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< 1 minute read

November 6, 2003, 11:52 AM

My cold weather is taking a breather! Frustrating, it is. I don’t know about you, but for some reason, I love the fall and winter much more than I do the spring and summer. But that’s just me, I guess. Still, we got some rain, which has served to cool things off a little bit, though not by much. What we need is a good cold front. Drop the daytime temperatures to the 50s at best, and into the 30s at night. I definitely enjoy the cold…

Categories: Weather

< 1 minute read

November 3, 2003, 12:22 PM

Well, my car’s exhaust problem is fixed. Basically, my car was running very loudly for the last few months, since, as we found out, the “flex pipe” was shot. I have no idea what that is, but I need one in good condition to pass my inspection.

It was very strange to drive the car after it was fixed, since now there’s no roar when I accelerate. It’s quiet!

Categories: Toyota Previa

3 minute read

November 1, 2003, 5:04 PM

Well, I went out with a number of former Potomac-ers, like Patrick, Chris, Jackson, Jason, Will, and Adam, as well as several others. You’ll of course recognize the people from College Life. Since it was Halloween, I wore the scariest thing I owned, which is how I describe my “I Bleed Schumin” shirt. Patrick went as a crocodile (in an inflatable costume no less!), Jackson went as a lifeguard, Chris as a pirate, Jason was… something else (hard to describe), plus we had a hula dancer, road signs, a cop, Billy Joel, and much more.

I think all in all I had like five beers, maybe four or five shots of vodka, plus a trip with the “ice luge”, which is basically where you put your face on the end of a groove in a big block of ice, and people pour alcohol down the groove into your mouth.

Needless to say, I was blasted. Totally smashed. However, I was a happy drunk, getting very friendly, even as I was kind of running into one wall after another and leaning on everyone and everything. I would dare say I was hanging on everyone at least once through the course of the evening. Still, I felt so light on my feet! My legs felt like rubber as I tried to maintain my balance. My face also felt like rubber, which was an interesting feeling. But yes, I was very drunk.

Continue reading…

Categories: JMU

< 1 minute read

October 31, 2003, 6:19 PM

Yes, it’s halloween, and I’m going to my first ever college party. Oh, I feel like such a freshman, but unlike the freshies, I’m legal to drink.

I feel like such a nerd… I’m 22 years old, and a fifth-year senior, and only now am I going to my first party.

Categories: JMU

< 1 minute read

October 30, 2003, 8:36 PM

The night before Halloween, there’s bunches of people camped out in Wilson Hall waiting to sign up for Alternative Spring Break trips. From what I understand, there are limited spaces on these trips, and so if you want the one you want, you really have to get there early and then camp out to hold your spot.

Alternative Spring Break trips, for those of you who don’t know, are basically community service trips to different areas both in the United States and in other countries. And it has quite a history of high involvement at JMU.

I did something similar quite recently – an alternative fall break trip to Pittsburgh about two weeks ago, where we worked at a soup kitchen, a drop in center, and Sojourner House.

However, the camping is where I draw the line. With the LPCM alternative fall break trip, we took as many as wanted to go. All I had to do was fill out the proper paperwork, which took five minutes. But there is no way in HELL that I’m camping on the floor of Wilson Hall, no matter how noble the cause. There’s just something about a cold, hard concrete floor that doesn’t go over well with me.

All in all, I commend them for their dedication to service, but I’ll pass on the floor, thank you.

Categories: JMU

2 minute read

October 30, 2003, 6:56 PM

Look at this picture, an LPCM file photo that I took way back in fall 2002:

The girl on the left is my friend Laura from LPCM. She is wearing the pink “MADISON” shirts that a group on campus is selling in regards to raising money to fight breast cancer. Now I’m all for supporting medical research. Anything that gets people to the next birthday is great by any means. I just think that pink alone is limiting their market just a little bit.

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Categories: JMU, LPCM

< 1 minute read

October 30, 2003, 11:21 AM

Yes, spam, as in unsolicited commercial Email, is crippling the Email system. But not how you think. It seems that as a result of people and their overzealous spam filters that nowadays I’m more astonished when Email DOES arrive than it getting eaten.

It used to be so easy to get Emails through to people. Address, message, subject, and voila. Done. If I need to send a file as previously discussed, I attach it and go.

Nowadays, there have been cases of all kinds of messages being eaten. Kathleen, the LPCM campus minister, recently sent me a whole bunch of stuff that never showed up, eaten up by the Email monster. I Emailed Dr. Teske a sound that we had previously discussed. Never showed up, though interestingly enough, it did show up for the friend I CC-ed it to who’s on the same server. I Emailed Dr. Skelley a paper recently, and it never showed up. Very frustrating…

At least I got the spam filters taken off of Schumin Web. You send something to my Email address, and I can assure you, I will get it. This after I nearly lost some domain names because the spam filter was eating my confirmation Emails.

It’s sad when I can say that the spammers are winning in destroying Email, but not directly due to their own activities, but rather some overzealous filtering techniques that will eat more Emails than they let through.

Categories: Internet, Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

October 27, 2003, 2:40 PM

Yes, another one of those quizzes. This one about the Pocky crunchy cookie-sticks. I’m strawberry Pocky. Good stuff, that Pocky. You can get it in places that sell Asian products, or just slide on down to the Chinatown nearest you.

Categories: Netculture

< 1 minute read

October 25, 2003, 11:16 AM

I watched Saturday morning cartoons this morning… I’m amazed what they do nowadays. Of course, it’s better than one cheesy cartoon after another like it used to be, but still this is amazing.

We start out with a children’s version of Trading Spaces. Here, two kids and one friend each, plus a designer and a decorator each, trade spaces and redecorate the other’s room. Different designers and different host from the regular show, but still interesting. A major difference I noticed is that they don’t mention their budget at all. All in all, though, I enjoy Trading Spaces in general, and this was no exception.

Then there’s “Endurance 2”. This reminds me of a kiddie version of Survivor, except it appears that the kids get to shower and get, like, real accommodations during the show, compared to regular Survivor, where they totally had to fend for themselves. Still, they have stunts and a form of “Tribal Council” where teams who are marked for elimination play “Paper, Rock, Scissors” with elements wood, water, and fire. Interesting.

Interesting what they show nowadays, indeed…

Categories: Television

< 1 minute read

October 23, 2003, 10:33 PM

Well… kind of. I did manage to get away with having no phone number listed in the JMU phone directory, which I did intentionally. However, I still do have an entry in the phone book and my address is listed, but I doubt many JMU students will actually drive out to Stuarts Draft to go visit me. Besides, it’s more interesting to send me to them, since it’s a way to get out of the house.

A “real” nonpublished listing, by the way, would not appear in the phone book at all, and would show up as “NONPUB” in a directory assistance service.

Still, I am quite pleased with myself, since I’d had problems with prank calls in the past. And with dorm numbers, you have one choice: published. So I’d get drunks calling me on Friday nights trying to get some entertainment. Now, I can work in peace on Friday nights, and not have to worry about getting a phone call, because JMU doesn’t have it.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what my obsession is with having a nonpublished number, it’s several reasons. First of all, the whole thing with the drunks, plus after working for CFW/nTelos/Telegate for almost five years, I’ve seen the whole non-published listing thing, and how well it works. And lastly, speaking of my former employer, after almost five years of working in a phone job, what makes you think I particularly want to spend more time on the phone?

Categories: JMU

2 minute read

October 23, 2003, 5:28 PM

As announced in the October 23 edition of The Breeze, the Student Government Association at JMU will now be picking a “Student of the Month” from nominations by students, organizations, faculty/staff, administrators, or themselves (the last one which we call “shameless self promotion”).

The requirements to be the Student of the Month are to have at least a 2.0 GPA, be a full-time student, be in good standing, and that only the past 90 days can be considered.

The winner gets a $50 gift certificate to the JMU Bookstore, lunch or dinner with Linwood Rose (JMU President), and a formal resolution of recognition from the SGA Senate.

I am ineligible for the Student of the Month program due to my being somewhat less than full-time this semester (I’m taking six hours, and you need twelve to be considered full-time). Just as well, though. People are always surprised to hear this, but I absolutely HATE public recognition. I despise it. It means very little to me to be recognized publicly in front of a bunch of people. In fact, I can’t stand public recognition and award ceremonies so much that I would deliberately miss recognition functions (and they would have to track me down later to give me the award), and I absolutely refuse to attend my own college graduation at JMU. Seriously. I simply want to receive my degree in the mail and then quietly fade from the JMU scene. Seriously.

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Categories: JMU

< 1 minute read

October 22, 2003, 1:53 PM

Well, it turns out that some filters at Schumin Web were eating the Emails. My tech people will be hearing from me. Meanwhile, though, we sent the GoDaddy authorizations through a different route, and I was able to authorize them just fine. Now I pulled all the eHost strings I was supposed to, getting the authorization codes for some and unlocking others, and so the domains ought to move right over just fine, though as the losing (or should we say loser) registrar, they could still screw it up. But we all hope they don’t…

Categories: Internet

< 1 minute read

October 22, 2003, 12:50 PM

Lately I’ve been trying to do registrar transfers for my different domain names because the new registrar is much cheaper than the old registrar. And amazingly, both seem to be screwing up today. eHost (a reseller for eNom) is looking in amazement at me as I work to transfer ALL my domains away from them. Meanwhile, GoDaddy is having problems sending my confirmation Emails.

And on top of that, the domain I originally tried to transfer to GoDaddy during the summer bombed miserably, since eHost totally had no idea what they were doing as they couldn’t supply me my .org authorization code. I actually had to go so far as to renew that domain with them (which I didn’t want to do), which went through. All the while, they’re swearing on their mother’s right kidney that GoDaddy is the registrar for schuminweb.org, while I’m swearing on their mother’s left kidney that eHost/eNom is the registrar, and that a WHOIS search shows them as the registrar, and I recently renewed with them and it went through just fine.

For GoDaddy, that seems to be a rather easy issue, since I think that the Emails are getting eaten up somewhere along the line, and I’ve Emailed my people to get rid of any spamfilters that they have on my Email. Now eHost, on the other hand… it almost seems as if I need to go down to wherever their offices are and make some heads roll, because this is downright nutty what they’re doing.

Categories: Internet

2 minute read

October 20, 2003, 9:41 PM

I actually got back from Pittsburgh yesterday, but I was SO tired yesterday, this journal was about the last thing on my mind.

Anyway, though, it was interesting. We worked at a soup kitchen, we helped with distribution of food, visited a drop-in center for homeless people, and of course, our main event: cleaning carpets at Sojourner House, a facility for mothers recovering from drug addictions.

On Saturday night, after everything was finished, we went out on the town, and met up with my friend Patrick Jarrett, who I’ve known for several years online. He gave some of us a tour of the town, and we also rode the Incline and rode “The T”, which is Pittsburgh’s light-rail system (their equivalent to Metro).

Continue reading…

Categories: LPCM, Pittsburgh

2 minute read

October 16, 2003, 12:51 PM

Sometimes it’s interesting what happens when the unexpected happens and you have to deal with it. Somehow, a bird got into Canterbury. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. All I know is that when I came to Canterbury today to visit Kathleen to talk Pittsburgh (which we’re going to today), I heard a flapping sound, looked in the direction of the sound, and there was a bird on the first floor of Canterbury, inside.

So I go upstairs, tell Kathleen that (A) I double-parked her, and (B) that there is a bird in the house (to which she said, “Yeew”). So we’re talking about stuff and working on stuff, and we hear a sound in the main upstairs room. First instinct is that it’s someone, but it turns out to be the bird. So we close the door so it doesn’t get in the room where we are.

When it’s time to leave, the bird is right upstairs in the next room, trying to get out, but not realizing that the window is closed. Poor bird. Meanwhile, Kathleen and I are no help, flipping out at every little move the bird makes, and ready to jump if it comes any closer to us, and we can’t just open the windows it’s running into, since neither one of us wants to go near it.

Continue reading…

Categories: LPCM