Hello, 2010...just yesterday you seemed infinitely far away

Hey 2010...you see your buddy 2009 over there? Yeah....he doesn't look so hot, does it? Nope. That's uh...that's gonna be you in a year if you don't watch your step. I'm not one to be trifled with. Do you know what the motto for last year was? No? It was "2009 - The Year of Vengeance." Yeah. Let that sink in. Haven't come up with a motto for you yet, though...

Oh, hello readers...didn't see you there....if you don't put a new year in its place right away it can become headstrong and disrespectful.

So I know I took a few weeks off from this thing. Seems like I took a couple weeks off of everything. And that's probably a good thing. I'm supposed to be working on a project for a professor before the new semester begins (in about 5 days), but ever since Christmas I've plateaued and not much has been accomplished. I figured I would make a lot of headway this week...however, I keep getting caught up running errands and wallowing in the mire of unmotivation. And, of course, there is the condition many of us know all too well - Procrastination. Why do we do it? I suppose it has to do with what one infamous professor always asks us - "are you a carrot or a stick person?" And unless I'm truly interested in something, I need a giant stick swinging down to crush my bones.

What hasn't helped this week is that I went online and looked at the course webpages for some of this semester's classes. (Cue ominous 1950s horror movie music) Looks like there's going to be lots of horrific computer programming.....I absolutely HATE that stuff....why on earth do they insist on making things harder than they need to be -- more complicated and confusing? Why not try to simplify things? OH NO! Let's make computers so that you need to know a dozen asinine, complex, and unnecessarily obtuse computer languages so that you can physically type in outrageously long, complicated, and tedious commands for each tiny little thing you want the computer to do! Here's a shocking idea -- how about making it so that you just tell the computer in plain English what you want it to do? Or maybe have voice-recognition software so that you simply TELL the computer what you want? "Hey, stupid computer -- I want you to use the Bernoulli equation to solve for stupid velocity with the following stupid variables! Can you stupid handle that??!?!?!"

What makes it worse is that the other fellows at school LOVE this stuff. They eat it up like Oreo cookies first thing in the morning (I could eat a box of those things upon waking). "Oh boy, FORTRAN and Visual Basic! Integrating codes between Excel and POLYMATH! This is fun and easy and helpful! C'mon Rick, you know how to do this! What's that? Telling the computer what you want? HAHAHA - that's just silly! Typing in inhumanly long and ridiculous codes is way better!"

Soooo.....in other news....we might be getting our first touch of snow for the season tonight and tomorrow. Only a couple of inches at best....but better than the nothing we've gotten thus far along with watching such places as New Mexico and Dallas get hit with winter weather while we alternate between 45 and torrential downpours for days on end OR 20 degrees and windy with blue skies. Of course, there's always the local weather station's Anti-Snow Machine to contend with. The Anti-Snow Machine (as you all know) creates a magical bubble of clear air, above-freezing temps, or otherwise removes the presence of snow from an area as large as the viewing area or as small as my personal location. So while all the area outside the magical bubble ceases the misery of their daily grind and runs out to frolic in a harmonious Utopia of snow and Christmas songs and talking snowmen and animated rabbits and smiles and hot chocolate and sledding (and not to mention everyone suddenly lives in a forest preserve like in Calvin and Hobbes...in fact, most of my idyllic visions of life are somehow related to that comic strip...) and peace on Earth and blah blah blah blah blah --- meanwhile, I'm standing at the window watching rain come down as the tv turns itself on and the weatherman or weatherwoman or weathermonster or weatherbear or weathercoffeemaker or weatherwoodchuck appears on the screen taunting me by name and using foul language to demean me as he/she/it has the camera follow them outside to roll around in the snow and then write "Eat it, Rick" in the snow itself. Of course, later on follows the pretentious pandering to the audience during the regular broadcast,"oh, gee, it was just so strange, we got lucky and the snow just dissipated over our area! We never could have predicted that! Who knew?"

Hmm....perhaps I should go eat something....like many people, I have a medical tendency to have low blood sugar if I don't eat regularly...many other people completely dismiss this and do not take it seriously when I say "I can't skip a meal." They think it's just me being dramatic or something. But no - you don't understand...I....can't....skip...a meal. From a health standpoint, I HAVE to keep myself fed regularly. No food = no glucose getting to the brain = inability to function like a normal human being. So when my class schedule comes out and two days a week we have a 6 hour block of nonstop classes from 11-5 with no lunch break and people laugh when I say that this is a serious problem - I can get a little annoyed. "Oh, just go eat some computer programming - that'll make you feel better - who needs food when you can stare at idiotic computer languages?"

Alright, well....looks like I started off the new year of blogging with a low-blood-sugar induced diatribe about various annoyances. I'm sure you all totally enjoyed that and don't want your money back. Oh...I mean...no....your credit cards are so NOT being charged automatically each time you view my page....that's just a ridiculous idea...like low blood sugar...or computer programming...or an Anti-Snow Machine...