Sugar-Coated Bliss

As my Facebook status suggests, this weekend has been one heck of a weekend, at least for my body/brain.  A trip to Target last night resulted in two cases of Diet Coke, three packages of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, two packages of Twix bars (5 for $4; who couldn't resist?), a box of Oreo's, a frozen Target brand pizza, and a 12 oz. bag of Dunkin' Donuts Hazelnut coffee grounds.  All for the low, low price of $22.

So here it is, a day later.  A current inventory count (using, of course, the FIFO method when valuating my ending inventory balance--can you tell I've been studying accounting?) shows: two packages of Reese's, half a container of Oreo's (which I shared with Carolyn, thank you), 19 cans of Diet Coke, one and a half packages of Twix bars, 3/4 of the pizza, and roughly the same amount of coffee grounds.  For those of you who dislike math, here's what's missing: one package of Reese's is gone.   Along with five cans of Diet Coke.  And four "generous" tablespoons of coffee grounds (roughly around two cups of coffee).  Plus half of a package of Twix bars.  And a 1/4 of the pizza.

So how do I feel?  Energetic.  Awake.  Slightly nauseas.  And how much studying has been done?  In the past two days, over 23 hours.  No joke.

I know what many of you are asking yourselves: What college kid studies for that amount of time for a test?  Well, for starters, I do.  Then there's the fact that this week will be the "week from hell".  I'll break it down for you:


Monday - more studying.
Tuesday - Intermediate Accounting 2 midterm (which is often referenced as the hardest class in Carlson.  The average grade on a test is around 52/100.  Yes, you read that right).
Wednesday - Auditing midterm (not so bad--just a lot of memorization of tiny details/procedures/modules, etc.).  A final group project is also due that night on the last night of my A-Term class (over ten pages of writing for just my portion of the project).  A paper is also due for my biology lecture at noon, which is right in the middle of said midterm and final project.
Thursday - "relaxful day", which means working on homework that's due the next day.
Friday - Biology Lab set of word problems is due.  And a lab quiz.  This wouldn't be as stressful had I actually paid attention in classes/lab.


And then it's the weekend.  Am I blowing things out of proportion?  Probably.  But it's still stress nonetheless.  If I have one thing to be thankful for, it's that the week before Spring Break appears to be empty.  Okay, I lied; I have two things to be thankful for--the other being that Diet Coke has zero calories.  Because the Lord knows that I need to save as many as I can, especially considering the junk food that's already, and shall be, consumed.

My body's going to kill me once I get back on my regular diet.

A Tale of Two Computers

This weekend was a bust.  Literally.  Here's why:

To start things off wonderfully, my somewhat new laptop decided to crash on me.  My 3 month old laptop.  Seriously.  It unexpectedly came up with a wonderful message stating that the hard drive crashed.

The screen of death.  So naturally, I turn to the good ol' Wide Web to tell me what to do.  How do I do this, you ask?  Why, I marched my butt twenty minutes to use a computer at the Carlson computer lab.  It basically came down to two options: i) use the Windows 7 Ultimate CD to try and run a repair, or ii) use the Startup Repair Utility disc that you can download and burn on to a cd.  Of course the laptop didn't come with a Windows 7 Ultimate CD, so that option was out.  So, I came home, got the the Utility disc, and tried to burn it with my old, ancient laptop that's partially broken.  So why didn't I use said old laptop to research all of this, you ask?  Because the charger for that laptop is shotty, and the back port for a charger on the laptop is somewhat loose/broken.  Basically, you have to hold the charger in a certain position in order for the computer to charge.  Janky?  You bet.  

Back to the story--short version, it didn't work.  Long version, it still didn't work.  It came up with a "cannot repair", and a "either the CD-ROM or the HDD is faulty."  Great.  And it had all of my music, school work, etc. on it.  So I immediately called Fujitsu support to help fix it.  The rep told me to send it in.  He sent me a form for FedEx to fill out, so I could ship the laptop to a facility to be repaired (he also informed me that all my data would be lost.  Great.).  Okay, this I could deal with.  But are things ever that easy?  Nope.  I immediately got a call back from Fujitsu who told me I would be elevated to Level 2, whatever that means.  They'd call me back when they had some higher-up rep on duty.  They didn't call.  So I couldn't send the laptop back throughout the weekend.

Which was fine, I guess, because I had my backup laptop.  Sort of.  Anyway, everything was going decent--the cord wasn't acting up, the laptop was running somewhat smoothly, when out of the blue, it, too, broke.  On Saturday.  Apparently the cord on the charger broke, so no charge was getting through to the laptop.  So, I had no computer the entire weekend.  And I had a group project to take care of.  So what did I end up doing?  Why, playing Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2, and watching insane amounts of The Office, of course!

Luckily, however, I know how to pick my friends.  Or, better put, I know how to pick friends who are dating computer geniuses.  Carolyn's boyfriend, Eric, luckily came through with a universal battery charger, so now my computer (old one...) is actually running.  I'm counting my blessings he came through--on Sunday night at 9 p.m.  He also tried to save the contents of my HDD on the new computer, but to no avail.  Thank God Microsoft allows you to rip songs off your Zune back onto a computer.  Microsoft = 1, Apple = 0.  

So what of my new computer, you ask?  Well, I ended up calling Fujitsu today in a not-so-great mood.  And they put me on hold for 15 minutes.  No joke.  Some dude in Tennessee ended up telling me that he'd be sending out a new HDD for me to replace.  Seriously?  They place a faulty HDD in the stupid thing, tell me to ship it in for repairs, and now I'm notified half a week later that I'm supposed to replace the HDD?  Are you kidding me, Fujitsu?  Looks like Eric's getting another phone call soon....

So that was my eventful weekend.  No homework, plenty of video games/television/movies, and two broken computers.  

He's Gone Country

I just thought I'd comment on what is the best, in my opinion, genre of music--country.  Yeah, yeah, I know many are thrown off, and disgusted, by the twang of guitars (and a few singers, as well), but if you look past the twang, you'll see a genre that's relatable to real life.  Many country songs are about situations that hit close to home, and many people can relate to the lyrics of country songs.  Plus, the genre is home to Carrie Underwood. That alone cements the awesomeness that is country music.  These past few months, I've had more Garth Brooks, Alabama, Brooks & Dunn, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Montgomery Gentry, and Rodney Atkins on my Zune's playlist than any other genre.  Maybe it's because I find a banjo appealing.  Or I find a fiddle oddly soothing.

You'll notice how Taylor Swift is missing from the above playlist of country artists.  Anyone who has to remix their music to gain more airplay outside of the country genre should not be considered a country artist.  Plus she can't sing.  And she looks like a wet rat.

The only thing I can say is that everyone should give country music a listen.  I will agree that country music is not everyone's cup of tea, but for me, it's the epitome of great music.

And also, I'm pretty sure there's a high correlation between growing up in small towns and liking country music.

I'm BAAAACK

I'm back to the blogging world.  The reasons for this are threefold: i) I need to start practicing my writing skills for my numerous writing-intensive courses (somehow writing in Swedish/not writing at all slowly decays all writing skills), ii) I'm currently procrastinating studying for a midterm in two days, and iii) there could be SOMEBODY out there who actually wants to read this stuff.  I'm thinking the third reason may be pushing it a bit, but hey, a man can dream, right?

Hopefully the blog will be updated much more frequently than its sister blog from my time in Sweden--something tells me there'll be more downtime here to actually update the thing.  We'll have to see.

...and now it's back to studying.  School, you suck.  But don't worry, I'm almost over you.