Ramblings

Today has been very... productive. Actually the last week has been productive, and today really capped it off. I FINALLY got in to see the doctor (took me damn long enough, I've been sick for the last three weeks). Actually, the doctor thing was pretty funny. I definitely woke up early today to go to my appointment, and it turns out that my doctor had called in sick -_-. Figures. I think this is a lesson that means Abby should check her cell phone messages, even when her cell phone's annoying noises wake her up half an hour early.

Breaking news: turns out the antibiotic I was given DESTROYS my stomach. Yeah. I'm pretty thrilled about that. So visit to the doctor goes under the mild success category. I'm going back to Ritenour tomorrow and getting different drugs.

Anyway... I actually ate breakfast today, which is something new and different. And since I went to the IST building early to pick up some more I-Connect magazines and rescedule my appointment with my advisor (which I brilliantly missed on Monday *faceplam*). By the way, I suggest checking out I-Connect, since it has an article on Second Life including spiffy quote from our teacher.

Class was a bit hectic, what with my LOSING OUR PROJECT TO ANOTHER CLASS'S HAND IN CHEST... THINGER. But it worked out. And I got the scarf to work too ^^. Also, HAL 9000 was not converted into World War III, which was not the least of outcomes I had forseen for today's class -___-. Oh well. If nothing else, this class has forced group work upon me in all of it's glorious glory.

I'm sure I should be doing work on the paper and the dance party, but that can definitely wait until tonight. Definitely.

Or maybe I'll just go right to sleep. That would be a good idea too XD.

But, for those of us who actually are working on the paper, some good sources I found to day are here and here. The first is the info island page that lists a lot of libraries and where to find them, and the second one is an argument (well... I comment war really) about the pros and cons of a library moving into SL.

Well isn't this special. None of you can see it, but I'm gnashing my teeth right now. Oh well. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been out during the dance party. I guess we might have wanted to check the planned outages calendar before deciding on a time. Then again, I doubt anyone had any reason to forsee that kind of necessity. I guess it just goes to show that you can't plan for everything.

Also, I find it funny that Second Life uses Google Calenders. I'm not entirely sure why, but it makes me chuckle. Then again, why wouldn't they use Google Calanders? Those things rock out loud.

Well, I need more links (I think. I still can't really tell what counts and what doesn't) so I'm going to totally linkdump while complaining about LJ at the same time.

I'm sure no one really wants to hear me talking about LJ anymore, but for once I'm not singing its praises! LiveJournal is a great free blogging site. With a basic account, users get a journal, can upload up to six user icons, and watch news, friends, comments and the like. Also for free, users can upgrade to a plus account, which puts advertisements on the journal, but offers more of the basic features, as well as allowing photo posts, voice posts, custom mood themes, polls and surveys, and other nifty features (a full list of accounts and features can be found here). The community is great, and a lot of fun, but more recently there's been some weirdness going on as far as content is concerned.

See, a while back there were some people upset about some of the user generated content on LJ. Recently, LJ has decided to implement a flagging system (for comparison, here is YouTube's flagging system). This post outlines the changes made, providing this quick summary:

- Adults will remain able to see all content on the site unless prevented by the exisiting security settings.
- The primary goal is to give you the ability to mark your own content so that kids aren't seeing stuff that is meant for adults.
- You now have the option to flag other people's content that you think is inappropriate for users under the age of 18. However, nothing will happen to that content unless multiple people flag it. Only then will it be sent to the Abuse Prevention Team for review.
- If your content is flagged by other users, adults will still be able to access it as long as they have the appropriate permissions.

Meanwhile, LJ users are sitting around rolling our eyes. It's hard to take this flagging thing seriously. Lj_biz posted some clarifications, but reading the comments makes it abundantly clear that most of us think it's stupid. This led to the creation of lj_policy where users could discuss and give feedback on policy matters, as well as the formation of a LiveJournal Advisory Board which at once brought up the question of how people are elected/appointed to this board and mostly caused more resentment than ease.

Of course, this is only what I've obsereved. I try to stay out of LJ politics myself, since, as you can see, it's a rather messy business. Every so often my friends page features some of the latest news and controversy, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't affect me much, so I'm staying out of it. Call me lazy, but it really isn't my problem.

Well, if that doesn't put me over the required number of links, it at least gets me close XD. I'm gonna relax with some Mahjong Titans.

Well... what can I say about my first semester at college? Penn State is amazing. I'm glad I'm here. But that's enough of the Miss America answer.... I think my first semester gave me a good foundation for what I can look forward to. Hopefully my teachers will all be as amazing as they were this semester, because I firmly believe that the teacher makes the class. I got a lot of requirements over with, so now Freshman Composition, Calculus, and my foreign language requirement are out of my way, and I was even able to start right into the introductory IST course.

I learned a lot this semester, not just from my classes, but also about college, and about myself. Getting out and doing things is a very intimidating prospect for me. At home in my dorm is my comfort zone, and I really need to work on getting myself up and out more often, or I'm going to miss out on things. I already missed a lot after only one semester, and even thought I've still got a lot of time here, that semester is time I'll never get back. My workload isn't much harder for me than it was in high school, so there's really no excuse for my sitting in my room all the time.

For the first time in my life, I screwed up a grade that actually counted. I failed my Calculus midterm badly, but I should still be able to redeem my overall grade. In the long run, I think this experience will be good for me. It should at least teach me that I am not invincible, and there are going to be things in life that I will actually have to work for instead of just gliding along.

Spanish reaffirmed my knowledge that I really dislike Spanish. It took care of my language requirement though. Maybe I'll try something else--I've been considering Japanese--but we'll see. At least I am no longer required to commit myself or my brain cells to a different language. I have enough trouble communicating with people as it is.

Although I had trepidations, I'm glad I ended up in English 030. At first I was very distressed that I'd clawed my way through AP English in high school only to have to suffer more of the same, but English 030 was nothing like that. It gave me new respect for English as a subject, which is good, because I really have no right to be judging a major I'm not in.

My First Year Seminar and IST 110H both managed to further convince me that I love my major. Everything I did in both of those classes was really cool, which gives me high hopes for the rest of my time here. I hope I'll be able to take more honors classes in my major as well, because I think that contributed a lot of my positive experience.

I loved this class. And the few parts that I didn't love about it, I think were good for me.

If I had any doubts that my major should be IST (which I didn't) this class definitely confirmed that I am where I want to be. The subject material was interesting, the projects were interesting and challenging, and the class just overall made me really excited.

I think overall my biggest challenge in this class was group work. I'm not sure if keeping HAL 9000 worked better or worse for us overall, but it was certainly an experience. I can't reasonably deny that we had a lot of friction toward the end, but by then it was really too late to do much about it, and not every group gets along, you know? Sometime you have to work with people who you don't see eye to eye with, and that's something valuable to take away. I don't think this particular class helped me at all with my tendency to micromange my teammates when I'm working in a group, but there will be other opportunities.

Also, even though Second Life has been really horrendous, it was a good mental excercise, and although it wasn't fun, we had to do it. Life won't always be fun, but you've got to play with the hand you're dealt and make the most of it. This whole blogging thing has been a bit of a chore too, but I like to blog, and it's been a good way for my parents to keep up with what I'm doing, so I'll probably keep it up, or at least try to.

I'm really glad I took 110H. It may have been more work, but it was definitely a good choice.

(Click for larger image)

And before anyone asks, "Council" refers to the characters in the drawing. They're my characters and I use them in a lot of the stories that I write. Theoretically they're supposed to inspire my creativity, but they're too lazy to actually do that most of the time.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone! Good luck on finals, and have a good break!