Fear the Crab

Today is the first day of the fall semester. I’ll be taking ICS 321 and 331 this year. Only two classes, but they span four days out of the week, including Saturday. This means I’ll only be able to work at The Lab two days, but hopefully they’ll let me stay longer so I can earn more money and not worry about making enough hours to qualify for medical. Best case scenario is to work 6-7 hours a day at The Lab, while pulling in 20 hours a week at The Office. I should still have enough time to get any homework done, since there will be time at the Office to take care of stuff.

Parking is going to be a problem for many people, so I will have to revert back to my original schedule. I think waking up at 0500 is worth the ease in traffic and the bounty of parking stalls at the structure, so long as I manage to leave the house by 0545.

I’ve decided to start work at The Office an hour later, at 0800, so that I can grab some breakfast at the caf when it opens at 0700. I do this because I’m not particularly enthused about tummy-rumbles during work. It’s very uncomfortable.

Bought a new game called Black & White the other day. It’s some sort of god-type game where you micromanage villages and people, flaunt your godly powers, and control some kind of magical giant creature to act as an Avatar. Seems a simple concept, one that’s been used for many years, but this time there’s a level of complication that isn’t advertised in the fine print. For one thing, each village and your creature have minds of their own, and if you leave them alone for a bit they’ll do their own thing. In terms of villages the effects of this aren’t that earth-shattering, stuff like eating too much food or breeding like rabbits and sucking the earth dry, but the creature can do things that you might not like, such as eating the villagers or pooping on the temple. Training the creature is not unlike housebreaking a pet; you give it love when it does something good, and slap it around when it does something bad. I was going over some gameplay tips online and the sheer amount of tasks one must accomplish to have a “decent” game is staggering. I don’t think I’ll be playing it with much enthusiasm, especially with school.

In the meantime I drink coffee to stay awake and ponder how much notes I will have to take with just binder paper. I seem to have forgotten my new notebook at home.

Today I’ll be taking Maile and Malia (sp?) home today. Since parking is an issue, they’ll be dropped off and I’ll drive them home. This won’t happen every day, of course, since schedules are so different. It’s too bad they can’t reserve a parking permit right now, since they’re not that high up on the registration scale, but I believe after a couple of semesters they’ll be able to. Otherwise they’ll get the hang of finding free parking around the Manoa area. I found some numbers for alternate parking that they can try to take advantage of.