Claire's Random Thoughts

Today at Tara’s BBQ party, she and Ellen suggested that I make a show about “my world”. Then, we though that maybe I could publish a book on it someday if I get enough ideas. So, I decided that I could keep track of my ideas in my new “In Claire’s World…” category on this blog.

Here’s what I have so far:

You must eat at least 2 oz. of chocolate day in order to survive. Yes, this is what happens after you order chocolate in bulk and make it routine to eat a piece every time it comes to mind. I need to make it a New Years Resolution to avoid chocolate next year.

If you RSVP to Tara’s party and don’t show up causing her to have a lot of leftover food, you must go back in the future and eat you share of the food, even if you don’t make it to her house until after it goes bad. Yes, it’s only fair that you get to eat the food that should have been yours instead of making Tara’s family stuck with it.

Christmas in America is more of an economic stimulus and credit card debt occasion than a celebration of Christ. Sad to see what a great holiday has become, but for a great portion of the population, it has become just a gift exchange tradition. Oh well, maybe the present state US economy could really use a stimulus right now, but the general prediction is that Christmas shopping expenditures this year will be lower. According to a recent Gallup pool, Americans will spend an average of $616 this holiday season, compared to $866 last year.

This year’s horrible Black Friday deals are more evidence that our economy’s sucking. The stores can’t even afford to lose a little bit of money by offering awesome Black Friday deals they had in the past. In fact, the deals in the brick and mortar stores that required waiting in line sucked so much that you could get the same prices if you just bought from online retailers. I find it hilarious that there was not a single person waiting in front of Best Buy when I took a look on my way back home from a Thanksgiving party. I didn’t even find anything worth waiting in line for this year, because nothing was that cheap today. I doubt I’m going to find anything that great on Cyber Monday either.

I have absolutely no clue what was so great of a deal at Wal-Mart that was worth trampling someone to death over. Seriously, that store needs to get a system to maintain some kind of order, so they’re not in the news every Black Friday about deaths or serious injuries. It’s absolutely ludicrous that someone trying to maintain order in the store was trampled to death.

Oh, and check out my proof that Santa isn’t real.

This purpose this post serves is mainly to remind myself of what I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe it will help me get my work done, so I can enjoy my “reasons to be cheerful”

Let’s start with things to be cheerful about. I’m trying to be an optimist, since they seem like the happier people. It wouldn’t hurt to be one of them, would it?
1. I get to go home for Thanksgiving! I miss home. I’ve been away since the end of August, so it’s only natural to want to go back.
2. It’s almost the end of the semester. Then, I get a break for about a month. Maybe I should try to get a job this time, since I have been unemployed for a while.

Now, what not to look forward to:
1. My scientific article project
This isn’t due until Tuesday December 2, but my flight’s coming in at about 6:00 am that morning, so I will have no time to work on it that day. I’m also going home for Thanksgiving break and don’t want to have to bring my laptop and articles with me, so my personal deadline for this is before I leave on Wednesday. I have to find 15 scientific articles and tease scientific terms out of them from a predetermined list the professor gave us. Then, we have to summarize the article while embedding the term. I was supposed to be working on this all semester, but I chose to wait until the very end. It’s much more difficult to find suitable articles than I had anticipated, because they not only have to be suitable for certain scientific terms but also have to be related to the environment. Since I only have to
2. My business law final. It’s probably not too big of a deal, because it’s just going to be multiple choice and fairly general, but I still need to review my notes. And, it’s on the same day the project is due, when my flight comes in at 6 am. I’ll be exhausted that day, sigh.
3. Studying for my calculus 3 final that will take place on December 9. I can’t say I fully understand vectors at this point. I can just follow examples and do problems. If I can get over this hump, I’m not too concerned about my other final exams, since this one is the most difficult.
4. Oh yeah, my final section of my accounting annual report project is due tomorrow too. Maybe I’ll skip this one and spend the time working on the scientific article instead (I say that, but I’ll probably just be wasting time on the internet). It’s only one section out of 10, and the whole project is only worth 10 percent of our grade. So, I’m only losing out on one percent of my final grade if I don’t do it. I’m glad the previous test had extra credit that was definitely worth more than 1 percent of the final grade. I’m probably going to end up doing the assignment tomorrow morning anyway, because accounting actually somewhat interests me.

I guess compared to some of my friends with majors with classes that require multiple term papers that each have to be pretty long in length, I’m lucky. Theoretically, I can concentrate on the scientific article project before I leave on Wednesday for Thanksgiving break and do a little looking over my business law notes. After that, I can then shift my focus to Calculus 3, since my grade is not in jeopardy in any of my other classes. The key word here is theoretically, which will only work if I am able to keep up my plan.

It’s funny how all the things to be cheerful about are directly related to one of the things not to look forward to. In other words, in order for me to enjoy anything I am looking forward to, I have complete one of my dreaded tasks. In order to enjoy Thanksgiving break, I have to get my scientific article project out of the way. Otherwise, I’ll have to go through great inconvenience to bring home all the materials I need to do the project and take time out of the few days I have there to do my project. In order for me to enjoy winter break, I have to get a decent grade in Calculus 3. Otherwise, a bad grade in that class will bother me throughout the break.

Other things to do:
1. Talk to another dean (not the one who was being as “unaccomodating” as she possibly could) so I can declare a minor in math (hmm…ideally, I can’t fail calculus 3 too badly if I want to do this, either. Otherwise a minor in math wouldn’t make much sense, would it?). I know that it’s allowed, because other people with my same major are doing the same thing, but it just seems like I always speak to the wrong people.
2. Redesign my stepmania site

So, I had an absolutely miserable calculus 3 test last Thursday. I didn’t mention it earlier, because it was before I resumed blogging. In fact, the test was so long and miserable for most of the class, that the professor let us take one problem home to do, the problem that asked us to find torsion for a vector that got more complex every time you derived it. I wasted a lot of time and frustration after dinner last night attempting to do the problem without one simple piece of information that I forgot to copy down, a simple t=0 (Thank you again, Sarah).

Do I think the majority of the population will really care about this? Probably not, but I feel like ranting, and I’m getting back into blogging, so think of anything that happens as “potentially bloggable”. Don’t worry if you don’t understand any of this problem either. As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t exactly the most useful kind of math. In fact, I can’t wait for vectors to be over, so I can get back to practical use math that I might actually need for anything Actuarial Science related.

Math with numbers is so much easier.

It’s almost funny how I used delude myself into thinking that I would write and others would read. In the past, I have taken many hiatuses, returned to blogging, promised to continue blogging regularly, and changed my mind after a week or so. It’s practically a guarantee that I’ll do the same thing this time, which should transform the “almost” funny to plain old “funny.”

Seriously, I find it greatly beneficial to my writing skills if I can keep up any form of regularly scheduled writing. Since I’m not taking any English classes right now and will probably only have one more for the rest of my college career, I need to depend on something else to discipline myself into exercising my writing skills, or such skills will only farther deteriorate and leave me without a paddle when it becomes necessary for me to write something that will be judged and potentially impact my career. Furthermore, recording my thoughts also helps me keep track of them properly as well as think deeper.

On a brighter note, I did update this blog with a new theme. Is it better than the old one? Probably not, but I’m hoping that the fresh look (and the many hours I put into customizing the template to make it suitable for my blog’s needs) will motivate me to continue blogging.

I am including a picture of my old theme just to prove to everyone that in reality, I just killed about four hours of my life for no particular reason. Now that I’m writing, I am also thinking deeper (like I said I would earlier).

There was a small section of the php code in my old template that produced an endless loop preventing my page from ever loading completely. Since I was too lazy to scrutinize the code for mistakes, I decided to look for a new template and re-customize it all to avoid looking for a simple mistake in the old code. This is only one of the few examples of how I am included in the group of those individuals who go through tedious and greatly time consuming processes for the purpose of avoiding a simple inconvenience that is only meant to cost a few minutes.

My prediction is that I will continue to blog regular for the next month at the most. Maybe I will have to continue for longer than that just to prove myself wrong. Oh, and by the way, the google adsense will be gone until farther notice. I get few enough visitors that it’s not worth it for me to take up valuable space or ruin a beautiful design with advertisements that will earn me little profit. Maybe if I really continue to blog and attract new readers, the adsense will be back someday in the future, but enjoy the advertisement-free site for now.