Author: nslyax

nslyaxhttp://www.nicholasyax.com/I am a Ferris State alum currently living in Holland, MI. My blog has been being neglected recently, but I hope to be posting more.
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Unemployed

So, all part time, all pages, and half of the full time employees were laid off. That means me, the other 8 tech pages, most of the people out at reference, Beth, and dozens more are unemployed beginning January 1st. So I am looking for a new workstudy, I don’t really think anyone else would hire me if they found out I plan on leaving in May.

In other news, school is down to 1 week. I have a psychology exam, a blueprint reading exam, and a take-home test and project for hydraulics. I have enjoyed some of my classes this semester, but I am still glad it’s nearly over.

I think that is all for now, see you all later.

nick

The Day

Today, at 3:00 PM, there is a a system wide staff meeting where we will learn who stays and who goes. I won’t be able to make it, as I will be in my Intro to Business exam from 3 – 4:30, but as soon as I am done I will be making calls to see what I can find out.

The rumor is I will have Genji 3x by the end of the month. Once for our work Christmas party, once with my dad and grandma, and once with Scott. Enjoyable, exciting, but expensive.

Christmas is approaching which means I should probably start figuring out what I am getting everyone. I bought Jenn 3 gifts last night, and gave her one since she had given me one of mine. Just 1 minute later a second of the gifts slipped out, though I didn’t really try that hard to keep it secret. Then, when I got home, I decided I wanted to try her 3rd gift, and since it wasn’t a great idea for a gift, I decided to keep it myself. So, I am back at needing to find her a gift now, to replace the one I kept.

This week, next week, and school will be done until January. Very very exciting, though a bit stressful as the exams and papers and projects pile up.

OK, I think thats all for now. I will try not to do that week without update thing anymore.

nick

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Mine went rather well, nothing real special, but nothing bad. Jenn has been up at her parent’s since she got out of work yesterday morning, she should be back tonight or tomorrow. I stayed here and had dinner with Mom and Chris. We had a few other people over, friends with no where else to go, so we had them.

School is winding down, just 3 weeks now. It’s nice that it is nearing done, but sucks because it really starts to get piled on about now. I have 2 take-home tests, an in-class test, a presentation, and a 3 page paper due next week. Not a huge problem, but not my idea of a fun weekend.

I am currently at work because today was either going to be really busy with all the kids out of school, or really slow with everyone shopping. So far, it is looking like the later.

Well, that’s about I have for you now. See you all later and don’t get trampled in any shopping crowds.

Nick

Unplayed

For whatever reason, it bothers me when my playlist has songs that have not been recently played. Not like, has been a few weeks, but songs not played since May 2004. There are a few reasons why this happens.

  • iTunes shuffle happened not to pick that song in a while.
  • I tend to pick certain songs I prefer more often.
  • My mere 256MB of memory isn’t enough for iTunes, iChat, Safari, Mail, and whatever else.
  • My speakers on the iBook are not that great, so I just didn’t listen to music all that much once my powered speakers started to act up.

So, I decided to fix that. My new headphones have helped, and since I tend to browse around at stuff randomly, I decided to just quit Mail and Safari. So, for 3 months now, I have been listening to music from a “Not Recently Played” playlist, that only included songs not played since before September 7. In 1 hour, 20 minutes, I will finally be done with my 36 hour long music library. I figure that will hold be for another 2 years. Probably not, but it makes me feel good for now.

iTunes Library

To help with the play-through, I downloaded LED Spectrum Analyzer. It strangely amuses me. Then again, I am happy for hours staring at a camp fire, and it does sometimes resemble flames, when the led colors are right.

iTunes Visualiter
OK folks, that’s all for now.
nick

1071 Words, and No Point

For those of you that are students, you may with to skip the next paragraph, because it may very well just piss you off.

I got back my grade for our business test Monday. It was a 94%, pretty darn good, I would, in any other case, be very happy with it. However, I put the grade into my little grade tracking spreadsheet, and the wonderful 94% dropped my overall grade in the class by a full percent, from 96% to 95%. That is still well over the 93% for an A so it isn’t a big deal, but how sad is it that I got an A on a test and it brought DOWN my grade? I am sure some of you wish you had such a horrible situation for yourself.

My car has been showing it’s piece-ness. When I sit down in it, anyone standing around can visibly see it sink on the driver’s side. That I know of right now I need a near complete suspension, wheel bearings, and valve cover gasket. I called Jason 2x now, but not much heard back. Maybe my brother’s friend Shelby, or just take it to a garage. Or maybe, I will find a super awesome job and get metric shitloads of cash, and be able to buy a new car. I wish I had the same problem with money that I have with grades.

Speaking of jobs, I am going Monday to look for a new workstudy position. I talked to Beth Friday and she said she would appreciate if everyone stay until Dec 31, which is understandable. In my case, it’s not a big deal because a new workstudy wouldn’t start until Jan 1 or so. For say Dan, who applied at Staples and I am sure they will want him working for day after Thanksgiving, it may become a problem.

I want to let it be known that I do very much enjoy my new headphones. I am listening to them now (Megadeth – Trust) and my favorite part, beyond the fact that they are probably the best sounding headphones I have ever used, is that you can wear them for hours and never irritate your ears, and when you take them off, you don’t feel naked either. I love them.

Being early November, it is time to begin Christmas shopping. I have no idea what to get pretty much anybody. Jenn said “there is something I really want, but I won’t tell you, I want to wait and see what you get on your own”. Well, that’s a really good way to not get what you want, I can pretty well promise that. I guess I should say I don’t know what to get anyone. I have ideas for Chris, my Mom, my Dad, I guess that’s all I buy for. Jenn too, of course, but her I really don’t have any idea.
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Nope, nothing. Oh well.

Just before I came to write this, I had a very long, about 3 minute, conversation with Dave’s away message. Granted, 3 minutes isn’t that long, but with an away message it it.

Speaking of long, as I said Megadeth – Trust was playing, then came Alice in Chains – Grind. Now, as I talk about long periods of time, what comes on, but In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I have about 15:30 of it left. I think it’s the longest song I have. I will check, 1 sec…
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Yes, 17:02, followed closely by November Rain at 12:29, then Metallica – Outlaw Torn in a distant 3rd at 9:58. I used to have some classical, symphonies and the like, and some of those were up in the 20 and 30 minute area in length, but I got rid of those because anything over about 10 minutes is a chore to listen through unless it’s really good. Then again, some songs are a chore at 3 minutes. Semi related, the shortest song I have is the Sealab 2021 theme, at 28 seconds. I really wish that was a bit longer.

Returning to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, I loved the Simpson’s episode where Bart switched it for the church organist’s music sheet. They cut away, come back 15 minutes later to her playing the last few seconds (among my favorite sections of the song, no, not because it’s the end) then fainting. I laughed for like 4 minutes.

Fitting in with Simpson’s , there is supposed to me a new movie preview tonight, in about 20 hours, during the Simpson’s. Just a little heads up.

Down to 8:15 of song left.

This is becoming a really long post. I wonder how long my longest post is? Would probably be one where I posted a story, but the stories have been removed, and probably wouldn’t have counted anyway, since they were more of an attachment, and had been written earlier. Except the Woods Runner, that was written on-the-fly, so it would count. One of the rants on ethiopians, or the 3 day long post, or when I lost iBlog because I forgot to pay for it. One of those most likely, or it could be this. I really don’t feel like checking, but maybe I can find a plug-in for wordpress to do it for me. I will have to check the word-count before and after posting this, to see how long it is. I could probably copy-paste into Word and check like that too. I guess.

Down to 4:30.

I was just writing, and going on and on, and had the feeling that this would be long, but then when the song with a name that is rather hard to spell and quite long as well came on (yes, I know the description, and now this explanation of it are incredibly longer that the name of the song is, but I really don’t care, shut up) I told myself I would write mostly non-stop until the song ended, and I am actually pretty close to doing that right now.

I think this is enough now, the song is down to 2:00. I am going to go get a wordcount, brb…
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1030 so far, holy shit.

OK, we end now, I will talk to you all later, and no complaining I don’t make long pointless posts, because this was a complete 1071 words, with absolutely no point behind any of it.

nick

Unemployed

So, the millage failed. With nearly 45,000 votes cast, we managed to lose by a mere 191. So, I am unofficially unemployed now. An email was just sent out that for now, we are going to continue business as usual until the end of the year, and the library board will meet over the next 6 weeks to figure out how to operate on 40% of budget. I will ask at work tomorrow or Monday on whether or not there is a policy yet on leaving, as I wouldn’t want to leave the lab short staffed prematurely, and I am sure the same question will be on others mind, and on Monday I will be updating my profile at Delta so I can begin looking for a new work study position. I figure that is my best chance, as I will only have whatever job I find until late April or some time in May, and telling an employer you plan on quitting in 6 months or less is not a great way to get hired.

Other than that, not a whole lot. I think I have mentioned that Ferris did finally accept me, and I have paid the admissions fee and now just need to wait mostly.

I think thats all for now.

nick

Comments and More

All 154 old comments are now up, bringing me to a total of 216 viewable comments, and a grand total of 376 if you include all the damn spam posts. It took me over a year, but I finally got them up. The to-do list has been updated accordingly, as well as indicating the fact that I fixed the search page so it actually works in the new template.

I also modified the Wayback code to display not only 1 year ago from the current week, but two and three.

But wait, there’s more!

I added to the stats section to display the total number of posts and comments along with the already present word and visitor count.

Thats one heck of an update!

nick

Finally

So, I now have 7 themes for you to choose from. Six are nearly identical, except for the banner at the top and the accent color used. The seventh, “atomic” is quite different, with a black background rather than white.

Jenn is at her parents in Alpena right now, went up today and said should be back tomorrow.

Ferris finally, after 4 months, accepted me. I applied June 24, and was told by email I was accepted on November 2nd. That’s rather sad.

I have 75% of my schedule for winter set. I am waiting on a prerequisite waiver for my CNC class to get registered for it, then I will be all set.

That’s all for tonight.

nick

Multi-Themed

I added a theme switcher to the sidebar so that you can choose between a whopping 6 different themes. Right now, all that actually changes is the banner image at the top, but with a bit of time I will change the colors of the themes to better match their image. I also plan on at least 1 more theme.

nick

Updates

So, over the last week I didn’t do a whole heck of a lot. I do have Kyle’s birthday party tonight at Applebees’s which supposedly will have 30 – 35 people showing up. Not sure what the hell they are going to do with us.

I made a few site updates. I got the school section up, it is under Work. I brought back the Wayback script, so you can read year-ago posts easily from the sidebar. I re-categorized all the old iBlog Poll and Pictures posts into a new Abandoned category, since those posts don’t actually have any useful information in them, but I didn’t really want to delete them all either. Sadly, the one iBlog category I have left to go through is the General category, that has 155 posts in it. Hell, I have 417 total, that nearly half. Finally, I updated the to-do list (under info) to reflect all those changes.

I checked out a book on programming for the Mac. I honestly couldn’t believe we even had one. I am definitely feeling the cobwebs, as I haven’t had C++ in 2 years and that is about as close as I have ever got to the Objective C used for Macs, but I am doing OK so far.

So, thats what’s been going on.

nick