blog dot northwindy dot com

Well I'm in San Antonio for a couple days so I'm writing this entry on my laptop. I just arrived here this afternoon around 3, and I'll probably be here until Tuesday. It's not a terribly long visit, but I need to go to a doctor's appointment on Tuesday so I came in for that. Ug, today while I was driving, some old guy almost crammed me against the wall on I-35 as I was heading to San Antonio. He just started rolling over into my lane with no regard for me, forcing me to move over onto the shoulder and honk. Dumbass. I think Texas should pass a law that says when drivers are over 60, they should be forced to retake the driving test every year so that they can be stripped of their license if they are incapable of handling the car. I have no problem against elderly driving, but in the very least they should be tested regularly to keep the roads safe.

Anyways, my trip down here was fairly uneventful. With my laptop now working, I should be able to stay connected as needed on my dad's network until I get back. I don't really have any plans while down here. My dad wants me to clean some leaves off the roof tomorrow so I may be doing that in the morning. Afterwards, my dad wants to go buy a leather couch for a Memorial Day sale. We'll see if that happens. My dad really isn't quick to spend even though he's an assistant vice-president for a major corporation and probably makes a six-figure income.

So I recently purchased the latest CD from The Goo Goo Dolls entitled Let Love In. It has become my favorite CD for now with Stay With You as my favorite song. It has really good music, and except for one song, I can listen to everything on the CD. The words to a lot of the songs I can really relate to, and I am posting them on my lyrics blog as I get a chance.

On a different note, I took this 3 hour online class on Visual Basic 2005 from Microsoft. It was nice because not only did I learn a little about VB, but I also will be getting a gift set from Microsoft for signing up for their free class. It's supposed to come with some software and a book on Visual Basic that will probably come in quite handy. VB is probably one of the languages I want to learn on my own in addition to PHP and ASP. The languages I know are quite valuable, but some of the companies I've applied to are looking for people with knowledge of Visual Basic, PHP, and ASP. I think it would open up more job opportunities for me if I knew those languages so that is something I want to try to do over the summer.

I guess I lied in my previous entry. I said I was done swimming, but I went again today. I woke up later than usual, and I felt it would be too hot to go jogging so I went swimming for an hour. I figured it was better than nothing. I played X-Men again and replied back to this job that was interested in my resume. I submitted my resume to them and apparently it passed their preliminary review by their HR department. The job is a programming job that pays between 40k-70k/year. It's a work at home job which makes me a little skeptical, but if it works out, it would make it easy for me to live wherever I want since my home would be wherever I want it to be. It would definitely be a keeper past graduation. And if they hire me early then I can make a surprise visit to someone . Oh and speaking of graduation, I updated the counter on the right.. it now says the number of days until I graduate.

So today was another uneventful day, but it wasn't really boring. Actually, yesterday I had an interview with Dell. I wish it was for a programming job, but it was for a sales job here in Waco. The interview went well. The lady there said I aced all the tests with flying colors, and she was really interested in hiring me on. The job is basically answering the phone when people call that 1-800 number at Dell to buy a computer. I'd be the guy you talk to when you buy a computer. It's not bad for a summer job, but the only problem with this job is that it's not full-time. When they reviewed my resume, they saw that I would be going back to school in August so she said a part-time job is all she could offer me. I guess they might want to keep me on into the school year, which would be fine, but the whole purpose of me getting a job was to make money in the summer. I'd be making less in the summer. I haven't declined or accepted the job; I just told her I would let her know before the information session on May 31st. The job would be 25 hours a week at $10/hr, or $250 a week. The way I see it.. I'm gonna wait and see if I get any more job offers before the 31st. I mean if I can find a decent full-time job, then that is probably a better summer opportunity. Obviously $6/hr 40 hrs a week at Office Depot is only $240 a week, and less money for more hours. I'm not saying that's how much I was offered, but basically the job would have to pay $7 or $8 an hour for me to accept it over that Dell position.

Anyways, today I played X-Men Legends 2 on the TV for a few hours before going swimming. Now that I have my laptop back, I can connect games to the TV, and with my X-Box 360 controller for Windows, it's like playing on an X-Box. Oh and about swimming.. I want to say today was my last day of the swimming routine. Basically I think I could get a better aerobic workout jogging in the morning as opposed to swimming. I'm only switching because of some research I read on the Internet about how jogging is a better alternative. It did help me to lose some fat. Now that I've started swimming, I've lost about a pound this week in fat. Some of it may be muscle, but usually fat storages are hit first and primarily when you are doing aerobic activity. Its more important now that I do aerobic activities for a bit since my metabolism is higher with the added muscle from my weight training the last few weeks. How so? My resting metabolic rate might have been 1700 calories/day before I started training back in January, but now that I have more muscle mass it might be 1900 calories/day, and that's doing absolutely nothing. The way I figure is that I'm eating about the same, but now my body is slowly losing fat on its own doing nothing. By doing aerobic activity, I am helping out my body's metabolism burn fat faster so I can get trim faster as opposed to several months down the line. So instead of burning 1900 calories/day doing nothing, it turns into 2500 calories/day with aerobics even though I eat about 1700 calories/day worth of food. So if you do the math, that's 800 calories lost per day * 5 days a week of aerobics = 4000 calories/week. There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat so the weight I actually lost is about what I've just calculated. I don't need to lose a lot of fat since I'm already about 12% body fat, but around 8% body fat I should be able to see my abs, which was my goal from the start.

Now that I've sufficiently bored you with useless exercise facts, I have taken something away from swimming other than losing a pound. I'm much more confident in the water than I was before. I can swim a lot better now and I'm hardly getting any water up my nose now. I never really considered myself a good swimmer, but I feel like I am a good swimmer now.

It's been awhile since I've felt somewhat bored. It's only been 8 days since my last final, but I'm beginning to feel bored sitting around the apartment doing little. I worked on the laptop over the weekend and that kept me busy for awhile but now that it's all working, I find myself in a bored state. Today I bought some Armor-all for the car and waxed the dashboard and went swimming, but other than that, I did absolutely nothing. I'm supposed to go for testing for a job tomorrow but they never e-mailed me the address or directions like they said they would, and what's worse, I don't have a callback number... they called me from some corporate office in Tennesee. Unless I get an e-mail tomorrow with directions, I won't be able to make the testing. On Friday I'm gonna call all those jobs I applied to so I can follow up, but the waiting is getting tiresome.

On a less depressing note, I'm getting better at swimming going to the pool everyday. I'm more confident about my swimming abilities now and I'm not tiring out as quickly. Now that I've done more research, I might just go back to running, but I'm gonna stick with swimming for a few more days so I don't lose my confidence in swimming.

Ok so this weekend has turned out to be more eventful than I thought. Since I had already bought groceries on Thursday I was expecting a slow and boring weekend, but yesterday I finally decided to open the box my laptop was in to see if I could fix the display problem myself. Well I was definitely surprised to find that the work order in there said the work had been done. When I got the laptop back, I asked my mom to check the box to see if they had done the work and she said they hadn't so I saw no reason to open the box. I was also tired of calling Toshiba over and over, and I didn't want to read another work order that said the laptop could not be serviced because it wasn't under warranty. Well it turns out that my mom read the wrong paper - she had read an older work order that I sent with the laptop along with a legal document proving that my laptop was covered by the warranty. To make a long story short, my laptop has been sitting in a box here at my apartment for the last 6 months fully operational.

So anyways, after taking the laptop out, plugging it in, and turning it on, I found that the hard drive on the laptop had been reformatted so I ended up spending yesterday installing XP Professional, Office 2003, and a few utilities on my laptop to bring it back up to date. I knew they might format the hard drive so the programs I wanted to keep were copied to my external hard drive and I have a backup copy of documents and old programs I wrote on there as well. Upgrading the laptop took a good portion of the day Saturday, and after laundry today, it took a little bit more time today.

Today I defragmented the hard drive and did a full disk scan to make sure everything was in proper working order. So after all that work, my laptop is fully operational again with all necessary anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, and whatnot. Now I have two working computers between my desktop and my laptop. I would say I've brought my laptop sufficiently up to date that if I went back to San Antonio today, I wouldn't have to take my desktop with me. This is important to me because I need ways to keep in touch with my friends.

The only major problem with the laptop that still remains is the battery. The battery life is only 30 minutes or less because of the age. The computer is like 4 years old so the battery needs to be replaced, but I'm not prepared to pay $70 for a new laptop battery. I can handle running my laptop plugged in to the wall.

Well I've been hunting for jobs this week, and I've had mild success. I've gone to two interviews, and I've begun to realize that I excel when it comes to interviews. I used to be very timid and not very good with interviews as I recall back to the days when I was always nervous and quiet at interviews. I guess over time I've developed the ability to look the interviewer straight in the eyes when I speak and maintain eye contact. I'm also better at forming more coherent responses. This week, I've had two interviews. One was on Tuesday with a company in Temple, TX. That interview went well but the job was for only a part-time position and it would barely cover the gas. Today I had another interview with this company Vector that sells knives. I tested well at their interview, and the assistant manager commented on how well I listened, my body language, and my eye contact. Basically they want to hire me, but I'm skeptical to the point where I may turn this job down as well. After learning more about the job at the interview, I realized that this was the same kind of job my cousin and one of my best friends had worked for, but they both had trouble selling their knives. They both stayed with the company for a few weeks to a month before quitting. I can't afford to flake out of a job within a few weeks because I'm not selling.

On Monday I'm going to call them back and politely thank them before turning down the job. As for all those other job applications I sent out, I'm going to follow up on those tomorrow. I tried calling Office Depot today but it was already too late and the managers had left. I'm going to spend tomorrow calling all those 7 jobs I applied to and follow-up, see if I can get an interview. Following up is something I haven't been very good at and may be a reason why I can apply to so many jobs and get so few responses. Anyways, I'm going to be doing that tomorrow.

Other than that, my day was pretty slow. I went to the pool for the second time in two days and swam a few laps back and forth. Actually yesterday, as I was walking to the pool, I felt a sharp pain in my toe, which I thought was an ant bite. It's been bothering me off and on today and this evening I finally got to the point where I got the tweezers and started poking at it. It turns out there was a stinger in there. Ants don't sting. Bees sting. So what I thought was an ant bite yesterday turned out to be a bee sting. I got the stinger out and drained the venom, but my toe is swollen now after poking at it. Oh well.

Anyways, back to the swimming, yesterday I swam a few laps for 30 minutes and today I swam a few laps for about an hour. I probably would have kept going but I didn't have any energy left towards the end and my ankle was beginning to hurt. After I got out of the pool today there was a message on my phone requesting me to interview with that company Vector that I mentioned above. So I had less than an hour from the time I got out of the pool until the time I had to put on business attire and go in for an interview. I was pretty impressed with myself on being able to rush into the shower, put on some dress clothes and rush over to the interview with little time to spare. What's even more impressive is I had a very good interview even after all that and going in there "cold turkey".

I'd really like to start swimming regularly if I stay here in Waco or go back to San Antonio. I'm not giving up weight training, but I need some aerobic workout to burn some fat. Basically my weight training program has allowed me to build up a lot of muscle, but now I'm going into a phase in which I try to lose the fat so I can have a lean muscular "swimmers build". Then I can go back to working out. It was either start running again or swim laps and I thought it might be better to go swimming. I'm gonna be doing aerobics this summer to lose the fat then I'm gonna go back to my weight training in the fall. I'll probably burn a little muscle along with a lot of fat, but I feel its the best way to trim out and stay trim. I'll have to regain a little muscle in the Fall, but as long as I eat well it won't be very much.

I guess I've been rather silent about this thus far, but I think I should make my position very clear. In case you haven't been watching the news, quite a few hispanic immigrants to the US have been protesting US policies and calling on hispanics everywhere to join their protest. As a fellow hispanic, I have to say, "You don't speak for everyone!" Look, I have no problem with people wanting to come to the US to make a better life for themselves, but if you are going to do that, get a green card or a visa. Naturalize yourselves legally! I have no sympathy for you if you crossed the border illegally and expect to be welcomed with open arms. You come to this country illegally, steal US jobs from US citizens, and think it is your right to protest when the country wants to deport you. As a hispanic and a LEGAL US citizen, I fully support the government in what they are doing. Yes, some people may say a bunch of bullcrap that I am turning my back on my brethren or something, but this is not true. I feel that if you want to come to this country: do it like everyone else! Honestly, I think they give a bad name for hispanics everywhere when they try to pull stuff like that. Maybe my perspective is skewed since I haven't had a single family member born in Mexico since like the 1860s, but I'm about as sympathetic to their cause as a german immigrant would be to Nazi Germany in the 1940s.

So today proved to be very eventful even though I could have been lazy if I had wanted to. This morning I sold back some books and got about $125 back for them. Considering how much I spent on them, its a jip, but I really need the money and I can't wait to sell them on the Internet. I deposited $108 in the bank and kept $20 on me (I already had some money in my wallet that's why it doesn't add up). Anyways that ought to be enough money to get me by the next week or so without having to return to San Antonio. I want to stay up here as long as I can so I can find out if its possible for me to get a job here in Waco. Today I applied at Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, Books a Million, and Barnes and Noble. Yesterday I applied to Office Max and Office Depot. So out of all those, I'll may get one or two calls back, we'll see. I can wait out here in Waco for awhile, but if I don't get any job offers I'll have to go back to San Antonio for the summer and live under my parents roof .

I also got the grade back on that ethics class (Cultural Impact of the Computer), I got a B in it as I suspected so overall it was a good effort this semester. Next semester I'll have to make sure to get at least a C in my retake of Systems programming. It's also my last semester so I can't make anything less than a C in my computer classes or less than a D in elective classes. But honestly if I'm gonna make less than a D in personal finance or marriage and the family, I've got some issues. :-P

Ok, so the semester is over, and generally there weren't too many disappointments in grades aside from that dumb Systems class. I made an end of year push to improve my grades, and for the most part it showed. I pushed my B in geology up to an A.. I had to ace the final to do that, which I apparently did. I also pushed my database grade, which was very flaky after an incident with one of the group programs I was assigned. I would say that grade for this semester in Database bottomed out at a D, but with an A on my last program, a B on the 2nd midterm, and probably a decent grade on the final, I pulled out a B in that class. Another grade that was kind of hopeless at first was my Spanish grade. She would assign readings everyday and as the semester wore on I fell further behind with all the computer classes I was taking. I had to do well on that final to even pass the class, and my goal for not having to retake that class was accomplished. So across the board, my grades varied, and I SHOULD have had a C in Systems, but I guess I'll have to take that class again. The only class I haven't gotten a grade back in was my ethics class, which I would guess is a C or B. Considering I made a B on both essays, and possibly a decent grade on the final, I think there is a good chance of getting a B in my ethics class. I thought my essays I wrote on the final were pretty good, and I felt good about myself afterwards.

So now that finals are over, I've started looking for summer jobs, which is going ok. I had a job interview today in Temple, TX. The interview went well, but I had to turn down the job because they only wanted to pay me $8/hr part-time, and that probably wouldn't even cover the 40+ mile commute back and forth. There is a possibility they might have a full-time position for me, but I can't sit by and count on it. I applied to Office Max and Office Depot today which both have openings. If I get called in to both, I'll take the job that pays more, but I'm not getting my hopes up anymore about jobs. If I land one, so be it. Tomorrow I may check out Best Buy and a few bookstores for openings. I also need to sell some books back tomorrow so I might as well do that.

Ugh... I have to retake a friggen Systems Programming class because of a matter of 10 points. I had 683 points out of a possible 988 which translates to 69.1%! Less than 10 points more would have put me over the top and given me a C for the course but apparently I couldn't get her to change the grade from a D to a C. It's got me a little upset because having to retake that class in the Fall will push me up from a part-time load of 10 hours to a full-time load. I'll still be able to graduate in December assuming I don't have to retake any more courses, but those .9 of a percent are gonna end up costing me a few more thousand dollars.

I'm still waiting on some more final grades to come in. The critical class right now is Intro to Database. I have that final at 4:30 today and after talking to the professor, there is a good chance I can get a B in that class. Database is a prereq for a class I need to graduate in the Fall so it's important that I do well in that course. Also because this is my second time taking that course and I can't afford to take it again...