Last night, I went to my first chi alpha meeting, which was really cool. It’s the Christian organization on campus, and every couple of weeks, they have a dinner at the youth pastor’s house. It’s a great chance for everyone to hang out and get to know each other. Last weekend they went to Lake Powell and from the video, it looks like a lot of fun…hopefully I can make it next year. It was a great chance for me to take a break from schoolwork, the campus, and Chartwells food. The food is good here, much better than some other schools, but eating the same thing day after day can become tiring.

Later in the evening, they pulled out a pair of indo boards, which kept several of us, myself included, busy for a good half hour. The pictures below are of myself and Ken Stuart, who brought me to the Chi Alpha meeting, meditating while balanced on the indo boards. For anyone wondering if we actually balanced like that for more than one-second, the answer is…no. All we wanted was the picture, but we got it!

It was a good night to just get away from everything else and hang out with people I now know better.

Exams are over!  Or so I thought until our calculus teacher told us we have another one next Thursday, a mere two weeks after our first calc exam.  Last week I had tests for matlab and physics, which went pretty well.  It gets confusing during the week when you have homework due dates all over the calendar.  Some assignments are due Tuesday in class, some due Wednesday to the teacher’s office by 4 pm, etc.  Wednesday is also my first ROTC test on basic knowledge…this weekend has been trying to cram in the last bits of information for that.

Last Saturday was the ropes course, which was cool.  I was bummed we didn’t get to use the climbing tower, but what we did was fun.  They had obstacle courses about 15 and 30 feet in the air.  Of course, everyone did the higher one which consisted of walking on a wire while holding on to an unbalanced rope with a partner, jumping from hanging platforms, and walking with your partner across an unstable bridge.  The last event that people could do was a rope swing.  After climbing 30 feet in the air on a pole, the swinger was hooked up to two ropes and after jumping off the platform, they swung back and forth for a while.  Most people did it upside down too.  Right as we were leaving, it started pouring rain; I’m not sure if the groups after us got to go up or not.

This week, our video game addiction level increased dramatically.  I think I wrote a couple posts back that we always played Nintendo 64 Super Smash Brothers.  I was mistaken with the word always; this week someone brought a Game Cube with Super Smash Bros. Melee.  The game console was on for at least 12 hours/day with various people playing.  Most of the people who were good on the N64 had to rethink their strategy because some of the characters in Melee had different strengths from their older counterparts.  A lot of us were also playing Halo ODST which came out late last week.  It’s a really cool game with some neat new features.

Yesterday was the all day production of the school newspaper, Horizons.  I do graphic design for them and I think yesterday I made about 6 or so graphics.  They’ll be in the issue when it comes out on Tuesday.  If you do not attend Embry Riddle and would like to see the newspaper, you can read the stories online at http://www.eraunews.com/ and if you’d rather see the print version, a pdf is available for download at the bottom of the left-hand side navigation bar.

When I got back from work last night, we all relaxed while watching Bad Boys 2, which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it.

Below is a panorama and another picture I made from the sunset pictures I mentioned last week:

I photoshopped in the background text and cross

Well, this week was pretty crazy. It was sort of a wake up call to me that this this year is going to be different from last year. Wednesday was my first exam, for my calculus class, and it really caught all of us off guard. Last weekend we started cramming in all the information on the practice exam, while working on all of our other homework. I ended up getting a B+, which was kind of disappointing since all the points I lost were from one problem, a one step problem at that. Tuesday night was three hours in the library working on calc and physics homework, and studying for my exam Wednesday. All of my classes have picked up in pace a little, and one thing teachers are absolutely adamant about is the late work policy. I learned that one the hard way.

A lot of my weekend was spent creating a flash animation/narration for a story in the book Arabian Nights. First we spent a couple hours recording voices and transforming them into female and Darth Vader voices. After that I had to draft up some characters that a 3 year old with a crayon could have drawn better. Finally we reached the stage where we added sound effects, music, and of course, the Star Wars intro. It’s because of that and other copyright law infringements that the video isn’t posted publicly

The highlight of my week, which seems to have become a feature on my posts, was getting a replacement phone for my Samsung Glyde. It was a touch screen and would randomly click somewhere very distant from the location of my finger. I just got my LG Versa in the mail and it’s great. It’s actually intuitive! Another added bonus is the tilt accelerometer that shows a full keyboard sideways but just T9 and numbers if held portrait. Overall, it’s a much better phone and I’m very happy with it. Lastly, it allows AAC files which means it’ll play all of my iTunes music.  It’s good for me since I couldn’t fit my iPod in my pocket with my phone, keys, and wallet anyway.

I got my bed raised this week, which the maintenance guys took to heart.  My bed was on the middle of the riser, about a foot off the ground.  I am now three feet off the ground, which is awesome!  I know have to either jump into bed or climb up my chair and dresser if I’m feeling lazy.  Getting down is a little easier, slide down the side and you’re already upright  Sorry, no pictures this week, but I hope to write in the next couple days after the ROTC ropes course tomorrow.