Its been a while! Quite a while….
Life has been pretty busy lately. For those of you who aren’t aware (I don’t know why you wouldn’t be, but I’ll continue anyway) I am currently enrolled in the Web Development program (well technically now its called Internet Applications and Web Development because they decided to change it for some reason) at Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario.
Yes, its quite a ways away from home, but as I’m sure most of you are aware, I was born in Ontario and lived in Ontario until I was 13. This is the longest I’ve been in the province since then. But, I had never been to Oshawa before, in my life so it was still a new experience for me. And driving in Ontario has been quite the experience too, since I learned to drive in the middle of nowhere in Northern Alberta, and got my driver’s license in less of nowhere in Southern Alberta.
With that said, I’m enjoying myself. For the most part. I’ve made a few friends. I’m not the best at making friends since I tend to be slightly anti-social at times, but I have met a few people that I really like.
Roommates
These people include my roommate. She’s pretty cool! I have to say she’s the best roommate I’ve ever had.
I liked the first roommates I had (Leandra, Dana and Eden) at Lethbridge College, but I didn’t stay with them. It was nothing personal against them, but an opening came up in the two bedroom suite, which was my first choice in residence so I took it, thinking it would be good for me with homewokr and such. I was correct, in that sense but the roommate situation, not so much. My roommate Katelyn was nice… as far as I could tell. She was always locked inside her bedroom and I rarely ever saw her. She hung out with me and my friend Cara once or twice but when we got back she went into her room and shut her door. The last day that she was there at the end of the year we went to Tim Horton’s for and ended up hanging out and talking for two or three hours. And it was fun but we don’t keep in touch. I did see her once in Lethbrige a few months ago and we talked for a few minutes but that’s it.
My roommate at Peace River Bible Institute was pretty cool. I like her too and we got along pretty well but we didn’t really hang out much.
But my roommate here in Oshawa I get along with really well. We seem to be a lot alike in personality, but in a good way. We haven’t gotten into any fights or anything yet lol. We seem to like the same TV shows, so we don’t fight over the TV at all. She watches it more than I do though, which doesn’t bother me at all. She even has relatives in Alberta too, and she’s been there, which is cool. I like her. Like I said, best roommate I’ve had!
Classes
My classes have been pretty good so far. Some have been fairly boring for me though, but only because I’m not actually learning anything. Well, I am, but I’m not. lol.
Mathematics for Computing
Fairly easy class. Learning things that I will definitely use. Remember things that I don’t remember how to do from high school math. And by “remembering” I mean that I’m remembering that I learned them but I don’t remember how to do them. Luckily, this class isn’t a normal math class. Its been described as being like an intro to programming class. We cover, briefly, some math concepts, and then we switch over to how to do them as if we were using them in JavaScript, rather than regular math.
Vector Graphics
This class is all about Adobe Illustrator. Definitely learning things in this class. Although, I took a graphic design class in Lethbridge, it didn’t cover as much about Illustrator as we’ve done in this class. I have a gigantic assignment due in a couple weeks where I have to recreate a company logo. Some how I got sucked into doing the Firefox logo. Its one of the hardest ones to do apparently, and I’ve already seen that. I started on it last week. All I’ve done so far is outlines but I don’t know what to do with half of it. Its very complicated.
Interface Design I
The instructor for this class is ridiculously hard to listen to! He’s extremely mono-toned and even more quiet. This class has been somewhat repetitive for me from a class I took in Lethbridge, so sometimes I don’t pay attention. I try, but its really hard.
Communication Essentials
Fancy name for English. I tried to get credit for this class but failed in that attempt. This is the third post-secondary English I’ve been forced to take so I’m doing pretty good in it so far. I’m a terrible writer. I’m fully aware of that. I have a hard time putting my thoughts into words. Or sometimes coming up with topics. I’m fairly good with grammar and spelling and such though so I have a pretty good mark so far.
Digital Imaging I
This class is all about Photoshop. Also, repetitive for me. Bigger projects though.
Extensible HTML
Obviously title, if you know anything about anything related to website design. So far the easiest class in this program, for me, because not only have I learned about it in college previously, I’ve been working with HTML for about 8 years. Most of my knowledge is self-taugh, but I got the basic understanding of it in a computer programming course I took in Junior High. We’re just starting to get into CSS, barely. Which is something else I’ve known for a while, but its all self-taught, and some things I picked up at LC.
Work
On top of my school work-load, I also have a part-time job. I transferred from Michaels, The Arts & Crafts Store in Lethbridge, Alberta to the one in Oshawa. I’m currently working way more hours than I should be too. I do need to talk to my manager about that but I’m going to see if I can make it past mid-term stress (which is happening right now) and maybe it won’t be too bad. I might have to ask for less hours though.
Anyways, I should probably get back to my homework. I finally finished my Photoshop project that’s due tomorrow but I have an XHTML assignment due on Friday night and a group project for Interface Design due on Tuesday and I have to work tomorrow night, Friday night and Saturday. And with my luck, probably Sunday too but I haven’t seen next week’s schedule yet.
That’s all for now.
Peace.
… ok did I really just say that…? I never say “Peace”… Weird.
P.S.
Oh yeah, an update on my friend Chris Craigman: he unfortunately did not make the top 16 of the MuchMusic VJ Search 2.0. But he totally would have made an awesome VJ!
iMac
We decided to buy it there because it was only 99 cents more than the price on the Apple Online Store, but then we would have to pay shipping and whatnot for it, and then I would have to wait for it to come. Although, maybe that would have been a good idea because I’m having too much fun playing with it but I have to get some assignments done for Jim’s classes by Tuesday. But I left most of my software in my desk in my room in res so I can’t really install some of my stuff. I was going to download at least my purchased music from my iPod on to my iMac but I was smart and forgot to bring the USB cable. But I found a solution! I put all moy music from my laptop onto my external hard drive and and then imported it into my iTunes on my iMac. That will also save me the time of importing all my CDs later, although I still don’t even have all my CDs on it anyway because I never did finish doing that after I downgraded my laptop back to Windows XP.
The keyboard is kind of flat because it’s so thin. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it because I thought it would feel more like when you don’t use the little things to prop up your keyboard, because it doesn’t have them, but it is propped up a bit. I don’t mind it though. I think it’s because the keys are so flat that I don’t really notice it as much. It’s weird. But they’re much nicer and easier to press than the the old Mac keyboards that they have in the Multimedia Mac Lab at the college. I find those keys are very stiff and I tend to miss a lot of letters on there because it’s so hard to type on it. But this is really nice!
The mouse it’s too bad. At first it didn’t have the right clicking option but I found how to change it. It’s still all like one button, like the old Mac mouses, but it somehow senses where you’re pressing from. It’s cool. And the little scroll wheel is so tiny, it feels a little weird but I like it because it can scroll both vertically and horizontally. It took some time for me to figure out why every once in a while my display would go out and show me all the windows I had open, and then I figured out that it’s because I was accidentally squeezing the side buttons on the mouse. I didn’t even know they were there. Well, I knew they were there, but I didn’t know that they were actually buttons.
I love the remote! I can be watching a movie or playing music and not sitting at my desk and I can pause it, skip, turn the volume up and down. It’s cool!
I wasn’t sure if the built-in speakers would be any good because any other computer we’ve ever had that came with built-in speakers (including my laptop) would just be basic speakers that aren’t really any good for music or movies but the speakers in this thing are amazing! Well, for computer speakers anyway. I can turn the volume up really loud and it still has really good quality and it doesn’t distort at all. It’s so awesome! The speakers in my laptop are just crap. If you want music to sound decent you have to have the volume low because if you turn it up, it sounds kind or hollow, and it distorts quite a bit. It’s like there’s a mini subwoofer inside this thing or something because it’s got good bass for small speakers. If I turn it up I can feel it vibrate the desk a little bit.
I love the screen resolution too! 1680 x 1050. It’s going to be awesome when I get Adobe Creative Suite because there’s so much “screen real estate” as Tanya says. It’ll be awesome for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash!
Plus, the size of the screen is great for movies and stuff too. It’s funny because it’s almost the same size as our “big” TV. Not for long though! My parents are planning to get a new TV now. They’ve been talking about it forever but it sounds like they’re actually going to do it now. We were looking at Future Shop after we bought my iMac. It looks like we’re probably going to get an LG 32-inch LCD TV.