Jared’s Blog

Is it October already? Geez, where did September go?

When Rick asked if I was planning on going up to St. John’s for homecoming, my first thought was “Why not?” I figured it’d be a perfect time to hang out with Brenna and maybe catch a few college friends.

Saturday’s weather was wonderful. After forecasts of rain, I was relieved to see blue skies with little white clouds as we made our way towards campus. Temperatures were in the 60’s. In fact the weather was a little too warm for how we were dressed. I in my black St. John’s hoodie and Kristi in her 4 layers of clothes found ourselves sweating bullets after only walking from where we parked to the stadium.

If there’s one word to be said about St. John’s football, it’s definitely ‘dominant‘. OK, 2 words, the other being tradition. I walked into Clemens Stadium to see the throngs of students, alumni, parents, kids, and fans draped in red. The legendary John Gagliardi still helms the ship. The entire roster suits up for every home game and takes the field together. As I told Kristi and Rick that day, “It feels like coming home.”

The Johnnies got off to their usual breakneck pace scoring a touchdown on their 3rd play of the game. Carlton followed up on the next drive with a touchdown of their own, but the defense managed to block the extra point. That’s my Johnnies! As the dust settled at halftime, the score was 14-12 Johnnies. The Knights missed a crucial field goal that would have put them up by a point right before the end of the half.

The second half, was all Johnnies. They racked up another 15 points while only allowing 7 points bringing the final score to 29-19. All without their injured starting quarterback. According to Brenna, they are 5-0 on the season.

I guess I wasn’t wearing enough red because by the end of the game, my face was showing red from being in the sun all afternoon. A small price to pay for a good game.

The rest of the day we spent hanging out with Brenna which included a trip to Chipotle in St. Cloud. I also arranged to take her laptop and stop it from “sounding like an airplane” as well as fixing a few other ailements it’d accumulated since I shipped it off to school with her. My geek pride took a hit knowing that my own sister is less than proficient with computers. On the ride home, I once again realized I’d forgotten to buy a SJU window decal for my car. I swear, one of these times, I’m going to remember to buy one.

Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here’s a thought: Maybe it’s the failed work ethic of todays kids. That’s what I’m seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.
Original Yahoo story

I found this story through Newsvine today. I don’t know if I can say for sure if kids are too lazy or not as I don’t have much to go on. So I started thinking about it in respect to my own life.

I have the position of being freshly out of school and also being one of the lazy kids. I’m not going to sugarcoat things or try to hide the fact that I was lazy about school. In both college and high school, there were subjects I just didn’t care about and because of this, put forth very little effort in those classes. For instance, in high school it was the English and History classes. Other than being somewhat trivial or interesting sometimes, I didn’t see any need for me to know much History if I was going to program computers. In college, it was German. I was required to take 3 semesters and frankly, I got nothing out of it. The only reason I took those classes was because I was required to. Maybe that’s a good thing. I’m sure there have been situations that I’ve used that knowledge in: trivial or otherwise. Ironically, I now love to write (music reviews, in my blog, news articles, etc.) and thoroughly enjoy the History channel.

Maybe part of my problem was the way it was presented. I’m very technology oriented; a self-proclaimed technology nut. One example of this is I never read books. Magazines, occiasonally. The last time I picked up a book (fiction or non-fiction) was 2 years ago in college. Not to say I don’t read now, because I read plenty, but it’s all on a computer screen. Had some of the material I considered boring been presented to me on a computer, I would’ve no doubt been more responsive and at the least, a little more interested in it. Realistically, you can’t customize a class for every student in it. But finding ways to connect with kids and their lifestyle will make it more interesting for them.

This site will be coming to a close soon. As of Sunday, I will no longer be a student of St. John’s University. Along with my departure will go my web space. I have to give SJU props for the free hosting. It’s a shame I couldn’t have used it more. I don’t know exactly what when the site will be going down, but I do know I don’t have a replacement lined up yet. There’s been talk of buying rackspace with Burns and a few other people. I may find a cheap place to get hosting. Who knows! Which ever direction I head will certainly bring PHP and a new layout. Uncertainty seems to be a theme in my life this week. Right now I don’t know where I’ll be at the end of the week. The job interview in Rochester at Kingland went well. Rick tells me the people who interviewed me liked me. They’re supposed to let me know late this week or early next week. Fishbowl still hasn’t gotten back to me about an interview. I sure hope that happens before I move home (or take the job in Rochester) because a 1 hour drive sounds WAY better than a 3 hour drive.

As with most college students, the last week is finals week. It’s no different here and thats another source of uncertainty. I gave my senior research presentation today. Good thing was it went well. I did go a little fast which meant I ended up about 5 minutes short. I was surprised to not get grilled by the department professors afterward. Usually they like to ask all kinds of tough questions to see if you really know your shit. Either I covered everything really well or the profs didn’t know much about open source software.

Admidst all this uncertainty, is one rock. VIDEO GAMES! I know this one is a little old, but I picked up Neverwinter Nights (the Gold Edition even!) last weekend in Rochester. I had been “demoing” the game with a pirated copy about a week beforehand. I decided it was good enough to buy, so I made the investment. Damn is that game addicting. I can play a good 4-5 hours straight and not get bored. It’s hella long, so it’ll keep me occupied for quite a while. I’ve been pretty much playing the single player because I tried the online play and it was sort of dumb. While it was cool to have other people to play with, the play is pretty disjointed. You can have players scattered all over the place in the same game. It also saves characters on your machine, so that leaves things open to hacking/training. I think I’ll probably stick to the single play until I beat it. Then there’s a whole other expanation to play and all the user/developer modules. Needless to say, its enough to keep me busy for awhile and being that I don’t know when I’ll get the internet back, I can play this wherever I am.

Along with the game, I picked up The Bled’s “Pass the Flask.” GOOD CD! It rocks hard. I wasn’t too big of a fan after the first listen a couple months ago, but after seeing their live show, I became a fan. My buddy Sean would be glad to hear that. On an unrelated note, I found out that Epic formerly of Crazytown is dead. Apparently he was able to record an album with another band called Pre(Thing before he died. I’ve not heard good things about the band, so I’ll be staying away from their CD. I also found out that Crazytown broke up. Not a big loss, but they had their moments.

Tomorrow I’ll be waking up early. I’ll take a shower just like I do every morning. I’ll shave. I’ll get dressed. I won’t be going to class though. I attended my last college class today. It’s funny, I don’t feel like its over. Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet. Tomorrow also marks another milestone. I will make the trip to Rochester to interview for a software developer job. I think my chances are pretty good. I can’t be too hopeful, but I’d like to be positive. While working in Rochester isn’t my dream, I’ll take the job if they offer it to me. I also found out yesterday that I have a job back home for the summer if I choose to take it. I am hopnig I don’t have to though. Living at home and making $10/hr isn’t my idea of post-graduate work, but if I can’t find anything else, it is a start. Fishbowl Solutions, the place I want to work for hasn’t contacted me for an interview yet. I just hope it doesn’t come down to me being offered a job at Kingland accepting it, and then being called for an interview at Fishbowl. I think I’d probably still go through with it, Maybe I could tell Kingland that I didn’t want to work for them after all. Who knows. I know I’ll feel a lot better once I find out exactly where my life is heading. While I know my life will go on if I don’t get a job, I know it’s not where I want to be. I can only imagine sitting at home trying to find a job while working at my old high school. I’ll be opimistic and say that at least that would buy me some time.

Now that Easter break is done, its the final string of days before graduation. Of course this means a multitude of class projects, papers, and presentations. I am no exception. I’ve got a test on Friday, followed by a presentation to give Tuesday. Moving on to Wednesday, there’s my research paper rough draft and thursday my databases project has to be in working order. To add to all that, I’ve got a number of other campus events going on. This weekend is case day (24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day, an uncanny coincidence). This means I’ll be wasted all day Saturday and that means I’ll be recovering on Sunday. Tomorrow I’ve got the Senior Banquet to attend. Free booze and prime rib! YES! Then you’ve got Pinestock…

Once again I’ve been disappointed with the bands the JEC decided to hire for this event. How they manage to bork it every year is beyond me. I used to hear of the good ole days when everyone went. There was a beer garden. Sun, fun, and booze! Unfortunately even on the 25th anniversary, they couldn’t come up with anything worth seeing. All is not lost however. Taking matters into my own hands, I’ve planned my own event. Now announcing Anti-Pinestock. There will be plenty of boozing, plenty of sun, plenty of food, and maybe even a live band. If all goes well Edelbrock will be rocking their drunken asses to 3DB. Nothing has been finalized yet, so I wouldn’t go telling friends to attend. Regardless, I’ll make the best of the day with lots of BBQ’ing and drinking.

Last and definately least, I recieved a package in the mail today. Wind-up Records sent me a Punisher movie package complete with keychain, sticker, and t-shirt. This all cotton short sleeve sports the menacing Punisher skull on the front and bold lettering on the back that reads “Punisher Army.” Yea, its really chessy which is why I love it. As to not feel guilty, I’ll say go see the Punisher movie whenever it comes out.

Yesterday I experienced my first live Wild game ever. It was awesome. Not only did we win, but Roli pulled a shutout, and Gaborik had a penalty shot. The atmosphere was so cool. Everyone gets into the game. It got so loud in there when they scored. You really get the idea that MN fans are behind their team. The club got a standing ovation for their win on Sunday. Yea, we missed the playoffs. There is a lot to improve upon. There way too many ties this year. A few more our way would’ve put us in the playoffs. Next year, Gaborik will be there full time instead of holding out on a contract. Provided we can pick up a good free agent or two, I think we’ll have a great team come September. Of course all this depends on the CBA. There’s a lot of people who could care less if hockey is on next year or not. This reminds me of the baseball holdouts. Baseball’s popularity dropped so much after that, but they’ve come full circle once again. I can see the same thing happening to hockey. The recent number of suspensions isn’t making things any better either. It all started with Bertuzzi. I can think of 4-5 other pretty bad incidents that got guys suspended for a few games too.

Bottom line is that there is a season next year. Rule changes or not, there has to be a season. Someone give in a little. The fans want it and the players want it.