December 2008 Archives

Happy New Year!!!

So on Black Friday, Taka and I went out to buy a couple computer monitors and a laptop.  We got up at 4:30am and went up to Office Depot.  We ended up getting a couple of 22" flat screen monitors.  We also ended up getting a couple of laptops.  Last week we bought a wireless router for the cable internet connection.  Now I am sitting in the living room blogging on my very own laptop.  WOOHOO!

Sorry, right now I am just having a bunch of fun.

So facebook has come through yet again.

Today I got a call from my friend Cara, from my childhood.  I have known her since 4th or 5th grade.  I don't remember exactly when we met, but I know that it was definitely by the fifth grade, because I remember being in class with her.  I can't believe that some of my friends from childhood have been able to get a hold of me.  It has been so great talking to Cara and Kim.  I need to spend a bit more time because there is still so much to catch up on.

It was a good day today.

Today Taka and I went to see my 11 year old niece play hockey.  It was actually pretty cool.  This is Serenity's second year playing hockey.  She isn't too bad.  She doesn't skate as well as some of the girls who have been skating for years, but she skated better than I thought she would.  Her team won 5 to 3.  I took some photos of her playing along with some video.  The other really cool thing was the goal tender for her team.  Freaking adorable.  During the period breaks she would get down on the ice in front of her goal then do a back flip over.  I got video of that during the second period break.  It was a fun day and it was good to spend time with family.

Merry Christmas!!!

I totally out smarted myself with the new camera.  On the bus ride in I finally read the manual for the camera.  It is a great point and shoot but you can do a lot of manipulating of it as well.  One of the settings that you can change is the shutter speed.  Our camera goes as fast as 1/1600th of a second.  This is the iso 1600 setting.  At my birthday party I was assuming that people would be moving around a lot, so to compensate I set the iso to 1600.  In the dimmer restaurant lights it basically didn't get enough light so the photos were a bit gray.  According to the manual, when you use the higher iso settings it sometimes creates noise in the picture.  I am assuming that the grayness of the photos is the noise that the high iso setting created.  I will set the iso to auto tomorrow for Christmas and see what happens.  I still need to play around with the scene settings as well.

Officially I got a B+ in Agricultural Biochemisty and I got a B- in Entomology.  Yay!  Now I am down to 4 classes and an internship.

Taka did really well, but he got jiped.  He got an A in Econ 3102, a B in Stat 5101, and an A- in Oms 2550.  That gives him a 3.556 for the semester.  He had 12 credits.  To get on the Dean's List he needed a semester GPA of 3.667.  So close!  He thought for sure he had an A in Oms 2550, which would have given him the GPA that he needed.

He was robbed.

Still all things considered, Taka had an incredible semester.

Way to go Taka!

Happy Solstice!

Well this year the chocolates are being done slightly differently.  I got a bigger scooper so they will be slightly bigger than previous years.  Also this year Taka has volunteered to do the scooping.  That will free up some of my time.  Lastly, Taka and I discussed it and have decided that I will make fewer flavors.  Last year I think I did close to 20 flavors and that was just too much work.  This year I am doing 8 flavors (peppermint, gingerbread boy, key lime, blackberry cinnamon, bailey's, espresso, chai, and the new flavor cranberry raspberry).  We decided that we will have some standard flavors that I make every year and then there will be some that I rotate through and lastly there will be at least one new flavor.  This is all in the hope of keeping me sane.  So hopefully this will work out nicely.  We will see.

YET!

I don't expect Entomology back yet, but was hoping for Biochem.

Taka was great because he got a B in his first 5000 level Statistics class.  He thought for sure it was going to be a C at best.  WOOHOO!  Way to go Taka!

Yesterday I looked at the photos from my birthday dinner. While they are clear I don't really know why they are slightly gray looking. The weekend before Thanksgiving Taka found a really good deal on a Cannon Powershot. A week or so before we bought it, a friend of Taka's let us borrow his Powershot SD1100 for a weekend. I put it though its paces. I really liked it. I had bought a Nikon Coolpix 4300 several years ago, but while it is a great camera it really is not a point and shoot. The Nikon doesn't do well in party situations. The Cannon on the other hand was a very good point and shoot. But playing with the Cannon that Taka bought, well somehow I have screwed something up. I must figure this out!

I did it.  I am done with finals.  I studied for Entomology last night and this morning before my final.  I did the math yesterday and figured that I needed about 32 points out of 200 to get a C- in the class.  I did have a B going into the final but don't know if that is going to last.  I definitely did better than 32 on the final, but I don't know if I scored high enough to keep the  B.  It is a bit frustrating because the professor is subjective in his grading.  But the good part is that no matter my grade, I passed the class and that means that I only have 4 classes left till I am done with my degree.  Yay!

Here is a photo from the dim sum dinner that I chose for my birthday this year. It was really good stuff and not too expensive either.

Here is the dim sum set on my flickr site.

First off last week was pretty awesome. I had my birthday dinner on Thursday at a place called Jun-bo. I decided that dim sum sounded good for my birthday. It was great because several friends joined me and Taka for dinner. The best thing though was that my friend Kim from high school showed up and we got to see each other for the first time in approximately 15 years. Wow! So this morning was my first final, agricultural biochemisty. It went okay, but I don't think that I did well enough to keep my A. Next up is Entomology on Wednesday morning. That one I am dreading. I like the class well enough and I like my professor, but he is so cryptic as to what he expects from us on the final. There is too much to cover. Oh well.