8:14a

I’ve loaded up the car, checked out of the hotel, and I’m in my last day of class (which won’t start for another 45 minutes.

Last night I went back to the hotel after class and decided I needed to take a short break from learning, so I sat down with the GBA SP and played Metroid Fusion for a bit. After that, I fired up the computer, which promptly gave me a load of errors - something about being “unable to read instruction at memory address 0x7somethingorother” - which meant disk issues, after a little investigation.

So I started a disk check and went back to the Game Boy.

I’m not sure if it’s my frustration with the upcoming exams or just my general lack of patience… or maybe even a distinct lack of hand-eye coordination when it comes to video games… but I got playing Metroid again and I quickly got to a boss that I just can’t beat. I got reasonably far into beating him several times (I think) but I just couldn’t pull it off. So I switched to Yoshi’s Island, which is a Mario-style game, and I couldn’t beat the level I was on.

By this time I was so fed up that I didn’t want to try some other game, I just wanted the GBA away from me so I packed it up and got out some comics I brought along with me.

The disk check, of course, was still not done.

I read a couple of comics, checked on the disk check progress (almost done), read a couple more, and saw that the check had finally finished. Not the quickest process in the world, but it did find a couple of errors, which it fixed, and I subsequently have not seen the weird errors that I was seeing.

I did notice, however, that there’s some other weird error involving “ACPI BIOS” that’s been happening for a while now, so I should probably investigate that when I get back to work.

It was around 8:00p by then and I still had four modules’ worth of labs to finish up from my Programming Windows Apps in C# class (the whole reason I brought the computer along, really, was to finish these labs and understand the concepts we didn’t have time to go over in class). I moved through them at a pretty decent speed (so I thought) and ended up finishing them up around 9:30p. I’m pretty comfortable with the stuff they taught now (I wasn’t before), but I still don’t think I could do them without a little bit of help in the way of documentation.

I figured I should probably call Jenn before it got any later, since I still needed to eat and pack my stuff up for check out, so I called. We had about 15 minutes of what I like to call “bad phone” (where nobody really has anything interesting to say, so it ends up being something like: “How was your day?” “Fine, how was yours?” “Fine.” “Oh. Okay.” “Right.” “So what’s new?” “Nothing. You?” “Nothing.”) and I hung up so I could eat.

After a fine meal of Lean Cuisine, during which I watched some more Broken Saints, I got some stuff packed up. Not all, mind you, but some.

And then sleep.

10:25a

We’re on break, and I remembered that I have a dentist appointment coming up that I need to reschedule for the following week, so I figured no time like the present - I stepped out of the classroom and phoned them up.

They’re closed Fridays.

Apparently, the “regular business hours” are 8:00a - 4:30p Monday - Thursday. What ever happened to work, people? Dammit! I suppose I’ll call them on Monday, but not being open Friday is pretty frickin’ ridiculous.

11:08a

Two more words that have lost meaning: pointer and marshaling.

11:34a

We’re getting pizza in class so we can work through lunch and maybe I can get out at a reasonable time. That’d be nice.

Can diabetics eat pizza? This guy in class is diabetic but he’s getting a salad. I wonder if it’s that, or if it’s just that he doesn’t like pizza.

There’s a car alarm outside that goes off about every 20 minutes. I wonder if it’s mine.

<1>1:27p

I just finished the last lab, and now there are several “optional” modules of varying interest. I’m interested in the Threading module, but I’ve seen the ADO.NET intro module more times than are useful (I’ve got the in-depth course next month).

Pending on what they decide to go over, I may end up leaving soon.

We had pizza in class for lunch, so we worked through lunch and made up some time. Let’s see if we can put that to use.

2:03p

Here’s an interesting blast from the past…

3:04p

We’ve gotten past the ineresting stuff and now we’re neck deep in technical garbage that doesn’t mean really anything to me. I suppose if I ever had to get into this stuff it might, but I don’t, and it’s Friday afternoon after a long week of class, so I’m tuned out.

Besides which, I should be getting on the road pretty soon.

3:16p

That’s that. I’m packing up and taking the traffic-laden trip home.