holding steady.™

today is a shit-day.

all i’ve listened to all week are rachel maddow podcasts (figure a) and girl talk (figure b).

figure a

figure b

i am having kind of a weird week.

yesterday, it rained on my head. and by rained, i mean it poured about fifteen minutes after i had blow-dried my hair. i was about ten minutes late to class.

the day changed directions when i got home, as my guitar and amp (à la ebay) had arrived. dicking around with that had its setbacks, as i performed exactly ZERO tasks of substance. i did get to finally watch “across the universe” (four out of five stars in my book), and i had a much-needed chat (part 1 of at least 3) with the woman in my life.

but then, this morning…i was late AGAIN. and it was rainy. and i usually can catch a ride (rather than try to catch my perennially late bus) with this guy who lives by me and works at UM. but he was nowhere to be found by the time my bus rolled on through. and i fell asleep on the train (due to aforementioned conversation lasting until 2:30am) and missed my stop. so i had to get off on the next one, and go backwards, a step that ultimately cost me almost twenty minutes. i would have been exactly on time, instead i got to class a full half-hour after the lecture had begun. i also tripped into the class over the cord from my headphones.

i’m just tired already. it’s not even 12, i still have one and a half more classes to go (one of which is about 3 hours long), and i’m just already over it.

POL 586 EF, Monday/Wednesday, 12:20-13:35 - Conflicts in the Middle East & Africa

i’m actually a little scared. or maybe not scared, more like neurotically anticipatory. yeah, that sounds about right. this is the end of the first week of my last week as an undergrad. yeah, I have to take french in may, but whatever. doesn’t count. i’m gonna have to grow up at some point in the relatively near future. vomit.

REL 354 D, Tuesday/Thursday, 09:30-10:45 - Religion & Gender

i keep playing this game in my head, where I let myself get too far ahead, caught up in the future, concerned with “what’s coming next?!”

SOC 210 P, Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00-12:15 - Introduction to Social Research

this is the class I have currently checked out of to write this. so fucking dull. I maybe wrote like…five lines of notes. but I did check my email a lot.

GSC 103 R, Tuesday/Thursday, 14:00-15:15 - Evolution of the Modern Earth’s Environment

so in my geology class…it’s just like the greatest possible amalgamation of useless dregs. these are the scholars of the university of miami, and the half that don’t ooze stubborn pretentiousness/abercrombie-hollister-american eagle “vintage”-ness look decidedly homeless, complete with mildly dreaded hair and ratty clothing. read some more issues i’m having with that class here.

POL 500 SX, Tuesday, 15:30-18:10 - Ideals & Realities: Bioethics, Religion & Politics

I give up. I wanna fucking graduate already. only 112 days, 20 hours and 45 minutes to go…

so. i typically take notes in microsoft word, using the notebook layout.

this WAS something that i looked forward to when i finally switched to the mac. i thought the idea of taking notes, with an option for voice recording seemed really intuitive. and i’d never had much complaint with microsoft word (although the new format is something that STILL baffles me).

so, at the beginning of the semester, i created six notebook documents for each of my six classes. the first test came on the first day, three classes in a row, back to back. no problems, all was well. i thought that i was in for a really productive method of note-taking. the following week, i decided that i would test out voice-recording in one of my monday class that runs an hour and fifteen minutes. i had previously used it when i was in student government at UM, for senate meetings that drug on for usually about an hour. the program got buggy withing thirty minutes of my recording, and there were dramatic slugs in my performace. and before we even get into that, my machine is in pretty good condition. when i tried to end the recording, before i lost all my notes, there was a three minute lag and then i had to restart the program so i could finish my note-taking. the part of the lecture that had recorded had summarily disappeared.

the next day, i had one of my two once-a-week three hour classes for the first time, history of photography. i typed up my notes as usual, very little out of the ordinary. the next time i opened up microsoft word, actually the next ten times, my notes from that class also opened up. apparently there was an error. i really don’t know.

and then yesterday happened. i was typing notes in my international terrorism class. and then i hit the enter key and the tab key. and nothing. fucking. happened. eventually, it got its act together. but later, in my congressional representation class last night, i looked up and noticed that tabs and indents and bullets that had been created with the tab and enter keys were suddenly invisible. oh, they were there when i clicked the cursor on the line. but as i began typing again further down the page, they disappeared again.

i’m done. i quit this shit. i’ve already moved most of my word processing needs to pages, and the few times i have opened powerpoint presentations, i’ve done so in keynote. numbers is a pretty slick replacement for excel (see my review). basically, the only reason im keeping this shit on my computer is because of that unsure factor, where you just never know if you’ll need a program. also known as why i have 97 programs on my computer. tonight, i plan to convert ALL my current notes to omnioutliner pro. i’ll let you know how that works out.