Greg Loesch (compulsiveguile) – Blog

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve written a blog entry, and I have a number of excuses which I will, most undoubtedly, spell out in great detail for all of you. Okay, I’m a liar… “little joke” (with Robin Williams accent). But I have been kind of busy doing other stuff. I like to consider it healthy that I’m not spending as much time in front of my baby… err… computer. Busyness on top of the decreasing novelty of having a website make my updates less frequent. I had a fear this would happen… but what can you do. It’s all about finding that happy medium.

This past weekend I was kept relatively occupied watching “scary movies”, carving pumpkins, searching for haunted houses, and most importantly… studying. Looking back, the weekend was alright. It could have been about 300x better if I could of overcome this strange oppressing feeling I had. It was like a sort of homesickness coupled with something intangible. For those of you who have experienced homesickness to any extent, you can sympathize. I hate that feeling more than almost everything else. It was just so strange that after being at school for so long, the feeling came back so strong. I, like many other college students, experienced this frequently the first couple weeks of school. It never was overly intense, but to deny it being there would be ludicrous.

This feeling hit me in the face Saturday. I believe that all this was due to multiple stressors that simply brought about this keen desire to be home, as though that would somehow solve everything. It’s interesting how negativity can increase exponentially in a very short time. When things start going wrong, I could name about 20 other things that are wrong that I normally would not be able to. This weekend though, two big things had to be dealt with that should not have been as grinding as I made them out to be.

First and foremost, I had my 2nd Western Civ exam yesterday, the class which I’m doing the worst in. It loomed over me like *insert clever analogy/simile here*. The turmoil it put me through is terribly unhealthy and reveals a characteristic of myself that I wish wasn’t there. I guess, in turn, it’s a derivative of that whole “fear of failure” thing. On my last exam, I thought I pulled at least a low A only to be pleasantly surprised with a C-. Gah, you have to love those moments. It didn’t seem as though this was the cause of all my strife, but as soon as the exam was over, I was almost giddy. Seems hard to deny the facts.

The next stressor was the whole issue of figuring out living arrangements for next year. Here, we are seemingly forced to pick our best friends for life within the first months of being at school. Yeah, let’s just add to the pressure of the already pressured students. For girls, this must be as terrible as breaking up with a boyfriend while PMSing after just getting a terrible haircut. Okay, I’m an idiot. Anyways, in my situation, I elected to live in a “friendship corridor” with some of the guys down the hall from me. I don’t know many of them very well, but considering the options I had, it seemed like the best choice. Well, after the stress of making that decision, I know had to decide who I wanted to room with and where. Normally that would not be a big deal, but remember, I was living in exponentially growing negativity at this moment. Long story short, things all worked out in a very positive way. Ha ha, the guy I’m stuck with for next year is pretty kool, and I’m somewhat excited to get to know the guys better.

CoverFlow – Leopard’s New Finder View

All of this emotional stress was resolved Monday night. The exam ended, Jon and I agreed to room together, and I was now free to dive into the glorious cyberworld of Leopard, Mac’s new OS. I had purchased it Monday afternoon, and I forced myself to let it sit despite its multiple attempts to seduce me. That shiny, shrink-wrapped bundle of love in a box… had to wait until after the exam. It was my reward. It called to me multiple times throughout the day, but I proudly abstained *Bows to the applause (or applesauce which sometimes looks like applause)*. Ha ha, the wait was well worth it. I’m still exploring and tinkering with the many aspects of Leopard while also attempting to find solutions to my own personal “bugs.” The update took a good deal of time, but I’m pleased with the results so far. I’m going to list my experience along with those from the newly purchased program, VMWARE FUSION (allows you to run Windows on the Mac without rebooting… similarly to Parallels) in my Mac Tips section. For those of you debating the upgrade, this may help. Until next time…