Today was the second day of school and thus my first time seeing my Tuesday/Thursday classes. The day didn’t last long due to a terrible toothache I encountered in the middle of the day. The throbbing pain began to slowly develop after I ate lunch with a classmate and professor. Soon thereafter it became an unbearable force on my entire skull that would come in waves of 5 minutes at a time. I have 3 classes on Thursdays, but I only managed to survive 2 of them today. Before I left the campus I made sure to tell my last professor my situation. She totally understood and said it would be fine to leave before her class. She’s too awesome.
My drive home was terrible. The blaring heat caused me to break out in sweats and my pulsing tooth continued to cause me much grief. I felt as if I was going completely mad. My head swerved and my eyes nearly rolled into the back of my head as I drove through I-95. There were blessed moments of complete numbness, but they were short lived. I whimpered into my home and took 800mg of ibuprofen. I laid on the bed and waited for another moment of numbness to finally get myself into a blissful sleep. Somehow it worked. I woke up pain-free and found that dinner was already prepared. I haven’t felt the pain come back since I awoke from my nap.
Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with my dentist in which I hope to receive a pulpotomy. It will be much cheaper than a root canal. I’ll wait ‘till I get back to Colombia for that procedure. I ain’t exactly made of money. Between braces and car accidents and martial arts injuries and MRIs, I’m starting to get a serious dent in my wallet. After all this, I’m going to consider living in a bubble.
Today marked the beginning of my senior year in college. First weeks of school have always been exciting for me. There’s nothing quite like seeing friends again, exchanging handshakes and hugs, catching up. The only class I have on Wednesdays is my Senior Portfolio class, where we will explore and develop a body of work for our graduation. Essentially we will turn in a “self-portrait” each week and sit through critiques. This should get the ball rolling towards an idea or theme I may want to explore. It’s a daunting task for me. I’ve begun to list the things that are important to me and where I may possibly like to take my art. I’ll go ahead and share it. Who knows, you’ll perhaps witness the development of my artwork right beside me.
Things that interest me:
Philosophy & Faith (why do you believe what you believe? why do I?)
Social Justice (in what sense? which kind?)
Laughter/Humor (irony, everydayness, sadness)
Community (family, friendship)
Typography (the power of words on print)
Organization (controlling my environment for my benefit)
Music (why are we drawn to it? what inspires me to move?)
Poetry (encapsulating a moment with just a few words)
Innocence (how can we regain it? how can we maintain it?)
Travel (show me that wonderful world)
We’ll see where this baby goes. I want it to be big.
Last week someone told me that Fidel Castro died. I was like “really?” and she was like “yeah, a friend of mine told me.” My journalistic instincts kicked in and I responded with “nuh-uh,” to which she replied “yuh-huh” and I realized I was up-gunned. So I decided to look it up on Google News. I typed in something along the lines of “Castro Death” and a few articles came up. Some were written only a few minutes before I looked them up and they said that, despite rumors, Castro was still alive and in recovery from a recent surgery. What caught my attention most was the photo posted on the majority of the news websites. Apparently the last photo taken of Fidelito was a ridiculous portrait of him smiling with his fist under his chin. I laughed out loud and thought of the absurdity of the imagery. So I decided to tweak it a bit more and make it look all nice and pretty. And so I introduce the first photo of hopefully many more… Glamour Dictators.
Many of my personal friends already know about my passion to travel. In the past 3 years I participated in a few trips to different spots and realized how much I valued seeing the world. Ever since then, I’ve committed a budget for this aspect of my life. Every time I get a paycheck, a certain percentage goes into my travel fund and I don’t touch the money for anything else. For anyone who is equally passionate about seeing the world, I would recommend the same habit.
You may or may not be familiar with Matt from WhereTheHellIsMatt.com. He’s the dude in those YouTube videos who dances (rather poorly) in the middle of the screen from different spots of the world. I’ll add the video at the end of this entry. But first I wanted to share an interview with him. He talks about how he did it, what inspired him, and why it’s possible for anyone else to do it. This video has confirmed my desire to do a similar quest.
I hope you’re inspired by that. Now here’s the latest video of Matt dancing around the world.
So if anyone is planning a trip soon, let me know. I’d love to join you.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I bought this new iMac because my previous PC just sort of died. Lightning struck nearby and fried the motherboard. I’m in the process of getting the hard drive encased and connected to my iMac so I can retrieve those important files I had stored. I regret not backing up those files before the lightning struck. So I’m attempting to start on the right foot for my new computer. I don’t have many files on here yet so backing up will be breeze. Especially with this piece of software I installed.
Mozy is an online-backup program for both the Mac and PC. As the website describes it, simply click on the types of data you want Mozy to protect, and it does the rest. You can also dig into the details of your hard drive and get specific about files and directories you want Mozy to take care of.
What You Get
2GB of free, secure storage (Or go Unlimited for $4.95/month)
Open/locked file support
Block-level differential backup
128-bit SSL support (to secure your data during transport)
448-bit Blowfish encryption (to secure your data on our server)
Continuous or scheduled backup options
Upgrade to Mozy Unlimited for just $4.95 per month and back up all your data.
(I really enjoyed this next part of the description….)
Alternatives to Mozy
Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store them at your brother-in-law’s office.
Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software.
Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn’t burn down.
Do nothing and don’t worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating “I’m in my happy place, I’m in my happy place.”)
Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend’s server over his DSL line.
Of course, we think Mozy is the best and easiest solution to the backup problem!
I don’t have many important files on my computer yet, so I’ve decided to backup my contacts, calendars, and whatever I had in my documents folder (2 pdfs). Anyways, I thought you all might be interested in using it. It’s free, after all. Backup the small stuff first and as you get more comfortable with the program start adding other files. 2 gigs is a nice amount of space to have backed up.
If you’re interested, click the logo below and feel a bit more relieved that you’re on your way to backing up your files painlessly!
