Subtle Coolness

I want to write a poem, right now, but it never really works that way.

What has become of me? If I recall correctly, in the last two weeks, almost every time I have held a conversation longer than two minutes with someone I have said, “I hate school.” What a bunch of bull honkey.

School is totally awesome, for the following reasons, which have been conveniently numbered so you don’t have to count them yourself.

1. I only “go to school” two days of the week.
2. Every morning that I go to school, I get to ride on a bus full of students and other people. With few exceptions, I will be standing on said bus, and said students and other people quite possible number in the low hundreds.
3. I get to walk around in the 107 degree heat. How many states in the United States can boast that sort of temperaturage? Few, if any. That’s why the Austin TX has way better Blue Book value than the standard Austin. And what’s with the “Population: ?”?
4. I sit on the second row in all my classes because I am “ambitious, but not overbearing.” And looking at the PowerPoint presentations from the first row makes my neck hurt.
5. “Mice come in two varieties. One kind has a little ball inside, and the other kind has a little light inside.” -Alan Lee, professor, Computer Systems Architecture

So, as I have clearly demonstrated using my incredible powers of enumeration, school is, indeed, totally awesome. I have given six perfectly sound reasons for coming to such a conclusion. So if any of you ever hear me say, “I hate school,” again, please correct me.

On my way from the Texas Memorial Museum to the Music building, my friend pointed out a cricket on the sidewalk. “Kick it!” he said.

“No way,” I said. “That’s really cruel.”

Five steps later, we turned around just in time to see a bird swoop down and eat the cricket to death.

Me: “I’ll be writing in my journal this evening.”

Friend: “Yeah, you’ll be writing, ‘I want it all, I want it all!’”

Me: “No, I was thinking something like, ‘Spent the evening with friends at the home of the CEO of the largest personal computer company in the world.’”

That’s Kevin Rollins, the CEO of Dell.

Today as I was working at the Help Desk I put an infected computer on the network.

That’s bad.

It was my job to sponge the thing of all spyware and viruses, and I thought I did, but something slipped past me. I left a little virus on the machine. It wasn’t even particularly nasty; I just forget to run one of our removal tools.

I plugged the network cable into the computer, and almost immediately the normal lights went out and red lights started flashing everywhere, and there were sirens and klaxons and high-pitched whine sounds, as if Capt. Picard had just yelled, “Battle stations!” Then the full-time guy started barking out, “Pull the ethernet cables! Pull them all!” Everyone else in the room started yanking network cables out of the backs of laptops all at once, and I disconnected mine, too. The full-time guy approached the wall and punched a code into a keypad, and the sirens shut off and the lights returned to normal.

Okay, not really.

I plugged the network cable into the computer, updated Windows and all the antispyware and antivirus software, shut down the computer, marked the machine as “done” in the database, and put it on the “Done” shelf. Twenty minutes later a man I had never seen before walked into the room with a piece of paper in his hand, announced that there was an infected computer on the network, and gave us the MAC address for the machine. (Ask me later what a MAC address is.) We checked the computers that were currently on the network, but none of them matched the MAC address. I checked the last machine I had worked on, and the address matched. I owned up that it was all my fault, and everyone was nice and forgiving, and “everyone makes mistakes,” etc. But I died.

I felt bad. But now I’m better, because Family Home Evening is going to be at my house tonight! Gonna have a good time tonight! Gonna have a good time tonight!

If I could do something about it? Indeed.

I survived this week. I can survive the next. This semester will be the hardest semester of all, but it will be the most rewarding.

If you don’t know my roommate, you can become a better person simply by knowing him. He has that effect on everyone. There is no better person to live with on your way to the end of undergraduate life, while there may be certain persons who are just as good (you know who you are). I find irony (the good kind) in the fact that I began college sleeping in the same room as him, and I will end college (barring unforeseen circumstances) sleeping in the same room as him. It just seems appropriate.

Internet Explorer really isn’t all that bad. That’s saying something, because you can now refer to me as a “Help Desk consultant” and say so with a much higher degree of accuracy than last year. After three long, wonderful years as a proctor, I have changed jobs (and hourly income rates) for the better. All those people I told I would fix their computers (your know who you are) might actually get their computers fixed now.

If I am not working at the Help Desk, you won’t be able to find me, because I will either be in class or passed out on the sofa (we have a sofa!) from exhaustion. Or entertaining guests (you know who you are) in my vastly larger living/dining area. When I get my table back. Another sentence fragment. Because.

Does anyone know if Institute classes are on for Labor Day? I’ll be attending church in Waco this weekend, so I haven’t seen very many of my friends in Austin. Of course, I have seen several of my friends in Austin (you know who you are), and enjoyed their company.