Hardly Workin'

Hey all,

So I've decided to try and make this a daily thing again. I'm typing this up on the car ride home (don't worry, I'm not driving), and I'm pretty much just trying to hang on. All of this excitement about colleges has been making me relax, for some strange reason, and now more than ever I really need to get my head in the game. My college counselor, my parents, and I all met today on where to go, and now that she's tailored my list a bit I have a bit of a better idea on what I'm going to do. Here's my new list of colleges:

- Boston College, Boston University
- Brown
- UC Berkely, UCLA
- Carnegie Mellon University
- U Chicago
- Harvard University
- Haverford College
- Macalester College
- MIT
- McGill University
- Northwestern University
- Pomona College
- Reed College
- University of Rochester
- Swarthmore College
- Trinity College
- Union College
- Washington University in STL
- Wesleyan University

...so yeah. Exhaustingly long list, I know.

Another contributing factor is this freaking Linux obsession that I've been having. I've successfully installed Xubuntu and have compositing working (Gnome-Do and Docky can actually work, huzzah), and yet it's still just not perfect for me. I tried OpenBox but I'm clearly too much of a noob to manage anything remotely non-GUI oriented, although I'm really loving XFCE. The boot and shutdown times are absolutely outstanding, and I got Conky to work with weather services and a Gmail checker. Mutt's installed, and I'm actually writing this post from Nano because I love the Inconsolata fixed-width font so much.

Finals are only in a few days... I'm kind of freaking out, even though I only have 2 exams. The funny part is that only one absolutely terrifies me, and it's AP Chem: everyone (except me, becuase I was in France at the time) got their labs back, and were subsequently moping the entire rest of the day. Apparently it was one of those assignments where getting a good grade is out of the question and you have to just hope that it doesn't hurt your GPA too badly.

Really haven't been able to get developing on PHP lately, I should start working on that again. My teacher's going to be pretty frustrated when we meet on Saturday and all I'll have done is re-written my code to have it be object-oriented. I have ban functionality working (with an awesome image, thanks Vijay!), although it really doesn't look pretty, which bugs me. I wish I didn't specialize in PHP and Perl so that I could actually design a nice frontend for this thing. That said, it didn't stop Zuckerberg... who am I to underperform Zuckerberg!?

Hope finals are going well for everybody. :)

Universities

So yeah, I know that I haven't posted in a while. It's mostly because I haven't found it really worth it that much. But do not worry, because I am posting now! Besides, this blog started out as a daily thing and it's definitely not going to stay that way, so this has turned into more of a whenever-I-feel-like-it kind of shindig. I suppose it's mainly the fact that I have 5 different social networking sites and Facebook always seems the most appropriate, seeing as it's in my bookmarks bar and won't require more than 200 characters per post, as well as the fact that I'm not willing to devote my valuable precious free time to typing, it'd probably be more something along the lines of sleeping.

Bref! I've decided to develop my own website for this stinky blog because it hasn't been fun managing two different blogs for whoever wants the french or english version of my posts. Hell, the posts that I put up usually aren't even about the same thing! So I'll develop it into a website and switch over to it. Haven't really figured out how I'm going to manage an RSS Feed and Facebook link functionality, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

So some of you might be asking, "Jack, how was France?" And to be honest, words cannot describe the amazing experience that I had there. Photos can't even describe the sheer awesomeness of my friends, their personalities, the breathtaking nature of every single monument that I've visited and the experiences that I had had there. So I'm going to answer to you, dear reader, as I have to everyone else, that it was simply amazing. It sounds boring, and you may want to ask me more, but I honestly can't fit all of it into words. I will never stop missing the amazing friends that I made there and the wonderful people and teachers that I had met. I will definitely be going back there someday and without a doubt I will try by all means necessary to make it there during this summer.

So that was my one paragraph on France. I'm sure it deserves more but I'm not going to give it more because if I did this post could be stretched around the earth several times. On to the real meat of this post, which was explained by the title: Universities! That's right. As a junior half-way through the year, I now have the right to start worrying and biting my nails over a very scary prospect: Applying to universities. On my list currently:

• UCLA
• Berkeley
• maaaybe Stanford
• Harvard
• Tufts
• Amherst
• EPFL
• Carnegie Mellon

It's quite a list. On the top of my list is EPFL, an engineering school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Not only is it in the French-speaking part of the country, but it's also halfway between Paris and Rome. Can it get any better? Yes it can. The school is positioned right across from Lake Geneva and will be just a train ticket or two away from my French besties, probably two if they've landed in England. I'm going to Boston next weekend to check out Harvard, Tufts and maybe Amherst if we have the time, considering that we only have two days to visit all three of them and I've heard that Amherst is a bit of a drive away. Also, only to twist the screws, all my EABJM buddies will be going to Boston this weekend, not the next to attend a mock-Congress at Harvard. I wouldn't have minded maybe a 4-week distancing, but one? C'mon life, that was a bit too much.

With that I resume developing my awesome new blog. I hope all of you are doing splendidly, and have an awesome day / night / dight / nay wherever you are.