Random

The air in Oklahoma really is a whole lot cleaner. Flying in to Salt Lake, it was startling to see how bad the smoke and smog was. Made me grateful for all of those Oklahoma windstorms.

With the new semester looming on the horizon, my roommates and I have been giving our apartment a thorough cleaning. While our apartment was fairly clean to begin with, there was still a whole lot of junk left over from previous tenants. Once (if) it’s completely clean, we’ll be able to a bit of interior decorating and make the place at least somewhat presentable.

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Solar Window Screens, West

Solar Window Screens, South

Now that summer is almost over, I finally managed to install the solar window screens that our apartment has so badly needed. Besides making the apartment look a whole lot better from the outside (our windows were pretty darn nasty and our landlords wouldn’t do anything about it), having them installed meant that I could finally put away all of the supplies and tools that I’ve used to assemble and install them.

No, my parents aren’t on Facebook, nor do I think they ever will be. So let’s leave them out of this.

I recognize the need for parents to monitor their children’s activities, especially when those children are at a point in their lives when they can be emotionally vulnerable to strangers over the internet. However, when those kids are in college, it’s really weird for parents to want to buddy-up with all of their children’s friend on social networking sites. So how about it? How many friend requests have you gotten from your friends’ parents?

The annual love/hate fest for my mother’s side of the family is scheduled for this weekend — should be interesting as always. We all get along pretty well, we just hate (and I use we in its editorial form here) having to deal with the mosquitoes that abound at the family cabin. Fortunately, since said family cabin is less than a half-hour’s drive from my apartment, I can at least avoid having to spend the night there.

The Harold B. Lee Library’s Folding@Home took this lead this morning as the top-scoring team at BYU. Congratulations, and thanks to those who have donated their CPU cycles to such a worthy cause. Now that the HBLL team leads at BYU, their next goal is to overtake the teams at Yale, U Minn, and the University of Oklahoma.

Also of note, the author of The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch, passed away today after his extended battle with pancreatic cancer. If you want to show your support for his widow and children, the easiest (and most meaningful) way is to purchase a copy of his book.

In an effort to simultaneously improve the aesthetics of the campus and melt the remaining ice at the poles, BYU will be removing the bike racks located at the sides of the Harold B. Lee Library. The official explanation is that BYU is trying to be a “walking-only” campus, which honestly would be a great idea, except that a large number of the students who attend classes here, in addition to many of university’s employees, don’t live within walking distance.

Yep. Decision made. I’ll be going to the Oakenfold concert @ In The Venue on Saturday. Between that and watching The Dark Knight up at the IMAX in Sandy, my entertainment budget for this pay period is pretty much shot. Not so much because of the cost of tickets, but the cost of a tank of gas to make two trips up to Salt Lake City. Pretty sad when it costs $60 to fill up a ‘96 Honda Accord, but that’s what we get for having such a crappy energy policy. Don’t even get me started on our foreign policy — I can guarantee you that starting a war with Iran is not going to drive oil prices any lower.

Today, I ordered/purchased most of the few remaining things I need to install new solar screens on our apartment’s west- and south-facing windows. I figure it’s cost me about $450 altogether, but that’s including the half-roll of solar screen I won’t need in addition to all of the tools I’ve purchased to be able to assemble and install the screens. I think my lightbulb-replacement project was much more economical (and, truth be told, will probably have the most effect.) Oh well, it’ll at least give me plenty of experience with windows screens - hurray for that.

At the moment, I feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in that scene from Total Recall where he has that device crammed up his nose. Feels a little weird — as long as I don’t have to shove a massive extraction device up my nostril, I should be alright, though.

Yesterday, I had surgery on my nose — not for aesthetic purposes, but to correct a deviated septum and reduce my primary turbinates. I was happyily surprised that the pain really wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be — closer to just a really bad sinus headache than an operation that totally restructured the inside of my nose.