The Bulk of the Curve

I got my second philosophy paper returned to me today. My class is based 90% on papers and 10% on participation. I have 40% of my course work completed and my grade is a very solid "B". In high school I would never have allowed for this. I was always in the top 5% percent of my class, never would I have settled for 40%. This is a new feeling on content for me, of course I would love an A and I will continue to strive for it, but I think I am good with the flow of B's. I don't quite know what to say, except for that I have changed a little. I am at the "best public university in the world" not just a random high school in the high desert in California. The people here are some of the best minds in California, I think I might be ok being average when it comes to putting me in a pool with "the best". (Ok not really, I want an A)

The New Cold War

I declare anarchy to exist. On this planet there is just one place where this form of government exists and unfortunately many of us experience this often. I am not talking about the ideal anarchy or extreme communism where everybody shares, but I am talking about riots, fires and disorder anarchy. This place is the public laundry room.

Mr dorm building has one laundry room which we share with about two other buildings and each building has around 100 residences. This laundry room has three washing machines and three dryers... oh wait one of the dryers is broken so make that two. Two dryers. I came to this conclusion while doing my laundry the first time and have confirmed it every week after on laundry day. Sunday is the busiest day for laundry and home game Saturdays are the least busiest. I do my laundry on Wednesdays because I like having clean sheets in the middle of the week for some reason, although I will probably switch to Mondays since my afternoon seminar class is over.

Anyway, each machine is on a timer, 38 minutes for washing, an hour for drying, pretty simple. Unfortunately people either Berkeley students have no concept of time or they are forgetful, I will go with the former to be a bigger jerk. I always like to check to see if a machine is open before i decide to drag my clothes two floors down to do laundry, usually there is one free so I grab my stuff and put it in the washer and set the timer on my computer to go off in about 35 minutes. When I put my clothes in the washer I realize there is about 20 minutes left on one of the dryers and about 40 minutes left on the other so I am sure I will be able to grab a dryer when I am done. Half an hour later I see that one dryer is done so I get ready to put my clothes in there, but oh wait, the person with 20 minutes left never came down to get their stuff so now I also have to throw their stuff in their laundry basket as well as put my stuff in the dryer. While I add my clothes to the dryer, the machine I was using to wash gets another load of my laundry and I know there will be a dryer for me to use since no one is using the washing machine but me and the other dryer has about 10 minutes left. I turn the timer on again.

35 minutes later I am ready to put my clothes in the dryer, but wait the machine I was going to use has 50 minutes left on it... apparently the person who was previously using it didn't think their clothes were dry enough so they put it back in for another hour. Now I have to wait at least until my current drying load is done before I can put my soggy wet clothes in a dryer, but I have to take them out of the washer because there is now someone waiting to use the washing machine. And also the clothes I removed from the dryer before I put my clothes in are still on top of the dryer. So I know there is about 20 minutes left on my dryer so I go upstairs and do some more studying and I go back down to collect my dry clothes and replace them with the wet ones from the washing machine incident just 20 minutes prior. Unfortunately there are now two people with wet clothes also waiting for the dryer who had their stuff in the washer with about 10 minutes left when I was removing my second load not too long ago. Now however I feel like an ass because they have also been waiting and I just show up to throw my crap in the dryer I was just using. Now I face a moral dilemma, do I give up the dryer to let the "patiently" waiting neighbors use it, or do I quickly throw my stuff in there and say "too bad, I get it"? I do what any anarchist would do. I take the machine for myself because I know had the situations been reversed they would have pulled the same crap on me.

And where the hell is the owner of these clothes on top of the dryer?

My Inferiority Complex

Apple introduced the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros on Tuesday and as most of you know I have a MacBook Pro. I have loved my MacBook Pro ever since I got it, except for the whole dead on arrival thing from mid august, but that's another story. I had at the time of purchase the fastest Macintosh portable available and it felt damn good to be at the top, but now with the intro of the new MacBook Pros I feel somehow inadequate. These new models have the Core 2 Duo which sports a 64-bit processor (mine is 32-bit) at higher processing speeds. It also offers firewire 800, a bigger hard drive and more RAM for the same price I got mine. I mean I know technology has to get better, but why can't mine get better with it?

I guess this is just one of the steps of depreciation, it's quite sad really, how we invest so much in the best technology and four years later you'd be lucky to get $400 for that. It's worse than cars. The original Macintosh for instance sold at around $2,400 and that price today you could get something almost infinitely faster... Ah technology, it makes me wonder where we will be just a few years down the road. 500GB iPods, 2 TB laptop hard drives, Blu-ray (or HD-DVD) burners and wireless technology up to wazoo.

My Meeting

So as you may or may not know I met one of my all time favorite people yesterday at a rally in Berkeley. Oh who was it? Well I'll give you some clues, he won a majority of votes in the 2000 presidential election, his policies during his reign as VP helped to create environmental standards and helped to forge the technology which created what we know today as the World Wide Web, and now he travels the country giving a slideshow presentation about the effects of global warming (on a Mac of course where he sits on the board of directors). yup you guessed it, I met the Al Gore.

Yesterday at around 12:30 I was at a rally in Berkeley for passing proposition 87, on the CA ballot it is for taxing imported oil and using that revenue to research alternative energy sources for the future. He talked about why we must pass this if we want to help stop the effects of global warming and create a better world for our children. If you are so inclined you can watch the speech here http://www.yeson87.org/page/invite/TakeTheLead. I was right in the front and center. I arrived about an hour early to assure a good spot in line. In fact my friend Claire and I were first in line and by the end of the rally somewhere around 2000 people had shown up! Here's a picture of him after he shook my hand.


Photo Credit: Claire Viall

Ah it was really amazing.

On 'Weekends'

Weekends are a coveted thing here in college. They're worth their weight in boba. After a week of classes, papers, midterms, work, hall association, and Hillel the weekends are welcomed with open arms. A typical weekend for me is on Friday I work from 10:30-4:00. I love my work so it's kind of fun and enjoyable. Later on Fridays I go to Hillel for services and dinner, something to ease me into the weekend. After services I usually go out with Eric to get some boba, which I am I now an addict. I'll go back to my dorm at anytime ranging from 10:00-1:00 depending on what i do after boba. Either way I don't get to bed around 2:00 because I have to check and respond to my emails.

On Saturday I will wake sometime around 10:00 and sit at my desk for about an hour talking to people on AIM before getting my butt up to take a shower. I'll generally get out of the shower and around noon I'll head out to either the game or hang out with friends. Yesterday I hung out with Claire and Jena and we took in a movie (Man of the Year) instead of going to the game. In the evening it's anyone's game. I'll either go to Hillel for some activity or go out and eat which I only do around once a day on the weekends, unless there is free food where I might eat up to three times a day. Yesterday I saw the Afro Semitic Experience at Hillel as a benefit concert for Crones Disease, they were pretty awesome. Jewish dudes wearing traditional African clothing and big black guys playing the bongos while singing Eliyahu Hanavi. After the concert last night I went to get boba and watched Harold & Kumar.

Sundays are the worst day of all (excluding M-Th). I still get to sleep in, but I realize that I have homework/papers to write for classes that week. I then get my butt into the shower, procrastinate for about an hour, clean as a method of procrastination and finally I might crack open my textbook. On Sundays it's rare that I will go further than the dining commons less than 100 yards from my dorm room. However, I can get cabin fever easily and I might take a walk to Memorial Stadium which is awesome when empty. I then proceed to bed around 11:00 to get ready to wake up around 6:30 the next morning. It's all part of the routine.

However tomorrow I get to see Al Gore talk about Proposition 87. Yay!

The Challenge

Sorry. For all of my frequent readers I am sorry for my month long absence. One month. That's almost half a percent of my lifetime. Much occurred since my last posting, but nothing all that special. It's all part of the routine. This blog was supposed to be for the interesting things in my life, such as starting college, getting a broken computer, and almost getting mugged. Either all of the what would have been "big stuff" turned into routine, or my life is just boring. In the past month I went home to help my family move and for Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays. It was an interesting feeling coming home. I felt out of place. I felt like my family didn't necessarily need me anymore, or perhaps it is I don't need them. It was a weird feeling, even though I had only been away six weeks, it felt different, my life is now here, in Berkeley.

Anyway, mid-term season is over for me. I had one test in economics and a paper due in both Philosophy and English. I can now relax again. Oh wait, in about two weeks I am supposed to start registration for next semester. I feel as though I just started this one, now I have to pick classes again? I don't even know my major yet, I can't just start picking classes, what if I pick the wrong ones? I'll just look at the schedule and pick the classes I want to take, the ones that look interesting.

As for everything else, I got a nice piece of mail today regarding my AppleCare agreement. I was reading over the terms and conditions--the small print-- and I noticed something they don't cover, "Acts of God". I wonder how many calls they get, "Hi, um my computer got burned, yeah God wanted to talk to me, but he couldn't find a bush so he just used my laptop, can you fix that?" I smirked.

Ok, so now the good stuff. I present myself with a challenge, the challenge of posting a blog every other day. An every two days blog. Nothing fancy, but just to stay in touch with everyone. For the next month, at least every two days will see a new post. We'll meet back here to see how I did on November 20.