Back To School

I thought this video was appropriate for my return to school. If only when I graduate, I could take over a fortune 500 company, damn you Adam Sandler. Back to the point, this week was the start of my second year of college. After a year of adjusting and getting used to life on campus, I get to do it all over again by learning how to live off campus. I've learned there is a major difference. First off, no rolling out of bed 15 minutes before class and getting there on time. 30 minutes for that matter.

Today I found out the hard way about the fun of parking on campus. I got up about 45 minutes before my class, showered, ate breakfast and headed out with about 30 minutes to spare. After checking the parking garage, twice, I gave up on it. So my next thought was "what other lot can I park in?". Shoot! I had no idea, so I drove around until I found a lot sign the same color as my parking permit and whipped it in. To no avail, I unsuccessfully circled that lot at least 3 times, no spots. At this point, making it to my first class on time was out of the question. So my next goal was just to get parked, because my gas was about as close to "E" as it can before it starts puttering.

I decided to re-check the parking garage, just in case. Bingo! There is room, for the public, but not students. Fail! I proceeded to say some choice words and just gave in, got a public parking pass ($4.50) and parked. I would like to rant about how it shouldn't be a problem to find parking when you pay the University $7,000 a year but that's another post on its own.

Other than that, school has gone smoothly so far. I like most of my teachers and think I will fare just fine this semester. I have even decided to pick up a part-time job, carrying on the tradition of the McGuire's working for the maintenance division of the athletic department. I will also be, hopefully, working for The Collegian, K-State's school newspaper. I've had way too many people in my major or in my future career field tell me that the sooner you get experience and clips, the better. I will be able to work as many or as few stories as I want. So hopefully that goes well, I'll let everyone know if I get anything published.

No other news here, almost to a week until game day! I need some help with tailgating music, any suggestions are more than welcome.

Change Up

It's been a while since I have given you a taste of what I'm listening to, so here you go.

The first is an up and coming country artist by the name of Eric Church. I wasn't fortunate to see him at country stampede but everyone that I've talked to that was there said he was hands down the best performer there. This first song is his most popular, if you listen to any country radio, you've probably heard it. The second song isn't an actual music video but it is one my favorite Eric Church song's, I think you'll enjoy it.

Homeboy

Sinners Like Me

Keeping the country theme, here's some T-Swift. This music video has been getting a lot of attention. This does not mean I'm a Taylor Swift fan (even though I might be).

Back To December

Last song I'll leave you with. A little bit of a segway into tailgating season which is right around the corner. 

My Kinda Party 

Ranch

In the 20 years I've lived on this earth, I have ate my fair share of food. From apple sauce to zucchini and everything in between. I've spilt food, thrown food, choked on food, played with food, and even ate it from time to time. What I've found in my strenuous study of food is that there is no sauce or seasoning more universal than ranch dressing. Now, most people will agree that ranch is a tasty addition to a salad or even a smaller group will eat it with their pizza. I however, take ranch to a whole new level, or obsession.

I eat ranch with anything that I can think of. Pizza, salad, wings, chicken, burgers, fries, onion rings, mac and cheese, tacos, eggs, and the list is growing everyday. I don't know what it is about ranch that has me hooked but I don't care. If ranch was a drug, I'd be in therapy for a long time. I'd run an illegal ranch distribution ring and fight off the DEA to the death. If ranch was a girl, I'd marry it or at least dream about it.

This will be at my wedding!

I'm kidding of course, as much as I like ranch, if it were to go away I wouldn't have to worry about how I would cope. This is because the disappearance of ranch from the world would ultimately result in the end of the world. Let me connect the dots for you naysayers. Without ranch, the salad business goes in flux. When the salad business goes out, buffets are the next victim. No one wants to eat a buffet without a salad, right? Once buffets fall apart, Las Vegas goes down with it, no one knows what to eat and the city falls apart. With no gambling, people don't know what to waste their money on. People start going bankrupt at a all time low. Our country would start to make money instead of digging the debt even deeper. At this point in time, the world is at a place where no one can handle themselves. People are overwhelmed with boringness and nothing to complain about in terms of the government. And Justin Bieber disappears forever. As much as some may wish for some of these things to happen, they will never happen in this world, so them occurring obviously means that the world will blow up from confusion. It's science.

As you can see, I obviously have way too much time on my hands. A blog about ranch that leads to the end of the world? Yes I am ready for school to start. I need to get in a regular routine of going to bed and waking up. But I'm sure as soon as school starts I'll be ready for a break, it's the nature of the beast. Can't have your cake and eat it too, right? Other than school and trying to find some work to make some money, my life is been pretty bland lately, which is not a bad thing. Other than that, I'm just anxious for football (professional and college). Stay tuned people.

Operation Migration

If I had to go without a pinky toe or TV the rest of my life, I would probably choose to have TV and get rid of my pinky toe. Who needs that toe anyway? This comes after two day's without TV or internet. I haven't been so bored and mad at the same time. Bored because I knew every time one of my shows came, I couldn't watch it. Mad because I had to stare at a blank 60 inch TV. Luckily, I had some tasks to do at my new house. Oh I forgot to tell you, I AM BACK IN MANHATTAN. I moved back Last Wednesday and my roommates and I got the house all together. This came with time however.

There are many things about living at a house that you take for granted. For instance, there is no "cleaning fairy" to pick up your clothes, empty gatorade bottles, and dirty plates. No one does your laundry for you and folds them as well. Fortunately for me, I have a basic background in cleaning house. I cleaned when I was a little kid, so it's still a little fuzzy. Laundry isn't too big of a problem, finding the motivation and energy to actually do it is a problem, for me at least.

Reminded of cable company

I got to find out how awesome (and when I say awesome, I mean not awesome) it is to deal with the cable company. Not to mention all of the random charges that I never would have thought was even legal. Apparently they charge you $45 dollars just to turn on your cable. Not even to set it up, that is an additional $50. So I told them we could figure out how to set up the cable and internet by ourselves. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out. And an additional 30 minutes of talking to a mumbling-quiet talking Cox support person because they didn't turn on our HD channels. I wouldn't have minded them not turning on CNBC or Fox News but HD is a whole other problem.

Our next adventure was to Wal Mart, to stock up on all essentials. We even made a list, however, when your buying things with your own money, the word essential takes on a smaller meaning. I learned how to shop for bargains and forget expensive items. Also, don't go shopping at Wal Mart on a Sunday afternoon. Stick to weekday nights, you won't have a problem with waiting on checkout lanes and it seems that is when all other college students shop.

Other than that, schools starts in 6 days. Bummer. I have to get my books and all other school essentials soon I guess. The only real countdown I have is for football, that can't come soon enough. Tailgates, beer, food, football, girls, and nothing else is needed.

Technology Fail

Usually I would consider myself very technologically savvy. However, in the last week I have gone into a "technologically challenged" state. Fortunately, I have lots of time on my hand due to the fact that I'm done working for the time being and will have about a week to fix my technology headaches.

The first problem that occurred was probably the more important of the two, but I still am more mad about the second one. The first was a problem that resulted from my procrastination (see "Procrastination Pro" post) and the fact that I own a MacBook Pro. As I have explained in a previous post, I am a procrastinator to the core. The final paper that makes up 40% of my grade in the Composition 2 class I took this summer ,via Cowley County Community College online courses, was put off until the final 3 days before it was due. Keep in mind that the paper had to be at minimum 7 pages, so this was no small task. This part of the problem is not what really set me back in the end as I finished the day before it was due. However, I was going on vacation to Arizona the day that the instructor would be grading the papers. So if anything were to go wrong, like he was unable to download the document you sent him, I wouldn't have known until I got back. The thought of bringing my laptop on vacation for this very reason did cross my mind but I assured myself that there would be some sort of computer use at the resort we were staying at. Of course there were no computers, just free wifi. Free wifi only helps when you have a laptop to use it with. FAIL! After finding this out, I just had to cross my fingers and hope for the best. Hope that he received the papers and that he was able to download them without any problems. Not so much. After getting home from vacation, I made sure to check my e-mail first to see if he had e-mailed me about my paper, hoping to see my grade. As it happens, he was unable to download it in the format I sent the paper to him. This is the one downfall to having a MacBook, you have to remember that the formats you use Microsoft word will not always work with other, inferior operating systems ("Cough" Windows). I proceeded by immediately sending him the paper again in a more convenient format but was disappointed two days later after finding out he never received the e-mail. FAIL! Luck for me, my professor was very understanding about the situation and the heartaches of running an online class. He allowed me to re-email him my paper, almost two weeks late, with no penalty. So after all this frustrating and hair-pulling computer issues, I got my paper graded and my mind at ease. As Borat would say, "GREAT SUCCESS!".

The next problem I had was more of my stupidity then it was technological confusion. My Ipod, that I've had for about 3 years, has music on it from my previous computer which has since bit the dust. I've always wanted to get the songs off my Ipod and get them onto my new laptop so I would have them in case anything were to happen to my Ipod (i.e. losing it, breaking it, or accidentally losing all the songs on it). Turns out, I ended up doing the last of those examples in the process of trying to save my music. Kind of ironic right? Theres a program to do this, it's called JailBreak and it's suppose to be a simple process. Not for me, when I tried to run the program, it told me that I needed a newer version of the Ipod firmware. I updated it and tried again. To my surprise however, when I updated my Ipod firmware, Itunes took the liberty of erasing all of my music that I had previously had on my Ipod. FAIL! I knew I should have listened to the South Park episode that was a satire of the Itunes terms and agreements that nobody reads but just clicks agree to. If I had, I might have realized that it said in Bold letters, "By updating your firmware, all previous music, videos, and apps will be erased so make sure to back up your data before updating" Problem was that  I couldn't back up all my music because it wasn't all from the same computer. So after an ambitious and confident attempt to Jailbreak my Ipod, I lost almost all of my music. Fortunately in today's age, you can get music with the click of a button. Whether it be Itunes, mixtape websites, or P2P downloading applications like Frostwire, getting music has never been so simple and fast to do. Consequently, I have been rigorously downloading music to refill my Ipod before I go back to Manhattan, because the radio can't keep me entertained for more than 30 minutes. I am currently at about 350 songs, which is about a 1/3 of the songs I had previously but I have confidence I can get this done and have an even better collection of songs than before. As long as I don't delete them all off my computer (knocking on wood).

That is all I got for now, only 5 days until I move back to Manhattan for my second year at the Kansas State University. Stay tuned.

Vacation Recap

So my plan of updating a daily recap of our vacation to Scottsdale, Arizona was ruined when I found out our resort did not have any computers but had free wifi instead. Of course I didn't bring my laptop for some reason I can't remember. So you get the full trip in one post, buckle your seat belts.

I'll post some pictures and try to explain where they were take and what we were doing there.

This picture was taken on our bike ride, kind of disturbing and scary. Makes you pedal faster or stop and take a picture.

Also on the bike ride, cool scenery

The first golf course my Dad and I played, first hole as well. Not to mention the random guy in the corner. Good thing I'm not a professional photographer.

Same picture, minus the random golfer.

Just B.A houses, on a pond. 

Funny story, my Dad and I thought this was a dog at first roaming the golf course. Turns out it was a fox or coyote. Whatever it was, it wasn't a dog. But I caught it on camera.

More from 1st golf course

Dad watching his shot

Shot of mountain in background of the second golf course we played

Pizza place on mills street. A similar venue to Aggieville, but bigger and nicer. Pizza was awesome, along with Arizona State campus that we then proceeded to check out. 

Camelback Mountain Shot

Higher up on Camelback Mountain

So tired by now, ready to jump off mountain.

More mountain shots

Highest point...I think

Probably one of my favorite pictures. 

Cool view from the second golf course we played

More of a detailed recap tomorrow, stay tuned people.