[Moriah] Grades Are In & Family Christmas

I'm really tired right now, but I wanted to do a quick update. I'll add more later. I am very glad school is done for the semester and am looking forward to having only one more left. I, too, received my grades and am so happy about them. Once again I have maintained my 4.0 GPA. I'm hoping to keep it up for this last semester so I can graduate with a 4.0! We'll see.



As for Christmas, I've had a great one so far. Tomorrow we finish the festivities at the other Grandparents' house. I'm looking forward to more fun and laughs. I hope everyone else had a great holiday and is spending time with those they love. Have a great night all!

[Daniel] Grades!

Grades are in on both sides. I'll let Moriah talk about hers if she wants. I could not be more pleased as the lowest grade I got this semester was an AB. :D One more semester...

[Daniel] Second To Last Semester Complete

As an aside, I finished my semester on Friday. Now I await my grades and next semester. It's sad but I'd almost rather start it right now, just to get it over with. There was a point in college where I cared more about the learning than the degree. This is no longer the case. I'm not real clear on when it changed but no matter how hard I try, I can not force myself to be interested in my classes anymore.



At Thanksgiving, Dad S. asked me a very telling question. He asked "Did you learn more this semester or your first semester of college?" It took a few moments of thought but my honest answer was "My first semester of college." When I look back on this last semester, I don't feel that I really learned much. I was already familiar with databases, Excel, OOP and VB. I learned quite a bit about Java but I did that on my own as class was little help in that respect. Legal Environment was vaguely interesting but I don't feel that it applies a whole lot to my life. :\



I guess that was more than an aside but whatever. In other news, TanPlan is getting a big visual overhaul as well as some new functionality. Depending on how far Tony gets today, the updates may be uploaded to Tan Plan tonight. Accounts are still free! :D



Oh, and frustrations abound. I've been busily applying to many businesses over the course of the last month and a half with no leads so far. It scares me because it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in me at all. Part of me wishes I could make RU my job but I fear the idea of both Moriah and I being self-employed. There really wouldn't be any stability in it at all and we have a lot of debts to cover when we get out of college. :( (Double Sigh)



Anyway, enough complaining. There should be a new poll up in a few minutes so HAMMER IT!



Update - The archives have been cleaned up. Most links and pictures should now work.

[Daniel] Xmas 2004: D & M Edition

After a ton of anticipation and waiting on both sides, we decided to celebrate our Xmas a little early, as in tonight. :D Since Moriah already wrote up her side, I supposed I should do mine. I was shocked when I opened up the first gift from Moriah: a beautiful Native American flute. I've been playing Moriah's for the last couple months and really enjoyed it. It's different from a lot of instruments because it can be played totally improvisationally with no musical training or it can be played from a highly musical perspective. She also gave me a sweet carrying case for it and a introductory DVD which will definitely get a lot of use.



And yes, we seem to celebrate every holiday early. Bizarre, yes. Convenient, very. :D

[Moriah] Christmas 2004!

Today has been a great day! First of all, I passed my First Aid/CPR exams with flying colors, ending up with the highest grade in the class for the semester. I was pretty psyched about that. Then, when I got home tonight, Daniel and I decided we couldn't wait to do our Christmas celebration, as usual, so we opened our gifts after supper. I'm sure Daniel will post what I gave him, so I'll post what he gave me. First, I opened up a beautiful wolf card he made for me. Then I opened a DVD called "The Quick & Dirty Guide to Salsa." I love dancing, especially Latin style, but have had trouble in the past learning how to Salsa. Damn hips just won't move right! So I think this video will be awesome to learn from! Next up, Myst IV: Revelation. I love the Myst games, and this is the newest one. I'm excited to play it over Christmas break. Then, I opened up a cool present: Ninja Abec 7 bearings! I've been trying to get my skateboard to go faster for a long time, but my house Abec 5s weren't doing it for me. These should help. Hee hee... Finally, Daniel gave me a wonderful book that I've used several times for research papers and other things but have had to keep checking out from the library at school: "The Vegan Sourcebook." I'm so excited to have a copy of my own so I can thoroughly go through it, highlight important stuff and use it for future reference. Thanks a million, honey! I love everything!

[Daniel] Skate Video: Now With 100% More Dialup-Friendliness!

The skate movies are back up. Much smaller downloads (~5 Mb) so they're now somewhat accessible via dialup. Next up is the archive section.

[Moriah] Big First Aid Exam Tomorrow

Life has been hectic the past few days with studying for my big First Aid/CPR exam tomorrow morning. It will be covering all 38 chapters that we've gone over this semester. So far I've been doing well in the class, so I'm hoping the trend continues with the 75-question written final and the two hands-on skills stations tomorrow. I will have to update after it's over to let everyone know how it went.



This week will also be very busy with work. I have a 32-hour work-week between tomorrow and Sunday, along with making Christmas gifts and preparing for my last few days of class. *sigh* One more semester of school...

[Daniel] Letter In The Mail

Something I never thought would come arrived today in the mail. A letter from the Uni stating that I am set for graduation in May. I can not even begin to describe this feeling, I am so happy. That is, provided I pass all six classes (18 credits) next semester. It's not looking exceptionally easy...

• Intro To Marketing



• Strategic Management



• Global Management



• Fundamental of Ops Management



• Networking



• Distributed Systems

Still, I am very eager to be done and get out into the "real world". I am tired of being poor, tired of this town and tired of working on small insignificant things that go nowhere. And I think Moriah agrees. :D

[Daniel] RSS Feed Back!

The RSS feed should be fixed. All two of you that use it, please let me know if you have any issues with it at all. I'll make sure I check on it periodically to make sure nothing...fun pops up like what it was doing. Thanks again for everyone's patience!



In other news, I have only 1.5 weeks left in the semester. I could not be happier that this is just about over. One more semester to go...

[Daniel] RSS Feed Down

Issues have arisen with the Perl script I had created to make the RSS feed so it will be down for a couple days. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Daniel] The Return Of The Poll

As promised, the poll returns. It's been completely rewritten and now Moriah has no excuse but to help write polls. :D If anyone wants the new version or you find what you think is a bug, please contact me. Thanks!

[Daniel] Tan Plan Debut!

I happily present to you all - TanPlan.



After just over 5 months of development, Tony & I are comfortable enough with it to release it to the public. It's still in a fairly early form but we're pretty proud of it and have big plans for its future.



For those not in the know, TanPlan is a free, web-based calendar I've been involved with creating. Please feel free to sign up for an account, give it a try and let us know what you think!



Also, the new version of NetAct and MicroTunes have been accepted on Konfabulator's Widget Gallery. I'm pretty pleased with this as well as the code behind NetAct is working 100% for me and I haven't heard any problems yet. Yay!

[Moriah] IMPORTANT HEALTH NEWS

If you aren't familiar with what is going on in the natural health industry right now, there have been several articles in the media recently badgering supplements such as Vitamin E and Vitamin C, saying that they are not safe. Nothing could be more ridiculous! What is happening is the Codex Alimentarius Commission is trying to take away every American's right to choose our own supplements and natural healing remedies right under our noses. If the European Union Directive on Dietary Supplements takes full effect in August 2005, as it is planned to do unless we stop it, the law will severely restrict access to natural health products in Europe, including common supplements and remedies. But we're in the US, you tell yourself. How can that affect me? Let me explain.



Because the US is a member of the World Trade Organization, if this law goes into full effect in Europe it will come to the US and just as equally devastate our natural health community because it will become international law at that point. The WTO law would override individual national law, which means the US would not be able to ignore it. It would literally be illegal to buy such trivial things as Vitamin C in whatever dose we choose. In fact, in order to be able to get common vitamins and minerals, let alone other natural healing products, we would have to go to a doctor and get a prescription because the government thinks they know more about our own bodies than we do! Is that freedom? I should say not! As I've said before, it's all a conspiracy to increase profits for large pharmaceutical companies. To read more about this topic, please go to: Jonathan V. Wright's Nutrition & Healing page article and check out the Alliance for Natural Health. If you want to help out, please join me in contacting local senators and congressmen urging them to oppose S.722, the Dietary Supplement Safety Act (what a joke!), and H.R. 3377, the Dietary Supplement Access and Awareness Act (another joke!) respectively.