last friday, i received the news that my dear grandmother, the fine woman that reared the man i call pops, passed away earlier that day. it was a merciful death. she had been hollowed out by alzheimer's over the previous, shoot, 6 years? her body succumbed this past year to the fallout of a tumor poking its head in a lung or two. again, merciful. yet, a death nonetheless, and one to be acknowledged and mourned. love you, granny bird.
so, i'm in this band. it's a cover band. we do 90s covers. no, i'm totally cereal. we even have a myspace page (link), for whatever that's worth. we had our first official gig this same friday evening. i qualify "official" as "playing at a commercial establishment where total strangers could possibly be present". it was at the tiniest bar in texas (link) and the gig went, well, to those it applies - do you remember the first time you had sex? remember it being clumbsy and awkward and not exactly your finest moment? certainly in comparison to subsequent experiences? but at the same time, it was still sex!
that was our gig on friday. not pretty by any means, but a gig all the same, and damnit, the crowd enjoyed themselves. we even got paid. seriously, cash money. i believe we got a whopping $108 and it was unexpected. apparently, we get ten percent of money brought in during our time on stage, (7:30pm - 10pm). we brought in over a thousand bucks for that place that night! *pats self on back* so, friday night out, and early sunday morning, my roommate dropped my brother and i off at the airport.
anyhow, travelling to minnesota and back in a scant 36 hours is not an experience i'd soon suggest. and it brought me back to austin late on monday evening. i took tuesday as a personal berievement day (i learned the term in benefits lingo for "someone died, yo!" this weekend) and cleaned my apartment (the peasants rejoiced!) and did a little hw. tuesday, went to a halloween adult skate night at playland skaterink where my clumbsy ass tripped a seasoned roller vet on his grizzled viking ass, knocking up his knee a bit in the process. he wasn't too happy, but reluctantly accepted my apologies. i have this weekend abrasion on my shin now, it's kinda cool.
work this week was hectic and a meeting this friday saw some heavy leaning on us from business about all this stuff they promised a potential client by some asnine date. i swear, people not familiar with the development process truly thinks this shit just gets thrown together in a week. anyhow, i'm not diving into it that. suffice it to say, work's been busy and stressful in its own right.
thursday night saw band practice where we stream-lined our setlist and worked on better transitions and other logistical crap. last night was a party gig for our singer's friend's halloween party at their condos. this gig went much better than the one at tiniest, mainly because we had all our own stuff and there was a great improvement in quality overall. afterwards, it was a swimming through the tens of thousands of people in downtown last night for halloween. what a freakin' trip. i took pictures with barf, the mog, from "spaceballs" and two little rolled-up rug-shaped headed freaks from katamari! no freakin' joke! they were the costume highlight of my evening, that's for sure.
and that brings us here, today, from the 24th of october. to recap what's on my school plate, there are 4 major classifications of things to do:
- normal set of readings and reviews for mobile computing
- normal set of reading and written problems for network security
- research paper for network security
- background research for mobile computing semester project
over this period of time, i did manage to complete 95% of the first item, with just three brief reviews to write and post for papers already read. the plan of attack, between today and the 14th, the friday of class this month, in a mere 13 days, is the following: attack it, singular focus, in order listed above. just power through it, no multitasking or concurrent threads of execution, simply do the security hw, write the security research paper, and read up on mobile computing project. in 13 days. it's simply gotta happen.
and i've already spent the first half hour of my coffee shop study time this afternoon catching up on my blog! again, i have to refer you to previous posts on this subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment