Let’s review some recent happenings in the life of icorey:

Corey was offered the job of Student Web Developer for RIT’s Alumni Relations today. He is very excited about this job and graciosuly accepted his position.

Corey will be coming home when his exams end this week. He is planning on working at the Dipson for the two weeks during his vacation. Of course, he’s looking forward to being back at the Dipson, but he knows he’ll wish he was back at school after about ten minutes of Dipson time.

Corey has a roller hockey game later on today! But before the game, he needs to purchase a roller hockey girdle. He would also like to purchase a book on PERL (Corey is supposed to know PERL for his new job). After the hockey game, Corey needs to work on his Writing final paper.

Corey is planning on heading back to RIT Sunday. He has a game with the B-team that day at 6:00 pm. He is very much so looking forward to this game. His team lost last week in a shootout after leading 3-1 at one point. Corey is thinking about being a puck-hog and skating the length of the ice (with the puck).

Make sure to wish Corey good luck on his upcoming exams.

I registered for classes during the week. Of course, registration has to start at 6:00 AM. I stayed up all night and thereafter was very tired, especially during my classes. Regardless, I got all the classes I wanted:

• University Physics I
• Freshman Seminar
• Aikido

Exciting, right? Okay, no, it’s not. I did not sign up for my arts of expression class, but soon I can. My upperclassman insider registered for an ASL class for me, which at some point she will drop and I will sign up for. Yay ASL! Yay deaf people!

In the morning I’m attending a tour of the newly-renovated/-rebuilt Darwin Martin Complex. Later on I’ll be playing roller hockey and then going to the Sabres’ game.

Have fun.

Completely dark except for a thin strip of light across my bed. The time is 4:00 AM. Nighttime wastes away into morning, delusional morning. I cannot fall sleep. I try everything. Nothing. I find a comfortable spot, a nice place to rest my foot, which is jammed underneath the side–guard on my lofted bed. My eyes close. I begin to drift away.

. . .

And then it all crashes down. Hard.

Here are some photos:

Interesting side note: see that red circle? Guess what’s inside that circle. Innocent wrapper? I think not:

In conclusion, after shoving my foot underneath the guard thing on the side of my bed, I kicked it off. In the brief moment before it hit the ground, I expected only a thud. Oh, but a thud it was not. It was a symphony of earth-shattering clashes and bangs and every other onomotapoeia one can think of. It was so incredibly loud, I assumed the worst: my computer was destroyed, the desk was flipped, large hole in the wall. Then I actually looked and found all my stuff intact. The falling guard did manage to knock the panel off of the air conditioner. I have no idea how that happened, it’s a heavy little panel. The mass of wood also turned over my roommate’s garbage receptacle, scattering debris across the floor.

Luckily, all is now well.

I ordered an orange Creative Zen Micro Photo 8GB Mp3 Player on August 2nd. The price for the orange version was $176.13 and a $30 (mail-in) rebate brought the price down to $146.13, a very reasonable price for an 8gb mp3 player, in my opinion. I just received the product tonight and so far I am pleased.

There was nothing surprising upon opening the box, except for the usb cord, which (as far as I know) is the only way one can charge the player. This is not much of a problem now, but I can see how it could be one. However, I hear the battery life is 15 hours, which should be enough time to find a computer.

Setting up the mp3 player was very easy: just connect the mp3 player to a pc, pop in the cd, and install the software you want. The actual program, Zen Micro Photo Media Explorer, works just fine. Files are easy to add and transfer quickly. Playlists are easy to add and edit. There was only one problem I had with the transfering of files: the lossless wma files I have (only about 11 of them) could not be transfered. Again, not a big deal.

As far as the player and listening to music, I only have a minor problem. The quality of the sound is good with bass boost on or off. Finding the music on the player is eay, with several ways of sorting the music. The buttons are fine and not overly sensitive (there is an option on the player to change this, I believe). The method to change the volume is also very simple (just move you finger along the slider up or down). In some reviews this was mentioned as a problem (the solution being a physical button). As far as I’m concerned, the slider is very good for changing volume, as one does not have to navigate through various menus, as some reviews made it seem. My one complaint is the editing of playlists on the actual player. First, there does not seem to be any way to add or remove songs from a playlist after it is created. Removing a song from a playlist actually deletes it from the player. Finally, creating playlists on the player is difficult to, as one must select all the songs and then choose to create a playlist. The problem here is that files cannot be unselected between the time the file is selected and the playlist is created.

The head phones are good; there is no pointless remote attached to them. The only restriction on files I have encountered is the limit on bit rate; music downloaded via p2p clients is okay for the player, if anyone is concerned about that. Overall, I really like the mp3 player so far. I hghly recommend it.

Watch out for a review on the Niko 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor coming soon (it hasn’t been delivered yet).

Today I turned 18 years old…

So what did I do on my eighteenth birthday? Yes, you guessed correctly, I bought $1500 worth of stock. Since my graduation (before actually, but the plan was not too realistic then) I’ve wanted to buy stock. Unfortunately, one must be 18 to buy stock, and I was 17 back then. So I waited, all the while planning out which stock I should buy. I decided on SanDisk (SNDK), Electronic Arts (ERTS), and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO). All three were falling fairly consistently and nearing their lowest valleys in quite some time, so they seemed like good choices.

Since last night after midnight was technically July 24, I tried signing up at e*trade. However, I could not sign up at the site, even after midnight. So I did some more research about online brokers and decided TD Ameritrade was probably a better choice. Luckily, I was able to sign up at said site after 1:00 am. However, after completing the sign-up process, I found out my account was frozen, as identity checks are performed on every new account and I have no identity (well, at the time I didn’t). Another setback.

I set my alarms for 8:00 am but ignored them anyways. So around 10:00 am I called my mom asking her about the information need by TD Ameritrade. I rode my bike to OfficeMax and faxed the necessary information.

Once I got home from the Max, I started my trading adventure. I purchased some shares of ERTS and SNDK. Then came the time for TTWO. Apparently, TD Ameritrade requires paying a special margin to buy TTWO stock. I have no idea what a margin is, so i decided to buy a different stock, one not affected by such margin. I remembered that a friend who knows a lot about stock trading has some Toyota (TM) shares, so I bought some of those.

The rest of the tarding involved watching the stock prices. Luckily, today was a great day for the stocks I bought (and most other stocks) so I made a profit of $23 (ignoring the $40 that went to TD Ameritrade as commissions). I can’t wait to see how my stock does tomorrow!

Later on today I played baseball. I couldnt hit the ball but made a leaping catch in the outfield and tagged someone out as home as the catcher. We lost by one run. Now I am going to eat some chicken wings and watch episodes of The Simpsons.