The Flow of Consciousness

A detachment of brothers from Phi Kappa Tau appeared at my front door Jan. 28 and handed me a bid.

I accepted it the following day.

Pick-Up Day (yesterday, Feb. 3) was one of the most fun days I’ve had in college.

Even though I’ve only got a semester with the guys, I’m gonna make the most of it and have lots of fun.

I noticed on dailydomainer.com today the site’s veritable cornucopia of social bookmarking links at the bottom of single-post pages. The sheer amount of them—all in one row—baffled me.

Are there really that many social bookmarking sites?

Do they really do well enough to merit keeping them open?

I realize the explosive success of Digg and Newsvine and Del.icio.us and Reddit (of which I only use the first two). I guess social bookmarking is yet another Internet phenomenon that everyone is trying to wrangle and profit from.

It would be cool to write a social bookmarking web application. PHP is used for almost all of them, with Ruby for the others and maybe something less popular for some others. I wonder if any of them are done in Scheme or Smalltalk? Hmm.

In other news, classes start tomorrow and I don’t have any books yet. It’s my last semester of undergrad, and I’ve spent more on books this semester than I have for the past five. That tells you something about history and English classes, eh?

JD tagged me. Ready? Go.

• Graduate.
• Key to success, here. The only people who could keep me from graduating are Dr. Shaffer and Dr. Hickman, who are teaching Capstone and Calculus, respectively. Passing capstone is a matter of simply doing my project, and passing calculus is a matter of getting enough people to help me even though I’m mildly terrified of it.
• Go to grad school.
• I want to get my M.S. in Business Education ASAP. Robert Morris, Bloomsburg, Gwynedd-Mercy, and Mercyhurst (just a certification there, though) are my options for that. Otherwise, Pitt has a M.Ed. English/Communications to which I’m also applying, figuring that I can get a job as an English or journalism teacher and earn my business, computer, and information technology teaching certification for my required continuing education hours.
• Keep writing
• Evann Garrison, the woman behind my writing minor (had her for four of the six required classes!), once said, “Keep writing.” I intend to do just that. My new blog will help with that, as I’m going to keep most of my punditry there and my cutesy stuff on my Livejournal.
• I want to get into writing about politics and technology a little more. Net Neutrality is a perfect example of the topics about which I want to write. I will continue to avoid religion, thank you.
• I’m enjoying doing reviews for ThinkComputers, any may soon start doing them for ThinkGaming, too.
• Keep coding
• I finished a site in about 24 hours this week (thank you, Smarty). I need to make manifest more of my site ideas so that I can perhaps start pulling in a little bit of money from them.
• Also, I want to get my idea for a social bookmarking site off the ground. I doubt that it’ll start prior to summer, perhaps launching this time next year.
• I want to improve my Python and Smalltalk knowledge.
• Learn more Esperanto and German
• My Esperanto is slowing getting better. It’s difficult to really work on it because there’s no one else around here that speaks it. I’ll continue to use Kurso de Esperanto and lernu.net to expand my vocabulary.
• I kinda wanted to take German in college, but I didn’t have enough time during the few semesters it was offered. My mother bought me a “learn German” program a few Christmases ago, but I have yet to even open it. Perhaps I’ll open it this summer.

I tag rosejoliefemme, morrigan32, jessbevan, billmeir, and dauphin1.

I have apparently been tagged by JD to do this, so here goes:

Five things you didn’t know about me:

1. I didn’t go to Slippery Rock University because I at least thought I missed the deadline for applications. I don’t regret my decision to go to WC, though
2. I owned a computer with Windows ME for three years and never once had a problem. It only blue-screened twice. I had installed Linux and BeOS beside it, too.
3. I’ve read more than 60 books from the Star Wars expanded universe, from the Han Solo Trilogy to the third book of New Jedi Order. I read the entire Jedi Academy Trilogy in less than 48 hours. Once I got to college, I stopped reading them ’cause I didn’t have time. I plan to resume after college
4. One of my ancestors wrote We Wish You a Merry Christmas. My paternal grandfather says it was his great-grandfather’s brother. I intend to investigate this further eventually.
5. (some may know this) I am a descendant of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland, commonly known as the bad guy from Braveheart. The line is direct from my maternal grandmother’s father.

I tag rosejoliefemme, jessbevan, soless, cashel_neasa, and morrigan32.