Entries for November 2005
Feeling Good
For once this semester, I feel relatively good about my handle on things. The GRE is over and successfully done with; I've made good headway on my grad school applications and have everything in order for my recommenders; my 360 group's hovercraft is nearly finished; and, best of all, I'm doing well in my graduate fluid mechanics class. The first half of the semester had me pretty terrified because my homework grades in that course were abysmal. Today I finally learned the grade I earned on my mid-term: 91/100. That made my holiday right there. To make matters better, though, my to-do list for today has only one significant item that didn't get crossed out. In conclusion, I'm impressed.
GRE Practice Test Frustrations
I purposefully got up early this morning (for a college student, at least) so that I would have time to take one of the full length computer-based practice tests they have on the GRE website. I download the software, install, and open it, only to discover that it's worthless to me. Their PowerPrep software requires that the moniter be set to 640 x 480 pixels, and the lowest resolution my laptop's moniter is capable of is 800 x 600. This means that, when I, say, open the practice test, I can see the first half a line of both of the writing questions, but I can't get the gist of either of them, nor can I see any way to navigate so that I can answer the question or escape the test I'm not capable of answering.
This is entirely too frustrating. I'm going to have to go do something like install this program in Nord and sit there for four hours just to take a practice exam and get an idea of what my scores are likely to be. Not that I have five hours laying around to just go do that...
I Miss My Computer
Like many computer-savvy users today, I've been taking full advantage of the customizability of programs like Mozilla Firefox and the freedom to define my own internet-powered entertainment through feed aggregators. Sitting at my keyboard, I'm in control and I can whiz through one task after another with ease. Middle-click here to pull up a useful link in a new tab; switch to Thunderbird to check e-mail; flip back to Firefox and use the Case directory searchbar to look up the person e-mailing me; have Winamp compile a new playlist for me based on that great song that just came on--the ease and usefulness of this personalized computing is endless.
Until I'm not in front of my computer. Then, I'm a drunkard: tripping over unfamiliar keys, muttering when I can't find something on an unfamiliar operating system, cursing when the middle-click doesn't work on the mouse (or, God forbid, the mouse has no middle button!), and quickly running out of things to do when I realize that I can't remember all of my favorite bookmarks and my Google Reader account doesn't contain all of the juicy feeds I normally read.
It's a sad compromise. You can get everything you could ever want just the way you want it, but only on one computer. Whenever you have to plug into a different computer, your personalizations are gone (unless, of course, you conduct all of your business through a web portal, but I have yet to find one of those that really appeals to me).
Alas. If only my department's computer lab allowed Remote Desktop capabilities! Maybe that's too much to ask. I'd settle for the ability to use a stripped down version of Firefox. Having all these IE windows open is annoying.