Well it's now official. Rowing is now over. I just had my rowing banquet the other night and now I am no longer affiliated with rowing :) I had to come up with a speech because I'm a senior. It ended up not being so bad and I had a good time. I don't know what else to say about it. Four years of hard work and all I got was an embroidered blanket and trophy oar. That's what I got as a senior gift. They're actually really nice and I like them. That is all. I can't talk very well today, so I'll stop rambling.

When I was cleaning out my closet on Saturday, I came across an old laptop that I stopped using 2 years ago. It's a 300mhz Toshiba Tecra 8000. It still worked but was too slow for me to use. So I got this great idea to tear it apart. Of course my idea went a little farther than that. I was going to rip it up and make it into a digital picture frame for my desk.

So I took it all apart and removed the motherboard from the case. Then I removed the LCD from the plastic housing. I got it booting up at that point so that made me quite happy and gave me hope. Heather and I went to Aaron Brothers to look for picture frames and I found the most perfect picture frame for what I was planning on doing. Unfortunately I can't find a link to what it looked like before, but you'll see in the final pictures. Anyways, after trying to assemble it, I got it to boot up, but with many memory errors. Come to find out, memory doesn't like to be in contact with styrofoam. So I raised it up a little bit and it worked great. After I got back to my apartment, I found out that I didn't reattach the CMOS battery, so it's quite a pain in the ass to start it with the box together. As of now, I just have one picture of the final product, but tommorrow (probably), I'll have more pictures of the inside.

EDIT: yes, that's Heather's dog Bear. She likes to lick the carpet :)

Today I ran with Greg (Brad's roommate). We weren't quite sure how far we ran at the time, but it ended up being 8.5 miles. That's a hell of a long run, especially for me. I hadn't run more than 5 miles in months. But it was all good. We ran at like 8 minute mile pace in order to get us ready for the Mud Run coming up soon. Of course, I was so tired by the middle of the day that I overslept and forgot completely about my scholar athelete banquet. So I got some concerned called from Brad and my parents asking where I was. Luckily I made it over there before all the awards were handed out and everything was all good.

I just had the best conversation with HP support. Now I know what you're thinking... good tech support at a computer company? Nahhhhhhh. But here's the catch, it wasn't over the phone. HP offers a live chat thingy that was miles ahead of it's phone support. Check out this conversation I had with HP support.

Kevin : Hi
Elizabeth : Hi Kevin. How are you today?
Kevin : good
Kevin : apparently my warrenty has expired,but it really hasn't
Elizabeth : ok- so i see your issue
Elizabeth : Are you trying to use the warrenty now or are you just tring to get the information to show acurately?
Kevin : just trying to get it updated correctly
Kevin : i had a problem earlier in the year and the warrenty was still screwed up
Elizabeth : ok. the best thing for you to do is to call our contracts department at(800) 386-1115
Kevin : and it took me a long time to get it updated, but apparently they didn't fix it all the way
Elizabeth : They can help you get it all sorted out
Kevin : sigh. i've tried that before, nobody ever seems to know what's wrong

At this point, I was about to kill HP and vow to never use them anymore. But then the unexpected happened... What follows below will blow your mind.

Elizabeth : would you like me to call. i can see what i going on
Elizabeth: i can call right now if you don't mind holding
Elizabeth : would you like me to call. i can see what i going on
Kevin: yes please, that would be excellent
Elizabeth: ok great
Elizabeth: can i get the system handle or the warrenty information

Then I give her all my info, and it's soon all fixed!

Elizabeth : Also when did you purchase this?
Kevin : december of 2002
Elizabeth : ok great
Elizabeth : Contracts is going to update the information.
Elizabeth : Is there anything else I can help you with?
Kevin : nope, thank you very much
Elizabeth : ok great. Give the ITRC a day or two to update the information
Elizabeth : Have a good weekend, Kevin!
Elizabeth : Thanks for using HP Live!!!
Kevin : thank you :)

Like I said, weird....We'll see if it actually gets fixed in 2-3 days like she says...

So I just took 2 midterms and I must say, I am SOOOO ready for school to be over. It's not that these were hard midterms, it's just that there are so many things I'd rather be doing than studying for classes that don't help me.

So one of these midterms was in Bio 9D: Diseases of the 20th Century. Sounds cool doesn't it? Actually the teacher taught it pretty poorly and the midterm ended up being a bitch. So I think I'm just gonna drop the class and not worry about it anymore.

My other midterm was in History 126B: History of WWII. This was pretty good. It wasn't an 'A' midterm or anything, but then again, I'm already taking the class P/NP so all I need is a C. Ah the joys of being a senior ready to graduate.

LDAP is a bitch to set up. That is all.

In the process of cleaning my apartment, I've found some computer parts that I'd like to sell. If anyone wants them, email me at pens@teamslack.net or check in #teamslack. Here is a list of items. Make me an offer if you want one of them

Aopen AK77-333 motherboard
AMD 1800 processor
SB Live (UPDATE: sold!)
ATI 8500 64mb
Alminum case w/ DVD drive
15" LCD (1024x768 res)

All items are in perfectly working condition, as far as I know (they were working when I stopped using them)

Let me know if anyone is interested.

Well, my 4 years of rowing have come to an end. Last weekend we went up to Sacramento for the last race of the year, the WIRA (Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association) Championships. Knowing this was our last race ever, Brad and I planned on having a good time while we were up there. Unfortunately, because of the amount of teams with a JV boat, we had to have heats before the grand finals. We had a head on Saturday and we missed the cut by like 5 seconds. That race was won by OCC, followed by Gonzaga. Univ. of Puget Sound beat us by like 5 seconds or so to take the last spot in the finals. We had a pretty decent time of 6:28.9, which was one of our faster times of the year. We were bummed that we didn't make the finals, but we didn't have any hope of getting 1st, so we felt good knowing that we could get 1st in the petite finals.

So Brad's mom drove all the way up to Sacramento to watch our race, and she wanted to take us out to dinner. So in our attempts to hide the fact that we were ditching the team dinner, one of the guys in our boat was found out and we got yelled at for trying to ditch. So we just didn't eat at the team dinner and went out to dinner after. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed spending time with the rest of my boat seeing as it was one of the last times I'd get that oppourtunity.

Seeing as Sunday was the last race EVER for Brad, Joe, Jimmy, Kevin, Jeff and myself, we decided to have a little fun in the last 250m. We came up with a little 'chant' that we would yell during the home stretch. It was great. Everyone stopped what they were doing when they heard us come down the course. Apparently it was really loud because we were in lane 1, nearest the shore. So we won that race by a lot and had a good time doing it. Now rowing is over and I'm happy once again :) Now I just gotta find out what to say during my senior speech.