State of the Willie

I know you feel neglected but, I've actually written a couple times and not posted. I guess that's just teasing though.

I am doing ok. The semester is off to a smooth start. I've been doing yoga regularly. Nick Jones moved into Colors so I have a consistent companion, which is really nice.

I realize I'm a lonely guy. Maybe that's the wrong way to describe it.
I just struggle a lot internally between my lone wolf mentality and my extroverted personality. Separating my mentality and personality is actually a good way to describe the disconnect I was feeling a post or two ago. I know it doesn't completely make sense but, neither does the feeling.

I like the idea of formatting my writing so that when I digress I can return to the starting train of thought a little more easily.

I'm currently taking Senior Design, Mobile Applications Development, Systems Programming, Linear Algebra, and an online course to prepare me for the FE exam, which is the state exams to be a licensed engineer. I feel like talking about school because I'm doing some interesting stuff and because it's been my number one distraction lately.

Why do I always need a distraction? What am I being distracted from?

I have a serious love/hate relationship with my Senior Design course. The teacher is annoying and assigns annoying assignments, e.g, watch this 11 minute video and here are 100 questions about it, but the questions are really stupid. "What did he mean when he said, per se?" and "Who is this person of no relevance?" and "What does vernacular mean?". It's annoying. I admit I've learned a lot, but it's all random useless information. I will continue to grow as an excellent conversationalist I suppose. Or I'll just sound like a douche bag.
The reason I love the class though, really makes up for it. I'm working with 3 other students and we're building a medical records system for teams of doctors to take with them to Ecuador so they can streamline their process when seeing patients, from triage to discharge. We're designing an awesome system that uses their iPads on a LAN (because they have power but not internet). I'll probably post some pictures of the final product in May.

In my Mobile Application Development course, I'm working in a team of 3 to build an iPad application for some Biomedical Engineering students. They have an idea that is pretty cool, but I can't tell you about it because I had to sign an NDA. I'm excited to be working on that too.

My other classes are pretty simple, learning a lot, of course. I hate the online course, because it's a bunch of physics I'm not familiar with (which means it's a lot of work) and I'm not even taking the exam. I have no desire to be any sort of engineer in Tennessee that requires licensing.

Because of all of the work with iPads I went ahead and bought one so I could develop on it instead of using the simulator. My mac has a hard enough time without trying to run that. I think I'm going to sell my PC after I back up everything that's on it right now. Maybe I'll sell my MBP and put that and the PC money toward a new MBP. I can dream haha.

I've been listening to Ludovico Einaudi, this Italian pianist, and I'm really in love with his music. You should check out his album I Giorni, it's hard to choose a favorite song but, Andare is definitely in the top somewhere.I hope I can play piano like this one day. I'm getting a little better but it's a slow process. I have a feeling that when I get to a place where I can pay a teacher for lessons, they're going to want me to forget everything I've done haha.

I got a new pair of glasses. I haven't put a picture anywhere yet because one hasn't been taken. It will probably happen sooner rather than later. They're nice, I like them. They are a change of pace from my last pair and feel slightly more adult like, whatever that means. They're kind of ironic, too. haha.

I was contracted by this guy to build him a website for a product he's trying to sell, so I have that in the works too and I'm getting paid a pretty decent amount so that's awesome. I'm also working on www.williamflaherty.com but I haven't really gotten anywhere, been busy programming for more important things. Oh, and watching The League. I just finished the third season and I really like it. It's kind of boring sometimes, but I think it's more my mood projecting onto the show. It has a lot of really funny moments. Although, as with everything in media sometimes they're a little annoyingly misogynistic or homophobic with their jokes. It's pretty clean most of the time though. 

I've been spending a lot of time on Quora, probably even more than I used to. My friends have taken to teasing me about it, but, I don't really have a reason to keep my phone on me anymore, so I leave it around a lot and that helps curb my addiction to reading Quora obsessively. I really need to finish up their puzzle and submit it, just another thing that's taken a seat on the back burner for now. Maybe I'll do that this weekend.

I can't sleep like normal Willie anymore. I sleep very lightly and I dream a lot. I was having this dream the other night and I woke up to me literally slapping myself in the face. Because I was doing it in the dream and this emotion transferred over. That's pretty powerful, and ridiculous. I haven't been eating before bed time or anything like that, and I've been getting to bed relatively early, ~10 usually.

Alright, I have to run to class, I've officially done a pretty exhaustive update for the start of 2013. Three more months and I'll have a Bachelors degree. Four more months and I'll be in Kansas City (probably).

Oh, I've decided that from now on I'll be finishing a book a week. I have a very long list and I'm looking forward to a voracious consumption of my very first love.


I miss you.