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I remember what sunlight looks like…

I’ve been a night owl since… since forever, I think. I’ve had plenty of “days” when I’ve been up to watch the sunrise, then slept until the wee hours of the afternoon. I have no problems functioning during that time. Hell, I prefer it. (Or maybe I just don’t like waking up early, I’m not sure.)

Apparently, being a night owl has its downsides as well (aside from sleeping until the wee hours of the afternoon). I bought the online version of our Economics textbook and I was reading it just now, trying to cram a whole bunch of knowledge into my head for our upcoming final exam on Monday. I made it through fixed, variable and sunk costs and clicked the button to turn the page. Instead of the next section, I was greeted with this message:

Temporarily Unavailable for Maintenance
While Gale products are regularly available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, a high quality product experience requires routine maintenance.

Which means they’re not available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So now I’m stuck trying to find something else to study, hoping that I’ll be able to access the textbook again within the next, oh, I don’t know, sometime before the sun comes up to say “Hi”.

(As a side note, shouldn’t that notice read “Temporarily Unavailable Due to Maintenance”? The way it’s written, they can’t perform maintenance on the website right now, in which case I’m getting doubly screwed.)

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Planning on getting here anytime soon?

A friend of mine set up a date through OKCupid and planned to meet him at a bar at 7:30. The guy still hadn’t shown up by 7:45, so she left to go shopping. Later that evening, she received these texts:

Yeah, like there’s anything else you might want to do tonight…

This begs the question of whether there’s an unwritten rule about how long to wait for a date, especially someone you “met” on a dating website. Ten minutes? Half an hour? “Only” fifteen minutes? I think my friend exercised good judgment, but I’m wondering how some of the rest of you feel. How long should you stand around, not knowing if/when the person will show up? (For the record, “That guy was a douchebag and what’s with the Lol?” may be true, but that’s not what I’m asking.)

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Testing the comments section

I got a message from someone this morning to let me know that she tried to leave a comment on the previous entry, but it wouldn’t let her. I have no idea why that was the case, so I’m writing a quick blog post that I can use to try some stuff. If I can’t figure out what’s wrong, you’ll see a line under this paragraph that includes a lot of crying.
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I’m not sure what the problem was before, but it seems to working okay now (at least from my IP address). Fingers crossed that no one else has similar issues in the future…

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LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

Today before class was nice. I got to school early to talk with the director of the MBA program, then spent the next hour in a study room that’s relatively quiet. Sometimes I’m there by myself, sometimes there are a handful of other people, sometimes it’s a group talking about a presentation—whatever the case might be, it’s usually a pretty peaceful place to study. Or in this case, type on my computer.

My computer was important because during the course of that hour, I’m pretty sure someone came into the room who I didn’t want to talk to for reasons I ain’t gonna tell you. He said hi to a another person in the room and it sounded like his accent, but I kept staring at the screen and typing, not looking up to see if it was him.

How could I ignore them without seeming rude? Headphones. I had them plugged into my phone so I could listen to music while typing. (Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about listening to the same songs over and over again—I’ve got about 4 1/2 days worth of mp3 files in there.) So I kept my headphones on and kept typing intently. Did I know he was there? Yes. Did he know I knew he was there? Nope!

The ability to isolate ourselves into little bubbles via the use of technology may not be a good thing. Being in a room where everyone is plugged into mp3 players or staring at their smart phones… it’s a little disconcerting, given that people in that situation would have had to interact with each other just a few years ago.

In this case, though, thank goodness for technology bubbles. It helped me avoid talking to the guy since he left the room before I looked up from the screen (about half an hour later) and I got to listen to music at the same time. Music is awesome. Definitely better than listening to people semi-whispering about their presentation for class in an hour.

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People’s lips don’t do that in the movies!

I went out to see Red Dawn with some friends on Friday night (thus, yesterday’s last-minute blog entry) and came away with some new-found knowledge that you all might find interesting.

First off, it’s a remake of a movie originally produced in 1984. Back then, the U.S. was invaded by Russians. This time around, it’s the North Koreans. The original version of the remake made China the bad guys, but that was changed shortly before the movie’s release. Why? China was probably like “Hey, don’t make us the bad guys!” and we were like “We’ll do what we want!” and they were like “Don’t make us the bad guys or we’ll sell your country to the highest bidder!” and we were like “Okay, sorry.” (The actual reason is the Chinese likely wouldn’t have released the movie in their country, thereby gashing the production company out of some major profits, so they made the change after all the filming was done.)

That actually made the movie a little more interesting at times. Consider: the invaders wouldn’t bother learning the English language—they let their guns do the talking. Lots and lots of talking. And explosions. There were plenty of explosions, too. But when words were spoken, the movie used subtitles. And since the bad guys were Chinese up until a few months before the movie was released, they were speaking Chinese. When their nationality changed, the movie needed to use voice-overs, too. When Major Badguy starts yelling in the face of Colonel Badguy, you can see that his words don’t match the movement of his lips. With voice-overs and subtitles, I thought it was only a matter of time before troops started pointing to the ocean, yelling, then up pops the subtitle, “GODZILLA IS INVADING CALIFORNIA!!!”

Everyone should take note of this next thing: if people want to kill you, never hide out in a place with only one exit. That’s common sense, really. I mean, if Godzilla ever did invade California and sent a burst of atomic flame breath into the opening of your hideout, it’ll only be a second before you won’t have any lips left for proper voice-overs.

The last bit of knowledge only came because we stayed through the credits. When those were done and the lights came up, I put my jacket on, turned around and saw a couple in the back row that… well, they didn’t realize the credits were over. They never moved as we left the theater and I warned the usher waiting outside that there was a couple in the back row that… well, they didn’t realize the credits were over. We stood outside as he went in and a minute later, two teenagers indignantly stormed out through the door. When he came back out, the usher informed us that it’s extremely awkward to tell people with their lips locked together that the movie is done.

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Phone + blog = last entry

I know this will seem like a cheap entry, but my options are limited at this point. I was out having dinner with friends after a movie, it’s now 11:17 and it’ll take me about 45 minutes to get back home. I’ve got a story from the movie worth sharing, but given the time constraints, I’m typing this while sitting in my car and praying that it’ll start heating up soon. Thus, I give my thanks to Apple for allowing me to finish NaBloWriMo successfully. See you in about an hour for something new and more interesting to read.