So today I was cleaning up my computer, general maintenance…and guess what I found?

TWO YEARS WORTH OF OLD BLOG POSTS. TWO YEARS! I’m so happy. I thought I had lost it all in the big server crash of 08. Apparently not. I seem to have backed up every post up till January 07, which isn’t too bad considering before I thought I only had January 05. But now that I have at least a little old stuff to remember from high school with, I will restore them and then embark upon that long and tedious process of sorting them through categories and tags.

Since the crash, I’ve been making biweekly backups as opposed to annual backups. Its about time I learned to be more responsible with data anyway.

So I lost all posts between 2007/01/18 and 2008/05/22. Great.

I just realized the consequence of not providing incremental page view links: robots can’t find my old posts with my linux guides! I better repost and stuff..

Today was my last day of work, marking the end of money making fun and the beginning of sorrowful homework. I am really loathe to begin math homework. The only thing I look forward to doing this weekend is finishing “On Writing Well.” In fact it has even inspired me to read Writing Forward by Melissa Donovan again, because some of the tips in the book match what Melissa writes in her blog. I almost feel like beginning an English major, though I know I want to do tech/business when I grow up. Oh well, we can’t win them all.

Running was very fail today. I went with Dave Sun up the start hill…stretched…and down the start hill. He already did it once with Aaron also. So he ran the most out of the three of us today. I guess it wasn’t a running kind of day, not when I worked an hour more than usual.

My laptop got delayed by 2 weeks because the color is backordered. I think I might actually get a refund and wait to buy my laptop because this one is functional again. I updated some drivers and it started working well all of a sudden.

WTF was fail! (World Tournament Frisbee!) Yeah. Only 2 and a half teams showed (the half-team was us XC guys) so basically that was that. Fail. Epic fail. There were supposed to be 8 teams…I don’t know what happened. Ended up playing a game for fun with them and then doing a 40 minute run with Stefan and Ollie…then we went to the Subway/Saigon/Pizza plaza to get subs (and pizza for stefan since he can’t eat subs…weirdo) lol. So yeah. That was pretty good. Then I went back to the park cause I had to pick up Esther…

Hmm that was basically my day because by that time it was 4. Rewatched some olympics opening stuff I missed with my sister, had some dinner, played smash with my little brother for like 2 hours, then went to my room to loaf around and download some stuff.

Good day, time to sleep.

Senior pictures today, so I couldn’t go to work. Uhgh. I ended up working from home (1:20pm-7:20pm). I seem to be more productive at home. I guess its cause I use 2 computers at once (and I’ve just discovered that dreamweaver isn’t as bad as I’ve been brainwashed by myself to feel about it…ever since I stopped using windows, that is).

Maybe I’ll install it on my linux.

Brooks Ghost came today, blue colorway cause the other one is gay. I haven’t given them a test run yet cause I had to work until 7:20 but I will break them in by walking them tomorrow in NYC. I just hope they don’t get all black and ugly from NYC cause the place is FILTHY. Uhgh.

Oh and I get paid for travel tomorrow. Since I already used my paychecks to pay back Esther/Mom, this money will go to that laptop I bought (with an advance from my mom’s credit card haha) and I’ll pay back Esther $200 more. that leaves mom to pay back Esther another $220 that she owes her and we can call it even…of course, I still have to stop by at the bank to pick up the cash that was wired in from the tipjar.

My laptop is officially…well, pretty much unusable. It turns off randomly. I’m running linux, so its not a virus/adware problem. The problem is it overheats and I don’t know why. The fans are working, but I think this problem has been since they replaced my fried graphics card. I don’t have a dell service plan anymore and its like $300 to renew so theres no way I can get this fixed…

Though I have come up with a plan. I’m asking the folks on YC news to help me out. Hopefully that will go well cause my family really can’t afford to get me a new laptop, not when I can make do with my stupid satellite with the cracked LCD which makes it useless and essentially a desktop with 256mb of ram…

Anyway I’ve started a tipjar with tipjoy and put a paypal link there. Maybe I’ll be able to get the gear I need to push on…or maybe I’ll have to wait to save up after my job (probably using this piece of crap and just sucking up the hourly shutdown) and then blow all my money on a laptop. Which would suck cause I have to pay for running shoes and school stuff.. geez.

Well, at work I use my boss’s cooling pad which seems to work mostly okay. A shutdown every hour or so. But the problem is just getting worse and I dont know how much longer I can take this…random shut downs are retarded.

So I had mostly an uneventful weekend. I went to 7/11 like twice though to get slurpees. Once with Kev Hsu after our fail Saturday run, another with my little brother (he craved something cold, haha). Also had some late night chats with a couple people. Oh and today frisbee was fun. We joined a bunch of random Holmdel alumni and seniors (Ryan Muller, Mike from Red Bank, Jeff something. I don’t really know the names of anyone on the other team except that one of them had a beard). Our team lost our first game but wrecked the other losing team during the second. They basically gave up after the first point though. It was fun overall but I had to go home at like 6:15 cause my dad needed someone to watch him and my mom and sister were exhausted from tending to him for the past week. I guess it was time for me to do my turn!

I’ve been so busy lately but finally went to B&N to pick up a Math Level 2 SAT II book so that I can retake it in October. I also got a jump on the first Common App essay. I’m liking my opening but losing ideas toward the end of the essay.

Today, though it was a bit hot during the afternoon, was superb weather overall. I did a 50 minute run with Kev Hsu around 6 (we got to the park at like 5:30 to stretch and stuff though). 5 mile trail plus the backtrails, then added on with a Loughran loop. Met Karl there, chatted a bit and left. Still job hunting…Craigslist really is a lifesaver though. I would never have been even able to find people who needed web designers without it…

I really hope I get hired somewhere soon though, because I need to start making money so I can pay for heath camp this year. If I don’t have money I can’t go cause my dad’s not gonna be working for the next year (He’s taking his sabbatical, which coincides with his back surgery which means he’ll be bedridden for 6 months at the very least…) meaning money is sort of tight. That coinciding with the fact I’m applying to colleges next year could be good or bad. It all depends on how much financial aid I’ll be able to get.

I started job hunting (as evidenced by old blog entries) really early this summer. In fact, a few days after school got out. Unfortunately, the jobs I applied for are all unresponsive so far. Dunkin Doughnuts, Staples, Kohls… I mean, my dad told me to apply to these places for easy retail/service work or whatever. But I thought hey, I’ve got skills, why don’t I just use them? Programming stuff beats serving coffee or showing people the paper aisle. So I went on craigslist and looked under “internet engineers,” then under “design.” So far I expressed interest in 5 different jobs, all listed within the past 2 weeks…hopefully I get to try at least one. They all want XHTML/CSS designers which is my strong suite, and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get to design php/mysql.

My dad got sent from the surgery hospital to rehab today. He’ll be there for 2 more weeks, then home to rest for like 6 months. That…is gonna stink. But yeah, pretty good overall. I’m happy he can sort of walk now, with a walker at any rate.

I have to drive my brother to Ranney every morning now…I really don’t see the point. Esther and I never went to Ranney or anything like that. The closest thing we’ve been to is this kumon-type summercamp but that was just 1 year…I was like in 5th grade or something. Eh, whatever. Different strokes for different folks.

Ok so I just spent all night redesigning the blog’s layout. Pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself. Pattern from Squidfingers. I came up with the fluid layout idea meself. Wigitized the sidebar so I can add spiffy bits of text…still gotta work on the font and maybe the color of the pattern to make things more legible.

I really wish my old blog wasn’t erased right now…it had so much more content and good essays I was hoping maybe to use for college now that apps are rolling around…now I have to start from scratch.

Its ok though, cause I’m going to churn out a thick pile of essays on my deepest passions, both for fun and also in preparation for writing college essays.

The best part of being a blogger is that you never run out of ideas. (As long as you’re connected, at any rate.)

Dad’s going from Hospital to rehab tomorrow. I spent the day at church, running, then moving beds around the house with the help of Dave Lo and his cousins cause we had to give dad the bed that can be attached with a rail that he can hold…he needs to walk with a walker right now cause hes unbalanced and stuff. Esther spent the whole afternoon up until 11pm in NYC visiting dad. I couldn’t go cause I had to run and take care of David.

Tired…time for bed.