Am I a nice guy? No, but I have a sweet Fedora (Linux)!

That’s right, I’ve installed another OS on my humble and mildly broken laptop. Fedora Linux 22.

Update: Switched to a USB 3.0 32GB drive. Works so much better.

Linux and my Personal Paradigm Shift

After roughly 2 days of Googling, burning, writing, formatting, downloading, installing, and generally fighting for every byte of hard won space, I have a fully functional full-install of Linux Mint 17.1 MATE running off a 64 GB Mushkin Nano USB drive.

Public Service Announcement: How to Put Air in your Tires

If you drive a car, you owe it to yourself and every service worker you will ever encounter to know how to put air in your tires. It may even save your life!

College – An Exercise in Hatred and Demotivation

For my Blog’s Anniversary this yeah, I figured I’d do something fun. Considering it’s also Throwback Thursday. A rage-post, but also assessment of the educational system in America.

I have never once, in my 6+ years of college, found it fun.

Typing a Paper – Fin

I fuckin’ did it.
I really did it, yeah!
I really did it.

Current Status: Fin
Time Spent so Far: Too Much ~ 12 Hours
Outlook: No-Longer-Have-a-Brain™

Typing a Paper – 4

Still got’s me some ADHD. It’s about 4:20 AM. I am very tired. But I’ve made some progress. I’m sure hoping I’m ready for prime time.

During my drive, I realized how hard it is to write papers. They’re these monstrous, annoying, spike-encrusted walls that you’re forced to climb slowly to prove you can find the safest way up the wall.

Alternatively, you can attempt to speed run it, and probably poke yourself multiple times, but at least you made it over right?

Except, there’s someone standing on the other side of the wall shaking their head and saying “Well, you could have done better… tsk tsk tsk.”

I honestly find nothing in this world as infuriating as research papers. Except bad drivers. But papers are a very close second.

Current Status: 5/10 Pages typed, 13/10 sources skimmed/gathered
Time Spent so Far: 8.5 Hours
Outlook: Only half-way typed?! F&@$

Typing a Paper – 3

Took  an hour long drive. Brain is doing the sleep deprived-thing…

Still 3 pages…

Back to it.

Typing a Paper – 2

Yeah… This isn’t going well…

I think perhaps a break will be helpful to my mental state.

Current Status: 3/10 Pages Types, 9/10 Sources Skimmed
Time Spent so Far: 6.5 Hours
Outlook: Not Great.

Typing a Paper – 1

In case I’ve never mentioned it before, or because I recently found out: I have ADHD. I’m classified as Type – C, but I typically present more inattentive behaviors than hyperactive, but still some both ways.

Anyways, I’m supposed to be typing a 10 Page Research Paper for a Law Class that’s due tomorrow morning.

I am medicated currently, but I find this to be helpful in allowing me to focus my thoughts. I wasn’t really sure where else to put it. Didn’t want to toss it up on reddit’s /r/adhd sub, or put it on Facebook.

It’s really hard to focus on something that I can’t really see the end of yet. Having a clear goal is always good, but as someone with ADHD, I have struggled with doing things that I can’t see the end of for a long time. Papers are just one example. Saving money was always another. I would think to myself, why save if I can buy things I want now? I still struggle with that even though I can pay bills. It’s easy to pay bills because I can see then end. Every billing cycle allows me to put the previous one behind me.

Long Papers (10+ pages) are still an issue. The one I’m supposed to be working on is a minimum of 10 pages, before footnotes. I’ve never typed a law-based paper, so this is super hard because I don’t know how much extra work I’ll have to put in when I’m done with all the bullshit of actually typing it.

Background: I’m a COM Major with a Concentration in Public Relations, Advertising, and Integrated Marketing Communications. Senior year. And no, I haven’t had to type up a Law-Format Research Paper yet.

I’m pretty done with school…

Suppose I’ll update more as the night wears on and my motivation wanes.

Current Status: 1/10 Pages typed, 3/10 sources gathered/skimmed.
Time Spent so far: 3 hours.
Outlook: It’s going to be a long night…

Control

Fall is upon us (at least here in the north-east United States) and that means that for some, within a few months, we’ll be blanketed with that white shit from God we all call snow.

Winter is one of my favorite times of year, because of Christmas, New Years, the opportunity to snowboard, skate, and take freezing walks with someone special (so you both don’t freeze), but there’s a reason I hate winter as well; it’s the snow.

Snow is white, but really it has no color. It’s just tiny water droplets that froze around some molecule of something less pure. It falls in inches. It sticks to everything and weighs a ton. It covers our cars making us start our commutes 20 minutes early to defrost the windshield!

Most importantly, and annoyingly, it blankets our roads, causing our tires to lose traction sooner, and thusly a loss of control. It makes our braking less effective, makes our cars more prone to spinning, and slows them down more than any other force in the world save friction by forcing us to drive slower to maintain control.

But like everything else in life, you can look with a pessimistic eye or an optimistic eye; it can be a hindrance to your driving, or an opportunity to improve it!

Car control, real car contol, fine car control is a skill not many people bother to master anymore. It’s something everyone can at the very least improve. With control comes better efficiency. Both in terms of gas mileage and time taken to travel. Every winter I learn more about car control. Everything has to be perfect in winter, braking; so you don’t plow into anyone, acceleration; so you don’t bog, turning; so you don’t careen off the road. Yet every winter I see more and more accidents from people who were too confident or under attentive.

This winter, I urge each and every driver to try and improve their driving. Even if you only once go to a parking lot after a heavy snowfall and practice sliding, you’ll still have practiced and know more in depth how to counter the slide. I think if everyone in the US took their driving even half as seriously as the Finnish do, that we would have fewer accidents and more people that enjoyed their cars.

I don’t understand why when cars are such a huge part of our lifestyle as Americans, we know so little about them.

Again, I urge everyone reading; improve your driving this winter. It may save your life, it will most likely save you money, and it will probably help you enjoy your car instead of it being a chore. Like anything else though, you have to want to improve yourself for it to be effective. But, please, if not for you then for the safety of others, become a better driver. I promise you will not regret it.