Home for the Holidays

So I'm home. Time for some serious relaxation. I should probably be asleep right now, but I'm just starting a game of Civilization Revolution... oh well!

Woohoo!

I passed!

Finally, free time

My second final was Wednesday morning at 7:45 am. It really wasn't as bad as it could have been (both the exam and getting up that early to take it). The exam was definitely hard, but I knew it was going to be and now I'm just hoping I did well enough (I need a B in the class to pass). I got the grade for my other class today and I got a 4.0, so that's encouraging. It's been really nice to have time after work each day that I don't have to use for studying or anything except what I want to use it for. Overall, life's pretty good and it's time for the weekend so I can't complain.

Tomorrow is mainly free time with a Christmas party tomorrow night. Should be fun. Sunday is mainly hangout time with friends, including some ice skating around 6ish. Next week's pretty light and I'm heading home Friday afternoon if all goes well. Looking forward to two weeks at home!

Watercolors

I've been thinking that it's about time I start painting again (I haven't since summer... geez it doesn't feel like it's been THAT long), so I looked around DeviantArt to see what cool stuff is out there. I mainly looked at landscapes because that's what I've been wanting to do.

Here's what I found:
First. This person's been doing small, quick (30 minute or less) paintings and they're pretty cool. I feel like I could do this pretty easily once I got a bit of practice in.

Second. This one's pretty cool too. It's quite a bit different from my style, but that's something to learn from.

Third. Definitely my favorite of the three. The colors are really nice and I really like the overall style too.

That's it for now, but I'll make sure to upload stuff if I get painting this weekend or next week.

Games

Now that classes are over for a while I've been looking for new games to get into. I still have a bunch of games that I haven't beaten (Metroid Prime 2, Chrono Trigger DS, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, probably more that I can't remember) and others that I've started replaying (Pokemon Sapphire, Chrono Trigger counts here too I guess) and World of Warcraft and Dwarf Fortress are always there. Really I shouldn't be looking for more, but I am.

So far I found a few.

First is Combat Arms. It's a free first-person shooter that's actually really good. Apparently my brother's whole apartment plays it, so I should probably get into it more and join them now and then. In the vein of Call of Duty and things like that.

FoldIt is a free game about protein folding! Yeah... that's the nerd in me coming out. Really don't worry about looking into it unless you have some Biochemistry knowledge and know a bit about protein folding. It's pretty fun and you get to fold proteins for points to compete against other people's high scores.

Next up is Galactic Civilizations 2. It's not new or free, but it's supposed to be really good. I downloaded the demo, remembered that I kind of liked it, but that it's a big game that takes a long time to play, which I'm not really in the mood for. I've been on a 4x game kick (like Civilization) and this was supposed to help fill that niche, but it's not quite doing it.

Next is Dominions 3. I think this might be a really good game, but it's having a hard time holding my attention long enough for me to figure it out. Another 4x game that's not quite what I want.

Finally, there's another one that I can't remember.

Also, during Thanksgiving I downloaded and played through World of Goo. It's pretty much amazing. If you like Lemmings and a bit of physics, you'll probably like this. You basically use little goo balls to build structures to get the rest of the goo balls to the end of the level. The fewer goo balls you use to build, the more make it to the end. Plus a pretty cool world that you play through and a neat story to go with it.

Well, that's about it for game for now. Next is art, and then a life and grad school overall update. Whew.

One exam down,

and one to go. The first one went pretty well. It was open book and open note, so t was a lot like just doing normal homework, except a bit harder. Time to get back to studying for the one on Wednesday morning.

Getting there

Yeah I realize I missed Tuesday last week (as well as every other day) but this week has been another push to the end for me. I guess a quick update now will tide me over until Wednesday or later this week.

First of all, Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. Good food and family hang out time was great, especially since it included ice skating (with family plus Maya) for the third time in the 13 years that I've lived in Michigan. It feels like it's been a lot longer than a week since then, though. So far this week I've finished a take home exam that took far longer then it deserved, attended the last 5 lectures of the semester, studied for two finals this coming week, and tried not to procrastinate. For some reason that last one seems to take more energy than it should. Anyway, that'll all be over on Wednesday morning and then I'll have a week and a half of just lab work! Should be nice to not have the specter of classes hanging over me at all times. And then two weeks of Christmas break. It seems so far away right now...

Time to get back to studying. (and this really only took 5-10 minutes. nice. makes me wonder why I don't just do it more often. the cat keeps yawning and it's making me tired.)