What am I doing down here, you ask? Well I got a job with the campus IT Department and have for the past week been working the Help Desk phone line. So if you called for help and got a steamy, lucrid man’s voice on the other line… it was 100% most definitely my lungs breathing hotness upon your eardrum by way of my good bud Alexander Grahmcracker Belt. I don’t know why he likes being called that, either, but he always insists when I blog about him that I use his nickname that his wife uses. And no, I don’t know where that name came from, and I probably don’t want to.

Anyways it’s been pretty good so far, though it’s a bit daunting answering peoples calls like that. In terms of computers, I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy. I wouldn’t know a quad-core from a pelican, or even a Super AMOLED from a pelicula. But I can tell you the subtle differences from Adobe’s CS4 and CS5 packages and use all of them proficiently. There’s another group of people who got hired who are working on capturing, photoshopping, tutorialing, and blogging how-to’s about our new “social” education platform we’re replacing Blackboard with for next semester. And they keep asking me for help with photoshop, wordpress, or whatever else. Why couldn’t I be there? *Sigh* Maybe I’ll talk to mi boss ’bout it.

In other news: as of next Sunday I’m homeless, which is pretty weird. First, it’s super weird spending my first Summer away from home. And to add, I have nowhere to live here, either. I had a housing contract to live in Eagle Landing for Summer, but I didn’t get into the class (photography) that I wanted to, so Res Life is saying I can’t live in campus housing. See, in the agreement you have to check that you will be attending classes, otherwise you’re on your own. The only exception they’ll make would be if my boss tells them the IT Dept is “sponsoring” me to live on campus, which would involve them paying for my meal plan. It’s all just such a big hassle that my parents and I finally decided it would just be better if I got my own apartment that I could keep for the Summer and then maybe room with someone next semester. Today my dad and I were out scouring the Fredscape for apartments and we found some surprisingly good places! This leads me to my next point…

My good friend Williamson McDungheap (AKA Will) got into Mary Washington! Now I don’t know if he’s going to choose here, but that’s super cool for him. If he comes down, who knows? Maybe he’ll end up being my roommate next year. Time, patience, talking, thoughtfulness, and flatulence will only tell!

I can’t think of anything else at the moment… they didn’t clean up Eagle Landing any before they moved us in… I found peoples’ clothes in my drawers, for instance. The third episode of Neature Walk was released from vicscrappyvideos! Woohoo! IT’S A BEAR. I THINK. I’ll post more about ideas and projects coming up soon…

I’m thinking of getting a Canon Rebel T3i (600D), that would be the most amazing thing ever. Either a Rebel T2i or T3i… though the swively screen is neat, I’ve heard the T3i is a little better with video, which is what I really want from my first DSLR camera. Now I just need money I have no doubt all of our videos would be a billion times cooler if we had anything better than the DV camcorder. Not that the hardware makes things automatically cooler, it’s just hard to find inspiration worth being reviewed by people with that thing. Bleh. We’ll see. (pictured is the T2i, of course)



Happy Trails,
Sam.



PS – Here’s a picture of an alien colony I took:

Most newscasters don’t even attempt pronouncing it, simply calling it “that volcano,” “the volcano in iceland,” or something of the sort. But when they do try, it’s pretty funny! Interestingly, even the Wikipedia pronunciation at the beginning of this first video is party wrong.

Or you could just watch these two ladies fail.



It’s an Icelandic word that literally means “island (eyja) mountain (fjall) glacier (jökull)”. You language-buffs may like to know that fjall is where the English word fell comes from, as in a mountain or hill. Yeah, leave it to them Vikings to make things unnecessarily hard. And just cause they can. The closest way to pronounce it I can think of using random English words is to say “heya fee-yacht-lie you-gut-th” (and say fee-yacht quickly). There’s a good example here. Or you could listen to this awesome Icelandic musician explain it live on tv!

If you were wondering: yes, that song will get stuck in your head. Enjoy! and I hope you’ve learned a little something about Iceland, your lack of language-skills, and the world at large!

Happy Trails and Namaste,
Sam.