Harder, better, faster, stronger.

The rebirth of slick. While cruising on the new Napster tonight, I found the song I've been looking for for basically forever. The Neptunes did a remix to a Daft Punk song called "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," and I heard it probably two years ago while messing around on a DJ website. I instantly fell in love with it and of course, sought to download it from the internet somewhere. I could have bought it from where I heard it sampled from, but they only had it on records. I don't have a record player. So I cussed and searched damn near everyday to find this song. It didn't work.

But, in January of this year, Daft Punk released a remix album (geez, isn't everybody) and this song, of course, was on there. I just found out about this album while listening to music on Napster. Once I get a nice supply of money built up, I'm going to buy this album. Most songs on it are hott.

"I'm the motherfucking fucking one who calls the shots." -Tony Soprano.

Nicely put, Tony.

In any case, folks, I'm back at school and this year is turning out better than I thought it would. I figure this is so mostly because I have changed my mindset and am now fully committed to doing what it is I've always done--been exceedingly smart. How can you lose commitment to this? It's a long story, but let's just say it ends in a lost full scholarship and a realization that you can't always break the rules. Hmph.

Anyway, I'm sitting in my room contemplating this computer science work for Monday. I want to get this program I have due on Monday over with by the end of tomorrow. I suspect it's not a difficult program, but I still have some reading to do for it so that I can fully comprehend what's going on with it. I think I might have a pretty nice time in both of my programming classes if I don't lose interest and fall behind on the reading--namely, if I don't fall behind. I heard that was the key to staying afloat in each of these classes I'm taking, so I am getting it into my head that I absolutely refuse to fall behind.

Let's not create enemies, thun.

You need to draw your enemies closer to you. Those people will do anything to get at you, so that means they're willing to fall all over each other to get what they want. That gives them an especially disgusting quality. That's what makes enemies particularly nasty. I think I made some over the summer, and now they're on campus. I'm gonna defy them though. I don't play around.

It's a controversy over some property I once had my hands on, and now the original owners want compensation for that property. Key thing is, I never had any formal instructions on what to do with that property, so I threw it away. Like I said, now the original owner wants some cash for it all. I don't play around, so I said I'm not paying for it. It wasn't really my responsibility anyway.

--End of Story--

Last time I seen her...

Who'd you see?

I don't know.

Anyway, today I didn't get much accomplished. So, tomorrow after I get off work, I'm going to take off to the library and take care of all the stuff I didn't get accomplished today. I'm going to go sprawl out on a nice big table and write my personal statement and make more progress on the African-American education essay. Even though the contest that I was writing that for ended up passing without me entering it, I can still use the same essay for another contest. They just want a 3-5 page essay that represents your best writing; I firmly believe this is going to be it--once I get it finished.

I went to the Gap today and bought this ultra cool backpack for $35. It's another one of those sling ones, but it's black, so it should be less susceptible to showing wear and tear. The other grey one I had looked runover by my standards, so I wanted less and less to carry it because I suspected one day the sash would come flying off as I was crossing the street in DC or something. That's what happened to the backpack I had in high school. I was late to class already, so I started running. My books were bobbing up and down on my back and I suppose the backpack was under severe pressure with all of that constant motion and stress. Naturally, one of the straps popped clean off and I felt the books basically go from my back to the ground. It was over. So, in addition to picking up all the books and pencils that had somehow come flying out, I had to drag the damn thing to class. Oh yeah, I was late, too. :[

But, I have to go to work tomorrow, so I'm going to get off now and read some more of The Bible and The Power of Positive Thinking. Think fast, think bright, think right. Or you won't be right. Aight?!

Three Laws Safe.

Everything is engineered to be broken though. The movie really had me thinking, so now I want to go back and read all of Asimov's stories like I used to do in middle school. I would go to Barr library and check out books, most of them science-related and many of them Asimov stories. But, of course, this story is actually very, very interesting. The implications of having robots in ratios that number closely to the living human population is interesting, and the idea of having them malfunction in such a way is equally interesting.

My interest in science has waned in the last couple of years, but this is enough to spark it back. When I go back to school, watch what I do.

Oh, man.

So, today I got up, called Howard and tried to get some business taken care of involving some scholarships that the school offers. After some wrangling, hand-wringing, three phone calls and a thorough explanation of my situation (from my mom), I finally got the people in the office to fax me a one page application for the scholarship. When I got the fax, I was basically sitting next to the fax machine in disbelief because of all the hell the lady was ready to raise over the phone concerning the idea of even faxing it.

She made it seem as if we had to come directly to DC to get this one sheet of paper, spend three minutes filling it out (not even that long, really), and then give it to somebody to go file away for a week or so. I swear, if I had to sit in the car and go up to DC to fill that one sheet of paper out, I would probably would have gotten the balls to demand a decision right there in the office before I left. Waiting any amount of time, other than the time I did, to fill out that application would have been a travesty. I mean, I filled it out neatly, wrote out a message on the fax transmittal paper, included a copy of my resume and cover letter and that was the end of that.

Now, in a week's time, I'm going to call them back and see what became of my application. Maybe I'll even call them back on Friday. That would only make sense because they just put out that application today, so undoubtedly I was one of the first people to submit an application for it this year. I'm hoping my decision will be positive and will come quickly. I need to go back to school.

On the other hand, I'm still dealing with how to get information from people on the phone. The folks at my school are notorious for barely wanting to answer the phone, let alone talk to anybody on the other end when they actually do pick up the phone. So, my first mistake this morning, knowing my own damn school, is that everything would have gone smoothly the first time around. I found that I have to demand information from people--even if I have to exaggerate and bring up a thousand names to get what I want. Otherwise, I'll end up making 1 or 2 phone calls that don't amount to anything. Like what initially happened this morning. Dammit, I don't wanna give up that easily next time.