This weekend I went camping. It was awesome... we even had electricity. I had a lot of fun though, hanging out with friends from school. Unfortunately I discovered what it means to be sunburnt. Stephanie Lukas is awesome. Thanks for putting it together.

Exactly one month left from this hellish nightmare called Systems Administration. I guess my lack of things to do has got me into a desperate need to do something. So now I'm working with my supervisor on writing a application downtime script (a script that lets you know how long a certain program has not been running). Then comes August, which will be utterly confusing. Move out somewhere. Go back to Minnesota. Move stuff to Champaign. Live. Start school. Blah blah blah.

Jesse, Ryan, Dan and Me (Courtesy of Food.com)

This has definitely been one of my busiest and exciting weekends. Dan, Ryan and Jesse came down to Chicagoland for last Friday the Fourth of July weekend and we saw Chicago everyday.

Saturday we went to the Taste of Chicago. We sampled a bit of food here and there. Then we visited the museum campus which is home for the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum. We decided to check out the museum and we loved it.

Sunday we went back with less of a plan. We decided to go to the Taste again and then see the Field Museum of Natural History which is noted for the most complete bones of a single dinosaur, Sue. We later met with Susan at the Navy Pier. While waiting Ryan decided to feed the birds bread, which ended up being more amusing than you would expect. Afterwards we went to eat at Gino's Pizzeria where we had an unfortunate misunderstanding with the waitress (we were clearly wronged, but it wasn't worth arguing).

Yesterday... we left late from Palatine to the Metra station and ended up reaching Chicago around 3:30. Later due to me being temporarily disoriented (and not looking at the map enough) we found ourselves around Lincoln Park. Dan enjoyed the 2 hour walk. Eventually Susan called me and told us that we should take a bus to get to where she lives. (Not that we couldn't walk there, it was a time issue ;) ). We met Neil and Stephanie at Susans and went to a staked out fireworks area on the lake shore. After some games of cards we eventually got to see an amazing display of fireworks (not nearly as good as New York's tonight, but probably a good contendor for 2nd place). Afterwards we went to Navy Pier, ate, and then missed our train back home and crashed at Susan's (for which we are by the way extremely grateful).

We snuck out of the apartment this morning and headed straight to the Virgin Megastore and then Talkabout two-way radios came in very handy at times and will be seen in greater quantities by me in the future I hope. This was a great trip and I finally saw a lot of Chicago. I recommend that people come by Chicago sometime (with or without me) and check it out. The Taste itself, wasn't that great. The food wasn't unique enough, like it is in Minnesota... too many "generic" types of food, I thought.

Last week went back home (despite travel troubles). I love hanging out with my friends in MN. Just a great group of people. Now with my new telephone which conveniently is in the 612 area code (local to Minneapolis) I can talk to them. Or just wait a week until they road trip down to Chicagoland for the taste.

Since nobody has come to visit me, I've taken the libery of flying back to Minnesota for the weekend to celebrate my brother's birthday, my parent's anniversary and fathers day. For kicks I'll arrange a road trip to Pal(p)atine.

Nothing too exciting yet... job is coming along slowly... having days where I tolerate it and days where I just want to leave and stop working. It seems I find no comfort in systems administration. I'd rather be playing with bluetooth...

Woodfield Mall is really cool. If you are ever in the Chicagoland area, check it out. It's a good sized mall. 2 and half floors and a ton of stores. It's like the Mall of America with about half the stores and no theme park in the center.

While you are at the mall, be sure to eat at Stir Crazy where you can make your own stir fry dishes and they will cook it up for you. Really good food. You should all try it.

So... Over the last month I finished school, started an internship and visited my home twice with plans to visit once more.

The finale of school was well awaited. I think I'd enjoy school much more if I took less courses. So I plan on doing as such. I may even take the minimum ammount if I can get away with it. I like school, but in moderation. Save for my Child Psych class which has an undertermined grade and my Math grade which was a lowly B- I aced this semester. I wasn't too sure that I would. Well wait, I should have gottena better math grade. Damnit. I wish I never took that Math class. I just found out I would have had a perfect 4.0. Wow... I did well. I've surprised myself. Cool. Dude... grad school here I come eventually. Okay wow, hard work does pay off.

Internship has gotten a lot better. If you talked/emailed with me during my first couple weeks (e.g. as M. Kate did) you'd have thought I hated my job completely. Now I tolerate it. I've learned that the job is fine. It is not what I wish to do forever, but for now it is fine. I am also supplied with monetary reimbursements from Motorola and can use that to purchase gadgets.

Visiting home was nice, but I'm bound to do it again for Father's day weekend (if you didn't get an itinerary from me, father's day is on the 18th of June). So I'll be hanging out with my parents (I owe them for not hanging out during Memorial Day Weekend). The amusing thing is, Marc will probably need to come over to do his laundry by then, if he hasn't already. (My family has adopted Marc after his parents left for Texas).

I came back from a party of mostly Motorola Interns. It was a nice crowd. I hope I can tolerate them (they're good people) for the next two months. I've got a bunch of new CDs as well (I've only listened to Pet Shop Boys' Nightlife about a million times). I'm on the prowl to purchase a new cellular telephone since I can get very good rates. Anyhoo... for those of you who think I'm not keeping in touch with you, just drop me a line and complain.

I'm coming home tomorrow. I'll be in at 9pm

At our school we have something before finals called "Reading Day." Essentially it's one day for people to study their finals. They didn't stop to think of course that we'd need more than the one day to study for finals. I one final every week day until Thursday (luckily I didn't get any Saturday finals). I just finished one and without further ado, I'll start studying for the next final. Blah. I want a week like some other schools do. Imaging, a week for studying. Heck, a couple of days would be sufficient. Professors and TAs could schedule review sessions during those times too.

Anyway, I finished my final for today. It went okay. I have four more left.

A number of people have asked if I'm coming to MN. I'll be in MN by next Friday and then flying out to Chicago on the following Monday. I'll be in town (Minneapolis) for memorial day weekend as well.

I'm starting to wonder what I want to do with my life as a whole. I always try to think of end goals or purposes. Not mine specifically, but for some greater entity. Perhaps humanity as a whole.

I however question siding with humanity soley because it is a default. I am a member of humanity, so I wish to advance humanity. If I were a member of any other species, I'd side with it. I suppose that could be okay. Now, I think, perhaps my alignment should be for all ecology. Why limit myself to humans? I should also support the eco-system that supports the life. This just gets into a too over-bearing task. Eventually you start to wonder, "what is the point of it all?" So perhaps there isn't. Let's bank on the fact that there is, however.

It's not too much to change short term goals into short term goals with extensibility into long term goals. Meaning: do things that benefit you now, but if there is a possibility of building on something go for it. I don't want to get into a situation where I'm doing something I do not enjoy for too long of a time in order to get some benefit in the end. That's funny... it almost sounds like a defense against authoratarian religions. I don't want to go to church every Sunday to get into heaven. I want to do things that I enjoy. Then again, church can be something other than uncomfortable. Then the rewards of going to church would be intrinsic as well as having a long-term benefit. Note: church/heaven can mean anything. At any moment life my end and it will be a life of misery if the end goal didn't come through, unless you enjoyed living life. Then it matters not whether the end goal comes through or doesn't.

Take it easy everybody.