I'm currently watching "Modern Marvels: Bathroom Technology" on the History Channel. It's rather dull, really... but you know, 200 years ago we didn't have toilets. 80 years ago, toilet paper was uncommon. Now we take both for granted, just like running water. Now we have all of that stuff, and it always works. But by most modern accounts, our rate of innovation is exponential, not on a bell curve.

So, what common items will be unrecognizably improved 50 years from now? I immediately think of things like wall-size, paper-thin TVs and computers with an exabyte of hard drive space (1,000,000,000 GB), but what about common items like... furniture? Lights? Lysol spray bottles?

Anyway, about one week into summer break, I've retrieved the cello and started with that, done a bit of chain mail, started running (and waking up at 6 AM to do it) and ... moved a whole lot of mulch and dirt. But hey, all in a day's work.

Well, in that order...

Finals are this week, which means that in two days, I'll be done until the end of August. I plan to study lightly for the one I have to take tomorrow (business stuff - yech) and I have to write a few pages for a take-home final, but otherwise, it's just going to Walsh to take a test for 45 minutes (after driving for 1:30) tomorrow and Wednesday. I remember when I used to get all stressed out about finals. The last time that happened was probably the first semester of my freshman year, actually. I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't have to study for finals. If you've forgotten enough of the material to have to re-read the entire book for most of a week before a test, then you won't remember any of it coming out of the class anyway. I suppose that's fine, actually... but to avoid the studying (takes WAY too much time...) I prefer to just listen every now and then in class, seeing as I have nothing better to do when I'm stuck there.

So now, I'm a little conflicted: How will I fit all my projects in this summer? I want to learn to play my cello, finish my chain mail shirt, and now program a space MMORPG. (Yeah, so I was poking at an old game I used to play a lot - Escape Velocity - a 2D space RPG sort of thing. So now I want to learn sound, graphics, and network programming in either Java or C++.) And I only have 4 months to do it all! Sigh.

Geek warning! AJAX is pretty awesome. I'm using it in a new project at work - I've got it set up so that you can just start typing part of a name, and it'll show all the matches as you type, and you check boxes and it updates without having to submit forms, and all that. I think I'm going to have to use this in pretty much everything I do now.

And, that last thing. My parents went up to Michigan to visit some great-aunts (my dad's aunts) this past weekend. I got to be the adult for a whole day... got home from work, made dinner, drove Sarah all over the place and everything. Michelle was tanning in the backyard while I'm doing all of this, too. She'll tell you she did some dishes, but would you believe that? I didn't think so. Well, ok, maybe she did a little bit. I guess I'm getting so old that I don't really care anymore, though. But making chicken linguine alfredo was pretty fun. I suppose have to start figuring out how to cook dinners if I want to move out in a year and a half.

I've been spending a good bit of time working on my chain mail shirt (technically, it'll be a "haubergeon"). It's got about 400 feet of 16-gauge galvanized steel wire in it so far, but it'll probably end up with at least 2000 feet of wire. I've done about half of either the front or back of it - not sure which yet. I found out that I was about to build the whole thing sideways... I'm just glad I figured that out before it would have resulted in days of work fixing the thing.

There are exactly 4 days of class left when I go back on Tuesday after break. Getting out this early is great, but why can't I be a senior right now?

So, I'll come out and say it: I'm getting sick of World of Warcraft. It's not the first time this has happened... I actually cancelled my account for a while a year or two ago. But this time, it's not because I'm more interested in another game instead. I'm actually wanting to spend time not being on the computer. Wait, huh? Yeah. Like, I started reading a book a couple weeks ago - haven't had time to finish it, but it's a start. Oh, and instead of doing homework while staring at the chat window in WoW, I went outside and studied on the patio.

Maybe I'm just getting tired of computers. Maybe it's because my latest guild is a rude, abrasive bunch. But I think that even more, it's because I'm realizing, for the first time in 6 years, that there is life to enjoy beyond games. Half a year ago, I wouldn't think to attend some kind of social event during a raid night. Not so much anymore. I made dinner last week, not because I was asked to, but because I wanted to. And at the same time, I had no interest in earning some leet XP or epic phat lewt. You see, this is troubling because for most of the last 6 years, I've been telling myself that spending all my free time on the computer was OK because I had nothing better to do. Now I might actually have to regret the (significantly large number) days of time I've spent on games and not, say, learning to play my cello.

At the same time, I'm appreciating the people around me more because of this. I mean, I have amazing family and friends, and seeing as I no longer mind that spending time with them means not finishing those darned quests, I should probably do it more often. And that's something that I think I can go with.

In other news... I have a 4 page paper, two group presentations, a 6 file program, a practice newsletter, and 9 days of class left before summer break. And finals, but I don't count those. They're easy. But, I'll probably have two Bs in classes where I could have easily had As if I cared more. If junioritis is this bad, I don't even want to know what senioritis will be like.