Spring Semester

Spring semester is a little slow getting started. My Wednesday class was cancelled, then I had classes on Thursday. Buy I have none of Friday, and today was a holiday. So tomorrow will be only my second day of classes.

I've decided to drop the seminar. I don't think I'm going to have to time to prepare one, given that two of my three classes are in physics, so will be a huge amount of work.

I can't believe how slack UNC is about collecting tuition and fees. My previous schools would drop your schedule like a hot potato if you weren't paid up by the first day of classes. My assistantship pays my tuition for me, but I still need to pay fees, and last semester I think it was the middle of October, at least, until I got around to doing it. The main reason was that they couldn't seem to get together an accurate bill; they could never get my assistantship funds applied to it.

What really sucks is that I'll have to continue to pay fees once I move to the lab on the coast, even though I won't have access to any of the facilities that the fees are meant to pay for. Not that I get $700 per semester worth of use out of them anyway. I think the student government is out of control. It would be enough to make me a Republican, if it weren't for the fact that Republicans are a bunch of frauds who spend even more money than Democrats.

I finally broke down and bought myself an iPod Friday night, and have spent most of the weekend converting my CD's. It's a white 4 GB nano, and I mainly got it so I could have music with me when I work out (mainly running), which I'm doing again. It's not enough space to take my whole collection with me, obviously, so I may get a full-size one eventually too. But for now I wanted something solid-state, because hard drives aren't known for shock-resistance.

One thing I've discovered through this process is that I'm damned tired of just about everything in my collection. Time for a music-buying binge, I guess.

Last night my housemate Chris came home and apparently turned on his computer. Suddenly I noticed "Chris's Music" on my iTunes menu. Turns out he's got 9000+ songs there for the taking, if I weren't concerned about copyright infringement.