And then Apple filed a lawsuit...

I was, for the longest time, one of the larger nay-sayers when it came to, well, everything to do with Apple. I didn't like their file system, I didn't like their computer design, I didn't like their iPods, or even their name. How dare they sour the good word "apple." And what is the deal with e-ver-y-thing being prefixed with a lowercase I?

Then, I started actually using an eMac (the downscaled, economy, eggshell-shaped style of desktop introduced after OS X came out) for my high school journalism class, and found out that Apple wasn't the red-eyed demon I had always thought it was. As a matter of fact, it was more than just usable. It was, dare I say it, intuitive.

And so college rolled around, and I found myself in possession of a pretty large sum of money, which I used to buy a replacement for my laptop. It was deathly slow, you see. Having dealt with both PCs and Macs, and with the advent of the Intel processor under the hood of every new Mac, which allowed for the installation of Windows on Macs, I decided that I could get a Mac and then have the best of both operating systems (which is to say, I could have intuitive stuff on the Mac side, and computer games on the Windows side).

And for a while, I was a fan of Mac. Apple made some darn fine computers, even if their iPod was nowhere near as useful or fully-featured as other MP3 players on the market. And sure, my Zen Vision:M couldn't exactly interface with my new computer, but I had ways of working around that as long as I was near people with a Windows computer.

Then Apple announced the iPhone, and it was sweet, but it was highly unaffordable, and came with a mandatory plan with AT&T, which makes the whole thing even more unaffordable.

Then Apple came out with the iPod Touch, which was like the iPhone, only stripped of the phone plan and, for some reason, several of the really handy applications that weren't phone-centric, like email, Google Maps, and Notes.

Still, I bought an iPod Touch on the grounds that it finally had something that no other MP3 player could replicate: Internet. And it was a good buy, especially because it interfaced with my iMac. But it still couldn't do everything I wanted it to as easily as I wanted it to. Case in point: email, Google Maps, and Notes.

Enter the countless number of people who have worked to hack the iPhone (and concordantly, the iPod Touch), which brings us to this point...



This will only last until Apple releases their first-party SDK and people can install Apple-approved applications on their iPhones/Pod Touches, but I love it. I'm quite giddy at this point, but soon that should evaporate into recognizing the usefulness of these applications for everything they're worth.

Bad fries, questionable rings, and a pretty good chicken sandwich

The title doesn't have much to do with the topic of this blog, I don't think. It's just the product of Tiger Inn, where I got some bad fries, saw one of the workers pick onion rings out of a deep fryer bare-handed, and got a pretty good grilled chicken sandwich.

In the past week, I've had my American government professor tell me that I seem more depressed recently not once, but twice. I don't know what he bases this notion on. At all. I can't feel any noticeable change in my behavior now compared to when I started his class, other than the fact that I've learned since starting his class that it is far less about American government as it is about the War on Terror, which he regards as the defining issue of our generation (in spite of the fact that nobody in class feels the same way), but as far as my overall attitude goes, I don't think that he could logically base his view of my mental health on three fifty-minute windows of time during which he sees me. Still, I'm not one to take somebody's observation of how I've been acting and just throw it out the window.

I went to my director Robin midday on Friday and asked him if I seemed like I've been depressed lately. He said that he wouldn't call it "depressed," but that I've been acting somewhat different lately. More introverted, perhaps, but not really depressed. This still surprised me, because I don't really think that I've been more introverted this year, especially compared to last year.

And my friends Caitie and Kathryn have also talked to me about how I tend to say things that are really depressing. Even people that I talk to online say that I've been acting withdrawn lately.

Still, I don't notice what everyone is talking about. I'm starting to wonder if I'm wearing my heart on my back and I just can't tell that I'm dumping all of these negative feelings out, or if this is like when you have something embarrassing written on your forehead, and people tell you, but you can't see what it says for yourself, because you're too close to yourself to see it.

In those instances, you always have to find a mirror in order to see what's going on.

I took an online screening for depression today because I was curious as to whether I would test yes to that. My results told me that I was more likely to have bipolar disorder than depression, so I took the online test for that. Three minutes later, I was told that I don't likely have bipolar disorder, and I was out the door and into the coffee shop just in time to get a muffin and a chai latté just before the lunch period started. Still, so many people are telling me I don't seem like myself lately.

Can anybody hand me a mirror?

The Dance

The night is coming,
My one big chance
Your eyes not taking
A second glance.
That pressing question
My lips won't grant,
"May I take you
Out to the dance?"

The time is rushing,
A steady advance,
While I'm still dreaming
In my mind's romance.
My fear expressing
Through trembling hands,
"May I take you
Out to the dance?"

My stomach is plunging
But my feet hold fast.
On your door I'm knocking;
Corsage with a clasp
But within I hear laughing.
I let a lie pass,
"I hope that he treats you
Well at the dance."

Life's little lessons

As I enjoyed my mostly blogless fall break, I did several things that I don't normally do: first, I videotaped myself trimming my toenails, and second, I revisited the Matrix sequels, two films which I quite enjoy, but haven't watched in well over two years.

While the toenails are a bit harder to explain, the movies are the sum of the remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. Plus, I really like them, in spite of what everyone else on Earth thinks of them. Concordantly, I got a rush of nostalgia from watching them, and suddenly remembered a ton of stuff pertaining to the two years before my senior year of high school. Vis-a-vis, forensics, theatre, journalism, mixed chorus, English 11, precalculus, and some other stuff, all rushed back into my mind. But there was a problem: all I could remember of the subjects were bullet points. There was nothing of substance in my memories, no recollection of the events, just the facts that I wrote such and such a column, and that I made it to state, but didn't qualify for finals.

It was some time in the middle of my watching The Matrix Revolutions that I got an email from an old friend of mine, who graduated back in 2004. Actually, he was much more than a friend. He was certainly something that I would call an idol. He was valedictorian of his class, he could act, dance, sing, place in state finals, everything. And it was at that point that I felt, "Wow... There's something behind this."

And so I went for my trademark walk around the cross-country track. I go out there a lot, when I need to think about things that are going on in my life, and this was certainly something. I began talking out loud to myself, concerned primarily about the fact that 2004 was rushing back to me, yet I couldn't remember any of it, and that since it was decidedly the last year before the major life changes began to take place, it held some significance in my current predicament.

And I made some important discoveries on my walk, mostly that it's fun to yell things in a public area while nobody else is around. But the revelation I feel like I was meant to make didn't come until Monday. I had just gotten back to my dorm from lunch, and was watching some of the specials on the second disc of Revolutions when I discovered as I walked to my sink to brush my teeth that my sink was nearly full of rust-infested water. Long story short, some calls were made around, and then the plumber on campus came in to look at my sink, remove the U-bend, stick a snake tube in to remove the obstruction, realize that the obstruction was much further down than he had thought, get a bigger snake tube to go further down, and finally unclog my sink.

It was after all this, as I was brushing my teeth, that I figured out what I was supposed to learn from all this: when you don't like the way something is, change it.

I'm sure that all of you are probably zOMG'ing about that no-duh revelation, but honestly, it wasn't something I had considered before. I was so used to letting myself believe that things in life will happen how they will happen, and that there isn't much that we can do about any of the circumstances we find ourselves in, but there it was, a solution to my sink problem.

And maybe there is merit to try, trying again. As much grief as I gave the concept in one of my earlier posts, the obstruction was cleared after the plumber went and got a different tool.

And I think that's what made me a happier person before my snior year of high school. I didn't accept circumstances as they were, I set out to achieve my goals even if I was afraid to do so. I think that's what I need to do now. I need to fix things that I have problems with, even if it'll take a little work.

Ergo, I hereby rescind any and all times in which I might have said that "this is just how things go."