Back to the Grind...

The days of simply going to work, and coming home, with the occasional day off, are officially over now as I go back to the daily grind of life as a college student. I am keeping my job at about 28 hours per week, while still attending full time (12 credits) at UW. This will continue for approximately the next two years until I graduate and get a real job.

I mean, fixing broken Macs is fun and all, but for me it doesn't seem like a viable long-term career if I want to afford a mortgage, and start a family.

I'm applying for the Informatics department at the University of Washington this year, with possible alternate majors of Applied Computing or Computing and Software Systems at UW Bothell if somehow things don't work out.

I'm a little annoyed at the fact that UW doesn't supply individualized class schedules compatible with iCal, Google, Calendars, or even Outlook. I had to enter everything manually. Lame.

Furthermore, why would anyone want to subscribe to the calendars I just posted?

The Problem with Microblogging...

The problem with microblogging is that it is entirely unnatural to refer to yourself in the third person. Twitter, Facebook, etc basically ask the same question (What are you doing right now? What's on your mind? etc.)

The problem arises from the fact that the microblogging services jam your username at the front of the post with no punctuation, leading users to use their username as the first word of the sentence. Myspace used to automatically enter "is" right after the username, but has stopped doing that recently. Facebook used to lead with your first name, while Twitter never even presumed to remind you that the username prefaces all tweets.

I've noticed lots of Twitter users just typing regular sentences or even (*gasp*) starting their sentences with subjective first-person singular pronouns. Mechnoch I do not think that this looks right, personally.

And it wreaks havoc if you tie Twitter and Facebook together. Subjective first-person singular pronouns are far less common on Facebook, and unheard of on Myspace due to the fact that these services (used to) remind the user during posting that their username will lead the post. So what is someone to do if they want their Facebook status to be updated with every tweet? Spend minutes of my valuable time to re-arrange my thoughts into the third person? Tweet in regular sentences, ignoring the fact that my friends on Facebook and Myspace are going to think I'm retarded for not speaking in the third person?

Mechnoch hereby resolves to tweet and update status exclusively in the third-person. In fact, Mechnoch may just start referring to himself in the third person all the time, even if people start saying that Mechnoch is starting to sound like Elmo.