Sorry I haven’t written in a while, no real excuse other than I’m super lazy.

Yes, Halloween is upon us, and here at UCSB, Halloween doesn’t just last a day, it lasts a whole week. The festivities started last night - a few hundred stragglers from out of town making their way over to Isla Vista. In fact, we met some Brazilians from UCSD who had come up here to get away from the fires that have been raging lately. Tonight and tomorrow mark the busiest nights by far. Thousands of out-of-town people will flock to Isla Vista to partake in the Halloween parties and so forth.

Now, you probably think I’m exaggerating a bit. Let me describe what my residence hall is like. Currently there is a fence that extends from the street corner next to Francisco Torres all the way down (probably a mile or so) to a crosswalk near campus. The fence is probably 8-10 feet high, and was put up in about a day (one of those temporary fences you rent for a period of time). You can only enter my dorm through the parking lot entrance, where Campus Security Officers wait with clipboards with the names, room numbers, and birthdays of all the people in both FT buildings. You must state your name, show your access card, say your birthday and what room number you’re in before you’re clear to go inside. Absolutely no visitors are allowed in any of the residence halls (although at Anacapa they’re slightly more lax), which includes parents. Simply put, this place is on lock-down for this week.

Beyond Halloween, school has been pretty great so far. Had a pretty lousy Chemistry quiz, but there are two of those and a final, so it doesn’t count for that much percentage-wise. Physics midterm on Monday, which I am strangely not worried about at all. Math midterm Thursday, and then a German midterm…sometime. I’m doing well in all of my classes, so I’m hardly worried at this point.

I’ll try to condense my updates in the future so the prospect of sitting down and typing something really long doesn’t seem so unappealing. With that, I bring this update to a close. I’ll have more in a few days, particularly about my Physics midterm and how Halloween weekend went.

As a closing note, I will say that unintentionally sleeping through your alarm set for 8 a.m., instead waking up at 9:51 a.m. for a 10 a.m. class, is not a fun way to start a Friday.

I’m out.

Later.

It wasn’t really a scavenger hunt, but it might as well have been; it was certainly just as difficult a hunt. Matt and I decided to spend a few hours in the past couple days scouring Santa Barbara for the elusive December 2007 issue of Official X-Box Magazine. I know what you’re thinking: “But Sam, it’s October. The December issue isn’t out yet.” Trust me: it is. A bunch of people have it, and in having it, also have the Guitar Hero III demo included with it. “Ah,” say you, the reader, “I see your motivation now. Dork.” And to that I say, well, I know. That aside, we hit no less than 8 stores: 3 Borders, 2 Barnes & Nobles, a K-Mart, a RiteAid, and a CompUSA. Our search ultimately ended in failure, but then we discovered the demo is coming out tomorrow on another disc included with Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, so maybe we’ll just get that instead.

Anyway. I got my bus pass today. About time, too. I was tired of getting to the bus stop, suddenly realizing I didn’t have $1.25, and asking my friends to lend me money. I ran into a couple friends at the bus stop home from Santa Barbara yesterday and they said they had just flashed their Student IDs nonchalantly to the bus driver and it had worked, and so I got bold today and gave that a shot, but the bus driver picked up on it rather quickly, so I was forced to pay $0.75 over the bus fare, putting in a dollar of my own and one of Colin’s dollars. Really, the whole point of a bus pass confuses me, mostly because it’s free. I feel quite sure I could back up that argument if I needed to. I’m a student at UCSB. As such, I’m entitled to a free bus pass. I think the knowledge of that alone should warrant the use of my Student ID as a bus pass alternative. It seems like the whole act of registering for a bus pass sticker (which isn’t anything special, no watermarks or defining markings, just a white rectangular sticker with red lines on the top and bottom edge and the words “Fall 2007″ printed in the middle) is just a formality, an unnecessary 2 to 3 business days between me paying $1.25 to go into town and look for a magazine and taking joy rides on the bus for free.

I’m looking at houses already. The way it works here is 99% of all students (maybe even 100%) live off campus after their first year. My group of 4 friends, Evver (we’re running out of puns we can make with his name), Andrew, Matt, and Colin, and myself were walking down Del Playa in Isla Vista, a nice street on the edge of the town right next to the beach, and we saw a house with a big “Now Leasing!” sign on it. I wrote down the number, and immediately the 5 of us began imagining what a house of our own would be like. It almost goes without saying that we 5 will be living together next year, so the only thing of major concern is finding a house that can accommodate us comfortably, and this house had 3 bedrooms, so I think it might be the one. This was on Saturday; unsurprisingly in the 2 days since then we’ve compiled a list in our heads of what would be great in our house. We found a few guys playing their X-Box 360 on a giant projector screen clearly visible through their window, and they invited us in, where we learned that they were selling their old projector for about $170, so we’re probably buying that. Also, today in CompUSA we found a unit of 3 reclining chairs joined together, which is also a good possibility. Naturally a big TV fits somewhere in that equation, but we’ll worry about that when the time comes.

Yep, life’s pretty good out here in California. Classes aren’t too bad; Physics is still hard, but rests easier on the mind knowing that Tuesdays are the TA’s office hours, and he provides ample help for those who need it, essentially guiding us through the problems that are giving us trouble. I’ve done a good amount of work on all of them, and on a couple of them I’m really close to the answer save for one small missing detail or something of that nature, so I’m expecting tomorrow to just clear up a lot of what I’ve worked on. Chem is annoying in that it’s a lot of repetitive work. German’s still fun, maybe some day I’ll be able to make an entry in German. Lastly, Math is just silly; all of our homework is entered online, and you can see the score you’ve gotten on each problem set, and of the 8 problem sets we’ve been assigned, I’ve gotten 100% on all of them.

That’s all for now. I’m going to go socialize with my floormates some more. Keep checking back in the coming days for more news and anecdotes.

I’m out.

Later.

So I’m sure you’re all wondering what’s been happening lately. I can’t blame you. Let’s face it, my life is full of excitement - non-stop, edge-of-your-seat, heart-pounding excitement. If my life was a movie, it’d be rated R (for “ridiculous”), and would contain thematic elements.

The work is definitely piling on. Physics took me a good 6 or 7 hours to complete, over a period of 3 or 4 days, working together with other people in my class. There happens to be an excellent Physics Study Room (that’s its official name, too), where TAs reside and offer help to whoever needs it. I went there the past couple days, and the TA for our class was there on Tuesday, and he was absolutely invaluable in helping us with the last few problems. We were concentrating on vectors up until today, and the 10 problems we were assigned for homework were all variable proofs. When I asked my professor for any tips, he said that it’s all about the “insight”; that is, most problems seem extremely difficult until you have what is essentially a miniature epiphany and see the simplicity of it all. In doing the 10 problems over those few days, I realize what he meant; the answers were so clear once you found the right way to start off the problem.

Anyway, besides Physics, I have no less than 4 math problem sets due tomorrow, a German quiz, and 126 chemistry problems. However, I must say that for all of this work, the way the homework is set up makes it not seem like a whole lot at all; better yet, it tracks your progress, so you know how you’re doing (with the exception of German, anyway). For instance, the 126 chemistry problems were all online, divided up into 9 groups of problems (with a different number of problems in each group), and after submitting each group (you had 6 tries to answer each problem in each group correctly), it would tell you which ones you got right and which ones you got wrong, immediately. This was also the source of some frustration. I ended up with 125 out of 126 answers correct on the chem homework, with only the chemical formula SnO being undefined. My friend Colin and I came to the conclusion that it was none other than Tin Oxide - this verified by actually googling the darn formula - but no matter which way we transcribed it to the online homework dealy, it was marked wrong every time. We eventually just said forget it, and called it a day.

It came to my attention the other day that hardly anyone on my floor actually knows who I am. I’m not terribly surprised - I’m not surprised at all, actually - since I’m never actually at FT except at night, and at that point I’m just in my room. During the day, I find it a bit pointless to ride 10 minutes to campus for class, finish class, ride 10 minutes back, hang around, ride 10 minutes out again and hang out with people who were 5 minutes from my classes initially, and then 10 minutes back at night. 20 of those minutes could be spent doing better things.

I was able to meet some people from my dorm tonight though. I came up the elevator wearing my iPod, stepped out and two girls were sitting on a couch, Megan and Nikki. They introduced themselves (luckily I could hear them despite music blasting in one ear after pulling the other headphone out), I introduced myself, mentioned I was from New Hampshire, got the “oooh”s and “aaah”s I’ve come to associate with those who have never been to NH, and then plopped down on the couch next to them and started talking. Another guy named Brian was on the couch next to ours, and he introduced himself, and through the three of them I met other people that came in and out of rooms and out of the elevators as time went on. Overall, a fulfilling evening on the social front.

Not much humor tonight. Too tired, to be honest, and it’s mostly factual today, but I needed to write something, since surely there are people sitting on the edge of their seat at home, clicking the refresh button on my blog like mad at all hours of the day, waiting for that one click that will yield new information. Well, that information has finally come.

I will try to write something more anecdotal next time. I’m aware people probably aren’t all that interested in school life, but currently it’s all I’ve got going for me.

I’m out.

Later.

Whoops, it’s been a little longer than I thought since I last wrote something. Sorry about that.

It’s 7:23 in the morning - far too early for me to have arisen of my own accord, so naturally the only explanation can be my 8 o’clock Chemistry class. It wouldn’t even be so bad if I was still on Eastern time; this would feel like 10:30 to me, which, to be fair, is still a little early, but it’d be a heck of a lot better than this.

I suppose the other grievance about getting up this early is that the class I’m dragging my feet to isn’t horribly interesting. It’s Chem 1A. Let’s take a look at this class number a little closer. Both 1 and A are the first in their respective series of numbers and letters. Generally they are used separately to indicate that you are at the most basic level, e.g. the first level of a game, or the topmost floor of a secret underground laboratory. Used in conjunction, 1 and A denote the most basic of basic levels. That’s what this class reminds me of. We’re learning things that we’ve known for years. Decades perhaps, but I’m not sure. Heterogeneous mixtures vs. homogeneous mixtures and things of that nature. The professor (wrote “teacher” first, oops, I’m in college now) is nice enough, and every now and again he cracks a joke, but I hope the class picks up. For everyone’s sake.

Other than that, not much is new around here. The temperature is unusually low for…well, what I was expecting, I guess, I’m not really familiar with average temperatures in past years in Santa Barbara during the month of October, but today’s low is 46º, high is 61º. Hopefully it doesn’t get ridiculously cold by the time a few friends and I make our way down to Santa Barbara to get dinner in town. Luckily as a New Englander I know how to dress for the cold (I’m not sure some people here even own long-sleeve shirts), but that’s besides the point. The point is I didn’t think I’d have to. Ah well.

Time to head out for my Chemistry class, but I’ll try to be more frequent with my blog posts. Not a whole lot to say about the past 5 days other than class stuff, so I guess I’ll fill everyone in on the rest of it soon.

I’m out.

Later.