I bought CS4 Production Premium the other day. I haven’t had much time to play with it, but I did download a few Flaming Pear plugins and make this desktop background for myself. I designed it for my laptop, so the 1440×900 is the original, and the 1600×1200 is just scaled up (non-uniformly) from that.

Download 1440×900 or 1600×1200.

My high school bio course was terrible, so I figured I’d withhold judgement until a college class. Well, I have. I judge: I do not like biology. Not that 1105 is a bad course — quite the opposite — it’s just too full of premeds for my comfort. I’ve decided that I am not that interested in biology in general. I am interested in some aspects, but they’re the chemistry/physics aspects of biology, so why not just study chemistry or physics? And I’m always so much more engaged and excited in my physics class than my bio class. So no more biology.

And physics and computer science can both be better studied in Engineering. I am not sure I would have enough room for electives in engineering, but that might be a price I’m willing to pay. I don’t know. It depends on how little room I have. Or maybe it doesn’t. What am I willing to give up?

I feel like either Arts & Sciences is a betrayal of my nature, or Engineering is, but I cannot for the life of me figure out which! I know I’ll be satisfied with either, but I’ll be happy with one. I need to do some serious thinking on this, along with research on course requirements and elective spaces and such. Right now I think engineering would be better, but I’m not sure how long that feeling will last. I’ve been oscillating too much lately to trust myself.

Blah.

Courses of Study: Applied and Engineering Physics

Courses of Study: Computer Science

Even if I didn’t sign up for Linear Algebra (the course I’m least committed to taking), it doesn’t really improve things. It’d just leave big gaps in the middle of my schedule.

As is, Wednesdays look really fun, though…

Weee!

(by Schedulizer)

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

That must’ve been a lot of fun to pull off, but the fact that they got away with it to such a large extent is a little frightening. Which news do we believe is true, and which do we believe is a hoax yet to be revealed?

Resplendent iridescent fluorescent.

Nope, no reason.

So by putting several afternoons into rewriting my lab report, I lost myself one point.

Oh well, next one’s due Friday! *grin*

Almost always [in his map predictions], Mr. Downs, 53, ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.

“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”

He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”

And this is what they have to worry about in Pakistan:

On a rainy Friday evening in early August, six Taliban fighters attacked a police post in a village in Buner, a quiet farming valley just outside Pakistan’s lawless tribal region.

The militants tied up eight policemen and lay them on the floor, and according to local accounts, the youngest member of the gang, a 14-year-old, shot the captives on orders from his boss. The fighters stole uniforms and weapons and fled into the mountains.

Almost instantly, the people of Buner, armed with rifles, daggers and pistols, formed a posse, and after five days they cornered and killed their quarry. A video made on a cellphone showed the six militants lying in the dirt, blood oozing from their wounds.

That is such a different level of problem. Why do we get so worked up here? No lives are at stake. I mean, in a indirect way, because of policies, but not like that. We talk about our country being on the wrong track, or economically disintegrating, or whatever. We have food and warmth. Most of us have a home. We’re safe in our beds.

We have no right to complain.