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At Long Last!

Source: Dafne Cholet This Sunday I did... nothing in particular. It was just a normal Sunday. Finally. In practice, it was actually pretty similar to the first week of the blog; I had a bunch of math homework to do. But having the choice to do something else made a huge difference. That's not to say that every Sunday this semester has been bad; in fact, many were far from it. Those days when I simply consumed media, whether it be through reading, watching a movie, or playing a video game were enjoyable enough, for at least most of the day. And some Sundays were downright productive; the day when I did nothing but homework genuinely gave me a head start on Physics 213. But I think the most fun (and occasionally the most painful) days were the weird ones. Standing, playing French horn (though that one wasn't quite a day), writing, coding, lacking sleep. They were all new, and that made them interesting. Until now, I wasn't entirely sure why I did this. Why spend
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Yawn

Source: Catriona Ward I made a point last week of getting a decent amount of sleep each night. I didn't quite get eight hours a night, but I came pretty close. This was partly because I wanted to improve my sleep schedule, but it was also partly because, over the weekend, I decided that I was going to stay awake for 40 hours straight. Now, I'd pulled all-nighters before. I knew what it meant to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. But every time I did that, I would get to sleep pretty quickly the day after. Before this past weekend, I don't think I'd ever stayed up for more than maybe 20 hours at a time. Oh, before I really begin, I should tell you: please don't do this. It's not good for you. Get some sleep! So, I woke up at around 8 AM on Saturday, and I spent the day doing, well, not much of anything. Most of my friends had gone home over the weekend, so I spent the day mostly just hanging out. I'd read a book, play some video games, check

Ardui-No Thank You

A screenshot of the Arduino IDE This post requires a bit of background before I jump in. I'm in a club here at Penn State called the Student Space Program Laboratory (SSPL for short). It's pretty much what it sounds like: a space program for students at Penn State. It's most heavily targeted at aerospace engineering students, but students from other disciplines like mechanical or electrical engineering are more than welcome. Now, I should make it clear that the club isn't launching Penn State students, or cars, or anything terribly exciting into space; it's mostly just small satellites. But, still, it's pretty darn cool to have anything in space. But I digress. I'm not actually working on anything this semester that will be shot into space, or even attached to a rocket of an appreciable size. Instead, I'm doing the Student Training Program, or STP. New members of the club are split into groups, and each group designs a payload for a small mod

Following the Script

Source: pixabay This Sunday, I decided that I needed to do something more active, more engaging, more creative than what I'd been doing in previous weeks. I needed to create something. So, I decided that I was going to write all day. Of course, I'd already written all day at many points in my life. Research papers, application essays, you name it, I procrastinated and then crammed the writing. So I needed to do something different this past Sunday. Something more creative. I'm not amazing at creative writing, but hey, this is stuff that probably under 20 people will see, so might as well throw care into the wind. I decided to write a screenplay. That's right. I'm one of those assholes who thinks they can write a screenplay. It's nowhere near done, of course. A day isn't enough time for something like this. But it might be finished, someday. Maybe I'll even post it on this blog, as an addendum to a future post. This is actually something I

Five Hours of French Horn

Image Source: meg_nicol This week was tricky. I couldn't do anything all day on Sunday because I had to pack and take the bus back to Penn State from my hometown. I couldn't do anything all day on Monday because I had to work. I couldn't do anything all day on Wednesday because I had class until 3:30. So that left Tuesday; I had a solid 10 hours free on Tuesday. But I also had a whole bunch of homework to do, and I already did that for an entire day in the first week of the semester. And I wanted to at least start this semester with a reasonable sleep schedule. So, I cheated. Sorry. I decided that, this week, instead of doing one thing for an entire day, I would do one thing for simply a large portion of the day. But this would have to be something interesting, not just reading or watching TV like I'd done previously. And it would have to be something that I'm not used to doing for a few hours, so things like writing or shopping are out (though they ma

Words, Words, Words

There's nothing quite like cozying up with a good book and a mug of coffee, turning on a reading lamp, and disappearing into a story. That's what I did the Sunday before last, for eight hours. It was decidedly uncozy. It should be said that there were a few circumstances that conspired to make the day a miserable experience. I was rather sleep-deprived; I'd had trouble sleeping the previous night, and I hadn't really slept well for the whole week before that, either. On top of that, I was in the middle of a nasty cold. But these things aren't usually huge problems if I'm doing what I like. And the book I chose was Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov, the second book in the Foundation series. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit, so I anticipated that I would like this one, as well. And, at least from the parts I can remember, it was even more enjoyable than the first book (more on that pesky "remembering" thing later). For the first few hou

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Image Source: Senor Velasco After last week's excursion, I decided to do something a little more mundane this past Sunday: watching TV. I don't exactly have access to cable television, so I decided to rewatch an old favorite of mine, Battlestar Galactica (the new series, not the one from the 1970s). Imagine my surprise when I found out that Netflix didn't have Battlestar Galactica anymore. Or Doctor Who. Or The Addams Family. Dang it. Eventually I settled on BoJack Horseman. It's a Netflix original, and my favorite TV show, and I figured I was due for a rewatch. So that's what I did all Sunday. I suppose I should explain what BoJack Horseman is. Basically, it's an animated show that exists in an alternate Hollywood where humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist (no explanation is given for this). The story follows the life of BoJack Horseman, a washed-up sitcom actor desperately clamoring for the glory days. It starts out seeming like any other subp