Finally yesterday, my group and I finished off our final paper. I say it like that when in all honesty, everyone else was done, I was just putting the final edits and making sure it sat right with me. Not that they’re slackers, they worked damn hard like me.

Needless to say, we were practicing a few times through our presentation and I felt like there was something missing at the beginning of it. So I used ChaCha and grabbed myself a quote to open it all off with. To preface this, let’s back up…

In Capstone, the class that I’m in, they do a strategic analysis paper to cap off the class. Every group in every class does the same exact company, so it gives a more objective grading to it for all of the groups to go up against each other in the final competition. Prizes include exam exemptions and extra credit points for participation beyond the class level, and if you win it, there’s gift cards there too, so its not a bad thing.

For this semester, the company was Harley Davidson, and their mission statement dealt with dreams. I wanted a quote to tie in with that. And on my second try with ChaCha, I got the above Garnett quote. And it was perfect.

See, I’m not the first guy people think of when it comes to sports. Growing up, I played baseball some and participated in martial arts. I always played neighborhood pickup games of roller hockey, football, basketball, or baseball, and I followed a few teams here and there. As a whole, though, when I came to college I focused so much on the music that the sporty side of me was somewhat lost behind that. Add to that meal plan, the freedom to buy pints of Ben & Jerry’s and bags of Swedish Fish, and a glowing computer monitor with an instant messenger window open and I barely strapped on my roller blades anymore. Sure, I did intermurals a few times, but mostly my first few years.

So why would a sports quote be perfect? My teacher is a huge Piston’s fan. Salt in the wound, and make it count and work. And because he’s a nice guy who I knew would appreciate it and laugh at it? I used it.

And not only that, but I concluded with the same phrase to tie it right back in.

Did we make it to the semi-finals?

While “anything is possible,” apparently that wasn’t. We weren’t the top team, but I still feel good about my last presentation and paper from my last class as an undergraduate…

So, for folks who might have thought that I’d forgotten to blog today, nope. Squeaking in under the deadline with this one…

Today marks a half a year that I’ve blogged at least a post a day. Be it all me, or some friendly surrogates, I’ve gotten in at least a sentence or a thought a day. And its good for the writer to do that.

For my first year of having this site, I wanted to do that. And the more and more I thought about it, and the more I realized a lot of the uncertainties and days/times that I might not be able to blog, well, the more I thought about how maybe a half a year was good enough for posting once a day.

As a whole, we’ll see if I keep up with getting in a post a day. I’m going to certainly try to when I have something to say, but I think it lessens the really good deep thoughts that I have when I post the quick lame ones that I’m just doing for the sake of blogging.

But, as a whole, blogging is just about writing what you feel like in your space, as you feel it. We’ll just have to see what I feel…

Remember Ask Jeeves? The search engine where you’d post your search queries as questions? Well, a classmate of mine showed me something similar to that…

What it is, is the website of a really unique cell phone service. Running around and have a question? Text your question to 242242 (or “ChaCha”) and in the next few minutes or so, you’ll get a reply back from a real person. Answers change all the time, depending on who’s answering, so you can answer one question and get different answers if its opinion based, but if its factual, well, its a good start.

Forgot who won Superbowl XIV? Ask ChaCha.
Need to know the airborne speed of an unladen swallow? Ask ChaCha.
And if you need a magic 8-ball style answer? Just ask ChaCha.

I’d say that the possibilities are endless. Its just like Googling yourself. Ever do that?

With school ending only a few weeks away, I’ve been trying to start reading more when I’m not working on the job hunt (more on all of that on Monday, I think, if I feel like talking about it). And right now, I’m in the midst of Lewis Black’s Me of Little Faith with Keith Olbermann’s Truth and Consequences lined up right afterwards, followed by Maggie Jackson’s Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. From there? We’ll see what crosses my hands.

And with that, I’ll ask another question, as I’ve come akin to do on Saturdays:

And that reminds me… I need to put a Last.FM widgit somewhere on my page, and maybe I’ll add a “now reading” one too…

That I’m one paper and presentation and exam away from graduation. That is all… for now.

This is the first night in a long time that I’ve actually pulled an “all nighter.” Not with much purpose or much completed from it, I found it a bit interesting all over again. After working as a RHAP for as long as I did and having the all nighter a second part of my nature, to force myself to pull it off now was almost too much for me.

I guess that’s what happens when you get a little older, you can’t do what you used to.

Guess I should get my wonderful wife up and get her out the door for work (on her Birthday, of all days), and get myself some sleep… Sweet sweet sleep…

Seeing Goob posted this on his website after my post on HeyItsFree last night, I figure its only fair that I post it here… This is via ChaCha.com and my friend Shaynon:

…and lastly, I asked
“What is AdamJCohen.com”?
They said, AdamJCohen.com is a political blog that talks about current issues facing the country”.

Really now, ChaCha? Next time someone asks, you should tell them this: “Adam J. Cohen is a guitarist/songwriter who has a blog that he never or rarely talks about his music or any music in…”

I should probably fix that too and actually start talking about music some more… Ah well…

And my thanks to Amrah for showing me ChaCha… I’ll write more about it for my Sunday Share this week…

As I was watching MSNBC today, they were discussing Barack Obama and how he is having issues with the Muslim community because of his lack of visits and appearances with them, as well as the recent campaign mixup where two women were moved from sitting behind him at a rally because of their head scarves and possibility of the perceptions of seeing them with him.

And that’s what it’s all about. Because of the lovely memo going around about Obama being some sort of Muslim.

But, here’s where my quandry comes in…

If Obama is a Muslim, why is there such a problem with this man “Reverend Wright?” I mean, he’s only the man’s pastor who married him, presided over the church he went to, christened his children, and was a deep and dear former friend.

A Muslim with a Christian pastor… That’s a new one to me.

Continue reading the post…

George Carlin has passed away at the age of 71…

And if you don’t like my title? Fuck off…

The other day while reading my usual icanhascheezburger.com, they posted a link that I scoffed at originally. It was a site that supposedly was a more political version without lolcats. And then, I went over and read it and had a smile…

Yes, my friends. A site that takes the best of lolcats and superimposes it on politics. PunditKitchen.com, which I readily linked for you on the picture.

Now, while I’d like to talk more? I have a class to head to. Back on Monday to talk about campaign public finance and all of that fun stuff. Or maybe, I’ll wait till Tuesday, as it is, just because MSNBC calls every Tuesday Super Tuesday from now till the election…

Morning friends… I type this one out as I walk to campus for mediation training- something I opted to do today and tomorrow. I find it funny, though. See, any day of the week that my alarm goes off at 6:18 AM and I’ll hit snooze a few times before finally dragging my ass out of bed around 7. Today? The title says it all…

I keep looking up at my calendar in disbelief… As of now, I have three weeks of school left. Well, three weeks of undergrad education left, and then I’m done. And then after another three weeks, I’ll be walking across a stage in a cap and gown, accepting a diploma, and then doing the same thing that afternoon for another diploma. One after the other.

I’ve been going to UCF for about 7 years now. My first day was actually August 20, 2001, which coincided with my sister’s 14th birthday. And at this point, I was an engineering major. I had planned to take calculus and chemistry and a bunch of other classes. As folks know, calculus and chemistry didn’t sit well with me that semester, and after failing both, I switched my major to English in Spring 2002. I started taking a few education classes in the Fall of 2002, and continued with that for a short while. And just as I neared graduation, I added an official minor in General Business. After this, I changed that minor to a second major in Accounting, and then a year later after failing half of the classes and doing mediocre in the other half of them, I was kicked out of the accounting school. Then, in Fall 2007, I switched that over to a Management degree, and now three semesters of that track, and I’m finally able to walk.

And on August 2nd, I’ll be walking twice: English Creative Writing and Human Resources Management.

It took me damn well long enough to get here, and I’m going to relish the moments as I can.

Of course, I still have three more weeks of Capstone, but that’s just an aside…

With a title like that, you wouldn’t expect a post about my cell phone of all things, eh?

Last night I had one of my last two finals of my undergrad collegiate career. Cool, huh? Well, to get to campus I usually use the shuttle service that’s provided for some of the off-campus areas. Instead, I decided that I’d walk to campus.

Now why would I do that, and why would I leave at 3pm? Well, this weekend on Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be taking a First Time Mediation Training through the UCF Dispute Resolution Services–two day seminar from 8:30a-5p. I thought it’d be nice to add to my resumé, as well as just in general it’d be good to undergo before even wanting to be a manager one of these years, as I’d like to eventually be able to attain.

So I leave home and along my way while I’m on an open stretch of road, it starts to rain with heavier drops. Fairly spaced out, but still heavy enough for me to start getting wet. And then, it really picked up.

For folks who aren’t from Florida, you might not understand the idea of “sideways rain.” We see it all the time over summer. Its that really fragrant and fresh rain with the heavier drops that instead of normal rain that seems to fall from a 90 or 75 degree angle (i.e. straight down, slightly from the side), you’re talking more like a 40 degree angle. And that’s what I faced.

With no shelter to even duck by or behind, I was drenched. My jean shorts were soaked through to my boxers, and my shirt was a wet mass that I was wearing that started to droop. I was thankful that my bookbag was waterproof, or so I thought, but more on that in a bit…

But in my pants, I had my cell phone, wallet, keys, pens: the usual for me. And my phone seemed alright, and I got to the parking garage and flipped open my phone and read the text that Sarah had sent me. I had made it to campus in about 30 minutes. Not bad.

Not bad? No, my phone got it bad. I went to reply to my wife’s message and my phone started freaking out as if I was adding spaces right after letters. Just horrible. It’s 3:30, I’m soaking wet, my phone is acting up, and my final is at 6. Things weren’t looking good for me.

I started looking at my phone (a Samsung m510) better. I noticed that it was primarily a few buttons that seemed affected: 3, 6, 9, #, and “Back.” Now, while that might not seem too bad, well, Sarah’s phone number was saved to speed dial on 9, and I text message a lot and that means that I’d have issues with: d, e, f, m, n, o, w, x, y, z, and “space.” Ten out of twenty-six characters. Damnit.

I couldn’t turn my phone off right away. I left it on and brought it to a bathroom and tried to use hand dryers to dry it out a bit. It mostly started to seem like it cleared up. So I called up Sprint’s customer service because *2 wasn’t affected. The gentleman I got was extremely helpful and gave me the number that I’d need to call to do a warranty replacement. Of course, that’s $50 to do that, which sucks, but still not bad. Of course, I have to run this by Sarah.

Now, its about 4ish at this point, and its still a bit frustrating and it seems to get better. If I push the 3, 6, or 9, it automatically adds a # after it. So texting is out of the question. Seriously, have you ever tried to text without using 5/13ths of the alphabet? Yeah, doesn’t really work all that well. I was able to get off “Call me” from the preset messages in one text, and then “ASAP” to Sarah, but because of the way my phone was acting up, it turned out more like–and I kid you not because I’m transcribing this from my sent messages–”Asap pjfox e o-w fox dozenyfowemen-yene my book for youfox.” Mr. Bush and Homeland Security: I swear to you that its not an encoded message and that it has no meaning. I may be critical of my government, but I’m no terrorist.

Needless to say, I finally get ahold of Sarah and she says to just wait it out and see what happens. I’d say that I agree with this, but if you know me? You know I’m addicted to my phone and I do almost everything on or with it. But seeing I can go to recent calls and access her number to call her, and any/all calls that I need to make, I can always use my GrandCentral account as a dial interface to make my calls. And because I can still receive calls, its not too bad. I could always use my wireless backup to add new numbers to the phonebook to make calls if I need to as well.

Still, I’m frustrated.

So at about 6:30 after calling Sarah after my final, I turn my phone off and leave it off. When we get home around 7 after getting dinner, I take out the battery and the memory card and let it sit on a paper towel. I powered it on last night and it seemed to be doing a little better, but still messed up. I then turned it off and re-divided up the pieces.

This morning, I turned on my phone and I crossed my fingers… And honestly?

It works.

Now, I’m not going to be like “omg, perfect like before!” I do notice that there are some differences. For one, the # key seems to falter 1 out of 7 times or so, give or take. Meaning when I’m typing messages, sometimes it doesn’t recognize when I push space all of the time. And there’s one other problem. The backlight for the keypad? Is dead. So there’s a little more battery saving right there…

All in all? I think I lucked out on this one. But if I ever text you and I’m missing a space? Yeah, now you know…

I thought I’d share something that I “just found out” now.

First off, I upgraded to Firefox 3, and I’d recommend the same. Tim, when you read this, I know we were just talking about it tonight and why I wasn’t going to, but I figured I might as well try it out. It seems mildly faster, but only negligibly so, which is nice.

Needless to say, if anyone uses GMail and has been trying to setup their “mailto: redirects” in Firefox 3, I found this nifty little guide which really helped out with that info.

Just thought I’d share that little tidbit for anyone who might be looking for it…

Oh, and for people wondering why this is in “Webmaster Woes,” I’ve just been using that as my all purpose computer one…

I’m finding myself looking forward to final exams.

I’ve got one tonight and one in 3 weeks, but because its at the end of the line? Well, I think that has something to do with it…