Downward Birthday Trend

Sorry, this will be one of my rare introspective paragraphs, so you may want to skip it if you don't care. So my birthdays have been on a total downward trend for a few years now. I've probably said this before, but do you remember back when you were little and you counted the days until your birthday and all the kids at school wanted to sit next to you at lunch and stuff? As selfish as it sounds, I kind of miss that. Today was another pretty bad birthday. Not only did I only get only four hours of sleep, but I didn't finish the homework I had to do after much effort, I didn't do so hot in my NI interview, and I had to walk to the bus stop in the rain while in my good clothes (from the interview), not to mention that the week started out less than ideally. Of course, I definitely appreciate all the birthday wishes I received, especially from NSC exec (I <3 you guys), but I think my depression today was kind of independent of it being a crummy birthday and just a mid-semester crisis. I feel like I'm on a downward spiral and I'm letting myself down in my school work and I'm still not doing my best socially. I think the stresses of grades, finding a job, and being more social are just really cracking me right now, and all I want is to go back to the summer when we used to work 8 to 5 and have pool parties on the weekend (see my profile picture) without any cares of homework or trying to play the dating game. I think I have to put all that aside though and realize that you only achieve excellence through much brutality, and I still have a few more semesters of that to go through. Still, it would've been nice to just be a normal kid and go out and party on my birthday and all that stuff, and I can't help but wonder what my life would be like if I didn't care about my own intelligence or about having a meaningful career and solely enjoyed school for the ride. And I guess that's what the point of this paragraph is: is it all worth it? Sorry, I'm rambling, I'll stop now.

I've talked about the possibilities for Apple's iTV remote before, but looking at the patent there's now speculation that the remote could automatically discover devices nearby with possibly even a touchscreen (would this mean a changing button layout?). I somehow doubt that it'll end up being this fancy upon initial release, but that would still be a pretty awesome future product for them. We're much more certain about Core 2 Duo MacBooks and MacBook Pros coming out soon, and Engadget even believes that it'll be next month. That's definitely a pretty likely thing to happen, though I wonder how they'll keep costs down on the MacBook models? Meanwhile, Microsoft has finally hatched IE 7 and so it's now available for everyone to rush out and download. Of course I haven't gotten it yet because I could care less about an IE that's still behind on standards and security, but I'm glad that at least they're making an effort to improve it. Then again, Firefox 2 still isn't all that exciting, though it has some really nice additions to it. I think it's pretty equivalent to adding another 0.5 to the version number, though people were probably hoping that it would be a whole number version increase. Lastly, Microsoft has finally cracked under pressure from the EU and will be giving away software to run multiple OSes at the same time, which is quite an interesting move. I wonder if it'll be free here in America also?

Just a couple of quick movie things here. Yahoo Movies has some hilarious clips from Borat. Even in the mood I'm in, I laughed at them so I'd recommend watching them if you're at all amused by Ali G. Yahoo Movies put up the trailer for The Good German, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. It has potential, but I just hope that it's not one of those movies that tries too hard to be great.



Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. What's the longest distance you've ever traveled?
However far it is to Bombay from Houston!

2. What's the longest distance you've ever walked?
Just walking, probably a couple of miles? That's contiguous walking from one place to another though, not just in any given day. I walk much more than that in sum over my average day.

3. How far away is the friend/relative who lives the longest distance from you?
I have a cousin in Australia, so I guess that would be the farthest? Then again, if you go West she really isn't that far away, so maybe my family in India? Too tired to think about it, sorry.