* ANMLY_Blog

Resolutions

Haven’t done them in a while, so I will actually do some this year. Here’s to making my goals.

1. Follow my schedule. Better.
2. Not miss a lecture except for a very good reason (sick, going out of town, natural disaster, family emergency).
3. Semester GPA between 3.5 and 4.0.
4. 77 kg.
5. No more Walmart (purchasing).
6. No more fast-food.
7. No more (plastic) bottled drink (2L exception)
7b. No more HFC-based soda.
8. No more sweet packaged snack.
9. Once a week maximum eating out.
10. Find an internship/decent job in the GTR area.

My bets?

1. Probably last about three to four weeks. But I hope that this prediction doesn’t come true.
2. I’ll stick to this till about the end of the semester. Watch me.
3. If I work hard, 4.0. Otherwise, I’ll end up on the lower end of the resolution.
4. Probably not this year. But you never know.
5. There’ll be something I can’t get anywhere else in Starkville and I won’t want to go to Columbus to get it. That’ll be it. 4 – 5 months.
6. I’ll crave something and go for it anyways. 3 months.
7. If I’m good, I’ll stick to this one for at least 6 months or so. I’ll just end up getting glass bottles (which the BP near my apt does sell). Only problem is 7b – Coke Zero does not come in glass.
8. Easy. I really only eat this at home. 8 – 12 months.
9. I know my friends will tempt me to go out. 3 – 5 months.
10. With this job market, not sure about it.

The meds, they work!

Just as the title says, I’m getting all kinds of better. Yay meds!

Pneumonia Is Not Fun

Pneumonia is not fun. Not fun at all. But I’m dealing with it. It took the Health Center a week to diagnose it, but they finally did take me seriously (rather than just sending me away with the “Common Cold” med package).

Last Friday, I went into the Health Center claiming short of breath, coughing, and headaches. They said I had the common cold and sent me away with basic meds to treat some of the symptoms. They said if it got worse or didn’t improve in a week to come in. Well, Thursday night, it suddenly got worse again and stayed bad Friday.

I come in and the nurses immediately send me to a MD. They took my blood, x-rayed my chest, and the doctor looked at the results and listened to my lungs. He said pneumonia and sent me into another room for treatment. An hour later, I’m sent away with antibiotics and an inhaler with meds to help with breathing.

It’s working, but not quick enough. *sigh*

Cell Usage Spreadsheet

So I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet that tracks my usage per month so I can change stuff on my phone’s account ahead of time based off trends calculated from previous months. It predicts what I might use the next month and if it shows that I’ll go over my minutes or messages to the point where it gets expensive, I can bump my plan up a notch so that I avoid some of those outrageous charges (like $75 for 400 messages in ’08 – could have saved $70 by switching to unlimited). So here’s the figures for this month…

Minutes (450 min + 4109 rollover min + 5000 night and weekend (no rollover))
Minutes Predicted: 299 min
Minutes Used: 269 min
Error: 10% (down)

Data (unlimited)
Data Usage Predicted: 269836 kb
Data Usage Used: 136808 kb
Error: 49% (down)

Messages (1500 text + MMS)
Messages Predicted: 1202 messages
Likelihood of exceeding 1500: 45.15%
Messages Used: 1069 messages (1067 text, 2 MMS)
Error: 11% (down)

So let’s analyze this.

I really don’t use the minutes I’m alloted for by AT&T. Almost nobody I know makes calls any more. Most of my calls are to home. If AT&T had a low voice plan (200 min or so) for non-seniors, I would jump on that quick. That or I need to find more people to call. Case in point – since January 2008, the most I have called was 400 minutes in August. I got 50 rollover minutes from that.

Data usage is going down from summer. This is mostly due to the university having wireless everywhere on campus and wireless at the apartment. I rarely, if ever, go to 3G except when in Starkville. The predicted numbers should start falling in the next few months, bringing the 49% error rate down close to 10%.

Messaging is getting more accurate by the month. 11% down is very acceptable when talking about 1k messages.

So the equations aren’t perfect yet – I need to tweak them one more time, but they are fairly accurate based off past months.

A Future Project Maybe?

So, looking at what I can do with an old analog LCD TV I have, I found this little number. A computer in an Altoids tin. Possibly a fun project for the future? $75 (or I can just buy the board and find the parts myself) and I have myself an Altoids computer. I’ll probably even convert it to run off battery rather than wall power.