Yes, these are the days, my friends, and these are the days, my friends. But these days of 888 cents and 106 coins of change...
Below: a fragmented essay I typed up late last night, after finishing some homework. I present it as is, because I'm too unsure about where I was going with it to attempt any changes.

One of my roommate's favorite pasttimes is going to parties, drinking a fair amount of vodka and beer, coming back to the dorm, calling (and waking) up one of his old friends from his hometown, and forcing her to stay up late and listen to him drunkenly mumble about life. I hope I'm not developing a similar penchance for sleep-deprived ravings in this space...
Anyhow, it's two in the morning, and I just finished writing a paper about nothing for my English class... in the dark. My roommates were going to bed, so I grabbed my PDA, portable keyboard, and assignment packet and headed for the Sanborn Hall den. The screen on my PDA is tiny, though, and my eyes were (and are) tiny, so I wound up turning off the lights and BSing my way though a paper analyzing Jonathan Schell's mastery of basic literary techniques to the blue-green glow of the Visor. Whenever I needed to cite something, I just switched the Geek Box over to a program that displays a screen of solid pixels and used the thing as a flashlight.
I bought the thing because I needed some degree of mobile computing and couldn't afford a laptop. Now, when it looks like I'm going to be buying a new computer very soon, my choice will be for a desktop model because I don't need a laptop anymore. One tiny $300 (now worth half that, natch) contraption does everything a $3,000 mobile computer would, and some things it couldn't. Technology is neat like that, you know? Like that, and like the way Andre Torrez, computer programmer and son of a barber, can be mentioned on a minor cable network for a personal side project. Go Andre!
After KQ, I forgot for a short while a major revelation I had as I drove Anne back to her dorm just after the event, just as I somehow temporarily blanked the name of Alan Kiung, the hip-hop DJ I mentioned. The revelation was this: running around and being crazy in the Friley basement was the most fun I've had in Iowa. To be perfectly honest (just this once), I'm really just not all that happy here. It's not because of the quality of the education I'm receiving, or the odd living conditions, or even the damned wind. I'm just not enjoying myself a great deal. Of course, the great dilemma comes just upstream in the flow of revelations: first, it's probably my fault, and second, I'm not sure I'm supposed to be happy. After all, I'm not paying $14,000 a year to have a good time; I'm paying $14,000 a year to receive a decent education. I have used this argument to poke fun at my university in the past, and it of course works both ways. But where does it leave me? Unhappy, slowly balding, and sitting in a dark room at two in the morning staring at a $300 address book? To claim that I'm misunderstood would be to imply that I understand myself in a way that most other people don't. Not only is this laughable, but it's not true. My glass is half-empty, after all, and the other half is just as clear.

Blah, blah, whine, whine, blah. And then I passed out.
Anyway, media and linkage. First off, Nightline may be on the verge of termination. A number of former Nightline staff and crew are working on CNN's News Night now, so it should be no surprise that that show did a piece on the subject last Friday. It's really an insightful piece, and takes a good look at the state of journalism today. I've acquired and cropped a transcript, and it is available here. Transcript is ©2002 Cable News Network, and all that, but check it out anyway if you care one way or another about news.
The "how much caffeine would kill you" meme has come and passed, but completely missed was a nice little crib sheet about caffeine's chemical properties. Fun fact! Caffeine induces an overdose state after the consumption of about 250mg in a relatively short period. This is equal to two or three cups of coffee, two and a half caffiene-imbued no-doze pills, or five to eight cans of cola. A caffeine overdose comes with at least five of the following symptoms: restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushed face, diuresis, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, rambling flow of thought and speech, tachycardia or cardiac arrhythmia, periods of inexhaustibility, and/or psychomotor agitation. Note that in general, you don't get to pick which five.
Finally, Philip Glass! I've done some checking, and after some consultation and a referral from Tyler, I've come to the conclusion that Einstein on the Beach is an incredible piece of music. Several recordings have been cut from it; I've posted the lyrics to part of it as a text file. (That first link has more information and audio clips, by the way.) Just astonishing...