Well, alright! An update it is!

Iowa State.
Iowa State!
What can I say about Iowa State?
Hmm.
Well, at least there are plenty of resources available to students here. Like the student-run teacher rating website that alerted me to the fact that my calculus professor couldn't speak very good English, the first and second threads on the campus bulletin-board that urged me to change sections, and the mega-wonder-app that made it possible for me to do so. I now have a better professor, a TA that I have worked with before, and a slightly better schedule that has enough free time blocked during the day for me to get a job, finally. The important thing here, though is that the Internet is coming along to the point where the lives of ordinary (not IT professionals, or hard-core geeks, but ordinary) people here and there are being improved by this technology.
...although I'm mostly just mentioning this as a roundabout way of complaining about my (now former) calculus professor. Sure, his English isn't too great, but it's better than my Chinese, and I am willing to work with that. Prof. Hou just isn't a very effective teacher, that's all. Prof. Wu, on the other hand, is very well-published, and seems to be very passionate about his work, so I will give him a try. In the meantime, I shall "keep on bitching!", as the beloved mistress Shar always urged me to.
I hope Shar's doing alright.
But you keep on bitching too, whoever you may be.

Random media of the update: my new keyboard. It's not much to look at (negative points on form factor), but the key pitch is almost as low as on a miniature keyboard, and fingers glide smoothly over them while typing as though it were a big two-by-four. Not as good for command-line hacking as the old Gateway axe, but perfect for long writing sessions.