Xatal

If you have a son, daughter, boyfriend, girlfriend, or friend in college and are not sure what to get him/her, thinking of good ideas can be a bit tough.

In dorms, college kids don’t typically have much with them — dorms in themselves are a rather limited lifestyle. If the person you’re shopping for lives in an apartment, there are a few more options, but they tend to be a bit different.

Gifts for college students

• Posters! AllPosters has many different posters, though if you’re unsure, a gift certificate may be better.
• Quality snacks — cookies, crackers, candy, or anything that can be eaten in a dorm. Dining hall food often leaves a lot to be desired, so snacks are always welcome.
• Gift certificates. Find stores near the college that are easily accessible. Fast food, restaurants, and cheap retail stores are always a sure bet.
• Cooking supplies (for students in an apartment). My mom always gets George Foreman grills — easy to use but very essential to have.
• Quality furnishings — nice towels, simple carpets, lamps, chairs, and so forth. Obviously most of these are more necessary in an apartment.
• Bean bag chairs! Perfect for having people over to hang out.
• NetFlix subscription. You’d be surprised how handy this can be.

Apologies a thousand times for the lack of posts, I’ve really been meaning to post more often, but due to final snad other complications, I haven’t had much opportunity to lately.

However, now that I’m off for the next three weeks, I’ll have more time to post.

If you have anything you’d like to see a post about, I emphasize the Contact page, where you can send me whatever question or suggestion you have. I’m always open to ideas!

Due to extreme cuts in California’s budget, schools are not being given as much money as normal, and so teachers can’t afford to buy all of the paper they need for tests, handouts, and so forth. In order to raise money to afford to print out papers, one teacher has a creative solution: sell advertising space.

According to USA Today, a high school teacher in San Diego has begun selling advertising space on his paper to help meet the costs of supplies. Read the rest of this entry »

This year is flying by already, and it’s really been catching me off-guard. Senior year in high school flew by as well, but I’m even more surprised that this year is going by faster.

This is my last week of actual classes, and after that comes a week of finals. I’m unlucky enough to have a final on the very last block, so by then many will have already gone home for the holidays.

In a sense I think it would be pretty cool to have Christmas here — sort of a Harry Potter-esque thing — to wake up with friends and unwrap gifts, hang out under a Christmas tree, and so forth. But of course that’s not going to happen. My roommate and I put up some Christmas lights which actually look pretty cool, we might actually keep them all year around.

Again, I’m sorry for the big lack of updates. I’m pretty upset with myself, since I’d been meaning to write a good amount of posts last month, what with applications being due and all, but I didn’t. November was a really disappointing month for myself, and I’m sorry to my readers for that.

Although of course every college has its due date, a huge amount of colleges have their applications due tomorrow.

Hopefully you haven’t put it off too long, as by now it’s nearing the end. Try not to cut it any closer than you have to. When my brother turned in his UC applications, he was technically too late, but they ended up giving another day because the server crashed from all the last minute applications being sent in. You don’t want to take that chance.

Good luck with your applications. Now you can take a rest from the stress of them and simply wait to see where you get in :)

Sorry about the downtime we had over the past few days. One of the servers that hosted this site had to be completely replaced, so it took a couple of days for that to happen. On the plus side, the server should be faster than ever now, which is always nice :)

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving!

I realize I haven’t been updating much lately. For the most part, I’ve just been rather busy with school work and other things.

Mainly, I have a nasty habit of procrastinating, so when it’s the night before I plan to make a post and I have to choose between writing out a post or doing the homework that I put off, I end up choosing the homework and don’t have enough time to write out a decent post. Of course, my lack of time management is my fault and I do apologize for the infrequent updates. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to have a regular schedule.

That and I’ve been playing Fallout 3. A lot, actually. Fun game!

So luckily, my TA for a discussion section on Tuesday night decided to cancel it due to the election, so I was able to watch the results fully as they unfolded.

As I mentioned earlier, I am an Obama supporter, and at first I was a bit anxious watching the votes come in — while Obama was doing well, he wasn’t winning anything Kerry hadn’t in 2004. But as the night went on, he began to do better and better, and of course he ended up winning it.

Although I disagreed with him on many issues, I do have a good deal of respect for John McCain and I think he was a reasonable candidate. Had McCain been our president for the last 8 years instead of Bush, I think our country would be in a different position than it is now. But, in the end, I feel that Obama’s stances are more along the lines of where we need to go.

The rest of the Western world was pretty in favor of us electing Obama, and I think we’ve begun to redeem ourselves for a lot of what’s gone wrong over the last 8 years.

How Obama will do remains to be seen, but I’m optimistic.

So, we finally have come to Election Day in the United States.

This is undoubtedly a big election, one in which a lot more people have been taking interest. Without interjecting too many of my political beliefs, I would guess the surge in interest comes from many believing that the United States is headed in the wrong direction, and so many want to have a voice in what direction the country takes. This election could sport one of the best voter turnouts ever.

There has been a lot of attention throughout this election. The primaries, normally a rather fast process, were drawn out quite a bit (see: Democrats), and the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s vice presidential nominee definitely spiced things up a bit as well. A lot is hanging on this election, from decisions about Iraq and the economy to decisions about healthcare and education. There is no doubt that our choice of president will greatly influence what path the country takes for the next four years.

Although it’s much too late for me to encourage people to register to vote, it isn’t too late for me to encourage registered voters to go to the polls. So much is hanging on this election: to simply turn a blind eye is to show a complete lack of care for the potential effects on the lives of many Americans.

I voted already via mail-in ballot, and I personally voted for Obama. I have my reasons, just as voters for McCain have their reasons. I have been following FiveThirtyEight lately, and am a bit curious how accurate their predictions are.

Regardless of who wins, I’m hoping that this election is not plagued by cheating (from either side), though undoubtedly something will come up. I just want an honest election, where the candidate who becomes president is truly what America wanted.

So without further ado, the big daddy:

 Loading ...

Seeing as today is Halloween, I was wondering about trick-or-treating.

Ever since I was a kid, trick-or-treating was the big highlight of Halloween. Each year, I would plan to hit even more houses than the year before. Once I was old enough to trick-or-treat with friends, we would try to find the areas with the most homes, where hopefully we could get the most candy. In reality, each year our plans ended up failing due to one reason or another: once we went to a neighborhood where nobody was giving out candy, another we spent looking for a friend’s girlfriend, and one year we were just simply too lazy. in the end, I never actually fulfilled my dream of “The Jackpot”.

Halloween is the ultimate holiday as a kid

As my friends and I grew older, we started hearing the inevitable line from adults handing out candy, “Aren’t you a little old to be trick-or-treating?” I first heard it in 6th grade, and I heard it more every year after that. The last time I went trick-or-treating was during my sophomore year of high school (when I was 16), and I was hearing it quite a bit that year.

During my junior and senior year, I didn’t have any interest in trick-or-treating because other opportunities came up — one year I went out with a girl, the other year I went to see a movie and spent some time with friends. However, if the group decision had been to go trick-or-treating, I would still have been willing to go out. Now, though, I finally feel too old to go out, perhaps a result of being away at college, or maybe because I finally realized I can buy candy any time I want. I would still love to hit The Jackpot, but beyond that I really don’t have much interest in walking around. I’d rather spend Halloween at a party, with friends, or even just watching scary movies and handing out candy to kids.

What do you think?

 Loading ...

Beyond that, I’d like to wish everybody a happy Halloween. Since it’s on a Friday this year, there are many more opportunities than normal. What interesting things are you up to this year?