The month of April 2005, will go down in my history books as one of the most stressful months of my life. I'm surprised I didn't get some kind of ulcer, or attempt to drive my Lumina off a bridge somewhere.

I think I've mentioned the living hell that is, or rather was, Business Communications. Well, during the course of this past month, OA 125's level of annoyance moved from eye sporking to, oh, let's say willingly running around campus with a trench coat full of pin-less frag grenades screaming "I are communist!" at random.

As part of the final grade, the class was given a set of topics, one of which a professional-like business report was to be done on. This was nothing unfamiliar; we had been told at the start of the semester that we would have to complete one. However, knowing that my topic involved something that I am very knowledgeable about, I didn't concern myself with it.

Who gives a rat's ass what network operating system would be best for a company? I said to myself. Seeing how much that group knows about computing, I could say that Novell NetWare is the most popular OS on the market, and no one will know any different. Why should I invest any time into this when there's fun to be had over the skies of Flanders? So I put it out of my mind. I whittled the days away in the era of Richthofen, winning countless, hollow battles against even more hollow aircraft. There was much fun to be had in the cockpit of my speedy Spad XIII. It was so speedy, in fact, that it had shot me into the future, and left me with only one week in which I was supposed to research and present a professional business report, something can easily take months to complete in the business world.

Crap.

It was safe to say that, by this point, I was so far underwater that I could no longer see which way was up. However, I realized that, as part of a project for Networking, I had to choose a NOS for a fictitious company. Seeing as how I had to do this anyway, I decided to adhere my report to the situation at RobCo, the false company. I pulled out my Net + book and frantically began plagarizing from it to write my report. What happened after that is a mystery to me. I'm guessing my brain had to use some equivalent of virtual memory in order to process that thing, and in the process, blanked out a piece of my memory. I remember snippets of the "creative process," but I don't remember anything else about that week.

Regardless, I somehow got the thing done, handed it in, and as part of the report, presented my findings to the class. And with that, the only thing left of the nightmare is the exam, which is going to be a Scantron (multiple choice) test. Sweet...finally time to relax...

...I realized that, as part of a project for Networking...

Double crap.

Well, actually more like crap & a half. In this project, I am assuming the role of a network designer, and my goal is to install a new network for a company that has a scanty collection of "computers." I'm being graded on the portfolio that I present to my teacher, Rob: the "owner of RobCo." It will essentially consist of some price estimates, along with a listing of what products I'm going to buy with the company's money. In essence, there is no real work involved: just go out online and print out pictures of cable, connectors, and other stuff, and throw a price under it. The only problem with this project is that I have yet to actually do the portfolio, hence this entry's change of tense.

Somewhere in this whole mess of a month was my 19th birthday, and as a treat, I took the $30 Grandma Morgan gave me and bought a copy of Call of Duty. For the last two weeks, the only constructive thing I've done is act as the Royal Air Corps' team representative for Red Baron World League VI. I've been so engrossed with this game that, after only two days, I beat the Single Player mode. All gamers know, however, that the real fun is in online arenas.  So, over the last few days, I've been battling Nazis and my iffy 230-ish ping time in CoD multiplayer. I've worked my way up from total novice to having a 1:1 kill/death ratio. With a dial-up connection, I think that's purdy dern good.

So that's April 2005, in a nutshell. I've got my exams next week, and in mid-May, a "vacation" in Tennessee that Grandma Redford concocted. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it, seeing as how I'm going to be deprived of a computer for a week.

By the way, a big thank you to everyone who wished my a happy birthday in my tag board over the 15th! Your wishes meant a lot to me.

Ok, I've had enough of looking at this Notepad window.