Jarrett's Journal

I just had a conference with my English professor about my first college research paper that I wrote on "Don't ask, don't tell", and he said he loved it. But the best part is that he liked it so much that he wants to help me get my article published! He wants to meet with me later to edit it, update it, and rewrite it as an editorial that I could submit to the school newspaper or a local Utah paper. How exciting is that?!

Here's a link to download it if anyone wants to read it. It's in PDF format.
Click here to download

Today I noticed that the colors of fall have really set in recently. Tons of leaves have fallen already, and most of the trees have an orange or red hue now. It hasn't started to get exceptionally cold yet though, I still need to get at least one more heavy jacket if I want to survive the upcoming brutal months of cold and snow.

I'm really excited for the snow though. I've seen snow plenty of times but I've never seen snowflakes while they're falling. I saw snow fall a couple weeks ago for the first time, but it only snowed for five minutes and it looked more like hail than snow (or what I've been told is "pellet snow"), so it wasn't that exciting. I want to see how good I am at making snowmen and other snow creations, I can't wait!

It was snowing today, yaaay! Unfortunately it only snowed for like five minutes, and the cold weather system is moving away from salt lake city, but it was still enjoyable. It's been pretty hot here for the past few weeks, so hopefully this trend will continue as fall approaches. Of course I say that now, before the temperatures start to play a game of limbo.

Aww, betrayal can be really sad [deviantART link]

I've been working on a video project for a few days now, and I think it's going to turn out well. I'm a bit disappointed though, because the library provides camcorders to rent but no memory cards or USB cables so I can't even edit any of the video. So I can only use my regular point-and-shoot camera for video, which is fine but the video has obvious compression artifacts in it. :/

However, I am doing it in black and white so that should hide them a little bit. I edited for like five hours yesterday and I think it's coming along really well. It's basically just random scenes of me walking, skipping, etc. in slow motion around campus with music in the background, but I'm editing it to look more abstract and surreal, like using lots of reverse video and cuts that sync to the music. I'll definitely upload it to facebook once the contest is over, can't wait to finish it!

Just saw this really cute but creepy cat on youtube

I got my first english paper back today, and I got great reviews! I had to write on a local issue in your hometown, and needless to say San Antonio doesn't have that much going on. So I wrote on our water shortage, and had to take a position on whether or not the water restrictions were justified. Well obviously water restrictions are justified, so I wasn't thrilled to write the paper. But I got these comments back on it:

"Good, focused topic. Excellent writing. I'll be counting on you to help some of the others work on sentence structure and other language issues."

I'm thrilled that my professor respects my writing! Thanks GT english!

I just got snow leopard for my mac yesterday, yay! In case you don't know, snow leopard, or Mac OS X 10.6, is the successor to leopard, or Mac OS X 10.5. I've been spending most of my time reinstalling my applications and setting up everything, which I enjoy doing. Most people installed snow leopard over leopard, leaving their data untouched, but you can make your computer run faster by installing the operating system from scratch (while backing up your files of course).

Some of the major changes in snow leopard include all programs being rewritten in 64-bit (so they run faster), a brand new Quicktime (which looks very sleek), a slightly better looking Finder, faster startup/shutdown, and takes up half the size it did before. Not very exciting changes, but it was only $29.


Aww, look at the snow leopard

So I'm on this road trip in Colorado with one of my roommates Alex and my friend Danielle. Now Alex and Danielle are pretty much bf/gf at this point, and Alex has been acting like a douche ever since. Every time I did the speed limit on the highway he would complain that we really could be going 5 mph over the limit without a problem, and would mention this fact literally every 5-10 min. Then he said I was "driving like a drunk man" and called me a "fucking idiot" when I took an exit too early. I told him to cut that shit out, and that's finally when Danielle said something, so he was (relatively) quiet for the rest of the trip.

We arrived in Veil, CO where his house is yesterday, and ever since then I've been treated like a third wheel. Ugh! And apparently we're going to see a bluegrass concert later tonight, and I'm not the biggest bluegrass fan to be honest.

It's not all bad though, we did chill in a hot tub last night, and I'm taking some great photos of beautiful Colorado. I'll post all of the photos of my trip to facebook by monday, but until then here's a preview:

Click on an image to see it's enlarged version

Thoughts from Jarrett

I went to the mall yesterday and bought a bonsai tree from an Asian woman who's first language wasn't English. I asked her how to take care of a bonsai, since I've killed one before, and it was a bit difficult to understand her, but it made me think how hard it must be for her to live in a country where it's difficult to communicate with almost everyone.

Then I started thinking about the best way to communicate with someone who has difficulty understanding you. Slowing down your speech a little helps, as they have more time to process your words and phonetics, but if you slow down your speech too much it will sound like you're baby talking to them, and that will probably offend them. The best strategy is to elaborate your sentences and make them clearer.

For example, if you were giving directions to someone who knows English well, you might say "Go down 'till you see the McDonalds, take a left, and the Best Buy'll be on your right." But if you were giving directions to someone who doesn't have a firm grasp on the English language, it might be better for you to instead say "Go down this road until you see a McDonalds. [short pause] Then take a left. [short pause] Then keep going. The Best Buy will be on the right." The more context you give, the more context clues they can use to understand you.

Well today I'm heading to New Orleans with my family for a vacation. I'm sitting in the truck, trying to survive in the cramped prison they call the back seat My jeep is much better for traveling but we never take it cause apparently it's too old (by 3 years).

The vacation should be fun though. I don't know what we're doing, but I know we're going to see a jazz show or two and that's good enough for me. I'll be sure to post pics to facebook!

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

Thought this comic was funny

Pictures for sad children

School is about to start, in less than three weeks, and I'm trying to be optimistic. I like seeing so many people everyday (as long as it's not CRAZY loads of people), but I hate the process of new classes, new parking spaces, new class schedules, new body clock schedules, new lunches, and all that grand new stuff. Sometimes change is bleh.

These stories keep coming out in the news, and its getting disturbing. Isn't it 2008? What happened to the progression of society, and the decline of barbaric attacks against other citizens, other people, of all kinds?

~~~~~

Report: Anti-gay violence on rise

(New York City) The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs said Tuesday that the number of violent crimes against LGBT people is up significantly in 2008.

Well since Deb has done a photo survey, I must as well to keep up with the times. But...I'm doing a different photo survey! You thought you could get me, but you couldn't!

( View photo survey )

I haven't posted to my journal in a while, but that's mostly because nothing has really happened this summer that I care to write about. I was going to keep a journal of my trip to Europe, but there's so much that happened on that trip, and most of it was bad, so I don't really want to write about it. That trip really messed me up emotionally for a while, but I'm fine now, of course.

What I will do, though, is try to include more into my journal, such as music, videos, random thoughts, hopes, and such. I had been trying to keep my journal feeling like a traditional diary, but now I realize what a waste of energy that really is, especially when you get and give a better experience, from more than just words. I hope that made sense.

I just recently discovered that you can import feeds to Facebook notes. So I imported my LiveJournal. Now whenever I make a post to my journal, it will also appear on my Facebook notes, which is great. If you are reading this post on Facebook, then the import works. Keep posted.

I talked with Domenica recently, and I haven't in a while, so that was cool. It turns out that she's in her local GSA club, and active in promoting acceptance of gay people, which is great! She's going to send me a packet of how to start a GSA club, so hopefully that will work out. Musha said she was trying to start one, but that was a few months ago, so I'll have to see if we hit an obstacle or something, as I'd love to have one my senior year. But anyways, me and Domenica talked for about two hours, and it was great to catch up on stuff. I wish she was still here though, she could have helped started a GSA over here, gosh!

I was in Corpus Christi, TX earlier today and yesterday, visiting my aunts and grandparents, and while I was glad to get out of San Antonio, see the beach, and eat at a nice seafood restaurant on the beach, the rest of it was very boring. Most of the time there was spent at my grandparents house, and my aunts and grandparents would talk about all sorts of things that weren't interesting to me, so I was on my computer most of the time.

It was interesting at one point though, as my grandmother had the Ellen DeGeneres show on. I said "Oh Ellen, she's so funny", to which my grandmother replied "Well, I don't like her". So I said directly said "Why, because she's a lesbian?", and she said "Something like that". I told her that she doesn't focus on her orientation, that it's not what defines her, and that she's a normal person, a nice one even, as she's a good philanthropist too. She told me how unnatural it was, so I just didn't continue it after that. I'll come out to her one day, but it'll only be when I'm independent, and not required to go to extended family events, just in case.

So I found out that my car's totaled, but I just recently found out that the engine block is cracked on both sides. So my parents got me a new car, a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee! It drives well, it has lots of room, it's got a great stereo, and it has an electronic console on the top that gives me the temperature, the gas mileage, how many miles I have left until I need to gas up, and other cool stuff! However, the gas mileage was supposed to be 17 mpg in the city, but the console has been telling me numbers from 12-13 mpg, so now I feel guilty. At least it's better for the environment than my old diesel car was!