I relaxed a little more. I kind of let myself spread outside of the confines of my room. All good things must come to an end, however, and my remaining roommate returned yesterday.

I almost wish he hadn’t left, because I got used to living alone. I could wander around the apartment in my underwear whenever. I could leave dishes and pans in the sink for a couple days. I didn’t have to get my clothes out of the dryer as soon as they were dry. I could leave a mess of razors and face cleaning stuff in the bathroom.

But now I have to go back to living-with-other-people mode. And it’s annoying.

Brad answered the door so he got to go first. The guy was asking him the basic questions, and then he asked Brad what race he was. Brad kind of gave him an incredulous look and said “white”, which is quite obvious if you look at him, but I know he has to ask this question every single time because he doesn’t actually know Brad and he could have answered in any number of ways.

So he gets to me and asks me my race and I answer “human”. He kind of chuckled and said he had to write it down because that’s what I answered. I didn’t make any effort to correct my answer.

I almost felt guilty for giving this guy an answer he clearly wasn’t looking for, but I think in the grand scheme of things I’d rather be marked down as “human” than “white”.

My dad called me a couple days ago and says he’s been getting a couple of phone calls from people asking for me. My dad lives in Florida. I have his number on my phone, and I haven’t given it out to anyone. We’re both boggled as to how anyone can make the connection between us as I haven’t seen him in more than two years and we typically only communicate through email.

Just 20 minutes ago, I got this voicemail in my Google Voice mailbox. I missed the call because my phone was on silent. I can’t even tell what the person on the other end is saying except for the bit at the end.

So if anyone knows anything about this, please let me know!

Last night I simply could not sleep. I tossed and turned for what must have been at least an hour. I’m woken up this morning by a phone call. I knew that the weather today would be shitty so I was expecting this to be my instructor telling me that she’s canceling this morning’s flight. It was my instructor, but she was asking whether or not I planned on coming in this morning. I had overslept. So we plan on me coming in at 9:30 and I apologize for oversleeping, and then I’m getting ready. I had apparently not re-set my alarm for this morning and it was still set for 10AM, which is when I woke up yesterday.

I get to the airport and my instructor had left me a practice exam to do while she was in a meeting. This practice exam is in preparation for a test that I have to take before I’m allowed to fly solo, and it’s kind of a big deal. There’s a certain number of failures, which implies that the test is somewhat difficult, and if you bomb out you’re done in the flight program. The practice test is short answer, which is the bane of my existence. I can take multiple choice tests all day but short answer is the worst because then I actually have to recall the things I’ve learned.

The practice test went well though, and I did pretty well on it. My confidence was building and my instructor and I went over the questions I missed and a couple of things that weren’t on the practice test. She asks me if I wanted to take the pre-solo written now. I was feeling pretty good about it and I know it’s a multiple choice test and by now I just want to get it done with so I agreed. She did some admin stuff, and made a phone call, and then she asked me if I had an E6B with me. The E6B is a little metal plate with some slides and charts for computing numbers quickly. I don’t entirely know what it’s used for. I told her my E6B is at my apartment because we haven’t really used it yet. She told me it wasn’t a big deal, if there were any questions involving the E6B it’d only be one or two, and I’d probably be OK guessing them. Another instructor pipes up to say that his student (a friend of mine) just took the test and didn’t even need the E6B. With that she sent me up to the terminal to take the test.

I got up there and talked to the lady to administers the test. She asked me if I needed a pencil or any materials. I couldn’t fathom what materials I would need beyond the E6B which I am now not concerned with, so I went into the testing room which what I have; a pen and my coat. She handed me a blue binder and piece of scrap paper. The test is computerized through Blackboard so I logged in, and started it. The questions were worded a little different from the practice exam and some of them covered topics not even hinted at in the practice exam, but it was a multiple choice test and I considered myself pretty knowledgeable as far as I’d been in the course. Then I got to a question that referred to figures and diagrams. This is a computerized test and there were no figures or diagrams on the screen so I assumed this was one of those E6B questions that I can disregard. I made an educated guess and moved on. I got to another question that referred to figures. Okay, two questions out of 36 isn’t that bad. All told there were about 5 questions involving figures. By the end of the test, I was slightly concerned. I submitted my answers and logged out.

Then I noticed that blue binder the lady gave me. I opened it up, and lo and behold, diagrams and figures. It was a little late now, though, because I had already submitted my answers and logged out. Oh well. At least I get multiple tries at this exam, right? I returned the binder and my scrap paper and the lady kind of looked at me like I was done, even though Blackboard didn’t immediately give me my score, and she clearly wasn’t going to tell me. Okay, I guess that means my instructor will let me know how I did.

Back in my instructor’s cubicle, another of her students is already there. She was astonished at how fast I had finished the test and asked me how I did. I made a face and told her about the blue binder. She assumed that I had failed and asked me if I wanted to try to get a retry now based on the fact that I’d missed out of the blue binder, or if I wanted another day to study and I could give it another go tomorrow. I knew that the difference in taking it with the binder would have saved my score so I told her I wanted to try to re-take it now.

She called the lady to administered the test and told her I didn’t know about the blue binder and that I failed. As soon as the words “failed” exited her mouth, I had to interject that I didn’t actually know my score and that I may not have failed. I was not looking forward to re-taking that test and if I passed, then the blue binder is moot. My instructor hung up with the lady, so she could try to check my score. Her account wouldn’t show her my score, so she asked me to log in to see if it’d tell me. Sure enough, I got 26 out of 36. Quick math revealed that I got a 72%. My instructor called up the lady to ask what was needed to pass and she’s told a 70%. Even without the blue binder and the diagrams, I passed.

That shit is embarrassing. I am so totally okay with bombing out on a test. I’m okay with bombing a test because I’m too dumb to realize that I have the testing materials and I’m not using them. But no, this time I get to limp across the finish line, with a barely passing grade. I almost would have rather failed the test and re-taken it and gotten an appropriate score, rather than slide through with the absolute minimum score.

I know my agonizing is ridiculous. I know passing is passing, and no one really cares how well (or poorly) I did on my pre-solo written exam. But I am seriously embarrassed.

I still have a theater class and a philosophy class to get through, on this rainy, embarrassing, shit day.

I came back to Carbondale last night. Okay drive but it was all in the rain. Both of my roommates were gone. This morning I found out the little refrigerator that I use to keep my soda in was turned off for however long they were gone for. It was gross though because my roommates keep some meat in the freezer section and it had all de-thawed and stank.

Then my xbox 360 died. Not like the last time it died, where it was acting weird and not turning on but ended up working fine. No, this time it won’t turn back on without showing a screen that says E79 error. E79 is hard drive related, and since it won’t turn on with or without the hard drive, the internet tells me that the console is fucked. I have the good fortune of having just received a big check from the government for god knows what, so I didn’t have much work convincing myself that the best solution was to replace it entirely.

Soooo I did. I went to Best Buy first but they didn’t have any of the bundles with Halo: ODST and Forza 3. I found one at Gamestop. It was possibly one of the best experiences I’ve had at a Gamestop. I asked the lady behind the counter if they had one, she said they did and got it for me, and rang me right up. No Game Informer, no reservations, no warranty, no bullshit. In and out in less than 5 minutes.

I got it home and agonized over opening it. Unopened, I can still return it for a full refund. Once I opened it, though, it’s all mine. I stared at it for a while. I plugged my old xbox back in and tried it again. Same crap. Then I bit the bullet, took out my knife, and broke the seal.

Don’t get me wrong; I did want a new xbox. I wanted a bigger hard drive and quieter console and more reliable hardware. I just didn’t want it like this; my old xbox in a state of limbo, not entirely dead but definitely a brick until I open it up. I’m still going to need a transfer kit to move all my savegames and downloads from my old hard drive to my new hard drive.

I did it. I have a new xbox, huge (well, 120 GB) hard drive, HDMI support, another controller and headset, and Forza 3 and a bonus copy of ODST. Life is almost good again.

In four days, my Army obligations will, for the most part, be officially over. I have plenty to be spiteful of but I can’t for the life of me dig up those graves. I just so happy that this is all finally over and I can go back to a normal life and move on to being more than just the dude who fixes your printer.

Here’s the short list of people I want to publicly thank; Martinez, Parlier, Thomson, Reina, Wilson, Key, Hice, Laforest, Blythe, Lawson, Saro, Burditus, Killman, Sweet, Jackson, Jones, Welsh, Baker, and O’Rourke.

I stop shaving on Wednesday and I stop wearing the uniform on Thursday. Beyond that I’m just working on being a real person again.

I’m done with Digg and Reddit.

Digg has slowly devolved into strictly stupid pictures and top 10 lists. Reddit gets huffs and tisks at every wrong doing while rarely doing anything about them and is a general wellspring of negativity.

Now I am batshit insane about getting new news but only when it’s stuff I care about. I could not care less about top 10′s, dumb pictures, and I can wait for good tech news if it means I don’t have to wade through a sea of bitterness. So I’m back to relying on old favorites, Slashdot and Ars Technica, and Google News.

So if I wasn’t doing much work before I’m definitely not doing much now! I start the out-processing rigmarole on December 15th, which will either be super easy because not a lot of guys are getting out the same time I am or absolutely impossible because everyone will be on Christmas vacation.

In case you don’t know me at all, I am super excited about getting out of the Army and finally moving on with my life. Ever since the beginning of my last deployment (November 2007) I’ve felt like I’ve been stuck in an enormous rut; unable to progress in my career with nowhere to go and no help to look to. I’ve been doing the same goddamned job for my entire enlistment in the same unit on the same post. I’ve gone nowhere and seen nothing but 1-32 CAV and Iraq. It is well past-time that I start something new.

Of course I’ve been told for years that there’s plenty of other jobs and places in the Army but I never saw any of them and even if I were to stay in I wouldn’t have seen any change until at least 2011. I showed a few people I knew a few things early on and they held on to me as long as they could and then handed me off to the next guys who did the same thing, my own career be damned. I think it’s safe to say that, like all soldiers, I’ve been used up and abused and now I’m ready to be cast aside.

So what the hell am I doing anyway? I’m going to school! Southern Illinois University Carbondale! I’ll be studying aviation flight for two years before moving on to finish out the two years for a bachelor of science degree in aviation management, and since I have so many existing credits anyway, I may take a minor in computer science. In four years I’ll be flying planes for a living. I really couldn’t be more excited!

Two weeks ago I blew the rest of my Amazon trade-in credit on five new games. I got F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (PC) (obviously), Far Cry 2 (PC), TimeShift (PC), Red Faction Guerilla (X360), and Dead Space (X360). I’ve given them all a shake to see which I’m more interested in, ended up playing all the way through F.E.A.R. 2. I’m playing Dead Space a chapter at a time, which has been about 45 minutes to an hour of gameplay at a time.

I’m absolutely struggling to bring myself to finish TimeShift. I’m probably three levels from the end now and it is so mediocre that it hurts. I knew it wasn’t a great game to begin with but I had some hopes that it’d take the time suit in some interesting directions. Nope.

Katie and I have been doing some cleanup and repairs to the house to get it ready to sell. Selling the house is the biggest question mark in the entire shift from Army to school. A lot of our plans hinge on it going well, so many that it makes me nervous to have such a single point of failure. What’s worse is I can’t wrap my mind around anything else that could be done to alleviate our burdens if selling the house doesn’t go well.

In less depressing news, I sincerely can not wait until I get to school. There are so many things I want to do there and so many things to look forward to. I may have fucked up my first college run something fierce but I’ll be damned if it goes anywhere near that bad this time.