Shouzer

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tuition-web-27mar27,0,5136278.story

For the first time, new undergraduates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this fall will have to shell out more than $20,000 to attend the state’s flagship university.

The cost—the highest for any public school in the state—includes nearly $12,000 in base tuition and fees and more than $8,000 in room and board. The university’s Board of Trustees approved the increase Wednesday. Tuition for the typical new freshman will increase 9.5 percent to $9,242, an amount guaranteed for four years.

It looks like we got out of there just in time. Here’s my favorite part:

Engineering and business students will pay $4,152 more.

To add a completely ridiculous cherry to the top of this sundae, by my experiences, financial aid awards have declined over the past 5 years. So in summation, here’s what they are saying: “We’re making it more expensive for you to go to college, but don’t worry, because we’re giving you less help to pay for it.”

I’ve pretty much stopped paying attention to any political news lately, which would probably be fairly surprising to anybody who knows me.  I was trying to figure out why, and I realized I think it’s because I just can’t stand Hilary.  She just pisses me off.  I’m not sure exactly what it is, honestly, but anytime I hear her talk I want to rip off my ears.  And that can’t be a good sign.

I’m really surprised that Hilary’s even still around.  It doesn’t seem like anybody really likes her more than Obama, and yet she keeps get votes.  I hear talk about people being inspired by Obama and believing he can make a real change in the country.  I don’t hear the same  things about Hilary.  So who the fuck keeps voting for her?  For real, Hildog, I wanna know what your game is.

None of my Fruity Pebbles would fetch nearly this much.

Check out this new ad campaign for MSN (click “Watch Videos” on top and pick from the bottom three). I’ve got to admit that I really enjoy these commercials. In general, I think Microsoft has been doing a great job advertising lately. To help my case there, I present for your viewing pleasure Exhibit B.

Mark Steele really reminds me of the news dude from Penny Arcade. He’s awesome.

I know I’ve been absent from the blogging world lately (*cough* Juvers *cough*) I’ve been studying hard for finals, but this deserved a post. I know Steph and Megan will appreciate the irony of this. Turns out that our chorus teacher that lasted one year was a contestant on ABC’s The Bachelor: London Calling. If that’s not funny, I don’t know what is. This woman was always complaining about having to leave “upstate New York” and move to southern Illinois. I had to check out the shows web site since I obviously did not catch the episode when it aired. Here’s a screen shot of her. I can only assume by the look on her face this is when she met “The Bachelor.”

Obviously since she is on this show her marriage to the classical saxophone player did not work out. Honestly, I’m glad. He was a real ass. Though, she must be happy out in LA now. Not in the simple, small town, rural southern Illinois. She always seemed to complain about that every day.

Anyways, gotta get back to studying. Last final is in two hours.

My TiVo flipped out on me the other day, and I have to admit…  I was scared.  I rely so much on that sucker that it would just be weird watching TV without it nowadays.  Seriously, people still watch commercials?  What’s up with that?!

Anyway, word around the campfire was that we had gotten some new HD channels the morning of the day this frightful event occurred.  Knowing that, I was surprised to see that my channels weren’t tuning.  I decided to just restart the TiVo (through the menu, of course) and hope the CableCARD would repair and give me my new channels.

Everything was going according to plan (which, in TiVo land, means waiting like 10 damn minutes for the stupid thing to boot), when out of nowhere my whole screen just turned green.  I looked up and read some goofy message about how there was an error it was going to try fix for the next three hours.  Huh?  What could really take that long?  I could wipe the whole hard drive and reinstall an OS in that time, no problem.  So what gives?

I started scouring the internet for clues and found a number of things, mostly related to people having dead hard drives.  Great, that bodes well for me.  But, suddenly and not more than 10 minutes later, the TiVo restarted itself and it’s been working ever since.  Crisis averted, I guess.

Suppose we are at war, and I take you prisoner. Let’s say I believe you have information that may be valuable to me, but you won’t divulge it with my ordinary interrogation tactics. So then I strap you down, cover your face with a cloth, and pour water on you to simulate the experience of drowning. Is that torture? Better question: how is that not torture? Apparently, though, it is not.

For my birthday recently, my parents got me an awesome present. It’s called Henrietta Hen. Basically, it makes boiling eggs ridiculously easy. Pour some water in the thing, put the eggs in there, and plug it in. That’s all there is to it, and it beeps when it’s done.

Of course, I happened to get a broken one. It doesn’t beep. It just keeps on cooking and cooking. Honestly it’s not that big a problem–I’ve got like three timers in the kitchen right around the thing, so it’s still easy. But, I mean honestly… Come on. Mine had to be broken?

Anyway, I love me some hard-boiled eggs, so Henrietta has a full-time job these days.

Man, so I found one definite disadvantage to working at Microsoft. Xbox.com is running this contest right now giving away 20,000+ things for the GTA4 launch. Unfortunately, as a Microsoft employee, I can’t participate.

That sucks. I could go for some GTA4.