My first week of college is now just about coming to a close. And so far, I'm absolutely in love.

It seems one thing that is ubiquitous is that every teacher knows how to explain their subject and relate it to students (or at least, in my classes). So far I've enjoyed all of my classes and I've learned a bit.

I have two major forms of classes that I'm in: lecture halls and classrooms.

Lecture halls are two completely new things to me. Seeing a room of about 200 kids all taking one class is absolutely intimidating... I didn't know what to expect when I first walked in and sat down. But so far I like the two lecture hall classes that I have. I'm able to sit down (in the left handed desks in the far left of the room) and just, well, sit and take notes. It sounds simple, but I'm used to the constant interruptions for silly things that comes with HS (people walking in with excuses for tardiness, dress code & lanyard checks, issuing detentions, praying, etc.) but with the lectures it's just, well, lecturing. And I really enjoy it.

My classroom courses are almost even cooler. My english class is in the new research building, and my classroom is located on the second story of some sort of silo. In that classroom, there is a U shaped desk, with chairs all around it, and the professor just stands in the middle. And class is just a crazy sort of roundtable discussion between the 15 of us in the class, with the prof moderating. I love that class. My other classes are close to about the same thing.

One of the craziest things (to me) about college is how the courses are formatted.... you read the material before, and you discuss it during the next class.....thats such a novel concept (again, to me). HS seemed to be where they spoonfed you the readings and forced ideas into your brain for english........not so in college.

The biggest thing that I've began to understand is that I fit in the "college student" box, *NOT* the "high school student" box. Never have, and never will. 

(I think this was my most rambling post yet---it's midnight on the east)

No, I'm not laying out any more security details than that. I think what you see above is what *most* would do to lock down their computers, but no one will reveal the exact way they lock them down.

(and yeah, the numbers on that screenshot are faked and are not the real ones saved in systemprefs)

And to think, the *ONLY* reason why I'm doing this is because I went to defcon and witnessed how insecure my "secure" setup is. (Don't get me started on "unsecure/normal" setups..... my iPhone could break into that no problem) 

I really should have done a full wipe and locked the machine down from day one of uptime, instead of trusting every byte currently present on the machine. But this gets me far enough. I will be watching every packet coming in or out of my system for the first (insert non descriptive period of time here) until I trust that there is no attempt for intrusion.

And I think that I made myself even more insecure by posting this--oh, well.

While I was at my friend's going away party for college, I played a game of scrabble against my friends CJ (the party boy), Kevin, and Vinnie. And naturally, I slaughtered them.

I was the only one that got words above five letters, but also got many words over five letters. Some examples, you ask? "Linear", "Harlot", "Beacon", and "Forget" were my big words. 

And to top things off, everyone started cheating at the end of the game to inflate their scores, but I still won with a fairly nice margin.

I present to you a photographic facsimile of the scrabble board for the official record. (Yes, the words were just that sad.)

I just finished reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  It is by far one of my favorite books. This is going to be a book that I'll probably read every few years or so--just like the Harry Potter books. I read the 1,200 pages of Atlas Shrugged spread across my trips to Virginia, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, and I recently completed it in my spare time at home.

Atlas Shrugged is a book depicting the normal operations of a functioning society not unlike ours as it devolves into an anarchy ridden dystopia. Unlike 1984 or Brave New World (which I am currently reading) it does not begin in a dystopia. (I can vividly remember classmates commenting that the world of 1984 is completely impossible and were wondering why we were reading it) I think that this, over anything else, is what really made this book for me. It gave a good reinforcement that at any time the government could head that way---if it isn't already. 

Anyway, what do I think of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, and Objectivism politically?

Sure, as a concept, Objectivism sounds pretty cool. But, in the real world, it would never work. Why not? (If you havent gotten the idea yet, there will be spoilers ahead.)

The biggest thing is that the world needs poor people. Not in the idea that we need people to suffer, but we need people to work hard, starting from zero and working to the top. 

But Atlas Shrugged also shows us why the current state we're in isn't any better:

We can't have poor people who feel entitled to do nothing but draw from the welfare state. That won't progress them any further in life. We need poor people to work their asses off. To make an extremely objectivist statement--they need to only use the money they earn. The easiest way to stop this is to cut off welfare so the poor can get up and work their way into the middle class. This is incredibly possible. It isn't hard to get up and work, but it certainly is once you get adjusted to the "silver platter" lifestyle. Melt the silver platters.

To give poor people credit, this isn't their fault at all. It's the government's. The government seizes the money that the poor would (in a functional free market society) and redistributes it freely to the poor people, who don't have to work for it. And if they want to work, they'll get a minimum wage job that pays less than welfare. It's completely discouraging. Basically, the poor never will break out of their low standing in this fashion.

Hm, I'm not quite sure how I managed to get into this rant, but after reading it, I figure I'll keep it. 

Anyway, consider this as a sign that I'm going to be writing more in the coming weeks.

-A

___________