I ditched work to go wander around OSU—specifically, to see if I could figure out how auditing a class works. I’m still confused; people don’t seem to know much beyond what the Academic Regulation says, and the AR doesn’t say much.

I also wandered into the bookstore to check out the G5. It’s a very, very nice-looking machine…and also fricking huge. Ah well. More important than the G5, though, was that I ran into John in the bookstore. He was looking for a flashlight to gut and use as the basis for his own four-LED designs. We chatted quite a bit while wandering the computing aisles; he seems to be doing well. I miss my old friends.

While visiting the rather unhelpful Registrar’s desk, I ran into Carol, the Apparel, Interiors, Housing, and Merchandising professor who planned the European trip I took with far too many females, far too long ago. She was surprised that I hadn’t graduated yet, and mentioned that academia needs more good people—that I should think about teaching. I probably will, if this actuary thing falls through…I think I’d enjoy it quite a bit. Probably high school, though, as I don’t like research at all.

I then visited the UHC office, where it was repeatedly mentioned that the office staff had seen Eric (a rare-enough occurrence as to signify the passage of quite a bit of time) since I had been in last. Tammy (the old UHC office manager) is filling in for Jane (the UHC head advisor) for a while, so I got to see UHC staff past and present. In contrast to Carol, the office staff was surprised that I was going to be graduating “so soon.” (???) Rebekah now knows that there’s potential for me to not graduate Honors, but didn’t seem to mind. I’m glad to have friends here.

This evening Marin discovered that Anime Jungle (great place to get used Japanese anime CDs) actually had an unclaimed copy of KareKano’s highly-sought-after first CD, “Act 1.0.” [Actually, it’s more complicated than that: Act 1.0 came in a few days ago, but was originally listed as reserved for someone. That person apparently decided not to purchase it, so the CD was updated as available—in the “new” CD listing from two days ago. Furthermore, as the site is not updated on Wednesdays, nobody bothered to check for changes today…so by the confluence of these multiple events, we got hella lucky.] At 8:45 pm I received a phone call from Andy, who informed me that I had until 9:15 pm to get to Fred Meyers, buy a copy of the Lord of Destruction expansion for Diablo II, and get onto Battle.net. He billed it as a heart-warming way to spend cold winter nights strengthening friendships across large distances; I figured what the hell. So, at 9:25 pm (installation took a bit longer than I had hoped, and every frickin’ name in the world has already been claimed on Battle.net), I joined the fight against evil once again. This time with multiple companions—Nate and Kevin were also in on this—and assuming the guise of an assassin. (My previous time at Diablo II I controlled a sorceress.) I probably should have stuck with the sorceress, that I might actually be useful to someone at some time.

Then, after all my setup time/cost, Comcast decided that I needed more internet connectivity problems. Aaaaaaaarrrrgh.