Category Archives: Life - Page 4

frustrating times

Posted by on October 31, 2002 1 comment

Well, all the snow melted, but it’s now fridgid here again. I’m told this is the third coldest October on record. I feel like I have so much to blog about but then again I don’t know what I should or can say because who knows who reads this thing so I’ll probably stick to the safe stuff for the time being.

I got two big things out of the way this week, nevermind there seem to be way too many more coming down the pipe yet this semester. I must say this is definately my busiest semester at school yet, and I don’t know why that is I had more credits last semester. Anyway I got an A- on both a speech and a Modern American Lit midterm this week, which made me pretty happy. I was worried about the midterm becuase the format was very open and directions were very lacking in direction.

The first bad news in the pipe is I have a montage due for speech class on Tuesday. What that has to do with speech I have no idea, but it’s going to be a big pain. I think I’m going to do it on the DMCA because we’re supposed to pick a topic that we’re passionate about. The trick is to figure out what I’m going to put on this “3-d collage” I have few ideas, maybe a video tape, cd and floppy disk that show somehow the inablility to use them as you like. I’m desperate for resources and ideas people, so please post any in the comments section right here. Remember I’m at school in a dorm so I have very limitied resources, another thing that makes this so frustrating. I also have an extremely limited amount of traditional creative ability, again very frustrating to be forced into doing a project like this.

I have to stay here at school this weekend to work Friday night and Sunday night. We have to work one weekend a semester, I guess I’m lucky to not have any morning events but both my events run late into the evening so we’ll see how that all goes. luckily the work is not too demadning so it’ll probably be mostly browsing the web time.

On Saturday morning I’ll also be taking my Technician Licence Ham Radio Exam on campus. As I mentioned before I think this is something I’ve been interested in for quite a while and I finally got around to doing something about it. I have been studying pretty well I think, and I should pass I hope. I’ll be sure to let you all know. I already bought a handheld transceiver on ebay so I’m all ready to go now except for the licence. I love talking about it with “the profs” but that’s another story for another time.

Happy and Safe Halloween Everyone!

the snow has arrived

Posted by on October 20, 2002 Comments Off on the snow has arrived

Here in Western Wisconsin we actually have a small accumulation of snow on the ground tonight and by the time it’s all said and done, they’re estimating 4-6″ in this area. This is all fine and dandy with me because I don’t have major travel plans and I’m ready for snow, but I know it will dissappoint many.

In other news, I know I have been really bad about updating this, but life calls you know? This semester is turning out rather busy actually. In some ways it’s hard to beleive it’s going to be halfway over this week, seems like school just started the other week, in other ways I’m ready for Christmas break. Hopefully things will let up a bit once we get into November though, I think they should.

My laptop is somewhere in Michigan being repaired right now, it needed some backlight and floppy drive repair. Luckily I’m not using it for notes in any class this semester and I should have it back this week I think. The joys of electronics.

Things are progressing well with my Amateur Radio Licence studying and I think I’ll be well prepared for the test on November 2nd. I’m in the midst of writing a speech for speech class right now so that’s the big project at the moment. I am slightly concerned about a Lit midterm coming up this Thursday, mostly because it’s a huge part of our grade in the class and I haven’t experianced this prof’s exams before, hopefully I’ll do well. It’ll be quite a relief to be through that in any event.

how busy is too busy?

Posted by on October 1, 2002 Comments Off on how busy is too busy?

So I’m stuck in a Student Association (Senate) meeting right now and thanks to 802.11b wireless networks I’m able to browse the net; it’s a lifesaver I tell you. Anyway I realized that it’s been a long time (almost a month!) since I updated my blog and I must say I’ve been extremely busy.

School has been going well for me this semester so far. I have a number of very interesting classes this semester and can honstly say I’m learning quite a bit. Thanks to my superior scheduling skills I have no classes before 12:20PM and no I don’t sleep in every day, but it is a nice option.

I again have two jobs on campus this year. I’m working two days a week in the Ameritech Telecommunications Lab and a few more days a week as an event service technician in the student center.

I seem to have more reading this semester than I have had before, this is not neccecarily a bad thing as I tend to enjoy most of the reading, but it does stress my schedule just a bit more than previous semesters have. Hopefully I’ll be able to update this more often as the semester progresses, I know that the second quarter will be less stressful as I’ll be through two more industry certicfications by that time.

busy as busy gets

Posted by on September 8, 2002 1 comment

I feels like it’s been a really long time since I’ve blogged. Probably because it has been. My summer turned out to be a lot busier than I had origianlly invisioned and the time just wasn’t there to blog, hopefully now that I’m back at school I’ll be able to get one in at least weekly if not more often. Better catch you up on my summer first though.

I got home towards the middle of May and jumped right in with the upcoming Current Jam concert at that time. I’ve already blogged quite a bit about that I think so I’ll leave that as is. For the last month of school though I had been looking for an interesting summer job and hadn’t found that yet. I didn’t want to be one of those average college kids home for the summer painting houses or whatnot. As luck would have it one of our vendors for Current Jam which is responsible for the intellegent lighting rental was looking for some extra work as their business was growing rather rapidly and they also needed someone with a bit of computer experiance to straighten out the network at the office. After a lunch meeting with them I was offered a job that would provide me with around 15 hours of work a week, which sounded pretty good to me, plus it was doing something I really enjoyed. As it turns out we were even busier than we had imagined and they ended up needing me for 40 hours a week which was fine with me because it was a blast working there. I got some great experiance and got to work on some interesting projects for them. If you’re ever looking for intelligent lighting rental or installation in the Twin Cities be sure to give the great folks at Light N Trax a call.

This kept me pretty busy weekdays after Current Jam so things at home piled up for me and I spent most weeknights and weekends dealing with those times, leaving little time for, yu guessed it, blogging about the summer. You must be saying to yourself that even with all this work I must have had a little time to myself or I’d go crazy. You’d be right, I did and it did stop me from going crazy. Now you’re asking yourself well great, but what did he DO with that time? I’ll tell you that too.

Towards the end of June the lake my Grandma lives on where we usualy have the boat and go waterskiing was flooded out. We quickly got the boat and dock out of the lake, anticipating it would stay out for the rest of the season. After haveing the flooded engine cleaned and checked out we kept the boat in our garage at home, this made it very convenient for us to go and chaeck out the skiing on a number of lakes near our house, specifically Bryant Lake in Eden Prarie. I got to ski more than I probably would have otherwise which is great because it’s something I love to do. The last few weeks of August it actually got low enough we took the boat out twice on my Grandma’s lake and I got in a few more ski runs. There are some pictures of me skiing on Bryant Lake in the Ben and Family Galleries located at http://ben.franske.com/gallery/ be sure to check those out.

I also got a girlfreind this summer, something I haven’t had before, it was never quite right until now. Katie and I have been good friends for a few years and over the first part of the summer we grew closer as we learned more about each other and spent quite a bit of time together. Towards the end of June we both got honest with each other and admitted we liked each other a lot and agreed to start dating. As the summer progressed we spend even more time together, walking around some of the lakes and parks in the cities. We went out to see the Music Man at Chanhassen Dinner Theater, and to see Sum of All Fears. At the beginning of August we took a one day trip up near Duluth to a camp where I usually spend a week during the summer but didn’t have time this year. We also started whittling down the James Bond movie series, Katie admitted to only having seen one or two and since they are such a look into the periods of American history since the 50s I thought we should watch all of them, we got through most of them and have just a few to finish up. Just before we left for school we decided together that we didn’t want to see anyone else, so we’re keeping up our relationship via phone, email, letters and occasional visits. It’s interesting that only 30 minutes by car seperates you a lot more physically when you don’t have a car. In any event we’re doing quite well and both have a great outlook on our future together.

I moved back to school right at the end of August, but after visiting the fantastic and unparalelled Minnesota State Fair. Classes started the day after labor day and I came back home for labor day weekend for one last ski run. More on that and my first week of school to come in a future blog, this one got long enough!

cisco fun

Posted by on May 3, 2002 Comments Off on cisco fun

let’s see, yeah i know i said i would try and get back to some more regular posting again, but duty calls and it looks like it will continue to call through the end of the school year which is another week and a half for me. let’s see if i can remember what’s been going on this week, this is a distinct disadvantage of having a low medium term memory and not blogging often enough 🙂

i think i got a lot of stuff done over the weekend, although not as much as i had planned, but i never get all of it done. in anyevent as of sunday i was feeling pretty good about that. of course there’s continuing and mounting pressure to pick a summer job, which isn’t getting easier the busier i get towards the end of the year, more on that later.

i eased into the week on monday with some bowling, at which i did simple terrible, i figgured out why on wednesday, more to come. monday night i had a wireless network class, they’re doing presentations on some chapters in the boook that’s going to be used next year, i got out of it since i know as much as i do and i know the prof. i get to rate groups and grill them afterwards with questions on their material, it might require less preparation, but it requires more knowledge.

tuesday i decided i was going to take my ccnp routing exam on wednesday night when i work in the telcom lab. we also did some more discussion on ethan frome in english class. we did some more work with integration in calc, i must say again calc is the easiest math class i’ve taken in a very long time. didn’t go to my routing class because my group is finished with all the labs.

wednesday started off with me doing very poorly in bowling again, then after a couple frames i realized that i was using the opposite side of my foot than usual to count off the boards and this was really screwing me up, after fixing that i did much much better. it started to get interesting when i headed off to work and to take my cisco exam, the testing server needed to be rebooted and was locked up for the night in another building so again, no exam. i was starting to think someone really didn’t want me to take this exam because this was the second time i had scheduled to take it and couldn’t and the third time i wanted to take it and it didn’t work out, i got permission to take it friday afternoon. otherwise it was a pretty slow night. when i got back from work i wasn’t feeling too hot thouhg, still not quite sure why., i wasn’t sick or anything, nor was i mad or sad, just like totally unfeeling which is unusual for me, i’m usually happy even if i’m in a bad mood, must have been something subliminal.

thursday was a good day because i found out that i did very very well on a test in energy tech, and i also had event tech (my new job for next fall) training which is really fun for me. we started integration by substitution in calc, which isn’t difficult, but is a little time consuming. i got to go back to the room and grab a bite to ea before heading to trainings. of couse we had to start with the boring stuff, procedures, policies and handbook material but then it got a little more interesting. they have a checklist of things you need to get signed off on before you can start working for them, well we started talking about some of the experiance i have with shows and equipment and we were able to check off more than half the list without getting up from the table. after that we walked around the building and looked at some of the room specific things which got another 1/4 of the list checked off, then we diceded to go home so we could save some of it for next time. all in all i think they’re more than a little impressed with my background and knowledge which can only be a good think, they’re also very thankful to have someone who really really knows what’s going on with them, i think it’ll be great working there.

that brings us to today, i got up, ate lunch and headed over to the telcom lab to take my cisco 640-503 routing exam, i was actually able to take it this time. i must say that partway through the exam i was worried about if i’d be able to pass it or not, but thankfully i did. in fact i scored 100% in two of the areas on the exam, my score was not as stellar as my CCNA score but still a lot better than other people taking this exam have been doing, so i felt really good about that and good about getting it done, it takes off a lot of pressure for me. right now, i’m sitting down at work in the campus lab, which is the job i’ll be leaving next semester to take the one at MSC, speaking of which i should get busy on letting them know i wn’t be back next semester. i also should probably work on some more letters to possible summer employers to see what they have open for positions. and then thier’s the matter of that last english paper for thursday, but maybe i’ll do that tomorrow instead.

speaking of tomorrow, i have lunch plans in Eau Claire with some friends from the cities that go to school there, it’ll be nice to see them again, i miss them a lot, i’ll let you know how it goes. turns out my sister won’t be coming to stay with me for the weekend because she’s working on a choir show in the cities, good for her, my people tell me she’s doing an excellent job at the light board. i think that’s it for now and again i hope to update a bit more frequently we’ll see if that actually happens or not as the year winds down here. well i should try and get some work done i suppose, although i doubt i’ll get much done.

afternoon ice

Posted by on April 27, 2002 Comments Off on afternoon ice

i stayed up pretty late again and slept in until almost 1:00 again today, had lunch and headed down to the library for the history research project, it’s actually really easy, just had to locate a bunch of sources related to our topic and do a bibliography of them.

i also took some stills of my video cameras now so i have them stored, if you’re interested you can find them at http://ben.franske.com/gallery/vidcams i should probably go grocery shopping now, nothing good on the menu here for dinner so i’ll see if something in the grocerty store catches my interest.

oh yeah we’ve had freezing rain all day today, luckly it’s not accumulating at all yet, let’s hope ti stays that way. i’m ready for it to warm up a little bit, aren’t you?

later guys!

it’s been a long time…

Posted by on April 27, 2002 Comments Off on it’s been a long time…

all together now, this sucks, i had a good start on an entry and i got a bluescreen in xp which never happens… ahh well what can ya do… we’ll try again.

wow it’s been a week since my last blog, that’s pretty bad, but it was a busy week. i worked all last weekend which pretty much kills the weekend.

the first part of the week was pretty slow, tuesday and wednesday nights their were solo tryouts for current jam in the cities, i couldn’t get there of course but i did get to hear about them seem to be looking at some good groups this year. wednesday i bumped up my bowling average a bit and we started integration in calc this week, yuk!

on wednesday (i think, maybe it was tuesday) i decided i needed to outfit my hitachi broadcast camera with it’s new power fittings so i went to the manufacturing lab to have someone do it. lucky me there was no one availible to do it so they let me do it myself, needless to say i got a kick out of getting to use a ram drill to make the holes in the metal plates for the jacks. then i spent some quality time with epoxy and a solderign iron wiring up the new jacks and power supply for the camera, it looks pretty good too!

it starts to get a little more interesting on thursday, after my last class (calc) i headed back to my room, dropped my stuff and ate dinner. then i headed down to the student center to try out being an event tech for a night, which will be a new job for me here on campus next semester. i loved every minute of it, this was unpaid time so i could leave at any time, i got there at ~5:30 and stayed until after 11 when everything was over. i got ot see all the secret passageways around the building too. we had a couple of events going on, there were some groups meeting that needed lcd’s and laptops which we took and setup for them. there was an early childhood conference setting up too so we had to drop power for lots of them. there was also an open mic night in one of the cafes in the building so we had to monitor that equipment too. for a while it was pretty exciting being needed in six places at once and running around the building, this is the sort of stuff i really enjoy doing. anyway i think it’ll be a really fun job, and the people are really nice as well.

that brings us to today, i stayed up until at least 3:15 last night and slept in until the phone woke my up at 1:00PM today. i got up and listened to the message, the front desk had a big package they wanted me to come get asap, so i took a shower and went down for my usual friday omelette(sp?) picked up my mail (which had a key) and stopped my the desk for the package, it was the new JVC camera I’d been waiting for. for those who don’t know i do a fair bit of video work and used to have to rent the broadcast cameras, i bouth two in the last month, so i’m pretty well set up for them now, anyway this one’s a beaut JVC KY27U with a 18x lens and SVHS deck docked on the back, i’ll put up a photo of me and my cameras sometime soon. it was a good buy and i’m very happy with it. in fact i used it to tape a LAN party in the basement here tonight in very low light and it preformed very well although the stills from the video don’t look good.

registered for fall classes today, i won’t say too much about it because i have to get a level wavier for one class and an overload sig for another, but then i’ll take soem time to discuss my classes for fall.

tomorrow i think i have to go to the library and do some research for a historty research project. we’ll see how that goes. oh my, someone just knocked on my door, needs to reinstall their video drivers so i’d better go, then i should get some sleep so i can get up at a decent hour tomorrow. in any event i hope to get back to a little more reular schedule of blogging soon!

organized tornado

Posted by on April 19, 2002 Comments Off on organized tornado

i’m at work in the campus lab tonight, i close so i’m here until midnight and don’t have a lot to do, there’s only one guy here right now so i said to myself, i should blog.

thursday started off with a bang, or a siren as it may be. i was awoken at 5:15am by the tonado siren going off, there was a radar indicated tornado north of town. well i was bout the only one who got up right away. i grabbed my keys and phone and ran down to the first floor door (i’m on third) to check out the action, wasn’t much to see, eventually i heard the RA get up on second floor and pound on all their doors and a couple minutes later about 3 of them went down to the basement. the tornado stayed north of town heading westward and the warning expired at 5:45, when i went back up to my room i did see one other guy on the floor up on the phone but all the excitement (or lack there of) was over anyway. my newest inoformation says it touched down north of town, but i haven’t been able to verify that yet. if you’re bored sometime ask me to tell the camping tornado story.

the rest of the day was very blah, i had a little time getting back to sleep and maybe that was it, bu i had little energy the rest of the day. my calc test was the hardest one yet, i’m mildly concerned about it (i don’t get very concerned ever really) but i did very well on all our other tests and quizzes so it shouldn’t bother much. thurday night i got copies of all the mass choir songs for current jam this year, so i’ve been listening to those today getting a feel for them.

that brings us to today i guess. i slept in, or tried to, the semis kept backing up outside my window all morning (neert, neert, neert) so it was a little difficult but i made it until 10ish. i had basically nothing to do (well, homework of course but i can do that at work) so i made it one of my organizing days, got all the paper off my desk and filed away, cleaned my computer dektop off and fixed the ID3 tags, filenames and level gain of all my MP3s (not a small task). after lunch i decided to do something i had seen about a job as an event technician on campus for the fall. i think i’ll be leaving the big campus lab and working for the telecom lab and doing the event tech thing next semester. anyway, i intorduced myself and asked if they’d like to see a demo tape of some shows i’ve done. they were taken aback (hehe) and basically hired me sight unseen, they are pretty desperate for techs i guess, and i think i’ll enjoy it a lot. i got to meet some of the student managers and they were really nice people, i’m scheduled to meet with them again next thursday and friday. i think this will be lots of fun, i’ve missed doing lighting and sound this year. so then i went back to my room, worked on my MP3s some more and had dinner. i saw the first half hour of the screen savers and then headed to work, i taped the rest and can’t wait to get home and check out yosi’s box.

that just about bring you all up to date with my happenings, i hope i didn’t bore you too much! i should read some Ethan Frome for english now, or do some other homework, but i suppose i’ll browse around on the net some more first. later guys!

bowling along

Posted by on April 17, 2002 Comments Off on bowling along

i had a good day today i think. it was fun for the most part. it started off really well when i stuck around after bowling class and practiced for an extra half hour by myself, i raised my average from an embarassingly low score to a respectable 129, i think i made my teacher’s day too.

i mentioned that i might be taking the CCNP routing exam yesterday night, well yesterday i decided to go ahead and do it after talking to my instructor who had more faith in me than i did. unfortunately the testing server went down right before our test was scheduled and it took us too long to fix it (ohh how i hate windows NT and it’s non plug and play capabilities) so we all get to pick anytime we want to take our tests, i’m thinking next friday when i have no classes or work. i’ll let you know how it goes.

my laptop keyboard was acting up again today, i need to have some parts replaced so it doesn’t type on it’s own and so on, but as a temporary remedy i decided to take out the internal keyboard and scrub it down with soap and water, no big deal, but until it drys completely i won’t put it back in the laptop (gives an error at boot) so I’m running my laptop with an external mouse/keyboard for the next few days, it looks funny with the guts exposed 🙂

at work tonight i got pretty bored, so first i fixed our frequency counter and played with some voice over IP equipment. i dug around the office and lab to see what new (and old) equipment was around and played with some for a while. the guys from the telecom policy and regulations class down the hall had a sub prof. today who’s one of our geniuses here, ex-motorola. anyway we went and shot the moon with him for a while to.

just witing for cheers to come on which i’ll watch and then head to bed, tomorrow i have to get up and shower quite a bit earlier than usual because they’re turning off the water in the building from 10AM to 8PM to fix some hot water problems…

everything is hot hot hot

Posted by on April 15, 2002 Comments Off on everything is hot hot hot

i got a number of things crossed off my to do list this weekend and today, but there’s still much to do. my wireless class paper is done and turned in, we’ve started a new unit in history and are about to wrap up all our classroom sessions for bowling class. this weekend was beautiful, but nothing like today. we go up to at least 91 here today, which is amazing, it han’t been that hot since august and we shattered all previous records. spring has truly sprung now and although it will be cooler the rest of the week, that’s ok and it’s still so beautiful out.

tomorrow i need to decide if i’m ready to take the next exam in my cisco certification series. the ccnprouting exam will be offered tomorrow evening, otherwise i’ll probably wait a few weeks and do some more studying. we’ll see, but i think i’ll go for it.

the warm weather is reminding me of all the fun of summer, including current jam, which i love. i had so much fun today just thinking about how much fun it’ll be again. of course i have yet to decide on a firm plan for a summer job yet, i’ve sent off a couple resumes to places, but don’t have definate plans yet.

i will say publicly(sp?) for the first time that i’ll be on vacation in San Francisco this summer, probably sometime around the end of july. i’d like to spend some time with the techtv crew when i’m there, we’ll see how that all plays out, i’m still waiting for definitive dates in SF before contacting anyone there.

happy tax day everyone!