return void;

That’s right, I am officially “Gree Certified.” In other words, I officially took the GRE test on Monday. After months of worrying and preparing, I walked in on Monday at 11AM to the Gateway Center Room #140 at the University of North Texas to take the GRE exam. I was scheduled for 12PM but I was allowed to start early.

After filling out a form promising that I would never disclose the questions on the test I took and placing my belongings in a locker, I sat down at my cubicle / workstation to start. I have to admit that I was intensely nervous. After chugging through the questionaire in the beginning, I started the Analytical writing section. Since the writing prompts are all posted on ETS’s website, I don’t see any harm in referencing them:

Issue prompt:
“Most people recognize the benefits of individuality, but the fact is that personal economic success requires conformity.”

Argument Prompt:
“The nation of Claria covers a vast physical area. But despite wide geographic differences, many citizens are experiencing rising costs of electricity. A recent study of household electric costs in Claria found that families who cooled their houses with fans alone spent more on electricity than did families using air conditioners alone for cooling. However, those households that reported using both fans and air conditioners spent less on electricity than those households that used either fans or air conditioners alone. Thus, the citizens of Claria should follow the study’s recommendation and use both air conditioners and fans in order to save money on electricity.”

These were fairly simple; I finished the issue prompt with about 15 minutes remaining and the argument with about 10 minutes remaining.

The verbal felt tough but I could tell from the words thrown at me in the analogies and antonyms that I was not doing that well. I ended up having 4 reading comprehension passages which are incredibly time consuming. The quantative grew very difficult very fast; I had to guess on question #9. I finished the math with 5 minutes remaining but I felt I could have done much better.

At the end, there was a research section. I decided to complete this for 2 reasons: 1) to find out what the next GRE will look like and 2) because there was a reward of $250 bucks for the top 100 scores. I figured most people will choose not to complete this section if not required so I figured I’d give it a go.

When I took a diagnostic sample test on the Kaplan CD (included with one of the many books I bought), I scored a 470 on both sections (that’s a 940 total). After 3 more practice tests and 6 practice verbal and quantative sections (kinda like 6 more practice tests without the writing), I felt prepared. UT of Dallas requires a 1200 but will let slightly lower scores slide if compensated for on other parts of the application. My official score was a 490 Verbal and 730 Quantative (or 1220 Combined).

Money and time well spent.

This site may experience downtime in the near future. I am going through component upgrades throughout hellkeep.

Citadel is being completely rebuilt on AMD’s new AM2 platform. I actually considered Intel Pentium D, but still think that the on-die MMU will pay off in the long run. I’ll also have to switch to PCI-X graphics card because AGP is all but dead. I won’t jump on the DDR2 bandwagon until the price is comparable to today’s DDR. I am going to try and keep the old case and see if it can sustain the new parts. Otherwise, I am contemplating switching to water-cooled system (nonconducive liquids only, of coarse).

Erebus, which is the file server and webserver is getting a rebuilt from the old Citadel machine. It will take the Asus A7A motherboard, processor and memory. This is a minor upgrade from a 733mhz Intel Dell machine to a 950 AMD custom. The case and power supply have become horribly outdated. The power supply is only 200W and barely powers the 4 harddrives I have plugged in. Thankfully, the motherboard and video cards draw very little power so they seem to be sustained fine but this is likely to not be the case if/when I add a new drive. I purchased a Thermaltake 430W power supply from Fry’s only to find out that Dell motherboards use a proprietary ATX auxilary connection. One more reason to hate Dell. The old Dell case lacks room for all of the harddrives I have in use right now (I hate vertical storage), so I purchased a sweet rackmount case for a mere $80! This fileserver is going to be worth its salt soon enough.

Eventually, I would also like to replace the 200mhz router with a 1U Mini-ITX machine. Once I have done this, I will finally weld together a custom rack.

It has been over a solid year of touring for Nine Inch Nails, and if you think that the pace would slow down or tire the band you would be mistaken. I was fortunate to catch them for their Washington D.C. performance at the Nissan Pavilion via Bristow Virginia. Of the three times I have seen them perform, this may have been the best performance yet.

The band put the theatrics away for this last leg of their With Teeth Tour, removed the video, added some new lighting schemes and turned up the intensity. The set spanned the entire catalogue, with some songs which seem to have become “staples” for live performances. Since the departure of Jerome Dillon, the touring members remain the same;

• Alessandro Cortini – Keyboards/Guitar
• Josh Freese – Drums
• Aaron North – Guitar
• Jeordie White – Bass guitar / guitar

The show opened with Trent appearing on stage behind a metal grading which was actually a lighting prop, with the members joining him shortly there after. The band wasted no time whipping the crowd into a frenzy, and this seemed to feed Aaron as it provoked him to dive off stage while still playing guitar. This wild antic was followed up with him knocking over his amp and swinging his guitar around like a maniac.

The first bump of the show was reached as Trent “choked” on either the fog machine, or something else which amused him because he kind of chuckled after it happened. There were several other parts which stand out in my mind; the lighting effect during the song “Closer” displayed red lights slowly collecting and filling up the metal grading lighting prop until it had reached capacity. Second was Aaron knocking over the keyboards set, and seeing Alessandro dive down to play on his hands and knees to make sure that element wasn’t missing from the song.

The last part has to be Aaron smashing his Fender guitar at the end of “Head Like a Hole” and then sticking it into the lighting prop. He was determined to go Keith Moon on it and didn’t let up until he was satisfied that the neck and body of the guitar had come apart enough.

Here is an incomplete list of the songs they performed:

• Wish
• The Frail
• Only
• Burn
• Terrible Lie
• March of the Pigs
• Closer
• Hurt
• The Hand That Feeds
• Only
• Dead Souls
• Into the Void
• Sin
• Somewhat Damaged
• Head Like a Hole

*There was also a brand new track which was performed, but I don’t remember the name of it.

For the last 2 weeks, I have been cramming like crazy for the GRE. I am taking the GRE in an attempt to attend graduate school (Computer Science).

I will likely devote the majority of my time until 19 June 2006 to studying and practicing this test. So far, I am teetering around an 1100 (650Q, 450V). I am applying to the University of Texas at Dallas and they list a 1200 as the recommended score (recommended, not neccesarily required). I feel if I break 700 with my Quantative score, I shouldn’t fear my test scores.

Anyways, I need to work on my reading comprehension, antonyms, and analytical writing. My weak-point is the inferance questions for the reading comp. and vocabulary level with the antonyms. I need to practice “active reading” under timed circumstances and the top 200 GRE words.

Also, I created a new category related to education and intellectual improvement. I called it “Project Bootstrap” as a reference to the Simpsons (like ‘Sector 7-G’). Here’s what it is defined as (according to the wiki):

Project Bootstrap was a government program, apparently initiated by President Gerald R. Ford in an attempt to provide more jobs by enforcing lower hiring standards in government regulated services. This allowed more under-qualified people to find work. Because of this project, the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant was forced to hire the least educated person it could find to fill the vacancy in sector 7-G. The only person dumb enough to meet government approval was Homer Simpson

Anyhoo, back to studying…