I refreshed the Ticketmaster page at 10AM on the dot and the ordering form appeared instantly. I did a search for tickets in the $55 price range and it offered general admission tickets on the field. I didn’t really want these tickets since I wanted a guaranteed seat since I probably won’t be able to get there 8 hours early to wait for the best spot on the field! I then did the ticket search a couple more times and was finally able to get two good seats on the Upper level for Mich and I. I think they will be pretty good seats and they were affordable for me at least.

I’m so excited! I’ve wanted to see U2 for a long time but they haven’t been touring while working on their last album. Unfortunately I now have to wait 6 months since the concert is October 9th! Oh well! I think this will be my first real concert in a stadium. Its gonna be amazing!

1. Professors who insist on writing on a green chalk board in white chalk without turning on the lights that are intended to illuminate the white board. I sit in the second row, have near perfect vision and cannot see his writing.
2. People who eat fast food in class. There is a reason for the school wide policy of no eating in classrooms. People who have been in class for 3 hours are STARVING and your fast food makes them hungry and makes it impossible to pay attention!
3. I followed a guy on his scooter today for about 4 miles on my way to campus. Let me tell you that riding a scooter is somewhat dangerous and people should always keep both hands on the handle bar. Not only is it state law but the roads in Gainesville are rather bumpy and one bad bump can make you go flying off the road if you are not holding on properly. Anyways, this guy was riding with a hot cup of coffee in his left hand while trying to drive! The speed limit on the road was 45 and he is on a scooter. Is it me or does this seem stupid? There are at least 10 coffee places on campus if you are really desperate for coffee.

Ok, ok, thats the end of my rant. Why can’t people be a little smarter?

All in all, this week has been crazy and I am so glad that it is over! There is a football game tomorrow and UF is playing Ole Miss. It is going to be AMAZING since I got front row tickets! Nothing like picking up tickets from the student ticket booth and seeing ROW 1 on the tickets! Heck yes! I’ll put up some pictures from the game since I should have a pretty sweet view!

Now that I am back home and have a full desk to myself, I was able to redo my computer set up. I bought a second Acer 22″ monitor at the start of the year to use as a TV and later took it out of use when my room mate got a new 26″ LCD TV for us to use. Now that I have a new graphics card and two monitors I finally have my ideal dual monitor set up! Here is a picture:

I’m pretty excited that I finally am able to use this as my set up! It consists of 2 Acer 22″ LCD screens, my “Hackintosh” desktop running Mac OS X Leopard and a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. I feel more productive already and I definitely enjoy being able to watch a movie or TV show on one screen while writing an e-mail or surfing the web on the other! I know that this set up will also help a lot when I am trading on the Forex market but I’ll write more about that sometime later. Overall, feels great to be home and feels good knowing that I have nearly four months of summer ahead of me!

Things have been rather hectic lately with the end of the school year finally here. I have one more exam tomorrow morning and then a Physics final on Saturday and then I’ll be done with freshman year! Oh, the joys! I’m definitely excited for the summer and glad that I can finally relax and not worry about studying and going to class until the end of August!

In other news, I have become a rather crazed Apple fanatic. In the past two months I have bought an iPhone, started using a Leopard desktop full time and bought Apple stock! I would definitely say that I fully enjoy using Apple’s wonderful products. The iPhone has been utterly amazing! I went from a piece of junk Motorola v360 flip phone to a “compact computer” for a phone. I remember buying the Motorola v360 about two years ago and being pretty psyched that it had a Micro SD slot that would let me store about a gig of MP3s on my phone. The iphone I bought has 8 GBs of space and can do a million more things compared to the v360.

I have also switched over to a Leopard desktop for full time use. I still use my laptop for CAD work and for some Windows based programming but am fully content using Mac full time now. I personally find that it helps me to work better. I actually enjoy having to do homework at times just so that I have a good reason to use the Mac! The entire look and feel of the operating system is so refreshing and fun to use. Everything is “smooth” looking and makes you feel like you are engulfed in an experience as opposed to staring at a boring screen as you work on something.

To top off my Apple craze I also bought some Apple stock! This was certainly a milestone for me since it was my first stock purchase ever! Considering how much I enjoy making quick money with a minimal amount of work, I don’t know why I didn’t invest in the stock market earlier. Granted, its rarely easy to make money on the stock market without serious research, making any profit kicks the crap out of the 0.20% interest Wachovia would be paying me to have my money in a savings account. I’ll definitely see if my investment was a wise one tomorrow afternoon once able announces their earnings! It’s either going to sky rocket or plummet and I’m obviously hoping for the first one!

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll leave you with a link to my development website:

http://www.stokedev.com

I’ve developed a couple small web applications for the iPhone and will be working on more soon now that my finals are coming to an end. Here are links to my applications on Apple’s website if you are interested:

Money Shuffle: a simple currency convertor for the iPhone:

http://www.apple.com/webapps/calculate/moneyshuffle.html

iDeals: a deal of the day tracker for the iPhone:

http://www.apple.com/webapps/utilities/ideals.html

I did a quick search on Google to see if other people made some type of religious connection with this idea of the Great Attractor. I found an article by James McGillis talking about the same idea. He approached the topic in a very metaphysical sense which was interesting to read. I like the idea of thinking about God or heaven being out there in a specific place in the Universe but at the same time I don’t know if it is reasonable. I am a firm Christian and I believe that God is omnipotent and omnipresent. That would mean that God would have to be in this Great Attractor region but also everywhere in the Universe at the same time.

All in all, I just like the idea of the Earth being attracted to this defined region in the Universe called the Great Attractor which in actuality could the location of “heaven.” I guess you could say that it is a very cliche idea but a fun idea to contemplate all at the same time.

Here are a couple interesting pictures illustrating the Great Attractor.

One last interesting fact! The Great Attractor is “attracting” galaxies and Superclusters at velocities in excess of 600 kilometers per second!