Rough Revival

“That was rough, huh?” I said to my sister after she and my mother finished arguing over how she spent her college days. Now, it wasn’t really a true “fight,” no yelling or anything, nothing really meant, but it’s obvious it’s been bubbling there for a while. I won’t comment on the specifics because that wouldn’t be fair to them, however I bring it up because it was me and my own current circumstance that provoked it.

I’m going into college. It was a long time in coming, but it’s happening. I’m working out the nitty-gritty details right now, in fact. Things like placement tests, course scheduling, course registration, and of course, financial aid. My dad is going to the same college full-time, as I will be, and with my mother opening her own business, things are becoming strained financially. By the end of the summer I should have both a job and my driver’s license, and this combined with re-using my family’s vehicles and carpooling with my father should lighten the load a bit. The tentative schedule we painstakingly drafted today we hope will maximize on the latter. And hopefully, I’ll be able to monetize my Android apps and Project Gforum to a significant degree, which would really help, but I won’t use them as a crutch, nor will monetizing them ever become my main concern. Although, if there’s any venture capitalists reading this and looking to buy in, be sure to email me.

You may have noticed I did not blog about my Prom + Graduation experiences, and I really wanted to. So many thoughts and feelings. So much elation and reflection. Truth be told, I was going to go over these topics in my fourth “Happy Birthday” post commemorating this blog being four years old. But I couldn’t find the words, or the drive. Unfortunately, this breaks the Happy Birthday tradition, but I do hope to resume it next year.

The Temple of Andrex, my personal hub site for my Internet persona, was radically upgraded earlier this month to Version 5. This version is also built on WordPress, making it the final site to be so in my “tri-fecta”, which includes this blog and Project Gforum. However, it is the first of the three to be built using HTML 5, which is a shift from my current websites which use XHTML 1.0 or 1.1. As per the Projects page of the new site, I hope to upgrade both this blog and Project Gforum to HTML 5 with their new versions. For Carol of the Bells, this means Version 7.5, which will also boast “a few cosmetic changes concerning the placing of the date and tags” and will minimize the “pre-existing cruft leftover from the sample design I originally used, [making] it load faster and better.” I also am really, really proud with the History page I was able to put together for the Temple, and am looking into doing something similar for this place.

The T-Mobile myTouch 3G was finally announced, which is the United States’ second phone running Google’s smartphone OS Android, for those in need of refreshing. Most of its thunder however was stolen by the upcoming HTC Hero device, which was also revealed at about the same time. Why? The Hero sports multitouch, Adobe Flash 10, a headphone jack, greater RAM, a better camera, and HTC’s custom slick UI overlay called Sense. I have mixed feelings about all this, despite being incredibly hyped for the myTouch earlier this year. To be sure, the Hero is the better handset, but what’s killing the myTouch for me is that it’s just been so late. I would have utterly eaten it up if it had launched here in April or May, like it did in other countries (and with better specs than we’re getting, believe it or not), but I’ve become more and more distrought as the phone went unannounced. When it was finally revealed for the US, its release date was pegged at August 5th.

This is where I get nervous because the second Android Developers Challenge is accepting app admissions only from August 1st to August 31st. That seems like plenty of time, but in terms of concretely ironing out bugs on an actual unit, it’s definitely small, especially if I want to publish it on the Android Market before I do so.

That may be less of an issue now though because development of my game is moving at a snail’s pace, and on top of that I’m going on a vacation to New York starting this Thursday. Gee T-Mobile, would have been nice to have a super-cool phone to bring with me to keep tabs on the websites I run, get locations using GPS, and receive local restaurant and site seeing recommendations, wouldn’t it? I still think I will be able to complete it in time, especially when I get all this college and vacation stuff out of the way, but it’ll be in a pinch. Even the third-third-place prize of $25,000 would be such a huge boon to my family’s current state, I have to try the absolute hardest I can.

The insulation is over and I’m almost an adult. I have responsibilities, and this whole registration process has brought them to the forefront.; things like autonomously controlling my college courses, driving myself on the road, and soon I’ll be required to do my own taxes. I’ve been so reflective and resistant to change that it scares me when I’m forced to take steps forward. Today, I could barely drink any of the McDonalds soda I had gotten before my math placement test. I just need to pray the process will go as smoothly as possible.
-Andrew