Josh's Website

April 13th

Hello and good afternoon! Today has been a relaxing but windy day. Not to say that wind can't be relaxing, but today the wind seems determined to mess up my hair. I came out of my house with my hair styled just the way I want it, but after sitting on a bench on campus and drawing the beautiful scenary I come to find that the wind must have been offended that I forgot to draw it as well. Tonight I will be watching the remake to the movie "Roadhouse". I have seen the original and now some friends and I will be going to Texas Roadhouse and then we will stream the movie in one of our apartments. I am particularly excited to eat some food that was not cooked by myself. Although I pride myself on my spectacular cooking ability, I have come to find out that I but groceries as if I was a family of four and I only eat as fast as a fasting monk. This creates a pardicament where I am eating the same meal that I had cooked throughout the whole week. Of course the snacks only last half as long, so I very quickly run out of little treats to tide me over from meal to meal. Currently, I am on my 12th sandwich. My breakfast sandwich is made with two pieces of bread and whatever else I can find in my fridge, then probably thrpwn in the oven. For some reason, my lunch sandwiches look similar, except I might pair it with a soda I found hiding from me. Finally, my dinner sandwich looks very similar to the lunch sandwich except for one key difference! I have most likely ran out of soda to pair it with. This cycle has been repeating for the past few days, or perhaps even weeks. Now that I think about it, I may have been eating these same sandwiches for at least a year, although considering how I can't stand the sight of them, yet instinctively know how to make them must mean that I have been eating these sandwiches since birth. That is the only explanation. I believe it may be time for me to pack up my things and continue my walk around campus. I do this to see the wonderful secrets that such a large campus tries to hide. It also has the added benefit of clearing up stomach space for the next sandwich, who despite me putting entirely different ingredients in, will find a way to taste the exact same. Thank you for reading and have a great day!

April 11th, 2024

Hello and good afternoon! I have not done much today. It has been really relaxed and lazy. I did not get much sleep last night so after my girlfriend woke up at 7AM and went to her volunteering job at Medical City Dallas Hospital (she is a volunteer lead) I got up and went to my place to sleep a little longer. By 'a little longer' I slept until about 12:30pm. I woke up and played games for a bit. A break from my recent waking up early and going to library or doing something productive. I then cooked myself some food, watched an episode of Seinfeld while I ate, and then went to class. Currently I am in my Requirements Engineering class. The class was full at the start of the year, but after a bad professor and a chunk of time, the attendance is probably about a quarter of the original attendance. I might read 'Three men in a boat: to mention nothing of the dog' by Jerome K Jerome in my Architecture class. It is a very calming and comedic book that I read to relax. It is currently in my top ten favorite books. In no particular order I have some of my favorite books in a table below.

Title Author Comments
Three men in a boat: to mention nothing of the dog Jerome K. Jerome Fun, relaxing, quirky novel. Written a while ago, but most topics still are relatable to this day. Short and enjoyable book that I would like to own a copy of in the future.
Red Rising Pierce Brown My favorite book series for a long time, and I even created a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that my friends loved based on this novel. Read in middle school/highschool. Tried rereading the series but it had moments that were awkward to read or had very 'Young Love' parts that seemed silly now that I am a little older.
Snowcrash Neal Stephenson I originally read it because I was wanted an action novel that was futuristic and had hacking elements. The book ended up being about, "history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy" that just happened to take place in a sci-fi setting. It was interesting, but not quite what I expected. It took me a while to read because I found all of the historical aspects of it kind of odd until I realized that the novel was more than just a cool sci-fi adventure novel.
The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie Fun fantasy adventure novel. Gritty and hardcore in some parts. Not too much magic if I remember correctly, but it was still a very interesting read. I did not finish the series unfortunately, I read the first and second books but got distracted before I was able to read the third.
Of Mice and Men John Stienbeck Have not reread, but my copy of the book has tears in it still from my original reading. Probably my favorite book that I had to read for class. Will probably not read again, since I am not a fan of sad novels but it was something I would recommend everyone read at least once.

April 10th, 2024

Hello! Today I attended an event that UTD had called PI-thon I think. I thought it was odd that it wasn't on Pi day (March 14th) but it was probably called that because our school is notorious for their nerds and an whichever booth got the most votes during the event would get pie in their face. They gave me a free Kona Ice (snowcone) and I had to get six of their people to sign a bingo sheet in order to get a free cup. Overall it was fun, and I did this all while there was a flash flood warning! Got my second class canceled today (unrelated to the flash flood surprisingly) and now I am debating on what I want to do. I will be watching Survivor season 46 tonight whether it is rain or shine at my friend Dayton's apartment. We all picked people who we thought would get out first and people who we thought would make it to the end. Unfortunately my winner pick has already gotten out in a unfortunate turn of events, and my loser pick is looking like they might win. Dayton guessed opposite of me (his winner pick is my loser pick and vice versa) so he is doing well. Today has been a dreary and lazy day, but I still managed to have a lot of fun. I accidentally made too much food and have been trying to scarf down a good portion of it. I got stuff for sandwiches and stuff for some BBQ chicken (chicken thighs, BBQ beans, and mac n' cheese), but since I am just myself and my appetite isn't what is used to be I have been unable to finish as much food as quickly as I would have liked.

April 9, 2024

Hello and good morning! I have gotten my server to pull from a repository so that I can edit and focus on making my website work and look good on my local machine, and then it gets pulled onto the server for hosting. I believe the server should update every night at midnight. Other than the tech side of stuff, I also finished an assignment from my Software Architecture after I walked my girlfriend to her car on the other side of campus. It has been a productive and calm morning, which I am thankful for. I have yet to eat any food for breakfast, and I was considering skipping breakfast all together but I may eat something light or pack a sandwich and go to either the library or a bench around campus to read or draw. I have getting really into jazz/classical/instrumental music lately. Some favorites would probably be (Song, Artist):

My Favorite artist from the above list would unfortunately be Piero Umiliani. I say unfortunately because his album covers seem to be rather inappropriate and the songs in his La ragazza dalla pelle di luna (Translates from Italian to 'The Girl with the moon skin') album seem to all just be variations of the same tune. Upon further investigation, La ragazza dalla pelle di luna appears to be a movie. This explains the similar tone throughout his songs in that album. I encountered a similar realization when listening to the 'Love Theme' by Micheal Small. Since these songs are from a movie, and the movie tries to keep a consistent tone for large parts of the movie, then these songs end up sounding very similar with slight variations in each.

April 8, 2024

Hello! This is my website! The date is April 8, 2024 and I just saw the solar eclipse while laying on the sidewalk with my girlfriend and some friends. It was spectacular! thoughourly enjoyed the event and all of UTD got into it. There were events and free sun glasses going around everywhere! Plus, they stopped all classes from 1-2pm which is when the eclipse was supposed to be happening. I was unaware that they were giving away free glasses at campus because I got mine from the fastfood/drink place Sonic. They were giving away a free pair of eclipse glasses with each purchase of a 'Blackout Slush'. The drink itself was not very good. It reminded me of when I was a kid and would mix all the flavors at the soda fountain into one cup and then try it. It tasted like pure sugar with too much going on. Plus the color was pitch black, which also resembles the 'every-soda' drink I mentioned earlier. Though it was the only place that I could find last minute eclipse glasses at, especially for a reasonable price (since I was unaware my campus was handing them out).