Where did time go??

I feel like just yesterday I was that little nervous freshman sitting in the circle with what we called “Clubbies,” wondering if I was going to find a good group of friends that I would fit in with. Turns out I found the best group of friends, 4 of which I live with right now and the others just across the back alley.

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Friends come and go but I have met a great group of friends that will always be close friends from now on. First there is Dan and Ashley who are now engaged and getting married next summer! I have known Ashley my whole life, she came here from Arizona to go to school, I would consider her one of my best friends. Then there is this guy named Dan who lived on my floor freshman year who I didn’t know very well at all. Who would have thought that my best friend from 2000 miles away would be engaged to a guy she met as SpanishDan in spanish class who I happened to know, and was on my floor?

Next is Niels, we graduated from the same high school but really never hung out at the time because we were in two completely different groups of friends, gotta love high school. As freshman year went on we hung out more, got to know eachother and have been great friends ever since, and we now are roommates. Niels and Dan from above happened to be clubbies as well, so slowly this group of friends is getting pretty tight knit.

Then there is Dustin, Dustin was a clubbie of mine, we clicked right away, had all the same interests in sports and everything else you could think of, but before Dustin and I were that close he had met our club leaders sister, who also happened to live right across the hall from Ashley in the story above. Dustin is now one of my roommates also. See how crazy this whole circle of friends is and how all this is coming together?

Then theres RJ who was good friends with Neils freshmen year who also lives with Dustin and I. There is also max who I went to high school with that lives with us now. There’s also Mike who was Dan’s roommate freshmen year and has been Dan’s roommate all through college.

Now that I have done a quick circle of friends history, I tie it all back to Dan and Ashley. I think if those two hadn’t become what they are today that none of us would be as close as we are now.

ASHLEY AND DAN

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It seems as if every corner I take on Concordia’s campus I see more and more students with Macbooks, and I love it. In fact in front of me in the library are two students with the new Macbook Air. I have been a mac guy since my middle school days, and purchased my first Macbook Pro my senior year of high school. It ran flawless for me for 4 years, with endless hours of video and photo editing, it did finally die on me but, that was my own mistake. With no hesitation I bought a new one last week and I am very pleased with it. The majority of my work is with video and graphics, and Mac seems to have figured things out when it comes to productivity.

It seemed as if no one caught on to the power of the Mac until this school year. What is it about a Mac that seems to put it above the rest? Is it the ease of use of Mac OS X? Is it the aircraft aluminum body of most Macs? Is it the fact that it is nearly impossible to get malware and viruses? It sure isn’t the price, because apple prices their computers rather high. I am not going to start the Mac vs PC debate by laying out everything that Mac does better than PC. The Mac vs PC debate can go on forever and people from both sides could build solid arguments against each other for days, even months, and years. What I think it all boils down to is security. With the recent hype about internet security I have never felt safer than I do using my mac. I can get on my Mac knowing that, what I am doing isn’t being tracked by some It is simply just not as vulnerable to other threats that hackers spend their time making for PC’s. On a Fox News article by Harry McCracken he states that, “a Mac owner who runs no security software is vastly less likely to be the victim of a successful attack than a Windows user who’s protected up to his eyeballs.” I believe this to be true, more often than not my roommates are continuously bringing their PC laptops into the solution center on campus for repairs and virus removal, they do a great job, but just because you fix it once, doesn’t mean its not going to come back later. In 4 years, not once did I have an issue with security, viruses, malware or anything like that. I was a guy who downloaded every application you could think of, torrenting movies, downloading endless amounts of shareware music, activities that are bound to give a PC user major problems.

So there you have it, My short testimony on the recent step up in Mac owners on Concordia’s campus, and I bet if I were to venture over to other campuses, I would see the same results.

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One of the best opportunities I have ever had came this past semester, best part is, I received credit to do what I have a passion for, video production.

I decided to do a Co-op with the Fargo Force hockey team through Concordia, and I must say, despite paying tuition to work for free, I have learned more about media production this past semester than ever before. There is no better way to jump into your field or area of study than doing a Co-op. Let’s be real, class time is good, but getting out and actually doing what you want to do, while receiving credit for it is the best way to learn. Others, may think why should I pay to work? I guess that is one negative way to look at it but the experience is worth it. I was given the opportunity to create television commercials for the Fargo Force, along with many other video pieces. I able to do a lot of post production videos, such as intro videos as well as live video for the in house video boards, whether it was operating a camera or doing instant replay.

My Co-op was for 8 credits which required 30 hours of work a week, it did get to be a lot of work, with going to class at the same time, but on the upside of things, that comes out to be two classes worth of homework that I didn’t have to do. It has all been well worth it.

Below is one of the commercials I have made, as well as a link to the Force website where you can see all of what I do. Come check out the Force this weekend, December 17th and 18th!

FARGOFORCE.COM<a

FargoForce December 17th and 18th