I'm taking three classes now here at UC Berkeley (aka Cal). It's an awesome campus, and I'm totally intrigued by how liberal everyone here seems to be. Not just in the political sense, but also in the more personal sense. Everyone just seems to have this "I'm me and this is who I am dammit" attitude that is a breath of fresh air away from San Diego (which looks more and more conservative everyday that I'm here in Berkeley/Bay Area).

I'm actually looking into going to Cal and Stanford as perspective graduate school choices up here (as well as UCSD down south for sure). On the east coast, it's Harvard and M.I.T.

Ok time to get back to reality and listen in class!

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I bought a MacBook Air last Sunday at the Apple Store in Otay Ranch Town Center. I have a week on whether or not I want to return it. Before this sexy beast, I used a MacBook Pro for all my portable computing needs (on campus especially) and this computer is definitely an upgrade in terms of weight and portability. With the MacBook Pro, I felt like I was carrying a brick or three in my backpack all the time, but with this thing I seriously forget that it's there until I take it out during lectures to take notes.

I actually acquired the 1.8ghz/64gb SSD version, because I was like, "if I'm going to get this thing, I might as well get the one closest to the performance that I'm accustomed to (on my MacBook Pro)." So far, so good. The only nuances that I have noticed thus far with this machine is its anemic 3D gaming performance (I tried playing the Sims 2 Life Stories on it... and it lagged so much that I thought I might as well shoot myself), but this laptop wasn't meant for that. Sim City 4 seems to do fine, and so do less 3D intensive games I installed on it thus far to kill time (Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Cooking Academy, etc.).

Real world performance-wise, the MacBook Air is snappy and I really can't discern a speed difference between this and the MacBook Pro. Maybe converting songs from one format to another might take a little longer, but I don't mind a couple of seconds. The SSD seems to have a lot to do with it, as it starts up faster and opens applications quicker than the HDD on the Pro.

For what I'm going to use this for, it's perfect. Now it's time to study. I have finals next week alongside the U.S. Open! /sarcasm

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