I sat down to write this without any idea what to call it. There was no plan behind it — the thought just showed up and I started typing.
Phone screens
My roommate recently got himself a screen-protector machine, and I've been the guinea pig. Over the past few days I've gone through a whole stack of films, which at least gave me a chance to compare how different types actually feel in daily use.
My conclusion: tempered glass wins, at least for me. Nothing complicated behind it — it's cheap, and the surface is nice and smooth. The matte film was the worst experience by far. It was too harsh on my eyes; I lasted about a day before peeling it off. I really don't like fingerprints smudging up my screen, but a matte finish and my eyes just don't get along, so out it went. 
Studying
Things are more or less on track, though I've been fairly busy. Even so, I've managed to keep the study routine going. What I do need to do is set aside time to catch up on my class notes — the backlog has gotten a bit embarrassing. Homework, at least, is basically getting done on schedule.
The chat platform I'm building
This one waits until I finish Spring MVC. After that I want to go back through the underlying source code, clean it up, and rebuild the redundant parts properly with a framework. The chat platform I put together earlier really only covers registration and a few basic functions — there's no actual chatting yet. Still, I think I can get it developed fairly quickly once I start. Before any of that, though, I need to back up the existing data at some point. Losing everything I've already got would be a waste.
My birthday
My birthday fell on a Thursday this year, a weekday. I'd hoped to go home, but I ended up staying at school — and there were classes that day too. That evening I went out for fried chicken with my friends. The photos are gone, unfortunately, so there won't be any to add here; I never backed them up. That's just how it goes.
As birthdays go, this one was fine. Not especially happy, not sad either. Happy because my friends were around. Sad because the person I wanted to see wasn't.
Running the class
It's been about a week since I took this on, and honestly it's been all right. I get along with my classmates well enough, and everyone has been cooperative. I hope it stays like this.