January 30, 2006
Sweet Poster
Anyway, that class is fun. Though I am worried simply because after having watched all the class give their presentations, I now realize some of them are utter idiots. This Friday we are assigned a group for essay presentations. The idea is that we each read a different essay in the reader, and then sum it up and give the most interesting tidbits to our group. Then the group asks some questions, and we're supposed to answer without sucking. My essay is "How to Give Criticism". I hope my groupmates don't suck.
January 29, 2006
ダンス・ダンス・ダンス
Only heard about a song or two from the Furries, but my initial impressions were strongly colored by their clothes. That and the lead singer was kinda like an American version of Hyde, but with a crappier voice and way less cool. They didn't suck, but they weren't particularly compelling. Ave bought their CD so I might try and borrow that from him sometime, but we'll see.
Kids was, eh. Had one or two songs that were fun and dance-y, but besides that they were just mediocre. Yeah.
And Morningwood wasn't nearly as fun as they were last time. I think because the venue was a lot larger this time around, and they weren't the main show. Instead of going into the audience and handcuffing and humping a random dude, she instead went into the audience, handcuffed a random girl, and brought her on stage and made out and nearly stripped her down. And the music was fun of course, but the audience was seriously a bunch of emo kids. Even right in front of the stage, there were just a handful of people dancing. Oh well.
And Jon had his 22nd on Friday night. The theme was funny hats. Sadly enough, my hat is not in that picture because it was stolen early on and was passed around like a cheap hooker for the rest of the night.
Anyway, it was.., fun. Old friends, the largest drink selection I've ever seen in an apartment, and a lot of frustration/aggression to work out due to hideous amounts of schoolwork. So, there was rampant alcoholism, dancing, grappling (which I suck at and lost at), and fisticuffs (which was too drunk to say anyone won). The only disappointing thing is that I left early-ish and in retrospect I think I would have liked to have stayed. Next time maybe!
Also had lunch with Li and Chris, who I have not seen in god knows how long.
In any case, the past two days have been a nice change in pace, and hopefully are harbingers of better days to come. I look forward to getting a new shortboard, getting some job interviews, not having two things due everyday, more random concerts, and maybe a trip to Horsetail Falls.
January 27, 2006
You Gotta Know When to Fold 'em
So, I get to Kinko's to see their hours listed as "6am-12 everday". I see people inside however, so I try a door, but it is locked. Great.
Well, I can always see how much colored ink I have left in the printer at home. Maybe I'll have enough to print out the pictures for my visual aid. In a worst case scenario, I could probably just print out in black and white and make some attempt to color with markers or crayons. As long as I have some medium to which I can attach this crap, I should be fine.
So then I swing by Safeway to deposit some checks (ATMs don't close, booyah), and to find some posterboard. I wander down the stationery aisle expecting to find the shelf of my childhood memories with racks and racks of various sized and colored posterboard only to end up seeing shelf after shelf of notebooks, binders and paper.
How can a supermarket be super if it doesn't even carry pieces of paper larger than 8.5x11 inches? I mean, where the hell are kids gonna go to get posterboard to finish their silly science fair projects and such if they can't get it at a supermarket? Rite-aid?
Anyway, looks like I'll have to be up early tomorrow to run errands and grab the requisite material to finish this visual for my presentation. Honestly though, a non-24-hours Kinko's and a Safeway with no posterboard; oh how the world has failed me tonight.
January 25, 2006
Midway Through the Week of Pain
Not to gripe too much, but, uh, here goes.
Ethics and the Information Age was miserable because the discussion was largely non-interesting and I decided that tea without breakfast first thing in the morning would be a good idea.
It was NOT a good idea.
I ended up grabbing some sort of nice tasting pastry between classes to absorb all the nasty acidic shit in my stomach that was making me feel bad.
Altogether, I still don't quite know how I feel about that class. First off, this whole "Philosophy class for engineers" thing is kinda weird. They try to fix problems in theories when they should just be analyzing, they fail to properly grasp the importance of a normative theory needing to be able to cover all cases, and a lot of the time they just fail to understand what the text is trying to say. The class started out promising, but now it looks like more effort than it's worth.
Communication Electronics went by pretty quick. The professor barely stops to take a breath through the one and a half hours, and my pen is moving pretty much the entire time. We turned in an assignment today (two problems) that me and a friend worked on for about five hours and still didn't finish. The nice thing is that today we finally moved into material that I'm more familiar with. All the previous stuff was filter and tuned circuit stuff I'd either forgotten or never knew, and signals and systems stuff I never learned well. We're finally gonna look at building multipliers using differential pairs it looks like, so maybe the class will stop being such an information overload.
Then, I ate at Espresso Roma with Shef, whee. They've got these grilled Pannini sandwiches that are pretty good. They seemed kinda small, but I think my perspective was a bit skewed by the being-incredibly-hungry thing. They have this turkey sandwich with jack cheese and sundried pesto sauce that was delicious. If only they gave more. And I got my sweet college of engineering sweatshirt back, booyah.
Verification of Digital Systems is a bore. Seriously. The class has been largely intuitive thus far, and I can usually predict what the prof is going to talk about next. Not to say I'm a genius or that the prof sucks or whatever; it's just that the material we've covered so far has been pretty simple and mostly just tedious rather than challenging. The first lab for that class is building yet another god damn processor, which wouldn't be so bad except that only the controller of the processor can be written in behavioral code; the rest has to be written in structural code. That is to say, when I want to add two vectors, I can't type "A<=B+C;", I have to use logic gates (AND, OR, NOR, etc.) or logic functions to build an adder and code the proper inputs and outputs to the proper nodes. Not fun.
Communications was interesting actually. In general, I kinda like lecture for that class since the prof is quite the speaker. He dispenses all sorts of interesting advice, things to think about, and random anecdotes that don't really relate and don't continue anywhere in particular. The most interesting thing he talked about was probably the idea of balance in relationships (friendships, SOs, etc.), how to cultivate and build upon a relationship, the uniqueness of a relationship between any two people, and basically a whole bunch of random shit about the nature of interactions between two people. I think some people might have written much of what he said as being intuitive, common sense, and largely empty of significant meaning, but for some reason the lecture struck some sort of chord with me. Anyway, this is probably the second most interesting class I have this quarter so far. Interesting quote of the lecture : "'So what's new with me?' you slow son of a bitch?"
After communications, I basically tutored for about..., four hours. It would have been longer except that one of my students bailed on me. I don't mind the tutoring so much since I do like my students, and I do get some recompensation for it, but four hours of tutoring after a full day of school is a bit tiring. I think I may have gotten a bit too curt with my geometry student. I mean, I'm not there to be nice to them or anything, but I think my tone of voice got a bit harsh towards the middle of our session. I guess I can't expect my students to remember every single thing I tell them throughout the course of the year, so I shouldn't get too frustrated. At the same time though, you'd think they'd retain information longer than until just after the midterm. Maybe I should teach better, sigh.
And now I'm home, preparing for the career fair tomorrow. I've got a list of companies I want to talk to first, I've got my resume fixed up to look real nice and pretty, and I'm attempting to prepare myself to be direct in trying to get what I want : mini-interviews and followup interviews.
And I finally got the Earthquake Glue album I ordered and it turns out it's not even the actual album. It's a promo album which should have the same songs, but, it's just not the same :-/. I should have read the auction a bit closer I guess.
So, as for happier things, I did get a sweet school of engineering sweatshirt. Lion dance performances are coming up. I am progressing in the broadsword set at a brisk pace. Conditioning is noticeably toning my body and a six-pack is poking its head out to play. Some more sweet CDs are coming to me in the near future. I'm probably going to pick out a new shortboard within the next five days and get back into skating again. The weekend should be adequately busy and fun, what with parties and celebrations and performances. The Japanese release date for Mother 3 has finally been announced. And as much as I appreciate an interesting, coherent story in books and movies, I really enjoy Kung Fu Hustle. It's such a ridiculous and awesome movie with things that just happen and are tied together plot-wise with style, spunk, and good intentions.
January 21, 2006
Finals Week (For the little ones) and stuff
Started lion dance again as well. Kristin is coming back with a vengeance, starting us up on regular conditioning and running. I have been saying that I need to bulk up a bit, so it's a good opportunity to do so, but damn if the second day after isn't painful like a bitch. And our lion got a makeover, so now it's all pretty and shiny and..., pink. Pictures will probably go up eventually.
The new quarter of kung fu also just started. There were just three new students signing up for the quarter, but it looks like a lot of the new students from last quarter are continuing as well. The big problem with the kung fu thinger is that a lot of students will sign up for a quarter or half quarter, get bored/pained, and then leave. So, it's always nice when students actually stick around and join the fold, which happens with maybe one student every other quarter. It's kinda like in the beginning of The Shawshank Redemption when they're taking bets on which new inmate is gonna break first, except we've yet to actually start betting.
I also finally ordered a sword bag to carry my broadsword around in, so I can bring it with me to practice. Carrying it around in the open, even though it was sheathed, was awkward in more than a few ways. For one, there's really no good way of holding on to it, and secondly, the library security guards always looked at me reeeeeal funny when I walked in with it.
So, my communications class.
We have to do this "cultural presentation" thing where we talk a bit about our family history, a bit about us, the subcultures we feel we belong to, the subcultures you identify with and get along with, along with subcultures you don't identify with, don't get along with, or aren't comfortable with.
I had to sit through like eleven of these on Friday, but there were two that were particularly memorable.
One guy went up there, talked a bit about his family, blah blah blah, said he considered himself very religious, hard-working, liked cars a lot, hated rap because it gave him a headache, loved country and classic rock. He said he couldn't relate to/felt uncomfortable around foreign people, people with accents, physically disabled people, mentally disabled people, he also "couldn't relate to lazy people and homeless people, though they're kinda the same thing anyway", that he'd "never seen a hard-working homeless person", and that comment shocked me so much that I really don't remember what else he said. Oh, and he was super conservative, if you couldn't already tell.
The next guy goes up, this Vietnamese dude with indie thick-rimmed glasses, dressed in the emo-kid uniform. Starts talking about his family too, and blah blah blah, and then talks about how he identifies strongly with indie kids, gamers, freaks, outcasts (because he grew up some place with "fifty percent Asians, fifty percent Latinos, and was too white to hang out with the Asian kids, and didn't know enough Spanish to hang with the Latinos"), was a strong atheist (at which point he pointed at a picture on his poster of Jesus playing soccer with kids and said he "loved this picture because it confused him so much. I mean, Jesus? Playing soccer with kids? C'mon, what does that mean?"), was more or less a vegetarian, considered himself largely socialist, felt that "capitalism promotes greed and gluttony and brought out the worst of competitive nature in humanity", and similarly felt that talking about money was very impolite. He had a huge gripe about college kids who were living on stipends from their parents and complained about being "starving college students", also hated those who actually were from lower income families and environments and spent frivolously on unnecessary things, and there was a lot more he complained about, but really, I stopped listening about halfway.
Now, the main reason this is worth mentioning is that later in the quarter we have to do a partner project presentation thinger, where you are ASSIGNED a partner from class and have to do some sort of presentation about some books or something. Also, in lecture, the professor mentioned that in this class we should expect to be taken out of our comfort zones in terms of people that we will be having to work with and deal with in the class. I'm guessing, hoping, that those two guys are gonna be paired together for the project, because that would be the most awesome presentation in the world. I think they might just collide and explode upon being assigned to the same group. Either way, this may well end up being an interesting quarter in that class.
As for other crap, school is blah. Work is piling up not-so-slowly and my labs are getting bitchy. Internship and career fair is next week, I gotta start getting ready for that. Rie, a TA and friend from Japanese class is coming to visit for a month in less than a week. Looking forward to seeing her again. My second host family sent me back a Christmas postcard sorta thing. Turns out Asami has been doing well in France, considering she only started studying French after she got there. I swear to god that girl has some sort of eidetic memory though, given how fast and how well she picks up language, so she's probably nearly fluent by this point in time. Which reminds me how poor my own Japanese is given how many characters I have to look up just to read this damn thing.
Anyway, time to get cracking on the ridiculous amount of work I have to do in the next few days. I need more three-day weekends, blah.
January 18, 2006
Forgiveness
He walked with lingering, pained steps; his pace unsteady as though he could collapse at any moment. His face, full of despair and sorrow, as though he had held paradise itself in his hands and tossed it away. And there he walked, staggered, and looked at his hands as though there were something there, perhaps something too small to be seen from a distance. His face twisted with agony, and he looked up to the sky, hands raised as if to give his life to the fates and then fell to his knees, screaming out a silent sob and collapsing to the floor.
- I saw this from thirty feet away. The thought occured to me that I might go to him and help him. My exact decision I don't recall, but it was probably the case that my own mood was so dour that I wouldn't have been able to help his much at all.
And I walked away, and saw him, still on his knees, body flung forward across the ground; a rag doll turned lifeless by the cruel fates, or perhaps by his own hand and mistake. I know not whether I imagined it, but I recall his heaving breaths, and were I closer I probably would have heard his ragged, choking sobs. Just then, he raised his head again, face grief-stricken as before, towards a girl walking to him.
She went to him and pulled him to his feet. She looked into his pitiful eyes and did nothing but pull him close and held him. He sobbed against her shoulder, and then they were out of sight.
- I thought to myself, "What a lucky guy", to have even just one friend as good as her.
- Unconditional forgiveness. It is a blessing to have friends who will not first ask why it is I am pained, but simply sit and listen to me describe it. I've made mistakes, I made a mistake, and I'm sure I will make many more to come. But were it not for my friends to have been there for me, many times I could have worsened my plight (worse than it already is/was?), and surely would not have the clarity of mind I currently do.
A humble servant looked into the eyes of his unwilling god and begged, "Please forgive me my sins. Will you please forgive me god?"
And the little god, thrust into this role he neither desired nor understood, did not know what to do. He was no god; what did his forgiveness mean? He was in no power to give forgiveness, much as he wished he could, and so could think of nothing to say but, "Forgive you for what?" And the servant shuddered, his last words lingering in the air, "Everything." In his hesitation, the little god watched the servant, his unwanted servant, fade into the abyss with a face that yearned for more.
Or perhaps, the little god paused. He knew not what to say, much as he knew not the reason for this man before him. This self-declared servant worshipped the unwilling god for an unknown reason, wanting nothing more than to serve and to love, and to be loved by his gods in return. And the little god, or perhaps just a man thrust into a situation beyond his control, said simply, "I forgive you."
Later on, the unfortunate man would speak to a friend and relate the story. "I barely knew him, and yet my word was his law, his reality. His life passed and yet he looked as though he were asleep, dreaming of paradise."
And his friend replied, "I can not think of a better way to pass on. In the presence of your gods, loved, cherished, and forgiven for all past transgressions; free to move on to the next world without the baggage of the past."
The prodigal son took his inheritance and left. "I need to be free, I need to learn of the world on my own. I no more need your advice, your help, or you, and leave only with what I am deserved. I leave here today to prove to you that I shall never want from you again."
The prodigal son returned home. He intended to prostrate himself before the house of his father, his family, and repent. "I deserve nothing," he would cry, "I took all you let me have, I squandered your gifts, I squandered the upbringing you gave me, and not only have I brought shame upon me, I have brought shame upon this house and upon you. I deserve not to look upon you again except to proclaim my worthlessness. Let the pigs trample upon me, and allow me to live my life protecting the mud from the droppings of the cows."
As he approached the house and prepared to beg for his life, his father came up to him silently and held him close; the father held his son in his arms, and said nothing. He picked up the frail body of his second child, who had left him just a year before. Into the home he was taken, washed, bandaged, given a change of clothes and fed a full meal. Nary a word was spoken by the father, and the son lay as though lifeless, sobbing.
"It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."
- Forgiveness.
Whether or not it's deserved, I can't be sure, but every single person craves it as much as life itself.
January 17, 2006
School Blues
Talked about ethical theories with a bunch of engineers for way too damn long.
Turned in a homework assignment (three problems) upon which I spent, with a classmate, about seven hours on over the weekend. I'm hoping to hell my lab partner finished the lab report, didn't suck at it, and put my name on it.
Randomly ran into Jon and had lunch with him.
Managed not to fall asleep in my Testing and Verification of Digital Systems class. A very good thing considering there were no more than eight people in class today. Finally got my senior project schedule thinger looked over and more or less approved by a teacher.
Saw a clip from "The Color of Fear", listened to the lecturer go on about fishing for topics in conversation, ego boosting in social interaction by making the other person feel worthwhile or important (calling them, complimenting them, making time to spend with them), ego busting in social situations by making them feel worthless or trivial (ignoring them, insulting them, making excuses), and how to be a good listener.
Swung by work, got students scheduled for the quarter, updated my own schedule.
Ran back by Kemper to talk with classmates, and now to get ready for a shitty, shitty lab tomorrow.
And I guess the weekend wasn't soooooo bad. I should appreciate the time spent with friends more, especially the ones I don't see often.
"昨日の僕はうそだと言うなら…
- Søren Kierkegaard
"To thine own self be true."
- Polonius
"Though the mask of Dionysus can indeed give voice to the meek, courage to the fearful, and resolve to the weak, one must be aware of a corrupting effect which confuses meaning, garbles intent, and debases the presentation."
…僕らの明日は変われるのか？
「君と僕」は本当になれるのか？"
The Tonics, Stress, Post-School Thoughts
I like this song, by the way.
And I'm doing that thing where I wake up at three in the morning unable to return to sleep again.
It might even be funny if I didn't have something like six and a half hours of class to look forward to.
Sigh.
Stress I suppose. Thinking about school and the workload of this quarter is stressing me out a bit. The sheer enormity of some of the tasks I have ahead makes me hesitate before I even start working on them.
Talking to people about post-graduation and what to do once out of school is also kinda sobering. Moving away from school is going to be weird. School as a social environment is quite unique and there's no way it's going to be nearly as easy to meet people once I get into the working world. "Have heart" I suppose, I won't be the first person to have moved into the working world and dealt with this kinda crap, and I surely won't be the last. It's not impossible.
And of course the upcoming job fair has me doubting myself and my ability to look good enough on paper to land an interview, to know enough to impress them during the interview, and, uh, I guess that's it. Working on my resume (CV?) is a depressing sort of experience as well, and makes the last three years of my life look almost like I was doing little to nothing at all. Another part of the problem is that one is never quite sure of what they're looking for on the resume, and what they consider relevant or irrelevant. Last time I went to the career fair they basically ignored parts of my resume, and more than a few times while asking whether I had a particular kind of experience or had done a certain kind of project, they told me to mention that on my resume.
Anyway, I can't say the three-day weekend treated me particularly well, but at the least it gave me time to relax, not think about school too much and get caught up on crap. I also learned again the importance of good friends, being able to separate you from yourself, and patience.
So, time to shower, eat, and get ready for classes.
Here's to clarity, purpose, friends, and happiness.
January 16, 2006
Advice and Presuppositions but Mostly Aimlessness
People give me a lot of advice. I think this is the case for everyone. In general though, I think this sort of advice is mostly just ignored. The few that manage to stick in the mind for more than a moment tend to be thoughtfully chewed for a week, and then ignored as more interesting things come along to think about. Sometimes, people may even think that the advice is worthwhile, and work on incorporating it into their lives, only to fail once their attention wanders or the advice fails to provide results.
That having been said, one of the most insightful things I've heard from a teacher, a communications teacher no less, was, well, it condenses into, “You should always be the one taking the initiative.” In particular, he applied it to relationships. Not necessarily between “you and your sweetie” as he liked to say, but also between friends and most anyone you might want to be friends with. You can't expect that others will take action for your sake, and so if you're bored, or feel a relationship is getting into a rut, or feel you're becoming distant from a friend, or want to get to know someone better, you ought to be the one coming up with ideas of things to do, making a phone call and catching up, or getting in contact and setting up a date or meal of sorts.
Of course this isn't something terribly new, but at the same time he said it in such a way that it made sense to me. I'd say that rarely ever is good advice expressing something entirely unknown to the listener, but simply a heuristic or approach at something coached in such a way that makes it apparent why and how one should the heuristic or approach. And of course, because such things are just heuristics, you can't universally apply them and should be aware of when it's appropriate to employ the advice.
Anyway, the point is that this teacher gave me advice which has been useful. Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure what the entire point of all that was, but that's been something that's been on my mind. Good advice is hard to come by, and I'm lucky I grabbed that bit from that particular teacher.
Which also sorta reminds me of something else that I've been thinking about a fair bit. As a result of a few different, unrelated things, the idea of racism and prejudices has been something that's been on my mind as of late. In particular, it's been causing me to think about my own prejudices and assumptions not necessarily about race, but about how I approach people and situations in general.
Often when I'm dealing with, say, a problematic situation, I've already made assumptions about the situation before I've even begun considering how to go about solving it. And then, in order to try and come up with a workable solution, I have to make other assumptions so that I can limit my range of choices to a few, feasible solutions to ponder at great length and make a final decision from.
Similarly, when dealing with people, we will make assumptions about their personality, their objectives, their feelings toward you, and what you think they want to hear, among other things. All of this comes together in shaping how you talk to this person, how you respond to their questions and conversation, and how you deal with them in general.
And sometimes, not uncommonly, we have problematic situations with people, where we make all of the above assumptions in our analysis and attempted solution to the problem. And.., I guess the point of all this is to say that we should all pay attention to these assumptions, as blindingly obvious or plain as day as they may seem. Often it happens that the problem lies not with the situation or the other person, but simply in what you think and believe.
You might think that something seems amiss and so you carefully analyze the events leading up to the situations. You find out things which, though previously unnoticed, suddenly support and contribute to the amiss-ness of the above something. Suddenly ulterior motives appear for otherwise innocent action, careless gestures betray hidden intent, slipped words speak of secret wants. You put these mostly unrelated bits and pieces together with crude and far-fetched reasoning to finally create a pedestal upon which you rest what you now realize is a Huge Problem. Funny that you didn't see it before, but now it's absolutely obvious that it's there and you must take action to get rid of or deal with it. Maybe you can confront the person about the problem and make them deal with it, or use an erector set to as to surreptitiously snatch the object away, or subtly leave hints so as to get someone to change their mind, or maybe just ignore the person related with the problem until the problem goes away or solves itself. Only, upon starting to take action (or inaction) against the issue, it's suddenly seen that people say shit for no reason at all sometimes, things happen entirely randomly once in a while, and the entire bloody world isn't out to make your life miserable. The waves crash in on your crappy sandcastle and you feel like an idiot for freaking out over a funny noise, a passing comment, an out of place object, a particularly lumpy rug.
Point being, people make bad assumptions all the time. And the more strongly you feel about a problem, the more likely you are to make a crappy assumption. Leave the detective work to those who do so for a living, and just ask the TA what the hell the circuit looks like, ask that one dude what his problem is, ask your girlfriend (slyly mind you) what she wants for your three month anniversary, and tell that creepy guy that he really needs to stop staring at you in class 'cause it's freaking you out.
January 12, 2006
Catch Up
Ate at that new Japanese place. It was alright. I was hoping it would be a good place to go for sashimi and so ordered some nigiri sake (salmon). It was alright, but bland. I guess the lesson here is to eat rolls in Davis, not fish.
Went with Jasmine to see John Edwards speak about poverty. I did not expect that he would have a southern accent. He spoke largely about poverty, the racial element of poverty, the social class stratification, the increasing difficulty of moving up in social class, inefficient medical insurance, and a few anecdotes about random stuff. Not too surprisingly, he avoided the topic of the Iraq war, even when it was brought up nearly point blank in a question after the talk. He was a good speaker altogether, and made several interesting and good points. I was glad I took the opportunity to see him speak. I'd say he did a pretty good job of not being too partisan in what he spoke about and how he spoke about it, but what do I know?
Went to a cocktail party with the strongest mixed drinks ever. I had maybe a cup of whatever foul mixed drink they had and was pretty buzzed a bit after. This resulted in me devouring a bazillion of these pesto croissant thingies one of the hostesses made as well as various other snacks such as bread, crackers, carrots and stuff. It was all fun and games until my buzz wore off. Then the drunk munchies disappeared and I felt sick from all the food I'd eaten. I then proceeded to get totally fucking sharked at scrabble by some Korean jerk. Final scores : 336 (diaspora? wtf. and two "bingo"s), 154, 128, or something like that. I hate losing.
Played "Shadow of the Colossus". This game is..., good. It's very reminiscent of "Ocarina of Time" in a lot of ways, except that Shadow is bigger, more hardcore (you get a sword, a bow, a horse, and powerful hands), and a billion times more depressing. In some sense, the main characters interaction with the world is limited to two kinds of actions : moving around, and killing things. There's not much to talk to (as far as I've seen), the only thing that moves that you can't kill is your horse, and most of the things you have to kill aren't even trying to kill you. All the same, the gameplay is great, the graphics and art are just superb, and the story makes you want to figure out what the hell is going on.
Over the break I managed to destroy my sleeping schedule something fierce. I fixed it the day before classes started, and then proceeded to fuck it up again not more than a few days later. As a result, I managed to sleep through my ONLY class on Monday, which was at noon.
That night, I made sure to get to bed at a reasonable hour so that I could get up in time for my 9am the next morning. My alarm actually died halfway through the night, but I still woke up about six minutes before it went off. I took the on-time bus to class, and got there about fifteen minutes before class even started. So people slowly showed up to class, and eventually all of us (all fourteen of us) were in the class, and he wasn't. And class had technically started about twenty minutes prior.
Someone then mentioned that previously, when this teacher taught some other class, he pulled the same crap one day because his son was running around with a Q-tip in his ear and fell or something and it, well, yeah. So we all left at thirty after figuring something similar had happened.
This would normally be nice, except that I had absolutely nothing to do until my next class. So.., a classmate and I wandered a bit looking for something to do. For lack of any better ideas, we figured bowling would be fun.., except that when we got there all the lanes were taken by a class. And the pool tables were out of commission due to the bookstore-registers-book-buying-thingers. And most of the games in the games area kinda suck. So we wandered some more and found an energy drink taste test experiment thing being held by the food health sciences something or another department. We figured we might as well, since we had nothing better to do. All there really is to say about is that I don't like most energy drinks, but apparently the one I like best is Full Throttle.
As for the teacher that didn't show, when I went to class on Thursday I walked in kinda late and saw we were taking a quiz, which kinda sucked. I also saw that the teach had many scabs on his face, a black eye, and some other random bruises. From what he remembered, he was biking, then he woke up in the hospital. According to a witness, he was biking, fell over, and fixed himself up good-like on the curb. Apparently the impact was so bad he was knocked out for about an hour and a half.
He was saying that it was particularly disturbing because no one had any idea why it happened. If he had say, hit a car, or a bump, or some such thing he would know what happened and how later to avoid it. Because they have no idea why he fell, he can't really do much to prevent it from happening again, which is a much worse situation to be in.
Went to kung fu for the first time in a long time today as well. I'm kinda out of practice, but it's nice doing physical stuff again.
As for tonight. Today has been an antsy sorta day, so we'll see how the night goes. Jon did suggest car bombs. But I do have class at noon tomorrow. Hrm.
The three-day weekend will be a nice time to relax. Schoolwork has indeed been kicking my ass already. No solid plans yet, but hopefully something fun comes along.
January 07, 2006
It's a Legitimate Tactic!
Dude 1 : Hey, did I tell you about how "Jack" almost got a ticket the other day?
Dude 2 : Nah, you didn't.
Dude 1 : So four of us were in the car going like ninety and as we're going we see this cop pull a u-ey and we're like, "oh shit". So Jack is like, "shit motherfucker", and thinks about just jetting out of there, but there are hella cars in front of us and a red light so he says "fuck it" and pulls over.
The cop comes up to the window and asks, "License and registration please", and Jack kinda looks at him blankly, and slowly starts getting the crap out of the glove compartment. The cop looks it over and asks, "So, why are you guys in such a hurry?", and all of us just kinda look at eachother blankly going, "uhhhhhh...". The cop repeats the question, and Jack, not knowing what else to say, points at "Don" and says, "He really needed to take a shit". Don is utterly shocked, and just kinda sits there, then sorta starts acting like he's got cargo he needs to dump to try and help out.
At this point, the cop asks Jack, "Excuse me sir, could you step out of the car?", and walks back towards the cruiser. Jack gets out and they're out there talking for a minute or two until Jack finally comes back empty-handed.
"Dude, what the fuck, where's your ticket?"
"..., he said it was a legitimate excuse."
January 03, 2006
Wrapping it up
Fall quarter is over. I could have done better, I could have done worse. I can't say I'm entirely happy with how the quarter went, but whatever. I'll hope to do better this coming quarter. Speaking of which, I have but two quarters of school left, if things go well. That's a sobering thought in many ways, but also something I'm not going to think about too much.
Winter break is also now over. It was a break of reunions, as I spent most of my time with old friends from HS. It was fun, but weird since this may be the last winter break before we all move onto real jobs and grad school and those kinds of things that sometimes don't permit returning for winter breaks. Ignoring that though, it was a good time to catch up, see what everyone's been doing, see where everyone plans to go. It seemed like almost everyone was staying in school in some form or another, with me being one of the few moving onto the working world. While this does kinda make me wonder if grad school wasn't a better choice, I still feel like I've been in school for way too long now.
One of my TAs said that if I was thinking of going into grad school at some point in my life, that I might as well just get it over with now instead; slay the evil schoolbeast in one foul swoop rather than destroy it up to its neck, then return a few years later to finish the job. More than a few people have already said that it would probably be quite difficult for me to leave an established career and go back to school. All the same, I feel the need to move away from being a student and making my frist drive at being financially independent. Or something.
And then I think about the current state of school for myself. I am taking something like six or seven classes next quarter. Two engineering, two philosophy, one computer science, one communications, and one engineering project class thinger. It is not going to be fun I think and I am worried about it. I figure though, that if things really get hairy, I can always switch the philo classes to pass/no-pass or maybe even drop a class or two. In the meantime, it seems like I am going to be spending most of every day on campus for the foreseeable future.
As for other things, I went to a Morningwood concert some time in the distant past. Sean got free tickets and so I went with him to go check it out. Apparently we were lucky the concert was not cancelled being that their drummer had some sort of nasty infection or another and was undergoing surgery in Phoenix. Altogether the concert was fun. The lead singer was..., energetic. Among other things, at one point during the concert she handcuffed herself to a random dude in the audience, jumped on him and began humping vigorously. Her father was also in the audience, having been invited to see her in concert. The music was fun, poppy, rocky stuff. Altogether the concert was entertaining, though due to the absent drummer and them having randomly found some dude to drum for them that morning, the concert was only five songs or so long. Which for some reason reminds me that I paid like eight bucks for an itty bitty cup of Guinness. That was upsetting. "My hands looked lonely" the waitress said with a smile. Well, next time she feels that way she can shove it up her bum.
As an aside, I found this link as I was googling for the Morningwood website.
I also saw Syriana at some point during the break. This was a Good Movie. I dunno about most people, but for all the talk about the Middle East and oil nowadays, I still barely know anything about the Middle East besides the fact that it indeed does have oil fields. Syriana was a movie that did a good job of taking a look at the Middle East and the people there and how we affect their lives through both political and fiscal avenues. Yes indeed that sounds like a load of hokey, psuedo-intellectual babble, but really, the movie is quite informative without being noticeably biased. Not exactly a happy movie though.
Besides all of that, things have been largely ok. 2005 was a year of learning. I learned ridiculous amounts of things relating to EE and circuits, I learned a fair bit about myself, the kind of person I am, what drives me and what bugs me, and I also learned how better to deal with the crappy times. For 2006 I look forward to moving on and meeting new people, to learning even more from school and life, and to enjoying the last couple of quarters of my undergraduate years. Furthermore, I hope to be more understanding of others, to listen more than I speak, to relax, and to be less judgemental of others. Let's hope this next one is even better than the last.
