It's another new month already. School will be over in a couple of weeks. I can hardly believe it. This past week I've gotten back into the groove of doing work to some extent, out of necessity if nothing else. On Tuesday evening I actually wrote up all of my kernel grade files. Despite being a bit rushed and not having as much time to go over the source as I would have liked, I'm still quite confident that all of the grades I handed out were fair. Yesterday I turned in 4 assignments - a paper and a summary in Metaphysics, something which almost passed for a Computer Vision assignment, and an actual good Graphics homework (but it was really, really easy). I haven't turned in anything for Algo - I may do something and turn it in late still - and I still have unbelievable amounts of work left to do considering that I already have no classes left. But I'm confident in my ability to pull out of this without a disaster.
Robert's AC adaptor broke. Specifically, the plastic bit around the contacts broke off and got lost, meaning I can't make it quite fit and make contact any more. This was clearly a critical situation, so I found someone selling a new one for only $40 plus shipping and handling on eBay. I called him up to confirm all the order details, and he said that having it shipped one-day would cost way too much, and 2-day wouldn't really be any faster than normal delivery since it was over a weekend. So Robert should again be operable on Tuesday (Monday if I'm really lucky).
I have some more things to say, but I want to save them for the last entry I make before I go home. I still need some kind of project for the summer. Hmm, I might make another update soon. Like, real soon. Or then again, I might not.
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I'm posting this update last, but I'm writing it first, just to warn you: I've reserved the next hour for updating my page, and so, despite my tiredness and the amount of stuff I have to do, I'm going to be writing a number of updates over the next hour, which follow below (in reverse chronological order, as usual).
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You know, it's not infrequent that I'm happy, but lately despite the pressure on me and how critical the things I have to do are, not just for myself but for a lot of people (especially TAing OS), I have felt a deep sense of peace about my actions and my surroundings. I feel that nothing can really hurt me, that everything is, in the end, good. Still living with Mark in the same room bothers me. I know that I will be even calmer, even harder to ruffle when I know that I always have a space to escape to which is mine. After years of trying it I have concluded that I'm simply not built to live with another person in my room. I wouldn't mind sharing an apartment, but I need one room to call my own where I can go, lock the door and be relatively guaranteed that barring disaster, I will be alone.
Still, this sense of peace is exhilarating. Perhaps "peace" isn't quite the right word - in the past I have used that word in my mind for a state more like aggravated boredom which nothing I can think of to do seems likely to alleviate. I find that state intensely displeasurable, needless to say, but the state in which I now find myself is drastically different from that. It is sort of a sense that everything will work out all right, that in a deep sense there is nothing to be worried about. I've found that the degree of my calm often in turn causes other people to get upset, as if they are simply expecting that certain situations will get a rise out of me, and they don't seem to manage to do so. There certainly are things that bother me, but many things that conventionally should do so don't seem to actually fall into that category. Oh well, I'll leave getting irrationally upset to others as often as I can. I'm not willing to adjust my emotional life for them any more for this than I generally am, and if you know me, you know that's not much. One of the defining characteristics of my personality is that I am stubborn almost to a fault. It is something of which I am (some would say perversely) proud.
I guess I should mention here, since I thought of it and it doesn't really fit anywhere else, that Robert's new power adaptor arrived on Monday, in perfect working order, even though it doesn't really fit here either. As I was expecting based on the feedback for the eBay user from whom I purchased it and the very pleasant conversation I had with someone in their company when giving shipping and billing instructions, there were no problems - the whole trasnaction was smooth as butter. One problem remains, however - it seems that Robert's battery has also failed, so now he only appears to function while the AC adaptor or the ArmadaStation gives him power. I guess I won't bother to replace his battery until I get home, though, even though I found a good deal for those on eBay as well. I have a feeling that I could blow - err, spend - quite a lot of the money in my bank account in the couple of weeks I'm taking off between returning home and going back to work for the DMV. As a matter of fact, I've been compiling a list of things that I want to buy and prices (and places to buy them if I know). I may post this list later as a kind of gift registry and reminder to myself, but for now I don't want to distract myself from writing these updates.
Since I know my parents read these things, I should mention that I'd sort of like to talk to both of them. I tried to call my father the other night but he wasn't in - probably at Nance's. But anyway, I'd just like to talk to them, and I also want to straighten up my financial stuff with my dad and ask my mom if I could leave Ragnar at her house over the summer - if I got her a hub then Road Runner would provide an extra IP for no cost and I could leave him up as ragnar.nilmop.com there until I return to CMU.
Well, for the first time in this ludicrously long update cycle I find that I have little to say. I suppose it's just as well, since the Iron Savior that I was listening to ran out - although I do have two full CDs of theirs now which I'm not considering. Or is that 3? Mark sent them to me. Anyway, I skipped around a bit to find something which I did feel like listening to - Excitement, by Fabulous Faber, Happy 2b Hardcore 3 track 3. It expresses the way I feel right now pretty well - it's a happy song and could easily seem to one not listening too carefully to be goofy, but to me it has enough depth to be ever so slightly tinged with sadness. Every time I don't actually have music playing (and that I'm not watching TV or a movie) the Futurama theme song keeps coming back to me. I suppose that could be a symptom of watching way too much, but on the other hand, too much is relatively to the goal one hopes to accomplish, and my goal more or less has been to saturate myself in Futurama, so I suppose that I've succeeded.
Anyway, I have a couple of minutes left in my hour, and I'm not going to wuss out now - I think that I'm going to fill up my hard drive yet again. Mark was talking about how it's good that being close to running out of hard disk space makes you delete some things that you don't really want, but it doesn't really work that way with me - I always just end up buying a new hard disk as soon as I get near running out. And indeed, I've already started to consider it. Then I could put my 45G drive in Ragnar, which would be especially nice if I do a bunch of other upgrades for him. But on the other hand, now that I finally have a burner I have a source of near-line storage, which is also nice. I'd like a DVD+RW drive... Anyway, my hour's up, thanks for reading.
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This past evening was spent first reviewing the OS final - yes, we all actually had to take it - then hanging out with Doug, Ed, and Ed's housemates. First we went directly to Subway after the meeting about the final, since I had barely eaten anything at all the entire day and they closed quite soon. Unfortunately, in so doing, we missed the chance to go to the Almost Midnight Breakfast - we totally forgot about it, but as we were walking by, we decided to try to go in. They wouldn't let us, though, since it was already after midnight, although there were plenty of people inside still getting food. That was mildly irritating, but then it was back to plan A - go over to Ed's house and eat there. We talked and ate for a while, and then we eventually settled into playing whatever the Gamecube variant of Smash Bros. is. I played as Kirby and I'm not terribly ashamed to say that I totally sucked, often getting dead last place (out of 4 for the first part of the game). Eventually Ed stopped playing and Doug, I and one CPU player teamed up against one of Ed's housemates, who still managed to kick our asses. We were killing ourselves so often that he didn't even really have to do much in order to win.
I saw Skullthrone, a server which I recently learned I have an account on since they were copied over from Bloodgod, sitting on Ed's floor next to the Gamecube. Ed and I talked a bit about digital cameras - he has two, the newer one of which cost quite a bit of money, and I'm considering purchasing one. He tells me that if I get back to him, he can find me a good deal, but I need to get my finances straight first - not that I'm low on money, I just have to figure out exactly how much I can afford to spend on cool stuff and how much I need to save for more mundane things. Then I finally came home and now am sitting here writing this.
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Now it's time to write about my life, rather than just the things I've been watching. I've dug myself into quite a deep hole in regards to OS grading, which I really should be doing right now, but I need to write this stuff in order to have written it and gotten it into a form less volatile, less losable and permeable, than my own mind. I still haven't turned in my formal report for physics that was due on Friday, although I completely finished it this afternoon (I had to scan my charts and put everything together into one set of paper). The professor wasn't there when I attempted to turn it in, although it was significantly after business hours. Oh, if you don't have heavy time constraints, the printers in Cyert, pear and grapenut, are cool. grapenut is the one where they punch holes in your paper for you - I didn't want that, but I actually didn't remember, but fortunately I did remember that Mark had said that pear was the one he used, so I just used that one. Anyway, they put all my stuff together for me with a paperclip and dropped it off in the box in the little room in Cyert where print jobs are collected. It's so great that we're able to hire a couple of people to provide that level of service.
The graphics final was relatively easy. The algo final was significantly more difficult, although I still think I got essentially everything except for one question on the intersection between a triangle and a line in 3 dimensions, which I left completely blank. The ironic part is that I had to implement this very thing for my ray tracer within the past few weeks, but they had a specific method they wanted us to use involving solving a system of linear equations, and I couldn't figure out what they were driving at. From what I've heard from talking to people though, no one could, so it looks like that question may not affect the curve in the class much one way or the other.
I had a very nice talk with Priya after the algo exam, standing outside in the drizzle. She had an umbrella and I didn't, but I didn't really need one. I'm really glad that I got to talk to her - it seems like we don't see each other much and I haven't been using ICQ much lately either, so although I've been reading her LiveJournal, it's very nice to actually talk to her a bit about stuff, just get caught up with everything.
Those two classes are done. I think I'll get an A in graphics. Algo is much dicier - I could possibly get an A, but leaving that one question blank and barely even bothering to turn in anything for the last homework assignment might well cost me the grade. I turned in 4 assignments the same day as that algo was due, though, so I don't feel so terrible about it. I guess that even if I do get an A in algo, I have a slim chance of getting an A in vision, so it looks like this semester will be the one to finally break my 4.0 in-major GPA. Oh well, I guess it's really not that big of a deal, and I knew what I was getting into when I decided to TA OS the same semester I was taking 3 CS classes at once for the first time. At least my grade in Metaphysics should be pretty good - I actually tried to read the papers in time for class more often that I generally have for philosophy classes in the past. :-)
So, as far as academics go, while everyone may think I'm a slacker this semester, I think that's just the inevitable consequence of stretching myself as thin as I have, and I'm not ashamed of that. As a matter of fact, even if my grades aren't necessarily up to the standard they have been in the past, I expect them to be pretty good, and I'm quite proud of even being able to pull off what I have.
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Well, my last entry leaves me several directions in which to go, but I think I'm going to pick the one of covering other audiovisual dramatic art I've experienced lately. (Yes, that is a rather obtuse way of saying movies and television.) I watched Arlington Road over the weekend, but unfortunately I watched it in Shion's room, and that inevitably meant missing a fair amount of it, although this time it was due to suboptimal seating arrangements and my being a bit sleepy in the beginning (despite drinking a Venom, my new favorite taurine-based drink). It was a good movie, quite cool, but didn't really manage to seem "real" to me. This was probably more of an artifact of the way I experienced it than of the movie itself.
Next, so much later that evening that it really has to be called the next morning (I don't think I started until 6:00 or after) I watched Pulp Fiction. That was one hell of a bad-ass movie. I'm glad I experienced it as I did. I didn't really know what to expect, and based on those expectations, it didn't disappoint. :-) Mark said when I was talking to him about it that he could have seen me either really liking it or hating it. There definitely were a few points that didn't quite click for me - for example, the chronological interleaving of the different stories was complex enough that at the end I was slightly confused about one plot point. But overall, it was a very cool movie, and I burned a copy so that I can watch it again at some point.
I watched a couple of episodes of The X-Files that I taped from the last two weeks. The second one emotionally affected me quite a bit, but it was more because of one piece of music - the one that plays when they arrest Cadet Ace and then again at the end - that did it than it was because of the plot. The chord structure bore a lot of resemblance to Shooting Star. I'm very glad that I'm back into The X-Files as it prepares to draw to a close - I wouldn't want to miss the end of it.
Another show that I realized I didn't want to miss the end of, despite the many, many ways in which it's changed, is Ally McBeal. So far I've liked the two episodes I've seen in the countdown towards the series finale very much. It makes me depressed that it seems like all of the TV shows that I really like (I haven't even mentioned Invader Zim) are coming to an end. I suppose that it will keep me from wasting so much time wasting TV, and that some day there will be new shows to watch, but still it feels like I'm losing small chunks of myself. I guess that any medium based on the economic premises of TV can't be relied on to supply a continual supply of the kind of things I want to watch. Sigh...
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Let's start with what's been obsessing me most over the past week or so: Futurama. It all started when I began downloading episodes a week ago, maybe two, of South Park and Futurama. South Park was the original purpose and Futurama was just a way to fill the gaps - to ensure that I was more likely to have something to watch, since I'd queue up a bunch of episodes to download and then start watching, and hope that by the time I finished watching one another would have downloaded. But then I sorted the two into a directory for each of them, and just kept downloading Futurama. I've now watched, in the past week and a half, 45 episodes of Futurama - not too bad for a show that's only aired 56. The bad news is that there are apparently 16 episodes that were made but never aired due to Fox's schedule, and those will be shown later this year, but other than that, it looks like Futurama is over. This is making me sadder and sadder the more I think about it and the more I watch Futurama.
I think of the good laughs I've gotten out of watching the show, I think of how much I like the characters, how zany the settings are. I fret over having often missed the show - or worse, tuned in halfway through - because its time slot was so awful (7:00 on Sunday evening - what is that?) I always like to sit down on Sunday evenings for Fox's lineup, although I guess that tradition may end with the end of Futurama and The X-Files this season, but I sometimes missed part or all of Futurama because it was the first show. No matter, I guess - I'll have all of the episodes on my hard drive soon, to be archived forever on CD-Rs.
Dr. Zoidburg may not be the greatest character invented, and Hermes isn't the most dynamic, but I really like Bender - he's the good kind of evil! ;-) Fry and Leela are obvious, both great characters, well done and rarely so over the top as to seem like they're pushing it - like Homer has often seemed in recent episodes of The Simpsons. Yes, I've been saying lately that I like Futurama more than The Simpsons, which has earned the ire of several Simpsons fans, but it's true. Watching The Simpsons doesn't make me as consistently happy as Futurama. I cheer inside every time Fry or Leela does something cute to show how they really feel about one another, despite the fact that this is one love affair that it seems will never be borne out.
Now, I'm not saying Futurama is godlike. It's certainly no Final Fantasy 9 (or Final Fantasy 6 or Final Fantasy 4, or Count of Monte Cristo, or Atlas Shrugged, or Brave New World, or...) But it's now what I think of when I think of what good pop art - art made for mass consumption - should be. And it just makes me so sad to think that people are incapable of appreciating it, so grateful that it exists, so happy I can recognize it as I do...
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This is a message to the person who sent me an anonymous email last night. There's nothing secret in it and even if you're not him, you should feel free to read it; just know that it's not addressed to you.
What you said was harmful to me in two ways. First, you implied that everything I've been doing in the past semester was worthless, by alluding to some concept of "me" that has nothing to do with it. I am proud of where I am in life, even if not everything I've done has succeeded, and it's unfair to me to take it as fact that I am "losing or hiding [my]self in all [my] work etc.". I believe that I have found part - certainly not all, but an important part - of myself there. Second, the quote that you put at the end of your message made me do nothing but worry for a good 3 solid hours. I'm still worried, for more reasons than one.
You should know that although I wouldn't bet my life on knowing who you are, I'm pretty sure I do. You didn't deliberately tip your hand as to your identity, so I won't do so as to my techniques; suffice it to say that the 'net provides a lot of trails of crumbs to those who are resourceful and know how to put two and two together. And given that you did do what you did to remain anonymous, you have to have known that I would take offense to what you said, and especially your attempt to deny me the chance to respond to you.
I'm not going to try to make you do anything out of guilt, both because it's a sleazeball tactic and because if you are who I think you are, it wouldn't work anyway. But I will say that I think the right thing to do would be to confirm or deny both my suspicions and my interpretation of what you said. I suppose I'll leave it at that except to say that if you really do think I've been wasting my time or hurting my "self", I want to know why, and that I hope that long-term, this won't come between us.
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Well, I hope for my site to still be accessible over the summer at http://ragnar.nilmop.com, so go there and see if I get it set up. Other than that, I'm in the mood for a nice long survey, something I don't have to think too much about... and fortunately I seem to have one. (Please note I didn't make the questions lowercase, but I don't want to reformat them.)
Sheesh, 13?
This is supposed to be some kind of "only n people live and everyone else dies" type of scenario, right? I figured out the answer to this once, but 1) it's been a while since I did it and I'm pretty sure my list has changed since then, and 2) I don't want to offend anyone who didn't make the list. So I'm not going to answer this one.
I wish I didn't get burned out. Being burned out is pretty much the only thing that prevents me from doing what I truly think needs to be done any more. I also wish I were better at forming and executing "big" plans.
My coat, my hat, my Nilmop necklace, my Medic Alert bracelet
Note: there are almost certainly some gross lapses of memory going on here, and I tried to choose a group that were representative rather than just "the best", but those 8 are all excellent.
Probably Bush, since it's the only real rock concert I've been to. Some of the Celtic thingies I went to with my dad were okay, and I have good memories of Bill Staines.
One of the Final Fantasy Orchestral things that they seem to run every few years would totally kick ass. Probably a concert of any band I like would be cool.
Sheesh, it's hard to answer this question without trivializing it, since my schedule varies so much. Let's try:
Artichokes, pizza, vegetarian "sushi", bean curd homestyle (try it from your Chinese restaurant some time)
Insulin, food and water, all in infinite amounts. If you also want me not to go insane, at least for a while, toss in a computer that never fails with an unlimited power supply and a large supply of music, movies, TV shows, books, and programs - all digital, of course.
Nanase Aikawa's my favorite artist of the moment, but it's hard to choose just one song... how about Lovin' You.
Hmm, no one that I can think of, really.
Well, that's a wrap, folks. Have a great summer, and feel free to email me any time.
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Just for the record, this is not the classic "I'm going home" post. I intend to make one of those later today or early tomorrow. OS grading - well, it should have been done a while ago, but it is moving along. I've written 5.9 out of 8 feedback files so far, minus grades, but once I'm done with everything I think that assigning numbers to it should be relatively easy. My father should arrive between 10 and 12 hours from now.
Know what? I had the rest of a post written, but I don't want to post it. I don't know what I want from my friends, but I do know that they seem to become my enemies. I don't think I'm built for this world. That's not to say I'm giving up, now or ever. It just means that I'm my only dependable source of happiness.
Actually, I feel like paraphrasing the post I wrote and then deleted. Alison, don't say "no, wait, things aren't anything. They're just not". It's a statement that disproves itself, and I'm not in the mood for paradox.
Nanase Aikawa's singing is about as close as I have to a friend this cold, cold morning...
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Guess who's reading my site since I put it up at my mom's house? No one! Not even my parents (yet)! I guess I'm reading it myself technically... anyway, I don't have time for a full update (at least, I doubt it, since my dad should be arriving to take me to the oral surgeon soon), but I need to write something or risk losing touch.
My time since getting home has been rather uneventful. I finished Trigun (didn't like the ending very much). I watched Interview with the Vampire and decided that maybe I just don't like vampire movies no matter how well done. I watched Star Trek Insurrection and realized just how much I had liked Star Trek: The Next Generation, even though the main premise of the movie was, in my opinion, morally questionable. Yup, that's right, I honestly wasn't sure whether the "good" guys or the "bad" guys were the ones I would root for in real life... although as is often the case in real life, you root for your friends, and they tipped the balance a little more towards the "good" guys toward the end.
I watched the last episode of Ally McBeal. Sniff, all my favorite TV shows are ending. It was a competent if not stunning last episode; I was hoping for Cage and Ally to get together (as I had for most of the series) even as I knew it was wildly improbable, but the marriage which was announced in the commercials was Richard and Liza's. I still haven't watched the last episode of The X Files - it's sitting in my VCR on tape waiting for me. I had to go to Catskill in the middle of when it was airing, and this way I can skip commercials, so it's better that I watch it today or tomorrow, as long as I can avoid spoilers until then.
Other than that I've taken steps to expedite my digital camera order and obtain new batteries for Robert, dealt with the last few scraps of OS-related stuff, and done a lot of sorting of files on Laura. I've been avoiding dealing with a personal issue (to be cryptic, in the style of everyone on my LiveJournal list recently except Laura. Hi Laura! Yeah right, like you'd go to the trouble of checking this site separately from LiveJournal if Ed doesn't even bother). Well, not precisely avoiding, it's more like I just haven't been thinking about it. To be honest, I'm not sure I really want to. If it boils over of its own accord then so be it; if not then I'll just deal with it.
I've been finding that this past semester has given me a level of task-orientation that allows me to accomplish a fair amount, but at the same time it seems to have screwed me up emotionally somewhat. It hasn't affected my capacity but merely its appearance and effects. I think it will pass of its own accord in time. The summer always is a detoxification period with very little stress for me.
I hope we hear back from the Hub about my financial aid soon so I know how much money I can afford to spend... it's burning a hole in my pocket. Ooh, the price of the Playstation 2 dropped to $200 while I wasn't paying attention, which is awesome. Now I just have to play Chrono Cross and then it's on to Final Fantasy X (yeah, I'm still going to give it a chance, even if I am very disappointed in the lack of my favorite piece of music...)
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I had this sort of weird aversion to starting to watch The Vision of Escaflowne, as if I didn't want to get into it because I was't sure I would finish. But eventually I started watching it, and not that much later, I finished. It's good, definitely a classic. It's certainly not perfect. It's extremely fast-paced (apparently it was originally planned for 39 episodes, then cut down to 26, which would explain this) and I wasn't a huge fan of the ending. But overall, it was quite good.
Last night I saw Spiderman. While I don't know if it lived up to the amazing amount of hype (and I can't believe it made as much money on opening as it did), it is certainly able to hold its own. It's really the reason behind each event in the movie and the emotions that hold it together, not the action at all. (And I'm sure this is horribly obvious to anyone reading this who's actually seen the movie. If you haven't, you should. No need to rush, but it's a good movie.)
UPS' website claims that my digital camera has been delivered to my dad's house, so now, it's only about 7 more hours until I'll be there and can try it out... I have a feeling this is going to give me a whole new reason to want a bigger hard drive. Of course, there's always CD. My flashcard and its PCMCIA adaptor arrived already - apparently when Dell switched around my order, they shipped it by UPS Ground instead of Fedex 2-day, unlike the other 2 items. They also listed the shipment as having 2 packages, though... if I end up having 2 flashcards with PCMCIA adaptors I may just hold on to them or sell them at school rather than worry about returning them to Dell.
There's a certain elemental joy in burning things (Escaflowne and some FLAC files of Final Fantasy soundtracks this time), deleting them and watching my free hard drive space go up...
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Well, I got my digital camera, and it took a few beautiful pictures, but it quickly developed a problem. Specifically, it lost the ability to focus. So I've got tags from Dell to return it and exchange it for a new one in the mail, which should arrive relatively soon. I'll post some of those pictures soon, but I forgot to bring them with me today.
Sunday was a day of setting things in motion to be fixed. My dad's phone has what was eventually described to me by a representative of the phone company as "heavy grounding noise", and my dad didn't want to bother to deal with it, so I called up the phone company and set up an appointment for it. The thing is, I looked at the connector and it looks lke it's not grounded at all. But my dad has a service plan, so the repairs won't cost anything, so I guess I'll just let the repair guy deal with it. I also called Dell about the camera as I already mentioned (and also told them to take back the extra CompactFlash card and PCMCIA adaptor that they sent me). Lastly, I called my Aunt Susan about my coat, and she told me that I had definitively not brought it with me that evening. It eventually turned out that my mother had placed it in my closet. I told her that from now on, she was never to move my coat, but to tell me if she didn't like where it was.
Today was my first day back at work. I have a new computer, which is a P4 1400 with 256M of RAM, a 19 inch monitor and Windows 2000, which isn't too bad. I also figured out how to give it Internet access (which was't too hard after Ginny realized that my old computer had an IP address) and got reacquainted with the office. It looks like another summer of the same.
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Kenn Hamm
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Last modified: Tue May 28 18:35:12 2002