Well, I'm making the first entry of September and it's already the 8th. I'm not quite sure why my rate of updating has fallen off so precipitously. I suppose it's a combination of a variety of factors. First, over the summer I got used to not updating very frequently, since I wouldn't be able to upload updates frequently, no one was reading my page, and not much was happening in my life. I haven't really gotten back into the swing of updating here. It also still doesn't seem like very many people are reading my page.
There's certainly no lack of things happening, but it just doesn't seem like I feel like chronicling them. This is problematic, since I know that I want this record to exist. I suppose it will work itself out.
The second week of classes felt a little uneven. The Game Programming professor is still covering introductory material - I think it's kind of silly to spend so much time learning things that were already covered in earlier classes. Yet I kind of worry that in the middle, he's thrown in some things that I didn't already know, and that I wasn't paying close enough attention since I was so sure I knew it all already. The first project is out, and it doesn't look that bad. I've set up CVS for it, and changed it a bit to be able to run on Laura, but I haven't started working on it seriously yet.
Continental Philosophy is covering material in which I'm interested, but I worry that it sort of assumes you're already familiar with the material at an outline level. This is an easy mistake for a professor, especially one who's been covering classic philosophers and their positions for a long time, to make, and I'm not really sure that bringing it to Prof. Cavalier's attention would do much good. I just hope that we get into a more critical examination of some of these philosophies at some point.
Compilers seems to be the most even-paced course so far. The first two projects are easy, but the material is moving right along, at just about the right pace. Of course, I'm sure it will start to seem far too fast towards the end of the semester, since each project is supposed to be orders of magnitude more difficult than the last.
I don't really have much to say about Value, Fact and Policy. I was assigned a report in it, which doesn't look too difficult. Overall, the class looks to have expectations that are very reasonable to fulfill, and the professor is great. Like Mark said, Covey is a great break from the typical academic routine, if you can get over the fact that he's very loud and some would consider him offensive.
I've only played a bit more Final Fantasy X, but it's still an awesome game. I think I need to realize that when I'm killing time anyway, I might as well kill it in a more enjoyable way.
I was mildly sick about a week ago. I think it was just a cold. I learned how well sinus medicines work.
I also discovered that Entropy does still stock Snapple's Venom (a taurine-based drink loosely considered to be in the Elements line of products, and my favorite of the taurine-based drinks as far as taste goes). I bought three, and will probably buy more before I even use them up - in my experience, Venom has been very hard to find.
I'm still waiting on purchasing any more hardware. I thought that Laura's power-supply fan was the culprit in her being excessively loud, but one day I tried powering down her hard drive, and the noise stopped. I did some research online and discovered that there's a new kind of bearing for hard drives, called a "Fluid Dynamic Bearing", which massively decreases noise. Unfortunately, although several companies have announced products, it seems to be totally impossible to find anyone actually selling FDB drives of 120G or more. I'm also considering getting a "Silent Drive" enclosure for my current drive; the drive is only 5400 RPM and thus shouldn't put out too much heat for the enclosure to deal with, but I really want any new drive I get to be FDB. This is problematic, since the hard drive is the upgrade I really need to do before the rest of the upgrades can go forward, so everything is kind of on hold for the moment.
I finally got copies of the songs on my Final Fantasy 6 soundtrack that have holes in the foil or are scratched! I posted to misc.market, figuring that the chances of someone being able to help me out at CMU, while perhaps small, were certainly much better than they would be once I had graduated and moved on into the world at large. So, about a day after I had posted, when I had just about given up, someone finally replied to me! He let me download .wavs of the songs that are damaged from him, and all he asked in return was that I fill out a small survey a friend of his was doing "if I had time". Needless to say, I found time. I'm very glad to not have to deal with this ever again, and have already made a backup of the .wavs on CD-RW, with another to follow on my second hard drive fairly soon.
Well, I guess that's about it for now. I may or may not get back into the swing of regular updates, but at least this entry was pretty long, right?
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Today, the one-year anniversary of September 11, 2001, I mourn the fact that the United States has become a mere shadow of what it should be and what it largely was before the horrific events that took place on that day. Neither I nor anyone else can be certain of the motivations of the men who destroyed our buildings and killed so many people. It has been hypothesized, however, that they wished to destroy our distinctly American way of life. If so, I must give them a grim salute; they have succeeded.
Patriotism has certainly increased, where Patriotism means waving a flag or putting a bumper sticker reading "God Bless America" on your SUV. But the core principles of America are opposed to this kind of blind patriotism. Despite the famous words of Stephen Decatur (which, incidentally, from my brief research on the web appear to be almost universally quoted in a misleadingly acontextual manner), "My country right or wrong" is antithetical to America.
Meanwhile, our actual freedoms - that which I personally consider most representative of the American tradition - are being eroded. The FBI can now wiretap Internet access without any warrant or justification. Defendants can be detained without charges being brought against them. All kinds of proposals obviously completely unrelated to the goal of fighting terrorism are being pushed through with massive bipartisan support. Anyone who speaks out against these policies is labeled by those who still keep the faith as a "traitor".
These policies are not reasonable accomodations to difficult times. If they continue to go through and move in the same direction, they will represent the total annihilation of American values and eventually the establishment of a savage police state. Meanwhile, politicians act in ways which they believe will make the public feel better while being demonstrably ineffective at accomplishing any important goal.
That opinions such as this one are not censored - and I am hardly the only one to express these views - is evidence that it may still be possible for the United States to pull out of this trajectory before it's too late. And my daily life has not been impacted that much - yet - by the changes, although I've been avoiding planes for the past year and I still can't figure out what, precisely, the department of homeland security is supposed to do other than hire away FBI agents who decided to change agencies because homeland security paid better. A friend of mine believes that many of the changes pushed through after 9/11 will ultimately be declared unconstitutional. That they are unconstitutional is, I think, undeniable to any honest, mentally competent person who reads a copy of the United States Constitution, but all I can say in regards to their being declared as such is that I certainly hope so.
In closing I must say that although I find the principles evinced by the United States Constitution to be some of the most beautiful and rational man has ever come up with, I pray that I be blessed with the courage to abandon a sinking ship, if that is what this nation becomes.
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It's odd to have the experience of wanting to update more frequently because I see people visiting my page more often than I write anything new to put on it, but that's exactly what's happening. Anyway, I think I'm going to divide this into two entries. This one will be the one where I talk about stuff that's going on in my life, and the next will be something different.
I didn't sleep much Sunday or Monday night, but I made up for it by sleeping for something like 12 hours last night. Monday was the KGB meeting, which is always fun. They're planning to give the Underground Tour on Friday, which almost sounds like an event that would break my run of never going to any KGB events despite being a member. I'll probably forget about it entirely or decide it's not worth bothering with, though.
This week seems to be the one when things first start being due. On Tuesday I had to give a report in Value, Fact and Policy. I thought that it would be much harder than it was, and in particular, that it would be extremely difficult to talk for 10 minutes straight, when in fact I and everyone else who had been assigned to give a report that day ran out of time.
Right now I really ought to be working on my Compilers project (but I should be extremely close to done with it, since it was very trivial) or writing a resume, but I really don't feel like it at the moment. I also would rather be playing Final Fantasy X. It's quite a change to be this driven to play a video game; although I had fun with both Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross, neither of them had quite the same intensity as FFX seems to. Mostly it's the fact that FFX is so cinematic, I think; this really is very close to the promised land towards which it seems Square has been aiming for quite some time. I still have a strong sentimental attachment to some of the older Final Fantasies, but I think that 10 must in all fairness be said to stand out in attention to detail.
I've started reading Cryptonomicon at Mark's request. It has two stories that run in parallel (although taking place many years apart) and the two are just starting to gel (and so far have only an extremely tenuous connection to one another). Nevertheless, I think I've learned to have a reasonable turnover rate with books, and I don't doubt it will have some value if I persevere (the book is quite long, almost 900 pages).
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The KGB Underground Tour, which I went on this past evening, was fun. It was low-pressure, funny, and I finally ended up going inside of Purnell, for the first and quite possibly the only time. However, the grill/gathering afterwards afforded some opportunity for thought, not of a very positive variety. I've mostly used this journal merely to chronicle the events in my life, but for a while here I'm going to go into a somewhat deeper emotional and ideological analysis.
The first conclusion I should make is that from a perspective of the pure amounts of joy and pleasure I could derive, I would have been best off waiting only to get my Boca burger and then leaving immediately. I suppose that I thought, mostly subconsciously, that since I liked the people in KGB that it would be different than all of the other party-like situations I've been in. I guess I still don't have the data to completely rule out parties as a possible benefit to me, but I can say that it's been made all that much less probable in my assessment. I reserve the possibility that they could still be a benefit because although I like the people in KGB, I don't really have close ties with any of them except Ed. In fact, I feel like I barely know any of them. Now, I know that KGB is a heterogeneous group and that it has sub-clusters, but I also know that I am a member of none of these sub-clusters.
What I did do instead of leave when I probably should have is hang around afraid to say goodbye (which I never did, only waving to Teki since it would have been impossible to leave without his noticing) for far, far too long until I finally made the spontaneous judgement that there was now, in fact, very obviously no benefit to staying. I watched people converse, sometimes laughing at their jokes but extremely rarely contributing in any way, and stared off into space thinking.
Aside from the whole party thing, there are several imperatives I must issue to myself. I must stop having a crush on a certain person who I won't mention here because 1) I think I'll remember who she is, so I don't need to record it for myself, and 2) I really have no desire to tell you, if you're not me. If you're able to infer who it is merely from this discussion, you probably were already able to infer the whole situation anyway, so I really don't think I'm revealing much here. Anyway, the whole situation is massively destructive of me emotionally with no benefit (I've been through quite enough character-building emotional pain over the last few years, thanks).
More generally, it must become harder for me to form crushes, and I must stop driving my habitual mode of action within a group of people by something roughly like a "follow nearest female who is remotely attractive" algorithm. I do think that I've made at least one stride in this direction; I had a developing semi-crush on someone which I managed to blow over so quickly that it shouldn't really be called a crush at all. Yet still the overall pattern remains.
I'm sort of thinking about these two issues and grouping them together into one. It occurs to me that I don't know how to make small talk, or that I'm too nervous to speak up in a conversation which involves a large number of people. Yet I don't think it likely that the people who do happily (to all appearances) participate in these conversations have ever sat down and thought "I need to brush up on my conversation skills". I don't think that trying to do so would make me have any more fun or be any more accepted at these types of events.
I also don't really like talking with strangers, or mere acquaintances, very much. Really, although I honestly think - and I hope you who are reading this won't find this statement too boastful or brash - that I am a fairly exceptional human being, the face I present to people on a distant social basis (as opposed to a functional basis, such as clerks in a store, or a close friend basis) is roughly that of a brick wall. Given this, it's pretty amazing that I am ever able to forge social contacts at all, and indeed my history of such relationships is mostly a history of failures (mostly failures to even make the attempt).
Then when and if I do start talking, I have a tendency to shoot my mouth off. Basically, I'll propose ideas as they come to me, and someone will point out a reason why those ideas are difficult to justify. At this point, I often advocate policies that the average man on the street would consider to be obviously insane. Generally they involve killing off some segment of the populace. When someone points out a reason why that won't work, I advocate killing some larger portion of the populace. I think that the people I know well tend to interpret these things I say as either a comedic way of indicating that yes, I've made a fairly brash claim that I can't figure out how to justify, or as a way to stall while I reconsider my opinions or try to come up with a reasonable way of justifying them. Those who know me less well, though, probably tend to interpret these arguments as meaning that either 1) I'm a nut case, or 2) I'm an asshole (or maybe both). Sorry for that digression, it really had little to do with the topic at hand, yet my discussing it seems to have flowed rather naturally out of what I was already talking about. You can all see the inner logic here, right? My psyche can't be so complex that you honestly don't understand it. Well, not all of it, but just try to get this one entry through your head. One thing at a time, right?
As I walked home, I told myself that I would not get emotional. I generally get quite sad after any party or group gathering situation, as I lament my complete and utter ineptness at social interaction and getting to know people. I managed to do this, at least outwardly. But the strangest thing happened. As I was growing up, I often had very intense emotional reactions to a wide variety of experiences. About two years ago - oh, hell, it seems to have happened almost exactly when Alison and I started going out, although I honestly have no idea which was cause and which effect - most of these reactions froze, and were replaced in some cases by their mere simulation. I've been in that state ever since, and hated it in many cases. Yet tonight, it seemed like I could suppress the outward effects but still felt the sadness. I'm not sure whether I actually turn off my emotions or merely suppress them. I also feel unsure whether causing myself, in whatever way, not to feel them is the best option available to me. I think back to how everyone hated to support me when I was weak and how many of them eventually just got sick and tired of me - how having me as a friend was a very demanding task. I suppose that this is really a desire directed towards others - I want them to be my emotional support, to want to be my emotional support. But I have become deeply fatalistic and as a consequence always look exclusively inwards for solutions to my problems.
I think what this all shows is that although I appear a deeply different person from just a few years ago, the fundamental issues with which I am contending are the same. The tools I have acquired do not actually enable me to surmount these problems but merely to "deal" with them, to put off feeling anything about them and get on with "normal life" for days, weeks, even months at a time. I want to let go for a while and yet as the consequences of doing so seem more and more obviously disastrous, I become less and less able to even seriously consider the option. The "easy fix" is to do what I have already been doing for quite some time - to deny that there is any serious problem here, to reassure myself that I am fine, and to go on about my daily business. This is also the solution which I will almost certainly adopt. Yet I honestly have no idea what the hard solution would be - what not sweeping the problem under the rug (as I might in my more cynical moments think of my new way of coping) would entail. It's very tempting to close this entry, as I generally do entries of this type, with "but I know it will all work out for the best", but even though such memes have already conquered my thoughts by virtue of their sheer pleasure value, regardless of truth, I will resist that temptation to commit to them with words. I do not know that everything will work out all right. I have no evidence for that belief whatsoever, just a vague feeling that could easily be bred more out of immediate wish gratification than any actual information I have.
Well, that was entirely too much insight into my mind and feelings for a public journal. You damn well better have derived some value from reading it, because I'm not at all sure that I got any from writing it.
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Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to write an update. I just finished watching American Beauty for the first time since I got my DVD (and the first time in quite a while). It's interesting to observe how my reactions have changed. I'm less overtly emotional (this is no doubt at least in part due to the fact that not only do I know what the next event will be at any given point, I can pretty much recite the dialogue word for word), but I still notice things explicitly that never occurred to me before. All in all I think it still deserves its place as my favorite movie ever.
I've been awake for the past 19 or so hours straight. That's quite a long time, and is especially unusual at 14:00 or so. I determined that my sleep schedule was getting simply too unmanageable - I'd never make another Game Programming lecture if I kept this up - and so I decided that the right way out was through, by "skipping" a day. With luck I still should be able to finish my take-home Continental Philosophy exam - which I haven't started yet, unless you count doing the reading - by class tomorrow, at 14:30, and then collapse immediately afterward. That was part of the purpose of watching American Beauty at this particular time - it kept me awake a bit longer, and thus closer to getting back on the schedule I want. Between that and a long walk and small shopping excursion I made this morning, I've already stayed up 5 hours later than I probably would have otherwise.
The last week was relatively uneventful. I've learned either to control my emotions or to repress them so well that I can't really tell the difference. This kind of disturbs me, and I'm sure would have disturbed the person I was a few years ago far more. I'm no longer certain that I can open the floodgates on my emotions, even if I did want to. I may have to give it a try, but as it's mildly dangerous and not at all productive, and I have quite a lot of work to do (which will only get worse as the semester progresses), I may have to postpone this experiment somewhat.
On Thursday I went to the TOC (Technical Opportunities Conference). I gave my resume to only two companies - Convergys and IBM. I really should have given it to far more, but my objective was somewhat narrowly focused (I said software development specifically on a Unix/Linux platform; still, I probably should have given a copy to VMWare and Apple at least). I also went to an Amazon info session on Wednesday and gave them a copy of my resume, and won a $25 gift certificate for answering an extremely easy question: What Amazon.com feature is implemented based on the equation "P(B|A)/P(B) > 1"? (Answer: related items. If A represents the item we're trying to find related items for, and B represents a potential related item (more specifically, if A and B represent the events that a customer purchases one or the other of these items), then this will indicate a positive correlation between purchases of the two items, indicating that to the extent that customers' tastes are uniform (an at least somewhat reasonable approximation), these two items are similar.)
Much of the rest of my week was spent working on programming a game. My game was totally stupid in that it didn't really have much of a point. The requirements were to render a skybox and terrain, allow the user to fly around in it, and maintain some kind of extra state (probably some other objects). Wraparound terrain turned out to be very complicated to implement, and my implementation suffers from some pretty nasty pop-in. For extra state I just had a giant sphere that bounced around (I rendered a bunch of them to make it easier on myself, since otherwise it looked like the sphere had just disappeared when it was at the point where the terrain wrapped), but didn't interact with the player in any way. The game also detects when you're nearing the terrain and issues a warning, and if you do crash into it, it prints a message to that effect and respawns you.
I really ought to spend more time on Game Programming (and plan to at least for the project), but Compilers is shaping up to be quite a bit of work as well. I've just started working on Project 2 and it's many, many times larger than Project 1 (which is not saying much, as Projects 0 and 1 were practically trivial). It looks like a good chunk of work.
I haven't really had any deep insights into the human condition or the world lately (well, any new deep insights into same), and I haven't had a chance to play Final Fantasy X at all since my last update, so I guess this is all I have to say for now. Take care until next time.
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I was all ready to write "wow, I can't believe it's a new month", but it turns out that I picked the last day of September to write this. Oh well. :-)
I've tried to rationalize my sleep schedule and completely and utterly failed. If anything, it's even worse than when I started. I believe I went to sleep around 8:00 this morning, and woke up around 14:00, just in time to make my philosophy class. At least I got some work done last night - the Compilers deadline is tomorrow at midnight, and I had barely started the project before yesterday. I now have the translator done, and most of the work left is in the canonicalizer. It's still possible for me to finish on time, although I may have to burn one of my late days (I hope not, since I only get two for the whole semester, and the class promises to continue getting more difficult right up until the last project).
James has been going nuts over a movie called The Boondock Saints. He's watched it something like 5 times already and has ordered the DVD. One of those times was with me. I did think it was a well-made movie, although I do have to say that despite a thoroughly sympathetic treatment, I still don't support the actions of the main characters. It's worth a watch, though.
My South Park collection is starting to fill out. I only have episodes from the 6th (most recent) season left before I have a full collection, although I was unable to find a few episodes in any format except Realmedia, which both looks terrible and has a terrible player under Linux. If Comedy Central airs them again, I'll try to remember to tape them, so that I can capture them with my TV capture card.
Mark asked people at Seagate if there was anywhere that I could buy a 120G hard drive with Fluid Dynamic Bearings (a new technology that makes hard drives much quieter), and he did find a retailer online that sells them. They're significantly more expensive than non-FDB hard drives, or at least this one is, but I've looked just about everywhere and I can't find anything over 80G FDB anywhere else. Speaking of potential purchases, I currently have 20 browser windows open in my bottom-right desktop. Ten of them are things I might want to buy and ten are just places I surfed to. This is getting kind of messy - I hope I get KDE 3.1 soon so that I can have tabbed browsing in Konqueror and start to organize all of this junk.
My sister's birthday was a couple of days ago. She's starting to figure out which colleges she's going to apply to and fill out applications. I talked with her on the phone for a while on Saturday (her birthday).
Well, if I want to take a shower and make the KGB meeting at 16:30, I guess I should start. I've got a tough time in my near future, but hopefully a rewarding one as well.
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Kenn Hamm
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Last modified: Mon Sep 30 14:46:50 2002