October 2002 Archives

Maybe I should just rename this thing "Crazy Person of the Day."

Today's candidate: a lanky fellow who set up shop beside an egghead sculpture outside UCD's Shields Library and called out loudly to passersby. He had a black light with a reflector and several signs. The most prominent one, perched precariously on an egghead ear read:

"People against Cruelty to People Who Were Told They Were J____ on Their Third Birthday in Ogden or San Diego."

Hmm. He saw I was staring (along with about a half dozen other people), so he held up the sign he was carrying, which read:

"Say No to the Corporate Pee Test"

"I'm taking donations!" he announced loudly. "But not money. This is a pee test container," he continued, holding one up. "I'll take whatever you can fit into it. Except pee. I'll take foreign coins. I've had enough, I'm leaving this country! I don't want to live in a place where I have to pee in a container to get a job!"

That was about all I needed to hear.

Yesterday, there was some corporate thing on the quad that involved Listerine and BestBuy. Picked up a lot of free Listerine PocketPak strips and won a ColdPlay's Parachutes CD. It's been getting a lot of play time in my MP3/CD player, and it sure makes good study music (until you start learning the lyrics...or start feeling sleepy). Now I'm starting to see why Jennie likes them so much. Speaking of Jennie, if you want a truly surreal experience (surreal...get it? *sigh*...you're no fun), go through your day with earphones on, listening to ColdPlay. A stranger's laugh will seem alien and distant.

Something else I've noticed my MP3/CD Player goes through batteries with the same relentless and savage single-mindedness of children attacking the candy cabinet at work.

Today is working out a lot better than yesterday.

Got a lot of studying done, and even got 15 points added to my first ECS 110 midterm...bumped me up from a low B to a mid to upper range A. Good stuff.

Yesterday was definitely one of those days. We had an unusual woman walk into work.

I first noticed her peering through the front door while I was showing a student the finer points of the Pythagorean Theorem. She wore a floppy straw hat and a banana-yellow rain coat (on a cloudless day), and carried a cream-colored traveling suitcase in one hand and a paper shopping bag in the other.

After a moment's consideration, she shuffled inside and put down her suitcase and shopping bag. She then proceeded to take off her grey backpack and and yellow raincoat, folding it neatly as she surveyed our facility. She opened her suitcase and kneeled down to put away her yellow raincoat, leaving the suitcase open. She then got up and stood expectantly at the front desk, looking aound as she started taking off a royal blue jacket she was wearing underneath the raincoat.

All the tutors were busy teaching classes, but alarm bells were already going off in my head as I watched the stranger, so I broke away from my class (my student is smart and could calculate triangle lengths in her sleep), and went to the front desk.

"Can I help you?" I detected a distinctive odor, and noticed that the woman's legs weren't shaved.

She fixed her sea-blue eyes on me with an uncomfortably direct yet vacuous gaze, which immediately registered as "crazy" in my brain. A few moments' conversation immediately told me that she was there for no distinct purpose. I wanted her out of there (and I wanted to get out of there myself), but in an effort to be professionally polite, I listened to her inquiries and treated her like a regular walk-in customer.

My student was getting restless, so I passed on the task of talking to her and getting contact information to a friend, but kept an eye on her. By now she had the attention of everyone at Computer Tutor (there were about 10 tutors and students), and we all eyed her suspiciously as she wandered from classroom to classroom. One tutor had candy out (we use it as a reward while teaching classes), and asked politely for a few morsels. She asked for a bite of another tutor's doughnut.

We were all getting rather creeped out when our boss, who was out at the time, came in and managed to coax the strange woman out of there.

So today is starting off beautifully. I was up a good part of the night working on the paper and I'm feeling the lack of sleep. I was right on schedule when my printer ate two pages for a page instead of one, printing my last page on a page full of goobly-gook. It was a passage from Paradise Lost that I needed to do a scansion on (that's when you show how the syllables are accented and wonder why Milton couldn't stick with iambic pentameter just to make your life easier).

So I told Word to print out the page again, at which point Word decided it wanted to take a break and go fishing or something. I CTRL-ALT-DEL'ed Word, and tried again. No luck.

I tried using Word's e-mail function to send myself a copy to print out at the campus computer labs. Word decided that it liked fishing and would leave me on my own entirely.

So I tried opening up the paper in WordPad instead. WordPad thought fishing sounded great and decided to go join Word on a little fishing expedition.

At this point, I knew I was running late, so I e-mailed myself a copy of the paper, grabbed the gobbly-gooked page and got in my car...I did the scansion at traffic lights as I nervously kept an eye on my car's clock. The assignment sheet said that essays were due at the beginning of class, so I was praying that my professor would show me some mercy.

Naturally, since I was late, there were no parking spots, but just my luck, someone pulled out of a metered spot with 43 minutes left. Since I was already 20-odd minutes late to the 50-minute class, that worked out perfectly.

After standing through the whole lecture (since all the seats were taken), I turned in my paper...my professor was very nice and accepted it, goobly-gook and all.

Lecture ran a little late, so I hurried back to my car...and saw a ticket, while the parking enforcement lady walked away. Had class gotten out on time, I probably would not have gotten a ticket.

*sigh*

I need to sleep, then pray. Or pray, then sleep. Or pray, then sleep, then pray some more. That sounds good.

Still working on my essay...it's due in an hour and fifteen minutes.

Something interesting that I discovered about Microsoft Word: the built in spell-checker doesn't have "resignment" in its dictionary, but it does have "Moloch," a Canaanite and Phoenician god to which children were sacrificed during Biblical times.

So it's 2:26AM and I'm nominally working on my essay analyzing a simile from Paradise Lost.

Right.

Well, I'm trying. I've been so busy catching up in my differential equations class that I've kinda let English fall to the wayside. The fact that it's only supposed to be three pages long is of little comfort with less than 8 hours till I have to turn it in.

And here I am, blogging. How typical of the post-millenial college student.

So the Angels beat the Giants in the World Series, and, much to the consternation of some of my friends, I have trouble caring. My reply to their cry of "but it's the playoffs!" has been "no, it's football season." :D

It's while pulling late nights like this that my mind starts to wander to things that I normally put off...things like what I'm studying in school. What's my ultimate goal? If Computer Science is often such a pain in the neck, and writing English essays often seems fun (well, it seems fun while you're NOT writing them anyways), am I really pursuing the right major?

Maybe. I like programming, too. Honest. In fact, I think the enjoyment I take out of both writing and programming can be applied to just about any situation that requires problem-solving. The appeal I find is having a "toolbox" of sorts—lessons I've learned through school and life. Then, I tackle problems with the "tools," partially relying on tried and true methods, but often finding new functions for tools and different combinations of tools in a sort of McGyver-esque fusion of unlikely items. And as I go through school and life, I add more tools to my toolbox.

Now that sounded like a bunch of hogwash.

Hmmm...I really ought to get started on this essay. I'll check back in when it's done and I've recovered from my lack of sleep.

I've just transitioned my content management system from Greymatter to Movable Type, which is why the layout may look kinda weird right now....I'm still working out some kinks with the templates.

This is my first post with Movable Type. How momentous.

Early post. People have been pointing out that my birthday was five months ago, so I should probably change my splash page. Went back to one of the old rotating splashes I had before "Coming of Age." Haven't archived "Coming of Age" yet in the projects section, but I'll get around to it when I have more time.

IE5.5/Win likes TheThousand.net Version 2. Mozilla 1.0 likes TheThousand.net Version 2. IE5/Mac likes TheThousand.net Version 2. But curses! Curses! Internet Explorer 6 for Windows gives me a Javascript error. A plague on you IE6! A plague, I say!


Ok, dork moment is over now.


School has been crazy. My Computer Science class, the infamous ECS 110, consumed my time for the first 3 weeks...I've been using this week to breathe and catch up in my other classes...it's going slowly and I still feel uncomfortably behind. Ironically, I'm coasting through my Milton class (ENL 122)...the impression I got was that the class, with this particular professor, is supposed to be one of the tougher ones in the English department. Maybe I'm aiming for the wrong major. (Nathan, feel free to use the "comments welcome" link below).


Got a CD I ordered last week today from E.S. Posthumus. Weird classical/techno stuff...lots of medieval sounding choirs and orchestral strings. You've probably never heard of him/her/them (does anyone really know?), but you've probably heard the music...it's often used in movie trailers. Interesting stuff to listen to while you're riding home at night.


*sigh* To reiterate an earlier complaint, why is it that whenever a girl comes up in conversation, the thing of most importance to guys is "is she cute?" Even in situations where those sort of superficial qualities shouldn't matter (ie. most situations), people always seem to treat that as the most important characteristic of a person.


I've been updating a separate blog for linking to sites, so that this blog doesn't become a linkathon, but I really should link up Jennie's site...her new layout's amazing.

Something I made is up as a Fan Film Select picture! Wow!

You know you're a geek when your Computer Science lecturer says "delete 55" in class, and the first thing you think is..."man...that would be a cool name for a website..."


Fixed the spasming Mozilla problem, but Internet Explorer 6 is still giving me issues. When I have the time, I can start reworking the navigation on the new site, and possibly switching to Movable Type and a new webhost.


At work right now...think I'll finish this entry later...

I went to a career fair today, sponsored by the Internship and Career Center at UC Davis. It was really kinda depressing for me...partially because prospects were slim for someone interested in a web job. However, the sum of my disappointment could be attributed to the fact that I got there late and thus did not score any free T-shirts.


Didn't talk to too many employers, and I didn't end up giving out and resumés, either. EDS had these green foam balls and silly putty at their booth...that's about all I took away from the whole thing. I asked one of their representatives if there were any openings for Computer Science majors...she smiled sadly and said they were looking for software engineers who knew COBOL. For those of you who don't know your programming languages, that's like asking a commercial pilot if he knows how to fly a zeppelin.


I don't intend to start a career with Target anytime soon, but I did pick up a brochure...I really like the company's aesthetic identity, from their website to their in-store displays. Whoever handles their brand identity right now is brilliant...they've gone from simply a discount retailer to a hip discount retailer. Kudos.


Altera was the only company openly advertising web development positions, though their reps didn't know very much about it and referred me to the website. Accenture also does a lot of IT, and I had a pretty good conversation with their rep.


Ran into Crystal at the fair...haven't seen her since that Davis web designers lunch last spring.

Ever seen a web browser spasm? Mozilla does with TheThousand.net version 2...so, looks like I'm gonna be working on that for a while.


Yes, I am alive...school is overwhelming...less than two weeks into it, and I'm already hopelessly behind. Updating the site has been kind of weird, too...version 2 has two feeds, one via Greymatter and the other through Blogger. I really miss the ease of using Blogger, and have recently discovered the joy of their little bookmarklet, BlogThis! So I've been updating the Blogger feed, but not the Greymatter feed.


Another little (very little) project I've worked on that's contributed to my busy-ness (business?): the jukebox at NosPro.com. Simple stuff, but kinda fun to make.


Version 2 is coming...it'll be a huge ol' update, though, something I'm really excited about, but also something that won't be up for at least a month or two...unless, of course, someone taunts me into putting it up, as Ryan did for the first version of TheThousand.net. Still owe him for that one...


Interesting quote of the week: "You spend the first two years of a child's life teaching them to stand up and talk, then the rest of the time teaching them to sit down and shut up."


Through all of this business, I've got to say that Christian fellowship really helps you through. I'm grateful for my church and my brothers and sisters in Christ.


Wow: if you do a Google search for "jennie", the first result you get is Jennie's site, blog.surreal.nu. She even beats out Jennie Garth.