| Books Galore |
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| 12:01am 19/04/2002 |
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mood:  satisfied music: Out of Sight, Out of Mind from A Tale of Two Cities via Modern Broadway on live365
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I had a book shopping day today. Rather unintentional, but a bunch of forces coincided. Specifically:
University Publishing had a moving sale. Selected books, $2 each. I scanned for a deal and came up with Dante's Testaments, a book about how Dante used textual, specifically scriptural, allusion. In short, it's exactly up my alley.
Slightly less spur of the moment were my purchases for my new class, Comm 172: Psychological Processing of Media. This involved a 2 volume course reader at $115, and a copy of The Media Equation (which claims that people treat mediated reality the same as actual reality). Of course, the books for this class were right next to those for Comm 169: Computer Interface Design. So I swung over one pile and picked up HAL's Legacy, a book about the gulf between the AI in 2001 and the AI in 2001. I've been lucky enough to hear the author speak a couple times on campus, and he's got a really good way of hitting the perfect amount of detail.
So yeah, it's going to be a fun reading quarter, which is great because the weather will be good, I can get out, and just enjoy myself. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Senior Follies |
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| 05:50pm 17/04/2002 |
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mood:  discontent music: Giants v. Padres: Play Ball!
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All right people, it's time for a decision that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm replacing a class that multiple people around me have told me not to take because it's 1) too easy for me (I know the C they're trying to teach me and I know the computer architecture stuff cold), and 2) it's too hard for last quarter senior year (as I'm finding now, MAJOR time sink required to do the coding). Instead of CS 107, I'm looking at taking Comm 172: Psychological Processing of Media. It's taught by the director of CSLI (Center for the Study of Language and Information), which I know I've liked when I've encountered it earlier. It's not as much of a time sink, it fits my schedule, and it would also fit in very nicely with my Rationality concentration in Symbolic Systems. In short, I think I'll learn more from that class the CS one, for less work. Any other voices (like parents)?
Oh, and parents, I'm ordering my cap and gown now. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| What did YOU do last night? |
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| 12:12pm 13/04/2002 |
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mood:  accomplished
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Math equations to Russian Ridge, CD track times to Venice Beach at Half Moon Bay, Cartesian calendar manipulations to the Lighthouse Best Western in Pacifica, coin morse to the SF War Memorial Opera house, musical braile to the Palace of Fine Arts, scarfing fortune cookies to the Mountain Theatre on Mt. Tam (with an illegal .7 mile hike each way), massive flashlight search of stone steps to Indian Rock Park in Berkeley, phone number connect the dots to the South S.F. sign, flight information overlays to the Hayward Albertsons, fun with litmus to an apartment in San Jose, mobius flags to One Infinite Loop, and a mad dash to a house in Mountain View. In 17 straight hours.
I survived The Game. |
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| YOU can wave it bye-bye! |
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| 07:56pm 10/04/2002 |
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mood: optimistic music: KNBR: SF 1 LA 0
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I'm so happy for Shinjo! 2 for 25, and finally gets a homer to put the Giants ahead 1-0 against the Dodgers. Maybe that'll jolt him outta his slump. |
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| Game On! |
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| 12:14am 06/04/2002 |
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mood:  energetic music: Midnight Baseball: All your base are belong to Barry!
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So, two main events today, which is what happens when I spend most of it avoiding work. First, I started finding my C groove again. This meant dragging out my old CS 106X book which I've barely looked at for four years. And yet, it quickly reminded me of my stupidity (. vs ->, for those who want to chuckle at me). But I've gotten a fair start at it, which is good because this assignment is supposed to be easy, just an introduction to coding in Unix (in my case, xemacs on VNC). It feels pretty good to geek out again, something I haven't done in a while.
Speaking of which, I've signed on for the Roble Game. I guess reading about the Jackpot game that's happening two weekends from now in Las Vegas brought the desire out of me. And I already had one person who agreed to join me drop out, which brought back the nervousness that springs up in me when I contemplate Games. I think last time, I learned how to do Games without putting my entire self worth on the line in my performance. This time, I'm going with some good friends, and it should be a fun time. I promise I won't take it too seriously. Of course, if on Wednesday I'm using breaks from my programming to search and print up sheets of morse, naval signal flags, linear B, ASCII tables, UNICODE tables, and swahili clicking language, I would still not be taking it seriously, right? |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Quarter: relaxing and not |
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| 11:45pm 04/04/2002 |
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mood: chipper
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Having a lazy schedule means freedom. Last night, it ment the freedom to stay up until 3:00 AM playing Diablo if I felt like it. Tonight, it means going to bed by midnight if I feel like it. I think I'm going to like having 4-day weekends, which CS 107 will very quickly turn into 3 day weekends.
Speaking of my time sink for the quarter, I just got VNC up and running between my mac and my school account. Tomorrow, I do the research to figure out how to Aqua-tize it. Because dang it, if I'm running something that looks like *nix on my Mac, I want it to look like OSX. Of course, if I'm just using xemacs and gbd, it doesn't really matter.
Oh, and for those of you who care about such things, Giants swept the Dodgers in LA for the first time in two decades. |
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| Schedualling |
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| 01:06pm 02/04/2002 |
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mood: energetic music: KNBR: Play Ball!
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Quarter Surprise 1: CS 155 (Computer and Network Security) has as a fairly firm prerequisite CS 140 (OSes). It's being taught at the same level as CS 255 was. This means that I cannot take it at my current programming prowess. Instead, it looks like I'll be taking CS 107, Programming Paradigms. This adds a fair bit of workload to my quarter. This puts my current class schedule as 2:15-5:15 Tuesday, 11:00-11:50 MW, 1:15-2:05 MWF, 2:15-3:15 MW. And of course, the MWF class is broadcast online, so I can skip the Friday class, making me available from Wednesday afternoon through Monday morning if needed pinch. That's one heck of a long weekend.
It might even mean that I could try out for the Roble musical. Last time I checked only 1 guy had signed up, so I'm pretty sure they need a second. Thinking about using "Turn Back, O Man" from Godspell as an audition song, nice and low. Not sure if it'll be worth the time sink, especially when combined with CS 107 and the desired visitation privelages with  copernicus. I'll keep thinking.
Anyways, off to listen to Giants opening day. Squeee! |
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| Initializing quarter, please stand by... |
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| 02:25pm 31/03/2002 |
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mood: rejuvenated music: M?hul: Symph. #3 in C major, Andante
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Week went swimmingly. Had a great time in bEndor, I think Nikky got some relaxing done and some work done, and now I face my new quarter. Weather today is truly awesome, so I'm going out for a late lunch outside. Then it's back and figuring out my schedule, with some room cleaning later today.
I apologize for the banality of today's post. Your regularly schedualled drama will resume quite soon, I'm sure. |
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| Inspected, Detected, and Selected |
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| 06:31pm 26/03/2002 |
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mood: optimistic music: See Title
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Back from MD. Given preliminary clean bill of health, both mentally and trustworhtily. And as my reward, I get to spend the late evening with Nikky. And now we play the waiting game.
The waiting game sucks. I'm gonna play "Let's get Mr. Chow's" |
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| Well Qualified to Represent |
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| 09:08am 24/03/2002 |
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mood: optimistic music: NPR: Will Shortz
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I'm in MD for the next two days. Hope I'll stay sane. Much love to all my peeps in the LJC*. Word.
*LiveJournal Community |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| Requiem for a Shoe |
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| 07:04pm 21/03/2002 |
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mood:  okay music: KFOG: Commercials
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Tree-fiddy is dead. Tree-fiddy was my sandals, which I picked up from Target just about the first week of school this year. Due to a checkstand error, I got them for $3.50. They're Birk knock-offs, and I took to wearing them constantly. Walking back from the dinign hall today, I felt a snap, and realized one of the buckles had broken in two. I'm still considering krazy glue surgery.
P.S. Go Hoosiers! |
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| Next Slide, Please |
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| 12:36pm 21/03/2002 |
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mood: amused music: Birds: heybaBEE, heybaBEE
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Powerpoint Autocontent wizard meets Gettysburg Address. Hilarity ensues. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| MySQL Ate My Friends Page! |
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| 11:45am 21/03/2002 |
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mood: hopeful music: NPR: TotN on School Testing (natch)
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Between moonrose and pyran, I've more than quadrupled my knowledge of MySQL in just a few posts this morning. I'm not complaining, SQL has always been kinda arcrane knowledge to me so I'm glad to get a quick peek behind it, but it's just funny that all of a sudden I'm facing it on my friends page.
One more final, and what should be an easy one at that. The material is hard, but the question range is fairly limited for us (the prof. admits to large reuse of questions and then hands us last year's exams).
And to answer arimethia's question somewhere other than her comments for the benefit of others who may not know, Stanford is on a quarter system, so these are finals, not midterms. In a couple weeks, you'll be hearing about an entirely new set of classes. With a good portion of them being taken Pass/No Clue, true, but I'm still interested in learning.
Web-based posting wasn't working, tryng through Phoenix... |
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| I *think* I am not making this up |
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| 11:50am 19/03/2002 |
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mood:  scared music: Peanut Butter Jelly Time!
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The Lorax, as told by the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association. |
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| Done being SCREWED, back to normal workload. |
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| 03:55pm 17/03/2002 |
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mood: complacent music: FurtherMore: Are You the Walrus?
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Two papers done and out of my hair, one paper (of which I need to write another 15 pages) and one final (for which I have about 80% of the questions already) to go. I'm chillin' now. I'll start writing again soon. But as of right now, I feel quite confident in my abilities to bring this quarter to a full and complete stop. Then it's off to MD, then back here, then bEndOr, then here again. And if I'm lucky at all, I might be able to finangle my way into getting a group to play Age of Renaissance before school takes over my life again. But for now, more on Dante. Dante Dante Dante. |
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| Go Florida Atlantic, Go! |
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| 01:30pm 14/03/2002 |
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mood: accomplished music: March Madness, bay-bee!
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Done with paper 1, with 30 minutes to spare! I had to get rid of my White Men Can't Jump reference, but I did manage to use the phrase "Ayn Rand Glee Club", so I'm happy with it. After I turn this in, I crash for a few hours. Then I start work on my Dante, then to my Psych, then back to Dante. Then I work 9PM to 2AM. If I'm lucky, it'll be Band Rally night and I'll get to hold a pink plastic flamingo again. The preceeding was an inside joke, for the benefit of regular readers. |
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| Because CRED SEW just doesn't work as well |
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| 08:56pm 10/03/2002 |
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mood: nervous music: The Who: Won't Get Fooled Again
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As of right now, I officially declare myself SCREWED.
That's Sleeping, Cleaning, wRiting, Eating, Working, Enjoying friends, and Dealing with job stuff. For at least the next 48 hours, those are the only legal activities I can engage in. No game playing, no pointless web surfing, no game playing, no Magic the Gathering Online, and no game playing. I'm going to write my Philosophy paper about the need for an account of group intention that isn't reducible to the intentions of each individual, my Religious Studies paper (25 pages *choke*) on Dante's rewriting of the Our Father in Purgatorio 11, and I'm going to revise my Psych paper about recent research on the possiblity of separate neurological processing areas for "living things" and "manmade objects". Once I get sufficiently far along on all of these projects, I'll return to my normal slacker self. Just not right now.
Good thing: Radio Sonicnet's prefab stations are still lingering around at mtv.com and vh1.com. Current favorite: Pop for Sale, rock music from commercials. Honorable Mention: Cover Tunes, The Black Hole, Dark Ambient, Blue Room. |
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| This Space for Rent |
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| 01:38am 09/03/2002 |
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mood: lethargic music: BBC - Outlook
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Muppet Show returns!. I know some of you will get quite excited over this. One quote for those of you who don't bother following article links...
"TV viewers have had enough of Buffy and Britney; they want some real sex appeal - like moi!"
You can see why I didn't bother attributing the quote. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| Your Name Here (See Last Paragrah) |
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| 11:42am 01/03/2002 |
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mood: good
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No, I haven't updated for a while. Yes, I'm gonna make up for lost time.
2 nights ago, I went to bed at about 4:00 AM. At 4:15 AM, the Stanford Band in all it's glory came to roll out the new Tree (pseudo-mascot). Two events which individually could have been very bad for my mood, but together just made me feel cool.
Last night, I was about to go to bed at 2:30 AM. The fire alarm went off. Again, staying up late has a rather large payoff.
For the next stage of my job interviews, they're flying me out to Baltimore. I have to be there on Monday the 25th, and they said it would be easy to allow me to stay in a different hotel (if I can find one cheaper) for a few extra nights and fly back later in the week. This would allow me to get a feel for the area, depending on my finding the resources needed (room, car/knowledge of something I've never really heard of in the bay area, this "public transportation"). So now I have to figure out if I want to spend all of my Spring Break out there, some of it, or only one day of it.
Do any of you know anything about sweet420girl? No posts, a few interests, and me on her friends list. I added her back just so that I could see if she ever did introduce herself. Or if I should know her and I'm gonna get a tongue lashing for not recognizing it sooner.
In other news, my Googlewhacks are officially dead. I realized that some of my inhibitions to posting recently came from an unwillingness to spend the 15-20 extra minutes it takes to find an appropriate Googlewhack. So, I'm actually looking for suggestions. I want a fairly coherent class from which to pull subject lines. Ideas? |
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