life – Page 7 – and the lack thereof

The Drawing Board

So, I was wrong. I, in fact, got a piece of crap 3 on the practice AP. This is sending me through all kinds of whirls of self-doubt and re-evaluation about everything. I honestly thought I did well, and although it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll get a 4 on the AP, I don’t find that acceptable. At all. I want a 5. I just don’t see any other option. Nonetheless, I’m really disappointed with this.

I’m struggling to find the line between “I’m just not putting enough effort into this.” and “This isn’t what I’m meant to do.”. On an unrelated note, I dislike how punctuation comes out when quotations are involved.

Life’s User Interface

I am exhausted. This week has been a non-stop marathon of energy-sucking activities. Two birthday parties, two sleepovers, one get-together at my house, one trip to the mall, three trips downtown, and a long trip to Rochester and back. And now I’ve gotta work as fast as I can to finish this CS stuff before Monday. It feels good, though. My break was not wasted. I completed almost none of my goals (I had no time to touch photoshop or the design, really, although I did make a little progress, just not much).

Today, though, I drove up to Rochester with Daniel’s parents and hung out with him for his freshman recital, and got to see things at Eastman. It was great to see Daniel, but it was cooler to see his friends and such, and also really nice to see a college campus. Eastman is kind of odd in that it’s in the middle of Rochester, which is about as ghetto as cities come. There are totally clean and modern sections of the city which make the city look really prosperous, but you can literally walk a block away and you’re in a red-light district. As Daniel, as well as other friends of mine have told me, you’re often instructed not to wander more than a block away from the local college campuses, as the chances of being mugged are extremely high.

Seeing the campus, though, was kind of a surprise. I had NO idea dorms were so small – and Daniel’s was larger than most. The actual facilities were really nice and such, and I saw the motivation behind going to a school that has a nice design and architecture. Which kind of put me in the whole college-centric mood. Honestly, all I want right now is to get to a decent tech school and OUT of high school. I wait semi-patiently.

Pwnies for Christmas

To maintain the integrity of the below post, I’m now mentioning that I WILL be learning Photoshop and creating a new design, as well as implementing it. It will take a while, mostly to learn Photoshop, but, I’m not spending this week on my butt. I kind of wish I had a scanner to visualize my ideas more clearly, but alas, I have not such advanced technologies.

As a side note, I scavenged myself a new phone, courtesy of Christopher. It’s infinitely better than my old one, mostly due to the fact that the buttons are no longer exposed (the “new” one is a flip phone), and I have Bejeweled, instead of “sky diver” and “bowling” for games. It’s a year or two old, but works just fine. The numbers is the same (280 9288), but that’s irrelevant since I literally only had a total of like half a dozen calls that weren’t from my dad, and over 90% of the calling time (4 hours) was accrued while talking to just Daniel. Woo!

Oh, and go take THIS QUIZ! It’s actually ridiculously accurate (concerning terms and origins) – I came out “60% dixie”.

The Latest Craze

Tonight’s Maundy Thursday service was a little bizarre, not in and of itself, but because as I looked at the bulletin, I literally started adding () at the end of each header (mentally). This is a strong indication that I rocked today’s practice APCS test, with the exception of the last question on Trees and Binary Expressions, which may prevent me from attaining my preliminary “5”.

I feel like I really did well on that thing, not because I studied (I did a total of 20 part one questions, 10 on two consecutive nights, mostly to get in the APCS “mood”), but because I’ve started getting the rest of my life in order before even thinking about school (yes, a long school performance post is coming). I’ve often wondered why I can’t get a grip this year (even my “I WILL NOT BE LAZY. :)” slogan failed after 5 weeks), when the simple answer came to me that there’s no way I can come close to excelling in matters of the mind, nor the body, when my heart isn’t even in the right place. While every conclusion I’ve come to concerning my performance at school has not been wrong, they’ve been misguided at the core.

Take, for example, my original thought that I was simply overloaded with courses in the midst of a busy life. This was possibly the furthest conclusion from the truth. Why was I doing poorly in Math 11H? I was getting two hours of sleep every night and doing half the homework. I didn’t accept THIS part of the equation until later, when I decided that my problem was sheer laziness. Back to analyzing the former, however. Was I busy? Sure, but the lie I repeated to me teachers about having three hours of homework was certainly overblown. This was a time in which I compulsively manipulated my teachers to gain pity and leniency, but not necessarily intentionally. I twisted the facts just a bit to gain the sympathy I needed to continue being a slacker.

Hindsight, as always, is 20/20, and it’s easy to judge my past acts so unabashedly. Maybe I WAS overworked, but I specifically remember spending half a dozen nights blowing off homework to watch Lost or the Sopranos or some movie. I can’t say with complete confidence that dropping Math 11H was a completely bad decision, but, I think I can say it could have been avoided. There was a definite shock factor at the beginning of the year – I was not prepared to actually work. Freshman and Sophomore years had been absolutely effortless, although my failure to apply myself is highly evident in my Sophomore year – my first F on a progress report (remedied to a B) appeared of all time, as well as my first D. So, this was something that was long overdue to happen, but is not totally the result of what I felt like it should have been. I WANTED to believe I was doing poorly because I was so overworked. I made things a lot harder for myself than they should have been. It’s definitely hard to do complex math at 3:00 in the morning, that’s for sure, so in one sense, I was right. I failed to see the connection between actions in the rest of my life, and consequences in my school life. Which is where I’m heading, here.

My true low point came a little bit after dropping AP Physics. I had justified the drop to a multitude of things – crappy teacher, depression, crappy course, still too much work, you name it. All of it contained a level of truth, just like with Math 11H – as I’m hearing from a lot of the people in there now, it’s only gotten worse in every respect. I was definitely a little depressed somewhere in there. The depression was a circular illness, though. I do poorly in AP Physics, I get depressed, which makes me do more poorly, etc.. The ONLY way to break the cycle, I figured, was to drop the depression factor – AP Physics. It never occurred to me that perhaps my performance in AP Physics was directly related to my constant absence from school, or my increasing failure to do the homework before each test, or my failure to study for the tests. A lot of the latter (homework, studying) can be attributed to frustration with the material when I didn’t understand it immediately. I’m not a patient learner. At all. So, I’d sit down for 10 minutes and stare at the book, and pretty much call it a day. All this, I believe, was the result of chaos in other, more important portions of my life.

I believe the last diagnosis I had, that I was sheerly lazy, was the closest to the truth, but was only treating the symptom. When I look at myself as a whole, my best work is done when I can actually focus on school – not in the “close the door and study for 5 hours” sense, but in the “there are no conflicting situations with friends and family, nor with God”. This isn’t something I’ve thought about for a while, but I realized it when I fell asleep in the middle of communion last Sunday, and subsequently missed the usher passing out the bread. Nobody came and scolded me for it or anything, no weird looks, nothing. I often fall asleep in the middle of church, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But this was ridiculous.

I started from the beginning, asking questions to get to the source. Why did I fall asleep? I was tired. Did I mean to? No, it was, at the moment of occurance, out of my control. I was tired enough to fall asleep in the middle of the prayer beforehand. Why was I tired, then? Lack of sleep. Why didn’t I sleep? I stayed up late (until 3:00, as per usual). Why? Because I was playing games and watching TV. Why? Because that’s what I wanted to do. I felt like it. It was purposeful.

I realized that when I choose to deny myself something that will enable me to do the simple act of properly worshipping on Sunday morning, I’m choosing myself over God. That, right thurr, is sin. So, this gets down to the problem of me falling asleep in the middle of church. How does this relate to anything?

I have a lot of other unresolved problems with friends, far and wide. Anything from just a lack of communication to miscommunication to discommunication. Probably one of the more haunting failures this year was with the old guy, Mr Dynkin. Although I’d already given me notice that I was leaving, I repeatedly delayed and canceled at the last minute for the last time I was supposed to work for him, he pretty much fired me for being so unreliable. I can blame him and his senility and him trying to make me put on those gigantic pants all I want, but really, that was mine.

That spawned from an overally apathy concerning work and duty in my life. I have a duty to do a lot of things in my life, and I can’t really take that as lightly as I used to. Keeping up with the world isn’t as easy as it was a few years ago, which, I guess, is just part of aging. If I don’t keep up with my duties to the most important things in my life, there’s just no way I can keep up with the lesser things, like school.

Hopefully, by God’s grace I can keep up with the greater elements.

Of Note

Mike told me about a rather widely-viewed program on National Geographic last night concerning the “Gospel According to Judas”. I hadn’t heard of it, so I did some research.

Essentially, it was found in the mid-to-late 2nd century by a bishop of Lyons, and this date has been verified by all the surrounding evidence. So, it’s definitely old. The “Gospel of Judas” apparantly is told through the eyes of Judas, and suggests the Judas did not, in fact, betray Jesus, but was asked to by Jesus. I haven’t been able to find any manuscripts of it online, but from what I’m seeing, that’s the big “danger” it poses to Christianity.

My initial reaction was mild confusion, whether due to being massively tired or whatever, but I managed to not hold judgement until I got some research done. Lo and behold, it appears to be yet another Apocrypha. For those of you who don’t want to read the article, the Apocrypha are texts from Jesus’ time that have been deemed false. The Roman Catholic church and some Orthodox churches still keep some of the Apocrypha.

The Apocrypha, in general, are massively inconsistent with the basic canonical text of the Bible. In them you’ll find stuff about Jesus getting married and having a child, or various Old Testament stories in which men are worshipped (iirc) with God’s sanctioning. The stuff is pretty blatantly contradictory. That doesn’t automatically qualify it for being excluded from the Bible, but considering that a lot of this stuff was made by Gnostics, I fail to see how the “Gospel of Judas” is any different (the author is apparantly unknown, although it is told through Judas’ eyes).

Call the Fire Department…

I’ve been put on SLASHDOT, YO!

None of you may understand the significance of this, but a hundred thousand people just read my question, and 100 were kind enough to leave really, really helpful responses.

The big idea I gleaned from this is that the math I’m doing now is far closer to Arithmetic than true math. Additionally, Computer Science, although math-based, can be understood with average math talent. There were also several really helpful suggestions dispersed throughout there as far as other careers – informatics, network administration (sysadmin, IT, etc.), and even being a lawyer.

The bottom line? Not so much video game design. According to them, that is possibly the most math-intensive line of programming in the field. Perhaps my feelings towards math will change in college – we’ll see. Even then, though the big thing I kind of realized is that I should probably just suck it up. Another encouraging point was that a few people said that those with the ability to communicate clearly and in a grammatically correct format are in short supply. This gave me a whole new drive to keep pushing for RPI (or whatever, I don’t really care where I go so long as it’s a tech school). This feels good.

I just hope it lasts.

[edit]

I love Slashdot. I got an email from a guy suggesting Interactive Journalism, which sounded pretty interesting. Equally notable was the fact that his email was from mac.com, which is most definitely Apple-owned. Slashdot, the place where 17-year olds get answers from Apple employees.

[/edit]

[edit]

//03:54:04 JRGuitar04: so…you could play like…NASA on your computer?
//03:54:18 salandarin: pff, NASA is old-hat
//03:54:32 salandarin: it’s all about the Department of Defense now
//03:54:51 salandarin: i can simulate the beaurocracy down to each secretary and unanswered paper!
//03:55:03 salandarin: oh wait, that’s Homeland Security

[/edit]

Blue Moon Syndrome

Every few milennia, something happens that one will probably not see twice. This is what as known as “things going as planned”. My 1 GB stick of RAM arrived today, and I was totally expecting it to be entirely incompatible with my current two sticks, which are all DDR 400, but would inevitably have different timings and voltages. Lo and behold, however, this was not the case. I’m happily chugging along with my 1.54 GB of RAM, which has pretty much transformed my computer into the monster it was meant to be. I’d never understood why my computer so consistently failed to Alt+Tab efficiently in any kind of application, but it was indeed the RAM causing the issue. The blame could also be placed on Windows / M$ for their inefficient event handling, but I only have so many fingers for pointing. Some fingers must be left available for playing Oblivion.

In any case, I was indeed pleasantly surprised to see this work. Perhaps it’s just balancing out how utterly screwed I am because of Mr. Briegle’s antics (or lack thereof), but whatever the reason may be, I am pleased. The end result is that I can finally play Oblivion at maximum settings without ripping my hair out every time a loading area appears. I still have to keep the grass distance down, but, I don’t really care at this point.

Other things are on the radar, however. Such as the fact that I’ve got a whole lot of work to get done in a short span of time – the marking period ends soon, and I’ve been lazy. And now, /. wisdom.

“Anyone can learn these tricks at any time anywhere. They don’t need to go to a school to find them. If you think someone going to a boot camp is going to become some 1337 h4x0r, well you might as well also start advocating destroying the internet.”

“Agreed. I’m about to cost these bastards lots of money by giving away their secrets. Gang, listen closely. First, watch the film Hackers a few times and try to dress as they do. Nothing shows up a non-hacker faster than one out of uniform.

Next, install any CLI-based OS. DOS, Linux, doesn’t matter.

Now that you have a command prompt (with the blinking cursor, nothing else will do), you can hack anything! Type in a command like “reroute airtraffic > Boise” and watch all of those jets turn around. Steal the latest hollywood flick with “download harrypotter.movie now” Want to make your idiot neighbors power blink in and out, spelling “I am t3h fag0rz” in morse code? Go right ahead. You’re only limited by your imagination.

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for the misuse of the preceding information.”

“Wouldn’t you also need a keyboard which beeps with every keystroke and a monitor which projects shapes onto your face as you work?”

“What about the exceedingly slow save program?

I want to make sure that whenever I save a file it goes extremely slowly and show’s me every percent along the way.

Oh, and it has to flash every bit of data on screen as it saves. I’m sure it’ll work out some sort of proper layout too.

Otherwise, how would I know it’s actually saving the proper data?”

Who Saves Daylight?

I hate Daylight Savings. Not because I dislike the extra hour of sunlight, but because of how it forces me to adjust my aural sense for time. My sense of time generally relies on the color of my wall as seen through the top left corner of my left eye, but that is no longer a reliable source, forcing me to turn all the way around to my clock, which is occasionally obfuscated by various objects.

Daylight Savings royally screwed me over last night, too. I was exiting Oblivion expecting the clock to read 2:00 AM, providing for a full 7 hours of sleep prior to Church. Nay, it was 3:00 AM, forcing me to sit down and watch cartoons that had been dubbed with fart sounds most hilariously (it was an April Fools thing).

As for April Fools? I’ve taken a liking to the internet version of this holiday. Generally I hate April Fools, but this year, it did not fall upon a school day, and waking up to a world of bizarre news was rather exciting, until I realized it was indeed April 1st. What I find more amusing about April Fools is what is unintentionally interpreted as a joke. But then again, Snakes on a Plane is quickly coming.

Speaking of movies, I saw Slither last night, as a sort of birthday doodad with Christopher and Jonathan. Akin to movies such as Army of Darkness or Bubba Ho-Tep, this movie, whether because it really was hilarious, or because I was just in the mood, had me laughing the whole way through. It was really, really gross, through. I’m no fan of gore, especially the visceral, intestiny kind that Slither had, but I still managed to find it really hilarious.

I won’t bore you with Oblivion details right now, but rest assured, it’s coming.

Along with a gig of RAM (should be here Monday or Tuesday).

Oblivion, lol

[geek]

I am now taking a short break to give you some preliminary (after 30 or 40 hours of playing) thoughts on Oblivion. Eventually, I’d like to do a nice, extensive review with some of my personal favorite screenshots and whatnot, but for now, I just want to jot down some interesting things.

The first being, the graphics, and my computer’s rendering capability. I am ever so close to being able to max out the settings in every category. My main limitation lies in the speed and capacity of RAM. PC3200 is standard, but contains no capacity for overclocking, and combined with the mere 512MB (hopefully being rectified tomorrow), my computer is unhappy with Oblivion’s extensive use of textures.

I’ve been running the game at 1024×768, with HDR enabled, and all other settings set to maximum. Because Oblivion uses floating-point HDR (Half Life 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory use an “interlaced” version that is much closer to Bloom than true HDR), anti-aliasing is off by default. I have not yet tried forcing AA on, but judging from the performance I got with Bloom and 4xAA, I do not expect a strong display of computing prowess.

For those of you that do not know, HDR is a lighting system that attempts to simulate the intricacies of the eye – moving from dark areas to light areas results in greater brightness for a period of time, which is inversely true for the reverse situation (that is, moving from light to dark results in a very dark environment). However, the lack of native AA almost makes Bloom (what is generally referred to as the “cheap knockoff” of HDR) more preferable. I took some comparison shots which you can see here.

Anti-aliasing becomes a serious issue when I’m faced with large patches of grass. Much of Oblivion is covered with truly spectacular fields of grass that will make your computer commit seppuku if you are not properly prepared. I have not sufficiently played with the settings to rectify this situation, but that will come soon. Playing with the settings can be rather frustrating when you have to restard Oblivion for any kind of major settings changes.

As for the game, I can safely say this is the best game I’ve played in years. Is it the best game I’ve ever played? I don’t know, but it just might be. More to come later.

[/geek]

These Times of Ours

In many senses, this is what one could consider the second part to my post about my paths in life. This is probably not the final portion, but it is a continuation, of sorts.

My overall progress towards pinpointing where I should be headed has actually headed in a negative direction. I’m no longer sure about anything at all. Sample questions that have been running circles through my head might be:

Do I want to do something in English? Writing? What kind of writing? Creative? Books? News? Editorials?

Do I want to do something involving communication? Commucation theory? Media?

What kind of media? Modeling and rendering? Image manipulation? Web design?

What about computers? Computer science? Game design? Software development?

I can’t help but wish that through all this, I had some kind of guiding motivation. In some kind of weird way, I wish something bad would happen to me that drove me to a specific career. This brings me to wishing these times of ours were more exciting. One could argue that there’s nothing more exciting than carbon nanotubes and cloning (even if it was faked), but recently, that stuff just doesn’t interest me.

This train of thought brings me back to a belief I once had in elementary school. I was thoroughly convinced that I had been born in the wrong century. In specific, I was really meant to be a chivalrous knight of old, fighting for the honour (I’ve taken to spelling that with a ‘u’ – I read a quote that went something like “I put the U in honour because it seems to be missing these days”) of…something. Needless to say, I had some issues with reality back in the day.

The point here is to say, I don’t have a direction. I spent an hour today staring at prospective colleges, not because I’m worried, but to get some kind of inspiration from their lists of majors and minors. The trouble is, when I think of any one profession I might like, I see huge blocks that would severely hamper my enjoyment. Examples:

Computer science (being my original choice) is still a viable option at this point, because I do enjoy programming. The problems here are that I don’t know if I enjoy it THAT much, but really, the killer is the math. Supposedly, I’ll need lots of math. I don’t enjoy math enough to spend my life doing that. Is there a compromise?

Engineering, I suppose, is still on the table. I don’t like the vast majority of fields in engineering, and this pretty much leads me straight back to computer science. What I do know, however, is that I do NOT want to be a computer engineer.

The most obvious combination of the above two is Software Engineering, which may just be the solution to the problem. Software engineers are lovingly known as “code monkeys”, mostly for their ignorance of elegant and robust technique. This is the main problem with software engineering – I do not want lesser training. I, like Will Wright, am very fond of the algorithm, and would thoroughly enjoy applying elegant solutions to complex problems. Could I do this with software engineering? I have no idea.

Journalism is just kind of a random thing that sounded cool. Potential issues I see mostly involve the content of what I would write. I could see myself writing for some website (preferable) or newspaper (not so preferable), but I definitely don’t want to write about politics or sports.

More thoughts out loud. I submitted a question to /. that probably won’t get answered, and I’ll submit another one tomorrow regarding the mathematical difference between SE and CS. Comment, please.

(also, I fixed the javascript to work for Opera)

The world, slightly askew

Having missed church this morning for some reason I’m not really aware of, I spent my time looking at this catalog I got from RPI entitled “Private Colleges and Universities”. As I expected, it was mostly the same old sensationalist drab, but the helpful part about it was one part of an “Admissions Q&A”. It said for those who don’t know what they want to major in, to attend a school with a wider array of classes. I thought that was pretty good advice,

Prelude to the Epilogue

Today’s Onion Day Calender reads:

Gay TV
Gay themed televeision series like Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Staight Guy and Boy Meets Boyare popular with mainstream audiences. What’s the Appeal?

Better than Oxygen’s Lesbian OshKosh B’Gosh Outlet-Store Shopping Spree
90% of Americans are latent homosexuals
Fans can live fun-filled life vicariously through gay characters before having methodical sex with wife in Mobile, Alabama
Explode myth that gay people are human beings like the rest of us
Homosexuals not so intimidating when they’re 22″ tall
Lost remote, accepting alternate sexuality easier than getting up and crossing room
The Mexicans already had a network, why not the fruits?
Crocodile-huntersexuals, Osbournosexuals, and antiques-roadshowsexuals are old hat.

In other news, I may have a soft spot for orchestral power metal. What is that, you ask? I sort of stumbled upon it while watching this video (which, by the way, I’m pretty sure isn’t fake). I really liked the music to it, and the description mentions “Trans-Siberan Orchestra”. I found this name to be super awesome, so I did some poking on Last.fm, and lo and behold, there they are. The only trouble is, half their music has some form of singing in it, which is not okay. I’m now on the quest to find what is possible the most obscure genre: Instrumental Orchestral/Symphonic Power Metal.

If anyone could, you know, help me with this, that’d be super.

You Call Down the Thunder

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is my CIA rant. I gotta get this out of my system – I was babbling about it pretty much all day after the speech, so otherwise, I’ll be doing this for practically EVAR until I write thoroughly about it.

(for those of you who don’t know, CIA stands for Congress in Action. it’s where US History students get assigned a representative, an issue, and must argue for or against this issue based on the opinions of their representative. this involves a lengthy research paper, a short speech, and an open debate.)

My representative is an ultra-crazy Democrat from Texas, strangely enough. I don’t exactly agree with her on 75% of everything, but thankfully, for this, I can argue my true opinion. The topic I presented was a fake bill providing for the legalization of Bush’s warrantless surveillance program. My job was to explain why this is a bad thing.

All around, I’ve actually had trouble with delivery of my content. I have really excellent content (if I do say so myself), but in both the paper and the speech, I’ve had issues with getting that message across. In the paper, I had serious length issues. I barely pulled it up to 6 full pages (although this can depend on which text editor you use), which is kind of the minimum. I had plenty of sources and research to use, but I ended up having to quote excessively, which I wasn’t too pleased about.

I initially had trouble coming up with convincing arguments, but in the end, it came around like this:

the bill is improper:
- violates IV Amendment (surveillance is unwarranted, and entirely unreported)
- violates all provisions of FISA (exceeds the full year under which the president may conduct warrantless surveillance)
- not provided for under the PATRIOT Act/AUMF (intended for action against the September 11 terrorists, and none others)
the bill is ineffective:
- america faces much larger issues of security:
  - we’ve failed in the war on drugs (it’s a $65 Billion business in America alone)
  - we’ve failed in our border control (60 million people travel through the US yearly, 7 million living on american soil illegally)
- the targets are hardly traceable considering the aforementioned facts
the bill is unnecessary:
- warrants provide necessary checks & balances against abuse in the system
- warrants are easily obtained (usually less than 24 hours), and not necessary for up to 72 hours under FISA, therefore meaning they do not hinder time-sensitive situations
- aforementioned time-sensitive situations are EXTREMELY rare

That pretty much sums up my arguments. I tried to communicate most of that in my speech, but I was REALLY nervous and it was REALLY cold in that room, so I stopped a lot, coughed a lot, and apparantly scratched my nose a lot. Apparantly my “content was great, delivery was not so great”. Because of my bad delivery, a lot of my points didn’t reach home.

The ensuing debate was very infuriating. The “Republicans” were ABSOLUTELY obnoxious – they’d clap whenever anybody said anything supporting their side, and kept using the SAME argument over and over even though I’d proven them wrong (ex. they kept saying time-sensitive situations were still threatened, I kept quoting FISA, which provided exactly what they needed). I also didn’t get to address the biggest point which was “if you have nothing to hide, then why does it matter?”, because Khoa (the Speaker of the House) kept picking the same people. I really hope they let us finish it tomorrow.

So, yeah, that’s CIA. I’ve had fun with it.

And I’ll reap the whirlwind.

[edit: This is entirely unrelated, but I found this snippit from a BBC article on a truly awful military idea very funny.

“During WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will “wrangle” itself on to enemy ship’s deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air.” /]

The world, up-side down.

One of the scariest realizations you can ever have is that maybe, just maybe, you’ve been wrong for eight years.

I’ve been telling myself since, heavens, even before I moved to Ithaca that my true destiny was to do something with computers. I knew it had to be computers. I knew it. Knew it. Knew it. But as I stayed home today because I blew off all my homework so I could hang out with Daniel, and dreaded doing the next APCS project, I started talking with Paul. We discussed our schedules and all that jazz, and he asked why I was taking math next year.

Because not taking math would be silly, of course.

Why is that silly?

Because…you have to have math to be a Computer Scientist. I don’t really like math, though. I don’t dislike math, but I gotta know it.

Why?

It was somewhere around this point that I kind of realized that although I enjoy all things technological and computerized, it just isn’t what I want to do in life. I like programming, it’s fun, but I don’t like programming under deadlines and doing things that I WOULD have to do were I to go into that field. I enjoy the idea, but I definitely don’t enjoy it enough to live it.

The thing that really sold me in the first place was when people started telling me I was good at this stuff. Boy, was that reassuring. But then came Digital Electronics. Wow, do I not care about this stuff. At all. It didn’t really hit me until just now that – hey, I don’t enjoy this. So, what DO I enjoy?

At this moment, I’m really not sure.

The basic fact I can rely on here is that I like computers and like playing with computers. But the times at which I’ve enjoyed the technical aspects of computers were always towards other ends. In general, towards advancing this blog. I didn’t learn javascript or PHP for the heck of it, I did it to improve the blog. My motives behind learning the hardware inside my computer weren’t just to build a computer, but mostly to learn how to improve it, so I could run my games at leet settings. The learning was a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

What do I want to do? I don’t think it’s computers anymore. I’ve known for a while now that I enjoy analyzing things a lot more than doing things that require analyzation, and I think some form of creative expression is a lot closer to what I want to be doing. Paul says he’s looking at journalism, which I find to be a really intruiging idea. I am a geek, I know that for certain, but being a writer for some kind of magazine or website sounds a lot of fun. I admire the guys at Gamespot a lot – what they do isn’t as easy as it looks.

Something that’s always stuck out in my mind is a story I wrote in 7th grade. Those of you that had Mahadabe (NO IDEA HOW TO SPELL THAT) for English at DeWitt, you might remember that really crappy slave story we read, called Nightjohn, and the extra chapter assignment we did. I did it with some level of vigor, and when I read it in front of the class, there was a collective “….huh?”. Upon recieving the paper back, it was covered in gigantic letters reading: “WOW!!! THIS IS AMAZING!!!”. I had accidentally left the file up when I was done, and my dad had read it (family computer days), and then proceeded to send it to my brothers and showed it to my mom and my cousins, and my uncle, which resulted what could only be described as very bothersome.

Now, I know a 7th grade English paper proves absolutely nothing concerning my skills of an author, but upon retrospect, I really enjoy writing. That’s why I have this blog, that’s why I make this blog look pretty (actually, the current design isn’t all that pretty, but that will eventually change). I enjoy the technical aspects of making this blog work, but honestly, I enjoy the things that have instant output. I don’t like the drawn out process of programming, I like the NOW aspect, which is what I got in Programming 1 & 2 – extremely basic programming that produced pretty results, thanks to BlueJ and Objectdraw. So, what does this all mean?

I’m not entirely sure. This leaves me baffled as to what I’m gonna do with college. My entire future was set on this idea of going to a tech school. I think the main reason I really wanted to go to RPI was not for the training, but the poeple I’d be with. I find the idea of being in a gigantic dorm with hundreds of geeks like me extremely appealing, but I don’t think that’s the reason I should be going to a place like RPI. What this means for me next year, I really don’t know. I need time to figure this out, but until then, I have to work. Work, work work.

[edit: i revised this a good bit, so it will look significantly different to those of you that already read this]

STARCRAFT LAN INFORMATION

Some of you know I’m doing a LAN party of sorts on the 31st, my birthday. I have some “official” details involving this, so listen up, y’all:

It’s gonna be on March 31st, which is a Friday, 19 days from now. Required items:

$5 dollars (I’ll need all of it)
Your Computer (please don’t bring anything less than 500 mhz, this isn’t a Smithsonian exhibit)
CAT5, ~20 ft length (NECESSARY)
Large blanket (explained later)

Other helpful but not necessary items:

A large hub/switch. Larger is MUCH better. Karel said he might have this covered, but, just in case, please bring one, if possible.
Starcraft (we can burn copies, but…)

I’m having issues with the limit of people that will be here. I had originally wanted to keep it at 8, but I will have to go to 10 for various reasons. 10 is pretty much the max, for a lot of reasons. Various information involving this:

Starcraft, the main game, only supports 8 people. This in itself is okay, as I’m willing to sit back and let other poeple play, but we obviously can’t go much higher than that.
Starcraft will be a mix of melee and custom games. I know a lot of the people coming aren’t good at melee, but a few of the people that are much prefer melee (I enjoy it a lot too), so I’ll do my best to make a balance.
Other games that are up in the air are Tribes 2, Warcraft III, and Quake 3, these are all possibilities. If you have ideas, LET ME KNOW SOON. Games must be at least 8 player, and fairly low performance.
We’ll be playing in my basement, not the attic, so space will be slightly tighter than in the attic, but I’m confident there will be room. This means that if it’s between bringing a laptop and a desktop, you really, really should bring a laptop.
I am not entirely sure how sleeping arrangements will work. I have one extra bed and one couch in the basement – most of the basement is unfurnished, so a lot of the space is no-go. We may have to stretch to the living room, which has three couches (let’s see, that’s 5 people covered thus far). This means a few people (assuming all 10 sleep over, which isn’t going to happen) will have to sleep on the floor. I have blankets and such, but, BE PREPARED. Bring a large blanket or something.

If you want to come, let me know, maybe we can work something out. Some of you may have noticed that this coincides with my birthday; please DON’T get me presents. PLEASE. It’s not a birthday party, it’s an excuse to have a LAN. If you really, really, really want to, fine, but there won’t be a ceremony or anything. You have your warning.

NO WAI!

Many things to report! The first of which, are my grades. They are good enough (I don’t know the GPA) to justify coming back, but I still have work to do. In fact, I have a programming project that’s now 3 days late that I need to finish for Monday.

So, the grades are like this:

English: B+ (one bad quiz and poor attendance)
US History: Pass
Math: Pass (bad homework, that’s because i have no calculator still, so i can’t do it)
APCS: A- (gonna fall with this next project)
Physics: B (i keep forgetting the homework! argh!)
CIM: B (poor attendance)
Digital: Pass (one bad test, keep forgetting homework, terrible attendence – it’s my first period class)
PE: A

Funny story with Digital – I walked in 30 minutes late one day and they had actually taken bets as to what time I’d get there. Mike was the winner with 8:20. When I say they took bets, Mr. Peters actually wrote down the bets on the board. The worst part is that the only scolding I got was from Mr. Briegle (read: he’s not even the teacher of that class). Digital has improved since like three people dropped the class a few weeks ago, though. Much, much improved.

I’ve basically been getting NO sleep. Generally around ten hours for every five days of school – this isn’t really because I’m playing games or whatever, it’s because I fall asleep when I get home for an hour or two (I’ve been walking home recently, so I get home at 4:00), and somewhere between two and three days a week I now have Judo. Keep in mind, this isn’t me complaining. I’m actually thoroughly enjoying finally taking on school and doing something with my time. I’ve pretty much adjusted to the sleep thing, and I’ve found I actually feel much better with 3 hours of sleep over 5 or 6. Moving on, though.

[semi-geek]

Several things have changed about my computer recently, which I think concerns each and every one of you. Firstly and most earth-shatteringly, I’ve switched to Opera. Opera, you ask? Opera was once the ad-laden alternative to Firefox, but has recently been purged of such foul inventions. Opera is, in general, significantly faster and less laden with “memory leaks” (I don’t care what you call them, Mozilla Foundation, if it sucks up 100 MB of my memory, it’s a memory leak). It’s, in general, just more awesome. It has some issues with AJAX/Flash, but it works just fine in general. The biggest selling point for me was that it played about 50% more YTMNDs natively than Firefox did.

The only unfortunate part is that the widget support (AKA extensions) isn’t as large as Firefox’s was. I’m using the 9.0 beta, which is the only version that supports widgets. The widgets themselves are more akin to the Konfabulator I once used, which is now called something else under Yahoo’s ownership.

[/semi-geek]

Other things I’ve gotten into? Last.fm is in there, which I had previously ignored for lack of knowledge of its radio-doodle. I’m now frantically trying to catch up with Zach and Paul in their track counts, which, considering my current Winamp stats, won’t take too long, but it will certainly take time. I cheated last night and left music on overnight (with the volume off, silly), but I probably won’t do that again. Note “probably”. Ahem.

[geek]

Most importantly, is the fact that the world will collapse in on itself with the arrival of Oblivion in a SINGLE WEEK! A SINGLE WEEK! AHAHA! I’ve not been this excited since the arrival of Halo 2! I scoured the internet for scans of the March 2006 OXM review of it (9.5 out of 10!), to no avail. Luckily, we get an early dismissal on the Thursday of that week, as well as a day off Friday. Truly, the heavens are aligning to accomodate the arrival of this magnificent piece of game.

Nobody Loves You!

FIVE WEEK PROBATION!

No blog posts for five whole weeks. No design tweaks. No nothing. I’ll start up again if I have above a 3.2 on my report card at the end of the semester. If not, you’ll see me at the end of the year.

Woo change!

EDIT: You know what, screw that. 3.8. It’s completely plausible.

Exquisite Taste

Music a really strange thing. More for me than most, I’ve realized, because I don’t listen to what’s good, I listen to what I feel like. Most of the time, that’s techno, but it took me about an hour to figure out what to listen to just now.

Music is one of those things that can really boost my mood. I’ve come to kind of depend on it while at home, but it’s a big distraction if I don’t make the right choice. I can’t focus while I’m reading if I enjoy the music too much, or if it’s too varied in tone. Like just now, I’ve been reading Catcher in the Rye. Music for the mood? Classical. I don’t often pick up the classical stream, but it’s pretty nice for times like this. Soothing.

And, in honor of the sign above my monitor that states “I SHALL NOT BE LAZY. 🙂“, I return to my reading.

EDIT:

New pair of glasses: ~$200.
New copy of Starcraft: ~$10.
This:

LazyAmy77: at least you didn’t have OWL glasses for six years
LazyAmy77: erg
salandarin: i did, actually
salandarin: but you’ll never know that
LazyAmy77: sure I won’t
salandarin: dude
salandarin: those pictures
salandarin: top secret
LazyAmy77: mine are in yearbooks all over Ithaca
LazyAmy77: and embarassing
LazyAmy77: ugh
salandarin: mine…aren’t!
salandarin: haha
LazyAmy77: rawr
LazyAmy77: i look like a librarian midget on crack
salandarin: right, but what did you look like THEN?
LazyAmy77: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
salandarin: OH NO HE DIDN’T!
LazyAmy77: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Totally, totally priceless. I found that super amusing, anyways.

The Core of the Hard

The Olympics this year have not been of Olympic quality. The figure skating is outright boring. Whatever controversy spawned this new scoring system has created a demon child that’s definitely not worth watching on TV. I had high hopes that NBC would do a good job of not flooding the television with biographies and whatnot, but nay, they’ve done just that. Don’t get me wrong – I like a few now and then, of interesting people that have interesting lives. But I honestly do not care about the life of every single American athlete. I really don’t. I absolutely HATE how EVERY reporter asks an athlete for their favorite olympic moment, or what it feels like to win. All of this reminds me of college mail.

This college mail is insane. Tons of it, all over the place. I’ve gotten at least thirty letters, and the last time I checked my inbox I had sixty-two unread emails (fifty were colleges). It angers me. What’s that, Baldwin-Wallace? You have lots of stories to share with me? Well, I have lots of I-Don’t-Care to share with you! No, really. All of these emails and letters are EXACTLY the same. These can’t seriously actually be effective tools. Maybe it’s a lot less exciting since I’m going to TC3, but, honestly, this stuff is exactly like the Junk Mail program I wrote not a month ago.

So, I hate defending my choice to go to TC3, but I had to do it again.

I had a little argument with Matt and John over TC3 versus Cornell. I stand by my choice not because it’s my only choice in the first place, but because I think it’s the right one anwyays. Both of them projected the idea that Cornell somehow gives a better education. Define “better”, please. Brilliant professors that are only at Cornell for research purposes, and not to teach? Honestly, when I look at some guys, I see people who are working themselves to death. Yes, they’re smart. But are they taking three APs (pretty much the max for junior year, unless you’re Ryan) because they’re that interested in US history, chem/physics, and computer science? Chances are, they want the college credit.

EDIT: as i read the above paragraph over, i kind of noticed i forgot that whole “two years” bit. i meant to imply that the education at TC3 for the first two years is almost as good as Cornell’s. hah. whoops.

I have nothing against making life easier, but seriously. Some people take college WAY too seriously. Maybe I don’t take it seriously enough. And if I don’t, that’s my loss.

New design should be done before break is over.

We Kill Because We Care

I bring to you another creation in my Blendventures (get it? Blender + adventures = Blendventures!). I had meant to put our little friend amongst his colleagues in the ocean, with a real ocean floor, maybe seaweed, and realistic water. But then, I figured, let’s just go with Seaworld. So, here’s our friend, in Seaworld.

As I’ve told a few of you, I got this new chair yesterday. As all of you should know, my previous chair was, in fact, not a chair. The back had broken off and left what was, essentially, an adjustable stool with arms. I shudder to think of what four months of sitting on that thing has done to my posture.

But now, the solution has arrived, in the form of a giant leather managerial chair that my dad found on super sale at Staples.

“Sometimes, all one can do is step back and laugh at the absurdity of it all. However, the jury will note that a fire extinguisher was within easy reach.”

The Parabola of Life

She’s dying.

8:14 AM, February 11 (6 days ago):
“…I just got off the phone with the Falls Home. Mom fell or collapsed (not sure quite how to describe it) in the dining room this morning. The staff roused her and she was talking. They called the paramedics who are taking her to the hospital. They assume it is cardiac related — her blood pressure was slightly elevated. I will go over a little later this morning to check on her and report back. Meanwhile, let’s entrust her to the Lord’s strong and wise care.”

10:44 PM, February 11(6 days ago):
“…I talked with the primary hospital care physician late this afternoon. He gave me all the time I wanted on the phone to ask questions and talk through mom’s situation.

While she is stable now and a-symptomatic, and while the EKG showed little change from the EKG they had on file from last year, the cardial blood work showed evidence that she did have a heart attack this morning. The doctor will not have a clearer idea about the exact severity of the heart attack until some add’l test results come back probably tomorrow. Given the nature of what mom is facing and given a certain degree of possibility of further heart failure (because of her age and her Alzheimers), the doctors wanted guidance on what kind of measures to take to care for her. Jim and I agreed that we should sign a DNR (Do Not Ressusitate) authorization, and we directed the doctors to supportive but non-invasive measure to respond to any further developments. (sigh)

Mom was pretty upset this afternoon while I was visitng her. She didn’t know where she was, couldn’t understand that she was in the hospital, couldn’t remember she’d collapsed and been brought to the hospital in an ambulance, kept jerking the oxygen hose off her face, kept trying to shove tissues into the non-existent pockets of her hospital gown, swatted the hand of the nurse who patted her arm, and generally kept telling me how cruel I was for keeping her imprisoned in this place. So, the nurses were going to check with the doc about upping some of her sedatives to get the old girl to calm down…. which apparently had happened by the time the doctor called me late this afternoon…

…Thank you for your prayers.
Steve”

8:39 PM, February 12 (5 days ago)
“It’s Sunday 8:30pm and I went over to see mom this afternoon. She was a lot calmer today. She was so wired yesterday, I’m sure they had to get out the tranquilizer gun to get her to be still.

I did not talk with the doctor today, but I did go over mom’s charts for the day. She had some more chest pains last night, but none today. It looks like she’ll be in the hospital for at least one more day unless some more symptoms flare up.

One bit of concern — she will have to be evaluated before being readmitted to the Falls Home. The evaluation is mostly related to mobility and self-awareness. My hunch it that she will be fine and show enough physical stamina and flexibility as well as mental ability for
self-maintenance (can brush her teeth, dress herself, take herself to the bathroom, etc.) to enable her to return to the Falls Home… but we’ll see.

Thanks for your continued prayers.
Steve”

7:22 PM, February 13 (4 days ago)
“All was quiet today with mom. She reported no chest pains, and nothing alarming showed up on any of the heart monitors… which apparently she managed to keep attached all day. No small miracle.

The doctor will give her another evaluation tomorrow as will the Falls Home to determine whether her independent mobility is significantly changed.

It’s likely the doctor will prescribe nitroglicerin for her heart.

She slept a lot today for which the nursing staff was grateful.

And… that’s the latest. I did not journey over to see her today since all seemed quiet.

Thanks for your continued prayers.”

5:09 PM, February 14 (3 days ago)
“I just got off the phone with mom’s primary care doctor and he gave me an update on mom’s condition. He confirmed again that the episode on Sat was a heart attack. However, they are continuing to run blood tests and EKG’s to determine if the continuing chest pains are an extension of that intitial episode or if they are caused by other things like acid reflux, angina, etc. They won’t be able to come to any conclusions about that for another week after they draw more blood for testing.

Mom did have more chest pains this morning, and the doc gave her nitroglycerine to counter that again. If she is free of chest pain tomorrow, he hopes she can return to the Falls Home on Thursday.

If the Falls Home is not convinced that her physical condition fits within their guidelines for residential care, mom will remain in the hospital on “swing care.” This is a 10 day – 2 week transitional evaluation period at the end of which the Falls Home can reassess her. If they reaffirm their position that she is now beyond their ability to care for her, then we will need to move her to a nursing home.

So, I guess that means that, given the possibility that she might need to move, I need to scout out some nursing home options. There is one possible location that I think is very suitable quite close to the house, and I will check there. We have one gal in the congregation who lives there as does the mother of another gal in the congregation.

I visited mom today, but she was kinda tired and dopey and not able to converse or concentrate at all, so it was a quick visit. I chatted with the nursing staff and they all seem to think she’s doing fine, as long as she’s not on a tirade…

…Thank you for your continuing prayers.”

Considering that none of that is even reminiscent of my grandmother, I’m going to hope that my the grandmother I know (knew?) and love is up in heaven, and that what’s still down here is just a shell of what once was. I feel like I already mourned the loss of Nana three years ago, when her Alzheimer’s fully took over. Enough of this. I shall avoid comtemplation and reminiscing until her day is done.

It hurts.

I Feel the Winter

I’d really like to go to Italy some time. Ancient Rome is possibly one of my favorite subjects in history, and the terrain is exactly what I go for – hilly, lush, diverse. It’s really the only European country (with the Scandanavians – Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway – as the exceptions) that interests me. Not that I would want to live there, but some day, when I’m rich and famous, I could go for it.

I’m really enjoying The Catcher in the Rye. I didn’t like it at first, because it was just the monologue of an angsty teenager. As I’ve read on, however, I realize there’s a lot in Holden that’s extremely easy to relate to, but there’s a complexity to the character that makes it hard to interpret. I had this really interesting discussion with a girl in my English class (as the rest of the class sort of sat there and said nothing) about whether or not Holden is, at heart, untrue to himself and just a coward, or whether he’s really emotional/opinionated but unable to express himself in a way that others understand, and is thus forced to comply with the social norms to function. I argued for the latter.

The real point is, this is really the first book I’ve come across in the high school curriculum that approaches any level of intellectual complexity. Maybe I was just encouraged more by the fact that another person exists that even has the desire to discuss this kind of stuff in detail. I don’t mean to say that we actually bothered to continue talking about it after our 45 minutes of class ended; Lord knows that will never happen. Only politics and religion could pull enough interest out of any given acquaintence to permit prolonged discussion.

Things have been very surreal. I’ve been watching people around me grow up – I’ve been carefully marking the point at which the line between us and Joe “sixpack” Smith on TV is blurred. I don’t doubt my own maturity, but it is strange to watch everything around me continue to grow, but in a very, very demoralizing sense, not change. To illustrate what I mean, look at American histroy. We’re discussing the “growth” of industry in the late 19th century in US History, the same “ideas” of the time are inescapably true today. We are owned by “the man”, the corporations, “the system”, as it were (this is so cliche). I understand why this is, and why this will never change, despite what illusions we may create. The knowledge that humanity is no different than it was at any point in time is very demoralizing, especially in the sense that I will not live to see “better days”. Days with less blatant acts of sexism, racism, homophobia, or whatever discrimination of your choice, I will probably see. It will simply be traded off for another culturally acceptable evil that, in time, will morph from the norm to teh ev0l.

Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do, are doomed to watch as it is repeated by those who do not know it.

I could end the post here for dramatic effect, but I feel like noting the fact that nobody will comment on this post – whenever I make these type of posts, the numbers are very low, possibly because nobody can find anything funny to say to break the mood of the post, or because nobody feels like debating whatever I’ve said. Please, though, I do enjoy discussion. Write thoughts, if nothing else.

Now Only One Question Remains.

[geek]

Benjamin informed me of the possible malcomparison of IIS to Apache. For those offended, I partially defend my comparison. It’s not entirely unfair. I don’t know squat about IIS, just what I saw as I cruised for the solution to my Apache problem.

And for those questioning the artistic talent behind my render, I want you to note that it is neither a depiction of anyone’s obscenities, nor is it just a pentagon with cones. Please, if you will, note the following:

Waves. The water. It’s wavy.
Reflections. They’re accurate and wavy!
Stars! I originally made them multicolored, but Benjamin noted that it looked odd, so they’re white. Just like me.
A fluent horizon. There’s no awkward transition between the water and the horizon.
Textures, on both the water and the castle (yes, it is a castle). The water, if you notice, is actually the background for this very blog. It worked nicely. The castle’s texture is a marble algorithm that comes with Blender.

The actual objects weren’t super hard to make, although that hole for the door took me a while to figure out.

And yes, I do realize it’s still not good, but there’s no reason to be mean (COUGHZACHCOUGH).

[/geek]

Another topic I have not yet covered is the Gumball 3000. I’ve told a few of you about this event, but not most of you. Most of you probably don’t care, but, it’s this super awesome annual rally in Europe. The group that runs the Gumball 3000 works out deals with the local law and government to allow the cars enrolled in the rally to forgoe any traffic laws of the given country. The only country to deny this thus far is Hungary (the beauty of that one is that it was the first result from “dancing hungarians”), throughout 7 years of this rally. So, people fly in from all over with their street-illegal cars, and race 3000 miles across Europe. It’s so much cooler than the crap you might see in movies such as “2 Fast 2 Furious”.

Speaking of competitions, there’s these Olympics. As you should all know, I dearly love the Olympics. Dearly. I enjoy the winter competition a lot as there’s lots of skiing, which I’m actually good at, and can appreciate the skillz that I don’t have.

With that, I leave you to celebrate.

And that is, what ‘chu gonna do with all that junk? All that junk up in yo’ trunk?

Ringing in the New Year

In the time I’ve spent vacationing away from you rainbow sloths, I’ve picked up some mad 3D-modeling skills. My first creation worthy of releasing into the public? Just look.

I did this using Blender, a masterful FOSS project to behold. If you venture towards using Blender, I’d strongly suggest starting with the tutorials. Note the word “strongly” in bold.

That said, other things must be done.

/glare

I’m so white I can’t even see.

I demand money. Lots, and lots.

I can’t believe I do this for free.

[geek]

For those interested in what went wrong, it was in fact Windows’ fault. Apparantly something I installed triggered the desire for Windows to start the IIS services (Microsoft’s version of Apache), which are highly magical and almost virus-like in the way they operate. They do not show up in the Task Manager’s process list, nor do they display as using any ports in the command prompt. Yet, in fact, they were hogging up port 80, Apache’s default port. After turning off the services and dozens of installs and uninstalls of Apache 1.3 and 2.0.55 (2.2 has no .exe available yet), Apache wouldn’t add itself to Window’s service list, probably after its run in with IIS.

I’m working on a bug with the PHP at the moment, but otherwise, things are just dandy. I may redo the graphicals over the break next week, but that is a mere pondering. Yes, a mere pondering.

[/geek]

Just like your mom.

EDIT: Just so none of you get this crazy idea that I like you fools, I didn’t read anyone’s blog unless they had an RSS feed. And even those times were sparing, as my lacking presence over at the place that’s serving the roast duck, with the mango salsa, for those silly cavemen.

SIlly, silly cavemen.