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ENTRIES ARE ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. BEGIN READING AT THE TOP.
I suppose just about everyone else having one is a good reason for me to start one too. As you can tell, though, none of that Xanga selling-out wackiness here — this is coded entirely by hand. This has (for you) one major advantage: no annoying advertisements, no pop-ups, no random posts by other people, no pressures to “subscribe” to something you can get for free anyway, and no “eProps.” Be very happy.
Sunday, Oct. 24, 2004
9:42 a.m.
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Well, here goes the inagural entry of this thing. I'm going to leave out all the usual “Hi, my name is...” stuff like who I am, what color eyes I have, what kind of clothes I wear, what my favorite food is and so on because I'm assuming that just about everyone who visits here knows me already. If not, and you really want to know something — like my exact height in centimeters or whether I like spaghetti more than rice — you could just ask. Now that that's taken care of, on to the good stuff! I spent most of yesterday out of my room running from activity to activity. I woke up at 8:11 because I had to be in Schmitt by 8:30 for a high school trivia tournament that the College Trivia Club was hosting. I (somehow) managed to get something to eat from my room and make it down there in time. The tournament went really well; some of our new freshmen showed up and graded papers and read questions and (I think) had a good time, and that's definitely good news for when all the seniors leave at the end of the year. I left the tournament at 1:00, a little bit after the lunch break, to come back here and get ready for the French club's immersion day out at the farm. I missed last year's day, so when Mme. Haymore asked me earlier this week if I was coming, I ended up saying yes even though the trivia thing was the same day. (Well, I actually said oui because we were speaking French at the time, but you get the idea....) It actually turned out that no one wanted to spend the whole day speaking French, apparently, so we told people to meet at Guilford House at 2:00 rather than 10:00 like we had originally planned. Which meant I was just in time. I was really glad I went — it was much more fun and more educational than the trivia tournament would have been. I haven't really spoken a word of French since last spring when I was taking FRCH 319, so I really needed the practice. (When I was talking to Mme. Haymore earlier in the week, I made so many mistakes and forgot so many words that it was actually frightening!) I think, though, that eight hours of nothing but French really helped me get things together again. When I got back, I annoyed my suitemates a bit because French was a bit more natural than English at that point. Qui veut du déssert? J'ai de la tarte ici didn't make much sense to most of them. Another good thing that came out of the day: I have another idea for what to do next year after I graduate in the spring. The French government, each year, has a program that places American students of French in French schools to teach English recitations. There's a guy from Case that I know doing it this year, actually, and three or four of us at the immersion day were really interested when Mme. Lathers brought it up. That way, if I can't decide between grad school in computer science or grad school in journalism, I can run off to France for a year instead and decide later! Yay procrastination. Today (speaking of procrastination...) I have to do all the homework that I've been ignoring for the past two days. I also want to run down to the Cleveland Public Library to pick up a book that they don't have at KSL. |
Sunday, Oct. 24, 2004
11:08 p.m.
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Here's to another rather unproductive day. I'm beginning to realize that any scrap of motivation I once had to get work done and stay on top of (or even ahead of!) my assignments has somehow vaporized over the course of the past year or so. When I was a freshman, I was somehow able to force myself to sit at my desk for hours at a time while I chugged through calc homework and physics homework and reading for my French class and whatever else had to be done. Now, though, I get bored after about 20 minutes of anything and start drifting into the unproductive realm of looking things up on the Internet. I did, at least, make it down to the public library. I ate in Fribley around noon, went back upstairs, and tried to force myself to read my phychology book for a while. I evenutally gave up and caught the 2:30 rapid for Tower City... taking along with me my number theory and psychology homework. Once I got to the library, I found the book I was after (I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson) and installed myself at a table by the window on the sixth floor of the Stokes Wing. My plan was to spend several productive hours doing homework, and then leave in time for the Observer staff meeting back on campus at 5:00. Well, "several productive hours" is hard to do when you've only got 70 minutes until it's time to leave to catch the train heading back, so I probably spent more time in transit than actually working on stuff. On the way back, the train to Windermere came into the station just as I was stepping out onto the platform, which made me feel like it was coming expressly for me just when I wanted it. That was nice. So I made it back in time for my staff meeting, which lasted until just after 6:00. We spent a lot of time talking about our super-cool trip to Nashville (Nov. 3-7) for the Associated Collegiate Press national conference. The Observer is actually a finalist for the Pacemaker, which is the top award that the ACP gives out each year. I never though of our news content as anything extraordinary — and neither do many students around here, I'd bet — but if they want to give us an award for it I would be really happy to take it. I do think we've improved the paper a lot from where it was two years ago, and the old staff did actually win a Pacemaker in either 1999-2000 or 2000-01, so I guess it wouldn't be too crazy if we did it again. Dinner in Fribley after the meeting, and then it was on to My software engineering stuff is a bit more up-to-date, at least, and I got all my Observer e-mails sent out on time tonight. Psychology's still a bit behind and so is number theory, though, so I think I'd better cut this off now and try to do something productive for an hour or so. One final note: my first post did elicit one comment from one of my friends; it addressed me as "Sir" and informed me that e-props are the "shiznit." Right. |
Monday, Oct. 25, 2004
9:04 p.m.
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Motto of the day: I hate databases!! But we'll get to that in good time. Today started off quite nicely: I woke up on time, had a nice breakfast with The Plain Dealer down at Fribley, and was early to my 10:30 psychology class. Number theory was a bit over my head (but not too much), and during my lunch break I took care of some things at the Observer office that have needed to be done for a while. When I went down to Bingham for software engineering at 2:00, I found like eight people from the class clustered in front of the building talking, so I joined them for a few minutes and then Prof. Podgursky came by too. All good so far.... Back here, I spent some time downloading and playing with Open Office (now I can make my own PDF files!) after Eric recommended it. The afternoon was so nice (blue skies, 65°F, light breeze), though, that I peeled myself away from my keyboard and decided to go running. That didn't work out quite so well — I'm so out of practice that I was only able to manage about 2.6 miles. I probably could have kept going, physcially at least, but mentally I didn't feel like continuing. I talked to my sister for a bit before dinner, which was a nice change from our IM conversations. We're both going home this weekend for a birthday party so we'll probably find time to go get tea or something and catch up with each other. The database-hating part of the day struck in full force right after dinner. I've been trying various things from my computer here to connect to the EECS 341 ASP server where we're supposed to create our class projects. We each have a database set up on the server, but we have to actually put the data in it, create web forms, background code, and whatever else to make it into a functioning product. I hadn't been able to even connect from home, so I went straight from Fribley to the Olin 404.5 lab to try it from there. At first, success! I connected all right and set up a blank database project in Visual Studio .NET, but that was about as far as I ever got. I spent the next hour trying to figure out how to actually create tables and put data in my database. End result: I found an annoying roundabout way to create tables and data, but it only works correctly if all the attributes are supposed to be strings. Unfortunately, my design doesn't include any tables that are all strings, so this isn't really useful. What's worse, my blind forays into .NET and SQL Server (I don't know which is which) didn't include how to remove tables from the database. At the end of an hour — quite possibly the most frustrating hour I've spent all year — I found myself with tables named data1, Staffer, and Issue that I can't get rid of, none of which contain useful data. At that point, I don't think Tekin himself standing next to me threating to flunk me if I got up could have kept me in that lab any longer. I tried editing some Observer content when I got back here, but I really don't feel like working any more tonight. I was mainly hoping to get a lot of work done on my database tonight, so aside from writing an article or two for this week's paper, there actually isn't much that needs to get done tonight. The temptation to run off to Starbucks or Arabica's for the rest of the night with a nice British novel is extremely strong right now. Music of the Moment: "A Year From Today" by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra, 1929. Bouncy songs like this really make me feel a lot better when I get frustrated or upset. (I still have a tape of 1930s and '40s stuff that got me through chem homework just about weekly back in 10th grade.) Click here for a streaming RealAudio version. |
Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004
11:43 p.m.
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Almost forgot that I had to update this thing before I went to bed tonight! One of these days I probably will forget, and that will be enough to drive it out of my mind for the next three months. Anyway, I came back from Starbucks last night to find four IMs waiting for me, two of which were about databases. For example, I've been told the proper line of code to remove a table of data — now I just have to figure out what kind of a file to put it in and how to run it. I also woke up today with a few new ideas of my own for things to try, so I'm feeling much better. Databases class, though, was a bit over the top this morning. Tekin loves to tell us how stupid we are in one breath and then tell us with the next that he's skipping lots of stuff because he thinks we know it already. So now I've got like 75 slides to read over and understand. Great. After databases (my only class of the day), I had to run up to PBL for a meeting USG was giving about mass funding that was "mandatory" for all student groups. Unfortunately, they had selected for this purpose a classroom about the size of what you'd find in an average high school. At the last minute (i.e. when about 50 people were standing at the back and along the walls) they decided to call someone to open up the folding wall at the back of the room and bring in more chairs, and that put us about 15 minutes behind. It's quite simple, USG people: when you know that there are about 120 student groups, and you call a meeting that's mandatory for all of them, you should expect about 120 people to show up. The meeting itself got off to a rough start because the first speaker was really rude and annoying-sounding, but then it got better and ended in less than an hour. After that, I went all the way back here to pick up my Montreal binder for a meeting with Janice down in the Office of Student Community Service. We ended (or rather, I left) around 2:30, at which point I was finally able to get some lunch and work on the two stories I'm writing for Friday's paper. (One of them is done now.) That and other random stuff kept me in the Observer office until 4:45, so I finally got back here at 5:00 feeling like it was bedtime. I also went to the weekly knitting/reading thing in Bethany's and Rachel's suite at 9:00. Lots of fun, like always. This week we read O. Henry short stories (I took my book along), and next week we're going to start "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," only I'm going to be at the Observer for early production night. Rachel and Bethany made tea and Rachel taught me how to purl (#/usr/bin/perl...) so everything was quite nice. I think it would be fun to have a tea party at some point. To do this, though, I would need to (1) get a teapot, (2) get a set of teacups, (3) buy or bake some biscuits or scones or cakes, and (4) find a time when people can come. This is a bit more than I feel like handling in the next two weeks, so the idea is going to have to be shelved for a while. Do tell me, though, if you'd be interested, and maybe I can work something out for after the ACP conference. I also want to have a Twinsburg High School alumni party over Christmas break when we're all home for a bit. I guess that's all for tonight. Thanks again to those of you who listened to me complaining yesterday or sent IMs of support. It feels really nice to know there are people out there who care. |
Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004
12:31 p.m.
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Wednesday = Observer. That's pretty much yesterday in a nutshell. In the end, I think I spent almost exactly 12 hours in the office: from 12:30 until 1:45, then from 3:00 until 1:50 a.m. I'm usually home by about midnight most weeks, so you can see that we were running a bit behind last night. Something called the "Vote or Die" tour stopped by campus yesterday around lunch time, complete with hip-hop stars and supermodels, so of course we had to cover it for Friday's paper. Kristin, our Focus editor, really did a great job of going to the rally and talking people and writing the article, but she also had to take care of Focus content and Focus layout at the same time. Between that and some other last-minute stuff in my section the paper ran pretty well behind the entire night. Laura let us (i.e. the copy editors) go before the layout was quite finished, so I hope page 12 turns out all right. Seriously, though, Observer Wednesdays are the most fun part of my entire week! Scraping together content and editing it can get boring and annoying after 40 weeks as news editor, but I don't think I'll ever miss being in the office for eight or 10 hours at a time reading copy, putting things together, working out problems in layout, etc. I also really enjoy just being there at the same time as everyone else as we all slowly go insane. Laura keeps joking that she's going to commit suicide by jumping out of the office window and leaving me in charge — this could get interesting; we're in the basement of Thwing, so she would have to jump up to reach the ground outside our front windows. After I got back last night and finally went to bed around 2:15 (and then couldn't fall asleep right away), I was thinking more about applying to some grad schools for journalism. I think I'll ask Laura if I can go along with her to her next meeting with our advisor for the paper, and then I can ask him what schools out there have good journalism programs. I know several top-notch places for computer science, but for journalism or other liberal arts I have no clue. Maybe Columbia? Either way, I have to get my act together "right quick," because applications are going to be due around the beginning of the year and I haven't even taken the GREs yet or visited any schools. My tentative goal is to (1) research journalism grad school by talking to our advisor and talking to people at the media conference next week, (2) take the GRE the weekend of Nov. 13 (assuming I can study and register for a spot by then), and then (3) start filling out applications and getting letters of recommendation. I figure that I can still apply to some places for computer science (Carnegie-Mellons Language Technologies Institute will definitely be one of them) as well as to other places for journalism, then visit schools later this year or in the spring. This way, I can defer to an ever-remote future time the final decision of CS or journalism, because I still have no clue how to select one or the other exclusively. I guess we'll see how that turns out. Today — another perfect day, weather-wise, by the way — I need to get my camping pictures back from the bookstore, see about any homework due tomorrow, and then try to do more work on my database. I also have a team leaders meeting for software engineering at 4:15, which will most likely involve me contributing usefully for about five minutes and sitting around pointlessly for 55 minutes while other groups sort things out that don't involve documentation. |
Random Stuff #1
Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004, 3:35 p.m.
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That's right, kids, it's a bonus entry! I'll do these from time to time just to point out things that have made me laugh recently. It should give you a nice break from reading about my databases project (which is already going much better, by the way...). Are You Sure About That? uh hi every1! i am just going around typing to random ppl, but mostly french horn players. i love french horns! yayyyyyyyy. i am not crazy Hello, Mr. Pot... “And a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as commander in chief.” And I Thought My French Was Bad In a Yugoslavian hotel: “The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. Turn to her straightaway.” A warning to motorists in Tokyo: “When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor.” |
Friday, Oct. 29, 2004
5:54 p.m.
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Today's rant is about web pages. Annoying commercialized web pages that pop up 30,000 ads each time you visit them. Pop-ups are, unfortunately, nothing new in the Internet culture, but I've usually managed to avoid most of them. Until today. A little bit ago I was trying to find the complete lyrics and artist name for a song I heard at The Observer this week. We usually listed to a pretty good mix of stuff — some of which I think is quite mediocre or even hideous, but some of which I occasionally like a lot — and the fare changes from week to week based on who brings what to the office and what CD someone throws in the CD player. That means I never know what exactly I'm listening to unless I ask someone. For this particular song, I've actually heard it a few times there, but I never found out what it was. I figured, though, that since I remembered one line of it I could look it up on Google pretty easily. So I went to Google and typed in "don't let go I've got the music in me" into the search bar. The results included at least two different songs with "I've got the music in me" in them, so I was looking at the different pages to see if I recognized any of the other words. Each page was from some commerical lyrics site and each one had at least two pop-up ads or requests to download something! Eventually (well, after not much time, actually) I gave up and just closed everything, so I still don't know anything new about the song. The lyrics I did manage to read between the flashing "Congratulations! You're the 1,000,000th visitor to this site!" and "Hit the zombie and win!" didn't look familiar. I am happy to report, at least, that this will never happen again. My first move (just before writing this) was to install the Google toolbar that blocks pop-ups automatically! </rant> In other news, it's finally Friday. As many Case students know, it always rains in Cleveland on Friday, but I managed to avoid most of it today by eating lunch in Sears with Sonnie and her friend Megan instead of walking to Fribley and/or back to my room between classes. My major goals for the next three days or so are to get as much homework done as possible, revise and print out copies of my resumé, get a newspaper out (somehow!), and run off to the ACP conference in Nashville. I am summoned to dinner. More later, maybe. |
Saturday, Oct. 30, 2004
10:37 a.m.
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Fun stuff last night! As the last entry (sort of) indicates, I ate dinner in Fribley with my suitemates around 6:15. Then I came back up here, made some tea, and tried to do a bit of psychology reading because I'm five "modules" (mini-chapters) behind. I didn't get too far, though, because around 7:45 Jeremy and I left to go see Susannah's play down at Eldred. She was directing "Four Sons," a one-act, and part of a two-play show put on by the Players Theatre Group. Both plays — "Four Sons" and "The Great Nebula in Orion" — were quite good. Susannah's had really natural dialog: someone in the audience remarked at the end that it sounded like it was written by an 18-year-old, which I thought made pretty good sense since the brothers were college-aged. The second play was a bit longer and was about two college friends who accidentially meet after not seeing each other for six years. One of them invites the other up to her apartment, and at the beginning the dialog of the play was equal parts stock conversation-starter phrases ("What a lovely apartment!" "So tell me about the kids." "How's David doing?) that the characters addressed to each other and equal parts narration that the characters gave directly to the audience. That part reminded me of Ionesco's "La Cantatrice Chauve" ("The Bald Soprano"), which he wrote after reading a phrase book for learning English. Later on in the Orion play, though, the dialog gets much more honest and open, and the narration to the audience ends up dropping out all together. I thought it was very well done. After the shows, Jeremy, Erin, and I headed over to a Halloween party at the House (also called "the Toolshed" or "the Den of Sin and Mischief" or just plain "the Den"). It was apparently a costume affair, so the actual process of arriving there took more than an hour. We also stopped at Giant Eagle on the way up to get some food to bring along. I had about three hours warning that there was going to be a party, so the only costume I had prepared was my capacitor thing from two years ago... which I didn't end up wearing anyway. Around 12:15 someone put in "The Evil Dead," a B movie from the '80s that tried to pass as horror. Not quite; just a lot of fake blood and pseudo-suspenseful moments. After the movie we all went home, so I got to bed around 2:15. Today I somehow woke up a little after 10:00. I'm going home for a combined birthday party for Chris and Katie (my two sisters), and I may be spending the night, so there may not be any updates here until late Sunday or Monday. |
Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004
3:44 p.m.
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OK, someone seriously needed to tell me that I had all of my dates wrong in this thing! I was just copying and pasting the header from the last entry (so I could modify it for this one), and the thought crossed my mind that I might have to change the month because it may be November now. (It's not, actually....) And then I realized that I had written September for each post instead of October. As a copy editor, this sort of thing annoys me. I hope I didn't do that in the paper anywhere this week. So yesterday was quite fun. I left from here around 11:30 and got home (after a stop on the way) around 12:30 — just in time for lunch. People came over for my sisters' birthday party around 4:00, but then more people came over at 5:00 for a surprise 25th anniversary party for my parents planned by my aunt, my sister, and me that everyone else knew about! My parents were really amazed; even when they saw uninvited people at the door they didn't connect it with anything related to their anniversary. Everyone went home around 10:30, after cake and presents, and then Chris and I did some cleaning up and went out running. It was actually more like a fast walk, since we had both eaten so much, but it was still good. I'd forgotten again how dark and quiet it is in the suburbs at night. Today I woke up at 8:30 thanks to the time change, so I was able to get back here by 12:30 without hurrying too much. Unfortunately, now that I'm here, the weekend rot has set in again so I'm rather not in the mood to do any homework. I don't actually have that much to do, other than five modules of psychology reading, but I do need to write a newspaper article, get new story ideas out, and start getting ready for production on Tuesday and the conference on Wednesday. Since today is Halloween, though, the prospects for being productive tonight aren't looking good: I'm planning on going over to the House during trick-or-treating hours to pass out candy with whoever else decides to show up. Request: Send me an e-mail or IM (or phone call) with your opinion on the following question: Is this page getting too long? I've been trying to set some kind of limit on how long it has to be before I put these entries onto an archive page and start on a new one, and I've sort of decided on 30 KB as a good length. I'm ruling out breaking it up based on number of entries or length of time, because the size of each page will still vary a lot based on how much I'm writing that week or whatever. This page is currently at 28.5 KB. |
Sunday, Nov. 7, 2004
10:37 p.m.
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I guess I'm a bit further behind in this than I thought.... Maybe I'll throw an abstract at the front of this entry, since it may turn out to be long. Abstract: Sunday: Passed out candy at the House, did homework. Monday: Class, dressing up like a linked list, and Observer stuff. Tuesday: Observer stuff, haircut, dentist appointment, voting, Observer stuff to the nth power. Wednesday: More Observer stuff, left for conference. Thursday: Conference. Friday: Conference. Saturday: Conference and Pacemaker!! Sunday: Conference, return to Cleveland. On Monday, Jessica and I "dressed up" like a linked list for software engineering and got some people in the class to join us. Prof. Podgursky wasn't really freaked out, actually (unlike Prof. Langer two years ago), and even recognized the Lisp box-and-pointer diagrams that Prof. Beer draws all the time in EECS 345. Later that night, we forced Mark to join us... the result of which can be seen here. I won't spend much more time on the beginning of the week, partially because I don't remember the exact details, and partially because Tuesday was a really annoying day. Let's sum up by saying that my hair is way too short now (but I'm getting used to it), politics is a really annoying subject, and the Observer ran way behind schedule but it didn't matter because we were leaving the next day anyway. I've mentioned the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisors National College Media Conference a few times in here — maybe not by the full name, but I did mention it — and it finally came this week. Nine of us from The Observer we out of here at 1:45 on Wednesday to get a plane to Nashville. We went to seminar sessions each day on different aspects of running a newspaper, writing stories, recruting and motivating staff, etc., etc., and then went out for dinner and such each night. Pretty cool times, I have to say. Especially when the photo editor comes along and brings a digital camera. You should watch out for something like the "Singing Editor Fun Page" in the next few weeks, maybe. Saturday afternoon was the best of all, because they gave out the annual awards, and The Observer won a Pacemaker! Our hearts are actually in good shape; the Pacemaker was established way back in the '20s to recognize college newspapers that were setting the pace for everyone else. We won for the best weekly black-and-white tabloid-sized paper at a four-year institution, I think. The categories weren't quite clear. Whatever it was, it was pretty cool because there were hundreds of submissions, 55 finalists, and only 14 awards in the end. That night we all went to a place called the Melting Pot (I've heard there's one at Legacy Village — it's a fondue restaurant) to celebrate and didn't get back to the hotel until almost 1 a.m. We also came back from the conference with a whole mess of great ideas for how to improve the paper, attract new writers, fix up our office, make our design more elegant, etc. A lot of our ideas for design will be coming from the other papers that we saw at the conference. Some of the college papers are so professional-looking that I couldn't believe anyone could make something like that and attend class at the same time. The weekly at Johns Hopkins was especially a fine paper. To sum up, all I can say is that if you've ever been interested in writing for The Observer, get involved now or soon because things are going to be fantastic. Since we took nine of us to Nashville, including all section editors and most assistant editors, I really think we have the commitment it takes to make a real difference this year. I just hope everyone else will take it as seriously and our work will produce some results. I think that will have to be all for now, actually. I've got a fair amount of reading and other homework to catch up on! |
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