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ENTRIES ARE ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. BEGIN READING AT THE TOP.
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Thursday, April 21, 2005
7:07 p.m.
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Two main things to note this evening: the end of my Observer career and a fine programme of live music. I'll start with The Observer, because I may have hinted in a previous entry that I'd write a little about that. First observation: it feels really good to not be news editor any more. Liz (my replacement) handled just about everything last week and everything this week, and it's really taken a good chunck of stress out of my life to know that I don't have to deal with any more press releases, save any more e-mails on the off-chance that they might be good stories, or (the best of all!) write any more content lists. These things are all someone else's problem now. Second observation: it's a little bit harder to give up copy editing. This is mainly because I'm an obsessive and anal-retentive perfectionist when it comes to things I can control and know something about, like layout and grammar. I seem to have some sort of engrained complex that the paper won't be complete until I personally have read through and looked at the design of every page and stopped the sports photos from being four columns wide. This, as you can probably tell, is a rather flawed mentality; first because I've let more than my fair share of copy mistakes slip by me, and second because the sports photos will come out four columns wide anyway. It helped that this week had one of those "isn't that sweet" storybook mush-endings, and that made me feel like there was some closure going on. The story I wrote this week, as I think I've mentioned before, was about Dean Robinson retiring at the end of the year — I thought it was nice that the end of my long news career has this link with the end of someone else's long administrative career. It's like we had the same feelings or a common bond or something. Then I took over Editorial layout for Laura last night because she really wanted to study for an O-chem test, so I ended up spending my last week at the paper doing the stuff I did during my first paid job there three years ago. I even had time to run up to the Thwing Ballroom and see Mark's orchestra concert at 7:30. The all-Dvorak programme started with something called the "Slavonic Dances," (which sure sounds like a made up word to me: I've heard of Slovaks and Slavs, but no Slavons). I hadn't heard any live orchetral music since last summer, so the sheer depth of the opening notes kind of took me by surprise. When I listen to music on my computer, everything's coming from essentially a point source; the fact that most of the music I like was recorded monophonically 60 to 80 years ago doesn't improve the situation either. So I'd rather forgotten that sound could be so rich and spread out until the Slavonic stuff started spewing out at me from points across something like a 45-degree angle. The concluding work was Dvorak's Symphony No. 5 (or No. 9, depending on whose numbering you like), "From the New World." I'd first come across the piece about two years ago as part of a giant compilation of records called "The World's Great Music" I got from my great-aunt, and I added it almost immediatly to the list of music I like. I made a CD copy of it, which I have here at school, but when I play it it's usually not just to listen to the music; it usually is more like background music for French reading or AI homework. Yesterday's concert was probably only the second or third time I've actually heard what was going on in the symphony; the different expressions that the University Circle orchestra chose also brought out a number of bits that I'd never heard before because they'd been mixed differently on the record copy. The two-level string effect, with violins and violas skimming along on top of a foundation of cellos and basses, was particularly fun and gave me a new appreciation of the deep-throated section of the orchestra. This is getting to be a really long entry, so I think I'll put a cap on my gushing for now. The list of things to do before May 15 is still quite long, but from this point on I think it can only get shorter; I should therefore have more and more time to post entries as graduation gets closer. |
Saturday, April 23, 2005
12:25 p.m.
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Just got back from (actually, out of the shower after) this year's Hudson Relay, which was definitely the most... varied one I've ever been to. I found out Wednesday that I had semi-official team member status (an alternate), so I stopped by the pre-race spaghetti dinner last night to see if they needed me. Our class president told me to show up in Tomlinson at 8:15 this morning just in case, and let me have a team T-shirt and hat. The weather forecast for today was cold and rainy, turning to even colder and snowy later on in the day, so I figured that there must be someone who would decide to not show up or would sleep through the race after having spent all of the night before getting drunk. This may have indeed been the case, but it didn't matter since the officers decided to have the fast people who did show up run multiple times rather than throwing me in somewhere. I had to fill the time with other things instead. I first walked with Galina over to her starting point across from Arabica's, saw the first lap go by (freshmen, juniors, sophomores, seniors, alumni), walked over to Severance Hall, watched the people go by twice (juniors, freshmen, seniors, sophomores, alumni), walked down Adelbert with Susannah after her leg, joined up with the senior pace car and rode around in that, and finally watched the end of the race on the quad (juniors, seniors, freshmen, sophomores, alumni). I don't suppose I can take any personal credit for our amazing second-place finish, having only run along with a large group of people for the last 50 feet of the race, but I guess I can still say I was part of the team. I'd imagine the Indians' benchwarmers (or anyone else's, for that matter) still say "we won" instead of "you guys won" after a victory. Still, a kind of disappointing morning in the end. I got to wake up early and spend three hours cold and wet without actually doing anything to justify my presence. I'm still wearing my Hudson Relays T-shirt for the rest of the day, though, because I'm sappy and pathetic like that. |
Sunday, April 24, 2005
11:44 a.m.
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I was complaining about rain in my last post, but that was before it got a bit colder and changed to snow later on in the afternoon. Snow that began sticking in an indecently short amount of time that necessitated brushing off the car during our shopping trip to Heinen's. The Suitemates and I have been going out to the Green Road store every Saturday for about a month now, I'd say, after we plan out dinners to cook on Saturday and Sunday nights. Last night it was taco soup and stawberry shortcake; tonight the plan is for beef stroganoff. We also called in at Target on the way out because Nicole wanted to buy a pair of roller blades and "The Incredibles" on DVD. While we were there, I treated myself to the "Mary Poppins" 40th anniversary DVD, mainly because it was on sale and I'd been thinking of getting it when it came out over Christmas break. The $15 purchase was further justified by the fact that I rarely buy myself anything, even though I did spend a good amount of money this year on all those grad school visits. I made it an early night and went to bed a bit after midnight. Some strange dreams, or bits thereof, though, kept waking me up every few hours. First was some chain of events that led up to me and both of my parents being shot by some evil villain somewhere. I remember seeing, as I was dying — which wasn't actually as painful as I might have suspected — a plaque in memory of me on the wall of the room. The date was included, but it was something in 2004; the only thing I remember thinking was that it was sad that I wouldn't even make it to college graduation after working so hard and coming so close. I woke up from this around 4:30 a.m., a little bit freaked out because I usually don't dream about dying and stuff like that. The second installment was much more normal. Somehow, Veale had decided to put one of the swimming pools to use for playing water polo and nothing else, and you had to sign up and pay every time you went. I was there one night watching people play, and this one girl was refusing to pay or sign up or leave, and generally making a nuisance out of herself. This was because the other girl taking the sign-ups and the money (another student) was deaf and the annoying girl couldn't make her understand what was going on. I decided to help out by acting as interpreter, which involved signing a few simple sentences along the lines of "She wants to play water polo" or "She thinks she doesn't have to pay." I don't actually remember any of the ASL except for one sentence in that included P-O-L-O spelled out and ended with "can." This one ended with me waking up at 7:00 or something like that. In the third and final dream, I was in a mall (or at least a strip mall) with some other people buying clothes. We'd been promised that we could get a certain amount of stuff for free but were having trouble getting them to follow through on that. I woke up from this one gradually around 9:00, once it was pretty bright outside and the light was coming in. |
Monday, April 25, 2005
1:34 p.m.
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I had a whole entry typed out and was working on the last paragraph when I realized that I was sort of backing into the good stuff that I really wanted to say. Here's the right spot, then: I called my parents last night since it was the weekend, which was as usual a mixed good and bad experience. My mom especially has an amazing knack of taking things that are really exciting (graduating, taking a road trip, moving out, finding an apartment, going to grad school) and turning them into nightmare situations and troubles. ("How are you going to pay for that? How much will that cost? You're only going to be at work for two and a half months? But you need the money? Have you thought about how much that will cost you? Wow! That's expensive!") I am not an extravagant person and I've spent most of my life (that I can remember) trying to save money by ordering cheap meals in restaurants, not buying stuff, etc. Growing up, I remember an endless stream of comments from my parents on the latest credit card statement, the car insurance, grocery bills, and whatnot. I've been continuously employed since March 2000, except for the first semester I was at school, including all summers and Christmas breaks, in order to make it though college. I realize how much grad school is going to cost! I've known for a long time that my educational career is not going to be free, and I've just kind of dealth with it along the way. Now that I've got an exciting new part to look forward to, a chance to be out on my own, to start my own life, I would kind of like to enjoy those possibilities for a bit before getting a lecture on the costs involved. Talking with my parents is so different from talking to people I know here. Among other students, the emphasis is more on the experiences and doing things that you'll enjoy or taking the chances that you might regret missing later on — or just sympatheic exchanges about turning in partially-complete homework assignments because there's not time to do them all. When I told my mom about the networks project that I did about 25% of and got a 70% on, her response was "Ohhhhh! Ahhhh! That's a C," like I had just told her I had malignant melanoma. Eric and QS, who understand these matters, would be more likely to say something like "Niiice!" or "Hey, that's cool! Take it." So that's the rant of the day. Probably a pretty common one among college students who have to deal with their parents. In other news, classes are over and, as Eric said, it's functionally the weekend again. Only... not quite, because the to-do list is still plenty long enough to keep me busy until after finals week. To wit:
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Thursday, April 28, 2005
12:12 p.m.
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The AI extra credit has been (finally) turned in and the networks final has been semi-competently disposed of, so now we move on to the actual fun of preparing the crypto presentation. This is what I wanted to be working on last night when I was trying to force myself to study networks. Studying, however, didn't go so well, and neither did waking up at 5 a.m. to finish things off, so I went into the exam having not even read through all my notes once. Luckily, the stuff I hadn't gone over was the stuff we'd covered most recently and that had been on the last homework, so I was able to fake my way through most of it. It was a long test, though: pick 10 out of 11 questions to do. I wrote non-stop for more than two and a half hours before crossing out #11 and filling in something that sounded good for the second parts of #8 and #10. I had an 82.9% in the class before the final, but a lot of people aren't doing so well — I'd say a B is almost guaranteed (subject to the possibility of me having done everything today wrong), but I'd really like to pull out the A in that class so I can let crypto be my one B for the semester. Once grades start showing up on the registrar's site I'll post them here. |
Friday, April 29, 2005
5:09 p.m.
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Nothing like starting the morning off with a bang: I woke up today at 8:00 for my 8:30 presentation, and was actually quite lucky to get that. I stayed up until 12:30 or so last night and then went to bed without setting my alarm. So when I first became semi-conscious this morning and got around to wondering what time it was, the "8:00" figures staring me in the face got me to shoot out of bed at possibly my fastest rate since I woke up at 9:53 for a 10:00 databases class in the fall. It didn't help that I had to stop at Jennings on my way to the presentation to print out the papers I was going to pass around during my talk, but I got there at 8:29 and everything went OK. My presentation went off quite well, except that it ran long and Dr. Singer had to cut me off, but it seemed that the people in the class (who were awake enough to listen) liked it and thought it was pretty easy to follow. I just hope Dr. Singer will consider it mathematical or technical enough to get a good grade. After class I went with Eric, Brian, and Seth to Wackadoo's for lunch — my recommendation: don't order the fish unless you don't like to taste the food you're eating. Even by my standards it tasted like nothing. I got back to my room around 1:40, and strangely felt like doing nothing but lying on my bed and eventually falling asleep. I don't ever take naps during the day, so this was a pretty big change from my normal afternoons. That, and QS kept poking at my hair and bouncing her finger off of the part where it annoyingly curls up on the side when it's misbehaving. (Today, since I went running yesterday and didn't have a chance to take a shower this morning, is a super-misbehaving day, much to Jessica's amusement.) Thanks to her, at least I now know that the inside of my ear is ticklish. This and that. Mark semt me a link to the story of Beowulf and Godzilla that I quite enjoyed. In a more serious line, Jeremy passed along a Connie Schultz column about cell phones that echoes almost exactly what I'm always talking about. |
Sunday, May 1, 2005
12:56 p.m.
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Not too much to report for this weekend: I spent most of the last two days doing fun things instead of studying for my AI exam. Friday night I went to see "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" down at Tower City with Jessica, Eric, Bret, and Dan. The movie was pretty good; they'd of course written in all sorts of things that weren't in the original book and took out a lot of the good classic lines, but at least you could understand the computer voices in this version. I also definitely enjoyed the theme song! After we all got back, Mark, Nicole, and I rounded out the evening with "Blackadder Back and Forth." Yesterday I ran down to the public library for a few hours to raid their stock of P.G. Wodehouse books. Came back with six of those, plus "Un long dimanche de fiançailles." I started on "Carry On, Jeeves" over lunch at Panera's at Tower City before taking the train back home. Almost immediately upon getting back, I threw some stuff into my car and was off again — first to take the stuff (winter clothes, some books, a random box of crap) home for the summer, then down to Stow to see Sonnie and Laura play in the Stow Chamber Orchestra. The programme concluded with none other than Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, played by great enthusiasm except for the woodwinds during the second movement. Starting from today there are just two more academic responsibilities (AI exam and French paper) in my undergraduate career. I keep getting more and more e-mails, though, about graduation events and awards dinners and end-of-year whatevers, so there are actually a lot more things that I have to do before leaving here on May 16. |
Random Stuff #10
Sunday, May 1, 2005, 9:15 p.m.
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Soooo definitely don't feel like studying for my AI exam right now. I feel like I've been looking over my notes for hours and hours without getting anywhere, but that might be because it's actually only been about 70 minutes since I started. Since I kind of want to be doing something else right now — and since I just saw "Blackadder Back and Forth" yesterday, where a time machine plays a central role — I'm presenting here some excerpts from my old written journal describing what I was doing around this time in previous years that wasn't studying. Wish You Were Here! Oh Wait, I Already Was... Today was Friday and our scheduling forms for next year's classes were due. I signed up for AP Calculus, AP English, Physics B, Biology, French 4, Graphics, Novels, and Math Discussions & Discoveries. My problem was that I've already taken a lot of classes (all the computer ones, chemistry, etc.) so I have a lot of easier ones for next year. Colleges look at the difficulty of classes in your senior year, so I hope it won't make a big difference if I have some easier classes because I took all the hard ones (and ones dealing with computers) before. —March 17, 2000 Today's May 1, so it's "le jour des muguets" or something like that in France. A "muguet" (if I have that right) is a lily-of-the-valley. When we were at the Pink Pig for the immersion weekend, Mme Valadon told us the names of a few flowers and trees in French — that I've forgotten already. —May 1, 2002 I felt pretty good about both tests this week, so I decided that today would finally be the day to go to Royal Garden Records out in North Olmsted. I first came across a listing for it in the phone book a few years ago, but that was when the address "23812 Lorain" meant nothing to me. When I went off to college last year and figured out how the addresses work, I decided I should be able to get there pretty easily on the RTA. [...] I wrote myself out a nice little note with the Red Line schedule and the times for the #75X bus that goes down Lorain. Then I took it out of my pocket to add the address and forgot to put it back in when I left for the rapid station. So I did it without the benefit of knowing the bus schedule. —April 30, 2003 Aside from that job stuff and finals coming up, the biggest news is probably that we're planning another camping trip for the end of next week. Erin's sister is at school at Cumberland College in southern Kentucky, and Erin has to go pick her up with all her stuff for the summer. That sort of evolved into all of us going down to Cumberland Falls State Park for four nights of camping and canoeing. We're still working out details, but it looks like it's going to happen all right. —April 29, 2004 |
Monday, May 2, 2005
10:48 p.m.
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I was remarking before the AI final this afternoon that I'm getting really slip-shod about studying for tests this year. As a freshman or sophomore, given a cumulative final exam with an absolutely free day immediately before to get ready for it, I would have spent a minimum of four hours going over my notes, trying problems from each chapter, reworking some of the homework, etc. This year, not so much. I don't think I spent more than an hour and a half reading my AI notes, and it was mostly just to remind myself what we had covered and in what order. I figured that, since the exam today was open-book and open-notes, the easiest thing to do would be to know the topology of my notes so that I could look things up quickly instead of actually knowing them. No practice problems at all, except for two alpha-beta search trees I wrote out on Mark's whiteboard. One could argue that this isn't a case of me getting increasily lazier, but instead one of me reacting to past experience and learning the optimal amount of study time needed for an exam. And, in retrospect, I don't think doing a lot of studying would have saved me more than 10 or 15 minutes over the course of the test anyway. When Prof. Branicky called out that there were 10 mintues left, almost the entire class was still working. I spent those 10 minutes frantically multiplying 0.9 by various other numbers, entering the results into a table, and then running back to the coding problem to make up and scribble in the rest of my answer for that one. I was just writing else return 1; when time was called, so I didn't get to go back and do any debugging of the code. Another point in favor of my trend of not studying much might be the grades that are just now starting to be posted. Two of the classes I was most worried about came back with very positive results. Semester Eight – Box Score:
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