Greg’s Journal Archives
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ENTRIES ARE ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. BEGIN READING AT THE TOP.

A Live Journal mirror of this site can be found here, so now you can leave me your comments!

Friday, April 1, 2005
1:29 p.m.

My apologies for the incoherence of the last entry. I had a lot of things I wanted to mention, but I didn't want the entry to be too long because I usually try to limit my entries to about the length of a screen when I type them in EditPlus. The page as a whole was also already over 30 K, which is about as long as I let them go before they become part of the archive. I realize that if I don't post every day, or almost every day, I'll end up with a whole string of incoherent text without much substance, so I'll try to be more consistent. So. Not too much to report since last night. I did a third of my networks homework, worked on my ASL song a bit, and then read "Life With Jeeves" before going to bed a bit after 12:00. The acute case of senioritis has definitely set in — the networks homework is actually due today and that class was at 10:30 this morning, but since the homework isn't technically late if we e-mail it to the TA by midnight, I didn't feel too motivated to touch it last night. Now that's laziness if I ever saw it! It made this morning a lot nicer, though. I think I may have mentioned in here before that Vicki usually goes swimming (for Nerds of Plexiglass) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays before sign language, and that I've tried dozens of times (mostly unsuccessfully) to join her at Veale at 7:30. In fact, my Nerds of Plexiglass calendar informs me that I've made it twice in the past six weeks. Well, last night I set my alarm to go off at 6:30 this morning and left my blinds open a bit to let the light in, and for once it worked! (It also helped that I'd gone to bed almost an hour before I usually do.) The sun, which is on the other side of the building in the morning, was reflecting off the glass windows at the top of the Sigma Psi house across the street and coming right through my window; I was up and out of bed by 7:00, which is doing pretty well for me. I got to Veale a bit after 8, swam for about 40 minutes, then grabbed a bagel in Nord before heading over to sign. I got most of my song translation finished in class, so now I just have to spend the weekend learning the signs and practicing them to the music. That, and doing my networks project and crypto paper rough draft, should make for a pretty busy time.

Random Stuff #7
Friday, April 1, 2005, 5:24 p.m.

How's That? Nicole, Mark, and I have been throwing comments back and forth on Live Journal after Nicole posted a joke in German and I replied in French. That got us talking about dialogues des sourds and related things, which in turn inspired this particular bit of cross-lingual randomness. The AltaVista translator is good, but not good enough, as most people have found out. It's especially humorous to translate from English into French and back to English. (Here's a fun site that does this back and forth to multiple languages consecutively!) Witness the hilarity of the English-French-English translation of the entry I posted earlier this afternoon: My excuses for the inconsistency of the last entry. I had many things which I wanted to mention, but I did not want that the entry was too long because I usually try to limit my entries approximately to the length of a screen when I type them in EditPlus. The page as a whole was also already more than 30 K, which are approximately as a long time as I let them disappear before they become a part of the files. I thus realise that if I do not announce each day, or almost each day, I will finish upwards with whole cord of the incoherent text without much of substance, I will try to be more formed. Thus. Not too with the report/ratio since the last night. I made a third of my work of networks, worked with my song of ASL a little, and then read the "vie with Jeeves" before going to the bed a little after 12:00. The acute case of the senioritis placed certainly in - the networks which work is due really today and this class was at 10:30 this morning, but since work is not technically late if us E-mail it with MT per midnight, I we do not smell too motivated in the touch the last night. Now that idleness if I never saw it! It made this morning much more pleasant, however. I think that I could have mentioned inside here before Vicki usually will swim (for plexiglass bundles) Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before language of sign, and that I tried dozen periods (most of the time without success) to join it at Veale to 7:30. In fact, my bundles of plexiglass calendar informs me that I did it twice in last six weeks. Well, the last night I place my alarm to attack me with far at 6:30 this morning and left my blind men open a little left the light inside, and for once that that functioned! (it also helped that I gone with the bed almost an hour before I usually.) The sun, which is on the other side of the building the morning, was reflected in addition to windows of glass to the top of the house of book per square inch of sigma through the street and came well by my window; I was to the top and out of bed by 7:00, which is to make pretty good for me. I obtained in Veale a little after 8, swam during approximately 40 minutes, then seized a bagel in North before moving more to sign. I obtained the major part of my translation of song finished in the class, so much now I just must spend the weekend learning the signs and the practitioner in music. That, and making my networks project and the crypto rough outline of paper, should lead to a pretty occupied time.

Monday, April 4, 2005
12:11 a.m.

Why does the world hate me so much? My 20%-complete networks homework bounces back every time I try to e-mail it to the TA, my math paper's only half done, my pathetic song is nowhere near presentation quality, and one of my news stories for this week just turned out to be nothing. This is the kind of crap I'm not going to miss after graduation. Only three weeks to go... only three weeks to go....

Monday, April 4, 2005
11:42 p.m.

More grrs are in order for this morning. I got out of bed at 7:30 in order to finish my math paper and practice my song; by 9:10 they were both relatively done. The paper was the suggested length, at least, and I'd run through the song about six times and only had real mistakes on three of them. Good enough, I thought, because as long as I got through the first verse and refrain all right it was pretty much guaranteed that the rest of the song would be fine. (Stupidly enough, the lines that were giving me the most problems last night — "Tell-her your feelings express" and "You don't-want me-tell-you how sweetheart keep" leading the list — were suddenly easy this morning, and the ones that were impossible last night were just hard.) So I walked to sign language class feeling pretty good about things. Wrong. Answer. I made the mistake of following Vicki in the song presentations after she'd done an absolutely amazing job on the first half of "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate." My rendition of Billy Joel's "Tell Her About It" was awkward, shaky, and not at all smooth. I also think I missed a word or two. Right after I got done, Shirley (the professor) said, "I know these things are hard for you guys. That's why I had you do them," which to me meant that my presentation must have been sufficiently bad to force some explanation or apology to the rest of the class. "But I digress." Networks was boring, like usual, and crypto was OK, as usual. At lunch I caught up with Sonnie for the first time in approximately 485 years, and then I went to the Observer office to take care of a few things. I ended up spending some time talking with Karen about grad school and life after college, the story-swapping of which had a nice theraputic effect and made me feel a whole lot better than I did in the morning. When I came out of the office around 2:45, the weather was so perfect for running that I got my running shorts out of Veale, went home to drop of my stuff, and then ran a total of 3.8 miles over the same course that I failed on Thursday. French and AI homework occupied the entire evening, even though neither of them is complete yet. Tomorrow I'm (hopefully) going to the used book sale at the Cleveland Public Library with Sonnie and whoever else can make it, finishing up the aforementioned homework, going to class, and (again, hopefully) playing in the first Observer softball game of the year! One rain-out and one snow-out so far, but if the weather's nice and sunny tomorrow I'm hoping that the field will dry out enough for us to play.

Random Stuff #8
Tuesday, April 5, 2005, 12:03 a.m.

Speaking of Songs... I should be going to bed so I can get up early, but I just found this on Nicole's journal. At the end, where you're supposed to "pass this baton" to five other people, I found my name on the list. Since it fits in well with the recent "fun" times I've been having with a certain piece of music, I figured it would make a good "Random Stuff" entry. Here it is: 1) Total volume of music files on my computer? In total, 6.75 GB in 583 files, or 18.1% of my hard drive. About two-thirds of this space is incidental to my on-going project each summer of transfering my own and my great-aunt's record collection onto CDs. 2) The last CD I bought was... I'm not sure if I remember, even. The summer music-recording project has left me with (so far) nine new CDs of my own manufacture, which is more than enough to keep me from paying music-store prices. I think the last one I actually bought was "A Christmas Festival" with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, but that was either 16 or 28 months ago. 3a) The last song I listened to before writing this was... Thank goodness it was not "Tell Her About It." It was "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You," by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. 3b) Song playing right now? Nothing. 4a) Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me. Prepare yourself for a list of songs you've probably never heard of before! "Keep On Dancing" by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, 1924. One of the 78-RPM records in my collection, this is absolutely perfect for making me happy when things aren't going well. A lot of people say that old music either gives them a headache or puts them to sleep, but I always find them remarkably full of energy! "Back In Your Own Back Yard" by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, 1928. I love listening to the combination of the various instruments in this one; it's got some fun rhythm. "Keepin' The Faith" by Billy Joel, 1983. This is probably the song that I associate most with being a little kid. My parents had a few Billy Joel LPs, and once they showed me how to work the record player my sister and I would play this one all the time. We each had stuffed dogs that we would throw into the air and make dance or sing. "Embassy Waltz" off the "My Fair Lady" soundtrack, 1964. I suppose it's not really a classical piece, but it's so much fun to listen to! I'll go for months without playing the CD, then pop it in, hear this, and wonder how I went without it for so long. "Charge of the Huzzars" by the Edison Concert Band, 1906. A long story behind this one. I first got interested in older music when my 10th grade history teacher showed us a video on Thomas Edison. I remember thinking that the invention of the phonograph in particular was quite fascinating, and that led me to look up more stuff about it on the Internet. One of the best phonograph-music sites around is Glenn Sage's tinfoil.com, where you can hear excerpts of a number of wax cylinders from about 1890 to 1910. The only problem was that, at the time I got interested in the stuff, our home computer didn't have speakers! I ordered one of the tapes anyway, and when it finally arrived (I know for sure this was the first week of December 1998) I put it in my tape player right away. I had no idea what to expect, and after a long space of blank tape, this song was my first foray into non-modern music. You can see what it's done to me since. It was so unlike anything I'd ever heard before that I missed the beginning of the music entirely and had to rewind the tape! 4b) Five albums I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me. How about three — this is getting kind of long. I won't include anything that's a superset of my answer to the previous question. "Moonlight Serenade," Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. This was the first swing CD I ever owned. Similar to the cylinder music tape, it's definitely had a huge effect on my taste in music since then. The soundtrack to "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulin." My first real entry into French music. Very interesting and fun to listen to! "Fletcher Henderson," from the Ken Burns Jazz series. This was a PBS documentary maybe four or five years ago that spawned a series of CDs. Fletcher Henderson stuff is really expensive to buy on original 78s, so this CD really comes in handy when I want sophisticated arrangements from the '20s and '30s. 5) Which 5 people are you passing this baton to? Nicole already challenged all but one of the other people I know on Live Journal — and I can only think of a total of six people who read my journal — so how about leaving it at Sonnie, Karen, Cheryl, and my sister Chris (if she happens to stumble across it). Should be quite a contrast if everyone replies!

Wednesday, April 6, 2005
12:31 a.m.

Today (Tuesday, even though this is going to get dated Wednesday) was an excellent day, minus my injury at the hands of Team Cox this evening. The projected high for the day was 67°, so I dug out my favorite pair of khaki shorts to wear with my Observer baseball shirt. A very nice-looking combination, I think, even on my scrawny self. AI homework all morning, then lunch and class until 4:00. I stopped in at the Observer for a bit before going back home. It was so nice out on my way back that I decided to buy some lemonade from the Fribley C-Store and read a book outside... but when I got to the top of the stairs I found Erin and Camellia looking for me with their bikes. Vicki also came up while I changed clothes, and the four of us went over to Lake View Cemetery to go running — Erin, Camellia, and I biking there and Vicki running alongside. After about a 20-minute run we biked home, and then Camellia and I went to play in the Observer's first non-cancelled softball game! That was when the injury occurred. We had some extra people on our team, so Bill had me set to sub in partway through the game. (I kept the official scoresheet instead, which was just as enjoyable, really.) In the top of the first, it was discovered that our No. 9 hitter had vanished, so I was thrown in instead. I hit the second pitch vaguely towards shortstop, and the throw to first base, instead of going properly towards the fielder's glove, came into sharp contact with my right hand instead. They gave me second base on the overthrow and I later scored a run, but my right thumb has been only semi-usable since. After our 9-1 win and dinner at Fribley, I attempted to do my crypto homework. I say, three problems should not require the fronts and backs of three sheets of paper! Especially not when writing is difficult and painful. (I really should learn to write with my left hand some time, just for these types of situations.) Here's hoping that there won't be a lot of writing in my classes tomorrow! I took several breaks during the homework to arrange a last-minute Boston trip (more about this later, maybe), call home, run my hand under cold water, etc. By 11:30, the homework was finished, so I played Boggle with Jessica and Mark until Jessica beat me 103-23. So overall, a nice day to counteract the annoyance of Sunday night and yesterday morning. Sun all day; when I got back from running/biking, Firefox told me it was 80° outside, and even now it's still 71. Still warm tomorrow, but it looks like rain.

Sunday, April 10, 2005
3:54 p.m.

I expect to be posting quite a lot about my last-minute who-needs-planning-anyway trip to Boston later on, but I wanted to share this quote as soon as possible. An inner copy editor must lurk deep within the soul of this Syracuse-to-Cleveland bus driver: Do not ask me to turn up or turn down the air. As Spock would say, that is illogical. I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, but I cannot turn up or turn down the air. That's reserved for John the Baptist, Mother Nature, and other good people.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005
12:31 a.m.

Still trying to get caught up from being gone for the weekend, but here are some quick updates. Retelling my adventures of the Boston trip is going to take many, many kilobytes of text, so I'm working on pushing that stuff out to its own page, which should appear within a few days. I'll post the link when it's done. I also scanned a few Washington D.C. photos of mine this afternoon, which will (hopefully) eventually morph into either desktop wallpapers or high-res images suitable for framing — Nicole's success with the kanalhaeuser picture is spurring me to try one or two of my own. Yesterday was spent on a lot of non-work things, mainly on an outing to Mme. Lathers' house for a medieval meal. Our FRCH 318 class met there at 5:00 to cook and eat, then we walked around the block (at the insistance of Madame's seven-year-old daughter) and had dessert. Thoroughly enjoyable. Today was class, working on my news story for this week, IM softball, and AI homework. The softball game brought another masterful triumph for the Observer team: we beat some people from the law school 18-6. I somehow must have turned into a better player during the last year. In our first game, last week, I made two catches in right field that everyone said looked really great from the sidelines; this week, in two at-bats, I satisfyingly-smacked two balls into the outfield that resulted in a single and a triple. I'm not the kind of player the outfield sets up deep for, but when I came up for the second time today they had all left amazing gaps between the ring of infielders and the ring of outfielders, which was exactly where I hit the pitch.... Grad school decision day (Friday) is getting really close, and I'm finding that I don't worry about it as much if I just pick Carnegie Mellon as my school and shut up about the matter. I think it's because of what Jeremy calls the "tyranny of choice": the fact that it's really hard to make a decision when you have lots of options, which most people naively consider to be a good thing. Boston as a city was absolutely amazing, as my trip page will show whenever I put it up, but I'm thinking that I should take advantage of my current knowledge of computer science to study something technical instead of something more general. It would be easier for me to drop the CS stuff in 10 or 20 years if I wanted to and then pick up journalism again; the other way around would probably be impossible. I'm hoping to formalize this thought process tomorrow-ish by way of signing and sending in four sets of paperwork and one tuition deposit, so I will hopefully have some concrete news to report in my next entry. Translation: if you've got something to say about the Great Grad School Question, do it now!

Wednesday, April 13, 2005
12:23 a.m.

I put aside some of my more important work to make this, which you can also get to from my home page. Blame Nicole. And the fact that some of my Washington D.C. pictures came out really nicely. I think I'm slowly starting to wander my way around PhotoShop without feeling like the Claw of Adobe Death is waiting under every drop-down menu.

Thursday, April 14, 2005
10:45 a.m.

I've finally made some kind of official decision on where I'm spending the next two years, and the winner is... the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I sent in the form yesterday while I was at the Observer office. Officially losing the competition was our own Case Western Reserve University, which is the only school I've officially rejected so far. The other two, which have later acceptance deadlines, are still hanging out in the netherworld of unofficialness. It was a bit corny, but I wore my Carnegie Mellon T-shirt yesterday as proof that I'd reached some sort of internal consensus. I guess it made me feel a bit better (I didn't self-destruct when I put it on), but it also drew a few comments about wearing "the enemy's" colors. Some people may be wondering what logic (if any) there was behind this choice, or how someone who was so excited about going into journalism ended up in a well-known school of computer science instead. I'll try to explain. My original logic ran something like this: "(1) I'm a computer science major. (2) I just had a computer science job over the summer. (3) That job was pretty boring. (4) It was boring because there was almost no interaction with other people and I worked in one lab almost all the time. (5) I would prefer a job that was much more interesting. (6) I am also a journalist. (7) My journalism experience has almost always been interesting. (8) Maybe I should study that instead." This is a pretty clear progression of thoughts, but recently I've come to see it as too simplistic. Instead of reaching the conclusion that computer science is boring, I think I would have been better off to say that computer science in vacuo is boring. If it can be applied to something interesting, then I can get interested in the subject again. It turns out that Carnegie Mellon is doing just that: the LTI uses computer science to solve problems in machine translation, speech synthesis, speech recognition, and information retrieval. The language part — one of the LTI faculty members is even a linguist — makes it much cooler than studying computer networks or databases just for its own sake. In talking to various people, I also formed the opinion that it would be easier to continue studying something technical now, while I still know the stuff, and possibly switch to journalism later on as opposed to becoming a journalist now, not liking it, and trying to get back into the CS stuff again. And then, of course, there's the question of funding, which looked like it was going to be zero or very low at the other three schools. At the LTI, I've got a really good chance of getting on a research project by the end of my first semester that would pay for my cost of attending the school. All I have to do now is send in the forms for Northwestern and BU that say I'm not going there. This, when I tried it on Tuesday, turned out to be harder than expected: I couldn't bring myself to check the "No" box for one of the top journalism programs in the country that I had, by some miracle or alignment of the stars, gotten accepted to.

Thursday, April 14, 2005
11:48 p.m.

Today qualifies as a much-appreciated all-around Good Day with capital letters. The fun began in AI; Prof. Branicky said that he only got an hour and a half of sleep last night because he was working on a grant proposal that's due tomorrow. Not only did that get a lot of I-know-the-feeling sympathy from the class, but it also meant that he was a bit... zany during lecture. Mark and I recorded a few amusing quotes between the two of us, one of which made it to my Professor Quotes page. Jessica thinks that Prof. Branicky should get 1˝ hours of sleep more often. French was as usual, and when I came home a bit after 4:15, with the sun shining, the sky blue, and leaves just beginning to show up on some of the trees around campus, I didn't feel like doing anything academic. Jessica, fortunately, felt the same way and was almost literally bouncing off the walls with excess energy and the desire to go outside. In the end, the two of us snared Mark and went outside to kick our ci-devant giant blue ball around. I have to say ci-devant because on one of its forays into a tree it most inconsiderately popped and turned into a giant blue shower cap. Eric came by on his bike at some point, and after Jessica ripped the skin of the ball into two, we spent another half hour or so dreaming up uses for the pieces while playing tug-of-war, keep-away, etc. We went down to dinner at Fribley after 6:00, and then over to La Gelateria for dessert. Right as we got back, Jeremy IMed us a news article about this site, which caused another half hour of hilarity. It's a program written by some MIT students that builds a random CS paper based on the rules of an underlying context-free grammar. One of their randomly-generated garbage papers actually got accepted to some kind of computer science convention in Florida! My favorite bit so far is one that Mark generated: "Compellingly enough, two properties make this solution optimal: our application allows the simulation of architecture, and also our system is impossible." I haven't done much work in the three or so hours since then, but I'm sure feeling a lot better. I also received an e-mail from Boston University implying that I'm not going to be offered any merit-based scholarships to go there, which annoyed me enough that I was able to fill out the decline-of-acceptance form, stuff it into an envelope, and get it all ready to mail tomorrow morning. Now there's just Northwestern left to deal with.

Random Stuff #9
Sunday, April 17, 2005, 7:20 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, April 19, 2005, 7:10 p.m.

The Instructions: (1) Pick 15 movies you like. (2) Find a quote you like from each. (3) Post (see The Data below) and let everyone you know guess what movie the quotes come from. No Google (or IMDB, I'd suppose) allowed! (4) Cross out Identify the movie that supplied the the quotes when someone guesses correctly. The Data: Most of these are probably pretty easy. 1. "I'll do it! I'll make a duchess out of this braggle-tailed gutter-snipe." My Fair Lady 2. "Sir, you are no gentleman." —"And you, miss, are no lady." Gone With The Wind 3. "Gee, I'm glad you turned up. We've been looking inside every cake in town." 4. "We'll be there at six!" —"I'll be there at ten." Casablanca 5. "Do you know you haven't stopped talking since I got here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle." 6. "Oh, George, you didn't jump into the river. How sensible of you!" Mary Poppins 7. "I like rich people. I like the way they live, and I like the way I live when I'm with them." The Sound of Music 8. "At this altitude I can run flat-out for a half-mile before my hands start shaking." 9. "It was a French-fried Cajun named Delacroix." 10. "Why do you think I have this outrrrrageous accent, you silly king?" Monty Python and the Holy Grail 11. "If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with Mother Nature, mother-in-laws, and mother-freaking Ukrainians." The Italian Job 12. "King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!" Robin Hood: Men in Tights 13. "Many many years ago, when I was 23, I was married to a widow who was purdy as can be..." 14. "You can't fight in here! This is the war room." Dr. Strangelove 15. "Quinze!"

Wednesday, April 20, 2005
12:10 a.m.

I've been kind of too busy to post regular updates for a while, but I keep getting more and more stuff to write about, so I think I'd better dump some of this down onto (virtual) paper before I start forgetting. Let's see... the achievement of the week is probably the practice short triathlon that the Nerds of Plexiglass crew ran on Saturday. I ended up doing about 60% of the total length in each event with some excellent results: 450 meters of swimming in 12:15, 7.6 miles of biking in 33:00, and 1.8 miles of running in 14:43 for a total time of 59 minutes and 58 seconds — two seconds under my goal for the day! Based on our success, we decided to give ourselves an official upgrade to Nerds of Polyvinyl Chloride. Sunday featured the first orienteering event of the season, out at the Brecksville metropark. Erin and I collected 11 controls worth a total of 170 points in 95 minutes, so they took off 15 points for being late. Ben managed to get something like 290, and Dan got 125. Since I was already halfway home, I left the others and went the rest of the way to check in with my parents and say happy birthday to my brother, who was turning 14 that day. On Monday I probably attained the high point of my sign language career. We were supposed to translate a set of 10 sentences from English into gloss (ASL grammar), then sign them in class in front of a video camera. I'd gotten the signs down all right, but in class Shirley decided that we had to say the sentences out loud in English while we signed them in ASL! That made things a bit difficult, because what I was signing didn't always match up with what I was saying, and they never took the same amount of time. At the end, though, Shirley said I did a really great job, and that I should do something with ASL during my career because she doesn't want me to lose the skills I have. This, I need hardly say to people who have been reading this journal, qualified as the shock of the century for me because I'd always estimated my signing skills at something around the zero mark. Maybe I can pick up the grammar pretty quickly because I've already got French and various computer languages behind me, but when it comes to actually signing something or reading someone else's signs.... But still, the compliment was more than enough to keep me happy for all of yesterday, especially since the weather was so nice. I ended up taking my French homework outside for a bit in the afternoon while my laundry was churning away down in the basement. The Observer played softball at 6:00 and brought back another triumph that sent us into the championship game. Unfortunately, this series of fortunate events was thoroughly spoiled ("spoilt," to keep the British tone going) by Prof. Branicky's Artificial Intelligence Homework of Death, which I turned in today just 75% complete. My usual time for finishing it — Tuesday morning — wasn't available today because I had to go interview Dean Robinson for my news article at 10:00. I did what I could on the homework before lunchb, but that meant I didn't have any time to finish the French homework that I started yesterday afternoon. I also had to run to the post office and be at Dean Robinson's retirement reception (for the paper again) at 4:00, so the best solution seemed to be skipping French class all together. Which I did. After a Tau Beta Pi meeting and a loss in softball (our first, which finished us at second place in the league), I finally got back to my room for the night and worked on typing up my interview. Maybe a little more about that tomorrow if I've got the time. This week, being the last full week of classes, is well suited to some diary-style introspection, which I'm sure you'd all love to hear about if you've nothing better to do.