Fear the Crab

I managed to get a lot of work done today. Went to school at around 1400 and sat in the lab for hours programming. Then I went to see the TA for help on using Visual Studio. It was cool. It reaffirmed my belief that the professor and TAs are there to be consulted, especially when you don’t understand the material. Too many people (especially the young ‘uns) don’t utilize those resources, I’ve found.

So now I just have a few more things to do, but I think I’ll do them tomorrow. I’m going to relax for the rest of the day, and hopefully this headache of mine will leave.

I just realized that I wanted to wash my truck tomorrow. I wonder if I’ll be able to fit the two in?

I’ve been busy with my homework. I’m slowly getting into the groove of school, yet it’s already the third week. I think the more hours I got from work is making me feel like there’s less time to get my studies done. Well, technically it IS less time, but the amount of free time I had before now seems shortened by a dramatic difference. Perhaps I will never be able to explain it properly, but hopefully the sporadic entries in my journal can give people the gist of what I’m trying to say.

There is a bit of good news, though. I actually managed to finish one part of my programming assignment. At least, I got it to work, but I don’t really know if it’s supposed to work in the way I made it. Hopefully my trip to school tomorrow will shed some light.

I still have a bunch of math to do, and there’s the other parts of my programming that need work, too.

My trip to school on Tuesday was.. eventful. First I dropped off that lab account application, and they told me it’d be ready in 5 or 10 minutes. So I think, “Cool” and head to the lab to check up on it. Lo and behold, there’s a class using the lab, and according to the schedule sheet, the lab wouldn’t be open until 1800! Being that it was only 1330, I wasn’t going to stick around and wait. I went to the Academic office to make an appointment, and found out that they only take same-day appointments (which is very strange, considering that they’re appointments). I guess that’s like a first-come, wait-to-be-served kind of deal. They gave me a phone number to call, and maybe I’ll call tomorrow. Since I couldn’t get an appointment, I went to the other computer lab to meet up with a classmate, and we hashed out some of the math homework. I don’t think we really learned anything, though.

Then I spent an hour in traffic. I hate traffic.

Tomorrow will be the second day of class for me, which feels funny because it’s already been two weeks of school. I’ll have to turn in my homework assignments, and I hope I’ve done them correctly, printed them in an acceptable format, and answered all pertinent questions. I guess I’ll find out.

In AC news, I paid off my final house. I hear if you keep depositing money in the post office, you’ll get a nifty prize. I also tried some of those trading codes, and they seemed to work, sorta. One item was said to be for another person, so I’m wondering if Maile mistyped my name or town by accident. It didn’t matter, though, as it was for an item I later got on my own. Tomorrow will be the day I try to send things to people other than Maile. George wants a whole bunch of Modern furniture, which will help him towards his series collection, and also a couple of old-school NES games. That’ll be a lot of codes for him to type out.

I finally updated my finances. I didn’t realize it until then, but I hadn’t entered anything in my register since mid December. Not good at all.

Tomorrow is a big school day, even though I have no classes scheduled. Rather I will be there to run some errands and meet a classmate so we can bitch and moan about our math homework. I have to drop off a lab account application, which oddly is for the same lab I had last semester. It seems that despite having had an account, I still need to reapply. I guess they don’t keep lab accounts forever, which in some weird way I can actually understand.

Time permitting, I will also stop by the Office of Academic Services and try and convince the advisers to give me more credits from my Puget Sound days. Since I’ll be considered an undergraduate next Fall, UH has loaded me with all these Focus Requirements (ie classes to make me well-rounded in the liberal arts), and these seem very similar to some of the classes I took way back in the day. So I’m going to go there with my old course-listing and try to needle out a few more credits.

I also have to stop by the bank and deposit some checks that’ve been sitting on my desk the past month. Ugh. I think all this Animal Crossing is starting to negatively affect my lifestyle.

Work went fairly well. Not because I actually worked, but because conversation was pleasant and enjoyable, and helped pass the time. I met Maile after work and told her about Irene and how I always seem to engage in a “contest of logic,” for lack of a better phrase. Basically whenever Irene says something I sometimes describe in detail the error of her thinking. Nothing overly critical (at least, I hope it doesn’t come off that way, ’cause I don’t mean it), but to show an example, Irene feels driving 5 miles over the speed limit is not speeding; I say that technically she is speeding. Yet the darling little princess insists that she is not, until she grudgingly acknowledges my perspective for the next few minutes before conveniently forgetting about it. When asked why I seem to enjoy sticking it to her, I answered that I do it to knock her off her pedestal, to try and show her that the universe does not work in the way she thinks it’s supposed to, or should, work. And it’s fun.

I will be the first to admit that I am not omnipotent. But I do have an opinion on many matters and I will orate such opinions when I feel it should be orated. And if someone should counter with a logical rebuttal, I will acknowledge and accept it. As opposed to an illogical rebuttal, which in my mind is an open invitation for some serious talk. I think that’s why I seem to butt heads with Irene, because often her counters are as flimsy as wet tissue.

I still like the little munchkin, don’t get me wrong. She’s really a kind, caring and overall wonderful human being. Much like a lot of my friends, and I would hope I fit the bill as well. Our exteriors are frazzling to the untrained eye, but deep down I think we’re all pretty cool. “We’re not stupid! We’re advanced!”

Anyway, moving on, I’m having trouble with my programming assignment. I’m supposed to write a temperature conversion program, getting input from the user in the form of a maximum temperature in Fahrenheit, then displaying a table of Celsius conversions from 0F to that max temperature, in ten degree increments. For example, the user enters 50 as the max temp, and the program will show the Celsius temperature from 0F to 50F. Everything seems fine except for the conversion. For some reason everything ends up as 0. I don’t know why it’s doing that.

As far as my math homework, I’m stuck on the last problem. I can’t even begin to explain what I’m doing there. Blah.

It’s late. I’d better shower and get to bed.

The day started pretty badly. I woke up with this stabbing pain in my side. I first thought it was gas, but it didn’t go away. It felt like there was a rock or something inside my abs.

Then I picked up Maile before I went to work, so that I could drop her off at her mom’s workplace. Along the way, there were a lot of stupid drivers, the kind of people who just don’t understand the concept of “right of way.”

Work itself was okay, except that stabbing pain was still there.

Called Maile during my break, and as we talked, something evil happened on her Animal Crossing game. Goes down like this: Maile was visiting my town while I was at work. She finished some errands and some fishing, then she talked to the Porter to get back on the train to her own town. The Porter saved data in my town, and as it saved, she handed the controller to her brother. As soon as he touched the controller, the screen went black, and the System menu appeared (the one where you can set the time, fiddle with the memory card, “Press Start” to play a game, etc). The Gamecube itself was not touched, and by the brother’s account he had only pressed the R button when it happened. And as the manual would explain, my girlfriend’s character lost all her items and her money when the game restarted. Both towns seem fine (items she dropped in my town are still there), but the real puzzler is why the game reset like that in the first place. I don’t think AC has a soft-reset function (aside from when playing the NES games), and even if it did, I doubt pressing only the R button would cause it. I have no idea how or why it happened, and as a result I have no clue how to prevent it from happening again.

Then I came home, and I have to do homework. At least that stabbing pain went away.

Had my first class of the Spring semester today, ICS 212. It’s basically programming in the C language. I’m hoping I don’t get a C for a grade. Perhaps it’s because it’s only the first day, but I’m starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. I think the professor’s teaching style is highly dependant on the student doing the reading before class has started, because he goes over a lot of things that are very unfamiliar to me. He did mention that he’s going to teach the class as though nobody knew what C was, but it just doesn’t feel that way right now. I tried a bit of C programming when I got home, and I seemed to do okay, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to do the homework yet (which is due next week Thursday).

I must email one of my classmates, who took 212 last semester.

I got my first assignment for my online 241 class, and it appears I already know two of my classmates. By “know” I mean that I’ve met them personally and actually converse about things other than ICS. There are a couple more names that are familiar to me, but I haven’t actually met them, yet. My first assignment is due next Friday on the 24th.

Tomorrow I go to dinner. Before dinner I hope to wipe my truck down (because it’s raining now), polish my boots, and do my homework. In reality, I think I’ll probably spend a majority of my time on Animal Crossing.

Irene still surprises me. She told me that she didn’t really like the movie Schindler’s List because “it was a black-and-white movie.” If that weren’t bad enough, she also said she doesn’t eat soba because “the noodles are brown.” I told her that she’s bordering on close-mindedness. To say that a movie is “okay” simply because it’s in black-and-white isn’t a very strong argument. If she told me the acting was panned and the storyline was something out of a magazine, then I’d seriously consider her point, but just because the movie’s not in color boggles the senses. I wonder if there are a lot of people in the world like that?

In Animal Crossing, I finally caught that friggin’ bee. I immediately gave it to Maile so that she won’t have to go through the stress. Now I just have to catch my own.

Maile and I are planning a double-date dinner with Irene and Tolkien. This was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and I don’t even know where we’ll be going. I do know it’s some yakiniku place called Million, but I’ve never heard of it. It’s for a Tuesday, since both myself and Irene have the day off (and no school), and both Maile and Tolkien finish school around 1630.

In Animal Crossing, I finally got the golden shovel. I don’t know what’s special about it aside from the gold color, but it seems whenever I randomly dig in some place I get a bag of money. There’s no mark on the ground to signify there’s anything there, too. It just appears. Wow. Maile has already paid off her debt for the current house expansion, and so she added a basement. Already she’s planning the theme for her carpet, wallpaper and furniture. I’m starting to consider buying the Gameboy Advance because of the extra options enabled for Animal Crossing, but I still must consider the cost benefits, whether or not it’s worth shelling out the bucks for something I may only use sparingly.

School starts on the 13th, but I will only go to school one day a week. That’s a programming class, ICS 212, and it’s from 1800 to 2040, so hopefully traffic won’t be too bad and there will be parking in the structure. The other class I’m taking is the math class, ICS 241, and it’s an online course, which will greatly benefit my work schedule.