Fear the Crab

Bah, that test was horrid. Despite my one page of notes I don’t think I did very well on that ICS 311 exam. If it’s any consolation, my co-worker said that he thinks everyone else did horrible, too. If that’s the case, then I just need to hope I didn’t do as bad as the others. I just hope my assignment and project scores will be enough to keep me afloat.

I can look forward to one more assignment, one more project, and then the final exam. Three more opportunities to obtain decent scores. Perhaps the upcoming assignment and project can give me what I need to pass. The jury’s still out on that final, which will likely be cumulative.

Spanish seems to be doing okay, but that bit of good news is tempered by my recent performance in ICS 311.

However, I helped Maile review her Religion essay. I think it’s a good essay, so hopefully she’ll get a lot of points for that.

Here at work, I don’t know what to do. I mean, I do have things to do, but I don’t feel like doing them. I wish I could go home.

Actually, I think I could go home, but then everyone would wonder about my work. Did you know that what I’m doing is akin to consultant work, and that consultants get paid around $70 an hour for this? All I’m getting is student wages, white hairs, and the prospect of having a decent resume should I pull it off. Yeah, it’s a pessimistic attitude, but again my mood has been affected by today’s exam.

I want to go home.

Ugh, what a day.

So my ICS 311 homework is due tonight, by midnight. My classmate and I have only two more problems to answer, but then we have to go over the 20+ questions to make sure we have the right answers. From what I hear, we’re not even close.

So my ICS 311 exam is next Tuesday. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I have to cover, and I’m not very comfortable with any of it. The answers to the homework are supposed to be posted by Friday, which would hopefully give me a chance to further understand the material. At the very least, how I was supposed to answer the questions. I still have to write up my one page of notes.

So my meeting with the Help Desk people turned into an overwhelming experience full of technical jargon and behind-the-scenes procedures that I never knew existed. I don’t know how I’m supposed to analyze the pros and cons of everything they want in this new ID Management web site. A lot of those procedures in the background involve the database and the information contained therein. Seems there are issues as to what changes take precedence and will overwrite existing data. I’m not entirely sure if it’s possible to analyze anything until I get the straight dope from the people in the know. Which might take a while.

So. There you go.

I think the month of December will be a busy one for me. Starting from the first weekend, I’ll have a few parties to attend. There’s the typical Christmas parties for both workplaces, of course, but there’s also a 1st birthday I wish to attend. Even my Spanish class is planning some kind of get-together after finals.

Oh yeah, and I have finals.

I know most of the parties I will be able to attend. Yet The Office party and the Spanish party are iffy at best. I still need to check my schedule and determine if my work won’t be affected. For example, the Spanish party is tentatively set for December 19th, which is a Friday, but I work the next morning. Same thing for The Office party, which is being held on December 5th, another Friday. Not attending The Office party isn’t such a big deal, but I do want to attend the Spanish party. I guess it’s because my classmates and I have been through hell and back.

I’m at work. I’m doing ICS 311 homework, which is due this Thursday, and it’s making me tired. I’m also reading a book on Usability, which is basically a method of analyzing and designing the interaction between humans and computers. A web page, for example, that has had some kind of usability engineering tends to be more successful than one that hasn’t. It’s a complicated process for something that seems more common sense. This has to be done by Thursday, too, because I have that meeting where I help some people redesign a web page interface for the Help Desk.

I managed to catch a glimpse of the offered courses for Spring 2004. The way it is starting to work out is that I’ll be taking three classes every MW, working at The Office MWF, and working at The Lab TTS. Monday and Wednesday will be my heavy days, as all three of my desired courses are on those days; ICS 312 1030-1145, ICS 313 1200-1315, SPAN 102 1800-1915. I’ll work at The Office from 0700-1000, then 1400-1600, before heading out to LCC to attend Spanish. To make up my hours at The Office, I’ll work from 0700-1200 and pull in a 15-hour week. Work at The Lab will be the usual 0600-1100, but this time on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday. Of course, I’ll have to see if this doesn’t conflict with Maile’s schedule, but so far that I can remember, she’ll be taking classes TT, so it should be okay.

Looking at the proposed schedule, I could potentially start working right after my classes, at 1330, instead of 1400. That would give me an extra half-hour to get to LCC, which may or may not help depending on the intensity of traffic. Given my past experience, however, traffic usually begins forming at around 1530, so it might be worthwhile. I have no idea what I’m going to do at LCC before class, though. Let’s say it takes me an hour to get to LCC, that will still mean I have anywhere from an hour, to an hour and a half before class starts. I could do homework, sure, but that’s an ideal. Thinking realistically, I might be lucky if I weren’t sleeping in the classroom.

I’d better return to this Usability book. It’s making me sleepy.

Well, I actually haven’t gone anywhere, but work and school have kept me sufficiently occupied to force livejournal into the messy back seat of life. I’ve been so busy, in fact, that Animal Crossing has become literally non-existant. I haven’t played that game since the 25th of July.News news.. lessee. I’m still working at The Office and The Lab, though these early rising mornings have certainly taken their toll on me. Work at the Office is normal, I’ve been given several projects in the past months, though they were all minor, usually involving a fix or two to current code. Up next I will be expected to coordinate several meetings to help design a new web page for the students and staff that work in the Help Desk. The first round of meetings is set for this Thursday, mostly to come up with “problem scenarios” in which we determine what areas of the current design need improvement. Once that’s done, we’ll move on to “activity scenarios” where we propose solutions to those problems. It’s going to be a long process, I gather, since this kind of stuff just doesn’t complete itself overnight.

Work at the Lab is becoming tedious. I think I’ve been allowing the stress of driving and meeting deadlines to overwhelm me, as I’ve been a bit.. well, snappy, as Maile would put it. It’s not like working at the Office, where I really enjoy what I do. I hate driving in traffic, and I hate having to ferry teeth from one dentist to another in the span of a few minutes. Recently I’ve been getting more deliveries that have to be completed by 0800 and the locations are all over the place. Add to that the frequent “update calls” I get, where I have to change my route to accommodate some dentist who waited until the last minute to announce his pickup. I especially hate it when I’ve already left that area.

I’ve gained weight, thanks to a significant lack of exercise.

School has been going fairly well. This fall semester I’m taking ICS 311, which is simplistically titled Algorithms. But it’s theory, and I’ve never been a very good theorist. I guess I’m handling myself okay, though, as I’m not failing. What helps is that I can work with a partner to complete assignments and programming projects, and it just so happens that my classmate is also my co-worker at the Office. So when we’re not working on anything, we’re working on the 311 stuff. I’m also taking Spanish 101, and that class is really cool. The professor is muy interesante, y muy paciente con sus estudiantes. Despues, yo voy a asistir la clase de Espanol 102, con el profesor mismo.

I don’t know if I said that right.

Anyway, in musical notes I’ve taken to listening to a lot more goth and metal. Lately I bought a few albums from My Ruin, and I really like their stuff. I also bought a couple of cheap-ass Goth CDs, and those put me in a really good mood.

And a lot of people are probably wondering how the little prince is doing. All I can say is, it’s cool. Drives like a Ferrarri.

Hm. I can’t recall if there’s anything I’ve left out, as far as what’s been going on the past several months. But fear not, as I can always mention them next time.