Fear the Crab

A lot’s happened. Firstly, school is kicking half of my ass. I say half because it’s not really that bad. I’m taking three classes, two in ICS and continuing my Spanish. ICS 312, Assembly Language, is pretty smooth. No problems aside from just having work to do. ICS 313, however, is hitting a bumpy hill right now. We’re learning Prolog, which is killing me. It’s not a bad language, but it’s a whole new line of thinking. It’s a logical, nonprocedural language, which is a direct opposite of what I’ve been learning these past three or so years. People tell me if I had learned Prolog first, I wouldn’t have these problems, and I believe them. Anyway, the good news is that we’re only learning Prolog this one instance. After, we’re moving on to more familiar languages. Even the professor says that it’ll get easier.

Spanish is Spanish. It’s muy bueno.

I was paid a visit from one of my college friends over the weekend. Jumi’s an upperclassman and really cool to hang out with. Took a couple of pictures, one of which is displayed on my web page. She came with a bunch of her friends, and it was a surprise to discover that two of them went to my high school! Granted, they’re older than me, but because our school is so small, everyone know everybody else. I never met them before, but they know people I know, so there’s some connection there. And to top it all off, they even went to my college. Talk about a small world!

I bought Schindler’s List on DVD.

I think I’m ready for a vacation. Spring break is only one week away.

There’s a party coming up this weekend, at my boss’ place. I’m going to drink, you can be sure.

Um.. that’s all I can think of. Doesn’t quite sound like a lot, does it? I could be forgetting things. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Old age.

I was driving for work today when I had a few random thoughts. One in particular involved this so-called “controversy” over whether or not figure skating, gymnastics, cheerleading, etc, can be considered “sports.”

I would tend to say no. First let me state that I highly agree (and I’m sure everybody else does) that these people are athletes. They undergo a strict discipline of mental and physical preparation and are very good at what they do. They have to be in the best shape and can perform acts that I couldn’t do. So yes, they are athletes.

But I don’t think that what they do is “sport.” To me I think it more as an “event.” I define sport as being a contest that pits one side against another, with clear-cut rules as to how one side wins. I’m sure you can see my reasoning when I use football, hockey, even boxing, as examples of sports.

Gymnastics and figure skating are events, where their performance is judged by observers. And observers, no matter how much they may say so, are not impartial. What might impress one judge may draw a yawn from the other. Sure, they throw in 10 or so judges so you can have an average account of a person’s performance, but that’s it. It’s still a judgement call, like the Emmy’s or Grammy’s or whatever award shows they have out there. In fact, all those events are simply award shows, not unlike film critics looking at all the movies and then deciding which one deserves the prize.

So no, I don’t think they are sports. However, I do have a suggestion as to what can qualify them as sports, and I’ll use pairs figure skating as an example. Throw two teams onto the same ice rink. Tell them that they have a certain number of moves they must complete, such as all those axels and triple sow-cows and what not. Each maneuver has a certain point value associated with it; the more difficult the maneuver, the more points you get. Tell them there is a timer, maybe 3 minutes. The goal is to perform as many maneuvers as you can (successfully!) within the alloted time and scoring the most points.

To make it exciting, each team has the option to try and prevent the other team from performing a move. Here, the Harding/Kerrigan tactics come into play. If you can stop the other team from scoring, while at the same time you score points based on your moves, then at the end of the match you deserve to win.

Figure skating martial arts.

You can apply this to all the others, too. Imagine a team of cheerleaders trying to do their stuff while the other team of cheerleaders sends “slicers” to take out legs. Gymnasts use their ribbons and batons to disrupt their opponents’ concentration.

For those of you in the know, this smacks highly of Ranma 1/2.

Yet you have to agree, the winter olympics would certainly be much more entertaining.

I registered for the spring semester on Tuesday. Thanks to the additional credits the Admissions office gave me, I was one of the first to register. Having 144 credits goes a long way towards ensuring that I get the classes I want.

I’m taking ICS 312, Machine-Level and Systems Programming, and ICS 313, Programming Language Theory. Both classes are required for the ICS degree. Both are being taught by the same professor, Albritton, whom I hear from many students that he is a very good teacher. And by good I mean that he’s instructive and attempts to make it easy to understand. So that bodes well for me. Plus, some of my co-workers have either already taken it, or are going to be taking it concurrently, so I’ll have extra resources of help available.

I’m also enrolled in Spanish 102, taught by the same prof I have this semester. My reasoning is that I may as well continue learning the language, and if by some chance I am forced to drop 312 or 313, I’ll have Spanish as a backup to maintain my part-time status and still work at ITS. Plus, some of my classmates are planning to be there, so I’ll know some people next spring.

I suppose I should mention that all three classes will be held Mondays and Wednesdays. My ICS classes will run from 1030 straight through to 1315, and Spanish will be held at 1800 to 1915. I think I’ve mentioned this schedule before.

Maile will be taking four classes next spring, but only one of them will be on campus. The rest are online courses, meaning she can access the instructional materials at her convenience. She’s pretty good about not procrastinating, too, so there’s no worry there. One of the classes she’ll be taking is ICS 100, so I can help her out when she needs it.

I gave Maile’s Christmas present early. I paid for her spring tuition.

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.

Well it’s been a long long time, and I can thank school and work for that. I’ve been getting a couple of projects from The Office that are giving me hassles, but in ways that I have no control over. For example, I need to manipulate some files, but unbeknownst to me, I don’t have permission to do that. I (and everyone else, apparently) don’t usually realize this until I’ve spent a day whitening my hair. As far as The Lab goes, it goes. I’ve noticed they’re sending me to some dentists that aren’t under my jurisdiction of “town.” It’s only been a couple of times, but since I don’t do “Leeward” I have no idea where these dentists are. I make sure to act dumb when they call, too, just so I can hear them fumble around trying to give me directions.

Speaking of white hairs, Maile noticed I have one growing on my neck, in the beardy area. It’s kinda bright when I let it grow out some. But it’s not in a sexy-sexy place, it’s sorta right under the mandibular angle (for you anatomy freaks), so it just looks weird.

In Animal Crossing news, I’ve been spending some time drawing textures. I made a couple of Mashimaro designs, the University of Hawai`i athletic logo, the Decepticon and Cobra and Star Wars Empire insignias, and my current fave, GIR in a dog suit. The GIR design I especially like, because from far away it actually looks like him. It’s too bad there’s no way to “trade” designs with other people short of having to actually visit their towns; I know a couple of people who might be interested in ’em. Of course, when these designs are put on a shirt or umbrella, the results are very humorous. But I think they look neat on signboards strategically placed in strategic areas.

My summer class is going.. okay. There was a bit of a problem with my most recent homework assignment. I had to get input from the user, and it seems the code would “catch” the carriage return and pass that to the variables, making the whole thing look funny. I had to incorporate a dummy variable to grab those annoying newline characters so that the real variables could get the proper data.
But this opened up another can of worms. I’ve set up the code so that it will only accept a certain amount of characters, truncating the data so that it will always fit. It seems to work fine when I test it, but when two or three distinct variables are processed (one after the other), the previous variables lose their data as the later are assigned. And I have no idea how to fix that.

I just finished off lunch, some suck-ass chicken katsu that came from the cafeteria. Bleah.

Next semester I hope to take ICS 312, which is supposed to be a continuation of the C class I’m taking now. I was planning to go for 311, which involves more theory, but the prof who’s teaching it in the Fall is, while uber-smart, kinda hard to understand. By which I mean that only if the student is also uber-smart will the student learn anything.

So, since I need 6 credits to continue working for ITS, I’m going to take Spanish at Leeward. Oddly enough, Maile is also going to take Spanish because she needs the credits, too. We’re going to be taking the same class at the same time. I think it’ll be fun!

I have an urge to get together with all the old folk that have some connection to DFS. It’s been a while since I’ve been out, and I consider a month as a long time. What with all the schedule changes, though, I imagine it’ll be hard to arrange. And while I’m on the subject, why am I the one who always seems to coordinate these things? Maybe that’s why I’m getting more white hairs than a Maltese.

Just kidding.

Over the weekend I spent some time at a beachhouse in Laie. It was a gathering of almost everyone from The Lab, plus relatives and friends. The house was huge, way bigger than what I imagined, and it was right there on the beach. Which, I suppose, explains why it’s called a beachhouse. Maile and I went on Saturday, but a lot of people were there since Thursday. We weren’t intending to stay over, though, since Maile had a lot of work to finish by Monday. I tried some fishing with Mark’s new and expensive rod and reel (oh yeah, no pressure), but the last time I cast any sort of fishing line was back in the elementary school days. I only had one good cast, while the rest of the time I’d barely make it 10 feet. Needless to say, I didn’t catch anything. The rest of the time I spent playing with the kids, whether it was throwing a ball around, digging holes in the sand, or making sand sculptures. Maile made a really nice turtle, since we saw one in the water.

Today started out smashing. I slept late and woke up late, but still in time to get ready and leave for work before the morning rush hour. On the way, Star 101.9 was having an informal contest, which was basically listening for whenever Mortuary Chris “let one go” and being the 9th caller. I guess he had a lot of burritos the night before. Lucky me, I dialed in and managed to be the 9th caller. So I won passes to the Laugh Factory, which is interesting because I was just thinking of going there. I don’t recall how many passes I got, probably two. I should have tried to ask for more, like tickets to The Vagina Monologues, or something, but when they finally took me off hold I was reversing my truck into a parking stall. It’s very difficult to talk on a cell phone while navigating between two concrete pillars.

Later tonight I’m getting together with a bunch of old friends, and we’re likely going to hang out at Ryan’s Bar and Grill. We were supposed to go to the Laugh Factory (odd that it’s been the subject of the week for me), but due to a booking problem they won’t have a show until Thursday. Normally they have comedy every single day. So it’s a night out at Ryan’s, and hopefully a lot of people show up. It’s been a while since we all got together.