Fear the Crab

The last couple of weeks have been a fucking hell. Not just any kind of hell, a fucking hell, with no protection. And it was all my fault, so that’s why I’m bitter, because I could have prevented it had I exercised a bit more caution, or more appropriately, anal retentiveness.

First it was discovered at the end of March that I had misplaced all my W-2s for the 2003 work year, plus the Form 1099-INTs that the banks send out with all the interest accumulated. I don’t know how I misplaced it, all I know is that it was all together with the Federal 1040 forms and then it disappeared. It used to be on the dining room table, but then my dad says he told me to take it back and hold onto it until he was ready to process them. Unfortunately, I don’t remember if I did take it back or if I left it on the table. So I turn my room inside out, looking through stacks of loose papers and books and other knick-knacks. I look through my old files, my old folders, the closet, my brother’s room, his closet, all the folders and files and books and binders and shelves and even under the bed. Nada.

So I had to do the next best thing. I had to call up all my employers and ask for copies of W-2s. The Office and The Lab were pretty easy, since it seems I’m not the first to lose a W-2, so they had copies readily available. DFS was a bit more stressful, because I had to call the main office in San Francisco to request a W-2, only to discover that I needed to fax my request in. So I had to wait. I didn’t know how long it would take, so I began preparations to file for an extension.

While this was happening, my laptop died. I mean it died. The hard drive failed, I think for a possible number of reasons. I’d been using the laptop every day for the past 2 years, so perhaps it was its time. Laptops are notorious for placing hard drives next to CPUs, so perhaps the high heat output negatively affected the disks. I was downloading and installing Visual Studio .NET (a legitimate copy from school), and I had forgotten to defragment my hard drive prior to that, so perhaps the disk wrote into some bad sectors, and upon boot it failed to read. So many reasons, or perhaps all of them, contributed to my laptop dying.

Ordinarily it wouldn’t be too bad. Unfortunately, the laptop crash occured at a crucial moment in my school life. I use my laptop to do my assignments, where I download applicable software to run my programming assignments. The crash meant that I no longer had a computer to program, and I wasn’t about to try to dload and possibly corrupt my desktop. So I had to scramble around trying to find someone else who either had the software I was using, or was willing to let me install it temporarily.

Needless to say, it’s been a stressful two weeks.

However, at the end of the two weeks, things worked out. The W-2s came in fast, allowing me to file in time and avoid having to submit an extension. Getting a new hard drive was simple, I just had to go to ByteWare and buy one. My professor offered his computer for me to test my programs on, so that went well.

Repairing my computer was a trial. It was the first time I had ever done something to a computer that involved the hard drive, so I didn’t know what to expect. Taking out the old hard drive was deceptively simple, so simple that at first I was trying to do it the hard way. I tried to remove the disks through the keyboard, when in fact all I had to do was open up a side panel and slide the carriage out. Pop the new disk in, and prepare to partition, format and install the OS.

Partitioning was easy. Formatting was easy, albeit long. But installing the OS was tedious. I heard from a reputable source that I couldn’t use my recovery CD that I got from Dell that came with the laptop. So I pulled a copy of WinXP from one of my friends, used the product key, and installed the OS. Then of course, I had to install all the patches, especially Service Pack 1. But after I downloaded it from the update site, it told me that the product key I had was invalid. Apparently MS put in checks to ensure that only legal copies can update their software, by comparing the product key to a known list of copies or pirated versions. So this meant I had a working copy of XP pro, but I couldn’t install any of the security patches needed to cover up the many holes.

I then discovered that my “reputable source” was an idiot. My recovery CD has a legal copy of WinXP Pro specifically for my laptop, and restores it to factory specs. I didn’t even have to enter the product key. But I had to delete the partition, reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS. I had to do this three times. The first time, I saw the message about the bad key. The second time, I figured maybe I entered the key wrong, so I reinstalled, and that didn’t work. The third time was the final, after my enlightenment by more wizened members of the computer community.

Updates were a cinch, although long, since I had a lot to catch up on. I also didn’t want to install them all at once, because sometimes that has nasty side effects. So I was downloading them one by one, installing each after I got them, and rebooting my computer. Took forever. I spent the whole day getting my laptop back on track.

And then I had to reinstall all the programs and files that I had accumulated over the past 2 years. This was a bit easy, and I cannot stress the importance of regular backups. Had I not saved many of my files to CD, I’d be lost. I suppose if there’s nothing important on the computer, backups aren’t necessary. Like I said, though, I use my laptop for my assignments, and I’ve started to make it a practice to save each one to disk for later retrieval, or as it so happened, in the event of a hard drive head crash. Even on my desktop, I’ve saved photos of friends, stuff that I wrote, even certain legal downloaded applications like ZoneAlarm and virus scanners (only because it’s a bitch to search the web to find them again). I’ve thought about saving stuff like the web pages I created, but if RoadRunner’s servers ever crash, it might be an opportunity to simply remake my web page from scratch. I don’t know. Jury’s still out on that one.

Anyway, I just finished getting my laptop back to “normal” level. It’s not quite the same as when I first got it, but that’s good, because after this reinstall, I only have the programs I want on there, not all the bundled software that usually comes out of the box. In fact, I should have done that for my desktop. It’s not too late to try, although it’d take a couple of days to backup current files and reformat/reinstall the discs. I need to check what reinstallation discs I have, though. Don’t want to start formatting and find out I don’t have that DVD player software anymore.

This morning I dreamt that I had a 10-inch fat centipede in my shoe, while my foot was still in it. I felt something inside, so I took my shoe off and emptied it, and this monster of a centipede fell out. It was dead, according to my dream, so I had no fear of being bit, but it was a disturbing sight and I felt very… uncomfortable. Chills and goosebumps, that sort of thing.

I was standing in a lush valley, surrounded on three sides by high mountains and overlooking a large calm lake. The floor of the valley was claimed by two kingdoms, splitting the valley into equal halves. On the left were humans, on the right were elves. And suddenly it seemed this valley was populated by some LotR characters such as Legolas and Theoden, and even Liv Tyler’s character had a cameo. It seemed someone opened a Pandora’s Box and let all this nasty stuff loose, which proceeded to coagulate into a single entity that ran amok eating all the vegetation in the valley and covering the hills in yellow dirt. For some reason, it felt like I was the one who opened the box and that I actually wanted this to happen. I’m watching the progress of this vegetarian evil when it suddenly occured to me that if I were simply standing around doing nothing, I’d be suspected of causing this. So I ran around alerting people that something bad was happening, and I had started in the human area and ended up in the elven area. At this point I became an observer, like I was supposed to be there, and all the elves were talking amongst each other and to me. Legolas had just returned from a scouting mission and seemed quite gloomy, thus Elrond appeared to act as a psychiatrist and counsel the lad. As Legolas began to open up to Elrond, I was at a sink rinsing out some kind of.. metal cup thing. I didn’t stay too long to listen to what Legolas was saying, because I found myself standing on a large patio-type area, covered by a ceiling but no windows, facing the lake. Then a man in armor appeared, armed with a bow and equipped with a full quiver, and he proceeded to stand on this dias-looking thing and aimed an arrow at this falcon that was carrying some type of small prey (weasel, perhaps). At first I thought he was going to shoot the dead weasel in the falcon’s talons, but instead he fired at the falcon itself, bringing it down with a splash into the lake. None of the other elves saw this except for Legolas, whom I can only assume finished his therapy session with Elrond and was standing next to me. I rushed up and tackled the armored man, and discovered that he was some bloke name Lord Hoggoth, or something to that effect. The commotion finally brought the attention of everyone present, and after a quick explanation all decided it was the right thing to do. However, no one could decide on a punishment, so they all went into this dining hall to discuss things over breakfast. I decided to take matters into my own hands, so I called Legolas over, and told him to take this Lord Hoggoth over the lake while I held the bow and quiver. Legolas immediately understood and transformed himself into a giant dragon-bird, snatched up Lord Hoggoth and flew over the lake. I then spend the last few minutes of the dream firing the bow at Lord Hoggoth and trying not to hit him. It was a bit difficult, because the arrows would never fly straight and would curve and dive around like paper airplanes. I did manage to scare the guy, though, with a few near misses. The other elves turned a blind eye to this, even though it was obvious they were aware of it. I was having a lot of fun trying to shoot arrows as close as possible to Lord Hoggoth without actually hitting him, and of course avoiding the bird-Legolas, until I realized that I had not set my alarm and had overslept and was late for work.

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.