Fear the Crab

Maile, George and I joined George at Bucca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant, for his birthday. It was a surprise party, because George had no idea everyone else was going to be there. His girlfriend planned the whole thing. There were other people, too, that were from George’s side of the social circle, and they were pretty cool, what few we managed to talk to. A couple of them reminded us of other people. There was a guy named Stacy (sp?) who reminded me of Reid, and another guy named Ken who reminded me of Richard. It wasn’t really a case of looks, it was more because of their actions, or little movements of body language that just screamed of similarity.

Speaking of screaming, when Maile and I went to pick George up, we idled some time waiting for the guy to finish work. We took a few pictures with my digital camera, and one picture Maile took of me standing next to my truck was.. well, interesting. There were these hazy swirls of white that suddenly appeared in the photo, and it’s not present in any of the others we took before or after. I can’t rightly explain it good enough, but it freaked us out because we can’t explain it. You can kinda see me and my truck through the white swirls, and that is very clear, so the camera wasn’t moving. And it’s a digital camera, so I don’t think there’s a problem with any double exposures. Weird.

After the dinner the three of us went upstairs to Dave & Busters for a drink and a few games. Combined we managed to acquire about 2000 tickets, bringing our running total up to a little over 17k. We actually don’t know what we’ll use those tickets for, but since all the good things are in the 50k and up range, it’ll be a while before we have to think about it.

Maile has a final to take tomorrow, then has to study for another on Thursday. I only have one final on Thursday, but I also plan to wash my truck tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll wake up early enough to get that done, but it’s been raining these past few days, so I’m not sure just how effective my little chore will be.

I went over to Maile’s classmate’s house, because the two of them were going to study for their upcoming final. I busied myself with writing notes for my 211 final, which is on Thursday. It was an interesting day over there. The house is loaded with animals, for there is one dog and five cats. Three of the cats are only kittens, so there was a lot of exploration going on in the living room. Those cats seemed really interested in my Cancer Man cap, though it was probably because of the scents from Maile’s house.

While there, I happened to chance upon someone else’s wireless signal. It was very faint, and probably from one of the neighbors. It was the first time I had ever done that, and I don’t really plan to do it again. For one thing, it’s usually an unprotected signal, meaning that someone, if they really wanted to, could hack into my computer. Not that there’s anything important on my laptop, but a hack is a hack all the same. Anyway, it was a rather interesting experience.

I tried to help Maile with her history paper, but my head was feeling stuffy, like my brain wanted to spill out through my eye sockets, so I only managed to write two paragraphs. I was feeling a bit lethargic after the outing, and that didn’t help much. Hopefully tomorrow will see me a bit more chipper.

It was another so-so day at work.

The day started out so well, too. Maile stopped by and dropped off some Xmas presents. I’m tempted to open one, but I know I shouldn’t. That just kills the whole spirit.

At work there were people to talk to, though it was still a long day and the end seemed so far away. I didn’t sell that much, but I don’t care because I’m not really a sales clerk. At least Min and Irene were working the same shift, so that made it better.

Tonight feels like another cold night. I wish I were at Maile’s house.

I’m feeling tired today, so I don’t plan to post a lot. I went with my folks to my mom’s doctor, to help lift her on to the examination table. We ate Chinese food for lunch afterward. Then my dad dropped off the van to a body shop because someone dinged the rear bumper pretty bad, and I picked him up. After all that was done, I went to LCC to visit Maile at her ceramics class, where she was finishing up a few more projects, firing them up raku style. I’d explain raku, but I’d probably butcher it like a carving knife on a mouse’s tail. Afterward I spent time with her at her house, and Titan farted near my head, right as I was warning him not to.

Tomorrow I start work at 1600, and I think I’m supposed to get a dinner break.

It occurred to me that I haven’t posted in a while. It’s not like I’ve been very stalwart in writing every day, but in the future I can hope to be more diligent. Perhaps it’s because nothing since my last post has happened to warrant any update. Perhaps not.

I decided not to do the extra credit assignment for ICS 211. It’s worth 4 points, but if I say I’m going to do it and I don’t do it (or it doesn’t work), they’ll penalize me 4 points. I’d prefer to take my chances with the final, and the extra time I get by not doing this assignment will help. I’m not going to take the ICS 241 final, since I’m not being graded for it anyway.

I found out that I don’t have school tomorrow, because my programming professor has jury duty. Tomorrow is also the 241 review session, but because I’m not taking the final, I don’t need to attend.

I’ve applied to become an undergraduate for the fall 2003 semester. Right now I’m considered a “post-baccalaureate unclassified graduate student” because I’m only pursuing what they call a Certificate of Second Degree Completion. When pursuing that, I only need to take the classes I want to take, and when I’ve fulfilled the requirements of that field, they’ll give me a certificate. The drawbacks to that are that I pay graduate tuition, I register last, and I don’t get to apply for a parking pass. This time I will try to be an undergraduate and remove those nasty nasties. The reason I didn’t do this in the first place is because Academic Services told me that I needed to complete other cores (what they call Focus Requirements), such as history and other things I don’t need. This time around, what I plan to do is “pretend” I am going to take those cores, and once I’ve finished with all my ICS courses, I’m going to walk up and say, “I’d like to switch to pursuing a certificate.” Of course, I haven’t told them what exactly I plan to do, but it’s apparently an accepted practice within the ICS department. At least, the adviser recommended I do it.

Maile finished her lamp today. It looks awesome. I helped assemble all the hardware, such as the wires and other goodies that make a lamp, a lamp. I also managed to break off a piece of the lamp through my ineptitude, and I felt really bad.

I drank a couple of beers tonight, because Maile and I went to Sunflower to have dinner with her mom and her mom’s friends.

Forgot to post Thursday. Nothing much happened, though. I spent a good portion of my morning trying to fix my homework assignment, and even went so far as to ask the professor for help. Not that it’s a bad thing to ask the prof for help, after all, that’s what they’re there for. But it was the first time I had to ask the professor for help, and it seemed her answer to my problem was something I had already figured out; I just didn’t know it was the answer until then. Still, it took me until later in the afternoon to fix my homework, but it was very satisfying to get it over with.

Friday started off as an okay day, then it turned lousy, and then it turned better. The lousy part began when I went to work, and there was a major traffic jam on the highway. I left the house at 1715 hours and didn’t get to work until 1900. I spent an hour and 45 minutes on the road in stop-and-go traffic. What sucked is that I was supposed to start at 1830, so I ended up being late and getting into trouble. I found out later that a good portion of Waikiki’s roads were closed because of some silly block party they were having to celebrate the grand opening of a shopping complex. Add to that a traffic accident on one of the freeway off-ramps, a concert at the Waikiki Shell, and the first round of the NCAA women’s volleyball tournament, and that’s plenty of reason for me to stress out at work.

Thankfully, hanging out with friends and talking on the phone with Maile helped make the day end gracefully. I went to Zippy’s with some co-workers and ate breakfast food. I also drank a lot of coffee, so I’ll probably stay awake for the next four hours. I could use this time to help Maile with her homework, but she wants to do it herself, so she didn’t send me stuff to look at. Her homework is not due until Tuesday, but then she has another assignment due the next day. This is all for the same class. I don’t know what the professor was thinking, or perhaps the professor wasn’t thinking, because I’ve never heard of anyone giving two assignments one after the other and expect them due within a few hours of each other. Hopefully tomorrow or Sunday I can help Maile alleviate some of that work.

I got my Eddie Izzard “Dress to Kill” DVD, and was pleasantly surprised to find some extra material that wasn’t included in the HBO showing. I also got Robin Williams’ Live on Broadway DVD, and I hope that, too, contains extra stuff.

Maile and I went to Ala Moana to do some more shopping. We didn’t get much, and none of it was for gifts, but we’re happy with what we got.

On the way to Ala Moana, as we were driving down the freeway, this lady in a black car came flying up alongside and gestured that she wanted us to roll down the window. I didn’t roll down the window, mainly because we were traveling on the freeway and were just about to come into traffic, and I wasn’t about to allow either car to get into an accident because we were trying to talk. Because of traffic, we never saw that lady again, and Maile and I got to wondering what it is she wanted to say. We first thought it was something about Maile’s car, but there was nothing visibly wrong with it when we checked. Weird.

People will likely ask why I didn’t roll down the window. Actually, people already have. I stick by my answer, though, and am content to leave what that woman would have said as a mystery.

Work was okay, but nothing very interesting happened.

I found out that my original programming endeavor is not valid. This means I’ll have to rework my entire code to meet the requirements of the assignment. It seems my week will be quite a busy one.

Tomorrow I will get my hair cut. A simple shave of the sides and back, a trim of the top, and I think I’ll be good to go. I would have preferred an appointment on my day off, but I discovered that my aunt (who normally cuts my hair) will be out of town and the only available time is Monday morning. The appointment is for 1030, and I don’t start work until 1315, so I’ll have some time to kill. At first I thought that I’d be uber bored, but the recent development in my homework means I’ll have something to do during the break inbetween my schedule. I just have to remember to bring my computer with me.

Maile said she would be getting her Christmas tree today, but I forgot to ask if she did that. She’s trying to get a small tree, maybe a 5-footer, because the clean-up afterward is just too much of a hassle with a big tree.

I worked eight hours today, and I managed to make it through without going insane. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had a full day of work; for the past year or so I’ve had 4 to 5 hour days. What helped me get through was the time I spent trying to figure out my homework assignment, even though I’m not supposed to be doing such things while on the clock. In the end, all that coding may be for naught, as one of the requirements for the assignment was that “no other data structures are allowed to manipulate data.” I found it easier to use one kind of data structure, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s allowed. As I think about it more and more, it’s probably not allowed. Which means I’ll have to redo my entire code, and redo it in a more complicated and difficult manner. I sent an email to my professor regarding that requirement, but I can’t expect a reply until Monday. I also sent an email to one of my classmates because he has access to codes from previous years, and hopefully one of those codes will contain an outline of what I need to finish this assignment. However, as before I may have to wait until Monday.

I ate at Anna Miller’s for dinner, because I wasn’t sure if there was anything in the fridge at home for me to eat and I didn’t want to go home to find out and have to drive off again. I figured that if there was something to eat, it can wait for tomorrow’s lunch or dinner. At Anna Miller’s I had the pancake sandwich, which is just two pancakes, an egg, and two strips of bacon or links of sausage (I chose the sausage). It didn’t bother me that I was eating by myself, though some company would have been nice.

Changed the oil in my truck today. What normally would have taken less than half an hour turned into a four hour ordeal. First, what I thought was the oil drain plug turned out to be the drain plug for the automatic transmission fluid. I had to go to Toyota to get some more atf, because none of the nearby auto parts stores carried my particular type. While there, I also got an oil filter wrench because the one we had at home was too big.

When I returned home, I refilled the atf to an acceptable level, and drained the correct engine oil. Then I tried to take off the filter. Unfortunately, the filter was on so tightly that no matter what wrench or how much force we used, it wouldn’t come off. Each time I tried to apply some force, I would see my truck move and not the filter. At first I was thinking that perhaps the screw was reversed, but that way didn’t help either. So I figured that perhaps if I didn’t get this filter off, I’d just go in to work and try again later. However, as luck would have it, all that force eventually broke the filter so that now I HAD to replace it.

We finally had to drive a screwdriver into the filter with a hammer and remove it that way. We got to this approach practically 3 hours after pulling and twisting and much cursing. So that came off, I was able to replace the filter and the oil, and now I’m all set.

Some of my co-workers say that the filter was on so tightly because it was factory-installed by some machine instead of a sane person. I just hope the next time I change my oil it won’t be as bad.