Fear the Crab

Way back in May I said that I was thinking of changing the format of this site, and thanks to recent scientific advances, today marks the first day of that redesign. The “scientific advances” I refer to are my days spent researching and understanding the very nature of CSS, WordPress, and good taste.

I figure, learning two out of three ain’t bad.

Continued ~

What we have here is the “first” posting in the new location for the termite droppings of my mind. It’s a new location for the caffeinated headaches of my imagination. It’s a new look, a new codebase (Word the Press, y’all!), and a new reflection of the changes going on in my life.

In the archives are the older postings from my days at LiveJournal. They have been lovingly exported here and given non-relevant titles so they don’t feel left out.

I’m still trudging through the newness, and it’s very likely that things will change again. I just figured I ought to begin with something.

Many thanks to Galbraith for leading me by the hand. This awesomeness could not have sauced forth without.

My allergies have been kicking into overdrive these past two weeks. The common theory is that because I quit smoking, my body is trying to detox itself. Oh yeah, I quit smoking.

It constantly feels like someone is pulling the little tiny hairs in my nose, and the drippy drips are annoying.

In other news, I’ve just recently learned how to make those little confirmation dialog boxes that pop up asking if you want to continue. I learned it for my project. They’ve been around forever, but it makes me realize just how much I don’t know when I come across things like these.

I almost forced myself into an infinite loop when I was reading the assigned materials for my Info Tech/Culture class. We’re covering capitalism and the shift from the rigid Fordism business models to the new flexible production systems. In formulating my response to the readings, I envisioned the division of labor to the nth simplest degree, the rise of labor unions to combat this seemingly oppressive regime. I envisioned the rise of flexible production and then the outsourcing of labor to foreign regions for lower costs, and the increasing rise of the division of SKILL to the nth complicated degree, a direct opposite of the Fordism model. I envisioned the division of labor to the nth foreignest region and the rise of foreign labor unions to combat this seemingly invasive regime, and I just kept going and going until I became as confused and loopy as the preceeding paragraph.

I have a headache.

Since Marissa has been reading my LiveJournal, it has occured to me that I haven’t been that diligent in maintaining it. I’m sure many of you really don’t care, but it says something about persistence and dedication if I can at least write something once a month.

I’m no longer driving for The Lab, except on Saturdays. They’ve hired two new guys, who both work all week, so instead I’m grinding contacts. Not lenses, but the areas where the crowns touch other teeth. It’s good work, because I get to use the small handheld rotary tools and really screw up my tasks. I get to sit down at a small desk with magnifying goggles around my eyes. But the best part is that I can listen to CDs while working.

Granted, I’ve always listened to CDs while working, even when I was driving, because the lab car has a CD player. Nowadays I’m listening to what other people call dance goth. I have no idea what makes goth dancable, but I don’t really care. I like it. Today I’ve been listening to Switchblade Symphony, a band I recently found out had broken up in 1999. Too bad.

At the Office, I’ve finally starting coding the identity management tool for the University. It’s in PHP with a lot of HTML involved, and it makes me realize just how much I actually know. For those of you who don’t understand, don’t worry, because I don’t, either.

Next semester I will take ICS 321 and 331. Or something like that. I actually wanted to start taking some of my 400 level courses, but there’s a new rule that 400 level courses are first reserved for seniors who are going to graduate. I understand why that rule is in place, because seniors who can’t take their required courses can’t graduate. It still puts me in a bind, though, because those classes fill up so fast that I’m forced to take classes that, while I need them, I don’t want to take them just yet.

Maile and I are going to start an exercise program. We’re also going to try and quit smoking. Starting the healthy life, yo.

Since Marissa has been reading my thoughts, it seems that perhaps I should tone down the content. Yet that sort of defeats the purpose of having a journal. However, it’s online and therefore public and open to scrutiny. A compromise must be found.

Still, Marissa has her own journal-type thing and her handle is dis-be-yo-pimpette, so who am I to judge?

I’d better get back to work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.