Fear the Crab

Worship the power of bulleted lists!

• Graduated with degree in computer science
• Looking for job
• Continuing to work part-time for dental lab
• Started using a bicycle to get around

Out of all that, I think the bicycle thing is the most exciting. I mean, graduating is fine and good and all things pleasant, yes. The diploma looks nice, too.

But not as nice as my bike!

So far I’ve just been pedaling to and from work, to and from Maile’s house, which is only an area of roughly 4 miles between everything. Already I’ve had two flats, one in each tire. So far things have been good, and I’m able to take the hill up to my house with relative ease (at the lowest gear, of course).

The real challenge will come on Friday, when I will journey far and beyond my norm and head to Ala Moana during morning rush hour. I will brave the traffic congestion of cars, the broken sidewalks, the throngs of bus stops, and the poorly-timed traffic signals, just to get a haircut.

According to MapQuest, the distance is approximately 12 miles. MapQuest also says that the total driving time is 18 minutes, which is correct if one is driving at 3 in the morning and is lucky enough to catch all the green lights. I figure it should take me about 2 hours, give or take 15 minutes, for me to traverse that distance. I’ll probably leave the house 3 hours before my appointment to account for red lights, pedestrians, and minor equipment malfunctions.

Hopefully I’ll survive.

It’s freakin’ hot.

I set up a web cam to take still photos of the fish tank. Unfortunately the shutter speed is so slow that moving objects become nothing more than a blur. Still, it’s a nice adventure into the land of web cams.

I used to have these live plants called anacharis. I had about 6. Trouble was, the leaves would start turning brown. I’m not sure if it was because of the under-gravel filter I was using, or I didn’t have the right conditions for growing live plants. Today I removed all of them and instead threw in 3 fake plants for color and to break up the monotony. The fish don’t seem to mind, but they might still be in shock after the trans-plant-ing and water change. Although, it’s only been about 5 minutes and they’re cruising all over the driftwood. I think removing the plants kicked up some stuff that was trapped in the gravel and it may have settled on the wood.

I still have living plants in the tank, except it’s java moss, stuff that apparently can grow anywhere. I stuffed two wads of moss into the driftwood, and I hope it secures itself and grows.

Enough fish news. This semester has me taking art history and narrative game design. The art history course is your typical history class, and we’re focusing on pre-history art up through the 15th century. There’s about 275 students, and I think a vast majority are sophomores. I say this because the prof had just finished going over the syllabus and opened the floor for questions.

She received her first question, “What is the test format?”

The prof answered, “Some short answer, some multiple choice. I don’t know, I haven’t made the tests yet.”

Then another student asked, “Are you going to have matching questions, with the answers to the side?”

“I don’t usually have matching,” said the professor, “but I don’t know. I haven’t made the tests yet.”

Yet another student asked, “How many questions will there be on the exams?”

The professor exhibited infinite patience as she answered, “I might have 30, sometimes I’ve had up to 50 questions, but I don’t know. I haven’t made the tests yet.”

Oddly enough, the syllabus has a section that states the tests will consist of multiple-choice or objective questions. Hello?!

Those questions had to have come from idiot sophomores, because freshmen are too naive to ask, and juniors and seniors know that it doesn’t matter what format the test is in. Only sophomores seem to believe that knowing the format of an exam enables them to better prepare themselves to pass.

Wise fools? Perhaps, but I think the emphasis would be on fools. If a student knows the material, the test could be in the form of an oral exam and there still wouldn’t be a problem. Rather than concentrating on studying for a multiple-choice exam versus a fill-in-the-blank exam, study the damn book and show up to class!

Aside from art history, the narrative game design looks to be fun. It’s a very small class of 10 or 11 students, including myself. There appear to be 5 ICS majors, with the rest of the class in fields such as filmography, art, and graphic design. We’re going to split into two groups, and each group will work on a “demo” version of a game concept the class will come up with. Hopefully my experience with software engineering and my recent work project will help me handle my share of the workload.

Speaking of which, my project went into production last week, meaning that it’s in actual “official” use throughout the UH system. I’m happy.

I think Meeth was hanging around the goldfish and corys for too long, because he’s starting to act like a bottom-feeder. The little punk even ate from the sinking tablet that was meant for Poppy³. I tried feeding him a small bloodworm, but he ignored it. Maile tried the next day and he ate it up. It’s said that angels recognize people, so maybe Meeth hasn’t become familiar with me yet.

Today I bought a backing for the tank, one of those photo-realistic paper things with plants and rocks on them. I got it because it seems as though my fish all try to swim towards the back of my desk and are surprised when they reach glass. Plus, many of them try to use the plants towards the back as cover when they feel threatened, but ram the glass so hard I can actually hear it. I figure the picture backing will hopefully “block” them from trying to swim through the tank and just cruise where the plants are. They had some nice ones at Coral Fish; even Maile bought some.

I’m finally finished with my ICS 413 class. We just had the final and peer evaluations today. I’m not sure how well I did on the final, though I’m pretty comfortable with some of the answers. Now I just have to concentrate on IS 330, which so far is going pretty well. I’m still a bit apprehensive about that 10-fuckpage paper I’ll have to write.

I was attending a Japanese school, replete with uniformage, except I was granted some exemption because I was in jeans. Probably because I was a foreigner. I still had to wear the jacket. I was in a mixed classroom of boys and girls, probably younger than me, and we were going over some kind of philosophical question. The problem was, while I could gather that it was a philosophical question, I had no idea what the question was nor what anybody was saying. I couldn’t read the questions, I couldn’t read the responses written on the board, and I sure as hell couldn’t read what people were writing. My teammates seemed to be moving along pretty well despite my lack of performance, and I was overcome with a sense of guilt.

For some odd reason, class was dismissed, and I felt I had to catch a school bus because I had to attend another school (maybe a cram school?). During the bus ride, then the walk to this new campus, I kept thinking that everybody was talking rather badly about me. Like, why is this foreign idiot here.

I never made it to the new campus, but the neighborhood looked oddly familiar, like the back streets of Kaimuki.

I just spent the whole day moving things. By moving I mean moving boxes of stuff into other boxes of storage. Then moving storage boxes to a big storage box across town. I ache.

Last night I had trouble sleeping. It was too hot. Now I pay for it. Especially tired from watching Maile’s fish swim around in their tank.

Supposed to do more reading on info tech and the socio-economic implications. Figure I’ll do that tomorrow.

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.

The subject is a tad misleading. I’m here, but I haven’t been here here, if you know what I mean. My last post was almost a year ago, and that was during football season (UH won 7 games and went to the Hawai’i Bowl, btw).

Nowadays I’ve been continually working at The Office and The Lab. I am still taking courses in ICS.

Where to start?

My project at The Office has gone beta. We conducted a loadtest on the server, and ended up overworking the poor database. Thankfully the problem wasn’t caused by what I had done, but what someone else did a long time ago. We went from 9 student employees to 3, including myself. That means there are other miscellaneous tasks to be shared by everyone.

The Lab is The Lab. Usual politics, usual work. At least the parties are cool, and the snack area is filled with the delectable bounty of fattening goodness.

School is nearing the end of its stint. I can expect to graduate in March of 2006, provided I don’t turn into a Senior and neglect my work. This summer I’m taking a software engineering class that doesn’t seem to be engineering software. I’m also enrolled in a rather interesting class, Information Technology/Culture, which looks at our lives as it is integrated with technology, be it computers or cell phones. We’ve discussed the rise of computers and networks, the virtual communities created by multiplayer games and MUDs and things like Xanga, mySpace and LiveJournal. We’re going over the Panopticon right now.

Oh, I got me an iPod. It is musical.

Today is the first day of the fall semester. I’ll be taking ICS 321 and 331 this year. Only two classes, but they span four days out of the week, including Saturday. This means I’ll only be able to work at The Lab two days, but hopefully they’ll let me stay longer so I can earn more money and not worry about making enough hours to qualify for medical. Best case scenario is to work 6-7 hours a day at The Lab, while pulling in 20 hours a week at The Office. I should still have enough time to get any homework done, since there will be time at the Office to take care of stuff.

Parking is going to be a problem for many people, so I will have to revert back to my original schedule. I think waking up at 0500 is worth the ease in traffic and the bounty of parking stalls at the structure, so long as I manage to leave the house by 0545.

I’ve decided to start work at The Office an hour later, at 0800, so that I can grab some breakfast at the caf when it opens at 0700. I do this because I’m not particularly enthused about tummy-rumbles during work. It’s very uncomfortable.

Bought a new game called Black & White the other day. It’s some sort of god-type game where you micromanage villages and people, flaunt your godly powers, and control some kind of magical giant creature to act as an Avatar. Seems a simple concept, one that’s been used for many years, but this time there’s a level of complication that isn’t advertised in the fine print. For one thing, each village and your creature have minds of their own, and if you leave them alone for a bit they’ll do their own thing. In terms of villages the effects of this aren’t that earth-shattering, stuff like eating too much food or breeding like rabbits and sucking the earth dry, but the creature can do things that you might not like, such as eating the villagers or pooping on the temple. Training the creature is not unlike housebreaking a pet; you give it love when it does something good, and slap it around when it does something bad. I was going over some gameplay tips online and the sheer amount of tasks one must accomplish to have a “decent” game is staggering. I don’t think I’ll be playing it with much enthusiasm, especially with school.

In the meantime I drink coffee to stay awake and ponder how much notes I will have to take with just binder paper. I seem to have forgotten my new notebook at home.

Today I’ll be taking Maile and Malia (sp?) home today. Since parking is an issue, they’ll be dropped off and I’ll drive them home. This won’t happen every day, of course, since schedules are so different. It’s too bad they can’t reserve a parking permit right now, since they’re not that high up on the registration scale, but I believe after a couple of semesters they’ll be able to. Otherwise they’ll get the hang of finding free parking around the Manoa area. I found some numbers for alternate parking that they can try to take advantage of.

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.

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.