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 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.

Well, it certainly has been a while. You can thank Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for my prolonged absence. There’s just so much to do in Zelda that it’s almost a sure-fire way to lose your social life. Thankfully Maile is very good at bringing me back to reality.

Let’s see, what’s happened so far? I think I’ve gotten into the groove of things at my new job(s). Deliveries for The Lab are becoming a habit, and many of the offices are permanently scarred into my memory. Sometimes I can get done with my rounds in less than three hours, which doesn’t mean good things for my paycheck since I’m on hourly. The Office has been holding steady; at least, I’m able to do the simple things. I haven’t gotten any major projects to work on yet, mostly because there really isn’t anything to do right now. There are still aspects of that job that I have yet to touch, but it seems I have to rely on my fellow student workers to show me the ropes, since the bosses are really busy with fixing another highly-visible project. And being that it’s finals week, I rarely see my coworkers. So I busy myself with checking Postmaster mail and setting up mailing lists while browsing the web pages for weird stuff.

On the homefront, life has been normal for me. I finished off my ICS 241 math class, and feel fairly confident I’ll pass with at least a C. That was my main goal, and if I score better, it’ll be all the more sweeter. Those E-Commerce classes I took were interesting, and I think I learned a few things, but the way they were carried out left something to be desired. The prof stressed communication, but it seemed to be lacking on his part. I would email him with a question, and wouldn’t get a reply for several days, if ever! Thankfully they were 100-level courses and pretty easy, otherwise I’d have more white hairs than I do now.

Life, however, has been anything BUT normal for Maile. Her brother’s back on crack again, and I actually witnessed the demon itself one day. He barged into the room and demanded the money Maile has been holding for him (because he’s so irresponsible with finances). When she refused, he got angry and tried to take her purse. Instead he missed and grabbed her backpack. Despite not having any money in the backpack, he ransacked through it, all the while spewing curses out of his retarded mouth. Maile finally gave him his money and he left. I found out later that everyone’s suspected he’s been on the rock from way before. Apparently he was given money to buy a nice present for his son’s 1st birthday and attend a small party, but instead he spent the money on crack and didn’t go. He’s back with this mental-case girl named Josephine who’s also on the rock (and with whom he had his son). Maile’s brother hasn’t been back for about a week, but he’ll start coming around once he wastes his cash.

The sad thing is that he blames Maile and the mom for his condition. Talk about a lame cop-out. His claim is that he was given too much responsibilities to handle, that Maile and the mom expected more from him than he could produce. Whatever. All they asked was that he help contribute to the house, either by getting a job or something. But no, the mere thought of hard work seems to be like a bad case of SARS for this whelp. Oh, and he also believes he has a mental condition, which is why he acts this way. I would tend to agree, but not for the reasons he gives. He feels it is justification for his behavior. I feel it’s simply stupidity. The guy is just spoiled, thinking the world has to give him what he wants without him working for it. I told him once that I was able to buy a new truck and these video games only because I worked and budgeted my money. At the time he seemed to take it to heart, but I guess he can only think short-term and can’t stand waiting for hard work to bear fruit.

So now the house has become like a fortress, with secured doors and a significant change in lifestyle. It’s like everyone’s on alert, since no one knows when he’ll drop by with some fake-ass sob story to try and wheedle pity and money out of the family. Pretty soon we’ll have to start using passwords and retina scans.

It’s been pointed out to me that I haven’t posted here in a long, LONG time. That’s what happens when Animal Crossing and school enter into one’s life.

Found out there have been some layoffs at DFS. None of my friends have been affected, but it’s a scary thought to think that they could be next. Everyone’s been hit hard, though, because their hours have been cut down to 20 a week. As far as my jobs are concerned, it’s been business as usual. I believe I’ve gotten into the groove of things at The Lab, because it’s taking less time for me to make my deliveries. At The Office I’m making progress on my intro project, so much so that I think I’m finished, well before the due date. However, there’s still so much I don’t quite understand, since it’s such new code that I think it works, but I don’t know why. There are a lot of aspects I haven’t even touched yet, either, judging by the looks of what else is out there. In the meantime, I’m doing some light work by helping clean up the list servers, flagging some to be deleted and others to be kept, depending on the owners’ requests. There are over 400 lists to go through, but I’m not the only one working on them.

I’m supposed to start my e-commerce classes from LCC, but the communication from the professor is kinda lacking. I managed to email him and get a reply, which allowed me to set myself up for instruction, but that was only yesterday. We’ll see how these one-month classes go.