Fear the Crab

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.

I got my first assignment for my online 241 class, and it appears I already know two of my classmates. By “know” I mean that I’ve met them personally and actually converse about things other than ICS. There are a couple more names that are familiar to me, but I haven’t actually met them, yet. My first assignment is due next Friday on the 24th.

Tomorrow I go to dinner. Before dinner I hope to wipe my truck down (because it’s raining now), polish my boots, and do my homework. In reality, I think I’ll probably spend a majority of my time on Animal Crossing.

Maile and I are planning a double-date dinner with Irene and Tolkien. This was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and I don’t even know where we’ll be going. I do know it’s some yakiniku place called Million, but I’ve never heard of it. It’s for a Tuesday, since both myself and Irene have the day off (and no school), and both Maile and Tolkien finish school around 1630.

In Animal Crossing, I finally got the golden shovel. I don’t know what’s special about it aside from the gold color, but it seems whenever I randomly dig in some place I get a bag of money. There’s no mark on the ground to signify there’s anything there, too. It just appears. Wow. Maile has already paid off her debt for the current house expansion, and so she added a basement. Already she’s planning the theme for her carpet, wallpaper and furniture. I’m starting to consider buying the Gameboy Advance because of the extra options enabled for Animal Crossing, but I still must consider the cost benefits, whether or not it’s worth shelling out the bucks for something I may only use sparingly.

School starts on the 13th, but I will only go to school one day a week. That’s a programming class, ICS 212, and it’s from 1800 to 2040, so hopefully traffic won’t be too bad and there will be parking in the structure. The other class I’m taking is the math class, ICS 241, and it’s an online course, which will greatly benefit my work schedule.

I’ve officially completed the Fall 2002 semester. Today I took the ICS 211 final, and I feel pretty confident about my results. Everything was pretty straight-forward, and the only thing that caused some hesitation was the inorder traversal of a binary tree. Normally I know how it goes, but the particular layout of the tree generated some momentary confusion of how to traverse it. Still, I think I did it correctly. The only thing I didn’t do correctly was answer the extra credit questions. There were two questions, each worth two points, so I think I missed out on those. The first was “What does XML stand for?” and I blanked on the X (I believe now it is eXtendable). The second was “What does TCP/IP stand for?” and I wrote Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, but for some reason I don’t think that’s correct. At least they were extra credit questions.

I sincerely believe the one page of notes we were allowed to bring helped. I didn’t look at it much, but I could always refer to it when I was unsure if I was doing the right thing. One surprising little twist on the exam was the last part, where we were asked to code a Java method. It just so happened that I had the exact same method on my “cheat sheet.” The reason I had this method is because a couple of days prior, the professor had emailed the class with a list of what “may” be on the exam, and she stated that there would be light coding involving Linked Lists. All I did was copy her in-class coding notes on Linked Lists to my page of notes, and it turned out to be a most excellent decision. In fact, the programming section was straight out of those in-class notes! Madness!

I suppose I was relieved when the final was over, because I went home and began work on my web page. I updated the pictures section, adding new photos and organizing the existing ones into a more effective (I think) layout. That took me a good majority of my evening, though I tried to intersperse it with quality time with Maile and Titan.

My next adventure will be to clean my room.

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 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.

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.