Fear the Crab

I’m working at The Office. My hire was approved officially and I started on the 16th of November. My first day was like I had never left! And that was actually a pretty accurate statement.

The keycode to enter the office door was the same as when I was a student.
I was given my old chair, seated at my old desk, with the same computer I used when I was a student.
When I was logged in, my account had all my old settings and files.

I just hope my paycheck’s not the same.

I’m not riding my bike to work. My mom does not wish me to risk myself on the commute during traffic. While I’m fairly certain a ride into town won’t be THAT hazardous, it’s not wise to argue with someone who was paralyzed because of another driver’s idiocy. My mom’s an example that despite oneself driving correctly and safely, there are others out there that can and will kill you. Take any commute on any day at any time, and you’ll find at least one driver who’s proving to be a hazard to himself and everyone around him.

The city does have a “master plan” to make the islands safer for bicycles. The statement for this master plan is “Honolulu is a bicycle-friendly city where bicycling is a viable and popular travel choice for residents and visitors of all ages.” There are over 6 separate pdf files, which makes it a bit unreasonable to look at everything in one sitting, so I haven’t actually read through the whole thing.

In the end, I hope it enables me to finally take the journey on bike.

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.

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.

This morning as I was walking to work (the Office), I saw a girl in front of me slip and fall. She landed on her tush, full leg extension parallel to the ground. She was too far away for me to catch her, unfortunately, and even if I were close enough I probably would have burned her with the cigarette in my hand.

The thing that struck me most, however, was the fact that none of the other twenty people around her didn’t stop. They just kept walking, some of them not even giving her a glance. It was rather sad.

When I got to her, I asked if she was all right. To which she replied that she was, thank you. She didn’t appear hurt, more embarrassed than anything. You could tell she was embarrassed because she kept trying to clean her hands.

Of course, she was wearing these stiletto heels whose points were no bigger than the diameter of a pen cap, so I suppose it would have been inevitable that she would fall sooner or later. The sad thing is that regardless of when she would fall, nobody would help her.

You’d think that in a place like Hawai`i, there’d be at least some sentiment to help.

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.

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.