Delay of Game

I feel kind of bad, like when you tell your kid that Santa Claus isn't real.

I said I'd update a month ago and I haven't even been on in all this time. I'm going to have to say to wait for me since these next few weeks are dreadful. This week I am in a mad scramble to finish my Operating Systems project, study for an Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism test (for today), write a paper for my "The Good Life" class, and finish my poster for SC|08.

Then next week I'm in Austin, Texas for the conference. Tuesday I present my poster.

Wish me luck, and I hope to see you winter break! Or maybe the week of/after Thanksgiving.

Retroactive Posting

Hi to all, still alive mostly.

Quick post today, since there are just a few things to cover.

For first, I will be trying to update regularly-ish once more. Perhaps weekly, perhaps monthly, perhaps once every Mercury day. I'll decide eventually.

For second, there are a couple of posts which will be completed. The ones that I never got around to but really wanted to finish up. Gonna keep a small list here, so check back when you can: Research!, The Month in Review

For third, I am totally skipping a week of school to go to SC|08. Best part is, it's for free :P

More on it all later.

Tiny Carl Jung

It's the little things that always make my day. Things like this (yes, that is a little dog). And also:

On my phone I have taken a lot of pictures.* In fact, I got a microSD card solely for the purpose of being able to get them off of my phone (fo' free!). Two such pictures I took about twenty feet from each other. One is of a large column with a security camera spray-painted on it. The other of a parking spot with a fire extinguisher spray-painted.

Yet more:

My first year at Tech I found a good number of entertaining pictures on people's whiteboards. This one won it for me though. I also read desks.

Not pictured:

In my dorm here at Tech for the summer, the instructions in case of a fire and "... IF DOOR IS HOT" are as follows.

• Do not open door
• Phone emergency 888
• Seal cracks around door with towels or blankets
• Hang a sheet, blanket, or bedspread out the window as a signal--then shut the window
• Wrap a damp cloth around your face
• Stay low to breathe
  
• Break out marshmallows
  

Finally:

I found this one in "viejo" San Juan, whilst walking around with Alina. Well, technically she saw it first, but I got the picture. Took me a while to see it, can you?

Bonus: Alex broin' out.


*Actually, all of these pictures were from my phone.

The Month In Review

My month of May can be summed up week by week:

Week 0: Exams

There were six of them. Public Speaking was online and easy, Statistics was my last and also easy, like Calculus of Several Variables. Computer Organization, Data Structures, and Intermediate Mechanics were all the same day and, respectively, not too bad, easy, and difficult--as expected.

Week 1: Home

With a B-tree project, the six exams, and the epic endeavor that is packing for the summer all behind me, I was finally able to head home. A nice lazy week followed, with the only interruption being the doctor's visit.

Week 2: Puerto Rico to visit Alina

This was awesome, to say the least.

Week 3: Recovering from surgery

I had never had surgery before this point. No wisdom teeth or appendix removed. Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

Anyways, the first couple of days I couldn't walk on my own. And after that walking was pained and only with contorted posture. Unfortunately for me, this was the week that my friends decided to have events requiring physical strain--at least more than I could put up with. As a result, I've yet to have gone to King's Dominion. Grrr.

It's fine, though. I focused on recovering and preparing for the next week to come...

June, Week 0: Back at Tech, working

On Monday, the 2nd, just a week and a half after my surgery, I had to go to work. This involved walking from the dorm that I was staying at to the bus stop, quite a struggle for me--remember, Tech is hilly. More importantly, though, before I could begin work I had to move into the aforementioned dorm. This was a gargantuan task, even with my dad's help, and unfortunately for me, Sahil was mostly busy and Alex was angry at me for a reason I did not know.

Somehow I managed to live through all this, mainly by limping my way around, and in a short month I was back to running and being silly in general (after the surgery, any laughter hurt immensely).

This Sort of Thing Never Happens!

Not in Northern Virginia at least. Places with monsoon seasons, totally reasonable. But not here.

It's been raining for the last 20+ hours. Not just a sheepish drizzle like what happens over in Blacksburg (think gray and miserable and depressing and you're on the right track), but real steady rain. At times like a downpour. Weather.com is screaming about flood warnings, but let's hope nothing too bad comes.*

Good thing it seems to be settling down. Hmm, now onto random subjects.

So, I harbor some sort of pure absolute disliking for cell phone companies--that is, more so than usual. Apparently, someone sat down to do the math and found that it costs less money per megabyte (MB) for beautiful pictures such as this and this from the Hubble Space Telescope to be sent to Earth than it does for you to say "sup?" to your friend in a text message. How much is the difference? Easily than four times as much and up to forty times as much. Ridiculous? Very yes. Doesn't it make you want to yell at your provider?

In other news, it seems something on the AOL front has gone wrong (um, again >.>). For those of you who just recently tuned in, last summer I interned over at AOL, my first real full-time job. It was actually a blast and I learned much more than expected. Anyway, they had me working the entire summer on a gadget for iGoogle (kinda like Netvibes), one which I'm now embarrassed to be associated with. Somehow in the last year it has gained a few thousand users, along with a poor rating from several of them. The system for retrieving mail is slow, and the code which I wrote--code that initially worked--is broken. Hmmm...

A sternly-written letter is in order!

Ever the procrastinator, I found something else to distract me from my work.** Installing another operating system! I hadn't booted into OpenSolaris in forever, so I basically had an open partition on my hard drive. That and the fact that I've never given Gentoo the true attention it deserves and thus I jumped on for a third attempt. The difference this time was that I tried to configure the kernel (the core of any modern linux distribution) to the best of my abilities. And two and a half hours later I was done and compiling--yum! But, an experience much like my first encounter with linux and later Arch, I soon found myself unable to get past having a base system installed. This morning, from nine to noon, was spent in a futile stab at getting my wireless to work. *grumble grumble* Ohs wells, probably time to get to work anyways..

After that letter, p'raps.


*Dad says some people who work with him lost power at their homes.
**A four page paper for a program that I'm applying for. More later(?)

PS: As predicted, the rain has stopped, huzzah!

The Rants, They Just Keep Coming

I feel like blogging about nothing and everything. I do have, and have had, four unfinished posts in the works, but those are not time-dependent and can be finished at my leisure.

Now, starting with complaints.

It seems I'm doomed to have lotsa complications to deal with (and none of them the fun kind). Two days ago was my last final exam--statistics, yum!--which meant that that afternoon I would be leaving for home. Problem was the amount of packing I had to accomplish in a three hour period. But, a frustratingly undisclosed amount of time later I was finished and ready to leave! My parents and I hopped into my mom's RAV4* and, following a quick stop at the BP on South Main, proceeded on back to NOVA.

Once home, I began the tedious process of unpacking, which somehow takes multiple days no matter how much or how little I had to unpack. Stopped after getting the basic necessities and slept. Next day--yesterday--I had to get up bright and early to go to the doctor, who happily made money for seven and a quarter minutes with me and for providing a referral. Afterwards a bevy** of phone calls had to be made to surgeons, American Airlines, my dentist, and a few other odd places. Hmm, you know, after interacting with so many receptionists/secretaries I've realized that it would be pretty kickass to have one. *adds to list of things to do* I don't care if my occupation doesn't require one, I will make sure to keep one around. Anyone looking for a job?

Mmm, got off topic again. Sorry. So, lesee.. this Friday I have a four page paper due for this program I'm applying for, still unpacking, and meeting with the general surgeon tomorrow to see when I can get surgery. Oh, and I gotta figure out if--though most likely yes--and when to I will be moving my trip to Puerto Rico. Originally the plan was to leave the fourteenth and return the twenty-ninth, but all that looks like it'll be changing. Yeah..

So, summer just started and it seems as if it might be as busy (and definitely crazier) than the last. Good and bad, just hoping things turn out all right. Oooh, and in mid-August I'll get to start moving into the house we're renting next year. Many fun things in store, just gotta live through these next couple weeks.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, I have a hernia. No, I didn't do anything to get it--that I know of--they can apparently just happen sometimes. But yeah, this has been the undoing of my summer. The wrench in the machine.

I have no clue if that last sentence is even a phrase. *shrug* Ohs wells.


*The one that just so happens to drive like a dream.
**YES! Finally got to use it.

As Things Wind Down

The end of the semester is in sight. A short sprint to the finish line. The evening before Christmas. Readying to touch down after that long flight. One last all-nighter...

Speaking of all-nighters.

So last Sunday John and I had a CS project due at midnight (soon extended to 9 am the following day). Let me get one thing straight right now: I had not been putting it off. I actually did everything except for one small--well, I didn't think at the time that it would take too long--part of the program. Hence you can't blame this one on procrastination.

It was somewhere around 3 am when I realized that I would not be sleeping. By this point I had been working nearly six hours straight (after having worked three earlier Sunday afternoon) and was still getting odd errors the likes of which I had never seen. Now, I could rant about the inadequacies of C++ as a programming language. I could also rant about B-trees, though their implementation is not too bad. But I'd much rather make it known that, after many trials and tribulations, I received a perfect score.

Following a day of falling asleep in my classes, I then finally went to bed at 11 and woke up at 7 the next morning, with my cell phone in my hand*. Yes I was confused. Yes I felt slightly better.
I was still fighting sleep in my Mechanics class today. Probably need to sleep more.

What remains is one day of class and six exams. Three on Saturday starting at 7:45 am. Do wish me luck, I'm pretty sure I'll need it.

Oh, and research will most definitely be interesting.

*I have no recollection of getting a phone call, much less picking up the phone and conversing. Felt like I slept through everything.

The Joys of Spring

Aside from allergies. They are having their way with me. And it is nothing like fun. *runs off in search of tissues*

Much more better.

The worst part has been the pace at which I'm going through boxes of tissues. I bought one less than a week ago and it's half gone (and I'd only gotten allergies on Wednesday!). It's gotten so bad that, in order to conserve my precious supply, I've resorted to using napkins, paper towels--the bathroom kind that hurt--and just about any sort of paper short of inflicting papercuts. This has just 'caused much irritation on mine and my skin's part.

I have to say, one hellishly productive Saturday just passed. Watched Gurren Lagann*, played Half-Life 2 Episode Two (my roommate can again say he woke up to gunshots), watched more Gurren Lagann, did over half of my CS project, and also finished watching Gurren Lagann. That anime was beyond excellent; I would put it nearly on even grounds with the Ender's Game series, even if they're in different categories. The CS project, eh. Simple for the most part, I'm just down to creating a b-tree that is stored in a file. That part's not too bad, just a lot of maths and working with C++ streams.

Now onto slightly less nerdy matters.

The semester is slowly drawing to a close, with an excruciating month left between me and sweet sweet freedom. Well, at least a vacation in Puerto Rico**. After that it's all up in the air right now, which is actually really annoying. I'll most likely be staying at Tech for most of the summer, given that I can find an apartment or work something out on campus. And I really want to, as I'd get to do research (more on that later) and most likely get paid to do it too!

That's it for now. Just a short one. Tune in next week when I wrestle a boar!

..but not really.


*This is epic. It will change your life. Watch it. 'nuff said.

**You know, someday I'm gonna have to sit down and explain that.

A Linux Fetish

Oh come on! Once the title popped into my head I had to. Plus, I absolutely adore the word fetish. It's one of those good* words.

Warning: There are somewhat technical terms used in this post, though I did my best to keep them to a minimum. But do try to trudge on. For Mandrake's sake.

Three years ago or so, I remember James mentioning how he wanted to try out Linux on his computer. At that time, honestly, I had only the faintest idea of what he was talking about (that Gabe knew little about computers). Hence, I did what any curious high schooler would do: I googled it.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Fast forward a month and some change and I had my first Linux distribution--distro for short--burned onto a CD, ready to install. What distro? Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake, not to be confused with Mandrake the Magician). The reason for my pick was that it was supposedly the most "newbie friendly" distro** and it was also one of the largest. So I hoped that things wouldn't be too bad.

And I could not have been more wrong. Must have spent a good eight hours one weekend racking my brain and stalking for answers in forums before giving up. I could not get the graphics working so all I had was a beautiful--although admittedly bland--black screen with grey-ish text. From that interface I had no way of accessing the internet (okay, so I didn't hear about Links or Lynx 'til just last year) and was constantly switching between Mandriva and Windows XP. At that point, having no real clue as how to fix my issues, I scrambled around the intarwebs looking for a way to "uninstall" Linux. *sighs* Oh how little I knew.

That was on the family computer, the one my dad and I had built together. To put it lightly, my first venture into the world of non-Microsoft operating systems had ended in failure (unlightly would involve painful acts which I shall save our younger readers from hearing). Anyway, after this defeat I decided to stick to the familiar.

Freshman year of college was when I really got back on the saddle (I'd dabbled a few times before). More experienced. More dedicated. This time, I got openSUSE running with relative ease. But, I barely used it. Didn't really have a reason to. Though the idea of SSH did tickle my fancy..

Enter Arch. Once more this was James's fault. He randomly brought it up in conversation and all of a sudden I just had to try it. Ignoring the fact that this distro was for "experienced" Linux users and that James hadn't downloaded let alone tried it himself. *shrug* Oh well. So I dove right in, downloading, burning, installing. And immediately hit a huge roadblock. This was even worse than the stab I took at Mandriva. See, Arch Linux goes by the KISS (also not to be confused, but with a band this time) principle. As a result, you get the base system and then install whatever you want on top. Something I was most definitely not ready for.

Fast forward--good phrase--again a month and I had me a working desktop. I loved it. From that point on my only reason to use Windows was primarily scholastic, as we were forced to use software not available on Linux. However, I did so with much chagrin, for I had one of the greatest toys on another partition.

Eventually this led me to dual-booting multiple Linuxes and even triple-booting. Though, quite honestly, that's a whole 'nother matter.


*When I first found this thread it did not require you to register to read. But you really should as Koala Wallop is an excellent forum. Or at least to read the thread, trust me, it's worth it.

**No Ubuntu back then, you lucky kids. And my xorg.conf actually had to be edited, and it required twice the settings it does today!
...*rambles*..uphill both ways...

Under Construction

Please excuse the mess and all that. I will be spending the next I-have-no-idea-how-long working on the layout of the blog. Blogger's nice because it lets you choose templates and then change them, but it's also a little annoying since you're forced to read through all this code. At least it's rather straightforward. Moving on..

The other night Alex (the one back in Ashburn) and I were having a nice chat as usual when he brought up an interesting bit of news. The fact that a quarter of teenage girls has some sexually transmitted disease. I hadn't heard about it when he told me, so I was beyond shocked. But of course, Alex always puts in a twist to things:

Alex: So my friends and I have started doing this thing at school.
Me: ??
Alex: Whenever we see girls in a hallway we count.
Alex: "One, two, three.."
Alex: and then
Alex: "..STD!!"

Oh Alex >.>;

"Research" or "How I Got To Do What I Love For Credit"

This past semester I took a class titled "Thesis Proposal" dealing entirely with that thesis that I'm supposed to write by the end of my senior year. The one for Honors*. It only met twice a week for the first half of the semester, still, it got me all worried about getting started on some research.

Therefore:

A few weeks after the class ended, and after several trips to VTURCS, I was sitting in a professor's office in front of its occupant. It was an informal interview of sorts, just so he could see that I was as competent--hopefully more--than a quick email from me led him to believe. The topic of research was virtual machines, which I had been playing with on and off for the last year or so. The professor decided that I seemed qualified enough, meaning that I at least knew what I was talking about, and thus I became part of the Synergy group!

So, how did this all begin?

My first two years at Tech I began playing with different operating systems on my laptop. Mainly Linux, but there was attempts at OS X and others. It was a terrible addiction wherein I would accidentally "break" my laptop whilst in class, rendering it completely useless. Nothing like sitting in the front row of your engineering class, where a computer is required, and shutting your laptop since it no longer boots. For example.

Well, by this point I was just getting over my habit of installing a new operating system on my computer every month or so. Be it a new Linux distribution or the latest OpenSolaris, perhaps I'd broken Windows again. The point is that all that experimenting required large amounts of partitioning and repartitioning of my lappy's hard drive. With a slow 5400 RPM drive, doing almost any sort of partitioning takes an afternoon. No good. Luckily, there was hope to be found. *cue choirs of angels*

I learned of a nifty new thing called a "virtual machine" nearing the end of my first year. Namely VMware. In essence it allowed me to run an operating system within another operating system; no partitioning, rebooting, or migrane required! A novel concept for sure, hence I quickly began looking into the details, soon finding plenty of other software that did the same thing--more or less. QEMU, KVM, VirtualBox.

Obviously, then, as I blabbed on about how much I loved virtualization, my professor could see my enthusiasm. Hmm, more like couldn't help but be hit by it. And, for once, playing around and having a child-like interest in things actually paid off! Who'd've thunkit.


* I'm still not entirely sure what the benefits really are at this point.

RE: The Fragileness of Faith

In reply to Tim's latest post.

Telling somebody that you have lost faith could mean a million things. Perhaps you've lost faith in the American dollar, or in your favorite basketball team, or in your chances of winning the lottery, or in getting that girl to go out with you. Could be just about anything.

But when all you say is "I've lost my faith," then it's implied that you mean religiously. Or at least philosophically.
And that is, for the most part, just what Tim's post covers.

The biggest issue arises with definition. What exactly does "having" faith even mean? Well, for the purposes of this post--a more in-depth discussion may come up in another post--I'll give a simple meaning. With the presence of faith comes a belief in some form of higher power. Whether that power be the Judeo-Christian God, the many gods of Shinto, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't matter. Whatever cream-cheeses your bagel, really.

Anyway, I think Tim made a great point: faith is of great importance to humans. Nearly a necessity across the board. He approaches this from his struggle with losing a friend and, quite importantly, from a Christian background. And that last part makes a big difference. From what I can tell, he seems a devout believer and so the period of doubt he went through must have shaken him greatly. But, as he mentions, he was able to move past this doubt with the help of friends. And so his struggle for faith was, like most, troubling at the time. For him, luckily it was brief.

For me, however, things didn't go so smoothly.

It was over the span of three months that I lost my faith. For good. All of it beginning with a book titled Ishmael, which we read in my English class junior year of high school.

Actually, no, it began earlier. In the period leading up to reading Ishmael. Since I was born I had been raised a Christian. And for more than seven years my family and I had been attending a Baptist church. It was around this point, after all those years, that I had a great revelation: God was the most important thing in life. His being meant all who believed would go to heaven and live eternally. So I would devote my life to spreading the word and to trying to convert those who would listen. However, things never got to that state. I procrastinated and felt guilty. Adding to the already existent guilt of being a sinner, never living up to the standards that my church preached. Trying harder seemed to do nothing, and after failing in "converting" a friend, I was left disheartened.

And that brings us to Ishmael.

For those of you too lazy to read yet another valuable Wikipedia article, I shall give a quick synopsis (mmm, fun word). A man sees a newspaper ad of a teacher seeking a pupil with "an earnest desire to save the world." From here, the man is lectured to by a telepathic gorilla--Ishmael. And that's about it. The important part, though, is the subjects the lecture covers, things from society to God to many things we take for granted of civilization. While it may not be the most groundbreaking book ever--and while I doubt most would agree with its statements--it is highly thought-provoking. If you know me in the slightest, thought-provoking books are my favorite. So from there I went on to read My Ishmael and The Story of B.

It was Story of B that really got me thinking. The last book of the series that I read--though technically the second in the series--was the one that undid everything I had believed as a child. A character in the book, named B, speaks with our protagonist, Jared Osborne, bringing up simple doubts of the Christian faith. And by the time I finished, laying on the top bunk of one of the bunk beds in my family's cramped cabin on a Norwegian Cruise Line cruise, all I could do was think (actually, I had a lot of time to lay around and think on that vacation). Think and evaluate my faith.

The next couple of months I struggled with myself back and forth. Previously, I had been trying to become a "better" Christian, yet now I found myself questioning even being a Christian. Questioning God's existence, similar to how Tim did. But unlike him, I did not turn back.

This was the most difficult step. Whereas before, I used to pray and talk to God every night while I lay in bed, then I could only say, "What's the point?" And it was troubling. There was that feeling, that need, to look up and know that something was staring back down, watching over everything. I had to know that there was more to life after death. That the good would prevail in the end, the evil punished. That things in life--tumbleweed and déjà vu and goldfish and duct tape and toilet revelations and lightning and love and limericks and packing peanuts--had a meaning. That my existence had a meaning.

And that all of it fit snugly into some sort of grand plan.

This need, this feeling of requirement, slowly subsided in those months. Afterwards I was able to truly take in The Story of B. My way of thinking on the topics of God and religion changed drastically. No longer was God a concrete being whom I prayed to and talked to and knew I would meet after my physical death. No longer were religions--namely Christianity--these infallible bodies of knowledge and authority. Instead, god was an idea. Instead, religions were to be used as guidelines for one's philosophy and theology, readily questioned when conflicts arose.

What remained after all this was me. Slightly jaded yet with a long path of possibility set ahead of me. Not exactly a blank slate, but close enough. And from that state, I happily--but much more importantly, willingly--thought about religion. What it meant to me, not what I was told it was supposed to mean.

I learned god is not required to: be a good person; have hope in life; find happiness. And so, at that time, I became an atheist.

Lost my faith.

Honestly, that's not the end of the story. Probably in some later posts I'll cover the rest, including what I believe now and how I got to do so. But, for now, I've covered the points I wanted to make.

April Fool's

The day of Poisson d'Avril. Or so my mechanics teacher says. The Japanese one that I'm quite sure speaks better French than he does English. But yeah.

Not a bad day. Hell, it's a rather good week so far. Little work in comparison to the last few weeks in addition to numerous amusements. This morning, in between the aforementioned Intermediate Mechanics class and the ever-loathed Public Speaking class, I got to witness the VT Flash Mob's latest event. Walking to class afterwards, the small group of newspaper-wielding students scurrying off in the distance, I could only smile.

Public Speaking was spent paying little attention to people's speeches whilst slipping in and out of daydreams. And from there I had my usual lunch break of sorts, lasting just under two hours. I spent the first half checking out a technology showcase being held in Squires (our student center) and got to see and play with lots of muchly nifty gadgets. For one, the MacBook Air, in all its thin multi-touch goodness. For two, a Dell tablet computer which not only supported pens but could be used as a touch screen! What I expected for the first, surprisingly cool for the second. Also, John's parent company, Sun Microsystems (get it? 'cause his dad works for them), was next to the Microsoft booth--highly disappointing, as one would think--so I got chat with the guys there. Didn't really learn much, but still, always good to meet new people.

Lazy day from there on. A seemingly short class (data structures, so easy stuff) and then the rest of the afternoon was spent in Tim's room. Mainly watching John and him switch off on Call of Duty 4, which is actually as good as everyone says. If you are in any way a video game fan do yourself a favor and buy it. Seriously. Even I think it's good, and I'm rather picky about games.

*phew* right, with that endorsement behind us, let's continue.

So in my free time--hah! so much of that this week--I've been reading Ender's Shadow* and finishing up that long blog post I said I was doing. After nearly two weeks of writing I finished the post, though some editing remains (do watch for it in the coming days), whereas after three days I'm a little over one hundred pages from the end of Ender's Shadow. And boy, I'd almost forgotten just how much I absolutely adore that book. It's been years since I last read it and that time has definitely made it a better read. Going through I can really appreciate the logic and psychology and "battles of wit" that go on constantly. Very much my kind of book.

That's all for now. Actually, I shall leave you with one last thing: penguins take flight!

*Part of the Ender series, including Ender's Game which, if you haven't read, go out right now and kindly do so.

Putting Things Off

You know, I have this huge Physics exam tomorrow morning. I've yet to study. Hmm, *twiddles thumbs* so...

A few minutes ago I was headed downstairs--taking them two at a time, as usual--to toss my trash in the dumpster (I'm good people like that). Moments later, the outside door slamming behind me, I realized that it was definitely not t-shirt weather. Also, that short walk becomes a lot longer when you're skin's begging for a little heat. But no matter, my attention was promptly stolen with an, "Ooooh, stars.." seeping from my mouth.

On the topic of random stories, earlier today I passed by the mail room to check if we'd gotten anything. And we did in fact get something. Actually, I got something. A magazine titled US Weekly. Addressed to me and everything. Which raises the question (since never in my life would I get a subscription to such a "great" piece of literature), "..who payed money for this??"

I was utterly confused.

So yeah, random rants aside, I actually had something useful* to say. In the afternoon I had a meeting with my partner for the Hausdorff dimension presentation (the one we're doing for honors credit). The two of us have a pretty good understanding of things--it took so long to take it all in but its finally paying off--and therefore we decided to sit down and start preparing. Afterwards we had a sheet full of lots of writing, a little over half of it solely equations. From here I volunteered to type it up and was introduced to an interesting, um, program(?) called LaTeX (wiki it). The best way to describe it would be a word processor like Word that doesn't have formatting. Instead you type something like tags which do this. Really, the biggest reason it's used is for scientific writing (especially math), since using word processors for that is just a pain.

And..hmmm. Nothing else for today. I'm gonna go get started on that studying. Do wish me luck, I wouldn't mind getting above a fifty (out of one hundred) on my test.


*If anything you at least got an easy way to cheat at Minesweeper.

Paying for Life

And it's taken an arm and a leg.

So, I've been busy. Like really busy. Spring break ended and I was thrown back into the fray, much more brutally than I actually expected. Thus, as it has been more than two weeks since you all last had a chance to read my witty rantings, I feel an update is in store.

My math homework (calculus of several variables, fun no?) sits in front of me, nearly complete, what with my messy scrawl and equations and symbols shoved into any open whitespace. My computer science project (data structures and algorithms, second semester) is on my laptop with a teensy bug yet to be fixed. My computer science homework (computer organization, building virtual circuits, mmm) I took one look at and just gave up. It was around eleven last night when I realized I'd done at least ten hours worth of work on a Saturday...On a Saturday!! *indignant* Anyway, that's when my pencil went down, my laptop turned off, and Lullaby was pulled out to be read.

I've been taking it pretty easy since then. Smash Bros. Brawl with Alex (roommate version) and reading and now writing--which I've been dying to do. Hmm, actually, Alex and I played a lot of Smash this weekend. But it's such fun, and ever so easy to just say, "One more round..."

Other than that--and homework--I've had lots of club meetings and hanging out with certain friends that I seem to never see. Oh, that and there's this huge talk that is being sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) here. And talking to a professor about research for next semester (more on that eventually) and talking to a VT dropout, who has some of the most interesting ideas I've ever heard, about a job. Just, so much. I've always wondered how people can become "workaholics" and am starting to understand it. But I really don't wanna be one of those!!

Also, sorta behind the scenes of everything, I have been trying to write a response to a post Tim wrote about faith. I found it interesting and, after a number* (that number is one plus one, or two (yay for MATHS!)) of conversations online on the topic, decided to reply. So yeah, watch for that.


*I really really wanted to use the word bevy there..'til I realized that it just didn't fit *grumbles*

Out of It

You know how when you're sick and have something simple like the cold or the flu and you sit around and don't do much?
Yeah, that's me right now. I've got a nice little headache that's kept me in bed nearly four hours longer than I wanted to be.

Have a good number of posts in mind to write, just been out of it (hah, see, the title!) for the last week or so. Classes begin once more next Monday so they might take me a bit to post, just bear with me.

Spring Break-ing

*sigh* I always get sick when I come home. It's a bad habit that I really need to outgrow.
..as if I have any say in it.

It's spring break for Tech, UVA, and William & Mary (I think). Has been for a few days now, though the technical start was Monday. Still, with a decently long list of things that I want/need to do in this week, I haven't done much. Gotta work on that.

For starters there's "I'll just get ahead on schoolwork!" which I always say when some form of break--usually the much-needed type--comes along. Another bad habit. Ideally, I would just stop saying this altogether because, as those who know me would probably expect, I never go through with it. I'm lazy and sleep too much on breaks and in general get sidetracked pretty easily. Which, after typing that last sentence I went off for ten minutes and looked at a few websites...for example. Er, that and I've read seventy-six chapters of Death Note this week (I'm so bad! But it's so good!).

In other matters, like I've told everyone that's asked me if I have an internship for this summer, I will say that I am half-assedly looking for something. Possibly work. Possibly research. I honestly don't know yet. Preferably not a full-time job like last year at AOL. Not that it was bad--in fact I loved it--I'm just not thrilled about the whole nine to five aspect.

What I would really like to do is work on a project for the Google Summer of Code (SoC for short). Tim did it last summer so I've been pestering him for information and help. Unfortunately the SoC requires a good chunk of work, though if anything happens I'll keep you guys up to date.

Other than that I've a few other things to keep me busy. For my math class--which I am trying to get honors credit for--I have to learn what a Hausdorff dimension is. Too bad wiki pages don't always give the simplest of explanations. Also, John, Tim, and I were thinking of working on a programming contest which MIT is hosting. It's called BattleCode and deals primarily with artificial intelligence--a field none of us have any experience with--specifically programming a player for a neat real-time strategy game they've made. Not too sure how far we'll get into it this year.

Last, but never least, is the latest writing assignment. Alina gives these out every once in a while, although it's been a couple of months since the last one. This one calls for a story two to four pages long and using the words "defenestrate" and "akimbo" (neither of which, in my opinion, gets ample usage). As always--as usual really, I don't always finish..--you can check my piece out over at my deviantART page. There's a link over on the right, click it now anyways. It has writings, and you should really comment on them.
Please comment. *whimper*

Hmm, that's all this attention-deprived artist has for now. Later~

Memoirs of One Seeking Life: Preface

It has been a year since I was last in the blogging spirit (hm, someone should trademark that). And you can just imagine how much has happened. If not, check my old blog, the last post to be precise. It alludes to it somewhat.

The biggest reason that I restarted blogging on a new blog page is that--apart from the year-long hiatus--I feel like a different person. I've gone through so much. My thoughts have changed, my view on life has changed, the way I talk and write and probably walk have all changed. Perhaps if you look closely you might notice the little differences.

I have a point. Namely that there was much learned and much to comment on. So since I can't really blog on everything all at once I plan to break it up by subjects. What subjects? *shrugs* I don't really know yet, though I have a few in mind.

So, I feel kinda silly leaving the post at this, but there's nothing more to say.
'til next time!

"Somebody Stop That Fruit!"

Two weeks ago I sat in Hokie Grill* and recorded (Facebook required for now) people frozen in place. Whether they were eating a chicken nugget or taking a sip of water or searching inside a backpack for something or gazing off into nothing. Hell, one guy was paying for his food.

Now before you start yelling at me that it's already been done, let me talk. There's a little group that started with that event called the VT Flash Mob. Well, not so little anymore. A flash mob is simply a group of people that appear somewhere without announcement and perform some sort of prank or event. And yes, I keep linking Improv Everywhere as they are the first group I had heard of. But there are groups starting up in universities around the country and Tech is no exception.

I went to their first event--conveniently announced on Facebook--and enjoyed it thoroughly. This is exactly the sort of thing I would love to do every once in a while, just to mix things up. Bring something different to life. Most of the time people have no idea what's going on and look absolutely confused, yet another plus!

Luckily for me, not only did I get to witness their first act (from "behind the scenes"), but I was also, quite unknowingly, a member of their next audience. Walking back from my Intermediate Mechanics class**, crossing the drillfield, on my way to get some food, I happened to spy a person laying on the ground. This didn't look good but as I approached my attention was promptly stolen. Enter man in a banana suit (again, Facebook). My train of thought: there were many people on the ground, as if passed out -> this can't be an accident -> banana! And it was very much planned.

I both loved it--I got to hear "somebody stop that fruit!" shouted about ten feet from me--and was disappointed that I had not known beforehand. So I expediently hopped online, found my way into the group and into contact with its "leader." I just hope next time I can get in on the meetings (though I'll settle for prior knowledge of future events).

Hmm, well now I must be off to finish preparing for my speech tomorrow. I'll make sure to think up as many creative complaints of that class as I can in the meantime.


* One of our local eateries, aka dining halls.
** Agh, it's as difficult as using a straw, a paper clip, and silly putty to survive a hundred foot drop..while wearing a straight jacket and blindfolded. I'd have to be a mix of MacGyver and David Blaine.