Checksum Arcanius

Washington State’s General election is coming up on Tuesday, November 8th. Here are my recommendations for the races I’m voting in:

Initiative 900: YES
Initiative 901: NO
Initiative 912: YES
Initiative 330: NO
Initiative 336: NO!!!!
Senate Joint Resolution 8207: NO
King County Proposition No. 1: NO
County Executive: David Irons
Sheriff: Greg Schmidt
King County Council District 9: Reagan Dunn
Port of Seattle Commissioner Position 1: John Creighton
Port of Seattle Commissioner Position 3: Lloyd Hara
Port of Seattle Commissioner Position 5: Jack Jolley
Bellevue City Council Position 2: Conrad Lee
Bellevue City Council Position 4: John Albertson
Bellevue City Council Position 6: Don Davidson

If you want to know why, read on below…
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In a grading miracle, my math teacher finished evaluating all of the tests less than twelve hours after we started taking the test. A quick response to my grade inquiry revealed that I scored 32 out of 40. Not stellar, by any means — in fact, it is about the worst I could have done and not felt terrible. On the other hand, I’ve decided that this will allow me to play at least one game of DoD:S before getting bak to work.

I was invited by fellow Microvision intern Nick to head out to Chopstix with him and some of his friends. I accepted and ended up enjoying my first experience at a dueling pianos bar. I escaped with a light $22 tab as well — not drinking does have its benefits. There were a number of great songs played, as well and a number that I didn’t know, and a number I didn’t know well. Three pianists took turns playing and singing on two pianos, so each got several times to rest throughout the night. The most impressive part was the huge repitoire that each of the guys had. The songs were always loud, sometimes fun, and ocasionally lewd. The food was quite good, but short of excellent (I had the shrimp and tried out some of the peanut saunce pasta as well). On our way out around 12:30, the friend who met us there discovered that his car was locked inside the garage he had parked in — it had closed at midnight. So after dropping Nick and Ariana (quite the babe) off, I ended up taking Andrew home.

After sleeping in a little too much recently, I decided I needed to rectify my alarm clock situation. Too often , was sleeping right through my alarm clock. When I had the same problem back at BYU, I set up my computer (along with the relatively nice speakers currently loaned to Bobby) so that it would play Chumbawamba’s Amnesia (“Do you suffer from long-term memory loss? I don’t remember“) at a fairly good volume. It always worked, and my roommate was good to put up with the brief morning noise for such a good cause as getting me up.

I hadn’t really considered this approach for a while because my current desktop is a little louder than oasis was, and I really didn’t want to be leaving it on all night (its also a very warm and bright machine, which combined with its noise might interfere with some sleep). However, I finally decided that waking up was too important, so I went about setting it up on Monday morning. While doing so, I came across a very cool feature in the Windows task scheduler: a check box that reads, “Wake up computer to perform this task.” Well, this was news. Apparently, I could put the computer into standby mode, where it is quiet, dark, and cool. Then it will wake up and play music at me in a loud manner at the appropriate time. After a quick test found the system to be working, I set it up. The system has been working progressively better. A couple of days ago, I tweaked the system for separate MWF and TTh wakeup times. Waking up early has made it easier to do so, so the effect is self-reinforcing. I even made it to CSE 143 section on time yesterday, something I hadn’t done since the second day of class.

Furthermore, I’m getting more sensitive. Today, I awoke not to blaring music, but to the click my desktop made as it revived itself from sleep. I was able to act quickly enough to turn the volume down to a good listening level before the startup completed and the music started. It was actually a quite pleasant way to wake up.

I have done it before and I am doing it again. As math goes not well, I will not play any Steam game until I do well on a math test, be that the one on Wednesday or some future test.

Last night, I was unable to get any traction on my Math 324 homework due today. I realized I was hopelessly tired and opted for sleep at 2:00am over trying to pull a fruitless all-nighter. This morning, I fared little better and as a result, I didn’t get the homework in today, and on top of that missed class. I need to begin taking steps to improve my performance in math or I am going to fall far enough behind that there will be no hope of regaining my footing. My current plan is as follows:

By Friday night, I will have caught up with where I am supposed to be in the textbook reading. By Saturday night, I will have completed today’s homework. By Sunday night, I will have completed next Tuesday’s homework assignment. By Tuesday night, I will have reviewed my old homework assignments and verified that I know what I am doing. This way, I can go into class Wednesday for the midterm and do well.

As I see it, I have two options when it comes to homework. I can either:
(a) start to do it earlier, preferably by about a week -or-
(b) continue to do it the night/morning before and DIE

I’m afraid I’m leaning towards option (b)…. sigh…

The issue lies in the fact that my weeks go something like this:
Monday – Tech Comm homework due (usually a paper I worked on over the weekend)
Tuesday – Chem E homework due (about 3-5 hours of problems)
Wednesday – Math homework due (about 2-4 hours problems)
Wednesday – More Tech Comm homework due (usually a smaller assignment, except for this week)
Thursday – Only one class, but work all day (last week was 10 hours at MVIS)
Friday – End of week, take a breather
Saturday – Sleep in, play frisbee, maybe catch a movie, hang with friends
Sunday – Sleep in, play flag football, do Tech Comm homework…. repeat

So ideally, with one burst of energy some weekend, I should be able to simply shift everything by a week and always be ahead by a week. Or something like that.