Blog | Admin | Archives

Graduation vs. Steel Conflcit

Today was my first day oif work at Microvision. I filled out a lot of paperwork, took the tour, and actually did some testing. Found a problem too, but due to NDA’s galore, I don’t think I’m going to tell you anything more about that. Things went well overall.

Tomorrow, I’m spending most of the day in the photo lab printing up my final project.

And now, on to the title piece. My brother’s graduation from college and Steel Conflict are the same weekend. I almost gave up the graduation to attend the battlebot-like event, but I talked to Tim today, who is heading the battle bot project, and thought some more, and so I will go to my brother’s graduation and miss the first half of the competition.

The math midterm indeed did not go well – I got another 77. I can still pull an A- in the class by doing 140 or better out of 150 on the final. I plan on it.

Keeping it short and simple, since so much is going on.

No so hot

The Math midterm didn’t go so well… I ran out of time because I didn’t know how to do everything immediately. Given some time to take the practice tests, I probally would have done a lot better, as Rich did. Its an unfortunate way to end such an incredible week, but then I can’t have everything work out. And I have a week to get things pulled together for the final, and I think I might still be able to eek out an A in the class. In photography, I have to figure out if I’m going to take Photo 3 next quarter… my photo 1 teacher thinks that I am good enough.

Kevin, from my Bellevue Club days, gave me a call today. It was good to hear from him again. He’s now working at Met Life and he’s putting together a soccer team that I may be part of, and holding some seminars that I’m invited to. Add that to the list of things I’m doing in April. Exciting times.

Sick Scott Sprockets

I�m still sick. I made it up to about 85% recovered and I�ve just hovered there ever since. Its very annoying, and not at all usual. I want to be well again!

I�ve started to recover my counterstrike skillz. I started out 6-12 today, but then went on to get to 30-18, meaning that I was, for that period, 24-6! That�s pretty good methinks.

I got to talk to big Scott for the first time in a long time. This is why I miss him:

Scott: yooooooooooooooooooooo
Me: hi there’
Scott: hey
Scott: wazzup in Ryan land?
Me: um
Me: I want my teeth to have that after-dentist feeling, so i amusing my leatherman on them
Scott: cool
Me: also, I enjoy photography, but not photography teachers so much
Scott: did you know that the amount of integers (positive and negative) is the same amount as just the positive odd integers? Is that messed up or what?

Tomorrow, bright and early, I get to call all around to try to secure two sprockets, a 32 tooth with a hub and a 45 tooth plate, both #25. We need them by noon on Tuesday, so we�ll probally be paying more in shipping than for the actual sprockets. It�ll be interesting. Then comes math and we find out if I get to continue playing counterstrike. Then I get to spend the rest of the day in the photo lab. Wahoo.

Dubiously Useful Information

I think I aced the calculus midterm. In celebration, I played Counterstrike. The ban will return, though, I suppose, if I don�t end up getting the grade I expected. Nevertheless, it was nice to get back into the game� My skills aren�t nearly as refined as they were when they left, but the instincts are still mostly good, and I�m hovering around 1:1 ratio-wise.

I visited the robotics �team� at the school today during testing. All of one student was there� Hopefully we get a better showing at the practice competition tomorrow. The arm still pops chain quite easily at half power, and its painfully slow, my fault. But the autonomous code is buggy as all-get out � Larry and Dave�s fault. There is plenty of blame to go around. J We�ll see how we are compared to other teams, and hopefully we�ll keep working on the robot for a few more days instead of packing it up tomorrow.

I saw Secondhand Lions � the idea was decent, but it was pretty overacted. The flashbacks were fun, but the touchy-feely parts of the movie were so forced it lost significance for me. Can�t suggest it too much, unless you�re into that kind of movie�


Adam: i drank red bull today
Adam: it didnt give me wings much less energey
Adam: have you ever had red bull?
Ryan: never
Adam: do you know what it is
Ryan: I have a friend who drinks them before he goes snowboarding
Ryan: he seems to think they helpo
Adam: lol
Adam: i drank a 24 ounce uh… something
Adam: it didnt do anything to me
Ryan: I’ll add your lack of energy experience to my repository of dubiously useful information

You know you’re too old when someone asks “do you know what it is” is reference to Red Bull…

Time for more CS or sleep, whichever comes first�

Running Away

I am in terrible shape. I went for a run — or rather, tried to go for a run — and it ended up being a glorified jog down and a walk back up the hill. It didn’t help that I am still a little sick (75% recovered, but not yet whole), and I was coughing by the time I got to the bottom of the hill, but still, I have a long ways to go before I get back to the condition I was in September of 2001. I think it is worth the effort, though. All the better to play ultimate with, which I will be doing a lot of when I start at the UW (hopefully on both playing and starting).

I had a plan to study for Math when I got home today. I somehow ended up getting almost none of the plan accomplished. Instead, I very efficiently wasted time until I finally started watching Donnie Darko (which is not a waste of time) for the second time in 24 hours. If language and a very mysterious plot don’t turn you off, then take some time to watch it.

This got me to talking to a friend about my early exposure to movies:
Me: I used to not like movies much
Me: I didn’t see them very often; when I did, they were generally bad experiences
Friend: serious?
Me: I once saw two movies in the same day: Bevis and Butthead Do America and Mars Attacks
Me: B&B was the superior movie
Me: which is really kind of sick
Friend: I saw Mars Attacks, thought it was really dumb
Me: yup

Which brings me back to the original topic, I’m not so good at studying, because I’m not so good at staying on task, especially when I’m around a computer (and thus the wandering of topics and the hour it takes me to write this one page.

While on the jog/walk, I took a shortcut back through the woods. While not exactly scary, since I was in Bellevue’s Lakemont area, it did get me to thinking about some of the topics covered in John Eldredge’s book “Wild at Heart,” which I have been slowly reading (thanks to Heidi for the excellent gift!). That is, part of my heart does long for danger, to prove to myself that I can overcome difficulty. My experience in this arena is limited. Hikes and camping trips touch in the area, but they have always been so controlled, so planned. The road trip was a good step in the right direction, but it was too limited also. My calculus class doesn’t look like it’ll be the one since once again I’ve found a way to not care about studying when it really counts. A midnight hike around Salt Lake’s foothills with Clifton was a good experience, as was the climb to the top of a peak as a thunderstorm approached and my brother called me off during my Spring term down at BYU. It hasn’t been enough. Of course, I should finish the book too.

CDex, Friends, and Dilligence

CDex rules again. I used it long ago to rip my CDs to mp3s, and then I switched to EAC. Then EAC stopped working on my laptop, and I used nothing for a long time. Then I got the latest version of CDEx and it is even better than it was before and it seems to make wonderful rips. Straight to mp3 via lame. And its open source. What more could I want? check it out @ sf.net (sourceforge.net, not to be confused with silverfir.net, although both are worthy projects).

I have some really good friends. In fact, I am amazed by the quality of my friends. You know who you are.

So far I have kept my counterstrike commitment, but I’m not doing so well with the studying commitment. Not enough library time I suppose (none, to be exact). Other commitments are doing even worse. I blame it on my lack of diligence. In my life, when the going gets tough, I have tended to pack up and leave. I was good enough at enough things that I guess nobody noticed. Or if they did notice, they didn’t do anything about it. But that is the past, and whatever happened, I have to deal with it now. I’m getting significantly better at facing down irrational fears, although it still takes the active intervention my rational self. My big need right now is to find it within myself to stick to something hard even if the outcome looks less than optimal for me. These two things are related because — as far as I know — I have always done well in school courses where I tried. However, because I tend to back off from things that aren�t looking to end well for me, I’ve never really tried at a course in which I was doing badly. Since it goes both ways, and I’m not really sure which is the cause and which is the effect, or if its some combination — but the end result is that I have never really been at risk of putting it all out there and failing in a classroom setting — or any other setting for that matter really. I’ve been planning on having this Calculus test change that — the first test didn’t go so well, so there is a real chance I’ll do badly in the class. And I want to ace it, which is still very possible from a raw points perspective. But I�m having trouble getting into gear of this — I have only done homework once. While I am not required to turn the homework in, it is very necessary to do it to get the proficiency needed for tests, which require both accuracy and speed. So unless I actually try here, I will remain uncertain of my ability to excel at school when failure is a real possibility. I will keep you posted.

Otherwise, it was a typical Sunday — dropped off movies, went to church, lounged around at home after eating… getting nothing done. Until maybe now, if I’m good, I’ll do something useful after this. We’ll see. Well, this is useful, isn’t it? Or is it? Meh.

I’m out of my Lithium — have been for a couple of days now. I take it for combating tendencies toward depression — and it does seem to level my mood. So I should probably get that one refilled, even ifs it’s just the placebo effect, it’s a good effect. And sooner rather than later I’m going to have to have my pinky on my right hand looked at. An injury that went away after I ignored it years ago came back in December and it’s lingering this time, and its probably time that I got it fixed for good. My guess is that it’s a fracture — and if so, it would be the closest thing to a broken bone I’ve ever had.

Multitasking and strange happenings at SilverFir.net

Multitasking is great: I’m chatting, administering SilverFir.net, watching a movie, and writing up the latest entry to the blog all at the same time. Well, I’m mostly watching the movie and chatting, which is why after an hour I’m only on my second sentence here. Two hours. Three� ok, maybe multitasking isn’t so great :-p.

Well, The movie was good, and the problem with SilverFir.net was extremely obscure. Somehow, the loopback interface wasn’t up — so “localhost” and 127.0.0.1 would give different results, and I couldn’t ping myself. Thanks to a user (see http://moretti.silverfir.net) wanting to install Uberblog (see http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/) the problem started showing symptoms, and after hours of struggle, was figured out and (hopefully) resolved.

I’m thinking I need to get the next version of SilverFir up real soon, because the current one is going haywire pretty quickly. Gentoo is looking like a good option. Now I just need a way to upgrade with minimal downtime.

Since I am thinking about it now, I have thought of an ideas that I think should be considered for Linux distributions: instead of putting files all over the filesystem when installing things (as Debian and Gentoo do), why not put all the files for a particular program in a single directory (say, /usr/local/programname/ just like apache and mysql default to), then use simlinks for everything else — logs, config files, binaries — just put simlinks in the “regular” places – /usr/bin or /etc or /var/log, etc. That way, when a program is deinstalled, a cron job can go by and neatly clean up all the simlinks and there is no residual from the program. And deinstallation involves one rm command. Very clean, very simple. Maybe someday I’ll suggest this to someone who knows what to do about the idea.

Well today I made it to Larry’s about 10 — only Hilary and Eric were there. I stayed until around 5, by which time the mast of the arm was maybe complete. I wish I were better at doing the arm project myself, but there are so many things that I just don’t think about yet. It’ll just take time I guess. After leaving Larry’s I made my way to Sammamish — stopping by Amanda’s place. She was at work, so I stopped there and let her know about the test on Monday. We’ll be studying before class Monday. o.O