Checksum Arcanius

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.

Recent favortes
Weezer – Beverly Hills
DHT – Listen to Your Heart – both the dance mix and the slow mix
Michael Andrews ft Gary Jules – Mad World (From the Donnie Darko soundtrack)

In other news, the parents are trapped in Atlanta for the night due to a delayed flight due to bad weather. And writing that just now made me say, “Oh crap,” because I had yet to make arrangements for them to be picked up – since I will be at work when they arrive tomorrow. Fortunately, I have good friends and they put up with me calling them at 11:30.

It looks like it will be a late night doing my Chem E homework. Here’s a sampler of why I think I’m going to hate this class before too long (somehow, it hasn’t gotten there yet):

A 150-lbm astronaut took his bathroom scale (a spring scale) and a beam scale (compares masses) to the moon where the local gravity is 5.48 ft/s². Determine how much he will weigh (a) on the spring scale and (b) on the beam scale.

Disregarding the gender-stereotypical astronaut for now, here was my response:

I strongly object to the term “weigh” being used to refer to comparing masses as with the beam scale. This seems sloppy and terribly imprecise, even if it is colloquial terminology.

I then went on to solve the problem, which, in case you were wondering:
(a) 25.5-lbf
(b) 150-lbm (even though the book states that the answer is 150-lbf, this is wrong, as I explained above)

I’m sitting in the Las Vegas airport using the free Wi-Fi, having just completed my CSE 143 assignment due a week from today. It was assigned today, and really I had it 95% done before I got here (coding on the airplane), and the test code (which turned up just one issue in my code) actually took longer to write than the class itself. Hopefully things get a little more challenging in this class.

In about ten minutes I’ll be boarding a red eye flight to Baltimore. I’m headed there for another cousin’s wedding — this time it’s the brother of the famous Italian wedding cousin. My choice of flights will allow me to not miss class. On the other hand, I’m flying all night and I get back to Sea-Tac at 2:27am on Monday. Mad props to Dan for being crazy and agreeing to pick me up at that hour (I tell him its good spy training).

In other news, I’m being tempted by the slot machines, and my Chemical Engineering 260 — Thermodynamics class is going to be entirely plug-and-chug, without many concepts. That has me bummed. I guess I should have done more research before signing up for a class specialized for non majors. At any rate, it makes me really appreciate BYU’s open enrollment major-track and honor-track courses. Here at the UW, you have to be in the proper program or get special permission for those.

Took the parents to the airport this morning, then drove straight up I-5 to school, got to class ten minutes late, paid some attention, talked to the TA briefly, then headed to work, worked straight through lunch eating only a few things from the vending machine then left work about 6:40, hit up the Puget Sound Blood Center for a walk-in donation, met a nice girl going to the UW (but curses on me, I didn’t find out any more), left just after 8, hit up Costco Gasoline at about 8:30, then deposited a check from work (reimbursement for my trip to Portland), then headed home, played a little bit of DoD:S (a very well-made game, I might add) to blow off the steam, then ate my first real food of the day (beef, rolls, and cheese, mmmm), submitted my CSE 143 assignment online, and then wrote this blog – and yes this is a run on sentence, just like my day.

I finally rounded out my schedule today by adding Technical Communications 333 — Advanced Technical Writing and Oral Presentation — in the MW 3:30-5:20 slot. While not as desirable as the MTuWTh 10:30-11:20 slot would have been (which was full), this slot still fits my schedule and adds some “texture” to my weekly schedule. Where by texture I mean I might as well be taking night classes at BCC again.

One of the most interesting things I have noticed about classes here at the UW, as compared to BYU and BCC, is that very few classes (of the ones I’m taking, at least) are a “full” 5 credits. I am in a 3-credit Advanced Multivariable Calculus class, a 4-credit Thermodynamics class, a 4 credit Technical Communications class, and a single 5-credit Computer programming class.

As far as work is concerned, this schedule means that Thursdays will be my daytime workday, with Tuesdays and Fridays being possible late afternoon excursions to work, with Monday and Wednesday being only for when I feel a particular need to work late. Probably what I will end up doing is working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

My first day as as a University of Washington Husky began as a glorious late September morning in Seattle. The sun was showing signs of life, yet the air was cool and the lingering clouds made it clear they they would not easily relinquish their rule from the night.

I awoke earlier than normal, unaccustomed to the morning cross-bridge commute and expecting the worst. My preparations took longer than expected, but the commute was shorter than expected. I traveled across the I-90 bridge, then up I-5 to the Montlake E-1 parking area. I was additionally pleasantly surprised to find that, with my Husky Card, parking cost only $2.62 for the whole day. Clearly, I had not researched this process very well.
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