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Today

Today, after Breakfast, a rather dismal day of frisbee for me (althogh I still had fun), and a lot of mom-office moving, I tried out for a spot in the Simpsons Coutnerstrike Clan. I didn’t have a great showing, but I was the top dog or top three a fair number of times, and on the last map, the one they are most likely to remember the best, I was doing the best as well, so maybe I actually have a chance.

But thsi also means I ahve to do all my photography and all my Diff.Eq. homework tomorrow. Yikes.

Tired

I’ve been really sporadic on posting recently, which is bad because posting here gives me a chance to materialize some thoughts, which seems to be a healthy thing for me to do.

Today in my Differential Equations class, we had the third and final midterm – I studied practically all night, albeit not very efficiently due to distractions of the Counterstike type. I went to sleep around the time the sky began to light up again, then woke up at verious 7 minute intevals between two and four hours later. Mother cooked me an excellent breakfast, and after brushing up on a few problems and missing my tennis class, I proceded to campus to take the test. It went alright – I’m fairly confident on 6 out of the 8 problems. The other two went pretty badly, though I may scrounge up some partial credit. Barring stupid mistakes on the 6 problems (which is not out of the question), I should do passably on the test. Otherwise it could get ugly.

The lesson to be learned here is that my time management, work ethic, and focus under pressue still need major improvements if I am to become a well-rounded functional person. My natural gift for test taking and blind intuition can only carry me so far thorugh life without additional effort.

On Sunday, Shai and I went to Bellingham to visit Beth and Greg. We had a good time walking among the Ski to Sea race extravaganza which included many street booths. We ate at Lemon Grass, the best Thai food resturant ever. Excellent food, good prices, excellent service, and a good time was had by all. We also thre in some frisbee and Lava tag with some WWU students that showed up before returning.

I have fallen rather far behind in my photography class as well, not having done anything to speak of in the last two weeks other than thinking about the upcoming assignment (due Tuesday). I will take pictures this weekend and develop and print on Monday, which I am getting off of work. Also due on Tuesday is the final project in the Diff.Eq. Class, which I haven’t even taken a look at yet. That will also have to be done this weekend, emailed in for comment, and tweaked (or rewritten as the case may be) Monday night.

My grueling work schedule over the last two weeks has played a big part in my lack of progress in other parts of my life – an average of more than 30 hours the last three weeks. The time outside of this is often wasted, I have to admit, usually by myself but also sometimes by others. I wouldn’t call the trip to Bellingham a waste, but the 2-3 hours of Couterstrike every night is definitely excessive, as are some of my other, less talked-about habits, such as surfing the web and other messings around involving, generally, my laptop, on which I have been on a rather lengthy binge. Of course there are classes as well (but reall yonly 7-10 hours), and the Seattle International Film Festival just grabs a little more time out of the pot. The result is that I’ve only taken a few hours for schoolwork, which was mostly composed of catching up in reading my Diff.Eq. book, because I got behind by, surprise, not reading any of it for a long time (and this well after the FIRST Championship Event, so I cannot place any blame there).

I do wonder how it is that I can get myself out of this rut. For the whole time, I was on the pills, (although they ran out today), but then I also have to wonder what affect those have other than leveling my mood – at least thats what I think they do, its so hard to tell, especially since I’m so insensitive to change.

Well, enough of that for now, back to work I guess.

New Cable Modem & Women

Well, the Comcast Guy came and replaced our cable modem. Everything seems to be better now, I am mucho happy. I have yet to se the new modem myself, but my brother reports that it is black (woohoo!). I will ost pictures sometime maybe.

Two weeks and a day until my last final this school year. I’m stiall waiting to hear from the UW.

I saw Uniform at the Seattle International Film Festival today with Dan & co. It wasn’t very good, but I’ve seen worse too. Primer, which I have higher hopes for, is Monday.

Clifton sent me this link, about how to get more women into Linux. My specific interest was different, how to get more women into the TRC… Reading the howto left me feeling a little guilty and a little confused and a little indignant. Guilty because once I made a sexist joke to the two most promising girls on the TRC. I meant to apologize, but I never got around to it, and now I rembmer that I need to again. Confused, because some things seem to contradict. Do we want to treat women like everyone else (as she says to do at one point), or do we want to be extra careful to let them type the commands themselves (as she claims at another point). Finally, indignant because the author cites both at once how we raise males and females differently that leads to discrimination against females. Does this differentiation in raising children not just as strongly (or, these days, even more strongly) “discriminate” against me being a nanny, for example? Of course, this isnt really discrimination, is it, since I don’t really want to be a nanny. But then, what percentage or girls want to be (insert technical field here). Of course it is argued that these preferences come from differential treatment of genders in the first place. But what of that? My parents did not introduceme to the joys of autoworking as a child, and perhaps as a result, I’m not terribly interested in auto working. Does this mean I was discriminated against? If this happened to a girl, would that make her discriminated against?

I actaully wrote all that last night… enjoy!

Day after tomorrow today…

Finally acknoledged!

From myuw.washington.edu:

Application Status

Thank you for applying for admission to the University of Washington!
We received your application for admission as a Transfer student to the University of Washington for autumn quarter 2004 on February 17, 2004.

The status of your application was last updated on May 12, 2004.

Your application was given an initial review, and a final admission decision is pending. If further information is required, we will contact you by mail.

Applicants are notified beginning April through July, as soon as an admission decision can be made. Autumn quarter 2004 begins September 29, 2004.

This is the first change I’ve seen since they reported recieving my transcripts almost two months ago. Its good to see life in the machine, it means the wait will be over soon. I think I’ll get in, but there’s nothing quite like confirmation to warm the soul and strengthen the ego (as if I need more of that!)

In other news, I got my Diff.Eq. tst back today. A 40 was an A and I got a 44.4, so I figure thats pretty good. I’m having more dust problems in photography, and since I’m working most days of the week, I hardly have time to really make prints except when I’m rushed. Finally, work is going well, except for the recent dead head disk drive controller, SmarTeam insanity, and self-extracting installs gone awry. Its a pretty good life.

Ben and I have selected movies from the Seattle International Film Festival we’d like to see. A lot of them sound pretty cool. The next step is actually buying them. Unfortunately, due to schedules and movie selections, only one of my selections coincides with one of Dan’s. If we work things right, we may be able to bring that up to two. We shall see. $45 for a six pack, two between us. Anyone who wants to see the director’s cut of Donnie Darko, contact me.

Meh

The power went out at the house today so I had the pleasure of restarting silverfir.net again. Hey, that�s a double repetition (kinda like a double negative, but with doing something again instead… yeah�)

The day went fairly smoothly otherwise. I got up early to go to kinkos to make transparencies out of some prints I have, then I went to BCC and started doing my cyanotypes. After math and more cyanotypes, I went to work, and then I was off to Shai�s 21st birthday party. That went till 10, and then I came back here where I got a new Belkin 802.11g wireless Ethernet bridge working, and gave the wet11 to my brother. The speed should make file transfers from my laptop to the desktop without connecting in cat 5 more manageable.

A Pretty Productive Day

Today was a good day. I managed to make it to tennis early, do better than expected on a Diff. Eq. quiz, get my photo assignment done and turned in, all before noon. Then, since Id din’t have work for the first weekday in forever, I was able to eat lunch at a leisurely pace, send a package to scott, donate blood, mow the lawn, and get some photogrphy in as well. I then watched some TV, something which I very rarely do, and I was quickly reminded of why I only very rarely watch TV. I also played some CS, but began feeling sick so now I’m preparing to sleep it off.

In other good news, I got to see Stu Bloom, a “gracious professional” who posted a scathing personal attack on me on the Chief Delphi forums stuck in an elevator in this video (careful, its big).

A good day overall.

Halo 2

“Halo 2 is a lot like Halo, only it’s Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas,” explained Jason Jones, head of Bungie Studios. “And the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

Sounds exciting. But I’m more excited for Half Life 2, and assuming Valve doesn’t make another giant misstep like they did with Steam when it was initially released, and assuming they fi the dynamic lighting problems, and assuming that the physics engine is as amazing as it looks, then I see nothing in the way between Half Life two and game of the year in multiple publications.

Its another inredibly beautiful day outside, and I have a huge photo assignment due tomorrow that I ahven’t even taken one photo for. And I have a Diff.Eq. Quiz tomorrow that I haven’t studied for. And of course school and work and I’d like to get a haircut while I’m at it.

Does it ever stop?