Monthly Archives: June 2006

Work, day 1

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Hm… well, first off, having to take the bus to and from work kinda sucks. I’m working at the Carnegie Learning HQ, which is downtown. I work from 9-5. There are lots of people who also have to go downtown to work from 9-5. Well, damn.
:-\
So yeah, it’s like 15-20 minutes each way, but whatever. It’s a really nice building, and I have my own cubicle.

As far as work goes, today I didn’t do much, but I really did try.
You know how I was so afraid of this job and that I wouldn’t be able to do it? Today really made me feel like that fear was justified.
Spent the first part of the day understanding exactly what it was I have to accomplish this summer, and got a schedule of things.
I understand what I have to do and what the code I write has to do. That part wasn’t hard at all. And we found a method library that, in theory, does exactly what I want.
Then I spent the rest of the day trying to understand how the hell to use the library. And I still don’t understand.
Gaaah.
Tomorrow I might look at it again and then look at other approaches. Dunno.
I really hope I don’t totally fail at this job… :-\

Also have a ton of paperwork I need to do for the job (and a bunch of meetings I need to put in my scheduler and such).
Gaah.
I feel so stressed and it’s only the first day. Just feel kinda lost, maybe. Like I really should know what I’m doing and how to go about it. Having to stress about busses doesn’t help either.
Kinda just want to curl up and cry :-P But meh, that’s okay.

Other PSLC interns living on this floor (the one in the middle is my roommate, Peter)

Um… as far as non-work stuff goes, things have been good. Really good, actually.
The past few nights have made me happy, for more reasons than superficial ones… and not the stupid kind of “OMG ECSTATIC YAY” happiness that I so often feel and that is fleeting… but a deeper kind of happy, where you just feel completely comfortable with yourself and who you are. The kind that isn’t so easy to get rid of (not even by my crappy day today) and that means a lot more to you than just “Oh hey, I’m happy right now.”
I think it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way.
Thank you.</cryptic>

Oh yes, and 8 introduced me to GTO (the anime). I think I’m addicted now.
Damn you. More stuff to distract me when I’m not working.

People should play Student Wars! No one has poked me to teach them how to play yet. I have 5 decks here sitting on my desk. Someone poke me!

I’m exhausted (probably should’ve gone to bed before midnight, given that I had to wake up at 7:30). Maybe I should go buy some dinner and take a nap.

Lotsa stuff!

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Yeah so, today was eventful.
Landing in Denver was the first time I’ve been on a flight that had to abort its landing. Apparently, the air traffic controllers screwed up and the runway WASN’T clear. We were about to touch down when the engines revved and we pulled up hard. Whee. Took another 10 minutes to circle around again for landing.

Then, walking to New House from Donner, ran into Keith and Tim. Went to dinner with them and bohanlon. Before that, however, they helped me carry my boxes of stuff from Alisa’s to New House. And, of course, it started to rain just when we were setting back. And, of course, one of the bottoms of the boxes opened up halfway. So yeah. It took like an hour to get the boxes back, and it sucked, and meh.

Wheee.
…
Okay, so it seemed like more in my head.

Edit: *gets back to room*
*looks at the clock*
Holy SHIT it’s 5 AM?!?!?
…
Erm….
I mean, oh look, I sure woke up early today, it’s only 5 AM! Maybe I should go back to sleep!
…
*cough*

Edit edit: Student Wars: Hijinks and Booooth have been uploaded. Please play.
I have printed versions of all 5 decks in the decklists page. Come poke me sometime and I’ll show you how to play.
And New House showers are teh suck. They’re either too cold or too strong. Bleh.

Thoughts

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So there’s been a lot of random things on my mind lately.

Right now, I’m pissed off at US Airways. I did their online check-in (which, BTW, is way too complicated for being check-in) and went to print my boarding passes. Hm… something screwed up with their page and I can only print my boarding pass from Denver to Pittsburgh. Oh well, not big deal, let’s try that again.
…
Oh, so I can’t check-in again because “a member of your party has already checked-in; please check-in and recieve boarding passes at the airport.” Um, what? Okay, getting past the stupidity of that, then there must be a “reprint boarding pass option.”
…
Nope. Well, damn.
Why can’t all airlines be like Southwest?

Also been thinking a lot about college and how it changes people. I dunno… I remember when I was sitting here a little less than 2 years ago, excited as hell (but nervous as hell) to be heading off to college. I remember arriving there and feeling invinsible… like I could do anything. It was a brand new start for me (just like when I moved here from CO), and I felt confident… like I could leave behind who I was in high school and become who or what I always wanted to be.
And, of course, you can’t really do that. You can only change who you are gradually. It’s unreasonable to expect yourself to be able to suddenly become the opposite of what you were.
At the same time, it’s also unreasonable to expect nothing to change. It’s a different environment. You’re with different people. If you were well-known by everyone… well… you’re not anymore. If you were the loner who sat in the corner by himself, you won’t have much of an opportunity to do that at Orientation.
So I guess a big part of heading to college for me was finding the right balance of the two, and I have to say I think things worked out pretty well. I’m not nearly as bold or outgoing as I envisioned myself being. At the same time, I’m not the same shy-but-popular-in-a-geeky-way kid I was in high school. And I think I’m really happy with that. I mean, yes, there are still things about me I’d change, but I can work on those. I don’t expect things to suddenly change overnight the way I did before.
Meh.
Anyone else have similar experiences?

It’s also amazed me how much I’ve learned in the past 2 years. I mean, I got back and was able to talk to my dad about a lot of the work he’s doing (he’s an engineer at Intel; not sure what area). I actually know more than him now in some areas (CS areas though, obviously). Some of the stuff I’m learning was stuff he did in graduate work.
I wrote up a page of major programming projects (on my CMU page) yesterday, and a lot of the stuff is actually quite impressive. I mean, how many freshmen get to write a photomosaic program, solve the Kevin Bacon problem (ick), write various compression algorithms, and write a (primitive but functional) AI? What about design a processor from scratch using nothing but NAND gates? And who could forget the auto-cannibal maker?
Even stuff that I’ve done this year… malloc, the caching web proxy, buffer bomb, and the Sudoku-solver… when you think about it, those are non-trivial problems. The fact that they’re giving them to us as sophomores says something as to the quality of education here. I mean, hell, the fact that OS is a sophomore/junior level course says something.

A lot of people told me, as I was deciding on my undergrad university, that it’s grad school that really matters. Undergrad is insignificant and where you go isn’t important. You know what? I disagree completely. I think that, at least for me, undergrad is the most important. I mean, really, all grad schools are the same. You’re going to be researching stuff you’re interested in. Sure, having more resources at your disposal might be helpful, but really, is that going to make or break your thesis?
Undergrad, on the other hand, is where you learn all the skills necessary for your (eventual) career. For me especially, since I plan to go into the workforce immediately after I get my BS, it’s even more important. Plus coming from a good undergrad school undoubtedly has some effect on what grad schools you’re accepted to (if you’re into that kind of thing).
So yeah. All of you who said I should go to UofA because undergrad doesn’t matter–you were wrong :-P
Curious what other people think as to this as well.

Oh yes, I promised pictar.

Using up printing quota FTW!

This is a new title

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My desk area r teh photo-y! :-D
Actually, I’ve been meaning to replace most of the photos on the wall. They’re mostly from freshman and sophomore years of high school. My wall above my BED, on the other hand, is happy. I guess that’ll be tomorrow’s picture.

Um… yeah. So I head back to Pittsburgh in 2 days (this Saturday). Strangely, I’m not as excited about heading back as I was at the beginning of summer… probably because I actually am starting to feel comfortable here, and because I havn’t spent as much time with friends here as I would have liked. Meh.
Poo to all of you too, for not having time for me :-P
…
Only half kidding.

Worked a bit on constructing Student Wars decks today. Got a Programming deck, Athletic deck, and KGB deck done. I’ll build more so people have more options when it comes to introductory decks (since building a Student Wars deck, like any other TCG, is not trivial). So yeah, I’m putting all this work in, so people please play? I’ll sit down with you and teach you everything. Seriously.

For those of you who’ve asked, I’ll be working at the PSLC this summer (which basically means I’ll be on campus at the LTI). They produce and market tutoring software for kids. I’m working on the algebra tutor project. I’m going to be rewriting the backend of said system: the parser that takes the word problems the instructor enters and outputs the solution algebraic equations. The existing parser is written in lisp and is relatively accurate. Our goal is to improve the accuracy (so instructors don’t have to go in and fix the parser’s mistakes, which is extremely time consuming) and to rewrite it in Java. In doing so, we hope to gain an understanding of how children learn to parse word problems and get solutions. Should be lots of fun.
…
I just hope they didn’t misplace their faith in me… as in I hope I’m smart enough to do this. Meh.
Sounds like an incredibly difficult problem.

Gone to GameWorks for the past 2 days and played DDR. It’s really weird that they don’t have an ITG machine there, given how they’re supposedly incredibly state-of-the-art. At least I’m getting exercise.

What else, what else… there’s so much I want out of life, and I feel like such a bum sitting here in front of my computer all day not getting any of it. What have I contributed to the world? Nothing. Makes me feel insignificant. Meh.
Whatever. I don’t want to be big and important anyway. Famous people are scary. I just want to be content with who I am and what I have.
And I think, at this moment, I can be, so yay.
Life is good.