Author Archives: Alan V

CMU Elections

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So yeah, I lost all faith in our student government earlier this year when they implemented a program that made Tartan bikes available to everyone… unlocked… on campus. Something like $15,000 was spent on this project.
Lo and behold, guess what? Within a week, there were probably about 2 left. They were gone in another few days.
What. The. Hell.
Grab a bike, get to class

So then there were student government elections. Or rather, there were supposed to be (the following links yoiked from jgraftor):
First there weren’t enough applicants, and can you really blame them given how little our government actually does (or even has the power to do), and the stuff they do is largely idiotic (see bike program above) or of little impact on campus?
Searching for Senators: CMU elections delayed

Then the students weren’t even informed there were elections coming up:
Students uninformed about upcoming elections

Then the election software froze, causing elections to be postponed again:
Technical difficulties: Elections freeze up on students

And today, the results are inaccessable because someone changed the encryption key:
Election results inaccessible

I mean seriously, WTF?
It is *not* that hard to do elections correctly. It’s not that hard to write election software that works. Correctly. I could probably write something (that looks better than what they have, as well) in something like 30 minutes.
Blar.

In other news, the weather has been nice, so I have lots of piccars.





In other other news, life is completely awesome and happy.
My project for webapps (CMU Adventures) was chosen as a “best project” and I’ll get to demo it tomorrow during class.
Mrrrr.
Also, other non-academic things are also going well.
Wheeee!

Life

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Why is life so amazing? :)

I did more work today on CMU Adventures. I added a messaging system so you can send messages to other players, and will soon extend it to include a public message board system where you can alternately post messages that anyone can read. Any help debugging that would be appreciated. Also, magic has generally been rebalanced as to be less abusive… let’s see how that works out.

Last night was happiness, spending time with awesome people and having random conversations. I think the more time passes, the more I’m loving just spending time with and being around friends. This is a good thing.
Also, spending time with >friend is also always a good thing. ^_^

Also, I got my official job offer today in the mail, and accepted it. I start work on May 28th, so I’ll be back here in Pittsburgh a bit before then. I’ll be working as a developer with General Dynamics. Sounds kinda awesome… my first real developer position. Kinda scared though.

Also, I promised Rolf I wouldn’t post pictures until people lost interest, but there was a Kesden/Rolf newspaper fight in teh clustar yesterday and I have pictures, so you should ask me if you want to see them.

Wheee, yay for Super Smash Brothers with huge turnip things :D

Tonight is 8’s ITG party of awesome and win. Yay for life!

Schedule’d and Carnival’d

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I registered this morning at 8:30. Got all the classes I wanted (first time since Freshman year… yay for being a Senior). Schedule here… Yes, I know there’s a conflict. I’ll be skipping databases recitation because I’m taking the class pass/fail anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. I was lucky getting Pen Based Computing… the class size is 10 people.

There was a Carnival weekend.






All piccars can be found here

Happiness

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The past 3 days, in particular the past 24 hours, in particular the past 7 hours have been among the best, most amazing, happiest times of my life.

Carnival has been happening. A few pictures are up at photos, and I’ll post more logical tomorrow sometime. Seeing all the booths and walking Midway was fun.
This morning was Mobot and buggy sweepstakes. I went and photographed buggy with Greg, and then watched Mobot with Alisa and rlambert and peoples. That was incredibly awesome and fun.
There was more Ukranian (sp?) egg dying with gwillen and peoples that resulted in pretty eggs being made.
Then this evening was dinner and a movie and some interesting conversation and just generally spending time with a certain awesome someone.

Also, I found out today that General Dynamics wants to extend me a summer internship offer. This makes me happy, because it means I’ll get to stay in Pittsburgh this summer (around campus), and yay!

I’m just totally, completely, utterly happy with everything in life right now.

Also, apparently, I’m absorbing nerdiness and cs-major-ness into my skin and developing pasty white nerdflesh, as I actually managed to lightly sunburn myself today after only being outside for a short while.
So weird…