Sleighted

So I don't think I'll be able to sign up for my summer class. Not gonna have enough money for it. Damn. I was really hoping to take it, too. Now this scuffs up my schedule in an unknown way, which I am totally not cool with.

I went out this morning and bought the new Shinedown CD. I don't know how I feel about it. The songs are good, but I don't feel the creativity behind it. A lot of the songs are angrier and more spiteful than their older stuff. I'm not saying it's a bad album, maybe I just had really high expectations. I don't know. Maybe it'll catch on to me, I don't know.

Work is going alright. I wish I could do a little more programming, but I feel behind enough as it is that I'm fine working on the report for the time being. And besides I still know very little about C++. When I tried to work with Alex on a file, he had to baby step through it for me, and I still don't get it completely. But that's why I'm not a CS major. There's a lot of stuff we've already done. There's a lot we still want to do, which is good. I'll get you guys a copy of the report if you want, or at least what we have so far. I still don't like programming at all, even though it is becoming more of a necessity.

Brent's totally got me hooked back on to Super Metroid. The fastest I've done so far is 100% in 103 minutes. I think Brent's record is 90 minutes, so less than 15% off the master, I think that's pretty good. I can't do the fast roll thing, though I do know how to do it, I just can't get my grubby fingers to time it right. Plus since I'm using a GameCube controller (I'm playing it on Wii Virtual Console- I think it's an exact emulation of the original. It even lags when there are multiple enemies on the screen. I would sure hope that the Wii has a better processor than that.) it's a little awkward to run and shoot at the same time.

I'm tired and I haven't even done anything. I need to find a math GRE book ASAP.

Woik

So I've been going to school for almost two weeks now in the middle of the summer, and getting paid for it! Too bad I won't see my first paycheck until next week. I remember last year, in Cali, three weeks in we each get this check worth 1500 bucks. It was awesome. This time, three weeks in, I'll be lucky if I get 400. But I didn't stay here for the money. I stayed here because it was more certain. More comfortable. More secure. Less confidential.

The project I'm working with Dave on has to do with computational geometry. There are two other guys also working with me, Alex and Tom. They're pretty cool folk. Alex is a double Math/CS major, rising junior I think. Tom is a Math major/ Comp Sci minor who was gonna go into Math Ed but just switched a little while ago into the pure branch. He's the oldest of the three of us by a couple of years I think, but that's no big deal. Alex is 20 and 3 months, so it looks like going to get a drink with the guys might be out of the question. But I digress.

Basically we're trying to mathematically run a bunch of stuff on a computer. Since we're dealing with "triangulations" that contain numerous edges, vertices and faces, we have computer issues and math issues in computing it. We're working in C++, and I get most of it from my one Java class, but I don't think I'll be working too much on programming; Alex seems to have that pretty under control. We don't really have assigned jobs yet; I tend to move around from researching methods to looking for usable code to checking my email to playing with wooden blocks to typing up our report that's due in a few weeks. Oh yeah, we're expected to return a paper on the order of 40-50 pages after the 4th of July. Eep. Hopefully we'll have enough stuff to take it as far as we need. But we need to go for quality over quantity. The program director (not Dave) just wants to make sure that a three-person team is doing the work of three people (We looked up that most one person papers run on the order of 15 pages, so multiply by 3 and there you go.)

So I work pretty much from 9-3, with travel time at the beginning and end, and a small lunch break. Sometimes the three of us go eat together, sometimes no. It varies. We all have our own little schedules. Like today Alex didn't come in cause he was gonna watch a soccer game. It's cool.

I'm hoping that I can earn enough money on these first two paychecks to pay for a summer class I want to take during Summer session II. I'm signed up for the class in the fall as it is, but if I could take it now then I can take another class I really want to take and that will make my schedule somewhat happy. Although I'll still be taking 6 classes for 15 units. Eep. With 2 labs.. Wah! I hate labs.

So again working on just math is making me look at my options again for grad school. I need to look into more programs, but I have a short list of places I want to apply to. I just wonder if I can get in to them. My GRE scores are not so GREat. They're pretty good, but not super awesome. I need to sign up for the Math subject GRE test. Plus I need to find out what the heck a ring and a field is.

I miss summer vacation.