Yes He Was Alright

Today I drove like a bitch.  One incident where I was honked at was because I did it on purpose.  While it’s completely my fault, I suppose there’s no harm in trying to warrant my bitch-like cutting off maneuver that I did.  The car on the left of me who I cut off left a huge gap in front of them, but barely short of allowing someone to change into their lane.  This happened for a couple of yards, and either I was gonna cut them off for pissing me off, or I was gonna miss the left turn onto the on-ramp.  I chose the former, and honk.  The second incidence was due to lack of focus.    I was about to switch over to the left lane, and there was a car in my blind spot, and then honk.  For some reason I didn’t notice their headlights that were probably glaring in my rear view mirror.  Luckily I did turn my head to check while I was about to make the lane change.  The other car seemed nice about it I think, since it seemed like they let me change.  But I didn’t.  Not sure why.  I was really pissed off at myself for being such a shitty driver, so I probably didn’t deserve that courtesy or something.  I stayed in my lane, drove about a quarter mile down to the next street light, then made a U-turn.

I parked my car and had the sudden urge to get the skateboard out of my trunk and go around the neighborhood for a bit to think.  But truthfully, I didn’t really have anything to think about.  I was just extremely annoyed at all my vehicular fuck-ups that happened all within a ten-minute period.  I was driving exactly like the assholes I cuss out all the time.  This is clearly unacceptable.  In any case, I strolled/skateboarded through the neighborhood and took in some fresh air.  On my way back, while I was approaching my house, I started going on a slight downhill gradient on an unlit street.  I skated on some gravel and was absolutely about to eat shit, but I didn’t.  It was miraculous.  I felt the gravel, the board started to spin out, I was falling back, then I forget what exactly happened here, but the board darted away under me and I think I fell off backwards but managed to land on my feet.  I ended up in the middle of the street looking as if I was doing squats with my legs far apart and my quads tightened up.  I think that the workout I’ve been doing lately saved me from some potentially bad scrapes.  It was a pretty awesome experience.

I did get back on a skated the few yards back, but made a right into the cul de sac and pretended I was surfing.  I wish that I had that kind of balance while I’m out on the water.  It’s kind of impossible to try and do cutbacks on land without eating shit, so I’m pretty much out of luck on ever doing those sweet surf moves cuz I certainly don’t see myself ever dedicating enough time to get good enough to do it on the water.  If there’s any sport that looks extremely fun when professionals do it, it’s definitely surfing.  I wish I didn’t suck so bad at surfing, and I wish getting out on the water wasn’t such a hassle.

I Don’t Want to Give It to You, Your Way

Yesterday was Thursday.  I don’t have class on Thursdays, or Fridays for that matter, so I typically do a full day of work.  I’m usually not very productive, but generally speaking, I get some stuff done.  Or at least figure out some stuff mentally, and make a game plan of sorts for the next time I work.  But Thursday and today, Friday, has been extremely horrible and disgustingly unproductive.  I woke up yesterday and it was storming outside, so I made a split second decision to “work at home” since I remembered my boss usually works at home when it’s raining.  Unsurprisingly, it was a bad decision.  0% work done.  The extent of my work day was opening up my code and adding a line of comment that states what to put in there.  “I’ll work my ass off tomorrow,” I tell myself.  As you can tell by this post, not much work is being done.  I am, in fact, more productive than yesterday though.  But not by much considering anything more than 0% is more productive.

Then there’s the problem of classmates.  Why is it so hard for people to respond to your messages, email or facebook, in a prompt manner.  They have time to do other shit online, but not respond to your messages about a class that they’re in too, whose grade is on the line too.  Fuck working in groups.  It’s such a fucking hassle.

Additionally, I feel extra lazy because my entire body is sore, especially my quads.  It hurts when I drive.  My friend and I started a new workout called Tabata, which basically consists of doing an exercise for 20 seconds at full power, rest for 10, doing this repetition eight times.  While it’s only four minutes of workout, I can happily say that I’ve never been this sore in my life.  Then yesterday, while headed down the parking lot stairs, I slip on the yellow paint that (I think) is supposed to help you see the depth between each step.  And down I go.  My right hand attempts to find the railing, but misses and is spared from being the first hand to feel the impact of the steps.  My left hand attempts to cushion my fall, but lands awkwardly on my pinky.  Now today, my pinky is stiff and sore, obviously sprained.  I can’t straighten my fingers out so that they’re all parallel to each other like I can my right hand.  My pinky finger hangs outwards.  It hurts but it’s kind of funny.

Past and Present They Don’t Matter, Now the Future’s Sorted Out

Title is quite the opposite but it’s one of the songs stuck in my head.

I think I may have found something I may want to pursue:  interface/interactive design.  I guess this ranges from user interfaces of products and websites, etcetera, but leaning more on the aesthetic side of things, not the detailed psychology of the design.  Specifically speaking, I’m thinking of the interface you see in Minority Report.  Apparently the people who work on the interface (called g-speak) are mostly from RISD, MIT, and USC.  RISD never really caught my attention too much aside from it being a tier-1 school, but I want to go there more than I did before after reading a little more about it.  I want to rant about grad schools, but I digress.  Pinpointing my interest in interface design is nothing particularly breakthrough since I have wanted to do this since I switched over to my current major, but there’s some kind of renewed enthusiasm and confidence that this is something I could see myself genuinely doing.  But the question remains, how does one get to that point?

Also, I have two canker sores in my mouth.  One is under my tongue, the other is on my gums right behind my bottom front two teeth.  I cannot wait until these damn things heal.  As you can imagine, I cannot eat without my molars irritating my canker sore under my tongue.

Gone for Good

To update those who actually read my last rant, I was in fact wrong.  Very, very wrong.  My professor literally gave everyone in the class A’s (except to one guy who probably dropped the class but was still enrolled).  Anyways, as nice as that may be, I still hope I never have to take any of his classes anymore.  My old argument still remains, I didn’t learn anything from him.

In keeping this tradition alive, this post will recap this past year (probably in very little detail unlike last year) and make some forecasts about the upcoming year too.

Sadly though, looking back at 2009, I really don’t recall any major events happening without having to reread some of my blog posts.  First, the goods.
• My very lucky summer internship at SDSC that turned into an awesome part time job opportunity during the school year.  I learned (and am still learning) a lot there, and my boss is extremely nice and lenient.  The real working world will likely not be like this at all.  And as an added bonus, I have an office all to myself which I should really do work in, but often take advantage of it and do my homework in.
• Also during the summer was my trip up to Northern California to visit some friends.  That was fun and interesting, particularly the part where we got lost the first two days trying to look for my friend near Yosemite.  Did some wakeboarding for the first time, and that was disastrous.  I was by far the worst person there, and had many face plants trying to just get up on the damn wakeboard.  It was fun being there with my friends though, as much as it sucked being the only one that couldn’t do much on the wakeboard.
• Good grades.  I was looking through my academic history, and the grade changes are pretty extreme.  It was like a kiddie roller coaster ride the first few quarters with my grades fluctuating at a pretty low altitude.  But it slowly eased up, and now I have a decent GPA for the first time since high school.  I have a rags-to-riches story– or an analogous form of it anyways.
• I got my sister’s old car to replace my car that was just about ready to die on me.  And it’s actually possible to keep it clean and new looking unlike my old car.

Now, onto the bad.
• My old car was a junker that cost me nearly three weeks of work when I still worked many hours over at Calit2.
• I got into my first car accident.  It was completely NOT my fault though.  A rental truck (not a Toyota Tundra or Ford F150 kind of truck, but a rental truck that’s a little bigger than a U-Haul truck) backed into my car while I was on the road along my school’s campus loop.  I paid nothing of course, but it was kind of a bitch to have to get my car repaired and go through all the paperwork with my lawyer who insisted I try to squeeze all the money I can out of the responsible party.  I don’t want to sound like a goody two-shoes, but I did not want to do that, and the lawyer kinda gave me a hard time for that.  I guess I would have caved in if the girl that backed her company rental truck into my car was a bitch, but that was far from the case.  She was nice, so too bad I would have felt guilty if I tried to take all her money.
• Had to get my windshield replaced after an extremely small pebble (we’re talking about a millimeter wide) hit it.  More money down the drain.
• Many of my friends traveled abroad, transferred to another school, or graduated.  I miss hanging out with them between classes and during our free time.
• I made an ass out of myself when I asked a friend out, which creeped her out so now I don’t think we’re really friends anymore.  But I think a lot of it also has to do with my not living in the CSE basement like I did before (because I had to in order to do my CSE assignments).  On the plus side though, I did get over it pretty quickly after a bitched and moaned about it to my friends who first laughed at me then talked me out of that miserable feeling a bit.  Still, it kind of sucks because she’s one of the very few girls I actually cared to try for (“try” is not a very good word to use, but I can’t think of any other words; “pursue” works but it sounds too needy).  I’m over it.  Though that’s not to say I wouldn’t date her if she came up to me and asked me for some miraculous reason.  But, whatever, I’m over it.

And the finale:  forecast.
• Graduation.  How incredibly frightening is it to think that I will be leaving this little shell I’ve grown very sick of, yet still want to clutch onto and never let go of.  After about five months and a few weeks, I’ll no longer be in college “learning”, but rather I’ll be working.  Working is the ideal situation.  Actually, working somewhere that’s not commuting distance from home is the ideal situation.  Getting there is the tough part.
• Possibly finding my own place to live.  I want very much to leave this house I live in now in San Diego.  The people I live with are slobs and are always there despite the fact they said they have another house somewhere a little up north.
• Working.  This follows graduating.  Though, this might end up being interning.  If that’s the case, I hope it’ll be paid, because I’m going to need money if I plan on not living at home.

And that’s about it.  The forecast doesn’t look too thrilling considering I mentioned only three things.  But those three things are pretty hefty transitions.  And aren’t you glad you’ll be able to read all about of these successes and more as 2010 progresses?  If some of the good luck I had in 2009 carries over into 2010, then there probably won’t be much interesting stuff to talk about.  But let’s hope that’s not the case.  Happy new year; 2010 is here.

All Fired Up

I wanted this post to be about what I did today, but wanted to first briefly talk about stuff on my mind.  “Briefly” quickly (and I mean very quickly) turned into a long rant about my class.  Needless to say, I’ve thrown in a lot of curse words in this one.  I’m sure I’ve had posts with more f-words and such in them, but I think I was just more conscious of it this time, so I’m tossing this warning-of-sorts into this header.  I also typically try to proofread my post prior to publishing, but at this length, I’m going to skip it.  I’ll likely find my typos a week or two later when I reread what I wrote, hopefully finding it amusing after having received good grades.  Again, that’s what I’m hoping.  It may or may not turn out that way.

You know by now how happy I am that the Fall quarter is over with.  You also know by now that it’s probably too good to be true that I can only be feeling happy right now.  You know me too well.  My indescribably feeling of freedom and hundreds of feelings that come bundled together with freedom are being overshadowed by feelings of anger, annoyance, and fear.  The fear of getting shitty grades.  After working my ass off every single motherfucking day this quarter (literally 8 hour work days, then 6-9p in the library, or class then library until 9 or 10p, and even more near the end of the quarter), I’m likely going to end up with shit grades.  Is it my fault?  I suppose it’s always going to be partly my fault; there was probably five minutes where I could have been studying instead of checking my email, or I could have studied instead of taking a break.  But this time, I gonna blame my bitch professor if he gives me a crap grade (i.e. C, or god forbid, a fucking D).  For many reasons that are perfectly clear to me, I’ll probably not be too pissed at the grades I get from my other classes–assuming I pass at least, which I better fucking do.  There’s just one of my classes and one of my professors that is a little bitch.  You’re about to join me while I bash his face in (metaphorically) through shit talking.  That is, truthful shit talking.

While logically speaking, there is absolutely no way he could possibly have the nerve to give me a D in the class, the dominant pessimistic side of me is chanting (and this is verbatim):  “That bitch is gonna give me a D.”  What is particularly irritating about this situation is not that he’s going to give me a shitty grade.  The irritating thing is that he likes the other groups projects who had shitty projects.  Shitty how?  Sure, they were presentable, somewhat good content from an objective standpoint.  But when you realize that all they did was use the professor’s stupid programs he showed us, and downloaded hours of YouTube videos of people playing a fucking video game, then using that to do their project, there’s not much to be impressed about.  On the contrary to my point of view and my project partner’s point of view, our professor seemed to very much like their projects.  What he didn’t seem to like was our project, that we spent more than 24 hours trying to do, using real-time data, and not utilizing the over-used software that the professor showed/”taught” us.  We used PHP and JavaScript to do our project and attempted to make something was wasn’t just a montage of hours of fucking video of a video game being played.  Let me go further with this.  They included in their shitty project, a 3-D model of a Mario World, world.  Since there’s no use in trying to hide what class this is, I might as well say it up front.  I’m talking about data visualization.  How the fuck is a 3-D model of Mario World (one small scene, mind you), a fucking data visualization.  And, this just seems to get better, how the hell is a picture of Mario Photoshopped to look like a human man data visualization?  My professor probably jizzed in his pants when that group was presenting their project.  Just because they used his stupid program, and in essence did EXACTLY the same thing he has done with one of his “data visualizations,” he likes their project more than our project.

I would like to stop there, but thankfully I don’t have school or homework to be doing, so I’m not going to stop there.  I think I’m due for an extremely long rant.  So to continue from me complaining about the other group’s shitty uncreative project, and my professor’s biased tendencies to like shit projects that used his shit software, my shit professor also feels he is an authority in web design, critiquing everyone’s web pages that were used to present our projects.  Yes, everything he said about other people’s website was true because they suck nuts at basic aesthetics of web design, it doesn’t mean my professor is in any means “good” or has a good eye for this stuff.  His website is crappier than mine.  Horizontal scrolling for your content?  Inconsistent fonts?  Poorly used font sizes?  Overall unpleasing layout?  Really?  You want to critique our websites?  That’s laughable.  What’s worse than his web page layout/design is his ability (or lack thereof, really) to lecture.  What are you saying?  What are you talking about?  Personally, I can sum up his lectures in no more than 3 minutes, and I’m assuming the worse.  He opens up a program, shows us some stupid examples he’s done, stumbles over how to get it to work, tries to explain its importance/relevance (which I’m assuming he tried to do), and then does this all over again for some other program.  One would assume this list of actions to be short.  That’s not the case.  He manages to drag out two software examples or something out for three hours.  I am honestly amazed how well he does that.  Bullshitting.  But wait, is it really bullshitting when most of what you’re talking about means nothing to the people you’re supposedly speaking to?  I don’t think so.  Perhaps it’s beyond the realm of bullshitting, and should be categorized as something else entirely.  Cuz at least with BSing, you make some kind of sense.  This motherfucker just talks and nobody knows what he’s talking about and most importantly doesn’t really give a damn.

Summing this up, if you’re still reading, I’m probably going to get a bad grade.  One reason is because my partner got help from his coworkers on the PHP and JavaScript stuff, but it ended up being to much work.  So he was over it.  Therefore the extra week our shit professor gave us to touch-up our project wasn’t really put to use.  So we’re turning in the “shit” project that we presented on Monday, that our stupid professor gave us three stars and two stars, out of four stars and four stars (for completion and quality).  And for some odd reason, he gave my partner three stars and three stars, but gave me the three stars and two stars.  What the fuck.  I hate that fucking bitch ass turd even more after that.  I’m gonna be mad if I get a C, but if he gives me a D (or even if I get the C and my partner gets a B, or I get a D and my partner gets a C, or any kind of permutation where I end up with a lower grade), then I’m going to go apeshit.  Not only do I need t0 pass this fucking class, but I need to pass this fucking class this fucking quarter or else I can’t fucking graduate.  To end, I shall append one of these seemingly in things nowadays for long posts such as these:

TL;DR – My professor is a fat, biased, cocky little bitch who sucks at teaching and web design, yet teaches a few of my classes and critiques his students’ web pages.  This turd will likely give me a shitty grade even though the other students’ unoriginal projects suck bigger wang than my project.

Too High, Can’t Come Down

I can’t complain enough about this quarter.  It’s so irritating with all this work that I’m constantly worrying.  The advice is to take breaks.  I do, but there’s that damn little thought parading around in my mind that I’m wasting time if I’m not either writing one of my many papers, working on one of my many final projects, or working on my application at work (like right now).  I primarily want very dearly to stop thinking about my papers so I can go back to writing them with an uncluttered mind.  But the gears don’t stop turning.  I’ve been revising the same stupid 3 pages the past few days that I managed to get myself up to 4 pages with extended descriptions and run-on-like sentences (who knew learning how to use those stupid punctuation marks in high school would be helpful).  But it still doesn’t help since I’m avoiding the inevitable of discusses my main argument.  I hope to god I don’t the same asshole TA I had from my other class to read my paper because it’s going to suck thanks to my professor’s inability to clearly explain essay prompts.

Right now it’s 8pm.  I’m still at work, but I’m not doing work related things.  I was writing my paper until I decided to post this.  And now I’m going to eat my dinner:  instant noodle.

I would like to finish this uninteresting post with a last uninteresting observation.  It’s almost December 31st again.  This just amazes me.  Just 11 months ago I was writing a post that recapped the year, and now another year is nearly done with.  I wrote some things I hoped to expect from 2009, but so far very few has/will happen.  I guess there’s still a month and a couple of days left though.  Something amazing might happen.

Untitled 12

I haven’t liked a song this much in a while.   It’s like it gets better and better everytime I hear it.  Normally for songs I like, there’s one or two things that don’t sit too well with me, but this is absolutely flawless in my opinion.  Nice intro, catchy verses, clean transition into the solo, nice buildup, perfect dual-lead sound with the second part of the solo (with three guitars even), then again with a clean transition to the outro riff with the bass playing those two notes right before the guitar fades out (although it’s not in the video above).  the only thing I’d dock points off for is that I wish the song was longer.  But I guess it’s a good thing they left me wanting more.

Additionally, I really recommend listening to Sky Blue Sky from start to finish.  It’s fantastic.  Maybe it’s because this was the first Wilco album I listened to, but I think this is way better than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  It’s been called “dad-music” which I guess I can see why since it’s definitely pretty mellow music.  But it’s still catchy and thoughtful with a good balance of guitar.

Untitled 11

if(expenditures>income){
….starve(self);
….healthyEatingHabit=false;
}
else{
….eatNormally(regularly);
….healthyEatingHabit=true;
}

So Help Me, I Don’t Know, I Might, Just Give the Old Dark Side a Try

I’m at that point again this quarter where I don’t quite have an unrealistic amount of work to do, but yet I’m extremely overwhelmed.   I haven’t tried undertaking so many classes and real work since my senior year of high school.  It worked out ok then, I hope I get the same results this time.  I only intend to only  ramble about my classes that should help me sort out my own thoughts, so truth be told, this post isn’t worth reading.

VIS158 – so far just reading.  One book is a fairly interesting read (so far anyways) and the other book with pictures is horrifically boring.  So far, only one week and one day behind in readings.

ICAM103 – stupid music class that’s just a bunch of physics.  Extremely behind in readings; problem sets due this Thursday.

VIS147a – a bunch of stupid reading.  Labs aren’t too bad and are interesting.  Reading for lab to be done by Wednesday, reading for class to be done by Thursday.  First project with throwies must be done by Wednesday?  Actually do the project Tuesday night.

Vis145b – so far nothing, thank god.

AIP197 – fill out the fucking forms.  Then when I know I’m actually enrolled, start?  What do I do first?  Just write?  Or find some research and show professor?  Must finish AT LEAST 10 pages before quarter’s up.

work – fix Cygwin, have boss look at code and help me out so I can actually work and not feel guilty about clocking hours, consolidate sites into their own class, fix animation, finish app, actually start phone app

If you’re still actually reading, I do actually have something interesting to catalog.  I went wine tasting in Solvang this weekend, which was really fun.  I noticed some really subtle differences in the wine at the first two/three wineries, then by the fourth one, I didn’t really care.  Some drama later that night, but whatever– it didn’t concern myself.  On our way up there, we stopped by a restaurant on State St. in Santa Barbara, and they had this really good pastry called kringles.  It was absolutely amazing.  I want some right now.

Brainstew

A list/rant of sorts to organize my thoughts that are concerning me at the moment.  Most seem to be good.

• Just got back from a roadtrip up and down California.
  • San Diego > Coto de Caza > Mammoth > around Yosemite > hicktowns/middle of nowhere around Fresno/Yosemite (North Fork, Auberry, etc.)  > Fresno > back into Yosemite (Vermilion Valley Resort) > Stockton > San Francisco > Stockton > Ojai > Coto de Caza > San Diego.
  • Miles traveled:  ~1400 miles.  Time driving:  ~15 hours the first day + ~13 hours driving back = ~28 hours
• My boss gave me a raise and offered to let me work during the school year with incredibly flexible hours.
  • Fill out independent study form thingy for upcoming quarter!!!
• I’m still keeping my old job too, but the pay is $6 less.  How do I split my time?
• My friend found a job and is a now a teacher.  Congratulations!  But my NY plans are canceled.
  • What to do for my week off?  I don’t want to just sit at home all day.
• Grad school plans?  I don’t know what I want.
  • GRE?  I know for sure NYU doesn’t need me to take it.  Not sure about other places.
  • App deadlines?
  • This website makes me want to go there because it’s exactly what I was expecting from my major now.