kampers.net

You know, you and me, we haven’t talked for a while. It’s all my fault. Sorry.

This last week has been… Uh, quite a week. I just spent a minute trying to come up with words to describe it in one sentence. I was unsuccessful. Go figure. Regardless. Without regard, that is.

There’s been very little sleep this week. And so much work. You wouldn’t believe. I turned in thirteen pages of physics homework today. Eight pages of calculus on Tuesday. And, heck, I read an entire novel this week for school. Yaaaay for work. I had two (2) all-nighters this week. At least they weren’t consecutive, I guess. My new record for staying awake is 36 hours.

As much as they continue to fade into the background of my everyday life, my girl problems have never left my swirling consciousness. I talked to Erin tonight for a long time about everything that’s happened. I guess I feel better. It’s not that everything has magically fixed itself, like my common sense told me would happen. It’s more that everything is now resolved. I don’t know if that’s better. I think it is. It will help me to move on, in the least. I still feel like I screwed up a lot of things in my life that were great, and that it’s all my fault. I thought it was all so simple, so easy…

Is there a lesson in all of this? Right now, I just feel jaded with girls — and, since I spend a lot of my time consciously thinking about it, with life in general.

It’s almost 5. I should go to bed. g’night. #

Yay, the music thingy on the left works. It was easier than I thought. It’s not very efficient, but oh well. It works.

You know what’s great? Rediscovering music that you used to love. I keep finding old music that I used to listen to on repeat, for hours at a time. A lot of it is stuff that I always heard on the radio, or stuff I just forgot about. It’s funny. This stuff is great. Yay for early 90’s rock!

I’m talking about:
Radiohead
Bush
Counting Crows
Fuel
Tom Petty
Oasis
Nirvana
U2
Wallflowers
Soundgarden
Everclear (So Much for the Afterglow)
Smashing Pumpkins

The best thing is that you can get all these not-too-old CD’s on half.com for about $2 each. It’s not that difficult to find quite a few of them brand-new, in the shrinkwrap. Sure, a lot of them are comps, but who cares. If I went to buy these CD’s in a store, they’d be $18 each. Meh. Yay for the RIAA. Yay for the big record companies.

checks prices Yup, Amazon.com would like to charge me $14 for the same CD that just cost me $1.50 on Half.com. Not to mention that shipping on Half.com is cheaper, and that Half.com doesn’t charge me tax and Amazon does. Oh, and Amazon is happy to tell me that they’re saving me $3 off the list price of $17. Thanks, but no thanks.

Enough venting. Today was a fun day. I went to the Beverly Center! I didn’t really want to go to the mall or anything, but it was really nice to get away from USC and this area of LA. We (Max, Susan, and I) took the MTA there and back. It was an adventure both ways. To get there, we waited about an hour in the cold across the street from Exposition Park, because the bus was really late. Heh. It was OK though. We got there, we walked around a bit, we ate at P.F. Chang’s (score!), we saw a movie. Then, we tried to take the MTA back. I had schedules and maps all printed out ahead of time, and that’s good. Despite this, we missed the first bus I had scheduled… we couldn’t find the stop. Well, we did find it, just as the bus pulled away from it and past us, doing about 30. Oops. So, we sprinted to another bus stop that was a mile or two away. That got us home OK.

Now, some people would say that being lost around midnight and running around for the MTA is bad news in general. Nah. It was fun. It might’ve been a little stressful along the way, but, well, there it is. When I think back to these times a few years from now, I won’t remember the midterms, or the lack of sleep, or the food, or any of that stuff. I’ll remember running around Beverly with my friends, trying to catch the MTA home. That’s what life is all about. #

Yup, I lied. Still awake. After posting that last one, I played Counter-Strike for an hour or so. So much fun! Now that my system is clean and pure, I got 60fps @ 1024×768 w/ OpenGL. Talk about sweet. All that, with a lowly GeForce2 MX 400. Yay.

I don’t like the design of this site anymore. I loved it when I made it. I want to make something a little darker now, something more like my original Scribble.nu page, with some nice graphics thrown in. It would be fun to walk around LA with a camera and get some shots of random stuff, then Photoshop them together as a semi-transparent background. Yes. I could make a few, and they would randomly rotate. Hmm. Speaking of Scribble, I should really copy those old entries to the end of this journal.

Maybe it could have sections. Links, about me, etc. Hmm. Maybe not. I really like the minimalist approach.

I called Dr. Forrester’s house today (the head of percussion here… the guy, not the house). I actually talked to a live person! Score! It sounded like his wife. She was very nice, and very apologetic that a certain professor had failed to return my calls for a month. She said she would send along a nice message. Hooray. I hope he follows through.

Girl problems are, well, still problematic. How’s that for redundency. Guess I play the waiting game some more. It seems like that’s all I do.

Remember when this page used to show what song was playing on my computer? Before I came to USC, where the firewall prevents it? I’m working on putting it back up. That would be cool. #

I just finished watching Tron. It was good. Considering that it was released in 1982, it has some amazing computer effects.

Everyone around here left town. Two went home… another went on some retreat. Hmmm. Not much to do around here. Guess I’ll do some work or something. yawn

I’m going to a basketball game tomorrow… USC vs. Arizona. It’s in the LA Sports Arena, which I think is in Exposition Park. I’ll have to find it. Shouldn’t be too hard.

I guess I’ll go to bed now. Bye. #

I was reading some Twain for my Utopia class — A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court — when I saw this small matter of brilliance printed on the page:

“A tree is known by its fruits.”

How true is that! Just let that one simmer for a while. And as long as you’re going to be simmering, I might as well just go to sleep. #

falls over from exhaustion

By my best calculations (which should be cast in doubt at this point), I’ve had 4 hours of sleep in the last 50. Yum! It’s only going to get worse before it gets better, but at least I’ll get to sleep tonight. #

By some stretch of space-time, it’s nearly 2 here. Ugh. I have to get up for physical therapy at 6:30. I have a lot on my mind, as I think you’re about to see.

I spent most of today formatting my computer, as noted below. It’s stable so far… no more crashes. What a pain though… What a way to waste a perfectly good Sunday. Formatting and reinstalling operating systems and software is one of my least favorite things to do in life, yet I seem to end up doing it for someone at least once a month. Yuck. A lot of times I wish I didn’t know so much about certain aspects of computers, so that I wouldn’t be the “go-to” man for those less technically inclined. Oh well… Someone has to do it. Might as well be me.

It often occurs to me that a programming career is probably the last thing I want. I was helping a friend of mine today with double-pointers in C++. Was it fun? No. But that’s what a programming job will be. Double-pointers, memory addresses, blah. Another programmer friend of mine once told me — quite some time ago — that as a team, I was good at the design and he was good at the implementation. Maybe that’s true after all. How does that pertain to my education? I don’t know. I think having a degree in computer science (or CECS, as it may be) is a gateway to the entire field, where I would be free to do something other than programming.

But, ah, computers. Where do I fit in? Software is designed with the user in mind, these days. It wasn’t always that way. For me, computers were fun to play with because I didn’t understand the basic functionalities completely, and because it was fun to work towards the goal of easier use. I don’t think either of those are true anymore, at least with the current state of computing. Formatting and installing Windows XP today made me realize how truly easy computer use is these days. The box on my desk has truly become an effective tool. This is a good thing, of course. But where do I fit in?

My goal is this. I want to be in a position where I am respected and knowledgeable in technology, so that when the paradigm of computing shifts again, I’ll be poised to take advantage of it. It will shift again, there’s no doubt in my mind. I think that eventually we will stop thinking of computers as the box-on-the-desk… Eventually, there will be true integration. Some people don’t think that’s good. I guess I do. I want to be in a position to work on the technology that brings us closer to integration. Computers shouldn’t be easier to use, in the long term; we shouldn’t even have to think about using them. It should be as natural to use technology as it is to move your hand, or turn your head. By that, I don’t mean that computers should be controlled by body movement, but rather that the mental effort it takes to move your hand should be the same mental effort it takes to effectively use technology. You would think of it as an extension of yourself.

I want to make that. I don’t want to sit at a desk and program.

Somehow, it’s been an eventful weekend and an uneventful weekend at the same time. Go figure. I can’t explain, because I don’t know how. I’m not sure what’s happening with my situation mentioned below. I’m extremely lonely. I know that Colleen hates me (or says she does)… Blah. I wish I felt loved. I know that a lot of people do love me, but it’s not all the same. If I transferred away from USC tomorrow, would anybody here really care? It’s a serious question. I don’t know the answer.

I love music. I love listening to music; I love performing music. It brings forth a passion in me that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Music is the one form of art that truly unites people. It appeals to everyone. Every human on this earth has different tastes, but we all love some form of music. Can that be said about writing, painting, sculpture, or any other art form? I don’t think so.

I wonder who really reads this thing. Hi Mom! #

Yes, it’s late. I’m not tired, because I’ve been staying up late this weekend and I’m used to it. Oh well. With my schedule, I can still get 6 hours at this point.
Still more stop errors. I think they may be related to an NVIDIA (graphics card) driver that was released on Windows Update a week or so ago, which I blindly installed. It’s gone now, but the blue screens remain. My problem was corroborated by some people at the Ars forums. Hmm. I’d like to fdisk + format; since I now have my new hard drive installed, backups would be easy. I don’t have the time, though.

The schism between Colleen and me widened yesterday (yesterday?) when she told me that she’d like to see other people. A certain person in particular. I did it to her last week, so it’s no big surprise that I’m getting a steady dose of my own medicine. It feels weird though. I haven’t experienced much heart-break in my life. It’s OK; she can’t control her feelings, and neither can I. That’s the way things work. He’s a nice guy, and it’s good for her. She hasn’t really done anything wrong in doing this.

So, since all the break-up songs make sense again (thanks, Ataris), I feel like I should concentrate on other things for a while. It’s difficult, though… I’m lonely, and it feels strange not to have somebody close at hand to whom I can talk freely about anything. What I was alluding to above with that whole medicine bit is that there is someone special to me here at USC. She is part of the reason that I originally felt distanced from Colleen. I’m not sure how it’s going to work out now, though. Things seem to be in a holding pattern, and I’m not sure if it’s because we’re both just too busy, or if there is some other reason. I guess I have more to say, but nothing else to write.

I’m not sure that I like my own writing style. It’s kind of stilted, and hard to read, with too many contractions. I noticed that my spelling has been going downhill lately, too. Maybe it’s because I only had to write one essay in January. Regardless, I always spend a good amount of time writing these things. I rarely hit my nice little submit button without re-reading my work two or three times. My posts here seem to be getting longer and longer, and this really suggests that the current format of this page isn’t quite right for the content (which is what’s important, after all). Maybe a redesign. Not soon though — too much work. Midterms are closer than I think. Heck, I have one this week.

Well, I hope this was as therapeutic for you as it was for me. Whenever I start writing these things, it’s usually because I feel guilty about not updating when (as my web server statistics tell me) I have a fairly modest readership. By the end, however, when I’m ready to click the button, I’m happy that I sat down to write. It’s nice. No matter what the incentive was to write, there’s nothing wrong with that result. #