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I just finished two problem sets of calculus, that I’ve been working on since the end of spring break (about 10 days). That beast clocked in at 14 pages. Hardcore stuff.

We’re just finishing up triple integration, which is no fun. I can’t seem to imagine those funny shapes, like, oh, a elliptic cylinder intersected by four planes and a parabolic elephant. The TI-89 doesn’t always help, either. It’s fun to say that I’m doing triple integration though.

I finally convinced my therapist that the ionotophoresis — that is, the electric shock therapy — isn’t working. We’re going to start massage on Wednesday. I’ll also be meeting my new therapist then. Hopefully he has some wise ideas.

I received James Taylor’s Gorilla in the mail today. What a great album. So simple, so beautiful. Yay for old music!

I think I’m going to start turning my computer off at night. My roommate and I have always left them on, but I think someone is going to call the police about noise pollution. My roommate recently installed an 80mm fan in the front of his case to suck air in, which is cool — I have two! — but there’s a small problem. His case doesn’t have air holes in the front. So it makes tons of noise, as there is no clear direct path for the air to travel through. Sounds like a hair-dryer. I don’t really care during the day, but it kinda bugs me at night. There’s really no point in keeping them on anyway. It’s just a convenience.

Anyway. I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings. No physical therapy tomorrow, so it’s time to eat some ice cream and sleep in. G’night! #

7135. That’s all I wanted to hear. Or 7295 — that was Max’s number.

This was the Conquest housing lottery. Conquest owns a bunch of apartments around USC, and they’re pretty nice. I really got screwed by the USC housing process, so I’ve been looking elsewhere. Out of over 300 people to enter the lottery yesterday, only about 40 didn’t get anything. I would be one of those. Max is another. How unlucky can I get?

Oh well. We’re investigating other options.

After thinking about it a lot (and talking to my mom about it , I’m not sure if a music minor is really for me. Despite an excellent faculty, the department has given me nothing but trouble. Maybe a neuroscience minor… That would be sooo cool. But I’d have to take biology, ick.

I studied quite a bit for physics last week. It payed off; I got a 68 on my midterm. I know that sounds bad, but the average grade was 63. Scoring above the average in a class full of geniuses like that one is a big accomplishment for me. With the curve, that grade will probably be in the mid-A range. #

Sorry that last post was so short - I was busy writing an update, and then I got interrupted and whisked away to a physics study session. I’m very tired right now, but I’ll try to make an effort tomorrow. #

Hullllo, everybody. I’m tired. I thought I’d give a little post here before resuming work for the night.

Haven’t been getting much sleep lately… usually about 3-4 hours a night. The problem is that I stay up late studying for all my midterms, and then I wake up at 6:30 every other day for physical therapy. That takes a toll. Fortunately, no PT this Friday, so I get a break. Maybe some sleep on Thursday night.

I’m studying so much, like I said, because I have so many midterms (not to mention homework). I had EE on Monday, physics is tomorrow. Calculus will be Monday morning (after physical therapy, no less). I did really well on my EE midterm, though. Yay! #

I wrote this on Saturday, but I’m just getting around to posting it now.

I’m writing this on my handheld, with my folding keybaord. I forgot how cool this thing is… I don’t take any notes with it this semester. Right now, I’m on flight 823 to Los Angeles. For some reason, it was more cost effective to fly first to Miami from Orlando, and then head west. Strange. The result is that this flight is a six-hour one — long for me. I’m used to little three-hour hops to cities in between, like Houston or Denver. Of couorse, al my international friends have war stories to tell about long twelve-hour flights.

Spring break was short. Too short. Although it was supposed to be a one-week vacation, I don’t feel like I had much of a vacation at all. I feel like I spent all my time doing something. I would’ve rather spent some time doing nothing. Didn’t get any studying done either, as I had originally planned. That’s why this six-hour flight has been good. I did a practice EE midterm (the real thing is on Monday), read about 100 pages of 1984 for Utopia, and started on my calculus homework that’s due on Tuesday. I still have loads of physics to do, though, so tomorrow will be a very busy day.

My mind is kind of blank right now. I’m pretty tired. Not much sleep last night, and thinking too hard about EE can really take it out of you. Maybe a short nap before we land. Sitting on a plane and typing up an entry on my Clie sure is cool, though. #

Almost two weeks. Sorry.

I’m in Florida. I’m tired. I just spent an hour trying to get the damn computer to grab an IP address. No such luck. So I am using the 166MHz Power Beast? for now.

The frustrating thing is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And, the computer I’m using now is on the same hub, connected to the same cable modem, and it always works fine. So it’s something with the other computer. Grrr.

So yeah, I’m home. I’m so busy. Even though this is supposed to be my vacation, I’m just as stressed out as I am when I’m at school. I either spend my time sleeping or doing something. There is no chilling. No reading. No relaxing. Yet, so little is getting done. I have mountains of physics and calculus to do.

I feel sick.

Complain, complain.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Winter Park Arts Festival. Maybe I’ll find something cool for my room. Maybe not.

Warcraft II is fun.

That’s all. #

I’m back.

Sorry, it’s been awhile since my last post here. I’ve been very busy. School work takes up just about all of my time. Lots of physics, lots of calculus, lots of electrical engineering, lots of utopia… I have so much work that I spent all of tonight (Friday night, that is) downstairs working in the study lounge. Mostly physics, and then a lot of reading. If anybody can tell me how to find the launch velocity for a satellite to Mars, it would be much appreciated…

I downloaded a new beta of Monkey’s Audio a few days ago - version 3.95a1. I started recompressing some of the CDs I compressed with 3.94b2, and the files became slightly smaller, as promised. But it corrupted about 1/4 of them, grrr. I think there’s something wrong with MAC, but the guy who makes it insists that it’s probably a hardware problem on my side. Bad memory, or something. I’m not so sure about that. Either way, I need to re-rip a few tracks from each CD I have. Oh well. All in the name of good audio.

Download of the day: A New Found Glory - Better Off Dead.

My roommate’s birthday is on Monday. About two weeks ago, I ordered him a nice pair of headphones as a birthday present. The dumb web store messed up, though… The item has been on backorder for some time, and they didn’t email me about it or update my order status page. It just says “packaging.” Those idiots even sent me an email saying that my order had been released to the shipping department, and would arrive shortly. Worst of all, the item page on their site shows that the headphones are “in stock.” Grr! I hear a lot of stories about people getting burned by webstores, but it never really happens to me. I guess it was bound to happen eventually Oh well, I guess Tyrone will get his headphones eventually — from a different webstore. I cancelled my order.

I’m doing really well in my Utopia class. Heck, I own that class. The relationship between that class and me is one of ownership. With me as the owner. Heh. I got an A on the midterm… Take that, foul arts and letters class. I really enjoy the books, too. Right now, we’re reading Huxley’s Brave New World, which is great. I voluntarily read it in 11th grade for a research project, but it was rushed, and I didn’t really let the setup settle in my mind. It’s an amazing book. Huxley really has a way with words.

The novel starts with small parts of several plots. They’re interesting enough, because they revolve around a dystopian world almost completely unlike our own. Two women are talking. A leader gives a speech to his students. A lonely man contemplates life. The system of human birth is detailed. These parts are first given full force by the author — a few pages each. Then, like a kid with ADD, the attention span falls. Maybe a few paragraphs each. Then, less and less. A few sentences each. The reader, already full of wonder over this new society, has trouble keeping track of the separate plots. Were there three? Or four? All of the sudden the parts don’t rotate in the right order. The reader can’t keep up. He’s lost. Slowly, the time devoted to each thread shrinks to only a sentence. Just a few words. The reader is lost in a swirling, twisting consciousness of words and thoughts and opinions. The threads cross over each other, seemingly woven without pattern. And then — boom! — it’s over. The next page, starting a new chapter, greets the reader like a shelter in a drowning thunderstorm. As the reader was passing over those fragmented sentences, he was absorbing them faster, and faster, in a frenzy of partial understanding. But as he reads the hushed words on the next page, it becomes clear that all those separate threads came together in some form to make something whole — something brilliant! — right under his nose. The reader isn’t sure of what he just read, but he’s sure that he doesn’t like this Brave New World. He’s sure that something must be done about it.

Anyway. It’s a great book. I think I’m going to watch a movie now, and then to bed. #