Captain Bad Habits has random news

Here are some random news items, in point form, since I can't be bothered to compose actual paragraphs.

• I'm tired right now, but I don't want to go to bed, so I'll stay up playing stupid games.
• I've started reading Death of a Salesman, just 'cos I feel like I should. I think once I'm done with it I'll start on 1984 if I have time.
• I'm now procrastinating from completing my final psych study, which is actually an online survey. I'm answering a bunch of questions about how I see my own personality traits. The survey does that really annoying thing where it asks you to rate yourself on a scale of, say, "Kindness" and then, several questions later, asks you to rate yourself on a scale of "Unkindness". What annoys me about this is that I have a seemingly irrational desire to not appear stupid by putting inconsistent answers for those, so I'm constantly going back to check what I put for the opposite trait. I know I don't have to do this, and probably shouldn't, but I can't not do it. This is only half the study; the rest of it is writing a 2-page autobiography. Finally, an excuse to write something (and an idea of what to write)! I really wish I could get more writing done here.
• No real classes till 3:30 tomorrow, and even that's not going to be a real class because it's psych recitation, which gets shorter and more useless every week. That probably means I should go swimming, since I can feel my back getting worse.
• I had a Calc in 3D test today, which I pwned. Or, I think I pwned it. And I have a Matrix Algebra test this Friday.
• I've given up on becoming a great rock vocalist. When my voice is in peak condition (which is usually late at night for some reason), I can almost sing Counting Crows songs (just the tough parts like the high note of "Mr. Jones" elude me). I think of all the vocalists I listen to regularly, Adam Duritz's range is closest to mine (this is a relative thing, my range is miles away from being the same as his). Also, I can sing "Sunshine Of Your Love" and "White Room" by Cream without sounding terrible. I've now gained appreciation for Jack Bruce's vocal talents.
• I recently had an excuse to program something in Cocoa/Obj-C. I made a program that uses a script on the Web to retrieve a list of eating locations on CMU's campus that are currently open, and then randomly chooses one after allowing the user to blacklist some. This ought to eliminate the conundrums that arise at every mealtime, when I can't decide where to eat. However, the random number generator in C's standard library really sucks, so I'm looking into another way to get random numbers.
• That's all, folks.
  

Captain Bad Habits thinks about stuff

Here's something interesting that I stayed up too late last night thinking about. In words like "friendship" and "neighborhood", where did the words "ship" and "hood" come from? What are they doing there? It's so random! I had a thought that made me giggle for about fifteen minutes: think about the word "hardship". That brought up a weird mental image. I suppose you would be going through hardships if you were going through some hard ships. I pictured some guy smashing their way through the hulls of ships. There was a whole huge row of ships, and the poor guy was just resolutely smashing his way through the whole row of them. That's what I call hardships. OK, this still makes me giggle.

Perhaps because I was thinking of weird crap like that last night, I had some really odd dreams. Definitely not the oddest ones I've ever had, but definitely pretty weird.

Man, Java GUIs are ugly and sucky.

Maybe it's something to do with reaching my 100th post, but I don't really have anything more to write. It's the end of 15-200 lecture anyway (keeping up my writing-during-lectures streak). So, I'll stop writing now. Goodbye.

Captain Bad Habits' 100th post!

So here it is, my hundredth post on this blog. The first post was back at the end of August, so with 100 posts in 3 months that averages out to almost exactly one post a day. That was what I swore to hold myself to. I haven't sunken completely into the black hole of blog addiction. However, I am writing this post during the freshman IC, continuing my trend of writing blog posts during lectures. This is probably a bad habit, but it doesn't seem to have had a huge adverse effect on me yet.

This is the second last IC lecture, by the way. It's kind of entertaining but I'm not paying full attention because I'm also playing Sudoku.

Not much is going on lately. I joined ABTech because I really need something to do with my spare time, and working tech in my high school theatre was something I always enjoyed. Plus I get to feel all cool, what with wearing black and sitting behind a big scary complicated board at events. Red Eye is showing in the school auditorium this Friday, so I most definitely have to go see that. I have an ABTech event the same night, so it'll be a busy night.

Housing Maintenance finally fixed the light in our room. The bulb (I think it's a fluorescent tube, but it's not harsh white) was really dim, and now they've changed it so it's bright. One good thing that's happened lately.

Now that the ceiling light is fixed, the possibility of me reading in bed (without the effort of dragging my desk lamp up there) is once again open. Isn't that fun.

For weeks now, I've really had the urge to code something other than class assignments. I have no ideas. It's really quite frustrating. Actually, any excuse to code in something other than Java would be nice.

Metallica > Megadeth. Seriously. Sorry, all you Megadeth fans (I know so many of those read this blog).

Captain Bad Habits is at it again

I'm writing this post in a psych lecture again. I slept through 15-200 today, intentionally. LOL my prof just forgot to put the wireless mike transmitter in his pocket, left it on the desk and walked away and it fell on the floor and broke.

So I have things to do tonight. At 6:30 I have a Calc in 3D review session, so I have to do the practice test and look at the review problems before then. That goes till 7:30. Then, I have to do all work I want to get done today before 9:00, because that's when the Steelers-Colts game is on. This game is really too close to call for now. In my gut I think the Colts will win it, but you never know. This is a huge game for the Steelers. The Colts are undefeated, and Ben Roethlisberger is back in the starting lineup, so I think the Steelers will be playing as hard as they possibly can. However, the Colts will know that and will also be at the top of their game. So I think we're going to see some really good football, but I think the Colts just plain have a better game, at their best, than the Steelers, so the Steelers will lose. This is bad but inevitable.

OK, I would estimate that 85-100 lectures get about 30% attendance. On test days the room is packed. Today, well over half of the lecture hall is empty. I think this is probably why the averages on the tests are so low. Definitely not complaining here; it puts me above average.

Dammit I thought I had so much to say, but it turns out I really don't. Oh wait, psych term paper. Just handed it in, at the beginning of this very lecture. So now I don't have to worry about it anymore. There's only a few homeworks left, total, in the first semester. There's also two tests, in math classes, plus an in-class programming exam. But we're getting very close to the end of the first eighth of college. ...Wow.

Captain Bad Habits kinda liked the solitude

The building is starting to fill up again as people return from TG Break. Last night, in an effort to not sleep past noon (which I didn't, by the way), I wrote on my whiteboard: "Sleeping. If it's after 12, do whatever is necessary to wake me up, including detonating explosives." I think that might have been an idea. Shortly after I woke up by myself, I heard a knocking on my door and then quiet male voices. I caught one word of what they were saying: "fuse". I was also slightly creeped out by the "pssst" I heard that sounded like a can of spray deodorant. Now, I know people here are supposed to be fairly smart, but now I'm afraid of opening my door because somebody without a sense of sarcasm decided to take my up on my ENTIRELY HUMOROUS AND NOT REAL request.

Anyway, now I can hear loud bass notes rattling things thanks to my next-door neighbor. My roommate's not back yet, so I'm enjoying the solitude while I can. I kind of preferred living by myself and having pretty much the entire building to myself. Turns out it's not a major issue like my mom thought it would be (I've come this far without having a nervous breakdown) but it is a minor issue. I've always been a solitary type; adaptable, but definitely preferring the solitude.

No Steelers football today, but the Ravens play the Bengals. It's actually an important game for the Steelers because they're tied with the Bengals for the lead in AFC North. However, what's going to happen is this: the Bengals, who are good, will kick the ass of the Ravens, who suck. The Steelers will lose to the undefeated Colts on Monday. And the Steelers will be two games behind in AFC North.

I think what I'll do now is write an email to my GYLC group. I've seriously got absolutely nothing else to do. Well...later.

Captain Bad Habits needs to start sleeping at normal times

So last night I went to bed (bed, not sleep) at 5:30 in the morning. I had set my alarm to wake me up at 12:30 so I could get started on making my sleep schedule semi-normal again, but I hit Snooze about thirteen times so when I finally crawled out of bed it was 16:00. I wasn't sleeping between 12:30 and 16:00, though; I was kind of in a dazed state with random songs playing in my head.

I just spent about forty seconds revising my psych term paper, which took care of about half the revision. According to the grader I need to re-work my thesis statement and conclusion. However, I'm only about a sentence below the maximum length, so I'm not really sure how I'm going to revise and expand (that's what he said to do) my thesis statement and conclusion. I've already cut out everything I possibly could, because I was about a page over the length limit when I first wrote it.

I just ate a pseudo-home-cooked meal for the first time since getting here. I made spicy spaghetti. It was not very fun to make because I had to use Morewood's really grotty, manky little kitchen. There was one pot with some rather suspect-looking black marks on the bottom, and the world's worst stove which took 15 minutes to make the water in said pot boil. There were no proper cutting implements or surfaces in the kitchen, so I had to make do with a tiny paring knife and the underside of a Glad interlocking plate. The frying pan I had to use was even lamer - the handle was coming loose and the bottom was all bumpy and covered with weird crap. However, the resulting food was really not too bad. Then, of course, I had to wash the dishes afterward. Seriously, if I could meet the person who invented the automatic dishwasher (I think he/she's probably dead now anyway) I would kiss his/her shoes. If I were mechanically inclined, I would invent a miniature dishwasher that could be carried around on a handle.

In case you hadn't gathered, I'm feeling somewhat less emo now than I was when I wrote the last post.

Sam got a Mac! It is a palpable hit by the forces of good. Can I get a "W00T" for the forces of good?!??!??!!111

I bought gloves that work better than my other ones, and a desk organizery-drawery-thingy. Majiggy. It's just a set of plastic drawers. I'm going to put stuff in them.

...

I'm realizing how ridiculous I'm getting. I said "organizery-drawery-thingy". I'm going to stop right now, and watch a movie. Later.

PS: Thank you, Sarah, for commenting. In return, I will now cast a spell that will cause many attractive members of the opposite sex to find themselves powerless to resist your feminine wiles. This reward will be bestowed upon anyone else who comments, except if the commenter is male, replace "feminine" with "masculine". Also, special arrangements can be made for people who would rather that attractive members of the same sex found themselves powerless to resist.

Captain Bad Habits is emo

I won't be posting very much, or in great length, until I feel less emo. Nothing worse than an emo blog. Well, technically I don't feel emo in that I'm feeling the urge to cry a lot and write bad poetry, I just don't feel very happy. More like, I'm feeling the urge to just curl up in bed and try to forget that the rest of the world exists until I feel better about it.

So, it's TG. Seems just like any other day. Woohoo. The only thing different is, I'll get fed tonight for free. On campus. Bah, I've never understood holidays, anyway. My theory is that people make such a big deal out of holidays for two purposes: to disguise the fact that they're just looking for excuses to slack off, and so that stores can make lots of money off of idiots. Heh, gotta love my oh-so-optimistic-and-joyful worldview right now.

I think I might have gotten hooked on Madden NFL 06. The lounge on my floor has PS2 and that game. Plus, since there's almost nobody here over TG break, I usually have the lounge to myself. I think what I'd better do is to play it as much as possible while I have nothing else to do so that when I do actually have other things to do, I'll be sick of it.

My back suddenly got a lot worse last night. I was just sitting here, minding my own business, when suddenly it gave off a huge massive pain wave thing. It gradually abated but it was still hard to get to sleep (to get into my loft bed, as a matter of fact). I think I'm getting a cold again, too. My body sucks at staying healthy.

Now I'm going to end this post before it sinks into the realm of emo. Now after reading that, go read something joyful like bash.

Captain Bad Habits is so sorry

OK....so, now seems like a good time to apologize for last night's/early this morning's utterly ridiculous, rambling, incoherent post. I was really sleepy and I guess I just thought it would be a good idea to write a bunch of ridiculous crap. There were a few true things worth pointing out, though.

• From now on, the plural of "turkey" is officially "turkies".
• Mean Girls really is a good movie and you can make fun of me all you want for saying that.
• I really did need sleep.
• When I woke up and looked at that post, I really was like WTFH was I thinking.

I think the phrase "tirukies fuck turkies" deserves an explanation. I am in no way suggesting that readers should go fuck turkies. I think I was trying to type "turkies" because it's such an awesome word, but I failed miserably the first time and got frustrated, so I typed "fuck" and tried again and succeeded.

Anyway, now on to real things. For the first time in my life I'm appreciating the big deal that is Thanksgiving in the US. When I lived in the US before, I was too little to know what it was all about, and since then I've lived elsewhere and not given a crap. Even my American mom sometimes forgot about Thanksgiving. But now I'm going to an actual Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday (OK hang on, Thanksgiving is real bitch to type so I'm going to abbreviate it to TG). Everything closes up on TG Day, and there's some kind of festive spirit in the air which I'm guessing has to do with TG. Dunno, it just seems weird to me that there should be such a major holiday at this time of year. I'm just not used to it.

So, what've I got to do this week? Not a lot. Revise and finalize my psych term paper. Watch a whole bunch of Scrubs. Write a program for 15-200. Apart from that, no coursework. No interesting football until Monday, but that'll be REALLY interesting football because it's Steelers vs. Colts. The Colts are the only undefeated team in the NFL, and they walloped the shit out of the Cincinnati Bengals (the Steelers' main rival in AFC North) last Sunday. But the Steelers will have Ben Roethlisberger back, so they're in with a chance. I dunno, that game will either be really sad or really amazing.

Well, I have laundry or something. And food. By which I mean, I must finish writing this post. Later.

Captain Bad Habits STILL HASNT SLEPT WOOO

still awake. not capitaliznig or puncutatiogn or spelling shit right. tough noogies if you dont like it. noogie noogie

i need to sleep. right now. at present im cackling about the fact that danielle spells the plural of turkey as turkies. because that is seriously the most aweosme rwayto plurailzie turkey. turkey turkey

three ini teh m=irning. just fnished watchiing mean girls w/ danielle. seriously make fun of me all you want, tis a good movuie. godamit i need slep; sleep slep slep

wow wtf. when i wake up and lookat this post ima be like wtfh was i thinking, beter stop now. turkey tuerkey noogie tirukies fuck turkies

Captain Bad Habits is a SHEEP

I did not get a whole lot of sleep last night, thanks to Uplink and a general not-tiredness. So now I'm tired. I seriously considered skipping 15-200 lecture this morning. With every day that goes by, me skipping 15-200 becomes more likely. Seriously, there's never really been a reason for me to go, except for when quizzes are handed out.

So there's a psych test later today, which I'm probably fuxored for. Note to all peoples: do not take 85-100. It sucks.

Calculus in 3D apparently goes in spurts of difficult stuff interspersed in stretches of easy stuff. Now we're back in an easy stretch. However, the last test of the year is next Wednesday, and it includes the difficult stuff that was killing me a few days ago. There's actually a homework problem due tomorrow that is killing me with its difficulty.

So, about the title of this post. Why am I a SHEEP? BECAUSE IM SLEEPY DAMIT

So, Thanksgiving break approaches. The psych class this afternoon, in which I have a test, will be my last real class before the break. So starting immediately after the test, IMASLEEP

Now is food time. After that, test time. After that, be-depressed-that-I-fuxored-test time. After that, SLEEPTIME except not really 'cos I can't sleep in the middle of the day. So I'll probably just wander around in a sleepy haze, saying and doing ridiculous things and not being aware of it. SJHEEPPEFADSKJ

Captain Bad Habits was on good form today

So there's a lot of Matrix Algebra homework due Monday. Instead of doing it early this afternoon, I watched football. That wasn't even helpful to my mood; Tommy Maddox was still the QB for the Steelers and he sucks, so it was a really sad, sucky game. They managed to tie it up in the fourth quarter at 13-13, but then they did dumb stuff in overtime and lost on a field goal.

Wow I just totally lost interest in writing a post. Perhaps because I'm actually stressed for the first time since getting here. With the Thanksgiving break coming up, profs are piling on the work. So I am off now.

Captain Bad Habits inserts a title here

So I've started a new game of Uplink, ready to head into the Thanksgiving break with my addiction in full swing. This time, I won't try to jack insane amounts of money from people's bank accounts until I'm really ready to do so.

It seems the Democratic Party is starting to grow a spine. I know they're not really going about putting up a fight in a very effective way, but the fact that they are putting up a fight at all is news.

My voice is back to its normal sucky self today. Apparently last night was just a fluke. Bummer.

In the interest of being prepared for spring semester and not dying then, I found an introductory text on graph theory online and started reading it. It's vaguely frightening to me that it manages to express stuff I already know in ways that are so convoluted that I don't think I could possibly understand it if I didn't already know it. Hopefully it's just that text that's bad. It's good in a way because it'll give me practice in reading really horribly written mathematical texts. This will be a good skill to have in the next few years.

I'm feeling the need to game, so I'm off to play either StepMania or Uplink. Laterz.

Captain Bad Habits is up late

I have a USB keyboard here, which isn't mine. Typing on it sucks, but it's definitely better than my laptop's keyboard for playing StepMania. I'm definitely bringing my G4's keyboard when I come back from Christmas vacation.

For some reason, right now my voice is in amazing shape. My range is humongous compared to what it usually is. Right now, I'm listening to "Don't Follow" by Alice in Chains and I can hit the lowest notes perfectly. Normally those are well beyond the low end of my range. A minute ago I was listening to "Big Yellow Taxi" by the Counting Crows, and I managed to do that perfectly too. Of course I still don't like the timbre of my voice, but the point is that I can hit way more notes now - and actually hit them properly. But this is for no good reason; I haven't been practicing or anything. It's just random; my voice decided to kick ass tonight. If I get bored over Thanksgiving break, I'm going to do some exercises to try and increase my range and my ability to hit notes without hearing them first.

I just tried to sing my "benchmark" song, "Be Yourself" by Audioslave. I did everything up to 2:30 right, then there's a transition into falsetto that I came tantalizingly close to doing right. My falsetto really sucks, though, so I don't think I'll ever be able to do that properly.

For some reason I'm listening to a lot of new music lately. I got "Hysteria" by Muse. The guy's voice really pisses me off, but the riffs are pretty cool. I got "Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and was very, very, very impressed by the guitar solo, which lasts for just over 4 minutes and takes up most of the second half of the song. I got "Nottingham Lace" by Buckethead, who is a rather odd guitarist who wears a kabuki mask and a KFC bucket on his head. He's a really good guitarist, though, along the lines of Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen. I'd rate him as better than Malmsteen but not quite as good as Vai. He's done a lot of things other than just play really fast complicated stuff; he was briefly a member of Guns 'N' Roses and was in a side project of Les Claypool's. I'm also starting to get a bit into Aerosmith. I don't have much of their stuff yet, but I'm working on that.

My Uplink addiction is starting to come back. I can feel it. I managed to lose the game I was working on before, by trying to steal $800,000 from some random guy's bank account. Definitely not going to try that trick again before I get some better software.

I'm off to play my other addictive game, StepMania, now. Bonne nuit.

Capitaine Mauvais Habitudes va écrire en français aujourd'hui

Parce qu'Eugene me l'a demandé, je vais écrire le post aujourd'hui en français. Eugene est le seul lecteur de ce blog qui peut être foutu à commenter, donc je croix que je suis obligé à faire ce qu'il m'a demandé (mais une seule fois; le post de demain sera en anglais, ainsi que les autres posts aujourd'hui, si je les écris).

Avant d'écrire plus, je vous avertis maintenant que je n'ai pas parlé ou écrit du français pendant tout l'été, donc c'est très probable que ce post est rempli de fautes de grammaire et usage. Je dois améliorer mon français avant que j'essaie à faire un test pour que je puisse gagner du crédit pour quelque classes de français.

Martin, ne rit pas si tu lis ce post. Tu sais bien que je n'ai jamais su comment parler français. Je suis trop nul.

Bon, maintenant les nouvelles d'aujourd'hui. Hier, j'ai dit que j'allais au bureau de mon prof de Calc en 3D, mais il a annulé ses heures de consultation aujourd'hui. Alors, merde, je peux faire quelque chose d'amusant après mon classe de psychologie.

Maintenant que j'écris en français, je n'ai aucune idée à quoi écrire. Donc je pense que je vais terminer ce post maintenant. Désolé à tous les lecteurs qui ne comprennent pas le français. Ce post était plutôt écrit pour moi avant que pour des autres.

Captain Bad Habits is pretty well satisfied

After a day that wore on my nerves, as I watched the sections I wanted to be in gradually fill up and slip out of my grasp forever, my final status as far as registering for classes goes is: quite satisfied. For registering so late in the day, I had remarkable success as far as getting the sections I wanted goes. My schedule is here. The only thing that may change is 33-112B, which might become A and be an hour earlier.

According to some reports, it snowed this morning. I can't see any evidence of that outside, though it certainly is cold enough to snow. According to my Dashboard widget, it's snowing right now. Yay, it's winter! Maybe now the random heat waves will stop. I've never seen a significant amount of snow wherever I was living (I mean, I've seen significant amounts of snow when skiing, and visiting Albany in winter), so this will be a new experience: dealing with lots of snow day in and day out.

This Sunday: the Steelers play the Baltimore Ravens. This is another regional rivalry, so the Steeler spirit will be strong here.

Tomorrow, for the first time ever, I'm going to go to a professor's office hours. Calc in 3D is starting to kick my ass, so I have to go see the prof and ask him about how to describe surfaces parametrically. Why don't I go to recitation and get help there, you ask? Because I'm lazy, that's why.

The psych experiment I participated in today turned out to be the Asshole Test (in a totally non-scatological way). I didn't pass, meaning I'm an asshole. Oh well, if being an asshole gets me money, I suppose that's how it has to be.

Captain Bad Habits' readers suck at commenting

OK, so after my rant about comments yesterday, the only result was that Eugene became my lackey, since he had to get a Blogger account to obey my command. So, pwned. But seriously, people, I know there are more people reading this than just Eugene. All of you except him, you suck at commenting.

Recently, there's been a spate of emails from GYLC people. I feel like I should write one myself, but I'm too lazy for now. Maybe tomorrow, but tomorrow I'll be using all my mental energy trying not to procrastinate from reading the psych chapter that contains information on how to do the quiz.

I'm having trouble deciding on courses for next semester (I register for spring courses tomorrow, after almost all other students at CMU have done so before me). Here's my current plan: if I can get into one of two sections of Physics II, I'll do so. I have to take one more science course to satisfy my requirement, and I think, given my experience with doing labs in IB Physics HL, for which I didn't get the credit it's worth, which really pisses me off, doing Experimental Physics would be a bad idea. Plus, the class is three hours long, two days a week. I need to get a work-study job at some point, so having a class that sucks up that much time is a bad idea. Next stage of course-taking plan: choose between 73-100 Principles of Econ (which shouldn't be too hard) and 21-484 Graph Theory (which, being a 400-level course, could get really hardcore). But here's my reasoning on why I can handle taking a 400-level course in my freshman year. When will I be better prepared to take Graph Theory? The only prerequisite is 21-127 Concepts of Math, which I tested out of thanks to IB Further Math (one of the very few reasons I'm thankful I took IB). Waiting until later to take Graph Theory really won't help; I won't know any graph theory I don't already, and I'm not going to get significantly "smarter" in the next few years. What I'm trying to say is: nothing relevant will change between spring semester and any other semester when I might take Graph Theory. So why not take it now? Both 15-211 and 15-251 will have some graph theoretic stuff, so it'll tie in well with my other courses.

OK, I just checked Course Information On-Line, and realized it's extremely unlikely that I'll get into Physics II. Any CS major taking 15-211 in the spring (meaning anyone who's in 15-200 now, which is a lot of people) and who is taking Physics I now will likely take Physics II in the spring, and they're all in the same situation I am: of the 5 Physics II sections available, they can only be in one of 2 because the others conflict with the 15-211 lecture. I'm among the last people to register, so it's very likely that Physics II sections A and B will be filled up by the time I get to register. All I can say is, I better have a REALLY GOOD registration time slot next fall. And, I guess I'll be taking Econ and Graph Theory. That means two humanities courses, which means writing a lot of bullshit...dammit. I was aiming to not have more than one non-psychology humanities course per semester.

If anyone with an early-morning registration time slot would like to sell it to me, make me an offer.

CAPTAIN BAD HABITS WANTS COMMENTS DAMMIT

I get altogether too few comments on this blog. All you millions of people who read this, I can't believe none of you can be bothered to comment. I must have attracted an audience of very lazy people. So comment, people! And make them real comments, not just "Look, I'm commenting because you told me to!" or "Moooo!"

Here is a very important public service message to anyone in high school: if you plan on coming to the States for university, don't do the IB. Nobody here knows what the IB is, and you won't get credit for doing a hell of a lot of work. People get credit for AP Econ, but I don't get credit for IB Econ because it's standard level, even though it's more work than AP Econ. AP Physics and IB Physics HL are given equivalent credit, even though IB Physics HL involves LOTS more work than AP Physics. I got credit for Physics I for IB Physics, even though IB Physics is, in terms of material covered, equivalent to Physics I, Physics II and Basic Experimental Physics (possibly even Experimental Physics itself) combined. So don't take IB if you want to go to university in the States. Stupid idea. Stupid stupid.

I got almost all the 21-241 homework done today, because it was really easy. I still have a short 21-259 assignment left to do, plus a copious amount of psych reading that I'm afraid I'll never catch up on. If I'm really bored over Thanksgiving, I'll do that. Except I'm afraid it'll kill me in the head because it's very little information hidden inside a mountain of blather. I like the word "blather".

My Uplink addiction, apparently, isn't back in full yet. That might change once I have a significant length of free time in which to play it.

I actually also have part of a psych quiz to finish, plus some reading that I'll have to do before I'm able to finish it. Why the hell are we doing game theory in psych class? It makes no sense. Blah off to work now.

Captain Bad Habits GO STILLERS

The Steelers won last night, 34-21, though the Steelers let the Browns have way too many points. They did some really dumb stuff - missed interceptions, missed tackles, blah. But mostly, the Steelers played some really good football - the Browns-Steelers rivalry is probably the most intense in the NFL, so they were all motivated to play hard. The sucky thing is, Charlie Batch (the second-string QB, after Roethlisberger) broke his hand. It was in a somewhat heroic way, though - in the last seven seconds of the second quarter, with the Steelers on the one-yard line, he just grabbed the ball and dived over the goal line for six. Apparently, he improvised this - the coach wanted to go for a field goal. Overall a good game - it was total domination, which usually doesn't make for a very exciting game, but in this case it was good to see total domination.

This week's programming assignment is from hell. So far, I've found one mistake in the instructions (the prof told us to do something that he didn't actually mean for us to do) and one mistake in the supposedly correct outputs for one part of the assignment, that we're supposed to check our outputs against. I emailed him about both of these errors, and he emailed me back saying that they were indeed errors. However, he hasn't told anyone else. This is what baffles me most. He made mistakes, and didn't fix them or tell anyone about them. It strikes me that this might be a test - only people who pay enough attention to notice and can be bothered to email him get the full truth. But still... wtf. Not nice.

I have no real classes tomorrow. So I should probably do things like swim, but what I'm going to do instead is sleep in and then do all the math homework I have that's due this week. Plus, I really need to catch up on psych reading. I'll be a slacker by sleeping in, but then I'll work. Work work work work work. Grrrr.

OK, the time between when I started writing this post, and right now, is three hours. Good God, I've been procrastinating from procrastinating. I've reached a new low (and hence, Captain Bad Habits is having his finest hour). Well, I can justify this because I seriously have no work to do right now. I'll do the 21-241 homework tomorrow, and 21-259 also (there isn't much of that at all). Oh dammit, I should be doing some psych reading. 15-200 is all done. But not psych reading. I'm going to do that now.

Captain Bad Habits once again fails to think of a title

Gah, I had something in mind that I definitely was going to write about, but I've forgotten what it is. So I think this post is going to have to be in the form of bullet points about random news items that I think of.

• CMU's last home football game of the season was today. Actually, this isn't news, because honestly, nobody cares about CMU football. I don't even know what happened in the game.
• Went to the Waterfront today, and had some very good but expensive milkshakes. Still trying to decide if they were worth the money.
• Reverse Polish Notation rules.
• Danielle was the victim of some stupidness on the part of our programming prof. The stupidness caused much aggravation and frustration (more than usual). I don't trust any code he writes anymore.
• Katamari Damacy is officially the most insane game in the world. I don't mean insane in a good way, like I sometimes do. I mean, I refuse to believe that there were no mind-altering substances involved in the creation of that game.
• I have rather more work this weekend than I usually do, and I'm sitting here being quite unproductive. This is probably a situation that I should remedy. So, later.
  

Captain Bad Habits is blah

Well, today is a day, just like most others. Except today is State the Redundant and Blindingly Obvious Day, as evidenced by the previous sentence. Wow, I have absolutely no idea where that came from. Something is wrong with my brain today. For some reason, the later I wake up, the more tired I am. Oh well.

Not much news. I've reactivated my addiction to Uplink, which at one point I played for about a week straight. I am not kidding. It was during a school holiday, and I played it all the time while I was awake, except for a few brief sprints downstairs to go to the bathroom, or grab something to eat (which I would then bring upstairs and eat while playing). I hope it doesn't have a similarly detrimental effect on my life this time.

Today, during psych lecture, I threw together a program that will run on Mac, Windows and Linux, whose function is to use a network to have a bunch of computers play a sound simultaneously. I have no idea why I wrote this program, there's no reason anybody would want to use it.

Well, dunno what else to write, so I shall leave now.

Captain Bad Habits' Errata

I have recently been informed by Jamie that there are several factual inaccuracies in my previous blog posts. In an effort to keep this blog a source of high-quality...whatever it is...I've decided to publish a list of retractions and corrections.

• In this post, I asserted that the New York Times can be kind of biased, as if this was big news. I was informed that, in fact, everything is biased. I regret the error.
• In this post, I used French and Flemish in the same sentence, "in true Belgian fashion". I was informed that no Belgian would do so, since the Walloons think Flemish is the language of lesser beings and the Flems just wouldn't bother. Oops.
• In this post, I said that you absolutely must have good bass to listen to Dream Theater properly. I was informed that I actually have no idea what good bass is like with Dream Theatre (note corrected spelling). I am so very sorry.
  

Captain Bad Habits is somewhat bummed

So, I went swimming today, after an entirely useless 15-200 (programming) recitation. Everything was going well, until once when I got to the end of the pool. I felt some foreign object on my face, so I wiped it off. I found that it was a suspiciously short, curly black hair. You know...there's something about that that just completely ruins my day. Just because of that, today sucks. I am a broken man.

Other stuff that just totally ruins my day (all of this happened today):

• After swimming for 40 minutes, I had to do a psych experiment that involved staring at rapidly flashing images and deciding if the patterns therein were symmetric. My eyes decided that they didn't like this treatment (chlorine for 40 minutes, rapidly flashing images for another 40 minutes) so they informed me of this by getting very sore.
  
• Only one of my two articles made it into this week's readme, and that one in a crappy spot.
  
• My cell phone is retarded and sometimes decides that it doesn't want to turn on even though it's fully charged. It's about two weeks old. And I've thrown away the receipt.

Uh oh, I'm whining. I shouldn't whine on this blog, since I like to make fun of people who do nothing but whine on their blogs and thus whining here would make me a hypocrite. Eh, all I can do is hope that you find my plight amusing. I might post a more out-and-out amusing post later, if my day starts to improve. If not, I'll just wallow in a pit of the day's suckiness and my own misery. All I can hope is that I won't start writing poetry.

Captain Bad Habits is a very impressed geek

OK, so I have to post for a second time today. This is because I've discovered something very very impressive. It makes me feel all cool in an incredibly geeky way. OK, here it is.

Back when I was heavily into cryptography, and I learned about the Blum Blum Shub pseudo-random number generator. It's a cryptographically strong PRNG, and the only one with a strong proof of security; that is, it has been proven that there is no way to break the algorithm without also finding a polynomial-time integer factorization algorithm. So BBS is a major algorithm in the field of cryptography, since cryptographic algorithms, in general, require a lot of random numbers.

Since coming to CMU, I had seen a professor's name mentioned several times: Manuel Blum. It seemed kind of familiar, but I didn't know exactly why. It was only recently (when I was looking at random crap on Wikipedia) that I realized he was one of the Blums which BBS is named for. I also discovered that he's married to Lenore Blum (who is the other Blum) whom I've actually met in person. This is the CS geek equivalent of meeting celebrities in person. So, when I meet the co-inventor of an important cryptographic algorithm, I'm like WHOA THIS IS SO COOL. You have to be a geek, beyond all hope of redemption, to have that kind of reaction.

Also, I forgot to mention earlier, my Calc in 3D TA is also very geeky - math geeky. We got tests back today, and some girl asked, "Are there, like, any curves in this class, ever?" (Meaning grade curves, of course.) The TA replied, "Curves? Yeah...we integrate over them." Then he made a rimshot motion, after which the class gave a collective groan, the kind you hear after someone has made a joke that is oh so very terrible.

Blah, I started writing this post like three hours ago. So I should probably go to bed now. There will be plenty of time for nonproductivity tomorrow. I just have a few questions left to finish up on my calc homework, plus I need to look over a few chapters of psych reading in preparation for tomorrow's lecture and Thursday's quiz. 'Night.

Captain Bad Habits hates waking up

I woke up at 7:50 this morning to go to my 8:30 Calc in 3D recitation. Various things annoy me about this. Firstly, the TA is always five or ten minutes late. One would think that means I can get up later (say 8:10) and still be able to get ready and stuff and be there for the start of recitation. However, unless I'm there at 8:20, I get stuck with a crappy seat (crappy meaning my knees are against the back of the person in front of me. Sitting in the front row is not an option, since I like to zone out and draw weird things on my paper. So I go in early, to get a seat way in the back of the room, with some actual leg room. Secondly, nothing useful ever happens in that class, except I get homework and tests back. 99/100 on the latest test, btw, and the one point I missed is debatable. I did something that the grader found fault with, but I know that the prof did exactly the same thing in the solution to the practice test. I don't think it's worth making a fuss over.

One good thing about 8:30 class: it forces me to eat breakfast. I should probably be eating breakfast more often.

So, I'm going to do productive things and stuff today. At 11:30 I'm going to go swimming. I should be able to swim longer, since I've actually eaten a pretty good breakfast. I'll swim for half an hour at the very least, preferably 45 minutes or so. I'm sick of having my back be screwed up. Then have lunch. Then work on Calc in 3D homework in my room. When that's done (if it gets done today) catch up on psych reading. At 3:00, IC. At 4:30, after the IC, undisclosed plans. After undisclosed plans, more homework (whatever calc and psych I haven't finished by then).

Wow, France is getting pwned.

Blaaaaah writing a blog post does not count as being productive. So blaaaaaah, I'm going to be productive and do work stuff now. Later.

Captain Bad Habits likes Firefox again

Firefox 1.5rc1 for Mac OS X is kickass. It's actually fast now. It still uses the retarded Firefox controls (thanks to XUL) but it's fast and much more customizable than Safari.

I'm not feeling very amused right now, so I can't really write an amusing blog post. So I'll cut this one short, since I prefer to keep this blog amusing. However, in the absence of an amusing post, I'll post a cat wearing the Pope's hat.



Cheers, Jacob. Later.

Captain Bad Habits doesn't like abusing linked lists

This week's programming assignment is really annoying. It makes a total travesty of linked lists. Well, the first part is to implement a queue using a circular linked list, which actually makes a lot of sense. Just using a regular linked list is somewhat easier, but it's essentially the same. The next part is to implement a priority queue using a linked list. This makes less sense; inserting elements is O(N). The best way to implement a priority queue is using a heap, but that's still too hardcore for us. The last part is what really constitutes total merciless abuse of linked lists: we're implementing a map using a linked list. Insertion is O(1), but contains() is O(N), deletion is O(N) and retrieval is O(N). Compare this to a hash table, where insertion is O(1), contains() is O(1), deletion is O(1) and retrieval is O(1). It just makes me cry. Linked lists are so cool, but we're just abusing and misusing them so badly. Aaaaaah.

The quiz this weekend is also annoying. We have to write three methods that operate on linked lists, and they all have to be recursive. But it makes so much more sense to write them iteratively. I acknowledge that there are linked list operations for which recursion is the better solution, but not for these operations. Grumble.

Anything else to say? Nah. I still have a lot of work, so I better get to it. Later.

Captain Bad Habits has better habits

I'm taking a break from working on Matrix Algebra homework right now. After I finish it, I'm going to start working on my Calc in 3D homework. I'm forbidden, by my coding partner, to do any work on the 15-200 programming assignment, so I can't do that, but I can do the quiz. I want to get all my work done right soon. I know, I know, that constitutes good habits, which is totally out of character for me. I didn't even get my laptop out during Calc in 3D today. I didn't use it for anything except note-taking in psych. What is happening to me? Oh noes, I'm actually turning into a good student. AAAAA

Speaking of Calc in 3D, I think the prof really likes weekends. At the end of the lecture, he just sort of lost interest and gave up, very suddenly. He was talking about vector fields, and he said (after doing a whole bunch of working and derivations): "So, the idea is, some vector fields are conservative, and some of 'em aren't. [chuckles from the class] So, uh...here's another vector field[waves vaguely at board] and umm, yeah, have a nice weekend." And he gathered up his papers and walked out of the room before everyone could register what had happened. He's an odd guy - very dry and almost boring usually, but that just makes it all the funnier when he does something mildly funny.

This leads me on to another topic. I suddenly started considering doing a math minor instead of a psych minor. I mean, I always thought psych was interesting, but my current psych class is rapidly starting to degrade into "here, memorize this stuff and regurgitate it on the test to pass this class". This isn't what I was looking for. With math, I already know I like it and am good at it. It also makes a lot more sense for a CS major to be minoring in math than in psych, unless that CS major is planning to do HCI (human-computer interaction), which I'm not. Another downside of doing a psych minor is that I'd have to do research. I really, really, really don't want to do research. Not in psych, anyway. I'm not totally opposed to doing it as an extracurricular project, but I don't want to have to do research to pass a class. The downside of not doing a psych minor is that I'd have to take a bunch of humanities electives (for my CS major requirement) which would otherwise be covered by my required psych classes. The classes I'd have to take to minor in math wouldn't satisfy any of the requirements for majoring in CS. So in a way, minoring in math would be putting myself in for more work. I gotta think about this a lot.

Righto, I've been procrastinating long enough now. Actually, I'm not going back to work; I'm going off on a quest. A real-life quest. Later.

Captain Bad Habits misses Belgium, in a way

A weird way...cell phone service here sucks balls. In Belgium, I had a Pay&Go plan from Proximus. I hardly ever used the phone, but occasionally I did run out of credit, so I would go to the store across the road from my house, buy a €25 card and use it. The credit would not expire for a year and a half or something. If I wanted a different phone, I would buy a new phone (any one I wanted!), take the SIM card out of my old one, put it in the new one, and bam, done. It would work. Here, Pay-As-You-Go plans are rare and extraordinarily sucky. Each provider ties you to a very limited range of phones, and you can't switch phones without going through a LOT of fuss. Verizon Wireless provides a Pay-As-You-Go plan that requires you to put in $35 of credit to activate it (OK, so that's acceptable) but then you have to put in at least $15 every month to keep your account active. WTF? Credit expires every MONTH? I'm used to it expiring after EIGHTEEN months. I can only use a crappy Nokia phone with the account, which is OK since I really don't need a fancy phone, but still, the flexibility would be nice. So I have to go with Virgin Mobile and an even crappier phone. How can such a great nation like this one (if you hold still, you should be able to hear the sarcasm dripping from that phrase) have such a primitive cell phone service system?

I also miss Belgium for the food. Maybe it's just that CMU has crappy food. But I could really use a nice gaufre liègeois right now, and perhaps a cornet de frites from a little fritkot by the side of the road, like the one at the entrance to Etterbeek station (I've been there a few times while waiting for trains on cold days). Note my use of both French and Flemish phrases there, in true Belgian fashion.

I had a couple really good ideas for readme this week. I'm doing two articles. Well, hang on. My ideas weren't necessarily good, they were just well-received by the readme writing staff. Here's how it works: there's one really annoying guy on staff whose sense of humor is totally the opposite of everyone else's. Mediocre ideas make either him or the rest of the staff laugh - never both. I had two ideas this week that made everyone laugh. That's how we know an idea is good. I'm thinking one of them might make the front page place of honor. Also, we've got probably the funniest writer on staff working on an article for Parents' Weekend; I'm sure he'll come up with something good. Next week's issue promises to be good.

On a side note about readme, our Wednesday meeting location has changed. It used to be a bunch of couches in this random scuzzy little lounge on the third floor of the University Center. Now, they're building more offices in that space for SOHO to use (CMU's LGBT student organization). So we've relocated into an all-purpose conference room. We sit around a big conference room table and discuss ideas while eating free pizza. Now, keep in mind that we're all just a bunch of random guys (and a few girls) who have weird senses of humor and enjoy inflicting those senses of humor on large numbers of people. And there we are, sitting in a conference room around a big long table, as if we're a real publication. I find it very funny. Even funnier is that even though that's the case (we're just random weird guys), we're still better than The Tartan, CMU's real newspaper.

Bedtime now. Got lots to do tomorrow, none of it involving schoolwork. 'Night.

Captain Bad Habits was made to cry by Java

OK, I'm trying to write some code in Objective-C now. But lately I've written so much Java code that I find myself using Java syntax when trying to write Objective-C. This is all Java's fault, and that's why Java is making me cry.

I lost my backpack today. That was sad. Then I found it again. That was happy.

So, stuff to talk about. The Apple tech talk and recruiting event. First, there was a presentation by Gandalf the Grey about the speech recognition in Mac OS X. Then, there was a presentation by a woman with a very masculine voice about optimizing Mac OS X applications with Shark. I should use Shark more often; it's very useful. Finally there was a presentation by a very boring guy about how awesome it is to work at Apple. I mean, it's nice to know that working at Apple is awesome, since I might end up working there, but seriously, shut up. Finally, a large mass of people descended on the presenters, bearing résumés. Thankfully, most of the people were inquiring about full-time positions rather than internships. The presenter I talked to seemed to be kind of impressed at my experience with Cocoa programming, then randomly asked me, "So what are some of the main differences between Objective-C and Java?" Thankfully I wasn't nervous so my brain immediately came up with the right answers. "Well, the memory management is different. Objective-C uses retain-release as opposed to Java's automatic garbage collection. Um...Objective-C is dynamically typed, so you never need to cast anything...uh..." The guy was pretending to be reeling (because I had started talking almost before he had finished the question, and had said all that very fast), but he came back with, "And of course, in Java, everything's an object, whereas Objective-C is just..." and I finished with "...C with objects, basically." So the guy seemed pleased. Then he said that I might get an opportunity to do a phone screening, where he and his "tech team" would ask me questions to test my actual programming knowledge, such as, "What is a linked list? Pros and cons? How would you reverse a linked list? How would you reverse a C string? What is a B-tree and when would you use one?" That sort of scares the hell out of me. So I came out of the presentation feeling a little inadequate, plus rather embarrassed because a can of Pepsi had exploded on me and the hand that I used to shake the presenter's hand was a bit sticky because of that.

Aerosmith is good.

My article made the front page of readme again, but not in the lead story spot. I think I'll start keeping statistics on how much of my work gets into readme, and where. But I can't be bothered to do that now. Right now I'm writing a program in Objective-C, which is how I started this rant. So I'll come full circle and get back to that.

Captain Bad Habits is posting later, like he said

So I'm back in my room after swimming (very refreshing) and lunch. I realized my Matrix Algebra homework isn't due till next Wednesday, so I'm taking a break now. I'm listening to Rush for the first time in a while. As I've said before, they're like Dream Theater Light.

Something I'm rather pissed about is scheduling classes for next semester. The time you get to start registering depends on the last two digits of your CMU ID number, and the order was chosen randomly. I got shafted: I'm in the second-to-last timeslot of the day. On top of that, all upperclassmen get to register before freshmen. This means I'm going to be one of the last people to register, meaning it's highly unlikely that I'll get all the classes (and the sections of those classes) that I want. And I had the perfect schedule worked out, too.

I seem to be losing my mind. I'll be doing something like writing a blog post, then I'll think of something I want to look up on Wikipedia. By the time I've opened a new tab in Safari and clicked "Wikipedia" on my bookmarks toolbar, I'll have forgotten what I wanted to look up. I do this all the time.

I don't know if I posted about this before, but the Steelers won 20-19 last night. The last two minutes of the game were extremely tense. The Steelers had kicked a field goal to go ahead by one point, but they had to hold the Ravens out of field goal range for one minute and 45 seconds, which is extremely difficult. In football, anything can happen in a minute and 45 seconds.

Now I really can't think of more stuff to say. I'm actually just writing this blog post as a way to have an excuse to not do anything productive, such as work on my bridge program, which I haven't done in way too long. It's almost done, too; I should just work my ass off for a few days and get it released. I might do that soon. Later.

Captain Bad Habits new month something stuff

Well, it's a new month! It seems like just a few days ago I posted hams as the new Comestible of the Month. However, it has actually been a month, and that means I must now post a new Comestible of the Month. This November, it is jams. Once again, those who would tell me that it should be singular, you are wrong. It's jams. Trust me.

So it's November already. That means I've already been here at CMU for all of September and October. Two whole months here. I wish I could stay away from the typical "omg wow stuff" blog post, but I really can't in this case. No way it's been two months.
That's just insane. In a good way, of course. The downside to this is that at the end of four years here, I'll think it's just been a few weeks and then be like, "Oh shit, I have to live in the real world now. Aaaaaaaaa." My high school econ teacher said, "The best day of your life is the day you graduate from high school, and the worst day of your life is the day you graduate from college." My high school graduation was certainly a good day, and this whole weird passage-of-time thing is making me worry about my college graduation day. It looks like he may turn out to be right.

Something political happened. No discussion of it here. Also, seriously...the New York Times can be kinda biased. I have to admit this.

Well, I have some stuff to do today. I have to go swimming for the first time in like a month. I have to make a lot of progress on this week's Matrix Algebra homework. I have to go to the freshman IC. I have to go to an Apple tech talk and network with people, armed with copies of my résumé. So I must stop blogging now. I might post later.