originally posted september 24, 2002

careening through time

The fifth week of classes started yesterday. The fifth week!

This semester is flying by. I say this a lot more often than I should, but all my studies and other activities are coming together for one last semester before I (hopefully) find employment.

four classes, two jobs, one pursuit

As far as "units," the largely-meaningless measure of course load, go, this semester is my least burdensome. My four classes total only 39 units, just three higher than the threshold for full-time student standing. Three of those classes (30 units' worth) are computer science courses, more than I've taken in any other semester. That was probably a Bad Decision on my part to schedule those three in: they will all require group work, frequent meetings, and large projects. Two of my courses are split between graduate and undergraduate students, so I attend class with an unfamiliar mix of students.

I'm back working at the University Center Information Desk for one last semester, working a paltry 2 1/2 hours per week. This was a stopgap solution since I had not heard from any professors regarding a job as a Course Assistant this semester. In the first couple of weeks of the semester, I got a few job offers and eventually accepted a position working for Prof. Tim Hoffman's 15-200 course. This is similar to the 15-200 course I CAed a year ago, but with a much more hands-off approach toward the course staff. There are five CAs in total for my section, but I have barely met them in person. I haven't been to lecture yet, there is no formal recitation, and I was not called upon to help with the first exam. One of his CAs graded all of the 15-200 exams by herself, leaving the five of us to help with another of his courses' exams. The course seems to be running smoothly so far, although there have been some communications hiccups.

Lastly, I am still looking for a job full-time to start in January 2003 after I graduate this winter. The annual Technical Opportunities Conference was mobbed, with something like 60 companies packed into the gymnasium. I spent four hours there giving my resume to just 19 companies, spending much of my time carrying logo-imprinted Stuff around and fighting crowds in the hot gymnasium. I have heard little so far, but the recruiting season is just beginning. Some companies seem to be more open to the idea of hiring someone before May 2003, but others seemed more insistent about their orientation programs to start in June 2003. If I have to take a few months off or do a temporary job in the interim before starting summer orientation, so be it.

My schedule is unusual: I start early twice a week, later once a week, and have something (either work, class, or a club meeting) from 7:00 to 9:00 PM four days a week. This means that my evenings are suddenly booked, but I'm trying to keep Fridays open for possible travel to job interviews.

communication strategies

I finally bit the bullet and got myself a mobile phone, due in no small part to my need to stay in touch with recruiters. The service (through T-Mobile, formerly Voicestream) has been okay so far, but I have a service plan too cheap to use the phone addictively. One annoyance: T-Mobile does not discriminate between daytime and evening, instead giving only "Whenever" and "Weekend" minutes. I've also been playing around with text messaging, setting up my own small scripts and AIM bot to bypass the ungodly $3 per month that T-Mobile charges for full-featured messaging.

E-mail is flying around constantly, and back on campus quick return times are critical. Some items have been sitting in my inbox marked "Important" for weeks, which is simply unacceptable around here. I try to keep my inbox totally empty, but it took about a month after classes ended to flush out everything. This past week, with a College Bowl event and course projects starting up, I had as many as 89 messages. I'm down to 27 messages right now, six of which are marked "important." This is unacceptable.

zooming around

My car is hopefully somewhere near campus right now.

This is the first semester that I will have my car in the vicinity of campus. Parking on campus is virtually impossible or prohibitively expensive: one person offered to sell me his $711 annual parking permit for $800 or best offer. I refused. There is a fair amount of parking around four to seven blocks away from campus, requiring an uphill walk or lazy bus ride to reach. Some streets close for street cleaning, requiring me to move my car further. Campus lots and garages are sometimes available on weekends, so that helps out somewhat. Nevertheless, I like the ability to go anywhere without resorting to public transportation that largely shuts down on weekends.

I'm not afraid of damage to my car as a result of parking on the street, but it's still a possibility. I have insurance, so the inconvenience of repair would be worse than the monetary damage. There are also those ever-present parking tickets if I don't move my car, but I've dodged them so far.

My car seats four people comfortably, but we've wedged five in. Most people don't mind the New Beetle's cramped back seat, but more importantly it can be folded down to hold a 17-inch or even 19-inch monitor in its box. During a very brief trip, one of my friends rode in the cargo area next to a monitor box, facing backwards. He was fine.

It would be nice to plan all sorts of cool road trips, but right now I'm tied down with project work that precludes any fun stuff. Maybe later.

hotel west wing

West Wing has been made over, with all suites getting nice new furniture and new carpet. Two kitchens have also been added to floor lounges. Our neighbors in Resnik got sprinkler systems, but no new furniture. Too bad our new carpet has already been spoiled.

The day before I moved in, a pipe in my room burst, spilling hundreds of gallons of water everywhere. When I arrived, the carpet was still very damp. It took a few phone calls and an enormous power dryer several days to fully dry the floor. No permanent damage resulted. Since then, things have been okay, but I'm still convinced that our suite is cursed. The same pipe that burst in my room burst in the other double two years ago, and our toilet has been less than reliable. This carpet could see a lot of unpleasantness if the curse continues.

class by class

Here's a brief run-down of classes so far.

15-381: Artificial Intelligence

I don't know why I'm taking this course: it's lots of work and it satisfies a requirement I already have. Bad move. The material ranges from boring to interesting, but it has been on an uptick recently. Now I just need to finish my first report in the next two days.

15-393: Software Engineering for IT

Also called 11-791 (the same as my ZIP code back home), IT is a course which is popular with Master's students. I am working in a group of five students: two MISM candidates, two undergraduate CS majors including myself, and an undergraduate ECE major. We also represent five different countries of birth: Hong Kong, South Korea, China, Kuwait, and the U.S. Despite our different backgrounds, interests, and ages, we get along astoundingly well. The only problem is that the course will require a substantial amount of meeting times with my group. I don't think I've ever had so much face time with a group of students I had never met before. Much like the databases course I took a year ago, this will require a lot of design work before the actual coding gets underway. Our progress has been good so far, but keeping it up will require effort.

My big mouth at meetings got me the de facto title of Project Manager, meaning that I'm in charge of ensuring that assignments are completed on time and that everyone is doing their part. Everyone has at least one title, but mine also gives me the duty of tying things together. Meanwhile, I pity the poor souls who got stuck in a group with That Guy. That Guy sits in a seat to allow maximum direct face-time with the professor during lecture, makes arrogant comments that serve only to add his own opinion to the course, and has posted two grandiose complaints to the class discussion board. That Guy is a sophomore in Computer Science. He needs shut up. Don't be That Guy.

15-491: Dependable/Survivable Systems

This course meets only twice a week, but it's at 9:00 AM. I suspect that it was the time alone that caused attendance to drop from over 20 people on day one to nine people the following week. The class is small and quiet, with a mix of undergraduate and graduate students. I'm partnered with a guy I met before taking this course, and we're behind on the assignment. Time to get moving before we get dragged along.

This course also marks the first time in 1 1/2 years that I have homework assignments due four times a week. Our "Journal Club" readings require us to read many research papers and then summarize them in a structured pseudo-XML document, while "Dependability Diary" lets us choose a news story or personal experience relevant to the current class topic and comment on it. All of this is done electronically, meaning that I have to take time out before going to sleep or into deep hack mode in order to get all of this done. The large volume of text that I have to type and read for this class makes the project components all the more difficult to schedule.

That said, the course itself is fairly interesting. We are currently discussing intrusion-detection systems, but past topics have included safety cases and hazard analysis. Our goal is to help the SCS machine room develop a plan and analysis for power outages, such as the one which knocked out power in July. The last extended power outage before that was 3 1/2 years prior, and some things went wrong.

70-364: Business Law

Meeting only one time a week for 2 1/2 hours per session, Business Law is an unusual course on my transcript. It's the only business course that I will have taken, but yet it is an introductory course with a 300-level name. The reading for this course has been brutal but the quizzes have been easy: the professor, currently under consideration to become a federal judge, is very laid-back in his lecture style. I'd like to say that he makes the time fly by, but that much time doesn't fly by any means.

Time to get some food and head on to office hours. Zoom.

Back to September 2002, or to the year 2002.