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oh, the humanities!

Important things in my life always happen in threes. Unfortunately, lately bad things have been happening in threes. With three weeks left in the semester, I get to look forward to three final projects. All three are in my humanities classes. It's going to be a very, very long three weeks.

Taking three humanities classes as a computer science major is never something to look forward to, even if two of them are vital to the minor and the third is a qualification for the major. Still, humanities involves a lot of reading, a lot of research, and a lot of whining about said reading and research. In one of my classes, I've heard two different people complain about how they hate the class so much that they would drop it if they could. Of course, dropping that class would mean not being able to graduate on time. It's easy to determine the priorities when one has to choose between a few six-page papers and another $15,000 in semesterly fees.

My general humanities requirements (freshman English, plus three courses from three different lists) will be done after this semester. The minor in Japanese is just two semesters away. I could potentially spend a summer or even a semester in Japan in 2002, although I would have to take a relatively heavy courseload to make up for it. Computer science is hard enough in English, thank you very much. Perhaps all these humanities courses will build a little character.

hey, I know that guy!

I attended "TRASHionals 2001: A TRASH Oddity" during my spring break. That's right: I took time off from my break to ride some 760 miles to Evanston, Illinois to spend time with lots of twenty- and thirty-something people (almost all men) who know obscene amounts of popular culture facts. It was a fun experience, and I also ran into some folks who would go on to gain a national presence through "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" James Dinan, the organizer of the tournament, was skunked on early questions about the use of a settee and the definition of "stays" (those plastic strips that keep collars straight) and became the tenth person in the history of the show to win $0 after making it into the hot seat. Meanwhile, Michigan coach Kevin Olmstead, who helped to create the now-popular NAQT questions for tournaments, set an American television record by winning $2.18 million. Congratulations to Kevin!

Seeing as though I don't know either James or Kevin personally, I'm not going to drop their names any more. Still, it's nice to have at least seen them in person.

three words: "no math skills"

So I've decided to be a TA next semester, assisting a professor for a course known as Data Structures. It's a programming course, taught in Java, designed for non-majors. Most people are taking it as a general requirement, just like the humanities courses that I take. Most seem apprehensive about taking computer programming courses; I'll have to deal with them. It should be an interesting new job: I get to work more closely with Java, and it also pays better than my current jobs. However, now I have a difficult decision to make: which of my desk jobs should I leave behind?

class-by-class

Just three weeks to go!

15-213, Introduction to Computer Systems. Well, I should be studying for the next exam. The assignments have been pretty manageable so far, but I need this A. I need it. My in-major GPA desperately needs to be improved, and hopefully this is the semester to do it. It's tiring to answer the question "What's your in-major GPA?" with "It's improving." Outlook: Good.

21-125, Maple Lab. Quick. Easy. Filler. Outlook: Good.

33-224, Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe. Every semester seems to have just one course that puts me to sleep consistently and completely. This year, astronomy is it. The material is pretty dull, the mostly-empty lecture hall has a lot of echo to it, and it's late enough in the day for me to be exhausted. If I can just figure out what the professor has been talking about for the last month, I may have a prayer in this class. Outlook: Uncertain.

80-242, Conflict and Dispute Resolution. Well, this humanities course has actually been interesting, although it doesn't help that I know practically nobody taking the class. Our final presentation: analyze a web site. That's right: take a web site of an organization, about a social controversy, and prepare a 20-minute presentation about its contents. At least I have some control over it, and the take-home final means I get to go home that much earlier. Still, the professor seems pretty strict when it comes to giving out A's. Outlook: Moderate.

82-272, Intermediate Japanese II. Continuing on with my minor, Intermediate Japanese II puts up the same heavy nightly workload with several ongoing project. One twist: instead of a final exam, we have a final presentation about a research topic of our choice, with a question-and-answer period. Of course, it's all in Japanese. It's all about the planning. Given the sudden jump in the difficulty of the course, this could ruin my minor-GPA 4.00. Still, a B wouldn't kill me. Outlook: Moderate.

82-273, Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture. Hey, you wanna take a survey? The dreaded data-collection step is part of my final project in this course, which also requires research from published sources. Another presentation to worry about, but overall I've found the course to be interesting in content without a very heavy weekly workload. I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts. Outlook: Good.

Just end the semester now, please...

and that's the half

So ends the first half of the Spring 2001 semester. Things aren't going too badly so far, all things considered: I'm keeping up in classes, I haven't had to pull any more all-nighters, and I'm keeping busy with other activities as well. Start this update off with a recent anecdote:

but I didn't DO anything!

Today is the first day of our four-day mid-semester break weekend. Some students have gone home, but many others have stayed on campus. Still, the overall atmosphere seems to be "dead," or at least "asleep," particularly at 9:30 AM. I got on the 67A bus out to Monroeville Mall to perform two simple tasks: exchanging my shoulder-type bag for a new one, and spending a $50 gift card at Circuit City. First, I arrive at 10:30 AM, and in a disturbingly quiet mall setting I exchange my bag without incident. For reasons that are completely alien to me, they put my replacement bag in a shopping bag, as both cashier and customer fail to realize that I can simply carry the new item on my shoulder out of the store.

The 67A runs about once an hour on weekdays, so I kill some time wandering around the mall before catching the next bus out. Circuit City is about a half-mile away from the mall, but it's down a divided highway with almost no provision for foot travel. Circuit City, as it turns out, is also relatively empty at 11:15 AM, and so I begin mentally calculating how I can best spend $50. I first wander over to the TV's -- nah, not worth taking $50 off one -- then find my way over to the racks of DVD's and CD's. A few catch my eye. As I start to price some video game cartridges, a friendly sales clerk comes up to me and asks if I'm looking for something. "No," I answer. "Just looking around." Seeing that I have just used a very standard line, I assume that he will stop bothering me and look for a commission elsewhere.

As I round a corner, I notice that the salesman who approached me is now consulting with two of his co-workers. One of them, who is apparently an assistant-manager-type, starts following me. After a couple more aisles of browsing, he asks me to walk with him over to the customer service desk to check my bag with them. Over a fair amount of nervous laughter, he explains that my carrying a bag around small items like that was arousing some suspicion. I comply without putting up a fight -- I want to spend this money, and I don't want to get thrown out. Consider that:

• If you've ever seen me in person, I do not like anything even remotely resembling a criminal (maybe a white-collar criminal, but anyway);
• The items I were looking at were all encased in very big plastic cases with radio transmitters and dye tags and all sorts of other anti-theft gizmotry;
• There are cameras everywhere in that store, so instead of walking near me to make me feel like a criminal, they could just have followed me around on camera to make the stalking less obvious.

chicks dig uncoordinated pale scrawny guys

I have recently been introduced to the wonders of Dance Dance Revolution, a PlayStation game from Japan where the object is to step on a directional pad in time to cheesy J-Pop music. It's a lot of fun, and the closest I get to actual exercise on campus. It also provides a unique opportunity to meet people.

Last week, when I was playing in a nearby suite, I decided to bring my large plush Pikachu just to use as a conversation piece. Of course, it got lots of "awww" reactions from the women present, and very surprised/disgusted reactions from the guys. That said, I futzed around on the pads in my usual uncoordinated style for a few hours, and around 1:05 AM we were all politely asked to leave. (Someone in the suite wanted to sleep. Go figure.)

Then they walked in.

He was just Some Guy, who didn't really say much. She was Sandy Gani, a first-year computer science major from Malaysia, who by some matter of circumstance is about a month older than I am. She quickly grabbed the Pikachu and stuffed it under her sweater, refusing to give it back. Fortunately, the guy she arrived with was helpful in getting it out and returning it to me. Sandy recognized me, although I didn't know who she was at all, and attributed it to "stalking." Apparently she already knew my AIM screen name, phone number, and where I live. Anyone who knows the finger command could find this out too, so this didn't shock me; what did shock me was the fact that she actually cared enough to look all of this up.

Next day: I get a message from some unknown screen name, and immediately decide that it's from some woman I had met last night while playing DDR. Sure enough, it's Sandy, and into the buddy list she goes. She is quite aggressive in her socialization: within a relatively short time, I learn that the guy who accompanied her to West Wing 370 was her ex-boyfriend (my emphasis) and that she was wondering if I wanted to go to the movie that night, "The Emperor's New Groove," on campus. I do, we go, I pay, we eat, we go to lame frat party, we talk, we go back to West Wing (she lives downstairs from me), we wave bye-bye, end of "date."

Things get more abstract from there: we talk about all sorts of matters, but just as friends. She answers more relationship-intensive questions, like "Why are you 'stalking' me?" with simple emoticons. I don't know what to make of it. Other people are equally confused, or angry, or jealous. Is Sandy a girlfriend? A friend? Just someone to hang out with? What? The relationship isn't physical at all, nor too deeply emotional. The closest it gets to physical is me trying to wrest my plush Pikachu away from Sandy, and she sometimes cooperates. I really don't understand women.

Maybe I should find better venues than J-Pop dancing games in which to meet women.

class-by-class

At the half, things aren't looking to bad.

15-213, Introduction to Computer Systems. The material is getting very intense, and I have still not yet found a partner for the most recent assignment. I will spend a good-sized chunk of this mid-semester "break" trying to figure out how to program something resembling a garbage collector by Tuesday. Still, I did pretty well on the midterm, a good thing since there is currently no grade-scaling whatsoever going on in this class. Outlook: Good.

21-125, Maple Lab. Still very doable, and light on the schedule. The TA is most helpful, although I now know not to use Windows 2000's Explorer drag-and-drop to turn in assignments. Outlook: Good.

33-224, Stars, Galaxies and the Universe. Uh oh. I had heard bad things about this course before, and they all seem to be coming true. The homework assignments have been getting easier, the lab assignments are still trivially easy, but the midterm just rocked me. Hopefully, the rest of the class did just as lousy as I did. Outlook: Uncertain.

80-242, Conflict and Dispute Resolution. A nice discussion-based class, although the material is sometimes pretty dry. It looks like early returns show me on target for a B in this course, but an A is possible. The correlation between in-class discussion and the recent midterm was pretty spotty, with a few of the questions being straight textbook definitions. Outlook: Neutral.

82-272, Intermediate Japanese II. Still as time-consuming as ever, with the added pressure of a final presentation instead of a final exam. Success on this course looks to be dependent largely on how much time I can invest every day. It can't be secondary to other courses, but sometimes lines have to be drawn. Outlook: Good.

82-273, Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture. The sheer volume of discussion, which revolves around a small subset of the class, has caused us to fall behind schedule. Fortunately, the professor realized this before it was too late, and adjusted the schedule accordingly. Here, we will also need to do a final presentation and paper instead of an exam, but I will have to do some data gathering as well. That ought to make things more tedious, although at the same time more informative. Outlook: Good.

As we play on this crazy game called living...

the end of adolescence

Well, here it is: my twentieth birthday. I'm no longer technically a teen-ager, and that distinction brings other implications as well. It puts the "too old" in "I'm too old for this," referring to things like staying home for the summer. A teen-ager staying with their parents is a non-event; a twenty-something staying at home is downright embarassing many times. This time also gives me a chance to look back and see what happened during those seven years.

what happened?

I can't say that I'm really that downtrodden about having left adolescence; it hasn't been all that good to me. As I cross into my third decade of existence, I still haven't been in a serious relationship, I'm still overburdened with homework, and things don't appear to be changing any time soon. Most of these happenings are apparently self-inflicted, at least in part. I didn't have to miss obvious signals from women who, I later found out, actually did (or did not) like me. I didn't have to choose Carnegie Mellon, where the computer science program is just as grueling as it is famous. What can I say? I've made my decisions, and I tend to lean toward the downside more often. Guess I get to try again in the coming years.

In a way, though, coming to Carnegie Mellon put me in the right setting. I built up a reputation as a nerd all through elementary school up to high school, and that caused more than a few people to have some prejudice towards me. I wasn't approachable. I wasn't accessible. I was, however, available. Constantly. Coming here, I wipe the slate clean: while the fact that I'm a computer science major has its various implications, the class is diverse enough to still prompt the occasional "what's your major?" from a fellow student. This is only a good thing. Looking beyond college, I get to wipe the slate clean once more and head into the professional world. What possibilities lie there are really a mystery as of now.

moving along

As mentioned earlier, the idea of staying at home for extended periods of time is a mixed bag. My laundry, room and board are free, but at the same time I still don't feel independent. When searching for internships, a search that has proved fruitless so far, I indicate that I'm willing to move anywhere in the country. This is partly out of desperation, but it also relates back to the fact that I want to see what it's like to be more on my own.

Syosset High School, where I spent four years before coming here, was noted as being a "bubble," a small community isolated from the Real World. Watch out, they cautioned us: the Real World wouldn't be like this high school. They drew parallels between college life and independence. Well, I regret to say that Carnegie Mellon University is almost as much of a bubble as Syosset was. All around me, I see people speaking ill of Pittsburgh, almost never leaving campus and expressing a disdain for the city. Many will incessantly complain about the lack of nightclubs, Chinese food restaurants, and anything outside the area that isn't open past 2:00 AM. The concept of a "fob," a derogatory term for someone from Asia who refuses to assimilate, is quite prevalent here. People of all races will sometimes segregate themselves, but there are still many people who don't pay any attention to it. The clash between the American notion of inclusion and the traditional Asian ideal of racial purity is evident here.

so what's next?

Well, first of all, I need to get back to my homework. After that's done, the search to find happiness continues. Happiness takes many forms: a girlfriend, a job, spectacular riches, a Perl script to better automate this web site, and so forth. Who knows: I might even be discovered by folks like Losers.org, who dismiss sites like mine with a one-line snyde remark.

A few nights ago, I was talking with an acquaintance about relationships. He explained his idea of the "fuck-it level," where a guy will just cease to care about the consequences of his actions and do something rash. It could be trying an exotic new food, traveling abroad, asking a friend out with some ulterior motives, or anything more. I'm convinced that my threshold is still way too high: while I'll often make a fool out of myself when conversing among friends, I have been very reluctant to advance myself in other consequences. Whining about it on the web doesn't help much either, of course.

and so it goes

So another year in my life has come and gone, and another narcissistic update is up. What next? Who knows? Who cares?

class-by-class

Here's the early returns from semester four.

15-213, Introduction to Computer Systems. The most hands-on computer science course I have taken here, this course deals with assembler and C in implementing systems-level programming. I have taken a liking to it, since theory has never really interested me. This course is designed to let the students play around with homeworks to discover things for themselves, something that I have always enjoyed doing. Outlook: Good.

21-125, Maple Lab. I was a bit disappointed by this class, mainly because interaction is minimal, my section is taught not by a professor but by an undergrad TA, and the level of apathy is high. I spend at least one-fifth of my time in the lab trying to help out other students with their UNIX desktop environments. Maybe I should take the customization out of mine and shut up if I want to get more work done here. Outlook: Neutral.

33-224, Stars, Galaxies and the Universe. At first, I thought that the professor's dry wit, British accent, and use of many colorful visual aids were going to make lectures fun. Little did I realize that the words "fun" and "lectures" don't go together. For a variety of reasons, I find myself falling asleep entirely too often in this class, and the homeworks and lab assignments do not seem to correlate with the lectures a whole lot. Outlook: Uncertain.

80-242, Conflict and Dispute Resolution. Ah, this class brings me back to the good old days of discussion-based humanities classes in high school, where I would frequently make an ass out of myself with grandiose, often incorrect comments. In this class here, the most talkative and opinionated people often aren't humanities students at all, but rather science and engineering students with a lot on their mind. Nevertheless, I find that the material is pretty easy to undersand, and interesting to boot. Outlook: Good.

82-272, Intermediate Japanese II. Continuing on towards a minor in Japanese, this course builds on the previous course but shifts the influence further towards writing and conversations rather than strict grammar. While there aren't any more bothersome grammar quizzes, the course now includes many more speaking, writing and even research activities. I still hope to study in Japan for a summer before graduating, perhaps in the summer of '02. Outlook: Good.

82-273, Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture. This class is fairly elementary, and is intended to be taken during the first year of language study. Still, there is a lot of information to be learned in this course, taught in English. It features a lot of discussion which can be entertaining, but sometimes drags on for too long. The dichotomy of long-settled white students with first- and second-generation Asian and Asian-American students helps to keep things lively. Outlook: Good.

See you next month.

fourth verse, same as the first

I'm back in Pittsburgh after three weeks off. I appreciated the downtime -- I got to play around with my new server (which will perform a few small tasks once I get it up on the LAN), do a little traveling, and otherwise just make up for a lot of lost sleep over the semester. I'm all set for semester four: six classes, the search for a summer internship, and all manner of extracurricular activities.

relationship redux

new adventures in hypertext

class-by-class preview

15-213, Introduction to Computer Systems

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: C

21-125, Maple Lab

best case: A
probable case: A
worst case: B

33-224, Stars, Galaxies and the Universe

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: B

80-242, Conflict and Dispute Resolution

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: C

82-272, Intermediate Japanese II

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: B

82-273, Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture

best case: A
probable case: A
worst case: B

overall

By the time you read my next update, I'll no longer be a teenager!

worst semester ever!

In my life, the number "three" bears a rather curious distinction academically. From first grade on through high school, we were on a quarter system. I invariably did the worst in the third quarter every year, for reasons outlined in About Me. Seeing as though Carnegie Mellon operates on a semester system, I though I could buffet my third-quarter failures with a strong fourth-quarter showing to balance out the spring semesters.

The gods of numerology did not like this, and brought forth an even worse punishment: my third semester here. Talk about your breakdowns.

jason's bogus journey
US Airways flight 539 from LaGuardia to Pittsburgh is scheduled to depart on Sunday at 3:29 PM.
2:00 PM	call US Airways, to find that the flight is 45 minutes delayed.
3:00 PM	the flight is 2 hours 15 minutes delayed.
3:30 PM	depart for airport.
4:00 PM	get stuck in traffic en route to airport.
4:30 PM	arrive at airport, wait outside to check bags. Discover that the flight now leaves at 6:00 PM, 2 hours 30 minutes delayed.
5:00 PM	check bags at curbside, clear security, head to gate.
5:30 PM	flight is delayed until 6:30 PM.
5:45 PM	discover that flight has changed gates, and will leave at 6:45 PM.
6:40 PM	board plane (my row being the last one to board).
7:00 PM	leave gate, begin taxiing to runway. (Scattered applause as plane finally moves.)
7:03 PM	Captain notes that there are "about ten planes" ahead of us on the runway. Collective groan. Passenger next to me places AirFone call to inform her party that she will be very, very late.
7:50 PM	plane takes off from LaGuardia Airport, 4 hours 21 minutes late.
8:45 PM	plane arrives in Pittsburgh, and taxis to gate B48.
9:05 PM	after deplaning, arrive at baggage claim.
10:05 PM	seeing that my luggage still hasn't arrived, and that flight 539 no longer appears on the board next to baggage claim D, get in line to inquire about my luggage.
10:35 PM	arrive at front of line.
10:37 PM	ask where my bags are. "They're still at LaGuardia," replies the attendant.
10:39 PM	file a "Property Irregularity Report." US Airways establishes a file for my baggage, and says that my baggage will be delivered to my CMU address when it is located.
10:55 PM	depart on overcrowded Airport Flyer shuttle bus.
11:54 PM	arrive at CMU.
11:59 PM	arrive at Entropy to purchase replacements for toiletry items in my luggage.
12:00 AM	Entropy closes.
12:21 AM	write bitter e-mail detailing the day's events.
12:22 AM	think of clever way to tell teachers, "US Airways ate my homework."

grounded

When I bought my plane tickets home and back for Thanksgiving, I had no idea that I would be returning on Sunday, November 26, the busiest air travel day in history. There was some heavy fog in New York that day, making the whole experience painful at best. I have converted an e-mail that I bitterly composed after my ordeal to a table, which appears at left: notice the total of 4 hours and 21 minutes of delays, an hours of waiting at the baggage claim, a half hour waiting to complain (in the company of many passengers from my flight) and an overall span of nearly eight and a half hours between the flight's scheduled departure and the time that I actually arrive at Carnegie Mellon. Had there been no delays, I would have easily made it back in time to catch The Simpsons at 8:00 PM; that's just one of the things that made me mad that night.

As an epilogue to this story, I received a call at around 8:45 AM on Monday morning informing me that my luggage had come in, and that they would be bringing it to campus. Fair enough, I thought: I was so desperate at this point that I was willing to get back on an Airport Flyer shuttle to pick my bags up as they arrived from New York on a plane. Because I packed all of my dirty laundry in one of my bags to have washed for free back home, I had nearly no clothes whatsoever back in Pittsburgh. Fortunately, I had a few sets of clean clothes left, so between those and the toiletries that I bought early in the morning at the Entropy convenience store on campus, I was set with a contingency plan. I finally got my luggage on Monday afternoon, unpacked everything, and was back to normal at last. I decided not to have US Airways reimburse me for the four dollars I spent on replacing some toiletries, for fear of more paperwork and red tape. Everything arrived safe and sound, but in the future I don't think I'll be taking quite so much clothes back home to wash. (Of course, when I head home later this week for the winter break, I'm packing my suitcases to the limit.)

The moral of the story: if it's humanly possible, avoid flying through LaGuardia. If you do end up in that hellhole of an airport, and are forced to check your bags at the curb, tip the skycaps generously. Perhaps then, and only then, will your luggage come through in a timely and intact fashion.

homework hell

15-212: Principles of Programming

This class ranks right up there as one of the hardest, most "hateable" classes that I'll take here. It reintroduced me to the frustration of working like mad on a program, only to come to the conclusion that I really should have started the program three days earlier. Furthermore, it reintroduced me to the concept of working my ass off on a homework assignment, only to get zero credit. That's right: no credit. No partial credit, no A's-for-effort, nothing. In fact, I should hesitate to call it finished: I'm still disputing a grade of 0 that I got on a recent homework because a portion of it didn't work.

This class had all of the hallmarks of a mismanaged computer science course: like in my last programming course, 15-211, the TA's ran the show. While this allowed for a lot more interaction between course staff and students (TA's tend to be more approachable than professors, in my opinion) it also caused some problems with the mechanics of the course. Homework was often not returned until nearly a month after it was submitted. Office hours were frequently moved. The overall difficulty of the material was very high. Overall, I feel that I'm glad to be done with it -- or then again, am I done with it? Grade outlook: C/D.

33-104: Experimental Physics

As I draw ever closer to completing my science requirements next semester, I look back on this course and think that it was pretty unremarkable. Fortunately, the pace was pretty lax and the instructors were friendly and accessible. Although there weren't a lot of assignments to do, they often took a fair amount of time to complete and were graded very strictly. Apparently this course wasn't the GPA-making course I had imagined it to be, although it's certainly easier than some other lab courses that I've heard horror stories about. Grade outlook: B.

36-217: Probability & Random Processes

My one statistics course that I will likely have taken while here. Although the homework often was pretty long and involved, it demonstrated the material in class pretty thoroughly. What's more, I was able to make good use of the many office hours available. The availability of the TA's and instructor were perhaps the biggest keys to my success on the homework assignments.

This course was also unique because it used what I like to call "karate-style scoring." Students started at a 0.0 mastery level, and could take mastery exams of increasing difficulty to increase themselves to a 0.5, 1.0 (D), 1.5, 2.0 (C), and so forth up to 4.0 (A). I managed to work myself up to 3.5, but my homework performance boosted that up by another 0.5, so I didn't even have to take the final to know what my final grade was. While this style of scoring is certainly very discrete and straightforward, I don't think I would be happy to see it again in another class. For instance, on the homework assignments we were encouraged to make an effort on every question: even if we never got close to the correct answer, our effort would be worth some small amount of points. However, the mastery exams were each just one question, graded on a pass-fail basis. Demonstrating partial knowledge would get some quick points on a homework assignment, but would get the student nowhere on the mastery exams.

Most courses stress homework over tests, to keep the students involved. In this particular course, tests were the single largest factor in determining the final grade. Everyone, myself included, has a tale of at least one mastery exam that they feel they could have, would have, or should have passed had they remembered one fact or one setup procedure. What's more is that I don't even remember what was covered in the last two weeks of class -- I slept through most of it, frankly. Despite this, my thorough knowledge of some of the material was enough to earn me an A in the class. That just doesn't seem right. Final grade: A.

82-271: Intermediate Japanese I

Many students take Japanese at the elementary level to satisfy some humanities requirement or perhaps because they just consider it to be an easy A. Whatever the reason, the attrition rate is very high in these modern language courses. Last semester, I watched my Elementary Japanese II class dwindle to six students; this semester, we started with nine students and ended with only seven. Nevertheless, small class sizes are only a benefit; while I can't sleep in this class like I could in most of my other classes, the level of teamwork and community within the class is astounding. The fact that we were all required to post to the class bboard and also show up to class (unlike any other class, except possibly my lab) further strengthened this experience.

I find that while humanities is not a department for which Carnegie Mellon is renowned, the modern languages program is very intense and very personal. Next semester, I expect to take the next language course along with an introductory culture course to continue towards a Japanese minor. While the homework is still plentiful, I still find time to deal with it. Grade outlook: A/B.

Overall

This semester was my lightest one yet in terms of units carried (42, compared with around 54 in semesters past; one unit is one hour of work in or out of class per week). While it certainly didn't destroy my overall GPA, my in-major GPA is still languishing. Both my in-major and overall GPA must remain above 2.00 so that I can graduate, so I definitely need to improve my time management as always. Next semester, I plan on rounding out my humanities and science requirements so that I can focus much more intensely on my major and minor courses in my final four semesters. As always, I'm entertaining the possibility of spending some time abroad. However, given my academic obligations, that would probably involve spending only a summer abroad. It would be a bit hard to expect transfer credit for computer science courses, especially considering all I go through just to be eligible to take them here.

social tendencies

Maybe it's just a bad time of the month.

Those of you who have known me for some time know that on December 8, 1999, I asked a good personal friend of mine whether she would like to be... more than just friends. Not only did she say no, but she also told me that she was bisexual -- a rather apparent fact that I completely failed to pick up on. The following semester, I was introduced to some of the most bizarre women I have ever seen, in the role of this woman's girlfriends. "Wow," I thought. "I finally met someone with a worse taste in women than mine."

Apparently, things don't change much in the New Millennium. While the ending might change, the story remains constant.

Saturday, December 2. Bright and early, I arrive at the University of Pittsburgh's famed Cathedral of Learning to help out with a quiz bowl tournament for high schools in the area. (For me, it's all about the children.) When I arrive, I notice that another CMU student has already arrived to help out, and another is on the way. The student who got there before I did is named "CMU Drone 2" by the resentful Pitt College Bowl team; I am given a choice of either "Drone 1" or "Drone 3" by the powers that be at Pitt; I choose "Drone 1" for reasons that may forever be attributable to fate. The tournament goes well, and the three drones even meet with a couple of the Pitt female contingent (well, okay, the only two women there from Pitt who aren't currently dating the president of the College Bowl club) for lunch. Things go generally well.

Tuesday, December 5. An e-mail arrives from a Jessica Payne, with a return address in the pitt.edu domain. It is entitled "Hello Drone 1." After a few replies back and forth, and the addition of each other to our respective ICQ lists, she invites herself over to CMU to partake of the 50-cent bottles of Surge available in the CS undergrad lounge. The catch: I have to pick her up at the Cathedral of Learning, about a mile away in less than ideal weather conditions. Not wanting to turn a pretty face down, I accept the offer. We kill some time in the CS lounge, frightening the geeks present therein with the presence of a woman that does not pain the eyes of normal people to look at. Although things end amiably enough, in the wee hours of the morning, nothing of note really transpires between us.

Wednesday, December 6. As I rise groggily from my few hours of sleep, I run to work where, like any good desk attendant, I immediately fire up VNC to log into my many instant-messaging accounts remotely. Some more conversation is exchanged. That evening, I receive a message reading "gee, women everywhere are putting the moves on you, what kind of chance does a little Pitt student have?" which puzzles me a bit. After all, women everywhere seem to consciously avoid putting the moves on me, given the way I like to distort kind gestures into perceiving women as actually liking me. That night, she invites myself and drone 3 out to the charming architecture of Wean Hall (again, inviting herself to CMU) with the promise of meeting her friend Amanda. The goal: to fix up Amanda and drone 3, leaving myself and Jessica as a Happy CMU-Pitt Couple. Well, drone 3 managed to charm -- or scare, it's not quite clear -- both of the women with his impression of the Jigglypuff song (if you've never watched Pokémon, I won't even try to explain). We wound up staying up until 5:00 AM, walking home in a snowstorm as the buses in Pittsburgh were starting their runs for the day.

Thursday, December 7. Simply the most drone you can get. I spent nearly half this day in Jessica's company: the five hours at the beginning of the day (carried over from Wednesday), an afternoon expedition to a "nearby" Japanese food store, and then some one-on-one chat in my living room in the evening. I come away from the evening thinking, "Hey, I think this girl likes me."

Friday, December 8. Before my usual no-life Friday night shift at the information desk, I stop by Ginza with Jessica. Ginza is a nearby Korean and Japanese food place that's pretty good, and inexpensive to boot. Then, while at work, I naturally sign on to ICQ using VNC and Everybuddy. After more small talk, we get to her saying, "Well, I'm getting closer to my decision, I'm almost there." After what is perhaps the most tense 14 minutes of my modern life, she decides to express no preference for either drone. I move along, a little disappointed but not entirely so. She eventually comes to CMU later that night to watch the late showing of "The Replacements" on campus for the princely sum of $1. (Since that's the rate with student ID only, I graciously buy her ticket.)

Saturday, December 9. After the movie is over in the wee hours of the morning, we head to the CS lounge for more caffeine and more opportunities to watch very pathetic people attempt to mathematically reason arguments about the card game bridge. (You think I'm kidding, don't you?) At around a quarter to four in the morning, I decide that I need some sleep, so I leave Jessica alone in the lounge with drone 3. This turns out to be the biggest Bad Idea I have yet carried out. I end up spending the rest of the day catching up on the homework I missed during my hours upon hours of time with Jessica in the past week. Jessica, on the other hand, goes to Pitt, where apparently it's okay if you leave your homework undone for three months.

Sunday, December 10. The bomb drops in the early morning hours. After spending a night on drone 3's couch, and a lot more time thatn I imagined in his company, Jessica sends me the most devastating 137-character message I have ever seen.

That single, terse, overly punctuated message singlehandedly destroyed whatever hope I had in finding happiness in this woman. Apparently I've fallen into the same trap as I often do: any sufficiently nice person is indistinguishable from someone who likes you. I read way too much into simple gestures and attitudes, to think that she actually liked me. Huh. Perish the thought. After the fact, she insists that she originally did like me, but that she apparently lost interest after a while. Perhaps it was my abrasive personality. Perhaps it was my condescending attitude or my objectionable nature.

I'd just like to think I lost out to a guy who did a better Jigglypuff impression.

See you next year.

man of inaction

Before I applied to universities, I consulted many books presenting opinions and statistics. In one of them, I noticed one student quip about Carnegie Mellon, "School, friends, food, sleep: Choose three."

In last month's update, I casually remarked that I had never pulled an all-nighter during my time at CMU. Well, I can scratch one item off of my "Things I've Never Done" list: on Sunday, November 5, the only person sleeping in my room was a student visiting for Sleeping Bag Weekend. Two empty beds, and one sleeping bag on the floor. After popping my all-nighter cherry, I felt perfectly fine at first. It helped that I woke up at around 1:30 PM on the fifth, after a long trip home from Washington got me back into Pittsburgh at around 2:00 AM that morning. At hour 18 of my consciousness, as I got out of the shower to fix myself some breakfast, I felt like this was no sweat. At hour 22, as I was leaving my morning Japanese class, I still felt like I could get through the day.

Then came statistics lecture.

"Today, we'll be talking about --" thud.

After 25 hours of being awake, I experience the deepest sleep I've had in quite some time, just ten feet from my professor. (Fortunately, college professors seem a bit more tolerant of this practice.) After lecture, my friends wake me up, and I hustle on back to my room before I collapse. This effectively kills the rest of my day as I try to collect enough energy to do anything coherently. Of course, I can't, my homework goes unfinished, and I fall right back behind schedule. Net gain: zero. I still don't understand how my roommate can claim he does three or four all-nighters in a week, although I have a newfound respect for how he can fall asleep instantly at virtually any hour of the day or night, not to be awakened by any blaring music or noise around him.

So with that behind me, I'm back to my usual strategy of time mismanagement. My duties as secretary of CMU's College Bowl club have taken me to such exotic locales as Delaware, Cleveland, and Washington this semester, where I recreate by closing myself in classrooms with men and women who have managed to convert their lack of social graces into a profound ability to recall all sorts of bizarre information. (Incidentally, CMU's team placed second overall at TRASH Regionals in Washington, losing in the finals to a team of graduates named the "Major League Assholes.") As fun as this is, it's also a good way to avoid doing homework and assignments, as my pathetic assignment grades in my CS class have certainly shown. Furthermore, in my year-to-date tenure as the news director of campus radio station WRCT, I've managed to accomplish... nothing. That's right, nothing. Nothing at all. I occasionally go to meetings, get yelled at for doing nothing, pick up my mail, with which I do nothing, and then leave. What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It's not like I want to do nothing; all this comes back to the refrain of my third semester at CMU, "Something's got to give."

For the radio, I do nothing. In my programming class, I might as well be doing nothing: a thousand monkeys working at a thousand terminals could produce more workable code than I could. At work, I do nothing: after all, that's what desk jobs are for. Socially, I do -- is there something worse than nothing? If so, that's what I do. I think I'd just like to call a do-over on this entire semester.

Maybe things will perk up. Maybe I'm still dreaming.

class by class

Last update before finals are done, and I get to return home yet again.

15-212, Principles of Programming. It's not that the material in this course is that hard to grasp; in fact, a fair amount of it bears at least some resemblance to material covered in classes past. The main problem with my performance in this class is, as I relayed to my TA, that I can't program in ML for shit. ML is a very strictly-typed language, he replies: just make sure everything type-checks, and go from there. Me, I go from there to getting zero credit for problems that I actually put a lot of effort into. I do not want my "major GPA" -- that is, based on courses only in the core curriculum -- to remain below 3.00, but it doesn't look like things are getting any better here.

33-104, Experimental Physics. For a class that most people take just because they have to, the staff still keeps things awfully strict. Unfortunately, this obligatory class doesn't appear to be an easy A, so long as nitpicking and strict grading keep things more tightly fitted to a curve. Still, this is the only class where I actually do productive things, while remaining in an environment sufficiently controlled such that I don't screw everything up and end up staying until all hours of the night. Other labs, I've heard, can be like this.

36-217, Probability Theory and Random Processes. Sanctuary! I'm within striking distance of earning an A in this class before the end of classes, due to the way things are structured, meaning that I won't even have to go to the final exam. Although I sleep entirely too much in this class, the professor doesn't seem bothered too much to go over some of the concepts that I missed. The fact that I work in a group trying to understand the material is also key. Considering that I only have four classes this semester, this class appears instrumental to keeping my overall average up.

82-271, Intermediate Japanese I. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to invest as much time as I would have liked into this class; being that it was my best class at the halfway point, I might be getting a little complacent. When push comes to shove, my Japanese homework sometimes finds its way to the bottom of the stack, only to be completed the following morning if at all. Still, my performance in this class otherwise has remained pretty good, and I feel confident that I'm learning more about the culture and language of Japan. Is a semester or year abroad ahead for me? Possibly. Computer science is hard enough in English.

updates for october 23, 2000

jason no well function sleep without

The first two and a half semesters here at Carnegie Mellon are officially over. This weekend, I took advantage of the extended mid-semester break weekend to spend some time with my family back in New York and also catch up on some much needed rest. I also managed to catch the first two games of the World Series, without the alcohol-induced craziness that my suitemates apparently indulged in back in Pittsburgh.

Things have been hectic this semester, although I'm proud to say that I have yet to actually pull an all-nighter while here. That's not to say that I haven't needed an all-nighter; there have just been times where my brain just can't have any more work and decides to shut off for the night. Fortunately, with the aid of everyone's favorite snack treats, chocolate covered espresso beans and Penguin Mints, even the longest of nights seems like mere minutes flashing by. Not wanting to crash too quickly, I've restricted my dosage of caffeine to "moderately unhealthy" instead of "completely insane."

One of the reasons why I took desk jobs instead of an errand job this semester was the opportunity to meet more students (and by "students," I of course mean "women") by working in a semi-public setting. By starting to work in the Modern Languages department (among the most female departments in the school) I thought I would be improving my chances.

Statistics lie in the cruelest of ways.

Indeed there are more women in Modern Languages than in most departments at Carnegie Mellon. Although the statistics on Modern Languages majors don't quite tell the story (ten women, seven men) other more female departments often prefer language courses to be used as electives. However, there happens to be this one woman who goes to all-female Chatham College and is cross-registered here for one of our new Modern Language On-Line courses. Ever since I started to work the Tuesday evening shift, which overlaps with the weekly French On-Line lecture, she's been trying to make idle conversation with me, harvesting information drop by drop. Apparently she's reached the point where she's fairly confident that I'm not gay, and that I'm probably not seeing anyone. In fact, last week she all but asked me out.

So why am I not jumping for joy and overreacting positively, like I almost always do in these situations? Simple. I'm not a picky man -- seeing as though I've lasted some 19 years without a relationship, I've been known in moments of desperation to shout "I'll date anything!" or something to that effect. Now I get to eat my words. Even I would not date this woman. Not only is she painful to look at, she also has an abysmal personality and I can just feel our interests clashing.

The bad news: apparently only unattractive, undesirable women find me attractive. The good news: at least this time, I get to be the one to find some inventive way of turning the other person down. Hey, they don't have Internet access at Chatham, do they?

Continuing in that vein, earlier this month Carnegie Mellon's KGB organization decided to "paint the fence," to stake its claim and spread its message on a portion of picket-fence-shaped concrete that has the distinction of being the Most Painted Object On Earth. (It's a CMU tradition.) In so doing, we managed to annoy several organizations: the central administration, for our mocking of Carnegie Mellon's plan to lend space to Intel in the University Center; the artist of The Tartan's "The Fence" comic strip, which looks an awful lot like Penny Arcade; and of course the Delta Delta Delta sorority, who was unable to take the fence during our reign there. (Because the fence is up for grabs as soon as one organization deserts it, tri-Delt had to wait all of 24 hours to take control. That night, one member drunkenly scrawled "KGB Sucks Bad" or something similar on one of the pickets.)

So at the fence, I got to meet some interesting people, drip paint on my nice coat and sneakers, and of course meet Kate, the woman touted at an early KGB meeting as a "geek matchmaker." She goes to Pitt, is engaged to a former KGB member (or "traitor") and specializes in fixing up people with slightly off-kilter social tendencies. After giving her my vital information ("What kind of woman are you looking for?" "Is she female? Is she single?") and my e-mail address, she said that she would give it a try. However, it's been a few weeks, and I'm still waiting. Far be it from me to give up hope, though!

Lastly, redemption greeted me earlier this month. At the School of Computer Science's Earthware Symposium, I saw numerous interesting presentations about the future of technology. Former Sun Microsystems chief and all-around hothead Bill Joy was there, sort of, with a synthetic interview. Ask him questions about topics like the future of technology, and he'll respond with mostly relevant answers. I thought, "Hey, this would make a good story for Slashdot." So I submitted it, hoping that it wouldn't be rejected like so many stories that had been rejected previously, and lo and behold, it was accepted! As a result, this web site recorded 2,400 hits that day. That's still not a record; certain misguided message board postings have generated activity more than three times as heavy, spread across two days.

class by class

With half of the semester gone, here's an update.

15-212, Principles of Programming. SML continues to be the pest that refuses to die, although fortunately I'm not alone in my suffering here. The average on the midterm was an unflattering 55%, with an equally unflattering distribution: not including no-shows, six students scored less than 10% on the test overall. My 84% should hopefully be curved up past the century mark, although terrible performances on homeworks will offset that. The whole mess is a redux of 15-129, the now-defunct Programming and Modern Math course that crammed way too much material into too little time.

33-104, Experimental Physics. The whole course still smacks of "obligatory" -- I probably wouldn't take it if I didn't have to. Still, the material is bearable, if not tedious. The instructor makes things as lively as possible, but the fact remains: this is Physics Lab. No fireworks here, unless they're being analyzed for their precise reactive properties.

36-217, Probability Theory and Random Processes. Stats feels like "15-251 Light," and for that I'm very thankful. Now that I've taken the aforementioned hellish discrete math course, stats feels like a breeze. The TA's are usually helpful, the assignments are manageable but not easy, and the material is usually tied together nicely with real-world case studies. The only times when stats gives me trouble is when a stats assignment and a 212 assignment are due very close to each other. In 212, assignments can be submitted a day late for a 10% grade penalty; in stats, no late work is accepted at all.

82-271, Intermediate Japanese I. Japanese just keeps getting harder and more intense here, although of course I wouldn't have it any other way. The homework remains a factor -- it often takes a back seat to other classes, and many times it's due the day after it's assigned with no "grace period." In any event, it's still an enjoyable class, even considering the volume of work that goes on there.

updates for september 23, 2000

a touch of the old as the new term begins

Year two has begun, and already a couple of unexpected flashbacks have happened in my life. I'm not talking about the hours of homework I had last year, but some new figures who have older roots.

making the virtual real

This first anecdote was hardly unexpected -- I had known about it for some time. I don't know what it is with DALnet #teen ops and Pittsburgh, but already I've met three people from that chat room in this city alone: one while I was here for Pre-College, one last year while he was attending Allegheny College not too far from here, and now a first-year student whom I've known on #teen for some time but had never met in person until she came here. (Names withheld on all counts, for reasons that I won't go into.)

from next door to next chair

When I first moved to Syosset in 1987, we met our next-door neighbors. They had kids comparable in age to myself and my two younger brothers, so we would often go next door to play in the house or swim in their pool. Then, our neighbors packed up and left for the brighter pastures of East Setauket. We never saw them again... until arriving here.

At Carnegie Mellon, Japanese class offers an interesting social environment. Students always refer to each other using the "Japanized" last name plus the suffix -san. For example, my classmates refer to me as Wairu-san, which is about as close as you can get with the standard syllables. When meeting classmates in other locations, this leads to some awkward situations. Since only a butchered form of the last name, and never the first name, is used for reference, I've often had to sheepishly ask my fellow students what their first names were.

When reading the class's bboard, I see messages attributed to my classmates' full names. Sometimes it takes a while for things to click as I break the original-language names into Japanese-sounding transliterations. When reading one message, things clicked into place: this person had the exact same name as my former neighbor. Things appeared to match up: he was two (academic) years older than I was, was from Long Island, and was interested in computer science. Could this have been the same person I lived next to until some eight years ago? A quick interrogation the following morning proved my suspicions: I had been sitting next to this person for weeks, heard the phoneticization of his name countless times, and neither one of us had suspected a thing.

It's a small world after all, although my former neighbor said that he hates that phrase.

impromptu reunion

As I sat down to type up this monthly update, I was interrupted by an instant message from a guy I went to high school with, but had almost never conversed with by IM before. He goes to SUNY Binghamton, some 241 miles from Pittsburgh. Apparently he decided to come to town with a friend of his whose boyfriend goes to Carnegie Mellon. I was surprised to see him, but gave him a quick tour and exchanged pleasantries. I thought it was quite an interesting surprise, considering that I hadn't seen this friend for some time.

on a personal note...

So the great-granddaddy of all job fairs, the Technical Opportunities Conference has come and gone. In addition to getting lots of Cool Free Stuff, companies actually expressed interest in hiring me for the summer. Already I've had two interviews, and many other companies told me to contact them after the new year for internship opportunities. (Most of the companies are looking for full-time positions to be filled by graduating seniors.) All in all, it looks to be an exciting summer, whether I head out to Silicon Valley, stay closer to home, or work just about anywhere else.

I have parted ways with the Office of Admission, which didn't offer evening or weekend hours to better suit my hectic schedule. I had a great time there, and would recommend it to anyone who's interested in employment on campus. I now work a desk job at the Language Learning Resource Center, a computer cluster and audio-visual lab for students taking language courses. As a Japanese minor in the making, it's a nice opportunity to work with language technology, and as a busy student, it's also an opportunity to get some homework done during off-peak times. I also work the glamourous 9 PM to midnight shift at the University Center Information Desk, where I field questions ranging from "What movie is playing tonight?" to "Could you turn off that damn Rusted Root concert?!". It's a more stressful shift at the information desk, but at least I don't get lonely like I do at the LLRC when nobody comes to use the lab.

Former Mystery Science Theatre 3000 host Mike Nelson gave a presentation and hyped his book, Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, on Monday. He is awesome, the presentation was hilarious, and the book is a must-read. Props to AB Lectures for getting this man on campus.

Why is it at Carnegie Mellon that all the women are ugly, taken, or both?

class by class

Here's a rundown of my academic status here, seeing as though I do keep busy nearly all the time.

15-212, Principles of Programming. Certainly no easy course, 15-212 (or just "212" for short) teaches algorithm design and programming structures using the wonderfully esoteric functional language of SML. Anyone who has done work with Scheme or Lisp knows how they put the "fun" in "functional languages." Not bad thus far, although I'm working on this update when I should be hammering away at some SML code and working on structural induction proofs.

33-104, Experimental Physics. One of those courses that I'm taking Because I Have To. Most of the material is pretty simple, although getting decent scores on labs often takes a lot of grunt work and pretty Microsoft Excel graphing skills. It meets twice a week, taking up to three hours per class. The professor is a lot of fun, though, and he keeps things interesting.

36-217, Probability Theory and Random Processes. Or "stats" for short. I kind of like this class -- a lot of the material overlaps from earlier classes, but the leap is made into "real-world" scenarios. Unfortunately, the class is made up of 80-minute lectures crammed into 50-minute classes, so it feels like we're being rushed sometimes. Still, it gives me a chance to apply my mad L^AT_EX skills to typesetting homework assignments.

80-181, Language and Thought. Dropped. Too much language, not enough thought. This is another Course I Have To Take, although I can take another course in its category instead. The 80-minute lectures on the meaning of "truth" (which always made reference to "the morning star is the same as the evening star, so the morning star with the blah blah blah...") were interesting at first but got extremely repetitive very quickly. Not to mention that my professor has a thick Latino accent, so "star" always came out sounding like "estar." This was cute for about 30 seconds.

82-271, Intermediate Japanese I. Continuing towards a minor in Japanese, this course is the only one I have that meets four times a week for the same purpose (i.e. no separate recitation). As a result, homeworks are often due the next day, and I still get about 30-90 minutes' worth of homework a night. This wears on me as time goes on. Furthermore, new projects (like conversations with a native Japanese speaker) make this level even more demanding. Still, it's a fun course, and it's an interesting opportunity to learn more about a culture that has always intrigued me.

and finally...

here we go again!

I'm less than one week away from the big trip back to Pittsburgh, and eight days from the start of my second year classes. My room contains a scattered mess of boxes and books, not entirely unlike the way it appeared after I arrived home. That makes it easier to pack everything back up, at least.

I can't wait to get back to Carnegie Mellon -- after one year, I've become used to the comforts of my home away from home. This year, I also managed to score a room in West Wing, one of the nicer dorms on campus, featuring suite-style living. With any luck, I'll be able to retain it through the end of my time there. West Wing features air-conditioned rooms, an elevator, a computer cluster, and a mail room. It's also connected to Resnik Hall, a nearly identical dorm next door, through an underground tunnel.

looking for something?

Here are just a few of the many interesting search terms for which some part of Jason Weill Web Productions is returned: Source: Dreamhost web server statistics

I've already gotten in touch with my roommate, an entering senior in computer science. We discussed all the standard stuff: what to bring, for example. I found to my surprise that he's been able to get by for all of these years without a computer of his own on campus, instead using the public clusters. While I know a few people who don't have PC's on campus, it really surprised me that a computer science major of all people could get by without one. I'm one of several people on campus that uses not only a desktop computer for important work, but also a palmtop computer to record information about assignments, classes, and appointments when I can't get to my PC. Since my roommate expressed no interest in bringing a computer, he said that I could take both network ports in the room. This means that I could build a second computer out of spare components and use it as a server or a testbed (or a dumping ground, to load any suspicious programs I get) without having to buy a hub. However, given how busy I am at home, not to mention the added hassle it would be to bring and set up a second computer, I think I'll be sticking with just one computer. Besides, the fan noise from one always-on tower can be annoying just by itself.

I have some plans for the semester and year ahead. I'm pretty much guaranteed a job back at the Office of Admissions, but I may pursue something that offers me a wider range of duties than just filing and miscellaneous clerical work. Still, even a minimum wage job usually covers my incidental expenses, and clerical work usually doesn't provide too much stress. Also, with the University Center literally steps away from my dorm, I might even start an exercise regimen to make sure I have enough energy to get through my days. Running around from class to class, work, clubs, and anyplace else all the time takes a lot off. I won't even speculate on which habits might stick and which won't.

Academics-wise, the main computer science curriculum plows forward with 15-212 (Principles of Programming), a course taught in the functional language ML. Three of the other courses I'm taking (physics lab, statistics, and philosophy) satisfy some elective requirements, and I'm taking 82-271 (Intermediate Japanese I) to continue on towards a minor. It should be a demanding schedule to say the least; Japanese has been fairly easy to this point, and I haven't written an academic paper in over a year now. Hopefully my elective courses won't get me too sidetracked; the advantage, of course, is that I can drop them if things get too hairy and take them at a later time without penalty.

I've had a fun time working over the summer at Cendant IT, getting to work with the administrators of several hundred Solaris and NT servers. I've worked with many new systems, gained new skills, and found out some new things about the way big corporations use and implement technology. My last two summer internships have been with large companies, though; next summer I might want to work in a smaller company, or at least one in which I could stay away from home. I've already received announcements about internships for next summer from certain companies, so I'd probably want to stop by the career center on campus when I get back. My resume has also been updated to reflect my new work experience.

Lastly, in my ever-present desire to become more multilingual, I spent the latter portion of this summer studying Perl, the Pretty Eclectic Rubbish Lister and the power behind the forthcoming Weill Aspects. As the table near the top of this update shows, people find this site by searching for all sorts of crazy things. The reason why they find this site is most likely because the news archive is so crowded with material, including many common Internet search keywords. Weill Aspects will be the replacement for the news archive, an automatically generated listing of all news articles posted on this site and sorted by category. This reduces human error and development time considerably, since I don't have to worry about manually updating as many as three or four pages, and then uploading them automatically. This will be done, and it'll be up when it's ready. If you have any Perl help that you'd like to lend, I welcome it.

duty calls

After my very first day of work at Cendant IT, I received a notice that I would be on telephone standby for jury duty. Even though my notice stated that I wouldn't be called for at least a month, if at all, I was still a bit surprised that their timing was so precise. After all, I go to school out of state for about nine months out of the year, and I had been home for less than a week. In any event, I gave notice to my co-workers that I might be called. The resounding response from most of them was, "Can't you get out of it?"

Well, in short, no. New York grants one automatic postponement of up to six months, but they eliminated all the provisions for exemptions -- students, doctors, and even judges have been called for over four years now. I could have done what one of my co-workers did when he was in a similar situation: postpone until a date when I would be out of state, get the notice while at school, postpone again, repeat. Since there's no block of six contiguous months when I'm at home, I could postpone until after I graduate. If I decide to live outside of New York permanently after college, then that pretty much disqualifies me altogether. I decided not to get into the whole mess of phoning in postponements, so I toughed it out. Finding that my standby number was 2079, I felt pretty confident that I wouldn't be needed. I called on a Sunday evening to see whether I would have to report on Monday. I was answered by a recording:

Thank you for calling the Nassau County Supreme Court Juror Information Line. Jurors on telephone standby, for the week of June 19, 2000, should locate their juror number . . . Jurors number 0001 through 0770 should report at 8:30 AM tomorrow at the address listed on their summons. All other jurors should call back tomorrow.

Although the number of new jurors called was lower the following day, I still wound up getting called on Thursday. I brought a book and my organizer to stave off boredom, but I thought I would never need them as our room full of prospective jurors was shown a videotape with various TV news reporters instructing us how lucky we were to be performing our Civic Duty. After a few introductions, the long, arduous wait began. Occasionally, the court officers read out a list of names, but most of the time I was flipping through my book or dabbling with a few games on my organizer. And it was boring. Terribly boring.

Then, right before lunch, my name was the last in a long list, and I excitedly hurried over to Empaneling Room #5, where after a long delay my fellow jurors and I were transported by bus to another court building located no more than 200 feet away. After we arrived, we were promptly told to go to lunch, and report back at 2:00 PM. (In government language, "2:00 PM" is defined as "a period of time ranging from 2:15 to 3:00 PM, depending on how late everyone gets back.")

The voir dire, where the judge and lawyers ask all order of questions, was the most interesting aspect of my day. Our panel of jurors was instructed that this case was a robbery case, where two men were suspected of robbing a pizza delivery man at knifepoint. This is where the "Can't you get out of it?" mentality comes shining through in a wave of overacting.

I heard all order of excuses as people were asked whether they could be biased. Jurors were asked individually, starting with number one going up to number 14 (12 jurors, two alternates). While number one made it through the first round of questioning from the judge without a problem, three people were dismissed from the number-two spot before a suitable one was found. Excuses ranged from "I've been robbed before, so I hate all robbers" to "I can't miss work because I have to pay my ex-wife's alimony." One man even tried to use his experience as a producer for Court TV to suggest that he was biased against all courtroom settings. The lawyers agreed to dismiss him, perhaps only to stop his whining. (When dismissed, a juror goes back into the pool, and can be called again for up to two days before he/she is sent home.)

My name was called when the eighth juror was dismissed. My heart immediately started racing as I walked up to the jury box. The questions were simple in nature, but I couldn't help noticing that the judge was asking me far more questions than any other juror, perhaps trying to expose my youth as a source of doubt. Finally, the judge moved on. A few other jurors were dismissed, but after the judge's questioning, both of the lawyers' questioning sessions went on without a problem. At long last, we were all sent out of the room while some discussion went on.

When the 14 of us were seated again, the judge called out a list of names -- eight of them in total -- that were dismissed. Lawyers can dismiss any juror with justification, or can use a limited number of "peremptory challenges" to dismiss a juror without any given reason. Despite the grilling I took, my name wasn't one of the eight called. I was in.

The trial didn't start until the following Tuesday, five days later. I was sworn not to tell anything anyone about the case, and I kept my word. My co-workers were surprised that I got picked, and some were angry that I didn't try to fake my way out of it. In any event, after a half-day on Friday and a full day of work on Monday, I was set to go.

The trial was not without a slew of delays. Whenever anyone ran late, the whole trial had to pause. A whopping 90 minutes was allocated for lunch, although there were always a few people who took more. We were surprised that the trial even proceeded in a timely manner; at one point we thought we were going to follow in the footsteps of the other jury we saw while waiting, who brought overnight bags in case they needed to be sequestered.

The lawyers had constrasting styles; while the Assistant District Attorney was always impeccably well-dressed and neat, the defense attorney almost reminded us of a lawyer who might advertise on daytime television, what with his hilariously mismatched suits, disorganized stacks of note paper, and generally gruff demeanor. Nevertheless, both were able to make very good cases.

The victim was a Domino's Pizza delivery boy who spoke so little English he required an interpreter, and there were two men suspected in the robbery. One man called Domino's and ordered pizza to be delivered to a dark house at 10:00 PM one evening last September. The other waited for the pizza to arrive and made sure that nobody came to the house. When the first man returned, shortly thereafter the pizza came. The two managed to distract the delivery boy by saying that an imaginary third party, their roommate, had the money. As a car passed by, the delivery boy turned around thinking that the roommate was there. That provided the distraction for one of the men to hold a long knife to the delivery boy's throat and demand money. They took the money -- and the pizzas, and ran off to their home, which was just a few houses around the corner. (These criminals weren't exactly masterminds.) Shaken, the delivery boy ran to a lit house and had the owner call 911. We heard the tape of his call, as he was barely even able to speak given how traumatizing the event was.

We heard testimony from several witnesses, including the detective who took the defendant in, and the accomplice. The accomplice bargained his way down to a class-D felony, with a penalty of 6 months in jail and 5 years probation, in exchange for his "truthful testimony." The detective was grilled on cross-examination, as the defense attorney charged that the statement the defendant gave was not given voluntarily based on all sorts of factors, mostly a lack of proper procedure. When we deliberated, we tried not to discount the accomplice's testimony despite the fact that the accomplice had a much longer record, did most of the planning for the robbery, took most of the money, and likely would have received a much more harsh sentence. We also carefully considered the detective's work, which was a hotly debated issue.

In a criminal case, the jury must be unanimous in their verdict. After four hours of heated debate, growing very fierce at times (I didn't gain any friends by changing my vote a few times) we decided that the defendant was indeed guilty of robbery in the second degree, and guilty of robbery in the first degree. As our foreman read the verdict, the defendant -- who had barely shown any emotion during the entire trial -- turned bright red and buried his head in his hands on the table. That, in my opinion, was the toughest part of the trial. However, after it was all over I was confident that I made the right choice, and the judge told us that the defendant would likely get the minimum sentence of five years in jail, rather than the maximum of 25 years. I was also relieved that I wouldn't need the overnight bag I was told to bring, so that I could enjoy my fourth-of-July weekend in its entirety.

Overall I think jury duty was an interesting experience, certainly one that not everyone gets to experience. I'll spare you the drivel they gave me about my Civic Duty, and just say that the sheer intensity of arguing points with eleven strangers puts "reality" TV shows like "Survivor" and "Big Brother" to shame. (Granted, there weren't any bikini-clad women or "entertainers in a gentleman's club" in our group.) I have to say, though, that it's also a load off of my back to know that I won't get called again for at least four years.

So, this being just about the longest update I've ever had, I'd be remiss to say that I've put eleven pictures of my new New Beetle up in the picture archive. Speaking of pictures, a person identified only as "E. Martin" sent a small animated GIF that you can use if you have a web page that you'd like to link to mine. Thanks!

Lastly, the news archive has been getting very large, with the larger updates of late. Plus, it's not very compliant with the spirit of the web, keeping small, manageable documents instead of enormous archives. I plan to categorize the documents in some sort of hierarchy, be it chronological or topical. Things will be more organized and easy to find. Additionally, search engines can index individual anecdotes, allowing for "deep linking" so that other web sites can link directly to relevant content. In any event, I hope to have everything neatly categorized (statically, mind you; my web host doesn't allow for dynamic scripting) before I head back to school at the end of August.

That's all for now -- next update next month!

toys

Well, it's summer, so kick back, relax, and enjoy a cool glass of updates.

The first thing you've probably noticed is that this domain is now for real, with no more redirects. You actually see the true URL in your browser. I signed up with Dreamhost after hearing many good reviews. I found it to be a pretty good deal myself, at $9.95 per month for 10 MB of space and unlimited e-mail forwarding. I gave five of the remaining seven Weills in my familiy (yes, that's all that's left) e-mail addresses this way. You can get additional space by prepaying for six or twelve months in advance, although this site fits comfortably in 10 MB.

Boys will be boys, and boys love toys. Seeing as though I've already run out of usable words that rhyme with "toys," let's skip the fluff and get down to business. Syosset is a driving town: people drive. Everywhere. Cabs are expensive, buses are nonexistent, and the only train service is designed to get you out of town as quickly as possible. My primary means of transportation used to be the stately 1994 Dodge Intrepid, well-appointed in the cabin but crappily designed most everywhere else. It was struck in the side by a woman who ran a red light last summer, backed into by a still-unknown 4x4 in the Syosset High School parking lot, and awkwardly maneuvered into ever-too-tight parking spaces until landing a place on Consumer Reports' "Used Cars To Avoid" list. The transmission went, it took pricey mid-grade fuel, it got terrible mileage, and it was starting to fall apart. My parents issued an ultimatum: pay the mounting repair bills, or trade it in and get a new car.

Duh.

So I gave in and dumped the Intrepid in favor of the 2000 Volkswagen New Beetle, although it'll hardly be a "new" Beetle when I'm done repaying my father for the difference between its price and the pathetically low trade-in value of the Intrepid. I really like the car, though. It's a small car, but has plenty of room up front and lots of standard features. And hey, who wouldn't like a car with a built-in bud vase?

Expect some pictures of it soon. I don't have a digital camera or a scanner available, so without the aid of CMU's publicly available scanners I'll have to get creative.

My other major toy purchase this summer is effectively a brand new computer, based minimally on parts from my existing system. Going from a Pentium-166 to an Athlon 700 doesn't give much overlap. Most of the parts have to be bought new. The total "upgrade" cost looks to be nearly $1000, including allowances for anything that can go wrong. Of course, I'll probably wind up spending more than that on incidental things that break. Already my trusty Palm III broke, forcing me to wind up buying one at auction for $80.00 (the unit arrived in worn condition with the serial number removed, and the seller has been suspended from eBay for reasons unknown).

Shameless plug alert: I wonder how fast this Athlon 700 can process packets from ProcessTree, a distributed-processing effort similar to distributed.net, but with the added benefit of getting paid for one's CPU cycles. Simply put, distributed processing takes a large computing job and sends small work units across a network (the Internet, for example). The computers on the network process the work units and send them back for the central computer to interpret. Assuming that the results are genuine (which they almost always are) it's a very effective method of processing.

I've scheduled away most of my summer with various pursuits, including the ever-so-low-tech pursuit of reading. I'm currently working my way through Douglas Adams's quintessential works collected in The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, and I plan on teaching myself Perl and TCP/IP later on if I have time. This isn't a requirement for any of my courses, or even necessarily my job, but it's just satisfying some curiosities of mine.

So it's been a busy month in the technology world, and I follow it by checking breaking-news web sites and discussions like Slashdot. Not like you asked, but here's my opinion on two of the hot topics being debated:

the microsoft breakup

For. Just like Standard Oil and AT&T, Microsoft is an example of a company that braved new ground in an industry but did so in a way that created a monopoly which used illegal and anticompetitive tactics to bolster its position. Consider what would happen if AT&T were to use its monopoly on phone service to "embrace and extend" long distance service with features that would only work between phones with AT&T service. Sure, you could still use other services; nobody's forcing you to use AT&T. However, the typical consumer would simply stay with what he knows, having been persuaded that there's only risks to be had if they switch companies. The consumer has been led to believe that AT&T is the best, for the simple reason that everyone uses it.

Now consider what would happen if Standard Oil made cars that only worked with their fuel. Sure, people could buy other brands of cars, but Standard Oil's would always be the most current and advanced ("innovative" if you will) because their automobile division could just walk down to their fuel division to hear about the latest advances. Third-party products could easily be rendered inoperable by a slight undocumented change in the fuel formula.

Now consider the Microsoft case of separating the operating system and application companies. Microsoft applications, while not necessarily the best in quality, tend to have excellent look and feel when compared to competing products. The learning curve is always reduced because each Office release includes various user interface touches that will be found in the next version of Windows. (Witness the roll-out windows in Office 97, or the unusual file requester in Office 2000.) Additionally, undocumented API's have been used to tie MS Office to the operating system in ways other office suites can't. Furthermore, vendors can be coerced with special "bundling" deals that third parties often just can't compete with. For a good, if anti-Microsoft-biased, read on the subject of MS's business practices, I recommend The Microsoft File by Wendy Goldman Rohm. It's a good, fairly quick read.

the AOL instant messaging fiasco

Against. While I'm for open standards to Help Make the World a Better Place (tm), AOL has built a standard for itself that it is now being forced to open. Open standards for instant messaging do exist, but the fact that AIM is the most popular seems to arouse suspicion of monopolistic practices. The bottom line is that, unlike conventional standards such as the World-Wide Web and e-mail, AOL IM's can only travel across AOL's servers. This means that competitors that implement AIM into their programs must use AOL's servers, while serving their own ad banners instead of AOL's. Ad-free alternatives, like the Java-based Quick Buddy and the TCL/Tk-based TiK are still acceptable, although they use the documented but less-functional TOC protocol. The binary OSCAR protocol supports things like direct connection and voice chat, but is undocumented.

AOL should not be forced to open its standards, although it apparently has if only to quiet its critics. Only when a decentralized network is created, and the load is not placed squarely on AOL's servers, will truly free communication be possible. I hate AOL as much as the next guy, but they're providing a useful service for free and people have the nerve to complain that it's not "free as in speech" just yet. BFD.

About me updated, for the first time in quite some time.

i survived a year at CMU

and all you get is this lousy report

Here I am, amidst a mass of wires, bags and boxes. I call it my room, and it's the source of this year-end wrap-up. It has been a year without equal, the first time that I've been away from home for such an extended period. I've seen and experienced new things on all fronts. Let's review, shall we?

academia

Let's start with the boring stuff first. As those of you who have read my anecdotes in about me know, I'm no stranger to academic hardships. It was fully four years ago when I first took a math course that was way over my head, and I have had that experience as precedent ever since. Carnegie Mellon's computer science program has a very simple first year program: in the first semester they break you in, and in the second semester they break you. The first semester was certainly very intense, but it seemed like a cakewalk as I stayed up until all hours of the night this semester to attempt to get all my homework done.

Still, like last semester, what helped me most was the ability to collaborate with friends on particularly difficult assignments. My programming course actually encouraged students to work in pairs for the mutual benefit of the students and graders -- although it didn't seem to improve turnaround times any. Meanwhile, my hellish discrete math course would have been even more of a disaster had I not met people who actually understood the material. Still, the courses certainly taught a lot of material in a short span of time.

The CS program also serves as a great equalizer. I have worked with students who came from special magnet high schools, who graduated at or near the top in their class, and who otherwise had impeccable credentials, and from all of these groups I have met students who have struggled with the materials taught in class. Past credentials don't mean jack when you head off to college -- fortunately, not once did I hear a student protest "But I graduated with highest honors!" in response to getting a C on an assignment. As opposed to Syosset High School, a public institution where an A paper in an advanced English class is good enough to scrub a table with, Carnegie Mellon teaches quickly that a B in a course isn't just a decent grade, it's something to strive for. Tactics like whining and grade-grubbing that work in high school certainly have no place once you're taking intense university classes. I certainly saw that some people had trouble making the transition, but most were able to adapt quickly. That may also be one of the intangibles that the Office of Admission looks for when selecting students: it is apparently possible to be too sheltered -- to come from an environment where competition and academic standards are simply unrealistic. To come from a school where, say, students are graded not on an A-to-F scale but on an "Excellent" to "Very Good" scale can quite simply induce feelings of confusion, then self-worthlessness and ultimately depression into a student. Going to CMU for a year can make someone feel very stupid, but also affirm that student's position in the academic world. Having a 3.0 GPA at CMU is a lot more desirable than I would have thought in high school.

personal life

Well, going to a school that's some 60% male, in a department that's nearly 80% male, provides at least a bit of impedance to finding my other half. Of course, it makes no sense to hide behind statistics. Many other factors contributed to my perpetual inability to find a long-term relationship, and inhibitions still lead the list. Of course, it's not like I haven't been trying, but certain new wrinkles have been thrown in.

As I wrote earlier, I have been cautioned against intra-departmental dating. As a result, one of my goals for next year is to put myself into situations where I can meet people of all departments. Of course, that's not to say it's impossible to find satisfaction within one's department. I've met several happy couples who share majors.

And then, of course, there enters the possibility of relationships failing for purely logistical reasons. Call me sheltered, call me naïve, but the fact is that before I came to college, I had not personally known an openly gay, lesbian or bisexual person. I now know several. Unfortunately, the first such person I met was someone that I was never on terribly good terms with. This fact, coupled with the fact that I hadn't known any openly bisexual people beforehand, prompted some friends to label both me and my comments about him to be homophobic. I personally don't consider myself to be any more homophobic than the next guy, but being in an environment in which people can be very open about their sexuality can be a bit discomforting to a formerly sheltered guy like myself. Now, I've worked in both academic and professional capacities and become friends with people of all lifestyles. Personally, I think it makes me a Better Person (tm) to have expanded my horizons to include all people of all types, even if my personal lifestyle doesn't change so radically.

on the 'net

Carnegie Mellon is known for its high-speed Internet connection, although it gained some international notoriety for the administration's suspension of 71 students for sharing MP3's over the Windows "Network Neighborhood" with no or very weak password protection. Nevertheless, services like Napster and Gnutella help to equalize bandwidth (ab)use by both technical and non-technical types. Given the amount of technical knowledge that Carnegie Mellon attracts, it seems like even if CMU bans the use of file-sharing services like Napster, it will hardly be a week before people leak the almighty secret of changing the port or server to work around the ban.

Meanwhile, on a personal note, the use of the Internet continues to play an active part in my life. The existence of this very web site and the domain to which it will soon be very closely tied (no more redirects) is an example of that. I've also been very active with AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ, using them not only to keep in touch with people who live hundreds of miles away, but with those who go to the same school with me. In the past academic year, the woman with whom I've conversed most on AIM lived less than a hundred feet away from me. Likewise, the guy I chatted with most on ICQ lives just a few buildings away. CMU's intra-campus messaging system, Zephyr, also proved very useful for swapping messages with fellow students and TA's. Add IRC onto the entire pile, and there were some moments where I had four means of instant communications -- plus an e-mail client for more traditional messages -- accessible. Keeping up with every message that pops up can be quite a trying ordeal.

conclusions

• Starting assignments less than two days before they're due always looks like a good idea on paper.
• Every woman in whom I become interested winds up at least 600 miles from me.
• True, the non-glasses votes strongly outnumber the with-glasses votes in the web poll. However, those who vote for me with glasses tend to be a lot more passionate about expressing their view.
• When an assignment is due in a matter of hours, having a reset button within accidental striking distance of one's foot is a Very Bad Idea (tm).
• Putting a six-pack of 24-ounce Mountain Dew bottles on sale is grounds for a criminal negligence lawsuit.
• Due to the amount of people registering multiple names, AOL Instant Messenger will soon claim to have more members than the population of the world.
• Going from a dual OC-12 digital line to a puny dial-up connection is like trying to stuff all the "World's Strongest Man" competitors into a Honda Civic.

• Just because a woman says she likes your web site does not necessarily mean that she likes you.

twice bitten, once shy

You'll find someone.

Rarely have crueler words been spoken. It baffles me why this is considered a comforting statement. It's as if a woman is telling me, "I can't stand you, but maybe someone might be able to." Or, "I don't want to risk being seen in public with you, but someone might have that little self-esteem."

I enjoy a good rant from time to time. And I don't find it at all surprising that my recent experiences (or lack thereof) with women are providing the inspiration for this particular rant.

'course, it very well couldn't have been my own fault that she said no. Some of the people I asked before even giving it a shot advised me not to date within a major. Although it seems a bit silly, the reasons behind it go along with the notion that you don't want to stifle a relationship with too much contact. When two people see each other constantly both in class and out, it's my understanding that at some point, something's got to give. Between work obligations and time constraints, the couple has to walk a tightrope. (Of course, I've seen a few examples of how intra-major dating can work, but those appear to be the exceptions to the rule.)

Then there are purely coincidental reasons -- she already has a boyfriend, or really genuinely isn't interested in associating herself with me. I can understand either case, but at least she didn't say the immortal words:

You'll find someone.

Maybe I will. But not necessarily with a woman that introduces herself as having seen my web page.

In other site news: I've added new pictures of my Spring Break travels to the picture archive, and I've also separated the page into galleries for easier accesses. My resume has a cleaner look and is updated. Look for an update this summer as I take a summer job at Cendant IT, doing some network maintenance work with a group that includes a CMU SCS alum.

The poll continues to be a source of important insights into what might be in my ocular future. Vote today!

the shape of things to come

establish.

strengthen.

develop.

transcend.

disrupt.

reinstate.

What do they have in common? They're steps along a cycle that has dogged me for some time now -- the w* .relationships cycle. It's also the foundation for "w.aspects," the next phase of Jason Weill Web Productions, slated for development this summer. It's all a part of re-establishing myself in a web presence through awkward, confusing terminology and pseudo-poetic drivel. Chicks dig that stuff. Yeah...

With that hype behind me, time for some other updates. Discrete math is still thoroughly killing me, although I'll be more than happy to leave that class with a solid C average. As I sit here listening to WRCT's web cast of what appears to be very horrible Russian pop music, and typing out these updates, I really ought to be studying and/or caring about what's coming up in that class. A recent homework assignment claimed the innocent lives of an estimated 25 hours of my time, and I received a somewhat unsatisfying 0 for it because it was Almost But Not Quite There. So much for that.

I've been very intrigued by the response to the web poll -- if you haven't already done so, please share your opinion. I've heard differing opinions from various friends on the subject of whether glasses are a good look for me. One friend advised me to go "without glasses if you wanna pick up chicks, with glasses when you're talking to your Comp. Sci. professor." Any other thoughts? ;)

Lastly, today marks the one-year anniversary of a minor milestone -- the event that most immediately affected my decision to come to Carnegie Mellon, my rejection letter from MIT. As I pulled out the thin letter from my mailbox that day, the best I could hope for was to have been placed on a waiting list, but alas even that wasn't to be. It was one of the low points of 1999 for me personally, but I think CMU's School of Computer Science made a fine second choice. At the Office of Admission, where I work, decisions have been mailed since last week. We often get calls from parents and students eager to know their decisions over the phone, but it's a standard policy not to give them at this time. Only our counselors can give those decisions, and in my opinion that's the best way. Some things shouldn't be revealed over the phone unless the messenger is properly trained for the reaction and questions that follow the official answer. Pardon the comparison, but the makers of HIV home test kits have often received criticism for the fact that an answer is revealed over the phone, albeit by a trained counselor. Despite what people say about the telephone being impersonal, the cadences and intonations of a person's voice can often say more than words possibly could.

To a lesser degree, this can be true of on-line conversation. The major barrier to the general acceptance of chat-style conversations is the fact that they are often not treated with both parties' full attention. On occasion, I'll have AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, a Zephyr client to chat with my classmates across the internal CMU network, and even an IRC client open simultaneously. All have their little quirks, but the grand unifying factor is that conversations can be preempted without warning. Users are well aware of these facts. If I were conversing with a friend, I wouldn't expect a congenial reaction if I were to just stand up and start talking with someone else while she were telling something to me. In "real-time" virtual conversations, this is perfectly normal. Perhaps the main reason why chatting isn't considered a serious form of conversation and expression is because people don't take it seriously to begin with. One can only wonder whether chatting will become more official and credible as the world continues to progress into the Information Age.

That's all for this month. Time to get back to work.
* w is the official symbolization for my name, used to maximize narcissism while minimizing screen usage. However, it requires 15 bytes of HTML, while my name only requires 11.

updates for february 19, 2000

nineteen!

That's right, as of this past Tuesday I'm officically nineteen years of age. Whoop dee doo. It seems that the only privileges I gain at this milestone are buying tobacco in Utah, Alaska and Alabama; and virtually anything that requires age verification (such as tobacco and gambling) in Canada. It would seem that the last major legal milestone I'll pass is 21. After that, the only one left is age 25, to rent a car in most states.

Come to think of it, most birthdays don't seem to have much significance after you finish the big birthday-party phase. After age 13, where Bar Mitzvah parties can cost more than a luxury automobile, things pretty much dry up. Sure, you go out with friends and exchange gifts, but the majesty of the moment is nowhere near as spectacular as when you invited all the kids in your third-grade class to a party where you rented out some large room with tables, chairs, pizza, and fun by the hour. Things become more... mundane.

That's what went through my mind as I went about my business during my first birthday away from home. I couldn't celebrate -- that didn't agree with my incredibly demanding schedule this semester at CMU. I had to put four hours of effort, which still didn't amount to anything much, into my discrete math homework, disrupting my other classes' homework in the process. As I returned to my dorm after disgustedly dropping off my abysmal homework, I was convinced that this was my second-worst birthday on record. (Not even discrete math can compete with the news that your grandmother died the evening before your birthday.) However, shortly after I plopped down into my chair and contemplated starting my other homework, there was a knock and some excited noise outside my room. My friend Meg, as well as a few other friends from my floor, surprised me with a cake and a rendition of "Happy Birthday!" That just made my day. I don't think any birthday I've had in recent years holds up to an experience like that.

As for my schedule, it's as demanding as ever. In addition to discrete math, I also have a programming course, a calculus course that's somewhat hard, a simple physics course, and Japanese, which hasn't been too bad. To fill in any gaps between classes, I'm now working for CMU's Office of Admission. It's certainly an interesting job, where I've heard and seen things about the admissions process I never would have imagined, and which unfortunately I legally can't share. Needless to say, it's been an interesting way to see the admissions process "in action," and to see how right my guidance counselor was about what counts and what doesn't. (Hint: Don't expect extracurricular activities to do anything for you.) I'd be lying if I told you it was my dream job -- it's largely filing at this level -- but I get to work with some very nice people who speak impeccable Pittsburghese and are a lot of fun to be with.

I updated my resume to reflect my new position as well as making it more similar to my printed copy. Expect a few new pictures and a poll soon, homework permitting. :)

updates for january 14, 2000

starting the new year with a couple of fizzles

Well, the new year is old news now, and fortunately there were no major technological problems. However, this left news organizations with very little to do, so I watched a reporter for Fox News in New York withdrawing $100.00 from an ATM at 1:00 AM on January 1 just to prove that everything was working fine. In a way, I'm kind of disappointed that nothing catastrophic happened -- it would have been nice to see some reliability in following through on threats and scare tactics.

Well, since the new year apocalypse scare didn't incinerate the CMU campus, I'm heading back to school today for another grueling semester. This semester, I've heard, is the one that breaks all computer science majors that weren't meant for the field after all. That said, don't expect a whole lot of updates here whilst I'm working my ass off.

I enjoyed the opportunity to relax during my month off -- a guy could get used to such cushy breaks. I buzzed by my old high school a total of five times to disrupt classes and make a bunch of students do double-takes. I met up with a few friends whose educational pursuits took them hundreds of miles away from New York (or Pittsburgh, for that matter). Syosset hasn't changed as much as I've heard, except it's downright eerie seeing how tiny some freshmen are. Nevertheless, my sixth-grade brother informs me that many of his classmates now tote cellular phones, not so much for the snobby aspect but rather for protection against unruly classmates that might start shooting up the place. While it's certainly fine to be on alert against violence, cellular phones seem a bit much. First, about 99.9% of school days across the country went on without incident last year, so students would likely be more tempted to use the phone for personal use. Secon