Ok so

Ok so, I'm kinda tired, so I might keep this short. But there's cool stuff going on, and I want to write about it. So went back to She-sha, the cafe and hookah lounge on main street again, and I got a cafe mocha, and that was good. But I also got this really interesting drink called mate tea (with an accent mark on the e in mate, but I don't feel like pulling out character codes). Its South American in origin and is quite different from normal teas. Like tea, it uses an herb, which I later found out is called yerba (you can apply spanish pronunciation to these words), which fills the special cup/gourd, which is the mate, about a third to half way. Then hot water is applied and the tea is drank through a metal filtered straw called a bombilla. It is VERY good and VERY strong tea. To my later discovery, as posted on my del.icio.us links, it is like, the national drink in many south american countries and is typically drank in a social environment, passed around similar to a pipe. Very cool stuff. It also contains quite a bit of caffeine, but leaves you with a somewhat unique sensation during/after drinking. Apparently unlike most caffeinated beverages, it actually relaxes muscle tissue and lacks most of the negative side effects normally associated with other caffeinated drinks. ANYWAY. Good stuff. Also saw Streetcar Named Desire. Very weird, quite good. I was impressed. I believe there is a movie corresponding to the play (or vice versa, I'm not sure...). Didn't get very much work done today though because of the basketball game and what not. I guess I'll just have to get more done tomorrow. I do have a group meeting for HCI tomorrow where I hope that we can finish the next phase of our project. With this in mind, I retire to sleep.

Look at this Photograph

Look . I won't poison your brain with my own opinions, but I definitely think this is a photograph worth sharing.

Not much to do...

Still haven't gotten that OS project assigned... The next phase of HCI has been assigned but I haven't been able to meet with my group to discuss it. Probably talk about meeting tomorrow, maybe work on it thursday in the evening. That would work nicely, it isn't due until Monday. Anyway, I think I screwed up on my math test. I felt sick in the middle of the test and had to excuse myself for like fifteen minutes... And by the time I got back I really couldn't finish. Dammit. I knew everything on that test too. Hopefully it won't be too bad. I'll just have to do better next time I suppose. It's only math. The HCI test was easy, and our grade for the first phase of the project was some sort of B, so I should be ok there. Part of me is scared about the next OS project, but then I know that I'm going to do well too. I let a lot of projects get away from me last semester. That won't happen again I won't allow it. Anyway, this is my last required programming project based CS class. Still haven't decided what field I want to go in. Maybe teaching, maybe I'll start my own business. Don't know. The idea of working for some massive corporation doesn't really appeal to me. I mean, there are a few exceptions. Working for Google or Apple would be cool, but both would probably require me moving to california. I don't want to do that. I like DC and northern virginia and I know that we have a damn good tech job market there. To move clear across the country to work for google or apple just isn't really worth it to me. What I'd REALLY like to do is come up with some idea. Patent it, sell it, and make a lot of money on it. Then sell the business, and go teach high school. That would be cool. I would have to have a damn good idea though. Something that I can be passionate about. Something that other people could be passionate about. Otherwise it won't work. Not many people come straight out of school and start their own business and are successful. But there are definitely examples of people that have done it. Like that business major that graduated from here and started his own men's underwear store. He's now making lots of money on this crazy idea. My uncle Doug barely graduated high school and he started his own business and has been extremely successful. These people worked like hell. It is long hours and a lot of desire. Right now I don't know if I can do that. I guess we'll have to see. I'm looking forward to the apartment next year. Its going to be cool. And damn, only like a week and a half till spring break. How time flies. Hopefully I won't have to spend the week with my head in a computer, working like hell to get that program done. I think its going to be pretty complex. Maybe bigger than anything ever done. Over five thousand lines probably. A few dozen objects. Insane. Thank God for abstraction. Anyways, I want to finish this book.

A star.
Shining bright
in the blackness of night
a wish and a tear.

go towards the star and go back in time
ten thousand light years away
observe from afar what once was
Breathe
cold in the darkness
in the cold steel of night
in the stars past the sun

daylight fading.
as you move away
away from the smiles
from the laughs
from the tears
from a thousand hopes
in a thousand pieces each
left lying naked on the floor
crying and not asking
not asking for a nod or a care
But just wanting
wanting something better

Drive away along that snake of a road
away from the sun.
To the hills, to the stars
getting closer

A thousand galaxies away.
Closing in.
On a giant star.
When does it get too hot?
How high is too high?
Wings of wax too frail to touch the sky
Flying down into the sun

Leap.

Into Vanilla Sky
Oh.
A thousand clouds.
Sail away.

WE BEAT DUKE

It was amazing--the loudest, most intense game I've been to here at Tech, and that includes football. 67-65 against the number seven team in the country. Wow. My head was pounding when I got back and I had two throat lozengers this morning to bring my voice back to life, which was already suffering from this cold that I seem to just now be recovering from. Anyway, definitely getting season tickets next year. Speaking of next year, signed the lease today. University Terrace 1213 H. I'm not actually sure what our address technically is... 1213 H Progress Street maybe? Going to derek's for dinner tonight. A nice macaroni and cheese dinner sans chicken, as I can't eat meat today. Should be fun though. And then tomorrow a few of us are planning to go to this event being put on by the Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club called "The Dark Side of Oz" in which The Wizard of Oz is watched while listening to Dark Side of the Moon. Here are some links. An interesting tidbit from that fourth one, a quote from Nick Mason (Pink Floyd's drummer): "It's absolute nonsense, it has nothing to do with "The Wizard Of Oz." It was all based on "The Sound Of Music." HAHA. Those Brits and their humour. Anyways, not much work this weekend. The next phase of my HCI project hasn't been assigned yet. The next OS project hasn't been assigned yet. I have two midterms - HCI and Calc on Monday and Tuesday. So I gotta study for those. And I've got to write a two page paper on the difference between threads and processes. Fun times. I guess if I got to it I could also work on the next OS project a bit, even though I don't know exactly what it is. I'm almost certain it will require a linked list so I started coding one yesterday, this time templated. I learned my lesson last year: Write it once, debug it once. Never again. I'm writing a linked list now and using it over and over throughout my career here. I think I need a queue too, which isn't much more than a special interface for my linked list, so I'll probably write that too. He was a little vague, but he said that the OS project is going to be a simulation of the process scheduler in an operating system, meaning it has to queue up processes somehow that are waiting/competing to use the CPU, allocate the CPU to each process for a given timeslice, and when a process requests a resource, allocate that resource when it becomes available. Its actually really interesting stuff. But I'm not going to be writing it in the traditional system software fashion (monolithic), as I value my time and sanity. Rather, I will write it completely object oriented, have probably twice as much code as I would have otherwise, and have a program that is much easier to write and maintain. And that is important. Because project 3 will build on project 2, and each is worth 15% of my grade. I got an 85 on the first project because I forgot to print "Command not found." when it wasn't. I guess I'm glad that's the only thing I forgot. Gosh, there is a lot of heat coming out of this heater next to me. I can SMELL it. And feel it. I wonder how much moisture comes up from there to water my cactus... I've had this cactus for over two years now. Katie gave it to me for Valentine's day two years ago. I think. Maybe it was three. But anyway, its still alive and about three times the size that it was when I got it. Maybe in the apartment I'll transplant it to a bigger pot. That could be nice. The apartment is going to be great next year. There's a specific clause in one of the things we signed saying "No beer kegs are permitted on the balconies/patios and no more than 10 people are allowed on a balcony at a time." Haha. Funny stuff. They know what they're up against in this town. Anyways, I think I'll do some reading now.

Just went to this hookah bar

I didn't smoke though. But it really doesn't matter--that place is amazing. No farther than torgerson, its just the most chill place I've ever been to. The atmosphere is just infectious. We left before the guy that was going to place acoustic guitar started playing, but it was just really nice. I had coffee and such. Great place. I'll probably end up going there to work more often. Actually, it would be really cool to kinda recreate that sort of vibe next year in the apartment, maybe invest in some really chill music or something, get a cappucino maker, you know. Some of this stuff sounds fairly promising, mixed up with some stuff I've already got. I don't know, maybe you can't really recreate the atmosphere of a place like that in a private apartment, but its still kinda cool to try. Apparently the reason we haven't gone there before is because alex and kendall don't like the idea. But now I can tell them from experience, that place is great and you don't need to smoke. Its just a coffee shop where they happen to offer hookahs. Anyway, I think we should definitely go more often, perhaps even weekly. I know I will probably be going there more often anyway to study.

Lots of new Pictures up

Normally I won't post just say that there are new pictures up, but today I did a huge update and uploaded over a hundred new photos (katie: see other for your carebear-in-shopping-cart photo, finally), including about fifty photos from last year here at tech.

Can't think of a title

anyways, its like, two am. fuck. those idiots next door are definitely smoking weed again I can smell it. Fuck, I think I had something to write about and now I forgot. fuck. Anyways, went out to brad, will, brian, and paul's place this evening. Fun times, played some poker (I owe Paul money). Saw part of Napoleon Dynamite. Looks interesting. I heard it blew from some people and that it was hilarious from others. Dammit now they're blaring their bass. And smoking weed. Where the fuck are the ra's I swear. They are never ever ever around when they are needed, or otherwise. In fact, the other day I swear I said hi to one of them and he barely acknowledged me. so, he's not even really friendly. And to think that he had the nerve to come in here that one time last semester at 9:30 on a saturday night and tell me to turn down my music, which wasn't even very loud. And now if I want to go to bed I have to either confront my neighbors to turn down their damn bass, and they are probably high, or just simply ignore it. Of course, if both the bass and weed smoke continues, I may be forced to do the former, as I will probably develop a headache. dammit. The girls went home for the weekend. That is, kendall, alex, and meghan. Meghan's birthday is today. I didn't talk to her, but if you read this Meghan (who the hell am I kidding, no one reads this), happy birthday. Alex's birthday is on the fifteenth. I only remember this because its the day after valentine's day. I actually really suck at remembering birthdays, names, or basically anything else that is important. And yet I can still remember random phone numbers and addresses of people I haven't spoken to in years and may never speak to again. It sucks. Anyways, we talked about going to Macado's tomorrow night for dinner. That sounds good. Maybe Brian and Paul and Brad will join us. Finished the first phase of my Human Computer Interaction project (which is worth 60% of my grade). Looks really good I think. Jon (one of the guys in my project group) did a really nice job with some graphics on there. I feel kind of honored or something about the whole thing because all the guys in my group have taken more math and more cs than I have. In fact, Matt is apparently on one of VT's programming teams and is apparently smart as hell. I like to think that I'm good at what I do too, but my experience with that last project last semester screwed me up, made me lose a lot of confidence in myself. They turned the bass down thank God. I can only hear it faintly now. The weed smell, however, persists. You know, I don't think I've made any paragraph breaks or anything in this whole post. Heh. Over winter break I talked to Mr. Miller, my old English teacher, and we got to talking about Jack Kerouac. Apparently, he wrote the entire book "On The Road" on a single sheet of paper (it was like a roll I guess) without any paragraph breaks, chapter breaks, or any punctuation to speak of. Pretty funny stuff. Apparently the guy was also on methamphetimines the entire time as well. Crazy guy. Damn good writer though. "On the Road" is an excellent novel, and after I read this Da Vinci Code book that I borrowed from Alex, I really want to read some more of his stuff. I hear that "Big Sur" is really good, also autobiographical like "On the Road" but instead actually puts him as Jack Kerouac himself rather than his character Sal Paradise. I know I read them in the reverse order of what most people probably have, but Jack Kerouac really reminds me of Dave Eggers ("Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", "You Shall Know Our Velocity!"). They're very similar writers, although I find Eggers to be a bit more comical, while reading Kerouac is like reading poetry or listening to jazz. It just flows over your entire body like some insane profound statement of bit of prose, or like a shot of something burning through your body, affecting you, a feeling you can feel in your whole being and soul. There's something incredibly profound about his writing anyway. Which brings me to Jim Morrison. I've been trying to get all of L.A. Woman (the doors album) on iTunes using free songs from pepsi. I only need one more free song to finish it. You see, I like the doors a lot but I only have one of their albums in addition to a greatest hits cd that I purchased years ago. Yeah, must have been years ago, because I remember junior year of high school in my graphics class we made a movie, my partner, can't remember his name now, about a man that is racing with himself. We thought this was really profound at the time. I guess it was kind of poetic in a way if you forget the fact that the real reason we were doing it was to avoid casting, costuming, and other bullshit. So we created something very like a work of art. But anyway, the film was only a few minutes long, jumpy as hell, shitty quality, but the background music that we stuck in there was Riding on the Storm (the doors song). We thought it was a great choice. I think I might have thrown away the tape though. Damn, looks like the heat just went on. The bass stopped. I can still smell weed. Its really starting to bug me. I can't wait until next year in the apartment when we wont' be dealing with such bullshit. Speaking of such, that is such crap that we couldn't sign the lease today. Apparently the realtor overbooked and wants us to call them back to reschedule. Bullshit. So now we're going to HOPEFULLY sign it next friday. Need to call them back monday *mental note*. I don't really care which room I get in the apartment, but I want enough room to put my futon, and justin wants the same, so thus needs what is Paul's room in Pauls' apartment (their layout is identical to ours). So I want either Brad's or Brian's room. Will's room is exactly the same size, but I can't put the futon in there because his closet is twice as wide. I don't know, maybe I don't want the futon anyway. None of them have futons in their rooms and they seem to do fine. I don't know. Need to think about it a bit more. Anyways, its getting late and I think everybody wants to get up between 11 and 12 to go to breakfast at owens. Sounds goooood. Goodnight.

Here come the photos...

The day has arrived. I have finally caved to my own longstanding whim to put ALL of my photos online. Not all of them are up yet though. Some photos I need to get off the other computer. Many of them I just haven't posted yet. What I HAVE posted are the pictures from my florida vacation with Brian and my family, and all the random-ass pictures from freshman year here at tech (there actually aren't that many). Soon, however, I will be posting the remaining pictures, of which there are a lot.

An index of albums can be found at http://del.icio.us/jdog1016/photos, so even if I don't post updates concerning new photos, you can check there. My profile will also have a link there.

SO TIRED

Ok, so I was up until 5 AM and woke up at 7... I am so damn tired. Wow. The project is done though, thank God. And as far as I know, it is bugless, which is more than I can say for the last programming project that I turned in... Anyways, I'll probably take a nap in a bit, after lunch, or something. I still have a lot of work to do though. Math homework. Lotsa reading for HCI and OS. HCI group project was assigned, gotta meet with the group sometime this week to start/finish the first part of it.

Ok, check out http://maps.google.com
I'm really impressed by this. I mean, granted it is google, and they have a history of making high quality products, but wow. This is nice. I've been wondering for a while when they were going to do this, as mapquest is really poorly integrated right now, and their interface is clunky and awkward. This, on the other hand, is very natural. You can click and drag the map to move around, drag the slider up and down to zoom in/out, and the directions are the fastest way to get there, and unlike mapquest, appear to be up-to-date. My only complaint, not that it is a complaint, is that it appears to treat all roads equally, without regard for whether that road is a highway or local road. For example, the fastest way, in terms of time, between mine and Brian's house is the beltway to 50. But the directions that google gives actually go into dc and then down 395 to 95 to the prince william parkway. Now, that is technically the shortest route, but it would be nice if there was more traffic awareness there.

New Bond Movie Announced

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It feels like the franchise is dying when they start making movies that have already been done in two other formats before. This one is based on Ian Fleming's first bond book, Casino Royale, and they don't know, or arent' saying, who is playing bond. The article does state, however, that three of the contendors are Hugh Jackman,
Clive Owen, and Dougray Scott. If I had a vote, I think I'd go for Hugh Jackman. Anyways, thank God Quentin Tarantino isn't directing/ruining the movie/franchise.

http://del.icio.us/jdog1016

Ok, I will now periodically post bookmarks to del.icio.us

RSS Feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/jdog1016

done with classes for the week

Yes, I am done with classes for the week, and it is 11:30 in the morning on a thursday. Its beautiful. Unfortunately, I have to finish my HCI homework by tomorrow at noon (but I want to finish today), and my project is due tuesday. FORTUNATELY, the HCI homework looks pretty easy, the project is almost done, as it is nearly identical to something I wrote about a year ago for my unix class, and I now have a ticket to see the VT/Wake Forest game on saturday.

Anyways, I got my job for the summer. It appears that I'm teaching all of the computer camps (6) this summer, designing the curriculum (which will most likely be somehwhat modified from last year), and scheduling the camps around my vacation and move-in to the apartment, which BTW is 1213 A (not sure of the street...) in University Terrace condos, with Justin, John, and Brian. Its going to be amazing. I think all of four of us have plans to purchase Macs inside the next six months. John and I both plan on getting iBooks, Justin is getting an iMac, and Brian is apparently considering a PowerBook. This is going to be one wired/wireless apartment.

Apparently my garage at home is now empty in preparation for conversion to an actual room. I think I have my mom all but convinced on getting an iMac for in there. Speaking of Apple, now that I think of it, we went to a demo of iWork the other day put on by the Mac Users Group on campus, and it is REALLY cool software. Keynote 2 is cool presentation software, but what I really like is their word processor type software, Pages. Its kind of a cross between PageMaker and Word. As a result, its like Word on steroids. And the academic price is only $49. So I'll definitely have to get that with my iBook, along with the previously mentioned Delicious Library, which just looks fun.