Three till Seven

While using StumbleUpon last night, I found a really neat art project: The Monster Engine. The premise to it is “what would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?” The result is pretty cool; I particularly enjoy the chomping baseball and this fellow. All the art shown has both the child’s version and the artist’s rendition, and it’s interesting to see how the child’s version was rendered in a ‘realistic’ fashion, especially since the professional’s version stays true to the child’s.

I had a linear algebra test Tuesday and, apparently, she already has them graded and ready to hand back today (one of my classmates texted me last night to tell me this). I can’t believe how prompt she is. She’s just a grad student, not a professor, and I swear that has something to do with it. All the professors I’ve had take maybe a week to return a test or paper, and some are worse than that. My applicable algebra professor doesn’t get around to handing back graded quizzes for months; I still think he has some of my quizzes from when I took Calculus IV with him a semester ago.

I’m going to Jessica’s house this weekend to relax for a while but also to help her varnish the dining room set we’re to have in our new apartment. It’s a set of table and chairs that have been sitting around her barn for years, but they’re in good enough condition to still be used, so we’re going to sand them down and re-varnish them. I don’t think I’ve varnished anything for maybe six years, when I helped my dad sand and varnish a computer desk he made. Though I try to avoid them, I always end up with runs that dry into hard little lumps that I then have to sand down.

Varnish fascinates me, actually, both because I like its color and also because of how rock hard it gets when it’s dry. I think it’d be infinitely fun to get some ball-shaped mould and fill it with varnish. I have this idea that it would never really set up, but would instead remain this amorphous blob that I could squish around, so long as I didn’t break through the outer, solid crust. Oh, and it would smell horrible, since it would be varnish and all.

The packing has officially begun at my apartment, which is now covered with boxes. I found an ad on Craigslist for moving boxes with free delivery, so I hit that up and ended up with a crap-ton (that’s a real unit of measurement, srsly) of boxes. I’ve got big boxes, small boxes, Subway boxes, Kraftmaid boxes, collapsed boxes, assembled boxes, aaaaand poster tubes. I can’t tell if I’ll have just enough, too many (and thus I’ll give some to Jess), or too few to hold my mounds of crap. The lady that delivered them was very friendly though, even when I was gushing blood all over my checkbook while trying to pay her. See, I noticed I was out of checks in my billfold, so I ran back inside to get a new book. In my haste to get the box out of the closet, I must’ve cut my thumb just a bit by the nail, though all I noticed was a little twinge of pain. Next thing I know, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig all over my checkbook. Of course as soon as I noticed this, I started feeling light-headed. You’d think that being a woman and thus having to deal with copious amounts of blood routinely would help one to build up a tolerance for it, but not me. I paid the lady and then had Todd hold me while I decided whether or not I was going to pass out. I’m such a wimp!

Another Craigslist deal turned sour on me, though, when a lady I’d arranged to buy some dressers from told me that her husband had already sold them and didn’t tell her. That was today, but I first contacted her about them on Friday. I had already worked out getting a truck from a friend of Todd’s and was just calling to get directions to come see them. She said she felt sooo bad, but really, how bad could she have felt if she couldn’t even be bothered to call me all weekend to tell me her mistake? Pff. The ad is still on Craigslist, too, so watch the dumb woman get more inquiries about it.

Not wanting to waste the borrowed truck, Todd and I checked out a used furniture store and called around to a few Goodwills. One Goodwill had a janky chest of drawers that I didn’t want, but the used furniture store did have a nice nightstand for $40 that I bought. Todd’s been on me to get a nightstand since I first got an apartment, because I’ve always just had my little wobbly Rubbermaid cart. Well now, dang it, I have a solid wood nightstand that’s actually in good condition. The search for a good dresser still continues, however; Rubbermaid, you haven’t lost me yet!

Saturday, Jess and I sanded and varnished four dining room chairs that had been sitting in her grandparents’ garage for years. They didn’t look that hot when we first drug them out, covered in spiderwebs and bird poop, but now they look pretty spiffy. We did a good job, if I do say so myself. Jessica’s mom picked out the shade of varnish+stain and it matched the original perfectly, so we didn’t have to refinish the table.

In Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64, which I’ve been playing on my Wii, there’s this creature called an Amazee Dayzee. It’s dead tricky to beat because it has 20 Heart Points, which isn’t much, but it usually runs away as soon as it gets the chance. I’ve been trying to beat the stupid thing because it’s a challenge, and because I wanted to see what I’d get for it. While it did stay to attack me once, which doled out a whopping 19 damage, the rest of the time it would skip off as soon as it became its turn. Well I just now beat it, and I’m ridiculously proud of myself. The trick was to do a Spin Dash into it with a badge enabled such that spinning near an enemy would make it start out the battle dizzy. Then, I used the Double Dip badge to hit it with two lightning items for 10 damage. I used Bow to dole out 5 damage with her Fan Attack (that Dayzee has some defense, let me tell you; the Fan Attack normally does 10 damage!). The Dayzee woke up at this point but didn’t have the opportunity to run away, so I did a Power Smash on it which finished it off. I got over 40 Star Points and a lot of coins for my trouble. Ha!

All right, I’ll put an end to me nerding it up in my blog for a bit…

I recently bid on and won a DVD of Boris Karloff’s Thriller episodes. The item was marked as ‘New’ and ‘Original’ with no mention of it being a bootleg, however, when I received it, it was clearly a burned disc. The menu screen looks just like it does on the home videos produced by my parents’ DVD burner, the packaging was cheap with the inserts printed on regular paper, the video quality wasn’t great and the film skips a bit in places, and the backs of the discs are that familiar purple color of regular DVD-R’s. However, when I checked the price of individual episodes on VHS, I realized I got a bargain on the whole set, even if it was a bootleg. So, I left the seller neutral feedback: “Quick delivery but it’s obviously a bootleg copy, and the quality isn’t great.” His response? “this buyer does not seem know arse from elbow, item is 100% original from the uk.” Lovely. He then left me negative feedback, saying “Beware! poor communication skills, no contact prior to leaving negative feedback”, to which I replied (on my eBay page): “Like I’m going to ask permission before being candid about product quality.” Then, to top it off, he submitted a mutual feedback withdrawal request, which I am denying.

I thought the whole point of eBay feedback was to let others in your position know how a buyer or seller serviced you. To me, it seems like the feedback withdrawal is a means of blackmail or extortion: one person leaves you worse feedback than you left him (as in my case), so they initiate a withdrawal in the hopes that both of you can erase bad history. Uh, no thanks, buddy. I’ll take my negative feedback that you gave me, even though it’s nonsensical (I am not going to ask a buyer’s permission before I speak my mind on how they treated me!), just so that my neutral feedback of your quality stays posted. Asshole.

Did you know that 2 times 2 is 1? My classmate was just pointing out that my professor misspoke (I’m posting this from class because I take notes on my laptop) when he, the professor, said 2 times 2 is 0 but how it’s actually equal to 1. Actually, my classmate is correct because we’re doing 2 times 2 modulus 3, which does happen to equal 1. But after twelve years of public school and four years of college, hearing “2 times 2 is” followed by anything other than “4″ is just weird. Now, back to my note-taking…

I went to a Ruby Users Group meeting the other day and there was a presentation on Shoes, described as “a very informal graphics and windowing toolkit.” It’s written by Why the Lucky Stiff, who does a lot of Ruby and Ruby on Rails work. I’m interested in the toolkit so I was doing a search for it just now with the query ‘why shoes’, and it occurred to me that that might be kind of funny coming from a Kentucky native. Yep, I jes found teh Internets and I’m'a wonderin’ why for we need t’be wearin’ them shoes.

I just got my license updated because today is my twenty-first birthday. :) I’m now a proud owner of a landscape-oriented driver’s license, proof that I’m 21 years of age and legal for the purchasin’ of alky-hols. I went to lunch with Todd directly after getting my new license and I was saddened that we ate at a sandwich place that doesn’t sell alcohol. I couldn’t put my license to good use! I am, however, going out tonight with some classmates to a local pub so as to sample some beers. Hot dang, it’s exciting.

Jess and I are hoping to get a head start on moving into our new apartment by moving big stuff in tomorrow and the smaller boxes of things on Saturday. This is mainly because it’s supposed to rain Saturday, and we aren’t keen on soaking our beds, couches, etc.

Jess and I are all moved into the new apartment, though we haven’t finished unpacking. We’re hoping to get completely unpacked today, actually, though I don’t know if that’ll happen. We only have a few boxes left, and I’ll be so happy to get my room walk-throughable because it’s certainly not right now, and it’s an obstacle course. I was hauling a basket of laundry through it this morning and I had to jump the boot that fell in my path and the sharp box corners sticking in my way, among other things. Last night, I just shoved stuff off of all three open bed sides to make room to sleep. If I don’t post for a bit, it’ll be because of my efforts with the new place to get it spic and span, or at least uncluttered.

The following are some photos I took today of mine and Jessica’s new apartment.

Living room:

Balcony:

Washer/dryer:

Kitchen:

Dining room:

Bathrooms:

Bedrooms:

Applicable algebra was awesome today because 1) we had it outside and 2) my professor is crazy. (This is the crazy Swedish professor I’ve mentioned before, just to clarify.) So the class was trooping outside when somehow our professor picked up an extra student, a girl who isn’t in the class. We passed a group of girls sitting under a tree and the extra student called to them:

“Do you know why class is cancelled?”
“No… What are you doing?” they replied
“I don’t know, this professor just came along and is now insisting that I follow him.”

Me and my classmates were cracking up at this, of course; our guy knows no bounds. The lot of us settled under some trees out in the middle of several campus buildings. He proceeded to lecture us, as we sat in a circle around him, about error correcting codes and their application to the hat puzzle with 3 or 7 people. He asked our extra girl something and she responded with “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” I think referring to randomly joining a class rather than the hat problem.

We proceeded to try out our professor’s suggested strategy for guessing the correct “hat color” we were wearing, though in reality he just had other students sit behind the chosen 7 and hold up a card with either 1 or 0 on it, representing white and black hats. I convinced him that a version of the game should be our Friday quiz, so that should be more fun than a written one. I also asked the extra girl what her major was: Spanish. Our professor brought her into the center of the circle and asked if she understood what was going on; she didn’t and said she didn’t even know how to add vectors, which was part of the game. I can’t imagine being drug into some random, say, psychology class, which would be way outside my major.

Friday’s networking lecture was darn near pointless because the professor spent the majority of the time talking about networking topics that he thought were cool, but that aren’t actually going to be on the final. He gave a mini-review of what the final might cover, but only because I asked him. He glossed over the fifteen chapters from which the final will pull questions, mentioning big topics by name only. All in all, it was a pointless lecture; look, buddy, I don’t care about whatever whiz-bang technology you’re trying to tell us about because the final exam is coming up. I pointed out to him that the class might be better spent going over topics that are relevant to our grades, but he just shrugged it off.

Oppositely, in applicable algebra, I didn’t mind a bit when my crazy Swedish professor went off-topic from the final. He started out teaching mathematical theories about juggling, which was a bit dry, but interesting. He tossed some chalk to illustrate and dropped it all, so I thought he couldn’t juggle. I joked with him “Should you really be breaking all that chalk with the recent budget cuts?”, so he gave me a few pieces to keep in reserve. They sat on my desk just fine till a little later when I picked up my drink, against which they’d been resting, and they rolled off and broke on the floor. “Uhh, crap. We just lost our reserves,” I said, and he chastised me about how I was supposed to be protecting them. The whole class was enjoying things: the lecture, the chalk reserves, him tossing chalk willy-nilly while he scribbled math-based juggling patterns on the board.

Then, however, things got really good: he pulled out this previously hidden sport bag, from whence he took balls, sticks, juggling batons, and other equipment. He then started to juggle for us, and he was awesome! One thing he used was crazy: it was two thin batons with one end on each strung together with a long length of string. On that string, he balanced what looked like a large thread spool, and he did wild stuff with it. He flipped it up into the air and caught it, sometimes flipping it across the front of his body, over one leg, and catching it again on the other side of his body. One juggling trick he did with a ball was to lift a leg really high, throw the ball under his leg, catch it on the other side, and continue juggling. He tricked us, too, and it took a minute to catch on, then we all laughed: he juggled two balls with one hand, but he had a third in his other hand and all he did with it was just hold on to the ball while raising and lowering his hand. It was a good optical illusion with the craziness of the other two flying balls. All the while he was juggling the various objects, he’d talk calmly to us. When we would look amazed at some particular act, he’d ask as if we were silly “What do you do at night?”

Our “quiz” in there was a series of questions about why there are so few math majors at UK, if it’s a boring subject, if the faculty is boring, etc. I suggested he take his juggling act to local high and middle schools, juggle for them, and teach them the math behind it, too. His suggested reading list for the summer included about 6 books by Douglas Adams, who he’s a big fan of. :) It was an awesome end to the semester.

As for good news in my life, I won $200 the other night at UK’s Undergraduate Student Showcase. I submitted a bioinformatics programming project of mine earlier this semester to a university-wide competition, and I came in second place in the Physical and Engineering Sciences category, as announced at the Showcase. Now, ask me who got first place. The answer? No one! The judges award first place, etc. based on the merit of the project on its own, not relative to any other entry, so apparently they thought I did only a second-place job. :P One category didn’t even get an honorable mention, which must suck. Personally, I think it’s a crock. My professors and parents have agreed, thinking the school was just being cheap since first place carries a $300 prize. My dad commented that it’s nonsensical, since you can’t have a second place without a first, unless they’ve come up with a new way of counting. Ah well, at least the $200 will help with rent and groceries.