Posts from — August 2003

I posted this to the band board so I figure I’ll post it here as well:

I’ve been thinking about writing some software for managing mp3 (or whatever) playlists, and I want input from people on how they choose which songs to play at what time. For example, do you group a genre and play those songs together, or do you play all random selections from your collection, or do you pick a certain artist or something? Most importantly, what criteria would you use to determine if a given song should be grouped with those in your playlist? Reply, email, IM, or talk to me if you have ideas. Be idealistic about how it should be done, too.

I finally got a paid account at livejournal. Among other things, this means that I can have much better control over the design of this page. I’m very satisfied with this design, because it offers a lot of information without being too complex. Parts do have too low a contrast, so I’m working to fix that.

Well I’m done with week one of classes. It feels like I’ve been here forever but I guess it has been 3 weeks. I ended up dropping my spanish class, so now have 13 credits. This should give me more time to concentrate on extracurricular things.
It looks like I’m going to get a chance to work in the new robotics lab that my CSE 350 professor is starting. He’s still working on gathering equipment, so the job won’t start until later in the semester. I’ll mostly be doing programming, and he seems to be very quality-oriented, which is important to me. Hopefully we’ll have a good group of people from Day 1 so that we can implement a clean, maintainable system.
That’s all for now

It seems that whenever I have some real ranting to do, I’m just too upset to write it in here. Not quite sure why.

Basically, I’m trying to drop my “Spanish Women Authors” class because it seems like it’s going to be a lot of reading for feminist themes, which frankly doesn’t interest me (plus I don’t really need to rush to get my spanish minor). Unfortunately, there are 0 other classes I can take that would contribute to either a Spanish or Cognitive Science minor, and that was my only non-computer science class for this semester. So, I’m either going to just drop it, or add a math or poly sci class. I’ll know in the morning when I meet with my advisor. 13 credits would be nice though, because I’ll be quite busy between 3 officer positions different organizations and I’m considering picking up a second work study job (I’ll write about this when there’s more to write about).
The whole thing is really frustrating because I really don’t have reason to waste my time and money on something that doesn’t interest me, but I can’t find much of anything else.

Classes begin tomorrow! I start at 10am and only have two classes. I hope that I don’t have too much work this semester. Between band, kky, acm, and my projects, I’m definitely going to be quite a bit more busy. I’m considering trying to scale back my commitments for next year so that I can focus on my projects a bit more.. but that’s a long while away. Actually, it’s not nearly as long as I’d like it to be.. time sure does accelerate.
I had a good time this weekend, reunited with the old roommates and surrounded by a morass of computer equipment. We made a lot of progress, but there’s a lot more to be done. I’d like to get tvguy going asap, too. I can’t last too long without watching law and order!
We watched The Hudsucker Proxy tonight to bring in the new academic year. It’s an excellent movie, highly recommended to anyone who likes good movies.
I sure have a ton of stuff to do this week, but I guess that’s the price I pay for accepting responsibility. I think I learn a lot from it though.

I decided (based upon a feature I found in gaim) to find out who sends and receives the most IM messages with me. I don’t think there’s anything personal here, so I’ve decided to post it to my journal. The following list is of all those with whom I’ve exchanged more than 1000 messages in the last 1.5 years, starting with the most. This doesn’t include IMs exchanged at work or on other computers.

1. Mike B.
2. Tim C.
3. Andrew B.
4. Mike K.
5. Andrew L.
6. Brian C.
7. Mike P.
8. Laura W.
9. John S.
10. Matt K.
11. Jim M.
12. Mike D.
13. Mike C.
14. Sandy N.
15. Lauren G.
16. Mike C.
17. Pete M.
18. Andrew B. (other screen name)
19. Laurie B.
20. Andy B.
21. Rachel G.
22. Jen F.
23. Peyton W.

Don’t think that I’m trying to rate my friends or anything, I just do this stuff for trivia. I want to write some scripts to analyze the logs to find out what words people use the most, who is the most long winded, who IMs me more than I IM them, etc. I think it’s interesting, but it’s also 2:45 AM.

We got back from band camp today. Three days of learning, tradition, war, and entertainment. I think that I had a good time, but I don’t think that’s really the point. It’s not a vacation. I’m quite tired right now, but i feel accomplished. We went from marching basics to being able to march through a long drill while (mostly) playing in a couple of days.
I should say that my assessment of the marching is probably more positive than most. A lot of people complained a lot about their legs being sore, being tired, and working on boring basic moves too much. In my opinion these things are often related. I think some people don’t realize that they’re really not in good shape for marching. That’s why they need to do tiring practices to build endurance and form. Generally speaking, if someone gets tired from marching, it’s a sign that they need to make some sort of personal changes (working out, for example), not that they need to lower the bar and practice less. A lot of people complained, and it really started to get to me. You don’t join marching band to avoid marching and playing.
Last night we had a bonfire, which was a neat way to teach the frosh fight songs and such. The event was quite underdeveloped though, as we quickly ran out of stuff to do (though staring at the fire and talking is fun, we could do a lot more). I hope we’ll be able to improve upon this in future years.
After the crowd at the fire dwindled to about 5, we extinguished the fire and returned to the cabins to see what everyone else was doing. There were only 4 more people sitting outside around the cabins, and it was only midnight! Like any responsible band members would do, we decided that we needed to make some noise to get people up and doing things. Out came the percussion and megaphone. We played our marching drum beat (and a bit of Steppenwolf!) to wake people up, and yelled “GO TO SLEEP!!” as loud as we could, because it was hilarious. I got to play the big bass drum, which is about as big as me, and was a lot of fun. We managed to get at least a dozen upperclassmen out of the cabin. They then tried to throw water balloons at us, but nothing really happened. We eventually joined forces and pelted the frosh cabin with literally hundreds of collected crab apples, a bag of potatoes, and quite a few water balloons. We turned in around 1:30am. It’s fun to be obnoxious from time to time, and I don’t feel bad about it because I was reminded that when I was a freshmen, people were throwing fruit and basketballs at our cabin until about 4am.
The freshmen seem pretty good this year, I hope they stay.
OK, quite tired now, so it’s time to get some sleep in a real bed.

Well, we’re basically done with exec week, two days early, which is amazing, especially since most of us are first time execs. Last night we planned out a lot of the exec skit, though much more work needs to be done. I ended up spending probably about 8 hours last night working on tvguy 2, which meant that I got to bed around 5:30am. Isn’t college grand? Despite the exhaustion, we accomplished quite a lot, thanks in part to Lay’s Kettle Cooked Potato Chips (thanks, H.W. Lay!). Needless to say, I didn’t end up going to Dorney Park today, partially because I was up so late last night, but also I didn’t feel like spending too much money at a park that I’ve already been to this summer. I like a day of relaxing
I went to the goosey gander for lunch today. As bizarre as it may seem, that’s the first time I’ve actually gone there for lunch, though I’ve had their food before. Matt rates it 4.5/5 stars.
I sat through an entire episode of Friends yesterday, and I was reminded how much I hate that show. To be fair, it doesn’t trigger the uncontrollable spasms and vomiting that anime does, but it does make me question the long-term viability of the human race. During the entire show, there was literally one joke worthy of any audible response from actual human beings. Even when they do make a joke, it always feels like the writers are are just lobbing really easy lines to the actors, who rarely ever capitalize on the scant comedic value of the dialogue. One overacted scene after another rolls by, hitting plot events so predictable they might as well be reruns of the yesterday’s evening news. I can’t think of one sitcom with more unimaginative writing.
The plot (a generous term) of last night’s episode was that "the gang" liked to look at some naked ugly guy through the window. To be clear, I’m not opposed to the main characters being bad or insensitive… I enjoyed Seinfeld. The plot continues that Phoebe (the dumbest one) has to go to the dentist, but every time she’s gone to the dentist, someone she knows dies. This wouldn’t be such a horrible premise if there were some talent somewhere in the show’s assembly line, but of course that isn’t the case. The writers sensed some comedy in the premise, and predictably pummeled it right out of the plot with a series of mediocre, obvious puns, punctuated by Kudrow’s consistently shallow delivery. The plot thickens when two of the women (whose names I’m proud to have forgotten) babysit Ross’s baby boy, and cause visible damage to his head by throwing him at the ceiling (playing ‘helicopter’ or something). They try to hide it with a funny looking hat. Kudos to the person in charge of costuming for choosing something mildly amusing. A series of predictable, campy social tension scenes ensue. As you should be able to guess, they believe that her dentist visit has killed the ugly naked guy (who is no longer moving). In the end, this turns out not to be the case. The only thing Phoebe’s dentist appointment killed was of the last remnant of original humor in the plot… a dismal patter that is probably one of the funniest things about the show.
In closing, I ask you to carefully review this picture before you respond and tell me that Friends is a good show. Then you will realize the error in your ways.

Well, it’s been a quite a few days, so it’s time for a bit of a recap. After hours and hours of packing Saturday night (until 2am), we left at 7am the next morning (well, that morning). We went to Delaware Water Gap, PA to go on a hike. We hiked for 7 miles, which took us about 4 hours (it was me, my brother, my mom and dad). It was really tiring because of the heat and lack of wind, but at least it didn’t rain. We saw a big, coiled rattlesnake right on the side of the trail, which was neat. We stayed at a somewhat bizzare country club for the night. Apparently it also acts as a hotel, but there’s still a dress code that requires collared shirts. The place was rather empty, and reminded me of the hotel from ‘The Shining’, only with more plaid.
On Monday, we drove up to Lehigh and dropped off a week’s worth of stuff and exec week for band began (I’m publicity manager!). I’m staying at 318 Summit St with Amy, Josh, Sandy and Shawn. Margo is also staying here this week.
All the publicity work has been going quite well. Karen (my predecessor) did an excellent job organizing materials to summarize the job and show how it’s been done in the past. Most of my work so far has consisted of writing letters to people of importance and helping other execs with their tasks. We’ve managed to work so quickly that we’re finished way ahead of schedule. We basically got everything done two days ahead of time, which is totally awesome. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to meet with Glenn Hofmann, so I don’t want to send out any mailings to alumni re: alumni band day.
Since we’re done so early, we might take a trip to Dorney Park tomorrow, which ought to be fun. I’ve also been working on tvguy2, the successor to the tvguy system tim and I built last spring. There’s still plenty of work to do, but I think we’re making a lot of headway in designing the system.
The Philadelphia Eagles have their training camp at Lehigh. I’m amazed by how huge their entourage is.. they fill parking lots! The players were eating in the upper UC (probably in the nice dining room on the 3rd floor), and I saw them coming in as I walked back from the mail. If there’s one thing that football players love, it’s SUVs… just like Germans love David Hasslehoff. There were quite a few hummers parked there.

That’s all the excitement for now. I move into my room on Sunday, which I’m looking forward to.

Well, it’s half past one and I’m almost done packing. I’m going on a hike in the Delaware Water Gap tomorrow with Brian, Mom and Dad, then going to lehigh monday morning. I hate packing because I get paranoid that I will forget something. It’s even harder now because I have to pack a small amount for the next week, then a larger amount for the semester. I’m totally exhausted now, which shows how long it’s been since I’ve been at school. Then again, it has been a quite long day (too tired to write about the events atm). To everyone I’m leaving in CT: it’s been a good summer, enjoy the rest of yours. Frisbee was especially fun, and I’ll really miss it during the coming school year.
One thing that has really hit me while packing is that I only use about 40% of the stuff that I have here (optimistically). Hmm… only 4.5 hours of sleep tonight, I’d better get going. Time to (*sob*) disconnect my computer.