Posts from — October 2003

This isn’t to anyone who reads my journal, but I need to let it out somewhere…
Don’t complain about the problem unless you want to be part of the solution.

It’s hard to say that to friends.

I think I’m starting out in the red for the week. I bombed my automata test, so bad that the teacher bothered to write about how amazed he was that I did a problem so poorly. So, it’s probably going to be an uphill battle for a B in that class, but I’m confident that I can get it. They were stupid mistakes and learning issues with this test, and I could get 100% if I took it again right now. This morning, while wallowing in my own self-pity (I’m not sure where that phrase came from, but I like it), I realized that it’s nearly impossible to do well in the class without taking notes. Many people would think that’s obvious, but I’ll tell you I haven’t taken more than about a page of notes per semester per class since I’ve been at Lehigh and I’ve never received anything below a B. It’s just how I work. I can’t focus and take notes at the same time. My teachers teaching style for this class is such that the slides are not meant for learning, it’s almost like a show that takes queues from the slides. Additionally, the book is filled with inane notation and trivial or wrong examples, so it’s often useless or misleading. So I’ve resolved to break down and take notes for the remainder of the semester in this class.

At this point in time, I’m strongly considering running for Manager in addition to Publicity Manager for marching band for next year. I had talked about manager before with some people, but decided that Publicity was a job more suited for me. While I still believe that, I have had numerous people suggest that I run for both, and I’m now thinking that it’s best to offer myself for both positions, as it could be to the benefit to the band. I was hoping Sarah K. would run for Publicity, but she told me she wasn’t interested this year. I was worried that nobody was going to run for publicity, but then Michelle S. told me she’d be running (I don’t want to leave the position to someone uninterested if I become manager).

So.. the only thing I’m waiting to figure out are some issues with an “unwritten rule” that kky presidents don’t lead any bands. I’m not too worried about it since I’d only have both positions for 3 months in common if elected, so the time period is pretty minor. Regardless, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it, including alumni who have been really helpful. Whatever I end up with, part of me will be jealous of the other position.. I really like my job right now.

End transmission.

This article that Michelle linked to reminded about how disappointed I was about the sox/yankees series. I don’t follow regularly follow baseball (I don’t follow anything besides computer news while at school.. not enough time), but I really did start to care about the ALCS. It was fun, and even stressful. A sox/cubs world series would be great, and I think I wouldn’t feel too bad if the cubs won. At least it would be someone different. I couldn’t be more apathetic about this world series. If the yankees win.. who cares? I don’t even really understand why yankees fans care anymore. They all seem to think their team is “america’s team” and everyone should root for them to win. Whatever.

I went on an impromptu trip to see Kill Bill with Mike C et. al. as a break from my day of work. I really enjoyed the movie, though it’s not for everyone. The style and direction were impeccable, and the acting was quite good (though it was light on dialogue). I’m not a big fan of Tarantino’s other movies (‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Reservoir Dogs’, etc), but this one was really attractive. The sounds and pictures were combined to create an subtly comedic ride through genres. There is no shortage of blood (part of the genre imitation). It is short on plot, but since it’s only part1 of a movie, I’m not too critical. The style and action were engrossing enough to keep me occupied, and it looks like he’s setting up part2 to have a lot more plot development.

While sitting in the theater I realized swordfighting is a lot like baseball. The vast majority of the actions have little effect on the outcome of the fight, just a few lucky (or opportunistic) hits and the balance of the conflict can be completely changed. This differs from football, for example, which focuses more heavily on steady progress, not quick hits.

Alumni band day preparations are moving along. I got all the ticketing and instrument arrangements sent to the appropriate people today, I still need to be sure that we have enough shirts (I’m 90% sure we do, as I had checked it over the summer). I feel rather stupid that I went through all sorts of effort to get the alumni to pay for their tickets to get into the game, while we’ve paid for a block of alumni seats and had them just march in in the past. If that’s the worst thing I screw up here, I think I’m doing pretty well, so I don’t worry about it too much. Then again, I really care a lot about how well I do my job, so I find it somewhat embarrassing. It’s not a huge deal in the big picture, as the tickets are $3, a donation which pales in comparison to that which they have already given to Lehigh.

I think I’ve slept about 4 hours in the last 42 hours, which is quite low for me. I got 3.5 hours last night because I had a big robotics project to do. I managed to stay awake and working without caffeine until after 6. It was helpful that the project was interesting and I was making progress. I got it done by the 1pm deadline. I’ve been trying to nap since then but haven’t really been able to for some reason, but I’m feeling tired now. I saw the movie “Old School”, which was really funny.
I got my new video card so that I now have two 17″ LCD monitors, which is a lot of fun. Ok, time to get some sleep.

I’ve been a lot weaker in avoiding sleep over the last few days. I have so much work that it’s been difficult to prioritized what can be pushed back a day. I’ll hand in my robotics assignment a day late (we’re allowed to do that once without losing credit) and I have a slew of things to go through for alumni band day still (I did 35 registrations so far, but my desk is covered with stuff left to do, plus emails). I’ll call this “the busy season”.

KKY had an ultimate frisbee and barbecue event today. I had a really great game… I managed to block a lot of passes and complete some of my own. I ended up covering Randy because he and I had played the most and were thus captains, and I somehow managed to defend against him really well. You can’t teach hustle. You can teach the hustle, though. I did feel like an ass for a bit when greg and I caught the frisbee at the same time and he pulled it out of my hand… and I called a foul (I was on offense, so it belonged to me). Nobody else knew the rule, but I was correct. It was a casual game, but that rule prevents it from getting too physical. The barbecue was great, I enjoyed visiting with everyone (especially after break). Now I have to go finish some work for tomorrow. I’m totally swamped.

Not much else to do right now, so I guess I’ll write a bit.

I slept a lot today, which was good. I got the book “Prey” by Michael Crichton from the library this morning. I’m almost halfway done with it, and I’m really liking it. This book has more of a computer science focus than any of his earlier books, talking about genetic algorithms, swarming, parallel processing, etc. It has a lot of drama, good character development, and the pace is good enough to keep me reading. The book is basically about the dangers of nanotechnology coupled with autonomous, adaptive AI. It’s definitely readable by non-computer people as well though.

I got a much-needed haircut today. Now my hair is really short, shorter than it’s been in maybe 6 years.. and I’m not parting it at the moment. The barber said it looks “sort of like Caesar”, but I’m not wearing any foliage on my head yet.

It was “customer appreciation day” at the bank today, which meant I got a free donut. I must admit… I did feel quite appreciated.

I think I really needed to get away from school for a bit. I definitely like being there, but it’s a lot easier to take a break in a different setting. It’s been a good chance to visit with the family, read (which I never do at school because I just fall asleep whenever I try), and get some good food.

I’m anxious to get working on tvguy once I get back, hopefully finishing it or at least getting it to a usable state.

I’ve watched 1 1/2 games of the ALCS baseball series (sox v. yankees) and have become moderately interested. It would be great to see the red sox win, I like their spirit.

32 hours ago, I decided that I might consider going home for a bit. Pacing break gives me a couple days off at the end of this week. I realized that I didn’t have a huge amount of stuff to do at school, and I didn’t really have much chance to visit my family when I was home. I also wanted to get a haircut and had to pick up some clothes, so I got a ride from Sandy.

I told my parents not to tell Brian that I was going to be home, so I’d surprise him. When we got near my street (dad picked me up at Sandy’s house), he let me out of the car at the corner. I walked to the side of the house and waited for a minute by the basement door at the side of the house (it was dark). My dad told brian he was going to bring some towels downstairs and let me in. He then made sure brian was watching the Red Sox game as I silently climbed upstairs into my room. I then called the house from the cell phone, talking to brian pretending I was at school. I asked him to go upstairs and check if he could find my old clarinet in the closet in my room. I stood on the side of the room so he wouldn’t see me. He came into the room, turned on the light, and started looking for the clarinet in the closet, literally 5 feet in front of me. Once he found it, I said (from behind) “It’s right there, Brian”. As expected, he was really scared and surprised. We sat down and watched the Sox game for the rest of the night.

I’ll be here until Friday evening, so that I can get back for the football game. I don’t really have much planned, but I can always find stuff to keep me busy. I’d really like to read some fiction in the next couple of days, as I can never find time for that at school. Hopefully I’ll be able to find something.

Last weekend, I went with 38 band members to CT to play at the Lehigh/UCONN football game. They all stayed at my house. We left at around 4:45 on Friday in 6 vans (I drove one of them). The journey went well enough… though herding that number of people between states had me very stressed.. luckily everyone in band was really helpful. A bunch of us went to play football at the high school that night around 10. We played in the parking lot because there was more light there. It was moderately fun, but inevitably, with that many people in a relatively small space, there was an accident. Kristin somehow fell and hit her head while trying to catch a pass. I wasn’t directly involved with caring for her at this point, so I’m not sure what her condition was, but she didn’t look well. We brought her and a few other people back soon afterwards.

Back at home, people played cards, talked, played video games, and ate pies and stuff my mom had made. They really loved the pies. It was fun to just hang out with people so far away from the worries of school. It was odd to see all the band people in my house.. it reminded me of “Worlds colliding” on Seinfeld when “Independent George” collides with “Relationship George”, but things worked ok. A few people have a lot less tact than I thought, and were unable to do a tolerable job of basic polite censorship at home, but things generally went well. My parents enjoyed meeting a bunch of the band people and my brother did as well.

I tried to get to sleep around 1:30 because I was going to be waking up around 8:15 to give everyone war wakeups with Pete and Greg (Good morning! Good morning! Good morning, good morning, good morning!). Unfortunately, some people who were still awake didn’t really adjust their volume at all, and that in combination with me sleeping on a relatively hard floor in a sleeping bag prevented me from getting to sleep. At about 3:30 I went in and told them to quiet down. Soon after that Kristin (whom people had been checking on hourly) threw up, so Dan (who is an EMT) suggested that she go to the ER.

So… at a little before 4am, Pete, Dan, Amy, Jen, Kristin and I went to the UCONN medical center. There was almost nobody there, and Kristin was told that she should wait for the catscan doctor who they called, though they failed to mention that he/she lives 2 hours away. So, we were there until a little after 9am. I got around 2 hours of sleep, which put my two day total at ~7 hours, which was far from sufficient. My mental state was pretty bad, especially when Amy woke me up to tell my to call my parents to have them wake people up, and I was mentally unable to understand the problem. I had to have her call on my behalf.

Kristin seemed good enough to leave, so we went back to my house, packed up, and left for the UCONN game. We got there pretty early, so we marched around the tailgates for a while. This was a problem for a couple of reasons: there was no central place for Lehigh tailgates and there were very few Lehigh fans. This basically meant we got to march through hecklers for a long time. They were horribly unoriginal and stupid… just yelling things like “UCONN” or “We’re going to win”, or throwing a beer can at us (I’m not a fan of that). I’ll admit that I did enjoy outwitting the bland insults of the fans… we talked circles around them.

I was carrying a sign that read “No Lunch at Lamberton”, which the class of 53 had used at their alumni reunion, and I had taken because it struck me as funny. Lamberton used to be their dining hall, and then became the music building, and then became some sort of strange portal into another dimension, I think. Anyway, I got a ton of mileage out of the sign, yelling at the UCONN fans, because they had no idea what it was. I yelled stuff like “Eat up now, because you’re going to be awfully hungry at Lamberton”. It doesn’t make any sense, but they don’t know that… so it was funny.

After quite bit of redirection to get into the stadium, we finally did make it. The stadium was physically ok, though I think it didn’t resonate the bands’ sounds at all. Throughout the game, we were bombarded with advertising, which got old really fast. I really appreciate the games at Goodman after this. We lost the game as expected, but didn’t do horribly overall, IMO. The UCONN fans were pretty classless… most of the stadium did the wave and bounced beach balls when one of our players was down on the field. There’s something I really hate about scoreboards that show random fans all the time.

Anyway, we somehow made it out of there without any black eyes, which was somewhat surprising considering our cheer became “Safety school” and such at times. I wasn’t really comfortable cheering that because a lot of my friends from high school, smart people who i respect, go to UCONN. Then again, some of the UCONN fans were obnoxious and totally deserved it. It’s too bad these people have to pull down their school this way.. some of their fans were respectful and reasonable, but their positive attributes were overshadowed by the crappy fans.

The UCONN band was big (>200), but wasn’t incredible. I guess I’m not all that impressed by corps style bands.. this one was good, but nothing really exceptional was done at this performance. Their drum line was something to be envied though. A few people from their kappa chapter stopped by and said hello and gave us a UCONN glass and candies as a gift, which was really cool.

I had Karen drive the van on the way home, because of my lack of sleep and diminished mental capacity. I drove shotgun halfway, and then moved into the back for the final leg of the trip because I felt it wasn’t fair to sleep a lot in that seat (part of the job of the navigator, imo, is to entertain and keep awake the driver with conversation). When I got back to LU, I slept for 12 hours.

We have Thursday and Friday off for pacing break, so I’m looking to finish up tvguy2 with tim. Plenty of time to rest and figure things out. And not be insanely busy.

OK, so I’ve been meaning to go on several rants on here for some time now, but I keep either getting tired of complaining about things, or too busy. So… I’ve decided to leave this vague vomit of anger, most of which has subsided but might as well get released.

Most of these deal with band, where most of my stress has been focused lately. Here are things I’ve wanted to say to people for a while but haven’t (most of these aren’t directed at a specific person):

* Don’t whine. It just looks bad and drags the whole group down. If you are asked to mark time for two hours at practice, DO IT! You came to practice to march, and you are marching, deal. The person telling you to do that was elected democratically, and you choose to be a part of this group.

* Don’t tell execs how to do their jobs during practice. I say this for two reasons: it slows down practice because everyone needs to wait while the rationale is explained or the decision is changed. Second, you are not responsible for making the decision. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t provide input, you should tell that person or the manager your thoughts on your own time. They bear significant responsibility for the product at the end of the day. As an organization, it is more efficient and effective for us to periodically make poor decisions without questioning everything than it is to make fewer bad decisions while questioning everything and wasting time on rationales for everything.

* I don’t expect this from everyone, but if I don’t feel that I know a drill that we are going to perform soon, I’m more than willing to give up 15 minutes of my dinner in order to refine it.

* Non-incidental profanity in the stands at games is unprofessional, rude, and not particularly funny. Swears are the poor man’s vocabulary boosters

A lot of the work ethic here I can trace back to things I learned to accept in cross country and track in high school. If you can run 5 miles on a track on race day (that’s 20 laps), you can put up with quite a bit.

In other news, everything else is going ok… I’m hoping that we’ll avoid a big political battle with band (I’m too tired to explain it right now). Tests are done for now, and a couple of projects are on the horizon.

I have nearly 40 people staying on the floor at my house for the UCONN flame this weekend. It’s going to be packed, but I’m happy that I was able to get so many people to go. Hopefully it’ll be a good time.