On Semesters, and the Ending Thereof

Wee! The end of the school year is in sight. Honestly, I felt a lot more in control this point last semester. Since spring break, everything seems like it’s been a blur. An accelerating blur. I can hardly even remember the last week. Well, I can remember specific details about it and sort of piece things together, but I can’t really picture it as a whole. This is probably because I’ve had a bizarre cold/allergy thing coming on, followed by lots of sleeplessness. I have taken to measuring the days past by noting the number of tissues piling up in the trash bag under the sink. That’s probably not a good sign.

Notable events this week have included:

• Getting back an operating systems assignment and not failing. Doing considerably better than failing. Yay.
  • Good thing too, because I was up ’till three AM working on that. >_<
• RAM from NewEgg arriving. Subsequently, my Linux desktop runs a lot zippier and Guild Wars runs smoothly (There are several other games I’d like to test, but haven’t had time). I can have a lot more stuff open before swapping kicks in. In fact, I haven’t managed to hit that point yet. Yay. The laptop also seems to be dumping out a bit more heat. I’m guessing this has impacted the battery life in some way, but my battery is basically a 15 minute UPS at this point.
• Learning that even though you can implement procedural algorithms in a functional language, it doesn’t mean that you should. TEA looses a ton of elegance when written in Haskell. Not to mention it becomes a ton harder to read and understand. Quite disappointing.
  • Thank you Jurassic Park. You have given me a phrase I can apply to just about anything.
  • Taking two programming courses at once is interesting. There is always something due. Always.
• Racquetball tonight? I want to play racquetball. I’ve hardly moved at all this semester, unless you count walking to classes and SAGA. Need physical motion.
• Attending physics TI this evening and having a personal tutor of whom to ask stupid questions.
• Almost walking into a lightpost on Wednesday. This was my second clue that I needed more sleep. (The first was how tired I was.
• Not recalling having difficulty forming coherent sentances while sleep deprived. Amazing! My personal theory is that all speech is simply bypassing the mental facalties. Um, yay?
• Everything I write eventually turning into bulleted lists. Normally I’m able to supress this urge and make the English flow like butter on a rabid bald monkey, but I suspect the aforementioned lack of sleep is overwhelming my English facilities.

My desire to play racquetball seems to be being fulfuilled. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and loose miserably.

The Joys of Brainstorming During Ethics Homework

I have just discovered a wonderful ethical dilemma.

A man is hiding in your closet, and another man is standing before you in the doorway. You know that each wants to kill the other, and you suspect both are evil, but you don’t know for sure. Man number one, standing in the doorway demands to know if the other guy is in the closet. If you reply in the affirmative, he will shoot the man hiding in the closet. If you deny that man number two is hiding in the closet, he will pop out and shoot the blighter standing in the doorway.

Now, both men could be equally evil, one could be slightly eviler than the other, or one could be the evil train robber and the other a hero mounted atop a white horse. (Aside from the complete absence of handy monochromatic hats and/or quadruped transportation, that is) You just don’t know.

Assuming that it’s a binary situation, what is the best ethical choice?

In retrospect, I’m probably I’m the last person on the planet to come up with this situation, but it still amuses me.

Discuss.

Insanity Takes Many Forms

I really hope I’m dreaming. It’s 3 am, I’m stuck on physics homework, and I could swear that someone is blasting harmonica music outside. There is a somewhat surreal element to the whole situation. o_O

Smoke @ 9:30

The microwave next door just started billowing out smoke due to burnt popcorn. Sadly, in the communal rush to close doors and fan smoke out windows, I didn’t think to wrap a shirt around the main west wing smoke alarm before it went off.

*sigh*

My Salad

I had two midterms today. In order to properly prepare one’s body for the harrowing experience, one must obtain three things: study, food, and sleep. I had one of those. Now, lunch is good for the brain and all that, but so is sleep, and I didn’t feel comfortable proceeding henceforth and thereon on six hours. Clearly, something had to be done. I needed to up my sleep stat to seven hours. So, I did.

An hour later, at 11:45, I advanced out of the door. My path was clear. I would approach the fine dining establishment known as The Hive, order an conversion meal, go to the classroom, and eat it before the test started. This is a test that starts at 12:00 sharp, mind you. I know, I’m brilliant that way.  After a three minute jaunt down to this hive of eatables and grease and a five minute wait in line, I had reached the conversion meal. It was a salad. That’s not exactly what I would have chosen, had I had a choice, but time, the universe, and everything had been and were gradually ticking away.

I entered the classroom just in time to receive my scantron sheet. Ok, so no food for now. It’s ok. The classroom is nice and cool, and the salad will be perfectly fine sitting under my chair while I take the test for an hour and a half. Yes.

Midterm number one was completed. I walked to my next class and seized the salad. At last, leafy goodness smothered with with Italian goo would be mine! I smothered it with Italian goo.

“Hey James, do you have your nutritional analysis assignment?”
Wait, what? Um, no, no I did not. I had taken it to the previous three sessions, and the professor had said he would take it the next session each time. Today was the next session.

The weather was clear and hot as I sprinted out of Solheim and vaulted over an unsuspecting hedge. After much drama and sweating and wheezing, I returned to the classroom and passed out on my desk. Just as the professor started passing out scantrons. Aww man.

The poor salad is now sitting in my refrigerator looking rather wilted. I can’t imagine why. It’s only been left at room temperature for like three and a half hours.

Sweet salad, I would have liked to knew thee well.