Psychology
My professor was nice enough to post our standing right now but minus our extra credit (which is the only thing I don't know, but whatever). I take pleasure in the fact that I have the fourth highest grade going into the final =). Although I feel kinda sorry for one person. They currently have a 23%. Ouch. Either they got every question wrong on the second midterm or they didn't show, either way they got a zero for it.

But yeah, felt like bragging. Cause *sings* it's my blog and I'll write what I want to, write what I want */sings* (burnt cookie for whoever gets that)

Fall 03
I registered for classes today. I got all the classes I wanted. Which means that I snagged the last spot in Combinatorial Math, go me! So the classes are:

Math 304 Vector Analysis 10:10-11am MTRF
Math 306 Linear Algebra II 1:10-2pm MTRF
Math 336 Combinatorial Math 2:10-3pm MTRF
Math 370 Putnam Exam Seminar 4:10-5pm MW

Lots of Math next quarter, but I'm ready for it (well, I will be once I get this Liberal Arts crap out of me). And hopefully those classes will give me so much needed direction. I don't have my work schedule yet but I know that I won't be working W 2-4pm because of Hawthorne and R 11:10-12 for Math Club meetings.

*sigh*
I picked up my grade for my Sociology test. A D fucking minus prior to adjustment. A plain old D with it. I honestly thought I did better on this one. I'm also hoping very much that I remembered my test number incorrectly and was looking at someone else's scores. I have no idea of how to prepare for this guy. His lectures, when I'm awake, are just mainly statisitics. There have only been about 4 days of real lecture I would say. The book is boring as fucking hell. I don't retain any of the information when I try to read it because it either puts me to sleep while I'm trying to read it or I'm doing some activity (like working out at the gym) in which case it's difficult to read in the first place.

Perhaps I just shouldn't bother with the book except for those focus on the country thingies. Maybe just attempt to pay attention to "lecture," and memorize the handouts. I wanted an A to boost my GPA back up, but even if I completely ace everything I'll only get a B. Hopefully fall will be less boring. I'll be back to math so that's alreay a plus.

Head Fucking Part 2
I re-watched Terminator tonight. As you may recall, the whole Terminator series fucks with my head and I don't like it. But tonight I noticed a major flaw with T2 and T3, which thus makes it fuck with my head some more.

In T1, Kyle tells Dr. Silverman that it wouldn't help the machines to kill John Connor at the point when he went back in time because the human resistance had smashed something causing the humans to win. He then says that that's when they found the "time displacement" machine and the Terminator had already gone through. He also says that the time displacement machine was destroyed after he went through. I'll come back to the "what if it wasn't, he has no proof of that" angle later.

So then at that time, the human resistance didn't have their own Terminator 101 (the one that is sent back in T2) because, to me, that would be a better choice to send back as a protector (hard to kill). But also at that time, the machines must not have had the T1000 or the TX because those are much better killing machines and would have been better choices to send for the first film. So then, how did the machines send back more advanced machines after the time machine was destroyed? Or, going back to the "the time machine wasn't destroyed for some reason" angle, then how could more advanced Terminators been built if the humans had defeated the machines?

Interestingly, the DVD featured some deleted scenes which contributed to the plot. One whole scene they cut out was Sarah calling her mom and telling her mom to hide in the cabin (referred to later by the Terminator as the mom on the phone with Sarah) and then looking through the phone book. Sarah tears out the page that contains the address for Cyberdine, the company responsible for it all. She then convinces Kyle that they should try to destroy the company. In the audio commentary, James Cameron says it ended up being a good thing that they cut that since that was the "nucleus" for the second movie. Anyway, some more deleted stuff was a guy who worked at the factory where the Terminator was destroyed picking up the CPU and handing it to another guy and telling him to get it to analysis or whatever the next day but they hide the chip from the police who told them not to touch anything. Outside, we see Sarah loaded into a ambulance and then the camera pans up to the name of the factory?Cyberdine Systems. Just another case of the Terminator series demonstrating how knowledge of the future causes the events in the present making that future.

I really ought to stop over analyzing things.

Back to plan A
Despite some people telling me that a certain teacher is bad and smells, I have to take 306 this quarter. Putting it off another quarter just fucks me up even more. How you ask? Because it forces me to take 481 and 412 at the same time the following fall. This way I can at least split those up. But basically, if I put 306 off for another quarter, I put off the upper-division proofs course needed as a "strongly recommended" prereq for like 3 other courses. So I won't be taking Stat 425 this quarter. I'll put that off for a bit. Plus, apparently that course is also proof based so I guess having 306 first would help.

*twirls around her clean vacuumed room listening to iTunes through her new speakers*
I got two out of the three things I wanted to set up set up today. *looks at a screw sitting on her keyboard* Okay, one of three. Anyway, they were to finish putting together the vacuum, setting up the DVD player and setting up my computer speakers.

In order to accomplish these things, I stopped at Rite Aid on the way home and bought a screwdriver and a power strip.

Then I attempted to set up the DVD player. The wires provided are worthless to me. The video wire fits way too loosely into the DVD player. While I was testing with Spirit, I had to hold the damn thing in place just to get a picture. I also had a problem with the audio wire. As in there were two plugs on each end. The DVD player had 2 audio jacks but alas my TV only has one jack. You would think that Toshiba would make their own products compatable, no? Hopefully will be calling their tech support about that tomorrow. As both products are made by the same company, I think they should provide replacement wires.

Then I put together the vacuum. Except not really, as there is a menecing-looking screw sitting on my keyboard. Then I cleaned my room so that I could actually try out the vacuum. I spent a lot of time under my desk trying make all of my wires not as messy. I am quite proud of how neat it looks right now; amazing what rubber bands can do. Then I vacuumed. I love my vacuum: it actually works! As in I didn't have to run over my hair a few times to see it still not be picked up as was the case with the Valencia vacuums. It also fits nicely into the bathroom for storage.

Then I set up the speakers (whoops, I added two wires...) and enjoyed singing along. I think I will test the absolute loudness of my music tomorrow afternoon ]=).

Oh, yeah. So before any of this happened there was school and work. Despite the pretty much cramming of Psychology, I think I did okay on the test. Definitely more confident about that than my Sociology test that I had on Friday (note to self: check score tomorrow). For Sociology, I was suppose to have my critique due. I had the article and read a little bit of it but didn't start writing. I was originally just going to say "screw it" altogether but I decided to work on it because 1 point is better than no points. I was surprised at myself. I wrote a one and half page summary, double spaced sans name area, of my article in 3 hours and 20 minutes while working. Considering that I tried to do the same thing for the last critique and only got it to be one page plus 2 lines with everything double spaced (including the header). Then I went to boring Sociology. So glad I get to miss it the rest of the week. So now all I have left for summer school is 2 essays and 2 finals.

ya know...
I usually hate fowarded e-mails but this was cute:
http://www.bordergatewayprotocol.net/~jon/humor/web_animations/may02-smilepop-soapbox4.swf

Finally some relaxation?
Backtracking to Thursday...
It started off as a normal day. Then I went to work. (Okay, okay, that doesn't leave a lot of time for normal day). At about 11:45am or so, there was a power surge. We lost power for about a second, maybe two, but it was enough to cause craziness for the ITS Service Desk.

Fortunately the computers by the window are surge protected and were unaffected. Unfortunately, I was not sitting out there. I had to wait for the computer to reboot (at least I didn't have any Remedy tickets open at the time). So when I thought the computer was done rebooting, I took a call as I was opening the basic applications: Remedy, PH (directory server client), and Internet Explorer. Those took a really long time to load for some reason, I felt bad for my caller because s/he had to wait for me to load those before I could officially help her/him.

Then there were a lot of calls. Mostly people needing to be forced off of SIS. By the way, did I mention that it was the second day of the freshmen registration?

(Tangent to explain SIS: SIS is the system that holds student information. The system is slightly wacky in a few ways. (1)Users have to change their passwords every 90 days or else they get revoked. (2) Users have to type exit or logoff (not sure which since I don't use it) everytime they want to quit the program. They can't just click the x or anything otherwise the system thinks they are still logged in. If that happens they need a force log off.)

So because of registration, lots and lots of people accessing SIS when the power surge happened. Therefore lots and lots of people who needed to be forced off. Now, technically, anything dealing with SIS, we have to deal with the account holder. However, sometimes they have student assistants who use it too or shared accounts. So my second call after the power surge was from one person in one department. She gave me her information and then asked if she could give the user IDs of all the other people who needed to be forced off. I told her that technically I needed to speak with the account holder, but given the circumstance and the fact that a force log off doesn't change the account (like an unrevoke does), I would do it. So that took a good 5 minutes, perhaps more. And for about the hour after that, the majority of our calls were force log offs. When Ronak came in, he checked voicemail and we had eleven new messages, all of them force log offs. After about 45 minutes, Jim told us that Ops was just going to do a mass force log off. So that took care of that for the most part. I stayed at work until 5 because Jeff needed to work on some project and Dan wasn't coming in. What "scares" me about what happened is that Steve said it's going to BUSIER during fall quarter.

The majority of the calls I took were about incoming freshmen trying to get their e-mail accounts. The idiots at summer advising told them that they should do it right away. Actually, they can't until after they've registered for a class. Supposedly a day after (more on this when I move to today).

After that I went to pick up my vaccum (still in my trunk I might add) from Sears and then I came home and basically vegged for the next 3 hours. I was planning on doing my Sociology reading/studying but I was just so tired. I tried to go to sleep except I couldn't because I was too damn hot. I just can't win.

Anyway, on to today
Work started off busy. Key Server went down. Key Server is necessary to run some programs, like some Adobe ones. So had some people calling about that. Also said that there were some problems with POWER (online registration) for people off campus. Which meant that nearly every freshman registering could have been affected. Key Server got fixed, POWER didn't.

Then at about 10:50am or so, I got a call from a user who got an e-mail from admin@calpoly.edu saying her account was going to expire and to see an attachment for details. My virus alert went off but I checked her out, and she was fine so I asked her to foward it to us. I checked out the message and it was obvious-to-anyone-who-has-gotten-spammed/virussed-before that it was not legitimate. E-mail the user back saying that it wasn't legitimate, to stop attempting to open the file (which she said she was doing on the phone). Then I got another call from someone about the same message. Steve saw the message on my screen mentioned that it was familiar and then went into his meeting with Terri (big boss of the Service Desk), some other ITS people, Jeff and Joel since it was 11. This left me and Ronak to answer phones and Jim (supervisor). Then it started.

That fake e-mail got sent out to a lot of people apparently. I myself got about 8 people reporting it and 3 wondering why their account was going to expire. And that was just me. Ronak go some too, overall I think we had at least 15 calls about it. My tickets all looked the same, I abused the copy/paste fucntions ;-). Now also throw in parents/incoming students calling about activating their accounts. Oh, and before Steve went into his meeting, we learned that it is actually TWO business days after registering that an incoming student can activate their account completely. So we had some people who waited a day call who could get into the portal but not into OpenMail.

To add insult to injury as the saying goes, Ronak left at 12. Jim left at about 11:55 for lunch because the meeting seemed to be over. However, they did seem to brake up but Steve was still talking to people. As were Jeff and Joel but they weren't going to answer calls. I was by myself answering calls for a good 40-50 minutes. At some points I hung up with one person and immediately answered the next call. I had some down minutes in which I tried to write up all my calls but it wasn't until about 12:45 or so Steve joined me answering calls (where upon I let him answer so I could do some write ups) and 12:50 when I had no open tickets for 2 hours.

At that point, I grabbed something to eat, and started to cram for my Sociology test. The one that I had in 40 minutes. I got off at 1 (thank goodness) but I stayed around until either Andrew or Matt arrived so Steve wasn't by himself. (See? I'm the nice one ;-) ). As I was cramming, I realized that I was screwed because I recognized very little. Matt and Andrew got in around 1:12 or so. I let them know what was going on and then left to cram in my Sociology room. Once there I quickly went through the practice exam remembering last minute that all of those questions would be on the test. I actually got most of those right. Too bad I didn't remember which ones I got wrong or what the right answers were for them by the time I got to them on the test. Once again I was the last one there, but staying over by only by 20 minutes this time. There's this one girl in there that I don't like on principle: she came into the test late and was one of the first ones to leave. She was in my English class last quarter too. She was only in class about a third of the time and managed to pull off a B. I got the same fucking grade and put in at least twice the work. (According to her group members, one of which was roommates with one of my group members. We had a whole discussion on it instead of working one of the many times). But I'm not bitter, really.

Which Brings us to now and later
Anyway, that's all over. It's now 10:26pm (I had started this entry at 3:56pm) and I just recently got home from one of my relaxing things: Math Club movie night. There was five us for the most part. We watched Die Another Day and then not really Mission: Impossible but mostly talked during the latter.

Tomorrow night is Bridget's party. It's watching Office Space and fruit smoothies. It's because she's coming to visit and also it's her birthday on Sunday. And on Sunday I'm meeting my family in Santa Barbara to celebrate my mom's and my sister's birthdays. Which reminds me, I need to find out the details of our meeting and also ask Jessica and/or Justin to please bring my CD/DVD player. I don't want to sound rude, but I've gotten kinda excited about it. Anyway, in between all that I get to study for a Psychology test, read a Sociology artice and write a Sociology article. All due Monday. This is where time management comes in handy. Boy do I wish I had that skill ;-)

Well my hole seems to be healing pretty quickly. I've got a white scab like thing over half of it Hopefully this won't become a permanent scar, I don't need another one of those.

Cleaning crew for the apartment came today. They were here for about half an hour. Some things look cleaner, like the floor which they vaccumed (speaking of which, Sears called, I can go pick mine up). Although the floor would look a lot cleaner if I had remembered to take out the trash yesterday. Here's the story: either Annie or Meghan (but I think it was Annie because Meghan said something to that effect) bought strawberry ice cream (for shakes I think). Anyway, it's been sitting in my freezer since they left over a month ago. I got sick of looking at it and Monday night I decided that I was going to throw it out the next day. So Tuesday morning I take the ice cream and put in the garbage. Then I put the eggs that had also been there since they left on top of that. Then I got distracted by the tv and ran out to catch the bus and left the trash behind. Come home and notice that I forgot the trash. I was too lazy to take it out then, completely forgetting that there was ice cream soup in there. This morning I tie up the trash with all intentions of throwing it out. I set it down on my chair while I made lunch but then I had some time to kill so I decided to sit. I moved the trash bag onto the floor and it tilted a bit. Then I figured I should do dishes. I do a dish and then look over at the door and notice a pink ooze coming out of the bag of trash. The ice cream had leaked onto the carpet. I quickly moved the trash outside and spent the rest of my time before the bus came trying to get the stain out of the carpet. No such luck, strawberry stains.

I have to stop at the market tomorrow anyway for milk so I'll pick up some sort of carpet stain remover to try. It doesn't have to be completely gone. I just want it lighter or less of it.

Well at least I can look foward to a fun weekend. Math Club movie night on Friday, my other friends movie night on Saturday, time with the family on Sunday night. And during the day I get to have the joy of studying for psychology and writing a sociology critique. I'm not to worried about the critique though. It's only 10 points and I have 5 extra credit points coming my way. Plus I completely bull shitted the last one which didn't come close to the page requirement and managed to get a 9. But why did I have to be in group 1? It's not fair. And I also have an essay for that class due on the 11th. Boo. And the test is in 2 days and I've got like 40 pages of it to read. *sigh*

That fucking hurt
I managed to get .5 cm of pencil stuck in the side of my hand tonight. I was streching by the refridgerator and brought my left hand down right on top of it. The pencil was in a magnetic holder for pencil and paper and had the tip up. From now on, that pencil stays tip down, if it stays there at all.