My Mental State

"breath, breath, breath, walk, step over mantle, sip...Not too quick, it's hot!, ...Needs some cream, but you already sat down, get up, walk, walk..." This was a paraphrased version of my internal monologue yesterday at the coffee shop. My mind may just be collapsing from the pressure. I watched all 5 seasons of Scrubs over the Summer, and Zach Braff's character always has some sort of internal monologue going (kinda like Wonder Years, except in his present voice and in first person), which may explain my own internal monologue. I also recently finished Dostoevsky "Notes from the Underground", which explains how the monologue can sometimes be both unyieldingly narcissistic and overwhelmingly self-deprecating("We met the first day of class, why doesn't that guy ever say 'hi' did I do something wrong? He's probably just threatened by your awesometitude"). I'm also not having any significant conversations unless I'm on the phone or on-line, which explains why the internal monologue often develops into dialogue("I wonder what the deal is with this whole 'popped collar' phenomenon"; "I don't know, why don't you look it up on wikipedia"; "Yea, good idea, I'm sure they'll have some sort of explanation...Hey look, an entire article!"; "See, told you, wikipedia's the best!"; "true that!" ). That was this morning.

The last week was intense and this week, despite hopes beyond hopes, isn't looking out to be much different. There was a quiz yesterday in Computer Security, which I think I may have just pwn3d. I have a presentation due today, but it's with a group and our leader guy will be doing practically all of the talking. There's a paper review and a test tomorrow in Packet Switching. there's another low-level programming assignment due in Embedded Systems due Thursday night. Lastly, homework#2 is due on Monday for Web Security and Privacy, and I haven't even looked at it. When I say 'homework' that sounds like a miniscule amount of work, but 'homework'#1 (which I pwn3d 100%) involved writing a small program that cracks RSA using the extended Euclidean Algorithm. Sleep has obviously found its way into the expendable department and my waking hours are spent on reading tech papers, powerpoint slides, and programming.

My Dear Vegas

Dear Vegas,

Classes are starting to bury me. I've been here four weeks and haven't found anyone that can hold a candle to you. Perhaps I'm judging preemptively. I wanted to write so you could know how much I miss you. I miss sleeping on your couch come finals time. I never told you, but half the time it was just so we could hang out. And I still recall the time I threw up in your tub because I was just too drunk and weak to lift myself up to the toilet seat. I slept like a roofied up sorority girl on your bathroom floor.

I miss your humor and ability to make light of almost any situation. Who else could come down with Krone's disease and still make jokes when I visit them at the hospital? I don't think I could have ever thanked your dad enough times for fixing old blue, or your mom for being so patient with the semi-weekly noise sessions.


That fateful Labor Day eve is ingrained in my memory for ever, and consequently in my permanent record as well. Who knew our innocent night of chalk and caution tape would escalate into 24 hours of court TV and stale, stale cake? I now smirk every time I see a Cobra or Viper. Admittedly, that was probably one of (if not) the most invigorating and eventful night thus far.

Hotel parties...I'll miss the hotel parties and the short notices, classic Vegas. And of course video game nights. I swear on my brother's grave that I could've wasted you if I had a mouse and keyboard instead of the clunky xbox controller. Anyway, how many times did I tell you to stay away, from our women? But you wouldn't listen, I'm glad you didn't. When I told you adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs, you wouldn't listen. Though I could definitely use an impromptu lunch date right now, regardless of your listening skills. Only no sushi! I just can't anymore since we got back. Maybe next time we go we can find ourselves a native widow to marry like we had planned.

If there's anything I learned from you, Vegas, it's to never make plans. I never planned on losing so many months due to petty misunderstandings, but I think that lost time was most beneficial in testing the waters of a friendship in need of redefinition. You always built that first bridge though, be it with a surprise AIM message or a bag of (the correct) Dunkin' Donuts left on the hood of my car.


You were there when I met my future wife, remember? She said I was "insane" for driving so far to see her. She called me lazy for having two copies of the same album, one for my car and another for my room. At which point she gave me a hug, and for the first time in my life, it felt like I was exactly where I should be. We saw her again and that time you gave me courage enough to take a picture with her.




You, Vegas, have been a seemingly endless source of inspiration. Your ability to conjure iron-clad logic out of thin air is something to be admired, as is your persistence and dedication to playing the Lwin opening despite the hecklers. Thanks to you I was enriched with prime triangles, factoral dimensions, Wittgenstein, and e^i*pie + 1 = 0. I still entertain the thought of what ambiguous fun we'd have if you were more than a would be room-mate. My Wednesday nights will never be the same and my Friday nights are sadly no longer associated with any kind of cardinality(finite or otherwise), but we'll always have Helsinki.


Well I'm tired. School is burying me. I could sure use the kind of sleep I once got on a return flight from Boulder city. I know you were disappointed in my passenger side snore-fest, believe it or not, that was seriously the best sleep I can remember myself having, and I should thank you for that.
And, Vegas, I should thank you for so much more than stolen naps, drunken strip pilgrimages, borrowed couches, and sweat-inducing chess games. but doing so would take up more space than Google would be willing to support, just know that I do. That's it. Good Night.

Yours,
0100110001001100

My Consumption Problem(s)

I'm sitting in my cubicle and there's a small trash receptacle behind me. It's a black, trapezoid-ish shape with a matching black liner. The contents, at least the ones you can see without touching them, include two '100 grand wrappers', one 'Doritos' bag of the ranch flavored variety, one rice krispies treat wrapper, one 'gummy soda' wrapper, and one 'fizzy gummy soda' wrapper (the fizzy one was sour, tangy, and therefore superior to its predecessor). I'm not proud to say these containers were emptied of their of their contents and placed there by none other than yours truly. This wouldn't be so bad if the time frame in question was more than 24 hours. I'm falling into a habit of heavy snacking which supports my theory that there is a fat kid residing within me and he's trying to liberate himself from this his slender prison. Well not today fat kid! The next time I go grocery shopping health snacks, Nutrigrain and cereal bars maybe, are definitely on the list.

My caffeine intake also needs to be restricted. Every schoolday I have a huge break between 1120 and 300. I don't go home(travel time just isn't worth it). So I stay in school and do homework or veg on the internet. By the time 3pm comes around, I'm exhausted from my (in)activities and have been falling asleep all week. The solution here is simple...Caffeine. But the timing must be just so. Today was the first day of this experiment and it was only semi-successful, and symmetrically a semi-failure. I started drinking a cup of black coffee about a 20min before web security and finished about 10min into it. Now, I haven't had much caffeine this summer so my tolerance is a bit low. Instead of falling asleep, my thoughts started darting everywhere, from mashed potatoes to transformers to stegosauruses(stegosaurusi? surprisingly enough, this last one was the most relevant to web security). So, game plan: start drinking coffee tomorrow more than 20min before class starts and compensate for any rise in tolerance I may have. Ready? Break!

Of eggrolls

I'm facing the beginning of my second week. The classes look absolutely brutal. All but one of my four classes have require some sort of massive project of series of semi-massive projects. Embedded systems has four labs all concerning the Xscale motherboard from intel. That means I have to touch circuits'n shit....I hate touching things....especially circuits. I'm a software guy. I write stuff so the motherboard has a greater purpose than being a paperweight. I don't wanna poke around on motherboards with those metal needle thingies. Eff all that!

I made my first eggrolls last night, totally out of scratch. Except for the wrapper, of course. I think I put too much ginger...I could've sworn it said TABLEspoon, oh well. This is a life milestone for any Asian.

A keyboard isn't going to happen this month for me. Friday night I was intent on maxing out my card to get one, but Thursday morning came with the early chills of winter and I realized the warmest thing I have is an old English airforce sweater. The phrase 'Catch-22' are printed on one of the shoulder pads. Maybe the creators were going for a 'no one wins in war' thing. Anyway, it's cute, but their philosophy isn't going to keep me warm during a Pittsburgh winter, so I opted for winter clothes instead of the korg sp300 with internal speakers and hammer weighted keys. Or the Yamaha p90 with 66 note polyphony and GRADED keys...Graded!!...drooool. Whatever, there's always next month.