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ObjectivistPurity
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Interests: Mathematics, hiking, working with the Compy 386, life and its scintillating euphoria
Expertise: Mathematics (again), digging post holes, making little sense if at all, understanding
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  NoldorForce
Member Since:
4/21/2004
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| For nearly six months, I've been working at one of our nation's megacorporations, this one being Acme. I was hired as a bagger back in late April, but managed to get fast-tracked into the checking class in a week; thus I'm now a cashier. Unfortunately, I'm one of the few people that are depended on to do late-evening shifts, which may entail working as late as 10 or 11 PM. Which means boredom when no customers show up, as well as less opportunity to get other stuff done. But it's a job. A low-paying job, but better than nothing, I suppose.
Still, I do get a chance to do other stuff when customers aren't around; on occasion I've brought in my homework for Math 245 (Intro to Proof) and worked it out there. Over Monday and Tuesday, for instance, I'd worked out proofs for the five problems on the take-home midterm, then proofed those solutions to ensure that they were both correct and legible. (I type them up in LaTeX.)
It still manages to feel like that science fiction story where everyone is forced to wear devices that act as "weights" to ensure that all are equally strong, intelligent, etc. Mostly because the mental "weights" put out brain-scrambling pulses every so often to diminish the effective intelligence of those above the standard - sometimes trying to focus on something while being a cashier at Acme feels like that.
And speaking of midterms, the in-class portion of Math 245 was given today. It didn't seem that difficult; the trickiest problem was the first one, in which we were supposed to prove an inequality. Working backwards using iff statements sufficed to give me a solution.
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| Figured I'd finally add a picture of myself in here; it's done by my cousin (and in fact yanked from his blog). It was taken when we were in Georgetown last August, getting my license renewed and the like. As I've talked to both him and Ahmet over the months after seeing all sorts of film (especially foreign stuff, like the grim Blind Shaft or emotional After The Wedding), we've discussed a lot of politics. Like how Turkey trusts its military more than its government, or the workings of French-style socialism (~30K euros in compensation for getting knocked up), or biofuels (corn ethanol is trash, biodiesel and cane ethanol aren't), or...you get the picture. And I've felt that my political views have shifted more to the left over those months. I don't know how much they've shifted, but it's how things are, really. I've always had this leftist bent from my parents, neither of which are exactly Democrats but who still associate themselves more strongly with that party's platform. But Chuck? He's probably in that threatened species known as the Extreme Left in the US. (There's a lot more influence from such groups in Europe, for instance.) He's been to South America and studied its workings as much as a freelance photographer might. He's even posted a video on YouTube of Brad Will (indie media journalist) inadvertently filming his own death. And so I've been, well, moving in sync with him in certain ways.I was thinking about discontinuing this thing and getting a LiveJournal account for the ability to let anonymous people post, but I've decided that simply cross-posting may be better. | | |
| More of the whole "I haven't posted here in a while" business. In its current form, I simply haven't had much that needed doing with this blog. I'd been able to extensively discuss politics and other stuff with my cousin Chuck and a Ahmet (a Turkish grad student) after movies and such. So I hadn't felt much need to spout stuff off here as well. Besides, where has everyone gone to in the first place? Most of the Charter folks have gone on to other social networking things, partly obviating that network outside the classroom.
So why do I still maintain this thing, occasionally poking at it? Really, because there's stuff that bears remembering. I've a ten-year old journal in which I spoke my thoughts more freely, and looking back on it I have some sense of my mental and emotional status at such times. Mind you, it's not entirely sunshine and flowers; there's one entry to which my only response was "What the f**k?" It ain't going up here, for sure.
What will the new status of this...thing...be? Really, I dunno. I've always had stuff to say about gaming and such, but didn't bother stating it here out of timidity, really. In the future, stuff might change. Not many people from Charter may have cared about such...but are they really watching at this point? And with proper cross-linking, well, who will notice this thing later on?
In any case, there's a bit of work to be done. Pruning, fiddling, and the like.
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| As I'd learned back in October, the overheating problem with my laptop was a design flaw specific to a select few models. Someone had filed a class-action suit about this, and won. Thus I'll need to send in my laptop for repairs in the next few months.
My point still stands that getting a Dell is likely a Bad Idea, due to contractual bundling of Windows Vista with it. If an operating system has inherent DRM in it, I'd be wary, considering the fiasco over Sony's music CDs that had rootkits. And if that DRM is draconian...I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. So no new Dell for me, likely, unless I get the explicit option to load some form of Linux on it (with a Windows emulator for occasional gaming) instead. Otherwise, a Mac is always a viable option. Though I would need to find a mouse with more than one button, considering how much I use the wheel button.
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| Wow. I haven't touched this in a while. I've been off on forums, college classes, Twilight Imperium, play-by-post, etc. So much that perhaps should be said, and is yet forgotten.
I've still been my insular self. Being a continuing education student (my own fault) has its differences from regular college life, not the least of which is a relative isolation. At least I still have the UD math undergrad lounge folks. They're a riot.
I should be able to move back onto campus (at UD...CMU is unfortunately a lost cause at this point due to my previous procrastination) next spring. I'm currently kicking back (so to speak) and taking an entomology course. Insects are fascinating things, especially when they crawl on your walls and run for foxholes when you attempt to catch them for a project. And dear my do I have a lot of bugs. By "bugs", I refer to the true bugs, or insects of order Hemiptera. They're easy to identify as such if you know what you're looking for - it's the wings which transition from opaque and thick near the base to transparent and thin at the ends.
I made Pellegrini feel old last week. Someone (possibly he) in our Twilight Imperium group had suggested making a drinking game associated with our playstyle, such as taking a drink whenever a reference to military history came up. ("Space Stalingrad" is the most common example, for when people throw mobs of forces after the same planets turn after turn.) And so I commented that by next week (ie, the current one), I'd be old enough to legally partake in it. When everyone you knew from high school has graduated such, you DO tend to feel old to a degree.
For the quote...well, this amused me. (Look at misfile.com for the context. It's among the many webcomics I read.)
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