Tonight I finally got around to start making a spreadsheet with all the application steps of the schools I’m applying to so that I can keep track of what does and doesn’t atill need to be done. Since so much of the stuff needs to be submitted online, making a paper checklist and having folders (my other method of organization) seemed to be slightly ineffective. Therefore, that is my justification for using my current method. Not that I need any sort of justification for it, but there it is anyway.
Tomorrow shall end up being my homework day (to some extent), most likely working on my next program for Machine Learning. Then, aside from that, I guess I’ll be looking for an alternative for some software I was going to put on the server since it doesn’t want to play nicely with Vista/Server 2008. Once again, I guess I could go the VM route, but I’d rather not.
Personal - Dallas
Last night while putting all of the hard drives in the new server, I realized that there was a key component needed for setup which I didn’t have: a video card. So, rather than only temporarily having one in there since there wasn’t a computer with PCI-E that I could permanently cannibalize one from, I went back to Fry’s to pick up the cheapest one that I could find. That ended up being just $38, but it was an ATI card. The last ATI card I bought was probably about 7-8 years ago, and since then, I’ve been strictly an Nvidia person. Oh well, price speaks!
No movies to go see this weekend, so I might work on homework that I probably should do. That and the usual stuff of playing games, being on my computer, etc. Weekends are awesome, but with such great free time comes responsibility. A responsibility to have fun!!
Personal - Dallas
I finally got my official GRE score report today, and my unofficial scores of 540 and 800 did end up being my official ones too. For the analytical writing section, I got a 5.5/6.0. This is also about what I expected, and since it is scored in .5 increments, that basically means I was near perfect there also. So, to recap, I can do math, I can write well, and my vocabulary is in the range where normal people can understand what I’m talking about. Exactly why wouldn’t a graduate school want me?
Even with no football tomorrow, I’m still going to HP for a little while to work with Mr. Barrows and the online course stuff. HP is in the process of evaluating a free alternative to Blackboard known as Moodle, and I’ve been doing testing and giving feedback on its status and usefulness. Most likely it’ll be at that stage for the entire year, but if it’s good enough to displace Blackboard (not that there’s that high of a bar to clear), I’m all for getting rid of one more Blackboard installation in the world.
Personal - Dallas
One of my Advanced Algorithms problems is a problem involving two sorted arrays of numbers and finding the median of all the numbers combined in the shortest possible time. While I appreciate the problem solving aspect, I don’t ever see myself wanting to actually solve this problem on my own. Sure, it may be a question that Google has you answer in an interview with them, but that still doesn’t mean that it has any practical purpose.
I still haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to spend my long weekend, but WoW and computer building are still pretty high up on that list. I actually got the first season of Chuck on DVD from Amazon this week, so watching that is also a possibility. I may hate choices and options in some parts of life, but as far as what I do with my free time, I’ll take all the choices I can handle.
Personal - Dallas
Well, I’ve been knocking out my homework piece by piece each night this week. So far that seems to be working for me just fine I luckily haven’t been rishing to get anything done, and with one one more night of homework to go. Homework management is such a fun thing to do!!
Aside from that, I’m actually playing WoW right now. The release date for Wrath has been announced so anything major done in the next month or two is slightly pointless. That’s not going to keep me from playing though.
Personal - Dallas
Even though we were given a 1 week extension on our machine learning project, anyone who submits it by the original deadline of tonight (coming up in 10 minutes) gets 10 extra points added onto our grade. Since I finished it yesterday, I most definitely fall into that category. Unless I decide to run some more tests on it later this week and discover a bug, I’m going to ignore it and just move on. To the best of my knowledge, my program performs perfectly, so the chances of that happening (that being me going back to bug test my program further) are pretty near zero.
Without football this week, I’m going to have a lot of time Thursday and Friday that I won’t know what to do with. I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with some things though (in fact right now I can name off working on our new file server and playing WoW as two great time sinks). Sure, homework will probably make that list to, but why would I want to spend a free weekend doing what I can do during my normal time?
Personal - Dallas
That bit yesterday about me not thinking that my programming assignment should take that much longer was very badly misinformed, but the good news is that I have it all done and submitted so there’s not going to be any last minute rush tomorrow night to get it completed. Rather than play WoW tonight I’m probably going to continue on my HW journey and try to knock out parts of at least a couple other assignments due this next week. I definitely have enough to choose from, and I’d rather have the free time later on in the week when there are other things I want to do rather than be in a mad rush to do things the night before.
I played some of the Wrath beta over the weekend, and to describe it in a word: lag. The little latency icon was gone from its normal spot due to some extra buttons on the toolbar so I’m not sure exactly what it was at, but over 1000 I feel would be a very safe guess. Basically, it was close to unplayable (especially if I had been fighting anything), so maybe during the week it won’t be quite as bad. Wandering around and seeing the one of the Northrend starting zones was fun though, and it’ll be nice to at least some some base to start working from once the expansion actually comes out.
Personal - Dallas
My foray back into the Java arena has been fairly painless as far as the mindless programming part goes. My difficulties today arose more form the fact that the algorithm we’re supposed to be implementing isn’t stupid simple, so it’s a lot of trial and error to get it to work properly. Since it’s my only class Monday (and therefore my extension my only homework due) I can dedicate as much time tomorrow as I need to get it finished up, but I don’t think it should be that much longer. Everything should just kinda “snap” into place once I get this one part done.
For all the warnings the news people were telling us about the hurricane, it basically did nothing here. Sure, the radar made it obvious that it was a tropical storm, but aside from that it was just like a rainy day that was slightly windy. I appreciate the whole “better safe than sorry” thing, but we’re talking a major anti-climactic finish to basically this entire week.
Personal - Dallas
The game that we were possibly going to lose actually started out pretty close. In fact, the only thing keeping us consistently ahead for most of the first half was a bad punt snap for Coppell that ricocheted off of the goalpost crossbar and gave us a safety. All that said, we ended up generating a nice lead going into the second half and won 57-41. 3-0, off week next week; football is going quite well I believe!!
It appears that Wrath has finally finished downloading/installing/downloading/installing (yes, two rounds), but I’m not sure if my character copy has gone through yet. If it has, I’ll probably play some tomorrow at the expense of homework. If it hasn’t then I guess I won’t. Easy enough decision, eh?
Personal - Dallas
It’s not. Consistent, that is. If I gave up after last week, this week I might as well start scoring for the other team. I get to the stadium, the plan in still for me to go with Coach Harris, and while I’m there they decide to have me stay at HP. I just don’t get it, I really don’t. From now on, every Thursday I’m not going to go in with any expectations, and hopefully then plans can’t get changed on me.
I’m downloading the quite large installer for the Wrath of the Lich King beta, and while that goes on I’m going to catch up on a few of my TV shows. There’s probably some homework that my time could be better spent on, but I have this weekend for homework. Wait, no, that’s beta time. Ummm, I’ll fit my homework in somewhere??
Personal - Dallas