Madness In My Method

The final went well. I was nervous as hell going in. Come to find out, about 75% of the questions were exact duplicates from our previous tests, so sometimes I knew the answer without having to work out the problem, even though I did anyway. I knew there would be two long questions, but there was one proof that I didn't think would be on there, so I just glanced over it. Sure enough it was there and I got about half through writing it out when my mind got stuck on the last few steps. I'm hoping I get at least 1/2 credit for it, especially since it's worth 20 points on the test, and those 10 points make the difference between getting an A on the final and getting a B.

Crossing fingers that the final grade is just above the A/B cutoff and not below it.

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Speaking of school, although this isn't just a school rant but a LET ME PICK MY OWN GOD DAMNED PASSWORD rant, here are the password requirements for my school sign on:

* Your password must be at least 8 characters long.
* Your password must contain at least three character classes (lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, or special characters).
* You may not reuse any of your last 5 passwords.
* Your may only change your password once every 5 minutes.
* Your password should not contain any part of your name or NetID.
* Your password should not be based on a word found in the dictionary.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR - I am so effing tired of all these damned password rules that are everywhere. More than anything, I hate the fact that they are different every.single.place.you.go.

This was just sent out to my mentor's mailing list. While the program description sounds absolutely wonderful (especially the part about visiting France a few times), I really don't want to go to Florida. I'm not completely sure if this is a grad/PhD program or if it is a post-doc position based on the information provided. If it is grad/PhD, I just may have to include this on my applications list to begin commencing in the coming month. It's either that or I just have to wait until the day that I am finally qualified to apply to positions like this.

( Connectionists: PhD position investigating connectivity and dynamics of large-scale brain networks )

I'm still scared as ever about this upcoming process. Still worried about leaving my friends and family behind and being alone. I'm not afraid of new and different places. I otherwise LOVE to travel and wish I could do so much more often than I do (which is about never). It's just the being alone part that I hate.

I'm scared to death of applying to grad schools in the fall. There's always a chance of seeing nothing but rejection letters, but that's really not the part that scares me. It's the moving part. Having to move away from friends and family. Having to move somewhere alone and to have to force myself into a world of classes and research without knowing how I'm going to pay for it. Having to forgo the concept of a typical 8-5 job and plotting and planning for a future boyfriend and wedding and house and family. Yeah, because that's what it feels like to me. It almost feels like having to sell my soul. It feels like having to become even more alone than I feel right now. The sad thing is that while I wouldn't feel quite as alone staying and working some 8-5 dead-end job, I'd still be alone regardless, but at least I'd have friends to keep me company at times.

Yeah, I'm in a mood.

I'm trying to just accept the fact that I should be alone for a while. That my life has been laid out so that I should just focus on school and forget about relationships. In the world of relationships nothing works out for me, and who am I to get into a heavy relationship only to have the looming possibility of moving soon. It's not fair to anyone, myself or them. I'm tired of trying to fight through all the relationship junk just to find out that no one is really interested in a long-term fucking relationship anymore, regardless of any future prospects that I may or may not follow. People today only seem interested in simply a fucking relationship that allows them to get their rocks off without having to pay $50/hr and I'm getting tired of that.

Again, I rue the day when my brain decided that I should be the biggest romantic schmuck in the universe.

1) This is a calculus-based class. I wrote my first integral sign in 14 years two weeks ago.

2) I will be spending the next week re-learning calculus integrals and derivations, so that I can pass my test next Wednesday. Basically, I'll be re-learning an entire years' worth of Calculus and figuring out half a year worth of Cal III (pre-req for the class that I managed to bypass) in said one week time, along with learning the actual math models that we are learning in class to solve physics problems.

3) The EE (electrical engineering) students in class are trying to figure out if this class is even worth it, because so far we keep going over various ways to derive the same equations that we all learned back in our basic physics classes. (read: this is easy as hell shit to the class geniuses, yo) Considering I was once a physics major, I should be just as jaded about the class, but my goals are different from theirs. I want this A so that I can graduate Cum Laude damn it, but I'm going to have to study a lot more than I thought I would due to Items #1 and #2 above.

4) Our classroom is being used by a bunch of over-achieving high school teens taking a summer AP Pre-Calculus class. I flipped through one of the Pre-Cal books lying around and recalled all the stuff that I learned ... oh ... 15 years ago, back in the day when I was an over-achieving AP math student myself.

5) A nice guy in my class has a PC Tablet he takes his notes on. I completely forgot about my class last Monday while watching Heroes Season 2 until it was already into the class time and given the 45min drive and parking time would have made me too late to bother going. Luckily, he was kind enough to email me his notes from the class that day.

5) In order to read his notes (see #4), I had to download a PC Tablet reader (Windows Journal Viewer). So if I ever do buy a PC Tablet I'm already set to transfer notes to my primary computer and still be able to read them.

6) Microsoft's Download Center, where I got the Windows Journal Viewer download, is about to get a face lift and you can try out the beta version for free.

7) The beta version of Microsoft's Download Center requires you to download Microsoft Silverlight. Because nothing on that web page actually tells you anything about WTF Silverlight really is and what it does, I finally resorted to the good ol' Wikipedia entry on Silverlight which basically says it's MS's very late response to Apple's QuickTime, although really I think they can both go fuck themselves while I stick to Macromedia/Shockwave Flash.

8) There's a house for sale on my route to and from school that looks like a mini fortress. It's probably way out of my price range, but it totally rocks from what little I can see of it. It definitely would hold up to a zombie apocalypse.

So, yeah. There's my school update.

This last class had better be worth it.

corzican has posted a few pics of the graduation. Unfortunately, his camera didn't seem to be able to deal with the dark auditorium with stage lights, so every one of those turn out blurred. Also, mom forgot to include the memory card in her camera, which is required for still pictures. I think she might have gotten some video, but I haven't verified it with her yet. I know of at least one picture that exists of me from the balcony taken by flemco, but I haven't seen it yet. I'll bug him about it tomorrow night.

I'm happy for what ever pictures were taken. I know I'll be contacted by the professional photographer about the official pic of me shaking hands with the Dictator Director of the program, which I'll buy some copies of for family and such.

I had such a wonderful day. I also made sure to give proper attention to my professor when he came in to the BBQ and to my mom and grandmother as it was still Mother's Day, and I could totally put the blame of my existence onto both of them. My dad was running around making sure all of the food was out and the shrimp peeled and the margaritas and daiquiris (man that's such a hard drink to spell) made. My uncle kept shooing me out of the kitchen as my natural Lead Hostess role kept creeping into my brain.

Food! OMG so much food and it was so good and tasty. I had bought a peach cobbler and a banana pudding that never even got set out because people were already so full by the time it would have been dessert time, and yet there was still plenty of food out on the picnic table.

It really was a great day and I wouldn't have changed it for the world.

Oh yeah, and I didn't trip walking across the stage!

It feels good to take a break from reading LJ every so often. However, it feels horrible when a week or two have gone by and you wonder what you've missed and then realize how many posts you actually HAVE missed.

I doubt I'll be catching up on the reading any time soon, and I'm fairly certain that it will get further behind before I ever think about really reading again.

I'm actually excited about working on and finishing my thesis now. The concepts I'm writing about are starting to solidify enough that I'm ignoring how much I hate the template in order to actually concentrate on the content.

Yesterday I was a wired accountant extraordinaire (added to windows' dictionary because Gates has never heard of Webster).

EDIT: Important News in case you didn't get a copy of the mail out from the IRS a short while back.

For all of yesterday I was still running on 1.5 hours of sleep, a pack of cigarettes, a little semblance of food around noon, and a lot of caffeine. I made it to the 8:45 teacher meeting early at 8:30. In all my sleep-deprived mind I kept thinking that class started at 9:45 despite the fact that throughout this entire semester the class has been scheduled for 9:30. I bought a muffin and cappuccino for breakfast and researched printer information in the computer lab for the next hour while waiting for class to begin. I showed up to class right on time at 9:45 - except that I was 15 minutes late and didn't realize my mistake until walking in sheepishly. 15 minutes early to meeting and 15 minutes late to class - go figure.

Class ended and I ran to purchase the printer. Then I ran to get lunch for the_paco, who was covering my afternoon shift for me, and for my coworker that I wanted to buy lunch for since she was kind enough to buy lunch for me on a couple of occasions. Side note: I really need to go by the bank and have cash in my purse again for those situations.

Back at home I managed to get the new printer installed and then spend the next couple of hours finalizing company accounts and forms. Fortuitously, our family CPA who is also a long-time family friend had a cancellation, so mom got us an appointment for between 5-5:30pm. I quickly raced to get everything finalized and printed off and still had do a few forms by hand in the car on the way there. We finally showed up around 6 after battling traffic, but that worked out perfectly for the CPA friend who was still trying to finish up with another client. Mom managed to get one set of grandparents taken care of as well as her own taxes and we made it back home by 10pm. Then I raced to file my other grandmother's, my sister's and my taxes online. At 11:15pm we jumped into the car to head to the post office hub to drop off the company taxes. H&R block wanted to charge an arm and a leg (>$500) just to file electronically for us the paperwork that I already had filled out. Fuck that shit. Luckily the car line for IRS tax drop off was pretty quick and I made it back home by 11:45.

With 15 minutes to spare. That was close.

My leg was cramping up, I had given up my first yawn while in the car line at the post office, and my allergies were about to kick in. I took a Benadryl (which knocks me out cold every time), some ibuprofen, and 1/2 a valium. I was *this* close to sleeping through my alarm this morning, but instead I managed to snooze for just a teeny bit longer and still made it to work on time despite a pit stop by McD's for breakfast and coffee.

Then damn if the phone lines at work started screwing up again. Luckily this time it only lasted about an hour.

Tonight - beers and good company. Tomorrow - I'm fucking sleeping in.

Our electricity went out again yesterday afternoon, so I had to shut everything down early. This morning we still had electricity, but the phones were acting up. They were fine long enough for me to start my morning work after reseting the power strip to the phone lines. After that they went down again. I'm still at work now awaiting AT&T to tell us for sure that they've fixed everything. I'll get phones and internet for a few minutes before they go off again (hence why I'm able to post this at the moment). I've already logged into our tracking system 4 times today, and I don't feel much like trying again until I know for sure it will stay up.

I still have access to MSOffice, and I brought my company tax stuff to work with me, hoping that I could work on it some between busy moments. Yesterday was non-stop busy, so I managed to accomplish nada. So far today, I've been able to get through half of the work I brought with me. I have a positive outlook that I might actually be able to finish it while sitting here getting paid to wait on the AT&T tech. This doesn't change the amount of work that I need to do on my paper tonight and tomorrow night.

I just hope everything is up and running by tomorrow morning and back to normal.

Note to self: Do not pick up Cat O'Shedsalot immediately after getting out of the shower and still dripping wet no matter how much she mews and pleads and rubs your leg.

In other news: Yay for three class days in a row in which I get to sit in the comfort of my home to work on my paper. My POD people group met last Thursday, so we are done with our small group discussions. This means no official class for the next three meetings while the other groups meet. There is still the next whole section of my paper due by April 11, so I will take advantage of the "library and research" days to do just that. But not having to wake up by a particular time and getting to make myself coffee so that I can be wired for the rest of the day and getting to sip it in the comfort of my big desk chair: priceless.

Since I don't have any plans this evening, I shall endeavor to add myself to the flock of Babylon 5 droolees, for I have never seen an episode yet and all of the seasons were on sale for $20 each at Best Buy this week. (Yes, you did hear that correctly, so run, don't walk, to make your purchases now.) I have procured season one and will most likely purchase the rest before the sale ends on Saturday, but I just have to start watching at least a few episodes to prove to myself that it's worth purchasing. (No, this does not mean for you to hound my comments and email with tales of how wonderful this show is.) Most likely, I will indeed fall in love and purchase the remaining seasons, however if for some reason my brain has been mis-wired more than originally thought and I am otherwise not impressed with the show, I will still purchase it because I know how much koed drools over it and he will appreciate the purchase regardless.