Da Brick Wall

I woke up today, exhausted. I actually got 7 hours of restul sleep, so that wasn't the issue.

The issue was that for the mast three months or so, I've been running at 60-70 hrs a week, either doing homework or dnd or work or whatver. Now, with the crappy weather, UAF cancelled classes for the week, so I've had nothing to do, and so, bam.

From 70 hrs a week to 0 hrs a week and yeah, the exhaustion that comes from running so fast for so long has finally caught up to me.

I think I'm gonna celebrrate with some rest.

Without an alarm clock.

for once.

I haz a job

So excited. I should be starting in a week or two.

I am so flipping happy right now words just can't describe it. There's a lot I want to do, that needs a lot of money. Like, I want to buy a humidor, for cigars, pay off bills, and save up some cash for after I graduate college/go on to a master's program, that I just cannot do if I don't have an income.

I should be starting in a week or two. Just need to wait for the background check to clear. So not worried about that.

First month of college is over

And everything is starting to pick up. It honestly doesn't even feel like a month has passed by. I think it's because I'm doing so much this year that I have very little time to sit down and rest. I actually installed Chandler for linux to help me manage all of my activities. It's not the greatest PIM around but it's the only one I knew off the top of my head.

When you have work and exercise, it's easy to keep track of these things. Go to work, go to the gym, come home. You also get lots of downtime to do nothing. When you go to college, you go to classes, and in between you get lots of downtime, but there is all this homework to do. Nonetheless, you keep finding ways to fill the gaps.

To make up time, you cut down on sleep. Things start to get more hectic and then who knows what after this. I feel somewhat hypocritical because I declined rejoining Toastmasters, saying that I wanted to be careful with my time, only to join a group called Circle K, which is a community service organization and is tying up my weekend with two events.

two snterviews, a massage (really need one, my body is trying to turn itself into a blackhole it's so tense right now), weightlifting, two awesome classes, will take up most of this friday.

So here I am, after 5 hours of sleep, getting an early start to knock out a lesson of Anthropology so that I can keep on track. I think I can knock out lesson 5 of English on sunday after my Dungeons and Dragons session gets out, and then there's just some math homework to do. Just a quiz, I believe.

The only two classes I haven't had any homework for thus far are Political Economy (have a test coming up that I need to study for though) and dance. I get homework for Assembly programming but thus far it has been really simple stuff.

Stop! Hamma time!

Can't touch this!

SO classes are a few weeks in and my activites are full, between dance class, and then programming class (Which is completely blowing my mind right now! Details in the other blog), and then all the rote work I need to do for other classes they want me to take, and mathematics, my days are pretty full. If I find a job they'll be even more full.

But, I'm loving it. It's pretty sweet. I dropped the firefighting classes and am retaking some other classes to get my GPA back up. Turns out this is a much better plan.

I was a bit disappointed until computer science class blew my mind away, twice, and I came across an opportunity for a student research position. I might get this, and I might not. I'm going to spend my free time studying Python and PERL though, and eventually PHP, so that if I don't get the job, the next time the position is open, I'll be that much more marketable.

I think I at least left a good impression.

Class is in full schwing!

And I'm loving it so much. My responsibilities are pretty basic, now that I've cut video gaming out of my life. Thanks, leechblock, and my uh, "clicking" the wrong button when attempting to save my 512-character password for you in gedit. I guess the only way out now is to re-install linux but that's not happening for awhile.

Yes, Mint version 10 is out. Version 8 is still doing all the things I want it to do.

So far it's been an amazing week. We had this whole three-day weekend thing, so classes didn't start until tuesday. I get smashed at the pub tuesday night (whee, fun), to the point where I was basically falling down and had to hold myself up. Well worth it though. I usually don't get hangovers. No idea why.

Wednesdays are ballroom dance and assembly. So are mondays and fridays. These are literally going to be my three favorite days of the week until December and then I get to take two programming classes (hooray!)

Back to college in five days

Music for the road trip. Check.

Brain in proper gear for CS? Check.

So many unanswered questions about computer technology? Yup. It's going to be a long road.

It recently occured to me that I could never learn everything about computers in one lifetime. This means I could learn for a lifetime. Really.

I spent the better part of a year (maybe more like 4 or 5 months) studying math. From Algebra to Precalc to part of Trig. I understand it a lot better, so now I just need to prove I can do it. I've spent a few weeks digging down into C++, and I think I remember the general idea of how to program. Doubt I'm as great as I once was (not that I was rockin, or anything) but my coding style seems to be coming back, and things are starting to make sense now. I have the next two days off so my plan is to program some problems involving pointers and string manipulation, and attempt to build a big number class in C++. Just a simple one. Addition, subtraction, maybe multiplication and division. I haven't laid anything down, but I am wondering how much the efficiency of it will matter. If I have to add two 10 million digits together, and my processor can perform 1.6 billion instructions per second, how fast will this operation be?

Other than that, I'm gonna read a little bit of effective C++. I'm not looking to become a god at C++ before college starts, there's no time for that now. I just want my mind to be in the right gear for Assembly Programming class.

This is my class lineup for the fall

Intermediate Algebra (3 credits)
Assembly Programming (3 credits)
Fire Fighter I (12 credits)
Ballroom Dance (1 credit)

I will take a class over Christmas break, which will be pre-calculus (4 credits)

Over spring, my schedule will be
EMT 1 (6 credits)
Anthropology (3 credits)
Another programming class (3 credits)
trig (3 credits)
Breakdance classes ( 1 credit)

which will be 39 credits. A lot of these are retakes to repair my GPA, so a lot of these aren't actually new credits. The firefighter/EMT classes are a diversion so get me out of retail, and firefighting is fun.

My GPA should be somewhere close to 3.0 at this point. From there, I'll have to get scholarships. I might switch majors to computer engineering at this point, or discuss double majoring. Not sure. I love programming but I hate that for an engineering field, I don't have a whole lot to show for my hard work like an engineer who builds a bridge or arch might.

we'll see. It all depends on funding.

Shifting my mind into 2nd gear now

Anyway, I think I'm just gonna head back to Fairbanks this fall for another year. See how it goes. I think it'd be easier than trying to get into a different university right now.

I started doing the material in the book "College Algebra Demystified", and started going through an old edition of a book for CS311. It's trippy. I think I spent about two hours trying to figure out how to implement a binary search to find the maximum value in a group of numbers without sorting the data first. What made this exercise a head trip is that a binary search usually operates on sorted data.

Being rusty or not having a lot of knowledge about a binary search didn't help. I warmed up with a few simple exercises on recursion, that the book gave me, and then devled into this problem, and by the time I finished I was feeling pretty good, like old times.

My goals academically right now are
- Study Algebra, and pre-calculus, before heading back to college in the fall. Pass these classes with either an A or a B. Will be studying out of the Demystified series of books.
- Retake Anthropology. Actually pass this class this time. SHould be easy. Just don't get caught up in all the stupid bullshit like last time. Haha.
- Possibly retake English 111. Get my GPA up.
- Take 4 new classes over the 2010-2011 year.
- Shift my brain back into gear for learning computer languages and software concepts. That basically means reading and programming and studying.

If I get As and Bs in all these classes, I will have an awesome GPA (like 3.2 or 3.4) according to the GPA calculators.

Then again, I could just go back to Fairbanks

And try my hand as an adult.

Gonna do this way differently though.

Currently wondering if I should just stick it out with them, transfer up there, work like 16 hrs a week and live on campus.

No idea.

But I know I need to get my brain back in gear math and computer wise.

So I just realized how I can get out of this god forsaken state

And that's college.

I'm stuck here until I get my GPA back up to a respectable level.

I just checked my transcript. I think they took off the F on my English 213 course, which puts me at a 2.2, if I'm reading this all correctly.

The only bad thing is this means that maybe I won't be going back to UAF, which is a pretty good school.

But then, sometimes you just need to make changes in life to go anywhere. Sometimes rapid, sometimes big ones. If I had never been to college in the first place, I'd never be where I am now.

I might need to sit a semester out though. I think registration might be closed.

Slow but strong

I really don't like working in the gym when there's a lot of people in there. I feel like I'm being watched - paraded around in people's minds silently as they gauge my strength in comparison to themselves, or just look in awe.

Maybe they don't care. I see a lot of people doing a lot of different things. I see skinny guys using machines, thinking they know how to not be skinny anymore. I see big guys using free weights, knowing what they need to do to get big, and doing it. I see people whose routine seems to consist entirely of see machine -> do a set -> see another machine -> do a set. It's pretty disorganized. I try not to make fun of these people, misguided as most of them seem to be. The reason is simple. If you're in the gym doing it all wrong, you're still already doing more than half the nation is right now (A lot of our problems with healthcare are caused by the fact that half the nation is obese).

Sometimes, people get it right. Or half right.

I finish cranking out my squats (225 for reps) on the smith machine and start to do my overhead presses (135 or so) when a guy asks if I'm using the bench. I say no. So he takes my smith machine and starts doing bench press with the weight I'm pressing over my head. Then his friends come over. They finished their sets pretty quickly so I wasn't too mad about it. Actually got to talking to them and how I take my sweet time with the weights. That's when the big guy told me that I'm "slow but strong". I'm still not sure if this is supposed to be an insult (i'm slow) or a compliment (i'm strong). Maybe it was just an observation.

But the point stands. You do something right or impressive in the gym, and people will notice. If enough people notice, they'll start talking.

I built a reputation in High School, even though I never intended to. Part of this was because when I was doing weight training there, I was pretty strong. People talked. People who I didn't even know knew that the short, fat, curly haired dorky kid was pretty strong. Among other things. Like, that I was also a total showoff. And then this short, skinny kid named Tyler took my spotlight the year after. Frankly I was glad.

It's not that I don't mind the limelight. I just want it on my terms.

Gone a day without games so far

And it's boring.

It's a hobby I wished I'd treated better as a child. Unfortunately, it's an addiction for me, and whenever I start I neglect everything else. While it's easy to sell things to a pawn shop like a PS2 and Xbox, there's still flash games. Something I just need to ocndition myself to stay away from.

Next step is to spend less idle time at a computer, browsing forums.

And to sell my desktop. I don't need it anymore.

But I need to put windows 7 on it first.

It's still a gaming rig. It should have an OS geared for that.

Booyeah!

Added 20lbs to deadlift. Feels great but its tough.

Had a friend tell his gf "look at this kid" as I started my third set (245lbs). Such a wonderful feeling.

Also. No longer need to do dips with taking off weight. Also a wonderful feeling.

Totally killed my forearms today as well. Also a wonderful feeling.

It's been a great day,

Deloading is done

I can now start ramping up weight again.

This is gonna be so fun!