So life might not be so bad...

I just got my "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad" COS 250 test back. I actually didn't do as bad as I had imagined. Once I make corrections and turn the test back in, I can bump my grade to an A-. I can live with that. Now I have a wonderful History of American Immigration test to look forward to. The week before spring break is just sooo much fun.

Major change... no pun intended.

COS 250 (Data Structures) will be the death of me. I'm sick of tests where I just flat out don't have enough time to answer the questions (specifically COS 250). Why am I slow?

Well on to the real reason for this post. I've been considering changing majors. I'm just not enjoying school very much right now. It has been quite awhile since I've enjoyed school, and I want that to change (especially when it costs $26k+. Perhaps I'm just in a melancholy, emo mood, but shouldn't school be fun? Shouldn't Taylor tailor my experience so that I enjoy my classes? (All these poor puns make me sick.) I went ahead and had a meeting with the communication department because I am considering switching to the New Media major with a Computer Science minor. Essentially, New Media is similar to Mass Communications with a digital twist. I would get to work with the Adobe Suite - Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. and digital video and audio. I think it could be fun. Perhaps more fun than I'm having right now. I don't know what to do. It seems like I kind of enjoyed COS 120, and COS 250 is not supposed to be a picnic. It is the Computer Science weed-out class. From here the topics narrow and could be more fun. Should I stick it out? I'd appreciate another point of view...

Peon me.

It finally happened. I could not deal with Dr. Muchiri any more, and I confronted her in class. About midway through class she started making generalizations about the class' performance on the essay she had graded recently. At this point, I had given up taking her crap - poor explanations and incorrect teaching were not going to drag my grades down. I explained to her how what she was asking for, didn't really fit with our writing piece. I had taken charge, and the rest of the class followed my lead. A guy two seats back said he was unclear as to the requirements regarding our external sources in the memoir. Dr. Muchiri continued to dig herself deeper by stating that it was our fault. One by one, other students joined in. Dr. Muchiri's voiced reached an uncomfortable tone and volume. Another student chimed in, "Why don't we solve this democratically? Then we can see if there was miscommunication on the issue." Reluctantly, Dr. Muchiri gave in. Five students raised their hands to acknowledge that they had done the assignment as Dr. Muchiri had intended. One student who had her hand raised, and was very attentive in class decided to clarify her position. It turns out she had only written the paper relating the sources by chance. We had won the war, but the spoils were worthless.

After class I decided to clear the air with Dr. Muchiri. If I left things as they were, it would not be good. I apologized for any offense she had taken to my argument. Dr. Muchiri was only able to retort, "I wasn't offended." Regardless, I spent another 15 minutes discussing my paper with her. She said she would reread the paper and consider all that we had discussed. We'll see. I'm not expecting much, I'm only a minion in her dictatorship.

Just don't bother e-mailing me.

I signed up for a Gmail account. If you advised me on my new e-mail address and just can't bear the username "nate886," freak out and don't e-mail me. (Namely 10-Speed. You frustrate me, and you are now officially the topic of a blog entry.) :-P I tried every formal combination of Nate Smith: nsmith, n.smith, nate.smith, natesmith, nathanielsmith, etc. None of them were available. Good old nate886 was! So I've got a new e-mail address. Eventually I'll notify everyone on my list that I'm changing. If you want a Gmail account, let me know. Someday I should get some invitations so that I can share.

Technology rant./Alias blasphemy.

Perhaps technology never made a direct statment that it will simplify my life, but why shouldn't it? Take for example e-mail. What can e-mail do to simplify life? If you've ever been on a college campus, you know that you get at least 5 e-mails a day. Most of them are from the pesky all-campus mailing list that you can never seem to unsubscribe from. Regardless, you can click on an e-mail and quickly scan it's contents. Pop quiz: Does the following e-mail interest you?*

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM CAMPUS SAFETY

In an effort to maximize university preparedness for the upcoming tornado season, the Department of Campus Safety is respectfully requesting that you become familiar with the attached Tornado Disaster Plan for Taylor University.
For those of you who have telephone-tree calling responsibilities in the plan, I suggest that you print two (2) copies of the document and keep one (1) copy in your home.
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Regardless of your answer, you were able to pick out the pertinent information quickly. (Or ignore it completely.) Heck, when e-mail was invented**, they came up with these nifty, main idea encompassing tags for e-mails called the "Subject" field. I can look through my e-mail in 10 minutes and sort out the important black-market Viagra ads from the unimportant "You are failing Expository Writing..." e-mail.*** Quick and simple, I move on with my day - you move on with ours. If we are destined**** to cross paths we do.

So what the heck does this have to do with anything? I had made an appointment with myself to watch Alias. My PA thought that that same timeslot would be a lovely time to schedule a floor meeting. Wrong. I kindly informed my PA that I had a prior engagement (which was completely true), and that I would be unable to attend. He quickly gave me the run down of what I was going to miss. He asked why I was going to miss, and I told him that Sydney (Jennifer Garner) and I had a weekly appointment. That didn't go over so well.

"Alright, you've made two incredibly pointless rants about nothing," you say. Congratulations Mr./Mrs./Miss Obvious. (Refer to the first post that lays out the ground rules.) I was informed that I would be fined if I didn't go to the meeting. The meeting which I had already heard the details of, which I could easily tune out when I went, which was after "business hours," which interfered with my plans, and which could have been sent in an e-mail. Honestly, where's my sick day or my "Get out of jail FREE" card?

So rant, rant, rant. Who cares? Actually anymore I don't. Bam Bam was feeling charitable he let me tape it and I have since seen it. Oh well, one more rant added to the site. (I'm all about volume.) With that, I'd like to leave us all with a quote from Michael Lewis' book NEXT: The Future Just Happened...

Change is inevitable, so you might as well pretend to love it lest you be taken for a doomed species.

* By citing the above e-mail I in no way meant to offend anyone or make light of tornadoes. Tornados are highly dangerous and everyone should read the complete e-mail. The PDF attached to the e-mail contained information that should be printed out by all Taylor students. If you expect to check your e-mail for instructions during the Tornado drill, you are endangering your life and the lives of others.
** Probably by Bill Clinton working side by side with the inventor of the internet, Al Gore.
*** [Sarcasm].
**** I actually have nothing to say here.

Roommate guilty of attempted murder...

My roommate Aaron was convicted of attempted murder. When we came back from the weekend, we found to two dead fish in the aquarium. Dewey the algae eater, and one of the goldfish were left half eaten in the bottom of the tank. Aaron seemed to think that Bam-Bam (the fish) was responsible. This put him in a villainously experimental mood. To date, Aaron has put the following in the tank to try and kill all the fish: 2 melatonin pills, 1 Clarinex, 1 caffeine pill, 1 painkiller (Vicodin strength), and some water balancer. To date, none of the fish have died. Congratulations Wal-Mart, you have engineered deadly mutant, chemophile goldfish. Now I know why the bag states that the fish should not be released into the wild.

Good weekend with a twist.

My roommate invited me home this weekend. I had a lot of work that I needed to at least get started, but getting off campus was irresistible. So I caved with a condition. I decided to drive separately because Aaron could not come home until sometime after 1:00 on Sunday. If I drove I could get back Saturday night and have some time to get work done. I could work on my "Linked-List" lab for COS250 with Blacksheep, and still have time to prepare for the week ahead.

I had a good time. On Friday night we watched Dragonheart and ate Pizza, Mac & Cheese, and chips with meaty cheese dip. Good stuff. We got up around 10 on Saturday to go paint-balling. It was my first time ever, so I was less than amazing. Again, it was fun. I even have a nice welt on my back. That night we decided to go see Constantine. My little review on the movie was that it was just alright and was rather inconsistent. I'm sure that you could draw out conclusions and parallels, but I'm not convinced. If you go see it, go to the first matinee for the discount rate and be sure to stay for the credits. I found out that there was another scene after the credits which puts an interesting twist on the movie. I wish I had seen it.

We got back from Constantine, and I was pretty set on going back to the dorm. Then I could sleep in and work on homework. 10-Speed convinced me that we should just stay the night and get breakfast at Aaron's house, then leave and get back to Taylor in time for lunch. I caved. To make a long story short, we got back just 20 minutes before Aaron did. We didn't leave very early, stopped for lunch, stopped at a Dick's Sporting Goods that was going out of business, and stopped for gas. We came across a gas station that was offering 10 cents off the price of gas with a car wash purchase. I didn't think it was a bad idea. I was saving $1 on gas and getting a much needed car wash. Everyone else had the same idea. We sat in line to enter the wash for about half-an-hour. On the positive side, I drove in a semi-aggressive manner (faster acceleration/highway speeds/full load) and got 34 mpg. Yay!

So now I'm back at Taylor (oh goodie) and am feeling just a little stressed since I am way behind schedule. So I'm going to go code my lab with Blacksheep. Labs always prove to be frustrating.

Procrastination = Bad

Ok, so maybe procrastinating on my paper about procrastination was a bad idea. I was wired last night and decided to pull a quasi-all-nighter. It was really odd - I was not tired at all. It was pretty fun, I wrote the paper in stages, and took lots of snack/writer's block breaks. Then all at once, sleep deprivation set in. I had the paper finished and decided that perhaps a 1-2 hour nap before class (at about 5:30 in the morning mind you), wouldn't be a bad idea. I set my alarm for 7:30 and went to bed.

"You chapel skipper!" I groggily awoke to the chastisement from Scooter (Brandon). "What the heck are you talking about?" I retorted as best I could. Fear flashed through my body. Why was the room so brightly lit? Where was my roommate? My alarm hasn't gone off yet, I thought. "What time is it?" I asked with a disturbingly puzzled look on my face. "Oh about a quarter after eleven," he replied. "Are you serious?" I probed even though I had lost all hope and the irony of the situation was glaringly obvious. "I guess, I'll go blog about it."

So that's how I'm beginning my day. I've missed two classes. Explaining it to the prof should be fun - talk about foot-in-mouth syndrome.

P.S. - I talked to my roommate and my alarm actually went off. I jumped out of my bunk, shut the alarm off, then climbed back into bed. The funny thing is that I have no memory of this. I hope I don't have any repressed murderous intentions, because I seem to be fairly efficient while I'm asleep. :-P

Procrastination, school, papers, tests, and a Macintrash

I'm procrastinating on my memoir about procrastination. Somehow, I don't think it's a good idea. Only the rough draft is due tomorrow so what the heck, why not? Anyways, brief update. I love my Expository Writing professor. [Thick, blatantly obvious sarcasm.] (I really hope she isn't an avid reader of my blog. I could be in trouble if she is.) She is proof that a PhD stands for "Piled High and Deeper." She is convinced that we need to cite sources for our memoirs. I will provide this opportunity for you to prove me wrong. How is that proper writing? A memoir stems from my experiences. Would you like me to cite the conversation I had with my friends as an interview? Just because I read someone else's memoir doesn't mean that I have to cite it as a source for my memoir. I didn't use any of their personal content as my own. This type of thinking would mean that I will have to cite sources when I write my will and do my taxes. Imagine that on my W4:

Works Cited:
Smith, Ernie. Personal interview. 14 April 2005.

United States. Internal Revenue Service. 14 April 2005 <http://www.irs.gov>.

What else? How 'bout that History of American Immigration test today? Oh my. That was oodles of fun. At first I was terrified about it. Who wouldn't when they saw the three page study guide?! I slowly worked through it for about three hours and thought I was in decent shape. Then I saw the six pages of the test. Uh-oh. It's too soon to speak about how I did, but lets just say I thought the essays were the easiest part. Oh well, it's history now, I can't change it. [Har har.]

Now my favorite topic. If you've ever met me, you know that "I made the switch." Yes, Nathaniel B. Smith is one of those pesky Macintosh owners. It turns out that I'm not immune from the insanity of owning a computer. I can't claim to deal with the joys of spyware or have ever experienced a virus on it, but Macs can be moody too it appears. For the past week or so my available hard drive space has been fluctuating. I'm not talking 5 MB or something easily accounted for, either. Three days ago I had 2.9 GB free. Two hours ago I had 2.1 free. Twenty minutes ago I had 1.58 GB. Lovely. That's my life.

I'll just tack this little advertisement on this post. Since I am a Blogger and not a Xangaer I can't join nifty blog rings (hate on me all you want, but I can host my own blog and edit the CSS stylesheets... yadda yadda yadda). However, Blogger updated their comments so you can now leave your name and website in the comments. Feel free to link to your Xanga in your comments.

How's this for secure?

At Taylor, the things that really irk me usually stem from administrative policies. You'll rarely hear me complain about a teacher (with the exception of Dr. Muchiri) or a student on campus. That's actually the reason I created this blog - for stress release. Funny though, this rant is about the government. Get this e-mail:

Notice:
As part of a federally legislated information security program, the Information Technology department will be requiring changes to network account passwords on Tuesday, March 1. Please note that there is no need to change your password before March 1. If you do, you will still be required to change it on that day.
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Please begin considering your new password based on the following rules with which it must comply:
* Passwords must be at least eight (8) characters long.
* Passwords must contain three (3) of the following four (4) items:
- Upper case letters (A-Z)
- Lower case letters (a-z)
- Numbers (0-9)
- Special characters (space, !, @, #, $, etc ... )

Ok, so perhaps this is a small thing to rant about, but when the heck did the federal government decide that it was a good idea for me to change my password?! Honestly, I don't know what we're paying them for and I usually don't ask questions, but how long did congress mull over this one? It gets better though. Taylor decided to make a password security checker. Check out a few of these password security levels:

• "abc123": What are you stupid?
  
• "password": Moderately Secure
  
• "Password": Strong
  
• ""secretWord": Uber strong.
  

The ironic thing about all of this is that it has actually created a less secure environment. It has been the discussion of everyone on campus. I've heard professors say exactly how they have changed their passwords. So while I'm in a sharing mood, I added a semi-colon to the end of my old password. If you have that password, you are more than welcome to use it. Heck, if you want to check my e-mail and frame me for terrorist activities, my computer is almost always on. Click on "Entourage" in the Dock, and you can e-mail to your heart's content. Rant over.