This past week has been something of a roller-coaster ride of uneventfulness. Concerns about my declining academic abilities proved to be well founded, when I went to office hours for algorithms, believing firmly that I had a good case for asking for a regrade, and was promptly shot down by the TA. I don’t think it’s so much that I’m losing brain cells as that I’m not able to focus on academics as easily as I used to. I think I can safely call this an “academic crisis”, and I’m going to have to get my act together, if I want my time at G. T. to have been worthwhile. I attended a workshop at the counseling center recently that was about controlling and modifying deleterious thoughts, and it may actually have turned out to be worthwhile. This might seem obvious to most people, but I had never really looked upon procrastination as being caused by the fear that there’s no way you’ll be able to get something done. This insight might finally get me to tackle real-world problems like the Distributed Computing invasion of America and starving students of Software Engineering.
Just got back from a Waffle Party organized by my building’s rather amazing RA. I had two Mickey Mouse waffles and some ice cream, feeling rather like Jesus at the Last Supper. Who’s Judas, I wonder? Probably Casper. That would explain why he wasn’t there. Anyway, Nicky was there. Here’s wishing her a speedy recovery. One can’t be sick and awesome at the same time, and Aizen knows awesomeness is the way to go. Socializing has never been more awkward than at grad school. I seem to have developed mental blocks with respect to socializing, because at some level I feel like it’s not something that grad students are expected to do. It’s too much an undergraduate thing, and I can’t help thinking that to do anything other than coursework would be to fail in some respect as a grad student. Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe I’m right. It’s a good thing that I won’t be here long enough to find out. At any rate, the Waffle Party was a decent way to be passably social without any of the awkwardness concomitant to being a grad student. We played a well-known variation of chess called “Zip, Zap, Zop” that differed from chess in that the two have nothing in common. The simplest way for me to explain this game, as a CS major, is that people stand in a circle, and person[i] says words[i++ % 3], where words = {“zip”, “zap”, “zop”}, and points at a person[j], who has to carry on the noble tradition. If you say the wrong word or falter, you’re out. It’s a semi-decent party game that I will be more than happy to translate into plain English for you, if anyone is interested. At the end of this very noble, very dignified variation of chess it was just I and another person, who ended up winning. His prize was a waffle, which I did not envy him, because I was full by that point.
I finished watching Damages last night. Season 5 was… interesting, to say the least. Ellen and Patty Hewes went at it head to head, and Ellen ended up coming out ahead. I love that Ellen had quit the law by the end, because that meant that she had won at life, while Patty Hewes, for all her success as a lawyer, was left absolutely alone and bitter. In that sense I would describe Damages as being “mature”, insofar as a TV show can be called that, because they don’t resort to cheap plot devices or the shameless servicing of fans. I mentioned in an earlier entry that Patty Hewes, for all her faults and twistedness, was ultimately a character that you couldn’t help rooting for. Well, that changed in Season 5, when the viewer couldn’t help rooting against her. That’s either a testament to how good the writing is or a testament to how fickle a viewer I am. Or both. Ellen Parsons, on the other hand - my oh my - is such a great character. I suspected that she might be a Mary Sue in the first season, but she has turned out to be quite otherwise. She’s a very canny and a very able lawyer with a definite moral compass, but she’s nevertheless not an annoying goody-two-shoes who always does things by the book. All in all, I would say Damages is very worth watching. Oh, and, I should have said “spoiler alert”.
On a completely unrelated note, I got a review on FFn this morning from a personage with the quaint name of seamens1.
Just got back from a Waffle Party organized by my building’s rather amazing RA. I had two Mickey Mouse waffles and some ice cream, feeling rather like Jesus at the Last Supper. Who’s Judas, I wonder? Probably Casper. That would explain why he wasn’t there. Anyway, Nicky was there. Here’s wishing her a speedy recovery. One can’t be sick and awesome at the same time, and Aizen knows awesomeness is the way to go. Socializing has never been more awkward than at grad school. I seem to have developed mental blocks with respect to socializing, because at some level I feel like it’s not something that grad students are expected to do. It’s too much an undergraduate thing, and I can’t help thinking that to do anything other than coursework would be to fail in some respect as a grad student. Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe I’m right. It’s a good thing that I won’t be here long enough to find out. At any rate, the Waffle Party was a decent way to be passably social without any of the awkwardness concomitant to being a grad student. We played a well-known variation of chess called “Zip, Zap, Zop” that differed from chess in that the two have nothing in common. The simplest way for me to explain this game, as a CS major, is that people stand in a circle, and person[i] says words[i++ % 3], where words = {“zip”, “zap”, “zop”}, and points at a person[j], who has to carry on the noble tradition. If you say the wrong word or falter, you’re out. It’s a semi-decent party game that I will be more than happy to translate into plain English for you, if anyone is interested. At the end of this very noble, very dignified variation of chess it was just I and another person, who ended up winning. His prize was a waffle, which I did not envy him, because I was full by that point.
I finished watching Damages last night. Season 5 was… interesting, to say the least. Ellen and Patty Hewes went at it head to head, and Ellen ended up coming out ahead. I love that Ellen had quit the law by the end, because that meant that she had won at life, while Patty Hewes, for all her success as a lawyer, was left absolutely alone and bitter. In that sense I would describe Damages as being “mature”, insofar as a TV show can be called that, because they don’t resort to cheap plot devices or the shameless servicing of fans. I mentioned in an earlier entry that Patty Hewes, for all her faults and twistedness, was ultimately a character that you couldn’t help rooting for. Well, that changed in Season 5, when the viewer couldn’t help rooting against her. That’s either a testament to how good the writing is or a testament to how fickle a viewer I am. Or both. Ellen Parsons, on the other hand - my oh my - is such a great character. I suspected that she might be a Mary Sue in the first season, but she has turned out to be quite otherwise. She’s a very canny and a very able lawyer with a definite moral compass, but she’s nevertheless not an annoying goody-two-shoes who always does things by the book. All in all, I would say Damages is very worth watching. Oh, and, I should have said “spoiler alert”.
On a completely unrelated note, I got a review on FFn this morning from a personage with the quaint name of seamens1.
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