Brrrr....

It suddenly turned cold today, and I can't say I'm happy about it. Nor am I happy about the fact tomorrow is March 1st. For some reason, I thought that March 1st was Thursday. This has unfortunate implications for my Q Phys. problem set.

oops. I'd better do something about that...

I'm supressing the urge to squeal over that little owl.  

My proposed mascot 

A petition

Dear school administrators.

I would like to petition to change the university mascot from a Bear to a Bunny. I feel that the bunny would be a far more appropriate and popular mascot than the current bear. I have outlined the following points in support of the change:

1. The bear is a ubiquitous mascot. Many, many universities use the bear as a mascot and many of them have a far stronger claim than ours.
2. The Bunny statue has been a popular phenomena on campus for many years. It is traditional for student groups to dress up the bunny to advertise events. The bunny statue even had to undergo recent repairs because all the people climbing on it destablized the platform. When the bunny was out of commission, the engineering school was forced to create a new, full sized bunny out of paper mache to temporarily replace the missing statue.
3. Bunnies, unlike bears, are native to the midwest and to campus. One only has to walk outside at night to notice the many bunny rabbits that live on campus. Bears, on the other hand, are never spotted on campus.
4. The charm. Just think of it; our football team could be the "Fighting Bunny Rabbits." Examine our football team, I'm sure you'll agree it's an appropriate mascot.

I would like to suggest a campus-wide survey and forem on this matter. I'm sure that given a choice, the students will firmly support my proposal.

Obligatory Cat Post

Sometimes, I think the stress is getting to my cat's mind. What stress, I don't know, but there's got to be some reason for his flight under the comforter. He was acting crazy all afternoon and now this. What a weirdo.

Pictures!

ha! I figured out the picture posting thing. In retrospect, it really wasn't that hard. I feel kind of stupid for not figuring it out sooner, but eh. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Instead of Capture the Flag, I ended up hanging out in the Media and Machines lab with Jim and Charlie, working on puzzles until almost 1am. It was pretty fun and it got my mind off the group business and upcoming decisions.

I did meet with the group member that sent me the nasty e-mail. I think we got stuff worked out. I think she knows that she didn't put enough time in and she wasn't as nasty in person. I still don't think she likes me, but we can work together in the future. I do have a number of theories as to why she doesn't like me though.

I put a counter on my old Livejournal and it was kinda scary. I didn't realize that many people came by. I suspect I am misinterpreting the results, or it counts in some strange, CS-specific way. At least, I hope it does.

hmmm... 

oh, the drama.

This has been a very long week.

At least things are progressing on my medical school application front. I applied to eighteen schools. So far, I have closure from nine of these schools. I am waitlisted at two schools, post-interview decisions are pending from three more and I have yet to hear from four schools. I started this process in early June.

I just had a fight with my group over their lackluster contribution to the group lab. They apparently contend I am too much of a perfectionist, which while true, does not excuse shoddy work on their part. They also contend many other things, but I'm not going to go into that here. I'm a little upset, but I'm going to meet with one of them in a half hour, so that should help.

I still can't figure out the latest Golden Mouse clue, but all the group lab drama was pretty distracting. Hopefully Capture the Flag will take my mind of the mess.

Long run

So, I did my 18 mile run today. I decided the best way to do this was to drive to Forest Park, and then just run around the park three times. It went pretty well, my splits were:

1. 49:00 [8:15/mile]
   
2. 1:41:00 (52:00) [8:40/mile]
   
3. 2:37:00 (56:00) [9:20/mile]
   

I'm still a little fuzzy on exactly how long Forest Park is. I think it's a 10k, but it might just be a six mile loop. I definately got progressively slower as I went along, but I kept a pretty decent pace the whole way. It was also snowing pretty heavily the last loop, but it didn't really slow me down much. I just got tired.

Anyway, add eight more miles to that run and I'll have a marathon distance. Next weekend I get a break and only have to run 12 miles. Then I build up to 20 miles and taper for the marathon. I'm pretty excited, although I'm gonna have to find someone to come with me to the event. Uncle Charles knows people who have marathoned before and he's says it's a safety issue. Don't run and drive, or something like that.

Now to curl up in my chair with the cat and try not to whimper from the pain.

Dear Student,

To the annoying biology student that showed up at my review session,

I am very sorry you are in my class. I am sorry the professor expects you to memorize things, gives you interesting pieces of information that are not on the test and additional articles for your enlightenment. I am sorry no one can summerize what you need to know into one convenient paragraph. I know that the college of Arts and Sciences has clusters and that you are expected to fulfill these requirements. You don't really want to be in my class, but they didn't give you a choice. Poor thing. Next time, we'll try harder to dumb things down, or make sure the class choices are personalized, just for you.

Repentantly yours,
The TA.


That girl really, really pissed me off. As an engineer, I've spent four years taking difficult required classes, and I rarely got to choose between "clusters". This class is really not that bad, no homework, no quizzes, no required reading, no required attendance. Just three multiple choice/essay question exams and a short paper. I went out of my way to hold an additional help session, and this is the crap I get? An attitude because she doesn't like the professor's teaching style?

I won't be holding multiple help sessions in the future. Especially since the girl who asked for it didn't even bother to come. Crap like that just pisses me off.

Commencement 2005

I got my long-awaited (by my parents, anyway) commencement packet today. It had a lot of stuff in there, the most important pieces of information being:

1)Diplomas are distributed after the ceremony and individual names are NOT read.

I was dreading commencement because I figured there was a good chance everyone's name would be read. With over a thousand people in my class, it was a horrifying prospect. Plus, the graduate students (medical school, law, business, PhDs, etc.) probably add another thousand people onto the total. The ceremony is only scheduled for about three hours though, so I don't think they're going to read names. I mean, they have to fit in songs and speakers in that time, which doesn't leave time for names. Right?

2)The Senior week schedule.

Senior week actually looks fairly neat. It looks very laid back and fun. Scheduled events include:

Cardinals Game (I'll skip this)
Senior Hoedown - games, line-dancing and free food.
Float trip - Rafting on the Meramec river
Senior Paintball - They rented out the park, apparently. I've never played...
Senior Night Out - Apparently, Wash U is big on renting entire facilities. Yay for clubbing.
Forest Park Picnic - Who doesn't like a picnic?
Senior Gala - City Museum!! In the fancy part, I bet. Door prizes!

Also, I made the honors list. Cum Laude, the lowest ranking, I know. But I wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not, so it's a nice bonus. Last semester really didn't help my GPA.

Anyway, I'd better stop procrastinating and work on this lab report.

Countdown: Approximately 20 days.

The weekend so far

So, it was pretty busy weekend. I took off from work on Friday and went down to visit my grandmother in Illinois. I figure, I'm not going to be around the Midwest much longer, so I should take advantage of these opportunities. That took up most of the day, and I used the evening to get some work done so I'd be free Saturday evening for the party.

It's funny. I thought I'd have a ton of free time this semester. To some extent, I do. But, I manage to keep busy. Little things keep on coming up and I don't really feel like I've fallen into my rut yet. I'm more or less pleased with the situation - having some variation in my daily schedule is welcome. After some debate, I figured out what to do with my exam review session and just decided to hold two to accommodate the maximum number of people. I did learn that if I ever feel the need for more e-mail asking my class of anxious premeds about ways to manage the course is a pretty easy way to get some. I don't think I've ever had so much e-mail arrive so quickly.

Anyway, I still need to go over the Endo review material so I don't look unprepared and finish off the Q Phys stuff, so I'd better stop procrastinating.

The Fat Mouse (ob/ob) vs a normal mouse

I want it!

Fat Mouse. Awwww...poor baby. I want one. I bet you could set him down on your desk and he'd just sit there. The fact his paws just barely touch the floor is a hint. Awesome paper weight though.

oh, the pain

So, I'm training for the St. Louis Marathon and wow, it hurts after a while. I did sixteen miles today, more or less. I've been trying to figure out exactly how long the Forest Park perimeter loop is, now that it's been remodeled. I think it's 6.5 miles, although the numbers 7.5 and 5.7 also came up. After reading all the literature, I suspect the 7.5 number includes the internal trails and the 5.7 is just for the new dual path, which doesn't go all the way around the perimeter. I tried out the dual path today - apparently, the traffic on the bike path was getting so bad, the city decided to install a second 'walkers/runners' only path - but I really didn't like it. It reminded me of running on the cinder track I had in high school and I see no reason to run on it when there's a perfectly nice, paved track running parallel to it. Maybe if the bike path was busy, but that wasn't the case today.

Anyway, back to the pain. Oh, my legs hurt at the end. After a while, the pounding just aches. I think I'm going to be able to do this - my first loop around Forest park clocked at about 50 minutes, the second at 52 minutes. Running the last two miles home was the worst part, really.

I do have iPod envy though. I think it's an overpriced toy, but it looks very lightweight and easy to run with. I bet you could just shove one of those suckers into your pocket and run with it. Plus, I could stuff a lot of cds on there without worrying about skipping. It's still not worth the price tag, but I am a little wistful. Ah well, maybe in 20 years when I've paid off all the upcoming loans and actually have a real job.

NOTE: I fixed the link in the last post. Apparently blogger inserts it's own set of "http://" into a link and it is unnecessary to do that bit yourself. Oops.

Literary Inspiration

I've been visiting the BBQ Pit at the Straight Dope for a few months. Yesterday evening I came across this thread. Now, the BBQ Pit is a place for people to rant and rave about stuff and in this case, a guy was ranting about his creepy neighbor who destroyed some of his stuff. This neighbor happened to be a fundie Christian who took objection to the poster's H.P. Lovecraft bumper stickers and destroyed them. A petty and stupid act, which partially explains why some people, myself included, look at fundie Christians with such disdain. Unfortunately, it seems like much of the Christians in this country are starting to lean more fundamentalist, but that's a depressing decussion for another time.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I decided to check out H.P. Lovecraft. After a thrilling adventure in the library which required the intervention of "Carl*" I managed to located a couple of books of short stories. I'm not sure if I'll like this stuff, but I try to keep my reading balanced and I haven't read much early nineteenth century horror. If I don't like it, well, no loss.

*Why is it that in Olin library PS3523 does not follow PS352_? My friend helpfully pointed out that one section (American plays and poetry) had four digits and the other (early American literature) three. Of course, since each section had four digits, I was left wondering what the hell was going on. But Carl straightened it all out, leaving me feeling confused and vaguely stupid. But, as we all know, this is a fairly common occurance and not of any particular significance.

American Innovations

So, I just read this conservative web-journal. It was mostly collegiate male postering and intentional obnoxiousness, but it got me thinking. What does America contribute to the world?

I started talking to a friend about it and we compiled the following list:

(1)Entertainment
(2)Scientific Research
(3)Bureaucracy

I wanted to keep it strictly positive. We came up with a bunch of negative stuff, but they all had a liberal slant to them, so I cut them off the list. But, that's really all I could come up with. I'm not thinking about imports or exports, like corn or steel or anything, but less tangible "innovations" type things. Okay, so bureaucracy is pretty negative, but I couldn't help myself. Take a look at the tax code some time, you'll know what I mean.

I was thinking about other countries too, but it was mostly sterotypes.

Any suggestions? I never actually get suggestions when I ask for them, but naively, I keep on asking.

The very first post

Well. This is new.

Anyway, I've recently decided to switch to Blogger from Livejournal. I've had my LJ account for nearly four years now, so the changeover is a bit daunting. Jim says writing a parser to deal with my old XML entries won't be hard. I, of course, have no idea how to begin doing this, but okay. He's the CS person.

I'm currently an undergraduate preparing to graduate with a BS in engineering. Next year, I will be headed to medical school, at an insitution to be determined after the financial aid packages are distributed.

Going to medical school represents a fairly significant change in my life, and is part of the motivation behind creating a new journal. The other part is the "ooh, shiny" factor, because, well, blogger is a pretty neat interface compared to LJ. But, the med school thing is a big factor too. I feel like my life will be divided into the "before medical school" and "professional career" bits pretty soon, so I'm dividing my journaling up too. And, hey! tradition. I created my LJ in the last few months before I started my undergraduate education, so now I'm creating a blog in the last few months before my graduate education.

And now, I need to stop procrastinating and get some studying done.