Yearly Archives: 2003

Confusion

Confusion is some­thing that has always struck me in the worst cir­cum­stances. Yet it’s some­thing that’s very dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand at the time. I am usu­al­ly very unaware of my con­fu­sion. I find that it usu­al­ly takes about six months for me to come full cir­cle, and come to a full com­pre­hen­sion of what has hap­pened. It’s as if I can’t see what’s going on in the present, but I have an idea of what will hap­pen in the future, and a knowl­edge of the past, like the damned in the Divine Comedy.

I under­stand that it takes time to be out of a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion and to be able to free one­self of the bonds or con­se­quences of deci­sions made dur­ing that time. Sometimes it just feels like the only thing that mat­ters is for the con­fu­sion to go away, so that one does­n’t make an incor­rect choice or deci­sion.

Confusion was an aide to me once in a rela­tion­ship. It caused me to see things clear­er, and I end­ed up in a bet­ter place because of it, although I did­n’t real­ize it at the time.

I just wish I felt like that was true.

Tired Thoughts, Game Of Life, Etc.

I’m fuck­ing exhaust­ed. I haven’t been this tired since my trip to Tremblant, pos­si­bly. I feel drugged. I almost had a 10 hour day, and I slept hor­ri­bly last night. I decid­ed to attempt an entry at five in the morn­ing, but I did­n’t get very far. I knew that if I did­n’t write tonight, I would­n’t sleep very well again.

I find so much rea­son to write nowa­days. I seem to be get­ting affect­ed by so much. All my emo­tion is com­ing back to me like the open­ing of a vac­u­um.

Working on my graph­ics assign­ment has made me real­ize how large the project is. I have most of the cam­era move­ments fig­ured out, so that I can enter co-ordi­nates into an array and the cam­era will move between them. I can get the oth­er motions done, like cam­era angle and cen­ter of focus rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. I just need to fig­ure out a way to ani­mate four arm objects at once, keep­ing track of all the motions. I’ll have about two days to work on it, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it done.

An inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal idea I’ve learned more about is the Game of Life. I’ve nev­er real­ly found math phe­nom­e­na fas­ci­nat­ing, but the Game of Life offers an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­bilites in cre­at­ing some­thing amaz­ing. With a sim­ple drag of the mouse, one can see if a group of cells will be able to sur­vive, reach sta­sis, or die off, based on Conway’s rules. I could spend hours try­ing out new pat­terns, watch­ing the cells dance in tiny flour­ish­es of log­ic.

I got all three of my mid-terms back, and I was able to pass two out of three. However, the two I man­aged to pass are still with­in five marks of fail­ing. I find that this term is the ulti­mate test of my abil­i­ty to pull things off. It’s the term with the most dire con­se­quences if I fail, and the term that requires the most of my gal­va­niz­ing strength.

I’ve asked Pat to attend my grad­u­a­tion. He’s the per­son who’s helped me out the most in the last four years, no mat­ter what my prob­lem was. Out of all the peo­ple I know, I think that he would be the proud­est.

Tonight was anoth­er scary movie night. Nick, Aaron, and Pita came over. This time it was The Shining. I almost watched it one time, but I was in the com­pa­ny of peo­ple who were mock­ing oth­er peo­ple, so I opt­ed to fall asleep instead. Although I did­n’t walk away from this movie with as much fear as Ringu, it was able to actu­al­ly send chills up my spine and down my arms. I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced any sort of chills relat­ing to hor­ror before, pos­si­bly because I usu­al­ly don’t like the genre. I was…amazed at what Kubrick did. The angles and score seemed to be the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture. My favorite scene is when the wife is exhaust­ed­ly try­ing to open the freez­er door, jam­ming the han­dle over and over, while the cam­era is set near the door, and the audi­ence can see the sweat in her hair, the fatigue in her face, the fran­tic­ness of the sit­u­a­tion.

Inferno: Canto III, Line 9

I always won­der who reads this. I try to nev­er write for any­one else; after all, the things I write about are things that both­er me, that I need to get down. It puz­zles me some­times when I read peo­ple’s jour­nals, and they start to talk to their friends about some­thing, or to some phan­tom audi­ence. I can under­stand why one would do that though, since the point of some are to inform friends of how one is doing. More often than not, how­ev­er, it seems to be an exer­cise in nar­cis­sism.

I won­der what some­one would think of me, if they were read­ing this with­out ever meet­ing me. Would they be able to see all sides of me? Would they be able to under­stand who I real­ly am? Most of the time, what I write is out of neces­si­ty, and ends up being some sort of com­plaint, rant, or con­fu­sion.

I think most peo­ple would believe that I’ve lost hope. It’s quite the con­trary real­ly. Ever since the sum­mer, I’ve gained hope to a degree. Of course, I’ve often stat­ed that hope is a bad thing, and I still feel that way to a degree.

What I’ve come to real­ize is that I should pos­si­bly try to hope for the future, but not get my hopes up. The dif­fer­ence between the two is in length of time. Getting one’s hopes up has a more short-term con­no­ta­tion for more tange­able ideas, where­as hop­ing for the future is thought of as hop­ing for some­thing that is cur­rent­ly unknown. If the future is ever to become the present, I’ll try to keep myself more ground­ed.

And if the present were to come to fruition?

Maybe it would be a good thing.

Thoughts After A Bad Phonecall

Leave it to a sin­gle phone call to fill me with wor­ry. Now I’m anx­ious about my marks, my mid-terms, my projects, my grad­u­a­tion, my life. Pat gave me a pep-talk yes­ter­day, and it helped. Graduation seems uncom­fort­ably close. I’m dying to know how the sto­ry ends.

Patrick was nice enough to come up to me and start a con­ver­sa­tion the oth­er day. I asked him how his work was going, and he told that he’s real­ly enjoy­ing it. He let me know that the Montage project in becom­ing real­ly big, and they might be look­ing for more work­ers, and that if I send Chau my resumé and let him know that I can work full-time dur­ing the sum­mer, I might be able to get a job in devel­op­ment, instead of infor­mat­ics.

God, my sen­tences are becom­ing more and more struc­tured like some­thing Henry James would have writ­ten, although I’m sure I’m not able to be as descrip­tive, or as bril­liant, since he’s a well renowned author infa­mous for being gar­ru­lous, where­as I’m sim­ply a com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent, only able to write when nec­es­sary.

There seem to be a few Five Alive flavours on the mar­ket, such as “Tropical”, “Citrus”, or “Peach Passion”, but none taste as good as “Berry”. Aaron, Trolley, and I all agree that it tastes like Skittles. The juice from con­cen­trate has a slight­ly vary­ing taste from the one in the bot­tle; I find the lat­ter to be a lit­tle more tart and a lit­tle sweet­er.

I’m get­ting a new Intellimouse Explorer sent to me via snail mail, thanks to Trolley. I called up Microsoft, told them that my mouse but­ton was dou­ble-click­ing when it should have sin­gle-clicked (as instruct­ed by Trolley), and they told me that they would send a new one, free of charge. I don’t even need to send my cur­rent one back. I got my cur­rent one four years ago, and I remem­ber spend­ing $100 on it. The pads of it have been worn out uneven­ly, caus­ing a notice­able wob­ble. The lat­est design of the Intellimouse Explorer has a low­er, sleek­er pro­file, and more eas­i­ly acces­si­ble thumb but­tons. Yay.

After talk­ing with my geol­o­gy pro­fes­sor I feel dumb as fuck. I almost failed my mid-term; my mark was the sec­ond low­est in the class, even with a gen­er­ous grade curve. I think I did con­sid­er­ably well, con­sid­er­ing the fact that I had three mid-terms that day, and the fact that I find my mind to be dead when I have my Tuesday lec­tures after a 7:30am lab. Apparently, I have very lit­tle com­mon sense. Although I know that zinc is the main ingre­di­ent is sun­screen, or that soft-drinks con­tain car­bon, I don’t know that nitro­gen is an impor­tant ele­ment in fer­til­iz­er or that graphite is a pop­u­lar indus­tri­al lubri­cant. The list of what I don’t know goes on and on. I had no fuck­ing clue that bak­ing soda is sodi­um bicar­bon­ate. To my prof, all of this is gen­er­al knowl­edge, so it’s assumed when deal­ing with the course. I was nev­er good at chem­istry, and my pro­gramme of stud­ies isn’t even close to relat­ed. I also took the pre­req­ui­site at the begin­ning of uni­ver­si­ty, which is four years ago. Fuck.