Posts tagged with "university"

Games Amid Exams

I final­ly got my Security in Computing exam out of the way. Basically, every line that I read in the text­book was worth­less. There were only four long answer ques­tions on the final, and each one was a prac­ti­cal, as opposed to the­o­ret­i­cal, ques­tion that we nev­er learned. I had to learn how to do all the math right in the exam. At least it was open book. For some rea­son I start­ed get­ting fucked up answers when try­ing to find the mod­u­lus with my cal­cu­la­tor. Calculating the mod­u­lus of any­thing about 10^100 results in inac­cu­ra­cy, I’m guess­ing. At first I thought it was my cal­cu­la­tor giv­ing me some odd val­ues that did­n’t cor­re­spond with my writ­ten ones. When I got home, I checked Pita’s cal­cu­la­tor, and got the same answer. Then I checked the built-in cal­cu­la­tor on my com­put­er, and it came to the same answer as what I did by hand. So now I have no idea if any of my val­ues are com­plete­ly fucked. Whether I pass or fail depends com­plete­ly on how lenient the giv­ing of part marks is. I’m slight­ly wor­ried, some­thing that does­n’t usu­al­ly hap­pen when I fin­ish with a course.

I trad­ed in two games, and used two EB gift cer­tifi­cates yes­ter­day, to pick up The Legend of Zelda for my GBA. It end­ed up cost­ing me $2.50.

I’m get­ting all psy­ched up for the LAN par­ty tomor­row. The atten­dance is sup­posed to be around 10 peo­ple, but Thom’s proces­sor fried yes­ter­day, so he might not be able to go.

Talking To Profs, Getting Drunk, A Cabin For Snowboarding

There’s always some­thing creepy about talk­ing to my pro­fes­sors. I feel like they have a face to put with my mark. As a num­ber, none of my fail­ures mean any­thing. But when I talk to one, I feel like I’m let­ting them down. I’m scared that they’ll know what my marks are, and that from then on they’ll rec­og­nize me as not going to class and fail­ing the mid-terms. Usually I can’t stand e‑mailing my profs. It has almost nev­er been a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence.

I actu­al­ly feel like I need to get drunk before going out this Friday. I’ve nev­er felt like that before. Apparently, it’s one of the signs of alco­hol abuse. I’ve only drank so that I could fall asleep a few times, which is anoth­er sign. It’s not a prob­lem though, so I’m not wor­ried.

Aaron showed me the cab­in that we’re rent­ing next year. It’s so damn sweet. The whole deal has been moved from read­ing week to some week-end in January, which should save us some mon­ey. Aaron’s going to let me bor­row his board, and hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to fit into Greg’s boots, so that all I’ll real­ly need to pay for is the lift tick­et, the cab­in, and the drinks, which should all be under $200.

Unwanted Hurt, And Failure

Sometimes peo­ple say things that just seem to hurt. One knows that they don’t mean it, yet it hurts any­way. For some rea­son, it’s even more painful, due to the igno­rance involved. But what can one do in such a sit­u­a­tion? Pretend as if noth­ing hap­pened? I sim­ply become anti­so­cial. That hap­pens a lot actu­al­ly. When some­one upsets me in any way, whether I become angry, sad, or for­lorn, I’ll close up. I’ll dis­tance myself, and I can’t help but be tac­i­turn.

No won­der.

I got my cryp­tog­ra­phy mid-term back yes­ter­day, and it turns out that I failed it. That means that I failed more than half my mid-terms. I’m start­ing to wor­ry about my finals. I was actu­al­ly con­sid­er­ing my absence at Dougie’s LAN par­ty, but Aaron (rather eas­i­ly) talked me into going.

Test Update, A Nietzsche Quote, And Racial Profiling

Why do I feel the need to write again so soon? Why can’t I just live one more day with­out hav­ing to tell my thoughts to some­thing, any­thing that will accept with­out judg­ment? Sometimes I wish that I could­n’t write for months.

I think I passed my DNA Computing and Quantum Computing test today. It turns out that I was miss­ing about 1/4 of the notes, so I real­ly had to do some last minute study­ing. The prof made it fair­ly easy though, which I was glad to see.

I stum­bled across some Taoist teach­ings today, and I was intrigued by what I read. I think it’s some­thing that I’ll have to research more, along with my Buddhist beliefs and Confucianism.

Women are quite able to make friends with a man; but to pre­serve such a friend­ship — that no doubt requires the assis­tance of a slight phys­i­cal antipa­thy.

—Nietzsche

When I first read this, I was­n’t too sure about the valid­i­ty of it, or per­haps even the valid­i­ty per­tain­ing to myself. In the last month, how­ev­er, it seems to be so true that any con­sid­er­a­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty to the con­trary would be ridicu­lous.

Today, some­one told me that ever since she first met me, she thought I was Korean. It was pret­ty sur­priz­ing, since this girl was Chinese her­self. It’s the first time I’d ever been mis­tak­en for Korean, although peo­ple often con­fuse my last name as being Vietnamese. Do we real­ly all look the same? Well, since even I failed the test, I sup­pose it’s true.

Conditioner, Moon Mix, Test, Music

I always get freaked out when on I put on con­di­tion­er. I hear things about it being car­cino­genic if you leave it in your hair for extend­ed peri­ods of time, or if you don’t wash it out cor­rect­ly. The bot­tle says to leave it in for one to three min­utes. And what if I leave it in there for longer? Will my scalp start to sting, or my hair start to fall out? It just leaves my hair so soft and man­age­able that I can’t stop using it.

Today was the first time I got to try out my moon mix, since it got dark so ear­ly, with every­thing I looked at being lit with arti­fi­cial light. It worked so well, and I’m pleased that I was able to pick out so many of the right songs on the first try, although a few rogue songs some­how man­aged to slip in there.

I have a test in DNA Computing and Quantum Computing tomor­row that I should be study­ing for, but I don’t under­stand a sin­gle thing since the last test. Being that I have no oth­er class­es tomor­row, I plan on study­ing for the whole day until my test, which is at 5:30 pm. I hope I can under­stand every­thing by then.

I’ve down­loaded a shite­load of Dir En Grey and King Crimson songs. It’s tak­ing me a while to get a feel for most of them, but so far I can tell that Dir En Grey isn’t quite my thing in terms of musi­cal tastes, although I’ve put two of their songs in my per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. King Crimson seems to be bet­ter; it’s hard for me to tell because their songs are all so diverse (I imag­ine so after a few mem­ber changes) that it’s hard for me to decide whether I like them as a band or not. I’ve also made sure to keep a few of their songs, such as Epitaph and I Talk to the Wind.