I completely forgot to mention that I have a google internship this summer. I'll post some advice on the technical phone interview later; I remember reading tons of blogs in preparation for mine.

I'm just going to skip right on past the part where I apologize for not posting for three months.

Let's see, the quarter's over. It's been an eventful one. I was taking math 5a, physics 3, physics 3 lab, cs40 and music 17. CS40 was probably my hardest class: Discrete mathematics- that is, the study of mathematics on the integers. We covered boolean logic, modular arithmetic, countability, infinite countability, proofs by contradiction, contraposition and induction, advanced counting techniques such as permutations and combinations, linear nonhomogeneous recurrence relations, and more. This anecdote should give you somewhat of an idea of what the class was like:

---

Two of my friends, Sean and Mason, worked with me in cs40. We were working on a particular problem. I won't go into what the particulars of this problem were, (I already feel like I'm pushing my luck with people just skipping over this entry by listing the topics covered in cs40,) but the answer I determined was the function "x (mod 3)," which is a function that means, essentially, "divide x by 3 and take the remainder." Well, in the second part of the problem, we were supposed to find an infinite number of infinite subsets, and as I considered how I could extrapolate my solution to this, I asked Sean: "What's infinity (mod 3)?"

Sean stared at me, pushed both of his hands into his hair, and asked: "You're trying to divide infinity by 3 and take the remainder?"

---

Yeah, that was pretty much cs40. Anyway, I just got word that I pulled an A- in that class, so I'm happy about that. The math 5a professor gave an absolutely evil final, so I don't know how that's going to turn out, even though I had a really high grade going into the test. The physics test was crap, as you might expect. Don't really have much more to say on this subject.

On a more cheerful note, I've been spending the entire break playing Dragon Age: Origins which is one of the most awesome PC games I've ever played, competing only with Portal, which can't really find an equal in my eyes. It brings me back to the days of middle school where I was pretty much a walking, talking Encyclopedia of Arda, about 3 rewatches of Lord of the Rings away from introducing myself as: "Suilad! Jessica i eneth nin." As in all games based on the D&D system, I chose rogue as my class, and decided what the hell, there's no way the group will ever play with elves in D&D, I might as well indulge my guilty pleasure side and be an elf. Well, to my delight, elves are not portrayed exactly as they are in other fantasy settings, (most notably Lord of the Rings,) but rather as poor servants of the humans, and my character gets racist comments left and right. I know you might think it's strange to be excited about being on the receiving end of racist comments, but it's just one of those things where I really start to think that the choices I make in the game matter, and that the game could take a different direction if I choose wrong at any particular juncture.

The controls are just awesome, too. I don't know why any other games of this genre, (that I've played,) haven't had the functionality to switch between top-down tactical view, (useful for combat,) and Legend of Zelda-style 3rd person. The graphics are totally beautiful, although combat is brutal, so if you have a weak stomach I wouldn't suggest watching it in 3rd person.

( Here are some screenshots )

It's times like this I wish I had a superpowerful gaming computer, but mine is running it fairly well, anyway.

Posting this entry has made me realize I should be playing Dragon Age right now. See you guys later.

When making my daily schedules for class days, I always seem to allocate myself an hour to 'wake up.' I never need this time. I woke up at 8, went into the bathroom, stood around awkwardly with two other girls trying to figure out how to negotiate ourselves into the showers with minimum skin showing, and I'm now back in my room at 8:20, 40 minutes earlier than I somehow thought I would need. Maybe 8 is a bit early to get up for an 11 AM class. Still, nothing wrong with jumping the gun on the first day of class, right?

I've had a glorious 3 days at school with no class, a 'welcome week' of sorts, which I've spent with Ed, Steven, Aiko, Justin, Mason, Nick, Andrey, David (one of Ed's and Steven's suitemates,) and some dude named Philip, who I met at a 'dress to impress' party in our hall. Apparently, though, Philip was the only one who read the sign because he was the only one there dressed in anything out of the ordinary, and he just looked like a Mormon. I made fun of him for this for the rest of the night. Somehow, friendships are more comfortable when you each have something to make fun of the other for. (Is there a non-awkward way to end that sentence?)

Anyway, there have been lots of Brawl, laughing until our sides hurt, tempura, soda and other shenanigans. Yesterday, Ed, Steven and I decided that we were going to spend the day playing Pokemon. I cracked open Pokemon Platinum again where my team is apparently Pikachu, Arcanine, Vaporeon and Torterra. I also used Ed's game to breed Eevees until I got one with a good SpAtk nature. (I think modest, mild, quiet and rash are the four natures for that.) This took an incredibly long time, and by the time one finally showed up I had filled one of Ed's PC boxes with Eevees. I don't really understand how this game is still fun, but it is.

Okay, that's all the time I'm going to waste here. Off to breakfast! Hopefully I'll update more frequently now, but now that I've said that, you probably can't expect another entry until late December.

Cheers!

It's my last week of work, so of course, it's going slower than wind erosion. (I need a new metaphor for 'slow' that isn't a nerdy video game reference, (so sit down Sho Minamimoto fans.) Wow, I just wrote a parenthetical statement inside a parenthetical statement. Is that even allowed? Heh. Nested statements. Heh.) I just presented my project for the last time, and had it deemed 'Satisfactory' by my inimitable German supervisor, Michael. That means the only thing left to do is--!

Oh yeah. Document the entire project. That will take the rest of the week. For everyone who's not a programmer, (there are probably like 2 reading this, if you count me,) that means commenting every loop, every conditional statement, every function so that people unfamiliar with the program will know what it does in case they need to effectively debug it. But then, after that- I'm free for 2 weeks. In celebration, I'm making an attempt to honor every social obligation this week. It's been difficult, folks. Like dragging a mole into the sunlight. But I'm sure it will pay off in the end when I need a financial bailout. Or, alternately, not.

I'm going to lunch in about half an hour with my friend and cubicle mate Karl Kappler, who made me feel like a real programmer yesterday, when I helped him with a Python road block he encountered SSHing into a campus computer when he couldn't import a module in a subdirectory because he didn't have administrator privileges on the a programming problem he was having.

This really needs to stop. I am honestly so far gone. I need therapy, or to switch my major to political science. Also, what do you guys think of this?

This was the least well organized post I've made in probably the history of this journal.

And now for a brief interlude by Faye Whitaker of Questionable Content fame:



Thanks Faye. Yes, it was payday today, huzzah huzzah ecstatic etc, except my bank won't let me transfer any more money from my savings account to my checking account this month, which means I got charged a 15 dollar "insufficient funds" fee for an 8 dollar BART ticket, even though the money was right there in my savings account and they have always in the past authorized free overdraft transfers from one account to another. Thanks for nothing, SLFCU. I sent in a complaint but I am not particularly hopeful.

The Good:
- I realized that my computer calendar caused me to miscalculate the number of weeks remaining until I'm done with work here at the lab. I have 5 more weeks, then 2 weeks of vacation and packing, and then it's back to school with me, where there will be cavorting, vidya games, celebrating, and probably lots of calculus and late night labs. I'd better end this point before I end up in "the bad."
- Tomorrow: D&D at Aaron's "swinging bachelor pad" in San Jose. I understand that I'm to play a rebel who is not in fact the rebel leader. Oh well, I still get to be a 6th level rogue. I should do all the easy stuff today, like figuring out name and history before actually making my character sheet with Aaron tomorrow. It's been a while since I played serious D&D with the Suspects, so I'm pretty excited.
- Sunday: Steven drops by for a few hours before heading back to his campsite in Petaluma. Finally, I can get repeatedly destroyed at Brawl again.
- I watched Star Wars (A New Hope) last night, an extremely satisfying activity very similar to having pure sci-fi goodness pumped into my veins through an IV. It's the only way I can fuel my addiction anymore.
- I actually got some sleep last night and am now drinking coffee.

The Bad:
- I just finished my coffee.
- The time is slowly encroaching when I'll have to buy textbooks for next quarter. It's so much fun to watch newly-earned money drain out of your bank account.
- My driving test is on August 12th and I have a rather intuitive feeling that I'm going to fail it, despite the fact that I've had my permit for over a year. Um, any advice you guys can give me?
- They canceled Firefly.

The Ugly:
- You are all beautiful.
- I've never even watched the movie I'm referencing right now.

I guess that's all the time I can afford to waste. Back to grinding my face against my keyboard for the next 6 hours.

Fellow Anchorites, I was perusing my hard drive today when I came across these screenshots. You may well remember them.

( How about a constitutional anarchy? )

I am so glad I saved these. Anyway, enjoy.

So, I know I've already sold at least one of these computers, but I feel that I owe my very uninterested readership an evaluation of the Asus Eee PC that I bought last winter. You know how some people LJ-cut their entries about their sex lives so that they don't expose prudish or uninterested readers to the subject? I'm doing the same thing here, except with boring tech rants...

( This LJ may contain nerd content )

I am very tired. I discovered this morning that downstairs, in addition to vending machines that sell soda so cold that touching the can burns your fingers, they also have vending machines that dispense coffee and coffee-related hot beverages. I just finished drinking some sweet French-vanilla flavored coffee out of a mug that I found lying around the kitchen that looks very similar to Godot's. Don't be surprised if my hair turns white and I start wearing a toaster on my face. It's a symptom of becoming addicted to coffee. Now that I've made a reference to a game nobody else who reads this blog has played, I can continue with my day. Still, I've had an overwhelming amount of caffeine this morning, so why can't I wake up? This entry was written half-asleep; it already sounds stupid, and I'm not even done writing it.

I was going to whine a bit about how boring my life is and how empty I feel about the next seven weeks of work, but instead I think I'll draw your attention to this comic strip from an ingenious webcomic that illustrates people's dreams:



Have a nice day, and enjoy the frequent updates from yours truly. At least someone gets to reap some benefit from my boring life.

What's up, guys? I really should update this thing more often, but I seem to only do so as a last resort when I've exhausted all other means of entertainment the internet has to offer. Plus, it's beginning to freak me out that there are still entries on the front page of this journal from when I was in high school, memories I have no desire to revisit at this point.

I changed my journal layout yet again. I think I'll keep this one for a while; Windwaker was one of my favorite Zelda games, coming in second to Ocarina of Time, which I believe to be unbeatable - it was my first console game, not counting the travesty that was Pokémon Stadium. I didn't actually make the header, though; credit goes to some very clever graphic artist with whom I'm unfortunately no longer in contact. I love autumn colors, and in fact would not be adverse if summer were to speed up and give way to autumn as soon as possible. I just want the summer to be over. My chagrin at spending eight hours a day in a lab hasn't boded well for my incipient career in science. Well, I guess you have to roll with the punches. And the early Saturdays spent pipetting in a lab at 3 AM. Well, probably not pipetting in my case. Programming, pipetting- eh, what's the difference at 3 AM on Saturday?

One upshot of going into an engineering field is that promotional science programs on TV that used to inspire me now fill me with a sense of sick dread and inadequacy. I feel that I have two choices: Either pick up my game, start staying up until God knows when in the AM trying to outperform my classmates, or drop off the face of engineering as another stain upon its pristine lab coat, another student who couldn't handle the pressure and ran crying to liberal arts. (No offense, liberal arts majors.) In some ways, I was always more suited to liberal arts; my ambition as a child was to be a writer. At this point the neverending barrage of math, physics, and CS has probably drained most of the creativity requisite to becoming one, perhaps irrevocably. It's so sad; as a young teenager, I could just sit down and make things up, and had any number of outlets for all of this creative energy: Roleplaying, drawing, making websites, (well, this involved a certain amount of code, but at least I got some visual creative feedback, as opposed to the dead, cold, mathematical code I'm working on now.) I even feel as though I've become less witty. I'm not sure if this is a symptom of taking classes where creativity is seldom required, or simply of aging. You know what? I just want to get an apartment and a cat, okay? And make my own mix of tea; did you know that the flavorless, touristy kind of English breakfast black tea can be made delicious by adding darjeeling? I was very pleased to discover this, as the tea I took to school last year was watery and tasted of whatever I added to it.

I'm not really sure where that last paragraph was headed.

Anyway, I'm actually not upset right now, and I'm no more confused about my future than I have been for the past few years. I'll probably stick with computer science because it's hard, and because it's a battle I'm fighting alongside my classmates, and because switching out at this point would be both financially unwise and probably pretty difficult. You're supposed to have settled pretty comfortably into a major by your second year in college; that is, if you intend to graduate in 4 years. And I plan to avoid being any more in debt than I have to be.

So... what's up?

A life spent coding
Why did academia
Seem so attractive?

Three posts in this blog within a week of each other? You must think the Jessica you once knew has been kidnapped by centaurs and replaced with some lonely middle schooler crossing her legs and anxiously twirling her hair with a laptop cradled in her lap, nursing some sweet coffee and an inferiority complex.

In reality not much of this is true. I'm sprawled out over two chairs in the UCen, my laptop is on a table, not in my lap, and I have the opposite of an inferiority complex. I do have coffee, though, and I have developed a bad habit of twirling my hair about the handle of my glasses.

I'm aware that you've had to put up with endless whining about school and endless image heavy posts on this journal lately, so I'm going to try to avoid either of those in this entry. And with that lengthy preamble...

The last couple of days have been wonderful. I've been a bit sick ever since getting back to school, and found myself in desperate need of a comforting atmosphere. I brought The Hobbit back from Pleasanton, and for the past couple of nights I've been switching off the computer at 8:30 and curling up with a mug of hot chocolate and my giant navy fleece blanket and reading for two hours before passing out at 10:30. It's amazing the difference this has made to my life: I'm happier, healthier, (my illness has all but vanished by today, 3 days after its development,) and I can't stop thinking about The Hobbit, which, anyone who has read this book will know, is an extremely comforting situation. I just love everything about this little book. Tea, trolls, seed cakes, dwarves, treasure, the One Ring(!), bread and honey, Gandalf. I love how I can totally see Sir Ian McKellen saying all of Gandalf's lines in the story. The characterization of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies was pretty spot-on. Annoyingly hesitant to disclose information, excellent at avoiding danger and excitement only to reappear at everybody's moment of need, and his obsession with being flashy and conjuring impressive smoke rings.

Anyway, lately I've had a sense of deep contentment with the world around me. We'll see how long that lasts - I'm guessing until math and physics start kicking my ass again.

Well, I've finished my coffee, so I'm off to philosophy in 10 minutes. Be seeing you all.

Oh, PS: I don't really like Pidgin as an instant messenger client for Ubuntu. Will have to find alternative that isn't amazingly inconvenient.