Monday, April 04, 2005
The Echo Chamber from Hades
Kevin has class an hour earlier than I do on Mondays, and although I had slept about 7.5 hours when his alarm went off I was still completely out of it. Seriously, I couldn't figure out what was going on. It was soooo hard to get out of bed! And although I had nearly eight hours of sleep last night, I've been a little sleepy all day. Hmmmm...but of course now that it's time to go to bed, I'm wide awake and writing in my blog. Go figure.
Class today was pretty much standard. I can definitely tell how much longer the four hours of lecture seems when I'm not fully awake for it. Oh well...I got through it without much struggle. It helps that I like the third and fourth classes the most, particularly digital design. We designed a circuit today that detected if an input was greater than four. It sounds simple enough, but I'd like to see you all piece together some transistors that would do the same. Anyway, I had fun.
I had a four-hour break between class and band; I used it to eat lunch (roast beef and swiss on wheat from Sandwich Factory...maybe I'll have to give you all that point back on the quiz) and to do my digital design homework. I spent about two hours converting numbers to different bases and adding and subtracting numbers in different systems (you can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at the four in the eight's place...and so forth). I enjoy the stuff, but it took waaayy too long. I didn't have time to get to my calculus homework, which is just as well because I had forgotten all about it at that point. I'll do it tomorrow morning...
WindO went well, too. The pieces we're playing are challenging...but only technically, and not range-wise. May the heavens bless Eric Ewazen for not ending his pieces on a high C. Hooray for that.
From there I went immediately to Atascadero for my first West Side Story dress rehearsal. The play is being performed in "the Armory" which is a big empty gym-like room that is in some way affiliated with the armed forces. I don't know...but the setup is quite strange. The stage is in the middle of the room, and from what I can tell the audience surrounds it on three sides. The orchestra sits behind it. Weird. As far as the acting goes, it doesn't seem to be too great or too horrible...it's about what I might expect from a high school group. However, I'd advise pretty much all of my friends not to come see the play, especially those who'd be doing it just to make me happy. Everything is fine, it's just that the Armory is the most acoustically atrocious room you've ever been in. I couldn't hear a word of dialogue all night. The drama lady (who, by the way, is exceptionally tense...she screamed at some kid from all the way across the room for at least a minute because she said he was talking) called the Armory "the echo chamber from Hades." So there you go. Also, the sound crew hadn't yet mastered the microphones, so pretty much every song was blanketed in feedback. Oh well...we've got three more rehearsals to perfect this thing.
And that was my day. Pretty exciting, huh? Well, fine then...but no one's forcing you to read any of these entries, so you have no one to blame for your boredom than yourself! I kid, I kid...but yeah, I've no more to write. So it's off to bed.
ECHO ECHO Echo echo echo echo,
Josh
mood: quite good, actually...I had a good day
music: "A Little Night Music" played by the Boston Pops
location: a darkened room, as Kevin has gone to bed because he has 7:00 class...bleh
Quoted Randomness:
[on the subject of Boole's novel number system]
"People are worried about how to get a ship from Boston to San Diego without dying, and this guy's creating a two-valued number system."
--Jeff Gerfen, digital design instructor
Class today was pretty much standard. I can definitely tell how much longer the four hours of lecture seems when I'm not fully awake for it. Oh well...I got through it without much struggle. It helps that I like the third and fourth classes the most, particularly digital design. We designed a circuit today that detected if an input was greater than four. It sounds simple enough, but I'd like to see you all piece together some transistors that would do the same. Anyway, I had fun.
I had a four-hour break between class and band; I used it to eat lunch (roast beef and swiss on wheat from Sandwich Factory...maybe I'll have to give you all that point back on the quiz) and to do my digital design homework. I spent about two hours converting numbers to different bases and adding and subtracting numbers in different systems (you can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at the four in the eight's place...and so forth). I enjoy the stuff, but it took waaayy too long. I didn't have time to get to my calculus homework, which is just as well because I had forgotten all about it at that point. I'll do it tomorrow morning...
WindO went well, too. The pieces we're playing are challenging...but only technically, and not range-wise. May the heavens bless Eric Ewazen for not ending his pieces on a high C. Hooray for that.
From there I went immediately to Atascadero for my first West Side Story dress rehearsal. The play is being performed in "the Armory" which is a big empty gym-like room that is in some way affiliated with the armed forces. I don't know...but the setup is quite strange. The stage is in the middle of the room, and from what I can tell the audience surrounds it on three sides. The orchestra sits behind it. Weird. As far as the acting goes, it doesn't seem to be too great or too horrible...it's about what I might expect from a high school group. However, I'd advise pretty much all of my friends not to come see the play, especially those who'd be doing it just to make me happy. Everything is fine, it's just that the Armory is the most acoustically atrocious room you've ever been in. I couldn't hear a word of dialogue all night. The drama lady (who, by the way, is exceptionally tense...she screamed at some kid from all the way across the room for at least a minute because she said he was talking) called the Armory "the echo chamber from Hades." So there you go. Also, the sound crew hadn't yet mastered the microphones, so pretty much every song was blanketed in feedback. Oh well...we've got three more rehearsals to perfect this thing.
And that was my day. Pretty exciting, huh? Well, fine then...but no one's forcing you to read any of these entries, so you have no one to blame for your boredom than yourself! I kid, I kid...but yeah, I've no more to write. So it's off to bed.
ECHO ECHO Echo echo echo echo,
Josh
mood: quite good, actually...I had a good day
music: "A Little Night Music" played by the Boston Pops
location: a darkened room, as Kevin has gone to bed because he has 7:00 class...bleh
Quoted Randomness:
[on the subject of Boole's novel number system]
"People are worried about how to get a ship from Boston to San Diego without dying, and this guy's creating a two-valued number system."
--Jeff Gerfen, digital design instructor
