Monday, May 09, 2005
Countdown
Today was a long day. It wasn't too bad...it was just filled with a bunch of little things that made me wish a little bit more that the end of the day was nearer. I'll take it from the top...
Class is tedious. I'm learning the exact same thing in both circuit analysis and linear analysis. (Differential equations apply to RLC circuits, so I have to derive the equations in BOTH classes. Gah!) Calculus is going well, I'm just a little tired of it. We've gotten into triple integrals now; if you don't know what those are, they're basically exactly what you might assume they are from they're name: three integrals built into one problem. After you finish the first integration, you're only one-third of the way there. Sigh. Digital design is interesting, but we've gotten into negative logic signals, the conventions of which are exceptionally confusing. Analogy: imagine taking a word in English and attaching to it every prefix you can come up with that means "not": un-anti-im-non-dis-in-de-ir-word. It's a frickin' octuple-negative! This is a pretty hairy topic, so much so that my professor admits that even he isn't completely clear on it. I won't get into the details of the hassle I've gone through to try to understand it, but suffice it to say that it's a continuing epic adventure.
Speaking of digital design, I got in a little bit of trouble in class today. Margaret is in this class with me, and we were talking and laughing in the couple of minutes before Dr. Gerfen started his lecture. Long story short, Dr. Gerfen started teaching right after the punchline of my/Margaret's conversation, and we evidently pissed him off a tad bit because we were laughing while he was trying to lecture. He said that he often hears "giggling" from about where Margaret and I sit, and that normally he's a nice guy but if the giggling continues he would start to kick people out of the class. Whoops...I really didn't think Margaret and I had done anything worthy of a reprimand. Honestly, we were in the process of halting our conversation when Dr. Gerfen started talking. Oh well...I can't do anything about it now.
I drove all the way down to Arroyo Grande (a healthy twenty-minute trip) to meet with Leigh Kaplan, a piano instructor who teaches out of her home. She was intimidating when I talked to her on the phone a couple of weeks ago, but in person she turned out to be a perfectly friendly woman; I liked her a lot. I was very impressed by her accomplishments: Bachelor's/Master's in music from USC, teaching at Cal State Dominguez Hills, written books, recorded CDs, and even performed with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Quite the pianist! I would jump at the chance to take lessons with her except that she lives over twenty minutes away, and she's slightly pricey at $55/hour. I told her that I was still looking to see what teachers were out there, and we left it at that.
I spent the rest of my afternoon struggling with digital design homework.
WindO was fine. There were no incidents to report, although I am a little tired of the music. We're still only playing two pieces - neither of which do I care for much - and a bugle call thing that goes with a piece being played by WindE. So WindO wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. What made it slightly crappy was that when I was walking from the back row to the front (for the bugle call rehearsal) I accidentally kicked over a clarinet's drinking glass, full of water, that she had made that day at the craft center. Didn't I feel awful?! But to make it worse, she cut her finger on the shards of glass as she tried to clean it up. I tried to help her clean it up but she sent me away because I needed to get ready for the bugle rehearsal. So all I could to was watch her clean it up and feel like a horrible person. Sigh.
I had dinner with Courtney, Ted, and Rosalie & Co., which was certainly the highlight of my day. Friendly faces were refreshing after today. After dinner, I walked Courtney home and then spent the rest of the evening on digital design and calculus homework. A big woohoo for that.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. Kevin is still up, so I might stay awake a little longer to finish my circuit analysis lab that's due tomorrow afternoon. I'll probably go to bed as soon as Kevin does, though. So, once again, good night. I'll talk to you later.
End of the line,
Josh
mood: not looking forward to class tomorrow (a la last night)
music: "Once in a Lifetime" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and Kevin's music which I hear over my headphones
location: dorm
Class is tedious. I'm learning the exact same thing in both circuit analysis and linear analysis. (Differential equations apply to RLC circuits, so I have to derive the equations in BOTH classes. Gah!) Calculus is going well, I'm just a little tired of it. We've gotten into triple integrals now; if you don't know what those are, they're basically exactly what you might assume they are from they're name: three integrals built into one problem. After you finish the first integration, you're only one-third of the way there. Sigh. Digital design is interesting, but we've gotten into negative logic signals, the conventions of which are exceptionally confusing. Analogy: imagine taking a word in English and attaching to it every prefix you can come up with that means "not": un-anti-im-non-dis-in-de-ir-word. It's a frickin' octuple-negative! This is a pretty hairy topic, so much so that my professor admits that even he isn't completely clear on it. I won't get into the details of the hassle I've gone through to try to understand it, but suffice it to say that it's a continuing epic adventure.
Speaking of digital design, I got in a little bit of trouble in class today. Margaret is in this class with me, and we were talking and laughing in the couple of minutes before Dr. Gerfen started his lecture. Long story short, Dr. Gerfen started teaching right after the punchline of my/Margaret's conversation, and we evidently pissed him off a tad bit because we were laughing while he was trying to lecture. He said that he often hears "giggling" from about where Margaret and I sit, and that normally he's a nice guy but if the giggling continues he would start to kick people out of the class. Whoops...I really didn't think Margaret and I had done anything worthy of a reprimand. Honestly, we were in the process of halting our conversation when Dr. Gerfen started talking. Oh well...I can't do anything about it now.
I drove all the way down to Arroyo Grande (a healthy twenty-minute trip) to meet with Leigh Kaplan, a piano instructor who teaches out of her home. She was intimidating when I talked to her on the phone a couple of weeks ago, but in person she turned out to be a perfectly friendly woman; I liked her a lot. I was very impressed by her accomplishments: Bachelor's/Master's in music from USC, teaching at Cal State Dominguez Hills, written books, recorded CDs, and even performed with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Quite the pianist! I would jump at the chance to take lessons with her except that she lives over twenty minutes away, and she's slightly pricey at $55/hour. I told her that I was still looking to see what teachers were out there, and we left it at that.
I spent the rest of my afternoon struggling with digital design homework.
WindO was fine. There were no incidents to report, although I am a little tired of the music. We're still only playing two pieces - neither of which do I care for much - and a bugle call thing that goes with a piece being played by WindE. So WindO wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. What made it slightly crappy was that when I was walking from the back row to the front (for the bugle call rehearsal) I accidentally kicked over a clarinet's drinking glass, full of water, that she had made that day at the craft center. Didn't I feel awful?! But to make it worse, she cut her finger on the shards of glass as she tried to clean it up. I tried to help her clean it up but she sent me away because I needed to get ready for the bugle rehearsal. So all I could to was watch her clean it up and feel like a horrible person. Sigh.
I had dinner with Courtney, Ted, and Rosalie & Co., which was certainly the highlight of my day. Friendly faces were refreshing after today. After dinner, I walked Courtney home and then spent the rest of the evening on digital design and calculus homework. A big woohoo for that.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. Kevin is still up, so I might stay awake a little longer to finish my circuit analysis lab that's due tomorrow afternoon. I'll probably go to bed as soon as Kevin does, though. So, once again, good night. I'll talk to you later.
End of the line,
Josh
mood: not looking forward to class tomorrow (a la last night)
music: "Once in a Lifetime" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and Kevin's music which I hear over my headphones
location: dorm
