Dagnabbit

Originally, when describing the movie Legion, I described Jeep's character as a "retarded hick." I decided to change it to "stupid hick" because associating him with the mentally challenged is insulting to them. I must apologize to the hick community for associating him with them because I'm sure he is in no way representative. This is Hollywood after all.

So a couple of my friends and I went to see Legion this Saturday. We picked it because it looked like a bad action movie that we could laugh at, and it didn't disappoint in any way. I encourage everybody with a dark sense of humor to go see it. Here is the best review I can give:

The rich lady is going to get hysterical. The impetuous teen is going to repent. Just because there are two black men doesn't mean they can't kill off both because of some stupid white people The crotchety old man is going to get the last laugh. The pregnant woman is going to accept her baby and raise him to be the savior. Despite not doing jack shite, the stupid hick is going to get the girl because he's the "hero." Nobody gets a backstory except for the British guy who does all the spinny-kicks/punches/gun. Nobody kills anything except for the British guy who kills everything and comes back from the dead. Everybody dies regardless of character development, except for the pregnant woman and the stupid hick who don't develop in any way whatsoever.

Moving on, I've discovered that my system doesn't work if I don't do homework. The idea is to split things up so I'm doing a little bit each day, but this past week and weekend there've been days I've not done anything. This screws up my system because I need do a lot of work some days, which discourages me from doing work, which means I don't do any work, repeat ad. infinitum. Today I've decided that, in order to do ENOUGH work, I need to convince myself that I need to do too much work, in order to be pleasantly surprised later. I've gotten a good air of curmudgeon and distaste for the world going, that I feel is very promising for my work ethic. This falls in line with my theory that I do my best work when I'm over worked and absolutely disgusted at the world (case in point: Scouting Spreadsheet).

To wrap up, I forgot to blog this last Sunday, and then again on Monday. So this means that you SHOULD get more blogs this week than you would otherwise. I'm sure some of you will be happy about this.

Additional:
I'm meeting too many new people. So I leave for breakfast round about ten, and I meet this guy I know on the way there, he joins me. Now I call him "this guy" because I cannot remember his name. He and I talk for some time (maybe an hour) about journalism, and he tells me some things that I can really use. For one, my idyllic vision of myself as a journalist definitely isn't the way to go. But we talk for a while and while he can keep on going, I run out of things to say.

Later, we head back to the dorm, and split paths there, and I realize I meant to head to the library after breakfast, so I turn around. Then this guy compliments me on my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him getting off a bus, and I don't think much of it. Then, when I'm about to walk up the stairs away from my dorm, he calls to me. Now, I have this nasty habit of turning around when people call to me, whether or not I really want to talk to them. This makes things awkward when people are asking for donations or whotnot (there was this one time in Japan that haunts my memories). But I turn, and find out what he wants. He compliments my hair. Says that he is impressed that I wear my hair long, like his, and at this he pulls his hair out from under his coat, and indeed he has long deadlocks. He's a black man, with a black rag tied tight over the top of his head, so tight it looks like he could be bald underneath, and he wears a puffy, orange and red jacket, over a white shirt with some printed pattern on it I can't recall. It looks like he normally keeps his hair tucked into the collar of this shirt. He smells strongly of peanuts, and talks and acts with a strong, friendly charisma, which is terrifying to a recluse like me, but I smile and thank him for his compliment. Then he goes on to tell me a Bible story, of Samson and Delilah. I'll not recount it here, but he also explains how his mother couldn't ever pay to have his hair cut, so she shaved him herself, and he couldn't have long hair until he earned his own money to pay to have his hair cut himself. Before we part, he tells me that the moral of the story is that I have beautiful hair. I thank him and head to the library.

I also have become part of a team here in Pullman working on an engineering competition. It's a lot like being back on Chief Sealth's robotics team, because everything is so loose and informal, and every part of product is subject to "ohh that seems expensive." The team doesn't have much money, so I'm drawing on my history and experience with Skunkworks to try and bring some benefit. I'd like to institute some greater organization for the team, because that could not only bring in more funding, but it could also produce a better design. They're ten weeks in and they only have a vague concept and a 3-d model of that vague concept. So I've asked for help from the robotics team, and I'm talking with Mr. Miller and Mr. Steele about things. That brings with it a pressure to perform, because I've not only sold my abilities to the WSU team, but I've also presented myself to Mr. Steele and Mr. Miller, and I feel like I would be letting them down if I didn't find some way to use their advice. It's going to be hard work, and another thing on my platter. I'm afraid of biting off more than I can chew.

On the way here, I think about how many people I know, and how I really feel outclassed by every one of them. I don't consider this a bad thing, they seem quite impressed with me (for what reason I cannot guess), so I figure that it's better to be humble and have a driving force than to be proud and stagnant. But all these people I know, every time I talk to them, I seem to feel pressed to present the best side of myself. I'm not really horribly concerned, and I figure that it'll either pass or I'll find a way to deal with it, but I thought you would like to know.

Maybe I'm not THAT Sure...

Spider Jerusalem reminds me of Mr. Joshi.
http://thoughtscream.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/spider-jerusalem-rage.jpg
http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/images_graphicnovel/transmetropolitan05.jpg

I think I've been reading too much transmetropolitan. That mixed in with what I'm beginning to realize is an ignorant and slightly fanatic obsession with The Omnivore's Dilemma, plus my appreciation of Dr.Who's stance on words being the most powerful force in the world, has caused me to romanticize journalism. Hell knows it's probably just another passing fascination of mine, but I'm toying with the idea of becoming a journalist instead of an engineer. I don't know what to think about that. This last semester, I almost killed myself over my English 101 and history 111 courses, and I hear tell that both history and writing feature prominently in journalism (or at least history SHOULD damn well be important). I don't follow the news and I've terrible self control for deadlines. When I consider it, I'd be a terrible journalist because the thought of critical thinking on a deadline, and all the effort I'd have to put in to something before I'd actually consider it good, wearies me. Still, I do like hearing myself talk, and that puts journalism in a good light for me.

Another thing. I was talking to my old friend from scouts, Phil, this morning over breakfast (he's stressed over this journalism thing he's gotta do), and he says that ME here sucks. He tells me about this friend of his, who transferred over to UW to finish his degree, and offers to set up a meeting between the two of us. I'm all for meeting this guy, and I figured that I'd have to transfer at some point, but I'm wary about the whole thing. Really, what I ought to do (and ought to have done before even APPLYING here) is look around for research I think is interesting, find out what colleges are doing that, and apply there (I can feel the "I told you so" through the internet, mum). I can see where to look this time (I was actually planning on looking through the scholarly databases for my own projects), but even if I DO find a college I'd like to get into: A) Why would it accept me? Should I wait to get better grades here? B) I'd be leaving all my friends and everything here. I've had enough trepidations about figuring how to get an apartment with Cole. I have no idea what I'd do if I transferred... That and trips home from Pullman are infrequent enough as it is.

My Damn Blog

Way back when I was still living on the horribly noisy floor, I deemed it worthwhile to invest in a jar of earplugs. I have just last night thrown away the first two, and have broken into a new pair. 8 pairs to go.

I have got far too many projects. I could list them all, but I'm not even sure how many I'm still working on. Really the problem is that I get into something, then it gets mildly hard, and I stop. At this point, Ive got three different programming projects, one writing project, the webcomic, a bunch of DnD things, and I'm certain I've got a couple more projects I can't even remember. See, while I am really excited about all of these things, I can't maintain that excitement, and I have horrible motivation. I do not think this is a particularly unique problem, but it is there. I just need to keep at all these things. See, when I get working on something, things do become easier than I expected them to be... usually.

Also, I totally neglected a thing that is due this next week, so now I'm getting on it. That said, I got to it with more than enough time so I'm not doing it all in a night, and it's really easy. I'm beginning to trust my spreadsheet more and more, just so long as I take the time to make sure it has everything, and that doesn't take long. I'm really worried about what'll happen when I get bogged down with projects again. I need to get to the point where I don't need to check all my classes in order to trust it. I need to get to the point where I can trust MYSELF to put everything into the system properly.

OH and one of the characters I made for DnD WORKS. I'm excited about this because lately I've been building characters based off their CHARACTER instead of using their character to justify how I've built them. This causes problems because I lean toward non-combat things, and DnD was definitely built for combat more than anything.

Progress

Cole and I are GREAT conversationalists. One of these days I'm going to record our conversations... and send a copy to Lydia.

So the sign of a good system is that it can break and still work just fine. That said, this time I kinda lucked out. I realized earlier today that tomorrow I had a bunch of engineering 120 stuff due. Turns out it was all really quick and stupid, but I was completely prepared to work on it till I was done. The best part is, because I realized it early today, I had all this evening as well as pretty well all of tomorrow as well. So yeah, pretty well nothing to report on that front.

OHH OHH! We got into programming in C today! That, plus I've found that I can program just fine in Xcode (I think). I'm going to have to pull the .c file into my windows partition (ugghh) and try running it to be sure, but it looks good! If everything pans out, I might actually departition my computer to get that ten gig back (as it turns out, ten gig is exactly enough for windows 7 and visual studio, but not much else).

I have decided that Gliffy isn't all that and a bag of chips after all. I need to finish my video project so I can build an actually GOOD flowchart program. That will, of course, be MUCH harder. You'd think video would be hard but no. All I have to do is learn to use tools designed to do pretty much exactly what I had in mind. This is why I love Mac.

Zork Mapper

Mother is a terrible influence. I ask for diet help and she gets me hooked on Zork...

So I've been playing Zork recently, and just like the last two times I tried getting hooked on it, I've never really gotten past exploring the little house. This is because, I have a terrible memory, and anytime I DO go further, I lose track of which direction I need to go and whatnot. This inevitably leads me to try making a map of some sort, but even though I TRY using paper and pencil to do it, I get disgusted with how the map requires me to erase and redraw significant parts, and how large even the smallest section has to be. Case in point, if you follow a grid system, the inside of the little house is bigger than the outside... Maybe they've been talking to a certain doctor I could mention. THIS inevitably leads me to search for a flowchart program that does what I need, and THAT is what I'm going to rant about today.

You see, I never get very far in Zork because I can NEVER find a flowchart system that works adequately. This is infuriating, because I know EXACTLY what I need it to do, and relative to all these complex and confusing flowchart programs I've found, it's ridiculously SIMPLE, intuitive and potentially BETTER than what they offer. That said, for the first time, I've found something adequate. It is by no means perfect, but Gliffy.com is a nifty little, in browser flowchart program that offers enough versatility to do most of what I want. Now, there are parts of my concept that it lacks, but you can't have everything... unless you make it.

That brings me to my second topic. I'd like to try making a flowchart program. I've already found a framework for Xcode for vector drawing, and I figure this'd be useful, but as with every actually USEFUL project that I'd like to tackle, I have no idea where to begin and no resources beyond myself. That and I really should finish my other Xcode project before beginning a new one, and there's all the OTHER projects I've got going right now. Honestly, I can't complain, because as irritating as it is to have all these ideas and no ability to learn the skills I need to implement them, I AM making a good deal of progress on quite a few of them.

Oh, and to end things, I'd like to say that I've done a few searches for interactive fiction mappers, and come up with quite a few results... for PC. The only one I've found for Mac is a... we'll call it nifty, MUD mapper done in Java. The problem with this one is, it's based on a grid pattern, which very doesn't work at all in any way for Zork. So if anybody has better ideas, I'd love to hear them.

OH and one more thing. Yesterday I got all my homework finished. Today I checked my system and it told me that. Furthermore, I trusted it. This is progress.

Oops

Now that Cole has a fancy hat, people stair at him more than me.

I'm going to have to blog more frequently now seeing as I've missed TWO posts since getting back to college. Sadly these have fallen to the wayside because of a fatal dose of finals mixed with a long break in which I did not have to post, which only compounded on what was an apparently irregular schedule anyway. That said, I think I've got my system up and running properly now, and I'm trying to figure on how to work this in as a regular thing.

This week I didn't get nearly as much done as I ought to have, because I wasn't really using my system. This weekend, most of the time I was working on getting everything INTO my system and making sure it was all there, rather than doing any actual work. Today, I think I got the last of it, and got all of my Calc homework done that is due this next week. I got all my Econ HW done yesterday (because it was all due yesterday), and while I am scared about whether or not I can actually maintain this system, I realize that getting more homework is going to be conducive for getting this to actually work.

Inspired by Cole's method of splitting each assignment into small, manageable parts, I'm trying to do the same. The idea behind my system is, instead of devoting copious amounts of time to managing everything manually, I think about it once when I'm putting everything in, and do what it tells me to. That said, I'm going to end up spending copious amounts of time making sure it works and checking everything before I can actually TRUST that it DOES work. I am very distrustful of myself and my system, so I really don't know if it'll ever end.

I've been thinking about the problems inherent with both of my systems, and I wonder if maybe I need to rethink how I do things entirely. Cole gets along fine with his little pen and paper planner, with just a few notes on each assignment. I point to everything ELSE that I feel needs to be managed with mine, but I wonder if I really have to use my system to keep track of all that or not. For example, clean desk, clean room, do laundry, do bed clothes are all in my list, but I do these things NATURALLY. This is mostly because they are nice, calming, stupid acts that are good excuses not do do homework. But they're still in there. However, things like check accounts still slip my mind even though they are. I think that maybe I'm over complicating my whole system, but I really don't know how I would make it simpler.

Furthermore, one of the reasons I spend so much time on my lists is because I A) don't trust them and B) spend much of the time it takes to organize them spinning my wheels. I think this is because I look at my lists and my mind goes blank. I can't process that much text. Now I've got this sort of visual thing stuck on my list to the side, but I don't really use it all THAT often, just as a quick interpretation of dates. The problem lies inherent with the list itself. I need it to simplify itself to show me JUST the things I need to deal with, but I also need a very simple method of looking at EVERYTHING ELSE to trust that those really ARE the only things I need. I really have no idea for any optimal solution that would let me do this, and I sense that this is going to be a constant uphill battle of revision and implementation, which I suppose is appropriate for an engineer. For now, however, I'm going to try this method of think and forget, and see how it works for me. Push come to it I can always go back to my simple .txt lists.

I should start posting now I guess?

I'm back, and tired, and my computer is low on battery. I'm also up too late.