Brian's World

Sunny Saturday

Today has been a pretty terrible day I’m not gonna lie. I woke up around 8:00am and was very tired, which is strange because I got 1 extra hour of sleep than a normal day. I started by normal morning routines, got to commons for breakfast, etc.. nothing too exciting on that front. For some reason the internet in my dorn wasn’t working, not big deal, I packed up my work and headed to the union. I spent a good hour or so writing an email to the signage list addressing my thoughts about weighting, but I didn’t get any immediate responses so I’ll delay that until further in the timeline.

I was down there working on my chemistry homework, all of which is due on May 3rd. So far I have completed 5 of the 10 assigments, and I hope to complete an additional 1 or 2 tomorrow. I am not enjoying this homework in the least. Its not very representative of the material covered in class, lab, or the tests.. so I’m not 100% sure why they are assigning it. I think it may have something to do with the fact that the tests and classes are run by one professor, the labs by another, and the homework by a third. They are not doing so hot on the coordination this semester. I think the lab we just did last week covers material we’re schedule to learn this upcoming week in class.. and who knows what the homework will be about. I have started to dislike doing chemistry homework online. I could deal with physics, but the chemistry is just dumb. If I was doing it out on paper I could get it done much faster, with fewer mistakes because I’m more likely to notice things like units and such.. online they are just numbers.

Blah de blah I was working on that comfortable, and everyone shows up to re-arrange the office. Now I know this had been coming, because they tried to re-arrange it once.. but I undid it the next morning after my chemistry test because it was junk and I was completely out of the loop on it. I’m more likely to be ok with things if I’m in the loop about them, surprises are not for me. But yea, the rest of the next 4 or so hours were spent moving furniture. Of course I didn’t feel there was even a need to move the furniture, but what do I know. After everything was re-arranged at least twice the furniture got settled and everyone went out shopping. Realizing I had gotten a very small portion of the chemistry I set out to do today done, I retreated back to my dorm to start the work again. I find chemistry and furniture tends to go hand in hand for some reason, the past 2 times re-arranging the room was brought up/done were the day of a chemistry test, and today was chemistry homework day. I look forward to finishing this class and rearranging furniture soon.

The internet was working again (whew) so I was able to login and start work again. During the process I received the replies to my email about weighting, which was pretty much what I was expected. Past assumptions have been re-affirmed. It seems the best way to get people to go along with my ideas, is well… I’m not going to share the secret with you. I think that might ruin it. Essentially I find myself in a constant balance, where I weight the least. It doesn’t help that I lack the verbal communication skills to present things outside of cyberspace.

Actually I take that back, I lack the confidence to do so because I know very clearly what will happen and it probably won’t boost my confidence. In comparison to South Hadley, where what I said was evaluated and sometimes agreed upon as correct or the route to take, I find what I say here tends to be the opposite of what people do (or want to do) and everyone is very capable of telling me otherwise. I lack the ability to argue or effectively debate my point because people insist on using these college-level works that just have a lot of letters and are not so dense. I guess I have to keep trying and hope someday my ideas may be correct. I should also consider myself fortune in this respect. I think my life lies in equilibrium, so all these poorly received ideas are going to lead to better received ideas in the future.. unless I’ve already had those ideas.. in which case idk what is going to happen.

To talk about a different subject, I think my Google Summer of Code projects have pretty much been a waste this year. No one responded to my request for a mentor. Thanks everyone… and my other submissions haven’t had any comments placed on them. In general (and in past years), advisers will read them over and give you a sentence or two where to improve or at least acknowledge its been read. Nope, not mine. Nothing… Maybe I will be lucky and its just so good that they don’t have anything to say to it. Yea right.

Katie interviewed for her first real job yesterday, I failed to provide any good tips because I’m not familiar with non-technical interviews. Like when I have gone on interviews its always very oriented at my skillset and implementation knowledge, and less on my people and service skills. I think thats probably been to my benefit.

Twitter is working again, I’ll consider adding a widget here at some point. There was this 2 day period where all my requests to update my status were going nowhere.. I think I was “bored in physics” for like 48 some odd hours. Thats a pretty crazy amount of hours to be bored, nevermind in physics! I ate McDonalds for lunch, which was a decent change of pace from the regular RPI Commons food. I haven’t made up my mind if I want to get I Love NY pizza tomorrow for lunch or not. Its what I typically eat for lunch up here on Sunday, but its also typically a Katie food, though I did go alone once while the bowling championships were on.

I’m kinda debating how I can increase my leadership skills without decreasing my effeciency. Its tricky, I spend a lot of my time writing code for things, and less time leading them. I’m very comfortable with the code writing portion, and I will never cut down on that (it goes against my belief that leaders need to do as well as lead) but its certainly tricky. Actually I don’t think I’m thinking about this at all actually. That sentence or two was all I had to say. What I do think about is the line “we’re starting to get recognition” and I wonder what exactly is getting recognition. I know concerto is getting recognized on campus, but I frequently wonder who people see as the people behind the system. I wouldn’t say this is just a concerto thing, or just an RPI thing, I’ve found a lot of things I’ve been involved in tend to have a very clear distinction between the people who are viewed as behind the system, and who actually is. A great example would be a television production, say a Tiger Times Special Edition… everyone is like ooo Matt Caron you did an awsome job with that or I really enjoyed the show (Matt is the anchor FYI) but very few people would credit the editor who spent a lot of time working on it behind the scenes. No, it wasn’t his/her face being broadcast on all the TV’s.. but it is their work. Thats why I frequently will put just about everyone else in the credits before the anchors (ok so the special edition is a bad example because of the limit crew).. but I feel its the least I can do to show appreciation to the production assistants, camera operaters, etc who made the production possible, but aren’t the starring roles.

I am tired and am going to bed now.