Brian's World

Refreshing

It is refreshing to know some things just don’t change.  No matter how optimistic you may be at time, the world moves on… in the same undesirable direction it’s been moving.  Today I was reminded of that, after spending some period of time thinking that things might actually be different.  Alas I was wrong, which I pretended to not see coming.

I would have described today as sobering, but I don’t think any parallels could be drawn between my past days and any state of intoxication.  The past few days have been, well, the same as the past few months, which accurately model the past few years of my life.  Most of the time I’m quite comfortable with everything, at least that is what I tell myself when I wake up in the morning.

What I have spent some time thinking about is how do I go about assigning value to things in my life.  The current working theory states that I assign value to things based on the value I provide to them.  This model adequately covers my desires to provide assistance to others but it doesn’t do a very decent job of capturing complex value propositions; nor have I solved the challenge of mapping this theory onto a social graph.  Clearly more work is needed here.

I have officially moved in to my new apartment.  If you are wondering how it is: it is sufficient.  Here is a tour for the visual impaired: walk down stairs, enter door.  Look left – kitchen with table and 2 chairs.  Pantry.  Look straight – two padded chairs (probably for “relaxing”) and a computer desk with rolly chair.  Look to your 1:00, door to the bathroom containing 1 toilet, 1 sink, and 1 shower/bathtub.  At your 10:30 you’ll spot the entrance to my bedroom which contains 1 bed, 1 dresser (or is it a bureau) and some (2) closets.  There are lights, windows, and such, but as a visual impaired or text-based explored they aren’t really relevant.

The moving-in to an apartment process was interesting.  I now have more steak knifes than I do fingers.  In the absence of a saw, I have been using one of them to cut wood and other materials as needed.  I don’t know who spread the rumor that I eat steak often and require knifes for it, I do not.  I will provide more details on this adventure later when I feel like talking about a less pungent topic.

Tonight I was in the Union working on a few projects I have coming down the pipeline.  If you were in the Office (you weren’t) you would have thought a hockey game was going on, I was completely alone.  You might also conclude that no one is on campus, which would have been right if many of my colleagues didn’t move in today.  Coupled with the loud freshmen dance party going on down in the McNeil room, I was feeling fairly lonely.  It was just me, Rails 3, Amazon’s S3, and some popular music from the party lofting in.  I recall visiting the “dance” during my freshmen orientation.  If you’re familiar with the decor in the McNeil Room you’ll note the walls don’t take well to a floral pattern.  Obviously I stayed for under a minute before strategically departing.  In my head I ran a quick simulation of actually attending such an event, but then I quickly remembered that a) that doesn’t happen and b) when it does there is no one there.

I came to the conclusion that I am not a day late and a dollar short, I’m just the guy stuck living in the USSR.

Good night moon.

Waves

If my memory is correct, I’ve spoken about waves before.  You know, the kind you find in the ocean made of water that bounce floating objects around.  What strikes me about waves is the bad reputation they’ve earned.  Waves crash down and destroy things, toss boats around, and are blamed for generally messing things up around the coast.

What I think you’ll find is that if you just sit, maybe swim, somewhere where there are waves in the deeper waters you won’t do a whole lot of moving besides the buoying up and down as waves come and pass.  The waves aren’t out to drown you usually.  I do wonder if waves should really be blamed for all the hassle they cause things, maybe it is the things that is really causing all the trouble in the first place.

Sometimes I relate to waves.  I don’t make a lot of progress in my personal ocean, but when I do I tend to cause some quantity of hassel and unrest.  I would be lying to say everyone else may be to blame, as I previously stated in my wave example (my perpetual motion is not controlled by the moon to my knowledge), but I do wonder how much of a reaction is mine and how much should be attributed to others.

What does seem fitting is to toss an association at the closest object, without always using the hula-hoop to check for strings.  I get that, and I’ve probably been guilty of it a few times myself, but I don’t try and toss negative association horseshoes very often.  Like hand grenades, its one of those sports where closeness counts (and can cause damage), collateral I see no reason to risk.

Good night moon.

Backlogged Updates

Last time I wrote I completely forgot that I had graduated from RPI and celebrated my 22nd birthday.  I forget those sort of events pretty quickly, but I’ll try and remember any notable (maybe memorable is more appropriate) details.

Let me think, I guess I shall start off with “Senior Week” which I did not participate in at all.  I made a deal that in exchange for filming a few events earlier in the year I would not partake in any of the events, and to be honest none of the events were really down my ally.  I don’t enjoy drinking socially and that seems to the theme for everything senior-week related.  I would have much preferred some really exciting lectures from people doing cool stuff…. not just a colloquy about a topic that I really don’t care for.  During my 4 undergraduate years at RPI I never remember there being a lecture or speaker on campus that was super thrilling to go see.  I guess Richard Stallman comes around every now and then, but he isn’t really my kinda guy.  Chris DiBona from Google came once 2-3 years ago but was in a really small room so I couldn’t get in.  It would have been neat if senior week wasn’t all about bar hopping and included some components of a collegiate nature.

Somewhere in there I celebrated my birthday.  Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, even those of you who only did it because Facebook told you to.  It’s ok, I regularly forget my birthday too.  Ah yes, I remember now.  For my birthday I got a cutting board and dish towels.  My parents (read as: mom) always pick out the best gifts.  Included was a coupon for more information about Office 2010 Small Business, which my mom said was a coupon for a new laptop… despite the fact that it was only a picture of Office 2010.  Katie got me another super cool gift, which I will be debuting once I get around to writing a widget for it.  My brother gave me a computer chair, which makes sense because my college one is 4 years old and not so usable these days.  I celebrated my birthday by…. hrm, I’m not sure exactly what I did.  I bought a cake for myself and probably ate some food, it’s not really standing out to me.

I also graduated, completing my B.S in Computer Engineering.  The ceremony was very long, and the primary speaker was lackluster from my point of view.  It would have been nice if, instead of having the sun in the eyes of the entire audience… they put the sun in the eyes of the few dozen people on stage.  Luckily it didn’t rain, which would have been a huge deal because my mom hogged all the rain tickets and wouldn’t let me dole them out as I saw fit (aka Katie couldn’t get one).  After taking 0 pictures with my graduating colleagues at RPI, I packed up and moved out of BARH for the last time.  I think in a few years I will have wanted to take >1 photo with people I associated with during my undergraduate years, but it is particularly lame to say “Please gather so I can take a photo proving I worked with people at RPI so in 10+ years people believe me when I say I knew you.”  I admit, I have done a particularly good job staying out of photographs.  Excluding pictures taken of me entering and sitting at graduation, I count a total of 20 photos on Facebook taken at/near RPI of me with another RPI community member in them… this is over the last 4 years.

Upon graduating, I entered into my Masters program with the Computer Science department.  My plan is to get an MS in CS ASAP.  I switched from the School of Engineering to the School of Science for a few reasons.  I really didn’t like how Computer Engineering was taught in the ECSE department.  I felt it was an Electrical Engineering curriculum that made you take a handful of computer science courses.  I gained a lot of knowledge about stuff I don’t really care for (circuits & signals) and didn’t dive deep enough into the computer sciency stuff I’d like to be doing in my future.  I’m not saying the engineering program is bad at RPI, I’m just saying that the Computer Engineering program is not an engineering approach to computer things, like I thought it would be.

The weekend after I graduated my mom organized a graduation “party” which she renamed the Memorial Day Cookout.  I invited my friends (brother Kevin and Katie) and mom invited the family + Katie’s parents. Mom instructed everyone to not bring gifts, so I got a few cards and a business card holder from Katie’s mom.  I also opened up the gifts from my parents (read as: mom) which included a pen with the RPI seal, several pencil with the same logo, a mirror with a very strange rendition of the quad, and a blanket with the RPI seal on it.  You would think we were celebrating Rensselaer here, not my graduation from the place.  I am not sure what I will do with all this strange RPI stuff, it won’t be appropriate to display for ~20 years so I’ll have to figure out how to archive it.