Brian's World

Brain Noise

If there is one thing I miss this year is the silence and privacy I had last year. It was nice to have a few hours of peace and quiet when Dan was out was others. This year its quite the opposite, I’ve estimated I have approximately 30 mins of free, silent, private time a day max. There are some days when its 0 minutes, and somedays its 2 hours. Thats about it. Those 2 hours would be from 8am to 10am, when I spend most of my time in the shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast, making my bed, readying my backpack etc. Thats where I get a number less than 1 hour of free time.

Things would be ok if things were silent, but unfortunately music is always playing, be it a guitar or some mp3’s. There are a few songs that I know, but 90% of them are songs I am not familiar with, such as screamo. Of course headphones aren’t used, or else I would have less complaints.

I enjoy silence, having a clear mind, being free to think as I please. I dislike having my brain distracted by sounds and noise. I don’t know whats wrong, but I know I was hoping for single and wasn’t that lucky. Things could be worse this year, I guess I should take that for granted. Who knows what next year will bring.

I do question whether I dislike being surrounded by people in general, or if I’m only comfortable around certain people. I don’t know, like I think last year I was more comfortable with any brain clutter because it was more familiar to me and I knew the person more, this year I know little… not that I want to know a lot either.. i don’t know where I’m trying to go.

I like light and freshair, which is something you can’t get if the blinds and windows are compulsively closed every time I leave the room.

I am proud of Katie today though, she was going to go to school late tomorrow because she was out late tonight with the college fair at SHHS and everything, but she opted to go in early so she can film the Tiger Times, thats pretty awesome and it makes me happy. Just thought I would share that.

I just got this sudden craving for a Friendly Frank, thats definately one of my favorite foods from a restaurant ever. Who doesn’t like a Friendly Frank? Only idiots.

Another pet peeve of mine is chairs, I insist my chair is properly placed when I go to bed, and usually when I leave it. Ask anyone who followed my bedtime routine in HS (which consisted of looking in 2 closets and under the bed), the chair would be raised up all the way and pushed in to the desk so the arms were touching the desk. Right now there is a chair all the way next to me, and I’m sitting in one. You do the logic.

I should go to bed, tomorrow is laundry day. I have to do my sheets and towels at some point, but I’m unsure when i can allocate 1.5 hours without sheets/towels. I hoped to do them last weekend but I went home and I really dislike bringing home when I can do it here for 0 work. Quarters, I need to find 4 of them unless they’ve fixed that machine… or I could use the machines in the other wing, which are closer and don’t involve walking down to the basement (4 floors down from my room), but I’m less comfortable over there for some reason.

Upgrade time

So today I upgraded my blog to WordPress version 2.3, the version all the cool kids are using. Apparently there are “new features” or something, I’m not completely sure. I see I can now add “tags” to a post, whatever those are. I cleaned out my plugins, deleted some files I wasn’t suppose to, and made everything work again. I also added a few extras here and there to make this go a little faster, at least for you readers. Pages should load faster if other people have viewed them recently (I believe I use a 60 min cache) so incase this blog ever gets swarmed it has a small chance of staying online. Very very small.

Speaking of upgrades I’m starting to debate what to do with my small form factor PC here in my dorm. I don’t think it will be Vista ready anytime soon, but I’ve managed to bog down XP pretty well. Mainly its Snapstream’s Beyond TV which is permanently doing something. I’m not sure how to procede, if this was someone elses computer and I was able to think objectively I would format it and start from scratch, but I would also be paying myself. I have all my files on my external hard drives, but its the nuisance of having to install everything again, let google desktop re-index all my documents, etc, etc. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll up the ram to 2gb or consider upping the processor from a 3.06 to something else. Theres always the video card, I could upgrade that or get an additional monitor. While that won’t do anything useful it would look cool. I’ve always contemplated getting another TV tuner, and at some point I need to, the 2 I own are pretty terrible. The quality is acceptable, but not thing I enjoy. Yes, RPI’s campus cable is very terrible in an of itself, but my tuner makes it worse.

Today was my first Data Structures and Algorithms test, it was 96% horrible, which means 3% went well. We’ll have to wait and see what the grade is on that. If I could only test my algorithms, I hate manually running an algorithm in my brain just to see if it works. Thats what computers are for.

Coming soon will be my awesome Facebook application, that will improve your lives significantly. You need it. More details to follow when its ready.

I also am debating what to put on a business card if I was to get one, I’m open to suggestions. I don’t know what my title would be, I don’t do 1 specific thing, I do a lot of broad things.. hrm.

Ok, all that was written last Thursday at sat in the hamper for a little while. I can’t remember what came up Thursday but I wasn’t able to finish it.

Logical Limits

So tonight I drove through the worst storm I can remember being in. Storms at Boy Scout camp always seemed pretty bad, usually because your default safety spots are made of plastic tarp, string, and some cut up tree limbs. But tonight was definately worse. I was driving a friend to Oneonta, NY. I have no clue where that is on a map, but its a long story. When I was leaving on the highway, 88 to be exact, the sky opened up. Wow, I can’t recall it raining so hard for so long in a long time. The speedlimit was 65mph, I was going between 50-60 during the storm following 2 tractor trailer trucks. It was insane, and I don’t use that word lightly. There was lightning hitting things all around me, I think even one of the tractor trailer trucks got hit when it was behind me, or maybe it was a sign. It was strange, the lightening was so vivid at times the windshield wipers, which I had on Kill Mode (when they are going as fast as possible), looked like they were in a strobe light of some sort. I think that if I can drive through that I can probably weather just about any storm that doesn’t involve a flood or tornado. Half an hour to 45 mins later the storm was done, or I had driven out of it or something. I checked the radar on weather.com and it showed several yellow and red spots on the road I was driving on. I think, I really don’t know how to read a weather map. I was tempted to call and say “Hey if I die let people know XYZ” but I didn’t want to raise suspicion as to why I was going to die. Not that I could have heard them, the rain was crazy loud.

In other news, RPI is/was on Digg today, you should check the story and Digg it: http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Unrest_in_the_ranks_at_RPI_engulfs_school. For those of you who haven’t followed it, the faculty senate is suspended by the President, the Faculty want their Senate back so they can all get together and vote on stuffs, but none of this really matters to students except for the principles that the Administration does stupid things at times. Ok, I really don’t know all the details, but the article in that Digg link should explain it.

Once again there are troubles in the Restroom. Someone has been in their for at least 30 mins showering, and I’d really like to brush my teeth and go to sleep. This happened last night as well, but it was much later. I was working on Moodle for SHHS, which I got working. I’m trying to implement it with the Active Directory server as well (via LDAP) but Moodle is beating me with some strange 404 errors. I’ll look at it later.

I don’t like the theme jealous, but a theme of consciousness vs reality certainily fits. As a full believer in simulations, I’m also a full believer in Limits, when applied within logical bounds. I can very easily simulate spilling soda all over my pants without having to do so, and the simulated response will likely be very accurate to what I would do in real life. Go to the bathroom and try to wash it using my handkerchief or some paper towels or something. There are other things that a simulation doesn’t go far enough with, generally because I’m relying on knowledge of things that I’ve only simulated. Kind of like making an assumption for A, then using A in an equation and expecting the correct output. You will never be right unless you can firm up your assumption of A or implement some error accountability into your equation. Its difficult to forward design error correction, mainly because you can’t assume what the errors will be. To assume what the errors would be you generally need data. Ok, I lied. You could probably get away with 0 data, but you’d have to trace back the basis used in your assumption, identify the errors there, and follow them as they apply into your assumption. Hrm, I must try this soon. Tonight sounds like a deal.

I have to be realistic, simulations may be as close as I will ever get. That is me, who I am. I am hesitant to explain this in detail, probably because of some charges in middle school.

Tomorrow I will do laundry, I really hope that the second laundry machine is working. Its been broken for quite some time, making it all but impossible for me to finish my laundry by Litec @ 11:00. If I can start 1 load at 8:00 (or maybe 8:30) I can be done before 11, but its cutting it close!

Bathroom adventure time.

Good night moon.