Dr. Memnus Lagbane Soultooth the Mad

I officially work in retail now! Well, at the archery range anyway. I'm the one holding down the register 12-6 on Sundays. All you local folks should come rent bows and stuff from me. :-) (And no, I don't work on commission. Sundays are apparently really slow days all the time. Yesterday there were all of ten people between noon and four, then no one for an hour. Just as we finished closing up the cash register, a crowd of eight piled down the stairs, with half an hour until closing. Never mind that Larry has a bus to catch...

I dropped my bus pass somewhere as I was running around today. Since I checked the lab spaces where I was sitting, that means it either fell out on the bus itself, or as I was walking across campus ... neither of which bodes well for getting the damn thing back. I got it replaced, and if it does turn up after all I can get a refund, but arg. Not making me happy, that. That and trying to build a UI in Matlab (that's right) have made for a tear-your-hair-out day, even though I spent the whole time convinced it was Tuesday. No such luck, apparently.

We're down to four weeks of classes. I have the Matlab UI and related stuff (though the group has left the coding to me), the Fleck model (for which I finally have a face template), and in theory some geometry homework (which will be scheduled exctly backward - written work this weekend, programming over Thanksgiving). No finals, and three assignments and a midterm to grade. That doesn't seem like much, at all.

click

Remember when I said that the worst was over as far as grad school is concerned? Yeah, well, so much for that. They decided to offer interesting classes after all, and I'm head TA for a bitch of a class. Never mind I'm feeling weirder and weirder about life in general, and can't quite pin down why.

Maybe I can blame it on the sudden shock of having the campus crawling with people again. I think I liked summer better.

( Dirty scheduling details ) The kick-in-the-pants-fuck-you part is that drop day is next Wednesday. I have to make a decision, and I have to make it soon.

Expect more spammage from me over the next few days while I pound through this mess.

click

I have hardly any attention span right now - I'm waiting for campaign to start, have laundry in the dryer, two different Google searches up, and the .tex of my geo paper open - and I imagine this entry will reflect that.

Dear DangKid,

You're in CS 2, and your girlfriend is in CS 1 - it's really sweet that you help her with her homework. Really, it is. However, we spend a LOT of time on the differences between arrays and linked lists. While that is new material in CS 1, you should probably know it by now, rather than coming to ask me about it.

No skin of my back,
Your TA


Dear NewEgg,

I realize not all of your stock is in the same place. Even still, did you really need a box that big for just my keyboard and mouse? Seriously, I could hold an entire family of cats in there.

Actually, that'd be pretty cute.

Still no access to recycling,
Brian


( Computer questions for discussion )

click

I am normally loathe to throw out food, but there are times i'll make an exception. For instance, at the grocery store today I got an idea for lunch. "Oh," I declared, "I will simply get a hunk of fresh mozzerella, a tomato, and some basil, and the proportions will be correct for a lunch." This started going downhill when I went looking for basil. The only stuff I could find was universally old and limp, with brown leaves interspersed. Not to be deterred, I got the best box I could find, and returned home with the ingredients. Only when I'd gotten halfway through the plate did it hit me just how dense and fatty that cheese really is. A bit queazy, I optimistically boxed up what was left, but when the thought of it was still making me feel sick four hours later, I figured it'd be better to write it off. This also killed my plan for the night, which had been to cook my usual week's worth of food tonight, so that's been pushed back to tomorrow.

The Latter-Day Transvestites opened their season last night with a performance at Heads Up, a local gay bar. It was a tiny room and tinier stage, so we didn't have a lot to work with; I was also activated from understudy to play Riff. I was there plenty early and had a drink (in other news, I've found that I do in fact like hefeweisen) and spent the show staring around creepily while onstage, or shouting lines while offstage. I did come to regret the latter, though, thanks to the smoky air making things even worse for my throat than usual. Then, this morning, we had dress rehearsal.

Yeah, explain that one to me.

I also neglected much of my grading this week, so had to lock myself to the computer for the afternoon and evening to plow through the assignment before the most recent one. I also have all of the most recent one to do, but it being a not-for-credit assignment, there's under twenty to look at. The advantage to me taking on the entirety of these two assignments is that I can have the other TA grade the entirety of the next one, so I'm not trying to do that over a show weekend. Because, yeah.

Apparently I need an actual Rocky icon. My Dynamic Tension icon feels too much like an archery icon. (Should probably remake that one to have a picture with Vera, instead of the old Mizar.)

click