5 Mar 2002 olandgren   » (Journeyer)

School

Working your heart and soul out on something and then getting a not-quite-good-enough grade really sucks. Happened in Econ -- I submitted two drafts, didn't sleep the night before the paper was due, and still ended up with an A-. I guess I shouldn't complain, but it's just frustrating to fight so hard for a good grade and then miss it by just a little bit.

Hacking

Lots and lots of SML code. It's fun, and I'm seriously considering something like "Compiler Implementation in a Strongly-Typed Functional Language" as my honors thesis in CS. I don't know if there's enough research there for it to be an honors thesis though. We'll have to see.
I've been thinking a lot about how much Unix I use on a day to day basis -- Cygwin/Emacs/Perl on Windows, and everything under the sun on my Linux box. What's really interesting is how many more annoying little tasks I've had to do since the Linux box went under(video card fan,which has yet to be replaced). I really miss scsh on Windows.

Diet

So I've been attempting a "eat normally, exercise" approach to weight loss. It hasn't worked at all. I weigh the same or more than when I started. Yeah, I'm a little fitter, but the point of the whole endeavor was to lose the last inch of fat so that I look decent again. Argh. I don't really want to start dieting again, but if there's not another way to get the job done...

Life

Life has been interesting and all that. Went on the date with Emilia, though not the movie like I expected. We went skating at the Depot instead -- I got to teach her how to skate, which was a lot of fun. She'd never seen an ice rink before that night. By the end she was able to do forward movement under her own power, and had only fallen down three times(and only once when I was helping her), so things seemed to go well. Much fun was had by all, at least as far as I can tell.
Other than that, had another self-recriminatory episode while under the influence. This seems to be something of a pattern, which is bad. I've thought about it a lot, and realized that there's a consequence for bottling stuff up while sober: it comes out when you're not. Katrina recommended that I see a professional therapist, and I guess I'm inclined to agree. I assume that normal people don't look in the mirror in the morning and say "Ugh -- how do you expect to go anywhere?" So that should be interesting.
The interesting part about it isn't so much going to be therapy itself(I've done that before) as it will be getting the money for therapy out of our insurance company without my mom finding out. I'm pretty sure that my father will be fine with it, but my mom would flip. *sigh* Oh, well -- you take the cards you're dealt and play them the best you can.
Other than that, though, life is fine. My great-uncle is recovering from his heart attack/aneurysm combo suprisingly well, my friends seem to be coping well with their upcoming graduation, and I've managed to make peace with my addiction to computer games. My room-draw number sucks, but that's life. Hopefully I can get in on a triple with a couple other people I know, but if not, then I guess a single will be fine. I'm not exactly going to have large amounts of people around to socialize with.

Listening

Richard Bone - Etherdome - Plateau to Level 30

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