I just finished grading 240 problems in a little less than 4 hours for my class, since they took a test on friday. We’re speedy, I tell you. My brain feels a little like mush right now. I’d love to go out and do something completely mindless, but I’ll probably stay in and watch more DVDs. If anyone wants to do something mindless like watching a movie (ooh, cold theater would feel good about now), IM me.

Last night I ended up chatting with amagdalyn for entirely too long and missed going out dancing, which made me semi-frustrated. So at the end of the night I instead watched two episodes of Six Feet Under that I rented from GreenCine. After two episodes my review is that either Peter Krause is a very good actor or I’ve only seen him in two TV shows that were extremely well written and directed well - the other show I’ve seen him in is the wonderfully written Sports Night written by Aaron Sorkin, the same writer as The West Wing. Also, Michael C Hall is playing his character very well too. The first two episodes have been eventful and give us incredible insight into the characters’ backstories and psyches. I hope the rest lives up to them. I’m also not used to TV shows without commercials being actually an hour long, in the first episode I was like “shouldn’t this be over yet? but it’s so good!”.

If I’m going to keep watching DVDs on my iBook, I’m going to need to buy some good headphones. The speakers suck and so do most of my headphones since they’re “walking headphones” that I don’t really care if they get messed up. On that note, if someone has a desire to watch Six Feet Under with me, I wouldn’t mind watching the first two episodes again.

It’s been really freaking hot in my apartment lately. I’m sure it’s not helped by having two space heaters (a.k.a. computers) running all the time. I’m very glad I have a bug fan that pushes air around

Yesterday was Buca’s with the LJ gang including zosiablue, adrianne, bronzegoddess and company. I had a great time meeting everyone. The food was mediocre by Buca’s standards though. I swear our waiter had the perfect voice for a stand-up comic. Having the food be not so great (except for the cheesecake, which was supreme) wasn’t really a factor though because the company was great.

We started at Buca’s late and were there until it closed basically. After that a smaller group of us went to amagdalyn’s apartment to continue enjoying the company. Amy got her hedgehog out and one of her Chinchillas for our amusement pretty quickly. One highlight of the evening: harveytchansaw’s perfect analogy for the boxers/briefs debate from a guy’s perspective. We stayed up very late, but that was okay because now it’s saturday.

I was supposed to wake up and go into school to grade tests that the class took yesterday, but my alarm clock had other ideas. It’s okay because we rescheduled for tomorrow, but I feel horrible because three TAs waited there for me for an hour.

Well, This day has started perfectly. Apparently I hit the wrong button on my alarm clock this morning and turned off my alarm instead of the snooze. Because of this, I had to drive into work today, which was accompanied by far too many stoplights and a wait at the bus stop on campus that far too long. Because I was on a rush to head out, I forgot my homework which I had nicely printed out last night and need to reprint again before going to my class in 10 minutes, and I forgot my phone in my apartment. Now I’m going to have to drive back and get my phone and then (probably) walk back in. I seriously hope there’s some “Mike’s reservoir of bad luck” that will run out very soon.

Still working on the homework that was supposed to be due approximately 3 weeks ago. The professor is being super nice letting us work on it this long - well, we really couldn’t meet with him before today anyway, but it was still nice of him. I need to get a bunch of that done later today and hope we’re not meeting too early.

Today I have a class, donut/coffee hour, proctoring for a test, a lab meeting (which got moved to 3), a barbeque, and Buca’s. I’m very psyched to meet a bunch of you people, which is why I’m hoping my bad luck runs out soon. If I’m tripping over things and accidently flinging silverware tonight, you were warned.

The rest of this week was fairly routine. I started working on my new duties in the lab, which mostly involve phone work and filling out forms online. Yesterday was review day in the lab for the test today, which is normally something I look forward to because I actually get to stand up and teach, which is something I throughly enjoy.

Oh, and because I’m mucho-lazy and have to go in one minute, thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. It’s really appreciated. :)

Well, since it is my birthday today, I am going out to dinner with a few friends at Annie’s Parlour on the U of M campus. Anyone who can read this is welcome to show up. It’s kind of late notice I guess. EDIT: Being the doof that I am, I forgot to put the time in the original post. We’re meeting around 6:30, although we may be a little late or a little early.

Mmmm.. yummy big burgers with fries and a malt. My mouth is watering already.

This reminds me of some of the humor of Home Movies. I think that it could easily be one of Brendan’s movies for some reason.

Well, I’m one year older today, so I have been thinking since this morning about the last year, and what I have done in it. It seems to be the correct time.

In the last year I have:

• Passed the Written Preliminary Exam, allowing me to continue pursuing a Ph.D degree in computer science at the University of Minnesota.
• Completed 16 hours of classes towards my degree, with a GPA of 3.78 in those classes.
• Was a Teaching Assistant for three classes, available to over 200 students.
• Paid $7,980.00 in rent at my apartment, approximately 51% of my total expected income in a year.
• Bought a new iBook 12” laptop and for the first time, put myself into debt which is not school-related.
• Had the first romantic relationship in my life since 1999.
• Started writing in LiveJournal, thanks to silvrayn.
• Contributed +1242 -724 lines of changes to the open source software project BitTorrent
• Started one of the top sites for Anime via BitTorrent, whose torrents have transferred approximately 399.1 TB of Anime to the masses from 21 different fansubbing groups.
• Discovered that I like DDR and am actually not bad at it, most likely to the chagrin of the people in the apartment below me.
• Drank more alcohol than I had in my entire life before this day last year.
• Submitted a paper to two conferences, and got rejected from both.
• Watched more Anime than anyone else I know.
• Started a diet and successfully lost 41 pounds to date.

Some of these I regard as accomplishments. Some are things I should fix in the future. Some I’m kind of indifferent about.

You decide that you want to check what all of the numbers from one to ten are on the internet.

• One - boring software solutions
• Two - something with flowers?
• Three - confusing but elaborate - I have no clue what they do, but I think it has something to do with cell phones.
• Four - online support
• Five - mysterious, black, enigma.
• Six - domain parked
• Seven - something to do with cellphones and PIM stuff
• Eight - online trading
• Nine - number 9 technology, defunct video card company - I used to have a VGA card by these guys in like, high school.
• Ten - erm, porn. Definitely NSFW link.

You get quite the range of the internet when you do this. I was so expecting to have a porn site on there somewhere.

1. What do you do for a living? I work at the University of Minnesota as a Teaching Assistant, currently teaching CSci 1901, a introduction to programming course.

2. What do you like most about your job? Teaching is one of the most rewarding experiences that I have ever had. I love to teach large classes, groups of 30 or more people.

3. What do you like least about your job? Grading - it’s one of the most boring part of the job, but it just needs to get done. I wish I could just teach and not worry about grades.

4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because _____… I didn’t get grading done that I needed to finish, or I feel that I have done a bad job conveying information to the students in the class.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in? I have thought about being a sysadmin at a college or small company for a while, or going and working some level of help desk support. Sometimes I think about menial jobs, ones that would not require large amounts of thought, but would always be done at 5.

I feel like I’ve just been just going through the motions of life lately. Get homework done, watch anime, work on some Debian packages, chat a little, sleep. Today is another Thursday I know will feel way longer than it really will be.

Sunday I went to see Hellboy. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t good either. It had a terrific setup (the part before the opening sequence was excellent), but fell flat later. More variety in the enemies would have been nice. I understand that the director/writer was trying to be true to the actual comics though.

We had a decent Steganography talk on Monday. I hope that he gets hired - he really knows how to present information well, I think he would be a good professor simply for teaching.

I skipped a meeting with a couple of CEO candidates Tuesday because I just didn’t feel like getting up. Apparently some excitement happened while it was going on - people showed up who we weren’t really interested in seeing the robots (we’ve had a bad past with them). Went out Tuesday night to the Edina grill with silvrayn and the LJ-silent want_a_be, with yummy french-toasty pound cake for dessert.

Wednesday was entirely a working on code day, although I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. I got hungry halfway through the day so I went and grabbed some Nutty Bars from the little convenience store in Coffman. Later went to Vescios for dinner, which was very good.

Lately I feel like I want to sleep a lot. Maybe this weekend I will be able to satisfy that. Class is coming up now, so I better wrap this up.

From silvrayn, kitchenwitch, and others: I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Mage Bard

Alignment: Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered ‘normal’.

Race: Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class: Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.

Secondary Class: Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Deity: Mystra is the Neutral Good goddess of magic. She is also known as the Lady of Mysteries. Followers of Mystra wear armor and carry shields with her symbol on them. Mystra’s symbol is a ring of stars.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan(e-mail)