I seem to be batting 1000 on quizzes today… they all fit so well… scary.

Which Ultimate Beautiful Woman are You?
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What box do you get put in?
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What fantasy race in ME are you???
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lol… especially this one:

Which book of the Bible are you?
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Not his one, so much… but then again…. I dunno.

What Fantasy Race Are You?
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ok, ok… enough quizzes. For today.

I have the most wonderful boyfriend in the whole world… he’s stuck in an airport right now, trying to make it home to see me for Thankgiving.

See, it went something like this… I have spent the last umm…. three months? Stressing about whether Chad was going to make it down for Thanksgiving, and whether I was going to go up the Southaven, and whether I was going to go up there even if he didn’t make it, yada yada yada… And Chad decided it would be a great idea to just show up here this morning and pick me up… Which was, of course, a wonderful idea. Except for one thing… no one factored in Chad’s odd luck… yeah. So Chad got on an airplane last night to fly from Denver to Indiana (I think?)… but the plane was an hour late leaving (it wasn’t Chad’s fault, I swear!)… So Chad missed his connecting flight to Memphis. And the airline said “Oh, we’re so sorry… We’ll put you on a plane to Memphis a 1pm on Thankgiving day… but no, you can’t have your luggage back, we’ll send it to Memphis on the next flight. Here’s a t-shirt and some toothpaste for your trouble.” And Chad yelled and kicked and screamed… but they wouldn’t do anything… so he ended up staying the night in wherever he is… and spending the day in the airport trying to make it on an earlier flight… there’s one more flight today he might be able to get on, but it’s probably overbooked, so we’re not sure. But he will definately fly out tomorrow… no later than 1pm… and then he’s coming to get me… and I’ll be all happy and stuff… and we will eat turkey.

The moral of the story is: never fly Northwest… and always account for Chad’s luck to randomly kick in at some point during a trip *grin*

So I’m here at school, until tomorrow afternoon… and everyone else has left. it’s an interesting feeling… I don’t think I’ve ever been on campus when it was this quiet… not even Easter weekend. I took a walk earlier tonight, and the lights are off in most of the buildings… the drill field is dark… the union is locked… there are a max of five cars in any given parking lot… But the engineering buildings (Simrall and Walker, in particular) are still a buzz pf activity… all the lights are on… random students entering and exiting the buildings… Yeah, I have a lot to look forward to in the future… This won’t be the only semester I have to pull all-nighters on a regular basis. Which is depressing… but not too depressing tonight, because it’s a gorgeous night, it’s clear and cold and still… and quiet… it’s nice. I can’t be depressed on a night like tonight… the only thing that would make it better is if someone else were here… someone who could go walking with me, and talk, but would know when to shut up and enjoy the stillness.

On a totally different note, I caught up with a couple of my boys last night… people I hadn’t seen in a while. It’s interesting… people change, and yet… they never really do. It’s hard to explain. But anyway… guys gradually lose contact with me because they get a new girlfriend and she doesn’t like me, or they think that I won’t approve of her, or because they are doing something they know I would kick their butt for… or whatever… but eventually, they come back. For whatever reason… I don’t understand why… but it makes me feel like Mom… I’m here to make food for the guys and give them advice, and they start ignoring me after a while…. and when the world starts falling down around their ears, they come running back to me. Like I’m the keeper of normalicy or something… like I can make everything better… like… like I’m in charge. It’s an odd feeling… I’m not sure I like people feeling like I’m all powerful or in charge… I’m actually glad that I’m not in charge of the world… being in charge is a stressful thing.

But anyway…. back to the point… said boys are doing well… I may have to kick their butts later this year, but we’ll see about that one. One of them (who’s 19) is now dating a *30-year-old* divorced woman… He says he’s dating her because she likes him, and she’s “more experianced.” More experianced at what? I asked him… he answer was vauge… Something about dating. Yeah… he and I may have to talk about that one. “More experianced” usually means “more risk of disease”… And he’s not the kind of person to think of these things ahead of time. But, other than that…. they seem to be doing well. Which is good. The world has managed to survive without me, for the most part, this semester.

Oh well… I had better get back to killing time… I have Christmas cards to finish, and dishes to do, and I should pack or something… and sleep. Sleep is good.

Whew… I feel somewhat better. The project is over… and I have had (a little) sleep… and break is coming up… it’s all good.

And, I don’t feel nearly as bad for not taking my Circuits test… The teacher had told me that my final exam grade could subsitute for this test grade if I was too sick to take it… and warned that putting %30 of my grade on the final prolly wasn’t a good thing… but here are the stats from the exam:

Average: 41

A – 1

B – 1

C – 1

D – 5

F – 13

Yeah. I thought I knew my stuff, but still… given the fact that I couldn’t concentrate at all, I would have totally bombed the test (the low score, by the way, was a 2). I’l have to kick my butt for the final… but there’s not much I can do about that right now. Right now, I’m going to take a nap. Naps are good.

Note to world: I am far past the 24-hours-with-no-sleep mark…. I am in a bad mood, and I will use whatever laguage I feel is neccessary to convey my emotions. Do not mess with me, or I will hurt you. A lot.

And now that my group project is over, and I have the right to say whatever the hell I feel like, I want to say a few things:

• If you don’t bother to show up for the last group meeting of the semester (like, the one where we write the project)… and you don’t e-mail or call… don’t bring your whiney-ass self up to the lab an hour before the presentation and try to get a good group rating.
• Don’t blame your non-communicativeness on having another program due today… I had two tests, but I put my ass on the line for your damn grade… and ended up being too sick to take either.
• Don’t tell me that my other group member (the one who stayed up in the lab with me from 2pm yesterday until 9am this morning) is a jerk, or imply that he has something against you. He has the same thing against you I do: you didn’t show up, and we ended up doing all the fucking work.
• Do not, do not, do not look at me pitifully during group evaluations and try to get me to feel sorry for you. I have already been to talk to Momma Donna, and she has told me to grade you on the work I feel you put into the project… which means you are fizucked. Sorry.
• People who pass out in the shower in the morning shouldn’t have to go back to the lab and listen to presentations. And deal with group dynamics. Or anything like that. They should be given a day to sleep.
• Teachers who require you to go to the doctor and get a note to be excused from a test after you call them and tell them you passed out in the shower are assholes, and should be shot on sight. If you are passing out in the shower, how the bloody hell are you supposed to walk/drive to the Health Center? I have only ever missed three tests in my life, and two of them were today… I must be pretty damn sick.

Other interesting things learned by this experiance:

• Caffine and sudafed make a really wicked combination… but will keep you wired for however long you need.
• Helios should have unlimited swap space… at least during final presentations.
• The Sun labs (Butler 213) stink… no really, we are talking about some serious funk, here….
• Some one seriously needs to clean the women’s bathroom in Butler. I know it doesn’t get used very often, but goddammit… the trash hasn’t been emptied in two weeks.
• It is amazing what is funny at 6am coming off of an all-nighter
• All-nighters are much more fun when you’re not pulling them by yourself

On a more pleasent note, I am nominating Jeremy for sainthood… he put up with a hell of a lot of shit in the last week. I really didn’t think we were going to make it… but we did. At the last minute, but still… we made it. And that has to say something. And after a night in the lab, I really feel like we’re friends… we’ll see how next semester’s classes go… I might have found a study person (if, of course, we can work around his frat-boy social activities *grin*).

And it’s all over. Which is the only thing that really matters in the end. And I have a doctor’s appointment in an hour. And after that, I can crash… for a few hours… then I have to study for my micro test (tomorrow @ 9:30am). And then I can sleep some more. And Thanksgiving is coming… Chad’s family will love me because I will sleep all weekend, and not talk or socialize or anything. *sigh*

Yeah. I’m going to veg for a few minutes. Before I have to walk to the Health Center.

Quote of the week:

Wow. I just freaked out! I thought my toenail was a bug!

Guess who said that?

Note: Sickness + sleep dep + stress = depressed.

Yeah. That’s about it. I have this awful feeling that sometime this weekend I’m going to break my rule about not crying in the computer lab… It seems like everything is setting me off… I have cried more in the past three days than I have cried all bloody year… Yeah. So I guess tomorrow, I’ll have to give Jeremy the “If I start bawling it’s not your fault” speech. Hope I don’t freak the dude out…

These coding nightmares are killing me… I tried to nap, but I started dreaming… I was stuck inside a java source file, and I couldn’t get out… I was walking through all the member data and methods and everything (Like I was stuck in the computer screen, walking over the text)… I kept tripping over the dadgum curly braces, too.. they were getting caught in my shoelaces like some kind of wild vine or something. Then an SQL exception started chasing me through the code (I know it was an SQL exception, because it looked like a a giant squirrel… dadgum you, William)… I knew if I could make it into the Oracle database, I could hide in the User table I made for the site, and the SQLexception couldn’t go there. But first I had to remember the password to get in… and then when I did, I couldn’t connect to the database… And the SQL exception was still after me… and I looked at my watch and it was 11:00pm, which means the database was down for backup. For thirty minutes. And I knew I was going to die. The last thing I thought before the SQL exception pounced on me and I woke up was “Damn… Why didn’t I just set up a try / catch block?”

And, of course, that made no sense to anyone who has never programmed in Java. But that’s ok, you should get the gist of it (If you missed it in all the technical stuff: A giant squirrel was chasing me around a computer screen and I couldn’t get away. And the squirrel caught me and did whatever sqirrels do to you when the catch you, but I missed that part, because I woke up).

So yeah… taking lots of drugs does weird things to your dream life.

Blah… I hate school. And I hate being sick even more. Blah. Blah.

So Hamaker sent me an e-mail back and basically said I had too many hours, poor time management skills, and I didn’t understand the material. And that if I wanted to pass, I needed to spend like, three hours a day in his office. And that’s not happening. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with that. I’ll deal, I guess. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m stuck here for an extra semester… If Chad and I want to get married the summer of 2004, and I’m still in school that fall… that will only work if he is here. And we don’t know that yet. So my entire life is up in the air over Circuit Analysis. I never knew engineering could be this much fun…

I’m so sick… I’m sick of being sick. I feel totally lifeless. And I feel like a druggie… I’m on three perscriptions right now (not including my hormones), plus two inhalers, over the counter Nyquil and Wal-Tussin, and an assortment of vitamins and herbs and crap. It feels like I’m eating a bowl of pills for breakfast or something… And, almost all of these drugs have side effects that include nausea and fatigue. Nausea’s not too much of a problem, as I have had like, NO appitiete in the last week. The fatigue is killing me. But that’s ok… I can sleep this weekend.

I have gotten like, 10 hours of sleep in the last four days. Not sleeping sucks. But I haven’t had a whole lot of choice… I’ve been up in the lab working on stuff until after 2am every night… I beginning to wonder how much of my CSIII group project is going to function properly. It’s due Monday, and…. Yeah. At least Jeremy is working on it really hard, too… I don’t mind pulling all-nighters, but it sucks to do it by myself. Jeremy has really pulled through in the last couple of days… and stayed up in the lab until 2am working on stuff with me. He even kicked me out last night (this morning) and told me I needed to go home and sleep. Which I tried to do… but between antibiotic induced nightmares about coding auction sites, and coughing my lungs up, I didn’t get very much sleep. We still have a lot to do on the site… I’ll be up there tomorrow and on Sunday… prolly all night Sunday night.

But not today… nope. I’m taking the day off. And trying to get better. And sleeping. And making a Wally-World run for coughdrops and soup. And sleeping. A lot. Hopefully. Yeah.

A transcipt of the e-mail I just sent my Circuit Analysis teacher:

When I got your e-mail today, I felt bad about not coming to your office to get my rework checked. I thought maybe there could have been some time I could have made it to you office (despite the fact that I had classes, labs, and group project meetings scheduled surring all of your office hours this last week)… maybe I could have made an appointment or something. I really thought I had screwed up by not coming to your office.

But then, I talked to some of the other people who had their tests returned… most of the ones I talked to said they had been by your office (some of them multiple times, at least one person came to see you three times) to have their work checked. And they seemed to think that you had checked their work fairly well, and they were ready to turn it in. And yet they all had their tests returned, the same as I did.

I guess what I’m asking is this… how much would it really benifit me to have you check my work?

Yes, I was upset that I did something stupid on a problem… but my mistakes my fault, so I was upset with myself. I would be a whole lot more upset if I had time to come to see you, and then had my test returned anyway… not only would I be upset that I had made a stupid mistake, but that you had looked at my work and hadn’t caught it.

Seeing as I didn’t get out of lab today until 4:30, there was no way I could get the rrework back to you by 5pm today. And, since I’ll be in class from 9:30am to 6:30pm tomorrow, with no breaks, I won’t be able to get you to check my work this time either. I have no idea where my mistake is… and asking anyone but you (other teachers, classmates, or upperclassmen) for help is cheating… so I don’t know if I’ll be able to turn this in or not. I really need the points… but what’s the point of turning it in when I know I’m going to make a zero?

I am extremely frustrated with this class. My dad is an electronics tech, and I grew up helping him fix things and running checks on circuits, so I was fairly familar with circuits in general before i took this class, although not to the depth that we’ve covered them. I feel like I’m learning the material… I understand what’s going on… I can do the homework… and yet I’m still failing the class.

Granted, I have been / am sick this semester, and I missed turning in a couple of homework assignments. But I didn’t skip them… I went back and did the work, even though I couldn’t get it done in time to turn it in. I was one question away from having the last test rework turned in… but I couldn’t get the right answer for one of the problems. And I wasn’t going to turn it in if I was going to get a zero on it anyway.

The homework frustrates me, because I never know if I’m doing it exactly right… Even checking the solutions after I get the assignment back, I have trouble determining if my answer is different from their because theirs is wrong, or if I got the right answer but followed the wrong procedure…

Even when I’m not in class, I’m spending a minimum of 15-20 hours a week working on circuits… doing the homework, doing extra homework, looking over the lecture notes… that’s more time than I’m spending on any of my other classes. But I’m not seeing any results. And I’m frustrated by that. I don’t know how to make it any better… I obviously don’t have more time to spend on studying for this class (I have 18 hours this semester). I’ve tried studying in groups, and studying by myself… nothing helps. I’m not spending my time out partying or playing computer games or anything stupid like that. I don’t go out on the weekends, and this year I don’t even go to home football games.

So what can I do to do any better? Can I do any better? I really can’t afford to fail this class… but there may not be much I can do about it at this point.

I’m working so hard at this, and I’m not seeing any results… I really don’t know what else to do. I really feel like I belong in Computer Engineering… but maybe I don’t. Maybe hardware isn’t my thing, and I should drop to CS. Maybe I’m just too stupid to be an engineer in general… I don’t know.

I’ll work on the rework again tonight and see if I can get anywhere… and if I do, I’ll turn it in tomorrow afternoon. If I don’t, I guess I’ll just have to deal with it. There’s not much else I can do.

Dorinne Glasscock

Computer Engineering

Yeah… not sure if I should have sent it or not.. but I did. So there. At least it’s out in the open.

Blah. Being sick sucks. Being sick and having loads of crap to do sucks even worse. Blah.

Myra says I have a bacterial infection… so she’s keeping me on the inhaler, and giving me more nightmare antibiotics. Which should be ok, because I don’t envision myself sleeping anytime soon anyway.

I have a few dead minutes now… then I have lab from 12-3, and make-up lab from 3-6, then I have to meet Jeremy in the Butler labs at 6… then finish my micro lab (that I didn’t finish last night because I ended up talking to Mike for, like, two hours and something)… then study for my Linear test tomorrow… then study for my micro lab test tomorrow… and I have class at 9:30 am tomorrow. Which means that the most amount of sleep I could possibly get, if I forgo eating and showering (which I prolly won’t…. I at least need to shower)… is something like 4 1/2 hours. Which is about how much sleep I got last night. And I’ll get less sleep on Thursday. Because I have to stay up all night and finish my CSIII project… which is due on Monday. And then I have to study for a Cal test and a circuits test…. both Monday… and a micro test on tuesday. And I’m going home this weekend.

So yeah… I may be posting to fill in the last 15 minutes or so before class, but don’t expect to hear too much out of me… unless school gets to me and I fee lthe need to rant. Which is very possible. Eh. We’ll see. At least the semester is almost over… that helps.

yay! it finally published (I’ve been working on it for like, 20 minutes)