chaz720.net - journal

March 04, 2002

No song today. Sadly, I haven't even been able to relax and listen to music in the last two days, and I don't see a huge opening coming up for me to do so in the near future.

Monday night I have two tests one right after the other in both ece313 and physics113. Sunday night I had online homework due for ece210. Wednesday I have written homework for ece210 and ece313 due and each of these takes several hours to deal with, hgarhgarhgar. Next week I have tests in music and ece210 as well as the usual ece313, physics, and ece210 work due weekly, I can't wait until spring break so long as I don't have a heart attack between then and now.

Also, if you don't live in the midwest this may be news to you, it's 4� outside at the moment, with a wind chill of -14�. Patches of grass feel like concrete and all the concrete is covered in ice. Walking to the library to study was like waking through an arctic tundra and my face was burning when I got inside, yay for shitty weather!

On the bright side of things Illinois defeated Minnesota Sunday to grab their piece of the big ten championship pie. It was a great game too considering we came back from playing some of the worst basketball in the history of the sport with something like 22 turnovers, to win the game by one with about 4 seconds left on the clock. It doesn't get much closer than that.

Also, I taught myself MySQL Saturday. That and all the joys of setting up apache with php and a mysql server to use as a test bed. Though at the moment I simply have no time to convert this page over to use SQL, I will most likely do that sometime in the not so distant future. While you most likely won't see any changes made to the layout of the site when it happens, you will most likely note pages loading faster, particularly things like searches (if you use it), calls to individual journal pages (from the credits page) and other stuff like posting as well. MySQL is a great way to store information and it makes it rediculously easier to manage, sort, and search through..

All that aside, it's about time I got some rest so that I can work my ass off through these next couple weeks here and get some more than deserved vacation time.

March 13, 2002

Hey, dont write yourself off yet. It's only in your head you feel left out, or looked down on. Just do your best, Do everything you can. And don't you worry what they tell themselves when you're away. It just takes some time, little girl, you're in the middle of the ride. Everything, everything will be just fine. Everything, everything will be allright, alright. Hey, you know they're all the same. You know you're doing better on your own, so don't buy in. Live right now. Yeah, just be yourself. It doesn't matter if it's good enough for someone else. Hey, dont rite yourself off yet It's only in your mind you feel left out or looked down on. Just try your best, Try everything you can. And don't you worry what their bitter hearts are gonna say.

Instantly fell in love with this song. Heard it at a friends place when I was finishing up ece210 homework. Had to get it, it and about a dozen other of their songs.

I'm taking a moment to write cause I need to get a break from studying for this blasted music test. Ga'h, the last couple weeks have really just taken it out of me. I've gotten pretty apathetic about school and I'm doing the work and doing the studying in more of a fashion of just going through the motions, and trying to look just to next week to get away from classes. It's been hell I'll tell you that.

The more I've been getting swamped the more I've been going to get help from office hours, friends, and the course newsgroups. I've never really had to do this before as going to class and maybe some reading from the book was usually enough to get through a course, but here it's just not cutting it. Maybe that's some form of lesson overtone that they are trying to lay down on us, "you are not a god, go get some help for god's sake." Well if it is, it worked, I know how and where to get help with my work... now knock it the fuck off.

I haven't really driven anywhere around campus in a while cause I usually just walk if I'm staying on campus using the car to head over to the commercial area of the city to buy things and this doesn't take me toward campus at all. This practice has prevented me from noticing the absolute shit that the streets around here have turned into. I just gave Corrine a ride home a couple hours ago and I felt like I was off-roading most of the way. It generally has to do with some overly-elaborate city beautification project that is not doubt being funded in part by the Bears coming down here next year. Particularly since the target date of completion fits snugly just before the start of the NFL preseason. To be honest, I don't really care, as long as it friggin gets done while I still go to school here :D

So march madness eh? I don't know. I'm psyched for the tournament, but pools don't really look all that attractive because I'd end up betting against what I actually want to happen in some cases and I have a hard time in good mind doing that, so I might just try to enjoy it at it's face value.

No real plans for spring break, and I decided I don't really care. My sisters are going to be in town for at least a few days that anywhere I went would keep me away from so I'm just going to say screw it. I'd rather just relax and do as little as possible. Typical burn-out fashion... Just a couple more months and then I can go back home and work 40 hours a week, I tell you, after a semester like this, it looks really damn good.

March 28, 2002

Shaking like a dog shittin' razorblades, waking up next to nothing after dreaming of you and me. I'm waking up all alone, waking up so relieved. While you're taking your time with apologies, I'm making my plans for revenge. Red eyes on orange horizons, if Columbus was wrong I'd drive straight off the edge. I'd drive straight off the edge. Taking your own life with boredom, I'm taking my own life with wine - it helps you to rule out the sorrow, it helps me to empty my mind. Making the most of a bad time I'm smoking the brains from my head Leaving the coal calling the kettle black and orange and red This kettle is seeing red. I've got a big fat fuckin' bone to pick with you my darling. In case you haven't heard I'm sick and tired of trying. I wish you would take my radio to bathe with you, plugged in and ready to fall.

Alkaline Trio is so hilariously bitter, I love it.

Busy, Busy, Busy. Spring break was so refreshingly boring I don't even know if words are good enough. After spending the majority of my time either doing work or putting off work, never being free of some (or several) very large assignment(s), the opportunity to wake up at noon and do nothing of any productive outcome until I fell asleep at two in the morning was awesome.

But that being over, I'm back to my usual rut. It took no time at all to end up with the same assignments each week so yay for the lack of hope for change! All joking aside my classes aren't too bad so much any more, actual real world applications are poking their heads out of the chainlinked, barbed-wire fences of calculus, trig, and physics that I've been climbing over recently. It's like I can see the real world on the other side, and I'm gonna get their any time now... ...no really. Or at least that helps me fall asleep.

Next semester I think I have my classes picked out so I will be happy to share with you all my tenative plans for next fall, aren't you just overjoyed?

ECE229 - 3 hours - This is a class where we study electromagnetic waves and interference as it pertains to an engineer's life. Here we throw out the lovely assumptions of earlier physics and account for thing like solar flares when trying to figure out the maximum range you can get out of a walkie-talkie.
ECE249 - 2 hours - In this class we get raped for hours as the class actually meets 4 hours a week all semester and requires about 8-10 hours of work outside class to accomplish all that is asked of us, not too bad for a 2 hour course don't you think? Basically we design big 'ol circuits to do things and build them in and out of a lab, I'll spare the details.
MBIO 100 - 3 hours - This is to fulfil a basic science requirement and I heard microbio 100 was really easy. Studying cells and such I suppose. (if you are a microbiologist and you are offended by my trivialization of your life's work, go jump in a hole.)
CS 173 - 2 hours - this class is a formality that stands between me and talking further computer science courses. It covers such torturous topics as "descrete math" and "logic". Things that are assumed known in several other classes I've talken a year ago.
TAM 152 - 3 hours - Engineering Statics. You hang a sign from a building and support it with a cable to it's far corner, what's the tension in the cable? That kind of thing, a little more complicated though, but you get the idea.
COMM 2-something - 3 hours - You watch movies and discuss them, some other people are taking this and I figured it didn't sound too bad. It's a western class and I need one

So yeah that's it, it might change, it might stand, I don't really know. At some point I have to dig my worthless sack of meat they call an advisor out of his cave and hope he doesn't decide to go on vaction during the week I need him to sign forms again, the little rat bastard.

We had a discussion in my music class today and watched a video concerning the Chief Illiniwek controversy. I thought the video was almost entirely against the Chief, and portrayed all supporters as ignoramuses who wave their hands around drunkenly and claim things like, "American indians have no right to protest so lets throw rocks at them for holding up signs." There are few things I don't like being called more than a racist, as I don't desplay any hate or contempt for anyone based on their ethnic background. While I felt the magazine and newspaper ads that were run claiming the lack of sports teams named "the blacks", "the jews", or "the caucasians" has gone surprisingly unnoticed were quite clever indeed, I also feel that the people against the Cheif refusing to see this as a gray area is more close minded then those who cheer as the Chief comes out on the field or court to dance.

The fact of the matter is, everyone is going to draw a line as to where they get offended by anything in some different place. I don't care for cartoons depicting indians as tontos of the past running around smacking their hand on their lips as they shoot arrows at wagon caravans, but I fail to see a problem with a Chief that preforms a dance that all who support respect a great deal, and by no means do so to mock that which it represents. Meanwhile people who outright hate the concept of the Chief have no expressed concern over the fact that the entire state of Illinois is named after an indian tribe that was completely annihilated by European deseases and settlers who killed the remaining native population to recieve bounty from the state government. How do you draw a line at sporting event ceremonies and not and the irony of hte states name? It makes your arguement look sloppy to me. Of course I'll likely be grouped with those who shout "go back to your tipi" in the minds of protestors so I feel like I'm wasting my breath.

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