chaz720.net - journal

January 20, 2005

Sittin' in the morning sun. I'll be sittin' when the evening comes. Watching the ships roll in, then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah. I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Ooh, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time. I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco bay. 'Cos I've had nothing to live for, and look like nothing's gonna come my way. So, I'm just gonna sit on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Ooh, I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time. Look like nothing's gonna change. Everything still remains the same. I can't do what ten people tell me to do. So I guess I'll remain the same, listen. Sittin' here resting my bones. And this loneliness won't leave me alone, listen. 2000 miles I've roamed, just to make this dock my home. Now I'm just gonna sit at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Ooh wee, I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time.

A new year, a new semester in grad school, a new project at work, a new running schedule, and a new appreciation for sunny weather. What do all these things have in common?

Uh, nothing really.

The boogie in Eloy was pretty sweet, but I still haven't gotten the hang of getting a lot of jumps in at boogies like this. I think maybe there's something very very wrong with my sense of timing.

At a big boogie, you get down from a jump, put your rig down, check at manifest, and find there's three planes on call, at 5, 10, and 15 minutes. You figure it takes you 10-15 minutes to pack, so none of those are go. You go pack, walk back to manifest and now there are 20, 25, and 30 minute calls. Fantastic! But there's not enough slots on any of them for your group, d'oh! So you go grab a snack and some water and wait a bit. Now you go back, and the next round is up for manifest, so you get on a 40 minute call. Now you've got plenty of time to toss around ideas for the next jump, or in a more-likely scenario, sit around and be a bunch of bums.

The call comes up. You get it on, get in, get up, get out, get off, get down, and get it together. Now you're back down and it's 3:40pm. The sun sets at 4:50 and there's a briefing for a sunset load you signed up for at 4:15, with take off at 4:30. You don't have time to pack and make another load or you'll miss the briefing. So it looks like you get to enjoy some more ground time with your fellow boogie patrons.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy relaxing every once in a while during a day of jumping, I just feel like people that are able to get 10 jumps in a day at these things are either incredibly lucky, or they've got some kinda mind-boggling, extra-sensory, mind-meld thing going on with whoever is running manifest.

My two new classes are going to be... interesting. Error Control Coding looks like it's going to be pretty cool, and the professor has been good so far. I've heard his style can make for a lot of work, but that you learn a ton in the process. This is fine by me, I think I'm at a point where no amount of work can phase me, so long as I can convince myself that I'm getting something important out of it.

Which brings me to Random Processes.

This course has earned the reputation as one of the more difficult ones you encounter on fellowship. Not due to the material directly, but because of the string of professors that only a course like this could attract. I've had a fair share of foreign professors in my time. But none in the past have ever sounded more as though speaking the English language was actually imparting upon them physical suffering. Combine this with an aversion to having his talking head in the corner of the screen (which would otherwise offer some additional clues in the ongoing "Mystery of the Jumbled Vowels") and I think I'm going to build a lasting relationship with the course notes I printed out from the website.

I'm as thankful as one can be that they aren't handwritten.

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