Thursday, September 22, 2005

I'm lagging

Phew, I have a lot to talk about tonight.

>>> 1 <<<
I went and saw a pyschologic counselor on Tuesday hoping that they could help me find a way out of this mess I've seemingly gotten myself into. It was good, and it helped a little to just talk things out. I'm going to go to another session next week. The counselor seemed primarily concerned with my lack of ability in expressing my anger towards people, and for next week I have to write a letter to a certain someone in my life that I have a lot of bottled up anger to. I'm looking really forward to writing that. :)


>>> 2 <<<
Another guy and I got lost on the run this morning and ended up overshooting a turn by like three quarters of a mile. It sucked, because I had run the night before too and so I was totally exhausted. I realized later this morning that I had run about 12 miles in the last 12 hours. No wonder I was so damn exhausted. It was really hard for me to move my body today. @_@


>>> 3 <<<
Okay, I have two unexplained phenomenon with my (failed) attempts to find a roommate (I've had something like 15-20 interested girls now). The first is that none of these girls have come to actually see the place. We setup a date, I make myself available, and then I either get an "oh sorry I just found a place", or they just disappear off the face of the Earth. :( The second is that 5 of those girls now, after saying they can't live with me, said that they wanted to meet me anyway. And most of them said that they wanted me to "show them around Austin". O_o What the hell am I, an escort service? Jeez! I don't get it. (But the most recent girl who told me that is cute, so maybe I will this time ;)


>>> 4 <<<
I'm starting to seriously consider changing my major to biomedical engineering. Its just so damn cool learning all these things about how the body works in my neurophysiology class, and it just "feels" better than ECE. I can't explain it. Its like I've fallen in love with it or something. I'll probably get my masters degree in computer engineering anyway (since I'm about half way there, I might as well). But I'm really starting to wonder if I can somehow afford to stay in school and study bio-med a little more...


>>> 5 <<<
Hurricane Rita is coming to visit this weekend! I just got an e-mail that campus is closed for Saturday, and we're expecting 75MPH winds and heavy rain (4-6 inches I think it said). Should be fun! They said be prepared for power outages, but I hope it doesn't come to that (cause I usually work on Allacrost on the weekends!). Well, if I lose power then I guess I can always do homework or something. Heck, this might be the most productive weekend in my life! ;)


I'll post about how that hurricane thing goes once it passes. Oh, and I should have some really wicked awesome pictures to post next time, so stay tuned. :)

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Weirdness

I had a crazy dream last night that I thought I would share.

In this dream I was not me, but rather I was this young, reckless private in the army or something. I remember I was running around the hanger or something trying to avoid the huge, gigantic, angry drill sergeant. The next thing I remember is I was on the deck of a battleship on top of a tank with some war buddies and we were eating baby squids for lunch. These squids had a single small white eyeball, and sometimes there was a "booguer" behind the eyeball that you had to pry out, which was like a little rock. I had been eating the squid, eyeballs and all (but no booguers/rocks) and when I got to my third one, I got a close look at its eyeball and it made me sick. I turned to someone and I was like "Man, I feel sick after looking at this eyeball and realizing I've been eating them.", and the guy tells me that everyone else is picking out the eyeball and not eating them. For some reason, this makes me really pissed that no one told me that and I half-purposely/half-accidentally fire the tank. Well no one is killed by the explosion on the ship deck, but about half of them are on fire now running around, and we're trying to put out the fire on everyone. No one was really mad at me though for some reason (I'd be pretty pissed if I was them though).

So the next scene takes place in court where I'm being charged with killing like 1/3rd of the men and severely injuring/disabling most of the others. I'm sitting in there with some lawyers and military brass and junk waiting for the judge panel to come (I don't know how a court martial works by the way). Then I spot at the front of the courtroom an Intel 8086, and I'm like WOAH! So I get real close and check it out. (After this instance, I realized my dream was taking place in the 80s. Rock on!) Then the judge panel comes in and after spending about 5 seconds staring at them as they walk towards me (and I'm still hovering over that 8086), I take off and make my way past security out of the courtroom. Of course, they give chase and there's like 50 guys all around trying to grab me. Once I step outside of the courtroom I realize that I'm in the middle of an airport (who keeps a courtroom at the airport?). So I'm running and dodging these guys, and then I jump and land on this weird patch of land.

Then this Japanese guy comes up and says (with a funny Japanese voice) "Ohhh too bad for you guys. This Japan territory so he okay now." So the guards (+ judges who are now there) realize there's nothing they can do to me now that I'm not on American soil, so they give up and walk away. Then I'm standing there kind of dumbfounded, and the Japanese guy (who's dressed in business attire) asks me to come with him and another guy on a shuttle train. There he's talking to me and propositions that I come work for some electronics company in Japan (I forgot the exact name of the company, but it was something hilarious like "Happy Fun Zoom Zoom Co."). I accept, and he gives me a plane ticket and says goodbye, then leaves his adjunct to take care of me.

The adjunct only knows Japanese (and is female) and she's talking to me in Japanese (I love it when I dream in Japanese by the way). She keeps telling me ああ、君はめちゃく河合ね! (Aah, you're such a cutie!) And I reply 私?あまりかわいくないよ。(Me? I'm not that cute.) And I also noticed that my grammar was wrong in the last sentence and correct myself ええ、かわくない。She giggles and then after getting past security, we board the plane. Then I go on to be the main driving force behind why Japan is the leader in electronics in the world today.


I can imagine the reaction on your face as you are reading this. O_o Yes, I have very weird dreams (on my scale this probably ranks 6 or 7 out of 10 on my weirdness scale). Ever since I had this near-fatal accident when I was 14, which left me with permanent brain damage, my dreams are incredibly real and often remembered very vividly. In fact, the above dream was kind of a transition from another weird ass dream (which I don't remember as well) where I was a sports player or something, and I remember there was a donkey and like water polo or something. I dunno, but I think it was even weirder than my above dream. Anyway, hope you enjoyed hearing about my dream (people usually do). :) I'll post more interesting dreams as they come to me.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Lacking Motivation

I've been in a slump for a week now and it's starting to get worse. I am lacking motivation to do anything right now. I'm not motivated to study, because grades don't really matter in grad school, and I'm not going to be just some lap dog that cranks out useless research papers every month. I'm not motivated to do work/my thesis, because I worked on it since April and I'm not getting paid to do work for Freescale at the moment. I'm not motivated to translate because I've been placing Allacrost as my priority over it lately, and my favorite series to translate has already been licensed. :( And I'm starting to lose motivation to work on my game as well, just because there's so much work to do and we're missing a couple key players right now to really achieve the next stage.

The past 24 hours or so I've spent vexing over if I'm doing the right things right now that will bring me happiness. From the last several months, I've discovered that success in academia/the workplace does not bring happiness. It only brings me more work to do. What is happiness anyway? What do I have to do to be happy? What should I be doing to make me happy? I just don't know the answer to these things. Okay, I'm going to stop myself here before I start rambling on about nothing. Anyway, if you have any insight or motivational words you can give me, I need all the encouragement I can get right now to get things done!

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

The Insanity is Coming...

Well so far I've managed to keep things under control this semester. But years of experience has shown that that state never lasts for long. I nervously await what is known as "the bulge". That period when all the sudden, reality comes crashing down on you all at once. You suddenly have homework and lab assignments due in every class. You realize a midterm is on the horizon. Your advisor starts giving you a bunch of pointless work to do and tells you to get a paper out of it. Your former employer calls you up and starts making absurb demands for work to be done. These are the events that I soon see happening to me, and there is nothing I can do but wait for the inevitable.


Well dark things aside, I joined the UT Marathon Team this week. They seem like a good bunch of people and I'm sure it will help me to get faster and stay in shape if I run with others instead of trying to run by myself. Others have expressed doubts in my ability to continue doing all the things I do during this semester, but I refuse to let grad school tie me down any longer! I shall not submit to the whim of others, but seek my own path to enlightenment!!!....and stuff. >_> I was telling the professor I TA for about my Neurophysiology class and about how its going to be tough for me because there's so many new things to me. He told me "Well, don't be afraid to bail out at the end!". I know he didn't mean anything by that, but I don't like it when other people suggest that I give something up because its too hard. Who cares if its hard? Is that seriously the mindset people go through in life? I sure don't think like that. Once I start something, I will never give up until I see it finished. That's one reason why my game is still proceeding smoothly and not dead like so many other projects, and also part of the reason why I'm not going for a PhD (hey, if I never start then I also never say I quit it ;).

Thursday, September 01, 2005

BRAINS!!!

So I had my first Neurophysiology/Prosthesis Design lecture today and I found out something totally awesome. We're going to dissect a human brain in about a month! How COOL is that!? Man, that's like one of the items on my "things to do before I die" list. *crosses out* I would like to consider this my first major step towards becoming a mad scientist. Now I just have to work on the evil maniacal laughter. MWAHAHAHAHAH!!!

So why am I taking such a class? After all, I study computer architecture, don't I? The answer to that question is simply "because I want to". I do not like my life to be static. I like to be learning new and different things all the time. I mean I like computer architecture and all, but for good god I need a break from all this computer junk and to explore a new area. Besides, a brain can be thought of as an advanced, organic computer anyway, right? And even in the first day, I learned SO many new things that I never had any clue about before. Why take another computer-related class that is probably going to recycle a lot of the things I already know?

I think the class is going to be pretty tough though, because I still need to learn all this new vocabulary and stuff that everyone else seemed to already know. But when I want to do something, I don't let anything stop me from doing it, no matter how hard it is. That's just a part of who I am I guess. :)