this is a strange place

I have so much crap to get done before the end of the semester, it’s insane. I really ought to be working on it now, but I need a break. Three papers due, a seven-pager due Monday for religion. Oh, how I hate that class. It’s like listening to three bad 50-minute sermons every week. A five-pager for english and an eight-pager for HPC due a week from Friday. A software engineering project that needs to be wrapped up and two more short reaction papers for psych. I did get my second experiment done for psych though, I’m glad to have that done. Anyhow, back to work.

For my psych class I have to write five different reaction papers through the semester. This one is on a subject that is really important to me, so I thought I would stick it here.

Reading the section on eating disorders in chapter 12 reminded me how much the typical media portrayal of women bothers me. We glorify a body type that is unattainable by 99% of the women in the world, a body type that is further enhanced by professional makeup, lighting and airbrushing. Woman, understandably, have got it into their heads that in order to be attractive they must conform to what is glorified by the media, but what is glorified in the media is not something that can be obtained by any woman.

How many times have you heard someone say that they had seen some celebrity in real life, and they didn’t look as good in real life as they do on screen? That’s because when you take these people away from their make-up artists, gaffers (lighting technicians) and touch-up artists, take them away from the people who are paid to make the celebrity look good and they really don’t look that different from you and me. They might be a bit skinnier, a bit better looking, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Despite that fact millions of people (particularly women) are killing themselves with eating disorders, and spending millions of dollars on make-up, health clubs and plastic surgery to try to conform to a standard that no one can live up to, not even the people who are setting the standard.

I wish women would wake up to the fact that most of them are attractive just the way they are. They don’t need to wear a ton of makeup, they don’t need to starve themselves, they don’t need to fit into a size 4 dress, they don’t need to be fake in order to be attractive. As the adage goes, beauty is only skin deep. What you are underneath is what’s really important.

I hate theme designers. It is almost impossible to find a theme that is really, really good. I’m not just talking about wordpress here, but in general. When I’m looking for a theme, I first have to weed out 75% of the crap that was thrown together by colorblind martians, or people who don’t understand the meaning of the word contrast. Clue: blue text on a slightly darker blue is HARD TO READ! Some people enjoy not getting a migraine while reading, and I happen to be one of those people. Oh, and white on black is not artsy.

Once I wade through those pieces of excrement that should never see the light of day, I’m stuck with two options. The first is like my current theme. It’s beautiful, I like it greatly, except the author seems to forget that not everyone looks at the web through an 800×600 pixel window. This waste of space is very annoying to me when I’m looking at the web through a much larger window. The other extreme is the people who get the fact that dynamic width is good, but then they make the theme far to minimalistic. I want a pretty, engaging theme but I want dynamic width too. I do website design, I realize that making pretty, dynamic width sites is very difficult, but it is possible. It just frustrates me that there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the middle ground. I think I’m going to play with this theme over christmas break and make it dynamic width. Actually do something, rather than just gripe about it. What a thought. Anyhow, I have a test Thursday, Friday and Monday, I should probably be studying for those rather than griping about this.

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat. Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb of innocence. To yield to its blandishments is so easy. The wrong, it seems, is venial… Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth.
– Benjamin Cardozo

Now, I have no idea who Benjamin Cardozo is, but that guy is spot-on here. As has been said before, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people do not actively choose to do wrong, at least not at first. I’m not aware of anyone who woke up one morning and decided that they were going to become evil, yet there is much evil in the world. That is why we must constantly be on our guard, to make sure that we don’t take that first step. To paraphrase the above quote, you need the most courage at the times when you would least expect.

Yeah, so that CS374 project I nearly killed myself on Monday night, it was a two week project. All six of us in that class get to the lab today, sit down, and there’s no new lab posted. When the professor gets there, we ask him if there’s a new lab. He gives us a strange look and says no, that last project was a two-week project. Gaaaah. It’s not all bad, because I later found out that my last optimization didn’t quite work right on larger values, but still. I’m glad to have it done, but the cost……

Anyhow, had a really good meeting for iTrain, we voted on project proposals for next year. We’ll be working on some really cool stuff, stay tuned…. Went to the Apple store after the meeting with a couple of people, dang they have some cool stuff there. Now, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool linux guy, but Apple stuff is just neat. If only I had money….. Anyhow, I did enough drooling there for one night. Time to go do psych…or wake up early and do psych then…. or maybe both… meh. Such is life.

I need to plan ahead better. I’m gone at the Occam conference all weekend, I get back Monday and look at what I have to do the coming week. After changing my pants, I take a closer look. I had a large CS project due Tuesday, a smaller English project due Wednesday, a design document due on Thursday and a design presentation due on Friday. I was in the ulab on Monday from 3:30 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. working on all those projects. The one for CS 374 came straight from hell, I spent about ten hours on it. We were optimizing the sieve of erastosthenes, it was conceptually a really interesting project but a ton of work, especially considering everything else I had to do. I also spent a couple hours working on a really freaking complicated ERD design for 262, (which the sadistic among us can see at http://cs262.bonaplus.com/design.shtml#erd. Anyhow, I’m tired and my head hurts, but the good part is that all four of those projects are either done, or nearly done. I’m happy.

Well, I just got back from the Occam conference at Oberlin College. I went with Professor Adams, who is the professor in charge of Calvin’s Beowulf cluster, which I administer. It wasn’t quite what either of us were expecting, there were a bunch of people from a few different sciences there, mostly biology, astronomy and physics, but there were a few other types there (along with us CS people). There were several different talks, pretty broad range of topics. I found it to be interesting, some topics were geared more towards the professors so they weren’t very applicable for me but overall it was good look at the types of things people are doing.

My interest in computational modeling, obviously, lies in the computer science aspect of it. Especially high-performance computing, I’m really enjoying the HPC class I’m taking this semester, and could definitely forsee doing that type of thing with my life. This conference also got me really thinking about grad school. It’s an idea that has been floating around pretty much since the end of my sophomore year, it had sort of been a plan B for me if the Four Corners thing doesn’t work out, but now I’m viewing it as more of an option. I think I definitely want to at least get my masters, eventually, but it might have to wait until a few years after I graduate. Meh, decisions, decisions, decisions. Gonna have to invest a lot of thought into this one. I’m not sure if I really want to teach, which grad school would definitely require, but doing research really appeals to me, rather than doing real work.

Alright, time to get to my stuff. The one thing I would really like about grad school? No core classes.