giving the business

kie: a v. messy room
kiel: kinda tired
kio: kula shaker : hush

i did laundry today for the first time since before break. that is quite an accomplishment, i must say.

the scoop:
classes:

transport phenomena ii:
taught by my advisor/research professor, at 9 am monday tuesday wednesday. for the first week i actually went and went on time. then last week i started coming at like 9:05, 9:10. this week: skipped monday, 9:20 tuesday, 9:25 today. ended up missing a quiz. yup. great start. i have a feeling though that i'll do much better in transport ii than in the first one, since i can actually follow marc's teaching style. he's not as fun to impersonate though as konstantinos konstantopolous, everyone's favorite greek.

mass transfer and separations/bioseparations:
directly after transport, in hodson. hodson is a pretty neat place. nice classrooms, motion sensing lights (!), lots of places to just hang out and do homework. also has a nice view of the woods out back from the third floor. anyway, separations is taught by dr. van winkle, who is a teaching professor, meaning he doesn't do research, he just teaches. so he's all about discussing stuff in detail. but there's only so much you can say about an absorption column, i tell you what.

he's one of those professors that will ask questions with obvious answers (which mist students assume to be rhetorical), then expect an answer from the class. of course the class, in turn, is reluctant to say it because, well, it's right there. everyone knows it and it seems like some implicit agreement that nobody blurt out what is right in front of the class's collective face. so minutes, literally minutes will go by and we will be stuck on a point that is essentially moot.

anyway, the material seems pretty easy, but the homework problems are pretty hard. last week there was homework due friday. but there was snow thursday night, so i didn't do the homework. i spent the entire weekend goofing off and ended up staying up til 5 or 6 sunday night to finish the homework. well, i didn't finish it, so i didn't go to class monday :P (this, of course, led me to skip transport, cause what's the point of ditching a 10 and going to a 9?). tuesday, after pretty much finishing the homework after a few hours monday night, that the homework is not due til this friday. yeah.

digital systems fundamentals:
a freshman intro course on digital systems and binary logic and some circuit stuff. so far, a very easy course. taught by the chair of the ece department, gerard meyer, a frenchman. very funny guy, although i am beginning to see his inner contempt for students that rimas mentioned. perhaps it's not contempt for students so much as for idiots. he mentions that a lot. "as soon as you are dealing with many people, you are dealing with many idiots." and it's so true. there are some senior computer science über-dorks in that class, including one michael hilsdale, my associate resnet guy. president of acm, the hopkins society for the 1337, this kid makes richie cunningham look like the fonz. by the way, if you look under members, the numbers under his name spell "Why did you bother?" in ascii code. oh and ps, i do realize how much of a dork i am, spending about 8 minutes putting the numbers into the calculator, converting to base 10, then punching them in with the alt key to get the letters. the fact that i am a big dork is not in question here.

medieval iberian texts:
total enrollment: 2. myself and a certain eric jabart. half the point of the class is reading and understanding the literature of medieval spain (specifically el conde lucanor) and the other half is dechipering photocopies of old manuscripts (the original writing). taught by nadia altschul, of whom i couldn't find a CV online but i assume has recently (within the last 5 years) gotten her PhD. she's argentinian, so she's got the accent going a little bit, but all in all very comprehensible. fun class.

taller el teatro en español
total enrollment: 6, also including the franch. just as seminario was a film class in spanish, so is this an acting/theatre history class in spanish. it just occured to me that spinach and spanish have many of the same letters. taught by mar encinas, the epitome of the PILF (cf. american pie's MILF). yeah. one of our first exercises involved me giving eric a head massage while some ridicuously sensous music played in the background. neither he nor i was completely comfortable with it, although i got the feeling he was more freaked out than i was. there's a cute freshman girl in the class. she's half chilean.

show:
jekyll and hyde went up two weeks ago after rather little rehearsal and preparation. the show still has a few kinks, but i have a feeling when things start to finally gel that it will be pretty spectacular. the audiences have really liked it so far. it seems as if miss helen's gamble is paying off. so that plays every saturday and sunday until april. wheeee. dave, greg, jess, michelle, and jenn came to see the show opening weekend. that was very cool. it really meant a lot. also "meant a lot" uses the same letters as "mental note". fancy that!

resnet:
resnet has hired a new student network technician. a freshman girl. so it was my duty (and privilege) to train her in the ways of the pimp. she's a mechie; it's nice to have some non-cs people on the staff. (i'm reminded of office space when tom is yelling at the consultants for not being able to grasp his apparently obvious "PEOPLE SKILLS"). really my job is not very technically challenging, and you don't need a large amount of expertise (excepting fundamental computer networking things) to do it. the real challenge of the job is dealing with people who treat a computer more like a magical machine and less like a simple device. by that i mean, if something goes wrong, they throw their hands up in the air and immediately call for help. well, actually, they call six-help. that's a pun, friends.

research:
i am also working on my project during the semester, and hopefully (as soon as i'm finished cloning stuff, which has run into various and sundry difficulties) will be able to start testing things soon. it's amazing how much i've come to understand in the past six months about molecular biology, considering where i started, which was at nothing. i really think it's something i want to do as a career.

mental notes:
we had a gig with the bc acoustics saturday (which i had to miss cause of the stinkin' show). apparently they were really good. they were also ALL FREAKIN HOT, as was evidenced at the after party at dave morrow's place. yowza. also, we just did song selection and have a pretty killer set coming up this semester. so watch out. also also, it seems we're going to try and set up more on-campus gigs, just hosting folks and singing some songs. this is not anything definite but it seems that the overwhelming crowd response to this little gig (held at e-level) is rather encouraging for such endeavours.

miscellaneous notes:
so that should bring you up to snuff with my life for the past three weeks. it's snowing a lot in baltimore this winter, which i really can't complain about. walking around campus last night i noticed (before anything was shoveled) that certain spots just don't get snow on them. i assume that they're underground heat vents or something of the like. it's just curious, though, to see untouched snow with an irregular patch of brick showing smack in the middle.

i provided nice bold headings in this entry because it is rather long. i mean it has been almost a month since i updated. once i get used to my schedule and learn to manage my time i should have more time to update regularly.

this entry weighs in at just under 1500 words.