iohelix

ya know what really sucks… when your writing a blog entry and then when you go to add it to the database, you get a nice little internal server error. that sucks. i had this whole post typed out yesterday, but when i went to send it, it died, so i’m typin it again…

i was tellin you about that render i was working on that was takin like 6 days… well, we went up to my girlie’s parent’s house for christmas, and it was snowing pretty good up there, so after the day was over, we decided that it would probably be better if we left earlier instead of staying and watching a movie with the fam. so we left and when we got to the bottom of the canyon, it was snowing pretty hard. one of the first things i did when i got home was check on the status of the render… it was coming along nicely, and it actually looked pretty good at the point it was at, so i saved a version at that point and went about the rest of my evening.

when i woke up, i noticed that the clock was blinking… fuck. the power had bliped. it doesn’t really matter if the render had finished during the night, i hadn’t had a chance to save it completed before the power bliped. 6 days of rendering, lost. but not completely… i still had the almost complete version saved from the night before, which is good or i would have been really upset. but it snowed pretty hard that night and there was like a foot of snow on the ground in the morning and it was still snowing!  it’s a good thing we left early or we would have been stuck up the canyon for 2 days.

i shoveled the driveway that afternoon with my gilrie and again that night by myself because it had snowed another 6 inches. all in all, over two days it snowed about 2 feet at my house. it looks cool, but it sucks to have to shovel that damn driveway three times a day to keep it managable. otherwise we’d have to shovel a foot at a time, which really sucks. it took us about 2 hours the first time.

oh well, sammie likes it.

plur, lates.

wow… christmas really snuck up on me this year. usually, around this time, i know that it is christmas, i just don’t have any of the shopping done.

this year, i went shopping yesterday (which was awesome by the way, it’s so nice to be able to buy about half of the stuff you need to get at one store, although the store i got everything at wasn’t even close to the kind of store that i thought i would be able to get everything at… and everything else at another store, which was also a big surprise, anywho…) i went shopping yesterday, and didn’t really get the christmas feeling until last night after that awesome day of shopping, but thats okay, cuz i gots it now, and i’m excited!!  i only have to buy a few more things today, but they’re the important ones, for my girlie, and then i’m done, and it’ll be christmas before you know it, and i’ll get lots of stuff.

and i know that may seem selfish… but whatever, you know you get excited when you get cool stuff for christmas, too.

don’t get me wrong, i love being able to buy stuff for other people, but gettin stuff is cool as hell, too.   =)

anywho…   Merry Christmas!!!

and i hope you get everything you wanted!

on a completely unrelated note… i’m currently rendering something in bryce that is taking like 6 days to render, not even kidding… i started it on friday or saturday and it has been running solid ever since (today is tuesday). it still has about 2 days to go (it’s currently about 65% completed), so… takin a while. i’ll post it when it’s done so you can see what all of the trouble is for, it’s pretty cool…

well, i was checkin my grades for the past semester and just about shit myself…

i was takin a PDE’s class that was rather difficult, and the teacher kinda sucked, so i quit going about halfway through the semester. i was going to drop it, but i had debated whether or not i should drop it too long and missed the deadline to drop the class, and i figured i was going to need to take it again anyway… so why bother going anymore, ya know? so i quit going.

I GOT A B IN THE CLASS!! holy shit!

i only took one test out of three, turned in two homeworks out of about 20, and never took the final. got a B.
i’m not really complaining, but dang, that’s messed up.

anywho… the other classes…

i got an A in complex variables, which is dope, because i was kinda worried about that one.
i got an A in computational physics, which isn’t surprising, but coolio nonetheless.
i got an A in undergrad seminar, but that wasn’t hard, all i had to do was show up, but that class was dope as hell, i loved it. it was basically a class where you go and listen to professors talk about their current (or past) experiments and studies that they are working on. pretty interesting stuff.
the other classes (optics and the lab that goes with it) don’t have the grades up yet, so i’ll keep you posted.

just thought i’d share that interesting turn of events with you.

plur, l8s

EDIT: I got A’s in all of my other classes, for a grand total GPA of aboout 3.85

i took my optics final yesterday, it was okay. it was a lot harder than i thought it was going to be. usually the professor gives out these really easy tests with 3 problems and a 4th problem as a graduate student problem or extra credit for the undergrads. it usually harder than the other questions, but this time it was the easiest question on the test, with the first question takin up like 45 min of the 2 hrs allotted for the test. i feel like i did okay though, it wasn’t too bad, but then again, it hasn’t been graded yet…

i took my complex variables test this morning, it was a lot easier than i thought it was going to be. i’ve been pretty much slackin this whole semester in that class, but my test scores have been improving. the good part about it is that he figures the grade for the final, then figures the grades for the tests and adds them to the grade for the final, and whichever is better, with or without the tests, is the final grade for the class. so basically, my whole grade rests on this one test, and i already know i got a few wrong, so…

i have one more final to take today, but i’m not worried about it. although i know it’s going to take me pretty much the whole 2 hrs to do it, just because most of the assignments and lab exercises have been very work intensive. but it’s because of that that i feel pretty confident going into the test…

we’ll see…

plur(it’s like plus, just not spelled the same) l8s

EDIT: well…  i took the last test of my first semester at the U. man that was a hard test, not to brag, but i was the first one done, and it took me the full two hours to do it. it was tough, as i thought it would be, but i never thought it would be that tough. oh well, time to go have some liquor or something…

wow…   i can’t believe the semester is actually over. it’s so nice to not have to do anything…   i can sit around, lay in bed, watch tv, stay up late, eat whatever i want, wait…   i could do that before, but now i can do it whenever i want, i don’t have to wait till class is over.

i have three finals next week. but i don’t think any of them will be really hard, i mean, all three of them are open book/open notes, and one of them is like four problems long… in two hours?!? and i know what you may be thinking…  those four problems are gonna be HARD!   nope   they’re not. its gonna be easy, and then one of the other ones is online, but that class was pretty time intensive. i just spent the better part of a week working on the final project and i’m not talkin like when i had free time all week, i’m talkin like for 10hrs a day all week, as well as going to school and sleeping and eating. it was tough but it turned out pretty good. (i’ll put it on the site for ya’ll, go to http://www.iohelix.net/proj/ and check it out. click the .pdf file for the final report, or check out the source code i wrote in the .cc file).

the third final has me a little worried, but not too bad, besides if i do good on the final, the grade comes off of it completely, and if not, then the other tests are figured into the grade as well, nice, huh?

so now i’m at work, and when i get home i’m prolly gonna clean my room cuz my girlie is complaining that it’s dirty. next week, i’ll be workin at all three of my jobs, as well as trying to figure out what classes to take next semester, and prolly start thinking about what i’m gonna be gettin peeps for chrismukah (and no, i don’t watch the o.c.,  i just happened to be laying there last night while my girl was watchin it).  then i’ll be workin at egi pretty much the whole christmas break trying to get money so i can buy those presents, and that’s about it…

i miss school.

plur, l8s

p.s.- if you have any questions about that final project, the code, the LaTeX files, whatever, let me know. they are NOT for use though, so don’t copy them, unless you ask, and i say ok.