yet another boring general update, plus the pumping lemma
This is where other bloggers would say something like “I’m a terrible blogger” because they haven’t posted in a [couple days|week|couple weeks|month]. I guess it’s sort of a meme (for shits and giggles, google search that phrase.
I don’t believe in that though. This is a world-readable diary, and so why should you feel obligated to write when you don’t want to or don’t have anything to write about? Not like I’m running ads or making money off of it, y’know?
Anyway, down to the writings of the things … a rollup of the last week or so. That’s what you’re really here for, after all :p.
It’s been a busy-ish week. I did the usual stuff … worked, ate, slept, played video games. And, I hid the details behind a cut, ’cause … well … it’s been a busy week.
I ordered Disgaea 2 and Xenosaga episode 3, and got them both on Friday (so that’s where friday night, all of saturday, and probably most of sunday and monday are going). Haven’t touched Xeno yet, Disgaea 2′s fairly fun. A bit slower and more balanced than the first one … it’s hard to really REALLY break the system. Kind of slows the plot down, which is both good and bad. I’d say the story is a little more engaging than the original, but the slower pace sort of counters that.
Other than that, I started another playthrough of Dragon Quest 8 toward the beginning of the week. I’m amazed how much faster I’m able to fly through the plot, just from knowing the course a bit. I’ve spent a lot less time wandering aimlessly, which is sorta neat. I’m not quite to the point where you get the Godbird Soulstone and can fly around everywhere (and probably won’t ever get there, in all fairness … I’ve got newer shinier things to play now). Still, interesting how much faster it goes.
Classes are going pretty well. Theory of computation has a homework due wednesday, I’ve got to futz with the last problem and rewrite the whole thing so it’s legible. I’m really digging the material though. Psychobiology is also decent … treading water in all the terminology for brain structures and functions, and the first exam is a bit more than a week away — meaning this weekend I’m going to have to take some time off of Disgaea to do some early studying for it and all that. I’m pretty surprised how readable both of my textbooks are though … the psychobiology book even manages to work in some actual humor. Pretty good stuff, considering what the material is.
Hmm, what else … I picked up a DVD burner last week. Burned through a 50-spindle of dvd+r’s, and retired a whole anime drive (formerly /anime/3). After some file-moving and rearranging, I’m down to 3 anime drives, plus the music and “misc” drives and the system disk. 6 drives total, 5 of them are data storage. I’m thinking of consolidating binder-space by reburning burned cds as dvd sets instead … getting a 6:1 (or better) pulldown rate would mean that I’d be able to combine the little bit more than 2 full binders into one, and still have space to burn off about another drive’s worth of files. I don’t like the process, though … copying the data off of those cds is just tedious. I think I’ll probably just lug a binder and a spindle into work on monday (since … you know, labor day, nobody there), take over the lab and copy disks 10 at a time. Put that gigabit lab upgrade to some good use :p.
My eventual goal is to be able to rebuild my fileserver in a smaller, quiet and unobtrusive case, with two drives: a data store and the system disk. I’d like to do that, and sell of the giant Lian Li beast before I move out of here (just because that case is half a carload by itself), but that’d depend heavily on finances and on what sort of tech improvements happen in the next 6 months or so.
No success selling any of the furniture I wanted to get rid of. Got a lot of random nibbles, but they were universally idiots. People who didn’t expect coffee tables to be low, didn’t expect a normal couch to be one piece (despite the picture that clearly showed a couch, not a fucking futon). I got 8 people who told me they wanted to buy my lamp. Nobody bothered. Fuck em. I rearranged the living room to cram all that stuff in reasonably. If I can work out a couple of wall-mounted shelves for the right and center speakers, I’ll be able to play music through the stereo (maybe via the fileserver?) and make good use of it. As it is, it’s a nice study area when I’m in that sort of mood.
My roommate’s still sort of a tool about transportation. He hasn’t gone shopping again, so we’re drawing near on a month since move-in day and he’s been eating random shit, burning rancid popcorn, or eating out for 3 weeks of it. I’ve given up on any concept of the guy going to the store, so I’ve scoped out the bus routes. Apparently they redid the routes over the summer, and the 1B bus is a perfect shot right up from the union down salisbury and over to walmart, and back. There’s a stop right down on Wood before the alumni center, so it’s maybe a 300-400 foot walk from the return bus to my door. That’s dang handy, even if public transportation is for losers. Somewhat unhappily, I’ve got to shop more often as a result, since I’m limited to only being able to buy what I can carry. Works out to about a week of food, plus random other stuff (the last run was a week of food, not eating out at all). I guess it means I could reasonably get fruits and veggies now, though … since I’m only getting enough food for about a week anyway, and they shouldn’t go bad by then.
Still on the topic of roommates, apparently he pays rent on time, and when I asked him for his half of the cable bill he wasn’t hesitant about dealing with it, so at very least he’s not a complete Seth. Just sort of a generically unreliable stranger. And really, Adam never seemed very happy to accommodate on the transportation front either (probably because he was a die-hard Kroger fan, and I wanted stuff that they just didn’t carry at all, or that they carried but at twice the walmart price — or it could be that I have a somewhat coarse demeanor in general <_<, I dunno).
My sleep schedule is completely hosed. So what else is new, right? Disgaea, DQ, Guitar Hero, relatively late-starting classes and the painfully loud tree-cricket trill outside my window have all added up to me not being able to sleep when it’s dark out. I need to work on that, ’cause it’s affecting how much I get done at work, and how much quality rest my body gets, which in turn affects how much I can do the next day. Irritating cycle, there. To make things worse, my new fan occasionally picks up an arhythmic tap, which is enough to wake me up. To say nothing of what having my window open with the random animals, cars, and people outside does. I think I need to make fixing my sleep schedule a priority.
Last on the “physical” checklist: scale’s reporting my weight at in the neighborhood of 304-305 lbs. This means three things to me: (1) the diet change alone is still causing me to lose weight (ie: it’s still working), (2) I’m about to hit a milestone of being able to say “I’ve lost 40 pounds since december” (which is amazing, I pick up my pair of 20 lb dumbbells, and they’re kinda heavy … to think that that’s how much extra I was carrying around compared to what I am now is just sort of shocking), and (3) the goal of being unable to call myself a 300+ pound guy by my birthday (a month or so away) might be realistic, ’cause to break the 300-barrier I’ll have to lose about 4 more pounds, so still about a pound a week. I should hit the bike a couple times this week…
So that’s pretty much it. I’m going back and forth between class, work, apartment, in class I’m doing classwork, at work I’m doing whatever I think is appropriate (dealing with gcc updates, broken systems, stuff like that), and at home it’s studying, video games, occasionally anime or tv episodes. A solitary, sort of humdrum existence, but it’s not too bad on the whole.
By the way, the pumping lemma is FUCKING COOL. I don’t care what anyone else says.