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the blind lead each other
2004-03-15 13:53:28
I finally got paid, after two months and six miles of unnecessary wear on my boots. I think I have like a thousand bucks now, which will conveniently cover due bills, rent, and forward expenses for the rest of the semester. I'm not bling-bling-cash-money rich yet, but that's not the point. The point is that I don't have to just starve when I run out of money for food.
I should also be able to buy more music and anime now, which would be a good thing. Financial rigor carried forward into the summer will also help paying higher rent and tuition costs; the FAFSA says I can swing three times as much this year as I could afford last, which is about what I pay, straight out, in tuition now. That sucks. Bad.
If I could just get a job, I could stop paying for school and just start getting paid. That's what it boils down to. And then I can start paying back the huge piles of debt I've got looming in the background. As I said, it sucks.
Did a little work on finalization, which is going to be a cast-iron bastard...and which I'll probably end up having to work through on Tuesday and Thursday nights...NO SLEEP TILL...
Offtopic:
I was even out of grits yesterday morning, so it was time to take the bus down to Meijer and hope I didn't get killed in the grocery-acquisition process. This time, instead of a gangbanger, my traveling companions included a neo-Nazi. He was trying to blend in, but you don't just fall down and get a Hitler-Jugend cut by accident. And it's one of the dorkiest-looking hairdos known to humankind, so it's doubtful that it could be concieved as cool in any other context. Fortunately I followed the rules for survival among violent rightists (1. Be bigger than them; 2. Be outnumbered by less than 7 to 1) and came through clean. [Surviving among violent leftists only requires being outnmbered by less than 12 to 1.]
Then of course came problem 2: getting my 25 pounds of shopping home without breaking my neck. This is because I don't own a frame pack, and three weeks' worth of food was in a duffel bag bent in a rough horseshoe over my shoulders, the way mortarmen used to carry shells in WWII. Unlike them I didn't have the benefit of a chest harness, so all the weight was riding on muscles that had fortunately been conditioned for long-term toughness by eight years of vigorous headbanging. If there's a moral to the story this is it: everyone should listen to heavy metal in order to be able to carry heavy weights over long distances when packed in inconvenient carriers. How's that for usefulness?
Stuff I previously did not know existed:
UM major in "general studies"
Chocolate Donuts breakfast cereal from Captain Crunch
barbecue grills made from sectioned kegs
Benkyo ni naru na, sonno daigaku...soreitomo sonno daigaku-no-machi.....
--Kai out
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and the cradle falls
2004-03-11 02:50:16
Burnt out today. Don't feel like writing TeX; there'll be plenty of time for that tomorrow.
I got a crap op today that really should have been an email or PM; this now makes 3. Ofcourse, I threw on some comments that will probably go unheeded (telling the reviewer to get civilized and ask for the unavailable video instead of pushing out a slate of all 1s), and grabbed one of his vids to review. Unfortunately, this will turn out to be the most scathing pan I've written yet once it gets posted; not good for trying to engender positive feeling. Unfortunately, the damned video bites, and there is no easy way around it.
Offtopic:
I was doing rounds at my job and ran across a bunch of freethought type poems and such, one of which is reproduced below. I was much surprised and delighted to see such content showing up in a business school:
Why I Believe In God
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Racial, religious, national, ethnic, gender
Sexual, cultural, family hatreds
Wars, killing fields, slavery, refugees
People living on garbage dumps
Foolish to leave the house without a lawyer or a gun
Sure I believe in God
What else could make this mess
The real pity of this is that I can't take this stuff home to frame on my wall: it needs to stay where it is and reach the people it's aimed at. I don't need this stuff; I've got Vital Remains' _Dechristianize_ and Nevermore's _Enemies Of Reality_ already, and a stereo to turn them up to 11 on; even if these MBAndroids ever listened to anything but "lite" whatever (jazz/rock/classical/r&b), it'd be devoid of meaning on their CEO-phonic sets that come hard-capped at 3. Somebody wants to open some eyes, and I shouldn't be hogging their materials just because I can already see.
--Kai out
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the holy symbol
2004-03-09 21:44:03
Hopefully, I'll get all the code I need written in the next hour and debugged in the hour after that, so I can actually listen to some metal. I've been wilting the last couple days; I've been working on a Sun (they're Unix, they're easy, and nobody uses them), and ofcourse they don't have CD-playing stuff configured. The HW is almost done, the presentation went well, and I'll have time at work tomorrow night to work up the TeX docs I need, plus all the tools that'd be required. Then after that it's 20+ pages of system internals to be written Sat and Sun, after I take Friday night and figure out WTH I'm doing.
Exodus' new one came out today. I've gotten six hours' sleep since like 2:30 yesterday. PM, fortunately. I can't remember the last time I slept for something that could be reckoned like a full night; it certainly won't happen before the start of next week, as I've got to get up at 6 tomorrow morning, and then Thursday is daysleeping, with Friday another 6:00 following. It'd really suck if I couldn't get back in a normal circadian cycle come the summer, when I'll only have to work 8-6.
Somewhere in there the demo will be finalized; I'll probably start on that Thursday night while I start on docs.
--Kai out
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without fear i die
2004-03-08 22:38:42
Slowly, ever so slowly, things are normalizing. I'll hopefully be able to get my project together and burned or otherwise stored before class tomorrow, and I ought to be able to get most of the stuff done I need to on the compilers stuff (it got extended). The exam is done, and now I just have to hope I did within a standard deviation of everyone else. SUCK.
Showing will be next weekend, and I get to do twice as much setup/teardown as normal, on even less sleep. It's a good thing most stuff is due by then...and that I have a ssh client at work and about 6 hours of uninterrupted access. Normal LSA-kid managers can read at night at the damn desk; I've got to tie up a kiosk recompiling betas.
Demo should be finished by this time next week; I might get some time to work on it over the weekend. It's only finalization and post to do, it's just a matter of finishing everything else and doing it. Still not paid so still no DVD gear. FUCKERRRS. THOSE GUYS ARE FUCKERRRRRS.....
Filled a special video request today...hopefully there'll be good news to post here wrt a debut....demo (if I put it up) won't be up till after it runs at the showing.
--Kai out
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a desperate situation
2004-03-07 01:18:29
Exam and homework are sort of coming together. I've got about two more hours of work before I think I'll be able to go home, recharge the batteries, and get ready to come back up and do a truly ruinous homestand from noon until I have to go to Crypto and turn the test in. After that's done, I might even get to sleep for a little and do up my presentation after class and pre-screening.
I thought I was going to start getting stuff under control after break, but my activity periods are breaking up like crazy across all kinds of chronological boundaries. It's like "days" don't make sense any more, and I'm working just on hours; right now it's about HW-due -23 and Exam-Due -32. That's all it comes down to. I'm about ready to give up.
As of today, I'm going to stop thinking about chronological macroblocking and start taking things on the basis of proper time-cut scheduling. As long as I can remember when things come due in terms of event horizons, I can just concentrate on what lies ahead, not what day it's supposed to be in.
I think I've got the guts, solidity, and sanity reserves to do this; if not, it's not like I can get much more messed up than I already am.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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