Posts by Berck

This one pushed me to the edge. I was worried I wouldn’t get through it. I may not have gotten through it with my 4.0 GPA intact. I just took my final final. Two of my grades have posted thus far: I have an A in Assembly Language as well as an A in Discrete Math. I keep hitting refresh on the grades page every half hour or so. I’m not sure why I care so much–I’ve always thought the carrot/stick method of education is a worthless way to go about the whole thing, but I suppose that’s the game I’m paying so much money to play.

I didn’t think I’d get an A in Assembly Language. I scored a 58% on the first exam and it put me in such a funk I seriously contemplating quitting school. After all, the airlines are slowly starting to hire–if I can fly, why do I need this crap? The professor is, in his own words, a cantankerous geriatric. I really thought I was going to enjoy the class–both the subject matter and the professor seemed promising. For once, a professor in the computer science department who not only knew more than I did, but professed to be a UNIX bigot. He even refused to accept homework e-mail submissions that contained HTML. I thought this would make him my kind of guy. Unfortunately, the lectures ranged from dull to excruciating, his grading was whimsical at best, and the work was nearly impossible. I finally decided not to worry about it, do my best, and accept the inevitable C (or maybe B if I was lucky). I went into the exams with an attitude of resignation and completed the assignments as best as I could. I scored an 88% on the second exam (which was heavily curved) and an 85% on the final exam (which may or may not have been curved). According to his emailed grade report, I achieved the highest score on the final exam, and my final average of 88% ranked me second in the class. He awarded two A’s: one to me, and one to whomever managed to score higher than me.

Calculus III also proved to be extraordinarily difficult. There were two sections of the class being taught this semester, and discussions with people in the other section have revealed that the two sections have little in common. The other section is being described as “an easy A”, whereas before the final in my section, I was only 5 people (of 40 or so) with scores higher than 90%, which is what’s required for an A-. I enjoyed the lectures, I found the professor to be quite competent, but her standards to be a bit unreasonably difficult. I spent, on average, 18 hours per week on the homework assignments alone. My average homework scores were in the neighborhood of 70%. I suspect that I did well enough on the final to merit an A-, but I don’t know if it’s enough to get an A. Annoyingly, UCCS doesn’t award A+, but an A- is only a 3.7 GPA.

My final final was in C++. This is the worst professor I think I’ve ever had. I learned next to nothing in the class, and I have no idea what my grade will be. I’ve gotten an A on everything so far, but I worry about the final. He assigns essentially essay questions (he has us write in a blue book!) for the exams. I initially scored a C on the midterm, but after I went and complained about the grading, he changed it to an A. Most of our grade is apparently based upon the term project, for which I was awarded a score of “96%”. No comments whatsoever about the project, the presentation, the demo, the coding, the user manual, the proposal… Just a “96%” written on my paper. Worthless.

But now I’m done, and I couldn’t be more relieved. I’m already dreading the summer a bit: I’m attempting Differential Equations, Linear Algebra and Computer Networking, all in 5 weeks. They tell me this is insane. I hope to prove to them that while I may be insane, I’m also competent. I’m a bit excited about Computer Networking: the book is written by Andrew Tanenbaum!

So, speaking of insanity, here’s the project I’m starting tomorrow:

As most of you know by now, my Dad is recovering from bypass surgery . He just got home from the hospital today, but is going to need a fair amount of help for the weeks to come. My sister is there now, and I’m planning on leaving in a few days to go stay with him at his new place in BFET. (East Tennessee)

I was planning on visiting before he found out he needed bypass surgery. For some reason, I got it in my head that the way to take this trip would be on Yoshiko. This isn’t exactly a rational decision, but I’m not getting any younger. As Ben said, “If you don’t do it now, when?” Good question.

I’ve been re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in preparation for my journey. I last read it when I was 16, had never been on a real road trip, and certainly never a motorcycle. I suspect that the book is partially responsible for my choice of a small, 38-year-old Honda. I didn’t know until recently (as it’s not mentioned in the book), that Pirsig rode (and still rides) a Honda CB77, which is the precursor to the CB350.

I’ve been trolling the internets trying to figure out how to go about 1,300 miles on an old motorcycle, and ordering spare parts and travel gear on the internet. I was unable to secure a luggage rack for what I (well, Jonah) thought was a reasonable price, so I’ll be strapping a bag, tent, sleeping bag and sleeping pad to the rear seat/fender and hoping it works out. Tomorrow I’m going to attempt changing my own tires (the ones I’ve got probably wouldn’t make it that far) so that I’ll be able to fix a flat on the side of the road should I need to. I’ve also got things like a set of stock jets for the carburetor (mine’s been leaned out for the altitude), a new chain, and so on… Depending on how it goes, I could leave as early as Sunday, but won’t be leaving later than Monday. I’ve got dinner with Neal on Saturday, and I’m very much looking forward to that.

I’m in serious need of not thinking about anything school related for these few weeks.

We’re off to New York. But first, a stop in Denver to eat Vietnamese with Neal at New Saigon. Our flight doesn’t leave until 12:55am, and on top of that I didn’t get much sleep last night, so we’ll see if I get through tomorrow without a nap.

I haven’t been to New York in 14 months. The MetroCard I keep in my wallet has expired.

The exciting part is that this time Ben and Amanda are joining us. They’ve never been to New York, and I’m hoping they like it.

The past few weeks of school have been brutal, and it’s only poised to get worse when I get back. I probably could have really used the spring break time for school work, but that wasn’t obvious before I made plans. I’m getting tired of the whole school game, but I’m not going to think about it until I get back!

We get to celebrate both Jonah and Amanda’s birthdays in New York. It better be a good time.

Dave, for reasons not entirely clear to even those of us who urged him to do so, took a UIL Calculator test. He finished the number crunchers in ~17 minutes, which given an entirely unfamiliar calculator, more than decade without practice, and a few beers beforehand, is an astounding time. Berck declined to take the test as he now assumes a loss to Dave in all such things to be a foregone conclusion. Tera acted suitably impressed.

I’m rather proud of myself. This weekend alone, I’ve managed to do my Discrete Math proofs, write some documentation relating to my C++ project, do my C++ programming homework, do my assembly language programming homework, brew a batch of beer, and put new brake pads and rotors on Jonah’s car.

That leaves a lot of Calculus homework to do during the week, but it’s not due until Thursday. Not to mention all the stuff I’m sure I’ll have to work on for the next week. I’m not sure why I thought 18 semester-hours would be easier than it’s turning out to be. Somehow, with 14 hours, I had plenty of free time, but with 18 hours I’m not quite, but nearly overwhelmed.

I had a terribly frustrating ordeal with Amazon Marketplace sellers over the book for the Assembly Language class. I ordered the book by ISBN from an Amazon seller who listed it as being in “Like New” condition. It arrived damaged in shipping, but the seller was willing to refund 25% of the purchase price, so I soldiered on with it.

Until the third homework assignment, when I discovered that nothing in the book was giving me any useful information about the MIPS programming language, which is what this course focuses on. There was almost no MIPS information in the book at all!

I finally managed to determine that I had some third-world country edition of the book, which did not have the same ISBN number, but otherwise appears to be identical. Only, instead of focusing on the MIPS language, it focuses on ARM, which effectively made the book worthless to me.

The seller was clearly aware of what they were doing, as there was a section of the book’s cover cut out and carefully taped over. I suspect that’s the part that says, “Not for sale in the United States of America.” It’s a cute market segmentation scheme–sell your book for an insane price in the U.S., but sell the same book overseas for far cheaper. One of my classmates has the same calculus book I do, only his is in black-and-white and says “For sale in India only”. Since the marginal cost of production of a text book is very low, it makes sense.

Until, of course, someone re-imports your book. This author is clever and effectively made the book worthless for U.S. students, but didn’t actually damage the book by switching to ARM. There’s nothing wrong with learning ARM assembly instead of MIPS, but you need to focus on one or the other.

Lesson learned: when buying textbooks used on Amazon, check the ISBN and return it if it’s not what you ordered.

Some time ago, Google started a webmail service. I managed to get an invite pretty early on as a result of knowing Jonah, and I was excited to be able to sign up for [email protected] before any one else grabbed it. (Hey, you never know!) It turns out that Google, for some reason they have not disclosed, decided to limit e-mail addresses to a a minimum of 6 characters. It suggested [email protected]. I figured I might as well get something that someone else would want one day, and picked flyboy.

Boy was that a mistake.

Within a couple of years the flood of mis-addressed email started. There are, I estimate, hundreds of people with e-mail addresses that are some variation on flyboy. It turns out there are two main subsets of people who have decided to go by flyboy (I’m not suggesting these groups are mutually exclusive): African American Men and Military Aviators. (For what it’s worth: These groups appear to be equally stupid and equally interested in pornography.)

You’d think that most of the misdirected email would come from people who simply forgot to add the numbers to [email protected]. Much of it, however, seems to come from people who simply don’t know what their own e-mail address is. Google sends me “click here to recover your forgotten password” e-mails several times a week–all requested by someone who is surprised they can’t log in to their g-mail account. I’m sure they remember the password, they’ve just forgotten that they’re not really flyboy.

I’ve also been signed up for countless email promotions from JC Penny to mail for expecting dads.

Totally unrelated: the following email just showed up in my UCCS inbox:

Hello UCCS Students,

Please be aware of these upcoming career opportunities:

1) Have you ever wanted to be a pilot??

Yes, yes, I want to be a pilot! How do I do it?

Anyway, people have paid for things like wifi internet accounts and pornography subscriptions using my account. A couple of years ago, someone signed up for Blockbuster video rentals with my e-mail address. I changed the account password, then filled their queue with things like “Manos the Hand of Fat” and “High School Musical”. Doing things like this insures that no only will the moron who doesn’t know his own e-mail address will be harassed, but also the company that fails to verify e-mail addresses.

Have you ever been annoyed by something that requires you to verify receipt of an e-mail before your account can be activated? These things used to annoy me, now I realize that all good sites should implement them. When I get one of those, all I have to do to avoid being further harassed by the site is delete the e-mail. (Frequently, though, such an e-mail is often followed by a Google password change request.)

Lots of e-mail I get as a result tends to be personal. For instance, a few weeks ago a prostitute negotiating a “party” got confused about an e-mail address and sent me the entire exchange. A few years ago, I managed to get on the forward list of a Jewish grandmother. It’s bad enough to get forwards from your own Jewish grandmother–no one should have to deal with those from someone else’s. When I told her that I didn’t know her and asked her to stop sending me e-mail, she said, “I’ll send e-mail to whomever I want.”

The niceness/nastiness of my response often depends on what I’m being forwarded. If you’re a right-wing moron, I’m probably going to be pretty mean. Often, I get aviation related forwards that I’m interested in. I usually don’t respond to those.

A couple weeks ago, I got an annoying forward about how Jane Fonda is a traitor. I responded with, “I won’t know who you are, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me email.” Response: “Its Uncle Howard. I’ll stop. Sorry”

People like to argue with me. Often they tell me that they don’t know how I get their e-mail, but they e-mailed someone that wasn’t me, and it’s obviously not their fault.

The latest is the mother of a person who is obviously a member of one of the aforementioned groups. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which:

Hi aaron

i,m doing fine tring to get back to sending you some mail

glad to know that you are getting a little better each day you know that

all our help come from the good Lord we must keep our trust in him.

Love alway

Mamma (..) (..)

Ps Hi to all

I responded rather politely that she’d gotten the wrong e-mail address. I got another today.

O.give Thank to the Lord for he is good and his mercy indureth forever Psalm136

hi aaron ihope your day and nite will get better,dont let the devil put doubt in

your mind that no one care about you i believe Lisa does she just dont know how to deal with it she hurt just like you do some it hard for her to understand

but we all must keep on beliveing.sometime our hard trail come just when

God is getting to bless us.

Remember the children of Isreal just before the cross the red sea no where to go

and GOD derliver them and then did not have the Holyghost ha had dont gve up.

Loveyou

Mamma (..) (..)(..)