Three months

...isn't, after all, such a long time between posts. Right?

Aaaaaanyway. Semester's about over- just finishing up Dead Week, then finals start Monday. Things are tight, but slotting together reasonably well; I have stats on Monday, geography and linear algebra on Tuesday, partials either Wednesday or Friday, whenever I want to take it, and then my medieval philosophy final is an online take-home that's already open for me to work on whenever, due next Friday.

The philosophy take home is kinda unfortunate, because it gave the professor leeway to assign a rather longer, harder, more intense final than would have been at all reasonable for us to do had we actually gone to the class and sat the final properly. Oh well. 9-10 pages of philosophical analysis can't be that bad. Right?

It hasn't been a bad semester. The math's been harder than I was really hoping, though stats has been easy. I don't regret taking philosophy as an elective- it's been interesting and fun, without demanding too much more time than I'm comfortable devoting to it. Geography of Disasters has been depressingly miserable, (We spent the last two class periods watching Demi Moore's The Seventh Sign. Please, if you have any respect for your time, don't watch this movie. Go... do something off this list instead. Or stare at blank walls. I swear it'll be more enjoyable, and certainly more self-enriching.) but it's over now. Gah. So much potential, and just an awful class. Sigh.

Partials has been the real disappointment this semester- I feel like I should understand it better than I do not only because I suspect it'll come back to bite me if/when I don't, but also because it shouldn't be this hard. Mostly it's just bad because the professor is head of the department and so has no time. Which is unfortunate, and makes things difficult. Things are starting to come together a little bit, though, which is good- we are just about to take the final, it'd better happen now. Here're some pics of our work on the latest hw assignment.









Had a good time down south for birthday/Thanksgiving, though. Disneyland was really neat; here's me as our friend Indie:



Right then. Time for a bit of sleep, I think. Busy days ahead. I was kinda hoping to get a little holiday baking done this weekend, but not I don't know if that's going to happen. I'd certainly like it to. We'll see.

pg 161 meme

Snagged from mom; here's the fifth sentence on page 161 of the book nearest to me:

"Evaluate the determinants of the following matrices (i) using the first row (ii) using the "diagonals" method."

Hmm, not very interesting. Ah well. Would that linear algebra was that easy these days.

This week was kinda unpleasant academically, but really good otherwise. Had tests/quizzes in all my classes except philosophy, and had a writing assignment thing on Aristotle's De Anima due in that. Today was an exam in stats and a quiz in partials; both of which I think went well, but it's hard to tell until I get them back Monday. I'm quite sure I didn't butcher either of them, though, so that's nice.

There was a test in my Geography of Disasters class that just doesn't bear mentioning; if the sort of stuff on the test was really what he considers important about the material we've covered, then I absolutely don't feel bad about working on other homework through those class periods. It was just...wow. He had had us all (as an assignment) email him five possible test questions, and their answers. He then compiled the test using almost entirely these questions, and believe me when I tell you it showed. That was on Tuesday, and I was absurdly glad that that class was furloughed Thursday. Gah. What's incredibly depressing about whole thing is it's such an awesome idea for a class, and I really want to know about it. Grr...

Oh, and I (along with everyone else I know) failed our second linear algebra quiz. So there's that.

Soooo, it wasn't a great week as far as school went. But! All was not lost. The bf and I were able to hang out a lot, which was marvelous. Thursday was particularly fun, since I had 2/3 classes furloughed. I know on an intellectual level that furloughs are bad things that are stunting an important time in my education, but seriously? It's really hard to be disdainful of extra time to get some done. But yeah. Hanging out this week was fun, and we're headed to Spaghetti Factory tomorrow for a bit of a break. Exciting! So it's been a happy week there :)

That's pretty much all that's going on here. The AC is broken in the big room where we have our step class, which is...unfortunate. I've been spending a lot of time up in the math tutor lab, doing work, killing time, and helping out when they're busy. I got to teach a CE major IBP the other day- that was really rewarding. It's supposed to be 100F again this week up here, which, like the room's AC being broken, seems to be lacking in a certain amount of good fortune. I like grocery shopping with company. We had the first math club pizza night of the semester on Monday, and it went really well (I may mainly think so because I got to cuddle a baby during it). I made tortilla chips this evening, and had them for dinner. I'm looking forward to House starting on Monday.

Aaaand, I'm quite tired (long week!) so off to bed with me. Everyone have a good weekend!

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

I sitting at my desk, copying information about early species domestication in the Andes, while on my computer screen James Bond Rochester declares his undying passion for Jane, rather than Romana I Blanche Ingram. Spencer used the last bowl this morning, so I've just finished my breakfast of honey nut cheerios out of a smallish tupperware. Later, I'm gonig to go sit in a classroom for a couple of hours while a balding Russian man issues death threats and praise at near equal rates.

There are times that I suspect the rest of my life is not quite going to measure up in terms of the occassional bizarreness that is college living.

This is my beautiful home...

Picspam post! Some random photos from Spence's Christmas camera taken over the last few days.

I get to be first, since it is my blog. Spence just took this one tonight, at the math club's monthly pizza night:



So Spence the photographer can be next. I took this one; his expression is a result of me yelling at him to stop glowering at the camera:



Lovely white board, covered in trig identities. They're useful!



And all of my texts for the semester. (Just in case I ever need proof I owned them, or something.)



Our pretty TNG cup catching the water leaking under our kitchen sink. The guys was supposed to come today to fix it, but I don't think he did. Sigh.



And since I don't want anything under the sink while it's leaking... all my cleaning supplies are stashed on the desk that lives in the kitchen. (Note Glad garbage bags, which are so totally worth the extra couple of bucks.)



Nicely tidied lounge; hw on the couch, crisps on the table, sunlight pouring through open windows. What more can a body ask for?



The other side of the lounge. I still need to dump that box in which my new bookshelf came...



Kitchen...



And me stalking down to the floor, to strip it of it's protective covering of grime. Kill, KILL!



Ahem. After the great grime hunt, one needs a snack:



Cheese on toast comes out quickly and perfectly from the toaster oven. Me amore.



Aaaand, it looks like that's it folks.

Oh, school, you ask? School's going well. I really like my math classes, (the prof is acerbic, abrasive, sarcastic, and wonderful) and my geography class (prof is whacked out, unafraid to tell you you're really wrong, and funny and random as all get out) and the econ classes require very little, except my attendance, which I can do. I dropped the American Music class, because it seemed more torturous than it was at all worth.

And I leave you for the night with:

Day is done, gone the sun...

Right, first day of the semester finished. It was fun, if somewhat overwhelming; five straight classes didn't leave a whole lot of time to digest information. Still, everything went smoothly.

Human Geography was first. The teacher was very upset with people who mispronounced their French surnames. ("No, are you sure that's the way you say it? I'm pretty sure that's wrong...") As he went through the roster, he asked everyone where they were from (I said San Jose, just to make things easier on everyone) and put markers up on a google map he had pulled up on the screen. One of the girls was from Hemet; when asked "What you got down there in Hemet?" she immediately, unhesitatingly replied, "Old people. Lots of old people." After everyone had a little marker for there point of origin up on the map, he gave us our first hw assignment (answer some questions from GG&S and some about ourselves) and sent us on our merry way. Very friendly bloke. Kinda stoned-seeming. Never mind.

Next was macro (conveniently, just down the hall). He went over the syllabus, explained to us that textbooks are very expensive (thanks dude), and that we could actually buy used off the internet either of the two previous editions of the text instead of the $143 new one from the student bookstore, since apparently all they'd changed was the cover and the order of two of the chapters. To which I said, "Okay!" and bought off amazon for 20 bucks once I got home. I still have the new one from the bookstore, but as soon as the old one arrives in the post, I'll just return it for the full refund.

Prof then carried on to explain why the economy had tanked. That was fun. He drew really good line graphs up on the board. I think that math profs could take lessons in accurate-graph-drawing-theory-and-practice from this guy. Crowded classroom, but that'll work it self out in the next couple of weeks.

Then there was back-to-back math classes. Things had been changed since I'd last printed out my schedule, so instead of changing rooms, I got to stay in the same room with the same prof for DFQs and algebra. Prof seems like a nice guy. Quite funny. Accent, though very notably Russian, is comprehensible. No homework collected for either class, though it will be assigned; in fact, he handed out a algebra/trig review sheet so that we could all dredge ln and exponent rules out of the far corners of our brains. All of his tests (though not his quizzes) are entirely open book/notes/calculator. Which worries me a little, about how hard the problems will be, but I think (hope) it's more set up that way so as to not stress memorization, which was a problem I had in calc (stupid formulas for stupid shell/washer/disk methods...).

The DFQs class was totally full (about 40 people), with 2 people waiting to get in. However, later talking to a friend of mine in a different prof's section of DFQs, I learned that there are twenty-two people on the waiting list for that section. Dunno why. Pretty nuts, though.

Algebra is a smaller class, mainly because it's not required by as many (if any at all, I'm a little confused on this point) of the engineering majors; I think there are about 26-28 people in there. The male to female ratio in there is a lot more skewed than in DFQs too, at about 4/1 (this is not, it should be noted at least, as bad as physics last semester). There was no homework at all assigned for this class, mainly because very few people have the book yet; apparently the bookstore only ordered 25 copies for two sections of at least 25 each. So yeah, I'm glad I bought mine online, and even more glad that it came today. I was very excited. It's a very pretty book. Especially when I got it for $50 dollars instead of $114. *Teddy grins*

Last up was micro. Another full classroom, another syllabus. He spent most of the time talking about how useful the class/economics in general would be. As Dad pointed out later, we were already in the class; he didn't really need to keep trying to sell us on it. Ah well; he at least had a really nice calendar in the syllabus, with all of readings and tests/quizzes lined up. I approve.

A free hour followed micro, during which I started copying all the important dates into my planner, and then dance. Or really, the first-day-calling-of-the-roll, and then she let us go with instructions to read the syllabus online. So, that was that. I tihnk it'll be a good time.

But now, bed for me. First (only!) class tomorrow is History of American Music at 9:30, but I'm headed to the library afterwards to get the DFQ and geography homework done. Mmm, library...

It's the (hopefully not) final countdown...

And...we're back. Finals did end, Christmas break was had and enjoyed by all, and now it's just about back to the old grind. But with all new classes for our (whereby I mean my) tagging pleasure!

Right. So. Two more days. I'm really hoping my linear algebra book comes today, though at this point, it's not looking good. Dang it. That's the only one I ordered online (saving 60 dollars!) and it would be depressing to have to start out the semester a book short. Worse case scenario, I go buy a copy from the bookstore, and then return it when mine comes. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. Fortunately, I know people in the class who'll (probably) be willing to share until mine arrives, for homework purposes.

In addition to linear algebra, I'm also taking Elementary Differential Equations (shortened to Mom's favorite acronym, DFQs, pronounced diffy-cues), History of American Music, Human Geography (for which we're reading the book Guns, Germs, and Steel), intro microeconomics, intro macroeconomics, and aerobic dance. Six classes (plus dance, which doesn't really count), 20 units, and...no more GE! After this semester, I mean. Except my required upper division theme, but that's only three classes, and I think I can meld most of it into requirements for either the math or econ major.

Hey, you like the new colourscheme? I decided the pink was getting just a bit...pink. I quite like this blue, and the new header is cool.

In other news. Spencer's computer decided to stop making sounds for him this afternoon. Headphones still work, so he's determined it's the speakers that are built into the monitor. As such, he's wandered off to K Mart to buy some external (and hopefully cheap) speakers. I offered to unhook my speaker to let him test his hypothesis, but he declined. Ah well: his time and money, I suppose.

Ack, and now Mom's distracted me into playing on myreads. Dang it. Well, that's all from me, then.