doomed

I saw the DOOM movie with Vincent and Lisa. Vincent really wanted to see it. I decided to go with him because he convinced Lisa to see it, and the opposite is probably true too. I'd say the movie wasn't really bad as much as it was stupid. For further details, check out my movie reviews. Which I updated. Holy crap.

All I have to do this weekend is study quantum, so I will have time to do other things that got neglected last weekend with all the exam grading. Like cleaning up my apartment, it's a dump. I can also do some longer range planning like research possible internships.

I'm not particularly worried about the quantum midterm but I know there is a lot of stuff (the not Linear Algebra stuff) that I need to brush up on for me to do well. I am a little worried about E&M though. I don't think I need to worry about getting the boot - at least just yet - but I'm going to start making a contingency plan for transferring to a lower level E&M next term in case things start going badly.

I was tempted to grab the little that's left in my bank account and run to Best Buy this weekend (I get paid on Monday anyway), but this week wasn't as rough as last week so I'm behaving myself.

grad school is a state of mind

making the grade

I did not have to do the exam problem regrade after all. One of the teachers took care of it. The students learned their scores today, but I have not heard anything about that. Apparently the average on the exam was something like 40% despite it being very similar to an exam from last year. Some of the students asked me about the exam in yesterday's lab. I couldn't help but mess with them. They asked if the average was below 60% and I laughed.

Today quantum went back to making me look stupid. (It was not about Linear Algebra, which I seem to have a black belt in.) Nobody understands what is going on in E&M. I have to do E&M homework tomorrow so we'll see how that goes. I can probably get an A in quantum, but I'm hoping just to pass E&M. Maybe I will drop it next term - I already know I'm not taking third term E&M.

PSM seminar was harping on internship stuff again, Lisa needs to worry about this stuff now but I have another year yet! Badminton went badly. I was not on my game today. We started playing doubles on Monday, and my partner and I have not beaten anyone yet. In Comm we had to do impromptu speechs about our comm projects. My project has not really been started, at all, so I started strong but then rambled for a while. I don't have stage fright though.

I have been grading prelabs. Tomorrow's lab is about beam theory. (Structural beams.) So I got to look all smart at the TA meeting today because I've had ME 222. The prelabs are insanely long and hard compared to the actual lab, if we could put half the prelab material in the lab we would be fine. At least my week eases up after Wednesday, I planned it out well. and no running around like crazy like I was last week.

quantum mechanic

Today was another long and painful day. It ended with my irritating communications class. I seriously considered jumping out the window and running away. I was late to all my afternoon classes because Oregon State only allows ten minutes between classes, and profs here love to run over as much as anywhere else.

I did manage to pull off one major coup though. There was an extra quantum class today because quantum didn't meet last week. So the prof hands out homework in the morning session, and Vincent jokingly asked if it's due at the afternoon session, to which the prof responds "if you want it to be." I took a look at it and did 3/4 of it in E&M instead of listening. I seem to have a very good grasp on linear algebra and that's what this homework was. I made it my goal to finish the homework and turn it in before the afternoon session.

My only free time was around lunch though, so I sat down and started cranking through it. I was doing well, until some of the students in my lab found me in my office. Disaster! However, I was able to kick them out after answering a couple questions. I finished the last part of the last question in my TA seminar, and I turned in the homework in the afternoon session. So now everybody thinks I am crazy good at quantum mechanics.

I don't know what's going to happen with the damn midterm. I am not going to be a happy camper if I have to regrade.

I actually had some free time tonight, so I played We Love Katamari and unlocked the secret and super secret levels, as well as beating the end credits. I have to grade prelabs yet, but I seem to recall they grade really fast this week.

we have uh-oh

So I guess the problem I thought was wrong on the midterm wasn't actually wrong, only unclear to everybody outside of a certain loop. The problem could be interpreted two ways, but you wouldn't think of the second way unless you had this exact problem hit over your head several times in class already. I did everything I was supposed to do and it's not really anyone's fault, but that problem will need regrading. Which is probably a 2-3 hour ordeal, especially since I seem to be twice as slow as the other TAs. I already spent over 15 hours grading the midterm over the weekend and the thought of more grading is the sort of proposition that is liable to make me scream and defenestrate something.

This morning was very backwards. Quantum made me feel smart and E&M made me feel bad. We will see how the rest of the day goes but right now I just want to be left alone to sulk about E&M and the midterm.

college nonlife

I really want to play The Sims 2 right now. There is a University expansion pack about college life, and a Nightlife expansion pack where you can drive cars and your Sim can be a DJ. Plus, I always love building Sim houses - it's the architect in me. It looks like so many different ways to entertain me. Unfortunately, the game and its expansions account for a good chunk of cash, which I don't have. I also have no time to play the game right now. I guess I'll have to wait for Christmas or something.

I could also go for some noise-canceling headphones. My idiot neighbor is at it again, and it's just generally noisy in my part of town. Another item for the Christmas list I guess.

So yeah, I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now. It's coming along...slowly. I'll get it done, but I'm becoming a nocturnal creature and Monday morning quantum is going to hurt. Tomorrow is a double dose of quantum, too.

The Hard Lessons concert is a little over two weeks away. I was getting concerned about my ability to pull it off, but now that my cold is cleared up I have a lot more energy, and I found out the Hard Lessons are playing early so I can bail afterward and get home before 4 AM. In any case, all three Hard Lessons concerts I was not sure about going to, and all three turned out to be incredibly awesome. The Hard Lessons helped me get through grading exams on Saturday - "Gasoline" is on my iPod.

My last LiveStrong band broke. I have a whole new box coming though. It should be here tomorrow, but it might take a couple days to catch the UPS man like it did for Jim's Top Gear DVDs.

graded

Exam grading is the kind of thing that could annihilate your soul. Fortunately, my iPod kept me sane. I am done now, which means I have to move on to writing papers and all kinds of other things before tomorrow. I spent a couple hours screwing around on Facebook though, and it was worth it. There will be AOE2 later tonight as well.

My $634 OSU bill finally went through, so now I have a grand total of something like $300 on hand, which will be mostly gone by the end of the month. My metamorphosis into a full fledged grad student is nearly complete. But seriously, being a grad student is nothing like undergrad. I was hoping grad school would make me learn how to focus my efforts and be a hardcore physics student. And I think it's working.

Apparently nobody in the department passed quals this term. Just as well I am staying the hell away from a Ph.D.

ph34r t3h r3d p3n

I just got back from exam grading. I'm about 85% done now, which means I'll have to go in again tomorrow. I think I spent maybe 7 hours grading today, so that's a total of 13 hours so far. The last 15% will take another couple of hours. Part of the problem was that the teacher did a problem wrong, showed the whole class how to do it wrong, who turned around and did it on the exam wrong, and the teacher skipped town before I found out and tried to clarify. I check with the other TAs and they agree with me, so I am grading it my way. I have not seen even one student do that part right yet, but I am giving points to students who broke their programming and took some steps in the right direction.

I have many other things I am supposed to do this weekend, like write papers, but I haven't been able to get to them yet. I stopped grading for about two hours in the afternoon...to work on something else. Speeches related to the biodiesel (biofuel?) project. We are taking steps that seperate us from the biodiesel club and I am very happy with that. Our work on the biodiesel stuff over the last couple days has actually gone very well and I am excited about it.

I also took a break from grading to play badminton because I am supposed to write about an out of class badminton experience. I missed my shot at open gym on Monday so I made Lisa come play with me. I also made the equipment desk people pull out a wallyball so I could prove to Lisa that they exist. (The desk person had no idea what a wallyball is, but I know where they keep it now.) I don't think Wallyball can be played until next week though.

Campus is very peaceful at night on the weekends. Mostly because only sucker TAs are there, grading. In contrast there is some kind of huge party near my apartment and some idiot managed to trigger a fire alarm over there earlier.

time issues

Undergrad midterm was this week. I spent almost six hours grading exams tonight...and it may take up to nine more hours.

I would say that I've been very busy but that is rather an understatement. I'm reaching the point where my productive output is not based on how hard I work, but on the number of hours in a day. I am worried that in the near future I will literally not have enough time to complete all the tasks before me. Today I went in really early and barely scraped out my E&M homework minutes before it was due. And I can't just cop out and dump one or two tasks - everything is important.

I am finally getting over my cold. I think it was prolonged because of all the stuff to do and my not being able to just sleep in. My weekend is completely blown already - perhaps even overbooked - but I'm sleeping in tomorrow, damn it. I've earned it.

The biodiesel stuff is a go - perhaps too much of a go. Basically any spare moment I have will belong to some form of biodiesel project task. Quantum makes me feel really smart on the homework and really dumb in class - I've been doing well on homeworks, and then I come to class and utterly bomb in-class worksheets. The midterm sounds like it will be on stuff I can handle though.

I could elaborate on some of the other stuff I've been up to this week but it's already quarter to 2 and I need sleep.

it's a grad, grad, grad, grad world

So it's been a few days...they are keeping me busy here. I have been running around this weekend trying to get stuff done while I have the chance, so I'm a little stressed. But really, the only thing that truly upsets me is noise. Birds with annoying calls waking me up, idiot neighbor playing music all day with his subwoofer against my wall, some other idiot neighbor whose car makes really irritating noises, somebody using a leafblower at 10:30 PM...all I want is some damn peace and quiet. I'm a grad student now, I guess it goes with the territory.

Other than some AOE2, I have been fairly productive this weekend, but I still have a ton of stuff to do. I'm going to have to be pretty productive all day every day just to keep up. I can see how grad students have no life.

Oh, and I got my first bill from Oregon State. I can also see how grad students are broke.

I am grading prelabs to get them out of the way. I am too tired to actually assign pass/fail right now though. I did not fail anyone in my first section, but some of the people in my other labs are tempting me. Sometimes it makes me very sad to see what they write.

I'm pretty exhausted. I don't know how I'm going to pull the all-nighter to see The Hard Lessons. With my luck there will be a quantum exam the next day.

I just realized quantum isn't meeting this week! An extra hour to sleep in! And I was getting up an hour even earlier than usual at the end of last week anyway, that was rough. I still have QM homework due Friday though.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit the motor pool, and there's also a meeting about this biodiesel project we physics PSMs are trying to get in on. I also want to hit open gym for badminton because I'm supposed to at some point. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

math sucks

My third week of classes has started and we still aren't doing physics, just math. The math was starting to get to me today but hopefully I can get it sorted out.

I have two sections of lab tomorrow so I am finishing their prelabs from last week. I also ran up to Albany to get a shirt & tie for a PSM deal on Thursday, but I couldn't find anything in my size so I have to go shirt hunting again. If I can't find anything tomorrow I'll have to skip comm on Wednesday or something.

I found out that the local rec center does have Wallyball, but I don't know if I can fit it into my schedule this week. I'm not looking forward to when classes start assigning real homework.

music

I went to a concert on the quad last night that featured some of the big local bands. I wasn't too impressed though.

The Hard Lessons confirmed where they're coming in Portland. One month from today, actually. So I am super excited about that. Unfortunately, The Nice Device is still only touring in the Midwest. On October 21 both bands are playing at the Temple Club - dammit, I wish I could be there for that. Being thousands of miles away has its disadvantages.

unquote

I went to go read my quote board and found that MSU has stolen my web space, so I will put up a mirror on my OSU web space when I get the chance.

I had a bizarre dream last night about having a food fight with Cerberus. I think that threw me off for the rest of the day. I have a lot of TA stuff to do tomorrow, hopefully it will go smoothly.

I have to do a stupid service project for my PSM seminar, but there is a chance that the other physics PSMs and I can use this to get hooked up with the motor pool's project to deploy biodiesel vehicles in the campus fleet. Apparently they want to get the biodiesel from on-campus sources...and they want to make the biodiesel facility solar-powered. That is really freaking cool. Lisa has to go talk with her motor pool contact about it though.

idiot neighbor

My neighbor is some kind of idiot gamer. He has been playing some game literally all day. He was playing at lunch, he was playing when I got home, he was playing at dinner. While his stamina is impressive, I got sick of hearing thumping through the wall and told him to knock it off about two hours ago. He's still playing (though at a greatly reduced volume). Seriously man, get a life. I just feel like I'm surrounded by idiots.

hard lesson

I was cruising The Hard Lessons' website and saw that they are coming out here, in November! I asked Augie to come to Portland, and Portland they are indeed doing. No specifics yet. It looks like they are coming on a Tuesday though, which means it's going to be really hard to pull off. It's going to happen though.

zero tolerance katamari

officially a grad student

Well, I survived my first week of grad school. I think I can handle the conceptual stuff in quantum mechanics, but the math is going to kick my ass. The heavy math stuff won't start until next week though. I'm probably going to be more comfortable with E&M. My seminars and communcations class seem ok, and badminton is a fun class but I have to get used to these so-called 'rules'. I'd like to play some Wallyball but I don't know if Corvallis has the facilities.

Last night a bunch of the PSM majors got together at a local pizza place. It was good times. The other two Applied Physics students and I get along really well, and the people from the other tracks seem like good people too. I think there will be more PSM get-togethers in the future because everyone was mad that people in their own department never go out and do things.

It started raining yesterday. More rain today. And for the rest of the 10-day forecast. I suspect Oregon's rainy season has begun.