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