01.17.07
Posted in High School, School at 10:14 pm by Nick
Today was the beginning of my final semester at Cedar Falls High School. It didn’t disappoint me. It is amazing, however, how fast a good day can turn into a bad one.
I started this morning going to work. It was pleasant, and I got to see Chris for the fist time in ages. I went to class at UNI and returned to work and ate a brief lunch. All was going well. I went to the high school and returned to Physics. Just like normal. I wandered over to Composition and Rhetoric with Ewald. She seems scary, but I think I will enjoy the class. I have had little to no time to write, and now I will have an excuse to do so even if it is in essay form. She has a lot of rules, but they don’t scare me. I then when to Sociology with Mullan. I have high hopes for that class. We have a rather large variety of people in it, and its dual credit and extremely interesting.
After high school I returned to work briefly with David and showed him around. We talked with Diane for about forty minutes (putting it at 4:40pm) before David decides he’d like to go on a service call! So we went over to the library and swapped a power supply on one of the lab computers.
I came home and before going inside I decided to do the shoveling I had put off from yesterday. I already felt kind of annoyed with things today, so a physically straining and numbing activity was almost desirable. After an hour and a half of good work getting the snow that we had driven over and was caked on the driveway off into the yard I went inside and ate dinner. All was seemingly well.
Later I opened an e-mail saying my father had collapsed at Legacy Point and had been taken to Mercy Hosptial. And there goes the day. A decent day, quickly and absolutely crushed by less then fifty words on my screen. I waited an hour or two for an update. Apparently he has some type of virus that hit him rather suddenly and, supposing all goes well (which it rarely does), he will be out tomorrow. ::sigh::
After a somewhat liberating talk with Wade about that status of life, I’ve decided turning in early would be a good idea. I need to be at work by 8am after all. I love work. It keeps my mind away from the more troubling matters and pays off (literally).
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06.15.06
Posted in College, General, High School, School at 2:24 am by Nick
I had a job interview at 2pm. I went in feeling pretty confident, and low and behold I got the job on the spot (granted that was after an interview). I now officially (though my first day is the 26th) work for the ITS department at UNI (paperwork still pending). A decent wage too for a fun and flexible job (with room for raises).
After that (lasted till 3:30 or so) I got to take dogs to the vet! Oh boy, so much fun. Sarcasm doesnt go through blog entries well if you don’t use tags. Today reminded me how much I really am allergic to the four legged crazys, so if Loki (my black lab) does live with me next year I’m definitely going to get some medicine for it.
Later I went and had dinner with Logan at Famous Daves. Yum. That was fantastic. The woman also started by asking us if we wanted any Michelob or daiquirii’s (I think it was daiquiri’s…), which was somewhat interesting. We then headed over to Blockbuster to find a movie and determined we would watch Beverly Hills Ninja (one of the first movies we ever watched togeather). Soon after we went to Hy-Vee to buy candy so Lauren could check us out (“you forgot the condoms?!” haha 
)
So all in all it was an interesting day. I have lots of packing and moving to do tomorrow and this weekend (and all of next week for that matter). Hopefully I’ll figure out my living situation and find some time to finish up my math/great books stuff so I didn’t completely screw myself over last semester (::shudder:: I can’t live with a 3.6 gpa… must… makeup… work… for better grades…). Speaking of homework, I suppose I should finish my homework for Computer Org. or at least tell Fienup to report my A-. ::sigh:: If only I had a bit more time to program in assembly (aka bash my face into hard objects).
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03.03.06
Posted in College, General, High School, School at 11:01 am by Nick
Right, so my seemingly great week has turned to crap. Lets go over why it was great:
- Perfect score on the Eastern Civ test (100/100). Woot.
- Perfect scores on CS II homework and test (without testing code even).
- Made $20 tutoring a college student
- Assembled a kick ass computer, for which I will (eventually) recieve $80.
- Spring break is but a week away
- My truck still has half a tank of gas (yup, this is a good thing)
- The play is on Saturday
- Great Books w/ Demoss is amazing, as is the Apology by Plato.
- Got to eat Village Inn and Carlos O’Kelly’s in the same week
- Made top 10 posters on Gammon’s forum
Ok, some intermediate things here:
- Signed up for the ACTs
- Got some sleep, but not too much, by pulling shifts with Dan
- Hacked away some math assignments (see next section)
- Video in Eastern Civ on Monday.
- Reading time in Eastern Civ today.
And the kickers, all of which have been happening recently (minus the first one):
- Mom back in the hospital on Tuesday (this cancels out like, 5 good things)
- Still have several math assignments to do
- Literary Analysis paper is due next week (I have a bit to read yet…)
- Comp. Org. homework due today that I don’t have done and don’t really know how to do…
- All of the problems of putting the computer togeather (eg. incompatible RAM, SATA troubles, optical drive troubles, Windows installation troubles (err, SATA troubles again…))
- No time to work on Kaladea
- No time to work on phpQuote
- No time to work on much of anything
- Horrifically unprepared for the ACTs next month
- Cable/Internet died during ACT registration
- 65 point quiz in Eastern Civ next week
- My knees died (I contribute this to tripping on the sidewalk, but standing for 4 hours straight prolly didn’t help either). This was resolved after two hours of icing them down with frozen peas.
- Terrible weakness and sickness Thursday morning.
- Mental meltdown + seemingly unavoidable academic failure
- Absolute depletion of care for math class ::sigh::
- Only got to see my Grandparents yesterday for a total of 45 seconds (twas leaving for tutoring)
—–
I’m not really sure what else to say. This weeked is going to be incredibly busy, as is next week. Then, finally, I’ll have a break from it all (which, sadly, will be used to catch up on things…).
—–
Can anyone name the song that contains this posts title in its lyrics? I’ll give you two imaginary cookies if you do! Google should make it easy.
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02.08.06
Posted in College, General, High School at 10:17 pm by Nick
“Talent does not determine how good you can get, only how fast you get there.”
~Dick Gabriel
This quote is actually from Wallingford’s blog. I found it especially fitting today and yesterday, with the various conflicts I’m currently dealing with in my academics.
Never before have I ever felt so undermined and unproductive, and yet, so accomplished. I’m one of the few junior’s who can say they go to college (albeit part time), and yet, I feel my academic zeal slipping. Like, seriously slipping. Fast. I’ve become very sick and annoyed with high school. It seems more like an annoyance than anything else these days.
This flame is constantly fueled with my college planning (I’ve got the courses I plan to take -totally- mapped out for UNI, though its not in a semester schedule (i’ll save that for later)). Also, the fellow I have e-mailed about the MIS major in the Management department was very nice, making me even more eager to join the college ranks. The reply form him was a tad amusing as it said “if you plan to visit the UNI campus,” which I do every weekday!
My feelings are strange currently. For the first time I feel like I’m goinging somewhere, like I’m realling doing something, and like it may actually matter. I’ve always ranted about about the importance of education, but never has it seemed more relevant than now. I am going places (finally), and the faster it happens the better.
Conversely, my performance is (way) down. The grades are in from last semester, and though they are relatively good, there is definitely a downfall (GPA drop again, ::sigh::). Every single one (to my amazement on a few) was an A or A- except math. What was math? C+. Yep, thats right, a C+. For the first time I’ve achieved (wrong word?) a C+ as a semester grade. I will blame this on a few things to defend myself (bad teacher, my mom’s illness’, my complete lack of mathematical competency, lack of time budgeting for math assignments, rather large amount of lengthy problems on the final (which screwed a lot more people than just me)), but it is my fault.
I need a break! Holy crap, this week has been bad! And tomorrow is “Zero Hour”. My brain is going into meltdown mode. Sadly spring break isn’t until March (though next wednesday is professional development day (I still have UNI class)), or, more specifically, 4 weeks from now. ::sigh::
Oh, it turns out I should be able to take a few MIS classes over the summer! I’m probably the only kid around here that is happy with the news they could attend school over the summer (hurray for speeding up college). Granted this will cost money, something I still need to discuss with my parents. However, things remain hopeful. If all goes well I may be able to grab my bachelor degree’s in 3-4 years, and have masters in another 1-2. This is all still subject to many things (for example, a really good job offer (one can always hope, eh?)), but going on to get Phd’s would also be nice. With the certificates I wish to get I may have to add another year or so onto my college experience (or should it be a college expense?), so it seems likely that going to classes through the summer’s will be a good option for keeping myself on track.
—-
What I am avoiding by currently writing this (with most of it due tomorrow):
A Computer Organization assignment (and test to review for), several math assignments (I’m so lost…), an eastern civilization assignment (well, partially, only some of it is due tomorrow), and a book to read for great books.
– Edit –
Interesting note: This post has the id 200, meaning it is the 200th post I’ve ever written. Crazy.
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01.22.06
Posted in ALPHA, College, Computer Science, High School, School at 3:06 pm by Nick
Time: 2 hours
Total: 5 hours
——————-
I spent some time verifying the balance of the tree’s and everything looks pretty good. However, I have one node in -every- tree I create with a balance of 2 (which is bad). The code leads me to believe that this node used to be a root node that was later rotated out of the root spot.
I will attempt later (if my professor can give me a lead) to fix the problem, but overall the effects are extremely positive. I ran the program on a 338 meg text file named osu.medline, which contains various informations on effects of drugs, diseases, disorders, their causes, and things like that.
This is a sample output (I won’t paste all 7.2 million words it read) with the number of nodes/unique words capped at 200,000 (Note: words of length 3 or less are discareded):
Nodes w/ 0 bal: 136003
Nodes w/ 1 bal: 32057
Nodes w/-1 bal: 31939
Nodes w/ other: 1
Overal balance: 120
Number of words: 7201810
Number of nodes: 200000
Time: 32 seconds*
–
It took just over 32 seconds to read 7.2 million words and inset them into the tree (and balance the tree accordingly). This is very impressive. The fact that 136,000 of the 200,000 nodes are balanced perfectly (balance == 0) means the tree is in very good working order, and the only problem is the “other” node, which has a balance of two. The others, -1 and 1, are local fluxuations that exist and will exist until the tree need’s rebalancing at that particular spot.
In closing (for now), the method outlined works. It is fast (7.2 million searches and additions! in 32 seconds!) and provides a very good tree.
*This time is a little off. Sadly the timer is not very resolute, and it in no way accounts for the hundreds of thousands of small words (length < = 3) that were read, translated to lowercase (with smashed punctuation), and then discarded. Also, this test was run on a Sidhe (http://sidhe.cs.uni.edu), a very fast machine.
-- edit --
I added two lines of code to avoid even smashing/converting strings of length less than 4 already. This decreased the overall time by one second:
Nodes w/ 0 bal: 136003
Nodes w/ 1 bal: 32057
Nodes w/-1 bal: 31939
Nodes w/ other: 1
Overal balance: 120
Number of words: 7201810
Number of nodes: 200000
Time: 31 seconds
-edit-
Code has been updated. The original is main.cpp, the recent additions are under main_mod.cpp.
http://www.nick-cash.com/download/cs2/1
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01.20.06
Posted in College, General, High School, School at 11:28 pm by Nick
I’m setting two year long goals for myself right now (these are not like New Year’s Resolutions, as I plan to keep mine this year and I don’t mind if I break these:
1) Produce a semi-decent 2-3 minute animation using trueSpace 5 and its facial animator. I already have an idea in mind, which should be good I think. I just need to find the time to work on this. Tomorrow will hopefully produce a 30 second animation (perhaps a recreation of the spinning blue-red ring with fancy camera tricks). I should use a few of the tutorials…
2) Have a workable alpha version of Kaladea by the end of the year. This means I need a building system and a few other things (such as combat). Luckily I have room’s set up right now, and all seems well. Fleshing them out shouldn’t be difficult.
Pretty average day today. High school was boring as ever, but thats nothing new. I must say Demoss is fantastic and I think I’m really going to like Eastern Civ. The only downside to it all is I have oodles of reading to do just for those two classes.
Highlight of my day today was definitely CS II. O’Kane got done explaining a bunch of code, but no one understood it (and we have three or four Physics majors)! I told him he could do it much easier and he went and looked at my code (explained in the two previous posts) and then all was clear. So, in short, my code was more concise and understandable (but used slightly more overhead) and enabled the Physics majors to have a clue!
Right, so over the course of two hours we built up two inches of snow and I had to clean off my previously clear truck. The trip home took ten minutes longer than it should have, as I got stuck through an entire light and repeatedly slipped past turns I planned on taking. I do believe driving that one time was worse than all of the winter. Oh, to top it off, they made the turn-in to my housing area smaller when they rebuilt it and I nearly smashed into two cars (though going 6 miles an hour i doubt anyone would be hurt and the damage would not have been more than scratch). Wouldn’t that have been oh so great? Luckily I was able to turn away, but in doing so I nearly went off the road (because of the damn fish-tailing nature of trucks).
On another note, it is the most beautiful snow I have -EVER- seen in my life. Slow, thick, heavy and nicely spaced. It was amazing. It is also the best packing snow I’ve seen (I threw a few snowballs at my house).
-edit-
I reread this post and fixed a bunch of dumb errors. Should make more sense now.
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01.17.06
Posted in College, General, High School at 9:08 pm by Nick
Yeah, so while all you little kiddies were sleeping in this morning (ok, not all of you) I had to get up at 7:30am and go to class. I know what you are thinking, yeah yeah, bitch bitch. And yes, thats exactly what I’m doing!
The title is partly inspired (if you didn’t somehow realize) by Benjamin Franlkin’s famous quote. I just finished listening to the hour long review of his life they did on him (this is the second or third time i’ve heard parts of it). He was such an amazing fellow, I really would have liked to meet him. But alas, I am not that old nor can I got back in time (too bad I sold that machine to NASA….).
Right, so, tomorrow is the first day of high school classes, second semester. Finally. My second semester college classes are pretty damn good, so I’m looking forward to Eastern Civ. (with Logan, Mandy, David, Ben, Tommy and probably tons of people i’m forgetting) and Great Books. I need to work much harder this semester. Maybe my mom won’t make it so much harder by staying out of the hospital for more than three weeks at a time…
In any event, I must shower, feed dogs, and sleep. Yup, I’m starting the wind down process now because I’m really really tired (up for almost 14 hours straight, I think I should be!). I feel bad for you poor fellows who have to get up and go to school at the normal time. Wednesday is my late day! I don’t have to be there till 3rd hour. However, I REALLY need to establish a sleep cycle so it isnt a shocker to have to wake up at 7:30am two days a week. If I could make a habit of waking up that early that would be pretty damn spiffy.
In other news, I’m going to get some help seeking employment at UNI in the ITS department from a fellow student (O’kane would probably give me a recommendation if I need one as well). Hopefully that turns out well.
Good night world. I’ll post something -real- tomorrow hopefully.
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01.07.06
Posted in General, High School, School at 12:02 am by Nick
This week was pretty worthless. Seriously, I honestly felt like this week was a waste of academic time. Should have just given us the week off (we wouldn’t have missed anything).
School is becoming shitty, like it always does around finals. I seriously need to work on my math, my entrepreneurship stuff, write up my ALPHA report, and revise my story for creative writing this weekend. Next week will suck as I need to go to Rod Library to rent a textbook until mine arrives (I’ve never done such a thing before) and classes start up on Monday. My schedule is so crazy. ::sigh::
Tonight was great. Lots of humor and fun games, which have spawned two memorable quotes:
“I’d take incest as a hobby” – Aviva
“Its a room full of beeping christians!” – Me
Quite amusing without the stories behind them, but somewhat funnier with the stories. Ask if you care
I’m too tired to go into depth. Hopefully tomorrow will involve the drinking game/1000 blank before Wade leaves town and school goes into crazy mode.
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12.09.05
Posted in College, General, High School, School at 11:16 pm by Nick
Been a while since a real update, but I finally have some things that are (possibly) worth posting.
Firstly, my schedule for second semester is now official. It is as I posted before, but I shall post it once again:
1. Computer Organization (Fienup)
2. ALPHA Autonomous (McCrea)
3. Advanced Algebra and Trig (Staniger)
4. Computer Science II (O’Kane)
5. ALPHA In-Depth (McCrea)
6. Eastern Civ. (Engel)
7. Great Books (Demoss)
So let me know what we share, if anything (if its 1 or 4 I will be quite suprised!).
The scheduling process was actually a bit annoying, as I figured it may be. They told me Computer Org. was closed, but O’kane, McCormick, and Fienup all said I could be in it anyway. They only have 20+ students in it, but it is only registered for 20 (apparently they tried to change it but the change failed). Either way, they accept up 30+ I think without too much thought, so no biggie.
Later I had Mr. Carr help fix up my schedule. He kept mistaking my first semester courses for second, which was kind of aggravating. He is quite an amusing fellow, though a little dry. I think he like Mr. O in the respect that you need to pay attention to really catch his humor, but he doesnt know it. Overall we got it mostly worked out, but he forgot to change 5th hour (sash just wont work!!). Later I got Mr. Flaherty to change it, so the schedule should be all set.
–
I went and got my PSAT scores back today. I was actually quite suprised at how well I did (I had low expectations), but it is still much worse then I could have done. I’m very disappointed in my performance, but I really did do it to myself. I didn’t study up or read much besides the booklet they give out, and I was a bit sleep deprived when I went. Also there are other forces that threw me off, but I’m not going to get into that.
Lets hope I can do better on the ACT’s (I need at least a 30!).
–
Today was the last normal day of classes at UNI for this semester. Kind of exciting, but overall nothing out of the ordinary. McCormick taught right up to the end, jamming all he could into our last session. For all I know he may post a last assignment on the stuff we covered today.
CS I was pretty boring. We finished up the example, turned in out lab and final assignment stuff (I think I was the only one who actually did it) and left. On the plus side we did get to leave about twenty minutes early. Yay for that.
–
To top off this evening (without rambling about Tales of Symphonia), I finally watched The Usual Suspects. ::poke carl::
I must say it was a great movie. Very interesting, though I pretty much knew the big secret the whole way (damn my thought process of deduction, the ending would have been so much more suprising). Anyways, it ended in a good manner, allowing people to piece everything togeather (which makes most people identify with the cop).
My thoughts back tracked to Ender’s Game during the final credits. The way I should have felt during the movie (that is, understanding and figuring things out with a character) hit me perfectly at the end. I always figured something was strange, but the instant I read the words where Ender realized he had been controling real men and real ships instead of just playing games I figured it out as well. The moment was shocking. One of those “holy shit” moments you get from time to time (especially after a thought provoking movie, such as the Usual Suspects).
My movie for tomorrow is Saw. I’ve actually heard it was pretty good (and bloody), so we’ll have to see. I also heard the second was better than the first, so I must see the second eventually as well. But lets not rush things.
–
I don’t feel like I have too much more to say. I’m fairly hooked on Tales of Symphonia right now (after scheduling GCN play time into my schedule to keep me sane during my studies this weekend), so I’ll probably go play that. I’m determined to hit disc two by the end of this weekend, and finish it over break. Uplink also looks like a good play currently. Quite amusing at the least.
Toodles.
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11.29.05
Posted in General, High School, School at 10:43 pm by Nick
Second hour we discussed about how my class has been really lazy and only a few people (myself included) have really sold anything. We need to sell a lot of stuff. Sell sell sell!
–
Creative Writing was great today. I thought Mr. Wilkinson really connected with us (if anyone else was paying attention) on a serious level today. While his poem was personal and I do not remember it, it was quite meaningful to him. It was compelling to see such emotion from someone largely stereotyped (even rightfully) as a big hulking athlete type man.
As such, he has asked we write one last poem. Any form. Any style. Any length. The only requirement is that it must mean soemthing. Something deep. Something within your soul. Perhaps a feeling supressed or something you never knew was there. Or perhaps the expression of something you’ve known all along. Meaningful poetry is the best kind of poetry.
Some people groaned at his request, but I have never felt that I would be allowed to write something incredibly personal and pass it off for schoolastic credit. I wrote some things last year in LAE that, of course, were rather personal. My poetry (even for a class) usually is. However, I’ve never felt this compelled to write with deep sensation for school. I think Mr. Wilkinson is an amazing teacher.
—
After Creative Writing I went home and played with my dog. He enjoyed it quite a bit, as he usually does. Later I played with him in the snow, which was quite amusing. My dog is pure black, so when he sniff’s in the snow and raises his head he looks like he’s been on crack. I threw snowballs, which had him both interested and excited, but overall left him a bit confused (same as every year). Where did that white ball go!? Its much more amusing when you actually hit him with it.
I spent close to 3 hours at Panera helpping a fellow Comp. Sci. student. Hooray for that. I think I made the woman at the counter mad though. Not only did I ask only for a drink (which seemed to annoy her), but I paid for it with a five (it cost like 1.09 or something).
Off to the hospital with Dan and after various tasks here I am. I have none of my homework done. Crap. Off I go!
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