twincityhacker

I've finished my Christmas shopping. And I'm going out to eat to celerbrate once I've finished cleaning for term break. Plus the fact that all the places on campus are closed for term break as well.

I just bought the majority of my books. I still have my Informatics books, but I'm going to go to the bookstore to reserve them there, as it's just the reader and whatever the Information Infostructure professor assigns. But this time it's an actual professor, and he's taught before and everything so I hope it's not going to be a pile of suck.

Anyway, $180 for linguistics and history of theatre. Which isn't bad, considering it's 12 books! 11 of them are plays for history of theatre, and I already have Poetics by Aristotle as I wanted to see what savemoony was raving about ( in a good way ) and Macbeth because I have a collection of Shakespeare's tragedies. Judging from the book list, the "history of theatre" is going to be a "history of western theatre" 'cause out of the books, five are Greek, and two of both French and English, with the rest of the world represented by one book from Japan.

But, it is about No theatre. = )

Fingaled scedual for the final time so I'm no longer taking Arabic ( YAY! ) but am instead taking two programming courses ( ICK! ).

If I don't graduate on time because I haven't taken enough electives, I think I might cry.

I went to class. I read the paper. I ate brunch. I finished "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin, which I should probably do a review for.

It's hardly afternoon, and my brain refuses to turn over. All circuitry burnt out for the day - which is unfortunate as the day is hardly over.

I blame the journalist who wrote "The woman lighted three candles." in today's edition of the New York Times. = )

The final I just took is best described as O_O *facepalm-y* *headesk*

I've been preparing to move out for Saturday.

This means I've emptied everything out, and have dumped it on my floor. But I have... most of my clothes packed. But I have two more days to pack!

Just one more final tomorrow, then packing and ushering on Friday and Saturday. Then it's home to Missouri.

Missouri.

Though I can't quite remember the name of the town I'm going home to.

Okay, adding on to my last post: anyone know good books on history of science in the 20th century? Because I have one more class and we're still in the mid 19th century and the wild goose chase that is aether. And I really, really hate aether.

Right now I have a book on the British codebreaking operations with Japanese code, and on Project Orion and the early projects dealing with nuclear powered spacecraft, and maybe a book on ENIAC if I break down and by the firesale copy at the bookstore. ( That contuinus firesale is the bane of my montary existance. I think I've spent over $60 there over this year. )

Seriously, one day I'm going to take a history class that actually finishes the damm syllabus and gets beyond World War II.

I went to the Little 500.

It was a bicyle race.

I had no idea where I was going when I left the house, I managed to get there fairly quickly by following where everyone else was going. Then I learned why you should aways carry cash, because then I wouldn't have had to run back to a dorm to get some for a ticket.

Of course, there was a food/drink ban at the gate.

So I had lunch, as I had to finish my just opened soda and the rest of the trail mix - though I ended up squirreling away some other food outside the gate.

I entered just in time for the national anthem, and wondered where the hell I was suppose to sit, because as far as I could see there were the matching shirts of the greeks. I walked, and walked, and then ended up at the nearly empty bleachers at turn two. Apparently, the Little 500 is a bigger deal for the Greeks than non-Greeks, for the bleachers that weren't behind the pits where much less full throughout the entire race, even though they were the better seats.

So I stood on my seat, and randomly decieded to cheer on the Cutters, for they were not a fraternity. I picked well, for not only were they never below fifth place for the entire race, but they won the whole thing! And there was only two accidents where the racer could not continue.

Could have done without the sunburn, but what can you do? It was warm, and the wind kept the dust clouds mostly out of where I was sitting. Good weather.

Now, to party. With my learning community. Because I really am that much of a shut in! No, it's because I just got a $808.87 receipt for food for this party, so I'm not going to crash someone else's party, even though I have a good idea where it will be.

And the lad who dropped the $808.87 receipt is going to Have A Talk with me about spending several hundred dollars over what he said he would spend. I feel a little bad about scaring the RA who handed over the receipt, though. ( I didn't yell at him! Honest. )

I have escaped one of the most awkard converstions that I might ever have. I was at a Women in Computing lucheon, and the topic was a study that someone did on mentoring. As the token undergrad of the hour, I got asked the question of whether I have a faculty mentor. I answered no, as I don't have one and have a tendecy not to ask people in RL questions about... anything.

Anway, the discussion ends and we all leave, and who walks in but on of my professors? I just hope that he didn't recognize me and no one remembers that I said I was talking the class he was teaching.

Besides the exit, the forum was good. Depressing, but good. Two professor's conducted a five university study about mentorship, and it turns out that the professors think they do a lot more mentorship than the undergrad or master degree students think that they're getting. On the order of 80% of professors think they make good mentors, and 20% of the students do.

The things that I found interesting was the way that respondents in the survey that they conducted got into the computer and applied computer sciences. The male students said that they got into the area in a younger age than the female respondents, and that the majority of the time the think that got females intrested in the area was a class, and the males it was self-study or in a group with friends.

Another thing that was mentioned that was a peer question on the survey, on whether or not the respondent was satisfied with their program had a great deal to do with their close friends in the unit. Someone posed a question on whether or not it made a deal with whether or not it made a difference with the gender mix, but it could not be answered with the data.

I think this should be followed up more, as I think it makes a large deal for female students in the area because most of the time you don't see a female student sitting in an area completely surrounded by males if possible. Instead, there's usually a few clusters of female students - and these clusters are more likely to be found near the front than the back. Of course, this is subjective to my expeince in all three of my classes, but it would be interseting to see how hat would work out.

Oh, and I've been up since five AM, trying to catch up on work. Some of it I've caught up on, but my programing, not so much.

1. University Shooting in Virgina. Kills 30 at last count of post. Jesus Fucking Christ.

2. I finished my advocey speech about political communication. It was touch and go until I wrote the concluding paragraph this morning. Though I only have four out of five citations that I neeed ( If you're wondering, two political events that I attened, a study on media coverage in the 2004 election coverage, and an extremely unscientific survey that I conducted in class. ) I'm giving the speech tomorrow.

3. I can register for classes tomorrow, and my schedual sucks. I have four classes on Monday and a daily eight am class. But since the daily eight am class is going to be learning Arabic, and since I rather like how Arabic is set up, it might be okay.