Linkstew

My method of organizing my life and goals by semesters might be on the verge of breaking down, but I can still review the goals I had for last semester (and it won't stop me from making some goals for "next semester," too). Anyway, I've done better, and I've done worse:

• Graduated. Rah.
• I didn't quite manage perfect attendance, but I did make it to every Ling 106 lecture at least (even if Shannon claims I missed a lecture. Psh.).
• Titanium PowerBook G4, bought and on my lap as I type (though not entirely paid for...)
• Read: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Night Watch, and Cryptonomicon. After two semesters in a row with Lakoff, I'm going to have to defer on Moral Politics for awhile.
• Gamewise, I finished Metroid Fusion, and Kirby's Nightmare in Dreamland. I'm about 2/3rds done with Super Mario Sunshine, still working on Golden Sun, half done with Yoshi's Island, and have barely scratched the surface of Metroid Prime (in terms of where I am in the game, I have literally "barely scratched the surface").
• Watched Cowboy Bebop in a few long sittings. Ow. Of course, that's nothing compared to my brother, who watched all 26 episodes in one sitting overnight. Holy christ. Also watched most of the first two seasons of Ranma 1/2 again.
• The only feature I really added to Linkstew was the RSS feed -- hopefully I'll get around to the rest of it soon.
• Loose ends at work? Still loose.
• Still working on what I'll be doing next fall. The options at this point seem to be finding a job here and staying in the bay area, moving to Seattle, or moving back to Bakersfield.
• I've only actually had a chance to go snowboarding once so far (thanks to drought of snow for awhile, then finals, then being in Bakersfield on vacation), but I'm going for two or three days this weekend, and from there I'll only go more often.

Gah, I put this entry off back when I should have written it, because I was really busy with a combination of work and school and fun and games. And then I put it off longer and longer, and now I've forgotten a lot of the summer, and at this point all I can do is respond to my stated goals in the Summer 2002 Future post. So here it is:

• Whew, I read a lot in the first half of this summer, but I haven't actually read anything since July 10th. It added up to something like 5000 pages in a little more than a month, but I forgot the exact number. Anyway, in no order, here are the books I read before July 10th: Microserfs, House of Leaves, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, The Dark Side of the Sun, Smoke and Mirrors, Coraline, and, I'm very embarrassed to admit, five Star Wars novels that I got cheap used.
• As much as I read, though, I didn't actually get around to reading Ender's Game or Moral Politics: How Conservatives and Liberals Think like I wanted to.
• Game-wise, I only actually finished Jedi Outcast and ICO as planned, though I also played Pikmin. Everything else in my queue, including (most notably) Golden Sun and Eternal Darkness remain unplayed.
• In the second half of the summer, I ended up watching more TV in the evenings than I would have liked. In particular, I watched all of Babylon 5 on reruns, and seasons 1-4, 6 of Buffy. I also saw a few assorted episodes of season 5 Buffy, leaving the other 2/3 of season 5 for me to patiently watch on the painfully slow weekly rerun cycle. Stupid syndication.
• I don't really know how to measure how successful I was at saying "hate" less, so I'm not not going to comment on it either way.
• I fixed what was broken with Linkstew.
• Uh, I didn't study for the GRE, because I haven't registered for it yet. And by that I mean I still haven't done either. I should get on that.
• And overall, I think I was fairly less successful at work than I was hoping to be. In particular, LDAP kicked my ass.

So as I expected, I was moderately busy having a life this semester, so a lot of what I had planned to do didn't actually happen. But regardless, I feel like this semester was a success, and that's what counts.

• I wanted to get two As and two Bs this semester, but I ended up taking Astronomy Pass/No Pass, making that goal impossible. I ended up with an A in CS162, a B+ in Linguistics, and a B- in Psychology, and that'll do.
• I've done a lot of thinking about my plans for next year, and at the moment I'm planning on the fall of 2002 being my last semester at Berkeley, though I'll stay in town through July of 2003. It's vaguely possible that I might still decide to take a class or two in the spring, but that's a $2000 decision. Beyond July of 2003 I can't say with any certainty where I'll be, because the answer depends on who accepts me for what after I apply to grad schools and apply for jobs next fall/spring.
• I decided that my time this summer would be better invested in doing just one job, so I applied to be a 61a or cs3 TA for the fall. Of course, that means I'm going to be trying to do approximately 139 things this fall, but in my head I'll just imagine it's the final boss fight of my Berkeley adventure.
• I've done some grad school research, and I have a vague idea of some programs I might want to apply to, but I still need to do much more research. One thing I realized this semester is that given the choice, I'm pretty certain that I'd rather do CogSci than CS.
• I feel much more organized than I did this time last semester. I've been mainly relying on keeping work notes in a notebook and the calendaring tool at work. I still could be doing a lot better, though.
• Ridiculously, the only reading I managed to do in my free time this semester was a book about Hawaiian Volcano Legends. I feel like such a failure. (later: Oh yeah, I completely forgot that I also read Neverwhere right at the beginning of the semester.) (later still: And oh yeah, I also read The Illustrated Man.)
• Not only did I not read, but the only video game playing I did all semester was getting 2/3rds of the way through Jedi Outcast. (later: Oh yeah, I forgot that I also played a lot of Escape Velocity Nova.)
• I haven't made any final decisions, but I've been playing with the idea of using Moveable Type for that ever unmentionable third site... More as it develops.
• Not only did I not add any new features to the The Stew, but it's gotten mysteriously slower in the meantime. Before I can even think about enhancing it, I need to make what's already there more efficient and maintainable.
• My brother's new computer is done, and once I finish playing Jedi Outcast, it's all his. When I noticed just how seldom I used my desktop, I decided that it'd make sense for me to take all of my best parts and put them into one computer for him, leaving me with my faithful PowerBook.
• And finally, something that I did a lot of this semester that I neglected to put on my list back in January, was snowboarding. Whoosh. I wish it were December already.

This was another idea that came out of my last final, but don't worry, I didn't write it all during the test.

Psychology 126 (Visual Perception)
• Interdisciplinary, Hypotheses, and Heuristics.
• Requirement, Redundant, yet still Interesting.
CS 162 (Operating Systems and System Programming)
• Concurrency, Synchronization, Security and Protection.
• Communication, Frustrating, Practical, and Time consuming.
Astronomy 12 (The Planets)
• Differentiation, Composition, and Satellites.
• Distraction, Easy, for Personal Interest.
Linguistics 105 (Cognitive Linguistics)
• Metaphors, Categories, Head and Side.
• Disorganized, Confusing, Egotistical, and yet amazingly Stimulating.