Only five days until Spring break! And considering the fact that the only significant obstacle between now and a full nine days of absolute relaxation is a compilers test on Friday, my week has definitely shifted into low gear. Essentially, this means even more jasterbation than normal and a significant reduction in my overall stress.

Of course, I'm just ignoring the horrendous onslaught of projects and tests that will accompany my return to school at the end of it all, when I come crashing back into reality...

But regardless... five days 'till freedom, and five days until I get to see my lovely Nicolle again for the first time since January! Being 500 miles away from the girl of your dreams for months on end is enough to drive anybody crazy right??

The only bad thing about Spring break is the inherent chillness that goes on not only during the break, but also the weeks immediately before and after. Like I said, I'm already in jasterbation mode, and the week after will be slow getting started. Inevitably this happens every year, as the week after Spring break seems to be the hardest time to want to do ANYTHING school or work related.

I guess it's time to go see if I can actually get something done, or if the rest of the night is going to be wasted playing my roomate's guitar in his room while he's trying to do his homework...

This semester, four of my five classes are based on programming. A compilers class (hard), a computer architecture class (very difficult), a Python class (moderately time consuming), and a VHDL design class (time consuming... and hard). This translates into me having about 1.8 projects due a week that involve a heavy amount of coding... as well as hours upon hours staring at nothing but a computer screen.

This might seem pretty awful, and sometimes (usually) it is, but personally, I tend to completely zone out and focus only on the task at hand. Its easier for me to do things in large chunks of time and remain focused than it is to break it up over small periods. There happens to be a very serious downside though:

I turn into a computer zombie.

With hours straight of doing nothing but code/compile/debug/repeat, my brain seems to shutdown all other rudimentary functions. Basic conversation skills seem to escape me, and social interactions begin to approach the awkward stage.

It's almost like the feeling of riding a roller coaster and getting off... after you get off, you still feels like your ass is flying around the track. Computer Zombie Mode is very similar... it takes a few moments to re-calibrate my reality. Example:

"I sure worked up an appetite writing all that code! Time to make a sandwich. Shit no bread! I better throw an exception! Time to write an error handler..."

Of course if I had be writing for one my C classes, I would make the sandwich anyway with invalid pointers to my bread slices on accident. My first bite would result in a mouthful of segfaults followed by me vomiting all over the place.

Luckily it doesn't usually take long to get back to the real world. So barring a few semi-awkward initial conversations and distorted thought patterns, it's a relatively painless process.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go write VHDL for my design lab.

Today I took my final for my US government class at Eastfield College. It was cake.... but we'll see when my grades come in. It was a different experience, going to Eastfield vs. UT, but I lucked out and got a pretty cool professor that was really opinionated, somewhat cynical... and just weird enough to make class interesting.

For those you of you unaware, I feel compelled to tell the sad tale of how I ended up going to Eastfield (~23 miles roundtrip) instead of Richland (~16 miles roundtrip).

It was my first day at Richland... I had printed out a map of the campus and my schedule off the internet.... and I was ready to go. I got there early too.... so I wouldn't have to worry about finding my class. My classroom was N212... So I found the N building.... but apparently room 212 doesn't exist! WTF mate? So I asked around and somebody told me there's a government class in 210, "It was probably just a misprint", somebody suggested.

So I sat in the class and when the teacher came and announced that this was a government 1 class (I was supposed to be in government 2), I realized I had screwed up.

So during break I went to the registrar and told them about my situation, and a large woman asked what room number my class was supposedly in. After I told her... she gave me a funny look and said, "Nope... there's no room with that number here. What's your professor's name?"

After I told her I got another really weird look. She typed it into the computer and squinted at the screen to make sure she was reading it correctly. Then she told me, "Hun, that professor teaches at Eastfield. You're at the wrong college..." Shit!

I must have accidently registered at Eastfield somehow... even though my second summer semester was all set for Richland. Go figure!

But now I'm done and will be attending Richland, and saving an ass-load on gas money too. Lesson learned.

I guess I should be more aware of the subtle clues I seemed to get. For example... next to my class room number there was "EFC" printed. What does that mean??? I had no idea until I realized it stood, of course, for "Eastfield College." Whoops!

-Brandon Valosek, clueless student

In regards to days I'd have to say that this one was pretty interesting.

I saw one of the most bad-ass things I've ever seen in a pond: a little turtle riding on top of a bigger turtle. I wanted to grab the little one and take him with me to my class... but I didn't want to traumatize the 3 year old kid looking on... although it would've been awesome to have some company in a room full of stale EE kids. Not to mention that fact that he most likely would be more intelligent than some of the guys in there... which brings me to the next topic of interest in my day.

Some people are just complete dumb asses. I'm afraid they have no hope... especially this guy I had the pleasure of sitting next to. He was attempting to do one of the labs in my EE class wherein you have to design a circuit on the computer and implement it in real life (see Nerdgasm).

First of all, he was a whiny little bitch. Calling the proctors over for every little step because his insignificant little mind couldn't even grasp the simplest of instructions (which could've easily been understood by a 5 year old), and complaining that his lab "just wasn't working." Not understanding the concept that computers do just what you tell them to do... he assumed that OF COURSE he was doing everything right and that "something was wrong with the program." Finally getting things straightened out (after 10 minutes of help by the TA) and getting his program onto the board, he couldn't get it to work!

He tried everything... re-downloading the program... checking the connections... flashing the ROM... nothing! Man his board must be bad! What terrible luck! No matter what buttons he pressed or switches he flipped, nothing would happen.

I guess he didn't notice that the board was clearly divided into two halves, and that one was labeled "FOR STUDENT USE" and one was labeled "FOR PROCTOR USE" in huge bold, black lettering.

And I guess he didn't notice he was mashing away on the unprogrammed "FOR PROCTOR USE" side.

But I definitely managed to zap a pic of his dumb ass before I left. He never did figure out that he was on the wrong side, and finally just gave up, slammed his books down, and threw his arms up in desperation (and realization that he really is a complete idiot), and walked out.

He walked back in about 5 minutes later to get his backpack he had forgotten.

After getting my lab done and checked it was time for me to head back home... in the pouring rain.

So as I said earlier, today was a day of days. If I can make it past this week of tests and survive finals... then I'm hoping to have a great summer... A summer of summers if you will.

Until next time!

I'm updating even though tonight I have to do laundry (which I haven't started), diffeq homework (which is most likely impossible) and a physics lab (which is pretty lame). Oh well... 'tis the life of a college student.

So spring break came and went... and it was awesome. I could go on and on about how extremely amazing it was to spend 5 days with my best friend and just relax and catch up, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't accurately portray how perfect this break was. SO I won't even try.

Something I CAN talk about is the nastiness that is the post-spring-break blues.

Here at UT we're done with holidays and breaks, so everyone has one more round of midterms and then the oh-so-dreaded finals week standing in front of the beloved freedom of summer. There's nothing like doing nothing for 9 days only to be hit hard by the realization that "OH SHIT! It's not summer yet!"

It seems now that everyone is just drudging on long from one homework to the next, murmuring "man I can't wait until this class is over..." and anxiously awaiting summer to get here. What a nasty feeling!

Summer can't get here soon enough.