The ratio of hunger sastifaction and taste to cost in both time and money for preparing typical college meals such as Rice-a-Roni and Ramen noodles is impressively high. The vanishingly small denominator makes up for the less-than-impressive numerator mostly, but that is beside the fact.

I hope the lack of nutrition I've experienced for the past 2.5 years of my life won't have any lasting consequences extending past the short term, because all I eat is shit. The usual college limiting factors of time, money, and laziness take their greatest toll on my eating habits (mostly), and I find myself either eating way too little or way too much.

I wonder if there will come a distinct turning point in my life in which the allure of free food will cease to overcome the normal barriers erected between yummy and yucky; because everyone knows that right now, food tastes the best when it's free.

If you haven't guessed already from the necker-cube-esque title or the inane preceding paragraphs, this entry has absolutely no point whatsoever.

Continuing:

When I was child (I caught a fleeting glimpse)¹, I used to love mac and cheese loaded up with black pepper. Ever since then, I have been doing the same, but the amount of pepper required to reach my optimal level of seasoning has increased through the years.

I don't know if this is indicative that I now have a larger area of taste buds that require more stimulation, or if I have basically fried my gustational abilities by over-saturating them a ridiculous amount of black pepper. My roommates love to think it's the latter, and give me crap about it.

Anyway, I think I have done enough rambling. Due to cramming for an exam, my sleep schedule is out of phase by just about 180 degrees, so I might be up for a while.

It's inevitable:

Put more than two engineers in the same room for a short amount of time, and without fail, the conversation will eventually turn into the classic engineering equivalent of a penis length contest.

By that I mean, the untold competition that is having the most amount of shit to do in the next week or so. Example:

"Dude, I'm so fucked. I have a lab on Tuesday and then a test and program on Wednesday."

"Dude, whatever man. I have three tests on Monday, a lab due Wednesday that I haven't started, a project due Thursday that my partner won't do shit on, and then a homework assignment due Friday."

"You guys have it easy. I broke both of my wrists and have to type with my  toes now, my computer HD crashed, my apartment burned down, and I have 4 tests next week and 3 programming assignments."

Of course, at some point a business major might chime in about how he has "work" to do that is "hard".

However, everyone will eventually stop laughing at him and continue with their discussion as normal.

I was walking down the street the other day and noticed an old pickup truck with a single bumper sticker on it:

I'm not even remotely sure why this guy has that sticker, but I like where he's goin with it.

Gotta love those Austinites!

So yesterday was April Fool's day, and I completely got owned by three of my friends. I fell for it THREE TIMES. Only two are really worth mentioning, though.

Part I: Anita

While trudging along on the 20-minute walk to school, I decided to call my friend Anita to see what she was up to. She told me that she was in the hospital after getting in a car wreck on the way to school, she even told me the details and that she broke her arm... etc. etc. I went as far as trying to console her and make her feel better, and thinking about how I could skip work that night to go visit.

"April Fools!!!!"

I suck at life!! And if that wasn't dumb enough...

Part II: Suzie

Later that day, I called my friend Suzie to make sure she was still good to work out that night. She sounded really upset and starting saying that she wish she could, but shes having some money problems with the new house she's trying to get for next semester. She said her checked bounced and the bank screwed something up, so she has to to work that out. Poor Suzie!

Again, I completely fell for it and started telling her that I know how frustrating that sort of stuff can be, but I'm sure that she'll get it all worked out.

"April Fools!!!!"

Again, I suck at life. After getting done a second time that day, I let a string of dammits shits and fucks go un-restricted on a crowded part of campus. Of course a few people gave me concerned and/or scared looks, but they had no way of knowing the pain and agony of getting OWNED by two of your best friends on April fool's day.

Moral of the story? NEVER forgot about April 1st!!! And never let your guard down.

Ever.

As I'm trying to finish up one of my programming projects, I was scanning through some of the code I had written and found something that was rather... interesting.

Normally, I consider myself a good programmer, but sometimes I have to take shortcuts and cut corners.

Here is a snippet from one of my recent projects in my CS 375 Compilers class:

/* Increment the index and return the next entry 
   we can use as a label. New entry should be 
   validated as well and safe for whomever wants 
   to peek at it. */

int GetNextLabel ()
{
    return 3;
}

The amount of code like this seems to be proportional to the margin of time between the due date and the time I actually finish the assignment.

Hmm...