I had a hard time concentrating in Data Management. My head was throbbing and I found it hard to focus on this, but I seemed to shake it off around the middle of the discussion. It was all about fault tolerance in stream systems. Interesting stuff actually.

After that I had Ubiquitous Computing, in which I managed spill Sprite all over myself. Nice. Anyway, that class was all about teenagers and their use of mobile devices, primarily in reference to their text message usage and how that affected or was influenced by their Instant Messaging usage, things like that. Really quite an interesting discussion, based off of two ethnographic studies for which the papers weren’t particularly good but nevertheless raised some interesting issues.

After that I went and had some lunch, promptly getting my bank account shafted by Westpac for not using the Bank of America ATM (which was out of order, as you may recall)… the food places apparently only take cash, cheque or Husky Card… this is something I don’t understand about here. There are a lot of places that seem to take cheques but not credit cards. Very weird. Then again, I’m of the New Zealand generation that barely uses cheques, so I’m bound to think it’s weird.

Anyway, the next thing was the Colloquium Seminar. This was given by Feng Zhang from Microsoft Research, and it was on the challenges faced with large sensor networks and how to globally assemble and aggregate all the information from various sensory devices. Interesting topic, but for some reason my brain kept shutting on and off… was very surreal, felt like I only got about half of the talk. Towards the end my brain said it was ok to go back to “on” mode though, and out I went. On the way out I talked to my Data Management lecturer, Magda about how the semiar related to what we were talking about in class as well as some potential ideas for research options in that area. I’ll be discussing that in more detail with her when she presents some research project option on Thursday in class.

Afterwards I went and did some email for a little while and started my blog entry before hooking up with Rob and heading to Zoka’s. At Zoka’s Rob was just doing some reading for Graphics as I dove into my general list of things to do on my computer: blog, email, work, etc. Also talked with Rob about some things as well as talking to some friends of his and, of course, having coffee.

After I got back I had some dinner and settle in to keep working. Turns out I didn’t stop until 5am… security debugging can be very engrossing, I tell you!

Well, I actually managed to get some sleep again. I’m rather enjoying that whole sleeping thing. Anyway. I got up, went through the usual start-the-day stuff, agonized over my graphics homework a little more, then headed into university. I’m not particularly happy with the homework, there was a lot of mathematical stuff I didn’t fully understand how it applied or how to prove it. If anyone that reads this understands interpolating function proofs, convolutions and Fourier transforms, email me and let me know. Next up I printed off my homework and headed to Graphics. Today we had a substitute lecturer, as Brian is away in Europe. It was supposed to be the TA, but the TA is still sick. This guy wasn’t particularly good, he kept skipping over all kinds of stuff saying he just didn’t remember, that kind of thing. I suspect that when Brian gets back he’s going to have to go over a lot of the same material, or at the very least field a lot of questions from the students.

After that I had a bit of a brief discussion with some of my classmates about the next project (which was apparently assigned today), which will be done in pairs. We all need to sort out which groups and so on. Rob’s gonna scout out who’s already in pairs and email Mario and I and then we’ll see how it turns out! This next project is going to be creating a ray-tracing program, which should be pretty fun.

After that I walked over to the Communications building, which was a good opportunity to expand my knowledge of the campus a tiny bit. Since most of my classes are in the CSE building, or the EE building which is adjoining, I don’t actually walk around the campus a whole lot, and it’s a beautiful campus. The reason I walked over to Communications is that I’m going to a guest seminar that I was alerted to via the FIUTS email newsletter on the political and economic correlation in Japan over the past decade or so. Sounded really interesting, so off I went. I was a bit early, only two people in the room, so I got out my laptop and started my blog entry for the day. The room gradually filled up (probably a capacity of no more than 50 or 60) and filled with the noise and hubbub that is people meeting up again, exchanging greetings and so on. Kinda nice to hear a soft buzz in Japanese as well. The seminar was pretty interesting overall, some fascinating stuff. I don’t know that I’d want a degree in it, but interesting nonetheless.

After that I went back to my apartment, sat down and started doing my emails. This ended up involving a lot of work as well as some stuff which was (apparently) reasonably urgent. I did some work, managed to talk to Ric for a bit about work stuff, talked to Anastasia just before she went to bed… the work stuff was a bit of a pain in the ass to be honest, as they were doing the usual client thing of “I want all kinds of things done pretty much now”, which can be frustrating.

Anyway, I went and had a shower (and had Aidan walk in on me on the way out of the shower), then got some food. While I was eating I turned on the television (on my computer, heh) and watched some of the Late Show. Coincidentally he happened to be interviewing Scarlett Johansson (of Horse Whisperer and Lost in Translation fame) for that segment. Phwaw. Gorgeous, talented and my age (I’m older by 3 weeks) as well. ^_~

Yeah, right.

Anyway, after that I read over some papers for my classes tomorrow then discovered that I did, in fact, bring my diary from last year, which meant that I could copy a lot of birthdays across to this year’s diary. I’m sorry for not wishing anyone a happy birthday when I was supposed to, I’m terrible with birthdays and everyone knows it. I know I’m still missing a lot of people’s from when I lost my diary, so do email me and let me know when your birthday is, I like being able to wish you a happy birthday when I can.

Anyway, after that it was a bit of reading in bed to relax, then sleep.

All ideas of an early start were crushed. I slept. I slept for a long time. When I got up, lunchtime was over. Yikes. So much for whoever-it-was’ theory that you can’t catch up on sleep. You can.

Anyway, after a little while I got picked up by Rob and we went out to work on our Graphics homework. First stop, however, was burritos from Chipotle (only one to start the day off…) then to a coffee shop where we were going to work only to find that they were closing early (Rob informs me that the owner is making all kinds of really peculiar business decisions – the place had a lot of people there) so we went somewhere else. Free wireless, decent coffee and donuts which I didn’t get around to sampling. In any case, ensue several hours of homework.

Back to the apartment, chat to Anastasia for a while before she goes to bed (still a different time zone after all), do some emails… I also did a bit of research around as the various colleges that have decent Computer Science programmes as well as Biomedical Engineering programmes. You never know, Anastasia and I might actually end up at the same place for more than a few months at the same time. Incidentally, UW turns out to be one of those places. Go figure.

Anyway, next up was dinner, went and made myself some sandwiches, some Hot Pockets Subs, got an apple and some orange juice. Yummy. I had just had an email from Dad saying he was going to be online, so I chilled and watched some anime (windowed) until he came online.

It was good to catch up with the latest from Dad, we talked shop a little, he passed the phone over to his new flatmate (hello again!) and we chatted for a little bit as well. All in all very fun.

Incidentally, I found out you can get The Pretender on DVD! In English! Wohoo! Sadly, I have no money to buy it… ah well, that’s what birthdays are for, I guess. ^^;;

Well, today I saw the Penny Arcade guys. Seriously. Man that’s cool. Look, I know I’m having a fanboy moment, and I’m cool with that. I got their new book signed, I got there early enough that I also got a free copy of their PAX 2005 DVD set… all in all, very cool. They’re the kind of guys I’d like to have sort of a ‘day in the life’ of, ya know? I wonder if that’s even possible, to shadow them and see what they do for a day. That’d be pretty cool. Anyway, signed stuff, free stuff and a good chat to the guy next to me in the line, who worked for a local image processing company or something over in Fremont and had actually been to New Zealand. He didn’t make it down as far as Christchurch due to time constraints on his trip, but it’s surprising how many random people I talk to actually know where New Zealand is and know at the very least about a city, usually Auckland.

The PA signing trip involved me working out several buses and so on out to Bellevue, the first of which I saw pull off in front of me, then after waiting a little while and ignoring one bus, I realized I needed to go back to my apartment and recalculate (thanks to the internet) my route. I realized when doing this that the bus I ignored was the bus I wanted to take, so I took the next one of those. Over the lake, change buses at the Bellevue Transit Centre then eventually find the Barnes and Noble at the Crossroads mall. When I was going to leave, I had a little time before the next bus so I got a hotdog… then when I went out again I’d missed the bus, so I had to wait in the cold and rain (curled up into a bus-stop equivalent of the foetal position over my prized signed book) for the next one. Turns out the next one I was taking wasn’t even the one I thought I was taking, but it got me to the BTC alright. After that I did some wrangling over timetables and eventually realized the one I wanted to catch was leaving… right now. So I pelted it up the BTC to the right bay, making sure I indicated (not too flailingly) to the bus driver that I wanted on. From there it was relatively smooth sailing back to my little patch of Seattle that I vaguely know, or at least can find my way back to my apartment in.

I realize that by typing this into MS Word first, it may in fact be auto-correcting some of my words into American spelling. Ah well. Bad luck for those who don’t like it, I can’t be bothered going and changing all the auto-correct settings.

I did a bit of catching up on my blog… I’m still a little under a week behind, but I’m getting there… sort of. Really I’m just killing time trying to do something to relax my mind before I get stuck into my homework and work, which I’m really not in the mood for right now. On the plus side, I’ve fixed the archives section so that you can now view everything! Actually, maybe that’s not on the plus side…

I finally got stuck into my graphics homework, this takes a while. I arrange to meet up with Rob to discuss it tomorrow. After a while two things happen: I need a break, and I realize it’s not raining. This means, at 10:30 on a Saturday night, I went grocery shopping. Naturally, I hear you say. WTF!? I hear others of you say. Well, you’re both right. You work it out amongst yourselves.

Back to eat a somewhat late dinner and relax for a little while. I talked to Dad in New Zealand for a bit, talked to Eric in the Azores for a bit… Skype is a wonderful thing.

Did I mention that Andrew snores? Not continuously, thankfully, but every now and again I hear this enormous rasping sound come through the wall. Can be disconcerting when I’m working at my computer to say the least.

In any case after all that I’m going to try and get a relatively early night, as I didn’t sleep enough last night. Then tomorrow it’ll be up relatively early so I can finish off my graphics homework and do some work-work… I hope.

Holy shit, I’m up to date with my blog!

I actually got some sleep, wohoo! And to make the start of the day better, I checked up on my business money situation, finally got paid so I can now pay some bills, yay! I got through accounting and headed off to meet up with my graphics TA, which I later found out I didn’t need to do as he was sick. Pays to read your email, people. Sigh.

After that I did some checking out of the various clubs on campus while sitting in one of the lounge-like areas near the stairs (the third floor one). I got a couple of text messages from my sister Siobhan telling me the weather was great for my brother, Dace’s rowing down at Twizel. Glad to hear it, I hope everyone who went had a good time and enjoyed the weather.

I then went over to the HUB, where the graduate CSE people were having their own little TGIF celebration at the bowling alley. Free bowling… sadly I still suck at bowling, but it was fun nonetheless. I met a few more people, hopefully I’ll remember their names! One such student informed me that my nonexistent class had, in fact, started and was a morning class on Thursday. While that sounds unpleasant and I still might try and do something else, at least I know it’s on and I can go have a look.

After that it was back to my apartment. Feeling kinda listless, actually… it’s not a feeling like I want to socialize and be with people, but at the same time I miss everyone and wish I could see them. Weird.

Anyway, at this point I blank out… no idea. I think I did some email or something. After that I watched Stargate SG-1, then went and got some dinner, came back and watched some Pretender while I ate, wished Anastasia a good night, then watched Battlestar Galactica (Friday night is a good TV-night).

I worked out my bus route for going to the Penny Arcade signing tomorrow, hopefully I won’t be too late, and I’ll be able to get something and actually meet those two crazy people. ^^ Sadly I don’t have my PA book with me, but I might try and pick up a copy of their new one or something that I can get signed. Ugh, early morning.

Did some logistical stuff via email, then decided to do a little spacing out and get to bed early. I know I’m not going to get enough sleep regardless of when I go to bed tonight, so I better make it earlier rather than later so I’m not completely horrible tomorrow.

Turns out I couldn’t get to sleep for absolutely ages, just lay there, my mind churning. I got up and shaved, then went back to bed. Probably didn’t get to sleep until 5am. Ah well, I’m gonna pin that one down to being excited. ^^;