In linguistics we have to write all of those crazy symbols they use in the dictionary to tell you how to pronounce the word. Luckily, I very quickly found how to write them through the IPA website with simple html codes.

Math, on the other hand, is a little more complex. There are a few ways to write math for browsers, however, they aren’t supported across browsers. The other option is some scripts that will take input and then it will create a images. I still have to figure out how to implement it, but I think I’m going to go with the image option.

The Idle Thumbs podcast ended last month and I’ve taken some of my spare time to listen to it from the beginning.

I’ve also picked up Bored to Death and Modern Family as two new TV shows to watch. No, I haven’t finished Buffy, get off my back!

And with a week off, steam shows what one week of vacation can do for me:

So what do I do in a normal day now that orientation is over?

Usually I get a bunch of emails telling me to moves files from one place to another. Renew a few domain names once a week. Renew some SSL certificates as well.

And when there is nothing like that to do? I get to mess around with ASP.NET and try and make a nice WAN map for our company network. With the power of SQL and a whole lot of googling I’ve gotten decently far. I still wouldn’t say that I know much about it but it’s better than just sitting on IRC all day. Which I might be doing anyway…

Oh, and it’s an all Windows environment which makes me a little bit frustrated at times. It’s nice in relation to how things work very nicely across the network when they work. It’s not so nice when things don’t work and you have no idea what is going wrong.

How often has x been googled over the years? Good for at least a half hour of fun! As a CS major, part of the math department, it is amazingly entertaining to look at trends of things, especially internet memes. Want to know when lolcats started? Rickrolling? It’s right there.

You can see when large historical events happened, who is more popular in the results (Obama). Compare HD-DVD to Blu-ray searches, see how things get more (emo) and less (My Chemical Romance) popular over the years. Porn searches vs. free porn? The possibilities are endless.

It’s like googlefight but over time as well. Extra dimension means it’s infinitely better. Go spend a good half hour at least amusing yourself.

You can thank Mark Miltenburg for this blog, he made me write it.

It was the morning of the… 14th? of January. And like an idiot I stayed up late the night before AGAIN. I guess I’ll never learn. Woke up around 8:20, grabbed a bottle of coke on the way over to wake me up, and I started writing the easiest final I’ve had yet.

Not that the final itself was easy so much as I have no trouble at all with Comp sci. I barely studied at all. It was more of a quick few minutes before I went to bed. I had about half an hour to spare which I spent looking at the art in the room. It was a conference room in one of the newer buildings in the school and I bet no one else had looked at that art as long as I had.

So I waited and waited, and a few weeks later I found my final mark in CS was a 70. Which is roughly what I was told the average would be before going in. Which means I probably got higher than that and they had to round down. Good. Crisis averted.

The following horrific turn of event occurred on December 19^th, 2007.

The day before I slept from noon til 5 p.m.. It was 5 a.m. now. I made the call to take a nap before my 12:30 final. So I set my alarm for 7 just in case I went to bed longer than I wanted to and I played around on the internet for a while. Then it was 5:15 then 5:30 so I went to bed then. 5:30, after being awake for a little over 12 hours. I figure that it normally takes me an hour and a half to go to sleep normally and I don’t even feel tired so I’ll be fine. I drift off.

I wake up. I don’t hear that annoying music I set my alarm to? A frequency which seems to pick up two radio stations at the same time. I think… that can’t be good, why did I wake up then? Why do I feel so fully rested? I look outside and find my roommate cooking. I see the clock behind him, 2:30.

2:30!?!?

Half an hour left in the final? 10 minutes to get ready and walk there? No way is that happening… Roommate keeps telling me that he thought I had already left. Whatever. Not your fault. My fault.

Entirely my fault.

So I take a little more time to get ready so I don’t look like total shit. I head down there and talk to the first person I recognize who looks like he’s in charge, a person who watched over my two midterms. I ask him if I can write this final during the next time slot. He asks the guy next to him who I don’t recognize at first. That guy starts answering no, no way, not going to do it. Then I recognize him as my prof for that term, a guy who’s class I wasn’t the best student in. Not looking good at all. I ask him where I should go next because I’m obviously failing the class now. He points me to the Office for Undergrad Math Students so I go there immediately to see what they can do for me.

I head over there, finding it with little trouble. Stand in line for a while behind people with forms that say they were sick exactly on or around their exam days. They look fine now of course… Once I step up I tell the secretary that I slept in and missed my final and ask him what I can do. He tells me that unless the prof, who I just asked, lets me write it, I will fail. So I’d have to take a CS class the next term. However, only CS 125 (Java based) is available not CS 135 (Scheme based) which I was taking. So either I’m four months behind with a class I don’t want to take or a year behind taking the same course I should have passed the first time. Fuck.

I walk back to residence and think. I screwed my life by an entire year because I have a messed up sleeping pattern. I decide, because there is no hope any other way, that I should send my prof an email. Worst case I’m exactly where I am still, best case I get to pass somehow. I take about an hour or two to make sure it’s polished and send it off because I have another exam the next morning for philosophy.

My mom gets on MSN. I wanted to tell her since it happened because it’s better to get it out quickly I assume. I did the best things I could have given the circumstances I believe. So I give her the whole story and as I’m going through it she tells me to do exactly what I tell her I did next. That’s a great sign I guess. I messed up but I messed up well.

I get a reply around 9:30 that night from my prof. He explains that he doesn’t want to write another exam just for me (of course not, there are 2 days til holidays and that’s a *lot* to ask for *my* mistake). He has marking to do for everyone else. He says he’ll talk to his colleagues about it when he gets the chance. I thank him for considering the possibility at all. I tell him I’ll be in town as long as I can if some opportunity does come up.

The next day at 3 he emails me back saying that on January 14^th I will be given a chance to write another exam (either an old one or from another school I presume). My final mark after that exam will be decreased by 12.5% (so it’s worth ¾ of the normal 50% final). Then the lesser of the class mean and my mark will be taken for my final mark. Heavy strings but better than an absolute fail. Much better.

So I get a second chance. I call home, tell my dad to pick me up and I wait. I wait and I feel like shit. I was so close to fucking up my life.