I just got two large books, which have made my already heavy backpack even heavier. I previously had a chemistry textbook, a distributed computing textbook, and two spiral notebooks for those subjects. Added to the mix are now the textbook for CS367, which cost me $130, and a specification for ANSI C, which is even larger, but cost me nothing.
I got the CS367 textbook because last semester, when being a TA for CS112, the students had a lot of questions that I could not answer because I did not have their textbook. I knew in general how to do things in python, but they would hunt up particular libraries or sample code and ask me questions about them. This didn’t always go so well, since their question would often be the first time I had ever seen that particular bit of code.
I also intend to attend CS367 on Thursdays, so I can keep up to speed with the class itself. I would attend on Tuesdays too, but I have a biology lab.
As for the ANSI C book, I got that from the professor who is officially my teacher for my independent study on compilers. I saw him a couple hours ago, walked in, and discussed my project. I told him some about the VM I had written / am writing, and some of my strategies for writing the actual compiler. He showed me this C specification, which is a step ahead of my old K&R 2nd edition C spec, and said I could keep it as long as I brought it back eventually. I took him up on that offer.
The only downside to all this is that my backpack is now heavier than god.
robin Robin, School
I got another UTA assignment last night / this morning. We had a substitute teacher in AI, and he started off the class asking if anyone wanted to be a UTA for some of the upper level CS classes. He said to send him an email if we were interested. I sent him an email right then from my laptop.
He responded some time later that evening, asking what classes I wanted. I told him that I would especially like CS440, but that I also liked CS330 and CS367. He responded by giving me the job for CS367. :)
robin Robin, School
So, I needed to buy a calculator for Chem 212. In that class we are allowed (encouraged, even) to use them, but are restricted: No alphanumerics, no graphing. I had an old TI something that I have used in the past, and spent last night looking for it, unsuccessfully. I ended up going, with dread in my heart, to the university bookstore to purchase one.
I expected to get reamed.
As actually happened, I got a pretty decent price. About $17 with tax for a TI-30XIIS. It’s about as tricked out as you can get and not be a graphing calculator, and not have an alphanumeric pad. It has such niceties as a two-line display, numeric on the bottom and dot-matrix on the top. It lets me enter in equations in infix form. It can handle up to five variables (A-E). It can handle one- and two-variable statistics, and does linear regressions.
It’s pretty rocking.
robin Robin, School
Woohoo! The first day of class has finally come!
My biology class(es) look like they will be pretty easy. The lecture is apparently going to focus on cellular biology, which I learned about in High School. Not that I remember everything, or went into as much detail as I will here, but it’s still okay stuff. The lab is harder to judge, but also looks like it will be pretty easy.
We got out of the lab early today; all we did in class was coordination. As a result, I’ve been sitting here trying to kill time until 1:15 when I go to my distributed computing class.
robin School
So the fiancé has food poisoning, we think. As far as we can tell she got it from some soup she ate yesterday for lunch. She was up almost all night vomiting, dry heaving, and enjoying diarrhea. She’s managed to keep down a couple saltine crackers and a popsicle so far, as well as half of a Jello cup.
Right now she’s finally sleeping.
robin Lauren
I like coffee a lot, and I have made a fair bit of it. I had a pot earlier today. I made another pot, but made it with only 1.5 or so times the recommended amount of grounds, because I was going to make mocha by mixing it with hot cocoa mix. Well I did that for the first cup, but decided I didn’t want to for the second, so I just drank it with some sugar.
It was sooo weak. Almost grossly so. I then realized that Starbucks is now forever ruined for me, because it was still stronger than commercial joe.
I suppose I should point out that I have a small pot, so a pot makes for only two mugs. I’m not as much of a coffee fiend as I may seem, although I suppose I am aspiring toward that lofty goal.
robin Robin
Also, my tooth is fixed. I spent maybe 15 minutes at the dentist, plus 45 minutes of driving each way. It was very quick, though. Because it was so fresh, they didn’t need to do any drilling. They just filled it.
As for the filling, that part is interesting. I’ve heard that fillings used to be made of metal, gold or silver or some such. The ones this dentist uses are some sort of concrete paste that hardens under what I presume is ultraviolet. The just kind of squeeze it in there from a tube, shape it to match the rest of the tooth with one of those dentist implements (a small spatula?), and then shine a light on it. Viola, instant filling. No need to wait; you can eat and drink as normal immediately.
Pretty cool.
robin Robin
I just spent something like half an hour hemming a pair of my cargo pants. I’m sewing by hand, so it’s really slow work. I wish I had a sewing machine. Since hand sewing is so slow, I didn’t actually sew around the full hem. Instead, I made 6 attachments on each pant sleeve, in a regular hexagon. It’s enough to keep the pants attached, mostly keep my feet from screwing them up when I put the pants on, and definitely better than the sewing pins I was using before.
robin Robin
I got back from Micro Center, having purchased yet another power strip to go with my computer. So far, this means I now have 4 of them hooked up. I have a lot of devices.
robin Robin