Of Exams, Evacuations, and Other Escapades.

So it's been... almost a good two weeks since I last posted. Whoops. It wasn't intentional, I just seriously haven't had the time. Or the few times I did have some spare time, I just didn't have the energy. But I realized today that a post was way overdue, so... here goes!

To Sew or Not To Sew

When I last left off, I hadn't quite decided whether to spend my Saturday (two weekends ago) sewing or playing video games. I actually did end up doing both -- although the latter only for about an hour or two, as Wild Arms 3 didn't prove to be too exciting, and I was tired. But I did sew a lot that day, and got quite a bit done. Without further ado, here are some pictures:

There was one more T-shirt that I did, but the pictures didn't come out very clear. That T-shirt was rather unique, anyway, so I should probably just take a picture of me wearing it sometime; otherwise you might not understand exactly how it works.

So that was that Saturday. Sunday, I went to work, crammed for a Matrix exam, briefly went to Luo's office hours, and then came back and worked hardcore on my C program. Thus concluded the weekend and began the...

Week of Woe

Just to reiterate: This was last week, and not this past week. Not that this past week has been stellar either, but last week was definitely horrible. Sunday night, I ended up not being able to sleep. I dozed off for an hour or two and then woke up Monday morning with a massive headache. This couldn't have happened at a more inconvenient time, as I had a quiz in C, an exam in Matrix, and a very difficult C program due that night. None of them ended up going particularly well. At midnight, my C program was still segfaulting every time I tried to run it, even though I'd worked on it for days and had been staring at it for the past five hours trying to make it work. I submitted what I had anyway, hoping for some, "Well, it doesn't work, but hey -- you tried!" points.

Tuesday ended up becoming an extension of my bad day on Monday because A) I still didn't sleep well, and B) I got all my grades back. Most notably, I wound up getting a 0 on my C lab. They didn't seem to care that I'd tried it. A program that segfaults at runtime is an instant 0. The TA who graded it e-mailed me saying, "If you're having trouble, you're supposed to come to office hours!" But that doesn't work for me, because office hours are always either during my other classes or during my work hours.

So, Wednesday morning I went to talk to Hoffman and explained my situation. He said he would give me the chance to get my points back on this lab, and he would personally come up to the cluster at night to help me figure out where things were going wrong. So, after sitting through classes and dealing with work, I went straight to the cluster and had Hoffman help me with some of it. He didn't help me find all of the problems, though, so I worked until the cluster closed for the night, and then came back to my dorm and worked on the program some more. Around midnight, it still wasn't working perfectly, but I submitted it anyway. I wasn't sure how long they were giving me to win my points back, but either way, I didn't really have time to worry about it anymore; I had another program due Thursday night and could not afford to get behind.

Thursday was the first day that week when things were finally going okay. Classes were still not too stellar. Because I'd been working so hardcore on my C labs, I hadn't really had enough time to do the Concepts homework, so I knew I couldn't expect a very good grade on that. However, work really cheered me up that day. Curt, my supervisor, had decided that we should get T-shirts -- "we" being Curt, me, Chrissy (the other girl who works for him), and Ellen (who I believe is the girl I replaced, and who now works for another staff member in CEE). LONG story short, we decided that we should have nicknames to put on the fronts of our shirts, and we spent the entire afternoon brainstorming while we worked on boxing offices and moving furniture. We wanted names that made us sound strong, powerful, and/or intimidating, so some ideas were natural disasters, infectious diseases, handyman names, and power tools. We ended up settling for mafia names. Ellen found a mob name generator online, which we used to decide on: Curt "Enforcer" Y., Chrissy "No Thumbs" L., Ellen "Mouthpiece" H., and Nara "Fancy Pants" K. Jim (the big boss) and Donna (CEE's financial officer) later got added on as "Big Cheese" and "Bookie", respectively. Needless to say, it was an afternoon full of laughter.

Then I came back to my room and worked on my 3rd lab almost all night. As soon as I submitted that, I started working on... you guessed it, another C program! Because, yes, we had yet another lab due Friday night. I didn't get too far before I almost literally fell asleep at my desk, though.

Friday was another okay day. The notable thing about Fridays is that neither Curt nor Chrissy work (Curt because he has enough vacation days saved up that he's off every Friday this summer, and Chrissy because she works enough hours the rest of the week that she doesn't come on Fridays), so I'm on my own. Not that I dislike working with either of them (and Chrissy and I do get along a lot better now), but it's kind of nice to work unsupervised. Especially on Fridays, when I'm usually exhausted anyway. I enjoy the peace and quiet.

After work, I went straight over to the Habermann cluster to work on my C program. Hoffman came in and helped me a little bit -- which turned out to be unnecessary because the whole reason I was confused was not because I didn't understand the concepts, but because I thought he'd told us not to use arrays. *facepalm* So after he told me I could, the program took me all of 10 minutes to finish.

I ended up getting into a conversation with another guy in my class for almost a solid hour. Then I walked back to Donner, relaxed a bit, and passed out by around 11 PM. Possibly the most unusual thing about my summer experience is that I'm in bed so early compared to the rest of the year. But then, with 8 AM-7 PM work/school days, it's not too surprising that I'm exhausted all the time.

Weekend Again

Saturday, I was really too tired to do much of anything. However, I was much overdue for a trip to the grocery store, so around 2 PM, I took the bus over to Target at the Waterfront and stocked up on food. Every time I go to Giant Eagle, I end up being angry at myself because I usually wind up at Target a few days later, only to find out that I could've gotten everything much, much cheaper. The downside to shopping at Target is that the Waterfront busride takes forever, as there is (STILL!!) construction on Homestead Bridge, and it gets especially bad on weekends and around rush hour. Anyway, this time, I endured it, and it paid off. I ended up getting enough food that I don't have to worry about buying anything for breakfast or lunch for the next several weeks. Dinner, I'll probably still have to shop for every week, but at least the other two meals are taken care of.

I also ended up buying myself a cheap Chefmate set with two saucepans, a Dutch oven, and a skillet. The Donner kitchen isn't very well-supplied, and half the time people don't clean up their shit, so I'd gotten tired of doing other people's dishes before being able to cook food of my own. For $18, I don't expect it to last forever, but whatever. I just needed something simple to get me through the summer, and then if needed, I can expand my cookware collection in the fall.

Getting my shitload of groceries and my cooking set (and myself) back to Donner was a bit of a challenge, but I managed. By the time I got back, it was around 6 PM or so, so I made myself dinner. Then I headed back into Squirrel Hill, because I'd promised myself a treat. Because I'd worked so hard all week and managed to get a 100 on my 3rd C program, I treated myself to a cupcake from Dozen:

Mmm, mmm, good! Part of me had qualms about spending $2.50 on a single cupcake, but! Dozen cupcakes are worth it, and it had been a rough week. And it was delicious.

Sunday, I worked for Jeanne in the morning, and then in the afternoon, I did Matrix homework and studied hardcore for my C midterm. And that brings us to...

The Infinite Exam Week

...Okay, so they were not quite infinite. But it almost felt that way. I've had three exams so far this week and one more tomorrow -- that's four total. Today was the only day I didn't have an exam. Monday, I had the written part of my C midterm. Tuesday, I had the programming part of my C midterm. Yesterday, I had my Concepts midterm. And tomorrow, I have another Matrix exam. I didn't even find out about the Matrix exam until yesterday morning -- and it made me really cranky because up until then, I'd thought that after I made it through the Concepts test, the rest of the week would be OK. But now I have to do Concepts homework tonight (because he didn't post the assignment until today) AND study for Matrix. I'm probably not going to get around to my C program until Sunday. Which is kind of bad, considering it's due Monday night. But there's really no helping it.

The other exams have been pretty okay, though. The programming part of the C midterm took me all of 15 minutes, and the Concepts exam took me only a little over a half hour. And it was nice to make A's after suffering through some bad grades last week. Not that that's any excuse to slack off, because things will probably get worse before they get better, but at least now I don't feel like a total dumbass like I did last week.

The Daily Doings of Donner, and a Not-So-Narrow Escape from Death

Donner has kind of been pissing me off lately. Other than the kitchen being a mess (which has resulted in our housefellow repeatedly warning us that if the problems persist, we are not going to be allowed to use it anymore, which sucks because I don't have anywhere else to cook and I can't afford to eat out every night), doing laundry is Hell because eSuds isn't activated during the summer. Not only does this mean that we now have to pay for laundry in quarters, but nobody is really keeping track of when their laundry is done, so you're lucky to be able to find an empty washer. Also, the showers have a tendency to not have hot water, which is really frustrating.

My dissatisfaction hit its peak on Monday night/Tuesday morning, though. I went to bed around 1 AM, after spending the entire evening working on Concepts homework and studying for my C midterm. After cramming my brain full of math and programming, I had a hard enough time falling asleep. I had finally managed to doze off probably sometime around 2 AM, when the fire alarm went off.

I was so disoriented that it took me forever to even figure out what the sound was. When I finally managed to place it, my first thought was, "...Damnit, which idiot burnt their popcorn?!" But the alarm continued. When I got out of bed and looked outside, Andrea pointed out that there didn't seem to be anyone out there. There didn't seem to be any commotion, so neither of us felt compelled to leave. I crawled back into bed and hoped the alarm would shut off soon. But, it persisted. Not too long after, Andrea suddenly said, "Nara -- There's a fire truck outside." I got back out of bed and looked, and sure enough, there it was. Seconds later, Jonas, our RA, came and knocked on all the doors and told us to get out. "There's smoke!" he yelled, and sure enough, as soon as we got further down the hall, I could smell it.

We went outside and waited while policemen went inside the building. Then everybody was let back inside. They didn't really bother explaining what happened, but in the morning, the housefellow e-mailed us saying somebody had left a pot of boiling water on the stove to burn (and once again threatened to take the kitchen away). It was a bit anti-climactic, but also made me more pissed. I didn't appreciate being woken up at 2 AM by the fire alarm when I was in the middle of exam Hell.

 

Other than that, there's not much to say. Work has been okay. Homework still takes up the entire rest of my night. I live for the weekend. I don't plan on doing anything on Saturday. I'm too tired and exammed out.

The good news is, tomorrow is payday! Which means... ICE CREAM! Yes, I've been looking forward to it all week. Even if there's free Rita's in Donner tonight. Italian ice is yummy, but in the end, I like real ice cream better. And payday is a day to celebrate.