Bump

I don’t think I like a “poker” post being the top post on my blog. I feel it makes me out to be a “poker player”, which I am not. So, this post is specifically intended to relieve the previous post of it’s position atop my blog.

QCA

I just decided I’ll be writing my final research paper on Quantum Cellular Automata in my technical elective Fundamentals of Electronic Devices. Now, since I don’t know anything about QCA, I won’t be posting anything about it here. I have four weeks to figure out enough to write a 10-page paper wherein I’ll offer some of my own thoughts on how QCA might be used in future applications to help technology along. If I’d known that people like me were studying this stuff, I probably wouldn’t have been so impressed by those who do the research I’ll be summarizing.

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Weblog? Is that you?

So… um… I don’t have a good reason for not posting for almost a month now. I mean, I’m a slacker and there isn’t really anyone who doesn’t know that, so I don’t see much reason for making excuses or explaining myself.

Football turnaround

At the beginning of the season, my posts were speckled with words like “miserable”, “disappointing”, “unbelievable” and other words that are mostly those words’ synonyms. Well, as is always true in football, those words still apply to some poor school’s season, but it ain’t Florida’s anymore! Right now, it’s probably Georgia seein’ as how they lost to us for the 13th out of 14 times (and the 6th consecutive time). I said before the game that I would feel awful for the UGA fans if we won again. While that’s true, that awful feeling is offset by the feeling of “oh boy! we got us a decent football team again!” that has been creeping over me since we beat LSU. Now, we actually have a shot at the SEC Championship and, yes, I would’ve laughed out loud if someone had said that to me 6 weeks ago.

46 days until graduation, I think

I’m not very good at counting and I am using a regular old wall-hanging calendar to do my calculations, but if I pointed correctly, I have 46 days left until I finally have something to show for my long tenure as a Florida Gator/nerd. In fact, I will have two somethings to show for my time–two degrees, one of which I’ll actually be paid to use. I guess the only problem is I’ve had this problem (a problem I also began suffering some time during my junior year of high school) called “senioritis” that’s been keeping me from attending classes and focusing in general. Fortunately, I just got some crummy homework grades back that have shaken me up and I’ve committed to go to at least one lecture this week. I decided to go today, so I could get that junk outta’ the way and enjoy the rest of my week.

Still playin’ poker

Of course, I’m still playin’ poker and have found marked improvement in my home game. I still have trouble beating bad luck (I lost an all-in hand the other night to a guy who had 10.5:1 odds against making his draw with one card to come, and I lost another all-in hand to a different player with worse odds of making his hand with two cards to come), but I’ve started using a strategy that seems to work well against the people with whom I play:

• First, I never raise before the flop: it’s pointless because all it does is give my opponents proper odds to chase draws and make calls that would otherwise be mathematically incorrect. Also, I’m able to disguise the quality of my hand much better and that allows me to win big pots when the time is right.
• Second, I very, very rarely bluff: I used to think I had to work bluffing into my game so that I could be a better player. While this is true (ie, without bluffing, I’m always playing good cards and other players will figure this out and make it difficult for me to win any money), it’s also true that the people I play with will play most any hand, regardless of what I “represent” with a good bluff. So, rather than throw money away at people who will always call bluffs, I simply patiently wait for good cards and then take all their money as they call my outrageous bets with mediocre hands.

The night I began implementing these two changes to my game, I tripled my buy-in… The next time we played, I tripled my buy-in. The next time we played, I had three opportunities to win huge pots, but lost to dumb luck (see above references to people winning hands against horrible odds). We’re playing in about a half hour and I will be disappointed if I don’t triple my buy-in. I can’t lose unless probability frowns on me.

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Beginning of the end

Tomorrow is the first day of my last semester here at UF. I’ve been here long enough that I don’t feel very sentimental about it all, though I’m sure it won’t be easy in a few months when I realize I’m about to make the greatest transition of my life. Mostly, I’m ready for a few new things: being debt free (I’m carrying a heavy load of student loans around), sort of order in my life, to begin seriously training as an actor. Unfortunately, graduation won’t bring one of the things for which I’m ready: consistency.

Yes, graduating and moving into “the working world” will be a big step, but, for now, I see it as an interim step to where I ultimately hope to be: acting. I’ll still feel that my life is in a huge state of transition and while that can be exciting, it can also be very unsettling. I have no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in five years; most people in my situation can at least say something like, “I’ll be working for a big company as an engineer.” That may or may not be true for me. For now, I can see that it will likely start in Dallas where I’ll begin chasing a clich�

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Skippin’ class

Today will be the third day I’ve skipped class this semester. It doesn’t surprise me at all that I’m skipping classes, but what does surprise me is why I’m skipping them. Apparently, Gainesville is getting a lot of rain lately and that means, among other things, that I have to walk to class in the rain when I go. One of my classes is a 20-minute walk from my car. It’s a pain makin’ that walk in the 90+ degree weather we have in Gainesville, but it’s even more of a pain to make that walk in the rain. There’s nothing worse than sitting through an hour lecture with my clothes drenched and my teeth chattering away. And because there’s nothing worse than that, I generally opt for something better: just skipping the stupid class. The problem with that philosophy this semester is that I really need to go to both classes because both of them have an “in class” portion of the grade (which means the profs regularly give group quizzes and pop quizzes and homework assignments that can only be gotten during lecture). Also, both of these classes are such that I’ll probably need that in-class portion of the grade. I’m not lookin’ to get A’s, but B’s or better would be nice; I really don’t care so long as I pass the classes, so I can graduate in December.

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First exam of the semester

Why is it that every computer science and electrical engineering professor thinks that every exam I take has to be some sort of time-critical event? I mean, when’s the last time a supervisor at some big software company sat one of his employees down and said, “Ok, I want you to do this list of assignments as well as you can in the next half hour. And remember, I’ll be watching you! Go!”? Never. That’s never happened. And yet, every exam I take in engineering is some sort of race against the clock, a test of my ability to read questions and jot down skeletons of my answers because I don’t have time to add flesh. I think we should occasionally be given an exam that says, “Pick five of these ten topics and write everything you know about each one…you have as much time as you need, so long as you don’t leave the room.” That wouldn’t be so bad would it? I mean, would it be so bad to give me an opportunity to demonstrate what I’ve learned, rather than asking me to regurgitate chunks of a textbook?

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Physical impossibilities?

It’s funny how things sometimes tie themselves together as though their juxtaposition wasn’t coincidental. I’ll get to the point eventually, but first, some details about my day:

Busiest day yet

I woke up at 8:30, went to class at 9:30, made my cheat-sheet for tonight’s Dynamics test from 10:30 to 11:30, went to a discussion section from 11:45 to 12:35, skipped my next class, went home to study for tonight’s Dynamics test, ordered all the components for my new computer, finished my Microprocessors pre-lab, took an hour nap instead of studying for my Dynamics test, went back to campus for my Microprocessors lab, was frustrated for three hours as I tried to wrap tiny wires around tiny pins on a circuit board, went to Burger King for a healthy dinner, went to The Oxford Coffee House to study for half an hour before my Dynamics test, ended up chatting with a couple of friends instead, drove around looking for parking for a while, finally arrived at the test, took the test and felt pretty good as I left a half-hour early, went home to change into my basketball clothes, went and played basket ball for about an hour and a half, came home and called it a day.

Basketball or football?

Lately, it seems like people have a hard time making the distinction; I am not one of those people. My first game tonight was pretty close and my team played well. We won, but barely, and all felt like we played a solid game. Our second game was a lot different because the guys we played were very inexperienced, but also athletic (those kinds of teams can often be the most difficult to play fairly against because they tend to rely on brut-strength rather than finesse). In particular, there was one guy who seemed to think that shoving and pushing were part of basketball and they are, sometimes, but not like he thought they were. I won’t share every detail, but allow me to recount this one event:

I was on offense and one of my teammates took a shot. I was standing outside “the block” by about four feet or so and, when the ball went up in the air off of the rim, I basically just stood and watched because I had no chance at rebounding it. The guy who was guarding me–he also didn’t have a chance at rebounding it–decided he should box me out (at least I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that’s what he was trying to do) and so he stuck his butt out and slammed backwards into me (he was between me and the rim). Because I wasn’t trying for the rebound, but was about to turn and head back up the floor, I wasn’t planted very well. He knocked me backwards and I landed on my butt and slid back a few feet. I called the foul and my reasons for doing so were two-fold: First, because we weren’t in the block and the ball wasn’t coming our way; Second, because he initiated contact and knocked me to the ground. I thought it was pretty clear-cut, but he didn’t feel that way (NOTE: No one else on the floor argued my foul-call, except him). Here’s a transcript of the event:

Thump
Me: Foul!
Him: Giving a funny look, What?
Me: Pointing, We were no where near the block and you’re runnin’ me over.
Him: You ran into me!

Isn’t it great how things work together?

We ended up getting the ball without much argument from his teammates. Here’s the tie-in (brace yourself): Since I’ve been studying Dynamics, I have a frame of reference for evaluating his statement that I ran into him. And here’s the question I thought of when he said that I ran into him: How fast would I have had to been moving to initiate contact with him, bounce backwards, fall on my butt and slide a few feet in the opposite direction from that of my original motion? To answer the question, a few assumptions (not necessarily true) have to be made–the collision was totally elastic, meaning none of my momentum would be lost when I hit him, so that all my momentum could be transferred back into my motion in the other direction; he wasn’t moving towards me or away from me. Taking these assumptions into account, I could “model” that guy as a wall with a spring on it (unmoving and elastic). So, the question is, how fast would I have to be moving in order to run into a wall, be thrown back in the opposite direction, land on my butt and slide a few feet on the floor? The answer: I have no idea, but it’d have to be pretty stinkin’ fast.

Here’s my point: There’s no way that I could have fallen backwards and slid across the floor if he was stationary and, as he said, I ran into him. In fact, because our collision would not have been elastic, he would need to have been moving towards me with a greater momentum than I was moving towards him. In fact, that’s what happened since he ran into me while I was essentially standing still. Maybe I sound stupid, but it’s pretty obvious, I think, that the guy didn’t know what he was talking about. I mean, if you’re gonna’ knock someone down, at least ‘fess up to it…

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Tomorrow is going to be awful.

I have three classes, a lab and a test. I guess that doesn’t sound too bad except my first class is at 8:30 and the test is at 8:20 pm. So, I have eight hours of school tomorrow and those eight hours will occur between 8:30 am and 10:30 pm. Of course, that doesn’t account for all the last minute lab preparation and test-studying I’ll need to be doing. At least I only have one class this Thursday and only one homework assignment due on Friday.

For now, I need to get some sleep, so I can make sure I’m up bright and early to help repair the damage done by procrastinating all night tonight.

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Where’d he go?

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying about myself lately. I’ve been super busy with school and Campus Crusade and I caught a pretty nasty cold (flu?) the other day. I think that about does it for my lame list of excuses.

Good weekend for football…

At least from my perspective as a Gator, this was a good Saturday. Several ranked teams were brought down by either unranked or lowly(is that a word?)-ranked teams, while we won pretty big over an unranked team. Translation: We should move up a few slots in the polls… maybe even to the top ten, although eleven is probably more realistic.

Next week, we play Tennessee on their turf. I think it’s going to be a tough game, but we can win if we use our run wisely (run=Earnest Graham). If we beat Tennessee (currently ranked in the top ten and threatening to take the SEC title this year), we’ll be making a decent start to a run for the SEC Championship. I guess that’s how it is every year when we play Tennessee, though…. I was in Knoxville two years ago when we beat ‘em with a controversial touchdown reception by then-basically-unknown Jabbar Gaffney (now playing for the Houston Texans), so I know anything can happen when we play them.

Building a new PC

I’m building a new PC and it’s almost ready to be ordered and then assembled. Unfortunately, it’s going to cost a pretty penny, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end. I’m considering posting the “specs” for it here on my blog, but that may just be an incredible waste of time and space. Suffice it to say this is gonna’ be a top-notch system (at least as far as PC’s are concerned).

Classes intensifying

I’m about to begin my fourth week in the semester and that means fun-time is over. Generally, we’ll spend the first few weeks catching up and reviewing in my classes; then, the prof’s start laying it on pretty thick and that means my free-time to work-time ratio will begin decreasing. I guess that’s what school’s all about, though.

Right now, I need to get some sleep because I have to be up in about six hours for church. So, g’night…

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First week of classes is over

I made it to every class and even did most of a homework assignment that isn’t due until Tuesday. I feel like this semester will be a good one for me, academically, and I’m looking forward to getting a lot of extracurricular stuff done. I don’t really think I’ll have all that much “free time”, but I think that, if I manage my available time wisely, I’ll be able to get some things done and, of course, have plenty of time for hangin’ out and goofin’ off as I usually do.

Still reading…

I’m currently reading three books: A Prayer for Owen Meany, Searching for Shcrodinger’s Cat and Heart of Darkness; I’m basically just moving slowly through each of them with no priority on any, but a high priority on finishing all three. I still have a lot of books that I bought on my last Barnes & Noble shopping spree that I need to get to eventually. I hope I can keep reading this semester. I’ve already found a lot of time for reading on the bus everyday on my way to and from campus. Seems like a good use of time to me.

First Gators game

We whooped up on the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) pretty good (51-3, I think). Next week we have Miami at home; that will be our first chance to see what we’re really made of. I think it would be incredible if we can knock off the reigning national champs and one of the current number one ranked teams in the nation. I can’t wait to go to that game.

It’s time for me to go to sleep now. I’m tired and I have church at 10:30 tomorrow morning. This’ll be my first time at my local church in about three months, so I’m anxious to get settled back in.

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Day two down and there’s no sign of any course-dropping ahead…

Well, the second day of classes has come to an end and I can truthfully say I haven’t missed any classes yet. Sure, that may seem trivial or even misleading, but it’s kind of a big deal for me, so I’ll say it while I can. It won’t be long before I’ll miss that first class, and then that second class and then I’ll be writing on my weblog to commemorate the days on which I actually attend class. Such is the progression (or, perhaps I should say digression) of my class attendance record each and every semester.

Video shooting went well

We decided that the emcees (myself and a good friend of mine) should shoot a funny video to show at the first Crusade meeting, which is this Thursday. My friend and I sat down this morning over breakfast and pounded out the basic idea for the video and we finished shooting it early this evening. We’ve left the editing up to another friend of ours who seems to have a knack for the technical and also a keen interest in making a good finished product. After each scene, we would look at what we’d shot and we always got a good laugh from it, so I’m thinking the finished product will be hilarious and well constructed. We’ll see…

Functioning on little sleep and a funky schedule

Turns out I have class at 8:30 four days a week this semester. That means I’m up at 7:20, which, coincidentally, is the time I got up each morning back in Dallas. I am not a morning person and I feel exhausted all the time. The good news is, I think I can go to a section that meets at 9:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and that will allow me to sleep an extra hour on those days. I’ll have to see how that goes. Also, I worked out at 11:00 tonight. I’m still pretty juiced up and it’s time to go to bed, so something’s gotta’ give. I guess I’ll try and workout earlier in the day from now on, but it’s tough because the gym is so packed during the day. On a brighter note, I was surprised how much strength I’ve retained in my three weeks away from lifting; I’m very nearly as strong as I was before I left Dallas. I expected to lose quite a bit of my strength during my transition. Pleasant surprise.

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