Never Another Standardized Test!

So I took the GRE today, as the previous posts would suggest. It was an interesting experience.

The analytical writing section was first, and I think I did pretty well on that. I won't get my scores for a few weeks (around 6 I think). I wrote an essay about the benefits of studying history, and another essay punching holes in a statement about writers going into television rather than print.

Then came the verbal. Verbal on the GRE is a tricky beast because of the obscurity of the words they use. I finished with a few minutes to spare, and felt like I had done alright. I think I got the first question right, which is the most critical question, and by the end I wasn't getting easy stuff, so it seemed like I was doing ok, but my score was somewhat disappointing (see the bottom of the post).

A quick stretch later I was taking the quantitative. Now, math is my strong point. The quantitative is 28 questions and you get 45 minutes. (Verbal is 30 questions, 30 minutes). So it requires more time for each question. I was moving along doing my work on the provided scratch paper, and I realized I was running out of time. I wasn't keeping a good enough pace. So I began hurrying up a bit. I then had to really push through the last 5 questions, jotting down a quick calculation and then making an educated guess. So by the end I was a little frazzled (since I'm usually good at this) and was unsure what to expect from the score, but you'll see I did pleasantly well.

I wrapped up writing another quick essay for the research area, which doesn't count for anything, and then went for the scores. I had my expectations going into this of doing fairly well. I was expecting a 7xx for the Quantitative, and a 6xx for the Verbal, my scores were not quite what I expected:

Quantitative: 800 (Woot!)
Verbal: 540 ( :-| should have been better)

Strangely the percentile scoring for these two sections do not relate to the number score the same. According to the estimates I've seen, 800 Q is 92 percentile. 540 V is 70 percentile. However a 760 V is 99 percentile; so the Verbal is clearly harder than the quantitative for reasons uknown to me. My scores are plenty good enough to get into the Master's program here, so I should be all set for next year.... now all I have to do is apply for the program, and graduate in April....

GRE

I'm off to take the GRE, wish me luck!

Provo....

I'm back in Provo, and my apartment is bumless.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything interesting to say.... so... umm... yah. I got my family to buy me lunch today, that was cool. I'm taking the GRE tomorrow, that should be.... interesting....

Sorry, nothing good to talk about today. Oh, they did catch the polygamist guy near Las Vegas driving a red cadillac.

There's a Bum in my Bed!

So due to a recent event at my apartment, I've decided I and my friends should write a book entitled "There's a bum in my bed! and other college survival stories"

Yah, A bum tried to move into our apartment. He was like 40+ years old, owned a bag of clothes and a dirty sheet, that was it. He apparently claimed he was a BYU student (I'm guessing he did the contract stuff via phone and mail).

Currently there are 4 of us in my apartment. 1 left to visit family for a few weeks. 2 of us left to come to Las Vegas for a last vacation before school starts again. So only 1 is left. We just get into Las Vegas, and the 1 calls me on my cell phone. He says he came home and there was a guy sleeping in one of the beds. The guy had a key and a contract, but is totally sketchy. He wasn't able to get ahold of the managers, so we begin hunting around for phone numbers. This is at ~12:45 AM. I finally get ahold of the complex owner, who says he just found out about this guy the day before. He doesn't like the look of the guy, and that he's going to check it out with BYU the next day, and also have a background check run....

My roommate calls me up the next day, tells me that the police are coming to take the guy away that evening.... I don't have all the details, but it was way sketchy, and I was going to be PISSED if I got home and all my stuff was gone.....

Crazy, right?

Don't cutoff fire trucks

BYU Police Beat:
"Aug 17: University Police were called to assist the city of Provo after a vehicle pulled in front of a Provo fire truck near 300 North and Freedom Boulevard. The fire truck, weighing nearly 50,000 pounds, laid 90 feet of skidmarks before it collided with another vehicle."

Now here's my favorite part:

"No damage was done to the firetruck but $1,000 in damage was done to the other vehicle."

25 tons vs 0.5 tons: 25 tons wins. Everytime.

Oh Gosh

Now this I have GOT to post. From "Secrets & Lies" -Bruce Schneier, copyright 2004:

A spate of illegal FBI wiretaps in Florida and a subsequent cover-up got some press in 1992; the 150 or so illegal wiretaps by the Los Angeles Police Department have gotten more. (Drugs were involved, of course; more than one person has pointed out that the war on drugs seems to be the root password to the U.S. Constitution.) J. Edgar Hoover regularly used illegal wiretaps to keep tabs on his enemies. And 25 years ago a sitting president used illegal wiretaps in an attempt to stay in power.
Things seem to have improved since the days of Hoover and Nixon, and I have many reasons to hope we won't be back ther again.

Is that very disturbing to anyone else? Except now it's not the 'war on drugs', it's the 'war on terrorism'. At this point I wouldn't particularly be surprised if 2008 rolls around and there's some 'extreme terrorist threat' or attack and it would be too dangerous to hold an election. Listen very carefully. If that happens, get your gun and meet me at the White House.

Hmm.. I wonder if the Secret Service considers that statement a threat.... If I disappear we'll all know why.

Finished my book

I finished "The Overachievers" by Alexandra Robbins yesterday. I really enjoyed the read. It provided alot of good insight into the education system in the US. I've known for awhile that things were going downhill, but I hadn't encountered anybody as screwed up as the people shadowed in the book. Robbins makes her points by following about 10 kids through a year of their life. Some are Juniors or Seniors in high school, and one is a Freshman in college. As she relates their happenings she discussing an area of the education system that needs to be reformed. She doesn't limit her criticism to just the system though, as that would be quite unfair. She discusses parents, teachers, administrators, the College Board, private counselors, and the students themselves. People that adamantly believe that not getting into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton means their life is over, and sometimes make it true by killing themselves. People who pay $16,000 a year for pre-school tuition. People that hire school consultants the day they know they are pregnant.

I recommend that this book be read by all teachers, administrators, parents, and high school students. I'd even go so far as to say that this would be really good required reading for high school freshman.

I'm really glad I didn't fall into the overachiever traps that are described throughout the book. I don't know when it happened for me, somewhere around grade 7, 8, or 9. I adopted a philosophy that I have followed ever since: I do the amount of work I'm comfortable doing. Yes, I try to do well, and to get things done, but if I've been working on something for an inordinate amount of time and it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, then I stop. Many that know me might criticize that this isn't how I work at all. I was salutatorian, got a 1520 on the SAT with a perfect math score, I'm at BYU on full scholarship, and also have a multi-year scholarship from home, I received the John Philip Sousa award for concert band, the Coaches award for track, I was President of the National Honor Society at my school, and Treasurer of the Music Honor Society.

I have all the marks of a serious overachiever.

So maybe this will make some people mad, but I was rarely stressed out about any of these things. I did them because I enjoyed them, and I had time to. I never studied for the SAT, I just woke up that morning, grabbed a Bagel sandwich from McDonald's and took the test. I practiced my trombone maybe an hour a week on average outside of school. Track practice lasted about an hour after school. I rarely edited a paper after printing out a first draft. I was rarely up past midnight because I had early morning Seminary at 6 am. I usually got about 7 hours of sleep.

I'm happy with my scholastic life. I usually get more stressed out about relationships than I do about school. I'm lucky. I am apparently quite intelligent and do well without too much effort. So you might say of my philosophy, "easy for you to say". But really, if I hadn't lived that philosophy, I could have pushed myself to exhaustion in high school, I could have been valedictorian (the difference was in the ten-thousandths of a point), I probably could have gotten into MIT or something, and continued to push myself crazy. I didn't.

My feelings on the matter are this: I work at a level I'm comfortable with. I came to a University where I could work at a level I'm comfortable with. When I leave school I will get a job where I can work at a level I'm comfortable with. I can then come home after an 8 hour day and be with my family (hopefully I'll have one....).

The approach true overachievers seem to take is: work really really hard in high school to get into a prestigious college, work really really hard in college to get into a prestigious grad school, work really really hard in grad school to get a prestigious job, work really really hard at prestigious job to make lots of money to show the world how successful you are. Problem is, your prestigious job demands 80 hour weeks, you have no hair left because it all fell out from stress, your family never sees you, assuming you found time to get married and start a family, and you have never known the meaning of 'fun'. The valedictorian of my class was like this. She had a nervous breakdown freshman year, and was the most high-strung girl I've ever had to deal with.

Please live your life at a level you are comfortable with. It will make you happier.

Complications of life

Ever meet someone so similar to someone else you know that it's uncanny?

It's weird. The last relationship I was in ended last September, it lasted 34 months. It started in high school and then became long distance, very long distance, as in >2000 miles long distance. But it wasn't the distance that ended the relationship. Nor was it a change in heart in either of us. It was simply me trying to do the right thing. See, she wasn't a member of the my church. She had played with the idea of joining, even so much as going to church on her own, and meeting with the missionaries a couple of times. Then she just wasn't interested. For some reason this suddenly bothered me. Maybe it was because many people I was friends with were getting married, so I had realized that I needed to do something with the situation. So anyways, that relationship ended for no reason other than I was trying to be 'righteous'.

Then there's this new girl. The strange thing is, from as much as I know about her so far, she's like a doppleganger of my previous girlfriend. Is it weird for me to feel strange entertaining the notion of dating her? I'm sure that the more I get to know her the more I will see the differences, but there are still so many similarities that it doesn't feel right.

So maybe it will help to know the similarities, so here is a sampling without too much detail:
A. Similar in appearence: Build, hair color, eye color, hair style, clothing style, speech pattern...
B. Similar sense of humor.
C. Similar interests / hobbies / job experiences
D. Similar personalities overall...

Now there are a few important differences: mainly major, background, family life.

My fear is tansference.

Would it be fair to allow my feelings from my past relationship (which are definitely still there, living just below the surface of my emotional control....) to influence my role in a future relationship?

Something I must ponder before I can allow my life to run its course again.... man... my 5 year life-plan is getting ripped apart before I even start living it....

I know you're out there

So I have Google Analytics running on this site, so I know people are out there reading this. Just drop a comment on this entry to let the world know who you are. Maybe I'll write more interesting things if I know a little about the people reading this.

Come on, don't be afraid. You don't have to use your real name if you don't want.

Favorite Quote of the weekend

'Later that night, Sam reconnected his computer cable to discover an important development: In trolling his Modern World classmates' IM away messages, Sam estimated that approximately two thirds of his classmates had invented their own Raheems. As on away message read, "I need a name for my fake muslim and FAST!"' - "The Overachievers" by Alexandra Robbins

Strange, Strange, Strange....

Seems like everyday I get up my world gets a little more strange, and a little harder to grasp. At least it seems that way as far as girls in my life go.... Quite odd how if I have no romantic interest in a girl I can pretty much understand who they are, and how they work, but throw in even a hint of interest, and forget it, I don't have a clue even when the 'signs' are slapping me in the face, as they probably are most of the time. This is nothing new in my life, just something that was clearly brought up in my mind again during the course of this past evening....

Having this superhero identity blog is actually kind of good for me, as I can speak about things like this without worrying the people involved will see what I'm saying, as they would if I posted on my mild-mannered Clark Kent blog. But then again, it was brought to my realization this evening as well that some of the people probably do know me well enough to have either guessed at my 'nym, or know it outright.... hmm...

oh well... if you think that this post is about you, and I suppose it might be at this point, understand that I am girl-stupid. I may or may not figure out what you're thinking, and any help you can provide me would probably be useful.

With that said, I kind of want to read the new book I got today (giving myself away again to people that have spoken to me today), but it's after 2:00 AM, so I think I'll just go to bed....

This post is a little rambly because of the fact that it is past 2:00 AM... please forgive the incoherent babblings of a tired, confused, mind.

Brick Wall

Ever just realize that the project you're working on at work is way more complicated than you anticipated? Yah, so I was not happy today at work. I had a problem when I started this project, where I couldn't see the trees for the forest, and I kept getting overwhelmed by the scope. So I finally sat down and organized my tasks and starting taking them one at a time. I've made good progress, but the whole forest kind of came back into view today, and my motivation levels dropped pretty hard. I've managed to put some blinders on though and at least focus on what needs to be done...

It's so strange how things just fall into my life. My job just kind of came upon me through almost no effort of my own. I have a couple of open-source projects of which I am the lead developer, that just sort of fell into my life (including the one I'm working on for my job). My position on the board kind of just happened too. It's weird. Through no planning of my own I've been put in positions that have forced me to learn a number of knew things: OpenGL, MySQL, PHP, Python, AJAX, multi-threaded programming, OpenCV, more than I've ever planned on learning about Computer Graphics... and the list goes on..... life is strange...

Another excuse

So I now use this blog as a respite from my work. When I hit a wall and my motivation drops, I find ways to kill time. I'll read slashdot, play video games, read the news, check out the various blogs I keep up on, and now submit posts to this blog, as I'm doing right now. See I just finished finding a way to the other side of a wall I hit yesterday, and now want a little break before taking the next step.

So it's been said (and proven I think) that everyone has a mood cycle (if you will) where they go from feeling good to feeling slightly bad on a regular basis. It's not a drastic change, nor is it a mood swing. It's likely something that happens over the course of weeks, not hours. For me this usually occurs in stretches varying from 5 days to about 12 days. Oddly enough I've recently been able to detect this phenomenon more easily based upon my clothing choices. Having gone through an interesting fashion update in June I now have my older clothes which are decidedly unfashionable, and my newer clothes which are quite fashionable. When I'm in a good mood I wear my new clothes, for they help me feel like I can take on the world. When I'm in a bad mood I wear my old clothes, possibly because I don't want to accentuate my presence, and my old clothes are certainly nothing to notice.

Having read "Blink" I realize that my clothing choice is probably perpetuating my mood in either direction. So it would actually be a rather intelligent move to wear my newer clothes more often, and force a smile when I'm feeling bad, because, as "Blink" tells us, a fake smile will affect your brain and cause you to actually become happier, cute little trick, and it does work, try it sometime.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

As one of the webmasters much of what I do is never seen by the general public. In fact >90% of the work I've done since I've joined the board is only seen by the editors and the other webmasters. I have done a couple of small things that I hope everyone enjoys. You know how when you click "Login" your cursor is now automatically in the Email box? That was me. And how the archives page looks all nice and organized? Me again. Not that I want to toot my own horn, I just want everyone to realize that I am doing quite a bit of work that you'll never see unless you rise to the esteemed position of Editor. That being said I will let you know that there are some nice features coming down the pipe that the other webmasters have been preparing, so keep your eyes open.

Now for something completely different.

I wonder if anyone thought I was weird while I wandered around campus taking pictures of random things.... See I needed to get texture swatches for a project I'm working on, so I went around taking pictures of grass, dirt, mulch, and the like. People probably thought I was nuts. Oh well, I was getting paid to walk around in the sunshine for an hour taking pictures, that's fine with me.

The beginning

So, I've decided to start a blog as my superhero identity of Curious Physics Minor. This will be difficult, as I have a personal blog that identifies me. And it places fairly high on google searches, so I can't simply re-use posts here. So you will probably get similar ideas, but not the same posts, which, of course, requires more work from me. But such is the price of preserving my anonymity. Maybe if you read enough blogs you will be able to figure out my true identity based on similarities of blog posts; but I highly doubt it. You'd have to read alot of blogs.

So here I am. Curious Physics Minor. Champion of the moderates, known in Utah for liberal viewpoints and known back home for being a pig-headed conservative. Master of the web for the 100 Hour Board. Programming since 1995. I am a man with a 5 year plan. And maybe, just maybe you'll enjoy what I have to say.