Classes

So, I've been at school for a while now and haven't really been writing.

A couple days ago, my entry was about how much work I was doing as a PCC acting as a nettech. I'm still a PCC, but after I made myself sick from working too much, I decided that job could just sit and rot for all I cared. So, I stopped going around and fixing computers.

The day before classes start, I stayed up way too late talking to a friend of mine. It was nice to get to know someone really well, but it was quite... well, I was exhausted in class the next day because when you stay up until 5:30, getting up at 7 is entirely too early.

Lessee...

First day of classes. ECE 205 is looking to be a somewhat hard, mostly because it covers a lot of the same material as PHYS 112, which is the class I failed last year, for those of you who remember that. I'm hoping I can pull that one off okay.

Geog 101: looks to be easy (lots of upperclassman taking it as an extra filler course): 2 hours a week plus an hour of discussion. Things like learning about how to map different things, how to draw maps, etc.

No Phys 113 on thursday: lecture starts next week.

CS 311 was on Thursday. Of my classes, that's the one I'm most excited about. It's a database systems class, using SQL. It's really neat - a group project, learning about SQL and query language and query optimization and everything. I'm really looking forward to learning more about WHY what we do on LiveJournal works and all.

I've already got an idea for a project:

Many times, you want to form study groups with people that live near you. So, using the University PH system (http://www.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/ph/) as well as an opt-in emailing of the schedule to the web site for processing, allow users to search for other people in the area with the same classes.

The email the university provides from our registration system is pretty easy to parse: my roomate already has a java parser that produces a pdf version of your schedule. The format isn't that difficult:
( schedule )

Included in there, you can see the "crschmid", which can be used in ph to look up users by their NetID, which we could then store information from. So, an original email is sent to whatever the website email is, which parses the class schedule, stores information on the student (netid/location information) and the courses being taken (Course name/numbers or specific sections: not sure how that would work). Then you can do a simple pull of other people living in, for example, Allen Hall, who are also taking GEOG 101, and contact them using the information available in their PH listing.

If I really wanted to get advanced, I could do distance type searches. However, that might be out of the scope of this project.

We're encouraged to do this project in C++ or Java, but I'm really hoping to get together a group that likes programming in perl or PHP. The prof said that the reason he didn't mention a web-based option is because it would "Take too long". I find those types of interfaces way easier to work with and design, personally, so I'm hoping to talk him into it.

I could get into client/server protocol stuff too. Allow people to upload schedules more directly somehow, by writing a server to accept the information... man, there's all kinds of neat things this could turn into.

I love diving into a new project like this. The class seems really fun, as you can tell by the fact that I wrote about 10 times as much about this one as anything else. My professor is a Hungarian trained vietnemese who is really really funny, and I look forward to this class.

Let's see... I think that about rounds up the classes I've taken so far.

http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~crschmid/schedule.pdf has my schedule. Note that it's missing CS311, since neil had to do his own AM-PM conversion and never schedules classes at those times. :P

Skeleton Danse

So, tonight was Skelton Danse, the local Goth-Industrial dance night that takes place once a month at the Channing-Murray Foundation in Urbana.

Let me just start out by saying that was the most fun I've had in a long long long time.

Vered (wyvernbitch) has been trying to drag me to Skeleton Danse since April or so. I finally got out there, with some help from some friends.

I picked up some clothes at the YMCA dump and run sale that would have worked: black jeans and a black button down shirt that fit nicely, and would have done well in the crowd I was in. However, Kilannin (kerme0343) saw me and declared that I needed to be more... gothy, I guess? Less dressy, in any case. So, she helped me out. I have some pictures up in my room of what I looked like, I'll dump them somewhere once I get back up there.

I wore some nice "bondage" pants - the kind that have laces up the back. I wore my black "stompy" shoes (Sketchers) and black socks, and a white t-shirt with a nintendo controller on it and the words "Know your roots". (That shirt got so many compliments during the evening that I definitely want one now. :P) I felt... I don't know. It was interesting to be in that kind of clothing, because I never had before, and it earned me some looks. However, it was really comfortable, and Christy (littledownpour) and I decided we definitely need to go shopping for more stuff like what we wore.

I got there about 8-8:15 with Vered and Stuart (zorbtrauts). A couple people were about, but it was mostly still empty. Once 3 people got on the dance floor, I was brave enough to wander up there and start dancing.

It was so fun. A variety of music that changed throughout the night, accompanied by some really incredible dancers and some really incredible outfits. I got to meet a ton of people - everyone from Jen to Carolyn to Colleen (I'm not sure howshe spells it: it was pronounced "Coh-lean") to Adin (think odin with an a) to Christina (Kristina? Didn't think to ask.) to Jessie to David to Seth and more. They were all very gothy: from rennisance looking skirts to metal protruding from many parts of their bodies, it was a very different crowd than I normally hang out.

In standing outside cooling off, I decided I'd rather be one of the "freaks" being looked at by passing by bar-goers than to be one of the bargoers. I like being the center of attention far too much, I'm afraid.

A bunch of 2nd floor showed up around 9ish, including Caitlin (evilkat84), Christy, Meg (the 2S RA) and a couple others I didn't get the name of.

All in all, it was a really fun experience. I got to meet a lot of people, see a lot of cool things, and I got to have a ton of fun dancing.

It just doesn't get better than that after a hard week of work and school.

Thanks to all those who helped me get out of my dorm room :)

Asthma

Asthma sucks.

I was in my room tonight, and I couldn't breathe very well. It happens occasionally, especially in fall. Normally, I'd just take my inhaler and be fine again, not have to worry about it. Unfortunately, I haven't been over to McKinley yet to get that perscription filled, so I was stuck without one.

I couldn't sleep, even laying down. I eventually called the nurse hotline and got told to go in first thing in the morning.

Which means I'm stuck not being able to breathe til then.

So, I come downstairs and come to the computer lab. Sitting in here for 30 minutes, my breathing is back to normal. As soon as I get on the third floor, I'm starting to get short of breathe again, and within 5 minutes, it was just as bad as before.

It's most likely just a high pollen count today, but the fact that it happened as I got up to third floor means that I couldn't get back to my bed to sleep.

I'm going to go try and crash on one of the allen Couches now. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do.

At least I can breathe well here. It could be worse.

Asthma sucks.

College Stuff

http://peanut.sytes.net/webcam.php is back. It's running off the quickcam for now until I get my other camera running.

My address is:

0355 Allen Hall
1005 S. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801

So. Send me stuff.

Lesse.

New phone number too: 217-332-3349

That's not so hard to remember, I suppose.

Let's see.

Still working on clearing my hard drive out so I can install linux. I need to figure out how to get Microsoft outlook emails out so I can import them into a mail client. Anyone have any ideas on how to do that well?

This update is sponsored by spratt.