Journal 1999-10

Current entries

1999-10-31, Sun (Day 58, temperature at 07:44: 22.4°C, difference: +1.3°C, Halloween, Daylight Savings Time ends at 02:00 [fall back], morning fog): The SCCS added me to the studpages list which brought on more visits to my site. Someone from Mary Lyon visited, then Willets twice, Parrish, Dana, Mertz (not me, I don’t count myself), me from home, Wharton, and Beardsley public area.

The morning was spent working on my web site. Around brunch I got my physics lab notebook ready for tomorrow and then started to sort out the MATLAB confusion. I started to lose general confidence since doing coding on Halloween seemed kind of boring.

I was taken home from 16:00 to 18:00 for Billy’s birthday. I found out that the CD drive on the Performa 6205 broke this morning and the keyboard and mouse weren’t working. The CD drive has a dislodged gear shaft, but the keyboard problem was easily fixed by removing the improper crosslink between the Performa 6205 keyboard and mouse to the Color Classic. I fixed the AppleTalk boxes on the LC II and 6205. The clocks were set one hour back and calibrated. I also received some ink for the Epson printer.

When I got back to Swat, I went to dinner and went down with people from Mertz, but ending up sitting in the small room with Jesse, Tom, Betsy, and Liane. Tom had more Barry Goldwater High School stories to tell including the saying again of the chant of “ … respect, perseverance, dedication, integrity …. ” After dinner, Luke (in person) and Kai (on the phone twice) were trying to get me to go trick or treating but I refused. I instead worked on my MATLAB backlog and managed to get caught up to last week. After 22:00, I went to the Beardsley public area and dumped the contents of the Konica floppy disks onto my hard drive over the network. The disks still lose a good amount of quality compared to the originals. Also, the inside of the existing Ridley High School is a lot darker than I thought.

1999-10-30, Sat (Day 57, temperature at 08:04: 21.1°C, difference: +1.4°C): I got up at the routine time of 07:00 and this time seriously sprayed the bathroom. At night, I realized that doing the wash and spraying today sort of messed up my respiratory system and I kept having to go to the bathroom this night. I managed to complete most of my wash and finish my Ed 14 paper before 13:00.

In the second half of the afternoon, I started working on my own web site. I set up the SCCS area better and connected it to the AOL area. Then I added a counter and guestbook. Once I got all of that working, I had to go to dinner since it was after 18:00. I didn’t get much, and I tried sitting alone to go faster, but Claire from Mertz second south came to sit with me. Chris from first south sat down next, and then a whole group of people from Mertz sat down. I left at about 18:30 to go back to my room and worked on my site until 19:10.

I went to see “Carrie,” which was made in 1976 and is a scary movie about a poor tormented child who uses telekinesis to get revenge. I sat with Betsy, Liane, and Chris, all from Parrish.

After the movie I finished working on the site by preparing the journal files. Luke got back from Washington, D.C. He left at about 08:00 this morning. I decided to use AppleWorks to convert the journal files into HTML and to make it easier and safer, I will only process full files. The cycle seems to be from Saturday to Friday, about twenty days. This time delay will prevent leaks that do not seems obvious until later.

1999-10-29, Fri (Day 56, temperature at 07:48: 19.7°C, difference: +0.1°C): At Sharples breakfast today, I sat by a window facing Parrish Beach. About midway through my meal, a yellowjacket mysteriously appeared at the seat back opposite of me. Instead of bothering it to fly away, I just glanced at it from time to time. The insect crawled from the center of the top of the chair to the edge of the chair closer to the window and started crawling down. At one point it went below the plane of the table, so I soon forgot about it until I got up.

When I was going to leave, I checked under the table and the yellowjacket looked like it just reached the floor. I thought that it was interesting that the yellowjacket could have flew down to the ground but instead it took on more of a challenge and climbed down. I soon remembered my brick wall ladder dream (see 1999-10-26, Tue) and thought the insect today symbolically represented me in going down this ladder that I did not want to go down but needed to.

I have had an e-mail backlog since Wednesday and it continued for the rest of the day into Saturday. In Physics, our sixth problem set and first lab report were turned in.

The Halloween parade was at Swarthmore-Rutledge School today and showed how the school has a great deal of patriotism to it by the playing of patriotic songs and then singing and choreographed dancing to Halloween “sing-along” songs. A lot of people got hot in their costumes especially since many were wearing black. I was wearing the Ridley School District uniform of a green top, khaki pants, and optional brown dress shoes. I did this originally since the stock market crashed today in 1929, unofficially starting the Great Depression, so I wore a green shirt to remember the event. Then when I had the outfit on, I realized that I was wearing the uniform and treated it as such.

When I got back to Mertz 260, Brendan sent me an e-mail this afternoon that said I was tentatively going to assume an expanded role of Phoenix Online Editor next semester. I worked on the news section and finished it at around 18:00.

The movie “Entrapment” didn’t suck but it was truly bizarre. It was about a male thief and a female thief that weren’t supposed to have a relationship but did anyway. The end scene of the movie was at the Petronas Towers in Malaysia during the rollover into Y2K.

I actually went to bed before 22:30 giving me at least eight hours of sleep. Now I just need to do this more often.

1999-10-28, Thu (Day 55, temperature at 07:36: 19.6°C, difference: -0.8°C): Today my dream was a combined summation of many things. I spent the morning before CS 22 trying to get the other half of my assignment to work but to no avail. However, I do understand Scheme a little more each week.

I started really working on the four assignments due over the next two days after 13:00. The Physics lab report was first, broken up by the Ed 14 paper review by Eva in Pearson, then MACOS materials gathering in the Ed Materials Center, and a meeting with Nelson in Hicks about advising. Professor Macken suggested that I need to tell myself to get stuff done quickly and well even if I have the whole afternoon to do it. This is the pause period, he said, and the week and a half after Thanksgiving break is very frantic and it is better to finish things and get them out of the way before going into December.

From this advice, I finished my Physics lab report shortly after 18:00, my Math 6A problem set before 20:30, and my Physics problem set at around 23:00. Dad dropped off Halloween decorations.

1999-10-27, Wed (Day 54, temperature at 08:44: 20.4°C, difference: +0.5°C): I had a dream that I was looking at weather.com and it was either Saturday or Sunday. There was a big temperature drop between Sunday and Monday. Today when I checked the site, Sunday is on the five-day, but Monday is not. The forecast high for Sunday is 64°F (17.8°C).

When I got back to Mertz, Jim sent me a reply to my e-mail I sent last night about the CS assignment due tomorrow. I went over to his office and went over the problems.

1999-10-26, Tue (Day 53, temperature at 08:06: 19.9°C, difference: +0.3°C): Even though I slept for five hours, I still remembered my dream which might mean it was fairly stronger than usual. I was in the high school auditorium with Russell who was quickly explaining to me all this cool new stuff in the auditorium. Then I found myself several floors above the ground and looking outside this door to an external ladder that was a series of rungs bolted into a brick wall. I needed to climb down that thing to get to the auditorium again but I didn’t want to.

I think in the next part of my dream I was in a cafeteria unfamiliar in real life but familiar in dreamland. I saw Ben and Ben (Ridley Class of 1999) there. They asked me about this 72 hour thing for Y2K and brought up the residence halls closing over break. They seemed concerned about the problem, but I did not seem to be and I only partially understood what the problem was.

The tree outside of Sharples that was damaged during the hurricane last month is being cut down today. When it was being cut down, I smelled that tree sickness that I remember getting a waft of on Rosemont Street in Ridley Park when I was in early elementary school (kindergarten or first grade). Perhaps the whole tree at Swarthmore is being cut down and I think it is an elm so it may have Dutch Elm disease, which killed many trees in Ridley Park before I was born.

Carr used the E5 lecture today to calm apprehensions about the rocket project. The lab period today was to finish up this week’s MATLAB assignment which is due next week, which makes my MATLAB backlog a little more critical than before. The last few minutes of the class were spent talking about EDWin, which is a Windows circuit design application.

Luke brought his spec John to the dorm as I was heading to McCabe to do my Ed 14 reading at around 16:00.

I had dinner with people from the quiet Willets basement: Jonah, Dave, Mark, and Spiegel. My EPSON printer was printing horizontal streaks, so I had to make a quick run up to Beardsley to pick up Ed 14 notes. This time the printing did work. We did have our Ed 14 study group tonight after the pumpkins were carved for the study break.

1999-10-25, Mon (Day 52, temperature at 07:48: 19.6°C, difference: -0.4°C): Today showed that I can feel totally different 24 hours after I feel good or bad, and in a few hours I can feel much better from feeling really bad.

I had to get up and stay up at 07:00 this morning. It seemed difficult at first, but going to class helped me not notice. Math 6B started today. Today was the real workout day for Nautilus as it looked like the whole class was there and I was able to get through the remainder of the machines that I have not done yet and do some machines a few times.

Lunch was not salad for me, as I had enough time between Nautilus and the physics lab. Even though the lab was short on paper, the analysis portion and simple record handling made the lab go past 16:00 for Kim and I. I did stop by the bookstore to get some organization stuff. Since I didn’t want to start my work, I went to dinner and had some good conversation with John about lots of things such as the bad ventilation in the McCabe library.

My family dropped off about three gallons of water in the form of half-liter bottles that should last me about 28 days. I came up with this time using the formula that I drink one of those bottles a day and two of them on Sundays to reach 64 oz. of water for the day, assuming I drink two 8 oz. glasses of water whenever I eat at Sharples.

I took a few pictures of the rising full moon while I was outside. Afterwards, I started taking care of various non-mission critical but needed things such as organizing my notebook. At 22:00, Luke, Chris from 1st south, Ben, and I went to see the SWIL movie “Dark Crystal,” a Jim Henson production. I liked it, but Ben didn’t and Luke who has seen the movie before said to Ben that he will be glad later on that he saw it. This also was the first SWIL movie I had seen since before I was busy on Monday nights.

I stayed up until 01:40 working on my notebooks.

1999-10-24, Sun (Day 51, temperature at 09:36 [half-wow]: 20.0°C, difference: -0.8°C): I got up at 07:00 and decided to go back to sleep again. I got up at 09:00 and then proceeded to spray the deteriorating men’s second north bathroom with disinfectant.

Someone egged the table in the first floor lounge. Public Safety thinks that someone in the dorm is doing it which is kind of weird that someone is willing to destroy their own living environment.

The IT lecture with Carl Russo from Cerent and Bill Hawkins from AOL started at 14:00. After Carl’s lecture was finished, who essentially said that you need to find what you think and feel is right and then act on that, there was a reception. The reception took so long I just left before the second lecture started.

When I got back to the dorm, instead of continuing with second level homework (IEEE), I started to chart out where my life has been, where it is now, and where it is going. This prompted a discussion amongst Ben and Sven in the quad about life and Y2K. Apparently the Y2K index I having been writing on my door for each day is being noticed. I reached an impasse of going individual or going with a group so I went to dinner and thought about it.

Afterwards I went back over an e-mail and saw that the network really has to be more of a group. It took some time before all of those changes went through. Then I started working on the HEV site and screwed things up since the write permissions are still set incorrectly.

1999-10-23, Sat (Day 50, temperature at 10:30 [wow]: 20.8°C, difference: +0.4°C): As you can see by the time I took the temperature reading, I got up three hours later than normal. My alarm did get me up at 07:00 and I think I did wake up about midway through the night meaning I got enough sleep like I did the first few days this week. However, when I got up at 07:00 I felt so tired and I knew it was Saturday so I thought, forget the schedule of getting up at 07:00 everyday, I’m sleeping in. I woke up at the latest time that I would have liked to get up at without an alarm — 10:00.

The entire day, I felt like I was three hours behind since I really was. As a result, I didn’t get any real homework done. My first meal was around noon instead of before 09:00. I started my wash in the afternoon instead of starting it in the morning and ending it in the afternoon. I finished washing at around 16:00. Luke came back from the outdoors club hiking trip to the Appalachian trail in upstate Pennsylvania sometime after then.

For dinner, Luke, Ben, and I were assembled by Deborah who also grouped with Drew, Sara, and Ben in the first floor lobby near the Mertz grand staircase. Sara E. was just getting back and she said “good timing” when we were going to dinner. With Olivia joining us also, our group of nine walked over to Sharples.

I went to “Go” instead of the music concert. The movie was in DuPont purely because the projectionist was “running a little behind,” according to the messenger. The machine messed up a few times but “Austin Powers” last night in LPAC Cinema didn’t mess up at all with the one exception that it may have been the reel when the sound kind of got mixed over. “Go” was about suburban drug dealing and the associated stories that go along with it.

Then the stuff started. I went to Beardsley after the movie to pick up an e-mail printout of Education 14 notes that I printed earlier today. It wasn’t there. I went into the nearby public lab and printed again. Still nothing after about seven minutes. I went back to my dorm and printed from the Epson and that worked.

1999-10-22, Fri (Day 49, temperature at 07:42: 20.4°C, difference: -0.1°C): Today was the last day for Math 6A class and most people showed up today. Nautilus was canceled today and the Ware Pool was locked so I still could not get my lock and towel. So Kai and I went to lunch. I remembered to grab a bagel this breakfast before I sat down so I could eat something on the way to Swat-Rutledge School, but it turned out I didn’t need it since I had the extra time to eat lunch in Sharples. Ms. Hoffman was not in today, so a within-house sub was in charge of the class. We talked about bats from the Weekly Reader for part of the discussion.

I got back to my dorm to encounter another one of those rush situations. Brendan sent me an e-mail about The Phoenix Online Opinions section, so I started working on that, taking a break for dinner, and completing it just before I had to leave for my Math 6A final at 20:00. I did the best I could on that final and I was alert because I was hastily editing HTML files beforehand.

Then the timing stuff worked. I was walking in the rain in just my windbreaker (it was raining before the 6A final) and as I went to LPAC for the movie “Austin Powers” I happened to meet up with Alyssa, Laura, and Andy to watch the movie.

1999-10-21, Thu (Day 48, temperature at 07:51: 20.5°C, difference: -0.7°C): The SAM meeting with Lorrin I had today was longer than normal as I chatted about CS troubles and ways of doing things better. What I seemed to come to is that I don’t think enough when I initially do a problem and I wait until the day before to complete the assignments, leaving me little time to think.

I took a one hour nap after lunch, woke up, and did my physics. I went to the physics clinic after dinner and then I went to the Cornell Library to look at the solutions to the Math 6A homeworks. There is a final in this class tomorrow night. Luke asked me about the Y2K index I recently started writing on my door, so I explained to him the exponential curve.

1999-10-20, Wed (Day 47, temperature at 08:44: 21.2°C, difference: +1.0°C): After yesterday’s meltdown and corruption of several routines, today didn’t seem that bad, but things weren’t fixed until the afternoon when I took a nap after Ed 14 and woke up at 18:15 to see a sky filled with red after the sunset.

The HEV meeting in Sharples was this morning. Kiyo or Smitty is going to arrange for about one hundred of the Garnet One flyers for the presentation on Saturday. I plan on having the web page in much better shape by then too. Nautilus started for real today. There are 12 machines, and right now our beginning group of four is going around the weight room and getting a feel for the machines and how to use them.

After dinner, I redid parts of my Math 6A homework and then went to Todd’s office to get help. I stayed at DuPont until I completed the assignment so I could slip it under his door when I was done since it would be too late to turn it in for the next class meeting. Alyssa and some others were also in DuPont to get their chemistry lab notebooks.

1999-10-19, Tue (Day 46, temperature at 07:54: 20.2°C, difference: -0.9°C): In my dream this morning (which was after 06:00 I think since I woke up twice since I’m actually getting enough sleep), I noticed in my family’s refrigerator that there was a lot of food that no one was eating and was starting to get old. I said that the average age of the food was getting high, which they acknowledged, but when I said “but is anyone going to do something about it,” there was a suppressed snicker and then I heard an alarm, only this was my watch going off. So I said, “Well, I’m just going to let this alarm run.” Then I realized I actually had to get up because I was going to wake up my roommate Luke if I let the alarm run.

Later on I also remembered in my dream that George Costanza from Seinfeld was trying to get a ride home when he was with the other TV show characters, but he couldn’t because he lived in the ‘bad’ neighborhood of NYC. The weird thing was I couldn’t remember the name of the bad area, making it an indefinite value, meaning it doesn’t really exist relative to the city or my own environment.

I also found out this morning from my door board that Alyssa has my group’s E5 circuit diagrams, so when the lecture period comes this morning, she should give them back to me, and I will then give them to Carlos.

Today saw the corruption of many routines which led to several problems, such as forgetting my watch and retainer case, so I was constantly looking at clocks and had to put my retainer on my lunch tray, a dangerous thing to do if I forget about it.

I cashed the money order today and gave blood.

1999-10-18, Mon (Day 45, temperature at 07:46: 21.1°C, difference: +0.3°C): Two things I received in the mail today were a bank statement and the money order from a longitudinal survey I completed before the break. I’ll probably cash it tomorrow. Professor Taylor, Kiyo, and probably many others (including me) got haircuts over the break, all of which look nice. Kai and I went to Nautilus today, but the professor didn’t come until well into the period to tell us that the class was really going to start on Wednesday. We did get credit for coming as this class has the same requirement as Aquatics where you can only have three absences. Also, there is a warm up and warm down component of the Nautilus class and you do have to be in the weight room for a total of one half hour each class meeting. Kai just made the class list which I think was capped at 15 when he signed up before the break. Even still, the class will feel crowded.

At lunch, Elizabeth told those at our table (Kai, Liane, Betsy, et al.) that her plane was delayed on the runway since one of the wings fell off. They did get it working eventually though. The physics lab today about the work-energy theorem actually went well, we finished before 16:00, and had a good understanding of the lab.

This night, I hastily completed my E5 lab notebook so I could give the circuit diagrams to Carlos, but he wanted to sleep so he will pick them up from me at the beginning of lecture.

Soon after Denise calls me and explains her rocket group confusion to me and asks to borrow the same circuit diagrams. I give them to her since her rocket group meeting is tonight.

As an interesting twist, instead of getting ready for my shower, going to the bathroom, and then taking a shower, I was compelled to go to the bathroom and then get ready for the shower. As a result, Alyssa (who is also in my physics lab section as I found out today) was able to talk to me in person about the E5 lab notebook. Coincidentally enough she was in the same group as Denise. Unfortunately, I didn’t know when and where they were meeting. So she was going to wait and hope that when the circuit diagrams came back from Denise she would somehow get them.

1999-10-17, Sun (Day 44 [making it a long Day 43], temperature at 08:29: 20.8°C, difference [from --10-09, Sat]: +2.0°C): I had a dream that I was in the basement of Parrish but the square staircases extended into that floor so I could look up from the basement and see the third or fourth floors. Next, I was at one of the buildings at the base of hill (around Ben West and the parking lot) with Kai trying to get this generator started to get the remaining lights on for these outdoor stand things. We did get it working but now we needed to hurry to the Lang Music building probably for a performance. We were going up the hill between McCabe and Willets and I remember seeing the observatory on the Scott Arboretum Cunningham building. About where the Rose Garden is, Kai stumbles down this concrete earth wall with climbing bars that these guys are sitting on facing Parrish east during the sunset. Kai recovers by catching himself on the topmost climbing bar. We see LPAC and Lang as viewed from the area between Beardsley, Kohlberg, and Trotter (where the five-leaf clovers are) but the dream ends before we get to the performance buildings.

My interpretation from this dream is that I’m running out of time (sunset), but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (view of LPAC and Lang).

I went to the Greatest Hits opera at the Academy of Music this afternoon with six other students from the Opera Club. Before the show, we ate lunch at a place called Samosa between 12th and 13th on Walnut in Center City. They served vegetarian Indian cuisine which was inexpensive ($5 lunch buffet) and was good. The opera was also good, but the seats our group had put us in the stage right corner at the highest level (amphitheater, section I) so we couldn’t see some performers if they didn’t come to the center of the stage, and the supertitles for translation if they were there were not visible from where we were. The music and singing were good however. As a result of the detachment, I dozed off about two-thirds of the way through the whole production (there was intermission). That was my first opera and I also think it will be my last.

I returned to a slightly different Sharples after break. The small room now has tables in this diagonal arrangement making it a pain to walk straight through the room. Luke came back at around 20:00 since he missed the SEPTA train at 17:17 and had to wait two hours for the next one.

The Mets are still alive in the NLCS (National League Championship Series) since a grand slam home run was hit in extra innings. A hallmate’s birthday was today and she had her party in the second lounge after the game. Afterwards, Ben noticed that I had the libertarian icon hanging up on my door which launched a discussion with Ben and Sven about social structures. Denise kept stopping by making sure the argument wasn’t going to get violent. I don’t think it got out of control; it was just loud.

As I went to bed, I noticed that someone wrote on the whiteboard “it’s all about symbolism” under the cowboy (in red) whistling a sitting dog on a rug (in black). The icons were drawn before the break.

1999-10-09, Sat (Day 43, temperature at 08:46: 18.8°C, difference: -0.4°C): Well this is the last day I was at Swat before I left for break. In all the rush of today, I’m actually writing this entry on --10-17, Sun. Ben and Sven’s room had this buzzer alarm go off since 08:00 today and went on for about two hours. Both of them left yesterday. As a result, I shut my door and played music until the alarm stopped. I wrote a note on their door saying it is a good idea to turn off your alarm before you leave for break. Today I worked on getting my room in as much order as I could before the afternoon since I was supposed to go home then. I had to go home today since I wanted to wash this week’s load at home. If I didn’t go home today, I would start running out of clothes or I would have to pay $3.75 to wash when I could have just taken the clothes home this week.

I came home to find the Performa 6205 had been taken over by some startup screen, was slow, and looked like it needed a facelift. I realized that I probably left my OS 8.5 CD at Swat (at least I thought I did, now that I checked, I didn’t find it in my dorm either), so instead I installed OS 7.6 and updated it to 7.6.1 over the break. The LC II and Color Classic were also rebuilt with System 7.1 Update 3.0. The hard drive of the three computers were optimized, and I turned the SE on to check it, test printing, and adjust for daylight savings time (fall back).

On --10-13, Wed, I got a haircut, then went to the new Ridley High School construction site to take pictures of the new high school being built on the site of the old Ridley Community Center. The teacher parking lot was being dug up and I took a picture of this giant hole formerly known as the teacher parking lot. Having some exposures left, I went to the middle school construction site and took pictures of the progress of the addition being constructed at the terminus of Trainor Street. I then went to the Ridley Park Lake to finish the roll.

After eating lunch, I returned to Swarthmore College for the rest of the afternoon and evening to check up on things. The ventilation in the wall cabinets was also turned on while I was gone. They still blow air out even when the temperature is at or above the set point. I learned from Dad that the Snowy color safe bleach was supposed to be added to a detergent such as Tide. It was not to be used alone as I have been doing since the second week, which could explain why my clothes have been developing random colored spots. What is incredible is that I have only been using Snowy for this long, so I really only cleaned my clothes the first week and just merely bleached them after then. The Dow color safe bleach and detergent can be used by itself.

After Dad and Bill left, I went to Parrish to check my mail and soon after I vacuumed the floor. I tried using one of the blue hall vacuums, but the brush wasn’t turning, so I had to use the hand vac I received as a gift to do the whole room. It took a lot of effort, but it does look nice. There were only a handful of people in the dorm, making hall life very quiet as Krista said to me several times today as I played my CDs on my new blueberry iMac-matching CoZo speakers. I also saw Josh, Ben, Kellam, and Youssef today.

I spent --10-15, Fri night at the Ridley High School Homecoming football game. Ridley took on and defeated Penncrest. When I was entering the courtyard area, Bill saw me and said Hi. We went to the press box, and I got to meet my friends from last year. I left after halftime.

On --10-16, Sat I returned to Swat for the rest of semester at 10:30. Dad drilled the mirror in my closet door and Bill played Nanosaur. I had KFC for lunch and Wendy’s for dinner since Dad went to those places today and dropped me off the food. In the afternoon and evening I worked on math. The dorm is only slightly more noisy than it was on Wednesday. Some people started arriving with the SEPTA train stops throughout the afternoon. A good portion of the hall is planning a last minute Sunday return.

After 21:00, some people who lived on Mertz last year visited my quad and were amazed at the decorations that the hall put up. Sven returned after the visitors left and saw the message I wrote on the door about the alarm clock and apologized about it. I was in bed before 23:00.

1999-10-08, Fri (Day 42, temperature at 07:46: 19.2°C, difference: -1.4°C): I ate breakfast with the 08:30 group from Mertz for the last time before the break.

The Ware Pool was locked today, so Kai and I went to the Field House. We went into the weight rooms (I just walked by them when I went to see where they were on --10-05, Tue), and then Kai signed up for Nautilus in the same section that I am in which replaces aquatics with the time and days of week. I found out today that first quarter classes really end the week after break and not this week. However, aquatics has ended already since I think everyone had enough class visits to get credit for the course.

Kai and I were able to eat lunch earlier than usual since there was no swim class. Since I had my observation at the Swarthmore-Rutledge School (SRS) in the afternoon, I was actually able to eat lunch at Sharples instead of having a lunch consisting of a bagel and water on the walk to the school. The first graders were somewhere in the middle today in how well-behaved and mannered they were compared to the first two weeks where the first week they were angelic and the next week they were wild.

I got back from the school and finished and turned in my Ed 14 paper. Luke’s parents were ready to take him back home for vacation when I got to my dorm to finish the paper. They said how nice Philadelphia is to tourists as they took an extended tour of the city. After they headed home, Josh, Dave, James, Kellam, and I watched “Swingers” in the second lounge. The movie was about two guys trying to get steady girlfriends through “cool” moves.

1999-10-07, Thu (Day 41, temperature at 07:54: 20.6°C, difference: -1.5°C): I started my Ed 14 paper this afternoon and finished most of the first part by 15:45, which was when I went to Prof. Jim Marshall’s office for CS help before the exam. The CS exam was from 19:00 to 21:00 in Kirby. Both CS 22 sections were taking the exam in Kirby. I think I did fine on most of the sections except the circle problem.

Afterwards, I finished typing most of my paper in McCabe. I was in one of those typing rooms and when the door is closed they are very stuffy. Even though McCabe has no open windows (especially since it’s a lot colder now) the ventilation system is either not on, or not on enough. I think I was in that library only once when the ventilation was actually on.

Susan put “When the Dark Comes Rising” above Luke’s and my door. This is from literature and like almost all of the other stuff hanging on the wall in the quad this fits with the literature theme. As the night progressed on, Dan got his Trivial Pursuit set and Ben, Denise, Susan, Luke, Dan, and I played.

1999-10-06, Wed (Day 40, temperature at 08:38: 22.1°C, difference: +1.3°C): I had breakfast a half-hour earlier this morning since the HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehicle) team meets on Wednesdays at 07:30. As a result, I wrote the journal entry for yesterday after breakfast. Today was the last day of swimming for many in our class; some including me are still coming on Friday out of our own initiative.

Ed 14 this afternoon left me greatly unsettled. I think what happened in Ed 14 caused me to hang in the hall more this night. The study break by Nina and Susanna was essentially a sexual activity test which was quite funny.

Also today Kiyo and I received accounts for the HP/UNIX engin server so the HEV site should be up as soon as a directory is made for it. The temperature was much lower today causing some people to leave their windows open (like Josh), making his room temperature a chilly 63°F (17.2°C).

1999-10-05, Tue (Day 39, temperature at 07:36: 20.8°C, difference: -3.1°C): After all the trouble of the last two days, today seems totally different in structure, with an aim to fix the difficulties.

After the E5 lab this afternoon, I got my checks ordered and then I went to the Field House to change tennis to Nautilus for next quarter. I then went to the Field House again to find out where the weight room was.

I finished the Ed 14 readings after dinner before 20:30 because I thought the study break was at 21:00, but it really was at 23:00 and I don’t think it happened at all. After the readings, I rushed my Math 6A homework, partly because I wanted to go to bed, and also this homework counts the least of all my subjects.

1999-10-04, Mon (Day 38, temperature at 07:52: 23.9°C, difference: +2.3°C [electrical storm]): The dream I had this morning was about going into a small elevator that was blue and had the buttons on the left instead of the right. The only buttons were for the floors and the key operate. No push-pull/stop-run or door open. Seeing that didn’t make me feel too comfortable about getting in there. Also I was the only one in there. I got in on the first floor and went to the top floor (either the second or third floor). When I was getting off, I got off real slow and consequently the elevator tried shutting the door on me and dropping since it was at the top floor. I did just get off in time, though.

The day was routine until I realized I lost my physics book at the end of the lab. The last time I remembered seeing it was in the lab classroom at the beginning of the lab but after then its location is unknown. Mary Ann Hickman sent an e-mail to the lab section so that if someone picked it up by mistake, I should be able to get it back.

In the evening, Denise was having trouble trying to get her Eudora to install on the new Dell she has. Luke and I went up to her room but we couldn’t figure it out. While I was up there, I checked the elevator to see if the color of the door matched my dream and it didn’t; the Mertz elevator inside door is black.

Afterwards, Youssef had his birthday party in the second floor lounge. Sarah made a cake for the event and helped start a “pin the tail on a drawing of a rabbit mascot” game. For my try, I managed to stumble into the corner of the wall, fell on the heater, and almost went out the window. Consequently I didn’t come very close.

My CS homework managed to somewhat finish by 22:00. Question four has a faulty second part, making it difficult to do the rest of the question. The fifth question also doesn’t work correctly.

1999-10-03, Sun (Day 37, temperature at 07:53: 21.6°C, difference: +1.5°C): The morning was spent working on code and trying to figure out how to get checks from FMFCU. I think I will just have to go to the branch office on Tuesday afternoon so I can get help in filling out the check request forms.

I went to brunch sometime after Sharples started serving since my breakfast of yogurt, blueberry pie, and milk was filling. I sat in the small room (which was planned), but what that did was separate me from the rest of my hall. I found out about the hall separation when walking back to Mertz.

The early afternoon was spent in McCabe reading Ed 14 and falling asleep. I dreamed that they were talking about the new lecture hall for DuPont (I was seeing DuPont 161). Someone remarked “we’re all going to be over this anyway.” That comment can mean death and ascension to heaven, earth changes, a simple cliche, or a host of other things. Whatever it meant, it woke me up, but I didn’t see anything to catch my attention and help me out on this one.

After an unproductive reading session, I started work on the code. Carr (E5) and Jim (CS 22) replied to my messages (around noon today) and gave me assistance. However, I had a difficult time working today because I was tired or something like that. I tried falling asleep in the lounge (which was now being decorated extensively) but couldn’t get past the loss of consciousness stage. Sleeping on my hard notebook cover didn’t help much either.

After all the sluggishness, I decided to go to dinner. Susan asked me if I “really wanted to go.” I said, “no, but I can’t do anything else, so I might as well get this over with.” She said the rest of the hall was going to eat in 45 minutes and she had fruit to tide me over if I was hungry. I was saying this stuff as I was walking up the hall to dinner.

As I was going to bed early (before 22:00), I realized that I forgot to start my math since there was going to be a problem set Q & A tomorrow. I could not figure out why I was so tired and devoid of everything today until I realized the next morning that the three month look-ahead put today as the first weekday of Y2K (2000-01-03, Mon). This day is not a good plan for that key date.

1999-10-02, Sat (Day 36, temperature at 08:13: 20.1°C, difference: +1.2°C): I worked on The Phoenix Online for the morning and the early afternoon. After that, I started work on my CS, which is due Tuesday since there is an exam on Thursday night. Ben started hanging various textual documents up in the quad with the aim of decorating it. Kai and I saw the “Blair Witch Project” in DuPont. After taking Ray Bruno’s Science Fiction class, seeing a movie of that similar type was not extremely scary. The camera didn’t bounce around as much as reported; I think some people get motion sickness easily and whine about their problem to others to make it seem worse to everyone than it actually is. Kai was wondering where this area was in Maryland since he is from that state. The footage shot seemed real; the hidden meaning behind the people’s voices seemed to agree with this truism.

After getting back from Blair Witch (before 21:00), there was a window of whether or not I was going to the swimming party in Olde Club. Sara C. had a hard time convincing Sara E. to go to the party as well. Once the partygoers left, I found a beautifully drawn marsh on Olivia and Susan’s door. It had this shark fin in the water.

I went to bed about 20 minutes before midnight.

1999-10-01, Fri (Day 35, temperature at 07:38: 18.9°C, difference: -5.6°C, fiscal year 2000 starts for the U.S. Government): In my dream, I was at the Swarthmore train station at dusk, maybe dawn. There were probably 100 people standing at each platform. I needed to go into Philadelphia, but when the SEPTA train came, there was only one extra-long car (seems like the Sunday routine on the R2 Wilmington) that was already two-thirds full. Seeing that I figured I would wait for the next train.

When I went to put my stuff together for today’s classes, I went to put my dark boxer shorts in a bag since I wear my swim trunks to the classes before Aquatics. However, I could not find them in the usual and unusual spots. I think I may have made them disappear, like what I did to the dictionary this year which later on suddenly reappeared under a pile of stuff that I believed was already checked.

The physics test today was difficult since I was not at full attention and the problems seemed confusing. Especially bewildering was the golf trajectory problem which was the major (20 pts) problem of the assessment.

I observed at Swarthmore-Rutledge School (SRS) this afternoon. The class was much more unruly today than in past weeks. The main focus of the afternoon was learning about and using magnets. Since it was a Friday afternoon, it was challenging to keep the children under control.

Soon after SRS, I went to Hicks for a meeting of the amateur radio club. We went up on the roof of Hicks to the solar energy lab building stationed there which is where the ham radio is kept. We found out the weather is nice in Montana and other areas of the western hemisphere (it is nice here as well). I met David, president of the club again. The roof of Hicks offers a nice view of the area. I was able to see the power plants located in Eddystone. They appeared to be idle.

I started working on The Phoenix Online News section after dinner and before the Cooper Lecture about race by Beverly Tatum. In between the lecture and “Rushmore,” I worked on more of the pages, and after the movie I finished the section at around 01:00. I’ll do Opinions tomorrow. Elizabeth sat next to me and was able to tell me various things about the movie since the school they filmed at was actually not called “Rushmore” but was really the St. John’s School. She knew this because she went to St. John’s.

When I got back from the Cooper Lecture, there was a note on my door that there was going to be a swimming club party at the Olde Club (I think it’s on the “frat row”) tomorrow. I have not been getting enough sleep almost every night this week, so I do need to catch up. I would say I’m 50-50 about going to the party right now (--10-02, Sat, 08:12).

Journal 1999-09