Andy Morrow's Blog

I’ve just realized that I haven’t been answering questions directed in the comments, so I’ll be using this post to do so in reverse chronological order.

First: cookies & cream milk, also known as the Manna and Dew of Heaven. It’s a BYU creamery product, and it comes in little jugs from the vending machines. It’s just milk with what I presume is artificial flavoring and tons of sugar. It’s extremely sweet, thick, and delicious. I occasionally check the vending machine coin returns and usually find around 25 cents each run. I wait and save up (a bottle is $1.40) and then indulge. Ahhh.

Second, my score on the Scoreboard ‘o’ Life. While I was gone during the day last week, a scoreboard got put up on my closet: one page for points and one page for demerits. I currently have 15 demerits and 13 points. Most of the points are for how patient and honest I am working with Bob. Most of the demerits are for mocking the scoreboard (by giving Andrew 20-infinity demerits – I started with 20 and decided that wasn’t enough) and for “general jerkness.” I appealed the decision; however, the council could not be coerced to convene and I couldn’t overrule. That’s okay; I’ve got one of the best point to demerit ratios.

Third, the choir. We’ve always been small, but we were especially small that day. It’s hard to get people to come and sing, even when we offer them food. They always say, “Oh, I’ll come some other week, I’m watching a movie,” or some other lame excuse like that. Oh well. I enjoy switching between playing and singing. I was aware that my playing was good, but apparently they really like my singing too.

Fourth, forgetting to go to class because of my job. I really can’t, because I have to be careful to not work more than 20 hours per week or else I’ll get in trouble. According to my understanding, the school is required by law to not let me work more than that. So, I’ve been working at odd times of day today (between classes) to try and make up for some of the work I’ll miss for the rest of the week, but so far I’ve been good at keeping track of time. I wish I had worked at the lab on Saturday, because I could have made up for more of what I’ll miss.

Fifth, the situation with my roommate. It’s good. We’re still struggling to go to bed early when we plan to – both of us – but it’s fun. The guys who I stay up with all night are actually my friends instead of just remotely friendly some of the time. Plus, if I tell them to be quiet or go away, they will. I just don’t want to. It’ll be good to get some extra sleep during the holiday.

Sixth, his car’s window. He’s got it wedged up using the doorstop from our room. Yeah. We’re holding the door open with a car battery given us by one of our RA’s friends. Tyler’s driving home this week for Thanksgiving, and he’s going to get it fixed then. It’ll work out well, since his dad knows the mechanics in that area and can get it done more cheaply.

Finally, new stuff. The Taylors called today at the end of my chemistry class. They’re going to come visit tonight at about 6, giving me time to work another few hours and also get dinner afterward. I’m looking forward to seeing them, especially because I think they’ll have my gloves and a few other random bits and pieces. I have a sneaking suspicion that my knife didn’t make it in with the payload. I think I remember where it is. I’ll grab it at Christmas.

I’m beginning to grasp the project I’m working on at work. The more code I read, the more convinced I am that most of the other contributors (dating back to the late 90s all the way up to yesterday) did not fully grasp the project, which makes me fairly certain that I don’t understand all of its bizarre nuances and abnormalities. I don’t know that anyone can. Thankfully, it has maintained a small overall codebase size, simply because it does something so simple. That hasn’t stopped it from bloating and uglifying, however. It ought to be implemented in about one tenth of what it currently is. I’ve heard that they’ll be rewriting it some day.

Well, I’m over 750 words and about out of time. Hopefully nobody’s died of boredom yet. Poor old lady.

See you all soon.

We lost the game to U of U. What shame and embarrassment. Oh well. Scott, Tyler and I just went on a three-hall vending machine raid. The guys with Dining Plus had to empty their cards out before Thanksgiving or else they would just lose money during the weekend. Thus, I have a veritable cornucopia of cookies & cream milk and Swedish Fish. Life is good.

Scott just gave me two albums by a band called Mattafix. They’re a pleasant mix of reggae and rap. James points out that Wikipedia’s definition is much more adequte:

“Their sound is a fusion of Alternative rock, Hip Hop/Rap, R&B, Reggae, Dancehall, Blues, Jazz, Soul and World.”

World! Now that is all-encompassing. Global music.

It’s way too late. Tomorrow is the last day of class, though, so life is good. I can’t wait to go to Grandma & Grandpa’s house. Maybe I’ll have time to write on my blog more there. Here’s to hoping.

I have done absolutely nothing useful today. It’s wonderful.

I sang in church today. It was the last week our (former) choir director came to our ward. She’s getting married Friday or Saturday. I don’t remember which. The bishop said a very nice, very brief farewell that I felt was in perfect taste. Instead of playing the piano, I wound up getting enlisted as a bass. It was practically more of an ensemble instead of a choir – there were only five or six of us – but I’m getting more and more used to that.

Nothing else to report. See you all soon.

The grades for the third math exam will not be thrown out! Score one there!

Plus, my score was 92. The average? 69! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I just love that feeling. Yes, college is competitive, and it’s a sport I can win at.

So far, so good. I started this week on Monday at my new job on campus. I’m working in the Chemistry CSR lab. CSR stands for either Computing Specialist Representative or Computer Service Representative. I can’t remember which. Anyway, my primary job is working on the Chemistry department’s wide variety of systems. I’m on a team rewriting the back-end to a grading system for a Chem 107 professor, and I think I’ll be joining one working on a new inventory system for every piece of hardware and software in the department. In the more boring departments, I’ve helped move hardware so that the carpet could be cleaned and I’m reinstalling the OS on an iMac. It’s a mix of some of everything, but it’s really heavy on the programming. Before I leave, I expect that I will have helped deal with the physical set up of the network, too.

This will be my first 20 hour week since I got here, and maybe even the first 20 hour week I’ve worked all summer. I don’t remember, but I wasn’t doing so well on concentrating during the summer.

School is not suffering significantly. The only problem that I’ve experienced is that I don’t have a draft of my English paper ready. I just reworked my thesis on Wednesday, and I have a conference with my instructor today. I expect to have at least a little something written, so I’ll basically just be going over my thesis and ideas and making sure that everything sounds good for me to do seriously drafting on Saturday.

I’ve also got a chemistry exam tonight. They say it’s much harder than the last few and that the average will be very low. I take that as a challenge. Ninety percent, here I come! Also, on my recent math exam, I scored the highest in my class by one point. Bwa ha ha! Sadly, the exam may be dropped because a huge portion of the class cheated. Apparently, math lab TAs were doing test problems for students without knowing they were test problems. Yeah.

I just got back from the chem exam. Only 73% on the multiple choice. Sigh. We’ll see. The free response has yet to be graded.

I haven’t really done anything tonight. I feel like a bit of a loser. My roommate and I have just been sitting around watching TV and goofing around on the internet. I’m going to bed. Soon.

I’m presently working on getting registered for classes, and it’s painfully slow. The servers are absolutely hammered (most of the freshmen are registering at this very moment), so page reloads take a few minutes. I’ve already gotten into CS236, however, and I’m now working on Math 113. I’m still not sure what my fifth class will be – it’s going to depend on which classes have spots open. I’m planning on completing the Civilization 1 requirement, whichever class I wind up taking.

Update: Math 113 has been registered!

In response to Mom’s question, yes, I did wind up getting a haircut. I did it Monday afternoon. My head feels wonderful, and I’m not really feeling a huge difference in insulation. I may still try to find a hat. I saw somebody wearing one of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics berets a few days ago – which I have one of. Too bad my Russian hat with the hammer and sickle doesn’t fit.

My homework load for this week is absurd. I’ve got a math exam tomorrow that I don’t really feel fully prepared for. On Thursday, I have a big project for CS235 that I haven’t really started and a big project for CS598R that’s only partially finished. I have written homework due Friday for CS235, a very important paper due Thursday for religion, and a lab due for Chemistry. It’s insane.

Update: I’ve registered for all my classes. To fulfill my Civ 1 requirement, I’m taking Honors Political Science 201 – History of Politics from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance. It’s 3 credit hours, but it ends at the end of February. Very interesting. It starts at 9:30 AM as opposed to my former earliest class of 10 AM, so I’ll have to get up a bit earlier. That ought to work out, however, with my new roommate, Tyler. The room request is in and the supervisor has already agreed to approve it. I’ll be moved in by Monday.

Well, I’m going to goof off for exactly 15 minutes to relieve some stress and then go to bed. See you all soon. Wish me luck with all this.

This door led to an equipment cabinet for the system that ran the electric mine carts. Nothing in there any more, but the lettering is sure cool.

Here’s another photo of old equipment in the mine. Sadly, I didn’t get to go yesterday for reasons that will become apparent.

I finally completed a ten hour work week, along with all my homework. This is the second time since I’ve been here. Rather sad. Plus, all ten hours were done in one day. Saturday. Exactly ten hours. It was long. I made a huge deal of progress on Bob’s website, however.

Today was my fast Sunday, since I forgot to fast last week. It’s not easy, but I need the help in order to get everything done and still keep room for the Spirit. Even at BYU, you can still lose the Spirit if you’re not actively seeking it constantly. Life never relaxes.

I’m planning on getting a haircut tomorrow. I haven’t had it cut since before I left, so it’s rather long. It gets very annoying. It’s curling in the back, and soon it will start on top. I can’t wait to get it shortened. I’ll have to find myself a hat, because it’s getting cold. Maybe at the military surplus store. Woohoo!

I’m getting along better with my roommate and his friends. If I ask them to mute it and whisper, they will. After that, I can usually fall asleep. They can then turn it up a bit and I don’t wake up. I sleep like a rock. I like my bed here. It’s long enough and soft enough that there really wasn’t a transition from home.

I stayed up much too late last night. I’m going to take a nap.

About half an inch of snow finally accumulated on Tuesday! It’s very exciting. I’ve got grand plans for snowmen, snow forts, etc. This should be a fun winter. I’ll put up a cell phone picture soon.

Of course, all those plans will have to wait for a bit, because the half inch melted the same morning.

As far as the friends in trouble – a few guys from my hall had a water fight in the hall. They soaked the carpet, which is bad. Even worse, however, they soaked a fire alarm pull. It proceeded to set off an electrical fault warning in the fire alarm system, which summoned an electrician, the couple in charge of Budge, and the police. Yeah. They’re in a spot of trouble. They should have found out exactly how deep of trouble yesterday, but I didn’t ask. They will definitely have to pay for the new fire alarm pull and they’ll have a mark put on their BYU records. They’ll probably also be cited by the cop for disorderly conduct. Ouch. That counts as one of the “dumb foolish things” (DFTs) that some BYU alumnus (can’t remember who) told me about right before I came here. He said he’d been cited several times, and he could have easily avoided it each time. Sounds like the guys on my hall. Oh well – they had fun. Hopefully a few hundred dollars of fun.

Also, I almost aced another chem test. 94 out of 100. Bwa ha ha!

It’s raining here in Provo. The fall colors came quickly and are going quickly. Many of the trees have dropped a lot of leaves thanks to the rain.

I’ve finally prepared and sent résumés for the positions in the Chem CSR lab and the DML. I’m expecting to interview with both within a week or two. We’ll see how they go. I’ll keep you updated.

I have massive amounts of homework left for this week, however, so I’m off. Wish me luck.

Sadly, the telemarketing machines don’t look like lotto machines with phones attached as Mark hoped. We had old Dell laptops with USB headsets and a Java program running. That’s it. I know, boring. The computer just popped up a window showing the name of the person you were talking to and filled out a bit of a script that you had to follow. Very, very boring.

I’ve just finished a résumé for the Chem CSR lab. It’s too late for me to be able to properly review the one for the Data Mining Lab, which I’m honestly probably more interested in. I was telling Mom on Sunday that I’d have to work for no pay for about two weeks if I got hired on there. It’s their initiation of sorts – to see if you work well with them and if their project works well with you. It looks good on future résumés, however, and it would probably be interesting.

Got a fair deal done today. I did my laundry (finally), sent an email to the Apple recruiter asking if I still had a shot at an internship (it’s been a long time since they talked to me), completed the résumé as mentioned, did my English homework, and put in about an hour of work for Bob. So it’s been an alright day. Now it’s time for bed, though. So long.