Staff Letters: Phil

...Master of Puppets is pulling your strings...

Happy Oct..zzzzzzzz... huh? Oh, yes, I'm awake, I am. Sorry. Happy October.

So, lets hit things subject by subject...

School
School's been a typical hell. After a talk with my EE326 (Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering) professor whose class which was much harder that it was supposed to be, he did a lot of discussion and adjusting, and things got much more reasonable. Not easy, but reasonable. But I had a midterm in that class today... I'm not so sure I did well, but I think I atleast got a low passing grade. We'll see.

My other class are going OK. Writing 340 is "Communication for Enginners" and it's a pain in my ass class. Lots of stupid "here's how to get a job" stuff that I already know. EE457 (Microprocessor Design) is a notoriously time consuming and semi-difficult class. It was pretty boring the first few weeks, but it's getting really interesting now. The only problem... or well two problems: 1. Despite telling us we're behind he spends the first 20 minutes of every class reviewing what he did in the last class 2. The work load is very high. Let's see, then I have... CS460 (Artificial Intelligence), a moderately interesting class. No where as cool as it should be... or make that no where as cool as it was 2 years ago when my friend took it. They took all the fun stuff out because it was "too hard." What the hell is that?? Lastly I'm taking Math407 (Probability Theory)... that's not too hard, but there's too many similar things to keep seperate in your mind, and that's a pain. All in all, school takes up a LOT of time.

Work
So for quite a while my job was getting stale. The last 2 weeks or so things have gotten more interesting. My boss hired a new guy who basically has turned around a lot of companies by managing engineers and interfacing with management. He's a technical guy with a business sense. Anyway he came in and said we need all things I've been telling my boss we need for 6 months. But since my boss is friend's with the new guy, he's managed to convince my boss to buy new hardware and allow us to embark on some cool projects. Of course, now that work is interesting again, I've had 2 job offers. LOL. Damn Murphy's law.

SCaLE
So, I'm the Technical Committee Chairperson for the Southern California Linux Expo... so I had to setup Online Ticket Sales for socallinuxexpo.com... as well as a bunch of other stuff. I have a committment to the Expo, and a bunch of responsibility I don't really have time for, so it's been stressful...

LISA
I'm preparing for my presentation at the LISA System Adminstrator's Conference the second week in November. Very exciting, very scary!

Random Rants
So I've somehow managed to get mixed up in so many things I don't even have time to think anymore. There's no such thing as spare time these days, there's ALWAYS something else to do.

On top of that I lost DSL access for FIVE FUCKING DAYS! I had approximately 3000 emails when I finally got back online. I can't tell you how much that sucked. Since I telecommute to work, I had to take 1 day off (Thursday's I don't work, Friday I was working at the Data Center instead of from home, Sat and Sun I don't work, and I had to take of Monday). I couldn't do half the shit that weekend I wanted to get done. It sucked so bad. I got so far behind. It took a LOT of yelling at Earthlink to get everything back up... but in their defense, it wasn't their equipment or people: it was Covad's circuit and Earthlink was waiting on covad, but I yelled until I got someone at Earthlink who would call Covad NOC and tell them it damnwell needed to be done THAT DAY. Finally I got a manager who did it. And it was fixed about 6 hours later.

Metallica
I think this Jennings' tribute James did is FUCKING AWESOME. He did every instrument himself! How cool is that! Go James. In top of that, I think their attitude and their happiness is going to make this the best fucking album ever. I can't wait. I really can't! I'm so fucking excited!!

Have a good October. Oh shit, it's almost Halloween. Time goes by too damn quickly.

Phil

GOOD

Going to LISA

BAD

School
No sleep
Being without DSL for 5 days

MOVIES

Lilo and Stitch
Spiderman
Insomnia
Dracula 2000
Godfather I
Scarface
Balistic Eks vs. Sever

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