After a week of congestion and sore throats I made my way over to Health Services yesterday for a strep test. I'd heard that strep was going around campus, and personally knew a couple of people who had tested positive, so it seemed like a good idea. Anyway, I'm now taking penicillin as I too have had an "abnormal" (as the Health Services people called it) rapid strep test. Anyway, I need to go drink lots of fluids now, so I'll see you later.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 29 March 2002 at 10:13 PM

another productive 456 class.

as for the presentation, it was pretty uncomfortable, as always. also, it didnt really help that dave was too sick to speak, so I had to do all the talking. but oh well. I suppose its my own fault, since Im probably the one who got him sick.

hes not the only one, either. by my initial estimates I managed to infect about half of the wash u campus. so to everyone out there who spent the weekend confined to the bed, coughing up lungs and other such organs, Im really sorry. the whole thing is completely my fault. try to get some sleep, though, and get better soon. (and also, please please dont give it back to me.)

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 26 March 2002 at 1:45 AM

I have to give another presentation in 456 tomorrow. bleh. I know it probably gets old listening to me complain about 456, but I really dont like the class, and now because of this stupid presentation I actually have to go. sigh.. so no sleeping in for me. but I guess Ill live.

the unfortunate thing is Im working on this stupid presentation right now instead of drawing my comic. (thats my excuse this week, at least.) Im sorry, though. I know a lot of people out there have been anxiously awaiting more gloompuppy, and I have really dropped the ball the last couple of weeks. the thing is, tomorrow I really need to work on my machine learning homework, and the same goes for tuesday. and then theres this movie contest that dave convinced me to enter, and filming for that starts on thursday. and that, among other things, is going to take up my weekend. so things dont looks so good. basically, if Im going to get caught back up with my comic, it looks like wednesday is the day to do it.

yeah, so if you see me on wednesday someone please remind me to draw my damn comic.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 24 March 2002 at 11:17 PM

Okay, here's the deal. I was all set to stay in St. Louis this summer and work for Dr. Smart doing some robotics research, but today when I checked the voicemail a guy from Whirlpool (where I worked last summer) had left a message to see if I was interested in working there this summer.

So here's my conundrum: do I stay here in St. Louis doing some very cool things with robots in a job that could turn into a two-year Master's program, or do I work at Whirlpool in Evansville for more money than I'd get here in St. Louis (money which could basically pay for next year's tuition)?

I need to call the guy from Whirlpool back tomorrow and get some more details, and then I think I need to talk to Dr. Smart about my options. I wonder if I could do some part-time work for him this summer? Something like Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I'm in St. Louis, and the rest of the week I'm in Evansville. But that seems a bit restrictive. I really need to give this some thought, because I really have no idea what I should do. Or, how important is money?

Well, maybe everything will become clear to me tomorrow.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 March 2002 at 11:35 PM

A few changes around here. I wiped the hdd on my desktop computer, reinstalled Windows XP, and then moved the computer into my office in the ACM Lounge. It's kind of cool to have a nice computer in here all to myself.

I can't find my checkbook, so I need to clean my room tonight and see if I can locate it.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 March 2002 at 4:37 PM

I realized tonight that ever since I upgraded my hard drive and operating system, my online playlist has been frozen in time. (unless of course Id been listening to the same smashing pumpkins song for the last month or two.) so (industrious as I am) I set myself to reinstalling "do something" on my computer and configuring it to upload my playlists. now you can again see (in astonishing real-time) what songs I have last listened to. whee.

now you may be asking yourself, why do I care about all this? well, this is entertaining to you mainly because Ive found myself in a rather indie mood over the last couple of days, and now, thanks to this marvelous new technology, you can make fun of me for it. enjoy.

in the meantime I need to sleep some, because tomorrow I must program a robot to take photos of blue, poster-board cylinders. ordinarily this would take longer than a day to finish, but some scientific writer is coming by friday and cindy and bill want to show him something, so were kind of forced to get something put together. and personally I have this bad feeling that the only way this thing is actually going to work is if I leave certain group members out of it. so I think Im on my own on this.

bleh. thinking about this is putting me in a bad mood. bed now.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 21 March 2002 at 2:27 AM

Now that I think about it, most of you probably have no real idea of how long 10,142 lines of code is, so I did a bit of research to help you out. A Word document with a normal font size and margins will display 46 lines per page. (In this case, normal equals a 12-pt font and one inch margins top and bottom). So at 46 lines of code per page, we wrote 220.5 pages of code for WUgrade. That's an awful lot of code, espcially considering that we also wrote test files and documentation.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 19 March 2002 at 12:51 AM

Nick tallied up the total lines of code that the four of us wrote for WUgrade. The total number of lines was 10,142, which is huge for a student project. And that doesn't include any of the numerous test files that we wrote, or the pages and pages of documentation that Nick wrote. If you're interested in taking a look at what we've been working on, head over to http://contest.eraserver.net/WUgrade and follow the appropriate links to the sample application. (The server often seems to be very slow; so things could easily time-out on you. Also, don't tell us about any errors. We can't fix them, and would prefer to pretend that they don't exist.) If you'd like to take a peek at our competition, you might want to go to http://contest.eraserver.net/abstracts.xml. A lot of them don't seem to have sample applications online, though.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 18 March 2002 at 10:36 AM

um, hi.

so in case anyone was wondering, Im still alive. although it was doubtful for a while. I was sick all last week, and as such I was pretty miserable. it wouldnt have been so bad except I never ever get sick. so I have absolutely no practice at it. consequently I complained about it entirely too much. so to everyone who had to be around me last week (namely the wugrade team as well as the ACM lounge regulars), Im sorry for being so fussy.

of course, in my own defense, having to work on wugrade for 10 hours a day for seven consecutive days isnt really great for anyones mood. especially when 3 of those day were during your spring break. and rachel being out of the country doesnt help things either. oh well. I hope you can all forgive me. Im feeling much better now, by the way.

anyway, Ill write more later. now that Ive returned to life again. but for the moment I need to go work on 456. ksjdflksjdflksjdfljsdf. yeah. if youve ever taken the class then you know how I feel.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 17 March 2002 at 1:43 PM

Six hours of WUgrade tonight, plus three hours of sitting around while Nick tried to fix things that had been broken equals a very tired coder. I must now go to bed. Or watch TV.

Oh, and don't forget to request stickers, if you haven't already done so.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 12 March 2002 at 2:11 AM

James is complaining to me via AIM that I haven't been posting enough, so I'll post now even though I don't have much to report on. I've spent 30 hours over the past three days working on WUgrade (michael and Nick have done the same) and we are not yet done. We're meeting at 3pm tomorrow to do even more work. We do seem to have a lot done though, which is cool.

I brought my 1.5 million candlepower searchlight with me when I came back from Evansville.I'd forgotten just how bright it was: michael shined it into my computer screen and the reflection still has my eyes hurting. Now to find some productive use for it (other than shining it on people who go jogging past my window).

Alright, that's enough for now.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 March 2002 at 11:36 PM

Out of a possible seven hours, I slept for four hours and tossed and turned in bed for three hours. This doesn't bode well as I head off to work on WUgrade.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 9 March 2002 at 9:55 AM

Umm, hi. It's been a while.

Aside from a brief lunch break, michael, Nick, and I have been working on WUgrade since 10am and I'm beginning to feel a bit tired. It doesn't seem like we've gotten a lot done, but it seems like we're on the verge of getting a bunch of things done. Once I get this profile page finished up, I'm probably going to have to call it quits for today. But that probably won't be for a while.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 8 March 2002 at 5:23 PM