I finally feel like I’ve gotten past the latest surge in work and don’t feel as bogged down as I did a week or two ago. My work is more clearly defined.
I can get going on some implementation of the system I am working on with my advisor (finally) so that we can move on to putting out a paper. If I don’t finish this, then I won’t ever get my M.S. The Theory of Computation class has some difficult NP-Complete reduction problems so while that will be difficult to get through, I don’t have to finish it right away. Looking at those problems a little bit every day is much better than staring at them for hours and getting nowhere.
Since I do have some free time, I got Call of Duty 4 through Steam. Though a lot of people complain about it, I really like the concept of Steam. There isn’t any rummaging through various B+M stores looking to see if they have what you want. There isn’t any annoying packaging and CD to insert everytime you want to play. There isn’t any CD to lose, either — you just redownload.
I’ve played through a portion of the game already in the past day since I downloaded it and so far, it’s been great. It’s very cinematic and the battles seem so out of control. A lot of the time I feel so helpless with stuff blowing up all over the place and bullets screaming by. At the same time, though, the game depends on you to get stuff done. The other soldiers you’re with won’t advance until you do, so you do have to make some kind of progress. If you don’t, they’ll just hang back and the enemies will continuously respawn in the same places. The linear aspect of the game is the only drawback (along with a pretty weak AI), but the action definitely makes it fun. I haven’t played the multiplayer yet, but I heard it’s great, which is one of the reasons I bought the game. With many games, the multiplayer is pretty bland, so I’ll finish the singleplayer and then leave the game to collect dust — four hours of gameplay isn’t really worth $50. But, a good multiplayer that allows hours of fun in addition to good singleplayer allows me to recoup my investment.
I also saw Into the Wild, which prompted me to buy the book. The movie reminded me of a few guys on the team that had a similar attitude as the main character. It would be great just to cut loose and forget about all the nuances of every day life, except this guy really did it. Christopher McCandless graduated college and decided to hitchhike, hop trains, kayak to Mexico, and live in a bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, he took it a little too far and starved to death. It seemed that he didn’t have much knowhow in terms of wilderness survival, or that maybe he wanted it to go that way. The movie (and maybe the book) got me thinking about what it would be like if I just up and left without telling anyone. To disappear into the great beyond with no real destination in mind. Forget sleeping in the same bed every day, going through the same old routine, going to class, eating the same bland food, and seeing the same things. Every day would bring something new and exciting. Of course, it wouldn’t be any walk in the park — things that I normally take for granted would suddenly become a huge problem, mainly food, shelter, and just general health kind of stuff.
The Colonial Relays were this weekend and I caught a little bit of the meet. A few of the guys who recently graduated came back and it was nice to see them. Most, like myself, are still in school, just somewhere else. It’s funny how removed I feel from practicing and competing despite still running every day from the locker room and seeing everybody that’s still here. At this point it’s difficult to imagine racing. Just running is an accomplishment at this point.
The semester is coming to a quick end — only 3 weeks and two labs left to TA. Hopefully I’ll finish everything successfully.
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