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July 29, 2004

Just a reminder: 30 shopping days until Flaxmas.

Three of my five classes ended today, and one ended yesterday, meaning I just have to deal with a couple more meetings of US History and the summer is over. I talked to the dean again today (she's also one of my professors) and told her I still haven't heard about the other two credits - she seemed surprisingly unconcerned by this.
So it's time to play "Let's See If We Can Predict My Grades." My ability to juggle five classes in six weeks - you try it some time - was pretty damn great, considering I had effectively been unable to go to a single class for months beforehand. There are three classes for which I feel pretty comfortable doing this.

Intro to Fiction
Grading
Participation: 5%
Leading Discussion: 10%
Short Paper: 15%
Long Paper: 20%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 30%

With 70% of the grades in (I took the final today and felt pretty good about it), my grade should look like this: 5+10+(15*.93)+(20*.89)+(20*.93) = 5+10+13.95+17.8+18.6 = 65.35 out of a possible 70 points. Assuming an A letter grade to be 90 or above, I need to score no worse than 24.65 out of 30 percent on the final. That's only 82%, which is something I feel comfortable that I can score above. The final was out of 300 points, meaning that I needed only 246.5 of them. I feel confident that I did not lose even as many as 50 points, which would still keep me in range. Thus, I should get no worse than an A- in this class. To get an A, assuming A to start at 93, I would need to score no worse than 27.65 out of 30 on the final. This is 92 percent; if I do as well on the final as I did on the midterm, I should get an A for the course. I feel like I did, but we'll see.

Family Communication
Grading
Family Narrative/Genogram: 25 points
Midterm: 30 points
Final Paper: 35 points
Class Participation: 10 points

As above, I feel comfortable assigning myself full credit on the class participation grade. I also received all 25 points on the genogram (it's like a family tree, but with more info) and 29.3 of a possible 30 points on the midterm (divided down from 88 out of 90, which was the raw score). This leaves me with, of a possible 65 points to date, 64.3. Assuming, again, that an A letter starts at 90, I would need only 25.7 of the 35 possible points on the final paper to get an A-. That's only 73% or barely a C. Considering that I don't think I've ever gotten a letter grade that low on a paper, I feel pretty confident that I will get some manner of A in this class as well. An A+, if such grades are assigned, might not be out of the realm of possibility.

Theories of Persuasion
Grading
Midterm: 30%
Final: 35%
Paper: 25%
Participation: 10%

There was next to no serious participation in this class as suggested by the syllabus (which indicated "small group exercises"), mostly due to the fact that it was a fair size, and that squeezing all the lectures into a six-week term meant we were running over time almost every day. So probably nearly everyone will get 10% there; since I know the teacher and have asked at least a few questions in class, I don't see why I shouldn't, at any rate. The midterm I got 100 points on, so give me all 30 there. 40/40 so far. The final was just today and I doubt I aced it as well, but I think I did at least comparably well. The paper grades should be up soon, maybe tonight; again, I tend not to get bad grades on papers, so 20/25 is probably about the worst we can expect (hopefully my hubris in this area will not jinx me). If we do that and even just 30/35 on the final, that's a 90 and an A letter grade in the course. Frankly, I expect to do better, but this grade is the least official one so far. I'll get back to you.

Oh, actually, my Motion Graphics grade is completed and up. I wondered about this class because, due to the sheer volume of extracurricular work it required, I lagged behind for a while and was doing crappy on the pre-class quizzes. However, the quizzes are worth a minor portion of the grade and the projects, which tote up to be worth 75% of the grade, I generally knocked out of the park. My weighted total in the class was 91.13%... unfortunately, this particular instructor does not seem to believe in minuses, and so while 93-100 is an A, 83-92 is a B. Meaning this will probably show up as a B even though it really should be an A-. Kind of annoying, but it's not a bad grade. (Considering I was taking five classes, I could not possibly have done all the extracurricular work necessary to ace all those quizzes and push the grade to an A. Not and sleep/see Alma, who I'm far too in love with to ignore, even for hours of After Effects drudgery. So I'm happy with the should-be-A-minus.)

So there you have it, kids. At least two As should be locked up and I feel relatively good saying that a third is on the way. Really, this summer could not have gone much better, and the fact that I made it through alive gives me hope for the workaday world... now let's see if I can finally get the other credits resolved and get to that workaday world.

July 28, 2004

   The summer, you may know from previous years, tends to feature more updates than this one has. Why not this one? Well, not a whole lot has been going on apart from class. I watched a couple of Netflix movies recently, but the past few days have been far more occupied with completing final projects/papers and studying, both of which I should actually be doing right now, but which will get done tonight and then I have basically no class thereafter (US History still meets for two or three more Tuesday nights, but Motion Graphics ended today with the presentation of my final project, and Intro to Fiction, Theories of Persuasion, and Family Communication all wrap up tomorrow).
    I'm still trying to find out whether or not I have any class to worry about after that. As some of you know but some probably don't, I had a meltdown of several months where I basically could not get to class, both due partially to not wanting to get out of bed, and partially to the fact that even had I gotten out of bed, it's hard to go to class when you're sleeping from 8 am to 6 pm most days. When these five classes are done and passed, as all should be because whatever problem I had somehow evaporated after the spring session completed, I will have two credits remaining. One incomplete should be no problem to finish, and the other credit I'm looking into going back and finishing a class for which I did most of the work but did not receive an official incomplete grade. I haven't heard from the professor on that one yet; hopefully I will soon. The problem with the summer term is for all I know he's in Bermuda and not checking his e-mail. So there's a chance I will have to come back for one class in the fall.
    Anyway, that's not very interesting. Today I downloaded the theme songs from Full House and Family Matters. That's not very interesting either. There may be something wrong with me.

Other news: Ben Folds finally is putting out his third EP (LP on the way sometime in 2074), and Jorja Fox and George Eads got rehired at CSI, much to my relief. At least I get one more season of the real cast, if Petersen really does leave after #5. Rumor has it that Greg/Liam the Lab Tech/Eric Szmanda will be seeing more field time this year. Alma bristled a bit at hearing that, and I don't entirely blame her because Greg clearly works best in a laboratory setting. Still, I find him to be an amusing enough character that I'll give it a chance.
I'm also taking bets on which Who song CSI: New York decides to appropriate for their opening credits, after CSI's "Who are You" and CSI: Miami's "Won't Get Fooled Again" (which, between you and me, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense). My vote: "The Seeker," which not only has a kick-ass guitar intro, but also seems to work with the general forensics theme.

    They call me the seeker
    I've been searching low and high
    I won't get to get what I'm after
    Till the day I die

There are other words of course, but those would probably be the ones used. CSI's opening mentions nothing about a Soho doorway, for example.
    On the subject of "Who are You," I put it at the end of my last mix CD and have been having a fun time listening for where the opening and closing credits music of CSI clipped. They really pull from all over the song; sounds like it would have been a fun editing job. (That's the kind of thing I'd like to be doing; whether or not I get to, we'll see. I haven't done much serious edit work since high school, which sort of hurts.) But I'm getting off topic. In the song, there is a line repeated a number of times where Daltrey sings "Who the fuck are you?" I've heard this song on classic rock radio sounding exactly the same as the MP3 I have. My dad always insisted it was "heck," but listen closely and there's no way. And scroll down to Townshend talking about the song here.
    So the question is, how did classic rock radio like Q104 get away with that? Did they think no one would notice? Even at a younger age I could hear what was going on. I guess no one in their listenership is really going to complain about that, though.
    (This is actually the opposite of another my dad/lyrics story, wherein he thought that in "Jet Airliner," Steve Miller was saying he didn't "want to get caught up in any of that funky shit going down in the city." That would make sense but he's clearly saying "funky kicks," whatever that means. Of course, this is the man behind "Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma" and "Kow Kow Calqulator.")

Well, that was long. Partial compensation for few updates before this, or just plain long-windedness? You be the judge.

July 24, 2004

The review for The Terminal is now up. I didn't hate it, but I think it ranks as the most disappointing movie I've seen since The Matrix Reloaded, in terms of my hopes for it.

July 20, 2004

It's been nearly three weeks since I saw Spider-Man 2, and I'm only just now posting the review. To be fair to me, a six-week class schedule does not leave much time for fucking around. To not be, I did have time to see the movie, and goodness knows plenty of CSI. More likely the reason for not getting the review done until now was I just didn't care about the movie that much. It's not bad, but I was always a bit confounded by the love the original Spider-Man got as well. Somehow, they don't interest me that much. (By the way, if anyone here is a compulsive grade-checker, I think the sequel is the better film, but history will record Spider-Man with a better grade because I was more into grade inflation in 2002.)

July 16, 2004

Goddammit.

    I finally pick up CSI after three years of missing it, and it quickly becomes one of the very few shows for which I would actually bother to keep an eye out for new episodes. And then this happens. We're short on details, so it's still possible CBS might cave. But here's the problem: why would they feel they have to? After all, Law and Order has been going strong for more than a decade and has had a revolving door of cast members. CSI has, theoretically, never been the kind of show that needs specific cast members to flourish, as the success of CSI: Miami would appear to prove.
    For someone like me, though, that's not the case. In my time watching Law and Order, the cast was pretty stable: Orbach/Martin/Waterston/Rohm. And Special Victims Unit, which I probably prefer on the whole, has had a stable nucleus for several years now: Meloni/Hargitay/Belzer/Ice-T/Florek. As a result, I was never subjected to the rotation that defined Law and Order throughout the 1990s.
    And when it comes to CSI, I really like all the characters. That's why I watch it near-religiously now and why I don't care about CSI: Miami, and why I'm having a hard time getting myself up for CSI: New York. It doesn't help that rumor says all these franchises are pissing off William Petersen. If Gil Grissom goes, there is no CSI for me. I just don't think I could watch it anymore, down to just two original cast members (even if Brass, Greg, and Al the coroner all stay).
    And if you have a hard time believing I'd do this, just think about The Simpsons. It's still my favorite show of all-time... through Season Eight. It's still fairly funny now, but they've destroyed all the characters, basically turning it into a second Family Guy. (For the record, that's the reason I've never agreed with the people who say that Family Guy at its best is better than The Simpsons at its best - the FG characters don't need to be consistent because the show is all about the gags. I prefer a funny show with consistent characters to a funnier show without them.) As a result, I almost never watch first-run Simpsons episodes anymore, and I won't be buying the DVD sets beyond Season Eight, assuming they even get that far in the release schedule in my lifetime.
    Assuming things hold as they currently are, I'll still watch the fifth season of CSI, though I'll be a bit disappointed. If Petersen is really gone after that, though, I'll be heading for the door.

July 10, 2004

   Yesterday I stopped by Drew's apartment to pick up a couple things I had left there from the few days I was crashing before the sublet was ready for occupation. Because there was a dumpster in the driveway of his building, I stopped in the driveway of the building next door and put the hazards on, something I had done several times before.
    When I came back out, at the very most ten minutes later, the car was hooked to a tow truck. This really sucked. The guy was totally ignoring me, too, except to mumble "Wrong property." He pulls out into the street and then stops, and, with me still standing there, gets out a coat hanger and starts trying to go in through the window. That led to this surreal exchange:
    Me: Uh, I can open that if you need...
    Him: You wanna take the parking brake off so I can go?
So what results is the sheer ridiculousness of me opening my car, releasing the parking brake, and letting the tow truck guy just drive away with it. This afternoon I walked all the way to 2527 Oakton, which took about an hour from Drew's, and paid the $125 to get it back. I had run out of clean socks and was wearing my sneakers without socks, which ended up giving me a couple of not too fun blisters on the walk.

All that was a rather unfortunate capper to a day that should have been great: Alma's and my six-month anniversary. It was fairly low-key: we went out for Thai food, which she'd been interested in getting recently, had some ice cream, and then went back to her house and watched the first disc of CSI Season One, which was my present for her. But it was, of course, nice. Six months is half a year and is probably the first major milestone in a potential long-term relationship; it's also a mark I'd only hit once before, and that was just barely. (In fact, the official breakup in that relationship was, somewhat perversely, on the six-month date, meaning that today makes Alma the longest-tenured girlfriend in BigFlax history).
Six months is more than just a number, though; it's time. And all the time I spend with Alma just reminds me of how great she is, and how great she is for me, and how absolutely, flat-out in love with her I am. I know you guys probably don't care for this corny stuff, but just indulge me this once; I really can't say it enough.

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This page last updated: Thursday, July 29, 2004 10:44:38 PM