Personality evolution?

An interesting exchange occurred tonight with my friend.  He mentioned that he would guess I might not get along naturally with some of his other friends, because we have quite different personalities.  I really wanted to know why, and he explained that they are more reserved, not so outgoing and interested in partying as me.

This was pretty amazing to hear, because for basically forever, I was much more like he described his friends than the way he described me.  Apparently, ever since I met him, I've portrayed a personality much unlike my old(?) characteristics of many years of my life.

I should probably take into account, though, that I nearly always meet him in a dance setting.  Such is cue for my general happy behavior, since, well, social dancing is kind of the best thing ever.

what's sensible? no clear idea.

[1] He sees me and I walk towards him. He gives me the same look, the same gesture as usual. It's something like "what gives?", which doesn't make much sense, because I don't think I've ever done anything that would deserve a "what gives?". I try to explain to him how I'm kind of dead from the week of midterms resulting in barely sleeping.

[2] Why am I having a resurgence of thoughts about him? Not much has been different recently. We have talked only a couple of times. One felt like the familiar back and forth, but the second seemed to slightly lack that warmth I was expecting.

[3] I've been worrying that I have said something wrong. Well, actually I think I did, and at exactly the wrong time. Without thinking, I plunged ahead along the lines of what had been going well, but forgot to consider the subject matter before choosing it. Then I got stuck.... He said it's okay, don't worry about it. He might just be saying that to be nice.

[1] I'm not as shy anymore, or at least not with him. I head for him to be my partner for this round of waltz. He's not so shy anymore either (unless he has always been like this and I never paid attention to these details before). He holds me in a strong frame, which I like. And he holds me closer.

[2] I'm thinking back more often than I have for awhile. Maybe the cold now makes me long for a sun that warms and for walking outside in a short-sleeved top, but I know it isn't just that. It's the heels too - especially in the grass. And the laughter, and the little craziness too, kind of.

[3] I've tried to patch it up, but now I may be on the unsure side. (Scratch that, I am on it.) Suddenly I wonder if I'm saying too much. Has anything I may have implied altered his perceptions? Because only now that I'm worrying do I feel more sure that I want to see if things might go somewhere.

[1] I feel this familiarity with him, although I'm not really sure how it's developing. We joke a bit. I have to back-lead him through the right turns, and my expression intends to poke a little fun at him, though I really do mean to help. For some reason, I might kind of like being close to him.

[2] I can't help running that time through my mind: the different parts, the little details I remember. It worked so naturally, so easily, even though I really didn't know how I was doing it. Maybe he made it easy. It was deviously, deliciously enjoyable. As we stood there, I knew what was going to happen. It did. Kind of ironic.

[3] Very coincidentally I happened to see him. We had a nice little exchange, or at least I really tried to make it that way. As we were nearing the end of the short conversation, all I wanted was some indication of a plan to see each other again. I was close to putting forth the idea, but I really was hoping he would suggest it... so I didn't. I fear being too forward, making assumptions. I hope he hasn't given up.

Today I read my horoscope, because it happened to be up on a screen in the cafe-ish place where I was. It said: "Problems in your romantic life don't have to ruin your day. Distractions abound." Well, sort of. I'm certainly distracted by all these situations. And I didn't even write about [4], [5], [6], the like.. who, once every now and again, attract my attention and thoughts.

FIREFOX 3!!

Yeah yeah I FINALLY updated to FF3. I was holding off for awhile cuz it kept telling me "these 5 add-ons of yours aren't going to work in FF3" and I am pretty attached to most of my add-ons, didn't want to lose them... But hey now it's winter break, I'm just realizing I don't have to worry about work anymore and I have time to do stuff I want to do, and I thought you know, I'll go through my add-ons and individually check out their compatibility. Turns out nearly all of them are good to go with FF3 and the ones that aren't I can do without. So at last I upgraded!! Immediately I loved it, cuz it even RELOADED ALL MY TABS!!! I'm so impressed it preserved that across version installation haha. It also upgraded my add-ons :D (except for two, which I did "manually", and it was fine). It also saved my settings as well as (I think) my add-ons' settings. Oh and I'm kind of excited for the add-ons manager thing, since now supposedly I can search for and find add-ons right within it... The new interface (icons, mostly) are pretty, though I think I might look into themes, which I've never done before, but as a DMD major, I don't think I should be blamed for being curious, haha. The only con I've felt so far is that I am a little overwhelmed by the new features....honestly I probably won't make use of all of them, considering how far I scrolled to read the whole feature description page. The tagging thing and the uncategorized bookmarks are both dangerous for me, since I already hyper-over-organize my bookmarks. This dual tag/folder organization reminds me of my considerations on Thunderbird vs. Gmail, since Thunderbird is folders-based (and I have... SO ... many) and Gmail is all about the tags (makes me nervous, but intrigued); I'm afraid that having both systems might make me crazy, and I'm already feeling a tendency to avoid the tags completely. Plus what will I do about all my existing bookmarks; I really don't think I want to go back and tag them ... that would take forever, seriously... :P

I love this.

I love it when I write something, code something, or design/create some kind of art, and then go back after some time has passed (enough that I don't really remember what it looks like or says), and realize hey, this is pretty good - and oh yeah, I made this!

This tells me I don't have enough confidence in my work in the first place, when I'm making it. So maybe the finished products tend to turn out better than I realize? Feels pretty good ... :)

New stuff I did

It seems like even though this year at Penn is just getting going, I've already done a bunch of new things that I've never done before. Therefore I'm going to start a record (in approximately chronological order lol) and update it as I go along.

• August - purchased a bunch of appliances for my room which I didn't have last year - toaster ($12), microwave ($35 I think?), coffee maker (like $20). They are all turning out to be useful so far. The toaster is surprisingly popular :)
• August - purchased a set of pots/pans, which came with a bonus collection of spices, with rack, which I'll probably never use...
• August something - really practiced bass clarinet. It's awesome, but hard to "get" the sound above the break; really hard to get good tone on that. And it needs SO much air!
• Again, towards the end of summer - I wanted some tea, and Dad drinks it all the time, so I asked him to make a cup for me. He gave me chai, and I ended up really liking it. (Ok, so it's not my first time ever drinking tea, but my first time trying chai.) I got a box of chai to bring to Penn.
  
• 8/31 - watched Anchorman with Rebecca, Becca, Eamonn, and Ben. Part of an initiative to see movies that apparently everybody except me has seen. Opinion: it's not my kind of humor, definitely. I guess some moments were funny, but it just often feels ridiculously overdone. (Obviously this is the point, though..)
• 9/3 - Saw Dan for the first time this year and was totally shocked by his new much shorter haircut (also not parted in the middle anymore) and switch from glasses to contacts (!!!!!)
• 9/3 - Purchased food from food carts/trucks. Last year John got me a sausage-egg-and-cheese from Bui's but this was the first time I ever bought anything myself. Dan and I went to Hemo's for lunch; I got a grilled chicken pita. For dinner Simone, Tatini and I tried to go to Magic Carpet but it was already gone, so we went to The Real Le Anh (Le Anh is across the street haha), and I got cashew chicken. Two discoveries: it's really good, and really cheap!!
• 9/3 - I guess a couple of FNAR courses I've taken have been cross-listed as grad courses, but CIS 460 (Computer Graphics) is definitely the first CSE/CIS course I've taken that's cross-listed. It was a bit intimidating, realizing all these quiet students were probably graduates... hence the invention of the DMD Undergraduate Row :D
• 9/4 - First class where I don't have cell phone service (I think). This is because it's CIS 262 down in the basement of Skirkanich (kinda like a dungeon hahaha). Probably all for the best - I should seriously pay attention in that class.
• 9/4 - First ever class I'm taking on databases. woooot
• 9/4 - First class in which I might be the only student who's not a music major. A little intimidating. =/
• 9/5 - Cooked a dinner dish by myself! It was meatloaf, and it was good! yayyy
• 9/5 - Attended Rodin bingo, and actually won a round! I got a gift card to Gap. Yay shopping!!
• 9/6(?) - FREE LAUNDRY!!!!! Most unfortunately I had to go up 2 floors to the 14th floor since the machines on my floor were all occupied.
• 9/7 - Discovered I did not make wind ensemble on bass clarinet... first year at Penn that I won't be in it, but that also means I can go to the music program's Third Thursdays now :)
• 9/7 - Played DDR (via Stepmania) with my own pad in my room at school. (I actually had the pad with me last year in Stouffer but never took time to play.)
• 9/8 - Taking a class in Linux :D
• 9/8 - Taking a class being taught entirely (as far as I can tell) by a computer science student in my own grade - the aforementioned Linux half-credit class. I feel like I should be feeling extremely inferior or something, but I don't. Zach's friendly and a good lecturer and definitely knows a LOT. Which is awesome :) . I think he was even in my 260 class haha...
• 9/8 - First job at Penn: mentor for CIS 110. We had our first meeting and it was a friendly gathering. We even talked about who had which lab shifts and office hours, as I was rushing out for band, lol.
• 9/9 - Met Danny's sister Laura - she's awesome! The three of us went to Cosi for dinner :)
• 9/9 - Salsa lesson at the Penn Latin and Ballroom Dance info session. It was sooo embarrassing but SO MUCH FUN!!! I decided I was definitely going to the lessons and began trying to convince friends to come...
• 9/9 - Tried iscribble for the first time, with John. I actually plugged in my mouse (finally) cuz there's no way I was gonna draw with the touchpad.
• 9/10 - First lab as a 110 mentor, with Ryan as the TA. I have to get there late, cuz it starts at 2:30 but I have 460 till 3. Luckily I made it in time for introductions and I even answered a bunch of questions which made me useful, yay!
• 9/11 - Played ping pong with Danny and Carlin in the lower level of Harrison - good times!!
• 9/12 (technically) - went to Allegro's around 1am with Carlin and Danny and had .. chicken and broccoli pizza? Or something like that. It was good, lol.
• 9/13 (or late night 9/12) - Installed Linux (Ubuntu) on a virtual machine on my computer!! Now I really want to install it "for real" (on a partition on my hard drive)
• 9/13 - Went out to dinner with Menghan and ate Thai food! I had drunken noodles hahah but it was really good AND I have leftovers!
• 9/13 - Went to Penn PM karaoke event with Erica, held on the Stouffer patio. Thanks to Erica I actually went up to sing; we did Beat It together. Michael Jackson's voice is way too high for my range (whatever limited range I might have), so next time I'll definitely be picking something else :P
• 9/13 - Uploaded pictures using Google's Picasa. It's got captions and some kind of tagging of people and reordering, and I was even able to include videos (though I had to actually download Picasa for that, rather than just using the web service). However, it seems that unless you upload through the Picasa client program, you can only upload 5 photos at a time..? This seems kinda ridiculous, especially considering how on Facebook you can upload a bunch all at once - I think it's a Java application actually.
• 9/14 - Played clarinet at church for the 10am Mass. This went pretty well, considering I got the music last minute. I had to skip a couple things, but overall it sounded good!! (And this is despite my clarinet not playing very easily, which is a fluctuating thing.)
• 9/14 - Right after Mass I went to the "hospitality" thing - like "Doughnut Sunday" at home, but on a much smaller scale.
• 9/14 - PLBD social lessons!!! Salsa and tango. SOOO MUCH FUN hahaha I cannot wait to go back :D (this really probably deserves a full post to itself)
• 9/14 - Lost my band pants (somehow by mixing them up with a pile of laundry on top of a machine) -> realized this, hours later -> panicked while trying to do my Graceland assignment for music 150 -> emailed Neil, who included my plea in his email to the floor -> received my pants from someone who found them mixed among his laundry by accident -> I've never been so glad to see those pants hahaha
• 9/15 - Ate a cookie and a brownie from Cosi (at cis 1xx grading system learning session); they were so good that I took another cookie for the way out haha.
• 9/15 - Used Dreamweaver in the Rodin computer lab - the version was old enough that it was still Macromedia... (2002 or 03-ish? I wonder why it's not updated.)
• probably September - Web design (9am-12 on Tues/Thurs) finished early enough for Grace and I to go to Wawa before 262. I got Wawa coffee for the first time and it is AMAZING. (Also much cheaper than Starbucks...I should keep this in mind and shift some of my coffee habits to Wawa...)
• 11/24 - arrived late to a clarinet social gathering which included watching Zoolander. I've never seen it before since it's not the type of movie I would typically like. (I usually don't find that kind of humor funny.) For some reason I was intrigued by it though, and although I didn't plan on staying long, I ended up interested enough in the movie that I stayed for the whole rest of it, to find out how it ended. I didn't love it and still thought it was pretty silly, but liked it enough to surprise myself.
  

Double Take

--> first and second takes on my classes this semester.

Note: This is an exercise in speed blogging, to be performed as practice in writing something of value but without taking forever. We'll see if this works.

Ok so here are my impressions of my classes from the first and second sessions of each (except for the 399, since it's a half credit and only meets Mondays). Btw these are in order of occurrence of the first session of each class.

CIS 460: Computer Graphics
[first class] Well we all gathered in Wu & Chen (aka Levine 101) where I took CIS 110, haha... There were a bunch of grad students, which was minorly intimidating for a sec, but made sense after I remembered it's cross-listed as CIS 560 and probably they're CGGT (Computer Graphics and Game Technology) students. Grace and I instated the "DMD Undergraduate Row" - I can't remember exactly but I know Ted, John, Carlin, Brynn, Nirav, and Ryan (a sophomore who was in 277 with us) are all in the class. The class began with Nirav asking if the slides could be printed in black and white and Dr. Badler explaining how the trio of himself, PowerPoint, and the printer do not get along. Then Dr. Badler introduced the field of computer graphics by describing a number of its applications. The class felt really comfortable and familiar, obviously because it's the class which 277 was specifically designed to precede (and taught by the same professor). As it's my only class on Wednesdays, I had a pretty good first day of class! :P
[second class] This turned out to be hilarious for a good 20 minutes or so when PowerPoint was being strange and YouTube was just not cooperating for Dr. Badler, and then neither was the DVD at first - and all he wanted to do was show a couple of videos! At one point, for the DVD, we had video but no sound, and then we had sound but no video! I was crying laughing...which I felt kinda bad about... The rest of lecture was pretty chill; I followed along in my $25 coursepack of the lecture slide printouts, just purchased from the SEAS copy center. We're definitely gonna be reviewing some material from 277, but for sure that can't hurt! (And it'll probably move fast.) So my outlook is lectures will be cool... Homeworks? Not sure how intense they'll be, yet. Definitely expecting to be coding a lotttt. We don't have lab, which is a little nervewracking, because clearly they won't be going over OpenGL and C++ stuff with us anymore. (We are supposed to remember it all from 277. lol..) We do, however, have Skiz as a TA, so that should be awesome. :D Maybe I will go to some office hours for once...

FNAR 234: Web Design
[first class] First off, the instructor seems good - he's cool but he knows his stuff. He comes from the design side, which I like, because I think that's the side I need more instruction/work on. (Also, he and the TA are friends and make a good pair. Kinda like Jeff and Sunita...hahaha.) From a code standpoint, I'll be relearning some html, and probably some css, though I definitely know there's a LOT I can still learn re: css. More importantly I hope I learn design and usability, which if the book he asked us to get and the first/ongoing project are any indication, it should be a focus. We are doing the html/css in Dreamweaver, so that should be interesting, and I might feel a little cheap not coding it all straight by hand. Also he keeps calling html and css "programming languages", which to me doesn't seem quite right, because I've always thought that programming languages DO something, whereas straight html and css don't perform any kind of actions on their own. Still...a good first impression, and I'm hoping not too stressful. Also Grace is in the class so that's cool.
[second class] We went over web terminology, complete with examples. So, yay I learned what some things mean! I don't care if it's elementary, because that might be where I am with some of this stuff. Then he demoed how to set up a blog and then we basically had an hour to start the blogging assignment. :) If not previously evident, I'll mention now that I like the TA, Erin, as well.

CIS 262: Automata, Computability, and Complexity
Ok this course deserves a precursor. Ever since at least the end of last year, when I really tried reading the course title during registration, I was pretty petrified of this class. The fact that Evan used to say he hated it while he took it (along with a few glances at his notebook) only added to this sentiment...
[first class] On the bright side Dan will be suffering through this class alongside me, as well as Grace, Jay, Carlin, John, and..? Anyway at the beginning of class Dan informed me that "automata" is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable; hence I'd been saying it wrong every time I listed my classes for someone and explained that I was scared of this one. Oh well. We are in Berger Auditorium in the Skirkanich basement, which is chilly and Dan and I both have no service. (This bothers Dan more than it does me.) The professor has something of an accent though not too horrible, I just have to listen a little harder. We spent like 10 minutes on syllabus stuff and then launched immediately into notes. Thus far I've followed what's going on, but I don't think I can trust that as an indicator that the rest of the class won't get plenty harder...
[second class] Well actually we have a "recitation" for this class - only one section of it, so basically it's an hour long and taught by the professor rather than a TA. It's my only class in DRL this semester - I was so close to not being there at all! At least A8 is a nicer room, despite its prior association as my Math 114 room haha. Anyway, we started going over proofs by induction, which is not a topic I enjoy but nonetheless familiar from 260.
[third class] This was the second lecture. It was pretty much more of the same, and luckily I am still understanding like 95-100% of the notes. People are already falling asleep in that class though, haha. It's probably gonna be a long semester. I miss Benjamin C. Pierce (260 prof) cuz...he was more engaging and pretty much all-around awesome.

CIS 330: Design Principles of Info Systems
(I basically translate this course title into "Databases".)
[first class] Well Dan and I get to walk from 262 and chill in this class too, so that's cool... Class began with the course webpage mysteriously being inaccessible, and other oddities. But once we got into the lecture, I'm glad it's starting pretty much from the bottom-up level of databases. I'm not exactly sure how the course is going to progress, either content-wise (she kept emphasizing that we're not gonna come out of it as Oracle programmer whizzes) or difficulty-and-effort-wise (we may not have even learned enough to do the first homework yet).
[second class] This time we all introduced ourselves and holy crap, Chin, our 121 TA who managed our final project, is in the class!! Nirav and I were laughing haha... (Am I really up to par enough to be in the same class as Chin??) At least I found that most people had only a bit of database experience so I should be okay. We continued through the lecture and it all seems reasonable so far. I'm really hoping I learn a lot through this class. I'm so eager to collect knowledge and ability in something really different from everything I know so far.

Music 150: Introduction to Global Music
Talk about a change from computer science...
[first class] Well, the class is almost entirely music majors - maybe one person who's not (as she wasn't even there at the second lecture), and then me, an attempting minor. So that's a little intimidating, because they have a lot of background knowledge to draw on and they know how to write and speak about music. Well the professor is very into it all, integrating both organized writing and stream of consciousness writing with listening to the music and especially exposing ourselves to music with which we're uncomfortable. There is to be lots of discussion and class interaction, etc. So I was pretty scared the first day, since I thought this was gonna be like jazz history where I listened to lectures and caught up on textbook reading, wrote one simple paper at the end and a couple of jazz performance reviews...yeah. Not this class. It's gonna be pretty intense, and I'll have to dredge up writing skills I haven't touched since freshman first semester. So much for an easy class...
[second class] We shared our "exotic" music selections and I found that I could participate in this collaborative discussion without sounding like a total idiot. I probably accomplished that though when I did not have much of a way to explain why my Praful song was "exotic". Oh well, hopefully that moment can be forgotten. For some reason I felt slightly less scared of the impending syllabus (though probably not because she kept saying we would be nervous but it would turn out okay) - with the major exception of this partner-project thing, which I'll worry about until I see how the partner issue pans out (ugh). I'll also have to see how well I can get myself going with these writing assignments.

CIS 399: Special Topics: Linux/Unix in the 21st Century
[first and only class so far] Jean Griffin, who teaches 110, is listed as the instructor for this, so I guess maybe "officially" Zachary Goldberg is a TA, but as of the first day, he appears to be essentially teaching the course. I mean, his name is on the slides so I assume he made them. He's a good speaker - already more naturally engaging (or I thought so anyway) than Ryan, who taught our Python course. (Don't worry, I like Ryan in his own way.) The funny part is he's in my grade (so Dan told me, and once we got to class, I recognized him, and I think he was even in 260 with us haha), but that's ok cuz supposedly he knows this stuff really well, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. He's starting with the very basics of Linux, which is awesome because that's what I need! I'm really excited for this class, cuz like databases, I'm gonna learn something that I know almost nothing about beforehand...except Linux is just kinda cooler than databases from the start. :P Also I noticed I am one of like three total girls in the class; all the rest is guys. Oh well haha.


The semester is gonna be crazy, I bet. 262 alone could drown me in painful work. I am hoping databases and Linux won't be bad, and hopefully interesting!! Web design should be good too, maybe my only semi-respite from the rest. I can see 460 being really intense, because if 277 was really intense and it was just the "intro" to this class, then we all must be really in for it. And music, well, it'll be its own kind of crazy, I'm afraid. I really did think I was pretty much done with writing. I guess it's a good skill to prune every once in awhile, at least (hahaha). Very different from last semester and even last year - no psych, music is back, digging 260-type of thinking out for 262, and totally ground-level new subjects. At the very least, it will be interesting. Here we goooo! (This good mood I've been in recently must be in part because I have done almost no work yet...possibly due to the fact I am lacking some key textbooks... I will need to beginning devoting time and energy to work-mode soon.)


Results: speed blogging? Kind of failed. Partly by distraction of thinking of Jeff and Sunita, which led to emailing Jeff, and also by a bit of chatting with Carlin. I'll try harder in the future.