Great thoughts of Fleeting substance

These are going to be a really short few entries.

I spent all of this weekend doing homework, such is the forecast until April 20. Which, I just realized, is 4-20 day. 4-20! Woo! Woo! Okay, nevermind. But yeah, that’s the plan, a full-bore mad dash to April 20th. If I’m still alive then, I’ll never have to do two classes worth of work again. It’s just pattern recognition until the end of this semester and then summer, one, and then fall, one, and then done. And drunk.

Whew, however, because I did manage to finally get in contact with my expert. He was gone last weekend, but tells me that he should be in town for the next month, which is pretty much all I need from him. I managed to bounce some good questions off him, and he send me some reports n’ stuff that may be useful. It’ll certainly make me look good if I reference them during my project presentation. There’s a few more technical details I have to work out with Professor Kosko, mostly having to deal with the adaptive side of the project, but once those last wrinkles are ironed out, I’ve pretty much got this thing handled, technically. The rest is just, you know, doing it.

And in the ‘more bad news’ department. My other class has a project, too. This is just stupid. It probably won’t be as hard, though, and it sounds like a group project, so…I guess I’ll just have to wait until he tells us what it actually is. I can guess, though, probably some pet project where we have to derive a Basean minimum error classifier from class densities with unknown probability functions, just estimate the functions, create the boundries, and run some tests, which sounds pretty easy, and it kinda is, it’s just more work I don’t want to do. And this is, of course, assuming I’m right about the project.

I didn’t even get to go to Easter mass, which is about par for the course, since I only went to church twice, I think, for all of lent. Lent is supposed to be for preparing, metaphorically, for the coming of Jesus and I, as dumb as this sounds, just didn’t have the time. I tend to put earthly responsibilities above divine ones. Which makes sense to me, because God seems to take a pretty hands-off approach to the world, it seems. You know, not actively wrathing and turning people into pillars of salt and the like. I figure, if God as left us to our own, earthly devices, then that lends a certain importance to those earthly devices. Besides, I said I do it, and I will, because to fail would be to lie. Which is worse, lying or missing church? There’s a philosophical conundrum for you. It’s more justification after the fact, though, I suppose.

I wanted to go to church and, strictly speaking, I probably did have the time, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that there is only so much unpleasant work I can force myself to do in a week, and I am at or above threshold right now. I could continue to push myself, but the ‘return on effort/pain’ ratio starts to bottom out real fast, and I end up making myself miserable and mean and *then* I’m stuck with the choice of either missing church, being a liar, and being mean and rude and nasty to everyone. I’m trying to find a medium here.

Okay, so maybe it’s not so short.

I played some Halo 2 this weekend, which is still lots of fun, so good for that. I haven’t actually gotten on Xbox Live, yet, but I’m told that it’s a magnificent adventure in gaming joy. Yay.

I’m wondering if I should buy a PSP.

I still have my game boy Advance, but the games have started to trickle off. Plus it has that awesome ‘plays music for you’ feature that I so love in my gadgets. And to top it all off, it’s a video game system. If I’m not spending my money on this, what in the world am I going to spend it on.

I’m starting to get in the mode, though, that makes me wonder if I should be having all of this stuff. A lot of people live life like they’re always trying to acquire more. Personally, I’d like to live to require less. Imagine that. You could be happy with less and less and less and finally you’d just be happy with nothing. And then you’d just be happy. Haven’t I written this before?

I should probably go through my stuff and just throw/give stuff away. I’ve got a lot of stuff. I need to make some donations, too. Any suggestions? What do you think, domestic or international? I tend to think ‘international’, but finding reputable methods of getting money to the actual people in some of the worst lands is not an easy prospect. Medical research, perhaps? I’m thinking I should just donate my tax returns. It’s not *huge*, but it’s pretty impressive, and I’m doing all right with money at the moment. Perhaps crank up my 401K? Bah. Questions for later.

Okay. There is love, but it’s buried under all my homework somewhere.

-N