Graduation Pics

I posted some pictures from graduation weekend here. Enjoy!

Home Page Trick

I was playing around with the home page option in Internet Explorer today and found an interesting thing. If you type "about:" with a space after it the rest is displayed as HTML. I usually just have it set to come up with nothing, because I hate waiting for a home page when I wasn't going to go to that site anyway. What this means is that you can build yourself your own little HTML menu that will load instantly as your homepage and you can click on the links to go anywhere you want. So in the Home Page Address box under Internet Options, try something like:

about: <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Google</a><br><a href="http://skvely.blogspot.com/">Steven's Blog</a>

to get a homepage that looks like this:

Google
Steven's Blog

I'm not sure if it works in other browsers, but it's kind of fun for IE.

Huh?

Sometimes I wonder if commercial writers put stuff on TV just to see if anyone will notice. Today I heard the best spin I've heard in a long time: "The #1 kung fu comedy in America!" Yes America, go see this movie, because it's more popular than all the other kung fu comedies playing right now!

New place, new job

So after the excitement of graduation, it was time to get back to work, literally. On Monday morning I met with the previous CS100 TA and went over a bunch of stuff about the class and the system they use, then worked for a while getting the class updated for the new semester. Monday was also the first day of classes for my teaching job, so I went and taught a Photoshop class. I spent all of Monday night packing and packing (and watching "24"). I didn't think I had that much stuff, but I had accumulated a lot of books over the last 2 years and those filled up several boxes.

On Tuesday morning I went in early to claim my apartment. The way they do it at this new place I'm in is they have you sign up, but you don't know where you will be until move-in day. By then, they've assigned everybody to apartments, then when you check in at the main office you can choose which room you want. I got there early enough and got the room I wanted, room 4. I had brought over a carload of stuff that morning since I had to come anyway to check in, only to find that somebody else's junk was in my room! I put all my boxes in the room as well and left a note saying to check with the office for the right room, and it was all gone when I came back that night. I'm guessing it was somebody moving out, now that I've met my other roomates, because I don't think it was their stuff.

After that it was back to work(s), where I taught an Access class, then got things ready for the first day of Cs100 (Wed). I also have had a problem trying to figure out how to clock in with my separate jobs. They have time clock machines all over campus that you can use where you just swipe your ID card to clock in and out, but now I have to keep track of two different sets of hours. After chasing some people around, I finally figured out which buttons to push to set which job I'm swiping for, so now everybody's happy.

Tuesday evening was the big move. I packed and took things over to my new place most of the night. It took me 3 or 4 trips, but I didn't pack the car full. I finished packing the last things during American Idol, then when it was over, I unplugged the TV and loaded it into the car. It's a strange feeling leaving for the last time, I had that weird feeling like I was forgetting something, but I checked the house several times over and I think I got it all.

I'm still not finished unpacking what with work and social duties, but it's getting a lot closer. Part of the problem was that my room didn't have a desk (required for BYU approved housing) so I had to leave lots of things in boxes all over my room. The other problem is that I had no place to put all my books, so I went to Walmart and got a small 3-shelf bookcase for $20 that worked out beautifully. The desk came last night, so I'll hopefully be fully moved in this weekend.

I've met two of my three apartment-mates. One guy has muscular dystrophy and is in a wheelchair. He has guys that come in the morning and evening to help him do his stuff. He has been living in the apartment for a while and is friendly. The other guy just moved in as well and he seems pretty cool too. The third guy is supposed to be coming back this weekend sometime, so we'll see.

And to make the move more enjoyable, we've been having sterotypical spring weather. It's been raining nonstop, but it's that kind of rain where it'll be pouring but you still need sunglasses occaisionally because it's so bright outside. There was a silver lining, though, as I was driving east on Bulldog towards the mountains one day there was a beautiful double rainbow framing Y Mountain. It was one of those time I wished I had a camera.

So now I'm getting into the swing of my new life. I've already started passing off the first labs for CS100 (what power!), the classes I teach are in full swing, I've already hosted some friends at my new place and as soon as I get unpacked completely I'll start cleaning up the apartment. It will be nice when the hecticness (heciticity?) goes away and life gets back in a rhythm. Soon there won't be anything at all to write about again. :)

Graduation Weekend

Time has flown by since I last recorded anything and it's already past my bedtime today, so this update is going to have to come in two parts.

Thursday night was the big commencement ceremony at the Marriott Center. I lined up in the parking lot with the rest of the black-robed cult and we all marched in together. I didn't really see anybody I knew (I found some at Friday's smaller ceremony), but I made friends with a girl graduating in Chemistry who was in the same boat, so I at least had someone to make sarcastic remarks to. It was quite impressive once we got inside to see the large mass of graduates, over 6,000, I think. And to think that happens every year. Earl C. Tingey was the main speaker. I remember he gave a good talk and there were 4 things I was supposed to remember, but I'm sure I've internalized those things by now, so it's probably OK that I've already forgotten. My parents were there, of course, and we took some pictures afterwards, then went to celebrate at IHOP.

On Friday morning I attended my convocation for the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (read "College of Nerdy Subjects"). All the magna cum laudes displayed their talent either through music or the spoken word for the introductory program. Eventually, I got to walk across the stage as my name was called and receive a nice leather case for my "SAMPLE" diploma, then shake hands with the head of the Computer Science department, and Elder Richard G. Scott and a woman who I think might have been President of the Relief Society. One cool thing I remember about this meeting was a comment from Elder Scott, well tailored to the this college. Paraphrased, he said that we each have our own abilities whether great or small, but when we are righteous these abilities are "raised to the power of God" (or in technical terms, God expands our abilities exponentially...).

Marisa came to the Friday ceremony as well, and afterwards we stopped by the CS department reception, then browsed the BYU Bookstore. When it came time to leave, my car decided again that it didn't want to start. It did this once before a while back and I had to have it towed, only to have the mechanic tell me it started first try. The day had started colder then warmed up considerably, which I'm guessing caused the problem. In any case, we nearly called the tow truck, but before we needed to my brilliant father got the car started by "flooding, then unflooding" the engine and turning the key sometime during that process. It made sense to me at the time. It's started fine ever since (just like last time), but I have comfort in the fact that I might be able to get it started if it tries this on me again.

That evening, the Beyers, where my parents were staying, invited us to attend a Seder Service, or traditional Jewish Passover meal, put on by Victor Ludlow of BYU and sponsored by the Beyers' ward. It was very interesting to not only do all the traditional steps and eat the traditional food (including some very "bitter herbs"), but to also get an explanation for everything and see how it ties in to mormon doctrine. Some of the symbolism is unmistakably Christian and it helped me to make more sense of the start of the Sacrament. Plus, we got to drink loads of "fruit of the wine". We were all fershnickered by the time it was over.

Saturday morning Brother Beyer invited us to go shooting with him. I had invited Amber to come, so while the other women stayed home and sewed, the four of us went and shot Brother Beyer's wide array of pistols. I hadn't been shooting in a while and it was fun to punch some holes in those targets. Amber had never shot pistols before so it was a whole new cultural experience for her, but she handled it very well.

On Sunday I took my parents to church with me, then we drove up to Salt Lake where I dropped them off at Doug and Kay's where they needed to do some business with the cabin before they headed home. We stayed and talked for a while about Doug and Kay's recent trip to the southwest, then I headed home.

Grajeeashin

I picked up my parents yesterday from the airport in what turned out to be an expensive trip. On the highway, I encountered a minefield of large rocks in my lane through which I unsuccessfully tried to navigate. I ended up popping my right rear tire and, I later learned, fatally damaging my right front tire. I threw on the spare, picked them up, then we found a tire store and I had to buy two new tires. I was also informed that I had a nail in a third tire, but the guy felt sorry for me and I think he fixed that without even charging me.

The parents wanted to meet Amber, so we all went to Applebees for dinner and then watched the results show for American Idol. (Our least favorite, Scott, was in the bottom this time, but stayed on the show... maybe next week.)

So today's the day. I get to don the robes of academia and march about solemnly and soak in the stirring words of elocutionists. Yes, it's graduation time. It should be fun, I'll try to get some pictures for posterity's sake.

Weekend Update

I made it to graduation week. Convocation and Commencement (I don't remember which is which) are on Thursday and Friday. Everyone's invited! Now that it's finals week, not only do I have nothing to do at home, but now I have nothing to do at work, because we don't teach during finals. So I've basically been waiting around for the new semester, and stuff, to start.

In the meantime, I did do some things over the weekend. On Friday night I went with Ally to a BYU baseball game. I was a little skeptical at first when BYU jumped out to a first inning 0-4 defecit, but it turned out to be an amazing game. They are #1 in the MWC and after increasing their defecit to 6, they finally proved it by coming back in the 4th inning with a grand slam and a single to make it close. It went back and forth and it started getting cold so we left after the 7th inning and I finished the game on TV. In the 9th, BYU was down again, by 3, only to produce 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs to win the game. Sometimes baseball can be fun. Except that the game lasted 4 hours...

Saturday I spent a lot of time working on a database for some much needed extra money.

As I was walking through the parking lot at church on Sunday, I looked down and spotted a diamond engagement ring. I figured this wasn't a good thing to leave on the ground, so I brought it in and tried to find the unlucky owner. I tried my ward and two other wards in the building with no luck, so I left it at the stake office and hopefully they'll be able to track down the owner.

Sunday night, Anne invited over a bunch of people for dinner, kind of a one-last-time dinner for people like Howard, who's leaving on Saturday.

CS Research Paper Generator

This is computer science at its best! Some guys at MIT were sick of all the lame conferences that were more interested in making money than supporting serious research, so they developed a Computer Science Paper Generator that generates papers that look solid at a glance, but when examined prove to be full of gibberish. They are hilarious to read, especially when you know what the terms mean!

They were successful in their efforts. A paper generated by their tool was accepted at a conference, but subsequently rejected when the news story came out. Read about it here.

To generate your own papers, go here.

Retain the retainers

I went to the orthodontist this morning and after looking at things and tweaking the retainers a little bit, he said "See you in 6 months." So it looks like I'll have these things at least until October. Yeah!

Old Man

Despite the fact that I've mentally ignored my increasing age, my body has not. This morning I pulled out two gray hairs and probably could have found some more if I'd looked. I guess I could be worried about this, but I choose to look on the brighter side: At least I still have some hair that can turn gray.

Book Reviews

I've had a lot of free time lately, since I've only been working part-time, so I went to the library and checked out some books last week.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: I've been meaning to read this book for years, but they're making a movie out of it soon and I didn't want to be a bandwagoner. It's quite an enjoyable book, kind of zany, but it's very thought-provoking in its own strange big picture kind of way.

The library had a display with biographies that caught my eye:

John Stossel - Give Me a Break: This book is less of a biography and more of a commentary on social and political problems and media biases. Stossel was once a consumer reporter that made some enemies when he started exposing government problems and advocating less government control. Excellent book.

Chuck Norris - Against All Odds: This is a decent read, a true autobiography about Chuck Norris' rise to success. The book's most redeeming qualities are finding out about his religious side and seeing how he mingled with other celebrities and politicians, many before they were famous.

Jay Leno - Leading With My Chin: This book is an autobiography in the form of loosely tied together anecdotes. While there are many amusing stories about Jay's rise to fame, many of them, as you might have guessed, are pretty crude and he seems almost proud of his promiscuity.

Movin' on up

I signed a contract this morning for my new apartment for the next year. The owners of the house I'm living in didn't invite us back for another season and quite frankly after two years I was about ready to leave anyway, so I found an apartment in a place called Carriage Cove. It's a large complex, each apartment has 4 individual rooms and 2 bathrooms and the rent isn't too bad with a year-round contract. It's a little bit further from campus, but there is a bus that runs every 15 minutes to BYU that stops right in front of the complex. I don't know anyone there (one of the reasons I was looking for a private room), but it will be nice to start fresh in a new place.

In other news, I watched the very Mormon movie, "Sons of Provo" last night. It's a satirical movie about a righteous boy band based in Provo. It didn't really have a plot, but it was funny in the inside-joke kind of way and better than I thought it would be.

24

I watched an episode of 24 last season, it might have been the last episode, when Jack chopped off his friend's hand to dispose of the deadly virus that was handcuffed to him, and despite the obligatory exagerrated drama, I was impressed by the show's ability to avoid the easy way out, the happy ending where all the good guys escape unharmed.

I happened to catch last night's episode and I was again impressed. Not only could the hero not talk the former military man out of (most likely) killing off the President of the United States (that was the cliffhanger), but they did something I've been waiting for a show to do for a looooong time. Jack Bauer, the hero, was searching a house with a fellow agent and an enemy posing as an FBI agent. The enemy ended up killing the fellow agent. Jack saw his dead body and with gun drawn told the killer to drop her weapon. She, of course, took a wild shot, then hid behind the wall. Jack, like anybody who's ever shot a gun would do, simply shot through the wall and took her down. I'm so sick of people hiding behind sheetwall or cardboard boxes during gun battles, and it was refreshing to see an at least slightly more realistic gun fight.