Blatant Obfuscation

The Winter Semester is here. Last week started off the semester and I felt that I was ready for the change from the classes of the previous semester. When I had signed up for classes in November and spent the subsequent weeks refining and contemplating out each class I wanted to take and each class I needed to take, I had to draw out a road map to graduation for myself. The classes I initially signed myself up for in November were the ones that I was going to be taking this semester after I was done mapping out what need to be taken and in what order, but at the same time a couple of other considerations including a work schedule needed to be added into my planning.

This past week though brought on some reflexion on if what I had decided to try tackle this semester was going to be worth it or not. I scheduled all but one class that directly or indirectly were related to my major in Statistics. That means that of the seven classes that I am taking this semester 4 are from the statistics department and 2 are from the math department. The last class is my religion class needed in part to graduate from BYU and in part in order to attend my current ward.
Isolating out my actual schedule, this is the first semester that I am not in the same class every day of the week; I am on campus everyday of the week, but I am not in the same class. I like the layout of the week and at the same time I am not to fond of how it worked out.
I end up having classes from 8 to 11 each day of the week, after which I go to work from 11 to 2:30 [Tuesdays it's 3:15] at which point I walk back up to campus to go to an afternoon class. After that class I will walk down to work and work for an hour or two each evening. That process is done Monday thru Thursday. On Friday the operation is different, that is my 'half day' I go to class from 8 to 11, but at the same time I go home to do homework or what else.

Over the last week I have been working refining my schedule for the semester. Every semester I get to sit down with my boss/supervisor and review the previous semester's work and go over what the current semester will entail. On Wednesday I did a quick sit down with Mark, my boss, and went over what I was expecting to work over the next semester so he would have an idea of when to expect me into work and when I would be around. I dont think it was 24 hours after that point when that had to be revised, one of my statistics classes require that I attend a lab for another stats class this semester and until I am informed which of my preferred times that I will be assigned a lab to attend it is up in the air on whether I need to adjust my temporary work schedule or not.
Additionally, I have found it a good thing to set aside time each day for homework and other activities that I want to do. I set aside a certain time for each of my classes to do homework, I came to a discovery that each of time slot in my mind to do homework in needed to be slightly longer, not that the material was harder than expected but rather the homework assigned was significant enough to demand more of time than I thought I would need.

Posted by James at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I played Baulderdash or maybe it was 'Beyond Baulderdash' for several hours last night. I happened to be playing with some old friends from Texas, one of which attends BYU and the other who was up for a visit and to snowboard. As we were playing on of the words that came up was 'splacknuck' and as I recall the definition on the card is was something on the line of 'odd looking person or animal.' I like the word.
So let me back track some. Saturday morning I woke up before I normally would have, to go do some snowboarding with my friends. So being up before the crack of dawn [actually up before the crack of noon] threw me for a loop as I was trying to get everything that I would need to have for the day. I thought that included some Advil.

Getting out the door and then up to the slopes, we started to do runs and enjoying the day. The conditions on the slopes were okay, but not the best. It was a little crusty and icey for my taste but at the same time I was enjoying myself. For the first run and the start of the second run everything was alright. As I went to follow the guys down the slopes I had a rude high school idiot ( I assume this only by his appearance) cut immediately in front of me and then biffed what ever he had planned. The action of cutting across startled me but the biffing shortly thereafter made me over correct myself. As I got a face full of snow I felt my right-knee twist and tweak a little too much. I initially got up only to have a sharp pain in my knee. So I plopped down off to the side of the run.
Having thought I had Advil in my I searched my pack and couldn't find the Advil. [I had left it on the kitchen counter] After a few minutes of recuperation I got up and with only a slight pain in my leg, boarded down the hill, not being able to find my companions, I went inside the Lodge to find some painkillers or a wrap for m knee. I had no luck finding any. So I rested a little bit more and then went back up the slope to have another try at it.
So I had a couple good runs out of it, and ended up meeting back up with Randy and Chris. After some riding up the lift and getting off to an okay start, I had my knee start giving on me. I stayed up as much as I could with them, but alas after a couple of runs I had lost them and would only meet up with them once or twice during the day. It seems that the more the knee would hurt the more severe the next fall got.
On one of my final runs for the day and the one that convinced me to call it basically, I was coming down a nice black diamond run, boarding outside my skill level, the run had a nice steep patch to it that I was able get some speed on as well as a couple nice little jumps off, when I caught my toe-side edge and ended rolling down the slope the last 75 yards or so.
Gathering myself after that one, I went to the lodge to rest my knee in hopes that would help. After and hour the knee felt fine, and I went up the mountain to locate Randy and Chris. As I was cutting over from the top of one lift to another that would take me further up the slopes, I had a rude boarder come up and as he caught his edge next to me, knocked me in such a way that I caught my edge and went off of the trail in to some crusty powder and a near by tree.
Sitting in the powder and having my knee in the cold, felt good as I waited to get back up. The guy who knocked me quickly got up and was gone with out saying a thing. I have words to say about a jerk like that, but they probably arent the best to say.
So I met up with my friends at the bottom and after some talk decided that the 5 to 6 hours of boarding they had gotten in [i was about 4 hours worth] that we could call it good for the day. I spent most of the night and then Sunday recovering from that experience, but it was good.
So back to sunday night and the Baulderdash game. We decided to do something about 9:30-ish and decided to give Baulderdash a try. We had a good time of it, and it wasn't until we were about 2/3 of the way thru the game that I noticed that it was after-midnight and I had classes in less than 8 hours and that wasnt a good thing.
The game dragged on until 1 or so in the morning. After a quick walk to my apartment I quickly found myself into bed with setting several alarms around me to get me up in the 5 hours I had to sleep in. I missed my first one and was lucky I staggered the second one. I got up and was out the door in enough time to get to my first class at 8 am.

More later on....must stay awake...

Posted by James at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some time ago I began a long look into the concept of having a campaign focused at my family and nosy friends who kept inquiring about my personal life. I have used the idea of misinformation for the longest time. To me the idea was to limit the amount and quality of the information given in such a way that not only could it be easily traced to the source sharing it but also to determine the validity of the source to begin with.
So in my head I tell person A a tidbit. I do the same with B, C, and D. Each person getting a tidbit shared with them that is similar but different enough to follow a path. The idea was to see how the information is shared between A, B, C, and D. The initial trail run of my plan was a small run, with the results of weeding out a person that distorted the information to make them better for it.

So at 21 I began my grand campaign, and for the last 4 years it has worked out well. Now as I am sitting here I am beginning to adjust some of the finer elements of the on-going campaign and as I have set some it down in writing, I spent some time on the Internet looking up use of 'misinformation' and discovered I might have been mis-using the concept in my head.
From a google search i got 'erroneous material, not necessarily intentional' as a definition of misinformation. Some more looking came up with 'Incorrect information from any source that is released for unknown reasons or to solicit a response or interest from a nonpolitical or nonmilitary target.' Now this was closer to what I had in mind, but to me the idea was to release limited information, not false information. So thus I have a misinformation campaign. Its a campaign against my family and their gossiping ways.
This all began a few years ago. I had returned from serving a mission in Germany and after dealing with too much bad information that was being spread around the family and people I was associating with I began my mis-information campaign. The concept was simple. Tell only tidbits of information to particularly chosen individuals and see how the information came back to me.
The campaign has continued to grow as time goes on. I found that the only reliable and trustworthy source for information is Jordan, my younger brother. I have found that as information is passed to him, I don't hear about it, and on rare occasions that I do hear something shared, it could have been pieced together from the other tidbits.
Over the last couple of months I have been spending plenty of time with my older brother John, mooching rides to places, talking, doing things, and the like. John sat high on my scale of information sharing at the time, and then I began hearing a ton of feedback from the misinformation campaign that began pointing fingers in various direction. Every bit i heard began narrowing the field quickly until it became obvious that John was the sift. I felt hurt hard. So as a result, I began work on the new scale of information sharing.

I am currently envisioning 5 levels of information sharing also known as MIC levels.

MIC1--bare basic information. Status (alive/dead) and health.
MIC2--limiting details. Willing to confirm/deny some information [original position for most people]
MIC3--better details. Willing to elaborate on daily activities
MIC4--un-defined at this time
MIC5--open access. Willing to answer all questions

This system will be reviewed and updated, but the system is currently in place for a reason. Thursday as the chatter and feedback began pouring in rather heavily [its a relative term] I began to get furious that someone had begun to 'sing like a canary.' Quickly in my mind I began to wall up and within an instant; everyone was now at level 1 information.

So this morning I had to explain the entire idea of my MIC to Jordan. He began to understand it but at the same time he was hurt that he was on the same level as the rest of the family, noting he was a pretty good at keeping his mouth shut [relatively speaking]. So as of this morning about crack of noon-ish, Jordan was raised to MIC2.

Posted by James at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)