Blatant Obfuscation

There is nothing much that is happening today. Really nothing at all is happening. I got up early and cleaned for a bit, but after 30 minutes or so I had gotten done with my pre-designated weekly cleaning and had nothing of substance to do. So I did the only thing that I could think of, I jumped onto WoW and tried for three hours to get into a group with my pally for one of the higher level instances to get some dungeon set pieces. It was no use. I ended up giving up and moving onto the next item on my list of things to do.

I bought Command & Conquer The First Decade yesterday as I was out running around looking at TVs. I am to a point of wanting a new TV, although it isn't a need it is a desire. My current TV which has been around for over a decade, has gone fuzzy or blurry in the picture quality, as has the sound only gotten worse over the last year. So I have been looking at TV's that will last me for a few years.
Also I have been looking at the possibilty of changing my residence come June. Last night I had gone up to the house two houses north from where I live. While there, I met up with Nels and we basically toured the upstairs of the house and pretty much decided that we will be moving in the come June. [Both of our current contracts end up at the end of May].
But then there hasn't been muich to report on otherwise. Maybe it will pick up later or tomorrow or something.

Posted by James at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, so having completed all the finals [or at least the ones I needed to] bu the predesignated deadline of 10pm Wednesday, I am being to reflect back on the past week with a grand WHAT THE HELL. So two of my classes were taught by the same teacher who in effect let both classes get out of taking the finals during finals week given we could get them done before reading days. Well for one of those classes was Statistical Programming which meant that the final was a program given certain specs.

Knowing what I now know, I think I could have taken care of passing off the project a week or two before I had. But for the most part the project went off without a hitch. Okay there was a particular hitch that I still think the teacher has wrong as it worked everywhere else. The other class from the same teacher was Statistical Matrices. In that one I had to produce a confidence interval to show from the 4 tests that were taken over the semester what my projected grade on the final exam would be, and with that grade what I was expecting to receive as a grade in the class. Easy enough, and it went well, I am expecting to see A's in both of those classes.
The other class that I was able to get out worrying about a final was my Teaching Statistics in a Lab Environment. It was a pass fail class where the 'final' was going in to talk to teacher and get ready for the next class where I will be teaching a lab for Stat 221.
That really left 4 finals to worry with. Two of them I played the math of the repeat class. Which meant that in all, I was planning on retaking them both, one due to poor performance, the other due to need of understanding and so after some careful consideration and discussion with people, I pretty much nixed them from my concerned schedule. That left two finals that I had to take.
My religion class was allowed to pre-write the essays for the final, which meant that I wrote them out Thursday night and then barely glimpsed over the notes for the class. It was truly amazing. I went to take the final and it took all of 45 minutes to complete and I was out the door. Then I began working on the evil final. Anything one that thinks a take-home final exam is a good idea, is kidding themselves. I began looking over the final Friday evening, and then looking at my notes on what the exam covered. I spent a good hour reading the needed section of the text book for each question. I stewed over the test Saturday night, Sunday and Monday. Finally I decided to get down to business. On Tuesday I went out and started the first two questions it wasnt long [2 hours] before the monotonous of it got to me and I had to escape. I came back to it early Wednesday. I hunkered down and went straight until 6pm. I spent a total of 16 plus hours working on the test and another 9 hours reading to take the test with a good 5 hours on the reading days.
I went to print out my final and got 3 pages printed to come to the realization that I was out of paper. Which meant I ran around looking for someone who had some to spare. That had set me back a little. So upon getting the paper, reviewing the printed copy, I went to turn it in. I put too much work into that class to be hoping that I just pass it.
Well the last two days I have been eating my Cookie reserve I made Monday to have myself a good 'feel-good' treat. With trying to get close to 20 hours this week as possible. I am looking forward to being done with the week.
That brings up next week. On Tuesday I begin the first of two summer terms here at BYU. They are 9 weeks of intense school work each, condensing what is normally taught in 16 weeks into the 9. Last year I dared and took the first term a.k.a. Spring term. It was an okay experience. This year I am being daring and taking both spring and summer terms. I felt that I could knock out 5 of the remaining 7 GE classes required by BYU in a short amount of time. Also my thinking into this 'bad' decision resolves around the desire to limit my exposure to “fresh from high school” freshmen. So when registering for the summer I came up with a plan that in the original conception would have put me out of BYU April 2007 or August by the latest. I would end up taking the second part of Teaching Stats in a Lab Environment [aka TA'ing]. That meant I wouldnt be working as much for my current boss, but rather I would be working 12 hours a week for the Stats department and then another 25 or so for OIT. Its a crazy plan, but getting paid to attend a class for a total of 6 hours a week, with 2 hours of actual TA'ing and 2 hours of TA meetings a week didnt sound bad. The bad part is the grading of homework. I dont feel too bad about that. It just means time a couple nights a week to grade homework.
The other classes that start next week are my online Lifestyle Management class for my Wellness GE requirement [its a PE credit]. I have plans to be done with it within 5 weeks as I want more time to devote to my other two classes come the end of the term.
I signed up for an advanced writing class, well Technical Writing to be precise. This will take care of the advanced writing requirement for BYU and should help with my writing somewhat. That is the hoped outcome for the class. I have been told that the teacher is supposed to be really good when it comes to the class and hopefully, it isnt too heavy as other advanced writing classes friends have reported on.
Lastly I come to the class that I have been looking at taking for a year: History of Philosophy part 1. I read that in the course catalog as a class that works for my Civilization GE requirement and I jumped to take it [with the second part in the summer term]. I have been toying with the idea of adding a logic minor and those classes might help me make up my mind. I figure that of all the classes for the next 9 weeks the philosophy class will be the most intense as far as a nightly reading/work requirement upon me, but man am I looking forward to it.

Posted by James at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past two days I have made two batches of cookies. It is no secret the recipe that I am using or at least I dont think it is, so here it goes.

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar

mixed together until consistant. that is to mean no big chunks of butter. In accordance to "High Altitude" cooking I remove about 2 teaspoons of each sugar from a leveled measuring cup.

1 tsp Vanilla [I like the taste of real vanilla, and so it is a generous tsp.]
2 eggs

Mixed until the mass is creamy

1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1.5 cups flour. [Again for high altitude i added in an additional 1/2 cup more or less]

Some notes from my sister whom gave the recipe, I tried using a minimally process flour to limit the unnessacary chemicals into the food. That is mixed in until it was good and "dough"-y if that is a word

3 cups of oatmeal.

MIxed in well. I found that as with the flour one cup at a time really helps mix it in well. As I used Quaker Oats Instant Oats.

For me a cookie isnt a cookie unless it has an "unhealthy" amount of chips in it. [ I dumped a big bag in] The first batch I tried plain milk chocolate chips from Toll house and the second time I tried a combination of Semi-Sweet and White Chocolate chips.

So some things I have noted from the two batches. First, my brother's oven is some much nicer than mine. It cooked the cookies more evenly than mine did. Then there was the matter of whatever I used up at my brother's on the cookie sheet itself helped let the cookie spread and look better where at my place they bearly spread out and look like lumps instead of cookies. Lastly is the notion of the smell. For some reason there is a burnt smell to the cookies that I baked this evening. I am not sure where that comes from or why but yesterday as I took them out of the oven they smelt better.

Posted by James at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Friday marked the beginning of Finals for the semester. I think everybody around me deals with the stress and pressure to preform that finals puts on a person. I have my quirks, but mainly I try to avoid the situation all together. I have played a lot of violent video games in order to vent some of the stress. I really like to play First Person Shooters (FPS) because really it is something to do, and it doesn't take too much time to play a few rounds before going back to studying.

I normally vent out frustration by playing a good Real Time Strategy (RTS) or work on a character in WOW, a Role-Playing Game (RPG). But in playing WoW, I have found myself not being able to adhere to the pre-set notion of an hour while playing the game. It is too easy to say, just five more minutes to finish this quest or to get this item, and then several hours later you realize the error of your ways.
Then with RTS that I play, if I am unwilling to commit to a good 2 to 3 hour sit down, the entire strategizing that I normally go for is out the window and I am left with something that is to me less enjoyable. I like to strategize and plan out attacks not rush and conquer.
So I relinquish myself to either the puzzle games or FPS games. I dont want to have to think more than needed so I dont want to sit and get frustrated with the puzzles like Sudoku or Bejewelled that I can sit and play for hours. I'll tend to play an FPS, preferably Halo for fast paced action or Ghost Recon for a slower strategic battle.
Friday it was all about Ghost Recon. I have taking a liking to the game series and to play a quick mission with set objectives becomes fun. It is in its own way relaxing. So with a group of guys that live near where I do, we have been playing GR2 for a better part of the school year for an hour at a time. This weekend was no different. I showed up and played for a bit just to unwind and then went back to studying.
With having a small number of finals to take and having an innate knack for doing seemingly well on most subjects with minimal study, I found that it has been hard concentrating on a particular subject longer than an hour or so before needing a break. I seem to go batty at times working on some of the preparation for finals.
Saturday I ended heading up to my brother's [Jared] house so that I could end up tending my niece for a couple hours Sunday night. Saturday night I spent two or so hours working on understanding logistical regression and the diagnostics and remedial measures that can be done. I think I am more confused at that now then I was before hand.
I woke up Sunday morning to unpack clean and get ready to use my new Mixer. I bought myself a nice KitchenAid Mixer in Dark Pewter. I had gotten a nice recipe from my sister [Rebecca] in Georgia for a chewy oatmeal cookie that she had used a few times as a base for a cookie dubbed "Suicide by Oatmeal" which contains all my favorite flavors of chips that a cookie could have. SBO normally contains Milk Chocolate Chips, White Chocolate, Butterscotch, Peanut Butter, and it seems like something else as well.
I had wanted to try out the mixer so I planned on making SBO but couldnt find in Jared's freezer the other chips, had to settle for plan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. They turned out pretty good in my book, as I was able to make close to 9 dozen or so cookies. I should have plenty for a feel good treat for the remainder of the week.
Sunday evening I ended up tending Cadence [the niece] for a little over two hours which was fun. She and I basically watched a TV and played with whatever toy she thought looked fun. It wasnt too bad. We ended up getting along just well.
Once getting home I packed my brother's car with my tools that had been at his house for a better portion of a year so I can start using them on a couple side projects I have going here in Provo. I arrived back in Provo about ten-ish at night, which is to say in time to do nothing really.

Posted by James at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"I got a great Idea" is pretty much all my younger brother told me when he planned to head south to come "hang out" this evening. Well I knew something was up and for the two days that I knew about him coming down, wondered at what scheme had come up with that would need him to come talk to me face to face and not so much over the internet or over the phone.

He got down here sometime after 5pm, a full 30 plus minutes after the expected time for him to arrive complaining in his own words "[He] had to go 'ninja' to get there" due to some construction closure of an exit on the freeway. I was not really sure what the hell he was talking about. And had him discuss for a few minutes what that meant.
Upon asking him what his idea was that he just had to come see about he simply indicated that he had talked to Jared, the brother he is currently living with, and had concluded that it wasn't feasible to do. [I must note the issue dealt with legality of the idea]. Which I just had to comment on. In the intervening time, couldn't he pick up the phone or instant message me with that so I didnt wonder what the hell he was wanting to talk about.
The end result we went out to eat at a now "sub-par" restaurant and tried to think of a movie to watch or something to do. When we came up with nothing after an hour or so of trying we talked for a while in front of my place before he headed back north and I went to study some more. But I needed to take the time out of studying to give the comment: Give a person warning.

Mainly I think a heads up to why Jordan was coming down and to the change of plans would have been helpful in planning what we could have done as well as not wasted as much time as we did trying to think up of something to do besides eat mexican food at that restaurant.
Needless to say, it was fun hanging out with Jordan for a few hours. It helped break up the entire get done with a single final and then start working on the next final that needed to be done.

Posted by James at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The last two days have been exhausting. Well only because I might have made them that way.
I had a test due in my Regression class. It was originally scheduled to be turned in Tuesday evening at 5:00pm but the teacher himmed and hawed and within moments it became due before he arrived into his office Wednesday morning. So I took the time rechecked most of the test and then after 10 hours plus working on the test I was able to turn it in early Wednesday morning.

Due to the lack of sleep the night before I choose to return home and decide what to do after I woke up later in the day. About noon-ish [it might have been closer to 1], I got up and decided that I didn't want to go to work and so I headed over to a friend's house in the ward and began to do nothing for the remainder of the day. Including the several hours of Xbox playing, I pretty much vegged out at Mike's place to the consternation of his roommates.
They began to complain about studying for finals coming up, I calmly pointed out that I had taken care of 4 or so of my finals leaving me 2 finals to take before next Wednesday. They weren't as happy as I was to hear that, so me playing my Xbox that has resided in their apartment for the entire school year probably wasn't the best thing.
But there was some good high points of the day. Mike and I with the help of two of the roommates finally beat the Dam level of Ghost Recon 2. I had been playing that game for over a year and mainly I had been trying to beat that map for a while in mission mode. It feels kind of good to have beaten it. Now looking back I have wasted a lot of time trying to beat a level of a game. I need a life.

Then there came down to a general narrowing down of what the MiniGolf association should be called. We generated several acronyms and then began to give ideas for what the letters should be. It was good, as we have an idea of where to go from there and eliminated some ideas and left us with a few plausible ones.
I am personally favoring PIOUS::

People
Interested in
Outlandoish and
Unorthodox
Sports

But nevertheless we are down to identifying possible sites for the tour and then trying to see if we can come up with deals and discounts.

Today has just been long. I got up early and have felt I have been stuck on go all day. Between work and attempting to get a few good bikes bought from a sale BYU is putting on, I havent felt like I have accomplished much. I might just be reading too much into things but man I have nothing to show for today and it is mostly over.
Now I am trying to finish up here at work to get over to the bike sale to stand in line and wait to get some bikes. THis should be interesting.

Posted by James at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today I ended walking into the testing center to take a test that was 'popped' on my Statistical Regression class at the end of last week. I had studied what was indicated that would be seen on the test, as well as all of the material that was covered in the 4 or so chapters that had been 'covered' since the last test. It didnt take me that long to find out that yet again the test covered a totally different set than what the teacher gave us to study.

So this spoiled my day. Okay it really hadn't but it had come really close to putting me into an off mood. I had gotten out of taking a final in another one of my statistics classes and I was having an all around good day. Work was good, as I had finally been given another assignment to work on.
It was a good day. And then I took that ill-gotten test. I think after question 1 or 2 I started to commenting on the test in my responses then in the answers I was giving. And so after a little over an hour taking the test I turned it in and walked out the door.

And so then it comes to my other consternation in life, the dis-courtesy of people in regards to planning and informing for activities. So upon getting home and not hearing from anyone about FHE or anything else that was to happen that evening. I hate not knowing until the last minute.

So after a disorganized and uneventful activity, I did the only thing that I could come up with to get out my frustration: I went out on a jog/walk for 35 minutes or so.

Posted by James at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So the running title of the sight for some time has been "A Search for Something." I think when I used it first, I was using it temporarily in my head until I could come up with something better. And this past week I think I have just done that.
To justify the new name, I think that I should note that in effect is a Mis-Informaiton Campaigned aimed at my family to serve unstated purposes. Well in order to more properly bring the blog up into accordance to some paradigm changes in the MIC, the new name was drafted.
Hence from this time forth the site is now known as [feels like there should be a drum roll here]
Blatant Obfuscation.

Posted by James at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today and tomorrow comprise the last two days of classes before what I am considering as a dreaded week of Finals.
I don't think that I am too worried about taking the finals that I have a head of me, it is just that I don't like the fact that finals are Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Well it really doesn't seem that bad to me. I have taken care of at least two of my classes and wont have to worry about those finals during the next week, later this afternoon I am planning on going into one of my Professors offices and showing him that statistically that I should be getting an A on my final exam and that grade wont effect my final grade in the class which should be an A.

Then there are my two Math classes this semester. I have struggled with whether I worry about taking those finals or not. I need to do much better in both of them. (One of them I stopped attending once I realized there was no chance of passing it after my 2nd midterm.) I have felt that I need to retake both of them, and so how BYU handles such situations I felt that it would be a good thing if I don't worry about them. It would free up some time. After much conversation on the subject, I have decided to take the calculus final which I might be able to pull a C out of the class yet still need to retake.
Then there is my least favorite class of the semester, my Statistical Regression class. I hate that thing with a passion. I hate it, I hate it so much. I have until tomorrow evening at 5pm to turn in a part of the second midterm and then begin to work on the final exam. The teacher was unable to be reasoned with that having a test this close to finals made no sense, just put all this information into the final and have us worry with it then, but no, he had to have a second test. And it didn't matter that it was to be over the last weekend of the semester and that we weren't going to be getting it back ever. Good thing there it is a take-home final and I have until Wednesday of final's week at 5pm to get it turned into the teacher. Hurray, I guess.
The only scheduled final that I know I have to worry with is my religion class this semester, and it is a Friday night final, or maybe it was a Friday late afternoon, I really should check that out, either way that blows my purposeful not wanting to do anything motto for Fridays.

Posted by James at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Late last week, in the midst of some serious smack talking between Nels and I, an idea was born. We have been talking sports for the better part of the year, and recently golf has come up as a main topic of conversation. Golf looks like a fun sport to play were I to have the clubs and the time to spend to improve my inability to play the sport.
Somewhere in the conversation, Nels brought up miniature golf. He began to talk about a course in the area that had some pretty cool sounding features to include sand traps in the form of shag carpeting.

I was sold. I really wanted to go play miniature golf. But it wasn't a desire to just play a round of miniature golf, it was a desire to beat Nels at the game over the course of the entire summer. So thus an idea was born: come up with an official sounding tour of miniature golf courses to play through out the summer and then name a victor in August with all the bragging rights that go along with beating the other person.
Then the two of us began to talk about where we can go to play this tour, and it was decided that it wouldn't be good enough to just beat each other, it would be better to beat a group of people of the course of the entire summer, that we would have to wrangle in as many people as possible to play the entire Tour of Mini-golf courses and then name a winner.
Giving that Nels and I talk on our way to get my Big Mug o' Caffeine filled most days, we parted ways and it was left to each of us to think on it some more.

Two days latter, Nels and I found ourselves trying to come up with a good way of going about this plan of ours. The idea had stuck with both of us, and now it is seeking implementation. A quick vote was called naming Nels to the position of President or whatever title he chooses of the association with me being official Rulekeeper. [Okay so I really didn’t want to be the face of the organization.]

In that first official planning meeting we came up with some important decisions.

1st We needed a cool name for the organization
2nd We needed a website that allowed for some smack talking and official reporting of leaders.
3rd We needed rules
4th We were going to rip on the PGA and steal the green jacket idea, but instead it will be a green hoodie, as no right minded student would be seen in a green blazer.
5th A BBQ was a must have awards ceremony.

We began to spread the word to feel out our friends on who would be interested in playing this weird overly complicated version of miniature golf. The finding was there might be something to this idea. Now it is just a cool name for the organization now.

Posted by James at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)