Why November is the Worst Month #2: Projects, Projects, Projects

November 28, 2005

There are two rules of work. Number 1: The amount of energy required to move an object is work. Number 2: If time is an object then there is always enough energy to insure there is enough work to take up all the time available. This means that during months like November, where the only holiday aside from Thanksgiving is Veterans day teachers decide the only way to use students energy to create work is to assign big projects. Really big projects.

It was last year I realized that this was in fact a conspiracy of teachers everywhere. I was talking to a CS TA in her office and was eavesdropping on a conversation between two of the faculty members. The first teacher asked the second if her students would be ready for the “November crunch”. They both laughed and said they were thankful there was a place late in Fall term where they could assign the big projects and actually expect the students to finish them. Being in one of those teachers classes, all I could do at the time was shiver.

Sadly I ended up in the other teacher's class this year helping to lead to another November crunch. God, do I dislike November.

Posted by sklarj at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)

Why November is the Worst Month Point #1: No Baseball

November 07, 2005

As a fourth generation Red Sox fan (The first in three generations to see a world series victory before age 50), I was overjoyed to see a sweep of the Cardinals in 2004. However in my heart I wanted a seven series game. Not just because I like drama, angst and good baseball, but also because I just wanted more baseball.

To me the end of baseball symbolizes the inevitability of winter. Early October is one of the last points in the Portland year one can expect warm, clear days at all. When the date hits November 1st I know I'm going to be greeted by ever darkening days, more rain, and such interesting baseball news as, “When the free agent negotiating period begins eventually teams are going to sign people... Really.”

Hearing that Manny is, as his annual tradition requires, requesting a trade from the Red Sox is just boring. Unless I frequent a Red Sox fan forum this news will distract me from the oncoming cold and wet November existence for barely five minutes. A Red Sox game on the other hand lasts at least two hours. During November I would love a two hour distraction from the darkening skies.

Instead of come from behind victories in the last strike of the last out in the ninth I can look forward to coaches making calls to get replays while they run out the clock and there players get pounded into pulp. And its getting dark at 4:30 too...

Thankfully there's only... five... months...

Posted by sklarj at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)

Categories: Attempt #n+1 to post more regularly

I found my little black book under a cushion of one of the chairs in my apartment. Before misplacing this small pocket notebook I hadn't realized just how critical it is to my life. Without it I've: missed appointments, forgotten important things people have told me, confused addresses, lost phone numbers, and generally felt very misguided.

Anyways, I open up the book this evening and my last entry (dated three weeks ago) said, “Write an entry on your blog before Halloween.” That kind of passed, so this is my next best attempt, a belated birthday card of a post.

So I've admitted to being unable to categorize anything, so I've gotten rid of all the old categories and decided to start anew. Somehow the seven post drafts where I couldn't decide if the category was 'programming:school' or 'programming:work' tipped me off to a road block in my posting attempts. So, I'll attempt to avoid adding too many top categories and only do so when its something very very obvious.

I finished a six month agreement of a sort today, so I'll also make one for this blog. In the next six months I'll make at least six posts. Everything else is gravy. I'll also make the colors all blue!!!!*!*!

Posted by sklarj at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)

Colophon: Josh Sklar's Simplywondering.com

August 08, 2005

Simplywondering.com is the musings of Josh Sklar. Not this Josh Sklar or this Josh Sklar. I'm younger then the first and older then the second :P.

For the various parts of this site I use the following software on my mac:

Simplywondering.com is hosted by the excellent people at Dreamhost and runs on the equally excellent Movable Type 3.x blogging software.

Once on a train ride to Seattle I had the gaul to write a “mission statement” for simplywondering.com. Thankfully the first person that read it laughed until I had to pat her on the back. So, instead of some teary eyed idealism, I just hope this site keeps me from looking too scary when someone looks me up on Google. :-D

Posted by sklarj at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

About Josh Sklar

August 04, 2005

So, I've spent a while trying to decide exactly what I wanted to disclose on my 'about me' page. Way back when I registered this domain I was big on disclosing those little details about myself. However having come across people who've had annoying identity theft issues I've decided to tone down the accuracy :P. Instead I'll just get off my 'serious horse'. I certainly get more out of 'about me' pages when the person isn't deadly serious.

Continue reading "About Josh Sklar"

Posted by sklarj at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)

A Little Cat Girl and Other Formating Tests

May 17, 2005

Isn't it cute? I'm certainly a fan. I tried making ears that looked like that but to be honest, it just doesn't look good on me at all. I think I'd have to be a cute girl with long hair to pull it off. I found that for me I do well with the shonen-ai'ish look from Loveless. Those kind of ears just fit somehow :).

Now to look at an unordered list. Here are a couple obscure goals of mine.

Did I mention I have an LJ? I really do enjoy it for some reason :).

Ok, this should be enough to play with for a bit.

-Josh

Posted by sklarj at 10:17 PM | Comments (1)

Redecoration to represent a redecoration of my life

May 13, 2005

So, I haven't updated this site since sometime during march. During this time most of my writing has been occurring at my other site located at livejournal. However I've gotten into a new relationship and this has caused me to get through so many of my projects that I'm finally getting to projects like this site. Since its been dormant since January I feel its time for me to actually do the design I've been wanting to do for so long. The blog fashion's template wasn't the best in the world at rendering in different browsers so I'm going to let it die.

Since developing anything for movable type depends so much on the movable type tags I'm actually going to do most of the development live on this site. Since I reason no one but comment spam robots currently read anything I've posted I imagine this shouldn't inconvenience anyone.

Here's to my productivity continuing.

-Josh

Posted by sklarj at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)

fare: Parsing Considered Harmful

March 26, 2005

I don't “agree” with the following livejournal post. It contains far too many arguments for its size and a distinct lack of context. However, one thing I agree with is his complaints about Computer science being a faux science. Francious-René Rideau says, “it is an Art, or an Engineering Enterprise, which is one and the same”. I'd agree if you're referring to the programming aspect of computer science. Look at the lack of theory and experiments related to the program design aspect. The formal validation qualities of CS don't seem as anything more then a specific branch of math which is hardly worthy of the the title “Computer Science”. Here's the link, fare: Parsing Considered Harmful

-Josh

Posted by sklarj at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)