return void;

So the inevitable finally occurred; this year, retail outlets opened on Thanksgiving so that consumer-whores were able to overspend for the holiday season.

I shouldn’t call it the “holiday season” because it’s really Christmas and New Years. Seems everyone has really forgotten the reason why we buy gifts, why we get off of work, and why we “spread the holiday spirit.” Instead, everyone is more concerned with buying their Christmas gifts over a month in advance. This year, I started seeing decorations go up right after Halloween (very appropriate). In fact, the city of Plano put up their tree the week after. It’s only a matter of time before Black Friday becomes “Black October 30th” and then “Black Sunday” (day before Labor Day). Eventually, people will lose sight enough that we have miniature “shopping holidays” all throughout the year to celebrate a non-religious holiday. I find it ironic that people refuse to celebrate Christmas for what it is because they don’t believe, but they will be damned if they have to work or not give gifts out. My house does not celebrate Christmas until December; we do not focus on gift giving, we do not worry about putting up decorations, we do not worry about throwing large parties. We celebrate Christmas when it is Christmas to show our respects for the birth of Christ (whether you believe in him or now, it is still his birthday).

Anyways, the wife and I decided to go pick up a few deals today for ourselves. We stopped by Staples and Target (walking distance from our house) first and they were not very busy. Then we went to Fry’s to see if they had X-Files DVDs on sale (they didn’t). Our last stop was at Circuit City and it will likely be the last time I shop there. I picked up the Shield and had to wait for an hour and a half because the morons that run that store decided that the 3-4 checkout locations would be plenty for the Black Friday Mob (TM). Fry’s took a whopping 3 minutes. Circuit City, you just lost a customer who loves the items you sell.

Anyways, we didn’t buy any gifts but found that my Dad would want the Shield Season 1 box set since he’s mentioned it maybe 10 times. Two birds, one stone. Without further ado, here’s the loot we swindled:

• Batman Begins (Target): $4
• Elf (Target): $6
• Simpsons Season 4 (Target): $16
• Seinfeld Volume 1 (Target): $20
• Harry Potter, Goblet of Fire (Target): $4
• Monk Season 1 (Fry’s): $12
• The Shield Season 1 (Circuit City): $18
• SanDisk 1G SD Flash card (Staples): $15
• Charmed Season 1 (Circuit City): $18
• Pirates of the Caribbean (Target): $6

Some of you who know me in real life are probably thinking that I’ve lost my mind. In fact, in the last several months, we have gone legitimate. I only buy CDs and DVDs (at least I’m patient and smart about it); I do not contribute to the growing bootlegging issue in our counterculture.

Considering some of those normally retail for twice what we bought them for, we did pretty good. Best part: no rebates, no rain-checks, no camping out overnight, and only one bad store experience (due to management incompetence). Maybe in 2 or three weeks, I might start shopping for gifts, but we’re in no hurry.

I found this post I made several months ago but wasn’t sure why I never published it. So, here it is. Maybe in 25 years, my kids will dig this up and find it just hilarious that their old man was pickin’ on his old man for turning 50.

My father turns 50 today so I wanted to commemorate his old age by posting the whimsical comment I put in his birthday card.

Wow, you’re 50. That’s half a century! I thought I would help you get a grasp on how old 50 really is; at 50 years old, you are older than the following inventions:

White-Out
Lasers
Hula-Hoops
Integrated Circuits
Barbie
Halogen lamps
Non-dairy creamer
Audio cassettes
Acrylic paint
Astroturf
Contact lenses
NutraSweet
Compact Discs
Kevlar

As if that weren’t enough, I thought I’d show you what things cost in 1956:

House: $22,000
Average Income: $4,454
Ford Car: $1,748 – $3,151
Gas: $0.23
Stamps: $0.03

By now, you’ve probably already forgotten why you’re reading this card. Happy Birthday you old fart!

My mother turns 50 on 9/11 (that’s as wierd as being born on 7/4 or 12/25) so we will be throwing a combined “Half Century Celebration” for them somewhere in the middle. I’ll post more with pictures from the party and what we got him my parents on their big five-o.

Jeez, what a marathon. I just spent the last 3 straight days trying to debug my project. I basically wrote a bulk of it in approximately 4-5 hours earlier in the week and resigned to ironing out the remaining bugs this weekend. Unfortunately, the remaining problems were pretty severe and mind-numbingly difficult to debug.

In the end, there were 2 deadlocks I could not resolve. Hopefully I can do some hand-waving and the TA won’t notice it not working. This is larger than all but 1 school project I’ve ever done (ZINC was much larger):

$ wc -l *.c *.h
320 config_parser.c
821 node.c
66 util.c
20 config_parser.h
108 node.h
12 util.h
1347 total

This grew so large and out of control, I had a hard time sifting through the code to find anything. I would have to spend 10-20 minutes graphically representing what my program does based on the output. Debugging with gdb or ddd was a waste of time unless there was a SIGSEGV.

I want so desperately for this semester to be over. If this project is any indicator what parallel system work in graduate school will be like, then I feel I’ve been turned off of the subject. Just thinking about the project even after I’ve submitted it enrages me to the point of feeling pits of depression similar to those described by Morgan Spurlock.

I did manage to setup my next semester:

CS 6364 – 501 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Schweitzer H
Call Number: 13773

MW 7:00 p.m. – 8:15 p.m., ECSS2.203

CS 6364 Artificial Intelligence (3 semester hours) Design of machines that exhibit intelligence. Particular topics include: representation of knowledge, vision, natural language processing, search, logic and deduction, expert systems, planning, language comprehension, machine learning. Prerequisite: CS 5343. (3-0) Y

Pre-requisite: CS 5343

A few students in my AOS class confirmed that this class should be significantly easier than AOS. That’s a relief; after the pounding I took this semester, it would be nice if I had a professor with realistic expectations. I feel like curling into a fetal position and crying for the next few days.

Oh, but I can’t. I have a homework project due Tuesday (that I haven’t started), the final 9 days from that, and the Qualification Exam 7 days from the final. The only light at the end of this otherwise gruesome and unending tunnel is the fact that I have somehow scrapped out the highest B in the class and only need a 60% on the final to ensure an A. But after I get through that hurdle, I realize that the light at the end is actually the train: the QE has material not covered by this professor.

I’m sure everyone has heard of the carnage that was the PS3 launch here in the states. Shootings, riots, fights, robbery, and sleazy eBay resellers; these people should be ashamed of themselves. Today was the launch of the Nintendo Wii. No I did not reserve one (like I have time to play), but I whole-heartedly support those die-hard fans who wait outside of a retail store at the slim hopes of landing a new console even with all of the recent dangers that seem to be presenting themselves (that’s what the industry gets for trying to appeal to a larger market). I’ve camped out for a new system or two, so I know how grueling a 2-3 day excursion can truely be.

So I was inspired by reading this article about a Canadian performing a random act of kindness for those fearless fans. My wife and I stopped by Target in our neighborhood (Allen, TX, suburb of Dallas) and saw about a dozen people camping out. Most of them seemed fairly young and somewhat cold. It doesn’t get too cold here, but it was something like 40-50 degrees outside. I struck up small talk with a few people in line and I asked if they wanted hot chocolate. They declined, so I walked around and asked everyone else (loudly). Most of the people in the front declined but about half a dozen in the back seemed shocked (“Are you an angel in jeans?”). Few of them were curled up in thick blankets so I kept asking and ended up taking half a dozen orders. I went into Target and bought the drinks and 2 packs of cookies (seemed appropriate, my wife’s idea).

When I brought them back out, the people in the front were flabbergasted. They said they thought I was joking or making fun of them! The people that got them were floored; they couldn’t believe that I actually bought them hot chocolate for no reason. One girl asked if my wife and I were Target or Nintendo employees. She had a very hard time swallowing the fact that we were regular people performing a random act of kindness expecting nothing in return.

Is this what society has reduced itself to? I spent a measly $10 and that single act will probably be remembered by those people for the rest of their lives (camping out is a big deal because the sheer boredom is a huge mental hill to climb). I can’t believe that by being nice enough to buy some people a hot drink when they are cold that I am thought of as an angel. I suppose this is akin to how people turn a blind eye to the homeless.

We would’ve hit up a few more locations but I have a project that is due in precisely 27.5 hours (and I’m not close to finishing).