Today was a stressful, and then overall good day. Well, yesterday, technically.. bleh. Stressful, because I met with my prof for my research methods class to discuss what should theoretically have been a preliminary analysis of my results so far, but I don't really have the data for a good analysis yet. I need to find and nag more people to take part in my experiment. Fortunately, I'm actually further along than some people in my class -- inconsiderate people from other classes keep reserving the lab room for large chunks of time. She's a nice person too, and didn't make a fuss (perhaps because of the condition of people who don't have their experiment programmed yet), although I still feel that I'm not doing as well as I'd like. I just find it hard to deal with social things like nagging people to take part in an experiment.. It doesn't help that my experiment is the most demanding of everyone's, requiring people to undergo trials on 3 seperate days. It's no wonder people arn't enthused about giving me a hand. Then I ran in the Random Distance Run, a race for geeks put on by the CS department. Again, like with the Pretty Good Race, I didn't run with an expectation to win, but instead with an expectation to complete the thing. Here are the results. Yeah, I'm not a fast runner.. 2 miles in almost 17 minutes. I might've been hurt a bit by some confusion on what lap I was on during my last 2 laps -- if I had known, I would've put a bit more energy into the last lap.. but it doesn't matter so much. Debb showed up to cheer me on, but had to go take care of other things right afterwards, so I didn't really get to hang out with her until much later. She's housesitting for her parents for a little over a week, and it's kind of hard on me -- I'm not all that independant. Anyhow, the results of the race on me immediately was that I turned pale, was fairly tired, but didn't really need to stop to rest (went back to my office, briefly had some of the free food, and biked home). The slightly longer effects are that I'm mildly sore and a bit tired.. The PGR was toucher..
Fortunately, I got to see Debb a bit later in the evening.
Over the last few years, I've been in a social game called Advocacy. The idea of the game is that someone designs a ludicrous situation, tells it to everyone on the mailing list, and they all suggest why that situation is better than the normal way of things. The suggestions are collected, people vote, and the winner designs the situation for the next round. It's a lot of fun.. but the game seems to be slowly dying -- I think most of the current participant pool is losing interest.. I hope new blood can fix things before it dies. So, if this sounds interesting, follow the link above and join up!
On the way back from Debb's place (I'm hoofing it these days, partly by choice, and partly because my car is still at Fnord), I swung by Coffee Tree (the wireless is still busted), and then on the way home, pulled out my laptop, and did a little wardriving .. ermm.. warwalking. Basically, I just had my laptop continually scanning for wireless networks as I walked, and found out 3 things: 1) There are a heck of a lot of wireless networks in Squirrel Hill, most of them 802.11b, many of them with funky names 2) My wireless network doesn't extend very far outside the apartment, at least in the front 3) It's easier to put one's groceries away before walking with one's laptop cradled in one's arms
No mental energy left to keep blogging tonight..