conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for January, 2005
January 25, 2005 at 3:16 am · Filed under daily grind
I am usually a pretty fast and solid sleeper. I lay down, I fall asleep. Every once in a while however, I get an episode like tonight when I am tired, I lay down in bed, and 30 minutes later, I still can’t fall asleep. Tonight’s insomnia is probably due to my racing mind; I just couldn’t clear it of all the thoughts that were running through my head … from dinner to what would happen tomorrow to attending a jeff scholar event at the end of september (9 months away!!!) to not being able to fall asleep. Isn’t that a classic? I can’t fall asleep because I can’t stop thinking about not being able to fall asleep.
The last couple of times that I couldn’t fall asleep, I just got up to do something else. There’s no point in just laying there in bed, knowing I can’t fall asleep. So here I am, writing in my blog, hoping to get my mind clear and/or tired enough to fall asleep when I try again. I think I like this better than continuing to lie in bed, without accomplishing anything aside from a building of my frustration at continuing to be awake.
I seem to feel a stronger bout of tiredness now … maybe it will overcome the thoughts in my head. I will try again to go fall asleep.
January 21, 2005 at 11:10 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
Riding the Saferide shuttle to Ryan’s apartment tonight, I came across some fine examples of the microcosm that is MIT.
1) In a crowded shuttle, standing space only, a strappin’ young lad squeezes past me in the aisle, knocking me with his bookbag, to beat me to an empty seat.
2) Sitting by himself, apparently bored, a guy intently studies his right forefinger, bending it and straightening it repeatedly. Every once in a while, he will use his left fingers to hold his right forefinger as he continues to bend it and straighten it. Bend. Straighten. Repeat.
3) Said guy above, about 5 minutes later, still sitting by himself, now has his black hat pulled over the entirety of his face. So, imagine a ski mask without the eye holes or the mouth hole, pulled over a guy’s face. When I got up to get off the shuttle (about 5-10 minutes later), he was still sitting there like that.
January 12, 2005 at 2:07 pm · Filed under the internet, site updates
I made some adjustments to my homepage. I think that they are pretty major adjustments, but probably folks who go there won’t realize that a lot of it is different. The gallery pictures have been redone (and will be redone again once I do some more sorting), some incompatibilities with Mozilla Firefox have been fixed (sorry, didn’t do anything for Netscape), and the about page description has been updated. I hope to add a links page some time in the near future as well.
Along with making changes to the site, I thought hard about my page’s Google ranking, which has always been pretty low. Or I should say, has always been inconsistent. My page gets very high Google search results (#3 if you search for shan wu :). However, this is only true for the mirror that is hosted by UVA (which is outdated since I now only upload changes to my domain at www.shanwu.com). My actual domain is not even in the top 100 even, though it exists in Google’s cache. To add to the oddity, Google’s cache for shanwu.com mysteriously points to the URL of my mirrored site as hosted by UVA …
So somehow, Google’s mighty intelligent spiderbot realizes that there are two versions of my webpage on the web. It indexes the version on UVA’s server and essentially ignores shanwu.com. So I’m not really sure what’s going on with Google, but I made some changes that will hopefully knock some sense into Google’s little robot and make it realize that my page is no longer at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~sw9j and if anything, that people.virginia.edu site is a mirror of the MAIN ONE at www.shanwu.com.
Alright, that was a long rant on something pretty nerdy and probably trivially confusing.
January 7, 2005 at 1:58 am · Filed under the internet, life thoughts
I officially deleted my gmail account, actually a while ago. I just thought I’d share, considering all the drama that has gone into it (see gmail). I wasn’t using it enough, and the congestion it created in my inbox was overwhelming … despite its claim of “you’ll never want to use folders again!” … well, in my case, it was kinda like … “gmail, think again … i like my folders.”
You know, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have no inhibitions, tie-downs, etc., but I’m sure everyone wishes that. What would it be like if I didn’t really have to do work and could just play everyday? What would it be like if I can say whatever I want to whomever I want whenever I want? Then wouldn’t everything be awsome? Or chaos? Oh well, I guess we still should keep our inhibitions, motivations, self-discipline … and they’re necessary to get anywhere in this world.
I’m debating whether or not to start a path into residence life again … HROL was a pretty tramatic experience. As much as I liked the Lawn, I would much rather have lived there as a simple resident, and I think those who lived on the Lawn 2003-2004 would have benefited from a better Head Resident … so why would I ever consider going back into residence life? I don’t know … maybe because I hate myself? I’m currently considering filling out the application to be an RA in an undergrad dorm … which the RA equivalents here are all graduate students. And I wouldn’t even have to feel guilty for not enforcing policy because policy wouldn’t really be quite my job. Anyway … I don’t want to apply unless I’m sure I wouldn’t mind, or I’m sure I wouldn’t tire of, of taking on the responsibility … and I’m not sure I’m ready to say that yet. However, I don’t really have much time left seeing as how the application is due on January 28, AND I need 2 references … so I better get my act together if I still want to be a decently strong candidate.
January 6, 2005 at 1:47 am · Filed under life updates
I’ve been back for a couple of days now, and I have to say that it’s pretty rockin’. It is a little strange to be back and not have classes, and not have classes for an entire month, but hey, I got used to it back at Governor’s School :) There’s not even a big Colloquium at the end of the month to have to prepare for, so sweet!
So I’m going to be a health nut this month and hopefully get myself to a good start for a good year of staying in shape. I have yoga class (yeah, can you believe it?) twice a week on Monday & Wednesday evenings, and for Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I plan to go to the pool and swim. The original plan is to swim on Saturday, too, but I may not get that motivated.
Research wise, I’m just going to be going into the lab/office everyday and try to get somewhere productive this month before having to drop it all until summer time.
Not official New Year’s resolutions, but I guess the idea is there.
