I spent 2.5 hours in physics lab last Wednesday trying to do online Mastering Physics. I didn't attend my 2:30 class at all (it's video recorded, so it's okay). I used the 3pm to 4pm time slot to study for the midterm in my 4pm class. I was able to get most of the physics homework done. Practically everyone in there was in my class and they came and went based upon their schedules. There's this one guy who's in my class who helps people but he's not a tutor. I always think it's strange for a person to be able to help people in their current class. They're learning it at the same time as everyone else, right? Josh, who is a tutor, stayed longer than he had to in order to help. He's also the lab assistant in a lot of the 143 physics labs. He's only one level above us and is a physics major.

Most people have trouble comprehending the physics concepts because they contradict much of their direct observations of the physical world. Take Kenneth, for example. He's a biochemistry major who has taken 400-level chem classes and passed but is failing intro physics. He said that he was so annoyed in lab this week that people probably thought he had Tourette's Syndrome. I have trouble with physics because I suck at math. I have no problem with the concepts. As usual, I'm an oddity.

We had a quiz last Thursday and I, once again, got a "C". If you miss even one question you end up with a "B". Like the first quiz, I missed two out of seven. One of the problems needed the radius for a calculation and he gave us the diameter, which threw off practically everyone. We just saw a number and decided to plug it into an equation. I'm not sure if I would have gotten it correct even if I noticed that he gave us the diameter instead of the radius. There was a test on Thursday over chapters 5-8. I hated chapter 5, but 7 and 8 weren't too bad. He said that the "hump" of the course was probably chapter 5. I didn't actually start studying until the night before. I downloaded a practice quiz from Blackboard and tried to work through it. I gave up pretty quickly because the last thing I wanted to do that night was physics. The test had a lot of questions from the practice test so if I'd actually worked through it and gotten help with the ones I didn't get, everything would have been great. As it was, I first did all the problems that didn't require me to use math (about a quarter of them) and then guessed on the others. The problems I tried to calculate the answers for went badly so I gave up. I had a dream the night before where I said "screw it" to the physics test and I carried that with me into the actual test. I probably got a under 60% this time, but two of the questions I guessed the answer for on the last test I got right, so I don't know. I know that if I hadn't screwed up two easy questions that I would have received a "B".

I should take physics 243 next semester, which is one of the physics courses I actually need for computer science. I took 143 as a prerequisite for 243, which is just 143 with calculus. The lecture and lab options are all in the afternoon, which is great. I'm not sure if that will be the case next Fall. I need to take the honors seminar eventually, but I don't like the guy who's teaching it next semester. Usually the dean teaches it. Dr. Thum had a point, though, which she said I should take it next semester as it doesn't conflict with anything. That may not be the case the following winter.

I decided to enter the new BS/MS program so I should take a grad class next semester. The only one I can feasibly take is computer architecture because I'm currently taking the undergrad one. I haven't even taken undergrad courses in the same subject as the other available grad courses. The cost of the grad courses as a participant in this program is the same as the undergrad courses (for me, the undergrad upper-division rate). That's a difference of $120 per credit hour.

I'm thinking about buying another laptop only because I have the money. Well, mine will be five years old in April, the CD/DVD drive works off and on, and it weighs 12 pounds, but everything else is okay. I have a 2.3 GHz processor with 64-bit architecture that I've never fully utilized because I don't have a 64-bit operating system (XP 64-bit wasn't released when I bought my computer). I recently upgraded my memory to 1.5 GB (literally 1024 + 512 = 1,536 GB) and could possibly reach 2GB (2,048 GB) by disassembling my computer to reach the second memory module (the maximum slot memory size is 1GB). My hard drive is 100GB, with 89 GB actually accessible by the OS. Currently, I have 4GB free. Seriously. I can fix that by transferring some stuff to my mother's hard drive through the network connection or by buying a bigger hard drive, though. My video card has dedicated memory but it's only 64 MB. It has pixel-shader technology, though (not sure if it's 1.0 or 2.0). I wouldn't be able to play Fable or Black and White otherwise. I was looking at the minimum system specs for The Sims 3 and the video card is short 64 GB. I don't even have enough free hard drive space. I plan to stick with The Sims 2 for a little while longer, though, since there are expansion packs I never bought and I'll play it again as soon as my CD drive decides to read discs again. It did about three weeks ago. I could buy an external one but I have two cats and dangling cords are in danger around them.

But since my laptop is still adequate for most things, I feel guilty for even thinking about buying another one no matter how much I want one. It's a waste of money and resources. I don't want to become one of those people who buy things just because they can. Intel has this article claiming that people should buy a newer computer so that they can watch HD video online. Yes, they think it's that important. The ability to do this is as much dependent on your ISP and the number of simultaneous viewers as it is on your hardware. I can stream video just fine. Personally, I'd rather download it. I think it's very amusing how people complain that a 6 lb laptop is too heavy. To me, it's light as a feather because mine weighs twice as much. It's like they weren't around three years ago when they weighed more.

I have to take note of minimum processor specs for Windows 7. I want to be able to run XP virtualization mode available in the Ultimate, Professional, and Enterprise editions that they claim no one needs but business people and IT developers, but your processor has to have virtualization technology (from CNet). AMD processors need AMD-V while Intel processors need Intel VT. I lean towards AMD because I haven't had a computer with an Intel processor since about 2000. Unfortunately, most pre-built computers have an Intel processor. Even Macs have them. It's also hard to find a computer with a dedicated video card that doesn't cost more than what it's worth. I refuse to buy a computer with Intel integrated video. I paid $1300 for my current computer to avoid that (and for the 64-bit processor that's proven useless). When the card is integrated, it has to share memory with the processor, which means that you have less general purpose memory for everything else. Video cards with onboard memory only do this when they need more than what they're equipped with.

I received a 70/100 on my first physics test. While I'm happy I, at least, passed, I messed up easy questions. That's because when a problem involves math my brain usually refuses to make sense of it. One of the questions I got wrong was a displacement problem. "A dog runs 3.0 km due east and then 4.0 km due north. What is the magnitude of the dog's displacement?" I drew a picture like a good little student and ended up with a right triangle. Instead of seeing this and thinking, "I need to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the length of the hypotenuse" I added the legs of the triangle and ended up with 7.0 km. Of course, that common wrong answer was one of the answer choices. The answer is actually 5 since 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2. What's ironic is that whenever I see a force diagram I immediately use trig on it. I forgot that the same concepts from later chapters can apply to problems from chapter 1.

Another one was unit conversion. I have problems with this because I remember screwing this up constantly in high school. I would always end up using the long and complicated method of conversion because I could manage to find the correct answer. "A bin has a volume of 1.5 m^3. The volume of the bin in ft^3 is closest to: a) 53, b) 41, c) 59, d) 47, e) 35." I got this one wrong because I wrote down 1.1 m^3 at the start of the conversion instead of 1.5 m^3. Getting this one right would have earned me a score of 75/100.

The third problem I got wrong on the very first page was "Which of the following is a vector quantity? a) Temperature, b) Speed, c) Position, d) Time" This was just carelessness. I chose "speed" because I was thinking velocity, but speed itself is a scalar. I knew the answer wasn't "temperature" or "time" because they have no direction automatically associated with them. That would have left me with only "position," which is distance over time.

Getting these three problems correct would have earned me an 85/100, which is much better. Oddly enough, I got the entire second page correct and I guessed on, at least, two of them. I completed the practice test the night before but Dr. Grafe didn't put up an answer key for it, so I was doubtful about my answers to about a third of the questions. What's the point of a practice test if you can't find out whether or not your answers are right? I discovered later that he doesn't make an answer key available because many of the same problems end up on the real test. The practice test was from Spring semester so it was likely we would be seeing them again.

I always feel like I'm barely passing in math class except for Discrete Structures last winter. I managed an A or a B on all the tests. I attribute this to the fact that Dr. Bix is the best math teacher in existence. I can count the number of times I've received an A on a math test since elementary school with both hands.

Why am I majoring in computer science, you may ask? That's okay; everyone asks when I tell them that I really, really dislike math. There is nothing else I can imagine myself majoring in except English or Philosophy. I can't understand why someone wouldn't want to major in computer science.

Agile development is a software engineering method. It's when you don't plan a software project more than a week or two (at most, a month) into the future because you anticipate the requirements changing a lot. There are many complete development cycles (from figuring out the requirements to deployment) but only a little bit of the system is completed at the end of each cycle. That way, when the requirements change, you can either easily alter the code or throw away only a small portion of the finished product.

Dr. Farmer made a comparison between agile development and planning a course schedule. He said that most people don't plan out their entire college career in advance. Rather, they wait until courses are listed for the upcoming semester and only plan for said semester.

Things don't always work that way. Especially if you attend a school where your major isn't popular.

I've planned as far as two years in advance due to the way upper-level computer science courses are offered. There are only about a few hundred majors and a handful of faculty members. Many of the upper-level courses are only offered once per year unless the business-oriented computer science majors need it as well (CS for people afraid of math and physics). Sometimes, these courses even conflict with each other. I made a flow chart with every required course linked to its prerequisite and successor course(s). I later removed some elective courses that sounded interesting due to the improbability that they'd be offered any time within the next two years.

It's theoretically possible to complete the computer science degree at UM-Flint in four years but I'm not sure if anyone's actually done it. The vast majority of majors attend at least five years even as full-time students. Prompt completion solely depends on the level of the math courses you took in high school as you would be required to take calculus as a Freshman. As my high school didn't have anything higher than intermediate algebra (partially because the school was small and partially because reaching basic geometry is a great accomplishment around here), I was "disadvantaged" from the start.

Even after all of this planning, I still hit bumps in the road. I took discrete mathematics and had to drop the course. I could have taken calculus II and probably would have passed because one of the really good math teachers taught it the same semester. I took him the very next semester for discrete math and passed. I decided to take calculus II this semester and had to drop it. Of course, I took the very same teacher whose class I had to drop before, but she was the only one I could take and the course is a prerequisite for networking I, which is only offered once per year during winter semester. I'll be taking it again next semester, with the good teacher (of course). Thus, I have wasted two semesters. You make one mistake and you'll probably be thrown off, at least, a year.

I might be able to take networking. My argument will be "I was there for two weeks, so I know how to do integration...sort of. Please let me in the class."

This is what happens when you're a science major whose mind resists math comprehension.

There's an example in my physics book about catching paper money in free-fall. It might be true for non-US currency, but it would have to be the same length and thickness as a standard US bill. If you hold a bill by an upper corner between two fingers (thumb and forefinger), and have someone else place two of their fingers at the bottom edge of the bill (without actually touching it), and the first person lets go, the second person shouldn't be able to catch it by just closing their fingers and not moving their hand downward. The book said to tell them they can keep it if they catch it. However, "the bill's free-fall will keep your money safe." I tried this with myself and was able to. I'm not sure if it's because I play a lot of video games and, therefore, have a better reaction time, or if it's because I knew when the bill started to fall.

On Mastering Physics there's a problem like this, but the second person holds their fingers near the center of the bill. How long does the bill need to be (in centimeters) in order for person #2 to have a good chance at catching it? A typical reaction time (in this case) is 0.20 seconds. When I actually measure a bill, it's 15.5 cm. When I do the problem, I get 19.6 cm. Is this because I did the calculations wrong, or is it because, in the Mastering Physics world, a US bill is 19.6 cm long? Even if I get it right, I'm only going to get 50% credit. I don't even get extra credit for not using hints because I don't have the chance to use hints due to it being late. My "punishment" should be the point reduction, not hint removal. And it's not even my fault I didn't complete it on time, it's the professor's for getting behind in the lecture.

I didn't complete the problem because every answer I input was wrong. Finally, I asked for the answer. It was 39 cm. After inputting it into the equation V=∆x/∆t with the reaction time (V=39cm/0.2s) I got 195 cm/s, which is what I got when using the acceleration equation A=∆V/∆t (-9.8m/s²=∆V/0.2s). I know know it's because I didn't multiply by the reaction time twice. Acceleration is m/s/s and I needed the displacement (x). Acceleration is the second derivative of displacement. I know this now, but on a test (the first of which is this Thursday) I'm going to get it wrong. All the quizzes/tests are multiple choice because there are over a hundred people in the class and that's not a good thing. You can't get any partial credit and I have a feeling that Dr. Grafe will always have a choice on the test that will match an answer you'll get if you did the problem wrong. Then it becomes more about how well you can use an equation than if you understand a physics concept.

For example, on our recent quiz, there were two that could easily trip someone up (once of which I got wrong). Question #2 on Test B was: "Which of the following SI base unit does not have a lab-reproducible definition?" a) the second; b) the kilogram; c) the meter. My first instinct was to circle "the second" because I remember him talking about the lack of a real definition for time for about five or six minutes ("Time is what a clock measures."). I finished early so I looked over my notes and the answer was "the kilogram" since it's based on a specific artifact in France. Question #3 was "Which of the following situations is impossible?" a) An object has velocity directed east and acceleration directed west; b) An object has velocity directed east and acceleration directed east; c) An object has constant non-zero acceleration and changing velocity; d) An object has constant non-zero velocity and changing acceleration; e) An object has zero velocity but non-zero acceleration. I chose letter "e" but the answer turned out to be letter "d". The object in "e" is accelerating from rest. The object in letter "d" is moving to the left or right at a constant speed but the acceleration is supposedly changing. If the acceleration changes, the velocity has to change as well. It can't be constant.

I decided that I need to drop math (Calculus II). Last Fall I had to do the same thing (Discrete Math), but it had been after the midterm. The same professor is involved in both cases. In the current class, I was a little worried from the beginning, but the class is a prerequisite for a class being offered next semester. This week was the third week of school. We've taken two quizzes up to this point, the second one on Monday (the 21st). The first quiz could have been countered by a better grade on a later one. The second quiz was a disaster. It wasn't graded until the 22nd, which was the day after the last day a student could add or drop a class without petitioning. I tried to drop math and add philosophy 101 yesterday and was told that I would have to petition. If it was accepted (which I think it will be), I would be responsible for paying for the math class I dropped in addition to the class I added. Since philosophy 101 is a three-credit class, that's an extra $947.55. Calculus is a four-credit, or $1263.40 dollars. I really want to take 101 with the professor I've chosen, and I need to take it since I'm now a philosophy major as well, but $950 is a lot of money. I could appeal the fee for calculus, but I will have to drop it before they will even look at the appeal and I will be below full-time unless I add a class that I might have to end up paying extra for.

Two weeks isn't enough time for a student to decide if they'll be okay in a class or not, especially if the professor doesn't grade things very often. I completed the homework, was able to figure out how to do it thanks to a few Internet websites, and was fairly confident when I took the first (real) quiz. I got two problems incorrect and she almost took off half the total points. I should have learned my lesson when I took her before, but she teaches calculus all the time. She hadn't taught discrete math before. I'd calculated the risk and decided that it was manageable due to the fact that I need to complete the class in order to take networking I next semester. There were two other sections available, but one was at 8 am and the other went through physics. I plan to take it again next semester, but there are only two sections and one of them is being taught by the teacher whose class I need to drop. The other is being taught by a really good professor (I took him for discrete math the second time around and passed), but it's at 9:30am Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Four-credit classes are almost always taught three days per week, but Friday is my free day. I don't like giving it up.

In other news: I'm okay with my other four classes. Computer architecture is interesting and the assignments are manageable. Software engineering II is not as interesting as CA or SE I, and the assignments consist of short essays (1 page, single-spaced for each question), but it's doable. Physics is interesting and I can complete the assignments, but the professor isn't very forthcoming with changes in said assignments. I stayed up late on Wednesday to complete a workbook assignment that was due yesterday only to find out in class that the due date had been extended to next Tuesday. Why couldn't he have e-mailed the class about that? It wouldn't have taken longer than a few minutes. I'm also going to get reduced credit for an online Mastering Physics assignment because I didn't complete it by 4pm on Wednesday (nevermind the fact that I was at school). He was behind in his lecture until yesterday and some of the questions on the assignment were about things he hadn't covered. At least he's giving credit for late online assignments. Previously, he said that he wouldn't. (And I had to pay $45 to be able to access the online homework in the first place.)

The fourth class is the once-a-week honors independent study that I have to take until I finish my thesis. All I'm doing in the class right now is updating my academic/professional documentation (résumé, personal statement, etc.). I will begin the actual thesis sometime soon. I still need to talk to my advisor about it. If it turns out that I'll be unable to get a fee appeal, I'm going to add another credit for this class to keep my standing at full-time. I had to do this last fall after I dropped discrete structures.

I went to lunch last this past Tuesday with three people: Dr. Farmer, one of my CS professors, Dr. Pearson, the chair of the Computer Science/Engineering/Physics dept., and Ms. Pettengill, an officer in the Development and Alumni relations office. It was to honor the fact that I won a Google scholarship. As a result of this lunch, the very next day I went with Ms. Pettengill and Dr. Pearson to UM-Ann Arbor because Google was there to present and recruit. I'd never been to Ann Arbor before because I'd never had a reason to go. On the way back to Flint I had a thought: they recently added another engineering program to the catalog so we have two now: engineering science (which has four tracks) and mechanical engineering. We at UM-Flint are proud of that. If you compare this accomplishment to anything that the Ann Arbor campus does, the difference in scale is very noticeable. They would probably counter with: "We have a new engineering building!" And our engineering programs aren't accredited, so there's that as well.

Ms. Pettengill asked the Google rep if they might come to the Flint campus and the answer was no (although worded more politely). We're probably not big enough to attract major corporations (nevermind the fact that we're only 45 minutes away from Ann Arbor). She said that if we had an alumni who worked for Google then they might be able to send him or her out for a talk. To our knowledge, there is no one. Dr. Pearson told me (jokingly) that I was now obligated to get a job at Google so they could have an alumni who worked there. There are several Ann Arbor grads working for them already. That brought up a major problem the Flint campus has. After people graduate, they rarely tell the university about their accomplishments. They have no idea what most of the alumni are doing. I thought that, perhaps, I could write a PHP script to hunt down alumni based upon their public data (from LinkedIn, Google, Wordpress, etc.), but it'll be awhile before I can work on it. Homework, you know.

The talk featured four Google software engineers who work on various Google projects. Three of them worked in the Chicago office. When we first got there the room was sort of empty. Dr. Pearson said, "We could get this many people to attend on our campus." By the time the talk began, there was standing room only and it was a small lecture hall. We would have been barely able to get half that, and I'm not sure how many software engineering majors there actually are at UM-Flint. Many of the people I know are networking majors because they don't want to code their entire lives. For some reason, most people are under the impression that writing code is all a software engineer does.

Our team won at Geek Trivia after the talk. It was me, Dr. Pearson, and two Ann Arbor students. Our name was "The Team in the Back." :) We didn't win anything special, but I was able to get a Google notebook. We had 50 points total, but it would have been 51 if someone had heard me say "Queen Elizabeth" for the "Which European monarch was the first to have a YouTube channel?" question. I also contributed "Maggie" to the "Who shot Mr. Burns?" question, "red" to the "What color is Milton's stapler in the movie Office Space?" question, and "PageRank" to the "Which algorithm does Google use to order its search results?" (there's an entire Wikipedia article on that, by the way) I was surprised that I was able to answer any of the math questions. "Which function is its own derivative?" Why, e^x, of course.

I'd already heard something about the Ann Arbor job fairs being closed to Flint students but I heard more from a rep from the Career Center on Wednesday. General job fairs are open to UM-Flint students, but we have to pay $20 at the door. The specialized ones (an engineering job fair, for instance) are closed to us. Interviews are always closed to us. Many of the things they have on campus (like the Google visit) are open to the public but we never hear about them. As much as they say that our campus is equal with Ann Arbor's, there's little indication of that actually being true. Even our degrees have "The University of Michigan-Flint" on them instead of just "The University of Michigan". I'm glad I didn't try to attend Ann Arbor, though. It costs over twice as much as UM-Flint, I would have had to live on campus, and there are far too many students. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been accepted even as a transfer student, though. My high school transcript wasn't stellar by any means even though my college transcripts were decent. I also have the impression that they don't care as much about their computer science programs as they do their medical school.

Ms. Pettengill suggested that I keep a blog. I replied that I had a LiveJournal (which I don't consider a blog, for some reason) but there wasn't an actual theme. She said that my theme could now be "the life of a Google scholar." Said life isn't very interesting, let me assure you. I go to school, I come home, I do homework, I sleep, then I repeat. Interspersed throughout is website maintenance, anime-watching, and manga-reading. That's pretty much it.

I've had an unusually large amount of homework these past two weeks and school has barely started. I'm only taking five classes (Calculus II, Physics, Software Engineering II, Computer Architecture, and honors independent study) and 15 credits total. That's pretty common for me. Physics and math are four credits each, the two CS courses are both three, and the independent study is one. Physics is a lot of busy work, basically. We have workbook assignments and online assignments. There's a lab once a week as well that always has a quiz at the end of it. What's helped is that I've taken three more math classes than what is required. It's basic college physics that only needs College Algebra (although some trig is included) and I've taken Discrete Math (which requires Calculus I as a prerequisite). When they talk about velocity-time and acceleration-time graphs, I know that they're the first and second derivatives of a position-time graph. Without having taking Calculus, I would be still trying to figure those out.

Software Engineering II is starting to feel like an English class. Our first homework assignment required us to write two single-spaced 1-page answers, one for each question. The second homework assignment is the same way. In Computer Architecture, however, our assignments are pretty simple. The first one was to discuss a netbook CPU and the second is the write a program to do signed and unsigned binary interpretation. I chose to use Visual Basic since I need to relearn it in order to take Advanced VB for the CIS minor. Unfortunately, I spent three hours yesterday created a program for unsigned and signed binary addition. I restarted over an hour ago and I'm already frustrated. I'm switching to C++ because it's more user friendly. Both software engineering and computer architecture are the same number of credits, the same course level, and are taught by the same teacher, but they have very different workloads.

I'm an INTJ -- Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judging. At least, I think I am. There are some INTJ traits that I don't identify with. I've looked at Wikipedia, Type Logic, The Compleat Idiot's Guide to the INTJ, the Myers-Briggs Foundation, and Socionics.com (different theory but similar lettering). As only, roughly, 1% of the U.S. population is INTJ, you would think that I would want to have a different personality type. As I dislike being even remotely like other people, that is obviously undesirable.

Now that I've made a list, I'm pretty sure that I'm an INTJ after all.

If I were to pick my own type without the aid of a test of some sort, I would pick ISTJ. Intuition requires you to have the ability to see below the surface. In terms of other people, I care little about a person's motivations, especially if they're fueled by emotion. Apparently, I'm 50/50 in terms of Sensing and Intuition (according to the test on this site) so that explains why I'm having issues with this category.

Categories/Dichotomies:
    Extraversion vs. Introversion
    Sensing vs. INtuition
    Thinking vs. Feeling
    Judging vs. Perceiving

I think I'm going to give my journal a "make-over." It's looked this way for about three years now.

I want to become fluent in the Japanese language so I decided to search for websites to help me with that. One of the best ones that I found is The Japan Page, which has games, articles, videos, and other good stuff. However, the best videos I've found online are by Genki Japan. The Japan Shop's videos are also helpful. I have a YouTube account just to bookmark videos. Unfortunately, this looks like I've joined the "Web 2.0 revolution." I detest social networking so you can understand my frustration.

The videos are excellent with helping you to learn vocabulary but that's it. You're essentially learning vocab in a void. Without learning how to construct sentences you have to pantomime when it concerns anything that's not a greeting or a verb. I've taken a Japanese course so I know how to construct basic sentences and am able to figure out to construct more advanced ones. No matter how good you are at remembering what certain words are in Japanese, if you can't use it in a sentence then your skill is pretty useless. I've heard that "Japanese for Busy People" is good if you want to learn how to say useful things like "Where is the bathroom?" (Toire ga doko desu ka. toire = toilet, ga = subject particle, doko = where, desu = sentence ending particle when there's no verb, ka = question marker particle) My sensei used it for a spoken Japanese language course one year.

I found another series of videos called "Pretty Intense Japanese," which are created by a girl who is fluent in the language. Her other (supposed) qualifier is that she's half Japanese. Her videos are different because she gives sentence examples, but she doesn't explain what each part of the sentence means, only what the sentence means as a whole. You might also have a tough time spelling things because the words aren't displayed. Also, her vocab from the first lesson were words a four-year-old would know: neko (cat), ringo (apple), sushi (sushi). Not particularly useful nor very "intense." She also seems insincere because her eyes don't reflect the smile on her face. What I do think is neat (besides the sentences) is the fact that she uses the correct intonation. I wouldn't have been able to tell that she wasn't a native speaker by listening to her.

Author's Note: I apologize in advance if the non-Roman characters don't show up correctly. You may have to have Japanese language support in your operating system. It's free to add for Windows, by the way.

Watashi wa kyou ringo tabemashita. (わたしはきよりんごたべました。) = Today, I ate an apple. Watashi = gender neutral polite "I", particle wa indicates the topic, which is different from the subject (ga); kyou = today, tabemashita is the past-tense affirmative form of taberu (to eat). The way I was taught, there would be an "o" after ringo (to indicate that it's a direct object), but we learned the ultra-polite speech.

Ano neko wa ringo tabemashita. (あのけこはりんごたべました。) = The cat (over there) ate an apple (her meaning: That cat just ate an apple.). Ano = "that" when used directly with a noun (otherwise it's are wa). I would have used "ga" instead of "wa" because the cat is doing something.

Sometimes, while I walk around Georgia Tech's campus, I think about Japanese sentences. I want to know if I can remember how to construct sentences since I took the class in winter 2008. I'm eager to take the next but I can't until winter 2010, unfortunately. I'm going to buy the Rosetta Stone software for the rest (I think just level 3) because the second level courses (intermediate) are hardly ever offered due to lack of interest.

Neko ga toshokan de mimasu. (けこがとしよかんでみます。) = (I) saw a cat at the library. Particle de indicates an action taking place, mimashita is the past-tense affirmative of miru (to see). The "I" is in parenthesis because you can leave it out if talking about yourself. Otherwise it would be Watashi wa neko ga toshokan de mimasu (わたしはけこがとしよかんでみます。).

The grammar is more straightforward than English, which is a plus, and there are usually standardized pronunciations (regional dialect alters things a little). Yes, the writing can be intimidating. Hiragana and Katakana aren't that bad but kanji gets complicated quickly. You don't need to know kanji to communicate in writing, but to read magazines, newspapers, etc. you should know the roughly 2,000 kanji in daily use. I wonder if the Japanese writing would be more simple if China hadn't influenced them with their written characters.

Author's Note: I don't know many kanji. I can recognize a lot more than I can write from memory. I know I (watashi) 私, Japan (Nihon) 日本, Japanese people (Nihon-jin) 日本人, Japanese language (Nihon-go) 日本語 (the language part is excessively complicated), book (hon) 本, tree (ki) 木, forest (hayashi) 林, fire (ka or hi) 火, water (mizu) 水, and person (hito) 人. Book, tree, and forest are remarkably similar to each other as are person and fire. The kanji for "Japan" includes "book" as one of its kanji but I can't remember why.

Something only semi-relevant to the above: Tuesday means "Fire Day" in the Japanese language (Mars is also associated with the day). Tuesday = Kayoubi (火曜日) in Japanese. Wednesday is "Water Day" (also associated with Mercury) but Wednesday in Japanese is Suiyoubi (水曜日) not Mizuyoubi.

And that concludes today's lesson. I may do one about anime names/words and what they mean. This can already be found in multiple places on the Internet, though. Maybe I'll just do the more interesting ones (like Tsukino Usagi). To look at kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana on your own, I recommend a very good (though complex) online dictionary called Jeffrey's Dictionary Server. There's an option to automatically load the kanji and kana (so the terms aren't written in Roman characters at all). I think it's great because it forces you to remember things. The definitions are always written in English. To enable it, click the link in the sentence "If your Netscape does have Japanese support, check here." Then click the first link in the table labeled "try this link." This works for Firefox, Opera, IE 7 (not sure about earlier versions), and probably Safari automatically.

Oh, Wikipedia & Wiktionary have neat Japanese language guides (grammar, particles, and basic words). Kanji and kana are included.

No, these two things have very little to do with each other, but I've been thinking about them both today.

Legitimate Work at Home Opportunities

Yes, they do exist. However, it's my opinion that the odds of finding one when you have absolutely no skills are very low. The scammers prey on desperate people so I would avoid searching for these types of jobs when you really, really need money. That said, I think there are two good ways to identify legitimate opportunities. 1) the job requires a specialized skill such as knowing a language other than English or medical terminology or Java programming; 2) the pay is low ($0.01 per word or $25 per article). The ones that promise you'll make $4,000 per month with little or no training sound too good to be true, don't they? $4,000 per month is $48,000 per year and that sounds like the salary of a job that requires a college degree. If I can make that much upon finally completing my computer science degree I would be content.


Adoption

I can't understand why someone would think that having a biological child must be their original plan. To me, it's cultural conditioning. It's like you're expected to reproduce because you're physically capable of it. If you're not, then it becomes okay to adopt. The adopted child was never your first choice, it's your "last resort choice." Nevermind the fact that there are kids already in existence who need a parent or two.

I think it's interesting that you're required to go through a background check and sometimes take courses before you're allowed to foster or adopt a child but you're not required to do so before biologically reproducing. There are oh so many people who should never become a parent and most of them have gone the reproduction route. It's like entering a profession that you're incompetent at. You're not going to do a good job and other people will suffer because of it.

I read today on Engadget that Dell is changing the name of their female-focused mini-site from Della to Lifestyle because of public criticism. It's a netbook marketing site (a netbook is a notebook computer designed for mobile usage). Since Engadget's community is probably 95% male, the comments consisted almost entirely of bad jokes. The original Engadget announcement on May 11th and the Slashdot May 15th announcement talks about the backlash Dell received about the site and the subsequent changes. On one of the Slashdot reference sites (The New York Times), a female marketing professional (who's only semi-computer literate) is quoted: "If the netbook is great for using the Internet and has a long memory, that would really be about helping netbook buyers get stuff done while they waited at the airport — not because they want to check diet sites." Long memory? Huh? She probably meant "long battery life," although one commenter made a pretty funny observation about netbook memory being physically shorter than tradition desktop memory (because the system case is physically smaller). The new Lifestyle site is here but the design hasn't changed all that much from Della. I think the name "Della" is more accurate than "Lifestyle" because there are only pictures of women on the site.

I admit, I was incredibly annoyed about the site at first. The very idea that females supposedly need a separate and more simple (there's less technical information) site to buy a computer is pretty insulting. But the more comments I read, the better I felt about it. I decided that I should be more upset at the general female population than at Dell. Why? Because there are a lot of females out there who would think Della was a "cute" idea and not feel insulted by Dell placing diet tips and recipes on the "Tech Tips" page (it's now just called "Tips"). They embody the stereotype of the clueless female consumer (when it pertains to anything technological). Dell just took advantage of that fact. The site wasn't meant for females like me who grew up using a computer (and could probably build one from scratch).

Personally, I would never buy a netbook. 1) the screen is too small; 2) it doesn't support enough memory (1 GB); 3) the default hard drive sizes are too small (160 GB max); 4) the processor isn't fast enough (1.6 GHz) nor does it support 64-bit architecture. It's really meant for checking your e-mail or surfing the Web on the go, but why in the world would someone pay $250-$300 for a device that's only meant to accomplish a few tasks? When I buy a computer, I want it to be able to handle graphically-intense or processor-intense games, graphic design programs like Photoshop, and program design. I want it to still be able to adequately run contemporary software 3-4 years after I buy it. One of the arguments for marketing netbooks to women is because they're small ("purse friendly") and lightweight ("less likely they'll break a nail").

And, of course, small things are "cute."