Not even kidding. Last night I dreamt that I was on some sort of island full of folks that were trying to recolonize some abandoned island. And Jason was there. Jason from Friday the 13th. Hockey mask Jason. And I got to fight him! Not like hand-to-hand, but I used a rocket launcher to obliterate him.
I'm not shocked my dream was violent. I was downtown last night and as I was going home, I saw some sort of "business" happening a block up. I figured it was a bunch of guys being stupid, but I had no idea how stupid. By the time I got up there, 4 guys were running away after shouting "I just beat your ass so you better stay down". The guy on the ground who had obviously just been beat to a pulp was bleeding from his mouth and his eye. What amazed me is that this guy was no fighter: he was small, maybe 135 pounds, and not a fit 135. And I could see in his eyes that he didn't exactly have the eye of the eagle. This poor guy was jumped by 4 assholes who beat him senseless, probably for no good reason.
What bugs me was that there were no cops around. All the cops were probably set up to catch underage drinkers with fake IDs. I'm sure arresting sorostitutes is a profitable venture, but what happened to "Protect and Serve"? Odds are that a report will be filed, and even with descriptions, no arrests will be made. The cops in this town are good at one thing: paperwork.
In other news, I have tests coming up, a paper topic to figure out, a class presentation to plan out, and a friend in the Neuroscience lab needs some help with some software. I'll be a busy little bee for a couple weeks. That's why I'm glad I was able to relax last night, with the exception of the assault. We did a "family dinner" at Rob's house with Rob, George, Brittany, and Christine. I brought over homemade spaghetti sauce. There were appetizers, garlic bread, caesar salad, and mixed drinks. It was nice.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Damn it
I started writing a long rant about how angry I am, but I deleted it. Here's the long and short of it: The detective who told me he "found my stuff" when he busted a drug dealer who had my gun was talking too fast. He didn't call me back for the last month because there was nothing to report. The stuff he found wasn't mine, it just looked a little bit like my junk and it was in proximity to the gun they found. So I'll get back my gun, but nothing else. They asked the drug dealer where he got it, and he gave them a name and a location on the person who traded him the gun for cocaine. And that's it. No more follow-ups. The cops are apparantly not pursuing the guy who traded a firearm for drugs, despite having a name and a location on the guy. The detective has completely dropped the ball.
So that was how I spent my day: playing phone-tag with apathetic cops. My day was spent thus because I woke up today sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. My eyes were too swolen and my breathing was too labored to ride my bike into school. I need to get my homework to Dr. Williams and buy some beers for my Historical friends so I can find out what material I missed.
Suffice it to say, I'm disappointed. I was looking forward to getting my toys back.
At the very least, I discovered what causes my respiratory issues. I have to keep my house better ventilated. During the winter, I didn't turn the heat on, I just ran a space heater. The cold, after all, is good for my computers. Not running the AC has kept the air in this place uncirculated and stagnant, swarming with dust. With the window in the bathroom open and the screen door shut on the carport, the air was fresher and I'm breathing better.
There was one little scare. My darling little kitten discovered she is limber enough to jump up to the window in the bathroom, five feet off the ground. I heard the sound of frantic leaping, and found my princess perched half-way out the window. She may have just been taking a look. After all, it's a solid ten feet to the ground outside. But it was still quite scary. The window is still open and Sabrina hasn't made any further bids for freedom. I'll ensure that the window stays shut when I leave the house.
So tomorrow I'll be playing phone-tag with the evidence cops in the ACCPD. I'll also be going to buy the little miss some new cat food and beef-flavored dental treats. They're good for her teeth and she loves them. And she's roughly a year old now if the dates on her adoption paperwork are accurate, so I'm going to move her up to the 1yr+ food and take her off the kitten stuff. I hope that (a) she likes it and (b) it doesn't play with her digestive tract. She gets a little gassy, and isn't so adorable in those moments.
I'll go into the office early in the morning to make up for missing work tomorrow. I'll try calling the cops in the afternoon after class to see about getting my gun back, then I'll hit Pet Supplies Plus.
In the back of my mind, I wish that I had something more epic or inspiring to talk about besides disappointment and my cat's diet. Kinda sad. The instant I win the Nobel Prize, meet a wonderful new woman, or rescue an endangered species from a sinking/burning battleship, I shall report as such immediately.
So that was how I spent my day: playing phone-tag with apathetic cops. My day was spent thus because I woke up today sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. My eyes were too swolen and my breathing was too labored to ride my bike into school. I need to get my homework to Dr. Williams and buy some beers for my Historical friends so I can find out what material I missed.
Suffice it to say, I'm disappointed. I was looking forward to getting my toys back.
At the very least, I discovered what causes my respiratory issues. I have to keep my house better ventilated. During the winter, I didn't turn the heat on, I just ran a space heater. The cold, after all, is good for my computers. Not running the AC has kept the air in this place uncirculated and stagnant, swarming with dust. With the window in the bathroom open and the screen door shut on the carport, the air was fresher and I'm breathing better.
There was one little scare. My darling little kitten discovered she is limber enough to jump up to the window in the bathroom, five feet off the ground. I heard the sound of frantic leaping, and found my princess perched half-way out the window. She may have just been taking a look. After all, it's a solid ten feet to the ground outside. But it was still quite scary. The window is still open and Sabrina hasn't made any further bids for freedom. I'll ensure that the window stays shut when I leave the house.
So tomorrow I'll be playing phone-tag with the evidence cops in the ACCPD. I'll also be going to buy the little miss some new cat food and beef-flavored dental treats. They're good for her teeth and she loves them. And she's roughly a year old now if the dates on her adoption paperwork are accurate, so I'm going to move her up to the 1yr+ food and take her off the kitten stuff. I hope that (a) she likes it and (b) it doesn't play with her digestive tract. She gets a little gassy, and isn't so adorable in those moments.
I'll go into the office early in the morning to make up for missing work tomorrow. I'll try calling the cops in the afternoon after class to see about getting my gun back, then I'll hit Pet Supplies Plus.
In the back of my mind, I wish that I had something more epic or inspiring to talk about besides disappointment and my cat's diet. Kinda sad. The instant I win the Nobel Prize, meet a wonderful new woman, or rescue an endangered species from a sinking/burning battleship, I shall report as such immediately.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Cold, Rainy Days
I'm sitting here in my office watching the lights twinkle on the 3 computers, 2 monitors, and 19 external harddrives as files get backed up and transferred left and right. A few minutes ago, I meandered out of my windowless 3rd floor office and happened by a window, which I immediately rested my forehead against and peered out of.
It's raining. Not so hard to call it a storm, but not so slightly to call it a drizzle. And I could tell with my forehead pressed against the glass that it is cold out there.
Today is the sort of day you want to stay home and curl up with someone you care about while you watch movies and eat popcorn. The only part of that equation I have is the movies part. They're saved on an external harddrive here in the lab. BUT, I'm not home. I have no popcorn. And finally, I'm single. Yep. I'm spending this cold, rainy Sunday held up in my lab, all by myself, doing work for a paper I'm not a coauthor of. *sigh*
I'll probably bail in a little while. I'll hit the grocery store and at least solve that no-popcorn problem. Doubtfull that last problem will get solved at Publix, but who knows? The woman of my dreams might be trying to find the gallon of milk with the best date on it right now, at this very moment. In all likelihood this hypothetical lady is thousands of miles away, though. :(
It's raining. Not so hard to call it a storm, but not so slightly to call it a drizzle. And I could tell with my forehead pressed against the glass that it is cold out there.
Today is the sort of day you want to stay home and curl up with someone you care about while you watch movies and eat popcorn. The only part of that equation I have is the movies part. They're saved on an external harddrive here in the lab. BUT, I'm not home. I have no popcorn. And finally, I'm single. Yep. I'm spending this cold, rainy Sunday held up in my lab, all by myself, doing work for a paper I'm not a coauthor of. *sigh*
I'll probably bail in a little while. I'll hit the grocery store and at least solve that no-popcorn problem. Doubtfull that last problem will get solved at Publix, but who knows? The woman of my dreams might be trying to find the gallon of milk with the best date on it right now, at this very moment. In all likelihood this hypothetical lady is thousands of miles away, though. :(
To sleep, perchance to dream
I slept most of the day yesterday. I finished up in the lab everything I could. I set a shit-ton of data transfers to go, and then I left around 10:00am. When I got home, I figured that none of the transfers would finish for at least five hours, so I had plenty of time to sleep. My head hit the pillow and I was out. Around 5pm, I woke up and acted as if I was going to go back to the lab and keep working, but my nose started acting up (probably due to the weather change) and two benadryl later, I'm asleep once again.
I slept until midnight. Yes, midnight.
So total, I must have gotten about 12 hours of sleep yesterday. The odd thing was that I can remember some of my dreams. I hardly ever remember my dreams. Not sure why I do now.
In one dream I was going through an empty house, or rather, I think it was being shown to me because I was considering living there. The house had a weird layout. The kitchen was in the basement, and the basement had a back door leading into the back yard where there was a very dirty pool. But the door was just an old screen door that I felt like I could push my hand right through if I tried. The pool was dirty, so I put some bleach into it to clean it up, and like magic, the dirty water became clear again.
Another dream, I sware this is true, I was fighting ogres and monsters in a very Lord of the Rings style. It was pretty cool, but fierce. I was being chased by them and running into more as I fled, killing all that I could. I think I was using a broad sword (one-handed) and an axe in the other, just slicing through everything in my path. My hair was a little shorter than it is now, I was clean shaven, and I had on a bunch of armor and thick leather and such. No helmet.
I think this is when I started waking up because I had another dream where I was doing something boring... I can't remember what exactly, but I remember having the thought "Man, I sure would rather be killing monsters right now." It wasn't like it was a lucid dream where I was transported back to the battle field, however. Would have been cool if that was what happened, but it didn't.
Generally, the only dreams I remember are a few of the ones that I seem to have over and over again. One is where I'm in some sort of psycho Disney World sort-of park that has an old stone church in the middle that is locked up. Another is much happier in tone, but more curious because I'm in this place where there are these enormous houses up on top of the rolling grass-covered hills that seem to be miles apart. I'm not sure if I ever go inside any of them, but I do remember going across those hills with the wind blowing.
It makes me sad that I don't think I've ever had the "flight" dream, but I have had the "falling" dream that wakes you up suddenly. Maybe that was me trying to fly and it didn't work out so well.
I've been wasting time doing nothing for about 4 hours, since midnight, since I woke up, so I think I'll shower and actually GO to the lab now. I have things to do. The way I figure it, if I don't go to sleep until about 8 or 9pm tonight, then I'll be able to right my sleep schedule. So I'll go to the office and get as much stuff done as I can, then I'll come home and spend time cleaning and doing household duties until I can't stand it. Then, exhausted, I'll hit the sack. Nice, huh?
I slept until midnight. Yes, midnight.
So total, I must have gotten about 12 hours of sleep yesterday. The odd thing was that I can remember some of my dreams. I hardly ever remember my dreams. Not sure why I do now.
In one dream I was going through an empty house, or rather, I think it was being shown to me because I was considering living there. The house had a weird layout. The kitchen was in the basement, and the basement had a back door leading into the back yard where there was a very dirty pool. But the door was just an old screen door that I felt like I could push my hand right through if I tried. The pool was dirty, so I put some bleach into it to clean it up, and like magic, the dirty water became clear again.
Another dream, I sware this is true, I was fighting ogres and monsters in a very Lord of the Rings style. It was pretty cool, but fierce. I was being chased by them and running into more as I fled, killing all that I could. I think I was using a broad sword (one-handed) and an axe in the other, just slicing through everything in my path. My hair was a little shorter than it is now, I was clean shaven, and I had on a bunch of armor and thick leather and such. No helmet.
I think this is when I started waking up because I had another dream where I was doing something boring... I can't remember what exactly, but I remember having the thought "Man, I sure would rather be killing monsters right now." It wasn't like it was a lucid dream where I was transported back to the battle field, however. Would have been cool if that was what happened, but it didn't.
Generally, the only dreams I remember are a few of the ones that I seem to have over and over again. One is where I'm in some sort of psycho Disney World sort-of park that has an old stone church in the middle that is locked up. Another is much happier in tone, but more curious because I'm in this place where there are these enormous houses up on top of the rolling grass-covered hills that seem to be miles apart. I'm not sure if I ever go inside any of them, but I do remember going across those hills with the wind blowing.
It makes me sad that I don't think I've ever had the "flight" dream, but I have had the "falling" dream that wakes you up suddenly. Maybe that was me trying to fly and it didn't work out so well.
I've been wasting time doing nothing for about 4 hours, since midnight, since I woke up, so I think I'll shower and actually GO to the lab now. I have things to do. The way I figure it, if I don't go to sleep until about 8 or 9pm tonight, then I'll be able to right my sleep schedule. So I'll go to the office and get as much stuff done as I can, then I'll come home and spend time cleaning and doing household duties until I can't stand it. Then, exhausted, I'll hit the sack. Nice, huh?
Friday, March 13, 2009
Special Delivery
I went on a little bit of a spending binge, buying books and computer parts. The computer parts are going towards a media PC I'm going to build for my parents. It'll be loaded with the three terabytes-and-change of digital media I have: music, movies, TV series, cartoons, anime... The list goes on.
I also got myself a little item to aid in safe backups. It's a docking station for SATA drives. It's not an external enclosure. No no. You take a regular internal drive and drop it in the slot and turn it on. Now I can just keep a stack of 1TB drives that all my data is back up on. And in other news, my replacement safe just came in this week, so I can keep the stack of drives in their in case of fire or theft.
I only wish the Detective who told me he found my stuff would call back. I've been trying to reach him for a week now. Homeboy doesn't return voicemail messages. I'd like to know what of mine he recovered from the drug dealer's house.
I also got a student-discount version of Visual Studio 2008. I'm not sure if I want to put it on my big desktop or if I want to put it on my little laptop. After all, my little laptop is the PC I take back and forth to work with me. BUT, I'd rather have VS2008 on my big computer here at home. Maybe I can get Dr. K to get a copy for one of the work PCs.
There's also a butt-load of books on the way from Amazon:
- Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind
- Robot Programming : A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics
- Connectionist Natural Language Processing
- Neural-Symbolic Learning Systems
- Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar
- Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology
Clearly, these won't be read until Summer. Quite frankly, I wish I had a whole semester off to read. Just read! I think I'd learn a lot more than I do sitting through classes, plucking out the parts I find useful as I go along.
I mean, seriously. I feel like the happiest time I spent learning was my last semester at the University of Florida when ALL I was doing was working for housing and working on my senior design project. It took several months, but I taught myself Prolog and created a program that solves rubiks cubes. Maybe it'll be like that again this summer when I'm working on my AI thesis and studying for my oral exams. Maybe that'll be what PhD research is like someday. We'll see.
At some point I need to fix my sister's computer. I've got two old 500gb drives to throw in there and load up with media for her. But I ought to just throw the thing in the garbage after the caniption she threw when I got robbed. Seriously. My apartment was broken into, my cat could have been hurt, and thousands of dollars of my junk was stolen... ...and she threw a FIT because I needed to use the phone and the computer to reschedule my flight and coordinate things with the police, my landlord, my catsitters, etc. etc. But nooooo. She needed the computer to chat with her friends online. I was floored. Her selfishness was astounding.
But I built her this computer, and despite her egocentrism, she's still my sister. It needs fixing because she let some stupid boy screw with it. Now it's infected with viruses and spyware. So it needs fixin. And it's up to me.
In other news, I know it's Friday night and Spring break, but I was intending to go into the office to get some work done today. BUT AGAIN, thanks to my vampire sleep schedule, I feel asleep at 9am and woke up at 5pm. So I'm going to go into the lab tonight, pack a lunch, and stay there until all my work is done. That ought to be enough to keep me awake through tomorrow night. Then I'll go to sleep Saturday night and get my sleep schedule back on track.
So I'm going to shower up and get the hell out of dodge. I'll pack a few sandwhiches and pick up dinner on the way over there. I'm sure I've got enough Mt Dew to make it through the next 24 hours. At least I hope so.
I also got myself a little item to aid in safe backups. It's a docking station for SATA drives. It's not an external enclosure. No no. You take a regular internal drive and drop it in the slot and turn it on. Now I can just keep a stack of 1TB drives that all my data is back up on. And in other news, my replacement safe just came in this week, so I can keep the stack of drives in their in case of fire or theft.
I only wish the Detective who told me he found my stuff would call back. I've been trying to reach him for a week now. Homeboy doesn't return voicemail messages. I'd like to know what of mine he recovered from the drug dealer's house.
I also got a student-discount version of Visual Studio 2008. I'm not sure if I want to put it on my big desktop or if I want to put it on my little laptop. After all, my little laptop is the PC I take back and forth to work with me. BUT, I'd rather have VS2008 on my big computer here at home. Maybe I can get Dr. K to get a copy for one of the work PCs.
There's also a butt-load of books on the way from Amazon:
- Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind
- Robot Programming : A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics
- Connectionist Natural Language Processing
- Neural-Symbolic Learning Systems
- Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar
- Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology
Clearly, these won't be read until Summer. Quite frankly, I wish I had a whole semester off to read. Just read! I think I'd learn a lot more than I do sitting through classes, plucking out the parts I find useful as I go along.
I mean, seriously. I feel like the happiest time I spent learning was my last semester at the University of Florida when ALL I was doing was working for housing and working on my senior design project. It took several months, but I taught myself Prolog and created a program that solves rubiks cubes. Maybe it'll be like that again this summer when I'm working on my AI thesis and studying for my oral exams. Maybe that'll be what PhD research is like someday. We'll see.
At some point I need to fix my sister's computer. I've got two old 500gb drives to throw in there and load up with media for her. But I ought to just throw the thing in the garbage after the caniption she threw when I got robbed. Seriously. My apartment was broken into, my cat could have been hurt, and thousands of dollars of my junk was stolen... ...and she threw a FIT because I needed to use the phone and the computer to reschedule my flight and coordinate things with the police, my landlord, my catsitters, etc. etc. But nooooo. She needed the computer to chat with her friends online. I was floored. Her selfishness was astounding.
But I built her this computer, and despite her egocentrism, she's still my sister. It needs fixing because she let some stupid boy screw with it. Now it's infected with viruses and spyware. So it needs fixin. And it's up to me.
In other news, I know it's Friday night and Spring break, but I was intending to go into the office to get some work done today. BUT AGAIN, thanks to my vampire sleep schedule, I feel asleep at 9am and woke up at 5pm. So I'm going to go into the lab tonight, pack a lunch, and stay there until all my work is done. That ought to be enough to keep me awake through tomorrow night. Then I'll go to sleep Saturday night and get my sleep schedule back on track.
So I'm going to shower up and get the hell out of dodge. I'll pack a few sandwhiches and pick up dinner on the way over there. I'm sure I've got enough Mt Dew to make it through the next 24 hours. At least I hope so.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Where The F#!% Is Matt?
Watch this video and I dare you to tell me this world isn't a beautiful place to live in. Quite frankly, it inspires me to defend us at all costs in the event of an alien invasion.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
My Brain Is Very Strange
Once again, I'm not sleeping. I don't have a clue why I sleep so irregularly these days. It could be latent stress or a subtle indication that I need to structure my life better. Who knows?
In this late/early hour, I can only sit and hope I get tired and distract myself in the process. I watched "Brain Smasher: A Love Story" and now I'm watching Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." Somewhere in this bizarre movie marathon I find my brain thinking on non-monotonic reasoning, aka, defeasible logic and the implications it has on aspirations for true artificial intelligence.
For the longest time, we've been trying to get computers to be like us: we want them to be intelligent. Well think about that. Computers, as they're built now, are nothing more than symbolic logic systems. Zeros and ones, put in distinct patterns, shuffle data values that, at their core, are also zeros and ones. Mid-level abstractions of the 0's and 1's are commands/rules that are executable line by line. Zero or one? True or false? These concepts are at the core of all computers.
True and false. That's logic in a nut shell. We like to think that with tools as powerful as deduction, predicate calculus, peano arithmetic, blah blah blah, that we have the tools necessary to describe things such as concepts and ideas... knowledge! And we've had some no-shit success stories. These successes have given birth to entire sub-disciplines of AI like Expert Systems and Knowledge Representation.
Well THERE is my beef. The representation of knowledge, as we do it now (most commonly) is inherently logical. Rule based. It's still a basic facet of linguistics that our syntax can be 'adequately' described with basic axioms and recursive rules. That's the rub. Just because we CAN describe aspects of our intelligence logically, with rules, with facts, quite literally SPELLED OUT, certainly does NOT mean this is the way it should be done.
Sounds all well and good, yes? So where is my problem? Well consider a logical system. It has to be deductively sound and valid. The true things are true, the false things are false, and everything is consistent with eachother. There's no such thing as a deductively valid system that holds both P and not-P. Furthermore, a given logic system won't let me introduce a new fact or a new rule that is not consistent with the rules and facts that it already contains. For example, if the logic system contains the rule "Birds fly" and "Penguins do not fly", the damn thing will simply not allow me to tell it "A penguin is a bird."
Quick interjection: I think the beast was better looking before he got turned back into a human.
Yikes, right? Right. If I threw "A penguin is a bird" into my already sound and consistent knowledge base, then it would forward-track through its rules with this new fact and deduce "Penguins fly." But then it would have the facts "Penguins fly" and "Penguins do not fly" which will cause it to blow up (fail).
Well shit. Ok. Here we are on the edge of reason, quite literally. One of my favorite professors, Dr. Nute, was the father of the logical solution to this problem. It's called defeasible logic or non-monotonic reasoning where it is possible to have rules that are always true, rules that are usually true, and rules that are true under different circumstances. So that when one course of deduction leads to an explosion (failure), we backtrack and try again with another rule that may let us keep our knowledge base consistent. Cool, yes?
Yes, it is cool.
But what the fuck, people? Seriously? I mean, this sounds about right, doesn't it? Defeasible logic. Exceptions to rules. Default rules and alternatives. Isn't this the way we would describe our thought processes? Hell. Even the Closed World Assumption, another basic premise of logic, fits with our way of thinking. If we have no evidence that something is true, then it must be false. In other words, if I don't have a fact or a rule that asserts "Penguins can fly" I must assume they can't. This is called negation by failure. If asking about the truth or falsity of the premise "Penguins can fly" or the premise "Bigfoot is a fabulous dancer", then coming up with ZILCH, we assume that penguins CAN'T fly and that Bigfoot has two left big feet. In this case we would be right, of course.
Like I said, it all sounds groovy. All this 'adequately' describes the way we think, right? Rules. Facts. Predicated knowledge. True and false (one and zero).
Let's take a survey: How many people out there have ever cut into a sheep's brain? Relax, it was for a class. I didn't hop a fence in at a sheep farm with a buzz saw and a surgical kit. I studied all sorts of neurological structures, most of which have several names, and most of which we have some incling about their functions. We have mapped out areas responsible for vision, language, muscle control, sensory input, and yes, to a certain extent, MEMORY.
A cry out to all you neuroscientists: point out to me the part of the brain where all of these facts and rules are systematically stored, i.e., take a a scalpel and cut to the part in the brain where the "food is good" predicate is stored. It would be especially helpful if Mother Nature left them in there to find in either a numbered or a bullet-pointed list. Keep it nice and organized.
Well you can't! Our brains are connectionist models, aka, neural networks. The processing is parallel, not serial (as it is with computers and logic systems). When we have a thought or a memory or recall a fact or drive a car, we don't have to traverse a list of stored knowledge, ignoring the information that is inapplicable until we finally hit the bit of information we want. Nuh-uh.
Defeasible logic is one HELL of a great way to get around the problem. My brain can wrap itself around the Penguin issue without blowing up. At least I hope so. Well why then am I so worked up this earl/late? Easy. Just because we DESCRIBE our knowledge and language etc etc etc (adequately) in terms of rules and facts (as if they're stored in the knowledge base of our minds), that doesn't mean THAT is how they are stored! Or executed, for that matter.
We're stumbling around, frantically trying to define new systems of logic that account for the simplest of counter examples to the working theories we have. To that I say TOUGH SHIT. We may be barking up the wrong tree here. Sure, we've gotten incredible results with knowledge based systems as they are described. But what about the Penguin case? What about US? To put it bluntly, the penguins don't blow our minds. I'm going to sleep just fine (eventually) knowing that "Birds fly", "Penguins can't fly", and "Penguins are birds."
I think it was Penrose who said any parallel process can be "flattened out" in time. By that, it is simply a cold hard truth that life is just a series of moments. He was trying to get at the fact that any parallel process, when examined at the smallest increments in time, can be defined serially, because inarguably at the SMALLEST increments of time, no two events occur at precisely the same moment.
So do it. Crack open a skull and put your right index finger on their stored knoweledge.
Where is it in the brain that knowledge is stored serially and logically? AGAIN, like I've said a hundred times, just because we can 'adequately' DESCRIBE a phenomenon a certain way doesn't mean that duplicating it will. We need to process parallel in a given AI system, or suffer for it. I think Penrose would do better to argue that our current logical systems (computers) are adequate platforms for the simulations of neural networks and connectionist models, not that just because we CAN flatten things out that we necessarily SHOULD.
So if there is any hope, any hope AT ALL, our knowledge representation and ESPECIALLY our knowledge bases of facts and rules that we don't question must be somehow encoded into neural networks... I'm not entirely sure how to do this just yet, but I'm willing to take a stab at it. I just need to figure out how to standardize a list of predicates into a training data set. In the meantime, I need to clean off my buzz saw and apologize to the sheep farmer.
In this late/early hour, I can only sit and hope I get tired and distract myself in the process. I watched "Brain Smasher: A Love Story" and now I'm watching Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." Somewhere in this bizarre movie marathon I find my brain thinking on non-monotonic reasoning, aka, defeasible logic and the implications it has on aspirations for true artificial intelligence.
For the longest time, we've been trying to get computers to be like us: we want them to be intelligent. Well think about that. Computers, as they're built now, are nothing more than symbolic logic systems. Zeros and ones, put in distinct patterns, shuffle data values that, at their core, are also zeros and ones. Mid-level abstractions of the 0's and 1's are commands/rules that are executable line by line. Zero or one? True or false? These concepts are at the core of all computers.
True and false. That's logic in a nut shell. We like to think that with tools as powerful as deduction, predicate calculus, peano arithmetic, blah blah blah, that we have the tools necessary to describe things such as concepts and ideas... knowledge! And we've had some no-shit success stories. These successes have given birth to entire sub-disciplines of AI like Expert Systems and Knowledge Representation.
Well THERE is my beef. The representation of knowledge, as we do it now (most commonly) is inherently logical. Rule based. It's still a basic facet of linguistics that our syntax can be 'adequately' described with basic axioms and recursive rules. That's the rub. Just because we CAN describe aspects of our intelligence logically, with rules, with facts, quite literally SPELLED OUT, certainly does NOT mean this is the way it should be done.
Sounds all well and good, yes? So where is my problem? Well consider a logical system. It has to be deductively sound and valid. The true things are true, the false things are false, and everything is consistent with eachother. There's no such thing as a deductively valid system that holds both P and not-P. Furthermore, a given logic system won't let me introduce a new fact or a new rule that is not consistent with the rules and facts that it already contains. For example, if the logic system contains the rule "Birds fly" and "Penguins do not fly", the damn thing will simply not allow me to tell it "A penguin is a bird."
Quick interjection: I think the beast was better looking before he got turned back into a human.
Yikes, right? Right. If I threw "A penguin is a bird" into my already sound and consistent knowledge base, then it would forward-track through its rules with this new fact and deduce "Penguins fly." But then it would have the facts "Penguins fly" and "Penguins do not fly" which will cause it to blow up (fail).
Well shit. Ok. Here we are on the edge of reason, quite literally. One of my favorite professors, Dr. Nute, was the father of the logical solution to this problem. It's called defeasible logic or non-monotonic reasoning where it is possible to have rules that are always true, rules that are usually true, and rules that are true under different circumstances. So that when one course of deduction leads to an explosion (failure), we backtrack and try again with another rule that may let us keep our knowledge base consistent. Cool, yes?
Yes, it is cool.
But what the fuck, people? Seriously? I mean, this sounds about right, doesn't it? Defeasible logic. Exceptions to rules. Default rules and alternatives. Isn't this the way we would describe our thought processes? Hell. Even the Closed World Assumption, another basic premise of logic, fits with our way of thinking. If we have no evidence that something is true, then it must be false. In other words, if I don't have a fact or a rule that asserts "Penguins can fly" I must assume they can't. This is called negation by failure. If asking about the truth or falsity of the premise "Penguins can fly" or the premise "Bigfoot is a fabulous dancer", then coming up with ZILCH, we assume that penguins CAN'T fly and that Bigfoot has two left big feet. In this case we would be right, of course.
Like I said, it all sounds groovy. All this 'adequately' describes the way we think, right? Rules. Facts. Predicated knowledge. True and false (one and zero).
Let's take a survey: How many people out there have ever cut into a sheep's brain? Relax, it was for a class. I didn't hop a fence in at a sheep farm with a buzz saw and a surgical kit. I studied all sorts of neurological structures, most of which have several names, and most of which we have some incling about their functions. We have mapped out areas responsible for vision, language, muscle control, sensory input, and yes, to a certain extent, MEMORY.
A cry out to all you neuroscientists: point out to me the part of the brain where all of these facts and rules are systematically stored, i.e., take a a scalpel and cut to the part in the brain where the "food is good" predicate is stored. It would be especially helpful if Mother Nature left them in there to find in either a numbered or a bullet-pointed list. Keep it nice and organized.
Well you can't! Our brains are connectionist models, aka, neural networks. The processing is parallel, not serial (as it is with computers and logic systems). When we have a thought or a memory or recall a fact or drive a car, we don't have to traverse a list of stored knowledge, ignoring the information that is inapplicable until we finally hit the bit of information we want. Nuh-uh.
Defeasible logic is one HELL of a great way to get around the problem. My brain can wrap itself around the Penguin issue without blowing up. At least I hope so. Well why then am I so worked up this earl/late? Easy. Just because we DESCRIBE our knowledge and language etc etc etc (adequately) in terms of rules and facts (as if they're stored in the knowledge base of our minds), that doesn't mean THAT is how they are stored! Or executed, for that matter.
We're stumbling around, frantically trying to define new systems of logic that account for the simplest of counter examples to the working theories we have. To that I say TOUGH SHIT. We may be barking up the wrong tree here. Sure, we've gotten incredible results with knowledge based systems as they are described. But what about the Penguin case? What about US? To put it bluntly, the penguins don't blow our minds. I'm going to sleep just fine (eventually) knowing that "Birds fly", "Penguins can't fly", and "Penguins are birds."
I think it was Penrose who said any parallel process can be "flattened out" in time. By that, it is simply a cold hard truth that life is just a series of moments. He was trying to get at the fact that any parallel process, when examined at the smallest increments in time, can be defined serially, because inarguably at the SMALLEST increments of time, no two events occur at precisely the same moment.
So do it. Crack open a skull and put your right index finger on their stored knoweledge.
Where is it in the brain that knowledge is stored serially and logically? AGAIN, like I've said a hundred times, just because we can 'adequately' DESCRIBE a phenomenon a certain way doesn't mean that duplicating it will. We need to process parallel in a given AI system, or suffer for it. I think Penrose would do better to argue that our current logical systems (computers) are adequate platforms for the simulations of neural networks and connectionist models, not that just because we CAN flatten things out that we necessarily SHOULD.
So if there is any hope, any hope AT ALL, our knowledge representation and ESPECIALLY our knowledge bases of facts and rules that we don't question must be somehow encoded into neural networks... I'm not entirely sure how to do this just yet, but I'm willing to take a stab at it. I just need to figure out how to standardize a list of predicates into a training data set. In the meantime, I need to clean off my buzz saw and apologize to the sheep farmer.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Overwhelming Odds
With midterms blissfully over, I was officially on spring break as of 4pm yesterday. I mean, I've still got a lot of work to do, but I don't have to go anywhere at any specific time, which is nice.
I went home yesterday, padded around for about an hour, got some Chinese takeout, and then as soon as my head hit the pillow I was dead to the world. I woke up to a phonecall from George to go downtown with him and a small contingent of boys on the prowl. I drove. Spent most of the night swigging Red Bull. Otherwise, again, I would have been comatose. One of the guys actually picked up a woman at a bar... But I still maintain that her age was questionable. Not that she was jailbait. Quite the contrary, actually.
I'm not a frequenter of downtown as it is. MAYBE I'll go downtown once a week if I'm not too exhausted. This time was interesting in that, as far as I could see, the number of guys out last night outnumbered the women at least 3:1. I think the ladies could sense it, too. They stayed in groups and kept moving. Linger in one spot for too long and the jungle predators will attempt to pick off the weakest (drunkest) in the group. The mataphor is far more appropriate than I can adequately describe: I really felt like an impartial observer for a National Geographic documentary on TLC.
I'm shocked I had as much fun as I did, though. It's been a VERY long time since I've gone downtown with a group of guys who have the same collective thought: "Chicks, dude. CHICKS." I mean, usually when I go downtown, I go to relax and have a laugh. This was different. This was primal. THE HUNT. Well, it was as primal as it could be with text messages and iPhones.
After the night was over, I fully expected to collapse and sleep for 17 hours. Not so much. I was still awake until the sun came up. It must have been the Red Bull. So I spent a little time reflecting on girls and boys, guys and gals, men and women, ladies and gentleman, chicks and douchebags. It may have been that 3:1 ratio which put me in such a discouraged mindset, but damn. Is dating really a viable possibility for me anymore?
Finding a girl you like is easy enough, but history has taught me that simply caring for someone is insufficient to maintain something meaningful. There has to be more. Ok, ok, ok. Granted, I'm not going to meet the woman of my dreams downtown so I ought not let last night skew my perspective. HOWEVER, it does bring up the question "Where the hell DO guys like me meet women?"
It actually reminds me of something that one of my professors, Dr. Hammond, said to me once. He said that as we go through college and then grad school, moving through Masters degrees and PhDs, post-docs, yadda yadda... What occurs is that we're slowly but surely adding "more teeth to our cognitive gear-works" and that as we keep moving, it gets progressively harder and harder to find someone else that our gears can mesh with. I mean, the metaphor is ridiculously funny.
Q: "Tony, why are you still single?"
A: "I've got too many teeth on my gears."
...
It's ridiculously funny, but it's spot-on. Let's review. I'm an Air Force brat who has moved more often than a mafia target. My undergrad degrees were in Computer Science and Philosophy. My grad education is Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, I've got an insatiable interest in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience, and I'm shopping around for Robotics PhD programs. I enjoy riding my motorcycle, going to the shooting range, screwing with my computers, and watching movies that I haven't seen in over a decade (which, I just realized, are mostly solo activities). I'll listen to a single song on REPEAT for hours on end. And while I admire the style and class of others, I have very little of my own as I wear the standard uniform of jeans and a black leather jacket almost every day.
So I submit to the void of the internet: where is the woman whose gears mesh with mine? I sincerely doubt she's at Buddah Bar, Loft, or Barcode. Buddies of mine I've discussed this with think that the key is to simply find a girl who is as intelligent and beautiful as possible, and the other details can be worked out later. To be perfectly honest, I know lots of ladies who are both very smart AND very pretty, but I hypothesize a relationship and I just don't see it working out(for sometimes very obvious reasons).
I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel and accepting the fact that my cat is the only woman in my life who loves and understands me. ;)
I went home yesterday, padded around for about an hour, got some Chinese takeout, and then as soon as my head hit the pillow I was dead to the world. I woke up to a phonecall from George to go downtown with him and a small contingent of boys on the prowl. I drove. Spent most of the night swigging Red Bull. Otherwise, again, I would have been comatose. One of the guys actually picked up a woman at a bar... But I still maintain that her age was questionable. Not that she was jailbait. Quite the contrary, actually.
I'm not a frequenter of downtown as it is. MAYBE I'll go downtown once a week if I'm not too exhausted. This time was interesting in that, as far as I could see, the number of guys out last night outnumbered the women at least 3:1. I think the ladies could sense it, too. They stayed in groups and kept moving. Linger in one spot for too long and the jungle predators will attempt to pick off the weakest (drunkest) in the group. The mataphor is far more appropriate than I can adequately describe: I really felt like an impartial observer for a National Geographic documentary on TLC.
I'm shocked I had as much fun as I did, though. It's been a VERY long time since I've gone downtown with a group of guys who have the same collective thought: "Chicks, dude. CHICKS." I mean, usually when I go downtown, I go to relax and have a laugh. This was different. This was primal. THE HUNT. Well, it was as primal as it could be with text messages and iPhones.
After the night was over, I fully expected to collapse and sleep for 17 hours. Not so much. I was still awake until the sun came up. It must have been the Red Bull. So I spent a little time reflecting on girls and boys, guys and gals, men and women, ladies and gentleman, chicks and douchebags. It may have been that 3:1 ratio which put me in such a discouraged mindset, but damn. Is dating really a viable possibility for me anymore?
Finding a girl you like is easy enough, but history has taught me that simply caring for someone is insufficient to maintain something meaningful. There has to be more. Ok, ok, ok. Granted, I'm not going to meet the woman of my dreams downtown so I ought not let last night skew my perspective. HOWEVER, it does bring up the question "Where the hell DO guys like me meet women?"
It actually reminds me of something that one of my professors, Dr. Hammond, said to me once. He said that as we go through college and then grad school, moving through Masters degrees and PhDs, post-docs, yadda yadda... What occurs is that we're slowly but surely adding "more teeth to our cognitive gear-works" and that as we keep moving, it gets progressively harder and harder to find someone else that our gears can mesh with. I mean, the metaphor is ridiculously funny.
Q: "Tony, why are you still single?"
A: "I've got too many teeth on my gears."
...
It's ridiculously funny, but it's spot-on. Let's review. I'm an Air Force brat who has moved more often than a mafia target. My undergrad degrees were in Computer Science and Philosophy. My grad education is Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, I've got an insatiable interest in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience, and I'm shopping around for Robotics PhD programs. I enjoy riding my motorcycle, going to the shooting range, screwing with my computers, and watching movies that I haven't seen in over a decade (which, I just realized, are mostly solo activities). I'll listen to a single song on REPEAT for hours on end. And while I admire the style and class of others, I have very little of my own as I wear the standard uniform of jeans and a black leather jacket almost every day.
So I submit to the void of the internet: where is the woman whose gears mesh with mine? I sincerely doubt she's at Buddah Bar, Loft, or Barcode. Buddies of mine I've discussed this with think that the key is to simply find a girl who is as intelligent and beautiful as possible, and the other details can be worked out later. To be perfectly honest, I know lots of ladies who are both very smart AND very pretty, but I hypothesize a relationship and I just don't see it working out(for sometimes very obvious reasons).
I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel and accepting the fact that my cat is the only woman in my life who loves and understands me. ;)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
PhD Application List
I'm still sleepless, don't know why, watching another Bond film. So I decided to peg down, exactly, what schools are going to be in my FIRST round of PhD applications. As per the advice given to me by my friend Peter in philosophy, I'm not screwing around. I'm going to send out at least 15 applications, maybe more, next fall. Most application deadlines are December 15th, so I have between now and then to get them all done.
As you can see, I'm trying to stay in the US. After all, I have a cat, a car, a motorcycle, and a LOT of computers and stuff. I don't want to do an international move if I can avoid it. The only place I *may* be willing to do that for is Scotland.
Here is the list, in no particular order of preference. I'd be very happy to go to any of these places. Surely one of them will take me, I hope.
1. MIT - Computer Science, Cognitive Machines group
http://www.media.mit.edu/cogmac/
2. University of Colorado, Boulder - Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience
http://ics.colorado.edu/grad/joint_phd.html
3. Johns Hopkins - Department of Cognitive Science, Robotics Research Lab
http://web.jhu.edu/cogsci/PhD_Program/goals.html
http://lcsr.jhu.edu/Education/Graduate
4. Cornell - Computer Science, Cognitive Science Minor
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Research/ai/index.htm
http://www.cogstud.cornell.edu/grad.php
5. Berkeley - Computer Science, Computational Cognition Lab, Robotics
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/Areas/AI/
6. Stanford - Computer Science, Robotics Lab
http://robotics.stanford.edu/
7. Carnegie Melon - Robotics, Neural Basis for Cognition
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri_static_content.html?menu_id=321 http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri_static_content.html?menu_id=327
8. Edinburgh - Neuroinformatics and Computational Neuroscience
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/dtc/index.php
9. University of Texas @ Austin - Computer Science, Robotics Research Group
http://www.robotics.utexas.edu/rrg/
10. University of Southern California - Robotics PhD
http://www-robotics.usc.edu/?l=Education:index
11. University of Utah - Robotics PhD
http://robotics.eng.utah.edu/
12. University of Maryland - Computer Science PhD, AI focus areas
http://www.cs.umd.edu/Grad/catalog.shtml
13. Brown University - Computer Science, AI focus areas
http://www.cs.brown.edu/grad/phd/
http://robotics.cs.brown.edu/index.html
14. UMass Amherst - Computer Science, Robotics
http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/
http://www.cs.umass.edu/grads/overview
15. Vanderbilt - Center for Intelligent Systems
http://eecs.vanderbilt.edu/CIS/cisHome.shtml
http://eecs.vanderbilt.edu/programs#grad
16. Georgia Tech - Robotics PhD Program
http://www.robotics.gatech.edu/index.php/academics/phd-program.html
As you can see, I'm trying to stay in the US. After all, I have a cat, a car, a motorcycle, and a LOT of computers and stuff. I don't want to do an international move if I can avoid it. The only place I *may* be willing to do that for is Scotland.
Here is the list, in no particular order of preference. I'd be very happy to go to any of these places. Surely one of them will take me, I hope.
1. MIT - Computer Science, Cognitive Machines group
http://www.media.mit.edu/cogmac/
2. University of Colorado, Boulder - Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience
http://ics.colorado.edu/grad/joint_phd.html
3. Johns Hopkins - Department of Cognitive Science, Robotics Research Lab
http://web.jhu.edu/cogsci/PhD_Program/goals.html
http://lcsr.jhu.edu/Education/Graduate
4. Cornell - Computer Science, Cognitive Science Minor
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Research/ai/index.htm
http://www.cogstud.cornell.edu/grad.php
5. Berkeley - Computer Science, Computational Cognition Lab, Robotics
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/Areas/AI/
6. Stanford - Computer Science, Robotics Lab
http://robotics.stanford.edu/
7. Carnegie Melon - Robotics, Neural Basis for Cognition
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri_static_content.html?menu_id=321 http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri_static_content.html?menu_id=327
8. Edinburgh - Neuroinformatics and Computational Neuroscience
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/dtc/index.php
9. University of Texas @ Austin - Computer Science, Robotics Research Group
http://www.robotics.utexas.edu/rrg/
10. University of Southern California - Robotics PhD
http://www-robotics.usc.edu/?l=Education:index
11. University of Utah - Robotics PhD
http://robotics.eng.utah.edu/
12. University of Maryland - Computer Science PhD, AI focus areas
http://www.cs.umd.edu/Grad/catalog.shtml
13. Brown University - Computer Science, AI focus areas
http://www.cs.brown.edu/grad/phd/
http://robotics.cs.brown.edu/index.html
14. UMass Amherst - Computer Science, Robotics
http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/
http://www.cs.umass.edu/grads/overview
15. Vanderbilt - Center for Intelligent Systems
http://eecs.vanderbilt.edu/CIS/cisHome.shtml
http://eecs.vanderbilt.edu/programs#grad
16. Georgia Tech - Robotics PhD Program
http://www.robotics.gatech.edu/index.php/academics/phd-program.html
Traction Control
To start this off on a good note, I've been on a binge of movies starring Pierce Brosnan this weekend: "The Laws of Attraction," "The Thomas Crown Affair," and a string of Bond films. I'm happy to report that the Halloween boxset and the Omen boxset have finished, putting my sinister little collection somewhere in the neighborhood of 750. Sabrina is sleeping on my chest and purring like a chainsaw. How she manages to rest her chin on her back paws astounds me. That would be like me sleeping comfortably with my nose pressed to my ankles.
We had a much-welcomed Snow Day today. I used it to catch up on my Adger reading and play around with Linux distributions at home. It was nice to hang around the house, not really doing anything, wearing a baggy pair of sweatpants and a 12 year old Superman shirt full of holes.
The snow was very pretty, but my motorcycle was buried under about six or seven inches of snow, which today, turned into slush, which tonight has frozen into a layer of ice... This worries me. Such a thing used to happen in Northern VA when I lived there: it would snow like crazy, get juuuust warm enough to turn it into slush, and the following night (a night like tonight) it would drop down to 20F and turn the roads into a lovely, shimmering, slippery pane of glass. We used to call weather instances like this "ice-overs."
It's 27F now. They're putting it at 21F by 5-6am. Grrr...
I am supposed to be at the lab for a staff meeting at 11am. I'm certainly NOT going in on my motorcycle. Ignoring the fact that the engine is encased in a block of ice right now, I'm not going out onto an icey road with only two wheels of traction. In a car, if one wheel loses traction, you've got three others to keep hold of the road. If you lose one wheel of traction on a bike, you're SOL. You might as well be riding a unicycle at 35mph.
It would thrill me beyond belief if school was cancelled again tomorrow, or if the staff meeting was rescheduled. My evil master plan to camp out in the lab this weekend and work was derailed by the inclement weather. Saturday turned into a laundry/housecleaning day. If I had known it was gonna snow, I would have made THAT the lab day and turned Sunday and Monday into the laundry/housecleaning days. So I don't have half the things done I wanted to get done in time for the staff meeting, ESPECIALLY considering the midterms and massive amount of homework due last week.
So I don't wanna get up tomorrow. I'm going to limp my way in to campus in the Tahoe and hopefully find a parking spot at a meter that I can keep feeding during the day. That means I'm going to need a bunch of quarters... Despite my better judgement, I'll drag myself in tomorrow, feeding quarters to the downtown Athens meter-maids (aka, the Yellow Envelope Parking Nazis).
I may try to go in early, driving slowly, and give myself a couple hours to get the tape drive working on the RHEL machine in the lab, but I doubt it.
My sleep schedule has been pretty out of whack recently. I don't have an explanation. I'm not writhing in mental turmoil. I'm not doing anything constructive. I'm tired, just sleepless. Something's up. I can feel it. What's up, I have no idea. I described it before as feeling a great disturbance in the Force. I've been up later and later, sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night, but always managing to get up and get to class on time. Midterms had an affect obviously, but it's been going on longer than that. That's how Satuday turned into a house-day: I went to bed semi-early Friday night and slept until 3pm. That didn't help.
Generally, when it comes to sleep, I'm the master of my own destiny. I've kept my Mt Dew and coffee in-take regulated so that I can sleep when I need to and so I can stay up when I need to. The system is broken right now, however. Gotta get a grip.
We had a much-welcomed Snow Day today. I used it to catch up on my Adger reading and play around with Linux distributions at home. It was nice to hang around the house, not really doing anything, wearing a baggy pair of sweatpants and a 12 year old Superman shirt full of holes.
The snow was very pretty, but my motorcycle was buried under about six or seven inches of snow, which today, turned into slush, which tonight has frozen into a layer of ice... This worries me. Such a thing used to happen in Northern VA when I lived there: it would snow like crazy, get juuuust warm enough to turn it into slush, and the following night (a night like tonight) it would drop down to 20F and turn the roads into a lovely, shimmering, slippery pane of glass. We used to call weather instances like this "ice-overs."
It's 27F now. They're putting it at 21F by 5-6am. Grrr...
I am supposed to be at the lab for a staff meeting at 11am. I'm certainly NOT going in on my motorcycle. Ignoring the fact that the engine is encased in a block of ice right now, I'm not going out onto an icey road with only two wheels of traction. In a car, if one wheel loses traction, you've got three others to keep hold of the road. If you lose one wheel of traction on a bike, you're SOL. You might as well be riding a unicycle at 35mph.
It would thrill me beyond belief if school was cancelled again tomorrow, or if the staff meeting was rescheduled. My evil master plan to camp out in the lab this weekend and work was derailed by the inclement weather. Saturday turned into a laundry/housecleaning day. If I had known it was gonna snow, I would have made THAT the lab day and turned Sunday and Monday into the laundry/housecleaning days. So I don't have half the things done I wanted to get done in time for the staff meeting, ESPECIALLY considering the midterms and massive amount of homework due last week.
So I don't wanna get up tomorrow. I'm going to limp my way in to campus in the Tahoe and hopefully find a parking spot at a meter that I can keep feeding during the day. That means I'm going to need a bunch of quarters... Despite my better judgement, I'll drag myself in tomorrow, feeding quarters to the downtown Athens meter-maids (aka, the Yellow Envelope Parking Nazis).
I may try to go in early, driving slowly, and give myself a couple hours to get the tape drive working on the RHEL machine in the lab, but I doubt it.
My sleep schedule has been pretty out of whack recently. I don't have an explanation. I'm not writhing in mental turmoil. I'm not doing anything constructive. I'm tired, just sleepless. Something's up. I can feel it. What's up, I have no idea. I described it before as feeling a great disturbance in the Force. I've been up later and later, sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night, but always managing to get up and get to class on time. Midterms had an affect obviously, but it's been going on longer than that. That's how Satuday turned into a house-day: I went to bed semi-early Friday night and slept until 3pm. That didn't help.
Generally, when it comes to sleep, I'm the master of my own destiny. I've kept my Mt Dew and coffee in-take regulated so that I can sleep when I need to and so I can stay up when I need to. The system is broken right now, however. Gotta get a grip.
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