Well, what I said I would do... It didn't happen. We did end up working on Visual Story. We came up with a whole new concept (yikes!). At least it is more managable. We shot 2 of the scenes tonight. We have a lot to shoot tomorrow and then edit before it is due on Wednesday. That is why I have to be at work at 9am.

Tonight I stayed home and avoided more of that and Animateering because I wanted to get my overdue papers done. I ended up just procrastinating them more. Now I'm going to attempt the very risky stunt of waking up early to do it. That works before deadlines but since I don't really have one anymore I'm not sure it will. On the other hand 6 1/2 hours will be more than I got last night (2 1/2) and I don't really have other time this week because of how much I have left to do on Animateering and how little time. I can barely believe it.

I think I will be very proud and happy with whatever we end up with at the end of this, under the circumstances. Although I'm worried about whether we'll be able to make that include all the things we said we'd have done by then, and really should. If I had the semester to do over again I wish I could have done a lot of the work sooner or had more spare time. I'm not sure if that was just poor planning and procrastination or just the unavoidable outcome of a tough semester and project constraints.

Between coming back from a vacation, this beautiful weather, and the fact that I'm dropping out of MIT after this semester anyway, I'm really unmotivated to do work. School work specifially. In fact I'm quite motivated to be active and get things done now that spring is here. I'm ready to turn over a new leaf and really try to make something of myself. Yet I have no desire to work on all the many projects I have stacked up against me in my 2 classes.

On Thursday I go away again, but until then I have a Sensors problem set, a 15 minute paper presentation in Ambient Intelligence, and a project update to give for that class as well as work that needs to be done on the project. After I get back, I've got tough projects for both classes to do, and a couple more paper presentations.

I wish I could just quit now, and move right now to Pittsburgh and get started. I suppose I probably could, technically, but I think the right thing to do is still to finish at least this semester that I started, especially the project that Alex is depending on me to help with.

To start off, skating didn't happen. :-( The rink was closed due to a technical problem with their new refrigeration system. That was kind of dissappointing, but hopefully they will open so and we will be able to reschedule. I hope everyone who was planning on coming this week will be able to come when we really go. It was really sounding like it was going to be a lot of fun, with all the people I got to go. It really surprised me how many friends I have, and how many of them are girls. I never realized that before, and it really drives home the point that I need to find myself a girlfriend. Obviously there can't be anything that wrong with me, because it isn't like I'm some total social outcast, but still I have been single all my life. Speaking of which, I saw this magazine article about nerds actually being mildly autistic in a friend's IM profile. Scary.

Speaking of IM profiles, and the real title of this entry, I wrote a little web application this week that allows you to include a link in your IM profile that will show a personalized message, in the profile, to different people on your buddy list. It also tracks who clicks the link. It was Sabrina's suggestion, but I can't believe I really did it. If you want to use it, it is designed to be not just for me so check it out. Yeah, that's what life has been like for me the past week. I have been working on these silly little projects instead of the work I have to do. Besides AIM Personal Away Messages, I did the website and bbGallery updates I mentioned last week, and I have 2 more things that I might end up doing soon.

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For those of you who haven't seen my schedule... So I'm officially insane I think. I do too much. I wish I could deal with classes. I really envy people who can. I should be writing a paper now, but no, no I'm not. I wish I could be a good student, because I always had friends that were and I never felt good enough for them. But I just can't get into my classes. I don't really care about them. Everything else I do is just so much more enriching and rewarding. Why do I even have to take classes? Somes I wish my teachers would realize that the other stuff that I do is actually much more important than their class and cut me some slack, but that won't happen.

Speaking not being able to get into my classes, I finally got into my computer engineering class. Funny story. I got 101 on the first exam. It was supposed to be out of 100 but problem 1, which was supposed to be out of 35 points, if you added up the parts, was actually worth 36. Apparently the TA's noticed it when grading but thought it wouldn't matter because no one would get 101. I did and apparently there was some pressure on the grader of the last problem to take off points so I wouldn't. Anyways, in class all the TA's are giving me shit about it, and the professor decides to announce to the class that someone got 101 and then look around the room for me. Luckily he didn't see me, even though I was right in front of him in the second row where I always sit. So after the class I go up to him and ask him, "So can I be the class now?" He laughed and told me that there must be an open spot in some other section and go talk to Dean Kale and get in but still go to my lab section with my partner.

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well, that basically says it. Not that I would know or anything, because I have been getting so little of it done lately. If I come home in the evening, for dinner let's say, and plan to go back to work, well it just won't happen. And then I end up playing or watching video games. I detest video games and I'll tell you why. Besides being a waste of my time, most of them are ridiculous. I'm at a place now in my professional career where I know enough about entertainment experiences and game design to know that most games are designed poorly. When I play Star Fox, forget about the ludicrous story about a fox and dinasaur planet and all those crazy items (see the penny arcade about Star Fox), why do I need to see a representation of the controller on the screen and buttons popping up over people's heads. How is that supposed to help immersion? And I should never hear a character say the words "control stick". There are games where what they make you do and what you have to figure out is too challenging or random. And then there are the games that I'm just plain bad at. Nothing is original. 3d has ruined some very good games.

Enough about games. When working on this website I lost a bunch of work including all of my pictures from the beach party. I'd be pissed except that the ones of the setup didn't come out well and the ones of the people, well, let's just say I'm not going to miss them. So I'm only mildly annoyed about that.

School. See, even when writing about work videogames distract me, let alone when I'm actually trying to do it.

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