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Carl Jantzen

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Ballroom Dance [Feb. 12th, 2006|11:25 am]
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[Current Mood | good]
[Current Music |Daft Punk - Face to Face]

Alright I've (basically) finalized my schedule for next quarter. My pass time starts Monday morning so chances are none of the classes I want to take will fill up before then.

I also added up all the courses I need to take before graduating to meet the requirements for my major and general education. I need 116 units worth of classes, and I have 10 quarters left at UCSB, so that averages out to 11.6 units per quarter. An "average" courseload is supposed to be 15 or 16 units. So I really don't need to feel bad about only taking 12.5 units Spring quarter.

  • Physics 2: Basic Physics

  • Computer Science 60: Introduction to C, C++, and UNIX

  • Mathematics 5B: Vector Calculus

  • Exercise and Sports Studies 1-16A: Elementary Ballroom Dance


So the anomaly in this schedule is, of course, Ballroom Dance. It is only worth half of a unit, and it doesn't meet a single major or general education requirement. It will, however, teach me how to dance. Hopefully. Which will be good, because it will mean I won't have to say no when people want to take me to cool dances. Emi is also enrolling in the class, so I'll have chances to practice outside of class as well. If the class is enjoyable I might even take Intermediate and Advanced Ballroom in subsequent quarters. We'll see.

Now, in order to fit this dance class in my schedule I did have to make a major sacrifice: every tuesday and thursday I have my physics lecture at 8 in the morning. Now, to be fair, I will very rarely actually attend said lecture, but it will be a pain getting out of bed to take the midterm.

So overall my schedule is quite light. This is good because it should allow me more free time, and also more time to work. I've been working much less this quarter because of my current schedule, so it'll be nice to get back in there and make more money again.
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"Your smile could save our movie and the world" [Feb. 8th, 2006|02:44 pm]
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[Current Music |Barenaked Ladies - Sell Sell Sell]

I bought my tickets; I'm officially going to New York.

I'll be staying with Emi at her house in Basking Ridge, NJ. We'll spend a lot of time in NYC, though, and possibly even drive to DC one day, which I think would be very exciting.

Part of spring break will also be spent in Norcal, though. I hope to get to spend some time with my families, as well as with Allie and my other friends. Maybe we'll even get some RP in! Who knows.

It's really hot today. 79 degrees. I don't like the heat. It'd be one thing if I were wearing shorts and lying out on the beach right now, but I'm here, cooped up at work. Bummer.

EDIT (3:18 PM): Just checked the weather again; it says we'll be hitting 83 degrees today. This is ridiculious.
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SuprGlu [Feb. 6th, 2006|01:49 pm]
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[Current Mood | energetic]
[Current Music |Thievery Corporation - Until the Morning]

I know this idea has been tossed around for a while, and I've personally been (just a tiny tiny bit) involved with the development of Rhyzomatic, but today I just signed up for SuprGlu, which seems like a pretty convenient way just to see all of my most recent contributions to the web. Check it out.

PS: I'm wearing sandals today.
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Beach! [Jan. 30th, 2006|03:31 pm]
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[Current Mood | good]
[Current Music |The Offspring - Original Prankster]

Right now I'm getting paid $11 an hour to sit at my desk at work and write this livejournal entry. That's about $1 every 5.45 minutes.

If I were to take an hour off to go sit on the beach (it's fucking beautiful outside right now) it would effectively cost me $11. But it's fucking worth it.

Besides, it's my birthday, I deserve it.
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Northern Star [Jan. 25th, 2006|03:32 pm]
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[Current Music |Groove Armada - Entrance to Zanzibar]

Well once again I find myself encompassed by a number of projects.


  • UCSBWiki is a collaborative database that seeks to accumulate all knowledge about University of California, Santa Barbara, and the surrounding communities into a single, easy to access location on the internet. I've announced it on the ucsb livejournal community, and will likely soon start promoting it via facebook. I still contribute the vast majority of edits, but some other individuals are getting involved as well; hopefully soon growth will accelerate. The goal is to reach the critical mass of articles so that we can attract readers in addition to content contributers.

  • Constantly Disemboweled by Bears is the name of my CS 50 project team. We are developing a distributed raytracer in Java. Right now I'm focusing on the storage format of scene information, and am getting involved in research into X3D, the successor to VRML. If you're interested you can check out some very early screenshots of the renderer here.

  • Work. Yes, I'm still active at my job. Coding PHP. Blech; I hate web programming.

  • Possible government contract work. I've been contacted by someone who wants my help writing Java code for some simulation software for the NSA. No lie. I'm not sure if I want to get involved in this, but I'll let you know how it turns out.

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Come from the air... [Dec. 5th, 2005|11:45 am]
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[Current Music |Daft Punk - Superheroes]

Wowza! I just sold three textbooks for a grand total of $119.25. How very exciting! I was honestly prepared to accept about $5 per book, but I got offered $25, $44.25, and $50 for them! That's a damn good sale, in my opinion. This money came just in the nick of time, too, because I have less than $20 in the bank, I had less than $10 in my wallet, and I need to buy gas to drive back to Pleasanton on Thursday. My first check from work was supposed to come on December 1st, but I haven't seen it yet.

The other business ventures I'm currently setting up aren't really going anywhere right now, but it's too early to expect anything. Hopefully I'll be getting a small but steady flow of income from Usana by the end of 2006, and I think UCSBWiki will start making money around May or June.

So after I get off work today I'm going to go over to Davidson Library and study. How weird is that? But it's a necessary evil. My math grade is very precarious right now, and if I don't get at least a C I've basically destroyed my chance of majoring in Computer Science. So studying it is! The final is on Tuesday, and it's the only real final I have. I also have tests for Computer Science 10 and 20, but I have very high As in both of those classes right now, and the finals are going to be jokes.
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The Year 20005 [Nov. 29th, 2005|01:12 pm]
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[Current Mood |busy]
[Current Music |Sim City 2000 - 10004]

Thought: sometimes you accidentally input an extra digit into the
year: i.e., 19993 and you add 18,000 years on to now, and you realize
that the year 19993 will one day exist and that time is a scary thing,
indeed.

-Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

I've been having some interesting experiences with time lately.

Just today I came into my office, and scanned my most recent emails. I noticed some strange arrival times, though: 2:17, 3:11, 3:42. "How strange!", I thought to myself, before I glanced down at the clock on the toolbar. 4:07!!! That's impossible! it wasn't even 1:00 when I got in the elevator!

It turns out there was some kind of glitch with the NTP (Network Time Protocol) server, and because of it I was inadvertantly sent forward in time three hours. Luckily I managed to find my way back to the present, but this is a risky business.

Oh, and the emails that arrived from the future were actually from those times yesterday.
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No Chalk Allowed [Nov. 17th, 2005|03:36 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Mood |productive]
[Current Music |Sim City 2000 - 10008]

I stole a whiteboard from an adjacent office. Watch my productivity soar!
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Intergalactic Stud [Nov. 16th, 2005|01:13 pm]
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[Current Mood |normal]
[Current Music |Linkin Park - In the End]

I fell asleep at Emi's last night after the Colbert Report. This morning when she got up to go to class I decided that I don't need to go today, so I trekked back to Manzanita and worked on my CS 10 homework instead.

I'm at work right now, and my boss brought the most adorable little golden retriever puppy in with him today. It literally pains me to restrain myself and stay in my chair in my office instead of running over to his office to play with Apollo.

So Microsoft gives out a lot of money in scholarships every year, and I think I could probably win one. The catch is if I do I'm committed to working for them for 12 weeks in Redmond. Now, as much as I dislike the company I wouldn't turn down the job for that reason. However, there are so many other things I want to do this summer that I'd feel really iffy about commiting to that right now. It could interfere with my plans to go to Hong Kong, and quite simply it would mean that I'd get to spend very little time in Pleasanton. I would also probably prevent me from going to San Diego for the sub competition.

Since I'm already missing Burning Man this year because of my Hong Kong trip I want to commit to going for sure in 2007. I know that's a long time from now, but I really want to make it happen.
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New Room [Nov. 2nd, 2005|03:24 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Mood | excited]
[Current Music |The Killers - Jenny was A Friend of Mine]

Alright, call me crazy, but I'm considering moving into my office.

Not completly, I'd still keep most of my clothes and bed and such in Manzanita, but it would be really convenient to have a place to crash on this side of campus. The office is nearly the size of a dorm room, and I don't have to share it with anyone else. Way more privacy in here, and I wouldn't have to guess when my roomate is going to be in the room or not. My door does have a window, but it's blurry glass so that won't be too much of a problem.

My office is getting moved to anaother building within a couple of weeks, however. I should probably wait until then before I try anything like this. I hope that I'll get to have my own office there, too, instead of having to share or getting put into a cubicle again. Only time will tell.

A couch would look very nice in here, though. A big one.
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I am the what? [Nov. 2nd, 2005|02:40 pm]
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[Current Mood | bored]
[Current Music |Nine Inch Nails - The Collector]

Yes, I'm at work and I really should be doing that instead of updating. I've also got three homework assignments due at various times throughout the evening (5, 9, and 12) that I have no time to complete. So naturally I'm doing everything but those.

I've decided the work I've done so far on The Empire is actually pretty decent, but I'm going to need to really keep at it in order to truly reap the fruit of my labor.

One thing I really need to do is stop spending so much money. Between my halloween costume, buying food for cute girls, buying food for myself, and other random impulse buys I'm starting to feel the strain on my bank account. My first check from work should come within a couple of weeks, and that will start to alleviate the strain, but I need to be way more careful with how I spend my money.

The sun just burned a hole through the clouds outside the window of my spacious office, and is now pointing directly at the screen. I'm too lazy to close the blinds, though. My office is pretty cool, and has a great view. I hope when they move me to the new building I get one that's at least close to being this cool.
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only perl can parse Perl [Oct. 26th, 2005|12:58 pm]
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[Current Mood |normal]
[Current Music |Bloodhound Gang - Discovery Channel]

I hate doing web development.

Right now I'm working on updating an application that involves four distinct computer languages in the same document. Why should I have to deal with both JavaScript and PHP sending SQL queries embedded within an HTML document when I could do all of the above in a more readable and less insane Perl script?

Other than dealing with this arcane application work is going well.
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[Oct. 14th, 2005|09:16 am]
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[Current Mood | tired]

Last night was quite an adventure.

Ben Stein was an awesome speaker, and I think I agreed with every thing he said. I wanna write more about this, but I'm really in a hurry right now.

I a little bit hungover, but I just wanted to say that I got a call from my new boss, and even though I thought it was someone else on the phone he still told me he wanted to hire me. I got the job!

I have sand EVERYWHERE, so I'm going to go scrub myself silly for half an hour and then drag my sorry carcass over to the Engineering building in time for math.

I'll probably write more later.
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This is it boys; This is war! [Oct. 11th, 2005|06:18 pm]
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[Current Mood | good]
[Current Music |Goldfinger - 99 Red Balloons]

Lots of cool stuff is coming up this week that I'm pretty excited about.

Tomorrow night there is a free screening of Howl's Moving Castle. I've never seen this movie, but it seemingly made a pretty big splash, so I'm hoping to get a chance to see what all the fuss is about.

On Thursday the one and only Ben Stein is coming to campus. He's going to give a speech about allowing military recruiters access to college campuses. I'm a big fan of Stein, so this should be quite interesting.

Friday night the GSA is hosting an 80's theme party. I don't really know what to expect, but I think I'm gonna at least stop by and check it out, it could be tons of fun.

Saturday afternoon I'm going to go see The Great Tennesee Monkey Trial, a play produced by LA Theater Works. Not only am I excited about the opportunity to see the play, but one of the lead roles is played by none other than John de Lancie (the guy who plays Q on Star Trek)!

Anyways, I had my job interview today, and I think that went really well. The IT guys seemed pretty cool, and they kept asking me questions about the sub. I think it was more out of geninue interest than really trying to figure out my qualifications. I should know in about a week if I got the job.
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Basically a weekend... [Oct. 6th, 2005|03:49 pm]
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[Current Mood | good]
[Current Music |Daft Punk - One More Time]

Well, since my only class on Thursdays is CMPSC20 today is effectively a weekend, because there is absolutely no reason for me to attend those lectures.

Not much happened last night other than me getting all my homework assignments in on time, which continues to be source of amazement for me. I met up with Arina and Zac after my writing class ended, and we hung out together until about 11, when Zac excused himself to go home and sleep. Arina did my laundry for me again; it's nice to have someone who does it for me after I've had to do it on my own for the last four or so years. We watched TV for an hour or two in my lounge, then we walked back over to San Nic and ended up sitting out in the hall on the 8th floor discussing philosophy until four in the morning.

I haven't done anything productive today, although I did manage to make it to the cafeteria before they stopped serving lunch, and I took a shower sometime between waking up and taking my first nap of the day (I've had two already).

I also downloaded an emulater and both Chrono Trigger and Radical Dreamers (with the English fan translation). I'm not sure what I think of 'Dreamers right now, but now that I've played it a little I can certainly recognize that some of the music from Chrono Cross is taken directly from Radical Dreamers. I'm considering buying/obtaining a playstation so I can replay some classics when I'm bored here.

I've got a pretty long paper due on Monday for Writing, as well as another calculus assignment and two more programming projects to get done. Thankfully I've got almost a week to get that all done, so I feel fine not working on any of them today.

Allie called to say she recieved her birthday present, which was good cause I'd started to worry that I'd miss addressed it or something and that it would be lost forever. I also got a call from the Biology department. They want to interview me for an IT developer position. If that goes well I should be making $12 an hour writing web applications pretty soon.

I think I'm going to go play Radical Dreamers some more, and probably visit the beach and get dinner a little later. I'll probably hit up DP tonight.
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Keep a mild groove on... [Sep. 29th, 2005|12:00 pm]
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[Current Mood | good]
[Current Music |Gorillaz - 19-2000 (Soulchild Remix)]

So I’m sitting in my CS20 lecture and we’ve still got 15 minutes left. I’ve spent most of this class editing my resume and writing cover letters for some of the 8 positions I’m applying for. I’m going to try to stop by the Career Services open house today to talk to Don Lubach about applying for jobs as well. This is, of course, assuming that I don’t get distracted and end up on the beach instead.

I haven’t updated this much since I’ve moved, but honestly I haven’t been doing much. I mean, I have been going to classes and socializing and chilling every day, but nothing incredibly noteworthy has happened.

Arina is going to visit her boyfriend in Irvine this weekend, so I’m going to need to figure out what I’m going to be doing. I didn’t really realize it, but I guess the only “good” friends that I’ve made here are Arina and now Zac. I have of course met hundreds of other people that I’m cool with, but I’m not exactly close with any of them. Maybe I’ll get an opportunity to change that this weekend.

In addition to meeting new people one thing I'm going to focus on this weekend is doing all the stuff I was supposed to do or have been doing a while ago. I'm going to finish applying for jobs, I'm going to do some homework (gasp!) for my classes, and I'm probably going to try to finish up that Magic auction I started ages ago. I'm also going to do some major research into studying abroad. I've actually looked into it quite a bit already, and I think that I'm going to be studying in Hong Kong fall semester next year.
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[Aug. 31st, 2005|04:18 pm]
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[Current Music |Blue Man Group - Synaesthetic]

As many of you likely know, I have somewhat of an obsession with the epic. Anything that is grand, majestic, monumental or simply huge will at the very least catch my attention and could very possibly spark a new obsession. Massive storm systems of course fit under this umbrella, so during last year's hurricane season I began to follow the weather situation in the Gulf closely.

Hurricane Katrina then, for obvious reasons, has been very interesting to follow. While the storm itself was fascinating to read about, what was even more interesting were the social impacts both before it struck and now during the emergency rescue phase. The sheer scale of the damage (80% of the city flooded; 70,000 in shelters, 40 field hospitals in place, etc) means that any sort of disaster management has to be both rapidly implemented and long-lasting.

Compounding the immediate problems of rescuing, feeding, and providing medical care for thousands of refugees is the fact that nearly all city facilities are unusable. The city (New Orleans) has no fresh water, no gas, and no electricity. All of it's major freeways have been destroyed, and both of it's airports are underwater.

Many of the problems are cyclical in nature; they are chicken-or-the-egg type situations. The city is underwater, so before electrical systems can be repaired the water must be pumped out. However, the pumps themselves require electrical power, which cannot be provided. Additionally, were the pumps working they would pump water out of the city and into the nearby lake, however due to the broken levees around the city, the lake is currently draining into New Orleans.

I read in an article today that the military is using Chinooks to airlift 3000 pound sandbags, and is dropping them on the levees in an attempt to seal the breaches. So many groups are working together and are invovled in the emergency operations: the National Guard, FEMA, the Red Cross, etc. I'm adding that to the list of things I might want to do: Being an emergency engineer who comes up with plans for how to do things like fix cities after hurricanes.
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[May. 15th, 2005|12:36 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Music |Moby - If Things Were Perfect]

Maybe I should get a job at NASA, or DARPA. I'm pretty sure I could develop some really cool technology there, and still get my fix of politics (whether I want it or not). I could also do cool stuff like invent the Internet, or send people to Mars.
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Insomnia + On + On [Apr. 5th, 2005|02:25 am]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[Current Mood |awake]
[Current Music |Third Eye Blind - The Red Summer Sun]

Well, I'm starting to get back into my "normal" sleep schedule, where I'll sleep for anywhere from 2 to 6 hours twice each day. I got thrown off some time after Winter Break, now I'm getting back on track.

I actually feel more vitalized when I'm on a schedule like this, and I feel like I become a more productive individual. Since I'm sleeping twice a day, I never go for a really long stretch without getting any sleep, so I rarely feel sleep deprived.

In other news, I'm so ready for college. Since there is an overwhelming probability that I will be attending Santa Barbara next year, I think I'm probably going to learn how to surf. I'm also looking into potential job opportunities down there, although I doubt if I'll be able to find any before I actually move in.

Jim and I are talking again about setting out on a business venture. If we actually end up doing so it will probably be something I can do from Santa Barbara, so that might end up being my source of income. Of course, chances are this won't get past the conceptual stage anyways, so it's not really significant.

Our "secret" powderpuff cheerleading practices are supposto start on Wednsday, which is something I'm pretty excited about. There shold be at least four of us attending these early practices, and our numbers should increase significantly once the official ones begin. I want to talk to Andy soon, so he can start choreographing our routine.

I've also become a lot more involved with Wikipedia lately. I initially started writing in order to provide another avenue for people to learn about the San Jose Grand Prix, but I've been getting involved in other aspects as well, including copyediting and fighting vandalism.

I also ran a single session of a campaign set in one of my homebrew settings ("Grand World" or "Tilliskan" depending on what I feel like calling it at the time). I did it with the nighttime group, and I think it went over well enough. I'm currently working on writing a session summary and building an experience spreadsheet. I really want to continue this campaign for at least a few more sessions. The group is primarily an experiment, so I can start fleshing out the feel of the world, but I would love to run it on an ongoing basis if there is enough interest. Especially since I declared a delay for the after school game, which is to be set in the same world. We won't begin that one until after AP testing is over, because most of my players are studious little children, and will be spending most of their free time preparing themselves for those two weeks.

Zolton's performance has been degrading more and more noticably over the last month...I now see it's definately necessary to reinstall Windows, and the sooner the better. I've also ressurected Fernando, who is now running WindowsXP and is quite stable. I plan on using him for the few hours/days that it will take to rebuild Zolton, depending on how thourough I end up being.

I am also starting to look around for a server to use in order to setup my subversion home directory for when I go to college. The plan is to leave a computer here, in Pleasanton, with a whole lot of hard disk space, running subversion. All my files will be kept in a repository on this server. When at school in Santa Barbara, or when I'm anywhere else for that matter I will be able to connect with any computer, download what files I need, work on them, and upload them. I will never lose any data due to the revision control features of subversion. On my main workstations (which I anticipate being Zolton and the soon-to-be-acquired new laptop) I will always have a version of the repository stored, so updating will be a matter of a simple binary difference, and will require very little bandwidth. Now its just a matter of finding a suitable machine, outfitting it with large reliable hard disks and installing a stable linux system on top. And of course organizing my files into a sufficient configuration to be uploaded. That will be the least fun part.

I'm also finally getting to work on Ken's computer, which I promised I would do for him in December. I actually really screwed up, not only in taking so long to start fixing it, but I think during the move I also threw away one of the side panels for the machine, so I might have to give it back to him with its guts exposed. Good thing I'm getting out of this town soon; can avoid most of the bad word-of-mouth this will get me.

I've actually been making some interesting and beneficial business deals lately, and am currently a lot less broke than I was a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully my prosperity will continue into the future, so I will be able to afford things like prom tickets, tux rentals, and, most importantly of all, food.
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[Dec. 6th, 2004|11:46 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Mood | excited]
[Current Music |The Postal Service - This Place is a Prison]

Damn it. I'm getting business-founding ideas in my head again. Must not become overcommited AGAIN.

Why fight it? It's bound to happen.
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