This Year's posts

Archive for January, 2005

School Again

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005

So, I was back in class this evening for the first time in a while. This was my first class at my new school, USF and I was a bit nervous. There’s nothing quite like walking into a room of your peers, all of whom already know each other.

I was nervous about the class, too, because my advisor let me in it even though I don’t have a the prerequisite for it. I was afraid I wouldn’t do well in the course.

Now, however, I’m really excited about it. The course is called Internet Systems Research and is being taught by David Wolber.

We’ll be reading the seminal and currently influental papers in Internet Systems. In addition we’ll be doing a semester-long research project, which looks really exicing- I’m already getting some ideas.

I really like the fact that we’re using a blog and will be using wikis for classwork, its good to be on (or at least close to) the cutting edge.

Senator Clinton Speaks of ‘Common Ground’ on Abortion

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005

I’m generally not much of a Hilary Clinton fan, but I have to say that I agree with her on this one.

She says, “The fact is, the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.”

This has been my stance on abortion for some time. I’m not going to advocate the limiting of abortion rights, because I think it is a symtom of a more significant problem- unwanted pregnancy. Or, maybe it would be better called “unbearable pregnancy.” If we could either reduce the number of pregnancies in these situations or change some factors which make pregnancies unbearable, we would do much more to prevent abortions from happening.

So it begins…

Monday, January 24th, 2005

The days of freedom are over. I start classes again today.

I don’t know what to say….

Sunday, January 23rd, 2005

I don’t know how to write about this, but feel that I need to get it off my chest….

Last night I went out on the town with Yousef, one of my new roommates. He’s trying to introduce me to San Francisco via the bars, so we’re bar hopping a different neighborhood each weekend. Lat night we went to the Mission, an area that is a little bit lower rent, but still had some decent bars.

After 1 AM, we decided to grab something to eat, so we stopped in a little mexican place and took care of our drunken-munchies. After eating we decided to head home.

As we were walking out the door, Yousef heard some guy say that there was a drive-by shooting outside. I didn’t hear this, so I just kept on walking. Up ahead, I see two bodies on the sidewalk, but don’t realize what’s going on until I get about 20 or so feet from them. That’s when I saw the blood on the sidewalk and realized that these weren’t just bums sleeping on the street, they’re dead.

As I’m realizing this, I notice the guy next to me is talking on his cell phone to a 911 operator and something dawns on me- this just happened! The police aren’t even here yet!

Yousef and I are both freaking out at this point, so we just flag down a cab and go home.

Just before we left the mexican place, I was giving Yousef a hard time because I was done with my beer and he still had half of his left. Still, he drank it slowly and I’m glad. If he had finished a few minutes earlier we would have been on the sidealk when this drive-by shooting happened.

More Meetup stuff

Saturday, January 22nd, 2005

Matt has a list of the people who were at the meetup.