weill aspects

originally posted january 14, 2001

fourth verse, same as the first

I'm back in Pittsburgh after three weeks off. I appreciated the downtime -- I got to play around with my new server (which will perform a few small tasks once I get it up on the LAN), do a little traveling, and otherwise just make up for a lot of lost sleep over the semester. I'm all set for semester four: six classes, the search for a summer internship, and all manner of extracurricular activities.

relationship redux

One of the more controversial segments of my third-semester wrap-up last month concerned the rapid rise and decline of the relationship between myself and Pitt student Jessica Payne. I thought that she was really The One, and she was originally inclined to agree, but over the course of our many hours together, something went sour and she drifted away. I'm pleased to note that we're still very good friends, and we still talk a lot both on-line and off. I wish her and her other drone all the best.

new adventures in hypertext

Although the long-promised Weill Aspects is still no closer to completion, I have added a couple of new items to the web site worth mentioning here. The first and most obvious one is Weill Real-Time, a small sidebar that will be updated more often than the main page. Additionally, this will be the last new-page announcement that you'll see here; all updates and site news will be relegated to Weill Real-Time. The other new page on the site is simple enough: a copy of my schedule for the spring semester, conveniently formatted for easy printing.

class-by-class preview

With all of the little updates and news out of the way, here's how my spring 2001 semester shapes up. It's reminiscent of my first semester here, with only one computer science course and a smattering of core and minor requirements. Of course, that's not to say that these courses will be any easier than the ones I took last semester.

15-213, Introduction to Computer Systems

After the torture that was 212 last semester, I'm looking forward to getting back to some more hands-on programming. In this course, we use assembler and C, two languages that I have little to no experience with, to perform various tasks in the area of systems programming. If nothing else, it should help me to forget the hell I went through trying to learn functional programming. With any luck, I can manage at least a B to give my major GPA a much-needed boost.

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: C

21-125, Maple Lab

At only three units (compared with nine or twelve for my other classes) this class should be a pushover. Of course, I'm not taking it specifically because it's not that difficult; in fact, I don't even have to take this course at all. I'm taking it as an introduction to using Maple, a computer algebra system that can often come in handy for computation in higher math courses. Considering that I took away nearly no practical knowledge about Mathematica from my first discrete math course here, I think it would help to learn at least one algebra system in depth.

best case: A
probable case: A
worst case: B

33-224, Stars, Galaxies and the Universe

This course rounds out my science requirement, which I will have satisfied exclusively with physics courses. I've heard some good reviews of this course, and the instructor replaced the much-hated textbook of semesters past with a newer, hopefully better version. It also happens to be my first class with a recitation section that meets at night, but some friends have told me that the recitation isn't really necessary.

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: B

80-242, Conflict and Dispute Resolution

As a humanities core requirement, this course should prove interesting. My roommate, now entering his last semester here, took it in the fall. He came away with a fairly good impression of the course, albeit a slightly more cynical view about the way the American government deals with major conflicts. Still, it's pretty much inevitable that I'll have to write a paper in a language other than Japanese while I'm here, and hopefully this course won't be too imposing in terms of workload.

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: C

82-272, Intermediate Japanese II

While I have yet to score lower than an A in any of the three Japanese courses I have taken so far here, that's not to say that the courses were a breeze. The intensity just keeps getting higher as the curriculum goes on. Some of the material can be learned by frequent review and application; much of it is left to pure rote memorization, a skill that I have yet to master. More conversations and a research paper highlight this semester's activities; it should be an interesting course. Already I have discussed the possibility of applying my Japanese skills in a computer-based internship this summer, and the possibility of spending a summer or semester abroad is still very real.

best case: A
probable case: A/B
worst case: B

82-273, Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture

Between this and 80-242, I hope to round out my humanities electives for my B.S. in Computer Science. This means that after the semester is over, provided that I pass these two classes, I can focus exclusively on my major and minor. That said, this culture course should not be difficult at all. It is recommended to students with a year or less of formal Japanese study, but schedule limitations prevented me from taking it last semester. My only hope is that I won't be too bored to pay attention. Much of the material will most likely be covered in more detail than I have seen previously, so it should be a good experience.

best case: A
probable case: A
worst case: B

overall

This semester should definitely be better than the last. Incidentally, despite my pronouncement of fall 2000 as the "worst semester ever," it actually turned out to be my best semester ever in terms of GPA. My disappointing performance in 212 notwithstanding, my GPA actually increased as a result. Here's hoping that I can not only do well in terms of my total GPA, but in my core computer science course as well.

By the time you read my next update, I'll no longer be a teenager!

Back to January 2001, or to the year 2001.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.