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Since I'm no longer at Columbia, I've changed my blog too. You can now get all the semi-intelligent rambling you want (and more!) at Notes From a Flatter Time Zone

Cheers,
Management

In which the protagonist doesn't drown

So, poor innocent me. I assumed that the last thing I had to do to graduate was take the swim test. This morning I went and dealt with that (and only inhaled a small amount of water in the process...). I was feeling sort of ambivalent about the fact that I will now definitely be leaving in two weeks, but I needn't have worried. No sooner had I finished washing the chlorine out of my hair than I received an email with the subject: "DIPLOMA HOLD!" Yay! Student Financial Services has decided to keep me around. :-D

Ok. They report that I failed to complete my mandatory student loan exit interview. Um... what? I most certainly did complete the online interview. All twenty minutes of it. I got all the questions on their stupid quiz* to see if you're paying attention correct. And I did it before the deadline. So I wandered over to their office and explained that I had a hold but that I'd already completed the interview. The guy working there smiled, looked up my account, read off, "Exit interview: April 23rd," and explained that the interview was in the computers. He sent me to a different office to request that they remove the hold. So, I went to the other office, explained the situation the another guy, who smiled and asked for my ss# (in hindsight this makes me nervous). He cleared the hold and apologized for the trouble.

Now, I didn't ask because I didn't want to be difficult, but I assume their computer system periodically checks stuff like this and automatically applies holds to people who need to do interviews. I'm very curious as to how this backfired today if my interview showed up in the system on April 23rd.

But whatever, it looks like I will be kicked out with my diploma after all. And while I will miss the cheerful incompetence of the bureaucracy here, I think I will move on.

* The sole purpose of this quiz is to ensure that when the university/loan company/federal government comes after you for not paying your loans you can't argue that you were too drunk to read when they explained the rules. An example question:

Which of the following is an appropriate use of your federal student loans?
a. Buying beer
b. Going on vacation
c. Paying tuition and academic expenses
d. Buying a yacht

Friggin awesome

In the last senior seminar, which was yesterday, we had a vote. It may or may not have been for best talks, because the criteria were not specified - but everyone got to vote for a talk (for whatever reason they wanted to vote for it). I ended up part of a three-way tie for second, so I won a piece of scintillating fiber. It's pretty cool... when light hits it the ends glow green and if you cover it up so that it's mostly in the dark, it stops glowing. Hours of mindlessly geeky entertainment ensued. :-) I'm very easily amused.

Senioritis

It's amazing what the combination of enough credits to graduate, a plan for the next few years, a recently completed APS talk, and the end of an airplane-aggravated head cold will do for one's motivation. I'm vaguely aware that I should be doing stuff.

Example: I have a comp sci assignment, the due date of which was postponed from last week to this week, that I keep meaning to start but then not starting. Part of the problem now is that last night, I remembered that we have Late Days in comp sci... and I haven't used any of mine yet. So if I don't want to, I don't actually have to write my code until Wednesday. Right.

Then I have some German reading I should do. But that will only take a few hours and can probably be done while I eat lunch tomorrow.

And I need to do laundry because I'm out of clean short-sleeved shirts and the weather is too warm for long sleeves. But it's already too late to start that today because other people will have taken over the working dryers by now.

Ear drum not ruptured: tinnitus remains mystery

So, I haven't posted in a while. There are several things I could, in principle, post about now. But I'm distracted by my head-cold. So I'm only going to write about that.

Basically, I got some sort of head/sinus illness while in Florida for the weekend. I should have been able to see it coming from the fact that every fluid in the vicinity of the horribly dry, over-air conditioned hotel was $5/oz. (I exaggerate slightly) and the tap water smelled and tasted quite awful (I exaggerate not at all). Anyway, the cold peaked shortly before I was due to fly home, so I bought myself some orange juice and Tylenol with extra decongestant things (10oz. and 3 doses, respectively. Total: $11). The flight was going fine (I slept through almost all of it) until 20 minutes before landing. Apparently, the descent was perfectly timed with my Tylenol with extra decongestant things wearing off. It was accompanied by mild loss of hearing (sadly, not enough to block out the children in the next row) and acute ear pain that did not improve with any amount of chewing, swallowing, gently blowing my nose, contemplating my continued existence, etc.

Some time after landing my right ear went back to normal and my left ear stopped hurting so badly, but remained uncomfortably stuffy. And then today, I woke up feeling almost reasonable, but my left ear became worse again and I started noticing an irritating whooshing noise. I went to Health Services. I sat for an hour. I learned that my ear is not infected and that the ear drum is not ruptured, but that I should take decongestants to ensure that my ear can drain, thus allowing the pressure to equalize and my ear drum to continue to not rupture. Excellent. I'm that German tomorrow will be fun on Sudafed.

Increasingly disillusioned

by the fact that my school is constantly getting bad publicity. Freshman year there was the racist cartoon, since sophomore year there has been the Manhattanville expansion and while I don't remember anything particularly damning from last year, something will probably come to me if I think long enough. This year, we've managed to a) invite a complete asshole to speak and then b) had a riot generating sympathy for said asshole and now c) after the administration invited some random TV actor to speak at Class Day we've gotten coverage for whining very publicly about it.

Sigh. 'Bout time to be moving on, I suppose.

Goddamnit!

Someone needs to remind me why I'm studying physics and not exploiting my fellow human beings for fun and profit:

While doing laundry this morning I had a brilliant idea. Take a bunch of dryers that don't really work and convince people that this is intentional - they're energy efficient. Then, hopefully, you can save money for your company by not fixing them *and* instead of getting bad publicity associated with the fact that people have to spend four dollars and five hours doing a single load of laundry you get good publicity for being environmentally friendly.

Later, if I have time, I'll post a picture of what the dryer did to one of my socks. >:-(