I am in a much-improved mood. I don't know what was with me the other day. What can I say, I am an overdramatic person sometimes.

I have a whole summer to plan for. I really don't know what I'm going to do. I'm planning to visit my sister in Iowa. I'm planning to work on my thesis project. Other than that, I don't know. I probably should be getting a job, but whatever, I don't desperately need the money and I really don't want to spend more time than necessary staring at a computer monitor. I have my whole life to work, why do I have to start now? I have a feeling those words are going to come back to haunt me later when I start looking for a job...

Now I'm going to do what I usually do on a Friday night, which is to watch Real Time with Bill Maher. I can't make up my mind about Bill Maher. Sometimes I think he's totally brilliant, other times I think he's an over-opinionated jerk who can't tolerate anyone else's viewpoint but his own.

Thirty dollars spent on gasoline this morning. That is just painful. It makes me want to get a hybrid car even more.

I'm currently ditching my AI class. It's the last day of class, too. What a way to end the semester. I'm such a slacker.

So it's Tuesday night. The test wasn't bad, I think I actually overstudied. My grade is currently an 88. I really wanted to get an A in this class. Maybe I will do well enough on the final to get an A.

I'm still in a really ugly mood. I am getting impatient, I just want things to be over already. I'm really down on myself, I feel so dumb sometimes. Sometimes I am just plain lazy, I don't bother to think things through. All I can think about are my flaws as a person. I know this is not a good way to think, but I don't know why there is like this cloud of pessimism hanging over me at all times. I've been overanalyzing, I've been thinking about too much all at once. Like I've been rethinking my whole life and I want to change just about everything, but then I end up changing nothing.

Maybe I just need some fun and relaxation. To do something different, something bold. I feel like a passenger in my own life. I see things happening but I am powerless to do anything about them. Maybe I should just quit thinking about all this, let things be simple and not make them complicated.

I'm just writing this and there's really no point. I've written this same thing in about a thousand different ways. And I think I'm actually at an OK place in my life, I've been a lot more depressed at other times in my life. Last year was such a huge disappointment, I felt so much more lost than I do now. Now I'm sort of lost, but I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. I like to think I'm a little wiser and a little closer to knowing where I need to be and what I'm supposed to be doing.

Sigh, sigh, and another sigh. I guess I'm just so frustrated with who I am, how lonely my existence is, how I just accept things and don't try to make them better. My junky car, my horrible-looking hair, my backpack that is falling apart. I go to Subway, it's so crowded so I take my sandwich out to my car and eat it alone. I always eat lunch alone. I see people I kind of know in the halls of the CS building, I want to get to know these people better, and yet I say nothing. I'm freaked out about the whole idea. Formal situations I can handle, I can barge into the tech support desk and ask about a problem with my computer, but for some reason the randomness of trying to start a conversation with someone in a hallway is more than I can handle.

A second possible hazard is that the human embryonic stem cells might generate all or most of an animal's brain, leading to the possibility of a human mind imprisoned in an animal's body.

Wow, that sounds freaky. We live in strange times.

I was in a crummy mood today. My dad took me out for Indian food to cheer me up. I ordered the vegetarian dinner, which was amazingly good. Six small metal bowls, each with a different type of vegetable dish, plus naan bread, plus two dumplings for dessert. Thanks, Dad, was it really that obvious that I was in such a foul mood? I would be so bad at poker, I can never cover up what I'm feeling, it's always written all over my face.

My sister e-mailed me the other day. She said she met a girl named Annette who has the same birthday as me. That's just spooky. What are the chances? In my experience, Annette is not a very common name, so as an estimate say the chances of any random person being named Annette are 1/100, and the chances of someone having the same birthday as me are 1/365. Then the chances of both things happening are 1/36500. That's right, isn't it? The more I think about it, the weirder it is.

Anyway, the web project is over. The damn thing worked, and I felt pretty proud of what I did even if it didn't compare well to what other people in the class did. I'm tired, I will sleep late tomorrow and try to catch up on all the other work I've been putting off...

Wow, I am totally exhausted. I spent all day programming the website for this class project. I don't know how I get in these messes. It's due in less than 24 hours, the project is basically mine to screw up. If I don't get this thing up and running, I don't know what I'm going to do. It's going to look really bad if our group has to present the site in front of the class and a big error message shows up on the screen. Fifteen percent of my grade depends on this. I'm not even thinking clearly any more, my back hurts from sitting too long, my hands hurt from typing too much.

Hey people. It's Sunday afternoon. It's really hot. Far from my usual activity of napping on such an afternoon, I spent the past five hours writing more ASP code. In three short days I have gone from knowing next to nothing about ASP to becoming a virtual expert on it. That is the wonder of the Internet.

I was invited to a classmate's home to work on this project. This guy is maybe seven years older than me. It kind of threw me for a loop when I realized that he owned an actual house, not like most people I know in college who live 1) at home with parents, 2) in a dorm, or 3) in a crappy apartment. It was weird, I walked in the door and thought, this is my future. Get a job, get married, start making payments on a house. This is what I have to look forward to after I graduate, the rewards of a stable income.

This has been on my mind a lot lately. Very soon I'm going to go from mapping out a degree plan to mapping out my life. Scary. It really freaks me out is when I hear about people who are the same age as me having kids. Britney Spears, anyone? I still think of myself as a kid, light years away from the responsibilities of a family, and yet I am closer to that phase of adulthood than I am to being a child. It's scary but also kind of exciting to think of what I'll do next, that my life is mine and I can do whatever I want with it, whether that's buying a house or starting or career or whatever.

Wow, I'm worn out. Having spent the whole day coding up a storm. Thank God for Google and all the developer forums out there.

I found my U2 CD this morning, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. I had been looking for that CD for months. Twice I've cried to the song "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own," I don't even know why it affects me like that. The rest of the CD is also pretty amazing, especially "Miracle Drug", "Vertigo".

I've also been listening to Hotel by Moby. Hotel is pretty cool. I love the songs "Beautiful" and "Spiders" on the first CD. The second CD is really weird, it's more mood music that you could play at a rave than music you listen to while playing on the computer or whatever. I guess I'm slightly disappointed since nothing could really compare to Moby's last CD, 18. The songs on that CD were so right for that time in my life. Sometimes a song from that CD will pop into my head and I feel all those feelings again, when I was 20 years old and even more uncertain about life than I am now.

I keep finding new ways to humiliate myself. This is like the third time this week that I've started talking about something and then got asked a question and totally blanked out about it. Today it was about my thesis topic, something I've been working on for three months, and I couldn't answer a simple question about it. I had done OK talking for like ten minutes, I get near the end, this prof asks me a question, one he probably thinks is easy for me because it is the heart and soul of my thesis project, and I sit there, silent and flustered, for a minute or so. I literally run my hands through my hair, I hem and haw, I pray for someone to rescue me. Then the answer finally comes to me, with perfect clarity and I start talking like it was obvious all along. It's as if I were a computer and the data is there, but it's on the disk drive, so it takes me what seems like an eternity to fetch it. This keeps happening to me, I'm beginning to think that something is seriously wrong with me.

I've been so busy this week. I have to set up an e-business site by Tuesday. I have to present a paper today, which is truthfully the last thing I want to do. I have also been serving as tax preparer for my sisters. Oh yeah, and don't forget that I'm basically single-handedly programming a game for my AI class, knowing virtually nothing about graphics. Plus my job. Anyway, so I've been busy, but one more week to go and then things will wind down.

I am so ready for school to be over. I'm tired and kind of stressed, I can never get enough work done. I feel like a total slacker. I spend like six hours a day on the computer, and a lot of that time is goofing off because I can't get focused. It is so easy for me to get distracted on the computer- I check my e-mail constantly, I look up blogs, I read the New York Times. I'm supposed to be working on programming projects, but I end up not getting much work done at all.

I guess I'm saying I probably need to spend some time away from the computer. I'm turning into a mouse potato, which is not much better than a couch potato. My Internet habits have gotten stale and boring, too. Same old sites, same old drivel, and who really needs to check their e-mail ten times a day? I guess I'm not going to be able to avoid spending time on programming projects, but I should really cut back on the amount of time I spend doing other pointless stuff. Resolution: cut back on pointless Internet time.

OK, so it's later. I did manage to get a haircut and go to the bank. My hair looks all poofy from being blow-dried. This will last a day, then it will go back to being flippy and annoying.

So I'm trying to get over my hesitancy to post stuff. Who cares what I write anyway, it's not like really have an audience other than the occasional random person.

So what to say, I think I'm getting addicted to Coca-Cola again. I had pretty much stopped drinking it, where I used to drink like 2 or 3 cans a day, I got down to like 4 a week, and now I find myself craving the fizzy goodness of soda and I want to drink it all the time. It's like I have to meet a certain sugar quotient per day, and if it's not from soda then I find I will start consuming sugary candy. I don't know which is the lesser of the two evils, but since I'm craving soda it might as well be that.

As far as exercise goes, I am still doing the jogging thing. I am actually going outside now instead of just jogging in place while watching TV. Jogging on the actual sidewalk is way more challenging. I get winded and sore from climbing those hills. But I know it is good for me. Maybe it sounds weird, but I like jogging. It's really not a chore for me to do it, it clears my head and I feel so much better about myself and my body.

So maybe it's weird that I jog and I'm addicted to soda. It's like I have two conflicting behaviors. Or not, maybe I just do whatever I feel like doing at the time, so if that happens to be jogging I'll do that, if it happens to be drinking a gallon of soda, then I'll do that. In computer science we would call that a greedy algorithm. But a greedy algorithm doesn't always guarantee the best solution. I know, I know, I could be a lot healthier if I cut out the soda. Oh well, that is something to work on some other time.

It's Monday morning already. I am trying to get myself motivated to do something. I've got projects to work on, blah, blah, I should go to the bank, I should get my hair cut. So far today I've gone jogging and watched an hour of morning TV. Not too productive, I haven't even showered, I'm sitting here zoning out in front of the Internet.

Roughly three weeks until school is out, and those are going to be hectic as I try to finish all my projects on time. And yet here I sit.

I haven't had much to post lately. I keep trying to write stuff here but then I end up not posting it. I guess I just find it too boring. I can't say what is really going on in my life, you know I don't want to name names and all that, and then I end up posting about stuff like what is the meaning of life, what is my purpose, which is just stupid because it's too big of a question and it doesn't even really matter in the day-to-day. Or I talk about how tired I am and how much I want to nap, which is even more boring than the meaning of life. I guess I need to find some stuff that is interesting that I can actually post about. Current events, maybe? Books I'm reading? I'm reading Lesley Stahl's autobiography. I've always admired her from 60 Minutes. It's interesting how she writes about the network media going softer over the years. Now the it seems like the networks themselves are practicing tabloid journalism.

I was going to go to this dinner for my research group today, but then I decided not to. I usually have dinner with my dad on Fridays and I could have easily told him I couldn't make it in order to go to this dinner. Instead I just didn't go, for various reasons, mainly I just didn't think I'd have much fun. I like these people all right, I work with them, I see them around school all the time. I sometimes talk to them about stuff related to my research. But to go to a restaurant with these people, what could I possibly talk about? I know I would be the one sitting at the table awkwardly with either no one to talk to or having someone take pity on me and ask me polite questions about myself without really caring what the answers were. Or I would be the one trying to ask polite questions and getting boring responses, and it would be the most awkward exchange you could imagine. I don't know if you would consider this giving into my shyness, or if "normal" people would also find this situation really toxic and boring. I guess I always complain that I never go out with people outside my family, and here was the perfect opportunity to do so but I decided not to. Maybe I should have just gone and taken the risk that it would be boring and horrible. Or maybe I would have actually had a good time and I'm totally missing out. Who knows? Anyway, so that's a bummer, I probably sound like the most boring person alive right now. If you could even consider this living.

Long day at school again. After about 8:30 I stopped paying attention to the lecture and just zoned out. My brain is fried. I'm tired. I'm looking forward to watching Jay and sleeping late tomorrow.

So much anxiety. I don't know how I get so anxious. It's really ridiculous. I don't know why I feel I have to act so perfect all the time. I constantly second-guess myself. Hours after I say something, I will replay it in my mind and worry if that was the wrong thing to say. Is that weird? It probably is. Talking is not an activity I do well, so I am super self-conscious about it.

I ask myself, where is the fun in my life? I guess fun starts after school lets out. But what about when I get a job, then I'll probably never have fun again. Fun to me is being home mid-afternoon, watching pointless TV while sprawled across the couch. That's what I did today, I came home during the afternoon and watched "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?". It was a really awesome movie, but I didn't get to see the end because I had to go to class. Great.

I feel so stupid sometimes. It is humbling to know that I will never be as smart as most of my professors. I bumble around with math and they use it with such ease and grace. After all the math classes I've taken, you'd think I'd be better at math than I am. I can understand the basic ideas of math, but it is still a very unnatural way of thinking for me.

Today was the weirdest day. I was so out of it, starting with the time change. So I lost an hour of sleep, plus I am taking this medication that makes me really drowsy. I had lunch then crashed for about two hours. I could have slept longer, but I thought I should wake up or I would sleep the entire day away.

I watched this movie After the Sunset that was kind of enjoyable. It was what a critic might call eye and mind candy. I also rented The Incredibles but have yet to see it.

Anyway, that's about all I have to write. Sorry my posts have been so extremely boring lately. I have to go back to writing my 1000-word report about privacy and the Internet. Good night, Internet.

Finally, a post. It's Saturday and I am totally bored. The day was beautiful, I felt like going out and doing stuff but instead I sat in bed and read and watched three hours of the Gilmore Girls. I love that show, the early years were absolutely brilliant. I usually watch the show with my sister, but my sister has been hanging out with some new friends of hers. Which is great, but it leaves me stuck at home alone on a Saturday night.

My moods have been all over the map lately. I'm kind of happy, kind of sad. If the semester just ended next week, I think that would be fine with me. I have less than four weeks, four stressful weeks, but that's about it. I'm going to have to work during May, too, to catch up on grading and stuff, but I still have a whole unplanned summer to think about. I'm thinking about taking a course in technical writing. I might also be working on my thesis project. I want to get a job, but I don't know what kind of job. The ideal situation is if I could find something local, then keep that job next fall and after. But I'm not holding my breath for that.

The truth is, I can see myself starting all over after I graduate. Or even before then. When I was 18 years old and picking a major, I thought, hey, I'll pick CS, then I'll never have to worry about finding a job. I thought jobs would just fall into my lap, and it would be so easy, that companies would actually be fighting over me so that I would work for them. That's how I perceived the job market in the year 2000 when I was deciding all this. Since I'm not a competitive person, and I hate job interviews and uncertainty, the thought of a guaranteed job drew me into this course of study. There were some other factors, too, of course, but that was the big factor in my decision making.

Fast forward five years. Here I am taking a master's degree in CS, wondering what the hell I'm going to do. I've realized a few things in the past few years: 1) I am definitely not guaranteed a job, even in the supposedly hot field of IT. It's still a pretty competitive market, and while I may have an easier time looking for a job than a philosophy major, I definitely don't have jobs dropped into my lap. 2) Even if I did have jobs falling from the sky, that's still a stupid reason to do anything. If you don't enjoy what you do, if you don't have excitement and motivation in your work, then you don't have anything. 3) Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I know I'm not very talented at math and theory and stuff like that, and that I'm better at verbal things like writing. What's more, I'm more interested in things like history than in how parallel processors work. I pretty much ignored all my natural aptitudes and interests, in favor of a career where I thought I would make more money and where I would have an easier time finding a job. I'm not saying it was a mistake to go this route, but what I am saying is that I should have taken more time to decide, to take stock of what I really wanted and what I was good at, than to just pick something because it was supposedly practical.

So that's why I say I can see myself starting over. Starting over into what, I really don't know. Something I enjoy, something that I know I can be good at. I'm glad I at least offer myself the option now, where before my attitude was that I'm stuck forever with a degree I shouldn't have taken, in a career I don't really like, and I'm going to have a miserable life.