An Update on Me

I talked on twitter a while back about a presentation that I had to do that you may have been able to surmise involved World of Warcraft. However, I didn't say what it was for. It was for my Masters program. I needed to do that presentation to graduate. The real truth is that it's taken me forever to do it. For comparison, the last class I took for my degree program ended in December 2010 and for the past year and a half I have been fighting myself to do that presentation.

It all started with my biggest flaw, sloth. I didn't work on the presentation because I was worried about the cumulative exams that I have to take and whether I'd pass those. I figured I would work on it after I got past that hurdle. I got past that hurdle and there wasn't enough time left in the semester to finish the project and present it. So I planned on doing it at the beginning of the next semester.

Well, I didn't work on it because, "Hey, I have plenty of time, at worst I can just present it later in the semester." Laziness compounded on laziness and I didn't get it done by the end of the semester. This turned into me being afraid to contact my professors. What if they would judge me for my tardiness? What if they told me it's too late? Then guilt set in. I was letting down so many people by not having done this already. I couldn't even think about it without feeling bad about it, so I would avoid thinking about it, and therefore would avoid working on it.

Laziness, forgetfulness, and avoidance due to guilt built on top of each other, turning a 2 year degree into a 4 year degree.

I'm glad I don't have this kind of work ethic when I'm at a job. It somehow just seems to apply to my personal life

Finally I kicked myself in the butt and it's done. There was some judgement from my professors about the delay, but not much and everything went fine, and now I feel so much better. It damn-near literally feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The question now is: "What now?"

I still have to look for a job (due to my impending unemployment), that hasn't changed. I don't feel like I'm done learning. I don't have any immediate desire to pursue a doctorate, that's for sure, but there are still things that I would like to learn. To begin, I didn't know that there are SAS (statistical software) certifications. I wasn't surprised that they exists, I just didn't know. So I'm going to be pursuing some of those.

I'd also like to get a deeper understanding of R. Right now I've been taking a "try and find solutions on the internet to your immediate goals" and I'd like to take a more structured approach. Maybe I'll buy a book, because right now I basically just now data manipulation and basic operations. I don't know how to do actual statistics with it.

I think I'll look through MIT's OpenCourseWare for mathematics/statistics courses that I could self-teach. I'm also interested in various computer science courses that relate to internet programming. I'm not interested in server stuff, but I am interested in webpage programming (in case you can't tell from previous blog posts).

Now that I'm free from the pursuit of degrees, I think I could actually enjoy taking courses. Perhaps I could take some computer science courses and fill out knowledge there that I don't have. I could make a serious effort at learning a foreign language. That is, once I find out where I'm going to be living/how employed am I going to be.

I wrote most of this about a month or even more ago. Yesterday (6/6/2012) I actually received confirmation from the office of records that I would be graduating. The request for graduation had been "pending" for so long and I was worried that it would fail to go through because of some clerical error. I'm very relieved to have this confirmation. I've been applying for jobs but I need to apply for more. I only have two months left here. There's one job application that I'm particularly excited for, but I won't say what it is (at least, not in such a public space). 

There is something that I've also been thinking about lately, which is tattoos. I've kinda been wanting one for a while. I even created a Google Docs spreadsheet of ideas. I think I may have settled on what I would get, if I ever get up the nerve to do so. I would get a lowercase tau. I've been using it long enough as part of an identity that I've really grown quite fond of it and attached to it.

I'm officially have my Master's now, and I feel pretty good about that.

Random Stuff 2: With Frontalot!

My last post on tattoos left me wondering, "What books should I definitely NOT get tattoos of?" After some quiet deliberation, I decided that Choke would be a bad choice. I can only think of anal beads for that one. I think I could break down all the Tolkien books down. The One Ring for The Hobbit. The Gates of Moria for the Fellowship of the Ring. Helm's Deep for The Two Towers. Sauron's eye for The Return of the King, or the White Tree of Gondor. The Magicians and The Magician King could also be separate, with the button for the first and the seven-pointed star for the second.

I'm definitely open to adding iconic video game symbols too. The Aperture Science aperture is a good one in my mind right now. Other things include, a metroid, an E-Tank, the master sword, an Arwing, a Moogle, a bandana, and many others. Granted, I may not actually get all of this stuff, or any of it, but it's fun to think about.

Blizzard announced an in-game pet for World of Warcraft that is bought with real money, but can be traded in-game. This has been labelled as Blizzard experimenting with real-money transaction. However, unlike the previously released pets, this one doesn't apply to all of your characters. So if you want to have it on all your characters, you'll have to buy it multiple times. This has people upset.

I really don't like it when people to mad about shit like this. You can disagree with it and wish it were another way, but don't get mad. You have to realize that you're getting mad about something that doesn't affect yours or anybody else's gameplay and is completely optional. Blizzard never had to ever even make this stupid pet, and if they hadn't, you would have never known the difference. You lose absolutely nothing by this pet existing. Stop it, stop being mad about it, it's not worth it.

Then again, is me getting mad about other people getting mad about shit that doesn't matter any better? Probably not. Probably not at all. On an unrelated not, I miss Umaro and Gogo. They were the best. I need to beat that game with a party of Umaro, Gogo, Mog and Gau. And Gogo can't use any 'added abilities', just Mimic.

Tattoos

I've been thinking about tattoos for a long time. I've never been able to come up with a design or idea that I thought was great and where to put it.

An idea came to me the other day that I do like. Iconic symbols from my favorite books, each roughly 1 square inch, down the side of my left upper arm. I've already come up with several of them:

The Symbol of the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter

The Mockingjay from The Hunger Games

The One Ring from The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings

The 7-pointed blue star from The Magician King

I need to really go through all my books to see if there is anything else I would like to do. If the symbol is for a series, I may do a different symbol for each book in the series, depending on the number of books and the strength of the symbol.

I really like this idea because it's expandable, explainable, not trashy, can be done in parts easily and, most importantly, because it's cool.