i hate you. if we still worked together, i would kick you in the shin.

regards,
steph

i managed to get more albums up on the album page. im using smooth gallery, which is a javascript gallery. i liked the design a lot and its pretty simple, doesnt require a database installation etc, but there are 2 main issues ive noticed:

1. the pre-loader is slow. i think it could be corrected by having it pre-load images when you click on a gallery rather than all at once on the index page, but i havent gotten into the code yet to try to alter it.

2. there is a bug in the code concerning the “back to galleries” button. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. the designer said this would be fixed in the next version, but i dont know when that is coming out, so i will be looking into work-arounds later this week.

leave me feedback, what do you think of smooth gallery?

i saw a quote today over at No Impact Man that i really liked. its from Jerome M. Segal’s Graceful Simplicity: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of Simple of Living :

“The point of an economy, even a dynamic economy, is not to have more and more; it is to liberate us from the economic—to provide a material platform from which we may go on to build the good life. That’s the alternative American dream.”

NIM asks his readers “what would you do if you were liberated from the economic”. im still contemplating that. the possibilities are endless.

j and i are taking a vacation next week. we are heading south to ft lauderdale and then taking a cruise to the bahamas for a couple of days. for the most part i will be completely disconnected from the world for those 6 days. it is my intention to use this time to simply relax and let go. maybe when i return my mind will be a little less cluttered.

this has officially been the longest semester of my grad school career and its not even half over yet. after a while (approx 8 years at loyola now between undergrad and grad), you have to take a step back and seriously ask yourself, “self, why am i paying $2k a class to teach myself the concepts and then have some half-wit who has no teaching credentials at all criticize my work?” the answer used to be clear – everyone knows that you pay for the degree, not the knowledge – but im starting to seriously question the value of said degree at this point.

Developing: Bush says ‘Iran is a threat to world peace’

Im sorry….what? Who is? How many countries are WE at war with right now?

you know, sometimes i try to put my finger on exactly what it is that i miss the most about college. i am a huge sufferer of the “quarter-life-crisis” syndrome and i try really hard to understand it in hopes of overcoming it.

id like to be superficial and say its the partying, sex and general lack of responsibility, but its really not. those things of course were a factor, but they were more effects than causes. i had a lack of responsibility and a lot of free time to get into trouble because i wasnt tied down to anything. any decision i made really affected only me, so i was free to do whatever i wanted when i wanted without feeling guilty or worrying about losing a job or neglecting a spouse or anything of the such.

i think a lot of the attachment to the college years has to do with having nothing to lose and a clear, solid (and achievable) goal ahead of you. from the first day of preschool until the age of 21, i always had something i was working to, something i knew i would reach if i just rode it out long enough – graduation. and until college, you always know whats coming next – another set of school years with another graduation date. but after college… nothing. theres always grad school, but its not quite the same, most people work full time during grad school, something that is rarely seen among 4-year private college students. so after college, you feel lost all the sudden. and then with that, you realize you suddenly have a lot to lose. baggage. physical, and imagined. at any point during college i could have packed up and moved on without really feeling like i was losing much. i got used to moving every year. it becomes a way of life. what little i owned that was important to me would fit neatly into the trunk of the car. and what wouldnt fit, i could easily leave behind without a second thought. but after college, i started to acquire things, and every move thereafter has taken longer with more planning and more money. its like invisible vines start to grow up out of the ground when you arent looking and wrap themselves around you so that one day, when you suddenly decide you want to change something in your life, start over like you could every september in college – no good. you cant move. your tied down by a mortgage or a job or a family or…something. i dont like that feeling, it makes me uncomfortable. and worse – it makes me unhappy.

im sure theres a lot more to it, but it is a very calming thought to imagine that you have nothing in this world to weigh you down except one suitcase and a couple of milkcrates. thats something i really wish i could have back.

monday – work, dance class 1, dinner, dance class 2, sleep. tuesday – work, object oriented analysis and design, dinner, sleep. wednesday – work, advanced algorithm analysis, bowl of cereal substitute for dinner, project runway, pass out. thursday – work, yoga, late dinner at paper moon diner or someplace of the like, pass out. Friday – work, granola bar, coma. saturday – groggy late entrance into the waking world, possible trip to the gym, disassembly of a basement wall or floor OR parging of already disassembled basement wall OR desperately seeking someone with a pickup truck to come help remove disassembled basement walls and flooring, dinner, something resembling going out, death. sunday – repeat saturday only with the addition of a possible raquetball game and the watching of at least one football game, read 2 pages of book i keep meaning to finish but am always too tired to read, sleep.

thats been my life in a nutshell. but with finals coming up next week, while im stressed out as hell right now, i can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, so i feel like i have room to breathe again. also, dance and yoga classes ended until after the first of the year.

so….hooray free time! boo finals!

whats kinda interesting is that, as a writing and english lit major in college, i really got sick and tired of writing papers. i basically got to the point where i never wanted to write another paper on anything ever again. as a grad student in computer science i spend all of my time writing programs or doing algorithm analysis for programs or coming up with UML diagrams for programs etc. 3 years into this, i would KILL to just write a goddamn 6 to 10 page paper analyzing a book right about now.

when you start to consider 10 page papers as “down time”, something has gone terribly wrong in your 5 year plan.

seriously though, i think i just miss writing. or maybe i miss studying something i enjoy rather than responsibly pushing for career advancement. language just seems so much more natural to me than comp sci. comp sci feels awkward and bulky, kinda like the first year of junior high. ironically enough, thats actually kinda why i decided to pursue it, it felt like something new and challenging. also, it was one of two degrees that my company will pay for and at the time seemed like a better decision financially than the MBA. but now im just sick and tired of it.

i digress…the point is. i have 2 finals next week and then im off school for a little under a month, so besides becoming reacquainted with my gym membership, i should also be able to find time to catch up on reading some of my favorite blogs and to jot a few notes down on my own. not to mention come up with a list of unreasonable impossible new years resolutions to work toward during the first few weeks of january but ultimately abandon halfway through february.

i’ll have a more formal update later.

maybe.