UTD at last, re-orient the vector oscillators!
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: edu
Got my acceptance letter from them (went out there
tommorrow -- v. hot, v. tired from walking around).

The "digial capture lab" (motion capture) was
v. cool -- by the time that I found the right
building (after hav-ing traversed about 1/2 of
the campus (more likely 1/4 of the area) in
the HEAT -- i had "just missed" the demo. Prob
just as well, need to dress for success (ie,
wear my *really* ratty pants? or the every-day
uniform? etc)

later.

Onward EDU !
Mood:  energetic
Topic: edu
And here we go again!

Getting people to send in recomendations for grad
school (having waited until the last moment to
apply, the only program still open for the fall
is the MA in Arts & Technology at UTD -- which is
actually pretty good since it's mainly a video and
"new media" program -- which (let's face it) i'm
pretty weak in.

ok,ok so i make these little films -- sort of
nuvo neo new-wave (wave good bye Gracie) films.

===========

So, it begins....

===========

Thinking back on all of the courses that i took,
i really do wonder at times: what does it all mean?

So, i took all of these courses:

art 30 or more hours
botany 3 hours (really enjoy-ed this, and have
taken up studying it again -- all because of
the h2g2 "life cycle in 3 seconds, 2, 1, zap".

chemistry an entire bscs -- un-claimable because
(like the good fool that i am), i insisted on
getting and in-complete in 1st semester organic
lab (despite the fact that the prof was going to
give us all A's because of the dept's shoddy
labs -- which were then promptly re-furblshed)
and of course the FINAL course in Russian
-- oddly enough, you had to have 2 full years
of a foreign language for any of the science
degrees, but....

Computer science (BSCS, UNT, Denton, August 1980)
since you took all of those computer "lanugags"
you only needed 1 year of a language -- bingo
instant degree!

The odd thing was of course, since this was the
nice new COMPUTER SCIENCE degree (and not that
business/applications DATA PROCESSING degree),
i couldn't count fortran, cobol, or algol --
since those were the "old languages". Odly
enough, i *could* count Basic (on-line, and
not all of that mucking about on the punched-card
ibm main frame). So, i ended up having to take
all of these graduate level classes to replace
the really easy classes -- they just ddint'
offer that many classes period. Thus, i got a
D in both PL/I (IBM's :"one size fits all"
solution: the perfect frankenstein's monster;
half cobol, half fortran, and half algol --
too bad someone didn't tell IBM that that makes
1-1/2 cause PL/I shure didn't work -- hence the
prob with getting my final project to work.

System's Analysis. I aced this by a clever means.
I wrote my "assembler" in BASIC!!! it was sooo
easy to convert ALGOL algorithms to basic (since
the text often had them listed in fortran in
the appendix and fortran and basic are kissin'
cousins when it comes to syntax). Also, i could
sit there and debug instaneously, those poor
hearty other people were making the valliant
effort to write their assembler in PL/I (one
chap (sadly an ex-biz major, now trying to get
a bscs) was trying to write his in COBOL (but
as i recall, he got a lot further than anyone
did with their PL/I stuff -- except for Mikey.
(Clever fiend, he was prob the smartest person
in the program -- a lot of hacker types, and
like i said the odd transfer in from biz and
odly enough from the linguistics and philo
programs -- many old froodz over there :)

And the rest:

foreign languages (almost all were in-complete,
my noodle does swell with gramar, and often can
actually get a word right (good with READING),
but WRITING and SPEAKING (disaster squared and
then some). Latin, (studied ancient greek on
my own) Russian (far too many hours to give up
now -- despite the man-hating (richard-hating?)
ultra-feminist (actually my accent was v. good
-- according to a friend of the family, and
emigree from Soviet Union, and i got to where
i knew enough vocab to actually be able to
read pretty steadily and even think a bit in
the old po-russkie yazikom). And then french,
german, and the odd bit of italian (you could
"switch channels" which i would when i got
bored with russian -- alas, if only i had
pursued that career ???; ???)

philosophy -- i must be the only person on
the planet to complete the entire study program
in philosophy without actually taking a single
course (i ended up by taking Philosophy 101
BY EXAM (needed 3 hours non-science/humanities)
Actually Dr. O was v. ipressed (after all you're
talking a full survey of all philo in ONE single
test !!!) i aced the essays on camus & natch came
in dead-even on MY interpretation of the DIFF
between socrates & plato (where was Derrida when
you needed him back then???) -- big argument
w/ Dr. O (but he was so imprssed that i got
almost an A on the non-essay portion that he
passed me anyway -- and i graduated (barely,
3.05 (needed a 3.0 in CS) 2.55 (needed a 2.5
over all GPA).

But, what do you expect from some one who had
become a fixture on the university and (after
some 9 years) was pretty much happy as a
professional student?

Ah those were the days.

ONWARD TO THE FUTURE.

Once more into the breach

************ BONUS TRACKS ************

As a special treat for our fans, we are offering
you this EXCLUSIVE BEHIND THE SCENES look at
the "mind of pizo eccentric".

The single most FAQ'd question is: How does he
do it? That is, all of this word play, the
word references, or in short:

GREAT ZARQUON HOW DOES HE APPEAR TO BE
THE PROTRUSION INTO OUR UNIVERSE OF AN
HYPER-INTELLEGENT PAN-DIMENSIONAL BEING?

(i mean i've met the him face to face, and
he's a twisted git, i'll give you that (all
you have to do is say tha word DUCK and he's
practically ovulating all over the place), and
he's talented (in that sort of innocent boyish
charm way, in just the way the Michael Jackson
isn't.

SO HERE IT IS:

The secret to The Richard T (aka Drongo the
Magnificent, Pizo Eccentric, Joe Talltree)'s
remarkable mind is:

1) He was dropped on the head often as a child
(thus, mirjickulating all of those nerual path
ways) -- this is what gives him the ability to
take 2 + 2 and come up with "Milard Philmore's
pancake flipper" (on a thursday).

2) He is/was/will-always-be a v. avid fan of
comics (hence his comic strip "The Adventures
of Pizo eccentric") the impact of YEARS of
reading (wasting his blinking time) pretty
much EVERY episode of Peanuts (snoopy as
ww i fighter ace!), Alie Oop (cave man +
time travel -- can their ever be such a
combination again?), Al Capp's "Little Abner"
(another swig of kickie-poo joy juice if yuh
pleeze), Dick Tracey (diet smith, sparkle plenty,
and of course 'sam' (and the bad guys)...),
Krazy Kat (oh, the little dahlink does love me),
Zippy (sublime beauty is nothing
compared to the smile of Tuesday Weld), (oh and
i could go on

D) (home alone ref -- love that) He failed English
102 3 or 4 times, had to spend most of his
summers taking remeidal eng in h/s studying
countless books on grammer, vocab and etc. --
all due to an un-diagnosed "speech deficit".
The SD only came to light (became apparent,
was revealed, shoved into illumination, burst
into the public conscienceness via the flourescne
of 42,000 fire flies, etc) when his daughter
was diagnosed with the SD prob -- and (like
father like Tochter), must have been what wuz
wrong with me -- v. good for the old "different
way of looking at things" and "can literrally
UN-BIND the logic process and (very zip-like)
connect a piece of worm-wood (stressed for
anitque appearance) in a picture frame, with
Roger Rabbit's girl friend "I'm not bad, i'm
just drawn that way -- actually i thought she
was drawn rather well.... (err, ahh, have to
remembe that this IS a family channel)

anyway, night all.

and now for those of you who are hard of hearing,
we will repeat the top story of the day with
the assistance of Garret Morris, director of
the New York lighthouse for the blind

GM: OUR TOP STORY TODAY: GENERALISSIMO FRANCISCO
FRANCO IS DEAD!!!!

(and now guenica can return to spain; good night
pablo where-ever you are)

--42--

And so it goes on (and on, (and on, (and on, (and on)))))
Mood:  crushed out
Topic: edu
So, I'm trying to get all of my loan stuff in
order (such a joke; no pay since July 1st!) And
the "server not found" (ie, down again).

And no one seems to know what happened to my file.

At least my art work goes v. well!!!

All hail Academia!!!
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: edu
So, what about all of this education stuff anyway?

Well, as old Socrates sed, "The un-examined life
isn't worth living". And for the most part, they
*aren't* living a life so much as having entirely
become MANNERISM's. That is, like some cheap
juke box, you push a button, you get a response,
prob pretty interesting at first, but damned
bore-ing after a while.

Had a conv with a clot, and the subj of edu came
up and sez I "I knew this one teacher and she would
start the semester saying, 'we are here to study
math. And I'm not here to entertain you. So, if
you want entertainment, you best go elsewhere."

Clot sez: GOOD on her!

sez i: NO, you're wrong. Our job as teachers IS
to entertain, once you get their (those student
type peop's) attention, then you can teach them
anything.

Course, clot-head would have none of it. Of course
*that* sort of stupidity is based on a lot of
clot-mannerist dogma/mythology that passes for
DOG-GIVEN TRUTH!!!

He quaz seying semthink like this: I'd tell them
if they don't like to not show up in class. Of
course, the admin types wouldn't like that. So,
what're ewe ghoing to do?

I remember one hist teacher I read about who
would dress up like in the current movies, and
then give the lesson -- tying it into a film
they knew. For example, he'd dress up like
Ind. Jones and talk about ancient egypt, meso
potoamia, etc.

Another case: My sohn took a summer science course.
The teach came in and sed, "Hi, my name is Ms.
Smith (or what-ever), but all of you can call
me (dramatic pause) DOCTOR EVIL". Natch, that
the austin powers flick had been on recently.
Frong loved the course immensely -- and was
even talking about it when he got home!

Oh, well. I guess, I should just skip drawing
cartoons on the board, and saying things like:
IN this class there is one thing we will all
make sure to abide: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS
GRAVITY! (which in maths there isn't. And
when somebody asks you what class you're going
to next period, I want all of you to say,
"Oh, it's weird zero-g class. There's no gravity
there!"

And then of course, we'd have to talk about
the quadratic equations, but then we could talk
about those neat imaginary numbers, and how
Asimov told off his teacher.

And I guess, where this totally meandering stream
of conscience is going is: If you give peop's
some respect, they are a lot more likely to
listen up than if you insist on RE-emphasiZING
how you hold the power of life and death over
their GPA!!!!

Sheesh.

(thinks about going off to work on his Chaos
notes on the main pizo pages, but then *still*
being tired from the whole previous week --
esp, the new story for the paper, decides
to log off. Gets up, trips over his walking
stick, and falls face-first into a near by
and quite recently depostited pile of horse
hocky. Picking himself up, wonders how HORSE
HOCKY got into the computer lab in the first
place.

(it was in fact that (at this point) he realized
he *was* really tired, and hoped that Daria
would be on the-n.com instead of degrassi.

)
) <-- lisp reference!