Call Me, On The Line

I love this phone. However, I was considering getting rid of it. My dorm at college is allegedly going to remove the land lines from the rooms to save money on something that most students don't use, and when the phone rings at home, it is never for me. I don't really need any phone besides my cell. It's pretty, but is it practical?

Besides that, it's an awfully outdated design. It has no caller ID, which makes it terrible for ducking telemarketers, annoying friends, and ex-boyfriends. Without an answering machine, screening calls is impossible. With one, the process is still a bit obnoxious, at best.

It also has a cord. You can't multi-task. You can't use telephone time to also fold laundry and catch up on your TiVo recordings. You can't even walk across the room to look up a phone number for someone without putting the phone down first. It isn't suited to the modern lifestyle. Perhaps I should try to find a recent, cordless variation of this design, with caller-ID elegantly fitted into the base, along with the date, time, and recent calls. It would still have that old-timey feel; it would just be a bit more functional.

I find this disturbingly indicative of the changes made to our communications over time, specifically in regards to the phone. Without an efficient way of screening calls, you simply had to answer the phone. Without a way to walk and talk and feed the cat all at once, you simply had to engage in conversation, or tell your friend or business associate that you needed to call them back later. Things were slower back in the day, and communication was perhaps a bit more honest. I do appreciate the convenience of modern technology, and I wouldn't dare undo the progress if I could, but I can't help lament the loss of a day when this telephone design was perfectly acceptable.

After thinking such things, I couldn't help but plug the phone back in.

bought a Dionaea

So I bought a Venus fly trap.

I should update this thing more often. I'm actually a terribly exciting person.

Procrastination

“Procrastinatio odiosa est, sed procrastinatio meus modus vivendi est.”

One of my resolutions for 2009 is to stop procrastinating. I seem to have this idea in my head that if I tell myself I won’t do it anymore, I simply won’t, and life will be grand. Unfortunately, procrastination is a habit, which means that it is difficult to stop. The nature of habit is also such that I don’t always realize I’m doing it. Different people procrastinate in different ways, but I think most of us have patterns of procrastination that we repeat and can recognize. I’m probably avoiding doing something that needs doing, if…

• …I’ve checked Facebook fourteen times in the last two minutes.
• …I’m reading about things that seem vaguely relevant to the task at hand but are in fact not going to help me at all. For instance, I had to write a paper on Richard Nixon’s quality as a president, and ended up reading about his grades in college and his relationship with his wife.
• …I’m cleaning the kitchen. As a matter of fact, I think every time I’ve cleaned the kitchen this past semester, my explanation to my bewildered roommate has been “I’m not doing calculus.”
• …I’m spending more time eating than necessary, by cooking or eating out with my friends. This only works because I can’t work and eat at the same time. I can eat a bowl of Rice Krispies in five minutes, but then I’d have to get right back to work, and I just can’t have that, apparently.
• …I’m checking Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, deviantArt, all of my email addresses, FOXNews, and the Drudge Report, over and over again, until something catches my attention and my time.
• …I’m trying to organize my papers. More often than not, this is my way of “accomplishing something.”
• …I’m watching all of the music videos that I can find for a particular artist on YouTube. One time, I had a Mandy Moore marathon.
• …I’m having an impromptu dance party with my roommates.

You get the idea. It’s going to take some real effort (and probably the help of God above) to quit procrastinating, but I am optimistic. I’ll evaluate my progress at the end of the year.

Oh, and the translation for the opening phrase? “Procrastination is hateful, but procrastination is my way of living.”

Double Major

There’s an accelerated masters program at UCF available for computer science majors, and I, a computer science minor and digital media major, was nearly sucked into changing that minor to a second major. It would certainly be useful, and as more and more jobs are requiring graduate school from their employees, being able to complete a master’s program in just one extra year seems like it would be a very good idea.

Well, a good idea except for the fact that I would never have time to see my friends again.

This semester, I took six classes that totaled nineteen credit hours. I had to get an override in order to do that, since UCF normally limits a semester to seventeen hours. I was also active in the Robotics Club and the College Republicans, and I have a boyfriend who goes to UF and who visits regularly. Throw friends and hobbies into that, and I have no time to breathe. Well, I like breathing, so I more or less put my friends and hobbies on hold.

All semester long, I told myself, it’s just a semester. Come winter break, I’ll have time again. Come spring semester, I’ll take fewer hours and everything will be okay. It’s just this one semester.

Then I found out about the accelerated BS to MS program. Oh, how tempting, how useful! And I do love being busy, and I love taking on unnecessary challenges “just to see if I can,” and I love computer science. However, I would have to take many extra classes, and I’d have to take graduate-level classes in my junior and senior year, something for which I was wholly unprepared. I dithered for days. Should I do it?

Well, I made my decision. Were I to double-major and do the master’s program, I wouldn’t do it because it is “useful” or even because I enjoy computer science; I’d be doing it because I am addicted to being busy, to having every second of my life too full to think. I like the feeling of accomplishment when it’s over, and I’m arrogant enough to feel special while I’m in the thick of it, telling people “I can’t, I have a lot of work to do.” Sometimes, the work itself is fun. Calculus seemed like a game sometimes, a series of puzzles, and for history I took pleasure in writing an amazing piece on H. L. Mencken. Learning logic in discrete structures was positively delightful.

Yet, I let important things fall to the wayside when I am busy. My friends call me “stranger” and ask me where I’ve been. I wish I weren’t three months behind on Vogue and Elle. I bought an Ironman comic book many weeks ago, read a few pages, and it’s been woefully neglected since. By firmly deciding not to double major, I am allowing myself a healthy amount of free time in future semesters, something I know I desperately need.

I haven’t even had time to write anything that wasn’t required for a class until now. Good grief.