I'm suffering from a distinct lack of sleep. This makes me very irritable indeed, and I'm snapping at people an situations when I don't need to. (FYI, I've had 5-6 hours of sleep a night for the past few days) So this is a "sorry" note to the people I've been talking to in case I sound preoccupied (which I am, or I'd be sleeping!)

So, let me start with rants:

The dryers. In the laundry. Suck. Seriously, I waited through 1 wash and 3 dry whole cycles (standing in berms on a rather cold night for more than two hours) yesterday and my stuff still wasn't dry. Frankly, I would have had more success if I'd strung up a clothesline next to a fan or something. Right now my room is strewn with (slightly damp) clothes which are "doin' it nat'rally". Lets hope naturally doesn't include mold, because that really gets on my nerves. (not to mention it causes skin irritation)

My water bottle broke. It's a cheap Nalgene knock off from Sinagpore, and the cap is starting to shred. On the other hand, even with what appears to be a gaping hole, it hasn't started leaking. I'll just assume that it's good for some more abuse and stop when everything in my bag starts getting wet...

From an engineering standpoint, both of these problems are results of design failures. With the dryer, the engineer shouldn't have relied on an external hot air (from central heating) source, because some dryers obviously suck all the hot air leaving none for the others. A supplemental resistance heater or heat pump probably isn't too hard to build (at least the resistance heater isn't. Heat pumps are, I admit, complicated and expensive in comparison) Then again, central regulation of hot air would probably "solve" the problem by making all the dryers equally slow... As for the water bottle - when your only point of support is the cap-loop and holding the bottle by the loop stresses the cap, reinforce the stupid cap! What sort of industrial testing do you guys do anyway? In either case, it's lucky that the internal pressure seal is keeping the water in, (which is good redundant design) but it won't continue to hold as the cap peels off...

Speaking of engineering, my statics Prof is getting on my nerves. He keeps assigning extra problems. Granted, the man has a love for the subject, but his enthusiasm is increasing _my_ workload. This is an undesirable state of affairs. =(

Non rants:

I went on my weekly comics trip yesterday and picked up a little something for nessa. Also got the latest issue of 1602 (Neil Gaiman's foray into the Marvel universe). He's finally stopped scewing around and the story is starting to sound very Gaiman! So, waaayyy cool.

On the way back from Comic Relief I walked by Koshland hall and went in, in search of the little engineer's room. It's a scary place, seeing that it has more radioactivity and biohazard signs than Etchevery, which once had a nuclear plant in the basement. Koshland is, unless I'm mistaken, the virology, pathology and genetics building. (So there are incongruities like a happy fruit fly drawing over a radiation symbol and a "Genetic Experimentation" sign). Koshland is the last place on campus I want to be caught in when the Big One finally hits California. I suspect it'd be safest in the Campanille, which is waaaayyy overbuilt, even if it's a big, tall, easy to topple tower. The Berkeley campus is so overrun with buildings the only other safe places I can think of are Hearst Field (which is a bunch of temporary container structures which ought to shift just fine with the quake hits) and faculty glade (which is small). Memorial Glade, though open ground away from buildings, has a library under it, so if it all goes you'd fall into a pile of books and probably be crushed.

My math GSI asked me today what the heck I was doing in math 54 because I obviously knew the material. (Actually his words were along the lines of "I'm surprised you aren't in a more advanced math course") Oh well, what can I say? it's a requirement, after all. In either case there is stuff that I haven't learnt yet, and I need the practice. Though it is true that I've seen approximately 70-80% of the stuff in the course. (which makes my screw-up of the first mid-term all the more embarrassing). In truth though, I really am enjoying math. Because math is fun, beautiful and all those other things. Always feel as if I'm grasping at the underlying mysteries of the universe when I do math. I note that SqBr probably felt the same until she got to graduate math. Thankfully, I'll never have to do that, but it begs the question of just when does academics stop being enjoyable and starts becoming a drag instead?