Another Intermission
February 14, 2013
The reason for my lack of frequent posting this past week has been pretty strong. Starting from Sunday I have been involved in the Glee Club ‘Hell Week’. A nightmare week of rehearsals till well past midnight every day. I have to go to bed now. 2AM. Can’t function much longer… will write more soon.
Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Shabbat – Day 124/125/126/127/128
December 5, 2012
You probably noticed that I’ve practically rolled the entire week into one. I can assure you, that’s how it felt to me. One giant, long, torturous day. Tuesday I was not yet fully aware of how my week would good, so I woke up at a decently late hour before physics at 10:30AM. However as the day wore on and the Operating Systems group got together it became clearer and clearer that we weren’t on track to finish the project. Tuesday night also marked the long glee rehearsal, from nine to midnight. However, even after completing that, I had to walk the twenty minutes to the engineering buildings to work till around five AM. Wednesday I was already out of it, and didn’t attend my algorithms lecture in order to scrape an extra hours sleep. I did make it bleary eyed to Rails class, but with so little focus, I may as well have been in bed. After Glee rehearsal, 5-7, it was another full night coding, five AM again. Thursday I was up at 7AM and was barely hanging on to the remaining threads of life, and the file system component of our OS was still nowhere near to being done.
By this point I was getting a bit aggravated and irritable with some of my other team members, which was not wise, and this further exacerbated the various existing problems. I did make it to all my classes Thursday, which was a miracle if I might say so. Thursday night however, was one of the worst things I have ever done to myself: nineteen hours straight of coding. We worked through the night, and didn’t slow, even as the sun began to rise, in the Rodin ninth floor lounge we pounded away at the keys and scratched our heads, as others scratched theirs in amazement as they woke up to see us the same way we were as the night before. This was surely an intensity of work not matched by any course at Melbourne Uni.
Friday morning, I was death incarnate. I reaped my way through what lines of code I could, before dragging my hollow body across Locust Walk for a final presentation of the lines that had so drained my life. Though our demo was passable, I knew that our code was a mess and our team in shambles. However, finally, it was over. I trudged back in the direction of Rodin and was caught on my way to my room by lunch at Hillel. However, I didn’t last long there, and soon I was wrapped up in bed. To stay there for twenty seven hours. Fast asleep almost the entire time. And just like that Shabbat disappeared.
Sunday/Monday – Day 122/123
December 4, 2012
Sunday was a last day of quiet. One that I much appreciated. Most of today was spent in, after waking up too late to get much done! To add to this, Tammy’s deployed friend was visiting home for thanksgiving and she needed to spend at least a little time with him. On her return we started packing up things and a few more of her friends visited before everyone returned to their schools and homes. Again, I packed by bags and, was driven to the Greyhound Station by Tammy, with her friend Anthony, in tow.
The bus back wasn’t quite as good as on the way there, it was cramped and I hardly slept, working on the operating systems project for most of the ride. After waking up from a brief nap on one particularly unpleasant leg of the journey, I skyped one of my closest friends in Melbourne to wish her a happy birthday and we ended up chatting for ten minutes at 3AM while I was travelling along the middle of nowhere.
I arrived back at Market Street Greyhound Terminal perfectly on time, at 8AM. Just enough for me to catch a taxi back to Penn in time for my first class, algorithms. I struggled through what work I could and ended up missing Glee Rehearsal due to illness and tiredness from the bus ride combined with an urgent meeting for Operating Systems.
I went to bed far too late, coding well into the night, in an attempt to move the team along somewhat. This was going to be an unpleasant week.