Napalm Riot

Well, my school pulled an extra $1500/semester out of their ass for me, so I can probably go both this year and next. Which, of course, makes me happy. I was really looking forward to this year. I mean, I'm actually going to be living with people I know and chose to live with. (For those who don't know, I lived with a friend of my boyfriend's last year, by complete coincidence. It was... awkward, because she decided that me being back at school meant she and Dave couldn't be friends anymore.)

So I leave on Monday night to go back East. My dad and stepmom are taking me. I'm hoping I can move in early, as the scheduled day for sophomores/juniors/seniors to move in is the day before classes start. Which in and of itself sucks, but I also have a several hour training deal for the Society of Women Engineers. I'm hoping this training thing will be interesting. It's going to cover some topics that are trouble areas for our chapter (like, a lack of involvement from the majority of members and both a difficulty in recruiting new members and keeping them interested).

I'm rather excited for some of my classes this semester and rather wary of some others. My classes are:
- Systems and Signal Processing (lecture and lab)
- Microelectronics
- Software Components and Generic Programming
- Advanced Digital Design (lovingly nicknamed "ADD")
- Software Design for the Visual Environment
- Applied Statistics
Most of my classes are on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In fact, I only have one class on Tuesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I'm free. I'm expected to spend a lot of time Tuesday and/or Wednesday afternoon/evening in the ECE Undergraduate Lab for ADD.

I suppose it's rather obvious that I'm back from South Carolina. It only took me four days to get home because of flight cancellations. I ended up spending a night in a shitty Microtel in Charlotte, NC and a couple of days with a former classmate in Plymouth, MA, before I was able to catch a flight across the country. They also managed to send my luggage to Fort Lauderdale instead of Boston, and then couldn't find it to save their lives - both when I reported it when I arrived in Boston and when I was departing Boston. When I landed in Oakland, I found out my parents had gone by baggage services and they had gladly given it up to my parents, without even making sure they were my parents. At least I finally accrued enough flight points to get a free flight.

I finished LEGO Star Wars: The Original Trilogy around a month ago and I played Guitar Hero for the first time a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed Guitar Hero much more than I thought I would, and I picked it up way faster than I ever thought was possible. So much entertainment was had.

So my new PS2 slim is having issues, but apparently only with my LEGO Star Wars games. Read here if your interested or might have any ideas for me.

I head back to school in just over a week, on August 18th. I'm excited for my classes, but there's a chance I won't be able to stay. I lost most of my federal funding due to measures my mom took to make sure we wouldn't end up on welfare. My school has not replaced what I lost, except for one $1,000 federal unsubsidized loan. The woman who's supposed to represent me has done more to prevent me from continuing at Clarkson than she has to help me. We've filed an appeal (which we found out from a different representative), but we don't feel like it's going to do anything. I've also emailed my advisor and another professor to request help, but I'm still waiting to see if they can do anything. So the outlook is rather bleak right now. :\

On the upside, I have this tidbit from #devart for you:
I'm a girl and you're a boy so you think if yoy're like me it's like being a girl

I had the pleasure the other day of catching this little tidbit in #devart:

as long as you're not married and you're flirting with me, i'm fine

This doesn't make sense to me. So it's okay to flirt with other people if you're dating someone, but not if you're married? What makes marriage so different? Yeah, you signed some papers and you get some legal benefits - but your relationship, how you treat one another, should not change. Marriage doesn't suddenly mean the couple loves each other more or bestow on them some promise of being together forever.

Am I the only one who finds this strange?

I started writing a blog yesterday, about something I read in #devart, but I never got around to finishing it. I don't want to combine it with what's currently on my mind, so it'll have to wait.

I'm usually loathe to discuss some of my medical issues, but I'm rather upset at the moment and I need to vent a bit.

I'm fully aware that I have a really good deal regarding health care and health insurance. I'm on my dad's health plan and he's an employee of Kaiser Permanente. This means I never pay more than $5 for medications, and I take three daily and another three when needed. Four are medications I take because of the migraines and severe headaches I get, one is birth control and one is for depression/SAD.

Where I'm getting somewhat screwed is that the medication I take daily, as a way to prevent migraines, is also an anti-depressant, nortriptyline. I'm just about certain that it does affect the effectiveness of the Wellbutrin, despite it being just about the lowest dose you can take (25mg). But the nortriptyline works and it doesn't make me physically ill and non-functional if I miss a dose (I tried a beta-blocker prior to nortriptyline and that's what happened if I missed a dose or took it too late in the day), though I can experience withdrawal symptoms from missing just one dose.

Kaiser provides a service to refill medications online - and ship it to you, for nothing extra. Awesome, right? When it works properly, anyway. It does work properly, when I just have it send medications to whatever is my default address at the time (home or, usually, school).

The problem is a huge bug in the way their shipping system works. I can see how it might be by design, but they don't tell you that and that's what makes it a bug, a problem.

I'm in South Carolina right now, I have been since mid-June and I will be until the end of July. My nortriptyline ran out on Monday night, I took the last capsule I had (if it had been a tablet, I probably would have cut it in half, to try to reduce the possibility/severity of withdrawal symptoms). I ordered a refill in late June and put in Dave's address. My mom called me on Monday, during the day. My medication had been sent to my school and then they forwarded it home.

This is the second time it's happened (well, probably more like third or fourth, but the medication has still arrived in time other times so I didn't care). I let the first time go because it was during school, I was stressed, I could have put in my home address. I let it go as user error. I do know, however, that my home address was set as my default address at the time. My school address is currently set as my default address. Their system completely disregards the entered address if it's not the default address or you use the option to make that address your new default address.

Okay. It could be a security feature. But, anyone could pick up my medications from the Kaiser Richmond Pharmacy as long as they know my medical record number. My parents have picked up my medications countless times for me. I'm over 18. Legally, they should not be able to do that; they are not on record as authorized to pick up my medications. Legally, Kaiser Pharmacies are supposed to request ID and only give the medication to person associated with that medical record number (or someone authorized to pick up medications). As a minor, only my dad should have been able to pick up my medications. I'm on his medical plan, so it would make sense that he could pick them up (especially since a lot of minors don't have a legal ID; I didn't have a legal ID between 15 and 18 and I only had a legal ID between 10 and 15 because I had a US passport). My mom picked up medications for me when I was a minor and she shouldn't have been able to do so; she hasn't been on my dad's medical plan since they got divorced, when I was like 6.

Now let's think about another situation. Someone gains access to my online Kaiser account. If they've gained access to that account, they'd likely have to know me decently well. I also don't hide away my medications, so it wouldn't be terribly hard to get a prescription number. All they need to do to ensure that they get my medication instead of me is click that "set to default" check box for the address and then change it back when they're done. They only way I'd find out is because they now have an automated call to let people know their medication has been shipped, but they could change the contact phone number, too.

Let's say I had always previously had my medications shipped to a default address and had never changed that address. I go away for six weeks to an area that probably doesn't know what the hell Kaiser is. I order a refill and put in the address where I'm staying, but don't mark it as my new default address. Why would I? I'm only here for six weeks, but I need my medication and ordering it online is a hell of a lot easier than requesting a script from my physician (or psychiatrist in the case of the Wellbutrin), getting that script to, say, a Walgreens - or hell, WalMart, picking up that medication at a local store, paying for it out of pocket, and then going through the hassle of getting Kaiser to reimburse me when I get home. My medication gets sent to my default address instead and there's no-one there to send it on to me. What if that medication had been my Wellbutrin and I'd been having a rough time? What if Dave had to have me hospitalized? Or what if Dave has been at work and I'd done something stupid?

I don't see the above as an impossible situation. I take brand-name Wellbutrin, because it works well and it ensures that I always get bupropion instead of the generic budeprion, which I found out doesn't work for me the hard way (right before finals too!). Kaiser doesn't like when their doctors prescribe brand-name drugs. It's expensive. I'm also taking a high dose (300mg). So Kaiser makes sure that if I reorder that prescription online and have it shipped to me, that it will arrive the day after I run out - so that there is absolutely no overlap in the prescriptions. If it had been my Wellbutrin that got shipped to the wrong place this time... going cold-turkey off of Wellbutrin is not fun.

I'm sorry for the length of this. Congrats if you actually read the whole thing. I'm going to finish washing the dishes in the sink while I wait for Dave, he should be home soon.

Woman sues Victoria's Secret - I saw this article and just had to laugh. Thought some of you might find it entertaining as well.

In other news, I may lose my lip piercing. I've been being the good girlfriend and taken my lip ring out for while Dave's dad is visiting. I can only get a 16 gauge circular back through (and I wouldn't have that without Dave's collection of tongue bars). I don't have any saline solution (had to take it out of my suitcase because apparently a half liter of saline weighs around 2 pounds, according to the Jet Blue baggage scale) so I don't really want to fuck around too much with the piercing and get it infected as it's already pissed off enough as it is. Hopefully Dave can get me some distilled water sooner rather than later so I can make some saline and make a decent attempt at saving my lip piercing and getting it back up to 14 gauge.

And now I'm off to play some more LEGO Star Wars II. :B

It's hot and humid here, which is not my favorite mix of things. So I'll be spending the majority of my time indoors, online. Just like at home. But there's AC here, which home doesn't have. AC is good.

I have lived my 20 years of life without ever stepping foot inside of a WalMart. The closest I have gotten was sitting in the car, in the parking lot, while my mother went to use a phone. I now have the slight conundrum that WalMart is the major store here, for everything. The Lion has a somewhat limited selection of foods (though, it's not a small store by any means), and they were out of tomatoes when Dave and I went to the store yesterday. I don't agree with WalMart's business practices, which is why I don't want to shop there. However, not shopping there isn't doing much, as Dave gets most of his food there. So I'm eating their products anyway (I can't refuse to eat the food bought there because I get sick if I don't eat enough). My problem, in a nutshell, is, is using products from WalMart, bought by someone else, and personally buying those products the same thing?

The Internet connection here is a bit shaky, so using IRC and dAmn are a bit out of the question. I'm not really happy about that, but there's not much I can do.

I forget that a lot of people don't understand coding and that a lot of people don't know how to talk about what they want in a program. That data manipulation job, the guy was already expecting me to have a version done that can operate on live data. When I've been requesting STATIC data samples.

Looks like I'll be learning VB for the project (unfortunately I don't think it'll be VB.NET), so I can by-pass the piece of shit software that controls the data acquisition device. I'm looking at using an Excel interface to control the thing (I had no idea that something like that could be coded, but I have a sort of working Excel spreadsheet that does this; I can take a screenie if anyone is that interested in seeing it).

I spoke to tech support today (the people at IOtech are really nice). The tech emailed me a spreadsheet he uses to do adjustments on voltages a daq reads if they're not reading correctly (this is one of the concerns for my, uh, client; he needs his analyzer and the daq to read the same voltage) and a VB program for interacting with the daq (instead of using the out of the box software). So hopefully he's just made my life super easy.

I bought an Intuos2 on eBay last week and it arrived today. I'm having fun with it. I've been using it as my mouse so I can get used to using it more quickly and I'm actually surprised how fast I'm getting used to it.

There's actually more I want to write about, but I should maybe try to get a little work done first, so I guess that stuff will get written about later this week. Hope everyone's doing good.

No, I didn't spell that wrong. There's a really amusing movie called Son of Rambow. I saw it this past weekend with my dad and stepmom. I was wondering if anyone has even heard of it? Theaters here generally don't seem to have any issue showing any movie that's even slightly off the beaten path, but this movie was only playing at one theater and I'm not sure it's even playing anymore.

I also went to Ikea recently (with my dad and stepmom), and these guys followed me home. :B They're adorable, but I think the boyfriend thinks I'm insane now.

Speaking of the boyfriend, he's in the middle of his third day at his job. He's working as a manager-type person at a Duracell AA battery plant in South Carolina. I'll be visiting him soon; I fly out on the 14th. I'm excited to go because I think this is the last extended period of time I'll get to see him for for the next two years.

I think seeing my mom's chiropractor is helping. He has some exercises he wants me to do to strengthen my "core" muscles, which I need to do before I can strengthen the part of my spine that's really causing a lot of my problems. He says that there's a disk in my spine that's bulging, which is putting pressure on a nerve - explaining the issues I have in my right arm/hand (especially like right now; my fingers are freezing and I think part of my arm feels a bit numb).

I should probably go get some work done. I'm working for the Berkeley Foundation for Opportunities in Information Technology to redo their website (which, if you clicked the link, sorely needs an update). If you want to see the direction I'm going with the design, you can see here. I'm also doing some work for my friend's neighbor, who's got a start up source emissions testing company called Blue Sky Environmental. My primary goal with Blue Sky is to write some Excel VBA to manipulate the data he takes. I don't know how well I'm actually going to be able to do it, since I'm quite new to VBA and the resources available online are few and far between (and good ones are even harder to find). The other is also a website, but I'll probably end up working on that mostly while I'm in South Carolina.

Hope you kids are having fun. :B

**edit: Oh yeah, I forgot. Is there a half decent way of getting pictures of console games? 'Cause taking a picture with a camera in the middle of game play could produce some interesting results...

So I have this super old game called Pharaoh. It's a civilization building game, with more emphasis getting your city running properly than on war. The graphics are really corny, the game automatically changes my screen's resolution from 1920x1200 to 800x600 (but it at least does it properly and fills the entire screen; I tried to change my res to 1600x1200 and it just shrunk the viewable area).

But I've been playing this game. I really enjoy it, even if I can only play on the easy/very easy difficultly settings (I go bankrupt too much on normal and then the Pharaoh's army comes and attacks my city). I think my hand is starting to complain, 'cause I cracked it/my wrist (which I do a lot) and then tried to pick up my nearly full 15oz mug of tea, had some nice pain appear out of nowhere and had nearly all of my hand strength disappear (not that I really have any).

Speaking of hand strength, I finally got tired enough of the pain I have in my back, neck and shoulders that I went to my mom's (very expensive) chiropractor. I have like a page long list of shit that's wrong with the bones in my body. Some of my wrist bones are misaligned (which is why I have no hand strength), my elbows are misaligned, the curvature of my spine is totally fucked (the upper part of my spine is just about straight, instead of curving), some other stuff about my spine that I can't remember, my right pelvic bone is pushing forward and out - which is also causing stress on the left pelvic bone, and I might be borderline anemic (which I already knew, because I know how much red meat I don't eat).

Unfortunately, my health insurance doesn't cover this chiropractor. They have a list of chiropractors that they cover and when my mom tried to get Kaiser to cover this chiropractor for her, they said no. Which kind of sucks. Because he's expensive, but I suppose you get what you pay for (my mom can actually get out of bed now without being in pain).

Back to games. I found my Warcraft III disc after it went missing EIGHTEEN MONTHS ago. Apparently, at the time I took the disc out of my computer (or was cleaning my desk), I couldn't find its jewel case and stuck it in a DVD case, underneath the DVD. I only found it because I decided I didn't want to carry (some of) my DVDs back and forth across the country anymore, so I started copying them to my external (I need a big one... I'm almost out of space on my WD Passport 160gig). Unfortunately, I didn't think I even had the slightest chance of finding it, so I left my license key in my storage locker at school.

I will end my exceedingly long blog entry now. For those who actually read the whole thing, I'd give you a cookie if I could.

hand, wrist and arm. I know, I shouldn't have repetitive strain yet. But I do. It's primarily mousing that aggravates it (I can't actually use a touchpad or nub mouse for more than a few minutes before my hand starts hurting) and I was working on a vector yesterday and Friday so all the clicking and click-holding killed my hand. I'm looking into getting a mouse from Microsoft, from their ergonomic stuff, at the recommendation of exsecror. I've also been trying (and failing miserably) to switch to Dvorak simplified.

What mouse do you use? What keyboard layout do you use?

I want to buy a sub for here so bad, but I just spent $940 on plane tickets so that my boyfriend and I can visit home over spring break and I still need to finish up getting my supplies for my classes (which is another $100+tax for a DE-1 board). So I'm feeling kinda poor.

I really need to get around to getting my DE-1 board so I can start living, er... spending time... in the computer labs figuring out how to use VHDL to make the board do cool stuff. I think we made a 2-bit adder in lab the other day, but I wasn't paying much attention beyond the NEAT FLASHY LIGHTS. :B It's actually kind of cool "programming" things on a hardware level and I think I might end up liking the hardware end of computer engineering more than I thought. This http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~hamblen/DE1/DE1.JPG is a DE-1 board, with everything labeled. I srsly want to make it play music. My friend and I were talking about that on our way back to the dorms and she goes "Yeah, I want to make it play music because it'd be better at it than the POS I use now."

Uh, yeah. That's really all I have to say.

Oh, and I'm currently playing LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. It doesn't seem to exist in the current search/list/thing, so yeah.