A terrible exam

You know how there are these exams that just make you wonder why you're even alive? Well, I had one of those recently. It was the Graphics final exam, and those who've been following my blog would know that I'm not exactly getting straight-A's in the course. Let's quit kidding.....I'll be lucky if I even pass the course!! I've really had issues with it. And if all that wasn't bad enough, a few days earlier, we had to take the dreaded final exam in that.
The first page actually didn't give an inkling as to the terror the rest of the exam would be. I felt quite happy on seeing 5 true-false questions, and sat about solving them with a pleased smile. It was after I turned to the next question that the real fun began. And please note, I'm being heavily sarcastic here.
As I read through the next question, I had that vague feeling of dissociativity, and a slight buzzing in my ears. You know, the type you get when you switch on your computer one morning only to find an insidious virus deleted the entire operating system? That kind. I stared at the paper. I squinted. I tilted it against the light. I may even have smelt it, I was so flabbergasted at the question. I stole a glance around the class. I shouldn't have. Most of the students looked quite pleased, and were busy writing into their papers. I looked at the TA, perched on the table at the front of the class. He looked quite pleased with himself, whether for setting us a horrendous paper, or for some other reason, I'll never know. I groaned silently, and turned back to the paper.
I squinted again at it, hoping that something might spring out at me. I think I even silently considered heating the paper to see if any invisible ink stood out, something that would make a little more sense that what the question was currently making. But apart from the fact that there was no heater in the room, I had to finish the paper in 75 minutes, so I didn't spend any more time planning my obituary, and instead, tried to tackle the paper.
Note the use of the word "tried". I think I finally managed to put some kind of strange symbols on the paper, hoping they'd be correct. I then flipped to the next question. It made a little more sense, so I started off. But even as I scribbled the answers, I knew I had nowhere near enough time to complete the paper, so I started sweating again. Please, God, at least let me complete a third of the exam! I thought desperately. I somehow managed to write something before the TA called out time, and collected back all the papers.
I was actually mollified to hear later that everyone had a torrid time on the exam. All the same, it's an experience I'd rather never repeat again!

A crazy month

It's been a very crazy month. In fact, ever since the semester started, it's been crazy. The sheer amount of studying I've had to do has been mind-numbingly immense, and I cam close to a nervous breakdown a few days back -- all thanks to Graphics (as I write this, I'm casting a baleful look at the textbook, 3-D Graphics by Alan Watt, lying next to me). No course has ever caused me as many problems as this one has. And, what frustrates me, we study only math, physics, and other abstruse concepts in the course, and nothing of creativity whatsoever. I've come close to yanking my hair out this past month.
We've had projects, and my word, were they awful! Well, the first one wasn't...but the second one most certainly was, and though I haven't had a look at the code yet, the third one also seems to uphold the tradition. I finally took the monumental decision today of converting the grading of the course to a credit / non-credit. I might have to take four courses next semester, but that sure beats getting a nervous breakdown, and only a C or worse to show for it.
But I didn't want to crib. I'm actually feeling pretty good right now. I've been working part-time at the Fine Arts Department at the University of Texas at Austin, as the assistant webmaster. For some time, I just had to make HTML or basic Coldfusion updates, which weren't bad at all -- I love visuals, and was more than happy to work on it, and arrange elements of the pages as I wished. But now, I'm doing my dream job -- security!
My boss, Jeremy, has asked me to help out with the security concerns of the Fine Arts website -- and has given me full permission to poke around, and try as many exploits as I can to try to hack into the FA system! How cool is that??! Right now I'm trying to implement a CAPTCHA for the Art and Art History website. CAPTCHAs are the strange twisted words that show up when you try to send potentially spamming material. They cannot be deciphered by machines, but can be read easily by humans, so they prove very helpful deterring spambots.
What I'm actually using is the reCAPTCHA -- which is a nifty little concept. It has two words, like the CAPTCHA, with a line running through them, like a strikeout (it prevents bots from using edge-detection mechanisms to deduce the word), and, the cutest concept of it all, the words come from scanned historical texts, so everytime someone uses a reCAPTCHA, they are helping translate a word that wasn't scanned in well and not recognized by the OCR readers at wherever they do the scanning. I had read about the idea sometime back in an issue of Wired magazine, and actually got to implement it! It's wonderful.
Well, that's enough rant for now. I'm dying of sleep (haven't slept more than 10 hours in the past 4 days), and still have a paper review to complete. So I shall get going, and return again some other day. Adios!