Well it’s winter break, the semester is finally over, and that means
it’s time to look back and reflect. I also got my grades (or most of them)
today, and I noticed something strange: they’re unusually high. So it got
me thinking about school and the differences between GW and WashU. One of
the things is that I’m only taking four classes instead of five, and
they’re all narowly focused. I no longer have semesters filled with
required courses and humanities requirements. (It also could be that GW is
a little easier than WU, but we won’t talk about that one just yet). The
other thing is that I have a feeling there’s less of a need to give bad
grades to grad students, especially when the average student is a full
time employee taking one or two classes a semester. So I’m sort of curious
about other people’s grad student programs (especially those of you who
went to WU since we have a similar background). Does it seem like they
give out more A’s in grad school in general or is it just me.

I just heard back from the people at NASA. I’m apparently their first choice. They couldn’t make me an official offer yet since they
couldn’t get a hold of the people they needed to in the payroll department, but I was assured that an official offer is imminent in Jan
or therebouts. Woohoo!

I’m a little behind on my blogging, so there’s a few things I’ve been meaning to mention:

So I’m now watching sealab. The first, last, and only other time I watched it was when Raquel
showed me a bunch of episodes last yeat. So now, can anyone explain to me why Lenin is on the show?
What about the Pope? The attorney general? That lady in the bikini?

On Jan 1 The US’ new anti-spam law takes affect. Whooope – it should eliminate all spam right?
Wrong. Once again the legislative branch of the government has proven itself to be shortrighted and
innefective. The law will effectively legitimize spam, and overrides tougher state laws. They also
go to an opt-out system. Great. Every spammer in the world now needs to just put an opt-out box at the
bottom of their spams and they’re legal. As we already know, anyone who is foolish enough to try opting
out of any spam will simply get more. Spammers can now use the law to go to ISPs (which formerly used
to sue spammers and cancel their accounts), and use the law as proof that they’re above board. The only
useful thing this law did was make it illegal to forge header information, but that’s another provision
that won’t have much affect. It’s a simple matter to have legitimate headers that only give as much
information as forged ones. (Not to mention that a lot of it goes through China, a place that congress
currently has no jurisdiction over). The only real problems that occured with forged headers was when
spammers used someone else’s email address as the return address. Previously, they could technically
charge a
spammer with a DoS attack if they did this They did on a few occasions – most notably to
disgruntled Phillies fan and general jerk-wad Allan Eric Carlson.
(and yes, jerk-wad is a real word). Now a jerk-wad who did this would simply be in violation if this
new law. I fail to see much difference. On the other hand the do
not call
list is a great idea, so I guess congress is one for two. On the other hand since I don’t believe in
the phone, they messed up the communications medium I like more.

Kudos to anyone who gets all the references in the subject line

So I think I finally have this whole job interview straightened out. The lady who called me and I have a different opinion on
setting up meetings. When a potential employer says to me “How about 10:30AM on Monday”. I mark it on my calendar, say yes, and plan on
being there. She is one of those people who believe that a meeting isn’t a meeting until it’s been confirmed, which of course neither of
us did since I didn’t have her phone number and apparently the meeting time didn’t work for everyone at her end. I assumed it was still
on although I didn’t know where to go (which is why I guessed that it was at Langley). So it looks like I have a new interview set up
for next Mon,
and this time I have a phone number to call.

I have on the other hand joined a very exclusive club. This would be the group of “people who showed up at CIA headquaters in Langley
without an invitation”. Another name for this group would be “idiots”.

It is now less than 12 hours till my job interview, and I now where the
interview is. No, they didn’t call me or anything, I figured it out with the help of
a map, mapquest, google, bus schedules, and the bus routes in northern VA. Anyway, here
is the map, courtesy of mapquest, of the place where the
interview is. See that large government complex there? Yeah, I thought not.