FML

I've been trying to save up money for a while to buy an engagement ring. My girlfriend and I already have talked about it, we both want it, are looking for ward to it, and can't wait for it to happen. I say trying because each time I get close, something catastrophic happens where I need to spend all the money I save. Last time it went to two months rent. This time, it's going into my car.

My car is old, but has been trustworthy (until this summer). It's a 5 year old Mazda 3 hatchback. It has a manual transmission, and has been my trusty sidekick for many an adventure for the last two years. Before that, it had the arduous job of ferrying my father between Vegas and Tucson. I love this car, and watching her die has been a great pain of mine for the last few months. A couple months ago, I hit a catastrophic pothole. This had the job of shattering my front wheel (which instantly flats a tire) and severing my brake fluid line. I was going 60 downhill. If I had something other than a manual car, my girlfriend and I probably would have died. That was $3000 worth of repairs, because the dealer found my front struts and most of my rear suspension resembling dust.

It is time for a new car. I love the ol' gal, but her time has passed. I was thinking of replacing the car in October. Girlfriend tells me Friday (before the long drive...how lovely) that the clutch is doing something...odd. What it is doing is slipping out of gear. Great. This means the clutch is dying, but my father and I thought I had some time. I get up to Girlfriend's family lakehouse. We relax. Car goes nowhere, but I start thinking about bad things that can happen. We borrow her grandparent's spare care and plan on driving them both back down to New Jersey so GF can have a car while we look for a new one to buy this week. This is a good plan.

We started our trek south today amidst the rain. I didn't think anything of it, but I stayed the speed limit in the right lane, which is actually a challenge. I never realized how easy it is to pass everyone going 10 over. Those guys chilling out trying to obey the law actually have their work cut out for them. Traffic merging on, semi's, people going 50....it requires a lot of attention. But I did my best. It looked pretty up, and I was feeling ok about getting home.

The clutch died in Albany. That is three hours (minimum) from New Jersey. Fuck.

I ended up dropping the car off at a dealer thanks to a very friendly tow truck driver and AAA. It was after hours, so I will have to call them tomorrow to figure out what's going to happen. I have the most insanely busy week ahead of me already, and now I have to pile this crap on there. Dad and I think the clutch will cost about a grand. Not too terrible, but I would rather buy a new car. She has served her purpose, but I think her time with me is passed. After all, she seems intent on trying to kill me (or save me). The clutch died right as I was about to enter a busy intersection off an interstate.

Let's go back to the first part of this. I received a pretty big signing bonus with the new job. Almost half was taken away due to taxes. I think "that's ok, I can still buy furniture and then the ring. Then I can save up for a new car." I bought furniture last weekend. Now I'm going to have to buy a car and the ring has to be put off again. I cannot begin to describe how sad and frustrating and enraging this is. I feel like I've been treating the car and the girlfriend equally shitty right now. It just seems that I can't have what I want, and it's frustrating as hell.

I've always told the girlfriend when things got stressed that everything would be ok. Usually, I'm right, and I believe what I say. I stopped believing that today. So, for once, I get the right to say "Fuck My Life."

Long Break

I do stupid things, and I will often be the first to admit it. Especially after a night of drinking. However, it is pretty rare that I enter into an activity with full knowledge of the vastness of my stupidity. This summer, I performed just such an activity: I started teaching. Why? I needed to pay rent, and my full time job hadn't started yet. This decision resulted in a few distinct outcomes:

1. No free time whatsoever (so no updates)
2. The money with which to pay rent
3. Pure frustration

I thought I had been frustrated before. This was before I asked a simple question to a class and received nothing but the blank stares of empty faces and emptier minds. This was before I had to explain the difference between equality comparison and assignment in programming. This was before I became known, for a brief period, as "Professor Bujerkee."

The STEP program is a very progressive program where my alma mater takes students from inner-city areas all around New Jersey and brings them to campus for 6 weeks. During this time, they take "college level classes." If they pass, they get to enroll as a student and admission  is guaranteed. However, if they fail, they're out. This basically gives them one chance to pull themselves up by their boot-straps and get the fuck out of the terrible areas they come from. These kids are not used to college, mentally challenging and frustrating work, or being in an environment populated by a bunch of weird white nerds. They have more issues than missing coursework.

My job: teach these kids computer science. Basic, not even three weeks into the actual class computer science. This was a challenge for them. However, this is not to say that they are stupid. This is just a concept that was completely alien to them. Thinking in the logic that is required from most computer science courses is foreign to most people. It is not math. It was I affectionately call "Incredible Bullshit Math" (aka IBM). The easiest comparison I can think of is this: In Calculus, you can perform many operations at once. In basic programming, you can do only one at a time. These small individual operations are what make programming. Lots of them.

Trying to get students to wrap their heads around this was hard. Me figuring out how to teach ( I didn't really get it down until the fourth week) was much like watching a dog trying to get out of a large blanket. I floundered around for a bit, made progress, lost a whole shitton of progress, the somehow miraculously managed to get out without any reason or knowledge of how I did it. However, it was exhausting.

Things I have learned from 6 weeks as a teacher:

1. Teaching is hard
2. Students are dicks
3. Some students are a lot of fun
4. Students are still dicks
5. The concept of a loop is like quantum physics
6. Showing the class two ways to do the same thing will confuse them all
7. Dry erase markers are stupidly expensive
8. Intelligence does not necessarily mean good grades
9. Girls have cooties. No one wanted to sit by them. I have no idea why this happened.