Zhanga: March 2008
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Sunday, March 30, 2008 (1 comment)
So I was grading an assignment last night, and I found that some students submitted identical code. Most of them tried to hide it by renaming some variables and deleting some comments, but what do they think I am, a robot? Actually, these days, plagiarism bots can see through those sorts of changes. It was actually kind of funny -- one guy changed a bunch of variable names and function names, even ones that were defined as part of the assignment and so were supposed to be the same for all students.
Anyways, I emailed each of them individually and asked for an explanation. Most of them at least sounded honest and said blah blah I won't do it again, I will resubmit original work if you want, blah blah. One of the fobs actually told me "I really sorry." (The academic integrity policy here is a zero for the first infraction and an F in the class for second infraction, but I'm probably not going to be that harsh on them for a homework assignment.) But two guys, after digging their graves by cheating, are still digging!
First, we have guy #1, who said he got stuck and asked someone for help. He said that when some girl sent him her solution, he saw what was wrong with his program. Up to this point, these actions are still excusable. Although you're not supposed to send other people your code, it's sort of understandable as long as it doesn't get copied verbatim. Now this gem:
I made the mistake of thinking that rewriting the code would not have made a difference, as it had already influenced my thinking to the point where the only changes would probably be in variable names and probably a less elegant code.
Translation: I cheated and instead apologizing and saying I won't do it again, I'm just going to admit to it and try to justify it using the worst excuse ever.
The other guy who has a completely awful excuse emailed me this:
If any code overlapped, it is either because someone was sitting there and copying from my computer screen or somehow managed to steal the file from me. Most likely, it is because the program was complex and seemed only to have one solution.
Wow. Somebody sat at your screen and managed to copy, verbatim, 120 lines of code? Seriously? And if that didn't happen, you got h4x0red? And the last excuse is the worst of all. Apparently two people working independently can generate identical code, including comments! Oh but wait, according to his submission, he worked with a partner. Maybe his partner was the cheater and sent out his code to others? Let's keep reading his email:
I hate asking for help and working with people. That's a shortcut in my opinion. I really would have documented it if there was something to say, but I'm trying hard to remember if we worked with anyone and coming up empty.
Oops. Caught in too many lies?
3:34PM
Monday, March 24, 2008 (7 comments)
I enjoy drinking 菊花茶/chrysanthemum tea, but it's not that common around these parts so I wouldn't blame you if you didn't know it was tea. Here's what it looks like in my coffee maker (which is only ever used for tea and ramen...):
When I bought the flowers, they came as a huge pie-slab-thing in a nonresealable plastic bag. To keep the flavor from disappearing, I put it into a jar with a lid:
A roommate of mine who shall remain nameless was trying to figure out how almonds could look like that. Then it hit him. They must be inside-out almonds!
9:05PM
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 (3 comments)
Does anybody else find this funny? It's not that late at night yet, so I think my sense of humor is still functioning.
Rape is common among orangutans. Sub-adult males will try to mate with any female, though they probably mostly fail to impregnate them since mature females are easily capable of fending them off.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pongo_pygmaeus
You are free to draw your own conclusions about why I was looking up monkey sex, but my official (true!) excuse is that this is for a class, and I was just using Wikipedia to figure out what a Pongo pygmaeus is.
11:09PM
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 (0 comments)
I really suck at speaking:
Guy on phone: If I could get your name please, I
will have somebody get back in touch with you.
Me: My name's David.
Guy on phone: Jody?
5:47PM
Sunday, March 16, 2008 (3 comments)
The photo from Redmond, WA shows Than Brothers Pho, a Vietnamese noodle shop, next to some place called Truly Mediterranean. Than Bros is the best pho ever. I don't think any other pho that I've had compares at all. A usual visit goes like this:
- Walk in, sit down. Look at menu for 1 minute.
- Order. Wait 30 seconds.
- Receive the usual plate of vegetables that goes with pho. Also get one extremely delicious "custard puff" dessert thingy at no charge.
- 30 seconds later, receive glass of water.
- 1 minute later, receive gigantic tub of extremely delicious pho. Total wait time: 3-5 minutes.
Yesterday when I was there for lunch/dinner, some old couple walked in, looked around, turned around a few times, and finally gave up and asked the waitress if she knew of a Mediterranean restaurant around there. Seriously? Mega-facepalm! (They had entered through the only door to the pho shop, which is right in front of that white car and like 10 feet from the Mediterranean place.)
I'm in the airport right now, waiting for my flight. I have a transfer at 6 AM... I will enjoy that.
One time, TSA caught me trying to smuggle a pear through security. What audacity I must have had to try to sneak a fruit past them. Then last week, they confiscated a 90% used tube of toothpaste from me. Boy, are they good at spotting dangerous items that I might use to blow up airplanes.
This time I lugged a large orange, a small watermelon, and a tube of toothpaste through security in my bookbag and didn't get the special treatment. They stopped my bag in the x-ray machine, and I think one of the guys was laughing at me, but they didn't say anything. I would be such a good terrorist.
12:32AM
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 (4 comments)
I did my taxes a few days ago, then decided I need to file all my stuff in an organized way so I can find them in the future. I went into my closet to look for manila folders, and that was a mistake, at least in terms of getting any sleep tonight. It seems that every time I muster up the courage to venture into that horrible mess of a closet (about once a year), I find some old stuff and chuckle at my years-ago self.
This time, I actually spent from midnight until now cleaning my closet. I went through everything in there (well, except for some high school homeworks and tests that somehow live at the top of the closet, which I can't reach...), even including some photos from elementary school. I was... really small and apparently didn't like pictures too much. Hey, that sounds oddly familiar.
In my closet were at least 30 books lying around in various places. This is quite a feat, considering my closet isn't a walk-in and it's only about 2.5 feet deep and 6 feet across. Anyways, I found two very interesting specimens among the mess:
Using the Internet?? Seriously?! I looked at the contents, and it covers such modern topics as how to choose a modem (the dial-up kind, not cable/DSL) and even talks about Gopher... as in the rodent that died in the early 90's, right around the time the WWW was arriving. What a waste. I don't think I've ever even opened this book before. How it arrived in my closet is a mystery to me.
The next WTF is pretty messed up too:
- It's a cookbook...
- It's a cookbook for making food from a region that produces inferior food.
- Said food doesn't even contain meat.
But most oddly, I found this recipe book in my National Science Bowl bag. It is the same bag that has my Delta boarding passes for DC, my color-changing NSB frisbee, and a bunch of other Science Bowl junk (I still have the Smoky Hill school label as well as a bunch of our own). But recipes from this Hare Krishna thingy? What?
I have a vague recollection of receiving this book after winning regionals or subregionals or something. Can someone confirm that we received completely random crap? I think it was from GA College & State University?
The last one is for Ronjon:
Oh yeah, I found a Paso a Paso book in my closet. I have no idea what it's doing there.
5:43AM
Monday, March 3, 2008 (3 comments)
Hanif, why did you turn off the room lights but turn on your desk lamp, then curl up completely inside your covers (to block out the light?) and start snoring?
Indians...
3:33AM
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