CtrlAltDelete: The Beginning (Arschloch's Story)

Something I wrote para sa CtrlAltDelete....
and for the record... Arschloch != me

It all started 5 years ago, Arschloch was lying in his bed staring straight up, he had been awake for more than an hour now, but he has not stirred. Arschloch has been busy reviewing the events that shook up his existence over the past few months. He had been accused by a teacher of cheating with consent, the teacher claimed that he allowed a classmate to copy his project. Arschloch defended himself by telling the truth, that his project had been copied without his knowledge, but this time the truth did not help. After a flurry of disciplinary board meetings and factfinding sessions the board ruled against him and had him suspended indefinitely. This ruling in turn meant that the failing grade he received stayed on his permanent record and his scholarship with the DOST was cut-off.

A low rumbling growl emanating from his stomach interrupted Arschloch's reverie, he glanced at the clock on the dresser, it was almost 2 o'clock in the afternoon now. He slowly sat up and scanned the room he shared with four others this has been his home since enrolling at the University as a fresh faced kid some four years ago. His eyes fell on the silent radio on the dresser near the mirror to his left. His gay roommate had once again changed his hiding place for the power cord of the radio, and this time Arschloch and his other two roommates were unable to find the cord. 'Damn', mutters Arschloch , it has gotten even lonelier now without the music supplied by the radio. Another rumbling sound from his stomach interrupts Arschloch, and on top of that, his bladders feels like it is about to burst. Left with no choice Arschloch gets up and heads to the bathroom.

After a quick trip to the toilet and a quick shower, Arschloch is now back in his room looking for his favorite shirt and fisherman's cap, he finds both under a pile of fresh laundry. He quickly puts on the grey shirt, and starts to head out, but he does a quick u-turn after realizing that he had left his hat, he stops by the mirror for awhile to look at himself, his curly hair was going all over the place, but that was quickly solved by putting on his hat.

A gust of the dusty and polluted air of Cebu hits Arschloch squarely as he opens the door, he breathes all of this in, 4 years in Cebu has gotten him used to the air. His thoughts drift towards his friends. Most of his buddies at the University had graduated that March. It was a bittersweet time for Arschloch, he was happy for them, he also knew that when his buddies found work, getting together would be much more difficult. As he heads on down the stairs, he thinks of his buddies, and how easy it would be to text them and organize a get together for that evening.... that is if he had a phone. He was contemplating all of these when he hears 'Nang Eva, his Landlady holler 'Good morning'. He quickly retorts, 'Afternoon na man Nang Eva' followed by a hearty laughter shared by both of them, this was a running inside joke between the two of them, Nang Eva always greets Arschloch with a good morning, regardless of whether it was 10 in the evening or 10 in the morning, this was because Arschloch, during his suspension had develop a habit staying up all night and sleeping all day.

Downstairs to Arschloch's room was a carenderia also owned by Nang Eva, this is where Arschloch usually eats. "Mokaon ka Shloch?" asks Nang Eva. "Naa pay sud-an Nang?" replies Arschloch. Nang Eva points to the pans and kettles on display, indicating that what was inside those displays were the available viands left. Arschloch heads towards the display table and scouts the available food, he settles on the bistek tagalog for today and orders two servings of rice for starters.

Arschloch looked at the plates around him, he had ordered 3 additional servings of rice, and he still felt that there was room for more in his stomach. He decides that he has had enough, the bistek tagalog was now all gone, he didn't want to spend an additional 15 pesos for another serving of viand. His thoughts returned to contacting his buddies, nothing has changed from 30 minutes ago, he still had no phone and no way to contact his buddies. Then his thoughts turned towards the internet, but this was 5 years ago, networking websites were not as they are today, the friendster phenomenon hadn't taken hold yet. And not everyone had an internet connection, unlike today. He began weighing his options, either he go back upstairs and lie in his bed until he develops bedsores or he could go to the internet cafe and try his luck with finding his friends online. It was a no contest, as he begins walking towards the nearest internet cafe.

This particular internet cafe was divided into two rooms, the gaming room and the surfing room. The gaming room was loud as it always was, even though the door was closed, you could even hear a 'Fire in the Hole' sound clip every so often. Arschloch had previously spent countless hours at this very same room playing CounterStrike, Diablo, Need for Speed and many other games, but that was not his purpose here today as he turns right towards the surfing room instead.

The blast of cold air from the air conditioner hits Arschloch square in the face as he enters the surfing room. The ambiance in this room was very different from the gaming room, every computer had a headphone instead of the over-sized speakers that was par for the course at the gaming room. Arschloch chooses his spot and starts to daydream of who was going to be online today.

Two hours have passed since Arschloch started surfing, there were no familiar nicks in any of the usual channels in MIRC, nobody was online on his instant messenger. He had spent the past two hours chatting up strangers and trying to pick up women in MIRC, he had been mildly successful, but the reason he was here was not this, he wanted to contact his friends. He was now low on patience and running out of time. So he decides to check his email one more time and head somewhere else. He saw that he had received another message which had countless of cc's in it, which led to him thinking that it would be much more convenient if you only had to email a single address and everyone would receive your message. 'Now, that would be a great business idea' Arschloch mutters. As luck would have it, someone had already thought of that idea and had already put it into operation in the form of the Yahoo! Groups.

Arschloch was now busy signing up for the Yahoo! Groups. But he still had a problem, he didn't know what to name the group, he searched high and low for a name that would be appropriate, but he couldn't think of any, that was until one of the computers near him was forced to reboot bejavascript:void(0)
Publish Postcause of a bug, that's when Arschloch thought of the name reboot, which was a computer term, it was relevant to his situation now... he needed a fresh start, a reboot if you will. But he still had reservations on the name, it was too obvious and it sounded like a failed TV show. Then it hit him, the name was right there on the keyboard, it had been staring at him the whole time... the three keys that when pressed together allowed you to close non responding programs and/or reboot your system... he has finally found the perfect name for the group and he hastily enters it into the space provided: CtrlAltDelete and with those 13 keystrokes, an era begins.

Math 17

Nobody has the whole story, not my close friends, not my parents, not even my sister. They have bits and pieces from which they could probably gleam what happened, but I've never told anyone. I planned to never tell anyone, but the issue has been bugging me for close to a decade now and it's about time that I got this off my chest. The issue? How in the hell did I mess up my opportunity at the University of the Philippines.

Going straight to college after a high school was probably not the smartest idea after the disaster that was my junior and senior years in high school. I cut classes and miss at least a month's worth of school in senior year (I'll discuss the specifics later). But once the UPCAT results were out, everybody (including me) believed that I might have turned a corner and was ready for life as an Iskolar ng Bayan. How wrong we were, I would have been better served by a year off before plunging head first into the grinder that is UP.

I had made up my mind that college was going to be different for me, no more cutting classes, I was going to be the model scholar. I tried to find ways to motivate myself, but the keyword here is tried, I've never been very good at self motivation and all my so called resolutions fizzled a couple of weeks into the first semester of my first year in UP.

I was now attending classes irregularly, spending most of my time at the mall rather than in a classroom. My prospects at passing most of my classes were zilch. Then something inside me just clicked. I remembered that during our orientation, Ms. Cando, then the head for the computer science program at UP Cebu, had casually remarked that 'Ibagsak niyo na lang lahat huwag lang Math 17' (Fail everything else, just don't fail Math 17) she had said so to stress that Math 17 was a prerequisite to CS 11 which in turn was a prerequisite to every other computer science subject. In essence if someone was to fail Math 17 they could not get in to the computer science program. I set out to accomplish what she said, fail every subject I was enrolled in except Math 17.

Failing every subject was and is not that hard to do, all you really have to do is not show up for classes, and since I was already failing most of my classes, the task was a lot easier for me. But, I still had to contend with passing Math 17, I had missed 2 or 3 long exams for Math 17 and with a big fat zero on those exams, passing the course would have been damn near impossible. Luckily though, our Math 17 professor allowed me to take special exams for those that I missed.

Was I successful in this mission? Well... no, I also managed to pass Philo 1 which came as a big surprise. To this day I still don't know how the hell I passed Philo 1. The final tally for that semester? an INC, 3 5.0s, a 4.0, a 3.0 and a 2.75 for Math 17, and yes 1.0 is the highest grade, and a 5.0 is a failing grade. Here's how my grades looked like.

Course Code	Descriptive Title	Grade	Credits
Soc. Sci. 1	Foundation of Behavioral Science	INC	-
Philo 1	Philosophical Analysis	3.0	3
Math 17	Algebra and Trigonometry	2.75	5
History 1	Philippine History	4.0	-
Comm 1	Communication Skills	5.0	-
P. E. 1	Foundation of Physical Fitness	5.0	-
MS 11		5.0	-

Yes, I even failed P. E. 1 and MS 11(ROTC).
The raw stats:
Total number of units enrolled: 17 (20.5) PE 1 and MS 11 do not count towards the total number of units.
Number of units passed: 8
Passing percentage: 47%

As it turned out passing Philo 1 was what kept me in UP, if I had failed Philo 1, I would not have been able to reach the 25% passing percentage rate required for UP students to stay UP students. Staying in UP might not have been the greatest idea as I churned out this compilation that second semester.

Course Code	Descriptive Title	Grade	Credits
CMSC 11	Introduction to Computer Science	1.0	3
Physics 51	General Physics I	2.25	3
Physics 51.1	General Physics I Laboratory	2.0	1
Math 53	Elementary Analysis	NG	-

Total number of units enrolled: 12
Number of units passed: 7
Passing percentage: 58.3%

Yes, I got a 1.0 for CMSC 11, that's not a typo and that's no bullshit, I did get a 1.0 in CMSC 11. How? It was just the perfect mix at the time, handled by my favorite professor (Ms. Cando/Mrs. Sta. Romana) my passion for computers right around its peak. It was also my first experience with programming, hence I was naturally excited to go to class every day. In fact the only thing that might have caused a problem was the time for class which was pegged at 8:00 am, first period, but that proved a small hump I was able to manage after all.

The other grade of note during this semester was the NG I got for Math 53, that can be explained in 3 letters UNO. Why UNO? well a group of us usually played Uno, the card game as well as other card games during the schedule for Math 53.

Overall, this was a better semester for me, improving my passing percentage by a whopping 11.3%.

The next semester was a lot better but there was one minor snafu.

Course Code	Descriptive Title	Grade	Credits
CMSC 21	Fundamentals of Programming	1.75	3
Physics 52	General Physics II	1.75	3
Physics 51.1	General Physics II Laboratory	5.0	-
CMSC 55	Discrete Mathematical Structures in Computer Science	3.0	5
Comm I	Communication Skills	3.0	3
MS 11		2.25	1.5

Total number of units enrolled: 15 (16.5)
Number of units passed: 14 (15.5)
Passing percentage: 93%

Maybe I should have passed the required laboratory notebook for Physics 52.1. Why in God's blue earth would I fail to pass my laboratory notebook, you may ask. Well I hate writing, using a pen or a pencil is one of the worst things I have to deal with. Another massive jump for my passing percentage, making people (including myself) to believe that I might really have turned a corner. O how wrong we were, I was still as troubled as I have ever been.

The very next semester I went AWOL midway through the semester and ended up with this masterpiece as my last contribution to the records of UP.

Course Code	Descriptive Title	Grade	Credits
Stat 105	Introduction to Statistical Analysis	5.0	-
Math 53	Elementary Analysis	DRP	-
CMSC 130	Logic Design & Digital Computer Circuits	DRP	-
Comm II	Communication Skills II	DRP	-
CMSC 123	Data Structures	DRP	-

Total number of units enrolled: 18
Number of units passed: 0
Passing percentage: 0%

I was aiming for a clean sweep of DRPs but my Stat 105 professor did not cooperate.

I was later informed that I was actually passing all my subjects before going AWOL, but that's a moot point. UP wanted to give me another chance to re-enroll, but I was not up for it. I truly believed deep down that I needed to get away from UP to actually have a chance at finishing college. I bounced around a couple of colleges in Cebu, STI and the University of San Carlos, I was actually able to talk the admissions officers of both schools to allow me to enroll without actually submitting any records from UP. I didn't last long in both institutions, lasting less than a year as a Comsci student at STI and less than a month as a Computer Engineering student at USC.

I eventually ended up back in my hometown of Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay and was able to graduate from the Universidad de Zamboanga (formerly Zamboanga Arturo Eustaquio Colleges Foundation) with a BSCS degree, but that's another boring story.