:: how nintendo are you? ::
This news article from Declan McCullagh (of Politech fame) regarding the proposed CAPPS-II system should be a ray of sunshine in your day. The Senate Commerce Committee has voted to increase the official monitoring of the passenger profiling system the Transportation Security Administration wants to create. Unfortunately they don't want to cancel it entirely but they do want to place more restrictions upon what kinds of information about passengers will be stored and for how long they'll be stored.
However, this Senate committe's report on the CAPPS-II system will remain classified - it's "for internal use only" (gotta love those words). There's talk on the Politech mailing list about something called the Air Cargo Security Act, which was introduced in 15 January 2003. I havn't read it all the way through yet as I'm sitting in a lab waiting for class to start, so my commentary on it will be necessarily brief until I get a chance to actually sit down and analyse it. Its name is pretty logical - it's aimed at cargo-carrying aircraft within the boundries of the United States. It calls for regular inspections of air freight shipping facilities, and allows for the periodic inspection of said cargo to ensure that security protocols are being followed and no one's trying to sneak something in that they shouldn't. Seems about right, no?
There is also a measure (section 44923, part 'a') for the creation of a database of organisations that ship stuff aboard passenger aircraft, which is pretty common these days. Seems all right.. Random inspections of air carrier facilities is mentioned in subpart 1.. screening of flight crews of said carrier craft... down in the very last paragraph, however (section 6, part c, paragraph 4) we have the following text:
4) SUSPENSION OF PROCEDURAL NORMS- Neither chapter 5 of title 5, United States Code, nor the Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App.) shall apply to the program required by this section.
You'll want to dig this up on your own - don't take my word for it. USC title 5 chapter 5 deals with "..cooperatively study mutual problems, exchange information...", otherwise known as the public being able to look at the text of the criteria this bill calls for. The Freedom of Information Act. If this goes through there's no way that anyone outside of the US Government will be able to examine what criteria they're going by.
I'll let you think about what this could mean for a while...
Let's see... for some reason I forgot to gas up my car when I left the lab this morning for campus. By the time I found a parking space up on the hill the 'low gas' indicator had gone off. Because I'm parked on a hill I really can't be sure how much petrol is left in the tank but I hope it's enough to make it to the gas station on the outskirts of CMU. This is going to be a close one. I just hope that I've got my AAA card if I'm wrong..
I think I know how to finish my algorithms project now. I'm sitting in recitation, and after going over it for a while I think I made it too complex. In particular, the recursive algorithm I've been trying to get working is too complex. The base case is fine, but the rest of it.. ye gods.
"To iterate is human; to recurse divine."
I'm not evolved enough to be divine yet. Time to go to v3.0.
Lyssa turned me on to No Pudge brownies not too long ago.. and now I'm hooked. It's a pre-made baking mix (which ordinarily I avoid like the plague) which you mix with yogurt and bake for a while. Thirty-three minutes later... they're amazing. They're so soft you'd swear that they're not done baking, but indeed they are. I found it at the Giant Eagle just down the street with the baking goods. I'm saving the rest of the yogurt for breakfast tomorrow, maybe I'll mix it with an apple and some spice, cinnamon or clove.
After dinner tonight I headed out to try to find a copy of Aliens: Special Edition to watch for the sci-fi literature exam on Tuesday. The phrase 'special edition' ensures that it won't be available when you actually need it. I got lucky and found a copy at a tiny video store not too far away from the mall earlier tonight... after driving around for two hours hunting for a copy. Media Play doesn't have it.. Suncoast doesn't have it.. Amazon doesn't have it (I checked last night).. Best Buy doesn't have it.. Blockbuster doesn't even have it for rent.. life sucks sometimes.
Song that best describes life right now: Bon Jovi - Living On A Prayer
Boring day. 'nuff said. Discussed Aliens in sci-fi literature today. The discussion got farther off topic than normal. Everyone shouting out the names of action flicks where the hero was even a little bit 'sensitive' got really annoying. I considered throwing Jack Dante from Death Machine into the mix to stir things up but decided against it.
It was supposed to rain today? This is news...
More to come if and when something happens.
Well, a few things did happen today. I almost got stuck in an elevator on my way to formal logic class. Apparantly elevator #2 in that particular building is a little bit weird - sometimes it doesn't go in the direction you want it to and sometimes the doors don't open. These aren't good signs - the building is less than a year old! After that particular class I had to run to the bookstore to pick up an umbrella to use because I didn't have mine on me and it was raining much more strongly. I'd rather drop the $6us on one than get sick again, especially with two exams next week (sci-fi lit and formal logic)
After that I made a short side trip to the bank so I could pay my bills tonight. It turns out that the teller knew my aunt and uncle about twenty-five years ago and has been trying to find them since my grandmother's funeral in 1987. She gave me her contact information, I'm going to pass it along to them this weekend. John C. Lilly, thou art avenged.
I paid my bills earlier this evening and filled out the documents to get health insurance. I don't have any insurance because I'm too old to be on my folks' insurance plans and I'm not working right now so I don't have any coverage of my own. I'm looking about about $530.00us/month, which is a kick between wind and water but will, on the whole, suck less than being hospitalised for something and having to pay for the entire thing out of my pocket. Sometimes you've got to grit your teeth and take the shot, no pun intended.
Today opened to a bit of unscheduled excitement, a close encounter of the butt-head kind. I was on my way to class, in a bit of a hurry due to getting a late start this morning, when someone down on the Pitt campus decided to make a left at speed and almost take me out as I was crossing the road (on the green, mind you). I was a little more than halfway over, maybe three-quarters when I saw the pickup make the turn southward and accelerate. I was close enough to the truck by the time I started running for my lives that I could see that the chrome on the grille was chipped in a few places and there were dead maple leaves stuck against the radiator. By this time I'd entered that unique state of mind that I suppose precedes a messy death. As far as I can tell my conscious mind had completely shut down; there was no internal dialogue or processing of information that I can recall. My body put its head down and started pumping its limbs as hard as they could at a full sprint. Somewhere deep inside me I felt an utter calm, complete resignation to whatever might happen, be it safety or inner-city succotash.
Descartes' arguments aside I appear to be sitting in front of a terminal in the computer lab reading Slashdot and writing this update. I made it, though not without the odd blasphemy once I'd gotten onto the sidewalk, well away from the reach of speeding motor vehicles. I must admit, I was unnerved by the fact that the driver of said truck slowed down to get a good look at me. By this time my higher cognitive processes had started back up and were fully expecting him to jump out of the truck and start beating the living hell out of me. This did not come to pass, either.
Nothing like passing Death on your way to American Cultures class early in the morning, nosireebob. Gets the hearts going, let me tell you.
Oh, Death says 'hi'. She's been a bit busy of late to stop in for tea.
This just hit the Politech mailing list, and I think word needs to get out. If you'll recall a few days ago, the UK Observer published a news article about the US using some dirty tricks to get more votes for its war effort in the UN. Someone got hold a memo written by the NSA which states that information regarding how the 'middle six' countries (Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guina, and Pakistan) will vote, as well as information about their points of view on various war-related topics. If you'd like to read the memo for yourself you can catch it here at the Observer or my mirror of it here (done without the permission of the UK Observer or the NSA).
Well, someone was arrested over this incident. An employee of the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) went down for leaking this memo. A 28 year old woman was arrested last week on suspicion of violating the Official Secrets Act. She is out on bail right now but undoubtedly in deep trouble.
Food for thought, cats and kitties.
Very quick entry for you, I'm kind of busy right now. Remember a few weeks ago, that little girl who died after being given a heart and lungs that not only weren't antigen-compatible, but not even compatible with her Rhesus factor (blood type)? That isn't the only time it's happened. This is about a similiar incident last summer.
I fell a lot better today. Got a decent, full night's sleep last night, which I'm actually surprised about. Woke up this morning not feeling like an organ donor. My mind's actually running decently right now. I tried coding for my project (due on Monday) last night but didn't make too much headway. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to convert an extremely large integer stored as ASCII characters into an extremely large binary value (also stored as ASCII characters) and I'm coming up short. I know that it can be done with a combination of modulus math, division, and subtraction, but the logistics of it aren't coming together for me right now. Maybe I'll take my body offline when I get home from class to think about it for a couple of hours. It's tricky but it can definitely be done. I just have to wrap my brain around it.
Why can't insulated mugs hold in heat worth a tinker's dam? I bought an alulminum one specially for class and by the time I actually got at it the coffee was nastily cold. Maybe the fact that it's 13 degrees Farenheit outside has something to do with it.
Here's a lurid thought for you.. project Echelon has been reported to have been instrumental in the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In case the name isn't familiar (and it probably shouldn't be, because the news media doesn't really use his name), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was one of the big guys in Al Quaida who was nicked a couple of days ago. It's said that the Echelon was used to monitor the cellular telephones (prepaid, no less) that KSM was using to communicate with with other members. Once they'd sussed the code of a particular phone they were able to triangulate his position, probably from the reception cells that the phone was interfaced with. If this article isn't jetwash then this says a lot for how difficult it is to communicate privately anymore. Once a unique identifier has been gotten for a given phone it's just a matter of time before they start moving in on it every time you use it.
Well, after clearing a few things up with the professor of my algorithms class, I've now got a good idea of what to do for my project. Thank Kibo, I don't have to translate an array of digits into a single, gigantic binary string, I get to keep doing denary (base-10) math. I've spent the past few hours figuring out what's what, and discovered that the code I'd written and discarded is the way to go. I keep lots of backups. No more Mr. Nice Coder.
The Pittsburgh Comicon is coming up at the end of April, the 25-27 to be precise. I might try to make it to both this and Tekkoshocon as well this year. "Why?" you may be asking. David Mack is going to be there again. Yes, David Mack, creator of Kabuki. Possibly my favourite comic ever. I wouldn't be going to get anything autographed, I've already got a copy of Circle of Blood autographed by him (I need to get a new copy, actually, because the binding broke), I'd be going because he's just that cool. Mack's a nice guy; if he's not up to his neck in fans he's very personable and very witty. He was fun to talk to, and I wouldn't mind repeating the experience.
I'm not sure if I feel like a zombie today or not. After finishing my research paper last night I tried staying awake, I really did. I think I went to bed around 2330 last night, much earlier than normal. I just felt drained, as if I'd tapped the last of my reserves and was hanging onto consciousness by sheer force of will. It feels kind of like depression but not. There's a bit of muzziness in there as well, some tiredness, and a lot of don't-want-to-move. I don't feel worried or obsessed with anything right now, which is really the weird thing. When I start using up my reserves of strength it's usually because I've been worrying about something too much. I havn't been, or at least I don't think that I have.
I think I got a grand total of two hours of sleep last night. I didn't drop off until 0130 or so and then I think I was out for about an hour. The rest of the night is a bunch of eyeblinks and glimpses in my memory records - up a little, out a little, some tossing and turning, and lots of phantom sensory input. Lots of pieces of past conversations, visual memories of the past few days, songs stuck in my head.. it's as if my sensory memory system decided to verify everything it'd stored over spring break.
In hindsight I may just have been dreaming very, very strongly. The quality of the state I was in very dense, almost like walking around.
I've got a weird, disconnected sort of feeling now behind my eyes and forehead (or at least this is how it feels right now) that mimics sleep deprivation but isn't quite it. I feel like I should curl up somewhere and take a nap but I know that sleep won't come if I do so. It'll just be a waste of effort. Besides, if I did sleep I'd probably miss my next class. I'm trying to figure out what might have done it but I really don't know. I didn't over-do things over break, in fact I was pretty laid back about everything, or at least I like to think so.
Not long after I'd written that last entry I decided to get a cup of coffee at the cafe' downstairs. I don't know if it was the caffeine that helped my headache or if it was not having any caffeine in my system, but it cleared up my head pretty nicely. Maybe I shouldn't have gone back to drinking coffee recreationally over spring break... after that I wandered around the city for a couple of hours to kill time. Even after studying I had time on my hands, I wish I'd brought all of those Phantom Dollars that have been piling up in my room, I could have cashed them in for something. Oh, well. Maybe later.
I'm finally back at home and tired. Maybe I'll take a nap before dinner.
This just in - if you can help it avoid the Mad Mex restaurant in the part of Pittsburgh, PA called Oakland (for readers who don't live around here but mind come to this city one day) - three of the eight people I ate dinner with there on Saturday came down with food poisoning. Don't go there.
Just great. In sweeping the spam out of my mailbox today I discovered that some spammer had decided to forge my e-mail address as the source of his waste of disk space. Fuck. Time to haul out the big guns. The point of origin was Korea, of all places.
Okay - here's the information for you, in case you'd like to preemptively take action so you don't get nailed by this as well:
drwho@leandra:~$ whois 218.155.6.175 % [whois.apnic.net node-1] % How to use this server http://www.apnic.net/db/ % Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html inetnum: 218.144.0.0 - 218.159.255.255 netname: KORNET descr: KOREA TELECOM descr: Network Management Center country: KR admin-c: DL248-AP tech-c: GK40-AP remarks: ****************************************** remarks: Allocated to KRNIC Member. remarks: If you would like to find assignment remarks: information in detail please refer to remarks: the KRNIC Whois Database at: remarks: http://whois.nic.or.kr/english/index.html remarks: ****************************************** mnt-by: MNT-KRNIC-AP mnt-lower: MNT-KRNIC-AP changed: hostmaster@apnic.net 20010924 status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE source: APNIC person: Dong-Joo Lee address: 128-9 Yeong-Dong Jongro-Ku Seoul address: Network Management Center country: KR phone: +82-2-766-1407 fax-no: +82-2-766-6008 e-mail: ip@ns.kornet.net nic-hdl: DL248-AP mnt-by: MAINT-NEW changed: hostmaster@nic.or.kr 20010425 source: APNIC person: Gyung-Jun Kim address: KORNET address: 128-9, Yeong-Dong, Jongro-Ku address: SEOUL address: 110-763 country: KR phone: +82-2-747-9213 fax-no: +82-2-3673-5452 e-mail: ip@ns.kornet.net nic-hdl: GK40-AP mnt-by: MNT-KRNIC-AP changed: hostmaster@nic.or.kr 20010906 source: APNIC inetnum: 218.155.0.0 - 218.155.11.255 netname: KORNET-XDSL-ANYANG-KR descr: ANYANG NODE descr: 445 ANYANG5DONG MANANKU ANYANGSI descr: KYONGGI descr: 430-015 country: KR admin-c: GP1968-KR tech-c: WK8128-KR remarks: This IP address space has been allocated to KRNIC. remarks: For more information, using KRNIC Whois Database remarks: whois -h whois.nic.or.kr mnt-by: MNT-KRNIC-AP remarks: This information has been partially mirrored by APNIC from remarks: KRNIC. To obtain more specific information, please use the remarks: KRNIC whois server at whois.krnic.net. changed: hostmaster@nic.or.kr 20030303 source: KRNIC person: GilSoon Park descr: KOREA TELECOM descr: 128-9 Youngundong Chongroku descr: SEOUL descr: 110-460 country: KR phone: +82-2-747-9213 fax-no: +82-2-766-5901 e-mail: gspark@kornet.net nic-hdl: GP1968-KR mnt-by: MNT-KRNIC-AP remarks: This information has been partially mirrored by APNIC from remarks: KRNIC. To obtain more specific information, please use the remarks: KRNIC whois server at whois.krnic.net. changed: hostmaster@nic.or.kr 20030303 source: KRNIC person: Won Kang descr: KOREA TELECOM descr: 128-9 Youngundong Chongroku descr: SEOUL descr: 110-460 country: KR phone: +82-2-747-9213 fax-no: +82-2-766-5901 e-mail: ip@ns.kornet.net nic-hdl: WK8128-KR mnt-by: MNT-KRNIC-AP remarks: This information has been partially mirrored by APNIC from remarks: KRNIC. To obtain more specific information, please use the remarks: KRNIC whois server at whois.krnic.net. changed: hostmaster@nic.or.kr 20030303 source: KRNIC
kornet.net. Lovely.
Since then I've interrogated KRNIC's whois server for more information and sent complaints to everyone listed as a contact, as well as the usual destinations (spam@, postmaster@, legal@, et cetera), and sadly enough the contact people's accounts are suspended. This isn't a good sign. I'm waiting for the clueless to start bombarding me with "Stop spamming me" messages because they don't know how to read SMTP headers. Fuck. Just what I wanted to deal with this week.
I just discovered something else - I forgot to activate my new debit card. It came in the mail yesterday, much earlier than usual (yay, bank). I just tried to use it to reopen a subscription, however, and was turned down... I forgot to activate it. Damn. I've got to run out today and hit an ATM to activate my card before I can use it, now.
I've found a reason to have the TV on, even if it's just for background noise: VH-1 Classic. Last night after I got home I spent the night watching videos from Gary Numan and Dead or Alive, and I just saw the video for Axel F (yes, there's a music video). I'm a happy Time Lord, I finally got to see a Gary Numan video. I've just found happiness on cable, or as close an analogue to it as possible.
Now I want to set my keyboards back up.. damn carpal tunnel syndrome, I want to jam again.
..and a fine night it was. Early last night I drove out to LARP to finish off spring break among friends and a good escapist plot. Before heading out I hit the local supermarket for supplies. Patrick had mentioned that he'd be making clam chowder, so I picked up a loaf of sunflower bread (amazing stuff, try it whenever you get the chance!), some pretzels, and a flat of rolls to go along with them. I honestly hadn't counted on other people bringing the same thing.. oh well. During the game itself I think we broke the new players... the Pittsburgh plots tend to be rough in the Lovecraftian sense. It's amazing that there aren't more characters walking around with derangements of some sort, but I digress.
Afterward we hit the local Eat and Park for dessert and decompression. That was one of the most fun times I've had in a long time.. spoke to Lu and Nicole about a lot of things, including the possibility of cosplaying at Tekkoshocon as part of the cast of X and a few other things that have been going on lately. Nicole was offered a job out west, which she accepted. I'm proud of her, I really am.. it's very hard to get employment at this particular company, and they've got a reputation for finding talent, which she's got in spades. This is the brass ring for her, and it brought joy to my hearts that she grabbed it when she had the chance. Opportunities like this don't happen very often. Patrick is getting married in the near future (gods.. everyone I know is either engaged or getting married soon), and I've been invited to the wedding. Wow... I've definitely accepted the invitation. I'll be there barring the most unusual of circumstances. Let's see... what else is going on...
Not much at all, actually. I'm chewing on the data from my research project and writing the paper up itself. I've got to make some more headway on that so I can go out tonight. I've got an invite to someone's house for the evening that I'm going to follow through on. Beyond that, what's going on today is anyone's guess.
I'm amazed at how comfortable it is outside right now - it actually broke 50.
I've got some thoughts about things that I'd like to turn into an essay at some point. Maybe I'll start working on them during break this afternoon and I'll get them refined and written up this week. I havn't decided yet.
It never fails.. a few months ago, Dataline found on clearance somewhere a few pairs of jet-black canvas carpenter paints.. I wasn't much interested in them as a style until I tried them on. They're incredibly comfortable.. or they were until I washed them. For once I followed the laundry instructions on the tag, and I've since discovered that they've shrunk ever so slightly. Not so much in the parts that were loose to begin with, but in the waist. They've lost about an inch of space. And no, I havn't gained any weight... when I first got these pants I actually weighted a few pounds more than I do now. I'm trying to stretch them right now, but I'm afraid of damaging the fasteners. Maybe I'll rig up some sort of weight apparatus tonight to pull them apart some. They don't have much breathing space anymore.
So much for reading the fine manual.
Today's shaping up to be another slow day. I'm going to be doing a bit of work on the first draft of my research paper today and I've got a standing request to shovel the driveway and front steps this afternoon. I'll probably do that in a couple of hours, if only to rest my wrists. My current gameplan is to write the introduction and an outline of the methodology that I used for my research and then start boiling the data down to draw conclusions from either this afternoon or tomorrow. I'm not in any rush, and that's actually deliberate: By taking my time and moving more slowly than normal, there's less of a chance of screwing up. I've got time, I'm going to take the best advantage of it that I can. It also gives me a chance to bring the 'writing things' parts of my mind back on line.
The Cowboy Bebop movie is coming to theatres in April. Apparently the test-showings early last year panned out for Sony and they'll be releasing it nationally. Readers in Berkeley, CA, Cambridge, MA, Minneapolis, MN, Seattle, WA, and Washington, D.C. will probably want to see it when it opens. I hope it gets a better treatment than, say, Mononoke Hime did way back when. Then again, Disney's not releasing it so it's got a better chance. The fact that CB is shown regularly on the Cartoon Network doesn't hurt, either.
It's spring break, for Kibo's sake... why in the hell is it snowing?
Early this morning, in the hinterland between dreams, I recall laying in bed listening to Dataline and my grandfather talking in the hallway. They had heated words about the buses running out here, not being able to get into work, and freezing one's ass off standing outside waiting for a bus that might not come. That's about it. The next thing I remember is my alarm going off and stumbling out of bed to get a shower. A brief detour into the living room once I'd rubbed the sleepers out of my eyes and a peek through the window showed Dataline waiting at the bus stop for the bus into town. There wasn't much I could do there so I doubled back and took a shower. A some point after that I heard the front door open and someone walk in. The roads, she said, were a sheet of ice, too slippery for a bus to make it safely. She was frozen and had given up. While I was getting dressed she called off of work.
This is the winter that just won't die. Every time it starts getting nice again and we can see the plants another blast of snow comes through and buries everything. At this rate it'll be April before the temperature breaks 50 degrees Farenheit again.
For those of you who remember reading about Delta Airlines running background checks on prospective passengers, this may interest you: BoycottDelta.com. So far, the CAPPS-II system is only in place at three airports around the United States, all of which are being kept secret at present (probably because if word got out those three airports would be empty so fast of passengers that their heads would spin). Take a look at the site and decide for yourself. As for me, I'm not going to be flying Delta anytime soon.
Props to dis.org crew for hosting that site. The respect keeps adding up.
And here's some news that I guarantee won't make it onto the television nets anytime soon - the city council of Pittsburgh, PA has voted unanimously against the war on Iraq. Pittsburgh is now one of 130 cities in the United States of America to take a stand against this vendetta. Spread the word.
It figures. I just tried posting the above link to a couple of mailing lists I'm on, and Telerama's SMTP server is screwed up again - I can't send mail from there. I hate it when that happens. It's always stuff like this.
I've just finished hacking on my fourth coding project for the afternoon. Starting from an algorithm given in the text book I've rewritten it four times now, each time refining it a little, making it a bit more understandable (the textbook we use is horrible for having understandable examples), tweaking it to do what I want it to do, and maybe even making it a bit more efficient. I havn't tried typing it in yet but so far I'm pretty proud of myself. We'll see how long that lasts once I start keying it in.
Telerama's SMTP server is up again. Whee.
Minor correction on that news article from earlier - the city of Pittsburgh opposes going to war without the sanction of the United Nations. Thanks, Emerald.
I've just fallen in love with my favourite art site, 2003/03/05
It's Mardi Gras?
Not much is going on today. I've been analysing the data collected for my research project for most of today, and I've got some coding and formal logic homework racked up for later today. Right now I'm taking a break, watching the DVD of Wargames that Dataline gave me a few weeks ago. I should also do some more reading for sci-fi literature soon but I think that can wait until after dinner.
You know what? I'm really enjoying this. No stress, no strain, no rush.. no fsck(1)ing deadlines to worry about. Downtime, pure and simple.
Well, today's been pretty productive, even though it doesn't mean any homework getting done. I really don't care at the moment. After breakfast I headed out to run a few errands. Dataline needed to get two of her wrist watches repaired so I dropped them off at a local jeweler and then wandered around for a while, killing time. I did some window shopping, went into a few stores to see what was what, wondered what happened to the music stores at the mall (they're gone, they're all gone..), then picked up her copy of The Ring that I'd put on reserve over the weekend. After that I drove back in to Giant Eagle to play my grandfather's numbers. True to form, the lottery counter was closed. My family's got their theories as to why it's closed more often than not, but I don't feel like getting into them right now. Suffice it to say that the store chain as a whole is really starting to piss us off.
I spent some time back in the magazine rack catching up, reading Adbusters and Starlog, then headed back. The counter was open so I did the deed, then headed over to the bank to cancel my debit card. They're going to kill the number first thing tomorrow so the charges I made today will go through without any trouble. I should have a replacement next week.
At Mediaplay I discovered, much to my horror, that the original pilot movie of Forever Knight, called Nick Knight unimaginatively enough, was released on DVD. I almost bought it, I really did. It's horrible; it does the series no justice at all (just like the third season). But it's still the beginning, of sorts, when the writers were trying things out. I havn't seen it in forever, pardon the pun. Maybe if I get a gift certificate or something I'll pick it up, but not right now. I've still got those DVDs Dataline gave me for my birthday sitting there, I should watch those first.
Frank Herbert fans rejoice (or cringe, depending on how much of a purist you are)! The Sci-Fi Channel will be showing its second Dune movie, The Children of Dune as a three part miniseries starting on Sunday, 16 March 2003 at 2100 EST. I'm definitely setting aside a videocassette for this one. It's supposed to combine elements of the second and third novels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. Frankly, I don't know how well this is going to work out, I just started reading Dune Messiah (with my luck, I'm reading them out of order - I'm going by copyright date), but I'm really interested in seeing what kind of job they did on it.
I'm watching X: Three right now. Episode seven opens with.. Satsuki. Nice way to open the day, I think... the girl whom computers adore brings a warm and fuzzy feeling to my hearts, I must admit.
I might change whom I'm cosplaying as at Tekkoshocon in a few weeks. *grin*
Well, I just got a lovely phone call. Remember back in February, when word got out that one of the big credit card transaction houses was cracked and several million credit card numbers were copied from their databases? I just got a call from my bank.. they're cancelling my card because they think it might have been one of the cards stolen. I've got to go to the bank tomorrow and requisition a new card, and then figure out where my recurring charges are so I can direct them to the new card once I get the new one. I needed a new card, anyway, but for Pete's sake... this is going to screw things up a good bit.
Aah, well. Better that then getting a bill at the end of the month two inches thick.
Security hole in Sendmail, film at eleven.
I've been doing a little studying this afternoon. After I finished watching X I watched The Boondocks Saints (which is steadily working its way up my list of favourite movies) and did some work on my research project. Then I did a bit of reading for science fiction literature. Right now I'm tracking down some handouts for my algorithms class, I'd like to get in a little work on my next project tonight. It doesn't seem too difficult, it's basically implementing a class to handle bignum computation (like multiplying extremely large numerical values). I just finished my laundry for the week; throw in a load, let it go, throw it in the dryer, let it go, rinse, repeat.
If the first thing you thought when you read that was 'cryptography', you're right. We've been discussing it in class lately. But it isn't a crypto project, it's more to profile algorithms than anything else. I'm hoping to find the handout that covers the one algorithm that doesn't appear to be in the textbook because it's specifically required for this asisgnment.
Oh, by the way.. I found out what I got on my second assignment - 100%
Such are the days when you don't have to worry about going to class, you can take your time on what you have to do, and goof off a little while doing so. If only all of life was this low-stress.
Okay, another of those weird Live Journal quizzes - "How Nintendo are you?"
I love the game Double Dragon so I don't mind the personality analysis being completely off-target.
Last night Swift Fox and Sil cancelled game night, so John, Lara, Lyssa, and I got together with some friends in Squirrel Hill to watch movies and relax. They rented some of the worst anime I've ever seen and we sat around MSTing it. If you've never heard the term before, MST (pronounced 'mist') stands for Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which was a television show based around the premise of a man being forced to watch horrible science fiction movies and keeping his sanity by heckling the movies with two friends, a pair of robots. I strongly search hitting up Google for the what and wherefore of MST3k, you won't be sorry.
Anyway, the night started off with FLCL by Gainax. There were only two episodes on the DVD, and that was quite enough. Between the reused ideas from Shin Seki Evangerion and the abuse of the two sound effects CDs that Gainax seems to have around it studios, I couldn't take a great deal of it. John and I wound up heading outside about halfway through for a cigarette. After that it just got worse. I've had hallucinations that were more coherent. And don't get me started on the.. suggestive, let us say... bumps on the head the lead character kept getting.
Everything we watched after that was just silly. They weren't nearly as bad, just laughable. I was actually entertained by that. Then there was the obligatory round or two of Dance Dance Revolution. The meme's spread out of control, of this I've no doubt. Damned lot of fun, though - I plan on getting a pad at some point so I can play it on my Playstation (as if I've got the cash for a PSX-2, even though the music for DDR Max is so much better). In the long run I plan on getting a PSX-to-USB adaptor for a DDR pad so I can play PyDDR on Leandra. I love the idea of being able to play to whatever sound files I care to throw at the Python sound libraries, like .mp3 or .mod files. Oh, and putting .mpeg files on for the backgrounds (or Xscreensaver hacks...) gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. But now I'm digressing.
Afterward we headed back to John and Lara's to crash for the night as Lyssa was supposed to leave for home around 0630 this morning. I drove her out to the terminal and saw her off safely. Afterward I headed back to the lab and caught a couple of hours of sleep. Once I had a bite to eat and took a shower I headed out to wander around the city for a while. First stop was Target to get more tennis socks; because I don't normally wear shoes while I'm at home or visiting someone, they get pretty torn up after a few months. I've been throwing the old ones out about once every two days and now I'm running a little low. That done I headed over to the mall to see what's changed in the past three months. The answer to that, incidentally, is 'not much'.
I hit Media Play first and foremost. Dataline wanted me to pick up a copy of The Ring for her but it technically hasn't been released yet, so I put a copy on reserve for her; the $10us discount made it an attractive deal. I also picked up a copy of X: Three and Boondocks Saints while I was there. While I was in town I figured that I'd get some button cells for my laser pointer. I discovered that they'd gone dead at some point in the recent past and figured 'why not?' Babbage's didn't have a whole lot of stuff. They havn't in years, actually, but now they have little more than games for the PC and the various game systems; the used stuff they have is nice but unless you've got a use for it there isn't much there. Not even collectibles anymore. Waldenbooks is much the same way right now, I hate to say it. Barnes and Noble and Borders have much better selections of just about everything. Then again they're also much larger storefronts. Electronics Boutique had marginally more stuff that was interesting. One thing that did catch my eye was the price they had on DDR pads for the PSX - $18.99us. I nearly bought one today, save for the fact that this week's the only time I'll be able to really use it for anything for a while; after that it'll have to wait until after graduation. Not only that, but you tend to get what you pay for, and a DDR pad for that kind of price doesn't make me think that it'll last very long.
After a little more wandering around I drove over to Toys-R-Us to see what was going on over there. It amazes me, the things that they have for kids now. The toys are so shiny and easy to mess around with.. they do so much.. but I can't help but wonder about what this does to the imaginations of children. By making toys with so much flexibility and so many options, does this, in some way, limit the ways in which the developing mind can work? Having a large yet fixed number of options tends to set limits on where your imagination can take you; generous limits, to be sure, but limits nonetheless. I think that they make the universe look that much smaller when you're younger, and children learn to think smaller as a result. This tendency, this restricted vision of the universe doesn't leave you as you grow up. The world looks static and simple when it really isn't. The world loses some of its wonder, some of its amazement, some of its novelty. Maybe even some of its spirit.
This article is darkly amusing, I think. After all of its bitching and threatening about chemical warfare on the part of Iraq the United States wants to start using pepper spray and CS gas to smoke out Iraqi forces. The spin of this article is interesting, they use the word 'toxic' a few times, almost to throw the idea back in the face of the United States. They do have a point, though - if the US is going to condemn chemobiological warfare on someone else's part they shouldn't be so quite so quick to consider its use on their own part. The irony tastes of bourbon.
For Kibo's sake.. it's snowing again. It's spring break!
I just had my first workout in two months. My legs are going to be sore when I get up tomorrow. It's been too long since I've done anything that strenuous. Didn't break a sweat, though - my metabolism is holding up decently, in the sense of efficiency.
Here's yet another IE 404 page parody, this one with a political twist.
Song that best describes life right now: Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing
This comes as no great surprise...
Yesterday was interesting, I must be honest. Once class was over I took a road trip down south to pick up Lyssa from her parents' house, where she was staying for a couple of days, and then we headed back into Pittsburgh to visit Don, a friend of mine who runs a neat little store on the outskirts of the city. After that we picked up John and drove into Oakland for dinner. For some odd reason I can never remember the name of the place, it's a tiny little Indian restaurant in the middle of the Pitt campus that's always showing rock videos from India and has a generally good atmosphere overall. I like it there. The food's relatively cheap and very filling. If they had a website I'd definitely throw a couple of links up to introduce more people to them.
After that we headed in to Swift Fox's den for game night. If you've never played Big Ideas by Cheapass Games, run down to your local game store and buy a copy. It's tiny and won't set you back too much, the name of the company is apt. The premise of the game is this: You play a venture capitalist during the height of the .com bubble. Those of you who were unfortunate enough to have worked during that time (like myself) are no doubt ready to cry or are loading your weapons at this instant. Please don't do anything rash, it isn't worth it. Anyway, the object of the game is to put together ideas of things to market from a deck of cards and then pitch them to the rest of the players in the game to try to get backing, which determines the payoff. Most of the fun of this game is pitching some pretty screwed up ideas to everyone; those with the gift of gab will be in their element.
After that we returned to John's to crash for the night. It wasn't particularly late in the evening but getting up early has a way of wiping you out when you've been on the run for a couple of days. I think I crashed around 0110 or so, I don't really remember. I remember getting up this morning shortly after 0900 and thinking "Oh, wow, I got to sleep in."
After that I returned to the Lab, got cleaned up, had breakfast, and cleaned the kitchen. Gods, it needs it... I can't stand looking at it anymore. Later today Dataline's making lasagne for dinner so I hope to get it finished by this afternoon. Right now I've got the detachable parts of the stove soaking in the sink and degreasing foam on the rest.
Being domestic feels weird sometimes.
The greeting cards I ordered for Dataline's birthday from the Total Information Awareness Cafepress shop came in. She's very amused... she already has a list of people she's sending them to.
Speaking of IAO, take a look at the Washington Times. This article has also made it to a couple of other newspapers, by the way.. American airline companies, starting with Delta Air, are going to start analysing the financial data and historical information of prospective travellers to determine how much of a threat they pose. The federal government wants to start 50-year long historical records on every passenger they think poses a threat to national security, and the same information for a smaller period of time (the duration of the trip, they say). Some people are saying that such a change to travel policy has the potential to create a class of people who are effectively blacklisted, curtailing their ability to move around indefinitely; others have already begun the chant of "papers... papers please..."
In a sense, they're both right. By not being able to move around it makes it easier to keep track of you for whatever reason - it lessens the number of discrete locations that you can access easily. Something about this scares me. I keep wondering what would happen if they started keeping records on people who travel to other places that someone thinks are distasteful, immoral, or otherwise wrong, such as the Phoenix Phyre Festival or DefCon. All it takes is one person taking offense at something about you at a certain level of control to put you in a world of hurt. Unfortunately, I know a couple of people personally who would do just this, which is why I'm writing about this particular topic. There is another article here at Fox News and background on the CAPPS II (Computer Aided Passenger Pre-Screening) system can be found here at Privacyactivism.org.
I think it's time to start yelling.
Just two more hours to go.. I'm in a lab waiting for my first recitation of the day to start (algorithms). After that is one more, the recitation for formal logic, and then I'm out of here. A few of us are going out this afternoon after classes are over to kick off spring break by going to dinner and hanging out later. For the first time in too long I'm going to join them.
I think some people need to work on their scripts... not too long ago the BSA (the Business Software Alliance) sent a cease and desist order to a mirror of the Open Office project by mistake. Apparently the programmes that chew on the data their probes collected thought that "OpenOffice.org-libs-1.0.1-9.mdk.i586.rpm" was really close to "microsoft-office-2000-disk-1.iso" and sent off an automatically generated warning. Nice going, guys.
In regard to a few of the news stories I was talking about yesterday.. a company called AquaPharm Bio-Discovery, Ltd. has discovered a number of bacteria that produce a compound which is effective in combatting the antibiotic-resistant strain of staphylococcus aureus. AquaPharm has patented the techniques necessary to cultivate the bacteria in question, and is keeping the name of the bacteria a closely guarded secret. So much for not worrying so much about it anymore; they wouldn't be cornering the market on these compounds if they did not plan on making beaucoup off of it. Looks like the medication will go to those who can afford to pay for it first and foremost.
Bless us, father, for we have Slack.
If that's not telling, I don't know what is. You got it, folks.. the Time Lord's brain has begun powering down into maintenance mode for a ten day rest. My brain's just about fried after the past couple of days and the only thing I'm interested in right now is getting some rest. Doing some reading. Maybe watching some stuff that I've been taping (by the way, how is Big Robots week on Cartoon Network? I havn't caught any of it yet). Maybe even doing some cooking.
My grandfather's birthday is today; he's 84. I can't say for sure but I think he's the oldest in my bloodline right now. It's amazing, how well life is treating him.. he's really enjoying the twilight years. Yes, his senses of sight and hearing have gone downhill, but he's healthy and staying active as best he can. I'm truly in awe of him. His mind's still sharp and he still has a sense of humour and friends. I wish more people could be as fortunate as he later in life.
I just heard about something odd happening across the United States: People in a couple of places, like Davis, CA (near the University of California at Davis) have been diagnosed with Whooping Cough. 172 cases of it. All but 12 were in same same city (Davis, CA). And there are more coming into the hospitals every day.
Five children, age seven or younger, have died in Virginia in the last seven days, four in Hampton-Rhodes, one in Richmond. So far the news down there is calling it an "upper respiratory infection" of some sort. As far as anyone can tell, there was no connection between any of them. The entire eastern region of Virginia's health departments has been brought to bear on this situation.There's also an outbreak of ebola in the Congo right now: 73 are infected, 59 are dead. And it's not over yet.
I've got to stop listening to the news.
Yesterday NASA declared the Pioneer 10 space probe at the end of its lifespan. The plutonium-powered electricity generation unit (hi, Echelon!) is no longer able to provide enough energy to drive its eight watt transmitter. Earlier this month NASA tried to contact it using their Deep Space radio transmitter network; no response was recieved. Pioneer 10 is so far away the signal it sends out is barely more distinct than the normal rain of background radiation that pulses through the universe.
The night's almost over. I didn't have a whole lot to do besides catch up a little on formal logic (three sections, trivial) and do research for my project. I also backed up a couple of gigs of data to cold storage while Leandra had some free compute cycles. And wrote a new travel CD for the car. And taught myself more about reading a map. And got in a decent conversation about religion. That's about it.
In short, tomorrow's just a formality. Catch you folks on the flip side.
Just a couple of hours to go until the first exam comes. I can't wait to get this over and done with.
As if anyone should be surprised by this - Windows XP Update transmits a list of every piece of software installed on the system to Microsoft whenever it's execcuted. A group in Germany monitored the flow of information to and from a system while running Windows XP Update and managed to decode some of the data in transit. I'm not a Windows expert by any means, but I'm guessing that the data's stored in the registry and it just picks through one of the hives and packs the information up. I wonder if it's possible to alter the registry keys so that the applications will still work but will have a different (i.e., indecent or profane) name just to see if anyone at Microsoft notices. Juvenile, yes, but maybe it would get a reaction out of Microsoft.
You know, this really pisses me off. I've been hard up for cash in the past, but you know what? I've got standards. College kids are being paid $20us per month to act as spam reflectors. They're asking for the privilege, no less. Spam's enough of a problem in this day and age, and this is just making it worse! Ye flipping gods.. that's up there with stuffing envelopes to make beer money.
Well fuck me and marry me young.
My algorithms midterm kicked my ass up one side of the CS building and down the other, and then had the temerity to switch to the other foot and start punting what was left down the road. That had to be the hardest exam I've ever taken; even the SATs were a piece of cake compared to this. Figuring the runtime of algorithms completely stumped me - the math flew out of my mind and hasn't been seen since. I took a couple of stabs at the theta() and O() values and made a half-hearted attempt at the T(N) computations, but I don't think I did them right. I'm not hopeful. I barely remember how Quicksort works; I'm kicking myself there for not having gone over it better. I regret not having taken the practise test to get a feel for how the exam was laid out.
Dammit, I hate it when I screw up this badly. I'm better than this; I don't lose. I'm supposed to know this backwards and forwards; hacking code is what I do, it defines who I am. And I screwed it up.
Looks like I've got a lot more evolving to do.
If you can say that there's a bright side, I think I did decently well on the archeology midterm. It wasn't as complex as the algorithms exam was and somehow I"m actually more familiar with the material. That doesn't make sense but that's the way things stand right now. I think it's because it was more abstract than the algorithms I've been working with. Anyway, it went pretty well. Damn my memory for not being able to mark up a sorting algorithm worth a damn yet throwing up a picture-perfect image of a map of ancient Sumer and Akkad so I could trace the details onto the test paper for that midterm. After that we watched a video on ancient China.
Went off on Dataline when I got home. I still regret doing that. Between my body going hypoglycemic (note to the public: if you ever see me Outside and I havn't eaten in better than ten hours, stay out of my way) and fucking up that exam, I wasn't in that great of a mood. I apologised later (after dinner) for yelling at her like that. At least we didn't get into a shouting match. My grandfather made chili for dinner tonight; ate it cold, I was so hungry. Good stuff, he makes a mean chili. My Pitt class ring came in today, which was the last thing I'd expected. When I put the order in they said it'd be ready between July and October, so I wasn't holding my breath. It came in today. Unfortunately, that also means that they'll be charging my account for the next four months to cover it. Gotta be careful paying the bills.
Okay, enough from me. I'm off to do my homework. Maybe I'll jack in later tonight if I've got time, though I'll probably set my alarms just in case and fall asleep on the floor.
So much material to cover, so little time... seeing as how I've got another three hundred pages of material to study for midterms tomorrow I decided to skip another day of classes so I could actually do the homework due on Thursday and then spend the rest of the time studying for exams tomorrow. There just aren't enough hours in the day. If I start pulling all-nighters I'll probably get the work done but as sleep deprivation sets in the answers will not be correct. I can't function on any less than six hours of sleep, that's my absolute minimum. So I'm doing what I can to make up for time lost by having to drive to and from campus (about two hours thirty in total), which is a sizable chunk of time.
An earlier event seems to have slipped past the American media. Surprise, surprise. I'll see if you can find it in this article... the police forces of Auckland, New Zealand are on heightened alert after intercepting letters destined for the United States and British embassies which contained crystals of cyanide. Members of the post office staff noted a white powder coming from an envelope and called the police; it's a good thing they did, too. Ironically, the letter enclosed said in part that escalation of the crisis in Iraq could trigger more terrorist acts around the world.
And the incident that escaped notice earlier? In January of 2002 the US Embassy in Auckland was sent a letter containing enough cyanide paste to kill twenty people shortly before the New Zealand Open. Tiger Woods fans will no doubt be interested in finding this out....
In other news today (so far, it's only 1007 EST) explosions damaged the Spanish embassy and Columbian consulate buildings in Caracas, Venezuela. Leaflets from what appears to be a previously unknown political party were found at the scene of each blast, taking credit.
It's not even safe to say something stupid anymore. More on this one later, I promise...
..okay. Break time. On 13 February 2003 Andrew O'Connor, public defender of the state of New Mexico was arrested around 2100 MST in the library of St. John's College while he sat at a public terminal. United States Secret Service agents questioned him at the Santa Fe, NM police station. O'Connor stands accused of making threatening remarks about George W. Bush in "a chat room", which could be anything from Yahoo Chat to IRC (the distinction is made because a number of portal sites and IRC networks have agreed to keep the Secret Service up to date in regard to what people are talking about across their lines of communication). O'Connor was quoted as saying that Bush was "out of control."
Food for thought.
Today started off on a bang-up note, let me tell you. It's been snowing since I got out of bed this morning and, as far as I know, hasn't stopped yet. A water main break around 0600 today shot the water pressure to hell so taking a shower wasn't nearly as comfy and awakening an experience as it usually is. I brought up a two-gallon jerry of water from the lab for my grandfather just in case, but by the time I left it was back to normal, so I suppose that they got it patched in time. All the water running down the street, however, and sub-zero temperatures probably left the roads in a sorry state. Dataline called shortly after 0700 to warn me, and suggested an alternate route. It was slightly funny, the most dangerous road in my neighborhood being the safest and fastest decision for once. Life throws you those sorts of curveballs now and then.
After I got onto the highway the snow kicked up another notch, which reduced visibility to two car lengths at most and killed traction. Just geting onto the highway I skidded sideways and almost wrapped my car around a tree on the corner. I got the car back under control and straightened out but damn, that's not what I enjoy doing that early. Or at all, for that matter. I might be a Cronenburg fan but I have no desire to reenact one of his movies, thank you very much. Traffic started to mount as people slowed down to compensate for the lack of traction and visibility, which lead to a major traffic jam around the Mae West bend, at the bottom of my hill. This, however, paled in comparison to the seven mile long lockup on route 28 north. I sat stuck in traffic for a little over an hour (somewhere around 10.6 tracks on Joyride by Roxette), barely inching forward every couple of minutes. Briefly, I entertained the notion that Pitt might decide to cancel classes, which would neatly have taken care of my midterm problem (American Cultures midterm, 0900 EST, be there or be a laterally truncated rectangle) but that sort of thing only happens in the cartoons. I placed a quick call to Dataline's cell and had her send the professor an e-mail for me (mental note: figure out who I have to strap to a surgical table and work over with a box of paper clips and a bottle of tabasco sauce to get a modem cable for my cellphone) while I sat and did very little. You can only read so many CD insert booklets before your patience wears thin, even though the members of Roxette are definitely not hard on the eyes.
It was 0845 by the time I finally got onto an open stretch of roadway heading in the general direction of the Pitt campus. I hit the student union around 0905, parking up on the mountain by 0915, and then hiked back down to go to class. It never fails: For a one-hour exam, you are guaranteed to get there halfway through. For a one-hour essay exam, you are guaranteed to get ther slightly beyond halfway through. Thankfully the professor wasn't asking for more than a paragraph or two, which I can write in a reasonably legible manner. I also don't appear to have been the only one late as he came in at some point and said that everyone but the ones who came in late could stay later to have a fighting chance of finishing the exam. Gods bless him for that, I'd have had a stroke then and there without that reassurance. He was very understanding about that, something I'd not expected at all.
I've made it through a chapter and a half of archeology so far and I'm going through my e-mail at one of the labs right now. We'll see how things go later this afternoon.
I finally managed to get through my e-mail at Telerama. There was a single message that kept making the IMAP server barf. Once I figured out which one it was I deleted it without opening it and all was well. To everyone who was waiting for a response, I'm sorry.
It's finally done snowing, at least for today. Driving home was pretty easy, no snags or anything lik that. Damned cold outside, though. I'm really not looking forward to below-freezing temperatures all week. It's funny, in a way; in the Old Farmer's Almanac it said that we were in for a rough winter, starting after the New Year. I didn't believe them. Shows what I know.
Last night I had some free time so I started working on a new technique. If everything goes the way I think it will I'll have the bugs worked out and I'll write up a document to put in the library.
Speaking of bugs... in algorithms class today there were many unhappy faces. Consensus seems to be that all but two people couldn't get the project to work, and the deadline was tonight. I handed in what I had earlier this evening just so I wouldn't forget. It's not worth fighting with it anymore. I get the feeling that the professor's going to be rethinking this project.
"Anyone can get it done inside of five hours" my datajack.
Two days and counting until the end of midterms. Cross your fingers, boys and grrls. I promise that I won't vent much more. Everyone knows what it's like, everyone copes differently. This is how I do it. I just hope that I'm not too annoying about it.
I spent pretty much all of yesterday studying for midterms. I don't think they'll be particularly difficult, it's just the volume of information that will be covered by the exams. The readings being tested for American Cultures class span between 200 and 250 pages in total, plus notes taken on them and class notes. That's a lot of data to digest; even breaking it down into chunks of information, it still takes a good deal of time to work through it. The information is densely packed (as many research papers are) so sorting through it takes the lion's share of the time. I havn't had time to work on my project yet this weekend (even though it's due Monday night; frankly I really don't care much about it, it isn't worth nearly as much as the midterm is, and some points are better than none at all), maybe tonight if I get through the material in time.
Or maybe I'll just finish the last few requirements on the spec and hand that in. Again, cost/benefit analysis.
It's snowing again, just like it was last Sunday.. I don't know exactly when it started but it shows no signs of stopping. So much for our forty degree heat wave.
Have you ever been in a position where you thought that you knew what you were doing and where you were going, and then something happens which makes you slam on the brakes and start re-thinking things? That's where I am right now. I had plans set up for the near future, after graduation, that I thought would finally be the right thing to do: Where to go, what to do, what might be needed, the whole nine yards. Now information has come into my possession which I've slowly been working my way through, confirming things, uncovering other stuff, and generally finding a knot of Gordian proportions. It's a scary feeling, racing along for days at a time and then suddenly stopping just a couple of feet from the side of a mountain, so to speak. Now I don't know what to do. On one hand, I still have faith in human nature and the ability of people to change.. but on the other hand every time I've listened to that faith in human nature it's gotten me screwed, blued, and tattooed, to steal a phrase.
I could keep moving forawrd with my plan and possibly wind up in what could be the worst situation of my life, far away from home and without any way of calling for help.. or I could terminate my current plan as it stands right now and switch over to my backup plan, but that, in all probability, would mean losing someone I care very deeply about, both as a friend and as someone for whom I keep a place in my hearts, possibly screwing them over, and definitely causing a scene that I really don't want to wind up in during the semester, when I've got more important things to take care of.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm afraid of hurting someone, and I'm afraid of the mess it'll cause in life right now. I don't know what to do. A lot of it's because this person has stood by me in a lot of situations - we've listened to each other laugh and cry; we've bailed each other out; this person drove me to the hospital once or twice. It's just one little glitch that gets me... but it's a glitch that could easily splatter me across the pavement, so to speak. I don't know what to do.
Right now I'm worried about school; if I'm going to screw my life up by trying to do the right thing, I'd much rather wait until after school is over. Maybe that's selfish; if it is so be it.
Last night I spent the evening with John, Lara, and Lyssa. We spent the evening sitting around talking and watching Boondocks Saints. I think I'm going to buy that movie when I get a chance - it's definitely a must-have for the collection (whenever I get a chance to actually sit down and watch television again). I must admit that was one of the best nights I've had in a long time, sitting with good people watching a good movie and goofing around. I miss nights like that.
Telerama's mail server is screwed up - I can get in to delete the several hundred articles of spam that pile up every day but I can't send anything to anyone without the server hanging up. Moreover, I can't even send an e-mail to the staff that there's something wrong...
At this point in time, my programming project's almost finished. I just wish I knew how to make it work all the way. I'm pretty thoroughly stumped now - in theory it should be working fine, in practise it just isn't making any sense. I think my problem has to do with how I read more characters into the buffer from the text file, but I've been playing around with it for days and no luck. I'll probably give it one more crack after I get home tomorrow and then I'll pack it in and get back to studying. Dammit.
There's enough to do today that I don't really want to be in class. I'm going to skip my next recitation and only go to the one for algorithms, because I've got a project due on Monday night. I'm not all that interested in the one for formal logic, mostly because I've got a decent grasp on what's going on, but also because the homework due for this week is from chapter nine of the textbook, but she just started covering chapter twelve. She's in just a bit of a hurry, which I find highly annoying, to say nothing of confusing. I actually get more out of the book than I do out of her class for this reason. She's doesn't synch the classes with the syllabus.
At least I'll be able to ask a couple of questions about why my project's screwing up the way it is. I sat down last night and stepped through the entire thing with GDB to see where it was messing up. It wasn't going wrong where I thought it was, that's for sure. At this point I'm now very confused. Time to ask for help.
I just found out that Lyssa's going to be in Pittsburgh this weekend. Too cool. Travel safely, Bard.
Recitation is going to start soon. I'll write more later, probably after I study but before LARP.
It's amazing how much trouble such a simple algorithm as the Boyer-Moore algorithm can cause.. between the extremely terse version of it given in our textbook and people who are probably frustrated beyond all limits by this project and want to remove certain requirements of the project, probably just to get it done (I won't lie, I've considered it myself), it's amazing. It's been said that the best things in life you have to fight for, I suppose this falls into the same catagory. I think I'm going to shut up now, before I say something else I'll regret (while sitting in the recitation in question, no less).
The rain was lovely last night.. unfortunately it left behind a fine glaze of ice covering every solid surface. My driveway's a solid sheet of ice; I'm still trying to figure out why my car didn't freeze to the pavement. Not that I'm complaining about that, just about almost falling down at least twice. Driving isn't much better right now, either. Trying to take turns or even slow down carefully was not fun this morning. I can onl hope that the sun, having risen higher in the sky, has melted off a decent amount of the glaze. If this isn't so, walking up the hill to my car is going to require some special equipment. I'm not looking forward to it.
Oh, this is cute. This reminds me a lot of those health and safety pamphlets the American Red Cross used to give out in school with the bubble-headed people and the blocky text that looks like a child wrote it with a felt-tip pen.
Today in sci-fi literature we watched a couple of scenes from Barbarella. *twitch* *twitch*
Where in the hell does she find these flicks?! I like bad movies, or at least I thought I did.... Barbarella is so bad I couldn't even laugh at it. Don't even get me started on the null-grav striptease during the opening credits... if we have to read the Gor novels as part of the curriculum, I'm dropping the class.
Okay. I think I've got that out of my system now.
United States operatives arrested Sami Al-Arain, a professor at the University of South Florida on unspecified charges. Professor Al-Arain was a noted proponent of the formation of a Palestinian state. The exact set of charges he was picked up under are currently sealed but they are expected to be released later today. If they get around to it, I should think. Right now the college has him on paid leave while they work out the paperwork to terminate his tenure. Professor Al-Arain denies any connection with terrorist activities and contacts and says that he does not support terrorism. He is currently a citizen of the United States of America. Expect this to change.
Getting back up to speed in class today wasn't that difficult... it was starting to study for the three midterms next week that's getting me. And a programming project due on top of that. Oh, and research, too. Joy. It's doable, it'll just take some juggling.
We're watching Ellen's little ones Friday night because she's probably going to be taking care of Jason, the LARP's storyteller, Friday night. That means staying at the Lab, I can't just run off and have fun while they're babysitting, it isn't right. So much for blowing off steam this week; I'm going to be joy to live with for the next couple of days.
Discovered this morning that going out for dinner three nights in a row, while a fun change of pace, results in a couple of pairs of pants that are tight in the wrong ways. I'm looking at it this way - nature gave me a bit more meat on my bones as a birthday gift to better handle the snow. I just like to have a bit more control than that.
In auditing my webserver log files I keep finding people who are linking to images in my photo album directly, I think as icons for their Live Journals, judging by the "Referred-by" lines in the HTTP requests themselves. I don't have a problem with that, I'm actually kind of flattered, but why mine? What's so special about them? What's so interesting about them? And why in the hell can't I find the references on the pages that they're being linked from?! This is going to drive me batty... Does LJ delete old links from archived text or something? Gods.... I hate not knowing what's going on!
If anyone who's doing this happens to read this particular entry, I'm not angry with you. Feel free to do so, I don't mind.. but drop me a line to let me know. Please?
This morning after getting up I looked out the window. My road's still not plowed. Last night I checked the Pitt website, which said that they were on a normal schedule. Then I watched the news and saw that the Pittsburgh Public Schools were all closed.. they're mostly within spitting distance from the Pitt campus. It was, at this point, that I decided not to try to go to class today. I'm going to stay home and hack on my programming project. It's not worth the hassle.
It looks like the snowstorm is good for more than just doing homework and watching movies... a credit card charge processing company was cracked and 2.2 million card numbers were compromised. Visa and Mastercard are having kittens over this, and have notified an unspecified number of banks around the country. Citizen's Bank has reported freezing 8,800 credit card transactions on suspicion of being fraudulent in nature. Great, just one more thing to worry about.
I just happened to turn on Cartoon Network, and A Pup Named Scooby Doo is on. This is wild stuff... reminds me a lot of Scooby Doo if the animators of the old Charlie Brown cartoons worked on Scooby Doo. The Scooby kids dance the same way the Peanuts kids did; what that's doing in an adventure series for the little ones, I have no idea. Most of the voices are the same, which is kind of neat. There are sight gags in the backgrounds, like signs that say "Cartoon visual cliche' this way -->". Unfortunately I just missed the copyright date on the episode so I don't know when they were made. But it's pretty neat. I just thought I'd share that.
What the hell?! All next week, between 1600 and 1700 on Cartoon Network, they'll be showing cartoons and anime from the 'giant robot' genre.. I recognised only two of the shows - Robotech (maybe they'll show the third generation for a change!) and... Shin Seki Evangerion. Yep. Eva, in all its mind-bending goodness. I'm waiting for the parents groups to start freaking out over the symbols in Eva. This is going to be fun.
I'm watching a tape of an episode of Cowboy Bebop right now, "Bohemian Rhapsody". I don't want to give it away if you've never seen it but it reminds me so much of the way Gibson described the space station Zion Cluster in Neuromancer it isn't funny. There's no gravity, plants growing everywhere, hippies and rastas lounging around, graffiti covers the walls.. the only thing that I havn't seen yet is graffiti burned with laser cutters on the outside of the hull. I think I'm going to watch this again.
Greetings from the winter wonderland. The state's declared a state of emergency - the major roadways are badly blocked, so they're calling out everyone they can for assistance. The malls are closed until noon, and most businesses in the area have told people to stay home and enjoy the day off. The University of Pittsburgh is closed, too - classes are cancelled. I've decided to take advantage of today to work on my research study to make some progress for once.
Penn State and Carnegie-Mellon University have called classes today as well. Let the lunch tray sledding begin.
It never fails. I finally have a solid day to do research for my study and the number of users idle on the system I am studying right now is... 81%?! I picked the wrong topic to study.
Maybe I should spend the day coding instead.
Duquesne is closed today, too.
My grandfather just paid two kids from the neighborhood to shovel our driveway and steps. Best $20us spent in a long time.
Today's the twenty-fifth anniversary of the dial-up Bulletin Board System. Yay, dialup!
Last night went extremely well.. 'lex, Taja, and I got together at Kenshin's doss for dinner last night. We got Chinese takeout from a local restaurant and spent the night sitting in the living room watching hockey and munching. I keep forgetting the effect the Great Wall's food has on me, I've been tasting General T'sao's chicken periodically for the past day or so. Not fun. It's good food but once I've eaten it that's it, I don't appreciate it stopping by time and again to say hello. After that we played a little Trivial Persuit, the last twenty years' edition. Just goes to show how culturally cut off I am, it was my worst game ever. Finished up with no pie pieces and I think one correct answer at all. Mental note: Watch more television (like that'll happen). After that we picked up Joy and headed out to a local nightclub. Last night was the first time I'd been out dancing in at least two years, perhaps a bit more.
The first thing that caught my attention about the place was the fact that there were four separate rooms, nicely insulated against sound, playing four genres of music: Latin (!), dance and pop, trance, and a mixture of trance, traditional techno, and pop. Each had its own particular group of people in attendence, and the four separate bars kept the patrons happy. Good HVAC in the place, too, so you didn't break a sweat just by standing around. There were also lots of corners and walls to put your back to if you just wanted to spend time people watching. The one thing I have to admit that bothered me was the mirrors that lined some of the hallways. They make for a nice appearance but they also make it very difficult to navigate. They mess with your depth perception just enough that if you're not careful you might run flat into one of them (which I almost did on two occasions).
I didn't give the trance room a try though I wish I had. The Latin room was nice to stand around and watch in but it's really not my thing. The techno room had a lot of open space on the dance floor but I'm not sure about the crowd; there's something there that put me off. The mixed genre room had my attention all night. Good beats and lots of room to move around.
I still find it ironic that the clerks at the oxygen bar were chain smoking all night, never mind the fire hazard.
After that we retired to Eat and Park for a cup of coffee and an appetizer combo plate. All in all, I have to say that it was a good night. I hope we can do it again some time.
It's snowing again, and showing no signs of stopping. It started early this morning, around 0300 EST, while I was picking up my car. The temperature fell swiftly from there, hitting the mid-twenties by 0315 EST and as far as I know it hasn't changed appreciably since then. Everything's covered with at least two inches and it's still coming down. The snow plows go through every thirty to forty-five minutes to scrape the roadway but by the time they make another pass down the road the blacktop's completely covered up again. The newscasts are predicting anywhere between six inches and two feet, they don't know and they won't hazard a guess. Looks like I might not be going to class tomorrow if this keeps up, I"m not about to risk life and limb for classes that don't have an attendence policy. It almost makes me wish that I was able to go out and play in it right now. I havn't been sledding since.. let me see... I was about nineteen, and a bunch of us went lunchtray sledding at CMU. That's the last time I was playing in the snow.
I'm getting old, everyone.
I'm also snowed in. It's been snowing all day today without a break and shows no sign of stopping. Dataline and I just did a spot check around the Lab and it's not looking good. In the back the snow drifts are up to the bottom of the window of the back door; the snow's piled up around the base of the garage door as well but not nearly as high because my car's parked in the driveway. We havn't tried the front door because we can't see the steps. My biomechanical butt's staying indoors tomorrow; Dataline's going to stay local and watch her DVDs tomorrow.
Wow... I'm 25 today. Yep, a quarter-century.
Also, happy birthday Dataline, who was born on this day as well. John C. Lilly, thou art avenged!
Yesterday afternoon I decided that I'd enjoy this weekend. I won't grind myself into dust trying to get everything done. Trying to do that just put me on the workbench with the flu. I got a little work done yesterday, then went out for dinner with Lowmagnet to the India Garden. The India Garden is a small Indian restaurant near the Pitt campus which has simply amazing food. He'd never really had Indian before (what I had made for a gather once notwithstanding) so this was a new experience for him. He loved it. I hope I can get him back to that restaurant again, there's so much more to try.
Afterward we returned to the Lab and hung out. Didn't do much of anything, and enjoyed every minute of it. Stress can go right to hell right now. Had a drink or two, watched TV, shot the bull with the family. Not much, but very worth while.
I got one of my birthday gifts last night - a copy of Staroffice v6.0. Yep, bought off the shelf, documentation and everything. It comes with a Win32 version, a Linux version, and two Solaris versions (one for SPARC, one for x86). I can't wait to install it and give it a try. Thanks, Dataline!
Later today I'll be heading out for adventure. Gods only know what'll happen but it'll be interesting just the same.
The interesting bits start... I just took yet another of those Live Journal quizzes, "Which LotR character are you?"...
How eerily appropriate.
Dataline and I exchanged gifts this afternoon. I bought her a pair of DVDs, The Best of the Twilight Zone volumes one and two, a book called What If?, which is a book of speculative historical fiction and Psycho II and III on videocassette. She loves history so the book is right up her alley, and she's a longtime fan of Anthony Hopkins. She plans on spending tomorrow watching television all day; I can't say I blame her. Enjoy, Dataline.
In exchange, she gave me two DVDs, Wargames and Videodrome: The Director's Cut, both in widescreen format. They're two of my favourite movies of all time. What cyb doesn't remember their heart pounding the first time they saw Wargames, seriously now? How many people got their first computers that Yule? She also gave me, and this caught me quite by surprise, a pair of black silk pyjamas with a matching robe. They're beautiful - shiny black silk, a belt... they feel like clouds. It's too cold to wear them right now but they're classy as all get out. I plan on sleeping in them once it gets warm enough. That's probably the classiest thing I've ever gotten. Thank you so much!
Dataline and my grandfather loved the cake I baked. It's a pineapple cake:
Mix together two cups of flour, two cups of granulated sugar, and two teaspoons of baking powder. Add two eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a 20 ounce can of crushed pineapple, including the juice. It'll be a very thin batter. Mix well. Then pour into a greased 13x9 inch baking pan and bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for thirty minutes. Serve with whipped cream.
Programmers will definitely want to read this article on Freshmeat - command line options for GCC to generate the most efficient code, in particular which ones to use to do the best job. Someone spent a lot of time figuring out the right switches to use and when. Give it a read.
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. To my regular readers I hope that you have a good day, if not in the company of a lover or two than with the closest of friends one can hope for.
The transation of that Commodore One article can be read here.
I wish I had more to write about right now but I really don't. Nothing's happened so far today. Classes have been uneventful. Afterward I'm going to drop off some library books and then head back to hack on my algorithms project a little and do some research for my study. I started last night and made a considerable amount of headway (a single interview is a considerable amount of headway when you havn't started yet). I'm actually enjoying the time freed up since I got caught up. Now it's just a matter of not wasting it.
Something really cool happened to me on my way to class today. I was at a stop light down by the police station when a women pulled up next to me and motioned to roll my window down. "What's coding?" she called from her car.
I have an EFF bumper sticker on my car, "Coding is not a crime", by the way.
"Oh.. programming." I yelled back.
"That's really cool! Thank you!" she responded, and when the light turned green she drove off.
That gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Someone thought to ask what coding was. Maybe she thought about why some people think it's a dangerous activity on her way to work that day, and perhaps well after she got to her destination. I hope she got there safely. To whoever you are.. thank you. You made my day.
It's just a few minutes before my formal logic midterm starts. I don't know how this one's going to go. I hope and pray that all the time spent studying will pay off.
We finished watching Sexmission in science fiction literature today. It's over... that was the most painful movie I've ever watched. Even more trying than Crash. Even more trying than Johnny Mnemonic. Even more trying than Spy Hard. I suppose that it builds character. The nightmares should be over in a couple of weeks, at the rate everything's going right now. I'm a full three weeks ahead on my readings in American Cultures now, so I've got myself some time to do research for my project in that class. The time I usually spend doing the readings I can now do observing. Because I can't use a custom client (like Trebuchet or PuTTY) in the labs because they're technically game clients, I'll probably wind up bringing Kabuki with me to class now. There are WAPs all over campus, I'll jump off of one of the publically accessible ones. This also frees up a lot of time in the evenings to do the next assignment for algorithms. Whee.
Planning life around homework. I hate my life.
The latest article about Jeri Ellsworth and the Commodore One has been scanned and posted here. Please not that this article is in German. I don't know if there's a translation yet.
There is a translation now, it's in the archives of the Commodore One mailing list.
And this is really cute. I want one.
Printing with Mozilla is working now - I set the environment variable $MOZ_PRINTER_NAME to the name of the print queue I just set up (aps1) and it printed in full colour (and didn't print the background of the test pages) with no trouble. I also set the environment variable $PRINTER to 'aps1' so I wouldn't have to keep rolling new sets of args to the lpr utility to print things out. Then I logged out and logged back in and tested them. Staroffice prints, too!
And this is just too much... Total Information Awareness swag???
Personally, I want the large mug. It's got a very officey feel to it.
Okay. I can't keep this in anymore.
The Terrorists(tm) have won.
The whole point of terrorism is to make people live in fear and change the way in which they live as a result. The United States of American has done this. We now live in a country where your car can be searched at the whim of airport security (which started happening just this day at the Pittsburgh International Airport), where you can be strip-searched at the whim of security (G-, what happened to you today was a travesty, both here and in North Carolina), where you can be arrested if they think you're helping Terrorists(tm) and held without bail, access to legal representation, or even anywhere someone can find you. The American public is being told to stock up on food and water and to be ready to seal off their houses with plastic drop cloths and duct tape because we could be attacked at any time. I spoke to a friend who lives in Washington, DC today and she says that the military there is ready to rock and roll at the drop of a hat. I havn't seen it for myself, so take this with a hefty dose of sodium chloride, but she also says that there are antiaircraft missile batteries installed and primed. If anyone has pictures of this please let me know, I'd love to take a look for myself (unfortunately, T-, not having seen this myself I can't say it's true, even though we go back a few years). I was watching the news tonight and a number of people were interviewed around my hometown. What these people said truly frightened me - they don't mind being searched, they'd open their houses and financial records for scrutiny, they have no problems with surveillance...
The Terrorists(tm) have won. I give up.
As for the AA missiles down in DC... they've been confirmed (thanks, N-). And F-16 flyovers every once in a while. *sigh*
Today's my marathon day.. twelve hours straight of classes, though I've got the odd break between morning and afternoon that takes up a lot of time. It's enough that I can study to catch up on everything I can't do at night but not so much to be worth driving home for a bite to eat. It's easier to just bring everything with me and find a quiet place for a couple of hours. Today's been a banner day for coffee abuse, first spilling it down my shirt while packing lunch this morning, then dribbling it repeatedly down the front of my sweater while studying. The one day I wear white... the fashion gods have made their decrees known.
At some point last night, I don't know exactly when, the power went out for a brief period. I woke up to three offline systems in the Lab, the audio rig on my home entertainment system is messed up again (not that it's a high priority or anything, I barely have time to use it anyway), and I'm willing to bet that my VCR is messed up as well, which means reprogramming it for the cable box. Damn. Anyway, I worked my way through the cluster, rebooting Crash, Burn,and Lain one by one. Everyone's up and running again, e-mail's going through per usual, the whole nine yards.
I knew I should have bought one of those big-ass UPSes from Moai before I left.
Figuring out when to do what is going to erase the last of my sanity soon. The amount of background work necessary for some of my classes is getting to the point where I've got to skip assignments that are due just to have time to do the work for classes whose homework I skipped last time to get something else done. I really don't know what to do right now. It's confusing enough that the librarian gave me the wrong article on reserve in the library today and I didn't even realise it. There went that hour.
What did I get myself into?
Getting harder to get up in the morning anymore.. so much going on I can't get to sleep easily right now. At least my brain's online by the time I get out of the shower. We're watching a horrible movie in sci-fi literature right now, a Polish flick called Sexmission. I won't post a link to a page about it because it's so bad I'm having trouble watching it. This movie was made in 1984, which is ironic because having to sit in a darkened classroom and view this movie is very much like Winston's experience with the cage of rats locked over his head. I think I had more fun the last time I was at the dentist's office.
I have to write a response paper on something for sci-fi literature, too, come to think about it. It's due on Thursday; I can do it this afternoon when I get home from class and then forget about it.
Studying for my formal logic midterm isn't too bad, it's doing the problem sets so I can force my brain to get better at the logical patterns that's taking up so much time. I have to be careful, how much time I budget for this. Oh, and somewhere in all of this I have to find time to get to the library to take my books back and take out another for American Cultures. And do my research. I hate my lives.
I feel vindicated. A couple of weeks ago on the Commodore One mailing list I asked a question about the largest possible IDE hard drive usable with the C=1 and recieved a few negative comments about not needing any more than 500 megabytes for a decent amount of software and data, even though I have a 13GB drive in mind for the unit. A few people posted with comments to the effect of "good lucking finding a 500MB hard drive anymore, the smallest you can easily find is 60GB without a struggle." Said posters swiftly fell silent.
You know, the US being on "orange alert" really pisses me off. Day after day they tell us to "be vigilant" against terror.. we're under attack from all sides, all we have to do is blink and we'll die in the crossfire.
Vigilant for what? All it's doing is making people paranoid and panicky. Mandatory smallpox vaccine in the emergency medical treatment field and the reports of allergic reactions and deaths from the test runs of the latest batches... hunting for bioweapons overseas.. the frankly lousy security of the airports in the nation (the Pittsburgh International Airport was penetrated just a few days ago, though by a tiger team and not a criminal; solution: (I'm not kidding) Have the guards face the other direction so they can watch people coming in and not leaving). Kibo on a fucking pogo stick, people.
Every few weeks the news media talks about another "clear and present danger to national security" that they're watching out for. That's nice. What exactly are you watching for? Gunboats just off of the shorelines of the US? Alleged tapes that we'll never get to hear for ourselves? Footsoldiers from Canada ala Michael Moore? More hijacked planes crashing into tall buildings (by the way, guys.. the plans you've drawn up for the replacements for the towers that are even bigger? Take a hint - it wasn't a good idea last time, either. Look what happened.)? Dogs and cats living together in peace (meow)? What, exactly, has you on orange alert? It's seeming more and more to me like you're just crying wolf to get people's attention... and while that's happening other things are sneaking through, like the sequel to the USA PATRIOT act (mirrored here, originally from here) which further attacks the civil rights of citizens of the United States of America. Making secret arrests legal; revoking the citizenship of anyone who is a member of or is thought to assist terrorist organisations (as defined by John Ashcroft, of course); completely unchecked surveillance; I'm not going to go on because reading this document sickens me.
The more you do this, the less I trust you. More and more this feels like a magician distracting the audience with one hand while substituting a card in the deck for one concealed in his palm with the other.
Okay, rant over. I'm done proving I'm not Dennis Miller.
So I decided to give configuring a printer under Linux a try. When I rebuilt Leandra I installed apsfilter v7.2.2-3 from Debian package and I managed to get USB active though this is actually the first time I've ever tried to use it. I jacked Dataline's BJC-2100 printer into Leandra using the USB cable and hit up Linuxprinting.org for stats on the BJC-2100. Oddly enough I found an excellent set of records on the BJC-2100 (verbosely written so search engines pick it up). I changed to the /usr/share/apsfilter directory and ran the SETUP script (./SETUP) to configure apsfilter. Right now I'm printing out a full colour test page under Debian Linux v3.0. Gentle readers, this rocks all known sheep. This is the first time I've ever gotten printing working under Linux, and I've been working on it for better than eight years. The beast is dead. No more having to jump over to Dataline's deck to print stuff out. Next up: Staroffice.
Staroffice is being a bastard, it's PostScript or nothing. It will probably only output things in Postscript. That means that I'll have to set up a print queue that'll take PostScript and translate it into the printer's native format. From what I've picked up today it shouldn't be too hard but I don't have time right now. At least I was able to configure The Gimp to print with no trouble as well - it used the same print queue as well. Mozilla's being difficult as well. I think I screwed up by not setting an environment variable someplace. Oh, well. Everything in due time.
I finally dug up Graeme's new address Outside; FTD's sending her a little something as I write this, hopefully in time for Valentine's Day. Again, time will tell (especially with all the snow and ice lately).
Yay, more snow. By the time I dragged my body out of bed this morning there was another inch on the ground, my car was nicely camoflauged outside against the driveway (also snow covered and, as I discovered later, concealing several large sheets of ice that my boots kept finding), and the roads hadn't been plowed yet. Thankfully that was fixed by the time I got out of the shower and tracked down clothes. Bills are paid off and sent out, so that's one less thing to worry about. Dataline and I picked through the proofs of my senior pictures last night and each of us decided on a picture to have printed up. I get the feeling that she's got one or two others that she wants to have made into wallet-sized ones privately but that's her progative. Can I help it that I like the serious pictures more than the ones with the smile?
Anyway.. first class went well, started catching up on reading for various classes, just killing time and letting my brain run down a bit before algorithms starts. I've been thinking about writing a bit about some mental exploration techniques that I've been playing around with but I'd like to get the ideas straight in my head first and maybe do a rough draft or two first. I'll muse more about it later.
And I've about run out of things to write about at present, so I'll probably pick this up after dinner.
Dataline didn't have an easy time of it coming home tonight. The big hill on the fringe of the neighborhood turned into a sheet of ice not long after the snow started falling in earnest. It started coming down while I was driving home, around 1700 EST, but it froze solid around 1800 EST. The bus watched two cars slide out of control down the hill and bounce off of a guard rail and decided not to try to make it. The salt crews hadn't been out, nor the road plows. Understandably angry at this development, a few cellphone calls produced the police for the wrecks at the bottom of the hill and a salt truck for the rest of the roadway. After all was said and done she didn't get home until 1845 EST or so. Not a few unkind words were said about the people who tried to take the hill at speed (in the middle of a heavy snowfall, no less), as well as those who didn't realise that if a public transportation bus wasn't going to attempt it, they shouldn't either, no matter how careful they tried to be. Observation produces useful information, folks... remember that.
Last night I had one of the most vivid and disturbing dreams of my life.
I was a student researcher in a secret medical facility of some kind somewhere. By nosing around inside an office by accident one night I had discovered a set of photo slides, about four inches square, protected by metal frames and stored in a Rolodex-like contraption of some sort. I don't think I ever took a close look at what was actually on those slides but I 'knew' that they were evidence of something hideous and frightening. I took them and put them in the office of someone I trusted, knowing that they'd find the slides, look at them, and shut the entire operation down; I did this anonymously, to protect my own skin.
The man heading up the research project in question thought that another of the students had done it after the slides' theft and review had been discovered by him and strapped him into a chair of some kind at a steel table which was more like a small isolation box: It was an air-tight glass or plastic isolation unit with an airtight gasket around a hole, through which the young man's arm had been inserted. After being strapped down all of the air was evacuated from the box, and the resulting vacuum and blood retention began damaging the tissues of his arm.
In one of those jump cuts that dreams seem to have, it was a day or two later, definitely after the span of a night, and the student was unconscious, perhaps dead, still at the table. He had't spoken as far as I knew - how could he? He didn't know anything; he'd been busted mistakenly for me. They cut his arm open to survey the tissue damage - all of the blood was pooled in his hand and fingers, which were hideously distended and purple from all of the clotted blood. Everything else of his arm was shrunken and withered, presumably from hypoxia. Oddly enough I remember thinking to myself quite clearly, "massive tissue damage from prolonged hypoxia" in my dream. The musculature was almost gone as his arm was dissected, and what remained of the circulatory system there was two large blood vessels, collapsed into little more than something resembling cut rigatoni and with the occasional blood clot. Kind of nasty.
At this point I began to panic in my dream. I knew that I'd be next, they'd start working their way through all of the students to figure out who'd blown the whistle. I vaguely remember waking up in the same panic last night, I don't know exactly when.
Welcome back to the Net, Mr. Mitnick... you HAVE been away too long!
It's been a weird weekend. Dataline went to the theatre last night and injured herself falling on an icy sidewalk. The staff hadn't scraped the concrete, leaving a layer of ice, which she (and, I'm told, a few other people) took fairly nasty spills on. Her left shoulder and back are in a considerable amount of pain right now. I'm doing what I can but until the inflammation goes down not much will work. Dammit.
Earlier today I was starting to get panicky about the amount of work I had to get done today, but after a cup of tea and actually flipping through the textbooks I've found that it really isn't all that much. I can grease most of this stuff, no problem. Writing the response paper for Thursday might be tricky but it'll be doable if I do it on Wednesday afternoon when I return to the Lab.
I still can't get in contact with Graeme. I'd like to send her something for Valentine's day but I havn't been able to get in touch with her so I could ask her what her current address is (she moved a couple of months ago). Graeme, if you're reading this I havn't forgotten, I don't know where to reach you. Phone home!
Feeling a hell of a lot better today. Another good night's sleep cleared me right up. The DayQuil was merely a formality this morning, I really didn't need a dose but better safe than sorry. Dataline helped me finish the charts for my algorithms project. I know next to nothing about office packages of any sort, I rarely use them for anything more than typing papers. It really galls me to slam into things that I should know a reasonable amount about but don't. I spend much of my time up to my neck in programming, you'd think that I'd know how to use Excel or StarCalc - not true. This is a rather poor analogy, but it's kind of like asking a Photoshop expert to repartition a hard drive; they might know how to do it, they might not. It depends on how much experience they have. Looks like I might have to spend some time with a book over spring break or something to get up to speed, assuming that I don't wind up learning everything as I go along.
I'm not a dog; I hate dogpaddling to keep my head above water, so to speak. I'd rather make solid, real progress, and not just keep up so I don't get run over. Gods... even working on call wasn't like this. At least I knew where I was, and if I needed to I could take time off and not be any worse off for it. Work is much easier than school.
I wound up not going to class today. My body's wiped out - the cold's in full swing and everything I've got has been concentrated on my immune system to evict this illness. Late last night I decided that I was more worried about getting better than I was about going to class, so I turned in at my usual time and slept a solid ten hours, something I've not done since before the semester started. On the whole I feel much better - sleep deprivation isn't making everything feel ten times worse. It's just the cold bothering me now, and I can handle that. I'm studying for my formal logic midterm a chapter at a time and I might spend some time hacking on my algorithms project this afternoon. I'm not in a rush to get anything done; even if I was it probably wouldn't happen. Today I've shifted into low gear and I plan on staying that way for a while now.
I had to go to the bank today to pay the last of my tuition for this semester. Ouch. At least my education's paid off now; I just have to get back on my feet so I can complete it. I also picked up some more apple cinnamon tea at the supermarket along with a good supply of tabbooli. They finally had it back in stock.
This is a lovely thought.. George Bush ordered guidelines and strategies for net.warfare drawn up last July. Basically, he wanted rules put together which would govern the penetration and disruption of enemy networks as an offensive tactic. Lovely. Turning the Net into a battlefield... can't he leave well enough the hell alone?
Stop and think about this people: Water distribution systems.. electricity generation plants.. cellular telephone nets.. television and radio broadcasts.. are the controlling computers of any of these things hooked up to the Net? I strongly doubt it. I honestly doubt it's possible to find a computer on the Net that controls the floodgates of a dam or anything like that. You know why? Becuase there's no reason for the risk. By putting such a critical system on the Net it invites attack, and as far as I know no one, no one is dumb enough to take a risk that could mean millions of lives in case it were attacked or compromised somehow. This isn't TekWar, nor is it Sneakers. Systems that control such things are isolated due to the risks involved. If Bush wants his boys to crack these systems to wreak havoc with them he'd damned well better understand the collateral damage that could be caused, and his systems crackers had better be well versed in black ops, because for them to get to these systems they'll probably have to break into the buildings that house these systems, because they probably won't be accessible any other way.
I can see the merits, tactically speaking, of cutting off a country's net.access but at best it'll prevent e-mail and web traffic... and you know how cranky people get when their POPservers aren't up or their porn isn't coming in... the up side means less spam for the rest of us, though.
Maybe it's just the NyQuil talking.
And apparently I'm not the only one enjoying the decongestants right now... see anything amiss here?
Archeology term paper handed in. Science fiction literature midterm done. Getting physically ill because I've blown the last of my reserves on getting stuff done this week. Yesterday afternoon I started running down. Even caffeine wasn't keeping me going, which is a bad sign. Then the nose started running along with trouble breathing.
Just great. Either it's another cold or the flu. 'lex thinks that I caught it at the Imbolc gather and that my immune system wasn't able to hold it off any more. I'm inclined to agree with him.
I handed in my formal logic homework last night before it was finished. I didn't have the time to finish it nor the concentration. Better a few points than none at all. My algorithms project is done and debugged, I just have to analyse the results, work up a spreadsheet, and write a conclusion. That'll take a day or so - no problem.
I'm planning on staying home Friday night. I really don't feel up to doing anything right now, I'm feeling sick and I don't want to give it to anyone else if I can at all help it. I just want to stay home and catch up on my sleep. Maybe watch some of the stuff I've been taping late at night. Anything but leaving the lab to do stuff right now.
Homework can wait until Saturday. My brain's frying.
On a lark I decided to take the which anime stereotype are you? quiz at The Otaku. Not surprisingly, I'm...
What Anime Stereotype Are You?
I picked up my car earlier this evening. The damage wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - $509us in total. Because my family's been customers of that particular dealer since they opened (about thirty years ago, if I recall correctly) I lucked out and got a 10% loyalty discount, which saved my six. The bill's still pretty steep but it isn't a bad as it could have been. There were leaks all through the cooling system, so they had to replace a good bit of it. They also re-did the hood and the headlight, which were damaged some time ago and never fixed. The car's winterised now, too.
I've decided that I'm not going to class tomorrow. I'm just barely running right now (praise the gods for Dayquil) and I'd like to make those most of that possible, so I'm going to stay at the lab and work at my own pace for a change and not running around like a hydra with a firefly up one of its noses. If I miss a day of class it's no big deal; I get better that much sooner. If I don't I might get sicker and be a complete wreck for the formal logic midterm exam next week instead of only a partial wreck. Give me the partial wreck any day, it's more of a chance.
Chills just set in. The central heating's running full blast and I've got six machines running down here and I'm still shivering. This isn't good.
Well, I got my paper for archeology finished around 0030 this morning. Special thanks to Lyssa for helping me proofread and edit my paper - I owe you one. After that I jacked out and collapsed, partially from stress and partially from mental exhaustion. Either I've been coding so long that my skill at describing things objectively has all but vanished, or I've been writing fiction so long that I've forgotten how to depict facts in a straightforward manner. No matter how you cut it it was a rough one. It's printed out and ready to hand in, however, and that's what matters. I didn't get much else done last night, though, so I'm going to start hacking on my algorithms project once I get these updates written.
Because my car's in the shop I had to borrow Dataline's wheels to make it to campus this morning. I'm sorry to say that she drives a jellybean for a car - it's got the internal capacity of a matchbox but the acceleration of a ferret on crystal meth. If you tap the acccelerator the car will go from zero to fifty-five in a little under two seconds - I'm not exactly sure because I was frankly too busy trying to bring the vehicle back under control before I wrapped it around a tree or something. It takes off like someone's gored it in the ass with a rapier, I'm not kidding. This still doesn't account for how I got in a good ten minutes later than usual this morning, though...
My research prospectus was accepted by my American Cultures professor. I don't have to hand in any more revisions and I can start on my research now... once I find he time to do so, at any rate. Unfortunately, since I was working on my paper last night I got nothing else done... including the programmes for algorithms due Monday night. Oh, and did I mention that Dataline called me not too long ago with a heads-up about my car? The intake hoses on the cooling system are bad, so they were leaking coolant, which explains why the reservoir was dry. I got my car in 166 miles before the warranty was up (I'm hard on my vehicles) so the repairs will be free. I don't know how much the other procedures I'd asked for will be, such as an oil change, winterisation, filter checks, et al... I do know, however, that the damaged headlight will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $500us to replace.
Yep, $500. When I heard this I practically shouted, which resulted in a neat echo effect in the Cathedral. I can get by with only one kidney.. I think I can part with a heart, too, but trying to explain how I'm still walking around after losing one could prove problematic... check my eBay auction page soon.
Due to a power failure this morning the Lab's arm of the Network has been offline. I've just brought the children back on line, one by one, and Leandra is active once more. I'm studying right now, so I'll write what's been going on after dinner.
Okay. Time to breathe for a bit.
This morning after taking a shower I stood in the bathroom washing up, doing basic maintenance.. and the power started flickering off and on until it went out entirely around 0715 EST. What a way to start the day. I somehow managed to finish up in the dark and packed lunch. The temperature was around 40 degrees Farenheit this morning so I wasn't too worried about leaving my grandfather while I was at class though I did offer to stay at home in case I'd be needed for some reason. He declined. Thankfully nothing happened while I was out. However, the children were not pleased at all - there's only one UPS in the entire Lab and it's got a five minute runtime. Leandra's got dibs on it, so to rest went down pretty hard when the power finally failed.
The only thing worse than having to get dressed in the dark is having to manually trip power switches in the dark so the computers won't try to reboot every time the power flickers. One thing I need to purchase in the near future is a decently-sized UPS, something with a sixty minute runtime if possible. Whenever I start selling internal organs to raise the funds, I suppose...
It was unreasonably warm driving in this morning so I didn't think to wear anything heavier than a jacket. By 1200 EST that had proven to be a mistake. The temperature had fallen to freezing and it started snowing. My leather jacket and scarf held up reasonably well but my body was still feeling the wind cutting past it. Thankfully a local coffee shoppe and a computer lab had room to spend some comfortable time in. I was amazed at how helpful my formal logic professor was in class today. I was asking a classmate for help with one of the homework problems (I still don't really understand proving conditional statements) and she walked over and offered her input as well. What's more, she went over it again in class as part of the review for the midterm, and she even started over completely to do so, which really blew me out the door. She really wanted to make sure that everyone understood how they were supposed to work and what techniques to use when.
A helpful math teacher - that's a first in all of my body's twenty-four years.
I dropped my car off at the mechanic's earlier tonight along with a laundry list of stuff to either have looked at or fixed. I found out that they do some body work as well so I've asked them to look at my car's headlights as well because the mounts are damaged so the beams won't stay in alignment. Right now I'm trying to catch up on stuff before I start working on my term paper, that's taking full priority right now (seeing as how it's due tomorrow night).
I'm kind of proud of myself right now... this is the download page for the game Freedroid, which is a clone of the old C-64 game Paradroid (go back through the archived entries of my memory log to hear about my obsession with the game, there are some links to net.shrines in there as well). If you look closely you'll see a file called "freedroid_0.8.4-1_i386.deb". I made it and contributed it to the project. The maintainers asked me to continue to maintain Freedroid and Freedroid RPG .deb packages for the project.
I've got this neat feeling inside now. I contributed to an open source project and it was accepted. Now I know how it feels.
Now I just need the time to do the Debian package of Freedroid RPG v1.0...
Welcome to yet another fun-filled week of stress, strain, worry, and carpal tunnel syndrome. The usual routine has held so far today - first class, turned in latest revision of the research prospectus, lunch, and to the library to study. I finished the readings for the current unit in American Cultures class, which we'll be discussing until the middle of next week. This frees up a lot of time during the day which I plan on using to catch up on coding so I can start the research for my project in the evenings. This seems like it'll work out decently well. I'm also reading for algorithms during the day to free up time at night. The only major time sinks I have right now are the paper due on Wednesday night (which I'll be done with by tomorrow at the very latest) and Formal Logic homework, which is a real pain in the ass.
I had a night's sleep last night (please note lack of adjective) so my brain should be rested enough to give it another go this evening. We'll see what happens.
Still no commentary about the Columbia accident; there probably won't be any, either. I don't have the CPU time to devote to reading the news reports and scientific analyses from NASA, let alone to writing about it.
Lyssa sent this to me this morning: Desiderata.
Max Ehrmann wrote that back in 1927.
It's terribly easy to forget about things outside of that which you're saddled with in everyday life. When you get up in the morning and go to work, and spend all day inside staring at a monitor it's easy to forget that there's something standing beyond those four walls. Driving to work before the sun's even up every morning doesn't do much for exposing you to new things. And when you drive home well after sunset so you can collapse into bed after a long day, it similiarly doesn't do much for you. The same thing goes for being in school all day: Walking between buildings doesn't count when you're surrounded by cars and trucks and exhaust and and and...
You know, I really love cities. I love the buildings and the sounds and the sights from high places, but I never get a chance to just wander around for the hell of it. I never get to walk through the park and listen to the birds, or to go to the museum to see the exhibits. There's an installation called Panopticon out here near campus; it's been here since Yule. And I havn't had a chance to go and see it yet, even though I can walk over to it. I miss having the time to do things on a lark and enjoy life for once. I feel like I'm starting to lose my connections to things.
It's very lonely here. I'm surrounded by people in the lab sitting at all of the workstations, yet no one's talking to one another. The only sounds are the rustling of papers and plastic copy bags, and the occasional sound of someone taking a coat off or putting a coat on to leave. That's it. Maybe the air exchanger adds soemthing to it, but that's about it.
Morpheus preserve me, what am I becoming?
...
After a lot of soul searching, private consultation, and proofreading, I decided to put the essay and photo essay that I did of my altar on line. It's probably of limited appeal and it's actually my first time writing something of this sort, so you'll have to bear with me if it sounds stilted or unsure in places.
The Imbolc rite last night was a lot of fun.. Andrea wrote and organised it. If I had to guess I'd say that about twenty people were there in the course of the night. Things got off to a late start due to having to move furniture around in the living room to make room for everyone; once things got underway Andrea's writing talent really showed itself. I honestly don't know how long it took, I was't cognizant of the passage of time around me. I was too wrapped up in what was going on.
After the circle was broken the feast began.. and what a feast it was. 'lex made two pots of chicken alfredo (excellent stuff), I brought s'mores mateirals and a dinner casserole (which went over well), someone else brought baba ganooj and flatbread, cherry cake... you name it. Everyone just sort of sat around talking and eating. At some point the bar opened in the basement and white russians made their rounds. I'll be honest, I could have done without the little ones yelling so loudly. I don't like shrill noises and after an hour or so I had a headache that just wouldn't quit. I doin't remember exactly when I wasn't able to put up with it anymore, it started getting to me. I'm also all for people blowing off steam; it keeps your stress levels down. But some of the things that people were voicing their opinions and complaints about really got to me. I try to go places so that I can get away from stuff like that, and after the third or fourth set of complaints about foo I got tired of that, too.
I like 'lex, Andrea, and TJ a great deal, and of the folks that I know who were there (the party was split down
