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04:05:47 Friday October 01 2004
Another productive day. After my long sleep I felt much better this
morning. I came on to campus about 1:30 or so. I did some paper work
and headed to my BOSO meeting. That was pretty boring, but they were
very efficent at distributing the information which was nice. After
that I went back to the office and surfed the web until the GSB
meeting. That went well. I took notes. I need to make them pretty and
send them to the webmaster.
After the meeting I went downstairs and hung out with the ACM folks
for a while. After that I grabbed some quick dinner and got to
work. Learning Java Swing for no particular reason seems dumb, but I
have a proof of concept. I just need to sit down and hammer out
the details now. I also made good progress on Professor Xie's program
tonight. By sheer luck I stumbled on to the most recent bug right
away. (I even had a comment there reminding me that it might be a
problem.) I fixed it right away, and I am now prepared for the meeting
tomorrow.
Since I finished more quickly than I expected I spent some time
helping Chris fact check his excellent coverage
of the first 2004 presidential debate. On my way home from the
office I saw a guy running towards me. The next thing I knew there
were cops and they were shoving him to the ground. From what I
gathered he was involved in some kind of altercation over at Harry's
and decided to bolt. After I mannaged to get passed all the drunk
people standing outside Harry's asking me what happened I almost
stumbled over a couple who, while not actually having sex at that
exact moment, surely got around to it before I reached my car.
I just finished backing up and cleaning out my email inbox. Perhaps I
should do that a bit more frequently:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nolandda smbusers 12M Aug 21 05:13 Inbox_2001-12-01 -rw-rw-r-- 1 nolandda smbusers 37M Aug 21 05:13 Inbox_2003-05-30 -rw-rw-r-- 1 nolandda smbusers 9.9M Aug 21 05:13 Inbox_2004-01-25 -rw------- 1 nolandda smbusers 35M Oct 1 03:48 Inbox_2004-09-30
09:39:39 Saturday October 02 2004
I know you are thinking to yourself: "Hmmm... He usually posts these
entries at 4am or so. What is this 9am on a Saturday stuff?" In answer
to your question, I just got back from the office. I have to say that
there is very little in this world that sucks quite as much as pulling
an allnighter on a weekend. Unfortunately I suspect I will be doing it
again tomorrow. <sigh>
For the record, I was/will be working on my Databases Project. Other
than that there is not a whole lot to report. Professor Xie was well
pleased with my progress at our weekly meeting. Lehmann helped me
straighten out my CSS float issue.
Recently I have been reading the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. My
interest in meta game design and more specifically diceless
roleplaying led me to read about Amber, which is a successful
diceless RPG. These books seemed inexorably bound to the game, so I
have been picking them up at the library one at a time. The premise of
the series is that there is only one real place. This place is called
Amber. Extending from Amber there are an infinitude of other
dimensions (called shadows). The Royal family of Amber can move
amongst these dimensions (in addition to their other more or less
interesting super powers). The books are interesting in their
treatment of the "infinite worlds" hypothesis and in the use of
political intrigue amongst the Royal Family. A brief excerpt:
|
"I am going to tell you something Benedict should have told you long
ago," I said. "Never trust a relative. It is far worse than trusting
strangers. With a stranger there is a possibility that you might be
safe." "You really mean that, don't you?" "Yes." "Yourself included?" I smiled. "Of course it does not apply to me. I am the soul of honor, kindness, mercy, and goodness. Trust me in all things." |
09:16:49 Sunday October 03 2004
I made more good progress on the database project last night. However it is still going to be very close. I need to get the first assignment done also. As a result the brain burn man is back in effect.
04:07:56 Wednesday October 06 2004
I am returned. So my brain got all squidgey, but now it is back to
normal. It is amazing what twelve hours of sleep and a shower can
do. Actually I should back up a little bit. Yesterday I finished my
project. This was a good thing, because it was due then. I am somewhat
disappointed in the final result. It is working. I am not concerned
about getting a bad grade, but it is just not my best work. I suppose
I should not be too hard on myself. I had to relearn java (not hard)
and pick up the JDBC and Swing APIs (harder) very quickly. The grand
total was circa 3000 lines of code. The swing API did some unexpected
things. I think if I had known about them in the beginning I would
have designed differently and had considerably less code.
After I finished the project Rick mentioned that there was a Google
talk that evening. I didn't want to sleep until after the sun went
down (that always does something bad to my circadian rhythm), so I
figured that after the 17:00 turnin I would head over to the talk. I
did make Rick promise that the talk would not be about "Google Page
Rank" though. I think that is well understood now, and they have only sent
about a billion speakers to talk about it over the years. It was
an interesting talk. I got a T-shirt, a black one this time.
As mentioned above, I got lotsa sleep and a shower and felt 1000%
better. I went on to campus, had lunch, printed all the notes from
CS541 this semester, read them, and took the midterm. I was mildly
upset because I asked him before the exam if we should pace ourselves
for a time sensitive exam, and he said no. None the less only one or
two people had left when he called time. I only failed to answer one
question as a result of this, and I feel better about this exam than I
have felt about a lot of exams so I am not too upset. I will give him
the benefit of the doubt, and assume it was an honest mistake. Then
again perhaps his statement at the beginning of the two hours caused
us all to go more slowly and thus drew out the test. Heisenberg at
work. You cannot publicly guess at the length of an exam without
altering the length of the exam.
01:11:16 Thursday October 07 2004
Not a whole lot to report today. I spent most of the day recovering from the last week. When I finally did awake it was almost time to go over to Terry's for veggie stir-fry with Ally. I finished a few odds and ends and then went over there. After dinner we watched The Insider. It is a good movie, but not a great movie. Tomorrow: Dental Work.
05:55:24 Friday October 08 2004
I had to reschedule my dentistry this morning due to a flat tire on my car. The GSB callout went well. For whatever reason I haven't been able to sleep the last two nights.
05:44:35 Sunday October 10 2004
Yesterday I had my canonical meeting with Professor Xie. I wish I
would have had more to show her, but this week was too insane for me
to accomplish anything for her. I had lunch with jolsen. After work I
did a lot of work on the family
site. I don't know why that particular project has taken me of
late. It is certainly not my highest priority.
Today I did chores for most of the afternoon. Lita came over for a
bit. We watched Finding Nemo and Futurama. After she
left I did some more work on the genealogy stuff and scanned some
family photos. John got off work later in the evening and we watched
Rushmore. I think that I liked it more than John did. He seemed
somewhat reluctant to rewatch it when I picked it out of the
pile. During the movie my temporary filling came out. I think this is
a Bad ThingTM. I will give the dentist a call
tomorrow.
I have been reading Neil Gaiman's
newest comic book creation. It is entitled "1602" and it is a kind of
study of what the world would be like were the marvel characters
around in that year. It starts off very strong. Toward the end the
book feels the need to "explain" why these characters exist in this
time frame, and this detracted greatly from my enjoyment of the
book. Over all the hardcover is worth the 25 USD price tag, but just
barely. It will be much more economical if and when it appears in trade
paperback. In the final analysis I am not a great fan of the super
hero genre, at least not when it takes itself seriously, and this
comes dangerously close.
04:43:17 Wednesday October 13 2004
Not much to report concerning this long weekend. I watched Finding
Nemo with Lita on Saturday. PUSH went off without a hitch on Sunday. Castor
was up this weekend and we hung out quite a bit. Most everyone else
was out of town for the break. I worked on the family site quite a bit.
In other news Lehmann has decided to take me up on my offer of near
campus housing in exchange for manual labor. This should get me in
gear as far as preparing the house for sale goes.
04:46:45 Thursday October 14 2004
Today I got up early with the intent of finishing my CS541 homework. I
had slapped it together in a hurry last week during crunch time. I
knew that a significant fraction of it was incorrect. However try as I
might I just couldn't bring myself to go back and redo something that
I fully believed was over. You see we got an extension on it at the
very last minute. I just turned it in as it was. There was good news
at the end of 541. I got to partner up with Mr Carrier for project
two. He was the only one in the room that I knew to be a good partner,
and he approached me. Of course I immediately agreed.
After class I had lunch at Kana Kazhana with the ACM crew. Then I did
some work and filled out some forms for the GSB. I bailed out of work
a little early and headed back. I had coffee with Lita, Ally, and
Terry. We watched the third and final debate on television.
I also had the good fortune to get to watch the musical episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer entitled "Once More With Feeling". I
was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. In general musical episodes
are kind of one off novelty items. However this episode managed to
not only drive its own narrative along, but also move the greater
overall plot of the series forward.
03:43:05 Monday October 18 2004
Another weekend spent. I went out with Terry and crew on Friday. I ran
into Hanson and Holly both in one evening. The only way it could have
been weirder is if I had run into mcgb or Meg. I suppose it is to be
expected on homecoming weekend.
On Saturday I went out with Wanke, Scott, and Cretia. Wanke was kind
enough to front me the money for admission and drinks. Otherwise there
is no way I could have afforded to go out. We saw Holly again and
discovered that she is indeed a dancing machine.
So the long overdue review of Penn Jillette's Sock: This is a
very fun book. The writing is clever, the characters (even the minor
ones) are interesting, and it is chocked full of pop culture
references. However in the interest of fair warning I should point out
that the book is told from a militantly atheist point of view. When I
started reading I thought that the whole premise of "A murder mystery
as narrated by the atheist sock monkey of a NYPD SCUBA diver" was just a
gimmick. For most of the book it is. However, at the end he not only
pushes the atheism button, but he leans on it. An example:
| Faith is the enemy. Faith and hope say it'll be okay. There is emptiness and hopelessness and pain and suffering, and faith can mask the pain, but faith can't really take it away. It's an anesthetic, not a cure. It won't really be okay. We're all going to suffer and die. It's going to get worse. But it's also a great ride. Fight the faith. When you want something to be true so badly that you can feel it, that is the time to question. Oh, faith feels good, the heroin of the born-again. The E of the higher power. The dope of a sock monkey. |
05:04:17 Tuesday October 19 2004
I am smarter than my computer.
03:14:47 Wednesday October 20 2004
Today was dentistry day. I headed to Anderson first thing. Once there
the first four steps on the left were performed. It took quite a
while, but was not all that bad. I learned a lot. Temporary fillings
are made of zinc oxide and eugenol (a.k.a. clove oil). The
silly-putty-like substance that you bite on to make the dental
impressions is Polyvinyl Siloxane. Which makes a lot of sense if you
think about it, because it is both non-hydrophilic and
non-poisonous.
After the dentistry adventure I was able to sit down and talk with my
family for a bit. April has returned from Florida, and there were no
broken down cars in front of my parent's place. After chatting for a
long while we had dinner and I returned to Lafayette.
01:29:42 Saturday October 23 2004
I am back from Washington D.C. The interviews went well. I am
tired. More info tomorrow.
04:09:31 Tuesday October 26 2004
As I said before the interview at nfr went well. I interviewed with
four different groups and met a lot of cool people. The median age was
pretty young, which is nice. They are definitely doing cool stuff, and
you can feel that they enjoy it. I think that it would be a great
job. I should hear back concerning whether or not I will get an offer
RSN.
Saturday was largely uneventful. I worked around the house. On Sunday
we had our weekly PUSH game. After the game
Castor Lehmann and I sat around chatting and drinking wine. It was a
lot of fun, but when we noticed that the sun had come up we knew that
Monday was not going to be fun. I opted out of Monday and finally
caught up on my sleep. When I did get up I cleaned the house (gaming
tends to have a deleterious effect) I did some paperwork and watched a
little Futurama. I will get back in the saddle tomorrow.
18:19:45 Wednesday October 27 2004
Found at Borders by campus: Someone was kind enough to give this dead bird its toll to cross the river Acheron.
18:19:52 Wednesday October 27 2004
Note to student organizations: Jack 'O Lanterns are meant to be kept outside in the cool October air. In a Stewart Center display case under hot lights they tend to grow a nice shiny coat of mold very quickly. Remember how microbes grow under ideal circumstances.
01:03:14 Friday October 29 2004
This morning I interviewed at Arxan Technologies. I think it went
well. Quite a few folks were out of the office, so I didn't get to
meet everyone. They are doing some very cool stuff there.
I went onto campus and did some work, but Rick and Shuey showed up so
I wasted most of the afternoon chatting with them. This evening I went
and saw one of my former students / fellow noders give a talk to the local ACM
chapter entitled "The Freak Programming Languages Tech Talk" I was
very surprised. It was an excellent talk, and he got laughs in all the
right places.
For whatever reason I am exhausted. Time to sleep. Tomorrow, meeting
with Professor Xie, pick up Matt up at the airport, and possibly go to
the Neon Cactus. I am not sure when I will find time to clean the
house for the party on Saturday.
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