Pen and Ink

Closing Down

2005-08-31T19:50:00.000-05:00

Well, tomorrow's my one-year anniversary of blogging, and it all started here. (Admittedly I was going to call it "Glowing Ember," but times change.)

Anyway, come tomorrow I won't be posting here. I'm dropping this blog and posting exclusively to my LiveJournal. This is for a variety of reasons, some of which are readily apparent, some not so much.

Human readers (if any) of this page and/or feed should be able to find my LJ fairly easily from this page, so I won't post a link in this entry and fall prey to the roaming ad-scum of cyberspace. My LJ also has newsfeeds which can be easily found. If you use Firefox, look in the lower-right corner in the status bar. There's a newsfeed thing. I'll post links on my LJ too, after I do some long-due rearranging.

It's been great, more or less, and I hope it continues to be so. "See" you around!

Enlightenment DR17

2005-08-31T19:38:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is, the promised Enlightenment DR17 desktop screenshot.

The thing on the right is GKrellM, not a part of Enlightenment, but it's a cool system monitor nevertheless. (Even checks my mail!)

In the lower left is my desktop switcher. You can see I was running Firefox in one of the desktops when I took this. To the right of that is my dock-type thing, called the IBar.

The thermometer in the right-hand corner reports the processor temperature (weather is in the lower left area).

The shadowed thing just above the IBar is an RSS reader, although it's not entirely functional. I wish I could selectively remove the drop shadow from it, but I can't. I have to use a fake transparency hack for it as well, but it's still cool.

The thing above it is the menu. I got it by just left-clicking on the desktop. It allows me to enable and configure things on the desktop, lanuch applications, etc.

Oh yes, and a nice clock in the upper right.

Well, hope you liked it. I'm definitely looking forward to an official stable release.

Shaky

2005-08-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the spam, just a quick note after last night. As I mentioned earlier, I went and visited the library.

K.C. was there, although she was rather busy so we didn't talk too much. I...I made the mistake of bringing up the topic of the aforementioned away message. Now, I knew how I should've presented it to her, but for some reason I botched it up pretty badly and she asked which of the possibilities was real, but I...I couldn't tell her the truth.

I left shortly after that, partly because the conversation seemed to have died (and she had work to do anyway), also because it's hard to study Hebrew when the page seems to waver. (Yes, it was late for me.)

Whipped myself into a pretty strong emotional turmoil (which was also why I left), although the night and the hour might have had a part in that. I know I was a real internal mess by the time I got back to the dorm. I've got something scribbled on my notepad here, I think maybe it was meant to be an away message or something? "LIAR! you couldn't say it COULDN'T SAY IT! spun some sugary falsehood FILTH! gutless worthless NOTHING you walk the path of the DEAD in the REALM OF THE LIVING vanish VANISH as if you never were GONE where are they now NOW?" Obviously I was kinda messed up.

I think I got a better grip, now. Didn't realize I'd mess myself up so much. Still kinda shaky, but I think I'm more or less okay now.

Right. Medication time.

Edit: I'm turning off comments on this entry because I've gotten like 5 spam messages in five minutes. Any human with a relevant comment can find me again with a minimum of effort. Look at the page carefully, or search.

Thinking about Her

2005-08-30T22:33:00.000-05:00

Well, pretty normal day today. Greek first thing in the morning, obviously. We had a quiz over the alphabet and the like. I think I did okay. Then it was off to CS 257 where we were assigned another project, seeing as how the current one is due tonight at midnight.

Speaking of the current project, apparently one of the guys in my group worked out the bugs, although I broke it briefly before he fixed it again. So I added the documentation and dumped it to my account, where hopefully the professor's script will gather it. (That reminds me, I should probably e-mail him a copy like he requested.)

After CS 257 I went back to the dorm and worked on the code a bit as I mentioned above. In the middle of that, Clark (the guy who fixed it) IMs me on—get this—my "lingapp" AIM screenname. He says he saw on a webpage somewhere that it was me, but he couldn't remember where. I couldn't find anything with Google, so I'll have to keep an eye out. Anyway, he was responding to the away message that I've had for a couple days now. ("Funny thing life, huh? You don't DARE tell her how you feel about her, but you can't live with yourself if you don't. Do you wait and hope she says something, or what?") It was, of course, in reference to K.C., although he didn't know that (unless he's been reading this blog, of course). Anyway, he was of the opinion that I should just tell her, at which point I asked how he can morally justify such a traumatization. He's still chewing on that one. Of course, I could always point out that (a) I don't have the requisite social skills, (b) I could be observing someone else's relationship, and (c) I'm trying to poke hints at K.C. (It's (c) by the way, although (a) is very much true also.)

After all that it was time for CC class, which was uneventful. Went to lunch with Jeff after that, where we complained about clueless computer users and whatnot. Then I went back to the dorm intending to work on some of my homework, but I wound up talking with my roommate a lot; just a couple of things about how I wouldn't like it if he had his girlfriend room here for the weekend like last year and whatnot. He seems better than last year's roommate. We also talked about bits of high school.

Around suppertime I remembered that, it being Tuesday, I had to upload this week's first comic, which I did. I have a story worked out for the next one I need to draw, but I only got one frame done before going to the CC picnic. That's mostly to welcome new freshmen to Christ College, thought they'll serve any CC student. Free food is good, obviously. Thought maybe I'd see K.C. there, but I realized rather quickly that I was just being social deadwood and escaped/left after half an hour.

Worked on the first panel of comic 11 after I got back, then took my medication at 7:00. After that headed to the library and studied Hebrew like there's no tomorrow, hoping to catch K.C. No luck, though. Either she's working evenings later than I expect, or I misunderstood the days of the week (or both). Then back here.

Um...y'know what, I'm gonna go try the library one more time, just for kicks and giggles. But for now, g'night.

Got a Job

2005-08-29T22:13:00.000-05:00

Whee, busy day. Also Murphy's Monday. I had a horribly runny nose most of the day, probably because they were cutting the grass...although it could have been any one of a myriad of things.

Anyway, Greek this morning where he once again forgot to ask us for our schedules. This was followed by CS 257, also rather uneventful.

After a brief break where I poked around at some systems stuff, I attended CS 365 with an incredibly runny nose. Talked to Professor Glass about the job he'd mentioned working to help set up the new computer lab upstairs in Gellersen. Turns out I was supposed to apply as as a Teaching Assistant, and the deadline was Friday. Oops. He went off to see about it with the department head while I went to lunch.

Came back from lunch about 1:15 and found a summons to the math/CS office. Filled out the paperwork there, then high-tailed it over to Kretzmann. Got to the Kretzmann human resources office and realized I'd need some bank account info. The paper on the door said that my bank account statements would work, so I went back to Wehrenberg to get them, then went back to Kretzmann. Turned out, though, that I needed to have a voided check specifically, so after filling out the paperwork it was back to 'Berg again, then back to Kretzmann, then back to 'Berg.

After that it was over to Mueller to meet with Professor Olmsted. Got my research paper back from last May (also K.C.'s, gotta get that to her), plus talked with him about dropping Christ College. Then back to the dorm to shower before going to supper, then heading to the meeting with my CS group.

We made some progress on the CS assignment. That is to say, it evaluates any expression without parentheses; basically, with the +, -, *, /, and ^ symbols (add, subtract, multiply, divide, and exponent respectively). We also added a "spork" operator which does the same thing as multiply, just because we wanted to. Having a lot of trouble with processing the parentheses, though.

After that I went over to the library for a bit to study Hebrew, then back here. And I'm dead beat; Greek tomorrow. G'night.

Mundane and Arcane

2005-08-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

Not much to report today. First off was church, obviously, at 8:30. I got there a little earlier than I usually did, because I didn't have far to walk. Unfortunately I didn't realize that there was going to be a baptism, which was at the back end of the main chapel, but one of the...um...acolytes or whoever told me. Anyway, went back and was present as three little ones from the same family (two of them twins) were baptized. The rest of the service was more or less normal.

Late this afternoon I worked on the CS project with the other two guys in my group. Gellersen was locked, so we both came up to my dorm and worked on it from here. It isn't functional, unfortunately, but we're closer.

I was able to eat supper with all the guys tonight, though I arrived a little late on account of the group project. Mostly technical talk and discussion about EIS and campus network philosophy. Very mundane and arcane, don't ask.

Most of the rest of the day I played RuneScape. I got my attack, strength, and defense up to 51, 50, and 50 respectively. I also got my crafting up to 34, so I was finally able to cut that ruby in my bank account. Also made a few amulets, some of which I enchanted and some of which I sold to the jeweler for a tidy sum.

I also got my prayer level up to 43, finally! Now I can use "protect from melee!" Woohoo! I'm also sick of hill giants at this point.

Oh yes, and the Fedora Core 4 Enlightenment RPMs were updated today, so I went and downloaded them and installed them. Haven't noticed any differences yet, aside from the menu generator (not that I'd expected much).

Anyway, bedtime for me. Got Greek and my two CS classes tomorrow, plus a CS project to work on. G'night.

Comic Talk

2005-08-27T22:20:00.000-05:00

Well, interesting day today.

First off, I did my laundry this morning while almost everyone else was still asleep. The machines were different, but not very difficult to operate. I read the reading assignment for CC 205 while in there. After I put my laundry away I took my trash down to the dumpster; oddly, there doesn't seem to be any provision for bottle recycling, just boxes.

Spent the rest of the morning playing RuneScape. I got my crafting level up to 32, but then it got too crowded to mine silver. So I went and beat up on some hill giants instead. Also did that a bit this evening. Worked through a goodly portion of my remaining tuna (I'm down to seven now), getting my hitpoints up to 52, my attack up to 50, and my defense up to 49. Also got my prayer up to level 42...one level away from being able to use "protect from melee."

I posted another Outpost comic around suppertime. I think I can afford to go twice a week with those, so this was the first week I did so. Tuesday and Saturday, which I think will be my schedule from now on, barring the unexpected. I intended to work out another one this afternoon, but I got distracted reading GPF Comics and wound up doing it early this evening. I shouldn't be in too much trouble if I can at least draw a comic the same day I post one, even if I'm drawing a little ahead of what's been released.

Anyway, drew the tenth strip today, which I think is second-to-last of the storyline that just got started (the galactic holoprojector). Also finally figured out a way to draw a decent-looking galaxy, though it's still difficult and mediocre-looking. At least I can do shapes now, though.

Anyway, church tomorrow. I also need to print out a copy of my schedule for my Greek teacher. G'night.

Today was a Big

2005-08-26T22:35:00.000-05:00

Well, fun day today.

First off was Greek, of course. We learned about accent and breathing marks. I'm not quite sure why there are three marks (acute, grave, and circumflex) to indicate the same thing (stress this syllable), but there are. Breathing marks are more like indicators of the "h" sound. "Hear" as opposed to "ear," for instance. They'd be spelled the same way, but in Greek there'd be a breathing mark over the "e" to make it "hear" instead of "ear."

In CS 257 Professor Hume added a bit to the assignment program. I have to meet with the other two guys in my group on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 to work on it. We have to handle exponents and parentheses now.

In CS 365 we discussed transformation matrices for scaling, rotating, and shearing about the origin. That was rather interesting, though I need to refresh my memory on matrix multiplication.

This afternoon I went to the bookstore and bought a fourth CD clam, so now I can store Fedora in the CD clams. (Before I'd only had three, which worked for the 3-disk Mandrake, but not for the 4-disk Fedora.) I also played RuneScape a bit, working my range level up to 30 and eating some of the tuna out of my bank. Also got an uncut ruby, but can't cut it yet, so next project is to gain another four levels of crafting.

Speaking of levels, you can see mine here. That'll work for anybody, just take "Ahnotahm" out of the URL and replace it with a different player's name. Granted, it only works if you're listed in the high score for that category (which requires at least level 30), but there it is. And with that, I think all my free-player levels are at 30 or above. Also got teleported to the maze at one point, and found in a chest a two-dose potion of strength. I didn't even know that free players could get those.

Oh yes, much coolness today in the software area. I'd had Xine for a few days because its libraries were required by something else. Today, however, I downloaded some codecs for proprietary formats like WMV (Windows Media Video or some such), MOV (QuickTime), and others like commercial DVDs. I don't need to convert junk to Bink anymore! Much awesomeness! I sat and watched a bit of I, Robot simply because I could. Also reviewed a lot of clips from my D'ni folder and whatnot (including Sehv Tsahno and Ilathid trailers).

Talked with K.C. a bit today, after we arranged a bit of time to meet together face-to-face via IM. Sat in the library foyer this evening and talked. I asked her advice on whether or not to drop Christ College, when factoring in the social aspects. Certainly gave me a lot to think about.

I'll need to talk with Professors Olmsted and Huelin too, at least. Professor Olmsted I think will be able to offer some guidance, and I expect Professor Huelin will try to talk me into staying, something I'll have to face if/when I officially drop it. Won't be until the end of the term at least, though.

Anyway, bedtime for me. I have to get up early tomorrow and do my laundry, as we have a smaller laundromat here (one on each floor), and the machines were all occupied this evening (except the busted one). I should also probably get around to posting that screenshot of Enlightenment I mentioned.

Okay, g'night.

Lord of the Keys

2005-08-25T22:19:00.000-05:00

Well, busy day today.

First thing off was Greek at 8:00 AM again. We went over the alphabet in class, which was really easy for me because I already know it. Our homework was to learn the letter names and sounds and to practice writing the letters. I was done in like three minutes. It was interesting to learn where I'd been right and wrong about the types of sounds the letters make. For example, Zeta (like a capital Z) actually makes a "dz" sound like in "adze." I'd always thought it was just a "z" sound. Also, upsilon makes an "oo" type sound (or u-with-uumlauts from German), not "uh" like I'd previously assumed. ("Oop-silon," not "Up-silon")

After Greek it was back to the dorm for a bit, then CC class where we discussed Plato(n)'s Republic. That was actually an easier text to read than Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, which was accumulated lecture notes rather than a finished text. Still not doing too well with that kind of stuff, though.

I suppose I'd better say it. I'm thinking of dropping Christ College. I don't think I belong there academically. But...I don't know. I'm planning to discuss it with a few people, then (if I decide to) drop it at the end of the semester, my usual quiet vanishing trick.

I didn't mention it yesterday because it slipped my mind, but we've got a new card-swipe lock at the bottom of the main stairwell now in Wehrenberg. So, a recap: one key for the room door, one key for the outside and stairwell doors, one key for the mailbox (which doesn't work), one key for I-don't-know-what (probably the elevator), and now a card swipe.

One key for the main-door under the sky,
One for the stairwell in the halls of stone,
One for the mailbox doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Berg of Wehren where the Shadows lie.
One Key to open all, One Key to find them,
One Ring to hold them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Berg of Wehren where the Shadows lie.

[overly cheery voice] Welcome to Wehrenberg State Penitentiary, formerly Wehrenberg Residential Hall for upperclassmen and lucky, scamming sophomores. Please remember that the locks engage precisely at 7:00 PM and are there for your protection. Enjoy your visit, and have a nice day!

Anyway, that was random.

CC Symposium this evening, which was just a welcome and introduction type thingy by Dean Piehl. (I swear that guy never stops smiling; he just changes its intensity. It's creepy.) Symposium is required for all non-freshmen in CC. After that all four Word and Image (CC 205) classes met for a plenary session. (That was mostly sophomores.) I had to take my medication along and take it in the middle of Dean Piehl's speech; luckily I was in the back.

Oh, and early this morning I got a script set up that queries the wallpaper currently being used by Enlightenment, then sets the root background to a similar image file in order to perform the fake-transparency trick used by Eterm and Erss. Tomorrow I should probably expand it so it can generate the appropriate image file if it isn't already there. (Or maybe I could just make it do that all the time? Hmm...)

Anyway, bedtime for me. G'night.

Dibblies

2005-08-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

Fun day today, more or less.

Two CS classes this morning, although the first one didn't start until 9:05, so I had a bit of free time. That was the lab for the Java course. The other one was CS 365, which is computer graphics with Professor Glass. Prior to that (during chapel break), I met with Professor Glass and we caught up on stuff like the research project.

Spent a good part of the afternoon trying to fix my roommate's computer and reading the bits of the Greek textbook and the first two books of Plato's Republic. (By the way, it's actually "Platon.")

This evening I visited the library again to try and learn the Hebrew alphabet. I need to find a better Hebrew font, but I think I'm coming along pretty well at learning the letters.

Oh yes, got Erss working. I've now got a fake-transparent RSS feed on my desktop. I should probably try to get RssOwl up and running properly again.

Floor meeting this evening, but that was just introductions and stuff.

Gotta cut this short, my roommate's already in bed. G'night.

Chicken Wings

2005-08-23T23:17:00.000-05:00

Whee, long day.

First off was Greek 101. Looks like it'll be an interesting class. Oh, and the fun thing: I'm the first one in the room. I watch the rest of the class (a sizeable number of students) come in. The seats fill up (even the front row!) but the two seats on either side of me remain completely empty. What gives?

CS 257 also. Professor Hume seems pretty good, although he's mildly disoriented from returning from his Cambridge trip.

Opening convocation was rather dull.

CC 205 (Word and Image) seems like it'll be tough, we'll have to see.

This afternoon I played RuneScape a bit. Also helped my roommate back up some of his data in preparation for reinstalling Windows.

Tried to catch K.C. at the library, but I don't know for sure if/where she's working there. Wound up studying ancient Hebrew for a couple hours. Learned only two things: that I can't draw Hebrew characters, and that they had a base 10 numbering system using their letters.

Went out with the guys from Tri-Lambda (Larry, Aaron, Jeremy, and Andrew) late this evening for chicken wings; that's why I'm back so late. Wonderful to see them all again.

Heh. A couple of times we turned to arguing over my social problems. Larry said I should be more like him, a statement everybody else said was a "bad idea." Jeremy observed that the best approach would probably be between me and Larry, at which point I turned and looked at that portion of the table and said, "What, I should be six BBQ chicken wings in a styrofoam box?" We all agreed that this was probably the best path to enlightenment.

Anyway, bedtime. No 8:00 class tomorrow, but one at 9:05. G'night.

Rough Day

2005-08-22T22:20:00.000-05:00

Well, the day started out okay. I got up, read my comics (some of the sites are no longer functioning properly, but oh well). Checked blogs. Went down to breakfast in the Wehrenberg cafeteria. Unfortunately, there were no doughnuts. Well, there were, but only one type. So I got a doughnut and a bagel. And there weren't even any jelly doughnuts!

After breakfast I printed out my résumé and my schedule and headed over to the Career Center. Figured they could give me a handle on jobs on campus. My mistake; it's the Career Center, not the Job Center. They handle mostly leaving seniors and such. I put in an application there anyway in case they wanted student help.

After that I walked to Walgreens, which turned out to be on the corner of Glendale and Calumet. Unfortunately, it's a forty-minute walk each way, and I think I was starting to blister when I got back. The worst part was, they couldn't even refill my prescription! Apparently there's some kind of "don't refill before X date" thing. Get this: my "X date" is tomorrow. Luckily the pharmacist said she could leave the info so it'd get filled overnight and I could pick it up tomorrow. Not wanting to walk all that way, I got my ex-roommate (from last year) to agree to drive me there tomorrow.

Definitely going to have to think that through better. I don't mind the long haul, but I can't do it two days in a row (particularly since I have classes tomorrow). Also, when I got back my shirt was soaked with sweat where my backpack was; I can't keep doing that.

Played a bunch of RuneScape today. Talked a bit with Miveen and we decided it would be best if I crafted my own tiaras, then gave her the rest of the silver. (Miveen, you still have to pick up the 91 ingots. I need my bank slot back.) Through various activities I got my strength level up to 49, my cooking up to 55, my fishing up to 49, my crafting up to 29, and my hit points up to 51. I also got rid of some spare bits of food.

Speaking of food, my final count: 1115 fish, from 699 cooked trout and 416 cooked salmon. Also made 43 anchovy pizzas, to get rid of those anchovies in my bank.

Roommate came today, but it turns out he's trying to get a room in Alumni instead, so I had to sign his form saying I need a new roommate. I checked the box saying I'd provide one in seven days, then sent out messages to the Tri-Lambda guys. I'm wondering what'll happen if I can't provide anybody.

He tried to connect to the network, and had to download some software. Unfortunately, it seems to have messed up his computer (corrupted and/or deleted his HAL.DLL file), and I was called on to help. I wasn't able to fix it, though, and advised him to take it down to EIS.

Tried to take a shower this afternoon, but it was more of a dribble. I think the stall on the end doesn't get much water pressure because it's the end of the pipe.

I seem to be getting rather depressed again. I thought my time home during summer break would anchor me, but apparently not. Seems like everyone I talk to recently finds some reason to break off the conversation after a minute or two. Wonder what I'm doing wrong?

Okay, bedtime. I've got classes tomorrow, plus a prescription to pick up. I should probably also work on The Outpost Comic a bit, in preparation for twice-a-week. And I've got to configure Enlightenment (though I've been poking at it a bit already). G'night.

Enlightenment

2005-08-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

Church this morning, obviously. I got up and got ready, assuming they'd do the usual services at 8:30 and 10:00. I was wrong, though; there was one big opening service at 10:30. No biggie, though.

I didn't mention last night that the old library is completely demolished and gone. Unfortunately, so is a lot of sidewalk in that area, which means that if you don't want to take the long way 'round, you have to go through some mud or some patches that smell of damp, decaying plants (yeah, that smell).

Played some more RuneScape today. I decided to work on some of my lower levels at one point, so now I'm at level 10 ranging and level 21 crafting. Funny thing is, all three random events I've gotten since getting that high in crafting have rewarded me with sapphires. So I bought a chisel and cut the sapphires, then made rings to sell. (Sorry, Miveen, just wanted to see how it was done and all that.) Which reminds me, I should probably get some gold. I hear there's a lot in the crafting guild, but that's level 40 to enter.

I also got my fishing up to level 47. Unfortunately, that means I've got almost 1000 salmon and trout. At least I got rid of the apple pies today; went and attacked some stuff, eating them to heal. Got level 49 attack, up from 48. Cooking's now at level 54; one more level and I can make anchovy pizzas, the highest cooking item for free players.

You're probably wondering about the title by now. Well, I finally went out and got the cutting-edge not-yet-released version of Enlightenment, Enlightenment DR17 (or E17 or Enlightenment 0.17, take your pick). I gotta tell ya, this is the spiffiest thing this side of creation. I'll post some screencaps tomorrow if I have time. Now I just need to learn how to configure it. Looks like they didn't include any GUI tools for doing that, so it's all command-line for now.

Anyway, stuff to do tomorrow. Gotta visit the career center, find Walgreens and refill my prescription, and muck about with Enlightenment. G'night.

Back to Valpo

2005-08-20T22:06:00.000-05:00

Well, long and short of it is I'm back at college. Let me back up a bit, though.

A few weeks ago Dad finally bought an Ethernet 5-port switch. I fiddled around with it but couldn't get much of a network going. Basically, I had three computers: a Windows XP Pro box (Family), a Windows XP Pro/Fedora Core 4 box (Mine), and a Fedora Core 4 box (Grinder). Both Windows XP's were SP2: Mine by update and Family by straight installation.

So, problems: First off, Mine on XP won't acknowledge any sort of network, though I'm hoping to get that sorted out soon. Family acknowledges a network between itself and Mine on Linux, but can't ping its own IP address for some reason. And the two Linux boxes wouldn't start up their network devices because they weren't getting IP addresses. I have yet to try all three because we didn't have enough cables.

I fixed the Linux-to-Linux problem, I think. Turns out they were waiting to be assigned IP addresses, which is handled by something called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a "host" being a computer that wants to be on the network). So I installed dhcpd on Grinder, which is a DHCP server type thing. Problem was, it still wasn't working. It wasn't until later, when I went poking through the Linux init scripts, that I found out the blasted thing quit silently if it didn't find a certain configuration file. Didn't even tell ya! Anyway, after consulting the manual ("man dhcpd.conf"), I wrote a simple one myself. DHCP started fine, but I also had to assign an IP address manually using one of Red Hat's little tools. (Note to self: find out how to do that from command line, without using distro-specific tool thingy.)

Through all that I found out the command to get Linux to spit up its IP address (and lots more besides), so that's one less unsolved mystery.

Anyway, today I moved back to Valpo. (That's why The Outpost comic was so late today; I'm thinking of going twice a week if I can handle it, though.)

I've got all my stuff moved in, although a few items have yet to be put away. Haven't met my roommate yet.

Wehrenberg is pretty cool, except they lack sinks in the rooms. (Lankenau had that last year.) There's lots more room, although I wish I had a few more shelves. The bathrooms are nicer, and the rooms have air conditioning!

Met K.C. in the bookstore while getting my books this afternoon.

This evening I played a bit of RuneScape. Reoriented myself, then spent some time mining silver. Also fished and got a few more cooked lobsters in the bank. Miveen, the silver's for you, all 112 bars of it. I need about 32 tiaras, though. Let me know if you're still playing, and if so, when you'll be on.

Okay, bedtime. Church tomorrow. G'night.

Now a Comic!

2005-07-30T11:28:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know, I've been rather lax about updating the past few weeks.

Truth is, I'm only allowed on once a week now (which I've probably mentioned already), and things just aren't very exciting around here. The biggest variation is what I have for lunch, pretty much.

Anyway, this past week I went with Mom to help out at the annual 4-H fair. Or more accurately, to help out with the church food tent at the fair. Got one of the delicious breaded tenderloin sandwiches for lunch.

I've also downloade InkScape, and as a result of playing around with it (sort of), I've decided to start a comic strip about The Outpost, which can be found here. I hope you all enjoy.

And that's it for me for posting, I think.

Comensani expidani revilani erte yamani...

2005-07-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I finished Myst IV: Revelation. That was rather quick. Myst took me six months when I was ten years old. So either the puzzles are getting easier or I'm getting better at wrapping my brain around them. Anyway, the promised journal is here. Now I've got to see if I can work Revelator to extract the music.

I've also set a new personal high score mark in NetHack. You can find my score table at the same place as the last link, or you can read the next few words which will tell you that my new high score is 49928 points. My new high score is 49928 points.

I'm also working on a bit of a project for The Outpost, but I don't want to say what it is yet. Suffice to say that it should come to maturity about...oh, end of October or beginning of November. (If you can't figure it out from that, then you'll just have to wait.)

And I think that's it for now. Keep on posting!

Talk of Many Things

2005-07-02T15:35:00.000-05:00

First, and most important: I GOT MYST IV: REVELATION!

Yes, that's right! I'm playing it now. (Don't spoil!) I'm keeping a day-by-day journal that I'll upload when I finish. Suffice it to say for now that I've finished Spire and started Haven.

Next up to report is that I've been cut back on my internet time to 3-4 hours per session, and only one session a week. Don't worry, though, I still plan to continue reading every little bit of blog in my bookmarks.

I've also found a (somewhat small) way to make myself useful. I'm going to make RPM packages for Fedora Core. See, when you get a program for Linux, you have the option (sometimes the only option) of getting the source code and compiling the program from scratch. When a person makes an RPM, they compile the code and bundle it into an RPM file. The end user then downloads the RPM file and double-clicks it (or something similarly simple) to install the program...already compiled. Unfortunately, this means that the compiled program isn't compatible with all Linux systems, hence the different RPM packages for one program (e.g. Mandrake, Fedora, Red Hat, etc). I'm not entirely sure how I'll distribute the RPMs (whether I'll try to submit them to Fedora Extras or what), but hopefully it'll be useful to somebody. We'll see.

As I've mentioned a couple times before, I've been playing a lot of NetHack. Well, I finally got around to uploading my score chart, which can be found here. (That's just the scores from my personal computer, not any other machines where I might have an account.) I'll still need to upload the log file from time to time, but it's pretty current.

Anyway, I think that's it for now.

Little Things

2005-06-24T17:46:00.000-05:00

Eck. Okay, must update before the connection dies, as it seems to like doing in the evenings. First off, I've gone and switched over to Fedora Core 4 for Linux. Good-bye Mandrake/Mandriva! Seems to be for the better, although I need to do a lot of adjustment. Not to mention find all my old programs.

Oh yes, the library had its annual book sale last week. I made out like a bandit and nearly tore through a plastic shopping bag. Wound up getting nine books, all for 50 cents each. That includes five Star Wars novels, which are usually priced at $7.00 brand-new. Also got the Thrawn trilogy! Couldn't beat that with a stick.

Um, I think that about wraps it up for updates. Not much excitement going on around here, unfortunately. Um, got up to about 38000 points in NetHack, but that's on my local machine (not on the high scores link I posted earlier). Well, 'bye for now. And remember, I'm always reading.

The memeress hits!

2005-06-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

Whee, too much NetHack! Anyway, got this one from miveen's entry.

Name five [5] things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make your list, post it in your journal, then tag five [5] new people and ask them to post it to theirs:

playing Myst/Riven/Exile/Uru
playing NetHack
reading
programming the computer
writing (occasionally)

Okay, let's see...targets. This is gonna be tough with only 11 mutual friends listed. How about:

kapera
computersherpa
eleri
ccmage
wandering_nomad

There we go.

On a side note, if anybody wandering by has some Linux knowledge, I need a little help. For some reason my .bash_logout script isn't working when I log out of Gnome or KDE anymore. I don't know how long it's been not-working, but I know it was working before I upgraded to Mandriva 2005 LE. Yeah...anybody?

Perl and NetHack

2005-06-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, a little later than I should've let this go, but let's see here...

First off, I am really starting to get fed up with this town. It seems there's no possibility for a job anywhere, except for maybe industrial type stuff (e.g. assembly line work). Seems you have to know somebody. Blasted nepotism, blasted inbred-ness. Blasted filthy town!

Anyway, I haven't been doing much else of note, aside from getting discouraged in looking for a summer job. I guess I'll have to wait and see what I can scrape up at Valpo this fall.

Let's see, I dabbled a bit more in Perl, and I'm playing a lot of NetHack. I found the log file and high scores file for NetHack, which list stats for every game and the top twenty games, respectively. (I should've done this sooner, as I lost my earlier high scores when I upgraded.) I've also written a Perl script for parsing the data and putting it in an HTML table.

Speaking of Perl scripts, I also wrote one to parse the "hits" log file thingy for my web page that the host churns out. It runs through it and calculates how much bandwidth has been used. With a little tweaking, I'm sure I can get it to be conditional. For instance, suppose I have a large file I want to offer for download. Well, I could have this script set up so that, every time the page loads, it checks how much bandwidth has been used that month. If too much (say, 90%) has been used, it'll replace the link with a "Sorry, out of bandwidth, try next month" message. Not sure if it's feasible, but should be interesting to try.

Also, speaking of NetHack, I found a few sites that allow you to play online. It's not exactly multiplayer, but all the player data and stuff is stored on a server. So, for instance, you may run across where somebody else has died, instead of one of your previous characters. (I haven't so far, though.) I'm signed up at one as Ahnotahm, and you can see my scores here. I'm particularly proud of my top one (27402 points), as it's the highest I've had to date and was tops for the month when I died (although it's only second now.) Still, I don't compare to, say, people who have actually finished the game ("ascended"). Top score for that is ten million plus.

Hmmm, maybe I can get my Perl script to parse my Ahnotahm scores also, then display it on one single page? Something to look into...

Oh yes, a fairly nasty but short-lived storm moved through here the other day. Nothing serious affected us, but a power line was down in another part of town. Oddly, we didn't even lose power.

Okay, gotta go. And remember: even though I'm too lazy/forgetful to update, I'm reading comments and my friends list twice a week.

Monotony

2005-05-31T19:58:00.000-05:00

Let's see here...well, first off, the traditional excuses. I meant to update on Saturday, but the ISP spontaneously decided to disconnect me before I got around to it, and I didn't feel justified in dialing out again. Yes, lame, but it's the truth.

Eh, nothing much notable this week. My acne seems to be receding, though I can't tell if it's due to the antibiotics or if it's just typical fluctuations. Too early to tell. Hopefully it's the antibiotics, which means it'll be gone by August...if I'm lucky. Unfortunately, I've had some mild dizziness and headaches, though it's hard to tell if those are from the medication or my allergies. The pine tree pollen is coming out, so that's going to be rough.

I've taken up learning to model in Blender. It's fun, though I'm limited to simple stuff like vases and whatnot. I found out I could import models from PlantStudio, though, which makes for some interesting arrangements. Learning new things in it almost every day, too. I've added a couple renders to my gallery here. (The bottom two images, to be precise.) Not much to look at, but it's a start.

Oh yes, talked with K.C. over AIM a bit on Saturday, too. I think she was busy or distracted or something, but she did take a look at my gallery updates. I told her to poke around the site a bit if she wanted to, but I doubt she did...not much there she'd be interested in, as far as I know.

Oh yes, poked a bit at Perl as well.

No changes on Facebook, although I note that K.C.'s profile now lists her as having last logged in from Brandt Hall on campus. I suppose she visited somebody?

Anyway, time to log off. Tomorrow's going to be another mind-numbingly exciting day of Blender modeling, Perl programming, or fruitless job-hunting.

Star Wars Birthday

2005-05-24T19:15:00.000-05:00

Ugh, I should be more prompt about updating this thing.

Well, first off, I had to go to the dermatologist's, as I'd mentioned a week ago in my previous entry. The doctor was rather nice this time around (different one). I'm now on the oral antibiotic minocycline. In other words, I'm taking pills by mouth twice a day. Luckily it doesn't seem to be related to Accutane, but at times I can't shake the feeling that I'm just gulping little sausage-shaped plastic pellets. I suppose it'll take time. (Speaking of which, I'll have to break in a few minutes to go up and take one for this evening.)

Anyway, went and saw Episode III on Thursday. Went to the 12:55 PM showing with Peter. (The one just after noon.) It...wow. Flipping awesome! Yes, okay, I could never be a movie critic, but...amazing. And the way everything all fits in now, of course.

Thursday was also my birthday, but (as is common practice in my family) we held off the celebration until Friday, when Aunt and Uncle came over. Got the Episode III soundtrack (wicked awesome music, by the way), a black ink cartridge for my printer, two shirts from thinkgeek.com (the LINUXUNIL one with Tux on the back, and the Einstein revolution one), a 256 MB USB memory key (my old one was only 16 MB), a Greek dictionary, some Creme Savers, and some apparently high-quality pencils.

Did a little more unpacking. I found my D'ni notebooks and such at least. I got to rereading the profiles of the D'ni Kings, then went back and played Uru again, as well as the two expansion packs. At times found myself wishing it was real, that I might share parts of it with K.C...ah well.

Speaking of K.C., no further contact with her. Her Facebook profile hasn't changed since I've started watching it, either. (And nobody's added me as a friend on it.)

Still no job, unfortunately.

Dad occasionally brings up the idea of getting me a new computer...this time a desktop model. I checked the Dell site today and if it's played right, apparently we could get a decent system that meets (or, more often, exceeds) the requirements for Revelation...for under $1000. While I certainly desire to own another computer, part of me says that this money could be better spent in other ways...such as, I don't know, maybe putting me through college?! Honestly, what's wrong with me using the little rubber bits on my laptop? Just because three keys were broken off...

Anyway, technical mystery of the day. So I'm using Linux and I pop my new soundtrack in to play it. The media player finds the information right off. Now, normally this wouldn't be a surprise as it's configured for CDDB retrieval...it finds the track names off the internet. Well, I wasn't connected at the time, but it found the track info anyway, so I assumed it was on the CD somehow. But if it's on the CD, why is Windows Media Player too stupid to find it, even when I am connected to the internet? (Anybody wanna recommend a good media player I can use in Windows?)

Okay, I think that's it for now. See y'all on Saturday hopefully...Tuesday, if I'm lazy.

Oh yes...

2005-05-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

I created a Facebook account, though I didn't put much in it. It's main purpose is to allow me access to the database. Much info to be had on many people there. That site could make stalking a breeze...not that I'd do anything like that. K.C. has an entry as well, with 48 friends listed from Valpo alone...

This Past Week

2005-05-17T20:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I suppose it's time I stopped avoiding this and actually updated.

First off, I got home safely and got all the boxes and stuff shoved into my bedroom. I've done a fair amount of unpacking, although there's still a few items to be found yet. (I'm not sure where my MREDU notebooks are, nor my printout of the D'ni Kings texts.) Also, I've run out of bookshelf space again, so until I do some reorganizing there will be a few foot-high piles of books on my bedroom floor.

On Thursday (and again today) my parents took me out job-hunting. Nothing's come back yet, unfortunately. I'm beginning to gain a new understanding of this town. A couple of the applications I've filled out were very agriculture- and industry-oriented. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you, but it's just not my area. It'd be a bad thing for me, probably. Hopefully I can get some office job somewhere. Or maybe at the library.

Apparently I'm still running on that feeling of quiet panic or whatever from college. When we were at the library I picked up "Perl for Dummies," which I've more or less finished. So, theoretically, I can now program Perl. I was out on the internet today looking for reference material that wouldn't have to be returned to the library, but no such luck. Ah well, I've got a week to copy the appendix. Also, I've got an implementation of Eliza in Perl that I want to tinker with. Seems I can write Perl-based plugins for Gaim, too. Heh. Eliza over Gaim, that'll be fun.

I've also taken up playing with the most recent version of Blender which I downloaded. I found a WikiBook which takes you through learning Blender, although it's patchy in a couple of places. Still, should be interesting to see how far I can go with it...considering I've never done much with 3D modeling.

Talked with K.C. over AIM a couple of times, though not much. Also found out my grades were posted online. Well, I knew, she just reminded me when she ran into a couple of issues with it. Helped her through, more or less.

Oh yes, attended my first church voters' meeting on Monday. Luckily it seemed a lot more subdued than what Mom reported from the last one, where the school was closed. One woman made a rather nasty jab, but I think everybody more or less accepted her being bitter and just lashing out. Mom said this one was very low-key and rather short. Didn't really sink in that this was the place where things in the church got decided, until then. Wow.

I'm amazed at the changes in the community over the past week or so. Seems a couple people have reconciled some issues, and a little bit of pessimism has been dispelled. Depending on how things turn, I might decide to break my "New Year's Resolution" and revisit CyanChat in the fall. It's a little early to tell yet, though. Also, the Myst V trailer was released. Amazing stuff, though if you look closely at the tablet he's carving, the inscription disappears when he drops it. Oops.

Lastly, it seems a lot of people are gearing up for Mysterium, one way or another. There's apparently some griping about hotel room costs, with various measures to counteract that. Now if only we could get somebody to buy copies of Myst IV and better graphics-handling computational machinery for those of us who still haven't played it...*ahem*

Oh, and Myst Blogs had its layout revamped. Very cool looking. The right-hand box seems kinda wide, though, especially since it blocks out text all the way down the page. I'm sure they're still tweaking it, though, and I really can't criticize.

Heh. These next few days are gonna be busy. I get to go see the dermatologist tomorrow about...well, you can check my "Info and FAQ" section on LiveJournal for that. (Look for the pic.) Get to explain once again that it's not doing anything and that I don't want to take oral antibiotics such as this nasty booger. I'm going to go see Star Wars Episode III with Peter on Thursday, then there's a birthday celebration coming up with all it's attendant trappings. Also have to check back with the Pro Resources agency on Friday. Whee, fun. At least I got Mom her Mother's Day gifts this Sunday.

Okay, time to sign off and grab the shower before Brother comes home. I'll try and update again when I can. G'night.

Packing Up

2005-05-11T01:44:00.000-05:00

Whee, this is late.

Well, CS 246 exam at 8:00 this morning. I did make sure to eat some breakfast. It didn't seem too hard, particularly since it was open-book and open-notes. There were a couple of things I wasn't sure about, but hopefully I did all right.

I played RuneScape through until a little after noon. Also got on at a couple of intervals this afternoon to make a few cakes. Yep, I'm baking cakes now, and the first batch I did got me up to level 50 cooking which lets me make chocolate cakes. So I've got about 50 chocolate cakes in the bank, as well as all the other food stockpiles. I'm like a bomb shelter or something. Also leveled firebuilding and woodcutting a bit, and got leveled up in smithing when I did the Knight's Sword quest.

Anyway, that's probably the last I'll play RuneScape until I come back to college, so...yeah. Here are my stats. Yes, I'm aware the prayer ran down a bit, I'd been fighting some stuff earlier and I turned on the double-healing prayer.

Spent the majority of the afternoon packing stuff. Now, I can't pack everything because a lot of the boxes are arriving tomorrow morning with Mom and Dad and Aunt and Uncle. However, I had a couple of boxes and other items that I packed. Got about a third to a half done, I think. Books are gonna be the biggie, though. It was nice to pack slowly while everyone else was rushing about. I got to watch people try to fit all kinds of stuff into the elevator.

Oh yes, Stupidity Exhibit of the Day: when you're boarding an elevator at the top floor, you do not ask the occupants if they're going up. The elevator does not go up from the top floor. And no, it wasn't just one person.

This evening I went with about a dozen other people (basically what was left of fifth floor) to "Wings Night" which was usually a social thingy that fifth floor did every Tuesday, though I never participated. Basically, we went to a sports bar and ate food, mostly chicken wings. I was...mildly concerned that one of the R.A.'s ordered a beer, but I wasn't exactly riding with him and he said he wasn't driving,ere so...yeah. Wasn't particularly entertained by the whole experience, particularly with the televisions every three feet. Ordered a sprite (because I didn't want to try my luck with the menu) and sipped it while everyone else ate. Then there was the pay fiasco; they didn't put it on separate bills, and refused to split it up. Ugh, what a mess. All I can say is I see what Douglas Adams was getting at with the Bistromath.

Later this evening, passing over into early this morning, a few of us sat in the lounge and watched National Treasure. I wasn't particularly impressed, but it was interesting.

Righto, this is probably my last blog entry for a bit. I go home tomorrow...er, later today. I'll be on when I can, but don't expect daily updates. I might cut it back to a weekly summary, not sure.

Anyway, bedtime for me. Everyone's coming tomorrow, and I'll have more packing to do. G'night.

Not Going Well...

2005-05-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

Well, interesting day today.

No breakfast, but I got on RuneScape this morning. Shortly after, miveen got on AIM and I asked her to get on RuneScape. Finally got those gems to her, about twenty-five in all. Also got up to triple 48 combat stats. Have about 261K gold now, too. Oh yes, I did some more fishing, including some lobsters from Karamja. So that's...level 41 or 42 fishing. (It was 40 yesterday, though I misreported it.) Also level 48 cooking and level 41 prayer.

Anyway, bought lunch which ran my mealcard down to zero. Well, technically I went nine cents over, but the lady was nice enough to overlook it and just zeroed me. So that's it for the mealcard money. I also bought supper this evening with a little bit of cash. Anyway, plan for next two days goes like this: buy breakfast because I have an exam at 8:00. Skip lunch, then eat that last bag of popcorn for supper. Skip breakfast on Wednesday, as I'll be moving out. Try to get Mom and Dad to stop somewhere for a meal before heading home.

Had my CS 158 exam this afternoon. I think it went okay. Didn't have one of the handouts we were allowed/supposed to bring, so I had to guess on a couple of questions. Luckily I was able to base it on how I thought the algorithm should work and what sort of subtle errors he's made in the past.

Roommate started moving his stuff out. I was gone for most of the move-out procedure, but they did a thorough job. They even took care of some of my stuff that I'd forgotten I'd have to move. Odd thing is, he left the...er, the cable thingy. The fat wire that connected his television to a box in the wall and gave him lots of channels. Yeah, it's still here. I'll give it to the R.A., maybe he can get it back to him. They're in the same fraternity, after all...

Around 4:00 I went down to the library to visit K.C. at the reference desk one last time. Unfortunately, she said that it'd be better off if I didn't sit and talk with her, as it might get her in trouble. So I sat on a nearby couch/padded bench thing while she worked. We exchanged a few words, but that's about it. After that I went to supper feeling pretty disgusted with myself. I could've had a better conversation with her if I'd stayed in the dorm and IM'ed her than if I'd went to the library. Ah well, at least I got to see her.

Came back and played RuneScape for a bit, then whined to miveen via IM. Wound up taking a couple of updated photos of myself, sort of to prove a point. A link to the image can be found in the "Info and FAQ" section (otherwise known as the "User Info" section) of my LiveJournal blog. Witness the nerdiness/acne/whatever! (Miveen, you never did say anything about it. Scare you that bad? *grins*)

Talked with K.C. a bit on IM, too. Or more like, dumped a bunch of my problems (real or perceived) on her. Probably wasn't a good idea, but I was feeling kind of down at the time. She's gonna think I've got more issues than National Geographic or something, I dunno.

Anyway, gotta get to bed. Exam tomorrow at 8:00, then some packing to do. G'night.

Too Much Fish

2005-05-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

Well, I woke up early enough this morning to get to church properly. Of course, I had a little help from my alarm clock, but I got up okay. Nothing remarkable about church. Oh yes, sent an e-mail off to my folks this morning as well.

I'm messing with my diet, which probably isn't good. No, I'm not on a diet in the usual sense ofthe word (i.e. a planned food intake designed to manipulate certain physical aspects). More of the overall eating practices. At any rate, I slipped a digit or something and when I bought all that Coca-Cola for Dad, it kind of took off money that I needed. As it is, I have about $3 left on my meal card, which needs to stretch through to at least Tuesday night. Luckily I have about $9 in my wallet, so hopefully they'll take cash. Of course, supper this evening was a big muffin.

Played RuneScape this afternoon. I decided to do something different and practice fishing. Now, keep in mind that prior to today the only fishing I'd done was on Tutorial Island. At any rate, I got up to about 37 or 38 fishing level, which netted me 119 salmon, 368 trout, 294 shrimps, 43 anchovies, and 45 tuna. And that's just the stuff I'd successfully cooked. Got my cooking up to 47, too. Oh yes, and finally got up high enough to have my name appear on the overall Top 500,000 list, though I don't know how long that's gonna last. Miveen, you're on the list for crafting. (By the way, you still need to get those gems...)

This evening Aaron and Larry and I met and ate and drank a whole bunch of stuff that we'd worked up. I spread around a lot of my seafood, Larry brought baked goods, and Aaron brought various intoxicating beverages. All three of us got...er, I think the term is "wasted." At any rate, we drank until our attack level was temporarily reduced to zero, then went and beat up on a palace guard. After that Aaron decided that we had to go into the wilderness and try to beat up a lesser demon. (Yes, we knew this would fail.) Unfortunately, I didn't have the guts or whatever to do it, mostly because I couldn't fit everything into my bank account for safekeeping. I'm gonna hear about it tomorrow, I suppose, but can't be helped now.

This evening I played a nice game of Clean the Inbox. Roommate's packing up, seems he's moving out in the next day or two.

Okay, bedtime. I have a final exam tomorrow, but that's at 1:00. Also have some Greek research to do at 4:00 in the library. G'night.

Blog Lite

2005-05-08T01:03:00.000-05:00

Well, not much today, obviously. Woke up a little later than usual, but that was expected.

Played RuneScape a bunch. Wound up getting triple 47 on combat stats, as well as level 40 prayer. I can use protection against missiles now. Mined and made steel stuff for a bit, got up to level 63 mining and level 53 smithing, so I can make mithril medium helms. Selling the steel goods got me up to 258K gold. And, of course, I'm pulling in more gemes. At last count it was 6 sapphires, 12 emeralds, and 2 rubies. Miveen, would you get these sometime soon? They're like tribbles...

Um...not much else today, I guess. Didn't see K.C. but that was expected, as she'd mentioned she was going home for the weekend.

This evening I stayed up a little late, as I watched Return of the Jedi with the guys. Total dissection again with the discussion, of course, which was kinda cool.

Anyway, bedtime for me. Church tomorrow, and I don't want to wake up late again. G'night.

Slow-Moving Day

2005-05-07T00:42:00.000-05:00

Well, not much to report today again.

First off, I'd like to apologize for that entry I wrote last night. Turned out rather messy and depressing, sorry 'bout that. And for some reason I'd forgotten to mention that I'd shown K.C. my galleries on my webpage. Y'know, with the Terragen and stuff. She seemed rather interested, or at least gave a good imitation of it. Looked at everything, at any rate. Only problem is, if she's a little clever she can pull up the page from my history, learn my online name (this one), and hunt down this blog via Google or something. Eh...probably low-probability event, but still.

Went at 10:30 to fill out the evaluation of the CC freshman program, in particular this second semester. I mostly obfuscated, saying that I didn't feel my opinion was qualified enough for such a thing, or that some of the material was over my head, or whatever else. Also complained about having to gamble the rest of my college career on one or two assignments. Heh. I specifically wrote at one point "This section scared the hell out of me." Hopefully I let my handwriting get sloppy enough that they won't even be able to read it.

Played RuneScape a bunch. Mostly fought hill giants, but did a little bit of mining and smithing, too. Got my combat stats up to triple 46, with my health now at 49. Also smithed up a load of steel plate skirts and sold them this evening. All twenty-eight of them, went for 14,420 gold pieces. Now I have about 226K gold.

Oh yes, accumulating gems again. I now have five sapphires and seven emeralds, I think. (Might be the other way around.) Not to mention the other goodies like runes I've been picking up off the giants as well. Miveen, I think I can enchant just about any amulet you care to make, and probably more besides...

Went to the library and researched Greek / talked with K.C. again. A.S. showed up for a bit, as well as some upperclassman from CC whom I don't know but with home A.S. and K.C. are apparently familiar. All I know is he's the communism guy. Yeah, he's pulled this gag twice, once at the symposium discussing the freshman production and once at the talk that Tim O'Brien gave. Stood up and asked about possible communist underthemes, or something like that. Weird.

Anyway, the odd part is he knows my name and a little bit about me. Now, this could be because we've met before and I just have a horrible memory for things like that, but it's kinda creepy nonetheless. Turns out he's gonna be in my Greek class next semester.

We all had to leave K.C. to her work, though. Apparently her boss was wandering around the area and wasn't too happy with the three of us hanging out at the reference desk. I'll still drop by on Monday, but I think I'll hang out in the reference area in general. And there's always AIM.

Heh. Monday's the last day before summer. I'm moving out on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately I go home to dial-up, so I won't be online as much...and consequently won't be updating my blog as much. Not sure how I'm gonna handle it yet.

Did my laundry this evening, nothing exciting there. Later this evening the guys contact me on AIM and we all sit in the lounge for a couple of hours watching Empire Strikes Back and picking apart various things, discussing everything from Han Solo's use of the word "hell" ("Is he a Christian?") to Imperial invasion tactics. Fun stuff. That's why I'm back so late.

Anyway, bedtime for me. Nothing to do tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll find something. G'night.

Whispers in the Dark

2005-05-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

Well, not much today. Tweaked my system a bit more. Still have some things to do, like configure the printer. Things seem to be running smoothly. More smoothly than normal, in fact. For instance, in KDE Supertux would always quit on the sound. Hasn't done so yet. Also, I can play my Bink files without the sound cutting out there, either.

Played a fair bit of RuneScape today. Got up to triple 45 on the combat stats, as well as level 39 on prayer. Also got up to level 37 cooking. Total combat level is 57, I think. Did a fair bit of fighting against hill giants. They seem to be dropping gems more often, I dunno. Anyway, now have three sapphires and six emeralds. Miveen?

Talked a fair bit with K.C. at the library this afternoon. Or rather, rambled at her. They'd had a fire alarm pulled earlier this afternoon; shortly after that her away message changed to something like "today's lesson: fire alarms are great for meeting hot guys."

Filthy moron...

Y'know, I doubt that she was interested in me at all, ever. I know I have problems reading people, but I don't think....ugh, I can't even express this.

Cold numbers and dead machines, that's all...

I really don't know where I thought I'd go with this, honestly. Yes, we talk, but to what end? I recall posting a rather lengthy entry earlier stating that I wouldn't be able to enter a relationship. And I can't read people, tell if they're attracted to me.

Lazy failure...

I think I'm going to have to resign myself to the background. I can't seem to get a job, I don't have the slightest idea what I'm going to do after college, I...

You don't deserve to—

Shut UP!

Sorry, the demons come out at night.

Anyway, spent a little time late this evening in the library, just numb-ish and sitting by the computer books section. Pull one down, read it for a bit, put it back and get another...keep going until it's time to leave. Brain-clobber.

Anyway, bedtime. Got the CC evaluation thing to fill out tomorrow at 10:30, then some more Greek research in the library from 4:00 to 6:00 in the evening. Sorry 'bout the entry. G'night.

Upgrade and Shopping

2005-05-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

Heh, well, not much today.

Got up and poked around on the internet, then played RuneScape a bit this morning. Left a little after 9:00 for Target and shopped for some gifts for Mom for Mother's Day. Wasn't sure what to get her, but I picked up a few things. Got this small plastic three-drawer thingy that's apparently useful for desk organization. Not sure if she'll need it, but I got it. Also got her one of those measuring cups with the slanted part inside that has the measurement markings, so it can be easily read from above. Can't remember if she already has one or not, or if the guys back home might've gotten her one. Ah well. Also got her two jar-things of those decorative garden stones. That's a first, I don't think she's ever had any of those. To be honest, I don't know what she'd use them for—if she'd use them—but there they are. Came back to the dorm shortly after 10:00 and realized I have no way to wrap the stuff. Maybe I'll figure something out tomorrow.

Played RuneScape until lunchtime.

After lunch I did the final backup of my /root and /home folders, then proceeded to install Mandriva Linux 2005 LE. Wiped the Linux partition in the process, which was expected (and more or less deliberate), then set about making it home again. Luckily when I restored the /home and /root folders from backup, many of my configuration settings returned. (Those that didn't were mostly because of differences between versions.) In expectation of such an upgrade I'd archived the installation files for most of my software on Great Zero, so those were easy to bring back as well. Just for kicks and giggles I spent the afternoon hunting my commonly used programs down on the internet and making sure I had the most recent version (bleeding-edge, in some cases).

Got some interesting new screensavers. Also finally took the time to hunt down those two "Matrix" screensavers that for some reason aren't bundled with the standard xscreensaver package or the supplementary package. (Something political at the center of it, I'm sure.) And before anybody asks what I think of it, I haven't seen the movies, however many there are now, but I know a cool-looking screensaver when I see one.

Had to get down to business and tinker in a few cases, but everything seems to be fine now. Of course, I haven't used much. Oh, and I still need to reinstall the themes for the login manager and tweak the bootloader. Hmmm...

Anyway, played RuneScape this evening. Wound up doing a lot there, actually. I now have triple-44 in combat stats (attack, strength, and defense). I'd bought a mithril scimitar earlier, and today I upgraded my armor. Unfortunately, some of the items are rather hard to get and my armor's a little hodge-podge looking. Adamantite plate legs, mithril plate body and full helmet, and I've still got that steel kite shield. I've also been mining ingredients to smelt and smith steel, and I'm making a killing selling steel plate legs. (Now if only the commute wasn't so long...) I've got about 206K gold in the bank now. Mining level up to 62, and smithing up to 52. I've got to do some cooking tomorrow, though. Oh yes, miveen? If I catch you on again, I've got three sapphires and two emeralds for you (at last count).

Didn't get a chance to talk with K.C. today, unfortunately even over AIM, but I've got her work schedule at the library for the next few days (including tomorrow), and I've got loads of free time, so...yeah.

Oh yes, bought 24 cans of Coke, a box of Kleenex, and a box of...er, "Teddy Grahams" from the general store today. They aren't carrying root beer anymore, apparently, so hopefully Dad will drink the Coke.

Ooh, note to self: download and install the latest version of F-Prot Antivirus tomorrow morning, before the scheduled scanning script fires off.

Okay, bedtime. Got a few computer things to take care of tomorrow, plus some chores and a library visit. G'night.

Housing, Linux, and Library Talks

2005-05-04T00:19:00.000-05:00

Wonderful surprise this morning. I went down for breakfast, then checked my snail-mail inbox (or whatever it's called). Anyway, found a letter from the housing department. Turns out they'd honored my room change request and moved me from Brandt to Wehrenberg! This is wonderful news for me. Brandt is...kind of a slum quality, where as Wehrenberg is one of the newest residence halls. Unfortunately, Larry and Aaron weren't as lucky as I because they'd requested to room together. Hopefully things will work out all right.

Anyway, CC class today first thing. Turned in my paper. Glad that's finally over, now I just have to worry about my grade.

During chapel break I removed the virus from my Windows partition. It was a little messy, but good practice for disinfecting the computer owned by the guy next door. Did a little better with his machine this afternoon. Unfortunately I woke him from his nap, because he proceeded to sleep through the process. I left a message with his roommate afterwards to tell him that it was fixed and his internet was back.

Luckily it seems he was the exception to the rule; many people I spoke to said that they didn't open the attachment. I guess computer security was better understood than I thought.

Anyway, after chapel break was CS 158 class, which was just review again. Got back early from that for lunch and then virus removal for my neighbor.

Spent the afternoon just messing around. Played a good bit of RuneScape. Fought some giants and got up to 44 attack level (up from 43). Then went and mined and smithed another load of mithril since the giant area was getting busy. Found a few more gems. After that load of mithril I decided I'd probably gain smithing experience faster if I went back to steel, which I did. Quit for supper.

This evening I found out that Mandrake/Mandriva finally released their latest edition, Mandriva Linux 2005 Limited Edition for i586 processors. Or rather, they released the CD images for public download. So I downloaded those and burned them, though I haven't upgraded yet. I'll probably upgrade tomorrow; prepped for it by backing up the /home folder and the /root folder. I also backed up the research project stuff in a separate location, then deleted it from my Linux partition so it doesn't hog Linux backup room and whatnot.

Oh yes, K.C. IM'ed me at some point this evening, and we talked for a bit.

Went down to the library at about 10:00 this evening to work with my Greek and talk with her. A.S. was there as well, working on her research paper. Ranged over various topics from whether or not I should continue with CC to where people are rooming next semester. Turns out A.S. and K.C. are going to be in the Fellowship House, and A.S. is going to be an RA. Interesting.

Anyway, bedtime for me. No class tomorrow, but I have a few things to do anyway. Upgrade Linux, of course, and I need to Target to try and pick something up for Mom for Mother's Day. I've forgotten all about that. Hopefully I can find something. Okay, g'night.

New Virus and Paper Stress

2005-05-02T22:51:00.000-05:00

Ugh, Monday.

Well, CS 246 first thing today. Just basically reviewed for the exam next Tuesday (not tomorrow). Then I met with Professor Glass afterwards, gave him his OpenGL book back, and we talked a bit. Among other things, I noted that Mandriva is a little late in publicly releasing the Mandriva Linux 2005 LE i586 ISOs. Schedule said May 1, but who knows.

Played a bit of RuneScape this morning, too. Made about a dozen pizzas. Got my cooking level up to 36, I think. That's about it, though.

After lunch it was time for CS 158, which was also review pretty much. Also got an e-mail from Professor Marion, asking me for the .zip file of the airline project. I sent it to him, along with a reiterated observation that he could've obtained it himself from the .jar file by executing a copy command (cp HPAir.jar HPAir.zip). Worded it a little more diplomatically, though.

This afternoon I got a couple of weird e-mails. Long and short of it is, though, that there's a new e-mail virus making the rounds, and apparently it's hit campus rather hard. Didn't know it until later, but EIS has been dealing with it all day. Also sent an e-mail to my folks warning them about it. Anyway, more information at Symantec's Security Response site, here. Please read up.

Rest assured, though, that the virus doesn't spread unless you actually open the attachment. Unfortunately I was rather stupid, and now I have to go clean it off of Windows later, as well as the guy's computer next door. Luckily my network connection in Windows hasn't been working, so I didn't spread anything. EIS locked down my neighbor's computer, they won't let him traffic anywhere.

Oh yes, copied out the Bible verses in Greek, then headed down to the library a little after 4:00 to see K.C. again. We got talking, and the research paper for CC came up. Turns out I was mistaken as to the due date; it's actually due tomorrow, not Wednesday. Anyway, spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening working on it. Got it finished, but I had to skip supper. And talking with K.C., of course.

Upside is, I added her to my AIM buddy list, then IM'ed her when she came back on and told her she was right about the due date. Good excuse to add her to my list. She's got an odd away message though, let's see here...

dam* it, i just want to love and to be loved in return, why is this too much to ask for?!?

--holler back to all those who sent messages agreeging--

---

There is one hope, one ground of confidence, one reliable promise--your mercy

*St. Augustine's Confessions

Yeah. Anyway, gonna go down again tomorrow evening with the Greek.

Speaking of tomorrow, I've got to print off the paper and turn it in, plus go to CS 158 lab. I know CC class doesn't start until 10:10 tomorrow, but I'd better get to bed anyway. G'night.

Ze Lost and Ze Found

2005-05-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

Woke up rather late this morning, at 8:10. Okay, maybe not late for some people, but my internal clock usually doesn't let me sleep past 7:00. Also, church was at 8:30, so...yeah. I hurried through stuff and got there at 8:25, luckily. It was a little more crowded than usual, probably because of the commencement or some sort of ceremony for the newest building on campus (which has, ironically, been in use for the past semester).

After I got back from church I e-mailed my parents, telling them about the poster, the keyboard fiasco, and the movie. Also gave them my birthday wishlist, since my birthday's coming up next...er, this month.

Speaking of the keyboard fiasco, I found my 'Z' key last night. Turns out it was in/on my bed somehow. Found it just after saying prayers. Anyway, it's with the rest of the bits now but no more reparable than anything else. Blast.

This afternoon I worked on my paper a bit, but didn't really get much done. Gotta get going on that, it's due Wednesday.

Stopped for a bit to try to help Capella with her Debian installation process. Didn't have a clue what was going on, but I think she worked it out anyway.

Oh yes, feeling a bit better this afternoon as well. Woke up feeling rather dry, particularly my lips, but later this morning they, erm...flaked or something. Not sure. Nose is feeling like sunburn as well, but hopefully it'll clear up in a day or two. Thank goodness I'm not having any difficulty breathing like last time.

Still need to look up the Greek translations of those Bible passages I'd picked out. Gotta have an excuse for dropping in on K.C. at the library. The GPF comic strip put it into my head to try some "secret admirer" gig with AIM, but I think that would classify as psychological warfare, at least in my book. I'd have to set up a different AIM account, too, and that'd mean another login name/password pair for me to remember. (LingApp would be too easy to research and figure out. What if she found this page?) At any rate, not gonna pull anything like that.

Played RuneScape a bit this evening. Got all three combat levels up to 43 from beating up on giants. Also got my cooking level up to 35 by cooking lots of apple pies (got about 46 now). Also made about twelve jugs of wine and a pizza. Go me. Larry wants to have a "feast" on RuneScape next weekend to celebrate the end of school. Toward that end he's making about 100 apple pies. I think I'll provide entertainment; I've got this wonderful little "color-changing staff" trick...

Curiousity: GermanShepherd locked his blog up tight. Now, it might've been inadvertent server tinkering, but I doubt it. I've sworn off CyanChat, but from his last few entries it appears things have been rather strained for him in the community. Too bad he'd locked it all up, though. Kind of seems a "guilty until proven innocent" policy to me. But then, my criticisms could very well be likened to a blind man giving directions to a theater...no social skills whatsoever.

Anyway, bedtime for me. Classes tomorrow. G'night.

Shirking

2005-04-30T22:28:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Wound up waking up real late this morning and missing Larry's Bible study breakfast.

Didn't do much today, wasn't feeling too good. Tried to work on my research paper but didn't get much done. Eventually gave up. I did pack up and send off the CS 158 project, so that's taken care of.

Read bits of the GPF archives again. Yes, computersherpa, I read them through in two days. I didn't do much else, unfortunately (you'll remember I'm socially retarded), but I pulled it off.

Got on RuneScape a bit. Wound up running through the last of my mind runes, so no more fire strike until I make a few more. Also finished up the Shield of Arrav quest (twice) with miveen. Bought a mithril scimitar, though I was kind of hoping to find an adamantite one in the shop. Should probably try to get a rune scimitar at some point.

Oh yes, while killing hill giants I got the mysterious old man random event. As has happened before, he gave me the mystery box thing. New prize, though: an uncut diamond! Gave it to miveen for when she gets up high enough to cut it. Also gave her two sapphires and two emeralds I'd acquired.

Um, not much else to say. Gotta e-mail my folks tomorrow. Also have to work on the research paper, and get the Greek translations of the Bible verses I'd selected so I can research them with K.C. at the library. If I recall correctly, she works Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. No, wait...well, I know she works Wednesday from 4:00 to 6:00...blast. Memory like a sieve these days.

Man, everything in my face feels like it's either the wrong size or filled up with concrete...particularly my sinuses. Anyway, bedtime. G'night.

Dingo's Dos...

2005-04-30T00:09:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Messy day today.

First off, I woke up at about 6:00 feeling like a metal spike had been shoved up my left nostril. Yep, cold or allergies. Runny nose most of the day, which meant high Kleenex consumption. I'm really starting to loathe those pop-up box things...

Anyway, CS 246 class today. Not much to say there. He discussed some modern techniques for speeding up computers. Seems rather messy, but luckily it wasn't covered in much detail. Although I find myself wondering more than ever now what this all stuff is on the dead motherboard tacked to my bulletin board.

Didn't do much productive today, unfortunately. Things got worse health-wise throughout the day. I realized this afternoon that it might be the salsa in the fridge, seeing as how this happened last time. Threw that away.

Yeah, let me explain the salsa. See, back around Thanksgiving break, my parents had bought it for a school project for my brother, but it never panned out. It was a gallon jug type thing. They were going to dump it, but I took it and said I'd share it back at college. Big mistake, nobody was interested. Anyway, wound up bringing the stuff back and forth during breaks because it needed to be refrigerated. Got it down about halfway, but kept forgetting to work on eating it. As I'd just mentioned, the last two times made me sick. The first time might have been coincidence, but now I think it's the salsa. So, got rid of that.

Anyway, like I said, didn't do much today. Finished up reading the GPF comic strip archives. Not exactly my thing, I suppose, but I guess I'll keep taking a look for the time being.

Oh yes, laundry. Did that this evening, while taking a look for any Bible verses I could look up in Greek and then translate in the library. Found a couple, I'll have to try those.

Bad stuff, though. Y'all know I'm a bibliophile (at least, you do now), and my bookshelf is above my computer. No problem so far, right? Except, as a bibliophile, one of my habits is to jam books into the shelf horizontally so they lay on top of the books already legitimately occupying the space. Well, two of those happened to be harcover yearbooks.

Yeah, I'm sure you can guess now. I accidentally pulled out the lynchpin/keystone book. Didn't notice at first, thought I'd arranged it better than that. On my way out the door I hear a clunk, then turn around to find the two yearbooks on my desk chair. Apparently followed by a Star Wars paperback and two Ozy and Millie paperbacks, which wound up on the floor. The books were okay, but on the way down something took out three of my laptop keys. As in, they're not attached anymore. I've got all the bits for them, except the cover for the Z key, which is presumably still missing-in-action. Sadly, though, the little plastic bits underneath were too damaged for repair, even though I called in both Jeff and Larry to take a look at it.

Which I suppose brings me around to the question you're bound to ask. "But LingApp, how did you type a 'Z' up there if your key is missing?" Look, the keycaps are missing for the left Shift, the left Control, and the "Z" keys. Doesn't mean I can't type "Z" or whatever anymore. Underneath the keys are these little springy rubber buttons. It's a little harder now, as I have to slow down a bit, but it's better than nothing...particularly since, being left-handed, I use the left-hand shift more...or at any rate, it's needed for the first person singular pronoun in English. Luckily there are duplicates of both the Shift and Control keys.

Anyway, went to see a showing of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this evening with the guys. (That's why I'm so late.) That was great, about half of us (we were six) brought our towels along. Great movie, although they changed some bits...which was to be expected, of course. Have you ever known any two publications of Hitchhiker's to be identical? Didn't think so...

Could've sworn Deep Thought was a male, though. Well, technically it's a computer, so it doesn't have a gender, but I imagined it with a male voice. Should probably double check that...

Anyway, should probably get to bed. It's been a weird day, lots of ups and downs. And if you see my "Z" key...well, g'night.

Slim

2005-04-28T23:58:00.000-05:00

Well, not much again today.

Met with Professor Olmsted at about 11:00 to discuss the paper a bit. I have to work on that this weekend, it's due Wednesday. After that it was a sprint over to Gellersen, where Professor Marion talked about problems with our projects. I need to meet with my partner to work on that tomorrow at 1:00.

The CS 246 lab was interesting today. We had to write a program that computed the value of Ackerman's Function for various inputs. That thing sure does get messy in a hurry.

Played quite a bit of RuneScape today, unfortunately. Got into the cooking guild this evening at level 32. Also worked on my mining a bit, got that up to level 61. Completed the vampire slaying quest as well.

And this evening? Curse you Trehk/Horizon/computersherpa for getting me hooked on a new comic strip with large archives!

G'night.

Solved Greek and Poster

2005-04-27T22:56:00.000-05:00

Well, not much to report for today.

Got up at about 6:30 and went through my morning stuff (e.g. comics), then went down for breakfast a little after 7:00 (which is when they open). Left about 7:40 for the VUCA to set up my poster.

I felt mine was a little sparse compared to the others I saw, but at least I didn't show up an hour late. Felt kind of odd because many of them were about marketing or biomedical studies, but there were a few more scientific ones. Professor Glass had three different groups there, according to the booklet we got.

Sat around there most of the morning, then left at noon for lunch. After lunch I played a little bit of RuneScape, but only about ten minutes. Then it was off to CS 158 class. Not much there, unfortunately. After that, back to the VUCA for the afternoon. Larry dropped by for a few minutes to check out the astronomy and physics exhibits.

K.C. dropped by right after that, since I'd mentioned it to her yesterday evening. Then a few professors near the end, including the Associate Dean of CC, my Spanish professor, and a few other professors from Gellersen.

After that I went down to the library again to do some research and talk with K.C. a bit. I also figured out the Bible verse puzzle. See, one of the words was "tetelestai" which I'm guessing was a form of "teleo," which means purpose. The only appropriate context is Jesus' last words, which means "It is finished" refers to his work on Earth.

This led to the question of why was it translated incorrectly in Spanish and Latin. Well, turns out that "consumado" doesn't mean "consumed," but rather "consummate." Same for Latin, apparently. Oops.

Anyway, now I'm going to have to come up with some other research to do, preferably with Greek.

Played RuneScape a bit this evening. Did the Demon Slayer quest, then took care of that mithril and practiced magic on hill giants. Wound up getting up to level 48 magic, just one level away from being able to enchant ruby jewelry. I need to make some more meat pies now, too.

Anyway, bedtime. G'night.

Printing Panic and Greek Research

2005-04-26T23:52:00.000-05:00

Quickie post here.

First off, CC class this morning at 9:00-ish. Just for kicks and giggles I sat in the professor's usual seat. See, there's an inner square ring of tables, and an outer U around it. I'm usually the only one who sits in the outer U because there's not enough chairs on the inside. Doesn't really bother me. Anyway, just to mix things up I took Professor Olmsted's seat. He didn't seem to mind too much, just made a couple of jokes and pulled up another chair. CC class got out early by an hour, but I have an appointment at about 10:50 on Thursday with him. (Everyone has an appointment, not just me.)

CS 158 lab early this afternoon. Well, technically a lab, but it was actually a test. We were supposed to write up some source and then e-mail it to him. Seemed rather easy, since we could keep testing it until it worked, but I had a little trouble developing the algorithm for my assigned thing. Got it done, though.

Most of the day I've been working on the research project poster. Worked up some stuff, then printed it out this evening. Unfortunately my printer just spontaneously decided to stop doing color, so I had to run over to Professor Glass's office at about 9:00 this evening to print it out. He had printer troubles too, unfortunately. And we were frantically swapping algorithms this afternoon. Anyway, it's done now.

Note: I'll be out of contact most of the day tomorrow. I have to stand around my poster and look vaguely intelligent. Setup is at 8:00 tomorrow morning.

Played a bit of RuneScape, but not much. Completed the Witch's Potion quest, and that was about it. Also, there's an updated map and some other new things; check the site for news.

This evening (i.e. about 10:20) I went to the library. Actually talked to K.C. this time, asked about Greek references. She was a little puzzled about my request, but quickly hunted up a number of volumes. In particular is what appears to be an analysis of the Greek New Testament. Lists the Greek word, the English translation, then talks about where it can be found and any linguistic particularities. Fun to hunt the stuff up.

Like I said, got talking with K.C. At first it was just about the research (she was impressed that I knew the Greek alphabet), then we moved onto things like courses and whatnot. She's planning to take Latin at some point. Anyway, we researched/chatted for about an hour before I came back here. Would've hung out longer, but I need to sleep. And the best part is, I'm nowhere near done with the translation. So I'll probably go back again early next week, if possible. Or maybe tomorrow around suppertime, depending on when I get away from the research project display.

Okay, bedtime for me. Even my roommate's in bed. G'night.

Oops, Broke It!

2005-04-25T22:49:00.000-05:00

Well, interesting day today.

First off, apparently CS 246 was cancelled today, and I forgot. So I sat in a dark classroom for a few minutes, then went down and checked Professor Glass's office. That was locked, so I assumed he wasn't in today. I'll have to e-mail him the research updates.

Anyway, I went over to Kretzmann and got some info on summer courses. E-mailed it off to Dad. He replied with his take on the numbers. Unfortunately, it looks rather expensive, and I doubt a job in the CC dean's office will pay enough...unless I only eat one meal a day and cut down on the housing by sleeping in the library. Don't think that's exactly an option, though.

Anyway, CS 158 class in the early afternoon. Professor Marion didn't say anything about the projects, which means he probably hasn't gone over them yet. Hopefully he does so soon, I'm curious.

Played RuneScape a lot today. Finished crafting the runes this morning, before miveen got on. Gave her the remaining gold bars, anyway. Also mined some clay and made a dozen each of pots and pie dishes, then spent some time hunting down the ingredients to make meat pies. Wound up burning rather a lot, unfortunately, but eventually I got a dozen of them. Then I went and cast fire strike at the giants a lot, helping myself to my meat pies as necessary. Anyway, magic level is 47 now, and prayer at 36. Health at 45, attack and strength at 42. Also raised my crafting from 9 to 11, and my cooking from 25 to 29. Heh. Larry's at level 30 cooking. I think we might get into a bit of a competition, cooking-level-wise. Also mined a load of mithril, but I haven't smelted it yet.

Miveen and I were trying to do the Shield of Arrav quest this evening. That's a little tricky because it requires two people to do mutually exclusive things. Anyway, we botched it up rather oddly, and wound up doing the same thing. We're probably gonna get Horizon to help us. Or...wait.

Okay, let's work this out here. I could create an alternate account, which I'll call Ahnotahm2 for now. Ahnotahm2 goes and does the other part of the Shield of Arrav quest, helping miveen to complete it. Then she does the same thing, creating a miveen2 account to help me complete it. As long as the two accounts owned by the same person don't come into contact, we won't be breaking any rules...the accounts could even be abandoned afterwards. Hmm...

Anyway, after that fiasco I helped her complete the Goblin Diplomacy quest. She went and got the dyes while I stayed in the village and slaughtered goblins looking for goblin armor. Luckily I was able to get three of them before she returned. Heh, those things are so easy to kill now...

Okay, busy day tomorrow. Gotta finish the display board for the research project, go to CC class, take a CS 158 test, and do some research at the library in the evening. G'night.

Fire Alarm and Runecrafting

2005-04-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Oof. Long day.

First off, we were woken up at about 3:00 or 3:30 this morning by the fire alarm. On the way out, my neighbor and I glanced at the status thingy in the lobby. The indicator light for third floor was lit up, indicating that the fire alarm was pulled there. Darn it, that's the second time this semester! At least I remembered my pants this time, though Larry was out in just a bathrobe and a coat. I remember my waking thoughts, too. "There's a loud buzzing in the hallway. That means something, now let me think...ah yes, it means there's blood to be had!" That last as I remembered it was the fire alarm, and not the first time something like that had happened.

Anyway, wound up outside in the wet snow/slush that was on the ground, and still coming down. Luckily we got to go into the first floor lounges in Alumni, the residence hall across the street.

Anyway, woke up in the morning a little dizzy. Wasn't sure why, but I'm sure it was somehow related to sleep deprivation. Sat there fighting the fringes of it in church. I coped, though I was rather worried how it would seem if I staggered up to the altar for communion, or on the way back. (Miveen commented it might be dehydration.)

Later this morning I played RuneScape, then went and ate lunch with the guys, where we discussed ever more creative methods of getting back at third floor. Larry's all for defenestration, or at least methods that are potentially rather dangerous. I'm in favor of subtle pranks (e.g. toothpaste smeared on the underside of the doorknob, virtually undetectable) and psychological warfare ("Big Brother is watching. And he's not happy about the sleep he lost...")

This afternoon I worked a little on the display board, but didn't finish it. Eventually succumbed and played a little more RuneScape, an activity that carried over to this evening.

I finished mining my planned amount of rune essence, then I went and mined some gold for bars for miveen. Then I started crafting the rune essence into air runes, which was about when miveen came on. So she helped me carry rune essence to the temple, and I gave her most of the gold bars. (Still got about 20 of the 56, though.) Between us we managed to get most of them done; I only have about 387 rune essence to craft yet. Got over 8000 air runes now, and I'm working on the mind runes. Oh yes, and somebody either died or dropped a lot of stuff outside the bank, so I got several more air and mind runes, a few coins, a couple of other oddities, and this curious little thing the game calls a "newcomer's map." Apparently it's an in-game map showing a section of RuneScape, with a little "you are here" marker. Got that stashed for miveen, but I should probably research where they come from. I've never seen one before.

Now let's see here...
Huh. Well, the somewhat hack-job description given by runehq.com says "Where Found: lumby general store." I guess that means Lumbridge general store. Interesting. Odd that I missed it. Maybe I should pick one up for myself next time I'm in the area.

Anyway, bedtime. Got both CS classes tomorrow, plus a report-in for the research project. Also need to look up info at the registrar's office on summer courses. Should probably also buy some nachos and get to work on that salsa again. Okay, g'night.

Bible Bits and RuneScape

2005-04-23T23:18:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess that productivity spike I'd been riding for the past few days has crashed. Judge for yourself.

This morning I played a bit of RuneScape, then went to the prayer breakfast that Larry had organized. Nothing real formal, just everyone meet in Jester's in the union for breakfast and Bible. I don't know how many people Larry had invited, but apparently it was quite a few, as he expected it to take up a large portion of the small back room. However, only five people showed up and we moved to the fishtank lounge, which doesn't serve food but has a nicer atmosphere (e.g. no vague "basement" feel).

Anyway, it turns out Larry didn't have anything like a lesson plan, so after the opening prayer, we opened up more or less randomly to Isaiah and started from there. I felt like a deadweight, mostly because Larry and...somebody named Derrik (whose name I probably misspelled) were simply amazing with the discussion. I'm not too good at that sort of thing, though my concordance came in handy. I'm gonna have to remember to take Luther's small catechism next time, too.

After that came back to the dorm and played a bit more RuneScape until lunchtime, when I went to lunch with Andrew and Jeremy. (Aaron and Larry weren't interested, apparently.) Along the way I cheerfully blamed the current spate of bad weather on Andrew, the group's meteorology major.

Oh right, the weather. Well, it's been nice and sunny in the seventies or eighties for the past week or so, but yesterday it got rainy and cold. Today it was down in the forties (thirties now, almost freezing) with snow coming down, along with some stinging ice pellet thingies. The wind was just blasting, which drove the stuff in your face. Yes, snow. In April. No, I'm not off my rocker. Welcome to Valparaiso, home of ADHD weather.

This afternoon I'd planned on working on the display board for the research project, but I got distracted trying to make my terminal program be as transparent as possible. Wound up looking for alternatives on the internet. Found an excellent one called Eterm, which allows for full transparency. It looks like the text's part of my desktop or something, it's really cool. No window border, no background, nothing. Just the text. Pity I can't change the font. Anyway, it's now my default terminal program...or at least the one that I have in my dock thing.

After that I stopped pretending to do my homework and played more RuneScape, an activity that I carried over into the evening.

This morning I'd worked up my smithing to level 50, so I went and mined a load of mithril, then the four loads of coal needed to smith the mithril ore into mithril bars. Since I'm only at level 50, the only thing I could make was mithril daggers, so I went and made 28 of those, then sold them at the sword shop in Varrock. Totally crashed the market for those at that point. Ah well. Kept pulling the dwarven stout trick to get into the mining guild.

Getting on towards late morning, it became tougher to get mithril as more people logged on, so I gave up mining for a bit. I figure I'll stockpile mithril early in the morning.

Went and grabbed my extra runes and blasted some hill giants. Wound up casting air strike a lot, which is next to useless against them. Kept taking off their hitpoints in ones and twos when it did anything at all, and I think they have 25 or so. Eventually ran out of extra runes.

Since miveen can cut rubies now, I figured I'd better level up my magic so I can enchant ruby jewelry when the time comes. So this evening I worked at mining some rune essence so I can make runes and practice magic. In the process I got up to level sixty mining, so I dumped my extra dwarven stouts. Also got the sapphire, emerald, and nine rubies to miveen this evening when she got on.

I'm planning to get 3024 rune essence and craft it into about 8064 air runes and 3024 mind runes. (Yes, I know the numbers are strange, but that's because they're multiples of 28, which is the maximum number of carryable items in one load. Now hush.) I figure I'll cast fire strike at hill giants until I run out of runes...probably mind runes, in this case. This is, of course, assuming that my runecrafting ratios don't change while I'm making the runes and that I don't fiddle with the proportions on my own. Unfortunately, I only have about 1900 or 2000 rune essence mined at the moment. (Yes, I forgot the exact amount. Quiet.)

Miveen and I talked for a bit. Went over the Bible verse research-in-progress, eventually coming around to K.C. again. Unfortunately, I had to cut it a little short and sign off, as I need to get to bed. Church tomorrow and whatnot. But before I go, here's what I've gathered on the Greek translation of John 19:30.

First, the text in Greek can be found here. You'll have to enter John 19:30 manually, I'm afraid. I recommend using the "Images" option on the font box, it's the only one that shows you the accents. (And yes, I'm aware that they have a point-and-click dictionary, but I don't trust it. The words that appear sometimes don't match the text I clicked on.) And here's the transliteration that I worked out, basically mapping the Greek alphabet onto the Anglo-Roman one:

ote oun elaben to oxos [o] iësous eipen Tetestai: kai linas tën kephalën paredoken to pneuma

I'm sorry, but you'll have to pretend the "e" with umlaut thing (ë) is an "e" with a macron (i.e. "e" with a flat horizontal line over it). I don't know what the proper code for it is, and quite frankly I'm too tired right now to hunt it down ~~and kill it~~. Also, "oxos" could be written "oksos," "Tetestai" might be "Tetelestai" because I might have copied wrong from one of my sources, and "elaben" might be "elaven" if you go with the modern transliteration of the letter beta. I'm fairly certain that "iësous" is the name of Jesus, but beyond that I'm pretty much stumped.

Please! If you know Greek, don't "spoil" it for me! I want to see if I can figure this out on my own.

Okay, definitely bedtime for me. G'night.

Bible and Programming Quandaries

2005-04-22T22:37:00.000-05:00

Blech. Today was rather rainy and cold. Down in the 40's again, after being up in the 70's and 80's the past week or so. Lots of rain this morning, and now some again this evening. Anyway...

CS 246 class today. Had to go to that in the rain, unfortunately. I am definitely looking into whether it's possible to get into any steam tunnels or maintenance tunnels without too much effort of drawing too much attention. Of course, that's assuming such structures exist...

This morning I killed a little time looking up John 19:30 in various Bible translations. I suppose I should explain.
"When he had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."
--John 19:30 (NIV)
Now see, I had always interpreted Jesus' last words to mean that His work here on earth was finished. The study notes in my NIV Bible seem to back that up. But when I ran across it in my Spanish translation, the same sentence read, "Consumado es." Now I don't think anybody needs to know Spanish to be able to pick out the meaning of "consumado." It basically means finished in the sense that something was consumed, which would imply that Jesus was referring to the wine. So I checked a Latin translation I had, which read "consummatum est." Same thing, of course, even though I don't know Latin.

So next I went to the Greek, the original language of the New Testament. Unfortunately there isn't anything there I can get a handle on, so I don't even know which words are the quotation. I think "pneuma" is spirit, mostly because it's the last word and because "pneum" is linked to air which is linked to breathing which is (conceptually) linked to the soul or the spirit. Also "oxos" might be the drink/sour wine/vinegar, because Wikipedia lists the modern "oxus" as acid, but I'm really not sure.

Gee, if I'd've known doing this was as much fun as puzzling out D'ni texts, I'd have done it a long time ago.

I wonder if the reference section of the library has anything like a Greek-to-English dictionary? I suppose I'll have to ask, if I have a little free time. Maybe next Tuesday.

This afternoon I spent working on the research project program. It now handles multiple files. I'd initially tried telling it to process all 50 files (200 MB). I fully expected this to take a while, and it did. However, after an hour I'd noticed that my processor graph wasn't redlining anymore and wondered why my system was still slow. Then I noticed my memory indicators. The thing had eaten up all my RAM and was halfway through the swap partition! Needless to say I put a stop to it pretty quick, then restarted to clear everything. After that I cut it down to three files, #25, #26, and #27. (We've been using #26 as a test case for a while now. It's one of the largeset at 20 MB.) Then I spent a while trying to figure out why the graphics program didn't like the data file being generated by the processing program. Got that fixed up this evening while I was doing my laundry.

Oh yes, I found out that "Danger Zone" from that movie "Top Gun" is definitely the song to play if you're running a processor-intensive program that you've designed. Not exactly my style of music but, eh...

Played a bit of RuneScape today. Smithing's almost up to level 50, just one more load of coal to smelt and smith. Also got my mining up to level 59. That's one level away from 60, the requirement for entering the mining guild. However, I found out that there's a drink called a "Dwarven stout" that can be purchased dirt-cheap at the Falador pub that (among other things) increases your mining level by one for about a minute or so. So I bought a few, took one to the entrance to the mining guild, drank it, and walked in. There is a lot of coal there, and relatively little competition. Also close to a bank, so I'm getting my coal mined a lot quicker now. Once I get up to level 50 smithing I can smelt mithril, so I'll be moving away from steel stuff. Oh yes, miveen? I've got a sapphire and about nine rubies with your name on them. Dunno if you can do rubies yet or not.

Heh. Roommate's gone to visit his girlfriend for the weekend, so I've got the room to myself.

Let's see, tomorrow. Larry's organized (or is promoting) some sort of men's prayer breakfast, which will be at 9:00 tomorrow morning at Jester's. Originally it was at 8:00, but we got a bunch of ~~lazy~~ people who like to sleep in. Also got to work up some stuff to put on the display board for the research project. That's due this coming Wednesday.

Anyway, bedtime for me. G'night.

Keeping Busy

2005-04-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

Well, CC class was cancelled today, as had been announced previously. So I spent the morning finishing up my essay. I got eight pages of text, although the last one was just a few lines. Also worked out a "works cited" page and a title page. Printed it off and turned it in about 11:30, despite the load on the processor that occurred while I was trying to work. Yeah, my backup script fired off. It takes about two hours, unfortunately. Anyway, got it in. After that went down to the bookstore and bought the display board for the research project.

After getting back I got a bit mixed up as to my schedule and wound coming in 20 minutes late to CS 246 lab. That was okay, though, he was going over the homework problems due tomorrow. Didn't miss too much.

After lab I had some lunch, then took a bit of time to play a little RuneScape. Then it was off to the meeting with my new CC advisor, Dean Piehl. That's right, the Dean of Christ College. *gulp* Luckily he's one of those guys who seems to smile a lot, so it went down okay. He just asked me what I'm currently taking and what I plan to take, then copied down my schedule and signed the form.

Then it was over to Gellersen to finish up the partners project for the airline thing. She liked the GUI, but negated my suggestion to have the program give the flight path as well as the total cost. I've got to pack it up and send it with a few instructions, but other than that it's done.

Oh yes, transferred $40 off my meal card and to Larry's account, for which he gave me $20. I had surplus and he eats more than, me so...yeah.

Played a bit more RuneScape this evening. Got my mining up to level 58 and my smithing up to 49.

Heh. Surprised nobody commented on my previous entry. Everyone busy?

Anyway, bedtime for me. I've got CS 246 class at 9:05 tomorrow, plus the DataVU system will (theoretically) allow me to register beginning 7:30. Well, g'night.

Plans of Pwnage

2005-04-20T22:54:00.000-05:00

Well, first off, I only had one class today. That was CS 158. Didn't learn much of anything in there, though. Gotta find out when the final exam is.

I spent most of today working on the research paper draft. It's supposed to be ten pages, due noon tomorrow (or thereabouts). Unfortunately, I was only able to get five, and I think I've run out of things to talk about. Ah well, I've got tomorrow morning yet...

Played little bits of RuneScape occasionally, but didn't exactly accomplish much other than smithing up a load or two of steel.

This evening, just for a change of pace, I went and coded up that GUI for the flight map project in CS 158. Got the whole blasted thing done, pretty much. That was...okay, no kidding here. That was the most fun I'd had in Java in months. Heck, that was one of the most fun things I've done in a while. Sitting there, organizing GUI elements and connecting them to the underlying program, then looking up my old functions...just like old times. Well, I guess "old times" is relative, the code templates I'd worked up have only been around since the beginning of April of last year.

Heh. Nothing says "PWNED!" to the professor quite like turning in an assignment that uses concepts not covered in the class. Error-catching, for example. Or the GUI.

Haven't had much time to think about the failed thing last night. I think working on the paper kind of burned it out of me, because I wasn't really feeling much except the usual background homework stress levels. Re-read what I'd posted a couple times during the day, which did make me a little sad, but I think it's all for the best. Yes, I know I've gone over this before, but humor me while I do it again.

First off, my social skills are so far gone that I don't even know how to bring up such a topic in the normal course of conversation. I have almost no idea of how courtship is carried out, so even if I did find someone, I'd be at a complete loss. In other words, the girl would have to lead the relationship. So I'm not ready socially.

I'm in college only because a large chunk of my tuition is covered by scholarships which are dependent on me meeting certain conditions. The rest is made up by funds my parents had set aside around the time of my birth, and the numbers aren't exactly certain. The amount of cash I have at hand usually goes to the bookstore or the laundry machines, barring a few indulgences now and then. I don't have any immediate job prospects, and I'm rather busy to go out and look. So I"m not ready financially.

We've been over my physical appearance before, and let me just say I've revised my metaphor to "anorexic slug." You can stick a "flesh-colored" in there if you want, makes no difference to me. So I'm not very attractive physically.

Mentally I'm a little messed up, as is (most likely) easily evident from this blog when taken as a whole. At any rate, my brain works a little oddly, as I've been told at various times over the years. I have a very strong mathematical bent, which basically means I'm most comfortable with two things that are an anathema to most people: mathematics and computers. Sure, a lot of people in my generation use technology freely, but really it's just the surface, the end product. How many people do you know who could plop down and whip out a Java GUI in an evening, and love it? Sometimes I even try to explain unrelated phenomena in computer or math terms, which gives people this glazed look...well, I don't think I'm mentally ready.

And spiritually? I'm nowhere near ready. I have no idea how these things are supposed to be approached. All I have are a few "no's" from various sources. I'm so far from ready, I can't even think of what I'd need to be ready.

At any rate, she can do better than me. She deserves better than me.

*blinks* There. I think that is what I've been meaning to say. I wish I could've gotten it out earlier. Heh, maybe I should clobber myself with essays more oft—er, maybe not.

Okay, bedtime. Here's hoping some of that eloquence (perceived or real) lasts until morning, when I can pour it into the rest of my essay. G'night.

I Just Can't

2005-04-19T23:41:00.000-05:00

Well, a promise is a promise, so here it is.

So I went through with my plan to go down to the library when K.C. was on duty at the reference desk, right? I brought my laptop, backpack, etc. under the pretense of researching whaling for my paper. Head down and arrive about 10:15. Study the wall map for a minute or two upon entry, also notice they've now got some sort of spiffy Sun computer information kiosk next to it running Firefox.

Since the reference desk takes up about half the second floor (which is also the floor you enter), I figured I'd ask her where in that area the encyclopedias were. When I got down there I realized that I was rather stupid, as they are on the shelf directly behind her, and any idiot with eyes who would be asking her such a question would also be positioned to answer.

So I grabbed a volume, plopped down on a nearby chair, and started taking notes on my laptop. Well, the first encyclopedia set didn't have an entry on whales or whaling, so I figured I might have to ask if there's any specific reference texts on whaling. Wrong there too. Found three more volumes from other sets, each with information on whales and whaling. Third one didn't have anything new, as far as I could tell, so I packed it up and left at about 11:00.

Not a word was exchanged. For all I know she wasn't even aware I was there. And I didn't have the guts to go up to her and try to make small talk, even when she wasn't doing anything. I am such a flipping moron. Worms for guts. I...Maker's name, I can't even get it out here. Vocabulary failure.

Her friend A.S. stopped by and chatted with her for a while. They were still talking when I left. Given that A.S. carries around this odd little image of me as a "wonderfully cheerful and happy person," and always greets me with an enthusiastic "[Liiiiiiing]!" regardless of context, I doubt even she noticed me, though she was facing the right direction. I tried to stand in several visually obvious places a couple of times, but I might as well have been invisible. Wouldn't be the first time.

Guess my social abilities are just too far gone and destroyed to do much with them anymore, much less anything like this. Absolute idiot.

I suppose it's all for the best. She can do better than the likes of me. Heck, for all I know she's already seeing someone. I just. don't. know.

Sorry for letting everyone down, I know you were all hoping something would come of this. Maker's name, what a mess...

Okay, time to wrap this up and get to bed. I've got ten pages to write tomorrow. Apologies again for being such a moron. G'night.

Little Pieces

2005-04-19T21:54:00.000-05:00

Okay, odd day today. Normally I'd have CC at 9:05 today, but Professor Olmsted cancelled it and saw us in small, individual appointments instead. They were supposed to be ten minutes long, but he ran over, so while mine was at 10:30, I wound up waiting around till about 11:00. It was okay, though, I didn't have anywhere to go. Wound up reading bits of "Words of the Watcher" off my calculator. (Forgotten I'd had that on there.)

CS 158 lab as well. Professor Marion decided to lecture through most of it. Also turns out that the two e-mails I'd sent him arrived missing their attachments, but that's because I forgot to attach the files. Brilliant. Since there wasn't anything else to do, I finished filling out the schedule form that Professor Glass had pre-signed, then turned in one of the carbon copies to him. Still gotta get the signature of my CC advisor, who is also the dean of CC. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow or Thursday.

Got up a rough outline for my CC paper based on what Professor Olmsted and I talked about. Need to get working on that. It'll probably take up most (if not all) of tomorrow.

Played bits of RuneScape at various intervals throughout the day. Got those gems to miveen. Also got my mining up to 58, with smithing still at 48. Two levels from the mining guild...

Oh yes, also worked on the research project program a bit. Turns out Professor Glass had done a fair bit of work with the graphics part of it. I just need to tweak the Python part to process all 50 files, instead of just the one. Seems it'll be a little tricky. Also, the color-enhancing program's got a bit of a problem in it. Professor Glass wants me to intensify the color results by a logarithmic scale, but when I ran it twice (once without the enhancement, once with), the colors changed. For example, green went to a sort of teal color. Maybe I should be approaching this from an HSV model, rather than RGB. I'm not exactly sure how to convert, though.

Anyway, time to wrap this up for the time being. I've still got something to do this evening, although I'm still not sure about it all. I'd ask for final comments/advice/whatever, but by the time I read them it'll be done with. Depending on my mental state, I'll hopefully post a shorter entry including how it turned out. If not, g'night.

Scheduling, Trip to Karamja

2005-04-18T22:49:00.000-05:00

Well, all four classes today. Rather busy. First up was CS 246. Professor Glass was a little late, and consequently ran a little over, but that was okay for me. He wrapped up disk drives, then started talking about pipelining. Um...here's an analogy for pipelining. Imagine you're doing four loads of laundry. Instead of washing-drying-folding-storing each load, what you do is wash the first load, then dry the first load while washing the second load, then fold the first load while drying the second and washing the third, etc.

Told Professor Glass about what I'd done with the research project, but we didn't look at it. I need to apply some color processing now; more specifically, add in a logarithmic function to make the colors brighter. Tricky part is, he wants it as a separate program. Anyway, I worked on it a bit this afternoon, but that was just optimizing the code. I shuffled the HTML generation code off into a library, then set up the red/green/blue junk as arrays rather than separate variables.

Been researching cryptography a bit. Rather interesting field. I want to study the Blowfish cipher more closely. But that's an as-time-allows project, and right now time doesn't allow too much.

After lunch was CS 158, where we just basically had a lab. Wasn't much to do there, and Professor Marion was late for that...although he'd made arrangements for another professor to come in and write on the board what we were supposed to do.

CC class this afternoon as well. Professor Olmsted pretty much talked about writing the paper. (At least he was on time...)

Supper with the guys, but there wasn't any discussion similar to yesterday's.

I played RuneScape a bit, but didn't really mine stuff or anything. Instead, I did that pirate's treasure quest. Part of the reward was a cut emerald. Miveen, more jewels! Heh. Also got to go sailing to Karamja (as part of the quest). It's 30 gold for a one-way trip there or back. Actually, it's the near-island just north of the land-chunk labeled "Karamja" on the map, from what I can tell. Interesting place, kind of a sub-tropical feel. There was a banana plantation that was part of the quest. Seems there's a volcano there, too. I should probably go back and poke around there sometime. I wonder if I can get to Brimhaven, or if that's members-only?

This evening I spent about an hour and a half hacking out my schedule for this coming fall. If all goes down well, I'll be taking Greek 101, as well as two CS courses and a CC course. Oh, and the required CC symposia, as well as the research project thing again. That's if everything goes down well, which I can't exactly guarantee.

Um...probably should stick this here. Well, I've talked about K.C. earlier but I think now I was grossly misinterpreting things. I very much doubt she's interested in me in any way, she was just talking with me because nobody else was around. Which is probably just as well, she can do a lot better than me...or already is, for all I know. She's had several chances to talk to me (every CC class), but we haven't exchanged a single word in over a week. So yeah, several miles off on that reading. Good thing I didn't act on it.

Well...

I know she works at the library reference desk starting 10:00 on Tuesday nights. If I have a little time, maybe I should head over there at 10:15, looking for something-or-other. See what develops. Dunno if it's a good idea, though. Do I really want...?

If anybody has any comments on this psychotic mess, drop 'em here. Or e-mail me, or whatever. Or IM me, even if I'm away.

Anyway, bedtime. G'night.

Partitioning and Lunch

2005-04-17T22:38:00.000-05:00

Well, church this morning. We had a Professor of Theology preaching, but a man I'm not familiar with. Also, I think the organist must have attended one of the jazz concerts on campus this week; the music was a little faster and there was just a hint of something-or-other...

I also researched partition managing programs this morning. I realized that the (admittedly wonderful) one that comes with Mandrake Linux is specific to Mandrake, and if I move to something like Fedora Core I need to look into other partition managing tools. Turns out there's parted, which is a command-line tool, and QTparted, which is a GUI front-end for that. Both projects seem to be a little slow and/or behind in development, though. But then I popped in my Knoppix CD and rebooted. Sure enough, they'd included a copy of QTparted with it. Seems to be a pretty good program, although I didn't exactly muck with my partitions. I like them where they are at this point, thanks. Still, I think I've got what I need.

The rest of the morning, part of the afternoon, and a good deal of the evening I played RuneScape. I've got my mining up to level 57 now, and my smithing is up to level 48, though just barely. I can make steel plate bodies. I've also got about 128k gold in the bank. Trehk/Horizon was on a bit this evening, he helped me find a place to sell the steel plate bodies I'll be making soon.

(Miveen, you might want to skip this paragraph...)
I ate lunch, then went to sit by the library again to finish reading Moby Dick. Didn't get very far when I saw Larry and Aaron walking to the Union for their lunch, so I ran and caught up. Ate a cookie with them, and Woody and...er, somebody else joined us. Talk wound up getting to girls, whereupon I found out that I was pretty much the biggest idiot at the table, at least in that regard. Even Larry's rejection stories were better than my void. I guess I just don't know how to start such things. Socially retarded, whatever.

Anyway, after second lunch (a.k.a. the cookie), I went back to my little sitting spot and spent most of the afternoon finishing Moby Dick. Then I came back and played RuneScape for about an hour or so before going to supper.

Oh yes, I found out that DataVU has a...somewhat informative feature that I'd overlooked. It's called "degree audit" or something like that, and it shows you what general-education requirements you've fulfilled (or need to fulfill), plus that same information for your declared major and any minors. Pretty interesting thing, except it basically returns a chunk of plaintext, no formatting. Well, the only formatting in it is headers at regular intervals, making me think it's usually supposed to be printed out in such a way that the headers are on top of the pages, but...yeah. Could do with a lot of cleaning.

Also, roommate's girlfriend left sometime early this afternoon. That's one less thing to worry about.

Researched cryptography a bit this evening. That's not something you want to do when you're tired, trust me. Anyway, I want to see if I can figure out how the Blowfish algorithm works. Maybe a few others. Depending on how the next few days play out, I may wind up rambling about that. Just a word of warning.

Anyway, all four classes tomorrow, so bedtime for me. G'night.

Pre-Registration Frustration

2005-04-16T22:58:00.000-05:00

Well, got up a little late today. Had to grab my things and go change and shave in the restroom. Not sure it was entirely necessary, but the restroom's practically right across the hall and I didn't want to risk waking the room's other two occupants. Focus: I am an ambulatory, self-cleaning piece of furniture this weekend.

Anyway, after morning preliminaries (e.g. e-mail checking, news checking, comics, etc.), I attempted to draw up my schedule for next semester. However, I quickly got frustrated with the whole process and limited myself to listing courses that are offered next semester that sound interesting to me, never mind time conflicts. The toughest part is untangling the twisted knot of general-education requirements, particularly since both the College of Arts & Sciences and Christ College seem to want to muck with it. Well, A&S is a bit more rigid about gen-ed requirements, while Christ College has a big list of how to replace them with CC courses. I would have thrown my course guide across the room, but that would have made people wake up grumpy...not to mention cost me a perfectly good fan propper-upper.

The online course guide/registration system isn't very good, either. It's called DataVU, pronounced "data-vee-yoo." What's incredible is that it lets you get a good look at the menus before challenging you for your password. And the "Log Out" button is always visible, regardless of whether you're logged in, logged out, or even have a password. The "Log In" button isn't visible except on a few pages that you can't access unless you're already logged in, but that's okay because the system does know to ask for your login info on appropriate occasions. Go ahead and check it out at https://datavu.valpo.edu. In fact, I invite you to. Maybe they'll notice people poking about and do something about it. Remember, this is the same system that so royally screwed up my registration last semester. Wouldn't give me credit for a course I'd tested out of. Looking through the CS course listing, I think I'm going to do a senior project in CS three years from now. I'll redesign DataVU to be—dare I say it?—user-friendly.

Anyway, late this morning I got on RuneScape, as well as a couple of other times today. I got the gems to miveen, along with a few others I'd dug up during the course of the day. Let's see, level 56 mining and 47 smithing. I can make steel plate legs and steel skirt armor now. Steel plate legs seem to haul in a lot of cash, but it's a long walk to the store to sell them. Four of them will net over 2000 gold. I gave some to miveen to sell, then sold about 28 when my smithing went up to 47. Got about 12,000 gold for the lot of them. Oh, and speaking of gold, I'm up to about 115k now. After 100k the bank reports it in units of 1000. Still one level away from smithing steel plate body armor, and three levels away from being able to smelt mithril. Four levels from entering the mining guild. I wonder what'll happen first, entering the mining guild or being able to smelt mithril?

Ate lunch with Larry. It was just the two of us, since nobody else in our group was awake yet. (He wouldn't have been either normally, except he had something or other to go to.) Found out that the pickle toppings taste pretty good on the chicken patties they serve. Normally I just get a plain one and put salt on it (lots, I'm a salt addict), but now I think I'll use pickles for a while.

This afternoon I went out to sit in the sun and work on the research project code. Unfortunately, a couple of unforeseen factors quickly drove me back inside. First off, LCD screens are very low-contrast and rather dark in direct sunlight. Second, I was sitting with a black laptop in direct sunlight. While this wasn't much of a problem for me, I was rather concerned about the laptop overheating. So, back inside I went.

As it was, my task was to tinker with the Python part in order to make it output some real data to be visualized (as opposed to the random data I had been using earlier). Well, it works...kind of. I couldn't figure out the coloration formulas I had, nor how to relate them to the task at hand, so I just took the relevance factors and said they were color values. Now, both the relevance values and the color values fall between zero and one, but since the relevance values tend to be towards the lower part of that range, the colors sometimes come out rather dim. Nevertheless, it works, although I wish I could zoom in and out on it. Hopefully Professor Glass will be pleased.

Talked with Capella quite a bit while tinkering with the code. We haven't talked in a while; it was quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, I started rambling too much about the project at hand.

After that worked I played RuneScape a bit more, then tidied up a bit and went to supper with the guys. Pickles on chicken again, heh.

Came back and fiddled around a bit with things before playing more RuneScape. Got my desktop down to two icons. Two! A folder labeled "Downloads" and the Trash icon. The rest are either in the applications menu or the dock which pops up from the bottom of the screen.

Been talking quite a bit with miveen on RuneScape. Quite enjoyable, though at times I feel rather out of my depth..although I probably do it to her as well, heh. We were comparing notes on college course registration processes this evening. A couple of times it wound up back at me explaining my social/personal communications deficiencies, which is rather odd for me to discuss.

Anyway, bedtime. Church tomorrow. G'night.

Caution: Chess Weirdos

2005-04-15T23:54:00.000-05:00

Whee. Well, CS 246 class today. Learned about the basics of how hard drives work. Also found out that I'd forgotten to do the chapter seven homework, so I didn't turn that in. Something to work on over the weekend, along with the rest of the chapter eight homework, which he assigned today.

The rest of the morning I played RuneScape. I've gotten my mining level up to 55 now, which means I can mine mithril, but since my smithing level is only 45, I can't do anything with the mithril ore yet. So, it's still steel goods for a while. And speaking of steel goods, seems that two-handed swords pack a serious punch...although you can't hold a shield while wielding one, obviously. And I'm only one level away from being able to smith plate legs and skirts, and three levels away from plate bodies. It's taking forever to get my smithing up, though. And mining levels are now upwards of 18,000 experience points. And I've got about 97,000 gold in the bank. Oh yes, miveen? More gems. Two sapphires and an emerald, if I recall correctly.

This afternoon I finally took care of that...magazine my roommate had on display. While he was out I printed off a page of Bible verses and such against adultery. Then I roughed it up a bit so that it looked like scrap paper off my desk, then wrote a note on the back asking him to place the magazine somewhere among his belongings and out of sight. The idea being that, if he saw the Bible verses, he might take them to heart, and if he reacted negatively I could just say that I grabbed a rather inopportune piece of scrap paper.

Didn't have the guts to stick around to watch his reaction, so I grabbed my CS 246 stuff and went outside for a while to work on the chapter eight homework that's due next week. Met up with Jeff while I was out there, and we got to talking about computer stuff and comparing notes on vigilante tech support nightmares.

I wanna take a minute here and talk about the little study spot. It's a little brick-paved side-spurt from the main sidewalk, with some of those compressed-plastic benches and a few plants around it. The plants aren't fully grown, but it's pretty cool nonetheless. Have a wonderful view of the chapel and whatnot, although I usually sit with my back to it so the sun doesn't get in my eyes. It's also near the old library, which is slated for destruction (or as I say, "deconstruction") at some point. Well, while Jeff and I were talking, a couple of contruction company looking guys come by and enclose the area in yellow "caution" tape. I mean, I knew I was repulsive, but I didn't think I was that bad! (Yes, sorry miveen, just a little joke.) Anyway, they said it was just so that the area isn't destroyed by the people coming to...um, destroy stuff in the next few days. Dunno if that meant the building or just the surroundings, but should be interesting to watch nonetheless. Hey, maybe if I stand in the marked-off area...

Anyway, got back an found that my roommate had removed the offending...magazine, and left the note on my bed, so I tossed it. Haven't heard anything from him about it, yet.

Late this afternoon my roommate's girlfriend showed up. Which means that she'll probably be staying in the room again. I could cope with this, barely, but he's got a fraternity thing going on most of the night, which makes me wonder who's going to be in (or not in) the room, and at what time. Of course, I wasn't told any of this, but had to pick it up in my usual manner...listening to conversations which I am not party to. Not exactly eavesdropping, as he knows I'm in the room and he's talking at a normal tone of voice, but I suppose sitting here with my headphones on probably makes him think I'm not hearing him. And I'd still like to be told instead of having to resort to being "invisible."

Anyway, I was offered a spot on Larry and Aaron's floor for the night if it looked like I would have to room with my roommmate's girlfriend alone for the evening. She hasn't come back yet, so I'm going to turn in and play my usual role of self-cleaning, mobile furniture.

Um. Laundry this evening, and read another chunk of Moby Dick.

Oh yes, Larry and I finally got to play chess in the elevator. We got a couple of people coming on with "Huh?" looks. Then an R.A. or two from the women's floor got on and said basically, "Uh, no, though I can't think of a logical reason." Big laugh all around. Anyway, once she and her friend (or co-worker) got over the initial "huh" factor, they pointed out that [a] it could be a fire hazard (i.e. if there was a fire we'd be locked in the elevator), and [b] we're really not supposed to remove furniture from the lounge. So, we might have to look into a third-party table supplier.

Future elevator oddity plans involve a fake barbershop quartet, which should turn out interesting since none of us can sing. Maybe the "Maya hee, maya hoo" song?

Anyway, bedtime for me. I've got a bunch of stuff to take care of tomorrow, starting with my CS homework and next semester's schedule. G'night.

Desktop Minimalism

2005-04-14T22:49:00.000-05:00

Well, CC class first today. Not much to say about that, really. Afterwards was CS 246 lab, where we learned how to handle I/O via interrupts. Also learned how to implement a queue, which Professor Glass went over.

Finished up the Java airline project, though I still need to pack it up and ship it out. That didn't take too long, luckily, although I did have to include much of the processing in a giant loop. And then needed to stick in a statement to clear the stack. Works now, though.

In the completely useless news category, I'm practicing a bit of desktop minimalism now. I've got KoolDock at the bottom of my screen, which holds many of my icons. The few left on my desktop (five of them, actually) have been set to be partially transparent and are crammed away in the corners. KoolDock is also partially transparent, as is the panel at the top that holds my applications menu, my desktop switcher, and the clock. GKrellM, the system monitor, is set to a transparent theme. Well, the background is transparent, but the graphs are opaque. It'd be nice if they were partially transparent too, but oh well. I've also got a theme for Firefox that makes all the controls smaller, so I have a lot of room to view webpages. I don't have to scroll down a smidge when playing RuneScape anymore.

Speaking of RuneScape, played a bit of that this evening. Finished up the last of my air runes on fire spells, and acquired quite a few rarer runes in return. Magic is up to 42, with health up to 43 and strength up to 41. Yeah, that's the odd thing. Apparently practicing magic will help increase your health a little bit, and thus your combat level. (Mine's at 51.) Also got my mining up to 53, and my smithing up to 43 (almost 44).

Miveen was on, and I got her the sapphires I'd acquired. She was able to cut emeralds, so I gave her those as well. She made me an emerald ring, then I enchanted the three emerald amulets. They turned into amulets of defense, which should be helpful against the giants in the future.

After that it was making steel shields while we talked. Topics ranged all over the place, from trying to identify fellow D'ni fans in real life to a few of my little...oddities. (And I'm not supposed to talk about my acne anymore, apparently. *grins*)

Um, I think that's it for me, I'm getting tired. I've got CS 246 class tomorrow, but that's it. I should probably draw up my schedule for next year, too. And I've got an e-mail to send that I've been putting off for far too long...

Okay, g'night.

Words of the Geek

2005-04-13T22:54:00.000-05:00

Well, not much today. This morning the campus internet connection wasn't working, although we could still access the university website. Luckily it came back at about 10:00, so I was able to get on and check my e-mail and whatnot.

I don't know if I addressed this before, but Mandrakelinux bought out Conectiva recently. Mandrake is the Linux distribution I use, while Conectiva was a company that distributed Linux in South American countries. Anyway, they've changed their name to Mandriva (pronounced "man-dree-va"), which sounds rather odd. They've also released their latest product, "Special Edition 2005" today, a day behind the revised schedule. Well, not released, exactly, but it's available for club members. Schedule says it'll be publicly available on May 1. Too bad they couldn't have stuck with "Mandrake 10.2," but now they're calling it a transition product. I'm looking into alternative Linux distributions, although I'm not quite ready to jump ship yet.

Professor Glass was pleased with the progress I'd made, although a little puzzled by one of my problems. He's going to work on the graphics end while I try to get Python to crank out some real data instead of the fake random junk I'd been using.

After lunch it was off to CS 158, which Professor Marion luckily turned into a lab. So me and my partner worked on the airline flights project. We got the thing nearly done, except for a couple of things that I'm going to finish up. (Volunteered for that.) That'll give me a bit of an excuse to start developing a GUI for the the thing.

This afternoon I reworked some of my Words of the Watcher fortune files. The fortune program basically takes some text files and spits out one of the aphorisms contained in it. Anyway, turns out that a couple of my old Watcher files were messed up. The newline character was messed up because the original text files were brought in from Windows. The tough part was ferreting it out, but I eventually found out that VI has a -b parameter that stands for "binary," which showed up the unwanted characters. So I edited them out and reprocessed the files, so now it works. Wasn't much of a problem except for the Phosphor teletype screensaver.

Oh yes, one of the guys in CS 158 put me on the path of something called Kooldock, which seems to be a good program. We'll see how that turns out.

Aaaaand got into a big discussion with miveen over my previous entry. Heh, that was interesting, although I'm really not good at that sort of thing. (It's on my LJ blog.)

Okay, bedtime for me. CC tomorrow at 9:05. G'night.

Program Progress and Issues

2005-04-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

Well, CC class first thing today. Turns out that the three-page thing wasn't due today, but rather Thursday. Oops. At least now I'll have more time to work on it. He mostly talked about how we're going to develop our papers anyway, so...yeah.

CS 158 lab, which wasn't very challenging. We had to take the professor's customers-in-a-line simulation and make it so that, instead of the program assigning a number to each customer, the program asked the user for the name of each customer. Didn't teach us very much about queues, though. Got a little more done on the ongoing final project thing.

This afternoon I worked some more with the research project program. It can now read data from a file, although it has to be all numbers. For some reason I couldn't get it to read in the integer from the line saying "BAR 1". Eventually I just took the "BAR" part out. And I didn't have any real data to go off of, so I had to whip up a quick little Python script to dump out some random color data. Also, I can't figure out how to resize the coordinates it uses so that the visible coordinates aren't from -1 to 1 all the time. But other than that it seems to be shaping up nicely.

Played a little RuneScape this evening. I flamed a bunch of giants, then got a little cocky and took on a level 79 shade that appeared. It took me down a peg and a lot of health, so I ran for it and dropped what I had in the bank. (Lotsa runes.) Anyway, then I went and did the Black Knights quest or whatever it's called before signing off. Oh, and miveen? I've got three more uncut sapphires you can have...

Oh yes, orthoclase is accepting connections again. Orthoclase is the server in the math and engineering building that handles all the files on their subnetwork or something. Anyway, I like to log into it from the dorm room and do my work that way sometimes, but it had been refusing connections for a few weeks now.

Um...I suppose this goes in too. Keep wondering about getting a girlfriend. On one hand, I'm not evil/cruel enough to mess up somebody else's life with mine, and I know I don't have enough X for a girlfriend, where X is anything from money to good looks to time to knowledge of courtship to friends, etc. On the other hand I keep finding myself thinking about it and yearning for something. Probably a chemical thing.

In unrelated news, my roommate seems to have acquired a...rather explicit magazine. Now that's his own butt that'll be burning when all is Weighed and Measured, so it's really his problem, but he keeps leaving the blasted thing open on the bed when he leaves. I don't want to look at it, but I don't want to touch it either, so I compromise by closing it with my foot. Out, Satan!

Anyway, bedtime for me. Nothing much tomorrow until about 11:00 when I meet with Professor Glass to show him the research progress. Hopefully he'll be pleased.

Okay, g'night.

Pbzchgre Trrx Enzoyr

2005-04-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

Well, CS 246 first thing today. Learned about I/O in regards to the different devices on the computer, and how they're all related. Disk drives, USB, the works. Loose Pentium layout. Motherboard-level stuff.

After that I showed Professor Glass the small progress I'd made with the research project. Well, first he had to go and find a system to compile it on, it wouldn't compile on his office computer because the libraries won't play nice with his graphics card. Anyway, then we talked a little bit about what needs to come next. He told me about a couple of graphics functions and how to store data and read it from files. Turns out I was wrong about the linked-lists thing.

Okay, quick CS lesson here. In C, when you make a list of things (called an array), you have to specify the maximum size of the array. Then you cannot exceed this size, no matter what, or you may end up mucking about in some memory you weren't supposed to get into. (This is related to buffer overflow and is sometimes exploited by crackers.) The problem is, you can't tell it "make an array of size x," the instructions have to be "make an array of size 5."

Well, it turns out that this is...not carved in stone. What I can do is create a pointer, a type of variable that holds a memory address. Now stick with me here. During the course of the program, I can use malloc() to set up an empty space in memory of a size of my choosing. The memory address of this space can be stored in the pointer, which in turn can be used like an array. So in effect, I'm saying "malloc, make a space capable of holding x numbers. Then store the address of that space in my pointer. Now, pointer, give me the fifth number slot."

Er, I hope all that made sense.

After lunch was CS 158, where we learned about queues, never mind that the entire idea of a queue and all its attendant concepts was discussed in the preceding course. The only new stuff, as far as I could figure out, was the examples and the code for the Java implementation. Oh, and get this! Professor Marion's got some nifty text-capture trick he does, right? Basically it copies any text typed or output by a program and sticks it in a file. Well, when he made the one he handed out, he must have accidentally mucked it up. For some reason the first part of the script is his e-mail inbox. I know it is because it starts off with "From <IMAP4.psuedo.sims>," then goes on to list an e-mail I'd sent him with my last assignment. Luckily nothing but the from address and a timestamp. What a joke, though.

Um...CC class this afternoon, but nothing much interesting.

I did play RuneScape a little bit, basically shooting magic at hill giants. Got a few more runes and another uncut sapphire.

This evening I avoided expanding my one-page Moby Dick paper, despite the fact that it's due tomorrow. Eh, I'll finish it in the morning.

On the other hand, I did learn about ROT13 "encryption." Turns out it's just a simple shift, so A becomes N, B becomes O, C becomes P, etc. ROT13 stands for "rotate 13." The reason for this is simple: since there are 26 letters in the Anglo-Roman alphabet, rotating halfway means you can use the same mathematical steps for encryption and decryption. That is, encrypting the message twice gives you back your original text. (Note: ROT13 was never meant to be strong encryption. Its original purpose was much like that of the spoiler tags on MC, and to serve as a demonstration model of certain software...or perhaps an exercise for CS and math students.)

I also found out about four new Linux command-line fun thingys: tr, rot, md5sum, and sha1sum. tr will transliterate text entered from the terminal. So you can set it up with the original alphabet, and the new alphabet to translate to. Excellent for substitution encryption. rot will take text from the terminal and process it through ROT13 encryption. md5sum and sha1sum take a file (or terminal input) and calculate the md5 and sha1 checksums, respectively.

A checksum is a string of characters, typically expressed in hexadecimal format, that serves as a near-unique identifier for the data in question. Usually data that differs by even a small amount will have a significantly different checksum. They're usually used to double-check transfers of large files, such as CD ISO's. Basically, you download the ISO and run the checksum program on it. Then you compare the checksum against the one posted on the website. If they match, your data downloaded correctly. Here's the checksums for the entire text of this entry, up until the end of the paragraph preceding this one:
MD5: e2591769663e4ae819630dd92787f683
SHA1: 82b69a1400b2d42b23cf96688097e4495c64a4f7

And that's about it for me. Sorry about the computer geek rambling. G'night.

RuneScape Warning

2005-04-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, I forgot to post this last night, but here goes.

Yesterday on RuneScape I was contacted by an entity calling itself "Item Return2." This person claimed that he or she was a part of a Jagex program to return lost items free of charge to players in the game. (Jagex is the company that owns and operates RuneScape.)

Of course, following the "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" rule of thumb, I concluded that something fishy was going on and promptly used the "Report Abuse" button to report this person for Jagex staff impersonation. After informing Item Return2 of this action, he or she persisted in the charade, telling me "Sir, this is the jagex head of staff." Still a liar, as I doubt any head of staff would call a near-anonymous customer "sir." My response was "Don't make me report you again." to which was replied "**** you then." Now I am dead certain no Jagex employee would violate their own filters. So heads up!

IF YOU ARE CONTACTED IN ANY WAY BY THE PERSON KNOWN AS "Item Return2" WHILE PLAYING RUNESCAPE, REPORT THIS PERSON IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT AGREE TO ANY REQUESTS, NO MATTER HOW BENIGN!

(Although, it would have been mildly interesting to see if I could've gotten a full set of runite armor out of the guy. That'd be about 100K gold or higher, I think. Not worth the risk, though.)

In other news, I deleted a paragraph from my previous entry. I doubt I was thinking straight when I wrote it...late evening, probably ate a few more mint candies than was good for me...yeah. If anybody read it, pay it no mind.

Too Much Sun

2005-04-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

Church today. Reverend Wangerin preached. It's too bad Dad missed him by a week, he's really interesting.

Before church I typed up and sent an e-mail off to Mom and Dad, informing them about the results of the debate and housing and whatnot. Basically answered a few questions Dad had about things and that he'd forgotten to ask while here.

Late morning and early afternoon I played RuneScape. Stocked up 1000 rune essence, then converted it all into about 2600 mind runes for spell use.

I'd wanted to play chess in the elevator this afternoon (yes, another elevator gag), but Larry had to do his laundry and clean up his room a bit. So I asked Aaron, but he wanted to help somebody finish a quest in RuneScape. I even asked Woody (no, that's not his real name, everyone just calls him that because of his real name). Woody was all fired up to kick my butt in chess, but when I mentioned the elevator part of it he suddenly remembered he had homework to work on that afternoon.

Maybe I'm delusional, but I thought I detected a bit of a pattern. Got a little fed up and went outside to study C for a couple of hours. Found a nice bench area that was relatively free of the sunbathers which tend to irritate me. Usually it's because my window overlooks a sunny stretch of lawn, and just about any guy who wanders in to talk is...distracted by the young women on the lawn. I should either draw the curtains or charge for the view, I guess. Also the double standard: I bet if I went out there with Larry or somebody and we stripped to our shorts, the place would be vacated in seconds...or we'd be "asked" to leave. Which kind of tied into me being irritated by social definition according to significant other...or lack thereof.

[This paragraph was written during an acute attack of stupidity and has been removed.]

Let's see...more RuneScape this evening. Wound up making about 3500 air runes, then went and practiced for a little bit on the hill giants again. Found my nifty little sniping spot and did lots of damage without getting hurt very much. Made out like a bandit on loot, too. Got about 1000 gold, 30 fire runes, 6 nature runes, 2 law runes, 4 cosmic runes...of course, some of that was leavings by other people, particularly the gold, but still...

Okay, bedtime. I'm starting to lose it. G'night.

Blink Tags and RuneScape Magic

2005-04-09T22:32:00.000-05:00

Interesting day today. It was a little chill, particularly since I'd removed my blanket from the bed last evening, but it warmed up nicely.

First off, after my preliminaries (e.g. reading the comics off the internet),I opened up my word processor and wrote a letter to Peter. That was a couple of pages, which I printed off. Took me a couple of tries to figure out how to fold it into the envelope, which means the letter will have a few odd creases in it, but it's still readable...more so than if I had written it by hand. Anyway, addressed that and pulled out coinage for the postage stamp.

Next I scoped out my old school corporation's website. To make a long story short, the web designer will be one of the first people visited in the night by the dread secret police when I am in power. Blink tags! Argh! A whole red, blinking announcement paragraph on a white background that was almost unreadable! The page headers were blinking, too! Now, according to UserFriendly, the only legitimate use of the blink tag is this: "Schrodinger's cat is not dead." (For those blessed among you whose browsers do not support this thing, the blink tag makes the text flick on and off.)

Anyway, I was able to pull up the faculty listings and found Mr. Grogg's e-mail address. (Mr. Grogg taught my health and AP Chemistry classes when I was in high school.) I'd heard from Brother that he'd wanted to see me over break, but by the time that news had reached me I didn't have any free time remaining in which to visit him. So, I sent him an e-mail instead. Hopefully it'll get through to him and whatnot. Also turns out that this past week was their spring break.

After that was a bit of RuneScape, which I played in the late morning and through the afternoon to supper (stopping for lunch, of course). I'm up to 41 hit points and 41 attack, with 40 defense and strength. I also upped my magic level to 32, so I can cast "teleport to Lumbridge" now. And as for my prayer level? It's now at 31, and I got into the monastery. Picked up a set of monk's robes that apparently help with prayer.

Larry and I went and had lunch after he tried unsuccessfully to wake up Aaron. After lunch we walked over to the bookstore and I bought a stamp to mail the letter to Peter. Then back to the dorm. I wanted to play chess in the elevator with Larry, but it turns out that he was going on a "field trip" type of thing to an observatory. Yerkes, was it? Anyway, maybe tomorrow afternoon.

Miveen was on again this afternoon, which was good. Took a bit of a break from bashing hill giants to...um...mystify her crafts and whatnot. First got her the materials, then after she'd made the symbols I took them to the monastery to get them blessed. Blessing them is a thoroughly lengthy process as you have to traverse a character's conversation tree for each one, and I'd given her 28 silver bars...ah well, got them all done. Apparently they let you gain more prayer points than normal when you worship at an altar while wearing one.

After that I used the two cosmic runes I had to enchant two of the sapphire amulets she made. Sapphire amulets turn into amulets of magic, apparently. Not sure what emerald amulets or ruby amulets do, though. I've got four more cosmic runes now, so if I keep these safe both of us will get one of each type of enchanted amulet, eventually. Also tried out the "teleport to Varrock" spell at one point, which was rather interesting to watch.

This evening I worked a bit on the graphics end of the research project. Unfortunately, I'm rather hampered by my (severely) limited knowledge of C, but I was able to lay a skeletal groundwork for what is needed. Among the things I need to learn to do in C are:
- linked lists (ironically)
- file input
- vagaries of the number types (e.g. what happens when you mix floats and ints)
- how to specify the coordinates in the graphics window (graphics-library specific)

After I'd mucked around with that for a bit I got back on RuneScape. Being rather tired of walking around in armor, and thinking my magic level needed a bit of work, I gathered up my runes and mage outfit and descended once again to battle the giants. The interesting thing is, if you're close enough to the wall in spots, the giants won't attack. This, of course, is prime ground for archer-snipers, but mages need a more direct line or something. Anyway, I soon found a spot and was racking up magic experience, goodies, and bones with very little risk...until my runes ran out. So I mined rune essence for a bit, getting my mining experience up to 52 and getting about 700 rune essence. I'll get it up to 1000 tomorrow, then go make it into runes.

Anyway, bedtime for me. Church tomorrow. G'night.

Hill Giants and Line Cutting

2005-04-08T23:27:00.000-05:00

Only one class today, which was CS 246 in the morning. The lecture was on buses, and how data gets from one part of the computer to the other, and whether or not there is a clock directing the whole process. Here's an interesting fact: if your processor is 1 GHz, then data can travel only fifteen centimeters in one clock cycle. That's six inches.

I played RuneScape a lot the rest of the day. I was going to write my letters but, eh...

Aaron showed me a place where there are level 26 or 28 hill giants that I can fight. Unlike the ice soldiers, I actually do pretty well against these guys, though I still take a beating...particularly when fighting them one after another. Good news is that occasionally they drop rare runes. I now have two cosmic runes, four law runes, and two death runes. I'm not sure what death runes are used for, but law runes are used for teleport spells. And cosmic runes are used for enchanting jewelry, so I'm covered there. If I can get more I won't need to venture into the wilderness for them. Also, the giants drop big bones, which give you more prayer experience when you bury them. Aaron says they go for 200 gold pieces on the open market, too. I don't think I need the money right now, I've got about 50 K.

Um, let's see. Level 48 combat, with 40 attack, 39 strength, and 39 defense. Level 30 prayer, one away from entering the monastery. Oh yes, and 40 hit points now.

Miveen was on this afternoon. I got the gold bars to her, as well as some cow hides I'd picked up while replenishing my food supplies. Apparently she went through them somewhat quickly, but she says she can cut sapphires now.

That reminds me, miveen? I have your "order" ready:
- 28 silver bars
- 11 uncut sapphires
- 1 steel longsword
Next time I see you on I'll get them to you. Just got the silver this evening.

Speaking of this evening, today was the first day to file a housing change request. Or rather, as it says on the paper, a "Room Change Request Form," which they also put in quotes. Anyway, I'd originally been assigned Brandt hall, which isn't very...palatable. Larry says there's lots of issues there. I've only been in there twice: once to eat breakfast during an orientation session, and once with Larry. The second time I was impressed by the number and variety of wires hanging from the elevator.
Me: "Are you sure we should use the elevator? It doesn't look safe."
Larry: "Well, I don't trust the stairs."
Um, yeah. Anyway, the session was held in the Brandt cafeteria. The paper said to begin lining up no earlier than 5:00 PM, with the session going from 7:00 to 8:00. Apparently people were beginning to line up around noon-ish, from what I'd heard. Larry and Aaron, who are planning to continue living together, took turns in line...although I think Aaron did most of the waiting. I showed up at about 6:00, passing Aaron on the way back and getting news from him. The line apparently stretched its gnarled and straggly way through most of one wing of the first floor. So I headed up to near the beginning and talked to Larry for a bit. Sat down, talked, then got up and filled out the form they handed out at about quarter to seven, turned it in right after Larry with priority ranking at 19 (starting from 1). Ah, the applications of amateur psychology and social invisibility.

After that I went back and did my laundry. Nothing much exciting there, except I read the assigned part of Moby Dick.

Okay, bedtime. I seriously have to write some letters tomorrow, plus practice some programming for the research project. If I'm on RuneScape, it probably won't be until the afternoon. Still contactable via AIM, Yahoo! IM, e-mail, etc. though. G'night.

Debate Night

2005-04-07T22:38:00.000-05:00

Busy day today. First order of business was CC class, where we watched a 1950's rendition of Moby Dick. The professor also announced in advance that he would not be here, but unlike CS class yesterday people actually showed up and were at least mostly attentive.

Then was CS 246 lab, which was on memory-mapped interrupts. Basically we wrote our own subroutines to take input from the keyboard and to display text in the terminal. Fun-fun. Got that one done and turned in.

My debate team had one last prep meeting at 5:30, an hour before the debate at 6:30. We won, but just barely. Something like 64-57. Brought along my laptop and took notes, but they weren't all that useful. My role consisted of getting up and reading a question for the opposing team that someone else had passed me, so...yeah. Sat down with hands shaking, obviously didn't do too well. Was sitting between K.D. and K.C. When I sat down, K.D. kind of...flicked her hand at my shaking one, which of course didn't help. But yeah, we won.

After the debate they all went for ice cream. I left by the back door, so to speak. Or rather, I left more-or-less unnoticed and came back here and was mildly depressed for some inexplicable reason. Anyway, sent out an e-mail to everybody that just basically said "congratulations, we did it." Later this evening I get one from our coach (also sent to everyone), where the first thing he does is correct the Greek in my signature. He then goes on to congratulate us, of course. The Greek read:
Agios o Theos
agios ischyros,
agios athanatos,
eleison imas.
which was taken from the Good Friday service. Roughly translated it means "Holy God / Holy Mighty / Holy immortal: / have mercy on us." It was...it was amazing when they sung it. Or I guess humbling. Whatever. I liked it. Anyway, our coach told me it was "hymas" or "humas." I went with the first one.

Yeah, I pretty much looked like an idiot this evening. Didn't do anything but read off a question somebody else had written and shake like a leaf. Left before the team went for ice cream, but got bashed in the congrats e-mail. Ah well.

Played a bit of RuneScape, of course. Got my strength and defense combat levels up to 35. Also got my prayer level up to 28. Got bored with that after a while and mined some rune essence for a bit.

Oh yes, funny thing. Apparently ticket sales for the "Freshman Formal" dance thingy were so abysmal, they cancelled it. Not that I was planning on going, but it was rather amusing.

Okay, bedtime. G'night.

RuneScape Craziness

2005-04-06T22:26:00.000-05:00

Whoo. Well, although I had a list of things to do, I accomplished none of them today. Yes, I only had one class. Yes, I played RuneScape most of the time instead.

Actually, I did break at one point. I disabled KDE's screensaver and set up XScreensaver in its place. Now I just have to remember not to use the KDE-provided "Lock Screen" button, but rather the one in the bar at the bottom of my screen.

Only class today was CS 158, and the professor didn't even show up (as he'd warned us he'd do...or not do). So we had another "lab." I don't know how much the others got done, but my partner and I hammered out two full class files in Java, so...yeah. Excellent progress on that front.

The rest of the day (morning, afternoon, evening) was largely spent playing RuneScape. I got up to level 40 attack this evening, which means I can wield my rune pick when I go mining. Thats as opposed to carrying it in my inventory, which cuts down by one the amount of ore I can carry. Should help because now I can get even amounts of coal again, which is easier when dealing with the coal-to-iron ratios (2:1) when smelting it into steel. Yes, I love numbers.

I am like a gem magnet, too. I keep finding more of the darn things. Larry says not to get rid of them as they're valuable, but they take up inventory space when you're mining. I've got about ten sapphires, four or five emeralds, and five rubies now. Miveen, you're going to be doing a lot of jewel-cutting.

Ah yes, I also mined a bit more gold, bringing the total bars in my bank up to 59. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring in much smithing experience. It makes up for it in the mining experience department, though.

Over supper I asked Aaron if he would be willing to locate the spawn point for cosmic runes in the wilderness. (Cosmic runes are needed for jewelry enchantment spells.) Turns out they're in the deepest wilderness, level 48, guarded by ice giants or some such. He took me to a place not in the wilderness where I could battle ice giants one-on-one if I wished. They're level 53 combat (I'm only 42), but I tried anyway and got my butt handed to me on a platter...even with the food I'd brought in case of emergencies.

Which brings me to my RuneScape plans:
- level up combat stats (40 each?) in order to survive wilderness trips
- achieve level 31 prayer in order to enter inner sanctum of monastery
- achieve level 48 smithing so that I can replace all my steel armor if necessary
- achieve level 60 mining in order to enter the mining guild
- get all those gold bars and stuff to miveen

Since killing creatures gives bones which can be buried to increase prayer, the first two really go hand-in-hand, almost. The reason I want to get into the monastery is because you can get these silver "Symbols of Saradomin" star thingys blessed in there, which help with prayer or something like that. I want to be able to replace my steel armor (all of it) so that, if I wind up dying in the wilderness, whatever I lose is replaceable. (Which reminds me, I should probably look into obtaining replacement mage outfits.) The reason I want to go into the wilderness at all is to pick up chaos and cosmic runes. As a non-paying player, I can't make those myself and have to depend either on creatures dropping them when I kill them or picking them up from spawn points...which are in the wilderness. Buying them is rather expensive. And the mining guild? Supposedly there's a huge coal deposit in there, and coal is used in all kinds of higher-level metals.

I'll probably be practicing combat and burying bones for the next few days.

Anyway, that's enough rambling about RuneScape for this evening. I probably won't be on much tomorrow, as I'll be rather busy. CC class of course, plus CS 246 lab, then CC debates at 6:30-7:45.

Bedtime, so g'night.

Debate Notes

2005-04-05T23:47:00.000-05:00

Well, CC class first off. I turned in the one-page thing that I'd printed off this morning.

CS 158 this afternoon. Turns out Professor Marion decided to have us work in partners, and then assigned us partners. This is fine, but it means being a bit bogged down (meaning no offense to my partner, who shall not be named here). Also, it turns out he's going to be doling out extra bits to the assignment. All of this adds up to a "no" on the do-it-early-turn-it-in-quickly thing. The professor is also clearly not used to object-oriented programming, judging by the greatly inefficient instructions he gave us. Ah well.

This afternoon I sat in the union and watched MTVu some more. Actually got some pretty good data this time around. At the request of one of the speech writers I took notes on the content, which meant I had to watch it more closely instead of just noting programming boundaries. I think that helped it turn out okay, but I can't tell because of the brain damage. (Heh. Just kidding. *twitches*)

During my free time I played RuneScape, of course. I have about forty gold bars now, excluding the ones I used to level my own crafting ability a little. Also got my combat level up to 38, my mining level up to 49, and my smithing level up to 41. That was somewhat productive. Since I don't have to watch MTVu tomorrow I may play RuneScape a lot.

On the other hand, I also have other things to do. Hmmm...

Debate this evening on whether or not to institute a Body Mass Index (BMI) assessment program in Indiana public schools. Rather shoddy, unfortunately. The final speaker for the pro side, for example, talked as if she was about to break down in tears but couldn't because she'd hyped up on caffeine. Scary.

At about 10:00 PM we had our final debate team meeting before our debate on Thursday evening. Oddly, we had to hold it in the library at that time because of schedule conflicts and because K.C. works at the reference desk then, so...yeah. I presented my research, obviously. We also went over the speeches. Lasted about an hour. Came back and played RuneScape a bit, then here.

Anyway, bedtime. My roommate's in bed now, and it's kinda dark in here. G'night.

Keyboards, Warmth, and Gold Bars

2005-04-04T22:25:00.000-05:00

Well, first class today was assembly class, CS 246. That was very interesting, we learned about input and output (I/O), especially as pertaining to things like the keyboard, mouse, etc. According to the chart, the keyboard can only handle input of up to 150 words per minute, assuming five letters per word and eight bits per letter. I'm sure the speed figures provided aren't universal, though. And even if they are, there's probably a built-in buffer in the keyboard or some such, so don't anybody worry about overloading.

After CS 246 I had to report no progress on the research project. However, I did talk to Professor Glass about the busy week to come. Mentioned that I had to watch MTVu, which led into the discussion of the pope via the strangely worded headline. Apparently the late pope's predecessor only lasted six weeks before dying under what Professor Glass termed suspicious circumstances.

During the late morning and early afternoon (as well as a bit early this morning after breakfast), I played RuneScape. I'm up to about 48 mining, 40 smithing, and 37 attack. (That's including this evening's playing, too.) I can now smelt gold ore into bars, which can in turn be used for jewelry. Miveen, if you want to try jewelry-making, I can get you gold now. It just takes a while because the gold ore regenerates slowly. It's also occasionally surrounded by snarky little morons. Observe: while mining gold this evening I was threatened with slow, painful castration. This is rather odd because, although I am male (as is my character), they were consistently mistaking me for a female.

After lunch and RuneScape I went to CS 158. Professor Marion handed out the "big project" that he expects will take us all month. If I weren't so busy this week I'd code it up and hand it in on Friday just to spite him. I'll get to it next week, though.

CC class later this afternoon. Apparently one of the (many) girls asked the professor to hold the class outside (at the behest of a large faction), but it was denied. He let us out early, though.

Speaking of outside, we've had wonderful weather. It's been up in the 70's, which is nice. Unfortunately it still gets rather cold at nights. That means I wake up, check the temperature report on my computer and think, "Oh! Forty degrees. Turtleneck it is." Brilliant. I should probably look for a program that reports forecasts and not just current conditions.

This evening after a bit of procrastination I wrote up the page for CC talking about what I hope to write my essay about. Still have to print it out, though. I'll do that when I get done here. Which I guess is now.

Okay, bedtime. G'night.

Defenestration and Armor Gifting

2005-04-03T22:22:00.000-05:00

First off, I got all my clocks set ahead an hour and I didn't have any time issues today, so that was good. The sun didn't wake me up at quarter 'til six today, either...because the clocks were set forward, of course. Also, Linux seemed to have taken care of resetting itself, probably courtesy of the time server it syncs with.

Church this morning. Dad came in at almost the last minute. He was coming through town on the return leg of a conference trip, so after church we went to Bob Evans, just like last week. The service had this pretty interesting hymn that we sang last week, too. Seems to be of Hispanic origin, particularly since the lyrics were written in both English and Spanish. Must see if the library has a copy of the hymnal so I can copy it out with my MIDI software.

Hmm, let's see...blast. Library's online catalog doesn't list it. Ah well.

This afternoon Larry and I had planned on playing chess in the elevator. We'd had all the furniture ready to go, but there were some unforeseen circumstances:
- a strong odor, partly of dead fish, in the elevator
- bits of foul-looking liquid on the floor
- the fact that the last basketball game of the season was yesterday evening
I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Anyway, I went to lunch with the guys, buying my token cookie so I could "eat" with them. I brought up the topic of defenestration...that is, throwing an item out of a window. We deduced that taking Windows off of a computer would logically be called inverse-defenestration—throwing Windows out of a computer—which sparked the question: What do you call the act of throwing a Windows CD out of an actual window? Answers varied from "defenestration" to "irony" to "a good way to spend an afternoon" to "one." The last one came about because Larry noted that multiplying a number by it's inverse (x times 1/x) yields one. Hence, combining defenestration and inverse-defenestration yields "one."

On the way back the other guys got a little rowdy on the subject of women, a discussion which I shall not detail here. Suffice it to say that, although these are some of the finer minds around, I'm rather disappointed in them from a more ethical/moral standpoint. That is all.

This afternoon I whipped up an analysis script in Python to analyze the log files I'd generated while watching MTVu yesterday afternoon. Between the logging script and the analysis script, the whole thing took me about an hour, including debugging. Ironically, people were impressed when I mentioned it during the meeting. Yahvo's name, if I'd have known how little it takes to impress people with computer skills, I'd have tried it long ago. I've made way better things than those two near hack-job scripts.

Anyway, the meeting lasted about two hours, during which I presented my findings (and got assigned more watching time). Also we went over the two speeches yet again.

After a rather late supper I played RuneScape for the rest of the evening. I'm up to level 46 mining and 38 smithing, which means I can now make steel square shields. I also got up to level 36 attack, just four levels away from being able to wield my rune pick. Replenished my steak stockpile by leveling in the cow patch at one point.

Ah yes, miveen came on at one point, so I volunteered to make her some steel goods. Unfortunately she's not yet up to a level where she can use them, so I made her a set of iron armor and some weapons, plus a few other items (like hats) I'd had in my bank account. Hopefully I'll get to a high enough smithing level soon and will be able to replace it all with steel when she's ready for it. Smithing up that armor was a nice change from my usual mine-smelt-smith-sell cycle for steel.

Right, lists. Here goes.

Meetings to attend:
- 10:00 PM Tuesday at Library Reference Desk

Things to do:
- CS 246 multiplication lab
- CS 158 "add" method lab
- draw up schedule
- write letter to Peter
- watch MTVu again

Okay, bedtime for me. Busy day tomorrow. G'night.

RuneScape Achievements

2005-04-02T22:54:00.000-06:00

Well, not much today. The microwave in the lounge is still broken, so no popcorn for breakfast. (Happy now, miveen? ) Anyway, I cooked up the Python program I talked about earlier, the one to log events from a list. I even made it extensible with a "new thing" option, or whatever I called it. You can define a new entry and it'll show up on the menu afterwards.

I played RuneScape a lot today. I mean a lot. I wound up making enough gold to buy that rune pickaxe I'd been eyeing, plus I have about 6000 gold now. I'm up to level 45 mining and 37 smithing, which means I can make steel full helms and steel long swords (among other things). I'd like to be able to get up to level 40 smithing so I can smelt gold, which I can use to make jewelry.

Oh, speaking of jewels, I seem to be like a jewel magnet. I now have two emeralds, two sapphires, and a ruby, all uncut. Not to mention two ring molds and a necklace mold.

The rune pick is pretty good. With iron (and lower-level minerals), it's almost like I just walk up to the rock, hold open my bag, and watch the ore jump in, it's so fast. The only problem is, I can't wield the rune pick because I need level 40 attack to wield rune weapons. I can use the rune pick for mining, but I can't wield it, which means it takes up space in my inventory and cuts down the number of ore in a full load by one. I'll be working to fix this over the next week or so, by leveling up on things.

This afternoon I sat in Jester's and watched MTVu while my brain tried to figure out which of my ears it most wanted to escape through. Among the "highlights" were a news report (played twice) and a special report on the death of the pope. Except they kept calling that one "Death of a Pope," which seems to imply that popes now come in six-packs or something.

Anyway, bedtime for me. Don't forget daylight savings time, everybody! Add one to the hour on your clocks. G'night.

Dock Hunting (MacOS Variety)

2005-04-01T22:59:00.000-06:00

Well, only CS 246 today. We went over the mid-semester exam problems, or at least a few of them. At one point Professor Glass realized he'd made a mistake on one of the problems, so who knows what will come of that.

The rest of the morning I spent trying to find a decent MacOS X dock imitator for KDE. Unfortunately, it seems like there isn't one. The first one I tried was visually glitchy and jumpy. The one I have in now seems decent once you get it configured properly, but it's a graphics/memory hog. Not real bad, but it's noticeable when I do other rough stuff, like play SuperTux. Of course, the version I'm using is a little outdated, but there aren't any Mandrake binaries of the newest version. I can get the source code, but when I compile it there's a complaint about lack of libraries. When I try to install those there's dependency problems, including some files I absolutely cannot find, so...yeah.

On the upside, I upgraded Thunderbird to 1.02 this evening.

This afternoon I poked around a bit on the internet, but I also sent out some e-mails I'd been meaning to write. Later in the afternoon I trekked over to Gellersen and finished two of the three CS 246 labs I'd been putting off. This evening I did my laundry while reading Moby Dick, so that's done.

Oh yes, I still need to write an assistant program to help me time MTVu clips. That shouldn't take too long, though, I can probably do that tomorrow morning.

This evening I played a bit more of RuneScape, which I didn't have a chance to do at all yesterday. I was mining some coal, when Trehk/Horizon came on! That was a pleasant surprise. After situating himself, he came and watched me mine coal while some unidentified female player made...explicit remarks to other coal miners. Ah well. He says it's a bit laggy for him, though.

So, revised lists:

Meetings to attend:
- 4:00 PM Sunday in Blue Light lounge
- 10:00 PM Tuesday at Library Reference Desk

Things to do:
- CS 246 multiplication lab
- CS 158 "add" method lab
- draw up schedule
- write letter to Peter
- watch MTVu *shudder*

Man, if I can get as much done tomorrow as I did today...Anyway, bedtime. G'night.

MacOS Fake and Long Lists

2005-03-31T22:57:00.000-06:00

More stuff for the to-do list.

The first part of CC class today was a meeting with all the Christ College freshmen to go over scheduling for the 2005 Fall semester. Luckily I have a couple of weeks to work on that. The second part I got a reminder to turn in a topic for my Moby Dick research paper. I think I'm going to talk to Professor Olmsted about that tomorrow.

After that was CS 246 lab. Where we got...yep, another lab. That makes a total of a consecutive three that I haven't finished. I worked on the 64-bit multiplication problem a bit, then got fed up with it and moved onto the lab he'd assigned last week, which was error handling. I almost finished it. Didn't even touch the one he gave us this week, though. And the server is still refusing remote connections (I just checked), so I can't work on it from my dorm. Gotta find time to trek over to the computer lab. And it's probably closed on weekends.

So let me see...that's a total of three unfinished assembly labs, one unfinished Java lab, one unsent Java lab, one letter to write, and a schedule to draw up. And I'm not even done for today.

Oh, cool thing. So I'm walking to my CS class and it's a bit windy. I'd mentioned earlier that there are a significant number of seagulls in the area, probably due to the proximity of Lake Michigan. Well, I'm walking along and this seagull flies over. Except he's about ten or fifteen feet off the ground. He turns and heads into the wind, and actually hovers over the path for a few seconds, wings outstretched. Almost completely still. It was...amazing. (Of course, it would be rather ironic if the only thing on its mind was target practice or somebody's Cheetos.)

This afternoon I rather foolishly wasted by poking around a bit on the internet. On the plus side, I did seem to find a rather thorough theme engine for making KDE look like MacOS X. Now I just need to find a good...um...what's that thing at the bottom called? Dock? Tray? Whatever, I need a good one of those. My imitation with KDE's components isn't very good; for some reason it insists on shrinking my icons. I want my glorious 48x48 pixel PNGs, darn it! And full alpha support, too, none of this alpha-removal nonsense!

Oh yes, I also figured out how to make menus have a hint of transparency. For some reason, though, my applications menu has expanded in width to go all the way across the screen. There is absolutely no reason why it should need that much room. I'm hoping a logout or restart will fix it.

After supper with the guys it was time to go to the second CC debate. This one was on whether or not a draft should be instituted for the war in Iraq, with all the details attendant thereunto. Interestingly, there was a lot of talk of the gender question and the feasibility of establishing a female database similar to the one already in place for males. The concluding speaker against the draft asked if we want people like celebrities on the front line. Personally, I wouldn't mind Britney Spears out there getting shot at. If she dies, the world is just that much better. If she lives, maybe then she'd have some factual basis for the "role model" claim.

Anyway, after the debate, my team had our regular meeting. After we went over two speeches (in the course of two hours), we figured out responsibilities before meeting on Sunday. My particular job is to actually watch MTVu for a while and determine the proportionate mixture of content that it has. Shouldn't be too hard, I'll just whip up a program in Python and sit there with my laptop pressing buttons. It can record the times and churn out percentages and the like.

Um...I guess I could dump this here. It's too early to tell, but...

Well, there's this girl in our group, and in my Moby Dick seminar. She was also in my CC classes last semester. Keeping with convention, let's call her K.C. She is...physically rather attractive, which probably automatically places her out of my league in that sense. Suddenly, out of the blue, she's begun talking to me for some reason. We had one short conversation before Tuesday's meeting, and a slightly longer one when we walked back to Lankenau for the meeting this evening. (She doesn't live in Lankenau, but that's where the team meets.) Even in the shorter conversation, though, she said more and expressed more than I've seen her do since...er, well, ever. (Granted, I never saw her outside of class, so that's not saying much.) Anyway, just some random things that happened. I probably won't try to pursue anything with her because (1) she deserves better than me; (2) I probably can't handle such a thing at this point in my life, if ever; and (3) she deserves better than me.

Okay, meetings to attend:
- 4:00 PM Sunday in Blue Light lounge
- 10:00 PM Tuesday at Library Reference Desk

Things to do:
- talk to Moby Dick professor
- CS 246 multiplication lab
- CS 246 error-trapping lab
- CS 246 mystery program lab
- CS 158 send merge sort code
- CS 158 "add" method lab
- draw up schedule
- write letter to Peter
- read Moby Dick reading
- watch MTVu *shudder*

Right. Bedtime. Only one class tomorrow, but it's at 9:05. G'night.

Night Storms and Phone Calls

2005-03-31T08:44:00.000-06:00

Okay, for various reasons I didn't post last night. Turns out this is okay because some events I want to put down occurred after I would have posted anyway, so...here goes.

After breakfast I spent most of the morning reading Moby Dick for CC class. After that I played RuneScape a bit, mining and smelting and smithing. I'm up to about level 34 smithing now, which means I can make steel swords. It takes a while to get the coal for the steel, though. Competition among players for coal is somewhat fierce.

After lunch I went to my only class of the day, CS 158, where I once again...learned nothing. In fact, class started even later than usual by about 15 minutes because the daily schedule had been shifted around to accomodate some big lecture or something. Anyway, after class I was going to use the computer lab to catch up on some assignments, but there was another class in there, so I came back and played more RuneScape instead. That took up the rest of the afternoon.

While I was on RuneScape, though, miveen logged on. So that was nice, I got to talk to her a bit and help her out. Actually walked past her at one point while I was taking a load of coal to the bank in Falador.

This evening I met with two other people on the debate team to go over the first speech. Well, actually, Nichole and Matt pretty much worked it over while I interjected a handful of points and nitpicks. Then we went into the writing center and did it all again, only this time Matt typed it out in the file.

When I came out of the library, a storm was brewing up. Now I should say here that we've been having wonderful spring weather for the past few days, only today was windy. So I guess it's no surprise that a storm blew up, but I had foolishly brought neither a jacket nor an umbrella, so I had to walk back to the dorm in a light rain. Not too bad, though; it got worse after I was indoors.

As it was, I shut down the computer and unplugged it, just to be safe from lightning and potential power surges. So I got out the chessboard and pieces, sat on the bed, and played against myself. I think black won. Anyway, after the storm abated I got back online and amused myself with some random junk I found on the internet. I lost track of time and wound up going to bed at about 11:00.

At about midnight I got a few prank calls. My roommate came back and intercepted the last one. Whoever it was, they knew enough to ask for me by name, so it wasn't just random number dialing...I was targeted specifically. After the fourth one we left the phone off the hook so we could get some sleep. I plugged it back in this morning. Is a little respect too much to ask?

Anyway, I gotta get to class soon. Regular update tonight.

Newsfeed Authentication Fun

2005-03-29T22:32:00.000-06:00

Well, CC 115 class first thing today. Nothing much there. This afternoon was my CS 158 lab, which I completely blew off. I attended, but that's about it. Of course, that means I have to finish (and start) it on my own time, but, eh...

I also finally figured out how to get RssOwl to read the friends-only entries on LiveJournal. The usual LiveJournal RSS feed is located at http://www.livejournal.com/users/lingapp/data/rss (well, for mine). According to LiveJournal, to access the locked entries, you'd go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/lingapp/data/rss?auth=digest. However, that URL will prompt you for your LiveJournal username and password. (Don't bother with that particular URL; I don't have any locked entries.) However, after I told RssOwl to save my username and password, it appended a bunch of hex to the URL. Most likely it's some encoded form of my login info. I'm not going to post it here for obvious reasons, but when I append it to the auth=digest version of the RSS URL, it lets me read the newsfeed without having to input my username and password. So I went through and appended it to all the LiveJournal newsfeed URLs that I follow, with the net result that RssOwl now gathers locked entries for me...at least the ones I have access to.

Miveen, this is all your fault. You locked all your entries.

This afternoon I played RuneScape. I mostly worked on mining and smithing, although I did take a break for a bit and make up about 500 mind runes. Also, the staff shop had air staffs back in stock, so I was able to pick one up. Now I have all four different magic staffs, plus the generic magic staff.

This evening I went to the first CC debate, since attendance of those is mandatory. I'm kinda worried about ours now. After the debates I came back and played RuneScape again, just mining up more iron and smelting it. I finally got up to level thirty smithing, which means I can now smelt and smith steel objects. Well, I can only do steel daggers at the moment, but it's a start. Since I got up my smithing level by smelting lots of iron, I plan to get it up even higher tomorrow by smithing the nearly 200 iron bars I have into things I can sell, such as helmets. That should bring in a good bit of gold.

As I mentioned earlier, if anybody reading this is just signing up for RuneScape, look me up. I go by the name "ahnotahm" and usually play on server world 20. Make sure to let me know what other screenname I know you by. Also, I occasionally have problems with the game where I have to refresh it, and thus log out and back in, so don't be surprised or offended if that happens. I also have to pull that trick if an e-mail comes in, otherwise I don't have the system resources to start up Thunderbird.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. I only have once class tomorrow, starting at 1:00 or thereabouts, but I have a few things I wanna catch up on. G'night.

Visit to Kretzmann

2005-03-28T22:28:00.000-06:00

Whoo. Busy day today.

First off was CS 246 class, where we learned the details of processor caching. The idea is that basically the processor stores pieces of memory in the cache so it can retrieve them faster. Same idea as a browser, but lots different...obviously.

After class I talked with Professor Glass about the research project. I understand a little clearer how to go about the graphics programming now, I think. Then we swapped stupid high school stories and whatnot. After the discussion I went over to the administration building, Kretzmann Hall. I had to fill out a proxy form for next year's housing selection because mandatory debate attendance was conflicting with my assigned appointment. Anyway, after a few questions I got the form filled out okay.

I'd like to say that Kretzmann is a rather interesting building. Besides the five or six foot high Valparaiso seal in wood in there, the view from the front door is wonderful. You walk out and you see the side of the chapel. Not the road side that I usually see, but the grassy side. Two sidewalks leading away lined on one side by (currently leafless) trees. And a nice view across the street of the garden in front of the center for the arts (aka VUCA).

After eating lunch, I had to go to CS 158, where I once again learned nothing. Then it was a little bit of RuneScape before going to CC 115.

This evening I played RuneScape. Worked on mining and metallurgy some more, and a little bit of combat. I was able to buy a mithril pickaxe, as well as an earth staff. I have enough money to buy an air staff, but apparently the shop was out of them today. I'll try again tomorrow.

Anyway, bedtime. CC class is first tomorrow, plus I should really write a letter to Peter. G'night.

Sausage Argument

2005-03-27T22:26:00.000-06:00

Well, church at 8:30 today. That was very interesting. Lots more people than usual, which meant the smaller chapel was a little cramped, but nothing too bad. They were decorating the upper/larger chapel, too. Simply stunning. I wish I'd had my camera.

After church, Dad and I went to Bob Evans for breakfast. I got the Belgian waffle with two sausage patties. That started a small argument over what constitutes sausage exactly, with me claiming it's just the mixture of meats and Dad holding forth that sausage is meat in a particular shape. Thus, I wasn't eating sausage. As a corollary, sausage pizza is not exactly sausage. The thing was settled when I came back and said that I didn't care what type of meat the pizza people called sausage, whether it was or not, just so long as they kept making it the same way because I liked it. That was settled until the end of the meal, at which point I simply observed that I shouldn't have saved my second (sausage) patty until the end because it had cooled during the meal.

Dad drove me back to the dorm, then I gave him some candies for the ride home, and we said goodbye.

This afternoon I played RuneScape. I've taken up mining and metallurgy for a bit. I've worked my way up to the point where I can make iron implements, but I've got a ways to go yet. I've been selling them for adequate sums of money, and I bought a better pick-axe. I should probably get a still better one tomorrow, plus buy those other two magic staffs I want. Then either back to practicing magic, or mining and metallurgy until I can make better armor than that which Aaron gave me (steel).

Anyway, if anybody reading this wants to look me up on RuneScape, my screenname's "ahnotahm" and I usually play on server world 20. Or, if anybody's just joined and wants some help, let me know. (Be sure to tell me what other screenname I know you under if you do that.)

Okay, bedtime. I've got classes starting at 9:05 tomorrow, plus a little work to do before then. G'night.

Terragen Triumphs and RuneScape Ramblings

2005-03-26T22:47:00.000-06:00

Okay, first off I would just like to announce that the Terragen animation is DONE with the rendering phase! Woohoo! I woke up at about 8:00 this morning, looked at the computer, saw that it was at 3000 frames, then slept in a little longer to let it finish. After an hour of having Bink stitch it together and playing SuperTux in Windows (an activity which probably slowed down the movie assembly process), I watched it. Man, it turned out even better than I expected.

I have some post-processing to do before releasing it. Most notable is the removal of "artifacts," or little bits that Terragen didn't render for some reason. There's also the fact that at one point the camera goes a little too high and you can see where the sky stops before meeting the land. Gotta get rid of that, too. Nothing an image editor can't fix, though. After all that, of course, comes the fun part of trying to compress the living daylights out of it so I can post it to my website without getting reprimanded for bandwidth usage. The Bink file currently weighs in at 81 MB with the default quality settings.

Ooh, hold on a sec, just found the RssOwl version 1.1 RPM. Must upgrade...
Woo-hoo, installed, let's fire it up...wow. Spiffy new look and stuff. I'll play with it tomorrow.

Speaking of playing, I played RuneScape most of the day. I wound up getting enough money to buy a fire staff, which is good because I can't make fire runes. Well, I can, except I don't have a fire talisman...or didn't, until about five minutes before I logged off, which is when I wound up buying four of them off a guy for 500 gold. Moron couldn't figure out I only wanted one, not four. Ah well. Anyway, late this morning or early this afternoon I wound up taking the 400 rune essence I'd saved up and making about 200 mind runes, 200 air runes (because by this time I'd worked my air rune ratio up to 2:1), and 100 earth runes. Got to practice magic a lot, lemme tell ya. Used the whole mess up casting earth strike until my earth runes were gone, then water strike until everything else was gone. Now I'm mining more rune essence.

I don't know how much sense that made. If anybody reading this plays RuneScape, or is going to take up playing RuneScape (it's free), let me know. And I can get you started with a few things...

Late this afternoon Dad showed up. He's going to Easter service with me tomorrow. He has to worship here because they're cooking Easter breakfast back home, and he's allergic to the smell of the eggs...I think. I know he's allergic to something in eggs, anyway.

At any rate, he brought me my wooden chess set and some tax forms. I had to sign the tax forms the family accountant had prepared. That wasn't very pleasant, but didn't take too long. I got him to take home the Christmas decorations that I'd had in my closet too long. Heh, Larry and I are gonna have fun with the chess set, playing in the elevator. *grins*

Okay, I think I'd better get to bed. My mind is making random associations; it's telling me that my background-of-the-moment (here) is related to miveen somehow. Must have something to do with her LJ icon; I've certainly never met her.

Right, bedtime. And for the first time in over a week, I can shut off the computer, instead of leaving it to render. Woohoo! Okay, g'night.

Evil Appliances of DOOOOOOM!

2005-03-25T23:33:00.000-06:00

Well, got the Terragen render up to 2450 frames today. Almost five sixths done! Hehehe. I was hoping to have it done in time to show Dad when he comes up to campus for Easter, but I don't think I'll be able to pull it off. More rendering tonight, though.

This morning I got up a little late. Rather then going out in the rain/snow wet mess for breakfast, I figured I'd just stay in and cook some popcorn in the microwave like I do on Saturdays. Except the microwave was missing it's little turntable thing. Y'know, the glass thingy in there that slowly spins your food around? Gone. Also the usual baked-on crud in the bottom, but something that looked like rice soup as well. Still wet. Anyway, after looking for the turntable I reluctantly take a sheet of wax paper and cover the bottom of the microwave. Put my popcorn bag in, set stuff, then watch it cook.

When I pulled it open, though, I realized it was steaming rather a lot. At least, that's what I thought at first because my sense of smell is gone because my nose is still very stuffed up. Then I managed to get a whiff or two and realized it wasn't steam, it was smoke! The blasted messed-up microwave had completely charred the popcorn on one side, and rendered most of it inedible. Because of the amount of smoke coming out I was rather loathe to leave the mess in the trash can where it might set off the fire alarm, so I took it back to my room, closed the door, opened the window, and propped the fan so it blew air over the popcorn bag's mouth and out the window. (I had to close the door because otherwise there'd be a strong breeze coming into the room.) After it cooled I took it downstairs and stuffed it in the overflowing trashcans there.

Y'know, on second thought, I should've just soaked it in the sink. But that would've been a soggy mess. Ah well.

That event having successfully put me off my breakfast, I read the assigned bits of Moby Dick while letting the computer churn away with Terragen. Then it was off to lunch, where I had the foresight to buy a bagel for tomorrow's breakfast.

This afternoon I played RuneScape a bit. The highlight, though, was the Good Friday service at 3:00. That was amazing. Or I guess "humbling" would be a better word, dunno. Nothing as deep as a Tenebrae service (which I've never attended), but still just a quiet awe. We didn't seem to be singing with any instrumentation, though, which was kind of odd for me.

This evening I did my laundry and had various arguments with the machinery. Things washed okay, but the dryer and I clearly had varying ideas of "dry." Then the second time I tried to use it, it ate my first quarter and spit back an "Err" message while making a continuous beeping noise. I eventually had to unplug it, then plug it back in. Of course, it didn't remember that I'd already paid a quarter, so I wound up paying $1.00 for that load instead of $0.75. Stupid machine.

I tried to learn some OpenGL programming in C while I was down there, but I didn't make much headway picking up anything useful. Some of it's rather hard to understand.

Speaking of uncooperative stuff, why does BinkPlayer refuse to play my Terragen animation-in-progress when I'm in Linux? Granted, it has to translate through a different filesystem, and it's a different program, but it should still work. Instead, the sound cuts out. Never noticed this in Gnome, but then I've never tried to play that particular movie in Gnome. Huh. Still works with my converted Episode III trailer, though. Odd.

Anyway, time for me to get to bed. G'night.

Classes and RuneScape Craziness

2005-03-24T23:26:00.000-06:00

First off, the Terragen render is now over two thirds of the way done at 2031 frames (out of 3030). I'm wondering if I can get it done by the end of the week. Probably not...

This morning was CC class, of course. Then I was back here for a bit of poking at the internet and whatnot before heading out again to CS 246. Didn't get much done there, unfortunately, spent too much time talking with some of the guys from my class. Eventually devolved into a killer Furby discussion after I showed them the site I linked to in yesterday's entry. Unfortunately, the server is still refusing remote connections (or even pings), so I'll have to finish up my lab "in person." And tomorrow we have off for Good Friday.

This afternoon I played RuneScape a bit. After supper I prepped and sent my CS 158 homework. Good riddance to that, it was basically just a bunch of copying and pasting...very little real programming involved.

After I did that I got back on RuneScape, messing around a bit. Then Larry and Aaron and I went to Jester's so they could eat supper; I just bought a cookie and kept them company. Then it was back to RuneScape.

I'm doing pretty well in there. I'm up to level 31 or 32 combat, which marginally beats out Larry. I've spent nearly all of today's time on there killing goblins and collecting the stuff they leave behind. When I wasn't killing goblins I was practicing making runes. Also, I bought a water staff, which means I don't need any water runes to cast spells as long as I'm wielding it. I think I'll focus less on getting a higher combat level and more on making runes and casting spells next time I'm on. Unfortunately, my bank account is getting full, which means I have to be careful how I store things. Maybe I can get rid of the oak logs and other things I'm holding for no apparent purpose.

Still stuffed up and coughing. Luckily nothing's causing me pain anymore, unless you count the fact that my nose is dry or that I can't breathe through it.

Anyway, I'm just rambling now. I've got to set up my Terragen render and then knock off for the night; it's really late for me to be up. G'night.

Furby Research

2005-03-23T22:54:00.000-06:00

Terragen render got to 1890 frames today, but it's back up doing big chunks of sky again. And in all fairness I let it run nearly all morning, so...yeah.

This morning I read Moby Dick for Thursday while letting the Terragen rendering run. As I said, it's got up and is rendering lots of sky again. I think it may be doing that for a while to come yet, which means longer rendering time per frame.

After lunch I attended my only class today, CS 158. Then I came back to the dorm and worked on my CS 246 lab a bit. Unfortunately the server dropped my connection while I was working. I'd saved, of course, but the server's been refusing connections (or even pings) ever since. This seems to happen a lot, maybe they take it down for maintenance or something?

After that I procrastinated a bit on the 'net, reading about Furby guts and looking up to see what's technically possible to hack on those things. Not much, it turns out. The microprocessors are stuck under some kinda black blob, like epoxy or something. Still, people have done some...rather odd things with them. Not to mention the gut-wrenchingly funny commentary provided in some of the how-I-did-this guides. Such as this one. "Squirrels love cogs." XD (Note: contains explicit images of cute, furry gadgets being dissected.)

After supper I did my CS 158 homework, which unfortunately seemed to be a big copy-and-paste job. After that I played a bit of Runescape. Didn't do much, just killed a lot of bears and goblins trying to level-up. Takes a lot of doing.

Still stuffed up and coughing, but nothing's hurting anymore. Definitely getting better.

Okay, bedtime. Past bedtime, actually. G'night.

Got a Screw Loose

2005-03-22T22:58:00.000-06:00

Terragen animation is now up to 1645 frames. Over halfway done!

We had a test in CS 158 today. Luckily it was all filling in bits of code that he'd blanked out, and wasn't too hard at that. The only thing I'm worried about is him being able to read my handwriting. He seemed to think that we could all write in size ten Courier New or something.

Sent off a long e-mail to Mom and Dad today. Asked Dad to bring the chessboard, although I didn't mention what it would be for. Told them I was sick, too.

In the process of writing the e-mail I discovered a black, rather fair-sized screw on the carpet underneath my desk. So, thinking something's falling apart, I crawl under there with a flashlight and look around. All the appropriate holes seem to have screws, or seem to have been drilled but never had screws put into them in the first place. Had to get a mirror to check a few of the holes, such as the one against the back wall. No clue where it came from, so it probably isn't terribly important. We'll see.

Played RuneScape a bit more this afternoon and this evening. During the evening the guys and I went to someplace just south of Linwood House (which is itself south of Mueller Hall, home of Christ College) for "wings." Apparently it's chicken wings in spicy barbecue sauce. I couldn't eat them and wound up bringing the mess home in a box. I don't know whether I'm going to try to force them on Larry or simply throw them away.

Still sick, unfortunately, but things are looking up. My voice seems to be returning, and it no longer hurts to swallow. Unfortunately, my nose feels like it's filled with airtight concrete, which means that swallowing anything, while no longer painful, is still difficult because of the changes in air flow. (Not to mention the hard-to-breathe issues associated with a blocked nose.)

Anyway, bedtime for me. G'night.

Programming Miscellany

2005-03-21T22:23:00.000-06:00

Got the Terragen render up to 1485 frames during the night. Almost halfway done, yay! Didn't do any today, though.

Showed the improved program to Professor Glass, the one that formats the HTML output and highlights the words. He seemed very pleased, but now he wants me to work on the graphics end of things. That's gonna be tricky.

Talked to Professor Marion about the homework assignment for CS 158. I think I get what he's after now.

Didn't do much else, as my day was fairly spread out among classes now that CC is meeting later this afternoon on Mondays (3:05). So most of my time was between-classes time which I spent either eating or just touching base with the computer (e.g. mail checking, newsfeed checking, etc.).

Still sick. I'm losing my voice now, it seems. So much for being on the upswing. Coughing a lot, too, and sometimes it's hard for me to get my breath—particularly when climbing the stairs to get to the fifth floor. Might start taking the elevator more, at least until this clears up.

Ah yes, played a bit of RuneScape this evening. Not much to tell there, though.

Gotta e-mail Mom and Dad yet. I'll have to remember to do that tomorrow.

Okay, bedtime. G'night.

Tired Day

2005-03-20T22:06:00.000-06:00

Well, got the Terragen animation up to 1180 frames over night, then let it run while I was at church to get up to 1271 frames.

Today was Palm Sunday. I have to confess I didn't anticipated the change in procedure. The morning service was held upstairs (ground level) in the larger chapel. Got my palm blade tacked up on the bulletin board. It's already curled up, must be pretty dry in here.

We've got seagulls flying around. They look kinda cool in flight, and they have a distinctive call. Pazuzu, Korora, you guys want me to see if I can snap some pics?

Still not feeling too good, but I think it's gonna upswing soon. First sign always seems to be the soreness on my nose from too many tissues and whatnot. It's kinda painful to swallow, though.

This afternoon and this evening I mostly played RuneScape. Seems to be a bit more fun now. I went after a bunch of chickens and gathered about 1000 feathers for Aaron. In return he gave me a full set of steel armor (and a sword), plus a wizard costume he picked up from somewhere. As it is, I wander around in the wizard costume unless I go up against something more intimidating, in which case the armor goes on.

Anyway, time to be getting ready for bed. Remember, according to my church bulletin bloopers calendar, "Today is the fifth Sunday of Lint." G'night.

KDE and Runescape

2005-03-19T22:14:00.000-06:00

Well, first off, the Terragen rendering got up to 930 frames, which is over double what it had before. Although, in all fairness, I did stop it a bit later than usual. Of course, I will set it to work again tonight.

Things are getting a little worse, physically speaking. Still feverish/achy with a runny nose thinking of joining the fray. Not fun. Also, my throat is still scratchy.

Didn't get anything productive done today, although I do have about three or four things to do for my various classes. One of them I want to talk to the professor about, so that'll have to wait.

Just for kicks I switched over to KDE (from Gnome) today. I've set it up more or less like I've had Gnome. I think I'm gonna work with KDE for a while, seems interesting. I was able to work up a MacOS X dock thing in KDE. Well, I had something similar in Gnome, but the thing had handles stuck on the end that I couldn't get rid of. No handles hear, but KDE insists on shrinking my wonderful 48x48 icons on the thing. Gonna have to see if I can fix that.

Ah yes, I located about 700 MB of junk that I wasn't using and deleted it. So now I have a lot more room on my Linux partition. About 2.2 GB instead of 1.5 GB. Gives me a bit more breathing room.

This evening I got on some free MMORPG called "Runescape" that the guys are playing. I played it a bit, but I don't think it's for me. Doesn't seem to be very entertaining, just basically performing sets of repetitive tasks in order to increase certain descriptive numbers.

Right, bedtime. Sorry about the short entry, but I guess I didn't do much today.

Many Renders

2005-03-18T21:59:00.000-06:00

Woohoo! The Terragen render got up to frame 276 before I stopped it this morning. I also did some rendering during the day when I wasn't using the computer and got it up to about 457 frames, which is where it stands now. Gonna reboot again and run it tonight as well. So, about 15% done at the moment.

This morning I went to my one class, which was CS 246. Not much to say there. The rest of the morning (and an early part of the afternoon) I spent reading Moby Dick while the computer worked on the rendering.

Ah yes, for the curious, I've changed my LiveJournal icon, just for kicks. It's a PNG image, so you should see some transparency, unless you use Internet ~~Deplorer~~ Explorer. It's a Mayan hieroglyph, read "itz'at." It means "sage" or "artist." Given that sages are usually associated with writing, and the Mayans developed the most graphically-rich writing system in known history, it's not surprising that the word for "sage" and "artist" would be the same. Anyway, don't know if it's permanent or not.

I think I'm coming down with a bit of a cold or fever or allergy attack or something. Not fun. As long as I don't throw up, though, I'm not sick. Heh.

Weather has been unusually warm. It got up almost to sixty degrees Farenheit today. Hopefully it'll continue.

This evening I did my laundry while reading more of Moby Dick and letting my computer churn away.

Spring is just days away, which means that animals of all kinds are (or will be) engaged in...activities promoting the continuation of their species. And when I say all kinds, I include humans. Mildly irritating, like Valentine's Day only without the official holiday and its various trappings. And somewhat prolonged. Hey, maybe I can hope I do have a fever and then cough on people who are irritating me.

Okay, I think my mind's wandering. Time to wrap this up, activate the rendering process, and go to bed. G'night.

Wallpapers and Finished Animation

2005-03-17T21:46:00.000-06:00

Okay, first off, what is up with BlogSpot? The entry count on my BlogSpot "Dashboard" page continues to be stuck at sixty-seven entries. According to LiveJournal, I have over three times that many. And it's been stuck at sixty-seven for months; my sixty-seventh entry was back in the 30th of October. Ah well.

Anyway, busy day today. CC 115 class this morning, then CS 246 lab. This one was on adding and multiplying 64-bit numbers. Of course, the system uses 32-bit registers, so it's tricky. I got the addition done by the time class was over, but I need to do the multiplication next.

This afternoon I fiddled around a bit more with the Terragen animation, and actually finished plotting it out! So now all I have to do is render it. I timed the rendering while I took a shower and whatnot, and it did the first 26 or 27 frames in an hour. Since there's 3,030 Terragen frames to render, that means roughly 100-120 hours of rendering time, worst-case scenario. That's gonna be rough. I'm gonna start it tonight after I finish writing this.

I also went online this evening and grabbed a few more wallpapers. Tossed them into the cycler as well. But I realized that if I ever start up my computer without the external drive plugged in, the system won't be able to find the wallpapers. So I tested to see how it would react...not good. So I spent about 45 minutes rigging my login script. What happens now is I have two wallpaper lists. One for the full list, the second one that just points to a single wallpaper on my internal hard drive. When I log in, the startup script checks to see if the external hard drive is connected and creates a symbolic link to the appropriate list. This link is then utilized by the wallpaper cycler. (A symbolic link is a file pointer. It works similar to a Windows shortcut, but fools the entire file system instead of just the user.)

Debate team meeting this evening. Nothing with K.D. again. I think I can stop worrying about that now, just an attack of paranoia.

Um...just rambling now. Gonna reboot and start rendering, then go to bed. G'night.

Image Collection

2005-03-16T22:46:00.000-06:00

Well, today was rather lazy. Only one class today, CS 158. As usual, it was rather boring.

This morning I worked on the merge sort lab. Finally figured out what was wrong and got it finished, luckily. I think the professor wants us to turn it in; I'll have to remember to do that.

In order to save a few megabytes, I shuffled the Digital Blasphemy wallpapers I'd been collecting onto my external hard drive and off of my internal one. Same with the fractals and the other miscellaneous images I'd been collecting. Stuffed them all into their appropriate folders, then did up a text file with the paths to basically every wallpaper that I own. That text file is now the list for the wallpaper cycler, so I have quite a lot of wallpapers set up for it. Changes every five minutes. Only drawback is that it negates the power-save feature of the external hard drive, forcing it to read-write a bit every five minutes. Ah well.

After that I went on a bit of a binge. I discovered Digital Blasphemy has a users' gallery, with links to other artists' sites. So I visited one or two of those and grabbed a bunch of images from them as well, sticking them in the cycler.

After lunch I had class, then came back and messed around trying to get Linux to talk to my TI-83+ graphing calculator. Didn't succeed, unfortunately, but I came closer than my last attempt. Seems the thing wants me to recompile the kernel or something. No thanks.

This evening I worked a bit on the Terragen animation. Got almost a whole minute done, by the looks of it. I also did the end sequence text. Should be interesting. Still have 31 seconds to plot out, though. Then comes the long, hard haul of rendering the whole mess. I think I'll probably let it run during the nights, when I'm sleeping. No telling how long it'll take, though.

Larry and I have talked a couple of times today. Once just after lunch, we were sitting and watching Star Trek in the lounge (before I had to go to class). He was also in this evening. A couple times now he's said something about "not understanding women." I hope he's not hinting for advice, because I don't have any. Blood from a turnip. Not that I'm saying women are a problem, mind, it's just that "I don't understand women" seems to be a code phrase for "I don't understand amorous relationships." And that's quicksand for me.

Anyway, I'm just rambling now, so g'night.

EgyptOS and Terragen

2005-03-15T22:19:00.000-06:00

Heh. Up-and-down day today.

I woke up this morning to the realization that I hadn't bought my copy of Moby Dick for CC class, which started today. The bookstore opened at 9:00, and class started at 9:05, so I didn't have it for class. That's okay, though, because we didn't need it much. The professor talked mostly about the general historical context and a few other things. He seems pretty cool, or at least funny. At one point when he went off on a bit of a tangent, for example, he was talking about a roulette wheel. With the appropriate gestures, he said, "...and spun the wheel, bpbpbpbpbpbp..." Yes, he actually made that noise with his lips. And he's this old guy, too, so it's kinda funny. (Not old senile-looking, just old). I got the book after class, though.

CS was rather boring, though we had a lab. Didn't quite get it working, though. I'll have to work on it a bit tomorrow morning. Same with the actual assignment.

Speaking of tomorrow, I think I only have one class. Cool.

This afternoon I just fiddled with some stuff in Linux. Tried to upgrade to The GIMP version 2.2.4, but wasn't able to do so.

Oh yes, you remember the...wait, probably not. Anyway, for Christmas I got this thing that looks like a CD case, but instead of holding CD's it holds these flat pens. Anyway, this afternoon I printed out a label to insert in the CD case that has a scarab on it and says "EgyptOS." I also cut out a bit of white paper and stuck it in the back, so now you can't tell what it contains without opening it. Then, under the plastic holder for the pen, I put my Knoppix 3.7 CD. So it's a double deception CD case. You think it has a CD containing the fictional "EgyptOS" until you open it, there's pens. But under the pens is a CD for Knoppix. It feels a little thick, though, but it's still cool. Hehe, "EgyptOS." Sounds like "'e gypped us."

This evening I went in and worked on my Terragen animation some more. I added in the river-following section (or at least the first one), bringing it up to a total of...1:59. Which is 1785 frames. Wow. Still lots to go, though.

Ah yes, update in the AIM terms-of-service scandal, here.

Anyway, I think that's it for today. Only one class tomorrow. G'night.

Search Formatting

2005-03-14T22:16:00.000-06:00

Happy Pi Day!

Well, busy day today. First up was CS 246. Immediately after that I met with professor Glass to tell him I'd succeeded in making the search program output its results as HTML files, despite the minor glitches (e.g. duplicating one result). CC class was cancelled because of the weird thing going on with that, which meant I got to eat lunch at a normal hour. Then CS 158 where we re-re-re-reviewed the sorting algorithms. Bored.

Ah yes, I got some nacho chips after lunch. I snacked on those a bit mid-afternoon, trying to put a dent in the salsa. I'll have some more tomorrow, I think.

This afternoon and this evening I spent mostly working on the research program. I've optimized it a bit so it won't (or at least shouldn't) use a lot of memory. Instead of holding the document in memory, it dumps that and pulls any necessary document data (like for making the HTML files) from the files themselves on a need-to-know basis. Also, the HTML files now highlight the search terms, and if there's seven or less, it does it in multiple colors. It also preserves the original spacing from the files, which is good because they sometimes contain tables. I think I could probably do away with some of the other cache files, too.

Curiousity got the best of me and I opened the "Easter bag" Mom had prepared for me. Turns out there's a bunch of tissue-paper-wrapped bundles in there, so I think I'll open one a day or something like that. Anyway, I opened one and was rather startled to find a new watch inside.

See, the watch I'm currently using has a broken wristband. It broke sometime in September or October, I think. Other than that, though, it's fully functional, so I haven't bothered to replace it. I just carry it around in my pocket. No biggie. So...why did they need to buy me a new one? And more importantly, why is this worrisome to me? I dunno. I suppose I should check tomorrow and see if it does all the other stuff my old watch does, like show the date and maintain two separate clocks. (That's a handy function for switching time zones between home and college...just hold down the button, and it switches.)

Ah yes, for supper I ate with Larry and Aaron and the guys. Good times.

Okay, time for bed. CC class tomorrow for sure, plus CS 158 sleeping. I mean lab. G'night.

Offering Blooper and Computer Fun

2005-03-13T22:21:00.000-06:00

Whew. Well, I'm back at college safe and sound. But let me start from the beginning.

Church this morning. I had to substitute for my brother for acolyte since he's doing it on the next two sundays (including Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday). Anyway, nothing notable except for Pastor trying to put down the collection. See, we had the usual four collection plates, but they also brought up the LWML mites box, which is about the size of...um, four shoeboxes. So pastor is holding this whole mess (four plates plus box), then goes over and tries to put it down on the side pedestal, which is slightly higher than the seat of your average chair. His fingers slip on the plates as he's putting this stuff down and a few coins and such scatter on the floor. So he squats down to pick them up. At this point the mites box comes loose and falls on the back of his head. So I grab the mites box and hold it on top of the plates while he picks things up and rearranges the plates and box so they're resting side by side. All while I'm trying to continue to sing the hymn. It was...rather amusing, unfortunately. Ah well.

After church we had Papa John's pizza for lunch. Unfortunately we found out that they don't open until noon on Sundays, although apparently they'll take call-in orders a little earlier than that. Anyway, got our lunch, I finished packing, and we headed out.

After dropping my stuff off in the dorm we all went to Panera and got some snacks (or supper in my case), then drove back here and dropped me off. I wound up with two bagels and a lemonade, though I didn't save the lemonade for supper. Got everything unpacked and I'm all settled in now.

Anyway, Larry comes by about 45 minutes later, looking for someone to go eat supper with him. I'd eaten, but I figured I'd go with him anyway and grab something light. So him, me, and Andrew (another Tri-Lambda member) went down to Jester's and had a nice chat.

Among the highlights of the evening was a girl named Nicole calling me, asking me to come over and take a look at her computer in Brandt. Apparently it wasn't responding to the recovery disk, but I'm not sure what the problem was because when she met me at the entrance to let me in, she said that it started working just after she'd called me. So I never even entered the building. Problem solved.

I worked a bit with Perl too. I'm trying to use it to work on that thunderstorm sounds project I'd thought up a while ago. As you may recall, I'd grabbed some rain sounds from Uru and ran the pitch down a bunch so it sounded different. Then I'd located all the thunder sounds. The idea is to write a program (or script or whatever) that does two things simultaneously: it runs the rain sound in a loop, while at random intervals injects the thunderstorm clips. I've got it set up so it runs the rain sound once, then after a random interval that can be up to nine seconds long it plays a randomly selected thunder clip, but I can't make it loop. For one thing, I don't know any looping structures (yet), which would be necessary for repeating the thunder selection process, but I have no idea how to tell the computer to detect when the rain sound has stopped and restart it. Maybe I could repeat the clip, then cut it off at an even interval of, say, ten seconds, then have the program respond to the passing of time. Not the best idea, though, if you ask me. Ah, fun...

Anyway, I'm just rambling. Class tomorrow, so g'night.

Terragen River

2005-03-12T21:26:00.000-06:00

Not much today. This morning I helped clean the bathroom, then watched I, Robot again on my computer before we had to return it.

After some canned ravioli for lunch, I played the Age of Mythology demo in the afternoon. That took up most of the afternoon, the rest beeing spent on the Terragen animation.

I fiddled around with the river a bit. Well, not the river precisely, more like the terrain immediately surrounding it. Anyway, I tried to add in a little sand-like coloration so the rock layers don't look odd, then I added a bit of wet sand just at the water's edge. Cut back the vegetation a bit, and it looks pretty good. This is all after a lot of trial and error, of course, particularly with the colors.

Anyway, bedtime. Church tomorrow, then back to college. G'night.

Terragen and Tutorials

2005-03-09T21:42:00.000-06:00

Well, the test animation finally finished rendering some time last night, after over 31 hours of working. it came out pretty well, so I don't think I'll be doing any more test animations, just still frames.

The river was kinda hard to see, though, so I darkened the color and foamed it up a bit. I also spent the day playing with some of the tutorials I'd gotten off the internet, especially the planetary ones. I wound up saving a near-planet render (where most of the atmosphere is beneath you and the curvature is just barely visible), a far-planet render, where more than half of the planet is visible, and some sea rocks. Unfortunately, Terragen can't seem to handle water when you curve a terrain around too much (like for a near-whole planet). I tried adding it in and it does some weird stuff. I don't know how to explain it.

Other than Terragen, nothing much else of interest today. I'm tired, so g'night.

Growing Animation

2005-03-07T21:39:00.000-06:00

Lazy day today, more or less. I printed out a copy of my résumé and cover letter, addressed specifically to Orion.

I fiddled with the animationg thing a bit, too. It's up to 1,260 frames, 1,365 total. Which is about...um...1:31. I've left the computer on to try to finish rendering them overnight, dunno how far it'll get. If it turns out okay this will probably be the last render.

Ah yes, went poking among my computer books this afternoon and remembered I had one on CGI and Perl. I'd picked it up at a library book sale, and it was published in 1996, but I think it'll be useful. If nothing else it should be a nice starting point for learning Perl. I read it a bit this afternoon while keeping an eye on my rendering.

Anyway, bedtime. G'night.

Gift Shopping

2005-03-05T21:46:00.000-06:00

Busy day today. This morning we all went up to Fort Wayne to do some shopping because we'll be celebrating Aunt's birthday tomorrow. After hitting a couple of stores, we all wound up getting her something from Bed Bath & Beyond (though, oddly, we spent most of our time looking in the kitchen supplies, an area totally unrelated to the store's name). I got her a couple of floral rubber mats that seemed to go well on top of the small folding table Mom and Dad got her.

We hit a few other stores on the way back home. Barnes & Noble was interesting, though I didn't buy anything. Once again I am reminded of how hideously expensive computer books are.

Sitting in the car with Brother while Mom and Dad made a quick errand was fun. He was happy to tell me that he didn't like me being home. And a little later when I told him to stop hitting me with the umbrella, he casually told me that if he'd really been hitting me he'd have broken my leg. Remember, this is a high school freshman we're talking about. Fifteen years old. I've noticed he's started using more uncouth four-letter words, though not when Mom and Dad are around. Starting to worry me.

Anyway, this afternoon I mucked about with Terragen and Terranim, working on my project. I got the first forty or fifty seconds (beyond the title screen) mapped out. The whole thing is 216 seconds long...or rather, will be. I ran some test renders this evening while we ate supper and watched Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Not good. Quality all the way up to maximum on everything...and only got through 133 frames out of the assigned 690. And the whole thing's gonna be over 3000...hoo boy. It's gonna take days to render. Hopefully I'll find some way of breaking it into 100-frame blocks or something.

Anyway, bedtime. Church tomorrow. G'night.

Job Researching

2005-03-03T21:53:00.000-06:00

Well, productive day today. I touched up my résumé and cover letter as Dad had suggested.

Mom and I spent the morning at the library. I poked through some books looking for jobs. Found a few interesting ones that I'll have to follow up on. Hmm, what if I were to get an internship at Microsoft? Think they'd let me in if they knew I liked Linux? Heheheh.

This evening I messed around with Terragen and The GIMP. I worked out a title screen for that canyon project, so that's underway. I'll need to start putting together some animation sequences now, I think.

Ah yes, there's a dog running loose in the neighborhood, it seems. According to Mom it belongs to one of the neighbors, but they can't be bothered to tie it up. Apparently it left a...present on our lawn once, and judging by the tracks in the snow it prowls around our house occasionally. This morning Mom and I even saw what appeared to be a crippled rabbit moving around in an injured fashion. We don't know where the rabbit went, though; it was gone after we got back from the library.

Anyway, bedtime. Might get on the 'net tomorrow, dunno. G'night.

Shirked Research

2005-03-02T21:47:00.000-06:00

Well, not much today. I got on the internet again and put up my back-entry on my blog. I also tried to research summer programs on the National Science Foundation website, but that turned up nothing and was rather difficult to slog through anyway, so I researched SuperTux instead.

I also got a few packages I'd needed for some software installation. Not all of them installed though, so I've made a note of the new requirements, which I'll try to fulfill next time I connect.

Still haven't been able to work out how to make the modem work in Linux yet. I thought I'd gotten a package to help, but apparently it isn't right. Or maybe the computer just needs to reboot, I dunno. I'll try again tomorrow.

I also found out that .wmv files can be piped directly into the arts sound daemon, apparently. Obviously you don't get any visuals from a sound daemon, but if I can get it to redirect the speaker output to, say, an MP3 file, it'd provide an excellent way to strip sound from .wmv files.

Okay, bedtime. G'night.

Texts and Searching

2005-03-01T21:37:00.001-06:00

Well, not much today. I found and updated the files for my résumé and cover letter. Dad looked them over this evening and made a few suggestions.

I worked on the research project a bit, too. Now it outputs the top ten results into an HTML file with hyperlinks to other HTML files containing the full—and formatted—text of the section in question. It isn't really necessary to do this since it's all going to be graphical anyway, but it's certainly helpful for testing the code. I can't figure out why the code to calculate the top ten keeps glitching, though. It keeps giving me a duplicate on one entry, so it's more like the top nine. Ah well.

Oh yes, I'm finally getting off my lazy rear and taking another look at getting the modem working in Linux. Tricky-looking stuff, that. Hopefully I'll be able to figure it out, though.

Okay, enough rambling. G'night.

Hardware and Yearbook

2005-02-27T09:32:00.000-06:00

First off, church this morning. No communion, though. And almost everyone in the congregation was missing a hymn insert, too. And in Bible class we discussed the recent decision to close the church school. It wasn't the main topic/lesson, but it seemed to be on everybody's minds.

This afternoon I worked with the old family computer. I took off the case and took out the CD drive and hard drive, then put in the bigger 17 GB hard drive and replaced the CD drive. Closed it all up, then checked the BIOS before installing Mandrake Linux. Net result, we now have a 17 GB all-Linux system. Seems to run better, too. And I took care of the hardware stuff on my own! Cool, eh? Well, Dad had to help me find the screwdrivers and the hard drive, but I took care of everything.

Hmm, I wonder if I should try networking it to my laptop via the crossover cable? And I should probably configure the printer...

Looked at my yearbook some more, too. Boy is that thing a joke. For example, at one point the page numbers go:
...54, 55, 58, 59, 58, 59, 60, 61,...
Yeah. That bad. Not to mention all the attention paid to athletics and whatnot, then the Top 25 photo crammed in on one of the last few pages. And they didn't even bother to list the names of the National Honors Society members. Or the photo of the two guys showing "school spirit" by dressing up in cheerleader skirts. (Feel free to gouge out your mind's eye at this point.) Or the wasted space devoted to instructions on how to jump in a pile of leaves. *sigh* The joy of high school.

Anyway, I'm just rambling and it's rather late. G'night.

Addendum: Looking at my yearbook again, I found out that we all had a wonderful "gradation."

Coming Home

2005-02-26T21:23:00.000-06:00

Well, I got home safely.

After Mom and Dad picked me up, we all went over to Panera for breakfast/lunch. Then the 2-hour drive home. Came home to find—among other things—my high school senior year book (03-04). Boy was that thing ever late.

I set up my computer and poked around a bit. Just glad to be home for break. I showed the Hitchhiker's trailers to Dad and Brother, both of whom got a kick out of it.

Ah yes, it seems that the old family computer has accelerated its decline. We're going to tray making it all Linux sometime this week.

Oh, and more bad news at church. Turns out that just this past Monday the powers that be voted to close the school, thus ending a long, graceful arc downwards...fiscally speaking. Mom says there are a lot of people who are deeply hacked off about this, and to keep an eye open because tomorrow is the first Sunday since that decision. Ah, what a wonderful, loving Christian church.

I wish I could get Professor Wangerin down here to preach. He's professor of theology at Valparaiso and an awesome preacher. Ah well.

Okay, bedtime. G'night.

Spring Break and Elevator Gag

2005-02-25T23:55:00.000-06:00

Whoo. Long day.

First off, I went on a bit of an upgrade spree this morning. I upgraded Firefox to 1.0.1, as mentioned in my previous post. It's a good thing I'd gotten it last night when RSS Owl notified me, because I tried to re-download it this morning and the Mozilla server was slowed to a crawl...half of regular dial-up speed. Ugh. Anyway, then Gaim notifies me that an upgrade's possible, so I download and install that. And it turns out RSS Owl has been bumped up to 1.0.2 now, so I upgraded to that. This time I'm certain it's upgraded because the version information the program gives me says 1.0.2 and it's stopped trying to notify me of potential upgrades. So that's one minor nuisance gone.

Anyway, CS 246 class and CC class today. In CS 246 we learned about memory and how that's laid out logistically. The two types of RAM we learned about were SRAM and DRAM. DRAM is cheaper but slower. Usually computers use a mixture; DRAM is the stuff that gets advertised. For example, my laptop has 512 MB RAM. That's DRAM. SRAM is more of a mini-RAM, a cache for the data that is undergoing processing at that point in time. The weird thing is, the SRAM bit-holder circuit seems to be based off a feedback loop. No idea how that works. Well, I mean, I understand how to use it, and I can even draw the logic circuit, but I don't get it. Ah well.

Professor Glass and I hurriedly submitted an abstract for the research project today. Turns out it was due today and he forgot about it. It's not going anywhere big, though, just for an exhibition day on campus in April. I just have to stand around a poster for a few hours looking intelligent.

I edited my essay this afternoon, then ran it over to the professor's door box at about 4:30. (It was due at 5:00, you may remember.) I don't think it's very good, but at least it's off my mind.

Ah yes. Tomorrow at noon they kick us out of the dorms. I'll be having two weeks off for spring break, which means that I'll be going home to an intermittent dial-up connection. I'm still open to comments and e-mails and the like, it's just that I may not respond for a few days because my parents limit the times I can connect to the internet. Comments and posts and e-mails and whatnot are still welcome, though. I'll be sure to catch up once I get back to the dorm.

Anyway, the dorm has been rather rapidly deserted by everybody leaving this afternoon to go home for break. I'm a little odd in that I'm leaving tomorrow, but oh well.

Larry and I went and ate supper at Jester's. Well, actually, we went over to Brandt hall first where he got a key so he could stay on campus over break. (He can do that because he lives so far away.) Then we went over to Jester's at the union. We passed K.D. with a group, but luckily nothing transpired. K.D., if I remember correctly, lives in Brandt. Larry doesn't know about K.D., though when he said we had to go over to Brandt before supper I was rather startled, thinking that...but that's just me being paranoid and spinning conspiracy theories.

This evening I packed up a bit, then Larry and I got bored. So, we took the elevator down to the basement and moved in a 3x3 foot table. (For the record, the elevator's only about 7.5 feet by 4.5 feet, doors at either end.) We also brought in a couple of chairs, then we took the elevator back up to fifth floor where I grabbed a sheaf of papers and my laptop. Then we sat there and waited for people to get on, asking them if they had an appointment. One girl seemed to take it in stride, but the other two (who in all fairness had a lot of baggage) called us every four-letter name in the book. After that we decided to put the stuff back. We'll try again on normal days when people aren't moving baggage. Hopefully we'll be able to get ahold of a card table as well. And maybe some bagels and/or coffee...heheh. We'll definitely need a smaller table, though.

Heh. Larry had a little bit of fun as well, since he was sitting by the elevator buttons. At one point he ran the elevator down to first floor, waited for the doors to open, then yelled something like "Have a nice day!" before hitting the door-close button and running the elevator back up to fifth floor. I wouldn't be surprised if they called in a technician to look at it over break.

Okay, now I'm just rambling. Gotta go to bed, it's way past my bedtime and I'll need to be ready to go by about 10:00 tomorrow, my time. That's GMT -6:00, if anybody needs to know. Right, g'night.

Resolving the Signs

2005-02-25T08:12:00.000-06:00

Quickie update this morning.

First off, I forgot to mention the signs. A couple of people came around "advertising" the thing in the lounge. They said it was a sex ed session. Larry and I (who had been talking at the time) registered our displeasure with the wording of the posters.

Also, I upgraded to Firefox 1.0.1 without any trouble. Kept all my settings and everything. Good fox.

Essay Improvements and Debate

2005-02-24T22:19:00.000-06:00

Woof. Well, CC class and CS 246 lab today. I'd forgotten we were having our mid-semster exam in CS 246, so no actual lab. Ah well. I think I did pretty well on it. It was open book/notes/calculator, so not too hard. We just had to cite the sources we used. So I went mostly by brains.

Ah yes, interesting thing. Before class, I joked that the test wouldn't be too hard just so long as there weren't essay questions. Came up with the slightly sarcastic example of Professor Glass asking for the history of the MIPS processor. Anyway, just to be safe, I looked up MIPS on Wikipedia just before class. There were a couple of bizarre suggestions on the disambiguation page, but what was really interesting was that the article said MIPS chips are used in—among other things—Cisco routers. And we have a Cisco router on fifth floor here in the dorm. Heh. Veeerrrry iiiiiinteresting. However, I don't know how to instruct the processor itself, only the simulator.

Ah yes, I took my essay in for evaluation this afternoon. At least it was a full draft this time. It wasn't as bad as before, but she was still heavy with the pen. Like I said, though, I should be able to fix it up a lot easier—I won't have to backspace over everything, for starters. I'll probably be able to pull it off tomorrow if I keep my nose down.

Oh, and debate team meeting this evening. We were divided into three subgroups to work on various angles over break. I wound up in the group with K.D. At least things will stick to e-mail.

Speaking of e-mail, I set up a mailing list this evening for the debate team. I dropped a line to our team captain including instructions for joining and posting. Hopefully it'll all work, and hopefully our captain will find it useful enough to disseminate it. Should be useful to simply send it to one address, instead of having to type out everybody else's all the time. Particularly since one guy seems to be going by the alias "Harry Norman" for no readily apparent reason.

Oh yes, Firefox upgraded to 1.0.1 today, I think. Go download it. I haven't installed it yet, but from what I've read it's a security upgrade.

Right. Bedtime. G'night.

Gmail, Essay and Follow-Up

2005-02-23T22:58:00.000-06:00

First off, signs update. It seems some of the flyer-signs were taken down. At least, the one on our restroom door is gone (the one I'd scribbled "immoral filth!" on), and the one taped to the second-floor stairwell door was shredded...what was left of it. The big one is still up, as are the ones in more public places like the lobby. Hmmm, maybe If I add a little more scribbled invective...

Anyway, CS 158 and CC class today. CS 158 was marginally less boring. Professor Marion was out of town somewhere, so Professor Glass filled in. We learned a new type of sorting algorithm, the quick sort. 'Twas actually interesting.

Ah yes, since I didn't have any classes this morning (as is usual for me on Wednesdays this semester), I worked on my essay. First, though, I messed around with my e-mail programs, trying to tie in my Gmail account. Gmail offers POP3 access, but not IMAP, unfortunately. For the uninitiated, POP3 is (in my opinion) somewhat less sophisticated than IMAP. POP3 downloads a copy of your mail to your hard drive when you read it. There is, of course, an option to leave the mail on the server (at least in Gmail and Thunderbird), but any information you change about it (e.g. read/unread status) isn't changed on the server. With IMAP, that stuff's automatic. Read it in Thunderbird, it's marked as read on the server. In fact, this was why I'd stayed away from Gmail for a while; no sense in picking up and moving if I couldn't get IMAP there, either.

Anyway, long story short, the e-mail checker on GkrellM (a system monitoring program for everything under the sun, plus the sun itself) now checks the e-mails in both my college and Gmail accounts. Thunderbird also handles both accounts, though I should probably check into the Gmail web interface periodically to mark my inbox as read, particularly since I re-routed all my blog comment e-mail there.

Speaking of notification programs, I probably mentioned what I'd did with the Hitchhiker's trailer. I'd taken the sound track from it and parsed it into some .wav files. In particular, I have the "*THWACK* Zarquon! What was that?!" sound file set up for e-mail notification. I think I need to change that, because when e-mail comes in and that thing sounds without warning, it nearly gives me a heart attack. Granted, that could be leftover Windows syndrome, where any unexpected noise from the computer meant that immediate action might be necessary. Still...

As for my essay, I worked on it a bunch this afternoon and this evening. I've got it up to four sheets of paper, or basically three full pages and one-third of a fourth page. I still need to write a conclusion, but I'd say it's basically done. Hopefully the draft will go down well with the professor when I meet with her tomorrow afternoon. I do not wanna have to re-write that thing before Friday afternoon. Yeah, the paper's due Friday at 5:00 because we're having "spring" break starting Saturday. Or rather, Saturday is when they kick us out. Whatever. And it's not really spring break, as spring isn't here yet, but...yeah.

Oh yes, played NetHack a bit today, too. No new high score, but I did set a new second-place high score. Here it is. For comparison, I've also listed my highest score.

20392 LingApp-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Gnomish Mines on level 10 [max 11]. Killed by a dingo.
18664 LingApp-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Gnomish Mines on level 11. Killed by a gremlin.

And, uh...sorry to everyone about the vaguely depressing post yesterday. I don't know what got into me. It was certainly weird. And for some reason I was actually pondering asking K.D. if she was attracted to me. Heh. That would be an interesting experience, but only the "I'm conducting a study of mental trauma" kind of interesting.

Ah yes, miveen? Since I'm ~~too lazy~~ already blogging anyway, I'll just answer your comment here. I'm more or less immune to about 90% of insults. First off, what would somebody do, start rumors about me? Anybody who believes unconfirmed rumors about me isn't somebody I want to associate with anyway. Calling me four-eyes and the like is just old and childish. And nerd? I take that as a compliment most of the time. Stuff gets through occasionally, but most of it I can just shrug off.

You wanna get me worked up? Try arguing that Microsoft has been beneficial to computer technology within the last five to eight years.

Anyway, thanks pazuzu(zu) and miveen for leaving me comments. And pazuzu(zu), sorry about the comment spam on your last LiveJournal entry. Don't let miveen take all the credit, though, I'm afraid I started it.

Right. Plans for tomorrow. Classes, obviously, including the CS 246 lab, which should be interesting. Also have to finish up my essay, then run it off and take it in to my professor for ~~evisceration~~ evaluation. Then some hurried research on the internet for the debate team. Also gotta take care of my trash (like you cared) and e-mail my folks back about travel arrangements.

Okay, now I'm just rambling. G'night.

Homework and Personal Issues

2005-02-22T22:38:00.000-06:00

Irritating thing today. So I wake up, as usual, go down to breakfast...and there, at the bottom of the staircase is this huge sign proclaiming "Sex in the Lounge." Um, what?! Sounds like they're turning the freshman residence hall into a brothel. I doubt that's what they're really doing, it's probably some sex ed thing, but the posters and flyers are still in extremely poor taste. It goes against almost everything the university stands for. Or maybe I shouldn't have believed the stuff from the admissions office back when I was applying to colleges. "Come to Valparaiso University! Wonderful Christian environment! Grow in Christ with your peers!" Huh.

Anyway, CC class and CS 158 lab today. Finished up the lab right quick and then e-mailed in my assignment just to keep things tidy.

We'd gotten a little bit of snow this morning, but it all seems to have melted now. Didn't get much above freezing, either.

This afternoon I worked on my CC essay. Unfortunately I have barely a page done, and I'll need a four-page draft—or at least something close—to show the professor on Thursday afternoon. Not much else, unfortunately, other than various miscellany in vaguely putting off the essay. Should've wrote more. These things are getting harder and harder.

Ah yes, I sent off a PM to albinogul at MC, since he mentioned in his sig that he had a lot of Gmail invites. So now I have a gmail account. I'll probably switch things over sometime soon.

For some reason I've been feeling really, terribly alone this evening, despite having supper with the guys. I don't know why. I almost went to CyanChat, but I held myself back for my own sanity. I know I wouldn't fit in, and I'd probably end up aggravating and/or being aggravated by somebody in there. But I'm just sitting here, no longer working on my essay, visiting the same handful of sites over and over again...Myst Blogs, my LiveJournal, my LJ friends page, my e-mail, The Outpost, MystCommunity...yeah. Throw in a few others like Wikipedia and The Internet Oracle occasionally.

For some reason I occasionally slide back to K.D. I haven't seen her in at least two weeks, and haven't talked with her since I-don't-know-when...of course, that's because I've been trying to avoid such encounters. I don't quite trust her. But if past peoples' comments in my blogs are at all accurate and she's attracted to me, I wish she'd just bring it up at some point so I could know one way or the other and make a clean sweep of it. As it is, I'm just sitting here with those two excruciating words: WHAT IF

Okay, now I'm just rambling. Gotta go to bed, I've got classes to go to tomorrow and some serious essay-writing to do. Sorry for the depressing post. G'night.

Fractals and Canyons

2005-02-21T22:43:00.000-06:00

Well, all four classes today. CS 246 was a little boring as we went over last week's lab, but it wasn't as bad as CS 158. Oh yes, and Professor Glass seemed happy with the latest version of the research program. I'm gonna try and get it to output results in HTML over break...maybe something similar to what Google does. That way it'll be easier for us to check it manually. As it was he had the program just dump out the parsed file section, which wasn't pretty...not that the raw files are pretty, you understand, just taht the parsed data is even less legible.

Seems the muses decided to have one last hurrah this week before I sit down and write my paper. This morning I downloaded XaoS for Linux. It's a wicked fast fractal generator. You can find it here. Granted, the version I have is only 1.2 instead of 3.0, but ah well. I also got an ASCII art version of it...it too uses AA-lib. It's pretty cool, it's got an auto-explore feature that just randomly zooms in on parts. It's a little smarter than random, but I'm not sure how to explain it. I guess "it randomly zooms on interesting parts" would be better. I've even figured out how to invoke it for fullscreen mode and I've taken some screenshots for wallpapers. Added 'em into my cycler.

Man, you get a lot more insight into the Mandelbrot set when you can view it in real-time...or near-real-time. Anyway...

This morning I rebooted into Windows and did up a canyon render that I posted on The Outpost. It's also up on my website.

This afternoon I did my CS 158 homework that's due Friday. At least, I think that's what he wanted us to do. I'll check tomorrow. Haven't submitted it yet, luckily.

This evening I was gonna work on my paper, but instead I booted into Windows (again) and messed with my canyon project in Terragen. I added a little bit of a river/stream in it. Also, it turns out that there isn't exactly a time field in the animation programs, so it looks like I'm gonna have to guess and check for rendering this thing.

Anyway, time for bed. Classes tomorrow, of course, plus I need to start that essay. G'night.