Monthly Archive for March, 2003
“You guys must really hate me now”
It’s been a while since I blogged, so I now present my various musings since then, in blob form. Enjoy… or don’t.
Tuesday was our first Davidson midterm. It hath been hyped as being a trip directly through hell to hell^2. I didn’t do too bad… I got 25/40. Class average was 17.1/40.
Cool thing is, he had the marks up Thursday night. That’s a little over 48 hours turnaround – the best I’ve seen since my OAC Calc prof handed back a test the day after we wrote it.
A lot of people are kind of afraid of the next midterm – 17 days after the first, and just this side of the test / exam ban that preceeds examinations.
I’m not having great success locating a summer job, and it’s getting kind of late. McDonalds is looking like a very real possibility at this point.
Nuke the whales… you’ve gotta nuke something, and I’d rather it didn’t start WWIII
Went to the musical on Friday, and a kick-ass show it was. Nothing stands out as being overwhelmingly excellent, mostly due to the generally high level of excellence of the whole damn thing. One bit stands out in particular:
“Oh, Gaston, I see you’re here. I thought I felt the entropy in the room rise.”
“Oh, (forget her name), I was wondering why it was cold in here, but now I see why, you endothermic bitch!”
(may not be verbatim)
Only in Engineering…
I hate Green’s Theorem, but not as much as I hate not understanding it.
IEEE Elections are this week, and I have to decide if I want to run for Student Branch chair. Deb, the current chair, is a) in her last year next year, b) is going to France for an exchange programme, and c) has had the job for 2 years now, so someone new must step in.
I’m not sure I can handle it, but it might be fun…
Had to explain (with the help of Ty, Brian and Marc) to Five Alive why guys don’t like shopping in malls. I’m not sure she got it.
Nothing on TV right now, but I’m not really tired… probably look for a movie and watch that while reading a book (Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook, if you’re interested)
Finally modified grub.conf to read “Windows XP” rather than “Windoes XP”. In my own defence, “e” is right next to “w”… Also finally ran Ad Aware on ye olde Windows desktop. Don’t know how SaveNow got on there 1+ months ago, but I finally got rid of it.
That about wraps up this bitch session. Thanks to everyone reading (ie no one) for reading.
A load of ass, possibly in hat form
“How come we understand each other when we’re both entirely unintelligible?”
“Speech bubbles! Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble!”
It’s a guest doing it this time, but it’s still OK.
IM services are booting me off, I can’t log into ftp.ximian.com to get the latest Evo 1.3 beta, Evo 1.2 is bitching at me about not seeing mail servers… and, to top it all off, I’m somewhat PO’ed.
Let’s itemize:
- Tried getting my remote control receiver to work in Linux. LIRC is possibly the worst documented piece of crap I’ve ever seen, and I’ve worked with SharePoint. There’s no good HOWTO, no indication of what the syntax for certain drivers is, no examples… I guess it’s supposed to come already set up. Which it doesn’t.
- Mozilla – almost a bigger, more monolithic pile of shit than Internet Explorer – doesn’t have a way of removing XPI patches you install. Which is great, seeing as how MozBlog has, now that I finally got it to install, completely hosed Mozilla for anyone non-root. Plus, I’m already running Mozilla 1.3b, so until another release comes along, I can’t uninstall without breaking an assload of dependencies.
- The ALSA drivers don’t play my TV sound through my satellite speakers, as it does in Windows. Problem is, that’s where the transmitter for my wireless headphones is plugged in – unless ALSA also swapped front with rear.
- I have a math assignment due Monday, and I don’t feel like doing it yet
- 24 wasn’t on last night, and won’t be on again until the week after next.
- Oakville Hydro rejected me for a position this summer. I really should have been applying 3 months ago.
- In a striking display of idiocy, the US government – House of Representatives, I believe – is calling French Toast, “Freedom Toast”, and French Fries, “Freedom Fries”. I’ve heard references to renaming certain German-descended foods back during the Great War and WWII.
Big difference between that and this: The US was at war with Germany. They’re not at war with France (though they have no problem treating them like it).I’ve half a mind to go down there, to one of these “freedom-loving” restaurants, and ask specifically for French Fries, and leave in a huff when they don’t.
I’m sure there’s more, I’m just too tired to think of it. Grrr.
“If I can fuck up memory, I’m programming. Otherwise I’m scripting”
Why is it that I’m worried, but not actively doing anything, about an Electrical Engineering midterm – worth 17.5% – on Tuesday, but I’m spending so much time working on a Computer Engineering assignment worth only about 8% of my final mark in that class?
Further, why is it that I likely won’t care how well I did on the Elec. Eng. midterm so long as I pass, but if I get less than 90% on the Comp. Eng. assignment, I’ll feel insulted?
Does this mean I made the right choice in turning down Waterloo’s offer for Elec. Eng. and going with Comp. Eng. at Mac instead?
“Oooh, look at me, I’m Brian, and I take notes in class”
“Oooh, look at me, I’m Randy, and I’m about to HAVE A PEN JAMMED IN MY EYE!”
*drool*
“Take this with a larger grain of salt than usual, because I only worked this out 15 minutes before coming here”
“Does anyone else notice how his surfaces always look like kidney beans?”
Quite the day to start the week with – got RedHat Phoebe 2 working on my notebook, then apt-get’ed my way up to Phoebe 3 + some choice Rawhide packages, as well as Gaim 0.60CVS from Fedora. The new Bluecurve is even sweeter than the one that comes with Red Hat 8.0, and the system feels really snappy. I especially like that the kernel supports USB on my messed-up machine here right out of the box.
Haven’t tested any video players yet, so I don’t know if the Xshm / XV drivers are fuxX0r’ed here.
Of course during the course of the day, I managed to remove Linux from the GRUB conf file, thus necessitating a boot with a rescue disc. First time I did that, I closed uncleanly, thus erasing my changes (not synced yet) and getting me nowhere. But it seems to work nicely now.
Went to Sayal with a Bunch O’ Friends to get LEDs, in much the same manner that More Normal People™ would go out and get beer or pizza. Which is frightening to say the least. Oh, Sayal wants $65 for a no-name USB->Serial converter, while Zellers (!) wants $45 for a Belkin. Hmmm… tough choice.
Finally saw Rudie’s Supercar – having a semi-live GPS Map, MP3 music and the ability to play movies in your car is so beyond cool it’s not funny.
Now, I go to do some form of homework, while salivating over how beautiful these antialiased fonts are. *drool*