Monthly Archive for August, 2003

Schedules up!

Published on August 29, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Last day of work, and the new schedules are up for school. Except mine’s not really ready yet, because I have a conflict on mine, which I’ll need to go and see someone about.

Basically, I made the mistake of selecting the Day session for Humanities 2C03, and should have selected the Evening section, because that’s the only one that fits into my schedule.

Good points:

  1. The only day that starts before 10:30 is Wednesday (9:30). And Friday is an 11:30 start.
  2. The only days that end after 2:30 are Tuesday (9:00) and Wednesday (10:00). Monday and Thursday are 1:30 finish.
  3. No more than 3 lectures per day
  4. No impossible treks
  5. Several courses with my non-Management friends

Bad points:

  1. There’s a 6.5 hour gap in my schedule on Wednesdays. Given that I have no car, that’s not enough to warrant going home.
  2. I have / will have 2 evening courses.
  3. I have Gabardo – a prof I can’t understand – for Math.

Actual schedule to be posted in ~6hr – have no FTP ability from this neck o’ the woods.

So all that remains is to finish this report for Stan, have lunch, and leave for home at ~4:00 (my dad promises). Sooooo close to the end… and not much further from a new, scarier beginning :o

10.5 hours and counting…

Published on August 28, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

… until work (and most of summer) are kaput.

I can’t say it’s been a great summer – being without work for 1.5 months sorta put a damper on my spirits and income – and I haven’t done nearly as much with friends as I should have. This is looking to be a rather stressful year (which means any get-togethers during the year that lie outside of scholarly collaboration are likely to entail little more than collectively passing out on a floor littered with empty containers of highly caffeinated beverages)

But, if I can make it through this year (and mark my words, we all will) I’ll be in a position to have a kick-ass summer next year. Sorta like what I was planning for this year, only 300% more likely to actually happen.

Assuming people are still around next summer, of course… :’(

I think I’ve put my finger on the biggest difference between work and school that I haven’t been able to put my finger on. No, not the having income vs. spending uncontrollably; not the endless lectures vs. endless grind; and not the done-by-a-reasonable-hour vs. all-bets-are-off-completion-time.

No, the biggest difference, I think, is where you work. In an office, you’re working at Your Desk, or The Meeting Room that you booked out for your Meeting. At school, you’re working everywhere and anywhere – hallways, libraries, cafeterias, empty classrooms, stairways, basically any place that isn’t a SARS risk or under construction. The number of places to do stuff bears a striking resemblance to the actual square footage of the joint. Whereas here, at the office, any place that isn’t your designated work area is someone else’s designated work area, or a Common Meeting Room that is invariably booked out.

I’m beginning to see that I really missed the freedom of being able to choose to work at a desk, at a table, on grass / snow, on a couch, on the floor, etc. in any number of locations across campus. I simply don’t have that here.

Wow

Published on August 27, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Read This

Yow. That’s damned sneaky, and surely it’s gotta be illegal.

I’m thinking certain Canopy and SCaldera execs are gonna be doing some jail time by the time this is through.

IMAP and general roxX0ring

Published on August 27, 2003 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Ross extolls the virtues of IMAP

IMAP does indeed rock. If you go to Blogstreet you can even set up an IMAP account that acts as your RSS aggregator (I’m a fan of the 3-pane layout)

I’m considering moving even my POP accounts to a Fetchmail + Procmail + Courier IMAP system on a hidden (“ninja”) Linux box and just read my mail as IMAP off of there. It’ll let me read it really easily from anywhere in the world if I put a copy of SquirrelMail reading it somewhere, and will give me all that SpamAssassin-y goodness that my ISP won’t give me and that doesn’t work too well in Evolution.

Now if only I could find a free Yahoo- and Hotmail-to-IMAP gateway…

Important note

Published on August 27, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Information gleaned from my vacation this past weekend: should you ever find yourself in the vicinity of the Wal Mart in the Chesterfield Crossing plaza near Auburn Hills, Michigan, and find yourself in need of female companionship on a shoestring, you would do well to call April at 586-228-5783

The things you learn reading men’s room graffiti…

Software Patents

Published on August 27, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

It’s a day of protest on the Weird Wide Intarwebnet today – protesting software patents.

Here be more information on the issue – yes, it’s in Europe, but the way so-called Intellectual Property laws seem to be spreading these days (DMCA-alikes popping up everywhere and such) there’s no telling what could happen next. Canada and the US already have software patent legislation, but this one looks a bit more lenient to those applying to me. Of course, IANAL.

So please, everyone: get educated about this, and express thine opinions. Just not here… this be the place for my opinions only :)

Back to $chool $hopping

Published on August 26, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Got back from El Vacation yesterday, and am feeling a bit more rested.

Found some incredible deals whilst Stateside:

  • Notepaper, 5 packs for $1 USD. Not a bad deal.
  • 64 MB MMC card for my MP3 player, $37.50 USD. I’ve seen them going for $80-90 here.
  • Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I’m on page 226 of 1152, and so far it’s kick-ass. Only $8 USD new.
  • 20 pack of 16x CD-Rs in slim cases for $4 USD. Cheaper than the spindle price here, by far.
  • 100 spindle of 52x CD-Rs (brand name, forget which) for $15 USD and a mail-in rebate for $5 (which I probably won’t bother with). Again, wow.
  • Billg’s The Road Ahead for $3 USD. From what I’ve heard, I probably overpaid
  • Total Recall Special Edition for $7 USD. Aaaahh-nold!
  • Open Source Development with CVS, $7 USD. Then I found out that the useful chapters are GPLed anyways. Oh well, small price to pay for deadtree.
  • Another light-up pen, $4 USD. This one has replaceable ink, extra batteries and ink cartridges, isn’t horrendously top-heavy, and has a nice grip. Doesn’t look as badass as the other one though.
  • 24 Season 2 DVD preview disc, $0 USD. Has the first two episodes of last season (which I never saw all of), so that’s somewhat ass-kickingly good. Funny thing is, is that I had to check out with it!

The bestest part about this trip, is that not only is the sales tax in Michigan lower than in New York (6% vs. ~7.5%) but since we were there almost 3 whole days, we came in under the daily exemption, so no PST, GST or duty! Huzzah!

That’s about it – a fun weekend where I spent more money than I should have. And now, back to reality…

Moved!

Published on August 26, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Hi! If you’re reading this, odds are you’re a personal friend of mine, have read a message I’ve posted somewhere and had nothing better to do than to follow the link, or just fed random characters into the URL field of your browser until you got somewhere.

In any event, if you want to see more me-y goodness, slide on over to My new home ‘cuz this site ain’t gettin’ updated no more.

Ahoy from the Apple Store

Published on August 23, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

I’m writing this from the Twelve Oaks Apple Store and it looks like things back home are delving even further into the depths of hell than they were when I left. Aaaaargh.

Blog moved!

Published on August 22, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

I have moved my blog from the old address to http://picxpert.stealthbanana.com/ – soon the old articles will all point to here.

Also moved to bBlog – nice-looking system with sane templates and prettified URLs. Makes me happy :)