Archive for the 'General' Category

Watching World Idol… about the only ones who don’t need to turn down the suck are:

• Kelly Clarkson
• Ryan Malcolm
• The Guy from Holland
• The guy from South Africa
• The Arab Idol
• The Belgian guy
• The Norwegian guy

Everyone else has soundly killed the soungs they’ve performed, IMHO. Especially the British Guy. Dude – the Polish judge was right, Jim Morrison’s estate should sue.

Simon, I knew you were an asshole before, but you amaze me. To suggest another judge is incapable of judging is slightly more than insulting to the country he represents… but you are so obviously partisan, so obviously slimy and so amazingly asshateriffic that you give me reason to support euthanasia.

“Voice like an angel but you look like a Hobbit” – LOL! Middle Earth Idol… I love it. Go Aussies.

More is still coming – I’m just up to me (body part) in exams right now. First is in a little under 5 hours, then the Threepeat of Doom starting Monday.

Much coming almost immmediately after that, though.

I’ve been a Linux-type guy for about a year now, and it’s been really good. Evolution is a great great GREAT email and contact and calendar app, Mozilla is a kick-ass browser, GAIM is acceptable for IM, and OpenOffice.org is all I need and more for office stuff.

Not to mention the fact that using the I’m-on-Linux-so-I-can’t-use-the-Borland-compiler thing has saved me on multiple programming assignments (the TAs mark assignments using the Borland compiler, which is crap).

However, as of late I’ve been using Windows a lot more. Reasons?

• Better battery life Even though Red Hat added Notebook Mode with Severn, it doesn’t get activated much, so the hard drive goes almost full tilt, full time. So I can get about 3 hours in Linux on my brand-new battery, versus about 5 in Windows (not doing anything overly disk intensive)
• Suspend and Hibernate These help with battery even more, since I can just hibernate the machine between classes and save about 10 minutes of power every hour – without having to wait for the system to start.
• Starts and shuts down faster
• Better .NET support – and since I’m joining the Microsoft .NET Student Community program to try and earn me another XBox or a wireless mouse or something, this will be an issue.
• More office software – because OpenOffice.org can’t read everything
• Better PIC tools
• Better WiFi support – not having to manually change profiles, letting me see what networks are available… *joy*

There are more reasons to switch back, but you get the idea – Linux basically isn’t made for running on laptops (especially mine, damnable Trident video chip…). The best thing is, this can be a basically zero-cost switchover with respect to changing software – since Evo stores things in fairly standard file formats, and since I’ve switched all of my email over to IMAP, and since cygwin can give me any software I need, basically… I’ll be set.

The only question is, when do I reformat and start anew? I mean, this XP install has rather gone to shit, and I need to repartition anyways.

“Okay, last time we…”

Welcome to Notes from Math Class, where I shall endeavour to talk about anything but Math class.

For a week with no midterms, it’s been damned busy – got IEEE stuff up to here (gestures to body part) and the assignments don’t make things any easier. Which would be bearable if not for the fact that I’ve got the theme to Beverly Hills Cop stuck in my head.

Do Do Do-do-do-do-do, Do Do Do-do-do-do-do do-Do-DO do-do-do-do do-dooooo….

Not that the non-Management guys don’t have it worse than I do – they’ve got a rather large midterm coming up at 8pm, at which point I should be out of the Microsoft product info session where I’ll be getting the most glorious of all on-campus in-lecture-hall enticements, Free Pizza and Pop™

This gives me several hours to finish a Materials assignment (due tomorrow, 5:00pm) and get the IEEE Annual Plan done and mailed in (due in New Jersey, Saturday) for which I have to meet with Dr. Davidson (should be fairly easy) and get the IEEE Member Numbers of my executive council (VERY difficult, it seems). I also need to try and track down the stuff from last year’s plan for recycling to make my life easier… and I need to check on the price of next-day mailing to New Jersey with Saturday delivery (or, send it Xpresspost and hope for the best). I’ll do better in the future… really, I will.

On a good note, things seem to be progressing on Getting Things Done in the IEEE Office, equipment-wise, due largely to the fact that Chris is driven to get that going. Yay, new toys that we won’t have to pay for all of!

On an insane note, as of last night’s Robotics Club meeting, I’m the secretary for the Robotics Club. When will I learn? Oh well, at least it’s an easy job.

So, in the next 24 hours, all I have to do is:

1. Finish the Materials assignment
2. Finish the Annual Plan
3. Get the PSpice course rolling
4. Attend the Microsoft seminar
5. Make sure everything is going well for AGM on Monday

Note that, as usual, less than 50% of the things I need to do aren’t IEEE related. Aaaargh.

A major corporate entity seems to be trying to subvert democracy in several US states, and seems to be meeting with some success.

There’s information available all over the place, yet there hasn’t been the uproar there should have been. This is people FUCKING WITH YOUR VOTE. There’s at least one massively suspect election so far. These assholes must be stopped.