Entries tagged “computers”

I was chatting with a coworker about luck and I was directed to a commencement speech that talks about it in some depth. When we shed our rockstar costumes, and our ninja suits we’re all just people underneath. Many of us are gifted for sure, some more than others, but usually we can find people who worked just as hard us, and continue to work just as hard and are even smarter than we are, but they end up in a different place.

I haven’t been completely happy with myself lately.

I am happy with my life in general, and external things. In fact, let me preface this post by saying that I’m happy with my wife, my friends and my family. Even my job is pretty good despite the oncoming layoffs which I hopefully won’t be subjected to, but you never know.

I mainly see my intellectual and physical development hasn’t been where I’d like, despite an urge to advance in both areas (i.e. in more simplified terms I’m getting dumber and fatter).

This post isn’t meant to be a downer… my hope is I can improve on each of these aspects one by one. I think it’s completely natural to have peaks and troughs in terms of personal development. I think it’s when I identify a low that I make valiant efforts at trying to improve myself. Let’s see how things go.

I’ll attempt to post more details. One of the things I want to do is keep a better journal of my life, be it a blog or otherwise… it seems to be what all the cool kids are doing … or were doing ;)

Katie and I are “officially” moving to California. A lot of people have been asking questions about this, so I’ll try to create a FAQ:

Why are you moving?

Short answer:

I got a job at Yahoo!/Delicious

Long answer:

I work on the symfony project a framework that makes building quality web sites easier. I will be contributing to this project in a way that is beneficial to Yahoo!. Furthermore, Katie and I are looking for an adventure. Moving out of our home in Minneapolis and into a new part of the country will be a big adjustment for us.

Where in California are you moving?

We are moving to the San Francisco Bay area. We will find a place when we arrive. We will likely be in Mountain View or if we can find some place affordable, the City of San Francisco.

When are you moving?

We are moving in early November. I start my job in mid-November.

That's really soon?

Yes! I know!

What will you do with your house?

We own a duplex, we'll rent out the half we live in. We're also finishing up our attic as I type. Initially our good friends Marc and Sadie will live here.

What about your cats?

We are not sure. They will eventually join us in California, but we are not sure if they will come with us right away in November, or later.

You're going to have a going away party?

Of course, just email me

What about your car/bikes?

Car is being shipped to CA. We bike a lot and intend to do so in California, so we'll be moving our bikes as well.

Are you excited?

Yes.

What is Katie going to do?

We will be getting an apartment that has a pool. I can only imagine she will spend her days making daiquiris sitting by the pool.

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You can signup for Earthlink which uses comcast of $30/mo for 6 months $45/mo after… and you get 7000 miles from NWA.

The Taj Mahal was vandalized yesterday. [ the Dawn Group ][ Rediff India ].

I've been watching this slow pattern of visible anti-Muslim rhetoric spewed by the BJP/RSS/VHP (unholy trinity that acts in the name of Hindusim). It's out of hand, and if India wants to stay a true republic for all people Muslim and Hindu alike, it will need to change the climate.

India is on the verge of turning into a racist state that abuses its religious and racial minorities like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Israel. Right now its in the hands of a signle party, the BJP.

The BJP has remarkable similarities to the National Socialist party of 1930s Germany. Given the chance they'd remove any remnants of the Islamic period of India - including the 14% Muslim population.

I'm being harsh and extreme, but it is deserved. This is not the Gandhiesque Indians, these are not the open minded Hindus, these are extremists who defile Hinduism by claiming all Islam and foreign cultures as an enemy to it.

This offends me to no end as an Indian American. The Taj Mahal is one of the greatest monuments of India. The wonderful intermixing of Hindus and Muslims is a beauty. I strive to understand Islam and relate it to the teachings my family has passed onto me. It is remarkably similar. If only the extremists would realize this.

They cannot blame Islam for the terror in Kashmir. True - many Islamic groups have committed acts of terror in Kashmir - but we as Indians must accept our acts of terror, our occupation in India. The moral high ground will always win.

My "stand in" logo, until I actually work on my crescent moon, is in the top left corner ('be like water'). It was quite an adventure to learn that IE for windows (any version) does not support PNG propperly.

For those of you who normally only listen to my political rants, bear with me. This is a rant about coding. Anyway, you never quite realize the importance of coding style until you actually are handed someone elses code. Programming is not that hard, except for the complex lexicon it uses. So here's a tip of the day for people who code things. Name everything, methods, classes, variables in a very descriptive manner. This will make it easier for yourself if the code happens to grow, and anybody else who might have to look at the code. Hmm... maybe I can't work as a programmer.

Yesterday I ate at an Indian restraunt. It was okay. I mean I don't like Indian food usually. This, however, was pretty good.

I have sound working on my computer. Linux is a good Operating System if it's preinstalled or you know Ryan Hayle.

Today I got to go to the airport and pick up my brother and sister-in-law. Now I'm bored again. I think I'll find something interesting to do...

I might try to get that Hindu Mandir Online thing working... that could be interesting.

Quantum transportation is neat. I think it will have a good impact on Quantum Computing. I'll give you some links on Quantum computing later, I have a few somewhere.

Don't look at the TV form more than a few seconds. It will pull you in. Turn it off.

What would happen if we killed the laugh track? Television would have to be funny on its own. Note that except in mockery, cartoons never use a laugh track. They stand funny on their own. Sitcoms rely on the laughtrack to goad you into laughing and then thinking that the show makes you laugh so it must be good and must be watched again. It's a catalyst for sitcoms. It's very deceptive and clever of the TV people.

I saw Prince of Egypt. It was fairly interesting. It connected the few Moses stories I knew together and took less time than actually reading Exodus. The animation is of a high level as well.

I saw Su' today. Su' is back, and I am happy. Unfortunately she leaves Sunday, but I will see her tomorrow at the wedding pre-reception (preception) that I am attending.

I think what is most intimidating about Linux is that there is so much you can learn about using it. I mean, after a few days, it's easy to master Windows 95/98 or even most of NT. But with Linux, you keep learning all these things you can do. This happens when you have an OS that keeps being updated constantly.

A friend of mine emailed me with a well thought out email that seems to reflect a lot of what Yishan said. So we decided that we are going to start advocating a techno-democracy where Congress will be held in a dance club and ... no wait... a techno-democracy where people use technology to be a part of the government. We would have Representatives create bills and then for several of the bills we would hold a national referrendum. This is all possible thanks to lengthy encryption/verification systems. And it's true to the nature of democracy. You know - majority rules.

Looks like my favorite OEM, Micron is hiring the Borg-chick from Star Trek.

I have a new respect for my UIUC peers thanks to this article in Popular Science (December 1998). A consortium consisting of 20 Chicago suburb school districts (a good portion of UIUC are alumnus of these schools) decided to be included as it's own country in TIMSS tests that are given to countries to figure out where they rank against the rest of the world. The Consortium was fifth in the world for Mathematics and second for Science. I feel very good about this fact. The consortium uses different standards that sound remarkably like the standards Minnesota school use. At least for mathematics. They seem to be a lot better in teaching science. Check this magazine article out it's on page 92, very neat so far.

On a sad note, I have no sound on my computer.

Well I completely formatted my NT Server system at home and installed Debian Linux. It's been quite an experience. I've installed it perhaps three times, but each time I learned something new. In all actuallity I didn't need to reinstall it so many times, it just seemed like a neat idea each time. So now, I finally have my computer working and Netscape works too.

So here's what I like. It loads fast. It's very configurable. There's a lot of software I can now download. Software is a cinch to install thanks to apt-get and dselect. What I dislike is the window environment (Window Maker). Of course I'm going to be changing that after I send this message. Several window managers have been created for X-Windows. I also dislike Netscape. It looks ugly when it renders forms and it crashes in certain places. Plus, I never really liked it for windows.

Life has been pleasant since I got back. Saturday night I was visited by Molly and my alter-ego, Katie. Sunday I finally recieved my luggage. I don't remember Monday. Tuesday we visited Katie to see how she was. Wednesday (today) we (Adam, Marc, Molly and I) made pancakes. They were good. We then went to the MSP airport and went to pick up Mike Jorgenson, whose flight was an hour late. We proceded to UNOs pizzeria, and ate delicious pizza. We then went back to my house to play Dr. Mario and pick up my gift for Katie and we then dropped it off.

Humourous things started happening afterwards. There was a knock at Katie's door and Mike was the closest one to it, so he answered. Lo and behold it was Mike's arch-enemy, Tanya Zhu. They don't speak to each other which makes things very interesting seeing as they both have information that when exchanged could add to a decent conversation. Anyway, I'll try to wrestle a picture featuring Tanya and Mike from Katie and post it.

We (reduced to Molly and I) decided at about 4:30 to drop off Mike Jorgenson since his parents were expecting him to be picked up at 10:16 and dropped off within a few hours, not at 4:30. Well that's what we figured. Then Molly and I came home and then she left and I went with my parent to eat at First Wok, a decent Chinese Restaurant. I was going to go to Katie's but I felt tired, and I'd rather save up my energy and do stuff tomorrow. Although tomorrow is X-mas eve. I'll figure out something to do.

It's strange. When I type my journal at school, I feel like I'm writing for my friends not at UIUC. When I type my journal here, I feel like I'm typing it for my friends at UIUC.

From the land of Kuwait, the mighty US launches an assault on Iraq.

Also, Tuesday I decided to format my C:\ drive where all my programs reside. It took me hours to figure out that I needed to remove my Jaz SCSI card and then install NT, otherwise there'd be conflicts. It took me a very long time to figure this out. I installed NT alone, on a new video card, under Windows 98, everything. I was about to give up and become like Hackel, but I finally figured it out. Actually I was thinking about BeOS, because that has NTFS compatibility and looks pretty and is fast.

It took me an entire day to install everything so it was back to normal. I am going to format again in six months, unless Windows 2000 Pro is being released around that time, then I will wait and upgrade. I need to get better at restoring my system. Although, it only took a day, which is amazing.

Now I am running Litestep, which after sufficient tweaking runs pretty nicely. Unfortunately they don't have an easy way to add programs to the warf bar. I decided that that doesn't matter so much, because I only use a handful of things, and it's fun to make my own icons. The Virtual Window Manager will take a while to get used to as well. I've resolved most issues that made me retreat to explorer, so I think Litestep'll stay.

It feels like a perpetual weekend with no homework, it's nice:)

Here is some information on Northwestern's Photon Chip. It's basically that uses photons rather than electrons for computing. Quantum Tunnelling is used instead of gates. I forget what gates are, and I have no idea what Quantum Tunnelling is.

I'm somewhat scared of the consequences of our attack on Iraq in respect to opposition countries. Russia is not going to ratify START II and they have a poor view of our master Klynton err Clinton.

Pricescan.com is a nice interface. Use it when you buy stuff.

Finished my final final tonight, it felt good. I made some pasta too, it was also good. I'm ready to return home and relax for a month. Basic flight information is as follows: I leave CMI at 1:45PM. I arrive in DTW 4:10PM. I immediately leave DTW at 4:40PM and arrive at MSP 5:44PM via flight NW3306. Upon arriving I'll probably sleep.:)

I don't know how often I'll be able to update this page over break. My computer at home will be getting a new CD-ROM and a new Operating System (Debian Linux). Until then, the computer will remain very slow, since WinNT server is very bogged down )it's a bit hard to reinstall without that CD-ROM). Due to this slowness I'll refrain from using my computer whenever possible (I may leave it online a lot though). I'll spare you the details.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. My old ryche site got picked as a cool site...

Christians in India protest religious persecution. Hindus blame bad Christian karma.

Apparantly theatres in New Dehli and Mumbai (Bombay) were sacked by the ultra-nationalist Shiv Sena for showing a movie, Fire, about lesbians. India is a Hindu state. No matter how much religion is seperate from Government, it's very plagued with religion. For this reason what some people view as not expressing Hindu ideals will be supressed. So any of you who thought that Hinduism was this all accepting religion and that anybody can be a Hindu, I suggest you reevaluate your assumptions. There are many Hindus that hold onto very prudent ideals. They may be few, but they are willing to ruin

I'd like to say that I do not approve of most of the things that go on in my country of ancestral origin. Many Hindus have been celebrating the sixth anniversary of the razing of a historic mosque. This razing has led to heated religious strife among Muslims and Hindus. I find this religious intolerance extremely backward and digsusting.

My speech went horribly. I am done with classes. Finals are next week. You can look at the Calendar. I have two papers I need getting done by this weekend.

I saw Star Trek: Insurrection and got just what I expected. A movie that had neat looking ships and fights. It was campy too. I think I enjoyed it because I made so much fun of Star Trek and the trekkies. I really hate Star Trekkies. I mean they think all these things in Star Trek are so cool, like Data and his neat little misunderstanding of being human. There were points where people laughed at the dumbest things, I mean come on. Riker was really trying to get it on with Troi. It is a good laugh though, and a lot of stuff blows up.

Fort Max - poking into God's territory for over 100 years.

Cool Info is moving to pair networks. I will be working on a news article entry system that mimics what I use right now. I'll work on it over break.

I use my workstation as a development machine for my web pages via Front Page and the Personal Web Server. The root page used to be an old web site that I had for Fort Max that I only developed on my computer and uploaded to the Internet. It was very corporate sounding, back when I cared about that stuff for ftmax.com. It never occuured to me that if CCSO did a scan of my computer, they would notice that my workstation is the host of a corporate web site. Here is some mail:

Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 08:48:01 -0600 (CST)
From: CCSO Security 
Reply-To: security@uiuc.edu
To: davedash@uiuc.edu
Subject: dorm room connection


I have noticed that the machine 130.126.72.54 has a web page for a commercial
entity. This is strictly in violation of university policy and state law.

If this page is not removed immediately, your network connection will be 
disabled and student discipline charges filed.

-- 

 [      Security Officer                |       CCSO/University of Illinois   ]
 [      security@uiuc.edu               |       1304 West Springfield         ]
 [      (217) 265-0000                  |       Urbana, Illinois   61801      ]

I finished reading Xenocide. Very Deux Ex Machina, I've heard bad things about Children of the Mind as well. I can imagine why. I will, however, finish reading the series as I am curious as to what Mr. Card is trying to achieve. I did like the book. I read at least over 100 pages on one day.

The Onion will have an MTV Christmas Special supposedly. This should be interesting, hopefully someone will record this for me. It's funny, Onion is one of the better sources of humour, we need more things like that on TV. Canadian TV has funny stuff that crosses the line, as does British TV. It's in our best interest to mimic these, instead of remaining prudish about our humour. Damn you America for spawning crap like SNL and MAD TV.

Since I have no original ideas, here's my Christ Day wish list:

1. Sony Netman or Diamond Rio PMP300
2. PCS Cellular phone with cellular service for one year (so next year someone else can get me a year of service)
3. IBM Laptop SCSI whatever you can or a DELL Inspirion must have DVD support
4. SGI 1600SW with Number Nine card
5. SONY DCR-PC10
6. Soundblaster Live
7. UMAX PowerLook 3000
8. Lego Mindworks
9. Something with a pretty LCD screen that goes on my computer.
10. A ray gun.

I ate at Burger King yesterday. It was very good after a disconcerting school dinner. I shall eat out more often. I will try to avoid Burger King for a while. Their sandwhiches are good, but they are the kind that make you not want to eat their for a few months.

The following was composed throughout yesterday.

The Willard Airport (part of the U of I Institute of Aviation) is beautiful. It's also the size of a car-dealership (they have Saab's:)), but what do you expect froma tiny town like Champaign. In front of the airport terminal is a nice pond. The airport makes me proud of UI.

I learned my driver's permit expired last December. For some reason I don't care. I should probably get a new one and then eventually get my driver's license. If oudn this out at the ticket counter.

I expected trouble at the security checkpoint. I carry a large multi-tool thing which I assumed to be the cause of my being beeped. The swiss-army knife that I also carry is quite loaded with metal as well. The wand found nothing. The bag I carried also had miscellaneous things like a modem, a caller ID box and various cables, etc. Showing them the modem made them feel better. I'm glad I don't have to go through security at DTW where they have it very beefed up.

I sepnt $20 on this legal pad and legal pad holder. I should have just purhcased this device from Cross that is an electronic legal pad that allows you to transfer stuff from your pad to your computer. I bet the OCR would not be able to read my writing, though.:)

I often wonder about the future, this would make me a futurist.:) I wonder what technology we use today will exist 50 to 100 years from now.

• Groundcars - we may be able to create hover cars, but nobody is trying to mass produce these things. Currently we are concentrating on low to zero emissions. Even if we do see a hover car, it won't be common place. Not until we can reduce the hell out of hover car emissions, which I would imagine to be harder. Much more, I doubt we will see hover cars that suspend themselves several stories of the ground for quite a while either.
• Telephones - even if we do have videophones, not everybody is going to want to use them. I mean, do you want to see everybody you talk to? Probably not. Do you want everyone to see you while they talk to you? Probably not. Not everybody at least. What about telemarketers? Nazi's? Robots? Video also takes a high ammount of bandwidth, but that can be solved in the future. What'll end up happening is we'll disable video on videophones as often as possible.

People complain about the take off on small planes. It's not that bad. I kinda like it. Wow, IL is all corn fields, and stuff. I forgot to bring batteries with me. I'm so used to using other power sources for my cd player. I should have taken Stinky's batteries. I may have to buy some at DTW if there is time.

Sitting next to someone with a PalmPilot has made me realize how untechno-savvy I am. Well I'm making a list of things I want.

• A thinner CD player w/ better skip protection.
• A portable MP3 player.
• CrossPad XL even though it's a bit smaller than a legal pad.
• PalmPilot III or the Razor
• Gatway's Fireant because it has a cool name, and then I'd have a DVD player.

The flight from CMI to DTW went well. It seemed very short. 10:25 to 12:55 minus one hour for Time Zone ... half an hour? WTF? Neat! This flight is about 1:52, a lot longer, oh well. I quickly went from sector G to sector C14 of DTW and I had a few minutes to call my mom, buy some batteries and board the plane in which I am sitting. Despite what the person sitting next to me thinks, this DC-9 is roomy compared to the tiny aeroplane I was in 45 minutes ago. Now I can finally listen to the songs in my head.

Okay one more technology thing:

• Email - this or some variation will last forever. I mean, we've had letters, and telegrams and fax machines and now email, this is just such an easy to use quick form of communication that it will perhaps never end.

  ---

  If I were at UI, I'd be doing laundry and hanging out waiting for my CS lecture... or I'd be researching my draft for Speech Com which is due Monday. I'm hungry. I'm always in the wrong Time Zone when it's lunchtime. It's lunch in the Time Zone in which I was just in and where I am going... but not here. Crap.

  I'm sorry, what I purchased yesterday at IUB and on which I am writing is a bifold writing pad according to NWA's gift catalogue.

  We are flying over Minneapolis. I saw a Jesus fish (anybody know where this is?), the three towers of Minneapolis which look very small from up here. I see a Yellow building which is on the road that goes along side Lake Calhoun when coming from Excelsior avenue! That's really cool. I'm looking for... and I just saw the Lake Harriet Bandshell. Reminds me of all the fun we had this summer:)

  Read full post

Stinky will not be present in my life until 29 November 1998.

Clinton recieving instructions from the mother-computer via an old-fashioned radio.

My dorm light went good-bye. I work in darkness now. Actually I work in the bask of a florescent study lamp from Jack's desk which is adequate for computer work. What errors I encounter will be adjusted through corrective surgery...

By the way, the song that I said was really cool is actually Jeane Michael Jarre's Oxygene 16 performed live in Moscow... I found most of the concert live, but only this track was 128/44 (and mislabled). I've uploaded all my stuff to the MP3 server. I've listened to a few of his other works and they are okay, but none were as impressive as this. Of course this is also the only good MP3 I could find of him (a mislabeled one at that).

There exists a World Jewish Congres... WJC... hmm... interesting. Sounds a little too much like World Wide Jewsih Conspiracy to me.

I've noticed a lot of people on my dorm leave their TV on, and don't actually watch it. It might be laziness or it might be some type of "security" that they get from the TV being on. I know that the TV gives me "company" when I eat alone at home, but I rarely do that anymore. This might be for the same reason. So I ask:

A lot of my friends here on campus have older computers that require non-SDRAM, either EDO or the "other kind." If someone can point me in the direction of how to distinguish between the types of RAM, that'd be great. Also, if any of you have this type of RAM lying around, please give it to me.

Now you may be thinking, "Dave, you're all the way in Urbana." I'm coming back Tuesday and their is a Thanksgiving Party at my house this Friday. All are welcome, just email me so I know you're coming. It's best to let me know if you're coming by Tuesday night for sure. If you've already told me that you are coming, then don't worry. Thanks a lot. Hope to see you soon. And to all my friends living on the east and west coasts, hope to see many of you during Winter Break. Unless I hate you. Email me if you want to know if I hate you.

"Whee!" Soaring through space, Stinky's PSX will never be seen in Urbana-Champaign for a very long time.

I hit the jackpot for MP3s. I've found all these neat live Aphex Twin and Orbital songs. The only difference from a studio and live cut is an audience and it sounds different slightly. Sometimes the sound is a little low quality, due to who recorded it, etc. The Orbital songs from Birmingham tend to have too much bass... that forces me to have to deal with Winamp's equalizer. The song of the week is an Orb song. Supposedly it's Toxygene live in Moscow, but it sounds nothing like the two other versions of Toxygene that I have. It's very space-future sounding. I've listened to it so much that I can't place it with another song that I've heard, becuase it's too familiar. The other two Toxygenic songs are mass-media-future sounding. Like something we'd have sometime soon. Supposedly the new Winamp (2.04+) are supposed to get rid of skips and stuff, but that's not happening. Oh well. I'll try to get my latest collection to the MP3 server in the sky before I leave. I'll at least start uploading by Sunday. I'd hate to go home and find myself musicless... although my CD-player supposedly works... and I could go CD shopping with my Jewish friend.

I'm really being pushed I guess. My Thanksgiving break will be relaxing, but I fear I'll be spending a lot of time composing a rough draft for my speech on an inclusive education model. Dammit, I need a day. Not just a day where I have no obligations, but a day where I have no future obligations to worry about. I have an outline due Friday, stuff to read, a paper due next week, a speech in a few weeks, end of the quarter soon, immunization tests that need be done, credits that need to be transferred propperly, class registration that needs to be propperly done.

Stinky made a stink tonight. I have witnesses, Neal, Mike, and anyone else who was unfortunate to walk by my room. I had to leave my room and go talk to the Katie with the red hair. Eventually the stink faded away. I don't want to sound like I'm exaggerating, but it was really bad. Mothballs and open windows should cure the room.

I heard Stinky talking to Josh in the hallway and I asked Josh in ICQ what Stinky said about the PSX (PlayStation):

You'll be really happy...he said he's not bringing it back after Thanksgiving...cuz he's gonna have to study for finals...Don't celebrate TOO loudly...:):)

I'm reading some news off the AP wire. Xis Vwj is pronounced "See Voo." In one light, that's pretty cool. On the otherhand, who the hell is responsible for translating Hmong (I think) to English?

This if from the AFP:

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (AFP) - Inspired by the victory in the Minnesota governor's race of former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, another veteran of the sport, Hulk Hogan, plans to run for president in 2000, Time magazine says.
"When Jesse won, I said to my wife, 'I'm 10 times more popular than him,'" Hogan told Time.
"People know Hulk Hogan like they know McDonald's and Chevrolet."
The weekly said Hogan planned to approach billionaire Ross Perot, CNN founder Ted Turner and talk show queen Oprah Winfrey as possible running mates.
Asked of a possible political contest against Ventura, Hogan said, "I'd like to get him into the ring and basically stomp on him."

I finished I, Robot some time ago. It's a childrens novel. Well it seems like one. The future it portrays is interesting and their are portions that are probable. I, personally, think that we will have powerful thinking machines far sooner than actual robots.

I have begun reading Ender's Game. I understand why Adam liked it so much. This summer I worked with gifted (well if not gifted, talented) children in a mathematics program with Molly. You could always single out that even among these there is still the quiet ones and the smart ones and the quiet and smart ones. I also like how it reminds me of my childhood.

Stinky has over six hours of video of the #2 Street Fighter player in the world. He watches it intently. I came back from the library to see him and Stephan watching it as if it were a good movie. I've heard at least two or three people come in here and just get disgusted with Stinky watching it. Stinky attempted to exclaim how cool it was by saying that this was the number 2 player. My friend, Tim, responded with "So?" So remember, if you are doing something that's really silly and stupid assigning a rank doesn't make it better.

Fashion is just one of the many uses of duct tape.

For fear that my floor may come off, I started duct-taping it. This duct-tape exo-floor should be more durable and less likely to come off. That's right people... I'm still strange. Actually I'm not going to tape my entire floor lest I incur the wrath of some building inspectors.

I'm experiencing another joyous no-Stinky weekend. With Stinky gone, I decided to fix the biggify thing so it prompts you and stores it as a cookie propperly. Previously it was using someone elses code that I slightly modified. Now a more modified code that makes more sense to me. I love programming.

"There are some things I wouldn't want to recieve as a gift." "Like what?" "Herpes."

Thanks to Tuesday morning's wind dynamics that I don't quite understand in Allen Hall the doors here keep making noises, as if someone were pushing and pulling on them. I think I fixed it in my room by applying poster tack.

For those of you who want ICQ 99a, you can get it here at least temporarily.

Umm... looks like I fixed the biggify button on the left. There is now a "debiggify." I finally found the phrase that I was missing from my Javascript at cnn.com. Speaking of CNN. CNN's custom news sucks, it gives you less information. I found more things that interest me on the regular cnn page.

Download this Ventura clip. A singing, rocking and rolling governor...

Not much is happening. This week I am a good chemist and no the entire weeks worth of chemistry. Unfortunately that doesn't help me with my pending assignments. Damn! I have math homework... and math class!

I started to work on this stupid, useless project of the Hindu Mandir registry/address book type thing (again). I doubt anybody will make propper use of it, I'll see. If I do anything tonight it will be a new project for Med Rx using this.

"Rabbi, isn't that your car?"

Intel's new demand on the computer industry is cool. I'd say it's more comparable with the SGI O₂s than the iMac (as far as looks). I think there is a more important issue at hand though. Getting rid of old ISA technology, getting rid of 1.44MB floppy drives and getting rid of stupid ports and replacing them with USB ports.

I think the media and as many non-Minnesotans as possible should make fun of Jesse Ventura (for their own reasons, not because I say so). The reason is this. If Jesse is ineffective, nobody's hopes will be down. People will just expect that. If Jesse does succeed then people can be surprised. I was going to continue on this train of thought, then I thought, that it may end up filling the journal systems quota. So I wrote a more organized 'entry' and will stick it in the words section eventually. I am only half way done.

It snowed tonight. I think we beat Minnesota.

"Moving the journal over here was a great idea. I just hope the users don't mind that we reuse old graphics, woman."

I heard the KQRS apology regarding the comments made regarding the Hmong. The result is that they have given in to Citizens Against Racism. There will be no more Talk with Tak, featuring Tak the person from Grand Forks with an accent that's surprisingly Oriental sounding. I guess not stating his race does not matter. I think KQ should make up a new character with an accent that can't quite be traced. :) I'm interested in what others think of Talk with Tak or what you think would define something as being racist.

Jesse the Body was on KQ. He also made the front page of the Daily Illini (not the feature article, but the front page nonetheless). Most of my news that I throw at you is usually computer stuff, so here's something from Maximum PC that mentions "the wrestler."

McJorgenson sent me this link.

Apple has a new deal where you can Rent-to-Own an iMac for $30 a month. Sure, it sounds like a good deal. Only a little bit more than unlimited Internet access... except you realize that this is for 67 months. After the first year or two you'll feel like your machine is really out-dated. Then you realize that you are paying $30 for the next 43 months for an outdated computer that, from many peoples view points, wasn't very good computer brand new.

Matt Sundberg graduated from High School today. Slacker.

Anybody who uses the mega-gigantic dryers in Allen Hall should not leave their laundry in their for more than 10-15 minutes. It's really annoying, because if you don't use those and have a decent ammount of laundry, you have to run your load a few times.

The 52 lbs. package has been spotted in Cach, IL at 9:47 PM today. It should be expected to arrive tomorrow or Monday. The last time I saw something at Cach, IL I got it the next day or the day after. That was of course in MN, but now that I live in IL, it should be here sooner. That's right, I live in IL. I am IL.

I wonder if I've regained control of my will power. Jack's Taco Bell poster finally fell. Jack missed two classes today because he went to sleep at six in the morning.

I took my second math test. It hurt.

I love this song. "Give it to me, baby!"

Overall in the last few weeks, I've been getting more hits.

• 13190 hits for the site, 1363 user sessions for the site.
• I had 45 user sessions per day (439 hits), this is probably artificially inflated since I and others probably check the page a couple times a day.
• 455 hits for the main page, 412 user sessions
• This journal wasn't viewed enough. I am considering redoing the site to change that. The friends page was viewed more (63 hits/57 user sessions).
Should http://www.ftmax.com open with the Journal in the main frame, or should it be left as is?

Yes, the Journal is why most people come here.
No, I like the way it is now.
I don't care.

• Most user sessions come from me and some of my friends here. Actually I know a few of them look around my site, so not all the hits are from me.
• The following ranking for user sessions is as follow: U of M, UW, Caltech, NYU, CMU, Visi.com (a local ISP in MN), Uswest.com (Kay's ISP), Dan Lavenda and finally a computer named ZENO. Their is only one computer I know of by the name of ZENO, and that is Tom's dad's.
• The top referring sites are Tom's page, Adam's page, Ben Schack's page, and Yishan's news page.
• Most people use Internet Explorer.
• Most people use Windows 95, with a close following by "Others."
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Adam Engelhart, reputed for having his own domain name states on his web site that he has a loft. He goes on and on about how great his loft is... well guess what Adam? I have cool stuff too! Basically every student is at the University of Illinois Residence Halls is given a 2'x3.5' desk and a 1.5'x2' dresser that are of equal height. So today I went to Menards (goddammit, if I hyper link it, you probably wouldn't go there... I mean it's Menards... what are they going to have on the damn site?) and bought a nice laminated piece of wood that just barely fits in my room that now sits between my desk and my dresser. So I have a big L-shaped desk. I also have my fridge and microwave right under it. So there.

Check this out.

I guess Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0b2 was not supposed to be announced to the world like BetaNews did. Luckily, I installed it before Microsoft did anything. I should probably redownload it for a better build, but I don't care that much. Beta 2 fixed my shortcut/shares and other miscellaneuous icon problems. It installed smoothly (smoother than any other IE, that I can remember). It's worth upgrading to if you have 5.0B1 otherwise don't bother, it may not be worth the hassle.

My mom sent a signed affadavit (actually my dad signed it) for my netcam. I forecast that I will get it around the middle of December at the latest. She also sent a package via Airborne Express filled with Candy. :)

I'm voting for senator Mosely-Braun, the incumbant. It was between her (Democrat) or Jim Davis (Natural Law Party). The Republican candidate didn't fill out this election survey, the libertarian and the US Taxpayer both annoyed me. The Reform party was okay. I agreed with a lot of what Mosely-Braun and Davis had to say, but Braun was a little bit better in most issues. I'll decide on whom else I should vote for later. I'll probably default to Democrat or Natural Law Party (because they are a promising third party with many views akin to mine).

My song of the week is Juno Reactor's Feel the Universe (Kox Box remix)... I'll upload Feel the Universe to the MP3 server of choice. It prompted me to download more Juno Reactor and more Kox Box and other Techno MP3s I could dig up. It's funny, I tend to always have more Techno MP3s than the MP3 server. Even after uploading all I have, I end up finding more stuff.

• I ran today (Friday)... out of assumed necessity. It was nice.
• The web site for Maximum PC is finally online. I think it will be equivilant to the other computer sites I visit, but who knows.
• Hate Microsoft, Love Linux? See this.
• Look at this. I fully expect that this site would use mouseovers (the buttons change when you put your mouse over them). Strange.

Take this Sagan! (sarcasm). What horrible people will we become. Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital states something along the lines that we must not use "ether" as much as we do. It must not be the main transmitter of bits. We should come up with local systems that transmit mobile data to cable outposts which retransmit via wired to anything else (unless it's a mobile device, then it uses a local transmitter). We have the know how. Unfortunately it's not cheap to impliment. That's why I want an army of men and women ages 19-35 to join my industrial sabotage group. We will disable all inefficient corporate projects and integrate newere better designs that are designed with longevity and efficiency in mind, not some made up fairytale thing which we call money.

Speaking of science... look what the Danish have done. I could wait for an upgrade:) Imagine the impact. Technology like that, once it can be easily replicated will enable people to have nearly unlimited storage and memory. This enables us to do so much. Unfortunately science takes its time when it snuggles its way into technology. I want to see Micron eating this technology up:)

There's a new version of litestep (b24). If you want your computer to look pretty, get this. It's real easy to install and should work pretty fine. I don't use it because I like my IE4 shell as it is.

Oh yeah, NT 5.0 to be named Windows 2000. It seems logical as the Win95-98 continuation is being absorbed by the NT 4.0 progression. I guess I'll be using the same OS as you (probably) will be. Of course, that depends on the state of Linux next year. It seems to be gaining a lot of popularity this year. It's become easier to use. And then there is Corel! Most of the stuff I do right now in excel, etc can be replicated using web-based interfaces, etc. So I shouldn't care too much. I'm thinking of buying a new CD-ROM for my old computer and slapping on Red Hat. Maybe next year if I get a laptop it will be a Linux and NT machine... of course.

Sorry I've been away from humanity too long. I have too much computer stuff on my mind. The RIAA ban on Rio has been lifted. Rio is the handheld MP3 player.

Ooh, non-computer: This is for all you people who are sick of those motivational posters.

And, Molly and I by the end of the year hopefully will be both on the NetCam Network thanks to ZDTV who deemed both Molly and I as winners of NetCam devices. I decided to go the ultralegal route and have my mom sign it for me (since I'm under 21). And then I'll send it in later this week hopefully.

Am I being too mean to Jack?

I found a link here and here referring to the shooting. Apparently they had the wrong guy.

It's a bout time that somebody came out with a phone that hooks up to your PC. Unfortunately you can't use this with talking over the Internet. It wouldn't be that hard. Just make it a USB device that doubles as a microphone/speaker and you could talk to people via netmeeting with a phone.

Friday Night I watched Omen IV with some friends. It's actually the second time I saw the movie. It's very funny. Watch it with girls. There was a seen where snakes bit people and Cheryl, a friend of mine, screamed a little too much. I'm not implying that all girls will scream, there are probably quite a few exceptions. One exception, I think, is Molly. I can't picture her screaming out of fear of a movie. Or having any fear of something in a movie. That's why I love her.

Looks like Windows NT 5.0 Beta 3 and subsequent 5.0 releases will not have as cool of an active directory interface as I thought. Originally it was to be a type of metadirectory where virtual links could be made, similar to Unix type systems where you can type "ln -s" to create a symbolic link. Oh well. One day I hope to be running this. Probably a legal copy too. My friend Chris has gotten me into this legal kick.

Crack.com is folding over supposedly because of lack of funds. They made cool Linux games. One game Golgotha has great music. I remember Tom playing a song, Meathook when it came out, it's now called Munich Germany. You can get these of the MP3 Server. These are, by the way, legal MP3s. All the legal MP3s I have are pretty cool.

Also on the MP3 server is an mp3 of Jack, my roommate. It's in Chinese. It's his mom calling about the shooting that happened. I have a translation available too. It's under \D\Dave's Roommate, Jack Lin\.

I shaved yesterday. I look a lot less credible, but I also look like I'm not fresh off the boat. I also noticed that some of my hair has a copper color. I think it would be cool to have more uniform copper hairs.

I've noticed that it only takes me a small amount of time to set up a web site. Here is one for Millenium 3. It's our team that's competing in a robot design competition. The sad thing is, if Peter were in the competition, he'd beat everyone's ass.

When I wake up and Jack is gone, I shouldn't get too excited. Jack can come back. Jack came back a little before 6 AM. He makes wierd noises when he's asleep. Probably hard for him to sleep when I've just woken up.

Anyway, the last week has brought some rivalry between a few "news" services on the web. The main reason was for an article printed about an MP3 virus. Beta News first posted the article. Dimension Music made a reference to this article. According to Dimension Music's Spyed, he wanted to see how many people would buy the story, and that later he'd post a lesson. The lesson was, not to trust every news source. Rather before buying into a story, try to see if it even makes sense. An MP3 virus doesn't make sense, because MP3s are read, not executed. Spyed is a smart person and I believe what he posted was true, that he was just doing a test. Unfortunately a lot of people bought the story. Spyed later apologized for this trick. In the meantime BetaNews updated their site informing people that it was a hoax. Spyed later apologizes for making BetaNews sound like an unreliable news source. This is all great. I later go to a new site, Acid Sounds. This is after reading a nice article posted on Dimesnion Music by Spyed:

Today (once again) DimensionMusic posted inaccurate information on its site. This time they warned people about a new virus floating around in Id3 tags, called "Bloat." I really don't know where Spyed (the Webmaster) made this one up, considering Mp3s cant transfer viruses (as they aren't executables), nor can Id3 tags. At any rate, pay no attention to this prank. There's nothing to worry about!

Finally, a reliable source (Dimension Music), has reported on the current status of the next Sonique release.

My opinion: For the record, all the news services I have mentioned are to my knowledge very reliable. If they do make a mistake I can look somewhere else to find the truth, or a day or two later they'll post a correction. Actually I'm not sure about Acid Sounds. It's too new.

I tend to write in the second person when I should be writing in the first person. Here is an example:

When living away from your friends and family on a college campus you feel somewhat withdrawn and start relying on email.

When living away from your friends and family on a college campus I feel somewhat withdrawn and start relying on email.

ANybody notice the new wave of skin-able programs? It's very strange. Suddenly all these programs we use will all use skins. Of course the only real program I use with skins is WinAmp, but others will follow. Then again, I usually use bigname products like Microsoft and Microsoft... Adobe too I guess.

Seagate sent me a nice new hard drive that doesn't make the evil clicky noises... yet (I say yet, lest I jinx myself).

Yes, I know, I have a million updates today, but I'm bored. Not because I lack stuff to do, it's just that I don't want to work on my big projects and I've been doing little things all day. Anyway, I went to Laureen Ojalvo's site. It's been a while. Out of my friend's sites I have seen I think that is probably the prettiest. Ben Schack's page is neat because it has JavaScript that he took the time to write, but it's ugly. Heh, my hyperlink to his page slipped:)

I wonder who else will start a page this year... it's pretty neat. Stefan was telling me that he's going to work on a page sometime. Not that he'll have anything to put on it, but because it will be something he can pour his creativity into. I think that's why people should make web pages. Because they can be creative. Of course... sometimes people's creativity looks like crap, and then I start to think that unless a page offers content it shouldn't exist. Of course that's hypocritical because I have no real value on this web page. It's basically, read about my life 'n' stuff.

I've decided to get a Logitech Marble Trackman. I've decided I hate mice and they aren't very useful. I may buy this when I get home, or something. If anybody can find one for less than $42, tell me. Shopping.com so far has offered the best prices. They actually offer better prices than those listed in Pricewatch.com for various items, so I'd check them out.

Seagate is horking me a new drive today! It's bein sent by Airborne Express's 2nd Day Air. Which is very nice. I'm happy. You see my current drive is being crowded. I also want ample space to rip CDs. Allen Hall's library has been touting their ample collection of CDs and they have stuff that's interested be, such as Moby. They also have Chemical Brothers and Nursat Fateh Ali Kahn. Well maybe not all in Allen Hall, but somewhere in the hall libraries.

I guess somehow we are going to get a lot of Transformer episodes among the minions of Allen Hall.

I saw Jack going smokey-smokey. I read a web page that talked about things you should not do in an online Journal, one was to refer to people by name unless you knew it was okay. I don't think this counts. I'm a bad bad man.

I thought it'd be fun to document Jack's life. Jack for those of you who don't know is my roommate. Here is what he did last night:

 8:44 PM: Jack has been playing a football video game
          for at least a few hours.
 9:51 PM: Jack finishes video game.  Jack is watching 
          some sports show, probably on  ESPN.  Surfing 
          channels occasionally.
 9:54 PM: Jack's work out: He lifts the TV onto my bed 
          so he can see it better.  (Will return it 
          back in an hour, he says).
 9:54 PM: Jack leaves the room.
 9:55 PM: Jack returns.
 9:56 PM: Flipping channels on his TV.  Watching some 
          football thing.
 9:59 PM: Also reading some ESPN book.  Watching 
          SportsCenter on ESPN.
10:51 PM: Jack hears a noise and looks outside.  
          Perhaps wanting to see what it is.  TV is 
          left on, meaning he probably will re enter 
          the room.
10:53 PM: Jack returns... leaves door open.  Inquires 
          about my waveform generations (pink noise 
          synchronized with alpha/theta waves 
          synchronized with alpha waves).
10:59 PM: Minimize this window and keep it so when 
          people are in the room.
11:01 PM: Jack leaves the room.  TV still on.
11:03 PM: Jack returns.  Closes door slightly.  I like 
          that, because the outside noises add to my 
          mental interference.
11:04 PM: Jack puts in a video game in his PlayStation 
          and starts playing.  I think it's in the 
          Street Fighter genre.
12:24 AM: Stops playing Street Fighter.  Completes 
          workout by putting TV back in it's place.  
          30 minutes behind schedule.
12:25 AM: Jack leaves the room.
12:27 AM: Returns puts on shoes.
12:29 AM: Leaves again, possibly for a smokey-smokey.

Well I'm back to 4.55 GB of Hard Drive space. It really isn't that bad. It just means I had to let go of some MP3s. I went to Mail Boxes Etc., which was very helpful. I shipped the drive to Seagate and it came out to $21.22 which covers packaging, shipping and insurance. A bit pricy, but for a $540 (actually shit... that was $590... oh well hope nothing happens to it) hard drive I think it's okay. The drive will arrive next Thursday and they ship me a new one a week later and I should get that around 21 October. That's a long time I guess. But I can wait.

This week has been considerably easier for me. Nothing too big is happening. Heather is having her best friend visit her tomorrow. Some of the showers stay relatively clean. My softsoap has tiny beads oof Vitamin E that supposedly get absorbed by my skin. I personally believe that the shower washes them off of me.

Caltech started school a few days back. That also means I have to find a computer for Molly soon. Speaking of computers, I got an RMA number for my hard drive and I am thinking of shipping it out soon, except... I now can no longer re create the defects that I was experiencing. In fact my hard drive makes normal hard drive noises. I have no idea if I should cancel my RMA number or just wait a few weeks. I think I'll wait until a week from now before I ship. It turns out that 75% or so of my MP3s will fit on my old drive, so I'm not to worried about shipping this bad boy... Hopefully tomorrow they will debrief me on how long a replacement will take, etc. If it doesn't take too long, I may just send it out right away whether or not the problems occur. If it's like a week or something, I'll try to push my drive over the edge before sending it.

My brother bought me some shoes the other day, they should be arriving sometime early next week.

My life isn't that exciting. Imagine if I was so silly that I updated this page daily. You could take this entry and split it up among the days and just read these crappy one or two line things that describe my life. Suck, no?

I've decided that tonight I may want to take a walk around the quad around 10:30 at night. Just to see what it's like walking around on campus. They recommend not to. So well... gee I don't know why the hell I'm doing it, but I think I will. I don't exactly believe our schools outrageous night crime.

I didn't mention it in the last entry, but on Monday Katie Romportl turned 19. For those of you who don't know Katie Romportl was part of my graduating class at Hopkins High School. Congratulations Katie.

I finished my speech yesterday. I feel more free. Although now I have to do Laundry, read Chemistry, do four hideous problems of math and write a two page paper by tomorrow. I'll try this one step at a time. I came up with this idea. If you have public showers with partitions like at my school, bring a bag of rocks into the shower. Throw rocks over the partition until you start seeing red on the other side. I haven't tried it, and I don't think I will. It sounds a bit evil.

I am on the road to fixing my hard disk problem. It skips a lot less now that I figured out a bit more about drive termination. I think I'm on the road to having a healthier hard disk.

This Saturday I had a talk with my roommate Jack about his Street Fighter addiction. During lunch he asked, "You think that I don't have a life because I play Street Fighter all day?" After a while human conversations become very silly because people tend to think a like. I answered, "Yes." I anticipated that he would try to find a similar flaw in me, due to the nature of his question. "Well I can say that you have no life also, since you are in front of the computer all day. At least that's what I see." I replied calmly, "Yes, but I study using my computer." I guess Jack is open to the fact that he has a severe video game addiction. His main excuse is that this December there is a Street Fighter cometition in Chicago. I hope he'll get wasted.

Anyway, Jack is getting less annoying, it's just that he needs discipline. Like there is this towel that I think he uses for showering, and he leaves it on his chair all day. That has to go.

Saturday my meal plan ran up, so I ate at BW-3. They have them in MN, WI, IL, OH, and PA. I found out about them from Shang who went with me (he's from Ohio). The food is good and very affordable. I think that will be my Saturday dinner every week since wings are only $.25 on Saturday nights.

TMBG coming soon... I'm so busy, someone's gotta remind me.

Today I have two meetingish things. I have a pre-lab for chem due tomorrow so I have to do that tonight. I have to read some Chemistry. I also have to write out my speech outline for the speech I am giving on Wednesday. I have to have a quiz in Chemistry on wed. Thursday is catch up on everything day. Friday I have a presentation and my math is due. I also am doing poorly in my math class. Just barely racking more than 50% in graded homework. Take the hardest UMTYMP take-home tests and assign the six problems that are proofs. Choose four of those each week and that's what my assignments are like. I have to try to do harder in this course. I think after my September Cycle finishes I'll have catch-up time so I can read stuff for that class. I have a test soon for that class too.

People are so dumb. Mistake 1. One of the admins at Unit One sent an email to everybody with everyone's name (like everyone from Allen Hall) in to "To" field. Normally this is to be put in the BCC field so people do not accidentally reply to all and so people do not have to scroll through so many names. Mistakes 2 and onward were people replying to all. So my UIUC mailbox was filled with all this crap, just because of Mistake 1. Grr... I am getting a gift from Minnesota. Right now the gift is in Wisconsin.

After a week of classes and a couple weeks of living here, I've recognized that UI is actually Dune. That's right. I'm taking the ficition that I've been reading and applying it to the real world where it doesn't belong.

I was brought up in Minnesota, where you'd get the most unexpected weather. It was generally cold. I have grown accustomed to cold weather. I long for cold weather to come. During the summer in Minnesota it gets quite hot, so we retreat to our Air Conditioned hideaways.

Now my home for the greater part the year is Urbana, Illinois. It's hot here. Retreating to airconditioning is not an option. It's deathly hot, but you get used to it. When I moved here, I had to get acquainted with the fre(sh)man. I had to become a fre(sh)man. I have ridden the great busses which travel at great speeds. But I prefer walking. The real comparison is that Urbana is a training ground for me. I am to be educated here, but I don't think the classes will be the only thing that shape me here. I think the environment will force me to be more adapted to different places.

You start to learn things. You are forced to be organized. You are forced to explore. When I walk from Allen Hall to the Quad, I take a short cut, or sometimes it's a long-cut through another building that is Air Conditioned. I learn lots of silly things here.

I don't know why I'm going off on such a strange tangent. I got a new desk from the Residence Halls. This one allows me to put my large computer monitor on the desk and my tower case without wasting too much space.

All of the above was pre-written yesterday. Today I got speakers from my neighbor and they are large. I don't know if I like them. I got my new telephone. I think there's a link in a previous entry to it. I love it already. I should run a wire to a friend's room and thus have a second phone line.

Hey, thanks to silly American holidays like Labor Day, I have no roommate this weekend! My parents are coming to visit. It would mean something if I missed them, well wait it does mean something. I guess I do miss them, but I'm just not realizing it. Hopefully I'll have fun with them.

Email is great. I think it strengthens my friendships. I ramble so I'll be quiet.

I was just remembering the good ol' days. Back when I'd hang out in the Tech center at high school. Sure it was also the worst year of school, but it had its high points. Like when we installed Remote Desktop which enabled us to control other computers. I remember we'd always make the web browser go to a porn site like www.sex.com or something when Ryan Hayle was near the machine. I need to get something like that on some of the computers around me.

She came online on ICQ and I called her and talked to her for a half an hour. Thank god I love her, because that was an expensive call... I wonder how long my parents will pay for this...

We had the Late Nighter today. It was pretty fun. We saw a very good improv group among other things. I got tired so headed back before 2AM (and half the floor did the same so we walked back together).

I had a cold, and still do. I helped Heather hook up a network card (3COM, like me) and then sat in her room which has 2 window fans. Then I went into my room and then went downstairs. The heat in my room was unbearable. Several people downstairs were doing likewise. I met an interesting group of people too. They were like the discussionist arm of Walking Fish. I walked outside with them too, they are all very interesting. Once again, I love my hall.

Thursday I could really tell that I had friends. Adam helped me the whole day with packing. Mike Jorgenson and Marc helped me throughout the day by keeping me company and Katie joined us for dinner. We marveled at how neat it was that we made a very good meal buy ourselves (well actually Marc and Katie made a good meal).

So I ended my traditional life as a Minnesotan resident that night. I barely slept. Tried to catch up on reading and packing. We left at about six in the morning on Friday. The ride was pretty fast. We made a slight mistake that cost us 20 miles or so. We arrived at Allen Hall at 3 PM.

My brother and I with some help quickly loaded my boxes of stuff into my room. We went shopping for a refrigerator and a microwave. Then we ate food at a Steak and Shake. We came to my room and loaded all my new stuff inside. We set up everything as much as we could and then my brother left. It's was disconcerting to part with the one person who was always looking out for your best interests for your entire life.

I went to the orientation night activities. It was there that I met Heather, my neighbor who lives down the hall. She's a cool person who hails from Omaha, Nebraska. I skipped out on the movie and decided to hang out with Heather, and explain to her some things about her computer. I felt very Adamish. I talked her into housing my IBC rootbeer collection for the night as well.

I found some guy who knows as much about computers as I do who was also the network guy for our hall. Luckily he's on my floor. He picked up the cable I needed to connect to the Ethernet. Unfortunately I was too incompetent to get DHCP up until Saturday (Day 26) afternoon. I also met Brian, my neighbor who doesn't like to walk.

I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to sleep on the bottom bunk since my roommate is not yet here. That worked. I woke up and had enough time to get ready before day orientation stuff started but had to skip out on breakfast. I met Stefan Pfister during lunch. Stefan went to my Jr. High and Highschool. We ate lunch and went to a bunch of orientation sessions together. We later met up with Heather and went book shopping. Books are expensive.

Stefan and I went to eat at the Luau but ate inside instead of outside, since the inside has AC. We skipped the rest of it, because weren't into dancing and stuff. We hung out watched south park I saw his room. I later went to my room and attempted to sleep or clean up my room or something.

9 PM rolled along and when I popped downstairs Stefan caught me and asked me if I wanted to see Blade. I ran upstairs and got Brian and we all saw it. The movie was very cool. Oh yeah, sometime that day I gained a roommate.

I had a tremendous sleep-deprived headache which is still persisting. I had trouble sleeping more than a few hours last night as well. I have to talk my roommate into reconfiguring the air flow of this room. I ended up showering and going to the basement where it's cooler and hung out. I later decided hanging out won't cut it. I slept. Some janitor guy pitied me.

I went upstairs and decideded to finish some things. Then I went downstairs for brunch with Brian. We met this girl Mary who has a baton. She's one of those people who fares well solo.

Brian and I made an excursion to Walgreens and some other place to get some stuff we needed. It was hot and annoying outside.

Not much else has happened today. This weekend has been pretty good so far. I like it. I just need a new telephone and a large fan. I should shave my head and put heatsinks on it. It's neat being from anywhere other than Chicago, or for that matter any place not Illinois.

Finally...

Saturday I read a lot of Dune and a lot of Maximum PC. It's a very good magazine for anybody who can justify spending more than $2K on a single computer. Later Marc and his Anime buddies and I went to Arby's to eat and on the way I dropped stuff off at Molly's house. Her room smells funny.

Then we went to Adam's party which was moderately okay. I dislike parties because nothing really happens and nobody talks to me, because I am either insane or because I don't like them. For the most part it's the former. The party ended early and Adam, Hayley and I went to my house. Marc came over later. Then Hayley left. Then Marc and I played Mario. Then I played Solstice. I played until 2AM or more. We were going to watch Kentucky Fried Movie but Marc and I were too tired to focus. My phone rang throughout the night because a family member passed away and people felt the need to call me and tell me while I tried to sleep. Eventually I gave in and just stayed awake (it was about 10:30 AM). Eventually Marc and Adam woke up and we all made pancakes and had fun. Then we watched Dune in the evening. I hate that movie. It's differs too much from the book for my liking.

I got most of my shopping done for Urbana. Now my problem is getting there. I have to talk them into letting me in early or I have to get there by 9AM on Saturday or maybe something magical will happen and I can go whenever. Hopefully tonight my brother will give me a schedule to work around. Looks like all the good computers at Micron's refurbished division are being purchased as they are added. Oh well.

The Hindu Mandir email thing is coming along. Now I am working on how the sign up form works. It's a long form because it's collecting data for the Bulliten Board as well.

Want to see something cool? Check this out.

I did nothing today. I would normally not have an entry but then I'd be missing day 16. What did I do? Hmm... I woke up later. I started reading Children of Dune. It's working thus far. I've studied more Japanese. I installed a fan for my hard drive. I think I'll no longer have to open that case for a while. At least not until I move. I noticed temporary no parking signs issued by the Edina police on both my neighbor's lawns... I'm a bit suspicious as to why this is. I wonder if this is related to friends and acquaintances of mine parking on the street... I hope not, but you never know. I personally do not care, because I am leaving in a week. This is my last Wednesday that I will get to spend at my house at least until December. If any of you are looking for a cheap computer, Micron has a few refurbished 300MHz machines available with 64MB of RAM. They are nice machines, except that they are desktop models. They are about $1K each no monitor.

Today I lured Anna into my house. I advised her on a computer and she's ordered it tonight. Marc, Anna and I went grocery shopping and we got a lot of macaroni and cheese type food... I am borrowing two more of the dune books, and hope to finish them soon. I have also been working on the Hindu Mandir email database (again) and studying the Japanese language for my test on the 20th. I configured a machine for under $3000. It could be called a dream machine I guess. 450 MHz 256MB of RAM... it's in almost every way better than my current computer. This is something that would be hard to beat even if I ordered it from Micron Recondition... of course those once in a while machines like the one I have come along...

It appears that I no longer have my University of Minnesota Email account. This is a small loss.

Well yesterday we went to the Uptown Art Fair. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did in years earlier because it was not only very hot, but I refrained from buying refreshments (or rather having my brother get refreshments). I went with a group of friends: Zach, Adam, Tanya, Jesse, Jesse's cousin, Yishan, Marc, Dan Lavenda and Katie. We were later joined mysteriously by Laureen. I think our problem was that we went as a large group. We split off into a group of 3 and a group of 8. 8 doesn't work. When I went with my brother we were usually 4, maximum. I'm sure if Molly were here we would have gone off on our own. I should make a list of why it's good for me to have Molly around.

Most of us ate at Uptown Express. They can make anything. I had a Gyro. Dan and Laureen got an interesting plate of food from the Cuban Food place. It looked good and I should have opted for it.

AFter that we went to the Improv in the Park at the Lake Harriet Rose Gardens. Most of us got there pretty early (all but Tanya, Marc, Laureen and Adam, because Adam couldn't find his car). Yishan was feeling weak and worn out so everyone but me went in cars to the Lake Harriet Bandshell. While I waited for Adam's car of people I walked around the rose gardens and the surrounding area. The place by the parking lot was pretty. It was a bunch of rocks and some water. It reminded me of this place me and one of my cousins visited in India. They had some neat fountains at the Rose Gardens that were nice too.

Eventually everyone came back and we watched the Improv. All I have to say is that Dr. Doug, my teacher, and this one other girl, seemed to be on a different level than the other people in the troupe. Parts of it were funny though. I think the audience was easily amused.

Dark ominous clouds formed and then started to rain heavily just as the show ended. We ran to a shelter and decided to go to my house and watch a movie. Ryan Hayle, again, showed up at the Rose Gardens very late missing almost everything. The whole lot of us went to my house and we watched a few people play Super Mario brothers and eventually Katie and Dan brought home the Full Monty. I had a headache by then, which seems to be a recurring thing (I think it's my lack of water intake). What I saw of the movie was somewhat amusing. I wouldn't have rented it myself though.

Overall it was a pretty nice day.

Since many of you are going to college soon, you may need to arm yourself with this pieces of scripture:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

-Mathew 6:5-6

Today I got a card stating that I've been accepted into the University of Illinois' First Year Impact program. Yay?

Actually, now I have a new NIC card and 128MB more memory... hmm that brings me to 192MB of Memory. 64MB was manageable, 128 is comfortable and 192 is luxury for me, but memory was cheap enough for me to go for this.

I broke one of our casarole dishes today. I don't know exactly how it fell, but it did. We have so many, I doubt my mom will notice.

I got a call from my roommate today. He seems really cool. He's bringing a TV/VCR and a play station. I don't require any of these things, but it's nice to know it's there. I guess we're getting a microwave/fridge. This is good... oh yeah, I can drink hot cocoa in the winter now... I can even steal food from the cafeteria!

It's my sister-in-law's birthday today. We took Kelly to Buca to eat. The food was very good. I don't think I'll eat for a while.

Wanna know something neat? Well upsetting too, I guess.

On Thursday night, July 30th, the facility that hosts Merriam-Webster's Web site was burglarized and its servers were stolen. We've managed to restore limited capacity, but we need to obtain new hardware from our suppliers before we can return to full service. We hope to have the entire site active again in a few days. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you will bear with us as we deal with the situation.

Thank you for your patience.

--The Merriam-Webster Web Team

Mail is coming late again today.

I went to see Saving Private Ryan. If you like to watch serious movies, I recommend it. It's a bit gory, but every movie that you have seen that involves gore has been preparing you for this movie. The violence and cruelty in this movie strengthens may hatred of war. It's not just the destruction of resources, but the humanity. This was a good movie, but not something that I could see another time.

I just ordered a Micron 128 MB PC100 SDRAM DIMM of Memory. I didn't need PC100, but the company who sold it to me, CSP, offered that at a lower price than other companies offered non PC100. I also ordered a NIC (3COM FastEtherlink XL). If this stuff sounds cryptic to you, I can explain it.

If any of you thing your computer is a bit sluggish, now is the time to upgrade your memory. Typically 64MB is good. The reason now is a good time, is because memory is dirt cheap, but it is slowly growing more expensive (at least the good brands).

Yesterday and today I woke up at 9:46AM. I don't know why I wake up at that time, I just do. Yesterday I did nothing useful. Well I actually mailed the last of my thank you notes. I read Dune a lot too. Suzy stopped by and gave me a CD. This is what I call human contact. I think it was neat. She showed me some shirts for her parent's company.

Today I recieved a 9.1 GB Hard Drive as mentioned earlier. I have nothing but good news to report about it. This is the first time I've ever had to install a hard drive and I am very glad I decided to get a SCSI drive because they are easier than Jell-o to install. I was going to read the online installation guide at Seagate's web site, but it was far easier to just "wing" it. Finding a home inside my computer was kinda neat. I found a nice place under my floppy. It actually took a while to figure out how it would house my drive. There is this little cradle that unscrews from under my floppy drive. It attatches onto the new hard drive by sticking two little prongs into holes on one side of the drive while on the other side of the drive, you fasten it with a screw. I was short on computer screws so this one screw mounting was pretty handy. Then the cradle slides back into the spot under the floppy drive and you screw it tight and wallah, you are back in business. Unfortunately they didn't give me jumper-dealies so I had to steal one from a network card I had lying around in order to set the SCSI ID to 1. Then I played around and attempted to not cut the pricy SCSI cable. I succeeded and I plugged in the drive. I booted, the drive registered to the controller BIOS, and then NT started. Opened up the disk administrator and played around with it and after ten minutes or so, I had a nice new NTFS partition on the new drive. Well I copied my 2GBs of MP3s to the drive and it took under 25 minutes. I think that is satisfactory.

Today some people are going to see Shakespeare with me. I think that shall be pretty fun. It's at Lake Harriet Bandshell. I love that place.

I stumbled on this cool ad on television. It was from Volkswagon. What made it cool was they were playing Little Fluffy Clouds from The Orb and they had it synched in such a way that the car colors changed with each beat of the song. Once again VW has put neat music to their ads.

On another note, look at this and then look at this. Or maybe look at them the other way around. Now is it just me or do some of the Apple advertisements have the same tone as the Chick Tracts?

Well she's gone. She left yesterday, early in the morning. I won't see her ever again until mayhaps September. I think I'll be okay though.

Monday I decided to go over to her house in the evening. Yesterday - Day 1 of no Molly went okay. I got a lot of things finished. I finished most of the remaining thank you cards (I have a few more from people who have sent me stuff but gave no card). I also did laundry for the first time by myself. It was easy. (Thank god for the Internet.)

I also ordered a very expensive hard drive. If any of you care it's an Ultra Wide SCSI (the only thing better is Ultra 2 Wide) 9.1 GB Seagate Barracuda. I have no real idea on how to install a second SCSI drive, but I assume it's quite simple.

Today I will finish the thank you cards and send them out and later I will attend some kid's birthday party.

From boot 23 (the last issue of "boot"):

The primary use of video on the PC is--you guessed it--porn!
-Alex St. John

The article is about justifying the use of powerful processors. Basically there isn't any justification, for most people to have big machines. He says video needs it slightly, but most video is sex and violence, like in video games. Society is funny that way.

Can somebody explain to me the Fine Structure Constant?

Anyway. I'm sick of something. Trends. There's all these people who will follow trends without understanding them. Like the Internet. Like 137 FSC, etc. But more the Internet. People should like learn about things before thinking they are neat. Why is it that half the people on the Internet haven't the slightest clue on how to do anything. We have computer illiterate people surfing the web. It's like the problem with illiterate people graduating from high school. I hate that. I'm going to start writing these Internet things for people that explain to them how to do everything I can do. Well almost everything. I'm going to work on my site tonight.

Has anybody been getting a series of messages with the body, "Jam with me?" or something about hackerz haven?

I've gotten almost one hundred of ICQ messages like that already. The UINs are large numbers not in the ICQ number range. I assume someone got a crazy hack thing. THe messages were sent at about 5:56-5:57PM today.

It turns out that I cannot get ADSL service quite yet. Which is good, it saves me $120 for this summer.

Although, I'm sure later this summer it will debut. By next year I intend to get something similar in the summer (unless I'm working away from home, which I may). By then, Sprints wonder-line should debut, and thus the prices for both ADSL and Sprint's line would be very affordable.

From the Star

Moeller said that, in a few tough cases, customers might be out of service until Saturday.

Well I think I'll do my Japanese now, and then take another stab at this silly assignment. If somebody who knows a lot of C++ or a fair ammount at least could visit me (at Tom's house) and tell me what I'm doing wrong... that would be nice.

I am one of 89,000 powerless customers.

Hopefully by Thursday (when my damn CS project is due) I can utilize my home for something more than sleeping taking a shower and reading. I don't even know what to eat. I'll eat Tom. I'm at his house, I may as well... no wait... I need Tom... hmm... oh well.

So far being without electricity has taught me one thing. Reading is fun. Make that two things: The sun is nice and bright, and is a decent source of energy. Nevermind, 3 things: More research and engineering needs to go into power distribution and efficiency. Like we should be using solar power.

Here's an old article from Nicolas Negroponte. I think it is quite interesting. It deals with learning and Legos.

This Friday I had a CSci Test and I actually finished it. I was happy. I also finished watching fifth element and learned that wind + fire + water + earth + perfect women = light. Unfortunately, it's hard to get samples of some of those "elements."

Wired and all their web sites suck. For some reason close tags and propperly functioning pages are of no concern to them.

ZDnet once again has another contest. This time win video capturing gear.

It turns out Ryan noticed that you have to be incorporated to sell stock. Hopefully udnerstands that you have to be a public company.

I've decided to assume that I will not get any response from the two friends to whom I mailed letters. It would be nice to get a response, but I'm not counting on one. This way it will pleasantly surprise me if they attempt to communicate with me.

I am still "looking over" the linked list code for my C++ project. I guess it's easier than I thought.

Due to "things" I will not finish the web site until July 11th approximately. Although, I really would like to finish. I bet one night I'll finish all of it.

Here is something that you may find humorous, it was in my Inbox:

Hello denizens of the internet and friends of 
mine. I am the President of Argente Graphics, and 
I would like to offer you the deal of your life 
time! Argente Graphics needs start up money, so we
are selling shares of our business. A single share
is $1.00. However, we are offering package deals.
10 shares for $9 and 20 for $17. In the future, if
our company starts making money, I will start 
paying dividens, but for now you get the knowledge 
that your money will be wisely spent. Thank you 
for your time, I hope to be hearing from you soon.

 Ryan McGuire
 President of Argente Graphics

 PS For all of you that know me from the AFA SSS, 
hi! How have you guys been? Are any of you going 
to the AFA. I will be there June 30. Good luck in 
all you do!

Grr... my C++ assignment was looking almost manageable. Except, I looked at the files that were included. We have to write most of it. I can do that, it just takes time and I don't know how to properly test what I have written. Oh well.

Here is a funny response to my AOL-ICQ mass message:

Are you serious? 
I already knew that they 
were being bought out, but 
is it really true that 
they'll charge? 

Okay, this isn’t something that I can just ICQ to everybody about. I mean, it’s different from winning a computer. Almost everyone wants a new computer or would know what to do with one. Alot of people would know what to do with a modem, but are too stuck up on their T1 connections. Anyway… Computers.com is giving away the modem of your choice. This includes ISDN modems. I suggest everybody should register. If you win a modem and can’t use it, I sure could use an extra modem. If you don’t have ISDN, I’d go with a 3COM/US Robotics Courier V.Everything 56k. It’s the exact same modem that I use currently with 56k technology. I bought my modem over two/two and a half years ago directly from US Robotics. I did not regret it. It was the best modem that I could buy at the time (and I got a hell of a deal on it, $264 or something, compared to the estimated $400 retail).

Wednesday we had our UMTYMP graduation. Present were Molly, Tom Borchert, Adam Engelhart, Suzy Reichel, Laureen Ojalvo, Eve Xin, and others. Doug Shaw gave an astounding speech. Suzy also gave a speech which was good. Raj (my brother) and I did not like the food at all. Other people said the food was alright, but I think maybe my brother and I have higher standards for food.

Anyway, I got a lot of help for my fourth CSci assignment in Recitation. Recitation was boring so I emailed Katie (ed: Romportl - 5/24/06) for the last two minutes. There’s a link, you can email her too (ed: there is no link, it was removed in a belated attempt to thwart spam - 5/24/06). I’m going to start using her as my personal wailing wall. Except I won’t cry. I’ll just babble about how I don’t want to be in my classroom at the moment.

When I got home, Molly and I started working on invitations for our graduation. Hopefully we’ll send them out today or on Monday.

Yesterday, Molly and I went to Minnehaha Falls and rain fell on us (which she enjoys more than I) and then hail fell on us (which neither of us enjoy at all). We ran back to a mini-shelter and then to the car and headed to someplace safe, Arby’s. Molly has sided with me and really likes the Roast Chicken and Pesto Panini Grill sandwich. We then left for the play at Hopkins (Pirates of Penzance). I got to talk to the crew and even where a shirt of a crew-member (because mine was sopping wet). Molly returned to the light, and I found Mike Jorgenson and we sat down and then were joined by Adam and a surprise appearance by Jason Waye. The play was very good.

We (Molly and I) went home, were tired, started printing labels for the invites. Then we realized they didn’t print what we wanted (well I realized that, Molly was asleep on the couch). Molly left home, and I went to sleep.

Today I worked on my C++ project a little. It’s not too bad at all. Tomorrow my dad comes back from India during Simpsons/X-files… I hope his plane gets delayed so I don’t miss any of the show.

I was reading the current issue of Boot magazine. It had an interview with an Ogawa-san from Sony. Boot asked him about integrating the MiniDisc with the VAIO computers. He said that the possibility of using the MiniDisc as a storage medium is available (but he didn't make it seem likely).

I came up with an idea. If a company wants to make their replacement for the floppy the medium it has to do two things:

1. Store over 100 megs of data.
2. Be backwards compatible somehow with old floppy drives.

This of course is a longterm solution. American companies do not use long term solutions. Japanese companies do.

My brother was telling me about a hybrid vehicle from Toyota. Toyota sells these vehicles in Japan for half the price that it costs them to make these vehicles.

Why?

Why would you buy a hybrid vehicle if it costs a lot more than an "equal" gasoline car? By doing this, people will buy the vehicles. Common people who don't by the latest eco-friendly machines. When you have a large customer base, you can mass produce more vehicles. Thus cutting costs. You can also build other models of hybrid cars which would let you do part-sharing between models, which lowers the cost of building these vehicles much more. In a decade or two, you will now have a population that drives ecologically sound vehicles and you will be selling these vehicles for profit. I think however, Toyota was doing this primarily to help "save the earth."

Well, I surprised myself again. The Calendar algorithm was very very simple to figure out. It pretty much uses the same type of logic as anybody would if they were to make an HTML calendar by hand. So, I wrote this thing, now I have to do something else... yes, I need to write an interface that lets you add/modify/remove events (do you know how annoying it is to write something like that... oh well).

It'll be nice when the whole web site is finished. I take it nobody has been able to find it's location. It's fairly easy. Tom probably has the best chance of finding out where it is located.

I'll post a time line for the entire site's completion, so you people can have a good idea about what I am doing and when I'm doing it. I'd give it a good month or two... although I'd like it done at the end of the month.

Mike Jorgenson has been in town, Molly and I had lunch with him at UNOs. UNOs makes great Pizza. I tried eating a slice of the leftovers and I was full... I have another half slice to go. Then I remember, you can never eat more than two slices of UNO pizza.

Yishan should be back sometime tonight. I won't eat at UNOs with him, because I can't eat there more than once a month or once every two months.

Here's something I found about RJ-11 plugs.