Magicite's Stuff

Explosion - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 9:09 pm

Over the 4th of July Holiday I found myself once more up at my family's Tofte, MN cabin. While there, we watched the local fireworks event. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned:

Heartbeat - posted by magicite

Monday, February 2, 2009 at 2:10 am

Yup, still here.

I somehow survived last semester (though I've yet to finish up a project...). I know I often say things like "I don't know how I survived X," but truly, it was tough times. Having to work on three grad-level projects at once is no good.

Instead of taking four classes like I did last semester, I'm down to two classes this time around. First, we have Stats 5021. Despite being a math major in undergrad, I have never taken any statistics courses. This course serves to fill that gap. This is also my first one hour class in years (most of my classes are 1.5 to 2.5 hours per session). I must say, I do miss short classes. I seem to stop caring about 1hr5min into any lecture, no matter how [un]interesting.

My second course is a special topics course, called Advanced Storage Systems. This is going to be a heavy project course; sadly, I have no background here, so I'm not sure how it will go.

In other news, a pipe burst in the EE/CS building at the UofM, causing severe damage. Among other things, the two labs I use for my TA work are closed indefinitely. Were they destroyed? I do not know, but this is going to making TAing 1113 verrry interesting for awhile.

I've recently been reunited with my longtime love, grapefruit. I had forgotten how tasty it can be (and, after searching the Internet, learning how good it is for you). For those looking to rekindle an old flame, I recommend it be this one.

Happy with the Obama administration so far, excepting the call to delay the DTV cutoff. The original date was in 2006... let's get it over with.

A Wee Bit Rusty - posted by magicite

Friday, November 14, 2008 at 1:47 am

So I was completely wrong. This semester is definitely one of my busiest ever, if not the busiest ever. Why is it so busy? I have a ridiculous schedule. I'm taking four grad classes (though one is colloquium and is easy), have my normal TAship, and also continue to work at Cray in my "free-time." Plus, I'm supposed to be starting out on some independent research.... yeah, more on that later. Hence, the complete lack of posts here.

So as a PhD student, I'm expected, roughly in my second year (i.e., now), to start doing some real research. But here's the problem: I have absolutely no time for it this semester. This has given rise to some inevitable friction between myself and another entity... not sure what I'm going to do about that.

That's not entirely true. I've thought quite a lot about what I would like to do with my life, and I'm not as confident as I once was that I want to get my PhD. Don't get me wrong, I like doing research, it's just that I'm not sure getting a PhD is in my best interest at this time. As much as I like research and CS, I like other things as well, and I don't get to do those other things at all while in school.

So, what to do. I really have three choices, as far as I can tell. I can continue along on the PhD path as is. Or, I can get a job in industry and get my PhD at the same time, albeit slowing down the process. Or, I can just get a job in industry after completing my masters in the spring.

I asked my advisor on the likelihood of option number two working out; that is, going down the PhD and job route. He said it was approximately.... zero. It just doesn't happen. So that realistically narrows down my options to sticking with PhD, or stopping at masters and getting a job.

Now now, I know what you're thinking. The economy is crap, unemployment is at an all-time high, so going the job route is unreasonable. While these facts are true, it ignores the fact that, well, I was offered a job a little over a month ago. So again, the two options remain: PhD, or job.

Let's assume that right now is the only time in my life where I can get a PhD. Thus, taking a job and stopping at masters means I would never be able to get a PhD. What do I lose out on? Well, I probably cannot be a CS professor anywhere. I probably couldn't get into a high-end research institution. That's... really all about it. A PhD probably won't make me anymore money in the long-run (side note: while it's "not about the money," it's an important factor to consider). All things considered, I don't think I'm missing out on much.

Now the question is, stability. Arguably, a PhD ensures stability. If I were to become a professor, I'd be a professor for life. Economy going poorly? Doesn't really affect tenured professors. New widget or technology X make me unneeded? Gulp. This is perhaps my biggest hesitation with regards to the job route. What if my skills go the way of the Punch Card? I think I worry about that problem too much. History has shown that I learn new things independently and explore new areas on my own. A rolling stone gathers no moss, all that. Still, it sits in the back of my mind.

About the job. I like it. It's interesting work, and I think I can make real contributions. And it allows me to have free time.

But... the grass is always greener on the other side. Blah.

It really comes down to a matter of choice. Neither choice is wrong, or necessarily better/worse than the other; they're just different paths that will lead to different lifestyles. That makes this whole thing difficult.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat - posted by magicite

Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 1:17 am

Another summer, another failed attempt at revamping this website. I haven't even touched the design since I made it, which was Summer 2004. Next summer? Who knows. My current interests fall outside of web design, so there isn't much motivation to do it.

But yes, indeed, the summer is coming to an end. My internship is coming to a close for the summer, and classes start up on Tuesday, right after labor day and right as Hurricane Gustav pummels the southern states.

Speaking of classes, I've added another one for the fall. I forget its name at the moment, but it's outside of the CS department and will help fulfill my PhD and Masters requirements. More on that in a few months...

The other day, I started making onigiri. They're quite yummy and portable. These will serve as excellent snacks this fall, especially when slogging through my Tuesdays and Thursdays, where I will be busy with U stuff from ~9:30am until ~10:20pm. Man, Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be terrible this semester...

...or will they be? My spring workload was rather taxing, but that was because parallel and algorithms were both very highly demanding classes. That's not to say that the current batch of classes aren't demanding--they are--but I think the nature of the previous classes was a bit more taxing than the new crop. Namely, both parallel and algorithms were theory classes, and none of my new classes are really theory driven (according to the department).

I've been watching lots of Kurosawa films recently. Lots and lots--he put out sooo many (good) films. It will be nice to have some non-Kurosawa films soon though.

The RNC will occur in St. Paul this year (unless ol' Gustav messes things up). I sense that the twin cities will be a zoo for the next few days...

I bought a clapper. Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.

Geocaching - posted by magicite

Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 12:08 am

The last few weeks have proven to be rather uneventful, outside of my newfound desire to go geocaching all the time. If you find yourself in the TC area and would like to go geocaching sometime, just let me know.

His obituary has been posted to the local newspaper website.

Memories of a Good Friend - posted by magicite

Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 1:17 am

I'd like to talk about my best friend when I grew up, Randy Feidt. I've only mentioned him once before in this post (briefly). The ensuing paragraphs meander and perhaps serve no obvious purpose, but I feel as if they are important. Please read them.

When I was growing up, I had but one male cousin my age: Randy Feidt. As you can imagine, we did everything together when we could. Up until the mid 90s, he lived about ten miles away, so I would on occasion either go over to his house, he would come over to my house, or we would bump into each other at our grandma's house.

I remember one time when I was spending the night at his old house and we closed a door in his room for some reason. When we awoke, the door had been mysteriously opened. When we went to go investigate, a motorized firetruck of his on a high shelf started to spark and move. We hightailed it out of there. Being the kids we were, we thought it was a ghost. To this day there's still no explanation for what happened. It was not our imagination.

In the mid 90s, Randy and the rest of his family built a house more or less in my backyard. Let me tell you, it was awesome. Now, we could do whatever we wanted to do all the time, and we wouldn't have to get rides from our parents to do it. Since we lived amidst a creek and woods, we'd often find ourselves playing there. Like I had done with my brothers, and had continued to do after Randy moved nearby, we'd build dams in the creek and forts in the trees (dams and forts are what every young boy lusts after). In the wintertime, we'd pull out some sleds and go sledding both at my house and at his house, since we were both on hills. We'd have competitions to see who would slide the farthest. It was fantastic.

At some point my brother Joel and I bought a pet hooded rat after seeing a segment on them on TV. Little did we know that the rat we bought (we named her Milo, by the way, from Milo and Otis) was not only female, but pregnant at the time of purchase. One day, Milo gave birth to numerous new hooded rats. Randy ended up with one of them, and it grew and grew until it eclipsed Milo in size. How both of us convinced our mothers to let us have a rat, I'll never know.

As we got a little older, we continued to do these things, but we expanded our hobbies a bit. We were now old enough to have BB guns, so we would shoot pop cans or the mud (to make it splatter) or other things (like old barn windows...I mean, scratch that). We were also in Boy Scouts together, which meant we went camping together often. Two summers in middle school, we were both on the same little league baseball team. Even though I was beyond terrible, he continued to practice with me and we had more good times.

In early high school, during one of the summer breaks, I introduced Randy to a couple games I was playing, and he was hooked. I do believe he came over every day that summer (or so it seemed) just so that we could play video games together on the computer. At the time, Randy and his family had an older computer that couldn't run these games, so he started an unsuccessful campaign to get his parents to buy a new one. After he figured out this wasn't going to work, he started to seriously consider saving up to buy one for himself. Granted, he didn't have a real job yet, but he was convinced he could do it.

On multiple occasions I went with Randy and his family to their cabin up in northern Minnesota. This would have been before Randy started to smoke. How do I know? Well, a friend of Randy's stepdad came to visit one time and brought his daughter and her friend with. Of course, they just happened to be our age. The normal high-school-age flirtation ensued (Randy really liked one of them), and eventually they both took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. They offered us both a cigarette. I quickly declined, but Randy hesitated. Eventually, he declined as well, but I'm fairly certain he only declined because I did. He really wanted to impress the girl, but didn't because he knew it would be bad for him, and my rejection reminded him of that.

Not that it mattered. Starting around middle school, the path in life that Randy and I were on began to diverge. We started to have different interests, different friends, and different habits. I became, and remain, someone who worried about school all the time. Randy, on the other hand, did the exact opposite. He stopped studying altogether. His friends all smoke and drank (who knows what else, to be honest), and he followed suit. By the time Randy and I graduated from high school, we had nothing in common but our childhood memories. Even so, we still got along great, and every time we'd see each other, we'd shoot the shit and talk about the good times we had growing up.

Randy's path took him to the workforce after highschool graduation. I went to college, so it is here that we really went our separate ways, since we were now in different places. Honestly, it's a shame he didn't try harder in high school and choose to go to college somewhere, because underneath it all, he was intelligent. Perhaps he didn't have the patience for school; I really don't know. I do know he tried. I vividly remember what I did after 8th grade graduation. For some reason, I found myself staying at my dad and eventual stepmom's house with Randy. I don't remember why we were there or what we were doing, but I do remember eventually having a very long, prolonged discussion with him. While I don't remember everything we talked about (girls and reminiscing probably entered the conversation; so ok, perhaps not as vividly as I alluded to), I do remember two things. One, we talked until the sun rose. Two, we talked about our future and our goals in life. Randy and school had never really gotten along (again, despite this, he was intelligent), so his grades were never the best. But it is here that I told him that everything he had ever done with regards to grades up to this point was meaningless. That, in fact, ninth grade on up is when grades actually started to count, and that if he had any intention of going to college, that now was the time to start caring. Upon telling him this, he remained silent for awhile, as if processing what I had told him. Having not known this, he believed he was screwed, destined to stay in Northfield his entire life (which there's nothing wrong with, but for some reason, teenagers seem to hate their hometown and want to get far away from it). When ninth grade rolled around, he put a ton of effort into school... for about two months. Then, just as before, he slacked off and began to fail his classes.

As I mentioned, we went our separate ways after high school. I do not know what Randy did at this time. I saw him working at the Tacoasis in Northfield on a couple occasions, and I saw him at my dad's wedding three summers ago, and my brother's wedding one summer ago. I also know that Randy had a baby boy about one year ago, shortly before my brother's wedding. As I write this, I've still never seen him.

You know, I'd like to tell myself that Randy's path in life has led to happiness. After all, in spite of his life's difficulties, he's had plenty of fun in his life, has a healthy baby boy, and many friends. Even though he remained "stuck" in Northfield, he had much of what many of us would consider essential to one's happiness, and that is the most any of us could ever hope for.

As I said, it'd be nice to tell myself that, but it's just not true. You know, Randy and I were born only three days apart--he beat me by three days (that bastard). Of course, growing up, Randy never stopped rubbing this fact in. Since he was three days older, he was therefore, however infinitesimally small, wiser than me. It is with exceptional sadness that that I report that, in about twelve short, short hours, I will be older than Randy.

It turns out that Randy, unbeknownst to me and presumably everyone else who knew him, reached a level of deep sadness few of us have ever or will ever reach. In spite of, or perhaps because of his circumstances (having a child, a job, friends), Randy chose to cure his sadness by removing himself from this world. Sometime this past Wednesday, Randy shot himself in the chest, and then simply ceased to exist.

But I'll always have my memories.

***

FAIL - posted by magicite

Friday, June 13, 2008 at 10:18 am

This one's geeky. You have been warned.

So it turns out that aliases in a shell are not inherited by any of its children. So, if you wanted to write a Perl script to examine a user's aliases, you're out of luck. The reason for this is that aliases are not part of the shell's environment, and thus, do not get inherited.

It is true that if the aliases are stored in a file somewhere (.bashrc, for example), you could just parse that file, or, launch a new bash shell from within Perl, and parse the output from the alias command. But that doesn't capture aliases added in that particular session, which is exactly what I need it for.

I'm not gonna lie, this is the first time a shell has failed me. I understand why it is done this way (Suppose aliases were inherited. Then, if I were to log in to my account from your shell, I would have all of your aliases), but it still makes me unhappy.

Mou Sukoshi - posted by magicite

Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 10:59 pm

Well, I survived. My first year of graduate school, that is. As hinted, this past semester demanded the entirety of my time. Taking Algorithms and Parallel together was probably not the best idea. However, they're both over now, and as a result of working hard (in all three classes; the third being real time / embedded systems), I did well.

I highly recommend trying out Crystal Light On-The-Go packets.

Hmmm.... so much to say, it has been several months since a real post. But I've forgotten any significant events in the past few month... (not that there were many)

I will do a site redesign... sometime this summer. :) Of course, I said this last summer... I twitter often nowadays. I'll be sure to integrate that in somehow. It's essentially micro blogging.

Can't wait for iPhone OS v2.0. I plan on (but have not started, no time 'til recently) developing for it. I'm already (relatively) familiar with Cocoa, so there shouldn't be much of a learning curve for me.

I've already been working at Cray for two weeks already. Time flies! I'm working with Carl Albing and others at Cray in the ALPS/WLM group.

Nick and Emily are back in MN/WI! Yay! Still haven't seen them though.

I've been making an inordinate amount of pizza recently (all from scratch; I make the dough, pizza sauce, and put it together with cheese and toppings, so I don't feel that guilty). I need to expand my food horizons once more.

Mario Kart Wii came out ~1 month ago. Awesome game. If you happen to have it and I don't have your Wii number, let me know so I can add you (in order to play together online).

I found Orange Box for the PS3 at Target for $15 the other day (it's normally $50-$60). I win. :)

I need a new alarm clock. Thinking about the Luna X2 or the iHome iH9. Both work in tandem with iPods/iPhones. Though, they are non-optimal with regards to the iPhone since the iPhone's GSM chipset (like most/all GSM chipsets) interferes with speakers. This can be fixed by having properly shielded speakers/cabling, but that's more expensive, and companies tend to be cheapasses. The Luna X2 was supposed to come out last Spring, but it is now rumored that it will come out at the end of the summer and will use higher quality components that block the noise from the GSM components in the iPhone.

Someone owes me a Mac Pro.

I need to make useful, productive blog posts. I'll work on that.

Pulse Check - posted by magicite

Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Yup, I'm still here. This semester has been spectacularly busy. Nothing new to report, other than we now have a cat in apartment 701. Yay!

Goldmine - posted by magicite

Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 3:37 am

The recently released iPhone SDK by Apple is a total goldmine. I plan on whipping up some apps in my freetime (read: the weekend after my last final and before my first day of work).

Work? Yup. I'll be working at Cray again this summer as an Intern. The company stock is quite low at the moment, which is kind of sad. Hopefully it goes up again. If it goes much lower, I'll have to buy some... unless someone tells me not to. ;)

I'm in the middle of midterms. Whereas last semester was relatively slacker, this semester is absolutely brutal. Two of my classes have homeworks due every other week, (each of which seem to take several days to complete), and one of my classes has something "big" every week: a test, homework, or a lab.

But hey, I'll be mostly done with my breadth courses at the U after this semester. Then I can focus on whatever areas I choose (of course, that's pretty much what I have been doing thus far).

Who knows what I will end up doing. I'm definitely at least getting my masters. Will I follow through and get my PhD? That's the current plan (and I am officially PhD track), but who knows, plans change. If the economy cooperates, a job isn't a half-bad idea...

It's 3am and you're all safe asleep. But there's a loaf of bread cooling in my kitchen and I'm hungry. Very very hungry. It's time for supper.

A Good 4 Years? - posted by magicite

Monday, February 11, 2008 at 1:53 am

First, with the exception of Huckabee, it appears the candidates I prefer are the only ones remaining. To me, this is good, as it means we'll hopefully have someone decent in the WH for at least four years. It's been a long time coming.

Second, my cooking exploits continue. Tonight, I made lasagna (for the second time in my life; the first, a week ago). Lasagnas are good to make [although they take forever] because they last a long time--a boon when you've got classes to tend to.

(Third) Speaking of classes, I am back in class. So far, the semester has been much of what I've expected: algorithms is kicking my ass (though I'm putting up a good fight), I've no background in real-time and embedded systems, and the parallel class hasn't been too bad, thanks to some of my undergrad endeavors.

Fourth, I have secured a job for this summer. Details when it's more official than it is now.

Fifth, Apple stuff from weeks ago. While I was wrong about what came out, I think my analysis remains spot on: there's no market for the MacBook Air. Don't get me wrong, it's a sweet machine, but I'm not convinced there are enough people willing to pay a price premium for an "ultra" portable that runs Mac OS X. Most pundits don't "get it" with regards to the device (hell, when have the pundits ever gotten Apple?), but I think I get it, it's just that, again, who's it for? And is that group of people large enough to justify the product's existence? The answer to the second question is No. And I think Apple knows that. I think they're investing in the future, much like they did with the iPod in 2001. It's better to get a good product out now, refine it with time, and convince the market it wants the device than to just come out with a similar device a few years down the road. We'll see.

Sixth, 2008 is going really freakin' fast.

Seventh, Nick got a job at a company in the greater Twin Cities area (read: western Wisconsin). Good for him. I've not heard about what's in store for Emily yet, but I'm sure she'll have no problem finding a job in her area here. It'll be good to get the both of them out of the pit stain of the US. :)

Eighth, Netflix has left a certain movie at the top of my queue for almost a month now. Yes, it does say "Very Long Wait" for the disc, but seriously, what the hell? Buy more discs!

Ninth, has anyone ever seen Chunky Tomato Sauce at a grocery store? Sure, sure, mix tomato sauce with diced tomatoes, but that's not what I'm asking.

Tenth, I recently purchased a new reading chair (think stationary papasan) for my bedroom. I've not used it too much yet, but when I have, it has proven to be a worthy reading chair.

Eleventh, Apt 701 [here] might be getting a cat soon. Purrrr.

Twelfth, if you're in the Twin Cities area and want to 'hang' sometime (video games, out to eat, movie, whatever), let me know. Thursday evenings and Fridays work well for me.

7 Comment(s) . . .

Break - posted by magicite

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 6:44 am

I've been on break for a few weeks now, and classes do not resume until January 22nd. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time off--I've traveled, played copious amounts of games, watched many movies, and perhaps most importantly, endeavored to learn to cook properly. In other words, as from-scratch as possible. I bought many supplies and a few cookbooks, which has thus far resulted in a Chicken Tetrazzini casserole, a spicy sausage + cornbread casserole, garlic cheesy biscuits (think Red Lobster), and some other stuff. I was going to make mashed potatoes the other day, but my roommate beat me to the punch.

So I bought a PS3 after finals in December. Shock! Not really. There's no chance I'd get an XBox 360 (I'm not a fan of it's overall game-base, the red ring of death, the closed-nature of the hardware [as compared to the PS3, which is actually quite open], and my general distaste for all things MSFT [I say, as I use a MSFT mouse]). So, why get anything at all? For me, Unreal Tournament III. The UT series has always been my favorite. I could either spend gobs of money on a new gaming computer [which has its problems], or I could buy a PS3 and get all of its associated goodies. Plus, the PS3 can act as a media server [think streaming music, pictures, or movies from a computer or direct from the PS3] and is also a Blu-ray [High Def video] player. Two comments on this: yes, the XBox 360 is a wonderful media server as well [and unarguably better right now for paid content], but the PS3 isn't bad and Sony seems quite committed to improving the system. Second, I've been of the opinion for quite awhile that Blu-ray would eventually succeed versus HD-DVD. Why? The logic is simple: Sony made Blu-ray default on the PS3, and MSFT did not make HD-DVD the default on the XBox 360. This setup doomed HD-DVD, in my opinion. Historical sales of actual discs have, for over a year now, always favored Blu-ray. This played a large part in Warner Brothers' decision to switch from producing HD-DVD + Blu-ray discs to just Blu-ray [reference]. This move by WB essentially signals the death of HD-DVD (barring some desperate moves by the HD-DVD camp, like bribing some other studio back over to the HD-DVD camp). Regardless, like most people in the intarwebs, I'm happy the format war is coming to an end. Doesn't hurt that my prediction seemed spot on.

So, the elections. First, you should all know that the American media is terrible. Ever notice how they leave out minor candidates? That's the media influencing your vote right there. The perfect example of this is that of Ron Paul (as an aside, I personally disagree with the man on many issues, but respect him; he is as genuine as they come. His perspective is refreshing and grounded). Despite polling decently well for a minority candidate (polling which, mind you, has documented flaws, but I won't get into that) and pulling in $20 million last quarter--more than all other GOP candidates--he still gets ignored. "No way!", you say. Well, yes way. Here's a perfect example:

This is a frame from CNN.com's online coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night. Notice anything strange? At all? Well let's see here. I see McCain at 37%, Romney at 28%, Huckabee at 12%, Giuliani at 9%, a big splotch of gray, and some really small stuff. "Oh!", but you say, "There's just no room for Paul, Thompson, or Hunter!" A mildly fair argument, I must concede. Except, not. That grey slice looks rather large, don't it? Whatever could that be? It even looks to be the same size as Giuliani! So it is. When this screen cap was taken, both Giuliani and Paul had 9% of the vote, yet Paul gets nary a mention. Crap, I tell you. This is but a small example of a consistent effort to ignore people who deserve air time.

Back on track, the election again. I've not committed to anyone yet. What's the point? Safer to wait until after the primaries. What I want and who are popular do not exactly jive. Other nuggets: I genuinely feel sorry for Clinton. Although a bit too much on the conspiratorial side, this article sums up my thoughts on her main challenge. That and everyone's tendency to say and therefore believe that "half of the country hates her!" I think the hate is misplaced and rather adolescent, but whatever the reasons, it is irrelevant. Whether people have good reasons or whether it's a product of cognitive dissonance, people do think they hate her, and that's hard to overcome. Barack seems a favorite to many on both the right and left, but his lack of experience in foreign policy is quite damning for a presidential candidate in today's world. I'm sure he'd make a fine president now, but he'd make for an even better one if he were a vice-president to someone for 4-8 years first, in order to gain some much-needed experience in this area. I didn't like Edwards in 2004, and I don't like Edwards in 2008. This is solely on personality. Petty, but true, and with a crop of decent candidates this year, it's all I need to cross someone out. The other two DFLers are in it to raise issues / gain awareness. For the GOP, I cross out Giuliani immediately because I think he's a schmuck ("Mr 9/11!") who will damage this country even more, and Huckabee because of his Constitutional-amendment happy views (i.e., marriage, abortion, et cetera; the government does not belong here, in my opinion. You know how, when learning about the US constitution as a kid, you'd see a listing of all amendments ever made, and some of them would have strikethroughs, representing that they were canned [like prohibition]? Yeah, amendments concerning the above, if ever made, would eventually be removed and forced to live as strikethroughs in history books forever). I admittedly don't know much about Thompson (aside from his unpresidential / unprofessional behavior in the debates), nor much about Romney (other than he's a mormon from Massachusetts). McCain is quite pro-war (thumbs down from me), but he does have a history of at least pretending to work with "the other side."

It'll be interesting to see how Super Tuesday [February 5th, where many states, including MN, hold primaries] unfolds. Should be an exciting time!

Mac Rumors. Hmm. There's the big annual keynote next Monday AM [14th], and lots of goodies shall be announced. The big rumor this year is that of a sub-notebook, much in the spirit of the popular Asus Eee PC, will be unleashed upon millions of salivating Mac users. I'm not so sure. Solid-State Disks are still too expensive (which the unit would undoubtedly use), and quite frankly, where's the market? Imagine if you had a $500 Apple laptop running Mac OS X. It's going to be sllloooowwww. What would it be useful for? Email, web browsing, word processing, and chat. That's about it. Sure, apple fans will buy a bunch, but only after probably cannibalizing much more expensive MacBooks / MacBook Pros.

Another long-time rumor in the Apple world is referred to as the xMac. What is it? Essentially, a Mac Pro (desktop computer), but for consumers. Mac Pros are sweet, don't get me wrong, but they are expensive. Beginning in 1999, Apple's pro desktop line reached increasingly affordable levels (sub $2k). The lowest it ever reached, if I remember correctly, was $1499, in 2001-2002ish. This has all changed with the transition to the Intel architecture, and for good reason: top-of-the-line Intel processors are damn spendy! The entry Mac Pro now costs $2799. Yeouch! Sure, the beast comes standard with 8 processing cores, but that price-point puts the unit firmly out of reach of many. And yet, it presents an opportunity. An opportunity, that is, to successfully make and market the xMac. Priced between entry-level iMac models and under number-crunching Mac Pro models, an xMac has a definite home and market. The xMac, when presented in this light, also makes the "new displays" rumor that has been floating around recently have more merit. If Apple makes a consumer-level desktop, surely consumer-level displays would be needed as well. How is this different from an iMac, aside from two pieces versus one? The xMac would be more powerful / upgradeable / traditional.

There are other rumors too, but these are the interesting ones. It'll be interesting to see what Steve-o has up his sleeves. I'm sure there will be one more thing . . .

Gold - posted by magicite

Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 1:40 am

Wow. phpBB v3.0 has gone gold four years after I thought it would.

Good work to the phpBB team; next time, go a little faster, eh?

Saved! [by Time Machine] - posted by magicite

Friday, November 30, 2007 at 10:03 pm

So as you may know, I'm working on a very large semester-long project for one of my classes [the 'Quiz Kong' project]. We're using the Flex development environment [think Flash but for programmers instead of graphic designers], which has, overall, been a very good decision.

Anyway, I was working on the project a few nights ago and checked my source code in at about 2am. Thirsting for more [or, because there was so much left to do], I continued to work on it for an additional 2.5-3 hours. Every so often, while coding or doing homework or something else, I become extremely efficient and focused and get a lot done in a short period of time. This was one of those times.

But something bad happened. I don't know how it happened [well, I kind of do, the software I'm using is buggy], but when I tried to check in my 2.5-3 hours of changes, all of my work was erased.

Wow, you know that feeling you get when you start on a test and realize you're vastly unprepared for it, and start to get all hot and panicky? That was me, at 5am.

But surely, something was wrong with my development environment and the files were actually there. Well, I checked that, but no dice: my work had disappeared, never to be compiled ever again.

But had it? When Mac OS X 10.5 [Leopard] came out, I turned on something called Time Machine. What is Time Machine? In short, it's an automated backup system that keeps hourly, daily, and weekly backups forever [well, until your hard drive runs out of space, at which point it deletes old backups].

Holy crap batman, did you just say hourly backups? That means that I lost at most an hour of work.

So I fired up the Time Machine interface and navigated to my lost files. When was the last backup? Ten minutes before I had seemingly lost everything!! I basically lost no work. Sure, it took me about an hour to patch everything back together [ah, nothing like going to bed at 6:30am on a schoolnight], but at least I recovered everything.

Moral of the story? Backup regularly :P

Back to Busy - posted by magicite

Saturday, November 24, 2007 at 1:57 am

After a month or two of being not-so-busy, I'm afraid I am quite back into the state of being busy. I'll get all of my stuff done . . . but it's going to be a ton of work. Wish me luck!

Distractions - posted by magicite

Monday, November 5, 2007 at 11:09 pm

So . . . sometime in September I started to make bread by hand. I had two primary reasons for this: it's dirt cheap [and saves money] and I will never run out of bread in the middle of the week [a common occurrence for me, actually]. I bought the necessary supplies and Brent lent me a book on bread.

I think I ended up making about four loaves by hand. The first loaf was OK, the second one was terrible, the third was ok, and the fourth was the best. This was just a basic white bread recipe, mind you.

But making bread by hand is a time consuming process. None of the steps are overly difficult, they just take time: mixing, priming, kneading, waiting/rising, kneading, waiting/rising, cooking, cooling, and then finally eating.

For the CS or mathematically inclined, this looks much like an algorithm [which it is]. And all algorithms can be carried out or simulated by some sort of machine. In this case, a bread machine [1lb loafs], which I purchased sometime in early October, as well as a book of recipes for bread machines. I must say, it has been another good purchase, and I recommend getting one to everyone. Just make sure not to get a really big one, 'cause the loaves are too big and you'll never use the damn thing. I make a new loaf every other day, in part because I use bread for sandwiches and, since getting the bread machine, copious amounts of toast with raspberry preserves.

Up until this past weekend, I only had access to bread flour [basically has more gluten in it, which traps the C02 produced by yeast to raise the bread] and white flour, so the loaves I made were basic. This weekend, however, I acquired a bunch of bread goodies, like whole wheat flour, herbs and spices [oregano, thyme, nutmeg, cinnamon, basil, dill, poppy seeds, caraway seeds], and other tasty ingredients. I had a couple of ripe bananas laying around, so I made a banana and walnut cake, banana oatmeal bread, and Italian herb bread. All were very tasty, and all were made from scratch. If you live near me / are in the area, I'd be more than happy to make you a loaf, so let me know. It's honestly fun to do, and whenever a loaf is baking, my apartment smells amazing.

This is how I have been distracting myself from doing actual work.

As far as actual work is concerned, work progresses on my group's project for User Interface Design class. Our project name is called Quiz Kong, and is a Flex-based application for creating quizzes that have an image as their central feature [ie, a geography quiz would use a map]. We have a few weeks to finish our implementation, and we've barely started . . . we'll get it done though. I'm not worried yet.

For my Networking class, we were just assigned Programming Project 2. It's not due for over a month though, so my partner and I haven't even started yet [in fact, I didn't have a partner until a couple hours ago].

For those of you who buy / play video games, don't you think that there is an absurdly high number of good games that have come out in the past two months / are coming out in the next six months? What a crappy time to live off of a graduate student stipend.

Biggest Weakness - posted by magicite

Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 7:21 pm

A few weeks ago my roommate, Brent, went job hunting and through the subsequent interviews. At one such interview, he was asked the popular question, "What do you think is your biggest weakness?"

I thought about how I would answer this question were it to be posed to me in an interview. The goal, of course, is to be honest and humble, yet simultaneously not reveal too much. I thought a decent answer for me would be that I can be a slow learner when given a completely foreign task. If, for instance, I was unfamiliar with the terminology in the task's area, I would have to first go out and be comfortable with that before tackling the given task. In other words, I need some form of structured starting point in a given area before I can be of any use.

If you were asked the same question in an interview, what would you say?

JURY DUTY - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 23, 2007 at 9:57 pm

'nuff said.

Alive and Kicking - posted by magicite

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 2:26 am

Hmph. Been over a month since I've posted. I suppose a quick little 2am post won't hurt.

Since my last post, my internship with Cray ended [which I thoroughly enjoyed], I went through oodles of orientation and TA training, made some new friends, registered for classes, and successfully survived my first two weeks of graduate school. In addition to my TA duties, I'll be taking User Interface Design, Data Communications & Networks, and Intro to Research in CS. Light load, in my opinion, but that's what I was told to do [they suggested 6 credits, I'm taking 7]. So far, I like it. But really, when was the last time I didn't like a CS class? [. . . actually, I can think of two classes in particular from Undergrad . . .]

More on all of that when I feel like it.

I finally broke down and bought a TV. Those of you that know me know that, at least as of late, I dislike buying things that break [ie most things from Target], and I like to future proof my purposes; my belief is that this ultimately leads to cheaper Total Cost of Ownership [TCO]. The result of this is that when I buy 'toys,' they tend to be expensive, but also last me a long time. Enter my new TV. 32" 1080p LCD TV. It is very nice, and the 1080i [not p] upscaling DVD player that got tossed in for free by NewEgg [highly recommended company, btw] is fairly decent, and makes movie watching a highly enjoyable experience. Brent, my new roommate [who was also my junior-year-in-college roommate], hooked up his sound system [via an optical-digital cable, direct from the TV to the sound system] and now everything is very much "kick ass." To complement the new addition to the living room, we also subscribed to NetFlix's 3-movies-at-a-time plan. If any of you readers [all three of you] have NetFlix, let me know, and we can be NetFlix "friends," which will let us recommend movies to each other [as well as see each others' queues]. Oh yeah, also bought a cheap "entertainment stand" from Ikea for the TV. It works well. Pictures later, perhaps.

Not sure buying the TV was the soundest decision I've made recently, but at least it was one of the more aesthetically pleasing ones. :)

Ah yes, my website redesign. Apparently it didn't happen. Shame on me. Or, shame on the phpBB group: 3.0 final still is not out as I write this. At least they're on Release Candidate 5. Any day [month? year?] now . . .

Furniture - posted by magicite

Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 10:40 pm

I recently purchased some furniture for my apartment. I bought a couch and a love-seat. Additionally, I purchased a 84" bookcase and a lamp for the living room. I don't know all of the details, but the store I bought the furniture from absolutely had to sell the couch and love-seat this weekend, so I only had to pay for the couch. The love-seat was tossed in for free!

Dishwashers - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 11:54 pm

Did you know that, when you load a dishwasher, you aren't supposed to put glasses and things [on the upper level] on the tines? I've been filling dishwashers incorrectly for my entire life.

Toys - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 1:23 am

I've recently purchased three toys with some of my [temporary] summer disposable income. All meant to encourage laziness, ergonomics, and/or save me time.

Item 1: Levo book holder
This item is, well, a book holder. It's cool because it attaches to my desk. I can attach a book [it currently holds the final HP book] and swing it out over my desk and read handsfree. The benefit really kicks in when I put a textbook in there. For instance, a thick CS or Math textbook.

Item 2: Roomba Scheduler, robotic vacuum cleaner
For the past month and a half, I haven't had a vacuum cleaner at my apartment. This hasn't been that big of a problem, because I tend to be clean and my brother, who lives near me, has a vacuum cleaner I can borrow at whim. However, woot.com had a wootoff last week, and one of the items was a roomba, which I promptly snatched up. This is the scheduling version, which means I can have the roomba clean at up to seven preset schedules. I had always thought that roombas were a gimmick, but my friend Jeremy has one and loves it. I ran the roomba for the first time tonight. I'll let the pictures below tell the story of how much gunk it picks up / how well it works; in short, I'm pleased. Note that most of the stuff is carpet fuzz, which makes sense given that the carpet in my apartment is brand new.

The rollers gunked up with carpet fuzz

The dirt container completely overwhelmed with stuff

Apparently people name their roombas. So, I suppose I'm taking nominations for my roomba. Nominate in the comments, please.

Item 3: Rice cooker
Historically, when I've made rice, I make it in a pot on the stove. This works fine for the most part, although oftentimes [for me] the rice comes out tasting funny, overcooked, undercooked, or is difficult to clean up. So, I researched rice cookers online and came to the conclusion [as all 26 reviewers on amazon already had at the time of this writing] that this particular rice cooker is damn sweet [and damn expensive, but hey, it's Japanese]. In addition to allegedly producing top-notch rice every time, the thing that I liked the most about this particular model [which is by no means unique to it] is the ability to schedule when the rice should be cooked. For instance, I could put in my ingredients [usually rice (white, brown, wild, any kind, really) but can also contain some other things] in the evening or morning and program it to have my rice cooked at, say, 7PM, which would be when I planned on returning from work or a day of classes and TAing. This will also be a good way to make rice the staple of my diet.

I still want to get a good GPS. Hopefully I'll get one by / for Christmas. Speaking of, I participated in "weeknight geocaching" with my brother last Wednesday. Some KARE 11 photojournalists tagged along and are going to run a story on geocaching on Monday, July 30th. I should show up somewhere in the video, albeit in the background. And I'll probably look particularly deadpan [more so than usual, even] 'cause I was hungry and very tired. It was fun though!

A heads up to all: Rachel's birthday is this Sunday, the 29th! She'll be turning 21, so be sure to wish her happy birthday if you get the chance!

Two Brains are Better Than One - posted by magicite

Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 10:14 pm

Late last September, you may remember that a processor fried on my G5 desktop machine. Were I to go through Apple, the repair would have cost me about $7-800. Waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. Were I to buy an official replacement part, it would have cost me about $650 and I'd have to install it myself [no big deal]. Still waaaay too expensive.

So instead, I looked on eBay. I looked every day, and even had eBay send me out daily search results for my particular processor model. Well, 10 months went by, and so did a few auctions [which I lost / chose not to win due to price], but finally, this past Tuesday, someone had TWO of my processors put up on eBay for a Buy-it-Now price of $299, which works out to $150 a piece. Plus, the seller guaranteed against DoA [Dead on Arrival]. I snatched it up quickly.

The processors arrived on Saturday morning. I promptly installed one of them, turned on my G5, and . . . voila! It worked! I tested a few things, shut down my machine, removed the replacement processor, and put the other one in. I turned on my G5 again, and . . . it worked too! So, both replacements work, so I can sell the other one on eBay for about $225 [see why it was a good deal to buy two at $299?].

Now, my G5 is much more peppy. Watching High Def TV on my G5 with my USB ATSC tuner is no longer choppy. Too bad I don't get the best reception in my bedroom in my apartment . . . or perhaps that's a good thing. :) I can also now encode videos for my iPhone much faster than before, which is a plus.

I'm almost done with Cobra II. I hope to get done with it tonight or tomorrow night. Then, it'll be on to bigger and better books. I think I'm going to start with The Golden Bough first, since I bought that in June 2006. Then, it's a tossup between The Tale of Genji or Understanding the Linux Kernel. I'll probably read both concurrently, since I'm sure at least the Linux book will drive me insane if I read it exclusively. That should keep me busy for the rest of the summer, and then some. I'll probably have to read the last Harry Potter book as well.

Speaking of, I saw the most recent Harry Potter movie in the IMAX theater on Thursday with some of the interns at Cray. It was good times. We went to Granite City in Eagan first, where we noticed that the waiters/waitresses were placing people in peculiar positions: couples of two were getting booths for 6-8, while our group of four got a smaller table. Strange. The movie itself was alright; I thought this movie was quite a bit shorter than the others [it's only two hours long . . . I think the others approached three]. Unlike the other movies, which seemed to have been able to stand on their own without reading the books, this movie seemed wholly dependent on the book; it was presented in what to me seemed like a two hour summary. In other words, it lacked depth.

Today my brother Joel and I went to Big Bowl in Edina, where we met up with our parents and had a late lunch. The place seemed alright [it was my first time there], although the booths seemed a bit small. Afterwards, my brother and I played frisbee for about two hours at Como Park, and then eventually made our way over to Arby's. After, we went and refound a geocache that my brother had placed near our apartment building. To get near the cache, we had to scale a rock and dirt wall approximately the height of the Franklin Avenue bridge [near the cache]. 'twas fun, and dangerous. I took some pictures with my iPhone and sent them to Rachel. I'll have to whip together a system that automatically uploads these pictures to my site. I take pictures more often than I write blog posts. :)

Chris redesigned before I got around to it. Darn you, Chris.

6 Comment(s) . . .

The State of Things - posted by magicite

Friday, July 6, 2007 at 1:28 am

Hold on tight, this post strays from one topic to another without warning.

Finally, after years of waiting [on my part], phpBB will finally be entering version three. Release candidate 2 is out, and after the phpBB group releases the final version, I'll be able to do the redesign that I've oft mentioned [and even oft mentioned that I had mentioned it :)].

Work progresses. Most of what I do nowadays is C in nature, which I generally like. One has to make [almost] everything they want to use, especially when working for a for-profit corporation.

I did in fact pick up an iPhone on launch day [summer treat for working]. I didn't decide this until maybe about two weeks before launch as more and more details were being released. To make a long story short, if you like gadgets as much as I do, this is an amazing investment. Sure, it's a v1.0 product, but it is a very polished one. And, unlike most other cell phones [and MP3 player, web browser, email client, video player, picture viewer, map utility, et cetera . . .], bugs will be actively squished, features will be tweaked and added, and all updates will be actively pushed to the end-user. Anyway, I see continued success for the iPhone, especially after price cuts and new revisions. Of course, when the iPod was launched in 2001, I thought it would fail miserably [and yet I still managed to justify the purchase of the original unit two months later], so perhaps I do not have the best judgement.

Apartment life goes well. I still have nothing in my living room [outside of temporarily stored items]. I purchased a new antenna for my HDTV tuner that I received for my birthday last fall, and it seems to work well. Unfortunately, I will only be able to use it in my living room, as all other rooms in my apartment lack windows facing northeast, where most of the twin cities TV towers are. Oh well.

I need to pick up reading [yet] again. I've developed a rather peculiar habit of buying books and not finishing them. It all started with Cobra II over a year ago. I'm about half finished with it, and I refuse to read anything else until I finish it. I've since purchased these books and will not start on any until I finish Cobra II: Understanding the Linux Kernel, bash Cookbook [which is actually co-written by my mentor at Cray, so go buy it!], The Golden Bough, and The Tale of Genji.

In the summer of 2004, around the time I first wrote the code for magicite.org, my then-roommate and I, Joel, had a desire to acquire the taste for tea--without any sweetener of any kind. My [our?] reasoning? Less caffeine than coffee, but still wakes you up. And without sweetener, it would not be as bad for you. To make a long story short, we failed.

Fast forward to the fall of 2005. My new roommate, Brent, had some non-bagged tea ["real" tea, as he would profess], and again I tried, but the habit never stuck.

Then came my China & Japan trip this past January. Essentially, if you did not like tea, you were going to die of dehydration, because most places served nothing else, and even if they did, I certainly didn't know how to ask for it. Plus, in China, it was a big no-no to get something that had not been boiled. My Chinese friend, Johnny, gave me some rose tea that was really good, too.

This spring, I received a kickass thermos from my parents. I started to drink tea when I would remember to actually make it. For my Japanese Civilization class, I chose to write a big term paper on the Japanese tea ceremony, known under many names, including Cha-no-yu and Cha-do. This, of course, encouraged me to drink tea [without all of the ceremonial obligations, thank God].

And now, I work. One of the 'perks' at Cray, and I assume most workplace environments nowadays, is that they have a liquid refreshment room where, among other things, one can get water, coffee, apple cider, hot cocoa, and . . . tea! My daily ritual at work now is to take that awesome thermos I received, bring it to this room, and either get green [my favorite, probably due to China / Japan], Earl Gray, or Black tea. Both Earl Gray and Black tea smell like rotting vegetation [or caterpillars . . . don't ask] to me, but I've gotten over the smell and enjoy the taste. Again, this is also without sweetener of any form.

Additional motivations for the drinking of tea have surfaced as a result of my newfound tea-drinking experience. There are a host of health benefits, for instance. Also, tea is dirt-cheap. So, instead of buying and drinking, say, bottled water [yes, I know it's evil, but until I find an alternative [like a good water filter], I will continue this dastardly deed] or pop, I can save that money and drink tea instead. Not drinking pop also reduces my sugar and calorie intake for the day as well.

I recently purchased a significant amount of Enigma music on iTunes. I had long heard of their songs Sadeness and Return to Innocence, but I was not too familiar with the rest of their music, but after purchasing it, I do like it. Somehow they are able to fuse electronic, dance, tribal, and French into something that I enjoy. Some of the lyrics can be a bit strange at times [talk about some galaxy colliding with ours forming a super galaxy . . . or something], but as I may have said before, I tend to view the human voice in songs as more an instrument than as a way of communicating some special message through, well, words. This turns out to be useful [for me] when evaluating music: if I do start listening to the words, it is usually because they are bad; at that point, I know to stop listening.

My parents, brother Joel, Rachel, an aunt and uncle of mine, and myself went to Oxbow Park for the 4th. We picnicked, threw frisbees, and then went back home. Rachel, Paul, Brent, and myself went to Applebee's for supper and then watched the decidedly lame Northfield fireworks from the Highway 3 / Target area.

Does anyone have any good meal ideas that are a) cheap b) good for you but not too good for you c) require as few perishable food items as possible? As much as I love Tuna Helper and Rice a roni, I gotta diversify. Another unfortunate caveat: I hate many vegetables. I get physically sick, for instance, when olives or mushrooms enter my mouth. Sad but true.

Rumor on the street is that St. Olaf will be getting a new firewall sometime this summer that more intelligently blocks certain traffic rather than ignorantly blocks everything. In other words, things like video streaming should work soon. I'll believe it when I see it.

Has anyone else seen / heard of Ron Paul? He's a republican candidate for president, and while I disagree with many of his points of view, I find find myself respecting him and his opinions. If hell were to freeze over and he were to become president, I wouldn't complain too loudly. Thoughts, anyone?

Busy busy - posted by magicite

Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 12:15 pm

Thought I would make a quick post to let you all know that I'm still alive. I've been very busy since I graduated at the end of May: I've started a new job, rented an apartment, acquried a summer roommate [and possibly a fall/spring one too], attended my brother's wedding, made many many trips between Minneapolis and Northfield, and lots of other things in between. I've only recently acquired a bed, kitchen table, and desk for my computer. So, hopefully things will settle down and I can get started on that mythical website refresh I've been talking about for quite awhile now.

4am Finals - posted by magicite

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 4:09 am

A quick update on what's going on with me right now [at 4am during finals week, no less].

I'll be done with my undergraduate education in less than a week. Hooray! While my initial intention for the summer was to take it easy at home, I ended up getting an internship at Cray in the Twin Cities for the summer [hooray again!]. So, I need to figure out some sort of housing solution quickly.

I've got three options for housing: room with two people I more or less know [in a triple bedroom apartment], get a double and hope to find a roommate, or get a single and just pay the extra money. Every option has its advantages. Anyway, I have no idea what I'm going to do just yet.

Finals aren't actually too bad this time around. I have to finish my IR [which involves lots of programming and documenting], do a take-home paper for my night class [which I'll be getting sometime on the 15th, ie, 'today'], take an in-class Japanese Civilization test, and present on a turing machine that I'm making for my Theory of Computation class.

Alright, bedtime!

Digital Revolt - posted by magicite

Wednesday, May 2, 2007 at 3:25 am

On May 1st, 2007, the first digital revolt took place. Over what? This hex number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. To make a long story short, the MPAA claims creative ownership over this number ('tis in the hexadecimal numbering system [ie, base 16 as opposed to our standard base 10]). It is a key piece in decrypting something called AACS, which is used on the HD-DVD and Blu-ray format [although this particular key unlocks HD-DVD discs].

Users posted the number all over the Internet, including digg.com, where the proprietors took it down. This ignited the revolt [against digg], which eventually resulted in spreading to Wikipedia and other sites. Digg caved in, and Wikipedia, as I write this, is still banning anyone mentioning the number.

You cannot copyright a number, period. And you can't stop legions of geeks from hiding the number in every nook and cranny of the Internet. Welcome to the Web 2.0 revolution indeed.

My Future - posted by magicite

Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 9:10 pm

I made my decision -- I'll be attending the University of Minnesota for graduate school next year. My options came down to the U of M and the University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). I chose the U of M over UIUC because I felt as if it were a better fit for myself. Living next to all of my friends and family didn't hurt, either.

My last semester at St. Olaf College is dwindling down quickly. In about a month's time, I'll be finishing up projects and handing in tests and then, I'll be FREEEE (until the fall, of course). Unfortunately, I have no clue what I will be doing this summer. Staying home one last summer, doing work for my parents, and devoting my time to finding an apartment in the cities sounds better to me every day. If I don't do that, I'll try and get an internship somewhere. A few people have mentioned some to me.

This weekend is the 2007 MICS conference, and a good chunk of my time has been devoted to this as of late. I'll be presenting a paper, participating in the programming and robotics competition, and standing by a poster with my friend Elizabeth. Since we leave on Thursday afternoon, I'll have another four-day week this week (third one in a row!). Yay!

6 Comment(s) . . .

Moved - posted by magicite

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 1:29 am

Everything's been (hopefully successfully) moved over. Hopefully I'll make an actual 'useful' post soon.

Still Moving - posted by magicite

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Haven't moved the stuff over yet, I've been having problems migrating some of the data over. Soon, though, I hope . . .

Deciding between two graduate schools at the moment (both of which I have to visit). More on that when I decide what I'm going to do for the next 4-7 years of my life.

Moving Day - posted by magicite

Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 4:23 pm

I'll be moving this site from one server to another in a few days. Do not be alarmed if the site goes down for awhile -- if it does, it means that I've run into a few problems that I haven't resolved yet.

One thing that won't make the transition is the photo gallery. It's too big to deal with, and riddled with spam.

Asia - posted by magicite

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 5:29 am

I leave for China and Japan in a little over an hour. Be back on the 29th of January!

Future Plans - posted by magicite

Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 8:12 pm

Quick update here, I'm merely posting this so as to distract myself from doing any actual work.

I managed to snag a Wii this past Sunday at Target. Not only that, but Rachel and Jeremy got a Wii as well. To make things even better, there happened to be a PS3 on the shelf that Jeremy purchased as well. Because of bullet three, I can't actually use my Wii.
I'm applying to graduate school at the moment; six of them.
I've got so much work from a week ago until a week and a half from now that I'll be amazed with myself if I actually get it all done.
I will be in China-Japan in less than a month!

More to come after my month of busyness.

Life Notes - posted by magicite

Saturday, November 11, 2006 at 2:44 am

Finally, at last. After a very long hiatus, I'm going to actually post a sizeable blog post.

Tonight is the eve of my 22nd birthday. OK, as I write this, it's actually about 1am on my birthday, but let's not get into details. This evening, a few of my friends and I went out to Chapati to eat. It was arranged more or less at the last minute, so I'm glad I could wrangle a few people into coming. Tomorrow, I plan on going out to eat with Rachel and my parents to a restaurant called "Boston's"�� in Faribault. It's a new place by the viaduct, and I've heard good things about it. I doubt we'll be disappointed.

As I alluded to a couple weeks ago, I ordered and received a new laptop. I purchased a MacBook Pro to replace my PowerBook that I sold in early August. I'm am pleased with the purchase thus far; quite pleased, in fact. It's faster, has more features, a nice glossy screen, doesn't use an outdated internal architecture . . . fun all around, in other words. Hopefully this machine will last me for several years. My last one lasted me 18 months. It would have lasted me even longer (there was absolutely nothing wrong with it), but I thought it a wise decision to upgrade when I did so as to capitalize on the temporary resale value of PowerPC-based Macs (for those in the dark / have a shred of care, Apple moved to Intel-based chips from PowerPC chips, meaning that PowerPC chips are becoming more and more useless).

Unfortunately, between this, the hailstorm, and my fried processor, I've been cleaned out of any real savings I had accrued. Hopefully I can find a decent paying job next summer, or I'll have an interesting start to my post-college life.

Speaking of post-college life, as I also mentioned in a previous post, I'm in the process of looking for a graduate school. I admittedly have done little looking, but this is due entirely to my busy schedule. For instance, I attended a conference in Missouri last weekend, from Friday to Sunday. More on that later. Also, my schedule remains rather tight outside of this. Elizabeth (a CS major) and I are grading for three classes, and I'm also holding my normal IIT job and Beowulf job. Let's not mention the GRE (which I've yet to sign up for . . .) and other obligations. For better or worse, I see myself now as I did in my senior year of high school. I'm completely disenchanted with the whole process. There's no way of explaining this feeling without making myself sound really lazy, so I won't elaborate, but in a nutshell, I don't want to have to go through the necessary rigmarole to move on to the next stage of my life.

This past weekend, a dozen or so St. Olaf research students (self-inclusive) traveled to St. Louis, Missouri for the Pew Midstates Science and Mathematics Conference. One of the major goals of this conference was to spur intercollegiate undergraduate research collaboration. I must admit that I was prepared to face what I had accepted at previous conferences: having the only Computer Science research poster there. Thankfully, another college had two or three Computer-Science related posters there. It was nice chatting with them, and my Beowulf poster may have encouraged them to start up there own cluster. Because of this and a few other events, I ended up leaving the conference with a real sense of accomplishment and appreciation. And a little bit of that never hurt anyone. On a less academic note, the conference itself was quite enjoyable. Our hotel rooms were rather luxurious (I'm used to staying in Motel 6/8s), the food was tasty, and our work was balanced well with play. We had the choice of going to the art museum, zoo, or arch. I chose the art museum (surprise, I know), and rather enjoyed it. There was a cool modern art piece that converted a wall into a wall made out of straws, so that you could see down a tube if you were looking at the wall. An interesting effect of this was that it served as an excellent sound dampener. If you put your ear up to the straw wall, it was eerily quiet. And since the length of the straws were all different, when you looked at the wall from an angle, it looked like clouds or suds that have been around for a while (i.e., slightly transparent). Quite nifty, if you ask me.

Allow me to get back to the food thing again. It was all very tasty. One thing disturbed me, however. Our box lunches that we received on our way back to the airport said Bon Appetit. Further, they were damn tasty boxed lunches, far tastier and with better selection than that at St. Olaf. How come these guys aren't on any good food lists? I'd vote for them.

Ah yes, St. Olaf food. The other day, upon entering the cafeteria for supper, we were mysteriously greeted to the caf with a lack of any uncooked food: salad, fruit, cheese, you name it. Apparently, there's some outbreak of the Norovirus on campus. It was originally linked to our cafeteria and/or the Pause, but after further investigation, it seems as though the source lay off campus. I've heard rumblings that it came from subs provided by Subway for the election workers and volunteers on Election Day. It's all still a mystery at the moment though.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd know that elections took place this past Tuesday, and that the Republican Party got thoroughly "thumped."�� While it was a surprise to me that the Democrats would win the senate (I personally expected 50/50, with Cheney of course breaking the ties), it was evident that trouble was afoot in the House many months ago. It seems as though months if not years of poor decisions and missteps finally caught up to the Bush administration. On a very positive note, it sounds as if President Bush is finally willing to work with the Democrat community to work through the Iraq mess. Elections sent a clear message: staying the course is not the way to go.

The first observable result of Tuesday's elections was the firing/resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. This more than anything else made me the happiest. I had acquired a generally negative attitude towards Rumsfeld ever since 2001, an attitude strengthened manifold after reading a good chunk of Cobra II this past spring. In a nutshell, he's not a team player, throws temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and has ideas that are just not feasible in modern day warfare. He's big on the idea of using specialized teams of military men instead of massive armies, for instance. While a great goal on the surface (cuts costs, makes for more efficient troops), Rumsfeld fails to remember that numbers are needed to secure a nation after the initial phase of fighting is over. Good riddance, Mr. Rumsfeld. You were one of my biggest problems with the Bush administration in the 2004 election.

Most of my classes have been going well this semester, with the exception of, of all things, Psychology 125. It's actually quite embarrassing, but I probably have to try the hardest in this class. The professor is filling in for the normal professor, he's never taught an introductory psychology class, and as a result, his testing and performance measures are woefully inappropriate for the class. As a result, my grade in the class isn't quite where I'd want it to be. I'm trying extra hard to bring my grade up now.

Capstone is going well, although I feel as if we've hit the portion of the course where interesting things stop happening; that is, now we have to read and write research papers, as well as ethical analyses. In the end, I think the research papers will be good for the Beowulf project here at St. Olaf. It'll help get everything written down on paper. We're also going to be putting up a normal, standard wiki for documentation purposes. This is exactly where a wiki excels at, so I hope our documentation for this project eventually dwarfs that of other, similar projects.

Differential Equations is going just fine, and has in some senses rekindled my love of mathematics, and reminds me of why I became a math major in the first place. I think I can quite assuredly say at this moment that I don't care much for theory class. I like being able to apply what I've learned and do directly useful things with them. After taking three theory classes in a row, this class was a much-needed breath of fresh air.

I really like my religion class, Feminist Theology. On most days, the professor lectures for about 90% of the time, and students ask questions or engage in dialog with him for about 10% of the time. I like this design because it cuts the crap and gets straight to learning. As long as I am mentally engaged while listening, I can pick up new things in class (and remember them) quite readily. I also find the information that we dig up every class period and every reading (when I understand the reading . . .) to be valuable to me personally. We recently started to get into some of the theories posited by Sally McFague in "Models of God,"�� and it interests me because one of her theories aligns quite identically with one of my own personal theories (at least as far as I've developed it, anyway). I'm interested to see where the author goes with this theory; hopefully it'll provide me with some new keys to open new doors.

Next semester, I'm most likely going to be taking Theory of Computation, International Relations, Japanese Civilization OR Japanese Literature, and an independent study with Professor Brown, working on CCT and/or the Beowulf cluster. I'm looking forward to all of these classes, though I am admittedly quite anxious about Theory of Computation. A professor that I've never had before is teaching it, and while I've heard that he's a great guy, he's demanding of his students. Not a good combination since it'll be spring of my senior year . . .

This year, I live in a quad in Rand; a quad means one room, four people. So far, I think the quad has worked out quite well. There are a few interesting dynamics that are less pleasant than others, but for the most part, I've found that a little bit of tolerance goes a long way. One of our roommates is leaving for second semester, so we had to fill out a New Roommate Application Form the other day. Since we have a quad, there's a high chance that we will not get another roommate (no one wants to be stuck in a room with three other guys when the three guys already know each other quite well). Since our quad is one of the nicer ones, we have a closet as well; if we don't get another roommate, we'll have one of the biggest rooms on campus with only three people in it. Here's to hoping . . .

A new round of game consoles are coming out in November, and as much as I'd like to buy all of them, I lack both money and stupidity. Why would it be stupid for me to buy something now? Well, because I'll probably be taking the GRE at the end of November. To buy, say, a Wii now would potentially affect my future in a negative way. So I'm going to wait on that . . . luckily, my neighbors are going to be buying a PlayStation 3, so I'll at least be able to drool while I study.

My vintage console game playing days continue (when I manage to squeeze in a chunk of free time). I beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time again, and I'm close to finishing up Chrono Trigger. It's an odd feeling to think that these games are old now. I truly remember playing them or seeing them played when they were brand new. To me, anyway, they've lost none of their charm, though I'm beginning to think that this is only because I identify things like these with my childhood. For instance, when one of my roommates was playing Final Fantasy 6, arguably one of the best RPGs of all times, another one of my roommates commented on how the game looked ugly and stupid. I of course was appalled and put him in his place for such blasphemy (hehe), but I can't argue that these games are in fact the product of a passed generation. On to prettier games, or so I'm told . . . but I'm going to remain old-fashioned. I prefer the glory days and charm of, say, the SNES RPG generation.

I'm sad that I never got around to redoing this website this past summer (as I had planned). As some of you may have noticed, I disabled the posting of comments on here. The spam was just getting too annoying and out of hand, and I didn't have time to correctly implement a good captcha system. I tried half-assedly once, but it just didn't work well with my system for some inexplicable reason. I'll get around to enabling them again some day . . .

The interim trip to China and Japan is still going on as planned. With each meeting that we have, I become simultaneously more excited and more anxious. I'm glad that Rachel and other people I know or semi-know are going on the trip; otherwise, I don't think I'd enjoy it as much. I find being a glorified tourist to be much more enjoyable with you can share the experience with someone else (so that you can force them to ask for directions ;) ).

I've not really done anything with my original group of St. Olaf friends yet this year. It's kind of weird for me because I honestly don't have a clue as to what most of them are planning for post-college. On top of that, I don't even see most of them ever while trekking from class to class. It's as if I'm living and attending a cloned St. Olaf College in which these people never existed or were never part of my life. On the rare occasion that I bump into someone from the original group, I'm temporarily transported from the cloned college to the original one. These brief moments bring back memories I forgot I had experienced, and there occurs a weird sensation within me that I can only describe as similar to the sensation lasting approximately four or five seconds one gets when one wakes up in a confused state after an especially vivid dream. During my confusion, memories, emotions, and other such things come to my mind and demand to be processed and thought over immediately; perhaps this is what makes me appear to be confused--I'm too busy thinking about that stuff all of a sudden.

It's late again, and I've wrote for a long time about all sorts of random flotsam in my head. I hope my next lengthy post doesn't come in nine months again . . . too many important things will be lost again if I neglect to post.

From Seventy to Snow - posted by magicite

Friday, November 10, 2006 at 2:52 am

Yesterday the high was 77?Ǭ? F. Today we have 3-6" of snow and it's currently 30?Ǭ? F outside. What a wacky state.

My new Macbook Pro arrived last Friday. It's quite nice, and a marked improvement over my previous laptop. It's also a decent machine for gaming (not that I have much time for that anymore), so I'll be able to play my brother and others when I see them.

Last weekend, I went to the Pew conference in St. Louis, Missouri. It was quite nice, and I met some people from another college -- hopefully we can collaborate with them in the future.

I'm currently in the process of deciding my future. Strongly looking into graduate school . . . but not finding much time to actually look. Silly St. Olaf.

Replacement - posted by magicite

Friday, October 27, 2006 at 1:24 am

New toy on the way.

RISE from the GRAVE! - posted by magicite

Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 1:36 am

So I ordered a new power supply for my G5, hoping that it would solve the problem. I spent this afternoon installing it, plugged in the power button, and . . . nothing. Didn't work.

I did some research while at the library (doing homework, of course) and stumbled across someone's comments that described an identical problem; they solved the problem by taking out one of the processors. I did just that and discovered that one of my processrors went bad. After taking the bad processor out and rearranging the old one into the 0 slot, the machine booted, and here I am now, on a uniprocessor machine.

I don't think it was a power surge anymore; I think the processor just up and fried / failed. Unfortunately, replacements aren't cheap, so I might stay at uniprocessor level for a bit. And, I'm strongly considering selling this now so that I can upgrade to something nicer in the future (after I get my new laptop, whenever that may be, of course).

So now I have an extra, perfectly fine power supply. Anyone need a G5 600 watt power supply?

Death and Destruction - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 1:54 am

Tonight, at approximately 12:50am, my trustee Powermac G5 of three years died. May its expensive goodness (even now) rest in peace. I hope homeowner's insurance covers this . . . There was a power surge and it bit the dust.

Jury Summons - posted by magicite

Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 2:23 pm

I just got jury summons. Anyone know if, as a college student, I can get out of it? Or am I just screwed?

Old School - posted by magicite

Friday, September 15, 2006 at 2:01 am

Played a NES game called Wizards and Warriors tonight. Joel and I played it all the time as kids. I think the game is forever burned into my memory; I beat the whole thing (well, it froze right as I got to the end) in under an hour. Good times.

The school year has started, and all is well. My classes are going well, and the beowulf project keeps on going. I think this is going to be a good semester.

The quad is working out well. So far, no problems. We'll see how long we last. ;)

I bought a new (used) car on Labor day. I purchased a 2002 Honda Accord sedan with 55k miles on it. Not too bad. It's quite a bit smoother than my previous car.

I need to get into a regular posting habit again. I unfortunately don't find the time anymore. Hopefully this'll change once things settle down around here.

Screen Touchers - posted by magicite

Sunday, August 27, 2006 at 1:04 am

Touching an LCD screen is a major no-no, right? I never every touch my LCD screens or anyone elses. It seems like fairly common sense to me.

And yet, over the past year, I've noticed many, many people touching them. And by touching, I mean violently tapping. It happens when someone wants to point at something on the screen. Instead of just pointing, though, the tip of the person's finger jabs the screen. I cringe every time I see it happen.

Are you a screen toucher?

Update on my car. The insurance person is going to look at it by Monday. As it turns out, my car has full coverage (including glass), which took us by surprise. We're guessing the insurance people "forgot" to take it off a few years back (we had requested it 'cause it's much cheaper) or because we had to add it when I got in my little accident two and a half years ago. Regardless, my car will be all shiny again soon. Or not. They'll probably total it, which is sad. But that means I get a new car.

Big Storm - posted by magicite

Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 5:25 pm

Big hailstorm came through this morning and thoroughly trashed St. Olaf and the rest of Northfield. Here are some pictures that I took, including of my car . . . let's just hope we can clean it up because if not, I'll be driving the Oldsmobile again for awhile . . .

For Sale - posted by magicite

Wednesday, August 2, 2006 at 5:13 pm

I am on the verge of selling my Powerbook that I purchased a year and a half ago. It has served me well, and suffers from absolutely no problems (I love this thing), but I need to upgrade at some point. I'll probably by a MacBook Pro when they get refreshed sometime this fall.

Oh teh noes - posted by magicite

Saturday, July 29, 2006 at 8:55 am

Yes, sure, it sucks that it's getting up past 100?Ǭ? here (a rare thing indeed). And yes, Nick, I know you've had it worse (but at least you have lots and lots of AC, there's nothing in the dorms here).

But the worst part? The low for tomorrow night is 77?Ǭ?. Which is really, really bad.

Fraud - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 12:14 pm

With regards to the last post, I got a call from Visa's fraud department. Apparently spending lots of money in 36 hours flags your account for fraud. :)

Before you all think I went on a giant, personal shopping spree, the reality of the matter is that only about $200 of that stuff is for me. The other $4500 is for other people: lots of hard drives, both internal and external, network cable, two laptops (both MacBooks; one for Rachel, one for my stepdad), two DVD burners, DVD-R and DVD-RW media, two iPod nanos, two HP printers.

And probably some more stuff too. But anyway, lots of this stuff is for the beowulf cluster. So no worries: people will be paying me back shortly.

Spending - posted by magicite

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 11:06 am

So, I've put about $4700 on my credit card in the past 36 hours. What ever could I be buying?

Summer Project - posted by magicite

Monday, July 17, 2006 at 3:56 am

I just completed a joint CS-related project with two other individuals. It's for the 60th anniversary of IEEE. Anyway, details are here, and the submitted site can be found here.

I should probably post a 'life update' soon too . . . man, I've been real slacker with my blog this summer. Sorry!

Edit: Fixed first link. That's what I get for posting at 4am!

Linux Imaging - posted by magicite

Tuesday, June 20, 2006 at 8:00 pm

I've recently been researching imaging solutions for a linux-based setup. Namely, for the beowulf cluster at St. Olaf. I found this really cool implementation called SLIM, and it theoretically could do everything we need. I say theoretically because I tried it out and it basically does not work. It copies over binaries from the host machine without worrying about shared libraries and a whole bunch of other problems. So now, I'm trying to wrangle SystemImager, with so far better results. The auto hard drive formatter had problems with LVM though, so I'm making a new image and using good ol' standard ext3.

My research partner and I started a developer blog over at blogspot, so you can keep up on my progress there.

This weekend, my parents, Todd, Rachel, and most likely Rachel's sister will be going up North. It'll be the first time that I've been up there in a long time, and the first time ever for everyone else. I'm sure we'll have fun.

Nick started cocoa programming recently, which I think is awesome. It has also given me the cocoa bug, as well as my roommate, who recently installed Mac OS X X86 onto his Dell Laptop; he is now using it full-time.

Rachel is just in the process of selling her laptop. She had to buy a new fan w/ audio ports attached because hers broke somehow. The person who sold it to her on eBay gave her a bad fan . . . but the audio parts work. Should she return the fan or just keep the current one and salvage the audio ports (which is doable)? The guy clearly screwed her. I'd say give the guy bad feedback, but then he'd do the same. Man, eBay is so broke.

In the Thick - posted by magicite

Saturday, June 10, 2006 at 8:37 am

Already two weeks into summer research, and it seems to be going alright. We'll be buying some Sun-based servers very soon, which'll be sweet. Sun currently has a grant-matching program going on, so we're able to get some extra nice servers at a cheap cost.

Yesterday I gave my first presentation for summer research. We always do a talk/poster two weeks in, and a talk/poster on the last day. This time I opted for the talk, and it went alright, though things were a little rushed. A few faculty and students approached Professor Brown, Will (research partner), and myself, which was cool. Hopefully these new projects will come to fruition.

You may be wondering why I am posting this at 8:30am. Well, first, I got up at 5:30am. And then Rachel, Todd, and myself trekked up to the opening of the new Apple store in Minnetonka, MN. I am currently about 6th in line of god knows how many people. There also just happens to be a power plug about where I am sitting, so I am mooching power out of that. I figured that since I haven't posted in awhile, I should post. :)

Rachel still hasn't picked up her MacBook, but that's because she hasn't sold her old Dell yet. Hopefully we'll be able to get that process started sometime today. Her roommate, Kayla, expressed interest in purchasing it (she hates Macs).

We've been making our food for the past two weeks, and it's been going well. Our diet consists of sandwiches, tuna helper, mac and cheese, corn dogs, cereal, granola bars, and other various goodies. We at least make meals, whereas lots of other people make small things (rice, canned soup, et cetera) and that's it. Quite sad, really. We're going to try and make some 'real' food at some point (perhaps on the weekend when we have more time).

One hour, thirty minutes until this store opens. Yay for free t-shirts!

Whew - posted by magicite

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 7:59 am

All done with my junior year of college. Now I get to look forward to my senior year, which is shaping up to be fairly decent.

Finals went okay, though I'm not happy with one of the grades I received; I'm slightly tempted to go ask the professor about it.

These past couple days, I moved from Mellby 108 to Thorson 120 (in 97?Ǭ? weather . . . yeouch). Our room is pretty nice, and in a good location. We (Todd, Rachel, myself) went grocery shopping yesterday, and our first bill totaled $124. Not that bad for the first time.

Summer research starts today at 8:30 (hence my early rising). Should be a fun summer, what with six to eight CS researchers here this summer (which is insane, given that there are, what, maybe 20 CS majors for all four years?). I am admittedly worried about the heat, though. All of those people, all of those computers . . . no good can come from this.

My mom is officially insane (again). She bought a swing for our house (think playground). But not just any swing; no, this one is is tall as our house. And, my house is two stories and an attic tall. You really have to see it to believe it.

I had an idea the other day, one which, if not already, should be patented by someone (I could find nothing on the Internet). Basically, it would be a wearable, cordless alarm clock that blocked out light and sound. In other words, earplugs + sleep mask + alarm clock = this device. I would totally buy one.

At work last week, I looked into Digital Asset Management solutions (DAMs). So far, Extensis Portfolio and MediaBeacon's R3volution. Both look pretty neat. Anyone have any experience with either of these, or other DAMs?

Finals - posted by magicite

Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at 4:08 pm

I am currently in the midst of finals. I will update you all later . . .

4am - posted by magicite

Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 3:46 am

Approaching 4am, just finished with my work for the day. I have to write a 3-5 page paper tomorrow evening, and then I'm basically done for the week.

Eek.

I wasn't kidding when I said that this week would be horrible. I've been in the library every day for over the past week (with the exception of Thursday, where I worked in the CS lab and in the art building, and Friday, when I went to eat supper with my family).

Meeting with Rachel's parents went well; they seem to be good people, which doesn't surprise me, given that they are similar to Rachel.

Lessee here . . . registration was kind of crappy. For some strange reason, they closed off senior and junior registration of Psych 125. I need that class to graduate. So, I'm raising hell right now trying to get in. I couldn't get in as a freshman or a sophomore because juniors and seniors had taken all of the spots. I understand why they're doing it, but I think it's absurdly unfair to screw me over twice here.

Combinatorics test . . . went alright, I think. I and most others made major mistakes on one of the questions, which is unfortunate. I spent a long time on that sucker.

Crunch - posted by magicite

Monday, April 24, 2006 at 11:11 pm

Again, I post during crunch time. I'm currently in the library, working on a Japanese paper that is due in approximately one week. Why am I getting it done so early? I basically get my combinatorics FINAL tomorrow, and I get one week to do it. So, it's due on Tuesday. Also do around Tuesday: standard homework, this Japanese paper, a big research paper for my Arts of Japan class, have to read a book for my history class (which I devoted the entirety of this past Saturday to), a paper for my history class, kanji stuff, make a poster for the beowulf cluster, and God knows what else I have. I'll probably be in the library for the next several days getting my Combinatorics final done, as well as working on the Arts of Japan paper. Blech.

Nothing too new or exciting with me, really. Doing some preliminary work on the beowulf cluster with Joel. We have our very own PO Box now (yay!), so we have an official way of communicating with the world now.

Roomdraw was on Saturday. I'll be living in a quad (4 people in 1 room) in Rand (room 240). We got one of the best quads on campus; it has a subroom (walk-in-closet), a good view, and is relatively close to the entrance. It should be good times. We'll probably have all (or at least some) of the beds in the walk-in-closet, so that when we sleep, it'll be quiet, and people can do whatever they want in the main room. I'll be rooming with Jeremy, Paul, and a new guy named Steven that none of us really know (he will be a sophomore; he needed a roomate(s), we needed an extra guy, so he joined our quad). He seems like a good guy.

Class registration for seniors is tomorrow. I'll be taking senior CS capstone, my religion BTS-T course, an HBS course (think human behavior), and/or a math class, independent study Japanese class, or a phy ed course. It's looking more and more like I'll be going to Japan over interim. I'm scared! Rachel and I will have to apply for that soon . . . Oh yeah, and if I take the independent study Japanese class, I'll be taking it as class overload . . . not so sure I want to do that!

Easter was relatively uneventful. Rachel and I stayed at Olaf, and on Easter day, went to my house, where she met a bunch of my relatives. Needless to say, she survived. :)

Need to find a roommate for the summer. If any of you are reading this, and from Olaf, and need a roommate for the summer, contact me. Unfortunately, Peter (my roommate from last summer) is graduating, and Brent decided not to be at St. Olaf for this summer. And, I can't room with Rachel. :(

Speaking of Rachel, her parents will be here this coming weekend (my busy weekend, no less . . . ). I've been told that there's a possibility that we'll go out to eat at some point this weekend. I suppose I am overdue to meet the parents . . .

Less than one month remains in my Junior year of college.

Iowa - posted by magicite

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 12:01 am

This past weekend, I went to a Computer Science conference in Iowa with Rab, Dave, Joel, Elizabeth, and Mike. Everything was thoroughly enjoyable, especially the car ride down, where we all talked about various CSy stuff. I must admit that I found the conference to be mildly lacking, however.

One thing that really irritated me was that we had entered in a programming contest. We had 3 hours. Towards the beginning of those 3 hours, someone was supposed to come visit us to give us instructions . . . they never came. So we handed in our solutions near the end, only to find that you get points based on time completion only. In other words, we were screwed. And they did not differentiate between hard and easy problems, which meant that one problem, which took us 2.5 hours, was worth just as much as the next two problems that took us only about 10 minutes a piece.

The college we stayed at itself constantly reminded me of high school; the atmosphere just reeked of it. The buildings, rooms, and campus all reminded me of a run down high school.

I've also recently become obsessed with origami again, thanks to the work of Robert J. Lang, an amazing artist. I purchased a bunch of his (and others') books today, and they should arrive by the end of the day. I made this one last Wednesday night. Not gonna lie -- it's very difficult and time consuming.

Done - posted by magicite

Friday, March 24, 2006 at 5:40 pm

Done with midterms, thank God. Man, they were terrible this year. This is the first time I've been socked by tests for midterms. So, I guess I've been lucky up 'til now. Rachel had it bad too, and it sounds as if her and Paul's Japanese test didn't go well.

Time to enjoy my Spring Break up North.

The New Pornographers - posted by magicite

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 at 10:14 pm

Midterms are already upon us all. The next week and a half shall be . . . interesting, to say the least. I'm most likely going to have to do homework on Friday, which is unfortunate because it's the last Friday before break. Stressful week, here I come.

Last Sunday, I went to a concert at the Orpheum with Brent. The main show was for Belle and Sebastien, but Brent and I went for the opener, The New Pornographers [iTunes]. They are an excellent group. I recommend checking out 'Twin Cinema.' Anyway, we left after TNP played, which was only for 45 minutes. Both of us had lots of work to do, and as those of you in Minnesota are aware, we had a big snowstorm Sunday evening / Monday morning, which had just started as we were leaving the Orph. Leaving when we did made the trip not as bad as it could have been.

DVD burner arrived, and lightscribe is cool. It'll be even more cool when the newer lightscribe media comes out, offering much better contrast, and also color. I plan on backing up all of my stuff very soon . . . I bought a five pack of dual layer DVD media (damn, that stuff is expensive!), and will be backing stuff up soon. I haven't done that recently . . .

Combinatorics was interesting today. Joel and Mike (two of my partners . . . same Joel as beowulf Joel) more or less made me go to the board to explain a certain math problem . . . one that no one else in the class did, and one that neither of us was too familiar with. At any rate, very nerve-racking . . . the prof said she believed this problem to be the hardest so far that we've encountered. While our answer was correct, the full explanation was of course a bit over my head. Oh well.

Looks like I'll be going up North over spring break. Should be nice and relaxing. I'll be bringing my laptop up too, of course, so I should get a bunch of work done. Perhaps I'll bring a book up too . . .

Bots have been spamming my comments recently. For now, I've just been manually deleting them . . . don't know what I'm going to do about it in the longterm.

Move On - posted by magicite

Sunday, March 5, 2006 at 8:34 pm

Haven't posted in several weeks. Bad me.

But really, there's nothing new / too exciting. Ate with Nick & Emily (and Rachel, of course) a couple weekends ago when they were up. Saw Josh in his new car (el camino, hehe).

Doing fine in all of my classes, except perhaps in Combinatorics, where I find myself not giving it the time it deserves. I'll pay for this when I get my take-home exam. Note to self: spend more time on Combinatorics.

Ate with the 'rents yesterday at Applebee's, and it was the first time Rachel met my mom. Everything went well (of course!), and afterward, we visited my house for a bit.

I'll be working at St. Olaf again this summer, working with Professor Brown on the beowulf cluster. Should be another nice, fun summer up at Olaf.

Bought a new DVD burner last week too, which should arrive on Tuesday. It's a dual layer burner, with lightscribe support. It's also the fastest on the market. Price? $51. Thank you New Egg, thank you competition. The main reason I bought it is because I'd like to do backups, and burning backups to dual layer discs results in fewer discs. Lightscribe should be fun too. :)

I purchased and received a water fountain / waterfall for my desk shortly after my last post. It's pretty nice, I'll be sure to post some pictures up later. I was able to buy it since I have more room on my desk now (as a result of the room remodeling). It's so dry in our room, though, that I have to put about 2-3 cups of water in every day.

The statistics tracking company I've used since 1999 went evil all of a sudden and started to inject popup ads onto my site. I apologize, and am no longer using them. In the meanwhile, I'm using Google Analytics (yes, I'm one of the few people who signed up before it got closed down due to popularity). However, I don't care for it. Does anyone have any suggestions for an alternative? Here is what the old statistics tracking service was capable of.

Busy / isogashii / ?��Ѣ?��ł��?��ł�� - posted by magicite

Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 4:08 pm

The semester is off to a wonderfully busy start. To update, quickly here: America Since 1865 has lots of reading and BS work (as expected), but at least it's somewhat interesting. Arts of Japan is getting better, but we're getting assigned a project that seems to me (more than anything else) more like an unpaid job for the department. Oh well, at least Rachel is in it. Japanese is very busy as well . . . had our first kanji quiz of the semester today, and it was brutal. Luckily I studied quite a bit for it. Combinatorics isn't too bad so far. Thankfully, the having-friends-in-the-class thing really helps.

Brent and I did in fact end up rearranging our room last Friday. I like our setup now a lot more, and we even (finally) have posters up. No more bare white walls! It's kind of sad that it took over half of the school year for us to get them put up though . . . oh well. I was also able to move my actual computer onto the floor, which is nice because now my whole desk is dedicated to my keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers. Oh, and I suppose for doing homework!

Yesterday, on Valentine's Day, I went to see the free Japanese movie in town with Paul and Rachel. It was called Nobody Knows (dare mo shiranai / ?��??��?�??��?��??��Ŭ�?��ł��), and was a very depressing movie to play on Valentine's Day. I wonder why they picked it . . . oh well. Afterwards I got a nice card from Rachel, and I gave her some goodies too, so in the end we weren't depressed at all. :)

Back to the Grind - posted by magicite

Friday, February 10, 2006 at 11:06 am

A week has passed here at Olaf since the beginning of classes once more, and I find myself already in a routine. I suppose this is a good thing. As I mentioned in the fall, I'm not taking any CS courses this spring (lack of offerings) so this semester is quite unusual for me. My "America Since 1865" class seems like it could be good, but right now we're in the Reconstruction phase, something that has been a staple of about 5 K-12 history classes. So things are quite boring there. Japanese is much of the same, though I have of course forgotten much. It'll take me a couple weeks to get up to full speed. Combinatorics sometimes baffles me in class, but when I look at things upon returning to my dorm, it all seems to make sense. Also, the book we're using seems to be fantastic, which is a very good thing considering that most math textbooks are absolutely terrible. Finally, my Arts of Japan class has the potential to be really good, but I don't feel as if I can give a good evaluation of it since I've had a fairly strong headache on both of the days I've had it so far. So I'll have to report back later.

One trend I've already noticed about this semester is that I'll be spending most of my time reading. This is a nice change from most of my previous semesters, where most of my classes (CS, math, Japanese) were very hand-in-homework oriented.

I seem to have gotten myself into trouble once more. This semester, I'm working for the MDC (6 hours a week currently), being a CS lab TA, being a grader for Programming Languages, and finally, continuing work on the Beowulf cluster. I told myself last semester that I wouldn't overextend myself, but I seem to have done it again . . . oh well. I managed last semester, I'll manage this semester.

Brent and I plan on rearranging our room sometime this afternoon. The main goal of rearranging? To make more room so that my computer get can off of my desk.

There have been rumblings in recent days about the "True" video iPod coming out within the next few months. I might have to upgrade from my first gen . . .

Day 9 - posted by magicite

Monday, February 6, 2006 at 1:26 am

Back to civilization.

After getting little sleep, I took care of the beasts once more and then took off to St. Olaf (after packing up, of course). And thus, have returned to sanity.

Went to Target, Cub Foods, and Arby's with some friends. I bought a new DS game (Bomberman, w00t), and played that with a couple of my friends in the afternoon (as well as Mario Kart DS).

Mucked around again, watched Corpse Bride (it was short), attempted to pull a prank in ************* (it was closed). Will attempt later.

Then saw Jeremy's hotel-like room. Pretty nifty.

And thus ends my daily, boring-as-hell blogs. Sorry, it was merely something to do.

Day 8 - posted by magicite

Monday, February 6, 2006 at 1:21 am

Hmm, forgot about this day.

Did nothing. Played Mario Kart and watched TV all day (literally) after waking up at 3pm.

Visited by friend at 1:30am; stayed until 5:30am. Whoops. Hence the lack of a post.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 1
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 27

Day 7 - posted by magicite

Friday, February 3, 2006 at 10:15 pm

Yep, today was far more interesting. I lost my virginity twice today. Read on.

Dropped Mr. Brian off at St. Olaf, then traveled to the faraway land of Stillwater. Went to Murasaki Sushi bar with Brent; here, lost first virginity of the day. Never had sushi before today. Verdict? Sushi == good (even the raw stuff), but Sushi == expensive. Will have to go with the parents in the future. ;)

Now my fingers smell of fish, even after washing them.

Returned home. Lost virginity again. Got pulled over in Northfield. Never been pulled over before. I knew what it was about before it happened; heck, I've been afraid of it for the past few weeks. The front driver headlight is out. Actually, the electrical system is borked, so the light doesn't turn on. Oh well.

Oh yeah, the beasts . . . Shone doesn't seem to be eating much. Cheyenne insists upon waking me up every three hours. What a high maintenance beasty.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 1
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 26

Day 6 - posted by magicite

Friday, February 3, 2006 at 10:07 pm

Traveled to the cities, picked up a certain Mr. Brian. Worked on his website until the evening.

And then we went to a small little party in town. Didn't know anyone, but got to watch "What About Bob?".

Tomorrow will be much more interesting.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 2
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 25

Day 5 - posted by magicite

Thursday, February 2, 2006 at 1:42 am

Is it a bad thing if the first two hours of your day consists of watching Beavis and Butthead?

Visited civilization again. More roasted beast. Also obtained some corn on the dog, meato pies, and pocky.

Speaking of beasts, was only awakened twice. Yay.

Somehow found the drive to work on CCT again. Lots of progress today . . . will hopefully be able to package it up and distribute soon.

Watched more TV, including Rocko's Modern Life and Legend of the Lost Temple. Haven't seen those in eons.

Corn on the dog is good. And Racheli keeps me from going cwazy.

And you people need to post in comments more. Don't make me beg (again).

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 4
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 23

Day 4 - posted by magicite

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 at 3:42 pm

Uninteresting.

Work on CCT continues. Ran into a rather nasty problem that has kind of sort of temporarily made me lose interest in working on it for awhile. Somehow, when executing a script, Perl is segfaulting. Worse yet, it's happening in code that I didn't write. Since it didn't happen this summer, I'm ready to believe it's a problem with my distribution of Perl.

I curiously don't remember too much of what I did other than that . . .

Did, however, get sucked in by television. Planned on sleeping at around 2:30am, got sucked in by the National Geographic channel until 5. All because of shows on Mt. St. Helen's and the Pentagon.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 5
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 19

Day 3 - posted by magicite

Tuesday, January 31, 2006 at 4:05 pm

Apologies for posting late. Crashed early.

Remained in servitude to the beasts for another night. Biggest chunk of sleep: three hours.

Awakened by a visitor. House magically cleaned upon exploring house after visitor left.

Took advantage of my previous purchases, made a baked dough and meat saucer platter. Bland.

Nearly decided to forgo taking a shower, considering my laziness and the improbability of any human contact. Showered anyway.

Proceeded to work on CCT until 6ish, then made another meat-cheese-bread saucer, after tracking down the metal disc used for cooking said things (magical cleaning visitor hid it). Bad idea. Experienced the effects of my first spoiled / bad/ tainted frozen "Italian" delight. Wow. Made the garbage happy.

Called by the 'rents. First word out of ma m?ɬ�re's mouth: aloha. I say no more.

Continued work on CCT. Proud of my work on this automation script. Fully commented, fully documented, modularized, robust error checking, fully tested. Best thing since sliced baked dough.

Watched late-night Cartoon Network. Started at 1:30am, fell asleep around 4am (hence no Day 3 post on Day 3). Got out of bed at 3pm? What?! I blame the beasts.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 5
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 14

Day 2 - posted by magicite

Monday, January 30, 2006 at 3:16 am

Much Mario Kart DS was played right after last update. Watched Flightplan; good, but too "mother knows best."

Awakened by two beasts four times during the night. Remedied each time by taking said beasts outside.

Rolled out of bed at around noon--early for me. Wasted two hours.

Decided contact with civilization was needed. Purchased three meat-cheese-bread saucers, butter, meat saucers, baked dough, pocky, refuse containers . . . and then trekked to the Raffel Brother's establishment for lunch. Conversed with Racheli the entire time.

Returned home, enslaved by the beasts once more. Then worked until 2 AM. No joke -- finally working on CCT again. More conversing with Racheli.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 6
?��Ǩ��Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 9

Day 1 - posted by magicite

Saturday, January 28, 2006 at 10:05 pm

I depart St. Olaf at approximately 2:45PM, after packing up my usual necessities and my computer display. At around 3:10PM, I arrive at my Final Destination: home. The first task I had was to take my dogs out. Since the temperature was about 35?Ǭ?F and it was raining, the dogs came in soaking wet and completely muddy.

I hook up my laptop to my display on my old desk in my old room. After wasting a bit of time on the Internet, I decide to check out what's on TV. Get sucked into the Discovery Channel for two hours. Damn you, Discovery Channel. I know now much more than I ever wanted to on a dam being built in Iceland.

In search of further distraction, I wander into my parent's room and stumble upon their DVD collection. Only two movies here that I haven't seen: War of the Worlds and Flightplan.

Stumble upstairs, watch War of the Worlds using Apple's Front Row. Get constantly ticked off at the children in the movie, especially the little girl. I hope this was intention on the director's part.

Finish movie, not entirely satisfied with ending. Realized that I was hungry, walked back down to kitchen. But first, took the dogs out once more. Stilly muddy, still wet, still miserable. Grab a Hard Mike's from the fridge (last one), but find no food.

Get sucked in by the Discovery Channel once more. This time, a special on China's Three Gorges Dam Project. Damn, lots of dams.

Scour the fridge again, discover we have an oversupply of eggs. Reduce that amount by three. Burn self on frying pan.

Decide to chronicle my adventures at home. Write this post.

Plans: pet dog (done), watch Flightplan, play Mario Kart DS online. Get to bed early.

And then dream about dams.

Cans of Diet Pop consumed today: 3
Cans of Diet Pop consumed thus far: 3

Coming to a Close - posted by magicite

Tuesday, January 24, 2006 at 12:08 pm

Interim is quickly winding down. My last day of class is on Thursday, and my final will consist of a presentation. Things are going quite smoothly in my class at the moment, which is good. We ran into way too many compiling-related errors, and we also discovered that our switch isn't up to snuff for what we want to do (we wanted / needed multicast support). Oh well.

This Interim has by far been my most enjoyable. My first interim was filled with work and study (Bioinformatics), my last Interim consisted of a boring class and lots of job-related work, and this one consisted of an interesting class (though lots of time required) with no job. I've been routinely starting "class" from 8:30-11am, getting out from 3-5pm, and then staying up monkeying around with Rachel and Paul until 1-4am.

I of course haven't been working on my projects . . . boo to me.

OH! I'll be traveling to Iowa in April to present CCT . . . either in poster or presentation form. I haven't really decided yet. Considering I already have a poster made . . . it might be wise for me to just go that route. Though the poster is rather outdated . . . hmm. We'll have to see about that.

I suppose I should also talk about Apple's announcements from earlier . . . Well, I'm rather surprised that they released what they released when they did (they updated the iMac and PowerBook . . . both of which were updated about two months prior). I'm kind of leaning towards "rush job" on this, at least on the PowerBook, but time will tell on that.

I'll be home watching my dogs during Interim break. If anyone is in the area (most everyone is going to be at college), feel free to give me an email or something. I'll be home alone otherwise since my parents are going to be in Hawaii. Boo to them.

Interim - posted by magicite

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 at 5:28 pm

Interim is going well. I've hung out with Paul and Rachel a ton (perhaps too much), and even though my class meets 6-8 hours every day, I leave having no homework. Which means, I've been having lots of fun. Whether it be movies or nintendo games, I've found things to do. Soon, though, I'm going to have to actually start doing "real" work (ie, finish CCT, my Japanese project, S5 stuff for the CS department, . . . ).

My actual class is going ok. I like it, but, the machines we have are quite problematic. We're trying to build a beowulf cluster (which in itself is easy), but we keep running into problems (hardware failures, the suckiness of up2date, et cetera). Oh well.

I've noticed that I've had a lot of mood swings recently, and it's kind of disturbing me. I don't know why I'm getting them. It may be because I haven't been getting that much sleep, but I don't know. Hopefully it'll go away soon.

Yay! - posted by magicite

Friday, January 6, 2006 at 3:00 am

What a wonderful evening. :)

And . . . relax - posted by magicite

Saturday, December 31, 2005 at 4:35 am

I've accomplished two things on break thus far. The first is that I have completely reversed my sleep schedule. I go to sleep (or rather, fall asleep at 5-7am, and roll out of bed around 4-5pm. Today, aside from when I got out of bed to take a shower, I didn't see any natural light. Not that it really matters, it has been cloudy every single day of break, and will continue to be like that until interim begins.

Oh yeah, I'm up North at the cabin at the moment. So how am I posting this, you ask? The high-speed wireless Internet, of course! I'm literally about 30 feet away from the crashing waves of Lake Superior. Good times.

The second thing that I've "accomplished" is nothing (a cop-out, I know), but I really needed it. Granted, this means I'm going to have to finish up a CS job-related project in January, as well as finish up CCT, but that's okay, I should have plenty of time. I loaded CCT for the first time in months the other day, and was admittedly impressed with what I've accomplished. To get version 2.0 out into the wild, I think I'm going to release an 'alpha' version sometime soon. It won't have any nifty automated installer or anything, but it'll include instructions for installation and whatnot. I think my biggest problem with the project is that I wanted to include too much up front, something that affects lots of software projects. A lesson for another project, I suppose. Besides, no one is going to use it anyway (at least, not until I submit it to a few software directories).

So . . . what has happened recently. For Christmas, I got cash, Nintendo DS / Gameboy Advance games (Super Mario Bros 3, Zelda: Minish Cap, Final Fantasy IV, Sonic Rush, Castlevania, and maybe one more that escapes my memory at the moment), some random stuff (like ornaments), some games from Joel, and . . . . a bag of crap. I'm not kidding -- wrapped and under the Christmas tree was a package for me (allegedly from my dog, Shone), and it contained a Glad bag filled with dog poo and, at one time, snow. As it turns out, evil Joel has struck again. As a practical joke, he wrapped up some doggy doody and put my name on it. It sounds gross, and was, but was also absolutely hilarious. Fear for Joel, however. His birthday is on January 19th, and I've already got many ideas churning away in my head. If you can think of any inventive ways to get back at him, I'm open to suggestions. I'd rather you e-mail me then put it in the comments, though, since he reads my blog.

It's about 4am right now, and I'm watching cartoons on this one station (not cartoon network). They're so terrible. Seriously, were there cartoons that we watched this terrible, or have the quality of them gone way down? They seem so angsty now. Comments?

A couple days after Christmas, my mom, stepdad, and myself went up North, and as I mentioned earlier, I completed reversing my sleep cycle. I also beat Zelda: Minish Cap (actually, I finished this just before I came up North) and am almost done with Final Fantasy IV. Given the time of year, my sleep schedule, and everyone's general laziness, I and everyone else has done nothing of note up here.

I'm really looking forward to Interim. I just hope it's not a letdown . . .

Hmmm. I seem to have forgotten about my Japanese Kanji Stuff project. I need to get some of these projects done and "shipped" . . . Things like that are actually useful to both myself and others. It doesn't hurt that it hasn't been done before (not the way I'm doing it, anyway). Boo to me.

I've been thinking of starting up a list of grievances against IIT (the blocking of UDP, IIT now allowing students to have DSL (even though telecom wants us to / has the capability of letting us), application favoritism, and whatever else I can think of. On the application favoritism front, I found out that users of MSN Messenger can use voice and video chat on campus with people off campus. And, this uses UDP, so clearly IIT has unblocked UDP for that specific purpose. How is this favoritism? They won't do it for other services / protocols. I don't want to have to be the whiny IIT complainer, but seriously, someone has to do it.

When I get the inspiration, I think I'm going to add a 'photo blog' portion to the site as well. Just something simple and quick. I'll take a quick picture, add a caption, and that's it. But this'll probably happen when I do the site redesign, though.

Almost Done - posted by magicite

Sunday, December 18, 2005 at 4:02 pm

OK, so I lied. I'm not done with finals, but I'm going to make another post. But that's because I only have one final left, and it's my Hardware Design final. I'm not worried about it at all. Yes, I'm going to study, but I'd study for any test that I have. The test will be open note, open book, so . . . yeah. I'm currently in the library procrastinating on studying though.

I think I'm going to stay here (at St. Olaf) until Wednesday or Thursday morning. Some of my friends will be returning from college themselves, and my car still has a flat tire. So, I still need to get that worked out. Of course, if things get boring at Olaf, I very well may leave as soon as Tuesday.

And when I go home, I lose broadband. Boo. At least I'll be able to play Mario Kart DS at home, unlike here at Olaf.

I realized recently that even though it's going to be Christmas break, I've got a ton on my plate. First, I have to start playing World of Warcraft again. I haven't played since late August, and I promised my friend Josh that I would play during Christmastime. I also have to wrap things up on my summer research project (just a little more to go . . . ), and complete work on a project for the computer science department here. And, after Interim rolls around, I'll be working on a beowulf cluster project with Joel and Dave. Holy crap, I just realized that my partners for interim have the same name as my brothers. That's weird . . .

So, how did finals go for me . . . I finished my Japanese paper early, and handed it in a day early as well. My operating systems final was fairly easy, though the last question was ridiculously arbitrary. I didn't like it at all. We were given a small piece of code, and asked how it relates to nine concepts in Operating Systems. And, if it didn't relate, we were supposed to cross it out. So, naturally, you had to think really hard as to whether or not said concept was involved. Oh well. I got an A on the midterm (which we got in our PO box about 30 minutes before we took the final . . . ), so I'm none-to-worried. I also completed the final operating systems project in record time (started and basically finished on Friday). My two real system calls--fdt and fdp--intercepts and injects file descriptors, respectively. It's actually quite useful, although can easily be used for malicious purposes. My hardware design project (which involved writing the UNIX 'tr' program in assembly) also went well, but I had finished most of that over Thanksgiving break.

And now on to the Abstract Algebra Final. I finished 3/4th of the whole thing the weekend I got the darn thing . . . and then I got stuck. And so did everyone else. The last two problems were magnificently terrible. Several people didn't get it at all, and others, like me, got it only in the final minutes before it was due after significant help from our professor. Oh well. That stressful class is finally over.

I still haven't purchased Christmas gifts for anyone, and I've given no one a Christmas list (and have received no ones Christmas lists either . . .) yet. There's really nothing I want or need this year . . . so I don't know. I'd rather "save" the present for when something cool comes out (think: Macworld January '06), but that's not really the whole point of Christmas (the commercial point of it, anyway). Does anyone have any serious ideas for what I should ask for? The price range is in the "any iPod" range. So, $1-400. And no, I don't want an iPod. I still have my original first generation model, and it suits me just fine. Maybe I'll be tempted next year though . . .

I keep finding myself listening to a techno CD that I purchased this past summer for work (the Euro Dance Party one). I can listen to it while doing work (or typing long blog posts . . . ) or reading or anything, which is really quite amazing for me. In fact, I even work / type faster when listening to it. I think it's because of the beat. I don't know, I'm not a music aficionado.

OH! I did in fact find a way to procrastinate on reading that book entirely in Japanese. For my final project / paper in Japanese, my topic of study was Akira Kurosawa. So, to do 'research,' I read his entire autobiography. It counted as both my "fun book" to read, as well as research / do homework time. It was quite interesting to see what he had to say about himself, given that many people have described him as kind of a perfectionist prick (think: Steve Jobs). He doesn't talk about that at all in his book, and doesn't give the impression of being a perfectionist prick either. More proof that you cannot accurately analyze yourself.

Oh, and I still seem to be hailing from the top of the second ladder.

Coming to a Close - posted by magicite

Friday, December 9, 2005 at 1:43 pm

Just a short update here, I have to go to class shortly. I've been enveloped in homework for the past week and a half. WIth the exception of part of the weekend, I've been in the library every evening for the past week and a half. This is amazing for me, considering that before Thanksgiving break, I had only been in the library to study once or twice.

Even with all of this studying going on (ie, crunch time), I have a lot left on my plate. I plan on working every day this weekend (including tonight) on all sorts of stuff. Namely, my Abstract Algebra final takehome, my final Japanese presentation and paper, and hopefully both of my computer science projects.

So, until I get done with finals, I'm going to be as antisocial as I possibly can be.

Oh yeah, before I go, I ended up getting a Nintendo DS + Mario Kart DS for my birthday. It couldn't have come at a worse time (right before finals), but the game is amazing. Being able to play 8 other people in the world anywhere, and wirelessly--for free--is awesome. It's probably a good thing though that St. Olaf's network blocks this capability (or rather, because St. Olaf blocks UDP network traffic).

Riveting - posted by magicite

Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 7:11 pm

Every once in a while, someone tells you something that chills you to your very bone. It's just something that completely hits you unexpected. Examples of this would be news of a loved one dying, a breakup, or some close-to-home tragedy.

Every once in awhile, these things change you in some way.

Personal story time.

I remember a time when I was in like fourth or fifth grade. Up until that time, I could get away with not showering for a few days (because I was a kid). Heck, I know friends nowadays who get away with it for several days. Anyway, one day, one of my teachers took me aside and more or less told me to start showering more. It absolutely devastated me. Obviously, it's quite the embarrassing story too. I'm not too sure I've ever told anyone this story, in fact.

Anyway, the result of the teacher's comment (I really liked this teacher too, by the way), shocked me into doing a 180, and to this day, I only wear my clothes once between washes. Maybe a bit too insane, I know. Similarly, I refuse to skip a shower on any day. The results are terrible if I skip even once.

I'm not going to go into it. Maybe I'll tell the story in ten years or something. But someone told me something within the past few days that ranked up there with the teacher story in terms of shock value. And now I must change.

Turkey Time - posted by magicite

Saturday, November 26, 2005 at 4:41 am

Time to get the (g)obligatory turkey-related post out of the way. My break began after work ended on Tuesday (around 5pm), and immediately, my brain shut off. I hung out with my friend Rachel watching movies, getting into squirt gun fights, and all sorts of things one would expect one to do on the first evening of break.

On Wednesday, my friend Jackie and I started to watch Full Metal Alchemist (from the beginning). It was her first real exposure to a full series of quality anime, and by the time we finished (with all 51 episodes), she seemingly loved it and now can not wait to see the movie. For those keeping count, this means that I've seen the first twenty episodes of the series about six times, and the remaining about two or three times. It is perhaps one of the few series I can watch over and over and not get bored with. Though, I must note, the first twenty episodes are far inferior to the last thirty one.

When Turkey Day 2005 rolled around, I found myself at my home with my immediate and extended family. This was the first time in like 15 years that we had a more-than-immediate-family function at my house. Our house has been so dirty (and quite small) for the longest time that having people over wasn't doable. I think it worked out well, though, and the turkey that my grandma and mom made was absolutely amazing. Too bad the stuffing ("dressing") wasn't so hot. Guess you can't have it all.

I'll save you all the boring read of what I'm thankful for this year. Needless to say, the list contains what one would expect.

I think I'm "getting to the age" where old songs now have the ability to rush old memories that I associate with a song to the forefront of my mind. More so than that, hearing said songs instills in me an emotional uproar that makes me yearn for the memory to become a reality. It's a relatively neat experience, with the downside being that not all songs have associated with them a pleasant memory. Of course, this could all be due to my new high-quality headphones that I bought off of woot.com a couple weeks ago.

Hmmm . . . I haven't gotten nearly as much homework done this break as I had planned on. Which is truly a terrible thing. Between now and finals, I have three major and one semi-major (minor? :)) projects due. I also have to redo a lot of homework assignments for Abstract Algebra. Why is that class (much like ERA) such a thorn in my side? I think I just need to dedicate more time to the class . . . though it'd be nice to know someone else in the class who would be willing to work on stuff with me. I know a couple people in the class, but one is uninterested (too busy with other stuff, though feels the same way about the class), and I don't actually know the other too well (and even if I did, this person I'm afraid is rather 'into' the whole math thing). Oh well. Next semester will be better (and yet simultaneously worse . . . argh).

I finally finished My Ishmael. It took me so long because I've just been too busy recently (damn, I say that I'm too busy all the time). Anyways, I must say that the final installment was a much better read than the first. I was eating supper with a friend of mine the Thursday before break and I recommended all three to her, so she's reading Ishmael right now. The message of the books seem to be right up her alley, so I hope she enjoys them.

You know what this means? That I finished My Ishmael, that is. No? It means that I can no longer procrastinate on reading Bocchan any longer. Bocchan is a Japanese story. For those of you that remember, I read the English version of it a month or two ago, only to be sidetracked into My Ishmael since I didn't want to fulfill the promise to myself to read Bocchan in the original Japanese. But now, I'm afraid I can hide no longer. All I have to do now is form a strategy against the book. I had originally planned on translating everything and writing new vocabulary down (which I still consider to be a good idea), but what about new grammar? What on Earth am I to do? Well, thankfully, I learn extremely well by example (especially when dealing with things that I'm actually interested in), so I think that if I pick up a Japanese "grammar dictionary" with plenty of examples, I can increase my reading ability manifold. I'll let you all know how that works out . . .

Nick's exactly two year old iBook bit the dust today, so now he's either going to buy a new logic board for it (think motherboard), or just scrap it, sell the parts, and buy an older PowerMac tower. As it turns out, he can probably sell the parts for $200-350, and old dual processor PowerMac towers run for about that much, so everything should work out fine. He never really used the iBook for portability anyway.

The other day, I tried Mike's Hard Lemonade. It was the first alcohol I've ever purchased and the first time I was really carded. Since I look like I'm a twelve year old, it was funny seeing the cashier do a double take on me, my license, and my birth date. Anyway, the 'lemonade' was ok, but I think I'd be more of a fan of the other flavors. So I'll have to try them out another time.

Mario Kart DS for the NintendoDS came out the other week, and the reviews have been phenomenal. Being the Mario Kart whore that I am, I might just have to pick one of those babies up (the game AND a DS). One of the coolest features is online playing. So I could, say, play someone on my NintendoDS from someone anywhere in the world as long as I was near a wireless hotspot (and, of course, the other person was as well). Pretty nifty.

I'm beginning to sort of notice that my college life has been running parallel with my high school life. It's kind of creepy, really, but since the last year and a half of my high school life was the best part, I can't complain. I'll elaborate on this topic more if it turns out to be true.

Drat! 4:40am. I've got to stop doing this, break or not. Perhaps I'll go back to my old (ie, summer 2004) routine of posting thoughts as I get them rather than saving them up for a week and posting them all at once.

Yeah, right, like that's going to happen.

Flakey - posted by magicite

Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 8:28 pm

As you might have already noticed, the venerable snowflake has returned to the upper right hand corner of the site. Let's just hope I don't leave it up until June again like I did last year!

Since my last post, I have turned 21. For my birthday, a few friends & acquaintances and I went to Chapati in Northfield. As usual, the appetizers were good, but this time my 'usual' (chicken makhani) was actually pretty bad. Oh well. After getting it like 10 times, I was bound to get a bad batch at some point. After Chapati, we all went to the Contented Cow, a bar/pub. There, I had the set of drinks known as 'The Three Wise Men' and 'The Blowjob.' The last was the best, but still quite terrible. After the cow, we all went to the liquor store and then attempted to go bowling (and failed). So instead we rented a movie and watched it in Ytterboe. Good times all around.

On Saturday, I went to my house and celebrated with my family. We had spare ribs (BBQ, of course, and this kind of thing for my family is extremely rare), and they were quite tasty. By my request, we also had sake. It was ok, but definitely tastes like wine (and I hate wine).

Tonight, I'm going to the premiere of Harry Potter at midnight. This means that I'm going to get back to St. Olaf at around 4am. While this is bad in and of itself, I've gotten a limited amount of sleep this entire week. I hope I can stay awake during the movie! I might have to get reacquainted with my good friend Mr. Caffeine . . .

I decided against taking Intro to Feminist Theologies for interim and am now instead taking Advanced Team Project (which should be umpteen times more fun). I'll be working with two seniors (Dave B. and Joel C.) on making a beowulf cluster. For second semester, I am officially taking Arts of Japan, 6th semester of Japanese, Combinatorics, and America since 1865. I'm actually really quite scared about Combinatorics. Oh well, I can deal with it. I'll basically be done with the math major after taking it.

I finally got around to sort of working on a project for the CS department today -- integrating S5 into our scheme wiki system. It shouldn't be too hard; the hardest part, as I've alluded to, is finding free time to actually work on it. I feel really bad for not having done anything yet, but it couldn't be helped. For those of you who don't know what S5 is, it's a completely web-based PowerPoint replacement. It's quite awesome, if you ask me.

My interest in Cocoa has been rekindled recently. A sophomore here, Jeremy Gustafson, has a similar interest. I hope we can serve as a mutual resource to each other in the future. We wanted to work on a Cocoa-based project over interim for Advanced Team Project, but the reality of the course is that it's for setting up future undergrad research opportunities, and learning cocoa doesn't quite accomplish that. Oh well. It could have been great. Maybe I'll treat myself for my birthday and buy a bunch of new cocoa books and learn some of the new nifty features in 10.4 over Christmas break.

Also, when I get time in the future. I've decided to redo the back-end of this site of mine. There's nothing wrong with it now as it is -- I just want to integrate it into phpBB. That way, there'll be a more robust comment system 'for free,' search 'for free,' and formatting 'for free.' I haven't quite decided yet, but I might redo this front page as well. As time goes by, I find myself more and more a fan of a fixed, centered page design. This feeling grew even more after my display acquisition this past summer. In order for my page to look completely decent, I have to shrink the page down by almost a factor of 3. Poor me, I know.

Fun with Linux continues! I got ridiculously bored at work last week, so I took over one of the old iMacs (350 MHz of power, baby!) and installed Yellow Dog Linux on it. I then proceeded to update its kernel to the latest version, and then compiled Firefox for it (I really didn't have an option on that -- PowerPC Linux is such a niche that not even the Mozilla foundation puts out PPC Linux binaries!).

What's sad is that I think the browsing experience on that little old iMac is now about as good as it is on my desktop and laptop. That thing's running fast now. Oh, I suppose it doesn't help that I upgraded its memory from 128 megs to 512 megs.

Now, in my Operating Systems course, we are finally compiling and tinkering with the linux kernel. For my final project, I've got to add a system call. A useful system call. Anyone have any requests / ideas?

Man, I'm really looking forward to interim. It's going to be so fun . . .

Midterm Result - posted by magicite

Wednesday, November 9, 2005 at 3:21 pm

Just a little update -- I got an A on my Abstract Algebra midterm. Yay!

And, of course, still no word on how I did for the computer science midterms . . .

And I turn 21 this Friday. Muahahaha . . .

Midterms - posted by magicite

Sunday, November 6, 2005 at 3:29 am

Yes, it has been nearly three weeks since I last posted, but lots has happened since then. Midterms have come and gone. Interestingly enough, I haven't received scores on anything yet. Actually, it's not that surprising. Two of the tests I took were for my Computer Science classes from the same professor. Those of you who took the CSA class this past spring will remember not ever having received our scores on our midterm . . .

I could recap the last three weeks of my life, but frankly I don't remember and it'd be too boring anyways. In a nutshell, I've gone to several concerts, saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a couple friends, and began toying with Linux on my old G4 system (which I'll get to in a bit).

My oldest brother David is moving to somewhere in South Dakota (he's in . . . Kansas or Missouri right now (I don't remember which because he lives in Kansas City)). He ended up buying a limo with a couple friends about a month ago, so I wonder how he's going to share that now that he has to move.

My other brother, Joel, started to work for the Minnesota Epilepsy Group doing all sorts of crazy things. He seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, which is obviously good. I hope things continue to go well for him.

I've started to think about what I'm going to do post-college. Graduate school is looking more and more appealing (read: I have no clue what I want to do, so how about delay the decision!). If I go to graduate school, it'd most likely be for Computer Science. Because of this, I've been thinking about picking up some computer science books on topics not taught here at St. Olaf and reading them. The problem is, these books are damn expensive. A few of Tanenbaum's books are quite appealing to me (Networks and Operating System Design and Implementation).

Lessee here . . . for interim, I might be forced to take my BTS-T. Unfortunately, this means I get something like "Intro to Feminist Theology." Definitely not up my alley. But what am I saying, almost anything in the Religion department here would not be up my alley. I really want to take a Japanese course taught by Professor Ito, but I just can't justify it given that I have so many GEs left. I'm also probably going to be taking my first real 300+ math course -- Combinatorics. Thankfully, a mutual friend of my brother and I -- also named Joel (not my roommate Joel from two summers ago) -- will be taking the course. This'll make it far more tolerable and interesting. On top of this, I'll be taking Arts of Japan (for the GEs and Japanese Studies requirement; a friend of mine will be taking this as well), possibly Archery, America since 1865, and Japanese 6th semester. What's that? No computer science courses? Yes! It's true! This will be the first time in a very long time where I will not be taking a computer course. This isn't by choice, mind you--I've taken all of the CS courses here already. All I have left for the major is my senior capstone class (though I plan on taking the graphics course here Interim of '07 and two CS-Math courses spring of '07).

I need to dedicate more time to Japanese. The next time I get a huge chunk of free time, I'm going to study my old Genki textbooks (which I've said about a half-dozen times already; I actually started before, but only got through half of one book (there are two books)). We're writing a lot in my Japanese class, which I've begun to notice has etched some of the more less-used grammar points into my head. The problem is that I'm not using a lot of what I've learned; for instance, I've not once used any of the grammar points I learned at the end of last semester yet. I need to change that.

The Llama Farm is up and running, and all is well. We unfortunately lost a few posts due to the server that hosts magicite.org (and a myriad of other sites) going down. The operating system got hosed and the hosting company had to restore everything from backups. Unfortunately, they didn't keep recent backups (the backups they had were about 72 hours old), so many posts in TLF were permanently lost. May they rest in peace.

My headaches and inability to sleep are definitely back. I was talking to my mom about it this evening, and it looks like that I may be finally getting it checked out. We're going to try and schedule something for Christmas break.

Pet peeve of the moment, because this has happened to me a lot recently: if you're talking to someone via an instant messenger, and you decide to leave (go to bed, see the sun, whathaveyou), a) tell the person you're talking with 'goodbye' or some derivative and b) after completing a, wait at least 30 seconds for them to say goodbye / goodnight. It's just the right thing to do.

OK, another pet peeve. I'm on a roll here. If you go to St. Olaf, and you're just leaving the cafeteria (tray in hand), when you put your tray on the rotating carousel, please, please walk to the farthest-away slot. It makes tray-putting-away so much faster. And, when it's the 10-minutes-before-class-and-after-lunch rush, it really matters. It's not just me being anal about efficiency.

No more pet peeves. Sort of. This weekend I took it upon myself to play around with Linux. So, I grabbed my old G4 450 from home and brought it to college. I downloaded Yellow Dog Linux (one of the many mac versions of linux; this one is based off of redhat and has many altivec enhancements (a processor feature of the G4 and G5)). And boy did I run into problems. First, the graphics card on my G4 is an ATi Rage 128 Pro with 16MB of graphics memory. A relative beast in the days of '99, but a relic of the past today. Although it is supposed to be able to drive monitors as big as 1920x1200 (which just happens to be the native resolution of my new display), the reality is much different from the purported fact. Second, since my monitor is widescreen, it has a few unusual resolutions, which linux in general just doesn't like. Third, some of the timing information for the monitor is a bit weird too (I admit, even I don't know what that is), so lots of things have to be hand configured. Fourth, after monkeying around for literally hours, I found out that when I boot the linux kernel, I have to send it a few arguments so that it can properly detect my graphics card. As it turns out, the ATi Rage series of cards does not play nicely with linux when installed in a mac. And, after I thought I had gotten everything figured out, I ended up more or less undoing everything because I couldn't get what I wanted to work work (namely, using the graphics card instead of something called the Open Firmware Frame Buffer). On top of all this, vncserver doesn't start up properly. I have no idea why. Actually, I think it's because of some of the updates that I ran yesterday.

It also didn't help that every time I misconfigured some of the display settings, the monitor would shut off at boot. Thankfully, I thought ahead and had the SSH daemon running, as well as multiple kernel-boot setups. Experiences like this really make me appreciate my Mac(s) all the more.

So for now, I've thrown in the towel, mainly because it literally consumed 24 hours of my life and I have plenty of homework to do for Monday (including a quiz in Abstract Algebra which I am not ready for).

On another note, any guesses as to when we'll get our first snowfall? My roommate thinks in a week and a half, but I said three ("shortly after Thanksgiving.") What do you think?

The Llama Farm - posted by magicite

Monday, October 17, 2005 at 11:08 pm

First, an update on the video iPod. It did in fact come out (and so did new, sweet iMacs). The amount of video content at the moment is scant, but that will quickly grow. It's important to note that Apple isn't trying to storm the video market. As Mr. Jobs so wonderfully put it in an upcoming issue of Time Magazine, the new iPod isn't "the video iPod." It's just an iPod capable of playing video; for now, people will buy the iPod for music (like they have been for years) and then in a year or so, there'll be this massive market of video-capable portable devices. That's when it'll be time to capitalize (which'll be when the real video iPod will be released). It's similar to the strategy of when Apple released the original iPod (October, 2001). When it came out, the iTunes Music Store didn't exist (and didn't until a year and a half later!). And look where it is now--it holds a commanding 75-80% of the digital portable music player market. This strategy (mixed with a few other variables) works.

As other people on the 'net have hinted at as well, this is just the first step in changing the way we all watch (or don't watch) TV. Currently, the day after shows such as Lost or Desperate Housewives airs on ABC, it is available on the iTunes Music Store (which, by the way, will probably be renamed to the iTunes Media Store; iTunes Multimedia Store; or iTsomething Msomething Ssomething; preserving iTMS is important because of name recognition). Basically, you don't need to plan for when you want to watch something. You'll be able to find it online and watch it whenever (without the long wait-for-DVD-release wait!). TiVo and similar devices do this right now, but this system takes it to the next level.

The profit possibilities here are amazing as well (as are the bandwidth costs). An album is lucky if it gets 100,000 units sold. A TV show is unlucky if it gets 6 million viewers. You do the math.

Enough about that. I'm on fall break right now, and aside from being lazy on Friday, Saturday (I went home on Saturday and had supper with my mom, stepdad, aunt, grandma, and two cousins), and going to a concert (Tarleton, local group), I've been doing homework. I figure if I get it out of the way now, I won't be so busy in the future. I've got everything done for "awhile" except Japanese and Abstract Algebra. I have a takehome in AA coming up which I am definitely not looking forward to. It's not that the material is hard (it's quite easy), I'm just not connecting the dots and/or remembering important things. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the day that I am more or less dedicating to AA. Wish me luck.

Oh yeah, on Friday, Katie, Kristin, Brent, and myself went to Kurry Kabab. We tried to go to Chapati first, but they told us that they couldn't seat us for about 3.5 hours. And it's offiical--Kurry Kabab is far inferior to Chapati, although things are a touch cheaper at KK.

I tried a new kind of Korean ramen called Shin Ramyun yesterday. I had heard that it was terrific, and I wasn't disappointed. It fills me up more than normal ramen, and is quite spicy. Not spicy in the put-it-in-your-mouth-and-explode spicy, but in the spicier-with-every-bite spicy. The local cub foods just started to carry it (as well as a bunch of other Asian foods; they have an entire aisle dedicated to Asian food now -- amazing, especially for Northfield).

My roommate and I have started to watch Fullmetal Alchemist again. It is a terrific anime series that I recommend to everyone (fans and haters of anime alike). If anyone wants it, I'd be more than happy to mail all 50-55 episodes to you. Actually, I watched up through about episode 10, and my roommate is up to about episode 30. He is, at the moment, more addicted than myself. But that's mainly because he has a lot of homework to do (and thus a higher propensity for procrastination). I was also busy this entire afternoon.

What was I busy with, you ask? Resurrecting The Llama Farm, of course. For those of you who are unfamiliar with TLF, it is a forum that I set up fall of my senior year of high school. It was used by my friends and friends of friends for about 2.5 years before more or less dying out. It died out because we all ran out of time / interest, and no new people were posting. During its hey day, TLF boasted of 10-15 active posters (82 total registered) and 15k+ posts. Not too shabby for a forum that started out on my old G4 (with 56k dialup connection!). Anyways, as I noted at the beginning of this paragraph, today was spent resurrecting TLF, or rather, updating it and migrating it to a new server (namely, magicite.org). Now that it has been upgraded and moved over, I want to return to the hey day of TLF. And that requires more posters. So, please, go to TLF and sign up and post something. You might just like it.

Be warned, however. One thing that I tried to do during TLF's incarnation was take a "no rules" approach. I wanted people to be able to post whatever they wanted, talk about whatever they wanted, and be whoever they wanted. This didn't always work out, and some people "abused" this approach. Some things aren't very tasteful, but that is just the nature of some people. You're bound to find some things you disagree with, people you dislike, and so forth. At the same time, you're also bound to find people you agree with and like.

I also find it necessary to point out that I have a slight alter-ego on the forum. It's more of a running joke, really, but I am sometimes referred to as (and my rank says) God or a godlike-figure. This is merely because I am the forum administrator and have 'God' privileges. Don't take it to mean anything more than that.

Retraction - posted by magicite

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 9:33 pm

I hereby retract what I said about what products will be released tomorrow. All signs are pointing to a video iPod being released. Will it play movies? Yes. Will there be a movie store? Not right away. That'll happen in January (at the earliest).

Oh, and if dual core PowerMac G5s do show up in the next couple of weeks, that would be a big deal. I accidentally said that it wouldn't be in my last post. Dual dual core G5 towers is more or less equivalent to having a quad processor machine. Now that kicks ass.

Also, Apple's financial details were released today. $430 million in profit. Best quarter in the past 13 years for Apple. And it wasn't even the holiday quarter. Next quarter should be interesting.

On a sidenote, Abstract Algebra is completely screwing me over right now. So I'm going to go attempt to finish the homework for that class before collapsing . . .

A Waste - posted by magicite

Monday, October 10, 2005 at 1:25 pm

Things are starting to (temporarily) slow down here. The last three weeks of my life have been amazingly busy.

I went to the The Bravery concert here at Olaf this past weekend . . . they sucked. And it was too loud. One of the openers, International Noise Conspiracy, were pretty good, albeit a bit on the political side. If it weren't for them, I would have completely regretted paying $10 to go to the concert.

Last week, for my Operating Systems class, I had to write a shell in C. I must say, it was rather fun, besides from the several 3+ hour debugging sessions. Those get annoying. It's too bad the project was due last Friday--I want to work on it so much more!

One more week to fall break. I can do it . . .

Apple is set to announce some new goodies in a couple days; tomorrow is the financial details release day (hint: they made lots of money, again), and Wednesday is the new product release day. Rumors have been flying everywhere from video iPods to G5 PowerBooks to Dual Core G5 Towers (don't worry if you understood very little of that). My guess? Slightly updated 'original' iPods, slight PowerBook update (and the last update 'til the Intel transition), and Dual Core G5 Towers. Really, nothing too exiting. Let's hope they surprise us (or at least me).

OH! I remember. I know most of the people who visit my blog because they have posted in the comments section before. However, there is someone who keeps visiting, and I have absolutely no idea who you are. If you work for Minnesota Mutal Life / affiliated with it, you are that person. But I have no idea who you are. So I'm totally curious -- could you post a comment telling me who you are?

I know that several of you who read my blog have blogs of your own. But you don't update them! C'mon now, you get to read about what's been happening in my life (ie, nothing), so I should be able to read about yours. It's only fair. :)

Things may be slowing down around here, but I still have a lot of homework to do. So, short post once again.

Matter of Time - posted by magicite

Saturday, October 1, 2005 at 11:41 pm

I've been busy recently, surprise surprise, blah blah. I'll get by.

On a more serious note . . . hmmm. No, I can't do it.

It's only a matter of time.

busy weekend - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 25, 2005 at 10:42 pm

Short little update here. I'm feeling much better (it's amazing what lots of sleep on a weekend will do to you).

Brent and I went up to the cities to look for / buy furniture on Friday. We bought a new coffee table and bookcase, and I'll post pictures later. We met up with Joel (who needed a table for his apartment), and later went to Applebee's. I also purchased both the original and new katamari damacy games -- great fun, of course.

On Saturday, I attended my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. The event, at the grand, wasn't too exciting in and of itself. But then again, I was still sick.

Today was spent doing homework. Nothing too exciting. I did, however, get done with one of my CS projects that is due at the end of this week (the hamming code project for Hardware Design). Now, I have roughly a week to add extras to it to get extra credit. And add extras I will (as well as work on my shell project for my Operating Systems class, which is due in roughly two weeks).

Some interesting things are underway in the CS department with regards to Wikis and scheme . . . More on that later. I set up a support forum for the project, which should go live 'soon.'

Byouki - posted by magicite

Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 7:33 pm

I'm sick. I've overworked myself, and now I'm sick. I started to get a sore throat late last night, and I woke up this morning to what felt like strep throat (I get it all the time). That eventually went away, but at about 10:46am (during my Hardware Design class), I felt the oncoming of a cold.

It's September 22, and I already have a cold. Why am I not surprised?

I saw Final Fantasy: Advent Children this evening. It was the movie for anime club. My rating of the movie? It was made for those who have played the game. Take from that what you will.

Well, time to get back to overworking myself. My first Japanese paper is due tomorrow, and I haven't been keeping a daily journal for the last week in the class like I should (we have to hand in a 'journal' page every Friday). It just slipped my mind.

work work - posted by magicite

Saturday, September 17, 2005 at 10:56 am

Things are starting to become a routine at college now. Over the past week or so, I've had various meetings all over campus (with my first year Japanese professor, computer science professors, and a handful of other people) about work and stuff. I might have upwards of five on-campus jobs this semester. Eek!

After returning to college, my headaches started to come back. It can't be that I'm allergic to anything at college since I was here this summer. The only real difference is the amount of people, homework, and food that I eat. I'm guessing it's the food. It can't be because of what I eat here (or don't eat, ie, vegetables), because I didn't really do that at home either. I'm beginning to wonder if the caf uses some kind of weird additive or something that my body doesn't like . . . I'll get to the bottom of it eventually.

I'm still watching Hajime no Ippo, and it is still a very good anime series. I'm on episode 60 right now (out of 75 + 2 movies), and will probably be done with the series by this time next week. I highly recommend watching it.

I finished Ishmael some time in the past week as well. It was ok, but suffered from what I believe are a few logical failures that I won't get into here. I'm reading a semi-followup book by the same authoer, The Story of B, and it basically has the same message as Ishmael. After I'm done with B, I'll read My Ishmael, which is basically Ishmael but from another perspective. Since I don't have any books to read after that (since no one has recommended any to me . . . hint hint), I'm going to read a book my Japanese professor from last year let me borrow . . . in Japanese. Should be challenging, but good for me. I really, really need to refresh my memory on Japanese grammar.

Brent and I went to Chapati last night, and it was good as usual. Since I have the expected leftovers, I'll be treating myself to them some time tomorrow. I'd have them today, but I fear that if I don't spread out eating Indian food, I will grow to dislike it (like most things).

There are a handful of other things I could blab about, but I'll save you all from the pain and get back to my massive pile of homework.

Back - posted by magicite

Tuesday, September 6, 2005 at 8:30 am

I'm back at Olaf. I live in Melby room 108, and my extension is 2010 (good extension!). All of my stuff has been moved in, and while the room is a touch small, it merely makes things cozy.

I've seen most of my friends so far, with the exception of Kristin, who's flying in today. I also bumped into Christine yesterday, and we talked for a little bit. Later on in the evening, she and a bunch of her friends needed a ride to cub foods, so I provided.

I was so tired yesterday while moving in, and today, after sleeping, I'm still really tired. Last night, at least, I fell asleep just fine and got a decent amount of sleep, so I don't know why I'm still tired. My head really hurts, and the only thing that really helps is for me to close my eyes. But I can't do that, because then I'll fall asleep. And if I fall asleep, I won't be able to fall asleep tonight, so I'll end up getting up at like noon, which I can't do, since my first class on Thursday is at 8am. Woe is me.

There's something that I want to do, no, that I have to do, but I can't bring myself to do it. Sigh. I hope the opportunity presents itself.

August Events - posted by magicite

Wednesday, August 31, 2005 at 4:45 pm

Lots has happened in the past, uhh . . . 24 hours or so. I've taken a bunch of photos, and put them in the Photo Gallery. Hence, this will be a photo-guided post. I'm posting thumbnails; if you want the full-sized picture, go the the photo gallery.

First, I found a rather interesting-looking spider in my house:

Some time during this week, I was forced to eat this vegetable "delight":

We are having our yard redone. Or better yet, done. We've never really had grass at our house (in fact, I'm not so sure grass was ever actually planted at our house). It is important to note that the "before" shots are actually in progress as well, since our entire lawn was mowed a few weeks ago to prep for this. Here's a few before & 'during' shots:

Of the side of our house:

Of our pond, after everything has been cut down:

This Saturday, all of the "land" you can see in those pictures will be tilled up. I didn't even show you our back yard. It looks so foreign to me right now. I'll post pictures of what our yard looks like after the tilling.

I woke up this morning / afternoon, and before my parents left to go to some banquet thing (I hadn't gone downstairs yet), my mom came upstairs and said to me, "We're going to the banquet, we just got a new puppy, it's downstairs. If you play with it, keep Shone away because she'll tear it up. She's jealous." As you can imagine, I was rather non-plussed. Getting a new pet isn't your every day event (especially when it more or less happens behind your back). She's basically a "Shone Clone" (Shetland Sheepdog), and her name will be Cheyenne (All of our dogs have had Indian tribe names; Cody = Dakota, Shone = Shoshone (of the Westwind), and now Cheyenne). Anyways, here are some pictures. I have many more that I haven't put online (I am on dialup, after all), so if you want more, tell me and I'll comply (yes, master!):

And finally, so she doesn't feel left out, here is Shone, nervous and very jealous sitting under my desk (which she hasn't done at all this month, except for today):

For those of you keeping track at home, I'm still finding it very hard to fall asleep at night / in the morning. I hope it goes away for college . . .

Water - posted by magicite

Tuesday, August 30, 2005 at 1:24 pm

I certainly do not envy the people who live near the Gulf of Mexico Coast right now. This is shaping up to be one of the costliest natural disasters in American history.

This afternoon, one of Louisiana's senators, Senator Vitter, is quoted as saying, "New Orleans will 'absolutely' be rebuilt." Call me a heartless bastard, but am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? I mean, if barely anything is salvageable, wouldn't it be better to not rebuild? Or put more clearly, to rebuild somewhere that isn't below sea level. Or perhaps surround the city with giant earthen walls (in, perhaps, concentric circles). Too costly, you say? I bet it'd cost less than $26 billion.

Thoughts?

Brownies - posted by magicite

Monday, August 29, 2005 at 6:22 pm

I'd like to let the world know that I've just made some glorious brownies.

Thank you, that is all.

Oh yeah, I'm working on a secret project (that will simultaneously help me procrastinate on my Japanese homework and make me work on it).

High Pedestals - posted by magicite

Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at 1:40 am

Nothing new with me, hence no new post. I've visited my brother Joel several times, hung out with several of my friends (most of which have left or will shortly be leaving for college), biked a couple times, visited Josh and his girlfriend Lori in St. Cloud, visited Brent in Stillwater, and a myriad of other things. It doesn't matter, it's all boring.

The acorns are starting to fall. Now, I live in the country, and there's an oak tree hovering over the kitchen part of my house (which is right next to my bedroom window). Every time an acorn falls, it falls on the kitchen's ceiling windows, making a startling noise. This happens every year, of course, and normally isn't a big deal, but as I've mentioned before, I'm home alone. Every time a damn acorn falls, I get startled. A few times, I was so convinced someone was trying to get into the house / knocking on the door that I went downstairs, half in shock asking, "Who's there?" The only response I ever get is the thud of another acorn.

I haven't been able to fall asleep again recently. I've never been very good at falling asleep because I can't stop thinking about stuff. It's not that I'm not tired (which is the case half of the time), it's just that I can't fall asleep. Anything from thinking about something remotely exciting the next day to thinking about some serious topic will keep me up. Several days ago (Thursday night), it took me perhaps four hours to fall asleep. On Thursday night, I couldn't fall asleep because I was thinking about several serious things. I don't know what triggered it; most likely, the thought just popped into my head.

One of the things I thought about was with regards to a friend of mine at college and why we never really connected. There is absolutely no animosity between us, but we don't really know each other at all. To make matters worse, I'm fairly certain I've come across as being a bit eccentric, or 'weird' to this person (which, really, is just a result of random happenings and my uncomfortableness, which I'll explain a bit later). I began to ponder how this all happened, and came to several conclusions. My theory as to why we never connected has always been that we had nothing in common. And I mean, literally, nothing in common. But as I thought over that theory more and more, I began to realize that it didn't make total sense. For one, a few of my other friends have very little in common with this person, and yet they are much closer to this person than I am.

So I needed a new theory. I came to the conclusion that, at least for me, the ability to chitchat and make meaningful small-talk is an important step in getting to know someone better. I think that being able to do this is like a "friendship ice-breaker." This may seem quite obvious (and it is), but I put a special word in my theory: meaningful small-talk. Let me step back for a moment and explain something else before I continue.

It's very hard for me to open up to people. I usually (for whatever reason) remain very, very guarded, especially when meeting new people. When I can't open up to someone, whenever I talk to them, I feel uncomfortable. And that leads to meaningless banter, chit chat, and small-talk.

I began to wonder: this friend of mine, well, why don't I open up to them? Why can't I make meaningful small-talk with them? To answer this, I looked at successful friendships I've had to see if I could figure out a reason. I've determined that in each of these friendships, the friend in question began opening up before I did. This comforted me, which comforted them even more, and so forth.

After analyzing my friend, I determined that he/she is just like me, and that he/she is subconsciously waiting for me to open up before he/she does. I'm fairly certain of this now, but there's just one problem. We've known each other for two years, and nothing has changed. Surely after two years, we would be good friends; I mean, if we're both waiting for the other to open up first (or, in other words, show our more casual sides), it has already happened. We've both had our "casual" moments in social settings, so certainly the "friendship icebreaking" has taken place. But, as I've pointed out, this hasn't happened. While I believe my analysis is correct so far, there's one other thing I've discovered that gets in the way of us becoming better friends.

For whatever reason, I think both of us (or at least one of us) put the other on a high pedestal. I think this is an impediment to our relationship because it makes our friendship seem formal or "professional," and the times we've seen each other act "casual" in social situations isn't enough to overcome this odd formal friendship we have. Assuming this person acts exactly like me (and opens up once opened up to), then one of us has to bite the bullet and open up first. I may just have to be that person.

Or maybe my friend doesn't really like me. :) That's always a possibility too.

I finished listening to Snow Crash this week while playing World of Warcraft. I bought the audio book just before Laurie and I went to Oklahoma in the spring (so that we could listen to it on the car ride), but since we broke up shortly after, we were never able to finish it. The book ends quite suddenly, but overall the book was enjoyable. The first half is far more entertaining, but the latter half is interesting nonetheless.

I started watching a new anime with my brother, Hajime no Ippo, about a bullied kid who, through various means, becomes a boxer. It is surprisingly good, and I highly recommend it. I've only seen about 15-20 episodes out of 75, so it could potentially go bad, but I doubt it.

I also started to watch (and finished watching) an anime called Mahoromatic. A kid loses his parents (one in a car crash, one in, he is told, a workplace explosion). One day, an android comes along and becomes his maid. But this android (a she) was a battle android. And the kid's dead father was actually the leader of a group of people (VESPER), who want to unite Earth with some Aliens (the SAINTS). (There are three factions: earth people (called the 'management'), earth people and alien people (VESPER), and the Aliens ('SAINTS')). Oh yeah, and the kid's teacher has sexual fantasies about him. Anyways, this anime was also surprisingly good (contrary to its description (though quite, quite gratuitous in the breast-drawing department)), but the ending completely sucked. It didn't make sense, didn't tie up loose ends, was not true to the characters' identities, et cetera. Poster anime for how not to finish a good series.

Tonight, I went and saw the movie "The 40 Year Old Virgin." It was fairly entertaining -- lots and lots of inside jokes (that you don't want to tell others about, for various reasons. :) ) Good sexual comedy.

I've once again stayed up far too late. I apologize in advance for logical or grammatical errors -- I never proofread posts, especially at 4:40am.

Snowballs in Hell - posted by magicite

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 at 10:16 pm

It has definitely been awhile. Nine days short of going for a month without an update. I?��Ǩ�Ѣve been meaning to post for days (I wanted to post last Saturday; I even made a quick list of the things I wanted to include!). I?��Ǩ�Ѣd apologize, but I update far more than most of my friends (with, perhaps, the exception of Nick. But his posts are baby-sized, anyways :) ). And now, I have the task of updating you all on what has happened to me in the past few weeks. While not as long as the last post I made, this is still one of my longer ones. Yay for reading material! Now, where to begin?

After my roommate left, things got kind of boring up at Olaf. That, coupled with my advisor either a) being gone to a conference or b) gone for good (as of July 29th), resulted in me being rather lazy with regards to work. I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt feel too bad about it, though. I?��Ǩ�Ѣm going to be working (?��Ǩ?�for free?��Ǩ��) this month on CCT to tie up a few loose ends and get it ready for distribution. I have to decide what I want to be in the final v2.0 release . . . I have to remember that I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt have to include everything in the first release. New functionality can be added in point releases. The final day of work was rather uneventful, aside from me moving out. I?��Ǩ�Ѣll get to that in a few more paragraphs.

The Friday after my last post, my brother, his friend Mari (sp?), and myself went biking on the Cannon Valley-Sakatah (definitely wrong spelling on that) bike trail. We biked from Faribault to Waterville, and then back to Faribault again (about 30 miles). It was fun (albeit exhausting), and Joel and I had the privilege of getting hit by bats. On the first half of the bike trip, some guy asked us to borrow our bikes so that he could catch his dogs. Dogs which we never saw (we were ahead of him). Highly suspicious. Also on the first half of the trip, my bike seat was way too low, which resulted in me getting much more tired than I should have been. After raising my seat at the half-way mark (Waterville), things went much better. Granted, the Waterville-->Faribault leg is much easier than the Faribault-->Waterville leg, but I can definitely tell it made a difference. If any of you who read this thing EVER want to go biking, just get ahold of me and we?��Ǩ�Ѣll do it. I have the entire month of August off to do things like that.

I managed to meet up with my old roommate Brian a few Sundays ago. My brother and I went and we bowled for about 2 hours. Ten bucks on Sundays will give you shoes plus unlimited bowling for three hours. Quite the deal--how could we pass it up?

In other Joel news, Joel got a job working for the University of Minnesota. You?��Ǩ�Ѣll have to check out his blog to get all of the details. Anyways, since his job is in the twin cities, he needed an apartment. He found one near Como Park in St. Paul, which also just happens to be quite close to the state fairgrounds. On the Wednesday before my last day of work (which was last Friday), my brother and I loaded up a U-Haul with all of my brother?��Ǩ�Ѣs crap and later on my mom, Joel, and myself hauled it up to his apartment and moved everything in. It just so happened to be about 90?Ǭ? that night as well. Just our luck. Anyway, earlier on that moving day, I ate at Arby?��Ǩ�Ѣs with Nick, Emily, Ryan, Miles, and Greg. I had seen Miles and Ryan a couple times this summer already, but I hadn?��Ǩ�Ѣt seen the other three at all. Actually, Greg visited me for a couple minutes the week before (he was visiting someone else, about to start a World of Warcraft marathon), but that doesn?��Ǩ�Ѣt really count. After Arby?��Ǩ�Ѣs, we went to Howie?��Ǩ�Ѣs house for a bit. I had to leave early though because of the moving stuff. So, back to moving stuff. The next day, the three of us went up to the apartment again after I got a much needed haircut and bought (or rather, my mom bought) Joel a bunch of stuff from Cub Foods (The Target near his apartment was closed . . . or rather, still being built, so we had to forgo getting Target-related supplies). Afterwards, we ate supper at Olive Garden, and then Joel was on his own in his apartment. He once again has high-speed Internet, the electronic nectar of the gods. Actually, right now, he?��Ǩ�Ѣs in Oregon for some job-related training; I had to drop him off at the airport at 6:30am on Sunday (yes, the time when I usually go to bed, and yes, I stayed up for the rest of the day) and I?��Ǩ�Ѣll have to pick him up again late tomorrow night (in fact, I may just spend the night at his place).

Meanwhile, I?��Ǩ�Ѣm back at home now, with dialup. Dialup really isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt that bad as long as you aren?��Ǩ�Ѣt downloading giant files. As it happens, I tend to download giant files. While it?��Ǩ�Ѣs a pain in the ass waiting for websites to load, it?��Ǩ�Ѣs not that bad. Downloading updates to software or new podcasts takes forever, and when things are downloading, you can?��Ǩ�Ѣt really do anything else.

My new roommate Brent helped me move from my room in Rand to my house. This was fairly uneventful (other than me having to check out at 10 at night . . . my what a pain in the ass), and afterwards we went to Chapati for a tasty meal. The entire time, I was trying to convince him to not stop playing World of Warcraft. For those of you who aren?��Ǩ�Ѣt familiar with World of Warcraft, it?��Ǩ�Ѣs a MMORPG, or, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game. Whew. After being pestered by Brent and a few of my other friends to get the game since it basically came out a bit less than a year ago, I finally caved in and bought it. The only reason why I resisted purchasing it was because I knew it would suck all of my free time away. And boy, was I right. At least for the first week I had it. I?��Ǩ�Ѣd get back from work and play almost nonstop until late at night. This isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt too unusual for me, actually. Every other time I get a good, new game, I end up playing it obsessively for about a week until I beat it. The only problem with doing that with a MMORPG is that, well, you can?��Ǩ�Ѣt beat it. So what?��Ǩ�Ѣs the point? Well, it sure beats sitting on your ass watching TV. Since you?��Ǩ�Ѣre playing with (mostly) real people and not bots (i.e., artificial computer intelligence, characters who simulate being real people), it?��Ǩ�Ѣs quite a bit more engaging. Anyway, back to Brent?��Ǩ�Ѣs quitting of WoW. He determined that the only thing he ever wanted to do was play WoW, so he quit. When he quit, he gave me all of his characters?��Ǩ�Ѣ stuff (equipment, money, et cetera), so now my character has all of this extra . . . stuff. Now, you may think that this would give me a supreme advantage in the game, but not really. Most of the stuff I can?��Ǩ�Ѣt use yet, and the gold is only useful to me when I?��Ǩ�Ѣm much more skilled. I play on the Kargath server, so if any of you WoW players ever want to play with me, now you know where to find me. My character name is, of course, Magicite. But I won?��Ǩ�Ѣt bore you all with any more WoW details. I haven?��Ǩ�Ѣt been playing it much recently (not because the game has lost its appeal, but because I?��Ǩ�Ѣve been busy moving, dealing with dialup, et cetera).

Oh, by the way, since I?��Ǩ�Ѣm at my house right now, I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt get cell phone reception. So, if you want to get ahold of me, call my home phone number. If you call my cell phone, I won?��Ǩ�Ѣt even be able to check for messages. So, don?��Ǩ�Ѣt call my cell phone.

I finished up Taiko the other day. My final opinion? A lot lost in translation, reads better than Musashi, and an educational rather than recreational read. After I finished that, I quickly moved on to a book called Non Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny, which my mom bought for me right before going into college a couple years ago. I attempted to read it last summer (and got about 100 pages into it), but then a bunch of books that I had ordered online came and I wanted to read those books much more. Since this is currently the only unread book that I have, I started to read it again. It?��Ǩ�Ѣs rather dry, with bits of interesting parts. But then again, I haven?��Ǩ�Ѣt cracked the 100 page mark yet, so I?��Ǩ�Ѣm merely reading stuff I?��Ǩ�Ѣve read before. I?��Ǩ�Ѣll get back to you on that.

Now, hell has frozen over at least twice this year so far. First, Apple announced that they are going to switch to Intel processors. Secondly, a few days ago, Apple released a mouse with more than one button (err, sort of). For those familiar with Apple / the tech industry, you?��Ǩ�Ѣll agree with me that these two things are in fact the equivalent of hell freezing over. For those that aren?��Ǩ�Ѣt familiar with Apple / in the tech industry, just take my word for it. I must report that hell has frozen over . . . three additional times since then. All have to do with me. I mean, heck, I thought, a few snowballs had already been thrown in hell this year, what are a few more? So, just what are these three things? Well, if you know me well and think really, really hard, you can probably get one of them. For those that don?��Ǩ�Ѣt have a clue as to what I?��Ǩ�Ѣm talking about (i.e., all of you), you?��Ǩ�Ѣll know when you see me in September. Oh, and it?��Ǩ�Ѣs quite possible that by then, a fourth ?��Ǩ?�hell has frozen over?��Ǩ�� thing with regards to me will have happened. Oh so many changes . . .

One last thing (I swear!). I?��Ǩ�Ѣll be (more or less) home alone until the 25th of August. If any of you fine readers are ever bored, give me a call (at home! (especially if you want to go biking!)). I?��Ǩ�Ѣm sure I could, uh, fit you in to my busy schedule. :)

Wedding Bells - posted by magicite

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 at 11:44 pm

Well, my dad's (and, of course, my new step mom's) wedding was this weekend. On Friday, I went to my aunt and uncle's house to prepare for the wedding. This entailed seeing people I haven't seen in awhile and figuring out what was going to happen the next day. After that, my brother Joel and I went to my dad's house for the groom's dinner. Pretty spiffy.

Afterwards, my brother Joel came to St. Olaf with his laptop and we played Unreal Tournament until the wee hours of the morning. By noon on Saturday, we were at our aunt and uncle's house again, waiting for the wedding to start. My brother and I were put in charge of measuring out sand for the wedding ceremony. We had it all measured out perfectly, but David, my oldest brother, suggested we lower the amount a bit. We did, and when it came time for the ceremony, there wasn't enough sand. That's what we get for listening to David.

My aunt's garden was really slick -- a couple ponds, loads of flowers, and altogether peaceful. A good place for a garden wedding. The ceremony itself was fairly uneventful outside of the wrong amount of sand. In the 'sand thing,' my brothers, dad, step-mom, the pastor, and myself put sand into a glass thingy. Something about uniting us together or some such thing. I had never heard of such a thing, but Jill, my step-mom, wanted it so we complied.

After the ceremony, and after chilling at my aunt and uncle's house for a couple more hours (OK, we weren't chilling. It was 95?Ǭ? last Saturday, and this was an outdoor wedding. We were perspiring for our lives), we went to the Eagle's Club for food. Those of us who were lucky (Dad, step-mom, brother, blood relatives, step-relatives, myself) got to go there in style--19th century style, that is. We traveled to the Eagle's Club in a horse-drawn wagon. Good times, except for the minute when the horses wouldn't cross the train tracks and basically stopped on it. Had a train come, there would have been something for Northfield to talk about . . .

Anyways, at the Eagle's Club, everyone ate food (the wedding was catered by the Nerstrand Meat Market which, as expected, was fantastic). Further, everyone got drunk (except those under 21 like myself -- even if we wanted to, the Eagle's Club is a bar, and they're quite strict about who gets alcohol). This made people act in funny ways (of course). First, let me back up a little bit. My dad had a friend in high school whose name is Rodney. After high school or college or some time post high school, Rodney moved to Rome. He came to the United States for my dad's wedding, and he brought with him his wife and 20 year old daughter. His extremely good looking 20 year old Italian daughter, that is. This caused the wheels in my grandma's head to turn. She decided to make it her mission to try to get her and I to meet. So, throughout the previous day (Friday, groom's dinner) and Saturday, my grandma would do and say various things to get us together. All of which failed, by the way. At any rate, back to the drunk people. I was cleaning up trays with my brother after the meal at the Eagle's Club (most people were still sitting down) and someone who I believe to be my step-uncle (I'm really not sure) asked me what I thought of the Italian girl and why I wasn't going after her. I asked him why I should go after her, and he got a serious, drunken tone on his face and said, "Because you could lay her tonight man! It's not often a hot chick like that comes around." And he said this in all seriousness. Quite hilarious. I, personally, was disgusted at the whole thing. First and foremost, the Italian girl could not speak English very well. Further, everyone was talking behind her back as if she was an object and/or piece of meat, to be devoured at one's will. Of all things, I kind of felt sorry for her. She's doomed to a life of being objectified.

After the Eagle's Club, the 'dance' was to take place at the VFW, another local bar. This started out wonderfully well; Joel and I decided to make a bell float using all of the helium-filled balloons in the room. After shaving off as much weight as possible (which included cutting the mouth piece of the balloon off, lessening the length of the string to the bell, having only one string attached to the bell) and adding as many balloons as possible, we finally got it to float. One time we were so desperate for balloons that Joel had to rescue a balloon from the ceiling with a pool stick. This involved Joel walking through the dance floor and swatting at a balloon for a good five minutes with the pool stick and being laughed at by all the drunk (and sober) people. Anyways, by the time we had completed our bell-floating task, the older people around us had begun to show signs of drunkenness. The person across from me (maybe 30-40? couldn't tell with the lighting) was getting extremely horny and drunk. Her husband didn't seem to be nearly as drunk, but enjoyed her nonetheless. At one point she was seen dancing on a table at the front of the room during love shack and a couple other songs. It was highly entertaining.

As the night drove on, everyone got increasingly more and more drunk and Joel and I got more and more bored. Thankfully, my cousin Randy, who I hadn't seen in awhile (FYI, Randy and I hung out all the time as kids, so at least at one point in our lives, we knew each other very well) was there, so we talked for a bit. My brother David brought a new girlfriend to the wedding as well (and her name is Whitney) as a friend of his (named Ryan). This kept us from getting overly bored, but eventually, Joel and I went back to St. Olaf 'early' at around 11:30 and played more UT / Settlers II / FreeCiv. Of course, since we were at the VFW, we came back reeking of cigarette smoke. One of the unofficial requirements of any VFW, of course, is that it must smell of smoke. This one more than succeeded the requirement.

Before I forget, there was a royally annoying person at the wedding who seemed to know Randy. My brother Joel wrote a blog entry on it, though I think it might be a private entry. At any rate, this guy, whose name I can't remember (and thus shall be called Dorf, since that's the name my brother gave him), would occasionally yell "GIT ER DONE!" at the top of his lungs. It was simultaneously hilarious and annoying as hell. He also lacked the ability to speak in a normal voice either indoors our outside. In fact, I don't think I heard his normal speaking voice once during the entire evening. He also prized himself on stealing other people's drinks when they went up to dance. And people wonder why I have lots faith in humanity.

Last Thursday, before the wedding, I lost my gambling virginity. I went to Mystic Lake Casino with Jackie, a friend / ex high school girlfriend of mine. As implied, it was my first time gambling, and I only gambled $20 and lost it all. It will probably be the last time I go gambling. It was admittedly quite sad seeing all of the people more or less hooked up to the machines. People weren't even carrying on a conversation with anyone, they were just putting money in and hoping for the best. The thing is, it wasn't even fun. Granted, that's partially because I won squat. But the atmosphere there was loud and didn't effuse 'fun' to me. Like I said, it seemed more like a sad, impersonal, unhappy, busy gathering place. For some reason, I'm reminded of a laundromat. Don't ask me why. At least Jackie was there, so it wasn't entirely unenjoyable. She's usually fun to hang out with.

On other ex girlfriend related news, another individual I dated in high school, Christine, is apparently coming to St. Olaf this fall. This will be interesting, because I haven't even talked to her since we broke up in February, 2003. As soon as we broke up, she just stopped talking to me (for those who are curious, I broke it off with her). I'm sure we'll bump into each other at some point this year, and if/when we do, it'll be interesting to see what has happened with her. I'll just have to get over the awkwardness of it all. I just hope she doesn't have any romantic interest in me anymore (not to say that she did well after we broke up) because I have none in her.

Work on CCT is progressing wonderfully. While the "code audit" that I initially intended is taking far longer than I anticipated, the results are, in my opinion, spectacular. Of course, one can't really call what I've been doing a code audit anymore. By the time I'm through with things, every single line in CCT will have been looked over, commented, and mostly rewritten. All of the original ideas and CS-related design are still there (with a little of that extra special Ben flavor), but things are now just more robust and organized. Whereas last summer I always had the feeling that I wasn't doing anything special or learning, I feel just the opposite this year. Perhaps it's because I know what I'm doing and where I want to take CCT. Last year, I had to learn Perl, how CCT works, and do all of the normal summer research-related activities (which take up a surprising amount of time: communication series, donut Fridays, random seminars like 'how to write an abstract' or 'how to look up papers'). This year, the only real thing I need to do (hehehehe, 'need') is Donut Fridays (mmmm, Donut Fridays). Though I've admittedly missed the last three donut Fridays (gasp!). The first time, it was Detroit, and the last two it was my inability to wake up in the morning. Oh well.

I'm about to get to the point of development where I need to evaluate the needs of end users. There are quite a few interesting things I could implement (robust user permissions system being one of them) that I almost feel wouldn't be worth the trouble. Who would use it, anyway? I'll have to ask Rob about it. I've been building preliminary support into CCT the entire time, so it shouldn't be *too* difficult to implement, but it would be quite a pain to maintain and perhaps administer. Actually, as I just wrote the last period, I thought of an idea. A single-user install vs. a multi-user install . . . This would be an option during CCT configuration . . . anyways, I won't get into details. I'm sure 90% of you never even read this paragraph anyways. :)

Expect a video iPod by the time santa comes down the Chimney in December. Will Apple launch a video download service? I'm not so sure -- probably not this year. But they will have music video downloads. Anyways, in other Apple-related news, Apple required 3rd quarter earnings last Wednesday and had one hell of a quarter. To sum things up, Apple's making lots of money, lots of Macs and iPods are being sold, and the iPod Halo Effect--people buying a Mac because they love their iPod so much--is real.

It looks like President Bush has nominated a pro- 'take bake Roe v. Wade' candidate. I can already smell a political battle brewing. Actually, all this talk about this nomination and abortion has gotten me thinking about abortion again. I won't discuss it here in the blog, but if you want to talk to me about it, feel free. I'll share my thoughts. Nothing revolutionary, but I think important nonetheless.

My roommate moved out last Thursday after his last final, so I have the room all to myself until I leave in early August. While I am significantly more lonely now as compared to when he was here, I find myself getting much more work and writing much larger blog posts (like this one). Hopefully, after I finish my current book--Taiko--I can start studying and practicing my Japanese again. Really, really need to do that. So far, I like Taiko a lot, but it's hard to follow with all of the geography stuff going on. And, of course, all of the names are hard to remember, and it doesn't help that the main character has gone through about 6 names by page 450.

Up until about a week ago, I hadn't been getting headaches this entire summer. But now, suddenly, I find myself getting them again. I don't quite understand why they would come back (or be here in the first place). Nothing has changed at all for me in terms of diet or anything. I guess I take that back--I've been having far less takeout now that my roommate is gone (and in the past couple weeks, implemented a '2 fast food per week' rule). Is it possible to get addicted to fast food, or to go through fast food withdrawal? For the record, the majority of the fast food I ate was either Basil's Pizza or Arby's. You know, I really wouldn't mind being medically addicted to Arby's. I wait for the day when a doctor will hand me a prescription for eating more Arby's. Mmmmm. And speaking of Arby's (talk about random connections . . . this paragraph started talking about headaches!) I have a few Arby's gift certificates I need to dispense of. Now, before you start thinking that I've given up on wonderful wonderful Arby's, let me tell you why. I got these particular coupons from Laurie's parents for a present a ways back (I think I even mentioned it in my blog), but they're only valid in Wisconsin. At the time, I reasoned that it was OK because I went to Wisconsin quite a bit to see / visit Laurie and her family. Since we are no longer dating, this reasoning doesn't really work anymore. Rather than let the gift certificates go to waste, I'd rather see them used somehow. Any ideas?

Speaking of food places, a Perkins is allegedly coming to Northfield. Keep your eyes / ears peeled for information. As I was telling Nick, I welcome the addition of a Perkins to Northfield, but added with a disclaimer that it can come "on its own time." I told Nick that while I like Perkins, I feel that I have pleaded with the food gods quite enough on behalf of Arby's. If I bug them any more, they may take my Arby's away. And we can't let that happen. (Fast Food Fact of Northfield: Within the last 10 years, the following buildings were arsoned / bulldozed: Burger King, McDonald's x3, Hardee's).

By the way, I still love my new monitor. It has allowed me to be ?ɬ�ber-productive recently. Oh how I love justifying my toys.

It bwoke! - posted by magicite

Sunday, July 10, 2005 at 7:59 pm

After almost exactly 4 years of faithful service, my CRT monitor died this afternoon. Heat and age caused it to die, I think. I believe it to be dead for good since it has a slight smell to it now.

Faced with this huge problem (I need a monitor to access my desktop), I set out for home to pick up my old 17" monitor. I wasn't looking forward to fetching it, since the maximum resolution is only 1024x768. Way too small for my uses.

When I got to my house, I saw my brother and I decided to go up to the Apple store to go pick up a new display.

A very nice display.

Say hello to Mr. 23" LCD Goodness, and all its 1920x1200 glory.

At any rate, this significantly burned into my savings, but that's OK. It's my (admittedly huge) treat for the summer. Over time, I've come to the realization that a display is more important than the actual computer. I mean, you don't look at a computer, you look at a display. If you buy a poor display, you're sacrificing dollars for the future of your eyes. That's why I bought the now-dead CRT display 4 years ago--high refresh rate, good resolution, good colors.

On Friday, I ate at Chapati again with my future roommate, Brent. It was good times, and after I finish writing this post, I'm going to go finish the leftovers. Mmmm, Chapati leftovers.

Work on CCT is going well. I should have an interface for setting up / taking down / freezing searches by Tuesday. The backend for analysis is complete (though I haven't worked on search dependencies or configuration options yet). One of the things I did for CCT v1.5 in the spring was implement a 'mass add searches' feature. I liked that interface so much that I'm going to make it the default interface for adding and deleting all searches. If a user wants to change the default settings, they can go back later and customize the search. I think it's a good tradeoff, given that you're given a lot more power (and can do things quickly), while not taking away previous functionality.

One thing that has always intrigued me about some programs is the idea of modules or plugins. I've always wondered how they work. I still don't really know, but I've implemented my own version in CCT for various things. Theoretically, anyone can make their own database connection module (CCT v.2 will work 'out of the box' with MySQL and flat-file databases), interface module, database formatter module, and search module. I guess one thing I can say when CCT v2 is released is that it's fully customizable because, well, it is.

I finished the fifth Harry Potter book some time ago now and am now well in to Taiko. It reads much the same as Musashi, which makes sense given that it was written by the same author. Here's Amazon's description: As recounted by Eiji Yoshikawa, author of the international best-seller Musashi, Taiko tells many stories: of the fury of Nobunaga and the fatal arrogance of the black-toothed Yoshimoto; of the pathetic downfall of the House of Takeda; how the scorned Mitsuhide betrayed his master; how once impregnable ramparts fell as their defenders died gloriously. Most of all, though, Taiko is the story of how one man transformed a nation through the force of his will and the depth of his humanity. Filled with scenes of pageantry and violence, acts of treachery and self-sacrifice, tenderness and savagery, Taiko combines the panoramic spectacle of a Kurosawa epic with a vivid evocation of feudal Japan.

The beginning of this book seems better than Musashi, but I've heard that Taiko begins to tank after the first 200 pages. I'll have to report back on that.

Oh yeah, about Harry Potter. My final conclusion on the Harry Potter series is that 1-3 kind of sucked, but 4 and 5 are really quite good. My advice? Watch the movies for the first three, and read four and five (especially before the fourth movie comes out this fall). I would buy the sixth book that's coming out in a week, but it's only hardcover. And while I love hardcover books, all five of mine are paperback, and I'd like to keep it consistent (for whatever reason). I'll probably borrow a friend's copy, read it, give it back to them, and pick up the paperback whenever it gets released. Not before I finish Taiko, though.

My dad's wedding is this coming weekend. I'm not so sure I've ever mentioned that yet on my blog (though I think I mentioned his engagement around Christmas time). It should be fun and interesting. I really don't know my father all that well, and conversely, he doesn't know me well. My parents divorced when I was only about 3, so my memories of him are limited. Most of the memories I have of him come from the every-other weekends as a child when he would have custody of my brothers and I. This oftentimes entailed going over to my grandma's house nearby, or to one of my dad's girlfriend's houses. Anyways, that's what I'll be doing this coming weekend. I'll report back later.

Someone made a comment to my blog this afternoon (in an old post) and said, "You keep referring to yourself as lazy. Does this bother you?". To answer this question in a word, no. While I can go through times of extreme laziness, I also go through times where just the opposite happens--I work and work and work, to the point of being a workaholic. Or something like that.

July 4th - posted by magicite

Tuesday, July 5, 2005 at 4:33 pm

Like last year, I traveled up to the North shore for the 4th of July this year. Outside of doing work and reading, I really didn't do anything (which is fine with me). I finished the 4th Harry Potter before leaving, and I'm almost done with the 5th now (might finish it this evening).

I have pictures (and movies!) of course, but I'll post them later (ie, I'm lazy).

I still haven't started practicing Japanese. Perhaps sometime this week . . . :P

As some of you may know, I rarely dream. Except when I'm up North. This time was no different. I dreamed about bad things again. :( Why won't it go away . . .

Anyway, I need food and I need to do laundry. Just got back from up North a little bit ago.

Oh, yeah, before I forget, the old Burger King in Two Harbors, MN (North of Duluth) has been converted to a Culver's. Take that :P

Detroit Update - posted by magicite

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 9:44 am

I'm currently in Detroit at the Marriott Renaissance Center. I've been here for a few days now, taking in all that this conference has to offer me. As I write this, I'm in a 'cyber caf?ɬ�,' set up by Apple just for this conference. There's a bunch of iMac G5s here -- it's pretty slick. I'll be sure to get a picture.

My colleagues and I will be leaving Detroit this evening to head back to storm-ravaged Northfield. Why-oh-why did I have to miss such an exciting storm?

Last night, I presented at my poster. The first two individuals who came to visit were people from a certain fruit company.

They came to find me. Tr?ɬ�s cool. A little later, another individual from a certain fruit company came to find me. Even cooler. I won't get into details now -- I don't have the time and it's probably best that I keep quiet. :)

Detroit is smoggy. When Joel and I were on the 72nd floor of the GM building (ie, tallest building in Detroit) snooping around yesterday evening, our view was marred by all the smog. I'll be sure to post a few pictures of that later as well.

Finished the 3rd Harry Potter book sometime shortly after my last post. Half way through the 4th now.

I couldn't sleep on Sunday night (this was pre fruit-company visit). I've got lots to think about.

Sorry for the rather scattered post. I don't have time to make a 'quality' post at the moment. :)

Enjoyment - posted by magicite

Sunday, June 19, 2005 at 2:06 pm

I'm really enjoying this summer, and my work. I finished Tai-Pan I think a week ago now, and am now about 3/4 the way through the third Harry Potter. Tai-pan was a great book, but nowhere near as good as Shogun. I bought the DVD of Tai-Pan and it arrived sometime last week. It was pretty bad, which is what I anticipated. The third Harry Potter book seems just like the other two that I have read (and to me, the movie more or less follows the book). I have to admit, I'm not all too entirely impressed with the Harry Potter books just yet, but I'm fairly certain that a big reason for this is that I have already seen the movies. It'll be interesting to see how I like (or dislike) the 4th book, which has not been released in movie form yet.

I've watched lots of movies in the past few weeks too, but they are far too numerous to list. Lots of old classics, mostly. I've also been encoding my movie collection to h264. The quality is, of course, fantastic, but it takes a very long time (10+ hours?) for each movie encode. For those of you who don't know what it means to 'encode' something (in the digital media sense), it means to transfer a media format (such as a DVD) to another format (such as in QuickTime , DivX, Real, or Windows Media format). Why would one want to do this? To make the movies smaller. Whereas DVD movies fit on and go on, well, DVDs, my encoded movies fit on a CD and look about the same.

On Friday night, Ryan, Peter, and myself went to see Batman Begins. Now, I have no attachment to the Batman series (or almost any other movie, for that matter), but this movie was fantastic. One of the very few I'd pay to see twice. All of us immensely liked the film, and I highly recommend you go see it. One thing I really liked (and perhaps some disliked) was that it didn't make things cheesy or over-the-top. Things were just more 'real' or realistic. The batmobile, for instance, looks nothing like the improbable versions of the past (not to say that this batmobile is realistic too, per se; it just doesn't have the cheesy slick, black, refined look to it). I just thought everything came together well.

As far as work is concerned, I'm really getting into it again. I discovered a perl module (DBI::CSV) that allows me to use SQL syntax on a flat-file back-end. Why is this important? Because it means I can code CCT using SQL syntax, and the end-user does not have to go through the tedious task of installing and configuring an RDBMS (Relational Database Management System, such as MySQL). At the same time, the end-user still can use, for instance, MySQL as the back-end (and should if they can). Oh Perl, you don't seem so bad anymore. Though you're still ugly.

I've also begun to beautify CCT ('cause right now it looks like a programmer made it . . . which makes sense, for obvious reasons. :) ). I'm fairly proud of the work I've done so far on this. While not integral to what CCT does (in fact, it's rather superfluous), the way it works is module-based, meaning anyone could write his or her own Perl object to define the way nearly *everything* is output. Mix that with cascading style sheets (CSS), and you've got some powerful stuff, man.

Sometime last week (I don't remember the day, perhaps Sunday?), Brandon took my flying to Rochester. We left off from the Faribault airport, flew to Rochester, ate at 'The Hangar,' then flew back to Faribault. On our way to Rochester, we went over Northfield and my house. On the way back, we flew over a wind farm and Owatonna. It was very cool. We had one scary moment when the engine died on landing in Rochester (we were already on the ground and turning off the runway, so we were never in danger), but it ended up being no big deal.

My aunt and cousins are in Faribault up from Arizona and I saw them yesterday. We hung out on my grandma's deck and went to the Heritage Days Parade in Faribault, which was at 6:30. My two cousins (Robert and Jesse) got so much candy, it was insane. I wish I got that much candy as a kid. I did, however, acquire a miniature frisbee that the Steele-Waseca Coop Electric company was tossing out. They're translucent, "construction-zone orange," and very cool. My cousin got one too, and we played with them after the parade back at my grandma's house.

I haven't touched Storm Stalker recently, but that's mainly because I was so engrossed with Tai-Pan. In addition to picking that up again, I need to start studying Japanese to keep it fresh in my head. The more work I do now, the better it'll be for me and the less painful this fall will be. :)

Professor Rutherford, Joel, and myself will be leaving for Detroit either this coming Friday or Saturday (hopefully Friday). We'll be staying in either (or both) Madison or Ann Arbor, and then in downtown Detroit. We'll then return on Wednesday sometime after going to a bunch of talks and standing by our posters. Should be informative if not fun. It'll be nice to take my first "vacation" since Spring Break.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks this summer is going amazingly fast? It's already June 19th. Aye carumba! I guess I feel this way 'cause I've been working since finals got out.

I have a secret, but I can't say what it is. Two secrets, now that I think of it. One I definitely can't reveal for over a year (as it will reveal itself; it doesn't actually have anything to do directly with me, but a friend) and the other deals entirely with myself. I won't reveal that one, either. :)

Grades - posted by magicite

Friday, June 10, 2005 at 8:28 pm

Wow. Just wow. The only class that I was worried about this last semester was ERA. And I did the impossible. I never thought this could have happened. I was expecting at BEST maybe a B, B+ if I was really lucky.

Do you know what I got in the class?

An A. A big fat A. Much celebrating must be done--I earned that damn grade.

Hung out with Peter (summer roommate), Howie, and Miles today. Ate at Arby's and played endless amounts of Mario Kart. Terrifical times!

Almost done with Tai-pan. In true me fashion, I ordered the movie (DVD) adaptation of it from B&N, and it should arrive sometime early next week.

Hotness - posted by magicite

Tuesday, June 7, 2005 at 9:26 pm

It reached 90 in Northfield today. It's odd to think that a tad more than a month ago, it was snowing in Minnesota. I suppose now that I should *really* take out that snowflake icon. Eventually. :) Also, take that people in Hawaii!

I am not house sitting for Nick's family. They found someone else.

My new roommate (Peter) is a pretty cool guy (MN meaning, Laurie). We get along just fine.

I was locked out of the bathroom all day today (neighbors forgot to unlock it). So I stayed in my room most of the day and did work from here (ie, I read a book Rob gave me on mass spectrometers and micro arrays).

Apple is moving to Intel hardware. This is absolutely amazing, and yesterday (the 6th) was a momentous day in computing history (even if you don't realize it yet). Apple switching to Intel is both technologically and psychologically interesting (for reasons I won't get into). The next two years will prove to be quite interesting for Apple.

I found out more about my 'trip' to Detroit this afternoon (the ISMB conference) when I finally met with Rob. We'll be leaving the 24th and returning late on the 30th. We'll be staying in Madision, WI most likely on the 24th (Rob went to graduate school there, so he wants to show us around) and arriving in Detroit some time on the 25th. Then, we stand by our posters for a few days while absorbing as much information (and rubbing as many elbows) as possible. On our way back, we might take the ferry across Lake Michigan, which'll be fun. Rob wants to fish--I'm not sure if he'll catch anything! Even if he does, what will he do with it?

I'm still reading, still making my own food (though I've had a terribly large quantity of pizza in the past week), and still battling my sweltering room (and today's weather didn't help).

I bought a new 'CD' on iTunes this evening called "Euro Dance Party." $9.99 for 27 songs -- can't beat that. Some of the songs are pretty bad, but there are a few gems. You'll have to listen to it to find some good songs! :)

Screenshots of Storm Stalker, by popular demand:

Basic RADAR interface without any RADAR data :)

Basic RADAR interface with RADAR data :)

Basic Satellite interface without any Satellite data :)

The icons at the top ("toolbar icons") are 100% temporary. A dog and a cat has nothing to do with my application -- they just happen to be 32x32 images, which is what I needed. I haven't worked on SS in a few days, but I have been rather busy with work and people (yay for fun). I'll resume work 'soon' . . .

I could have sworn I had more to say, but alas, 'tis late and I've forgotten.

Things change - posted by magicite

Saturday, June 4, 2005 at 3:45 pm

So I do have a roommate. I was informed of the change the morning I moved in. Not too pleased about the timing of that, but whatever. My room is fantastical big.

I started work last Wednesday, but was unable to work on Thursday and Friday. Northfield was basically cut off from the rest of the world (the Qwest had problems; no dialup internet, no St. Olaf Internet, no long distance calls in or out of Northfield, no cell phone service). It was a Northfield-style armageddon. Things are obviously working now, though, since I am writing this.

I've been reading quite a bit and watching movies recently. Tai-pan is really getting interesting. The first 50 pages were quite the bore.

I'll (possibly) be housesitting for Nick's family as they all go to Hawaii. Yay for a house, boo for them going to Hawaii. Damn their fun in the sun.

My first grocery bill came to $86. This is partially because I bought lots of grapes (or rather, expensive grapes) and 5 pounds of cheese (which will more than last me the summer). I haven't really had the opportunity to eat any of this food that I purchased because I've been eating out a lot. Not because I'm lazy (which I am), but because I've been eating out with various friends. Arby's and Basil's pizza love me.

I'm making a 'furniture porn' movie. Don't ask, just wait until I put it up. :) It's for someone's mom. Don't ask about that, either.

Need to clean the room (already) for my new roommate. Put things in the right spot is a better term for it -- I haven't quite found a place for everything yet!

I'll post Storm Stalker pictures 'soon.' The application is on my laptop, and I'm posting this on my desktop.

The long post I mentioned in the last post has yet to come, and may not come for awhile (or ever).

First days of 'break' - posted by magicite

Friday, May 27, 2005 at 10:12 pm

First and foremost, I officially a) do not have a roommate for this summer and b) have a double. Good times.

After my Japanese test on Monday (and after lunch) a few friends and I (Kirsten, Kristin, Laurie, and Charity) went down to Way Park (where, 12 hours prior, there had been an attempted abduction). There, I got sunburned. As a result, I'm now in the "peeling stages." I must say, it came on rather quickly. It was funny, though, because earlier in the week, my face was dark red all the time. And it was only on about 75% of my face (due to the angle of the sun at the time I sunbathed). I hope my shedding process is over by the weekend.

Ever since 'break' began, I've been working. Working at the MDC, that is. It looks like we're going to be getting a new 42" wide-format printer. As it turns out, these behemoths don't get updated very often, although a new model was introduced last week that we've been looking into. But that's boring, so I won't talk about that.

For those who care, I've seen the new Star Wars movie twice now and, to be perfectly frank, I don't like it. I think it's boring and filled with way too much action. The second time through, I was literally bored. Shocking to most of you, I know. The fact that the movie theatre I went to the second time was extremely cold didn't help things much either.

Everyone but the orchies (orchestra) and celebration weekend workers is leaving tomorrow. Right now, there are a bunch of old people staying in Larson Hall (class of '55) and it's kind of weird, but luckily I already experienced this last year. Anyways, it should be interesting to see what happens after that. I'll be working all day on Sunday, off on Monday, and moving in to my new room on Tuesday. The "worst" of these days is going to be Monday 'cause that's when the orchies leave for Norway. Then I'll be really bored. More bored than when I watched SWIII.

I've worked on Storm Stalker these past few nights. It's coming along nicely. If someone requests a screenshot in the comments, I'll put one up. Anyway, I determined (through experience and online research) that cocoa's GIF handling (specifically, NSBitmapImageRep and NSImageRGBColorTable) in 10.3 and below is more or less broken. Thankfully, this is fixed in 10.4+, but this means I will have to limit Storm Stalker to 10.4+. Oh well. I also looked into something called Core Image to do the transitions between radar frames to make it look pretty. Core Image (for all of you who don't have a clue) is described at Apple's site. It's quite nifty. If I were to integrate it into Storm Stalker, I'd be sure to make it an option for those with older computers. It would look damn sweet though! :)

An idea I had earlier today while walking back from a meeting with my Japanese professor (she taught me how to use a kanji dictionary) with regards to Storm Stalker is to create storm / rain alerts based on radar. Let me explain how you would use it so that what I just said makes sense. Say you live in rice county (much like I do). What you could do with this feature is select Rice county (graphically) as something to monitor. Then, Storm Stalker (or more likely a background process) would download radar updates every 30 minutes or so. Whenever a storm cell was detected, a small radar window would pop up on the screen and show you a small animation of the storm. I think this would be really cool and nifty.

There are a few implementation problems with this, though. First, during sunrise / sunset, radar tends to pick up rays from the sun, and this shows up as a big line on radar. Second, whenever there's no storm, people doing the radar (NOAA) turn up the strength (so as to detect small things). What this accomplishes, however, is lots of noise (that shows up as red or orange or something). Exacerbating this problem is the fact that radar stations tend to be in big cities, i.e., where the majority of potential Storm Stalker users would reside. Getting false-positive storms is bad. I've been thinking of ways to solve this, though what I thought of is not fail-safe. I could have the algorithm both monitor radar and a text feed (which NOAA also provides) that says, basically, if there are storms around. At any rate, this whole tracking idea only came to me this morning, so I'm sure more solutions will come to me in the future.

Nick and Emily are up here for the weekend, and I'll be eating with them at Arby's tomorrow at noon. Now let's just hope that I can get up on time. :) Actually, I have to force myself up since I have to begin work at 7:30am on Sunday, which means I have to get up around 7. For those who know me, this will be quite the challenge for me.

I have a feeling I'll be posting a long post in the next few days.

I'm done! - posted by magicite

Monday, May 23, 2005 at 8:45 am

Yay, done with my sophomore year of college. I thought the Japanese final I had this morning was pretty hard, but I think I did fine. There were a couple things that I was confused about (some of the 'directions' weren't exactly clear), but that wasn't common.

My room has been totally rearranged. Since Brain moved out, there's a lot more free space in the room. For those of you who have been in my room before, this is where stuff is now: TV and fridge is where Brian's DVDs are, my laptop is on Brian's spot, the futon is where the bed used to be, and the bed is behind my desk in front of the window. Having the bed in front of the window is awesome. For the past two days, the sun has shined in right on me and gently woken me up. It's wonderful. I honestly don't feel tired right now, which is fantastic.

Speaking of bed, I have now slept in a bed in my room 3 times this year. The first time was the first day of the year (in September), the second time was on Saturday night, and the third time was last night. It's nice to be able to sleep on a bed (in your own room) again.

I finally chucked my Epson C80 printer that I got for my birthday several years ago. It never quite worked right, and gobbled up ink like no one's business. I think my next printer investment will be a personal laserwriter. The cost of ink in inkjet printers is atrocious for what you get out of it.

I should probably take that snowflake out of the top right corner. Though I'd argue that it's appropriate, seeing as to how we had snow a couple weeks ago . . .

I got my room assignment for Rand the other day, and as it turns out, they haven't assigned me a roommate yet. It looked like it was going to be Joel again for a moment, but he's going to be living off campus this summer instead. There's a small possibility that I'll have a single in a double until second term summer school . . . that'd be kind of nice and bad at the same time.

Off to a celebratory lunch.

Half Done - posted by magicite

Friday, May 20, 2005 at 9:55 pm

I'm in the midst of finals at the moment. I had my ERA final this afternoon (thank GOD that class is over with . . . ) and I handed in a 36-page ethics report (group) on St. Olaf's new Student Information System around 11:30 this evening. Which means I have two finals left. The next final I have is in about 8 hours. It's a presentation for my Client-Server Applications course. I'm doing the intro and am the backup for two other people. I have to get to the presentation room early tomorrow, and may very well end up doing part of the demo. We'll see. The last final I have will be happening on Monday morning. It's my Japanese final. I haven't really studied for it yet, but I'm not too worried. I'm doing quite well in the class, so even if I totally bomb the final (which won't happen), my grade won't budge.

I haven't seen the new Star Wars yet, but I heard it's real good. Erik Martz, someone I've known since middle school, really liked it. He's a big Star Wars fan, and as far as I'm concerned, if he thinks it's good, it's good. I'll probably go see that tomorrow evening.

Tomorrow, I should find out who I'm rooming with for this coming summer. I honestly have no clue who it could be . . . it's either going to be Joel from last summer, John from Japanese (though I'm fairly certain he got a single), or some random person. Please do NOT let it be some random person who has, umm, bad tendencies. That's all I'll say.

Since I'll be at Olaf for the next week, I think I'm going to hard-core Cocoa again. Or I'll do some early work on CCT. Either way, I'll be programming. It should be good times. I haven't had a good code fest (that I actually enjoyed) since I worked on Storm Stalker a month or so ago, and even then, it was only for a day (night, actually).

I'm totally caught up on Naruto, so I've watched through episode 135. Now it's time to watch the movie (which I hear is bad).

Time to go practice my slides for the presentation . . .

Busyness - posted by magicite

Sunday, May 15, 2005 at 7:53 pm

Last week was incredibly busy. Aside from my normal homeworkload, I had an ERA takehome test, a final solutions report presentation in my ethics class, and a presentation in Japanese class. All on Friday. I was so burned out, that I slept in until 2 on Saturday. Of course, I did the same today, but that's 'cause I went to an Autechre concert with Brent.

I finally found powdered PowerAde. This whole time, it was at EconoFoods. Apparently, Joel knew about it the whole time but never told me. Boo. He told me that they only have the blue kind, but when I was there they had the red kind as well, so I picked up one of each. I just made the first batch, and while it does taste slightly different from what you get in a vending machine, it still tastes pretty good. Good PowerAde times.

The Pause closed down tonight for the season, which is sad since I won't be able to enjoy the Garlic Cheesy bread for another 4 months. Sniffle, sniffle.

I was able to arrange to stay on campus and in my dorm room until I move into Rand on the 31st, which is pretty nice, but now I'll be bored for a week. I'm sure I'll be able to keep myself busy though with either CCT programming or general cocoa programming. I really, really need a break from college work / working at all, and that week will be it for me until August.

Still addicted to Naruto, but I'm getting to the end of it. It'll be sad when I don't have a constant supply of Naruto to look forward to; I'll have to go back to like I was last summer when I waited each week for a new Full Metal Alchemist. And, I'll only be enjoying it by myself. :(

Still no concrete roommate for this summer. I'm guessing I'll go random or get a single. I found someone else who doesn't have a roommate for the summer, but they're also going for a single. If they can't get a single, then we'll room together. I'll keep you posted.

I got an email from my CS professor this afternoon saying that I've only logged 5 project entries since March 21st, which is . . . well, wrong. I've been to class every day, which is more than 5 times since March. I've got to go see him or something . . .

Oh, and for those keeping count, she died again last night.

Lots of Japanese - posted by magicite

Thursday, May 5, 2005 at 10:51 am

The other day, I got lots of Japanese-related stuff from my Japanese professor. I got one "book" and two manga collections (one who's name I forget (about ninjas) and the other, original Dragonball). We have to do a project for the oral part of our final for the class (based on anime, jpop, manga, etc), so I'm going to use one of the mangas. Should be fun (though difficult).

My current school-related plan for next Interim is to go to Japan any way I can. This can happen in two ways. The first is the college class that goes to Japan and China. The second is getting an Internship for a month in Japan. Due to recent developments, however, that I can't yet go in to, it might be better for me to do the college class in Interim, and the internship in the summer (ie, go to Japan twice). I'd just have to convince my parents to pay for it. Buahaha, they always wanted me to "go abroad" at St. Olaf. Now they'll have to put their money where their mouth is. :D

Crunch time is definitely starting. Lots of projects, presentations, tests, random sources of stress . . . blech. I can't wait until the end of this month . . .

Speaking about the end of the month, it looks like I'll be working at IIT until I start my summer research. This will let me keep my current room in Larson until I move into my new room in Rand. Yay! It's incredibly lame to move out one day (and bring all of my stuff home) and move back in less than a week later.

I've been addicted to Naruto recently. It's an excellent anime, but it's causing me to stay up 'til the wee hours of the night (*cough* morning). Must. Stop. Doing. That.

I'm looking forward to my classes for next semester. I'm taking Hardware Design, Operating Systems, Advanced Japanese, Abstract Algebra, and Fitness Walking. HD and OS should be fun, Japanese will be hard, AA will be easier than my current math class (Elementary Real Analysis) since I have taken ERA, and fitness walking is, well, fitness walking. It's at 8am T-Th, so it'll wake me up before my 9:30 T-Th class. Let's hope I can roll out of bed in time for fitness walking . . .

I'm in need of a roommate for this coming summer. I know about 3 people who will be here at St. Olaf this summer, and they've all got roommates. So, if you're reading this and need a roommate for this summer or know someone who needs a roommate, feel free to contact me. Minor caveat -- I make my own food in the summer, and would want a roommate who does the same.

Check up - posted by magicite

Saturday, April 30, 2005 at 6:46 pm

One month. One. Long. Month. It's funny how some people consistently look forward to the good milestones and forget the bad, while others consistently remember the bad ones and don't think much of the good ones.

What an amazingly unproductive day today. After waking up late, I got a little Japanese done. That's it. After supper, some people and I went to Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, a series of 2 minutes-or-less plays in an hour. 30 in all. It was highly amusing, but way too overcrowded so we had to sit on the floor. I can't stand sitting on floors, especially when you can't stretch.

Yesterday, I got tiger and installed it on my G5. My G5 finally feels fast again. I've put so much garbage on my G5 in the past year (Darwin Streaming Server, lots of little utilities, et cetera) that had slowed it down so fast that it seemed to run slower than my PowerBook. Not anymore! Later on yesterday, Apple put up some high definition h.264-encoded video clips for public consumption. A fast computer and QuickTime 7 or later required. The PC version of QT7 should be out "soon."

After tiger, Brent and I went to Chapati's, an Indian (think Asia) restaurant in Northfield. I had been there before, but had gotten the buffet option. This time, I actually ordered something. It was much better the second time, although the service was uncharacteristically slow; it took about 45 minutes - hour to get our food. Oh well, it was good anyways.

Time to finish my Japanese homework. Perhaps I'll work on Storm Stalker or read after that. Or even a movie. Anything.

Storm Stalker - posted by magicite

Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 11:44 pm

For those of you who read my blog last summer, you would know that I was working on a Mac OS X application called Storm Stalker. I stopped working on it because I ran into a few animation-related obstacles with cocoa. I went on a coding binge this past weekend and resolved these issues (sort of), and have an interest in coding the application again. It sucked up a big portion of my past weekend, and may possibly do the same for this coming weekend. We'll see. It has the potential to be really cool.

As of today, I am a Computer Science Major, Mathematics Major, and Japanese Studies Concentrator. Which means I have to take two more semesters of Japanese, something I never thought I would do. Learning Japanese will hopefully be beneficial to me some day . . .

Earlier in the week, I reformatted my friend Katie's computer. St. Olaf kicked her off the network since her computer became a spam zombie. It took a ridiculously long time to do; the initial file backup of her machine went ridiculously slowly for some reason (perhaps the spam thingy was messing with things?). Today, I did the same thing with my roommate's computer. All this computer fixing has made me ridiculously tired (and sick). Well, ok, it didn't make me sick, but I am sick right now. I think it may be allergy related . . . though I don't want to admit it. I can not have allergies.

Only a few weeks left of my sophomore year of college . . .

Coulter - posted by magicite

Monday, April 18, 2005 at 8:37 pm

Oh wow, what a boring speech. Ann Coulter came to St. Olaf on Sunday evening, and boy was she boring. I won't get into what she actually said (nothing) but I will say that she didn't answer a single person's question (except when she was asked if she was religious; after which point the questioner told Ann that she would pray for her tonight). She also 'threatened' to send a Muslim student's name to John Ashcroft (who, if you pay attention to the news, stepped down in early February). I will have the unfortunate pleasure of receiving a Time magazine in my PO box tomorrow with Ann Coulter on it as well. Oh the things that run through my head . . .

I had my second ERA test on Friday . . . . I think it went pretty well. I'll find out on Wednesday.

In my Japanese homework today, one of the exercises had us say, "I'm angered that a sex offender touched me." I'll scan it in some time.

We got a rough cut PDF version of the CCT paper today from NAR. Looks pretty sweet.

I have a new roommate for next year. I think it'll work out well. He's a good guy. We hung out on Saturday evening and took a look at Melby (where we plan on living next year). He's also fallen in love with my gamecube, which is good times.

The person living next to me in Larson had his laptop stolen around 7PM yesterday evening. Scary stuff. Luckily someone was in my room at the time, so my stuff wasn't stolen. That would really, really suck if my PowerBook was stolen.

Mac OS X Tiger was finally announced last week, and I've already ordered. I should, however, have my hands on it within the next twenty four hours if all goes well. . .

Even More Reading - posted by magicite

Saturday, April 9, 2005 at 9:45 pm

So apparently I procrastinated in doing my ERA homework a bit too much. I haven't touched it yet, and I just finished book 2 of Harry Potter. Oh well. I think I'll start reading Tai-Pan next and then read some more Harry Potter books after that.

Lots of Reading - posted by magicite

Saturday, April 9, 2005 at 12:46 pm

I finished Pride and Prejudice (FINALLY) this past week some time and I started to read the first Harry Potter book the next night. Which I'm already done with. One reason these books read so easily is that there aren't that many words per page / the book comes in a big font. Which I'm a fan of, because you always get a sense of accomplishment every time you turn a page. I have some ERA homework to do this weekend, so I'm procrastinating on it by starting the 2nd Harry Potter book, which I will begin after I finish this post.

I went to the Three Penny Opera at St. Olaf on Friday. I enjoyed it, but as usual, was repulsed by the people (not the musical / play) who were offended by the material in the play. There are several prostitute characters in the play, which is too much for many Oles. Heaven forbid they get exposed to a play that has characters that are prostitutes. This is the kind of thing that ticks me off about Olaf. That's what's revolting to me.

Laurie and I went on a very long walk on Wednesday night and talked about a lot of stuff. I prefer not to get into any details, but I must say that some things still don't add up. But that's for me to wrestle with. Anyways, it's incredibly hard to move on right now because I'm not sure if I should be moving on yet. Gosh, things are so confusing . . .

I had a dream last Saturday night where, to make things short, Laurie died in a car crash. This actually happened before my last post. Before you think this sounds morbid or weird, it has happened before when we were actually going out (twice, actually). The details weren't exactly the same, but the end result was. An important aside here is that in my dream, I hadn't quite registered the fact that we were no longer dating. The emotions in this dream were so intense that I woke up feeling exactly as had in the dream--no, nightmare. Anyways, previously when this happened, it had been nice to go find Laurie and give her a hug or something. Just imagine what I felt when I came to the realization that I not only couldn't do that, but I was no longer dating her . . .

I was supposed to go with a friend (Brandon Christel) yesterday flying, but it ended up being too windy to fly. All I can say is good call Brandon. You see, he also works at the airport where we would have taken off from, and this morning he spent five hours helping to clean up a plane that crashed on landing yesterday evening (when we would have gone). The pilot is safe, but he crashed purely because of the strong winds.

My appetite hasn't really improved since my last post. Once or twice I've managed to eat lots of food, but that's it. I've not eaten my entire bag lunch or had very big caf meals at all. The biggest thing I've had was a hamburger and fries on Tuesday which, while big, is by far the biggest thing that I've had all week. Not sure when my appetite will get better, either. I'm still in one piece though, and I've gone on 2-3 walks total in the past week, so I've been sleeping better as a result.

I found out the other day that my high school friend Josh is moving up to St. Cloud in about a month. This really sucks, because now a considerable amount of my male friends from high school won't be in Northfield this summer or will also be busy. Thank God for AIM and having Howie still be in town. I'd count Miles, but he never does anything.

Alright, time to start reading. Hopefully I'll not succumb to the evils of doing ERA before supper . . .

Life Updates - posted by magicite

Sunday, April 3, 2005 at 5:09 pm

For those of you who have no idea what I was talking about with my last post, Laurie and I broke up. My life since Wednesday night has been filled with extreme sorrow, fidgetiness, and restlessness. I've never felt so amazingly lonely in my entire life, even though I've probably been more active in the past few days than I usually am. I've also completely lost my appetite for the time being. For instance, I just got back from supper, and the only thing I've eaten today is a half a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of captain crunch. I've not touched my easter candy either. I've also noticed that I've been going through extreme mood swings. All of this is of course normal, or at least normal for me, as previous end-of-relationships have shown me.

Things are pretty weird right now. I've not been up to the 3rd floor (where Laurie, Kristin, Katie, and Tara live) since Wednesday evening, and not really talked to either Charity or Kristin. I've been doing a lot of things with Brian and Katie recently, as well as with a high school friend. They've all been a wonderful help, but I need more distractions. Also, in addition to being my girlfriend, Laurie was my best friend at college (some would say it's one in the same thing, but I wouldn't; since I've dated Laurie for the entirety of college, she naturally took the place of my best friend at college). So, I not only lost my girlfriend, I lost my best friend (at least temporarily . . . we'll see what happens on that front). Most people go to his or her best friend to help them through the tough times. I can't do that; my closest best friend now is 770 miles away. (Disclaimer: I have multiple 'best friends' and now I merely have one less).

I've been trying to get as much homework done as I can, but I find that I'm unable to actually do it. I figured I'd go into hard-core homework mode for awhile, but it just isn't happening. Luckily I don't have much due for tomorrow. I do, however, have an ERA test this coming Friday that I am by no means prepared for. I'm going to try and do everything in my power to see my ERA professor sometime this week so that I can get a few things worked out. I also have to pay a parking fine and drop my badminton class (which I've never attended because I planned on taking it with Laurie next semester instead. So much for that).

Something else that adds to the weirdness is that as long as "the group" has been together, Laurie and I have dated. We started to date September 29th of our freshman year. Now I'm faced with experiencing college without a girlfriend, which is something that is hard for me to imagine. Whenever I think about it, I'm overwhelmed with a sense of confusion, awe, and squeamishness. It's like that feeling when you try to comprehend infinity, or try to wrap your mind around the 'fact' that God has been around forever and was never 'born' or 'created.'

One thing that makes this breakup hard for me, I think, is that I really did not see it coming (Laurie broke up with me). I mean, our relationship hadn't really matured in the past two months, and there were a few low moments, but I really thought it started to pick up as soon as Spring Break rolled around. We drove down to Oklahoma to see Nick and Emily, and then drove back up to Wisconsin to Laurie's house for easter. There, I met her extended family and I think we both had a good time. Honestly, I thought things were going really well. I even 'let' Laurie's mom do my laundry (hear me out here, previously when I visited Laurie's house I just saved it until I got back home, and I didn't want to burden her with my dirty laundry, and c'mon, there's something weird about your girlfriend's mom washing your boxers). I even *gasp* prayed at the easter service, something I never do any more. Among other things, I prayed for Laurie and my happiness together. So much for that.

There are other things on my mind, but I'm not really ready to say them. It was hard for me to say what I have said so far.

Last night, as Brian, Billy, and myself were talking in the Larson entry lounge area, there was an altercation on the first floor. Someone was taken to the hospital (depression) that Brian knows. It was kind of surreal. We didn't really know what to do, and Brian wanted to try and help, but public safety arrived quite quickly and so we thought it proper to go somewhere else where we couldn't hear what was going on. Private stuff and all.

Ethics class group meeting time.

All Done - posted by magicite

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 at 10:15 pm

A 1 year, 6 month, and 1 day chapter of my life ended this evening. :-(

Update 1
Time seems to be moving so incredibly slowly, and of course I have a headache. I hope my ERA homework isn't that bad tonight . . .

Down in Oklahoma - posted by magicite

Monday, March 21, 2005 at 9:14 pm

Spring break is finally here! Last Friday, as I was finishing up my last class, St. Olaf was engulfed in a big blizzard-like storm that dumped a good 1.5' of snow all around us (hard to tell, actually, how much snow since it was blowing around). All I know is that at 6:30am on Saturday, Laurie and I were digging my car out of 1.5' of snow at my dad's place. Why were we up that early? We had a 12 hour drive to Oklahoma ahead of us. Anyway, it took us about an hour to uncover my car and get it out of my dad's driveway, and we left St. Olaf fully packed around 8:12am.

And then we were on our way. The roads weren't very fun in Minnesota, but at least they were plowed. Literally the moment we got into Iowa, half of the freeway wasn't even plowed (about 8" of snow on the lane) and the lane that was plowed still hadn't been plowed very well. This slowed us down quite a bit, and by noon we were only an hour or so south of Des Moines, where Laurie and I ate at Subway. After that, I let Laurie take the wheel for about 5 hours and we listened to the audio book of Snow Crash (). The voice on the iTunes Music Store (the one we bought) is easy to listen to, especially compared to some of the other audio books out there. Plus, the book is quite comical, making a 12 hour drive down to Oklahoma a lot more enjoyable. The audio book is about 17 hours long, so we'll probably not finish before we get back to MN, but that's OK.

We then stopped off at a Phillips 66 on the Kansas Turnpike (where we had to pay $5 . . . :: spoiled for not having any toll gates in MN ::) where we switched spots (I became driver again) and payed an outrageous amount for gas. Who's idea was it again to travel 12 hours in the car when gas is the highest priced it has ever been?

After seeing Kansas on fire (they were prairie burning . . . kind of neat) and coasting through the Northern part of Oklahoma, we arrived at Nick and Emily's apartment in Norman, Oklahoma, around 8:30. Not bad at all for battling the remnants of a snowstorm. Anyways, when we got to their house, we had supper, played some games, and went to bed. Laurie and I were exhausted. We didn't get up 'til 1:44 PM on Sunday. Whoops!

On Sunday, we hung out at the local playground (Nick and I played bocce ball) and eventually made our way to Coach's, a local food establishment. We sat outside just so that Nick could see a train or two, but unfortunately for him, no train came by. When we were done with food, we went to one of the giant city-state wal-marts (it was HUGE inside) and checked out the local populace, where we spotted a young boy wearing a shirt that said, "Your mom thinks I'm cool." Now, normally, I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but given his appearance AND that fact that we're down in the South, I (and actually, all of us) began to laugh. Oh how funny. When we got back, we played more card games and watched Run Lola Run.

This morning Nick and Emily went back to college while Laurie and I slept in a bit. When Nick returned around 11:30, he began checking out some storms online and we eventually decided to go storm chasing (this was the first severe storm of the season). Nick has the details. To sum things up, we saw a funnel cloud (tornado warning et al), giant hail (baseball size) which cracked the windshield of the guy ahead of us, and got about an hour and a half away from Norman when all was said and done.

The really scary thing happened on the way to the storm. We were on highway 9 south of Norman heading East and as I was driving up a hill, a crazy lady in a white car was driving in the wrong lane, heading straight for the car ahead of me and my car. She was probably drunk (at 2:03 PM on a Monday, no less). The car in front of my luckily swerved (had he not, it would have been a 100% head on collision with each car going about 70). I saw him swerve, wondered what the hell was going on, saw the white car in front of me, and swerved onto the shoulder and braked as quickly as I could. 'Twas very scary, but we could have all quite easily died today from that. Not to mention the funnel cloud. :)

You might wonder why each car above would have been going 70. Well, in Oklahoma, where the speed limit in the midwest would be 55, it's 65 down here. So since everyone goes 5 MPH over the speed limit, everyone is going 70 with no median in between lanes. While it gets you to wherever you want to go faster, accidents tend to more often lead to death. Before we ran into the crazy lady, there were crosses all over in the ditches. I wonder why.

A note on Oklahoma drivers in general. No one seems to drive slow, which is a relief. If the speed limit is 65, people go at least 68, which is nice for a change. No more slow drivers. However, drivers down here are much more likely to be reckless, in my experience. No one uses turn signals, and people swerve in and out in traffic all the time. A trip up to the twin cities and back down again from Northfield might turn up one bad driver swerving in between traffic, whereas down here you'd be lucky to drive anywhere without seeing it. We'll see if I notice the same thing when going back up North sometime this week.

After this afternoon's shenanigans, we had a barbecue that consisted of hot dogs (undercooked, says Emily) and hamburgers (which fell apart rather readily, thanks to the grill), but it was tasty nonetheless. Nick and I also had cold Boston's Baked Beans, much to the chagrin of the girls. Mmmm, Boston's Baked Beans.

Last week, when we celebrated Laurie's birthday at my house, I got a bunch of anime from my brother, which included ?????(Chobits). I'm almost done with it, but I don't have the last two or three episodes, so I've been downloading them at Nick's place. They're almost done, but it doesn't seem to want to finish. Hopefully it'll finish tonight, so I can finish this series. I like it, but there's nothing too compelling about it. It tries to bring to light the issues between humans (love) and robot-humans that are almost indistinguishable from normal humans (expect for their data port "ears"). This 'issue' is one that we haven't really had to deal with yet in society, but it's quite possible that it'll happen within our lifetime. We'll see.

After we leave Oklahoma on either Wednesday or Thursday, we're going to go to Laurie's house and spend Easter there. I will be meeting the rest of her extended family, which should be . . . interesting. I swear, almost all of her cousins are girls, and they're all young girls. All of my younger cousins that I ever really saw were younger boys, leaving me at an extreme disadvantage here. Young boys, I can deal with, but girls? Pfft, I'm about as useful as a lava lamp.

Oh yeah, another interesting thing about Oklahoma (and the South, in general). Unlike in the North, people are allowed to have extremely tinted windows (all of them: front, back, side). Very creepy. I have one of the few cars here where you can actually see inside from any direction. It's kind of fun being able to look out of the car and see people looking back at you, though. They think that I can't see them, but in reality, I can see them just fine. Oh well, if it makes them feel secure . . .

Alright, so I'm not done yet. Another interesting thing about people down here that I've seen (with the exception of where Nick and Emily live--they're all Asian) is that they all more or less look like white trash. Now, I realize I may have offended vast sections of the United States, but you cannot tell me that people down here look more or less the same as people from up north. 'Sides, I'm sure people from the south think that people from the north look like "yankee trash" anyways (and yes, I do know that Oklahoma wasn't a state when the civil was happened, but let's not kid ourselves, they would have fought for the South).

Midterms - posted by magicite

Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 4:28 pm

The week before spring break has historically meant finals, and this year it's no different. I've got a rather large midterm in my ethics class that I'm going to meet for in about 20 minutes, and I've got a Japanese test at the end of this week. I've also gotta handle some ERA work, and a Japanese story to give in front of my Japanese class. Actually, my midterms week shouldn't be all that bad since I had several tests about a week and a half ago.

Laurie's birthday was last Thursday, and we celebrated at my house on Saturday. We had steak, popovers, and some other good stuff. We also finally got Laurie's Christmas present to my parents after forgetting several times. I also got a bunch of anime from my brother, which I'm watching right now while I wait for my meeting. I'm currently watching Chobits, which seems alright so far.

Howie is visiting Nick and Emily right now for a week. Should be fun hearing all the stories when Laurie and I get down there.

I've been working on CCT pretty much all weekend, and I'm finally starting to see some of the fruits of my hard work. I've implemented an "Express Search Setup" which makes adding new searches a breeze. I've implemented this because one of the reviewers who reviewed our paper recommended it. Hopefully, they'll be happy with what I've done.

Memories - posted by magicite

Monday, March 7, 2005 at 9:20 pm

Wow, just wow. Tonight, after doing my ERA homework for Wednesday, I decided to take a break and check out my really, really old guestbook back from when I used to run an immensely popular hotline site (site permanently down). Wow, that was so long ago . . . the first post to my guestbook was September 21, 1997, nearly 8 years ago. At the height of the site's popularity, it had, in addition to lots of information, a mailing list with 4800 members (not a typo). Further proof that I was a lot cooler 5 years ago.

I read a good 50 page chunk of Pride and Prejudice last night. I hope to finish it as soon as possible so that I can move onto something new. I considered reading a bunch tonight, but as I mentioned up above, I decided to do my ERA homework for Wednesday instead.

I've officially been offered a summer job which I will take. It is the same thing that I did last summer--doing research at St. Olaf with Professor Rutherford. Should be fun. My research partner / summer roommate, Joel, will also be working again, along with two new people, though they will be doing more lab-oriented activities. Hopefully it'll be another enjoyable summer.

Last week (end part) sucked. Big tests, lots of stress. I won't elaborate.

I don't quite know what I'm going to do next year for rooming. It's looking like Brian will most likely room with a couple other people in a quad or something. Anyone who I would potentially like to room with already has someone for next year (I'm assuming. I'm not the type to ask someone if they want to room together if I know he gets along with his current roommate just fine). Anyways, I have no idea what I'm going to do, but what'll most likely end up happening is I'll either randomly get a new roommate (which would kind of suck -- could get someone really terrible) or I'll be part of a triple / quad / quint / pod with Brian et al. To be honest, though, it would probably do me a lot of good to pick one of the former options.

If you have been living under a rock for the past week and go to St. Olaf or if you don't go to St. Olaf at all, then you would probably not know that St. Olaf is now part of thefacebook. I've seen a few other Olaf bloggers bitch about "how popular it has become," but c'mon, get over it, thefacebook is pretty neat. Don't hate it 'cause it's popular.

In two weeks, for Spring Break, Laurie and I will be going to Oklahoma to visit Nick and Emily. They just got a cat, so it'll be nice to see and play around with it (in addition to doing things with Nick and Emily). After staying down in the cultural armpit of America for awhile, we'll be traveling up to Laurie's house to celebrate Easter with her family. I get to meet her entire extended family on her mom's side . . . I've already seen her dad's side, and they're pretty (MN meaning) cool, but her mom's side of the family is much larger. I have a feeling that it is not a good idea to bring my laptop with on Easter Day, though. Something tells me that Laurie would be none-to-happy.

[mysterious messages] I have a message for someone: Get over him. Honestly, get over him. Every time this flares up, it gets more and more ridiculous. Grow up, grow up, grow up. Please, for everyone's sake.

Moving right along. If you're currently being pressured into doing something with regards to rooming next year (and I'm not talking about myself) and you really, really don't want to do it, then don't. Stand your ground. Your opinion counts too. [/mysterious messages]

Finally Complete - posted by magicite

Sunday, February 27, 2005 at 9:43 pm

I finally feel complete. Someone got to my site by searching for "learning about goats." Terrific.

I talked with someone this evening who I hadn't talked with for a long time. I met him wayyy back when I went to Peace Lutheran School (I was there from K-2nd grade). It turns out that he's also a Mac guy, and the lead art director for Battle for Wesnoth. He also happens to know my friend Gareth Miller. It's a small world after all.

Anyways, this unexpected encounter has made me neglect my homework (reading + Japanese + CSA), so I'm off to finish all that (if I can) before I go to sleep.

What to Do - posted by magicite

Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:43 pm

Kind of bored at the moment. I have lots of homework to do, but it's nearly all group work, so I have to wait for my group members to want to work. Unfortunately, that means doing most of my work tomorrow, which isn't desirable since Nick, Laurie, and I are having lunch tomorrow, which will eat up some time.

Last weekend, I went to Iowa with Brian and some other quiz bowlers. It was pretty fun, though Iowa smelled (literally) and the police were going crazy on Saturday morning. 'twas very weird.

Yesterday, I went to Brian's house for the night. We watched "The Forgotten," an overall bad film. We watched both endings, and I liked the alternate ending better than the original. The movie was intriguing for the first half but ended up going downhill after that. It began to feel like a made-for-TV sci-fi film.

Time to go read for my Ethics class and maybe watch a movie. Everyone else is watching "Bridget Jones's Diary 2," so I have to entertain myself for awhile.

Addiction - posted by magicite

Thursday, February 17, 2005 at 9:36 pm

OK, I admit it. I'm addicted to PowerAde. There, I've said it. I bought 24 20 oz over Interim break, and my brother and I had them all finished about midweek. Last week, I bought 24 more and we're almost out. Considering that it is an expensive addiction, I'm not sure I'll buy it much any more.

I have to give a 15 minute presentation with two others tomorrow morning in my ethics class. That should be a breeze, given that 10 of the 15 minutes are for class discussion. I have a quiz in ERA, which will probably go badly. I'm finally ahead in CSA, so I can start digging into Eclipse, a Java IDE tomorrow. I don't have Japanese tomorrow, but I have to film a "video letter" with two others sometime this weekend.

On Friday night, I'm going to be a chauffeur to the St. Olaf quiz bowl team. I'll be driving them (namely, my roommate and some other people) down to Des Moines, Iowa where they will play on Saturday. We'll probably get back to St. Olaf around midnight on Saturday. I plan on bringing lots of homework and my PowerBook, but Brian is trying to twist my arm into playing. I'm afraid, however, that I would be a total disappointment. I stopped retaining random facts years ago.

In case any of you were wondering, I'm still "stuck" on Pride and Prejudice. Not having time and not wanting to make time for reading it has caused me to read about 10 pages a week, on average. As soon as I'm done with this . . . novel, I can move on to the first Harry Potter, then Tai-Pan, then the next two Harry Potter books, then Taiko, and then the last two Harry Potter books. When am I going to find time to do all of this? Good question. I have no idea whatsoever.

Ahhhhhhhh! - posted by magicite

Monday, February 14, 2005 at 9:13 pm

The end of last week and this past weekend were completely busy for me. I didn't have time to adequately study for anything, really, only enough time to get stuff done that absolutely had to be done. On Friday, after visiting with Olaf again, I worked on CCT until 12:30 in the morning. On Saturday during the day, I also worked on CCT. I took Laurie to the Depot, a nice restaurant in Faribault, MN. We decided to celebrate Valentine's day a few days early since we would both be relatively busy on Valentine's Day. Right now, Laurie and I are watching the original Shrek (watching Shrek and blog posting, yay).

Laurie got me this really cool mug for Valentine's Day. It's super insulated (vacuum and all). After putting hot cocoa in, it didn't even get warm on the outside. In fact, it was cold! Totally cool. I ended up getting Laurie a coffee maker and a big super family size of hot cocoa. It seems to work well, and since we both hate coffee, it will mostly be used to make hot water.

I feel seriously disadvanted in Japanese at the moment. Most of the people there went to Japan over interim and didn't forget how to speak / still remember lots of stuff. I, however, remember little and have to refresh my memory. Given that I had no free time this past week, I haven't been able to do this yet and so I don't quite feel comfortable in the class yet. This week is shaping up to be quite a busy one as well, so it'll have to wait until this weekend at the earliest.

Oh, getting back to CCT real quick, I released version 1.4 today. I highly doubt anyone here would be able to use it. Unless you're doing research related to genetics and tools like BLAST and so forth, you can safely ignore it.

One of my college friends, Katie, recently got all of us hooked on a new song (Dragostea Din Tei (Original Romanian Version)). It's very catchy. There's a cool flash movie with the song as well. Well worth the download, even on dialup.

Still in love with my PowerBook.

Right now I'm scheduled to work for, well, long stretches of time. Tue: 10-12 & Thurs: 10-12 12:30-3:30. I'm going to have to get that spread out a bit more. Working 5.5 hours "straight" is ok if you have a project to work on, but sometimes there's nothing to do, and that big long stretch of time can get kind of boring. I guess I always could bring in homework, but I kind of feel bad doing that.

We got a nice snowfall yesterday, and half of that melted today. St. Olaf looks flooded, which is really sad given that St. Olaf is on top of a hill. Perhaps I can go swimming between classes one of these days.

Toys - posted by magicite

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 at 8:05 pm

My PowerBook finally arrived early this morning. I've been using it tons today (and all for good purposes!), and I'm completely happy with it. It's quite zippy and does what I need. The illuminated keyboard is sweet. For those who are wondering, I got a 15" 1.67 GHz PowerBook w/ 128 MB VRAM. I'm making this post from it. Yay!

On another note, I'm beginning to learn Java for my Client-Server Applications class. We delved into Java GUI programming today for homework (as well as basic java syntax). Everything was programmed in code, probably more for the learning experience than anything else. I'll have to investigate using java with Apple's XCode. Apparently, the cocoa-java integration was done quite well.

Semester 2 - posted by magicite

Monday, February 7, 2005 at 1:26 pm

Semester 2 of my sophomore year started today, and since all of my classes are on MWF, I had the pleasure of having each and every one of them today. I'm pretty happy with what's being offered, so far. Ethical Issues in Software Design shouldn't be too bad -- just lots of presentations and whatnot. Elementary Real Analysis will take some real work, but I think it will be a very valuable class. We're doing a cool project in our Japanese class over the next few weeks where we'll make a "video letter," and the subject of my group's letter is the Pause on St. Olaf. These videos will be sent over to Japan, where Japanese students learning English will view them. They, in turn, will make their own videos in English and send it to us. Should be fun. Client-Server Applications looks to be one of those courses where you get to learn tons and write lots of code, which is a nice change from the last few CS courses I've taken.

My new PowerBook shipped last week and should get here either tomorrow or Wednesday. It's supposed to come on Wednesday, but it's at FedEx's Memphis, TN hub at the moment, and historically, whenever a package goes there, it gets delivered the next day. So, I might have my new toy tomorrow.

I think I only have to buy two or three books this semester as well. It's so nice not having to shell out lots of money for books.

Finally - posted by magicite

Monday, January 31, 2005 at 3:20 pm

PowerBooks were updated early this morning, after weeks of waiting. In addition to the laptop, I ordered an additional 1 gig chip of RAM and a laptop case for it. Everything should come sometime next week, if I'm lucky. Let's hope all of the "extras" come after the PowerBook, and not before.

Joel and I picked up some snacks at Cub Foods at like 2:30am this morning. The infamous Cub Foods Lady was there.

Work on CCT continues. Only a little more packaging up needs to be done. Anyways, time to go home for some food :D.

F5Data - posted by magicite

Thursday, January 27, 2005 at 10:01 pm

My friend Nick, who I'm sure most of you are familiar with by now, will soon be launching a weather website with his business partner. It's called F5Data, and if you subscribe earlier, you get a special deal. Check it out!

I finished both my giant paper for Age of Goethe this evening, as well as Zelda: Windwaker. The game was pretty and fun and all, but it was terribly easy and the ending (save what happens to Hyrule) was crap.

I'll be all alone (sniff sniff) here at Olaf for the first part of break, so if any of you people who read this are from Olaf and are sticking around, feel free to contact me . . .

Thousand Words - posted by magicite

Wednesday, January 26, 2005 at 8:38 am

I think this picture speaks for itself:

And don't blame this on the war(s).

Grrr . . . - posted by magicite

Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 8:37 pm

Still no PowerBooks. Will they come out tomorrow? Next week? Who knows. The only thing that is certain is that I'll continue to wait for them.

Amazingly, my sickness from last week lasted about 3 days. Usually, when I get a cold, I'm sick for about two weeks. Perhaps it wasn't a cold after all.

J-term / interim is coming to and end, and with that comes many papers. Tomorrow, I have a 'movie review' due, and on Friday, a big paper 'final' that I had intended on starting this evening. Laziness prevailed, however. Mmm, laziness.

I ordered books for the first time today with the new version of iPhoto from Apple. The process was fairly painless, and I'm looking forward to the final results. I made a book of Nick & Emily's wedding, and three smaller books: outdoor photos, family, and one filled with entertaining photos (bad shots, set up funny shots, et cetera). Should be here sometime next week.

I'd like to note that someone from my high school knows more about musicals than Brian does. And there's nothing he can do about it. Perhaps, if I ever meet this person again, I'll have him and Brian challenge each other. Should be good times. :)

I'm just about to beat Zelda: Windwaker. It's an incredibly easy game, and while thoroughly under-challenging, it's quite enjoyable. If it weren't for those pesky papers (and CCT), I'd probably be done right now. But alas, it'll probably have to wait for break.

While Arby's rocks, roast beef sandwiches with cheese are terrible. Blech. Don't tamper with the original.

We got our first decent snowfall earlier in the week (like last Friday), and quite a bit of it melted today. The squirrels, which have been feeding from one small section of exposed grass over the past month (heat pipes melt the ice on the ground), had to find a new source of food for awhile. Poor squirrels. They're not longer as fat as they used to be.

I think I'm going to stay at St. Olaf during break, at least for part of it. I need to work on CCT a bit more before it's submitted to a journal in mid February. There are a bunch of small bugs that need to be fixed, but they shouldn't be too bad to fix. If my laptop comes during break (cough, cough), that might serve as either a distraction towards CCT or as a catalyst for me to actually work on it. We'll see. I think the dorms are going to be open during break (hence why I said I think I might be staying here), but I need to find out if that's the case or not. I need access to my G5 when working on CCT, which means I have to leave it powered, but the last time I left my computer on during a break, the room inspectors unplugged it. That would be bad if they unplugged my machine while working on it.

I got my first issue of Time magazine today (if you don't remember, I got it as a Christmas present from Laurie). I've paged through it a bit, but I'll look at it in more detail when I have time (probably at work tomorrow :) ). I like it when Apple places ads in Time magazine (and other magazines, for that matter). Sometimes they have cool posters and whatnot inside (for the 0.0001% of the population that actually cares).

If any of you who blog read this, why do you do it? I think I do it for two main reasons. The first is for myself. I just like being able to get something down in writing. It's rather cool to go back to last summer and read some of the stuff I wrote. I'm sure it's not very interesting to the rest of you, but it contains some interesting little tidbits for me. Anyways, the second reason is that a few of my high school friends read what I post and so this serves as a way for me to write a public 'letter' to everyone.

OK, so I guess there's a third reason, but I haven't really acted upon it yet, and it's kind of indicated by the title of my blog: MagiRant(s). One of these days, I'm going to go on some incredibly long side tangent (read: bitching). Perhaps I'll start having a rant of the month or something crazy like that.

Is anyone else alarmed as to the amount of pointless drivel I put in my blog posts? Good. Stop reading.

Sickness - posted by magicite

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 at 9:46 pm

Well, I have succumbed to the cold that all of my friends have been carrying for the past week. First it started with a sore throat, and now it's a full-blown cold (the sore throat is gone).

A few birthday wishes to send out . . . last Thursday was Nick's birthday (I may or may not have forgotten). The 18th was also Lisa's and Jackie's birthday. On the 19th, it will be my brother Joel's 23rd birthday. Happy birthday all!

Class goes on. I finished the last big book for the class, Goethe's Elective Infinities. I enjoyed it, though it did get a bit frustrating at times. On Friday, I have to give a group presentation, and we haven't even started working on it yet (don't worry though, all of the other groups started to work on it the night before the presentation). As far as the 8 page paper that's due next week is concerned, well, I still don't have a clue as to what we're supposed to write it on. Perhaps I'll ask around.

I'm disappointed. New PowerBooks were supposed to come out today (educated guess), but they didn't. Maybe they'll come out tomorrow, or next week . . . hopefully soon. Most retail stores are out of stock on all models. I'll place an order the hour they're released.

Going to bed 'early' tonight. I only got 4 hours of sleep last night courtesy of my cold and the whimsical nature of my roommate (who now hates me, or so I'm told ;) ).

CCT, Zelda, MWSF . . . - posted by magicite

Wednesday, January 12, 2005 at 9:25 pm

I finally started working on CCT again this evening. Thankfully, I fixed the #1 problem with it, so now we can go ahead with publishing. Hooray! I'll add some more polish this week sometime. Eventually I want to give it an interface overhaul (looks rather bland at the moment), and possibly think of a cooler name. That comes later though.

I beat Zelda: Majora's Mask on Monday evening. After beating it, I must say that I don't remember the Ikana Canyon / Stone Tower part of it at all. Oh well. That part of the game was 'new to me.'

My slacker class continues on. Tomorrow, we're watching a movie called The Jack Bull. It's supposed to be an interpretation of a book we read, "Michael Kohlhaas" by Heinrich von Kleist. Should be interesting. Since I've started to bring hot cocoa to class every morning, I am able to stay awake and alert. Hooray for caffeine!

Well, MacWorld San Francisco is going on right now, but the main keynote was on Tuesday. There, good ol' Steve Jobs introduced iLife '05, the iPod Shuffle, the Mac Mini, and some other goodies. The Mac Mini is cool, and I'm sure will sell well. It's ridiculously small.

The iPod Shuffle is so cheap that it will have to sell, and iLife '05 looks phenomenal. I'll be getting that with my new PowerBook (which, unfortunately, was not updated at MWSF -- more waiting for me).

Too bad I already have an iPod (the original 5 gig).

Grades - posted by magicite

Monday, January 10, 2005 at 1:11 am

On Friday evening, I was able to see my grades for the semester, and I must say that I am quite happy. All the classes that I thought I was going to get a bad grade in ended up being not so bad at all, and I'm on the Dean's List again (not that it really matters). Let's hope next semester goes just as well if not better.

Yesterday, Kristin, Laurie, and myself went to my house and made grilled cheese, tomato soup, and freshly cut pineapple. They were all quite tasty (especially the pineapple). I also picked up $2 worth of ramen (which is like 16 packs) and a big super family size of hot cocoa. I took Brian's coffee maker (which has been used once in the past year and a half) and put it in my closet, plugged it in, and made myself some tasty hot chocolate. If I can get up a couple minutes earlier every day, I can probably have hot cocoa during class every day. That'd be sweet, and it'd keep me up.

My professor for my interim class is going to be gone this coming Thursday, Friday, and the following Monday. Should be good times (aka no class on Friday and Monday). Anyways, I hope we can start on our papers soon (he hasn't really given us any directions on what to do). That way, I can get done with all of my work well before the end of the class (and thus have to only show up for class, and then focus on more important things).

I met with Rob on Friday (I think it was Friday) and we went over how CCT's status in being published. We have to have our paper in by the middle of February, which I think we'll be able to do. I still need to work on it as well (fix a few bugs). I have plenty of time, I just have to get to work. Perhaps that can be my project for tomorrow.

Brian, as some of you may know, is addicted to musicals. Right now, he's hooked onto the song Popular from Wicked. Anyways, tonight we did a recording of Brian singing the song (with a limited appearance by myself). Quite entertaining. I'll have to let some of you listen to it. :)

I started to play Zelda: Majora's Mask again today. I stopped when I got to the water temple (it's a bitch, and I stopped having freetime), but I completed that today as well as made progress with the Ikana stuff. Perhaps I can work on that in between working on CCT tomorrow. Work, play, work, play.

I ran a defragmenter on my hard drive yesterday, and I think it messed a few things up. I think I'll reformat my machine soon. I haven't done so in over a year, and I've installed lots of kludge that I no longer use (unixy kludge that's harder to remove). Now I just need to find someone with a large enough hard drive (for backup). I'm afraid my 512 meg flash drive won't suffice.

Right before break, I made a really cool calendar. All you have to do is put in a few settings (language, et cetera), and then it generates a calendar for you that you can print out. Here's the kicker: the calendar is on a 12-sided figure of your choice that you have to construct.

I started Laurie on Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and so far she likes it. Zelda is such a universally-loved game. She's progressing fairly well, though I think it's better (and she'll probably agree) if she plays when I'm not around.

Site Update - posted by magicite

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 at 12:30 am

In between reading "The Sufferings of Young Werther" today, I fixed some "glitches" in the site. It has never loaded properly in Internet Explorer, and I knew about it, but I didn't care. Most of the people (until recently) who visit my site don't even use IE, so it didn't matter. Well, now it loads in IE anyways (there's a really nasty IE bug that deals with div tags, image backgrounds, and margin offsets). Now all the random people who visit my site will see a decently-rendered page.

Tomorrow I get to watch a movie in my class, and the professor is going to be gone for 3 days next week. This class keeps getting better and better. It takes care of 3 GEs and meets for a max of 1.5 hours a day. We have to do a presentation, a movie review (3 pages), and another paper (8 pages). That's it. Lots of reading, too, but that's fine.

I've decided to have a "goal of the day" throughout all of interim. Today's project was, of course, to fix this site. I think tomorrow I'll apply for the research job again for this coming summer. Since that won't take long, I'll probably do some programming or something. Maybe I'll fine-tune the thing my brother and I were working on over break.

Less than a week until MWSF '05!

Kaerimashita - posted by magicite

Monday, January 3, 2005 at 1:48 pm

Well, I have returned to the hill / bubble that is St. Olaf. I had my class early this morning, and it looks like it will be both interesting and easy (which is usually a hard combination). Unfortunately, two of my friends who were thinking about taking the class as well decided to do something else, so I don't really know anyone in the class (outside of my nextdoor neighbor). This should prove to be an interesting month. I'm sure I'll have lots of free time on my hands.

I went up North last week, and then went to Laurie's house to finish up break. I met "half" of her extended family for New Year's Eve, and we just relaxed on New Year's Day. I think this was the first Christmas Break where I didn't find myself "wasting" several days. Usually, break drags on for a bit too long (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). I didn't get much reading done, either, but I should be able to read a bit more this month. Laurie got me all 5 Harry Potter books for Christmas, so I'll have to add that to my reading list. I've been told that they read fast, so I'm sure I'll have them done in no time.

I can't wait to have access to poorly written, local news stories.

I think the local Arby's workers know me by name now.

Mac rumor roundup: It seems as if Apple will (finally) be releasing an el cheapo mac and their own "office suite." It's not looking good for me though -- all signs point to no major powerbook update. Let's just hope I get surprised. The iPod Mini's will be slightly upgraded. As for everything else, well, just your standard fare updates (iLife '05, et cetera).

Between going up North and going to Laurie's house, I met up with Nick, Emily, Ryan, Miles, Greg, and Alicia (Greg's girlfriend). That was fun, and before we got together, Nick and I took a quick trip up to Best Buy in order to use some of our giftcards from Christmas. I am now the proud owner of a new mini mouse, to be used with my new laptop. Since my roommate is mouseless (laptop), I'm letting him borrow it for the time being. Let's hope he doesn't get too attached.

Merry Christmas! - posted by magicite

Saturday, December 25, 2004 at 12:59 am

Well, the holidays are finally here. Santa has arrived, and another successful year of capitalism is over. Now, let me update you on a few things.

First, Arby's was, as anticipated, absolutely wonderful. I have gone several times since its opening, including visiting the Rochester Arby's on Monday night, when I brought Laurie there to rendezvous with her mom. I know that her mom didn't enjoy the trip that much since the roads were so treacherous (we had an ice storm the previous night), but we all made it back just fine.

The bio final wasn't that bad at all. I was amazingly able to retain most of the crap I learned throughout the semester. Now that this semester is done, I look forward to interim and next semester. Oh yeah, I got an A on my multivar final.

From Laurie's family, I got a Best Buy gift certificate, as well as a bunch of Arby's Gift Certificates (.w00t!). I will look forward to using both. They also gave my family a bunch of holiday treats to eat, which we have been thoroughly enjoying.

Tonight my family, as we always do, opened presents. I'm sure I will have forgotten a few (I'm too lazy to go search for them all amongst the debris in our living room), but here's a bunch of what I got: shirt, socks, 512 meg flash drive, ren and stimpy complete first & second season, Taiko (book), another DVD set that is basically Musashi and more, a Barnes & Nobles gift certificate, money, more gift certificates, super smash brother's melee (GameCube), lots of ornaments, and more. I've yet to receive my gifts from Laurie. I wonder what she got me? :)

Both of my brother's received a laptop for Christmas this year as well. David received a 12" PowerBook G4, and Joel received a 15.4" Toshiba laptop (which comes in at like 8 pounds). I think they'll both be happy with it. I'm going to be getting one too, but, I'm waiting for January to roll around for when Apple introduces the new models. I'll also be paying for a hefty portion of the laptop myself. Goodbye savings!

A few other loose ends here . . . my mom is going to have surgery on Tuesday to remove some sort of mystery lump from her back. Chances are that it's not cancerous (1/99 that it is), so we're not too worried about it. We'll go up North on Sunday, she'll drive back down to Mayo on Tuesday morning, come back Tuesday night, and return back home at the end of next week. I'll be coming home on the 30th of December from up North, visiting with Nick, Emily, and the rest of the gang, and then going to see Laurie on the 31st for New Years. Should be fun.

Today, my two brothers and I went to the VFW to watch the Vikings-Packers game. It was rather entertaining, but it sucked that the vikings not only lost, but lost in the exact same way as the previous game, and with the exact same score. So much for learning from your mistakes. It was exciting nonetheless. I got to see a bunch of my cousins and my aunt and uncle as well as my dad and his girlfriend. Or shall I say fianc?ɬ�e? After we left (5:30 PM), and before 9:00 PM, my dad (finally) proposed to his girlfriend of like 10 years. So, that'll be another event for next year.

My grandma came to our house this evening after much pestering. She had knee surgery not too long ago and wanted to get out of coming, but we finally convinced her. I think we convinced her to come up North with us as well. We'll see. We might have to work on her a bit more.

Last night, I was bored so I installed the Mac OS X Developer Tools on our home computer and started to toy around. I created a little Answering Machine app (it's really lame) so that I could refresh / remember all the cocoa stuff that I've learned in the past. After completing that, my brother and I decided to make a "Lights Out!" clone for Mac OS X. Amazingly, we got quite far in only 3 hours of coding. We'll have to polish it up and release it. It's rather fun.

Alright, my vision is getting blurry. Time to go to sleep.

Finished! - posted by magicite

Monday, December 20, 2004 at 11:42 am

Well, semester 1 of my sophomore year is finally over. I took my bio final this morning, which was surprisingly not that bad. I think I studied about the perfect amount, although I may have botched one question fairly badly.

0 more finals until Arby's.

After the afternoon final today, I'm going to be bringing Laurie to Rochester to rendezvous with her mom. If all works out well, I'll also be spending New Year's Day with her, but we'll see how that works out. I also have to figure out a way to squeeze in Nick and Emily and Howie and so forth, but I'm not sure I'm going to have any time to do so. We'll see how things work out.

Apparently, the big extended family Christmas will not be at my house this year. Instead, it'll be what it has been for the last several years: private Christmas with my close family (and Grandma?) on Christmas Eve, and a big family get together on Christmas Day at my uncle's house. The day after, we're going up North. Looks like I'll be traveling a total of ~20+ hours (5 up North and back, 4 to Laurie's and back, 1 to Rochester and back) this break, which is sad given that my house is about 15-20 minutes away from college.

I think it's nap time. I haven't had one in such a long time.

Last Leg - posted by magicite

Friday, December 17, 2004 at 2:33 pm

Alright, done with my multivariable calculus test. It was, as anticipated, a cinch, and took me only about 40 minutes. Now all I have to do is study like mad for my bio final, which is on Monday morning. Today, however, I refuse to study. I need a break. I'm at work scanning in slides right now. It's the perfect mindless thing to be doing after studying for so long.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I beat super mario sunshine last week. Overall, I give the game a "meh." Not something I really ever got into, but it was nice to just sort of sit down and beat a few levels every now and then. Now I have to get back to beating the final (water) level of zelda: majora's mask. Maybe I'll work on that tonight. It depends on what everyone ends up doing.

I have a problem. I'm for sure going to be getting a laptop "for Christmas" (meaning after Christmas, but for Christmas), and I really want it to have a G5 processor in it, but I'm not so sure it'll be out in January. If it's not, should I wait for it? I'm thinking that I'll order a PowerBook as soon as they *update* them. I fear, however, that they will not update them, but rather drop the prices on the current models. I don't think I would buy then, though. They probably won't do that, though, since there are a bunch of deals / rebates out on the current models that expire on January 10th, the day before the MacWorld San Francisco keynote (where the new models will be introduced, hopefully).

Anyways, moving on . . . I got my 1 year anniversary gift from Laurie yesterday. It's the final Lord of the Rings DVD collection set. The reason why I just got it is because it just came out last Tuesday. We've already watched a portion of it, and plan on watching more later today. Thank you Laurie!

Nick and Emily are coming up again on the 24th. The 24th!!! Jeez, that's so late. Yeah, yeah, they have real full-time jobs, but that's no excuse. They're going to miss the grand opening of the Arby's. Mmm, Arby's. One more final until Arby's.

Half Done - posted by magicite

Thursday, December 16, 2004 at 10:50 pm

Two down, two to go. Tomorrow, I have my multivar test. I'm taking a little study break from it at the moment. I was really worried about it earlier in the day, since after looking at my first test and quiz, I realized I didn't remember anything. On top of this, I woke up with a splitting headache that has lingered all day. I took some motrin, which made the headache go away, but any time I take headache medicine, I find that I can't learn very well. As a result, pretty much any studying I got done before supper was useless, though I did get my takehome part of my test done during that time. I think I'll be fine tomorrow, and it'll probably only take about an hour.

I gave Laurie her Christmas presents about 20 minutes ago. I got her the Shrek II DVD, a diamond necklace, and last month I gave her a teddy bear. Tomorrow, my friends and I will be exchanging secret santa gifts. I've pretty much figured out who has who, so it'll be interesting to see how right (or wrong) I am.

The other day, I managed to figure out how to put about 6 hours of video onto a DVD (playable in most if not all commercially available DVD players). A normal DVD will hold about 2 hours of video. I put the first 14 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist onto it. If anyone would like a copy (either of the DVD, or the original DivX episode files (all episodes)), just email me or leave a comment here.

Trivia for the day: someone found my blog by searching for 'hardcore nude macintosh' on the MSN search engine.

Back to studying for Multivariable Calculus. Mmmm, Green's Theorem.

And so it begins - posted by magicite

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 at 10:23 pm

I'll be in my first final in a little over 10 hours. Here's my schedule:

Wed. 15:
Algorithms & Data Structures
Japanese

Fri. 17:
Multivariable Calculus

Mon. 20:
Biology

Of course, two finals just *had* to be placed the day right after classes end. I've been studying all evening as a result, but hopefully I'll be able to take a break tomorrow night.

I feel fairly screwed for the ADS final, though I'm confident with the Japanese final. I've done well on all of the other tests, so why should this one be any different? Also, there's no listening part to this test, which makes me ?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��?��łĆ?��?�?��ł��?��ł��?��Ǩ��Anyways, if I review a bit for my calc test, I should be just fine. The bio test will only be tamed after a massive weekend of studying. Start early, study often.

Time to get back to memorizing kanji and the performance characteristics of various algorithms and data structures.

Whew - posted by magicite

Wednesday, December 8, 2004 at 4:38 pm

The semester is quickly winding down, and many class-related projects are actively being worked on. My CS group got together last night, and we basically finished our end of the year project, so that will be a low-stress part of my week. Work on the Japanese final continues. We have been writing a little 200 character journal every day for the class, which I think is working out quite well. We got a test we took a few weeks ago back, as well as the Kanji test from hell that I took right before break. I did great on each, but I still feel as if I need to study a lot more for the class in order to get a good grip on the language. I think if I ever start reading literature in Japanese, I'll be good. I'm a passive learner (ie, I learn things best when not being taught, but when practicing them). Other tests I got back . . . did excellent on my multivar test, and did so-so on my bio lab report and test. I'll just be glad when I get that class over with.

I'm currently at work and scanning in pictures of various amphibians. There's a great picture of a bunch of toads with radio transmitters on their backs. Absolutely hilarious. I'll post one up here when I get it scanned in.

Last weekend was, of course, Christmasfest, which went by without a streaker. Oh well. The parents of Laurie, Katie, Kristin, myself, and each of the listed people went to Applebee's after Saturday's concert. I'm sure the workers there absolutely hate us. "Table of 13 please!" We stayed quite a while, and our waitress was really bad.

Drama is unfolding between the 2nd and 3rd floors of Larson right now. More on this later . . . I feel as if I've signed some form of non-disclosure form and can't really talk about it publicly right now (even though it's relatively common knowledge at this point among those who know what I'm talking about . . . err, yeah).

Anyways, I'm happy to report relatively little drama in my own personal life. Same old, same old. I purchased a bunch of stuff (ie, all of the stuff I'm getting people for Christmas) off of amazon the other day. Right when I hit submit, amazon's site crashed, my shopping cart emptied, and I didn't know if my order went through or not. Thankfully, after about 20 minutes of waiting, I got a confirmation e-mail. Wooo.

IBM recently officially got out of the consumer PC business. They sold their PC business to China-based Lenova group (I've personally never heard of them, but then again, I've never been to China and I don't speak Chinese). It'll be interesting to see what affect on the PC market this will have. Will IBM's famed ThinkPad line go down the crapper, or remain an industry-leading product?

Laurie is silly.

Tests++ - posted by magicite

Thursday, December 2, 2004 at 4:27 pm

Just a quick update here. My math test on Tuesday went fine, but now I have a bio test to worry about for tomorrow. It's looking as if I'm going to have quite a bit of homework from now until finals (Japanese project, CS project, normal homework load . . . ).

Anyway, not much new here. Laurie's parents are coming for Christmas Fest this weekend (as well as most other people's parents). Janet is now apparently working half-days here (although they're in the morning, so I've yet to see her), and I've been doing some research into some video compression tools (such as Sorenson's Squeeze) since I recently found Apple's Compressor to be a bit lacking for the MDC's needs (need 2 pass VBR encoding). I'll have to wait for Apple's H.264 video codec implementation with 10.4 / next version of QuickTime.

Game Over - posted by magicite

Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 10:09 pm

All throughout Thanksgiving break, I basically played Mario Kart and Super Mario Sunshine. I can officially say that I am all gamed out for awhile. Having gotten the gaming bug out of my system, I can return to my studies for another 4 weeks before Christmas break. Hooray!

I saw Nick and Emily for the first time since August on Saturday. Nick and I had lunch at McDonald's, after which we went to Howie's house for some Mario Kart and pool. For supper, we went to the cities to eat at Outback, which was tasty as usual.

For Thanksgiving, my family and I visited relatives in the cities, where we, of course, had turkey and (unfortunately) watched lots of football. Nothing too exciting, other than that my grandma made an appearance (she's been in the nursing home since she had knee surgery).

On Friday, I went with my stepdad up to the Science Museum of Minnesota to the Chinasaurs exhibit. It was quite nice, and I could tell that my stepdad thoroughly enjoyed it. Afterwards, we went to the Mall of America (yes, on Black Friday), and getting a parking spot wasn't nearly as bad as anticipated. Perhaps the rain or our 1 PM arrival time drove off all of the normal hardcore shoppers. We picked up an AirPort Express at the Apple Store, which'll allow us to play music anywhere in our house. I thought it was supposed to be a Christmas gift for our family, but upon returning home from Howie's house on Saturday, Joel had already set it up. It works wonderfully.

Everyone who's in choir at St. Olaf is going to have one hell of a time this week. They have practice every evening from 7-10 and then have 4-5 straight performances starting this Thursday until Sunday. I wonder if this means that homework overall will be lessened this week. If memory serves, there'll be no drop in the amount of homework I receive, which is unfortunate. My big obstacles for the week include my multivar test on Tuesday (half of which is a takehome, which I completed this evening), and a bio test on Friday (which is easy material, but I need to memorize it -- shouldn't be as bad as last time).

Oh, this was interesting. When leaving for home last Tuesday, I got a ride to my car (courtesy of Chris), only to find that it wouldn't start. Needing a ride, I called my brother to come pick me up. While waiting for him, I repeatedly tried to start my car, but to no avail. The moment he pulled up in my dad's driveway (approx. 30 mins later), it started. That's just my luck. Oh yeah, and it turns out that my dad was in the house the whole time (I knocked, but he didn't hear me).

I did some preliminary Christmas shopping this evening online and already have something for Laurie, which makes me happy given that before tonight, I had no clue what to get her. I still need to pick up something for my brothers and parents. Any suggestions?

It's looking more and more like I'll be getting a laptop for Christmas, which makes me happy. The only downside is that I won't be getting one until at least the middle of January (when Apple updates them), and even then, they won't ship right away and may not even be announced until the end of January. And for those of you thinking that I am ?ɬ�ber-lucky for getting a laptop for Christmas (which I am), I am paying for a large portion of it.

Another thing our family is getting this Christmas (hopefully) is a digital camcorder. After looking at some reviews, the Canon Optura 40 came out on top. It's a very sweet digital camcorder, but I'll do some more research on it and others before reporting back to my parents. Does anyone have any experience / recommendations on digital camcorders?

Time Eater - posted by magicite

Sunday, November 21, 2004 at 2:43 am

I've spent even more time gaming recently. The casualty? My homework. I have a bunch of stuff to do on Sunday (bio lab report, Japanese, computer science project). I suppose I ought to do laundry as well. More on my gaming exploits later.

Laurie has been gone this entire weekend, and should be getting back tomorrow around 1 PM. Hopefully I'll be up by then. I slept in until 1 this afternoon because . . .

Last night, some random person invited me to an AIM chat, and I accepted. I tried to find out who they were and how they got my AIM SN, but they wouldn't tell me. It tried various things in order to determine how they knew me, but after 4am or so, my brother, a friend and I gave up (we were having so much fun playing with them. Message me if you want the transcript).

Brian has been gone this weekend as well. Apparently, he had to do some project for a class up at the Mall of America. Since he couldn't get a ride back, he's staying up in the cities with his parents until sometime tomorrow. I wonder how much homework he'll have gotten done.

I watched Beyond Borders with Kristin, Charity, and Katie this evening. Overall, I liked it, bleeding-heart liberal overtones aside. It's Katie's favorite movie right now.

I caved in and bought some GameCube games this afternoon as well. I bought Super Mario Sunshine (from what I've heard, you either love it or hate it. So far, I think it's ok, though the controls kind of suck) and . . . Mario Kart: Double Dash! I just had to cave in. I love the Kart series. Let's hope it doesn't keep me away from my lab report tomorrow . . .

I'm looking forward to Nick and Emily coming up this week for Thanksgiving. I haven't seen either of them since mid August, and it'll be nice to catch up with both of them (even if I do talk to Nick every day online). Recently, Nick made some modifications to his blog to allow for comments posting (finally), and he thinks that he has since "leapfrogged" me in the Code War. I beg to differ. Where is his random quotes feature? The only thing he has over me is a search feature, but I don't see that as being necessary yet. Plus, where's his photo gallery? Lacking, I'll say. At any rate, I'm sure I'll have some free time over break to work on this site. I have a few new tricks up my sleeve. ^_^

When fetching my new games today, I noticed that the Arby's is nowhere near done. So much for the Thanksgiving opening. We'll be lucky if it's open by the time first semester is out.

I think I've perfected the art of making Creamy Chicken Ramen. If you add exactly two cups of water to a hotpot, bring it to a boil, add in the noodle, cook until all the noodles are bendy, and then add in the flavoring, and cook some more until the sauce is creamy in the pot, you've got yourself some perfect ramen.

Saturday, the 20th, was my mom's birthday. Although my mom doesn't read this, happy birthday mom!

Good Deal - posted by magicite

Thursday, November 18, 2004 at 10:57 am

I am now the proud owner of a GameCube + 8 games + 3 controllers (one being wireless) + memory card. I only had to pay $100 as well -- what a great deal! I'm sure that'll suck up lots of my time. What games, you ask? (Zelda: WindWaker, Zelda: Ocarina of Time Bonus Disc (rare), Metroid Prime, Fifa Soccer 2002 (bleh), StarFox Adventures, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, 007, Spiderman).

After my bio test last Friday, I needed some mindless fun, so I've started to Play The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask again. It has sucked up quite a bit of my freetime over the past week. I'm already to the 'water' level (end). With Thanksgiving coming up soon, I very well may end up playing lots of games rather than doing anything productive. So, it'll be a game + Arby's Thanksgiving. What more could anyone ask for?

The Northfield Raiders appear to be doing quite well this year. The championship game is coming up, and hopefully Northfield wins big again this year.

This week has been surprisingly easy and laid back. I really hate how I always have extremely terrible weeks followed by extremely easy weeks. I'd rather have it all averaged out. Feh.

Oh, I registered for classes yesterday. Over interim, I'll be taking Age of Goethe, which only meets for one hour a day (hooray!). For the normal year, I'll be taking Japanese 4, Elementary Real Analysis, Ethical Issues in Software Design, and Client-Server Applications. Should be a fun semester (ERA notwithstanding). Oh yeah, I'm also taking badminton on Tuesday-Thursday. On Tuesday, I have Japanese and Badminton, but on Thursdays, I'll only have Badminton. Thursdays are going to rock :) MWF are going to really, really suck though. I really hope there isn't a time where I have 4 tests all on one day (who am I kidding, that's bound to happen).

Laurie's dad was here this past weekend for the Father-Daughter dinner. We ended up eating at the cage with him on Friday, going to Laurie's Collegium Musicum thingymabopper after that, and rounding off the night with some Jazz at the Pause. Good times.

I also received my birthday presents over the weekend (and on my b'day). From Laurie, I received two DVDs (Spiderman and to-come Spiderman 2) and a cool monkey light (I'll have to take some pictures sometime). From Katie, I got a nice flower which is now sitting beside my computer. From Laurie's parents, I got two nice shirts, one of which I have worn so far. I'm saving the other shirt for a nice cold day (probably this weekend). From my parents, I received money which went to the GameCube fund and savings. I also received money from my grandma in a card earlier last week. Oh yeah, and let's not forget Nick's generous gift of magicite.org. :)

For my birthday dinner, we went to the Hubbel house in Mantorville, MN. Shortly before that, we went to go see my grandma in the nursing home (she's recovering from knee surgery). Apparently, she's getting out of the nursing home on December 23, which is way longer than I expected. Laurie and I will definitely have to go visit her a few more times before she gets out so she doesn't get too lonely. I gave her her Christmas stuffed dog which she promptly named Cody. I'll put some pictures up in the photo gallery sometime today.

I ended up not reading like I said I would two weeks ago or so. I ended up finding a bunch more quotes to add to the random quote thing at the bottom of every page instead. They're from fairly broad topics, so they should be able to keep you entertained.

I think there's something wrong with the water filter in my room. If water has been in it for longer than a day, it tastes absolutely raunchy. I can only describe it as being slimy. As a result, I've been either stealing water from Charity and Laurie or taking water straight from the college tap, which is warm and tastes absolutely terrible. I can taste whatever chemical they put into it. I'm so glad I wasn't alive when water wasn't clean. Granted, I would have grown up with it and not cared, but I'm spoiled now that I (and all of us, for that matter) have access to clean water.

If anyone who reads this has Mario Kart for the GameCube, I really really really really really would like to borrow it. You can borrow one of my games for awhile if you want. I absolutely love Mario Kart, and it's also a multiplayer game, so up to 4 people can play it as well.

It's my Birthday . . . - posted by magicite

Thursday, November 11, 2004 at 1:08 am

. . . and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to. And maybe I just will, considering how hectic this past week has been, and what's in store for me over the next 48 hours. More tests, more work, more decisions. All will be better soon.

How does a Math, Computer Science, and Asian Studies major (triple major) sound? I can pull it off. Now I have to worry about getting my generals . . .

A card reader, 50 DVD-Rs, and a USB 2.0 hub arrived in the mail today from amazon. I ordered them on Saturday night with free shipping, and they're already here. I love amazon. I'm going to start [soon?] again on my spring project of converting old family video tapes to DVDs. With Final Cut Pro to play with now, the end-result should be much better now than in the spring. Hopefully the G5-incompatibilities-with-iDVD-and-iMovie thing has been fixed since this spring . . . I can only hope.

I did quite well on my CS test that I took a week ago, which I attribute entirely to studying the night before. Note to self: no more study-berserking, even if it kind of was out of your control this time 'round.

So like I said earlier, it's my birthday today. I'm no longer a teenager, which makes me a) old b) no longer a 'teen statistic.' Twenty sounds so much older than *teen does. I'll be expecting presents from each and every one of you. :)

Delicious Monster, a nifty DVD-movie-book organizing application, was recently released for Mac OS X. If you have a webcam (iSight or otherwise), you can scan in the UPC code with that and the software does a lookup on it. Very nifty. Go check it out if have Mac OS X.

Konfabulator for Windows was recently released. Originally created for the Macintosh two years ago, the developers decided to migrate to Windows after Apple unveiled Mac OS X 10.4 this spring. 10.4 contains a feature called 'dashboard' that closely mimics what konfabulator does. Anyways, Konfabulator is really nifty. Right now, I have konfabulator open with the widgets 'The Weather' and 'Slickies,' a computer sticky note. Even Laurie is using it. :)

Ashcroft is gone. Good riddens. Will his replacement offer his subordinates to pray with him every morning before meetings? Will he cover up pieces of art because they're nude? I sure hope not.

I finally figured out why Google wasn't indexing my new site [magicite.org]. Microsoft is going to release their new search engine sometime today [Thursday], and they planned on being able to claim to be the biggest search engine "with over 5 billion web pages crawled." Google, obviously having caught wind of this, has been holding out on everyone for awhile now and today announced that they have doubled their total index size in order to prematurely leapfrog MSN. So, they went from 4 billion web pages crawled to 8 billion web pages crawled. There goes Microsoft's big marketing campaign claiming to have the biggest / best search engine. Oh how I love you google. I wonder what the marketing droids over at MSN are doing now. NO SLEEP FOR YOU!

Cody: 1991-Nov. 7, 2004 - posted by magicite

Monday, November 8, 2004 at 12:53 am

As mentioned in the previous post, my dog Cody died on Sunday around 2PM. Cody has been around for the majority of my life, so as you can imagine, her death has had a big impact on me. It will be awhile before I come to terms with the fact that she's no longer here. Every time I want her back, I'll be reminded of the last time I saw her alive--last weekend after eating chicken and dumplings at home. The last time I saw Cody--dead--was in the back of my mom's car, where I tearfully pet her goodbye. She has since been buried, and I'll never see her again.

The real sad thing is what's going to happen to our other dog, Shone (said like "show knee"). If you know anything about Cody and Shone, it's that they did everything together. Or rather, Shone always mimics Cody. If Cody goes to the bathroom, Shone does. If Cody eats food, Shone eats food. This morning, something really sad happened. After Cody had been taken to the U of M, and my parents put food in both dogs' food dishes, Shone sniffed her food, then went over to Cody's dish and sniffed her food [identical food], and then didn't eat anything for awhile. Were Cody to be there, she would have gobbled up her food. Cody's dish will be filled no more. Whatever will Shone do?

Every time our dogs would be taken outside, Shone would bark out loud, and then Cody would join in, and soon the whole house would be wondering what excitement lay outside. Without a companion barker, whatever will Shone do?

Cody was Shone's teacher. If you look at Shone's doggy habits, they closely mimic Cody's. It's rather comical, actually. Will Shone go off in her own direction now, or will she be lost without a teacher?

Losing a close pet--a friend, even--is such a devastating experience for me. I become amazingly attached to animals, perhaps because they are always so reliable and loyal. When our cat, Simba (named well before the Lion King, mind you), died in May of 2001, I was not my normal self for at least a week, and probably didn't fully recover until that fall (only to then be hit with the 9/11 attacks). Having a pet is great, except for those tearful few moments when you have to say goodbye.

An amazing thing happened this evening that happened on the same day that Simba died. A powerful act of nature. When Simba died on May 9th, 2001, two tornados struck Northfield. One touched down very briefly in the heart of Northfield right where the Jesse James Days carnival usually takes place (I was at a gas station a few blocks away at the time), and the other (well, the same, just at a different time) right just outside Northfield that managed to level quite a few buildings, including a turkey shed. It was weird that day because the weather was great up until the time Simba was put to sleep. After that, it started to get really stormy out.

Today, the second act of nature occurred. At around 5:30 this evening, everyone in my area of MN enjoyed some lovely Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). It was Cody's way of saying goodbye. Simba said goodbye in tornado form, and Cody in Northern Lights form. I find it hard to swallow this as being a mere coincidence. Tornados are rare, and maybe more even more so are Northern Lights at 5:30PM. Absolutely amazing (Daniel has some shots). It's times like these that make me believe in some sort of higher power. How pleasant.

As soon as I get some good pictures of Cody, I'll post them. All I have now is a few dead pictures of her, which I'd rather not show.

RIP Cody -- 1991-Sunday, November 7, 2004

She's Gone - posted by magicite

Sunday, November 7, 2004 at 3:43 pm

I just received word that my dog of nearly 13 years has died. Here's a picture. I'll post more later with more pictures. Now, I have to get ready to go to the U of M to pick up her body.

Incredible - posted by magicite

Sunday, November 7, 2004 at 1:30 am

Just got done seeing The Incredibles with Laurie, my mom, my brother and a friend of his, and myself. It was, as the title suggests, incredible. Highly recommended -- if you're looking for an excuse to go see a movie, this is it.

This evening was the annual mother and son banquet. My mom got a fan [chinsiest (sp?) gift yet] as a 'gift' this year. The food was good, though, and I ended up eating with Chris Schommer, someone who I worked with last year at the MDC. I told him that I was interested in taking the Digital Media Foundations class for my Art credit, but he told me that I'd be completely bored since all they do is teach you the basics of like HTML and Photoshop. Considering that I hand-coded this page in PHP and HTML (and use Photoshop for my own fun and profit), he's probably right. I'll have to find an alternative class or maybe email the art people to find out what I should take. A few caveats: it has to count towards getting a GE, I don't want / need to take a full credit class, it should be a technology-oriented class, and no drawing classes since I can't draw [yes, I could learn, but I've already twisted Janet's arm into teaching me].

I also ended up giving my mom her stuffed animal [I gave Laurie hers the other day]. My mom got the moose and Laurie got the bear. My grandma is going to end up getting the Christmas Dog. Hopefully, she'll like it.

This coming week should prove to be interesting. I have a Multivar quiz on Tuesday, and a bio and Japanese test on Friday. I should also be getting my CS test back on Tuesday. I'm still crossing my fingers.

Laurie and I got to talking about her grandma this evening. The reason why it came up is because Laurie went to "Swing A Club," which was a locally-created dance on cancer [the person who created it had a younger brother who died of cancer]. Laurie was moved by this because her grandma, who died last Thanksgiving, had Leukemia. Anyways, it reminded me of something my mom told me this afternoon. My dog, Cody, hasn't been doing well recently. She essentially snores while awake as a result of having some kind of obstruction in or pressure on her trachea. Henry took her to the vet, but they were fairly helpless. They told us to bring Cody to the U of M, and I'm sure we will, but Cody has been "falling apart" this past year, so I'm not so certain she has long to last. For those of you who don't know Cody, she's an almost 13 year old beagle. She's part of the family.

I still haven't decided on my majors yet. I'm a CS and Math major, with interest in asian studies, statistics, and biology. If I know anything, it's that it'll be a combination of any of those. I'd like to maybe concentrate (minor) in asian studies, but none of my Japanese language classes would count towards the concentration. I'm interested in biology because of the whole bioinformatics thing, and statistics for no good reason that I can think of. Basically, I consider statistics to be a "useful form of math," although it's none-too-exciting. But that's ok -- it's at least useful. I need to know what I'm going to be majoring in soon because registration is coming up very, very soon. What do you people think? What should I major in?

Laurie is going to be booked tomorrow with singing, which means I'll be booked listening to her sing. I should have plenty of time -- I only have to get some CS and Japanese homework done, since today was spent doing my multivariable homework. Hopefully she'll sound as good as she did a few weeks ago.

I haven't read anything for the past month now, but I think I'm going to read some tonight. In case you forgot, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice (movie) [Laurie's orders]. I've seen the movie, and so far, the book has read just like the movie [or I suppose, the movie plays just like the book]. That's kind of disappointing since I already know what's going to happen. I miss the days of Musashi and Shogun. Good times.

This evening, I ordered a 50 pack of DVD-Rs, a new USB 2.0 card reader, and a powered USB 2.0 hub. I needed all three rather desperately, but have been lazy in attaining said items. Amazon claims that they'll *ship* on my birthday, but if history is any teacher, I'll probably have my new toys by Friday.

For those of you interested in seeing what county voted for who for president in the past election, here's a nifty breakdown. Utah, Nebraska, and Oklahoma scare me more now then they did before. So does Massachusetts, for that matter.

4 More Years? - posted by magicite

Wednesday, November 3, 2004 at 1:35 am

As I write this post, it appears as if George Bush will be president for 4 more years. As disappointed as I am with the outcome, life goes on.

If you didn't vote, shame on you. If you did vote, treat yourself to a cookie.

Right now, the Kerry campaign is not conceding Ohio, which is a wise decision. While the outcome will most likely not be in his favor, there's no point in conceding early. We'll find out after all of the absentee and provisional ballots have been counted. Maybe next week.

My CS test was, as expected, really hard, but an hour and a half with the CS professor on Monday night definitely helped me. I look forward (sort of) to getting the results of that test. Lots of people weren't happy with it.

Now I'm going to go to bed, unhappy yet satisfied with our election process. Well done America.

Today was also the first time that I voted [didn't take the time to do so last November], which was a cool, simple process. I'll have to try it again some other time.

Mysterious Gifts - posted by magicite

Monday, November 1, 2004 at 12:36 am

Today, after going home and seeing my family and having tasty, tasty chicken and dumplings, I returned to my dorm-room with a 100' phone cord, my old printer, and lots of cords that my brother had planned on throwing away. When I was setting up the printer, I noticed that I couldn't string any of its cords down the back of my desk. After monkeying around for awhile, I found out that there was a bunch of stuff wedged in between the desk's backboard and the wall. For the next hour, I used two flyswatters to pull out an inspirational quote book for women, by women [which I promptly gave to Brian, who offloaded it to Paul], a toenail clipper, a blank cassette tape, and a cassette tape recording of U2's "Joshua Tree" album. I wonder how much other crap is behind other people's desks in Larson. Buahaha . . .

After setting up my printer, I discovered that it was out of black ink [which is crap -- I swear I just refilled it, AND I haven't been using the printer]. I ordered a cheap ink cartridge online [$6.90! yay!] and should be getting that soon.

Chris and I worked on the CS review sheet this evening, and ended up having a few questions that we'll be forwarding to Olaf. 32 hours until the test . . .

Oh yeah, that 100' phone cord that I got from home. Our room now has three phones [yes, too many]. However, it works out well -- the corded phone is now right by Brian's bed on the wall, so now, whenever someone calls, he 'gets' to answer it. Since it has a speakerphone, he can remain laying down in bed while talking. Buahaha. Katie -- feel free to call him whenever now. There's a phone by the door, his computer, and where he sleeps. I will no longer be the middleman.

I found a rather entertaining program for Mac OS X called "Country Song Generator." Totally pointless, but hilarious nonetheless. Perfectly captures the . . . style of country music. Here's a sample:

I met her in a nightmare wrestlin' gators
I can still recall the hearing aid she wore
She was drinkin' Dr. Pepper with Led Zeppelin,
and I knew what strong deodorants were for;
Her rabbi said I'd punch her out forever;
She said to me our love would never die;
But who'd have thought she'd grovel while in labor;
You'd think at least that she'd have said goodbye.

Someone took the time to create an online version.

Oh! I almost forgot. Today, everyone went to Subway with Katie's parents right before they left, which was quite enjoyable. I know they'll never read this, but thanks for the pizza and subway today, Katie's parents!

Phone x2 - posted by magicite

Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 12:50 am

The weirdest thing happened to me this afternoon. After receiving a corded phone that was at home from my mom, I unplugged the broken purple phone and started to connect the new phone. After the power had been cut to the old phone, it beeped. Odd, I thought, because cordless phones should only beep if they are functioning correctly. After having Laurie hit the phone's on button, it magically started working. I have no idea why it was 'broke' before or how it got fixed, but now I have an additional phone for my room. Now all I need is another phone cord so that I can hook that one up . . . Does *anyone* have a 25' phone cord laying around that they don't need?

Saw 'Saw' this evening. Terrible, terrible acting, and I'm the kind of person who cannot normally tell if someone is a bad actor. Watch the movie -- you'll know exactly who I'm talking about. Anyways, Laurie went to go see the movie as well [she hates suspense / horror movies], so I commend her for going, but she didn't really like the movie and I think was not happy with her choice to go to this movie over some other one with Charity and Katie's parents. Oh well. She's watching Pride and Prejudice now, so she should be recuperating just fine. At least she watched a scary movie for Halloween.

The killer CS test is coming up on Tuesday. I really need to study hardcore for this one, as we really only have two tests [this and the final]. I'm definitely not looking forward to the test.

Tonight is daylight savings time -- don't forget to change your clock(s).

I have a new project (as if I didn't have enough other projects / unfinished projects). It will be called College FOOD or Campus FOOD. Before I tell you what it is, let me give you a little background information. People always come into Brian and my room and borrow Brian's DVDs. People are borrowing DVDs all over campus, but only amongst friends. So, what I want to do is start some sort of DVD borrowing / swapping service. Basically, you put your DVD list up on the web [only the ones you want to lend out], and then you can borrow other peoples' DVDs. A couple caveats -- when you borrow someone's DVD, you have to give them one of yours as well [not necessarily for them to watch -- moreso as collateral]. You could also limit DVD rentals to friends or people in your dorm. I think it would be really cool, and a neat project to work on. It would, of course, all be done in PHP and MySQL. All I need is time to work on it. The interesting thing is that I came up with this idea this afternoon while talking to an acquaintance over AIM at around 2PM or so. After returning home from supper, I saw posters all over the place for a campus DVD swapping service. Kind of odd that we both had the same idea at around the same time [though he implemented it first]. The only problem? His isn't database based or anything. You basically send the guy a list of your movies, he puts it on the web, and then you contact the person if you want a DVD. No search functionality, no dynamic nature. While I could [I think] easily undertake this project myself, is there anyone who reads this who would be interested in partnering with me on it? This venture wouldn't be for money -- the service would be entirely free. The programming experience would be fairly valuable, I think. Oh yeah, the FOOD stands for Find Other Oles' DVDs. If you can think of a better acronym, post it in the comments.

The owner of the mystery package was finally determined late last week, and I had to give it back to its owner [oh well]. I still want to know why Monoprice.com gave the Post Office my name.

Amazon.com has a killer deal on the new iBooks -- $150 mail in rebate. This brings the entry model down to about $830 after amazon's "pi over 2" discount. So very tempted, but I want at least a dual core G4 or G5 in my next [first?] laptop.

Apparently, the college's network switches all support 100 BaseT Full Duplex networking, but it's not turned on. What the hell? I demand a logical reason for this. Why do they have it turned off?

I haven't talked to Nick since Thursday night. He tends to "take his weekends off from the Internet." Kind of weird. What are you doing, Nick?

Phones - posted by magicite

Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 11:53 pm

So my purple cordless phone is broken. It worked fine last year, and a little bit this summer, but apparently a move home and back to college was a bit too much for the old thing. As a result, I need a new cordless phone. By chance, does anyone who actually reads this blog have a spare wireless phone that I could borrow? I'd rather not buy one.

I got up extra early today and went to breakfast with Laurie, which I'll be paying for tomorrow AM. I just know I'm going to sleep through my ADS class, which is unfortunate because we have a midterm on Tuesday, which I feel totally unprepared for. To be honest, I have no idea what kind off questions he'll ask. Grumble grumble . . .

Nick has been less than thrilled with his test grades. Farking Physics.

Tonight I cleaned my room, for no real apparent reason. It needed cleaning, I had time, and if I didn't do it, I doubt it would ever get done. So, now the room is clean, and you can actually easily get to the TV now. Yay for cleanliness.

Lessee here . . . Ralph Nader was here on Tuesday night, and Leonardo DiCaprio was here tonight. I wanted to go to Nader's talk [apparently he was an hour and a half late], but had no interest in Leo's talk. Love him or hate him, Ralph is generally a good speaker -- since he has no chance of winning, he doesn't have to worry about stepping on people's toes. I suppose if the other candidates were in his place, I'd probably think that they were good speakers for the same reason too.

Pretty soon, all of this election monkey business will be over. For those of you who have a few extra minutes or haven't decided on who to vote for yet, go find out by taking the quiz. Good luck.

I recently got turned on to an instant messaging client called Adium for Mac OS X. I had actually used Adium a few years ago in its infancy, but then Apple came out with iChat, which regardless of its shortcomings, is still pretty slick. Anyways, Adium is highly customizable and really slick. I still dislike the duck icon though, cult following notwithstanding . . .

I think I got most (all?) off the CCT issues nailed down. Now Rob needs to keep working on documentation, and we should be good to go. Hooray for being published.

What's really cool about this week is, well, not having Monday and Tuesday, my busiest days. This means that the weekend is almost here, and of course, this weekend is Halloween and Daylight Savings Time [which should be abolished . . . ]. At least we gain an hour this time.

Nick was talking about what would happen if, in this election, Kerry won the electoral vote, and Bush the popular vote. If you remember, the opposite happened back in the 2000 election. Now, the election process went rather smoothly in 2000, which is a testament to the strength of our Democracy. There were no riots or uprisings, even though, ahem, the majority of the population was upset. So, if this win-with-fewer-votes thing happened again, but with the DFL ticket winning instead of the GOP, would the transfer of power go as smoothly? People seem to be a bit more passionate this election. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Arafat isn't doing too well. How will this effect the situation "over there?"

The server that magicite.org is hosted on has been going down periodically over the past few days, so I'm sorry, but hopefully it gets fixed in the near future. Until then, umm, go do something productive.

Disfunctional - posted by magicite

Monday, October 25, 2004 at 9:41 pm

Once again, I am typing this completely unable to think properly. Around 4-5 this afternoon, I started to get a headache, and it has lasted ever since then. I tried to sleep it off but couldn't fall asleep. Drag.

Tyson, Katie, and I went to Target and my house today. I picked up some phone cord couplers so that we could finally get the phone away from the door. After using two couplers and 4 phone cords, I can report that I have been successful. This is how it works: we have a cord attached to the wall and then a coupler; a cord attached to that coupler and another coupler; a cord attached to that coupler and a power strip [this power strip has a 'phone surge protector' thing built in]; and a cord attached to that and the phone. At least I'm using most of my phone cords now.

Tonight, Katie and I made waffles and cheese biscuits. They were ok, but I can tell that I'm starting to get sick of them, though this may partially be because of my headache.

Last night, Joel, Katie, Greg, and myself took advantage of Domino's 3 medium for $15 pizza deal. So yummy, though I think I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to hate Domino's pizza as well. I have it all of the time, and it's really not *that* great. If only there were a Pizza Hut in town. Too bad the old one went out of business.

I'm happy to report the the Arby's that is being erected to the West of Target in Northfield is well under way. They wood structure has been placed up, and they are now advertising that they are indeed building an Arby's. They have a month to make their Thanksgiving deadline. Oh mean, I'd kill for some Arby's right now.

I haven't done any homework over break yet, not that I have much. I'd do my multivar right now, but with my head being as it is, it wouldn't be worth it.

Trivia of the day: if you search for 'tacoasis' on yahoo.com, the first or second hit that comes up is my site. Go figure.

Joel and I watched Ghost in the Shell 2 last night, and I must report that it was better than the first. We watched it with subtitles this time though, so that might explain why it seemed better this time. I'll have to watch the first one again with subtitles in order to see if I really like it.

Ok, so here's an interesting story. I ordered a KVM switch from MonoPrice.com this spring [May 28th, to be exact] and it arrived the next week or something. On Friday, St. Olaf received a package for a "My Online Researcher." Not knowing who it was for, they opened it up, hoping to find a packing slip. Finding none, they called up the company and somehow determined that it was for me. I haven't ordered anything from these guys since May, and I wasn't charged for the new item either. Oh, in case you're wondering, I'm now the proud owner of a "Bytecc Aluminum Laptop Cooler." I know that Charity has been having some heating issues with her laptop recently, so maybe I'll let her use it for the time being.

What should I do if they company wants me to return the item? Knowing the company, they'll want me to pay for shipping, which I'm certainly not going to do. The laptop cooler is only about $20, so I'm sure they'll just "cut their losses" and move on. Anyways, what's really interesting is the fact that this package is addressed to "My Online Researcher." I did summer research this summer, but I didn't collaborate with anyone online or anything . . . even if I had, I don't own a laptop, so they shouldn't have given me this. So. Totally. Confused!

Laurie's returning [and so is everyone else] tomorrow, so that should be exciting. She should be returning around 4pm tomorrow, though I'm sure it'll end up being a little bit later than that.

For those of you using Internet Explorer, you'll notice that the page looks kind of funny. I'm not so sure I want to fix the problem, given that it only happens in Internet Explorer. Not many people who visit this site use Internet Explorer, and those that do shouldn't. You should be using FireFox or Safari instead. What do you think? Should I fix it?

Fall Break - posted by magicite

Saturday, October 23, 2004 at 8:50 pm

Ahh, lovely fall break. The bio test and Japanese filming session went well, and now, I have fall break ahead of me. Today, I met up with Professor Rutherford and Mike Olson and worked on CCT. We hope to submit the project to a few journals in a week or so. A few outstanding bugs have surfaced, and we're doing our best to squash them. Mike seemed to be impressed with the diff highlighting and Mac OS X installer, which was nice to hear.

Katie and I made some tasty Three Cheese Macaroni and Cheese this evening. Did I say it was tasty? We were going to make Thick 'n Creamy as well, but we were satisfied after just one box and some fresh cookies. Good times.

Last night, [brother] Joel, Kristin, Katie, Joel's friend Lorna, and Greg watched Donnie Darko. It was the first time I ever saw the movie, but I enjoyed it. Joel was explaining some of the finer details the director wanted to get through, which I thought was helpful. Before DD, we watched The Butterfly Effect, which I also thought was a good movie, but contrary to what a lot of people think, not that deep. I guess after a summer of indy film watching with roommate Joel, a movie needs to be really different in order for me to think it's deep.

I'm really starting to love Final Cut Pro HD. I plan on picking up my camcorder from home soon and then playing around with some video for the next few days. The best way for me to learn something is to get a project, so that's exactly what I intend on doing. Any suggestions for what I can videotape? I have Final Cut Pro HD, LiveType, Motion, and SoundTrack at my fingertips. If I get some good suggestions, I'll maybe do them and then post the finished product here on the blog. Now wouldn't that be cool? I know that Charity has been talking about doing some parody commercials with bananas [don't ask], and I think that that would be an interesting / fun thing to do. We'll see.

I need more ways to improve my blog. Nick recently implemented searching on his site, which is a nice idea, but I'm not so sure I need it yet. The archives page does that well enough already.

I think I'll add a quote database and do Nick's suggestion of making a links page that lists all of the links at once.

RSS Feed - posted by magicite

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 at 11:22 pm

Well, I had some extra time tonight to work on this site some more, so I added an RSS feed, courtesy of Nick. I'm using his RSS generation code, which I must say, is rather nifty. RSSerizing my site was a cinch [outside of dealing with St. Olaf's ftp issues . . . ]. You can subscribe to the RSS feed in two ways: a) the orange icon in the top right hand corner of the page and b) the XML RSS 2.0 icon / URL on the left. Take your pick.

Tomorrow's going to be completely hectic. I have to study for a biology test on Friday and create a 5-7 minute skit with someone from Japanese class. The skit has to be memorized and, of course, entirely in Japanese. At least my partner is a cool guy -- I think we'll do fine, albeit a bit stressed out and strained for time.

The Red Sox just won the series against the yankees, so they're going to the World Series. If the Astros end up going to the World Series, it'll be Texas vs Massachusetts, just like the presidential race (Bush vs Kerry, respectively). I know who I'll be cheering for. :)

Three more days until sweet, sweet fall break. ?��ł��?��Ŭ�?��?��Ŭ�?��Ǩ��?��ł��?��ł��?��Ŭ�?��łѢ?��Ŭ??ج��

Janet is gone from work now [boss] for surgery, and unfortunately, she'll be gone for a month. Hopefully her surgery goes well. While she's gone, I'll be learning Final Cut Pro HD and doing a few instructional videos. I had the MDC purchase Snapz Pro X [for screen movie recording], so we should be able to create some high-quality videos.

I think I'll go ahead and add my friends' blogs to the friends list now.

magicite.org - posted by magicite

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 at 11:42 am

For an early birthday present, Nick decided to register magicite.org for me. So, here we are at our new location. The hardest part of the migration was moving the photo gallery over, but that's because I had to upgrade the software, download the gallery data, contend with St. Olaf's crappy network, and do homework. Moving over the blog scripts and post data was easy [yay for MySQL!].

I found a nifty plugin for iPhoto that allows me to upload photos to the gallery software directly from iPhoto. This will definitely motivate me to actually post more pictures since it's so easy now. Hooray!

Yesterday's taco run with Josh was pretty cool. He's now working fulltime at EconoFoods, and I was able to cash some checks for the first time in approaching two months. Yay for new cash!

Apple released new iBooks yesterday that are really tempting me. I really think a laptop would do wonders for me. Anyway, it looks like new PowerBooks will be released in early January, so I think I'll wait. Odds are that they'll have stuck a G5 in there by then, which would be fantastic.

For those of you who are RSS users out there, the gallery now has an RSS feed. If you use it, I request that you set the refresh time to once a day. There's no reason to have it update any more than that, so please, save my bandwidth.

Unexpected Homework - posted by magicite

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 at 1:05 am

Not much new with me, outside of having some unexpected homework. I met with a friend from Japanese class and we worked on a project that we have to have videotaped this next Friday. We made some good progress, and with a bio test on Friday, it'll be good to get this out of the way as soon as possible so that I can focus on that when I need to.

Brian and I got out of lab totemo early today. A lot of groups had to redo parts of their lab because they messed things up. Giannini tried to stump us by giving us a chemistry-related question before we could leave, but since Brian and I both took AP Chemistry, the problem was a no-brainer.

Should be getting my test back tomorrow in multivariable calculus. I know for a fact that I got at least 6 points off [unless I got partial credit, which I did], but other than that, I feel fairly confident that I did well. Time will tell.

Professor Hall-Holt [ie, Olaf, ie, the CS professor who was sick] just gave us "all of the homework that we didn't do over the past month." I'll probably end up doing the few problems I didn't do over Fall break, but I did most of them, so I'm not too worried. I know a few people in the class haven't been doing much, so I feel for them -- they have quite the workload ahead of them.

In case you're wondering why I've been posting so much, it's because of the comments system. The comments system motivates me to post. The more you guys post comments, the more motivated I am to make a post. So, comment away.

The cold war is on -- apparently, with Nick being the United States, and myself the USSR. Granted, the USSR lost the war, and is currently rebuilding, but at least it's not led by a completely incompetent leader. The second round will be different . . .

So, soon I'll be adding an RSS feed and *maybe* taking Nick's suggestion of putting all of the links on the left on one page so as to increase everyone's google page rank. Hooray!

Concert - posted by magicite

Monday, October 18, 2004 at 1:20 am

Laurie's concert this evening was fantastic, even if we all did pick out Matthias's voice [and we all sat in different locations]. That boy has such a big ego [which he can't back up].

I worked on the page a bit more this afternoon while waiting for Laurie to return from Lab Choir [she never did. How scandalous! I had to remind her to come see me]. For those of you using Safari [basically me and Nick], there are a few extra CSS-related goodies for you that I'm sure you'll notice.

Now that my site has been indexed by google and I've added in some additional people-tracking code, I can tell what people search for when they come to my page. So far, people have searched for my name and Brandon. Let's hope it's not his mom.

Nick has a bunch of tests this week. Wish him luck -- right now, he's studying for an "Understanding Music" test. Drag.

I haven't decided if I'm going to go home for break, or stay here. There's currently no place for me to sleep at home, and there's no bandwidth, either. If I stay here, I have good ol' broadband. Maybe I'll invite my brother over for a little bandwidth fest.

On Tuesday, I [and probably Laurie] will be taking advantage of Taco Tuesday at Tacoasis with Josh. Mmm, Tacoasis. The softshell are to die for if they stick plenty of cheese on them. Mmm . . .

As I mentioned earlier, I only have a bio test this coming Friday, so this week should be a real dozer. Sometime this week I have to figure out a decent chat environment that supports unicode [ie, need to be able to use Japanese]. If everyone were using a Mac and iChat, we'd be fine, but alas, we don't live in a perfect world. I'm trying to figure out if AIM on the PC supports unicode, but I don't think it does. If I'm wrong, tell me in the comments. It'll make my life much easier. St. Olaf has their own little chat room for each class, but alas, it doesn't support unicode. Too bad. I tried to use this jabber-based thing called coccinella which promised unicode support, but alas, they lied. Bastards.

I've decided that I'm happiest when I have a project. More specifically, a computer-related project. For instance, nothing would please me more than to be working on CCT or StormStalker again [both of which have been neglected for awhile]. Having a program project eats up my idletime as well as increases my programming proficiency. Oh, that reminds me. My meeting with Rob last Monday went well. It was indeed about getting published, and soon, Mike, Rob, and myself will be honing up the last release of CCT and updating the paper material and submitting it to a few journals. I really think the easy Mac OS X installation will be a hit. I think I just made a project for myself over fall break. I'll clean up the CCT code some more, as well as fix a few bugs. In general, make it shine. Making things shine is good times?��.

In political news, John Kerry's good showings in the debates are not translating into increased numbers for him, which is too bad. I think he is a much stronger candidate than Al Gore ever was, and Al Gore vs George Bush in 2000 was closer than this race. Actually, wait, if I remember correctly, everyone predicted a Bush win in the days leading up to the election, but come election, Gore did much better than the polls suggested. Perhaps there's some mysterious force going on now doing the same thing. Oh well, fifteen more days until we have a new leader of the free world.

Brian and I had to do a ridiculous paper for Biology this weekend which I did right before supper. The intention of the paper--getting us to learn EndNote--was all well and good, but the resulting paper was one of the biggest piles of BS ever to be written. On the bright side of things, though -- FREE POINTS! :) I can tell that a lot of people are trying to get this assignment done now, though, because when I go to one of the sites related to the paper, this message comes up: The maximum number of simultaneous users (6) are already connected from St. Olaf College. I'm so glad I did this thing earlier.

A lot of things have been bugging me recently that I can't yet synthesize into words. This is both because I don't want to say them, and because I don't know how. I need to stop being such a lapdog . . .

With that being said, I realized something while at breakfast / lunch with Laurie on Saturday. Usually, when I'm angry with someone or at something, I'll do the normal thing of telling her about it and why I feel that way, but instead of leaving it at that, I tend to remain in a pissy mood, and it affects her more than anyone else. For that, Laurie, I am sorry, but it's one of my shortcomings you'll have to get used to until I overcome it.

When I get time, I'm going to add a random quote feature to this blog, perhaps as early as tomorrow. FIve bucks says that it takes me a lot longer than that . . .

Oh yeah, before I go, a bunch of my friends have gotten a blog recently, and when I get time, I'll add them to the friends list over on the left.

7 Comment(s) . . .

Useless - posted by magicite

Sunday, October 17, 2004 at 3:46 pm

Ok, there must be a logical reason for me getting headaches. I mean, seriously, these are completely debilitating. I can't function at all, move slowly, and definitely can't do homework when I get them. Grr.

On another note, I got my multivar homework done yesterday, and since we haven't gotten any new CS homework recently, my tomorrow *should* be free [excepting Japanese, but that's usually easy]. We also ended up having a 'pasta night' last night, which turned out to be a success. We had spaghetti and garlic bread [which was very tasty]. Perhaps we'll have taco night another weekend.

After pasta night, we went to Lakeville on the movie bus and saw Napoleon Dynamite [for only $3, mind you]. I enjoyed it, and afterwards, we had an hour and a half to burn, so we just stayed in the theater and were controlled by the whims of the Toshiba god [inside joke].

I have some sort of bio 'library project' due tomorrow that I should continue working on after my headache subsides. Meh. Don't want to do it, it's a lame project.

At 7:30 tonight, Laurie has a concert that I [and others] will be going to. Should be fun, and will hopefully do wonders for my headache [if it still lingers].

Oh yeah, I just remembered something about my headaches. They *always* go away at night. Like, tonight at 10, I'll be headache free and completely energized. Why is this? Anyone?

Tomorrow, at 2:30PM, I'm meeting with Peter Munson, head of Mathematical and Statistical Computing Lab, National Institutes of Health, who will also be giving a talk here on the "Statistical Approaches to Data Mining with DNA Chip Technology." Unfortunately, I have class during his talk, so I will be unable to attend, but like I said, I'll be meeting with him at 2:30. I think I'm going to do a bit of research on him tonight so that I know what to talk with him about.

In case you haven't noticed, I worked on the scripts for this blog yesterday. There is now a working comment system [and you don't even have to register!], as well as the ability to directly link to posts. If you have any more requests, add a comment to this post.

Long Week, Little Reward - posted by magicite

Saturday, October 16, 2004 at 1:26 am

This week seemed rather long. I had a fairly large Multivariable calculus test on Thursday, and a debilitating headache on Wednesday. I watched the final debate on Wednesday night as well.

Tonight was spent making cookies (good) and then watching Conan (DVD and show) with Laurie and Kristin while waiting for Katie and Charity to return from salsa dancing. We were going to watch a movie (at least Laurie and I were), but we decided to wait for Katie and Charity to return. When they finally returned [late (though not their fault)], Katie took off without saying anything to anyone [I was under the impression that she was aware of our movie watching plans]. So, while waiting for Katie, we all got tired and now we are going to go to bed.

Without watching a movie.

?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ѣ��?��?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��İ?��Ŭ�?��łѢ?��Ǩ��?��Ŭ�?��ł�??��??��?�??��Ǩ�Ķ?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ѣ��?��?��Ŭ�?��ł�??��?��ł��?��?��?�?��ł��?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��ł��?��Ŭ�?��ł�??��?��Ǩ��?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��Ŭ�?��?�??��Ǩ�Ķ?��Ŭ�?��ł�??��?��ł��?��?��?�?��ł��?��?�?��Ŭ�?��ł�??��?��Ǩ��That's supposed to show up in Japanese. It's supposed to say, or I mean it to say, "My time is precious. Because people don't care about my time, I don't care about people."

While I may be guilty of disregarding others' time every now and then, I make it a point not to do so. Can't others do the same? So much for that golden rule.

Falling Leaves - posted by magicite

Sunday, October 10, 2004 at 1:57 am

Laurie and I decided to go on a 'nature walk' this afternoon. We initially planned on going to the Big Woods, but after realizing that I didn't have a parking pass for state parks on my car, we decided to go to the Cannon Valley / River park between Northfield and Faribault on Highway 3. The walk was beautiful, but the mosquitos were atrocious. While getting the car, we walked past many beautiful trees that I just so happened to take pictures of. You can find them in the usual place, the photos section off to the left.

Laurie and I ended up staying up until 4am last night, which made me really sleepy for the first part of the day. I intended on waking up around 11:30am so that I wouldn't be groggy, but my sleepiness got the best of me and I stayed in bed until nearly 1pm. Oh well.

It's a good thing we couldn't go flying today since President Bush was here. As a result, there was a 30 mile no fly zone set up. Apparently, two unsuspecting pilots had flares shot at them by F something or others. Scary.

Laurie is silly. Interestingly enough, that is the first time that that phrase has been said on the Internet. May it not be the last.

My two tests, uhh, well, happened last Friday. The bio test had two questions that were kind of hard / tricky, and so I'm not so sure how I did. We'll find out how I did probably on Monday. For my Japanese test, I know I did really well, but I think that it was probably the hardest Japanese test we've taken. Larson sensei's tests don't give you contextual clues like Itou sensei's did. You really have to know your stuff here. I think a lot of people probably choked and didn't do too well. We'll see.

I've got to correct / fix my first bio lab report tomorrow, as well as finish some computer science with Chris and possibly start on my bio library project. That will be easy--the time required to complete it is the only problem. Given that Fullmetal Alchemist 51 has aired [and I've seen it--it was good] and I'm no longer reading Musashi [finished it last night], I need to find another activity to do for Japanese class. I'll probably just go downstairs and watch Japanese television for awhile. That should be entertaining.

I'll probably crack open Pride and Prejudice after writing this post. It's only about 350 pages long, which is miniscule compared to my last two books [Shogun was monstrous]. There's also not very much text per page, so it'll probably be a quick read. We'll see if I like it. I'm guessing the flowery / English [think Brit] language will throw me off. But, who knows.

Oh, yeah, about Friday night's debates. Bush didn't make a total ass out of himself, but I felt that Kerry still won easily. I thought he artfully handled the abortion question [or, at least as artfully as anyone could do]. I thought that Bush was, once more, very rude to the moderator. There was one time in particular when Bush wanted a 30 second rebuttal, but the moderator wouldn't give it to him. Bush kept pestering him, and then the moderator started to ask the President the new question. After about four or five words, the President interrupted him and started his rebuttal. How rude.

Two weeks until fall break, which means midterms are coming up. I have a big kanji (???) test in Japanese on Tuesday, a multivariable calculus test on Thursday [which I'm not looking forward to in the least], another bio test right before break, and probably something in my computer science class. Speaking of that class, I'm finally going to be getting my original teacher back. He has been gone for almost a month now. I'm sure he'll have one hell of a story to tell us.

Tonight, a bunch of us watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I enjoyed it, though I was worried at first. Jim Carry is a funnyman, and he wasn't that in this movie. However, in my limited movie critiquing skills, I think he pulled off this new role quite well. One thing that helped him into this new role was having him shown with some facial stubble. The film was also a bit more 'artier' than most, which in this case I liked. Sometimes I don't like movies that do that, for whatever reason. All unique indy movies [not saying that this movie is one by any means] end up being just the same. They explore and do something really cool and creative but end up failing in some other crucial cinematic element. Or some such nonsense. I'm not really making much sense anymore.

I got Nick interested in RSS a few days ago after I started to toy with it and he has now RSSerized his blog, which I intend on doing at some point or other. It'll happen as soon as I have lots of free time and motivation, whenever that happens to happen.

I'm finding that time is going much faster than it used to. For instance, it's almost midterms for us. But I swear, we just started college again. The reason why this is so scary is that it will end up bringing the end of college sooner. This is, in turn once more, scary because I still don't know what I'm going to do. Perhaps I should figure that one out soon . . .

Speaking of figuring things out / things related to me figuring things out, I got an email from Professor Rutherford on Friday asking me when I could meet with him. He says that he has some good news for me and would like to speak with me for about an hour on something. I'm guessing it has something to do with getting published, which would be really cool. Getting published this early in my life would be a great accomplishment. I'm meeting with him early on Monday morning.

Someone recently stuck a CD player inside of our bathroom, but the reception is totally crappy, so I burned a CD. A few others have been listening to the CD, but some idiot keeps unplugging the CD player. I don't understand why they can't just turn it off if it bugs them. The volume is never very loud and I'm sure the majority of people enjoy walking into the bathroom with music playing. Oh well.

Oh, the twins lost tonight, which is too bad. I really had high hopes for them this season, but they didn't have much of a chance being placed up against the Yankees. Money wins once more. Now we'll have to wait and see if the Vikings can pull anything off this year.

Test++ - posted by magicite

Thursday, October 7, 2004 at 10:28 pm

Tomorrow, I have a test in Bio and Japanese. It'll be my second bio test of the year and my first Japanese test of the year. I don't really know what to expect of either -- the first bio test was really easy, but I'm sure it was designed to be easy since it was the first test. I've had Japanese tests before, but not from this professor. I know for a fact that we'll have to do an exercise where she speaks a bunch of stuff in Japanese and we have to write it down. That's bad times because she'll end up using something called katakana words, which I'll stumble on.

It looks like we will not be flying this weekend after all. Some guy rented the plane that Brandon was going to take out for the entire weekend, so we'll have to wait. It might be awhile since the weekend after this one, he might be going to Gustavus. I'll keep you posted.

I started to toy around with Final Cut Pro HD, Compressor, and LiveType at work. I consider myself to be a self-taught iMovie and iDVD master [which isn't that big of a deal], so it's time for me to move on to the bigger fish. You can do so much more with FCP, but sometimes it is hard to accomplish simple iMovie-like tasks in FCP. I'm looking on amazon for a good FCP book, and I think I'll have my boss order it for my place of work.

The election is quickly heating up, and if the election were to be held right now, no one would win according to Electoral-Vote.com. Kerry seems to have definitely won the first debate, as is reflected in his recent rebound. The vice president debate was much more evenly matched, however, and will probably have little affect on the election.

I'm strongly considering starting up an Apple User Group here at St. Olaf. There isn't one here currently, and I'd be willing to be that I could do a lot of really cool things with it. All I need now is some motivation and time.

Oh yeah, something that has really been bugging me recently. Early in 2003, a Democrat [Rangel] introduced HR 163, a piece of legislation that called for a draft. The bill was created in the time leading to the Iraq war for the sole purpose of making lawmakers think about their decisions. An article on the matter from December of 2003 can be found at CNN. In it, Rangel clearly states the purpose for the bill. Now, as we approach election time, the Republican party is using this to their advantage, completely bastardizing the bill's original intent. They used a rarely used 'suspension' rule to swiftly move the bill out of the subcommittee it was in [a place where it, like most bills, would have died]. Now out of subcommittee, the Republican party, which has the majority in the house [and senate], thinks it can show the country that it is anti-draft by defeating this piece of legislation and painting Democrats as people who want / support the draft. Why can this tactic work? Where are the journalists? They should be digging up Rep. Rangel's comments about the bill, and furiously writing about how the Republican party is trying to do something underhanded. I've heard Republican people on my dorm floor talking about being "anti Democrat because they support the draft!" Total, utter crap. Also, why doesn't the Democrat party retaliate over this issue quickly? I mean, heck, they could, perhaps, use this little gem written up by two Republicans that goes one step farther than asking for a draft--it asks for mandantory military service / training. So, what would you rather have: Democrats 'wanting' a draft if we need it or Republicans requiring mandatory military service?

It's crap like that that gets me all riled up. I only really get political when I get pissed off [which is how most people work, I guess]. Anyways, I've got those two tests to study for :P.

One Year - posted by magicite

Saturday, October 2, 2004 at 1:53 am

Last Wednesday, Laurie and I 'celebrated' our 1 year anniversary. She ended up getting me the final Lord of the Rings movie and making me cookies. I gave her the 10th anniversary Conan DVD [we both love Conan] and plan on making her breakfast early on Saturday morning. We'll see how 'early' I get up.

Laurie also got me flowers today, which are sitting in a water bottle container right next to my mouse. The arrangement consists of two roses and some yellow flowers [plus 'fluff'].

We also celebrated my oldest brother's birthday this evening at Applebee's. David is turning 25 on October 6th.

I'm cutting this post short since I have to get up early in the morning. Let's hope I make some tasty waffles and cheese biscuits!

First Test - posted by magicite

Monday, September 27, 2004 at 11:18 pm

I got my bio test from last Friday back today . . . I got an A, which is nice to know, considering that when my mom got her first bio test back, she got a D . . . I beat my mom. Yay. And oh man, that quote could be horribly taken out of context.

I got the unfortunate email today that all of the CS homework that we haven't been doing in Olaf's absence will now be due this Friday. Fiddlesticks.

This weekend is shaping up to be quite busy for me. On Friday, there's the first presidential debate that I and all of you should watch. Maybe you hate politics, maybe you're Canadian, or maybe you're under 18. I really don't care -- watch it. Sometime this weekend, I'm going flying with Brandon Christel and Laurie. That should be fun, though my mom is 'nervous about Brandon's age.' To which, of course, I replied by saying that I flew up with David when he was young. I have yet to get a response. Anyway, other than that, I have my other load of homework and a bio lap report to write this weekend. Eegad!

My brother has a really amusing entry regarding his adventures this morning with wasps. I'm so glad I wasn't sleeping at home when that happened.

Where's the Homework? - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 26, 2004 at 8:51 pm

Alright, so this marks a week of not having that much homework. It's a great feeling, I tell you -- I'm so much less stressed out. The sole reason for not having much homework? My CS professor is still gone. We still have class, but we haven't gotten any homework or reading. Very good times indeed.

Before you start to loathe me for my lack of homework, keep in mind that I'm sure I'll get smacked with it as soon as my CS professor comes back. We'll have to make up for lost time. And that's never fun. He'll probably be back this coming Tuesday or Thursday.

I'm about 150 pages away from finishing Musashi, and I must say that my initial impressions of the book were completely wrong, and I really like the book now. It's one of those 1000 page novels that takes the first 200 to set up the remainder of the story. So, whereas before I was meeting characters and learning about each of his/her pasts, I'm now deep, deep into the character interaction phase [which one would expect when at around page 820]. Anyways, if anyone wants to borrow it, get in touch.

Laurie's had a lot of homework recently, a lot more than everyone else, which is kind of a drag. I know she's feeling a bit down right now, but like I said earlier, soon enough it'll be my turn to be socked with homework. At any rate, with her having little free time and me having lots of it, it sucks 'cause I can't spend much of it with her. I need to find more things to do outside of reading Musashi all day long.

Speaking of reading again, after I'm done with Musashi, I've decided to put off Tai-pan for awhile and read Pride and Prejudice instead. Laurie's infatuated with the novel, so I figured I'd read it to see what all the fuss is about. I'll fully admit that I'm going into the book with a pessimistic mindset, but that way, if the book is as good as she says it is, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Brian [roommate] has been sick as of late. Sucks to be Brian.

Laurie and my one year anniversary is coming up this Wednesday. I'll have to whip up something special for her . . . don't really know what though. Any suggestions?

My friends have taken it upon themselves to sing in public whenever we're together, which, to be honest, is rather embarrassing and humiliating. And just plain weird. First of all, I can't sing (Why oh why did I go to a college famous for its choirs?) and, well, everyone else can. I dunno, it's just not my thing. Oh well, I'm used to it by now.

I made some cheese biscuits sometime last week that were decently tasty. I mean, for $1.50 just-add-water-biscuits, they weren't bad at all. I highly recommend them. They're from Betty Crocker. Good times.

I think I am just starting to get used to the minocycline, but I can still feel its affects. My complexion is a bit cleaner, and the acne that was on my face pre-minocycline healed up rather quickly. I've come to realize recently that I'm "over the hill" in terms of acne. It was much worse a couple years ago. Yay for almost no longer being a teenager!

Enough about disgusting acne, and on to prettier things, like Nick's maps. Mmmm, Nick's maps. Good times.

Alright, back to Musashi.

Preggo - posted by magicite

Saturday, September 25, 2004 at 1:07 am

Today's workday was rather interesting. I had to crop a bunch of pictures for the asian studies department. No big deal, but rather mundane. Towards the end, the pictures turned into . . . photos. Erotic photos. Anyway, by the time I was done, I had seen more than my fair share of nude pregnant women. Let's move on . . .

I started to take minocycline for my acne. I can't take doxycycline since I get sick off of it. My brother has been taking it for awhile and says that it works -- I'll have to get back to you all on that. My first impression is that it does work, but I am definitely feeling some of the side effects. I can still think properly, but I can no longer walk in a straight line. Like, I can actually feel my body shifting left and right when I walk. It's quite odd. Let's hope that goes away.

My CS professor has been 'sick' this entire week, which means that I didn't have any CS homework, which is absolutely fantastic. I've had so much free time--it's nice to be able to relax for a change. If I had this workload the entire year, I'd be one happy man.

One of my books that I ordered--from Amazon--arrived today. It's not that interesting, just an English->Japanese & Japanese->English dictionary. Some of the phrases inside are hilarious though--"My brother took the knife and stabbed the meat" and other such classic lines.

I was a bit bored after supper today, so I looked at a bunch of my old essays and school documents. It's quite amazing to see how far I've come along since middle school. I completely surprised myself. I made the most ridiculous mistakes possible. I can't believe I even let them slip through. Of course, now that I've said this, I'm guaranteed to make a big stupid mistake somewhere in this blog post . . .

Yesterday, a friend and I bridged all of the Larson rendezvous traffic together. What does this mean? Lots and lots and lots of iTunes libraries! :D Oh how I love iTunes.

First test of the year happened today in bio. I think I did alright. There was only one question that dealt with the bonding of molecules that I thought was unfair, but that's ok. It's only the first test.

Speaking of tests, I think the minocycline has the effect of making me less anxious for tests. I wasn't too worried about this test at all [except right before the test in class]. It's nice not being stressed out over stupid things.

Oh yeah, another thing about minocycline. It seems to be making me move slowly. For instance, when playing DDR, I almost act as if I'm drunk. I miss really easy things and can't quite catch the rhythm of the song. Once again, let's hope that goes away . . .

Tomorrow I've sworn to get a haircut. I haven't gotten one since mid July right before Nick's wedding. And when I did get it cut, I made sure that it was cut long so that it didn't look too short for the wedding. While my hair is quite long right now, I don't think this is the longest it has been. There was a time last year when I was . . . excruciatingly scraggly.

Who remembers Zubaz? Of course you do, they were those terrible early 90's pants that looked like fluorescent zebra skin. Laurie and Kristin hadn't heard about them before tonight, which is just sad. EVERYONE knows what Zubaz are, right? Well, wrong. Doing a search for Zubaz on the internet [and this is the correct spelling] brings up mostly sports pants that only look vaguely like the original Zubaz. I still know someone who wears the original zubaz--an individual who graduated with me [I think he graduated . . . ] in high school. I'm sure everyone who's an '03 knows who I'm talking about.

One of the things I'm doing for the MDC is setting up a TV station, and my specific area of expertise is setting up a quicktime video feed [stream]. I asked the network guy if the St. Olaf network supported multicasting, and he told me that it didn't and wasn't possible. However, upon further investigation, I have found that it does in fact support multicasting. Since the network guy won't cooperate [and this is an official college-sanctioned project], I'll have to do a little . . . reverse engineering of the network to figure out how things work. Let's hope I don't get into trouble.

I was let on to two cool apps by Daniel. The first is called Mail.Appetizer. It is for Mac OS X users only who use Apple's Mail program. Whenever a legit piece of email comes through, it puts up a semitransparent window at the foreground, giving you a preview of the message that just came through. It's really slick and looks slick too. I'd definitely check it out if you use Mail.

The second application is called iEatBrainz. This is one of those apps that I have always thought about, but I didn't think it could be done and, even if it could, I wouldn't know how to go about doing it [I'm such a n00b]. Anyways, let's say you have all of these MP3s that you *cough* obtained *cough* from somewhere. Then let's say that the ID3 tag, or metadata, was missing or incomplete. The ID3 tag tells you what the song name is, who the artist is, et cetera et cetera. Anyway, if this is missing, how do you know what song you're listening too? While it might be easy to identify one song, what if you have hundreds or thousands of songs with this problem? iEatBrainz eliminates this problem by querying a master database for information on these mysterious MP3 files. It does this by comparing various things such as song length and acoustic signature [whatever the hell that means]. It won't be able to identify all songs, but some is better than none. The best part is, the "select your songs to update" part is integrated really well with iTunes. When selecting songs, a brushed-metal sheet comes out from the iEatBrainz main window that looks exactly like the playlist and songlist part of iTunes. Totally sweet. Oh yeah, Mac OS X only, although you can find a Windows client at the MusicBrainz site. Unfortunately, I don't think it is integrated with iTunes at all.

Tomorrow Laurie will be gone, so in addition to getting my haircut, I'll do lots of homework. Mmmm, homework. :: vommit ::

More Weekend Happenings - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 19, 2004 at 10:04 pm

On Saturday, Kristin, Laurie, Brian, and myself went off to Faribault to see the annual balloon rally there. The balloons were supposed to launch at 5:30, but by 6:10, there were no balloons to see. It ended up being that there was too much wind, so they couldn't launch them. Oh well. Afterwards, we ate a tasty meal at A&W.

Now, you might think that the trip was a waste. You couldn't be further from the truth. While waiting for the balloons, Brian managed to sit in a puddle / pile of grease. It literally looked like he crapped his pants. Highly entertaining.

Today, all I did was homework. I finished my computer science for Tuesday, as well as my Japanese for Monday. After I'm done writing this, I'll go read some chapters out of my bio book, alternating each chapter with a chapter or two from Musashi to keep me entertained.

Today I ordered a bunch of books from Amazon and a present for Laurie (our 1 year anniversary is coming up). The books were all uninteresting--Japanese<->English dictionaries. Oh well. Laurie's gift is fairly cool, though I somewhat fear that it's one of those things that I'd rather get for myself. We'll see if she likes it.

The anime series I'm watching, Fullmetal Alchemist, is quickly coming to conclusion. FMA 49 should be out and translated in 24 hours, and then there are only 2 episodes left. It really sucks when such a wonderful series comes to conclusion. Let's hope the conclusion isn't disappointing.

OK, time to stop neglecting my biology.

Life Goes On - posted by magicite

Thursday, September 16, 2004 at 12:28 am

Nothing too new with me at the moment. Just my typical load of homework and lack of time.

I got my playstation <--> USB converter recently, though I've been having problems. Occasionally, the device will lock up and I won't be able to use it until I unplug the thing and plug it back on. Oh well. The search for a good adapter continues.

I've been eating a lot less recently, and it's been rather subconscious. I rarely eat between meals [which actually is a bad thing -- better to spread things out] and when I do eat, I tend to not eat as much as I should to maintain my body weight. I generally have a ham sandwich [no cheese], pretzels, a cookie, and cranapple-raspberry for lunch. For supper, it's usually something that falls in the under 1000 calorie range. What this means is that I'm getting about 1600 calories a day, and people my age require 2500 calories a day to maintain body weight. We'll see if my weight goes down a little. The reduction in calories and massive DDR playing [albeit I've been slacking on that recently, due to a badly-bruised right foot] should do well for my health.

Off to bed, damn 8ams . . .

Wasting Time - posted by magicite

Friday, September 10, 2004 at 11:21 pm

I've come to the conclusion that too much of my time is wasted on other people, and that others greatly take advantage of my time. You know, I was raised to be patient with people, consider their time, and try to accommodate others as much as possible.

The only problem is the reciprocation, or lack thereof. I feel like it's a one-way thing, and it's very aggravating. I don't know what to do, I'm torn--give up my way of doing things, or become like everyone else. The problem I anticipate with being like everyone else, at least in the position I am in, is that I will be ostracized, or the result will be a forced self-imposed ostracization [made up word].

Obstacles are harder to overcome when people don't support you, and in fact harder when they're against you. I say that in italics, but I don't mean it in a paranoid way. Anyway, is defying others alone worth the effort? I'm not so sure. All I know is that something's gotta give. And I'm not in the best of positions.

Anyway, on to a less depressing topic. Brian's 20th birthday is today, and we celebrated by going to Applebee's with Brian's family and lots of college friends. In all, a party of 12! Good times, and I got to talk to Brian's dad quite a bit. He's the kind of guy that anyone can comfortably talk with.

Lots and lots of DDR has been played recently, which is a good good thing. In fact, it's being played now. Time to go play . . .

Back to Work - posted by magicite

Friday, September 10, 2004 at 2:31 pm

Well, I'm at work now. First day of work. 'nuff said.

I've had each of my classes at least once now, and I'm liking how things are shaping up. My Algorithms & Data Structures class seems to be interesting. Multivariable calculus will just be 'another math class.' Bio 125 looks to be exceedingly easy. And Japanese 231 [last semester of Japanese] doesn't appear to be too bad. As promised, the new teacher seems like a good person. The only downside is that I'm going to have to do *a lot* of reviewing over the next week. I 'get' to do another self-introduction, only this time it has to be three minutes long and I have to have it memorized. Ouch. Oh yeah, I have to memorize the katakana character set. I have hiragana down just fine, but katakana is just plain ol' dirty. Looks like I'll be doing that some time this weekend.

Back to work.

Classes - posted by magicite

Thursday, September 9, 2004 at 9:55 am

I'm back at St. Olaf and classes have finally begun. I recently returned from Algorithms and Data Structures. The new professor [conveniently named Olaf] seems to be working out well--I like him so far. We already have a homework assignment, and I've been partnered up with Chris, a guy who also did summer research this past summer. We seem to have a pretty slick solution to our first problem already. Now we just have to implement it.

In about 3 hours, I have Multivariable Calculus. Should be . . . interesting. I got a taste of it at the end of Honors Calc II, and it didn't seem *too* bad, although I'm sure we just graced the surface.

I'm liking my room, except for my bed. I can't really use it right now 'cause it's too close to the ceiling. Brian and I intend on lowering it tonight or sometime. I've slept on the futon the past couple of days.

I've played a lot of DDR recently, which makes me happy. I'm going to try and make it my goal to play DDR at least once a day. We'll see if that materializes.

I'm about half way done with Musashi, and it's getting better. I felt towards the beginning that things were moving kind of slow, though I can see that it was all character development and building up for things that happen later.

This fall I will be in Bio 125, Multivariable Calculus, Japanese [last semester!], and Algorithms and data structures.

Tonight, after a 7pm all-dorm meeting, at 9pm, Laurie and crew [crew == Brian, Kate, Kristin, Charity, maybe more] are going to see Shrek II. Now that I think about it, this leaves me with no time to work on my project with Chris. Maybe I'll work on it this afternoon then, and email him with what I've done. I guess I'll see how things materialize.

Why me? - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 5, 2004 at 2:20 pm

Alright, so I definitely woke up at 8am, but decided to sleep in an extra hour since I didn't sleep very well again last night. So, I woke up at 9, but was still feeling in need of rest. I think I rolled out of bed around 11:30, which isn't *too* bad . . .

That's when the bad stuff began. I didn't notice it when I went to my computer to putz around, and I didn't notice it when I was looking for clothes. I began to notice it while I was in the shower. If I moved my head down or to the right, there would be this terrible sensation in my shoulder area [and neck]. Yes, that's right, on the day before I move in, I got a freakin' pinched nerve. ARGH.

I've had a pinched nerve maybe 2-3 other times in my entire life, and it SUCKS. The worst part about having one now is that I have to do a considerable amount of heavy lifting over the next few days [ie, moving in to college]. Now I'm not so sure if I'll be able to do that. I took an aspirin and have been massaging my neck to try and get it to go away, but I've had no luck so far. I took an aspirin or something a few minutes ago, so we'll see if that kicks in and helps.

AIM still doesn't work for me. I'm thinking about getting a new screen name 'cause this is ridiculous. Anyone have any suggestions?

Rut - posted by magicite

Sunday, September 5, 2004 at 12:53 am

As promised, I cleaned out my car this afternoon. I've made this a tradition over the past few years. Right before going back to school / college, I clean, as best I can, the inside of my car. Unfortunately for me this year, the window wipes I had intended on using dried up. So, this year, the windows will remain dirty. Too bad for them.

When did I get up today? Blah, the latest I've gotten up in weeks--2:54 PM. Worry not, however, as it's only 12:30am now and I'm tired. Further, I'm going to bed after I post this, and I'm bringing my cell phone alarm clock with me. I will force myself up at 8am. It must be done.

Tonight I watched both Kill Bills. I must say, I rather liked them. I've heard from most people that you either love it or hate it--I apparently fall in the 'love' category. With that being said, Kill Bill is definitely not a 'Laurie' movie. It's your textbook Tarantino film, which is about as far away from a Laurie movie as you can get. Perhaps I'll force her to watch it anyway . . . ;)

Anyway, getting back to my car. I put my three plastic bins inside tonight so that I can be extra lazy tomorrow. Although, now that I think about it, since I'm getting up early, I'll have plenty of time to waste . . . which brings me to my next point.

Within the next 10 hours or so, I should be acquiring some Japanese learning software that will help me review. Sure, sure, I could look at my book and notes, but where's the fun in that? This way, I can chuckle at the funny Japanese software. Muahahaha. Crap, guess that was an evil laugh. Hehehehehe.

Yesterday I glue the clay monkey Laurie bought for me back together. For those of you that remember, I accidentally broke the poor thing about two weeks after Laurie gave it to me. Yes, it has taken me two months to fix it, but in my defense, I did not have any glue at St. Olaf and, well, I have no excuse for not doing it after returning home except that I wasn't exactly looking forward to rummaging through all of my college crap.

After Operation: Monkey Restructurin' was complete, I moved on to gluing my web cam back together. That's still a work in progress, but only 'cause it has to dry. I think I'll have to end up using the rubber band method with it though, since glue is no substitute for hard plastic.

In 36 hours, I'll see my Laurie again.

Packing - posted by magicite

Saturday, September 4, 2004 at 12:47 am

Nothing too new on my front. Just lots of packing and sorting through crap. With the exception of my clothes, computer & related supplies, and heavy appliances [microwave, fridge, couch], all of my stuff fits nicely in three short-but-long plastic bins. This should make moving in rather easy. I've decided to not bring many books, since there's really no point.

Tomorrow I plan on doing my yearly car cleaning, which consists of taking everything out of the car and cleaning the inside thoroughly. Surprisingly, this is usually fun. The only crappy part is washing the hard-to-get spots.

Oh yeah, given that I want to be at St. Olaf at 8:30 in the morning on Monday, I'm going to have to start waking up earlier [ie, wake up early tomorrow and Sunday]. Should be interesting, 'cause I'm not so sure I can do it :P. At the very least, I need to get up early on Sunday so that I can easily fall asleep Sunday night. I'll keep you posted . . .

Today, my main AIM account, 'applicite,' decided to stop working. I can only access it from AIM Express. AOL really offers no way to complain. They have a 'report a problem' page, but they make you check a box saying that I'm complaining about a feature of AIM, not an account problem. Bastards, all of them. I sent it anyways--hopefully they'll take care of my account.

The freshman of St. Olaf move in in a few short hours [Saturday morning]. I remember when I moved in last year and visited some of Brian's [my roommate] friends from high school, wondering if I would act like these sophomores and go about things in a similar way. Well, I can report that I am in fact doing just that. I packed lighter for college, I'm living in Larson [which is where Brian's friends lived at the time], and I know a few freshman who I'm sure will visit me in the coming weeks.

And so, the cycle continues. Next milestone: going abroad.

Alcohol - posted by magicite

Wednesday, September 1, 2004 at 2:15 am

So I finally got my gift from South Africa that my mom bought when she was there in June. It was a candle, a wooden giraffe, and . . . alcohol. Amarula Fruit Cream. Anyways, it just strikes me as funny. Ha. Ha. Ha.

For the past few days, Joel and I have been at Josh's house having an Unreal Tournament 2004 fragfest. Good times, though I must say that I've had enough UT for awhile. Perfect timing, too, given that I move back into college in less than a week.

I need to get a playstation <--> USB adapter so that I can play dance-dance on my computer. I have the software and a zillion songs.

I realized how backwards my days have become about a week ago. For 'breakfast', I had pizza. My 'midnight snack' consisted of cereal. Completely opposite of normal. Ahh, me, the abnormal one.

Apple finally released the new iMac.

iMac G5 iMac G5 side

Besides it looking like an anorexic eMac, I like it. It offers a lot of bang for the buck, and makes great strides towards getting rid of desktops all together. The thing about it that throws me off at first is the giant white part under the screen, making this the "Jay Leno" of computers with it's giant "chin." This feeling quickly passed, however, when I learned that it's there because it houses the power supply and speakers. This is a boon because all you have to do is plug in a normal power cord, not a special one with a giant power brick attached to it. Anyways, all I have to do is convince Laurie [and I guess her parents] that this is what they should get for their new computer [Laurie tells me that they're going to get a new computer this fall / Christmas].

Nick got a new cell phone, the SE T637 [basically mine]. Copycat! :D Good choice though.

Plans for tomorrow: repackage my college supplies. Everything from college has remained in a giant collective of plastic bags since I moved out. Actually, my mom gave me a scare today because she said I had to move all of my stuff including my computer to somewhere else. You see, the window in my bedroom is complete crap and always has been, so we're getting it replaced with something decent, and I'm typing this message with my computer & monitor against the window. Fortunately for me, I move out on Monday and they're starting work on the window on Tuesday or Wednesday. Hooray for good timing!

Wedding Pictures - posted by magicite

Wednesday, August 25, 2004 at 3:41 pm

Alright, the wedding pictures are finally up. There's a remote uploading application for the 'gallery' software I use, so that helped in the process quite a bit. You can find the pictures in the usual place.

Here's my advice on knowing when you have to pee when you're sleeping: if you have a dream where you're floating down a river in a hot air balloon, and the river eventually turns into a street, which just happens to be next to a public information building, which ends up being Ryan Howie's house [and it looks nothing like his house], and the toilet room inside is really small [because my dream said that Japanese businessmen, who apparently deal with Howie's dad, donate money to making the smallest toilet room possible [fetish?] after striking a deal with Howie's dad], and upon peeing in the toilet [while standing up -- couldn't sit down] and missing, you find yourself not yet relieved, so you pee again, and again, and again. That's when you know you should wake up and go pee.

Finished - posted by magicite

Wednesday, August 25, 2004 at 3:15 am

I finished all 9 hours, 10 minutes of the Shogun DVD set in 23 hours. If that's not proof that I have a lot of free time right now, I don't know what is.

Today I reunited with a bunch of internet friends, well, online. The secrecy of the organization forbids me from saying any more. Heck, I've already said too much. At any rate, it's interesting talking to old friends and seeing what's new.

I finally saw the final matrix tonight. Maybe it was because I had extremely low expectations, or everyone else is a dolt, but I enjoyed it. My only complaint is that there aren't really very many 'philosophical' parts to it. Nothing really makes you say "What?" in your mind. Just lots of action. And there's nothing wrong with lovely, pointless action.

A little over 2 weeks until classes start up at Olaf again. It'll be good to go back, but at the same time, I so love not doing anything, and having no real responsibilities. The biggest hurdle in my day is forcing myself into the shower. That's how lazy I am.

Hopefully I'll go clothes shopping with my mom tomorrow. I say hopefully because my mom is well-known for changing things at the last minute [or just general announcing things at the last minute, such as relatives' birthday parties]. Not only have I not gotten any new clothes in well over a year, the recent use of my house's laundry facilities proved fatal to half of my clothing collection. Giant rust stains devoured several white shirts, pants, and socks. I'm sure a few colored shirts are badly ruined as well, but at least the coloring tends to hide the iron stains. I can't wait to use nice, city water at Olaf when doing my laundry. Ahh, life's luxuries.

Still haven't put up the wedding pictures. I made an attempt at doing it today, but for some reason I got distracted and didn't do it. I don't know how that happened, given all of my free time. Oh well.

The torrent for Fullmetal Alchemist 45 was released recently. I'm definitely all over that.

Daniel Edwins, a friend of mine who will be going to St. Olaf this fall, has a link to an interesting thing on his blog. The concept is not new, but the application is rather nifty. The highest number I got was 4, though the record is almost 3 times that. 'tis a good way to waste a lot of time. Read: If you're at work and bored, Laurie, go there! :)

I plan on changing my class schedule around a little bit, but as it stands, on Tuesdays, I only have 45 minutes for lunch. Other than those 45 minutes, I have class from 8am until 5:30pm. Talk about major suckage. Definitely need to get my schedule changed a bit! Through the miracle of pulling strings (read: stepdad works in the biology department), I'm going to have my biology class & lab moved to MWF instead of TTh. If for some reason I can't have it changed, which I could actually see happening [crap like that happens to me all the time], it'll be a very, very interesting semester for me.

Apple will be releasing the new G5 iMacs next week, and I'll be all over that, so expect major droolage on my behalf then. Just a fair warning.

Instead of sending Nick a check for the TV he bought that I actually bought [wedding present], we used the Miracle of the Internet and electronically transfered the money. Ahh, technology, how I love thee.

Brother Joel has been gone for the past day and should be coming back sometime on Wednesday. He left right after I returned home from Laurie's on Monday, so for all intents and purposes, I haven't really seen him since last Wednesday (I left before Joel had really awoken on Thursday). He claims to have increased his UT skills as a result of getting a new graphics card as a windfall. I highly doubt this, and will prove my superior UT skills once more upon his return.

I leave with this thought: Am I the only one who doesn't care for the Olympics?

Zoink! - posted by magicite

Tuesday, August 24, 2004 at 1:54 am

Well, I've been busy once more. My car is having trouble still, and I haven't had it checked out. Soon�Ѣ.

I finished with Shogun mid last week, and I really liked it. I bought the DVDs of the miniseries as well, and I'm on the 3rd DVD as we speak. Good times. Like I said before, I highly recommend the book.

On Thursday, I made my way off to Laurie's house again. She recently cut her hair from being, well, long to short, and I think it looks great, even if she doesn't believe me. Where's the trust!? :) It was good to see her again, but our original plan of going up North to see her grandparents fell through because her grandpa was sick. Hopefully he gets better soon.

When I got there, Laurie and I took a small walk to a nearby park and went on the swings which was fun. Later on, we started watching Gone With the Wind, since I had never seen it. Oh yeah, and for the record, I always thought that Gone With the Wind was in black and white and about horses. Oh how wrong I was.

On Friday, we went to go see Collateral, while Laurie's sister, Julie, and a friend of hers went to The Village. Collateral was ok, but it's one of those movies I wouldn't necessarily pay money for. Rent / pirate it.

On Saturday, we trekked off to Milwaukee. We endured a fairly strong breeze and the lake effect [coolness] for awhile before heading into the nearby art museum. Oh yeah, there seems to have been tons of people getting married or visiting the museum after getting married. Anyways, we looked at . . . art and stuff. It was interesting, at least, more interesting than most of the art galleries that I have been to. The first part was kind of boring, though, I thought. There were a bunch of pictures by one artist who really, really liked including bears in his pictures. It's his artistic style, but meh, too many bears in one spot for me.

On Sunday, I finally met one of Laurie's friends who has evaded me [not by choice] for the past 11 months. That lasted about three hours, two of which I had a headache and at the same time, the topics at hand were things I couldn't really participate in, such as old teachers. Oh well. Laurie's friend, "Kana," was interesting nonetheless. Later on, Laurie and I went on a walk with two friends of hers for about half an hour. It was kind of nice seeing them again [I had seen both of them before].

On Monday morning, Laurie left early to go to work, and I woke up several hours later and left. Before leaving, Laurie's mom made some tasty french toast. Mmmmm, tasty french toast. Good times.

Anyway, I'm back now, and like I said, watching the Shogun DVDs. For some reason, sitting in my chair for long periods of time now causes my hands to tingle and kind of go numb. I'm sitting at an angle in my chair, and I think it's pinching a nerve somewhere where it shouldn't be. This chair really, really needs more padding. Perhaps I'll buy a new chair. Nah, too lazy.

Since I'm done with Shogun, I've started reading Musashi. It is definitely different from Shogun, and I can tell that several things have been lost in translation. Also, to fully appreciate it, I feel a broad understanding of Japanese culture is necessary. I guess the somewhat fairy-tale-like plot is what kind of turns me off. By this I mean, Takezo / Musashi, the main character, never seems to really have any problems. Or, rather, he does, but he overcomes them rather easily, or so it seams. However, I'm only about 200 pages into it, so we'll see how things go. I think another thing I need in order to fully appreciate it is to have a different mind set.

Oh yeah, Arby's rocks, and so does Ramen. Mmmmm.

I've been looking into buying some Japanese learning software, namely, the Rosetta Stone Learning Japanese software. The problem is that it costs like $200. Takai desu ne! Speaking of Japanese, I need to crack open my Japanese book and review. I will not have time to study when college starts again, so it'd be good to get the reviewing done now instead of later. I have a feeling that, with the exception of the kanji, I'll be able to review / relearn the stuff quite quickly. Let's hope!

Blah, I've been ignoring Storm Stalker. It really sucks to develop on dialup, and I think I need to think through the interface a bit more thoroughly before continuing. I want it to have a multi-location setup, but some of the things I've implemented are location-independent, so they logically need to be found in a place different from the location-dependent information. I'm currently using the illogical, group everything together method.. Hmm hmm indeed.

The book list for this semester's classes was posted recently. I think I'll buy from amazon and save like 70% over the stupid college bookstore prices. Damn dirty college . . .

Shogun - posted by magicite

Saturday, August 14, 2004 at 11:48 pm

I forgot to mention stuff about Shogun. I totally like it, and recommend it to other people. It's kind of cool because there are tidbits of Japanese strewn throughout it, followed by the English meaning. It's cool being able to read the Japanese without needing the English.

I'm a bit over half done, nearing page 700 or something. After this'll be Musashi.

All Caught Up - posted by magicite

Saturday, August 14, 2004 at 11:12 pm

Well, it has been awhile since I posted, but it has not been because of laziness. Nick finally got married on the 6th, and everything went terrific. There were a few problems, as to be expected, but nothing show stopping and nothing most people would have been able to pick up on. I got to drive Emily's car, which would be much much cooler if the steering wheel could be adjusted [I honestly didn't know that cars were made where the steering wheel can't be adjusted] and if it had cruise control. You don't realize how much you rely on cruise control until it's no longer available.

Joel [roommate] moved out on Saturday. The way things worked out, I didn't get to see him moved out or see his parents. Oh well. I'm sure we'll cross paths at some point in time. Late[r] that night, Howie, Laurie, and myself drove up to the cities to return our tuxes and get some grub. We ate at Red Lobster, of course, where we dined in delicious Cheddar Bay Cheese Biscuits. Mmmm, so good. Later that night, the three of us brought the newlyweds to the airport for their honeymoon.

Laurie helped me move out on Sunday, as did Howie and Josh and one of his friends. Jeez, I have a lot of crap that I am not bringing back to college. It's all stuff that has accumulated as well, crap I never use, such as stuff my mom gives me for Christmas or Easter that I never use [I think I've gotten about 3-4 bathroom totes in my life]. Blah.

Sunday night and Monday night was spent playing UT2k4 with my brother, Joel. He doesn't like to admit it, but I can definitely take him any day in anything but deathmatch. I don't play deathmatch.

On Tuesday, Joel and I drove up North to join my parents on our cabin. That consisted mostly of sleeping, reading, and being bugged by my mom about Benecol. Ugh. Don't ask.

I talked to Laurie on each and every night, which was nice. Looks like we might be doing something next weekend. Hooray!

Tomorrow I'm going to my cousin's birthday party, which my mom informed me of after our first day of being up North. Typical mom behavior, but I had told Nick that I couldn't pick up up at the airport on Sunday morning because I was going to be up North. The birthday party caused us to come back a day earlier, so I could have done it. Oh well. Given my sleep schedule up North, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it had I known ahead of time anyway.

I'll try and post a bunch of wedding pictures tonight / tomorrow. There's a lot, so procrastination is winning out.

Update - posted by magicite

Thursday, August 5, 2004 at 12:04 am

Laurie's coming tomorrow, the dress rehearsal is tomorrow, I'm printing my poster tomorrow, I'm finishing my speech tomorrow, et cetera et cetera. The next 5 days of my life are going to be hectic. Finishing up with work, seeing Laurie again, finishing my speech, giving my presentation thingy, doing wedding stuff, driving Nick & Emily to and from the airport, hotel, et cetera, packing all of my shit up, and finally heading up North. Jeez.

I'm in for one hell of a week.

Time to pick up Joel - posted by magicite

Monday, August 2, 2004 at 10:52 pm

Joel's plan should arrive around 11:45 PM CST, but for some unknown reason it seems to have been delayed by an hour and a half. This means I'm going to have to leave later and get back later. Argh. I had my night planned wonderfully. Silly airline industry.

Had food at my parents house this evening, but I think I'm going to go out and grab something to eat while driving up to get Joel. My evening meal was extremely light and the only thing I've had to eat all day, outside of a few tropical dots.

I've finally started to work on the best man speech, and it seems to be shaping up rather nicely. Does anyone know how long they're supposed to be? I fear mine is getting rather long. E-mail me at l_ands_tei@sto_laf.edu -- take out all of the underscores (_) before emailing me though. That's an anti-spam guard.

Silly St. Olaf Policies - posted by magicite

Monday, August 2, 2004 at 2:08 am

So suddenly St. Olaf is requiring us to register our computer to the network. This isn't that big of a deal, but they have you agree to a set of rules with some inherent problems. Here's a rough draft of my letter being sent to the IIT department / Roberta Lemke.

---
Hello, It's the wee hours of the morning at the moment and I decided I'd "register" my computer to the network. No big deal, I figured, just simply place in my login and password and that would be that. However, there are a few important matters that need to be discussed before I get even close to hitting the "Submit Registration" button.

The first little checkbox has this label: I understand and agree to abide by all IIT Computing Policies. Now, I have a general idea as to where these policies may be found, but I'm sure the majority of my friends would not know where to go, and would simply check this box. Putting a link to a complete listing of the IIT's policies would be, in my opinion, a good thing.

The second checkbox has this label: I agree to install all available critical and security patches on this computer. I really have no problem with this point, as it is valid and necessary to maintain a strong, secure network. Perhaps a link would be helpful here as well, though, directing both Mac and PC users to a page describing how they can keep their computers up to date.

The third checkbox has this label: I have installed antivirus software on this computer and have a current subscription to keep it up-to-date. If you are using a PC and do not have antivirus software installed, please install our free version of Symantec Antivirus. First and foremost, I am running Mac OS X, and as a result, antivirus software is entirely unnecessary. There have been no known viruses for Mac OS X. You may be aware of an alleged virus (http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,63000,00.html?tw=rss.TEK), but that article more than dispels the alleged danger that this virus causes. Another "virus" (actually a trojan horse) popped up a few months later (http://www.intego.com/news/pr42.html), but this was a simple AppleScript and not really a virus. Furthermore, the "virus" was only obtainable via the shadier parts of the net (filesharing networks). It is for this reason that I find the requirement to have antivirus software installed to be entirely extraneous. While I'm not saying that Mac OS X is completely invulnerable to virus attacks, the demand to purchase antivirus software for Mac OS X machines is a bit overboard at this point. Keeping one's system completely up to date is sufficient. Furthermore, only a free version of Symantec Antivirus for the Windows OS is provided. How is this being paid for, and if Mac OS X users are supposed to get antivirus software, are they supposed to pay for it themselves?

The final checkbox has this label: I understand that IIT may monitor my computer and disconnect my computer if it is causing problems on the network. This is quite interesting, as it brings up a whole bunch of issues. What exactly is meant by "monitoring?" What is defined as a "problem?" To what extent do you plan on monitoring machines, and how does each users' privacy fit into this scheme?

While I'm sure most people will simply click these checkboxes without really caring, I would rather not agree to a set of rules that I do not plan on following or that I do not agree with (checkbox number 3 in particular).

Thank you for your time, Ben Landsteiner
---

Let's hope a few of those issues get resolved.

On a much sadder note, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Pixar and Apple, underwent emergency surgery on Sunday to remove a rare form of pancreatic cancer. 99% of pancreatic cancer is incurable and most people die a year within being diagnosed. Thankfully, Steve Jobs has the 1% of pancreatic cancer that is curable if detected early on, and, well, it was detected early on. Let's hope he recovers swiftly.

Only a few more days until Nick's wedding. Yikes. Still no Best Man speech.

Oh yeah, some cool information about my last name taken from my brother's blog:

---
So I got ahold of some interesting history on my direct male line decendents, the original Landsteiners and where they came from.�� It seems that the furthest back I can trace my lineage is to Jerusalem, around 1100 AD.�� Landstej, was the name (and strange, since that is my Olaf e-mail address).�� There it meant, to work the ground, but not in the form of farming, but pottery.�� Yes, I'm the product of a huge line of potters, masons and sculpters.

After Jerusalem, the Landstej family moved to the Czechlosvokia area and established influence in the area.�� They changed their name to Landstejn.

From Czechlosvokia, the family moved to Austria where they were feudal lords.�� They established two castles in Pomezi: One of which fell, the second of which stands on top of the remains of the first. Today, this is one of the largest remaining and best preserved castles in the world. In the move to Austria, the 'er' was added to Landstejner, and after that it was germanized to what it is today, Landsteiner.

Castle Landstejn has had a very rich history. Most of which involves ruling and nobility. My direct ancestress 'the White Lady', was said to lay a curse upon her decendents that would punish the Landstej who failed to keep the Lord's Commandments by giving them deathly illness.�� I stand testament to those who have fallen before me, as the rest of this famous and powerful family has perished.

To read more about it, check this out: http://fmv.vse.cz/cz/castles/landstej.htm
---

Good times. I am no longer a farmer but a potter. Much, much better. :)

Return of the Magi - posted by magicite

Sunday, August 1, 2004 at 1:54 am

And I'm back. I've been housesitting and doing stuff with Benson up in St. Cloud [including his Bachelor party] over the past week, so I haven't had any time to post. I finished up Dune, and overall I liked it. Next up is going to be Taipan, Shogun, or Musashi. Haven't decided yet. It'll probably be Shogun.

My new phone kicks ass, as does the case I bought for it. Good times.

One more week until Benson gets married. Scary!

Joel's leaving for a day [to Colorado] at 9am on Sunday. Which means I'll be allll alone. Miles plans on coming over tomorrow and watching some of the FMA episodes he hasn't watched yet. Episodes 41 and 42 were so amazingly good. So much plot progress.

Time to head over to Reynolds' house. I'm "moving out" of her house tomorrow before Miles drops by.

And I'm Off - posted by magicite

Friday, July 23, 2004 at 2:59 pm

Within an hour, I'll be on the road again to Laurie's house. We plan on going to a bonfire tonight, where I'll (gasp!) meet all of Laurie's friends. Should be . . . interesting. Yes, that's a good word to use.

I'm definitely sore from yesterday, but not nearly as sore as I had expected. Luckily my arms don't feel incredibly heavy like I expected. It would have made driving 4 hours an extra large pain in the ass.

Work progressed today on the Mac OS X superinstaller. I think I have all of the CCT-required Perl libraries nailed down, but now blastall crashes randomly. It's definitely because I've been attempting to only include required files in the superinstaller in order to keep its size down. Right now, it's at 10 megs, which is quite respectable. The uncompressed version is around 37 megs.

Joel and Dan plan on having a barbecue this evening. Hopefully they'll enjoy themselves. They'll have to tell me how things went when I return.

I can't wait to see Laurie. :)

Yay for new cell phone! - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 10:46 pm

Alright, I just bought a new cell phone. new_cell_phone

Good times, only it cost a hell of a lot. Oh well. I need toys to sustain me.

I'm visiting Laurie this weekend again. Hooray! Her hometown is having their yearly celebration [ie, fair] so we'll have plenty to do. Good times.

Starting tonight, I'm house-sitting for Reynolds again. Good times. Her house rocks. Joel's going to tag along as well since it's so damn hot in the dorms.

Benson, Joel, and myself made supper over there as well tonight. It's so nice to be able to actually make a decent meal in a kitchen all to yourself. Even the dishes are already done . . . they're done because we had a SINK all to ourselves. Damn inadequate St. Olaf facilities . . .

Sigh. Now I must wait for my toy. Probably won't get here until Tuesday or something. Major suckage.

Stormage - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 1:43 am

Storm Stalker continues to move along nicely, and as luck would have it, there's a major thunderstorm coasting through MN right now. Good times. There's another wave coming in about an hour, and Joel and I are going to stay up for it. Excellent.

Laurie had an eventful day today, but I won't go into details. If you know what I'm talking about, then, well, you know. If you don't know, then, you probably will never know. At any rate, Laurie got a few extra hugs and kisses [well, internet ones at least] tonight. Bad times.

90% done with my final poster, and starting tomorrow, I'm house sitting for Miss Reynolds. Mmm, air conditioning.

I'm at page 210 of Dune. It seems like a good book. Speaking of which, I'm going to go read that now.

The Weekend - posted by magicite

Monday, July 19, 2004 at 1:34 am

About to read / go to bed, so this'll be short.

I'm working on a new Cocoa application called "Storm Stalker." It's going to be great. I spent all day Saturday and a few hours on Sunday working on it.

I went to my cousin's birthday / barbecue party. Good times. Joel^2, my mom, and myself played badminton for far too long. Good times, though.

Go check out the photos section. A frog decided to visit this afternoon at the party, so I got some cool pictures of it.

Weird Sickness - posted by magicite

Friday, July 16, 2004 at 4:19 pm

Benson dropped by work here today to pick up the key to my room. I think there was some sort of chemical on him or something, because right when he came in, I smelled something and it made my nose really hurt and water. I asked him if he had come in contact with anything, but he said he hadn't. Anyways, I'll find out later after work and Olaf when I return to the dorm.

Work on the Mac OS X superinstaller continues. I think I'm completely done, but I have to test it. Another issue that cropped up is that CCT currently requires something called RCS, but that's a developer's tool. It's not installed on Mac OS X boxes by default. It's easy to engineer CCT to not use RCS [its usage is questionable at best anyways], but that would mean I'd have to redo a bunch of documentation, go through a round of testing, and so forth. Blah blah blah.

I think I'll start working on my final poster next week to get it out of the way.

Tonight, Joel, John, Dan, and myself plan on making a 'decent' meal of seasoned chicken, mashed potatoes, and possibly corn and/or beans. It'll be our first "full" meal. Usually our meals are lacking in variety. It's never "mac and cheese with corn on the side," it's always just "mac and cheese."

Three weeks until Nick's wedding. Three. Whole. Weeks. And I still haven't gotten him anything for his wedding, I don't know what to get him for his wedding, and I still haven't planned for his bachelor party. Alright, I need to promise myself--next weekend will be Nick's bachelor party. It can't really be any later because he'll be busy and out of state. Next week it is. If I can pull it off, I'd like to keep it 'secret' to most people [one person in particular, actually]. And no, it's not you Laurie.

I highly recommend participating in the Shakespeare Monkey Simulator. Joel and I have gotten 17 letters. A new record is attained about once a month.

Blah - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 at 10:37 pm

Nothing new today. Only thing interesting to note is that the next iMac will indeed have a G5 in it. Excellent.

The bioinformatics meeting this morning was interesting. It was good for the experience more than anything else.

The canoe trip tomorrow has been rescheduled until next Tuesday or Thursday.

I received my books today: Dune, Tai-Pan, Musashi, and Shogun. Got the DVD The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra from a friend. I have very low expectations of it, so maybe it'll surprise me and be good.

Good Sleep - posted by magicite

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 at 8:40 pm

For some reason, I woke up fully rested and with lots of energy yesterday. I have no idea why. I didn't have my usual post-wakeup morning hangover that I usually get for whatever reason. The only thing odd about that night was that I didn't use a blanket [it was really hot in here] and I slept on my back. Actually, I was probably more tired than usual given that I had done quite a bit on Sunday. Maybe being somewhat physically active helps you sleep better. Who'd a thought :)

Rob is testing my CCT additions now. While I'm waiting for him to get back to me, I'm going to look into adding another program module. No clue what it'll be yet though. I also want to start making a Mac OS X installer and designing CCT v2.0. Rob also said that I could relax some more if I wanted to. Buahaha, what a nice job.

Tomorrow, Joel and I have to get up extra early so that we can go into the cities to go to a "roundtable" discussion on bioinformatics with some bigwigs. No idea what that entails, though. I'll guess I'll report back tomorrow.

On Thursday, the science department is having their annual canoe trip. Joel and I plan on going, but we're not too sure what we need to bring / where we meet / et cetera. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Today was the annual summer research picnic. Good times. The best part included watching ants carry a cookie up a wall [quite impressive!] and playing frisbee. Good times. Joel and I brought salad and clementines [oranges].

Howie, Benson, and Joel are here right now. Howie is updating his computer [he only has dialup at home, so he's doing the downloading here] and Nick is doing the usual programming thang. Joel is VNCing into the work computer in order to get some last minute work done. He just got tons and tons of data and is having a few perl scripts process it all. Mmm, using Perl for what it was made to do. Good times.

Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand is a great song. Go buy / listen to it.

Mac and Cheese - posted by magicite

Monday, July 12, 2004 at 7:23 pm

Oh man, I love Mac and Cheese. Whoever thought to combine pasta and cheese deserves an extra pat on the back. Whoever decided to dump in the occasional hot dog deserves a pat on the back as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this past weekend [surprise, surprise]. I arrived at Laurie's house around 7:30 on Friday. I was a tad bit sick, but I decided to go anyway. We ended up talking with her family and eventually watching a movie down in the basement.

After waking up on Saturday, we went for a 45 minute or so walk. We needed to pass some time after that, so we mucked around on the computer for a bit until supper at 4. It was early, but for good reason.

At 5, Laurie had to cantor at church, so we all went there. She was wonderful, as usual, and after that we returned home and waited for a limousine. A friend of Julie's [Laurie's sister] was throwing a surprise birthday party for Julie. The limo finally arrived, and eventually Laurie and I got to ride in it, which was fun given that I've never been in one before.

After this was over, Laurie and I went to The Union, which is the student center for UW Madison. We hung out downtown and on the lake for awhile before returning home and eventually going back to bed.

On Sunday morning, after a tasty brunch provided by Laurie's mom, we went to go see some goats that lived nearby. After this, we went to a sporting event being hosted in Madison. Basically, we came to watch dogs jump off of a "dock." While we were waiting in line for the event, it began to pour. We stayed there anyways, and sat through 45 minutes of rain and seeing 3 dogs jump. The water had messed with all of the electronic equipment, so they kept delaying the event until we finally left since I had to leave and Julie had a basketball game to go to.

After saying goodbye to Laurie, I headed back home and listened to Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Coldplay, and the radio on the way. The Arby's stop proved to be fruitful as well, since they actually gave me lots of curly fries and lots of meat in my roast beef sandwich. It feels good to get what you actually bought rather than be shafted.

On the way back, in La Crosse, I met perhaps the worst downpour I've ever seen. The rain came down so quickly that there was a couple inches of standing water on a bridge, an overpass bridge, which caused the car in front of me to lose control and almost go in the ditch. I quickly braked, but also lost control for a short period of time, and felt the vibrations of the breaking water hit my car. Bad times. Later on, I saw several cars in the ditch and right as I was in the middle of the bridge connecting MN & WI on I90, the sun was out while it was still pouring out, and everything was yellow. It was the weirdest thing ever. It gave birth to one of the most fantastic rainbows I have ever witnessed. Two rainbows, actually, which were both "complete," save for a small amount of dimming on the top of the second rainbow.

Good times. Some pictures are up in the gallery.

Weekend Plans - posted by magicite

Friday, July 9, 2004 at 12:06 am

It looks like I'm going to be able to see Laurie this weekend after not being able to see her last weekend. Yay for me!

Unfortunately, my throat hurts. If it hurts really bad tomorrow, I may not go. However, it's possible I'll still go anyways since then Laurie can take care of me. There's also something else happening that I'll speak of the next time I post. It's hush hush.

I get to start writing documentation for CCT tomorrow. Rather, I get to update it. I need to include what I've changed and fix a few minor spelling / grammar errors. Read: Tomorrow is going to be boring as hell. Thankfully, I get to leave early in order to get to Wisconsin. Mmmm, the land of cheese.

Hartin her wisdom teeth taken out today, which means she'll be drugged up for several more days. Buahaha. Evil plans, EVIL PLANS! Err, cough cough, nevermind.

Oh mean, the weirdest thing happened on the forums today. Some Russian found the forums and is advertising herself 'for sale,' essentially. Damn, Russian Brides are hilarious. I googled some of her stuff and found out that she's all over the place. She finds forums and posts messages to them. I don't know how she found the llama farm, but I'll get to the bottom of it.

I'm skeptical, however. I'd be willing to bet that it's someone on the forums who goes out and does this for fun. The IP of the person checks out to be from Russia, but that's easy to spoof. I must get to the bottom of this. Unfortunately, it'll have to wait 'til tomorrow.

One thing going against them is that they always post at standard US times, not Russia times. My prime suspect is %(*@*%&(*@ I can't tell you. If I leak information, the bandit might try to erase his trail. Muahahaha.

Joel and I made tacos tonight and they were awesome. We'll have to do it again sometime. We were also watching Muholland Drive, but then Joel got distracted and now it's midnight. Hopefully we'll be able to finish it.

I also did something for about 3 hours straight last night. 3. Hours. Straight. More on that latter. And yes, this is a hint for someone. Note: HINT! I'm not going to say anything more about it.

Anyways, I'm off to go order myself a Russian bride . . .

Good Movie - posted by magicite

Wednesday, July 7, 2004 at 12:45 am

Joel, Dan, John, and myself went to go fetch my G5 and see Spiderman 2 this evening. I'm happy to report that the G5 is working superbly and that Spiderman 2 was great. I highly recommend seeing it. No plot spoilers here though.

We spent Saturday relaxing and putting a puzzle together.

Sunday was spent going to Grand Marais, putting another puzzle together, and watching fireworks. Fireworks directly in front of you, over a lake, and about 500? feet away at times. Very nice.

On Monday, after leaving the cabin, we went to Tettagouche and walked on Shovel Point. Good times, albeit a bit cool. For supper, we ate at Blackwoods.

And that brings us to today.

Benson bought the Simpsons 4th season DVD and Joel, Hartin, Benson, and myself are watching it as I type this. Mmmm, The Simpsons. Good good times.

Oh yeah, the hot water didn't work today in the dorms. Talking cold showers REALLY sucks. I hope it's warmer tomorrow morning . . .

Joel and I finally got Scrabble as well. We had two identical games up North for whatever reason, so we decided to bring one here. Good Scrabble fun in the future.

July 4th Pictures - posted by magicite

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 at 4:51 pm

I've posted some pictures from the 4th in the photo gallery. I'll post more tonight, but for now, I have to go fetch my G5 and go to Spiderman 2.

Hittin' the Road - posted by magicite

Friday, July 2, 2004 at 2:15 pm

Joel and I will be hitting the road shortly and heading up North. We plan on taking Monday off and coming back that day / night. Hopefully it won't be too boring.

Highlight support is now in tblastn. Another thing I'll be doing is adding an option so that the user can turn it off. If there are a lot of changes, it can get annoying. I have to reengineer highlighting in hmmpfam, but I don't expect that to be too big of a deal.

Looks like I'll be homesitting for everyone's favorite AP Chem teacher again sometime this month. It'll only be cats to watch after this time though.

Well, time to get driving.

Sleep - posted by magicite

Thursday, July 1, 2004 at 1:29 am

Well, I had planned on getting work done today, but instead I slept until 1 PM. Yikes. To my credit, I was feeling a bit sick and had a major headache, which continued throughout the day. I thought it was a caffeine headache, but it didn't go away.

Benson, Howie, and myself went to go get tuxes this afternoon. None of us really knew what we were doing, so we just let the salesperson do everything for us. Let's hope the tuxes turn out to be decent. They [Men's Wearhouse] seemed ok when I rented a tux for prom.

After that, Benson treated Howie and I to some tasty tasty Outback. Mmmmm, Outback. Oh how I love Bloomin' Onions and beef.

:: hears his heart skip a beat ::

After that, we went to the Mall of America. After checking in with the Apple store and informing them of another issue I was having, we went to Lego Land. Man, lego's are testament to man's desire to build and create. I think all three of us could have tinkered around for hours. We built little racing cars and then proceeded to race them. Good times indeed.

On the ride home, Howie and I watched a few Season 4 Simpsons episodes on Nick's iBook. We had the audio hooked up to Benson's car speakers, so there was Simpsons goodness all throughout the car. Man, I think season 4 was the start of some really really good Simpsons, though I'd have to see season 3 again to be sure.

Laurie is leaving for up North tomorrow morning, so we said our typical goodbye to each other. I hope she has a good time. Maybe I'll finally get around to writing her a letter. Maybe. As of right now, we've been dating for nine months. This is Laurie's longest relationship by 5 months [her other one lasted 4? months] and mine by 3 months [six months for the last one]. And we're both happy. At least she tells me she's happy. :)

It's 1:30am right now. Why oh why does my headache decide to go away now? And why can I think clearly right now? If I had it my way, I'd work on my programming stuff until the wee hours of the morning. I should really get my sleep problems checked out . . .

Two days until I head up North.

Up North - posted by magicite

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 at 12:20 am

Well, it looks like Joel and I will be going up North after all. We'll have to sleep on the floor, but that's ok.

St. Olaf didn't win the Bioinformatics Cluster Award, but that's ok. The winners included Washington University, MIT, and a few other college heavyweights. St. Olaf is a mere speck in the college continuum.

How do you deal with someone you can't stand when ignoring them just won't work?

July 4th Plans and more - posted by magicite

Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 12:52 am

Well, my plans with Laurie for July 4th seem to have fallen through. While she did get Thursday and Friday off, her parents thought it would be better if I didn't go this time since Laurie hasn't spent much time with her family. This means I'll be visiting her the weekend after the 4th, and Laurie's parents said that we could go together [and with Julie, if she's available] to their cabin up North. Excellent . . . we'll see if that pans out.

I didn't think this was too big of a problem, as I could just go up North with my family, and perhaps roommate Joel could tag along as well. Unfortunately, brother Joel tells me that there's not going to be much room, seeing as to how my Aunt, Uncle, and two cousins from Arizona will be up there as well. Poo. This will be my second year in a row staying in town. And last summer, my car broke down 10 minutes before fireworks. Grr.

Speaking of my car, I'm going up to the cities sometime tomorrow with my mom and Nick. First we'll be stopping at the Honda dealer and hopefully getting the audio code for my radio. Jeez, this security code thing is a ginormous pain in the ass. I really need to keep this code away from Henry [he lost it / hasn't looked hard enough for it]. Also, I'll be bringing my G5 in to the Apple store. Hopefully, Apple will have one of those new gigantic 30" LCD displays that I'm lusting after.

Cool 30 inch Apple LCD Display

By the end of this week, I'll be completely done with all that I needed to get done with this summer for research. Basically, I'm quite ahead of schedule. This means I'm going to be adding some features I hadn't planned on implementing. Rob and I also think that making a "super installer" for Mac OS X would be a great idea. This super installer would install all of the necessary perl libraries [namely bioperl] and all of the supported applications [such as blast, clustalw, hmmpfam, et cetera]. Basically, all a user would need to do is install our package, and they'd be ready to go. This would increase CCT's coverage immensely. Hopefully I'll get around to doing that.

One of the things I was supposed to do this summer for research was something we dubbed "titleline support." Let's say we have an unknown protein sequence, and we use BLAST to align it with the human genome. Let's then say that BLAST returns a sequence, but it's name / description is "Hypothetical Protein." Hypothetical only means no one knows what it does, not that it doesn't exist. Anyway, 'titleline' would inform you when that matched hypothetical protein updated to, say a Transcriptional Regulator or something. The new program is much cooler, as it does that and much more.

Instead of just showing the differences in the titleline, all differences are shown. While this will most of the time be the titleline, the actual sequence could be updated too. This new way of doing things is to just highlight the differences between the old results file and the new results file. An example follows, in FAFSA format:

>UniqueSequenceName | Hypothetical Protein TATAACGGCTGCAGTACGTAAGTCGATGA......

Let's say scientists determine that 'UniqueSequenceName' is a Transcriptional Regulator. The new thing would look like this:

>UniqueSequenceName | Transcriptional Regulator TATAACGGCTGCAGTACGTAAGTCGATGA......

In this case, Transcriptional Regulator would be highlighted, say, red or blue or some user-defined color. Actually, in the current implementation, the whole line (>UniqueSeq. . .ional Regulator) would be highlighted, but that's more of a limitation of the 'diff' perl modules I'm using (it goes line by line). Maybe that'll be a future enhancement.

Rob also told me today that he was happy with my progress and talked with me about future opportunities. He asked me if I was interested in doing some independent research in the spring [basically, what I'm doing now, but as a class]. He also mentioned working here next summer either working on CCT or doing something more Sciencey / less Computer Science. We'll have to see about that.

We also talked about CCT v2.0. We talked about MySQL support, and Rob pointed out the ODBA open-bio project going on. Looks like a good idea -- something that keeps forward compatibility. I just hope it doesn't get in the way of CCT v2.0's design. We also decided that if we were to ever do a CCT v2.0, we would have to start from the ground up. This isn't because of some major architectural problem with CCT, but because of the way having a database backend works. When doing something that requires a database backend, you always design the database first, and then the application. Doing it the other way around causes major, unnecessary problems down the line, and just plain ol' isn't sound design. The good thing is that most of the CCT code could be reused. All of the logic is the same, and all of the hard work of figuring out how BioPerl works has been done already. Things would just need to be sliced and diced a little bit in order to properly fit around the database model.

Still need to work on the speech for Benson's wedding.

I haven't gotten any books to read yet, but I heard that Shogun is good. Any one agree / disagree?