My New Year's resolution: be a good person. What's the point of anything more?
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As I write this, I am in the middle of my 5-hour prelicensing course. Not much happened this week, really; I sent and received a bunch of emails, did a little work, played Final Fantasy 9, and so on. I am sort of looking forward to going back to school, but at the same time I could use a little more time to finish FF9 first - as is it looks like I won't have time.
I don't know whether this is a good or a bad thing, but it's started to feel painful again that I'm single. Since historically I haven't taken much action to alleviate that feeling, it probably tends more toward the bad side of things. Perhaps my excessive busyness (that's not a typo) this coming semester will take my mind off of it...
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We had the first serious snowfall this past night. My dad is driving us home right now and he's only going 52 on the Thruway - and we're passing people. I guess snow had to fall at some point this year...
Saturday I got a lot of things, surprisingly none of which were computer-related. I got a new hat (identical to the old one I lost a year ago, I think - I even got it at Lord and Taylor's again), a pocketwatch (to replace the one I broke, though the new one is much nicer) and a backup pair of glasses. In addition, I took a used receiver which was sitting in my mom's closet to replace mine, which I think is dead (Nance, my dad's girlfriend, is going to take it to a place she knows of nearer to where she lives that's good at assessing these kinds of things), and of course, I passed my 5-hour course, so I can schedule a road test at some point in the future (though not before I go back to school at this point).
I'm starting to get upset that I can't find my Playstation memory card. I hope I do, because it has 30 hours of Final Fantasy 9 on it, and I don't want to have to redo that. I spent most of yesterday watching Trigun with a pause for The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, and The X-Files. The Simpsons was unusually goody-goody, Malcolm was typically entertaining, and The X-Files managed to make an entire episode about Mulder without actually showing his face a single time. I would have been playing Final Fantasy 9 but for the memory card issue... (not during the TV shows, but instead of Trigun.)
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I managed to find my memory card. It was in my bathrobe. God knows what kind of mental state I was in to ever think that putting it there was a good idea. There was also a $10 bill there, which was a nice bonus.
I was wondering if there was any way I was going to get to see Charlie before going back. It was getting down to the length of time where I would just barely be able to fit it in, but he called, so I went over to his place for a night. I'm tired between that and Monday night, when I didn't seem to get quite enough either, although Charlie says anything beyond six hours of sleep isn't physically necessary and that maybe I have a mild addiction. :-)
I'm going to miss my cats a lot, but I am looking forward to going back to school. I just wish I had a few more days free to finish Final Fantasy 9. I almost could have finished it if I hadn't lost my memory card, but I think I still wouldn't have quite made it. The first few weeks of school are always reasonably slow, though, and I have no classes on Fridays at all, so hopefully I'll be able to finish it before things really start moving there.
Ragnar's definitely getting OpenBSD at some point; only question is time frame. The web page you're reading now may well have been served from OpenBSD, depending on how my schedule works out and the reason Ragnar hasn't been responding to any network traffic for most of break.
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Well, I'm back, and Ragnar is back up. Damn maintenance people... just like I thought. At least it wasn't hardware problems.
I didn't get to see Harry Potter on Friday due to Crossgates changing the schedules that day and my dad not knowing about it. I thought I might see it today (well, yesterday now), but it turned out not to be playing at the time we had hoped at the theater my dad and I stopped at. It seems that the world has a conspiracy against me seeing that movie...
I saw A Beautiful Mind instead. About the first hour or so wasn't very good, but it got a lot better. About all I should say about it is that it's apparently based on a true story (though I need to do more research to make sure) and that it's probably worth renting at least, going to the theater if you're the kind of person who generally likes doing that. Although whoever made it has obviously never personally had a burst of mathematical inspiration...
No energy to write a longer update. I drove 400 miles yesterday. It can wait.
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You're reading this page from OpenBSD. It was surprisingly easy to set up - my website only had a few hours of downtime. There are still a few tweaks that need doing eventually, but all the basic stuff (serving web pages and reading mail) work fine.
OS was fun this morning. Kesden accidentally overslept due to some medication he had taken, so about half an hour into the class (when someone was apparently about to dismiss the class), the other TAs and I took over the class and went over the syllabus. We played Hangman, and now everyone knows my name, due to the question after it was a word: "Does your name really have an extra 'n'?" and my response "Yes, and if you forget it, I will be very pissed!" :-)
I went to a KGB meeting with Ed after Experimental Physics (my only class on Mondays). I can definitely see why they could be interesting, and their parody of bureaucracy really makes one appreciate just how terrible actually being under a real bureaucracy is. Furthermore, their meetings are quite a bit of fun. Nevertheless, I don't know at this point if I'll do anything with them long-term - just a sampler for now.
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Hmm, I guess I've been getting lazy with the updates. Oh well...
I've had a full week of classes already, since none of them meet on Friday, but not much experience TAing OS yet. My office hours are from 3 to 7 this afternoon and people are actually working on the shell, though, so I should get a good chunk of that later today. I will say that having 4 and a half hours in a row of CS, starting at 9:00, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sucks. I'm sorry, but that's just too much to deal with. If I didn't have Robert and wireless ethernet, it would probably drive me up a wall... as is, I'm always looking for a power outlet.
It may be the honeymoon period (generally whenever you install an OS, everything works really well at least for a while, because everything is still set up in the default configuration, which is pretty well tested), but I'm really liking OpenBSD. The ports system (*BSD's answer to the fact that few bother to actually port their software to it :-) is pretty cool; I used it to upgrade Pine to the latest, hopefully more secure version. The only problem is that compiling software on Ragnar is slow. I mean, I can start it and not watch it constantly, but it was kind of irritating to not be able to check my email for several hours. Oh well...
My first impressions of each of my classes: Physics looks a lot easier than I had expected, and since Ed's in the class, not too bad overall (although it is a huge chunk of time). Computer vision looks like interesting material, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of doing all of the assignments in Matlab. Computer graphics looks quite good; I may have to rearrange my priorities next semester to take advantage of the course in video game programming that's being offered. The only problem so far is that I wanted to start on the project which was supposed to be out yesterday, and it's still not up on the course website. Algorithms looks more or less like what I expected - a hard-core CS theory class. It shouldn't be too bad, but I must admit that lecture without Robert would be quite dull. Metaphysics is... well, it's pretty much exactly what I would look for in a philosophy course. We go over interesting material, the class involves a fair amount of discussion, etc.
Since I'm up so early I may actually go to OS lecture today... unless I fall back asleep. :-)
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Over the weekend I played Final Fantasy 9. I finally managed to get unstuck, got stuck again, got unstuck again, and am now stuck once more, but I decided to save my game and call it a night. I will beat this game no matter what it takes. It's a symbol for me of what I've waited so long for...
I got absolutely no work done over the weekend, which I suppose is fitting. That's not to say I accomplished nothing, though - there were certainly tasks that needed to be done which I dispatched. And the 4 hours in which we don't have class tomorrow (CMU sort of half-celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day) happen to coincide with my only class, meaning that this will be a 4-day weekend for me (all weekends are 3-day, since I have no classes on Friday :-).
Laura was temporarily removed from the network due to a mistaken portscan of the wrong address, coupled with the fact that using port 12345 for an actual purpose wasn't the greatest idea, since it's the port used by a well-known Windows trojan. :-) She seems to be back on the network now. I wasn't affected much since Ragnar and Robert still had network access, and Mark set up a SOCKS proxy which allows any program that supports it to go through it.
Oh yeah, The Simpsons was actually very funny this past night. It hasn't always been so great recently, so that was a pleasant surprise. King of the Hill (which I don't usually watch, but I tuned in half an hour early this time) and Malcolm in the Middle were both quite good too.
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Guess I went a little too long without an update this time. A lot of stuff has been piling up. This coming week I have three CS assignments due, one in each of my classes, and I've only started the one for Algorithms. I also should try to get demand paging working in my kernel so that we can give it out as a project later in the semester, although the time is a bit more flexible on that one.
I was up all night (literally; I had Amp) Wednesday into Thursday porting a rotating cube example program given out in graphics class from C to O'Caml. The OpenGL bindings can be found here. I also found an image library. I'm surprised that so many support packages are actually available for O'Caml. I'd prefer to use it for my graphics assignments, rather than C or C++ (it was originally suggested as a choice for the adventurous by my graphics professor, who's really more of a functional programming researcher and is only teaching graphics because the university is too short of graphics faculty). I don't know if I'll be able to get everything working perfectly in time (this assignment is due on Thursday), in which case I'd just use C++ for this assignment and then try to use O'Caml on the remaining ones.
I finally got around to watching the Halloween Special of Invader Zim. While it was pretty funny to me, I can honestly see why Nickelodeon would choose to cancel the series - it doesn't really fit into their image at all. The episode was more insane than funny, and surely gave at least a few kids nightmares. I just wish they would sell the series to Cartoon Network instead of cancelling it entirely - it would fit in their lineup much better, and it's a terrible shame for such an excellent but mistargeted show to disappear entirely.
I haven't felt like I've had time to play Final Fantasy 9 at all this past week. It's not like I have no free time, it's just that it never seems to come in big enough chunks for me to start playing. Oh well...
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This won't be the longest update ever, since I really don't want to be awake now. Unless, that is, I ramble, since my 4.5-hour block of classes starts in under an hour, so there's no point going to sleep. Last night was one of the few academic all-nighters I've pulled in my life. My computer vision assignment I didn't botch up (at least, not too badly), but that's only because it was easy. I'm fairly certain I did botch up my Algorithms pretty badly, but there's nothing to be done about it now except try to plan better for next time.
I updated the page about Ragnar to reflect the fact that he runs OpenBSD now. He's been running it for quite some time, I just hadn't yet bothered to update the page.
I went to another KGB meeting yesterday. Then I went to a TA meeting where Mark Stehlik showed us how to teach sections. I don't have a section, but if I do a review session or decide to TA a class where I do have a section next year, it will come in handy. Besides, what else was I going to do - work on homework? BAH.
Sunday TV was good, as usual. The X-Files was a little disappointing, which seems a lot more important when you know the show is being cancelled. I can't say that I really regret it - I thought they pulled off the transition to the new characters, but they certainly lost a lot of viewers, and the show has been around for long enough that it's reasonable to call it quits. I sure hope they call out the fireworks for the finale, though.
Speaking of cancellations, whoever decided that Invader Zim should go needs to be jabbed repeatedly in the groin with a compass (you know, the kind you use to draw circles with, not the kind you use to find your way). I wish they'd sell the show to Cartoon Network so they could do something with it. GIR.
Panera may be expensive, but it's worth it.
The unlived life is not worth examining. I made that up. Well, I spoonerized it. Other people had done it earlier chronologically than I did, but I hadn't seen them do it, I swear!
Poke.
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Kenn Hamm
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Last modified: Tue Jan 29 08:17:51 2002