Kenn's journal entry of 2003/05/13, #01

2003-05-13

I haven't been not writing because nothing has been happening in my life. While there are things that could be further from the truth, they'd be really, really weird things. The reasons I haven't been writing are that my site has been down, that I've been lazy, and that I've used up most of my ability to commit my thoughts to verbal form on something else this past week or so. As usual, a few issues have take over a very large percent of my thinking time.

Robert III

I bought a new laptop. Cost me nearly a thousand dollars. This is a big expense, especially when I'm about to enter an uncertain period in my life. But this isn't just a totally irrational expenditure - I figure that I'm going to be moving around a lot more in the coming months, and thus will want to have a good computer to bring with me. Robert Jr., while I have never for a minute regretted buying him, has several deficiencies that have become quite annoying - inability to play movies (due to slow speed), lack of a DVD or even CD-ROM drive, operating system (this could be fixed, but with only 96M of RAM, nothing good will also be peppy), small storage capacity, and most annoyingly (in that it doesn't just mean I can't do certain things, but annoyingly interferes with almost everything I try to do on him), an incredibly flaky pointing device. Anyway, here are two descriptions of Robert III.

Non-geek version: Robert III is fast - about twice as fast as Laura, in fact. He probably can't play really new games (I haven't tried yet), but older or slower ones should be fine. He can play DVDs and burn CDs. He weighs about the same as Robert Jr. (7ish pounds). His screen is big, he has a touchpad, and he runs Windows XP (which I've managed to make act mostly like Windows 2000). He has a decent amount of storage for music, movies, pictures, etc. but not anywhere close to as much as Laura. He has wireless, but only because I gave Robert Jr.'s wireless card to him. He should be able to display on a TV once I get the cable. Oh, and he has lots of blue blinky lights.

Geek version: Athlon 1.53 Ghz, 256M RAM minus 64 for shared video memory = 64M usable, some non-Radeon ATI video card, 30G hard drive, 14" (I think) screen @ 1024x768, 24 (CD-R write) x 10 (CD-R/W write) x 24 (CD-R read) x 8 (DVD read) DVD + CD-R/W combo drive (Toshiba SD-R2312), 1 CardBus slot currently occupied by an ORiNOCO Silver 802.11b card, 1 Firewire port, 2 USB ports, 3ish hour battery life (depends a LOT on what you're doing), built-in 10/100 Ethernet, built-in Winmodem, S-Video TV out. HP ze4315us if you want to look it up, although there seems to be very little information about this model online.

Matrix ticket seeks date

The university bought tickets for graduating seniors to see The Matrix: Reloaded. Those ran out before I got one, but then they acquired 50 more. Each senior was allowed to purchase up to 2 tickets: the first for $7.00 for himself, the second for $9.50 for his guest if he wished.

While standing in line to buy my ticket, I pondered whether or not to buy a second one. I didn't have anyone in particular in mind - Ed was already going with Priya - and I had no intention of scalping a ticket. I tossed around in my head an idea I had also considered when I first intended to buy the tickets.

I bought two tickets, and upon arriving back in my room, I posted the following message to cmu.misc.market, a public bulletin board here at CMU:

Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 13:02:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kenn Brooks Hamm <khamm@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: kenn@cmu.edu
Newsgroups: cmu.misc.market
Subject: Matrix ticket seeks date

So, being a graduating senior, I just picked up a couple of tickets to The
Matrix: Reloaded on Wednesday night.  I am now looking for someone to give
my second ticket to, in exchange for accompanying me.  This is not a joke.
This is not a left-myself-logged-in post.

Qualifying factors:

* Must be female

* Must be a CMU undergrad student (freshman through 5th year senior is
  fine), although I might waive this requirement if you can make a really
  good case

If you're interested, please submit by email to kenn@cmu.edu the following
items:

* A recent (last 2 years) picture of yourself, or a link to same

* An essay of not less than 100 nor more than 200 words describing
  yourself (please do not include information I can retrieve with
  finger(1) - name, major, or class standing, in particular)

* An essay of not less than 100 nor more than 200 words telling me why I
  should pick you over any other applicant

If you have a personal website or webjournal, please include a link to it
in your submission.  Feel free to include any other information or links
you wish, but make sure that the items listed above are clearly marked,
and keep in mind that I may not go through such material, especially if it
is voluminous.

The deadline for submissions is Sunday, May 11 at 23:59:59
(coincidentally, the same time as my 15-498 take-home exam is due).  The
winner will be notified by email by Monday, May 12 at 23:59:59.  If I
receive no acceptable applications by that time, my second ticket will be
for sale for $9.50 (the same price I paid for it), but I hope I don't have
to do that.  I reserve the right not to pick a winner even if I do receive
applications.

If you want to know about me, please refer to
<http://ragnar.nilmop.com/kenn/Kenn.html> for information, and
<http://ragnar.nilmop.com/kenn/news/default.html> for my webjournal.

Kenn

One result of this was that ragnar.nilmop.com had to be disabled in order for Ragnar to regain network access - someone apparently got pissy and decided to do a lookup on him, then report him to Computing Services - .com addresses aren't allowed in CMU's network.

Anyway, as you might be able to guess, I attracted a lot of flames and initially no serious responses. I had been expecting that, though, and I managed to hold my own and remain in good humor. I eventually relaxed the requirements somewhat and received two entries (both from people I already know), picked one, and will meet her after Schlag3a @ Dave and Busters.

If this sounds interesting to you, you can read the whole cmu.misc.market thread here (warning, potential time-waster: 226K of raw text).

Distributed final

I kept putting the Distributed final off just long enough that I knew I'd still have time to do it. I finally got around to it on Sunday afternoon. I don't think it was too hard, although Mark's answer (from a cursory glance) looked a lot more detailed than mine. Also, the first half of the exam was totally a networks question. It barely involved distributed anything at all.

In other Distributed news, Mark and my 3rd project (the one we didn't finish) was graded ridiculously leniently. The grade was very obviously assigned by the TA rather than Kesden. The difference in score between what I expected us to get and what we actually got, multiplied by the weight of the project, comes out to an entire letter grade in the course overall.

Steam tunnels

Late Sunday evening, I was in the CS Lounge, ostensibly studying Linear Algebra. Needless to say, this was not actually happening. So, when Matt Brewer and mkehrt and Abe and a girl I didn't know named Chelsea and some guy whose name I don't remember, but who was at the KGB meeting the next day despite not being a member, and one other person I don't remember at all were going to check out the steam tunnels, I went with them. The steam tunnels are really not incredibly exciting once you've seen them, but that was okay - people didn't try to talk to me too much, and I thought about this journal entry / my life at the moment as I walked. Plus, I saw the construction now going on in the UC basement which hadn't even been started the last time I went there, and we also went up to the Doherty roof, which has a truly frightening drop-off with no guard rail.

KGB / Linear Algebra / Selection

On Monday, I went to probably my last KGB meeting ever as a dues-paying member. The meeting got sort of out of hand, but was very amusing nevertheless. Afterward, I went to India Garden for dinner, then over to the CS Lounge, where I found out that Ed had finished his Concepts of Math final in a matter of 10 minutes (it had been all multiple-choice, and they had been given the questions beforehand). So I went up to meet him in the Physics lounge. We did actually get at least a bit of studying done, as I agonized over which of the two who had submitted and not retracted entries to my above-mentioned contest to pick. Eventually I made a choice, just as Ed was about to leave. I walked to the door of Priya's dorm with him, then walked to the UC and emailed the person I had selected, then walked home.

Fire Alarm / Laura

That night, around midnight, the fire alarm went off. This was probably some incredibly rude person who felt the need to make a complete ass out of himself now that he was done with finals. Some of my friends and I paid a visit to... err... an interesting location nearby. Eventually we came back to Mudge.

Laura logged into AIM, and I started talking to her. She was upset, and I figured that meant I should leave her alone, but she had just told me not to do that when the fire alarm went off again. I seriously considered just ignoring it, but I've been informed by Professor Covey that the fire alarms in these buildings are literally designed to cause you hearing damage if you don't leave (and yes, that is a proper use of the word "literally"). I told Laura I would try to be back as soon as possible.

I returned about 4 minutes later. Laura is very lonely in Pymatuning. I felt helpless, like all I could offer her were vague platitudes, but I tried really hard to make them the right vague platitudes and to put genuine feeling into them, and by the end it really did seem like she felt at least a little bit better. I hope so.

Linear Algebra exam

Because of staying up so late, to talk to Laura and because I wasn't able to fall asleep instantly after she left, I only got about 4 and a half hours of sleep last night. I set about 4 different devices to alarm me in different ways at various points in time, to make really sure I wouldn't sleep through my last undergraduate exam, possibly my last exam ever.

My mind wasn't working very quickly, and though I'm sure I got some of the questions right, I'm also sure that I bullshitted some of them, and did so poorly. The highlight, though, was that when there was about an hour left, I had one problem left completely unanswered, and I was drawing a blank. The only way I could think of to solve it seemed way too easy for a problem on the final, and thus I assumed it couldn't possibly be right. But I was really tired, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to figure it out the "right" way, so I just put down the ridiculous simple answer and then after it wrote in parentheses "Yes, I know this probably isn't the right way to do this, but hey, it was good for a laugh, right?" This might not bear mentioning except that as it turns out, Ed put down the same answer, and seriously thinks that it was correct. I hope we got it right, and I'm glad they don't grade on confidence.

That afternoon, I was completely exhausted, so after a few hours of not sleeping in the CS lounge, I came home and discovered that my comforter felt incredibly warm on my bare legs. I slept for a couple of hours and felt much better.

I think I like this journal format. The sub-headings are useful.

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Kenn Hamm
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Last modified: Mon Aug 4 19:38:35 2008