volume seofon: dec 1998ad
dates in hex unless otherwise stated...times are in decimal UTC/GMT
La dee dah...
Got up reaally late today. I think I live in a time zone somewhere in Polynesia or somewhere... Ate a late lunch for breakfast. Called the company that is suppose to be shipping me my new workstation. No complaints about the credit card, however, they don't care the RAM that was on the order. I ordered 128mb SDRAM DIMM with CAS3. (For those who really don't care anyway, the CAS rating is part of the whole pre-charge timing equation.) They don't carry CAS3 anymore. Only CAS2. At the same price. After I explained to them how ridiculuous that was, I changed the order, it was charged and supposedly set for shipping. Doubtful that it will ship, however. VISA is being a pita again with other companies.
Did nothing for a very long while. Then threw together some ideas for a new callback paradigm for libfaim. As with all my other ideas, I liked it then decided I'd forgotten something crucial and gave up. Rather, lost interest. Then decided the Great fAIMbot project needed to be revived. Got the basic framework laid for fAIMbotTwo. Nothing good yet. I'm using the 30dec1998 libfaim snapshot (ie, before I broke callbacks, but after I fixed most everything else). This faimbot should be a good one.
I suppose I should talk about faimbot. I don't think I've ever actually explained what I want it to do. That's probably because I really don't know yet. Mostly things like equivelents of common IRC things, just for AIM/AOL: /whowas (when a user logged on/off), /whois (gated profile retrieval), /amsg (broadcast messages), reflection (like 'chat', just using the bot as a gateway), and (this one I like) delayed messaging. I mean by that: when you want to leave a message for another user but they're not online. Just message faimbot to let him know, and it will give them the message next time they come on. You know...all that trivial sort of stuff that AIM/AOL makes no allowances for.
Also spent some time looking around for laptops. Nothing I found beats the Jetta I mentioned yesterday. Also found that most auctions are currently running *above retail*. I don't know if its the market trend or just the holiday rush, but its actually cheaper to buy straight retail instead of attempting to save on the auctions. If this keeps up, I might just have to stop using auctions competely.
Drank a lot of Citra for some reason. Probably why I've been sleeping so much. Talked to Amanda for a while. Ate a peanut butter sandwich about 0130. (Amanda heard all about my trials with peanut butter.) Watched South Park. Did nothing a while longer. Typed this for a bit.
Quote of the day from Linus: "Alan, calm down."
A bit of prediction: I will go to sleep. But, not before I mention the fact that its new year's eve. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Only mere hours left before the Euro migration. And just a year left before y2k. And just another few millenia until the Sun runs out of stuff and goes "poof fizzle fizzle wheeewww...Glad that's over. Now I can just sit here without having to produce any heat or anything...eek....I'm freezing... anyone have an extra sun? ..." Well, maybe not -those- words. Porbably in a different language or something. Oh, and for those who just won't let Christmas go... Its the Seventh Day of the Octave of Christmas.
Hohum...
Started off the day a bit later... around noonish. Did a whole lot of nothing for a long time. Started working on mammatus. Finally got a kernel to compile for me. With the assistance of Alan, it was found that my patch was too old. He provided a quick fix and that was that. mammatusThree is now booting and running Linux 2.2.0pre1ac2. Its nice. I like it. The bug reports are really rolling in for 2.2.0pre, though. linux-kernel is, if you can believe it, running at a higher traffic rate than I've seen it in quite some time.
Got that to the point where it was detecting the PAS16 (audio) card. I'm not sure how I'm going to get the AMD audio board going. Only ALSA supports that. But ALSA doesn't support the PAS. And you can't use both at the same time.
After I got tired of messing with sound (about 0100), I decided libfaim needed some work. There's a new snapshot up. Some massive cleanups. Got rid of a LOT of cruft left over from as far back as Jun/Jul1998 when the original decoding was going on. No more arcane "phase" numbers in login. Everything has proper names. Also, reviewed and read through a lot of code, making TODO notes where needed. I'm happy with the amount of work that got done. Consolidated a lot of the login process too. Its slowly getting cleaner. Also, I'm making the client do more so that eventually, all the different defaults that get set in the login process can be set properly (privacy, deny lists, etc).
I forgot this above: the final report on the laptop is in... Its dead and not worth repairing. The entire video subsystem has fried itself. So, you might have guessed, I'm getting a new one. I don't want to spend any more than US$1000-1200 on it, though. Anything I take out of that huge balance will cost me either in future gains or in ugly taxes (let's just say that the IRS is going to really love our family in 1999). I'm looking at the Jetta 7050-30. I'ts $1180 for a 12.1in tft panel, 2gb hd, 24x CD, 32mb ram, and an AMD K6-2 300mhz cpu. The AMDs are not that much cheaper, but they are faster. And I trust AMD more than I do Intel these days.
I guess that's all. Oh, calculus ruined my day. I only _barely_ passed. And it kind of did bad things to my GPA. (Which, for the just-ended semester, is 3.26 **GASP!**.) Shouldn't hurt my cumulative too much, howerver. Lets hope not anyway. I suppose I should actually attempt to pass that class next semester. I suppose a lot of things.
Although I dread slashdork, Josh pointed me to an article that really shouldn't be ignored. See here. And to the CNN/AP article here. And to filing from the ALCU here. All that stuff is about a student who deflated and generally criticized his school, its faculty, and specific faculty members (by name) on a private web site and was suspended and failed because of it. With the aid of the ACLU, he took it to court and the case was found in his favor. That's good news. I sure wish I'd have called the ACLU when it happened to me.
Bit of trivia for the day... Its the birthday of Saint Thomas Becket. You know, the Catholic guy who managed to tick off a King Henry back in the 12th century. Kind of a foreshowding to the eventual seperation of church and state. Kind of. Really, its just a day for Catholics to have another day for. That, and its most enjoyable to celebrate holidays to remember annoying people.
One of the more discouraging mondays of my life...
Was awakened by absolutly nothing around 1130. Nothing to do. Well, there were things to do, I just didn't feel like doing them. Anyway...
Attempted to put together a generic-to-all-mammatus-nodes 2.1.132ac3 kernel. Didn't compile. By the time I figured that out, I had lost interest. I had started working on Sun4/330 stuff. Got the farthest with it I've ever gotten: a serial console (yet completely non-legible...it was there and sending data, though). I'm not quite sure what's wrong with that. I got to there by moving the mainboard up to slot 1 in the 4/110 cardcage (slot order, top-to-bottom: 2, 1, 0). Aparently there's something special about that bottom slot. Oh, and the previous troubles might have also been do to the fact that it lacked ram. I'm not sure whether moving the slots or adding ram helped. I think the latter is more probably, but ya never know. I got the RAM from the 4/110 mainboard. It had four banks of 8x(1x8)'s. The 4/330 only has one bank of the same. So I took out 8 of the 110 SIMMs. That's easier said than done. Its got those blasted vertical (90deg) SIMM sockets. Sun uses the two types of SIMM sockets I absolutly hate: the 90deg verticals and the 30deg near-flats. Both are terrible to work with (the latter are used in the 4/330). Both of these sockets require moving very small plastic fingers. In the case of the 4/110, it was a case of moving very small plastic fingers that hadn't been moved since production 12 years ago. I was lucky: only broke two figers (one socket). Also did some other modifications to the 4/330 board. Mainly, removing the bgfour video card and putting in the cgsix(?) from the 4/110 (I was hoping to get a local console going since the serial thing wasn't working out...still no-go however. Just a blank, black screen.).
Got tired of that. Got doing some other things. Eventually, nothing happened.
Found Amanda was watching La Cenerentola on PBS as I was. Two-way commentary there, some of which was truely spooky. Basically did nothing while that was on. Not much to do.
Later got going looking at that DTV1100 tuner board again. I soldered in a tap into the middle of some of the circuitry that's there. I think I have most of the needs covered. When I put it in to try, however, I find that it doesn't work. I mean really doesn't work. Unlike last time, there was the 5v. However, what should be a 33v line for the NTSC decoding was only getting about 18v. That's bad. (The fact that 18 is so close to 33/2 is kind of interesting and probably points to the problem.) However, I did map all the inputs of the VPX3220 to a fair degree. I should really get that going sometime anyway.
In conclusion, I still have no working Sun4/330. I still have no working tuner. I still have many things to do. I still have merely a small amount of mtndew left. I still have things to say "I still" for. I'll stop there. Recursion is imminent.
Linus released a bit of Linux protohistory this afternoon at 14:42 PST (no, really, it was 42 minutes after).... Linux 2.2.0pre1. Its not a big deal. But it is the first step towards The Big Deal: the final 2.2.0.
Oh well. Just a few dozen hours till the Euro goes into circulation. Won't that just be fun?
The Master of the Dominion of Curly Braces was correct: I am indeed home.. The days are filled out below in their respective positions.
Now that you've read that, we can continue. I'm for some reason drinking Citra. Its like mtndew but tastes nothing like it and has none of the caffeine. Go figure.
Spent the hour after we got home unloading the mess that had accumulated in the van (its a big van) and getting caught up on the world. This didn't take overly long because it seems nothing happened while I was gone. Maybe next time.
From there, it was a matter of doing nothing while eating pizza (its a tricky feat, I know). Also took some time to take the meter to the video blaster. Figured out how the TDA8708 input selection is done through the SAA9051 (seems there's some general-i/o pins on that chip as well that happen to be connected to the input selection bits on the 8708). Also emailed Thom-Luke Sales to see if they can find the books on those three mysterious chips. On the mysterious front, I can't find any connections on that SAA9060 at all. Maybe it really does do nothing.
David got all excited about this. Please tell me you can figure it out. Its not that difficult. Really. I swear. Use a piece of paper and a pencil if you have to.
That's probably about it. Oh, and for those of you who wonder just where I got the money to get a new system. With all the recent upswings in the domestic stock markets, my personal worth is quickly (and narrowly) approaching...don't tell anyone... US$200,000. We are figuring that $1k out of that isn't going to affect it all that much. Besides, its best to take it out now while its high. Real high. [That value came from keen stock investing and making use of no-load funds over a 16 year span.]
I'm getting tired of typing on this blasted keyboard now. I think I'll stop. Oh, and yes, I did leave myself logged in the whole time I was gone. efnet didn't even disconnect me. Nor did AIM. linuxnet, did, though. Confused everyone on AIM. They all thought I was home. Silly them....
New contest for this week: Name my new workstation!! Send suggestions to afritz@delphid.ml.org.
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1998/Cx1B {27 dec 1998 MST} After much of the usual diddling, we started home. Got home about 1500. 1998/Cx1A {26 dec 1998 MST} British Boxing Day. First Day of Kwanzaa. Second largest shopping day of the year. I stayed away from all three. Sat around and did nothing all day. Boring boring. 1998/Cx19 {25 dec 1998 MST} Christmas Day. Did all the normal Christmas thiings. This includes going to Prescott for the latter half of the day. Up there, we did the usual eating and all that. Boring. |
{LEAPING ZARK BURGERS! Adam just walked in the door!}
Well then. It seems this whole "Christmas" thing ran me over again. Aparently, its today/tomorrow (depending on your current living time zone). Oh well. Stuff happens...
Woke up late with no plan to do anything. And do nothing I did. And had a good time doing nothing.
I've found that CSPAN2 is far more worth watching than CSPAN1. For instance today, they had a reinactment of the great Douglas-Lincoln senatorial debates of 1865. Good stuff. And the also regularly show the procedings of Britain's House of Commons. That's always fun to watch too (why just ask Amanda!).
Eventually 1730 rolled around and we all got in the van and left. Where'd we go? Well, as is tradition for the Eve o' Christmas, we went to Windy's for that hokey fast-food taste ya gotta love (and yes, I am serious about the tradition part... long story). Then went to the candlelight service (my family is Presbyterian... a notably conservatice pacifist Protistant sect). I have a wax-laden bulletin to prove that it was indeed a candlelight service. They need new candles. Or at least new cardboard wax-catchers...
Came home to find the hard disks in zeta making an unbelievable racket. Decided that was it. They needed to be pulled. Consulted with my dad. His solution: buy a new machine. Not one to ever turn down a new machine, I agreed. So, there's now an Gigabyte Ali motherboard, AMD K6-2 350mhz, 128mb SDRAM, a 25in ATX full-tower case w/ 300watt PS, and (the point of the whole venture) an 8.4gb hard drive. That should be enough space to get rid of both my ailing Micropolae (the 1gb and the (now really noisy) 4.5gb). Good deal. Should be here mid to late next week.
However, until then, I need to save my data. So I started a backup from ihpled. This is a particularly slow process. It does work, though. Just not the first time. The first time, zeta committed suicide. The PCI bus somehow got deadlocked (my suspicion is the idiotic adaptec). So I restarted. This allowed me to try out a feature of screen. That feature being the detach/resume mechanism. This has got to be the most groovy feature I've seen in quite some time. You just hit ^A-D and logout. Next time you login, you just run screen -R. It starts exactly where you left off. Incredibly nifty.
New computer on the way. Really, really, really noisy computer in my room. Data in flux. Christmas. This has got to be the best/worst yet....
Merry Christmas / Happy Hanukka / Jolly Quansa to all... (Wish your hard drives best of silent, unannoying wishes too.) And an exquisite day for all the Wyse terminal keyboards, too! (If it weren't for those bloody things, I would have been done typing this an hour ago!)
Oh dear... If there's more spelling and typing mistakes than usual tonight, its because I'm not quite ussed to this keyboard yet. And its a wierd one...
Got up late once again today. I'm going to have to stop that. It wastes a lot of the day to be sleeping that much. Just think of all that time sleeping that I could be using to do nothing.
Once I got started. I had the i2c code working and doing a successful bus scan on the Video Blaster in an hour or so. I'm not quite sure what was wrong. I ended up just starting over and writing code completely off what I'd learned about i2c the night prior. Then quickly figured out how the kernel i2c stuff was to be initalized. Within minutes, the beginnings of a kernel driver for the 82c9001a was present with only the i2c code functional. However, that is enough code for the i2c bus scan, which completed successfully. It found two devices: 0x88 and 0x8a. Ya, that is a bit wierd. I gotta get out the meter and do some PCB lead tracing, I guess.
In the middle of the above paragraph, insert an episode about getting up and driving all over the place all for the sake of a blasted hummingbird! Aparently way up north of here, this bird fell out of a tree. And in a further revelation of silly events, they called _here_ to report it! So Saara and I drove up there and then drove some more out to the rescue place (long story there). That probably sucked up an hour or so of my day...
As you could imagine, the day went down from there. Nothing much happened at all. Worked on generating code that could drive the video of the VB. Only mildly successful there. It appears that the GPIO ports may get used as well. This may explain why there's only two devices on i2c when there's about six chips on the board. May still need the scope yet...
KBAQ had the Chicago Phil on with Handel's Massiah Oratorio in its entirety. Timeout to enjoy that.
Something quite relevent to this point in time is the fact that my laptop is dead. Well, its panel anyway. Everything powers up, but no pixels (even the backlight lights!). So, there's now a Wyse terminal sitting near my bed, near the floor. I'm typing this on it too. I got screen and am still trying to figure it out completely. It takes away most of the oddities of the wy50 terminal descriptions and gives linux console-like virtual terminals. After I found that Ctrl-A+Number is too difficult to be useful to change terminals, I figured out the archane Wyse setup procedure and reprogrammed its F-key setup. Really quite logical once yet understand. And now I just hit F1, F2, F3, etc. to switch 'consoles'. Still a crap keyboard, however. I can't give one specific reason why its shit, it just is. You have to try it to understand.
Hopefully someone feels like fixing my laptop and/or someone feels like buying me a new laptop. Somehow I doubt the latter. But I can hope. In the mean time, you'll have to put up with my stupid typing. Also, I think my quest for an AIM client with ircii-style windowing will be getting closer. NAIM causes me more problems everyday. And screen hates it. Oh well....
Happy non-denominational, non-descriminant, multi-racial holidays!
Hmmm... Rather busy day, actually... but it wasn't doing what I wanted it to, so it wasn't very preferencial...
Woke up around 1130 or so. Just seconds after I started checking the state of the universe, Brock pops up. I hear the BEEP BEEP of talk chattering. I was forced to answer. The only reason I'm going into such detail is that I want you to be as annoyed with that bloody beeping as I was. He soon convinced me that I needed to aid phlurm (his computer while running linux). I think when he left, it had pppd working on a 2.1 kernel. That's new. I somehow doubt he's got sound going, however. My belief is that its never going to happen. Alas, he maintains his optimism.
Sometime shortly thereafter, I took a shower. That's not spectacular. Exccept for the fact that it reminded me of the discussion about UPSes (uninterruptable power supplies) with David. Conclusions from that discussion: 1) David does not need an UPS; 2) Yes, I do have my TV on batteries; and 3) No, I do not own a hair drier (that's where the shower part came in). Anyway....
Temas started bugging me about libfaim's cronic aim_snac.c troubles. I figured I should probably make a "midendian official" aim_snac.c. So I did. It idn't work, of course. I think Temas fixed it. n was gone most of the day. He got his new computer. narnia.n.ml.org is now a new machine. I think he spent most of the day tweaking that.
For some reason, that took all afternoon to straightenout. After a while, I got bored again. Found a messege on the counter that Philips Semi called. So I called them back. Out of the three chips I requested books for, they can only get me two. And even then, they recommend that I get them from the local sales office. (The local sales office is nice enough... Thom-Luke Sales. Thats the place where that kind woman spent hours and hours seeking that Paradise book for my laptop video reversal problem.) If I get bored enough again, I'll call them. That also led to a bit more research. I found very little info on the chip that is the most curious at this point. That being the SAA9060. Its a Picture-in-Picture (PIP) interface...but only for black and white. Now I've delt with this card a lot and I've NEVER seen it do PIP, even in monochrome. I'm confused. That's one of the books I don't have. This is an incentive to bug Thom-Luke about it.
I thought it might be neat to have NAIM do word-wrapping. Decided to try it. Implemented a quick routine that wraps words. Add another five minutes to that, and it did intenting ala BX. I didn't feel like integrating it into NAIM at that point though. I just wanted to do it to see if it was difficult. If I get bored, I'll integrate it too.
Then _finally_ got to work on VB stuff. After much research, twiddling, and staring, I have some code that -used to- work. It doesn't anymore. I was letting Bernhard's utilities initialize the card and then I'd run my routines that mess with the i2c bus only. I had it switching inputs and changing the image brightness all from within my own code. Then I decided to actually understand the code I had derived. That broke it. So, I started commenting and commenting. You can see my comments (written in the form of a C application...I guess theres a bit of code in there too) here. Great source of info on i2c there. I even used my keen ASCII art skills to draw timing diagrams of the i2c lines during common operations. Go on...look. The point to emphasize is that it _was_ working. And I don't think its that far off from working again. I just need to rework the lowest level (register-level) line control routines and it should all fall into place. I do however get the feeling that the oscilloscope will end up in my room sometime this week analysing what is(n't) happening. Once I understand i2c to a decent extent, the rest of the v4l driver should be simple. (And most of that generic-looking i2c code will become just that: generic. There's already an i2c.o module in the kernel and there's no need for that much duplication.)
That basically fills the evening. If you see me on efnet twice, theres a reason. You see, one nick is for the east side of my room (mid_ or midzzz) and the other (midhack) is on my console on zeta in the west side of the room for when I'm off hacking over there. {This is the ultimate in Adam's laziness. Keep in mind that "east side" and "west side" are seperated by a pile of papers, a couple dozen mtndew cans, and about three feet. Don't feel sorry for him.}
Chances are that all the "if I get bored"'s above will end up being "I will do tomorrow"'s....
Oh, and Happy Winter Season...
Oh my is it early... let's make this quick... i need some sleep... so i can get up early and do nothing some more...
Got up later today (roughly 1030 local). Got to work doing more research on the Video Blaster related things. Put together a list of parts and some other info with links to databooks for all the chips on the VB and Video Spigot (related board). Turns out that every chip on the Spigot is completely documented. And to think Creative wanted me to sign an NDA to get that. All but three of the chips on the VB are documented. I've already mailed Philips asking for the books to the missing ones (usually when you can't download them, it means they're available but only in print form...which are free too, you just have to ask for it and wait longer). Hopefully they'll respond.
Also spent a good portion of the day trying to get my printer to cooperate. Too dry of air led to severe static problems when printing duplex. That combined with all my cursing and its lack of toner led to an eventful but uneventful afternoon.
The VB is an incredibly simple board. And I like it. I've been staring at Bernhard's code in a vain attempt to at least pretend like I understand German. (Which I don't...but most of the source is still readable...just that all the variable names and the (few) comments are in german.) Also glanced at the bt848 v4l drivers and the partner i2c drivers. I probably (easily) have enough code to piece together an i2c driver for the VB and have it bus scanning by afternoon. That is, if I get up in time.
Also managed to down ihpled and stick the repaired 56k modem back in. Should be running a bit faster now (though probably not enough to be noticable).
Something else to note... As most of you know, one of my newer goals for mammatus is to be able to descramble PPV, HBO, and the rest of the new scrambled channels we now recieve (I think there's probably over a dozen scrambled out of our 78). While looking through the databook for the TDA4680, it talks about using it for video scrambling/descrambling. It also appears that the AGC clamping is completly configurable, which is certainly a step towards descrambling the more simply encoded channels (ie, most of the PPVs and an HBO or two). Should be fun. Kind of interesting that the oldest card I've got may be able to do the most for me. (I think the Spigot also has this chip.)
Oh, the PS/2s got moved around a bit. They keep getting closer to their origin. I'm guessing before long, they'll be back down at the district office. Having 16 PS/2s falling all over the garage is starting to get a bit annoying (especially to my father, who doesn't seem to agree with the whole stockpiling of hardware to begin with... he's been quite tolerant so far, but I think 0x10 386sx/16's may be his limit). CUMULUS never got done. Let's all face that fact. It was a summer project and, well, its the end of Decembre.
Hopefully, on marrow break, much hacking will occur, instead of dreadful other rubbish...
I'm not actually going to bed yet like I usually do. I just thought it might be fun to write as I live it. (Like you could POSSIBLY find that more amusing than me retelling it later, but anywho...)
Firstly, before I forget, Amanda pointed me here. Go on. Laugh. It's funny, damn it! Oh, and if you really want something so dreadfully annoying you just HAVE to share it with someone else, go here (also courtesy of Amanda).
I suppose before we go on with live events I should review the day. Woke myself up dreadfully early again (0800). Had some breakfast (GASP!). Did some ViRGE work. This was short lived. I did, however, get the mmap() of the LFB (that's the Linear Frame Buffer) going. And I made pretty pictures on my console using rand(). However, I never did quite get it all working right. Firstly, I couldn't get the MMIO enabled consistently. So I just started up the X server and did my twiddling while it was running (it initialized the core nicely). After I got done staring for 42 in the rand() paintings, I decided to try and get the i2c going using the ViRGE as the buss master. This required connecting devices to the i2c bus, right? So I find myself an LPB cable and plug the ViRGE into the DTV1100 (with the tuner and VPX on it). I turn the machine on. The monitor won't catch sync. Figure I probably have pin 1 wrong. Swap cable. Turn it on. Still won't catch sync. [Insert give-up routine here.]
Then go and goof off for hours and hours. This includes web browsing, learning all the hidden cool features of lynx, installing and learning mutt (I'm now using that for auk@delphid.ml.org), as well as talking to people on linuxnet. (It was actually a rather boring day socialization-wise... no one around.)
Really started getting serious about discussing things with Alan on linuxnet. Talked about everything from linux/vax to netbsd UVM to scottish fried pizza. I also found out that, alas, El Polo Loco did not go under. They're building one in Gilbert. Which implies something else... there's yet another Arizonan who hangs out in #linux. Suprise suprise. Oh well. I asked Telsa if she'd mind if I sent Alan a MAU (he's got a complete TR setup sans a MAU...and that's just depressing). She never gave an answer, just "How BIG is it?". (Telsa is Alan's wife, btw.) I may just send him one.
The ViRGE happens of the early morning were not encouraging. Oh, also before I forget, I did down ihpled today to take that dead 56k modem out. Turns out that the lightning really had nothing to do with it. It died because it wasn't made to run 24x7. Replaced the transistor and it was done. Will bring down ihpled again in the morning to put it back in. Anyway, back to video. I saw the Video Blaster sitting over on the far side of the room and decided to take a look again. I open up the databook for the largest chip on the board (the chips and tech one). Look at the block diagrams for their reference design. Look down at the video blaster. Hmmm... Its the exact same. Component for component, matches precisly. I can't find books from Philips on all the chips, however. But Josh (ya, long-time-no-see) passed a long QuestLink. This thing is great. Takes you right to the databooks for even the most obscure ICs. I'm going to try and find all the chips in there (maybe they have something Philips doesn't want to give out).
I've been watching these hilarious shows on the Discovery Channel. The first was about reptiles. They interviewed the stpuidest people I'd ever heard. Then this one about insects came on. Its on over yet. They're on ticks now. Just got done with the bit about malaria. (Amanda and David have been getting random commentary.)
Oh well. If something happens before I fall asleep, I'll put it here.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.........
Well the day started out most amusingly. I mean, how many days can you wake up and say "I watched the beginning/middle of the end of the Republican Party?" Livingston's resignation kept me laughing for hours. That such stupidity could be all bunched up into one single person is just truely amazing. Then watched the democrat's last plea for a censure agreement. Then watched the President of the United States of America, the most successful nation of all time, get impeached on two out of four articles (one and three... two and four failed). That was humorous and unsettling all at the same time. I shut the TV off shortly after the vote on the last article.
Intermixed with all that were various things. Firstly, I found out (in a rather unfortunate way) that the UPS on zeta is faulty. Everytime the big bench saw in the garage got turned on, the power sagged enough to kill power, but the UPS didn't switch to the inverter. That will need replacing. Also, n fixed libfaim/aim_snac.c to an apparently suitable extent. We'll need to wait until someone compiles gtkFAIM with USE_SNACS_FOR_IMS to know for sure. Also during that time, I connected a VCR up to the Temic tuner just to see if it was working. I unfortunatly left it on too long and blew a microfuse on the tuner card. I hate it when that happens. (Of course, I was asking for it... only taking 75ohms off a .5kohm impedence line. It was only a matter of time. In this case, about a minute.) But while it was working, it was working great. Extremely clear picture. Got the tuner card fixed, too, btw.
Spent most of the spare moments of the day researching i2c and then later, the ViRGE chip. [For those who don't try and force things to do things other than they were made to do... i2c is a two-wire bus used to control a lot of things in both computers and your standard consumer devices (TVs, VCRs, washing machines, white cats, you know). In this case, its connecting the temic tuner and the VPX3220 to either the ViRGE or the bt848. Oh, and the ViRGE is a graphics chip by S3.] I haven't had too much luck with the ViRGE. I've been trying to piece together some code to try and figure out the databook (its written for people who know what they're doing... of which, I don't). This led me to quite a misunderstanding, as I was using the databook for a standard ViRGE while I was actually programming a ViRGE/GX. After much disgust (before noticing this), I found my DX/GX addendum laying around (coincidentally) and started looking. Sure enough...all the stuff I was trying to do has changed. Arg...
Not really that exciting of a day. Well, the impeachment thing was fun...but that's about it. More ViRGE work tomorrow. And if I get far enough, I may even start on the VPX FIFO'ing... {Yea, Adam, whatever...it'll take you weeks to get there...} And the ViRGE book is _already_ falling apart...
Fairly boring day (fortunatly).
Day started at 1100 or so (I was enjoying my inherent lack of motivation). Wandered around for a while. Did nothing for a while. Wandered around while doing nothing for a while.
Read about S3's video to ntsc conversion on-chip. That was kind of amusing. Also wrote up a quick table of the IP numbers used and to be used on our "little" network here.
I'm kind of confused about most of the afternoon. The evening was filled with getting mammatusThree booting off of mammatusCore. That wasn't too difficult. I just based the node-maker script off the one I used for CUMULUS. Only minor changes.
Also aided Amanda in a bit of a free association. Stopped at just under 280 words between the two of us. Kind of amusing.
n fixed the borken list manipulation code libfaim/aim_snac.c. That's nice.
As you can tell, I'm not very excited about much anything today. Oh well.
Well then. Its over. Finally.
Slept through first hour (don't worry... it was just a study period). Accidently walked to school a bit too early. Wandered around the band building for a while. Then went to take the calc test. He lied abit about that one. The first part of the test was the exact same sheet as part three of the take-home. The second part of the test was to list distict things we've learned so far. Lame indeed. Then went to humanities. Gave a speech. Then left. Well, not really. I really just went over to the band room (after much preoccupation with people on the way there...I was beginning to think they were purposefully trying to keep me out of there). Sat around for two hours. Then banged on a tape machine trying to convince it to cooperate. Never did get it to record on the first 20sec of the tape. I played it all, got myself calmed down (the tape machine had put me in a bad mood), and started to leave. Then remembered I'd forgotten the chromatic. I shouldn't have done this, as I had just witnessed Tara making the exact same mistake. So I did it ALL OVER AGAIN. Finally got home about 1320.
I remember eating something. Eventually took a nice long nap (yes, two days in a row). Got up. Watched tv a lot. Finally got some stuff going with mammatus (ya, I'm bored enough already to work on a project). mcore/mammatusCore/mammatusTwo is running. And damn is it fast. First 486 I've had that broke 30bogos. Interactive performance is better than that of ihpled. Now need to start bringing up the rest of the 'cluster'. Oh, watched a Cheech & Chong flick too. I needed some laughs, I suppose.
Oh, and Brock. I suggest you take a look at your guestbook. I did a bit of...uhm...'fixing'.
I've been pondering a lot about what I want to do with the video for mammatus. I'd like to try and write a driver for the VPX3220 chip on the DTV1100. This means using an S3 video card (only ones with full LPB). But that means losing the composite-out of the trident card. But it may get me a tuner without adding more components. I don't know. I've got a ViRGE/GX set away for this purpose. I suppose I can start a driver as soon as I have a machine (ie, after I get mammatusPrime booting).
I'm still laughing at slashdork. I didnt think they could get any stupider, but yesterday they did. That trite little glorification by Sengan about Clinton and the Iraq situation got him in deep trouble with the viewing public. That article got 716 comments last time I checked. That has got to be a new record. Idiots. Idiots. Idiots. If you're going to invent a new medium, you should respect it. As far as I can see, Sengan desperatly insulted Rob by posting that. I know I will never read slashdot on purpose ever again. If I want incorrect facts and lame, uninformed opinions, I can turn on CNN.
And its done. (!!!)
I'll start writing _above_ the above comment tomorrow, as finals will be over then. I'm not exactly pressed for time now, but I figure I should stay here for now. Interesting day indeed...
Chem was neat. Finished the second half of the final in just under 15minutes. After that, I went to the PSAT interpretation thing. I did terribly. Lets not talk about that. (Though for the first time ever, I scored higher on the math section of a standardized test than the verbal/lanuage part. Bizare.) Came back, grabbed some apple cider (Mrs Gumm was kind enough to make some of that for us), and headed off to second hour. Practiced for about 15min (today was just one of those 15min days), and quickly did the audition thing. (I'm first chair now.) She also asked if I wanted to audition for the district honor band. What the heck. I'm doing that today after school. The etude for that is incredibly simple. Eventually went to APUSH. Did that presentation real quick as well. Kind of fun, I guess. I probably should have read through the material I was suppose to cover before I talked about it, but that just made it all the more amusing. The rest of that hour was quite amusing as well.
After much stalling (ie, wandering around school), I got home. Took a nice long nap. Woken up by loud noises. Aparently those stupid humans decided to start killing each other again and leave it to me to fall asleep watching CNN.
I started scanning #linux on linuxnet in an attempt to not get too involved with that mess. But it didn't help. They were talking about it too (its always nice to hear Alan's and other's British/UK perspective on things like this). They pointed to the #cnn channel. Now apparently diz decided to write a cute script for his bt848 video capture card that feeds the VBI closed captioning data directly into IRC. That was just the most groovy thing I've seen in quite a while. Live transcripts of CNN without even turning on a TV. I need to do something like that with mammatus... (when he switched to watching south park, we got transcripts of that too)
Dug up my "technology in education" minispeech from 8th grade. Cleaned it up a bit (not much, though... it was very very good for 8th grade). Printed it out on notecards. I might as well give it for humanities today. Oh, and have a calc test today. That's it. I'm done after those two things. Nothing else till Jan 1999.
About midnight, I got into a scanning mood. Here:
Well, see ya. And in the beloved words of Amanda..."Long live Mtn Dew!"
Just a few comments....
One of our palm trees got a little...well...exploded yesterday. Lightinging strike. Debris ejected across the entire yard. If it hadn't have been 7ft from my house, it would have been hilarious. As it was, its only slightly amusing. But much more perturbing. The static field of lightening also blew ihpled's v90 modem, zeta's 33.6kb modem, two network cards, and port #4 on the ether switch. I'm pissed. Oh well.
Nextly, Cox came through and _actually met a deadline_! We've now got all the channels (yes, even the scifi channel!), except for the half-dozen that are scrambled. Need to get the bt848 to descramle those for me.
And my near-silence is almost over, folks... Just two more days...
Got up a bit late. Vowed to not get into the shower until I got the APUSH stuff done. Got outline done.
My dad found a modem in the parcel box. He kept telling me it was a winmodem. This sounded quite odd as its an ISA card and has way more analog components on it than a winmodem would. Eventually found the source of the confusion. 3Com/USR has two modems they call winmodems: a PCI version (a real winmodem) and an ISA one (a _real modem_). He then convinced me to put it in ihpled, as its a V.90 and the one in ihpled was only a 33.6kbsec. So I downed ihpled, got that changed (left old one in there too, but changed its address). While I had ihpled down, I figured I'd swap out the UPS too...that meant downing eagle. Then lifting that damn UPS. There is NO possible way to understand precisely what I'm talking about until you've actually lifted a 1990 epoch Best UPS with the (unvented lead acid) battery installed. Its a truely enlightening (and painful) experience indeed. Total downtime was quite a bit longer than expected...about 30minutes. (I'd also forgotten once again just how heaving the steel case of ihpled is...).
After that (about 1500), I was sweating quite a bit and decided the shower really couldn't wait. This turned out to be quite a pleasant decision, since I didn't get the APUSH stuff done until midnight.
David and Kari brought over brock+kari's Deskjet 670c (or whatever) printer. Outward symptoms pointed to stripped drive gears in the head assembly. Further inspection showed a mere miswrapped guide/tick tape. Easy fix. It was more difficult to take apart the chassis than it was to fix. Done in less than 30min. I informed Kari (who was aparently at David's) and she said they'd drop back by and pick it up. I told her no later than 0200. They still haven't come. Does that mean it's mine?
Ya, I did finish the paper. Its crap, but sounds nice. Now I'm free to do all that calc stuff. I've pretty much decided that a speech for humanities is definitly _not worth it_. Oh well.
It's going to get worse before it gets better...but at least I know that much...and can admit it to myself....
Someone: "So Adam, how did you spend your Saturday night?"
Me: "Ya, well, I wrote an APUSH paper and cleaned up an exploded Pepsi."
Someone: "You did what?"
Me: "I wrote an APUSH paper about the history of the American economy."
Someone: "No no, the other thing...about pepsi!"
Me: "Oh! Yes, yes....some genius (not me) thought it would be a nifty keen idea to flash freeze a Pepsi in the freezer."
Someone: "Oh? Did it go boom?"
Me: "Very much so."
Someone: "You're really talkative at 2am."
Me: "What can I say? I just spent 20minutes wiping frozen pepsi from the inside of freezer! And washing it off of ice cubes!"
Someone: "Ya, I just thought you might want to explain a bit..."
Me: "EXPLAIN? Sheesh! Do you have no respect for someone who just got a dozen ice cubes thrown at them by a machine for leaving the tray out and the door open too long?!"
Someone: "Well fine then."
Me: "Well then!"
Ya, well. Someone aparently stuck a pepsi in the ice bin and forgot it there. I go to grab some ice at 0200 and find a gooey half-frozen mass of pepsi syrup instead. After further inspection, I find a somewhat giganticized can of pepsi and frozen signs of explosion completely covering the inside of the ice bin and most of the freezer. I decide that I don't want ice that tastes like stale pepsi (it smelled bad enough already), so i started cleaning. Its mostly cleaned up now. I did leave whats left of the disproportioned aluminium can sitting in the side of door so I have proof that it really happened. Ya. I have no life. Especially at 2am.
Note to self: get more mtndew and drink it. Fast.
And the reason I'm half-alive....
TODO:
For Today (Thu):Okay, okay, so I'm kind of tired. Let's gone on with this...
Starting where I left off last time, we went to the aeroport -- left about 0030. It was foggy and a bit chilly (I thought it was rather comfortable, but no one seemed to agree with me -- the .25in of solid ice on the car windows scared them off, I guess). Stupidly enough, the onramp from 101 onto 10 was closed eastbound. Why? I have NO idea. I was stumped. Anyway, made it down to the aeroport eventually. Sat there for hours as Sara's plane kept getting delayed and delayed. It finally landed about 0250. Went down and grabbed her two 90lb bags (I'm not kidding). Got home about 0425. Unloaded. Got to sleep about 0500.
When 0600 came around (my normal waking time), I made an official decision to not get up (I make that decision increasinly often, but this time I had a really good reason). I slept till 0930 or so. Got up and did a few things. Grabbed a mtndew and dragged myself down to school at 1030. I didn't finish the mtndew before I got to school this time like I usualy do. Oh well. Good thing I drank it though, or I would have been sleeping right away (as it stands, it took till last hour to fall asleep).
Calc was boring. Humanities was spent doing mostly nothing (as usual). Watched another art video. Talked for a very few minutes about the speeches we're suppose to do. Oh, did I mention I need to give a persuasive speech of some sort NEXT WEEK?! Did I mention I just found out TODAY?! Oh well. Oh, and I fell asleep. Luckily I woke up in time to get up and come home.
Came home. Found a thing on the door from Cox Communications (cable people). Saying that they'd be in the neighborhood all week installing...guess what... FIBRE OPTIC CABLE! So ya, cable service will be unreliable and have holes in the roads, but at least we're getting all new equipment put in. They started today by climbing up every pole in the neighboorhood removing the filters (I'm not getting HBO, Showtime, etc -- all the premium channels -- since we don't have cable boxes, they use physical filters to remove them before it gets to the house). They have to take the filters out in preparation for our 72channel upgrade on the 16 Dec. Anyway...
While attempting to relax before taking a nap, I was reading mail. While I was reading mail, I got clued into a web site for the manufacturer who labels their chips "ITT" yet is not really the American supercompany named ITT. The DVC1100 board I have (with the tuner on it) has an ITT VPX3220A on it and until today, I had no idea who ITT was. Now I know. And now I have a full 80pg data book for it.
Then I got talking with Temas and n on efnet #faim. I don't remember about what. I think it was a serious conversation, though. Temas I think will end up throwing out all the IM window code in gtkfaim (its ugly stuff...what can I say? it was my first gtk dialog box! :). n was generally complaining as usual. He was trying to get an mp3 player to work or something. I don't know...
Obviously, this detracted me from actually getting to sleep. I did, however, get to sleep, but less than 10minutes later, I was awakened by the smell of food. And I had to eat that. So, I still haven't really slept yet.
I don't quite know what I've been doing all night.
The Sun4/330 boards should ship today. Russ got back to me about token ring cards. He set aside 4 Thomas-Conrad ISA boards for me (which are IBM Tropic-based, so they should work in Linux just fine). He'll sell them to me for $22 shipped. I'm going to take them. I need them. Also, the Dallas DS1387 clock/nvram chip in these ALR EISA motherboards (one of which is in a mammatus node) is aparently not dead. My dad sliced open a DS1287 (same, just without the NVRAM) to see where the lithium was at. This all turned out to be unnecessary as the chips aren't dead to begin with. I'm not quite sure why I was getting those failed BIOS checksums before, but I haven't been able to reproduce them. Possibly a cracked motherboard (leading to intermitten battery contact). Didn't get any libfaim work done either.
That's mostly it I think. Of course, I never mention everything I want to mention. I just have a bad short term memory... oh well... I'm going to go to bed now. And sleep real good....
I woke up to find a laptop sitting right next to me on the bed waiting for me to awken and check my mail. So I did. For two hours. At 1300, I did go ahead and take a shower.
After the showever tried to kill me, I got out and wondered around for awhile. Started getting caught up on just what was going on in the rest of world. Laughing at slashdot, etc...
Then started working on faim again off-and-on. I'd take mail reading breaks at various times, along with breaks to do other things. Got faim changing passwords. {Now that sounds like that was a boring event. In fact, it was quite an exillerating one. Adam just has problems expressing extreme joy, I guess.} The process is quite clean and requires only a very small amount of code to implement it in the frontend. Still left to do yet is parsing the response (ie, determining if it really got changed or not). That's trivial. The point is that it worked, and works well, and looks good. The gtkfaim part should be very trivial. I suppose I should release a libfaim snapshot now...nahh... I'll wait till I get it cleaned up and have chat at least started... (!!!)...
With all the eating and mail checks, that took all day and evening. Of course, I stopped at 1900 to watch my normal Sunday night enternment (ie, Simpsons and X-Files). [Now Amanda, you missed a very good episode for commentary.] Also talked to Orb about various things (including X-Files).
I don't know what I did for the two hours following that. Then talked to a few people. Then wrote the log you see below. Then wrote the log you see above. Then wrote the sentence you just saw... {Adam was scaring me when Amanda mentioned the distance between his and her houses and he actually went to Lycos and looked it up (it's 2.2mi, btw, but it gave incredibly stupid directions as aparently it has no idea that (1)79th Ave exists and (2) Banff goes east as well as west.). }
That's all (probably). I'm off to the aeroport (and a beautifully ugly aeroport it is, too). Sara is coming home because she is too ill to stay there (so she says). I'll probably be home about 0400 and be in a nice bad mood just in time for school...
Well, this day ended a bit strangely, so I didn't get to write here till the day latter (ie, now).
Woke up late. Did nothing for a few hours. Drove down to the Arizona Center. There was a TubaChristmas event going on down there at 1400. I usually play in it, but this year I did not (just didn't feel like it -- though now I regret it -- it's really quite fun). [For those who don't know (probably 99.9% of the people reading this), TubaChristmas is an informal gathering of tuba and euphonium players from all over the area that just get together to play Christmas music together (usually sounds pretty bad because of the prominence of people who haven't played very long, but its nice anyway). There's not too many things that can beat the sound of a 50+ member low-brass choir. I just went to watch (though afterward, I regretted not playing). Saw a lot of people from ASU (thats a fairly long story...basically, I used to spend a lot of time wondering around down there... even got to practice in Katzin Hall once :). This includes two of the greatest tubists around (and two of the best people you can talk to): Deanna Swaboda and (the one, the only) Sam Pilafian (the definitive jazz tubist).
Got back from that about dinner time (stopped on the way home to do various things, not to mention stand around Az Center enjoying the wonderous weather).
Then worked on more faim backend code. Got some more major breakthroughs. Then stopped and closed it out when it started crashing right after it made the new connection (this later turned out to be a stupid problem, but I'll get to that in today's log). Still nothing visibly working at this point.
On Fri, I found what I think I will buy for my domain: auk.net. The auk, of course, is the evolutionary parent of the penguin. [The penguin has obvious importance to me as it's both the Linux logo and the unofficial logo of Libertarian Party -- "Liberty Penguin".] Once I scrape together $70, I'll buy auk.net (or whatever I think would be appropriate at the time I finally have the money).
I also decided I'm not well informed enough about the open source / free software community, so I made myself another account on ihpled and subscribed to a bunch more mailing lists...brings me to about 30 total I think. And, yes, I do read them. [I'm still not as bad as Alan, who seems to be subscribed to about a 100 or so linux-related lists!]
That's probably enough for that day. It was coooold. Never did rain, but it was beautifully cloudy and "dreary" most of the day. Great weather. Low was something like 28degF in these parts. This, while it was around 75degF in DC and Kansas and most everyhwere not here. This is mostly completely opposite from what it normally is this time of year. The earth is probably falling out of normal rotation again...
Oh, I just kind of fell asleep without formally "going to bed". It happens.
So I'm sitting here watching an infomercial for an 'ionic toothbrush' and wondering just what I should talk about today... (no, I'm not kidding)
Anyway, I suppose I should blabber about the day's events for a bit. Used the time entitled chemistry to finish up all that lab-sorta-thing we were doing the day prior. Got to scrub that nail again...woohoo! Spent second hour reading things for humanities (I'd forgotten to do that). That took the entire time. Lunch was there, as usual. That got productively used by refering to Lanèe's APUSH homework to do mine (no, not copying). I don't remember anything real exciting being discussed (I'm sure Amanda will promptly remind me when she reads this). APUSH was spent listening to Pavia say how she wasn't going to give away all the answers to the quiz (yes, she did end up doing that, along with wasting nearly all the time we actualy had to take the quiz). Oh well. Humanities brought some more of that hilarious art video. Also many other things that proved terribly amusing (such as the word 'supremely'... that word slipped out of my mouth and aparently it has lost general conversational usage lately... new to me, so Mike and all had to go around mocking that for a while -- have you guessed why I'm still in this class yet? many funny things came and went...).
Came home and all that. Read mail. Don't remember. Talked with James Croall about the AOL protocol for a bit. Aparently it uses some compressed headers (interesting). Thomas' password problem inspired me to get working on password changing support for faim/gtkfaim. But, that requires making faim handle multiple simultaneous connections (to change passwords, you have to open another connection to the authorizer as well as keeping your BOS connection). This led to several hours of faim hacking. Ugh. I can't think of too many things more masochistic than working with that horrid faim code (it's some scary stuff). I did get a lot of it cleaned up to a fair degree. It does now support multiple connections (though untested at this point, it should theoretically work). I also took this opprutinity to improve some other things. Like the massive amounts of code needed in the client for parsing things like IMs and user info. So, I created kind of a pseudo middle-end (I told you you'd see that word somewhere) that parses things from the raw backend form and sends them through passups to the frontend in a cleanly form. I decided to use stdarg to do the passups. It may get kind of ugly in the future, but it's not too bad at this point (it's better than what gtkfaim is currently using). A new faimtest.c that works with the current snapshot of libfaim is here. A snapshot of the entire libfaim is somewhere in delphid.ml.org/pub/aim/snapshots/. Beware that it spits several dozen warnings and still isn't completely beautified yet. I get the extreme feeling that by the time I'm done, I would have been better off to do a full rewrite of faim. Oh well. Live and learn, I guess.
Forgot to mention that a few days ago, I spent a bit of minutes pulling boards out of the VME backplane of parsky (in Stack1 -- if you've not seen those pictures, you should... i'm sure the way you organize computers tells you something about yourself!). [parsky is the Sun4/110, btw.] I was checking to see just how many VME slots it has. It's got three. My plan is to take out the 4/110 board and use the chassis as a backplane for the 4/330 boards that are on their way. Hopefully this will work. [So what do you call a 4/330 in a 4/110 chassis? Maybe "TRIO"? :) Well, I guess "threow" would sound better... -- I'm talking quotients here people!] Anyway...
It was just generally a good day, I guess. Nothing majorly wrong happened. And aparently some people have been misled about who I am. No, I don't just sit there and laugh at people. Sometimes I talk to them. And every once in a while, they get to laugh at me too.
Oh, and a short followup to yesterday's ramblings. The guy who was publishing the private newspaper has been let off the hook and can now distribute the papers ON CAMPUS during certain parts of the day. Great news. There is still someone sane left on school boards. Now if only there was one on OUR school board...
I need to do homework. I'm getting a D in humanities (thanks Rebecca! [i was failing]). I'll be getting a C in calc here real soon, and probably lower by the time the time comes. Oh well. I don't like force-fed education. It bothers me. It's like they're begging you to be stupid...
I'm just wondering how many people wake up one morning and say "I think I want to change my teeth's polarity today!" And remember: "FRICTION IS NOT ENOUGH!!!"
And here we are once again. I could, of course, start rambling about polyeyed insects or maybe even small woodland creatures, but I'm not. Surprise, surprise...
And the day happened. It was a Good Day.
Chem was spent participating in a minor distilled water fight. It seems distilled water is far more amusing. Flows better I guess. Also scrubbed a nail, oggled at the enigma called copper chloride, and then scraped rust off the nail. Fun fun. Second hour contained not much of anything. Attempted to finish up the worksheets from the two days of chem I missed. With much distraction, that didn't happen as planned. Oh well. Lunch..hmm... Aparently Amanda got herself illified and is blaming it on me. {Master of the Curly Brackets can only utter: "HAHA!"} Also remembered at that point that I still hadn't filled out those forms for AD. Moved on to calc. Sat there for quite some time. Then moved on once more to humanities. Sat there for a really long while as well. Watched this hilarious video about elements of art. Quote: "If it LOOKS like a line, it IS a line." (The narrator then continued to point out several different types and examples of lines, followed by a fasciating bit on primary colors.) She finally shut that off because nobody could stop laughing (not kidding). Ran around after school trying to get all those AD papers ready-to-go (which they were supposed to be two weeks ago). This was complicated by 1) the need for an administrator's signature and 2) Denton stopping me in the hallway asking some wacky question about TC and WinPopup. Don't ask me... I'm still not quite sure why the 600 building smelled of baking chicken. I'll have to query Broq or David or Somebody about that...
Came home, checked mail, ate something (I wonder what I ate). Had a short discussion with Orb about religious dominance/majority. This was interrupted once by Sara (his sister) with something about sleep and blow jobs. Hm. She's an interesting one indeed.
Thomas told me gtkfaim 0.0c was broke. Oh well. Put up a new copy he provided me. Later found out (thanks Orb) that he'd accidently left his password in there. That forced another patch-up.
Somehow, in this side of the universal timeline, very close to the proximity of a few hours past, Tara got waaaaaay to close to Amanda's keyboard. Aparently she didn't like the leeping turtles comment. She was for some reason reading David's log. She was complaining about it's length. Oh well. Then Amanda kicked her off (I bet biting was involved). Then she started complaining again. Oh, I was watching Rain Man while talking to Tara...I'm sure she was vastly confused. Or maybe not...
Think that's about all today was about.
Now, since I mentioned it last time, I suppose I should actually talk about it a bit. Okay, here's the scenario. A high school student who's working on the school newspaper, quits that after it comes under a new teacher who wishes to lower the newspapers standards quite a bit. This student then goes on to find funds and publishes his own newspaper and distributes it on campus. This paper does contain some things that are quite critical of the school employees. Now, at first word of this, the admins start confiscating papers. So, the next month, the student distributes it completely _offcampus_. Guess what? They still confiscated it. Since he was distributing them from a safe place just outside school property near the parking lot gates, they seem to think they could write him up for 'distrupting traffic' and other such nonsense.
Sound familiar? It should. Especially if you read the octobre edition of this log. You've got a student who is excercising their own rights to free speech -offcampus- on their -own time-, yet are still being held accountable for it -oncampus- on -school time-. Sound logical to you? Hope not. It's plain idiocy. There is absolutly no reason students should be deprived of their rights to insult people, especially when they're spending their own time and space to do it! I think you get my point, so I'll stop now.
Oh well.... I think I'll go off to sleep now. (Long BEFORE Matlock tonight...)
{Hahaha.... Master of the Curly Bracket Dominion here... Just a note that Adam is jumping up and down wildly for a reason.... Aparently he finally got majordomo to archive all by itself! Yea!}
I really need to hurry up before Matlock starts spooking me again...
As for the day... well... It was there. Chem was spent making up some of what I missed. Aparently what I missed was the entire unit on reaction balancing. I have no idea why she blows that into great proportion (probably for the same reason we spent an entire week on scientific notation). Second hour was a little odd, since Baedke wasn't there combined with the fact that there was no substitute either. I finally convinced Mr Heir to let me in. Quickly read bits of the APUSH book so that I would be caught up inthere too. I found this really hilarious cartoon that I'll scan and in and show you some time. It's 150 years old, but it's hilarious I tell ya. Anyway, lunch was there too. Went with Michelle to that carrer fair thing. Nothing exciting there (a hundred people crammed into a hallway -- it was suppose to be outside, but then they decided that it would not be quite right to have it in the rain...so they moved it inot the 600 building). [I was in there long enough for Regnu to give me one of usual nasty looks and have the chance to give a mocking look back, though -- you know, that's "her building" that I'm banned from or something.] Went on to APUSH. That was fairly boring. Ooo...Jeffersonian era. Ya, exciting stuff there. Humanities was spent sleeping. Well, mostly.
Came home, read mail, went to sleep. Slept for a really long time. Woke up to find messages from Amanda. That's the SECOND time she's talked first... Oh well. Wandered around moaning a bit. Browsed a bit. Released a new gtkfaim. Watched MASH. Ate ice cream (mmmm). Took a bunch of amoxicilin (fun stuff). Decided not to take the decongestant/expectorant as it makes me feel far warse than just being congested (such as making me sleep for five hours in the middle of the day). Got majordomo doing archiving, and set up an aol-protocol list on ihpled.
Oh, and talked to n about, well, the fact that Monolith (ml.org) may soon be no-more. This kind of speeds up my need for a seperate domain. I've been thinking about midend.org or midend.net, but I'm not real sure how I want it to go. Brock seems to still want phlurm.org as well. ML may or may not go down. It's quite unclear at this point, but @home and dyndns are definitly gone forever. This certainly affects David, though it has already affected him for the past few weeks anyway. --I still need my own domain (at least one).--
Oh, did I mention I made a new gtkfaim release? Ya, after much ado, gtkfaim 0.0c is now available, nearly two months after the last formal release. I know, I've been stalling. But oh well. It will probably be on freshmeat in the next few days. Hopefully they'll wait until it's on a mirror to do that. Sab's readonly flag was only partially implemented, so I had to finish that. Also a few other things needed twiddling. It got released, with known problems. But it was released anyway. No more pre's, damn it...
That's probably all that's worth noting. Remind me to start talking about first ammendment rights in the next entry. Some stuff has come up at other schools that really needs to be attended to. However, I need to get to bed...
Yep, that's right, I rotated. volume siex: nov 1998ad is there. Have fun. [Don't ask _me_ why I'm writing numbers in eald englisc today...]
Alan finally got himself back to Swansea after a short stay in Galway (linuxnet has been kind of boresome without him). Wish I got to go to all those conferences.... I don't even get to go to the ones IN this country...
Anyway, I suppose I should trance back a few hours... (and I do mean trance...)
Made an official decision not to get out of bed (again). I finally got bored with that and walked to school for lunch and what follows. Sat there mostly in a daze at lunch (and they had the gall to think it was funny!). Tara got off on something about her love of whipping things (particularly the male human form). Worries abound. Fortunatly, it was nearly time for calc. Ahh..calc... Cut out pieces of paper and made boxes for no aparent reason. Moved on to humanities and continued doing nothing. Kinda-sorta caught up on what supposedly occured the day prior. I think Foster just tells you what she HOPED she'd gotten done -- if she actually got through that much material in a single day, it was probably the most productive day yet this year. Therefore, I doubt it.
I slowly drudged homeward... I'd already begun to feel quite nauseated and walking home didn't exactly help much. I think it's that entex crap they have me taking. Which is better: congestion or nausea?
Skipped dinner (for obvious reason). Quickly did that chem lab I've been avoiding typing up. Sat around feeling horrid. Caught up this log on all the days I'd missed. That's probably worth a read if you're truely feeling as worthless as I feel right now. Talked to Broq and David for a bit about absolutly nothing. Rotated this log (I finally noticed that novembre doesn't have 31 days in it and that someday I would indeed have to admit that it's now decembre). Noticed that for some reason I kept typing numbers in Old English. Decided the best way to not do that was probably just to stop writing numbers. an, twa, threo, feower, fif, siex, seofon, eahta, ooops...
That's probably as much as I should write for now. Wouldn't want to start scaring anybody... especially because Matlock is on and that in itself is scaring me... I should be at school all day today. Ya, not that you'll want to talk to me....
You know it's not good when you start sounding as bad as the guy on the Afrin nasal decongestant commercial...