Did you know stuff happened today while you weren't watching?

Erg.

Speedchoice called yesterday. Quite a coincidence since they called right when I was digging around for their phone number so I could yell about the twelve hour downtime the night before. They had more interesting news than I had for them, however. Their merger with Sprint finally went through. And Sprint will be making major changes, quite soon. They've started by getting out of the leasing business and just giving away the antenna and modem. So now I only have to pay 39$/month instead of 55$/month. And I get a new antenna and transverter. Which are said to be "more reliable". We find out tomorrow I guess. They're coming to install.

And today, CU called. They decided they don't hate me quite enough to refuse me. I think they're just bitter because I can get random D's and F's and still end up being in the top few percents of my class. Heh. So now I definitly get to leave this place. I couldn't be happier. (Well, I could be. But let's not get into that.)

Oh well. That's about all of the somewhat interesting stuff thats happening these days. Boring, yes. Only a six more weeks. 18 may.

Damnit. Connection has been really unreliable. I'm really getting pissed off by this point.

It hasn't been a great couple of days. Blah.

I slept the majority of both days. Did minor company code things both days. Found some little place that still has Intel L440GX+ server motherboards in stock. So I should have a new machine soon. (Intel doesn't have production problems. No. Never.)

I need to do more homework. Blah. Someone needs to do that compandlithellofnoremorse assigment for me. Its due next Tuesday. Have fun.

Oh, CU has now determined that I need to be personally approved by the dean. Haha. It just keeps getting better. And they're on spring break. So I get to wait at least another week to hear I didn't get in.

I can't believe they replayed the Tomacco episode again. Its probably the best episode of the season, but that doesn't mean you can play it every other week....

May will be the best month yet. I want it to be here now. Can't we skip April? (Of course not. Because then I could never be half-legal. We can skip all of it except the first week.)

The rest of last week just got less and less eventful. Mostly just doing various bits of coding all day. Got back to phoenix (it stinks, really) around 1330 on Saturday. Haven't really done much since.

Last week did clue me in to one major thing: I don't want to live there (in the Valley). Which makes it all the more sad that I actually am going to live there this summer. And I'll probably end up moving there after college. But I don't want to. I can't really pin down any specific reason as to why I don't want to live there, but I can assure you, I don't.

Anyway, I've been purposely doing nothing this weekend. And being fairly succesful at it.

Rearraged my laptop a bit. Installed slackware-current after moving my old root fs into a directory. Spent a while merging the roots back together. I think I may do this to other machines around here. Including deepthought.

Deepthought is breaking...bad. Yesterday /usr/sbin/named just up and disappared completely. Today the terminal database is screwed up. I don't know whats going on. It hit day 80 of uptime too.

Yes. That's right. PST. I was rather amusingly made aware of that fact at 0830 this morning when by boss arrived to meet me for breakfast and I had already gone and had breakfast after giving up waiting for him an hour prior (0830 MST). Time warp indeed. So, today was an hour longer than I was planning on. Oops. (When was DST? Someone should really remind me of these things. Of course, its never been a problem in the past since I've never had to deal with it this directly before. But bah anyway.)

Sunday wasn't real interesting. Did a fair amount of coding. Quite productive in some areas.

Got up and packed Monday morning and left around 1000. Flight scheduled to leave at 1205. [The WB affiliate out here has news. Disturbingly odd. Why would anyone trust news from a WB affiliate?] Sat on the runway for a good 20min. Aparently the FAA told the skyharbor tower not to fly to San Fransisco because of extremely high winds [Very high as I found out on arrival. Up to 73mph in the hills.]. The FAA later cleared that warning, but failed to notify the aeroport again. So we sat there. As the flight attendent put it: "This is why we don't let the FAA actually fly planes." Flight was really jarring. Didn't particularly bother me, but they lowered the cabin temperature by about 15degF to "keep people from being sick". I was happy because it was cooler (I could live in a meat locker and be happy. Well, as long as I had some way to cook the meat.).

The Bay Area is pretty neat looking from the air. Unfortunatly it gets worse when you get closer. In any case, boss met me and we went to lunch. Sushi. Never had it before. Don't plan to have it again. Yeek.

Met another non-employee employee (which is technically what I am until I'm a non-minor). Went out to dinner with a guy from VA (R or LS...I like R better, but eh). Its amazing that food can cost so much and yet still taste terrible. Went to the co-lo. Spent the next four hours+ there. Gah. Its not healthy to stay in those places that long. They might as well put airlocks at the doors -- no real air gets in anyway. (Hell, it takes 20minutes to get people through the door. Ridiculous amounts of paperwork. I didn't have to sign the NDA again. I just got a neat badge that says "Adam Fritzler -- NDA/Non-Customer". And that qualifies me to not talk about what I see. Heh. Not that it's real interesting anyway. I mean, its interesting the first time you go, but after that its just a lot of crap laying around and lots of dry disgusting air. Of course, telling you that the air is disgusting is surely enough to violate the NDA.) Was utterly exhausted when I got back to the hotel. Went straight to bed. I tried to call home first, but aparently it was 0230 (MST) by then. Oh well.

And then to get up at 0830MST/0730PST this morning was a bit bad. Aparently I was confused about the time thing without even knowing it because I didn't really mind getting up that early. I wasn't tired. And I somehow doubt I slept that well in this hotel. Not that its bad.

It's actually quite amusing. The only place that had rooms open this week is the Motel 6. And add to that...only the handicap room. Thats entertaining in itself. (Paramount Great America is right up the road. Probably vacation people filling up all the rooms.) Anyway, the handicap room. Its quite large. The bathroom is huge. The shower is at least four foot square. Its quite nice actually. Free HBO. Haha. What they don't tell you in that is that thats all you get. That is, except for an NBC affiliate, an ABC affiliate, and two WB affiliates. Real useful stuff.

The TV is a Magnovox. I think it must be badly hacked up. I don't think even Magnavox would let something this bad out the door. It doesn't save any settings when you turn it off. When you turn it on, it starts on channel two and the volume all the way up (I must say I was quite surprised when I turned it on at 2am yesterday, as I'm sure were the people next door).

Enough ranting about TV. So after I had a second breakfast, we had meetings all day long. Bleh. I feel asleep twice. Got chinese for lunch, though. That was good. Most of them spent the rest of the evening (what was left of it) at the co-lo again. I refused to go there again, as did one of the other guys. Stayed back at the office hacking away.

I got to thinking while I was showering (in my extremely oversized shower) tonight. I (and many others I know (I'm looking at you, brock)) sit around and start to write something. I then have some great revelation, and scrap everything I did and start over. And then have another revelation and do it all over again. The bad part of this is that I hardly ever actually finish anything. I just have great ideas. Well, the obvious goal of it all is that you keep starting over until you stop having revelations long enough to finish it. And the result should therefore be the most perfect implementation. But what if that never happens. Now, what is the most elegent, cleanly implemented piece of code?

A nonexistant one. How much more elegent can you get? You can't. I figure that if you keep having these revelations that inspire better code, you should end up at a final revelation: the revelation that you don't need the code. The implementation/"code" just... is. Doesn't need creation, the algorithm just happens.

Yes, I know that has little application in respect to real life. But its helping me understand the nature of gurudom. And understanding it is probably the first step to never being one, but eh. I can try.

Hrmph. I've run out of things to talk about before I even started.

I went to the doctor on Friday. Had stiches removed. Got some Claritin-D-12 (lortadine+pseudoephedrine). Seems to work. An apalling amount of cruft comes out. You needed to know that. Aparently its not enough however. I'm still rather congested.

Also went to the musical last night. Sara is too entertaining for her own good. And Adams is scary. And fred can sing.

I basically slept all day today. Very nice. Went to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. Harrased Michelle. Hah.

Before and after that, I've been working on libfaim and libfaim-related code. Did some long overdue cleanups to the queue code. All should be better now. I found a couple bugs that have been present for a while, dealing with unitialized data. They should be fixed now. Killed a lot of the stupid i-dont-know-what-the-hell-im-doing-so-ill-just-add-lots-of-random-code stuff in the queue management code. The functions should readable now.

I suggest everyone who likes using CVS libfaim and mfaim update their trees now. I think the response is a bit better, but it may just be my imagination. The code looks nicer anyway. (You must update both libfaim and mfaim! The libfaim interface changed a bit (for one function).) I haven't tested faimtest. But it compiles. It must work.

And yes, I was supposed to be in nocal right now. Moved that to Monday. Because you know I have to lots of things to do here. Heh.

I got my "You'll hear from us soon.". Yay.

I didn't get any sleep yesterday. It's amazingly difficult to sleep while coughing. And coughing won. I slept in when the coughing stopped. Unfornatly, I slept through the alarm that I'd maticuluously set. Hah. I woke up around 1300. Oops.

I cannot believe I'm still sick. Its been two weeks. I've taken all the medicine they told me to. Most of it doesnt work. Allegra is worthless. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow.

Don't let me forget to go to the musical tomorrow. I seem to keep forgetting to do that.

A finally got a copy of GEB. The "20th anniversary edition". Its the same except for a matte black cover instead of the old shiny blue one. And it has a new preface. Also got a copy of the Hitchiker's movie from the BBC.

Spent most of the day sleeping and coughing at random intervals. And watching above movie. Or half of it. Its 194minutes. Its pretty bad. But thats why I got it. Its great in its badness.

Also got a couple token ring to token ring bridges. They seem quite nice (they sell used for 1400$, which seems a bit outrageous...I got them for 1$ apiece). However, I can't get both sides to open at 16mb. Port B always opens at 4mb. On both of them. I figure I need to get into them to configure them somehow. They've got a config rs232 port. I connected. All it does it send a string of numbers every few minutes. Not very exciting. And definitly not what I want. Perhaps it needs special software or something ridiculous.

I spent all evening doing homework. Blah. Calc test tomorrow. I really shouldn't have been gone today, because it drastically complicates the corrections from the last test. Too much to explain. Damnit. I should've been there today.

Oh well. Spring break is next week. I'm leaving saturday for nocal. I'll be back when I feel like it. I'm going to take my time. I have nothing to do here, really. Just homework. Not like that matters. Hah.

Gah. Life is annoying me again. Why can't I just leave NOW?

Is it not interesting that "hello" and "hell no" are so closely similar?

I called CU today. I was informed as to why I still have recieved no definitive word on my application. Aparently they wanted to get a grade report to see if I was passing Calc this time around. And they went to my counselor for that. Haha. I would think they'd know better. High school counselors are dolts. Its obvious. [I didn't name names. I'm still not violating anything. Not that I have anything to violate. No. Never. I am going to graduate damnit.] Talked him into just letting me fax him a grade report instead. Yay. Then I can get another "Expect to hear from us soon". (Aparently he's obsessing about the calc grade because I specified an engineering major. It would be a Bad Thing for someone going into engineering to not understand basic calc. Hah. "Don't you care that I FAILED HUMANITIES?" "No. Not at all. I only care that you got a D in calc." Yay. Can I just graduate with that F and no one will notice?)

"you are too sane for your own good." Finally, an explanation.

The Ides started today. I didn't get anyone killed today. But I say from here on out, we get at least one public leader a day for the next six days. That should show them.

The Ides also means the vernal equinox. Can't we just start travelling back and forth between december and march? Its such a nice time here. Well, weather wise. I don't want it to get hot. And vernal equinox means hot. Damnit. It would be enjoyable to travel backwards from march to december too. That works.

It is definitly one of my goals in life to have a longer FBI file than the great, idyllic populist Huey Long. That means no less than 1818 pages. I'll try to contain my alacrity for a few years, just so they don't suspect it when the Time comes. And then I'll attempt to take over the world just so that I can say: "Okay, I am done. That is all. Go home! I just felt like taking over the world. I do not really want to control you. Feel free to attempt it yourself. It's sort of fun. Really."

Damnit, she left. I can never leave. Oh, but she can. Bah. She'll regret it. I'm going to sit here and write page and pages and pages of useless information and then mail it to her at four in the morning. (I'll set a cron job, of course. I don't plan on being awake then. (And yes, it does matter what time I send it. It just does. (That's why I'm sane and you're not. Or something like that.)))

I would say that I don't want to go to bed because that means I would have to get up. But since thats obvious, redundent, and dubious, I'll leave it unsaid. Mu.

Weee...? Maybe.

I've been surprisingly busy lately. Or at least pretending quite well.

Looks like Phoenix is going to bring itself into the Public Transportation mess again (prop 2000). Phoenix loves to do this. It makes me glad I don't live there. They get everyone hyped up ("wow! public transportation reform! we're going to have busses and trolleys and light-rail everywhere! yay mass transit!") and then spends the next decade squandering the tax money on debating which plan is the best. This is then followed by running out of money and then sponsoring yet another proposition, they hype it up again, get it passed, and repeat the whole thing again. Citizens are so entirely intelligent, aren't they?

"Bush calls himself a 'compasionate' conservative. He's from Texas. Warm and fuzzy Texas. Leading the nation in executions..."

Oooh, the Genome Project is giving away info. The big question is whether they're going to give away accurate information. I think I'll start my own Human Genome Project (change the name, of course...I wouldn't want to infringe on a trademark that the government itself owns) that just makes up stuff and gives it away. If you're a HGP, you don't have to go through peer review. Know why? No one has that kind of resources to verify your work. I can lie all I want. I'll have people with hands coming out their ears. Yay. [Oh, if you ever see a genome project with my name attached, you didn't see this paragraph. It was just your imagination. It's not my fault your kids' hands are coming out of their ears. Really.]

Anyway. Fought lots of really stupid bugs in company code over the weekend. I was quite disappointed by the fact that I got nothing done this weekend. The bugs didn't really get fixed, because I still have no idea what really the cause of them was. Crazy stuff.

Yesterday wasn't too bad. Not great. It was a Monday. Slept in the afternoon. Managed to get near-nothing done most of the evening. Ended up working all night instead. Didn't sleep a bit. But I got a lot done and sent off a tarball around 0400.

Had to sit through an assembly this morning concerning drunk driving or something. It was actually about trying to freak people out by talking about graphic information. Shrug. It promised to get me out of second hour. They lied. Damn them. Still had to go to physics. Where I proceeded to play tetris on my 89 for exactly 89 minutes. Had compandlit today too. By then I was rather tired from not having slept in entirely too long. Was mostly awake. Yeh.

Came home and slept. Went to Big Heng. Mmm. I'm avoiding doing anything productive this evening. I actually read a good majority of the 244 messages from l-k. Thats definitly sad.

"you truly are insane ... that humans with hands coming out of ears thing is disturbing" -- The one who obviously talks more than I do. (That would be Tara. I'm not going to tell you who the one in the last entry was, because I've sworn to not publicly acknowledge her existance.)

I decided the other day what I want for a first Simpsons movie: "Invisible Homer: An Ellisonian Simpsons Epic". It should be based on Ellison's Invisible Man, of course...accenting the invisibility of Homer, an average middle-aged yellow male. I think it would be great. There's lots of great stuff in Invisible Man that could be made into Simpsons comedy. The only troubling bit was that the Invisible Man was intelligent. Some arrangements would have to be made for Homer. Anyway, it needs to be a movie. Its a decently large book and definitly could not be treated well in 23 minutes. [This is definitly possible. Simpsons has done classic literature before. The obvious examples are 5F11: Das Bus (Golding - Lord of the Flies) and 1F22: Bart of Darkness (Conrad - Heart of Darkness), not to mention AABF14: Simpons Bible Stories.]

Okay, I'm done rambling. (It only took me three hours.)

I'm in the mood for watching fish talk to each other. Luckily I'm watching Meaning of Life, so this isn't a major problem.

Lets see...the last time we had a daily summary was...Wednesday. Thursday wasn't terribly interesting. Went to school again. Went to the doctor. Had minor surgery. Not school school related. You don't want to know. Really.

I slept through Friday, thank the Gods (including Mel Brooks). Did get to play with a new toy that came that afternoon. Its really fast and has some really neat features. You're not getting any more information. Except that it has two of something that starts with a K (or a P) and ends with an i (either way, three of them in the latter case though). And it can install Slackware-current in just under ten minutes. And has half of a unit-of-capacity-that-starts-with-a-G of RAM. [I really don't have to be this vague. I just find if fun and thrilling. Really.]

"I prefer the term "sick" especially since it applies to you in so many different ways." -- The one who has been unscientifically proven to speak less than I do.

Slept alot today. Messed around a bit. Did some work stuff.

I'm growing bored of being awake again. I'm feeling a bit better than I have been. It only took a week, and eventually, three pills three times a day. Wheee. (Gave up on loratadine. I'm on good ol' fexofenadine now. Its great to be allergic to reality, isn't it?)

I told you Mel Brooks is a God. No one listens to me.

Bahhh... I didn't find any important leaders to kill.

I feel better for random periods of time, then it just gets worse again. Gah. And it didn't let me sleep at all last night. Life is hell. Have I mentioned that?

I actually went to school today. Boo. Had to take two surprise tests too. Physics and calc. The calc test was hellish. So much for my high A in that class. Twas a compandlithellofnoremorse day, however, it was short. And we didn't really do anything. And I didn't have to read. Which is all well, too, since my voice still randomly vanishes.

A guy from CU called today. He wanted to know how 1) I ended up with a 4.0 GPA last year, sans the D in calc. and 2) how I ended up with a 4.0 last semester sans the F in humanities. I have to admit that looks rather odd. But, ehh. It's the way I work. The calc D should be gone now. I need to write that paper for fosterwebb eventually. It's probably not a good idea to leave that F on there. Sigh. I hate shool. And I hate (most) teachers. Anyway, he gave me another "Expect to hear from us soon" comment. That's got to be the third or fourth one of those exact statements I've heard over the past few months. I'm not sure if those lowish grades got me on the low-priority list or what. I can't imagine their fast-path being that slow. (Or perhaps they have the "Expect to hear from us soon" comment posted on plaques around the offices and they're required to meet a monthly quota of saying it and I ended up being the unlucky one. Or not.)

Brock/mandie/beth wandered into my room for some reason this early evening. No idea. Entertaining. (And brock didn't even see Fred. He was sitting RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU. Next to the DVDs. Nay, on the RIGHT side of the DVDs.)

Came up with some more neat hacks this evening. I can't talk about those however. Of course not.

I'm going to go cough/sneeze/sniffle in a different place now. Perhaps a shower would be useful. (Not that it would matter. You don't have to see me tomorrow. Or pretend not to, anyway. Start thinking of people you'd like to torment, I'll see if I can find them for you. We can all have a mery time in humble worlddomination on little ol' exchange four...)

I need to find the camera. Must start the 'Devolution of The Great Potato' collage. [No, he's not mush yet. Quite firm, actually. But its coming.]

Oooh, the eighth of march. That sounds too much like you-know-what to be mere coincidence. Which ruler shall we kill? [Yes, I know it doesn't really start until the 15th. That doesn't mean it should. It really should start on the 8th. Because that sounds better.]

I'm still feeling rather dreadful. Slept through school today; in fact, most of the day. Blah. At least it stopped raining. Now it just needs to start again when I feel better. It needs to be an A day too, so I get to walk home in the rain. [Unfortunatly, in their fit of giving us no weather once again, the weather channel has removed my hopeful chance of rain for again on thursday. Pout.]

Gah. Blah. Damnit. I didn't want to rime today.

It's been a "rollercoaster" of a few days, if you will... (Not really. I've just always wanted to mock that idiom.)

Friday was wholly uninteresting. Got out at 1015. Some freakish finals thing. I can't really justify it because I had exactly zero finals to take that day. Its only important for two reasons: 1) I got out quite early and 2) it marks the fact that I only have a single quarter left this year before I can be rid of this place in general. And both of those are something to be celebrated. And I did. By sleeping an extra two hours.

They need to put this on DVD. But keep the 42$ price tag.

Saturday was moderate. Got up unusually early (for a Sat). ABODA Area Concert Festival. I think the performance was beneith what we have done...but they didn't think so. Superior with Distinction. (I have it on 8mm, but I don't think it came out very well. I'll have to see. Those events aren't known for their respectful audiences.) The part I left out when saying I got up was that I got up with the beginnings of a head cold. This, of course, only worsened as the day went on, and into Sunday...

Mel says I got a C in compandlit. Yay. Its not an F!

Sunday started out perfectly. It was raining. You can't get any more perfect than that. I got up at 0600, but I had good reason. It was raining. And I had to get to the aeroport. I got there rather quickly (speed limit? hah. '79 suburbans are really just overbuilt trucks you know...). The Terminal Four Burger King actually makes hot food that early in the morning. The flight to San Jose was nicely empty. The coke was not flat. Southwest's seats are too close together, but I had an entire row to myself, so that was avoidable. (The only reason that Southwest is even halfway decent is that if I get there early enough, I can get a window seat every time.) Flight was quite nice. Arrived 10minutes early of all things. Met with the people who flew me out there. Discussed some great stuff. Tried to catch the plane home when it was scheduled (1555). Finally did board at 1640 or so. The plane took off some underdetermined time later. It was an overbooked flight. Not a seat empty. (Luckily I stil had a window seat to take refuge in.) Horrible, horrible flight. Took over THREE HOURS. The SJC-PHX route is only supposed to take 1hr 45min. Touchdown at 2005. In the rain. Aparently it had been raining here even more than it had in SJ. (In fact, Phoenix aparently broke its 24hour rainfall record yesterday. And then broke it again today before noon.) Wandered around the terminal for quite some time wondering where the hell that bus was that dropped me off. Finally found it, after wandering around in the rain for a half-hour. (Yes, that terminal is well-labelled. That would be good too, if the labels were accurate.) Then got off that bus. Found my car sometime after that (in the rain...it looks even more yellow now...I barely recognized it...if it weren't for the green spots...). Drove home. Made the mistake of taking 101, or rather, whats left of it. You'd think they would've done something by now. Instead, they've just anabolized it down to a few strips of pavement with lines on it in occasional spots (and even when it is lined, you can't see them in the rain). Came home, slept, feeling terrible.

And now for a few random explications.

SJC terminal A, gates A1, A2, and A3 are utter shit. There's about 20 seats for all three gates combined. I sat on the floor for the two hours that I was there, waiting for my outgoing flight. In addition, their close proximity to each other means that you can't distinguish between the various announcements. They all try to make a "sorry for the delay comment" intermixed with another gates "we're now boarding your delayed flight" announcement. You'd be amazed at how similar those two sound. Surprisingly, I never actually ended up on the wrong flight. I was saved by the prior knowledge that my flight was the only flight to phoenix all afternoon. If there were more than one, I would've surely taken the wrong one, as those people don't seem terribly fond of flight numbers either.

Remember the head cold? Oh yes, it was still there (and still is, in fact). Never fly like that, FYI. Its very bad. Very little was keeping me from cursing in pain during the descent of both flights. They seem to enjoy changing air pressure at random, just to piss people with ear aches off. My right ear has yet to release its pressure, and its quite painful. I've tried all sorts of medicines. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take yet another trip to the doctor. Damnit.

Okay, enough ranting. Today I stayed home from school. I feel worse now than I did this morning. But...I'll go to school tomorrow. Because I need to go tomorrow night, or Janeal will (find more reason to) kill me. If you talk to me and I don't respond, I have more of an excuse than the fact that I don't like you: I can't hear you.

The Gods pick the few days that I'm terribly sick for it to rain like this. I can't enjoy it when I'm sick. Damn them.

"'...yellow submarine...'...with green and blue polkadots..."...and black trim.

It finally ended. And what joy the end brought with it: March. Hah. I'm overjoyed. Can't you tell?

I would've rotated yesterday, but it took me the last two days to think of a new color for this month. [(~green)>>8...err, rotate...there's no bitwise rotate in C...] Yellow is great, isn't? Hah. Yes, it is my plan to annoy the hell out of you in the small hope that you'll all go away...

And using the color yellow is certainly a good way to get people away from you.

I don't really have anything splendid to write about, as you have probably guessed by the fact that out of the current four paragraphs, three of them are less than two lines. I take that back. This one just got longer. Imagine that.

This color gets better the longer you look at it. How sad.

Today was entertaining enough to comment on. Not really. But I will anyway. Parts of it were. Such as physics. I think it was the most amusing physics class yet. We were supposed to present on things that no one ever taught us. Not that she would know that. We could talk in gibberish and she would not care, for she had no idea what we were supposed to be talking about anyway. Nor would she understand it if she did. B came in and started asking real questions. No one knew the answers. It was hilarious. He stood in there for a good ten minutes explaining. The comment from my side of the room when he walked out was: "So thats what real teachers look like". I was amused to no end. I finally contained myself and left. To do nothing in calc. Compandlithellofnoremorse was actually rather remorseful today. Abnormal teacher, and abnormally easy test. Shrug. Came home, slept, did nothing all night.

There you have it. Fun, wasn't it? It deserved to be yellow. With green and blue polkadots.