It's been a while

I haven't posted in almost a month, but what are you going to do? sue me? Anyway, my life has basically returned to normal... working at the astronomy department and going to classes, only this time it's tilted more toward work and less toward school. I'm taking a meteorology class (METO400) and a linguistics class (LING444), which on the surface don't seem to be related. That's because they aren't. They both are, however, good candidates for artificial intelligence, and I would like to have my computer speaking english and predicting the weather before I die (and really, I would like to see it prevent me from dying too). I could even try to have it do both, and I'd have my own little meteorologist on the monitor. I'm thinking simple weather forecasts, like "It's gon' rain" or something. I don't know.
I need to go on more dates, because I had no idea what I was doing last night. I'm used to knowing a woman first, and going on dates once it's apparent that we both like eachother, so when I'm put in a situation where I hardly know the woman, I'm left confused and disoriented. I have no idea what to talk about, and I forget everything I had planned on saying. That's what happened last night; I met her at a party a couple weeks ago, and this is the first time we hung out not surrounded by (and being) loud, drunk people. Still, I had a good time, and I hope we do it again. I just hope I can take all my friends advice to heart and not be an asshole. That's my brothers job.
Speaking of which, my brother's working on getting eagle (in boy scouts) and needs to do a project that benefits the community, so if anybody is interested in doing some construction for the humane society, let me know. I don't know when he plans on doing it, so I don't really have any more information.
Now go away, I ain't got nothing else to say to you.

Crazy?

So I'm sitting there today, in my room, just trying to calm my mind down a little. I turned off all the lights and any sound-producing device, got comfortable, and started letting my mind wander. I try counting down from 10 to zero over and over, which usually does a good job removing my attention from reality without knocking me out, and I start having a conversation with some people. Mind you, all these people are made up, but I'm half dreaming so it's excusable. I think. Anyway, I'm having a little argument with some guy and he uses the fact that he did something (what, I can't remember) on his birthday. My response was "you're lying, you never had a birthday. You don't really exist." He disappears, and I continue the conversation with everybody else. I eventually drifted into unconsciousness, and woke up groggy as all hell.

Weird.

Not Guilty

Went to court today to contest a ticket I got from an accident this spring. It had been raining earlier and I lost control when I hit a slick spot on a curve in the road while breaking. Hit the jersey barrier, totaled the car, but didn't hit anybody else and I wasn't hurt. The cop got there afterwards and issued a ticket for driving faster than reasonable. I got to court at 8:30, which is when they told me to be there, despite the court not opening until 9:00. They say it's so that people get there on time. I figure, if "on time" is 9:00, tell people 9:00 and let them decide how early they want to get there. I was one of the last cases being heard, so I sat around for about two hours before being called up. It went very quickly; the judge asked the cop if he saw the accident, "no", he then asked if there were any witnesses, *sound of crickets*, asked me how I plead, "not guilty." Judge: "not guilty." It took all of 30 seconds. Got back to my car just as the meter expired (wouldn't that be funny, getting a parking ticket while contesting a moving violation), went home, and now I'm at work.

In other news, my sister is coming over to take a couch and foreman grill (we're getting a newer, better grill) and have me install some programs on her new iBook. She has OS 10.3, while I have OS 10.2, so I'm going to borrow her installation CD and upgrade my laptop, assuming it's compatible.

Lazy

That's the best word to describe my posting habits lately. Now, I'm normally lazy, so that alone isn't enough to justify not posting, but I've been lazy across the board, so I haven't got much to talk about. Anyway, here goes.

Went to NJ last weekend, going up again this weekend. I'm "working" durring the week, but between Tuesday and Friday of this week, I don't have anything to work on, so instead I read the news or play freecell. My brother and sister came back from NJ on Tuesday, and we're all heading back up Friday afternoon; my parents are staying all week. It's a little weird staying in my grandfathers house now that he's passed away, and I still feel like I can't touch or move anything (he was a little OCD when it came to keeping the house clean and in order.) I'll probably spend most of the time at the beach anyway. I'm going to Ocean City with Tim and Parker and Parkers sister and other people who I don't know for the last weekend in August, so I will have had a lot of beach this summer. Maybe it will help give me a tan; I need all the help I can get since I work in an office with no windows most of the time that the sun is out.

I'm not completely moved into my new room. I moved most of my crap a while ago, but my closet is much smaller now and I couldn't find room for a lot of my clothes (and I don't even have that many.) I managed to figure it out, and moved everything in. Then I vacummed my old room for the people moving in (when I moved in, there was dust, paint, and dry-wall chunks everywhere, and I like to leave things a little better than I found them.)

Skip this paragraph if you don't care about computers. This computer project I'm working on has hit a problem that I'm not sure how to fix. The problem is this: I need to install a compiler (a program that turns source-code into a program that can be run) on a completely blank system, but the compiler is given as source-code, which means that I need to first compile it before I can compile anything. Problem is, I have no compiler, which is why I'm trying to install one. It's like buying a screwdriver that comes in multiple pieces that need to be screwed together. Sofar I haven't had any luck finding a compiler that doesn't need to be compiled, but they have to exist.

What else what else what else... I've signed up for reinstatement at UMD and tuition-remission from the astronomy department, so i should be able to take classes in the fall for free. I'm looking at ASTR330, which is Solar System astronomy, and LING444, which is Child Language. The astronomy course is for work since it would be nice to understand the data I'm working on, and the linguistics course is to help me understand how humans learn language, in order to help me figure out how to teach computers language. I think I have a firm enough grounding in linguistics that this course shouldn't be that hard, and I'm finally looking at language in a scientific manner, which makes it a lot easier to understand. I hope those classes don't fill up by the time my application for reinstatement goes through. They said it could be a couple weeks.

I'm looking forward to more people living in my house. (Yes, my house. while I wasn't the first person to notice the house was available to rent, I was the first to actually consider it and talk to the landlord, so I am claiming it as mine. Also, I pee everywhere, so the territory is marked.) Leslie and her boyfriend are moving in in a couple weeks, and Paul should be moving back at some point in August, so the population (not including Keith, who lives in the basement and we rarely see) will double.

Oh, Bill Clinton is going to be on The Daily Show on Monday. I advise you to watch it.

New room

I'm more or less moved into my new room, and I've found a good arrangement for all my furniture despite the room being so small. It's not so bad, in fact. Even with a queen-sized bed it's not cramped. I don't have to climb over anything, it's comfortable. Hopefully the limited space will require me to keep things cleaner, and throw a lot of junk out. If I didn't have so many books it wouldn't be so bad, but I'm not going to get rid of any books. Books are good. I'm going to have to convince myself that cardboard is not, in fact, as useful as I would like to think, and stop collecting it. I suppose "waste not want not" applies to space too.

One thing I like about having a bunch of tapestries is that no matter where I live, I can cover empty wall space with them and the room instantly feels like home, since the walls look familiar. Maybe I'll just make a poncho out of them and forget the whole "living indoors" thing. Maybe not.

The other morning I woke up and thought "I should have no problem with space at all. I just got a 200 gigabyte hard drive" then realized that "nooooo, I'm crazy."

Giddy

Not normally a word I use to describe myself, but what the hell. Today, I told a girl that I still liked her. We went to school together in the 9th grade, went to homecoming together, and even went on a date (both of our firsts, turns out) before she moved to Washington, near Seattle. I haven't seen her since, but recently she got in touch with me. She still lives in Washington, and doesn't know where she'll be working once she gets a job, but that's not the point. The point is that for once, it felt natural talking to a member of the opposite sex about "feelings". Her reaction didn't hurt either.

i've got nothing

I haven't been posting very much lately. I blame apathy, or my current dull state of affairs, or some third thing. But in my defense, I haven't been up to much lately. I'd post on recent happenings that I find interesting, like congresses wise decision to shoot down dubyas (un?)constitutional ammendment that discriminates against homosexual couples, or Stephen Hawkings recent statement about information loss in black holes or the lack thereof, but chances are you probably already know these things, or aren't interested. With that disclamer out of the way, here's some shit you don't care about:

I got a 200GB hard drive, which is actually more like 184GB since the nice people at western digital have decided that 1000 = 1024. 1000MB is not 1GB, 1000KB is not 1MB, and 1000B is not 1KB. Powers of two, people, get with the program. Still, it's a huge amount of storage space, which will soon be filled with genetic algorithms and neural network diagrams, and 32GB of music.

I heard from Katie today, whom I haven't talked to since freshmen year in high school. It's nice to hear from people you thought had disapeared forever, unless they're jerks, then it's just anoying. I'm assuming she got my screenname from my blog profile, so blogspot proves to have uses other than providing an outlet for my oh so dull and poorly constructed sentences. That put me in an unusually good mood.

Freecell is an addictive game. I'm not one for computer games, but every now and then one comes along that grabs my attention, like that crappy Deimos Rising game that came with my mac, or SSX Tricky. Is it bad that I'm thinking about designing a genetic algorithym to play the game?

Clusterfuck is one step closer to completion. Only aleph-null steps to go. I now know how modules will work. Granted no code exists for this part yet, but with clusterfuck the going trend seems to be a few weeks of thought followed by 2 or 3 lines of amazingly powerfull code. This should really go in codemill but it can wait until the code is in place.

We've found people to live in our house. Leslie and her (I'm assuming) boyfriend are moving into my room, which is big, and I'm moving into Bens old room, which is small. I'm a little upset that I'm losing my room, but I had it for a year so I can't complain, plus we're gaining two housemates and people are good. I hope all my furniture fits in the smaller room.

That's it, people. Maybe I'll have some interesting stories by the end of the summer, maybe not. Depends on whether or not I care to write about things that happen when most of the people who would care were probably there anyway.

WVU

Went to visit Kevin at WVU with Tim, Parker, and Kyle this weekend. Good times. Got drunk at a mall then saw spiderman, got a free beer at a bar, pool (table, not water), various "tobacco accessories" stores, stole Kevins car twice. but yeah... uh... the drive back hungover wasn't great, not horrible, just not great, and I like driving.

Got back and went to a BBQ at Wills, played a few games, more fun.

Now I'm driving my sisters car because mine is getting it's oil changed, and she's in France. I definitely take better care of my car than she does hers, inside and out. I found this surprising.

Slashdot story

First Post.

Well, my first story on Slashdot. I didn't write the article, but I wrote the blurb and sent it to the administrators. They liked it, and posted it, and now everybody can read it. They changed the title, but mine kindof sucked anyway. That's right, you can say it. I'm awesome.

cell

replaced. new one gets signal. so, um... yeah. that's about it.

Genetic engineering

Read the article. I'd write more here, but other than bitching about how dumb this is (which the article does quite well) there's nothing I can add.

So yeah, get angry, please.

Rain + Electronics

I got caught in the rain yesterday when biking home from work. I got soaked, as did everything with me including my mp3 player and cell phone. My mp3 player works, but my cell phone is having problems. It has found signal since drying off, but doesn't do it most of the time. I figure there's probably still some water inside that has yet to evaporate, because I've never seen low-voltage electronics ruined by water. Plus it worked this morning and a little yesterday after getting wet, so I imagine it working again. If not, I'll just get it replaced. Until then, don't try calling my cell.

From now on I'm walking

Got a quick (read: immediate) flat today on my way to work and nearly lost control. Luckily I landed on my feet and ran with it, righted the bike and continued on my way without slowing down too much. Didn't even notice the flat until I got off work and it was starting to rain. So I rode on my flat to the bike shop across campus... it's hard to steer when your front tire is as soft as microwaved butter... and got a new tire. I'm never going back to that bike shop again; they kept my flat inner tube (I forgot to ask for it) which I could have fixed once I got home, and the guy said I should come back for a tune-up because the joint where the handle bar meets the fork was a little loose. Did he fix it? No, and on my way from the shop some kid swerved into me from the other side of the sidewalk and knocked me over. I landed on the grass and was fine, but my handle bar was now parallel to the tire rather than the traditional perpendicular configuration. It was loose enough for me to fix by hand, but it's still just annoying. It would have taken the guy 2 seconds to do there. And the last time I went to this shop I got a speedometer and they installed it but decided I didn't need the manual. And yes, before you ask, I can fix my bike on my own, put new tires on, install a speedometer, and what not, but I figure I have no big problem paying for labour at local businesses every now and then. Well, not there anymore. So I rode home shaken up from the crash; I can't remember the last time I fell off my bike, not to mention that I had a close call earlier today.

So yeah, when I drive asshole cops give me tickets, and when I ride my bike people crash into me. Every now and then my incredible luck runs out.

no revenue for the police

So I'm driving today, highway, speeding but moving with traffic, and I get pulled over. I couldn't find my registration at first because I was looking in the glove compartment, when it was in my wallet, so the officer went back to his car to write me up. He came back with a ticket for failing to provide my registration and by that point I had realized where it was and had it for him. Handed it to him. Still got the ticket, which I'm contesting (I produced it on demand, just not as quickly as the cop would have liked), but got nothing for speeding. He said not to go to court otherwise he'd tell the judge what else I was doing. So he tells the judge that I speed... and then what? Why no speeding ticket then? I'll get off from the ticket I got because I gave him the registration before he gave me the ticket, and I won't get a speeding ticket because that's just not how traffic court works. Between the parking ticket I sortof got out of (guilty with explanation, $250 ticket reduced to $20 court fine), the "driving faster than reasonable" ticket I got from the accident (it was raining, I lost control when I hit a puddle, court date in August) when the cop showed up well after the fact --- and told me to contest ---, and this, I'm going to know the Montgomery County traffic court pretty well. And if all goes as planned, I won't be nailed that badly for anything since my only speeding ticket from over 3 years ago. Even when I get a ticket I'm lucky.

Still, this is why I love my bike.

Do Not Click On This Link!

I've included the following link which I would advise against following, http://xxx.lanl.gov/seek-and-destroy, because I find it funny. Apparently the people at LANL (Los Angeles National Labratory), who brought us the atomic bomb, don't like automated searches of their site, and any IP address that tries to access that url will be attacked by the LANL network. How, I'm not sure. And I don't want to find out.

Consider yourself warned... if you click on the link and something bad happens, don't blame me. I'm just the messenger.

Stormy Weather

Bad weather (good, if you ask me. you didn't? nevermind then), good music (Modest Mouse's new CD), and an interesting book make the fact that all my housemates have left me to my own devices not so bad. Still, though, I don't think I would ever want to live alone.

I know what this means... *sigh*... no more being an asshole. *snif*

By the way, we're still looking for a housemate, and if for some reason you haven't been encouraged to exercise your right to live here and are looking for a place to live in college park, let me or one of my housemates know.

Damn, the weather cleared up. I was looking forward to a nice storm. Scratch that title, make it "ramble" instead.

Everybody take off your clothes

It's hot out, and in for that matter, so it is now my mission to wear as little clothing as possible. I'll wear a shirt at work and when I go to establishments of business which require it, and shorts around those who aren't comfortable with nakedness. Other than that, clothes, I ain't got shit to say to you.

^?^?^?^?^?

I've figured out the way I program, and why it takes me a long time to get something finished... I'm a perfectionist and a lot of the programs I write a large. So what ends up happening is I write a rough copy once, then write it again using better structure as I understand the problem better. Usually this means I rewrite code once, but with projects for work where they keep on changing what they ask for, or the standards change, it means I write the same program 4 or 5 times before it's finished. The nice part about this is that in the end, my code is very well structured and easy to read, and usually modular and extensible (my two favorite words.) Right now I'm working on the... let's see... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... 6th copy of the program I'm writing for work. I've changed programming languages once (it started as horrible C code somebody else wrote which I was trying to adapt to fit the problem), added top-level features a few times which required rewriting large sections of code, and broke apart the code into separate modules a couple times (which is what I'm doing now). Once I'm done with this version, though, it will be the last.

new car

2001 prizim. Wasn't planing on getting one (doing fine biking to work) any time soon, but it was my parents idea, and the car will last my younger brother a while in a few years when he gets it. I'm still going to buy my own car eventually, but apparently there's no rush for my brother to get a car. Still, I do want to actually own my own car, and it would make his life easier. So now what? I guess I see if I can still bike to work when the weather's pleasant, or if I'll just drive every day because it's easier. Nice of my parents, though.

Where did everybody go?

The house I live in has changed substantially over the last week or so. First, Paul moved home for the summer, then Ben moved home for good. They had all better come back, often, those jerks. So now it's just the three of us. The house does not feel like it used to. Also, in a little over a week, Tim is going to France for a while. That leaves it as Karen and myself, too few people for such a large house. If anybody cool needs a place to live in College Park, MD (don't worry, you're cool), let one of us know, because with Ben moved out there is an open room that needs filling.

To go with the flow, I've fixed my pc and rearanged my room a little. I figure, if the house feels different but my room doesn't, my brain won't register as quickly the changes (yes, I am that dense.) So now my video card doesn't do that thing where bright or dark areas of the screen make the rows they're on brighter or darker than the rest, and my keyboard no longer has any cables coming out of it. It would be nice if my keyboard worked, though; I thought you could just cut the cables and make it 'wireless'. Finally, I moved my pc from the floor to my desk, so now I won't get back problems every time I feel like using linux instead of my iBook.