I finally got my week overdue trip to the grocery store done this morning. This is both good and bad. On the good side, I now have food, so starvation doesn't feature as prominently in my future. On the bad side, I feel that I've accomplished so much already today, that I should just take the rest of the day off. This would be bad, as I spent all of last night working on a homework assignment, and all I have to do is drive over to school at 1:00 and turn it in. I also suspect that rent checks are due today.

So what am I going to do? I don't really know, but I'm sure a nap will help me decide.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 September 2002 at 12:15 PM

I finally got my week overdue trip to the grocery store done this morning. This is both good and bad. On the good side, I now have food, so starvation doesn't feature as prominently in my future. On the bad side, I feel that I've accomplished so much already today, that I should just take the rest of the day off. This would be bad, as I spent all of last night working on a homework assignment, and all I have to do is drive over to school at 1:00 and turn it in. I also suspect that rent checks are due today.

So what am I going to do? I don't really know, but I'm sure a nap will help me decide.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 September 2002 at 12:15 PM

I'm very tired, but my 511 homework is now finally (mostly) done. I just hope I'll be able to get up for class tomorrow. In fact, I need to get up long before class and do some grocery shopping. I have nothing to eat here in the apartment, and haven't had anything here for about a week. I've been living on Honey Nut Cheerios and trips to restaurants for the past week, but now I'm out of milk (and unwilling to try cereal with water) and even Joy Luck's House Special Beef is getting a bit unappealing to me. So tomorrow I really need to head off to Schnucks.

If we get our act together (as unlikely as that seems), michael and i might manage to get our 513 stuff done tomorrow, which would be great as it would free me up to do a couple other things on Tuesday.

Hey, does anyone know of a php-based online calendar thing? I'd like to have a planner/organizer that I could put things in and then be able to read it and update it on the web. It seems like it would be easy enough to implement in php, but of course I don't have the time to write things like that these days.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 September 2002 at 2:02 AM

I think my two tests today went fairly well. My 455 exam was a bit tougher than I thought it would be, but was still quite simple, and my networks exam was fairly straightforward as well. I do have a little worry about the networks exam, though. I finished the exam, read it over, and then sat around for 10 minutes, and I was still one of the first to leave the exam room. That always makes me a bit uncomfortable.

This evening I watched a bit of TV (if only we had TiVo) and tried to get the Sun monitor I picked up off the dock a few days ago to work. It doesn't seem like I'm going to have any success with it (and I think it only supports 256 colors), so I'm going to have to drop it in a skip at some point.

I also spent a bit of time working on some new wallpaper for Navi (my laptop). If you'd like to see the results, click here. I scaled the screenshot down from 1400x1050 to 700x525 to make it a bit easier for you to view. The background still needs a bit of tweaking to accommodate things like having AIM docked on the right side of the screen, but that can wait until tomorrow.

I mentioned that I watched some TV up above, and in doing so I was reminded of the situation with the television here at 323 Clara, Apt. 12. Those of you who've visited are familiar with the loud rattling that accompanies all television watching. Then a few weeks ago, the TV decided to start turning on and not display a picture. A solid whack on the top of box usually brings the picture (and the rattling) back, however. Well, it's newest trick is its best yet. Occasionally it will decide to stop listening to some or all user input. For example, Chris had the 1 key on the remote stop working for him. All the other keys worked just, fine except the 1. I've had the Mute die on me before, but today I had the worst variation yet. The TV didn't respond to any of the remote control button or to any of the buttons on the front of the TV (like the power button). It also produced a garbled image and no sound while this was going on. I had to resort to unplugging the TV and plugging it back in to get it to work. Not good, my friends. Not good.

This TV is supposed to have been replaced by now. But my parent's slowness at purchasing a new jumbo TV for themselves has prevented me from claiming their current TV. Not that it matters all that much, as I can't really get out of St. Louis until all these 333 videotapings are done.

Speaking of 333 videotaping, by this time next week I should be about halfway through the roster. Very good news, as this has quickly become an organizational nightmare. I have a room reserved on Saturday for people to videotape, but despite assurances to the contrary when all of this was set up, no one can actually make it on Saturday, so I have to reserve room sin 30 minute blocks of time all week long. I'm sure the room reservation people have gotten as sick of reading my "I need another room with a computer and projector for half an hour on Friday at 2:30" emails as I have gotten of writing them. Hopefully it'll all be over soon.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 27 September 2002 at 12:57 AM

Here's how my day will go tomorrow.

1. Wake up, study for exam two (see 4).
   
2. Drive to school, make photocopies for 333, fiddle with the paper-cutter in the CS office.
   
3. Take exam one, leave the test room happy.
   
4. Take exam two, state upon leaving test room determined by 1.
   
5. Go to 333, distribute papers, listen to presentations.
   
6. Go to 530, attempt to stay awake by playing hearts and/or spider solitaire.
   
7. Go to ACM lounge for 530 meeting.
   
8. Go home.

Total elapsed time: 11 hours.

Tomorrow is not a good day.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 26 September 2002 at 12:22 AM

I was intrigued by the new google news service. It's not really new technology. Today's Papers on slate does this by hand every day. Blogdex has been doing almost the exact same thing in an automated fashion for weblogs for more than a year now. And google has the technology to index all the news sites already.

What is a bit interesting is that some of the people quoted in this nytimes article seem to think that google's news service will be taking the place of real editors. Which, to me anyway, seems to indicate that they don't really understand what google is doing. Without the editors at, for example, the nytimes, google wouldn't be able to rank the news stories and decide which ones to display. So, Mr. Douglas B. Feaver, executive editor of the Washington Post, is exactly right, it's not now nor ever going to "drive [him] to the unemployment office."

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 24 September 2002 at 2:00 PM

Here at -273 we're lucky enough to get a large number of visits via search engines. While it's true that most of our search hits come from people looking for "DragonBall Z AIM Buddy Icons" or "273 fortune cookie," we do get a lot of other, more interesting queries on occasion. Here's a partial list from the past three days.

how to get an alcoholic drink registered in your name

why cant i get adult webcam room on messenger 5.0

pimp volvo

my girlfriend thinks that i am growing tired of her. how can i provide to her that i'm not

"yo i know you want to look inside"

MY wife's naked HOLIDAY PHOTOS

halloween costumes for cupples

I especially love the misspellings. That unique spelling of the word "couples" takes the cake.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 22 September 2002 at 4:35 PM

last time everyone got sick, as I recall, it was all my fault. this time, however, Im happy to report that I am perfectly healthy and hiding out in columbia until this whole thing blows over. or until monday, whichever comes first. oh well.

on the upside, in the event that I do become sick, develop complications, and die a mysterious and painful death, I have life insurance now. so at least my dad wont have to worry about that money I owe him.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 21 September 2002 at 3:51 PM

I've had a cold for the past couple of days (although I'm feeling quite a bit better today), and it seems like everyone I know has one as well. For example, Joe Tucek was feeling under the weather on Thursday, as was Chris, and today Aaron Beckerman told me he has a cold as well. I just find it interesting that these things seem to happen to everyone at once. Last spring when I was really sick (I actually had strep), everyone else I knew was also sick. I usually expect these illnesses a week or two after everyone gets back to school, because everyone introduces new germs to everyone else, but a month after returning to school seems a bit late for that.

Anyway, enough about colds. Another 333 student has just shown up, so I need to get off this computer so he can videotape his presentation.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 September 2002 at 12:27 PM

Evan Williams, the guy who runs blogger, just released a statistics package for blogger pro users called bstats. michael and I think it bears an odd resemblance to the homegrown stats package we use here at -273. The layout of bstats is eerily similar. But don't take our word for it. Here are some bstats screenshots. And here are some -273 stats screenshots. See the summary box in the upper right corner of both? And the lines of alternating color to mark different visits? I think someone tipped Ev off to our program.

Of course, our program is superior. For example, we allow identities to be associated with IP addresses, so we can more easily see exactly who all our visitors are. And we have graphs that give a visual guide to the number of visits our site is getting. And I bet Ev didn't write his stats program in one night.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 20 September 2002 at 12:42 AM

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today (a sore throat), and I would like to stay home and rest, but I have tests in two of my classes next week, so I feel like I should go to them. If I'm still not feeling well at the end of the day I might skip out on the last class and grab a few hours sleep before the ACM Movie Night (we're showing Fight Club at 8:30pm in Lopata 101; free popcorn and soda).

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 19 September 2002 at 10:15 AM

If everything is working properly, this post will have a number in parentheses after the date up there in the heading. That number indicates that number of comments that have been left regarding this post. That's right, because of popular demand, we have enabled the comments feature of movable type here at -273. We're still fine-tuning things, so don't flood us with bug reports just yet. But feel free to comment at will on any of our posts that allow comments.

Comments: 5 Posted by david on 19 September 2002 at 1:01 AM

Dan Bricklin has an interesting article on his blog about why programming is too difficult for the masses to pick up.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 18 September 2002 at 10:42 AM

Last fall I was in a student in Prof. Rosenzweig's Chief American Writers course. I was particularly ill-suited to be taking this course, though, since I seem unable to grasp the underlying symbolism and meaning of many of the texts we read. And because I didn't latch onto more than plot and general tenor, I didn't fare so well during the class discussions. I just found it hard to discuss the homoeroticism of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance when I entirely missed every clue that the book wasn't really about the two male-female relationships that seemed to be at its core, but was rather about the male-male relationship that didn't really exist. But the Blithedale Romance was, fortunately, the low-point of the course. Following Blithedale, and settig aside that horrid Herman Mellville, we had The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Admittedly, reading Faulkner was a bit strange, and our in class discussions of As I Lay Dying were even stranger, but I still enjoyed it. And The Invisible Man and The Sun Also Rises were amazing. I'd read some F. Scott Fitzgerald works before, and expected, because Hemingway and Fitzgerald were contemporaries, that The Sun Also Rises would have a similar feel to, say, The Great Gatsby. Let's just say that I was very, very surprised by The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway brought 1920s Paris to life for me (the postumously published A Movable Feast accomplishes this from a non-fiction standpoint, and makes for an excellent read), and even transformed things like fishing and bull fighting from rather mundane and possibly grusome acts into a kind of dance. I loved every word of it.

So what's the moral of this very long story? Sometimes its best to leave your comfort zone and try new things. Because occasionally even things that don't start well can have a very positive outcome. Chief American Writers certainly did for me. As I write this my new copy of A Farewell to Arms sits about nine inches from me, and as soon as I'm done here I'm going to dive back into it.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 18 September 2002 at 12:55 AM

so if Ive got this straight, erv has agreed to accept our challenge if and only if I agree to post a new gloompuppy once a week for the next four weeks. so if I refuse to do this, erv will consequently refuse the challenge. and if erv refuses the challenge, as stated on our website, he has to finally stop whining about not being linked.

sounds good to me.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 17 September 2002 at 12:15 AM

To: "The forgotten son of -273"
Subject: A Challenge

So you're upset that we don't link to your website from our main page? Well, we have a proposal for you. A challenge, if you will. If you survive our challenge, we'll link to you. Should you fail, you must abandon all claims to -273 linkage.*

All you need to do is post every day for the next thirty days. Actually, we'll be generous and say 28 out of the 30 days, as long as you never miss two consecutive days. Your posts over those 30 days will be evaluated by a team of weblog experts** on the following basis: "Was reading this site today worth the time I took to read it?" If you average more "yes" votes than "no" votes for a particular day (a day is defined as midnight to midnight local time) you get a point. If you get more than 14 points during the 30 day period, you win. If you get 14 points or fewer, you lose.

If you accept this challenge, please indicate this on your weblog. Because we are offering you a chance to get linked, should you decline to accept this challenge, we feel that you must stop whining about not being linked.

* Should you lose, you must also abandon your default template and redesign your site.

** If you're interested in serving on our panel of weblog experts, please send an email to challenge@negative273.com. In order to qualify as an expert you must currently run a weblog (please provide a link in the email) or be able to demonstrate your expertise in some other fashion.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 16 September 2002 at 11:49 PM

The ACM BBQ is today (11am - 1pm, Lopata Courtyard, everyone is invited) and there's still a lot that needs to be done for it. Like buy all the food. I'm running on about five hours of sleep, so I'll count myself lucky if I make it all the way through cleanup. Being the leader of a large group of slackers (and being one yourself), especially when there is a lot of work to do, is not the idyllic walk in the park that you'd think it would be.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 13 September 2002 at 8:40 AM

My long day of classes is tomorrow (well, one of my long days), and I should probably be going to sleep right now. Instead I'm going to write this post and then dash off a few emails. And then watch a bit of TV. Actually, lets scratch the TV thing; I'm a bit more tired than I thought I was.

The -273 community will probably be getting a new member soon. Lucas (of Mount Athos fame) is planning on migrating over here. In other -273 community news, there is a rumor that a minutia press redesign is in progress.

The ACM BBQ is this Friday from 11am - 1pm. You should stop by. We'll be in the Lopata Courtyard. Because of the BBQ, I have a bunch of stuff to get done tomorrow. So don't be surprised if I'm not in class.

I was going to post this for 9.11 (incidentally, I detest the phrase nine-eleven; it seems rather pedestrian), but for a variety of reasons, I wasn't really in the mood for Sept. 11th - related posts today.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 12 September 2002 at 1:45 AM

Twice now I've seen a bumper sticker asking me to "REMEMBER CEDRIC DIGGORY." The thing is, I haven't forgotten Cedric Diggory. I can even tell you that that line is from the end of the fourth Harry Potter book, and was spoken by Albus Dumbledore. Now that I've admitted to reading the Harry Potter books (and committing large portions of them to memory), can you please remove your stupid bumper sticker?

I know you think you're being cute, but you have an obscure line from a children's book on your car. Yes, its better than the "My Child is an Honor Student at ..." bumper stickers, but not by much.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 September 2002 at 10:04 PM

I've started using the comment feature on other people's blogs, and in doing so I began to wonder if -273 needed comments. We're using movable type, so I just have to enable the comments feature, update the templates, and find a place to put the comment link. So, send me an email or instant message if you think we need comments. If we get a lot of feedback, I'll turn them on.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 September 2002 at 5:08 PM

You might want to read this. I liked it and perhaps you will too.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 September 2002 at 2:16 AM

dave found something tonight that I feel I must share. amusing as it is, normally I would have the decency to keep something like this to myself. but as of late bill has taken to making fun of my paleness, so as dave puts it, "its payback time."

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 9 September 2002 at 12:50 AM

"So in essence if you eat a full order of chicken tenders you shouldn't eat anything else for the rest of the day."

wow. I guess my freshman year eating habits were healthy after all.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 7 September 2002 at 3:58 PM

There's a traffic light between my apartment and WashU that was broken this morning. I guess the computer that controls it crashed. But it was stuck with eastbound traffic having a green ball and a yellow left-turn arrow. All other traffic had a red light. When I approached the intersection for the first time, the people with red were cautiously moving through as if it were a stop sign, but being careful to avoid the east-bound traffic as they didn't know the light was malfunctioning and were consequently driving through at a high rate of speed.

Anyway, I first went through it around noon. As I went through I wondered if it would still be broken when I came back through.

Well, an hour later, it was still very broken. And now there was a huge accident, most likely with injuries. I was tempted to stop and help, but lacking any medical knowledge I didn't think I would be very useful. If I had a cell phone I would have called the cops, but I figured one of the 20 people already helping out had done that. This big accident bothers me a bit, because it could have been easily prevented if someone, myself included, had called the police and notified them that the light was malfunctioning.

In other news, I followed a Ferrari Testarosa to school today. I think my Echo is faster.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 September 2002 at 1:46 PM

Today was an odd mixture of classes, broken appointments, and hours of dead time. I hope all my Wednesdays aren't like this. During the hours of dead time I left comments on a bunch of websites and did a little CS455 homework. I also talked on AIM more than I did all summer long. At my peak earlier this evening I was holding six AIM conversations at once. Not too bad for a guy who doesn't really like typing.

I waited a day to see if michael would post this, but he didn't. The Wedding Photographer was written up on slashdot yesterday morning. After reading through all the comments, I can't help but think that slashdot is not the site it used to be. There just weren't a lot of insightful, amusing, or intriguing comments. Really, the useful posts came from people here at WashU.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 5 September 2002 at 1:17 AM

I knew I should have stopped this whole TA business while I was ahead. I'll keep doing it this semester because I'm a nice guy, but I'm definitely done after this semester. What has me upset? Well, it was announced during the lecture for the class I'm TAing for that I will be videotaping the student's practice presentations for them on Saturdays. This time announcement came as a surprise to me, and not a very pleasant one. So now for the next 6 weeks or so I'll be spending three hours every Saturday on campus videotaping presentations. This has pretty much killed any plans I had to get out of St. Louis anytime before Fall break, and I'm not too happy about it. I wouldn't have minded Friday or Sunday too much and Monday would have been perfect, but Saturday is just a really bad day for this. I think I might have to talk with the professor about this. The students didn't seem to mind meeting on Saturday, but they're only giving up 30 minutes on one Saturday. I'm giving up 3 hours on every Saturday. I wish I'd been consulted before this was announced to the class.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 4 September 2002 at 5:59 AM

I visited the posh Schnucks in Ladue again today. This time I was struck by the parking lot. The spots seem 50% wider than the ones at the Schnucks on Clayton road, and there are cart return bins every five parking spots. Literally. So you're never more than two spots away from a cart return. And there are always spots near the entrance. It's like a parking nirvana.

Aside from grocery shopping I did little else of great interest. Washed some clothes, read about networks, rolled over my sunglasses with my chair. Oh, I installed spamassassin in the hope of eliminating a bit of the spam that usually comes my way. It works fine with the fake spam messages michael and I have crafted, but I've yet to receive any legitimate spam (the one time I actually want to get spam...), so I don't really know how well it'll work. I'll break down how well its working later this week.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 3 September 2002 at 12:07 AM

hiddeninput: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_661036.html
crhill1979: hahahaha
crhill1979: that's too bad
hiddeninput: he didn't even know why he was there
crhill1979: well look at him
crhill1979: I don't think he really knows what's happening most of the time

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 2 September 2002 at 5:03 PM

I tossed and turned for hours last night after drinking a Code Red an hour before bed. Tonight, in an effort to prove that I don't learn from my mistakes, I've had two Code Reds in the past 90 minutes. So now I'm very tired, but know that I won't sleep well if I go to bed now.

I still need to get to the grocery store. I've meant to go the past two days, but haven't yet gotten around to it. But now I'm getting really low on food, so it looks like my hands are tied, and I'll have to go tomorrow. I have a couple of other errands that need to be run, but I don't imagine I'll get to them. One shopping trip per day is pretty close to my limit.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 2 September 2002 at 1:06 AM