In my element
2AM Taco Bell runs. All-nighters. Mom jokes. The semester is in full swing.
Good night/morning.
What’s going on?
So, I’m sitting in my apartment, working on my digital design project when I hear a knock on the door. I’m thinking that it’s a friend of mine who was coming up today. No, it was one of the girls that lives below me. I actually ran into this girl last week and exchanged words. We talked for no more than 45 seconds and about nothing of importance. Anyways, so, she is standing at my door and asking to come in. She hands me a CO-ED form and tells me that she is moving in during the summer.
Moving into my apartment! I’m just like “What? You’re moving into this apartment? You’ve known me for all of three seconds, what are you talking about?” It was weird to say the least. We talked for the next 10 minutes or so and she was explaining the situtation, which frankly, sounded like nothing more than her wanting to get away from her rooommates or something (her roommates knew nothing about this — I found that out when I went downstairs to give this girl a telephone number and was greeted by her roommates). The story she told me was that she wanted to procure my apartment for the fall, but that kind of fell through when I just asked her to ask the leasing office to let her specify which apartment she wanted when she signed a new lease for the fall. She danced around that by saying that she wasn’t 100% sure that she would sign for the fall and that if she did she would wait until there were some ‘deals.’
So, I call “Matt,” the person she says she spoke to in the front office. Matt proceeds to tell me that this girl said that her and I were friends and that was the whole reason he was even entertaining the idea of her switching to my apartment (assuming I said it was OK and signed the CO-ED form). Well, we aren’t friends, and like I said, I only knew this girl for 45 seconds prior to this incident. Matt didn’t like the fact that she lied to him.
I called her and let her know that I really liked living by myself in the four-bedroom apartment and that I’d like to continue that as long as possible. I told her to call Matt and ask him to put her at the front of the line of possible move-ins (if, in fact, they were planning to move someone into my apartment over the summer). She was upset and even let out a final, sad, “Are you sure?”
Dave Barry
Dave Barry, the prolific humor columnist, started his own blog a few days ago. He even talks a little about RSS in today’s entry:
People have been asking for something called an “RSS feed.” I have no idea what that is, and neither does my Technical Support Department, Judi Smith.
Surprised
After a 1.5 hour wait with D-Link’s return office (have to love the speakerphone built into the handset), they are in the process of shipping me a new wireless router. Save the wait, there was no fuss or hastle, as it should be.
Path To War
Yesterday I watched HBO’s much-hyped Path To War. Not only was it incredibly engaging and entertaining, it really enlightened me on Lyndon Johnson and the climate of mid-60’s America.
What I enjoyed most was the painting of Lyndon Johnson as a horribly conflicted man who couldn’t make a decision of his own. He came across as being genuinely concerned for the betterment of America, but let himself be coerced by his cabinet to go against “every bone in [his] body.”
After watching the film, I read the following timeline about the Vietnam War. Quick, informative, and to the point.
Strike this movie and The Gathering Storm up as two more entries into HBO’s incredible film library.
Wired
To complement the POS network currently running through my apartment complex, my wireless router decided to die last night. That’s right, it simply stopped advertising its signal. I was browsing around and then my signal suddenly dropped to ZERO. After trying everything I could I sucked it up and called D-Link. It was a very short call. I told the tech that I had no signal and that the “WLAN” light on the router was off and he said, quite matter-of-factly, “It’s broken.” He also told me that they would send me a new one without much hassle. Of course the office he pointed me to was closed and won’t be open again until Monday. Either way, I’m assuming they will be sending me a new one next week. In the meantime, I’m running a 25-ft Cat-5 cable from my ex-roommates room (it’s closer than mine) to my notebook in the living room.
RDF feed
I added an RDF (RSS 1.0) feed to the site today. The link is under the ’syndicate’ heading in the menu to the left.
FeedReader
For those who found Syndirella helpful, be sure to check out FeedReader, a news aggregator I came across today. Though it is lacking some key features that Syndirella had, it offers the ability to open up links in browsers other than IE (as long as some other browser is set as your default browser and you only open the link from the list of entries, not from the link supplied with the summary). That feature alone is enough for me to start using it instead of Syndirella. FeedReader isn’t completely problem-free though. The main thing I don’t like about it is the inability to specify the number of articles it keeps current; Syndirella can be set to delete entries after it reaches a user-specified threshold for a particular channel. Another major problem is the display of dates. It seems to have trouble parsing certain RSS dates (i.e., on my computer, the dates next to all of the entries are off by a day). They are aware of this problem and are working to fix it.
Lots of Robots
Andy Murdock’s Lots of Robots is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. As you watch the video, stay cognizant of the fact that this guy did everything himself — the story, the writing, the music, and all of the animation. Wow.
New counter
As you might have noticed, I made the counter visible about a week ago (below the menu). For the past few years I’ve been using a Perl script called Count to keep track of the number of visitors to the site. My major beef with Count is that it will only report back an image of the counter value, not plain-text. Though it offers quite a few options regarding the look of the image, I wanted plain-text so as to keep with the overall layout of the site. To make a long story short, I wrote a very simple (six lines) PHP script to do the counting and now I have a plain-text count value. :)
Preliminary proposal
The preliminary proposal for our senior design project was due today. It’s available here if anyone’s interested.
I have a dream
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
If man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Syndirella
As most of you know, I’m a news junkie and for a while now I’ve been searching for a GOOD news aggregator. After an exhaustive search, I believe I’ve stumbled upon the best one out there. Just a few days ago I was praising the greatness of fyuze, a web-based aggretator. A web-based program was the last thing I was looking for, but it turned out to be the best of those that I tried/read about — until now. Though the new client that I’ve found takes nothing away from fyuze, I prefer it because 1.) it is more configurable, 2.) it isn’t web-based, and 3.) the 3-panel layout (not unlike GOOD usenet readers).
Syndirella is truly brilliant. Not only does it accept most RSS feeds, but it also allows you to define ‘web feeds’ from sites that don’t actually have any form of syndication. To do this, you tell it the site, it pulls down the source and you sift through it and tell it the format of the title, description, and date… given this information it can parse through the source each time you update and will return the latest entries. Very neat.
Whether you are doing an RSS or ‘web feed,’ you are offered the ability to specify how many past entries to store — this can be controlled by the number of entries or days (or unlimited). You can also specify how often it should check for updates. This is great for two reasons. The first is that everything is completely automated; all you have to do is click and read. The second is that it gets around some of the limitations imposed by sites that will only let you update once every hour and even then will only allow you to retrieve the last five entries. By setting your update interval to an hour, you bypass this completely and are able to get all of the news, assuming there weren’t more than five posts (or whatever their threshold is) within the hour.
I’ve had no real trouble with it so far. I really enjoy the fact that it displays clicked-links within the client itself. The only caveat is that it uses Internet Explorer to do this, which can’t be changed. Given that I loathe IE, this doesn’t sit too well with me. As it stands, when something interesting comes along, I just copy the link and open it in Opera. I have a feeling the authors will offer the ability to choose the rendering engine in the future (e.g., Opera, Gecko, etc), because who doesn’t feel WIDE OPEN when they use IE? I mean, really people. Either way, I’ll be using NetNewsWire on Mac OS X in a few months anyways.
I realize that this news aggregation thing isn’t for everyone, but if you are half as bad as I am with requiring yourself to stay informed about everything you can, then I’m sure this will be of great help to you. If this interests you at all and you need help finding a syndication channel for your favorite site, don’t hesitate to ask.
You have to feel for me
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse than this, we have the following traceroute to google.com:
$ traceroute -d google.com
1 3 ms 2 ms 3 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * 3012 ms * 64.80.126.1
3 * * 3077 ms 64.80.19.73
4 * 3189 ms 3069 ms 157.238.179.1
5 3365 ms * * 129.250.26.206
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 3343 ms * * 129.250.5.14
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * 3302 ms * 208.172.156.13
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 3174 ms * * 206.79.9.205
17 * 3351 ms * 216.33.153.68
18 3341 ms * 3181 ms 216.33.153.197
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * 3335 ms 216.239.35.100
Nothing but 3000+ ping times! At least it’s consistent, right? Bleh.
Adding insult to injury
So, my senior design group and myself stroll up to Dr. Gugel’s office today (our senior design advisor/sponsor) to discuss some specifics of the project and what does he have in his hands — a PowerBook G4! Apparently he just got it and was in the process of setting it up. I told him that for the rest of the semester when I walked into his office he would have to hide it so that my attention wouldn’t be pulled away from our project.
One step closer
I’ve secured ‘bids’ from two friends on my Dell Inspiron 8200 notebook, putting me one step closer to being able to get a PowerBook G4. As I’ve said before, I plan to get one as soon as I graduate from engineering. It was so annoying throughout college to have to stop running Linux just so I could use some Windows-only software for a class I was taking. I’m moving to Mac OS X as soon as possible and don’t think I’ll ever look back.
Secrets of the Tomb
I’ve finally finished the Secrets of the Tomb book by Alexandra Robbins. I realize I started it over break and that it isn’t very long, but after arriving back in Gainesville I read it only while I was on the bus to and from school. I found it to be really interesting (if, like myself, that kind of thing interests you :P) and have already convinced a few friends to read it.
Unbelievable
The network is getting worse. Yah, I didn’t think it was possible either. To let you guys get a feel for how bad it is, check out this traceroute to news.com. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read these previous posts: here and here.
$ traceroute -d news.com
1 2 ms 3 ms 3 ms 192.168.0.1
2 245 ms 167 ms 32 ms 64.80.126.1
3 380 ms 215 ms 467 ms 64.80.19.73
4 241 ms 265 ms * 157.238.179.1
5 * 461 ms 263 ms 129.250.26.206
6 * * 392 ms 129.250.2.109
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 352 ms 308 ms * 192.205.32.209
11 370 ms * 473 ms 12.122.11.233
12 305 ms 305 ms * 12.122.10.30
13 391 ms * * 12.122.10.42
14 * 354 ms 347 ms 12.123.13.174
15 316 ms * 370 ms 12.122.255.222
16 472 ms * * 216.148.209.66
17 348 ms 353 ms 360 ms 63.241.72.150
18 570 ms 395 ms 375 ms 206.16.0.136
Not fun.
If Bush comes to shove
I was informed yesterday that a really good friend of mine and my roommate have been ‘called’ to duty by the military. My friend Adam is going to be guarding an air base in Panama City, Florida. Apparently, he will be gone for at least a year. Carlos, currently my only roommate (they didn’t move anyone else in, woohoo), is headed for Iraq. He leaves tomorrow for North Carolina and then to Iraq soon after that. Needless to say, it’s pretty scary.
View your checks
I’ve been doing all of my banking online for years now, but I just stumbled across a very neat feature today. I use Wachovia (not sure if the following feature was there when it was First Union or not), and when I go to one of my accounts it lists the transactions for the last month or whatever. Today I noticed that next to the checks I had written there was a link called “view.” This link brings up a scanned image of the actual check — front and back. I don’t know, I just thought that was really neat.
Still broken
After the checking of my e-mail did its expected multiple timeouts this morning, I decided it was time to make my now semi-daily call to the front desk to bitch. This time I got a jovial young man ready and willing to fire off BS excuses as to why the network was completely broken. Today I was told that not only has new bandwidth been ordered and would be here within two weeks, but he acted as if it would arrive at the door from FedEx or something. Seriously, he made it sound like they were expecting a package within two weeks and this would solve all of the problems — how ignorant. I realize you can’t expect too much of a technical explanation from these people as their job isn’t computer networking, but rather manning the front desk of an apartment complex. Either way, I would like a REAL explanation and feel that I deserve one as does everyone else that lives here. I was very close to pointing out to this guy that whatever he is talking about isn’t going to solve anything, something a very simple traceroute from here to ANYWHERE will easily show (that is, when you can do a traceroute, because half the time you can’t resolve the target anyways), but I knew that it was pointless to even bring it up. The network is just wacked out and it’s my assumption that somewhere along the line an agreement fell through and and now we, the end users, are paying for it. At least this time the guy didn’t tell me to go to the page of the people that supposedly handle our network, Paetec. Good thing too, because for the last few months there has been no site configured at that address. No surprise there. I guess in two weeks all will be fixed. I’m NOT holding my breath.
Opera
For those not already familiar with Opera, I strongly suggest you check it out. Not only has it been my favorite browser for years, but there is really nothing comparable out there. Period. Linux or Windows, Opera is what I use. Mozilla is its closest competitor, but it still has a ways to go.
The main reason I’ve stuck with Opera for so long is, if for no other reason, because it remembers all the sites that you had open before something went awry or you shut the system down. Let’s assume that you, like myself, always have at least 20 browser windows open. Now, let’s also assume that the browser crashes, your computer craps on itself, or something else happens that causes the browser to die. With Opera, when you bring the browser back up, you are exactly where you left off (there is an option to disable this). I think the importance and usefulness of this feature is self-evident and so I won’t elaborate further.
I said that was the main reason, there are many more. Opera is extremely fast. I regularly have 50+ windows open and it never misses a beat. It’s infinitely configurable which is ALWAYS good (you really can’t understand this until you start playing around with all of the options). You have the ability to completely turn off pop-up windows. This has been a feature of Opera for a while. Ok, I have to stop praising everything, but only because I have a lot of schoolwork and really need to get back to it.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything; Opera will do that on its own if you give it a chance. If you are thinking about trying it out, be sure to get Opera 7 (beta) as it was completely re-written from scratch and is much faster and obviously more standards-compliant than its predecessors.
I can’t stop drooling
Apple has done it again. Look at this new PowerBook — 17-in (1440×900) screen, all the previous PowerBook goodies plus Bluetooth, FireWire 800, and 802.11g (backwards-compatible with b). Ugh, I don’t know what to say. All I know is that these better be IN STOCK when I look to buy one. I’ve been talking about these forever and absolutely cannot wait to own one. The beauty of Apple plus the brilliance of UNIX — what more could anyone want?
10 credits left
My last semester of computer engineering at the University of Florida officially begins today. I’m taking three courses: Digital Design (hardest course in my curriculum), Senior Design, and Legal and Social Issues in Computing.
Myself and three of my good engineering friends (Jorge Power, Ty Fiebig, and Sean Reilly) plan to make a voice-controlled IR TV remote for our Senior Design project. It’s going to be a very long semester.
One more thing, if anyone out there is aware of a news aggregator that can check RSS feeds every 30 minutes or so and alert me of new entries, please speak up.
Search
The search feature has been implemented. It will let you search through all of the blog entries. The link can also be found in the menu.
Ahhhhhhhhh
The network here at the apartment complex keeps going in and out. For those of you that know me personally you know that it’s MAKING ME CRAZY. There is absolutely no excuse for the checking of my e-mail to time out 90% of the time (I’m actually checking it through GPRS on my mobile phone as I type). This went on for the last two weeks of last semester and after repeated calls to the front office I was assured that it would be fixed by the time we got back from break. The best part is that when I initially called to complain, the poor little girl working the front desk was all like “Hold, let me check on that… [five minutes later] Ok, sir, apparently we’re now allowing access to a website that we previously blocked.” BWAHAHAHA. Riiiight. Idiots. Either way, this shit better be fixed pronto else I’m droppin’ elbows.
Back in Gainesville
Just arrived back in Gainesville. Looking to spend the next few hours cleaning up/organizing my room because it is COMPLETELY disheveled at the moment. I’m also thinking about putting some search functionality into the site so that might go live tonight, though I doubt it — too much other stuff to get done.
Not looking forward to getting back into the fast-food routine again. While on break I was spoiled by great food from my dad, grandma, and friend’s parents. *shrug* Whaddya gonna do?
Much to my liking, it doesn’t look as if anyone will be moving in this semester, leaving the four-bedroom apartment to myself and Carlos. Two of my best friends moved out over break as they graduated last semester and so I was slightly worried about them putting in two complete strangers. I guess there is still time for them to move in but it seems unlikely. If I talk about some people moving in later then someone please remind me to edit this entry so as to not let the new guys see what I wrote. :P
Robbed
Well, I think we can all agree that Miami was robbed of the National Championship last night. What a jackass call — are you kidding me? I’m not really a Miami fan, but as the Gators didn’t make it to the Fiesta Bowl this year, I thought I should at least cheer for the Florida team. It was actually a GREAT game, save the TERRIBLE pass interference call against Miami which gave the Buckeyes 1st and goal in OT. If I were a Miami fan, I’d be pretty livid.
So, let’s see, the Gators, the Seminoles, and the Hurricanes all lost their respective bowl games. Go Florida.
I’m headed back up to Gainesville early this afternoon. Classes start on Monday. Joy.
Fiesta Bowl!
If you aren’t watching the game tonight you should be shot. It’s gonna be a great game. Well, maybe not (can anyone beat the ‘canes?), but it’s going to be fun to watch regardless. If it’s half as exciting as the FSU-UM game earlier this season, we are in for a good show. Though the Gators should be playing this game instead of Miami (BWAHAHAHA), they aren’t, and so I’m left to cheer for the Hurricanes. Go Florida.
I’ve come across what are probably the most interesting chapters of the Secrets of the Tomb book today — Chapter 5: The Secrets of Skull and Bones and Chapter 6: The Network. These chapters delve deep into the stuff I am most curious about: the twice-yearly meetings for all of the patriarchs, the “Life History” sessions, the Bush [and other promiment family] affiliations, etc. Not only were a lot of the rumors I had previoulsy read about debunked by this book, but many things I was unaware of had light shed on them. It’s been a very entertaining book.
Chugging along
I finished the fourth DVD in the New York documentary I spoke of earlier. Only 6 more hours (3 DVDs) to go and then I can start the one on Napoleon.
I’m not sure there are too many things I enjoy more than sitting outside under the shade and listening to music (yes, I know it’s January 2nd, but I’m in Florida and it’s currently 73 degrees). I Just queue up the iPod and drift away. It’s rare that I have time do that and even now, when I’m on break from school, I feel guilty just sitting out there, but dammit, it was only for a couple of hours. I recently aquired a pair of Bose TriPort headphones and can’t put them down. I’ve gone through a lot of headphones and can genuinely say that these are the best I’ve owned. With that said, I have a really nice pair of Sennheisers begging for new ears if anyone wants to buy ‘em. :P
My brother asked me to help him install his new TV screen in his truck today. Yes, TV screen. He’s all about wasting money on that truck. I guess the whole idea is to eventually connect his PS2 to it — so he can play while he’s driving? Don’t ask me, because I don’t know.
