Month: September 2003

Cleaning up hard drive days are so interesting. You’d never realize what tidbit that’ll show up. Today, while I removed some 3 gigs of generic “stuff”, I ran into this.

Yes, just about as believable as the 22 greatest bands ever?

How seriously do you take such things?

Due to, I assume, lack of entrants, this week’s “Picture of the week” is mine. Mine I say. Muahahahahah.

Check it out while it’s still up here. Sure, they spelt my name wrong and didn’t publish my rant about the licensing and things, but hey, they’re not geeks, just normal folk.

Even more annoying, since it’s in a frame, the direct link just takes you to that portion of the page. To see all of it in its (not so) glory, you need to follow a more arduous route: www.umich.edu/~isa/ :: follow the link to the “leisure” section (on the top navigation menu) :: click the “photo of the week” link on the left navigation menu.

Phew.

Hmm.. I watched some more of the US Open today, and it felt weird, very. Again, against all reason, I was totally rooting for Roddick’s opponent to win.

This was strange for two reasons. First, it’s JUST a sport. I normally never even follow, let alone take sides, let alone take sides and totally pin all hopes on that person, cheer, or get so involved that it affects me. Again, all of this happened during today’s final as I was rooting for Roddick’s opponent.

Then it hit me, it had nothing to do with the “other” guy. I didn’t even know his name.

It was just that I wanted Roddick to not win.

Again, that had nothing to do with Roddick.

For some strange reason, I think it has something to do with Mandy Moore.

Now what she’s got to do with anything either, I don’t know.

I guess I’ve got to stop analysing and learn to enjoy.. *shudder* sport.

But is this more fun?

This is the fastest I’ve ever burnt out, ever. Actually, I don’t remember ever burning out ever. That’s, obviously, not because I am super human, but because I’ve never really pushed it.

I mean, what good would that have done? (Besides probably the unimportant things like over achieving, becoming rich and famous and all that.)

This week has been, I have to say it, more than what I can take. I’ve been leaving early early in the morning and returning late late in the night (yes, repeating the words, not as typos, but to emphasize, how early and how late). Yes, smoke and mirror away the numbers, and you just have to trust me on it being really early or late.

Anyway, I’m not cut out for galavanting across campus on different bus routes to catch consecutive classes from the time I wake to the time I sleep, and getting work done in the remaining time. What remaining time you say?

What work I say.

So the weekend’s been nothing more than laaate waking and idling. Re cooperating sort of thing. I’ve also drastically dropped the course load, to make more time for real work. Notice I never ever said the classes were too much for me to handle intellectually. I just said I am not cut out physically to actually handle being there at the right time each time through out the day.

In this down time however, I’ve got quite a bit of tennis watching in. Sports don’t matter, and I normally never get involved in what’s going on, but COME ON, Nalbandian should have won.

Sure, he served slower, didn’t hit the ball as hard, just kept the ball in play until the other guy screwed up, among other things.

But it’s just no fun when the crowd favorite wins you know?

Also, saw some totally bogus program on MTV2 about what I thought was on the greatest bands of all time. I was all furious over the peoples’ votes, but then realized, after 3 near heart-attacks, that it was just a poll based on the “greatest bands” that had their greatest string of commercial success during the post-MTV era, circa 1981.

Yeah right.

Ahh yes, another hectic day. Didn’t do too much besides the ordinary worth talking about. It’s at these times, I hope, that pictures can come to a rescue.

Here are a couple of pictures of different sites that I’ve worked on. “Worked on” is an ambiguous term. The truth is all my sites have been stolen from different locations, to varying degrees. But no, nothing majorly illegal, I do it when they’ve said it’s ok to, and credit back or whatever is required of the license.

Aesthetica is a forum that’s been dead over a year. It was a phpBB powered forum. Yes, it was inactive.

And now I am fooling around with something called “espeek.”

I found a template I liked on css Zen Garden and decided to use it as a framework for an MT powered blog for someone else. As is obvious, it requires a lot more work.

Here I go, still scratching around the same old hole
My body feels young but my mind is very old
So what do you say?
You can’t give me the dreams that are mine anyway
You’re half the world away
Half the world away

I’ve been lost I’ve been found but I don’t feel down.
No I don’t feel down.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. What I meant to say is, I am without a watch. I’ve had my trusty watch for a very long time, and it has given me very little trouble. Of course, I’ve had to change the strap a couple of times, and the batteries a few times, but hey, it has worked so far. About a month or so ago? just before my Albuquerque trip, the batteries started dying again, and it failed BANG IN THE MIDDLE of my talk.

It is weird, I use (depend on) my watch more than most people. Next to google, it is my brain’s closest friend by being an ‘off line’ data store containing (seemingly important but actually unnecessary) information like people’s contact information and birthdays and all that sort of thing. It helps keep my mind freer for the hopefully more relevant things.

But, I do use it to tell time too, and often.

Which is why, when it died in the middle of the talk, I was more than a bit flustered. Of course, I then resorted to the more fundamental art of telling time by how bored the crowd looked. And, surprisingly, it worked. Judging how patents and so on work in this country, I think I can patent the idea of “telling time based on how bored your audience appears” and make a fortune some day. Some day.

It’s been dead since then, and I’d almost learned to live without it, apart from the sporadic “stare at empty wrist hoping to see the time” syndrome. I’ve just been too lazy to do anything about it. I assumed I could get by, and yes, I was wrong.

Today was one of the more hectic days and I rushed in and out of five? or so (with four of them being fairly advanced math analysis) classes. Not fun when they are in totally different parts of campus and I didn’t really know what time it was most of the while, which resulted in some odd, and slightly embarrassing, class entry/exit times.

I have to get it fixed. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

I also realized I’ve messed up, I think, by getting into engineering. I should have pursued pure physics/math instead. Damn it, those people are so much cooler than we can ever be. Even the halls and the buildings just radiated a “we know more than you people” sort of glow, complete with the “we just love knowing, and we don’t stop as soon as we know ‘just enough’ to make a product, or write a program, or design a circuit… like you lowly engineers”.

Sure, half of my degrees should make me a hybrid, like I halfway belong with them. But it’s still not as pure as it could have been.

No, it isn’t.

And one of the cooler things that could have happened did happen today. As I was running around those older, feel more “grand university”ish halls, absolutely random people (lying down in the corridors with their all free software stickers plastered laptops and so on) were all smiles, starting random conversations, gesturing (something vaguely resembling a thumbs-up) and so on. Why? I was in my friendly Free Software, Free Society shirt.

Again, if these normal people (complete with the ones with hair all over their face and beards upto their knees) can see, recognise (the importance), and strike up a civilized conversation on some geeky topic, why can’t the engineers?

They’re just pseudo geeks, they don’t really know or really care. Just fake it.

I was looking into some of last month’s site statistics and here is something interesting, to me. Out of the top three browsers to hit my site, two are gecko based. Mozilla Firebird (now Firefox) and everybody’s favorite (except the GNOME dev team :() gecko browser, galeon.

2995: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030429 Mozilla Firebird/0.6

2675: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; T312461; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

2109: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686) Gecko/0 Galeon/1.3.3

Yes, it is just me. And I know you don’t care. Move along now, nothing here.

It was cold today morning. No, I don’t know how cold. I don’t want to know. All I know is that it was cold. Damn, I hope it just doesn’t get worse and worse from now on until it hits subzero (in their evil units) temperature. Sure it’s very, very pretty, but very, very annoying.

It did get better towards mid day though, I think. I have been cooped up indoors since then anyway, so I don’t know how warm (read ‘not cold’) it got.

Point being, it is fall already. Classes have started and I am currently rushing to 6 or so and attempting 7. Yes, it’s unnecessary strain on the mind, but it is something I do each term till I slowly back off until I hit that sweet spot, where I know I won’t die with work and can do moderately decently. Just what is moderately decently you say? I don’t quite know.

Anyway, I assume work and so on will come to a grinding halt for a little while at least, while these things reach a steady state.

I just thought about it, since I brought up ‘fall’. I’ve decided I prefer how the weather was where I’m originally from, and you DON’T HAVE TO SEE WEATHER NEWS, EVER. Because it’s always going to be very hot. That’s the weather report, on ANY given day. The way it should be. Sure, we don’t have “seasons” where plants shed their leaves, but hell, it’s so hot we barely have plants.

Since things like these always come in groups to exponentially increase their irritation factor, along with the changing weather (for the worse) and the suddenly quantum jumped courseload, there are the quintessential rommie issues. I don’t think I have anything particularly against ‘a’ roomie. I think I’ve begun to detest the very concept of a roomie. This dawned on me when I ran out of hot water a very short 40 minutes into my shower. Sure, it’s no one’s fault, but it wouldn’t have happened if roomies didn’t exist.

Yes, next plan is to rob a bank or whatever and get my own place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing personal, it’s just, the concept that I’m beginning to not stand.

Before that, I am seriously considering changing the blog name to ‘the trials and tribulations of your usual grad student’ or something similar.