Category - Stuff

It's summertime in The World of Colleges. All of my friends are either taking summer classes, traveling Europe, pursuing research opportunities at national laboratories, getting married, or working. Yes, working. I'm home for three months, so I figure I'd try to get a job that's close enough to walk to and that I could work at, say, most days of the week. I could always use the money.

I searched the Internet for extremely local job listings and found a place close by that was looking for someone to do easy but tedious work on their web site. As it happens, I love doing easy but tedious things, and I have experience with web sites. I got the resume ready (thanks Kirsten), wrote a cover letter, and shot them an e-mail. Response: "I have found someone for that position. Thank you." I told her to take the ad off the freaking web site so other people wouldn't make my unfortunate mistake of wasting time trying to apply. I did not use the words "freaking" or "wasting," but that's how I felt.

So I went around to some local businesses to see which were hiring. Then I went home and called them to see what positions were available. The pizza place wanted a chef, and the Thai restaurant wanted a delivery boy. Nope and nope. I haven't tried calling the others because I can't decide which one I would want to work at the least.

Ah, getting a job. It's totally worthwhile, even necessary. It can bring you security and happiness. But finding one is tough. You will get burned a lot, especially if you have little to no experience. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets. Good thing nothing else in life is just like that.

I need to come up with a clever idea to make money. One that doesn't involve writing a cover letter. Something really stupid yet clever that no one has thought of yet. Maybe I could just play the guitar on a street corner. Maybe I can start a business and Be My Own Boss™. I also need an outlet for my near-constant frustration. I mean, besides this blog. Something that doesn't involve complaining. I wish I could make art. Angry art. Sad art. Luckily, anything can pass for art these days, so I guess I could throw paint on a wall and call it art. But art isn't really my thing. I want to smash things or blow stuff up in a field. And I want to not clean up after it.

Maybe I can make a business out of smashing things. Send me $50 or the iPhone gets it.

On a completely random note, no one has ever bought anything from the World of Stuff Store.

By the way: Justin is in Rome for one of his classes, Adam is going to pursue a research opportunity at a national laboratory, and Jennipher is apparently engaged. I don't know her that well, but we're friends on Facebook.

This is cool if you're an independent artist: TuneCore distributes your music and videos to Internet music stores. You keep the rights to your songs and and all the money they make.

Big-time Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings has interviewed a former Jeopardy! writer. Carlo Panno reveals all the secrets about how the show was made, as well as some amusing anecdotes. Here's the interview: parts 1, 2, and 3.

Because you've always wondered: The Stories Behind 10 Famous Product Placements.

I'm back from my weekend vacation in Fort Pierce. Not much has changed, I see. It's the same old world with the same old problems. Same non-problems, too.

The trip was pretty nice. We'd never before brought our Italian greyhound, Speck, so it was interesting to see how he'd react to the ocean. We've established that he's afraid of the pool, but he approached the ocean with interest... until some cold water reached his little paws. That was it for him. Although he was on a leash, he tried as hard as he could to run away. Later, my parents took Speck on a walk, and he got used to the incoming splashes. So my dad decided to carry him into the water. Then he placed him in. Speck tried to swim out of the water, and he had a pretty good go at it. But my dad helped him, and he tried to run back to the umbrella and beach chairs. He was shivering and wet, so he warmed up and dried off in the sun. That was Saturday.

On Sunday, we decided to be nicer to Speckie by not having him go in the water (which actually was pretty cold). So he was just chillin' there in his beach chair under the beach umbrella on the beach. What a good sport. And actually, he didn't make a mess in the condo at all, which is surprising because he's gone through some phases of being pretty non-housebroken (housefixed?).

On our way out on Sunday afternoon, we took a drive north to Vero Beach where we ate at the ice cream store we always make a point to go to. But instead of going back south, we went north to check out Sebastian Inlet. We just took a peek, actually. We continued to go north on A1A, and there weren't many chances to get back to the mainland. Around those parts, the island (whatever it's called) is very narrow and has little more than the road and houses on the beach. It looked like more of the beach houses were for sale than weren't.

We didn't get to turn around till Melbourne, where we could see clouds of smoke rising from what appeared to be a brush fire. As we headed south on I-95 and I thought about how many Wikipedia links I would include in my forthcoming post, we had to take a detour because of the fire. It took a while, but after that, we could get back on 95, and it was smooth sailing (driving) home from there.

I listen to music a lot, usually through headphones. My laptop's speakers aren't very good, and I tend to be self-conscious about the music I like to listen to. Last week, I was using my headphones a lot, and my ears started to hurt. So I did the sensible thing, which was to stop using the headphones. In fact, I stopped listening to music altogether. Only the pain hasn't entirely gone away. It was pretty unbearable at times last week, but my ears seem to be getting better. Either that or I'm getting accustomed to permanent hearing damage. I guess it's less of a hearing impairment than a feeling that I need to pop my ears. I really, really hope it does go away because it's made me think about the things I take for granted as well as my own mortality. It's one thing to say "I am made of meat and chemicals; when I die, my flesh will rot," but it's quite another to be confronted with the risk of losing the amazing ability to hear sounds in one's environment. Okay, ears, I get the message. I promise I'll never abuse you again.

Here's a site about the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth. Pretty interesting stuff.

Have you ever wanted your own island? They're for sale at Private Islands Online. I checked out the page for Florida. There are a lot of keys you can buy.

One of baseball's most legendary records is (apparently) Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941. But how likely was it to happen? Researchers at Cornell University used historical baseball statistics (and a computer) to create 10,000 digital simulations of the entire history of baseball. In each "alternate universe," the players hit and missed randomly, but according to their batting average for that year. So, just how likely was it that Joltin' Joe set this record in our own particular universe? Find out.

This weekend, I'm going with my family to our usual vacation spot on North Hutchinson Island in Fort Pierce. I haven't been there since last March, so I'm looking forward to it. We go at least once every year. A typical trip to the condo entails going to the beach in the morning, playing games in the rec room, eating coffee cake for breakfast, relaxing by the pool, and going to Vero Beach to have ice cream at Cravings. The beach is the best part. While it's true that I live near a public beach, the one at the condo is private, so there's usually nobody there. I'll try not to get sunburned this time.

This is the first time I've gone there since I've had my laptop, so there's no precedent here. I'm not going to bring it because it sort of ruins the idea of having a vacation. We're also bringing the dog for the first time, presumably because we can't find someone to look after him. He's been good lately, so I don't expect any trouble. But we'll see.

Though I just said that the beach is the best part, I'm also looking forward to some good, old-fashioned R&R. I'd been kind of sleep deprived, living in a college dorm, so I was hoping I'd be able to catch up on sleep at home. I've been back for a week, and I haven't noticed an improvement. For one thing, it's bright in my room in the morning, and it's usually hot too. I could open the windows so it's not as hot, but then it would be noisy. To be able to sleep, I need to be stored in a cool, dark place with lots of quiet. What I need to have at home is one of those masks that ladies wear when they need to get their beauty sleep. I need my resting sleep.

Anyway, I'm leaving tonight, and I'll be back on Sunday night. Au revoir.

Scary stuff from Wired: FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses. This is one of a few such cases to have come to light. Who knows how many others there have been?

Researchers have recently decoded the earliest known sound recording, made in 1860. It was scratched into a piece of paper as part of an attempt to record sounds visually rather than to play them back. But thanks to modern technology, the grooves have been converted to sound in much the same way that a stylus reads grooves on a record. This article has more, including the sound clip itself.

And finally: When you're a reporter doing a spot for the TV news, you've got to make sure you're standing out of harm's way. Such was not the case for this reporter, who got owned by a sled.

I went to a French restaurant for today with my sister and our friends Yamilee and Austin. The place was called Rendez-Vous, and it was located in Fort Lauderdale. I'd never heard of it, but then, I don't go to a lot of French restaurants. It was actually part bakery, as those sorts of places tend to be, and the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. (No snooty waiters who take offense at your butchering of the French language.) I had a crepe with chicken, spinach, and mushrooms. It was good. Apparently Yamilee and Austin eat there a lot. I think I should go back at least a few more times to try all the things that looked good on the menu, not to mention the desserts.

When I upgraded my operating system a few weeks ago, I got a new version of Rhythmbox, my media player. In the new version, a plugin is enabled by default that allows you to stream and download music from Jamendo, a site that allows artists to distribute their music for free and receive donations from fans. So I poked around and found some albums that I liked. Here are a few of my favorites. All are downloadable for free.

• Demo by MoOt. Though it's a demo, its six songs are more polished than some of the other tracks on Jamendo. This album consists of nice pop-type numbers that are -- dare I say it -- Beatlesque. Very catchy, imaginative, and well-done.
• I Don't Know What I'm Doing by Brad Sucks. The artist's name and the title of his album both suggest a lack of self-confidence, but this album of moody-sounding semi-electronic numbers has managed to capture my interest -- an achievement to be proud of. I think I'd actually heard of Brad Sucks, even, and his music sounds like stuff that may or may not have been on the show with zefrank.
• I've saved the best for last: The Heavens by The Heavens. It's a professional recording by experienced musicians -- and it shows. This new British group's four psychedelic rock songs show that kickin' it old school is cool. The final track, "Echo Serena," is -- dare I say it -- sublime. (Or at least lime. I'm daresaying a lot of things today.) Highly recommended.

Although I've run out of the space I've allotted for myself, I will continue to go on about The Heavens for a minute. Their songs are cool. Their album cover is cool. (Seriously. Look at it.) A reviewer on Jamendo says of "This Beautiful Machine" that its stereo separation is "straight out of 1966." The drums and bass on either side, with guitars in the middle, hearken back to the days before record producers decided they should always be the other way around. "Echo Serena" is one of the better expressions of love ever committed to tape. And The Heavens the first and only band (not counting my friends' bands) that I've friended on MySpace. That is no small thing right there. I look forward to acquiring their next record, whenever it comes out, even if it involves paying money.

And now, the links.

If all the humans on Earth died, our buildings and cities would fall into a state of disrepair. Here are some lovely pictures of what it might look like.

Here's a fun read: "40 Years in the Future," from Mechanix Illustrated, November 1968. According to the article, the world of 2008 will have such advances as computer-guided cars, vacations in space, the four-hour workday, domed cities, and plastic silverware. Big-screen TVs will allow us to shop and take college classes from our own homes. We'll also be able to get new hit movies on demand!

Wikipedia has a list of common misconceptions.

Oh hi.

On Wednesday, I studied for my programming exam with this girl. We had a friend in common, and I had been helping her study and work on projects. "Thank you so much," she probably said. "Do you want to unwind and have dinner tomorrow night?" I asked. "Sure!" "Like a date?" "... We'll see!" "Okay, call me." Note to self: never say "call me." Nobody calls you. I should write a list of things not to say. It would be a very long list.

On Thursday, shortly after I wrote my last post, my parents came over and helped me pack stuff up from my dorm room. That took about an hour and a half. I spent the night at my aunt's house nearby, and the next day, I was due to check out. I cleaned up a little bit, and the RA came to make sure that I left my side of the room reasonably clean and didn't forget anything in the drawers. She told me that by the end of that day, Friday, only three people on our floor would remain. She had me sign a form, and then she left.

It was just me and my roommate, Adam. After I took my room and mailbox keys off my keyring, we exchanged goodbyes, I thanked him for being a great roommate, and I left. My other remaining suitemate, Evan, wasn't in his room. So I went down to the lobby and returned my keys. It was over. That evening, I was home.

As I was taking boxes from the rented van in the driveway, a familiar car stopped in front of our house. It was my friends Nick, Mike, and TJ. They were headed to Clamsters to shoot some pool and have a bite. After filling my entire room with boxes, I joined them. I had a good time. We might have done something after that, but it all runs together in my mind. I forget. See, since I got home, I've probably spent more time with them than I have at home.

I definitely know what we did yesterday, though. Nick, TJ, and I started by seeing Iron Man. Nick had already seen the movie the day before, but he couldn't see it enough times. After that, we went to his house and played video games. Then we went to Hooters, where Mike met up with us. After standing around in the parking lot and wondering what to do, we decided to go to Clamsters again. Nick and TJ wanted Mike to talk to a waitress-acquaintance who he was apparently talking to the day before. He stalled until she left; then they got her phone number from another waitress. He wouldn't call her, so they texted her, and eventually, he left her a message apologizing for their stupidity. We drove around for a little while longer and then went home.

Nick had a little birthday get-together today. Mike, TJ, and I were there, along with a few other friends and family members. It was pretty crazy, actually. There are a lot of kids in his family -- mostly boys -- and they're wild. It's funny, though. Surprisingly, we didn't see Iron Man today, although I would have been willing to. Nick said he needed a break from it so he could forget some of the plot points and be surprised when watching the movie again. Probably not going to happen. Anyway, after that, we went to the Pompano Bowl to bowl for an hour. Then we had to split, and I went home.

I haven't been home for a while, so I've been noticing things that have changed both in my house and in the surrounding environment. Some are subtle: we got a new phone with a built-in answering machine and caller ID, or they painted this building over here some other color. Some are more drastic. They totally redid the interior of the Pompano Bowl. They installed blacklights, got some new artwork, and painted the walls purple. They put screens between the lanes, some of which were showing videos from the new video jukebox thing. And I don't remember a drinking section being there before. But so it was, in the lanes right outside Joey's (formerly Gary's) Sports Bar and Grill.

Things change. Some things never change. I'll admit that I was heaving a Hail Mary on Wednesday -- a date on my last night at school? Hardly a chance, and I knew it. If my personal ad doesn't work, I give up. And now, the links.

I put the "laughter" in "slaughter." You have to be pretty bored to notice some Words in Words.

Here's an interactive, visual introduction to black holes: Anatomy of a Black Hole (Flash).

From the Songs Everyone Knows But No One Knows the Names Of Dept.: "Powerhouse" is the "assembly line" music used in cartoons.

For the past few days, I've been studying for exams (and taking them). Now I'm done. So are a lot of other people. Over the past week, trucks, vans, and SUVs have been buzzing about and parking outside the dorms. People are moving out.

My differential equations exam was on Monday morning at the ungodly hour of 7:30 A.M. I couldn't get much sleep beforehand. I studied a lot, but I could have studied more. I needed a 56 on the final to get a B in the class. I estimate that I got the equivalent of 4 out of 7 questions right; if that's true, then I got a 57. Anyway, it's going to be close. I'm glad I did the optional assignment that will only be invoked if you're on the border between grades.

I had my last biology exam yesterday. It wasn't a cumulative final, which was good. I hadn't been doing as well as I wanted on the tests, whose average makes up the entire class grade. I needed a 100 on the last test to get an A in the class and an 88 for a B+. I just found out that I got a 90. B+ in the bag.

Also yesterday, I found out how I did in physics. Amazingly, I got a B+ in the class somehow. I received a breakdown of my grade. They gave me full credit for the in-class response questions (5% of the grade) even though I got some of them wrong. I did get an 85 in the final exam, as I had guessed. Even then, I still should have had a B, according to my calculations. They must have rounded up, which they said they weren't going to do. Oh well. I would have been happy with a B, but a B+ is welcome.

And today, I had my last exam: programming. I'm all but certain that I'll be getting an A in the class.

Last night, I visited my friend Andy, one of the people I'm starting the Esperanto club with. I didn't have to go very far because he lives down the hall. He plays the piano, and he wanted to know if I wanted to rock out with him. I had a lot of fun. He's really good at improvising on the piano. Besides discussing music, we also talked about computers. He said he needed an office suite to run on his Mac, and I suggested NeoOffice, which I recommend to all my Mac-using friends. For everyone else, I recommend OpenOffice.org. Both are free as in price and free as in freedom.

So, in short, good times were had by both. It reminds me of all the interesting things I've done that I haven't mentioned here. As I begin to pack up all my stuff and leave my dorm for the summer, I reflect back -- in no particular order -- on some Things I Apparently Didn't Mention.

1. As part of my college orientation over the summer, I had to spend the night in a real dorm room with a real roommate. My one-time disposable roommate was even quieter than I was, which, if you know me personally, might be hard to imagine. I had to do the talking. Anyway, his name was Amer or Ahmer or something, and he lives in my current building, so I see him every once in a while. Invariably he has earbuds in his ears. I don't know how people can walk around listening to music all the time. Open your ears, folks. You can do without your Fall Out Boy for ten minutes. (Seriously, it's getting bad. When I would volunteer for Get Carded in crowded areas, I would marvel at the proportion of people who listen to music while they're walking. At least one of my professors did it on his way to class.)
2. There was an old woman in my programming class. When I saw her on the first day, I assumed that she was doing a write-up or something to judge the lecturer, but she kept coming back every day. She looked like she was over 70. Way to go for her, taking a computer class in college at that age. Eventually, she stopped going to class, so I assume she dropped it.
3. At the beginning of the year, our RA, Shannon, made little name-tag-type things and put them on everyone's door. Although it took me about 6 months to realize it, each one was supposed to look like a little iPod with a different album cover where the screen ought to be. I had the most random album ever. Every day during the fall semester, I had this on my door, printed by a color printer without yellow ink:

   

   So random. When we got a new RA in the spring, she replaced our iPods (as I still didn't know they were) with blank CD-Rs with our names and hometowns written on them. Have you ever tried taping a CD to a door? Those things are heavy. Few of them lasted very long without falling. After a month, I gave up on trying to stick mine back on the wall and substituted my and my roommate's iPods, which had been placed inside the room when they were taken down. They've been up ever since. (My roommate's album was the Virgin Suicides soundtrack).

4. I was poking around the web site of one of my physics professors one time when I came across a link to a picture of his "famous sister." One of my physics professors, it turns out, was Sally Field's brother. And not the one I liked, either. I thought that was pretty weird. I did some Googling to make sure it was true, and I found some sites saying that Sally Field had a brother named Rick Field who was a physicist. I also found a university library catalog mentioning a video of Sally Field visiting her brother Rick at the university in 1982. Almost everyone I talked to about this hadn't heard of Sally Field or referred to her as Sally Fields. Sucks to be you, Sally Field. But I like you, I really like you. As for your brother, meh.
5. I took up a form of exercise called shovelglove in November, but I didn't really explain why. I did hint at it, however. There's this girl Ashley who lives on my floor, and she would come by to talk to my roommate, Adam. Adam works out a lot and would often hang around without a shirt on. She mentioned how she always seemed to encounter him while he was shirtless. So, one time, I had gotten out of the shower and I had a towel wrapped around me while I was combing my hair. There was a knock on the door, and I saw through the peephole that it was Ashley. Oh, no problem, I thought, since she sees Adam without a shirt all the time. So I opened the door, and she averted her eyes and said, "I can come back later!" Come to think of it, maybe it was the towel. I am not a fat guy, and I wasn't then, but it got me thinking about how I should probably work out.
6. In January, one of my suitemates apparently tried to overdose on pills. He had to go to the hospital for a while and withdraw for the semester. What I didn't mention was: he came back to the dorm to visit a few months later and seemed to be his same old self. He spent a few nights sleeping in the common room, and then I think he got kicked out.
7. Evan moved in to take his place as he had wanted to be roommates with Cameron. Evan really livened things up around this here two-room/one-bathroom suite-type thing. I already mentioned how he had a jacuzzi party by buying a kiddie pool, putting it in the bathroom, filling it with hot water from the shower, and inviting his friends. One night, he happened to catch Die Hard on TV, and after that, he started posting a "Die Hard Quote of the Day" in the bathroom. After he, Adam, and I rented Die Hard: With a Vengeance, we all got in on the act. They're still hanging up there. My contribution:
   Jeremy Irons: My only problem is that I went to some trouble preparing that game for McClane. You interfered with a well-laid plan.
   Samuel L. Jackson: Well, you can stick your well-laid plan up your well-laid ass.

My first year of college is over, and tomorrow, I'm going home. I've done pretty well in my classes. I've had fun. I've made a lot of friends, and I've learned some things. But I honestly don't mind not having classes for a few months. I could use a break. In fact, except for a friend's birthday on Sunday, I have absolutely no plans at all this summer. I think I'll try to get a job to make back the money I spent this year. I've already started working on the old resume. I'm also looking forward to sleeping in and not getting irreversibly awoken two hours early by someone singing in the shower or having a loud conversation in the hallway. The time for those things is no more. It's summertime.

But first, it's time to pack.

And throw crap away.

JungleCrazy.com lists some crazy Amazon deals. This is great for people who buy random cheap stuff online.

If you get an automatically generated e-mail with a return address at donotreply.com, do Chet Faliszek a favor and don't reply to it. He's the owner of DoNotReply.com, and his site gets innumerable e-mails every day.

From Lawrence Lessig, creator of Creative Commons, comes Change Congress, "a movement to build support for basic reform in how our government functions." He's trying to have politicians and citizens pledge to support increased honesty and transparency in Congress.

Final exams have begun. I had my first one today. Physics, it was. I did pretty well, too. I got an 85. According to my calculations, this means I'll have a B in the class, which is good. I didn't even have to study that much. Now I need to study for Differential Equations, which I also spent time studying for last night. I'll need all the studying I can manage to make myself do.

Last night, my roommate, Adam, was reminiscing about Nickelodeon's Super Toy Run, the annual sweepstakes in which the winner would go to Toys 'R' Us and have a few minutes to fill a shopping cart with anything they wanted. I mentioned how it reminded me of "Supermarket Sweep," a '90s game show which was about exciting as it sounds. For old times' sake, we watched an episode on YouTube. Check out the description for the video. The uploader (who appears as a contestant in the episode) says that the audience consisted of paid extras who were only present for the taping of the beginning of the show. So the rest of the applause throughout the show is canned. We noticed how strange it was that the contestants would clap for themselves when they got a question right; it's because no one else was actually clapping for them.

Boring technobabble follows.

The latest version of Ubuntu (8.04 or "Hardy Heron") came out on Thursday. I suppose the difficulty of downloading updates when a new version is released is a testimony to Ubuntu's growing popularity. This time, I couldn't get through the download. It took about three hours to get a third of the way done, and then it stopped. What's more, I couldn't re-connect, so I had to wait. But in my Googling, I found out that you can download the alternate install CD, mount it as though you've burned it to a CD, and use that to upgrade. So I tried downloading the CD. It was just as slow, if not slower, until it timed out.

By that time, a number of other mirrors had come online, so I was able to choose one that was a lot closer (and less overloaded). I downloaded the CD image from Georgia Tech at a rate of 4 MB/s. Yes, four megabytes per second! The 700 MB download was done in a few minutes. (I'm going to miss having a university Internet connection, but I wouldn't have had to resort to such drastic measures if they allowed BitTorrent traffic in the dorms.)

After mounting the CD image (sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.iso /mnt/) and running the upgrade utility (gksudo "sh /mnt/cdromupgrade"), I was good to go. Or so I thought. Apparently you still need to connect to a server to verify the upgrades or something like that. Since I couldn't connect to the servers at all, it wouldn't work. But then I thought of going to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and choosing a different mirror. I let the system choose the fastest one to me, but it didn't seem to be working well. Russia? Belgium? I couldn't connect to either of them. I tried a third time. Georgia Tech. Aha.

Now that the upgrades could be authenticated or whatever had to be done, the upgrade went smoothly. After the reboot, I surveyed the virtual territory. There were the inevitable annoyances. For one, my default system font (DejaVu Sans Condensed) was uninstalled, but it was no problem to reinstall the ttf-dejavu-extra package. Another annoyance was that I would get a system beep whenever the computer booted up. I managed to turn this off by adding the line blacklist pcspkr to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. I've also noticed a couple of times that the bootup process gets to a plain black screen and stops with no hard drive activity. A perusal of the system log suggests that this is a network problem.

The main issue (unless I'm forgetting one) is that I couldn't have two applications using the sound card at the same time. If I were listening to music in Rhythmbox and I paused it to watch a YouTube video in Firefox, I wouldn't get any sound from the video. After some digging, I found that installing libflashsupport fixed this problem, but I still couldn't use Audacity if another application was playing sound. A friendly person from the Ubuntu Forums suggested I install libasound2-plugins. After doing that (and rebooting, just for kicks), I would be able to use OSS with PulseAudio, which is new in Hardy. So I set Audacity to use OSS, and when I run Audacity with padsp audacity, as suggested in the forums, it won't want to have the sound card all to itself. Problem solved... mostly. This doesn't work for Ekiga because I can only set Ekiga to use ALSA, not OSS, but it's a start. I haven't used Ekiga much lately anyway.

(Standard disclaimer: I don't know that much about computers. I learned the above information by searching the Internet and asking people.)

The Ubuntu developers made a pretty controversial decision when they decided to make Firefox 3 Beta 5 the default browser in Gutsy. Beta software in a release that's touted to be especially stable? It doesn't add up. I did my homework and found that some of my favorite extensions wouldn't be compatible, so I made a copy of my Firefox profile folder (~./mozilla/) before upgrading. It's a good thing, too. While Firefox 3 did seem to use less RAM, I noticed that it almost froze a few times. It did have some cool features, like the new location bar with its frecency algorithm, the new download manager, and the ability to zoom in and out of entire pages like IE 7 (I think). But the lack of useful extensions was the show-stopper for me. I uninstalled Firefox 3, reinstalled Firefox 2, replaced my profile folder with the copy, and all is well again.

Except for the fonts. Now in Hardy, Firefox equates displays the clones of Times New Roman and Helvetica/Arial whenever those fonts are called for. Previously, it would just show the default serif and sans-serif fonts (DejaVu Serif and DejaVu Sans), which I think happen to look better. They scale better, for one, and I think they better suited for the screen. I don't think this font thing is specific to Firefox, and I don't know to change it, but I've changed this site's stylesheet so DejaVu Sans precedes Arial. It shouldn't make a difference to anybody except certain Linux users (or anyone else who has DejaVu Sans?), but if it has caused the sky to fall on your head, please let me know.

So, what's actually new in Hardy? Updated versions of all (well, most of) my favorite programs, like Rhythmbox music player, Pidgin instant messenger, the GIMP image editor, and the OpenOffice.org office suite. Some of the more basic default programs have been replaced with more sophisticated ones; the BitTorrent client and the CD burner come to mind. Plus, this new Tracker search tool seems pretty handy although I haven't needed to use it yet. I'll probably discover more new and exciting additions as I continue to use the operating system.

Wikipedia has a list of pigs, although it also includes hogs and wild boars.

For your entertainment, here's a slow-motion video of a tomato in a blender.

And here are some cool photos of striped icebergs that apparently look like some British candy. I wouldn't want to eat one, though.

Today was the last day of classes of the spring semester. Tomorrow and Friday are "reading days" to study for final exams. On Saturday, exams begin.

I can't believe how fast this semester has gone by. But I'm more surprised by the grades I've been getting. I was a straight-A student in high school (except for one B), and I'm on track to get 2 A's and 3 B's this semester. I guess I could have studied more. But I have to study more now. I have my physics exam on Saturday, differential equations on Monday, biology on Wednesday, and programming on Thursday. Luckily, my bio exam isn't cumulative, but the rest are.

I've been worried about physics all semester, but now that I got an 85 on the last test, I've got a B in the bag (after having a C+ most of the semester). Diff. Eq. has become the new enemy. I didn't do very well on the last two tests, so what might have been an A can now be no more than a B+ (if I'm lucky). So I've really got to hit the books. In fact, the only book I really don't have to hit is for programming, and not just because we don't have a textbook. I'm doing so well in that class that I haven't even checked to see how the grade is calculated. Programming really is my thing, y'see.

So, I talked to the latest girl today, and guess what? We're going to dinner tomorrow night!

Just kidding. She said it was a "bad time of year," with her having "three exams" in "two days" and all.

I would have asked her last week, or the week before that, or the week before that, but I was working up the nerve and I didn't want to get rejected. My careful planning has brought about the very situation I planned to avoid. This would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Moving on to important things, the next version of Ubuntu, my operating system of choice, is coming out tomorrow. It includes a lot of updated programs, including Firefox 3.0 beta 5. I just hope the update goes without a hitch. The last time I upgraded Ubuntu on my dad's computer, there were some hitches of unknown origin. I think the system managed to fix itself, but it was quite a scare, and I don't want it to happen with my computer. The alternative is to do a clean install and probably lose stuff like wireless and sound. Also, I'd have to put all my personal files and settings back on. I guess I'll just take the risk of upgrading, but I'll do a backup first in case things go awry. Wish me luck.

Here are some fun facts you probably didn't know about living in space.

I think I've posted something like this before, but in any case, here's another password strength checker.

The Pirate Bay, the world's largest BitTorrent tracker, gets a lot of nasty letters for facilitating the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted movies and music. They've posted a few of the many letters they've received, along with their responses.

My roommate left for class yesterday morning around 10:30 or 11:00, as he usually does on Fridays. But he hasn't come back. I think he went home for the weekend. He might have told me about this, but it had to have been a long time ago, or I would have remembered clearly. I think Passover is starting.

In any case, I'm here by myself, and I've realized how boring it is without him. He usually has some nice music and/or the TV on. Or he might be on the phone with someone, or playing games on the Internet, or at least just studying or crunching data and graphs for his top-secret materials research project. In any case, he's usually there, and now, for a little while, he's not. It's hard to imagine that some people live like this all the time in their single rooms. I think I'd go crazy.

It's been a pretty stressful week. The culmination was last night, when I had a physics test. Yeah, a physics test from 8:20 to 10:10 on a Friday night. I studied a little more than I wanted to, which wasn't much anyway, but I wasn't completely lost on everything. I felt pretty good about it, in fact, but I was wary because I've gotten tripped up before. (I got a 60% on the first test and a 65% on the second one. I should have gotten a 75% on the second one, but I apparently bubbled in two of the answers wrong. Both of the scores I did get correspond to a grade of C+ in the class.) After last night's test, I went online to compare my scratch work to the answer key. Totally unexpectedly, I got an 85%, which will be very good for my grade -- provided I bubbled in the answers right.

Even though I have more work to do and more tests coming up, I've been taking it easy. I've been listening to music a lot today (even more than usual). With my playlist on shuffle, it's like Radio Free Jordon in here. Now that I have my own computer, I have all my music available on the go (except my record collection -- I'm leaving that project for the summer. Thanks to Luke for the shrink-wrapped copy of Double Fantasy. That'll make a pretty darn good digital transfer). It just occurred to me that because no one's around to overhear my music, I don't have to pump it directly into my ears. My laptop speakers aren't great, but I'd rather not have my headphones on all the time and go deaf.

I was going to do something tonight, but now I'm not. Yesterday, I asked a girl (previously mentioned) to dinner. She seemed surprised but pleasantly so. She said it was probably a bad weekend for it, but that it was okay. In what I am considering a first, she actually seemed to understand my intentions, probably because I made them as clear as possible without sounding like the completely blunt and naive person I was until shockingly recently. But she called me today and said she was going out with her girl friends tonight. I should have expected this. The semester is drawing to a close; everyone is stressed out; everyone is about to leave for the summer. Okay, how about Wednesday? "We'll see how the week goes." I don't want to have to wallow in feelings of failure all summer.

Speaking of which, I'd better get on that resume. And now, the links.

Do you believe in God? There's a poll going at YesNoGod.com. A breakdown of results by country is available.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Rate your local law enforcement officers at RateMyCop.com.

Check if a site is down for everyone or just you: Down for everyone or just me?

For the past year or two, my hair has been pretty long. Now it's really long... for a guy. It's at my shoulders now, which I think is a little excessive. I know I need to get it cut. But I'm not sure... how.

I've had this hairstyle for almost six years. Simply put, I part it slightly to the left and let it do its thing. (The part has drifted closer to the center over the years.) Originally I kept it pretty short, but I've let it grow longer and longer, and now it's at my shoulders. It's getting kind of annoying, and I don't think it looks very good. Most girls wouldn't like it either.

Since it's this long, I wonder whether I should cut more of it than usual and try a different style. Before this 'do, I had a plain and simple buzz cut. Before that, when I was a little kid, my hair was just kind of normal. At least, I think so. What I mean by that is that it radiated out from a point on the back of my head. That's the normal cut for a guy. Or, at least, I thought so as I looked around.

I've been looking at other guys' hairstyles over the past few days, and I have realized that everyone's hair is different. It depends on their style and what sort of hair they have. So this has become a little more complicated than I thought. I want to look good, but I don't want to wear someone else's haircut. I want to have something that works well with the color and texture of my hair as well as the shape of my face (respectively: brown, fine, and -- I've been told -- diamond). It also has to be easy to maintain. If I have to do more than comb it, I won't consider it. I'm lazy, and I'll never buy or use any kind of gel.

That sounds like a lot to ask for, but hopefully a hair specialist can help. I think I'll head to SuperCuts soon (either tomorrow or this weekend; probably on the weekend due to my aforementioned laziness and hesitation). In the meantime, how about some suggestions? Come on, guys, I know you can recommend something. Here's an up-to-the-minute photo to help you out.

Security at casinos is pretty crazy. Here's (almost) all about it.

Remember that TV show St. Elsewhere? Okay, me neither, but it was from the '80s, and its last episode was famously cheesy. It turned out that the whole series had been dreamed by one of the characters. But other shows referenced it and its sister show, Homicide: Life on the Street, as being set in the same fictional universe. Other shows have referred to those shows. And so on, to a staggering degree. So it must be true that all those dozens of shows were also part of the dream. See the whole chart at Tommy Westphall's Mind - A Multiverse Explored.

Okay, I just used "dozens" in a sentence, but I don't agree with the Dozenal Society of America which advocates a base-12 numeric system. In base 12, I'd only be 16 years old. Also, 12 would be 10. (It's one of those things that you just kind of have to be good at math to get.)