The most annoying thing in the world: working on a computer with a Sun keyboard, and then switching back and forth to my laptop (or any other normal computer). See, Sun thought it would be a bright idea to swap the Control and Caps Lock keys. Which is all well and good, if you only work on one computer. But if you say, have a Sun machine at the office, and a regular (PC) type machine at home... then lots of things get capped that shouldn't. And while Windows command line is very forgiving about random capital letters... Unix, not so much.
The second most annoying thing in the world: TMJ. No more chewing gum for me... ever. Blah. Anyway... class is supposed to be starting soon, and my professor is glaring at me. I guess I should actually look attentive or something.
Oh yeah, I updated thing link to Brian's site, as his blog is no longer active, and to David's blog, as he changed the URL (and some of the layout stuff). So yeah, check out everyone's new spiffy stuff.
I'm going to get back to reading, which is what I was doing when I found the whole Turing thing. *sigh*
Alan Turing, one of the great pioneers of computer science (and, I might add, "The" great pioneer of Artificial Intelligence), and one of my all time favorite CS/AI role models... was gay. And committed suicide.
Don't you hate it when humanity butts in and tarnishes the pedestals you have so diligently put people on?
That being said, such things have little effect on how good a computer scientist you are (except the suicide thing... I mean, you can't make more discoveries after you're dead, right?)... And sometimes, it's nice to know that my imperfections shouldn't limit my success (at least to some extent).
At least the government isn't forcing me to take hormones because they think my lifestyle choice is a chemical imbalance. Sheesh.
Survived the first day of class... discovered that one of my classes is going to require 4 10-page papers and a project. *sigh* So much for free time...
Question of the day: How the crap did Beonce beat out Angelina Jolie for number 1 on Spike TV's 52 most irresistible women? I mean really... she was Lara Croft. What more could you ask for?
I think I did a bad thing. I just fed a kitten. She was a little bitty calico kitten (the kind that hasn't quite gotten big enough for it's head yet), and she was whining at my door when I got home from the store... and now she's sitting right outside the door devouring a can of tuna. she's about half way done wiht it, which is amazing, as she's not too much bigger than the tuna can.
I'm not usually a cat person... and we can't have cats here (landlord, Chad's allergies, etc)... anyone want a cat? :-)
School starts a week from today... Yay! I am so looking forward to all of my classes... and I'm going to spend less than $100 on books this year, for like, the first time ever. Graduate student = fewer classes = few books. Yay for me! I think I'm gonna go buy my books and price Chad's this afternoon. other than that, I'm mostly out of errands to run... nothing left ot do but program and write thank-you notes from now until school starts ;-)
Anyway... My sleep schedule is (slowly) trying to return to normal, due to the fact that Chad's in band camp and has to be asleep by a semi-reasonable hour every night... hopefully all will be good when school starts.
Interesting book... "The Search For Significance" by Robert S. McGee. It's about self-doubt, and finding your place in life and in God's plan. Good study guide... I have a feeling that this book was all the rage a while back and I missed it... Anyway, this guy seems to right on track as far as his theology goes... And sitting down and reading a couple of chapters today has done more to change my thinking process than the 4 or 5 counselling sessions and personality profiles I took last year.
I am a flower quickly fading Here today and gone tomorrow A wave tossed in the ocean A vapor in the wind Still You hear me when I'm calling Lord, You catch me when I'm falling And You've told me who I am I am Yours - Who Am I, by Casting Crowns
I, Robot Not so much like the book... but and awesome movie from the standpoint of Artificial Intelligence. More like the book than I expected... and much more AI theory than I expected. If you have never read the book.. it's a pretty good sci-fi movie with good graphics and only a few slightly unbelievable parts, overall ok. If you read the book... enjoy the line in the credits: "Suggested by a book by Isaac Asimov". The nude scene with Will Smith was totally not important to the plot, and was (I assume) designed only to show off all the work he did preparing for Ali. Overall: Good movie, I'll prolly buy it on DVD.
Collateral Weird, screwed up movie. But good. In a weird, screwed up sort of way. The camera guy was on crack, though... the whole movie looks like he was carrying the camera on his shoulder. Like Blair Witch, only wihtout the running, and they didn't mic him to get the paniced breathing. Really. I think I might want to see it again... but in a little while, not right away. Tom Cruise made a good and totally beliveable badguy... So I guess that should make up for the cinematography.
um... so like, those are the only movies I've seen recently... Sorry?
Back in Starkville, for a day or two. Back for good Saturday, as Band Camp starts Sunday, and Chad needs to be here for that. I am so looking forward to classes this semester... I have an awesome schedule, I like all of my professors, and I have a class with William (and as of yesterday, he's in my lab, too). The fact that my schedule is the complete opposite of Chad's schedule is a little bit of a downer... but typical.
On a side note here... I hate spam. Not SPAM, the canned meat stuff, which I kind of like sometimes with egg on a sammich... but spam. The annoying e-mail crap you get constantly, that keeps you from paying attention to the real (like, important) e-mail you have gotten. Like this morning... 216 spam messages. 0 real messages. but I had to look at everything im my spam folder, as I am expecting a couple of e-mails from professors, that occasionally look like spam. Grrr.
Plans have changed, yet again. We will be extending our tour of Huntsville this week in order to replace / do repairs on parts of Chad's Intrepid's cooling system. Which failed today, though not spectacularly (like, nothing acutally blew up or melted, thank goodness). Car + repairs = -$$$. Sucks. But, it might not be too much, we hope, if the problem is what we think it is, which it might not be.
So. No spiffy cool setting up Linux boxes or rearranging the apartment for me tomorrow. Chillin in Huntsville. Not at the Holiday Inn, either. *sigh*. So, if you happen to be in Huntsville and are bored, call/e-mail and we might can hook something up. If you're in Starkville and you're bored... sorry? I'll be back in a few days :-)
On to local news: there are some cool new things apearing in Starkville this year... among them Lowes (where the old Wal-mart was... they leveled it... left Penny's and Kroger there, though)... and Zaxby's Chicken (which I might could convince Chad to try, although I'm sure it won't replace Abner's). And Mississippi has new driver's licenses. They are green. And I have one, with my new name and everything. And... um... that's about everything going on in the world of Starkville. School starts the 18th, which should be cool and all... I still need a job, but I might have something lined up the the ERC (engineering research center, not the teacher thing) :-) We'll see. I should know by the time school starts.
Chad's rejoining the band this year, which means a couple of cool things and a couple of "eh" things (but over all cool)... I get to go on the band trips and stuff, as it is mean to seperate married people and such... I've been offered some work down at the band hall if I really need it... I have an excuse to go to all the games (now if I have time....)... and we're spending Thanksgiving Day in Oxford. But... that doubles for a good excuse not to spend it with either family, and for me to cook a turkey and lots of other food on Wednesday. Yay!
Honeymoon. It was great. We spent a couple days in New Orleans, and ate lots of cool places... walked down Burbon Street a few times... hung out and enjoyed the creepyness of the town... and needed about another month to do everything we wanted to. I have pictures, and since I've got some down time, they may make it online pretty soon... we'll see. Then we got on a boat (read: ship), and had a great time there, too. We boarded at like, 1pm, and started eating, and finished eating about 9am the day we had to get off the boat. We ate a wonderful five course meal every night, shared a bottle of champange with our table the last night, ate breakfast and lunch at least twice every day, and drank so much diet coke and sprite it's a wonder we didn't float away. We spent a day in Cozumel, Mexico, which was awesome. We went snorkeling (cool), and scuba diving (really awesome!). Scuba diving pictures may be online, too, if I can get my new super spiffy scanner (bought with Best Buy gift cards from my Aunt Dorinne and the NASAexplores team) set up and scan them... then we went shopping, and brought home two bottle of Kahlua, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a huge block of Cadbury chocolate, various souvenier things for our siblings, color change nail polish (it really does change color in the sunlight, too!), shot glasses for Chad's collection, and a stone pig for mine. The alcohol was really the best deal, which is why Chad agreed to bring it home. :-) All in all, we had a wonderful time. And we were exhausted by the time we got back (because we weren't allowed to bring out LiveWire on the boat!), except we ended up driving up to Southaven, as they were still heming and hawing about painting the apartment. I think it's all done now, though...
And I have been drinking lots and lots of LiveWire, due to the four boxes of it in the office :-) Unfortunately, it's in the office in Starkville... and I'm not. No LiveWire for me. *sigh*
Anyway. I guess since I'm here for another day, I should go socialize with my family or something. ;-)
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
