Since Stacey and Shelby are always complaining about having nothing to do online....

... here's a fun website: www.psychoexgirlfriend.com. Listen to some of the voice mails that this psycho broad left for her "boyfriend". It's great. She tries *every* trick in the book to try and get this guy back. Tries to make him jealous, tries to make him feel guilty, obsesses over some stupid cell phone thing (she cries about not being able to figure out her cell phone, and he promised to teach her... how stupid does she have to be?). Many of the voice-mails were left within minutes of each other, sometimes immediately after each other. It's twisted.

What can I say? I am fascinated by stupidity.

Today, I spent most of the day with Stacey - driving around, then hanging out at my place, then at hers. I haven't done much productive. Time to start studying for my 112 test.

NHL 2003 released on PC. I downloaded and burned it, but haven't played yet.

Nothing much to talk about. It was a good day, but nothing much interesting to write about.

I want a PS2. I will get one soon.

Tomorrow's C SCI 112 lab was cancelled, due to our test being this week (Friday). A small reprieve. I have a C SCI 1 assignment due on Friday, but other than that, I don't have any other assignments to do this week (though I'll probably get C SCI 60 homework for the weekend, and I need to write my concert report for music by next Monday).

This weekend was one of rest and recuperation. After last week's trio of tests, I was beat. I still have my hardest exam (of the first round of midterms) on Friday. My music exam tomorrow shouldn't be too tough. As for Friday's C SCI 112 (assembly) exam, well, got some serious studying to do. Might want to organize a couple of people to study for it. At least I can focus on it all week, as I won't have anything else due this week.

Recapping the weekend:
(1) Friday - Fresno State Bulldogs vs. Colorado State Rams football game. Fresno wins, 32-30. Stacey and I went with my parents (the season ticket holders).
(2) Saturday - Fresno Fair. Food, interesting things to see, and Michelle Branch concert.
(3) Sunday - Drive to Porterville to watch the day of NFL action. Jacksonville scores a big win over Philly, 28-25.

The weather got warm again today. It was up to 88° today, and it's supposed to get to 91° tomorrow. CRAPPY. But, after another 88° day on Tuesday, we'll see 85°, 84°, and then a sharp drop to the lower 70's (where we dang well better stay). Some overcast would be nice at some point.

A laptop conneted to a personal wireless network is a wonderful thing. Everyone ought to have one.

Not only did the Jaguars win 28-25 today, but it wasn't even that close. It was 28-10 and the game was over at that point.

I drove down to Porterville, all by myself, to watch the games at my parents house.... all by myself. My parents are still in Vegas. The drive was worth it, because Jacksonville kicked.... even though the running game had a hard time getting going.

Music test tomorrow on jazz. Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Glenn Miller (bleh), John Coltrane, Miles Davis......

Finished installing my wireless network yesterday. My wireless router is now handling all my routing duties, rather than my FreeBSD box. Is this because I thought the hardware router would be better? No, it's because I couldn't figure out how to make the router act as only a wireless access point. I must say, it is easier to administrate the SMC Barricade than it is FreeBSD ipnat (though I got pretty handy at typing "vi /etc/ipnat.rules" and "ipnat -CF -f /etc/ipnat.rules").

So, anyway, Stacey and I went to the fair today. The food was good. Don't ask me how I managed to avoid eating the barbecue ribs, though. Just never had time to sit down and eat them. Pizza and nachos and snowcones are edible on the move. Anyway, the Michelle Branch concert was fun. Granted, pop music isn't my style, but I prefer Branch's style of music over the whiz-bang of so-called "bubblegum pop". At least it's honest, and not manufactured. So I was able to enjoy myself. I'm still far more looking forward to hearing TOOL play, naturally, but this was enjoyable. Stacey and I took some pictures - they'll be on each of our sites eventually.

Driving down to Porterville tomorrow to watch the football games tomorrow. A nice way to cap off a fun weekend. I needed a good weekend too, because the exam studying starts again on Monday (my C SCI 112 assembly language exam is on Friday, and it's going to be TOUGH. I have SO much studying to do for it).

Why does Blogger's post editing page only display correctly in Internet Explorer?

Anyway, let's recap:

(1) 3 exams down. 1 more on Monday, and another on Friday.
(2) TOOL coming to Fresno. Ticket ordered and paid for.
(3) ProgWest happening in LA in November. Need to get my ticket.
(4) Michelle Branch tomorrow at the fair.

As for today, I went through more than I needed to with regards to a UPS package that has been attempted for delivery to my apartment twice, only for me to not be there each time (unfortunately, due to whatever the shipper specified, I was *not* allowed to sign a card and authorize them to leave it at my door). I called this morning, and was told the package was supposed to be held at the station for me to pick up. I go there in the afternoon, and it turns out that the package had been sent out on a truck for delivery. Yay. Oh, and backtracking a moment, the UPS station was way the heck on the other side of town, in an area that I'm not familiar with and don't plan on becoming intimite with, and the offramp off of Highway 99 was closed. Yeah, it was one of those days.

It got better after I got back home. Stacey stayed at my place and worked on her homework, while I went on this little escapade. Not terribly long after I got home, the delivery truck made its way to my door. Yay, my package (FINALLY) is in my hands. What is it? Why, it's my wireless networking hardware. Yippee skippy.

After that, my parents showed up, and Stacey and I went with them to the Fresno State vs. Colorado State football game. Fresno won, 32-30, against the top 25 ranked Colorado St. Rams. After losing three games to top-25 teams (one of which they lost on an officiating call, another of which they just barely choked away), it was nice to WIN one. Of course, had they nabbed a "W" on even one of those first three games, they'd probably be due for their own top-25 ranking. Oh well, it just can't be like last season.

Tomorrow, Stacey and I hit the fair. Hopefully, it'll be entertaining. Meanwhile, I need to start studying for my music exam, and my assembly language test (I have a ton of catching up to do in there).

C SCI 60 test is over. Some of it was hard. I hope I did well.

I was at Stacey's yesterday, and I saw a commercial for TOOL coming to play at Selland Arena here in Fresno. Tickets went on sale this morning at 10:00am. I booted up my laptop and ordered mine while in class. I got tickets in the front-and-center section on the floor. Should be great.

I showed some people in my C SCI 112 class (before class, before I had to go buy my tickets) the lab that I finished yesterday. They were impressed at my solution. We're still not sure if it's "allowed" or not, though we think she'd have to accept it because what I did was not explicitly disallowed. I can't help it if I'm brilliant and good at researching my work...

On my way to class, I saw a paper posted on the wall, asking "Can You Solve This?". The problem went as follows:

"Given 12 gems, each of which are identical in outward appearence, but one of which is counterfeit and lighter in weight, use a balancing scale to determine which gem is the counterfeit. You may use the scale no more than 3 times."

It took me about 2 minutes to solve this problem. I don't know if that means that I'm smart, or if it was just a brain-dead problem. The paper asked for people to e-mail their solutions to a couple of the math professors. So, I wrote down their e-mail addresses, typed up my solution before class, and e-mailed them.
[Update: I saw a problem just like this on the Internet, which was solved by grade schoolers. So obviously it's not that hard.]

Not surprisingly, Stacey is attached to her WinXP. We'll break that Microsoft dependancy soon enough...

Quick shout-out to Greg Buchold, who tried to message me when I was with Stacey this afternoon/night (for some reason, Trillian did not go into idle mode - I had three messages from people that I had not talked to in a long time). Greg was a friend back in P-town... yet another brilliant mind trapped in an otherwise mentally deficient mini-tropolis. He said he's attending UC Santa Cruz, and is double majoring in quantum physics and pimping. (OK, I made those majors up).

I don't think my C SCI 60 exam will be too tough, but you never know. I think I'm going to skip C SCI 1 tomorrow (that class is the definition of "skippable" - I've skipped it a few times already and I know I pounded the crap out of that exam), and use the extra time to study for the test.

After this, I have to study for my music exam on Monday, and for my C SCI 112 (assembly language, ugh!) exam on Friday. THAT one is going to be terrible. Honestly, C SCI 112 is a class I just want to pass (I know, I know Stacey, I've said that before... but unlike last time, Dr. Seki has a reputation for being a *real* tough grader. Dr. Yeung graded very softly for us in C SCI 41). I've neglected assembly language for the last couple of weeks, because I was so focused on my C++ assignments and exam. It's hard to learn two languages at once! You just kinda learn them in stages. So, anyway, it's assembly language study time.

I want a better laptop. Maybe I should save up some money and try to get my parents to pay for half of one for Christmas or something. My laptop has become so inseparable from me that I could use one with some extra power. I'd love one of the sleek new Apple laptops (now that Mac OS is built on top of BSD Unix), but they're *too* expensive. Whatever I get, it has to be STURDY. My Thinkpad is a workhorse. I need something I can sling into my backpack's laptop slot and carry around on my back. I wouldn't want to carry Stacey's laptop that way... it's too delicate. I need a manly laptop. :)

If you feel like supporting a good cause for the day, click here, and a can of soup will be donated by Campbell's for the hungry, on your behalf.

OK, now that things have calmed down a bit (even with an impending test in C SCI 60 tomorrow)........

My C SCI 115 test was difficult (surprise!). I wish I would have studied my actual Knight's Tour code more, and the pseudocode from the book less, because sure enough, we had to actually code it (despite a couple of my classmates insisting we'd be writing it in pseudocode - I thought I had heard differently, and turns out I was right). I think I did well on the Knapsack problems, which were the very last things I studied for. We'll see how the grading goes...

I finished my C SCI 112 lab this morning/early afternoon. It ended up being a whole whopping *one* line of code. At least, that's how I coded it. It's so simple that I wonder if maybe I "cheated". I found out that the "eval" function has the ability to easily change number bases. I wonder if maybe we weren't supposed to know that or not. But then again, I don't know how I would do it otherwise. And we're just supposed to write a macro that simplifies the process of changing a number from decimal to hexadecimal, so maybe it wasn't supposed to be a difficult problem. We're given very little direction in these matters... we're pretty much left to fend for ourselves. It's really like a teacher throwing you a math book and a French book and saying, "Here. Learn math and French. You've got one semester."

Tuesday evening, I went to Round Table Pizza to get myself some pizza. (I didn't have much time to leave the house, so one big pizza would provide dinner, a late night snack, and the next day's lunch before my exam). While waiting, I sat down at an arcade game called Arctic Thunder. It's a snowmobile racing game. What's cool is that the handlebars and bench seat shake to simulate the rough ride and acceleration. But what's REALLY trippy is that the game machine has these fans (I'm guessing they're fans) built in, and they kick in when you're moving and blow cold air on you! It's kinda cool, because the moving air and bumping ride give you a decent sense of motion. I bet the game would be more fun during hot summer months than it is in winter. It reminds me of an old PC Games column, jokingly talking about the future of force-feedback, and it included fans and water sprayers for simulating wind/movement and moisture. Funny how reality's catching up to satire.

Stacey's laptop and Windows XP continue to be at odds with each other. I'm wondering if she wouldn't be better off with Red Hat Linux. Maybe if one of the all-in-one instant messengers works well (I'll try Imici very soon, Frank). KaZaA can be installed using Wine, I've read. Hmm. I'll bounce the idea off her, after I've used Linux a bit more, unless I'm able to resolve the XP issues on the laptop.

"Be our guest
Be our guest
Put the rumors all to rest
Bring in all your top inspectors
and watch Saddam pass the test!
Come inside!
Look around
There's no nerve gas to be found!
The only thing we're making
Is some cookie dough for baaakingggg..."

-- A fake Saddam Hussein and the candle guy from Beauty and the Beast, singing on Conan O'Brien last night.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is ridiculous.

If anyone wonders why I download so many MP3s with no apparent regard for artist royalties, consider this:

At a recent hearing to U.S. Senators, one member of the Backstreet Boys (Kevin Richardson) stated that the members of their band have NEVER received a royalties check. NEVER. Millions of albums sold, and not one penny gets to the artists. Surprised? It happens all the time.

Don Henley (of the Eagles) brought royalty statements to the hearing, despite being threatened of lawsuits by the label (gee, think someone's not wanting information like this disclosed?). Henley didn't budge, and lo and behold, the royalty statements clearly show that the label withheld more money than was allowed by the contract for the band's live reunion album, Hell Freezes Over. The contract also deducted over $80,000 for free promos for Europe, despite the fact that the contract specifically states NO freebie deductions for that market.

It gets better. Leslie Chambers, the wife of one of the Chambers Brothers (remember them? "Time has come today..... TIME!") states that their label has lied to them about royalties. The Chambers Brothers, according to Leslie, have not received a royalty check for 30 years (gee, about the time that the industry became commercialized). The label claimed that there were no European distributions on their albums. After scoping out eBay for Chambers Brothers stuff, imagine how Leslie felt when she found European distributions of her husband's work! And not bootlegs either, but from foreign affiliates of their label, Columbia Records! Howzabout that?

These artists are making NOTHING off of album sales. $0.00. Imagine a business model where you paid a few pennies to download a song, and got to do so at high speeds, without the hassles of bad rips, slow downloads, and other weird stuff. A few pennies is nothing, but it could add up for these artists fast. But who does that leave out? Why, the precious members of the RIAA.

The RIAA lives by a line from Blazing Saddles: "We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen!". Harrumph!

One exam down (the easy one). One more (the very hard one) to go.

I finished my C SCI 1 exam in 20 minutes, and I'll be disappointed if I don't get 100%. It was pretty much a joke.

C SCI 115 will be a different story. I'm still cramming, trying to memorize all this code and pseudocode and crap. Wish me luck.

Another crappy day of studying. Well, at least when I've been able to focus on studying. Which isn't as often as it should be. I've gotta stay up tonight learning some more things. Man, the C SCI 115 test is going to be obnoxious. Why can't I ever go into a test with some degree of confidence?

Well, I got a call from my mom today, telling me that they'll have an extra ticket to the Fresno State vs. Colorado State football game on Friday, so I called Stacey and asked if she wanted to go. She said yes, so we're watchin' football Friday, and then Michelle Branch on Saturday. Should be fun. Football will be the best, though. :)

Enough studying! I just want a few days where I can play some games.

I installed Red Hat Linux 8.0 onto my laptop. Unlike Mandrake, Red Hat 8.0 has actually saved my network configuration and remembers it when I boot up. It's got potential as a desktop OS. I need to get a program that serves a similar purpose as Trillian. I also need to configure Samba so that it can network with my Windows machines. I need to be able to share my class notes on all my machines.

I ordered my wireless networking gear today. Can't wait for that stuff to come. Next on my list: big hard drives for my server.

Class and study. Class and study.

Got some good news today: one of my three tests has been pushed back to Friday, lightening my workload a bit.

Aside from studying and going to class, my day has been entirely uneventful.

Too tired to offer any pithy comments or priceless words of wisdom...

Tonight's study session was essential. I coded the two algorithms that I needed to (though using plenty of outside resources to accomplish that). Of course, the goal wasn't to code them, but to learn them to the point where I can write up the code on an exam. Naturally, coding them once is the major 1st step. I already have one memorized, and I can get the other one down with a little more memorization.

Currently listening to the Finnish psych/neo-Krautrock band Circle (album: Taantumus). I've been interested in this band on an academic level, but the music never really clicked before. It's starting to click now. It's very repetitive, very entrancing, very noisy cacophonic blend that will annoy those in the wrong mindset and hypnotize those in the right one.

SO much more to do in the next two days. One step at a time...

JAGUARS WIN, 28-3!

(The real Jaguars this time, not my NFL2K3 team).

I read an interesting story on Slashdot about DirecTV hacking, and I saw a comment that made me think. It read:

"Economics is how to allocate scare resources amoung various competing consumers. Technology enables us to achieve an almost utopian state with some products, 0% scarcity. These companies are trying to apply old-world economics to new-world goods and servicies by creating an artificial scarcity."

It's a very interesting point. With a technology like satellite, there is no scarcity of the resource. The only thing that keeps prices what they are is artificial measures and controls applied to "lock" this technology.

Anyway, I went to Porterville today to watch the football games. It was fun watching the Jags pound on the hapless Jets. I took some of my books too, but I didn't really spend much time with them. I'm staying up tonight to try and code a couple of these algorithms... if I can do that, it will cut my workload leading into Wednesday's tests by a good measure.

I'm a little burned out right now, and it's not really a good time to be burned out. I have to get through these tests, and then two more midterms next week. After that, I will probably go "splat" for a week. It's just a never-ending workload, which seems to self-replicate much more rapidly than any other semester of work.

My toe is feeling mostly good, except if I bump it. Like the doctor indicated, it will be tender for a little while longer.

My handicap parking pass expires at the end of this week. Bummer. I rather enjoyed the choice parking. Maybe I should hurt myself again....

This Saturday, I'm taking Stacey to see Michelle Branch at the Fresno Fair. I need to go to a pop/rock or jazz concert for my music class, and she likes Michelle Branch, and the tickets were pretty cheap, so it seemed like a good move on all fronts. Should be fun, even if I'm not really a fan of the style of music. I can think of far worse ways to spend an evening.

That's it for now. I'm tired, but the night is still young.

Today was a lazy day. I wasn't in any mood to start my studying, although I actually did get half of my C SCI 60 homework done. I got a workout in too, which was good. So it wasn't ALL lazy.

I slept in until past noon. I had been up late for the past few nights (particularly Thursday night's late-night programming session), and I needed the rest. I watched the Fresno State football game (close win on the road vs. Rice), which, again, is 100 times better on a big flat screen. I'm glad they didn't lose this one. I hate seeing teams that run an OPTION offense win games. How lame.

Some brilliant soul on GameFAQs's NFL2K3 board is trying to convince me that Kurt Warner currently sucks because of his "thumb injury", and that he and Mike Martz are keeping it a secret from the world. Riiiight. Warner's thumb had an offseason to heal. If it ain't healed now, it's never going to be. Apparently it's an arthritic condition, but it's something he's had since the Arena league. So it's basically just an excuse when things are bad. Or, if it's not, can you say "Bozworth"? Either way, the jig is up.

I went to Target, and bought a cordless phone (with caller ID) for my upstairs bedroom. I also got a headset for the phone. And, I got a cool clock radio for my bathroom. Nothing like NPR classical radio in the mornings.

Speaking of classical, I'm currently listening to Dvorak's String Quartets #10 and #11. Pretty good. String quartets are great when you're in a tired mood. They're almost surreal to listen to in the mornings when you've just woken up, and your mind isn't moving very fast yet.

I'm going to Porterville tomorrow, to watch the Jaguars game (they *better* beat the Jets!). I'm taking my programming books with me. Gotta study for midterms (THREE of them on Wednesday). Time to figure out the Towers of Hanoi...

Last night, I stayed up until 1:30am, completing all of my assignment programs.

I must be becoming a programmer. Every "milestone" deadline that I set for myself, I ended up missing. I actually had 0 programs fully functioning at the end of Thursday night. So then I wanted to have 2 done Friday morning. I finished one, and finished another one in the afternoon. Then, I spent a LOT of time on the 3rd program (these first three were all in C++). I got it done, and done well, but it was a fight. After that, I did my assembly language lab. I didn't do a good job on this one - the code was not optimized, and I don't know if it was correctly functional either. But, it wasn't worth that many points, so it was the lowest priority. The first three programs (a real "assignment" in C SCI 115) were the big ones, and I nailed those (I think).

So, this afternoon, I was done with programming. I got a haircut after I got out of class. Later this afternoon, Stacey came over. We went to Blackbeard's to play miniature golf. Well, let's just say the outcome of the game wasn't in my favor. I got way behind on the first 9 holes, and though I made up a lot of ground on the second 9, it wasn't enough. Then, we played some arcade games (I rule at air hockey ;) ). We drove the go-karts too. Stacey had flip-flops on, so she couldn't drive. Thus, she rode as a passenger in my car. Now, most of the people we were racing against were early-to-mid teens. By myself, I'm heavier than most of the tandems, and with another person, our car was definitely more weighed down than everyone else's. There were a couple where only one person was in a car (and they were paper-thin teen girls too, so they weighed nothing at all). Naturally, those single-occupant cars "won" the race. Stacey and I finished third, behind those two, though. My driving was crisp and skillful. I had a REAL hard time fitting my long legs into the car, though! I hit the brake on accident a few times, because my leg was just cramped in there.

Anyway, we went to dinner after that, and sat outside to eat. It was fun. We came back to my place and added some stuff to her website. All in all, a pretty good day.

I know I'm missing some things, but I'm not all that coherent at this hour. Oh, I installed a new Linux distribution - Mandrake 9.0 - on my laptop. More on that later.

I got my MP3 player in the mail today! I checked Amazon.com a couple of times today... once, it said to expect delivery tomorrow, and once it said to expect delivery on the 30th! (Given that I paid for two-day shipping, I was going to demand a refund in the latter case). However, true to the "two-day shipping" name, it arrived today.

After letting the batteries charge for 6 hours, I'm now loading it up with albums. By my math, this little handheld device (smaller than a Discman) will hold approximately 250 albums at a time. That's at an album size of 80MB, which is a rough average for the bitrates that my stuff is encoded at (usually 192kb, which to my ears is more or less indiscernable from CD audio). I currently have 50 albums on there, and haven't yet taken up a full 5GB (out of the drive's 20GB capacity), so we're more or less on target for the 250 album ballpark. How sweet is that? 250 albums on one device is enough to satisfy even me (ask Stacey sometime about my "backpack o' CDs" travel habit). I can't hook this up to my car stereo (unless I get a short-range radio device, which works the way hands-free cell phone devices do), which is a distinct possibility at some point.

Right now, I'm listening to Latin Jazz: The Essential Album, a 2CD compilation of, well, "essential" Latin jazz cuts. Kind of interesting at points.

I'm going to be up for a while tonight, working on my programming assignments (due Friday). I'd like to get 2 out of 4 programs done tonight, and knock off the other 2 at my convienence tomorrow (I have the day off).

[Update: My linked list classes are working! Woo!]