Chatting with Megan

Megan recently pointed out that I haven't been very talkative online lately. I'm not going to lie, and we already discussed this, I think it's because I'm afraid that my encouragement isn't always as helpful as I'd like it to be. We talked a bit today, then after I came home I accidentally fell asleep at the keys. Although I must admit that I do quite enjoy a good nap, I'm sure she wasn't happy about that.

so... um... oops.

Anyway, that was all I could think of today, so it's what I wrote about.

Missed a Day

Whoops! I missed a day. This post is therefore being posted retroactively.

Today (Yesterday, when I'm writing this) has been (was) very "full." I got up at about 10:30 and prepared to head out to the NAU Bookstore to pick up the T-Shirt I ordered back in March for Megan. (Oops, a bit of a delay in the delivery, but I can't say I mind too terribly much.) I also happen to have received the video card for flatdell and the hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs yesterday, which was a nice bonus. I did also actually go shooting with the D300 and everything. There's even some nice images I think, but I haven't really had a chance to go through them yet.

Flatdell's new video card installed perfectly. I had to bring the machine and the card into the office to get it all set up, because I lack my own tools right now, but once Mel and I got the brackets rearranged, the card installed great and the drivers installed pretty easily.

Not too terribly much progress was made on the ThinkPad/OPENSTEP project. I burned the CD and the OPENSTEP boot discs seem to realize that the CD is there, but the machine seems still unable to read the disc -- that or I burned it wrong. I may try another (more conventional) CD to see if the machine is physically capable of reading the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, and I'm also getting a different CD image to try.

I also lacked progress on Meaghan's laptop, mainly because I had a bunch of other things going on. I'll work on that more today or tomorrow.

Progress on Projects

Today I finally went to my PO Box at NAU's Central Campus post office location, underneath the NAU Bookstore. It was after today's Freshman Orientation information session, Meaghan and I stopped in to check the prices of some books and for me to pick up a package I've been waiting for.

So tonight's project involves finally getting Meaghan's little old PII Dell Latitude CPi working. I've already got the new hard disc installed, and I had Meaghan drop it off at my room. I just need to put Windows 98 or Windows NT4 Workstation on it here. I'm going for NT4 personally, since the goal is something that'll be fast and reliable. I just need to find out where I put imager, and we'll be good. Imager does include a blank Windows 2000 Pro image, so I may install that purely for the fact that it's easily available.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to Postal Services again to pick up the new graphics card for flatDell, along with my hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs. Part one of that project is to get flatDell upgraded with the graphics card, and get some games installed onto it, at which point I'm going to remove the bootcamp partition from my iMac.

After that, the next project is to install OpenSTEP 4.2 on the ThinkPad 760ED. I've already got the two install floppies made and they  both work well, now it's just a matter of burning the install CD. With luck, and the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, it'll all work properly, and I'll have OpenSTEP running on real hardware.

Plans for the 760s

Well, I've started working on the decision for exactly what I'm going to do to the ThinkPad 760 computers. One of them, the 760CD, will remain the same, because it's already nearly a museum quality piece of hardware.

The other two, a ThinkPad 760EL and a ThinkPad 760ED shall be combined to make one ThinkPad that I have decided will be nearly museum quality. I'm going to then throw the worst bits away, keeping the extra bay modules and anything else I think I'll need.

The exact plan is to make the 760ED the base of my new setup, because it's the fastest of my 760s and it has a nice big 1024x768 resolution display, compared with the 800x600 display on the CD and the EL. I am going to take the top case, the keyboard and the rear port cover from the 760EL and put them onto the ED. I'll also be keeping the floppy, battery and dead hard disc from the EL as a "just in case" pile of spare parts. One of the things I will then eventually do is put a new drive in the EL's hdd caddy, so I can have a drive for Windows and a drive for OPENSTEP4.2, which is the operating system I'd eventually like to run on the ED.

Tonight, I've actually gotten Windows 98 installed on the ED. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how easy the whole installation process was. Right now, I'm just copying the variety of Internet Explorer installers to it's hard disc so I can see how "modern" I can make Windows98.

Windows 98, at least the OEM version I installed, isn't really as bad as I remember it being so long ago. It's got some stuff I don't even remember in Windows ME, like "Windows Family Logon." (Although I may just not have looked hard enough, or needed WFL that long ago.) The cool thing about Windows Family Logon is that it actually separates profiles, and keeps them very mildly secure. You set up an initial profile, and from that point forward you create new accounts as needed, and you can determine exactly how much customization is needed for each account. You can also set passwords, but I haven't bothered with that yet.

Another thing I would like (but am unlikely) to do is recell and/or revive some of the spare 760  batteries. With as fast as the 760ED is, or as fast as the CD can be if I run a more slim OS, a 760 that's got two batteries would be a great notetaking machine. Two batteries that can get 3 hours each would be great for a portable system. Plus, since I have three batteries total, I could pop in a third and really get all-day computing.

PowerBook 520c

Today I've been playing some PowerBook, and have given some thought to exactly what I want to do with some of my older computers, because it was pointed out to me that I've got ten of them in the office right now, and another three in my room -- and that's not counting the two that I still haven't received in the mail.

One of my favorites of the old PowerBooks, purely for it's high specs, is a PowerBook 520c. Unfortunately it's hinge isn't in such great condition, and I need to consider whether or not I am going to repair it. I should repair it because I would like to have a nice fast 68k PowerBook around. I will probably take the hinges from the PowerBook 520c, and then sell the 520c later on.

At some point I will probably re-do the software installation on this particular 520c, it's running someone else's install of 7.5, with some software licensed to the university. I think it was used by a faculty member or a graduate student of French, in the department of modern languages. I should like to put my own installation of System 7.1 or Mac OS 7.6 on it, along with my own selection of software.

Inventory

One of the most terrifying things about being such a packrat has been moving. Moving from Cedar wing to Aspen wing of Gabaldon was downright terrifying, and somehow in the past few weeks, I've managed to get not only another computer of the desktop variety, but another two are on their way.

One of the things I suppose I need to start doing is finding the time to work on some of my other projects, like re-combining the ThinkPad 760 machines so I can toss out my least favorite one. Same with the PowerBook 520s, and I think I need to send a computer or two back home, probably the PowerBook 180 and/or whichever 520 I deem the best. Plus the e-PCs probably, and who knows whether or not I'll keep using the U60.

I've also got optical discs I need to get rid of because they're useless, a whole box of extra sheets, blankets and clothes I've never worn, and a bunch of other little nicnacs.

For the summer, living minimalistically is both very easy, and extraordinarily difficult. It's difficult to get through the day without having to dig through the various layers of boxes underneath the bed. I find it difficult to move around the room without tripping on something that hasn't found it's own place that's out of the way.

In summation, I need to get rid of stuff, or at least figure out a better way to move it and have it around without it being in my way.

Flatcat

Today, after sleeping until noon, Meaghan and I went to the Black Bean, a small Mexican restaurant inside a little nook of Flagstaff I would never have seen unless someone had taken me there. Luckily, Meaghan was there to show the way. The food was great.

Also part of our adventure was a trip around downtown, including some shops like the Blackhound Gallerie, where I got flatcat, my new dorm pet. When I get my printer back at the beginning of the next semester, flatcat will be assigned to protecting that, but for now she (or he or it) is assigned to protecting flatdell.

All told, Meaghan and I spent about 4 hours walking around today. I got about 160 frames in with the D300, and there would've been more if I had brought more than one memory card. Today's Photo365 image is pretty great. There were some very awesome shots of Meaghan, but for today, the train picture won.

We're probably going to make these particular event a weekly thing, because we found out that downtown Flagstaff on a Sunday afternoon is a very fun place. Live music, shops, and great photographic opportunities. Next time I go to downtown, I am definitely bringing all of my memory cards.

Speed Racer... oerr... Indiana Jones.

Last night, Meaghan, Tyson, Mel, David and I went to see Speed Racer, I mean Indiana Jones. It was a pretty great movie overall, and quite a fun adventure.

The movie itself was pretty epic, I'd never seen any Indiana Jones movies before, so there were a few little things lost on me, but it wasn't something I felt like I was unable to continue watching, which is good. I should check to see if there's any particular order in which I should watch the others, or if they're standalone too.

Because I can't seem to post without some technology update, it's worth noting that I chose and bought a video card for the flatdell -- I'm getting for it an nVidia GeForce 8600GT.

Errands

Today has been very busy. Lots of errands were run. I've been to the helpdesk, to Staples & Walmart, and I've just now gotten back from getting food (Taco Bell) for Glenn, who now has a job at the front desk of Gabaldon. In a few more moments, I'm heading out with Meaghan, Tyson, Mel and probably a few other people to go see the new Indiana Jones movie.

As an update on 'Precious' the Dell Inspiron 530s, I have decided not to get a new monitor for it yet, I am going to run it with the 19" dell trinitron monitor, which I found out is capable of running at 1600x1200@75Hz, which is a very viewable resolution and refresh rate. I'm going to try color calibrating the thing in the next week or so.

I'm also still looking at graphics cards for it. I've found nearly a dozen individual suitable cards, but I'm not a hundred percent certain which one I'm going to get yet.

"Gaming" PC

Today after taking the picture for Photo365, Meaghan and I headed to Staples, mainly to look around. In our exploring, we discovered a very cheap Dell. A Dell that I bought, somewhat uninformed about it, but I'm very happy with the decision. The idea is that I don't like dual-booting the iMac into Windows for games, and a slim desktop system would be able to take a graphics upgrade would be a very helpful type of computer to have around.

If it weren't on clearance, this particular system would've cost about $600. Luckily they had it on massive clearance discount, so I brought it home for about $300. The trip home with it was quite fun. Meaghan and I had to carry the CPU separately from all of the other stuff, because the original box wasn't included. Meaghan has decided that it's name needs to be precious, because it's such an adorable little computer.

The specs of the system in it's base form aren't too terribly spectacular. It's got a 1.8GHz "Pentium Dual Core" processor in it, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard disc, a mega DVD burner, and a card reader. The motherboard has an Intel GMA X3100, but one nice surprise is that it's not using the expected 965 Express series chipset, it's got a G33/G31 Express family chipset, which means it's capable of using much nicer processors, like either the Wolfdale E8500 or the Yorkfield Q9300 processor. It's also got a PCI Express X16 slot, and it should be capable of holding up to 4 or 8 gigs of memory.

My plan for that PCIe slot is an 8-series nVidia GPU with 256mb or more of memory. I've found five candidates on Newegg, which I'll talk about in a later post I think.

Right now the thing's running Vista Home Premium, but I think I'm going to load MSDNAA Vista Business onto it. Other than that, I'll put Office2007 on it, and as soon as I get the new GPU, I'll install the games on it and remove Vista from the iMac I think. Tonight's project is burning a Vista Business DVD and getting this machine up to date.

Speaking of the iMac, I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the iMac yet. This system is shaping up to be more powerful than the iMac, and it's definitely more expandable. I'm just not sure about whether or not I'm too attached to Mac OS X and/or the iMac itself to impulse-sell the iMac. More on that in yet another blog post.

XIMETA is Dead

Today I loaned Meaghan the old 80gig XIMETA drive, in an attempt to help her get a bunch of data backed up. We started formatting it, but on both her and my computer, it can't finish formatting, and it'll end Windows Explorer until the computer is restarted, and/or the drive is removed.

It's been a nice, long run. I got XIMETA in 2004, when I decided I needed a drive for backup (haha!) and (mainly) for archival of different files. Initially it wasn't so fast because I had to use it over USB1.1, with the occasional visit to it's Ethernet mode.

I'll probably either toss it out, or replace the mechanism in it. We'll see. At some point, I'd like to replace all or most of my external storage devices with a drobo, with the exception of maybe a Windows backup drive, and a drive for the laptop. What I may end up doing is using the MyWD drive as my Windows/Mobile drive, reducing my number of externals to 2.

Anyway... here's to you, XIMETA. You were a good drive, my first USB external drive, in an era when two USB ports was good enough for everything I needed to use.

Your Orientation... In Space

Recently, Glenn and I have been watching a bunch of things showing on the SciFi channel, and it made me think back to watching Firefly/Serenity earlier last semester, and a few other shows and movies I've watched that take place in space.

A big thing I've noticed is that in each of these fictional universes, there seems to be an absolute standard as to what's "up" and what's "down." You never see two spaceships flying around, with different orientations.

Another tidbit, one that's almost contrary to the first "rule" of space, is that you and your spaceship are always "above" whatever planet you're closest to, as though all planets are sitting down on one 2-dimensional plane, and you can always fly above them.

Just some weird observations, there are probably more weird things like that about science fiction, this just happens to be the one I noticed most recently.

Gaming PC

For some reason, I woke up yesterday with this very strange urge to research computer parts. So far I've looked at processors, motherboards and cases. Glenn and I have been talking about building a gaming computer, and I always like having another machine around, so I decided to look at some parts today.

I've decided on two processors that are very similar in price. One is a dual-core at 3.16GHz, and the other is a quad-core at 2.5GHz.

• Q9300 Quad-Core.
• E8500 Dual-Core.

The two processors listed here are both 45nm processors that require some of Intel's latest chipsets. There are three motherboards that I really like, one based on the G35 chipset, one based on the P35 chipset, and the other based on the X38 chipset.

• DG35EC motherboard.
• DP35DPM motherboard.
• DX38BT motherboard.

My favorite motherboard is the DG35EC. It's got a nice complement of ports, and if I were building the machine purely for Vista use, the board's Intel GMA X3500 graphics would serve great -- and it's capable of HD video playback, at up to 1080p. The other two boards don't have graphics, which makes them quite suitable for what I'd originally intended to use the system for, which is as a gaming computer.

So far, I've pretty much decided on one enclosure, the Antec 300. It looks like a great enclosure, the power supply is at the bottom which is for whatever reason my favorite orientation, it can hold an ATX board, and there are plenty of . The big important part about this particular enclosure though, is the fact that it's not ugly. After looking at a lot of mid towers, I've got to say that I think the Antec Three Hundred is the one I'd probably be able to live with.

So far I'm happy with the components I've looked at and their prices. I'm somewhat terrified of the prices for the rest of the components. I'm not sure quite yet if I'm going to go through with building this machine -- the iMac is a pretty great computer as it is, and any of the games I'd like to play run great on it.

Over the next few weeks, I'll probably look at other parts and see what's out there, but ultimately I don't think I'll be building a new computer this summer, but if I do, it'll be later on in the summer.

Photo365 Revisited.

Oops, I stopped pre-writing blog posts!

Well, I suppose then that I'll take this opportunity to tell you that I've started the Photo365 project, and I'm pretty excited about it all so far. I'm hosting my Photo365 stuff on a different blog actually, the WordPress blog I installed on my Sun Ultra60 computer.

The first day, I did a short in the lobby at North Hall. It was so-so photographically, but it was an image I wasn't going to go back to get any time soon.

The second day, I got some construction going on outside my dorm. It was really close by, but I think that of today's images, it was the strongest, compositionally.

One of the things I'm looking forward to is using the variety of lenses I've got, and I may even try the D50 body some more, with the various lenses. I also hope that my workflow really gets tighter and better, as a result of this project.

Mac OS X 10.5 Server

Well, I've finally brought the ThinkPad and the Pismo to the new room, and started playing with Mac OS X 10.5 Server on the iMac.

I started out with "simple" mode -- because I was under the impression that in Simple mode, everything "just works." And for the most part, this is true. Although for whatever reason, I ended up switching to Advanced Mode. There were a few quirks with that switch-over, but new accounts worked just fine in OpenDirectory. I was able to get Mac OS X 10.4 running on the Pismo authenticating against the 10.5 server, with networked home directories and some group policies quite easily.

The real challenge will be to make sure that the knowledge I've gained from my tiny setup here in this dorm room will apply at KHSPhoto. I'm pretty excited about it all, of course, and I bet that everything will work just fine in the KHSPhoto installation. That'll be a big project blog post with pictures, diagrams, tables, and everything. It'll be great.

One of the biggest disappointments about the project so far though, is that I haven't got a sufficient number of Macs here at home to really try out some of the things OpenDirectory can do. I think it's reason enough to impulse-buy a few G4 iBooks/PowerBooks, so I can have a few machines to authenticate against the controller.
(I have actually been eyeing one of the G4 PowerMacs at Surplus Sales as a secondary machine for Leopard/LeopardServer, I may grab one later on in the summer, if I haven't decided to try out a Psystar, or my own hacked Mac or building a "gaming computer.")

Speed Racer

The other night Meaghan, Mel, David and I went to see Speed Racer. Unfortunately this is being put up using the Scheduled Posting feature, because I've already got a queue of blog posts out to like Thursday or Friday.

The good news is that the movie has a pretty amazing soundtrack and the color is amazing. The sound design in it's awesome, and the editing and visuals are awesome. Glenn asked me if any of the extra effort put into the technical detail detracts from the movie at all, and I've got to say that it definitely doesn't. The whole thing is made more impressive by, for one example, the editing where as events are unfolding, you can see everyone's reactions.

The music makes this movie, I think. During the whole thing I can feel the suspense, the excitement, or whatever other emotion is being conveyed on the screen, more because of the music than anything. It has a great orchestrated sound, and I intend to have bought it on iTunes by the time you read this.

The bad news is that Meaghan and I managed to get hopped up on caffeine during the movie, each of us having consumed 44oz worth of our preferred caffeine drink. (Coke and Dr. Pepper, respectively.) Meaghan ended up staying in her room, hopefully she's managed to fall asleep by now because I feel terrible about having contributed to her crazy insomnia. I've stayed up for a bit to write this blog post, and do a few other things around the room.

I completely recommend that anyone who is looking for a movie to see, see this one.

Relaxing Weekend

Well, after finally getting finals done, and getting everything moved last Friday, I've taken the bus down to Tucson and I'm here with Megan, watching her write a comment on one of Eric's notes.

I'm mostly confident about my grades, I think I got mostly Bs but I'm concerned about my grade in World History, because I'm not sure that I did so well on the exam, and if I did very poorly, it'll reflect pretty badly in my GPA.

Other than that, on Saturday morning I took the trip down to Tucson, meeting a nice older woman named Norma. She and I made our way down to Tucson where I met Megan and her little brother Donald, who took me to an interesting Mexican restaurant whose name I've forgotten. Afterward we went to her house and watched some Avatar. I've found out that her whole family seems to love DDR, although it's only been a few days yet, so I'm not sure how long that'll last.

The real highlight of the trip was Rent on Sunday though. The trip to Phoenix wasn't too relaxing, as we started to run a little late, which drove Megan completely crazy. Other than missing the first song or two, Rent was awesome. Although I've got to admit that the stage show is a very draining experience, emotionally as well as physically, especially in the second act. I cried during the movie, but during the stage show, I completely bawled, and wasn't able to speak normally for about a half hour afterward. If anyone remembers how I reacted to Fullmetal Alchemist, it was basically the same for Rent.

After Rent, Megan and I had some Ruby Tuesdays and I got on the FlagExpress van and came back up to the new room where Glenn, who is living with me this summer, and I set up the room to our liking. More on the arrangement of the room later.

Typing Speed

73 words
I recently took an online Speed-test, which I found while reading another blog. It was interesting to do the speed test, which I wasn't really very prepared for. When I first did the test, I got 73wpm, with two errors. When I re-did the test about 20 minutes later, i got 84wpm with 5 incorrect words, which is pretty good. I'm going to bookmark the test and in the next few weeks, I intend to try again. Because I had 5 incorrect words, my theoretical speed is a bit over 90wpm, which is pretty cool.

84 words

Nuclear Winter. Has Returned.

I pushed two blog posts further back in order to post this for you today. To let you know, that here in Flagstaff, right now, it is is snowing.

Meaghan, Courtney from Kingman, and Glenn and I are going to IHOP in the next few minutes, because we're all friends in weird ways which is awesome. I am going to take some images of the snow with the phone of I, which I will probably add to this post (or at least to Flickr) later on. There will be pictures of snow that exists in mid-May. I will have them.

Anyway, great day!

Missed a Day!

Well, well. Glenn and I put so much effort into moving and going to Village Inn than sleeping and writing blog posts, so I missed posting yesterday, even though I had already started to write a new post.

So this is an apology post for having missed the mark on that particular post. I'll probably go ahead and finish writing yesterday's actual post and put it up tomorrow, and from there the blog will resume a fairly normal schedule.

Frenzy

If you're reading this -- Blogger's scheduled posting still works. If everything has gone down properly, I should either be in Tucson right now, or should be on my way. I'm pretty excited about having some time to just sit around and not do anything, and seeing Rent this weekend.

I'm sorry for all of the pre-written posts, but all I can do is just attempt to express how insane the past few days have been. After covering an overnight Monday evening, then sleeping in the office until noon, a bit of studying and procrastinating on actually packing up until I was done with all of my finals yesterday.

Speaking of finals -- they went pretty well. I'm pretty sure I'm ending this semester with a record number of Bs, and probably a few Cs, but as far as I know I haven't failed anything, and I'm certainly not doing online courses again.

Packing went okay -- I packed some, moved a few things into Megan's storage unit, and then packed some more. As of this writing, the only thing I have left to pack is my food stuff in the top of the closet, then I need to clean up and get everything moved.

I'm at work right now because the prospect of more packing seems pretty terrible. It's things like this that make me consider a life of minimalism, fewer clothes, and only one computer. But would I really be able to stay a minimalist? probably not.

Moving!

Well, if everything goes like the emails have said they would, I should be moving today. I've pre-written this because I need to be packing and moving today, not writing on my blog.

More Finals

Well this year I only had three "finals" per se. German was yesterday, and today I've got History and  CIS120. I don't yet know how I did on the German final, nor am I 100% sure on how well I studied for History or CIS120, because I'm writing this post on Tuesday night, instead of studying.

So with luck, this'll be the end of generic pre-written posts for awhile, but just in case, I think I may dig up something from the archives of pre-written junk for Friday, so I don't have to worry about what I'm doing instead of packing.

Finals

I'm pre-writing this so I don't get tempted to write more blog entries, but when you read this I will be taking my German final.

Another Overnight

Well... I remember writing yesterday about how I was done with overnights for the semester, but the opportunity arose and I'm here for another night.

I'm not too terribly concerned at the loss of studying time, because I haven't got any finals tomorrow and I'm purportedly using some of this time to study.

My two finals left are for German and History, and after that I've got to get everything packed and ready to move.

Luckily, I've heard that I may be able to move into my room in Aspen for the summer as early as this Friday, because (luckily!) nobody has requested an extended check-out in that room. Another cool tidbit is that I'm on the second floor of Aspen, so I'll be right near the kitchen and laundry room.

The other cool thing about being able to move in on Friday is that I may be able to go to Tucson with Megan, and see Rent this coming Sunday.

Blogging about Work

Today I came across an interesting situation at work, and decided it would be worthy of a blog post. However because of the sensitive nature of the situation I was about to post on my blog, I decided it might be a good idea to check with some of my coworkers and one of the full time staff members to see whether or not the thing I was about to post on my blog would get me fired.

I've been told that while the tidbit I was about to post had no real personal information, it was still not a very good thing about which to post, and that it would probably turn into a situation where "do that again, and you're fired."

I'm sure that in the future though, there will be topics I would like to address with more broad strokes than the post I'd previously written for today, and for those days, I've elected one of the full time staff members to be my blog pre-reader, just to make sure that I'm not writing anything that could cost me my job.

So from this point forward for posts other than those I get approved, while I will probably blog at work, I'm going to have to try not to blog so much about work.

Home Stretch

I know this is just about all I've written about in the past few weeks, but I'm excited to say that I'm nearly done with everything. Including the VC251 project about which I was so unhappy. It was one of those things that in the end wasn't too terribly difficult, I just needed to actually get started on it. I also ended up using a lot of Megan's advice about how to make a vectorized human face look good.

From this point forward, I just need to finish the website stuff for VC251, pray that I'm not kicked out of the class from my Unit 11 shenanigans, then finish up on my finals and projects for my German, History and Computer Information Systems classes.

In other news, I'm just now finishing out my last overnight shift of the semester. Having my macaroni and cheese, and chatting with my WonderTwin. Megan's around too actually, but she fell asleep at about 2 a.m. on the couch, so I then pursued some of the Thomas the Tank Engine videos I've got hanging around until at about 4:45, my WonderTwin Meaghan showed up, with a case of the insomnias.

On another Megan-related note, we finished the first season of Avatar today. I'm borrowing her set of "Book 2" to rip into the iMac so I can watch it, and then I suppose it'll be online videos for me, and Megan and I were talking about watching the show finale at the same time, and voice/video-chatting on the Internet at the same time, or seeing if she could come visit Flag sometime around then.

Winding Down

It's really starting to feel like the end of the semester. It's just like last year, as I walk around, I notice that there's a calm that has begun to settle over the campus. As reading week drew to it's close, classes stopped meeting and the people I did observe walking around were keeping to themselves, quieter and it almost seemed slower than usual.

Right now it's the weekend before finals, which means most people are studying, packing and finishing up projects. I've got my own projects and studying.  Unfortunately Illustrator didn't seem to want to install on the ThinkPad R61i, and while I could go grab the Pismo, I'm going to leave that for a bit later in the morning, maybe switch 'em out in a few hours.

Other than that, I'm installing Solaris today. That will probably become a fairly regular occurrence, just as a warning.

I'm not going to lie, freaky and unnatural as it seems, I actually don't mind -- nay -- I even like the times where it's quiet. It seems like it becomes a time of reflection, reading, studying, among other things. It's also quite relaxing, which helps a lot because it's finals week.

New Toys for Summer

Well, my summer projects are all mostly here. First and foremost is the Sun Ultra60 workstation, which I'm taking to work tonight. This one is just to have a Sun workstation, and because I want to host ULW locally again, on something that's ultra.

The other big part of today's shipment is some ThinkPad 760-series stuff. Unfortunately their epic amounts of memory aren't compatible with my 760CD, but I think that between the 760ED and 760EL, I can get at least one more very workable 700-series ThinkPad. My intent is to combine their parts to make one pretty ThinkPad, and install OPENSTEP 4.2 on the hard disc drive it's got. Maybe I can even find an OPENSTEP-compatible pcmcia ethernet adapter.

And on the topic of PCMCIA adapters, I got the Sony Ericsson GC83 GSM/GPRS/EDGE Network Wireless Internet PC Card, with the Cingular logo on it. I've already got it installed and set up on the R61i too, so that setup is ready for summer. I'll be able to blog and post photos in Michigan. I gave it a try today, and I'm really happy with it. Once things have started loading, it's faster than dialup, but there's huge latency issues, especially since my room can't get full signal with the EDGE card. I have no doubt that under any given situation where it's the only thing available, it will be no problem at all. It's not like I intend to rock out in the dorm with the EDGE card. (on a regular basis, anyway.)

The Destruction of my Network

Actually, this post isn't so much about my network, like someone came into my room and snipped the ends off of my Ethernet cables, as much as it's about the fact that today I took down the TREL and unhooked the printer from my dorm network, in preparation for moving to Aspen wing at the start of this summer.

And so, we come to the actual purpose of this post, my description of how I think I"m being shafted by ResLife, who are going to make me move at the beginning of summer, and for some reason I've got this weird idea that they are probably going to make me move at the end of summer too. Had I known this earlier, it wouldn't have been such a big problem, but my issue is that I was led to believe by just about everyone that I wouldn't have to move.

Almost worse than reslife doing this is what I've done to the room -- Jim and I have made a few customizations, and we've got the room absolutely filled to the brim with random crap. Huge collections of novels, my nine computers (of which, to be fair, seven are laptops, one is the iMac and the last is the decTOP), among other things.

So for the next few weeks, in addition to studying and taking exams, Jim and I have to clean the room and get everything ready to move out. But I don't just have to move. I have to move on Sunday, May 11th. The day I'm going to see Rent with Megan. My intent was to hang out with her in Tucson all weekend, go back up to Phoenix to see Rent, then take a Greyhound bus from
Phoenix to Flagstaff, in time to get sleep and be at work Monday afternoon.

Hopefully I'll be able to get it arranged with Leslie Jo and Dylan (current and summer RHDs of Gabaldon) to either move into Aspen wing on Friday/Saturday, or Monday, and then get a ride down to Phoenix for Rent on Sunday. (I may have to do the Greyhound thing even then -- I suppose I should familiarize myself with their schedule.)

So if I seem on-edge, or in general "really angry" over the next week or so, that's why.