Linkstew

That puts Anime-Expo in about three weeks. That should give me the relief I need from Bakersfield until such a time as I get to go back to school. Anyone know of any good 3 or 4 unit classes at Berkeley I could take? I need one more besides Enlglish 1A, Math 55 and EE 42 and EE 43. I've considered taking just those, and then doing Lab Assistant for 61a or 61b for one unit.

This weekend is already the Fourth of July. This revelation came as a shock to me. Granted, fireworks stands have been up for something like two weeks now, but they've just become part of the scenery... They were up so early, I wondered at the time why they were going up, but since, I've just come to ignore them, only idly wondering why they're up so long before the Fourth.

Though it's not so long before the Fourth anymore, is it? I've been back in Bakersfield of a little over a month now... When I first got back, I just hopped into a groove and felt like I'd never really been gone... But now, Bakersfield is starting to wear on me a little... I'm ready to be back in Berkeley now. Galatea, my other miscellaneous Friends, and Cheap Rent.

I suspect, that if I drank anything which goes by the name of "java", I would OD, given the exposure I've had to programming in Java in the last couple of weeks... I've been loving the language more and more as time has gone by. The things I've done outside the scope of 61B have only reinforced this. Too bad not too many upper division CS classes at Berkeley use Java... But eh, what can be done? I'll manage.

Anyway, Networking in Java is spiffy and slick as snot. Reflection is just plain keen, and the ability to dynamically load a class at run time allows for neat possibilities... I've been awakened to the utility of SecurityManagers, and am going to have dig more into java internals, because there is some neat stuff down there. JDBC is a good thing. Object Serialization is a great thing. And RMI is... RMI is so insanely cool that I can't even put it into very descriptive words. Oh, and being able to dynamically load classes at runtime from a network resource is just the cream of the cake.

Well, the BScam is, at least. But remember, just because it's fully operational does not mean that it's cosmetically complete. It takes a picture every four minutes, and then uploads it for your viewing pleasure. Some day there will be a nice pretty page to frame my mug or the back of my head of whatever, but for now, it's framed in bee-you-tea-full netscape grey.

While the BScam is happy at last, hex is far from it. Given that he is a half-baked potato at present, it's no wonder, really... But my X and my emacs installs are exceptionally whacked and disjointed. Re-warming the potato hasn't helped any, either. I think sometime soon I'm going to have slink back to Slink so I can have a working and happy linux install at home.

For those who aren't in the know, I run Debian GNU/Linux. The last released version was 2.1, which was otherwise known as Slink. The version of Debian which is currently being worked on is known as Potato. Since is it isn't finished yet, it's a "half-baked potato". Hur Hur...

I've been reading Pratchett at something like a mile a minute. Well, thereabouts. What this means is I have about 20 reviews of various Pratchett books to write up some day, though it probably won't happen until I've waded through the cache of books I already have.

But if you're too impatient to wait for the full reviews, here's the summary: If it's Pratchett, Read it. You won't be disappointed.

Okay, I've got work to get done... I'll write more some day. Yay for Java. Yay for SQL. Yay for Dr Pepper and Pratchett and my good luck.

So I'd been waiting to get all my grades back.. I've known three out of the four for what seems like a month now, but my 61b grade was cloaked in mystery. I had seen my scores on almost all of my assignments, and my lab partner and I thought they were pretty dismal. Frankly, I was terrified that I might get a C or so, and be unable to get into the CS major, and that I would be better off leaving Berkeley, and so on.

Now, with some people, that previous paragraph and it's rather calm tone would suggest that I, in fact, did not get a C in 61b and that I actually did well, contrary to what the assignment grades would suggest. However, those who know me will note that I am cool under pressure anyway, and so that previous paragraph could just be me trying to mess with your minds.

So, to review, I got an A in 61c by the hair of my chinny chin chin... I had like one or two more points than the lowest possible to get an A in that class. And I got a B in Math 54, which I was happy with. And, as predicted, I got a B+ in Psychology 2, which I am perfectly happy with.

And, shocking everyone, I got an A- in 61b. Frankly, if the scores I and my lab partner got earned us an A-, everyone elses scores must have been dismal. When I saw that I got an A-, I whooped with joy and almost fell out of my chair in shock. I'll be posting reviews of all my classes sometime in the next couple of days, now that I've gotten all the grades.

So, now that weight has been lifted from my chest, I can truly get one with enjoying my summer.

No Worries.

When I took my 486/25 to use at Intelegenesis, I had to reinsall Linux on it, and when I did so, I named it Astfgl, simply to fit in with my Discworld theme for computer naming, and to fit in with Chris's theme of God names. Astfgl is the head of the Discworld Demons, which are basically Gods. I almost named it Quezovercoatl, but I decided that would be too long to type frequently. So Astfgl it was. A couple of days later, I noticed the machine was an AST, and then shortly after that I found myself in the FluGLebinder studio. That was probably just a subconscious choice, but it was still pretty strange and cool.

When I was making my fortune file for the Quotes page, I came across The Quotable Homer, which is a fortune file of quotes from Homer. I downloaded the fortune file, and then finally figured out how to make a fortune file. The next day, I checked out Freshmeat, and The Quotable Homer had been updated after not having been updated for two months.

First point: PCI Modems, at least the ones I tried, DO NOT WORK IN LINUX. Don't try it. You'll be happier that way. I didn't try any ISA modems, because I have no available ISA slots, but I suspect ISA would be a royal pain to get the pnp working right. So I got an external, and as far as modems go, I think that's what I'd recomend most linux users try, unless they have no open serial slots.

But ultimately, I got an external Viking 56K modem, and I got it working. However, before I could get it to dial, I had to issue an "ATF0" command to reinitialize the modem to factoy settings 0. I don't know why I had to issue that command, but it sure as heck wasn't working without it. Once I did that, I just used Debian's pretty nice "pppconfig" tool, which produced some nice scripts for me to use.

Once I got the modem dialing, I recompiled my kernel to have support for Firewalling and all of that, and I put my ipchains rules in place, and it just worked. Bam! Everyone had net access through hex. It gave me one of those warm fuzzy feelings.. I'm sure you know the kind. The only thing I never quite got working was diald, so the thing still has to be manually connected and disconnected, which is not ideal, given the needs the people in this house and given how strange lightspeed behaves. Though it is worth noting that the modem has only been disconnected twice in almost a week, which is significantly better than the mac's do.

This place just keeps getting hotter. That's so annoying. But what am I to do about it? I spend most of my time sitting around and reading, be it Pratchett or programming books. It passes the time. I also play some computer games... I walk the dog in the nights, though in the day would just be bad news. Actually, I walked the dog at 4 pm yesterday, because some people were looking at the house, and it was just as bad as I would have expected. In general, I stay inside when possible.

Somewhat on the spur of the moment, Pi and I decided to head with Ben and Curtis to Ragnarok, though when I say Pi, it turns out I mean Pi and the ever unmentioned, but apparently ever assumed, Kathy. Anyway, so Pi and I went to Ragnarok for the second time, and Ben was around all night, too, though Curtis left early because of anger at an ex-girlfriend who was present. And Kathy was there, too.

As we were arriving, Neil just happened to be approaching, too, and so I couldn't help but ask the obvious question of "What, are you going to crash this one by climbing down a rope, too?" His mother, who was present, insisted he wasn't.

Once inside, I eventually found Don, and he grinned at me and asked what it was about alumni crashing graduation events, and whether or not I was planning on climbing down a rope later in the evening.

Ragnarok is still the best name ever for a grad night. It's just so appropriate, and the people there seemed to have fun. Though in general, it was almost exactly the same as Ragnarok the year before, which says something about cyclical universes, though I won't expound upon that thought at present.

In short, people gambled and people sang Karaoke. And people ate, and people talked. The main difference between this year and last year was that this year they bribed people into dancing by giving money to people who were dancing on a given star at any given time. This got people to dance, albeit in very small circles. Last year, almost no one danced. And, because they gave out money to people dancing, they didn't raffle cash prizes like the $250 I won last year.

I didn't want to win anything this year. It wasn't my place to win anything. I didn't have anything in any of the raffles, so there wasn't a chance I'd win anything either. And, true to form, I didn't win anything.

Yesterday, I went to Wests graduation. It was nice seeing a lot of people again, but strange, too. The band was significantly better than the Junior High Band, which is to be expected. Things seemed more generally polished, which was to be expected. But on the whole, I think the Junior High graduation may have been slightly less roudy.

For whatever reason, they rushed through the whole ceremony, and got everyone across the stage, had the band play a selection, and had two speeches in less than an hour and a half. I was rather impressed, and pretty surprised, too.

One cool thing that happened at the gradution, though the admin didn't think so, was that Neil Wood crashed the ceremony. As the recessional was about to start, a rope dropped from the ceiling, and after the graduate who began to climb up it got off, Neil decended clad in his gold robe and hat and hacked tassel. To fully understand, you should probably know that Neil graduated a year early, so he was part of the class of 99.

I thought that that was wonderfully creative of Neil, however, the admin didn't think so, and neither did the Bakersfield PD that was in attendance. So Neil spent about 50 minutes handcuffed in the back of a police car in front of the civic center before they released him. No one was hurt and nothing was damaged, so I don't see what the big deal was... Though I guess it could have been dangerous.

Regardless of all that, it was still the coolest thing I'd seen at a graduation in.. Well, ever, and I'm sure the class of 99 will remember that over most everything else that happened at their graduation.

And on a side note, everyone at the West graduation failed to get the millennium thing wrong, while two people at the Thompson graduation flubbed and called this the last year.