Older blog entries for eliot (starting at number 49)

OI!!!! Good grief it's been ages since I've been able to write a diary entry.

In the meantime.. After breaking from school, I immediatly flew up to Denver to work a bit at Jabber.com's HQ. I realized nearly immediatly that I do not want to work in an office. Of course, I was sick (cold junk) and I missed my family and friends from school terribly. I still didn't like the whole getting up, going to work and figuring out what to do for lunch routine. No thanks, I'll stick with working from home.

Following that I came home and did nothing. It was fantastic. At first I couldn't figure out what to do because I've never been bored before. I always have projects or deadlines or something. After I figured out how to enjoy having nothing to do, I had a brilliant time.

Desperate for some new music, I picked up the Coldplay Parachute CD. I was a bit saddened by the loss of the acoustic piano, but I still enjoy their drummer's jazz beats. The lead singer's voice is very enjoyable as well. He reminds me a lot of Dave Matthews.... I also got the Beatles 1 CD as I've never listened to the Beatles much and wanted to get to know some of their songs. What better way to do it? I was surprised at how quick a lot of the earlier songs are. The song is over before you even know it started. I really like Help. :)

I wasn't too happy with my semester report card.. too many B's. I only had two A's and one of the classes I got an A on was just a one credit hour class. In the constant reflection of a college student, this year will be better.

I'm in total chaos about where to live next summer. I was sure that I would go live in Denver, but now I don't think that's a good move. Ah.. I've got lots of different places to live, but I just don't know which one is good. How's the weather in Australia in summer? :) I'm also in a bit of a conundrum about whether or not to take English as a second major or just do a minor. I want English something. I figure a Computer Science Engineering student mixed with a little English would make an interesting enough background to stand me out a bit from all of these idiots taking CS courses.

I'm finally the maintainer of the campus Debian server. It hasn't been updated since a year ago. The previous maintainer was a RedHat user and didn't know about apt I guess. Loads of packages are being updated..

You don't hear many people say this, but I'm not afraid to: I am really glad to be back at school. I miss the people here and the schedule and just college life in general. highly recommended :)

Welp, I want to get back into Advogato reading. Over break I just visited fejj, Iain and julian .. I should probably branch out a bit.

I'm looking forward to classes tomorrow. Today I had Engineering Graphics (CAD stuff!) and tomorrow I have CalcI (again), Speech (with a fun teacher), Engineering Graphics Lab, CompSciII and chapel. Good stuff.

Odd.. I'm not a Journeyer anymore. Guess I'm losing grip in Advogato. Oh well.

This is going to be a fantastic semester.

Iain: Hmm.. you've struck a cord with me (ooh, I think I really used that phrase wrong). In this post you talked about Radiohead becoming old news. I've been feeling very similarly lately, yet I have a delema. I still love Radiohead. I've been looking at some new bands to try and move me away from that.. among them are David Gray, Aaron Sprinkle, Jeff Buckly, Belle and Sebastian, Sunny Day, Pedro the Lion and most notably, Coldplay. I haven't been able to scrounge up many besides Coldplay.. but I'm hoping I'll be able to find a band I like a bit as much as Radiohead. So what do I do? Just forget Radiohead because now they are popular? I feel like a deserter then. I love their style and their words.

*sigh*

And so finishes another week in the life of Eliot.

It was a good week really. At julian's insistence, I finally got some big junks of the Gabber manual updated. Hopefully will be able to finish that off shortly so he can release 0.8.0. I hear it will have message queing! Beautiful....

I sent an article I wrote about the University's censor ware (Internet filter) to the director of student activities (who happens to be a good friend of mine) after he brought up over dinner one evening how much he hated Internet filters. I was surprised because I figured him to tbe the normal Univ admin kind of guys regarding this area. Anyway.. he was really impressed with my article and wants to print it in the school newspaper. I'll need to dig up some more facts and structure it a bit better, but I think I'm going to do it. I hate the filter and I hate what it stands for.

I'm off to take a friend to Lufkin... Hopefully will be back in time for some Christmas parties!

Yay! Tests are done. I did really well on the Biblical Foundations test. Mostly because I'm really familiar with a lot of worldviews (naturalism [atheism, agnosticism, humanism, etc.], transcendentalism [new age, polytheism, pantheism, etc.] and theism [Judaism, Deism, Biblical Christianity, Islam, etc.]). The PE test on the other hand... I *hate* memorizing random facts about calories, carbohydrates and junk like that. It's so much harder because there's no main ideas to understand and digest (like Biblical Foundations), instead it's just lots of random bits of information from the chapters.

pphaneuf: Mozilla's 20001114 binary build is quite nice (using it right now). I'm sure today's build will be similar. It's been awhile since I've used Moz and I've been really happy with the speed, rendering, and general quality of this build. I haven't been able to get the Netscape 6 release yet (the installer stalls up everytime), but comparing to the PRs, I bet the Moz nightlies are still far superior.

NOW TO RELAX WITH NOTHING ON MY MIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I would still like to know about TinyCOBOL on Linux.. AND a WWW-based calendar/address book that syncs with my palm pilot in Linux.)

Have a great day folks.

Gah! I had a great diary entry done. Then I hit the menu option I've never used before: File -> Exit.

I'll keep this one short, considering I have two tests tomorrow morning and it is getting a bit late already.

Want to know how busy I've been? I've been so busy that I didn't know Netscape 6 was released. I missed the big party! Oh well.. today's Moz build is beautiful! I wish that Netscape's chrome's would install in Moz!! There's already some cool ones.

It's amazing that with all of these companies and portals and such that we don't have one simple thing: a portal/webcalendar/webaddressbook that can synchronise with your email program and especially your palm pilot. Why is this so hard? I'd love to use Netcenter's calendar and have it in my sidebar and such.. but what's the use of that when I need to keep another one on my palm pilot and another one in my school intranet and and and.. Not to mention all of the places I keep address books! This is just sillyness. Hmmm.. how much effort would it be to do this myself?

Hrmm.. speaking of sidebars. An advogato sidebar would be super. That'd be really cool actually.

I need some help.. I need to get a COBOL compilor installed on a Debian box here at school for a class to use next semester. We've been looking at using TinyCOBOL, but it doesn't compile on Debian! yacc/bison complains of many errors and continues on. If you didn't know better (like me at first), you'd think it worked fine. Too bad there are no COBOL compilors in Debian. The lack of COBOL compilors for Linux seems strange.

I need good search sidebar. One that has boxes for Freshmeat and Kuro5hin and Google and Price Watch and eBay.

Wow Moz is smooth. I'm in love.

Lava lamps are wonderful.

I don't want to be an American. To be associated with today's American culture is embarrasing. I wonder what the weather is like in Australia at this time of the year...

In other news, I had a great weekend. I'm glad last week is far behind me. I had a great date to the school's big banquet, she was gorgeous and we had a fun time. It's great going to formal events with good friends instead of finding a real date kind of thing.

Today is officially the start of Update-Gabber-Manual Day. I've got LOTS of catching up to do. julian and Dave have been busy the past month or so. Now it's my turn to be busy.

I LOVE MY CANON REBEL 2000. Oh, I'm having SO much fun with it! I can't wait until the book I ordered about it comes so I can have more fun with it. I'm going to develop three rolls today and I'll get them scanned in and on a web site for my family and friends to see. I'll post it here too if anyone wants to see the quality of the Rebel. It's a beautiful thing.

On to Gabber!

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -- Gandhi

Today I slept. I believe this morning I also went to Student Senate to see my bill for campus recycling be debated on (someone put one bad phrase in the bill and it caused debating for 20 minutes). I think I also went to Fine Arts class after that. It all may have been a dream.

This evening I rounded up a crew to get a roll of film done for this weekend's Camera Capers. Basically, you find some funny or odd thing to do with your floor and take pictures of it. For lack of better ideas, we took pictures of us asleep all over campus. In the student center, in the chapel, in several classrooms, on a plane, in a truck bed, on a society fence, etc... It was pretty fun. I hope the pictures turn out well!

julian: Ah, how I love live Shakespeare!!! Even reading it aloud in a group setting is enjoyable. I have yet to make it to the Houston Shakespeare fest, but I have wanted to go quite badly for years.

I have been invited by a professor/friend from Houston to prepare a paper on CS Lewis to present at Baylor University in January. I'm contemplating it a bit.. It sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure if I have the time to do research or pull together a good thesis.

I believe my Canon is waiting for me in the mail center. Now to actually go there when they are open.

Schweet.. I just got an email from someone in regards to my article being published in the December 2000 issue of Web Techniques magazine about Jabber. I haven't even gotten a copy yet. Be sure to pick up a copy!!

I'm tired. Sleep will come very quickly tonight. Unfortunatly, morning will come much quicker.

Iain: Ah, I believe you're right. I do not have Pablo Honey, so I wasn't familiar with the songs on it. The MP3 I have of Blowout says "RADIOHEAD - Blowout (Pixies cover)" and the lady at the end of the song says "Thom Yorke of Radiohead joined with Hosy's John Ower on Drums and Ken Stringfeld on guitar." I probably totally screwed up the last two people as I've never heard of them.

.. waiting in patience for my new Canon Rebel 2000 ..

I want a blender so I can make yummy fruit drinks any time I want. I think if I did that instead of one of the cafeteria's meals once a day I'd feel much better. Some good bread along with it.. mmm.. sounding better already.

Breath, keep breathing. Don't lose your nerve. Breath, keep breathing.

Argh. I'm pretty bad at studying. A test this morning proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I suppose it's OK to take some time in the first semester of college to figure these things out, but dangit, I'm getting graded!

So far, this hasn't been a very happy week. Exit Music seems pretty fitting -- depressing and emotional.

How is it November? What happened to the last three months of my life? I remember just yesterday being at LinuxWorld and enjoying AP Stumps over in San Jose.

How come my Concepts of Lifetime Fitness class stresses eating so well and I'm not able to get any good food at the cafeteria? Sure, things taste good most of the time, but it is nearly impossible for me to eat in a healthy-lifestyle manner. Throwing some crappy carrots and bell peppers on the side doesn't help the dripping-with-oil fajitas or fat loaded beef.

Ok, I'm in a bad mood. I'm gonna blow some steam before I blow.

I can't do this alone.

I like this new <person> feature.

Today was nuts. I still haven't gotten a chance to start reworking the Gabber manual for a task-oriented approach. I should have more time now that I'm dropping Calculus I. 12 hours isn't much.

raph's comments in today's diary about free software and such. Although it doesn't quite seem to be all there, he's hitting on something that's been silently bugging me. Something just seemed a bit wrong with the current community and I hadn't been able to pin it down quite right. Certainly a bit of food for thought..

This semester is literally flying by. It's so disgusting. All I do is sleep, eat, homework and go to class. How dull. Yes, julian, that is college. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the fantastic people I'm around all the time. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Radiohead's cover of Blowout by Pixies is cool.

Fade out again. Fade out.