Older blog entries for nosinut (starting at number 11)

Hiked through Racoon Creek Park today, the leaves were beautiful. Of course, the weather is a bit on the cold side -- 38 degrees F.

A young tree had fallen across the creek. It was very tempting to try to slide down it -- just to make it to the other side. Two things argued against this course of action, however:

1) the water was colder than a witch's tit
2) the tree looked barely thick enough to support my weight

So I decided that there would be no fool-hardy tree crossing for me.

Ben was of a different mindset. He took off his clothes (Emily, apparently, didn't mind) and went three quarters of the way across before falling to the ice water.

Crazy Californian Apple employees.

Senior year isn't supposed to be this hectic.

Anyway, I'm on my way out to go clothes shopping. I hate clothes shopping. But I need a suit for upcoming interviews. Lockheed Martin is flying me out to DC, so it would probably make a bad impression if I showed up in jeans and a Copyleft GNOME tshirt.

I applied to HelixCode, but they're looking to hire in the near future -- no we'll-hire-you-for-next-May practices like larger companies. Which means if I really want to work there I'll have to ignore the job offers from everyone else and sit on my haunches until next semester.

I've done a lot of thinking lately about where I want to work and what I want to do, and hacking on GNOME full time comes out near the top of the list. So I suppose I should start proving my worth by sending patches. :)

In other news, the first round of exams were this week. Social psych wasn't too bad, and I kicked ass in poetry. (Lots of "fluffy" courses this semester, I'm finishing up a minor in English Studies.)

I've played racquetball every day this week instead of every-other-day, and it has had a remarkably negative impact on the quality of my game. I wish I could insert a chart here, but basically my energy level is monotonically decreasing.

And I'm incredibly jealous: I missed the Great Race (10k) here last weekend because I was visiting my sister for her birthday, and Melissa ran it in 55 minutes. (It's been a goal of mine for practically forever to get my sedentary butt through a 10k in under an hour.)

Well, I think that's enough senseless rambling for one day.

For a few months now people have been sporadically mentioning to me that I should really go read these books. So last night I suspended all real work for six hours to read the first Harry Potter.

And I'd have more to write in this diary entry, but I'm going to go read the second.

Ok, things have been crazy this last week.

I ran the Regent Square 5k on Saturday but it sucked. I was completely unprepared and hadn't run any for the past three weeks (hey, I was on vacation). So I guess I should be lucky that I didn't cramp or injure myself embarassingly.

Andrew Gnome builds are progressing nicely. Our hope is to create a complete Gnome environment for andrew here at Carnegie Mellon, maintained by the computer club. Which basically means that we're adding a GNU environment (rebuilding EVERYTHING) for the Solaris boxes. But it will be way cool when it's done, and lots of good karma for the cclub's membership drive.

This morning I went to church for the first time since Easter. The church (the "Ecumenical Church of Light") was definitely non-mainstream sect of Christianity. Anyway, I think it's probably healthy for an atheist such as myself to go to strange churches every now and then. It helps me remember the strengths of religion (which are all too easy to forget) -- the self-empowerment that church-goers receive from being told that they belong and are wanted and are inherently "good", the enhanced social safety net.

School starts tomorrow (woohoo!).

Returned to Pittsburgh. USAir cancelled my flight back, then put me on a non-stop that arrived sooner than the original schedule was due. Go figure.

The beach was fun, lots of good reading done. Finished Henry Miller's Sexus and finally got around to Lolita (Nabokov).

So many incredibly cool announcements the past month! Gnome 2.0 on all Solaris machines, Sun assigning 50 engineers to work on Gnome. Mozilla relicensed to the GPL. Man this is a cool world to live in.

Hm, I wonder what it would be like to work at Sun? That could be slick, a job at Sun hacking Gnome. Well, next semester is resume fun time so I'll see if I get any bites.

Another anatomy test coming up. Just when I thought I could get in a few minutes for Sophomore again, hmf.

Been really busy; the past week has disappeared out from underneath me. Went to Jersey to visit my mother. Spent most of my time there shopping or ssh'd back to Pittsburgh via modem-based AOL connection. Very painful.

Andrew Gnome builds are progressing nicely. Very nicely, in fact. Won't everyone be pleasantly surprised to find out that their favorite desktop environment is now depoted to every campus computer? :)

Most of the hard AFS work was done by John Bucy, I just had to screw around with smake a bit. No, not skeleton make -- shadow make, another obscure Andrew environment utility with inadequate documentation. I've heard rumors of the existance of psmake, smake rewritten in perl.

Flying to Norfolk tomorrow to begin Outer Banks vacation with father & co.

Just drove like a maniac to get back to Pittsburgh from Fairfax, VA. Visited my dad there for the weekend and unpacked all of my books that had been lying in boxes for going on 5 months now. Also had an epiphany: "home" -- a concept which has been sadly uncertain the past few years -- seems to be the place that houses my books, which are the largest John-nostalgia containers around.

Time for a 30-minute essay writing session. This is quality work, folks; you can tell by the hastily misspelled words and information-in-a-list style of writing. PSMT had better appreciate me.

Bought the new Matchbox 20 cd, played mercilessly on repeat for four hours on the road. The first half is much better than the second half, but the whole CD is sadly a step down from their first.

Henry Miller kicks ass. From the first book in the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy:

"As for Kronski, the moment he laid eyes on her he dropped his leer and banter. Even more impressive was his silence. Usually, when I presented him to a female, he became garrulous and made a sort of fluttering noise with his invisible wings."

He makes me laugh.

Listened to Have You Seen Me Lately. Sam Kinison has to be the most distasteful comic ever. Homophobic, misogynistic, pro-drinking-and-driving, loud, arrogant, and generally nasty.

But he can be funny as hell.

"Jesus, God that's the sickest most disgusting joke I've ever seen on stage. Wrong! I can top it." (insert joke about leper whores) "Just when you think it can't get any worse ..." (insert joke about homosexual necrophiliacs) ... and so forth.

The summer has gone by so quickly! It's hard to believe tomorrow is my last day of work.

Speaking of work, LRDC was shut down today because of a water leak. That seems so odd -- that a building can be shut down just like a machine. I suppose it is just a people machine, swallowing them up and grouping them and storing them and then spitting them out at the end of the work day.

Well, we were spat out early today. So I came home and watched Dead Man Walking on DVD. The first time I watched this movie, I remember coming away with that dazed "wow that was a good movie" feeling and thinking that the death penalty was immoral. Maybe I was feeling cranky, but when I watched it today I just thought he got what was coming to him.

I've been reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Damn I wish I could write like that.

Pain is the ultimate karma-steroid. Want to jack your empathy for your fellow man? Fail out of school, get a divorce, lose your job. The most soulful people have been through the toughest shit.