Older blog entries for olandgren (starting at number 213)

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My last entry was a little long, so I thought I'd do this. Being able to build diary entries in Emacs is seriously convenient, and advodiary is even cooler. Bring on the new versions. <grin>

School

Quite a bit of homework needs to be done, and I've not much time to do it. In order of priority, I have half a combinatorics homework assignment(well, a little more but I'll be generous), a 3-5 page draft for Economics of Gender, and a presentation for my programming languages senior seminar.

I've already figured out the topic for my presentation -- I'm going to talk about the new and interesting features found in GOO. Yeah, it sounds like a bad joke to some extent, but it's actually quite interesting. The language is the logical extension of Scheme into a purely object-oriented, typed language. It should be interesting to see how the ideas for its design fit together in my head with what I've learned thus far this semester. Articulating those ideas should be even more interesting

Hacking

Aside from setting up my first cron job ever, dedicated to running rdate -s -p time-b.nist.gov, not much. It's pretty cool to get an email once a night that says "Yup, everything is ok." I guess I'll learn to like cron more in the future.

Work

Quickie Perl is fun -- I got to write a script that moves inboxes to a new location on the system to alleviate overcrowding in /var/mail, and tells users what it did. Hopefully people will move their stuff elsewhere and won't get whacked by it, but you never know.

Life

Wow, is life ever complicated. Yesterday it seemed like everything I touched was turning into ash. Shot down for a job, was a complete and utter bastard in front of the girl I like a lot, got specifically targeted by a professor in class when I was trying to lay low. Everything seemed to be crashing down on me. Then, today was the day of Owen doing/saying stupid things. I managed to work three into a conversation with Emilia in under a minute. I don't think I've been on such a roll for a while, so it was nice, in a very twisted sort of way.

The idiocy starts about 2:00 in the afternoon, when I stop by her place, only to discover she's not home. Not daunted, I stop by at 4:00, with approximately the same results. Then about 4:30 I leave a voice mail message suggesting that she call me and we try to do something. However, as fate would decree it I don't see her again till dinner. College cafeterias are interesting places, and at a school as small as Macalester you can't avoid running into people at times. So, I see her at supper, but she's sitting with a guy that I really have some serious issues with. He's not a bad person per se, we just have personal difficulties. This makes it sorta hard for me to walk up and ask if she wants to do something tonight. So, I don't, and instead diddle around trying desperately to catch her when she's not around him. This doesn't happen, sadly, and so I run home. There, the mistakes begin(the real ones -- the ones made at supper were simple by comparison).

To begin with, I pick up the phone and call without checking for messages. I sorta have plans for the evening, but they would very much be malleable depending on what she wants to do. In not checking my voice mail messages, I miss the one she sent saying that she hoped to see me at destination X this evening. So I call, and ask her to destination Y, phrasing it such that it sounds like I'm planning to do Y regardless of what she says(which wasn't true at the time). This, by itself, isn't mistake number two. Mistake number two is asking her which she thinks I should do. She suggests Y. Slightly flustered, I only semi-jokingly ask if she "wants me to stop asking her" This is mistake number three. Yeah, I'm dense. Luckily, she's an absolute sweetie, and responds with something along the lines of "I like spending time with you, but it looks like not tonight." I think I managed to escape without making any more mistakes. Y was indeed fun, but I'm sorta stuck wondering about how X went and whether she's still busy writing her paper right now. Ah, well. I seem to have survived, though I'm covered in egg. It should be interesting to see what kind of hard time she gives me tomorrow.

Listening

Pete Namlook - Molecular Progression

Work

One option down and out. They're not going to extend me an offer at this time. Who knows how things are going to work, but I guess I'm of two minds about it. Part of me thought the job would have been really interesting, but the other part of me was shuddering inside. I guess that since the decision got made for me, I don't have to worry about it. Oh, well. Off to celebrate the weekend.

Hacking

In the I-really-shouldn't-but-I'm-going-to-anyways department, I set up advodiary and emacs to work on my Windows box. The process involved the following for me:

• Setting two environment variables ($HOME and $EDITOR)
• Installing the new version of ActiveState Python(because I couldn't figure out how to make my Cygwin install correctly spawn a shell before running scripts when double-clicked)
• Stripping down my .emacs file to the absolute bare-bones stuff I need(CUA-mode, HTML-helper-mode, bindings for home/end/, parenmatch stuff)
• Setting emacs to not use an init file and instead load this new barebones .emacs with the -l commandline option when invoked as EDITOR
• Defining a function which will insert the skeleton of my diary into the buffer when called

I didn't particularly think I had it in me, but it ended up working great. Advodiary is quite cool, though I must admit it's a pity the emacs-mode I saw only works with emacs 20.7. 21 is just so much nicer on Windows. Yaay for sleep-deprived hacking.

Edit: Not only did I do that, but I was on such a roll I decided to set up Ispell as well. So now I can spell-check my entries before I submit them. Thanks to cmiller for such a cool toy. Whee!

School

School is going fairly well, such as these things go. It's crunch time, and I really should be working on combinatorics right now, but I haven't made an entry in a while. My last couple of exams have been a lot of fun, in that I kicked ass on them. High score in the class, and the teacher liked my paper enough that it was the one that got sent around(sans name of course). I guess that's a sign of a good job.

Hacking

Aside from some more work with AspectJ, not much has been going on. It's really rather sad -- I quite enjoy programming, but other homework has been getting in the way. Lots of papers to read in my senior seminar class.

Life

Life has been overall excellent, modulo some minor annoyances. Most happily, I've been able to talk with Emilia -- things seem to be going well there. I dropped by intending to stay ~15 minutes and ended up talking for three hours, which was a lot of fun. Put me a little behind the curve, but hey, that's life.

I feel really silly sometimes -- I wish that I could explain to girls in words why they're so incredibly cool/sexy/beautiful/attractive/<adjective here>, but the words just never seem to come out. Or when they do, it's at the wrong time or phrased wrong and I end up coming off smarmy rather than just nice like I was trying to. Oh, well.

Listening

Pete Namlook - Airport Freak

School

School is slowing down, as the nasty homework winnows out the chaff that is busywork. I'm not entirely sure if this is a good thing. I did my presentation on Aspect-Oriented languages today in Sem, which was fun. I really need to learn to tone down the hyperkinetic presentation style I seem to have developed somewhere along the line. That and the fact that I draw a diagram, get halfway done, see that my audience gets the point, and stop, leaving an orphaned diagram or scrap of code, is always fun. We apparently messed up part of our proof for the combinatorics homework assignment, so that's pesky. It'll need to be a fast fix, too. Econ of Gender is fun, though I paid for making a sarcastic comment by being asked a fairly difficult question. Oh, well -- sometimes you're just grumpy. You pay your dues.

Hacking

Retrofitting a school project with AspectJ is really interesting. I've been thinking about how I want to do the design for a while, and it's getting to the point where I think I've got what I want in my head. I wonder if there's an Ant build task for it?

In sadder news, my RSI has been getting worse. I'm a college student -- I'm not supposed to be getting RSI this early in life. I've got a better set up wrist braces, and upgraded to an ergonomic keyboard on my work machine, so hopefully that will stem the tide. I suspect stress to some extent -- I wasn't bothered at all last semester.

Life

Life is proving interesting, as always. As of about 12 hours from now, there will be exactly two months until my entire social life graduates and leaves for parts unknown. It should be incredibly interesting -- I'm reminded how much I love my friends every time we do something. Parties over the weekend were mostly good, with some untoward incidents I wasn't directly involved in, but on the whole much more positive than negative.

As far as the female front goes, I managed to ask her on a date, but ended up not getting it due to scheduling conflicts. She did agree, though, which is at least a positive sign, and she doesn't seem to be repulsed by my company. Hopefully I don't mess this one up. One odd thing: I fixed a friend's computer(the power supply was overheating), and on my way back to my room walked past her house. Emilia was sitting in her living room, face in her hands. I just wanted to give her a hug and tell her that she was beautiful and smart and everything would work out. Funny how that works..

Making peace with the fact that your friend is dating another friendly acquaintance, and that you're really, really jealous about it is hard to do. I understand why Katrina is doing what she is, but there's something that just hurts deep inside when you ask "so why is he good enough now, and I wasn't then?" I guess that's one of those nasty little questions that you can't really answer, because it involves looking at stuff inside yourself that I would rather not. I'm sure that she's right and that it would have ended up a complete disaster, but I guess I tend to be more of a damned if you do type of person. Rejection always hurts.

Listening

Tom Heasley - Monterey Bay

Yes, I am listening to Ambient Tuba. You got a problem with that?

School

Not too much on this front. We get the networks test back on Friday. My Econ of Gender paper got butchered and I'm going to need to resurrect it for tomorrow afternoon so that the preceptor can look it over. What else is going on? Combinatorics went well -- I got a good score(95%) on the last homework to make up for the one I failed. My programming languages seminar remains the coolest thing walking -- we're looking at continuations and the formal denotational semantics which surround them.

Hacking

My Linux box is live again, after a horrible episode with the video card. All is better now, and I've got a shiny new GeForce II MX 64. Damn, those things are dirt cheap right now compared to what video cards were a couple of years ago. Redhat 7.1 also impressed me by autodetecting it and automatically configuring everything.

Work

<sings>Leavin' on a jet plane...

Life

But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we'll not fail.

Let's see, what all is interesting. Still haven't managed the above -- I'm currently dying of inaction. *sigh* Bad Owen, No Cookie. A girl I know through a mutual friend contacted me to let me know it was ok to talk to her, which was interesting. I guess I'd never thought about that particular behavior pattern of mine, but I guess that's just the way things are. I purchased, at semi-ruinous expense, a new pair of wrist braces which will hopefully alleviate some of the newly resurgent carpal tunnel. Fun and games.

Listening

Eels - Beautiful Freak

Hacking

Lots of thinking about Aspect-Oriented Programming. It's really cool stuff, even though I'm still having some issues wrapping my head around how some of the more general cases are used. I understand specific stuff, like abstracting out logging or errors, but the idea of a more general cross-cutting concern is still escaping my grasp.

Perl 6 is going to be incredibly cool. It's sorta like the language that I have fun and do stuff in is slowly converging on all of the neato features out of functional languages that I miss. Though I suspect it's probably a little much to ask for pattern matching sub, eh?

Off to break code I wrote two years ago. Should be an exercise in learning how much I've learned, or not.

Oh. Is there a better(read smaller) way to perform a fork bomb in Perl? A friend and I are carving trays of fork bombs in different languages in our cafeteria, and this was the best I could think of for Perl:

perl -e '`"$0 | $0"`;'

Scheme, of course, gets the Y combinator.

School

School has been being more interesting, and slightly less depressing than it could have been. I've adapted, and I think I'm over my case of the blues. Extra credit on failed Combinatorics homework assignments helps a lot.

Work

Lots of interesting stuff going on in the possible summer job front.

Life

Lots of interesting stuff has gone on. Let's see. Last week was sorta bad, but I figured I would make up for it with the weekend. No such luck -- while walking to supper I slipped, fell, and sprained my right ankle quite badly. Hiking boots that only decide to have traction halfway down aren't very useful. So the rubber band is now all stretched out, and I can't put pressure on the ball of my foot without shooting pains up the Achilles tendon. Nurse Bob says that I've been very sensible about the whole thing and shouldn't suffer any permanent damage, so it's all good.

Let's see. On the girl front, not much. My friend thinks that a girl in my Econ of Gender class has a crush on me. Sadly, she's not the right girl in my Econ of Gender -- I'm currently interested in Emilia. Communicating that interest is proving somewhat entertaining, but I'm trying. I keep getting distracted by her eyes. And smile. And sense of humor -- it's hard to ask someone out when you're cracking up. Pity I can't really ask her dancing now. Meh. Isn't it funny how that kind of thing works? The one with a crush on me seems nice enough, just not really my type.

Other than that, my dad should be calling for a nice uninterrupted talk, so that should be good, provided that I actually manage to wake up. We've got some stuff to discuss, mostly about finances and medical insurance and stuff like that.

I accidentally offended Katrina with a email mean t to be a simple joke. It seems I'm destined to constantly screw up there. I keep trying, though. The road to hell and whatnot...

Listening

Miles Davis - Autumn Leaves