School

Classes are going well. We turned in an excellent paper for the Math modeling competition. The model itself that I wrote was not exactly the most wonderful thing in the world, but it provided us with some numbers to put into the report. Stochastic modeling is fun. Other than that, I now have a LOT of reading and homework to do to catch up. Such is life.

Hacking

Well, not really hacking precisely. First I thought that the CPU fan was the problem. Then I thought that the power supply was the problem, so I got a nice new one from Enermax. Still makes the noise once in a while. It doesn't appear to be the fan on the video card, since when I change the pressure on that fan the noise doesn't change. Rargh. Very frustrating.

Edit: Hah! I decided, genius that I am, to unplug the vid. card fan while it was running to better test my hypothesis. It's the videocard fan, alright. Sheesh. All that work for nothing.

It will be nice to go to work today and just program Perl for 5 hours. It's been a while since I've gotten to do that, and I think I may have forgotten how much fun it really is to be able to use a language with no restrictions other than the ones in your head. I wish I could remember where on the Net I found this, but it's funny all the same

Perl is the only Bondage and Discipline language that has safewords.

Life

I got to know a couple of people much better as part of the competition. Both Stephen and Erla are a lot of fun. Erla was completely not what I would expect in a female computer science major, but it was a welcome wakeup call that not all people interested in CS are necessarily squares like me who can rhapsodize about their desire for closures in a programming language. So hopefully I can keep that up, if for no other reason than she cracks me up.

Stephen is another example of the ways in which I've screwed up at college. He was in my firstyear course freshman year, has been in various other classes, is friends with one of my friends, and yet somehow I've never managed to be more than an friendly acquaintance with him. I put the blame for that one squarely on my own shoulders. Anyway, he's great. The man is the master of the deadpan line.

Other than that, it's time to repair my rather fragmented social life. The combination of having a bad week(and thus never seeing anyone) with the competition has pretty much toasted my knowledge of what's going on in friends lives, and I feel out of touch and alone. Probably a precursor to next year, but whatever.

Other than that, not much is going on. The dreaded day of Saint Valentine approaches and once again I'm bereft of the ability to give flowers to anyone. I want to be able to actually use my knowledge, dammit. What's the use of knowing that you give yellow roses(to another American) to someone you regard as a friend but can't actually give them because society requires that flowers --> significant other. Feh.

For those curious, yellow roses mean two different things depending on which side of the tub you're on. Americans tend to interpret them as friendship, where in Europe they're jealousy.

Listening

Boards of Canada - Rue the Whirl