Might as well mention that I just saw Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and it was incredibly awesome, better than the last one. Everyone else will be saying similar things, figured I might as well do it here too.

Sally sent me this one from the Onion. It’s good:

WASHINGTON, DC—Flanked by key members of Congress and his administration, President Bush approved Monday a streamlined version of the Bill of Rights that pares its 10 original amendments down to a “tight, no-nonsense” six.

Bill of Rights Pared Down To A Manageable Six

“Atoms are like people. get lots of them together, never know what they’ll do.”

Following up on Microsoft’s recent move to purchase evil from Satan, Santa Clause is looking into moving his entire North Pole operation over to the Linux operating system, says this report.

Bold move, Santa!

Here is something I posted on Slashdot, bad spelling, grammar mistakes, and all. The topic is Linux standardization and suggestions of finding common ways of doing things, which some people take to mean one standard window manager, one way to install programs, etc.:

No one needs to convince me, they need to help me (Score:3, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15, @04:24AM (#4891015)

There are a helluva lot of comments of the vein, “if you don’t want to learn Linux, stay away.” It is obvious to some but not many of us here that the problem is not that people don’t want to use Linux, it is that they want to be able to USE Linux. As a relatively new Linux user (although I’ve used a lot of Nix tools in Mac OS X) I find it incredibly frustrating that oftentimes I want to do something in the CLI, I have no idea how, and I don’t even know where to start looking. Friends tell me commands to run like they should be obvious, but how would I know them except by being told? And I absolutely hate it when I want to, say, change my resolution and I have no idea how and a friend refuses to help me because he knows how to do it in Red Hat and Mandrake but he’s never used Debian and he doesn’t know nor care to know the “Debian way.”

The posts about “lowest common denominator” are right now, and here is an example. When you want to change the host name of your machine, you run the command “hostname” as root followed by the new name. Ta dah, its set. This works, as far as I know, on all Linux distros. On Mac OS X, you use the hostname command, and it doesn’t stick on reboots. Why? Because the Mac uses a differnt configuration file and its not documented under man hostname.

What do I want as standards? I want you to be able to add new ways of doing things, with new features and better usability and nicer functionality, but I still want my old commands to work, even if their deprecated. Or at least point me in the right direction.

That is what “standardization” means to me…a unified method of handling user interaction. I don’t care if you use Gnome or KDE, I just want to be able to access all my apps from each. I don’t care what you write your programs in, I just want to be able to use keyboard shortcuts for “cut” and “paste” and “save” that are the same. I just want my window themes to apply. I just want the widgets to look the way I set them. I just want the “Okay” button to always be on the right. Or the left. Whatever.

Please, standardize. Look at the Apple Human Interface Guilelines, and make something better, something that projects and apps can put a sticker on their website proudly saying, “I’m usable!”

That’s all I, a Linux newbie, ask.

There are still some among us (okay, a majority of the American people) who don’t understand why the others of us don’t like the Bush administration. Ariannah Huffington spelled it out in the clearest way possible.

Read that, and then ask me again why I don’t like President Bush and his cronies.

The episode of Firefly, “War Stories” really didn’t do it for me. Not even close to as powerful as Ariel…too much sex, too much violence, no fun or plot. Eh.

I slept < 6 hrs. on Tuesday night/Wednesday as I prepared for my JOUR final and wrote my last essay for that class, which, by the way I've posted online in PDF and raw LaTeX form (first one this year that I’ve gotten around to putting up!). So I aced that final, then was in the strange situation of falling asleep at 5:30 PM and waking up at 11ish…then falling asleep again at 5:30AM and waking up at noon. Total sleep > 12 hrs. Time spent studying for Mary Davis’s (really hard) AMST 100a final? 2 Hours. Grade on said final? Terrible, I’m sure. Sigh, sigh, sigh. I did great in journalism and turned in a good paper at the expense of a class I was already doing worse in. If I’d have stayed awake as I planned and put in another 5 or 6 hours of studying Davis material, I could have done decently well on that exam. But my excessive need for sleep put me at a disadvantage…again.

One test and one essay done, no problem (and the essay is my first in L^AT_EX, so that was fun)

Three more essays, one more test, one more day. Ick.

To do: essay on why T_EX is good and Word is bad.

Addendum: Apache’s spelling module is really nice. More people should use it. Seriously.

I started playing the Fame soundtrack on my computer, a soundtrack that I downloaded legally from EMusic.com a couple years ago. This led me to the EMusic site, which hasn’t changed much from its (perfectly functional) old design. From this I followed a link to MP3.com, which is completely redesigned (finally, although sadly they’ve changed their logo yet again, for no good reason)…and from that I checked out the hardware reviews.

Why am I writing this again? Ah, yes. I worked at MP3.com last summer, and one of the things they actually let me to (as opposed to promising and then forgetting about) was write reviews of new products. Soon after I got into the swing of things, my boss was laid off, and they really didn’t like my reviews anyway (I was…how do you say? Ah yes, negative. Honest, I’d say. They’d say negative.) So anyway, my reviews are still online, and you might be suprised with the amount of vitrol emanating from those pages of the otherwise-cheery MP3.com site. This review in particular I really like, as the product was really very very bad, but I kept emphasising that it was good while at the same time dissing it at every turn.

For kicks, you can compare my (wonderfully written) review with their review of the first version of the product, a suck-up review if I’ve ever seen one.

That (non-me) review is symptematic of the whole problem with MP3.com. It quickly turned from its vision of the water company of music, a monopoly conglomeration of all music in the known universe in an easly-usable system that could be tapped by every program and internet device and whatever, to a marketing organization pandering to anyone for a buck. Ah, money. Someone should really start a non-profit alternative to MP3.com. Or should have 5 years ago. No point now, we have peer-to-peer. Less powerful and pretty, but perfectly usable.

…and he lives in Snowmass, Colorado.

I’m posting this one because its something that I’ve always had a (very mild) passing interest in, and so I think other people might find it interesting too. There is a terrible sub-plot on The West Wing about Donna’s new love interest (hopefully he’ll die or disappear like everyone’s love-interest/plot-device seems to do on that show). He says he didn’t vote for Bartlet because of differences over military procurement, and then an interesting exchange happens. Well, not incredibly interesting, but much more interesting when recapped on Television Without Pity:

Donna tries again: “Five-hundred-dollar screwdrivers is why you didn’t vote for the President?” Sparky says he works for the President: “That’s a lot.” Hey, you don’t have to tell Donna. He keeps unpacking his box. Donna claims it’s wasteful spending. Sparky: “No, it’s not.” Donna: “A $400 ashtray.” Sparky sighs, grabs the pipe wrench Donna was using, and smashes the ashtray that’s on his desk. It breaks into three solid chunks. Donna: “What was that?” Sparky: “A $400 ashtray. It’s off the U.S.S. Greenville, a nuclear attack submarine and a likely target for a torpedo. When you get hit with one, you’ve got enough problems without glass flying into the eyes of the navigator and the Officer of the Deck. This one’s built to break into three dull pieces. We lead a slightly different life out there and it costs a little more money.” [“Should people really be smoking on nuclear attack submarines?” — Wing Chun] He goes back to arranging his belongings. And just because Television Without Pity is nothing if not educational, here’s a bit more information about the staggering costs associated with the military, courtesy of JohnConstantine, a self-described Army acquisitions geek: “The reason people see it as a $400 ashtray is because people roll in the RDTE [Research, Development, Test and Evaluation] costs into the per unit cost. In actuality, it doesn’t cost that much to manufacture, so every time you make one, the per unit cost goes down. [In addition] sometimes the cost is seen as X, when that’s actually because classified items have been rolled into the line for the ashtrays, to conceal our intel spending from prying eyes.”

The Daily Show and Salon keep pushing the Democrats to act like the Republicans — advertise, become better at using the tools of consumption to do politics. While there are lots of things that need to change about that party, I’m not sure what good it says about America that the winning party is the one that can best “package” their issues.

Oh boy. I’m back from break and I’ll write about that, along with info about my new computer…but right now I can only wonder at how great the residents must feel of whatever building just had a fire alarm go off. This has been happening far too frequently, generally from “pulls” i.e. pranks, and it is definetally not at all funny. Plus, its freezing cold and snowing out…and people who were previously asleep are now headed outside. Poor folks.

The Wall Street Journal has a very funny article about users of systems that profile them, such as TiVo, Netflix, and Amazon.com, all of which I use. Basically, the people don’t like or are suprised that TiVo pegs them in certain holes. Someone put Queer as Folk on their Season Pass list and suddenly TiVo was recording other gay-themed shows. Oh no, TiVo thinks I’m gay! So they start recording Jerry Springer to make TiVo think they’re rednecks.

Oh, good grief. TiVo is a machine and has no idea who you are or what you like. It, like Amazon and Netflix, use what you buy and compare it to what other people buy to forumlate recommendations. The more things you rate, the better the recommendations. All three of these services let you rank anything, and I have ranked a few hundred items on Amazon and several dozen on NetFlix, and I’m not afraid to give a TiVo show a thumbs down or thumbs up. Really, people, TiVo is not judging you! If all you have on your Season Pass list is Queer As Folk, it will try to find things similiar, with the same actors, writers, producers, network, or whatever. Give it more choices, and it will give you better recommendations. Don’t take it personally. TiVo is not judging you.

The architecture of Usdan leads me to believe that it was modified to be in its present form. Specifically, I do not believe that the Boulevard and C-Store were originally as they are. I would guess that what is now the Boulevard originally served some other function, possibly incorporating features of the C-Store, and the area outside of the Boulevard was not in the original building design.

The nice glassed in Boulevard eating area appears to have been added after the fact, along with the C-Store, energy-efficient doors, and the fire sprinkler system. I’m not sure where I could go to see the plans for these buildings (for free), but perhaps the University Archives could help me out here. I might need to become friendly with whomever maintains that collection.

Alwina Bennett wants to turn the former bookstore into a game room. I disagree. I think the very big, nice place would be a great study lounge a la the Technology Library in the new green thing. Combine lots of tables and couches, a bunch of computers, some smaller rooms with white boards, and windows, and you have a nice quiet place to hang out and study. And what’s funny is that that room wasn’t even designed to be a quiet study lounge…more of a gathering and meeting place with study rooms and nooks, but the students quickly took it over and made it what they wanted — a quiet place to study. I think we need a few more nice big clean quiet rooms with plentiful desks, desk lamps, computers, and such. With the atrocity that is the new bookstore, it would be nice if we could at least transform the old bookstore site into something useful, instead of the current empty, debris-filled space that it is.

Speaking of the new green thing, I hear that otherwise bustling offices like Trisk, SSIS, and such are now pretty barren thanks to being hidden somewhere on the second or third floors of our great new building. Meanwhile, the women’s resource center has a pretty prominent location that generally seems empty and devoid of life. Oh, and everyone wants the conference rooms. Another lesson: groups need places to meet! Places with big round (or rectangular) tables, nice chairs, projecting screens, soundproofing…how did we overlook this in all the rest of our designs?

I want to do a profile for the newspaper of the new dorm…hopefully I can find out more about it BEFORE they build it, so we can fix any deficiencies we may find before the thing is, ya know, finished.

Here is a quick, long overdue update before I dash off to class. It concerns the continuing saga of my restfulness.

I decided to do another experiment last night – I was tired at 8pm, so I went to bed then, thinking that maybe I’d sleep my standard 9-12 hours and maybe for once wake up rested. Yeah, that didn’t work. I awoke at midnight, not awake enough to get any work done but not tired enough to fall back asleept. Not until about 4 am, and as a consequence I slept until noon (12 hrs.), woke up tired, and missed another Jerry Cohen class. Sigh, sigh, double sigh.

List of diseases I’ve ruled out, thanks to WebMD: chronic fatigue syndrome, mono. They recommend home tests – basically various exercises at various times before bed – that I really need to try. The problem I have is that I often get sleepy while doing exercise, causing me to stop, instead of getting reinvigorated like everyone else says they do…

One thing that does keep me active and awake is anything that requires both physical and mental activity relating to one task — it looks like carpentry is my thing (and hey, it worked for Jesus). If I can build a cabinet or a set or something every day at around 8pm, I should be set…

Anyway, consequences of sleeping through classes that are held at 1:00pm: dirty looks from the professor, missing papers, falling participation grade. Now, how do I convince Socolow to give me an A when I miss 2/3 of his classes? Sigh. Double sigh.

…pondering…

Eep! Class! Gotta run!

Newsweek put forth an interesting story, even if it does suggest huge problems without any real statistics to back them up. The antecdotes are informative and in general I found it a pretty good read.

Young and Depressed: Ten years ago this disease was for adults only. But as teen depression comes out of the closet, it’s getting easier to spot—and sufferers can hope for a brighter future.

The thing about the Firefly 2 hour pilot episode is, it’s really good. I mean, really really good. It establishes characters with a lot of depth, it gets you caring about every member of the crew, it has suspense and action without being excessive…so of course Fox pulled it, decided it wasn’t exciting enough for their network, and instead Firefly began its life with the somewhat disappointing retooled episode The Train Job. It’s a shame, and when they show the pilot as an “origins special” in January or December, I hope people watch it.

The photo gallery script has been broken for some time, so I’m transitioning everything over to my new photo site hosted at Brandeis. Also there: some never-before-seen galleries! Check it out!

Slightly old, but I finally got around to reading the article:
So what we have here is our top intelligence agency endorsing the past success of a peaceful, enforceable disarmament technique that our allies and the United Nations support, while our president and his Cabinet repeatedly belittle it as a sham.

Bush vs. the CIA