I just realized that this is the end of the semester, and I never got into “Crunch Mode”, where I have to work extra hard to make up for slacking all semester. I haven’t been slacking, and I never noticed that the crunch time had come. I realized this in Statistics, and was a bit puzzled by how I felt about it. I couldn’t really describe it. It was like I was missing something, but it was something I didn’t want. I finally realized that it was a feeling of pride.
robin Uncategorized
My mom also bought for me a winter coat, to replace the one that doesn’t have a zipper anymore. Supposedly it is rated for -50 to 0 degrees, but I suspect that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Anyways, I’ve used Safari’s clipping function to make a dashboard widget of the FedEx tracking history. Now I get my “Where is my package?” fix just by pressing F12.
Surprisingly, I think it makes me a little less impulsive in the tracking department. It’s there immediately and easily whenever I want it, and that somehow makes it less urgent. Isn’t psychology fun?
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I got some cute pictures of the cousins over Thanksgiving. Ch-ch-check it out!
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My mom took me shopping after Thanksgiving and bought me some new clothings. Woowoo clothes at Costco! I got a sweater, two pairs of pants, a shirt, and a polar-tech button-up overshirt. I love it!
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I got a new card reader for my laptop. I went to MicroCenter in search for a large XD card for my camera, so that I would have plenty of space for photographs over Thanksgiving. I realized that a card reader would do just as well, and found a perfect one. It does SD cards, XD cards, and Memory Sticks. I only use SD and XD, so it’s fine with me. And it’s slim and sleek and stays -inside- my computer in the PCI express port. No need to screw around with external USB stuff, although it is USB internally; the PCI express card is a combination USB hub and card reader, so there are no drivers needed.
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Well my Christmas present from Lauren arrived this afternoon. It’s an Iomega 500GB external hard drive with both USB and firewire interfaces. I’ve got it tied by a firewire cord to the hydra that my laptop has become (5 cables sprouting from the thing). Time Machine finally finished its initial mirror, copying 87GB of files. Lots, me says.
But now I have enough space for roughly ever for backups. Sweet. Backups have saved my life a billion times. Well, maybe not that many, but they’re still essential.
If only backups weren’t one of those lessons you can only learn through failure. If only you didn’t have to lose your data to appreciate them…
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I’ve been subscribed to Scott Sigler’s podcast for a while, and managed to pick up four episodes of his new novel Nocturnal. I’ve been listening to them in a marathon, and it is fucked up. I love it.
Scott Sigler’s novels are notorious for their violence, and this is no exception. Captivating, and the sort of thing that just makes you cringe.
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Thanks to the joys of Mathematica, my most recent Numerical Methods homework took only about an hour. I’d estimate that that is about a third of what it would have taken me if I did all the calculations by hand.
Of particular interest is the Solve[] function. I give it equations, it gives me solutions. It does the algebra for me. So I can set up some equations that define a spline with an unknown parameter, feed the definition of a spline into Solve[] as well as the equations, and out pops the unknown quantity.
Mathematica took the tediousness out of this homework assignment. It’s not that I can’t do the algebra, it’s just that I have no inclination to waste my time doing it by hand. I’d have to check it anyways. Mathematica is for symbolic manipulation what MATLAB is for matrices: The best tool for the job.
Thank god I’ve got a student license, though. Apparently the real thing costs on the order of $2500.
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Yay for firewalls. Real firewalls. Hopefully Apple will bring back the real thing, but until then I am protected.
robin Uncategorized
Well I’ve got one gripe about Leopard: The firewall is brain-dead. Leopard’s firewall no longer uses ipfw, and instead uses some socket filtering system. Bleck. It has some advantages, like being able to specify specific applications that are allowed to set up listeners, but it no longer lets me filter things by port number. The old Tiger firewall system has been completely replaced.
I downloaded an application called WaterRoof which is a GUI for ipfw, which is partially helpful. It plays havoc with my synchronization software though. Not all evil, mind you, but I need to put more effort into configuring it.
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