Interesting Stuff

Well, I recently discovered that there is a bridge club near my home, so on Monday I decided to stop in and play a bit. I was paired up with a guy named Jim. Though we had fewer than 5 minutes to get our conventions straight, we seemed to pretty much understand each other’s bidding and playing styles. After a very rocky start (on one contract, I went down 4… doubled… vulnerable. -1100 points – ouch!), we played really well, and finished off the evening in 2nd place out of 7 partnerships. Pretty good for C stratification, eh? For those who don’t know, the A stratification is for good players, B is for OK players, and C is for bad/new/unregistered players like me and Jim. And we finished 2nd overall, not just in our stratification. The only pair to beat us were two guys named John and Cecil, who are absolutely amazing players. For those of you who have been to Bridge Etc. in Pomona, they are like Vick and Hans, but without the sour attitudes. Because we did so well, we were each awarded 0.49 of a Black Master Point! The different colors denote where you got the point – black is for club play, while gold is for regional and national tournaments, etc. Technically I didn’t get any points because I am not a registered member of the American Contract Bridge League, but I’m going to count it as my first Master Point nonetheless. Jim and I had such a great time that we agreed to meet again the next night to play in the North American Open Pairs qualifying event (same place, but it’s a dollar more, there are more people, and you can get Red Master Points).

Well, I show up the next night ready to work out precisely which conventions we will be using. Much to my chagrin, I am told that Jim can’t make it. Instead, I was partnered up with a man whose name I will not mention, just in case anyone reading this chances to stop in at the Twin Cities Bridge Center. He was 70-ish, and just at that age where he thinks that anyone under 30 can’t possibly know beans about anything. We use all of his conventions, including some really weird, cumbersome things (for example, intermediate jump overcalls. Strong jump overcalls are intuitive, and weak ones are statistically better. Intermediate ones have all the drawbacks of both strong and weak, but with none of the advantages). As you might have guessed, our bidding was way off, and our communication during play was not much better. My partner made several huge mistakes, and even revoked (miscarded) a trump that cost us 2 tricks and gave us the lowest score on that board (he claimed it was my fault because I didn’t ask him if he really was void in trump when he played out of suit). However, every time I made a small mistake that he caught, he was certain to point it out, and explain why his way was better (even if his way wasn’t better and I had just been unlucky). To be fair, I had my share of mistakes, and gave us bottom on several boards, but my errors were nowhere near as serious as his. It should be no surprise, then, that we took last place. There were only 3 pairs with lower percentages in the entire tournament. Argh. I can’t wait to get back to Mudd where there are bridge players who use reasonable bidding conventions and familiar styles of play (if you do a takeout double, and I pass after an overcall, do not try another takeout double expecting a response from me!). Thanks for letting me vent.

Wow. School. The summer has just flown by, though much of that is probably because it was only a month long for me. I’d like to relax more, but at the same time, it’ll be nice to be back at school, out of my parents’ house, and seeing friends again. And I’m pretty excited about my schedule this coming semester.

On Sunday, I went down to St. Olaf to visit Michael, one of my two best friends. He’s doing pretty well, and it was good to see him. Seeing St. Olaf also helped me appreciate Mudd that much more (not that you can’t have a great time at Olaf; it’s just not for me, and Mudd is a near-perfect fit). The dorms fit more people into smaller rooms, have no lounges, no air conditioning, and are mostly separated by class (frosh/sophomore/etc, not lower/middle/etc). While this last point might seem a bit odd, I really appreciated getting wisdom/homework help from the upperclassmen as a frosh, and hope to pass this along to other classes. Michael is also a CS major, and says that his school focuses on the programming aspect of it. While this is more fun in my opinion, I appreciate Mudd’s focus on the theory behind CS because it lends itself to more problems and achieves deeper insights (not to mention better jobs, hopefully). Also, Michael has several courses in his schedule that he is taking simply to fulfill distributions, and has a couple that he is actually dreading. While I am not gung-ho about all of my classes, I am at least content to be in each of them. All in all, it was a good reminder that I am sooo happy to go to Mudd.

We also saw the Manchurian Candidate on Sunday. It was an OK movie – I’m not sure I’d call it good. The story wasn’t bad, the acting was great, and there were several points where I found myself holding my breath on the edge of my seat. However, the cinematography was different, in a pretty bad way. Many of the shots of conversations are from the point of view of one of the people in the conversation – just a close-up of the other guy talking. While this was unusual, it came off as rather… amateur. There were also scenes where the camera just kind of drifted around. One guy would have a lot of lines to say, and he’d start off on the left side of the screen. Then the camera would drift until he was at the right side of the screen, and then it drifted back so he was on the left. It was really weird. This is also the first professionally-made movie where I have noticed when two different takes of a scene were spliced together. But overall, there was still something that rubbed me the wrong way about the movie. Perhaps it was that the bad guys seemed so lifelike (I can argue pretty easily that the same thing is happening now, but to a much, much lesser extent). Perhaps it was that there wasn’t any closure with regards to the main character. Perhaps it was that the background of what happened to set all of this in motion was never really explained (like, what was up with that creepy woman with the tattoos on her face holding the brain in her hands?). I’d recommend seeing this eventually, but you might wait to rent it instead of seeing it in theaters. Now I’ll have to see the original Manchurian Candidate. I’ve heard it has little to do with this version, but is simply wonderful.

Lets see… before I go, I should mention something about the Olympics and something about politics. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, the International Olympic Committee has made rules that no one can have merchandise made by a sponsor’s competitor (I first found out about this from Slashdot). This means that if spectators are caught with a can of Pepsi, it will be confiscated. If you are caught wearing a Puma T-shirt, you will have to turn it inside-out, or you won’t be allowed to watch the games. This is a smart move for Coke, but I’m surprised that a non-profit group like the IOC agreed to this. It just goes to show how much of the world is run by huge, money-grubbing corporations. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the world, and I fear it is making me more jaded and cynical about things. Luckily I can soon go back into the bubble of happiness that is Mudd, and live in bliss for another few months.

Well, that’s about it for tonight. Thanks for reading, and sorry I can’t keep the length of these down.

Lets see… what have I been meaning to put up here…

On Tuesday, in honor of my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, my family got to take a hot air balloon ride! It was amazing. The balloon was surprisingly sturdy, and I never once felt unsafe. We went up about 4,000 feet, though at one point we were mere inches above the St Croix River (a river separating Minnesota from Wisconsin). It was absolutely amazing. Next time you see me, ask to see the pictures. I even got to hold open the envelope while it was being inflated! The whole contraption is pretty neat – the envelope is teflon, and the burners use propane. There are two of them – use one to move about normally, but use both if you really have to rise fast. There were all sorts of sensors to help the driver – temperature probes at various points on the envelope, altitude gauges. Although the driver had these flaps that could rotate the balloon so that he could always face the direction he wanted, there is no steering mechanism. Consequently, there was a chase truck that followed us, ready to pack up the balloon and bring us back to the starting point at the end. The truck and the balloonist were in constant contact using their walkie-talkies, though they picked up many other signals as well (my favorite: “Manager to register 3 please, manager to register 3”). We landed in Wisconsin, about 15 miles from where we started. We bumped down in an empty field, though the weeds were so tall that we had to be pushed by the truck’s crew to a nearby yard (we floated a foot off the ground as they pushed). There, we all got out and they folded the envelope back up. Because our only way to control the balloon is the burners to make it go up, we had very little control over whose yard we landed in, and the chase truck had to get there a few minutes before and ask permission to use the yard. I think that would be a pretty neat surprise – “Hi. Would you mind if we landed our balloon in your yard? It’ll be here about… now.” Looking at the whole thing, it really can’t be that hard to build one. Maybe after I retire… maybe not. I’ve been meaning to build a lifter for a while now, and haven’t even started on the power supply (a lifter is a really crappy ion drive). Still, one of these days…

Before today, I had not heard about the Allais effect, which is a pretty neat, though puzzling thing. I’d like to summarize it by saying that during solar eclipses, gravity becomes slightly stronger, but it also works on torsional pendula, so I don’t quite know how to describe it. The Economist also mentions one of my favorite unexplained phenomena, the Pioneer Effect (space probes Pioneer 10 and 11 are heading in opposite directions from Earth, and both are experiencing an acceleration towards the Sun that is unaccounted for). Just for a little more background on MOND (the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics thery), the idea behind it is to take all the data we have, and say “this is how the universe behaves.” Very pragmatic, but not very fulfilling because there is little to no math to make calculations easier. Indeed, it cannot really predict anything, though it explains all unusual phenomena we have already observed.

In world news, communist rebels are threatening to blockade Kathmandu. The Nepalese government has agreed to talk to them again, though I can’t forsee anything different happening – the communists have been trying to overthrow the monarchy for 8 years, and nearly 10,000 people have died in the conflict so far. The more I learn about the world, the less civilized it seems. On the other hand, this makes things like Iraq, where a mere 900 Americans have died, seem much less significant.

On a happier note, last week there was a deer in our backyard eating from the birdfeeder (less than 15 feet from the house)! It was scared away by a fox, which I saw again several days later at Cornelia Elementary School. However, the deer came back and ate from the birdfeeder some more. It was pretty neat. There was also a flock of several hundred grackles that came through our yard. It was surreal, in a Hitchcockesque way – the entire yard was covered in birds (for those not familiar with them, grackles are black birds slightly smaller than crows with dark green heads). Around our neighbor’s birdfeeder, there were so many grackles you couldn’t see the ground – it was just one big black mass of feathers! I went to get my camera, but they had flown on before I could get a good shot. In California, we get some pretty neat wildlife too – about once a week, I see a hummingbird, and there are about 15 rabbits that live around my dorm and the soccer field. Lizards are a common occurrence, and though I haven’t looked for them yet I am told that around dusk I can find tarantulas and scorpions in the botanical gardens near campus.

I’ve been working a bit at Temporary VIP Suites (the place where my mom works; they find temporary housing for people moving between cities), which is OK. The hours are perfect – I come in when I feel like it and work for as long as I want, with no warning at all. The people are pretty great, but the work itself is kinda crappy. Mostly, I’m stuck in the back room by myself going through the archives. No one has emptied the archives since the company was started in 1995, and I’m supposed to throw out the old, unimportant parts. I feel honored that they trust me with such an important job (I’ve gone through tax returns, documentation on fired employees, bank accounts, and mortgage applications, among other things), but it gets a bit boring. For half the time, the radio is my only companion, and the other half there is someone else there, but doing something unrelated, like packing the truck for an appartment cleaning. And it’s a huge task – I’ve spent roughly 40 hours on this, and I’m about half done (as I said, no one has cleaned out the archives in 9 years). I’ve filled 3 dumpsters of recycling (the small dumpsters that take the place of trash cans, not those huge industrial sized ones). Still, the pay is pretty good, and I do, on occasion, get other things to do. I code bills, pick up lunch, run errands. When I worked there in January, I was out cleaning apartments, so I guess this is a step up from that.

That’s about it for now. Sorry this was so long – when I get back to school I’ll update more often so entries will be shorter.

Over the summer, I don’t have my own computer, so I’m not nearly as good at checking my email or updating this thing. And I haven’t been on IM in weeks. If you really need to get in touch with me… good luck. I’ll get back to you eventually… probably… I hope. :-P

Jeff (my best friend) spent the weekend in town. He’s been working at Rockwell Collins this summer, except for a month that he spent in Transylvania. And he’s now in Texas working for NASA (I’m so jealous!). We spent the weekend looking at pictures of Hungary and Romania, which were really really neat. Transylvania really is a creepy old place with castles and fog everywhere. It was wonderful to see him. We were going to go down to St. Olaf and visit Michael (our other best friend), but he was really busy this weekend. Hopefully I’ll get to head down there next week. We’ll see.

It’s looking like Bridge Etc (the “real” Claremont bridge club) will be having games on campus this coming year! Their lease on their building is almost up, and they’re looking for a new place to play. I talked to Dean Chris (in charge of Student Activities) about it, and he seemed responsive. Well, we’ll see how it all turns out.

At this point it’s probably old news, but the California Supreme Court has nullified the 4,000 gay marriages that took place in San Fransisco. However, their reason for doing so is that no mayor or any other elected official should have the power to rule any law unconstitutional, because if everyone did that, there would be no laws in effect. They said that the right way to challenge the constitutionality of such a law is to have a couple apply for a marriage liscense, get denied, and challenge the denial in court (this has since happened). One of my professors at school was married to his partner in SF, so when school starts back up, I’ll have to go talk to him and see what he’s doing about this all. Well, eventually this will get done properly, and I for one am fairly confident that (at least in California) the law will be ruled unconstitutional, and gay marriages will be allowed. We shall see.

Well, I have to go. I’d like to write more in here soon, but doubt I’ll be able to. At this point, count on sporadic updates for a while.

Well, I’m now home in Minnesota. Research went OK. The last day was a lot of work though – Friday morning, we had a meeting to make sure that everything was ready and done. Then, Prof. Raugh decided to tell me that he had looked through my part of the report and had some changes for me to make. I spent all afternoon making changes, and getting the final copy ready. I put the entire thing in a .zip file (just over 3MB zipped – quite a large piece of work!), and I was about to mail it off! I decided to check my email just in case anything unusual had happened at the last minute, but forgot how to do that from the terminal room. So I skateboarded back to my room, and check my mail. Lo and behold, Sarah has also made some major changes to her part of the report, and could I add them to the final copy? Mind you, this was at 6:00. I was about to be done. So I save her changes and go back to the terminal room and put them in the final report, rezip the whole thing, and send it out. I also put a copy in the directory Claire made for this project so that we can all access it on the math computers. It’s now about 3.1 megs (we had a lot of changes, apparently!). I finish work up at 6:30. :-P But it’s now done.

It’s a little weird being back in Minnesota. Marc can now drive, and has a job lifeguarding. So he’s going to be taking the car a lot, I fear. He has also decided to put bumper stickers on the back. He got one of those stickers from WootWear, and one from the USA Fencing Organization. I don’t want my car covered in bumper stickers! Get those off there! Luckily, he hasn’t put the fencing one on there yet, and I’m hoping I can persuade him not to. hm…

Though my computer is at school, it is turned on and the SSH port is open, so I can continue to install programs on it while I’m here. This evening, I started building OpenOffice. We’ll see how that turns out. I also have a copy of Knoppix with me, and have been impressing my dad and brother with its little features (everyone is impressed with the “fuzzy” clock, and Marc really likes the ASCII movie player). Since I have X-forewarding turned on on my machine at school, I can also check my email from there. This is really nice, because I can continue to train the Bayesian spam filter, and keep all of my email in one place. Whee! :-D

In world news, the Darfur Conflict is finally getting some well-deserved attention. The New York Times (free registration required, or go to BugMeNot) has stuff on it here. It even made the local paper here (the Star Tribune), which barely has any news of import. I for one am glad that Darfur is finally getting some attention. I’ve been following the conflict for several weeks, and at first I was quite dismayed that the rest of the world didn’t seem to notice (though perhaps it merely appeared that way because I was living in the college bubble). Well, I just thought I’d try to increase awareness of the issue.

It’s late, so I’m now going to bed. Goodnight!

Just thought I’d say that today is a blue moon! ’tis the 2nd full moon of July (the first was on the 2nd). Huh… I just wrote that the first was on the 2nd. That’s a little weird.

In other news, Francis H C Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, passed away on Wednesday. He was 88. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/science/30crick.html

As you can see, I’m rather tired. I’ll write more when I’m rested.

Again, tonight, I screwed up cooking something. When I was at the
grocery store, I had bought a tube of croisants and some white
chocolate chips, figuring I could make chocolate croisants. Tonight, I
did so. First, I got the tube out of the freezer, and tried unrolling
the dough. This didn’t work so well, because the dough was frozen
solid. Rereading the label, I was supposed to refridgerate it, instead
of freezing. Oops… I’ll warm it in my hands for a bit. After a minute
with no change, I decided I’ll be there all night at this rate, so I
put the dough in the microwave, and had it defrost for 30sec. Well,
when I took it out, the outside was warm/hot, and really sticky and
stretchy. The inside was still frozen. Which makes sense, if you think
about it (for the details of why this makes sense, IM or email me. It’s
too nerdy to put in an LJ, even for me). Screw it, I think. I’m making
these croisants, even if they are a little stretchy. So I’m tearing
along the perforations to make the pieces the right size. The ones on
the outside just stretch, and don’t tear, so they come out misshapen.
The ones on the inside I can barely keep from cracking. I put in the
chocolate chips, and put them in the oven. The package says to bake for
11-13 minutes, or until golden brown. I set the timer for 9 minutes,
and figure I’ll check on them then. After 6 minutes, I check back, and
they’re definitely done. The room has a hint of smoke in it, and they
certainly smell done. I take them out, only to discover that one pan of
croissants is already burnt on the bottom. 11-13 minutes my foot! I
guess they turned out OK. But this isn’t the only time this summer I’ve
messed up cooking. Early in the summer, some friends and I were in the
habit of making dinner together, 1 person cooking for all of us each
night, so that we only had to cook 1 night each week (but for 5
people). For my first day, I decided to make a lemon-artichoke chicken
dish that I got a recipe for. It looked pretty simple – put the chicken
in the oven, and everything else in a pot. Then wait. I also put some
rice in a rice cooker. Well, I managed to somehow mess up the rice.
That’s right – I messed up rice in a rice cooker.
It started bubbling out the top, and got everything starchy. And on top
of that, something from the night before had dripped onto the bottom of
the oven, and burnt while I was cooking. It set off the smoke alarms,
and CampSec had to come to turn them off (I’m the only one this summer
that I know of to have set of the smoke alarms – well done, everyone
else!). Well, after the smoke alarms, I looked at my chicken, and it
wasn’t done yet… so I put it back in the oven. The meal came out ok,
but my ego didn’t. So… yeah. Apparently I need to learn how to cook.
People say it’s easy, and you just mix stuff together and toss it in
the oven, but I don’t seem to be able to do that. Well, practice makes
perfect, I suppose. :-P

I’m getting pretty fed up with F&M this summer.

At the beginning of the summer, they said I could move into my new room, so I did. I then locked the door to the suite, the door to my room, and went to bed. The next morning I was awakened by 3 guys from F&M in my room wondering how they were going to paint the room while I was living in it. After talking to their headquarters, it was established that I had to move back out. A week later, I could move in again.

Partway through the summer, I (or rather, my parents) received a bill for “room damages.” Not being able to remember damaging the room, I inquired as to what these damages were for, and the reply was that they had to repaint the ceiling because the paint had been ripped off. I went back to look at the old room, and sure enough, there was about 3 square inches of paint that had come off before I lived there. I had marked the ceiling as “good” on my room condition report (by which I meant it didn’t warrant an “excellent,” but was still nice). However, because I hadn’t specified what exactly was “good” about it, they billed me. It seems like many people have gotten ridiculous damage charges (apparently, my $75 was cheap), and the parents are even speculating that they’re using this as extra fund-raising.

It gets better – on Friday, I woke up to 2 people from F&M in the suite talking loudly. When they noticed that I had been sleeping, they left. I got up and went to work. When I came back for my lunch break, I discovered that everything I had left in the big single had been thrown out. This included the entire bridge club inventory (cards, books, cheat-sheets, etc), half of my dishes, and an LCD monitor I was storing for a friend. I spent my lunch break that day talking to F&M trying to get my stuff back, which I was able to do only because the garbage truck hadn’t come by yet. When I initially explained my problem, the secretary tried to claim that I had no business putting stuff in that room and that anything in there was liable to be thrown out. I replied that it was the room I was officially staying in (and I showed her the key), so they had no business touching anything in there. It turns out that when Robert moved out, they planned on cleaning the room he vacated, but didn’t write down which room in the Case Library that was. So, they picked the one that looks like someone had just moved out (for the back story here, Robert and I will both be in the double next year, and the big single was empty, so over the summer he had the double and I had the single. When he moved out, I started moving my stuff into there, so that I don’t have to move when school starts). I eventually got it all back, but I had to sort out the cards again (sorting 10 decks of cards is rather tedious, let me tell you), and in general it’s still a mess. They had just put everything in bags and thrown it out, though they did have the sense not to break the monitor.

Today, again, I woke up to find F&M in my room poking around. However, this time it was Jesse, who is a very cool person. He’s going to be in charge of cleaning Case this year, so he was looking at all the different rooms. After seeing how each other’s summers have been, he left.

So… yeah. I’m fed up with F&M waking me up in the morning. I’m fed up with them telling me I can live in the room and then treating it as though I’m not. Everyone’s fed up with them charging us for minute damage that was there before we moved in. I wish there was a way to change this, but I can’t see how to. Well, perhaps someone else will have a good idea. Until then, thanks for listening to me gripe.

That’s right – my own! X is now working, and KDE is sort-of working (enough to do simple stuff like this, though I don’t have sound, my 2nd monitor, or much more than the internet right now). Hopefully, more to come soon!

Wow. Last night was a blast, in that “we’re horrible people, but damn that was fun” sort of way. Now that summer math has ended, Atwood is housing a group of Italian exchange students taking English courses at Pitzer. They are from a Catholic school, and the woman in charge of the group, Sister Paula, is a very pious, devout nun. So last night I was hanging out with three people, who said they didn’t want to be named in my blog when I mentioned I was going to write about this. Anyway, I was hanging out with 3 people I will call A, B, and C (C is the only girl among us, and she was a very good sport about this whole thing). A has several good friends who are female and spend a fair amount of time in his room (he’s one of the few Mudders living in Atwood), and the Italians think he is some sort of pimp. He had the idea that we should take this a step further, and pretend to have an orgy in his room while the Italians were outside talking on the couches. We all thought that would be hilarious, so we planned it all out – A and B would go find some porn, and then come get C and me. I went and got some condoms, to add to the effect. When it was all ready, we met up, got some bottles of alcohol, and staggered drunkenly (we were sober, though our acting was pretty good) over to Atwood and past the Italians into A’s room. I managed to drop a condom right in front of them, and go pack to pick it up. It was glorious. Once in the room, we used an awesomesound system A was keeping over the summer to play the porn loud enough to be heard outside the room, but quiet enough that it could have been us making those noises. After about 15 minutes of this, we went back outside and staggered back to Case, and talked for much of the rest of the night. The looks on the Italian’s faces were priceless! Usually they’re very talkative and always chattering among themselves. When we came back out, all conversation stopped, and the ones on the couch facing away from us turned around to look: 3 guys and a girl leaning on each other, laughing, and staggering away. B joked that Sister Paula might try to exorcise the room sometime. I think this was a good enough prank that we might need to do this again sometime (there’s another group of Italians coming in a week or two!). So, yeah… what a night.

Back in the computer department, Mac and I have given up on Windows and Knoppix, and put Gentoo on the system. The going’s still pretty tough, but it’s getting better – I now have a command prompt, read/write privs on the hard drive, and an internet connection all at the same time! I’ve installed XWindows, but haven’t configured it yet. Soon, things will be just fine. In the meantime, I’m writing this from the terminal room (the room with computer terminals, not a room you go to to die).

Yesterday I played frisbee again, and gadzooks it was a violent day. Carrie did something quite nasty to her foot, and I’m a bit concerned about that. I think today she’s going to a doctor to have it looked at (personally, I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s a bad sprain at best). Nick and I had another run-in. We usually guard each other because we’re at roughly the same skill level, but we always seem to run into each other. Yesterday, we both (and a couple other people) were bunched up and jumped for the frisbee, and his leg slammed into my thigh. His leg is rather sore, and I’m not sure if he’s going to play again today. My thigh hurts rather a lot, and going down stairs today is quite painful. However, that’s not the worst of it: during warm-ups before the game (yes, during warm-ups :-P ), I took a frisbee on the tips of the fingers of my left hand, and it did something pretty awful. My middle finger has swelled up rather a lot, and I can’t make a fist (though I can type OK, so it could be worse, but I can’t do much else with it – it was a challenge to wring my washcloth out after showering this morning). Baxter Health Facilities is closed over the summer, and I’m not sure if this warrants a trip to a doctor. Well, I’ll keep an eye on it, and see what happens. And I’m definitely not going to frisbee today.

Well, that’s about it for now, and hopefully I’ll be able to get Instant Messenger working again soon so I can talk to all of you!

So, I haven’t updated in a while, but at least I have a good reason! I’ve been meaning to switch to Linux (specifically Knoppix, but if things continue this way, I’ll install Gentoo) for a while, and I finally decided to do it. Mac has helped me a lot with this, and I’m sure he’ll help me a lot more with it soon. The plan was this: shrink the Windows partition on my hard drive, and add a Linux partition so I can dual boot. Well, Partition Magic had a major error shrinking the original partition, even though I had enough space to do it. None of the Windows recovery CDs worked, but we eventually got some recovery floppies for Partition Magic itself. These managed to tell us what the problem was, and the fact that it cannot be fixed. We booted up Knoppix (which worked fine, because it runs from a CD), and managed to get read permissions on the now-corrupted hard drive. This was enough to back up a lot of things to CD. I had backed up the really important stuff before (like airline reservations), but this allowed me to save my entire music collection, most of my movies, and various other things that I can do without, but not easily replace. Then we reformatted the hard drive. That was a little sad, but it’s done now, and I think it’ll be good for me to redo everything, because anyone who has worked on my computer knows that my system of directories is haphazard at best. I made a 20GB partition for Windows (I’m really only going to use it for games and ShareScan), and the rest went to Linux. Because we reformatted the hard drive, I had also lost the backup copy of Windows that came with the computer (HP has this great idea where they don’t give you the boot disks, and instead charge you extra to recover your system for you, when you could do it yourself). So Mac used a Windows XP CD that he had. We put in the serial code, and it installs and boots fine. I go to start the many, many security updates (4 more security problems were discovered in IE yesterday alone!). I get to the updates, and they claim that my serial code is not valid! ARGH! The part that bugs me is that my main reason for switching now is that things were starting to go really, really wrong with Windows. For example, I couldn’t use my POP3 client to check my school email any more, and I couldn’t open webpages in new windows any more either. Things were going really wrong (the last time I’d seen this, within 2 months our copy of Windows 95b was corrupted). And now I can’t even reinstall!

So I try to put Knoppix on the other partition. First, I read several tutorials online, all of which turn out to either be out of date, or for the German-only version of Knoppix, or other things like that. I finally find the tutorial for my system, and start that. Knoppix claims I haven’t partitioned my hard drive yet! and when it tries, it says that it only has read permissions on the hard drive, and can’t reformat it, even with root privs (this is supposed to happen, Knoppix is given read-only privs to stop you from screwing up whatever OS you’re currently running). I finally manage to get Knoppix to try to install, and it can’t. It gives this really cryptic error message, and quits. This whole thing is so frustrating. I know that once I get both OSes installed with the proper software and updates, I shouldn’t have to do this ever again (at least, not until I buy a new computer). Nonetheless, this is very frustrating. Well, I’ll go bug Mac and Michael some more, and hopefully they’ll be able to help. In the meantime, I’m writing this from the computer lab in the LAC.

On a brighter note, today the Senate stopped the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage (if you don’t want to get a free account with the New York Times, go to BugMeNot). I’m quite glad this has happened. To the best of my knowledge (please correct me if I’m wrong), no proposed amendment has ever tried to take the rights away from a small subset of the American people (some have taken rights away, like Prohibition, the 18th Amendment, which took the right to drink away, but that was from everyone, not a select demographic). While I am not gay, I’m rather pro gay rights. While he didn’t mention homosexuals in his poem, I’m reminded of Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came”:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me-
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If we let the religious right oppress homosexuals, what will stop them from oppressing atheists, or Muslims, or women (sadly, there are still a few nut-cases in power who think women should not have the right to vote). Though I guess part of my mentality comes from going to Mudd – according to the Princeton Review, we are the 11th most homosexual-friendly campus in the country (I’m too lazy to find the link to this statistic, but if you really want, I’m sure you can find it). I have several friends who are openly gay, and one professor who got married in San Fransisco to his partner (husband? I’ve always heard gay couples referred to as partners, but I don’t see why they’re not pairs of husbands and wives). Anyway, I think this is just wonderful.

Lets see… I’ve been playing a fair amount of ultimate frisbee lately. Now that Carrie’s back, and people read my summer-l about how West Nile Virus really isn’t that deadly (It isn’t! The media like to hype things like this, because it boosts ratings. If you want a copy of my email, write to me, and I’ll send it when I get my computer back up), we actually have enough people to play games (last week, we just played catch). It’s a lot of fun, and hopefully it’ll build up my endurance before soccer starts in the fall.

Well, I should get going, but hopefully I’ll have my computer up and running soon, and then I’ll post more.