Interesting Stuff

Today is Rachel’s birthday, and everyone is here for it! Her family drove in from Texas, and Robert, Amanda, and John came to visit too. Last night we all (12 of us) went to Buca’s to celebrate, and it was wonderful. That place has such a fun atmosphere. And the food! We had a large enough group that we could order a bunch of things, and everyone could have a little of everything. We were all stuffed by the end. Then, we went back to Case, and talked and stuff. Then, Rachel had cookie-cakes for us to eat (I don’t know what they’re really called). It was a cookie that was the size of a large pizza. We each got a slice, and some ice cream. Things were pretty great. We played some pool, and I got to show off my mad jumping skillz (ok, they’re not mad, and barely skillful, but I can consistently jump the ball now! Aiming is another problem altogether, though…).

For the record, I did get one screen window up before Robert arrived. He was quite pleased with it, and I think it’s really nice. Rachel’s sister is sleeping over in Rachel’s room, so Robert slept in here. We know that I like the room warmer than him, but wow! The AC was blowing the entire night, and I was freezing. So today I made the chance discovery that the thermostat that we’ve been playing with only controls half of the AC in the library, including the air vent by my bed, but not the one by Robert. This explains why he thinks it’s so hot while I’m shivering. We’ll use the other thermostat today, and see if things improve.

Well, I’m slowly but surely moving my stuff out of Kenny’s room and into mine. I’ve gotten all of the important stuff out, and I’m going through the unimportant bits now. It’ll be done by the time summer is over (at least it better be – Kenny wouldn’t like moving in and finding my stuff all over).

On Tuesday, Andrew and I went to the ACBL sectionals tournament. We were in the stratified pairs competition, so we were only competing against other players with less than 20 masterpoints (I have 0 and Andrew has 5). We did pretty well – we took 5th place out of 7 partnerships overall, and took 2nd out of 3 in our stratification. I’d like to go back soon. We’ll see.

Mac bought the car he’s been looking at for a bit – it’s an offwhite Toyota pickup that seats 2 and a half. 4 cylinder engine with a lot of pick-up. I got to ride in it a bit because we did errands and bought stuff tonight. Food, power strips, and some mesh to make screens for the windows. It’s summer, so the bugs are out in force. Being a college student, I’m up late and keep my lights on after dark. Let me tell you, when the windows are open, the bugs come in droves! I figure that with mesh, velcro, and a liberal application of duct tape, I should be able to make screens for the windows and keep the place mostly bug-free. Robert is coming on Friday for Rachel’s birthday, so I hope I can do this by then. I doubt it, but it’s nice to have goals. As Douglas Adams once said, “I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.”

Oh! I now have 2 monitors hooked up to my computer! I got the 2nd monitor from Travis at the start of summer, and had been looking into getting a graphics card. Then, yesterday, Mac mentioned that the CS Staff had been cleaning out the machine room, and were going to throw out a bunch of 2nd-rate graphics cards, and I should go get one first. I only wanted a crappy one anyway, so I got it. The one I picked out happened to not work, but a second card did, and life is good. At 1024×768 it can only support 16bit color, but I don’t really care; I’m not using the 2nd monitor for raytracing or games.

On the academic side of things, Clair finally got DIRCOL up and working yesterday, so I can start building a model in that. Now I just need to talk to Prof. DePillis a little about the finer points of the system. Raugh thinks I will have a paper to publish by the end of the summer, but I’m not so sure. Time will tell. and it would be pretty neat. Tomorrow’s a Stouffer talk, so I won’t get too much done in the morning. Still, I’ll be getting paid to eat food and listen to a prof talk about what they’re doing this summer, which is always interesting.

So… yeah. All in all, life is pretty nice right now. Having said that, I’m going to sleep.