Posts from — September 2004

Google Labs Aptitude Test. I’ll give it a try this weekend… if I get enough answers, I’ll send it in.

Quick note before sleep..
Today I was scheduled to work at Career Services from 1-4. When I got there, Kirk (my boss) seemed on edge since the server was down and the networking subsystem on the machine seemed to be nonfunctional. To make a long story short, I stayed until past 9PM with him, installing windows multiple times, configuring IIS and SQL server. It was painful and tiring, but I’m glad I was helpful (I solved the last problem that got the site working). I learned some stuff, too, so I’m now a bit better at working with IIS (5 & 6) and SQL Server (7.. ugh). He got me dinner, too, which was nice since I would have died from working over 8 hours straight. Working on this was unique because we needed the server to be back up, there was no other option and no chance of delay. It’s interviewing season, so the software on the server is really mission-critical. We just had to stay until it worked.

Kickball was nice tonight. The teams were just the right size that I didn’t get tired but I got to kick a lot. I’m 1000x better than I was a couple of years ago.

Since I know the net isn’t quite the same without my incessant posting..

Take a look at this video soliloquy, a reading of one of those nigerian email scams. Best of all, he reads it complete with typos. Bravo!

Ah, a nice late night. That’s what I get for napping so much today. I learned a fair amount about writing Firefox extensions, but I still have a lot to learn before I have even basic proficiency. It’s really hard, but it’ll be a great skill to have.

Just another reason The Daily Show rocks.

Movies I haven’t seen or haven’t seen in full, in no particular order:
Reservoir Dogs
The Usual Suspects
Donnie Darko
Rocky (any of them)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Schindler’s List
American History X
Mystic River
Trainspotting

Movies I feel like watching again:
Kill Bill
Star Wars (original trilogy)
Fight Club
It’s a Wonderful Life
The Life of Brian
The Shawshank Redemption
Life is Beautiful (with subtitles, not dubbed)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (same as above)
Memento
Requiem for a Dream
The Hudsucker Proxy
Magnolia
Toy Story 1 or 2

I think that’s quite a variety. Ah, how did I forget to list “The Notebook“?

Philip Greenspun: Outsource university administration to India or China?.

I hadn’t thought about that before. I’d say it’s somewhat feasible, at a cost, though it surely wouldn’t be popular.

I’ve started reading Tom’s Hardware ever since Tim replaced his motherboard, processor, etc. I’m thinking about building a new desktop after this semester. This computer is now over 3 years old and is beginning to show its age. My monitors, video card and speakers will both still be good, but a faster processor, motherboard and disks would be helpful. I hope RAM prices go down before then.

I’m thinking about spending $700 on a processor, motherboard, RAM and a new case. Maybe a new hard drive, too, I’m not quite sure.

I listened to an hourlong interview with Joel Spolsky of Joel On Software today. Really good stuff, I definitely recommend it. He’s by far my favorite person to read online. Unfortunately, there haven’t been too many large updates to his site lately (I’ve already read each article in the archives at least a couple of times).

Dell’s support system is such a pain. Maybe not the worst, but it’s still such a painful system to use.