New Email Address
I've shifted back to my previous email address from my NCSU account. Since I graduated in the summer, my post-graduation access will end in a day or two. However, I have forwarding on the old account for about five months, so if you want to know what my "new" address is, drop me an email to my NCSU account, and I'll let you know.
My instant messaging screenname is still the same, and this blog should still be around (sorry, I've made it through 4+ years without Facebook, and I sure ain't going to start now).
Noncharacteristically, I haven't done much investigation for the upcoming winter weather "event" tomorrow morning. The word on the street is that moisture levels are going to be very low, and given the warm ground temps of late, there's going to be minimal risk of sticking. Still, I would advise caution during the event; rapid or relatively heavy amounts could cause some minor accumulation on troublesome surfaces in the typical locations (typically north of the Triangle).
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Prodigal degradation of network resources
Soopy-kun and I are prodigal degraders of network resources:
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Urgent Advisory for Users
The CEDS (Current Earth Destruction Status) from the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board appears to be loading slowly. Current observations appear to indicate that the planet Earth, contrary to popular demand, is not destroyed.
This blog apologizes for the inconvenience to data users. We urge them not to vent their frustration by the act of jumping into thorns, as it would not be a good idea at the time.
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Note to Vermont: It's probably a bad idea to try to secede
An AP article (Yahoo|Time) notes that a growing (well 8-13%) of people support secession in Vermont. Now, it is possible to get 8% of almost any group of people to say almost anything, but some of the supporters are very serious in their desire to secede for corruption, war, militarism, unresponsiveness, etc. In a sense, it's similar to the movement of "some" people to emigrate to Canada after the 2000 election, although the last time I checked, the population flux in that movement wasn't that large.
The supporters also feel that there are ways to make secession economically feasible. Realize of course that the federal government spends billions of dollars on the States that would have to be replaced, and the government would have to pay for things it hadn't had to pay for before that any state (differentiate from a State of the United States) would have to provide. But let's set those issues to the side.
Now I will admit that the text of the Constitution makes it an open question as to whether a State may secede and whether the federal government can compel them to rejoin. But my reaction upon reading the first paragraph or so was almost identical to the reaction of Russell Walker of the Brookings Institute: "I always thought the Civil War settled that." The key is that the Union, being the winners of the Civil War, settled the answer to this question per the military conflict. Walker goes on to say that maybe Vermont would have a case if they defeated the United States but "that's not going to happen." Sections 3 and 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment skirt this issue very lightly, and they could be construed (you'd have to do this very broadly!) to mean that the Union can settle insurrections.
So here's the gist: It doesn't matter how pissed off you are about national policy--you can't secede from the Union. Trust me--a bunch of other States have thought about this and tried (for reasons on both ends of the political spectrum). With a few exceptions (and the exceptions themselves are immaterial), the States bought into this Union thing willingly, and once they've bought in, they can't get out. No, you can't declare independence or repeal the ordinance of ratification (Vermont in this case actually directly ratified the Constitution, and was admitted as the fourteenth State, so they would most likely repeal their ordinance of ratification). If you want out, you have to choose one of the following options:
- The United States consents to secession (it's a little unusual, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible).
- Repeal or replacement of the Constitution pursuant to Article V or some other means (this is more or less the mechanism by which the Articles of Confederation were replaced).
- Require recognition by military conflict. Just a little hint: this typically doesn't work well without some serious forethought, and Presidents, irregardless of political affiliation, get a little pissed off when States threaten to secede. They generally respond by threatening to march the federal troops in and putting you in the gallows.
Now while I'm sure that some people are serious about this, this kind of movement is the overall effect of frustration with progress. And in the short term, it doesn't look very good. But in the long term, these things have tended to take care of themselves, and taking steps such as "nullification" to emphasize (or distort, depending on your perspective) federalism, are counterproductive.
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A brief note...
I will be less than accessible the next few days as I decide how to reformat my system. I finally finished backing up my system on DVD (Nero to the rescue!), and my hard drive is now wiped clean, so it'll be knoppix for at least a few days I think.
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Wow....
.
Wish I could make something like this (the original was made available per the GFDL and is available as linked.
Note: for some reason Firefox is rendering the GIF very poorly. It looks much smoother in Internet Explorer, which from what I can tell, is how it is supposed to look.
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Me: So what would you do if an elephant came to your store and wanted to buy Ar Tonelico?
T: I'd sell it to him. But he'd have to show ID if he wanted God of War.
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Uh oh....
I think Soopy-kun might kill me when he finds out what I did to his Puyo Puyo Fever fever mode records (let's just say that one of the five original records are still standing).
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Who copped to soopy-kun?
I have been betrayed...someone gave classified information to soopy-kun. Specifically, they gave him some information that in addition to the name, according to certain sources, can be used to tell a lot about a person.
Now lest soopy-kun thinks he has puzzled it out, I'm going to issue a categorical non-denial denial--there's absolutely no way that someone could possess such important information about me. That being said, the information is located in the public record, so he may be able to find out...or not (it is always possible that the information in the public record is inaccurate, but for prudential reasons, I refuse to confirm or deny this possibility).
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Laurie Williams was probably right....
It was said that the longer (and later) you work on a project without breaks means an increase in the bug injection rate. And of course, I happen to be writing backup schedules for the competition (for which I have to be on site at 7am). Neither will I get much sleep nor will I be able to put a high degree faith in these schedules, but they have to be made!
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Soopy-kun won't be very happy....
Instead of getting Nelson 3400, he got Mann 216. Let's see what his reaction will be to this....
Here's the screencap from the Ad Astra lookup:
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Sammy says....
Sammy: It's not going to catch it [detect the virus] because Symantec sucks.
Person: What do you recommend we use?
Sammy: Symantec.
(after Sammy demonstrated one of the trojans being delivered by email this morning by opening it on the classrooom machine in EB1 1007)
Sammy: You'll be hearing about this around campus soon.
Person: Because you just released it.
Don't you just love Sammy?
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England expects that every man will do his duty.
Since today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, I thought it appropriate to add put up the image of the coded naval flags for his message. I lifted the image from the Wikipedia article:
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Labels: other
It pays to be aggressive on TRACS
This weekend, Soopy-kun found out that he was not in ENG 221-003 as he thought he was; he was actually in ENG 221-002. All three sections of ENG 221 had been closed hard for several weeks, and classes start next Wednesday. But this evening, I spotted an open seat when I was randomly using the Open Section Inquiry tool as I have for the past day or so, saw the open seat, told him, and he snagged it.
I just love NCSU's live system, don't you?
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Labels: computing, other
Well...I guess we're going to be in the parking lot after all...
This is from Soopy-kun's ECE overlords:
Dear ECE student:
Your first test for your ECE classes this year will be to find your
classroom (and you thought differential calculus was hard!) As you
probably know, ECE has moved to a new building on Centennial campus,
called EB2 (Engineering Building 2 -- catchy name isn’t it?) There will be
no ECE classes in Daniels from now on. Almost all our classes are in EB2
or the building next door, EB1.
For your first assignment, figure out where North, South, East, and West
are. You will need them.
ECE lab sections will be in Daniels this semester, but do not worry about
labs now. No labs during the first week, and your instructors will give
you details about where and when labs will meet
Unfortunately, the construction of EB2 is still under way. Only the first
floor is open, and the only entrances are on the South side.
This type of email usually isn't a good thing. Stay tuned to see if the building starts to collapse.
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Jeopardy!
Wow--Jeopardy's coming to NCSU!!! October 1-2 at the RBC Center!!! And tryouts at NCSU August 23!!! (also at Fayetteville State, NCCU, UNC, Duke, and Southpoint). I AM SO GOING TO TRYOUT AND SO GOING TO GET TICKETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Announcements:
NCSU announcement
Jeopardy website announcement
WTVD announcement
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Labels: other
And we think we have it bad....
Report: Thousands of Chinese Students Riot
(AP)--Thousands of students rioted on a campus in southern China to protest high university fees, overcrowded dorms and unappealing cafeteria food, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Saturday.
More than 4,000 students overturned cars, threw bottles from windows and torched banners on June 25 at the Jiujiang Institute, a university jointly run by the military, the Chinese-language Oriental Daily News reported.
The students also destroyed phone booths on the campus. Total damage approached $120,000, the paper said.
The mayor of Jiujiang, Cai Xiaoming, visited the campus to mediate. The school agreed to several of the students' demands, ordering a reduction in the number of students per dormitory room from eight to six, the Oriental Daily News reported.
The institute also promised to pay back some fees, and to allow students to join a committee monitoring the food quality at the campus restaurants, the paper said.
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Labels: other
Wait What?!
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me will be in Raleigh on September 15 & 16. I don't think I can resist not going....
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Labels: other
So *that's* why the network went down in Reynolds!
This morning, there was an routine Sysnews post; fairly routine in fact:
--- ORIGINAL POST: 2005-05-23 10:56:12 ---
Reynolds Coliseum is currently experiencing network problems and we are investivating.
And then I hear that Reynolds is on fire. That would be an excellent reason for a network failure:
--- FOLLOWUP POST: 2005-05-23 11:16:16 ---
Reynolds Coliseum is on fire. Channel 5 is reporting that a transformer blew in the basement.
There are a number of news sources reporting the fire right now:
WRAL,
News & Observer,
NCSU homepage. You can probably find plenty of links to it somewhere else.
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One final laundry go
I'm totally out of clothes now, but there's only one week to go. But I can't really stretch it anymore. So I decide after my two exams today to do laundry.
There are only seven days left, so at the end of that I can finish up with whatever's at home. This means that I had to wash:
- About 8 or 9 shirts (some I need to sleep in)
- All the pajama bottoms (about 6 pairs I think)
- 8 pairs of shorts (1 for surplus)
- 9 pairs of underware (you really wanted to know that; 2 for surplus)
- 16 socks (1 pair surplus)
So I go downstairs to do the laundry (it's about 4 lighter loads in the washers), load all of the washers up, put in the detergent, and go to swipe my card. For those of you who don't know, I did put money on my card i) because it's slightly cheaper the cash and ii) it's pain in the rear end to get quarters all the time. Unfortunately the card reader says "CASH ONLY."
I go next door to the other half of the laundry suite, and as I feared it also said "CASH ONLY." I guess I shouldn't be surprised; it's the end of the semester so they put the readers on cash only mode.
Unfortunately, I have no quarters. And no $1 dollar bills either. Luckily, I had actually had cash on hand (I was
spending money for once), and after a little searching, located a five dollar bill. The quarter changer downstairs takes five dollar bills. Of course, if my luck had truly been off today, it would have been broken, out of quarters, or something (I could've gone to a near dorm in that case I guess).
Today my luck is in, it has quarters. Success. Rush down to the laundry room to put in the money and start the loads.
Each load in the washer is $1, four loads = $4. That leaves $1 for drying, and a dryer cycle is 25 cents, so I should be good, right?
Wrong! Those dryer cycles are only 24 minutes, and 24 minutes on those things isn't enough for most loads. So I need one more dollar in quarters. This time, I don't have to leave my laundry sitting and not washing (I have about 34 minutes for it to take washing). I also happened to have a $10 dollar bill, so I went down to the C-store, spent a $1, got $9 back, went back to the coin machine and got four more quarters. Interestingly enough, I also got a $2 bill from the cashier, so the day turns out nice after all.
Now if only my exams would somehow work out pleasantly like that. Four more to go after two today; the four being two on Thursday, one on Monday, and one next Tuesday. Hopefully they all work out.
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