#food If this entry had no title, it would be sad. 29 December 1998

And you would be sad.

Today my Uncle and his family gave me the X-files movie on VHS Cassette (I'm guessing this would be Julie and Auntie's idea). I watched it. It was similar to a long episode of the X-files that was pretty good. It's just not nearly as cool the second time around.

Later tonight Molly came over and we eventually gave birth to cookies. They were good despite the pain we went through (no, just forget I used the word "birth" in that last sentence).

My brother shall be returning soon. Last I heard he and Kelly were in Thailand.

Thank you and before I say goodnight, I leave you with a pleasant link. (Note: This will make sense to Run-Friends and perhaps nobody else, except maybe Su').

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#movies "Just so fast" OR Random 27 December 1998

So yesterday I went to my cousin's engagement party and hung out with Egypt, Su', Tina, Leena, Aradhana, Shiela, and whomever else. It was pretty fun, I guess. Err.. maybe. Tina, Leena, Su' and Aradhana had a real good dance (albeit there was a technical difficulty). Towards the latter part of the night there was dancing, and I hate dancing, but everyone, including my uncle pushed me to go on stage and I made a fool of myself since I have no talent in dancing at all. Odd that I listen to so much electronica and techno music.

Afterwards I was conned into going to Woodbury in a van that had way too many people in it. We (Tina, Leena, Aradhana, Titu, Sunita, &c) stayed at Tina and Leena's main floor. We stayed up till 5:30 AM or 6:00 AM just chatting watching half of Austin Powers, etc. It was fun It was nice to hang out with people that I hadn't hung with since oh, I dunno... hmm OSA which was in July. It was also neat meeting someone who's visited my school all the way from Milwaukee twice who is also a clone of Su'. I learned at 3:00 AM you get hungry and late at night everybody becomes like me... crazy. That, and people have wierd sleeping habbits, from kicking to enpillowing to talking. Quite amusing.

I left around noon. It was a nice break from being at home and not doing anything substantial. It's also nice to be with friends that I've known almost all my life.

Anyway... today Molly and I saw Patch Adams. I am definitely looking forward to the real Hunter "Patch" Adams visiting Allen Hall in February. My uncle and his family are coming over tonight. My little cousin, Joshna is very adorable. I saw her yesterday, although I never talk to my cousins. I feel bad, because soon they will be Germans.

I don't feel like writing much more tonight. So bye-bye.

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#friends Why am I never the corrupted one? 26 December 1998

Quantum transportation is neat. I think it will have a good impact on Quantum Computing. I'll give you some links on Quantum computing later, I have a few somewhere.

Don't look at the TV form more than a few seconds. It will pull you in. Turn it off.

What would happen if we killed the laugh track? Television would have to be funny on its own. Note that except in mockery, cartoons never use a laugh track. They stand funny on their own. Sitcoms rely on the laughtrack to goad you into laughing and then thinking that the show makes you laugh so it must be good and must be watched again. It's a catalyst for sitcoms. It's very deceptive and clever of the TV people.

I saw Prince of Egypt. It was fairly interesting. It connected the few Moses stories I knew together and took less time than actually reading Exodus. The animation is of a high level as well.

I saw Su' today. Su' is back, and I am happy. Unfortunately she leaves Sunday, but I will see her tomorrow at the wedding pre-reception (preception) that I am attending.

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#computers Merry Gift-X-Change Day 25 December 1998

I think what is most intimidating about Linux is that there is so much you can learn about using it. I mean, after a few days, it's easy to master Windows 95/98 or even most of NT. But with Linux, you keep learning all these things you can do. This happens when you have an OS that keeps being updated constantly.

A friend of mine emailed me with a well thought out email that seems to reflect a lot of what Yishan said. So we decided that we are going to start advocating a techno-democracy where Congress will be held in a dance club and ... no wait... a techno-democracy where people use technology to be a part of the government. We would have Representatives create bills and then for several of the bills we would hold a national referrendum. This is all possible thanks to lengthy encryption/verification systems. And it's true to the nature of democracy. You know - majority rules.

Looks like my favorite OEM, Micron is hiring the Borg-chick from Star Trek.

I have a new respect for my UIUC peers thanks to this article in Popular Science (December 1998). A consortium consisting of 20 Chicago suburb school districts (a good portion of UIUC are alumnus of these schools) decided to be included as it's own country in TIMSS tests that are given to countries to figure out where they rank against the rest of the world. The Consortium was fifth in the world for Mathematics and second for Science. I feel very good about this fact. The consortium uses different standards that sound remarkably like the standards Minnesota school use. At least for mathematics. They seem to be a lot better in teaching science. Check this magazine article out it's on page 92, very neat so far.

On a sad note, I have no sound on my computer.

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#friends dave@icosahedron 23 December 1998

Well I completely formatted my NT Server system at home and installed Debian Linux. It's been quite an experience. I've installed it perhaps three times, but each time I learned something new. In all actuallity I didn't need to reinstall it so many times, it just seemed like a neat idea each time. So now, I finally have my computer working and Netscape works too.

So here's what I like. It loads fast. It's very configurable. There's a lot of software I can now download. Software is a cinch to install thanks to apt-get and dselect. What I dislike is the window environment (Window Maker). Of course I'm going to be changing that after I send this message. Several window managers have been created for X-Windows. I also dislike Netscape. It looks ugly when it renders forms and it crashes in certain places. Plus, I never really liked it for windows.

Life has been pleasant since I got back. Saturday night I was visited by Molly and my alter-ego, Katie. Sunday I finally recieved my luggage. I don't remember Monday. Tuesday we visited Katie to see how she was. Wednesday (today) we (Adam, Marc, Molly and I) made pancakes. They were good. We then went to the MSP airport and went to pick up Mike Jorgenson, whose flight was an hour late. We proceded to UNOs pizzeria, and ate delicious pizza. We then went back to my house to play Dr. Mario and pick up my gift for Katie and we then dropped it off.

Humourous things started happening afterwards. There was a knock at Katie's door and Mike was the closest one to it, so he answered. Lo and behold it was Mike's arch-enemy, Tanya Zhu. They don't speak to each other which makes things very interesting seeing as they both have information that when exchanged could add to a decent conversation. Anyway, I'll try to wrestle a picture featuring Tanya and Mike from Katie and post it.

We (reduced to Molly and I) decided at about 4:30 to drop off Mike Jorgenson since his parents were expecting him to be picked up at 10:16 and dropped off within a few hours, not at 4:30. Well that's what we figured. Then Molly and I came home and then she left and I went with my parent to eat at First Wok, a decent Chinese Restaurant. I was going to go to Katie's but I felt tired, and I'd rather save up my energy and do stuff tomorrow. Although tomorrow is X-mas eve. I'll figure out something to do.

It's strange. When I type my journal at school, I feel like I'm writing for my friends not at UIUC. When I type my journal here, I feel like I'm typing it for my friends at UIUC.

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#friends I am home 20 December 1998

I am at home. I miss the Allen Hall entities already.

My trip back wasn't that great. After Eric dropped me off I checked in my luggage. My plane was ten minutes late at least. I noticed a friend, Shiela, on the plane, but made no contact. We touched down and got off the plane at about 4:30 in DTW. I ran to my gate D4 for my 4:40 flight from the G concourse. It was maybe 4:37, and I found that the gate changed to E12. I missed the flight. I found Shiela missed it too and we ended up taking a 6:40 flight to Minneapolis, which was also very late at arriving. We got there almost a half an hour late. I had trouble with the luggage. I waited almost an hour and then found out that my luggage never left Champaign (thank you very much Mesaba/Northwest). It finally arrived a few hours ago, but it would have been nice to not waste that hour. So I'm home. I'll try to post more entries lest I incur the wrath of Caroline.

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#computers NT for another semester. 19 December 1998

From the land of Kuwait, the mighty US launches an assault on Iraq.

My computer's been producing a lot of heat recently, and I thought placement may have been a problem, so I moved it to the ground where their is more ambient air flow. Tuesday I realized the massive fan was damaged. So I removed it and yesterday I purchased a smaller weaker fan, that will hopefully suffice. The computer isn't as hot, so I think it will suffice.

Also, Tuesday I decided to format my C:\ drive where all my programs reside. It took me hours to figure out that I needed to remove my Jaz SCSI card and then install NT, otherwise there'd be conflicts. It took me a very long time to figure this out. I installed NT alone, on a new video card, under Windows 98, everything. I was about to give up and become like Hackel, but I finally figured it out. Actually I was thinking about BeOS, because that has NTFS compatibility and looks pretty and is fast.

It took me an entire day to install everything so it was back to normal. I am going to format again in six months, unless Windows 2000 Pro is being released around that time, then I will wait and upgrade. I need to get better at restoring my system. Although, it only took a day, which is amazing.

Now I am running Litestep, which after sufficient tweaking runs pretty nicely. Unfortunately they don't have an easy way to add programs to the warf bar. I decided that that doesn't matter so much, because I only use a handful of things, and it's fun to make my own icons. The Virtual Window Manager will take a while to get used to as well. I've resolved most issues that made me retreat to explorer, so I think Litestep'll stay.

It feels like a perpetual weekend with no homework, it's nice:)

Here is some information on Northwestern's Photon Chip. It's basically that uses photons rather than electrons for computing. Quantum Tunnelling is used instead of gates. I forget what gates are, and I have no idea what Quantum Tunnelling is.

I'm somewhat scared of the consequences of our attack on Iraq in respect to opposition countries. Russia is not going to ratify START II and they have a poor view of our master Klynton err Clinton.

Pricescan.com is a nice interface. Use it when you buy stuff.

Finished my final final tonight, it felt good. I made some pasta too, it was also good. I'm ready to return home and relax for a month. Basic flight information is as follows: I leave CMI at 1:45PM. I arrive in DTW 4:10PM. I immediately leave DTW at 4:40PM and arrive at MSP 5:44PM via flight NW3306. Upon arriving I'll probably sleep.:)

I don't know how often I'll be able to update this page over break. My computer at home will be getting a new CD-ROM and a new Operating System (Debian Linux). Until then, the computer will remain very slow, since WinNT server is very bogged down )it's a bit hard to reinstall without that CD-ROM). Due to this slowness I'll refrain from using my computer whenever possible (I may leave it online a lot though). I'll spare you the details.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. My old ryche site got picked as a cool site...

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#politics War 16 December 1998

War. I have an aversion to war and this war. It would be nice if we could do something besides a war, like a tactical mission. Take over it's power centers without loosing too many people. The war will do. I do not believe this war has anything to do with the impeachment. The war would have happened anyway. I believe that we are going to war for the right reasons: so the weapons aren't in the hands of the bad people. In our case the bad people is Iraq. They are a threat to us. It's foolish to think that no country will have nuclear weapons. It isn't, however, foolish to think that the countries that do have them will not use them. If going to war means lowering the chance of a nuclear conflict, then let us go to war.

I wish people would shut up about Ramadan. It doesn't matter that the war may go into Ramadan. Ramadan is a month long fasting for Muslims. It teaches them to give up things or restraint. Basically you go the day without water and food, and at night you can eat and drink (although not in excess to make up for the lack of food, this would defeat the purpose). If Iraqi soldiers are mostly Muslim we may think that we are fighting a bunch of thirsty, hungry people. I have been told, however, that Islam is an understanding religion. It is absurd to risk your life in order to follow a rule so strictly, so exceptions can be made. I, however, do not really think the religious details mean that much. We are going to war. We will fight whenever we feel like. The fact that it is Ramadan, may make it easier for us. That's too bad. What if we went to war against a primarily Jewish state like New York... err Israel. Would we have ethical questions about fighting on Shabaat? I mean, the Jews can't use technology during Shabaat.

So, now that we are plunged into war, we should make it fast. We need not lose lives or inanimate resources over Iraq and its transgressions. After the war, we will install whatever government we please. The best idea would be to create a satellite government in Iraq. That, however, is unlikely. We should be conquerers, not destroyers.

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#web development Happy Channukkahhhaaahhhhh! 15 December 1998

World Wide Jewish Conspiracy trains even the youngest of conspirators in their rituals.

The monitor that I desire was featured in an ad for Southpark. Those creators are cool. I knew they used an O2, I didn't know they bought the coolest monitor for it. Somebody buy me this monitor. Once it drops to around $1K, I'm game for buying it:)

Guess which post card I sent in to pair Networks.

I had a cool dream on my beanbag last night... I guess for some reason my dorm was somewhere else, it was like a warehouse type place, the rooms were much larger. Anyway, I went outside of the building and decided I'd be back really soon so I could just leave the door shut, not locked. I come back and Jack is in the room and I see stuff is moved around and I don't see my computer... none of it. I ask Jack and he says he doesn't know where it is. So it was stolen. Well for some reason I just find an IBM Laptop, but I am still worried about my computer, because I was working on a paper or something and well it was stolen, which sucks. So I guess I tell my brother that it's been stolen and we end up like seeing these boxes of stuff and we look at it, and I guess one of them has my machine in it. We had to mark it so they wouldn't get rid of it, and then we eventually got it back I guess. I wondered about my monitor as well. I explained why it was my fault, but my brother understood. Well I just thought it was really strange. If you ever want to make someone really worried. Steal their computer.

Since this is such a geek entry, Apple is coming out with an iMac Notebook. You could save yourself the money and just buy an Etch and Sketch.

I purchased a new HEPA air filter as advised by my brother. Supposedly it is shooting out air that will make it easy for me to breathe... we'll see. I also bought this watch band that cost me a fourth of what my watch cost. Although, my watch looks like it's brand new, which is nice.

Apparently the Illini Precision Dance Team was selling "Tuck Ins" for $2-$5 last week. They tuck you in bed, read you a story and kiss you goodnight. I find this odd. Actually it said packages from $2-$5. It's like a prostituion ring, in training.

Sunday I was very sick. I don't know what I had, but it forced me to sleep most of the day. Monday I was still sick and forced myself to do a paper. After finishing my math final I walked home and I was very very cold. I was shivering. This was with three layers. I came back to my hall and my temperature returned to normal. Today I feel much better.

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