Clean is good, a mantra I have recently accepted. This is mostly because through a laborious process which failed, I lost my main partition. The last incarnation of this system had partitions setup for Windows 98, Windows 2000, linux, a linux swap file and a FAT32 data partition (MP3s, thanks). No matter how hard I tried, I could only boot into linux using a boot disk. The Windows 2000 bootloader was not smart enough to load it. Originally, I had Red Hat 6.2 installed. Feeling adventurous, I decided to install CAEN linux instead. Who wouldn't want to run a distribution of linux created at their own university?! For some odd reason, CAEN tried to use my network card at IRQ 0, which just does not work. Also, since it is based on Red Hat 6.1, it did not properly recognize my GeForce video card. Screw that, time to go back to Red Hat 6.2. Oops, now that is trying to set my NIC to IRQ 0! Screw that, lets go with linux Mandrake. The NIC was properly configured for IRQ 5, but it still wouldn't see my gateway. I figured I could work on that later. I got x windows working just fine, but by this point I figured I should get some work done. Since all of my course hyperlinks were stored in Windows 2000, a quick reboot should get me going. Reboot, walk away, come back to linux. WTF? Reboot, wait for my Windows 2000 bootloader menu to show. Linux. WTF?! Reboot, look for any promising signs, boot into linux. Try to mount my windows partition, get weird errors about bad disklabels and superblocks. At this point, I knew what the outcome was. My C drive got fried by Linux Mandrake because it was not smart enough to ask me where I wanted the boot information. All of my documents from the past year, all my conversations, anything: GONE. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now....

I know, I know... this sporatic posting has got to stop. I apologize. Life has been very hectic lately, and I am just now getting used to the new semester. Let's start from the most recent and work our way back... Today was my first discussion section for CS 280 (C++ programming). We went over the mysteries that are FTP, telnet, pico, and the g++ compiler. Aside to that obvious sarcasm, the GSI (graduate student instructor (read: TA)) is quite foreign, and impossible to understand. No longer will my prescence be necessary at that class. During 280 lecture yesterday, I sat beside an overly stressed sorority girl. The stereotype was in full effect, as she complained about how she had no time for programming since it was rush week and she had to party. She also complained about the complexity of UNIX. All she has to do was type three well-documented commands. We are even allowed to use Visual C++ for most of the work! Dumb blonde. Two nights ago was scary. The main server at The Michigan Daily went down. All of the stories, production templates, everything. Couldn't do anything to the server remotely, so I dragged my ass to StudPub. Logged in at the console, and it turns out that all 4 of the data hard drives had crashed, destroyed their disklabels, and could not be accessed with AppleTalk. After an hour of scratching my head as to what would cause the 4 data drives to crash all at once, yet keep the operating system drive intact, we decided to blame the weather. "Lightning", we told all of the frustrated Daily staff. Oddly enough, even without disklabels, the drives randomly came back up for an hour. Down for 2 more hours, and now they have been up for 48. Stability, not my concern. Other than that, life has been boring.... Everyone needs to tell me what makes their life interesting.

Finally! The FCC wants open source IM protocol. No longer would AIM use proprietary code or servers, and all IM types could talk to each other.

I got confused when the flight attendant woke me up to ask if I wanted a wet-nap, because I was well on my way to having one on my own.

The Onion becomes funny again. 'Equestrian diving' and 'Greco-Roman fucking' are funny, but the image is still the best.

Kitchen: Selecting Blendolini Causes Choco-Banana Shake Hang, Microsoft at it's best.