Monday, April 10th of the year 2000
The new computer is officially overclocked now. The Celeron 366MHz is working perfectly at 550MHz. I have the network card installed and configured in Linux, but something is keeping me from connecting to the intranet. Once the new hard drive is here, I will actually be able to play around with the system. Why make a whole bunch of configurations now when I am just going to wipe that hard drive and install a new one?
9:46 AM
Note to self: Learn how to control the weather. I do not want there to be more snow this week.
9:43 AM
Note to self: Do not stay up until 3 AM. Only one more week of class, then finals. I need sleep. Do NOT stay up until 3 AM, no matter what is keeping you up. :-)
Sunday, April 9th of the year 2000
"That is so totally tits." -- Mike #1 through AIM. Having not seen a recent episode of South Park where Cartman replaces the word 'cool' with 'tits', I had no clue what he was babbling about. This comment was in reference to the announcement of the Fifth Star Trek series. I used to watch Star Trek: TNG every week, then watched the first three seasons of DS9. I did not have the time to watch the show anymore, and it just fell out of my usual pattern. I tried to watch Voyager, but all of the great aspects of TNG and DS9 (character development, technology, etc) were lacking. Maybe this show will make up for it...
Stolen off some weblog that I forgot to remember: The funniest 404 page I have seen yet.
10:00 PM
More friends in the weblog community. The Daily Doozer has linked up to our Chaos Terminal with a simple "Nice blog.".
5:35 PM
Alright! This weekend was a complete waste. That is okay, simply because of what happened just previously. All of my work on Beer and ht://Dig paid off, finally! The search engine for The Michigan Daily is completely operational. I am not taking full credit, but at least some. You can look up my name (more specifically, Bibik), and it will show you the page where I am said to be a Systems Analyst. I was pleased to see this email sent out to the entire staff of the Daily:
From: takinmus@umich.edu
To: daily.staff@umich.edu
Subject: search engine works
Body:
All hail Mike Bibik
-Toyin
Other than that, the weekend was blah. I did get my pictures developed finally. I got them for free because of my Gretag Lab+ skills. The machine had jammed and the normal spool of 4 inch paper was empty, and no one there knew how to fix it. I whipped out the dark bag and slapped in a new spool, then removed the jam. Funny enough, I scanned in the three most important things in my life: my car, my kitties, and my friends (more specifically, Sarah). The cat on the right is the new one, Lucky. Here is a much better close up. As for the picture with Sarah, my hand is NOT on her butt. It may look like that, but I know that my hand was rotated away from her. Do you think that someone as smooth as myself would pull such a low class manuever?
To top off the weekend, I ended up watching The Matrix with my parents. Oddly enough, they liked it. Mum, of course, said there was too much violence. Cheryl thought they got the idea from Edgar Cayce and his out-of-body ideas. BS.
Friday, April 7th of the year 2000
Time for an über-update!
Just today, Sarah and I discussed CollegeClub.com. I had not been to that site in over 6 months, and it has radically changed since then. Each large school has an extensive photo gallery, and Umich had a huge collection! I realized that everytime I was stopped and asked to have my picture taken on campus, it must have been them. It had happened at least 5 times. This was all quite coincidental because just today, in the Michigan Union, someone from College Club asked Jamie and I if we wanted our picture taken. She declined, so I guess my grinning mug won't be on their site anytime soon.
Today I had the pleasure of shutting down one of the main servers at work. We had installed one of my network cards in an attempt to achieve 100 mb full duplex, but I needed it back. The shutdown sequence completed without a hitch, but then I couldn't get the case open! This server was housed in an old Mac 7600, which is known to have The World's Worst Case Design©. I practically ripped it off, got my card, and rebooted. All is well.
Speaking of work, I labored on the ht://Dig project until 2 AM, woke up at 9 AM and started working again for 2 hours, then 2 more hours at 4 PM. The digger/indexer is currently toiling away and it is up to 90 PERCENT CPU usage. That is not good for a server. If this does not work, I am making the building manager buy a new server.
Celera, a relatively small company, has (almost) completed the Human Genome Project. They have completed determining the chemical breakdown of the entire genome of one person, now they just need to assemble the data. Give them 6 weeks, and it's done.
More importantly, a new Shaft movie is coming out, with Sam the Man. Also, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is in the works. You can also see trailers for both: LOTR, Shaft.
Thursday, April 6th of the year 2000
I am a very bad weblogger. I almost didn't update for the day! I have been extremely busy, unfortunately. Physics exam went fairly well, especially since Jeremy and I seem to come to a common answer on a few of the hard questions. On a less happy note, I got my Genetics exam back, and it was harsh! Everyone else did poorly, and we get to drop an exam, so who cares?
More personal babble: It seems that I have finally figured out the problems with ht://Dig, the Michigan Daily online search indexer. The guys at work and I have been wrestling with it for at least a week now. One less thing for me to worry about.
Wednesday, April 5th of the year 2000
Mike's New Computer: 1, Mike: 25. I wiped that .8 gig hard drive and installed Red Hat 6.2. This is the first time that a Linux install has gone flawlessly for me. I have too much homework to modify the system, but everything is in order. I will try to actually overclock the system once the 30 gig hard drive comes in.
3:44 PM
Wow, such service! I broke down and purchased a 30 gig hard drive today. When my billing and shipping addresses did not coalesce, the House of Computers called me immediately. I informed them that I just got off the phone with Capital One, who graciously allowed an alternate shipping address. He said he would make sure the order went through correctly, and would be shipped by tomorrow. Slick.
1:16 PM
Mike's New Computer: 1, Mike: 1. Finally, some progress! I had a satori today just before Physics discussion began. Needless to say, I skipped class. Two problems surfaced and were fixed. The 2.2 gig hard drive I was using was an old one I had laying around. I now remember why I wasn't using it -- it doesn't work! I should just throw stuff away. Also, it seems that new ATX motherboards cannot use old AT keyboards, even with an adapter. Using Alpha Mike's keyboard and the .8 gig hard drive I used for storing MP3s, I got the system to boot. Now I just need to buy a new hard drive, keyboard and floppy drive! The old floppy drive was decimated -- the IDE connector region is brown with oxidation, the 12 V pin on the power connector actually grew in size due to the extreme heat applied, and it smells as a combination of sweat socks, old condoms, and beef. Yes, it is that bad.
Tuesday, April 4th of the year 2000
Mike's New Computer: 1, Mike: 0. I finally received the Asus P3V4X and proceeded to install everything. I know that everything was installed correctly (I am anal). Well, let me just quote the post I sent to alt.comp.hardware.overclocking:
After finally receiving my Asus P3V4X, I attempted to assemble this system:
Aforementioned P3V4X
Celeron 366 on an MSI slotket
128mb PC133 RAM
300W ATX full tower case
2.2 gig WD hard drive
Asus GeForce
Floppy drive
40x CD-ROM
After making sure all of the connection were correct, I hit the power button. About 2 seconds later, a medium sized cloud of white smoked exited through the power supply fan. I quickly shut the system down, and hunted for the problem. Turns out the red wire on the floppy power Molex connector was completely trashed. The plastic had melted off, the wire was black, and had snapped in two. On top of that, the connector was practically fused to the floppy drive.
All of the settings were on Auto for this first attempt. The MSI slotket was set to CPU define, the motherboard was on Auto Detect, nothing was yet overclocked. Here is another weird error: After I disconnected the floppy and isolated the bad connector, I booted the system again. After going into the BIOS, the CPU was being clocked at 5.5 x 133MHz = 733MHz! After this, the system froze. I attempted to manually define 66MHz for the system and it will no longer boot no matter what setting.
Needless to say, I am pissed off.
2:52 PM
Snow? Grr...
11:34 AM
Unfortunately, I was right about Michigan State winning the NCAA championship. Now I get to hear even more stupid MSU students tell me their school is better than my beloved University simply because of their athletic program (no offense to the non-stupid MSU students I know!). I can just direct these buffoons to one of many college rank websites. Where are you on that list, MSU? Oh, so sorry, you didn't even make the top 50. As for Public schools specifically, UMich : 3rd, MSU: 31st. Heh.
Ok, enough putting people in their place. Linux 2.4 is rapidly approaching final release candidate status. Great improvements in the file system, hardware support (USB!), and kernel structure are in store.
12:01 AM
I guess I had a little bit too much on my mind today, since I completely forgot to register for my classes! My scheduled time was 4:00 PM, but I had no difficulty getting it done at 11:30 PM tonight. Checking out my future schedule online lead me to see the picture at the right. Finally, the university states I am a SENIOR... at only the age of 19.
Monday, April 3rd of the year 2000
Pulic Service Announcement: What you do not know can and will hurt you.
On a less psychotic note, DARPA is developing exoskeletons! The article linked is a bit complex, but think of one thing: Battle Suits. Here is something else that can kill you: Top Signs That Watching the Simpsons Has Had a Big Impact on Your Life. With over 1400 entries, you can be busy for quite some time.
Sunday, April 2nd of the year 2000
No! I feel my funk quotient dropping now that they have taken down Pimpwar.
6:52 PM
Jamie and I are both getting quite excited about our apartment for next year. Our ideas are not terribly original, but slick nonetheless! The list as of now:
- The corner shelf unit with alternating fish bowls (with different colored marbles/pebbles) and plants (possibly bonsai trees)
- Candles everywhere
- Enough plantlife for 4 apartments
- An overall Asiatic/naturistic decor
As for my room, the aforementioned pair of Japanese flags will be the centerpiece. I will be 20, I wont do posters anymore. At least one wall of the room will be taken up by computers. Yes, plural. The rest of the ideas are coalescing over time.
6:52 PM
The film Burnt by the Sun was my introduction to Russian cinema, and from what I saw last night, the character development is outstanding. Reminds me of Dostoevsky. American media is just garbage though! Nsync sets records for the sheer volume of albums sold, and 'God' is cancelled. Our culture deserves to be looked down upon, so I pledge alligance to Japan. Today I purchased a Japanese national flag and a Japanese Battle Flag.
3:04 AM
I HATE Daylight Savings Time. It was 1:55 AM less than 10 minutes ago. I want my hour back!
Saturday, April 1st of the year 2000
The Residental College here at UMich can be shut down for all I care. I was supposed to take a History course that is also cross listed in RC, but now I cannot because I am not in the RC! I have reworked my entire schedule by dropping that course and picking up two others. I guess I like to make life miserable, since I am currently finishing a hard semester and now I choose a concurrent one.
5:50 PM
Hmm, a quick update to the www.churchill.k12.mi.com domain questions. It seems that almost all of the high schools in my area have a domain similar to that (such as www.stevenson.k12.mi.com and www.franklin.k12.mi.com) and even some of the high schools through out the entire state (www.okemos.k12.mi.com is taken). Maybe Domains.com is just sitting them for Michigan schools, or it is more likely that they snatched them all up to extort money from the schools. :-)
5:39 PM
Workout #3 in 4 days! After cardio, I attempted to do some of the wrestling exercises/maneuvers that I remembered from high school. The back bending bridge where you support your entire body weight on your neck was not difficult on my neck, but on the top of my head! It feels like I took an axe kick directly to apex of my cranium. Ok, back to that 'high school' link: It seems that someone has picked up the domain name for my old high school, but no one is doing anything with it. A whois search reveals nothing. Maybe I can convince the school to let a certain alumnus to take the duty of designing the site....
3:18 PM
Alright! A cheat sheet for Unix file permissions! For some reason, I can never remember these:
--- 0
--x 1
-w- 2
-wx 3
r-- 4
r-x 5
rw- 6
rwx 7
Mutability is the name of the game. No longer am I going home for the weekend, plus a few things are up in the air with my friends. Also, I have yet to recieve the two things I have ordered! (Shogo and the P3V4X). I guess I should not complain about the motherboard since it was only ordered 5 days ago, but that eBay bid went through almost 20 days ago! I guess this sort of thing happens when you deal with people from Canadaland.