Saturday, October 31, 2009
On Mondays and Wednesdays, I've been having an interesting problem: two almost-adjacent two-hour classes that require me to run back to my dorm after the first class is over, so that I can recharge my laptop. Annoying? You bet.
I researched an extra battery but found out that one would run me $180, and I wouldn't be able to use my docking station with it. So I came up with this:
"This" being a 180-watt-hour battery pack constructed from two UPS batteries and a car adapter. Now I can run around for eleven hours without having to plug in - although my ability to run around is somewhat hindered by the fact that they weigh in at 5.2kg. Either way, better than spending $180.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Today I brought my watch to have the battery replaced - I figured that was a simple enough process. After trying Wal-Mart and Target, both of which told me they didn't service digital watches (strange, seeing as Wal-Mart is usually where I bring the watch to replace the battery), I brought it to a small local jeweler and ended up having to pay them eleven dollars just to replace it.
But it doesn't end there. When the jeweler's gave me the watch back, I found out that none of the buttons on the side were functional. Furthermore, part of the seal on the back was hanging out, as if it had been stretched out of proportion. When I mentioned this, they simply told me that their policy didn't say that the watch needed to work, but they gave me a new battery, so I had to pay for it anyway.
Seems like people will do anything for money nowadays, even high-profile places like jewelers' shops. In any case, I bought another (identical) watch off Amazon just now, which should ship within the week.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Those guys actually went around to pick people up, too.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Apparently someone that received one of the aforementioned handouts decided it would be a great idea to add insult to injury. The guilty party scanned the handout containing all of my contact information and posted it to the armpit of the Internet, 4chan's /b/ board.
It's amazing how long you can spend safeguarding your privacy, yet how quickly those barriers that you've erected can be broken down with one fell swoop.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Some wonderful people decided to hand out roughly 150 flyers containing my name, phone number, e-mail and IM addresses, and Skype name to various people on campus. Now that I'm receiving a deluge of phone calls and e-mails IMs and Skype requests, I figured I'd let everybody know that I may end up changing my phone number and e-mail address if things keep up like this.
Thanks a lot, world.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Antony has sometimes spoken to me about how he drinks Coke out of cans, and with a straw. For various reasons, cost being the number one , I used to buy two-liter bottles in bulk and drink them out of a mug (to Antony: a cheap plastic one I got for Christmas, not expensive or glass or whatever). Since I was going to college I figured I'd stock up on cans, since they're easier to transport and would actually fit in the refrigerator here.
This turned out to be a bad idea. Why? Two weeks ago I had 72 cans, and now I have zero. I guess I needed to stay awake somehow.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
I don't know what's so hard about operating a microwave: turn the dial and, if necessary, add some water. Yet in two weeks my entire residence hall has been evacuated three times, due to someone not following the "1-2-3" directions on the back of their food, then leaving the microwave and letting the entire floor fill with smoke.
This will become commonplace, I take it?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Somehow I'm not at all surprised that everybody in the laundry room has a laptop on them.
Does anyone remember my giant Wi-Fi antenna? I think it's now safe to say that I no longer need it; there are Wi-Fi access points located every fifty meters or so. The only place I've been so far where I haven't been able to get a Wi-Fi signal is the parking lot - residence halls, dining commons, laundry room, everything has Wi-Fi. It's a welcome change from having to use an antenna just to get a signal in some classrooms.
I wouldn't think that a big part of life in a residence hall involves Nerf guns, but so far I've seen quite a few Nerf dogfights in the halls. I'd get one myself, but then I'd be spending money on toys, so I'll pass for now. In the meantime I've been chucking empty Mountain Dew cans at people who attack me instead.
On a similar note, I'm trying to get the people living on my floor to contribute their empty Mountain Dew cans. If I can get 400 cans by Christmas time, I'll build our floor a Mountain Dewmas Tree and put it in the common area.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Here's a short list of things I've learned, considered, and/or regretted these past few days:
- When someone pulls the fire alarm at 6AM, you should grab a jacket, NOT your computer. Rochester is cold in the morning.
- Always take a towel to the showers. An embarrassing mistake I made my first day, I ended up drying off with a shirt.
- I really should have finished my streaming server before coming here. Aside from WITR 89.7, the campus FM station, there isn't an awful lot of radio around here, and the WFNX Boston streaming site is only 96kbps.
- Don't forget your camera; there are plenty of shots I'd have liked to take by now.
- People inevitably bring loud stereo speakers. Don't worry about this because they end up overdriving them and blowing them out while they're drunk.
- Bring more cables than you think you'll need - in my case I forgot a coax and a power cable.
- Halo 3 is always more fun when played 4-player with the guy that brought the 32" LCD HDTV.
- People like the IBM Model M more than their fancy backlit gaming keyboards with the LCD screens and knobs and whatnot, and will ask you where they can get one.
- Someone on your floor will inevitably run Ettercap, so encrypt all traffic humanly possible, and VPN when necessary.
And finally:
- Semi-autonomous robots driving around the campus with humans in tow, sitting on a couch, are perfectly normal.
Friday, August 28, 2009
And so begins my final full day in Boston for a long while. It's a feeling that I knew was coming since last year, but finally set in. I'll be making my last rounds around the city in the morning, and plan on finishing up the packing in the afternoon, leaving Saturday morning for the 6.5-hour, 400mi / 650km trip to college. Hopefully it won't take me all that long to get situated there so that I can come back and detail the move-out and move-in.
Anyway, the past few weeks have been rather eventful:
My rooming situation has been up in the air for some time now. At first I was placed into a quad room, that is, with four people instead of two. Later I was placed in a standard double room, with a new roommate that I wasn't able to contact. Just last week I found that my roommate had surprisingly vanished from my housing confirmation, and that I apparently would have the double room tentatively single, awaiting reassignment of someone else. And on Sunday I was reassigned a new roommate that I haven't had a chance to contact yet, so I'll most likely meet him once I there.
On a similar note, since I'll be living in a dorm, having a large number of PCs is out of the question. Instead of simply compromising on one, I shoved the components of my primary desktop and my NAS into one machine with three hard drives and three CD drives, using a Promise ATA controller in SCSI mode to attach the extra two CD drives where the limitations of standard IDE wouldn't let me. I ran out of space to mount all the drives, so I ended up with something a bit like this:
The bootloaders for FreeBSD and Linux don't get along very well, so I selectively boot either OS using a SmartBootManager floppy. Better than having to rewire the drives every time, I suppose.
I spent a few hours last night packing the car with all the things that could be packed early, which essentially came down to everything fitting the description "not clothes and not cleaning stuff." My video game console decision came down to just taking the Xbox (to Antony: I do NOT love Microsoft) and leaving the GameCube and PS2 behind. Though I originally considered taking the GameCube along as well, my lack of a multiplayer library for it defeats the purpose, and in the case of the PS2 I've since broken (to Antony: accidentally, not because I hate Sony) both of the controllers. I'll also only be taking one monitor instead of both, using a 4-port KVM to switch among my laptop, desktop, and TV input box. I decided to take my Model M instead of getting a quiet keyboard; I'll replace it if my roommate complains. Speakers are coming with me after all, instead of just headphones. My printer will be coming, with the scanner detached to save space. My VHS and CD libraries are staying home; some good DVDs will be coming with me but without the jewel cases. I think that accounts for most things. The end result looks like a Tetris game - and yes, I'll be padding the loose space with clothes to prevent things from rolling around:
In other news, I obtained an old circa-'99 Compaq P3 laptop from a friend of mine a few months back. Since I was going on a 6.5-hour drive, I put the laptop in my car and ran a microphone cable up to the front, then connected the laptop to the tape deck. More recently I installed the Media Player Voice Command software, part of the Windows XP Plus! pack, on it. After loading on some MP3s, I can now boss the stereo around using my voice - "DJ, play artist Led Zeppelin" will play Led Zeppelin and so forth. Neat stuff, and hopefully it'll reduce the risk of getting into an accident because I was trying to tune the radio or select a track with my hands.
Though I've long prided myself on hosting my blog such that I can physically access it if need be, it looks like that will be coming to an end. The server is staying at home under the couch. I'm not yet sure what this means for getting content onto it, but we'll see.
To leave on a humorous note, my first work with features specific to the .NET Framework 3.0 turned out to be at a party - in particular the SpeechSynthesizer class. I used it to create what's possibly the nerdiest Twister spinner all in attendance had ever seen. Probably not a good sign for Microsoft if the first time I use it is for something like this.
This will probably be all until Monday. I'll be sure to follow up with a log of the move-in and perhaps some photos if I'm so inclined.