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now that my multiple-weeks-of-nonstop-assignments are over, i finally have some free time. so what do i decide to do? i started installing gentoo.. but then i hit a compile error when trying to build python. then i noticed that gentoo 2005.0 is going to be out soon, so i might as well wait for that.

in the meantime, i pulled out the PCLinuxOS CD that I burnt way back when and booted that. since i had partitions set up for gentoo, i just re-used those and installed PCLinuxOS on them. probably the easiest OS install i've ever done. bar none. it was almost ridiculous.. i booted the LiveCD, started the install app sitting on the desktop, and while it was copying stuff to the hard drive, i played a few games (Kolor Lines was quite entertaining).

had to do a bit of lilo magic to get it on my boot menu, and off i went. or am going. it has a really nice set of apps included, including krusader, which i couldn't get running on my mandrake setup, oddly enough. very nice.

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so looks like google is going for an OS along with their gbrowser. they've already hired rob pike (interestingly, i can't find the link to the news article using google news) and they just hired some other OS guru from MS. interesting.

this reminds me of a thought i had a while back after reading some book on AI.. google's server setup is massively parallel. on a ginormous scale. that's possibly the one thing that most distinguishes it from other server farms (akamai might come close). it's also what makes their server farm so much like a human brain. if they wrote an OS to take advantage of that parallelism/distribution, they could literally make an electronic brain. it might be a bit stupid, but it would be faster than anything else out there. that's why it's interesting that they hired rob pike, who wrote the plan 9 distributed OS at bell labs.

watch out for them hiring AI experts in the not-too-distant future. then we'll have to start worrying about skynet. :)

Also: if they do create an OS, they better not call it goOSe.

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so i was reading about the dvorak keyboard and how it's oodles better than qwerty, so i decided to give it a shot. i pulled out my old keyboard (good thing i didn't throw it out) and did a little key-rearranging to get the dvorak layout. it actually looks more efficient, with all the vowels on one side and the oft-used consonants on the other. that way your hands tend to alternate letters most of the the time.

one annoying thing about my old keyboard is that the += and -_ keys, which used to be in the digit row, are taller than the rest of the keys. so now that they are in with the rest of the alphabet, they really stick out (figuratively and literally). also, the {[ and }] keys are regular-sized, but are now at the end of the digits row, so they look short in comparison. very distracting. well, that and the lack of home key indicators (home keys are now U and H). meh well, i'll see how it works out.

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this weekend has been one of the busier weekends this term. had to do my CS assignment on thursday so I could do my ECE lab on friday so I could study for my econ midterm on saturday so I could study for my UI midterm on sunday. have to read 4.5 chapters of densely-packed UI course notes on sunday (that's today.. already). i might have some time tomorrow, but i don't want to count on that since time seems to disappear on weekdays. and i have to finish up my econ review sheet and ece lab on tuesday morning/afternoon. argh.

i've also been ignoring my soc 232 DE lectures.. i should get around to doing some of those.

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got home after class today (well, yesterday) to find john, victor and charles building a snow fort. it was already three layers high (where a layer is the height of a recycle bin (they were using blue boxes to make bricks)). i joined in and we managed to get it up to 5 layers. it's just under 6 feet high, and is quite the marvel to behold. also, there's an arched entrance on one side to get in with a menacing guy carved around it. i'll post pictures when john uploads them.

also, jobmine was busy cranking away with matches today and i've now officially been matched with SlipStream Data, where i'll be working for this summer's co-op term. i also got a reply from jmetz about that weird email (need to log in to see that post) and she said they'll look into it. meh well.

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i finally caved and hooked up my engmail/csmail through opera's mail client. up until now i've been reluctant to switch to a non-web-based mail interface because i figured it would be harder to keep in sync. after a month or so of using opera's m2 client for gmail, newsfeeds, and newsgroups, i don't think i could live without it. figuratively, of course.

although for some reason i couldn't get SMTP working on engmail/csmail. there's a bunch of caveats listed in an MFCF FAQ, but even accounting for that, i couldn't get it to take my outgoing mail. so finally i just used the gmail SMTP server to route my mail. works just as well. and probably better, since my connection to gmail is TLS'd.

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i've come to the conclusion that early morning interviews are actually good for me. sure they make me wake up early, but i'm actually coherent (well, mostly) during them, which is always good.

other news: the weather is getting wonky again. snow. melt. rain. slush. repeat cycle. this means that wherever the ground is uneven, there's this puddle of water, capped with a thin layer of ice, covered with snow. when you step on it, badness ensues. however, on the bright side, this means that whenever it snows, the snow sticks to tree branches and makes them all white. looks so cool.

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Should I add poll functionality to my blog?

Yes - 42.86% Not No - 0% Yes and No - 0% Yes or No - 0% Yes xor No - 42.86% Not (Yes and No) - 14.29% You do not have the permissions to vote in this poll.

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going grocery shopping at 1 am en masse is surprisingly fun. particularly since the parking lots are empty and shopping carts have wheels. :)

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go opera!

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