Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

04 December 2002

Whew. I just played CivIII for eight hours straight. Now I'm going to bed.

"Why am I playing this awful music when I have Frank Sinatra?" --Russell Monk

Posted 5:41 AM [+]

03 December 2002

WOOOOO HOOOOOO!

It turns out that the problem with CivIII on my computer had nothing at all to do with being a TiBook and everything to do with my installing it on a UFS-formatted drive. When I transferred it to an HFS+ drive, it worked just fine under either System 9 or X. Except that it wouldn't load save files from the main screen; but it would load save files from within a running game, so I can start a nonce game whenever I want to load up another one. I called in both fixes to the tech support line---they seemed surprised that I would bother calling when I didn't actually need assistance, but they thanked me. :)

"And her face is like a potato only in that it's not anything like a potato." --Kevin Price

Posted 4:29 PM [+]

Aaagh.

Last night, Shriram walked into my office to tell me that he'd finished writing my recs and would send them off today. "!", I thought, since the first of my applications had been due the 22nd, two were openended, and another three or so were supposed to arrive by the first. But what can I say? It's not like at this point he could get them in any faster. I did think, however, to go confirm that Eugene had sent his---and he hadn't (though it was "very high on his list", which I assume means "I forgot that some of the deadlines were early, but I'll do it tomorrow morning"). Putting me in the position of sending a letter to the schools with passed deadlines and telling them why my application isn't complete. It's not like I didn't give them warning: I first asked all four recommenders at the end of October; then I gave them the list of addresses on 8 November; then I reminded them on the 15th. Fortunately, Mark sent his out around then and Polly a few days later, so at least it won't look like I didn't ask the profs until too late. (Actually, it mostly just looks like computer scientists are procrastinators, which is not the most untrue statement in the world, although I'd like to think that I'd get something as important as a rec out on time....)

In other news, some jackass spammed an obscene email about me to a list of 400 or so people in the CS department, via an open relay in China. Irritating.

Oh, and I'm finally no longer on the Brown homepage, though I was as recently as last night. Oh well, eight days is a pretty good run. :)

"When the astronauts take a leak while on a mission and expel the result into space, it boils violently. The vapor then passes immediately into the solid state (a process known as desublimation), and you end up with a cloud of very fine crystals of frozen tinkle. It is by such humble demonstrations that great scientific truths are conveyed." --Cecil Adams

Posted 1:20 PM [+]

01 December 2002

And in the continuing coffee table book saga: it's even better than I thought, Kathleen and I have a two-page spread to ourselves. Pages 110--11, if you happen to lay your hands on a copy. I wonder if I can get them to give me one free?

Oh, and that pic is still on the Brown homepage. I guess they stay up for a whole week!

"I used to think of New York as flyover between Chicago and Paris, but now I see that it's a lovely city in its own right." --Michael Kimmitt

Posted 12:27 PM [+]