• 01:00 I can update from my phone now #

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• 02:47 I can't sleep #

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• 05:03 Are you ready to amarok? #

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In the very rare event that I decide to write a blog entry, I will from now on be posting it as a note on facebook. I have a lot more friends on facebook than I do here, and I think everyone who reads this is my facebook friend. If you're not, fix it; and if you don't have a facebook account, get one. Actually, I think I know one person who doesn't have a facebook account. You told me your reasons but I think you should reconsider. Anyway, I just posted a note so go read it.

My last post was exactly one year ago tomorrow. I guess I should let you all know what has been going on.

Finals were last week, so I have now completed one year of graduate school. For those wondering, graduate school is fairly similar to college. In the Computer Science department at University of Delaware, there are 600-level and 800-level graduate courses. All the 600-level courses are also 400-level courses, so it's combined graduate/undergrad. Most teachers will do things like add an extra problem on homework or tests for the grad students or something similar, but in general it's not really different from an undergrad course. The 800-level courses are different, or at least the two I've taken so far were. They focused on much more specific topics and involved mostly reading academic papers about the topic. There was considerably less work involved than in the 600-level courses.

I was a TA this past year for Computer Science 101. It was very easy and very boring. This course is not introductory programming. The course title is "Introduction to Computers", and the course assumes that the student has never seen, touched, or possibly even heard of a "computer". My job was running the labs, but there was nothing to teach or demonstrate for the labs, since they were following a lab manual. I just sat and waited for someone to have a problem to fix or a question. And then I had to grade the labs. The labs covered exciting topics such as using the internet (or, as the lab guide always insisted on calling it, the information superhighway), sending an email, using Microsoft Word, using Microsoft Excel, using Microsoft PowerPoint, using Microsoft Access, and creating a webpage (all they learned was bold, italics, underline, lists, images, and links).

As for where I live, I am renting a room in a house off-campus. There are two other people here, they are brothers. One is graduated from UD and working for DuPont, the other just finished his fourth year and will be doing his fifth next year (he is a double-major in economics and political science with a minor in spanish). I like my roommates, but I will probably be moving sometime this summer. Both of them are moving out, and I don't want to be the primary renter, because if I can't find roommates I'd be paying more than I can afford. So I will probably get my own apartment.

That's it for now, check back next year.

I am now in Florida, however we have to wait until June 13 to get our internet hooked up. Right now I am in a public library in which I can only use the internet for half an hour. I have spent most of it going through my email, so I still can't catch up on livejournal. I'll have a lot of reading to do once I get internet back up.

The cat survived the trip down to Florida, but didn't enjoy it. Now she is adjusting to the house and isn't peeing on stuff to put her scent on to it, which is good.

We got our furniture yesterday, so no more sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags. We also got our gas turned on, so we can take hot showers.

It's not as bad as I've made it sound.

Dear Gecko,

Remember when people used to accidentally call you when they were trying to call Geico? You got so mad. But now I see you are actually advertising for them. What happened? You should have stood up for yourself, but instead you were bought out by the man. Do you see bears advertising beer? No! Stick it to the man, dude, stick it to the man!

Sincerely,
me

I got home Sunday, but my parents left Monday morning to look for houses in Florida. I am also sick. I think it's just a cold, but everyone at Earlham seems to have either had it last week or has it now.

Has anyone else noticed that livejournal pages load forever? Even after it looks like the entire page is there, it still says "Transferring data from www.livejournal.com..." and the progress bar is about 95% filled. And it stays like that forever. Very odd.

I'm done with college except for a couple self-evaluations that I have to do. I need to take a shower and do laundry, but I think that might wait until tomorrow. Most of my friends who are not graduating are staying later with various excuses, except for a few who have to leave tomorrow which is sad.

I was hoping to make it through the summer without needing to get a job, but I'm not sure how possible that is considering my current funds. I think as long as I can make it to Florida, I will be ok, since I won't have to spend money in Florida (there are no friends to hang out with, only family, and they pay).

So in a few weeks I will be graduating. What happens next? I will be back in Munster probably on Sunday, May 7. I will stay in Munster for a currently unknown amount of time before I move, with my parents, to Florida where they are retiring to. This will most likely happen sometime in June, I think. In the fall, I will be going to Newark, Delaware, where I have been accepted to the University of Delaware grad school. Yep, I'm staying in school for even more years. They are giving me money to go there, so I've put off having to get a real job for a while longer.

So there's the first real update I've made in a very long time, in which I summarize the next five or so years of my life in a short paragraph. Now I have to go to a group project meeting.

If you've seen over 80 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 189 movies on this list. Put your score in header and repost:

( Movies )

SUPER TOTAL: 70

If you are ever asked to implement the Data Encryption Standard (DES), I recommend promptly hanging yourself.

Ok, we all know I never post here and I'm never on AIM, so it's kind of hard to keep in contact with me. Well, the people at Google have imbedded the Google Chat ability into GMail. Since I've always got GMail open, this means I'm always on Google Chat. Now there is a way to contact me! My screenname on Google Chat is razael1. But right now I'm going to play video games so I won't be there.

"In a development that would probably even puzzle Claude Shannon, information can be negative -- at least when the information is quantum. The discovery, by Horodecki, Oppenheim, and Winter, appears in the current edition of the leading journal Nature. If I tell you negative information, you'll know less. Apparently, researchers hope to use this to gain deeper insights into phenomena such as quantum teleportation and computation, as well as the very structure of the quantum world. More details can be found here and here A popular account of the article can be found on Oppenheim's homepage, and a free version of the article can be found in the arxiv for those of us without subscriptions to Nature."

I believe this snippet is negative quantum information, because when I read it I felt knowledge being sucked out of my brain.

Nigeria is to Nigerian as Niger is to ________

I got new parts for my computer and everything seems to be working fine except for the wireless card, but I've always had trouble with that. Hopefully this computer will now work with some degree of reliability. I'm a little worried about heat. I assume the fan that comes with the CPU is sufficient to deal with the CPU heat.

Work is still going. It's slightly more unpleasant than before, mainly because I work 8 hour shifts instead of 5 or 6 hour shifts that I used to. I can't have more than 35 hours though, so I only work 4 full shifts a week. Occasionally a shorter fifth shift. That still means 3 days off a week, though, so I guess I can't complain.

You gained 1282 Experience Points and 423 gold.
You found a potion of speed!
Colin has advanced to level 5!
Learned Fireball!

And tomorrow my shift is actually 9am to 4pm, that's two fewer hours than I thought!

I am about to go to work for a 5pm to 1am shift. Then I have to go in tomorrow for an 8am to 5pm shift. My manager said he didn't mean to schedule me like that, so hopefully this is the only time I'll have to do this. But he could have changed it...couldn't he?

Howdy Honda passed the emissions test. I wasn't really worried that it wouldn't, though.

Here's a question for people who know about computer hardware: When buying a new motherboard, do I need to worry about if it will fit into my case I already have?

I've worked three shifts, now. They haven't been too bad. The store isn't as busy, which means the shifts don't pass as quickly as they did at the Munster store. The big thing is that now that I'm a Shift Leader, my shifts are 8 hours long. Before I usually had shifts that were about 6 hours. Eight hours is a long time to be standing on your feet. It wouldn't be that bad if the work could be done sitting down. My feet hurt a lot that last hour.

I'm currently needing sleep. I worked until 1 in the morning last night, then got up this morning at 7 to go to a meeting for a new promotion we are doing. And I have to get up early tomorrow. I work at 8. But then I come home at 5 and have Monday off, so I will be able to catch up on sleep.

I wonder when the next batch of paychecks come. My first priority will be computer parts.