Category Archives: University

My time at the University of Toronto at Mississauga.

Here’s Some Snow For You to Eat, Mister Groundhog

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It decided to snow yesterday night. Which meant the first thing I did this morning was shovel the driveway and sidewalks. Apparently something got messed up, since on Groundhog’s Day the prediction was that spring was to occur the next day. The winter had been ridiculously light this year, so everyone expected a soon spring. Even mother’s snowdrops burst out of the light snow cover around the old pine tree’s stump on the front yard. They are probably still there. Under around a metre of snow. I have yet to see metre high snowdrops.

As is the custom of Saturday mornings, the rest of the day has started off slow. No real surprise there. My folks have come up (dreamed up for the sarcastic alter ego in me) with a number of tasks that I have to complete today. I reiterate; no real surprise there. However, I plan to finish my journal entry as I promised yesterday.

University is the life for me, yahoo! Right… Third year course in Computer Science are starting to become interesting fortunately. (Side note: mom bugged me about undoing the 2 metre high snowbank on top the snowdrops. I guess we will get to see the snowdrops this year. That and seeing a grown man using his hands to move a 2 metre high snowbank, 3 metres to the right of its current position.) This semester will be probably be my last in the actual CS major program. Which means I will have the opportunity of maybe TAing next year, and be in class whose girl-to-boy ratio is not worse than 1:20.

This semester I am taking Web Programming (to satisfy the hacker in me), Programming Languages (adventures in Scheme and Prolog) and Operating Systems. All of these I find interesting, and I have yet to actually fall asleep (from boredom that is) in one of the lectures. Web Programming being taught be Arnold Rosenbloom, means that are assignments will mirror the real world applications. That translates into massive code-monkey projects, which we can’t open source or subcontract to others. Lazy me. As for Operating System Fundamentals are being taught by G. Scott Graham. This results in a lot of technical details, derailing of lectures by introducing tangent topics, and assignments that may or may not be explained in the course content.

Programming Languages is being taught by an amiable younger (younger than most of the older faculty, if that means anything to you) professor by the name of Richard Kruger. This course I call my Adventures in Scheme. Now there is a language thats different. I really feel like I am learning programming all over again. Which is a nice feeling, I guess. I keep on having to ignore the itty-bitty nonsense of thinking in imperative languages, and dealing with memory issues. In fact, I found that thinking in “Scheme” alone helps alot with the assignments. Programming in this LISP derivative, sometimes feels intiutive and sometimes counter-logical. So I get this love-hate type emotion when dealing with this language. The best way of describing this emotion is with a mind-image:

Imagine being placed in an abstract world. One of those checkerboarded, cubicist, and colour-uncoordinated worlds of dreams and freaky puzzle games. Experiencing such a world in the first person, would be at time totally familiar. At others totally alien in the most mentally alarming manner. That is how I feel about this course. Since I would enjoy such a trip (prefer the land of the Sentinel over Hawaii); I find the entire course as a novel, refreshing adventure.

Now to crashland into Reality’s lap, I want to discuss my impressions on the people around me. I have been getting along much better with my family generally. My brother is becoming as a irritiating and obnoxious like I was at his age, only much less rude and in a much more lovable manner. This week being Reading Week, I decided to go out on Wednesday to meet some of the leaders of my brother’s Polish scout troop. So I went with my brother to the scout meeting, just to find out almost none of the leaders were there. For some reason, I volunteered to deal with the “Zuchy” (read as a Cubs/Brownies). Damn little brats. I had the honour of working with a girl from the older Girl Guides, Gosha as the leader of “Zuchy” decided not to show up. So I had the experience of being a teacher-substitute of Kindergarten/Grade One class. Yummy. Which basically meant extracting troublemakers out of trouble, yelling my voice off, and dealing with silly conversations with smart-ass mini-punks. One of the best conversations/rumors was that I was either the boyfriend, fiancée or husband of Gosha. Righto… like I would be married to a 15 (maybe 16) year old girl. Not that she was bad looking. But WAAAYY too young for an old fart like me. Too much of an age difference anyhow. Damn kids. In a funny way I did enjoy myself. But I made sure I never showed it.

The next day, Rudy invited me to go go-karting. So he picked me up around 9:30, and along the way there we find out that his “so-called” ex-girlfriend Shelly was not feeling too hot. So we ended up going to her house. I never really liked Shelly, but since Albert and Rudy were there I obliged. I probably shouldn’t of gone, since my opinion of Rudy and Shelly went down a few notches that night. So we talked a bit, over wine and beer (hated the wine, and I never tried Corona). After deciding to hit a bar later on, Rudy and Shelly decided to get stoned. Since I was there, and I hate the smell of weed, they decided to go outside to smoke. I am totally against getting intoxicated in any manner, I found their actions very childish. Since they didn’t want to take their precious bong outside, and Shelly couldn’t roll to save her life; they made an improvised bong out of a small plastic water bottle. Sigh… since I never liked Shelly, her smoking up just added to my abysmal impression of her. And Rudy… he is simply immature. I don’t know who was more immature Rudy or those “Zuchy” that I had put up with yesterday. I vote Rudy. That is just sad.

When they finally finished, we hit the road to get to a bar. Poor Albert had to get directions from those two crack-heads. After a near hour of rather pointless circling, we arrived at a sports bar ran by the father of one of Albert’s old acquaintances. We played a few rounds of pool, in which Shelly even in her state beat us down badly. Since it was late, I found it a little difficult to concentrate on the game. I think it was more of the late hour than the single bottle of Stella Artois beer I had there. Around half-past midnight, we left the place, and had to stop by a Tim Hortons to satisfy some folks’ munchies. Again another long sigh… I ended up getting a ride home with Albert at one in the morning. Overall it was a waste of a decent evening.

To end this entry in a positive note, I am still working in my work-study job on Datasphere. I was supposed to have a nasty meeting Wednesday morning, but that by the grace of God was cancelled. So I have recently buckled down and done some serious work in that region. I am hoping to work off an fair number of the hours I owe them in the next couple of weeks.

Well I better be off, since I have a number of tasks I want to complete today. Till this evening’s post, farewell fellow blogspherenaut.

A Near Icarus Flight

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We will be returning to normality. Once we figure out what that exactly is.

— The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Yup. Normality, that would be nice. Relaxation would also be welcome. Yes, the universe is not letting me experience either of the above. This week is the final critical week in my semester. And the amount of stress is leveling to its normal high plateau. Again, my own fault for everything that has transpired. Last week was probably the worst.

Last week was work like no tomorrow time… I had three assignments, all due on Friday. Visual Computing naturally took the longest, and I had to iron out bugs. I hoped to finish it at latest Thursday 6 PM. When everything was said and done, I had completed it on Friday @ 2 in the morning. Right after I got to work on the Requirements Engineering spec that was due in the morning. Regardless, it took me up to 5:30 in the morning. That was a record time, because everyone in my group actually worked on the assignment. With a tiny bit of sleep, Rudy and I arrived at school to hand that in. In the process we interrupted a first year CS class. I felt like such a prick, but hey, I am third year. Everytime I talk to a first year CS student, I always come off like some “Zeus” of programming. If I want to light up my listener’s eyes like First of June (Canada Day, you hopeless Americans), all I have to do is slip that I am a hacker. Which is more or less true, both by the 1980’s coder definition and the more modern non-techie defintion (Don’t worry all your base safe with me… right…).

Databases was last. After a short nap, I viciously attacked that assignment. I actually figured out how to do most things in SQL finally (me == slacker), after a semester of procrastination. I knew it, but never really sat down and actually wrote the stuff up. Theory always has been my weak side, so I never really finished that part. I had done enough. And enough damage I had done to my lack of work on Datasphere.

So here I am employed at school, in this Datasphere project. I told my project manager that I would get something done two weeks ago. I did it yesterday. Later I encurred his wraith due to my keeping a low profile. And not answering his emails. I got an earful today, about it. I will admit it was unprofessional of me. However, I didn’t want to fess up that I had not touched it. To make things more interesting, there was supposed to be a meeting this morning. And yes, I showed up. Just to save my skin, and hopefully my job. No else did, cause it was rescheduled for Friday. Bummer. Nevertheless, I saved my skin, and despite the stern warning today, I still get to keep my job.

Yay. Tomorrow I have an exam first thing in the morning. Databases. Yummy. Friday is Visual Computing. After that I can actually take a short breather… err… I mean attend Datasphere meetings. I can probably expect another scalping for my previous behaviour… On the positive side, all my hard exams will be finished, and I will go shopping for a new box. I am still debating whether or not to build the system from scratch or just go with a prebuilt package. Considering that I have to basically get one from the ground up (with the exception of the mouse)… both options are expensive. The only great thing about a self build system, is that I can mod it to my heart’s content. Hmm…

Mayan Nightmares and Lazy Dreams

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Yesterday was both a rather eventful and uneventful day simultaneously. I did not get much done, but instead I had a pleasant chat with Mike. The usual science fiction, writing, and social issues chat, which I enjoyed greatly. I think I might have come off as conservative, hardhead… and there is nothing wrong with that. We discussed everything from the state of fiction, the state of states, and just other random stuff. Anyhow, this chat was a welcome change in mood for me. Earlier that day I tried to catch the attention of Katarina, and while for a moment I thought I had gained some ground. Then it died off again… oh well. Rudy told me to let her go, but she is only person I can actually practise on. No I am not the person to just go up, and serendipitously ask ladies out. Anyways, talking with Mike cleared my head of those thoughts. I actually want to go off and write a novel now too. (Alas time where are you?)

From the university scene, the requirements engineering assignment is due this Friday. No I have not really worked at it, and I am not motivated to do extremely well on it. I will probably end up staying up tonight to do it. Databases nothing exciting happened. We finally got our assignment for visual computing. One of the parts we have to do a 30 min. short animation in Maya. Not too impressed since I have to use the Personal Learning Edition to do this. I am familiar with Blender, and would rather use it. I stayed up yesterday figuring out a way to use Blender and final work in Maya. Alas, the PE version does not have a 3DS plugin, and Blender does not yet support Alias’ FBX format. A real shame. The only positive light to all of this was, the fact that I can still make my models in Wings3D. That is good… unfortunately I still have to learn how to use Maya PLE. I have not decided upon an animation as of yet either.

Finally I actually did some Datasphere yesterday. Not a gigantic amount, but still it is progress. I will do the bulk of my task today. The rest of the time I will delegate to the 340 requirements report. I will have to continue reorganization first, before I get serious with any other work. In the gaming universe, I killed my first Yeti yesterday in Kingdom of Loathing. Then I noticed the Bounty for Yeti and Penguin fur… and I went nuts. I am proud of being able to level up, and to increase my meat amount by 100% in one day. 😉 Now I will probably continue with one quest, and level up so that Yeti hunting is a single strike issue. After that I am planning to open up a store, and upgrade the clan with the gained meat.

Other all I am feeling in good spirits, but extraordinarly tired. I assume that my writing shows this. Anyways, I have to run off to do some chores, and work on all this stuff.

Back in the Void Again.

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I feel so out of place nowadays. There is a bit of lull between assignments and exams, so I have taken advantage of this to do a few random things. These past few days I have returned to work on my pet project, justCheckers. I am quite pleased with the new look, and setting up the forums was a quick issue. This time I even included an avatar gallery. Only two things remain to do. One is to write a dynamic news page, and an image gallery. Thanks to my new found knowledge in databases, I can finally make this a reality. The only issue is that there is a bit of planning that needs to go into this.

I have sort of taken a hiatus from my Datasphere work too. I am sort of ashamed of this, but with schoolwork and all… My most recent task of coming up with requirements is not fun. Originally when I applied for this work, I was hoping to become a code monkey and not a designer. Oh well. I have a 10 page memo to go through, which I am not too excited about.

I have to do a financial check today. I have sorta neglected that for too long. Recently I have spent a lot outside of home on food, and entertainment. Not to mention the paychecks coming from Datasphere. Taking about entertainment, the topic of Rudy’s new girlfriend is starting to be a bit irritating. I am in fact slightly jealious of Rudy, and also the amount of attention he gives her. No I am not complaining… but I still am going to. I learnt a few things about Rudy, that I would have passed on knowing. Also my own failure of picking up any girl, or even getting the slightest hint of interest is most depressing. I do loathe this type of depression cause it leads to defeatism and more depression. The fact of having little social activities, the looming perpetual cold of winter, and the stress of the end of the semester, is bad enough. This little issue (I mean this is only an emotionally large problem) is compounding to the general depressing mood. HEY SOMEONE GIVE ME A LITTLE ATTENTION!

On a good note, I recently acquired a sexy little USB optical mouse. I am seriously looking into acquiring a Palm keyboard. The funds of getting my own system are still not present. Fortunately things are looking up in that department. I still feel a tinge of guilt… I really aught to buy a few presents for the family… I promise I will.

Farewell until later, fellow blogsphere traveler.

And the Rain Kept Falling…

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Slowly, very slowly the time seems to creep for eternity… Life. The continual stream of assignments and midterms has worn me out. Today, I have to finish off a DB assignment which I am about halfway through. Writing SQL Server frontends in Visual Basic .net is not a task I relish. Figuring out all of VB’s nuances drove me yesterday to the point of despair.

Basically my days are spent living in front of a computer. Also since this my Father’s work laptop, I don’t have the option of messing it up into my nice and pleasent cubbyhole. A 15-minute break of playing Star Wars: Battle of Yavin got me an ultimatum. I know. I know. I should not of. But when all you see for most of the day is an IDE, and you have stare into the face of a bizarre, mind-numbing language, the idea of blowing up TIE fighters and Star Destroyers becomes pleasant. Anyways, I have to follow the no-mess up rule until I get a new machine/fix my old one.

I have not had the luxury of fixing it. Most likely I will try to do so tomorrow, after my tutorials. I might have to say no to going kart-racing to allow for it thought. I don’t know what to think about it. If I am fortunate enough to finish the two applications by evening, then all will be fine. Most likely I will stay up and work on it. I really hope that Rudy is correct that this is a misaligned heat-sink issue. Today, I will inquire about the possibility of getting a grant to buy a new machine. I am thinking a decent desktop, and maybe a keyboard for my Palm. In that case, I will be the most mobile. Laptops are too expensive and underpowered for my liking. I want to build my own box. I would love to play around with it… modding it. Come to think of if it I do have an ancient box lying around… A new motherboard with a P4 would be inorder. Oh and 1 GB of RAM.

Anyways… I have to run and do a task for Mom. I pray that I can go all out and defeat this DB assignment in a fallow swoop.

Temporal Dysfunctionality

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Phew… Just finished my massive, and not so pleasant visual computing assignment. It pretty much worked alright. However I didn’t finish the game that I wanted to till 20 minutes AFTER the due date. Cause the one that I handed in was ok. But the one that I have no is just fun! No, I am not going to tell you what it is. That is because some people my class are probably still working on it.

Well it is late. And need sleep. Tomorrow is the start of another long assignment, and I am unfortunately not a robot. So good night, sleep tight. And dream happy dreams.

Putting the Edge Back into My Sword

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He ran softly down the tunnel, morningstar sword in hand. The passageway in the caves had begun to twist in a myriad of directions. He stopped to listen for the monster’s footsteps. A few days earlier while exploring the cave system, he had stumbled across an orc patrol. He then smote the first one that got in to this path. Apparently that one was the orchish commander’s lieutentant. Oops. Now there he was the great Adventurer… hunted like a rat by an entire orcish army.

You know those days that you feel like our Adventurer? Well it seems that this month has given me nothing but those kinds of days. Yeah those days. Sort of like perpetual Mondays. 😉

Course work and midterms backed up on me so much, that I had to drop my philosophy course. Did not really like anyways… but I sure hell could you the money. Also I must admit that I have fallen behind in Datasphere work. I was hoping to catch up on that this week, unfortunately I stumbled across my own orchish army. In my case, it was the departure of my laptop’s late chipset. Yup. My chipset of all things. My fan, and HDD are intact. But the machine’s performance has ground to a near P2 halt. Oh, and did I mention that I run modern software applications??? After a number of tests, and reinstalls of my new Linux distribution to no avail. I think I have to “acquire” a new modern system. Unfortunately I have about $100 in my account. So a purchase is out of the question, even off a self-constructed rig. Without the 3D graphics card. Right now I have borrowed my Dad’s laptop. Windows 2000 sucks, and getting the whole system to my liking is a pain in the… neck!

I finally left Gentoo after 1.5 years of continuous usage. I realized that I spend more time configuring my system and hacking then doing school work, house work or even hobbies. Also I don’t have the time or the patience of building a distribution. So hence, enter Ubuntu, or more specifically Kubuntu. The system looks nice, the installation is easy (for a non-RPM system), and is hacker-friendly. I am looking forward to using it, along with setting it up. I hear there a huge variety of packages. So we shall see… I still think Gentoo Linux is the best out of all them. The most flexible, configurable and the nicest package manager. I just don’t have time to do that anymore, besides my configurations often turn out disastrous. And the package release is too fast. But the community is the best I have seen anywhere on the web. Kudos to the Gentoo developers, maintainers, and community for making those 1.5 years the most colourful, exciting and informative years in my Linux experience. However I think I will be more use to you and the OSS community as whole, as a developer. Thanks guys!

I seem to have lost my edge in programming and computer science. I remember being the second best in high school. Some of that elitism continued into university with being a Linux fan, and project manager of my own pet open source projects. Nowadays looking at my mark, and me being in the lower part of the class marks, I feel rather mediocre. In fact if it were not the valiant and determined work on my partner and friend, Daniel D’Alimonte, I would be doing worse. I know that this third year, and that I am in the top elite of CS. However when I am surrounded by such brilliant and talented individuals, a half-talent enthausist looks rather like a drone. Sure from the perspective of a high school student I may seem like a demigod. But I feel puny in my current surroundings. My midterms place me where I am supposed to be. Sorta sucks to finally meet your limit.

Now for more of my unhappiness rant. Dude, I feel so sucky. I am terrible at educational pursuits, as seen above. I don’t excel in art, or any of the other humanities. Social interactions are almost non-existent. Heck even my friend (you seems most unlikely) Rudy as a girlfriend. And supposedly a hot, cute, and almost-“perfect” one at that. I even tried asking out Kat again recently, to go out and do something. She was unfortunately busy with moving. I am not a great worker, in a rule-filled environment I seem out of place, I carry my memory in my PDA (which curiously lost its own… a lot of its own), bad organizational skills, and I can say the say thing about almost anything. I feel most uninspired, and not compelled to work at anything… since I am sooo sucky.

Sigh… I wonder why I even try sometimes. Well I got bored yesterday… and since my crap-box was hogging my wireless card, I did not get ANY school work done. Instead I managed to compose a shorty ditty in Fruity Loops… I hope to use it in my game project for Visual Computing. It will be on my school website, Gluppy Intro.

Well I have to get going. I have a lot to do… OH AND PLEASE WRITE COMMENTS. Most of the time I feel very lonely, it would be nice to know that I am not alone all of the time.

Adjusting to the New Universe

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The new reality of me being in school, and the prospect of working during the same time is slowly starting to sink in. Still its this sitting in front of a computer doing either homework or chores… trying to catch up. I mean I am catching up. Already I have made progress in my Visual Computing assignment. Got multiple image support working for our mini-Paint program. So I am very pleased with the outcome. No luck with coming up with a project for the Requirements Engineering course. But Mr. D’Ettore, one of my best friend’s father is willing to look into. Of course in my bumbling way, I came across in the most awkward manner… but I hope he understood. I will write an email to him shortly about the subject, and maybe we will get a reply soon. We badly need this. Very badly. The sad thing is my group members are even more clueless than me at this stuff. I still consider myself a messy person but apparently some of my new found habits are turning me into a neat freak, and ultra-organized. I can not stop laughing at that thought.

Tomorrow’s logic test is hanging above my head today. Sigh… I need to sit down and come up with a schedule for the next weeks so that I can be prepared. Too many things happening at once.

From a lighter side, I have joined the GLUE (Gentoo Linux User Everywhere) folding@home group. I hope that my laptop and occasionally my brother’s machine can help with number crunching so that researchers can better understand the way proteins behave, their impact on diseases and pharmaceutical interactions. Maybe this mundane CPU work can one day save someone’s life. OK, this is not going on the lighter side.

OK. Now a definitely lighter side. I probably will be earning money this semester as a developer playing around with an intricate Java web and database system for courses. Also once I get caught up on my studies, I will work at releasing a new version of justCheckers. Up to version 0.1.1, I believe. Maybe I will get some writing done too.

I will be seeing you, fellow netizen.

One More Turn To Take

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The purplish sand dunes flashed by as he accelerated his blue mlaren down the course. The magenta sky and the orange-yellow gas giant hung above him in a surreal but serene manner. One more sharp turn, he thought quietly to himself. The race had been a hard one, but now only a few more minutes and it would all be over. And he would emerge victorious.

These last few days have been nerve-racking. My lecture notes and preparation for the assignments pile up, while I continue on struggling with the mere set-up of my box. I have installed everything that I need and that I want. I have fought with getting my Palm, which now is safely and soundly synced with my computer. The software suspend and the splashscreen work partially. Fortunately that is nothing I have to worry about in the near future. Getting a virtual machine running was a hassle. Eventually it worked but not without a lot of arm twisting. It does like to sync with my laptop‘s native resolution, but I think that is because of the DGA mode. All my programs have been acting funny since I started that up. Again, in windowed mode everything works swell. So that is fine for this semester. As soon as the semester ends, the virtual machine is coming off my computer, along with Visual Studio .Net, Windows XP, and SQL Server.

Today alone, I got my web server up and running. The rest of the day was spent playing around with iptables, and so now I have a decent firewall running on my machine. Decent as in it literally chokes nmap when it attempts to scan for ports from the inside. I should try from my brother’s computer, but that would take too long and I am short on time. Heck, I did not go kayaking today even thought my parents insisted. This evening I tried to PHP running in safe mode, which it did. Unfortunately do to permissions issues, things behaved strangely. Silly me. All that is left is to play a second with mySQL for a few minutes and then set up my local Subversion repository. Then I am done.

I need a break, like a walk. I want to go but I think I might have to even stay up a bit, so I will refrain from leaving until EVERYTHING is set up. Then I will go for a walk.

Nightfall, Weariness and Hope

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I feel so incredibly tired that I am amazed that I am still able to function enough to be able to write a journal entry. Must of switched over to auto-pilot. Funny. Today was busy, and full of unexpected twists.

Got up this morning, and rushed to get ready to school. Meanwhile my Mom and brother were preparing for another day out. I had just enough time to stuff my backpack, make my brother breakfast, make myself lunch, copy a CD, and few small computer fixes before launching out of the house for my first class. No hope for a ride back, but oh well I have the whole day to work.

A beautiful, warm day, but I had to dress warmly as my university believes that the temperature most conducive for learning is the breeding temperature of Emperor penguins. The lectures were hard to sit through as usual. I tried to pay attention but I still managed to copy two more CDs that I owed Mom. Sorry Professor Sills, and Katz, I only have a maximum attention span of 45 minutes. So I learned a bit in Requirements Engineering and almost nothing in Symbolic Logic. However, I managed also to try out some tricks with my Palm. I seems that I am making progress in connecting with my Linux-only laptop. But I would really have to work on it. I don’t have time for that now. Too much other things to get setup and running.

Registered with AccessAbility, and now I have the letters for my professors. In the meantime however, I received a nasty shock. My laptop refused to start up! I believe it had overheated later. But at the time being I was panicking (inside of course, always cool on the outside). A while later I turned it on… everything worked. Except that the power light had changed positions with the floppy/CD light. Confusing to no end. Now it works… lights right and all… Sometimes I am wondering if I am not dealing with a sentient being…

By the time I reached databases classes I was so exhausted that I was in my famous ranting mode. Fortunately I had nothing to talk about, but still I started falling asleep in class. And I sat at the front, not a good thing. However, I regained my senses half-way through and could answer questions, and ask for clarification. I think I understand this databases stuff. I really hope I do. Its pretty cool, once it all clicks into place. Danny was thoughtful to bring a DVD with ISOs for the course software (all legit, thanks for the lenient license Microsoft!). I got it most copied on to my system except for Visual Studio .Net 2003 Prerequirements and XP Pro. Now if only I can get VMWare Workstation to work on my laptop, we would be cruising.

I got back home by bus. Chilling and listening to music helped to kill the time, and I got off with high spirits. The short walk home I enjoyed throughly. Soft silent warm night air breezing around me, cooling me down but not too considerably. I enjoyed it. Life is good. There is a good chance I will be working for Dr. Graham in the Psychology labs… paid hacking. 😉 And I signed up for PEY too. OK I now post, and reboot. Hope this kernel fixes the framebuffer issue.