Tag Archives: assignments

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.

Cruising through the Clouds

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Another day off. Well sort of. Today I may be off from school, but the assignments are there nevertheless. Fortunately, I have managed to get my system in a fairly workable state. I can develop for the most part now, I am just emerging the last programs that I need to have a fully operational development system. Basically mySQL, a few graphics programs, a number of games, and a video player is all I need. Oh sure, there are a few things I might to add-on like old style BSD games, extra themes and fonts. But really I am well off now.

I received an email from Ewa today. Its very thoughtful of her, but then she always has treated as a bit more than a friend. I am very grateful for that, since practically all the other girls that I know just think of me as “Oh, just a guy I know.” Sigh… Seems that her semester is working out for her. Actually her course load is far more balanced than mine, as I am taking only CS courses and a Philosophy course to finish off my Humanities requirement. This is sort of paradoxical of me, as I strike as more of the Humanities type but I have been mostly involved in Sciences since mid-high school. I love history, languages, art and the such, but I have been always wary of who teaches them to me. There are just too many crooks, and jerks who indoctrinate half-truths, distortions and lies, and not teach the truth. Often I find these distortions have impacted my life in a negative manner and when I learn of the truth, it becomes harder to accept. So that is why I self-teach myself, and analyze everything in view of what I know, and what I hold near and dear.

Yesterday, I sat in a PEY (Professional Experience Year) session. After this I decided to give this program a try, as the career skills I will develop will be essential to like get a decent job. I mean I can learn now while I am an undergraduate or later the hard way after I graduate. This will require some time, but even the short term monetary compensation from this venture will be worthwhile. Even if I earn some 30 grand, I should be able to pay off all my OSAP debts and the final school year in one fallow swoop. Besides I hunger for the taste of real work, not some half-brained unskilled employment in a factory on the production line. I hope this works out… anyways time to dust of that resume. I go forth now to conquer the skies, as the stars will be next. (Relax all you USAF types, I was being metaphorical.)

Framebuffer Fracked but System Up and Running

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Live in the inside of a particle accelerator is quite fast. You hardly get time to look around, but still things happen. So you are never too bored. Buts its no fun… especially if you are about to have a head-on collision with your opposite-spin counterpart at 0.99999C. Enough about high energy physics research, more about me.

Recently, I have concentrated almost exclusively for next week, and especially with building my Gentoo system. The Synaptics touchpad on my laptop gave a lot of trouble, and even worse was the framebuffer. Everything is now working, except for the blasted framebuffer. Naturally, it took nearly ten recompiles of different kernels to get it right. And a lot of searching. As of right now, I have a working X, with a minimal KDE install, Abiword, and Firefox. Its still a long ways away from the hard core developer production system I need. Fortunately most of the hard work is done.

Truth be told I have been slacking a bit. My room is still a mess, things are misplaced, and I have not touched my notes (let alone the assignments) yet. The resume still needs to be done, OSAP picked up, rides, scheduling, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Better get cracking. Night.