Burrito for 20070831

As stated before, I'm going to start compiling weekly wrap-ups, with elaboration, on my twitter posts (which are apparently called tweets) into almost useful blog posts.

Technology

First, I want to express my frustration with Twitter, because it appears to be flaky as hell. I've subscribed to several news and technology feeds and I am not getting IM notifications when they update, despite having all of my notifications enabled. Furthermore I am having problems completely removing feeds; instead I have just been disabling notifications. Boo, Twitter.

I've been working on my sister-in-law's PC over this week. I think I've finally narrowed the problem down to a hard drive failure, but it's taking a really long time to transfer all of their files so that I can reinstall Windows and all of that crap. I'm hoping that this is the last time someone asks me to work on a Windows PC for them. There are people who get paid full time salaries to work on this stuff, and I'm not one of them. I don't mind working on linux systems since I can do that remotely and they don't break very often.

Ignorance

My favorite technical bookstore, nerdbooks.com, happens to be located about 1/2 mile from work. Not only are their books always cheaper than on Amazon, but being able to walk into the store to browse and examine the merchandise is an extreme bonus. Recently, however, they've been forced to close their doors to the public because some people are "afraid of dogs", even though the two dogs in question are extremely well behaved and docile Labrador Retrievers. Nothing bothers me more than when I'm affected by the ignorance of other people. Luckily they are allowing existing customers to still enter through the side shipping entrance.

With regard to ignorance, I can't say that I'm surprised to hear this week that SAT scores are dropping. "No child left behind" my ass. I've got about 6 years to figure out how I'm going to finance at least one private school education.

School

Speaking of school, my class so far has covered no material that I'm not already extremely familiar with (depth-first tree search, queues, etc). I know at some point things will get interesting, but I'm glad things are simple for now. I should be using this lull to work on my independent development project.

Health

I've started going to the gym now that school has fired back up. I awoke at 6:00am on Wednesday to go secure a locker at the facility. I was able to procure a medium-sized locker; I wanted a large but they had only one available and The Captain was in line before me. Even if I had arrived before him I'd have surrendered my spot to him; he needs a large locker more than I do. The Smurf was mysteriously absent from the gym on both Wednesday and Friday morning.

Life Ambitions

This week's moon eclipse was fantastic even though it was way too early to be awake. Neither me nor my wife were able to get great pictures. It also got me thinking about solar eclipses, and I've determined that I must see one before I die. Unless I make a special international trip, the next most likely opportunity will be on Monday, August 21, 2017. I figure we can drive to the middle-of-nowhere Nebraska, set up a tent, and get in some great viewing / photos. Even better will be the event on Monday, May 8, 2024 in which the path of totality includes my house.

Friday

I haven't been productive since about 2:00pm today; it's been a long week and I'm out of GAFF ("Give a Fark Factor"). We had our monthly cake today , but not after we resisted their feeble attempts to move the cake up to the third floor. Our company split has been finalized (their keys are deactivated after today), yet they still had the nerve to try and steal our sugary goodness. My cake, damnit ... it's a good thing I worked out this morning. Finally going to see HP5 tonight; better late than on DVD.