Joe Auricchio

<joe> You want to take my bike?

<aaron> It’s been so long, I forgot how to ride.

Yeah, it’s not that great. When your mind sucks, it’s fun to wrap it in cotton and toss it around, I guess.

Iain, on drinking and those who enjoy it

Work: It’s eventful.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

…

Okay seriously. It’s me and eleven really great coders. All but two use Macs. Plus we have Aerons. And we win Web 2.0 Bingo. (future post). I love the work I’m doing. What else really matters?

School:

• CSE 30 rocks my world. I think I’m gonna have to pull a numist and take it again.
• JAPN 20B isn’t even kidding around. Today we learned keigo (honorific form, used to show respect for your superiors), which basically means you double the length of most sentences and now have a choice of 3-4 ways to say them. Not to mention last week’s material, which has me confused out of my mind. I should, like, study.
• I’m waiting for COGS 101B to actually start. So far it’s a little light reading, and paying attention in lecture. Tests to date have been multiple choice. If it doesn’t get any harder than this, and gets up to maybe 101A level, I’m fine. I might have to switch majors just for the GPA.
• MATH 20D is shaping up into a major brainfuck. I did well on the first quiz, which was easier than expected, but I certainly don’t grok the material. I can do it, but I don’t deeply understand why it works. I’ve heard Bad Things about this class, so I’m gonna do my best not to fall behind at all. The MATLAB assignments are crushingly easy, though.

Other: I got a bike! It’s a late Christmas+Birthday present from my family. I love it to death. The price of accessories is starting to add up (lock, helmet, taillight, headlight (thanks ebay), gloves, and I need to get various tools and spare parts).

Firefly: Is the best. If you haven’t seen it yet, tell me. For serious.

Chris’s Insta-NPE. Note the ampersands.

if(x == null && x.equals("") && y == null && y.equals(""))
/* Thank you, sir, may I have another? */

My top is taking more CPU than your top.

…

Awww.

Paul, after Chris showed us that top can display colors

As reported in the GoogleBlog, Google Talk will now interoperate with all Jabber (XMPP) servers. This rocks. This rocks a lot, folks.

We’re one big step closer to a free and open IM system.

Get everybody you know to start using Google Talk or Jabber.

<joe> What classes are you taking this quarter?
<chris> Just three. GEs.
<joe> Which ones?
<chris> B ... S ... and F--k

So I’ve got a few more folks hooked on Firefly. Last night we charged through fivesix episodes (The Train Job, Bushwhacked, Shindig, Safe, Our Mrs. Reynolds, and Jaynestown). A great time was had by all.

Somewhere between O.M.R. and Jaynestown, the general feeling of the newbies changed from “This show is pretty cool” to “Oh my god I love this show”

I’m going to make a shirt that has a picture of Jubal Early looking angry, and the caption “Don’t go taking the sky from me. Don’t ever.” Maybe I’ll mail one to somebody in charge at Fox, with the note “When was the last time fans made shirts for American Idol or Trading fucking Spouses?”

Not that it’ll do any good, of course. But at least I’d have tried.

(If you don’t know who Jubal Early is. google probably won’t help you)

If you like Firefly… you know you want a Blue Sun logo shirt. Just like the one Jayne had. But it looked better in red.

If you don’t like Firefly… Walk away from this blog. Right now.

If you haven’t heard of Firefly, or haven’t seen it… let me know. I’ll have the DVDs by next week. You really, really want to watch the pilot. Yes you do. Watch this space for more details.

So, last Sunday, the first of the year, a storm hit town. This may have been the same one that dumped 8 inches in 24 hours on Norcal. We got a few inches of rain too, but the real killer was the wind.

According to the paper, there were sustained winds of 65mph. Sustained. Gusts up to 75mph - that’s hurricane strength.

There are a lot of pine trees in Cambria… a lot of shallow-rooted pine trees. Over a hundred trees fell or snapped in the storm, causing over 50 separate power line breaks. PG&E had their hands full for most of the week.

We didn’t have power from Sunday evening until noon Wednesday.

It was a good opportunity to contemplate dependency on electricity, both our society’s overall and mine personally. Four days is the longest I’ve gone without using a computer since I went to Hawaii in 2003. (When I went to Japan last year, we hit the Apple Store in the Ginza to catch up on the rest of the world and send a few emails). I found other things to distract me (hi Gabe, Kyle), but after a week I’d really be hurtin’ for some Slashdot.