September 2005-October 2005

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The Network

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I am a student attending West Virginia University who can have a lot of things on his mind.

Sometimes these things inspire me to type them down and publish them here. Enjoy.












Comments by HaloScan.

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11-28-2005: How Not to Write a Mass E-Mail

(Previously posted under "Technology Talk:")

Yes, I'm here. I'm just not updating this section every day. Thanksgiving has come and gone. A lot of things have happened, and yet things are still pretty much the same.

A week and a half ago, I received this mass e-mail from the WVU Technology Support Center (Yes, the same WVU Technology Support Center I talked about two posts ago). The title was "VIRUS PROTECTION ALERT!!!!" (Yes, in all caps, with four exclamation points tacked on the end), and the message itself is as follows:

By this point I was rolling in laughter. The person who wrote this sure makes things sound catastrophic with the choice wording and judicious use of capitalization, doesn't (s)he? The general tone sounds lifted from a spam message, or a prophecy of the end of the world.

Gee, I didn't know that an expensive commercial product like Norton (or as the message of doom calls it, Symantec) AntiVirus was downloadable for "free" with "no annual charges to keep it updated*". (Yes, I know they probably have some sort of special licensing deal, but it still makes you wonder.)

Neil Rudish, a moderator of several music-related forums I visit from time to time and maintainer of A&M Corner, once stated "I could really be mean and say that anything with Norton's name on it, new OR old, should be thrown in the trash...but I won't. :-D (Oops. ;-) )" Yes, good old Norton. It pre-loads everything it can from before the point of startup and manages to slow down your system no matter what, *with free updates that last shorter than sand slipping through your fingers and peculiar system requirements to boot. It's ironic that an anti-virus program requires Internet Explorer (a potential virus perpetrator with its support for proprietary ActiveX/VBS technologies) to be installed.

Of course, by this point you're probably thinking that your data is already corrupted, your internet connection will be suspended at the count of ten, and your only means of salvation is to install the endorsed software if you can.

Don_HH2K, another acquaintance of mine, opined that "If you ask me, that message seems like something that would get caught in a wide variety of spam filters."

For what it's worth, I've only snagged a single virus in the last ten years, and that was when I was downloading old game betas from a suspicious server. ;-)

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11-17-2005: Questions at College

Why haven't I ever been given a paper syllabus in any of my German classes, only a direction to go to a website and print it off myself?

Why does my current German professor have a habit of giving vocabulary tests after we've had the chapter test on the material?

Why is the Engineering "A" platform for the PRT closed every time I've gone by it for the past two and a half years?

Why did no one come to my 2:00 art class today except for me?

Why were my two worst college roommates both from the state of Maryland?

Why has no one offered to buy the iBook I put up for sale except for a couple Creative Arts Center employees who offered less money than I expected?

[Add a comment . . .]

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11-8-2005: Computer Problems Resolved...But Only Just!

What has happened in the computer-repair soap opera since my system went haywire eleven days ago?

After spending the better part of a week resorting to Knoppix whenever I needed to check my e-mail or browse the web and realizing that I wasn't finding any solutions to my problems on my own, I bit the bullet--again--and this time tried contacting the WVU Office of Information Technology Help Desk by e-mail, repeating my story and asking if they had any suggestions. The only suggestion they had was for me to directly call the Technology Support Center. So I got on the phone and repeated my story once again to the secretary on the other line, who didn't sound as hostile to my using of Windows 95 as I expected and directed me to physically bring my computer to one of the TSC service locations on campus, where presumably miracles came true.

So, I unplugged everything, lifted off the monitor, and walked a ways with a Compaq Deskpro system unit under my arm. When I got there, I repeated my tired tale once again, this time to the inexperienced-looking kid on the other side of the desk who simply referred me to a terminal where I filled in information myself, printed off, and signed a mandatory "We are not responsible if your computer spontaneously combusts"-type waiver. I followed the instructions, did my best to ignore an obnoxious "One nation under God" ribbon someone stuck in the office, and left the machine in their possession.

I had no idea what they were going to do. I half-expected them to wipe out the hard drive or do something cruel and nefarious like "upgrading" me to Windows 98 or installing Internet Explorer 5 without my permission. Or, equally likely, not be able to do anything.

Surprisingly, they found and reportedly fixed the problem quickly. Unfortunately, I left the computer with them on Friday afternoon and wasn't able to pick it up until Monday morning. In the meantime I spent two and a half days wondering just what the heck they did.

When I had the opportunity to pick it up, I found it amusing how long it took for them to find my computer. I figure they simply couldn't notice the desktop case sitting inconspicuously on their shelves among dozens of towers.

To my surprise and delight, the problem had been fixed. I could access the Internet once again. They hadn't wiped out my hard drive or added software I would go out of my way to avoid. Everything was the way I had left it. The "Close all programs and log on as a different user" option had disappeared from the shut down dialog, but I never used that option anyway.

What the problem exactly was I'm not entirely sure about, since they took back the piece of paper saying what they did on it when I paid the mandatory $26.50 for their trouble; I recall it to be something with cryptic abbreviations vaguely along the lines of installing some missing network-related functionality. What was the problem? Suggestions are welcome, but they probably wouldn't do a lot of good since the only computer-related problems I receive are those that affect no one else on Earth.

As the cherry on the top, I found out myself (today, in fact) that my out of phase audio problems were because of a faulty driver. All fixed now! That's all for now.

[Add a comment . . .]

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11-3-2005: Terrible

This day, exactly one year ago, was the worst day of my entire life.

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10-31-2005: Halloween

You know what? Tonight is Halloween. I nearly forgot about this fact today, until I saw the jack o'lanterns in the windows at Boreman Bistro today. Someone had carved one of the pumpkins with the Xbox logo. Very weird.

Back when I was in high school, the administration made a policy of "banning" Halloween from the premises. Every year around the middle of October, the principal or vice principal would make an announcement over the intercom that "just to clarify, there will be no celebrations of Halloween in any way," in a booming voice. Or something like that. A few days later (still before the end of the month), they'd then proceed in taking the "Welcome Back Students" decorations off the hallway bulletin boards and put up Thanksgiving decorations. Very weird.

The policy was probably intended as a heavy-handed measure to eliminate the opportunity for people to make Halloween-related pranks. I can't help but wonder, though, if the decision was also made to appease some closed-minded fundamentalist Christian parent unwilling to accept the existence of any holiday derived from a tradition other than their immediate own. I feel that the most likely explanation by far, however, is to discourage people from singing those awful Halloween-themed songs we learned in elementary school:

H...A...double L O...double U double E N...spells Halloween!

That was the sole lyrical content of that particular song. Was I the only one?

P.S.: I hated high school. ;-)

[Add a comment . . .]

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10-30-2005: Computer Problems

Out of necessity, it may well be a long time after I write this before you'll see this entry. Why? Take my advice, folks: Never mess with the Windows registry unless you backup first and absolutely know what you're doing.

Two days ago I was pruning out redundant registry entries and system DLLs on my computer (a five-year-old Pentium III-based Compaq Deskpro EN), and when I finished I realized that several applications gave error messages about missing DLLs, and I could no longer access the network. All of my Internet software bombed out with messages like "Server not found," or "Unable to connect to remote host." Even Lynx wouldn't work.

Since so many things were going wrong, I bit the bullet and tried reinstalling Windows 95 in another directory. This seemed to work well, and after I spent several hours cobbling proper video and audio drivers together (Sound seems to work fine, but when I listen to a CD through a set of headphones plugged into the back panel, it sounds out of phase. I don't know why, unless it's an internal cable I knocked loose or something.)

However, I still could not get network functionality. It was a pain just getting my 3Com 3C905C NIC detected properly...I had to pop open the case and reseat the card to do so, a process I repeated several times in my quest to get everything up and running again. Once all drivers and so forth were properly installed, I was dismayed that I still did not have network functionality...my Internet software still threw me "Server not found" messages, in spite of my re-installation of Windows and that the 3Com diagostic software indicated that the network card and network connection were both operating properly.

As a further wrinkle, I tried out the Knoppix bootable Linux distribution CD I had acquired a couple months earlier, and found that I could access the Internet through it. So the problem seems software-dependent. Weird.

Incidentally, all of these problems began on October 28, one year to the day I had network-connection problems with my infamous Apple iBook. I had the exact same problems then, albeit only when I attempted to connect with an Ethernet cable in the library. And the thing broke altogether a couple days later.

[Add a comment . . .]

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10-24-2005: German Class

I'm on my third year of German foreign-language classes at WVU.

What have I learned? Essentially, a lot of assorted words and phrases ("Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag" comes to mind) and some basic grammatical rules, some of which I've found easier to pick up than others. I cannot make heads or tails out of adjective endings, for example.

I did not enjoy my German 101 class last year. I hadn't taken any foreign language since two semesters of Spanish in High School; the class was inconveniently timed (Tuesday and Thursday evenings, often overlapping with art lectures on the other campus I was required to attend for other classes); it seemed overlong, and I struggled in class. Like many if not most second-level courses, German 102 was easier: The class was much more conveniently timed and positioned in my schedule; I had acquired enough German-language experience beforehand to not feel overwhelmed; I found myself working with a partner more often, and the instructor seemed more lenient. I was getting As and Bs where I had been getting Cs and Ds the semester before.

The periodic tests in German class (no matter what level) are always organized the same way: A page of listening exercises, several pages of miscellaneous "fill-in-the-blank"-type exercises, and an essay. The tests seem to be focused slightly more on grammar than vocabulary; memorizing the vocabulary list does squat on your performance if you don't know anything else. I've long felt that the tests would be a lot easier if the listening exercises and essay were omitted, and then it would actually be short enough to finish in a 50-minute class period without running dangerously low on time. Sometimes we've had to omit the listening exercise, or complete it on a day separate from the rest of the test. Of course, that the first ten or fifteen minutes of class on test days are spent explaining the listening exercise doesn't help the time budget either.

One odd thing I've noticed about German 203 is that unlike in my first two classes, there are almost no homework exercises to turn in. Instead, almost all out-of-class assignments (some of which are essays to read with a corresponding picture and an option button saying "I have completed this activity") are conducted online in the form of "workbook" and "laboratory manual" Quia Books, keys to which are bundled with new copies of our textbook, titled Deutsch: Na klar! (or as I like to call it, "Deutsch Not Clear.") That must also be why the book is so expensive.

Ironically, my German 101 instuctor seemed to assume everyone had a conventional paper workbook instead of this online facsimile, and gave assignments out of specific page numbers in the book...which more often than not did not match up with the Quia equivalent. Also, my current instructor has an odd habit of giving a quiz on a chapter's material the week after we've supposedly wrapped up the material with a chapter test.

P.S.: Each cardboard thing shrinkwrapped with the textbook containing a key for an online Quia Book says this on the back cover:

HA! Utter balderdash. I've accessed Quia with Mozilla Firefox on Windows 95 dozens of times flawlessly. (Beats me why they didn't even include Netscape 7.x, which was already a couple years old at the time this was printed in 2004.)

[Add a comment . . .]

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10-19-2005: Mozilla Firefox: 100,000,000 Downloads and Counting

This just in: As of this afternoon, 100 million copies of the Netscape-descended Mozilla Firefox web browser have been downloaded from the official website since version 1.0 was released last November.

100 million certainly is a large number. This works out to roughly 9 million downloads a month or 300,000 a day.

Here's a snazzy graphic devised to commemmorate the occasion on Spread Firefox, the official promotional website:

Download it yourself. If you use Internet Explorer, find out why you should try or switch to Firefox. It's a modest download, easy to install, and absolutely free, so you have nothing to lose.

[Add a comment . . .]

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10-18-2005: Math Talk Again

I formally declare Tuesday to be Square One day.

This week's fifteen-minute episode of Math Talk was focused on the concept of probability. Segments included "Wheel O'Chance," in which a bet was to placed on unequally-proportioned segments of a wheel, "But Who's Counting?," a game show parody in which contestants attempted to create the largest odd number from a series of digits selected one at a time, and a Square One "Challenge" on the probabilities involved in coin-flipping.

While I enjoy the segments of Square One just as much now as I did fifteen years ago, I like the "Math Talk" continuity sequences featuring the characters Maria Lopez and Buster the Parrot a lot less. The parrot's voice is scratchy enough to serve as sandpaper, and the animation is so choppy that it makes the work of Hanna-Barbera look like fine art by comparison.

"This is P-B-S! Ooh ooh! (Ruff!)"

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10-16-2005: I'll TELL You What's Up...

I hate it when weird students I don't even know walk past me and say, "What's up?" as a means of acknowledging my presence. "What's up??" How the hell should I know? I have three ways of answering this stupid question: "Not much," "Nothing at all," or a smart-aleck reply if I can manage it on the spot. But this question has been asked with such frequency and annoyed me so much that I will refuse to answer it at all from now on. Why don't they just say "hello" instead?

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10-15-2005: FOOD

I want to talk about FOOD. Yes, food; namely the food the university serves.

I have concluded that none of the breakfast food at Hatfield's or the Boreman Bistro is remotely fresh. Everything comes pre-packaged out of a box. French toast comes out of a cardboard box that says "Mrs. Butter-Worth's French Toast" on it. Same goes for pancakes; pre-made, packaged, and warmed up for the taking, which explains the dry or rubbery texture. Biscuits, doughnuts and pastries come out of a box too. The only exceptions are waffles, which we make ourselves, and foods like omelets that I don't pay attention to at 9:00 in the morning.

Is this a Boreman/Hatfield's-only thing? I always assumed that all of this food, when served at the Towers dining hall, was made fresh and in-house; in any case I never saw a single cardboard box in two years of eating at Towers that said "Mrs. Butter-Worth's French Toast" on it. Maybe I should also ask why the pieces of cake served for dessert at Boreman Bistro usually have an awful dry texture around the sides. Do they cut it twelve hours in advance and leave it in a room with a dehumidifier on? Or does the cake come from the factory pre-cut? Oh well.

I really shouldn't be so harsh on Boreman Bistro. They at least read the pieces of paper dropped into the "suggestions" box, answer them, and post them by the entrance, which is a lot more than Towers ever did!

Speaking of food, I went into the bathroom (which is situated between my dorm room and the next room over, and shared by both) and noticed that someone had left a partially eaten piece of pepperoni pizza on the shelf over my sink. Weird. Was this an oversight (like the bars of soap sporadically left in the shower) or a deliberate attempt to annoy or bother me (like the anatomical drawing one of my ex-roommate's friends drew on my wall last year)? I hope it's only the former.

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10-14-2005: Homecoming Day and Homecoming Night

Today was the day of the homecoming parade at West Virginia University! Unlike last year and the year before, when I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, I was able to watch this year's parade in its entirety, standing on the street corner in between someone from KDKA television with a video camera and a short man chomping a cigar. Highlights included a fraternity float with a Back to the Future theme (complete with a crude plywood mock-up of a De Lorean), and the forensic team's car, which had a couple of simulated dead bodies sitting in the open trunk. The entire procession took about an hour or so.

Homecoming weekend is marked by a home football game and other various events, so it might not be surprising that it serves as a time for students to do stupid things. This night I heard the sound of running water and people from the next room over nervously chattering in the dorm bathroom, accompanied by the sound of another and then another can being popped open every few seconds and a smell like beer coming through the cracks around the door. I went in later and found a piece of a label reading "12 fl. oz" and "Brasseur Depuis Seize Cent Soixante Quatre." Methinks they tried flushing their evidence away. (Alcoholic beverages are prohibited in the dorms.)

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10-11-2005: Math Talk

I noticed today that my local PBS station, WNPB, has begun to broadcast instructional programming on weekday afternoons.

One of the shows included is Square One TV Math Talk, a 15-minute program that is essentially a classroom distillation of Square One TV with animated continuity in between segments and minus Mathnet.

In case you don't know or remember, Square One TV was an excellent and entertaining mathematics-concepts show broadcast on PBS from 1987 to circa 1994 that I watched on an almost-religious basis back in the day. This news excited me, as it was nice to be able to see this show (in a form) again. Let the VCR taping begin!

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10-9-2005: Falltime Musings, Including an Obligatory Computer-Related Writing

I like this time of year: The leaves begin to fall from the trees, the nights start getting longer, and there's a cool breeze in the air. Finally gone is the overbearing heat that caused me to turn the fan on and point it at me every night throughout August and September. For the last couple days, it's been cool and wet outside, and a perfect time to kick back and feel toasty inside. I can almost envision snowflakes falling outside the window now...though I'll obviously have to wait a little while longer for that. Meanwhile...

Did you know that you can tell with reasonable certainty what browser a print-out of a web page was printed from?

By default, Firefox and other Netscape/Mozilla browsers (including old ones back to the mid '90s) print the page title and URL along the top edge of the page, and the page number, date, and time placed along the bottom.

Internet Explorer, on the other hand, puts the title and page number at the top and the URL and date on the bottom. Additionally, the font size is larger and the time of day is not included.

It's sometimes interesting to look at web page print-outs posted on bulletin boards in homes and offices or passed out as handouts in class and being able to tell what browser the associated person uses without asking or even directly observing. Further deductions are up to you.

Other, more specialized browsers present other possibilities as well: For example, Opera 7.54 prints the title, date, time, and page number along the top, and nothing along the bottom. I'm not sure what Apple Safari does, since I never use it.

[Add a comment . . .]

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10-7-2005: eXTReMe Tracking: A Look at Referrers

A week ago, I decided to add a free eXTReMe Tracker to the front page of my site. It is essentially a linked image and JavaScript that serves as a counter that logs information about when the page was visited, what browser and OS the visitor used, and even what the referring page was. It's a very nifty tool, particularly when you're in a situation such as mine where you have no server access logs.

I was particularly curious to get an idea of how visitors came across my site. After seven days, I had accumulated enough information collected to make some observations:

• Just as many or more visitors come across the front page of my website from search engine queries than from links from other websites.
• Visitors referred to the front page from other websites invariably come across the site from other pages on my site (such as the Mozilla Network), or online forum posts and profiles.
• Most (or actually so far, all) of the visitors referred to by a search engine did so by searching for "Andrew Turnbull" and image searches for things like "WVU Wallpaper" or "Joke Wallpaper."

I found the multiplicity of visitors looking for computer wallpaper surprising. The reason why is because for over two years, I had a screen shot of a Windows 95 illegal-operation dialogue linked to on the front page, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek sick joke recommendation to set it centered as wallpaper to see if anyone would react. The image was then cached by Google Images, and the rest is history. Since it didn't serve much purpose, I decided to remove this from the front page.

That people came here looking for information on Andrew Turnbull (the name or the person) is not surprising. Search Google for the name, and I guarantee that this will be the first site to come up. However, visitors seem to stumble across the site by accident. No one came across the front page using a search term representative of the content on the site: No one came across the front page looking for Mozilla Thunderbird technical information, for example, or a Third Eye Blind discography. And to be honest, the lone words "The Andrew Turnbull Network" making up the title aren't very descriptive of what the site is really about. I may make a few changes in the future...

[Add a comment . . .]

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10-2-2005: Online Petitions: Much Ado About Nothing

(Previously posted under "Technology Talk:")

Since they tie into the Internet and computer technology, I want to talk about online petitions. Yes, I've signed a few myself in the past. But with few exceptions, they're stupid and don't work.

To be honest, I'm not all that keen on "regular" petitions either: That 50 people signed their names in support of something means, well, that 50 people are in support of something. And with the convenience of online petitions, virtually anyone can start a petition on any topic imaginable, and virtually anyone can sign it worldwide, often with pseudonyms and several times over.

What's more, many online petitions are so poorly-written that no one could ever take them seriously. Here's a direct quote from one I found...I kid you not:

...followed by 74 signatures that, even if they were all authentic, are much too few in number to make any kind of impact. What's more, some people go out of their way to work up insults for the party their petition is supposed to influence: "i hate new versions microsoft sucks the most i wish i had a mac." "i dont want to use msn 6 its C.R.A.P." "Bill Gates is the third anti-Christ." Not that I can argue the point, but this petition is impossible to take seriously. What's more, this is only an arbitrary example. There are hundreds of online petitions worse than this.

There are a number of ways to show support and attempt to exert influence, but online petitions are not one of them.

[Add a comment . . .]

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9-28-2005: Confessions of an Engineering Washout

I came across this hilarious article today and, as a fallen-away engineering major, found that it hit close to home. I especially liked this part:

[Add a comment . . .]

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9-26-2005: Music Update

As usual, I've collected a number of "new" CDs to listen to recently. Here are some finds from within the last month:

• Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3; Equal Vision/Columbia CK 92686.
• The Doors - Morrison Hotel; Elektra EKS 75007-2 (042-080). Early mid-'80s copy pressed in West Germany with snazzy disc-face design (below).
• The Doors - Waiting for the Sun; Elektra 74024-2.
• Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience; A&M 75021 5403 2. Early copy with hard-to-find original cover and artwork.
• Bruce Hornsby and the Range - The Way It Is; RCA Victor PCD1-5904.
• Jethro Tull - Minstrel in the Gallery; Chrysalis/Capitol 72435-41572-2-6.
• Led Zeppelin - III; Atlantic SD 19128-2.
• Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got; Ensign/Chrysalis F2 21759.
• Rush - Power Windows; Mercury 826 098-2 M-1.
• Yes - The Yes Album; Atlantic SD 19131-2 (240 106).

Here are some quickie scans I made of some of the titles. I'm getting to like my five-dollar scanner, even though the power switch doesn't work and it sometimes produces moiré effects at low resolutions.

[Add a comment . . .]

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9-24-2005: Game Day

Today was the day of the WVU home football game against East Carolina. West Virginia won by 20-15. Perhaps the margin was close enough to discourage some WVU athletics fans from ritually starting fires and destroying property to the degree that they normally do.

I can live the rest of my life without hearing the John Denver song "Take Me Home, Country Roads." Don't get me wrong; it's a nice song, but if I had a dollar for every time I've unwittingly heard the song in the last twenty years, I could afford a new car. It's become a de facto anthem of the state (not bad for a pop tune from 1971), and you can bet on hearing it whenever there's a home football game in this city: On the radio, or coming seemingly through the walls, no matter where you are. Does anyone think it's interesting that the geographical features referenced in the song ("Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River") are primarily not in West Virginia?

Another thing I heard today was a parody of the song "Rocky Top," with all references to "Rocky Top, Tennessee" changed to "Morgantown, double-you vee." Ugh...

Municipal bus service today was a joke. For today, all non-evening routes and their usual hourly runs were pared down to only a bare selection of routes, with only one or two runs the whole day. Apparently, this arrangement was done to work around the football game by allowing bus-service employees to attend it (!). It also meant that I forwent riding the bus today, and stayed downtown.

[Add a comment . . .]

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9-23-2005: Out of the Vein Revisited

Today I found myself listening to the Third Eye Blind's 2003 CD Out of the Vein again.

I was a little bit critical of the album a few months ago, when I (being in one of my moods at the time) said that it was "rather underwhelming with repeated listens, compromised in part by occasionally cringe-inducing lyrics...and the type of ear-wearing compressed mastering that all contemporary rock CDs seem to have." Happily, I've warmed up once again: The material is musically melodic and diverse, the compositions are strong, and I feel confident to say that Out of the Vein is one of the best recordings of the last five years. I would recommend it to anyone liking Third Eye Blind's other albums, or contemporary rock music in general. Now, to explain those reservations I had half a year ago:

How is the mastering? Well, the songs are maximized all right; the peak volume level hovers around 100%. Is it compressed? Of course; the waveforms of some songs look like distressed 2x4s and zooming in reveals lots of clipped peaks. But there is enough variety between loud and quiet parts of other songs that not all dynamics are lost. While it would obviously improve from an audiophile-quality remastering at the hands of someone like Steve Hoffman, the recording is listenable (although harsh high-end sibilance is noticeable, especially when listening through unequalized headphones) and not any worse than other contemporary recordings (although that doesn't say much).

As for the lyrical content? I still find a few lines a bit cringe-inducing, although nothing that sufficiantly discourages me from listening to the album. Here are some examples:

• Forget Myself: "In the slickness of your blood:" Mainly because all the instrumentation stops at the same moment, drawing more attention to the lyric than would seem necessary.
• Company: "Old English is making me manic:" Commercial product references make me queazy...
• Company: "I go to 'SuicideGirls' again...to check on anything I missed:" The ultimate: A reference to an (erotic) website in a song? Fifteen years from now (Will the web still exist then?) we'll all be scratching our heads wondering what this was about.
• Another Life: "It's like I face a seven-headed whore:" See below.
• Crystal Baller: "Still wonder what the fuck it says:" The expletives come by unexpectedly and with extra enunciation (à la Billy Joel's "Laura"), leading to uncursory glances at the stereo speaker with a "WHAT was that?" expression.

Additionally, at first I misheard the line "Don't turn my hope into a weapon" in "Palm Reader" as "You turned my home into a wet bed:" No comment on that. Oddly enough, the "tater tots" reference in "Can't Get Away" that bugged some people never bothered me at all.

I'm nit-picking. All things considered, Out of the Vein is really a pretty solid album, in a world where good music is becoming an increasingly rare commodity.

[Add a comment . . .]

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9-21-2005: AAARGH!

I can't believe it! I missed my "History of Christianity" class today! The power went out in Boreman South early this morning, and reset my alarm! (I know that it was the power that went out, since my VCR is flashing as well.) With one other exception (an art class a year or two ago that I walked into 30 minutes late), my college attendance record has been nearly perfect.

Oh well...it was kind of nice being able to sleep in late.

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9-17-2005: "Bye Dude!"

My advice: Don't post (or actually, don't expect me to post) in online forums where moderators are referred to as "unstoppable sex machines" and exert their authority (or lack thereof) like this arbitrary example:

[Add a comment . . .]

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9-16-2005: Washington, D.C.: A Follow-Up

Yesterday's Washington, D.C. excursion was very eventful and lasted for most of the day.

I had to wander out of bed around 6:20 in the morning, work my way across to the other campus, and be out on a moving tour bus shortly after 7. I dozed off part of the way up, but was awake and alert by the time we arrived in the District three or four hours later.

The first attraction I saw was the Washington National Cathedral, an elaborate structure incorporating many architectural and sculptural motifs from Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth century. This was certainly the biggest, tallest, and most impressive place of worship I have ever been inside. One feature that particularly caught my eye was the "space window," which had a piece of actual moon rock from the Apollo XI mission embedded in the stained glass.

Our next stop was the National Gallery of Art. I spent about two hours browsing through the exhibitions in the massive structure, and even so did not get to see everything. At this time I finally got a bite of fast food to eat in the Cascade Café, and also visited the triangular East Building, connected with the main museum by an underground moving sidewalk.

The final attraction of the day was another museum, the Corcoran. This was smaller than the National Gallery, and I sailed through it in about half an hour, spending another half an hour browsing through the gift shop.

I found it highly interesting that I saw the exact same Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington on display in both the National Gallery and the Corcoran. While it would be fun to make up some original theories over this surprising and amusing circumstance, the mundane truth is that a number of copies of this famous portrait exist.

Finally, I was back on the bus again, and got "home" late, indeed a bit after 10:00 p.m. After all this, I was pretty exhausted. So exhausted that my alarm didn't go off the next morning and I woke up ten minutes before my first class. But that's material for a different entry...

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9-14-2005: Destination Washington, D.C.!

Tomorrow I'll be on a field trip to Washington, D.C. along with others at my university to see some art-related attractions. Since this is not exactly a short trip, I'll be gone before 7 a.m. and won't be back here again until after 10 at night...

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9-13-2005: Words and Phrases That Irritate Me

I feel like I'm in a mild "rant" mood today. Are you ready?

1: "Burning a CD."

Where did this come from anyway? How did the capability of lowering the reflectivity of a dye layer by laser light become known as "burning," except in a limited sense? No open flames are involved. In addition, I hear the term so frequently, often in regard to bootleg/illigitimate material, that it gets nauseating after a while. I get especially frustrated when people extend the term to commercially-pressed CDs, which are most certainly not "burned" in any sense of the term.

2: "We support Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0..."

Ah yes, a term from the highly frustrating world of computer software. To me, the term "support" means "we will help you out if you call us about a problem." Just because a certain OS version, etc., is not "supported" shouldn't mean that it isn't capable of running the software. Too often however, software developers make statements like "We support Windows 98" when they really mean "This requires Windows 98," or worse, "This runs fine on Windows 95, but since we only support Windows 98 we have rigged the installer to prevent you from doing so."

3: "Self-titled debut album (or CD)."

Isn't it enough to describe that the album is self-titled? Or that it's a debut album? Somehow, both come across as being clichéd. Yet I feel unsatisfied with all of the synonyms available: "Self-titled," "Untitled," "[Title of the band]," "Eponymous," "S/T," etc., and "Debut album," "First album," "First record," Roman numeral "I"... And all of this could be avoided if the album in question had been given a proper title to begin with.

4: "Alternative Browser."

Yet another incredibly annoying term from the world of computers. Somehow, this is taken to indicate "any web browser other than Internet Explorer" in spite of the fact that Internet Explorer was neither the first popular browser nor is universally used today, and the term is usually used to justify ignoring them. And if Internet Explorer is the "standard" as some people think it is, then why does its user agent string (that identifies the software to servers and in access logs) modestly state that it is Netscape 4.0 "compatible" to this day?

5: "Since 1986." "Since 1992."

This is the last one, I promise! I can understand why a company or brand would make a point of bragging about how long it has been around when it has been around for many generations spanning decades or centuries. But I find it incredibly pretentious for a brand to concoct praise for its supposed longevity when that longevity doesn't really exist. Hello, 1992 wasn't that long ago!

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9-8-2005: More Junk...

Another day has gone by. Thankfully, I stayed put in bed last night.

This afternoon, I received another junk message in both my e-mail addresses. Like yesterday's, this one carried the return path of "apache@wvusa401.sa.wvu.edu" in the message source.

What is going on? Did someone hack the university e-mail system to make pranks? Actually, I'm a bit curious to see if this daily junk continues to develop. This is getting interesting...

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9-7-2005: Walking in Sleep, Miscellaneous Weirdity, and Frustrations at the PRT.

Have you ever gotten out of bed and walked around or done things in your sleep?

This happened to me last night. Somehow in the early morning hours, I got out of bed, pulled the top sheet off the bed and put it in the closet, took a jacket and a shirt of mine out of the closet and put them down on my desk, and wandered back to bed.

I was alert enough to know what I was doing, yet I was asleep enough to not know why. It was a somewhat surreal experience...

Very weird. I hope I sleep better this night.

Ironically, this was just the tip of the iceberg for unusual events today. Here's a very informative e-mail I received today in both my POP3 and Gmail inboxes:

"Mailed by wvusa401.sa.wvu.edu?" Interesting.

There was some nut standing on the platform outside the Mountainlair this afternoon, clutching a book and shouting out biblical stuff. As far as I could tell, none of the dozens of students and other people walking around were paying attention to him.

Anyone familiar with Morgantown and West Virginia University is familiar with the PRT, the electric people-mover system linking the campuses together that nowadays I ride round-trip three days a week. To be honest, the PRT is actually pretty convenient when it works well. However, as any student will tell you, it does not always work well.

Here's a typical example of what the PRT is like: There are two boarding platforms on the university campus downtown, which for most of the day are configured so that one platform is used for people heading toward the Towers station and one platform is used for people heading toward the other three stations on the line.

Let's say I want to get off at the Engineering station to go to a class near that location in thirty minutes' time, so of course I walk onto the platform, where there is a mass of people waiting. Two PRT cars are already pulled into the station seemingly ready, but it takes over a minute for the first car's doors to open. The LED panel indicates that the car is headed towards the Hospital station, however, so I continue to wait. The next car pulls up, and it takes close to four minutes for the door to open. This car is headed toward Engineering, where I want to go, but so many people want to go there that the car fills up before I can get on.

Four minutes later, a third car pulls in, and the LED panel indicates that it is destined to go to Towers station. No one is supposed to use this platform to go to Towers, and the car moves off without anyone getting on. Another four minutes pass, and another car is ready to go to...Hospital. Didn't another car just go to Hospital several minutes ago? Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to go to Engineering. Another car finally pulls in, and in four minutes' time it opens up to go to Engineering at last. About time! Except that halfway there, the car slows down and STOPS on the track for a number of seconds. Wonderful. Ultimately it does resume moving again, and I get to my class just barely on time.

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9-3-2005: Identify This Action Figure

Can anyone help me identify what character this action figure represents? I've had it since...well, forever. I do know that it is one of the action figures Mattel released in the 1980s as part of the "Masters of the Universe" line (which spun off the popular Filmation cartoon series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which incidentally I never watched). The chest plate is removable and is dated 1984.

He doesn't look like a very nice guy, does he? ;-)

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9-2-2005: Miscellaneous Ramblings

I recently decided to go to the inaugural meeting of the Morgantown Linux Users Group. Although I've rarely used Linux, I have always been curious about the OS. The meeting was enjoyable, and I picked up a disc of Knoppix, a "live" Linux distribution compressed into a bootable CD-ROM and suitable for trying out without actually installing on a computer. Unfortunately it wouldn't pick up my serial mouse for some reason, so I couldn't do much with it this time. I tried Knoppix out once before, in Spring 2004 when some people were giving them out at the year's Computing & Technology Symposium.

Yesterday, one of my art-history seminar classes met in the Evansdale-campus library for discussion and research, centered around an introduction to using the library's computer-based information resources, including the many online databases accessible. Internet Explorer was the only browser available, and I kept finding myself holding down the Ctrl key when selecting links for multiple articles, expecting them to load in additional tabs. Oh well...

I sometimes wonder what the good people of the WVU Office of Information Technology think of this website. At least I can infer that I haven't yet stepped out of line enough to warrant them deleting the entire site from their servers without consent.

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