I've been creating a list of books that I've been running into here in Europe that I want to read / get from the library. While I know Davis is an enormous library, since UNC isn't particularly strong in computer science books (which is what I generally look for), I haven't thought amazingly highly of UNC's library. However, the books I've been completely randomly running into here have an extremely high chance of being found in the UNC library, and I'm extremely impressed. I thought I would post up a list of the ones I have so far (I find the book, add it to the built-in list functionality of the new search engine, then email the list to myself), in case others were interested in what I've been thinking about reading.

• The Breaking and Remaking of the Portland Vase—the story of one particular vase in the British Museum which was related in brief by my tour guide and sounded very interesting. Apparently it's a short story as the book is only 32pages (which I didn't notice until now. But we have a copy of an obscure pamphlet about a vase in the Art Library!


• Advertising Next—a coffee-book style book on successful and interesting advertising campaigns which seemed like a neat book to take a look at (saw in the Victoria & Albert bookshop).


• Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)—I've seen notes about this book for ages from my economics blogs, and decided it's definitely worth taking a look, especially after spending some time in a car in European traffic.


• Why we buy : the science of shopping, one of the three books on this list from Don't Make Me Think's recommended reading list, which was itself read because it was on Jeff Atwood's recommended reading list, which sounds like a very interesting book on how consumers make purchasing decisions (in retail stores).


• Sources of Power : How People Make Decisions, the second item from the reading list; a book that describes how decisions are actually made by those who have to make them quickly, not how in ideal a decision should be made, which in a sense is similar to a portion of the usability book ("how people actually use your website vs. how you think they use it").


• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: 3rd Edition, the third item from the reading list. A reference book on how to design websites which sounds both interesting and not necessarily as light reading as the others. However, it's on reference at SILS, so I can't check (this edition) out.


• The fall of the Bell system : a study in prices and politics. I was reading up on AT&T today. I probably started with some mention of cell-phones, then started digging a bit more into the history of AT&T (via Wikipedia, what else?) and doing my perodic checking-of-AT&Ts-website-to-see-if-they've-lowered-prices. Generally, they create new plans with the same features as the old ones but lower prices or flat out lower the plan's price, but if you're a current user of the plan you don't get moved to the lower price (a method of price discrimination). I switched my family's local phone service from "2Pack" to "CompleteChoice Basic" and we'll now save $2 a month with no service change. Well, this book is one of the books recommended in a biography on the judge who broke up AT&T (into the Baby Bells, which eventually merged back together to get the new AT&T).


• The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T —Another book. Very much out of print but with very good ratings on Amazon, and fortunately very available in Davis.

Oh, while I'm speaking of books, The Name of the Wind and Don't Make Me Think are two damn good books. Ben and I can choose good books (we're doing a loose book club this summer and these are the two we've read so far).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, France, Amsterdam, research, my life, yeah, stuff I should be blogging about. But you get my book list first. :D

So, my summer has begun!

As anyone who has ever been a student knows, the last period before school ends is just an exercise in pain and endurance; full of studying, stress, exams, final assignments, and packing. Mine was heavier on the stress just because I like to stress myself out.

This time, I was most concerned about a five-page Dutch essay (the longest essay I've ever had to written in that class). All our previous papers have been two pages long--you can ramble on about a subject for two pages. This time, I decided to compare all the works we read in the semester (more or less), so I came up with a theme, re-read/re-skimmed them, pulled out quotes, and came up with a six-page quote list, then condensed that into an essay. I stressed out about that essay a significant amount because I don't write essays nor in Dutch well. Of course, my Dutch essay was last so I could worry about it all the way through my exams.

I also think I don't study as much as a lot of other people, who had textbooks and huge stacks of note cards and days spent in Davis Library. Sure, I studied, and I stressed out probably enough to make up any lack of note cards, but I didn't go horribly crazy; probably due to my physical sleep requirement (I MUST sleep seven hours a night. Period. Not negotiable. My brain shuts off at about 11pm).

After my exams were over, I then tried just to crash mentally but also had to do all the little tasks that I had to do before I left (ResNET responsibilities and favors, Cobb Community Gov't Treasurer-like responsibilities), as well as packing, and whatnot; which ended up being almost as stressful.

However, it all managed to get done, and now I'm at home. Yay!

So, what have I been doing? The dreaded bulleted list:

• Watching way too much TV on Hulu. Throughout exam-time and past it, I was watching the first two seasons of Stargate SG-1 which is an interesting TV show takes a different path from the other sci-fi shows I've watched (present day Earth. Explore new, unknown worlds, often branches of old Earth cultures, sometimes new) and while it's not always amazing, it's interesting and different and I like it. After I ran out of that, I completely switched gears and at the mention of my sister started watching Kitchen Nightmares, a reality TV show about turning around bad restaurants (except that description refers more to the British version, apparently, the American version is more about blowing up the emotions, and it looks like almost all the restaurants Gordon turned around still closed). I like that it's about making things better, not just tearing things down, and it definitely is like mental popcorn. Now I'm interested in seeing the British version.


• Saturday was my 'cultural' day. My family went to a tea ceremony and musical performance at the Bain Project, an abandoned waterworks temporarily public art forum, which was pretty neat, and in the evening we saw Side by Side by Sondheim, a musical revue of the earlier works of my family's favorite musical theatre composer in the Raleigh Little Theater amphitheater. It was pretty awesome, apart from some technical hiccups and the threat of rain. Raleigh Little Theater has never given me a bad show (well, Taming of the Shrew back when I was too small to understand Shakespeare, but that wasn't their fault); they consistently have great-quality performances, better than any other venue I've been to.


• I've watched a couple of movies--on Sunday afternoon, I saw the new Star Trek movie (at Mission Valley; go there for your Triangle movie-watching needs!); I thought it was amazing. I felt that the producers took the old Trek (of which I am a major fan) and treated it lovingly--they were not afraid to stray from it, but the core of the series, such as the characters and a few jokes just for old-timers, was kept. And oh my god, those special effects were frakking incredible. "This is not your father's Enterprise" is a good summary. On reflection and after complaints by my father, yes, the plot may not have been the best, but frankly, I didn't care. It was good enough to keep me there. Beautiful. Last night I saw Shall We Kiss (Un baiser s'il vous plaît) at Galaxy Cinema, our local independent movie theater, which I also thought was a great (but obviously very different) movie, the story of two people who meet, have an amazing evening together, and why one doesn't want to kiss the other.

That's the past. I also have things which I am now working on, but frankly, this is getting long enough I'll save them for another post, even if it's just later today.

I will be one of the two co-chairs for the Executive Branch of UNC Student Government's Technology and Web Services (commonly abbreviated Tech and Web) committee. I'll be working with my fellow committee member from this year, Andrew Phillips.

(Yay for long and official-sounding titles!)

I just updated the website and added a nice redirect link.

http://www.unc.edu/studgov/techandweb

I'm excited; it should be a great experience and hopefully not too much more work then what I did this year. The transition meeting is this afternoon.

It was my birthday on Friday. I had a good low-key but enjoyable birthday. My parents got me an iPod Touch so I can check my email and generally do computer-related things without lugging my computer around--my dad's iPod Touch was useful when I had it for a while and now we both have our own. The App Store has exploded in the past 9 months or so, when I checked back then I could actually look through every single app.

Debating whether to by LogMeIn Ignition so I can access my computer from my phone. Probably, it's just expensive for an iPod app ($30), but I guess cheap for a normal app, which it basically is.

I suck at updating this. Not that this bears repeating. I've been using Twitter somewhat frequently as an announcement/micro-blogging platform; but those two goals are at odds (if I want something announced, I can't micro-blog when I feel like it).

So here are some cool links I've been discovering over the past few days.

• Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics is the Wired summary to the full article, which is here. It's basically a computer program that uses genetic algorithms to find non-trivial invariants in collected experimental data--it starts off with random equations, then figures out which ones are "least wrong" and tweaks them, making them more and more accurate, while also being encouraged to minimize the terms in its invariant result. The result? Science laws. It's really damn cool, especially since we can collect data a lot faster and lot better then we can actually analyze it.


• OmniGraphSketcher is a new Mac app that basically allows you to make graphs. It's not just a point grapher, you can create curves by dragging, you can highlight areas between curves, it's a much more visual way of looking at graphs--something you'd find in an econ textbook rather than in a science lab report. It's pretty awesome, though, I used a couple of its features to help me do a presentation for my ACM class.


• This UNC ad is pretty awesome.. I personally find that the ability of a person to throw a ball through a cloth basket does not actually excite me at all and certainly does not represent the academic institution that the person may be associated with. However, I also got a little bitter at all the really smart people who get scholarships, just because I was a bit bitter that NCSSM administration never cared about me because I didn't win any prestigious scholarships for the school, that was all they cared about academically, and I didn't get robertson and am way too unathletic to get morehead-cain, but I think I do a lot of really awesome stuff.
  Frankly, I should stop bitching. UNC is paying me to go to school here (with my combination of merit scholarships and ResNET) That's pretty awesome and probably something that very few people have, and frankly, I should get over this whole low-self-esteem thing. Like now.
  
  Also, I know one of the students who got the Rhodes (she's in my Dutch class) and she's actually really nice and awesome, and all these people probably are too. :)


• Always At the After Party (A Liberal on Libertarians)--I think I agree with what was said in this article. A quote from it has been up on my Safari tabs since the first week of February (as I say below, tabs in Safari open for waaay too long) but I never read the whole thing until now. I really don't want to start more political debates versus libertarianism--I did that here already. However, one quote really spoke to me, so I'll quote it again here:
  

  
  We think that politics is more than an unfortunate necessity required by our inability to live together without killing each other. We think it is, can be anyway, an arena in which we work out and pursue, sometimes with notable success, large and constructive purposes.

  
  I have faith in government. Not blind faith, but faith that government can be and is a good force in people's lives. It's not perfect, as it is made up of men and men are definitely fallible, but it is definitely not despicable.


• The True Cost of Credit lets you know what the processing fees are whenever you use your credit or debit card. Very interesting.


• Web Design+, a neat list of how to do various things in web development using standards-compliant code. Seems like a good reference.
  

I have way too many tabs open in Safari. They serve as reminders of things I want to read or reply to/ bookmarks / whatever, but they need to be sorted through and closed. If Safari didn't have a "Restore all tabs from last session", then crashes / accidental shutdowns / etc would be horribly difficult. Working on that now and things are already a lot better!

I went on an upgrade spree yesterday / this morning. Updating open source software is fun 'cause there's a lot of updates, always, and I like updating things, intrinsically. However, fink update-all ran into a snag because of a circular dependency with libtool2 and libtool14, but I think it's all been worked out by installing a couple of things once at a time (thus, the tools that need libtool2 can install, the tools that need libtool14 can install, and the two can remove each other's libtool first).

So, I read UNC change notices. This one made me very happy from a "well-written code" standpoint.

Partial failure of www.unc.edu cluster

Partial failure of www.unc.edu cluster
ID: 11260
Priority: Normal
Categories : Web Services
Starts : 2009-03-22 21:30
Ends : 2009-03-23 04:00
A single node in our www.unc.edu cluster got into a very unstable state and stopped responding to HTTP(S) requests. This triggered our load balancer to automatically remove it from the pool and redirecting customers to good servers. We're rebooting the host at this time and it should be back online soon. A handful of users may have noticed some sluggishness before they were redirected to good servers.

Start: 3/22/2009 at: 21:33
End: Sun 3/22/2009 at: 22:50

WIN for the load balancer! I'm glad it automatically removed the server from the pool once it realized it wasn't working correctly. This is how technology is supposed to work. :)

In other news, I was very productive this weekend. If only I understood my differential equations class (if only I had a better teacher?) then everything would be near-perfect, except for that econ midterm on thursday I haven't started studying for.

I am also in a good mood because my COMP 431 due Wednesday assignment works! Now all I have to do is re-comment it and I'm good to go. My COMP 426 assignment due tomorrow was done yesterday, I actually did my Dutch reading tonight instead of putting it off, and I did all the diff.eq. homework I was able to understand (thank you, wikipedia, for explaining the basic concepts behind eigenvalues and eigenvectors very well). I was productive, and I saw my family today and hung out with friends yesterday.

Not perfect, but I'll take it.

Trying to make my goal of short frequent posts a reality.

• Even with the help of loratadine, I am still minorly allergic to my bed after a night's sleep. This probably means it's time to wash sheets or dry pillows and kill all the dust mites, although I never really think it does all that much.


• My lovely headphones (Sennheiser PX100s), which have lasted me well since September of '07, have recently been acting up. I ran the connector into a doorframe while carrying around my laptop, and from then it's been finicky--the left channel likes to break up. If I play with the connector, I'll generally get it working, but it's annoying. I feel like it's probably worth it to get another pair. I am trying to decide whether to get the same model or to get a slightly different model (the PX200)--the difference between the two models is that the PX100s are open (they don't block sound coming out of the headphones or coming into the headphones) and the PX200 are closed (I would hear less of what was going on around me and people around me would hear less of my music). I asked my roommate to see how loud my current headphones are for him, and he says he can't really hear my music. Any thoughts?


• I have way too much work. Because I'm a bit more annoyed with this class, thank you COMP 431 for changing our assignment due this morning last afternoon, the one day I did not have internet access because I was traveling, and for assigning a pretty crazy assignment on Friday, during spring break (she said she'd get to us before the break, and didn't). Still love the material, so whatever. Today I should get back my midterm I took before break. [edit: nope, will be later this week]


• WHY DO I THINK I CAN READ DUTCH? I really can't. I spent all day yesterday (in the car, mainly, which is not as great for reading) reading a short story (De ondergang van de familie Boslowits) and still am not done. I just read really slowly, am very easily distracted (can't listen to public radio because if I hear English words I concentrate on those and not the Dutch), and have to look up way too many words. We're starting to read a book, which I got the first part of over break (he's sending it to us in PDF format), and have I started it? No. Hopefully I'll manage to finish the short story today. To be fair, I re-read the part I had already read since I didn't really understand it very well, which took a couple of hours.


• I got the Ministry of Magic's new CD in the mail last night, and have been listening to it. It makes me very happy (although not sure if I like it as much as the first couple). My main listening now is wizard rock. It's great stuff. :)


Arg, should stop here so I can get ready for class on time and get to class. à+ ( = à plus tard in French IM speak = until later)

[edit: Forgot to actually hit submit because I was running out of time.]

I apparently have issues with this whole "using LiveJournal regularly" thing. I do want to use LJ more frequently in shorter bursts instead of very infrequently in long bursts.

So, things of interest in no particular order:

• I'm currently up in McLean, Virginia (outside of Washington DC) staying with my grandmother for a week. I've been doing this for a couple of years, and it's a good tradition--I don't see my grandmother very often, and spending some low-key time with her is nicer than the crazy high-tension Thanksgivings when we all got together (which don't even happen anymore


• My cousin (who lives next to my grandmother) is having her Bat Mitzvah this weekend, so the family will be assembling this weekend up here and celebrating--I just got a bit of a head start on the visit.


• I took the train up--it's pretty convenient for me, since there's a train station right in Cary which'll take me up to Alexandria in a mere six hours. Dirt cheap now (about $35 one-way). You have to have a physical ticket mailed to you in the mail, which is ridiculous, and there's normal power plugs for each seat in the train, which is great. Due to construction, the only train left at 6:15am. Fun times.


• Instead of sleeping like any sane person on the train, I instead took this opportunity to catch up on some podcasts, in particular, the Dungeons & Dragons Penny Arcade / PvP podcast series, where the authors of the comics Penny Arcade and PvP come together (one for the first time) to play DnD, and you can hear their game-playing session in a series of podcasts (and a second set, airing now, with Wil Wheaton added in the mix). This is my first real experience to DnD, which is something I've always wanted to do but have never really been able to. If anyone knows of local DMs / local game stores or whatnot please tell me, 'cause I'm interested in a game.


• Spring break was supposed to be my time to catch up on everything as well as recover from my crazy life at school. Those two goals are somewhat at odds with each other. What have I done so far? Done all my family's taxes, started looking into the investments my grandparents gave me when I was boring (there's some spare money that snuck out of portfolios which I want to reinvest), traveled up to DC, did some homework, am slowly working on closing all my Safari tabs (current count: 30, down from 50), am choosing next semester's courses (see below). Still need to do lots more homework, reply to a bajillion emails, etc.


• Saw Entre les murs (The Class), the new French film. Won the Palme d'Or (first French film in 21 years to do so) at Cannes, already nominated for "Best Foreign Film" at next year's Oscars, and a really good film about a teacher of kids in a racially-mixed Paris middle school. Semi-autobiographical, based on a book (the main character, the teacher, is the writer of the book), the other kids and teachers are actual kids and teachers.


• While it is totally awesome that my grandmother has wireless internet, her Verizon DSL modem + wireless router is pretty bad. Its built-in DNS server is pretty screwed up, and prevented me from doing my 431 DNS-sniffing assignment easily because it just flat out ignores NS and MX DNS requests and has set this lovely "domain_not_set.invalid" search domain automatically for me which screws with external DNS requests. The rest of the router isn't particularly better--it only does WEP encryption wirelessly, and frankly, the Internet acts a little funky but I don't want to try upgrading firmware and messing with DNS in case something horribly breaks.


• I do like my job with ResNET a lot--I really truly helping people with their computers. I've also helped out a few of the OAs, RAs, and the CD, and I keep the printer well-stocked, so as a result the Cobb Housing staff likes me too, which is great. I do my job well and offer useful suggestions, so ResNET management likes me. Good situation all around.

Seems like a good list for right now. I really should post these as I think of them and not in long lists, but I'm working on it.

I use twitter, linked with my facebook status, as a mini-blogging / announcement platform (which you can also see on my website, which is newly redesigned with better colors!).

So, my current tentative / hopeful schedule for next semester:
COMP 530 Operating Systems (MWF 2:00-3:15, Jeffay, 4 credit hours)
COMP 550 Algorithm Analysis (TR 11:00-12:15pm, Lin, 3 credit hours)
HNRS 325 Dunlevie Honors Junior Colloquium (W 6:30-9:00pm, Kendall, 1 credit hour)
PHYS 116 Mechanics (TR 8:00-9:15am + lab + recitation TBD, Karwowski, 4 credit hours) (has turned back into "staff", and told I couldn't get into it anyway by Maggie)
Possibly replaced with: MATH 547 Linear Algebra for Applications (MWF 9:00-9:50am Adalsteinsson)
FREN 300 Review Grammar and Composition (MWF 9:00-9:50am Jarausch or (if I take 547) TR 12:30-1:45pm Noblitt, 3 credit hours)

At first I was looking at a fifth course, but it conflicts with OS, and then I was wondering "should I really only take four real courses"? Frankly, I've always taken five but OS is going to be killer, Algorithms will be hard but great, and Mechanics will probably be hard/time-consuming but great, so I think I can keep myself busy, and I'll still have 15 credit hours. :)

I finally sprung for PickAProf because I was trying to determine whether any of the Math teachers are any good. If the teachers for MATH 547 (Rozansky, Adalsteinsson), MATH 566 (Mitran), STOR 435 (Ji) or STOR 455 (Sen) are particuarly good, let me know and I might switch out French. Karwowski is supposed to be really good, so I'll stop putting off Physics.

• BOOK SALE!!!! I'm going in just about half an hour to the fourth day of the annual Wake County Public Library Booksale. Let me just quote from their website: "More than 300,000 books will be available for sale in the largest sale of its kind in the Southeast.". THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND BOOKS! FOR REALLY CHEAP! It's one of the most amazing things in the world, and is where a lot of my (and my family's) book collection came from. I HIGHLY recommend going if you're in the area (today: $2 hardback, 50 cents paperback, tomorrow $5 box and $2 bag), and if not, stick it on your calendar for next year. :) [edit: Actually, I'm not sure I've been to it in several years. I frankly don't know why, probably exam or homework concerns, but I am totally going this year. :) ]
  



• I've had this link open for a while (thanks yuki_no_oukami!), and think it's one of the best defenses of gay marriage I have ever read, from Keith Olbermann (the MSNBC anchor). If you haven't already read it, it's pretty powerful stuff. The YouTube videos Wil Wheaton posted on WWdN are also quite good. Frankly, I feel like this election (specifically: Obama, the black man*, winning the election by a landside**, yet gay marriage was outlawed by constitutional amendment in what I think as the most liberal state in the nation) shows that black/white racism has ceased to be the great civil rights issue in America. (Am I saying racism doesn't exist? No. etc. etc.) and I think that torch has passed to gay rights. Frankly, looking at Prop 8 etc. etc., I don't know if this will be my generation's issue, because I frankly don't know if America as a whole can handle gays anytime soon. This makes me very sad.

* Really people, he's half African and half Kansas-ian. I have doubts about him being "African-American" (especially culturally), which is a very different thing from being an American with a directly African parent. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great step forward, but I frankly think he's not an example of an African-American becoming president, he's an example of a black man becoming president. Perhaps I'm just arguing semantics here or just have no idea what I'm talking about, as a totally Caucasian person.

** Frankly people: I don't care what you say, 53% to 46% is only a 7% difference. For elections, this is very decisive, but a freaking 58 million people voted for McCain. That's not a "landslide" victory for Obama, a whole lotta people in this nation voted for McCain.

I read this New York times article about the fact that Obama is an enormous Blackberry user but when he becomes President he'll have to give up e-mail since no president is allowed to send e-mail. Isn't that horrible?

This is a blog post about Adobe's horrible Mac installer. This is an excellent example of things that Mac users care about (at least to some extent) which other people probably think is totally crazy. One of the things I hated about the Zimbra Mac Client was a HORRIBLE JAVA INSTALLER WHICH TOTALLY EMULATED A WINDOWS INSTALLER AND WAS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN ON MY MAC AND INSTALLED ZIMBRA IN MY HOME DIRECTORY WHICH IS TOTALLY OFF LIMITS TO APPS!

Okay, I'm better now. You all must think I'm crazy.

I am way too busy and should be doing homework now. Also I was really angry today regarding incompetent management of the UNC passport drive (not the government, the government was totally efficient. the university, specifically, university photo's role). I am not going to detail because I've already ranted at two or three people about this and I now have better things to do with my life.

So here are random news snippets and thoughts I've had over the past few weeks. It's getting quite long! I am majorly neglecting this place.

• It snowed a bit today! As someone who has not seen snow in a while (who lives in the South), it was very exciting. Sadly, the ground is too warm and it melted away.


• I went to a Wizard Rock concert last night at Camelot Treasures. It was a lot of fun and we got to hear The Remus Lupins (aka the Wizard Rock Heart-Throb Alex Carpenter) who came from California! He had some good music, and seemed surprised at how excited we were and how we knew every single one of the Blibbering Humdingers and Hawthorn and Holly's songs (the local wizard rock bands). I was the only male in the audience (besides Bryson) for the majority of the performance, which is a bit bizarre (I do things like French + wizard rock which are 'female-heavy' but also things like CS + Dutch which are 'male-heavy.) I still want The Ministry of Magic to come down (they're my favorite wizard rock band), but they probably won't.


• Had a midterm today in my COMP 411 class which I probably didn't study "enough" for. I think I still did well, but probably not as good as my first midterm (which I actually got a perfect score (!!) on). The first question (which asked about whether the given addition of twos complement numbers would cause an overflow) threw me for a loop because I kept thinking about the numbers as floating-point and not twos-complement numbers. For example: 0x8000000 is the most negative number you can represent in twos complement (-2^31), which if you add negative numbers to it will definitely overflow, while 0x80000000 in floating-point is actually "negative zero", which you can obviously add negative numbers to it without it overflowing. My brain took a couple of tries to sort that all out but I think I did. I really like that class and am sad it's ending soon.


• I got my hair cut! It is now shorter (a standard male haircut location wise, with the hair itself longer than a standard male haircut). To compare, here is a photo of me before the haircut and here is a photo I just took. I realized after getting my hair cut that my inner self-image of myself I think always has hair of more this length. One of my classmates said "You don't have mad scientist hair anymore!" and I think that describes my old hair pretty accurately. :)


• The Gridlock Economy is a very good book, the best non-fiction book I've read in a very long time. It's basically about the "tragedy of the anticommons". For those who do not know economics, the "tragedy of the commons" is basically that if nobody owns a given resource then there's a tendency for that resource to be overused--e.g. overgrazed land (the town commons where everyone would let their sheep graze), overfished water (if nobody owns the water, everyone'll try to fish as much as they can). The classic econ answer to a "tragedy of the commons" problem is "privatize the resource or institute government control", but this book points out that you can go too far with private ownership. If a resource has too many owners, then it will be underused, to take an example, medical patents. If a drug you want to create would involve several patented structures / would need to be tested using patented structures, you have to reach agreements with EVERY SINGLE ONE of the patent holders to bring the drug to market, which is prohibitively expensive, even if all the patent holders are agreeable, easily known, and easily accessible. One of my favorite stories in the book was how Congress solved the problem of passenger air traffic.


• I have now full administrator privileges on the (Executive Branch of) Student Government website. Basically, I offered to fix some broken links for him, and Mac, the current webmaster (a senior CS major and a fellow ACMer), wants me to take up the mantle of webmaster (or "Chief Information Officer") when he graduates. I've been tinkering around with the site, fixing the aforementioned links, changing a few minor features, updating pages, cleaning up some rather disgusting HTML (Microsoft Word-generated HTML should be shot, by the way), getting the pages to XHTML and CSS validate. For an example of the horrible HTML, look here. Note not just the HORRIBLE word HTML, but the fact that the "first" list is actually a SERIES of ONE ITEM BULLETED LISTS, instead of one list with multiple bullets, and how worse of all the second list is NOT ACTUALLY A LIST AT ALL, but a UNICODE BULLET SYMBOL and then the bullet text. The fixed (and condensed page) is here--note the bulleted list, just like the one being used in this blog post! This has been fun and has been taking up some of my spare time but I don't mind.


• Thanksgiving is coming up! I am making arrangements with friends now to make sure I see them over break, especially if they are just visiting for Thanksgiving.


• AAAH EXAMS ARE ALMOST HERE?!!?! Also, all my exams are on the last two days and need to be moved.


• ARG I HAVE FINAL ASSIGNMENTS! I have (as of now): a comp 416 assignment (worth 3x all our other assignments. Doesn't look too tough, fortantely), a Dutch paper (which I can do, just need to set aside the time), and a final paper for my English class (five to seven pages! I know that's short in the realm of REAL HUMANITIES classes, but it'll be the longest paper I've ever written. I need to start on it so I can write it gradually and revise it!). Guess what I'll be doing over Thanksgiving when not seeing family + friends?


• I like my classes and am sad to see most of them end! Maybe not MATH 381, but I find the material somewhat interesting, it's the class itself I don't like. I really like my computer hardware / organization class (COMP 411), my sci-fi class (ENGL 146), the web programming class (COMP 416) is interesting and useful with a very good teacher (we learned AJAX yesterday! I was waiting all semester for that...), and Dutch is a fun class, just not such a fun experience when trying to read books in Dutch or assemble coherent and grammatically correct sentences.


• Next semester's classes are also very cool, as you can see on my schedule. I'm excited about internet services and protocols (learn how the INTERNET actually works in detail!), more web programming (Java servlets! Server side stuff! Crazy!), and to a lesser extent honors differential equations (should be interesting, giving the math department here another shot, and I need it to take Numerical Analysis which I want to take again!), honors macroecon (the teacher is apparently REALLY good and everything happening now should be great fodder for class discussion), and Dutch (last semester, which is a little sad! perhaps I will be able to assemble coherent sentences? We will be doing a one-semester overview of Dutch literature, which seems very neat).


• I really like being on the Student Technology Advisory Board and on the Technology and Web Services committee of Student Government--besides that I like talking about tech stuff, I can talk about tech stuff that actually directly will affect me and other students at UNC! In STAB, I can ask ITS (our IT services) 'why are things done like this?' and I'll get an answer, and they ask us what students would think of their new ideas. In both committees, we get to find out about what's coming to UNC tech-wise in the future and help influence its development. In Tech and Web, we support students (for example, with their new Joomla! websites for their student organizations) while also attempting to lobby for changes we'd like to see (better email, more use of SLICE, etc). This stuff is way cool, and I love it!


• Related to that, this is basically why I am reluctant to study abroad. Frankly, there are so many cool things to do at UNC and so many cool things to be involved with that I'm not going to get them all done anyway, and if I left I'd have to give up some of them and I'd lose some opportunities to do things like be on these committees, be in ResNET, etc. etc. I know it'd be an awesome experience for me, but still, I'd have to give up a lot.


• I Geek-A-Thonned this weekend (well, it was a mini-geek-a-thon). It was fun, I was able to take the bus there (Triangle Transit goes from UNC / South Road to 2/3 a mile from Kramden) and meet some new people and see some old ones. Mainly, though, there were new people who I didn't know and I was doing final testing, which (despite being new to me) wasn't exactly what I wanted. It was still neat. Got my thumb gashed by accident (oddly enough!)


• I hope I am not an arrogant person, especially / including academically. This was going to become a whole other LJ post, but it gets condensed into this little list item.


• I've been doing quite a bit of personal computer consulting at Carolina Meadows (my grandparent's retirement community), which is fun and actually surprisingly lucrative (since I get paid actual money!) on Fridays. This is mainly fun, and hopefully I am useful to people and not overcharging etc. etc. (I think I am, and I am not, respectively, I'm just not used to semi-constant demand and actually being paid). I probably should start recording all the money I get so I can pay taxes on it, make it a bit more official.


• I upgraded the old iBook of the Carolina Meadows Mac Club (which is basically on permanent loan on me, since the club doesn't need it as their new presenter brings her own laptop and the person who primarily bought and used it is actually dead now) by maxing out the RAM (from 128mb to 1.128 GB), adding an AirPort card, and upgrading the OS (from OS X 10.3 to 10.4, which is the newest it can handle). I'm considering using it as my more 'portable' laptop, since it's lighter, more expendable, and decently powered for my uses with the upgrades. I used it to study for my COMP 411 test (above) on the way to the wizard rock concert (also above).


• I'm considering buying a netbook (or more specifically, an OLPC XO-1 through the buy one get one program) that I can carry around with me, take notes on, surf the web, etc. A person I know through STAB (see above) has an OLPC laptop which I am borrowing to try it out.

That's all I can think of right now. That's a lot of typing. :)

Oh, and I have one other item which is under friends-lock. If you are NOT MY LIVEJOURNAL FRIEND then you should comment and I can add you.

COMP 426 (Advanced WWW Programming; JB Smith): MW 12:30 - 1:45
COMP 431 (Internet Services and Protocols; Kaur): MW 9:30 - 10:45
DTCH 405 (Topics in Dutch Culture; Thornton): MWF 3:00-3:50
ECON 420H (Intermediate Theory: Money, Income, AND EMPLOYMENT; Froyen): TR 2:00 - 3:15
MATH 383H (First Course Differential Equations, Taylor): TR: 9:30 - 10:45

Alternates:
POLI 100H (Introduction to Government in the United States, Rabinowitz): TR 9:30 - 10:45
POLI 230H (Democracy and Citizenship, Searing): TR 2:00 - 3:15
PHYS 116 (Mechanics, Clegg) MWF at 8:00 - 8:50 + lab + recitation

I'm trying to find out more information about Taylor, any advice / anecdotes would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I am considering doing an honors contract in one of my COMP courses instead of taking two honors courses, but am leaning against it due to the extra work / nobody's done it before / I have four honors courses I want to take / I'd probably add on phys 116 if I honors contracted which would probably be too much work.

Hello, faithful readers. I bring you news from the World of Max.

My cell phone is in the process of breaking. I've had a Sony Ericsson Z520a phone once I accidentally washed my first cell phone (a very basic LG model) in the beginning of my junior year (just about three years ago). My Z520a was replaced several times throughout my time in high school due to the fact that it kept breaking (and the replacement phone I got shipped quickly became defective) but for the past two years I've had excellent luck with my phone--it's been dropped more times then I can count and stuffed into my pants pocket daily, and until now it's worked perfectly. But as of a few days ago, the main screen seems to have been damaged--sometimes when I open the phone it just displays as a blank white screen, other times it displays my screen at an "offset", which causes it to flicker rapidly like a bad TV signal, sometimes it works perfectly (especially if I don't open it all the way). The outer screen works, which makes the phone perfectly functional for receiving calls.

I decided, after talking to my parents, it was time for a new phone. I am extremely satisfied with my phone--its interface is decent, its Bluetooth connection (more rare in those days) allows me to sync my contacts and calendars through Apple's iSync software and transfer ringtones and pictures back and forth, and my phone did not try to be anything other then a phone. My phone is quad-band, meaning that I can use it in Europe, and was eventually unlocked, meaning I can put European SIM cards in it and get European phone numbers instead of paying AT&T outrageous rates.

I then started to look on AT&T's website for a new phone. These were my major criteria:

a) Must be a quad-band phone, as I will most likely use this abroad.
b) Must be able to sync with my computer via iSync, which basically requires that it have an uncrippled Bluetooth implementation and built-in support in iSync or a plug-in written that'll play it.
c) Must NOT have a keyboard. I want a phone, not a device to write text messages and emails.

The above criteria, especially the second, were surprisingly hard to meet. I made a list of the phones meeting criteria a and c, then checked the phones for iSync support on a series of four websites (the official Apple website, three iSync plugin websites). What I discovered was that all LG phones and Samsung phones were out of the running--none of them can be synced with iSync. (Technically, a few Samsung models can be synced, but no "A" model phones, which are all the AT&T phones), and newer Motorola phones were spotty.

I picked out the phones that seemed to meet my criteria--the Nokia 6085, the Nokia 6555, the Sony Ericsson W580i, the Sony Ericsson z750a, the MotoRAZR v3xx, and the MotoRAZR2 v9 Mahogany. (Note: yes, I'm a Mac fanboi, but the iPhone's required data plan is way too expensive, and I'm using my dad's iPod Touch here, and with the university's omnipresent wireless it's an excellent substitute)

Reading through the CNET reviews for the phones, I found myself pretty unimpressed with the phones. The 6085 seemed extremely basic and there were many complaints on Amazon about it, the 6555 apparently has next-to-nil battery life, the W580i focuses on being a music player (my iPod plays my music much better, thankyouverymuch), the z750a seems less functional then my current phone, and I was unimpressed by the MotoRAZR. The V9 Mahogany was okay, but expensive. There are only unofficial plug-ins to get it to work with iSync, and I'm a bit skeptical of the "slider" design.

So I tried a different tact--looking on CNET's site for their highest-rating phones, then seeing if they were available, and I stumbled upon the Nokia N95, an unlocked phone basically imported from Europe/Asia, where their phones are much more impressive. Since I want to remain with AT&T, a GSM network, I could buy an unlocked phone and put in my AT&T SIM card, instead of being stuck only with AT&T branded phones. The main disadvantage of this process, besides not getting all my support from AT&T, is that AT&T's phones are subsidized since I'd need to sign a new two-year agreement with them, so bascially unlocked phones are really expensive. The N95 has everything I'd ever want in a phone as well as a good camera, GPS, Wi-Fi access and media player, and costs just around five hundred dollars, if not more. I just want a *phone* that can work around the world and can connect to my computer--is that too much to ask? (Apparently if you ask Sony Ericsson, the answer is no. They make walkman-phones and still camera-phones and stylish-phones, but there's no replacement for my z520a).

I then surfed around on Amazon's cell phone store, in their selection of unlocked phones. Sorting by both "high reviews" and "best-selling" turned up another phone, the Nokia E51. As I looked more and more at the Nokia E51, it seemed like a good choice. It definitely has a lot of features--quad band, unlocked, Bluetooth, iSync, 2 MP camera, MP3/video player, expandable memory, and most interestingly Wi-Fi, but it's still very clearly a phone and not a phone-still camera or a phone-iPod or a Blackberry, like most of the other phones I was looking at. The reviews are extremely positive, and for a unlocked phone with that many features, it's pretty cheap (costs $260 at Amazon, which is after a 33% discount). The more I looked at the E51, the more I liked it. It has Wi-Fi, meaning that I can actually surf the web on my phone without paying through the nose to AT&T, and I could even download VoIP software so I can call via Skype / Wi-Fi, in cases when I don't have cell phone reception or internationally, where Skype is cheaper, and it seems like a solid, full-featured phone.

I wanted to show my findings to my dad and ask him for advice, but he hasn't been answering his cell phone. Thinking about it a bit more, I realize that the phone still is quite expensive (a holiday present, perhaps?), and that if I had to choose another phone, the Nokia 6085 would probably be it--it's a solid phone with the features I wanted, and it's free after signing a new contract (and we're not planning to move from AT&T anytime soon, everyone else in my family is on contract with them after getting new phones).

Perhaps I'm putting too much emphasis into those reviews and thinking of them too negatively, and perhaps having an expensive phone is a bad idea (in case I drop it and break it). Time will see, and I'm sure my dad will give me some good advice. Advice from you faithful readers is also welcome!

[edit: After discussing with my dad, I bought the E51 from Amazon. It's in the mail...]

Word, so I want to write about lots stuff, but right now you just get this note about my computers:

I have acquired two six-year-old iMacs (400mhz G3s). I am trying to figure out a use for them.

My old PowerBook's battery seems to have given up the ghost and refuses to charge at all. Reading online, it sounds like it went into a "deep discharge" state because I left it uncharged for this whole summer and I need to buy a new one if I want to use the machine without keeping the power plug in, which can be difficult due to the bent nature of the case around the power plug. That's $129. Might be worth it for a pretty nice PowerBook. I'm considering adding an El Gato TV tuner stick and make it into a faux-TiVo, a foldable TV, since I get free cable in my dorm room. That costs $150, or $100 if I get the older model. There's also the chance my power adapter is not-fully-connected or somewhat screwed up, so I should try other power adapters first. Or try the battery in another PowerBook (if I had one), or reset the power management unit.

I upgraded the memory on my MacBook Pro to 4GB, its max. Yay!

I also have gotten (on loan) an old iBook (12", it's tiny). I thought "iBook, decent computer, could use it as a note-taking device since it's much lighter then my MacBook Pro, although I should probably just lend it to my sister's boyfriend since he's without a computer that's not totally depressing".

So it's the original model of an iBook G4. It has a grand total of 128MB of RAM (built-in). And no wireless card.

The second part threw me for a loop--a laptop. Without a wireless card. Like a somewhat recent one, too (from 2004).

I can add a wireless card (b/g) for $49, and stick in another GB of RAM for another $40. With those two additions, it'd actually be a decent computer, if a bit slow, but nice and tiny. I'll probably do that.

But a LAPTOP. Without a wireless card. I mean really, people?

I got some money today by helping an old lady connect to the Internet--she moved to my grandparent's retirement home and had to reconfigure her DSL. She didn't know the password on the account so I had to call AT&T support and get it reset. I probably could have asked her for more money, but frankly, I'd do this sorta stuff for free--I don't really feel like I need payment, and I already raised my rates slightly from what I used to change. I'm sure it's half or a tenth of what people in the business actually charge.

I bought a mini-DVI to VGA adapter cable for my dad, and a copy of Final Cut Express that actually is a Universal binary and doesn't give spurious error messages when launched on an Intel Mac. Yay?

I am officially IN Tyler Curtain's ENGL 146 (Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Utopia)!

I was waiting on the wait list since registration quite a few months ago (#7, which dropped to #5 after a while), then on Friday I got sent a form email from the registrar giving basic policies, and mentioning something about wait lists being purged at some point. I had been on studentcentral earlier that day or so and I was #3, then went back after the form email and noticed they had dropped the whole wait-list. So of course I immeditely add myself back on the wait-list (for some reason they just dropped everyone but didn't actually disable the list itself), and I was #1. I checked again today and I AM IN THE CLASS! Oh snap... :)


This was the major piece of uncertainty that I've had regarding next semester, and now it's gone.

I have posts written from France that all I need to do is post, but due to summer I've been lazy and haven't posted them yet. I also have a long list of interesting weblinks I discovered while catching up from the summer I want to share and have carefully bookmarked on delicious, a list of things I still haven't read on instapaper, a really messy room, lots of things to reply to on Facebook, and of course dealing with school.

But in making this post, I am at least starting to deal with things. I have accomplished minor things:

a) Today I put away a lot of my clothes, which involved sorting things and deciding I really don't need my old socks and underwear anymore. I still need to sort through my shirts, which are excessive.

b) I began cataloging all the books in my room before I left, which also involved putting ones I'm never going to read (again or at all) in a box to be donated. I hope I can finish this before I go.

c) I bought my dad a new computer. Related to this: He got a free iPod Touch due to the education promotion, which he says he'll give to me because I can use it at school. The iPod is actually a very neat little device, I've already downloaded quite a few apps for it (including buying Cro-Mag Rally, and I'm planning on buying Enigmo as well. Pangea makes good games). Also related to this: All my family's computers are getting RAM upgrades, because we're upgrading the RAM in his new computer (buying directly through Apple is bad because they gouge the price) and we already promised my mom more RAM. Thus, my Macbook Pro is now humming along on 4GB, as is my mom's computer, and my dad's computer (when it comes), and I have the 2GB from my computer to put in my sister's MacBook, because her machine (the first generation of Macbook with the Intel Core Duo chip) can only handle 2GB. Basically, all our machines will be maxed out with RAM.

d) I bought new shoes today, which I should have done before I left for France. I hate buying shoes, because they never feel right and I want to get THE right shoe, which doesn't exist, probably. I'm used to really really loose shoes, so tight shoes feel uncomfortable to me but are probably much better for my feet. My new pair of shoes is white, a change for me.

e) I've replied to a few things on Facebook, and read through many many things on the Internet to get to this point, then successfully managed to file them all away on Delicious and Instapaper instead of having sixty browser tabs open all the time.

f) I've read fun books from the library. Reading for fun is a remarkably...fun... thing. I'm catching up on new Star Wars books, re-read a few Patricia C Wrede books, read an Angel book, and am now reading the Dresden Files series, which is actually quite good. Odd story, I started reading them due to a few recommendations I saw online, and then when I went to the beach with my whole family I found my sister and Bryson were actually reading the same book in the same series at the same time as me, completely independently. Very bizarre, in a cool way.

g) I've met up with a few people over break, although I also need to contact a few more. Hanging out with friends is fun but somewhat hard to plan (requires taking social initiative), which is why it was extremely nice of Noura to be extremely forceful and arrange many events together. I managed to catch Brendan before he left, which was extremely fun, since we rarely get to hang out and catch up nowadays.

Okay, so posts which should be coming in the near future:
a) Which D&D Character are You? (this post was originally the intro to that but ballooned into this)
b) How is France? Addendum
c) Europe / American comparisons (probably incomplete, but better than nothing)
d) Review of TV shows I watched last year and greatly enjoyed.
e) What I've been spending my money on this summer and why it's all awesome

Jenna asked me on my wall "How is France?". This is a simple question which can be responded to in one word ("Good", "bad", "okay", et cetera), but I feel like I should give an honest, and somewhat complete answer. Since this is most likely of interest to people other then Jenna, I decided to post it over here instead of just on her wall (especially since walls have 1000 character limits which is frankly horrible).
( Cut for length )

So yeah, I've been in France for a couple of weeks now, and I even have (slow and somewhat inconsistent, bringing back memories of Science and Math) wireless internet access in the dorm I'm living in.

So I've been wanting to post a lot of things for a long time ('cause this LiveJournal is falling into disuse and I've been pretty withdrawn for a while). Instead of posting a huge post that makes no sense, takes forever to write, and nobody probably will ever read, I'm splitting it up into portions based on topics, so I can get pieces out as I finish them, and people can just read what they want. Yay?

I'm taking the French class here (level 5, the most advanced). I have two teachers, and they switch off day-by-day. One of my teachers is giving us two-and-a-half lectures on French history, literature, and grammar. We started during the Middle Ages and have been reading short excerpts from several of famous French works. My skills at taking written notes in French are increasing. We're learning some new grammar--my teacher started with the rules for past participle agreement (which involve direct objects and can get complicated in corner cases) and we're now deep into the passé simple. For those who are not French-speaking, the simple in passé simple doesn't mean "easy-to-learn", but instead just "not a compound tense". The passé simple is used mainly in literature* and all my French teachers up to this point have shied away from really teaching it, only giving us enough to get by in readings (perhaps this will change in FREN 300), but here we're definitely going into it. After passé simple, it sounds like we're going to dive right into all the different subjunctive tenses. This course'll be good for me. It's also three hours long. Even with a break in the middle, that's a really long time.

I've been also been taking the european political systems course here--it's taught by a political science professor from the Catholic University of Leuven. To be more precise, I assume he's from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the Dutch-speaking portion, and not the Université Catholique de Louvain, which is the French-speaking portion, because he's Flemish and has all his course materials and computer in Dutch, although apparently he's extremely interested in the French political system and is teaching at the Université Catholique de Lille, so one could make an argument otherwise. It's an interesting course, since we're learning about all the quirks of different electoral systems.

There's a matched european economic systems course that I was interested in taking, but due to various miscommunications the teacher didn't come on the first day, and I was extremely tired the second day and decided not to go to class, and since then I've had a large amount of inertia of not going.

* The actual differentation between the passé composé and the passé simple, as explained by my professor, is that the passé composé implies a connection between that past event and the present due to its use of the present tense. In other words, it implies a continuous timeline and gives a sense of "reality" to the events depicted in it. The passé simple implies a disconnection between the past event and the present and thus a broken timeline, thus giving more of a "fictional" or "unreal" bent. For example, linguists have examined the tense usage of Victor Hugo when he was referring to himself, and have determined he used the passé composé when he was discussing himself as a real-life person, and he used the passé simple when he was referring to himself as a "writer", a larger-then-life personna.

Moore tried to lose, but wins House seat
by Josh Shaffer, Staff Writer
RALEIGH-In a bizarre election-night turn, Stan Morse won the Democratic primary for state House District 40 despite endorsing, campaigning for and voting for his opponent.
A recruiter and consultant to the printing industry, Morse took 54.2 percent of the vote to Sam Hart Brewer's 45.8 percent. This happened despite Morse submitting a concession speech a day before the election and spending Tuesday outside a Raleigh polling place encouraging voters to pick Brewer.

Source: The News and Observer Wednesday May 7, 2008, B1

Poor guy.

Mrs. Clinton did not. “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” she said on the ABC program “This Week.” A few moments later, she added, “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.” --source

Clinton, are you trying to get me to dislike you? Because it's working.

First this incredibly stupid "gas tax holiday", now this? Are you TRYING to get me further into the Obama camp?

The blog post explaining that picture is here, and some discussion on the issue on one of the economics blogs I'm now reading ("Marginal Revolution") can be found here and here.