Reading (For Dummies)

American Mathematician in Paris

The hotel room (room number 102 in the Hotel Opera Maintenon)

The room is small and had a mirrored ceiling, which suggested that its use is limited. For the less crafty, a portrait of a young French woman in some state of nondress [picture] would be enough to fuel the masturbatory fantasies of all but the least imaginative of men.

Our Sunday was mostly a wash: None of the group was able to sleep on the plane, a meager lunch at a small French Cafè (tomatos) left me with not enough energy to do much but find my way home on the subways and get some sleep.

The Hotel is in the Opera district of Paris, surrounded by Japanese restaurants, "masagi" parlours and fetish boutiques. My first dinner in Paris was indeed sushi. "Watashi wa bejetarian, sorekara sakana ga suki. Nani wo tabemasho ka?" I asked our Asian host. He didn't understand a word. Laosian. Damn.

Monday proved a little more fruitful. Robbie's birthday coupled with a "touron" (== "tourist" + "moron") bus tour to give us the kind of overview of the city that only an automated electronicated tour could give us (available in Japanese, French, German, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Serbian, Greek, Chinese, Swahili, and several kinds of English) left us wandering the streets of Paris, looking for a little action.

Happy Jesusmas

One of my favorite things about this time of year has to be my father's wry sense of humor where Christmas decorations are concerned.

His tree

He usually decorates the tree as above: the branches full of cams, aliens, carabiners, slings, and other climbing gear. To top it all with a touch of joyous class is his now infamous stuffed raven. I have tried to convince him to shine a light on this crown and spread the love to his neighbors, but we have yet to find sufficient means of drawing attention to the centerpiece.

Christmas was much as I had expected, a quieter mix of family, subdued present exchanges and catching-up with the family.

My cousin Mitchell

Funny how the family is all grown up now. Mitchell, above riding his new toy, has become a force to be reckoned with. He was the last shy one in the family, but seems to have 'cracked the shell,' as they say. While not unicycling, he's out winning skateboarding competitions with the East Coasting Skatboarding Club. He has mad skills. I wonder if he has a future job skateboarding for Aboriginees while wrestling crocodiles?

Christmas Groove

Today was the beginning of a Dysfunctional Christmas. Actually, everything in the immediate family seems relatively normal this year; a Christmas Eve dinner gift exchange at mom's, with trips to dad's and aunt's scheduled for tomorrow. Usually I feel stretched too thin at this time of year, trying to give equal parts love to all relatives without leaving anyone feeling left out. I suppose I still feel guilty at not seeing Florida snowbird grandparents at all this fall holiday season, but the situation is righted in my mind with a severe heart-to-heart with grandmom, my neurons firing at just the right pace tonight to be intelligent and remembering without being weird and mathematical.

The new year needs changes as I said at the spellcasting session, and tonight I'm beginning to see what those changes are. Too much viewing a zen motor-cycle-riding future and a happy family life as being mutually exclusive, growing negative thoughts toward everything has left me with some actual regrets in handling things last year. Too late to correct, so, as the Japanese say, it's time to perservere and be optimistic.

The new year opens with a trip to Paris, which may or may not lend itself to 'blog updates (sadly, my cell phone has no bluetooth, and my laptop has no infrared, so GPRS is out of the picture for 'net access. Wi-fi may still be an option, if I can find an access point).

I'll leave with a handy photo of sunset at Beach No. 3...

Hail and Welcome

At 2:04am (EST) this morning, the God was reborn. We celebrated with the four corners, thanking our elements for the strength and casting off the bad things, followed by a group entirely-too-much honesty. An opening up of sorts that needs more. Waiting is.

Our corners: Erin, Kat, Lauren, and myself

As much as I hate religion, I like tradition with an equal bow. I can't say I prescribe to anything but science and rationality these days; still, humans are a rather irrational species and it is nice to get that out every once in a while. Casting circle and raising a cone with this group just somehow fits, even when there are some missing with their harps and wiley ways.

Goddess superior blowing out some candles

It was certainly nice to get to see the Daly clan again. Hopefully this means that things can move forward, even in the dark days of winter.

A New Paltz Scene

Man oh man can New Paltz go from boring to exciting in a matter of seconds.

Erik and I went travelling much of the day in search of Solstice presents for friends and family. Our journey took us as far north as Woodstock and as far south as Manhattan. We ventured long and far and bought...nothing.

We came back to New Paltz defeated, ready for a night on the town. First stop was to a little bar called the Oasis? I met a young woman there named Jessica. We flirted most excellently, but it ended in the usual way, a not twice but thrice nervous, "I have to go see what my friends are up to." I suppose I keep forgetting that people at bars aren't there to be asked, "So how is it that a self-described pot addict really wants to teach elementary school kids?" Seconds after the words left my mouth I thought back to home and realized that she could do a perfectly fine job.

That aside, the night got more interesting at the second bar (Snug Harbor), this classic dive full of leather-clad chicks and dudes that you generally would not want to mess with. This bar really belongs in a movie.

We won't go into details...

...about what happened at the bar. I would like to remind readers at this time that the Wightman clan, such as it is, is kinsman to Robert the Bruce. We also have this not-so-distant relative by the name of Charles Wightman, who was reknowned for being a hot-shot test-pilot fully capable of kicking his copilot's ass with one arm and landing a badly designed plane with the other.

Tradition got even more hilarious as I was introduced to an apparent American custom: Nose burning.

Yeah

This dude had a nose ring and volunteered to have said metal contraption burned with matches in exchange for a free shot from the bartenders. They were more than happy to comply.

Yes, there are some very interesting folks around New Paltz...

Elvis has left

I left Syracuse on Friday, after a bit of a love affair with a few bottles of wine. Keisuke came over with some Korean food, and was able to get more truth out of me than most (current romantic interests, etc), courtesy of the three bottles we downed together.

Yes, Friday morning my head was pounding.

Aside from this, it has been running around doing the last-minute Christmas shopping bonanza, trying to figure out what everyone would use. I guess that I am entirely too utilitarian -- if it is not something that people will use all the time, why bother? Maybe I need to take a lesson from Jill Boardman on gift-giving or something.

Aside from that, it's trying to relax and become something closer to human again.

$? == 0

If you are seeing this post, welcome back. The website has been moved to the new server, and everything seems dandy. Not only that, but you're reading off of the new server. Let's hear it for a dedicated co-lo!

Syracuse U's DNS servers have an amazingly short TTL...

Inner Wanderings

Yesterday old friend Chris shows up to crash on the futon. He is full of surprises. Somehow I always mistake him for this complete computer geek thug. He shows up at my door bearing tidings in the form of printed circuit boards, yes, but he also brings a bag of home-baked cookies, apricot tea, new music, and interesting conversation.

Five video cards, four hard disks, three CPUs, two motherboards, and a case fit for Reid's dad

Sadly both of my old motherboards are fried...time to go shopping if I am going to build my dad a new system for a Solstice present.

Introspection comes later this morning, at a meeting with Haizhi to discuss computer ideas floating in my brain since Germany. The problem is to find a way to do anonymous-friendly computing, protecting data from even the system superuser.

Haizhi gives me focus and drive, explaining that the problem I am trying to tackle is too large to start. Divide and conquer, in classic Chinese tradition. My scatter-brained personality of late has brought to light the question of whether too much partying has shrunk my brain, or if I have, indeed graduated.

I wish I was making this up

I was out visiting some of the local bookshops with Megan this afternoon when I hit upon a rare gem full of kitsch and social commentary value.

"It's kind of like Monopoly, but with Arabs..."

This back of the box reads,

For Dick and Bev Anthony and their four children, it's a dream finally becoming a reality!
The game is unique and so is the story of how it came to be. It's the tale of a family playing together and working together.
After a hard day's fishing on a lake in the Canadian wilderness, the Anthony family clustered in the kitchen of their cozy cabin.
As the day's catch sizzled in the big iron skillet, young Betsy piped, "I don't have anything to do!"
"Yeah," answered big brother Tom. "Kinda nice, isn't it?"
"No T.V., no telephone..." sister Suzy wailed.
"Hey, I've got it!" said Julie, the eldest. "Why don't we do something really different? Why don't we figure out a game to play?"
"Hey, that sounds neat!" said Dad. "As a matter of fact, I've been thinking...wouldn't it be fun to play a game where you could own oil wells?"

And the rest is history. I noticed that the back of the box was completely content-free (it had no information on how the game is played, rules, etc). I can't help but chuckle as I think how this parallels real life.

I also couldn't help but think that a certain miserable failure probably played this board game often with his father, although this was invented in 1982...

Neither let it burn too bright...

You know you're getting snow when you live in Syracuse and there's a severe weather alert for "Heavy snowfall". We're at 12" and it shows little sign of letting up.

The only trouble from all this is a -10C chill outside, coupled with the last of the firewood being in the woodstove, presently on its last coals. Assuming I can't go pick up this cord of wood in the next few days, it is going to be a very cold apartment indeed.

In the meantime, I've been shaking off the last vestiges of what Kei and I have termed the "man period." I think this one supercedes my previous definition...it's this sort of funk that guys spiral into when they haven't gotten laid in 3 months, and seems to be cyclic in that it crops up right at those intervals.

To combat the effects, you need endorphines. So I went for a walk. Ran into one other brave soul on the streets, and we simultaneously said, "Nice night for a walk," to each other in passing.

Or sledding

It was a nice night for a walk, or whatever other outdoor activity you prescribe to. There were lots of folks snowboarding and sledding down the hills by Crouse Hall. Most people swipe trays from the dormitory cafeterias and use them as downhill friction-reducing devices.

I decided to make the walk a lot lot longer.

Once again

Here we have my ever-so-popular South Campus shot. We've seen it a few times before.

In order to get up to the water towers this time, I had to hike the access road which was covered up snowdrift up to my waste in most place. It took me a half hour just to go up the 1/4-mile access road...we won't even talk about the trails.

Sweet-looking stairs

I did a little more exploring after the South Campus shot, trailblazing through the woods around the water towers. I stumbled upon these neat-looking stairs. They don't really serve any purpose that I can tell, unless the plan for this place was to make it into a city park.

In all, it was a hike of just under 5k, and it took 3 hours. The roads all had a foot of snow...walking was not easy anywhere. Even the 4-wheel drive beasts were having trouble.

The morning after

I think there's a car buried under there somewhere. Today is digging out day. Also the day that I polished off my final papers. Time to party hardy I guess.

Fin

You're invited...

Thursday night marked the end-of-semester partay held at Sarah and Megan's place. There was much groping going on.

Our sadistic host, dressed to kill...

The massage line

Despite the name, there really wasn't that much nakedness. In fact, there was much less so than is normal for any house that Sarah happens to be in (she's a bit of an exhibitionist).

I am also, thankfully, almost completed with my assignments for the semester. Zero exams left to go, two papers.

Still no dates.

Object-Oriented Agent Smith

Random thought while I'm writing my CCS paper. Agent Smith of the Matrix: He was object-oriented and had static variables*. If there was only ever supposed to be ond Agent Smith in the matrix at any given time, why would he have static variables? Discuss.

* Note that other agents, in order to communicate, used their earpieces (sockets). Smith's earpiece was destroyed, yet he and his copies were able to communicate. As separate objects in the system, this would only be possible through function interfaces common to all agents (talking, kicking, and apparently the earpiece), or via a static variable.

Oh and another matrix question while I'm at it.

If setting off an EMP inside Zion took all their defense systems offline, why didn't the machines just drill into Zion, drop a couple of EMPs down there to zap all the defense systems, and *then* send a bunch of sentinels down to clean up. Obviously artificial intelligence is stupid.

Elections

Starting to hear news about primaries kind of ticks me off. I registered with the Green Party up here in CNY and can't vote on the Democrat primary. Why can't parties be affiliated? IE Green is a subset of the Democratic party, so registered Greenies and vote on the Demo primary? Same thing could go for the conservative end of the spectrum.

I can't see how this would hurt. People still can't vote in a primary for a party that they're not interested (or if they do, they'll lose the chance to vote in the primary for the party they want, still). This could really help out the minority parties.

The End is Extremely F'ing Nigh

The last days: CIS583

It's exam week. Things began last Friday with the Attack-Defense lab for our Systems Assurance course. Things got off to a rough start when the opposing team's firewall had a network card die. Really, I don't know how to remotely overwrite the EPROM in a RealTek 81237 NIC. *subtle grin*.

Even after the card was replaced, their router wouldn't route. So it turned into them probing us for exploits. I compiled a version of ssh and sendmail that reported the wrong (and very old) versions on connect so that they might be stuck trying to exploit fixed holes. Fortunately they never penetrated our defenses.

Much of the week and weekends have been studying and writing papers. One that might be of interest to Doug and the other Mixers is an idea for using isolation kernels to prevent memory leakage from anonymity nodes. So basically, if someone r00ts your box, they can't see what your anonymity server is doing. I haven't really figured out all the stuff that the isolation kernel needs to check (obviously strict interrupt handling, buffer and cache cleaning, zero'ing of memory on deallocation). For the truly paranoid, the performance hit might even be worth it.

The CIS600 final

I probably should not have stayed after the final for that class. I got precisely 0 correct answers on the final exam. I'll be holding out for the curve, even though that goes against every academic fiber in my being. Consequently, I am wearing a holey polypropylene shirt right now, which doesn't have "fibers" in the traditional sense.

The rest of this week promises a lighter load. Just two exams, both relatively easy, and two papers. One of those is 90% written (just needs diagrams) and the other is a process that will write itself in CCS, pardon the pun.

Heating

Yesterday, while in the shower, an idea came to me. We will call this moment, the epiphone. When I stepped out of the bathroom, Henry had the same idea.

You see, our apartment has electric heat. Electric heat is expensive. Our apartment also has, courtesy of the apartment company, free hot water. As much hot water as we can use, ours for the taking. The hot water heater is powered by natural gas.

Keeping in mind that water, pure, precious water, has a specific heat of about 1 joule per gram per degree celsius (that is, it takes 1 joule to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree C), and that air has a specific heat of just .25, the geeks engaged in some hot (quite literally) watersports.

How many kilograms of water in a bathtub?

For now, we just have a rudimentary tub-filling and fan-blowing system, which steams the upstairs, and also makes it quite toasty. Future plans (ie after winter break) are to engineer a heating pipe with radiator that takes water from the tub's spicket, pumps through the hallway upstairs, and empties it back into either the sink or the tub drain.

This apartment is about to get so A-Team...

Google

Andy points out this one:

Go to Google.

Type in "miserable failure".

Hit "I'm feeling Lucky".

Yes, now we know who the miserable failure is.

Stopping by Woods

Today it has been gently snowing in Syracuse. It's a very fun thing. The nearest clouds are miles off to the West, above is blue sky and sun, yet the snow falls from seemingly nowhere. I might describe it as looking like Monet's Seine at Argenteuil, but with snow. It also sort of reminds me of the Erzgibergen.

It was also art week on the quad, which might explain my recent fascination with the subject. Those VPA kids set up some pretty weird stuff. I guess they need to do something to relieve the stress of final projects.

Yes, this blog posting now features a meta-meta-bench

So wait, if I print out that picture, and hang it from a wooden structure over the bench, is that art?

Duchamp must be rolling in his grave

The text on the toilet above reads, "We know your injury." Some sort of take on Bulimia Nervosa. There was a large crowd holding a vigil over the toilet earlier in the day...

Finally, we get to the title's namesake.

Chapin reciting some Robert Frost

Somewhere in the middle of taking photos, I also took the first part of my CIS600 final exam. I did meh. Probably not good, but probably a lot better than the rest of the class. Amazing how the curve turns a 'D' into an 'A'.

Movable Typepad

I've been tinkering with files under /tmpl/cms/, tweaking some of Movable Type's lesser talked-about template files. Finally, finally, I have it so when I upload photos it encapsulates them in my nice little colored boxes (of course, set up using stylesheets so I can change the whole scheme on a whim). No more typing that pesky HTML every time I put a photo in. Yes, as a geek, I am ashamed to admit that I haven't done this before. Mostly because I formerly used Grey Matter (the remnants of my Grey Matter site can be seen here, although I'd prefer if you didn't).

I suppose this really means that, once I move to the Doug's Co-lo, I really will need my own copy of MT.

Anyway, enough rambling, back to the grind...

Classics

Sitting around studying is never very much fun, but Henry brought some toys to spice things up a little in the living room.

Very Large 250W speakers

These things can pump. I've been playing some Liszt, Pachelbel, and Fasch on these things this evening (okay, they're lightweights I'll admit), and the bottles on the stove, the light fixtures, the paintings...everything is shaking. And these are just string and trumpet pieces mostly.

We're considering a cross-country skiing trip this weekend...maybe I should leave my Kodo CD in the player, turned up for the neighbors? By the time cops would arrive, the CD would probably be over :).