Not for me anyway. I’m packing up to leave work and noticed that I had another call that I had missed (maybe I should check my ringer) and a corresponding voicemail. I check the message - it was the Network Operations Center (NOC) here at Dal and they said that my IP was blocked because I was spreading a virus. I am assuming (even now) that they are talking about Sobig.F or whatever it is called. I’m thinking that is really crappy because my laptop was having some trouble connecting from home as well. I might be network-less for the weekend and that wasn’t cool at all.

When I got home, I found that my PC was working fine. Now I was confused, where was the virus? If it wasn’t my desktop then it must be my laptop. However, Sobig doesn’t infect Macs. Nor can I get any of the other virii that ever make the news, because the reason that they make the news is because a lot of people are affected. A lot of people use Windows. Hence why virus authors target Windows. However that didn’t change the fact that my IP was blocked. So I called the help desk and told them my dilemna. They confirmed that it was my laptop that was the blocked IP and they even read me the MAC address. The guy on the phone was as confused as I was with the Mac issue. So I was put on Hold and he went to check. As it turns out, because we all had to re-register for ResNet yesterday and the way that the virus scanning runs, it was the last person who had my IP address who was the infected one. So that means that someone in this building (and there aren’t many here yet) has the virus. So that was my crazy adventure of the past 25 minutes. Moral: Buy Apple. OSX rules.

I don’t want to seem sexist or whatnot, but there are a lot of very attractive women in the city right now. I was out briefly last night to pick up some milk, and this was around 8pm and even in the half-light I was impressed if you know what I mean. Of course this time of year always sees an influx of people into the city. Another school starts and the cycle begins anew. Welcome to [back] Halifax.

Well… I just spent 10.5 hours at work. Not that I don’t like it there, but it is tiring to do anything for that long. The reason that I stayed late was because we had an issue. It was about 4pm and people are starting to think about leaving at some point in the not-so-distant future. And what do I hear from down the hall in the old programmer office? “OH MY GOD!” Yes this must be good. And it was.

Lets just say that a table that has about 2900 entries managed to find it self with 2900 almost identical entries. An UPDATE query without a WHERE clause was the culprit. When was the last backup? A month ago? Perfect! But with that and a bit of skill and persistence, we were able to get it back to where it was without much trouble. Nothing brings a team together quite like a small crisis. Good times.

Well I finally bit the bullet if you will and I bought a new 19” monitor. I can’t remember if I mentioned my old one going out not so gracefully in a hissing fit, but that doesn’t much matter now. For the past 1.5 months I had a “loner” monitor from Krafty. The only problem being that it was like 14” and that wasn’t going to cut it considering that I was used to a pretty intense resolution.

Long story short: Staples, monitor, happy. And for anyone in the monitor buying phase of life… this one is very nice. But like they say, seeing is believing.

Are you a fan of roasting marshmellows over a camp fire? Well if you are city bound and don’t happen to have a fire pit or even a BBQ then you are still in luck. If you want, you can actually roast marshmellows on your stove. Just turn one of your elements on to high (or slightly below high) and jab a fork (or marshmellow stick if you have one) into a marshmellow and hold it a centimeter or two above the element. In about 15 seconds you will notice that it is golden brown. Rotate your marshmellow as you would on a fire and roast until you are happy.

Just be careful not to drop the marshmellow into/onto the element because that would like be quite the mess if not a serious fire hazard. :) Enjoy.

Moving that is. Into an apartment in which I have already lived before. Back into the bachelor downstairs in my building which I was forced to vacate only 4 short months ago. But what can I say. It’s a nice spot down here and I have settled in nicely. That being said, there are still a couple of issues before I am in for good. The first being that I have five (5) couches in here. This room was used as a lounge over the summer and as such has a lot of seating - which is going to be removed, just not yet. And my closet has a padlock on it and to the best of my knowledge is full of sheets and what have you from our summer business here. So my stuff it still floating around in piles surrounding my couches and none of my clothes are in the closet. Apart from that though - good times.

Hiccups have to be one of the weirdest bodily actions. To the best of my knowledge they serve no useful purpose and they are incredibly annoying. To the point where I can’t just sit and ignore them, I have to get up and get rid of them. Luckily for me getting rid of them is very easy and reliable, but I know for others that is not always the case. To those people I sympathize.

Some of you may have noticed that things were a bit weird for a while with the forum and the rest of the site. This was a result of the site being ported to torch, which happened some time while I was away. I think that I have things sorted out but if you notice any problems please let me know.

At least in Nova Scotia. I got in (to Durham) around 11:30pm and I am quite tired… I will make sure that I update my pages tomorrow. :)

Cheers.

That’s right… we were here right in the middle of the chaos. We were actually on Yonge Street in Newmarket, ON when the power went out.

I have updated the road trip website though… enjoy. :)

I’m just updating my other Road Trip 2003 site. However, at Karen’s suggestion I have decided that I should add a post here too. We are at her place tonight on her wireless access. Tight stuff indeed.

I am presently sitting on the corner of my bed in Durham. The bed that I slept on in high school and I guess a fair while before that too. I am plugged into our home network and sharing our cable Internet connection. That was something that we didn’t have when I was in high school. That and the pool. I guess that is what happens, things change.

This will be the last time that I am on broadband for a week or two likely, so I guess that I should take advantage of it. Get all the last minute stuff done. :) That being said, I don’t think that it should matter.

Cheers,
~rhuvok

So I only have one exam left. That software engineering one wasn’t too bad at all. Now I just have Networking in the morning and then I am off on a road trip for a couple of weeks. That’s right, by the time that a lot of you read this I may very well be gone. I am leaving pretty much right after my exam tomorrow and I don’t know if I’ll be back until the 20th or so. I am very much looking forward to the period of rest and travel. For those of you interested in keeping track of our progress as we head westward, please feel free to check out the web site I created - Road Trip 2003. Obviously we won’t be on the Internet a lot, but I am bringing my laptop and I have an identical site running on my web server that will allow us to add entries to the web site and when I get a connection, I will be able to synchronize them.

At this time I will essentially make a post on here that will tell you all to check for updates on the road trip web site. I do hope that you all have a good couple weeks. Cheers.

Algo’s didn’t pulverize me. In fact, I was quite happy with it and I managed to finish 45 minutes early. I was on an algorithmic roll you can say. And let me just tell you that I am very glad that I have this course behind me now. I realize that it teaches valuable skills that are carried over into all aspects of computer science, but wow… it tries to teach that by getting you to bend over and grab your ankles so to speak.

Now I have Software Engineering tomorrow afternoon. I hope that it isn’t raining, because this one is in the Dunn building. I also hope that I can learn all that I need to know from the course in the period of less than a day. This was the class that I didn’t attend all that much. I have the distinct impression that for most of the questions, you could likely feign an answer and get most points, even if you haven’t taken the class before. That’s because software engineering is fairly logical - if you have fewer people working on a project then you are going to need longer to finish it. That being said, I’m sure there are nuances that I haven’t read about yet. Unless one of the questions is whether or not programmers are more productive if they are allowed to take coffee breaks. That I do remember from class. :)

One down and three to go. I guess it’s good to get the easy one out of the way before the pounding that will be dealt out with this next Algo’s exam at 2pm. So now I have to study Algo’s… wish me luck. :P

I have started looking at PHP IDEs and which one I might like to use. I have a list started on my review page, but if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations then I would love to hear about them.

Summer Activities for the rest of us. Good times.

The Two Towers DVD will be released on August 26, 2003 and the special extended edition will be available on November 18, 2003. FYI

Well… it is all over now. Hell Week has finished and now I have a brief recovery period followed by exam week. Exam week shouldn’t be as bad though, because I don’t stay up all night studying - I get normal periods of rest and I am usually in a considerably better mood.

I’d like to thank everyone who had to see me though this mess. I am usually a pretty together type of person but sometimes, when it hits the fan, watch out because I can get pretty bad. Now for sleep - and plenty of it.