Fall 2004
May 18, 2004 08:00
Total Credit Hours: 16.000
Power in American Society – PRGM POWAS 01
Associated Term: Fall 2004
CRN: 10090
Status: **Web Registered** on May 18, 2004
Assigned Instructor: Lawrence J. Mosqueda
Grade Mode: Credit/No Credit
Credits: 16.000
Level: Undergraduate
Campus: Olympia
Yay 
Movable Type Developer Edition was announced several days ago and caused an immediate stink because of new pricing schemes. Six Apart was really quite stupid — they didn’t clarify everything and went with a licensing scheme that even they probably didn’t understand. Apparently, they’ve lost a lot of users because of this stunt. Now, I run this blog on Movable Type 2.661, and never intend to upgrade, so this doesn’t affect me. I do say that they could have handled the issue so much better than they did. It was unprofessional and potentially costly in terms of their user loyalty.
Luckily, I simply don’t care. The new features that MT 3.0 introduces aren’t things I need. Even if they were, I qualify as a personal blog (one author, one blog).
In other news, it’s Google’s corporate blog!
Interesting. I must admit, I find Google very appealing business-wise — it’s unorthodox, to say the least, and that’s a good thing. It should be nice to see how they work out this blog stuff. As C|Net puts it, it’s a blog that’s “somewhat less than bloggy“. For some reason, that headline conjures up the phrase “let’s get jiggy with it”. I’ve always hated that phrase.
There was also an article on ZDNet recently about the SoBig and MyDoom viruses and how they succeeded because of greed. A related article, also from ZDNet, covers AOL’s field testing of a program called SPF, or “Sender Permitted From”, a form of authentication for e-mail that ensures that the sender of an e-mail really exists. This has really interesting implications for users of e-mail, and, from my perspective, is badly needed. Now if some other people would jump on the bandwagon…
Current Music: James Taylor – JT – Secret O’Life
Something worries me when I start reading about high school science fairs turning into security research projects with scholarships awarded by the Department of Homeland Security (New York Times article; membership signup required – link only valid until May 23). Don’t even get me started on the name of the Department itself; just the same old tired observation that it sounds too much like fatherland for my own comfort.
I don’t know, something just strikes me as worrisome when high schoolers start thinking about chaos theory and using it in encryption algorithms. Sure, you can point me to Linus Torvalds, who wrote an entire operating system in college, but that’s another thing altogether – I would expect a college student to do something like that. But high school students?
I needed levity after that. Remember HP and Compaq’s merger – or should I say.. well, I don’t want to give the punchline away.
If you’ve got a lot of free time and more bandwidth and hard drive storage than you know what to do with, perhaps you’d like to try downloading the entire Internet?
Current Music: Kathy Mattea – Roses – The Slender Threads That Bind Us Here
Ah, a nice weekend of sitting around and procrastinating heavily. As usual, the procrastinator gets to pay with work, work, work, and more work when that work is done. Well, it was worth it — my stress level is a little lower than it was. I needed it after three weeks of developing cabin fever sitting around on this campus (maybe it’s supposed to be campus fever).
Not all that much impressive happened — I managed to install SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 on darwin, my 1.8GHz home desktop computer. I initially installed it with Gnome’s desktop manager, but it didn’t work very well and was incredibly buggy, so I reinstalled with the default KDE. I have nothing against KDE, I just like Gnome.. but not when it doesn’t work right out of the box. The wireless card in darwin (which, I’m fairly certain, is a D-Link DWL-520+) doesn’t work under Linux, but then, almost no D-Link wireless cards work under Linux. I knew this when I installed and was hoping to download and install some drivers to fix the problem, but that may be a much bigger project than I’m willing to take on.
So here’s what I’m looking for: a reasonably cheap (but good quality) Linux-compatible wireless PCI card, as well as a new ISA (card slot) card for my laptop, autumn, which will likely be converted to SuSE over the summer at some point. If anyone has any recommendations, contact me.
I got to see Amanda this weekend too, which was really nice. There’s something calming about having the girl you love around, even if you aren’t doing all that much together. Her birthday is next week, so we’re both looking forward to that.
An unrelated thing — I was browsing the Web early Friday morning after 1AM because I couldn’t seem to get to sleep and stumbled across something via Memepool which I thought was rather interesting: a listing of abandoned and little-known Western Washington airports (as well as Eastern Washington and all of the 50 states, though I’m showing Western Washington here because, well, that’s where I am). This was an interesting read — check it out if you have a lot of time on your hands.
And if you aren’t procrastinating on a lot of schoolwork.
Kind of like me.
Current Music: Faith Hill – Fly – Stronger
So, Computability requires an entrance test in order to enroll. I took one look at it, and my reaction was “um.. no.”
So, bye bye Computability. That leaves:
| Power in American Society | F |
| 500 Years of Globalization | WS |
| OR | |
| Power in American Society | F |
| Nietzsche: Life, Times, Work | W |
| After Nietzsche: Arts, Literature and Philosophy in the Wanderer’s Shadow | S |
| OR | |
| Power in American Society | F |
| Nietzsche: Life, Times, Work | W |
| Marxist Theory | S |
Eh, that’s okay, though. I really like how the syllabus looks for Power. Should be an interesting year.
On an unrelated note, I get to see Amanda tomorrow, and I get to go home tomorrow for the first time in about three weeks. Bonus! I saw Amanda on Wednesday, since she was down here for the transfer advising day that was going on at the same time as everything else. Got to hang out on the roof of Seminar II and watch the Student Activities Fair (after avoiding a variety of gaming freaks and weirdo vegans). She had to leave for Seattle again, though, so she couldn’t stick around as much as we had hoped. Eh, nothing is perfect.
I used to love SatireWire while it ran. In that spirit, Canada has a warship!
Edit (10:50PM): For those wondering, Amanda’s my girlfriend. Just in case that confused people
Well, today’s been a good day. I managed to get really good seats for the Seminar II dedication and got some nice photos. My angle on the ribbon cutting was all wrong, though. I still got some shots. I’ll post them sooner or later.
Perhaps the coolest part was listening to Governor Gary Locke’s speech. Also got to wander around the building and look around and stuff — it’s a great building.
Went to the Academic Fair, too – got information on Computability and Power in American Society. All in all, a very good day.
Possible classes for (F)all Quarter of 2004, as well as (W)inter and (S)pring Quarters of 2005:
| Computability: The Scope and Limitations of Formal Systems | FWS |
| OR | |
| Power in American Society | F |
| 500 Years of Globalization | WS |
| OR | |
| Power in American Society | F |
| Nietzsche: Life, Times, Work | W |
| After Nietzsche: Arts, Literature and Philosophy in the Wanderer’s Shadow | S |
| OR | |
| Power in American Society | F |
| Nietzsche: Life, Times, Work | W |
| Marxist Theory | S |
Just to prove that I have, in fact, been thinking about this subject quite a bit. All of the course descriptions can be accessed through Evergreen’s 2004-2005 Program Catalog.
Part I: The Annoyance of May 12
Okay, so here’s the thing I’ve been complaining about for at least the last two weeks: tomorrow’s May 12. No, that’s not a problem, really, I like the number 12 (uh.. well, at least, I’m indifferent towards it, which, to me, is the same as not hating it). Evergreen, in some fluke of scheduling I will never understand, scheduled the following items for tomorrow:
>>> Second half of the Board of Trustees Meeting (from about 9AM-12PM)
>>> Seminar II Building Dedication (1-2PM)
>>> Transfer Student Advising Day (1-3:30PM)
>>> Seminar II Building Open House (2-4PM)
>>> Summer/Fall 2004 Academic Fair (4-6PM)
Now, this is a hell of a lot of major events on campus, all on one day. To top it off, Governor Gary Locke is coming to cut the ribbon for Seminar II, which probably spells some sort of nightmare in some form or another, in addition to the overall nightmare of 34,126 things happening on campus at once.
I’m complaining not because I don’t think it’ll be cool to see the dedication and go to the academic fair so I can figure out my class for Fall, but because of the inordinate amount of stress this puts on the already hard-working faculty and staff at Evergreen. Every single staff member here does a stellar job, and this just seems like too much to ask of them. I will admit a side benefit — since my girlfriend is transferring here and she has to come to the advising day, I do get to see her tomorrow. That, however, is unrelated — Evergreen’s scheduling pundits should’ve thought this one out better.
Part II: There’s Something Fruity Here, and It Ain’t the Grapes
“A boy is allowed to choose 2 pieces of fruit from a basket containing a pear, an apple, a banana, a scorpion, a plum, and a watermelon. How many ways are there to choose two pieces of fruit from the basket?”
Well, there are.. err.. wait a minute.. a scorpion? Wow, I didn’t know scorpions were fruit..
Speaking of fruity, that’s what my discrete math faculty put up on the board as an example problem this morning. He must have been trying to make sure we were paying attention. I almost didn’t notice, and wouldn’t have if I wasn’t busily copying into notes… Obscure humor, that.
Current Music: Alison Krauss & Union Station – New Favorite – The Lucky One
I’ve been thinking a little bit about my future academic career (for the next year or two, anyway) and I’ve come up with something resembling a plan.
I’ve been having a lot of trouble in the discrete mathematics component this year, but I think I’ll take the pretest for Computability: The Scope and Limitations of Formal Systems just to see how badly I do. The work gets harder next year, but maybe it won’t be as bad in terms of having faculty who can assist me. I don’t really want to give up computer science, I just don’t want to beat my head against the wall constantly because I can’t understand material in one component.
As a backup, I’m thinking about possibly enrolling in Power in American Society. This sounds like an intriguing program taught by one of the better-known faculty on campus. More than likely, I’ll register for this initially while I wait for a faculty signature override for Computability.
I’m still undecided as to whether to graduate next year (04-05) or the year after (05-06). I’m not sure I’m really ready to be done yet. Still thinking about it.
Current Music: Josh Groban – Closer – My Confession
Ach, the discrete math midterm is turned in at last! Okay, so I admit I probably bombed most of it, since I only managed to figure out half the exam in the first place, but it’s (marginally) better than nothing.
So now it’s to the architecture midterm, which is, if I may say so, infinitely easier from my point of view. Oh, and I suppose I shouldn’t forget any of the programming stuff either. That would be bad form for someone hoping for upper division credit in that exact subject.
On a completely unrelated tangent, I’ve found that Josh Groban’s newest CD, Closer, is permanently stuck in my Winamp playlist and my little MP3 player as late. I love several songs on there, but particularly Remember When it Rained and My Confession. Great singer. I’d recommend him to anyone.