Segnbora-t's 27th birthday. I can remember in high school where the idea that eventually there would be a year 2000 and that in it I would turn 27 were both equally unbelievable.

But I had a very nice birthday gathering at The Melting Pot where we had three kinds of chocolate fondue and eight of my friends made jokes about obscure movies and the sound of a theramin and many other things. Tregoweth, Sylvar and Gamaliel were there.

Daylog
Yesterday : Tomorrow

Two bits of exciting news.

First, something I already knew about but hadn't put much thought into: the government is subsidising the cost of buying a PC if you're a teacher, to the tune of £500. Debbie, the old B&C is a teacher, so I may well be "suggesting" we get a new PC in the very near future, when I see her tonight.

Secondly: several weeks ago Steve and I both filled in the online forms to register our interest in Demon Internet's ADSL trials -- the moment we found out that Kenilworth and Leamington Spa were both covered. Last night I got a mail, saying that because of overwhelming demand, the trial would be restricted to existing Demon customers. Well, that's me, but not Steve. Result! With the rest of the world defecting to free internet accounts, I finally feel vindicated in continuing to pay my £12.75 a month internet subscription.

So, I signed up for the next stage of the selection process. Fingers crossed. If chosen, I'll be paying £35 a month for the two month trial, then get three months free, once the service comes out of its trial phase.

Today is a day. yes it is. My boss came back from Florida today and then proceeded to tell me that some rush order that I processed killed this system at work called MRP and put it in a fatal loop. Oops. Did I ever tell anyone here how much I hate Oracle? I mean it's big and big and an RDBMS but dude, it is NOT user friendly and I hate entering rush orders. aRgh. I've helped build Oracle web applications, but I just don't like it. Prolly cuz I don't understand it very well, eh?

Just give me unimportant things to do and everything will work out just fine! I think my boss hates me also. Had my review a few weeks ago.. and it was a great review, but my boss was a buttmunch. He has a bad attitude.

Lucky I have an interview soon for a Help Desk position in another building. Sounds like a poopy job, but I dunno, I think one of my co-workers is going to bring a gun to work soon.
I had a seminar and a meeting for the research project I'm working on. So far it's real cool. Transcoding between various document formats and our own XML DTD for the purpose of better visually-impaired access on all sorts of things, such as overly-laid-out webpages like Everything, and mathematical equations.

Think about it: how is a speaking math browser supposed to say something? There are a good half dozen interpretations of the sentence "a plus b over c plus d." However, if you had it structurally parse it out into a tree and then say, for example, "a plus fraction b over c plus d end-fraction," things are immediately much more clear.

So that's what I'm doing as a research assistant. I love being back in academia, though it helps that at NMSU the various professors treat students very well and not as just some stupid mindless automoton who is unable to think for itself.

Hot Damn It. In preparation for reinstalling NT on my home box, I open the case to see what all I have in there. I'm kind of hoping I have a hard drive I had forgotten about, but no such luck. In fact, I discover the CPU fan isn't fanning. How long has this been going on?!? After 20 minutes of cooling, the heatsink is cool enough to touch. So I'm off into the freezing goddamn cold to wrangle a new CPU fan. Of course, now I have to shop drives, because with a new hard drive, I could reinstall NT fresh and have my previous installation for reference. PC Warehouse in Rochelle Park doesn't have the 20GB drives they advertised, but they do have Canon BJC1000 printers for $60 (after rebate). I resist the temptation; maybe next month.
"I'll take one." I continue north on SR 17 to CompUSA. "I'd like to buy a vowel, because, O my God!" There are 40GB drives here. The clerk watches me carefully as I stare at them and chuckle aloud.
Access denied. The CPU fan installs smoothly, but of course the drive has to hassle me. While ascertaining that my motherboard won't recognize the full capacity of this UltraDMA/66 drive, I accidentally render unreadable the drive where I currently have NT installed. So much for a working reference... Fortunately, I can beg a Promise UDMA/66 controller card that will support the gi-antic drive. Unfortunately, it will probably be a week before I receive it. Tomorrow is another day...
It snowed.

OK. All you damn northerners are just wowed, I'm sure. But it rarely snows in Oklahoma, and when it does snow, it never sticks to the ground. I remember being so jazzed when I was young - there was enough snow to actually build a snowman. So, please, allow me my simple joy.

I celebrated by going biking.

The roads were empty. Lots of sand, but wet sand, so traction was all right. I had on my long johns, some hunting gloves, a ski mask, and a bike helmet, along with normal clothes. I'm very fond of the ski mask - it's blue, and very loose around the neck, so all it needs is a red insignia on the forehead and I look kinda like a bespectacled Cobra Commander when I've got it on.

Not much really happened, except I dropped by some high-class bar to warm up for a bit, and they were watching Univision - one of the Spanish soaps was on, and it seemed like the whole bar was just entranced by the show. It was a bit surreal.

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