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I started school.

Classes started monday (2010-08-23).  I'm taking five classes this semester (currently).  The work load of Physics and four Computer Science courses is rather difficult however.  Generally advisors recommend taking no more than two CS courses in a semester.  Now that I'm taking senior level CS courses, the workload of individual classes has gone up dramatically.  I wasn't expecting things to be due in the first week.

I may end up dropping one or two.  This won't affect my academic career.  Pretty much no matter what I do I'll have fulfilled all the requirements to get a CS degree by the end of Spring 2011.  However, I like the idea of pursuing a dual major in Math and CS, so I'll probably stick around for another year before getting my degree.

I finally got all my contacts in google.

It only took me four years.  It's not that I had a lot of contacts or anything, I'm just lazy.  Well I have a lot of contacts too, but I don't keep in touch.  As I went through my address "book" today, I realized I miss many people that have probably already forgotten about me.  Trying to remember how I met people was akin to flipping through a photo album of the last sixteen years.  I feel like an old man looking back on his childhood with a euphoric sense of nostalgia.

I got an A in the second semester of Japanese as well.  The prof and two of the other eight students told me I should continue Japanese.  I don't want to do anything outside of my degree right now though.  I need to make sure I get that slip of paper before I run out of money.  Which is coming sooner now that I bought that stupid (awesome) iPhone.  (Note: Do not send me money, I'm exaggerating the impact of that purchase.)

I bought something else that's cool and received far less media attention.  It is called a "Boogie Board", but it's not the kind you take to the beach.  It is basically an information age version of the old "Magic Slate".  It's a passive LCD panel that you can draw on with pressure, and clear with the press of a button.  It does not connect to a computer or plug into anything, it is a standalone device.  So the Magic Slate analogy is very accurate indeed.  The only real difference is that I press a button instead of lift and replace a plastic sheet.  I mean both will probably wear out after 50,000 uses.  The Magic Slate because it is cheaply made, and the Boogie Board because the screen clears are powered by an unreplaceable watch battery.

For those of you following me through Google Buzz, you should be able to read the full article again.  My brother was quite vocal in his disapproval of having to open a new page to read past the title, so I fixed it.  If anyone else has some preference for reading my blog that is not currently possible, please let me know.  I do not anticipate this blog getting so popular that I cannot personally handle individual requests.

Grandmother is doing pretty well I think.  Her friend, Carolyn, is using a walker all the time now.  Hopefully that will stop her from falling.  She's also got a lift chair here (she comes over here every day for dinner, and occasionally lunch too).  My grandmother does not approve of the chair being in this house.  The irony is that my grandmother picked out the chair.

Oh and to the people that found this after I friended them on facebook today.  Sorry if you do not actually know me.  Friend finder found 116 people that had facebook accounts associated with e-mails in my address book.  I did not actually go through them all by hand.

Twenty Seven in Human Years.

Today was my birthday.  Happy birthday me.  Congratulations to me for surviving twenty seven revolutions around the star we call "Sun", on the planet we call "Earth", in the galaxy we call "Milky Way" in the space we call "Universe".  I would go into further detail here, but then I would have to choose which group of people I want reading this.

Grandmother had surgery Friday.  Walking around same day.  Granted it should not have affected her walking.  My point is that she still had energy.  She was doing well today too.  We went to dinner with Carolyn to celebrate my birthday.  I really wanted to get a cheeseburger from Wendy's, but that is not the sort of thing we do here, so I had a subpar steak at an upscale restaurant that deserves no advertisement from me.  It was expensive.

On an unrelated note, Carolyn started talking to the manager who lost 118 pounds by changing his diet.  He attributed it to a book called "The China Study" or something like that.  Apparently it exists because someone was trying to prove that nutrition cannot cure cancer.  Then they discovered that their hypothesis was incorrect.  I think I want to look into that book some other time.  Someone please remind me in six months.

I took a nap today before dinner.  My grandmother was asleep for a long time and I thought, "yay, I can sleep without getting lectured."  So while each of us was sleeping, someone snuck into the house and delivered a cake.  Apparently the cake maker called out our names a few times, but after nobody answered, she just left.  Note to self, never lock door, burglars bring yummy treats.

To those that called me or sent me a message, thanks.  To anyone that did not, [shunning silence].

It Rained Today

I think I mentioned it before, but I'm taking Japanese over the summer, two semesters of it.  The first portion ended, I got an A (go me!).  We have a different Sensei (professor) this semester.  She seems new to teaching.

We're currently learning how to express preferences, saying what we do and don't like.  When a student asked Onishi-sensei what she likes to drink, I was expecting something like "water".  Instead, she replied, "beer and wine."  New to teaching.

I realize that most of my readers aren't interested in how my website works, so I'm going to try to stop mentioning technical aspects of things.  Suffice it to say, I obsess over them, and spent most of yesterday working on my website.  It didn't slip my mind that I had a lot of homework to do, but I didn't bother starting it until after 10pm.  So I went to bed around 2am.

I was very tired when I woke up, so I had some coke (caffeine content).  I read something on lifehacker.com about caffeine helping your memory or some such nonsense, so I figured it wouldn't hurt with my kanji quiz.  I spent about 10 minutes looking over the kanji before class started, I think I did all right.  I know I missed one, but if I make no mistakes, people get jealous, so it's not worth extra effort.

When I got home, I was no longer tired (thanks to the coke), but I still took a nap because I knew I needed it.  It takes a long time to fall asleep when I'm not tired, which is why I'm so accustomed to falling asleep around 4am.  At that point, most people call it "passing out", rather than "going to bed."  Taking a long time to fall asleep often leads people to believe that I sleep a lot.  I don't.  It's not really insomnia either.  If I'm left to my own schedule, I get about 7.5 to 9 hours a day, and I fall asleep within 30 minutes of the attempt.  However, most of the waking hours are when the stars are out.  Although, nobody lets me keep my own sleep schedule.  Everyone has some kind of input.  Which has lead to my current situation of 4.5 to 6 hours and coke in strategically dosed amounts throughout the day.  I mean the soda, despite using the word "dosed".

Today, while I was napping after class, it rained.  I think that's the second time this year.  When I "finally" woke up my grandmother "Aunt" Joane pointed out the puddles in the carport.  The expensive new screens in the contemporary design she wanted, rather than the suggestion a neighbor made, facilitate the formation of a thin sheet of water the whole length of the carport.  Most of the water evaporates shortly after the rain stops, but a significant amount of water pools in the dips of the concrete floor of the carport.  The concrete has been there for decades so it is no longer level.  This leftover water "of course" is the "neighbor's fault" for (beautifully) installing a (functional) trench drain that "doesn't work".  A (permeable) vertical screen wall is "obviously" waterproof.  So I'm supposed to have the neighbor that dug the "failed" (working) trench drain fix the water problem (that his recommendation, if taken, would have alleviated).

I think I'm going to buy a big squeegee for the monsoon season.

Primary Sources

As things stand, this is how I expect people to follow my life (if they are so inclined):

• Browser: http://www.tekempire.net/
• RSS: http://feeds.tekempire.net/tekempire
• ATOM: http://feeds.tekempire.net/tekempire
• E-Mail: http://www.tekempire.net/feeds/email

These all have the same content, so take your pick.  If you follow me on another site, that's fine too, I don't plan on eliminating them in the near future. Just be aware, the above are the primary sources.

Website Overhaul

Everything is different!  (But you can keep accessing the blog however you do now.)

Between today and yesterday, I added wordpress and bbpress to my website at "http://www.tekempire.net/".  The users are integrated and the wordpress side allows OpenID logins.  (I'm not entirely sure what happens if someone logs into the wordpress side with an OpenID and tries to post comments in the bbpress end.  Feel free to try if you know what I'm talking about.)

The reason for the change is because posterous does not yet allow advertising.  Oddly, they do allow propagation to wordpress blogs.  At some point I'll put adds on my website.  For now though, I'm still tinkering with the appearance.

I added bbPress because I remember I had a forum on my site before that people seemed to like but I got rid of it because I couldn't figure out how to integrate it with the rest of my website.  Anyway, if people are afraid to use the site because they think I'm going to make changes and delete everything again.  Don't worry about that anymore.  I'm trying to get into the habit of iterative upgrades.  If I want to make a huge change, I'll first figure out how to recover the content.

The genealogy logins for "http://family.tekempire.net/genealogy/" are not integrated with the logins on "http://www.tekempire.net/"  (Hence I'm keeping it on a seperate subdomain).  Don't worry, this applies only to one person right now.

I can technically provide e-mail from my domain (through google apps), but I'm not going to automate the process for two reasons.  First, I'm not a fan of spam, and automated e-mail providers usually end up being zombies.  Second, I can't figure out how to integrate the system with the user database in wordpress.  If you would like an "@tekempire.net" e-mail address and don't mind it being a separate system from the rest of the site, just ask me.  (Note: If you aren't family or a business partner, I'll probably ignore the request.)

Dinner time.  Bye for now.

Six Hours a Day

Fujio-sensei tells her regular Japanese students that they should study at least two hours a day. However, since this is a summer class and every day is equivalent to one week of regular class, Fujio-sensei suggests we study at least six hours a day.

Yesterday, I got home as early as I could so I could take my grandmother, Joane, to a breast cancer center (henceforth BCC) to discuss treatment options. Her friend, Carolyn, wanted to go along to help out, but her van was having A/C trouble. The plan was to drop off Carolyn's van at the shop and then take Joane's car to town. I, of course, was the chauffer. As Carolyn walked to the building to hand the gentlemen her keys, she had another fall. Plans changed a little and we took her to the VA on our way to the BCC. The new plan was to pick her up on the way back. A few hours passed before we returned to the VA ("cancer treatment options" is not a discussion you want to rush), but they still were not done doing tests, so Joane and I went home.

Sometime in there, my brother, Eric, called me to inform me that he found $200 I accidentally left in a suitcase. Happy birthday brother!

It was a little early for dinner but for some reason I was quite hungry by the time I got home, so I ate early. Which was convenient since the time I normally eat dinner, as I was preparing to study, I got a phone call from Carolyn telling me to pick her up. Of course when I got there, I had to wait another hour or so while they waited on results for a test. So I finally got home and ready to study around 8:30pm, an hour and a half before I normally go to bed. There is a fine line between too little sleep and too little studying. If you get it wrong, you will not know the material. Fortunately I had spent some time trying to learn Japanese on my own a few years ago, however, I think we have now moved beyond where I left off.

New (old) Blog Location

http://blog.tekempire.net/

If any of you have been following my internet musings over the years, you'll know I've had the domain name for a while and don't really use it (on the public facing side). I'm not actually hosting the blog myself. I'm using posterous. The service reposts content to facebook, twitter, and blogger. So if you don't update your bookmarks, it won't matter, you can still read all my new posts. Assuming, of course, I write new posts.

Event Stream (no particular order)

All A's again last semester (strangely). Start summer Japanese course on Monday. Got a Roku player a few weeks ago to watch Netflix videos instantly on the television. Grandmother enjoys it. Will be getting a new router to deal with an issue the cable company has. Decided on a camera to want, Canon SD1400. If anyone buys this for me, it will not be appreciated. Still learning to budget. Grandmother likes suggested insulated water bottle, uses it frequently. Expensive screen to be installed in carport this month. Discovered A/C duct was losing significant amounts of air outside. Neighbor, retired from company that installed A/C, fixed same day. Photo organization re-automated. Still not enough pictures taken to justify organizational system. Fire department removed snake from premises. Turned out to be harmless Bull snake. Visited Kitt Peak with friend from China. Stopped at border patrol checkpoint on return. Formed opinion on new immigration law, do not like. Got sick for two days. Good excuse to catch up on much-needed rest. Need new excuse. Want free epub books to read, preferably good ones. Search for "free epub books to read" does not return good ones. Determined to improve native language skills. Regained interest in quantum entanglement. Discovered service allowing e-mail to snail-mail conversion (for a fee). Sent post cards. Went to Mount Lemmon with friends. Attempted intellectual conversation. Learned not friends. Went to mall with friends. Attempted intellectual conversation. Rediscovered not friends. Internet is friend, discussed quantum entanglement. Some other stuff you might have an interest in also occurred, but not recollected currently.

ACM Picnic

Today the ACM club at U of A had a picnic. We invited all computer science majors, not just ACM members. Someone brought a football. Several of us, myself included, played football. You read that correctly, CS majors played football at a picnic. I also stubbed my finger trying to catch the ball, but that's not nearly as interesting as the premise.

Apartment Idea Revisited

I moved back Friday. The apartment did not save enough time to justify the expense.

Apple OSX Cruft Removal

I am obsessive about the organization of the files on my computer. Apple does not understand my organizational system, and I do not understand theirs. On the operating system drive, I leave the files how OSX put them. On my removable media, Apple should leave things as I put them. So I wrote two files to allow me to "umount" properly.

To make this work by just typing "umount /Volume/<VolumeName>", I added "export PATH=~/bin:${PATH}" to my "~/.profile" and put the following files in "~/bin".

If you read this far and do not know what I am referring to, you probably should stop reading here and find something else to do. Otherwise, let me know if you have any problems with this technique, or a better solution.

--- ~/bin/umount Begin ---
#!/bin/sh
# File: umount
# Author: Brian Lindsay
# Purpose: umount a volume from OSX.
# Usage: umount /Volume/<VolumeName>

uncruft "${@}"
diskutil unmount "${@}"
--- End ~/bin/umount ---

--- ~/bin/uncruft Begin ---
#!/bin/sh
# File: uncruft
# Author: Brian Lindsay
# Purpose: Remove OSX cruft from a filesystem volume.
# Usage: uncruft /Volume/<VolumeName>

# MCP
main(){
 clean "${@}"
}

# All known sources of cruft in OSX
osxcruft(){
 #Files
 #echo "._AppleDouble"
 echo "._*"
 echo ".DS_Store"
 echo ".VolumeIcon.icns"
 #Folders
 echo ".fseventsd"
 echo ".Spotlight-V100"
 echo ".TemporaryItems"
 echo ".Trashes"
}

# Forcibly remove cruft
clean(){
 cd "${@}"
 osxcruft | while read cruft; do
  rm -rf ${cruft}
 done
}

# Run program.
main "${@}"
--- End ~/bin/uncruft ---

African Aqueducts

Recently I have been spending a lot of time thinking about getting clean water to underprivileged people. This is probably due to the fact that I now live in a desert. Nevertheless, it seems important, so it stays on my mind.

If you could only do one thing to help prevent the spread of disease, it should be to supply clean water, because nothing else has such a dramatic impact. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that a steady supply of clean water permits the irrigation of crops, which creates a stable food supply. You know what happens when your village no longer spends all its time worrying about its next meal and surviving the next outbreak? Industry. Well, not immediately, but it permits the possibility.

So the important part of the idea. How do you get freshwater to the desert with no streams or aquifers? On a much smaller scale, the Romans had some plumbing that did not require power. Aqueducts. We could use something like that to transport water for the highest places in Africa to all of the smallest villages. The initial expense would be enormous, but if you build it with local materials, you would not have to maintain it. As a passive system, it would require very little maintenance anyway.

The really hard part is getting the freshwater to the highest points in Africa to begin with. I like the idea of selling sea salt from the Atlantic ocean to the developed world, and pumping the distilled water uphill. I have no idea how much salt would need to be sold, nor at what price to make this possible, but I have heard little discussion about it, so I thought I would start the conversation. Anyone interested in a business venture?

Apartment

As of March first, I have moved into an apartment much closer to the U of A campus. This is a temporary arrangement for the rest of the semester. Apparently five classes is more than I can handle. At least when three of them are math, and the other two computer science.

I have been toying with the idea of rewriting my website again (the previous versions were short-lived publicly) through google's appengine. This would allow me to organize messages with respect to topics. That way people interested in my personal life would not have to read about my grand ideas for bringing freshwater to Africa (e.g.), and vice versa. For now though, I think it is better for me to just post everything I want public on this blog until I have time to learn python (a necessary step to move to appengine). In the interim, you can expect a little more frequency here, but less relevance.

Arizona

Dearest <you>,

So I live in Arizona now.  Officially I have lived here since 2009-08-13.  That is when I got my local driver's license anyway.   I am what the locals are calling a "live-in care-taker" for my grandmother.  If that were not the case, you see, I would not be allowed to live here.  My current residence is within a retirement community with a minimum age of, I believe, 55.

While I was visiting my grandmother, shortly before I got the license, she had a bit of a fall.  I think it was due to drowsiness from some medication.  The cause is hardly the issue however.  The point of the matter is that it was bad enough that I ended up taking her to the hospital, albeit a few days later.  I thought someone should stay with her, and called my brother to discuss it.  Since he did not offer to sell his house, quit his job, and leave his girlfriend, it was decided that I should make my visit permanent.

I am currently majoring in Computer Science at the University of Arizona.  I am taking a few extra math courses this semester, and plan to add Math as a major before I graduate.  At this point I believe I am a Junior, but I honestly have no clue what I need to graduate.

The purpose of this weblog is to reduce the burden of telling several people the same set of things.  It is a lot easier to write a general synopsis of my days here, than it is to answer real letters and electronic mails asking what is going on in my life.  I still enjoy a good letter now and then, but I am getting too busy to respond properly.  Not that I normally would respond properly, but now, I am also unable to do so.

Feel free to ask any specific questions if they have not been adequately covered.

Sincerely,
<me>.