Journal 2002-04

Current entries

2002-04-30, Tue (Day 635, temperature at 10:59: 22.9°C, difference: -2.5°C): Early this morning my phone was ringing and lawnmowers were going. I figured the calls had to do with putting the Phoenix story online but since I wanted to sleep at least five hours I put my phone on do not disturb. Nathan was clever enough to get Branen to add him to the phoenix SCCS group so he could put the story up. Branen who is probably going to be on Phoenix staff next semester is now a SCCS sysadmin.

At lunch I sat with Kai, Emily, E.B., and Abram. I was in a hurry so I left the table earlier than I normally would. Emily sensed that I was rushing to leave and left about when I did and so did Kai. E.B. however left a few minutes prior to this point to get chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. She got back when we were leaving so she just had to discard her entire bowl. I felt bad about that.

I did some cleaning up stuff with today’s Phoenix online update and went to afternoon classes unprepared like last Thursday and with a stuffy nose most likely due to allergies. This evening in Beardsley public I made final revisions to my econ paper due tomorrow.

I printed a number of journal articles and then looked into why today’s online update wasn’t showing on the popular page, which Nathan pointed out by e-mail this evening. I couldn’t figure out the cause of the problem and the confusion was enough to crash the public area Mac I was on and my own computer. Even though my computer still showed up on the network when I would login to it the public computer would crash. As a result I couldn’t reply to Nathan’s message until I got back to my room.

I went to McCabe at about 23:00 to start my final semantics problem set. I left for Worth about an hour later and restarted my computer, which wouldn’t wake up from sleep. So even though my iMac didn’t last without restarting since 2002-04-05 into May, it did stay up for 25 days, which is a record.

2002-04-29, Mon (Day 634, temperature at 09:56: 25.4°C, difference: +0.9°C): I listened to Kevin’s last radio show this semester in the afternoon and continued working on MacFixIt archiving. I have been working on this project for a week and all of last weekend so I wanted to finish it today even if that meant rushing. I sure did need to rush. Even though today is a friend’s 21st birthday I didn’t go out this evening to join his friends and him since I was too stressed out. I also decided against going to the SWIL movie at 22:00. Since I was already in the student publications office for Branen’s Phoenix interview at 21:00 I felt compelled to stay for the editorial board meeting that ran past 22:00. As a result I didn’t regain all of the time saved by not going to the movie.

I started moving towards finishing up stuff with MacFixIt at 03:00 and compressed the archive at 04:00. I went to bed at 05:15 at the very beginning of twilight.

The Finder unexpectedly quit late today but I still have not needed to restart my computer since 2002-04-05.

2002-04-28, Sun (Day 633, temperature at 11:28: 24.5°C, difference: +1.5°C): I dreamed that a large Sears Home Central opened at the Springfield Mall near the Strawbridge’s. I thought it was interesting that this Sears was named differently than the one at Granite Run since the two stores are nearby.

I also daydreamed while dreaming about how I was going to get to work in Oregon. I floated the idea of using mass transit; PATH is what I was calling it. A woman wanted to drive to the station at the end of the day to pick me up. I wanted to walk home because I think a station was close enough where I could walk. This woman insisted on meeting me at the station by walking there herself. In reality Tri-Met is the mass transit for Portland, Oregon.

I worked on MacFixIt for most of the day. I had a WA conference this afternoon for econ and went to “Between Two Worlds” at 19:00 in the LPAC Frear.

2002-04-27, Sat (Day 632, temperature at 12:51: 23.0°C, difference: +1.8°C): I dreamed that I was on the ground floor eatery of a hotel in Washington, D.C. I was with another guy and we were trying to get to the walkway that was one floor above and connected to other nearby buildings. We found an exit door near the restrooms that said it went there. However, the stairs behind the door looked like service stairs and the clearances after the first flight made the stairs unusable. The ceiling above the top stair on the first flight was too low so I had to crawl to get to the landing. After this point the ceiling remained low and pipes were crisscrossing the stairs so we gave up, went back down, and tried a different way.

I got up to go to Sharples late lunch. I had a roast beef sandwich and a cheeseburger, the latter I wanted last night but I had already grabbed enough food. The cheeseburger today was slightly overcooked but warm, so it didn’t completely meet my expectations.

The person who dried crap last week still didn’t pick up the bulk of her clothes but the dryer and laundry room no longer had that awful smell. I worked on MacFixIt for the rest of the day save for going to the chorus concert at 20:00, which John was in. I sat with Jesse near the top of the concert hall in Lang.

2002-04-26, Fri (Day 631, temperature at 10:00: 21.2°C, difference: +0.4°C): I ate lunch with Kai, William, Gee, Emily, and Abram. Laura sat next to me across from another Emily but they were with a separate party. Nevertheless these two are going to be on my hall next year along with Kai, who was to my left. I left Sharples early so I could go to the collection at 13:00 in LPAC. The speaker’s lecture was very short; I was going for my walk before 14:00 even though the collection started late.

I spent a good portion of the remaining part of the day working on MacFixIt. I went to Kirby for the showing of “Pollock” at 20:00. The Student Art Association sponsored this movie. I went to their soiree in Parrish Parlors after the movie. The event was just starting, there were at least a dozen people there, and nobody was chatting. No one was eating the food yet but everyone was waiting for a glass of champagne to be given to everyone I presume. I stood at the entryway for a couple minutes and then left since I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want champagne; I wanted cheese and strawberries. It seems really strange that the social events I have been at recently are having a negative effect on me.

A school shooting this morning in Germany has some resemblance to the Columbine massacre three years ago.

2002-04-25, Thu (Day 630, temperature at 11:00: 20.8°C, difference: -0.9°C): I was in a few places in my dream, which ended with me being in a church. I was sitting in the pews near the front. A group presentation that turned into an impromptu discussion referred to fiscal terrorism.

I ate lunch with Kai, Emily, Joan, and Mike and then went for a walk before afternoon classes. I went to the Hicks Mural Room for a 16:30 lecture about Christianity after Sept. 11. The argument given by religion opponents is that religion leads to divisiveness and conflict. The talk itself was rather boring, which gave more justification for me to leave at 17:00 for dinner. I would have left then anyway since time is getting short given that the end of the semester is not too far away.

I went to Phoenix ed board at 19:00, which focused on critique since this week’s issue was much worse than average. I continued working on MacFixIt this evening and made good progress but I am still not done getting the archives in order.

My computer has been up for 20 days now, which is a complete surprise. I had a few unexpected quits the past two days with Word and IE but they didn’t set off system crashes.

Today would have been the fall symmetric equivalent of 2001-09-11. There was an accidental explosion in Manhattan today that injured dozens but nothing else serious was reported on CNN.com.

2002-04-24, Wed (Day 629, temperature at 10:00: 21.7°C, difference: -0.8°C): I dreamed I was in a urban mall in Washington, D.C. and one department store had numerous hidden cameras that were concealed in these peaked mirrors from the ceiling. Another department store that I was in also had cameras but they weren’t hidden.

I felt really bad this afternoon but I persisted and completed my Phoenix application for next semester. I continued working on MacFixIt for portions of the late afternoon and evening. I also put up this week’s Phoenix and went to the MST3K showing of episode #310 “Fugitive Alien” at 19:00. Only one other person besides Arcadia showed up so this event seems to be losing popularity among students or work is picking up now.

2002-04-23, Tue (Day 628, temperature at 11:00: 22.5°C, difference: -0.2°C): I got up later but still early enough to go to lunch. I sat in the Sharples big room with Emily, William, Joan, Anna, another Anna, E.B., Kai, and others. I continued working on the MacFixIt archives around dinner. At 19:30 I went to an econ lecture in Kirby. Prof. O’C didn’t plug the lecture yesterday and not a lot of people showed up probably as a result.

I did my semantics problem set in McCabe after the lecture. I continued working on MacFixIt and I still didn’t finish by the time I went to bed after 02:00.

2002-04-22, Mon (Day 627, temperature at 09:56: 22.7°C, difference: +0.8°C): I dreamed I was going into Philly on I-95 from the south with my parents. However there were only two lanes in each direction, which seemed like a line striping error to me since the shoulders were abnormally wide.

We get off the highway in Southwest Philly but the area is much denser with more tightly packed row houses. The gray highway is elevated to my right (east) and towers over the nearby houses. I get to a dead end at a ‘T’ intersection so I turn around. Now I need to drive with just a learner’s permit down a narrow street with parked cars on both sides. A red police car then comes up the opposite direction. Fortunately there is a part of the street near the middle that doesn’t have parked cars on the right side so I drive up on the sidewalk to let the police car pass.

I listened to Kevin’s show this afternoon. Immediately following dinner I went with Jesse and John to Lang for an opera greatest hits performance at 18:00. The performers were students. I wasn’t too thrilled about it but I agreed to go with Jesse and John anyway. After the performance I worked on the MacFixIt archives saved on my computer. They take up 20 MB on my drive and I ran out of disk space this afternoon while looking at network stream data. I also went to the SWIL movie, “Help” at 22:00. I was able to trim the disk space usage down somewhat but I didn’t finish since I started falling asleep after 01:00.

2002-04-21, Sun (Day 626, temperature at 11:14: 21.9°C, difference: -5.3°C): I dreamed I was walking east on College Ave, but when I get to PA 320 it is a big divided road that is difficult to cross. I continue walking into Marple Newtown even though this wouldn’t be the right direction for it. The environment gets more industrial urban residential, unlike anywhere in this area. I am walking to someone’s weird dorm apartment. Martin is one person living there.

After a while at that place I walk back with them to Swat so we can take the MCAT at dinner in Sharples. I clean the left side underneath a bathroom sink in Sharples. Jesse comes in to the bathroom at 17:30 and wonders where I was.

After leaving Sharples in the dream, it was clear that everything on campus was different but the building names still fit their real life function. However the layout of buildings and their placement on campus was altered. Even the Sharples bathroom I was in didn’t match the real life one.

Note that Kai took the MCAT in real life yesterday. I got up today without an alarm but with much to do. I needed to finalize the room choose list for the housing lottery tonight at 19:30 and do an econ problem set. After lunch I started working on housing. The weather was cloudy and occasionally rainy, which wasn’t conductive to doing work.

I spent a fair amount of time realizing that I didn’t have enough time to do an AppleWorks database for housing so I used last year’s work heavily. I was going to use a database so I could organize the list both alphabetically and by rank. It is easier to find which rooms have been taken in an alphabetical list. I walked over to the Wharton area to figure out exactly which first floor rooms were high enough to essentially be second floor rooms. For security reasons I don’t like living on the ground floor. I also did the same for Danawell. I didn’t think I would have to make use of this detailed information but it turned out I did.

I fell behind putting the list together since updating and validating last year’s list with this year’s available rooms took longer than I wanted it to. Even by dinner I didn’t know what my top rooms in Wharton would be. I didn’t know this piece until the hour before the lottery started.

By the time I had to stop working much of the ordering of rooms within a dorm still had last year’s ordering, which is different than how I would order them now. I hoped that I wouldn’t have to go that far down the list. I also hoped that the randomness of other people’s choosing would funnel me away from rooms that I ranked higher but weren’t actually that good if I saw them firsthand. Even though I would need to choose lower in my list I would have picked a better room. In other words I was banking on others to correct for my ranking errors.

I go to print the lists out at 19:20 and then my printer decides to print streaky like it is going to run out of ink. I don’t have time to troubleshoot my printer and since I haven’t yet set up desktop printers on my computer for the new print servers I go to McCabe to print the documents. By printing on a different computer the Monaco font was replaced with Courier and the rooms in red text indicating that smoking is permitted looked identical to the non-smoking rooms. I get to the Tarble Gym a few minutes late but the lottery hadn’t started yet.

Each year the mic quality gets worse and this year was especially horrible. The runner to cross out rooms had a walkie-talkie with the room choosing side to avoid needing physical runners. The updating seemed faster but as I learned later not all of the rooms taken were crossed off. It wasn’t like there was an extra delay but they just weren’t crossed off since that process appeared to be in real-time without look-behind error correction. With a lottery number of 372 the agony persisted for a while as I saw numerous Wharton rooms get crossed off.

When it was my turn, there were hardly any Wharton singles left and since my list wasn’t up to date it made the process more stressful. The RAs at the Wharton table had difficulty quickly answering my inquiries for a room, further increasing my stress level. Choosing a room last year was a lot more relaxing.

Tonight, I essentially had to choose between small rooms near the bathroom on Wharton center 3d or a slightly larger room on center 1st. I reluctantly but hastily chose the latter since I wanted a larger room but at the expense of numerous factors. Namely: living on the first floor (though the room height is essentially the second floor), having a room directly across the stairs, being directly above the party space in the basement, and choosing into the worst looking hall in the entire building. In addition this room does not have a distant view, does not face the courtyard, and lacks a south exposure.

When I chose this room, Wharton 150, I immediately had doubt and was in a paralyzed daze of, “what did I just do?” In fact I was feeling pretty stiff earlier today but the feeling I had now was just shock. In the final checkout line I was standing frozen with my papers in hand for a number of seconds until I snapped out of it. Jesse picked in to Wharton west 3d and John and Tom chose Pittenger. I chilled with Jesse outside of the field house until John and Tom finished.

I get back to my room and I still felt tense from the lottery. I went to McCabe to do my econ problem set due tomorrow. Fortunately the problems weren’t too difficult. After I sketched out the solutions I took a break and went to Parrish to see who was on my hall. Fortunately the people on my hall make up for all the other physical shortcomings with my room location. Kai, Jeremy, Norense, Todd, and Karl are all on my hall.

After I wrote up the problem set I returned to Parrish to write down the rooms and lottery numbers of the Wharton rooms. I wanted to do an analysis to see if any rooms that were higher on my list were in fact available to me but in all of the confusion I overlooked them or just didn’t ask the right questions. Rooms in Wharton center 2d and east 3d were open if I was a woman but they closed to men before I could choose. Wharton east 280 may have been open but it was in the same lottery block that I was in so I might have been too slow or I realized that this room is a closet so I passed over it. Other than that it looks like I chose the best room available at the time.

2002-04-20, Sat (Day 625, temperature at 11:26: 27.2°C, difference: -1.1°C): There was a moderate earthquake in upstate New York before 07:00 this morning. I did the wash this afternoon and read Gnutella Forums posts. Some woman dried crap they fell into while outside and fowled up a dryer and when I removed the clothes the whole room had the stench. I wiped down the dryer and Lysol sprayed but the awful smell was still there primarily because the clothes remained unclaimed.

I went with John to the student dance concert in LPAC at 20:00 and the showing of “Broadcast News” in Kirby at 22:00.

2002-04-19, Fri (Day 624, temperature at 10:01: 28.3°C, difference: -2.9°C): I dream that I am in the publications office writing an article about a list of 12 or so ITS bandwidth usage limitations. Even though it was hot today it snowed while I was in the office. This is not the first time it has snowed unexpectedly while I was in the office.

The weather in reality today was far less hot and the thunderstorm at dinner cooled things off dramatically. Even though it was virtually clear at 14:00, clouds picked up by 15:45 although there was nothing on the 15:30 radar. I caught up my journal this afternoon and evening. I went to DuPont at 16:00 for a physics lecture on demonstrations. I thought that demonstrations meant protests but it actually meant lab demonstrations in lecture. The lecture was still very good though.

The lecture started in DuPont 139 at 16:30 and beforehand there were refreshments in the Joel Dean lounge, which is outside the first floor chemistry labs. I talked to Barbara from the Health Sciences Office.

The thunderstorm arrived during the lecture but since the windows were covered in DuPont 139 I only heard thunder from the storm once and didn’t see how much it was raining. I needed to walk through the thunderstorm after the lecture to get to Sharples. The lightning was crashing as well so I was at some risk walking around then especially since I needed to walk on metal staircases outside DuPont and Cornell, walk near the steel outside Cornell, and go by the Clothier tower.

I got to Sharples and sat with Kevin, Marilyn, Madalyn, Renee, Caroline, Sophia, Kiyo, and Carl. I went to the living wage film showing of “Occupation” in Kohlberg 115 at 19:30. This film was about the 21-day student sit-in at Harvard last spring for higher staff wages. I met John outside Kirby at 21:45 for “Red.” Even though it is spec weekend hardly anyone was there. There were no projector failures though. This movie seemed very interesting at least to me. A judge spies on telephone conversations in France. The movie was in French with subtitles.

2002-04-18, Thu (Day 623, temperature at 11:00: 31.2°C, difference: +2.2°C): I dreamed a woman Swattie was outside my window in a courtyard that resembled the Worth courtyard. The building I was in resembled Worth although everything was slightly larger and less square. She was out there doing push-ups.

I also dreamed I was in a building that resembled the Ridley Middle School. I was in Ms. Miller’s classroom on the first floor on the northwest side of the building. Through the door across the hallway I see the same woman Swattie who is wearing a yellow shirt and is excited. Someone asks if he’s living with her this summer. There’s a sign that says “Eligible bachelor” above the area where the Swattie is.

I found that dream interesting. I went to Sharples at 11:30 for a LAX Conference feedback session in room 4, which is the large windowless room in Sharples by the cereal. I was able to provide feedback to John, Steve, Pat, Leslie Ann, and Lisa. A few other students showed up later to round out the session, which lasted at least until 12:30. I drank six glasses of water and felt pretty queasy for some time after the meal.

During this time a small plane crashed into the tallest building in Milan, Italy leaving a large hole in the building. This crash was worse than the Bank of America plane crash in Florida in 2002-01. Not going to breakfast just moves the planes crashing into buildings later into lunch.

I have noticed that each day for the past couple of weeks the structure of the relaying network has changed and is different each day. To me it seems like a way of ensuring privacy since the structure would need to be figured out each day to attack it but it could also serve as a point of masquerading. Also, since 2002-04-11 I have been receiving through visions an increased number of images of the World Trade Center. I also have noticed that both before 2001-09-11 and a couple of weeks ago there was a push on the network for a particular type of commitment among members. In September it was a commitment of continuity. Recently it has been a commitment of non-attrition.

I continued working on my econ paper draft in Beardsley public following afternoon classes and into the late evening. I went to dinner at 17:00 and ed board at 19:00. Even though I am not as sick as I once was, the combination of the start of allergies and the lingering illness is making me feel less than good.

A few minutes after 17:00 an Amtrak train derailed in Florida.

In my room I implemented Nathan’s suggestion that he gave last night in the publications office. He said that in the middle of the day when an open window no longer provides ventilation but just supplies heat the window should be shut and the shades should be drawn. I shut my windows and pulled my curtain before leaving for afternoon classes today.

After dinner this action didn’t make the temperature any different than what it was 24 hours prior. My curtain didn’t actually make my room dark so that might be the difference. Nothing I have done so far makes my room significantly cooler. The temperature goes down overnight when I am not awake and am off my computer but the base value the past couple of days was quite high anyway.

I left Beardsley public after 01:00 having finished my econ paper draft. Even though my computer hasn’t crashed I managed to freeze the public area Mac I was using, which I hardly ever crash unexpectedly. Apparently Word had a memory leak as dialogs started frequently displaying blank messages and after some time went by the whole computer just crapped out.

I tried hanging up my icicle lights again but I used the hanging runner since thumbtacks will go into this part of the wall. However, with the lights positioned lower in the room and further away from me the brightness is worse. Fortunately I don’t think Wharton has textured ceilings like Worth does, so I should have less of a problem next year if I wanted to use tape for my lights again.

2002-04-17, Wed (Day 622, temperature at 10:00: 29.0°C, difference: +1.3°C): It didn’t seem as bad as yesterday weather wise but it still was hot. Half of my icicle lights fell down today since my room is too hot for the tape to stick. I hung them up again after 21:00 only for them to fall down again a few hours later. I figured that I needed to hang up my lights using tacks and nails instead of tape.

The temperature readings that I take daily from my desk thermometer are normally in the morning and at the low point of the temperature range. When I got back from the publications office after the first Phoenix deadline my room temperature was 34.6°C at 18:37. However, my computer processor temperature did not have a much higher standing temperature even when I was sitting in front of my computer and using it, which makes the temperature go up. In the publications office the processor temperature of Scratchy at 17:28 was 31°C, which is a normal temperature. However, even though I haven’t seen my desk thermometer go this high before, my computer temperature is still within previously seen values.

I met Jenn in the afternoon to discuss my current post-Swarthmore plans. Following the meeting I started the WA draft of my optional econ macro paper.

I went up to the office after 17:00, which was hot but somewhat ventilated compared to my room. The pizza didn’t arrive until 18:30 so I took a slice to go and did the early edition in my room. The slowness of AppleScript applications had a significant impact for doing the early edition quickly. I needed to run two scripts that took much longer to complete since I still have not restarted my computer since 2002-04-05. I got to Trotter 203 for MST3K 15 minutes late as a result.

After hanging up my icicle lights again I returned to the office to do the rest of the articles. I didn’t leave until 02:00 but while I was there I updated the author pages, something that I haven’t done since the end of February. Updating the pages is not an all at once process, which is one reason why I haven’t been doing it each week. Also, the script that makes the pages isn’t optimized and I want to develop a more secure way of making these pages.

I left my door in Worth open and turned my fan on medium but that just made my room warmer.

2002-04-16, Tue (Day 621, temperature at 09:59: 27.7°C, difference: +0.9°C): I went to lunch a few minutes after 11:00, slightly later than I wanted to, and Jesse wasn’t in the Sharples small room. I sat in the big room and it didn’t take long for Kai and company to arrive. I sat with them, including E.B., Emily, William, and Joan. I started my semantics problem set after lunch but before afternoon classes. With it being hot today I was averse to staying in my room for any significant period of time.

Facilities took my old radiator handle and screw. They placed a new control knob still in its original bag by the heater but there wasn’t a screw to attach the handle. So now I can’t turn my heater on at all although I certainly wouldn’t want to do that now.

I went to the psych colloquium at 16:15 with John. Tom Gilovich was the speaker. John and I ate dinner and I continued working on my problem set this evening in McCabe. I took a break and went to the dining services fireside chat at 21:00 in the Kohlberg Coffee Bar.

I read some more Gnutella Forums posts after 00:00. I had my door shut and my fan on high but it took a couple hours to shave a few tenths of a degree Celsius off of the room temperature.

2002-04-15, Mon (Day 620, temperature at 09:59: 26.8°C, difference: +0.4°C): I dreamed that I was looking at covers of Time magazine. Besides the Sept. 11 cover of the World Trade Center towers on fire, there was a cover from 2001-03 that had a plane flying into the WTC and asking if it could actually happen. I found that cover odd and to figure out what was going on I took myself to the site of the attack while it happened. It was quite staggering as the north tower was more heavily in flame and explosion than what actually took place.

The Internet beyond the Yipes network went down at about 14:30 and wasn’t operational until after 17:00. The college’s firewall, whose redundancy was tested on Friday, caused problems for Level 3 one of Yipes’ ISPs. As a result Level 3 shut off the college’s Internet access.

My computer reached ten days of uptime this afternoon, something that I think never happened when I would use my computer each day. Normally during college breaks my iMac can stay up this long. I also don’t think a single application unexpectedly quit in this ten day time period. I find this event remarkable. For one the temperature in my room varied a good deal during the period, which could cause a crash. Recently my room has been very warm. Before this long uptime period my computer was very unstable for a couple days. This problem may have been due to the heat and temperature swings or a low amount of free drive space. However, I still have a low amount of free drive space and am not having problems.

I don’t do all of The Phoenix art on my computer anymore and I didn’t listen to MP3s most of the time with Audion but I did open Photoshop to do The Phoenix cover and I listened to MP3s some of the time. I also opened RealPlayer and Windows Media Player and LimeWire has been open with the same session the entire time. The memory leak bug with LimeWire has also been fixed and memory usage after ten days is at 46 MB.

I went to Papazian 324 at 16:15 for a psych senior project meeting. During the meeting, LimeWire found Swarthmore IPs to connect to. Since the Internet outage on 2002-03-29 I have made an increased effort to find more Swarthmore Gnutella IPs. I would place these IPs in the LimeWire quick connect list so that when the Internet would go down I should be able to form a Swarthmore connection automatically.

The person I was directly connected to was one IP number greater than mine. The other person connected through him was in Mary Lyon. Speeds were in the 100 KB/s range probably since the host computers were slower or because of my computer. Since about yesterday my iMac has been slowing down especially when running AppleScripts, dnetc, and iDo. It seems that tasks that yield frequently aren’t getting the processor back as often as normal.

I did some reading this evening for semantics and DNS resolved the log files on the SCCS that have been accumulating on the server for the past month. I went to the SWIL movie, “Open Your Eyes” at 22:00. This movie was in Spanish.

I tried reading Gnutella Forums posts after the movie but I fell asleep on the same thread that I dozed off on a few days ago.

2002-04-14, Sun (Day 619, temperature at 09:59: 26.4°C, difference: +1.4°C): I got up at 10:00 and immediately got dressed since my family picked me up at 10:10 for the Crum Regatta. There were only four boats in the contest and the route wasn’t very long probably because of the drought and the possibility that the boats wouldn’t be able to last much further than that. Dad told me that in the past the route went underneath the train trestle but dirt banks from lack of rain and fallen trees made that part of the Crum Creek impassable. Also, with the deeper water came more substantial boats.

After this event I went to lunch and then McCabe to start my econ problem set due tomorrow. I went to LPAC for the 14:00 matinee of “I Want a Baby.” The thrust stage provided seating on the sides of the stage, which I took. Very few people sat in these sections possibly because plush white fabric bodies occupied some of the seats. These bodies were placeholders for the performers to sit in the audience during the trial scene. However, I wasn’t sure if it was ok to sit here and the feeling that it was fine was immediately challenged when the play opened with one of those plush bodies being dropped off of the balcony to my left.

Sitting in the left seating area gave me a good view of the orchestra on the right side balcony. It seemed difficult to conduct in a line though when everyone is facing the same direction. In general the play blurred the line between the actors and the audience.

I returned to McCabe after the play to continue working on the problem set. I left again for an 18:00 ARC focus group meeting in Kohlberg 202. Pizza was served and I got an opportunity to say my feelings about athletics on campus. I went to the Swarthmore Orchestra performance at 19:00, which was good. John was in the performance.

I continued working on the problem set after the concert, finishing soon after 00:00.

2002-04-13, Sat (Day 618, temperature at 10:00: 25.0°C, difference: +1.8°C): I dreamed that a large residential building complex in a large city burned to the ground and the smoky remains of the site were pictured on the NBC nightly news.

I also dreamed that in the late afternoon I was heading on southbound I-95 with Dad after crossing the Girard Point Bridge. Traffic going eastbound on the downside of the Platt Bridge was backed up and there was a two-truck accident on the bridge. A standard truck was hanging off the side of the bridge and a white cement truck was also hanging off the bridge on the south side at the mid-span. The cement truck looked especially precarious as while the cab was still on the bridge deck the cement trailer portion was hanging off the bridge.

Today I waited outside LPAC at 11:30 so I could meet my family and go to lunch at Sharples. Sharples wasn’t that crowded in the seating area but a significant line formed at the center bar, which had strawberries, kiwi briefly, and other fruits. The first two items normally aren’t served at Sharples making them hot commodities.

My family and I went back to my room after lunch. Mom accidentally broke the handle off my radiator, which was already cracked but it still mostly worked. I immediately wrote an e-mail to workbox and moved the cinder blocks by the window so facilities could work on my heater. In the e-mail I also described the problem where steam would escape from the handle periodically and that my room was overheated. I figured by listing all of the heating problems at once it would be more efficient than having people later on figure this out and complain later.

I did financial aid stuff this afternoon and early evening. I did the FAFSA first, which was very easy to do. I didn’t use Virtual PC this time since I didn’t want Retrospect to back up the entire drive image tomorrow and I didn’t think I had enough drive space for Virtual PC temp files. So I hoped for the best with IE 5.0 Mac. While the FAFSA was nice the Profile was more of a pain to complete. First, it wanted me to log in but I wasn’t registered yet on this new system. I did that and started filling out the application.

I got to a section where I needed to enter a telephone number and a JavaScript-driven alert complained at me about entering non-numeric data since I put dashes in the phone number. I removed the dashes but now any button on the page that used JavaScript no longer worked. This included the continue, previous, save, and log out buttons. I was able to go back and forward with the browser buttons but no window could use the JavaScript Profile buttons. I restarted Internet Explorer and was able to continue. Fortunately I didn’t lose any previously completed application data. I submitted the application by 19:30 and at that time I left for Mertz.

I met Kevin at Mertz and we left at 20:15 to go to Upper Tarble for Calvin Weston’s Big Tree (rock) and Nickel Creek (bluegrass). The first band was scheduled to play at 20:00 and Nickel Creek at 22:00.

I thought Calvin Weston was better than Nickel Creek since I enjoyed Calvin Weston’s music more since the live performance difference was most noticeable with this type of music. Also, Nickel Creek’s set seemed sparse and had no drummer. Nickel Creek did interact with the audience heavily so that was nice. Kevin, Jeremy, and Ryan sat to my right and Bob Gross sat to my left. The concert ended at 00:00 and I went to bed soon after that.

2002-04-12, Fri (Day 617, temperature at 09:59: 23.2°C, difference: -0.7°C): I dreamed I was walking with two other people in the Parrish basement hallway towards Clothier. Near the end of the hallway it starts to get darker and more disturbing including a pass by our right a yellow and dark red sign indicating radiation at that particular spot.

We get to the end of the hallway and there is a glass enclosed room that is carpeted, lighted with fluorescent bulbs better than on the hallway, and has a blue color surface tone to it. There were a bunch of tables in the room and they had a number of papers on them. The other two people I was with wanted to enter the room through the door on the right side of the enclosure. I looked through the glass in the center and with a little magnifying help I noticed these white worm-like parasites were eating the papers. I said that we should get out of here so we left.

I was going up the stairs to the fourth floor of Parrish and Michael bugs me somehow and gets in the way of the fourth floor door. I get him to move and then I realize I need to meet Nelson, whose office is on the fourth floor. I enter his office, which faces Parrish beach. There was a bunch of people in the room since they are getting ready to watch a movie. The room was already fairly dark. Nelson was willing to advise me on my course selection but his helpfulness draws the ire of the others in the room since they wanted to watch the movie.

Today, my mother sat in my econ class while my father sat in my social psych class. I figured out what classes I was going to take after lunch before meeting Ed Kako at 15:00 for advising. I felt rushed especially right before the meeting. What made the situation difficult is I only put down one central course for next semester in my sophomore paper.

I also needed to find a half-credit course that I could take and I couldn’t find one. If I didn’t need to take Psych 98, the comprehensive project, for half-credit I could schedule an additional one credit class, which I would have no problem finding. Instead, to recover the one credit deficiency, I will need to take at least 4.5 credits spring semester senior year. It will probably be easier to schedule five credits though.

I resolved the other difficulty I had quickly although unpleasantly. I was unable to take any computer science course next semester. Since I took CS 22 my freshman fall, it would be logical to take CS 35 but that course was offered when the only central course I had on my sophomore paper was offered. Other non-lab CS classes required CS 35 so I can’t take CS next semester.

I used the same time scheduling that I have for this semester and settled on an econ, poly sci, and sociology/anthropology course to fill out my 4.5 credit schedule.

After advising I still had a lot of stuff to do. I needed to do financial aid applications online but since the Internet should have less traffic tomorrow I’ll do them then. I went to a wind ensemble concert at 20:00 that John performed in. Following that I rode out with Tom, John, and his family to Palmer. I went to Jeff and Brendan’s party in their rooms for an hour. The food was plentiful and good but I didn’t get any conversations really going with anyone. Since the party wasn’t happening for me I left after an hour. I left at 23:00 feeling worse than I did when I entered the party.

2002-04-11, Thu (Day 616, temperature at 12:12: 23.9°C, difference: -1.6°C): I dreamed I was in my room next year in Wharton CD on the amphitheater side of the building. I saw a news report on TV that said Portland is the best place to live. I start making a lot of excitement noise in the room after hearing this.

Today, I went to lunch a few minutes before the rush. I ate lunch with Kevin and Renee outside on the lawn. I happened to sit in a location where I could see my window on Worth. I went directly from lunch to my afternoon classes.

Before and after ed board at 19:00 I tested the UPS uptimes and made some more changes to the publications office power outlet configurations. I was unable to place three Power Mac G4s with large monitors on two 350 VA UPSes. So instead I had to have one G4 with a monitor per UPS. I updated The Phoenix Online hiring page while up there as Nathan spent most of his time continuing to look into the Quark PDF file not found bug. I left the office sometime after 03:00.

2002-04-10, Wed (Day 615, temperature at 09:59: 25.5°C, difference: +3.0°C): The afternoon into the evening was filled with a steady stream of events. After lunch I went back to Marilyn’s room in Wharton to see what it looked like as well as the rest of the building. Wharton looks pretty nice since it was renovated in the summer of 2000.

The last time I was in Wharton was to see John’s room my freshman year. At that time, Wharton didn’t look that nice, which John agreed with even though it was last renovated in 1996 I believe. Now Wharton has an emphasis on tan and neutral colors in the halls, making it look like Willets. The first floor of Wharton CD or center looked like the first floor of Willets, but didn’t have the smell. Lounge space was plentiful and the bathrooms in the entire building were nice although they all were virtually identical, especially in appearance. In at least Worth, Mertz currently, and Willets the bathrooms are different both in layout or appearance.

The laundry rooms in west and east (AB and EF) differed in atmosphere of the room and quantity of the machines. The more basement-like laundry room in east had one less dryer than west did and having one less dryer is worse than having one less washer since actual dry cycles are longer than wash cycles. For me it’s almost 2:1.

The rooms on the third floor of Wharton had higher ceilings than Worth both overall and for the full space of the room. In my Worth room the ceiling slopes at about a 60° angle for almost half of the room. These two things coupled with a moulding that unevenly divides the vertical walls means that I have less space to hang up posters than I did in my Willets double.

I got to see most of the singles of people who had their door open. Wharton has very few juniors and sophomores, mostly freshmen and seniors. The singles I saw also varied to a significant degree. The size of the singles was somewhat larger than my current single although the rooms didn’t have as much window space. There were windowsills to place plants though, unlike Worth. It seemed unclear if the building had 100 Mbps Ethernet and those who I asked didn’t know.

Two people told me the heat wasn’t that great but I don’t mind a cold room anyway. One single that I visited on the east first floor was very unique. The lighting provided with the room was merely decorative but there were two closets, two network jacks, and four windows in a bay configuration. This senior told me that his lottery number was 11, so clearly I wouldn’t be getting this room as my lottery number will be in the bottom third of my class.

I went to Beardsley public to check the new Phoenix Online archives page on Windows and Mac Netscape and print journal articles. By the time I got back from my walk I didn’t have much time to do things in my room before I went to Kirby for the psych colloquium with Daniel Kahneman at 16:15. Since today was Phoenix deadline day I needed to leave the packed lecture hall at 17:00 to do the articles from the first deadline.

I had just enough time to put up the early edition before leaving for the MST3K movie at 19:00. Tonight’s movie in Trotter 203 was episode 316: Gamera vs. Zigra. This movie had a lot of cut-second editing and the plot occasionally leaped forward assuming the viewer could deduce what happened in the lost time. The special effects really looked like toy models. This movie made in 1971 still had to have twangy guitar chords even though it was a Japanese movie. The chords made their entrance when Gamera plucked Zigra’s ribs.

I did some preliminary housing and course scheduling stuff but nothing significant. I went up to the office for the second deadline and put the rest of the paper online. The art was up soon after 00:00, before the full front page was done. I finished online stuff after 02:00 and then I got the inspiration to reconfigure the power strips and UPSes in the office. Nathan told me that every time the lights have been flickering recently some of the UPSes wouldn’t reset properly and would continue beeping after the lights flickered.

I did a spot test with the iMacs on the conference side by disconnecting the UPS plug from the wall. The UPS switched to battery, made a lot of chirps, and then the iMacs lost power within a few seconds. I looked at how they were plugged in and two iMacs were plugged into the UPS bank. So an original iMac and a new non-dome iMac were too much for the 280 VA UPS. I put just one iMac on the UPS bank and also the Ethernet hub power transformer. This failure caused the UPS replace battery lamp to go on. I was able to remedy this problem at least temporarily by power cycling the unit.

On the lab side of the room I made a bunch of changes. I dug up a six outlet surge protector from the old office so power cords weren’t pulled too tightly and to keep equipment from being plugged directly into the wall. I thought that two 350 VA UPSes with 3 UPS outlets each could provide battery power for three G4s with large monitors. When I did the test though I found that the UPS that would have the two G4s plugged into it immediately overloaded. This could explain why the UPSes wouldn’t stop beeping since tripping the power caused the overload check to occur, which failed.

While I was doing this reconfiguration Nathan and Liz tried reproducing and quantifying a bug that was very acute this week. The cover art, an ad, and some images were PDFed at 72 DPI since the script couldn’t locate the original files at PDF time. The two eventually figured out that the PDFing process itself sometimes causes the images to not be found. Trying to PDF the page doesn’t fix the problem but quitting Quark, sometimes twice, will fix the problem. The list of open files also would give unknown results or have files open that would have no reason to be open.

I didn’t go to bed until after 06:00. Dawn had started by then.

2002-04-09, Tue (Day 614, temperature at 10:00: 22.5°C, difference: +2.1°C): I dreamed that I was in Mertz, which has several secret underground floors. I needed to take a special elevator to get to them. At one point though I forget to take the special elevator and so the standard elevator I am on starts going into the basement but the red LED readout for what floor I am on displays a gibberish character. The elevator knows that I can go to the basement floors but it forgot that it couldn’t stop at them. So the elevator keeps descending down the shaft further and further into the basement.

I get to the tenth or so basement floor when I decide that this could go on forever. The elevator is trying to go to the floor that I want but since it can’t find it the cab goes deeper down the shaft thinking that it will find it eventually or figure out what floor it is on. Neither of these possibilities will happen so the elevator won’t stop until it reaches the bottom of the shaft, which could take a long time. I press the call cancel button, the elevator stops, I specify an above ground floor and then the elevator starts moving upward.

Today, I went to lunch at 11:00 but sat in the Sharples big room. Kai and Robin, who lived on Kai’s Dana hall freshman year, sat down a few minutes later. I felt crappy by the end of this afternoon’s classes but I went to Beardsley public following them to continue revising my econ paper. I ate dinner with Kevin. After Kevin left I switched tables to join Kai, Renee, Anna, Ellie, and Jeremy. I stayed at dinner much longer due to this switch though. I spent the rest of the evening revising my econ paper. I went to bed after 02:00.

2002-04-08, Mon (Day 613, temperature at 09:06: 20.4°C, difference: -0.2°C): I dream I am at home and cleaning through stuff while the rest of the family is out. I come across an old Philly metro map before I-95 was built around the airport. I then find a national seismic map, visualize concentric colored rings around Portland, Oregon, and then see an inset map of that city.

I see on the map Portland’s Afghanistan airport in the northeast fringe of the city. The airport has a lot of runways and access roads in the southwest to northeast diagonal. The pathways open out onto a bay in the northeast suburbs of the city. Apparently the Afghanistan reference has to do with someone being associated with the country in Spike magazine.

I got up at about 09:00 this morning since I had some desire to make Sharples breakfast but my wake-up was assisted by the buzz of lawnmowers and the hall playing music loudly. When I woke up it sounded like there was noise all around me.

I felt pretty crappy during lunch so when I went for my walk I relaxed all of my muscles while on Whittier Place. I get around the block to Elm Ave again and further up I see a large branch blocking the sidewalk. Normally I kick branches on the sidewalk off onto the grass and I am quite good at doing this accurately. However, the size of this branch posed a challenge. I stop, notice the branch is resting against a telephone pole meaning that it won’t move fully forward.

I kick the branch up but it doesn’t move far forward at all and most of that energy transfers into lifting the branch. I realize that the branch may hit me in the head so I try moving forward while ducking. Since I am too slow today the branch hits me on my left little finger and the palm of my hand. The mark on the palm on my hand was not significant but the cut on my little finger was large and covered in dirt.

I continued walking but diverted to the Papazian restroom to clean myself up. The bleeding really started up after I washed my hands and the paper towel I wrapped around my finger stained through to the other side of the towel by the time I got back to Worth. I didn’t want to take my jacket off since I was unable to keep the towel steady. I couldn’t do any work so I put my Walkman on and went to the Willets lawn to listen to Kevin’s WSRN show at 14:00. I sat out there for 20 minutes and continued listening to the show inside. I slowly got things together and after 16:00 I went to McCabe to do psych reading for tomorrow.

I went to dinner at 17:00 and ate with Jesse, John, and Tom. I continued reading after dinner and then went to the Swarthmore borough council meeting at 19:30. The meeting last month apparently ended very rapidly and this one did too, finishing inside an hour in duration. I finished up reading in the library, went to Parrish Parlors for the Halcyon Worth picture after 21:00, and worked on my econ paper revision in Beardsley until 21:55. I then watched “Kiki’s Delivery Service” in Kirby. This movie was very good. I went to bed after 02:00.

2002-04-07, Sun (Day 612, temperature at 10:59: 20.6°C, difference: -2.5°C): I get up at 11:00 thinking it is 10:00. I am surprised that my computer clock says 11:00 but the clock on my desk says 10:00. I then realized what I had done; I forgot to set my clock for daylight savings time even though I knew about it beforehand. This oversight caused me to get ready much faster since I wanted to be at Sharples by 11:00, not get up at 11:00 since the LAX conference started at 12:00.

Jesse and I sat in the Sharples small room. I was in a rush and talking loudly. I wanted to be back in my room by 11:30 to get ready for the conference. I tell Jesse about the LAX conference I am going to this afternoon and my fast Internet idea. The two things go with each other since until I had this fast Internet idea I had no reason to go to a conference on entrepreneurship.

I got back to my room a few minutes after 11:30. I needed to get ready and when I got to LPAC for the conference I also needed to register so I needed additional time for that. I hoped that the pre-registration I did online Friday afternoon would save time and at the very least it did provide me with a preprinted nametag. I sat with Keith for the keynote at 12:00, who was in my intro to psych attachment in the fall of 2000.

Following the hour and a half keynote there were two concurrent panel discussions at 13:45. I went to the one in the Scheuer Room about the promise and pitfalls of being your own boss. A unified panel was at 15:00 about the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship. The conference ended at 16:00 with a reception. I left the conference glad that I went but I didn’t get a great deal from it. It seemed like a lot of good people were there but the connections didn’t seem that great due to the limited time.

I went to dinner at 17:30 since I ate periodically during the conference. Therefore I haven’t sat with John and Tom at dinner for the past two days. This evening I focused on getting a working version of The Phoenix Online new archives page so I could demo it. Following the demo period I can clean up the code and make that the default archives page. Getting this page done took until 01:00 though. Overall this project took too much time but I couldn’t do much about speeding it up since I was sick this weekend and this heavily used page needs to be fairly bug free. I read Gnutella Forums posts and went to bed at about 03:00.

2002-04-06, Sat (Day 611, temperature at 15:29: 23.1°C, difference: +1.6°C): I slept until 15:30 since I didn’t have much work to do this weekend and I wanted to catch up on my sleep. I rushed to make Sharples late lunch, which ends at 16:00. When I got to the serving area the grill area was cleared out and the center stage and bar areas were setup for dinner but not completely ready. I looked over to the deli area and that was fully available so I made myself a roast beef sandwich.

I went for a walk, did the laundry, and returned to Sharples at around 17:30 for dinner. I talked with Jessica my RA. I finished up the laundry after dinner, continued working on the new Phoenix archives page and went to Mephisto’s for the 20:30 performances of Chaverim, Mixed Company, and the Columbia Klezmer Band. By Columbia I mean Columbia University.

I continued working on the archives page after the performance. I went to bed before 02:00.

2002-04-05, Fri (Day 610, temperature at 09:59: 21.5°C, difference: -1.3°C): I dream I get stuck on the Willets elevator with Nathan and some other woman from Willets. She looked most like Maya. After riding from the first floor to the third Nathan wanted to test the elevator and ride it to the basement or the –3 floor.

Just when Nathan goes to push the button the elevator loses power but since it is still stopped on a floor Nathan forced the doors open in the dark. We have to open two sets of doors since there are two passenger cabs attached to a movable lobby cab, which then connects to the floor. Eventually the elevator starts working again.

I also dreamed I was in the lobby of a building at least 21 stories tall with other people. This building was located much north of campus.

Today, I read Gnutella Forums posts this afternoon and evening. I went to Kirby at 19:30 for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” I expected to have a hard time finding a seat but I didn’t have a problem when I actually got there. I figured since this movie has a fantasy bent to it I wouldn’t like it but the storyline was captivating enough to draw me in.

I worked on the new archives page for The Phoenix Online later this evening. I got most of it working by 02:00.

2002-04-04, Thu (Day 609, temperature at 10:02: 22.8°C, difference: -1.2°C): I went to lunch at 11:15 expecting to see Kai and possibly E.B. I saw Emily in line at the serving area but I didn’t see her, Kai, or anyone they sit with in the big room. So I sat in the small room. Kai later told me he was in the big room in the center so I don’t know how I missed him since there weren’t that many people in the room at the time.

I went to a living wage rally outside Parrish at 16:00, which lasted almost an hour. I don’t agree with the living wage or the minimum wage since it just creates a black market for wages and people who already were getting paid much more get another raise. However I wanted to see what the living wage rally had to say. To me the character of the rally seemed like some sort of liberal hippie anti-globalization thing so I wasn’t too thrilled.

I went to the office at 19:00 for the weekly ed board meeting. After the meeting I hung out with Nathan, who was writing an AppleScript to get the first phrase of the captions so that section can be bolded without selecting it manually. We put in a great deal of logic to figure out what to use and in the end we got that portion working well for captions in the last two issues.

Then we talked about the backup script. My script still hasn’t caught up to the current date yet and the delay on getting the files modified on Phoenix for a day causes an annoying slowdown, like it did when I first implemented this method. The thing is now I realize how annoying this slowdown is. So Nathan kicked around the implementation of his open files on the server backup idea.

After thinking some more we soon found that this idea would also be complicated unless we compromised on a number of things, namely centralized versioning, identical folder structure, and anything else extra. The script would be reduced to simply tell the Finder to copy files that were busy but are no longer busy to a single folder that has the current date and time on it. Previous versions of files would still be in the older folders by date though so there still is some form of versioning.

2002-04-03, Wed (Day 608, temperature at 10:00: 24.0°C, difference: +3.1°C): I met Kari in the afternoon about this week’s problem set and then wrote it up in McCabe. I went up to the office at 17:00 and got back after 18:00. I had more time than usual to put up the early edition so I did that and then made a few test save previews of the cover to see what were the best Photoshop settings to use. After putting the cover up I went to Trotter 203 for MST3K episode 414, “Tormented.” I don’t know if it’s because things are different or this movie wasn’t that good but this showing didn’t seem that great or like the other ones.

In Trotter 203, I was the first person there after Arcadia, who shows these movies but people trickled in later. A few more than before showed up tonight although it was almost all guys. The movie sound also wasn’t good as women’s voices didn’t sound articulate as if there was too much bass. Also, the screen obscures the top band of the video if the screen is lowered all of the way, which is what happened tonight.

I went up to the office and after Nathan did his stuff he left before 02:00. I left after 02:00 having done the art but that is still earlier than last week. I wrote three e-mails that took a combined two hours to write. Two went to John and Tom and one went to Nathan about feature suggestions for the image script.

I went to bed after 05:00, having taken a shower. I would have been to bed sooner but the Internet beyond the Yipes backbone was unavailable, which made looking up hostnames slow since it took time for them to timeout. WhatRoute then hung on me when I did traces. My computer all today was very unstable and I needed to restart at least three times.

I also needed to restart when I couldn’t print a simple document and after I came back from the office the second time. My computer wouldn’t wake up from sleep and while file sharing was still working, it wasn’t logging that I was connected. The idle-usage.log also stopped working at the same time. During that session SpeedSearch would quit on me if I did a search with a few applications open but was fine after I quit them. I thought that my computer was unstable due to unexpected quits but I didn’t want to restart again.

2002-04-02, Tue (Day 607, temperature at 10:00: 20.9°C, difference: -4.4°C): I put the art that Nathan did for the hoax article on the site and placed his revised version of the text. I went to lunch about 15 minutes later, which would cut into the time I would have to work on my semantics problem set. I was thinking of E.B. while walking to lunch but the last time I saw her on a Tuesday/Thursday type day it was after lunch. Nevertheless I saw her talking to Ana at the salad bar. At center stage I said hi to Kai.

The small room didn’t have a lot of empty tables and since I knew Kai just got here I figured I would sit with him. Kai was also sitting with E.B., William, Joan, and Emily. Emily has sat with E.B. at lunch in the past. I sat next to E.B. to fill out the table. The table conversation would routinely split between Kai and I and the others at the table.

Afternoon classes weren’t too bad but I dozed during the psych colloquium in Hicks mural room since my evening was filled event wise and I needed downtime at some point. Jesse, John, and I went to dinner following the colloquium. I continued working on my semantics problem set after dinner and stopped at 19:05 to go to the monthly Ridley School District board meeting at the high school. There was a mob of teachers standing outside wearing signs since they still don’t have a contract.

The meeting was held in the auditorium instead of the boardroom since more people were expected to come. Not that many people actually attended the meeting however. The reason why more people were expected to come was the district like many others in the area are facing a cash crunch due to the recession and lackluster investment performance. Specific to Ridley, Exelon appealed their assessment on their power plant property in Eddystone and is not paying school taxes while the appeal is going on.

The talk of a 1% earned income tax was discussed by a number of people during the public comment period. The public comment period besides being before the meeting also was after the meeting. The post-meeting section was added this evening and will probably be continued for the foreseeable future due to the budget crunch. By speaking after the meeting, people could make better comments since they would then be aware of the board’s business for that meeting. The first public comment period lasted for at least an hour, almost the length of entire meetings in the past. The meeting didn’t adjourn until a few minutes after 22:00.

I continued working on my problem set upon returning to campus. I was about to write up the problems when I noticed that I didn’t answer the first question right and I couldn’t figure out how to answer it properly. So this snag derailed the whole process. I got back to my room at around 01:00 and instead of doing other things I just went to bed since I would need a good amount of sleep to get through tomorrow with all the things I needed to do. I would need to meet with Kari about the problem set, write it up and do The Phoenix Online, among other things.

2002-04-01, Mon (Day 606, temperature at 10:04: 25.3°C, difference: -0.2°C, April Fools): I expected to find creative and amusing pranks today. I had to go looking though. I asked Jeremy at lunch about what he had saw so far today and he told me about the hacked student records e-mails and a wall blocking part of a Parrish hallway. Administrators would put their head through a hole in the brick wall and have their face be the head on a donkey. I couldn’t find this prank in Parrish after 13:00 though. A pattern of string was hanging CDs in the center stairwells of Parrish.

I found later today about this much more amusing prank. A senior sent PostScript code to the McCabe and Beardsley public printers to blank out hundreds of words that are commonly used in Swarthmore papers such as capitalism. This removal only occurred on the Macs and not the PCs. ITS wasn’t able to fix the problem for a number of hours so they had to bring online their new print server, which didn’t have the problem. In the meantime people were trying to print their papers out but they were missing words.

After lunch I met Prof. O’C about my econ paper and then stopped by Adam’s office about the Webinator updating for The Phoenix Online. Adam told me Webinator isn’t calling the scheduling itself even though it should and cron cannot get Webinator to start a crawl. Adam gave me an account with Webinator so I could play around with it to try and get it working.

In Worth I listened to Kevin’s radio show, looked around the Webinator interface, and started writing my journal. In other words in a short span of time I went from being relatively idle to being loaded with a bunch of things, including surprises. I didn’t expect Adam to give me a Webinator account. The rest of the day was nice and the weather helped also.

I went to a movie in LPAC Cinema about the environmental impact of war. The attorney in the movie, Jay Austin, talked for a half-hour in person after the film screening and answered a few questions. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

I went to dinner close to 18:00 but had no problem finding a seat in the small room. I continued getting the day in order after dinner. I managed to reach much order before I went to the SWIL movie at 22:00, “The Lathe of Heaven.” I found it interesting that this movie was set in Portland although it was actually filmed in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. Even odder was the movie’s psychological emphasis. Overall the movie was really good and the soundtrack fit so well with its twangy chords at key times.

I read Gnutella posts after the movie and then posted an article to The Phoenix Online about the hoaxes today.

Journal 2002-03