It was the night of great advances in computing happiness!

First off, got the new non-Beta Firefox 1.0. Why bother with a new browser, when you're all nice and used to the last one which wasn't yucky super-buggy no-tabs IE, you ask? Well, I wish I had a bunch of wonderful technical reasons or I could go on about Open Source (which I do think is cool), but really there were two main things that Safari just wasn't doing for me: 1. WYSIWYG editor in blogspot didn't really work, 2. (and this is the big one) you couldn't ctrl-t to open a new tab, you had to ctrl click on a link - which is dumb, because then you have to wait for that page to load when all you really wanted was a google search or something like that. So, now I can ctrl-t to my heart's content :).

Also, they've got this nifty feature called "dynamic bookmarks," you give a bookmark a keyword, which you can then just type into the address bar. This also works with searches, you type in the search keyword you've assigned, and then your search terms. Well, a Google dynamic search came pre-installed, so I gave it a spin. So I wander up to my address bar, type in Google, and then the most random search term I can come up with.... knickers (which, as an American, isn't a word that I use often... well, actually I think this is probably the first time ever). And rather than the Google search results page I was expecting, I ended up here! Imagine my surprise...

And then, as if I hadn't had enough fun already, I found out that my number one big sad unhappy thing about Apple isn't true! The only thing I've been upset with them for, is that since I didn't have OS 9 (the old version, I'm running OS 10.3 now), I couldn't use many old programs that were written for "Classic Mac" (as opposed to OS X) - like Myst! Whenever people warned me that I wouldn't be able to use any cool programs anymore if I got a Mac, I just laughed them off, because I knew that the only game I really like playing said "For PC and Mac" on the case. But then I go to try it, and it demands this classic version - which I didn't have. So, I finally managed to find out where I could order it from, but they were going to charge me $20 shipping and handling just to be able to run old programs!! Well, as it turns out, they actually sent me OS 9 along with my computer, it was just on a seperate disk labelled "Additional Software." I can't believe I hadn't checked out this disk yet, I mean, it's not like they gave me hundreds of them, there were only two... But anyways, so I popped it in, clicked "Install" waited for about a minute and a half, and presto chango - I now have two operating systems, didn't even have to reboot! So of course I had to make sure it worked, so I tested it with Riven (Myst II) for an hour, or two... And now, I'm going to sleep to dream happy computer dreams. Good night!

Caution: The following post was brought on by extreme frustration, as such it is highly unlikely to be terribly enjoyable reading, although it might actually be a bit more interesting than my usual blather.

ARGH! People who cannot run computers should NOT be made graduate level EE professors. Let 'em teach philosophy or something where not using comptuers could be thought of as a virtue. The subject of this rant is actually in general a fairly decent professor, until it comes to the whole information-transfer-over-the-web stuff, which is not a good weak spot for prof who would rather lecture to an empty room than come to main campus. We'll start with least annoying first: the syllabus doesn't say anything about where course information might be found on the internet. Turns out that it's all on Blackboard, so this isn't a big deal, but it'd be nice to say something about that (particularly as every other ECE professor I've had has preferred to use their own website, so that this is the first semester I've ever used Blackboard). Ok, so, figured that out, no big deal. Gripe #2: apparenly he's never heard of pdf's. Everything is saved in Microsoft Office - which I don't have yet. Now, the .doc files are no big deal, they actually look just fine in my text editor. However the homework solutions are saved as PowerPoint files, which do not open in text editor, or anything else as far as I know. So, grumble grouch grumble, I move over to Julia's computer since she's not using it at the moment. Open the ppt and guess what? Gripe #3: He took his scanned images of the handwritten solutions and put them on the slides SIDEWAYS! Now, as far as I can tell, Microsoft never really thought anyone would want to rotate slides - and I mean really, why would you? So that you can lay your projector on its side for variety?? So, I've got two options, I can tip Julia's monitor on its side (which i think she might not like so much) or I can go downstairs and print the dumb things out (hey, what's another coupla trees, right?). So, I trek down to East basement, where I discover Gripe #4: Half of the pages were either scanned or saved so badly that they're not legible, and a fourth of the ones that are legible, were scanned all cock-eyed, so that the corners are cut off... whole bits of the problems just gone. At which point, I just want to give up. "I don't care" is just written too large over all of these sheets, it's hard to convince me that I should care when the prof so obviously doesn't - but I can't start thinking like that, because I'm the one who has to be tested on this junk. At the very least, he could have made sure that we got our homework assignments back before the test so that we'd at least have those to work off of. Ok, just had to get that all off of my chest, back to the grindstone.

Ah... election day is over, and guess what? The earth is still standing, although I heard plenty of predictions to the contrary beforehand (and melodrama afterwards). Granted, the choice of President of the United States is pretty important, but America is a good country and a strong one, it would take more than four years under a lousy president to bring everything crashing down. And, again despite what people make it sound like, neither of the canidates would have been that horrible - they wouldn't have made it this far if they were. Disagree with them on issues, methods, choices, even personalities if you must, but to call either 'evil' or 'stupid' or anything else that you might hear a five year old say during a fight is just ridiculous, grow up people! Ok, that's enough political commentary from me.

Next, I recently booked my tickets to go see Robbie over winter break, I'm so excited!! It'll be great to see him again, and I'm really looking forward to exploring his island, and having some relaxation time. This semester is going fairly well, but it's a lot of work... When things are going well (like today, thankfully), I really enjoy it, but when my homework makes no sense and the tests are flying fast and furious, I wish I could quit. Other good news, I had a fun weekend, went dress shopping with Julia and her mom, aunt, and grandmother. It was a good day, especially since she finally picked out her dress! Pretty exciting stuff, let me tell ya. Working at the ARC is still going well, this is probably the most fun job I've ever had.. except the two days or so before each 308 exam :P. I really don't remember how to do that stuff! But for the most part I'm impressing myself with how much I remember and manage to figure out. I hope that I'm helping some of the students to understand better, although it can be hard to tell, for the most part you just have to work through the stuff yourself I guess, but I'm glad I can be there to help them get unstuck. One of the students who comes in semi-regularly for Circuits 1 help recently got 100% on his test, I'm so proud! :)