Pete's Log: geeking around and musings on growing up in europe
Entry #513, (Life in General)(posted when I was 22 years old.)
Today I wore my new RSA shirt. I encountered Dr. Lumsdaine in the Cushing hallway, and he asked me if I was wearing a munition. I was amused.
Today's Top 5 List was titled "The Top 17 Things Heard at a Magic Convention" ... the sad thing is that I saw "Magic" and interpreted it to mean "Magic: The Gathering" and then was baffled at why I didn't get any of the items. Then it dawned on me. I am a sad pathetic human being.
During the process of working on www.gsu.nd.edu I realized that I can't stand using anything less than new, so I switched it from running debian potato to running debian woody. Of course, that switch lasted about seven minutes short of forever (Note that due to some funkiness in complexity theory this does not mean that forever is several hours plus 7 minutes, despite what you may think).
Biking to school today I set a new maximum speed: 34.5 mph. I think the 35 mph barrier can be broken. The 40 mph barrier is still a long ways away... I also caught some good air (relatively speaking), which is amazing, since normally catching air and setting speed records aren't things that happen at the same time, since catching air tends to kill momentum...
I cleaned up my desk at the SSR today. I'm proud. I forgot to bring music with me today, which is a bad thing. But luckily I was able to temporarily steal some punk CD's from Arun. And thus life is good.
Had a good talk with Dr. Freeh about research ideas (mainly relating to PIM runtime and distributed stuff in general). I definitely want to find a good masters thesis soonish, so I can hopefully get the research out of the way next summer.
Interesting quote from fortune:
'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do with equalizing. Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This will be under communism. Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."' -- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
I remember Perestroika. I remember the fall of communism. I lived it. OK, not really. I was a young geek in west germany at the time. Of course, I was in middle school at the time, and like any young idealist, I had socialist tendencies of my own. But a friend of mine at the time had managed to move to our town from east germany with his family, by means of the newly opened czechoslovakia/west germany border. It was interesting to hear about his experiences. I was definitely anti-communism. I remember so many things I experienced in my youth that I didn't understand very well, that looking back upon are quite remarkable. I can't believe how comfortable I've allowed myself to become in indiana. I need to experience life again. Indiana is a comfortable place to so many people, I think, because it buffers you from a lot. I remember when I was really young (about 8 or so) there was a period of time where we weren't allowed to play outside. Looking back, I now realize that this was when chernobyl happened. I love fortune sometimes. It can actually cause you to think from time to time.
the plan for the rest of today: japanese food for dinner. no running, need to go easy on the knee.