Today marks the one year anniversary of the day I broke my leg. Now for a moment of silence.
Monthly Archive for February, 2003
From the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”, by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally “to drink” and metaphorically “to be one with”. [Source]
1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge.
Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark.
2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. “Almost all C compilers grok the “void” type these days.”
Took some tests at Fuali.com. Here are my results:
I am 29% Geek |
You probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the “normal” crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing. |
I am 37% Internet Addict |
I could go either way. Deep into the madness of nights filled with coding CGI-Scripts and online role playing games, or I could become a normal user. Good luck! |
I am 51% Evil Genius |
Evil courses through my blood. Lies and deceit motivate my evil deeds. Crushing the weaklings and idiots that do nothing but interfere in my doings. |
I’m not sure how much faith I have in the testing criteria, but at least I’m not as much of a geek or an net junkie as I may have suspected. My rating on the Evil Genius scale is a little frightening though. Guess that’s just my intellectual elitism showing through…
I think I’ve figured out what’s been troubling Elysium as of recent. After trying all sorts of stuff (updating my drivers, reinstalling the system from scratch several times, swapping out RAM, switching all partitions in the system over to NTFS…), I finally noticed that the fan on the video card is dead. That would likely account for some of my problems (ie chunky video whenever I stress the video card by going to full screen or doing any 3d). Contacted tech support and in theory a replacement fan has been shipped out to me.
Crossing my fingers that this fixes it (and I didn’t torch the GF4 chip during the uptime between when the fan failed and when I finally noticed it and shut down the machine).
Stay tuned true believers for further updates…
Had an entertaining conversation with Jeff yesterday. Somehow we got on the topic of ECE291 and his team project. And how most of the rest of his team was pretty worthless. Anyway, he googled himself and showed me the webpage that the team made for their project. Turns out Gel (from IMSA) was on his team. So we started talking about her. So I guess Jeff was getting a little peeved by his team members and wasn’t convinced they were putting any effort into the project. And Gel had a webcam set up in her dormroom at that time. And Jeff would check it sometimes to see if she was working on the project. And one time I guess she had just returned from the shower and wasn’t particularly careful with her towel. So Jeff got a hint of towel and a whole lotta eyeful of Gel. Pretty damn funny.
After a little bit of work, I got the simulation of 32 input vectors in parallel up and running in my simulator. Pretty sweet. Shouldn’t be too bad to get basic sequential circuit support added in and then I’ll have done both extra credit options. Mainly need to figure out how to time my program and the rest is trivial. Will probably look into doing some further optimizing of my code, but seems pretty zippy for any circuit I’ve run it on so far.
Yeah, so I’ve been pretty busy this past week, and haven’t really had time to post. Chi-Wei checked in fixes for the bulk of the bugs I had encountered in the gui, so I’m pretty happy. I can actually sorta use the thing now. More importantly, Jeff and I have made some comments about additional features we REALLY want, so with any luck, we’ll actually get some of those before long.
I haven’t gotten too much farther on actual work-work this week because I decided to hop into the class Jeff’s taking this semester (ECE443). Keep in mind that the semester started a few weeks ago, so I’m a little behind. First homework was due Wednesday, so I spent a good portion of Tuesday night hammering away on it. Not sure if any of my answers made any sense, but whatever.
More importantly, he handed out the MP assignment on Wednesday. This was really why I joined the course. First assignment was to write an event-driven combinational logic simulator. Pretty cool if I do say so myself. Had a basic one up and running by the end of the day on Thursday. Figure I’ll hammer on it some more to improve its efficiency (optimize for speed, etc), and probably work on some of the more advanced stuff that’s not specifically required (such as simulating multiple input vectors in parallel, adding support for sequential logic, etc). Will be interested to see how the timing of mine (written in C) stacks up against Jeff’s (written in OCaml).
So, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I think I managed to succeed at being all sweet and romantical by surprising Amanda by making her lasagna from scratch with a side of garlic bread. Turned out pretty well considering I wasn’t really following any particular recipe. Also got her a copy of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and a set of cute dragonfly chopsticks from ArtMart. Oh, and of course a cute little card with a whole bunch of lady bugs that form a heart. Pretty good day overall despite the icky weather that moved in last night.
According to BJ, a glibbet is a small, weasel-like animal. Unfortunately, I have been unable to confirm this is a legit word. Most of the references I have found on the web state that it’s a nonsense, made-up word. BJ’s convinced it’s legit, but I suspect it’s just a word his favorite author made up for one of his books. I could be wrong though. I’ll have to ask Amanda’s mom and see if she actually confirmed this word somewhere, or if BJ just showed it to her in one of his books.
1 : TENDON; especially : one dressed for use as a cord or thread
2 obsolete : NERVE
3 a : solid resilient strength : POWER b : the chief supporting force : MAINSTAY — usually used in plural
[Source]
Pronunciation: 'sin-(")yü also 'si-(")nü
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English sinewe, from Old English seono; akin to Old High German senawa sinew, Sanskrit syati he binds
Date: before 12th century
Scary tidbit: Amanda’s little 8 year old brother BJ used this in a story he wrote for school.
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