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mánudagur, október 27, 2003

It's funny, whenever I'm totally swamped, my brain goes into overdrive.
I've been studying hard for my second midterm these past few days. But all the while, I've also been thinking about what I'm going to do when I have some time, scheduling intersting things to take up my already limited time. I'm going to program a tile based role playing game, I'm going to program a mod for Unreal Tournament 2003, I'm going to continue writing my stories, I'm going to practice my trumpet every day, I'm going to go workout 5 times a week, I'm going to write music. That sounds like a thirty hour day to me...
It's as if, when I finally get my mind going, it just goes overboard...I get this amazingly strong tugging feeling, as if I HAVE to do something creative, MAKE something, not just read or watch tv...do something that leaves something new behind. On the other hand, when I really do have free time, my mind shuts down and tells me to veg out in front of the tv. I guess I need to learn to trick my mind, make it think there is no free time :)
I also need to learn how not to sleep. Or at least shorten the time I need to sleep. Right now, I'm a mess if I don't get 10 hours of sleep. This last night I slept 11 hours. I can't afford that. Maybe it'll all work out when I get my workout schedule in gear. We'll see.
All righty, on my way to school to teach my little comp sci kids, seeya.

laugardagur, október 25, 2003

Andy came over this morning with the new heat sink and fan for my crippled comp. As soon as he brought it out, I knew we had a problem...it was wider than the one I had. We opened the case and pulled off the original heat sink, and sure enough, we had a problem. I had told Andy I had a P4 processor....turns out I had an AMD. Stupid me. So the heat sink didn't fit. Well, you'd think, best to just wait and get a new heat sink, this time for AMD, right? Not likely? Instead, since Andy had already come all this way, we tore off the fan and looked at it, trying to figure out why it was running so slowly. Got rid of all the dust, didn't change anything, checked the wires...didn't change anything. It wasn't until Andy pulled off a sticker on the back of the fan and exposed the 'axis', that we saw what could possibly, remotely, be causing the slowdown. The grease around the axis was flaky, as if it had been contaminated with dust. So Andy cleaned that off while I searched our house for some oil. None to be found. That's all right, said Andy, and we took the fan outside, opened the hood of his car, and pulled some oil from there and placed on the fan's axis. Brought it back inside, and voilà, it runs at 5 times the speed it did before, and completely steady :) I couldn't believe it. This is what's called thinking outside the box, ladies and gents.
So we replaced the heat sink and the fan. We had to put a new layer of Arctic Silver on the processor (it's a heat conducting material...I gather they are single silver molecules floating in some kind of 'state'...or something, pretty cool :)), which Andy put on with a razor blade, which he popped out of a special box made for carrying razor blades. Hunh, didn't know that even existed.
So now I know how to change a heat sink, and fix a fan :) Ran the computer all day in the bios just to be sure....the fan stayed at 4700 rpm (was rocking from 800 - 1200 before) and the tem steady at 44°. I hope Andy knows how much I appreciate his help.
Not much else to tell, other than that I'm studying hard for a midterm on tuesday...difficult one...have to know 21 papers (ca 200 pages) by heart....all highly theoretical and/or technical parallel programming papers. :S Oh yeah, and I got my new trumpet today...nice to finally own a C-trumpet :)
Til ykkar íslenku hornleikara...hitti hornleikara hér úti sem heitir Jim Ross...sagðist hafa verið á Fróni um síðustu jól að spila með Joe, Emil, og Stefán Jón...kannist þið við hann?

föstudagur, október 24, 2003

So my computer tricked me.
I thought I had fixed it, but no, it just let me THINK I had fixed it. In reality it was just waiting for a good moment to snap back at me, to blinside me...just like a girlfriend :)
So it died on me again, with the blue screen and all. I figure that the self-named 'queen of the blue screen' must have been sending me some nasty thoughts ;). This time I got a little message along with the BSoD, it said PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA. Figured out that basically means that a page was removed from virtual memory that shouldn't have been moved, i.e. a page containing vital windows code. So the system halts. So I found some remedies for that on the net, ran them, and that fixed it...for about 15 minutes. Then my system halts again. One symptom of my halts was that my computer would act strangely (the bios would be screwy) for like half an hour after a halt, and then the system would boot up perfectly after that. This should have been a hint to me, but I was in such a state of anger at my computer treating me like this that it didn't register. So finally I gave up and phoned Andy. We discussed it for a while, thinking about this and that solution until it dawned on Andy...could the processor fan be failing? As soon as he said that it rang true. Why else would my system require half an hour to cooldown than to....well, cool down? So I went into the bios and monitored the processor and mobo temperature, and sure enough, the fan rpm was around 1000 (should be between 2000 and 3000) and the temperature started at 50° and rapidly rose to about 60° before I turned it off. Just to be sure, I let the computer boot up normally and ran a processor heavy program until the computer shut itself off. I then immediately turned it back on and checked the temp. Sure enough it said 71°. So the good news is that my processor is working fine, it's turning itself off when it's supposed to to avoid damage. But my fan is shot. I also noticed that a rattling sound comes from it when it runs. Funny think...that rattling sound has been present for almost a year, and I always thought it was from the case :D Stupid me. Anyway, now, so I can still use my baby, I've set my computer down on it's side, opened the case, and have a normal fan blowing on the mobo and processor, keeping the heat down to 40°. Very technical solution. Andy's coming over on saturday with a new cooling unit and we'll install it then.
Not much else to tell...my trumpet's ready, only cost about $100, not bad I guess...I just ordered a wireless card for my PDA, which, btw, is totally cool :) I've programmed my PDA to be a universal remote. So now I sit down in front of the tv/vcr/amplifier and press one button and everything turns on, the vcr is set to tv and the amplifier is set to tv, a process which normally uses three remotes and a 6 button sequence.
I'm also buying a C-trumpet on saturday for $1,300. This is actually a late graduation(from Tónó) gift from m&p. It's actually a great deal I'm getting. This is a Bach, top of the line instrument, costs $3,000 new. The one I'm buying is two years old, with almost no wear showing. Can't wait to get my hands(lips) on it.
All my free time now is going into studying for my next midterm, HPC, .... hmm...:S We'll see how that goes...it's a lot to read. Hey as long as everybody sends me warm thoughts I'll do fine, right?

þriðjudagur, október 21, 2003

So I've been in America for two months now...
Took my first midterm today, in AI. Did pretty good I think, although I was so tired I could probably have slept through it and dreamt that I did good. We'll see when I get my grade. Right now I'm forcing myself to stay awake so I don't totally screw up my sleep cycle.
Tricked Dan into driving me to Gaithersburg(Gerðursburg?) to send my trumpet in to be fixed (which is going to set me back $200 by the way). He ended up shanghai-ing me. He tricked me into helping him with loads of his errands on the way, then he had to go to work so I had to take the Metro back home...took me 4 hours altogether...
Things are looking up girl-wise...there are two cuties in the orchestra, and I'll probably meet up with Kazuko next weekend for a movie and some dancin' (we were supposed to go out last saturday but I cancelled to hang out with Stulli, and then he didn't have time, and then it was too late to reset the date...sooo...hafðu engar áhyggjur Stulli minn, þetta var ekkert mál, hún bíður bara ;))
I'm slowly but surely getting into a good schedule, getting into regular, healthy eating, and regular excercise (both physical and trumpet), so things are looking up.
As to absolutely loving the schoolwork...still not happening...maybe after new year's...who knows. As of yet, I'm still viewing this first year as a trial year, to see if this is really what I want to be doing. I often think about the guys back home who are already working and think how easy it would be. Then I think about what I would like to be working in and I realize that I need more education for that...it just seems that I'm not quite in the right frame of mind for it...hope that will change.
I can't wait to live alone(whenever that will happen). Binh is such a slob. He's the only one who's been using the kitchen the past few days and it's already a mess. And he doesn't clean the toilet after having thrown up in it. And when I point out this stuff to him, it's like he doesn't understand me. Just smiles and says yeah yeah yeah, and nods a lot and laughs. Maybe he's asperger. Or just a dick. Either way, I can't wait to be rid of him.

sunnudagur, október 19, 2003

(Sorry gringos, this is gonna be in icelandic)
Ég er farinn að tapa íslenska hreimnum!!!
Djöfuls, ég hefði varla trúað því...en þegar ég var að tala við Stulla félaga...þá var ég alveg hikstandi og höktandi...og sagði 'sko' svona tíu sinnum oftar en ég hefði átt að gera. Andsk....ég verð bara að fara að tala við sjálfann mig, og vinna hreiminn aftur upp, þetta er alls ekki nógu gott.
Humm, Stulli sendi mér meil á föstudaginn og sagðist vera í DC laugardag og sunnudag fyrir upptöku. Þannig að ég hringdi í hann og reyndi að redda því að við gætum hist. Kom í ljós að allur tíminn hans færi í upptökuna, bæði í kvöld og á morgun, þannig að hann gæti ekki komist hingað og heilsað upp á manninn. En það var í góðu, spjallaði bara aðeins við hann í símann, og við höfum líka nægann tíma til að hittast seinna, hann verður hérna úti í 2 - 4 ár, og ég í 5 ár, þannig að.....
En ég er ennþá fúll yfir hreiminn...ég verð bara að setja upp audio capabilities með messenger. Hver vill spjalla við mig með hljóði í gegnum msn?

laugardagur, október 18, 2003

It's been a nice coupla days, managed to reduce my tasklist from 20 tasks to only 10 (I love my PDA). I got a nasty little surprise when I received my grade for the first HPC project...only got a 52 out of 100. It turned out that I had turned in the wrong file. So I corrected that and they fixed my grade, but they also added a minus for submitting late...totally fair I guess, but it sucks anyway. So I ended up with a 62.
Went and got a haircut today. Came home and thought since I already look ridiculous I might as well shave. So now I look like a 15 year old choirboy. Some people have been pressing me to shave, which is understandable because these are the same people that have actually never seen my face. I've pretty much covered the lower half of it with this strange hair that just keeps coming back for the better part of 4 years. So now's your chace people, before it grows back!
Haven't done much but sleep and watch tv today. Managed to catch the premiere of 'The DC Sniper: 23 Days of Fear' on tv. With all due respect to that whole tragic incident....this movie sucks. 'Nuff said.
Hmm...some of the people I know have been doing a "top 100 things about me" thing on their bloggs...Although it's interesting and potentially funny, I'm not going to do that. I think that anything I'm going to tell someone about myself is going to be biased by my own image about myself, so if I tried to make the list serious, it would fail, so I would have to make it funny. Ok, I'm a funny guy, but anybody would be strained to make 100 funny statements about himself. But I will give you what would be on the top of my list. So here's my top 100 list mod 99:
1. I'm still waiting.

miðvikudagur, október 15, 2003

Boy did a weight get lifted off me yesterday.
First off, my computer is not crashing anymore. I encountered a single error which said 'memory not referenced, blablabla, Save.exe'. So I googled 'Save.exe' and I found that this file is part of a spyware program that was running on my computer. And it turns out that it is flawed so that it often crashes your computer. Well...would have liked to know that before the weekend, wouldn't have had to go through hell. But I guess going through hell makes you a better person....... Anyway, I downloaded a program called Spybot Search and Destroy. I suggest you ALL download this program and run it...every day... I found a plethora of crap on my computer, all sorts of stuff that just manages to sneak in and stick itself in all the nooks and crannies. These are the programs that constantly throw up all those nasty pop-up windows at you, and monitor what you click on and send info to their headquarters. Get rid of them! Spybot found 120+ things it had to fix. Btw, it also gets rid of hanging references in you registry, which is nice.
So the next thing which contributed to lifting my spirits had to do with the HPC project I had been working on. I had been having problems with the project, was getting nonsensible profiling information about the parallel program which I was writing. And I was tearing my hair out. So I went and spoke to prf. Hollingsworth (the HPC teacher) about it, and he basically said that the point of this project was to get the students to realize how bad the profiling programs were and how desperately we need new and better ones. Well....MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! Grrr.....
So once I manage to finish that project (not much left) my first real crunch time here is over. In reality, it wasn't a true crunch time since the 'crunch factor' was caused in part by outside influence (school lockdown, computer crash) and in part by my own incessant need to understand everything (if I had just ignored the profiling info and finished the project it would have taken a couple of hours, some people did that). The next thing happening is a midterm next week and then another one the week after that, should be fine.
Our new kitchen is almost ready! They've been working on it since tuesday morning, and it's looking good. Got a new floor, walls have been spackled and fixed, the sagging ceiling fixed, most of the new cabinets are in. We have a new countertop coming tomorrow along with a new sink and a new oven. And they are also going to paint the walls and the ceiling for us :) WOOHOO! Man, you guys should have seen our old kitchen...it was grooosss. The only bad thing is that we can't cook and we can't clean our dishes, and everything that was in the kitchen is in the living room. Oh well, I'd rather have the new kitchen than three days of status quo.

mánudagur, október 13, 2003

Man has this been a rough evening.
After finally getting the software to remotely access my class account to run correctly, my computer turns itself off with a blue screen. But not the normal blue screen, no, this blue screen only had one line of text with it. It read stop - computer has halted. Oh? Thanks for letting me know, I couldn't have guessed when EVERYTHING SHUT DOWN THAT THE COMPUTER HAD HALTED!!! If you're going to have error messages, at least make them so that they don't further enrage the recipient.
When I turned my computer back on it was totally fried. After a couple of minutes of anguish I called in Binh and he helped me out and I got it running again. Only to have it crash the same way 5 minutes later. I pounded my fists on the table, took a deep breath, and took out my anger on the flies.
I ran some diagnostics, pulled out memory and placed it back in, but I have yet to figure out what is wrong. However, the problem seems to be dormant for now....hopefully it's gone. I know I did manage to fix some errors, whether they are responsible for the crash....well I'll find out won't I. Right now I'm defragging my drive.
Owning a computer is like having a child. You just can't go to sleep without knowing it's going to be fine.

sunnudagur, október 12, 2003

Hey guys,
Lots of stuff happening around here...lets see...I've been sick since wednesday, but it's been bearable since friday. Before that I couldn't concentrate so I couldn't study, so I'm behind in my studies...bleh, not good. There are a couple of other reasons I'm behind in my work...the program that I'm using to connect to my account at school sucks. SSH secure shell sucks. You'd think those damn programmers could do a better job. Curses on all computer programmers!...wait a sec....Another reason is that my building at school has been in a lockdown over the weekend. Last thursday, some guy came to our building carrying a gun and threatened the dean of the comp.sci. dept. So on thursday there were police all over watching the exits and then the building is closed over the weekend. So I have a buggy program that won't let me access my account and I can't access my account physically, so I can't do my homework...I just hope my professors are reasonable people.
Some dudes came around yesterday with the new cupboards for the kitchen...finally...that's gonna be sweet. Our kitchen is disgusting. We share it with a family of mice who are not house-broken, and a swarm of anti-homosapienist flies. And someone told me the floor was white. Who'd have known? So anyway, the whole thing is getting redone, I believe we're getting a new sink and possibly a new stove as well. So we spent this morning taking everything out of the kitchen and filling our living room with it. There were a couple of surprises lurking deep in the cupboards (you reeeeaaally don't wanna know), and we ended up throwing away loads of stuff, almost 4 full, large, trash bags. It's not done, we still have to move our fridge out of the way and get all of our dried food out, but they don't start working until tomorrow. This will be a fun week :S....
There was a party here last night, I decided not to take part, stayed in my room and studied with my headphones on until about 1:30 when I had had it with my buggy ssh and crap and I said 'to hell with it' and stepped out and had a coupla drinks with the people. It was fun, except for the fact that there was one guy, a friend of a friend of Dan's, who had drunk for the first time three months ago (he's 28 years old), and he was still going through the 'whoa, I'm really drunk' phase. So he was pretending to be wasted after like 5 beers, and he kept on doing it for like three hours ( because he was getting loads of attention ). But because he was pretending to fall all over the place he managed to break our screen door, the bastard.
We also spent part of this morning waging a war on the flies. Flyswatters are crap, rolled up junk mail does the trick. I have now titled myself Lord of the Flies.
I have a half-full glass of water on my desk which has been standing out for about 5 days. I just realized there is mold floating in it. MOLD??!?! In WATER???!?!?!! What's that about? I guess there must be something in the water here in the states that molds. Man, that's not nice.

fimmtudagur, október 09, 2003

Entry: insomnia
Function: noun
Definition: unsleeping
Synonyms: indisposition, insomnolence, restlessness, sleeplessness, stress, tension, vigil, vigilance, wakefulness
Concept: sleep

That's what dictionary.com has to say about my condition. Not much help there.
Was going to wake up this morning and go out jogging. I accomplished half of what I set out to do. I woke up. Then I went back to sleep. I didn't actually get out of bed until 11:30, and even then I was feeling a little groggy, a little hint of what was to come. Anyway, went to help oversee my students' midterm exam at 1:30. That was interesting. It's amazing how difficult it is to answer students' questions without giving too much away, but still without annoying them with enigmatic responses. So that took 50 minutes, ending with them all walking out with their tails firmly placed between their legs. We then met up with Bunny and J.J. (the profs) and the rest of the TAs and spent almost 6 hours grading them all. That was kind of depressing. The highest grade we saw was an 88. The lowest an 18. We didn't have time to calculate averages for everything, but I do know that one of my classes had an average of 62 which is the highest one I've heard so far. Austin's two classes had 54 and 57, and one of Alex's classes had 52, so my students are doing good. The guy with the 88 was also in my class :)
The problem was, there were a couple of minor errors on the test which probably set some of the students off balance a little bit (not enough to warrant these grades though). But there was a subtle, yet large error in the solution to one of the problems, and we didn't notice it until it was too late and we had graded half the papers. So we had to continue grading in the same manner to save consistency. So that might have raised the average by at most 5 points. However, that kind of error is pretty bad, and the fact that we saw it and the profs didn't is also bad...(it was actually Tanya that saw it first, good for her).
So we stayed there from 4 to 10, we got candy and pizza and coke. And I got a cold. Or the cold I had gotten earlier began to manifest itself. I blame that for me not getting up this morning. Seriously. I am not kidding myself.
So now, because of the cold, whenever I lie down my sinuses get flooded with phlegm (it actually hurts :( ) so I can't sleep. So what do I do if I can't sleep? I tell you guys about it and whine on my blog.
Whine whine whine whine...this is me whining...
Let's end this on a funny note, since I used a thesaurus to find the definition above...

You can consider yourself a blonde if you think a Thesaurus was a dinosaur.

þriðjudagur, október 07, 2003

There's a show here on tv that is hilarious. Joe Schmoe. It's a parody of the reality tv shows that have been clogging up the tv channels. Everybody taking part is an actor except for one guy who thinks it's all real. So they're creating all the drama and "suspense" (note the quotes) of reality tv, but all the while, they're laughing at him and thinking up new ways to make him do funny and interesting stuff. It's almost painful to watch. I just wonder what happened to this guy's self-esteem when the show was over and they told him what had happened. Maybe he was too stupid to take it as an insult. I guess you have to have at least slightly diminished intelligence to want to take part in a reality tv show in the first place...
Got an email today from someone that I thought had completely forgotten about me. That's always fun, getting a reminder that there are people out there that like you :)
One of my teachers didn't show this morning so I spent the time using my PDA to schedule my life. In that schedule I'm waking up tomorrow morning at 7:00 to go out jogging.
Yeah right.
We'll see, maybe I'll surprise myself. Anyway, I scheduled my time from 7 am to 5 pm for every minute of the day, including things like food and time to get between places and stuff. For those of you who know me well, this is how I function best...when I have no free time. I'll probably end up scheduling my evenings as well (for one, playing my trumpet will happen then) and my weekends.
Got my first homework back in the AI class, got a 37 out of 40 total, which calculates as a 9,25 out of 10, which is more than I expected. I didn't do my best work on that assignment, I was still floating around in a limbo of self-pity at that time. But I guess, the teacher thought it was good. Still waiting for a result from the HPC project, that didn't go too well either, I thought.
You guys that read my page, thanks...you still are one of the high points of my day. Checking my blog to see comments is always fun :) So keep 'em coming. And you guys that have blogs, leave your URLs so I can link to you, if I haven't already. And put comment systems on your pages so I can comment back!

mánudagur, október 06, 2003

Hmm...people told me that I would slow down on my blogging tempo, and I just laughed. But it's happened. An unprecedented 5 days have passed since my last blogg. Oh well, I guess that just means I'm busy and having fun. Or that I was either drunk or hung-over all weekend. I'll let you guess which one.
Went to the first rehearsal of UMRO (University of Maryland Repertoire Orchestra) on saturday. That was fun. They're not all that great but they'll get better. There are all sorts of people there, a 17 year old trombonist with a high squeaky voice. A 16 year old high school student/violinist, and a horn player named Erica who knows Joe (bóbó og ella, þekkiði þessa stelpu?)
While I was rehearsing, Dan and his friends were trashing our place. They grilled steaks and drank beer and messed up the kitchen and then went to the football game which started at 3. By the way, while I was walking to and from the rehearsal I experienced something called 'tailgaiting'. I thought that was when you act like a dick on the highway. But it turns out it also means acting like a dick in a parking lot with a whole lot of other people acting like dicks. Basically, people park in the parking lot, put up a tent and get drunk and have lots of fun and then go to the game if they haven't already passed out. Sounds like verslunarmannahelgi, in Iceland. Except we don't need an excuse like a footbal game to get drunk and act like dicks.
So after the game, Dan and his crew show up back home, where I've been sitting on the porch drinking beer with Dave, a friend of mine from school. A handful of other people show up later and we have a nice little party. One guy got sick because he OD'd on our evermelon (watermelon soaked in everclear, which, for you Icelanders, is 96% alcohol). Poor guy.
I spent most of the next day comatose in my room, just sleeping...sleeping is good.
School is going good, not to much pressure. I'm starting to shop around for possible advisors, seeing who's a good guy (or gal) and with whom I can work. My students are taking their midterm on wednesday, and I guess that will show whether I'm a good teacher or not...:S I'm really rooting for them, it's fun to see the difference in how they react towards me now, and how they acted the first few days. There were a couple of really uninterested faces that have changed into eager faces.
Sakna ykkar allra....

miðvikudagur, október 01, 2003

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again (and for you gringos, this is a first, but not a last)...BLOGGER SUCKS!
I don't know how many times I've written something funny, something smart, something interesting...and then blogger encounters an error, and for no good reason erases my text, or (when I was still writing in Icelandic)replaced all the Icelandic letters with reeeeaallly interesting symbols like ~@A, or <^* or some garbage like that...annoying as hell.
You know what else is annoying?
Binh.
I know I keep griping about him, but you guys are the only ones who will listen, and possibly laugh at my predicament.
Anyway, I woke up this morning to a pleasant surprise, followed by a not-so-pleasant one. Someone had cleaned the stove and the table by the stove (which is usually cluttered with all sorts of things that, by the looks of it, once could have proudly worn the tag 'food'). I was amazed, looking at the stove...I had never realized that it was white. So I go about getting my breakfast ready (which consists of opening a bag of oatmeal and putting it in the microwave) when I realize that I can't find my oatmeal or my cheerios. You see, they had been on the cluttered table amidst the culinary fossils...and Binh...well, he threw them away. It seems he thought that a box half-full of closed oatmeal packets was something that wasn't worth keeping...it was probably already bad......yeah, that's right...:S
Anyway...I went to audition for an orchestra here at UMD this morning, and it went really great. It turns out that this is not THE UMD orchestra. This one is a campus-wide one (as opposed to being primarily for music students) and so the standard is a bit lower. What do I care? I get to play principal trumpet in an orchestra again! Looking forward to my first rehearsal on saturday. They were very impressed with me, I guess they were expecting some amateur player (computer science student who plays a trumpet? Pfft, gotta see that!) The conductor even mentioned that he would be putting together a smaller group of musicians later on, an 'elite' group as he termed it, and offered me to play principal there.
This is me strutting.
There's going to be a party here on saturday. This time, no misunderstandings. We've already started preparing. Right now, there is a watermelon in the fridge with a bottle of rather strong alcohol protruding from it. I gather the idea is to saturate the watermelo with alcohol and then offer it to the guests of the party. Sounds interesting. Looking forward to that as well :)

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