Smallhouse Log

Saturday

The other day I was awoken by a bird calling my name. Is it too much to hope it was an owl? That would be awesome.

Friday, third week after Pentecost

So I am extremely wary of the command line FTP program here on the linux machines, but I am going to give it a fair shot. The tutor assures me it is extremely easy to use, but it seems to freeze up any time I attempt to use the ls command. Whatever. If you are reading this, it obviously worked.

So I am getting pretty desperate here. No job and no apartment as of yet, no reserve of cash, et cetera. I am probably going to have to borrow money to pay my first month of rent, and I am really not keen on the idea of borrowing more money. But I will survive.

There are, of course, other things going on right now (aren't there always?), but I am not inclined to write about them right now. Mostly, I just want to see if this crazy method of updating will work. Here goes!

Edit: It did not work. Thus, this. Don't worry, this will all be back to normal once I have the Internets again. Further edit: And now it is!

Sunday

So you may have noticed that Smallhouse now looks exactly the same as it did a couple days ago. You may not have noticed that it is now completely composed of perfectly valid markup. Well, to be fair, the 'list-of-links' type of pages are not. But the rest is! With the help of this wonderful widget, I combed through and corrected the majority of the pages yesterday. Unsurprisingly, most of the errors were in old code, especially for things like page headings and the navigation menu. But now it is sweet, sweet XHTML 1.0 Strict valid code. Mmm. Say, you should roll your mouse over that abbreviation. Cool trick, right?

So today we went to Japan, and it was awesome. I almost bought a magazine that was just pictures of adorable cats. I did buy an angry sponge and several strange candies. Also, a packet of what Erica translated as "Meat Men Card Game", which appears to be a bizarro superhuman professional wrestling CCG/chewing gum. Both turned out to be of poor quality, but the gum was less hilarious. The big buy of the day, though, were these tubes of goo which may or may not turn out to be soft drinks, or possibly syrup. No one has dared open one yet. Oh, and the angry sponge. I really like the angry sponge.

Friday, Ninth Week
"It's like a truck in a full-length sequinned ballgown." -Xian!, 04/29/2007

So Scav is well over. For my impressions, czech out the aforementioned Scavenblog. For some other impressions, I found some unaffiliated outsiders who did a good job: The welcoming committee for admitted students. Man, with all the sheer addictive usefullness of Google/Blogger, it is no wonder I always hesitate to post using my own (admittedly, now highy improved) system. I think I can resist the lure for now, but only because I am that stubborn, and because I do not really trust them that much yet. Still, it has got me thinking that I could (and thus, should) program my own software that could do automatically many of the tedious things I still do by hand. Oh, with semantically correct and accesible markup, too, of course. That is key.

So, you know squirrels? Apparently (BAM!), they are this bad at every college, and I am not the only person who thinks about killing them every time I walk across the quadrangles. That's right I said quadrangles what what.

Ok, more random stuff that I have been meaning to mention. WikiHow has a very nice article on moshing, which warms my scaly heart. Ok, so I disagree about the crowdsurfing (because crowdsurfers force the pit to stop moshing to carry them), but still. Warm. Scales.

But the big thing on my mind is the recent wedding of Mister Jeremy John "Bingley" Scripps to the former Miss Hannah Bennett. Sadly, there were no good opportunities while I was there to crack Pride and Prejudice jokes. It was fun to go on a little trip, see the home of Heinz katsup, make jokes about the home of Heinz katsup, see why people from the east coast think South Dakota is flat, sleep in a chicken coop, find a better George Washington than any team presented, ride the Metro again, ride a propeller plane (Yeah.), and generally meet a lot of cool people. The whole trip would have been worth it just to see the look on Jeremy's face as he removed her garter during the reception. Jody caught the bouquet, Hannah's little brother is a rockstar, and for Jeremy's bachelor party, we played Settlers of Catan. That was a fun bachelor party. I ate the best sourkraut of my life (that is, the only sourkraut I have considered worth eating) at the rehearsal dinner. All in all, a lot of fun. Makes me look forward to Shaina's wedding in August and Paul's in... um... whenever that is happening.

To close, a recent conversation tidbit:
JR: "The first problem is a problem of transparency."
LB: "What do you mean by transparency?"
JR: "We'll get to that in a minute."

Wednesday, Seventh Week
"They already hate me for my techno!" -The Boat, 05/08/2007

So Scav is almost here. I direct your attention to the official Scavenblag. Go forth and divide.

Addendum

I fixed the bug with the comments not showing up. There were always there, just eerily invisible.

Saturday, Fourth Week
"I'll give you a proof just because it's a nice proof." -Professor Simon, 04/06/2007

Well, things seem to be going pretty well, other than that I totally forgot what I meant to write about. This will be the first post truly using the php setup, and I am a little eager to see if it works properly. Here's hoping.

Also, Hot Fuzz.

later that day

SWAAN!

I do not care how high your expectations are, this movie is better than you expect. It literally leaves nothing to be desired, except perhaps to see it again as soon as possible.

"I am speaking, of course, about the living statue."

Wednesday, First Week, Spring Quarter
"So Canadian people have, like, ten fingers on their arms?" -Dennis, 03/25/2007

I bought a bottle of juice the other day, and after I had drunk the juice, I filled it with ice and water. As I was drinking my icewater, I noticed the bottle had been labeled, in large print, "Do Not Reuse". Assuming they meant the bottle and not the juice itself, that's really creepy. Plus, who makes durable one-time-use containers? Coke, apparantly. Didn't notice that until I scanned the bottle for other weird things.