So, I had a few more pictures from recent times that I wanted to post.


1. This was on the back of a panel truck. The lock in the center is probably 4 inches in diameter. An identical one was on the side. This was panel van was parked at my hotel before I moved into my apartment. The van itself was driven by a middle-aged asian woman and someone who looked to be her mother. I can only assume that nefarious things were hidden behind that lock.


2. With the advent of Lego Fruit Snacks, the era of children being told not to play with their food is over. I am still curious as to whether or not the Lego blocks that you can eat fit together with the ones that you cannot. I hope that they are universal so that you could design joints at slight angles using non-rigid Legos.


3. Math Blaster has gone Xtreme--anime style. I would have thought it was a joke if not for the fact that I saw it with my own eyes.


4. I went to an eye doctor earlier this week since I was over-do for my yearly checkup. While waiting, I saw this apartus on the wall. This particular item is a projector, which is nothing iteresting. What is interesting, however, is how it was used. Since space is at a premium in the LA area, this projector was pointed at a mirror that reflected an image of a standard eye chart onto the wall behind where I was seated. I then was directed to look through a different mirror in order to read the chart. It seemed more complicated than what is usually necessary for such situations.


Eventually, I will post pictures of my apartment, but I doubt that will be for a while yet. I want to make it somewhat presentable before taking images that will persist for an indeterminate period of time.



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For the last several days, the temperature in my apartment has been unreasonable. It has been at least 80F pretty much constantly, and much worse right after work. This is probably due to the fact that the temperature outside has been a high of over 90F (it is 100F right now), but it hasn't gotten below 65 at night. I don't think my little window air conditioner can fight that kind of battle with any success, but turning it off would lead to heat stroke.

Aside from the heat, I've learned several things this week:

1. SVG renderers aren't ready to render ~200k elements in a single image. I think this is probably not an unreasonable limitation, but it does cause problems when trying to use SVG as a graphing output format.

2. I consume a lot of electricity. I got my electric bill on Monday this week. It was just shy of $250 for the month. My power usage was 1.75kW (thats 42kWh/day). Computers consume a lot of power when left on 24/7 as does the 800W air conditioner that can not be turned off without fear of death.

3. The deer on lab at JPL don't seem to consider humans as threats. They just wander around anywhere they want to go. You can even get up rather close to them without causing them to panic and flee. Example:



4. Daria is as good a show as I remember it being. So far, I've watched the first two seasons and am almost done with the third. I believe this show was MTV's greatest achievement.

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So today, I purchased a plane ticket to come back to Homecoming. Tom was nice enough to agree to pick me up from the airport and take me back. It'll be weird to be back without having to do schoolwork or being in 004, but I figure I'll just crash at Theta Xi for the weekend. If the actives do a good job, I'll may even break out my checkbook.

In other news, I have the XBox working again. If you had something stored on it that you need, I can probably get it for you.

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So, I've taken more than one picture since I left Indiana. As such, I've decided to put some of them here. Note that this may disrupt your friends page.


This picture was taken in the Indianapolis airport at the Sony expensive device despenser. If you look closely, you can see that there is a PSP stuck in the device that carries things out. I seriously considered trying to buy some cheap item to get a free PSP. That is when I remembered that there isn't any reason to buy a PSP. Ever.


The government is very serious about its tables.


This blurry device told me exactly where I was, thus making waiting on my flight seem all the more excruciating.

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I thought that I had more interesting pictures than that. Ah well, maybe I'll collect more later.

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So, earlier this week, I finally got everything that I needed to put together my new computer. I had a couple of odds and end before I got it to boot (improperly seated RAM, weirdness mounting the HSF, backwards SLI connector), but it didn't take too terribly long. I, of course, decided to install Vista on it since it will by my primary gaming computer for the forseeable future. I have to say that the machine is really quite a beast. It runs may things (LEGO Star Wars, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast) at max settings and native resolution (1600x1200) at over 60 fps. It is at least twice as powerful as any previous machine that I've had.

It does, however, have one major irritation: mouse problems. Now, I have a working MX 1000 Wireless Laser Mouse. I know it is working because I have it connected to a KVM switch, and the other 3 machines with GUIs work fine. Basically, it goes like this. First, the mouse will start jumping around and clicking randomly on screen. Usually jamming the buttons some will fix this. After it does that a few times, the mouse will simply stop responding in Vista. I've tried using it as both a PS2 and as a USB mouse. The only difference is that the former always requires a reboot to fix while the former can occasionally be coaxed back into working without one. I fear that I will have to have a seperate mouse just for the Vista box or that I will have to purchase a new keyboard and mouse (mine are a combo with a common receiver).

I must say that, of all things, failing to properly write a mouse driver should be embarassing for Microsoft. The failure is even more disgusting when coupled with the fact that this same mouse works fine in Windows 2000 and XP which means that it is their re-write of an existing driver that is broken. Hell, I'd bet that if I hooked up my Windows 98 box, the thing would work just fine.

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In other news, I've started watching Battlestar Gallactica. So far I've watched the first 5 episodes and I'm rather impressed. It is good stuff. I've also been watching a new anime: Murder Princess. It is suprisingly good. It reminds me slightly of Scrapped Princess, so if you liked that, you might like this. The show is coming out as a 6 episode OVA, the last of which is to be released in a couple of weeks.

I also watched the first episode of Powerpuff Girls Z. Note that the "Z" is pronouced as "Zed". I haven't seen enough to decide if it is good, but it does make several interesting breaks with the original PPG universe. I am sad that the PPG are no longer comprised solely of sugar, spice, everything nice, and chemical X. I suppose it is a silly premise, but still, it was the main premise of the show. Every episode started with a reminder of it!

Ah well. I think that's enough of that.

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