Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/28/monday/
So, Monday morning I got up at 0630h and rode to work with mom. I dozed off in her office, then grabbed a very inexpensive breakfast of French Toast in the cafeteria. After that we headed off to traffic court for my 1030h hearing.
On the way out, mom introduced me to “the girls” – all her Physical Therapists seem to be in their twenties, which seems weird but cool. Like college, only everyone’s a few years older, and there’s four peers as opposed to 40,000.
Anyways, we waited in traffic court, the proceedings going uninterestingly. From what I could tell, mine was a somewhat special case. Others seemed to feature mainly repeat offenders for speeding and other infractions. I was in there for a moving violation which resulted in an accident with no injuries, property damage, and no problems insurance wise. All the same, when I was called forward to the bench, the witness, Mr. Goldman, whose car I had hit, was not present, and the prosecutor said that the police officer was sick with the flu and asked for a reschedule. As the judge explained that I would have to come back in March, I interrupted, “Your honor, can I just plead guilty?” She seemed a bit surprised, but complied, issuing me a thirty dollar fine, a light penalty considering other fines were running forty to sixty with “supervision”.
My intent was, of course, to avoid the expense of traveling to and fro for such a trivial matter. Thirty dollars is less expensive than the cost of round-trip between Chicago and school, without even counting opportunity cost of missed classes and work.
After paying my fine I saw Mr. Goldman in the lobby. He had been delayed due to car troubles. Irony. He seemed disappointed or frustrated or otherwise unhappy with my guilty plea. “No, you say ‘Not guilty’ because it was just an accident and they let you off!” My understanding ran contrary to this, but I know Mr. Goldman’s testimony and that of the police officer could only have helped. This is this matter of impatience on my part. Some have suggested this gives me a criminal record or somesuch, but I figured if just going and pleading guilty was so bad the judge might have said something, especially as I hadn’t bothered to consult the legal counsel, which would have taken longer.
Ahh, the intricacies of court.
So, after that, I drove back, with mom in the car, which was very nice of her. I didn’t want to miss all the things I had scheduled, like the NASO meeting, dinner with a friend, and work from 1900h.
At the NASO meeting I volunteered to write thank-you letters for Organizations that had contributed to Pow Wow. Bill said he thought that the lack of thank-you letters was offensive, and that furthermore he hadn’t time to finish the rest.
I’m a Rhetoric major.
Of course, this was after one of the more … outspoken members launched an attack on what she felt to be a terrible lack of Native Americans in Native American Student Organization, being reflected in the President and the Treasurer-elect being non-enrolled persons. This sparked a debate that was way tangential about the meaning of enrollment, qualifications for what is a Native American, and stipulations that NASO might attach to it’s executives. She was particularly offensive in her approach, but she seemed to be the only one who felt such a way. The other enrolled Indians seemed perfectly comfortable with us white oppressor types pitching in to help the group. The president is a white guy, which is kinda cool in it’s colorfulness, while still illustrating the problem of Native Americans at the University: there just aint enough.
One of her objections were to fake Indians
or folks who claimed some Indian ancestry but weren’t enrolled. I may be 1/16th Cherokee, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m a white guy, and that’s all I’ve ever claimed to be. I thought she was just barking up the wrong tree with me. Lots of passion and justifiable resentment, but it just isn’t targeted very constructively, in my opinion.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/26/amtrak/
I am so excited. I haven’t rode a train in years. Being in one of the front cars, I swear I can hear the sound of what I believe to be the beautiful putt-putt of the train’s diesel engine.
The leg room is astonishing! Trains, being the wonderfully fuel-efficient devices that they are, have less to gain by packing us in like sardines. To serve more passengers they only have to add another car. For an airplane or a bus to do the same … well they can’t do the same!
And that, of course, is why trains are superior. Nowadays even trucks ride trains, in a sense, for the long-haul. There are modular containers which can be stacked on trains and ships and placed on trailers for local delivery. That’s just cool.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/23/all-aboard/
This section was written Sunday evening on the Pilot.
I was waiting on Green Street for the bus to take me to the train station. A campus bus called the Illini pulled up and I nodded my head “no” to save him the trouble of stopping. He stopped anyway, pulling the door open.
“What bus are you waiting for?”
“Green.”
“That one aint running anymore.”
“I need to get to the train station. Any suggestions?”
Clearly this was a difficult request. He hopped on the radio and asked about another bus.
“You can catch the yellow. It’s up there. Hop on.”
I rode with him a block towards Wright. He stopped in front of the Union to pick up a group of students.
“See that bus up there?”
“Ya.”
“That’s the yellow – he’s waitin’ for you.”
“Thanks!” as I took off running in front of Everett to catch up with the bus resting at the Wright Street shelter. As the doors opened I looked at the driver and tried to explain myself.
“The other guy sent me.”
“That would be Chip.”
“He’s a great guy!”
“Yup.”
Yup
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/12/17/live/
Wed Dec 17 23:43:45 CST 1997
![[DANNYCAM!]](/journal/images/971217.gif)
Bought a QuickCam the other day from a place called PC Mall. It wasn’t easy, but I got it hooked up and running under FreeBSD. Now, the ultimate in geekness, it’s live on the web!
The first reaction I get from folks is “What about if you want privacy?” to which I reply “I live in a Quad – there is no privacy!”
It’s really not that bad at all, especially since it doesn’t handle low light well. If I’m really cool I’ll get to hack up some of the source over break and see if I can’t convince it to do some auto-correction of contrast and brightness and such.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/10/10/cisco/
Last night I went to a company presentation for Cisco Systems – the “Microsoft of the Internet” – an analogy which I am uncomfortable with as Cisco products don’t yet suck. In fact, I’m pretty fond of Cisco and am impressed with its energy. It’s a place I might consider to work at, though I’m a bit wary of living in Silicon Valley, if my understanding of California Suburban Sprawl is true. San Francisco, an hour away, might offer a nice home though.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/mashed-potatoes/
So we took Mom out to Baker’s Square to celebrate her birthday. Turns out they stop making pies after 6PM, preferring to run out of pies instead of having too many … but it’s Baker’s Square! This was likened to McDonald’s not making any burgers after 6PM because they didn’t want to have too many. End result was the birthday girl couldn’t get her French Silk pie, and had to settle for the inferior Chocolate Cream. Our waiter was dumb also, but at least he forgot to charge for the drinks. I liked the busboy better, and gave him two dollars of what I might normally give the waiter, even though he stole my fork!
On a different note, I’m sick and tired of places that don’t have real mashed potatoes! I mean, it’s a restuarant, the place is supposed to be good, no?
Well most places sell reconstituted potato flakes and call them “mashed potatoes” and it seems wrong to me dammit! It’s dishonest. It’s an imitation of mashed potatoes and it doesn’t taste as good as the real thing. It tastes like fucking grits, and I aint no redneck grits-eatin’ southerner. I like my mashed potatoes like I like my hot breakfast cereal – hot and with a lumpy texture. Oatmeal’s good ’cause it’s got texture, it sticks to your ribs, keeps ya warm, makes ya feel filled, makes ya feel like a man. Now grits … or potato flakes, just don’t give ya the same feeling, all they give me is a feeling that I’m more likely to have soft bowel movements, and that doesn’t make me happy. No sir, mashed potatoes, and oatmeal, any day, a real man’s food, a real American’s food!
God bless America, Land that I love!
Stand beside her, and guide her,
To a plate with real mashed potatahs!
From one restaurant, to another, to the cafe-teria!
God bless Idaho, state where they’re from!
God bless America, my home sweet home!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/rust-spots/
A long, long time ago –
I can still remember,
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make those people dance,
And maybe they’d be happy for awhile …
Excerpt from the Lyrics to “Miss American Pie”
Well … got that van fixed up some. It’s quiet, so now the shimmy is far more noticeable. The shimmy can be fixed by a set of new tires. Mom suggested perhaps I could buy it some tires and hold on to it for awhile … yes, a car downstate … should think about that. Bert over the weekend recommended Sears as they offered him free rotation and whatnot for the life of the tires. All four or just two? Mom says one is kind of new, wouldn’t want that money wasted … wouldn’t it make a nice spare though, perhaps?
Well, to look into. I walked Max down to Fair Muffler, so he could ride back. He likes cars, though maybe he was disappointed because I didn’t really take him anywhere.
Have to read the gas meter also. I tried to do that earlier today but none of the meters I could find had the same numbers as the one on the sheet I’m supposed to fill out. Okay … have to drag Uncle in on that one.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/14/netdev-party/
Well, momma picked me up on Sunday, that was nice. Turns out she’s a bit pickier about speed than Uncle is. Okay, so I had to keep to no more than 75MPH, ah well … it was still a nice drive.
The week before that was pretty frenetic … Beckman upgrade! Ripping out BNC thinnet cabling and installing twisted-pair 10baseT ethernet. I’ll spare the gruesome details, but I let ya know I let me hair grow out in part because I kept hitting my head on the undersides of desks, digging around.
See, also upgrades work better if things aren’t defective … bad jacks, bad splitters, bad cables, all somehow unavoidable and so we gotta keep dealing with them. Not to mention a few old Macintoshes that just wouldn’t listen to an AUI transceiver and were very interested in just sticking with their thinnet.
By week’s end, my mantra had become, once again, “Computers suck!”
Ah, it wasn’t all that bad though, really, just a little more stress-ridden than anyone likes I think.
Paul’s party was very nice. I followed Mike’s example and made myself a little keychain out of a BNC connector. Mike was making one for Paul, but I thought it cute too. Right now I’ve got a tee, a barrel connector, and three terminators on my keychain as well as a wrench I bought to fix the front wheel on my bike. I think the whole ensemble could double for a weapon in a pinch.
Brats, those were good … good food, good desserts, extremely humid and occasionally rainy weather, and soggy chips that went stale absorbing moisture out of the air as a result. We watched “Beavis and Butt-Head do America” on Mike’s DSS setup. It was an excellent movie indeed. I don’t think we ever got around to margaritas, after the movie. Plenty of beer though. Mike boils the brats in cheap beer I guess, and we drink the good stuff.
Paul couldn’t stay long, they have a cat on a feeding tube … if that’s not good devotion to a pet I don’t know what is. Anyhow, this cat gotsa be “fed” kitty goo every few times a day, and Paul comin’ down from Chicago.
We hung up Beckman thinnet around Mike’s yard, told Paul he had to “debug it” … ookey yeah we’re geeks, but there was also … I think his name is John … juggling lit batons! Just wait ’til I get this one picture scanned! Yeah …
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/02/bee-with-butterfly-wings/
It rained today. Monsoon season in Illinois.
I got wet walking from our NetDev Beckman upgrade to the CSIL meeting. Between the wet clothes and the extreme Air Conditioning I was freezing myself cold – silly cold!
So I walked home with a cold can of Coke in my hands. I was drinkin’ it. I went to recycle the can at a receptacle. I had to walk through mud. After gettin’ rid of my aluminum, I noticed a bee, stuck by his wings on his back, well her back, to the garbage can by water.
I don’t like bees, you probably don’t either. Gandhi said though that one should be kind to all living creatures, and I suppose I should try to respect that once in awhile. A Puff of breath righted the bee. I dunno if she could fly so well, but she was upright, and didn’t seem quite so distressed about being stuck in a very vulnerable position.
Good deed done.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/07/13/political-pot-pourri/
(Watch out, rant coming forth!)
I met a cool freak yesterday at the Union lab. You see why I like labs? We’re both here now. He’s a self-educated computer geek, and a writing studies sort. You see his web page he’s working on a collaborative writing CGI. I was walking past and saw Perl code, did a double-take, and we started talking.
Well, that’s nice. Yesterday was an errand-running day. I returned library books, renewing one by Frederick Pohl that I haven’t finished with. Then I took the bus out to Jewel, spending nearly $40 on groceries, which is more than I’d wanted to spend, but I made a really good haul, so I can’t complain. I’ll be eating well. I bought lunchmeats, cheese, and romaine lettuce for lunchtimes. I’ve settled on purchasing milk, eggs and bread at local convenience stores though. Perishables I go through quickly see? Anyways, I didn’t skimp on ingredients. The cheese is sliced deli cheese, cheddar and swiss. The romaine lettuce don’t seem so cheap either. I also stocked in some Peanut Butter and Jelly, the old standby.
What else? Some Turkey dogs for Mac & Cheese, some spaghetti sauce, and garlic bread … mm! That’s gonna be good. I picked up some Matt’s Fig Newtons as I like Fig Newtons. They seemed right tasty. I made a rule for myself though that I shall only buy one package of cookies per shopping trip. Their expensive and spoil my appetite for a real meal if I’m reckless. Ah well.
Ran into Mary and Phil, we did a little bowling. I caught sight of Asao there and it messed with my game some. I still missed her. Still haven’t figured her out either. Well, managed to get it off my mind pretty well. She seemed to be enjoying her self pretty much. Hard to tell, of course as I didn’t approach her and she tends not to be too expressive.
So, I been thinkin’ you know … about the American electoral process. It sucks you know? You can run out of money, and have to withdraw from an election. That means that to be elected to public office you have to curry favor with the monied interests, and that’s not representative. That and ya got all these lamers who refuse to vote because they just don’t see any point to it. Whoever wins, the results will be pretty much the same, since the Democrats act like lame wannabe Republicans, or so it sometimes seems. Just this morning I heard that the White House put out some document on their thoughts on the Internet, and it was concerned mainly with how commerce could take place, not so much with the human potential the thing offers. As well, old man Clinton was supposedly defending the Communications Decency Act … sheesh!
I remember in PoliSci 150 with Joe Miller. He talked to us some about Proportional Representation, the idea that instead of winner-take-all you kinda break the political spoils down into a certain number of representatives per party depending on what percentage of the vote they got. Each party could have a list of candidates they’d send, and however many the election entitled them to, that’s how many of that list they’d send to office.
I proposed in class that perhaps any state willing to try could easily enact a scheme like this with their House representatives. Say, Illinois has 30 folks or however many they send to the House of Representatives, but instead of picking those by district, they just throw them all in a big ol’ PR pot and depending what percentage of the state vote their party gets, that’s how many get sent to Washington. Joe got all upset about this it seemed saying that it would be bad for people to not be represented geographically, but the way I see it, it’s more what your ideology is, isn’t it? Especially if you’re an obscure “radical” like Joe.
Anyways, if yer worried about rural representation, then a major party would have to represent itself to rural constituencies for fear that they might lose that constituency to another, possibly third party. This would alleviate voter angst somewhat, I’d think, because partys could fill niche rolls for different ideologies and interests. Staunch environmentalists could vote green, say. Farmers could vote for Farm-interest parties. When you get to Washington then the special interests are more clearly marked based on the popular constituencies, and less on PAC or corporate monies. At least, that’s what I’d hope. To be a successful major party then, one would need to develop a platform that appeals in some rational manner to a wide array of newly-awakened popular political interests.
Well, no-one said I was ever an expert.
Another time, I believe, it was proposed that with technology and all, direct participatory democracy could be achieved. Well, we run into the problems of “mobocracy” and the fact that it take a lot of work to run a government. Well, I’d think to take PR to it’s logical extreme conclusion then, which I would think would be proxy democracy.
See, take mom for example. I’m a politics geek moreso than she is. she has better things to do. Sometimes she’s consulted with me on ways to vote, you know, which candidate? Well, why bother with that, when she could say, just give me or someone else whose judgment she respects proxy power over her single vote? This would maybe work again in a forum like a House of Representatives where at least there you are in theory representing the individual voices of several Americans. I could in turn assign my proxy to another proxy broker or whatever, who I can consult with on his decisions, which might in turn be selecting another broker, or direct representative perhaps. See, this way people have much more encouragement to be involved in the system. Anyone could be their proxy, so it comes more instead of deciding between two bozos more of deciding who your ideal candidate might be .. like shopping for a car. By assigning your proxy to someone you’re stating that you feel confident in the decisions they might make. It’s a far more personal fit than a normal election, so you put more effort, more political awareness and activity, in to making the right choice. At least, one would hope.
In theory, you could then perhaps have several multitudes of representatives – small proxy holders. Well, it might get a bit crowded to implement. Of course, tele-whatever could be used for such folks to discuss the fate of their government, and act accordingly. But if you wanted to be more old-fashioned, you could make a cut-off, say … only the top 38 or whatever number of representatives you want get to go to Congress, with each of those representatives having their votes weighed in proportion to the number of voters they represent, the number of proxies they hold. Proxy holders who don’t have enough votes to make it to Congress have to select their most favored representative to assign their proxies to.
This might confuse the hell out of Corporate America, and other monetary contributers, as the system is very populist, a potential nightmare though, to implement! Imagine the paperwork.
But we don’t have to do this zaniness based on election cycle, eh? You know how a corporation works? Who owns the most stock controls the company, or who owns a significant proportion may sit on the board of directors? Well, say some fool starts making bad decisions, he starts losing his proxies. He makes enough bad decisions he’s outta office. The real power then, gets kinda defused in the larger intermediate proxy brokers who have much control over whether a candidate stays in office.
This also distributes the load of a representatives job. They’re responsible directly to a smaller group of proxy holders who trust them to be doing the job right. They can explain their decisions to this perhaps smallish group, and consult with these “wizened” leaders or whatever, who can in turn come around and address their proxy holders as to why the representative is making the calls he makes. Mr. Representative doesn’t have to commute so much to his district to be in touch with voters, his proxy holders give him the poop. And if they start acting too elitist or anything, of course they start losing their powers.
Fraud becomes much easier though. But then, perhaps, less likely, at least at higher levels, where you have a public trust that the media would be very interested in investigating, no?
Eh, I’m wacko.
NOTE – 19 February, 2002: I’m not the only wacko. And some folks take their own ideas more seriously. If this idea strikes your fancy at all, check out http://www.directrep.org/.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/07/11/dog-days/
Dannyman’s been toasting himself in the sun
Well, Independence Day certainly rocked. After much dickering and dithering I finally had a BBQ at my house in Chicago, mostly family, but Ed and Rachel dropped by, enjoying themselves much, as I could tell. There’s more families in the neighborhood now, more young fathers with impressionable kids who like fireworks. After the neighbors exhausted their stockpile on the blacktop, we wandered over to Rogers Park and there were several groups visible shooting fireworks off. Some guy, referred to as “the Indian” was shooting off some weird, evidently homemade stuff. A few things shot up in the air and exploded like an M80, setting off car alarms in the neighborhood, whose wailings added to the noisy festivities. Well, until a patrol car happened into the park and told everyone to go home. I took pictures of the works, hope they came out.
On Saturday, after a nice meal in Chinatown with some folks, we went to see “Men in Black” which was a right entertaining movie. I enjoyed it. Brian really dug it. He’s the gentle-sir who drove me to and from Chicago, and to the movie.
I’ve not been writing much in the ol’ journal eh? Well, it gets to br a drag to spend so much time working with computer for pay and then to continue doing stuff just as I always do. Errr, like I mean the weather’s nice, and all the labs close early. I much prefer hanging out somewhere at 1AM writing up here you know?
So I been thinkin’ of heading out for Colorado between 10 August when the lease expires, and the two weeks later when I’m s’posed to start school. Just stash my stuff somewhere you know? It’d be nice to meet dad, possibly head out to California to enjoy once again the San Diego beach.
The bike is in the shop. Some drunk motherfucker must have felt like … well, whatever he felt like, I found the bike splayed off the rack at a funny angle. The front wheel was misaligned, so I eventually bought a wrench to fix that, and noticed that the frame was bent up. In the rear it’s out of spline, and the part that goes out to hold the rear wheel is mashed into that rear wheel. Bogus! The guy told me any other place would have sold me a new bike, but that he could make it rideable again, and relished the challenge. So, in two weeks I should have my cool old Raleigh back and rideable again. I’ll be a really happy camper then!
Ahhh, girls? Eh, try not to worry about them so much, just enjoyin’ the scenery you know? I’ll let what happens happen. Asao is starting to talk to me a little bit now. That’s good.
I’ve started to amass a respectable mp3 collection. There is some Smashing Pumpkins in it. I’ve found that, given my first date was a Smashing Pumpkins concert with Linda, that the music tends to make me miss her of all folks. I think it’s a side-effect of actually hearing a few words from her mixed with the fallout of breaking with Asao. Wonders never cease?
Right now I’m hungry. Mom sent me home with some brats leftover from the party. I’ve finished eating them though. Last night I marinated a pair in beer. They turned out good. I didn’t like the beer so much, but the brats seemed improved by having soaked in it. Anyways, it’s a darker honey brew beer or something, and goes down better if you don’t let it wallow on your tongue-tip.
I may be hooking up with Mary soonish for a movie and/or dinner.
I’m enjoying work. The bloody audit is kinda finished, and we’re working on getting all that data into our DNS database, after which we’ll start tracking unaudited miscreants and getting their data, until the whole inquisition is complete, and we can begin to reap IPs. Funfun!
Well, time to finish this entry up. I’m sorry it’s not very titillating. I’ll hopefully get some better stuff soon. You know, interesting thoughts like. I’ve been keeping those pretty much to myself, however unfortunately for the ol’ web page.
Byebye.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/05/31/the-fight-and-the-party/
The past days have been mixed.
You know, I guess at least with this Win95 telnet, vi doesn’t honor arrow keys. hjkl for me!
So last night was good. Better than the night before at least. After work, Mary Lee and I walked over to Asako’s place for dinner. Wow! Curry rice and bread and some Indonesian food and some cookies I’d made, and numerous glasses of wine. I enjoyed myself. Maybe too much but we all have to live sometime. On parting, I distinctly recall folks saying that they did indeed enjoy themselves and were glad to have come. Asako has a good bunch of friends, who for some miraculous reason, perhaps alcohol, I can remember quite well … let’s see Mark, Paul, Kostas, Hang, Henry, Sarah, Hanif, Jori … and her roommate Joyce.
I also had some Sake last night. I liked that too. Very distinctive flavor that goes down well. Rice wine it is.
The night before, Thursday. Well that was not so pleasant. I made cookies for the party. Not being entirely at peace yet with our kitchen facilities and being pressed for time I bought some cookie dough at Jewel. Didn’t know which was best but my tentative conclusion is the inexpensive Jewel brand. The Nestle brand came out very sticky and left the oven looking like tanned lumps of Peanut Butter. The Pillsbury rivaled Jewel in quality though. Both may have fared better as I turned the over down 25 degrees based on Inez’ analysis that the baking was too hot.
Anyways before that though, Asao, tired as she was, made me dinner. Good food, but she walked out on me saying that I’m a terrible person for being an insensitive clod in the things I say to her. Frankly, myself, well I’m pretty irritated too. Not so much as the fact that I get myself in trouble by what I say so frequently but by the fact that Asao gets so upset about it. It is frustrating, because I say these things with no malicious intention, she may perhaps be offended by something, but she should explain to me the error of my ways so that I might improve. Instead it’s coming off like I’m the grand-master of some evil conspiracy to destroy her emotional well-being.
And what sort of stuff have I said? In my own book, nothing so bad … anyways it’s best not for one to air their dirty laundry too openly on a web page eh?
For now though … some time apart.
I’m at work now. Not working, just physically “at work” where there’s computers I can use. CCSO and stuff closes around 5 nowadays, Library too. I checked out a book, only had time to check one out, by Steve Allen, whom I’ve recently read about in Discover magazine. The book is entitled “Explaining China” tough I’m more looking forward to reading some of his stuff on Christianity. Well, I’ll see how I relate to his writing style.
I was a bit proud of myself that once I did wake up and shower today it was the library I felt like biking over to. Mary Lee too seems to be leading a healthy intellectual life far more than I am. She keeps talking about which library she was over at checking out what books … if she’s not careful, the girl will end up a grad student!
I have things I want to say, things I must express. They must be expressed to Asao though, and right now I’ve neither the desire nor the capacity to express them. We’re going to have to talk, but we should each collect our wits first. She has an exam to study for anyways, so I’d best not interfere with her mental stuff.
This too, shall pass. Oi.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/04/28/still-alive/
In south Australia I was born
(Heave away, haul away!)
In south Australia ’round Cape horn!
(Down in south Australia!)
Augh! Well thank God the end of the year is near! Been workin’ been sleepin’ been bitchin’ been with Asao … eagh, well okay that last bit aint so bad.
Asao may very well be returning to Japan in August. Thing is, it’d take her forever to graduate from here, and she’d have a harder time getting in to grad school and meeting UN age restrictions than if she just went back to Tokyo to graduate from Keio next March.
Meanwhile, I think I’ve found my summer apartment. A nice five bedroom two bathroom affair that’s on the fourth floor and actually has two stories. The living room is very tall ceiling, I like. Plus with so many rooms I may be living with other folks in a communal atmosphere, which I tend to like. The kitchen looks quite acceptable too and for $400 for the summer, I can not complain about the rent. It’s also got bicycle parking, and it’s two blocks from CAB, two and a half from the Union.
Not using so much punctuation you notice? It’s like nearly two AM and truthfully my wrist hurts from typing so much. I look forward to resting a bit after finals, the hot summer spent down here, with me woman, with me work, with me own thoughts. It should be good, I’d hope, a growing experience.
Well, aint said much here for awhile, aint got much to say. Tomorrow is our Signet tour of the machine room with Joe Gross – must remember to buy some film to catch pictures of student cluster. Yum! Meanwhile the wrist hurts and 130 messages waiting in my INBOX, so I’ll cut short here. Yes I’m still alive.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/04/07/enter-ncsa/
Dannyman starts at NCSA, among numerous other cool goings-on.
Yah, well after English today, where we had a good discussion about Quentin’s section in Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” I wandered on over to ACB as scheduled and proceeded to start on my new job. I spliced my first patch cable today – that’s a 10 base-T connector used to hook a computer on to a network. I guess at least for now my workstation is a Macintosh, but with a little time I can make it useable, or hopefully “upgrade” to something better.
After that first lesson, we went over to ACB to lay some network cable for some Supercomputers that are being installed. Didn’t actually hook them up – I think that gets done sometime tomorrow. Those monsters are outrageous – something like 4G of RAM and some hundreds of Gigabytes of drive space. I saw a guy sliding a drive in to one of ’em, he told me it was a 9G Ultra-SCSI. There was a row in that machine of those. The memory, he told me, is installed in 256M SIMMs … and the machines come in pairs of units each with 32 CPUs. Neat! I wondered later what kind of memory cache those CPUs were treated to.
As I was helping place the cable under the floor – 100M fast Ethernet for now, to be augmented by 800M HIPPI cable later, I couldn’t help but flash over to the future sometime when Asao might be telling the grandkids something along the lines of “Back around the turn of the century, your Grandfather actually layed network cable for some of those ‘supercomputers’ they had at NCSA.” Who knows, maybe I’m a little over-psyched about playing a small part in a historical era. Someday though, I know these very same supercomputers that are so exotic today will seem quite quaint by the standards of a future modern day. I however, will be able to remember the old days when a computer with 32 CPUs or hundreds of gigabytes of storage would have been something to babble about.
After dinner, I got up to DCL where SIGNet conducted a tour of “Node 1” with Charley Kline. It’s an exciting place where cable of all kinds run thick. I understood a good deal, a lot of it was kinda mystical to me. Basically Node 1 is a little bunker where a great many of the Campus’ telephone and telecommunications equipment is routed. Basically a significant part of the campus’ “nervous system” … fascinating. Unfortunately though I accidentally hit the hidden button in my camera that causes it to panic and rewind the film, so no pictures, sorry. Chris should have some on the digital, though to be sure it’s not that visually fascinating anyway.
I’m actually pretty excited about my paper for Rhet 143 for a change. I got a C+ on the last one, which I kind of blew off as a pretty gay assignment. This one though I’d hope for an A. It’ll be on the web too don’t worry, so I’ll not bother to talk about it much for now. Just like to say that I enjoyed “Peer Editing” this morning in class. Actually, I should tell the TA that much, I think it’d do much for her in terms of … whatever.
Speaking of spreading the word of knowledge, I got some most excellent and thoughtful words from Matt Malooly. I agree with him most whole-heartedly. Here is a dude who has much the same beliefs as my own, only he can express them in a more coherent manner. All things in equal opposition, I’ve also been talking with Casey about her Religion, and was even questioned most insightfully on my beliefs by roommate Pat, who is part of the Campus Organised Christian scene. I appreciated his questioning, as for the time his intent was not at all to convert me or anything, but to get a genuine perspective on my beliefs. I was heartening.
Well, I could babble on forever about what a wonderful time I’ve been having of late, how I relish the increasingly busy schedule I face. Well, hey an occasionally Nihilistic guy like myself has to keep hisself outta trouble ya know! But anyways you readers gotta like occasional
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https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/03/27/oh-what-a-beautiful-day/
It is such a beautiful day today one would prefer to do no work at all. So I’m reluctant to write here. It’s 6:14PM right now, I’m over at EnterAct working for the evening. I figured I’d write here as I haven’t in a few days.
Yesterday I got a postcard from Detroit! It was from Asao, from the airport. Today I got a letter from Washington DC. Yep, girlfriend again. She’s cool. Said she saw a movie and it made her think of me.
To be honest, I haven’t been thinking of her so much. There’s a bit more to occupy me here. I tried upgrading mom’s hard drive. Oh, it did not go very pretty. Oh well, next time I know better. Fuck Microsoft. But now she’s got Windows95. Caveat: if she wants any of her old data we have to swap hardware around and transfer it on to floppies.
Idea: I think we have that old ‘386 …. it could use a big-arse 504M hard disk!
I got a haircut today. They sort of styled it all funny and whatnot. It don’t matter so much to me since I just wanted shorter hair anyway, and it’s shorter now, so like, there is conclusion.
The A1200 returned yesterday. I don’t know quite why, maybe because it spins up slower, but the second hard drive doesn’t get recognized. Oh well. 700M on the internal should be more than enough. What I want though is my old data on the other partition. It contains what would be the Dannyland Graphics Archives had they not crashed and burned last week.
Asao should be back in Urbana now. In fact I know she is as I’ve received email from my lovely lady. She has much studying to do prior to a bunch of exams net week. Economics and Economics with a little bit of Business Managements and Economics to make things interesting. Poor dear. She’s got nearly four, well now three solid days to study though.
So what do I do with the page from here? Well, I want to write a friends section where friends will be able to edit what it says about them. Look good for an employer if nothing else. I think if I can also get a guest book system going, along the lines of “chat forum” about various topics I could toss out. Ahh, where to start? And where to go? When to end? How to go, where to end? Augh ’tis complicated!
Well, first I think I’ll make a customer error page for Dannyland. Ciao.
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