When I tell people I meet that I live in Minnesota a not infrequent reaction is “how can you stand living there? Isn’t it always cold and snowy?”
Personally, I could handle a little more snow and cold. Besides, if I didn’t live here I wouldn’t wake up to views like these:
I love ya Minnesota, you’re beautiful.
12:05 AM - Try to fall asleep.
06:40 AM - After restless night get up for 8 AM final.
07:00 AM - Choke down breakfast and drive to campus.
07:10 - 08:00 AM - Read through notes one more time.
08:15 - 09:20 AM - Final, harder than expected, but OKish, did better on final paper than anticipated.
09:30 AM - Get to work, feel miserable, but happy to be done.
10:30 AM - Decide to leave work early once co-worker comes at 12:30.
12:00 PM - Co-worker calls, wife has flat, will be in late. Decide to wait.
01:30 PM - Throw up, take that as a sign to go home.
01:45 - 02:45 PM - Spend most of hour in bathroom feeling sick, time outside spent reading Calvin & Hobbes to feel better.
03:00 - 06:00 PM - Sleep, bliss.
06:30 - 07:30 - Laris comes home and makes dinner (I <3 you Laris)
08:45 PM - Write this post. Generally feel woozy, but very happy to be done and looking forward to break. I survived, woot.
“That just about brings us up to date” 
One final down (Advanced Computer Architecture, it was okish), one to go. 8 AM tomorrow morning (bleh), not that I’m counting hours or anything.
Title really says it all. In 48 hours I’ll be done with all this non-sense.
Ugh. The last few days I’ve been desperately trying to to get myself motivated to study for my two finals, but I almost can’t make myself do it. I’m just too damned tired. I’ve been running on fumes for too long.
Even when I do make myself study, the information just flows over me without leaving any comprehension behind. At this point I’m just hoping to do well enough to keep my grade oin each classes intact (I’ve worked too damned hard to have them slip now) so that I can get some damn rest. Three more days, I just have to survive three more days…
Strange as it may seem, but after all these years together Laris and I have never had a Christmas tree. When we lived in the dorms there was no room, shortly after which we got our cats and we we’re sure they’d trash it. We probably would have had one last year except that we’d just moved back to St. Cloud and were too tired. This year would have gone the same way except Laris insisted we set up a tree, so here it is the first Christmas tree in our relationship, woot:)
I have a picture for you, and a little challenge. What is this laptop case made out of?
Any guesses? Painted metal? Plastic with a stick-on skin? Or is it what it looks like? Is it actually wood? That laptop my friends is made out of… bamboo!
Normally this kind of thing would be an after market alteration made by one of the myriad of case modders, but in this case the laptop in question is actually a product of a major manufacturer: Asus.
In an effort to find green alternatives in computing Asus is evaluating bamboo as an option for their forthcoming Eco book line. Bamboo is abundant, flexible, attractive and strong, as such it covers a lot of the needs of a substance suitable for a laptop.
What’s unclear at this point are bamboo’s thermal properties when subjected to microprocessor heat and its durability, particularly in regards to localized impacts — it is prone to breaking when subjected to blunt trauma I believe.
What is known (in my mind at least) is that it’s amazingly cool; my hat’s off to Asus for coming up with something that is as functional as it is beautiful and that’s made with a (more) renewable resource all at the same time, bravo.
More info about the Eco book available at Reuters.
Being unfortunately saddled with doing web development on Windows I’ve had to come to live with Windows pathetic idea of a terminal, cmd. Since Microsoft apparently doesn’t see value in producing a terminal utility of any real value, cmd is next to worthless, particularly when compared with any *nix terminal application. After suffering through a few months of cmd I decided to look for alternatives. Although Cygwin jumps out as the immediate option, I wanted something a little more lightweight and easier to administer. After some searching I was delighted to find a solution, that while not perfect, addresses most of my needs: UnxUtils.
UnxUtils is a native port of GNU *nix utils that can be used in cmd. The overall user experience of cmd is sadly not improved by this, nor is every tool you’d find in a *nix terminal included, but what UnxUtils does offer it does well and it makes cmd use at least tolerable.
Today was the last day of classes. Let me repeat that, today was the last day of classes! That means no more homework, no more lectures, nothing left to do but finals. Booya! What’s more the class that I had today barely counted. We handed in our final papers, mentioned that the final is in a week and left. Now if only I didn’t have any finals…
The view of the Mississippi from our kitchen window was spectacular this morning and it was made all the better by the silhouette of Morgana nestled in her cat tree. Sadly my camera doesn’t do it justice:
