Journal 2000-04

Current entries

2000-04-30, Sun (Day 216, temperature at 07:53: 22.8°C, difference: +0.8°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,585, rank change: +53, total blocks tested: 60,731, overall rate: 780 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 132,299, odds change: +4,972): I dreamed that I was in a supermarket that looked like Acme but felt like Pathmark. I think the whole family was there. For some reason, I was taking twice as long to get my stuff. My family finished when I was only halfway done going through the aisles, which I told Dad about near the center of the store where the frozen food section is.

I went through more Netcenter mail today. Before dinner at 17:30, I was alerted to a large cloud of blue smoke in the east.

2000-04-29, Sat (Day 215, temperature at 07:57: 22.0°C, difference: +0.2°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,638, rank change: +68, total blocks tested: 60,452, overall rate: 779 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 127,327, odds change: -61,604): I dreamed that I woke up and there was this red checkout coupon list next to me. Out of probably four coupons, only one did not expire. I also had an appointment at Swat about the McCabe. The first time earlier, my entire family went with me but this time just Mom, Lauren, and I think Thomas went. They were in the basement where the library was when the misunderstanding occurred that they were going to wait there while I went for my appointment. I didn’t know this, so I was 20 minutes late to my 14:10 interview.

The way I got to my interview was kind of strange and related to the movie that I saw last night, “Being John Malkovich.” I needed to scale the wall of Kohlberg to the third floor and hang on to the lower “seventh” hinge while looking at this magazine hanging from the wall to activate a portal. In the movie, the seventh and a half floor contained a door that led to the mind of John Malkovich.

Sharples was closed for breakfast due to spring fling, so I instead went to confusing Tarble. There was confusion about one egg or two, the toaster was acting strange, and I had difficulty finding the toast spread even though I remembered that things like barbecue sauce are in the drink refrigerators. The toast spread turned out to be in the center area. At checkout I was over my meal credit at first but then I was O.K., and I almost left my drink sitting on the counter near where the grill is.

When I came to lunch today Tom noticed that my voice had a more serious tone to it and I explained that things seem to be very different now. The weather has suddenly turned much better today compared to the last few weeks.

On the Netcenter mail I finished reading the last of the dc-y2k digests today slightly after 15:00, which would be three months to the day between when I unsubscribed from the list and caught up. That three-month look ahead seems to be more like a look behind.

The on-campus movie last night was the last one for the semester under the non-19% budget cut imposed by the Student Budget Committee. I’m curious to see what movies are going to be shown next semester that are of the “Meatballs” quality, according to The Phoenix. Instead of a movie, Tom, Jesse, and I went up to Beardsley after dinner to rescan pictures of Tom and Tara.

It appears that OmniPage is one of those silly applications that does silly things, as the first time Tom tried scanning the images on Friday they scanned in color but they saved in black and white. So Tom tried the different saving options but they all gave equally non-color results, so I started fiddling around with Photoshop on the other scanning Mac and found the plug-in for the Epson scanner. After much running around in circles, such as scans that turned green at the last second, I finally got it to work. I also took out the red eye in one of the pictures manually, which was something considering I haven’t done this step before.

After this hour and twenty-minute scanning escapade, Jesse, Tom, and I wandered over to the amphitheater where Macbeth was showing. Then it was a chill on Parrish Beach with 1960s music supplied by another group of people that were there. Drew stopped by later.

After about an hour of this, we all split up to head back to our respective dorms.

2000-04-28, Fri (Day 214, temperature at 08:06: 21.8°C, difference: 0.0°C [yes, things really are staying the same], RC5-64 rank: 40,706, rank change: +29, total blocks tested: 60,124, overall rate: 778 KKeys/sec, rate change: -1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 188,931, odds change: +46,576, last day of classes): The E6 bridge trials were this afternoon in front of Trotter. Our group, Different Deck, placed third in the competition.

Before and after the bridge event, I was in Beardsley revising my physics lab report due at 17:00.

The engin barbecue was at 17:00 on the rugby field near Whittier Place.

2000-04-27, Thu (Day 213, temperature at 08:06: 21.8°C, difference: -0.2°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,735, rank change: +54, total blocks tested: 59,898, overall rate: 779 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 142,355, odds change: -3,779): I dreamed that by Saturday the high was going to be 100°F (37.8°C) and a few days later, 108°F (42.2°C), which would be an all-time record since Philadelphia’s old record high was 106°F (41.1°C). Right now, the highs are in the 50s and 60s (10°C to 21.1°C) along with rain, with 70s perpetually five days away.

Today was the last edition of The Phoenix for the semester and my last chance to be in an intro English class by Blackburn since he is retiring. The Phoenix staff meeting tonight was at least an hour and a half in the midst of a loud Spike staff working to get their publication done.

2000-04-26, Wed (Day 212, temperature at 08:06: 22.0°C, difference: -0.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,789, rank change: +41, total blocks tested: 59,599, overall rate: 778 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 146,134, odds change: +25,072): I took a two-hour nap early this afternoon and that improved things somewhat.

2000-04-25, Tue (Day 211, temperature at 08:13: 22.3°C, difference: +0.6°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,830, rank change: +78, total blocks tested: 59,300, overall rate: 777 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 121,062, odds change: +2,544): English today was optional in Kohlberg 117, so I used that time to work on physics in Cornell. It seems that the rainy cool weather is making the pollen stay on the trees, causing my nose to be runny.

I met with my SAM in the afternoon, then Abram in Parrish Parlors, and then back in Cornell to finish physics. I went to Beardsley public area tonight to write up the draft for the physics lab report.

2000-04-24, Mon (Day 210, temperature at 08:10: 21.7°C, difference: -0.1°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,908, rank change: +66, total blocks tested: 58,959, overall rate: 776 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 118,518, odds change: -12,582): I dreamed I was riding with play people from high school and Alyssa in this red van. My group had a hard time finding the way back to our van when we were done with the field trip. I also dreamed that I was powering up three iMacs in my room, but I was overloading my surge suppressor and UPS. The light above my head was dimming and the green lights on the UPS turned to yellow, red, and then the alarm started going off. Shutting down one of the iMacs, which led to a “It is now safe to switch off your Macintosh” message also shut the other two down, which I didn’t want to happen. Also the computers should have just turned off instead of requiring me to flip some manual switch, explaining the “It is now safe … ” message.

At the tennis center I got through all of the MedX machines in one workout for the first time today. I noticed that my arm muscles are developing well.

My E6 bridge group worked on the truss this afternoon and evening and now it is taking shape more since both sides are glued together. I went to the reading and study skills refresher course today at 17:00 before dinner. Since I had many things to do today, I didn’t have much time to do the last physics problem set, which also was the most complicated.

2000-04-23, Sun (Day 209, temperature at 08:09: 21.8°C, difference: -0.5°C, RC5-64 rank: 40,974, rank change: +57, total blocks tested: 58,653, overall rate: 775 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 131,100, odds change: -1,010): The main focus of today was the bridge construction for E6, which took most of the afternoon and part of the evening. I also got to the E6 problem set, but I wasn’t able to start physics yet.

2000-04-22, Sat (Day 208, temperature at 09:06: 22.3°C, difference: -0.2°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,031, rank change: +56, total blocks tested: 58,376, overall rate: 775 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 132,110, odds change: -73,580): I worked on reading more Netcenter mail today. The Mertz barbecue was this afternoon although the wet weather seemed to put a damper on it.

2000-04-21, Fri (Day 207, temperature at 08:08: 22.5°C, difference: +0.5°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,087, rank change: +20, total blocks tested: 58,077, overall rate: 774 KKeys/sec, rate change: -1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 205,690, odds change: +71,918): I dreamed I was in Tom’s class near the end of the semester; I think the class may have been at night. Tom showed a movie rather abruptly and the screen in Kohlberg 116 was on the other side of the room even though the window was still there. The group in the movie was outside some government buildings with Greek architectural columns. Someone in the group had a Pennsylvania sign that led to a few others in the class and I to make this whooping catcalling sound.

After the movie John was talking about how he sent an e-mail that he didn’t want to send. Tom saw it as no problem, simply choose revert from the message menu and command-J. I checked this morning and there isn’t a revert command in Eudora and command-J filters messages. I then received this green-faced plaque on dark wood. Everything else on my desk, which actually were trapezoid tables, had tape rolls on the back of them. Tom had some anecdote to give so he opened my notebook and wrote in some random place in another class’ notes. When I saw the saying I remembered it before, but I said that it was the kind of thing that I would immediately forget.

Next, I was in Tarble Gym for a major political convention. A few others and I arrived early to get a good seat. I was sitting near the top of the bleachers on the northwest side of the gym. Someone was kind enough to pass caffeinated and decaffeinated sodas around with multiple straws and there seemed to be plenty for the first few minutes. All of the cups and many if not all of the straws passed around were Coke red. Then, this water plaster mixture falls from the ceiling almost like it is raining about a meter to the right of me. It almost hit the guy sitting to my right since he was sitting just to the right of the mixture. One of the event organizers said to move away from the area especially if you are young since it contained asbestos. The person also mentioned it was actually less harmful if you touched the stuff than sitting in the room with the stuff for a prolonged period of time.

The reception desk of the tennis center received a Power Mac G4 today, which looked very stylish with the design of the rest of the building. I spent almost an hour and a half at lunch with Jesse and then John talking about my current situation.

There was a thunderstorm in the late afternoon before I went to dinner, which made the power flaky and caused my roommate’s UPS to beep. However the power didn’t go out.

2000-04-20, Thu (Day 206, temperature at 08:25: 22.0°C, difference: +0.7°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,107, rank change: +58, total blocks tested: 57,875, overall rate: 775 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 133,772, odds change: +1,472): I ran an hour behind this morning despite not having linear algebra and not having to come to English today since I came on Tuesday. I was able to put the online edition of The Phoenix up three hours earlier than normal with the extra time today. I also did the image, link, and validation tasks that I normally do on Fridays this afternoon and evening.

I had my interview for The Phoenix after dinner.

2000-04-19, Wed (Day 205, temperature at 08:10: 21.3°C, difference: -0.9°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,165, rank change: +67, total blocks tested: 57,552, overall rate: 774 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 132,300, odds change: -35,887): The seemingly perpetual rain stopped completely today and the sun came out. As a converse, my last physics lab was mostly in darkness due to the nature of the experiment. I worked on engin and read Netcenter mail tonight; both tasks had a limited amount of time to complete and both were done rather hastily.

2000-04-18, Tue (Day 204, temperature at 08:14: 22.2°C, difference: -1.1°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,232, rank change: +50, total blocks tested: 57,231, overall rate: 773 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 168,187, odds change: +45,772): I took a nap after lunch until meeting with my SAM for an hour. After the meeting I rested on the quiet second floor of Cornell.

The only academic work I did today was physics lab prep. I didn’t feel like doing anything today even though I bought and ate all this candy later this afternoon. In the evening I worked on Netcenter e-mail.

2000-04-17, Mon (Day 203, temperature at 08:09: 23.3°C, difference: +0.1°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,282, rank change: +72, total blocks tested: 56,982, overall rate: 773 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 122,415, odds change: -9,245): I dreamed I was in the Ridley High School TV Studio and I was going to read a Top Seven. It seemed like I haven’t done one in a while. I didn’t have time to rewrite a submission, so I needed to read it from this small piece of green clay. The list was a very stupid one where each item was only different from the previous by having a different internal number. The items were about pizzas and each item had a different number of pizzas (such as two, four, and five). When I got on the stage, the words weren’t readable anymore and all I saw on the clay was this ram-like animal. They cut the announcements off early (at about 08:11) and my back was to the camera so I didn’t read the list. They also turned the lights off before I left the stage. I said to John if I did need to read the list I would had to ad lib it, which I could had done since this list was so simple.

2000-04-16, Sun (Day 202, temperature at 07:38: 23.2°C, difference: +1.4°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,354, rank change: +48, total blocks tested: 56,682, overall rate: 772 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 131,660, odds change: -35,538): I dreamed I was driving through South Philly and it looked like it normally does although the streets hardly had any cars on them. I followed the street I was on too far west since it reached a point (without any sign telling me) that I was going to enter the Schuylkill Expressway, which I didn’t want to do. I think I backed up to avoid entering the highway.

Today was a nice day until right around dinner when the temperature dropped and a thunderstorm arrived. I did engin early this afternoon, worked on more Netcenter mail, pre-enrolled for next semester, and redesigned the archive page on The Phoenix Online leading to a 25% file size reduction.

2000-04-15, Sat (Day 201, temperature at 09:00: 21.8°C, difference: +0.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,402, rank change: +30, total blocks tested: 56,402, overall rate: 772 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 167,198, odds change: +12,347): I dreamed that I redid The Phoenix Online front page to look more like a section index page. Mom was commenting about it.

I mailed my Phoenix time slip and application for next semester this afternoon. While doing that, I ran into Justin who was taking pictures of the sports action in the intermittent rain today. I later ran into Nathan at Parrish.

I read Netcenter mail the rest of the night only interrupted by the movie “Blue Streak” that didn’t show at 19:30 due to “projectionist issues.”

The debaters and specs are now firmly over the campus. Inflatable, carnival-like structures were set up on the top of Parrish Beach near Tarble this afternoon for the specs. My roommate’s spec from Maryland arrived at around dinner.

2000-04-14, Fri (Day 200, temperature at 08:08: 21.5°C, difference: +0.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,432, rank change: +39, total blocks tested: 56,155, overall rate: 772 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 154,851, odds change: +4,026): This is the start of a busy weekend for the college. Prospective students started to arrive today and will stay through until classes on Monday. A national debate conference is also on campus and has taken over large lecture halls, delaying tonight’s movie in DuPont by a few minutes. The movie was “Scent of a Woman,” which was a very long movie, but was worth every minute of it as the subject was on the complicated side.

2000-04-13, Thu (Day 199, temperature at 08:10: 21.2°C, difference: -0.5°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,471, rank change: +44, total blocks tested: 55,883, overall rate: 772 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 150,825, odds change: +9,615): I dreamed that I was reading something that said in a complicated and confusing way that the French like clowns and I found that to be amusing at first, but I became sad because I then thought of Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown.” I was in the same windowless (or the shades completely covered them) gray colored room that I was in during a dream I had spring break. In that dream someone told me that “oak tree doesn’t love you anymore.” I was thinking about that statement during E6 today.

I also dreamed that I woke my roommate up this morning by not remembering to plug my headphones in before playing music.

English today was in the Kohlberg 117 computer lab. The rest of the day continued in a routine fashion.

2000-04-12, Wed (Day 198, temperature at 08:12: 21.7°C, difference: +0.4°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,515, rank change: +59, total blocks tested: 55,603, overall rate: 771 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 141,210, odds change: -23,233): The tennis center turned on its sound system today, which was fairly good. Physics lab today was very involved. While walking back from lab to Mertz, I stopped and talked about housing to Jeremy and Kai. I started linear algebra before the housing lottery, which was at 19:30 in Tarble Gym. Jesse, John, Tom, and I got our first choice, Willets South 305 and 309.

2000-04-11, Tue (Day 197, temperature at 08:17: 21.3°C, difference: 0.0°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,574, rank change: +41, total blocks tested: 55,301, overall rate: 770 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 164,443, odds change: -18,251): I dreamed that someone sitting in front to the left of me was trying to attract people by flirting, I think in Sharples.

Today was still rushed since I needed to do several things and didn’t have much time to do them. I did manage to get a ranked list of the housing options sent out to my future roommates, but I got to bed sometime after 24:00.

2000-04-10, Mon (Day 196, temperature at 08:09: 21.3°C, difference: -1.5°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,615, rank change: +25, total blocks tested: 55,037, overall rate: 770 KKeys/sec, rate change: -1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 182,694, odds change: +15,808): Today was one of those rush days where everything was compressed and by the end of the day I just felt bitter and burned out. I started going to the Mullan Tennis Center to use the MedX machines today so that way I am ready to lift computers for the summer Computing Center job. So now I don’t have that time to do work between engin and physics. Before engin lab that was the full afternoon, I made up the formula sheet for tonight’s engin exam. After lab I did the physics problem set so I could go over it after the exam with my tutor and then I did the paper draft for English around dinner.

I went to Hicks early for the exam. The rest of the class and I were giddy before the exam since it sort of was no fun taking it.

I crashed in the period following the 19:00 exam, which ended before 21:00. I recovered somewhat in Cornell before I met Abram for physics help at 21:30. I starting thinking about what went wrong.

2000-04-09, Sun (Day 195, temperature at 07:06: 22.8°C, difference: -0.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,640, rank change: +36, total blocks tested: 54,836, overall rate: 771 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 166,886, odds change: +18,061): Well, believe it or not, I woke up and it was snowing. The asphalt was not well covered but the grass had about an inch or two of snow on it. The flakes were rather large considering how warm it still really is. The snow was heavy enough to make visibility poor so for a period of time I couldn’t see Parrish or Willets from my window.

I went outside after lunch to take pictures of the quickly melting snow. The snow was almost completely gone by 14:00. However, around 15:30, a snowman that someone made earlier today was still there and I ran out to the Cunningham Fields to take pictures of it.

I finally installed TechTool Pro 2 early this evening but it has similarities to a Windows application unfortunately. Also, it wouldn’t optimize my main disk partition since the Virtual PC disk image was too large compared to the largest contiguous free block.

Since the engin problems are due on Tuesday at 17:00 with the exam tomorrow night, I read some Netcenter mail and went to bed, knowing that Monday and part of Tuesday are going to be difficult considering the amount of pending work.

2000-04-08, Sat (Day 194, temperature at 08:34: 23.1°C, difference: +1.2°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,676, rank change: +53, total blocks tested: 54,619, overall rate: 771 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 148,825, odds change: +2,889): Today was the first day where the high was above 70°F (21.1°C) recently, so I wore my new iMac T-shirt. Temple called this morning to continue with their survey and I got to quantitatively evaluate how my Swarthmore experience has been so far. I ate lunch with my family in Sharples, which was really crowded and humid since it is parent’s weekend.

I went through the files on my iMac to have enough space to backup so I could install TechTool Pro. I also went to see “Dogma” in LPAC, which is a satirical movie about religion.

2000-04-07, Fri (Day 193, temperature at 08:11: 21.9°C, difference: +0.7°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,729, rank change: +52, total blocks tested: 54,343, overall rate: 771 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 145,936, odds change: -4,237): I was walking to E6 this morning and when I got to the same spot at the Parrish circle yesterday, I saw my family pull up. Mom got out so we could walk to class.

I went to the open session that the Mullan Tennis Center is offering now since it just opened on Monday. The new MedX machines were the focus of the session. These machines have more options but are more confusing and less intuitive than the Nautilus machines. Also, since everything is brand new, there are many rules such as the ID check so that only Swarthmore College faculty, staff, and students can use the building, no book bags in the fitness room, and you need to wipe down the machines after each use.

The building is not yet done. I saw electrical outlets without covers, the exterior still needs work, and the fitness room seems cramped since there are so many machines in there. Also the noise level in the fitness room is a little on the high side since the designers didn’t add a drop ceiling; instead the girders and sheet metal roof are exposed and painted black. Overall, the air quality was good and the building feels nice.

The tennis center also has its own AppleTalk zone now, “SC Mullan EN,” which is right below my local Mertz zone. Checking the zone list on Saturday morning, I also see some zones I don’t remember seeing before, “SC Forum EN” and “SC PIX EN.” I’m not too sure what these zones are for, and none of the “new” zones have any AppleShare volumes on them. Also, this morning (Friday) there were several spools of coaxial cable on the north lawn. Before I went to lunch, workers were running those cables between Kohlberg and LPAC.

This afternoon Joe, David, and I worked on the MATLAB code for our E6 lab draft due on Wednesday.

2000-04-06, Thu (Day 192, temperature at 08:08: 21.2°C, difference: -1.8°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,781, rank change: +39, total blocks tested: 54,057, overall rate: 770 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 150,173, odds change: -3,885): I dreamed I was in a classroom. We were to find partners as in relationship partners.

I had a linear algebra test this morning and I didn’t think it was too nice so I’ll have to see about that. When I was walking to Cornell in the afternoon, I saw my family pull up in Parrish east circle. We talked about parents’ weekend coming up.

2000-04-05, Wed (Day 191, temperature at 08:16: 23.0°C, difference: -0.6°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,820, rank change: +47, total blocks tested: 53,777, overall rate: 770 KKeys/sec, rate change: 0 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 154,058, odds change: -1,249): I dreamed that I was in the Ridley Middle School and I was in a classroom. The class was about to write an essay, but I didn’t do the prerequisite writing homework. A classmate accused the teacher of saying something but his accusation was untrue, leading me or somebody else to say that people will just twist other’s words around to fit with what they want to hear. Around this point I jumped to the area in front of the Camp Innabah dining hall in fifth grade. There was this budding sapling that our group (I think all guys) had won as a contest, but we weren’t too thrilled about it even though I think we should have been.

Back at the middle school, after saying the last comment about people hearing things, several of my teeth including a molar fell out. Some of them seemed rotten and there was a fair amount of blood in my hand. I excused myself and tried to find the nurse’s office. For some reason I walked by it and was heading towards the lobby, but these floor-to-ceiling metal grates that I couldn’t open when they were closed separated it. I headed part of the way back and then went through the grate when some students had opened it by just them walking through. When I got to the lobby, I saw a checkpoint so I headed back.

Next, I was in an old blue house with a blond haired tall guy and a woman. I finally got cleaned up, but I think it happened in a room of the house instead of the middle school nurse’s office. I also noticed that when I was inside the house there were these symbols on the palms of my hand when my teeth fell out. My left palm had these black and white horizontal connected boxes with words on them and my right palm had some sort of red marking and black writing, only it was backwards. I was going to say something about it, but after I washed my hands to take care of my mouth and teeth, they were gone.

An older lady was the resident of the house. The guy tries to shut the front door on us since if he shut the door while he was inside and the lady was outside, it became his house and the lady would have nowhere to go. This applies not in a legal sense, but in more of a spiritual sense. This realization was not stated by anyone, but each person with the possible exception of the older lady knew that fact. The woman and I pushed on the door so he couldn’t shut it and then we got him out and allowed the lady to reenter. I don’t think the lady said a word the entire time, and she may have been a ghost.

This is such a complicated dream that I’m going to write-in some interpretation. The grates represent established order and I can only break free from it if the populace opens the door. When I do try to leave, I will see that there are too many physical obstacles, so I will essentially teleport to some random location, like I did in my dream. At that new location, I will have the assistance of wisdom (older lady), technical (tall guy with blond hair), and my significant other (woman). The technical will try to kick out wisdom and my significant other and I will fight technical to allow wisdom to prevail.

2000-04-04, Tue (Day 190, temperature at 08:15: 23.6°C, difference: +0.7°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,867, rank change: +51, total blocks tested: 53,502, overall rate: 770 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 155,307, odds change: -34,334): I had a dream that I was explaining to Brendan in a visual sort of fashion the changes I wanted to make to The Phoenix Online front page when I will rewrite it. Right now I want to move away from huge tables, simplify the attributes in the section horizontal rules to just a left align, and have the news and opinions teases be under each other instead of side by side. The remaining sections would have text wrapping around the image if necessary instead of staying in a block. I also would try and get the default text size to be about the same on Mac and Windows.

I starting doing on-campus housing research in general today and found that in order for our group of four to get two doubles near each other, our best chance right now looks like Willets since more sophomores are in that dorm currently.

I met Nelson, my academic advisor, this afternoon to tell him what my planned courses are for next semester. Afterwards, I went to Helene’s office to get more linear algebra questions answered.

I sent out various housing e-mails at night, one to my housing group about the research I did today and a message to select Willets dwellers about the quality of life in that dorm.

2000-04-03, Mon (Day 189, temperature at 08:12: 22.9°C, difference: +1.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,918, rank change: +11, total blocks tested: 53,228, overall rate: 769 KKeys/sec, rate change: -1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 189,641, odds change: +15,267): E6 lecture today was quite different than normal. Faruq had two people each put one homework problem on the board. Melaku explained his problem and then Faruq called two other people up after his explanation to go over the problem. We ran out of time before we even got to the second problem.

I had my interview at 09:30 for the Summer Tech Support Associate position with the Computing Center.

2000-04-02, Sun (Day 188, temperature at 07:04: 21.6°C, difference: -0.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,929, rank change: +40, total blocks tested: 53,037, overall rate: 770 KKeys/sec, rate change: -1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 174,374, odds change: -15,022, Daylight Savings Time starts at 02:00, spring forward): I dreamed that someone came in and asked me where Luke was and she asked if he was on the farm, which he probably is. He left Friday afternoon and would be returning on Sunday afternoon at 3:48 p.m., which I said exactly. Two women actually did stop by yesterday afternoon from Baltimore and asked where Luke was, and I didn’t know at that point.

Today I worked on getting all the summer experiences on the Engin 2004 web site. Then, I put the March journal file on my site and then I removed the extra tables from the front page of The Phoenix Online. This last task soon became frustrating since the code is very fragile and making a change so the page displayed correctly in one browser would cause problems in one or more of the other three testing configurations. The Windows browsers however were more forgiving in rendering the HTML though. I worked on the engin in the evening.

2000-04-01, Sat (Day 187, temperature at 08:52: 21.9°C, difference: +0.3°C, RC5-64 rank: 41,969, rank change: +44, total blocks tested: 52,829, overall rate: 771 KKeys/sec, rate change: +1 KKeys/sec, odds of finding the key: 1 in 189,396, odds change: -1,616, April Fools Day): I dreamed I was with my family at Wawa on Morton Ave in Ridley. I was looking for a Snickers bar but couldn’t find it since it was replaced by Easter candy. I went to a different aisle and saw oatmeal cookies for about $4, but I thought they were too expensive so I got something else from the aisle the Snickers was on. Dad was buying several bottles of cream or something in a carton of milk and I asked him if it was fine to buy that much, which it was. A gallon of apple cider was also thrown in. The second clerk had a large rainbow of colors Apple Computer sticker on her smock slightly below her neck. However, the sticker was peeling off.

Today, the first April Fools prank I noticed was petroleum jelly under the front door handle of Mertz. Other pranks I saw after tonight’s movie included the upside down signs in Parrish. The east center stairwell also had rope tied through the center area, forming a nice pattern.

I saw “Dirty Dancing” tonight in DuPont, which is a really good movie.

It seems like the things that normally don’t work well actually did work very well on April Fool’s. The clothes dryers worked noticeably well, Network Neighborhood just started working again, and there were no movie projector failures tonight.

Journal 2000-03