Back in the day, if we wanted to transfer data between our computers (avoiding the slow Internet) we would just go over ethernet. Nowadays, we go over the wifi.

At one point in time, we had a very crappy laptop lacking a network or wifi card. Oh, and the CD drive was broken. I put some stuff on it using 3.25" disks and later using a flash memory stick (though the laptop was running 98, so I first had to copy over drivers on 3.25" disks). It was a collosal pain.

Yet earlier today, I observed some of my housemates, both on the same wifi network, transferring music between their laptops using first a flash memory stick and--when that proved inconveniently small--an external hard drive.

The moral of the story: Some people don't know how to setup webservers, sshd, or the like, and their lives are, consequently, miserable. Barely worth living, one could argue.

Dearest Senecans,
http://192.168.1.171/music/

(I've been meaning to configure a dyndns thing for my laptop, but have yet to do so, and how often do people here need to access my webserver, anyway?)

Last meeting, we decided on a new way to do officer reports: email.

But people objected to getting eight email messages every other week. (An average of 0.57 messages per day, tending toward the last couple days before the meeting. OMG, so much email!) Sign up for the digest version of the mailing list, maybe? No, instead officers will all send their reports to the Trustee who will manually combine them into a single report (which, of course, will be as long as all individual reports combined anyway). Result: more work for Trustee, less up-to-date reports (they have to be sent to the Trustee nearly four days before the meeting to which they apply), the inability to mark individual reports as read/starred/flagged/etc., and one more important point I just stumbled over:
Our Labour Czar's report had something I wanted to reply to. I had three options:
* Not use email. Presumably this is what the technophobes who wanted the manual digestation method would have used, but that's much less efficient: our Labour Czar isn't here right now and what I have to say IS, whereas the precise details of it may flee from my mind at any moment. I may not see him all day, or only when one of us is busy.
* Hit reply, sending my reply to the Trustee who could then manually forward it to the Labour Czar eventually--possibly in time.
* Look up the Labour Czar's email address on the UT website, c/p his school address to my email client (hoping it's the address he uses, and that it's the right him), c/p the relevant portion of the original email to my reply, turn it into quoted text, and then type and send my reply.

Technophobia has costs. If you're a senior honours student at a somewhat prestigious university, I think I'm justified in expecting better.

[For non-Senecans: The Hobart LX-18 is our sanitizer. You wash your dishes, put them in the Hobart tray, and put it into the Hobart when full. We have two Hobart trays so we can have one go through (which is very fast) while one is being loaded.]

Dear Senecans,
You have just washed your dishes (Thank you! You are my hero!) and now are faced with a choice. The Hobart tray by the sink is full. The other one is probably in the Hobart, full of sanitized dishes in need of unloading. Do you:
1. Remove the clean tray from the Hobart and put the new one in.
2. Pile the dishes between the sink and the Hobart tray to be loaded into the next available tray.
3. Pile your dishes precariously atop the already full Hobart tray, making it impossible to move, so that when some responsible person decides to run it through the Hobart, they must first partially unload the tray, undoing all your careful balancing.

Choosing option 1 makes you wonderful. It does lead to another choice--put the tray currently in the Hobart on the island to be unloaded by the community as time allows and needs require (leaving your dishes the same as in option 2), or be highly ambitious and unload the clean one yourself, then use it for your dishes. This makes you doubly wonderful.

Choosing option 2 is the correct choice if you lack the few seconds required for option 1 or if numerous people before you have already chosen option 3, making the tray immobile until partially unloaded (unless you have the time and inclination to be our kitchen fairy).

If you chose option 3, congratulations: you are an American! Why do more than is absolutely required for you, right?

Love,
A Kitchen Fairy

Last night, our dumpster was emptied.

However, there's been a mattress standing up behind it for a while, and apparently it fell down while the dumpster was being dumped.

Result: very wobbly dumpster on a springy mattress on raised concrete, so anyone (well, many people) could just tip it over into the street. Maybe it would fall itself once filled (as filling would mostly be toward the front, probably.)

Initially my plan was to stick a couple cinderblocks under the hanging front end, but they weren't quite the right height, and I noticed it was actually light enough that I could manually tilt the dumpster up on one edge about 30 degrees--enough to get it pretty much completely off the mattress.

I couldn't, however, pull the mattress out while holding up the dumpster. Propping it up with the cinderblock on end held it high enough, but blocked the mattress in.

Luckily, Ayla showed up, and she pulled the mattress up while I tilted the dumpster off it.

So 'lifted a dumpster' goes on my list of accomplishments for the day. Not bad.

Oct 31: ICC General Membership Meeting. Hey ya’ll, the meeting is scheduled for Sat Nov. 15th. Be there, or be tagged “uncooperative.” --Jenn from the office

Great! I'll be there. What time? And where?

Nov 12: Get hyped for some ICC charades at the General Membership meeting on November 16th on the deck of Hillel from 2:30-4:30. -- ICC Ed. Coordinator

Great! Where's Hillel? (Google gives the address of a 'Texas Hillel' as 'The Drag', which covers about ten square blocks) And, wait...November 16?

The three things that should always be known about a meeting:
* Who - This has been explained. everyone in ICC. That includes me. Shiny.
* Where - This has been vaguely established.
* When - This is unclear.

My education feels uncoordinated.

UPDATE (before I even posted this): I went to the ICC office for other matters (open on a weekend? Amazing!) and asked the person working there when the meeting was. She told me Sunday, and showed me the flyer posted on the office door. She, however, had no clue at all what or where 'Hillel' was. I told her what I had determined using the magic that is Google, so now at least one member of the ICC staff(-like people) knows where the meeting is.

Earlier, I felt tingly, and then cold sweatish and then slight lightheadedness, so I was like, 'Hmmm...I'll be like that moron on Google's Testimonials page who thought she was having a heart attack so she finished walking home, Googled the symptoms, and then called an ambulance'.

So I read the symptom list for heart attacks (which I already knew, but why not?), and was like 'Hmmm, that's me to a large extent' so I mentioned this to Bryan just in case I suddenly passed out. (Actually, a bit before mentioning it to Bryan, I typed 'Gee, I hope I'm not having a heart attack.' into an IRC tab, but didn't send it. 'Luca's passed out! Let's look at what he was writing in IRC. Looks like maybe he was having a heart attack.' See, just in case.)

Anyway, over the next minute or two it got worse and lightheadedness got bad and vision blurred, so Bryan was going to drive me to the hospital (having just Googled where to find such an institution), but 1. oh noes! a bunch of cars parked behind him in the driveway and 2. I didn't make it to the car. So he called the ambulance while I lay on the driveway (where I found myself alone upon awaking) with my feet up on his car, feeling better because, well, I was lying down with my feet raised (clever of me to think to put my feet up, eh? I'm like a doctor or something).

Eventually the ambulance came and checked my blood pressure, which was fine, and my blood sugar, which was fine, and something involving various electrode thingies, which were fine, and said 'You seem fine, but we can do a cardiogram-like-thing (not their term, but something like that) if you want and I was all 'yeah, probably a good idea' so they did and said 'You're not having a heart attack' and I was 'then screw the hospital. I'm actually feeling essentially fine by now anyway!'

Long story short: I'm alive and exceptionally healthy, with the exception of the rare bout of feeling faint and passing out, which hopefully won't happen again because I kind of run a chainsaw for a living right now, and those things can be dangerous, I'm told.

By the way, in the 'gee, I'm having a heart attack' moment, I was actually less concerned with making sure my brother (or someone trustworthy) would have access to my passwords and more concerned with deleting data that should die with me.

The moral of the story is: encrypt what you want to die with you and encrypt with a different key the data that shouldn't.

And Bryan says next time this happens, none of this sitting around Googling. Hospital.

You know how recipes first list all the ingredients and then say 'Mix these two, and then add such and such' and the like? if you have sugar and butter, for example, you always mix them together first (or maybe with eggs if that's also an ingredient).

Well, I usually don't get around to reading past the ingredients list until too late. And I don't worry about doing things in an order that makes sense to me, either. I'll think to myself 'I'm probably supposed to do these two together first' or 'don't put the baking soda in too soon!' but then I'll just go ahead and toss the ingredients all in and then mix.

I've watched a lot of Good Eats, so I know better. I'll modify recipes to my liking. (For the cookies I just made, I was going to add salt because you should always put salt in most anything you bake--sadly, I forgot. I do that a lot.)

But I usually don't really think about things much when cooking. It'll work out, I always assume.

Luckily, given enough sugar, cookies still taste okay.

OMG, I am delighted by how things just went down with the Hobart LX18H, Seneca's dish sanitiser. It's because I'm crazy. You don't care. So here's a related rant to keep you entertained. Or not.

When loading silverware into the dishwasher or sanitiser, always put the pointy ends down. Because people trip and fall and gore themselves on pointed-up utensils and get blood all over the nice clean dishes. Sad. They also cough (covering their mouth) and pick their noses and have colds while/right before taking the clean dishes out. You want them touching the handle of the silverware you're going to use, not the part that goes in your mouth. (Note: if you just picked your nose, wash your hands, and if you have a cold, shunt this job off to someone else, even if the silverware is properly loaded.)

Anyhoo, in addition to this, the small silverware container we use is shaped thusly:

 _______
| |__|__|
|_|__|__|

So I like to sort things. Easier unloading. The big section is for miscellany--sharp knives, spatulas, etc. Then knives go in one of the middle sections, and either forks or spoons in the other middle one, reserving the last two for whichever is more plentiful: forks or spoons.

Usually spoons win after breakfast and forks after lunch. For dinner during interim, it's probably forks, but when meals are prepared it can go either way.

On Friday at lunch, I was a bit insane. We had lots of spoons and a paltry three forks. Things fit properly, but I was saddened by how empty the fork section was. We needed to use some forks! Luckily, Michael used one, which helped slightly.

Today, though! Just now! We had lots and lots of spoons and ZERO forks. All three of those things are filled with spoons spoons and more spoons.

But the tray wasn't full. We had all the silverware we needed, but not enough plates/bowls/cups, a very unusual situation. Usually there are half a dozen to be found.

Anyway, I grabbed some dirty cups and ate a bowl of cereal. Result: an essentially full Hobart tray with three sections of silverware and zero forks

This is big.

Okay, it's not that big.

Okay, so it's totally lame. But I totally own that kitchen, and the Hobart. I make my own excitement on the weekend.

Well, it's official: they've succeeded in replacing a parking lot with eight stories of people who own cars. What could possibly go wrong?

My tiny one-way street now has two layers of cars parked on the far side, and by 'far side', I mean the right lane and the centre lane.

I've never double-parked. It always seemed like something only a complete asshole or someone in an emergency situation would do. You're a college freshman. You can walk one goddamn block.

I just saw The Dark Knight at the IMAX. It was good. Afterwards, I was tempted to be a complete asshole and shout to all the people in line for the next showing 'Hey, Bruce Wayne is Batman!' Completely spoil the movie for them. But I didn't. I'm too nice.

Anyway, this isn't much of a blog post, but I needed to post it. Trying to make sure I get a full 12 dollars of utility from that ticket.

I probably did. Good film. Mediocre blog post. Answer other than 'washed dishes' for when people ask me if I did anything fun over the weekend.

I don't know why some people think washing dishes isn't fun.

I just saw a line of birds flying, but I saw them through some branches, and my first thought was 'COSMIC STRING!' But then the entire solar system wasn't immediately destroyed.

So in retrospect, this is one time when I'm glad I was wrong.

You know how if you can't cook then you're too stupid to live?

I was afraid I might be like that earlier today, but turns out I'm not.

I made cinnamon rolls. But there are twenty people living here, so I doubled the recipe. Except:
* I used two packets of yeast, probably making 2 or 4 tbsp instead of six.
* I rolled the thing out in a messy non-rectangle.
* I used Smart Balance instead of butter/margarine.
* I put the Smart Balance directly into the filling, rather than spreading and sprinkling. Then I added extra sugar because it wasn't spreading evenly and needed more filler.
* I used a pan that was not 9"*9" or 9"*18", but something rectangular.
* I put them in the over and forgot to note when I put them in.
* I got out the powered sugar for the topping and then put in table sugar without thinking. Then I added water because I didn't want milk.
* Then I added powdered sugar anyway. And more water.

But they came out great. Everyone loved them. 'Everyone' being about five people who were here. Nearly everyone was away today.

But, see, this merely emphasises my point from August. Even if you don't follow the recipe, things usually turn out fine. Cooking's easy. Don't leave meat raw and what can go wrong?

(You know how on Food Network people comment how baking requires precise measurements? LIES!)

(This is what blog posts are supposed to look like. Stupid ramblings about my day.)

This morning, I superglued my fingers together. I was trying to repair my earplugs, but the glue wasn't coming out, so I squeezed really hard, and it all shot out. Apparently the way superglue works is to heat way up and then rapidly cool down and stick. For fingers, this means blisters from the heat followed by a painful pulling apart of the stuck digits.

On the way home, I had to run to the bus for my transfer, 'cause it was about a block ahead of the 27 instead of the usual block behind. Sadly, I somehow dropped my bus pass. I considered going back to look for it, but by the time it occurred to me, I'd already paid the 0.50USD fare, and it was going to expire in a week. (It's 10USD for a month pass.) But! Morgan from ECorps saw me drop it and she got off, found it, and brought it to my house for me. Nice to know I'm not the only person this cheap. :-)

The middle of the day was hours of using mattocks to clear trench along a path at Southwest Key. Tired now.

Upon waking this morning, I glanced at my watch. '07:15am'. Oh, gevalt! I overslept by more than an HOUR!

So I quickly, got dressed, grabbed a bag of banana and a cereal for breakfast and lunch, and ran out to the bus stop, where I brushed my hair and ate a banana as I waited for the bus.

Where's the bus? Glance my watch: 07:15am. I should call them to say I might be late, but there's no payphone and I haven't a Handy.

Glance my watch: 07:20am. Ah, good, it's supposed to be here in three minutes. Some people from work drive by and shout my name. 'Hey, I could use a ride!' But they're gone. Curses!

Glance my watch: 7:25am. Where's the bus? It's late. Pace. The Night Owl bus shows up. Strange that it's running at 7:30am, but it goes where I need to go, so I board. The clock up front is flashing '1:30'. Ha, I wish. No one there from whom I can borrow a Handy to say I'm going to be late. Just two homeless guys.

Glance at my watch: 7:40am. Wait...for the past six years I've had my watch set to UTC (essentially Greenwich Mean Time). 7:40am in England is 1:40am here. It suddenly dawns on me what a colossal idiot I am.

So I get off the bus and walk thirteen blocks home. I'm not going back to bed and oversleeping for real. At least I went to bed early, so I got half a night's sleep.

Good thing I didn't have a Handy. Would've left some interesting messages.

I made lasagne for supper.
Same recipe I always use, even though there are now four people instead of six.

However, though I used the same amount of dough, I think I used more cheese than usual.

We had no parmesan, so I used extra mozzarella. As in, more than half of a 2LB bag. The whole bag was supposed to be 32 servings, so I'm guessing I used about 20 servings.

Roughly 1.8lb of tomato sauce. (~13 servings). Basically, one large can.

Roughly 1.5lb of cottage cheese. (6 servings). One container.

We had a little lasagne left over (what I'd consider a decent serving), despite my probably eating over a third of it. Meaning I got about eight servings of cheese.

When I was three, perhaps, my brother went to Montessori school. Since my mother sometimes helped out there, so too did I at times.

For those not in the know:
Montessori school is a very 'laissez faire' type of school. They had various 'stations' the kids would visit of their own accord, visiting them all, but perhaps focusing on those they found most interesting. Something like that. I don't remember what all the stations were, but I know two of them:
* The painting station, where you'd get your brushes and paints, paint a picture, and then when you were done wash off your brushes.
* The snack station where you'd get peanut butter crackers.

Visiting all the different stations, of course, as delightful as it sounds, was not what I did. I'd go to the painting station, get my brushes and paints, paint a picture, wash off my brushes, and then head over to the snack station for peanut butter crackers. When I was done eating, I'd go back to the painting station, get my brushes and paints, paint a picture, wash off my brushes, and then head over to the snack station for peanut butter crackers. When I was done eating, I'd go back to the painting station, get my brushes and paints, paint a picture, wash off my brushes, and then head over to the snack station for peanut butter crackers. When I was done eating, I'd go back to the painting station, get my brushes and paints, paint a picture, wash off my brushes, and then head over to the snack station for peanut butter crackers. When I was done eating, I'd go back to the painting station, get my brushes and paints, paint a picture, wash off my brushes, and then head over to the snack station for peanut butter crackers. When I was done eating, I'd go back to the painting station, get my brushes and paints, paint a picture, wash off my brushes, and then head over to the snack station for peanut butter crackers.

You get the picture.

My mom ended up homeschooling us.

Yesterday the power company had curtailable customers cut power usage by 2.5%, and expect that later this week they'll have to go to the next level, 5%.

The step after that is 'rotating feeder and substation blackouts'. They don't think that'll happen.

Anyway, I turned off my fan. It's possible the air conditioner is downstairs, so I may go sit in that room and read.

(My laptop suddenly turned off earlier this week. I suspect it was overheated. I turned it back on immediately, though We've been getting over 100f, and over 110 with the heat index.)

I usually over-pay my credit card bill slightly. Having a slight credit doesn't hurt anything, right? Well, a few months ago two of them sent me checks. End of the fiscal year, I guess. The first one didn't say a thing about why they sent it. I didn't know what was going on until the second one came.

Just now I got a third one. This may be the last; I only have three or four credit cards. Anyway, this last one--from Washington Mutual--is for $0.01. They sent me a check for ONE CENT. La-di-FRICKIN-da! I'ma drive down to the bank right now and cash this baby!

Luca: She's reading the copyright page first.
Lilani, reading HP7: You always read the copyright page first.
Luca: Of course.
Lilani: I always do.

I was going to post about the hawk, but it was a boring story. Basically: hawk want birds in cage. People not want hawk to get birds. I stare at hawk and move the cage he's sitting atop. Hawk not kill me.

Happy ending!