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Call waiting. Some people may find it a convenience, but I do not. Call waiting was designed to allow people to take incoming calls just incase they were urgent. Nine times out of nine, this is untrue. In accordance to Murphy's law, a call coming through via call waiting is in fact inturrupting an urgent call. Maybe you're talking on the phone with your boss about some important deal that week, and a call comes through. Of course you'll go and check it out, maybe your mom's in the hospital or something. So you flip lines and a friendly voice on the other end greets you with "This is Bell Canada..". *groan* It then takes ten minutes to explain to the telemaketer that you've got an important call on the other line, but by then your boss has already hung up. Now take the flip side of the equation. You're eating dinner, and some telemarketer calls in asking you to do some sort of survey on some inane product or event that you'll never use or attend. While you're answering his/her questions like a broken record, Murphy's Law states that this call will not be inturuppted at any point during the survey, and only after the call is complete does your phone suddenly start accepting other calls from the outside world. Maybe there's some way to remotely turn off call waiting. In any case, call waiting is a bane to phone users everywhere! *shakes fist*
Now on a completely unrelated topic, I've been reading this feature series in the Toronto Star about obesity in our society. Okay, so I'm not exactly in the high risk catagory, but high cholestorol apparently does run in the family. Well, high something at least. Anyway, the main message so far is that obesity and sloth go hand in hand. How many of us have TV/VCR/anything electronic remotes? *raises hand* How many of us drive to work or take public transit? *raises hand* (Although public transit is not as bad.) How many of us go to work and stare at a computer screen for eight hours? *raises hand* Plus five hours after work? *raises hand* Pretty sad huh? So although I'm okay now, this type of lifestyle will catch up to me eventually.
It's a nice day today. I should've went biking, but I had to make it to work on time to pick something up. *sigh* Tomorrow then..
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Damnit! Now I remember what the heck was on my computer that can't be replaced. I was working on some code for the past couple of months (which is significant since I've only been working for a couple of months) and there aren't any copies of the code anywhere else here! Curses! Now what am I supposed to do?
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The porting of my site is complete. Actually, my site has been in it's new location for quite some time now (a couple of weeks) but I didn't really feel all to secure about it during that first week.
Oh no, this is more than just a domain name change we're talking about. I did physically.. well, digitally move all of my stuff off of the Scienide system and onto my local Linux box. Why? Well, the answers to that are pretty simple and straightforward. First of all, I don't like leaching off of Scienide. It's designed as a research system and now that I don't work at the school anymore, I don't really feel like I have any right to take up any of the resources on that system that would be better used for discovering more about us and nature. Okay, so the space and bandwidth I'm taking up is insignificant, but it's the thought that counts!
Secondly, I like having my stuff close by. I feel more safe to know that all of my stuff is within walking distance from my room (or house). It also makes updating easier and faster, and I wouldn't be waiting for someone else to fix a problem with the server because it's my server. I'll know what I did to it, and I'll know what limitations it has. I also have much more control over access this way also, so it gives me that extra sense of security.
There is one catch. I still don't have control over my broadband connection. The pipe going into UW is pretty fat, although most of the time it's filled with Napster crap (although I believe that's been toned down recently). I also don't have the luxury of a backup system for my LAN ATM. Fortunately, I can work on that as soon as I get my new system.
So, The PIT is in a new location, and it'll be here to stay for a while. I hope things will go well for the future. I just hope I don't screw it all up..
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As I pulled onto the road, I noticed that 14th was jam packed with cars, so I decided to forgo the "faster" route and head down to Denison and try my luck there. The traffic there was much better, although it was annoying to have to wait to (left) turn onto it with all of the other cars which had the same idea as I. I usually don't take Denison for a good reason. It is slow. During rush hour, it is painfully slow. The speed limit is only 50 (which really doesn't make that much of a difference with the drivers around here) but the big difference comes with the number of traffic lights on that tiny road: Seven. (14th only has three along the same stretch.) Since Denison is only a minor thruway, chances of hitting a red light are rather high. In fact, I ended up stopping at five of them. Man did it seem like a waste of energy (starting and stopping, starting and stopping, etc.) but I still think I made it home earlier than if I went with my normal route.
Hmm? You might think that the difference is smaller if I took into account all of the traffic lights that I come across during my voyage home rather than just that W-E chunk? Well, let me see.. during the normal route, I hit six traffic lights and three stop signs. The Denison route has.. eleven traffic lights and two stop signs. Oh yeah, big difference. Oh, and don't even get me started on the Steeles route. God knows how big that parking lot gets during rush hour.
I did a quick glance at the news while I've been responding to my e-mail. *pause* Okay, so I only have one message, but it's important okay? =P
Anyway, the ShackNews's got a link to an interesting bridge building program which I have yet to look at. 8m? That sounds familiar..
The other bit of news is from ArsTechnica. They've got a link to a big article on clockless processors. Thinking about these clockless processors, and how their ships (and eventually flotillas) sort of reminds me of neural networking (although at this point, the ship pathways don't seem to be strengthened/weakened over time), is it also the next step towards artificial intellegence?
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Laz and KGL have weekend updates up. Laz has the scoop on Growly's new job, with more info being provided by Growly himself! I don't quite understand Growly's comment about getting his own homepage, he already has (at least) three!
Some more news from the ShackNews. Apparently New Hampsire is thinking of taxing video games and movie rentals with the money going towards sexual assault victims. Steve's got a few good comments about that.
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Straight from the ShackNews: Crazy things happen in Quebec.
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Hey, I forgot to mention that I saw a picture of Sealand in the paper today. Boy does it look small (and crappy).
I also read about how 90% of people will go on a diet at least once in their lives, while 95% of them will fail..
