On the way “home” tonight (to where I’m housesitting), there was a serious failure of the car navigation system, causing me to miss turns twice and go about ten miles out of my way. It probably would have been scenic if there had still been any daylight. I expect that it was just [...]

I didn’t do as well as I’d have liked to on today’s Linear Algebra exam. There were 19 problems (originally 20, but the professor dropped one because it was on material we haven’t yet covered). I’m pretty sure I missed at least 3 and part of a fourth, so I’ll be lucky to [...]

I’m opposed to complete bans on smoking in restaurants and bars, as we now have in California and Colorado, even though I’m a non-smoker and find cigarette smoke very irritating. It should be sufficient to have designated non-smoking areas, with suitable ventiltation. If there are enough people that want entirely non-smoking restaurants and [...]

Because of the war, I was drafted into the military.  I tried to explain that I could best serve in a technical capacity, but they insisted on trying to make me a grunt.  They tried to get me into better physical condition by making me run while carrying fire extinguishers, and berated me for not [...]

While a friend and his family are vacationing in China for two weeks, I’m housesitting, which is probably more of a favor to me than to him.  The central air conditioning in his house works much better than my poor little portable room air conditioner on days when it gets really hot, as it has [...]

I previously wrote about problems with switching to a Cingular FamilyTalk rate plan.  The gist was that because I was a former AT&TWS customer, I had to upgrade my phone, or at least the SIM card, in order to switch to the FamilyTalk plan.  A new SIM card would cost $25, but they were willing [...]

Some coworkers and I were discussing diets, including vegetarian diets. I pointed out that I am a metavegetarian. When I eat animals, I try to only eat animals that are vegetarian. However, I make an exception for seafood; a strict metavegetarian would have to be very selective about that.

Professor Braun didn’t show for this evening’s American Government class. We were expecting to have some lecture followed by our second exam. About 27 minutes into the scheduled class time, many of the students started leaving. Professor Braun did contact one of the students and let us know that the exam will [...]

Professor Sekhon decided that too many students did poorly on quiz 9 (on vector space basis), so he decided to drop it from the grading, and didn’t finish scoring everyone’s quiz. He did grade my, and I missed two problems out of 12, which is what I expected because those last two were proofs [...]

I wanted to add a second line to my cellular account, using Cingular’s “Nation 1400 FamilyTalk w/ Rollover” plan. Naturally I had to get a second phone, so I ordered one from them. My existing phone is a Palm Treo 650 quad-band GSM phone, which is fully compatible with the Cingular GSM network. [...]