Saturday, 17th of February, 2001
I had an interview with a Princteon University alumni today, and it went really well. I was reminded today how great that place is for undergraduates. It's definately someplace I'm going to seriously consider and visit if I get in.
Friday, 16th of February, 2001
I went to what used to be The Evergreen Project, now I guess Schwartz and Associates, and helped out with some stuff, and also helped take out some trash. I took home 4 Pentium 90 boxes they aren't using anymore. That makes 17 computers in my room now. I think I'll set one on Mom's desk, and Dad is talking about having a workstation just for plotting, and I might run some Linux tests on one, so we'll see. In the mean time, I completely boarded up the top bunk of my bed so I can store these there for now.
So now let me power them up and check out what these kids have under the hood... Woah, the first one is a P166 with 32MB RAM! Nice! 600MB Hard drive, not bad. It seems Ran had installed FreeBSD on it. Nice. Computer #2 is a dissapointment, P75 with Trident video. I guess that averages out fine, specs are otherwise the same as the first machine, with no OS on it. Computer #3 is what I was told it is, for once, a P90. NT Workstation 4.0 is on it, and there's this weird Venus 6000 video card in it. Computer #4 is again a P90, with a 1.2GB HDD. Cool. The case seems nice too, heavy and well-built. Thumb-screw, nice, easy to open, it appers there is a Cirrus Logic video card in it. Red Hat 5.2 is loaded on it.
I also acquired some components, like a couple SCSI CD-ROMS (16X Teac and 24X Panasonic), a TwinTurbo video card, tons of old SIMMS and DRAM, and one thing I actually need - CD-ROM audio cables!
Thursday, 15th of February, 2001
Ok, so these new Logitech computer mice have these little red blinking LEDs on the box to help attract their product in stores as being one of those optical mouses. Well, our school bought like 8 of those the other day, and yesterday I ripped them off to see what it was made of. I was pretty surprised to find radio-shack components, and 2 Duracell Ultura AA batteries. Wow, that's expernsive. But as for the LED, it's just an LED on two diodes to complete the circuit for a blinking effect. Neat. Today, I put one in my car and fastened it on my dash, and it works as a very good fake car alarm. It can be seen on a cloudy day like today from halfway across the south parking lot. Neato.
Wow, TDK is treating me pretty well, I got my warranty replacement for those 80-minute CD-Rs, and now I have 25 74-minute CD-Rs in those nice slim-jewel cases. If nothing else, those jewel cases are nice. so I'm happy now. The 74-minutes are excellent, they have passed every single one of my CD-R tests so far, including anti-skip in my portable and speed on an ancient 1X caddy-loading CD-ROM. Much improvement over the 80-minute.
Wednesday, 14th of February, 2001
Valentines day, Susan and I exchanged gifts, (of course, since we're going out) so that was really nice. Strolling Strings had this Valentines Day dinner to play for at the Friendship Village, and that was really fun. Afterwards I didn't make the mistake of keeping Beth out in the driveway, and we went inside and hat a little to eat, and chatted with her and Jim.
Tuesday, 13th of February, 2001
I took the AMC/12 test today, it went ok I guess, I really wasn't shooting for anything in particular. I only answered the questions I was sure of, so that works out to be 13, which means I'd have to get them all right to break the 100 barrier, though the percentile qualification might work to my advantage.
Woah, there was an e-mail bomb threat at the Jr. High today, and it was "scheduled" for 1:30. They had all the students rounded up in the gym from 11:00 to 1:30 while dogs sniffed the entire building. That is crazy.
Monday, 12th of February, 2001
The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had
covertly
funded a project with the US auto makers for the past five years, whereby
the auto makers were installing black boxes in four-wheel drive pickup
trucks in an effort to determine, in fatal accidents, the circumstances in
the last 15 seconds before the crash. They were surprised to find in 45 of
the 50 states the last words of drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes
were, "Oh, Shit!"
Only the states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee were
different, where over 89.3 percent of the final words were: "Hold my beer
and watch this!"
Sunday, 11th of February, 2001