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Journal 2000-10

Current entries

2000-10-31, Tue (Day 274, temperature at 07:35: 28.3°C, difference: +0.2°C, Halloween): I spent the rest of the day after classes making index pages and more page templates for The Phoenix Online, staying up a little later than last night.

2000-10-30, Mon (Day 273, temperature at 06:57: 28.1°C, difference: +0.4°C): I dreamed I was riding north on Chester Pike past home and there were red lines on the second lanes in the road, occasionally crossing over. It looked like these were markers for power lines starting at about 18 kV and working down, possibly what is there or what needs to go underground?

Next, I’m in a K-Mart/Wal-Mart type store most likely in the location of the K-Mart at the MacDade Mall. The floor pattern is very detailed and colorful but it doesn’t seem to always define where the walkways should go or what they are. Now I am in a farmers market in the area of Baltimore Pike between the Kids ’R Us and the Genuardi’s supermarket in Springfield Square North. I am moving through the building quickly east to west parallel to Baltimore Pike and I get thoughts of the Reading Terminal Market in Philly. I also think that this building is so big and busy that if there were a fire it would be tough to get out of the building.

Finally, I am at the Pathmark supermarket on the day before returning from break to get some stuff. I get a sardine can and open the paper box surrounding the metal can to check the contents. I am doing this in the front area near the door like in CVS. I also bend the can, which is apparently what I do before I eat it. I realize that I should have waited to do this stuff until right before I was going to eat it because the lot number is on the box. I get to the register and the cashier is not sure if the package is sardines since I opened the box. Also Dad is buying a big bag of Lucky Charms and the cashier tries to find the UPC on the Pathmark bag, which contains the Lucky Charms. I help the cashier with finding the code and I thought I saw it at the top but it wasn’t there and then we see one in the lower left corner but it is a Pathmark UPC code without any noticeable stripes. The print color on the plastic bag is green like the bags that are used for produce. I tell the cashier to find the product code (such as for produce, since they don’t have bar codes) and he eventually finds a big bag containing many things by the register. With the help of another customer we can agree that something in the big bag is Lucky Charms, which is what we have.

Once outside the supermarket, I finish loading the car while I am sitting in the car but I am taking things from outside the window. This is happening as we are driving home on Chester Pike (from the CVS building by Taylor Hospital) — an apparent impossibility since the stuff outside the car would have to be moving with the car which it is not in. However in this case it was. Apparently it is quicker to start driving and finish loading instead of loading everything while the car is stopped at the store.

I got up at around 06:30 today since the return to standard time yesterday was not all that smooth. Traffic accidents go up after the spring and fall daylight-saving time changes and yesterday and already this morning I hear the police going out on calls. Since the sun is rising at around 06:30, the light from the blue sky is waking me up when I am partially willing to.

I spent the rest of the day working on a template containing the new Phoenix Online design that Nathan’s script uses to automatically generate an article file. I also wrote two more AppleScripts and the way things are looking automation-wise, I will probably be writing more and more AppleScripts in the future as the amount of automation and new features increases.

2000-10-29, Sun (Day 272, temperature at 09:46: 27.7°C, difference: +1.2°C): I studied for my linguistics midterm this afternoon and evening and actually went to bed at an earlier time than in nights past. At 16:30, I went to a concert in Lang on West African Music.

2000-10-28, Sat (Day 271, temperature at 09:25: 26.5°C, difference: +0.3°C): Even though the room temperature went up from yesterday I did shut the window and the heat was probably on. Earlier, the high predicted for today was going to be close to 70°F (21.1°C) but today the high is predicted to be only 55°F (12.8°C) and it is windy. Yesterday’s predicted high was over 70°F (21.1°C). So something changed a little more quickly in the past day.

The elevator wasn’t working today as well as yesterday, so doing the wash this morning was a little more cumbersome since there are a minimum of three doors between my room and the laundry room. Even though Mertz was also like that, I didn’t have to go down three floors like in Willets.

I met my family before 12:00 to go to the homecoming lunch and football game vs. Franklin & Marshall. Since it was so windy, Sharples was open to sit in the dining hall, but the food was served on the patio outside Sharples. There were some random tables set up under trees to be blocked by the wind but the area where the lunch was supposed to be did not have tables set up but instead had a few chairs set up in a circle like there were tables there earlier. Also, the anticipated place of the lunch is the same as last year although this year it is called the frat house lawn and last year it was called Sharples lawn.

The football game was very competitive and we stayed until some point in the third quarter. The game clock wasn’t working properly and it was malfunctioning so badly that the referee shouted from the field at the beginning of the second quarter to “Shut the game clock down!” The final score was 29–21 Swarthmore Garnet Tide.

I ironed out rough spots in The Phoenix Online redesign sample article and went to the movie “1941” in DuPont. There weren’t that many people there but the movie was still enjoyable to watch.

2000-10-27, Fri (Day 270, temperature at 07:41: 26.2°C, difference: +0.1°C): I worked in the student publications office from 13:15 to after 22:00 working with Nathan on The Phoenix Online redesign. Nathan did the art while I did the coding. I didn’t take any breaks except for the bathroom, so I think that was my longest period of uninterrupted work of about nine hours.

2000-10-26, Thu (Day 269, temperature at 07:24: 26.1°C, difference: +0.9°C): I have found out that playing a fast-paced CD while putting The Phoenix Online together makes me finish early. For the last issue, which was before break, I played Fleetwood Mac and I fell behind and had to push myself to rush at the end. Today I was playing Rolling Stones and I finished 15 minutes early.

I went to a lecture this evening in Kirby sponsored by several departments. The topic was whether language influences thought.

2000-10-25, Wed (Day 268, temperature at 07:52: 25.2°C, difference: +1.1°C): I felt tired until the afternoon when I took a nap but even after sleeping I felt somewhat disoriented. A guest speaker from U Penn came to linguistics today to talk about dialect differences in United States English.

2000-10-24, Tue (Day 267, temperature at 07:23: 24.1°C, difference: -3.2°C): As I was walking back to Willets following lunch I saw a whitish ground-level cloud at the intersection of the Willets-Sharples path and the McCabe-Chester Road drive. I identified it as a gateway and was going to walk through it but a resistive feeling developed and at first I thought about diverting left but that didn’t have many options so I veered right towards Chester Road. I walked in the Bond parking lot around Ben West and then walked to Willets from there. I don’t think making this detour did much, but things did calm down somewhat as the day progressed.

2000-10-23, Mon (Day 266, temperature at 07:47: 27.3°C, difference: +2.7°C): I went to the library in the afternoon to look through older print editions of The Phoenix. I looked back at when Kohlberg was built (opened 1996-01), as well as Mertz (1980/1981), and Willets (1958/1959).

At night I did my philosophy reading and then read psychology.

2000-10-13, Fri (Day 265, temperature at 07:31: 24.6°C, difference: -1.9°C): I left for home today. I intended not to do much over the October break and while that was true for the first half, AppleScript ideas came into my head and I spent the second half of break working on them. On --10-21, Sat I wrote a script to upload Phoenix Online files from Tex-Edit Plus. Instead of saving the file, going to the right directory in Fetch, dragging the file from the Finder to Fetch, waiting for it to finish, and then going to IE and reloading, I now press F9 and the whole process happens automatically. The manual method takes about twice as long as the automatic method both at home and at school. The automated process at home took 15 seconds, while at school it only took 5 seconds.

I returned on --10-22, Sun to a well working iMac. The CD drive worked and even though the window in the room was shut the computer processor temperature was lower than normal. It seems that my sitting in front of the computer makes the temperature go up, or the applications that I run do the same.

I soon worked on my oral report on Alexandra Exter for tomorrow’s set design class.

2000-10-12, Thu (Day 264, temperature at 07:34: 26.5°C, difference: +0.5°C): I dreamed that ITS junked the HP 8500DN’s in the Beardsley Public Area for much smaller Apple printers although only one of the two models does double sided printing if you feed it again manually. One of the models was black, like for Powerbooks. The 8500 in McCabe that I use for double-sided printing will still remain. An ITS staff member agreed with my comment that there were numerous places to check for paper jams in the 8500 due to the winding paper path. Even though it was the last day for the summer installs, it seemed like the present.

My CD drive is still giving the same problem of not opening although wiping the sensor still gets it to work again.

I either got sick from the two good crab cakes at lunch today or today’s events overwhelmed me and made me sick. I felt better by the mid-afternoon and then worked on stuff due for tomorrow during the rest of the day.

2000-10-11, Wed (Day 263, temperature at 07:42: 26.0°C, difference: -1.0°C): I remembered quite a few dreams since I was awakened at 04:30 due to the fire alarm. The one that I think is unusual is that statues should be oriented west east. There were some statues outside Trotter near Kohlberg and Beardsley that were being reoriented.

Heating on campus is still very uneven. Trotter 301 is still cold, my room is warm, the Sharples bathroom sink has a small amount of hot water (you can put it on the maximum and still not get burned), and in general academic buildings are chilly.

I finished my philosophy paper in the early afternoon, met with Karen, and then went to a lecture in Scheuer.

2000-10-10, Tue (Day 262, temperature at 07:22: 27.0°C, difference: +1.4°C): I dreamed I was at the gas station across the northeast corner of the MacDade Mall with Dad. We got stuff that came to $15.80. I tried paying with a $20 and the cashier was unable to take it. This has happened before, so I paid with exact change.

It seems that my tendency is to fall asleep in the afternoon, which explains why I didn’t like afternoon labs that much.

2000-10-09, Mon (Day 261, temperature at 07:37: 25.6°C, difference: +0.9°C): I dreamed it snowed and then there was an ice storm. I also saw a dead bird. Ice was accumulating on the phone and power lines outside my home. A weather report said a few thousandths of an inch of ice would collect and then there would be rain. The heavy storm (reds and maroons on the radar) moved from north to south right over Philadelphia to the southeast area of South Carolina. Also, there was a report that the West Nile virus (dead birds) was spreading in the East Coast and Louisiana. I saw this via a large US map that is normally green but areas that had the virus were in yellow-orange branching. I zoomed in on the Mississippi delta area of Louisiana. The disease is moving at a specified distance per time, or a rate. I asked my family what it would do to crops, phrasing my question as would the disease make crops malicious.

The temperature dropped much today and caught most people by surprise. I saw people walking back from the mall with shopping bags. In Trotter 301, my Linguistics class was in a blustery 65°F (18.3°C) room. My room in Willets on the other hand is on the warm side as evidenced by the morning temperature readings.

I spent most of the rest of the day studying for my psych exam tomorrow.

2000-10-08, Sun (Day 260, temperature at 10:45: 24.7°C, difference: -0.4°C): I got up later today after falling asleep earlier. I worked on my psych paper this afternoon and discovered that the overall quality of the public area Macs in McCabe has gone down partly because of OS 9, wear and tear, and the larger differences between my computer and the public machines.

2000-10-07, Sat (Day 259, temperature at 07:32: 25.1°C, difference: -0.4°C): I actually did my weekly e-mail check and backup this afternoon. Having fewer things to check and less list mail to read helps out. Instead of watching the showing of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” since I recently saw it, I went to the Chinese Film Festival showing of “East Palace, West Palace,” which was about homosexual relations in China.

2000-10-06, Fri (Day 258, temperature at 07:37: 25.5°C, difference: +0.2°C): I dreamed I was in the Acme supermarket and the store was rearranged. New locations for product groups had flashing red backgrounds in aisle directories. The sardines are still in seafood, but they are on a shelf above the freezers for frozen food. Since they are so high, there are these green milk crates stacked two high in the aisle. As I was setting the crates up to get several cans of sardines I was complaining about the layout to nearby people.

Quite a few specs and parents were in Linguistics today. I ate so much for lunch that I had to walk back to Willets very slowly with the feeling that my stomach was going to reverse. The shrimp was good and the fries were even better since they were really potato slices that were lightly fried. The skins were still on the fries, reminding me of Nifty Fifty’s fries.

I got back to my room expecting to eventually get to the library when I could walk normally. However, in one of the e-mails that I got, a collection was mentioned leading me to find out more details since I haven’t been to too many of them. The lecture on Black students’ self-esteem in LPAC Cinema by Dr. Iyailu Moses was today at 13:00. I had just enough time to arrive early.

I watched “Boyz in the Hood” in DuPont tonight, which I thought was a good movie to show a sample of what happens in Los Angeles.

2000-10-05, Thu (Day 257, temperature at 07:23: 25.3°C, difference: +0.9°C): I arrived in Parrish this morning before this week’s Phoenix was available. I still put up the online edition at the usual time so this is the first time that I put up an online edition in full without consulting the actual print edition.

2000-10-04, Wed (Day 256, temperature at 07:27: 24.4°C, difference: +1.5°C): My second psych attachment was this afternoon and was full of intent analysis of the soundness of the research in this week’s articles. Third Wing also met today although there was less discourse than before.

2000-10-03, Tue (Day 255, temperature at 07:27: 22.9°C, difference: +1.0°C): In psych today we watched this video about obedience. Participants in the Milgram experiment would give someone else an electric shock if that person answered a question incorrectly. They were told to keep going even if the receiver of the electric shocks was against the process. Many did keep going with the experiment despite the person’s wishes.

2000-10-02, Mon (Day 254, temperature at 07:30: 21.9°C, difference: -1.6°C): I did my oral report on Edward Gordon Craig this morning in set design. I took a short nap in the early afternoon and then worked on clearing backlogged items. In the evening, I finished my compositional rendering for theatre.

2000-10-01, Sun (Day 253, temperature at 13:19: 23.5°C, difference: +1.6°C): I woke up at 12:00 and stayed in bed for another hour. It took a while to get started, but eventually I got to the library and started doing research for my Edward Gordon Craig oral report tomorrow.

Before and soon after 24:00, I also did some reading for set design and then I posted my September journal file online.


Journal 2000-09

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