Journal 2001-04
2001-04-30, Mon (Day 413, temperature at 11:02: 23.1°C, difference: -1.6°C): I dream I am at the supermarket like the Acme in Woodlyn with the wall of windows. I need to buy four or possibly three different things but I can’t remember any of them now and I wrote down this part of my dream the moment I woke up. What a fleeting memory I had of this dream.
There was no history class today so I slept until 11:00. I backed up this afternoon and went through the top layer of my stack of papers on my desk. After backing up I ran TechTool Pro and rebuilt the desktop. Both had their quirks. TechTool still thinks like Disk First Aid does that there is a problem with the Linux /boot partition, fixing it but not actually fixing it. I left for dinner when it was checking everything else and when I came back there were no major problems, but a screen of the report ended with pages and pages of colored noise that had some banding to it. I thought it was kind of funny actually. However, after having TechTool (basic) restore the file comments after rebuilding the desktop, it restored even fewer comments of what it restored last time.
I went to a lecture in the Scheuer room at 19:30 given by Roy Innis about why Blacks should be Republicans. His general premise is that only Blacks overwhelmingly stick to the Democratic Party and that has not been helpful to them. Soon afterwards I went to the SWIL showing of the “Secret of NIMH.” Part of the event involved bringing your phone to today’s dinner and the movie.
2001-04-29, Sun (Day 412, temperature at 13:03: 24.7°C, difference: -0.1°C): I dream I am outside Ben West trying to find a room number, which are numbered on the outside as the room doors open to the outside. I see lots of bathroom doors on multiple sides of the building.
I spent most of today writing a draft of my classics paper. I wrote the paper in three different places in four sessions, starting in my room early today and in the afternoon the lower level of McCabe on a beige G3 that only had 32 MB of RAM. The public area iMacs have 64 MB of RAM. After dinner I worked on the second half of my paper in my room before meeting my WA for Chinese Civ. After the meeting I went to Beardsley public area to finish the paper.
I finished the paper soon after 22:00, did the daily stuff, and eventually went to bed.
2001-04-28, Sat (Day 411, temperature at 11:30: 24.8°C, difference: +0.3°C): I dream I am trying to get an old black and white TV to display color by rewiring it. The set is a small 9-inch screen. The TV did power on, but it is not in color yet. “The Price is Right” game show is on.
My interview with The Phoenix for next semester was this afternoon. Like my interview last semester on 2000-12-08, 15 minutes wasn’t enough to discuss in great detail the planned improvements for the online edition.
My five-event Saturday night started off with Night of Scenes in Mephisto’s. I left after the second scene so I could go to John’s concert on time. This was the general Swarthmore College Orchestra concert in Lang Concert Hall. Jesse sat with me although we didn’t see Tom.
The concert ended in time for the second showing of “Godfather” in LPAC Cinema. The movie ended at 01:00, later than I expected. I felt tired at this point but I still wanted to go to the fetish and the Krafftwerk party in Clothier even if it was for a brief period of time. Back in Willets, I started my classics paper, writing a page of the eight and later I went to bed.
2001-04-27, Fri (Day 410, temperature at 09:01: 24.5°C, difference: -0.1°C): I dream that I am at the back of McCabe and a large, tall communication tower that is essentially a thick rod with antennas on it falls down to ground away from College Ave. The tower, which was on the edge of the roof, was held to the building by large blue tape but that didn’t hold. In real life there are three towers on the roof although they are not very substantial relative to the one in my dream. One of them is shorter than the other two.
Classes today were less than half full it seemed but Sharples was crowded. This Friday afternoon I met Rosaria briefly to narrow down my mythology paper topic. My immediate family except for Bill who was in school came by to drop off financial aid stuff and my roommates John, Jesse, and Tom got to meet my family. After turning the aid form in, I worked on taking care of the last pre-OS 9.1 thing that needed to be configured. I had already upgraded Analog and while I had a configuration for The Phoenix Online soon after the upgrade, due to the complexity and superfluity I put off the doing the configurations for my own site until today. It took the rest of the day until 02:00 to do them. I also updated and rewrote Make stat reports to handle the revised configurations and I created functions in the script to allow for easier upgrades in the future.
This weekend is filled with an array of activities. I went to the last ellipsis… concert this year in Mephisto’s. I sat down in the third row in front of the stage. The concert was good and I bought the group’s CD.
The concert ended after 22:30 but I still went to the showing of “Harold and Maude” (1971) in Hicks Mural Room. The movie was oddly humorous, since I like movies from the late 1960s to early 1970s, especially the music. After the movie was over and the lights were brought back up, I noticed this Linux penguin balloon seat in the front of the room.
2001-04-26, Thu (Day 409, temperature at 08:59: 24.6°C, difference: +0.5°C): I started feeling tired in the afternoon although I just kept working instead of taking a nap. I didn’t do anything too taxing. After the Phoenix meeting and a film showing in LPAC Cinema of “Fugitive Love” and “Family Remains” by Tamara Jenkins, I worked on some outstanding reminder folders. It turns out that converting the stylebook over to the current Phoenix design was remarkably easy. Since I had already converted the page to the intermediate design last summer it was much easier.
I was trying to fix the problem in Windows Netscape 4 where text would not display in bold. However, I grew too tired after 00:00 so I went to bed, getting nearly eight hours of sleep, which I haven’t done in a while during the midweek.
2001-04-25, Wed (Day 408, temperature at 08:04: 24.1°C, difference: -4.2°C): I dream that I am in the Sharples small room. An African-American guy diagonally to my right by the window tells me that things need to spread out. I sense a hidden meaning which a man sitting across from me explicitly tells to me that this has to do with someone. Other people start sitting down around me except to my right. I am facing towards the southeast and someone hangs a sign on the far wall saying something confusing but it meant that things are bad but at least flirting keeps things going.
Before or after this I don’t know, I am on some suburban street and someone plays back something I just said by using a recording device. I begin a rant about how the company that is doing this action is bad by having something to do with recording people’s voices. However, an official labeled as such on his beige jacket comes out of this old house that is across the street by itself and also plays back what I said initially even though he wasn’t there when I said it. He wanted to show that he has the same recording device too so it is just a matter of parity.
I got up at 10:00 today to go to class. I went for a walk after lunch. I’m walking down the hill to Willets and I catch up with John, Jesse, and Tom there.
Dad stopped by in the afternoon and John, Jesse, and Tom got to meet him. I went up to the office for a brief period before leaving for the last psychology colloquium this semester. Claude Steele talked in a filled LPAC Cinema at 16:15 about academic underperformance when given a stereotype bias.
I fell behind since the lecture was when I normally did the web stuff for the 17:00 deadline. I went back to Willets and here I needed to continue reading Yahoo mail. Back in the office for no more than an hour, I do the remainder of the pages.
Apu the printer took 15 minutes to print a page proof of the back color page of sports. Another page later that night took two hours to print but people were using the computer that can print so the print spooling may have been pushed too far in the background. Another G4 stopped making PDFs with the error being a system failure. A fix that worked on Sideshow Bob running OS 9.1 didn’t work in this system failure case but the G4 with the problem is running OS 9.0.4 instead. The fix that I tried was to resolve a general printing problem (add a space in the MenuFonts control panel filename like I did on 2001-04-17).
I finished at 22:00 since the second deadline was met a half-hour early. However, this head start didn’t help in the end as I went to bed late. I was working slower and I spent more time reading the articles. I didn’t try listening to Antenne Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as it has crashed my computer when doing Phoenix before.
2001-04-24, Tue (Day 407, temperature at 08:01: 28.3°C, difference: +0.4°C): The fire alarm went off after 03:00 and again at 06:30, and has been going off early each morning at least since early Saturday. Someone has been cooking in the basement kitchen, messing up, and the alarm goes off.
I did my Phoenix application for next semester after lunch. The copy machines in McCabe were not working very well or at all.
I go to the Co-op late this afternoon. I got lots of cookies and peanuts as I went through the initial supplies of them faster than I thought.
The printer broke again in the publications office this evening, limited to just the LocalTalk port instead of Ethernet.
2001-04-23, Mon (Day 406, temperature at 08:00: 27.9°C, difference: +0.1°C): I started at 08:00 today feeling good and the weather was warm.
The composition for Chinese Civ was different due to quite a few specs sitting in the class. I backed up this afternoon like usual although it got up to 32.1°C, almost 90°F. I was going through what rooms the rising seniors picked last night and updating the housing list in time for the lottery at 19:30 in Tarble Gym.
The gym was very stuffy and hot so the lottery proceeded quickly. I got my first choice room, Worth M 30, which was also my first choice before the seniors picked too. There was some confusion about what my phone number is going to be but it was not a big deal. Jesse, John, and Tom are living in Palmer next year.
I went to the SWIL showing of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” at 22:00.
2001-04-22, Sun (Day 405, temperature at 13:41: 27.8°C, difference: +0.4°C, Earth Day): I dream I am in Sharples and I get food including chicken potpie and a banana. In the center area stuff is being set up to serve more food. John, Jesse, Tom, and I are here at our normal time, 17:00 although we are told that the peak is not till after 18:00.
I get up into a dubious situation. I want to start and finish the WA copy of my last paper for Chinese Civ but I got up after lunch, giving me less time to work on it. I did manage to finish the paper but it took the entire day. The McCabe level two printer is gone again. I also had a difficult time finding an open iMac in McCabe and some people seem to be reserving computers by leaving stuff open on them or around them and not using it.
2001-04-21, Sat (Day 404, temperature at 13:06: 27.4°C, difference: -0.4°C): I dreamed a rehash of what I experienced yesterday, but the unique event was when I came late to the Denny’s in Essington and my party already ordered. I felt completely out of sorts.
I got up in the early afternoon and did the laundry while going to post brunch in Sharples and for a walk.
I went to the student dance concert early this evening. It was standing room only. I get back to my room and finish up the ordered room list for the housing lottery on Monday night. I receive a call and am asked if I could come up to the publications office to get the printer working, as Scarlet Letters needed to use it. I agree and when I get up there the Spike staff is there too as well as other people, and Jeff, the student publications coordinator.
Jeff was trying to get an older printer to work but a note on it said it was a paperweight. Apu, the printer that we are trying to fix, was showing up on the Ethernet network but it wouldn’t respond to print requests. I saw the printer had a serial port so I got some LocalTalk boxes from the closet and a phone wire and directly connected the LaserWriter 16/600 to a Power Mac 7200. Now printing worked. I tried getting LocalTalk Bridge to work on the 7200 but it wouldn’t load properly at startup. What this control panel would have done is provide a bridge or gateway between the LocalTalk and the Ethernet to allow network printing.
So energy was shifted to just get the printer working from one computer, the Power Mac 7300. Getting the Scarlet Letters proof to print was a challenge, as the Ribbon font they were using was not working with PageMaker. So they needed to choose an alternative.
I didn’t get out of the office until 01:30 so it didn’t make much sense to go to the SWIL Root Beer party in Paces that ended at 02:00.
2001-04-20, Fri (Day 403, temperature at 10:02: 27.8°C, difference: +0.6°C, spec weekend): I dreamed I was in Trotter 301. However, Lillian’s class is in this room instead of Rosaria’s mythology class. The class breaks into small group discussions. I didn’t say my number and when I said something immediately to say that I didn’t say my number but the counting continued anyway, I was ignored. Instead of picking the number one, which I get frequently (and I think I got in this count too), I choose six, which I think is the highest group number. I sit at the corner of two long tables placed side by side closest to the center of the room. The table itself is near the area of the blackboard furthest from the door. A woman was wearing a blue top with a multicolored, rainbow-like scarf. I saw her standing near the front of the room. I was sitting down and she seemed really tall.
In my dream I talk in the group about teaching needing to use all knowledge (like this is an education class). The moderator talks about when retirement usually is and asks me the question about when is a good time to stop because of overwork. I refer to Pennsylvania’s 30 and out program for teachers, but the rest of the group isn’t paying attention. The moderator gets the group to pause but this one guy to my right at the other corner of the table interrupts me and changes the subject. Later back in Willets after lunch but before afternoon classes I go to the bathroom to take a shower.
Today is one of the last few Friday afternoons for this semester. I typically regard this time as the lead up to the weekend and usually do something that I want to do. John received a flight simulation game and spent the rest of the day figuring that out due to its steep learning curve.
I went to the Talent Explosion in upper Tarble at 20:00. The show started a half-hour late and was fine for the most part and this one very vocal audience member was funny.
It got to 22:00 and half the audience left while the show was winding down and not reaching a clear ending. I left 15 minutes after then and went to DuPont to watch “Wonder Boys.” The lecture hall was more filled than normal this semester. I sat in the back row.
2001-04-19, Thu (Day 402, temperature at 09:14: 27.2°C, difference: -0.2°C): My dream is in unordered form as I think this is a premonition type dream and the order of events are not always that important. I am in a dark, fairly nice elevator but there is lots of confusion about what direction the elevator needs to go, what floors it needs to stop at, who should be in it, etc. Another: I am in a boardroom without a high ceiling. In another place or places I saw two Swatties who I normally don’t see, both of whom I saw by lunch in real life today.
It seems impossible for me to get up early enough on Thursdays to grab a print copy of The Phoenix before they run out as I go to bed later the night before because I am putting the online edition of The Phoenix up on the site.
After The Phoenix ed board meeting, I didn’t have much to do right now so I eventually worked on housing for next year, shuffling around rooms in the potential list.
2001-04-18, Wed (Day 401, temperature at 10:01: 27.4°C, difference: +3.0°C): The Smokey Robinson song “Tears of a Clown” was playing at Sharples lunch and I stood near the vegetarian bar, which is what my dream on 2000-03-16 was like.
I get a lot of reading done in the office today since I didn’t distract myself as much. There are only two Phoenix issues left for the semester. The staff seems to be feeling the end of the Justin/Nathan/Brendan era. The computers were acting up a little.
2001-04-17, Tue (Day 400, temperature at 08:02: 24.4°C, difference: -3.0°C): I updated the hiring page on The Phoenix Online before Ed’s class and afterwards I went to McCabe briefly.
I wrapped up the first report for set design research late this afternoon. The evening was filled with events. The economics lecture was in Kirby at 19:30 and I then went to the science center update after 21:00 although it started at 20:30. A ed board meeting for Phoenix was at 21:30 in the publications office. After the meeting I fixed this problem where printing wouldn’t work on the OS 9.1 stations because of an INIT conflict. I found that out through searching on MacFixIt that the ~Suitcase 8 MenuFonts control panel was causing the problem. Adding a space after the ~ in the filename fixed the problem.
2001-04-16, Mon (Day 399, temperature at 08:02: 27.4°C, difference: +0.6°C): The dynamics for history and mythology were good today, especially history.
After backing up, I got Mac on Linux working in Linux. At first it was booting Linux in Linux and not liking it but by adding a specific boot partition command it worked reasonably well. I was able to get networking going more or less.
I did reading for Ed’s class this evening and then went to see “Siegfried,” a silent movie. I was tired so I fell asleep near the end of the movie, not understanding the ending.
2001-04-15, Sun (Day 398, temperature at 12:36: 26.8°C, difference: +0.5°C, Easter): I dreamed that I was walking on the corner of Parrish closest to Clothier. I see a small forest on Parrish Beach on the left side of the path to Sharples. Thinking about how that is one of the last few forest patches, I get the feeling that this piece is going to disappear too. I feel bad about it.
Next in my dream I go to the dining hall, which is in Parrish somewhere between the dean’s offices and admissions, where the MAC machine is. The admissions door is no longer really tall; it seems very short actually. I think it looks worse. Above the door is a floor plan of the renovated admissions space. The dining space has many pillars. I sit to the right of one. Kai sits down across from me and says that I look different. I tell him about the forest thing. He confirms as he is wearing this shirt with a big picture of a green gecko on it that says every five seconds or minutes a gecko disappears because of deforestation. The text is green and flows on the top to the right side of the picture.
I then picture a Philadelphia Zoo article that is a large picture of many animals in one space with some text on it about the increase in diversity of animals there. However, it states that it takes much work to keep it. A reference is made to the gecko or some other rainforest animal that says that the life support in it is as fragile as what supports the earth. Sticking the animal in an inner tube is not enough.
I also visualize (although I picture more of the reality of the dining hall for this one) shirts that have a headshot of a president and underneath it the years the president has served. This has something to do with the deforestation as well.
I got up in time today to go to the traditional Sharples brunch. I went to McCabe and started the designers’ research for set design, which I am doing as a service for the professor. I also went to the design studio in LPAC to scan the visuals. It took some wrestling with the scanner settings to get a good output and I also needed to put on a newer version of Photoshop. The 5.0LE version already on there was pretty ghetto, as the option to arbitrarily rotate was grayed out and the menus were alternating in white and gray as I passed over them.
I went to dinner late but ate quickly. I went to LPAC Cinema expecting to see a Taiwanese film at 19:00. Instead nobody was there. I checked at 19:20 and nobody was there then either. I spent the rest of the time finishing the scanning for Craig, the prototype designer I am starting the research series with. I got back to Willets earlier than I anticipated so I worked on housing stuff.
2001-04-14, Sat (Day 397, temperature at 14:08: 26.3°C, difference: -0.5°C): I got up at 13:30, started doing the wash and went to breakfast. I then went for my walk. I went to LPAC Cinema with Jesse to watch “Terminator 2,” which was a good movie.
2001-04-13, Fri (Day 396, temperature at 08:09: 26.8°C, difference: +0.1°C): I dream I am in the publications office although computers are on the far side of the wall as well. I am facing towards the far wall. There is a meeting table close to the far wall on the side where most of the computers are. In the far left corner I am standing next to a guy who is plugging in an Ethernet cable into an extra jack just to try it out, but this audible large spark develops because he had his hand on the contacts on the other end of the wire. The cable was orange, while the cables already connected for the computers were green (like in real life as Cat 5 Ethernet cables on campus are green). Earlier in my dream I was in my high school’s old auditorium and a couple was wearing orange shirts.
I went to see Rosaria and Lillian this afternoon to talk about end of semester papers. I went to the Swarthmore Co-op to get food later on. After dinner, I went up to the office as I was left a voicemail that a Phoenix story was being worked on and some slide shows needed to be done for the web in response to the walk and speak-out today. The events were organized due to the alleged racial incidents that happened last weekend.
I went to “Girl, Interrupted” in Kirby and I stopped by the office briefly before going to “Gods and Monsters” in LPAC Cinema with Jesse. I went back to the office afterwards and ran the story through the server and prepped the images for the slide show. I went back to my room and then posted the stuff online by 02:00.
2001-04-12, Thu (Day 395, temperature at 08:01: 26.7°C, difference: +0.8°C): I intended to get up at 09:15, but one of my alarms was kept on for 08:00, which I got up to thinking it was 09:15 until I looked at the clock a second time. John’s alarm went off at 09:00, which I got up to as well.
I got my housing lottery number in the campus mail today and I then remembered that I got one in my dream too and both of them are pretty good. The first sophomore to pick is 400 and I am 450. I should be able to get a single in Mertz or Worth rather easily.
Trees and shrubbery are in the midst of bloom.
I met Ed in the afternoon about academic advising. I did reading for tomorrow’s discussion in Chinese Civilization in the late afternoon. The Phoenix meeting in the office was at its usual time, 19:00.
2001-04-11, Wed (Day 394, temperature at 10:00: 25.9°C, difference: -0.8°C): I dreamed much but didn’t have time to write it all down when I woke up. I remembered that my iMac had a serious thermal networking error, something about freak. An Open Transport error application gave this message in a window. It was really bad in that all the networking stuff that I run on the computer wouldn’t work. I didn’t know if it was a permanent problem.
Also in my dream, I went home for spring break but for some reason I just left and only brought one large black duffel bag. My mom was going to wash my clothes but when she asked where they were I realized I didn’t bring them home.
I went up to the office at 15:00.
2001-04-10, Tue (Day 393, temperature at 08:03: 26.7°C, difference: -1.7°C): I took a nap in the late afternoon so that I would be rested for the remainder of the night. I went to dinner with Jesse.
2001-04-09, Mon (Day 392, temperature at 08:11: 28.4°C, difference: +0.2°C): I dreamed I was talking to two Swatties at a table outside Trotter near the corner of the building that is closest to Beardsley. I was facing towards Kohlberg and the third Swattie was facing towards McCabe. The one sitting next to the right of me was asking about summer plans. I explained last summer and talked about working for the CC last year but here I said that I might just move boxes this summer.
Next, Ben comes by with a group of people as he wants to have a conversation with the person who I was sitting next to. The third Swattie at the table left and the remaining person briefly pauses and then he gets up to leave me without saying anything. For some reason now this area is somehow enclosed, just enough so that a light switch can be flicked off, which someone does briefly.
Today was expected to be a busy day before I started going through it. However, additional factors were added to increase difficulty.
I backed up this afternoon and after that Jesse and I went to the lecture in the Kohlberg Scheuer Room about Tiananmen Square at 16:30. It was a warm day today but it felt much worse in the Scheuer Room. The hotter lights were on, the air was not going and it felt very uncomfortable. Nevertheless the lecture was very good.
Right after dinner, which I ate later due to the lecture, I went to another lecture in Kirby about farming as a career. That was also good. Immediately following this talk I went to the publications office for a reporter’s session that Wendy from The Philadelphia Inquirer was giving so Phoenix staffers can improve their writing. Soon after the meeting it started to thunderstorm. The power didn’t go out but the lights did flicker off and on a couple of times.
I went back to Willets with only a half-hour before the movie in Kirby, “X,” started at 22:00. The attendance was good considering the weather and more people were there than usual, although the rain mostly stopped by the time the movie started. This Japanese anime movie was about power shields and end of the world stuff.
After the movie I went to get chocolate. The vending machine in Parrish had three chocolate items I wanted but wouldn’t accept paper money and I didn’t have enough change. I went to the change machine but it wouldn’t take money either. So I got one thing from the machine in Parrish and went to the Willets lower level to get the rest. One of the items that I didn’t get in Parrish wasn’t in the Willets machine although the other two were. An additional complication was a note left on the Willets machine saying that it didn’t like change and that paper would have a better chance of working. So I got another item of chocolate and ate the two that I got.
I needed this extra energy to take care of the daily stuff that I haven’t been able to get to until the end of the day.
2001-04-08, Sun (Day 391, temperature at 13:41: 28.2°C, difference: -0.1°C): I dream that I am at home, woken up close to 15:00, and it is still snow showering. The flakes are really large, fancy, and unique looking.
I thought I got up at about 11:15 like I did yesterday but instead I got up after the normal period for Sharples lunch. Since I wasn’t that busy today and I wanted to eat more than what was in my room, I went to Sharples a little before 14:00. So it took a year from the time Sharples started open door to my actually making use of it. I didn’t know what to expect as the options are reduced during the in-between periods, but there was a fine selection of breakfast stuff. Everything was self-serve. There also were some people still there from lunch so it didn’t seem very empty either. The only problem I ran into was the dish machine wasn’t open so people piled their trays on the counter in front of it, the tray rack, and on top of the trash receptacles. I needed to balance my tray on top of other trays with stuff on them on a trash receptacle.
I did reading for history and classics this afternoon and evening.
2001-04-07, Sat (Day 390, temperature at 11:19: 28.3°C, difference: +0.5°C): I dreamed I needed to do a breakdown of TV equipment that was stored in the backroom of some store on a city street. I had some people to help me but I was coordinating the effort. There were two quad monitors to be moved, many Shure wireless mic receivers, and cameras on tripods. One of the Panasonic cameras (used in the Ridley High School TV studio in real life) didn’t have a lens cap that stayed on, which was bad. I was wrapping the power cord around one of the battery chargers for the cameras. I also saw a portable amp and there were lots of wires for everything too.
Next, directly across that Crum (which has no forest — just a small creek) I see the Strath Haven High School although in my dream I think it really should be Paxon Hollow Middle School. The school was just renovated so the outside looks similar to Strath Haven, as I didn’t see the four story new academic wing that Strath Haven has.
Then, at sunset the hill from Wharton to Clothier is much steeper. To see the sunset, I shimmy up the hill on my butt backwards up the sidewalk but when I get to the point where I should see the sun landing on distant objects, now the sun is higher in the sky at about 25° above the horizon. I next get to PA Route 352 north of Brookhaven by entering on a side road from the west.
Finally, I am in a car with Dad driving through Philadelphia in southeast Center City by the Delaware River. A driver crashes through a concrete low wall that is blocking a street off permanently under I-95. They are heading south and go straight through the wall. The crash happens right in front of us as we are heading east. We stop here and see that things are ok. When I am out of the car, an overly energetic yellow jacket starts bothering my left arm on the opposite side of my elbow. It refused to leave me alone even after I waved my arms and walked around.
While doing the laundry this afternoon I revised my second paper for Chinese Civilization due Monday. I finished and printed it out before dinner.
This evening I went to the 19:30 showing of “Time Code,” which seemed like one of those alternative movies shown at the Sundance Film Festival. The entire movie was split into four screens to follow characters as they go about their day-to-day. It seemed like I was getting four movies for one, but it also seemed like I needed four times the effort to figure out what was going on. The movie was good though. What even made it more of a feat is at the end a message was displayed stating that the movie was filmed as three continuous takes starting on 1999-11-19.
I went to the Pink Party in Paces later this evening. I only went to hear the 1980s music. I stayed for almost an hour and then left.
2001-04-06, Fri (Day 389, temperature at 08:05: 27.8°C, difference: -0.2°C): I got up at 08:00 and did the routine morning stuff since I needed time and energy to do some of the reading for discussion for Chinese Civ today.
John and Tom left today, John for the weekend, Tom for ten days. Jeff sent an e-mail this afternoon that ITS managed to fix the PageMaker problem by installing OS 9.1. Mac OS 9.0.4 was on the G4s previously. With that version, PageMaker would open but would quit without error on initializing the clipboard.
For movies, which I couldn’t get to last weekend including Monday for various reasons, I went to “Charlie’s Angels” in Kirby at 19:30 and then went to “Glangarry Glen Ross” in LPAC Cinema with Jesse at 22:00. Unlike the earlier recent weeks, the movie in LPAC was presented with a movie projector and not a display projector. There were no projector failures.
2001-04-05, Thu (Day 388, temperature at 14:43: 28.0°C, difference: -0.3°C): After Ed’s class I continued working on this week’s online edition. I didn’t finish until later this evening, after the Phoenix ed board meeting.
2001-04-04, Wed (Day 387, temperature at 08:02: 28.3°C, difference: +0.5°C): I dreamed I was in South Philly and I was walking to the CVS on Oregon Ave at first with Tom and my other roommates but on arriving there also with my family. The CVS has a large book section but many blank walls, something I have never seen in a store. I commented this observation out loud. Dad got a 19-inch Panasonic television. I was going to walk the set back to wherever I came from in South Philly although I might need someone to switch off with along the way. I then realized Dad had to have drove down here and Dad offered to drive the TV back. I put the set in the trunk of the car and there was no problem with fitting it in because the box was not sized like a typical TV box. I put the box near the center back of the trunk and to the right of a similarly sized box.
Then in my dream I get back to the Willets room and the TV was actually for John. Also, the set looked larger than 27 inches. John replaced his computer and his desk with the TV since it was so large. The onscreen displays that I saw where white with black shadowing in the lower right area of the screen. The old TV had a touch-tone pad with metallic buttons on the left side near the bottom to give an idea of how old it was.
The weather was nice today; spring is on the way.
I went to the office after doing the daily stuff. The Nelson G4 was gone. I was told an ITS student consultant took it earlier. Jeff brought it back around the 17:00 deadline so that way we would have a machine that would run Word and Photoshop for the evening. So far, ITS has not been able to fix the PageMaker problem.
I was trying to get a stapler working to put together the printout of the long course minors e-mail that Joy Charlton sent out yesterday afternoon. I needed to borrow a long thin spring from one stapler that was permanently jammed to use in another stapler although it seemed like the spring wasn’t helping much. I got the stapler working by manually pushing the group of staples to the end of the track for each action. So I got the e-mail stapled.
I continued reading for discussion in Chinese on Friday. Even though the opinions section was very easy to send to the Web as well as in-depth and living, the news section gave me many problems and kept crashing PageMaker. The sports section was also difficult. So I finished a half-hour behind because of that.
The delays only grew worse. I needed to get extra art up for the in-depth section this week that was about the inner workings of the college’s infrastructure. I worked until 06:00 and I still didn’t finish; in fact I stalled out on the in-depth section.
2001-04-03, Tue (Day 386, temperature at 16:06: 27.8°C, difference: +0.4°C): I set my alarm to 09:00 but apparently I didn’t hear it or something because I didn’t get up until 09:15. I’m not sure how I did that considering that the curtain was shut and the room was fairly dark.
I took an hour nap in the afternoon. I went to the lecture by Senator Bob Kerrey in LPAC Theater at 20:00. Jesse sat to my left and Matt sat to my right. Senator Kerrey’s lecture was very good.
I went to the office late this evening and there were no new computer problems.
2001-04-02, Mon (Day 385, temperature at 08:00: 27.4°C, difference: 0.0°C): After lunch I had the directed intent to finish configuring my iMac so that way I could back it up today. Everything needed to be set up and in working order as I was going to go over the last set of data that was there before upgrading to OS 9.1. The process fell a little behind as the afternoon went on but it became way behind when I was called this evening to come up to the publications office as PageMaker broke on another G4. So I had to stop what I was doing and go up there.
Jeff and I worked on the PageMaker problem; reinstalling the application did not help. I suggested backup, reformat, restore, but it was not a good idea to do the time consuming process again. So instead I e-mailed selected ITS staff members. I needed to finish doing the stuff with my computer first so I didn’t get to sending this e-mail until closer to 06:00 the next day.
The spacebar on the far-left iMac keyboard stopped working and I made a fix by repositioning the metal bar under the spacebar that now was getting in the way of the key working properly.
Back in Willets I didn’t start backing up until a little after 01:30. John stayed up through most of that. After backing up I ran TechTool, rebuilt the directory, rebuilt the desktop, and optimized. The virus scan progress bar stalled although disk activity continued so I skipped this check. The /boot partition has been giving directory errors for a while now and the same problem kept recurring even after fixing it. For a period, when TechTool would rebuild the directory on that volume the data size would increase although I don’t know what is actually taking up the extra space. Optimization took a while but did complete successfully in the end for all three drives. However, I still feel that Norton’s Speed Disk was better although I don’t have a compatible version nor do I feel that fantastic about Symantec due to their repeated buyout of competitors causing the Mac utility software market to dry up.
I didn’t get to bed until before 07:00 as dawn was beginning.
2001-04-01, Sun (Day 384, temperature at 09:44: 27.4°C, difference: +0.9°C, April Fools, clocks forward for Daylight Savings): My dream is in three areas; I can’t place the order. I am inside a computer lab and the CD mice don’t have lenses in them as somebody took them. I go see someone, whose office is next door. He offers some help as I look around his office. There is a Mac by the door that has programming windows open. On the other side of the room is a box running Windows and another box running Linux. I see on his bookshelf above the Mac a book about C programming on the Macintosh. The book is thick and teal-colored.
Later I am sitting on the slanted roof (like the Cornell library) of a building in a large city at night. I think Dad is on the roof with me too. I spot four separate fires in the nearby area. I hear sirens from the emergency vehicles. At another point I am sitting on the lawn outside of where I live, a combination of Willets and home. The building looks like Willets but only one floor is showing on the backside of the building I am on. The outer walls are lightly colored, true at neither place in real life. I comment to the person I am with, Dad I believe, about how my unit is much nicer than others’ are. Other people don’t have porches outside their window and one person had a residential sized central air-conditioning unit in front of their window. However, there is a gas meter on our porch and we then recall that a gas line runs under our unit, so we do have something to deal with. Mom is inside in the kitchen and we can see her from the outside window, like much earlier in real life.
I broke today into pieces in terms of what work I did. I did reading for both classes tomorrow although I went to the library in the early afternoon and late evening to do so. In between I did the daily stuff (journal, e-mail).
