Journal 2003-03
2003-03-31, Mon (Day 825, temperature at 09:00: 22.6°C, difference: +4.9°C): After eating lunch I went to Cornell to finish my astronomy problem set. I worked on the main level. The main level should have seemed familiar from yesterday except for it being daytime now, but there was an important unexpected difference. The tables I sat at yesterday were replaced with much smaller temporary tables. The old wooden tables apparently were moved to a new portion of the science center.
The temporary tables, made out of metal and plastic, seemed very out of place with the environment and a number of people entering the library gave lukewarm comments about them. The tables had four seats at each one but they could really only handle two people per table since science work often spreads out over a large surface area. The old tables were oversized and could have comfortably seated four people doing science work.
In the evening I went to Beardsley computer lab to work on two one-page essays for psychology class. I went to Kirby at 22:00 to watch the SWIL movie. I returned to Beardsley after the movie to finish the short essays.
2003-03-30, Sun (Day 824, temperature at 13:21: 17.7°C, difference: -6.2°C): I got up today and saw that the publications server needed to be restarted. I needed to go to the office today to burn CDs anyway so I went up there immediately to restart the server and copy the Phoenix issues to burn to a client computer’s desktop. I then went to late lunch and returned to the office.
I finished burning CDs early this evening before going to Kohlberg coffee bar for a WA meeting. After the meeting I went to Cornell to do work for astronomy. I first did a small assignment for tomorrow’s class and then I started my problem set due tomorrow. I worked at one of the tables on the main level since I haven’t done that in sometime and I wanted to see what the perspective was like. My experience wasn’t that great since the lighting on that level was not the best and one of the fixtures made a buzzing noise.
2003-03-29, Sat (Day 823, temperature at 13:39: 23.9°C, difference: -1.6°C): After eating late lunch in Sharples I started the laundry and wrote the journal entries for the past two days. Doing the laundry took longer than expected since I couldn’t use all of the washers at once and the dryers took an extra hour to be available when I needed them. However all three dryers became ready at once.
After eating dinner I went to Beardsley computer lab to write my fourth environmental studies paper. There were a number of other people in the lab who I have seen before or live on my hall. They took the time to make jokes, which made the evening enjoyable. I finished the paper before 22:00 and went to Olde Club soon afterwards. Two bands from Washington played, Beauty Pill and Black Eyes. During the Black Eyes set the large crowd started moshing but the band finished soon after then. The night was over so quickly that people didn’t leave right away making it ambiguous that there was some point in staying even though the show was over.
2003-03-28, Fri (Day 822, temperature at 10:00: 25.5°C, difference: +1.4°C): Today and tomorrow are busy days in terms of work and other events. I needed to complete an activity form and submit a resumé to the dean’s office by the end of today. I also needed to write a lab report for astronomy. I didn’t have art history class this morning so I could get up later and be rested. I also could have gotten up at the same time and have an extra hour to work or I could get up an hour earlier so I would have two extra hours to work. I originally got up at 07:00 today to have two extra hours but I felt tired so I swung to the option of getting more sleep.
It felt weird having astronomy class first. There was no CS lab today but there still was interactive lecture. At lunch I was told by a Phoenix staffer there was something wrong with The Phoenix Online. When visiting the front page instead of displaying index.php it brought up a directory listing. I looked at it early this afternoon and also noticed that the SCCS setup Apache virtual hosting for The Phoenix, which I asked to be done earlier this week. It seemed the DirectoryIndex rule that included index.php in the .htaccess file was not being used so I e-mailed the SCCS about that. The problem was fixed later this evening.
This unexpected snag took time away from the other things I needed to do this afternoon. At this point I thought that it might have been better to stay up early and start things this morning. I went to Beardsley computer lab after replying to an SCCS e-mail about The Phoenix Online. In Beardsley I completed the activity form and resumé and completed my astronomy lab report.
After turning in the report draft I went to Sharples for dinner and ate in the middle room, which I hardly ever do. Following dinner I read the New York Times before leaving for the Bond courtyard to catch a 20:30 shuttle to Haverford College. The bands Safety First! and Dismemberment Plan were playing there tonight at 21:30.
After getting off the shuttle a group of Swatties who rode with us walked to Founders Hall, whom we followed. Inside Founders the performance space was essentially a big room that looked much nicer than Olde Club does but it didn’t look like a place to have a concert. For one of the Dismemberment Plan songs, part of the audience including the group I was with got on the stage to dance. After getting off the stage it seemed very clear why the lead singer was very sweaty due to the heat of the stage lights. The windows in the room were fogged up by the end of the performance even though the room did have a ventilation system. It seemed to be overtaxed about a few minutes into the Safety First! set.
Back at Swat I was planning on going to bed immediately but the complete opposite happened. Instead I stayed up very late. The SCCS fixed The Phoenix Online problems soon after 00:00 so I began by testing site operation. I still found things wrong but I could fix what was left since they involved how the .htaccess file was configured. The /org/phoenix/ way of specifying paths doesn’t work with virtual hosting so I tried setting up a /org/phoenix/ redirect. That fixed a number of potential problems but even with the redirect I still would need to edit the ErrorDocument rules and change SSI path calls in every server-parsed HTML file.
I did a text content search of the web docs for /org/phoenix/ since I might need to change the link method. I ended up getting thousands of matches before crashing Milhouse. I walked up to Parrish slightly before 03:00 to restart the server in the publications office. The server had problems restarting and I needed to replace the Acrobat Distiller installation on the RAM Disk with a backup copy on another disk partition.
At first Milhouse would freeze after loading the startup applications but in a couple restarts the Finder trapped the error with Distiller, calling it 199. Replacing the application itself fixed that problem but then Distiller encountered a fatal internal error about saving the job options. I needed to replace the entire Distiller folder to get things working.
Back in my room I finished up the work on virtual hosting and e-mailed ITS to change the DNS record for phoenix.swarthmore.edu. The changes the SCCS made today were only apparent for the hostnames that included the sccs.swarthmore.edu level since they manage their subdomains.
Hopefully when ITS updates the phoenix.swarthmore.edu record I won’t have another set of problems to deal with but given what happened today I wouldn’t be surprised. I do anticipate problems forcing all pages to use phoenix.swarthmore.edu instead of using the old www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/phoenix/ address. The biggest problem I anticipate with that is getting SSI to work.
With the possible need to change numerous SSI pages, I reasoned that now might be the time to update the archives to a new PHP based format. Realizing how daunting a task editing all of the pages would be, I wanted to do it in a way where hopefully nobody has to do this again. It wouldn’t seem that wise to switch everything to PHP since a new scripting language might be used with the site later.
Instead I thought that XML could be the base article data structure and a single PHP script could compose the HTML. This method would truly separate the content with the page layout and markup and would allow for easier parsing of articles and make the transition to a database much easier.
I thought that I might need to figure out how to get Sablotron working on the SCCS. I then saw that while Sablotron didn’t seem to be active for the SCCS or for 34sp, the XML functions were. Using the XML capabilities and sample code I parsed parts of one of the XML files from last week’s issue into HTML.
I then thought about how to make the URLs work like how they do now. I looked into mod_rewrite. The first time I saw mod_rewrite in action was quite spooky, namely having one somewhat arbitrary address load another page without redirecting. Without the URL rewriting all of the articles would need to be called by one script and the URLs would have a query string in them, meaning search engines would be less likely to index the content.
By this point it was quite late and I started feeling tired. However I now had a plan to move the entire site over to XML and I had the proof of concept that key portions of the process could work.
2003-03-27, Thu (Day 821, temperature at 08:00: 24.1°C, difference: +1.0°C): Environmental studies met outside again today. I wasn’t that amused going outside for class a second time this week considering how uncomfortable I was on Tuesday. We went to the elevated bench ring in the Scott Amphitheater, which was an improvement from Tuesday. Our class fit nicely into the seating area and the views around us were great. The benches also were not wet like the ground would have been.
From late this afternoon until 18:30 I revised my art history paper in the Beardsley computer lab. I read the New York Times this evening and then went to pub night at 21:30. All of the beer was served from the central counter and there were four kegs tonight, two Natural Lights, a Heineken, and a Moretti. The Moretti tap took in excess of a dozen pumps to get started for each time it was not immediately used before. Once the Italian beer started pouring it would continue without too much effort. Also the tap for this small keg needed to be pumped from the side instead of the top, so you couldn’t put as much of your weight on pumping.
The Moretti tasted very sweet and the Heineken ran out before I could try it. During the busy hour, which typically runs from 22:00 to 23:00, the line at the bar grew since the Moretti ran out and we only had one Natural Light tap. At this point only one keg was open with another Natural Light in waiting for the first one to finish. Still, there was no beer leftover by the end of the night.
2003-03-26, Wed (Day 820, temperature at 08:00: 23.1°C, difference: +0.6°C): I was going to watch the men’s lacrosse game this afternoon and read the paper while there but it got very windy when I got ready to go. A rain front was arriving so I decided to not go watch the game, which started at 15:30. After working in the publications office following the first Phoenix deadline I went to Trotter to watch episode #422 of MST3K, “The Day the Earth Froze.”
While in the publications office for the first deadline, facilities opened the Parrish ballroom for a dorm scavenger hunt. The Parrish ballroom is located on the floor above WSRN and the publications office and is normally closed since it is unsafe for extended use. Phoenix staffers went up there to see what it looked like. I had some of idea of its appearance from when The Phoenix did an article on it in 2001. When I got up to the top floor of Parrish I was surprised by how large the room was both in terms of floor space and ceiling height. The large ladder that went up into the ceiling to the flagpole did not cover the entire distance to the roof. Once above the ceiling there was another ladder about six feet high that went to the roof.
In the office after the second deadline I continued working on improving the post-processing part of the Phoenix workflow. At the first deadline today I spent much time figuring out how to get an AppleScript to work when variables are not passed to it when it is expecting them. I needed to test for the variable data type, which has a different class when the variable is not set. After getting that problem resolved I worked on integrating multiple code bases into two scripts and tested as I worked. My work pace was intentionally slow to avoid bad design and hasty errors.
I left the office after 01:00 and went to bed within that hour.
2003-03-25, Tue (Day 819, temperature at 08:00: 22.5°C, difference: -3.5°C): Environmental studies class was held outside in the Trotter courtyard today. My comfort level was not that great as I felt the sun baking me, the damp ground made my pants wet, and my sitting position created discomfort. I could shift my legs around numerous times during the class but instead I wanted to see if I could keep my legs crossed the entire time. I managed to do it but it was not very pleasant. I felt very uncomfortable one hour into class and increasingly so towards the end. I had difficulty walking to my next class, which fortunately was not far away in Kohlberg.
At 15:00 I went to the softball field near the C parking lot to watch a game versus Goldey-Beacom. Most of the people I sat with left at the end of the first game, which Swarthmore lost 7-3. Swarthmore also dropped the second game 3-0. While watching the game I also tried to read the New York Times. I had more problems reading the paper today than I did on 2003-02-19, when I read that day’s issue during a basketball game.
Today I had added difficulty reading the paper since it was windy outside and I was at risk for being hit by a foul softball. I initially sat behind home plate, thinking that would be safest since there was a high fence directly between the batter and I. Few people were sitting around there and I had to sit on the ground so after a few innings I moved to the bleachers along the outfield third base line.
I realized that I would be more likely to receive foul balls from there but from what I saw today not a lot of them headed directly for the stands. However, near the end of the game a foul ball was hit right at me, which led me to lean forward and put the newspaper section I was reading out in front of me to lessen the impact. The ball passed behind me without collision.
I went to the Sproul Sun lab from 21:00 to 23:00 to work on a CS program due tomorrow that would not be collected. The point of the program was to learn about structures. After 23:00 I left to go to Beardsley computer lab to revise my art history paper but while walking there I felt quite tired so I decided to go back to Wharton instead. I eventually went to bed but I actually stopped to sleep earlier last night.
2003-03-24, Mon (Day 818, temperature at 08:30: 26.0°C, difference: +1.3°C): I started the weekly log rotation this afternoon and went for a tour of the new science center at 16:00. The science commons still had an unfinished look to it but the large lecture hall looked complete. The upholstery on the back of the seats had a pattern of the Greek alphabet, which I thought was really cool.
Physics faculty began moving into the labs below the science commons. That floor didn’t seem like a basement due to the large row of windows in the corridor facing out towards the Crum woods. Construction on the research annex began while faculty was still moving out of it, namely cutting out a portion of floor space for a stair tower. Right now there is a 2.5 floor hole in the annex building but when the stair is built it will connect to the chemistry wing.
In the later evening I went to Kirby to watch the SWIL movie. Since the movie ended at 00:30, I was able to get to bed before 01:00.
2003-03-23, Sun (Day 817, temperature at 12:33: 24.7°C, difference: -0.1°C): I got up for lunch and then did various things in the afternoon including putting the journal online and getting Swatmail caught up. I went to Beardsley computer lab in the evening to write my astronomy paper draft.
2003-03-22, Sat (Day 816, temperature at 11:45: 24.8°C, difference: 0.0°C): I dreamed I was riding the bus in Ocean City, Maryland, but at first the city layout did not look like the beach community. The city grid seemed to go in a long distance in both directions when in fact in Ocean City the long distance is north to south. I got off the bus thinking my family was also getting off to go to the hotel but I didn’t see them. I walked a few blocks north around 47th Street to get to the hotel. However this large hotel right on the Coastal Highway required me to walk through the hotel to continue north.
I entered the hotel and looked on the overhead signs above the walkways for a pedestrian connection or something along those lines but I only saw a symbol resembling a disabled access route. I figured that was the best thing to try. The signs disappeared after following them for a bit so I got lost and ended up somewhere in the hotel amidst the rooms. I eventually found my way to the other side of the building but before I left I complained to the desk sitter at the door on the north side. They didn’t seem to care too much about my comment so I just left.
Outside, I then saw that I was now too far north since I past the street that my hotel was on. I walked towards the beach thinking I could go back a street or two but the boardwalk was not there (correctly so) and the only beach path was in sand. There was no walkway or road right at the edge of the dunes. Also, there was a drinking water chemical facility right on the beach edge that I could not get around.
I go back a bit and eventually got where I needed to go. Essentially the hotel my family is staying at is behind the large hotel that I got lost in but the former is closer to the beach. There was a Friendly’s restaurant connected to the hotel that I stopped at outside the door. Eventually I saw my family when they went to go into the restaurant. I told them the staff at the restaurant gave me a hard time but in retrospect I think I was confusing it with the staff at the large hotel. Either way we left the restaurant after we entered to wait but before we were seated. Instead of eating there we got Chinese food to take back to our room instead.
I slept until 11:30 today so I did the laundry in the afternoon. It was slightly more difficult to do the laundry then since other people were using the machines but all four washers worked.
In the evening I went to the publications office to image another client computer. I went to the Delta Upsilon lodge after 23:30 to go to a St. Patrick’s party. I had not been in DU for a party before so going was a thrill in itself. The music was good and the building had a nice feel to it. However, hardly anyone was dancing. There were other parties going on tonight at Olde Club and Paces so the party-going crowd was split among many places. I wanted to stay at the party even though nothing was happening as I had the hope that things would pick up. After almost an hour things did not pick up so I left.
2003-03-21, Fri (Day 815, temperature at 09:00: 24.8°C, difference: +0.3°C): Today seemed reasonably scheduled when the day started but by the time I got to CS class my schedule changed where I had many more things to do today at very specific times. I got up directly at 09:00 and quickly got ready to go to class. There was no CS lab today since the lab really was on Wednesday. Ali instead talked about structures.
By the end of class I found out that I needed to actually finish the CS lab assignment started on Wednesday by 17:00 today. After lunch I went to the publications office to continue the server backup. I went to Sproul at 15:00 to work on the CS lab. Most of my time until 16:30 was spent working on writing the code for that last part. I went to dinner early and then went back to the publications office to continue the backup and read information for the CS assignment due tomorrow. I went to Sproul at 19:00 to work on the CS assignment. The assignment was finished later this evening.
I then walked to Olde Club to hear David L.K. Murphy and Ian Thomas. The show didn’t start until after 22:00 so even if it took longer to finish the CS assignment I wouldn’t have missed much of the music. After the show ended I went to bed soon afterward as even though I had not read today’s New York Times or done a number of other things, it made more sense to just go to bed since I would have time to catch up tomorrow.
2003-03-20, Thu (Day 814, temperature at 09:00: 25.1°C, difference: +2.1°C): After putting my journal online I went up to the publications office to continue a secondary server backup and image a client. I finished at about 19:00, right when people starting arriving for the Phoenix ed board meeting. I was delayed by a few minutes since the Quark hardware key stopped working after I restarted the computer before leaving. I reseated the USB device and restarted again; Quark started up properly that time.
I ate dinner in Sharples after 19:00. The ice cream flavors available were too offbeat, so I was still somewhat hungry after eating dinner. This feeling in part led me to go to Tarble to buy four bags of pretzels. I got back to my room and then realized that I also wanted to go the Student Budget Committee office hour to fill out a time slip. I went back to Tarble to do that. The rain today was very heavy at around this time, especially so when I was walking to dinner, so even though I was not walking very far going to Sharples, Clothier, and Wharton, my coat, jeans, and socks got quite wet.
I went to pub night at 21:30, which would be the fourth time I went to Clothier today. The first time I went to the building was to pick up the New York Times at the bookstore after lunch. A new bar counter was installed that looked too nice to be a bar counter. The countertop is a shade of white, which means that stains will be very visible. The counter seemed slightly higher than the old one and the added height did not seem like much of a benefit to me. While there was more apparent space for the bartender’s counter, the corners around the bar counter made walking around it not so easy.
The beer ran out at 22:55 so a number of people left soon after then. Since I didn’t have an astronomy problem set to do tomorrow afternoon and I felt fine, I helped Jeremy, Kai, and Rachel clean up once pub night ended.
2003-03-19, Wed (Day 813, temperature at 08:01: 23.0°C, difference: -1.8°C): CS class today was a lab in lecture to gain familiarly with the string functions. In the late afternoon I started testing web browsers to see if they could scale text sizes specified in points. I ate dinner in Sharples, finishing at 17:10, and then went to the publications office for the first Phoenix deadline.
Afterwards I went to Trotter to watch Episode 620 of MST3K, “Danger!! Death Ray.” After the showing I continued the browser size testing. At about 21:30 the U.S. attacked Iraq by striking a government building in Baghdad where Saddam Hussein was believed to be at.
In the publications office for the second Phoenix deadline I started the post-processing workflow optimization. By the end of the night I saw that the AppleScript “run script” command will not work on a compiled script but it will work on a script application. Before going to bed I finished the browser size scaling test and found that all the browsers I tested were able to change the text size when it was in points.
2003-03-18, Tue (Day 812, temperature at 08:00: 24.8°C, difference: +0.5°C): I went to dinner early since I wanted to get that out of the way so I would have the early evening to do things before astronomy lab. After dinner I went to Cornell to do astronomy lab prep. The lab was at 20:00 in Kohlberg 117, the iMac computing classroom. I left lab at 22:30 and started reading the New York Times. While reading the paper a large moth flew into the room despite my window screen being shut. It took a few minutes to coax it out of my room.
2003-03-17, Mon (Day 811, temperature at 08:03: 24.3°C, difference: +2.3°C, spring break ends): Classes today had a fresh feel coming off of spring break. This afternoon, after rotating the logs that closed overnight I read the New York Times. It took longer than typical to read today’s issue because some of the articles were particularly good. The war on Iraq appears imminent now and I spent extra time to read more about that.
I went to dinner at 18:30, an hour later than anticipated. The senior class officers were selling shot glasses with drawings of Al Bloom, Bob Gross, and Tedd Goundie on them. Al is the president of Swarthmore College; Bob and Tedd are deans. I bought a number of them since I thought they were so cool when I first saw the samples on Sunday.
After dinner I went with Kai to the Parrish CRC to watch President Bush’s address to the nation at 20:00 about the Iraq situation. I went to Kirby at 22:00 to watch the SWIL movie.
After the movie ended at 00:00 I went to Beardsley computer lab to write-up two one-page essays for psych class tomorrow.
2003-03-16, Sun (Day 810, temperature at 16:26: 22.2°C, difference: +0.1°C): I got up in the afternoon since I went to bed late. I went to Sharples for dinner. Early this evening I moved the February journal entries on trucksess.com to their own file. I also made changes to the PHP code to have a link list display in reverse order and have the automatic linking ability present in the change log be available everywhere.
After doing the site work, I rotated last week’s logs, prepared for classes tomorrow, and updated the virus definitions on my computer. I started a full virus scan before going to bed but that in turn made it harder to fall asleep since my computer’s hard drive was making a lot of noise.
2003-03-15, Sat (Day 809, temperature at 12:59: 22.1°C, difference: -1.7°C): Over break I spent most of my time at home sorting through papers, throwing out many of them and packing for storage what I wanted to keep for myself. I also setup a new NEC 17" monitor that replaced a sometimes purple and very dim Apple Multiple Scan 15 display.
I returned to campus early Saturday afternoon and worked in the publications office from the mid-afternoon until early Sunday. I left my window open this afternoon and when I got back to my room it was 16.4°C but my computer had no problems waking up from sleep. Previously a temperature change like that would cause it to not wake up from sleep.
2003-03-07, Fri (Day 808, temperature at 08:30: 23.8°C, difference: -0.2°C, spring break starts): I went to Cornell this afternoon to do my astronomy problem set. Due to break the library closed at 16:30 so at 16:25 I took all of my stuff to DuPont and found an area in the hallway near where the problem set is turned in to finish the assignment. I ate dinner and then packed up to go home. I left later this evening.
2003-03-06, Thu (Day 807, temperature at 08:00: 24.0°C, difference: +0.7°C): This afternoon I wrote the WA copy of my second art history paper in Beardsley computer lab. I did Phoenix things before dinner. In the evening before going to pub night I wrote my third environmental studies paper also in Beardsley.
2003-03-05, Wed (Day 806, temperature at 08:30: 23.3°C, difference: +0.4°C): After eating lunch, I went to the Sun lab to finish my CS program. I went up to the publications office for the first Phoenix deadline after 17:00. The early edition was up by 19:30 so I went to Trotter to watch Mystery Science Theater episode 706, “Laserblast.” In the publications office for the second Phoenix deadline, I finished cleaning out temp and test files in The Phoenix Online.
2003-03-04, Tue (Day 805, temperature at 08:00: 22.9°C, difference: +0.9°C): In the evening I went to a career services session about alumni reflections on their post-Swat experiences. After the alumni panel I went to the Sun lab to continue working on my CS assignment. I got the basic algorithm of the program working by 23:00 and I left then to clean the code up tomorrow. After posting to Blackboard for art history I went to bed at around 00:00.
2003-03-03, Mon (Day 804, temperature at 08:00: 22.0°C, difference: -2.3°C): I dreamed I had an eye doctor appointment but I arrived an hour late due to car transportation problems.
I finished the log rotation by the first half of the afternoon and used the second half of the afternoon to prepare for a psych class study that I needed to do on two people.
In the evening I went to Beardsley computer lab to write up the psych study findings and print environmental studies readings. The Macs were not communicating well with the print server but I managed to get through after some effort. However, later the workarounds I tried did not work and at this point some PCs were having problems printing as well.
I read the most recent Oregonian and started reading an old New York Times but it got late and I hadn’t finished so I just stopped for the day.
2003-03-02, Sun (Day 803, temperature at 11:21: 24.3°C, difference: +0.3°C): I got up at 11:20 and was in Sharples for lunch until 13:40. As a result I started my day quite late. Still I read two Oregonians before going to dinner after 18:00. I read another New York Times in the evening.
2003-03-01, Sat (Day 802, temperature at 08:01: 24.0°C, difference: +0.1°C): My dream was located at the Springfield Mall. While paying for stuff at a fast-food type place I realized I didn’t have enough cash for my bill, so I decided to use my credit card. I also had other credit cards in my wallet that expired. I inadvertently used them first, which caused the card reader to give errors and also annoyed the cashier. I then found the right card to use but the card reader wouldn’t scan it so the cashier had to manually process my card.
It took me an extra hour to get started this morning but I did finish the wash before going to lunch. I spent the afternoon in the Sproul Sun lab to begin working on my CS assignment due Wednesday night. Before coding I needed to talk to the prof about my implementation plan and he was around this afternoon. I wrote up my plan and explained it to him soon after 15:00. After getting it approved I felt that I should start writing the program while it was fresh in my mind. I started writing then and left after 17:00 for dinner.
I went to Sharples early tonight since the Screw formal festivities were at their peak. While there weren’t too many wild things this year I did see some partners meet each other in interesting ways. For example, the table I was standing near had two fighting it out gladiator-style with water balloons attached to sticks. The balloons broke and got all over bystanders. None of us knew what the balloons were filled with so some of the onlookers, including me, were quick to get out of the way when things got messy. Others got wet, including the digital cameras they were holding, by staying right at the action. Overall, there wasn’t a whole lot of shouting but the big room was quite noisy nevertheless.
