Tiffany is visiting me over the next few days as it's spring break for the folks over at Boalt law school. It's been a nice relaxing visit so far. We'll have to think of something fun to do tomorrow and Saturday.
Even though I biked to school in the rain. It wasn't raining that hard, actually.
On thing that irritates me about blogs is when people continue their entry straight from the title, as if it was all a single block of text. I hate it when people do that.
It's getting hot in Tucson, sadly. I was out playing ultimate last night and it was the first night of the year where I was wishing it was cooler. Even my room is starting to warm up. I'm not quite ready for this.
I've been planning a string of "Posts With Value", but I just haven't mustered the desire to do it.
I noticed today that the Colts signed Adam Vinateiri away from the Patriots. This is that critical move that will finally push the Colts over the top and hand them a superbowl victory. Wow, I just can't overstate the significance of this signing. The Pats are crippled. They might as well not even show up for the season next fall.
I haven't received a single email on my work computer in the past 48 hours. At first, I thought this was because of spring break and it was simply the case that nobody was emailing me. But I haven't been receiving astro-ph notifications either, so something is amiss. I have no idea what to do about it though.
I know a lot of my readers have been asking themselves the following question: how on Earth do I install IDL on Gentoo Linux? So I thought I would provide all of you with the answer. Basically, it's not easy. The GUI script installer didn't work for me (because I use Gentoo, I think), so I had to get my hands dirty and do a little manual labor. Here's what I did (as root):
1) make a directory called /usr/local/rsi
2) copy from installation cd to /usr/local/rsi the following files: unpack.sh, base1.tz, linux_x.tz
3) edit unpack.sh so that it finds files that end in *.tz instead of the default, which was *.tar.gz
4) ./unpack.sh base1.tz
5) ./unpack.sh linux_x.tz
After doing these five steps, it seems to work fine. Except that the ? help menu doesn't connect to acroread properly, but I suspect that may be because I don't have acroread4 or acroread5 installed on my machine. Since I hardly ever use the ? feature I don't really care. I may still have license issues after I reboot, but I'm crossing my fingers so I should be good.
There you go. I hope you use this gold mine of information wisely.
I just switched from State Farm to Geico. It wasn't by choice--I'll be paying over $100 more per six months under my new plan. The difference is that I won't be under my Dad's plan, which is why it used to be so cheap. However, the State Farm guy in CA wasn't licensed to do business in AZ, so I had to switch after I registered my car in AZ (...which I had to do since I own my car and live in AZ). The whole thing was a hassle and stressed me out a fair bit, but it should be over now.
Meanwhile, I'm still having trouble running tycho, the stellar evolution code, for a 16 solar mass star. This is a problem because I'm supposed to give a presentation on what happens with the evolution of such a star next week. On the research side, I got a little concerned over some of the results from the work I'm doing. I can't even describe what the problem is here. Oh yes, and I just found out I have a midterm next Tuesday. Great.
I'm heading back to the bay area tomorrow. I should try and get a ride to the airport. In fact, I think I'll go do that right now.
I just sneezed so hard into kleenex that it reflected off the kleenex past my glasses and onto my eyelid. It's a strange feeling to be wiping mucus off your eyelid, let me tell you. Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens more often that I'd like to admit.