Checksum Arcanius

In addition, I will be working at Microvision Mondays and Wednesdays at 3:00 and Thursday all day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between classes I will be doing CREE research.

Ryan is emotionally unstable, has abnormal memory characteristics, makes decisions often without much forethought, and jumps to conclusions. This leads to problems like treating awfully the people he cares about the most, failing to remember when he does so, not knowing why he’s doing it or did it, and then coming up with weird possible reasons afterwards that may or may not have any basis in reality. It is a broken situation, and it needs to be fixed.

A grand thank you to all my well-wishers on the last post. The update is that there is no rash developing — for which I am very grateful. The penicillin seems to have done its thing to the strep throat (Today I can swallow without pain for the first time since Saturday!) Don’t worry, I understand the need to continue the antibiotic regimen until its all gone; I will do so faithfully.

Things seem to have proceeded now to just cough (much more outwardly apparent, but also much easier to deal with than a sore throat; for me at least). I love being able to drink the proper amount of liquids without feeling the need to slam my hand into the wall with each gulp. Very refreshing!

In other news, I did defy the doctor today by skipping out on my Bioengineering “Design” class where some lady came to talk about avocados and their uses for sex (for serious), in order to go and ostensibly “watch” my utlimate frisbee team play. Of course, I had packed my cleats and I was wearing shorts under my pants, so I ended up playing some too. We lost; it was not our best effort or our best game by any means.

On a similar vein, the Sun’s playoff run ended tonight to the ghastly-to-watch San Antonio Spurs. Jazz-Spurs? Yawn. Probably the most boring western conference series possible. The NBA just lost out big time. Maybe they should change the rules so that Bruce Bowen’s hundreds of stealth hacks don’t go unpenalized. Just a thought for restoring balance to the game.

I went to the doctor today to see about the possibility of Strep Throat in a worsening sore throat I was confronted with. A few tests and a couple hours later, I got a call from the doctor telling me that I did indeed have Strep Throat. I actually took this as good news, because while in the examination room, the doctor said my my symptoms looked to her like mono. So I was a happy camper — I only had strep, I would be better in two days with the antibiotic regimen, and I could play in the Friday Ultimate Frisbee playoff game. Alas, it was not to be. About a half hour later, the doctor called back to give me some truly terrible news: I also had mono. So in addition to have a really sore throat that makes me want to cry every time I swallow, I have a even sorer throat (perhaps the sorest I’ve ever had, according to the literature) that makes me slam my fist into hard objects every time I swallow. It is agonizing, and all the rest of the sick stuff is going on too — too hot, stomach issues, tired without sleepiness, and on and on. To add insult to injury, my doctor told me that because I have both, the penicillin I’m taking now along with the mono might actually lead to a rash that is “not subtle.” Furthermore, this isn’t the best time in my life for this to be happening.

Oh well, I will survive.

I sure haven’t slept much as-of-late. Wednesday to Thursday, I stayed up working on Computer Architecture homework. Thursday to Friday, I stayed up to work on a ridiculous “Capstone Design” assignment. Friday to Saturday night I was awoken several times by phone calls and was waking up at 6:00 (actually didn’t wake until 7) to go to the Second Annual Pacific Northwest MATE ROV competition with Dan.

It was quite interesting seeing some real-life underwater robots, but what I found most compelling about the competition was that the drivers were not allowed to watch their robot while maneuvering it. They had to rely entirely on on-board cameras relayed through long winding tethers to small TVs located at their driver station. As Dan Marsh said, this twist gives the whole competition a much more “robotic” feel, rather than the supercharged “R/C Car” feeling that FIRST Robotics Competitions often degenerate to. MATE is much more robotics in the real world. Being able to watch the drivers attempt to operate their machines almost blindly also created a lot of real-world dramatic irony. “If only they knew,” I found myself groaning, “that they are still three feet away!”

Due to a Software Engineering meeting I had at 2:00, a late competition start, and the competition’s relative remoteness out at Evergreen State College, we had to leave before any official matches were played. However, I still had a good time.

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. My laptop, I am sad to report, has officially given up the ghost. Those of you familiar with Kleinoscope probably know that I have already performed surgery on it several times to replace a broken power plug:

Also, the keyboard’s enter key got stuck down, and in my attempts to fix that I broke it, so it kinda flops around and occasionally falls off these days. One battery is dead and the second is close. Most recently, a little bit of dripped water took out the touchpad and started causing instant lockups when moderate pressure was applied to the touchpad area. To add to the excitement, the front panel lights were all cross-wired, so the power light was always on, the hard drive light acted a lot like the power light, and the power light sometimes turned a hue I had never seen before.

So, I decided it was time for surgery again. To the tune of Sportcenter, I pulled out my tools and got to work. I had never opened up the touchpad area of the laptop before, and it was quite interesting. I found an area on the touchpad controller board where some water damage had occurred and attempted to fix it several times. Each time, the problem was not fixed until, finally, the laptop stopped turning on at all. At that point, with laptop disassembled, touchpad gone, enter key dead, batteries low, and wits at end, I decided that it was time for a new laptop.

So now I will ask all of you who dare read this far, for advice on what laptop I should get. My main criteria are:

– Portability. It doesn’t necessarily have to be ultraportable, but I am not going down the 8-pound behemoth desktop replacement pathway again. I guess I would aim for around 4 pounds ideally.
– Battery life. Kleinoscope was a P4. Without the M designation. That means it put out more heat than a toaster oven and drained batteries about as fast as a short circuit. I was not appreciative.
– Ruggedness. I treat my stuff fairly hard sometimes, and I appreciate it when it can keep up.
– Bug-free-ness. My last laptop often had trouble waking up from sleep when plugged in to power. Stuff like that is crap.

Ideally, the laptop would lose the optical drive for more battery space. I don’t mind an external optical drive. I realize this is unlikely to find in anything that’s not imported from Japan. I think I would still prefer XP over Vista at this point. I don’t need gizmos like a camera, but built-in wifi is almost a requirement. I guess that’s all. Thanks in advance for your input.