Pug’s Place

A study of spiders shows female wolf spiders will eat strange-looking males that try to mate with them, but spare and even hook up with familiar-looking males.

Some may just see the males as food.

– Arachnologist Eileen Hebets

Read the short note on CNN.com here.

My computer organization and design class is doing sequential logic right now. You know, AND gates, OR gates, data paths, clocks, etc. It appears that most of the people in my discussion class just don’t think the same way that computers do. This makes me feel bad, especially since we’ve begun diagramming logic units (register files, ALUs, MUXes, etc.). The diagrams we’re drawing are growing in complexity at a geometric rate with each addition of a logic unit. If you try to memorize these sorts of things, you will either get a headache, or just plain fail. You’ve just got to think logically. I’ve even had to start taking a few notes in this class!

As I said, I feel bad for them.

The CSC (see previous posts…) has decided to do a secret santa system for Christmas presents. Being as we’re … geographically diverse, the best way to do this was email. But, who would have the honor of knowing everything? Well, I decided it should be me! Myself! Muwahahaha! Well, actually, I wrote a simple little PHP script to randomize an array of names and mail one name to each email address. The result is that the script tells everyone who they get, and not a human, so privacy is still assured.

Theresa – don’t read this paragraph!

If someone reading this was picked to be the Secret Santa for Theresa, you should remember the MegaTokyo Ninja Hoodie at ThinkGeek.Com – Theresa seems to still want one after lusting for it for a year.

At the end of Physics today the professor demonstrated super-conducting diamagnetism using a super-conducting disk, a little magnet, and a thermos of liquid nitrogen. The LN2, of course, to cool the super-conducting disk to the temperature required to become a superconductor. I tried to ask them to fill up my thermos with LN2, but the people up front ignored me. I guess they didn’t want me to try pouring it on random objects and creatures. =(

So sad. I’d have not hurt anything! Well, nothing sentient, anyway…

Doing lots of studying. I’ve registered with BlogShares.com, a fantasy blog-stock market. Hey, why not? Umm… That’s about it.

I’m taking my car in for its 3750 mile checkup and to perform recall maintenance on the pre-catalyst in the catalytic converter. I drive a 2003 Nissan SE-R, for note. It looks like this. Anywho…

Got back this afternoon. The drives were in general good. Friday night everything was perfect until we hit SR-285, where James and I encountered not only heavy fog, but also masses of deer. More than I’ve ever seen before, ever! We drove slowly, to the annoyance of those behind us — who decided that 65 in minimal vision conditions with happy little bouncy Bambi’s on the roadside was a fine speed.

The trip back here had rain until a few miles out of Tallahassee, but it never got torrential, just a heavy thunderstorm.

The weekend itself was excellent. I got to see both of my grandmothers again, and play on the beach a little bit. James got to see the area (but really only in general, we spent less than 48 hours there!). The real downside is I never got to see my brother Jay! If only he knew how much I was looking forward to spending time with him this weekend…

As soon as my next class is over, I’m hopping in my car and driving. See you Monday.

Well, the site resolves again. And there was much rejoicing. For note, if the place isn’t working at UF, going through a proxy like Anonymizer.Com or the truly free Anonymization.Net will show the site. Note that Anonymization.Net will block the stylesheet from your web browser, so it’ll be plain-text, but that’s probably okay. I spent time designing the site so that things still look a-okay while viewing it in Lynx.

I’ve decided to put an extra emphasis on my physics studies until the end of the year. Woo.

Things are progressing with my genetics paper – I’m going to meet the professor next Tuesday to just talk about bioinformatics in general. Hopefully this will give me the big picture I need to understand more of the research I have found.

This afternoon James and I are driving to Fort Walton Beach. Well, Destin actually. Thus, I’ll be out of town and not updating this weekend. Before then, I need to do laundry and check fluids and pressures in my car. Woo!

UF’s name servers are using old data again, so pug.ibu02.com is not resolving… I’m still thinking of solutions. UF does this, unfortunately. It’s like they revert their name servers to data from a week ago every few days, at random. This has plagued me for a year.

I got into my “Honors Speaking and Writing for Engineers” class. Normal class registration for me is the 6th of November.

I figured out this morning that I never have to take Differential Equations! Woo! Just Linear Algebra. Awesome! Woo!

The Dark Engineer Sauron forged magical computers to help control the computing world.

He gave three to the Computer Scientists, wisest and fairest of all professionals.

He gave five to the Software Engineers, most productive and stubborn of the professionals.

And to the profession of IT Managers, who desire power over all else, he gave nine computers.

But they were all of them deceived, for a supercomputer was secretly forged in the pits of Doom Labs.

One computer to rule them all, one computer to connect them.

One computer to bring them all, and in the darkness wreck them.