VT’s G5 cluster.
Virginia Tech is doing something very cool. They’ve bought 1,100 Apple G5s, which they’re going to group together to create one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. They intend to take delivery of the systems this coming week. There’s an information session being held about in this Thursday morning, which I’ll [...]
Hoax-a-rama.
I love hoaxes, pranks, and instances of social engineering. (Broadly referred to as “culture jamming.”) In the past couple weeks, here in Blacksburg, I’ve delighted in staging improvisational jokes and fictions. In every instance, it was only funny to me, which is fine, because I’m only looking to amuse myself. When [...]
More cars than sense.
There are now more cars than drivers in the U.S., according to the transportation department.
Everybody with me now: Put the keys down and step away from the car. Nobody has to get hurt if we end this now.
Whumpa whumpa whumpa.
Still with the bass from next door. Tonight, I played Portishead’s “It Could Be Sweet” for them. I’m looking for suggestions for other bass-a-riffic songs.
Thumpa thumpa thumpa.
The girls who next door to me enjoy techno. At least, they play it. A lot. I put a nice note on their door the day that they moved in, politely and self-effacingly asking that they turn down their bass. I guess it didn’t take, because they kept it up. [...]
Nekkid.
Many of the girls at Tech could hypothetically wear less clothing, but they would, in fact, be naked. Lord knows I’m no prude — I’ve done my share of nude hiking — but I couldn’t imagine walking around with as little clothing as some of these girls. Most people wear more to the [...]
The finest minds of my generation.
One of my classes is a 3000-level political science class. (They use thousands at VT; I have no idea of why. Maybe all colleges do so. What do I know about colleges?) This class is intended for third- and fourth-year students, and is consequently populated mostly by upperclassmen, largely political science [...]
Day the second.
I had three classes today. (Well, yesterday — it’s late.) It’s too late for me to go into a whole lot of detail, but suffice it to say that they were a lot smaller than the two classes that I had yesterday, but still quite overcrowded. My professor didn’t show up for [...]
Long-haired hippies need not apply.
Blacksburg has banned rollerblading. Not only is it illegal to skate on the sidewalk or in the streets throughout downtown, but it’s illegal to use them on the Bicentennial Greenway, the paved pathway that runs along a tree-shaded path through town.
I brought two pairs of ‘blades with me. I’d intended to use them [...]
$.5T Deficit
The Congressional Budget Office will reveal tomorrow that our deficit is about to expand further still, from $401B this year to $500B — half a trillion dollars — next year. They forecast a total $6.3T deficit in the next decade. That’s not including $2T tax cuts planned by the White House. Tax [...]
First day of school.
I learned a lot in my first day of school today. But not about the sort of things that I thought that I’d be learning.
My first class was Knowledge and Reality, your standard intro-to-philsophy class. Well, standard except that there were hundreds of students in this class. Every seat in the auditorium [...]
PayPal changed their query format.
Without telling anybody — at least, without telling me — PayPal changed their format for URLs that permit people to send money. Nobody had booked ads on nancies.org for a couple of days, which I thought was weird. Turns out that the link that people click on to purchase a text ad led [...]
Sterling Ball, unlikely Linux guru.
C|Net has an excellent interview with Ernie Ball’s CEO, Sterling Ball. Ernie Ball is known as the world’s leading manufacturer of guitar strings, but now they’re becoming known as prime examples of the tremendous benefits that a business can realize from moving from Microsoft Windows to Linux. Three years ago, the BSA raided [...]
They revamped the airport completely.
The students are coming back to Blacksburg. This sleepy little town is about to go from a population of 10,000 to 35,000. I’d gotten to like the town’s sparseness, the slow, friendly approach to just about everything. I think that’s about to disappear.
Outside my window, where there’s a metered parking lot, SUV [...]
In the soft white underbelly of the beast.
I bought Microsoft Office today.
I feel so dirty.
Geek plates.
I am a big geek. My new license plate seals it. (Note that this is not a political stance on Linux nomenclature; it’s just that the plate was available.)
Mo’ Betta fish.
This is my fish. His name is Charlie. He’s a Betta. I wanted a pet, but they’re not allowed in my apartment. Anything more complex than a fish, I’d kill and feel bad about it, anyhow. I speak to Charlie only in French. Which is fine, because he’s fairly [...]
DSLd.
Aaaahhhhhh….bandwidth. The friendly neighborhood Ntelos just set up my DSL. It is such a relief to be able to get connected from home.
And now to Charlottesville, to pick up my servers.
Eye-bleeding speed.
I feel a little silly spending my afternoon sitting in this empty student lounge in Squires here at Virginia Tech, but I have got the bandwidth of the gods. DSL Reports‘ test indicates that I have 4Mbps download and 3Mbps upload. This is in no small part because the campus is devoid of [...]
iBook fixed.
In Apple’s usual two-day turn-around, I got my iBook back today. The screen works perfectly. It’s so clean, in fact, that I think that they may have just replaced the whole LCD assembly. I’m definitely going to have to spring for AppleCare on this in a few months. Maybe somebody will [...]
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Waldo Jaquith (JAY-kwith) is a website developer and political pundit who lives in the vicinity of Charlottesville, VA, USA. more »
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