Today after class I skied up the Lamprey river to Packer’s Falls in Durham. You can park at the end of Piscassic Rd. in Newmarket and ski down the boat ramp onto the river. After that you need to follow the ski and snowmobile tracks up the river. Some sections of the river have even been groomed for cross country skiing. Overall I skied about 5.5 miles.

I made a hat! From the pretty yarn that spinfire’s parents gave me for Christmas. And it actually came out well and I finished it and I’m wearing it and it’s all exciting.

Erm. Right. Anyway. I was prety happy with it. I didn’t really swatch for it, but I knew I wanted earflaps so I made those by eye and then figured out the gauge from those. Entirely improvised, really. And then I finished off the top part (there are few things funnier-looking than trying on a hat that’s only about halfway knit and is still on the needles), at which point I decided that the earflaps were really awful and picked them out from the bottom up (P.I.T.A.) and re-did them. It was a quick project, and, as you may suspect, a fair bit of it was done in classes.

Pictures later.

First, my school schedule has been updated to tell the truth.

Second, I’m starting to sort out dates etc. for things that we are doing and places that we will be between now and August. People who need to know our plans, they’re here, along with other stuff I need to keep track of.

My first assignment for my Data Structures class is done! Uh, so, it isn’t due until next Friday, but because it is in Java and all I figured I would start early. Well, it wasn’t too bad. The assignment was to write a class which implemented a mathematical matrix and operations. If you’re aren’t plagiarizing by doing so, check it out. Note! By clicking on that link, you certify that you are permitted to look at it! Ye be warned!

SpamAssassin on threepwood.isomerica.net has been upgraded to version 3.0.2. The upgrade should be seamless, but if you use SpamAssassin and encounter strange behavior, please let me know via email. You may also want to check your user preferences if you have customized settings. Some options may have changed.

Seen in #pugglewump:

<@spinfire> Wunderground says it is -0 F here.
<aelscha> -0? heh
<@spinfire> it is a very low zero!
<@dyfrgi> It’s limiting to 0 from below.
<@spinfire> Haha.
<@spinfire> except it’s not, because it is definitely approaching 0 from above :)


No 8am classes! Continuing the trend set by aelscha, my schedule:

Monday:
09:10-10:00 Calculus II
10:10-11:00 Data Structures
11:10-12:00 Introduction to Digital Systems
13:10-14:00 Data Structures
Tuesday:
09:40-11:00 Energy and the Environment
11:10-12:00 Calculus II
14:10-15:30 Introduction to Digital Systems
Wednesday:
09:10-10:00 Calculus II
10:10-11:00 Data Structures
13:10-14:00 Data Structures
15:10-17:00 Digital Systems Lab
Thursday:
09:40-11:00 Energy and the Environment
11:10-12:00 Calculus II
14:10-15:30 Introduction to Digital Systems
Friday:
09:10-10:00 Calculus II
10:10-11:00 Data Structures

I like it! Every day starts after 9:00, and ends relatively early (except for ECE 543 lab days). Plus, both of our Fridays end relatively early, allowing us to leave early for the weekend. The only bad thing is that I have several classes in a row during many mornings.

I love the way fresh contact lenses feel on my eyes.

School tomorrow. (My brain doesn’t quite believe this yet.) People keep asking me if I’m excited. I’m not, particularly. I mean, I’m really looking forward to a couple of my classes, but for the most part this semester feels like it mostly consists of things I have to take for one reason or another. And I have an 8am class. Which is one of the classes I’m really looking forward to, it’s taught by Toni Bisconti who is wicked cool and I’ve been hoping I’d get to take a class with her, but it’s at 8 in the morning. Bleh. Spinfire, who has had 8am classes the last two semesters and doesn’t this time around, has been gloating. Damn him. My other class I’m really excited about is a high-level linguistics class, ‘Syntax and Semantic Theory’. Yummy.

My schedule (may be subject to further changes):
Monday:
9:10-10:00 Calculus II
2:00-4:00 Honors Seminar, Changing Earth
Tuesday (Day of Doooom):
8:10-9:30 Adult Development and Aging
9:40-11:00 Principles of Biology II
11:10-12:00 Calculus II
3:40-5:00 Syntax and Semantic Theory
Wednesday:
9:10-10:00 Calculus II
1:10-5:00 Principles of Biology II
Thursday:
8:10-9:30 Adult Development and Aging
9:40-11:00 Principles of Biology II
11:10-12:00 Calculus II
3:40-5:00 Syntax and Semantic Theory
Friday:
9:10-10:00 Calculus II

Things to notice: First, I have 8.5 hours/week of biology. That’s in-class time, not counting reading and writing lab reports. This is for the exact same amount of credit that my 5 hours/week of calculus or the 3 hours/week of either liberal arts class is. I don’t like sciences… However, I did manage to have only math on Mondays and Fridays, and to have no evening classes except for that one section of bio. Now I just need to decide whether to make one of my non-major classes honors or to pick up an honors class. And whether I really want to be carrying 20 credits. Decisions, decisions.

Edited: The evening bio section doesn’t meet, bringing that class down to a mere 7 hours/week. Also, I added a Changing Earth seminar in order to get my second requisite honors class and a 3T gen ed.

John Derbyshire (conservative author) writes about why scientists generally do not suppot ideas like “Intelligent Design.” I agree. People who are scientifically inclined are more likely to accept gaps in our knowledge, content that we may never know. I always liked the idea that we haven’t been able to look at time before the Big Bang. It provides a place for God, a place where we can have faith ideas without fear of contradiction. I find the deist idea of a God who is a clockmaker much more plausible. Compare this to those who believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Today Aelscha and I went skiing along an old abandoned rail trail in Newfields, NH. The trail actually goes all the way from Rockingham Junction in Newfields to Manchester. We travelled about four and a half miles total, down and back. While we were in the parking lot after coming back I snapped this photo of the abandoned Rockingham Depot, which is apparently now a monopoly railroad:

Only seconds after taking this picture the Amtrak Downeaster went flying by very fast!

temper.unh.edu currently uses a customized pam setup for authentication. It uses a copied password file to authenticate users, and uses SMB to query the main UNH servers for password authentication. Pam_mount is used to mount the user’s home directory. But after upgrading the setup to Fedora Core 3 strange things happened: gdm would ask for the user’s password first and then ask for the username. Other than that it worked fine!

Because of the ordering of lines in the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file, pam_mount was actually asking for the password and passing it off to pam_unix and pam_smb_auth. But pam_mount was asking for the password first, then the username. GDM passed this on to the user (which I believe is the Correct behavior) and the console login process did not. The solution? Changing the ordering so pam_unix requests the password and passes it on to pam_mount, instead of the other way around:


auth sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so likeauth nullok
auth sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_smb_auth.so use_first_pass nolocal
auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_mount.so use_first_pass


These are some of my favorites:

I waited in the car and photographed Molly while Aelscha was in the bank. Note the mirror.

We stopped in Lake Potanipo, Brookline, NH, on our way down because I wanted to take a picture of the lake.

“Sparkles.” I took this while waiting for food on Christmas day at the Noyce household.

After setting the table.

My niece Ellie playing violin.

My niece Claudia.