A long time ago, there was a girl named Crystal. After she broke my heart, I've never really been the same. The details, for now, are not important - I'm still trying to work those out. And not so long ago, I saw a girl who looked exactly like her - Fish's best friend. How do I explain this to Fish so that I don't sound like a depraved lunatic? Well, I told myself that I didn't care how depraved I sounded, and I just told her, most of it. Fish has never looked at me like that before - maybe after "break" she'll understand when I try to explain to her. Maybe not. Right now, that's the fourth biggest problem I have on my plate.

Capstones, bloody capstones. There I said it. That leaves out problems first and second. Problem three is the most complex, the most erudite - feh feh. A pox on problem three.

Spring break at home is something I should never do again- I never get anything done. Not that I'm a workaholic at school, and seeing as how I only have one somester left, I won't have this problem again. It wasn't particularly resting, or enlightening, and in fact, since getting back, my knee has been bothering me something awful. If I had anything remotely approaching an active lifestyle, I suppose that would make sense. Right now, it doesn't. And all my other books for my capstones are sitting in the mail room right now - which won't be open until Monday. And my laptop - that's there too. Feh feh. A pox on your "mail room."

Seal'da wit a curse
As'a sharp'a as a knife-
Doom'd'a is'a your soul
And'a damned'a is'a your'a life'a

. . .

History is'a made at'a night -
Character . . . is'a who'a you are, in'a the dark'a.
-- Buckaroo Banzai, Lord John Worfin

If you've got some time that you have to spend away from your computer (say, you're leaving it to go to Northern Wisconsin for a few days), may I suggest the following .mozconfig file:

# sh
# Build configuration script
#
# See http://www.mozilla.org/build/unix.html for build instructions.
#

# Options for 'configure' (same as command-line options).
ac_add_options --enable-toolkit-gtk
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews
ac_add_options --disable-postscript
ac_add_options --disable-xprint
ac_add_options --enable-crypto
ac_add_options --disable-jsd
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-optimize=-O2
ac_add_options --with-default-mozilla-five-home=/usr/local/mozilla

Since I don't have a printer, I use CronosII for mail, and some tin variant for news, the time you spend optimizing the living hell out of the code is almost gained back by removing debugging features and stuff I never use. I had no idea, that Mozilla could be so fast - like I can actually FEEL that I'm connected to a T1, and click on a page, and it doesn't churn/sputter/render for a while. It just happens. And so far, it's been pretty stable (9.9, anyways). Thank you Mozilla . . . thank you. When I have another spare day away, I think I'll add the expensive optimations to the optimization flag. ;)

It just sucks. It's long, hard, and tedious. And it's all graph theory. And my head is fuzzy- not like when I shaved it - like when I'm drunk. But not on alcohol - math. This is pure, 198 proof math. Somewhere in the world, there is a Mathematics still, and it's churning just for me - and all of my fellow Combinatorics students, I suppose.

I'm drunk with power. Wait, no - buttershots.

Progress on the dance front is going full steam. The theme is "Robots, Sex, and Death" - and I'm death. "Would you like a sugar cookie? I made them myself . . ."

There's a rusted halo on my head
It must have been something that I said
This is the dawn of my betrayal
This is the final broken nail
Fill this hole
Suck this soul
I am the thing that I can't control
--- Flesh, KMFDM

Conflict and dissatisfaction of one sort or another enforce the need for the compensations indicated by the + group.

Your Stress Sources

Has an unsatisfied need to ally himself with others whose standards are as high as his own, and to stand out from the herd. His control of his sensual instincts restricts his ability to give himself, but the resulting isolation leads to the urge to surrender and allow himself to merge with another. This disturbs him, as such instincts are regarded as weaknesses to be overcome; he feels that only by continued self-restraint can he hope to maintain his attitude of individual superiority. Wants to be loved or admired for himself alone; needs attention, recognition, and the esteem of others.

Your Restrained Characteristics

Feels that he is receiving less than his share and that there is no one on who he can rely for sympathy and understanding. Pent-up emotions make him quick to take offense, but he realizes that he has to make the best of things as they are.

Trying to calm down and unwind after a period of over-agitation which has left him listless and devoid of energy. In need of peace and quiet; becomes irritable if this is denied him.

Your Desired Objective

Seeks an affectionate relationship, offering fulfillment and happiness. Capable of powerful emotional enthusiasm. Helpful, and willing to adapt himself if necessary to realize the bond of affection he desires. Needs the same consideration and understanding from others.

Your Actual Problem

Needs to achieve a stable and peaceful condition, enabling him to free himself of the worry that he may be prevented from achieving all the things he wants.

Your Actual Problem #2

Wants to be valued and respected, and seeks this from a close and peaceful association of mutual esteem.

Kinda scary how spot-on these things are sometimes, isn't it?

I suppose it doesn't have the same lilt to it as some other songs, but still, a song somebody needs to write down. BTW - when a beautiful Bulgarian rose asks you where you're sitting for dinner, say "wherever you are." I'm going to miss her, come May.

Nobody comments in my journal- frequently. Either an Anonymous Coward, or Nobody (nodody_of_consquence@hotmail.spam-me-motha.com). In some ways, this was always comforting, but lately, I feel alone- and Nobody, often some of the best of company, isn't always sufficient. I stopped by Cam and Chase's, on a whim (see next entry). It was 1:00, and they were the only people up that I felt comfortable calling. Handy that Chase is Nobody, I suppose.

Lately, I've been sick- and sleep seems to be the only way to keep me feeling anywhere near good. So I sleep- and now I feel better. I also missed the entirety of Friday. One of these days, this issue will resolve itself peacefully. Ugh.

You want the Good Life
You'll Break Your Back
You Snap Your Fingers
You'll Snap Your Neck
--- Snap Your Fingers Snap Your Neck, Prong

At bottom, no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone.
All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes, whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling.
There is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.
--- Rainer Maria Rilke, Of Love and Other Difficulties.

It's a Southern kind of heat-
The shadows crack and start to creep,
Conversation drags its feet
I wish we'd both been more discreet
Like light
that is caught between Night and Day,
You've stepped , between
Me and my-

Me and my Big Ideas.
Won't wash away your tears
No one else seems to mind
That I'm not that kind

Well they love you when you're weak
Bet they hate to see this winning streak
It's that thing we call control
There's a deep frustration in their soul
Black Thoughts
That get stuck between someone's ears
Like Me
And my Big Ideas
--- Me and my Big Ideas, Tears for Fears

Sorry
How many times must I say
Life is not a cake to separate
What do I have to do
To save you from worry
Cut off my nose
To spite my face
--- Sorry, Tears for Fears

Time enough has gone by- time for an update. I've recently finished reading "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," by George Saunders, a collection of short stories and a novella. If you have not already done so, I suggest reading it at your earliest convenience. I was recommended to read it after a friend of mine likened his style to mine in a short story I'd recently drafted. The title of my story is the definition of a complex number, in purely mathematical notation. Mostly, it's about the Vietnam war, and a high school math teacher who's coming to grips with the fact that one of his students is the daughter of one of his unit members. She's in an abusive relationship with another student of his, and he's getting ready to solve that. At least, that's what it was in my head. On paper, it's a hell of a lot more confusing.

But I digress. The story will sort itself out as time goes on. Comments by my friends were many and varied, and so I have to do what's best for me with that. I re-compiled Mozilla with cryptographic support. Note to self: always ./configure --enable-crypto , then gmake. Saves another 2 hours of compiling random packages again.

It's freezing rain here. Still, Slivken managed to convince me to go see "The Time Machine" over at the Death Mall (which is the Mall of America, for those of you out of the Midwest[Hell]). A solid movie - about what you'd expect from Hollywood, with the sci-fi aspects not glossed over too much. It's only great fault was how it was only 1.5 hours long. Jeremy Irons (the leader of the Moorlocks) has completely redeemed himself from Dungeons and Dragons, in my eyes anyway. Can't tell you how much it resembles the book- never read it. But Alexandru has, and he's awaiting my review with bated breath, or perhaps baited breath. Never can tell with those cagey Rumanians.

My Dutch naval trenchcoat is falling apart, and this rain isn't helping any. If anyone knows a keen place to get Dutch naval trenchcoats, let me know. I'd greatly appreciate it. It's pretty frigging cold here.

You get things done by setting small goals to reach larger ones. If I make a piece of toast, it might lead to a sandwich, or, eventually, to my own space program. -- Steven Wright

Baby steps . . . combinatorics, capstone alpha, capstone beta, sociolinguistics, programming, creative writing. Argh.

Turns out that Gentoo Linux (jen-two) and Sorcerer Linux are both in pretty usable states. I suppose the main priority right now should be Grandma-level usability.

Which is an odd thing for which to ask. Personally, my maternal grandmother can be a twisted, passive-aggressive nightmare. Which makes me wonder what sort of "usability features" I would add to a stock RedHat CD to freak her out. See, a computer for my maternal grandmother needs to be several things- a CD Player, a classical musician, well-versed in the apologetics that technology is not the devil, and, in a worst-case scenario, a seasoned hostage negotiator.

So until a rather large number of open problems in Artificial Intelligence are solved, Grandma ain't getting squat from the Linux community. Hargh.

You have not done your homework? Then you must fight the bear!
-- Kargan's .sig (uid#250092)

"You were amazing back there Corny!"
"No Duckman - I just did what any other classically-trained pianist slash hostage negotiator would have done in my shoes."
-- Duckman and Cornfed, Duckman

I have a problem with people telling me to do extremely stupid things- especially when I am paying them to do it. One of my professors has assigned a paper on the sociolinguistic implication of Wilson's 14 points. If he had mentioned anything that he wanted out of it, it would be a good assignment. At this point, though, I have neither the will nor the ambition to write it. The worst part is that I have homework for Combinatorics due later today, and I've been working on that instead. I like Combinatorics - but most of Sociolinguistics is turning out to be the worst kind of soft-science bullshit I've ever seen.

There is definitely something to be said for my lack of maturity in not writing it (as of yet - I need clarification, not absolution/martyrdom). I understand that. But this is a bad weekend for this kind of busy work altogether. What kind of person am I becoming?

In my head right now:

With the lights out it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
-- Smells like Teen Spirit, Words by Kurt Cobain, Performed by Tori Amos

Okay. After four hours of compiling "stable" GNOME from source, and hunting down libraries from every which-where in order to build Mozilla and get XMMS working, all I want is a Linux distro that bootstraps a compeletely native code base onto a box from a "working" kernel, and maybe someday I'll get this out of Sorcerer GNU/Linux, but I'm angry now, dammit.

Okay, here's how it goes. Developers for a major codebase, say, GNOME, KDE, GNUStep, whathaveyou, write a SINGLE script that takes the code they have, compiles each individual package in the right order, and emits a DETAILED list beforehand about which dependencies need to be applied before construction begins. None of this crap about installing an ISDN subsystem so I can get libgtop to compile- nothing about assuming I have an infinite-precision calculator like bc to compile libgtop, and nothing like refusing to build libgtop anyway, just on principle.

Start with a base system- the CD can have m68k, i386, MIPS, PARISC, and sparc binaries on it. Bootstrap from binary glibc and gcc all the basic binutils and networking options again, then redo gcc and glibc. From this point on, everything else is, as they say in StarCraft, "crawling up the Tech Tree." Want to install XMMS? Set your phasers to Mp3 and Ogg goodness, and fire away as glib and gtk+ are installed by default. Decide you want GNOME after that? You already know where you are in the Tech Tree- maybe you have to crawl back down again for some reason, but you can always build back up again. People, this is FREE CODE- all you need is time, and if Walters can do it on his 226MHz Pentium box in FreeBSD by typing "make world," dammit, I'm willing to give it a shot. For right now, just a whole lotta bitchin, but I think this is definitely the way to go for the future of Linux. If nothing else, automating the construction of an entire operating environment is a good proof of concept that Linux is well-organized enough, and its code mature enough, to be ready for the mainstream. End rant, in 5, 4, 3, . . .

ST PAUL,MN -(AP)- In the wake of the COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modelling , experts estimate that "fatalities are hanging steady at 9, what with the three teams and all, but countless more are injured." This quote comes, of course, from Phineas Phogg, of Phogg Research, who has been studying the mental and physiological effects of 96-hour problem-solving competitions on adult humans for the last 23 years.

"I can't believe the wounded are still responding to human contact," said a dazzled Phogg, upon examining the shell-shocked body of an Art History Major who accidentally glanced at the perl code of the late W. Owens, a team member attempting to solve Problem B. It is estimated that in the first 48 hours alone, E. Slivken, N. Lindgren, and W. Owens lost 4.5 pints of blood each, entirely through the sweat glands in their forehead. Loved ones and acquaintances of all levels of closeness were affected, ranging from N. Lindgren's mother, who can no longer pronounce the letter B, to O. Landgren's pet rat, which has spontaneously assumed vampiric powers.

"They will be missed, but their hastily-thrown-together-at-the-last-minute report will echo throughout eternity," said Phogg, wearing an arc-welding mask to shield his pathetically human eyes from the insanity-inducing font and bright text selected in the 11th hour by the team of Macalester seniors.

So here we are, our final results due in less than 36 hours, and things are finally beginning to take hold. Like this caffeine rush. Ahhh . . . endorphins.

Not much to report on, lately. Odd that. Trying to solve the airline overbooking problem (Problem B) has occupied most of my time, when Slivken isn't wailing on my ass in chess, and I'm not doing my usual "wake up, lumber out of bed, experience existential dread, take medication, drink coke, surf web, class stuff, eat something, more class stuff, eat dinner, work out problem with stupid Linux users, contemplate my own mortality, read Lensman, adjust headphones, sleep" thing. Pretty much the norm right about now.

I usually don't talk too much about other people here. At least, they don't always know it. It's the same with the rest of life- set up hoops, watch others jump through them, smile with amusement. There's more to it than that, but I have a strange feeling that this is a peculiarly INTJ thing to think. And I have such nice hoops.