So Nicky, Adam, and I were at the local Publix shopping for our normal amenities. I walked up the register, put my goods on the counter, and paid using the credit/debit machine as normal. Error! The card was denied! So Nicky lends me a twenty so that I am able to pay. Thoughts of credit card fraud floating in my head, we head home.

When I arrived, I immediately went online and checked my financial statements. Everything seemed to be in order. As a last measure, I decided to call the bank. It turns out that the bank cancelled my card because of various small check card payments made in high frequency. Now, for those who know me, you know that I pay everything with a check card, including things like 35 cent sticks of gum. The bank apologized and reactivated my card.

Left to go to Alex and Elysia’s party around seven with Nicky.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the party really begins at ten. So right now I am here updating this entry from Alex’s iBook. Elysia made an MP3 playlist for the party using iTunes. Overall, I was very impressed with new Apple operating system.

The party started to pick up around 10 o’clock as other people started to trickle in. Most were friends of Alex or Elysia. Some were friends of friends of Alex or Elysia. And on and on it went until we even had blue-haired people arriving from London, majoring in politics and law, visiting the United States, and generally whining about how England lost to Brazil in the World Cup.

Elysia’s sister, a first year student, bearing female friends from Oglethorpe, came over as well. They didn’t stay very long.

Alas, all good things must come to and end. Nicky and I left the party in the early morning, and stopped by the Waffle House before heading back to our apartment around 3 AM.

It’s Friday! I went to the Georgia Tech Student Health Center today. I changed the batteries on my HP49G and updated the calculator to the 1.19-6 beta ROM through Linux. The calculator seems to run a lot faster now after the update.

Thursdays are always bad days. I have to wake up at 6 AM, catch the front end of rush hour traffic, survive the deadly crossing of Exit 252, find parking, and arrive at school one hour early when I only have one class. The rest of the day is spent performing teaching assistant duties. The good news is that nothing is ever due on Thursday. I therefore get lots of time to pursue my non-class related interests.

Today, I created a custom Berkeley SPICE Debian package with GNU readline support. Along the way, I also learned a lot about the Debian package management system. SPICE, for those who don’t know, is a general-purpose circuit simulation program. It uses nodal analysis to perform its calculations. After completing the above setup, I installed spice-mode for GNU EMACS, and built a simple DC circuit consisting of resistors and batteries.

If you aren’t using EMACS, you’re missing out on all the fun.

CS1322 recitation tonight. Turned in my Circuit Analysis homework. I had a quiz in both Computer Architectures and Statisics and Applications. Some minor software updates were also made to my PHP journal.

Stevie signed my PGP key. I filled out an RMA form for my bad RAM module. VMware won’t run comfortably with only 256 MB. It took about six hours, but I finally finished my Circuit Analysis homework.

Andrew woke us up at 10 in the morning. Again. For the same reason. We had pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast today. After finishing breakfast and packing, we said our goodbyes and headed back home. I dropped some of the TAs off at Georgia Tech before heading back to my apartment. I was dead tired when I got home.