Dropped by ASMS to pick up my sister from school, and met with a few faculty while there. Afterward, we went to the Mobile Public Library, where I finally obtained a replacement for my missing library card. I can once again use the online catalog.

Added stub code to the online journal to allow for JavaScript support. The online journal now also supports the Internet Content Rating Association rating system. The ICRA ratings are used in browsers such as Internet Explorer when Internet filtering is enabled.

Downloaded HP Photo and Imaging Software to scan slides. The scans are saved as compressed TIFF images at 2400 ppi. I expect that the pictures will be up by the end of the next week.

Picked dad up from the MARTA station here in Atlanta before heading to the International Farmer’s Market. We returned to Mobile sometime in the afternoon. Upgraded the Linksys router here at home to firmware version 2.00.8. Began migrating barik.net services (starting with DNS) over to Pair.

Used MySQL Control Center to connect to the Pair database on port 3306 using SSH forwarding. I was unable to connect to gehennom, however, because it does not support connections to 127.0.0.1.

Got an oil change and made other necessary preparations to leave for Mobile tomorrow morning. Olin signed and uploaded my PGP key to the MIT key server sometime during the past few days. Covered basic functions in Python, including the use of the global keyword, as well as the various special argument-matching modes.

Finished another chapter in Learning Python on basic statements, such as assignment, expressions, iterative constructs, and range operators. John got back to me and thinks that it would be best to print the cards using smooth, white, eighty pound cover stock, rather than glossy or textured paper. Too much texture can cause printing problems on finer type and graphics. Good places to print them would probably be Office Depot or Staples.

Watched the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King midnight showing at Regal 24 with Nicky and Alex.

Nicky and I went out to lunch at Jade’s Palace. Received my grades for this semester. Did some basic housework and cleaned up the room. Finished the exercises on types in Learning Python. The slice operators in Python are half-open intervals. E-mailed John of Relevant Arts about printing business cards.

Designed a 3.43 in. x 1.93 in. business card using Adobe Photoshop and the Akkhor bengali font. Designing business cards are a lot harder than they look. After several hours of hard work, I’m pleased with the results. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble finding professional places to print these cards.
Christmas is just around the corner. Although there’s nothing that I really want, if you’re dead set on getting something for me, I’d like it to be something from this list:

• A donation to one of the following charities or organizations: Electronic Frontier Foundation, EPIC, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Sierra Club.
• Community service with Habitat for Humanity, Hands on Atlanta, or a community service organization in your area.
• A book store gift certificate, such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble, to purchase books on mathematics, computation, and philosophy.
• Money to pay my rent and other living expenses.

Installed Debian/unstable on a VMWare virtual machine. The latest Debian installer supports ReiserFS out of the box. Tried out the latest 2.6.0-test11 kernel, which immediately had a segmentation fault on boot. In the evening I watched The Last Samurai with Ben and his friends Stephanie, Nicole, and Jaeyun.

Adam and I went out to lunch at Ruby Tuesday. Took another stab at user-mode-linux. In Debian, the user should pass the options devfs=mount at the linux command-line to make the rootfs images boot correctly. Read a few sections on the built-in types in Python from Learning Python. Updated the Linux kernel to 2.4.23 using the patch-kernel script on chronos, and performed a quick Debian package update.

Installed the Jigsaw Download package and downloaded the latest unstable version of Debian to use as an experimental operating system for kernel and package development from within VMWare. Finally, added an entry on logical effort to the Wikipedia. I intend to finish it by the start of next semester. It’s my pet project.

Turned in time sheets. Took my Compilers exam in the afternoon, and graded the last batch of final exams in the evening for CS1371. Checked out a few books from the library, since I finally have some free time. I’m going to make this break a productive one.

A power failure caused freya to mysteriously die. After some examination, Adam and I determined that the boot sector had somehow become corrupted. A simple re-install of lilo solved the issue.

I took my VLSI exam today. If nothing else, I can say that I’m relieved that yet another class is out of the way. With one more final to go, I spent the evening studying for Compilers. There’s still a lot of material that I need to cover before my last final exam tomorrow. I’m anxious to get it all over with.