Three till Seven

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How ridiculous is this? These terms of use are from the new Coldplay CD:

This CD cannot be burnt onto a CD-R or hard disk, nor can it be converted into MP3 for file sharing.

This CD has been manufactured for usage in regular CD players but might not play in the following players:

• Some CD players that have the capability of burning into an MP3 (such as portable players or car stereos)
• Some CD players that possess CD-R/RW functions (such as portable players or car stereos)
• Some car steros with satellite “Guidance” systems
• Some CD players or car stereos with hard disk recording capability
• Some CD-R/RW Recorders used for music
• Some portable CD players
• Some DVD players
• Some CD/LD Convertible Players
• Some Game Players

Although you can use your PC’s Windows program to listen to certain tracks, this does not mean that the CD can be played in all PC’s.

The first time that this program is used (in Windows automatic starter software) it gets registered in Windows File. Thus, programs already registered do not affect Windows operation.

Windows OS also uses the latest files.

This CD does not support MacIntosh PC software.

Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept exchange, return or refund.

– Coldplay’s new CD has rules: No MP3s, no DVD players, no car stereos from BoingBoing

Another article about it that’s been interesting:

There are numerous ways to fail and not be able to listen to the music you paid for, even if you give up and use Microsoft XP Home with Windows Media Player. You certainly have to work mighty hard to play a simple CD. And they wonder why file sharing is still booming? The choice shouldn’t be between unconscionable terms, breaking the law, or giving up music.

– More DRM Follies - The Coldplay Edition from Groklaw

Note: If you enjoy this article, you might also check out the Geeky Stuff section.

From a Microsoft Exchange partisan:

There is a 0 day exploit of another Microsoft file format that makes your Windows XP system wide-open for hackers if you made some bad decisions. On top of those is still using Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the Internet - what in the world are you thinking? How many times do you have to stab yourself to bleed to death? … The Internet Explorer team needs to be punished, severely, for slacking away and compromising your computer and data security.

From an MS employee:

I think IE is horribly behind the times. When every other browser on the planet that’s worth a damn supports tabbed browsing, it’s just crappy that I still have to have different copies of IE open to have multiple sites open at once.

Both of which are from Microsoft Employees Rage As Internet Explorer Ship Sinks.

And from A Year of Bugs, an article about a browser security test of IE, Opera, and the Mozilla family of browsers:

Actually there was only one period in 2004 when there were no publicly known remote code execution bugs - between the 12th and the 19th of October - 7 days in total. That means that a fully patched Internet Explorer installation was known to be unsafe for 98% of 2004. And for 200 days (that is 54% of the time) in 2004 there was a worm or virus in the wild exploiting one of those unpatched vulnerabilities.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t get up this morning at 10 a.m. I had my phone set to wake me up then, but I never heard it go off. Maybe it did, but since the thing was right next to my head in the bed with me, I think I’d have heard it. Kind of frustrating, since I hate sleeping late. I ended up getting up around 1 p.m., which was annoying because I was going to go with Mom to the court house to get a license plate for my Volvo, but she had already gone without me. Fortunately, she didn’t have any trouble and we have the necessary stuff to pick the Volvo up from my uncle. I sent him an email about that earlier today, so hopefully Dad and I will be able to get it tomorrow or the next day.

My grade is up! The missing CS grade that I had griped about is now posted, and I’ve emailed all the appropriate people letting them know this, including the Office of Academic Scholarships. Now I had darn well better get my scholarship money. I’m still waiting for webUK to update showing the hours that the class was worth and my adjusted GPA, but that always comes a little ways after the grade itself shows up, so I’m not worried.

Another small, car-related problem: the insurance information isn’t in my old Volvo’s glove compartment. After the wreck, I put all that stuff in Jessica’s trunk and then into my desk at school. I could’ve sworn I then put it back in the Volvo when I got it back, but maybe not. I hope it’s still in my drawer at school, since I don’t want my parents to have to deal with the hassle of obtaining another copy of that.

Hey, I sense no one is using the satellite, so maybe I can actually watch TV. I’m going to run down and check; I might catch it between football games. Here’s a survey I took a few minutes ago:

“Last” Survey

I’m back in the dorm again. I left Jessica’s house at maybe ten till 2, got here, and was annoyed to find that construction has screwed parking all to heck. The employee lot that’s right across the road from my dorm has the convenient entrance next to my dorm blocked off with a chain-link fence, so I couldn’t park there. I ended up driving around my building again and was able to catch a parallel park right next to my dorm because some guy in an SUV was kind enough to move forward.

All my stuff is unpacked now, though the room’s still a wreck because we have clothes and chairs and stuff everywhere. I was hoping to see Scott this afternoon but that never happened. While I’m disappointed, I did get some dishes done that I had forgotten here over the break. Wow, that smell… I don’t know how to describe it. It originated from a bowl that had once held Mom’s au gratin potatoes. You know how those are normally a nice goldeny yellow color? The remains of these guys had turned dark brown, but they weren’t dried out. Oh no, there was a runny brown slime coating that bowl and lid; I opened it and about gagged. So I took all the dishes out to the sink in the little sunk-in kitchen area in the hall, started washing, and noticed that when people walked by, they commented on the smell. I was cracking up but trying not to be obvious about it. Some comments I overheard:

• “Pfhew, what’s that smell?” / “I guess someone just got sick.”
• “It’s coming from the trash can.”
• “It’s coming from that room! Why does it smell like that? It never used to smell like that!”

I tried washing the lid of that bowl but afterward it still stank, so I just threw both the lid and the bowl in the garbage. This won’t please my mother, as they were hers, but since they were cheap plastic things, I’ll buy her another set.

Jessica, Ashlee, and I went grocery shopping earlier because it was needed and because Jess had $45 in gift cards to spend. We spent that and $15 more on canned soup, cereal, milk, yogurt, brownie mix (for my two roommates who are not on a diet), etc.

I don’t know why, but my lips have been really chapped the past few days. I’ve been drinking water and juice constantly, so it’s starting to bug me. I felt sick a couple of days ago, with nausea and a headache, so maybe that has something to do with it.

My first day of work is tomorrow. I’m to go in at 9 a.m. to fill out paperwork, then my manager will pick me up at 10:30. After that, hopefully I’ll be able to do something computery. I’m really nervous, so I just want to get the first day over with and I really, really hope that it goes well. I’m worried about being overwhelmed or unable to do something that they expect me to do. I’m also going to be working more than I ever have before (40 hours a week), so I’m hoping I get used to that quickly and enjoy my work enough so that the time goes by quickly. Maybe this semester I’ll become more of a morning person, since if I go into work earlier (I set my own hours), then of course I’ll get to come home earlier.

I just got back from having dinner with Scott. We just went to Subway and spent probably a total of twenty minutes together, but it was still nice to see him. I’ll have to corner the guy sometime when he’s not busy and I’m not working.

My first day of work went well. I first had to fill out some paperwork, then Ashley gave me a tour around the place and got me my security badge. From there, I waited for my manager, Neal, to pick me up. When he did, he talked to me for a bit, introduced me to some people, and took me to lunch, which he bought. From there, he introduced me to some other people, showed me around our building, and then released me into the lab in which I’ll be working. I have my own little cubicle with a Fedora machine (dual screen! shazam!) and a Windows box, as well as some shelves and a filing cabinet. Scott, my boss, came by and talked to me for a while. I was introduced to more people, Scottie (too many Scotts!) got my Lotus Notes set up, and then I was let loose to read various company things and begin working on my first project. I’m to make a web program that allows the user to choose various things to search for in a database, then display the results in a table. Sounds simple enough, and that is, but I first have to think about the structure of the database and get that set up. This is the part Scott said would be hairy, so I’ve been reading about database normalization.

I’ve got to get to a post office. I need to send my parents some insurance stuff for my other Volvo, but I also received a parking ticket for which I have to mail payment. I was parked between two white lines, as I’m supposed to be, but there was apparently some yellow line that I didn’t see, thus making it illegal to park there. Ergo, I have a $25 fine. Ridiculous. I was pretty annoyed about it this morning, but I’m even more annoyed at my health insurance: Mom said I received a letter from our insurance company today saying that what I’ll have to pay (I don’t even know if it’s for my gynocologist visit, from the wreck, or both) is $400-something. Thank God my Lexmark paycheck will be weekly…

And now… The girls went to get dinner before I left with Scott, Scott himself had to go check on his apartment (he’s moving), and I don’t have anything to do. It’s so weird not having homework or studying that needs to be done. It feels like I should be doing something, and so I’m kind of restless, but there’s really nothing I could be doing. I’ll probably read here in a little bit (I finished reading Shadow of the Hegemon the other day so I started Shadow Puppets, both by Orson Scott Card), but for now I’m going to take a shower.

Wow, the week’s over; it went by very quickly. Besides work (which is still going well, by the way), I’ve gotten to hang out with the guys some. Last night I went over and found the whole group there: Scott, Todd, Todd[1], Steve, Ike, and Brent. All we did was sit around and either watch Family Guy or games on the XBox 360, one of which was Call of Duty 2, and I don’t know the name of the other. It was still relaxing, though, and nice to just see them all again. Afterward, Jess and I watched TV briefly before getting me some dinner at Chipotle’s and going to bed. It sucks having to go to bed so early (usually 10:30 p.m.), but I have to get up at 7 a.m. every morning, so it’s necessary.

I’m now sitting around drinking hot chocolate and waiting for Dan to give me a ring: he’s taking EE 280 this semester and he’s borrowing my Digital Logic book, so he’s coming by to get it. I don’t know where my roommates are. Jess is probably at work, knowing her–she works all the time–and Ashlee is probably either with Doug or at work, too. I hope tonight doesn’t continue to be as boring as it has been since I got off work. There was absolutely crap on TV earlier while I was finishing last night’s burrito (I ended up watching a French game show, and I definitely don’t know French) and I don’t want to continue staring at a monitor. My eyes started bugging me this afternoon at work, so I had to take a break and walk around my floor, get some water, use the bathroom, etc.

I don’t know why, but I got a nice $400-something check from UK yesterday. My KEES scholarship is what I usually get money back from, and that hasn’t come in yet, so I don’t know where this money came from. Oh well, it’s nice to have it, so I’m not complaining! Let’s take a look at the debts Sarah has incurred of late: $1,080 to my father for car repairs, $400-something for a hospital visit, and then the long-standing $700 to my mom for various bills at UK she paid for me last year when I couldn’t afford them. This talk of bills just reminded me to check Cingular for my phone bill: $50 due. That’s definitely an amount I have in my bank, though, so I’m paying it now. I need to remember to visit the bank this weekend and deposit UK’s check as well as a check from my mom for a book I ordered for her.

Note: If you enjoy this article, you might also check out the Geeky Stuff section.

Ahh, chicken noodle soup; I love this stuff. I had some at my aunt’s over the break and I’ve been wanting more ever since. I’m not talking about the soup with vegetables and everything else, but the classic Campbell’s chicken noodle that’s a bright yellow from all the butter. Surprisingly, the bowl I bought today has only 2g of fat. I don’t know how that’s possible, but at least I don’t have to feel guilty about eating the stuff. Let’s not talk about the sodium content, however… Anyway, I also have some Reduced Fat Wheat Thins as well as Linkin Park to listen to (I bought a used copy of Hybrid Theory today), so I’m very content over here.

Work’s going well. I’m still working with PHP and MySQL and I’ve already learned a lot because I’m doing stuff I’ve never done before. The main thing has been image generation, which has been fun just because it combines two of my loves: programming and graphic design. Mind, the “graphic design” so far has consisted of generating tables of data, but it’s still cool. It’s great how PHP has the necessary functions built right in. It had also been a long while since I’d worked with MySQL, so I had to relearn SQL syntax, which I had never been good with before, but now… I’m doing LEFT JOIN’s and ALTER TABLE’s in my sleep, buddy.

I got up at ten this morning because I couldn’t be a bum and just stay in bed, even though I was still tired. Puttered around the dorm a bit before walking to the used CD place to buy, like I said, the Linkin Park album as well as The Better Life by 3 Doors Down. Then I went off to Wal-mart to pick up some things, which was mostly food for work. I got some soup, animal crackers, the Wheat Thins, some tuna… Various things that I would enjoy eating for lunch or snacking on that aren’t that bad for me.

Note: This was a dream of mine. I have this warning here because some visitors have thought my life had just gone to pot, when really they were only reading one of my crazy dreams. :)

I was in a classroom for a Spanish class, but I asked the professor if I could study some other subject instead. She told me I could, so I was going to work on some kind of math homework. Before I started, however, I reorganized a big pile of textbooks beside my desk. They were all related to witchcraft in some way, but were really cheesy with fantasy images of sorceresses and dragons on the cover. I was trying to put the least stupid-looking book on top, but I couldn’t find one. The people around me were pointing and laughing at my collection of books. I was apparently taking some class about witchcraft, and all of them were for that.

The dream shifted and I was in a dark lab in front of a table covered in beakers and tubing. I had a flask in my hand and was mixing up some potion that was in one of my books. It was a deep blue violet and very pretty. The flask had a tapered neck that came to a very small opening, in which I had stuck a cork. I took the cork out and the potion rose higher, as if it were going to come out. I corked it again and instead the potion blew a small hole on the far side of the flask, and potion shot out everywhere. It was apparently boiling hot. I now had to go clean up all the spilled liquid.

I set down the flask and walked over toward my right. The lab gave way, kind of gradually, into an African savannah where a bunch of lions were resting under a tree. There was potion spilled all along a rock next to them, and the zookeepers were angry with me about it. I went to swiping it up with a paper towel.