I give up, I think
Mood:  sad
Topic: Site Info
My current ISP doesn't allow me to run a server and I don't have the money to switch to an ISP that does. So, for now, unless I get alternative funding, I guess I'm going to come back to blogging here and having this be my permanent site. I'm pretty sad because I loved the independence of having my own site and blog. Being able to do pingbacks and trackbacks. Well, look to here for future posts.

instructions
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Site Info
I've decided that from now until I have to shut down my server, I'm going to be blogging with my server's blog It's A Binary World 2.0. Amongst other things, it automatically sends to some blog search engines whenever I've made a post and has led to 200 visits to my blog so far this month. So, from now on, go there to read my blog until I let you know that I'm going to have to shut down my server temporarily until late 2005.

I've made quite a few posts over the last few days so you should have plenty to read.

Quotes
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Quotes
"The truth is a hassle" - Mo Rocca

"This is the way I did it and it worked so I didn't think anymore" - Prof Land

"It's fun to program in assembler; so manly" - Prof Land

"I majored in the most unmarketable major of all: Sociology." - Alysha Cryer

more posts over in Binary World 2.0
May as well us it while it's available. Go to http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog/

Upgrading It's A Binary World 2
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Site Info
I have some new posts up on It's A Binary World 2 for you to check out. However, later today (in the evening) I will be upgrading the blog software. If you can't access the blog, just come back about 15 minutes later and it should all be set up.
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edit - messed up royally on the URL of the blog. It's fixed now.

Happy Valentine's Day
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Holidays
I have posted two different posts in my blogs today. So you get twice the fun. Access the other one here.

What is Saint Valentine's Day about anyway? I wanted to share this with you since I found myself wondering the same thing...

In researching the answer, I compiled facts from these three sources, Saint Valentine, Wikipedia Entry for Saint Valentine, and Wikipedia Entry for Lupercalia.

As the Wikipedia entry suggests, we know very little about Saint Valentine. Just like Saint Nicholous, it seems most of our holidays center around lesser known Saints. However, with Valentine even less is known. However, the British website does present us with some theories. Apparently, the Roman Emperor Claudius II had anulled all marriages and engagements in order to get men to go to war. I don't see what real effect this would have had on soldier morale. Just because someone declares my marriage invalid doesn't mean that I would stop loving my wife. It seems like the types of laws our Congress sometimes passes without thinking.

At any rate, such a law was not going to find a lot of popularity among the clerics of the early Christian church. Cancelling people's marriages probably had the unintended effect of "cheating" on wives since they were no longer wives, as well as some other potential societal and moral problems. Thus, the British site tells us, Saint Valentine performs underground marriages.

The Emporer catches wind of these covert operations and when the Saint doesn't recant, he is martyred. Conviniently, since he was performing marriages and other love things, he is killed on 14 Feb which is the day, in ancient Roman culture, where boys would draw girl's names from a pot and get to be with that girl all night at the festival. They would often end up getting married from this interaction.

As I pick up from the Wikipedia article, it is more likely that the date was fabricated by the early Catholic church eager to replace Lupercalia with a Saint's Feast Day as they had done with Easter and Christmas. Since his deeds had to do with love, they chose him to replace the Roman celebration of fertility and love.

In the 1800s in the United States, the holiday was commercialized and now we send each other cards and chocolate. Just like the Easter Bunny and certain elements of Christmas don't make sense outside of commercialism and a reversion to the pagan holidays they were meant to replace, Saint Valentine's Day has very little to do with this mysterious man.

g33k stuff
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Linux
First of all, I'm pretty happy that Linux Format Magazine (UK) ranked my distro, Fedora Core 3, as the second best of all the distros. Additionally, they expect it to edge into the number 1 spot with the release of Core 4 this may. q:o) More info on those reviews in a future post.

Second, if you're programming in the C programming language you will definitely want to check out Kwrite. My partner in ECE 476 was using some expensive commercial software that does some special formatting and apparently Kwrite does it too! For example, I can shrink down block statements to get a good overview of the code by clicking on a [-]. Neat!

Today's post can be found in my other blog
go here

Mo Rocca @ Cornell!
Mood:  chatty
Topic: School Stuff
Mo Rocca came to talk today at Cornell, thanks to a Sponsership from Hillel, the Campus Jewish group. Why they invited him, I don't know because he revealed during his performance that he was Catholic. But he did have a hilarious opening bit where he told this whole story using Yiddish.

He was quite hilarious and I caught some of it on my camera's video mode. I'm not 100% why because I don't normally use my camera for video but the picture is a bit jerky. Weird for a 12 MP camera. But I will be posting the video on my other blog probably tomorrow.

He also suprised the audience by giving us this traditional Jewish treat he had made for us. He actually put it on stage at the beginning and there was a crowd of people rushing to grab it.

He began his talk with he coverage of the 2004 presidential elections. His jokes brought forth both tons of laughter and a few jeers depending upon which political candidate he was talking about. But he stayed pretty neutral, lampooning both sides of the isle. The picture immediately above was accompanied by the joke, "yeah, the wedding photographer didn't do such a good job with those two." hehe...

He told us about his personal life, including the fact that he's good friends with Flava Flav, who you might know from the Surreal Life on VH1. He recounted a story when he went to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC with Flav where they were in the lobby and it's all quiet like church when Flav says, in a loud voice, "I want to see something with a f***ing pendulum!"

He talked about his contributions on VH1's I love the 70/80/90s and quizzed this kid on 90s stuff. He won a Celine Dion CD autographed by Mo Rocca.

All in all it was an awesome show! I also got to take a picture with Mo as well as get an autograph from him. I didn't scan the autograph, but here's the picture I took with him.

Today's Post
Mood:  chatty
Topic: politics
You can find (at least one of) today's posts here on my other blog, It's A Binary World 2