So, what's up?

[peskydonkey]

So, I haven't posted a real entry in a long time. What's been going on recently? Let's recap.

1. I'm working at PSU in a lab in IST. This is really cool for the most part, as I love programming and the project is reasonably interesting. The project, essentially, is to improve on current search engine algorithms. As a prototype, we're working in the field of nanotechnology, and the goal is to return only results that have to do with nanotechnology. We're also trying to introduce social networks by examining co-occurrence between names; thus, if Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley do a lot of work together, they're more likely to appear on the same web pages and thus their co-occurrence will be higher. Other times, the job can get a little boring, because many times it involves me babysitting code, watching out for memory overflows and other frustrating errors that can crash the machine. At least the pay is decent: I think I'm making more this summer than I will at my job all three quarters at Stanford.
2. I sent my laptop in for repairs. Some of you may remember me bitching about the fact that the headphone jacks no longer work. Essentially, it's as if the laptop doesn't sense something plugged into the jack; it insists on piping sound out to its own speakers. HP said that they'd complete repairs in seven to nine days. I sent it in on August 3, and it was received August 6 (signed for by a "H.CRUZ", according to FedEx). I called them, and the CSR said that they received it, but they have a backlog. He also promised to update the case file in twenty-four hours. That was almost two weeks ago. They still haven't updated my online case file, and I (obviously) still haven't received my notebook. WTF, HP. WTF.
3. I bought Shadows over Camelot for my sister. It's a great game, and I love it, but I think I played way too much of it the first week, and it's gotten really tiring. Especially when each turn takes forever because players don't use common sense and debate stupid moves. Also, I lent it to a friend, and I need to retrieve it.
4. I thought my 1992 Toyota Corolla had terrible gas mileage. For some reason, I had the idea that it got around 250 miles on a tank (its capacity is around 13 gallons), or just under 20 miles per gallon. However, I decided to actually check it, and it turns out that I drove 290 miles on 9.8 gallons, or about 29.56 miles per gallon. This is better than the EPA estimate. Granted, over half of my driving is around midnight, and I take the abandoned roads at around 55 or 60 miles per hour -- which is supposedly the velocity at which most cars get optimal fuel efficiency.
5. I enjoy playing Spades.
6. I succumbed to capitalism and bought a new 8 GB iPod Nano. I would really like a larger portable music player -- mine is currently a 128 MB thing -- with better battery life -- mine currently runs about 10 hours before quitting. However, I don't need a huge hard-drive based player, because I don't have nearly that much music. Competitors of the Nano are significantly worse, and not nearly cheap enough. Thus, I bought the Nano on eBay for $150 plus shipping. Unfortunately, my card keeps getting rejected because of an Address Verification failure. I recently changed my card's address, and I received a letter yesterday confirming it (though online it had already showed up last week). I'm going to try again on Monday, and hopefully it will work.
7. I got hooked into playing online Diplomacy at phpDiplomacy. It seems like a lot of fun, but there are too many possibilities and it seems very difficult.
8. School has started for a bunch of my friends already -- notably, those at Cornell, PSU, and JHU. Plus, the high school begins classes next week. It seems so odd that I'm still on summer vacation. I'm certainly not complaining, but sometimes I really wish our schedules were shifted earlier.
9. Penn State (17) steamrolled Florida International, 59-0. Michigan (5) lost to Appalachian State, a Division I-AA team, 32-34. Excellent. Stanford looks like it's about to lose, though. Oh, well. As long as our football team has a better season than last year, I'll be happy.
10. I recently read Dan Brown's Deception Point. The premise was more interesting (in my opinion) than either Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code, but the plot was absolutely the same. Protagonist is thrown into unknown world; protagonist meets attractive sidekick of the opposite sex; protagonist and sidekick make amazing discovery, with huge implications; mysterious authority tries to suppress knowledge and truth, often ordering the protagonist's death; mysterious authority exposed as most trusted figure; protagonist and sidekick have sex.