Wow

Microwavable Grilled Cheese

Groan

News Reports for Ultra-Short Attentions: "Mr. Smith, let it be known, does not like verbs. Whenever he finds one, he crinkles his brow in disgust like a man who has discovered a dribble of food on his tie. He taps furiously at his keyboard, moves the cursor to the offending word and deletes it, or else adds "ing," turning the verb into a participle and his script into the strange shorthand that passes for English these days on cable news:

"Amazon.com celebrating a birthday! The Internet company 10 years old."

"Texas! A school bus and two other vehicles colliding in Dallas. The bus rolling over on its side."

"Outrage in the Middle East! A vow of revenge after an assassination and reportedly threatening the United States. Tonight — how real the threat?"

Shepard Smith! Explaining to a reporter, why not the verbs?"

Next, they'll think up a way to deliver the "news" that allows us to turn off our brains entirely.

Sounds Right to Me

Slashdot | BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM: "hype7 writes 'BusinessWeek is running a very interesting story on Apple's foray into music, with a different bent to everyone else's. BW suggests that, instead of opening the iPod up to the world, Apple should instead license its DRM - 'Fairplay' - to anyone who wants to start up a music store. The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous; Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold); and, it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format. As the iTunes Music Store isn't running at a profit (or forecast to make a big one), having the Music Store clones eat into Apple's existing market share wouldn't be a problem; all these stores would be doing is building a bigger potential market for the iPod.'"

The Sweets Capital of America

Do you all realize how many candies and other sweet things are made in Chicagoland?

Brachs, Tootsie Roll, Nabisco and Jelly Belly all have factories in the area. Others may, too, but these are the only ones I remember offhand from watching "Unwrapped" and "Top 5" on the Food Network. Considering how big Hershey is in Pennsylvania (especially in, well, Hershey), I'm surprised that the only food company most people could probably associate with Chicago is McDonald's (and even then, they might only know it's in Illinois).

I Hate Everything

I've lost a WHOLE NIGHT'S WORTH of work. Why does the universe hate me this month? When will this crap STOP??? I hate this stupid program. A program as craptacular than this should come with an automatic refund. If I had five cents for every word I've lost while I've had this program I'd be a billionnaire. I hate it, I hate everything, and I just want to go home.

AHHHHHH!!!

WHAT THE HECK!?! I updated my template for the pages I'm working on and ALL OF THE CONTENT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR HOURS DISAPPEARED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to explode! *#*()$##!!!!!!!!

Studying

Gavrilo Princip - Wikipedia: "Gavrilo and his six co-conspirators were inexperienced with weapons, and it was only due to a freakish set of coincidences that they were successful. The first member of the group attempted a shooting from an upstairs window, but the range on his gun was insufficient. The second member threw a bomb (or a stick of dynamite, according to some reports) at the car, but missed. The explosion destroyed the following car, killing its driver and wounding the passengers. The assassin tried to escape, but was beaten to death by the crowd. The next four never got a chance due to the heavy crowds, and it was beginning to look like the assassination would fail. However, Franz Ferdinand decided to visit the victims of the explosion in the hospital. Princip had gone to a nearby shop for a sandwich, apparantly giving up, when he spotted Ferdinand's car as it drove past. After dashing up to the car, Princip shot Sophie in the head, killing her instantly, and a second shot hit Ferdinand in the chest, but after that his gun locked and he was arrested. The wound sustained by Ferdinand normally would not have been fatal, but because he had his suit sewn shut (he was a very vain man, and couldn't stand the sight of a crease) he bled to death in the time it took to cut the suit open."

Also: Because Princip was too young under Austro-Hungarian law to be given the death penalty, the heir to the throne's assassin was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison instead. But his astounding luck didn't extend to wartime prison conditions, so he ended up dying a few years later anyway.

Terms

I have about 75 terms to define tonight in order to be prepared for my final in Eastern European Culture and History. Surprisingly, I'm starting to feel tired despite napping all afternoon after a late night yesterday. But then, big tasks tend to do that to me. At least half of these terms are tucked away in my memory somewhere, though I can't quite put them all in context. Some I don't remember hearing about at all, which is unfortunate.

Still no subletter. I paid the Roommates.com fee again to access my "RoomMail" and people's profiles, so I guess I can hope for some response this time around. I doubt it though. No one wants this place, so I probably shouldn't even be wasting my money. Is this place really so unattractive and depressing?

I have finally discovered the solution to ridding my ceiling of those nasty cobwebs that have been growing in number since I moved in. Attaching wet paper towels to the end of our Swiffer appears to take care of both the height and the sticking-to-the-duster problems. Unfortunately, looking up above my head now I appear to have missed one. I guess I'll have to go get it again. This time, that spider is dead.

Internships

I'm still looking at summer internships, and I find they fall into three categories:

1. Paid internships
Clearly the best.

2. Unpaid internships
Good if you're going into a competitive field and need the experience. And if you're rich or don't sleep.

3. Unpaid internships for required class credit
The worst of the bunch -- not only are you not paid, buy you have to pay and pay a lot for the privilege of being there, a la Teaching Media. But at Medill, you don't actually GET credit for this sort of internship -- the course you register for is a zero-credit course because they won't let you count anything other than TM. I can't say that they make you pay for a noncredit course, but that's only because I don't know.

Hmph

Someone in this building -- I don't know where -- someone is snoring very loudly and making my room resonate.

Stress and Health

It's a bad combination.

Right now, as I study for the big Modern Middle East final tomorrow morning, I could really use, more than anything, some sort of drip that would kick my dehydration without me needing to constantly drink water. I could also use something to take care of my periodic stomach- and earaches and something to steady my vision. And an end to the jitteriness would be nice, too.

If only everything would just resolve itself already.

Proof

I mentioned this in a conversation earlier and wasn't believed, so here is the evidence:

"Lebanese governments did their best to encourage the movement of foreign capital into the country by deregulating the currency exchanges and adopting banking secrecy laws. These and other measures made Beirut a major international banking center and earned Lebanon the reputation as the Switzerland of the Middle East. . . . The city offered other attractions as well. Its luxury hotels, its Las Vegas-style casino, and its flashy nightclubs drew all manner of pleasure seekers." -- William L. Cleveland's "A History of the Modern Middle East," pages 323-324

Holiday Wishes

Happy Pi Day.

(Get it?)

Lonely Nights

I've ended up in the bad habit of staying up until the wee hours of the morning this week. Unfortunately, since Scott has a job now and must go to bed around midnight, this leads to me spending several hours alone with the TV and the computer. The lack of human interaction is getting to me a bit. Of course, it's hard to say I could just pick out anyone to chat with at these times. Most people are asleep or working. Mainly asleep.

This peculiar loneliness is something of a new phenomenon for me. I haven't often felt lonely. I get by with the voices in my head most of the time, so to speak. It's an indication of how my expectations have changed. I've become accustomed to being talked to, and I've lost the capacity to deal with silence. Maybe I'm afraid of it. The silence is building up inside of me, and I should really write something to get it out, but I'm afraid of doing that, too. I hold it at an arm's length.

Housing

When are those housing people going to send out the e-mail they promised last week? It figures greatly into my TM arrangements.

Still haven't heard from the OC Register contact. Still haven't turned in my petition to graduate(!). Still don't know much about the paper. Still haven't been called by the hometown paper for the promised interview.

Still don't have a subletter. One turned us down today, so my hopes are pinned on the other one who visited and on a guy from France who won't arrive until mid-April.

And people wonder why I don't like living off-campus.

Here's another point on that note: I'm much more likely to buy pricey or nonbasic food on a meal plan than when I can buy whatever I want. I would never buy something I like that's small but costs about $5, such as that muffaletta spread they have at the Norris C-Store, at the grocery store. Instead, I buy way too much rice and pasta and then get sick of what I have to eat and go out to a restaurant. I need to learn how to budget food luxuries. But it's harder to do when you haven't already spent the money.

Come So Far, So Far To Go

My News and New Media final project is finally done. That one was so mentally overwhelming that I did much of it on autopilot and I still haven't fully awakened from that feeling. I have barely had time to think the past few days. Sunday night I stayed up late writing my econ paper; Monday through 4:10 p.m. today I spent working on the project, coding various "interactive" features and trying to get everything to work right, in addition to taking pictures and producing articles.

Considering how much trouble my partner and I and some other people in the class had with needing permission to take pictures in some places and some not having the rights to the pictures they wanted to use (Medill likes to be picky about these things because it is full of holier-than-thou journalists, whereas other profs will tell you to just copy pictures since it's not commercial), this project seems to be impossible to finish without using subterfuge. Deception to achieve the appearance of ethics. Interesting paradox.

I am totally exhausted right now since I had to interrupt my progress on the project last night in order to clean the whole apartment as potential subletters were coming to visit the next day. I picked up my room to show off, I picked up the other rooms, did the dishes several times, put away the dishes, swept, Swiffered, made myself dizzy with antibacterial cleaning solution fumes, threw away the collected newspapers and junk mail, took out two bags of trash and three bags of recyclables, and surely more, and it still wasn't spotless, but it was better. And then I was tired. But I still needed to finish cobbling together an interactive timeline and a photo slideshow for the final project site. So I was up very late.

And then one subletter called this morning around 9 and woke me up. She needed directions and I was expecting to get a call from her. But I couldn't fall back asleep until around 10, when I really needed to get up and get dressed for when she would show up.

I hope the two potential subletters liked the apartment. I really want to put the whole process of finding someone behind me as it's stressful and yet another big project on my list of many big projects, which include updating the whole RC/RH Handbook, writing Communique articles, two finals, familiarizing myself with Orange County and the Register, teaching the new RCB VP for PR how to do everything, and, lest we forget, packing up everything I own. I have more than enough on my plate.

Apple Windows

It angers me that Apple seems to have turned to some sneaky Microsoft tactics in Panther. I'm not going to complain that they conspired to break Camino (because Camino really does need to have its Carbon bits rewritten in Cocoa), but it's shady to have gotten rid of the Internet preference pane. The only way to set the default mail client and browser is to open, respectively, Apple Mail and Apple's Safari browser. Even Microsoft doesn't make you open Internet Explorer to set the default browser (assuming you ignore the fact that Internet Explorer powers the OS and thus is never really "off").

How many people "choose" Safari for the same reasons everyone on Windows "chooses" to use IE? It's the default, so it's easy. And who would ever think to open Safari's preferences to make Firefox the default browser? It's nuts.

I understand that Apple is in the unique position of having such a small OS market share (it has a relatively generous hardware share, so one must be specific) that it needs to create its own applications in many cases to ensure that Windows-equivalents exist. And yes, Apple has the big idea of the Mac being a "digital hub" and so all of its little apps are in a way just one big app. But come on, when competition is there, is it fair to, oh, abuse your monopoly on the desktop to squeeze others out?

When there's so few developers for the platform, it seems unwise to alienate any.

Congratulations, Scott!

I knew you had it in you! And you can say it best.

How Much Is Windows Worth To You?

WSJ.com - Portals: "Most technology companies that do well justify the money they make by saying that is what is required to fund innovation, that were it not for all the profits they were accumulating, the industry would be standing still.

The claim is suspect. The disk-drive industry, for one, manages to release drives with ever-larger capacities while often barely breaking even. And the technical challenges they face are among the most formidable, involving squeezing more and more bits of data onto ever smaller portions of a rapidly spinning magnetically charged platter. ...

That leaves Microsoft, and the question: What does the world get for the 10% Microsoft tax on every PC?"

An Excellent Addition

If you use any Mozilla-based browser, this site has an essential addition to your setup: http://texturizer.net/firefox/adblock.html. Follow the userContent.css link to figure out how to set up that file, then paste this code in. It blocks all kinds of ads, going beyond Mozilla's built-in pop-up blocker to blocking ad graphics and ad Flash animations. It's careful to only blacklist ad servers and images that are ad-sized, so it won't block good graphics. It's much like the Adblock plug-in for Firefox except that it kills all ads in one fell swoop.

More on Camino

I was reading the Camino boards today, trying to get a sense of its development and what will change for the 0.8 release, and I discovered that the sidebar has been stripped from the nightlies. Although I personally didn't care for the sidebar, especially as a bookmark manager, it was one of those features that I know people really liked about Camino back when it was the browser du jour. People were always lauding it as the browser's best feature. Why did it go away?

Its replacement for bookmark management is that replace-the-browser-window thing like Safari has. In fact, Camino on the whole is becoming Safari for people who don't like the Metal theme (though oddly enough the forums have instructions on how to make Camino Metal). I think that's rather disturbing. Camino should be striving to distinguish itself, to create cool features not found elsewhere, not simply copying the new dominant Mac browser.

The tab-buttons still look weird. I hope they get rid of those.

Roommate Service

What gives? I get an inquiry from one of the many, many sublet services I signed up for last night, and if I want to actually contact the person I have to pay the company $30? What a scam. I don't think I'll bother as it looks like this person wants to move in in August anyway.

But if you're a RoommateAccess person looking for contact info for colleenf to talk about my apartment at Maple and Hamlin, my e-mail address is c-fischer@northwestern.edu.

A Change

For once it's the crack of dawn and I'm not extremely tired. I'm sleepy, yes, but the knowledge that I'll be waking up again in only a few hours in order to turn my paper in is making sleep seem a little distasteful. Plus sleep is never very pleasant here anyway. My bed doesn't provide enough support, so I always wake up with a sore back, and I always seem to wake up with a funky stomach these days. But no, I haven't caught the plague yet. It has been on the whole a most healthy year for me. Those dorms really are unhealthy environments. How do universities get away with it?

Blah

Don't want to write more econ paper. Want to watch "Bewitched." Or sleep, perhaps. Or maybe shower. But my level of caring about econ is about nil.

Informercialesque

Is the infomercial, as-seen-on-TV advertising format really so effective? I know from my advertising class that it does motivate people to buy when there's a sense of action being imperative (i.e., "call now!") and a request for response, but really, Clorox, don't you think this method degrades your brand image?

Lethargy

I have been stricken with that horrible sickness that leads to laziness, lethargy. The idea of movement is intensely unappealing, let alone doing anything else. I can't think, I can't act, I can barely remain awake. I'm even starting to long for caffeine, just to give me a pick-me-up. I wish I knew of a decent quick fix for this, especially considering all of my work to do. Maybe its having so much on my plate that's causing this. Unfortunately, the cure in that case is intensely unappealing to the disease.

Insanity

Some madman has written into the Daily today defending David Horowitz's full-page ad of this past week. Defending!

I'll say straight out, I don't think Israel should be destroyed or that it's a bad idea in general for there to be a Jewish state, considering how hard it is for peoples who don't have their own states (such as the Kurds and the Roma/Gypsies). It's true that it probably didn't emerge in the best place, but considering the wackiness of 19th-century nationalism, every nation wants to claim what it considers its ancestral lands, even if they haven't occupied them in hundreds (or thousands) or years. But whether or not you like Israel or Israel's policies, Israel is a fact and it's not going anywhere.

But still, people in this country (a longtime Israel supporter) have no understanding of the region's history, nor have they stopped to consider the commonsensical explanations of why the Palestinians are continually fighting Israel. So let's disabuse everyone of this notion that, to paraphrase, the Palestinians have rejected every offer of a state side-by-side with Israel. It's true that the Palestinian leadership rejected the United Nation's partition plan. But that was way back in the 1940s, when Palestinians were still widespread throughout the territory and when, frankly, it seemed like a slap in the face to them that there should be a Jewish state created at all in the territory they had lived in for centuries.

More than this, the Palestinians had been jerked around on the international scene since the end of World War I, when most other Arab territories became states with more or less foreign influence but Palestine remained under a British mandate. No one offered them a state then, when they could have ruled all of the territory without a contest.

And who wouldn't become angered when a bunch of foreigners came and settled on your people's territory, and then once they had great enough numbers deciding to claim the whole place for themselves? If the Mexican population in Texas demanded self-governance and control of all of Texas, do you think the United States would let them go their own way with best wishes? If the United Nations stepped in and declared that the Tex-Mex nation's rights had to be respected and that a binational state was impossible considering the violence on both sides, which side do you think would agree to partition and which side would refuse and plan an invasion to reclaim their territory?

It's just wrong to say the Palestinians don't deserve a state or shouldn't be angry now because the Israelis so generously offered to cut out only half of the Palestinians' territory for themselves. While it's certainly in the Palestinians' interest now to push for the original partition, you can't say Palestinians rejected a state smaller than their traditional territory in order to give it to Israel.

The bottom line is that the Palestinians did not "reject the offer of a state." They rejected what they saw as nationalistic imperialism and attempted to defend their home and their own nationalism.

But we won't get into now why nationalism sucks or how the Palestinians are not addressing the situation today correctly. The Palestinians have their own faults, including nationalism and using violence, but this claim about them having been offered something reasonable and rejecting it is really a nasty distortion of the facts.

My Goodness

Check out the groups.northwestern.edu server stats, particularly down the page a little where it lists search terms. Oh my.

As an indication of what's to come, "sex" is the number three term. It is the Internet, of course.

What?

I got a credit card offer from Home Depot today. Not just for some Home Depot-affiliated Visa/MasterCard but for a Home Depot store credit card. I don't think I've ever purchased anything from Home Depot in my life.

Whoa

As you may have figured out, I didn't get much sleep last night. Around 4 a.m. I decided I could no longer stay awake and so I took a two-hour nap, which refreshed me enough to finish the paper. Then I slept again from about 8:10 to 10. Actually, I set my alarm for 9:20, but that wasn't going to happen.

When my alarm starting going off, I got into that state when I'd feel awake when the alarm buzzed but my body was so tired that my brain convinced me that I was up and brushing my teeth in the bathroom when in fact I was totally unconscious in my bed. Then, when the alarm would go off again nine minutes later, I'd groan mightily at the prospect of having to brush my teeth "again" and feel even more tired.

I decided to get some food for my econ presentation after all when I struck upon the idea of bringing "Turkish coffee" that was really Colombian coffee fresh from White Hen. My wager paid off and one of the 24-oz. cups was still full when class ended. At the moment, I'm trying to force myself to down all three cups of black coffee, which, truth be told, is all that is keeping me awake at this point.

Go Me

I've written two paragraphs from my sort-of outline. That covers one section. I haven't stretched the page into double-spacing yet, so I'm not sure how long it is. Imagine, when I was in grade school I single-spaced my papers. I wrote so much more then.

My eyelids are unfortunately drooping. I don't know how long I can last. I'm planning to pull together a rough draft and then take a nap. Wish me luck.

Yes, I Know I Read Slowly

I just finished the book. Believe it or not, I have been reading with almost no interruptions since I last wrote. Even those interruptions that did crop up were way shorter than my usual procrastination. I think this is because finishing the book was in a way procrastination as well.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any sort of leeway in the assignment concerning the paper's due date. It is most definitely due March 4. I'm hoping the four pages will come more easily than my past few papers, which took inordinately long despite their shortness. It's especially vital that I finish in a timely manner because I have a short presentation to prepare for econ in the morning and the cursed residential college people chose my between-classes break of all the times I offered to meet with them to discuss my progress on the project they've given me (which caused me to devote about four hours of paper-working time this afternoon to that in order to have something to discuss).

And still no one wants to sublet my room for the spring. A week ago I had four people interested. What gives?

E-mail Is a Cruel Mistress

It would seem more appropriate, of course, to use "master," but it just doesn't fit the phrase.

I can't seem to find a way to order my Mail rules efficiently. I keep getting messages filtered into my inbox that are from residential college listservs, and the "new mail" sound goes off about every 15 minutes when I have nothing new but more res college listserv messages that have already been marked "read." But the sound makes me look up and fills me with the momentary hope that I have something interesting to read. Alas, no.

It's 8:24 and I still haven't finished the book I need to write a paper on tonight. I have more than a hundred pages left, so I need to start skimming. But it's not like I'll be able to crank out these measly four-to-five pages before dawn anyway. It's just my way.

See Below

The Daily just called me to ask if I knew of others who'd received the "Northwestern.edu team" virus e-mail. Guess you should e-mail them tonight if you have.

For NU People

NUIT has a virus alert page.

They also have an e-mail address: virus-alert@northwestern.edu. You can forward those questionable new viruses there and hopefully that'll give them the message that they need to send out a universal warning to stem the tide.

And if you get a message tonight purporting to be from the "Northwestern.edu team," don't open the attachment.

Amusing

This may or may not work for you at first, but try it:

type http://your-user-name.blogspot.com/robots.txt

This should bring up the bit of code included with your site files that tells search engine crawlers what they can do. If you have your own web space that you can upload files to, you can create a robots.txt file to tell Google, Yahoo and other search bots not to crawl your site, keeping your content from being listed. I've done this to keep the RCB minutes from being crawled in the past.

Notice which search engine Blogspot (owned by Google) has chosen to block from crawling its sites?

However, if you're really (un)lucky, you might find your robots.txt file not only blocks that engine but, for some odd reason, also blocks Google. Go figure.

Stomach Knots

I have so much to worry about.

Finals start tomorrow for me. Two papers and one project are coming due soon. I have a whole bunch of crap to do for TM, and I'm starting to feel nervous about how I'll fit in at the Register. My chief concern is that I know relatively little about Orange County.

And then there's this whole sublet thing. There are people interested, but they don't seem to be interested enough. Or at least they don't e-mail as often as I obsessively check. Signs are going up tomorrow to increase the applicant pool.

And then there's the whole future thing.

Worst of all, spring break is far too short a time to relax in.

Rainy Day

I'm not quite sure today whether it's my teeth or my ears that hurt. Well, I'm sure they both hurt, but I'm not sure which is prompting the other. I'm betting on my teeth at this point as it hurts to drink anything cold, but who knows. Maybe these are independent pains. Wouldn't that suck.

I feel pretty yucky on the whole today. I'm tired after having been restless in my sleep. Also, I most certainly overate yesterday and I continue to feel overfull today. I wish my digestive system would kick into gear. I also have the usual aches in my back plus a new ache in my right shoulder.

I have an econ final tomorrow morning, a paper due Thursday on a book I haven't finished and a hundred errands to run this afternoon, possibly in a thunderstorm. I need to meet with my TM advisor sometime soon, I need to find a subletter and a summer internship, I need to pull together stuff for my new media final project and sometime in there, I need to complete the two jobs I have at the tail-end of this quarter. It's a depressing schedule.