It occurs to me that “exCentric” would have been a much better word to use than “exCentriate” in my dinner party entry the other day, but I’m not going to change it, because then this entry would have no purpose and you’d probably never know.
Category: Pulverbatch
I’m pretty sure I’m not violating my NDA by writing this: I’m famous! Whoo! Six of the seven changes in our next point release, which comes out Thursday, were bugs that I FIXED!
This is actually not a big deal, since all the issues I’ve done are what Justin calls “five-minute fixes” (except for me they take about a day). Still, code that I’ve written is now part of a commercial software product. I feel like I should have a badge, or at least a button.
Meanwhile, of course, the eleven other issues I’ve worked on didn’t pass muster with Quality Control and have all been assigned back to me. It’s almost like I’m a real programmer. I would demand to get paid more than eight bucks an hour for this, if I actually worked hard enough to earn it.
The LeonardR writes:
“I made a doob-doob (http://www.crummy.com/2002/09/03/1) rendition of Xorph. I’d give you a picture, but I have no way of getting it to you.”
First, that makes me feel bad, since I haven’t updated Xorph in a long, long time. Well, no, first it makes me feel all tingly and flushed, as happens every time someone cool talks about my comic. Second it makes me feel bad. Third: Leonard has made fan art for Xorph; the fan art is made of paper; I have never seen this fan art; I have also never seen most things made of paper. The question this poses, obviously, is are all paper things I haven’t seen actually Xorph fan art?, but I kind of like it better unanswered.
So the design isn’t quite done yet, but here it is: NFD now bruises its news with some of the neatest software I’ve ever had the chance to yell at. The archive navigation is a lot different now, but one thing I’m actually pretty proud of is that all the old permalinks will still work–if I’ve done it right, there’s a little script that will redirect you right to the newly bruised entry.
I actually started working on this over a week ago, and once I’d started using NB to post I couldn’t go back (which is why there hasn’t been anything on the old NFD page for so long). Switching my journal software was like walking into a dealership with a wheelbarrow and driving out with a red Ferrari, so I’ve been writing, but in here instead. You can read like two weeks of the stuff starting on June 27 (although I think this next one is my favorite yet).
The front-page design has been trickier, since I wanted to finally have something on this site that was valid XHTML and built entirely with CSS. I think it’s pretty close now, but the design still looks better in IE than Netscape. I also tried to tidy all the old code in the conversion, but I’m sure I missed something; if you find broken links or funny-looking entries, let me know.
So enjoy the calendar, the searchability, the randomnymity and the category madness; pretty soon there should be something else up top, either a random quote or a Today in History feature. Expect entries to be rather more frequent but correspondingly shorter, as now updating isn’t such an ordeal that I feel I have to save up my material. Expect also at least two more of the secret projects I’ll be developing this summer, involving obsessions and imperatives.
I really do hope you like the new NFD (BC). And I’d love to stay and type more, but today is Blood Drive Day and I’ve gotta go faint.
I’m writing way too much today. NewsBruiser makes it so easy!
From the back of my instant lemonade tub:
To make 1 quart, fill cap with mix up to line "A." Pour mix from cap into pitcher and add 1 quart cold water; stir to dissolve.To make multiple quarts, repeat instructions.
My instant lemonade tub was designed by a programmer.
Landmark
Just moments ago, I, Brendan Adkins, closed my first issue! And promptly got busted for blogging at work. I think I’m a real professional now.
This is how I graduate: the only Centre commencement in living memory on which it has rained, in alphabetical order yet in the middle of the pack, ending up shivering in the library halfway to the auditorium, which was in neither the sunny nor rainy day plans. Our baccalaureate speaker was a fervent liberal and our keynote speaker a stolid conservative; hackles were raised at each and both. I tried to dry the rain off my glasses and found that polyester robes don’t soak up much.
My apartment has been messily slaughtered, furniture shoved and stolen and hidden mold revealed. One more time I’m the last one to move out. The walls are bare, and most of what I own is in piles on the floor. I’ll never live with Jon or Amanda or David again.
I said goodbye and soon to many, many people, and went to my uncle’s house to see Ken, Jon and Emily one more time and to be astounded by the generosity of my family. I fell asleep sitting up before we came back here. I’m going to pack all night and leave in the morning, which I was explicitly told not to do.
Those of you who know me from my first Governor’s Scholars Program will be gratified to know, I hope, that I brought an umbrella onstage with me at the ceremony. As we were leaving, I ended up facing the wrong way and didn’t notice I was supposed to be moving for several long seconds after the rest of my row had gone. I jumped and cursed onstage (at my own commencement) and scrambled out. I was so flustered I forgot the umbrella.
On my way out to meet my family I stood for a few minutes on the stage in Weisiger. That was the first place I found myself on the first day of GSP, here at Centre; I stood in the dark, having come in out of the rain, and wrote about quiet stages on a chalkboard. Later that night, Milton Reigelman would point it out in his opening convo speech, and I would feel a strange mix of shame and pride at having something I’d written read.
This is how I graduate: I am bone-deep nothing-left weary, and I have miles to go before I sleep. I know my time here is done and I am satisfied with it, and I’m ready and willing and glad to go. I’m hurt and hollow, childish and scared. I want desperately to put off the deep wrench I’m feeling, because it means I’m really leaving home.
So I actually did it: Running on three hours of sleep, I wrote the ten-page culminating statement on My Theatre in three and a half hours, then presented it earlier tonight. And it was pretty good. I’m exasperated with myself for doing this yet again, but at the same time, I’m now fully convinced that I’m capable of flight and the picking up of cars.
I know there’s more to talk about, but I’m really too tired to be capable of rational discourse right now (even the paragraph above was written down on an envelope at around 4:00). But hey! New Guster!
Can’t post this yet because our interweb is dead, but let it here be recorded that today I got a full-time summer internship. It pays eight bucks and it’s working with databases, and in no part of that can I see anything bad for my resume. Plus I’ll get used to the (possible) monotony and stress of having a real job, which will only make me more grateful to be back in school in the fall.
Also today, I got the CS department’s “outstanding senior” award. What?