Archive for the 'Site Stuff' Category
Adium Tip
So periodically I tend to go through my buddy list and delete old names of people that haven’t been online in ages, or whom I don’t speak to anymore, or what have you. Since I’m such a pack rat though I don’t like deleting things without keeping copies somewhere (the utility of remembering what names were once on my buddy list eludes me at the moment, but I’m sure it exists).
In any event, I did a bit of searching and came up with nothing helpful. Exporting a buddy list in Adium is an oft-requested, somewhat contemplated, and ultimately unsupported feature. The new version of AIM for Mac apparently omits this feature, although if you were to search you wouldn’t know it.
I ended up installing Pidgin on my Windows 7 tablet, since I already knew you could export your buddy list as XML using that. But only a brief moment of thought resulted in this helpful nugget of wisdom (one that, I had taken advantage of before, I guess, but had forgotten–hence this post):
cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adium\ 2.0/Users/Default/libpurple/blist.xml ~/blist-backup.xml
And your backup is now in your home folder.
On an entirely unrelated note, I finally fixed got fixed the problems that were going on behind the scenes. The end result is you need no longer register to post a comment (not that I would expect anyone to do the latter, much less the former). The curious thing is that even though I had “required” registration to post comments, and no one registered an account in the interim, 1,000+ spam comments still managed to get through. I guess WordPress doesn’t really do much in the way of effective checking for such things. Oh well, I guess?
Register to Comment
Sorry in advance for the inconvenience, but you need to register if you want to comment now. There’s a firewall blocking my server’s connection to Akismet (the service I use to block spam) and it’s resulting in an innudation of emails. (Thankfully these are “comment moderated” emails, not “comment posted” emails–although on reflection I shouldn’t get any of the latter, and I did get a couple….)
In any event, until the firewall issue is resolved or I find a better way to block spam, that’s the way it is. Not that it matters too much, since I haven’t posted recently. (I have been writing recently, actually, I just haven’t posted. One might argue that sort of defeats the purpose of writing, and they’d probably be right.)
Two Weeks
Effective next Friday the bonds of school will be temporarily released so that I may engage in a break of rest and relaxation, and perhaps (dependent on other factors to be determined in the interim) enjoyment. Things to note:
- About this: if you’re truly the one person concerned about me getting more than one CD you should either claim it or choose something else. Obviously I can’t be privy to everything I’m getting, because that would make me omnipotent, and I can only be so perfect.
- The poll is now approximately representative of actual votes received, and not votes erroneously calculated. I think I’ll have to end it by Thursday or so, for obvious reasons (which I will not state, in the event that they are not obvious).
- Guidance demanded today that I fill out an application for a New York State scholarship, which I don’t think I’ll even be entitled to since I’m almost certainly not going to an eligible college in New York. But it was demanded of me, so there you go.
- Recent surveys have indicated that my readership apparently dislikes both long entries and entries that are entirely devoted to computers. As my entries frequently fall into both of the aforementioned categories, this poses a problem as far as sustained readership is concerned. We may return to this topic of discussion in the future.
That is all.
Smart Decisions for Senior Year
Want to get through the first month of school with little to no formal writing? Avoid AP Chem and AP Euro; substitute with Physics C and AP Government. (Corollary: AP English is acceptable if you’re willing to confine your writing to 14 minute blocks.)
Want to avoid calculus teachers who can’t teach calculus? Take Physcalc.
Want to make sure you don’t keep falling asleep while reading Crime and Punishment for English? Take Fitness Walking in gym and take your book with you, and do the readings a day in advance.
Want to claim a Saturday morning to yourself? Do well enough on the SATs in the spring so that you don’t have to take them again in October. (Corollary: Don’t do the Columbia Science Honors Program unless you’re already antisocial enough that you’d have nothing to do on a Saturday morning anyway.)
Since this entry is pretty much to-the-point, here are some other points I feel compelled to include:
- The Almighty College Board has informed me that I have reached the level of “AP Scholar with Distinction”. I’m not sure what that’s worth exactly, but it sounds important.
- It seems the influx of questionable poll votes has been curbed. I’m still not sure of the cause, but I took some preemptive measures to attempt to solve the problem, and one of them worked. At some point in the future I might try to figure out how to appropriate the votes.
- My body hurts. This is probably because my shoulders don’t like supporting my backpack (which I recently updated, thank you). Yesterday I also was due for a couple shots, which while not a big deal left both of my arms sore. Interesting note: the building in which I went to get my shots is numbered 666. Notable politicians who have a campaign office located in said building? None other than Democratic candidate for Congress John Hall. (Be warned, a mysterious figure will appear on your screen if you click that link, and he makes noise.) The distinguised candidate has some dumb picture of Bush on his door saying something about John Hall giving him a headache. I think Mr. Hall is a bit too fond of himself.
- Random thought: all work weeks should be four days long.
So that’s what I’ve got to say. Now to go off and work on college stuff, or calculus problem sets, or something.
Pardon the Amotivation
Since school started a few short weeks ago it seems I’ve found difficulty encountering a free moment. Probably because senior year is a bit of a drag, and rather than screwing around all the time I’m now just devoting my time to getting work done for school. Less of a stretch compared to those used to screwing around with other people in their spare time (take that as you will) who now face the same fate, but still a bit of a chore.
So since I’ve been a bit sleep deprived in all of this, I’ve been neglecting my blog. Hopefully this is a condition that won’t last for exceedingly long, as I do enjoy being able to write a bit on what’s on my mind, which hopefully is not the fact that I haven’t been doing much of that.
Though the amotivation thing is kind of bothering me. I wrote my national merit essay Sunday night. My counselor told me it kind of sucked (using other words), so I took it back, reworked it, and handed it in on Wednesday (she wasn’t there to read it on Tuesday, else I’d have had it in then).
Maybe it’s just the amount of work I’ve had to worry about that prevents me from getting anything done. Last Spanish test I didn’t bother to study for until my free period the day of (though for the record it turns out I got the highest grade in the class on that, so maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea). The school newspaper editor application was due yesterday, but I didn’t bother to finish mine. My guess is that the whole concept of answering yes/no questions in “3-5 sentences, typed” kind of suggested that it wasn’t the job for me anyway (there were probably other things too, but I’ve got enough to worry about without trying to rewrite articles rants about how much cafeteria food sucks).
Of course, my “free time” is really supposed to be spent toward application completing and essay writing and whatnot. So I guess we’ll see what that ends up leaving me with.
By the way, I don’t know if you knew this, but Ken Jennings has a blog. I only stumbled across it (not to be confused with StumbleUpon) a few days ago, but it seems he’s slightly more regular in his posting habits. He’s probably more enjoyable to read too. And you’ll learn more from him than you will from me. And even if you don’t think he’s that great I gave you a second link to suck up some time so you won’t notice me not posting.
And one day I’ll figure out where all those damn poll votes are coming from.
Easy Fixes
In a previous rant I posted about a chronic freezing and crashing problem with my computer. I had long suspected that this was a heat issue, and that for some reason my computer couldn’t handle running around 50 degrees Centigrade, and that the only real solution would be to invest in a new, loud, potentially not-that-effective fan.
I wanted to put this off as long as possible, of course. But the issue of turning on my computer and having to hard reboot it just a couple hours later didn’t work for me, nor did it work for my buddy list and index of e-mail messages, both of which suffered from the OS suddenly crashing while they were being accessed. But first, just in case, I decided to try a somewhat less intensive solution–say, updating the BIOS for my motherboard.
Well, that was a few days ago, and I’m pleased to report that since then, I haven’t had a single sudden freeze. Either my fortune has coincidentally turned on a dime, the BIOS update did its job and solved my issue, or the new CPU driver I installed held the secret to success. In any event, I’m not questioning it, but will be pleased that I’ll be able to get my homework done without fearing for my sleep should I forget to save every 30 seconds.
Other technological issues continue to evade solution, however; I sent an e-mail to the company that made my GPS device about the fact that the device, well, doesn’t work, and after about a week and a half there’s been no response. I’ll have to look into other means of contacting them.
And I thought I had a serious partisan around here after looking at the poll results, but a check of the site logs reveals that there haven’t been nearly enough votes to account for that kind of lead. So I’ll have to look into that, too.
Uh, and by the way, school starts in less than a week. I’m kind of behind.
