but i was haunted by the idea that i remembered her wrong

I have been saving up a list of things to get on Amazon.com but when I tried to order them I failed miserably. I was going to get a bunch more Tribune daily crossword books but all the old ones I don't have are out of print, and somehow I don't fancy a used one. I was also going to break down and get the final part of the Hitchhiker's Guide radio plays after several years of wanting it, but it turns out it hasn't been released yet.

never trust robots

Norton 360 is really dumbed down. It won't tell me anything it's been doing. I have to go three or four screens deep just for it to tell me how many files it's been messing with.

Even more annoying is how it demands it be turned on 100%. I like having the firewall and antivirus but the stupid browser plugin crashes IE and all it does is detect phishing scams, which I can do myself because I'm not an idiot. Norton also demands Automatic Updates be turned on, but I prefer doing the updates manually.

if you're not a machine we're in business

I got fed up with Kaspersky and bought Norton 360. Unfortunately Norton has dumbed down their interface a lot since I last upgraded. At least I can find a screen that calls the firewall a firewall instead of 'Anti-Hacker'. The old stuff was better. I only stopped using the old Norton software because Symantec sabotaged it after they realized you could gimmick it to not require renewal for updates.

The most interesting part was installation. I decided to install Norton without first removing Kaspersky so I wouldn't go without a firewall, and also just to see if Norton and Kaspersky would pick a fight with each other. Norton mostly minded its own business, but Kaspersky decided Norton was a trojan.

The security swap has added to my computer's instability, however. Some Norton plugin now crashes IE every time I close it, producing no fewer than 21 popup dialogs about memory read errors. I am putting off a reformat until I build my new machine. That's going to require like $1600 in parts though.

Also among today's spoils are Lego gummis. I couldn't pass that up.

On another note I am annoyed at my cell phone's adaptive text prompts. It learns words if you type them in manually, but it apparently deletes them if they haven't been used in a while. This usually comes up in the context of swear words.

technology

I went to Fry's today to get 300. I also picked up a new fingerprint scanner since my old one broke. It seems to be cleverer than my old one, which is good since the old one was something like eight years old. I also got a wireless USB hub/print server for the hell of it since they had a good price.

it's the same old thing as yesterday

I recently reread Cryptonomicon so now I'm psyched about encryption again, and thinking about getting PGP for the new desktop PC I'm planning on building. Part of the reason I haven't actually commenced construction is that I'm not entirely sure what its function will be. I do want to be able to play more demanding games, but the majority of the games I play on the PC are older and don't require cutting-edge technology. I am also trying to find entirely new interesting uses that can be accomplished with newer technology.

In other news I spent most of the day figuring out how to build a high voltage test circuit. This will generate a few hundred watts of heat so I decided a case fan would help. While looking at case fans on newegg.com I found this amusing note in a review:

"The reviewer who is concerned about the .4 mm width difference really doesn't have much to worry about as .4 mm is about the width of 3 or 4 human hairs...about 0.015 inches. You should be able to deflect the back plane of your Sonata that much by giving it a dirty look. Then you'll be able to fit all those 88's in there."

Also, I went to Wikipedia at one point to look up resistor technologies, which eventually led me to reading about anamonics, combinations of anagrams and mneumonics that are frequently used in competitive Scrabble. Interesting trick.

this ain't a surfin movie

So I'm a Master now. I have been since Friday but I have been in a very low energy and reclusive mood for whatever reason until today. I would put some details of my defense up but the whole ordeal did not really seem that cathartic for some reason. I presented my work again, not the smoothest version but pretty well. The oral exam consisted entirely of project-related questions so all my work studying wave functions and Maxwell's equations was useless. I would have been better off studying barium titanate and the nature of the dielectric constant. But in any case I passed, with no dissenting votes. I spent the rest of Friday running around doing things like turning in keys and passing off paperwork. Fun. Thanks to everyone who showed their support in one way or another!

Saturday I did nothing. Today I printed off the hard copies of my report. I was under the impression I had to get them professionally bound but they just want Kinkos-level. So I went to Kinkos. They didn't do the world's greatest job of copying but I now have a trifecta of somewhat professional looking reports along with the original template from which they were wrought.

You might expect that now that I'm a Master and a full engineer I would go off and buy myself something to celebrate, like a new PC or car. Today I actually did buy something - a helicopter. A really little one about as long as my hand. Fry's had them for $25 and I couldn't resist. It really is a toy of a thing - it has some kind of styrofoam body, and it will only go forward if you turn right, not left. Even so, the thing is a marvel of miniature engineering. Somehow it works by infrared control, and the materials used are lightweight but certainly strong enough to protect it from all the knocks it's taken so far. It even has a working tail rotor and an interesting double main rotor for balance. The thing brings me some joy and keeping it in the air requires no small skill so it gets a lot of your attention when you fly it. The biggest downside is that I have to turn the fan off or else the helicopter will just blow away in the airflow, so the room gets hot while I'm flying. That's not a big price to pay though. I have a helicopter!

The PC and car are still in the brain crack phase.

Anyway, it is back to work tomorrow. It will be a little different now that I am not preparing defense material - I have to go back to doing real work. It's going to be a short week though, as on Thursday I am flying back to Michigan for ten days or so.

Also, I updated my video game reviews.

like car parts, bottles and cutlery

Well somehow it's now the week of my Master's defense. Time to step up my efforts. This involves finishing my paper and presentation, studying physics and generally making sure I'm in a condition to go through this on Friday.

ride the fire eagle danger day

Well it's July 7. I am now done with my internship and will be a real engineer on Monday. I'm not sure what my new duties are but next week is going to involve more training, assisting other people with real problems rather than studying one in isolation and preparing for my defense on the 13th.

Also, Pettit and Regina are getting married today. Congrats!

car talk part something

More car stuff. I tried looking around at what else is available. The outgoing Grand Prix actually sounded kind of tempting. It's been in production for a while so I'm sure they've gotten it to a point where they've got it all worked out. It has front wheel drive instead of rear, but that isn't critical. The real dealbreaker is the transmission - you can only get a four-speed automatic, it's not one of the lucky few that have GM's new six-speed auto. Same story with the Impala. I like the looks of the previous generation Impala but the new one doesn't impress me too much. I figured I would give it a look anyway and the stats looked pretty decent. It even comes with Active Fuel Management, but apparently that only makes a 5-7% difference in fuel economy.

So I am kind of back where I started. I am backing off from things like the Camaro and the G8. I really don't need that much power and the cars will be too big anyway, and I don't feel like waiting and waiting either. Especially since it's never a good thing to get the first run of something. I am starting to favor the G6 again. I went over to a Pontiac dealer and harassed them about it but I only drove the base model, whereas I'm all for speccing it up all the way (sans some of the body kit stuff, and I wonder if there's any way I can get it without XM.) I might go back to the dealer to really scope out a GTP model and run through the available options, but then they'd really be on my case and I'm still not set to buy anything just yet.

yippee-ki-yay

So I spent the 4th watching Live Free or Die Hard and Transformers back-to-back. Surprisingly I like the former better. It felt really epic while Transformers tried too hard to be silly, and any action scene with the robots was useless because everything was just a blur. I was kind of hoping for more of a car chase/duel between the Camaro and the Mustang as well. And I felt let down that the Camaro wasn't rebuilt as a 2009, it just went off and did that itself.

Anyway I actually have to go back to work today, which is harsh. Tomorrow is technically the end of my internship (although I am just going back to work on Monday as a full engineer) and I am defending a week from tomorrow. Which means I need to sit my ass down and study some physics for the very last time.