Duquesne Light has an online bill payment setup. This is good -- I hate mailing checks, as I always lose the envelopes. Unfortunately, their forms don't work with Linux. I finally give in (again) and at work, vnc to a windows box to pay the bill.. but the bill is gone. I think they probably sold it to some collection agency, either that, or they sent it to my landlord. I hate bills. I really need to set up direct withdrawls on my bank account for more services. Speaking of which, I need to order the new DSL, as my neighbors, who I've been leeching off of, apparently turned their AP off (they're out of town a lot, and maybe this is for a long trip).

I just helped someone setup the ancient calendar program ical on someone's nice, recent Linux workstation. I'm always reluctant to do things like that, as using such ancient tools really is a blocker when I'm hoping to get people using more productive, modern tools. Of course, MacOSX uses ical, but their version is considerably newer and different than the ancient Tk-based program that bears the same name.

I'm making more progress on getting my data all organized and packed up for the upgrade, and was surprised to find that at some point, I split my media collection on my laptop between its two partitions, and have since forgotten about the other part. I've re-ripped CDs and stuff since, to recover what I thought was missing data, and then I find that it was there all the time. Oy. So, I'm stitching the two halves of my media folder back together, applying the reorganizations that I did to the active part long ago to the neglected part, and tossing out things I don't think I'll ever listen to. It's a really neat experience, actually, like cleaning one's apartment, except I think I relate more strongly to data I at one point decided to store than to the things in my place. If, for example, I were told that I could either lose all my data, computers, etc, or I could lose everything else in my apartment, and were given the money to replace what I want, I'd definitely lose the stuff (although losing the memory boxes and photos would certainly suck). I wonder if there are any people who don't get sentimental about the past in that way, who don't keep old stuff around to remind themselves of who they are..

OpenBSD just got its first taste of SMP. Cool! A newly found Unix kernel bug that combines itimers and modern x87 operations. Users can crash 2.4/2.6 kernels. Oops! Povray 3.6 is out! Very cool.

Tomorrow I get keys to my new office... and it, I discovered today, is a window office! Hurrah! I wonder how often I'll end up bumping into the really cool psych professors I had.. And, like with the data, and the cleaning of my apartment, moving is always a good time to have one's memories stirred up. I wonder what I'll find in my office that I've forgotten about as I empty my part of it..

I came across this recently while arguing on Wikipedia with someone on whether CMU is properly part of Squirrel Hill or Oakland, and found it oddly compelling reading. It talked all about historical and future buildings at CMU, and also mentioned that there may be some cash incentives for CMU folk to live near campus. That'd be nice -- anything that helps me buy a house around here would be wonderful.