all things me

I was reading Black House in the bus today (on the way home) and there was this short passage that somehow got to me. I don’t know why. But it’s unbelievably sweet.

Scenario: Jack Sawyer (familiar from The Talisman) is meeting the wife of Fred Marshall at a mental hospital. The elderly woman is one of the patients and a nurse had told Jack about her condition before they (Jack and Fred) went in.

   “Especial–” Before he can finish the question, an elderly woman with a lined, sweet face appears beside him and touches his shoulder.
   “Excuse me.” She tucks her chin toward her throat with the shyness of a child. “I want to ask you a question. Are you my father?”
   Jack smiles at her. “Let me ask you a question first. Is your name Estelle Packard?”
   Eyes shining, the old woman nods.
   “Then yes, I am your father.”
   Estelle Packard clasps her hands in front of her mouth, dips her head in a bow, and shuffles backward, glowing with pleasure. When she is nine or ten feet away, she gives Jack a little bye-bye wave of one hand and twirls away.
— Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

@ 21:31
Joined Greymatter fanlisting

Finally the professor came by. I got the parser and he explained it a bit. Now my job is to try to understand and test it. And make bug reports.

Ah… one more day left this week and then it’s looooong 3-day weekend. I wonder if I’ll be the only one here tomorrow…

40 minutes to go…

The prof had a summer beard….

I got a berry pie! (or a muffin… a hybrid) This guy (heh, I’m just trying to not name names) gave me a muffin. He told me that he has so much food that’s going old soon (and it’s a long weekend ahead) so he asked if I wanted one. Gladly Yum… Maybe I’ll get through the day with this and don’t have to eat one of those cheese rice cakes. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good. But a bit… boring.

Oh yeah…
*brag warning*
I got 3- for Open Source Methods for Language Technology (best grade in the course) and 3- for Context-Free Parsing Methods (there were a couple of other 3-‘s)
*brag danger over*

Yesterday Dad had installed (or whatever you call it) 256 Mb more memory to my computer… behind my back! I noticed something was “wrong” when I saw my monitor light blinking (if you leave it on, it blinks when there’s no signal) but I thought I had just forgotten it cause I had to do some bachelor’s thesis stuff late the previous night.

When I was playing Splinter Cell he came there to watch and asked how my computer was working and “how much memory do you have? Do you know?” I couldn’t understand what he meant and said “256 of course, or you mean hard drive?” He made me Alt+Tab to desktop and check; My Computer –> Properties. “Look! It has multiplied!!” Dad said and slipped away.

The computer, sorry — Simon, does run smoothly. The thermo-goggle mode in Splinter Cell looks amazing (well, the whole game looks amazing, all the lights that weren’t there before on Geforce).

To another thing, yesterday our study councellor and her dog were here. I was “stupid” enough to talk to the dog so I was its best friend after that (and also, my hand smelled like cheese rice cakes). I was already on my way downstairs when I hear ‘clickclickclicketyclick’ down the stairs. I had to turn back and ask them to keep the dog entertained so I can leave.

Anyway, this morning I noticed that it had decided the front of our library is good enough place for a toilet. Nice one. Hopefully no one steps on it.

I don’t understand…
– people who return library books late
There was a guy yesterday at the library who returned 3 magazines 34 days late and the fine was about 20 euros. He started complaining about that and said that if he didn’t return the mags at all, that would cost him less. He was pretty loud. I felt like telling him “next time, why don’t you try returning them *on time*”
– people who use dog’s ears (the papery kind…) as bookmarks
– people who underline and write notes on library books
I understand some of the marks may have been done by the previous owner who kindly donated the book, but not all
– people who don’t cross the road (bigger than a small one ) via the zebra crossing
People run recklessly in front of cars, why do they think they have the right to be first? I know… cars have to give way to pedestrians, but why don’t pedestrians give way to cars? It’s far easier to stop on foot.
– people who don’t return things they’ve borrowed, in general
– did I already mention all kinds of cruelty towards library books?

I was trying to print my bachelor’s thesis but the printer went nuts. I don’t know if it was because of me (or actually, because of printing a .pdf file) or what, but it printed out pages after pages after pages (far more than the 21 of my work) of unintelligible codes.

I sent my work on .pdf to the professor even though yesterday he said that it’d be safest to return the work both on paper and on a file. The file will have to do. I’m not risking another heap of useless paper out of the printer (well, useful as sketch paper). Or, I’ll print it out at home (which in turn will waste my ink and my paper).

Protege mailing list (http interface) doesn’t work.

Protege 2.1 won’t open my ontology (not like I need it to open it but it would be nice now that there’s a new release and not a beta anymore)

The smell of coffee drifts into my nose. Too bad the taste is shocking.

While I’m at it (“complaining”). I’m veeeery annoyed by the use of 3rd person singular verb with 3rd person plural. In Finnish, that is (we have different verb forms for each of those, 1st p. sg to 3rd p. pl that is — in case you didn’t know). It’s like using non-3rd person singular verb with 3rd person singular noun (“she say”; and that is in use as well). I know that some people are annoyed with the colloquial personal pronouns which I am “fluent” with (but I would NEVER use them in writing — hardly ever in the “internet speech” either, or text messages.. oh, no) and sometimes (in speech), I have to admit, I might slip a passive with “alkaa” (shame on me). But if that (either wrong number in verbs or that passive thing I mentioned) ever becomes acceptable, like the scary rumours I’ve heard could suggest — I’ll probably drop dead on the spot.

Now, enough bitching, time for coffeeing.

He-hey! There was sugar! (for coffee) This makes the taste not-so-shocking.

Hmm… I was going to write about something… oh well.

I forgot my key this morning (the key to the room here at work) because I had taken it off that thing, that loop thing on trousers to slip the belt through. What is it? I don’t even know it in Finnish (at least not right now). Anyway, luckily there was a cleaning lady (the same that said good morning to me the other day) around so I asked her to open the door for me.

There’s this man (I think he’s Indian, but that’s not the point) who hands out free magazines every morning (or how could I know, he could be there all day). He says “have a nice day” in a high-pitched, monotonous voice to every single person (almost). And he chases you!! Almost forces you to take the magazine (I usually just shake my head). Also, when he sees someone running to a tram he pushes the button to open the door and holds it open until the person has reached the tram. So, then the person must take the magazine cause the man has been so kind. The “have a nice day” is a sneaky way too cause who can say no to that? Well… after a while and too many unnecessary magazines, I could.

Talking about monotonous… there’s a monotonous drilling going on somewhere in the building. Agh. *drrr drrr drrr* *drrrrrrrr*

Hehey, the next entry (if it’s not today’s) will cause the 1st entry to scroll off this page. Exciting!!

Can’t wait to get home (have to go via the library, I’m taking Carrie and the two translation studies books back) and start playing Conflict Desert Storm II (I stole it from Dad cause he’s playing Hitman II at the moment, and very well too) with my brand new graphics card. I could play Tomb Raider too but I’m in an annoying place and my switch-target key doesn’t work! It’s the same key as roll (I’ve changed it to Alt) and it should work when the gun is drawn but Kurtis just ROLLS! No “typo” there, I do mean Kurtis. Uh oh… a spoiler. I think the problem is that the roll key should be tapped and my Alt is a bit sticky. I have to change it to Ctrl or something and try again cause I’m not giving up now!

My new Radeon works!! The service pack fixed whatever needed fixing (mother board’s support for AGP 3.0 perhaps) and when I turned on the computer after the card had been attached, it didn’t start beeping like yesterday and it works! Works! Works!

Sooo… today I’ve been (apart from admiring the view…) updating the “About me” page (there’s stuff about Simon too, you see) and, well, I did a new button and changed an old one a little and made some new pages.

I’ve done actually something important too… I revised my bachelor’s thesis cause I have to hand it in next week (the professor leaves for holiday on Friday). I’ll just need to ask him how he wants it, on paper or electronically.

I bought (or Dad, I’ll pay when I get my pay) Radeon 9600 Pro today (wheee, the “special offer” was a Pro!!) but we didn’t get it working yet. Simon (my computer) is quite old, 3½ years give or take and I haven’t updated it much (other than Windows and virus scan stuff; only new driver for Geforce 2 when Splinter Cell wouldn’t work) so there was some glitch and the computer started beeping when we started it (after replacing Geforce with Radeon). Probably the problem is with the CPU to AGP controller… or how could I know… Dad found some service pack which I installed, but we didn’t try changing the card yet (it’s sauna night and I understand that he doesn’t want to crawl on the floor fresh out of shower). So, I’m still holding my thumbs up (as we in Finland do; or keeping my fingers crossed as it is in English) and hoping all will be well tomorrow. Oh yeah, Simon’s gutted His left side is wide open, I can see his intestines!

In fact, now I don’t have ANY graphics card installed. Or, GF2 is *in* there (I wouldn’t have anything to plug the monitor in if it wasn’t…) but the configs have just a VGA driver and no fancy stuff.
(Oh my goodness, that big-eyed smiley is hilarious!)

In the meantime I’ve been doing new buttons to fit my new layout. I don’t have any affiliates yet and I doubt I ever will, but a girl can hope, right? No one probably ever reads these anyway (except for Mum, hey Mum! *waves* ). Well, if someone does, they never leave anything behind which is a shame.

Hmm… I wonder if the word “disappointment” comes from someone cancelling an appointment; the person they should’ve met would’ve got disappointed. I only have a Finnish etymology book.