OT:The Weekend

What are you all doing this weekend? Just curious. Do you sit at home and lounge, or do you go out and have fun or go shopping? Or both?

Is it you, Quinn?

MiniCat155 wrote:

Well, today I went to the dentist. And that's it, basically. Usually I go shopping, but I never have fun whatever I do, for some reason.

We're all having a wild party right now, but it seems your invite got lost in the post.

Shopping is never fun unless you're spending someone else's money.

Happiness seems to entail doing very small things like sitting in a bar garden trying to get a rivulet of spilt beer to follow the wood grain of the table, or watching how the sun sparkles on the undulating ocean swell, or feeling the heat of sun-warmed granite beneath your skin as you lie on a rock wondering vaguely if it's teatime yet.

-Shez.

Shez wrote:

Shopping is *always* relatively fun, even if you don't buy anything, or if you're broke. :)

Hmm. That's very true. And very strange. Hmm....

On Sun, 14 Feb 1999 12:20:22 +0000, "endless, nameless" wrote:

Shopping is only fun if I go home with a new game or book...

Saturday: Work. Go to the grocery store to get something for supper since my mother is fixing dead cow. Listen to mother yell at me because she doesn't have food for me. Go online and write all my complaints in an e-mail. Get kicked off line. Get yelled at again for not being Meg Ryan. Contemplate suicide. Decide that that might be painful, and I try to avoid pain. Eat dinner. Return bottles at Meijer. Go home to bed since my mother isn't letting me online that night.

Sunday: breakfast, online, church, lunch, online again. Maybe a movie.

Sometimes I do go shopping, yeah. Except most everything I want can only be found online, like my 3-CD set "Cornology" by the Bonzo Dog Band I just spent too much money on.

Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony

Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697

"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche

On Sun, 14 Feb 1999 18:38:49 +0000, Shez wrote:

A better question would be, Shez, why aren't YOU?

___ Kyle ICQ #12773280

The dead have risen and they're voting Republican!

Another Nugget Of Wisdom from the Wonderful World Of Kyle(TM)

Kyle of writes:

I'm still trying to remember who she is. Wasn't she in that film about Seattle? I guess she must be upbeat, since Dagny is downbeat. My knowledge of actresses is limited to beautiful but sullen ones like Winona Ryder, Molly Ringwald, and of course Daria.

-Shez.

I'm downbeat.

Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony

Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697

"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche

Eccles9697 wrote in message ...

spent

You must be the most serious BDB fan I've ever come across. I looked up that set on the site that I link to for the Daria video, and it's UKP18.12 (about $29)!

Have you seen them on video? I wouldn't qualify as a fan, but I enjoyed them; I never thought their weirdness came across on audio in the same way as seeing their performance (no, never saw them live, only on TV 8-( ).

How well would a BDD gig fit in with a flashback to Helen & Jake's student days? BDD's "Sport" (if that's what it's called - about the kid who hates PE and games) might have made good end-credit music for See Jane Run?

Martin.

I actually spent (sit down now.) $50 on it. They like screwing us out of money on imports, but it was the only way for me to get "Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse" (and I also didn't have "Gorilla" yet since it, also being an import, sells for like $30 alone)

Yeah my friend Alley copied me a video with a bunch of their performances from TV and such. Their style is really more visual... and I would have died to see them in concert, but I was born a few years too late.

The only problem being the fact that their best performances were all in England and Helen and Jake are Americans. Although England was a fairly popular place for Americans trying to avoid a trip to the Vietnam-ish area of the world. (Terry Gilliam, for example....)

I love that song! That would have been cool. The chances that anyone at MTV would have heard it are slim to none, unfortunately...

Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony

Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697

"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche

Eccles9697 wrote in message ...

that

(about

money

<gulp> And I thought *we* were the ones who get stuffed on CD prices. Take some comfort, though: with airmail shipping, it would have cost you nearly $35, so you only lost about $15 compared to buying direct from the UK. Um, okay, that's not *that* much comfort, is it? I'll get me coat....

popular

Helen as an exchange student in England, at a BDB gig? "Love had nothing to do with it..."

Martin.

Hmm.... oh well. I've never actually visited in any UK music sites. Where were you looking? The only things I've ordered overseas are books from amazon.co.uk

Sounds cool to me! Hmm... this could make an interesting fanfic. Which reminds me I should finish the first fanfic I started, the one that's going in my cousins' fanzine.

Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony

Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697

"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche

Eccles9697 wrote in message ...

were

amazon.co.uk

Follow the link in my sig, and choose "Daria books & video". The online discount stores I use for books and CDs/videos are both part of WHSmith, whose bookstores (with CDs, videos, magazines, stationery, etc.) seem to be on nearly every British high street. But the shops don't give you the discounts their web stores do!

to

reminds

Is that a web fanzine, or a paper one?

Back to the plot: Viv S. reveals that Helen kept him going through the recording of "War of the Worlds..." <g>

Martin.

Moreover W.H.Smiths shops are notorious for not stocking much in the way of books either! It's intriguing that their website seems to offer such a wide selection, I would never dream of visiting a W.H.Smiths branch in the high street if I needed a book, as ten to one they wouldn't have it unless it was a popular paperback novel or a road atlas or something that I was wanting. For real books I would go to Dillons or Books Etc. or somesuch place. (OK so any bookshop can order any book in print if you are willing to wait a week or two, but I prefer to be able to buy stuff on the spot.) Actually Virgin stock quite a good range of books, quite a lot of which, eg. graphic novels, are hard to find outside of specialist shops. Certainly Virgin are better than Smiths for books in my experience, which is kind of ironic given that Virgin are supposed to be a music shop not a bookshop. (Of course Smiths also sell CDs, but as with their books they only stock the populist stuff.)

-Shez.

Shez wrote in message ...

One of the problems with chains like that is you can get city branches like Nottingham (ISTR *way* more books than Virgin Megastore in Nottingham), and small town branches like Beverley that are more like newsagents and stationers with a book department no bigger than a couple of domestic rooms. I'm not knocking the small town branches, in some places they're the only place you can order a book; but it is hard to get a mental picture of an "average" WHS branch.

Ah, big-city girl! <g> That would involve a 33 mile drive West and North (and 33 mi back) and over UKP4 in bridge tolls for me, or a longer drive South.

ISTM that the Virgin book departments I've seen are very nearly specialist: they were the first place I tried for Neil Gaiman books, and they'd be the obvious place for popular music and mainstream jazz books, along with anything you could describe as "youth culture."

In the Virgin Megastores I've seen, the range of GCSE or A level books, or reference works or religious books, or maps and guides, or anything else that's not "youth culture," has been much smaller than the selection at WHS. You must live near a really big VM, or be in the Virgin book buyer's niche market! ("Shez, get out of that Virgin man's niche, now!")

Yes, charts and easy listening. <groan> Try finding an obscure Jazz or Classical CD in WHS - forget it! I prefer Andy's Records - they got me Stimmhorn's _Schnee_ when HMV and Virgin had each told me it was not available.

Martin.

Minicat wrote:

You probably don't want to know. Let's put it this way, I just finished working 12 hours, and, with the exception of Mass tomorrow, that's probably the high point of my weekend.

Peace kevin

Kicked some butt at the Apollo Conference Scholastic Bowl Meet!!!! You are either looking at your Apollo Conference Scholastic Bowl MVP, or the runner-up MVP, and a mere mortal member of the All Conference Team either way.

On 13 Feb 1999 22:23:08 GMT, [email] (MiniCat155) wrote:

___ Kyle ICQ #12773280

The dead have risen and they're voting Republican!

Another Nugget Of Wisdom from the Wonderful World Of Kyle(TM)

MiniCat155 wrote in message ...

Thanks for the sparingly punctuated question! 8-)

No, no, and no, in that order, to "Lounge?" "Fun?" and "Shopping?"

Saturday: Drive to the chapel of ease, celebrate Mass, celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, drive to the main church, celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, have some lunch, finish work on a homily, finish the prayers of the faithful, celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, drive to the chapel of ease, celebrate Mass, hang about for people who want to talk to me, drive back, see people who've got appointments with me.

Sunday (well, today): Celebrate Mass, drive West to the next town, celebrate Mass, hang about for people who want to see me, drive back, eat lunch, look at this newsgroup and answer your question, go out to see someone to arrange his wife's funeral, drive back, do some admin tasks, see people who've got appointments with me, work out when I'm going to get time to arrange the ecumenical service for Ash Wednesday.

Once upon a time, Sunday used to include: watch Daria. 8-(

All interspersed with the odd cup of tea and the occasional glance at my email.

Funny how I'm never bored at the weekends. 8-)

Martin.

In article , [email] wrote:

presentation

got.&nbsp;

Let me guess...engineering student??? (thinks back to when she was a computer engineering major) Ick. Actually, it wasn't half bad...considering the one course I truly hated was graphics. Icky gross! Template after template of torture. "You were 1/5 of a centimeter off there, and your angle was about 3 degrees too much". If I'd have liked graphics better I'd have stayed. Besides, I love physics and calculus. Hm...maybe I'll go back after I've finished this degree....

Good luck, Ann! I hope you get better, and I hope your presentation works out fine! :)

deena lissa

"Sure eyes awake before the dancing is over, Wise or naked in Secret Oktober..." -- "Secret Oktober", Duran Duran (1983)

In article ,

Close, I'm a computer science major. I started in mechanical engineering, but after spending hours staring at statics problems, trying to figure out what the planet the textbook writers were on, I decided it wasn't for me. I didn't do too well in that engineering graphics class, either. They'd look at a picture and say that it's this part I'd never heard of, and all I'd see was a bunch of random lines. What's your major?

Thanks. I'm not doing too bad, just going through tissues like crazy. And I think I can manage (or at least fake)most of the work. The circuit stuff'll be the toughest because I don't know what I'm doing. I can fake my way through the presentation pretty easily, it's just impersonating Pascal in an interview(I supply the questions).

Ann

In article ,

Wow, you must be an upperclassman then. I'm a CS major too, but right now the most pressing things I'm having to study are operating systems and linear algebra (Java isn't even a challenge since it's mostly like C++). I actually like operating systems, and linear, with its wonderful (hint of sarcasm) matrixes and the like, is making me get these major headaches. I'd rather be doing calculus.

Cool...we're both CS exiles from engineering *g*.

Oh wow, sounds very interesting. OMG...Pascal!!! It's been AGES since I've heard that word used before! So it's been ages since I've had to learn it for high school CS.... Yeah, circuit class sounds like it'll do that to you. I really need to see if I'll be required to do that...I know this one school that I want to get into requires one more semester of physics, though, and I'm looking forward to that....

Once again, good luck and hope you won't have to feel those tears running down your cheek for long. Just try to relax every once in a while with The Coolest Animated Show on TV (aka "Daria").

*yawn*

deena lissa

"I believe you'll follow me, it's all I need to know" (Duran Duran, 1987) Jane: Dear Daria, Lousy Traitor. Daria: Dear Jane, I know what you are, but what am I?

In article ,

but

didn't

a

That depends on how you look at it. *Technically* I have junior standing, if you go by credits. But it's really only my second year.

I'm a CS major too, but right now the

I'm taking Java this semester. That's one of my fun classes. It's easy since I already know C++, and I like playing with the graphics. I haven't gotten to the other two classes yet. Probably in the fall.

Nice to know I'm not the only one. :)

The person, not the language. It's for my History of Computing class. There'll be some other dead guys that a couple classmates are portraying, too. Basically it's like a panel of speakers, and the teacher interviews us. I don't remember offhand who they all are, but my friend Kevin and I discovered that our people had opposing religious views, and we're planning on having a lot of fun with that fact. <evil smirk>

Yeah, circuit class sounds like it'll do that to you.

We're required to do this circuit stuff. Personally, I don't like it, and I'd get out of it if I could. Especially for physics. I'm debating about taking an extra semester myself. But it has to compete with a long line of interesting classes that I'm not required to take but probably will anyway.

I didn't need the tissues because of tears. Did you ever feel like you're about to sneeze? Constantly for an entire day? And I did catch a bit of Daria Day, while I was working on my paper (which I finished about fifteen minutes ago, yay!).

I'll second that.

Ann

The Cartoon Guide to Computer Science is a great intro to computers and IT from the Stone Age through to the 20th Century. I don't know if it's still in print though. It's by Larry Gonick, and mentions not only Pascal but Wilhelm Schickard, who *really* invented the first calculating machine, a few decades before Pascal made his.

-Shez.

In article ,

I haven't read that book yet, but I liked the ones for Statistics and Physics. It's great series.

It's by Larry Gonick, and mentions not only

Unfortunately, Schickard had to be left out of the reincarnation party. But we did have Aristotle and Newton last week.

Ann

I thought the first calculating machine was made by some nameless Chinese guy, the abacus.

Jon Armstrong The Space Ranger Graveyard gives one a unique outlook on life. A dark one.

[email] wrote:

Didn't Babbage build some kind of gear-driven calculator?

Eric Stevenson of University of Missouri - Rolla writes:

Babbage designed the first programmable computer, the Analytical Engine, but it was never built. He also designed a differential equations calculator, the Difference Engine, but I don't think he finished building that either as the funding ran out, though a couple were made during his lifetime (in Scandinavia I think). But Babbage came long after Pascal and Schickard. He actually pinched the idea of using punched cards from the Jacquard programmable weaving loom.

One thing that Babbage did succeed in was establishing the tradition that all computer projects should be over-budget and very late.

Incidentally, a pal of his called Ada Lovelace (daughter of the poet Byron) was the world's first programmer as she wrote programs for the Analytical Engine, though of course as it didn't get built she wasn't able to actually run them. Despite this she came up with three of the fundamental concepts of programming: loops, conditional jumps, and subroutines.

-Shez.

In article , Shez wrote:

[Charles Babbage and the World's First Computer:]

And if you check out her hairstyle (as seen in http://www.adahome.com/Pictures/ladyada-big.gif) you'll note that she also pioneered another programming concept by inventing the world's first Endless Loops.

Steve

Eric Stevenson wrote in message ...

Yep the "difference engine", He also designed a mechanical programable calculating machine, but it was beyond the engineering techniques of the time to actualy build.

In article ,

That was a while later. Sometime in the 19th century.

[email] writes:

This is one of those slippery definition things, like the question of what was the first computer (something which gets a dozen pages to itself in the alt.folklore.computers FAQ), but I wouldn't call the abacus a machine, although it is generally considered a type of calculator. I think the question is, who is actually doing the arithmetic, the device or the user? Basically the operator supplies the algorithm with an abacus, it's sort of the operator is the computer and the abacus is the memory, whereas with a proper calculating machine you just have to key in the number and turn the handle (or press "="), as the algorithm for arithmetic is embedded within the mechanism itself, making it the computer. Of course the tricky thing with the abacus is that the addition is done by way of the method by which the numbers are keyed in, which blurs things rather. It's worth noting though that unlike Pascal's machine, Schickard's calculator was apparently a four function machine, and certainly the only way you could do general multiplication and division on an abacus is by knowing the rules for long multiplication and division.

-Shez.

Yeah but then you go out into the real world and companies make you use atrocities like Windows, which is still struggling to come up with bad solutions to problems that were actually dealt with perfectly well by operating systems in the 1960's.

-Shez.