Once again, the entire ITS staff is out except for me. So I sit here and "answer the phones," but of course they sent out a faculty/staff email yesterday, saying that they would be out of the office. So there hasn't been a single call, and I have to resort to looking up the latest Harry Potter rumors on the internet to keep myself falling asleep. And blogging. Blogging keeps me awake. (Does my blogging keep you awake, dear reader, or are you nodding off just reading my rambling?) Speaking of meta-blogging (a.k.a. blogging about blogging), the previous post was my attempt to expand my horizons, so to speak. I sat down after getting back from Walmart, and decided that the experience deserved to be recorded. As I started writing, I realized that it would be quite easy to turn it into a humorous post. So I did. I don't know how well it worked, but I had fun writing it.
*Geek Stuff - Skip if you don't get it.*
I've just discovered the genius that is GNU Screen. I start screen on a terminal in the morning, then start centericq. (Which is an excellent ncurses-based AIM/MSN client that has a built-in RSS aggregator. If that's not one of the hottest things this side of the Mississippi, I don't know what is.) After setting myself as away, I create some new windows and update fluxbox, gaim, xmms, and mplayer from CVS and start them compiling. Then I detach the screen session, lock the computer, and head to work. I sit down at any computer I choose, ssh in to my home computer, re-attach to screen, and there are my programs, just about done compiling. Centericq is just where I left it, and I'm free to chat at will. It's awesome. If it weren't for the school's firewall, I could pretty much run my desktop like I normally do from any computer on the planet with an internet connection and an ssh client. As it stands, I'll have to settle for any computer on campus. What I really need now is a console-based email client that can handle html. Mutt is awesome, but the site with the thing that can get lynx to work as an embedded html viewer for it seems to be down, and I'm far too lazy to keep looking. I'll just have to settle for what I have at the moment. Oh well.
*End of Geek Stuff*
On the music front, I've been listening to some new stuff recently. Gilbert introduced me to Brand New the other day. They're sort of a pop-punk emo. Fun to listen to, and they have a couple great songs (Jude Law and a Semester Abroad, to name one). A couple weeks ago I was listening to Anthrax, which led me to look at some other thrash bands. The giant in the genre is, of course, Metallica. Now I had never listened to Metallica, because right when I started listening to music (freshman year of highschool), they were coming out with Load and Reload (which were terrible records), and when the whole suing fans thing started. These two factors were enough to make me avoid Metallica like the plague. But then I heard that their earlier stuff had not only been good, it had been REALLY good. So I *ahem* got ahold of the first few albums. Holy shit. "One" (from ...And Justice For All) is already in the legendary "Carl's Top 5 Favorite Songs of All-Fucking-Time" list. They have some incredible stuff. It really is too bad that they kept making music. Oh well. Beyond that, I've also been listening to some more Modest Mouse, which I got from Dan. It's so damn good. Of course, the XMMS playlist (along with all ~11000 tracks in it) usually stays on random, but when I get new stuff I'll tend to play straight through everything, then go back and listen to individual tracks that I liked.
Well, it's getting close to lunch time, so I'm going to wrap this up. I'll probably get bored again in the afternoon and post more.
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