the GRE

I doubt anyone will care, but I just wanted to get this out there:

The GRE book I had (and probably most other ones) will tell you that you can’t copy in the essay editor, only cut and paste, and that you have to click some buttons to do those things. This is false: I noticed that Shift+Ins and Ctrl+Ins perform copy and paste as usual. I suspect that Shift+Del will cut, but I couldn’t remember that one to try it during the test.

This has been your DZHU™ PSA for the day. Thank you.

“Dear audio diary! Today I learned why we measure lifetimes in years and not ‘failed trips to Uranus where only corpses show up at the end’.”
– T-Rex

the MBTA

The first part of my trip to school today:

The next part:

A hypothetical second part of my trip:

the lens.

I’m finding something.

Something: it’s not until you introduce something really new into your life that you get even a small glance at yourself — what you are, what you’ve become, and whether you think this is even a good thing.

Things are happening in my life and I am (as always, always, always) re-evaluating everything around me, but it’s only close encounters like these that let me evaluate myself.

Have I changed? Have my desires changed? My bad habits? My sense of self-control? My fears, hesitations, inadequacies?

I’ve not a damn clue of what’s to come, but I shall treat it as an adventure, and attempt to be wise, kind, and thoughtful at every step.

Computer surgery

Dear readers,

Let me tell you a story, full of tragedy and despair. In December 2009, through an accident involving a high-speed pen and poor aim, I cracked my laptop’s LCD screen. The damage wasn’t so bad at first – a couple of dead lines on my screen – but as the months went by, the amount of dead screen space got bigger and bigger. I finally caved and bought a brand-new replacement screen for my computer…

and decided to install it myself!

I’ve always wanted to get better at knowing about the insides of computers, and this was a great opportunity to do this.

Here’s an image gallery of my wonderful exploits.

Long story short, it turns out that in a ThinkPad, if you want to replace the screen you have to literally take the entire computer apart. What a pain.

It was fun, though.

Commuting

Damn it.   I wrote a draft of this post in July with the intention of finalizing it the next week:

China in nutshell: lots of people

“”"
July 18 – Commuting takes a toll on your life. We spend a significant portion of our time moving from one place to another without engaging in any sort of stimulating activity, e.g. staring at a subway door for an hour. I’ve suggested before that everyone should just learn how to play blindfold chess to make waiting more bearable (“hey stranger, e4″).

Despite how kickass that scenario would be, it will forever remain a (very geeky) dream. Yesterday , I transferred some Japanese audio lessons to my mp3 player, so we’ll see if I can be productive during an otherwise wasted part of my day.
“”"

Now that I remember having this plan, I recall that it wasn’t too successful.  I managed to get through 6 half-hour lessons over the course of a week, but it was just too troublesome to listen carefully to audio lessons on the subway.  Constantly readjusting the volume to counter the noise of the train, getting shuffled around by the throngs of people, and checking my pockets every five seconds due to fear of pickpockets were factors that weren’t very conducive to learning.  Maybe I should try doing this again during my daily commute to Vanserg.

Someone took the name “blandfill” a little too literally

and left a pair of extremely soiled briefs in our dropbox.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/10/4/li-dropbox-quincy-over/