fortress!

Mira and I have moved the steel cabinets in my office around to form an impenetrable wall protecting my side of the office.

I challenge my opponents to attack - nothing but sorrowful, pride-obliterating defeat awaits them at the foot of my towering walls.

Food could be a problem.. right now I am thinking we'll need to order pizza, then raise it up through the window with a rope.. except we have no rope. Maybe I can use cat5 cable.

Awesome

A couple of my classmates in Web Mining did a project on phishing (claiming to be someone else, often through email, to try to get someone else's personal information).

I don't know the full details of the project yet, but somehow they mailed a lot of people a bogus link that tricked them into inputting some personal information (in this case, their ADS username and password). At some later point in time they apparantly provided everyone so deceived with this site to let them know what happened. The site included a blog on which people were invited to post comments.

Lots of people were really, really angry. Try to find the post where somebody calls Tom (one of the investigators in the study) a "weasel".. it's comedy gold. Several lawsuit threats are also made. Of course the study was conducted with full HSC approval and in a completely ethical way.. apparantly people are just bitter to have been fooled. Guess what, guys.. that guy in Nigeria really isn't going to send you that fortune you're helping him transfer. Sorry!

Hats off Tom and Nate, great project.

dumb ads

Ads that demean their intended audience are really dumb in my opinion. For example, I keep hearing this ad on wtts. Imagine a cheerful guy reading this in kind of a bland voice:

Greetings WTTS listeners! Congratulations to all of you that are using Broadripple Heating and Cooling, and a big slap on the head to those who aren't! Just kidding. But you appear to be slow learners! Be smarter than a machine and [blah blah, I forget the rest.]

Certainly the ad is memorable (I probably didn't get it word-for-word, but I was close).. but it certainly doesn't make me want to use Broadripple Heating and Cooling, even if I owned a home and had that option.

rocking out

Some pictures of me rocking out at home last winter. Shortly after these pictures were taken, the camera used to take them exploded from the sheer volume of my high-voltage guitar solo. Only these pictures were salvagable.

(click for larger)

mad moves

This little guy sure knows how to cut up the dance floor.. kinda like me.

title

I smell really nice today for some reason.

If anybody else were in this office they would totally notice how nice I smell.

Not that I usually smell bad, despite what Mira says. I just smell even nicer today than usual.

Just thought you all should know.

no rest till brooklyn

I will not leave the office tonight till my main project is done and the paper is mostly written. It would be really nice if the paper was all the way written before I left, but I'm not committing to that.

Currently chugging vile coffee and writing the paper. Once more into the breach..

semester almost over

otherwise its likely i would break down and do nothing but play video games and drool for several days, to give my brain a rest.

as it is, I work for another week or two, then do the video games & drooling.

Here's what's left.

Here's what's left before the semester's over:

• Finish coding project for B652 (Monday 25)
• Write paper on this project (Monday 25)
• Write paper for webmining project (Tuesday 26)
• Present webmining project in class (Tuesday 26 or Thursday 28)
• Finish proofs for P515 (?)
• Paper for P515 (?)
• Present P515 project in class (Finals week)

whew

Rough night last night.. worked until 7:30 am. Haven't done that since undergrad. On the bright side, Alex and I got a ton of stuff done on our webmining project. It's almost ready to roll out now, which is good because I rashly committed to having it done before now anyway. Oh well.

nice

Man, it's so nice outside it makes it really hard to concentrate. It's dark now of course, but the air smells really nice. Summer is definitely on its way.

crunch time

It's crunch time now. With less than a month left in the semester and project presentations coming up, I really have to get these projects done. I don't really know what to think of this time of year - I hate it because of the stress, but I like it because summer's coming up.

reign of terror

I keep forgetting to post this.. pictures from the Spring break vacation in Florida, the only real spring break I've ever been on. It was a blast! The trip was something like this, to give the pictures some context:

Flew from Indianapolis to Orlando, got rental car and drove to Tampa / St Petersberg. Stayed the night in St Petersberg. Got up, went to some museums, drove to Marco Island and relaxed on the beach. Spent the night a little north of Marco Island, on the mainland (too expensive on the island itself). Drove back to Marco Island and stayed on the beach until it started raining. I think this night we spent outside Marco Island on the other side, but I dont remember for sure. We made our way to the Everglades either Friday or Saturday and spent the day there kayaking and hiking. After that we found our way to Miami, finally on Monday night we drove back up to Orlando and flew back to Indy on Tuesday afternoon.

Oh and here's the pictures. If you view in a non-Microsoft browser you'll get to see my captions. Just remember to click the left-hand button to go forward (oddly). The first picture you see should be Mira and Tanya on the plane.