The Internet seems determined to keep me away, at least while I'm on campus.

I've been having bizarre internet problems all semester - starting with the random loss in February of any access to the publicly available program website. Our CTO had no idea what was wrong.

Websites don't just up and stop working for random individuals.

But this one did.

But last Friday, things just up and started disintegrating. Aim crashing every 5 minutes, email going into some sort of infinite network loop black hole...

Weird.

So I've been fighting the Net for the right to be productive for the past weekend.

And I missed a trade opportunity in Fantasy Baseball because of it too, dammit.

The "solution" is to get me a new IP address. It's working...mostly.

But now it's that time of the month (no, not the cranky time - the other one), and I'm crampy and frustrated and sneezing.

Yay pollen. Yay womanhood.

Screw the internet!

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I've spent the past half-hour trying to get an automatic photo album script working on my website.

But I have no idea what I'm doing. And most of them use ImageMagick, and I don't know how to install random software on these random Unix computers I'm being hosted on.

Well, maybe I'll just have to settle for being a cs goddess of prototyping.

Not so much a Unix software goddess.

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Last night, we went to see a performance of Carmina Burana, conducted by a man from the Music Department who won a Grammy for a previous recording of the same piece.

Needless to say, it was overwhelmingly impressive.

Many of our friends (e.g. all of the voice majors and then some) are in the choir that performed it. In fact, Rapunzel was the female soprano soloist (singing notes that God never intended for humans to sing.)

They're all so good! I can't wait to see where their careers take them. I also think I'm going to audition for the department's repetory choir next semester, if I'm still here.

Hell, it's either that or Databases, and I'd much rather spend a semester studying under an alcoholic Grammy-winning composer than pushing C code.

We shall see what the future holds.

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I filled out a rental application for the apartment we want in California, and they asked for my monthly income.

After calculating the hourly rate plus the stipend and such, it turns out to be the monthly equivalent of a salary that's really not too shabby for a lil' intern like me. :)

And when you add that to Hunter's equally nice sum, our little household might just survive financially.

Huzzah!

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Our graduate program is hosting this international conference in a particular field, and we got the following email regarding the conference earlier today:

We will need for all of you to be available from Wednesday, March 7th through Saturday, 8:30 am to 9:30 pm each day. We will be using your expertise and congeniality to aide us in set up and take down demos, presentations, and all else, related to the (name of conference removed.)

Hello? 13 hours a day for 4 days? Congeniality?

We're not the hired help, guys. We're paying a shitload to be here, and personally I don't appreciate being taken for granted in such a manner. We didn't get consulted about this absurd affair, and it comes after final presentations, when many of us need to be packing for our summer engagements.

Certainly we all have better things to do than stand around and pass out papers and smile for conference attendees.

Grrrr.

I feel like booking a flight to Orlando just to spite them. Well, that and to go to Disneyworld. :)

And we got this cute email from the Program Coordinator:

I want to congratulate the following students who registered for fall classes in accordance with the Student Handbook. They have signed up for a project course and 1 elective course. If you don't see you(sp) name on this list, you are in trouble and need to see me.

Oooooooo! Somebody's in trouuublllleee! What are we, third-graders? (While I registered correctly, more than half of the students in the program did not. Might be an indicator of poor communication, yesno?)

I'm glad signing up for Yoga and Karate counts as an elective. Can't get into anything else I want to take due to damned departmental regulations.

Well, no time for any more now. Rehearsal for the show, then home to Wind Waker, most likely.

Why does it seem like May 19th is still so far away??