Yeah, it's been about a month since my last Journal entry. A lot of stuff has happened. A lot of really small things.

First and foremost. I got a job. Woot. I'm working as a research assistant implementing and experimenting with various algorithms for finding minimum spanning trees in graphs. It's lots of fun, since I get paid to program. Woohoo. It's really been helping me out, since I've had to program in a way to help other folks understand my code, implement super-optimized results, and then stress test them on huge inputs. It's really nice, especially since my final exam tomorrow is based in part on this kind of stuff. Really nice, even if my bizarre coding practices drive my Professor crazy. ._.

The experience is what matters. Quite a bit more than the pay. Good thing, too. Considering how little I actually do, I certainly wouldn't be able to survive on it.

Finals have started, and I've got mixed feelings about how I'll be doing. I did exceptionally well throughout the year, meaning that I've got a lot of cushioning in the event that I totally mess up on my examinations. I do that intentionally so that I always maintain a bit of room for unexpected problems. I just hope I'm able to pull off another successful year. All of my Computer Science grades are decent, but I'm just a little worried about history, since there wasn't much classwork to serve as grade padding, and the final is worth nearly a third of my grade.

So yeah... I'm just relaxing right now. I've got an exam tomorrow and an exam on Wednesday. I'm in a really good mood right now, which is very odd.

You know the expression "Out with the Old, in with the New?" I wish that the Ubuntu and Linux kernel developers didn't take it so seriously.

I tried to upgrade to 9.10 today. Two big issues happened thanks to an over-dosage of "Out with the Old" syndrome.

First of all, they've changed grub. Instead of having grub1, they have grub2! Which is a pain since I just learned how to make my memory issues go away in grub1, I had to learn how to work with it all over again. Woohoo.

Luckily, those folks in #ubuntu are so friendly and helpful, I was able to do it... in two hours.

Second, and much worse, is that I seem to have a laptop that's considered "too old" by today's standards. My Inspiron 1420 and it's BCM4312 were considered so out of date, that the dev team plopped the driver in the 'legacy' spot. Unfortunately, I blew up my OS trying to fix it. So rather than keep going, I reinstalled 9.04.

Luckily, since I know all about memory issues, both installations went by perfectly in about 15 minutes each.

It just goes to show you, even if you try to do your important stuff the day BEFORE Friday the 13th, the bad luck travels back in time to foil you.

This is so much fun!

Karmic is WAS coming out some time in the next 24 hours, but thanks to all the people on the channel asking about it, it might not be out until 2010. XD

I've not been this excited about anything since Animal Crossing DS (which is a very odd example, yet totally the truth). I'm loving this craziness on the channel. I'm so happy I popped by. I'm so distracted by the party that I can't finish my homework!

Despite the dangers, I'm going to throw caution to the wind and install the thing as soon as it downloads! WOOO! I'm totally on the edge! Of course, I could just go to the Pirate Bay and get the leaked version, but I'd rather wait for the official release!

Hop in if you get a chance! #ubuntu-release-party on Freenode! This is so exciting!

Before I start, let me get something out of the way: I got my driver's license. Woo.

OK. Now then. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!??!?!?!?!??!?

Let me say this. In seventeen days, Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic is going to be coming out. But for reason, I decided I wanted to UPGRADE today. So I did. But I decided, unlike my prior upgrades, I was going to do this one by the book.

So I got an ISO, and I did an md5sum on it.
Then I made a live USB stick (or rather, I BOUGHT a USB stick for this purpose), and I did an md5sum on IT.
Then, because all of my md5sums messed up, I repeat the above steps all day long.

I finally managed to get it working. Woohoo.

So I try to install. Fail. Crash. Boom. Like everything else in my life.

Since my hard drive was already wiped, I started plugging in random CDs in order to bring my computer back up to a usable state. And that's when something unbelievably bizarre occured. A CD that failed its checksum AND failed it's own integrity check actually INSTALLED THE VERSION OF UBUNTU THAT I'M RUNNING NOW.

The moral of this story is: only install GNU/Linux when you have nothing important that you should be doing. No amount of preparation will ever help you. Ever. Ever.

Final installation report: 38 minutes elapsed, 1 failed attempt

So then. With that out of the way, I'll be running this system until I get enough free time to download and install Karmic when it arrives. Furthermore, now I have a "Tested and Approved" (TM) Ubuntu CD for use when my computer dies. Yay.

So then. Java just finished downloading, so now it's time for me to get settled in my new home.

Before I go, here's the headstone of my old OS and the birth certificate of my new one.
Rest in piece, Freedom (Ubuntu 8.10: Born 01/29/09, Died 10/12/09)
Hello, Interim (Ubuntu 9.04: Born 10/12/09)

NAEV 0.4.0 came out recently ( if you haven't seen it yet, please download it and try it out [link] ). I was actually able to compile the source code, too. That made me happy.

But that wasn't the best part. I submitted my FIRST CODE TO AN OPEN-SOURCE PROJECT EVER! It wasn't a particularly important bug, and it was kind of trivial, but I was able to find, isolate, repair, and submit the patch. That made me very happy. I've been hanging on the #naev channel in IRC every day this weekend, listening to them toss around ideas. It's more fun than TV!

NAEV is an amazing project. These guys are making such an awesome game, and they're a really active community. NAEV was, after all, my first favorite game on GNU/Linux (I found Gearhead after this one). The music is great, the story is good (just short), and the gameplay is extremely challenging (for me, because I fail at gaming). It's a game that you can really get into, and the group is working as hard as they can to make everything grow.

Unlike Gearhead, there is no permadeath/permafail, so there's no worries about losing a favorite ship... although I really did start liking the concept when I played GH. It really makes games a lot more fun (for me, anyway).

In other news, I've recently been playing Flight of the Amazon Queen, a game for SCUMM. If you're bored and want to play a hilarous comedy-action-adventure game, check it out. But that's about all I have to say. Catch you all later.