The voting has been going on for a week now, and will be open until the end of this week. I’d like to remind all of you who haven’t yet voted that we’d really like your input, so please go and vote now. If you have already voted, you may change your vote by simply re-voting, if you’ve changed your mind. There are, in fact, new names that weren’t there when the polls originally opened. We’ve been adding some of the better suggestions that we’ve been getting.

So, everyone please help us decide on a name. This could, in fact, be more important than the naming of your first-born child.

Your Existing Situation

Readily participates in things that provide excitement or stimulation. Wants to feel exhilarated.

Your Stress Sources

Feels that life has far more to offer and that there are still important things to be achieved–that life must be experienced to the fullest. As a result, he pursues his objectives with a fierce intensity that will not let go of things. Becomes deeply involved and runs the risk of being unable to view things with sufficient objectivity, or calmly enough; is therefore in danger of becoming agitated and of exhausting his nervous energy. Cannot leave things alone and feels he can only be at peace when he has finally reached his goal.

Your Restrained Characteristics

Conditions are such that he will not let himself become intimately involved without making mental reservations.

Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity.

Insists that his goals are realistic and sticks obstinately to them, even though circumstances are forcing him to compromise. Very exacting in the standards he applies to his choice of a partner.

Your Desired Objective

Needs a peaceful environment. Wants release from stress, and freedom from conflicts or disagreement. Takes pains to control the situation and its problems by proceeding cautiously. Has sensitivity of feeling and a fine eye for detail.

Your Actual Problem

Needs to achieve a stable and peaceful condition, enabling him to free himself of the worry that he may be prevented from achieving all the things he wants.

First off, if the friend I helped move is reading this, don’t take it as an indictment against you at all. Even though you didn’t follow all the suggestions set forth here, it certainly wasn’t unpleasant. It was actually a fairly easy move. Now, let’s get on to it.

Firstly, the single most important thing is to be absolutely completely ready for them. Let me clarify what that means. When your friends arrive, make sure every single thing is packed up and ready to go. And make sure it’s all packed up well. Go get some boxes. Don’t throw your random knick-knacks into a laundry hamper; put them in a box or suitcase. Hanging clothes should be put into a garment box or hanging garment bag. Don’t expect them to do any packing at all. They’re there to help you carry stuff; that’s all. And if possible, gather all your stuff in an easy-to-get-to location.

Secondly, for goodness sakes, feed them. You’re not paying them, so you could at least give them some food. Food afterwards is good, but food beforehand is better. But not all food is ideal. Don’t feed them something heavy or greasy beforehand. That’ll make them groggy and make it harder for them (which will, consequently make it take longer). Before the move, something light that provides quick but lasting energy is good. Pastries and doughnuts is a great idea, because they provide both simple and complex carbohydrates. The simple will give immediate energy, while the complex will break down later and help them keep working. If you have a lot of stuff and the move will take a while, consider providing food both before and after. The food after can be something heavier (like pizza). And especially if you live in a hot climate, make sure there’s plenty of water easily available the whole time, in both locations.

Third, make sure you survey the areas through which things will be moved and try to identify problem spots beforehand, and try to work out what will probably be the easiest way around them. It makes things a lot easier if they know they’re going to carry a piano up three narrow flights of stairs (please don’t ever ask anyone to do that).

Finally, don’t give them a hard time at all. If they need to take a five-minute break, just let them, and don’t even jokingly criticize them for doing so. You are not paying them, so don’t expect them to work like they are. Don’t expect them to be professional movers, because they aren’t. If they nick the edge of your furniture, just ignore it. If you can’t afford any damage to come to your stuff, hire movers.

Earlier today, I was at a film shoot. The shoot was in an abandoned building. There was no electricity and therefore no air conditioning, and it got quite hot. So, when I got home, I was quite tired, and decided to take a nap. I was going to nap for maybe an hour, then take a shower, and head off to the dance. So, after taking care of a couple things, I laid down on my roommate’s couch. Then was brought forth an event like no other. It was as if the couch did something to my mind, for I did not simply nap, but rather sleep was thrust upon me.

As I awoke, several hours later, I felt as if I were in another world. I looked around the darkened living room, and tried to determine where and when I was. To what distant land had I traveled? In what time had I found myself? Wasn’t I supposed to be dancing right now? For a few seconds, I wasn’t even sure of my own identity. So powerful was this sleep that my mind was still trying to remain in Dreamland, after the land had already withered away.

After about a minute or so of flitting to and fro between worlds, I was finally able to ground myself back in reality and determine exactly who, where, and when I was. But even now, half an hour later, my mind is still trying to pull me back to that Land of Nod, which I have recently departed. Such is the power of my roommate’s couch.

1. Put your MP3 player or ipod on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
4. If you want, you may write the movie/album/artist

I’m not quite sure what to think of all of them, but whatever. There they are.

As I was leaving Taylor on the way up here, I was riding right along a train track. There was a train, about 30 cars long, going along the tracks, probably about 55 miles/hour. As I passed it, I saw a small road that went right over the tracks.

I had the best (or worst) idea. My idea was to take a sudden, sharp right turn, and drive right over the tracks, mere inches in front of the train. It would be just like in an action movie.

Maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t do it. I would have had to wait for the train to pass to cross back to get onto the main road. Oh, and of course there was the risk of me killing myself. That would have been bad, too, I guess. But it could have been amazing.

The job is part-time: 19 hours a week. Why 19 and not 20, I’m really not sure. I’m glad it’s part-time, because that means I’ll have time to devote to be able to do movies and plays (my real passion), and work on the new web design company my friend Abinadi and I are starting. Also, since they let me decide on my schedule, I put all my 19 hours on Tuesday through Thursday, so I always have a four-day weekend.

I found the job through my friend, Bryant Moscon. It was actually his job before, but he just got a better job, and they needed someone to replace him. He recommended me, and they jumped at it.

This job probably won’t be the most interesting thing for me to do, but at least it’s something for me to do. I’m glad it didn’t take me long to find it, and that I found it so easily. It’s really nice when things just work well.

I was just reminded of this episode when I awoke from a strange dream of my own. In this dream, I was part of some sort of competition. I think it was some sort of church activity and each of the wards were competing against each other. I believe it was an academic competition. There were several parts to it, and each ward had to select just one member to do each part. In one of the parts, we were asked to write a eulogy for a dead dog. Whoever wrote the best one would win. For some reason, I was selected to do this part. I was given biographical information, including a newspaper article that was written about him while he was still alive. There was something famous about this dog, but I don’t remember what. Part of it was his advanced age. He was 19 when he died. As I was working on this eulogy, I wanted to figure out how old he was in dog-years. There was a blackboard in the room they gave us to work, and so I wrote 19 × 7. For some reason, I couldn’t do the math. It didn’t make any sense. I screwed it up, so scratched it out, and started calculating again. I still couldn’t do it. I erased it with my hand, and wrote it again. This old man from one of the other wards was walking by the room, and saw my difficulty. He came in and tried to help. He pointed to what I was doing wrong, but he couldn’t figure it out either!

Then I woke up. This inability to do elementary school mathematics forced me out of my sleep. As soon as I was awake, I did the math in my head, and learned it was 133. Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I checked it with a calculator. Of course it was right, it’s a simple calculation, but I couldn’t do it in my sleep! It made me think of poor Bruce being unable to read a book. Though unlike Bruce, who couldn’t even make out the letters, I could clearly see and understand what the numbers were (I wrote them), I just couldn’t do anything with them. It was nearly the most frustrating experience of my life.

I play Bowser’s goon, Koopa. I hope you all enjoy it. Please rate it on YouTube, and tell all your friends.

There is an interesting linguistic feature known as infixes. An infix is a word or morpheme that is placed in the middle of a word. This is practically non-existent in Standard English. It is fairly common in Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages. In Tagalog, for example, <um> is placed inside a verb to make it something like the active voice. For example, the borrowed English word graduate becomes grumaduate to mean “I graduated.”

Although it’s not common in Standard English, it’s often found in Colloquial English. For example, in Snoop Speak, <iz>, <izz>, or <izn> are often used as infixes producing words like hizouse (house), wizzay (way), or shiznit (sh**). A few more great examples are found in The Simpsons, uttered by Homer. For example, in the following dialogue between Homer and baby Lisa:

What do you like Lisa? violamin? tubaba?

Lisa : I want THAT.

Homer : Saxamaphone?

The most common infix in colloquial English I will call the f-word infix (Wikipedia calls it expletive infixation, but I like my term better: take that, linguists). I call it this because the f-word (mostly in its present participial form), and it’s substitutes (freakin’, fraggin’, fudging, etc.) are the most common words used for this type of infix. In Britain, bloody is usually used. The purpose of this infix is to add emphasis to the word. So, we end up with words like absofrigginlutely, and fanbloodytastic. Well, my most common usage of this form is unbe-freaking-lievable. Technically, these aren’t exactly infixes, but rather Tmesis. It’s close enough to being the same thing, though, that I’m going to call them the same thing. Infix is a lot easier word to remember than Tmesis (those crazy Greeks).

Now, what does this have to do with the Smurfs? Well, today I read an article about the Smurfs. The content of the article has nothing to do with this post. But the author used the word “Un-smurfing-believable.”

Well, as soon as I read it, I thought, “That sounds weird. Why didn’t he write ‘Unbe-smurfing-lievable?’ That’s where the stress naturally falls.” Well, I looked up the article on wikipedia about the f-word infix, and it said:

A simple rule is that the insertion occurs at a syllable boundary, usually just before the primary stressed syllable. Thus, one hears abso-fuckin’-lutely rather than *ab-fuckin’-solutely. This rule is insufficient to describe examples such as un-fuckin’-believable (not *unbe-fuckin’-lievable), however, so modifications to this rule are proposed such as morpheme boundaries taking precedence over stress.

This blew my mind. Have I been saying it wrong all my life? Am I the only person who puts the infix inside the believe, rather than before it? I don’t know. Further study is required, but it’s midnight now, and I have to sleep. It will have to wait until the morning.

In this dream, I was a deadly assassin. I can’t imagine what made me dream that. The beginning of the dream is a little blurry now. I remember going into an office to get my assignment. The office was small, a little bigger than your average cubicle. The walls were all glass. There was no one in the office, but my assignment was sitting on the desk.

I set out to take out my mark. It all happened pretty quickly. I remember being at some sort of man-made body of water. It was like an artificial pond, in a very urban area. I remember that’s where the hit took place. I was very stealthy: like a ninja. Basically, I walked up to the guy, quickly pulled a blade out of my coat, drew it across his neck, and walked away as he fell into the pool, his blood draining into the crystal clear water.

I had to go meet some friends: two women. I don’t remember the reason. I think it was a double date, and we were meeting the other guy wherever we were going. We were meeting nearby, so I walked to the meeting point. They had no idea what I had just done. Obviously, even my closest friends couldn’t know the secret of my occupation. We met, and were going somewhere else, but I had to quickly report in at work, first. So, we drove by the headquarters so I could report in to my boss. I told them to wait for me outside, and I would be right back.

I went to the same office I was at previously. My boss was there this time. She was a short woman in her late 60’s. She was wrinkly, with gray hair, and not what I would expect from a person who regularly sent people off to kill others. She started complaining about something as soon as I walked in the door. I don’t know what it was because I really didn’t care. I mean, really. I go out and do my job like anybody else, and all she can do is complain. Anyway, she had my file sitting on her desk. I picked it up, and started leafing through it, trying to pretend I actually cared what she said to me. I came across something interesting in my file. It mentioned a new team that I was to head, and had the names and pictures of the three other members.

A couple minutes later, the three members of my new team walk into the office. It’s two girls and a guy. They’re all dressed sort of punk, the guy more goth-punk. I addressed them all by their first names, and shook their hands. The guy is really skinny, has straight, black hair that covers most of his face. As I shake his hand, he just lets out a sigh.

The first girl had long curly, black hair. As I extend my hand, she extends her left hand. I think, “whatever, okay.” So, I extend my left hand, and give her one of those old-fashioned hand-to-wrist handshakes. She seemed pleased.

The second girl was bald, and didn’t have a nose. As I shake her hand, she groan-sighs, “Alright.” I sense something is wrong, and want to get off to a good start with my new team. I also want to establish that I’m not taking crap from them. I sternly ask, “Is something wrong?” Sigh. “This morning … I … my boyfriend …” Then she mumbled something, and stared into space.

I then notice through the glass walls that the girls who were waiting for me outside have entered the building looking for me. They hadn’t quite noticed me yet.

The first girl turns to me and says, about the other girl, “She’s always like that.” Before I can respond, she continues, “I’m really excited to be working with you, Dan Jones. How old are you? ‘Cause I was talking to my girlfriend the other day and she …” I stopped paying attention. This girl is apparently star-struck, and I don’t want to deal with it right now. It seems I’ve got some serious training to do with these three. I can’t imagine why that old hag put me with them.

About this time, the two girls who should have patiently waited for me outside walked into the door. “Dan, are you ready? Oh, hi! I’m Dan’s friend.”

The alarm goes off and my career as an assassin ends.

One of the best examples of this is Adobe Photoshop and The GIMP. Photoshop is a commercial graphics editor produced by Adobe. GIMP is an open source graphics editor maintained by a group of volunteers under the auspices of The GNU Project. I did a little research to find out what the real differences between the two are. Most of the well-thought-out articles I read said that the most significant feature lacking from GIMP is support for the CMYK color model. This is used extensively in printing. For this reason, GIMP is unsuitable for use in publishing. However, for just about any other use, GIMP is perfectly capable, as long as the user is familiar with the interface and program’s capabilities.

The other complaint against GIMP has nothing to do with GIMP itself. The complaint is that Photoshop is an industry standard not just for publishing, but also web design and graphics design (not entirely true: it’s a de facto standard). When working with a company that requires work to be in Photoshop format, the GIMP simply won’t do. It doesn’t import Photoshop files perfectly, and it doesn’t export Photoshop files perfectly. I will concede to that, however an individual whose work simply needs to be a JPEG, or PNG, or any other common graphics format, is perfectly fine using GIMP, as long as he knows how.

The biggest problem I have when I’m trying to explain this to people is that I, myself, am not very familiar with either Photoshop or GIMP. I haven’t used Photoshop more than a few times in the past five years. And I only use GIMP on occasion. So I’m not able to talk about particular features. So, I’ve set out to change that. I have recently started reading through various GIMP tutorials so that I can familiarize myself with the program and its capabilities. I decided to share with you the results of the first of my forays into learning the GIMP.

I started with the Souping up a Photo tutorial at gimp-tutorials.net. This is an adaptation of a Photoshop tutorial at PSD TUTS.
Rather than using their example image, I figured I’d learn more if I used an image of my own and just adapted the tutorial to my needs. So, I started with this image (on the left) of two of my friends having a swimming race.

Chris and Abinadi racing

Much better

After some editing, I came up with the image on the right. I consider it much stronger than the original, and allows the viewer to focus on the action at hand more easily.

The next step was to see if I could achieve a similar effect without going through the tutorial step by step. So I took another picture, from the same trip, of a chicken fight. The original is on the left, and the modified one is on the right. I did all the modifications without the tutorial at all. I did what I remembered, with a few modifications that I felt improved it. For example, I airbrushed out the ghosts (little orbs of light from the flash reflecting off dust or water droplets in the air).

Lisa and Kasey fighting to the death (well, at least to the water).

Unimportant background details faded out.
Foreground action emphasized.

I think there’s a definite improvement in the pictures here. Most importantly, my GIMP skills have sharpened just a little. If I make any more GIMP masterpieces, I intend to write about them here, as well as post them to my flickr account.

Finally, if any of the subjects of either of these pictures would like a high quality copy of the pictures, just send me an email.

We went to IHOP where more friends were waiting. I was amazed at how many people came out at 6 in the morning to wish me a happy birthday. It was a great time, aside from our very grumpy waitress. Now to be fair, it looked as if she was one of only two waiters working at the time, and it seemed pretty busy. It may have been the end of the nightshift and she was tired. Nevertheless, a waiter should be able to put that aside. When she (finally) took our orders, one of my friends patted me on the shoulder and said, “it’s his birthday.” To that, she answered, with disdain dripping from every word, “I am not singing Happy Birthday.” A little later, when another friend said we’d like to pay with separate checks (which really is not that much of a hassle; I know) she said, with as much incredulity as she could muster, “Are you serious?” You’d think a waitress at IHOP in a college town would be used to large parties paying separately. Anyway, her disposition later improved, but I expect she overheard us complaining about her, and didn’t want to get a 2¢ tip.

Despite the poor service, we had a great time. After we got back, one roommate discovered that we hadn’t gotten the mail in yesterday, and a card for me was waiting there. It was from my little sister, was very funny, and included a very nice gift certificate. When I got on my computer, I discovered more gift certificates in my email inbox from other family members. I decided to spend the one from my parents for Amazon.com at once, and buy a couple video games and a few DVDs.

The day progressed as usual. Friday Forum at the Institute was great. Another friend reminded of a plan we had discussed to have a birthday video game party for me playing Super Smash Bros: Brawl. We arranged to do it at my house, since my roommate has a 64-in TV. So, after I got back from class, I sent out invitations to the party. We also decided to watch the first Batman movie, starring Adam West, since one friend had just gotten it on DVD. Because I sent out invites only a few hours before the party was to start, I didn’t expect to great a turnout, but probably over a dozen people showed up. Some of them came because it had been previously arranged to watch UT’s basketball game against Stanford at our house just prior to the party, and getting to play video games after was just icing on the cake (figuratively speaking, of course; we didn’t actually have a cake). I got one great present from Miss Stephanie Hall, and a couple others from other people, one of which I’m now eating.

All in all, it was a really great day. I didn’t even really announce my birthday beforehand, but my friends still made sure I had a great one. And I’m sure lucky to have such great friends and family.

So, the setup is already unusual. Now, near the end of the dream, one of these girls had to leave. So, we said goodbye, and I gave her a kiss. Now, it wasn’t a passionate I-love-you-more-than-life-itself kind of kiss, but it was definitely a goodbye kiss that you would expect of a couple. There was some passion in it. A little while later, and I had to leave. As I left, I kissed each of those girls with the same sort of kiss. I kissed the married girl last, and said, “Don’t tell her husband.” Everyone laughed at the comment, then I turned around to leave, and woke up (of my own accord: no alarm), ending the dream.

Now, I’ve never kissed any of these girls in real life. I’ve only gone on a date with one of them, and that was just a friendly date. So, this dream seemed rather unusual, and I was thinking about it later that day when I was hanging out with some friends, including one of the girls: Kristen. I told them about the dream, and my friend Mark suggested that perhaps there’s some aspect of each of those girls in my “dream girl.” So, I said to Kristen, “You’re one-fifth of my dream girl.”

I do wonder, though, if Mark was right. I’m thinking perhaps he was. I suppose that it would mean that in my mind, there’s a particular defining aspect of each of these girls that attracts me. If I could just figure out consciously what I know subconsciously, maybe I’d be closer to finding my dream girl. Maybe it’s even one of them. Although hopefully not the married one, as I’m sure her husband wouldn’t appreciate it.

If you’ve never heard of it (and you probably haven’t), I recommend reading this article from FXCuisine.com.

Well, I decided that I was going to try to make it myself. The aforementioned article helped me figure out how I could do it, as well as this recipe from cooks.com. I thought I’d share with you how I did it, and have included pictures to help out.

I started with a mini-frozen pizza. I don’t remember what brand it is, but it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t have to be a very good pizza (none of the fried pizzas I had in Scotland were), since the quality of the pizza is not the appeal, but don’t get a pizza that’s just plain awful. If you don’t like it cooked normally, you probably won’t like it fried.

I started off putting the pizza in the toaster oven at 375 for about 12 minutes. I then started to mix up the batter. The recipe called for 2/3 cups of flour, half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of baking soda, a tablespoon of vinegar, and 2/3 cups of water. I used a little less vinegar, and just estimated with the salt and baking soda. I mixed them all together until there were no lumps left. This made enough batter for 2 pizzas, with a little left over.

Once I finished with the batter, I took a frying pan and some vegetable oil. I filled the pan so that the oil would cover about half the pizza. I then waited for the pizza to finish cooking, and the oil to get hot. Once that was done, I battered the pizza as completely as possible, and plopped it in the oil. Here’s how it looked as it cooked.

When it was all done, I had one great fried pizza.
And doesn’t that look delicious? And now that I know how to do it, I can go ahead and clog my arteries with this delicacy any time I want. Feel free to try it yourself. I recommend you wash it down with a nice cold Irn-Bru.

This dream took place in Chicago. I was working for a local television station (W-something-something-something). My job wasn’t anything special. I worked with the local news, but I never got to be on camera. I was responsible for fact-checking, or something plain and ordinary like that. The only interesting thing about the dream was that two of the characters from The Office (Kelly and Stanley) were in the dream, but they didn’t do anything interesting.

So, I’m confused. I really can’t ever recall having had such a boring dream. Whatever happened to the dreams where I was a cartoon character, or a super-hero, or dated a super-model? I hope this is just a fluke, or I just won’t want to go to sleep anymore.

Fast forward to last night. The Institute hosted a “formal” dance: sort of like a mini-prom. I don’t really like dressing up, but I wanted to go to the dance. They were also providing dinner, and who’s gonna pass up free food? Not me, that’s for sure.

So, I went to the dance. I had a beautiful date, who’s also great company. The food was pretty good. The music was mostly good. And I danced up a storm. At one point, some fast dance song (maybe it was techno) started playing, and I was dancing pretty fast, and couldn’t really tell much of what was going on around me because I was moving too fast. I heard something like, “Go, Dan, go,” and I became aware that a circle was forming around me. So I kicked it up a notch, and when I slowed down to move to the edge of the circle to let someone else have a chance, I realized the circle was WAY bigger than I thought.

By the time I got home, I was sore from my hips down to my toes. I was also tired. I also felt really good. Throughout most of this semester, I’ve been a bit depressed for various reasons, but after that dance, I felt really good. Not just that I had had a good time, but my outlook seemed a little clearer, and some of my problems not so serious. I thought maybe it was just endorphins. I had expended a lot of energy, and I’m sure I was producing a lot of endorphins, which make you feel good. It was probably just a chemical thing.

This morning, however, I still feel really good. Somehow, going out and partying with good friends just changed my perspective. Which brings me back to the Institute class. This is what Bishop Simmons was teaching us. Thursday afternoon I understood the principle, but Friday night, I truly learned it. We all need some time from the daily grind to re-create ourselves. I guess I hadn’t really had that in a while, but last night I got it in a big way. I’m so glad I went to that dance, and so glad I learned that principle.

So I looked into the directory and found out that I didn’t even need to use the web interface to access it. I was planning on writing a program that would send queries to through the web site, and parsing the results. Not easy, but not that awful. But I didn’t even need to do that. There’s a little program on my computer called “finger” that could query the server, and send back the results in a nice, easy to parse format. One caveat though: it would only return the first 50 matches to each query. So, I would have to try many different permutations to get a good number of results. So, I typed out a few commands that would loop through the number 0-999, two letter permutations (aa, ab, ac … zz), and three letter permutations. It would write the results to a file, sort the file alphabetically, and remove duplicate entries. When that loop finished (after a little more than a day), I had 53,380 unique email addresses for University of Texas students, faculty, and staff. I actually never showed up in the list, but with such a common name, that wasn’t too surprising.

Ok, so I had the addresses, the next step was to write a good email and send them out. Here’s what the email said:

Dear {name},

How would you like to support a group of UT filmmakers? We’re a small group of UT students who
recently produced a film for the Insomnia Film Festival sponsored by Apple. For this festival,
we, and other college and high school students across the nation, shot, edited, and scored a
three-minute film in only 24 hours. Now we’d like your help.

This festival is a vote-based contest. Those in the top 25 get their film featured in Apple
Stores across the nation. Our film, “Crosswalk,” can be seen at Apple’s website. For instructions on how to register to vote, you can go here.

We’d love it if you would view our film, and if you like it, give it a four-star rating.

So, now that I had this great email, the next step was to send it off. Now comes the problem. The mail server on my computer is a little buggy. It sends emails off pretty slowly, and while it’s fine for everyday use, sending off 50,000 emails would take forever, and bottleneck any other email I want to send off while it’s sending the others. So, in my excitement, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. Being in the Computer Science Department, I had access to the CS Department’s computers, and I could even log in remotely. And I knew that their mail server wouldn’t be buggy like mine, since I’m sure it transmits well over 50,000 emails on any given day. I was sure that if I sent mine off from UT, it would just be drop in the bucket, and nobody would mind. So, I logged in to one of the headless machines (i.e., computer without a monitor) from my home computer. I copied the list over, and wrote a little script to send them off. Before I started to send them, I checked to see if anyone else was logged in to the same machine. Nobody was, so I started sending them off, and it seemed to be working fine. After about 2/3 of them were sent off, I noticed that I started getting back a weird error. They weren’t sending properly. Then I noticed an email in my inbox from, apparently, one of the lab admins. It read thusly:

Do you know that you have 37,000+ messages queued up on olympus {the name of the computer} to addresses all over the Internet? Is this intentional? Can you convince me it is not spam? i.e., do all these recipients know you and did they solicit your email? Or is this unsolicited email?

Did it ever occur to you to ask before doing this?

I have disabled email on olympus.

Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask beforehand. I didn’t even think anyone would mind. Clearly, I hadn’t thought through this properly.

A little while later, I received another email from one of the higher-ups in the department. It wasn’t actually addressed to me, just CCed to me. It was addressed to the guys who administer the CS user accounts. It read:

If we don’t see a reply by tomorrow morning, please turn this account off.

Oh crap! This was more serious than I thought. So, I immediately sent a reply to the first email I got.

Yes, these were unsolicited emails. However, they weren’t commercial.
They were sent to UT students/faculty/staff informing them about a
contest in which a few UT students were competing, encouraging them to
vote in the contest.

I realize now I probably should have asked before I sent out such a
large volume of email, but I guessed that several thousand were probably
not much when one considers how many emails are sent through the email
server everyday.

I also checked olympus before I started sending them out to see if
anyone else was logged in to the computer beforehand, so that I wouldn’t
be hogging resources from somebody else on the same machine.

I apologize for my actions, and in the future, I will not use University
machines for my own personal projects.

Apologetically,

Dan Jones

I hoped that would fix it. About half an hour later, however, I noticed I had been booted off of olympus. It could have just been a timeout. I logged back on, but it wouldn’t let me. I tried my CS department email, and it still worked, but I couldn’t log in to the computers. Not a huge deal, but a thought occurred to me. The CS department has a website you log into to turn in homework assignments. You have to use your computer account to login. I tried it, and couldn’t log in! This was not good. I decided to send a response to the second email, to the higher-up in the department.

I have responded to the mail (my response is attached),
and I am very sorry for what I have done.

My account seems to be disabled. I fully accept the consequences of my
actions, and feel it is fully justifiable to deny me access to the CS
computers, however, disabling my account also restricts my access to
Turnin. I do still have assignments I need to turn in there, and it
seems too harsh to not allow me to do my assignments.

I promise I will never use University computers for my own projects
again. I just ask that I be able to still use Turnin so I can continue
to do my coursework.

Sincerely,

Dan Jones

I received no response. So, I decided to forward this to the guys responsible for administrating the accounts, telling them that while I could still check my email, I had no access otherwise. Remember that the email telling them to cut my account said to do so by the next morning if I didn’t respond. I did respond, and they cut it immediately after my response. I wasn’t sure what to do. I waited, and less than half an hour later, I couldn’t get my department email anymore. I decided there was nothing else I could do right then, so I forgot about it until the next day.

The next day, I still had no access to my account, but I did have a new email in my main UT email account inbox.

The Information Security Office at The University of Texas at Austin has
received a report that you have used UT Austin’s mail system
inappropriately. The report specifically alleges you, or someone using an
account that you are responsible for, used the mail system to send
unsolicited email (spam).

While you certainly have a right to distribute information to those who
have indicated a desire to receive it, sending the information to large
groups of recipients who may not have requested it is a violation of
University policies and can result in a suspension of network privileges,
disciplinary action, or both. I’ve attached a copy of the message attributed
to you which is the subject of the complaint and which, on it’s face, does
appear to violate University policies.

 

The complete policy regarding acceptable use and your responsibilities
as a user can be found at:

http://www.utexas.edu/its/policies/responsible.php

The rules for acceptable use provide:

Section IV:

7. Use resources appropriately. Do not interfere with the activities
of others or use a disproportionate share of resources. Send messages
only to those who may be interested in the content. Examples of
inappropriate use of resources are shown below. These actions frequently
result in complaints and subsequent disciplinary action.

• Sending a message at random to a large number of newsgroups
  or recipients (known as “spamming the network”).
• Attempting to inconvenience someone by sending a large number of
  messages (commonly referred to as a “mail bomb”).
• Deliberately causing any denial of service, including flooding
  or ICMP attacks (”ping attacks”).
• Excessively controlling a chat channel by such actions as kicking
  off or blocking other users.

Student Judicial Services will be informed if there is a second complaint.
If you have any questions please contact SJS at:

http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/

Wow! This was getting pretty serious, but it was just a warning. So, I used the same finger program I used to get the emails to see if my CS account was still active. It showed up, so they hadn’t deleted it, just disabled it. I decided to send another email from my main UT email account to the guys in charge of CS accounts.

I am the owner of the CS account with the username drj.

I was recently involved in an issue where my account was disabled due to
innapporpriate behavior. I have received a warning from the Student
Judicial Services, and have already stated multiple times that I realize
my actions were innappropriate, and it will not happen again.

I remain unable to access my account, and without my account, I am
unable to use the Turnin program to turn in my school assignments.

I can see (through finger) that my account has not been deleted, and I
would like to know if I am going to be given access to my account once
again. I can accept not being able to use departmental computers again,
but I cannot do my schoolwork without access to Turnin.

Since I have no way to access my cs email account, I would appreciate a
response to this email address.

Thank you,

Daniel Jones

Later that day, I received a response to that email from the same higher-up initially involved.

Dear Mr. Jones,

Please come see me tomorrow to discuss what happened. I am available
from 10-11:30.

I went to see her the next morning. I arrived just after 10. I knocked on her office door, and she called me into the office. She was in a meeting. “I’m Dan Jones.”

“Oh, you’re the bad guy. Could you give me five minutes?”

I’m the bad guy apparently. I wait until the meeting ends and everyone leaves. She calls me in. I don’t remember the exact conversation, so I’ll paraphrase.

“Because of the enormity of what you did, we had to disable your account. I just want to know what you were thinking.”

“Well, I wasn’t really. Did you actually read the email itself?”

“Yeah, something about a film contest.”

“Yeah, well, I really just wanted to help a friend. I knew this was a way I could help get votes for his film. I was just so excited to help him I didn’t use my common sense and think through what I was doing. Looking back on it, I realize that it was a bad idea, and not clearly thought out. I’m really very sorry for it.”

“Well, you know, this doesn’t just affect you, it affects the whole department. ITS found out about this, and now we look like we have no control over our students. They start asking questions like, ‘Why do you let your students do these sorts of things?’ It makes the whole department look bad.”

“I understand.”

“What you do on your home computer is completely your own business, but once you use our computers, it becomes our business.”

“Right”

“Normally, we’d delete your account right off, and you’d have to deal with the consequences. You tell me it was a stupid mistake. We’re all allowed to make stupid mistakes. I’m going to tell them to reactivate your account. But I want you to read every single department and university policy. Because if you violate even the smallest one, your account is gone, and if that affects your academics, you’ll have to deal with it.”

“Ok, I will.”

“Alright. I don’t want to see your name again until you graduate.”

“Ok, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

And so, all has return back to normality. I’ve certainly learned a few lessons about shared resources and proper computer use that I won’t soon forget. And that is the story of my week as a spammer.

Well, the time to vote has finally arrived! Apple took a little while longer than they expected because they were just overwhelmed with entries this year. Their website is still a little shaky, but you can still vote for our entry.

Now, voting is a little confusing. First, you have to get an Apple ID. iTunes and .Mac users can use their account. For the rest of us, we have to get one first. Once you have your Apple ID, you can go to our video page. However, the registration to vote is not yet done. Apple wants to make sure you really want to vote for this! So, click on login on the right side of the page under where it says “rate this project.” It’s going to bring you to a page that asks you to register for the contest. Put information in all the starred (*) fields. For “Captain” put your name. Under “School/University,” put whatever you want (University of Texas is a good idea).

Now that this is done, you can go back to our video page, and vote (4 stars would be a good vote).

If you have a website, and would like to help promote our video, we have a banner add you can put up to get others to vote. Simply add the following code somewhere on your site/blog:

<a href="http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=1839" title="Vote for Crosswalk"><img style="margin:0px;" src="http://www.zanecochran.com/hosted_sites/oogafilms/uploaded_images/crosswalk_banner3-753832.png" /></a>

It will look like this:

If you want it centered on a line by itself, try this code:

<div style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=1839" title="Vote for Crosswalk"><img style="margin:0px;" src="http://www.zanecochran.com/hosted_sites/oogafilms/uploaded_images/crosswalk_banner3-753832.png" /></a></div>

It looks like this:

The film centers around a young man (played by Gavin Gee), and his romantic endeavors to capture the interest of a young woman (played by Rachel Lawson), whom he met at a crosswalk. Like all of oogaFilms’ romantic comedies, this one is sure to amuse and entertain. (Really, this thing is great! I promise you you’ll like it.)

The film was written and directed by oogaFilms founder Geoff Yano. The music was done by Ryan Gee. Other behind-the-scenes tech stuff was done by Arthur Kendrick, Rodd Simonsen (of Ironrodd Productions), myself, and Mark Sanderson. Supporting roles were performed by myself, and Noelene Clark.

Again, come Friday, I encourage everyone to go to Apple’s website and vote for “Crosswalk” by Team oogaFilms, and tell all of your friends and family to do the same.