Dan’s Musings

Last night, I had a strange dream that I felt like sharing. Why do I discuss my dreams on this blog so much, you might ask? I guess my real life is just boring enough that I need to supplement it with my fantasy life. Oh well. On to the dream.

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.

I use Linux. I don’t like Windows, and I don’t care for Mac OS X. I love Linux, and its software. I especially love the fact that most Linux software is Free Software. I’m not a Nazi about Free Software. I’ll use proprietary software if there’s simply no usable free alternative. Google Earth, Skype, and NVIDIA drivers are a few that come to mind. However, some people feel that free software must be inferior to commercial software because it doesn’t cost anything. Some people are just so comfortable with their proprietary software that they won’t consider using a free equivalent.

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.

Yesterday was my birthday, and boy, was it a great one. Around 6am, there was some noise right outside my room. It was just enough to not actually wake me up, but enough that I was able to hear what’s happening, and the sounds in the real world would meld with the sounds in my dream. So, as I’m on a boat floating down the Danube, I hear a whispering, disembodied voice say, “Alright, you ready? Now!” Then my door crashed open loudly enough to actually wake me up, as four or five of my friends start singing “Happy Birthday” to me. As my eyes flutter open, I see my good friends standing there, and as the song concludes, one of them says, “We’re here to take you to IHOP for breakfast.” I slowly roll out of the hammock in which I sleep as the words, “Ohhhhh, Mannnn” escape from my mouth. I walk over towards them, and in retrospect, I wonder if they were wondering if I was about to deck them. I didn’t, of course, because I love them, but instead put on my sandals, looked up and gave a groggy, affirmative nod. “Alright, let’s go” came from one of the crowd. And so, in my pajamas, we headed off to IHOP.

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 other night I had a pretty weird dream, and I’ve been thinking of it since. In the dream I was working on some kind of project with five girls. I don’t really remember what it was we were doing, and it’s not particularly important anyway. These five girls are all friends of mine in real life. I know them all pretty well (some better than others). These girls are all vastly different from one another. Really, the only noticeable similarity among them is that I know all of them from church, so they’re all Mormon. But in just about every other way, they’re all very different. Their ages vary from about 23 to 31. There’s two blondes and three brunettes. Some are students, some professionals, with everything in between. Three have never been married, one is divorced, one is currently married. Most of the girls know each other, but aren’t good friends, and never hang out with each other (aside from seeing each other at church, and sometimes at parties). Basically there is no common thread running between them.

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.

Last night, I got a craving. I was thinking of my time in Scotland, and some of the stuff I missed from there, and one stood out. Some stuff I can get here in the States, like haggis, or Irn-Bru (it’s not easy to find, but not impossible). But there’s one uniquely Scottish dish that I have not had in the nearly four years since I’ve returned home: fried pizza.

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.

I had a weird dream last night. It wasn’t weird in the sense that weird things happened, things that were out of the ordinary, unusual, or impossible. In fact, it was weird in the fact that it didn’t have any of that stuff. You see, usually I remember dreams when something strange/frightening/unusual/fantastic happens in them. This dream had none of that. It was just a little slice-of-life soft of dream. I wasn’t aware that I could have those types of dreams, because, as far as I can remember, they’ve never happened before.

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.

Thursday afternoon, I was in a class at the Institute. The class was “The Gospel and the Productive Life,” taught by Bishop Simmons. The lesson was mainly about The Word of Wisdom, but one of the quotes that was read mentioned the benefits of wholeseome recreation as well. Bishop Simmons told us that the root of the word recreation is re-create, and that if recreation doesn’t help us re-create ourself, it’s not really recreation. I liked that a lot. Generally when someone explains something to me using etymology, it helps me understand a lot better. This was a concept that had never really occurred to me.

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, last week, I was trying to think of new ways to spread the word about our entry into the Insomnia Film Festival. As I was thinking of ways to spread the word, the student directory at my school came to my mind. It lists all the students, faculty, and staff at the university who haven’t specifically restricted their listing. All in all, that comes to about 70,000 people. I thought that if I could search that directory, and send an email off to everyone in it asking them to vote for our entry, surely at least 1% of them would vote. That would send our rating through the roof! Yeah, I knew this was spam, but it was for a good cause so it seemed like a good idea to me.

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.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I helped create a three minute film for Apple’s Insomnia Film Contest.

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:

Last Saturday, oogaFilms created a three minute film for the 2007 Apple Insomnia Film Contest. This is a contest wherein college and high school students create a three minute film in 24 hours. oogaFilms’ entry is titled “Crosswalk,” and can currently be seen on YouTube, but on the 19th October will be available for viewing and voting on Apple’s website. I encourage all to go and vote this Friday.

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.