Now that I actually have some time, I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to put up Christmas lights for the 2 days I have left before I head north. I like the way they look, but, man, that's a lot of untangling and stuff.

I've managed to con my 12-year-old neighbor into taking care of my cat while I'm gone. (I plan to pay her, but I think I probably could have pulled a Tom Sawyer -- she was just excited about playing with the cat!)

This is kinda cool. Yamaha has a CD burner that can use the unburned area od the CD to burn text into the data side of the disk, creating a permanent label.

On an unrelated technology note, it seems that DirectTV DSL (née Telocity) is being closed down by Hughes. (My 30-day warning arrived via e-mail at 4:30 this morning.) I originally switched to Telocity after Comcast@Home (née Intermedia@Home, aka Excite@Home) gave me crap about running a web server on my connection. So it looks like I'm back in the market for a provider. At this point, I think the top contenders are SpeakEasy and Butler. The second one seems to be run by some local guy out of his garage, but then again, there's something to be said for knowing where your ISP lives. And I really like the fact that he's actually encouraging people to set up open-access WiFi access points using his service -- that's a refreshing change from network nazis who run some of the big-name providers.

As of 4:30ish this morning, I think I'm finally done with classes for this semester! Now to deal with the other parts of my life that I've been ignoring for the last month. Including this blog.

A sad day...

They just demolished the Capital Center, also known as the US Air Arena. It was an ugly building, and the new downtown arena in DC is in a much better location. But the Cap Center was part of growing up in Prince George's County. It is where I went to my first rock concert and where I graduated from high school. And I remember going there with my family a number of times to see "Spirit of America" pageants put on by local military units, and one time I was part of a chorus that sang the National Anthem before a hockey game.

The arena was built in the early 1970s, and I grew up along with it. It was probably of limited use with no hockey or basketball team to fill the seats. But it's still sad to see it go. They're going to build a shopping mall on the site.

Argh! My professor from hell did it again. While this exam is not as bad as the 35 hour midterm, it is still nuts. He seems to think that as long as he tells us to limit each response to three pages, we shouldn't have a problem. But the problem is that each question has 4-5 subquestions, and each subquestion could easily take up 10 pages on its own. I mean, "What factors were responsible for GM's and Chrysler's problems?" isn't exactly a 5-word answer, let alone "Compare the roles played by information systems at Chrysler and GM. How did they affect the structure of the automobile industry?" And these are just two of the four answers I'm supposed to cram into three double spaced pages. And then there are four more broad questions each with 4-5 subquestions where this one came from.

And I haven't even started the final for the database class.

Oy. I need a beer.