Htam::Diary

This Tuesday, I worked on my website authentication.  Yesterday I made the calendar.  One little problem: Once I move back to the States, my parents will no longer be on my private network.  Setting up VPN for this little purpose is not worth it.  So I decided to move it to public domain.  This is not good either: I wouldn't want my schedule to be posted for the world to see, what if I have a `meet girlfriend' entry in there?  So I added accounts to my security system with username/password login and bitflag-type priviledge granting system.  Yay.

This Monday, I programmed an objected oriented calendar system in PHP without using database as storage.  Why?  I wanted the solution to be lightweight and without the entanglement of another server.  The result?  Functional, colour coded, little calendar that makes my plan easy to recall.  I am placing this on the intranet.

This Sunday, (actually I am not completely certain as to the temporal coordinate of this event, as I have been performing way too many temporal incursions, and as a being normally subjected to linear temporal progression, I am not fully trained in mentally handling the interleaved timeline being slightly altered,) I played ping pong with my father.  The last couple of times when I played with my dad, for some odd reason, I was playing really poorly.  Today, for some other odd reason (which makes it even :-P), I played up to my normal level in the States, when I would play on a much regular schedule with regular partners and training items.  I was really glad.  I played really well from the very first stroke.  It probably have something to do with the cleaned paddle rubber, but not all due to it.  Even though I do not clean it every time (I should), I do clean it but sometimes I still play poorly.  In any case, I was able to get my hearbeat up to 38*4=152 per minute, which is, in my oppinion, a bit too much.  I am pretty sure that was a semi-instantaneous record and was not sustained for long.

This Saturday, having been introduced to the Odyssey series by Charley three days from now (yes, I possess some simple temporal incursion capabilities), I listened to the Saturday episode ``It Ended With a Handshake.''  (Okay, fine, I actually listened to this on the 31st, but it was the Saturday episode.)  Charley suggested this series because he thinks and I quote ``Eugene Meltzner, one of the actors, speaks very similar to you.''  After listening to this episode (after listening to two others which Eugene did NOT show up), I have decided to continue listening to this series.  I really like Eugene!  Affirmative, sometimes he would behave just like I would.  Wow.  Are all geeks the same?  I refuse to believe so.  It is a very good series in any case: Whit's End [DEPRECATED].

This Friday, we went to the city for the third time in a week.  (From the campus where my family live, it takes about twenty to thirty minutes to get to the city.)  This time my mother also came.  We had lunch with another family from church.  Afterwards, I picked up my (new) pair of glasses.  Even though the diopter number (or whatever the token `675/675' is called) is reduced (from `7xx/7xx'), I can see clearer now due to the correction for astigmatism.

Earlier today, I also rode by bike hands-free and solved a rubik's cube while riding the bike.  It was quite a feat.

This Thursday, I stayed at home and simply enjoyed my day.  I like this kind of uneventful day.  It makes me warm and fuzzy inside.

This Wednesday, I was caught robbing a bank and was sent to the police station.  Just kidding.  I am now illegally staying in Taiwan because my Visa expired.  Originally I could have asked for an extension for free.  However, as the time is expired, I have to be fined AND cannot ask for an extension.  I will have to leave the territory in a week.  But I plan to leave in two weeks.  So the lady at the desk told me to come back in a week to pay the fine then as it would be the same amount (within 10 days of expiration).  Then I would be able to leave Taiwan with my original plane ticket.

Afterwards, as we were already in the city, we went and bought some pairs of pants, continuing what we were doing yesterday.

This Tuesday, I went to Hualien city.  Why?  Because I am leaving Taiwan pretty soon.  Everything is cheaper here, so I prefer buying stuff here.  I got my teeth cleaned and ordered a pair of glasses.  It was about lunch time, so my father and I ate lunch.  Then we went home.  We put off other things we wanted to do because we need to come again to pick up my glasses.  This is similar to load balancing.

This Monday, I took out my father's violin and played a while.  I actually went to Kennelley Keys back when I was in Seattle and bought some music.  So I played some of them.  Even after not playing (basically) for a year, I still have the feel.  Though it was a bit rough, I am pretty sure it will all come back to me sooner or later.  If you look at the caltech section, you'll know why I am practising now.

This Sunday, I went to church.  Nothing else happened really.  I was going to type `normal' when I realized many different mathematical connotations.  So I decided to switch to `ordinary' (trying to avoid words like `boring') but also realized its mathematical meaning.  Come to think of it, `simple' is also used.  So which words are not used by mathematician?  Even the word `faithful' is used to indicate a bijective map.  Too many properties, too few words.

This Saturday, I embarked on the mission of setting up virtual mail accounts: with mysql!  (Yesterday I did everything but the mail part as I have not done it properly before.)  Even though I did not get virtual mail accounts with mysql last time I was playing with postfix + maildrop, this time around I got it to work perperly.  It took some work, some fooling around, some tweaking, but it paid off at the end.  Besides, the path is the enjoyable part.  Now I can provide mail to whoever I want without the need of actually creating user accounts.  I also wrote a frontend for changing mail passwords via HTTP (without compromising general system security of the passwd file, as it has nothing to do with it at all, yay.)  I am faily happy with my solution.  If you want spam-filtered, unlimited*, IMAP mail, let me know.

This Friday, I re-installed the new server that I mentioned right before I left for Hsinchu.  Now it has FC4 installed.  As always, I like to install the operating system while I sit in front of the physical computer.  I made sure that I had a non-priviledged account set up properly and that SSH was up and running.  Then I came back home and started configuring the server remotely (which I really like doing).  After several hours of work, the server is now matching my specification.  Compared to the time I spent tweaking my own laptop, this is next to nothing.  I really enjoyed the well-documented log of the things I did to my fresh FC4 installation, so this time I only have to do them (with minor modifications).  I like keeping logs.

This Thursday, after a six-day event of travelling back to Hsinchu and having a friend come back down to Hualien, I am very very tired.  I did not do much today; it is simply a time of recovery.  I did do some pre server-wipe backups to get ready for a big day tomorrow.

This Wednesday, I played some table tennis with astro in the morning.  Actually, not much to be said.  Later in the afternoon, we went to Hualien city and some famous food.  astro's mother asked him to purchase some local goods.  Then we sent astro to the train station and parted: until next summer.

This Tuesday, astro and I went to the Hualien Ocean Park.  It was an interesting experience, but I am not too excited in going back for a while.  We mainly watched different shows after shows.  Some were good, but some were still lacking.  At the very end, we went on a ride that got us wet, just a bit.  However, as a precautionary measure, we put all our belongings in my backpack.  That was a mistake, my backpack was soaked.  Oh well.

This Monday, after eating some breakfast, astro and I went to NEHS.  I saw Ms. Chen and Ms. Hsiao.  After being there a while, aeon, de, mainengre, nogard, and pcncvl all arrived.  We went to some cheap (but good) restaurant next to our school and ate some simple lunch.  According to nogard, it was quite interesting.  Later astro and I rode a bus to the Hsinchu Train Station and took a train back to Hualien.  He is visiting me for three days.

This Sunday, silver and I went to the National Syncrotron Radiation Research Center (where aaron's mom work) and played table tennis with byjiang and aaron.  The facility was fairly nice, there were three tables and two pool tables.  After playing for a while, astro and nogard arrived.  We started at 15:00 and played a fair part into nineteen o'clock.  Wow!  More than four hours!  It was very fun and I enjoyed the afternoon sports a lot.  I went back to silver's house and took a quick shower, packed all my luggage, and moved to astro's house for dinner and the night.  I stayed at silver's house for a total of two nights.

This Saturday, after eating breakfast and discussing cubing techniques with silver, we went and ate lunch at a Japanese place.  Afterwards we went to aeon's house and got him to come along back to silver's.  aeon was obsorbed in practicing some magic tricks for our evening engagement, so silver and I had a lot of fun playing table tennis without the hinderance of a third person.  After taking a shower, we all went to a fancy restaurant and had dinner.  This is the only pre-planned dinner that dictated my travel plans.  The eight (8) students of the NEHS junior high science honors class (J_SCIENCECLASS) were all there: aeon, astro, fantasy, htam (me), Libby, northernalaina, silver, and penguine.  This time Ms. Chen was not available, but we had a fun time (perhaps even more free.)  After eating dinner (which started around 18:30), we talked for a long time, moved to a neighboring Starbucks, and talked even more.  We were driven from Starbucks at 23:00 when the store was closing.  People went home, as silver drove aeon and me here, we both went back with silver.  This evening, silver and I have been teaching aeon how to solve a Rubik's cube.  aeon was so obsorbed that he went home fairly late.  It was a very enjoyable day indeed.

[Photo: J_SCIENCECLASS reunion with all the students.]

This Friday, I took a train and travelled back to Hsinchu.  I lived there most of my life until I went to the United States after graduating from middle school.  silverblue (`silver') came to pick me up at the train station.  He waited for a very, very, long time because the train broke and incurred an one-hour delay.  At night, we ate dinner with astronaut (`astro') and nogard at a restaurant near silver's house.  Afterwards, we went back to his house to let our stomach settle, then we played table tennis for quite a while.  It was quite interesting.

This Thursday, I picked up from where I left off yesterday and continued working on the virtual mail hosting solution.  (Thus confirming the `temporarily' clause at the end of the last diary entry.)  Now I decided to strip everything and start over.  Instead of following tutorials blindly like yesterday, I configured everything htam-style: meaning, I do very small changes and continually making sure everything works.  Finally, after playing around with groups and many, many configuration files, I got everything to work properly.  This whole thing is a test, however, as I was not careful in cleaning up when I made changes.  I will be reinstalling the whole system over (using FC4 instead of RHEL).  I just wanted to get a feel of RHEL before I commit to FC.  In any case, as I am leaving for Hsinchu tomorrow, the work will have to be put off until I return.