Time

Time is an interesting thing. There's less than a week left of school (excluding finals, but they don't count as school anyway), and most of the big projects are done, and the little homework seems to be disappearing quickly as there's a shortage of time to grade it in. Thus, on one hand, time is flying by. On the other, the next version of Ubuntu is coming out in three days, and I decided a few weeks ago that I wouldn't bother to fix the numerous things that were broken on my laptop's install, instead electing to just do a full, clean install (maybe with an encrypted hard drive this time...). On the gripping hand, I sent a reply to Brittany's email, and there hasn't been a reply back yet...so I'm not sure what that does to time, but, well...whatever. [2022 edit] hi, it is me from the future. This was a really...weird...time in my life and I was super creepy around Brittany and...yeah. I was dumb and horny and should have known better.[/edit]

The project I'm working on has unfortunately gone slightly over budget, but not by much and there are only a few, cheap components yet to get. And no, it is not a EEE encased in a hamster ball, as a couple people have suggested. (Although, if you built it with actual omni wheels instead of the mecanums he has there, and turned them 90d to their drawn position, and put the webcam inside the ball, it'd be a really kind of cool project...but I've spent too much money recently for me to justify starting another project.)

Phone interview with Delphi tomorrow! /me is a little nervous, but confident.

Sunflower seeds are tasty. Very much so. Especially when you get the large bags of them from Jim's for very little money.

Saw Cloverfield on Saturday. I have to say, it was amazing, but I should not have eaten beforehand...and I wasn't the only one feeling queasy, though I'm pretty sure the guy puking in the median of US41 was drunk...

Lovely weather we've been having here, and it looks to only get better.

Been playing around with PGP (specifically, GnuPG) paired with the Thunderbird extension Enigmail to digitally sign my outgoing emails and attachments. Not only does this make it simpler for others to confirm that the messages they receive in my name are from me, it also allows me to confirm that signed messages are from who they are signed by. This system also allows me to receive encrypted emails, provided that the sender has PGP software and my key. My public key has been uploaded to hkp://subkeys.pgp.net (not a link your browser can parse, but any PGP software will be able to use it to authenticate signatures).

PGP is fun, in that it's based on trust. If you get a signed email from someone, it will display that the email is signed and the key has been found in the database your software looks in (provided the key has been uploaded somewhere). However, it will also mention that the key is currently UNTRUSTED, meaning that, though that message is signed, you have not personally confirmed the identity of the sender, and thus the software does not trust the sender. Thus, you have to sign the person's key, telling your software that you trust that the owner of the key is the person sending the email. You do this by contacting the person, usually via a different medium than the one protected by PGP, and asking for their key's fingerprint. If the fingerprint matches that of the key on the email, you sign the key and future messages signed with that key will show up as TRUSTED. This approach works well, and offers fairly decent insurance that the person you get email from is the person stated in the message headers.

The fingerprint of my key is 9121 F498 B96B C113 BB55 5EE5 0D56 E47A ACAA 3075, if you have PGP software and wish to sign my key.

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