Oh, how I would love to live somewhere with public transit that was available seven days a week and at least part of the night. That, or a taxi service that was reasonably affordable. Even just having more than one or two little things in reasonable walking distance would be nice. It’s so frustrating being unable to drive sometimes. I hate my attention span. :-\

Restaurant owners… please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t blindly accept the suggestions of Microsoft Word’s spell checker, unless you’re willing to serve up another sort of flesh entirely:

And yes, that is a completely unaltered screen shot. O_o

Edited to add: Egads… it gets worse. OS X’s built-in spell checker— the one used in Safari, Mail.app, and iWork— also suggests ‘prostitute’ for ‘prosciutto’. Ouch! OpenOffice.org, on the other hand, actually recognizes ‘prosciutto’ as a word…

This next spam excerpt is from an e-mail I just received in my spam box today… that is, Saturday, October 29. In other words, two days before Halloween, which falls on a Monday. Why is this important, you ask? Well…

A Halloween must have!

Want to have the coolest Jack O’ Lantern on your block? Come see the Amazing Rainbow Pumpkin Light at [url deleted] The Amazing Rainbow Pumpkin Light, lights up your carved pumpkin in 7 superbrite colors. It’s safe, fun and will last for years. Visit [url deleted]

Enter discount code: 1031, and receive $1.00 off each light you purchase.

Orders ship same day! allow 2-3 business days for delivery.

Riiiight. So I’ll end up getting this pumpkin light… oh, what, two days after Halloween? Absolutely impeccable timing, spammers… makes me look completely organized in that regard, which is quite a tough task.

OK, these spammer names just keep getting weirder and weirder.

Tonight I had a message in my spam box from one “Altair C. Yoknapatawpha.” Selling medications, no less.

Talk about your alternate-universe Faulkner…

Yes, I know, I know, I haven’t posted anything here in ages.

Why? Well, for one thing, I’ve been rather busy lately… mainly coordinating a group assignment for a Software Engineering course. Not that this isn’t something I needed to take; in fact, I’m learning quite a bit about the development process in it, far more than I did in the corresponding course at Mercer, despite the fact that group projects were involved in each. Maybe it’s that the professor’s lectures are slightly clearer; maybe it’s that there’s more emphasis on the project (I don’t remember the workload being quite as insane, though it was heavy in Mercer’s course too), but something is helping me understand it better. Of course, it’s still extremely vague no matter who teaches it, simply because of the open-ended nature of the subject matter…

Oh, yes, and there was also the ACM Southeastern Regional Programming Competition a couple weekends ago. Fun times, even though my (new) team didn’t do nearly as well as in the past… some of the test cases they came up with on those problems were absolutely insane, because they obviously thought of situations that didn’t even cross my mind. And normally I’m quite good at spotting those strange out-of-bounds sorts of conditions…

And, well, outside of all that’s been keeping me busy in the CS department, I still haven’t a whole lot of time to blog. Something or another’s usually keeping me preoccupied… though, granted, it’s not always important. I know I spent several hours playing We ♥ Katamari when I could’ve been blogging, for instance…

…But then again, my brain’s been so foggy lately that I haven’t really been able to think of much to write, anyway.

So why am I posting right now, then? There’s a simple two-word answer to that, and that would be “fall break.” Currently I’m back home lying on the bed with a laptop on one side and a lapdog on the other. Ahhhh.