originally posted january 14, 2000

starting the new year with a couple of fizzles

Well, the new year is old news now, and fortunately there were no major technological problems. However, this left news organizations with very little to do, so I watched a reporter for Fox News in New York withdrawing $100.00 from an ATM at 1:00 AM on January 1 just to prove that everything was working fine. In a way, I'm kind of disappointed that nothing catastrophic happened -- it would have been nice to see some reliability in following through on threats and scare tactics.

Well, since the new year ~~apocalypse~~ scare didn't incinerate the CMU campus, I'm heading back to school today for another grueling semester. This semester, I've heard, is the one that breaks all computer science majors that weren't meant for the field after all. That said, don't expect a whole lot of updates here whilst I'm working my ass off.

I enjoyed the opportunity to relax during my month off -- a guy could get used to such cushy breaks. I buzzed by my old high school a total of five times to disrupt classes and make a bunch of students do double-takes. I met up with a few friends whose educational pursuits took them hundreds of miles away from New York (or Pittsburgh, for that matter). Syosset hasn't changed as much as I've heard, except it's downright eerie seeing how tiny some freshmen are. Nevertheless, my sixth-grade brother informs me that many of his classmates now tote cellular phones, not so much for the snobby aspect but rather for protection against unruly classmates that might start shooting up the place. While it's certainly fine to be on alert against violence, cellular phones seem a bit much. First, about 99.9% of school days across the country went on without incident last year, so students would likely be more tempted to use the phone for personal use. Second, this is not the Matrix, parents -- you can't jet out through the phone booth at Wabash & Lake if some misunderstood punk is running at you with "guns. Lots of guns." A much better idea would be emergency callboxes, like the ones in place on many college campuses for years now. They're simple, cost-effective (you don't even need phone service to dial 911, for example) and they work well for their intended purpose. The last thing we need nowadays is yet more examples of overactive security measures. The SUV craze ("A little security in an insecure world," raves one ad) was entirely enough.

On a lighter note, guess who won the New York Millennium Millions lottery jackpot drawn the night of December 31? Okay, some guy who works at a coffee shop in Manhattan won the lump-sum jackpot of $44.7 million up front (versus $100 million over 26 years). However, I won a lottery cash prize for the first time since I started playing (legally) last February. Check it out: seventh prize, for matching three out of the five main numbers but not the bonus number. Some basic odds-based calculations suggested I was going to get $10.03, which would make me just about break even after the cost of my five two-dollar tickets. That in mind, I marched down to the 7-Eleven on New Year's Day with ticket in hand. Once the clerks there were able to figure out just how I possibly could have won, they doled out my prize in cold hard cash: eight dollars and fifty cents. I guess they don't get many seventh-prize winners at that particular store. Oh well.

At least I left from the 7-Eleven with my car. Shortly after the new year, I decided to head to Long Island's legendary Roosevelt Field (once an important airfield, now a homogenized shopping mall) to pick up a few necessities. After spending more money than I'd care to mention here, I returned to the location I had etched in my memory: South Garage, row E. I walked down row E, and reached the end of row E not having found my car. I then retraced my steps back down row E a few times. A thought coalesced in my mind: either something inopportune has happened to my car, or I'm a complete idiot. Knowing from past experience that my second impulse was probably correct, I proceeded down rows D and F thinking I had read the wrong sign at first. By this time, there's a car slowly tailing me waiting to take my parking space. After I wander aimlessly through all seven rows in this particular garage, the car gives up. Finally, a passing security mini-truck stops in front of me. The officer apparently thinks I'm casing the garage to see what car I should steal, or that I'm some sort of helpless moron. I get in and describe my car in vivid detail, and we go driving through rows A-G. After a few routine questions ("Are you sure you parked in this garage? Is that the entrance you used to get into the mall?") he asks me the question that makes my day.

"Did you check the lower level?"

Sure enough, there's my car -- lower level, row E. Damn modern commerce and its use of three-dimensional parking garages.

My only hope is that experiences such as that one won't set the tone for the year to come.

Back to January 2000, or to the year 2000.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.