originally posted august 20, 2000

here we go again!

I'm less than one week away from the big trip back to Pittsburgh, and eight days from the start of my second year classes. My room contains a scattered mess of boxes and books, not entirely unlike the way it appeared after I arrived home. That makes it easier to pack everything back up, at least.

I can't wait to get back to Carnegie Mellon -- after one year, I've become used to the comforts of my home away from home. This year, I also managed to score a room in West Wing, one of the nicer dorms on campus, featuring suite-style living. With any luck, I'll be able to retain it through the end of my time there. West Wing features air-conditioned rooms, an elevator, a computer cluster, and a mail room. It's also connected to Resnik Hall, a nearly identical dorm next door, through an underground tunnel.

looking for something?

Here are just a few of the many interesting search terms for which some part of Jason Weill Web Productions is returned:

Source: Dreamhost web server statistics

I've already gotten in touch with my roommate, an entering senior in computer science. We discussed all the standard stuff: what to bring, for example. I found to my surprise that he's been able to get by for all of these years without a computer of his own on campus, instead using the public clusters. While I know a few people who don't have PC's on campus, it really surprised me that a computer science major of all people could get by without one. I'm one of several people on campus that uses not only a desktop computer for important work, but also a palmtop computer to record information about assignments, classes, and appointments when I can't get to my PC. Since my roommate expressed no interest in bringing a computer, he said that I could take both network ports in the room. This means that I could build a second computer out of spare components and use it as a server or a testbed (or a dumping ground, to load any suspicious programs I get) without having to buy a hub. However, given how busy I am at home, not to mention the added hassle it would be to bring and set up a second computer, I think I'll be sticking with just one computer. Besides, the fan noise from one always-on tower can be annoying just by itself.

I have some plans for the semester and year ahead. I'm pretty much guaranteed a job back at the Office of Admissions, but I may pursue something that offers me a wider range of duties than just filing and miscellaneous clerical work. Still, even a minimum wage job usually covers my incidental expenses, and clerical work usually doesn't provide too much stress. Also, with the University Center literally steps away from my dorm, I might even start an exercise regimen to make sure I have enough energy to get through my days. Running around from class to class, work, clubs, and anyplace else all the time takes a lot off. I won't even speculate on which habits might stick and which won't.

Academics-wise, the main computer science curriculum plows forward with 15-212 (Principles of Programming), a course taught in the functional language ML. Three of the other courses I'm taking (physics lab, statistics, and philosophy) satisfy some elective requirements, and I'm taking 82-271 (Intermediate Japanese I) to continue on towards a minor. It should be a demanding schedule to say the least; Japanese has been fairly easy to this point, and I haven't written an academic paper in over a year now. Hopefully my elective courses won't get me too sidetracked; the advantage, of course, is that I can drop them if things get too hairy and take them at a later time without penalty.

I've had a fun time working over the summer at Cendant IT, getting to work with the administrators of several hundred Solaris and NT servers. I've worked with many new systems, gained new skills, and found out some new things about the way big corporations use and implement technology. My last two summer internships have been with large companies, though; next summer I might want to work in a smaller company, or at least one in which I could stay away from home. I've already received announcements about internships for next summer from certain companies, so I'd probably want to stop by the career center on campus when I get back. My resume has also been updated to reflect my new work experience.

Lastly, in my ever-present desire to become more multilingual, I spent the latter portion of this summer studying Perl, the Pretty Eclectic Rubbish Lister and the power behind the forthcoming Weill Aspects. As the table near the top of this update shows, people find this site by searching for all sorts of crazy things. The reason why they find this site is most likely because the news archive is so crowded with material, including many common Internet search keywords. Weill Aspects will be the replacement for the news archive, an automatically generated listing of all news articles posted on this site and sorted by category. This reduces human error and development time considerably, since I don't have to worry about manually updating as many as three or four pages, and then uploading them automatically. This will be done, and it'll be up when it's ready. If you have any Perl help that you'd like to lend, I welcome it.

Back to August 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.