makeshiftmind

Brittany and I went over to the house today and took some pictures. We dropped off about eight boxes of books, which is hardly a dent in our worldly posessions, but hey, it’s a start!

Brittany and I closed on our new house yesterday — something we’ve been waiting for with much anticipation. It feels good knowing that I don’t have to live in this tiny appartment anymore. I’m looking forward to having my own office, a backyard, a basement, and a washer and dryer in close proximity. Our house has three bedrooms, one bath (with whirlpool tub!), a finished basement, a brand new remodeled kitchen, a nice storage shed in the back yard, all appliances, and an unusually long driveway to accomodate our vehicles.

The official move-in date is Saturday, March 4th. We plan on throwing a housewarming party either before the month is out, or in the beginning of April. All our friends are welcome!

Today I learned that 25 consecutive grande coffees from Starbucks will kill me.

So today I’m glancing through Business Week, and I see a small article on the link between recent business scandals and our institutions of higher leaning, er, learning. The article is a brief summary of a study conducted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, which concludes that, of 50,000 students surveyed in 69 schools:

• 27% of journalism majors admit to cheating [on major exams]
• 26% of business majors admit to cheating on major exams
• 54% of business majors admit to cheating on written assignments, engaging in plagiarism, and copying friends’ homework

Is it any wonder that the business world is full of “Enrons” and the big media is full of liars and spinmasters? Ironically, the students who cheat least in school were students in the hard sciences (19%). I guess it’s a little harder to obfuscate physical realities like, say, gravity by cooking your books. Honesty has no meaning to these people because they do not believe that reality is true, in the sense that reality cannot be bent or broken by what we believe or what we wish.

Sorry it has been a while since I last posted, but things have been busy lately and I just haven’t had the time.

Busy? How busy? Well today I’m home sick, and yet I’ve been working remotely from 7 AM until right now (10 PM) with only an hour break. It doesn’t look like I will be done soon.

But good news though: my wife and I bought a new house in Florissant! I’ll post pictures as soon as I get them. It’s a three bedroom, single bath, with a completely renovated kitchen and a finished basement. It has a nice fenced in yard so Brittany can bring her grayhound with us when we move. The area is really nice — old town Florissant — and has a lot of newer shops close by.

I am very excited about leaving this appartment. The walls are closing in on my as I write. I’m feeling cramped and I need SPACE. Brittany and I will both have our own (!) offices in the new house, so I should have plenty of stretching room.

Let’s see, what else…

I’ve been playing Guild Wars on and off. It’s a fun distraction and I’m a sucker for RPGs. I also watch Battlestar Gallactica religiously because it is by far the best sci-fi TV show on right now. I haven’t bought any new CDs for a while, but a guy at work keeps harrasing me about leaving my iTunes program running so he can listen to my old Mechwarrior soundtracks… I think he needs to get help.

I bought a KVM switch for my computer so I can use one monitor, keyboard, and mouse between my desktop and Linux server. When we move into the new house, I’m going to set both machines up in my office. You all know I’m crazy about Linux — this will just be another way to get my fix.

Oh, something else I learned recently — there is a TV show in the UK called “The IT Crowd” and it’s about a bunch of geeks who work in the basement of a massive corporation. The humor is pretty dry, and it’s definately geared towards computer nerds, but it is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. You can download them here if you have the patience.

Signing off…