FortKnox's Journal: Misery

So, I worked with my friend thursday with his integration by parts. The problem he was having wasn't the concept of the IBP, but rather how to take stuff like sine^2 and converting it to something easier to integrate. I didn't help him much, but started breaking down the problems, giving him options, and he ended up working all his problems out on his own.

Thats when the misery happened. That next morning, at like 4am, I got a severe stomach flu. I've had the flu before, I've had it bad, I can even remember when I had it the worst. This was about 100 times worse than that time. I was almost to the brink of tears, I was so miserable. Friday was hell. I'd go on, but A.) It'd be a gross conversations and B.) I'm trying to forget it.

But, on the bright side, Valentine's Day was still spent the way we had planned[1], rented a couple DVD's, got takeout from our favorite restaurant, and ate & watched them while Joey slept (my wife isn't the "flowers" type, and no "chocolates" for the diabetic).

It took until today to fully recover, but I got some time on the new computer (I still need to rehookup the old one so I can copy over all the email stuff and crap... I haven't checked my home email in almost a week). So, of course, I played myself some more DeusEx:IW. One of the most entertaining parts of the game has been the 'dead body physics' (followed closely by people standing too close to fires, catching themselves on fire, then running around flailing about, and catching OTHER people on fire). Firing a sniper shot out of a high powered rifle, hitting the enemy in the face, and watch his body, basically, summersault is just funny to see. And the lines can just be GREAT (I must be dead, then, cause I'm up to my eyeballs in biomodifications!). Then again, I could just be loopy cause of the illness...

So I've been out of the /. look for a bit long, and had to use the 'amigos' trick[2] to try and get back on track.

Anything exciting happen to yens all?


[1] Hey all you "I don't celebrate Valentine's Day, and my wife agrees" types: She may not like the 'hallmark' thing, or whatever, but all her friends and stuff will have Valentine surprises and such, and you'll be the one looking like an ass because she secretly wants a little something (women wanting something, but not telling you or telling you the opposite is just completely unfounded, right?). For quick recovery, do something on a Tuesday (bring home flowers?) just out of the blue for no reason. Thank me later :-P

[2] the amigos trick is simply http://slashdot.org/my/amigos. It lines up all your friends journals in order. Its the best way to check out new stuff, and good if you are one of the first people to reply to a journal (so you can go back and see what other people have said. IE - going back to see all the wiseass cracks at em when he posts a poll) ;-)

Amigos

[arb]

/my/amigos [slashdot.org] is the only way to read JEs, IMNSHO. Been using the amigos page for a d*mn long time - it's a wonder there isn't a link to it anywhere in the slash interface.

Another variant on this is /~username/amigos, which will show you the amigos page of any slashdot user.

Re:Amigos

[heliocentric]

There isn't direct amigos link, you're right, but there is something similar that I also use. Since sometimes the JEs can be long (look at my 11 page post about Verizon for case in point) I often use the "Friend's Journals" link that is up there in plain textual linkage (ie not some picture) near "write in journal" and such when you are viewing someone's journal.

This presents a listing of your friends and simply the title of their latest journal. I've used that as a step before the amigos for when I've b

Re:Amigos

[Some Woman]

I always use slashdot.org/journal.pl, which lists your friends' journals.

Re:Amigos

[arb]

One thing I don't like about the journals.pl link is that it only shows the most recent JE, so if a friend has posted more than one JE since you last looked you can easily miss something. Plus it doesn't display a comment count, so you can't quickly see if there has been any action in that journal. And it doesn't sort the JEs in date order, so you don't always pick up on the meme-of-the-day cross-journal threads that seem to pop up every now and then.

Of course, mother-fscking long JEs can be a PITA, but th

Re:Amigos

[LPetrazickis]

I use the links in the optional email notifications to read journals. That way, I don't miss any and can skip whichever ones don't sound promising.:)

Re:Amigos

[arb]

I started using the email/message notifications, but Amigos has advantages (IMHO) such as not having your inbox flooded with journal notifications, and as FK pointed out, you can easily go back and see if any journals you have read earlier have had (m)any replies. You still have the option of skipping journals that don't sound promising, but with the added option of reading the first few lines just in case the title is misleading. ;-)

Re:Amigos

[Morosoph]

Thanks arb! My "bio" now has a link to http://slashdot.org/~Morosoph/amigos [slashdot.org], so that visitors get a link to my friends' wonderful journals!

Stomach flu sucks

[MacBrave]

I usually get a bout of the stomach flu every year or so. Some cases are worse than others. The worst was about 3 years ago when I swear I could actually see my stomach moving, the cramps were so bad. Man, that hurt!

So far, the wife and three of the kids have gotten it this year, but pretty mild cases.

Excitement

[dthable]

Worked all day Sat. and got a lot of stuff done. Still having some problems setting up JBoss on our W2K server so I might be in this coming weekend.

Marquette get their asses kicked and then handed back to them. You can't give up 60% in the 3-point range and still hope to win with 30%.

A couple of hours of snowboarding and hanging out with ski patrol. I guess my accidents are something of a legend with them.

Interviewed with a race team on Sunday and looked at some new bikes. I'm leaning toward a Trek Fu

Deus Ex

[Cliff]

I went over to a friends and we cracked out on the game. He and I managed to get through 3 of the 4 endings (I think). He wanted to do the 4th, but I just couldn't bring myself to help the Templars and passed out.

Nice game in some places, although I was cursing up a storm due to some of the enemies you encounter in the later part.

Took us about 15 hours total, from start to finish, to accomplish this. It was a real marathon session.

Gotta say though, the best part about the game was the "Party level

Re:Deus Ex

[FortKnox]

"Party Level"? Sounds like a bonus level. I'll have to give you a hollar when I finish if that's the case (just finished up Cairo, off to Germany tonight) :-)