Poked.net

Sweet! It's snowing! First time this year.

Any way, I competed in the Mid Atlantic ACM Regional Programming Contest (aren't you glad I didnt expand the ACM acronym too) yesterday. Put basically, my team was slotted to be #2 in the region, and definitely top 5. I was the captain, so I should have gotten a large portion of my teams problems (team=3 people). Well, our team got 3 out of 8 problems, myself getting none. We had 6 solved(including 2 difficult ones that I got), but for various reasons they didn't work on the judges test data. 6 problems would have placed us #3 or 4 in the region I think, but 3 means we weren't even top 10. So, I'm upset about that.

On another note, Sallie Henry, the VT team coaches, always names the teams 1,2,3,4,5 in order she believes they will come in at the regionals. And she is usually right - always right about team #1. Well, this time, team #3 was the only team in the region to solve all 8 problems. Team #1 missed it just barely by having a very stupid error at the last minute and only got 7 problems done. So, after Sallie had been making flight arrangements and telling team #1 how fun beverly hills (the location of the international competitions) would be, things kinda got turned upside down. Oh well - I have a special deal worked out to go to internationals as the alternate, so it works out for me.

My apartment complex had the following notification posted on the Bulletin Board downstairs:
EXTERMINATION
NOTIFICATION

YOUR APARTMENT
WILL BE
EXTERMINATED ON

FRIDAY,
NOVEMBER 15TH

I hope I'm not the only one who understands the humor in that.

Spencer is swinging a wooden sword at me - backed me into the pantry while dan props a chair up against the door so I can't get out. Eventually I realize that the circuit breakers are in the pantry and negotiate my way out instead of frying their computers. What instigated this chain of events? You'll have to ask to find out.

Well...24 hours after the infamous - "confirm your email address" mailing, we have had about 8% response. I would have expected 30-40% by now and about 55% total. There are a couple reasons for a person not confirming their address which is where I derive the 60% number:
a) The address was never real (estimated = 5% of userbase)
b) The address has changed and is no longer accurate (estimated 2% of userbase)
c) They don't care about tag-board (estimated = 25% of userbase)
d) They don't speak english and don't understand the message (estimated = 10% of user base)
e) Email client can't handle the link and it causes problems clicking on it (estimated 3%)

The last one is kinda hard to estimate, and I think I'm way off based on some of the responses I'm recieving...so I'm looking for a new way to set up the confirmations. I may just get Kim to help me with processing a second wave of people who can just hit reply and confirm. It wont be as solidly valid as someone can fake a from: header, but I guess I don't care much as a couple extra free boards laying around is no biggie. If any tag boarders read this, I'd like to hear some feedback on the issue.

Tag-Board has a few new features coming:
Free + Enhanced
1) Users will be able to change their email address from within the admin panel(this has been a long time coming)
Free users will now have to confirm their email address when they sign up or change the address.
2) Users will be able to change the word that replaces profanity from *beep* to whatever their heart desires

Enhanced Only
1) Users will be able to toggle on and off the archive links and the auto-refresh feature.
2) Users will be able to delete messages from within the post notification email messages by clicking a link

OK, so nothing mind bogglingly great, but it's progress. I also chatted with some of the users on Tag Board today, and a few ideas that they came up with included
1) Avatar images
2) Links to HTML help web sites
3) A gamecube emulator (?)
4) Find some way to accept money via smail mail

I watched "Hackers" yesterday afternoon w/ the roomies. It just serves to remind me how uneducated the world is about computers. I mean, I know its a movie and overglorified for the sake of drama, but come on. There is absolutely no school in this country that has sprinkler systems hooked up to a computer that is connected to the internet. The same is true with traffic lights in a city. And there are no computers that look like big 3d columns of glass with a visual filesystem etched on their sides. And computer worms do not 'eat' money. Some people seem to have this strange idea that anything with a wire in it can be controlled by '31337 hax0rs'. And then there were the clubs in New York where everyone skateboarded around the inside and there were large 12 foot computer displays for single individuals to play video games for free. Sure....

Now back to real life.

I guess I haven't blogged much recently. No reason really. Been doing the same stuff. Najm came over this afternoon and went over itenerary for our trip to Europe. Apparently the place tickets are 12/27/02 - 1/10/03, 2 weeks. We will be doing hostels and trains for the duration. Looks like its arrive in Paris, and from there head to -> Barcelona -> Cannes -> Nice -> Monoco -> Genova -> Piza -> Rome -> Florence -> Venice -> Milan -> Bern -> Dijon -> Paris. Might cut some of that so we can stay at some places more than a day, but who knows. Its fluid and it will be fun.