I hate power surges.

Just finished my MATH 342 assignment and put it out for printing on my print server when BAM! power surge!

I do have my system on an APC and of course my monitor, a Daytek MV170, as well just in case stuff happens. Unfortunately, it does not work all that well and whenever it happens, my computer just shuts off.

After I try rebooting, I notice that the monitor’s light isn’t on. Obviously, the first thing that happens is panic kicks in, simply because

1. I only have one monitor (all you dual-monitor users can shut it ); besides, if I did go dual monitor, I don’t have the desktop space for it until I do a complete overhaul of my room space (ie. cleanup)
2. I don’t have the money to go out and buy another monitor
3. I have to do stuff on this machine and all the other unused monitors around the house are CRTs (eww.. placing that here would kill all the desktop space I just freed up with a small amount of cleaning)

Thankfully, a few minutes later, after shutting off the APC and letting things kind of just sit for a while unpowered, the monitor turns on again. Yay!

Well, I know what I need to do now – get a new APC or swap it out with another one  around the house.

For CMPT 470, we have decided to do our project, a Gradebook/Submission Server replacement for the School of Computing Science, in Ruby on Rails.

This will be quite a challenge. Why?

All my experience so far with Web development is with PHP. The approaches are quite different, with the whole MVC thing Rails pushes, not to mention the fact that I will need to learn Ruby.

I just so happened to choose to do CAS integration with the system. After looking at the one page of documentation of making use of CAS, I think I know how it works, but getting it done in a language I am not familiar with is going to be a pain.

If anyone have any good sites that cater to people like me, migrating from PHP to Rails, please let me know.

Another thing as well. You know how PHP has sessions? Does Rails have anything of the sort at all? Again, let me know.

After my evening class tonight at Harbour Centre, I caught my bus home. Once I got on, I could not help but notice there was this guy on the bus talk about some person or group of people (I honestly think it’s the latter, given how the bus goes by one block away from the Downtown Eastside; for those not too familiar with Vancouver, read up) and how those who opposed him were “murderers and rapists with mental problems on record, drug users, …”. You know, the whole generalization that the entire Downtown Eastside is full of these kinds of people, which is for the most part true, sadly enough.

Normally I would just ignore people like this (hell, this is probably the first time I’ve seen something like this on a bus), but this guy was a repeater, just spewing the same thing over and over again, from the back of the bus to the front, not to mention that my MP3 player decided to run out of batteries. So I became curious as the what the guy was going on and on about so when he moved up towards the front, I asked a guy sitting nearby just what he was going on about. Turns out this guy does this every so often and has problems.

Eventually, the guy I talked to got irritated since the strange fellow in question was constantly doing this thing while looking up at where the guy was. Honestly though, if I were in his shoes and some guy was going on about people who are murderers, rapists, druggies, and people with psychological problems while looking at me, I would be pissed off about it as well. Naturally, this is where the ranter moved on toward the front of the bus, since this guy was pretty angry with that to say the least.

So the ranter continues his banter at the front of the bus. Eventually, while reading my number theory text in a futile bid to study and understand more on that course, I hear “SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU’RE ANNOYING! LET ME DO MY WORK! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET OFF THE FUCKING BUS!”

Of course, the guy just screams back. I didn’t quite catch it because frankly, I just don’t care about crazy people all that much, but… just wow. Thank God someone had the nerve to tell the guy to shut up. Even better was the guy got off the bus at the next stop.

Thank God. I even joined in the small applause as he left because the guy was just that irritating.

Do you have any bus stories like this to share?