Geekery and school updates

I guess 90% of my posts could be titled that, couldn’t they?

School updates: the people who “flunked out” largely came to school today (I didn’t see them all, but a few people were sick anyway). To my knowledge, no one was brave enough to ask them what the story was. I am at a loss. **shrug** We have our technologies II written final on Thursday and practical check-offs later that day (MINE are later that day, anyway). We had quite a lot of time today to practice in lab, and I feel fairly confident. At least more than before. My fave teacher also supplied me with an ampule to replace the one that got broken…I was so carefully saving it, and blam! I’m pathetically grateful for such acts of kindness.

I have had a little time for some geekery, what with the long weekend and need for study breaks. First off, I would like to direct your attention to Miranda. I used to leave Gtalk and either Yahoo or Windows Live running in my taskbar to cover all my buds and their preferred method of gabbing, but it’s a bit cumbersome. With Miranda and some minor annoyances hooking Gtalk up to the Jabber network, there is now ONE program running with everybody on it and one status message to set! It supports other protocols too, in which I am uninterested because they are not about me, and you can customize it endlessly. I had some trouble that resolved with installing some SSL libraries to my Miranda directory and, counterintuitively, NOT clicking “Register new user” but rather assuming the thing will work. Also you have to use googlemail.com instead of gmail.com if you have an actual gmail address. I don’t know why, and I no longer ask questions. It’s a slick program.

Second, there is GoPingMe, which is really extremely geeky. You have to take the time to learn its esoteric lingo, but once you have you can set fabulously flexible reminders to do stuff. They can repeat and even be set to bother you until you tell them to knock it off. I’m guessing most people will not like the learning curve, but I’m finding it useful to have it Ping to-do’s to my gmail inbox and then just deleting them when I’m done. It can Ping your cell phone, too, and if you just CAN’T do the thing right then, you can, eg, reply with “1h” and it’ll re-Ping you in an hour. Very handy for the geekishly inclined. As I always say, if you want to complicate a simple thing by making it electronic and connected somehow to SMS, come sit by me!