Yesterday I had a thanksgiving party for the computer science faculty and staff. People who went: Dr. Vergara, Dr. Manalastas, Sir Olpoc, Sir Mike, Sir Maguyon, Ate Lisa, Ate Marivi, Reagan, Sir Mark, Ate Nanette, and Maan. We played Trivial Pursuit for a short while, but found the questions too America-centric. Taboo! was a lot of fun. Here's an excerpt:

Sir Maguyon (? Who was it?): Doc Mana is a... ?
People: Pervert! Sex maniac!
(Turns out the word was "sexist".)

Then we had grilled steak, salmon and sausages, with portabello mushrooms and vegetarian pizza for Doc Mana.

It was lots of fun.

Also, got invited to the faculty R&R this 2003.04.14 and 2003.04.15. Practically required to bring games along.

The deadline for applying to the graduate school of education in Ateneo is the second week of May, or 2003.05.05.

The anonymous person from 2003.02.26#6 contributes another puzzle link: http://www.claymath.org/Millenium_Prize_Problems/ . This one has heavier problems with big cash prizes.

This is the Nth bad sector that I've come across. It's starting to get a little annoying.

Susan Fox (SIGCSE) has a student double-majoring in CS and Psychology. From the message:

A part of her project is collecting anecdotes on personal experiences with gender stereotypes, primarily but not only from women in the field.

If you might have an anecdote to contribute, she has an online form to use at: http://www.enderton.com/maria/womeninCSrequest.html

- http://www.sniksnak.com/cathealth/howto10.html

On the compsci mailing list, Migz Paraz mentions the Hacking Society, a pretty cool idea.

I'd love a real-life space like this. Currently, I get this sort of stimulation in irc.freenode.net#emacs, which has a high concentration of - what else? - Emacs geeks who speak little LISP snippets like it was their native language.

It would be nice to have this happen in real-life; a space where we can pair-program on anything that comes along. All we really need is a space with computers (or bring your own!), a common time to meet, and a common desire to learn something new and hack on something cool.

I'm all for it.

Another cool project can be found at http://cards.sourceforge.net . It was started by Sam Watkins, one of my friends and an all-around nice guy. Check it out and add your card!

EmacsWiki:ProgrammingEffectivelyWithEmacs has a lot of productivity-boosting tips. In particular, it links to a Kuro5hin article about making Emacs stand up to Microsoft Visual Studyio 7.

Alan Shutko on debian-user@lists.debian.org links to http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/nealstephensonOS.html . Coooool. Well, as if the OrdoEmacs reference in Cryptonomicon wasn't a giveaway... NealStephenson is cool.

Cross-reference: PlannerMode#4