cat /proc/claus

Two weeks ago, I had this nasty ear infection. The doctor treating me said she wanted me to check with her again on a bi-monthly basis, because the left side of my nose cannals was too small or something like that. When I told her that I was going to Japan in 3 months and probably couldn’t commit to any long term treatments, she freaked out.

- You can’t travel by air! Your eardrums will rupture! We need to do something about it before going!
- But the trip is three months away…
- Doesn’t matter, you can’t fly in this condition. — she was adamant.

And then, just after leaving her office, I remembered that I was going to take a flight much earlier, for the Brazilian Congress for Bioinspired Computing just two weeks later.

Uh Oh.

While I made a mental note to visit her again before the trip, I completely forgot about that. I was feeling much better by the end of the first week of treatment. I just remembered the punctured eardrum threats the day of my trip.

Oh man, I was swallowing and moving my jaw like crazy as the plane started to taxi out, mildly amazed at the possibility of rivers of blood suddenly coming out of my ears. My throat was DRY, and the plane hadn’t even begun the take off yet.

As you can guess, nothing happened. I after all that exercise, I probably had the best pressurized ears of the whole cabin.

Other than this scare, the flight was one of my most enjoyable domestic flight ever. I used Azul Airlines which, surprisingly, does not have an English website (shame on them!). If you can navigate the Portuguese website, I recommend it.

I’m a scientist, and I’m okay
I code all night and I read all day

I run my tests, commit my changes
I go to the laboratory
I read my news on the Internet
And check the economy

I’m a scientist and I’m okay
I code all night and I read all day

I run my tests, I check stock prices
I talk to undergrads
I put on expensive clothing
And hang around in bars

I’m a scientist and I’m okay
I code all night and I read all day

I run my tests, I wear a suit
A top hat and a tie
I wish I’d been a Biz’man
Just like my classmates!

The internet can be a weird scary amazing awesome place.

Someone made a twitter bot called “InigoMontoya”. It scans twitter for the word “Inconceivable!”, and responds with Inigo’s catchphrase “I don’t think it means what you think it means”. If you talk back to the bot, it gives you a random line from the character. Lol

Checking the bot’s history, it is impressive the number of people who ends their twitter posts with “Inconceivable!”

So yesterday night I dropped a whole cup of coffee on my keyboard (and my whole desk, but never mind that). I desperately tried to dry it all out as fast as I could, but after I spending a ton of paper towels, the “t” and the “y” keys were still stuck (so that whenever I pressed “t” I got “rt” and whenever I pressed “y” I got “uy”).

My first tought was that maybe some sugar or coffee dried under those keys, binding their pressure sensors together. I tried as hard as I could to clean it under them, to no success. Then I decided that I would try to take the keyboard apart to fix it.

Bad mistake.

First of all, why does a freaking keyboard has SO MANY SCREWS? My keyboard had 16 (SIXTEEN!) screws attached to the lower side. Worse yet, even after I released all those screws, the keyboard would not come apart! The plastic was probably welded shut, and I could just pry at the borders. WTF?

Then I noticed something wonky — when I took off the screws, half of my keyboard stopped working — but it was not a consistent half: The enter and space keys were okay, as well as the number row and the function keys. But all the keys in between where non-responsive. As I started putting the screws back in place, the keys started responding again. Maybe the screws were just holding the sensor in place? It does not make much sense, externally accesible screws that would not give internal access, but would hold the internals of the keyboard in place >.< Of course, when I put it all back together, it was working even WORSE than before. Not only the t and y keys were stuck to the r and u keys, but the q key was stuck to the tab key, and the w key was stuck with the CAPS LOCK key (they are not even close together, WTF?) the o and p keys were stuck to [ and ], respectively. It made no sense at all.

So I guess I will have to buy another keyboard today. I don't know if I screwed my old keyboard for good, or if I just spread the water that was inside and created new and amazing connections, but I have enough work this week that I cannod afford to be without a computer until I figure out what went wrong

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

In other news, I just got this VIM cheat sheet from my laboratory’s mailing list. I should take the chance to properly learn how to use VIM, I guess. Hope it is useful to others too.

So I bought this book Monday night, thinking: “I need a book to read while I’m in the bus to the university”. I started reading it yesterday morning, on my way to school as planned. I couldn’t put it down after returning home, and by 11:30pm I finished it.

Fail.

At least, “The Boys From Brazil” was a pretty good book. I still have three more books I bought along with that one. Let’s see if I can control myself a bit better this time!