Trapped at Berkeley

I think the time gap between this post and the last post is the longest such gap this blog has ever seen.

Many things have occurred since the last post, and most of them have been keeping me very busy. Here’s some of the important stuff:

I moved back into the dorms. This will be the first year where I haven’t lived in Bowles Hall and where I’ve had a roommate. While I have nothing against my current living conditions, I still wish I was able to return to Bowles Hall — I really miss the atmosphere and short walk to classes. As an aside, I was recently quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle about the changes in policy regarding my former dormitory.

My third year at UC Berkeley started, and I’m as busy as ever. I’m taking five upper-division courses, and they leave me with very little free time. I’m feeling a lot of pressure to become more efficient with my time. We’ll see how that goes…

Along with my friends Ryan and Dima, I’m currently trying to bring back the Berkeley GNU/Linux Users Group. This week, we held a speech by Richard M. Stallman, who turned out to be pretty interesting. Pictures are posted here.

I’m acting as a co-teacher/teaching assistant for CS 198: System Administration for the Web. It’s an interesting and educational experience to teach people. I’m having fun, and I think it’s a great way to develop my skills at presenting information.

I’ve also had some computer problems, and, as I type this post, I’m attempting to recover data from a broken backup. The one lesson that I’ll never forget from this experience is to always test my backups before going ahead with a possibly destructive task. Though nothing vital was lost, the information I did lose was of considerable value.