The Armchair Politician

I’m examining a few different options for getting to and around Georgia Tech’s campus. Driving is always a possibility, but parking permits run $575 for an entire year, which is quite steep. It also doesn’t afford me any convenience for getting around Atlanta; parking inside the city sucks. Alternatively, I’m considering taking MARTA, then riding a bike around campus.

So far it seems to be pretty good. It’s $40/mo for a MARTA monthly student pass, which works out to be about $100 less than the parking spot. It has some other fiscal advantages, too: I’m not going year-round, so I don’t have to pay for the months I won’t be there. And, the Clean Air Campaign is willing to pay $3/day for cleaner commuting, up to 90 days. Figuring thee classes a week, I could earn $115 or so — enough to basically pay for three months of MARTA fare.

Not to mention, there are a ton of side benefits. It’s a good bit of exercise, which should not only keep my gut in check, but wake me up and keep me focused before all my courses. It’s also convenient as hell for getting around Atlanta. What would be a thirty minute round-trip walk between places suddenly takes three both ways. And, well, it’s fun.

Only one problem: I need a bike. I bought one at a local bike store, but it ran almost $500, when you include the additional things I’d need: gloves, mounted water bottle, air pump, and a sturdy U-lock. Then, while riding around yesterday, my chain broke. Not good news for a new bicycle. I hoofed it about a mile and a half to the nearest bike shop I could find, and they repaired it. I bought a chain tool, which should allow me to fix it if this ever happens again, but that cost another $16. So, there’s not really a financial advantage in biking any more, but it does win over parking by convenience, in spades.

So, I don’t know. I’m going to try and get graduate housing next semester, but am not sure how lucky I’ll be. If I do, I’ll want to have a bike anyway (there’s no sense in using a car, at that point), so perhaps all this money will have been well-invested. I have thirty days to return the bike, if I’m not satisfied, but I’d still be $100 down the hole. Better than $500, though, I suppose

Yes, you can all hate me. Jessica and I have front row seats to see the MythBusters guys, Jamie and Adam, at Georgia Tech.

Neener. See you there!

I went to the orientation for graduate students at Georgia Tech today. The campus is incredibly neat; you hardly feel that you’re in the city.

I’m glad I finally got a lot of this stuff sorted out. Finally had my student account (and thus email, etc.) activated, so I can finally catch up on departmental stuff I’d missed so far. Which, apparently isn’t much because they’d forgotten to add me to the mailing list for incoming Computer Science graduate students. So far, I apparently missed the fact that I’ll need to go back Thursday and Friday for the CoC orientation. At least I found out in time, no?

They have a campus-wide wireless network, obviously. However, it can be slightly annoying to use for anyone with NetworkManager under Linux. Thankfully, NM is somewhat easily configured to connect seamlessly.

First, the Georgia Tech wireless ESSID is hidden. This normally isn’t a problem, but they have a parallell service being offered whose ESSID is broadcast. However, this is a pay-for service meant for campus visitors only. The problem is, if you’ve connected to it (which is somewhat necessary in order to find the ESSID and WEP key for LAWN, the service provided free for students), NetworkManager prioritizes this network over the one you truly want.

Not too tough to get around, just slightly annoying. To remove NetworkManager’s memory of the network, run the following command (which purges it from gconf).

gconftool --recursive-unset /system/networking/wireless/networks/FASTPASS

Now that that’s out of the way, we need to do a few more things. First, NetworkManager detects that a network with a hidden ESSID exists based on its AP MAC address. Since multiple access points cover the campus network, you’ll need to have all of these added to the network profile so it reliably detects the network all around campus. If all of these are not set, you’ll have to re-enter the ESSID and WEP key whenever you’re in an area of campus you haven’t been before. This will likely mean another trip to the pay-for network, where you can (for free) look up these values. But, you’ll have to purge the information from gconf again, with the command above.

My current list of access points is:

• 00:03:93:ED:EC:B8
• 00:0F:8F:3D:D7:81
• 00:0F:8F:3D:D8:31
• 00:0F:8F:3D:D9:D1
• 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:11
• 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:51
• 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:61
• 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:D1
• 00:0F:8F:40:7B:D1
• 00:0F:8F:40:7E:C1
• 00:0F:8F:40:7F:81
• 00:0F:8F:40:82:D1
• 00:11:20:4B:FB:01
• 00:11:20:4C:01:B1
• 00:11:20:52:C9:01
• 00:11:5C:A1:B2:A1
• 00:11:5C:A1:B4:11
• 00:11:5C:A1:B4:41
• 00:11:5C:A1:B4:81
• 00:11:5C:A1:B5:01
• 00:11:5C:A1:B5:11
• 00:11:5C:A1:B5:41
• 00:11:5C:A1:B5:D1
• 00:11:5C:A1:B5:F1
• 00:11:5C:A1:B6:11
• 00:11:5C:A1:BE:E1
• 00:11:5C:A1:BF:31
• 00:11:5C:A1:BF:41
• 00:11:5C:D4:7E:A1
• 00:13:5F:55:15:91
• 00:13:5F:55:17:61
• 00:13:5F:55:17:E1
• 00:13:5F:55:18:D1
• 00:13:5F:55:19:F1
• 00:13:5F:55:2C:A1
• 00:13:5F:55:34:31
• 00:13:5F:59:17:C0
• 00:13:5F:59:2C:80
• 00:13:7F:BB:40:21
• 00:13:7F:BB:41:A1
• 00:13:7F:BB:41:B1
• 00:13:7F:BB:41:D0
• 00:13:7F:BB:44:81
• 00:13:7F:BB:44:F1
• 00:13:7F:BB:45:71
• 00:13:7F:BB:45:B1
• 00:13:80:94:43:31
• 00:13:80:94:47:91
• 00:13:80:94:52:71
• 00:13:80:94:52:A1
• 00:13:80:94:5D:51
• 00:13:80:94:5E:51
• 00:13:80:94:5F:51
• 00:13:80:94:60:61
• 00:15:2B:42:50:81

I’ll (hopefully) add more as I come across them later on.

The gconf command to insert these is

gconftool --set /system/networking/wireless/networks/GTwireless/bssids -t list --list-type string "[00:13:5F:55:18:D1, 00:13:5F:55:19:F1, 00:13:5F:55:15:91, 00:13:7F:BB:40:21, 00:0F:8F:40:7E:C1, 00:0F:8F:3D:D7:81, 00:11:5C:A1:B5:D1, 00:11:5C:A1:BE:E1, 00:13:7F:BB:44:F1, 00:11:5C:A1:B6:11, 00:11:5C:A1:BF:41, 00:11:5C:A1:BF:31, 00:13:5F:55:34:31, 00:13:5F:55:17:61, 00:11:5C:A1:B5:01, 00:11:5C:A1:B2:A1, 00:0F:8F:3D:D8:31, 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:51, 00:13:80:94:60:61, 00:13:7F:BB:45:71, 00:13:7F:BB:45:B1, 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:61, 00:0F:8F:40:7B:D1, 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:D1, 00:13:7F:BB:41:D0, 00:11:5C:A1:B5:11, 00:0F:8F:40:7F:81, 00:11:5C:A1:B4:11, 00:0F:8F:3D:E4:11, 00:0F:8F:40:82:D1, 00:03:93:ED:EC:B8, 00:11:5C:A1:B5:41, 00:11:5C:A1:B5:F1, 00:11:5C:D4:7E:A1, 00:11:5C:A1:B4:81, 00:13:7F:BB:41:A1, 00:13:80:94:5E:51, 00:13:7F:BB:44:81, 00:13:80:94:43:31, 00:13:7F:BB:41:B1, 00:13:80:94:5F:51, 00:13:80:94:47:91, 00:15:2B:42:50:81, 00:11:20:4C:01:B1, 00:13:80:94:52:71, 00:11:20:52:C9:01, 00:13:5F:55:2C:A1, 00:13:5F:55:17:E1, 00:13:5F:59:2C:80, 00:13:5F:59:17:C0, 00:11:5C:A1:B4:41, 00:11:20:4B:FB:01, 00:13:80:94:5D:51, 00:0F:8F:3D:D9:D1, 00:13:80:94:52:A1]"

Note to any Georgia Tech staff reading my page: this will not give you campus access. It will only ensure that NetworkManager detects the wireless connection in the areas serviced by these access points.

We’re almost done. If you’ve connected to LAWN and fired up your web browser, you will find that you’re redirected to a login page, where you have to enter your student account name and password. This is easy enough to do, but we can automate it, so you never have to see this page again. Thankfully, the folks at Georgia Tech who set this system up were kind enough to give a few niceties to Linux users, and include an easy API over the command-line, through tools like curl or wget. I prefer wget, so the script I use to automate this login uses it. However, instructions to use cURL are on the LAWN information page.

NetworkManager lets you drop scripts into /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/ which get run whenever it brings up an interface. I’ve attached the script I wrote to automate this login process. It’s nothing complicated, but it does ensure that an exit status of 0 is set when access is granted or when you’re doing anything other than bringing up the Georgia Tech wireless network (i.e., it does nothing when you’re connecting to other networks), and it returns 1 upon failure. This is opposite from the return values they give you, but oh well.

Drop this script into /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/99gtwireless. Once you’ve done so, run

sudo chmod 700 /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/99gtwireless

This will allow it to be executed, and prevent it from being read by other users on the system. Second, replace the USERNAME and PASSWORD variables with your personal Georgia Tech student account information. Yes, these will be saved in plaintext on your hard drive. However, the earlier chmod to 700 should be sufficient in preventing normal users from accessing its contents. Make your own decision about the potential security implication of storing passwords on your hard drive. For me, I consider this relatively little risk. I’m the only user of my laptop, and the aforementioned chmod is enough to prevent casual users from stumbling upon it. But, to each his own.

How did I guess? Played Guild Wars until 5AM, and now I’m up at 10:00 trying to organize enouh of my brain cells into a task force to try and understand the last half-semester of Probability and Statistics.

On the upside, I still have my cheat sheet from the last Electronics test. The final is going to be about 80% on that, so I don’t need to make a new one. That gives me an extra hour or so in which I can flail about pointlessly, trying to study for my Statistics final.

I put off doing anything at all for finals today. Just didn’t feel like it. So now I sit here at 12:00AM trying to make a reasonable attempt at my Advanced Object Oriented Methods final. It’s due at 9. With any luck, I’ll be done at 1, get to bed, and be up at 9 tomorrow to do some studying and preparation for my Electronics and Statistics finals. On the other hand, I get the feeling I’m going to succumb to my throbbing id and play Guild Wars until I pass out sometime midmorning.

Speaking of which, Guild Wars is quite interesting. I like it; I really do. Let’s hope that that feeling persists.

Well, I did the assignment for my Advanced Object Oriented Methods class. It wasn’t too tough, but it took me until about 4AM before I mustered up the desire to do it. Let’s hope I can actually pass the final, now.

Well, I made a 114 out of 100 on my Modern Algebra take-home final. I knew I would do well, but I hadn’t suspected it would be that good. This is considering the fact that my average quiz score was around a 60. It was kind of funny, though. When I turned in the final, I asked if he could grade it with me there, so I saw what my mistakes were. He complied, and we went through it problem by problem. As we did, he pointed out where everyone else stepped on land mines, misunderstanding the problem or forgetting to do crucial parts, which kind of made me feel good about myself. Apparently I did just about everything exactly the way I should have; he only took off points for minor things. It was Dr. DeMaio (with whom I did my research project earlier), so I halfway expected him to nickel-and-dime me since he knows what I should be capable of.
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It looks like the research of Dr. DeMaio and myself is starting to pay off. As you may recall, we’re searching for prime numbers that lie within the domain of Stirling Numbers of the Second Kind. Essentially it is nothing more than a function with two parameters, and we are looking at the primality of the result for all combinations of values given as input to the function.
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