never fall into repetition

We didn't have a stick of furniture.

We would have picnics
in the living room.

We ate when we felt like it.
Stayed up all night when we wanted.

We vowed never to fall into routine,

to go to bed or wake up
at the same time.

Hidden Guides to CMU

Disclaimer: These are just a few things that I remembered from my time there. They helped me a lot, and I hope it will help others in the same way. Some of the stuff listed here are not strictly by the books, use at your own risk.

1. How to pwn every printer on Campus (unlimited print quota, yes, color as well)
   Required: access to a departmental unix terminal, (SCS: fish machines or Gates clusters, ECE: cluster machines in Hammershlag or Wean, etc..)
   Depending on which building of the printer you wish to print to, adjust according to department.
   Once you have a terminal window, issue the following command

   lpstat –v

   You will see a list of device names followed by lpd://something, this is the address of every lpd device in that department. For ece the server name starts with treekiller, scs server names start with color names, e.g. magenta. After that just use the lpd address and add it as an ordinary printer to your machine. For MacOSX select generic postscript drivers, and enable “Duplex” option if you intend to print on both sides (saves paper). Here’s the location of every printer owned by SCS: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~help/printing/printers_by_building.html

2. How to get a list of every email address in CMU
   Required: knowledge of a scripting language, AFS access (could be expanded to all schools that use AFS)
   Everyone’s andrew id is split into volumes on AFS, usr1, usr2, usr3… doing ls on /afs/andrew/usr10 will give you a list of all Andrew IDs under usr10, write a script to loop through /afs/andrew/usr*/* will give you every Andrew ID in CMU.
   finger andrewid
   Will give you something that looks like this:

   name: John Doe
   class: Master
   department: Computer Science
   login name: jdoe
   e-mail: jdoe@cmu.edu
   forwarded to: jdoe@gmail.com

   When that person is no longer with CMU, the record will show this phrase: (Email addressed to ‘jdoe@cmu.edu’ will not be delivered…

3. How to get into classes legally or illegally
   Required: A little bit of courage, willingness to take on a challenge, faith
   Typically for classes you do not have prereqs for, but feel compelled that you are advanced enough to be in that class, you can still get in. Harder for undergrad courses, easy for grad courses.

   For undergrad: You need approval from your dean, OLR will restrict you automatically
   For grad: You only need the professor’s approval, OLR place no restrictions during registration.

   Either way, you have to speak to the professor. If you know your stuff already, great, the guide does not really apply to you, if you don’t know the course material yet, but still want to take the course. Obtain past lecture notes/midterms/hw prior to the meeting. (How fast can you read and memorize phrases?) This could happen if the course uses blackboard, look for remnants of the course from the past under Courses tab in blackboard, or better solution find someone who took the course already and ask for it. If neither works, it gets a little tricky, e.g. 18731 was one such case for me. Wait until the professor distributes the syllabus, then Wikipedia about 50% of the topics. When speaking to the professor, use terms and phrases from your “research”, (works a lot better if you can name papers). He/she will not ask detailed questions since the meeting will be short. If all goes well, you will be admitted. If he/she says you need to take a placement quiz, agree to it. This is where it gets easier for grad courses but harder for undergrad. Placement tests do not matter to grad, but matters to undergrad. For grad wait long enough on the waitlist, you will get in. (Have a little faith) For undergrad, if you cannot pass the placement… tough luck.

4. How to get in touch with autolab servers
   Required: SWAG
   213 Autolab is being hosted in Intel Labs on the fourth floor of CIC, to find the machine ip address as well as host name do this from CMU subnet:
   ping autolab.cs.cmu.edu
   You will see the server reply happily. Furthermore, working from Intel Labs in CIC, you will be on LAN with the autolab server. You will find that a lot of the connections in Intel Labs are quite “open” in LAN. Land a research position there, and do some research.
5. How to quickly set or wipe privileges recursively to/from AFS directories for another user
   Required: AFS access
   Execute the following command verbatim in the directory you wish to perform set/wipe privs

   find –type d –exec fs sa {} andrewid access ‘;’

   Note: access is a subset of rlidwka, and chmod will fk your system up.

6. How to gain access to Gates after 6PM everyday without a CS badge
   Required: Patience and SWAG
   Land a research position with any professor who has a lab in gates. Looks good on your resume + you can abuse guide 1 from above as much as you want. To find professors in Gates, modify your script from Guide 2; look for Faculties with cs in their description or email address. Look them up, all CS professors have their own page. Once you land a position, express to them this message: “I am an workaholic, I like working late.” Cha-ching!
7. How to get unlimited texting/talk plan if you don’t already have one
   Required: SWAG
   Land a research in mobile* class. Preferably security class. CMU faculty have upwards of hundreds of android phones ready to give out to students doing research for them. Once you get the phone, express the following message to them: “I need this phone to be activated to experiment with packet capture”
8. How to bypass moss
   Required: internet connection and a terminal
   Moss is open to all now. To obtain a Moss account, send a mail message to moss@moss.stanford.edu. The body of the message should appear exactly as follows:

   registeruser
   mail username@domain

   where the last bit in italics is your email address.
   If you already have an account, the latest submission script can be downloaded here.

9. IRC chat with friends
   Required: terminal
   Download irssi on your terminal ready laptop, or simply log on to Unix Andrew. Start the client:

   irssi

   To join the CMU channel:

   /connect irc.freenode.net
   /join #CMU

   Switch #CMU to anything else for a random channel of your choice. To leave a channel type /leave

10. “Secret” passages/shortest paths
    Required: willingness to walk, unless you are the only asshole on campus with a segway
    From Neville to Campus: Go under Forbes bridge and enter CIC parking garage, take elevator to Lobby to goto Gates, take elevator to G1 for a hidden side exit for quick access to Doherty/Hammershlag
    From Donner to Wean: Steam tunnel entrance at Donner Ditch, exits at UC and Wean
    From ENS to Porter: Press the elevator button and wait for 1 second, if no show, take the underground hallway to Porter, if elevator shows up, take to 5^th floor and walk above ground to Porter.

Apple Patent Win to Be Reviewed by U.S. Agency – Bloomberg

Apple Patent Win to Be Reviewed by U.S. Agency – Bloomberg.

come on Apple… step up your game and be a little less anti-competitive for once.

i currently own an iphone4 and am trading it for a htc sensation tomorrow. hopefully this transaction will go through with no hassles.

measurement of success

if we can quantify success, what would be the standard unit of measurement? would it be the amount of money in your bank account? the number of partners you’ve had? how much “happiness” you’ve generated for yourself and others everyday? percentage of the world map you’ve covered? it is none of the above, in my opinion. success isn’t something that can be quantified, measured or displayed. it is not the illusions of grandeur suffered from a few company paid interview trips. it is not the sudden feeling of satisfaction and cockiness from a temp job during the summer. it is certainly not the number of posts you have on facebook boasting any such “accomplishments”. it is an item in your mind, that needs not be shown to the world, but for the world to recognize you by it.

forgive

done

practicallity

broken items can be either fixed or thrown away, coping with it is simply not practical. the importance of noticing that something is broken is also very understated. it is perhaps one of the few things one should develop in the process of growing up. with that said, my attention now goes to storage systems project 2.

son of adam

i hope and pray for a ray of light,

a sign of guidance,

for it’s my own version of adam and eve,

and in the midst of all the developments,

i have enough headaches and i don’t want no more.

gossip

i sincerely believe “live life, stop gossip” should be the slogan of everyone. clearly life offers other more interesting activities, other than divulging on information that are either unrelated to yourself or simply intrusive to others. i did not think i would say this one day, but privacy will prevail. i believe that assuming possession of what you do not own, maybe… just maybe wrong. i will reserve judgement on this matter for now, and go on pretending everything is still ok. let’s not forget the ultimate goal at the moment

- graduation.

戴爱玲 – 闭上眼睛爱

一肩之隔 咫尺天涯
用情太深 不可自拔
千瘡百孔 苦苦掙扎
若無其事 心亂如麻

好想抓緊你手掌
只恨自尊把我阻擋
就怕思念太瘋狂 會更傷

像夢一場 閉上眼睛愛到絕望
我還在等你說過的天堂
用回憶 去療傷 去眺望
去抵抗 拍打胸膛 的海浪

閉上眼睛愛到幻想
現實跪在我們面前投降
讓你我 越沮喪 越凝望
越流浪 越懂 要去的地方

像夢一場 閉上眼睛愛到倔強
我嘲笑著你說過的天堂
用回憶 去療傷 去眺望
去抵抗 拍打胸膛 的海浪

閉上眼睛愛到成長
現實從不在誰面前投降
讓你我 越沮喪 越凝望
越流浪 越懂 要去的地方

Waking Up by OneRepublic Album Review

this is just something i can sit and listen to, like the lyrics say “it’s gotta be good life…”

i think the whole band is simply amazing, not that many singer/bands these days write lyrics as good as they do.

yea that’s right, for me the songs aren’t just chords and melodies, the lyrics play a big part in my judgement of the song’s quality as well.

shout out to apologize, secrets, all the right moves, stop and stare, and last but not least, good life.