Replied: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 20:18:02 EDT
Replied: ""Ryan B. Caveney" <rcaveney@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> "
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Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 17:12:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Ryan B. Caveney" <rcaveney@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
To: nathanw@MIT.EDU
Subject: taking the plunge
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	Right.  I refuse to adjust to an environment which thinks that 9 
windows boxes in the basement is enough residential computing power for 
700 grad students.  Mail is on a UNIX system, but the only real 
connections to it are six mono xterminals in the physics building and a 
handful of SPARCs in the CS building, which I can't get into outside 
MF9-5.  Resnet costs $75/year (but voice mail is free), but dammit, it'll 
be worth it.  So I need to buy a computer, and then put an OS I can 
handle on it.  I would like to ask for your advice.
	Linux or NetBSD?  Note that I will have to maintain this entirely 
alone, as even Princeton IS refuses to help me outside windows/mac 
terrain.  How do I obtain them?  Suggestions for a manufacturer/system?  
My only current leanings are 32 MB RAM and CDROM...
Sorry to drop this on you.  I would appreciate any help you can offer.   
	How's the TA going?  I've told them here that I'd like to teach, 
but it won't be until next term at least, and even then it will probably 
be a section of freshman lab -- can you picture that?  :}  The really 
strange-sounding part is, they call a TA position an "Assistantship in 
Instruction": to my MIT-accustomed ears, it is most unnerving to tell an 
adminsitrator that I want to become an AI.  *grin*
	Physics classes here don't start until monday, so I'm being very 
bored here at the moment; trying to choose a bank has been particularly 
thrilling.  On the plus side, once things begin, it looks like my 
schedule has room for 5 physics classes and as many more in math, and I 
don't have to actually register until the 20th (math classes start 
tomorrow, to boot), so I have some shopping to do.  =)  Field theory and 
GR are the only definites... in math I'm leaning toward a geometry of 
manifolds class that will culminate in knot theory.  Let the games begin!
	The undergrads are a truly frightening bunch.  At MIT, every 
single one of them would belong to LCA or Alpha Phi.  They all do the 
stupid backwards-or-badly-bent baseball cap thing.  We have many 
international grad students (heavens be praised!), but they keep asking 
me and the other americans (who are generally of the slightly fried 
harmless weirdo type grad students are widely considered to be) to 
explain why the undergrads act so strangely.  This is gonna be a 
seriously worldview-damaging year.


--Ryan

