Rock on!

Three pieces of awesome news.  Also, I visited my sister in Davis today and had an awesome time with her.  Love ya, Sarah!
Awesome piece of news #1: Curtis is coming to town
My apartment-mate from undergrad, Curtis, is moving to SF.  Not only that, but he's moving a couple blocks from me.  The street is named Beulah, and we got into a conversation about how to pronounce it.  I instinctively pronounced it "B'oolah."  Curtis' new landlady said it should be pronounced "Byoolah."  Here's the actual deal:

Many people believe that Beulah is a biblical term for Israel or Jerusalem.  It's not.  It means bride.  Isiah says that in the future, Israel (or Jerusalem, not really clear) will be a bride, or Beulah.  It goes deeper.  One biblical term for "master" or "husband" is "baal."  Hebrew words are based on three-letter roots, and the root for that word is BAL.  ("A" is actually a blank vowel spaceholder.)  The most common conjugation for that is paal.  When you conjugate BAL using paal, it comes out as baal.  But if you use the huphal conjugation, it comes out as b'ulah!  Huphal conjugation is rare, but it's used for passive stuff.  In other words, a b'ulah is someone who has been mastered, or who has a master or a husband.  A wife.

So it turns out my instinctive pronunciation was correct.  It must be in my blood.  And to think I got B's in Hebrew class.

Awesome piece of news #2: New hamster

We haven't named him yet, but the front runner is Tucker.  He's a Special Siberian Dwarf Hamster.  We got him at the Petco in Davis.  He's only two or three months old.  He's been really nice and patient, and when we introduced him to the cage he was very calm.  He poked around, climbed upstairs and found the food dish, but didn't seem to be freaking out at all.  I think he's going to have a good time with us.

Awesome piece of news #3: I got a fancy Linux thing to work

Everyone has been talking about this fancy new thing called Compiz.  This is what it looks like.  It took a lot of work but I finally got my computer to do that.  Beats the shit out of Apple or even the new Windows (and they haven't even released it yet)!  Yet another computer victory.

I also managed to get my camera to work with linux.  All I had to do was change a setting on my camera, and then it was plug & play with linux.  Awesome.

OK, it's almost midnight and I have work in the morning.  Only one more week.

J<