Compared to my typical Sunday, November 5, 2000 was eventful.
I woke up at about 10, showered and skipped over to the ENS to remove my old hard disk drive. I was meeting Winnie at 11:45 so at 11:44 I ran out ENS towards 26th.
Squirrels are very common at the University of Texas. Like birds avoiding cars, they seem intelligent enough to avoid collisions. Well, I must have met a squirrel with a hang-over. It saw me coming at a fairly good pace and moved under a park bench. Then at the last second it ran back towards my path. I gave it way to much credit and assumed it would either hurry in front of me or retreat to the bench. Instead it panicked and went under my foot! I was pretty scared and turned around hoping to see it terrified but okay. I was not prepared to see a squirrels body in spasms caused by an obviously fatally damaged nervous system. It's body flapped around for about 5 seconds before finding peace. Shocked I could do nothing except continue on.
The build of Winnie's computer went off with few problems. She was unexpectantly called into work for a couple hours but the wireless network had been established so I just chilled with her machine. She is getting internet access via a cable modem in a nearby apartment. Her computer is connected to the apartment by a Lucent IEEE 802.11 wireless network card that transfers up to 600kB/s with a respectable 2ms ping time.
The ride back to campus provided Winnie's dose of shock for the day. It was raining, the roads were slick, she only had one headlight. We were taking an exit with a sharp 270 degree turn when we went into an over-steering 180 degree spin. The car didn't even hit the curb but we were left facing the wrong direction. Once we got to campus I invited her in to calm down before going home. She received the treat of seeing my room at its lowest point of cleanliness of the entire semester. Her trip back was thankfully uneventful.