Depuis hier, je lisais français dans mon ordinateur. C'est vraiment fantastique!
Finally, I am forcing myself to become acquainted with new French vocabulary - I changed the language on my computer to French. My desktop, GMail, OpenOffice, tout les programmes... en français.
It should be interesting to learn some new French vocabulary and have a little fun, too. Since I am running Ubuntu Linux on my laptop and in French, it should be fairly difficult for a typical person to understand what I am doing. :)
I also noticed in my GMail account the following message: Vous utilisez actuellement 42 Mo (1 %) de votre espace de 2897 Mo. Literally translated, the prompt states: You are actually using 42 Mo (1%) of your space of 2897 Mo. The only problem is... what is a "Mo"? So, I looked it up on Wikipedia.... mégaoctet, une unité de capacité de la mémoire des ordinateurs. As it turns out, an Mo is a megaoctet, which is essentially a Megabyte (or 1024*1024 bytes... or 1024*1024*8 bits = 8388608 bits). By definition an octet contains 8 bits. However, an octet is not necessarily equivalent to a byte. As Americans, we typically do not make the distinction between octets and bytes since bytes are commonly referred to being 8 bits, but in reality, bytes are sometimes referred to 6, 7, 9, or 10 bit values, especially when talking about telecommunications, protocols, etc. For example, often times there is a start/stop bit in serial communications, etc. So, the French are actually more precise in their memory specifications on GMail... they are talking about Megaoctets rather than Megabytes. Even though, we are aware that the numbers are equivalent (in modern day computing) 99.9% of the time. So... I found that a bit intriguing, but nevertheless, rather useless and probably not so interesting to the rest of the world. So I apologize if I bored you.
Anyways... school is off to a decent start, and week 2 is wrapping up rather nicely. Unfortunately, I am still awaiting the arrival of some of my textbooks, which is beginning to create difficulties... nothing for which I haven't been able to derive a solution. For example, today I was supposed to read pages 1-50 in a textbook that I have not yet received. So, I decided to go to the bookstore, read the selection, put the book back, and then head off to lunch. The best part about the whole scenario is that I cannot possibly feel the slightest amount of guilt since the bookstores rip you off on every purchase you make anyway. Other than all of this, there is truly not much else noteworthy happening at U of A.
I would also like to mention that today was the first day of my life where I sent flowers to a significant other. In this case, I obviously sent them to my wonderful girlfriend, Carla Pizzino, whom I love dearly. As of today, Carla and I have been dating for 35 months... nearly incomprehensible!!!
Bye for now.
Finally, I am forcing myself to become acquainted with new French vocabulary - I changed the language on my computer to French. My desktop, GMail, OpenOffice, tout les programmes... en français.
It should be interesting to learn some new French vocabulary and have a little fun, too. Since I am running Ubuntu Linux on my laptop and in French, it should be fairly difficult for a typical person to understand what I am doing. :)
I also noticed in my GMail account the following message: Vous utilisez actuellement 42 Mo (1 %) de votre espace de 2897 Mo. Literally translated, the prompt states: You are actually using 42 Mo (1%) of your space of 2897 Mo. The only problem is... what is a "Mo"? So, I looked it up on Wikipedia.... mégaoctet, une unité de capacité de la mémoire des ordinateurs. As it turns out, an Mo is a megaoctet, which is essentially a Megabyte (or 1024*1024 bytes... or 1024*1024*8 bits = 8388608 bits). By definition an octet contains 8 bits. However, an octet is not necessarily equivalent to a byte. As Americans, we typically do not make the distinction between octets and bytes since bytes are commonly referred to being 8 bits, but in reality, bytes are sometimes referred to 6, 7, 9, or 10 bit values, especially when talking about telecommunications, protocols, etc. For example, often times there is a start/stop bit in serial communications, etc. So, the French are actually more precise in their memory specifications on GMail... they are talking about Megaoctets rather than Megabytes. Even though, we are aware that the numbers are equivalent (in modern day computing) 99.9% of the time. So... I found that a bit intriguing, but nevertheless, rather useless and probably not so interesting to the rest of the world. So I apologize if I bored you.
Anyways... school is off to a decent start, and week 2 is wrapping up rather nicely. Unfortunately, I am still awaiting the arrival of some of my textbooks, which is beginning to create difficulties... nothing for which I haven't been able to derive a solution. For example, today I was supposed to read pages 1-50 in a textbook that I have not yet received. So, I decided to go to the bookstore, read the selection, put the book back, and then head off to lunch. The best part about the whole scenario is that I cannot possibly feel the slightest amount of guilt since the bookstores rip you off on every purchase you make anyway. Other than all of this, there is truly not much else noteworthy happening at U of A.
I would also like to mention that today was the first day of my life where I sent flowers to a significant other. In this case, I obviously sent them to my wonderful girlfriend, Carla Pizzino, whom I love dearly. As of today, Carla and I have been dating for 35 months... nearly incomprehensible!!!
Bye for now.
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