Subject: Pi Day

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:51:51 +0200

Hi,

Today happened to be PI-day.

Since I'm a firm believer in the "celebrate for any silly reason"
philosophy, I wonder if some of you would like to go out and do something
together tonight (yeah, I know its a short notice), and which city you think
is appropriate.

(Personally I prefer Tel-Aviv, but if there is a strong majority for
elsewhere - I'd drive).

Thanks,
Chen.

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Mar 2001 13:13:11 +0200

> Today happened to be PI-day.

Was it yesterday - 3.14? Who cares...

> (Personally I prefer Tel-Aviv, but if there is a strong majority for

Please post to the list if any decision is made. I will try to come
(always fun to see you guys), but this depends on my heavy workload.

Thanks,

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked] 
"... We work by wit, and not by witchcraft;
 And wit depends on dilatory time." [Shakespeare]

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 01:11:43 +0200

> Today happened to be PI-day.

Pi day? What the heck? Does it occur once ever 314 days? ;)

Should we write obfuscated-C (or whatever) programs that generate digits of
Pi to celebrate the occasion?

> together tonight (yeah, I know its a short notice), and which city you think

It appears that nothing came out of your good idea :(

Anyway, I just spent the evening of Pi-day (after spending the day working)
installing a modem (US Robotics 56K ISA Faxmodem) on my Linux machine. It
was excruciating - over 3 hours of trial and error, and dozens of wasted
phone calls. Never mind the strange commands I had to use like

isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf
setserial /dev/ttyS2 irq 3 port 0x3e8 autoconfig

and strange files I had to edit (isapnp.conf) or pppd/chat scripts I
had to edit. The worst thing is that I gave the modem some stupid "AT S7=20"
command at the start because it was in one script I used, and that caused
the modem to disconnect 20 seconds into the call (usually - in the middle
of the modem handshaking), and until I did "ATZ" by accident, I wasted
a couple of hours trying to figure out what on earth was wrong. I even
tryed a different phone line, a different computer on the same phone line (!),
arrggg!! There must have been a better way of spending Pi day ;)

Now I'll finally be able to take my computer to my apartment - until now
I only had a lousy winmodem that couldn't work with Linux at all, so
I had to put the machine in my parent's place and connect it to their home
network.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |        Friday, Mar 16 2001, 21 Adar 5761
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Open your arms to change, but don't let
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |go of your values.