Cervantes is back online, at least for the time being.  I’m going to take this opportunity to write a few things.  So much has happened since my last post.

Obviously, the main thing is my internship.  I’m now almost three weeks in, and I’m loving every minute of it.  The campus is downright amazing, and the weather in Palo Alto is beautiful.  I’m getting to work exclusively in Linux, and using GTK+.   I’m really starting to like coding in C/C++ now that I’m doing something useful with it.  My first paycheck has come and gone, but on the upside, I’ll have a place to live for the rest of the month.

My Thinkpad T61p has been holding up great, and has handled everything I’ve thrown at it easily.  That said, there’ll soon be available upgrades that I could consider, including 8GB of RAM and a Quad Core 2.5GHz CPU.  But at around $1000 each, I don’t think I’ll be getting either any time soon.  But, I can dream.

In the world of tech, some other goodies have been announced.  One of these is the ASUS Eee PC 901 and 1000, the newest in ASUS’s line of subnotebooks, at 9 and 10 inches, respectively.  The new generation of Eees uses Intel’s new Atom platform, including a CPU clocked at 1.6GHz, a notable improvement over the previous Celeron processor.  The new notebooks are also rated for up to nearly 8 hours of battery life.  A few days after the Eee announcement came the Canonical’s unveiling of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a custom version of Ubuntu designed for small, Atom based netbooks like the Eee.  I’m really wanting to try it out on an Eee PC 1000.

Also, a few short days ago, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination after the final two primaries, meaning he’ll be going up John McCain in the fall.  I’m very excited about this, as Obama is the first candidate in my short lifetime that I’ve actually been able to get excited about, and I’m hoping that this campaign will ultimately change the way the political system works in this country.