Home, Home, where I wanted to go

my day thusfar:
people. stuff. people. stuff.
Nothing else compares
(piano solo)

Perl helped me sign up for my physics class

I used the following perl script to check the page that showed the status of my Physics 1A discussion. If it finds certain words on the page indicating that any discussion has an open lecture or waitlist, it will e-mail whatever e-mail address it is given. I set the e-mail address to my cell phone's so I would receive a text message whenever there was an opening.

The script is currently fairly primitive in the sense that it checks every discussion and lecture for an opening in either the waitlist or the class itself. The script could fairly easily be modified for a different or more specific use.

I used a cron job to run the script on my web server every two minutes. One annoyance that this created was that until the opening was filled in the course I would continue receiving e-mails to my phone every two minutes. I had to turn off my phone during my Computer Science final because of that. Tonight the script finally proved itself useful after I successfully signed up for the physics course I needed.

#!/usr/bin/perl

#########################
# CHANGE THESE VARIABLES
#########################
$url = 'http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/detselect.asp?termsel=07W&subareasel=PHYSICS&idxcrs=0001A+++';
$email = "youremail@ucla.edu";
$subject = "Physics Opened";
$body = "The Physics 1A waitlist opened so go sign up.";
#########################

# Prints the page header
print "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n\n";

# Grabs the page content
use LWP::Simple;
$content = get $url;
die "Couldn't get $url" unless defined $content;

# Defines the words to look for on the page
$str_open = '<span style="color: rgb(0, 57, 0);">Open</span>';
$str_wait = '<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">W-List</span>';

# Checks to see if either word was found on the page and attempts to send the e-mail if the words were found
if($content =~ m/$str_open|$str_wait/i) {
unless(open (MAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t")) {
print "error.\n";
warn "Error starting sendmail: $!";
}
else {
print MAIL "From: $email\n";
print MAIL "To: $email\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL "$body\n\n";
close(MAIL) || warn "Error closing mail: $!";
print "Mail sent.\n";
}
}

(Insert Michael's comment about UCLA vs UCSD hehe)

Things aren't as pretty on the inside

In case no one noticed, I got a haircut. I watched some movies at the LAN and played Quake for about 5 minutes. Mmm boba. I've been to three Targets in two days. I need to finish up some Christmas things.

I have a hat. It fits on my head. Yay!

I walk along the city streets

I'm currently sitting in the main lobby of my building waiting for Paul, Jawon, and Taylor to drive down from SLO. They shouldn't be here for quite a while.

I did well on my Comp Sci final on Saturday and I think I did well on my Linear Algebra final but I bombed my Chem final. I'm glad to be done with the class though. Last night I saw a screening for the mid-season finale for Battlefield Galactica. I'd never seen the show before so I was a little lost. It seems like a pretty addicting show, given the enthusiasm of the people there.

I like the people and places in LA. There are an amazing amount of things to do and places to go and an even more amazing mix of people here. It seems like an abundance of every type of person is here.

My RA and RA2 just left to go out for the night. I'm all alone except for the people working at the front desk. Time to play music.

I'm not catching on fire today

The A Capella concert was awesome. Some of my favorite performances were One by Three Dog Night, Circle Of Life, Stand By Me by Ben E King, and I Want It That Way. Pulp Fiction was fun. There were actually quite a few things I hadn't noticed about the movie and I've seen it many times. I stayed up too late Monday morning. last night = holiday stockings. This is a weird sickness.

I think I remember the film

One overdue post coming up.

Thanksgiving was pretty cool. I saw Taylor for the first time since we left for school. I also saw Kyle for the first time since sometime before last summer. Taylor and I went Thanksgiving party hopping. We spent most of the day at his mom's house and then drove to Campland to see my dad and relatives. I saw Borat later that night. I hung out at Paul's on Friday and went to Rocky Friday night. I ate pho for dinner Saturday night with Michael, Jessica, Jeff and others. My mom came back from her vacation on Saturday night and I saw her for the first time when I ate breakfast with her Sunday morning. Stoy's parents drove me back to LA on Sunday and I slept for most of the day because I only had three hours of sleep before that.

The following week consisted of catching up in Math and getting ahead in Computer Science. There was a journey to the inside of the Chem building at night sometime in there. I like the 1337 room. I slept a lot Friday, probably because I needed to catch up on sleep. Friday night / Saturday morning was fun. I stayed up all night again. Some local high schoolers found me and I ended up giving them a tour of campus. I stayed up till 2pm to sign up for classes. I had company until then due to an unexpected yet not unpleasant invasion. I slept from 3pm to 3am with only a couple (or a few depending on who you ask) phone calls. I took NyQuil and slept again from 3am to 7am. Although my roommates aren't here I've had company and food. People == good. Sickness != good. Food == good. Sleep == good. I wish I didn't have to sleep but nature requires it. I think I'll go back to sleep now. I plan on seeing an A Capella group that a floormate is on tonight. Must sleep before that.