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| Thursday, December 6, 2007 - Where's My Motivation? | |||||
| Posted 11:59 PM (MST) | |||||
| Ahh,
yet another irregularly scheduled blog update! The end of the semester
is near! Only finals stand in my way now. So, of course, my motivation
to do anything school-related is completely gone. Especially drained
with the semester being so hard, my brain is wandering in greener
pastures. These past few weeks have been the two least productive
weeks in my entire life. I mean, I'm so burned out that I may be reduced
to a brain-dead lump of flesh after I finish finals! In regards to issues of motivation, there's a site out there for all of you cynics, tricksters, and downers out there. Some of you might be familiar with the site I'm about to link to and/or the products it parodies. Have you ever seen one of those motivational posters with a pretty picture and a catchy saying? If you found yourself reaching for a spoon to gag yourself with, then you'll enjoy these "de-motivational" designs: Despair Inc. (link). I personally find them hilarious and a few of them quite true. The "challenges" one is pretty much the story of my life right now. Heh, it even says that it's perfect for the "disaffected college student." Anyway, I'll be off for the weekend tomorrow, so I'll post again during finals. Until then, dear readers, until then... |
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| Thursday, November 8, 2007 - Pigs Are Flying! Hell Froze Over! | |||||
| Posted 11:38 PM (MST) | |||||
| ...I
actually updated my blog. Crazy, huh? I swear, when life comes at
you, it pulls no punches. I've been busy lately (yes I know, I've
been busy for the past few months! So sue me!). However, right now,
I've got that whole "maybe I can just do nothing until Thanksgiving
and then pray" attitude going on. It's not beneficial and it
sure doesn't help me out, but I am beyond burnt out right about now.
If I ever have to look at number theory or DNA sequences again, I'm
gonna scream. It doesn't help that my car is deciding to strike, much
like the Writers' Guild. I had to open the hood and mess around today
to get the darn thing started. I also scraped the heck outta my right
pinky knuckle doing so... I'm not too gifted when it comes to avoiding
sharp, pointy things. Heck, I was standing there getting gas while
I was bleeding on the nozzle. Speaking of it, what does everyone think about the WGA (Writers' Guild of America) strike? What they're doing is quite noble, but it sucks for the rest of us. I'm all for writers getting more revenue per unit as well as having them benefit from long and short term sales of "new media" like internet streaming. Just... just give me my TV, dang it! No new Simpsons, or Family Guy, plus 24 is cancelled this season (or so it's being reported). However, we've all gotta understand why this strike is happening. Not every writer makes loads of money like Matt Groening or Seth MacFarlane. A lot of writers make about as much as the everday American, even those who work on major shows like Prison Break, Bones, Law and Order, and Lost. Studios are refusing to give them revenue for longterm sales or new media sales, so when they are done with one show and looking for another to work on, they have no incoming revenue. For a job that sporadic, long term revenue is a Godsend and they have every right to make the studios pay up. As it is, they get about 4-6 cents (not exactly sure which it is, but it's in that range) of a DVD sale where the studios make about a $12 profit. It's ridiculous. That ultra-famous and wealthy writers are sticking up for the little people is great. They were seeing problems and they knew how to fix 'em. A bunch of writers, including many famous ones, picketed outside of Disney Studios today. Good for them. Though hopefully the studios get the point sooner rather than later and make an agreement with the striking writers. A network can only survive on re-runs for so long, you know. Moving on, I've got some content that I think people will enjoy. First off, I added "Death Note" to the television list on the sidebar. It's an excellent series that's got great artwork, smooth animation, and a very engaging storyline. It's one of those series that actually makes you think. For the interested, it airs in the [adult swim] block of Cartoon Network at 1 AM (MST) every Saturday. I also added a video games section to the sidebar. From there you can see my Xbox Live Gamercard and you can also check out my Halo 3 Service Record & File Share. Lastly, but also great, is a website that covers the stories of a team of pranksters that went to NMT back in the early '90s. They called themselves "Stealth Force Beta." Here's a link to their site: (link). After reading that, I was inspired. Who wouldn't want to do that kind of stuff! P.S: One last thing! I have put the beginnings of an ongoing story on a website under this domain. I would like it to go on to become a full-fledged novel, but we'll see how that goes! Basically, the version you see now on the site is the most current version, but I'm planning heavy renovation for the story already! I'll be the first to admit that right now, there are some cliches and some parts that don't work that well, but I'm posting it anyway. If you're interested, the title of the story is "Virus 2050" and you can find it here: (link). That's all for today, I promise! Really long post, eh? |
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| Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - It's Greek to Me! | |||||
| Posted 11:50 PM (MDT) | |||||
| Been
a while, eh? I had no idea how crazy this semester was going to get!
Wow! We're almost at midsemester, but there's one milestone I missed
posting for. September 26th was the one year anniversary of this blog.
Halo 3 was released the day before that! (And it's quite fun!) Hard
to believe that you've been following my ramblings for a whole year,
huh? Anyway, I have two bits of news, one being positive and one being left to personal opinion. Wondering what today's blog title means? It means that New Mexico Tech is dipping a bit into Greek culture. That's right, a fraternity is being set up at NMT. This fraternity happens to be Kappa Sigma. I checked their website and Wikipedia entry, and it seems they have a great reputation (academic excellence, community service, no hazing, etc.). I, however, am not interested. Most Tech students just kind of blankly stared and walked away from their kiosk in Fidel today. For a school that currently only has professional fraternities (ex. Beta Beta Beta for Biology majors), I don't know if this will be a good fit. I could be wrong, though. West Hall feels like a frat house already anyway! :P It might not come to fruition, but I'm really not for it. I enjoy the open structure here at Tech. Creating more lines of separation for (mostly) socially inept students is not very productive. Also, Tech has been able to maintain a professional attitude around campus and I'd hate to see that disappear with frat antics. I'm not saying all frats are bad, but fraternities and Tech really don't seem to mix well. Plus, if they wanted housing, it'd be quite tough to find, or take a while to set up. Other than that, the good news is that I somehow scored a 95 on my CS project, even though the last part was quite broken. But, hey, I'm not complaining! |
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| Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - Guerilla Storm Tactics | |||||
| Posted 10:17 PM (MDT) | |||||
| I
still can't quite get why Socorro's storms are so much stronger than
the ones in Albuquerque. I mean, the two cities are only seventy or
so miles apart. Today we had a really fast storm fly over us. At first,
I heard thunder, even though it was sunny outside. I thought that
was pretty weird. I looked out of the door and lightning was striking
sunlit ground. Five minutes later, it started raining. Five minutes
after that, it started pouring and the winds whipped up to about 40-50
mph. I could barely keep my door in place while holding it open to
see what the heck was going on! It was raining nearly horizontally
in sheets. It looked like a mini-hurricane out there! That lasted
for a whole five minutes. It tapered off within five additional minutes
and within ten minutes, it was sunny again. It was bizarre. The ground
is soaked here and there's standing water everywhere. The fact that
it only took fifteen minutes to generate so much water is amazing. At one point, the lights flickered as well. The strange part about the electricity browning out was that the direction of the ground wind seemingly shifted at about the same time. Maybe it put a lot of stress on the wires switching directions like that. Anyway, it was an interesting event. It's nice to have distractions like that every once in a while, especially such grandiose distractions! |
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| Monday, September 10, 2007 - Progression | |||||
| Posted 10:32 PM (MDT) | |||||
| The
behavior of the human brain, namely in recognition and remembrance
of surroundings, is strangely singular. When residing in one place,
all other previous places we've been become static images in our minds,
whereas the place we currently are seems dynamic. In other words,
when I'm here at Tech, it feels like I haven't been home in a very
long time. When I'm at home, it feels like I haven't been at Tech
in a very long time. I thought my mind would be able to get used to
being at two distinct, different places in rapid succession. It's
been a whole year and this bimodularity still won't activate. But,
that's okay, I guess. As long as Friday looms on the horizon, I can
strive for it. Anyway, the coming months are looking great. Fall semester is always fun because of the events that go on in these fall months. It began last Friday with the opening of the State Fair. The fun comes with the fact that all of these events happen in rapid succession. There's always something fun coming within a month. Two weeks after the State Fair, the Balloon Fiesta comes. Three weeks after that, it's Halloween. Three more weeks and it's Thanksgiving. A month after that, it's Christmas and New Years. There's always a milestone event to hold on to and countdown to. To be frank, the event I'm looking forward to the most is the Balloon Fiesta. It's always so much fun going out in the frigid cold and warming up with hot chocolate and a bratwurst while the sun slowly comes up and warms you. The mass ascensions are always so incredibly beautiful. Until the next update, just assume that I'm slowly scheming towards Friday, waiting for the day where I can comfortably drive back and forth with windows up, and dreaming of hot air balloons! |
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| Thursday, September 6, 2007 - Outside in Pajamas | |||||
| Posted 11:03 PM (MDT) | |||||
| So,
you know how I was complaining about lack of sleep yesterday? Well,
I got fourteen hours of sleep last night! Went to sleep at midnight
and got up at 2:00 this afternoon. I felt great today! Anyway, five
minutes after waking up at 2:00, the fire alarm goes off outside.
Once again, it takes me a while to figure out where the sound is coming
from, so I opened the door and sure enough, the little white light
on the fire alarm box was flashing. There was only one little problem:
David was in the shower. He couldn't hear the alarm or me saying,
"Hey, David!" So, I waited for the RA to come around. I
told him what was going on and he looked back at the other RA accompanying
him. After a few seconds of deliberation, he said flatly, "Meh.
Let him burn. Come on out yourself, though." Of course, I just
crawled out of bed, so out I went, wearing pajamas and untied tennis
shoes, sporting massive bed hair, and squinting like I was looking
straight at the sun. A few minutes later, here comes David, with clothes thrown on and sopping wet hair. So there we are, standing out in the 2 pm sun looking like two freakazoids while the fire alarm wails away. We got back inside after about ten minutes, but facilities management totally spaced on the whole thing, so the alarm didn't cut off for another fifteen minutes. The whole event was... interesting to say the least. Oh, and I have another bit of technology news, related to yesterday's iPhone fiasco. Anyone who bought an iPhone up until today will receive a $100 voucher for any Apple product. While I applaud Apple for doing that, I still think they should've just given a $100 rebate. Not every iPhone purchaser is into other Apple products. Oh, and iTunes 7.4 came out early today. Can't wait to visit the State Fair this weekend. Fun stuff! |
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| Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - Another Year Older | |||||
| Posted 11:18 PM (MDT) | |||||
| Well,
it looks like I'm another year older. Time passes by so fast! My birthday
here at Tech was actually pretty miserable, but whatever. I had tons
of work to do and I'm still not done! It didn't help that I couldn't
sleep at all last night and got a grand total of about three hours'
sleep. I felt like a walking birthday zombie! Enough about me, here's
some technology news for folks who aren't exactly hip to the tech
groove: As a few of you know, Apple released the new sixth generation iPods today. The iPod Shuffle is exactly the same, the iPod Nano is now a fat little pocket beast with a 320x240 widescreen LCD display, the standard iPod has been renamed the iPod Classic and is now only available in 80 or 160 GB models, and the iPod Touch debuted. The iPod Touch holds 8 - 16 GB of stuff and looks exactly like the iPhone but slimmer. Well, I guess you could say that the new iPod Touch is the iPhone without telephone capabilities, pretty much. The iPhone just dropped $200 and Apple killed the 4 GB model. Now your only choice is the 8 GB iPhone for $399. Still exorbitant, if you ask me. All of the early adopters pretty much got a $200 slap to the face by Apple. They also opened iTunes Wi-Fi, which lets users buy music from the iTunes Store on the new iPod Touch and the iPhone. Also, Microsoft finalized its new web enrichment APIs and released them. The program is known as Microsoft Silverlight. Oh, and they also announced Moonlight for all of you Linux users out there. That means Silverlight will be supported on all major platforms, which suits the technology well. I've tinkered around with it and it seems pretty nice. Kudos to the Silverlight team. For all of you who didn't understand that last bit, Silverlight was designed for displaying rich media content on websites. Some examples would be playing a video file in the webpage, animating things within the page, and just generally making a website seem more alive, so to speak. |
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| Monday, August 27, 2007 - Insomnia Builds Character | |||||
| Posted 11:59 PM (MDT) | |||||
| For
some reason, it seems that I just can't go to sleep here at Tech!
It's the same dorm, the same bed, etc! Over the weekend, I was able
to go to sleep right away at home. Now that I'm back here for the
week, the insomnia has returned. I guess I'll just have to get reacquainted
with my bed or something. I didn't get much sleep last night and when
I got up this morning, I thought I'd make myself feel better by taking
a nice, hot shower. One problem: the bathroom door was locked... from
the inside. So I was tired and dirty all day! Also, on Wednesday Chartwells is holding a big barbeque outside on the front lawn instead of serving inside. It sounds interesting at the very least, so I'll give it a try. In case you haven't noticed by now, something on the site is different. By popular demand (e.g. people calling me to find out my schedule for the day or calling while I'm in class... you know who you are...), this site now shows my schedule on a daily basis. It updates by itself, I don't even have to touch the code. I wrote it using some JavaScript, which was exactly like C, to my amazement. Also, the pane can be hidden and restored via the little Show/Hide button. This technique uses both JavaScript and cookies, so if your security settings are set really high, it may not work as intended. Although, both Firefox and Internet Explorer work fine on default settings. I've also added a favicon (favorites icon). |
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| Thursday, August 23, 2007 - And the Thunder Rolls | |||||
| Posted 8:30 PM (MDT) | |||||
| Socorro
would be a great location to film a commercial for Morton salt. Their
motto rings true here: "When it rains, it pours." We had
one heck of a storm about an hour ago. It poured rain and put on a
very nice light show. We looked out of our dorm and watched strike
after strike of lighting come crashing to the ground in brilliant
white streaks. Some were so powerfully charged that you could see
purple and blue energy on the outside of the bright white interior.
One strike was extremely loud and made the electricity turn off for
a good five seconds. Overall, it was another Socorro thunderstorm.
I can't say I've ever seen anything comparable up in Albuquerque. Other than that, things are going well. All of my classes seem just fine, except CS 221 might be a bit of a challenge. The instructor listed on BanWeb was James Holten. Our real instructor is Qingzhong Liu. The CS chairperson came in and explained to us that Mr. Liu was teaching this class to brush up on his "conversational English skills." Wonderful. He is still in grad school here and has a very hard time with English. Thank God for PowerPoint. He's a nice guy, don't get me wrong. Heck, he even put a good sized curve on the grading system, but he's just so hard to understand! Oh well, computer science is my strong suit after all. Well, everyone in Albuquerque, I'll see you tomorrow. Peace! |
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| Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - Year Two, Begin! | |||||
| Posted 10:10 PM (MDT) | |||||
| Hello
everyone! It's time once more for school, and you know what that means:
more blogs! Today was my first day of classes and it wasn't too bad.
3D Modeling is going to be a doozy! From what I've seen, it's not
going to be easy! Tomorrow, I have Discrete Math, Computer Systems
Organization, General Physics, and General Biology. Once again, my
classes start at 8am. Oh joy. However, this time around, all of my
classes are one after the other, so I can block my time a lot easier.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have from noon on to myself.
On Tuesdays, just forget about it! On Thursdays, I have before 2 pm
and after 4:30 pm. Not too shabby. Moving in went just fine, except for one detail: My brand new 22" LCD monitor that I've only had for a month got damaged. I put a T-shirt over it to protect it from the sun, but when I opened my windows because I was roasting, it blew a corner of the shirt off and exposed the monitor. So now, most of the right hand side of the screen is slightly discolored brown. $250 down the drain... great. Oh, and the bookstore's credit/debit machines are down, so I couldn't get my books (I know I could've gone the ATM route, but that's just too messy for me). So, I'm a bit cheesed off at the moment. In case you're wondering, the food still stinks as well. But, I pretty much took that as a given. Everything else is fine; I just need to mentally prepare myself! In my mind, it's still summer! I figure that after a few days and few assignments I'll feel ready, though. It always happens like that. So, things are mostly all right and it's time to get started! Let sophomore year begin! P.S. - I refreshed the sidebar content. I have some new music, TV shows, movies, and internet humor links up. Feel free to browse. |
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