24-Jan-2005

Yeah, I'm tired.  I haven't been getting the most sleep lately.  I am getting sleep, just not enough.  I've been thinking about too much stuff these days.

I'm waiting to hear back from someone I might be working for this summer, and it has been a week since I wrote him that e-mail.  I'm hoping he got it.  Gonna write another one later today.

I also need to get a car.  I found a nice Ford Mustang '98 with ok mileage and not too expensive, but chances are it was in an accedent or two based on the asking price for what it was equiped with.  My only requirements are a manual transmission and cruise control (for driving out to Denver this summer to work).  I'm also hoping it has good A/C, a CD player would be nice, but I can install that later if need be.  I'm not big on convertables, so that isn't a must.  I would take it though!  And I really don't care about make and model, I just prefere American cars and it has to look like something (I hate some of the new body designs that are coming out).  There goes a good ammout of my savings...

Plus, I'm getting more upset with ITS.  They disabled RDP from the labs to MY dorm (they said all dorms are disabled, but some people I know can do it to their dorms).  On top of that, the desktop I was using for data storage sort of quite the other day.  I can't figure out if it was processor, motherboard, or something else that was stupid.  I turned off "halt on errors" in the basic bios configuration, and when I restarted the machine, it wouldn't work.  I reset the bios to default, even pulled the little battery, but nothing worked.  Now I'm left with a half rate system that can't handle the 80 gig drive I had in the computer that quite.  I hate computers.  I plan to make my living off them, but some times i think about the song "If I Had A Hammer..." and smile to myself.  Forget about hammering out justice or any of those other things.  I'd hammer out a few comuters, and perhaps create a time machine so I could hammer a few people who started some of the trends in the industry.  Oh well... guess I'll just let "progress" be "progress."

That's all for now, folks.

20-Jan-2005

Currently Watching
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
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19-Jan-2005

So, it's been a week since I've updated.  I'm sitting here in the computer labs, class got out 30 minutes ago, but I'm working on some homework.  Not a lot has been happening that is worth talking about.  School is ok, not too many classes.  Keeping up with the readings is going to be hard, but that always is for me.  Work has been exciting.  It slowed down for a little while, and I was getting stuff done, but it was getting boring.  But not the last few days.  I've been working on a project that interrupted my work on the new ICE page, and that is coming along.  I'm almost done with it, and I’ve learned a few new techniques that I'll be using to code future sites.  I've been staying busy working on people's computers, but am going to have to cut back on that because I'm running out of personal time to get homework done.  I need to get on a regular schedule of working out.  I got my hair trimmed last night after doing some computer work for a friend (I like the barter system, saves on taxable income).    Well, the homework I was waiting to finish processing is done, so I’m off to make something of myself.   More to come…

11-Jan-2005

Currently Playing
Hoobastank
By Hoobastank
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6-Jan-2005

How in the world does Xanga not have a currently: Playing (Game) option to tag on as extras?  I want the world to know chances are if I'm posting, I just got done playing Half-Life 2.  That game is so great, even though it still doesn't render quite right.  I think it has something to do with DirectX 9b and my video drivers, which are 2 years old.  And when I tried to update my video drivers from Dell's support site, it crashed my video and I had to restart in safe mode and roll back to my original drivers - loving XP's recovery features, too bad you have to use them so much.  Video drivers tend to crash when you try to update them.  I think my computer is ready for a format and clean install of all drivers (updated ones).

Florida was great.  I got about half the computer stuff sorting done, and even fit in a small lan party and a half hour at the beach (which was very relaxing, and I only took a roll of film while I was there, I normally take more).  Too bad it was overcast, I need work on my tan.

I'm glad to be back in Nashville.  Going out to eat tonight .  I like being able to use the caffeteria being closed as an excuse to go out... and my fridge is empty, gave all the perishables to my sister before I left.  BTW, thanks to CIT for the Christmas gift I'm using to eat out tonight.

Well, I'm trying to keep these shorter.  Just one last thing:

While at home I got really depressed.  For two days I couldn't figure out why, but then it hit me: I'm an 18.5 year old who is a senior in college with a diceased dad and a mom who just got re-married, a brother who is married in another state, a sister who is about to graduate (and is currently dating and looking at places to work when she does graduate).  I have a few possibilities for jobs when I graduate, but nothing is for sure on those.  I'm going to graduate in a year and a half, am not/don't need to be dating, and don't know where I want to live or how God will use me to work what he has called me to.  I was basically terrified that I was this young and winding up to start out on my own in life.  But then I reallized that God has all of that taken care of.  He knows what is best for me and what the future holds, so I don't need to.  I realized that while I do have an effect on my future, I don't need to worry about it.  I can sit back and enjoy the ride we all call life.  I know some one who is taking care of me.  And that is enough to make me content.  I love God so much!!!

1-Jan-2005

Okay, so I'm a few days late.  The early New Year's Eve party Wednesday was a lot of fun, but it took me a while to recover sleep wise.  And I've been busy around here sorting out all Dad's computer stuff.  I sure wish he was here to clean it up.  I don't know what is worth saving and what is useless.  I've decided that software and books for Microsoft products that are older than 2000 are gonna get tossed.  I'm hanging on to the MSDN subscription, and that has a copy of Win 98 in it I can use, but other than that, I'm dumping all the old books and that stuff.  There is just too much to sort through properly.  I found a good ASP book, a book on Win XP Pro, some other things on networking and security...  but most of the stuff is old or duplicate (he bought a lot of HTML books the last few years, I use the web to look up all that stuff).  I sure miss how into computers he was.

I got Half Life 2 yesterday for $30.  As expected, it is an amazing game.  Now I just need to buy a gaming computer to go along with it.  My Inspiron 5100 meets minimum reqirements, and the graphics are great even on the low settings I have to use, but there is a rendering problem with my system settings, because all the people in the game show up as black shapes with no texture.  I found some online guides that tell you how to tweak your system and hardware settings, so I'm gonna take a few days back at school to back up my system and try to get it all running smoothly.  I would rather buy a good gaming system, but I don't have an extra grand to throw down right now.  Oh, btw, if you turn on and then off the flashlight in game (once you get one) that fixes the render problem, but the flashight itself doesn't actually render as a light source....  I can't wait to be a rich computer programmer some day.

I also got an external enclosure for the 120 GB harddrive I bought last semester.  It is very cool with a blue power light on one side, and an orange activity light on the other side.  Looks very cool in a dark room, and runs nice and fast.  I had problems getting the drive to show up at first, but the realized it wasn't a problem.  The guy I bought the drive from (I thought) said it was formatted and all, but I had to partition and format it.  So there were no actual problems.  Cool beans!

So, I know most of you won't read this far because I just spent three paragraphs completely losing you with computer talk.  But hey, you are gonna have to live with that from time to time.  I'm not the only computer geek out there, so I put up posts like this so they have something to read on their level technically.

Write ya lata all y'all