Friday, March 31, 2006

It seems that no matter how much I wanted to keep my study tool a secret, word got out and more people are asking me about it. I'm trying to dodge the issue of allowing them to use it this exam sitting, mostly because it's still in beta and I haven't tested the server issues yet. I'm not sure if it's the study solution for everybody, but the fact that people are interested is a good sign. If only I had the time right now to work on it some more.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Digg brought me to a site that talks about domains that are currently registered. Interesting read. Dealing with statistics all day, I found this graph particularly interesting. A classic lognormal graph with mean of 11.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

I've been trying to drink green tea in the morning, for obvious benefits, instead of the usual Mountain Dew. I gotta tell you, it seems to give me more energy in the morning and my brain feels like it's running smoother. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

My commute has recently changed. Before, I was in traffic a little longer and I depended on the traffic information updated every 10 minutes from a local radio station. I would take different roads depending on the congestion. Now, my commute isn't as dependent on congestion. So I've been thinking I can get my car MP3 player back up to specs and try to get into listening to podcasts downloaded the previous night. I'm a fan of the Revision3 family of content. I guess now I just have to find time to actually find and download content.

Monday, March 27, 2006

It's been a few days since the last post, in part because I've been quite busy, but mostly because nothing new has happened. I'll recap. Yesterday I studied, the day before I studied, then previous to that I'm sure I studied, and then ... well, you get the idea.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I presented a new application today at work that I built. I had about two weeks to incorporate a new application that captures data from an Excel workbook into a database, while also adding an account log feature to replace the current, primitive system. Luckily, I've built something very similar before. So I recycled the code and was done in a few hours. Naturally, my boss doesn't know this and assumes I was slaving away the entire two weeks. Ahh, efficiency.

Monday, March 20, 2006

I switched from the unlimited plan from Vonage to the 500 minute plan. I use my cell phone most of the time, so the home phone rarely gets used. I was looking back at the used minutes through Vonage, and it averaged 100 per month. This type of analysis is exactly why I like detailed (and hopefully online) event logging. I knew I didn't use a lot of minutes, but now I can justify going to the cheaper plan.

That's why I'm leaning towards using Alarm.com. They log events relating to your security in real-time, which is accessible over the internet. They almost market their product not as an intruder alarm that rarely gets used, but as a home monitoring solution that gets used everyday. All that's holding me back is the initial cost of new equipment.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

I got to go to another Wild hockey game tonight. Even though we lost, it is always fun to see live hockey. We were able to get some food and brews before and during the game. All around a fun night. This is how I would spend the other half of my days if I won the lottery.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

I've reconfigured the network in hopes to get the ADT security to work with Vonage. I put the Linksys VOIP router in front of the D-Link wireless router. This should have removed the extra layer that the security had to go through. I did the quick communications test, and still no go. I might try the extended 2 minute test, but that would require the alarm to sound for the entire time. I'm still considering Alarm.com.

Friday, March 17, 2006

It's St. Patrick's Day and guess what I did. Studied. I wonder if this blog will be still around when I'm done studying.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Back in high school, I experimented with lucid dreaming. I was never able to fully control my dreams often, but I was making progress. Although I was wasn't able to recognize my dream state, I was able to control my dream "oddities", in particular, flying.

I bring this up because there was a digg post about "hacking the mind" dealing with lucid dreaming. (I don't know if I'm a fan of the "hacking" buzz word. It seams to be everywhere.) This got be interested again, and I've begun the process of training myself to acknowledge the dream state. One part is to keep a dream journal to not only remember your dreams, but to find signs that you might be dreaming. However, I've been getting little sleep lately, and am so tired that my sleeps are very deep. I can't remember what I did the night before let alone what I did in my dreams.

Anyway, more to come on this "mind hack" when something happens.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Happy Pi Day! On 3/14 at 1:59:26, I can't remember what I did, but should have said a little pi prayer. Or something.

I want my Xbox back.

Monday, March 13, 2006

I read a very interesting article on the whole Matrix idea, written from a programmer's point of view. It's a unique twist to the trilogy. I doubt this is how the Wachowski brother's had it in their minds, but who knows. The article sure fits nicely with what we were presented in the movies.

Back at the home front, we probably got around 10 inches of snow. Wet, heavy snow. I think I cleared the driveway in under two hours. I've refused to get a snow blower for this long. I wonder how much longer I will hold out?

Sunday, March 12, 2006

I was a bit out of sync today; not quite feeling right. I studied for a while and went to another birthday party. I better get back in the groove before the week starts. I have a feeling that I'll be putting in a lot of hours, both work and studying.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Study in the morning, house projects in the evening. That's all I got.

Friday, March 10, 2006

What an adventurous day. It started off with a few morning brews. Karl and I then headed off to Llamma and actually talked to the Dali Llamma (he goes by Head Llamma, but soon I'll start calling him Dali Llamma from behind his back). Now, if you're involved in Xbox modding, you've probably heard of them. They were the first to mod the Xbox 360 controller, and they're right here in town. We talked to him for some time. I dropped off my two broken Xboxes in hopes he can chip at least one of them. They also have clear cases for both the Xbox and PSP. The workshop was as close to nirvana as you can get on Earth.
Mopping the drool from the floor as we left, we stumbled across one of those extremely cool restaurants that only locals know of, Barley John's. Excellent music, homebrewed beer, good food, friendly staff, relaxed atmosphere. I can't wait to go back.
The last thing we did on our travels was to ship back the bug infested Xbox. I still need to leave negative feedback for that fool.
Ending with a few cocktails back at the ranch, I thought of the day and drifted off to sleep. I think if I won the lottery, these are the days I would fill half my life with.

Thursday, March 9, 2006

I took tomorrow off to get a few things done, mostly Xbox related. I'll be with Karl most of the day, which usually means we get nothing productive done. We'll see ...

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

The new Xbox I got from eBay doesn't work. First there was a not in the box that said it doesn't work, and when I booted it up, it just froze. I opened it up to see if there were any visible problems on the motherboard. I was surprised by what I found: it was infested with bugs. Literally, bugs. It was quite disgusting. I took it to the garage and cleaned it out, attempted another boot, and it still hung. I'm obviously going to return it, but I'm out $35 for shipping. Not good.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

My new Xbox arrived today. Now to get its guts altered. Hmmm, I haven't taken a sick day in a while ... if it weren't for responsibility ...

Monday, March 6, 2006

I took some time tonight and played around with the configuration of Mandrake on the new server. Before I had to quit, I got Mobil (the Xbox downstairs) to recognize the server's root directory. The next step is to install another hard drive, configure that for sharing, and presto. It's slowly coming into place.

Sunday, March 5, 2006

Another fun day of baby gear shopping and studying. I swear Willy Wonka was working today.

Saturday, March 4, 2006

I went to a birthday party today, which meant I needed a birthday gift. A bunch of us went in on a used Xbox with a few games. It's only a stepping stone until we convince him to get it modded. I think everybody should have at least two.

I finally got my Xbox 360 sweatshirt from the Mountain Dew Every10Minutes promo. It's fun to forget about things that you ordered months ago.

Friday, March 3, 2006

I had a window of opportunity to rearrange the server closet to test my theory of ADT security and Vonage VOIP compatibility. But if it didn't work, I've found it often isn't an easy thing to simply "undo" the configuration. And if the internet went down for any length of time, I'd consider moving.

Thursday, March 2, 2006

I got my first taste of fraudulent charges this week. There were about a dozen charges on one credit card that clearly I didn't make. All of them were to "dating" sites and after talks with the fraud department, they appear to have been originated overseas. I have an account with True Credit and fortunately nothing appears out of the ordinary ... yet. Fortunately, credit card companies have a very efficient fraud department, so the process to stop this from happening again should be smooth. Frankly, I'm amazed this hasn't happened earlier, with the frequent online purchases and online bill payments.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

I've kinda known in the back of my head that the ADT security wasn't working since we got Vonage VOIP telephone service. The phone lines in the house are wired with no scheme in mind. There's parallels, daisy chains, directs ... pretty much a mess. Anyway, since I disconnected the land line, no telephone jacks work and the cordless phone base is sitting next to the VOIP router in the server closet. Well, the security is spliced into the phone lines near far from the server closet. After rewiring the security to the VOIP router, ADT still receives no signal. Calling them was no help, as they "don't support VOIP". I've read it's really a hit or miss whether it'll work or not. I do have one more trick up my sleeve. Currently, the VOIP box is behind the main router. I'm going to try putting it in front of it and see if that works. The only thing stopping me is that I need to go offline to make the proper connections, but the way the broadband flows in this house, there's never a time it's idle. Maybe I'll need to wake up at 2:00am...