Ma Petite Chouchou

Ramblings... a little tech, a little french, a little random... enjoy
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Thursday, April 27, 2006
Summer Dreams
Well, it's coming. I got my internship!! I'll be living farther west than ever before (it's not that far) only 2 states west of the mississippi. I'm using craigslist to look for somewhere to live. So far no luck but waitin gfor 7 emails that I sent out. I'm sooooo excited.

Anyway tonight was fun. Very low key. Made a great dinner with 2 of my room mates had 2 beers and a thing and a half of wine that we got in key west over a wonderful spring break. We made turkey burgers, german potatoe salad and strawbery shortcake. So yummy. Nothing like getting tipsy with the roommates. I'm going to miss them next year. One just went out to the bars. I don't feel like going out. I think I'm going to put in a movie and veg out. One class left tomorrow at noon and then 4 finals. It's almost over.

I'll be moving 3hrs away for the summer. I'll be hopefully moving a week from Monday! One of my roommates will be helping me. I'll have to go home for a doctors appointment and then I start work the 15th I think. Still waiting for the official documentation after filling out everything online. I should be passing the background check.

Now off to pick a movie and then bed.
posted by mpcc @ 4/27/2006 11:05:00 PM   0 comments
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Back to Monday.....
Lets just say the end of the week and even middle was busy. Three tests later and it's almost over. I can't believe there is only 1 more week of classes and then finals week. And then everyone leaves... It's sad. I need to get our group wiki/blog up. It's going to be kind of a group forum in wiki form for everyone to leave information or just a quick catchup of their news. Much easier than calling 4-6 individual people. I'll post the setup and all when I do it.

I also need to get a wiki organized for a club I'm in. All cabinet information is getting moved to it. Should be a better way of organizing data and making new cabinets coming in a bit more organized.

I'll be so happy once school is over. It's very bitter sweet. I have a phone interview this week sometime. I hope it goes well. Could end up in NE. Never spent any time there, just driving through. As long as I can get out of this state I'll be happy just for the summer. And then I'll get here for a whole new semester.

I fixed a personal computer from a guy at work. Haven't figured out how much to charge him. I hate Windows ME. I ended up having to reformat the thing and reinstalling everything. It kept saying that it needed the driver install disks and would repeatedly install the drivers but it would just keep asking for it. I probably worked on the thing for 8-12 hrs all in all. No idea how much to charge at all. And I need to finish a take home test by 5pm tomorrow that I haven't started yet, I'm just going to do one of the questions I answered all the in class ones.

posted by mpcc @ 4/23/2006 11:22:00 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Tuesday.....
Two days down, 1 more left. I don't know what to eat for a very late dinner. I had a bowl of salad, a bowl of cottage cheese and a scoop of mashed potatoes. Now I'm stuck and still hungry. I'm trying out the Performancer Blogger extension in firefox. Just popped it up in the middle of homework.. .learning about adding/changing/and organizing linux users and groups..... we'll see how it works. I'm been using googles calendar for a few days. I like it. I was using 30boxes for like 3 months and I like it but it feels heavy. I really like googles minimalist approach. I like the dragging and dropping and I like the multiple calendars with color-coding. You could do colors in 30boxes but it was considered a tag and one more thing to type in while adding the event. You can also share certain calendars with people who have a calendar up (more likely than having a 30boxes acount). I'm hooked. I also have been playing around with google analytics. We had someone from Saudi Arabia and Koreo check out my clubs page. All kinds of neat info available.

Well hadn't planned on talking that much. Just clearing the mind to get down and do some account organization. Joy.
posted by mpcc @ 4/18/2006 09:17:00 PM   0 comments
Monday, April 17, 2006
Monday........
Monday. For me it means 5 hours of work, 3 hrs of class (including one that is 2hrs long) and a 1-2.5 hr meeting. My day is pretty filled to say the least.

I'm in a sorority. I'm not the usual type. Trust me. I got "talked into it" by a few friends from a different club I was active in. Decided to give it a try, it's a technical sorority for women in science and engineering. I like the idea of it. It's more achadmecially driven then social as many other sororities are. There are only 20 of us. Tonight was the most drama filled it's been. It's almost the reason I didn't join. I'm in classes with boys all day and my friends that I do hang out with are not girly girls. The huge drama genereally doesn't follow any of us. Tonight was sad and drama filled. Not going into details but it involved 4 crying girls and lots of discussion. (though one girl was having a end of year life crisis)

Tonight was the last meeting of the semester and I'm happy. I know i'll be ready for it again come fall but, a break is ok. I'm the webmaster! along with another club (which i'm getting a wiki ready for) and a site for a department at school.

It's been a weird night and now I get to start homework. Yippy!! 2.5 weeks left. Maybe I'll have a job?
posted by mpcc @ 4/17/2006 11:19:00 PM   0 comments
Friday, April 14, 2006
Late
I love the fact that I can go to my departments building and at 2am not only is it still open, but there are more than 2 people in it. Although after driving down our main bar strip I really wish I could have been at the bars instead.
posted by mpcc @ 4/14/2006 02:38:00 AM   0 comments
Thursday, April 13, 2006
TopCoder and Ray Kurzweil
I saw two seminars yesterday. Skipped two hours of work for them and now haven't decided if it was a well worth skipping (yes I did tell my boss ahead of time). I could have made $17 instead.

The first one was a talk by Ray Kurzweil for an Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Forum. I'm taking a Psych class based on HCI and our professor talks about him all the time -- especially at the start of school. He made him out to be very different than he appeared yesterday. I was thinking some very optimistic guy, not really having any type of technical background. Just kind of crazy. Boy was I wrong. Based on the general feeling I'd been getting from class I figured it would be a good entertaining talk. Nope, actually kind of slow and boring. Heard more about Biotechnology than I really wanted to. To me it didn't tie in well with the forum. I had to leave before it was over, about 55min into it so I'm not sure how it ended but... needless to say not impressed. He kept talking about "As I say in this or that book...." If I wanted to know what was in the book, I'd have read it and skipped the seminar.

I left early in order to get to the second seminar for the day done by topcoder.com. That one was really interesting. If you don't know anything about them their about page says it the best:
TopCoder is fast becoming the major league for programming competitions. TopCoder brings members together once a week to compete online (Single Round Match) and twice a year both online and on location (Tournaments). ...

Competitions provide an understanding of a person's capabilities through a demonstration of skill. What was lacking in the world of programming competitions was a format that offered immediate and objective scoring. The solution was the creation of a "Single Round Match".

In addition to regular Single Round Matches, TopCoder holds two major multiple-round, elimination tournaments each year. These tournaments span many weeks and include significant prize purses along three independent tracks of competition: algorithm, component design, and component development.
This site has more too About TopCoder . I can see the merit in it. I mean who doesn't want to be able to say how good they are or efficient? But at the same time the competitions (professional ones at least) are now including components of the actual program their corporate side business is really needing. The best code gets used in the program and the winner gets money and fame. It does take opensource to a whole new meaning but what happens if all companies start doing this. Will a computer programming become no longer a job but a hobby/life sport? What if companies start requiring employees to have a rank on topcoder before they can hire them?

There will be more later once I figure out what I think and compile it better in my head. I should get back to the homework I need to do but haven't started yet and the 20 page paper due Sat that isn't started either.

Long Live Procrastination!
posted by mpcc @ 4/13/2006 04:26:00 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Wow
It has definitely been awhile. The blog site that I moved to about a year ago is going down hill. It's had problems for awhile and is getting really slow! So time to come back here.
posted by mpcc @ 4/11/2006 05:51:00 PM   0 comments
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Name: mpcc
Home: Mid-West, United States
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