Ma Petite Chouchou

Starcraft 2

2007-05-26T20:22:00.001-05:00

OMG http://www.starcraft2.com/ it's time to dust off my original and start playing again!

October perhaps?

UPDATE: It's been awhile but almost 2009 and still nothing? Holding off till the next year.. must we?

oh my

2007-04-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

it's been forever! I realized I've had a blog in one form or another since 2004! And I'm still the same, can't seem to keep up with it all the time. Basically not much has changed. I graduate in 3 weeks! I need a job.

Right now I'm checking out 53 CSS tutorials anyone can do , the French version of the office: le bureau , and dress hunting for my friends wedding. I'm partial to this one. I love de.lic.us new addon for firefox. I think I'm going to port over this blog to my own wordpress one. Blogger hasn't changed and still sucks1

How to explain programming to a non programmer?

2006-11-21T21:58:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine asked me a strange question the other day. First a little background on her. She just graduated in environmental science and is currently working on models in Arc View. She runs these models and has to figure out how to work them. She asked me if I could recommend something on the basics of programming. Nothing in depth just enough so she could understand the models but she doesn't need to actually create them. Anyone have good resources, sites, or books you could recommend? She has no experience with computers other than your everyday use but I like to think I may have rubbed off on her after living together for 2 years.

Here are the one's I've found so far:
I think this one is the best: How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Computing and Programming

What is Programming?
BASICS OF PROGRAMMING
Software Engineering for Internet Applications

Graduation plans

2006-11-05T23:15:00.000-06:00

I don't really have these yet. I'm not sure what I want to do. Thank god I have till May. I know for certain I don't want a cubicle job. I did that this summer and, if I haven't said it enough, I don't have the attention span for cubicles. I need to tell the company that but not entirely sure how to. My parents have offered to let me stay with them while I'm looking this summer instead of spending next semester doing that. Just knowing that they're ok with that helps stress-wise. I mean that was probably the most stressful thing for my roommates last year. I also have plenty of couches I can crash on if need be, and living with my parents becomes too much (though by then I should just find a job).

As far as locations go I'm looking for a large city. I plan on looking at Chicago, Seattle/Portland area, DC, and Atlanta. Other places are also a possibility but those are the cities I'm actively going to focus on. What I want to do? I don't know. I liked doing the design process this summer but I didn't like the fact that it was in JAVA and a desktop app. Seemed limiting and I just didn't like the outcome. I feel they should scrap it. I'll probably focus on Consulting Firms. Smaller and more diverse in what they offer sounds good.

Anyone want to offer me a job? I enjoy learning new things, have a great work ethic and great references. Send an email to mpchouchou@gmail.com with the subject Real Job Opportunity! ;)

Well that is my pathetic little plug for myself. I'm done.

gotAPI.com layout update

2006-11-03T08:55:00.000-06:00

gotAPI.com is a great site for programming references. It has recently updated its layout for an easier way to search, including suggestions and they have added a few new references. I used this all summer. The old layout wasn't bad just looked dated. This new one looks fresh and simple. It includes web design languages: html, css, actionscript, and other languages such as ruby on rails, java, c++, mysql and more.

Feeds and updating tags

2006-10-21T15:40:00.000-05:00

I've been going through my old posts and adding tags. I just realized that it is republishing all the old posts to the feedburner feed. I'm going to probably turn off that off for a day so I can go through and finish all that. I've also been adding some of my older posts that I used to have on xanga and post dating them. Wasn't aware that those were going through too. Sorry about that because those are mostly personal. Blogger needs to add an option to make individual posts private.

Advertising

2006-10-21T15:24:00.000-05:00

I've decieded I don't like cubical jobs. This summer I spent 8-9 hours a day in my cubicle working on only one project, mostly coding and documentation. I liked what I was doing just not the atmosphere. Since I didn't like that I'm looking for other means of an income for once I graduate. If you look over to my right hand side bar you'll find a new decal for the performancing advertising network. If you'd like to advertise here please click that link! Otherwise just keep coming back to check out my blog!

Vista on my Laptop

2006-10-17T23:47:00.000-05:00

I was brave and decided to see how Vista went on my laptop. It works great. In a week or so I'll see if it's still as fast as it is right now. I'm hoping so, but XP was getting slow fast on me lately so we shall see. It was basically a really easy install. Didn't have to visit the dell site once.

The only problem I ran into was getting my wireless card to work. I never got my new Belkin (f5d8011) one to work. Couldn't find any generic drivers for it and the XP one's didn't work. (any ideas out there for me?) I have an older netgear (wg511T) finally worked after I used a hint off another forum that talked about a guy using generic Atheros drivers and those worked great. WPA does not work but I have internet. I like my Belkin better, it isn't falling apart but this will do till Belkin gets drivers out... hint hint.

I'm also trying out the Microsoft OneCareLive Package. I'm always looking for something nice, easy, and non expensive to be able to recommend to friends and family that need help. So far OneCare was really easy to install, comes with 180 day free trial and is surprisingly non intrusive.

Leo on Plein Ecran

2006-10-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

Leo Laport and Kevin Rose are both on the French podcast Plein Ecran (full screen). I haven't watched all of it but, I think I'm going to watch it in French first and then English and see how I do. The link above has an English dubbed version or VO (version originale) and there is also a French Version. It looks like they have a lot of interesting stuff.

From the site "'Plein écran', the high-tech dedicated programm of the french news channel LCI".

You can read what Leo has to say about it at his Vox blog leoville. Just scroll down past the German article, unless you like German too.

Tidbits and Randomness

2006-10-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

I have about 90 tabs open on my laptop in Firefox and another 60 open on my desktop. I have lots to share. I should just do like 100 posts in the next 2 days and I'd have like half that taken care of.

First, three handy little Firefox extensions I highly recommend: NoScript, Flashblock, and GTDgmail. All three work with the Firefox 2.0 beta 2 version and below. Flashblock has been a huge help with some memory management. I saw one person on digg.com saying that it fixed the "memory leak" problem (no I don't know why he used quotes cause it's a real problem for me) but it is helping keeping it's memory usage under 300 even with approx 90 tabs open. I'll eventually do an actual post on GTDGmail. It's a great way to organize even if you don't really follow all the GTD stuff.

YouTube acquisition by Google, WOW

2006-10-09T23:20:00.000-05:00

Who would have thought. Google bought YouTube. Good buy for them. GoogleVideo is no where near as popular. I heard the news talking about YouTube and shows on TV have popped up following new stuff going on online; including viral videos of YouTube. It's good to know thought that: "Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community." I like the way DownloadSquad named them "GooTube overlords".

Still one huge WOW the rumors have been flying all weekend, everyone thought it was a unbelievable rumor. Go figure!

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

2006-10-08T23:27:00.000-05:00

A great song and just seems to sum it all up right now.

Hide and Seek Lyrics

where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to fall
crop circles in the carpet
sinking, feeling

spin me 'round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first

oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the take over,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines (you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears
they were here first

ooom what d'ya say,
emmm that you only meant well?
well of course you did
ooom what d'ya say,
emmm that's all for the best?
of course it is
emmm what d'ya say?
hmmm that it's just what we need
you decided this
mmmm what d'ya say?
hmmm what did she say?

ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling
no, i don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a bit

(hide and seek)
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs

(hide and seek)
speak no feeling
no, I don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a bit

(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit
oh no, you don't care a bit

(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit

Windows Vists RC2 and Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh

2006-10-07T12:57:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been awhile. Anyway, the latest release of Vista, RC2 is available at Get Vista 32bit English and the Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh (2TR) is available too.

I already got the Office 2TR going. I like it. It lets you minimize the ribbon by double clicking on one of the menu names and the slash screen looks better. It may just be me but the program also seems to be loading faster. I'm downloading RC2 as we speak. I'm still hoping that it's more stable than the last one. I had a few problems during install and continuously in use if I install the programs I consider essential.

Found from Slashdot

iTunes vs Urge

2006-09-19T13:45:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I can't actually compare them. I've still never used iTunes, never had an iPod and never wanted one. I love my iRiver clix. Anyway, this wasn't a bash Apple post I'm just saying I've tried out Urge and I like. Sure the music is DRM but duh so is iTunes. I haven't tried out the new program that supposedly rips it but I shall try and get back to you. I like it because it works with my mp3 player.

For $15 a month I can listen to any music and put anything on my mp3 player with out having to download it. I'm picky, I listen to some stuff constantly and will be listening to it for the next 5 years and other songs are one hit wonders for me. The only song that I like from that artist and I'll only listen to it for a few weeks and be over it.

I also like the radio feature Urge has. Their alternative selection is pretty good, they have pop, classical and even country if you must. Something for everyone. It is kind of annoying having to use WMP. I like the 11 beta much better than 10 but it still hangs on my computer from time to time. Though my computer just may need reformatted.

So I just felt like sharing. I highly recommend Urge. Great music selection and its easy and not Apple.

Test

2006-08-13T23:47:00.000-05:00

Checking out the new Windows Live Writer (beta) WYSIWYG blog writer.

My cat:

Inserting picture works great. check out my new blog (unstarted) .... inserting links works wonderfully. This feels like cheating. It seems to be an extension of what publishing to blog using Office 2007 beta does. But much more centered around blogging. It even has it formatted exactly how my blogs posts look. Here is a screenshot as I'm writing it.

When I typed up a post for a wordpress blog I could see my cursor but with this blogger one I can't. I wonder if that is due to my theme, blogger or just a bug? Cool idea, especially if you do a lot of blogging offline since you can save them as drafts. You can also insert a map, only option is Windows Live Local but perhaps that will change?

All in all, as long as this post publishes I think I"ll use this for awhile. That has always been one of my biggest problems with blogger. Their WYSIWYG editor blows.

UPDATE: Ok, turns out there are different views.... weblayout can't see my cursor normal I can. The views are nice. You can see it in your blog, much faster than bloggers preview too, and you can see the html it is creating. Also wandered around the options and it lets you customize the html of images, feed items, snippets, and links as well as has the ability to have plugins.

Electronics Protection

2006-08-03T23:13:00.000-05:00

I bought some screen protectors from Shieldzone.com. I will be using them on my new phone (RAZR V3m) and my iRiver. I read a review about this stuff from Techgurls. It looks pretty cool, apparently it's tough enough that even the army was originally using it.

I just ordered it so hopefully I'll get it sometime end of next week. More info to come...

Reading books

2006-07-30T16:47:00.000-05:00

I'm currently reading 2 or 3 books, among other things. Two of them happen to be the same publisher O'Reilly... while the last one is SitePoint. Head Rush Ajax and Head First Design Patters and Build your own site the right way using XHTML and CSS So far I'd recommend all of these books. All three of them teach through example and none of the pages are complete boxes of text, you see how the code effects the page.

The book on XHTML and CSS is definitely for beginners, I skipped the first chapter and a half. It goes so far as assuming nothing, even that you know what a browser does. I almost put it down at that point but I kept with it. I taught myself CSS online just looking at what others had done and feel that to make sure I was staying within standards and all a basic book might be a good idea. And this book does what I want. The writing is entertaining and I can almost here a British dude narrating it! Though that's more to do with the fact that I heard about the book from a British podcaster but, that's later.

On to the Head Rush/First books. I like the way they are very graphical and example driven. You lean what you need as it is needed and each example involves more plus what you have used in the last chapter. I also think it's great for anyone who has problems with short attention span. There are little quizzes along the way and it's a very practical way of learning instead of the theoretical approach you might get in other books.

As you can see I'm on a webdev kick. I think it's really interesting and plan on applying what I"m learning to some forms and a site that I help that is currently all in asp. I think Ajax would be great for it and even help keep down user error.

I'm always open to other book recommendations, in pretty much anything.

A quarter century of MTV

2006-07-24T20:35:00.000-05:00

I'm 22 and I grew up with MTV. It started when my parent's were 18 and they watched it well into my early pre-teens. I remember watching Real World with my dad (mom didn't know), Singled Out, cleaning to the music on weekends (yep, they played music videos regularly). At some point, right before puberty hit my mom decided, hmm maybe not a good idea letting me watch mtv so it was refused to me cold turkey, in the middle of a season. I did as all good children do, I snuck in my parents room and watched it on their tv while they were watching tv downstairs. I think they thought I was watching Disney, and my finger was on the last channel button so when they came up stairs, guess what I was watching. Parental controls were on of course. They didn't find out till I was about 17 that I've always know the code. It's the same as our house security code and that was the first one I tried.

I can't say I watch MTV much these days, but when I pull all nighters that's the channel I have on 'cause they play videos in the middle of the night. Real world is no longer believable and I don't care if your parents don't like your significant other or those bratty kids in Laguna Beach. MTV has moved on to the next generation... my sister loves watching it still, I guess I just grew up and the same will happen with the next group of teenyboppers.

Whether you think MTV is the devil or the best thing next to sliced bread you have to give them kudos for hanging on 25 yrs and probably will be around another 25yrs.

Happy birthday MTV.

New Template

2006-07-23T23:08:00.000-05:00

I've got a new template from www.Isnaini.com. Obviously I need to customize it but, not doing that tonight. I'll do it tomorrow. Anyone have an opition on it?

Yahoo Groups and 10 week free AJAX course

2006-07-23T21:30:00.000-05:00

I'm not a big fan of yahoo groups. Don't get me wrong, they had their time. But today with wikis and forums why deal with all that in an email?

There is a 10 week free AJAX course going on and originally the main form of communication was a yahoo group. With over 4000 people that's a hell of a lot of hello emails. So someone (many but this one was just faster in execution) in class got a great idea to start a wiki for the class and a forum (which I get to be a moderator in :)).

It may just be me but having to search through emails to find answers seams to be harder than just going to wiki to get info or asking a question on the forum. Even if you have gmail and searching your email is no big deal still. Why when we have wikis and forums at our disposal?

If you want to check out the class check out the teachers site above and the AJAXWorkshop wiki.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm blogging so much this weekend. Perhaps it's taking my mind off the demo I have to do of my summer project to 10 people to see if it would be useful for another project? Hmm maybe.

More Tubes

2006-07-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

A whole new meaning to A Series of Tubes.

Found from BoingBoing

My Favorite Firefox extensions

2006-07-23T20:32:00.000-05:00

These are the extensions that I install after a new install, although I think after Firefox 2 comes out I may not need all of these:

Google Browser Sync -- great for keeping my desktop and laptop browsers synced
Nightly Tester Tools -- makes older extensions compatible, perfect when new versions of FireFox come out
SessionSaver - sort of redundant with Google Browser Sync but useful none the less
Restart FireFox -- quick way to restart FireFox after loading a new extension
Adblock Filterset.G Updater -- good filterset and auto updater for adblock plus
Tab Mix Plus - good menu and options for tabs
CSSViewer - shows the css used on a page
Greasemonkey - some of the user scripts are useful
Adblock Plus - great ad blocker
Performancing - blogging software, including stats, and a WYSIWYG editor to publish to many types of blogs
ColorZilla - pin pointer allows you to find out the hex and RGB of a color on a site
SingleWindow - forces all external links to open as new tabs in one window
FasterFox -- various settings geared towards making FireFox run faster
Screen Grab! - great program that grabs the whole site, not just what is visible in the screen but also what is below the scroll

Also if you want to see if there is an extension for something you want to do check out I want a FireFox Extension to.... A cool site that has over 200+ extensions and explains the circumstances of why you'd use it.

toread

2006-07-23T16:42:00.000-05:00

How do you mark those sites that you don't really have a category for or you want to go back to it reletively soon?

Right now I bookmark it with del.icio.us and tag it as toread along with any general tags I can gleam from the parts I have read. This works just fine with me and I think I'll stick to it even after checking out toread.cc.

The idea behind this site is to, using a bookmarklet, email a cached version of this page to your email, "bookmarking by email" as they put it, to read at your leisure. It's a good idea I suppose but personnaly I'd rather it didn't take up inbox space.

The company that does this looks like a japanesse company and possibly also have RSS Readers, but no english version I could see. I'd like this toread site better if you could send it to an RSS feed instead. But then it'd be another del.icio.us.

Spam....

2006-07-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

For the last month I've been categorizing my spam by day of the week. The day I get it it goes into that label. I was curious on how much spam I really was getting and how the gmail filters worked.

So without further ado .... my stats (word used loosly):
Date: June 18 - July 22
Total: 335 spam mails
Avg. per week (5 weeks): ~67 emails per week
Avg. per day: 9.5 per day
Daily Totals for 5 weeks:
Sunday: 53
Monday: 55
Tuesday: 40
Wednesday: 45
Thursday: 58
Friday: 44
Saturday: 40

On average Gmail caught most of it. I might have gotten 1 or 2 in my inbox a week but that's it.

I remember why I did this. In a podcast from diggnation.com Alex talked about how gmails filters were horrible. My guess is his email address is to out there in the public. If he compared how many gmail is catching to what is getting through.

That's that take it for what it is. Now I'm going to go and delete my spam mail I've been hording for the last month.

Beer Recommendation.... Way off topic

2006-07-21T22:08:00.000-05:00

This is very off topic for me, I usually don't talk about beer here but. It's such a good one! Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat is Leinenkugel's beer of the summer. It's very good. A little citricy and great with an orange. My family is from WI but if you live in the Midwest or atleast near WI you'd probably know the beer. Not sure how far reaching it is. I know you can get cans in WI, only bottles everywhere else.

And this very odd beer recommendation is over!

Gizmodo by invite?

2006-07-20T19:30:00.000-05:00

If you haven't checked out Gizmodo's new site redsign you really should. I love the background color. I suppose it's an off-white but I like to think of it as a pale periwinkle. All in all I like the color. As great as the site is, I knew it had happened but I use RSS to view it so.. just now noticed that comments are by invite!! Taking a hand from google perhaps? I found a want ad for an invite on craigs list of all places. It can't hurt but I'll ask the void... can I get an invite?

Anyway. The point is that I wanted to leave a comment on this page The Internet Is Not A Big Truck: Featuring John Hodgman in reply to another comment. First check out the page, watch the video. I'll wait. ..... Ok, wasn't that funny? Now if you read the comments you'll notice their talk about the Senator using the tube analagy and the fact that yeah it is an older analogy used at one time, but it's the fact that he's using this analogy that is scary.

From the sound of his little speach I'd have assumed some tech support person gave him a dumbed down explaination of the internet thinking (perhaps knowing) he wouldn't understand and/or care for a better explanation. I wouldn't even call it laymens terms, dumbed down is the best description. Do we really want someone who doesn't even really have the basics down in charge of regulating any aspect of the internet? I don't think so.

Iriver Clix Review

2006-07-18T21:47:00.000-05:00

I've now had my iRiver for about a month. I cannot live without it!! First I want to explain why I choose this one and not an iPod or any Apple product. Next I'll do the good old full feature tell all. Then I'll explain how I use it and the features I use. Did I mention I loooooove it? 'Cause I do.

Ok, first off I'm not a fan of Apple stuff so chances are I'd probably look everywhere else before I even consider an iPod but I do recognize that they're well built and if I wanted something with more storage it would be hard to choose between them and the large capacity irivers. I've never wanted an mp3 player with a hard drive. I'm rough on my mp3 players. Really rough. I drop this one at least once a day. Today was bad. I dropped it like 4 times. So flash memory all the way for me. The clix has more functionality that I use than the iPod Nano the FM radio player is the biggest point.

Instead of a feature tell all here's the Iriver site iRiver America Clix. They do a great job explaining them and I haven't had any problems with it doing what they say it should so far.

The key parts I use are the FM Player, which is about 100 times than the one in my car (granted my car radio is horrible). There is a program called Iriverter that converts and compresses video into a format (I believe .avi) for viewing on the player. I watched Ctrl-Alt-Chicken on it. It look great. Not painful to watch at all. The sound is great and the headphones it came with where really all I need (till my cat ate through it at least). It plays flash games and video. I haven't used much with the games, but I have a feeling once I get back to school, that will be used more.

I sound like a commercial I know. The only problem I've had with it so far is some of the logic behind the menu system. The menu is fast and for the most part makes sense except for if you go to Now Playing. Going back to the menu takes you directly to the main menu. You don't get to see how that track is in the play list. For that you have to go to Music->Song (or however you want to view it) and then it starts over at the first song in that list. Not the one currently playing. For me I'd expect it to find the song I'm playing when I went to music. But that's just me. I'd also like it if it continued playing the music or the radio when playing the flash games. Right now that stuff stops as soon as you start a game. The only game that seems to rely on sounds is the Simon Says type game.

Another minor issue I have with it is that the only way to charge it is through the usb on the computer. I have no problem not being able to play it while it's hooked up to the computer but I'd like an AC way to charge it too.

I did get one accessory with it when I bought it. The FM transmitter works great. Lets you choose any station, not limited to just 3, and charges as you play it which is nice for long drives.

If anyone wants more details let me know, I can always gush some more if needed. As I find things I like/dislike I'll let you know.

Eating My Words

2006-07-17T22:43:00.000-05:00

My previous post I bitch about the lack of blogging tools available for your average person. Well, I think I've found one. Vox.com . It has a great WYSIWYG editor and is very much community oriented. Not in the myspace type but in more of a local, family, intimate community. Once I have an invite I plan on sending it to my mom.

We'll see what she thinks. Check out twit.tv the most current Inside the Net with Amber MacArthur has one of the founders of Six Apart (makers of Vox) Mena Trott. This service will remain free. They are shooting for a fall public release but are accepting emails to recieve an invite right now. Mine took about 2 weeks to get.

Is blogging for everone?

2006-07-14T18:40:00.000-05:00

I think it should be. And I don't just mean those with or without opinions. I mean those tech savvy and those who aren't. Right now I'm setting up a wordpress blog for me and 5 of my friends. After most graduated and have spread out across the US I thought a group blog would be the best way to keep in touch with everyone and only have to tell "the story" once.

This was a great idea in theory. I bought a cheap domain from GoDaddy and set up a GeekLog site. It was ok, turns out geeklog is a little too buggy for me and it intimidated my friends who have no technical background what so ever. They can do the basics but beyond surfing, checking email and downloading music for their mp3 player everything else is a bit over their head. So Geeklog was too geeky for them.

I've now got WordPress set up the theme is better I found a plugin with a better WYSIWYG editor and then using Wink2.0 (great freeware) I made a little how to intro to the site so they could see all the basics and things I thought they should know.

This is working for my friends right now, but if it wasn't for me doing the real techie stuff for them a blog idea wouldn't work. Even blogger generally involves not being afraid of code or messing with things if you want to personalize it. There may be a lot of bloggers out there but the majority of them are tech savvy to a point. Even if it's just the basics.

Your everyday person is not on blogs and it's too bad. I'm sure they'd add a great voice that is needed and should be present. Are those who have the tech skills just not paying attention or is it just not noticed?

I'm tempted to create my own blogging software. Where to start?

Free Willy Two

2006-07-05T21:18:00.000-05:00

Lol, I watched Free Willy 2 today. Forgot the Miohel Jackson song that plays in the middle "..have you seen my childhood..." Made me laughe out loud!

Are you getting paid for that post?

2006-07-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

One of the more heated debates in the blogoshere (particularly the tech sites I frequent) is http://www.payperpost.com. If you don't already know about this site it literally does what the title says. Advertisers put up "opportunities" for bloggers to take. I've seen things from opinions about your favorite (they don't give you one) search engine to opinion about a show, and a review of a photo editing software. They all say neutral.

I currently use 3 different editing software's for photos and I planned on talking about them here. Why not add one more? Check it out and compare it with the ones I already use, while getting $5 for it. Who knows maybe I'll find one product to do what the 3 did for me. Am I a sell out? Perhaps, but if it's known ahead of time that parts of the post are getting paid for, and you don't even necessarily have to be positive is there really a moral issue in it?

Check out the comments at TechCrunch.com. Lots of good discussion. Personally I don't think it's wrong if it blends with your blog. Would I accept an opportunity about "Parenting and Pregnancy Opportunity". Hmm for some reason that just doesn't seem to mesh with what I'm doing. Don't worry, unless I become pregnant, which will not be happening anytime soon, that will not be one I will even consider

Can this service be used to the detriment of bloggers? Of course. Bloggers are a detriment to themselves. That many uncontrolled opinions is bound to get someone, if not a group ie. the blogosphere, in trouble. Personally I think blogging is a good thing, whether people read your blog or not. As long as there is full disclosure as to what content is getting paid for and whether that has swayed your opinion I have no problem with it. Will everyone do it? Nope, I highly doubt it. Call me a cynic, but I prefer realist. If everyone is not moral/ethical about it should it be allowed? It's the age old question, what kills... guns, alcohol, cars (insert favorite or not so favorite object) or people?

By the way, did I mention I'm getting paid for this post ? I decided to show my opinion on both sides.

Tips in learning

2006-07-01T16:41:00.000-05:00

Learning languages has always been hard for me. Just when I think it's working I plateau again. Here are a few articles that have helped me so far:

Six steps for learning difficult subjects quickly: Good article with tips that really should work. I applied them to learning French.
How to Learn a Language: A story from kuro5hin.org with good tips envolving technology and languages.
Learn foreign languages with open source software: Good article about the options in opensource to use for learning vocabulary and such.

French stuff

2006-07-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

Update: Added 2 more.

LoicLeMeur Wiki: Interesting information about what eh's up to, available in French and English versions.
Le Nouveau Pourvoir des Internautes: Interesting french product. This book was released and now for the second version they are doing it online, wiki style, to allow readers to change it and are doing the revisions in 80 days.
Guitef: Blog covering different things going on, in French.
French Learning Center: A free typ eof online learning classroom, done by the guy behind the podcast The French Podcast. Should also check out the podcast. It's well done. I enjoy this site because there are bilingual books and grammar for all ages.
France with Sebastien is done with the above two. One I just found and has a lot of good information.
DotClear: A blog software develpoed by a french person. This is a link to their forums

Fantastic Planet scored by everyone.doesntexist

2006-07-01T15:54:00.000-05:00


Ren? Laloux's french trippy animated, cartoon, film from the 70's. soundtrack rescored to idm, experimental, type music of: aphex twin, venetian snares, prefuse 73, matmos, clue to kalo, pole, luke vibert, japanese telecom and a few others... rescoring was done in 2003 by http://everyone.doesntexist.com why?: for fun; the orginal soundtrack is great as well.

Tutorials and How tos

2006-07-01T15:11:00.000-05:00

If you enjoy teaching yourself and scouring the web for all those little tidbits of knowledge about whatever title here are some good picks, mostly programming languages and softwares:

TechCheatSheets: from the site: "a collection of the best cheat sheets and quick reference guides on the web. Arranged by tags, you can subscribe to a feed for only the tags you want to monitor. Visitors can also give the listings 1-5 star ratings promising more features to come."
Learn How: A blog site that has a collection of interesting how tos for a variety of things tech related.
Cheat-Sheets: Index with a collection of cheat sheets from asp, php, world of warcraft, css, mysql
Getting Your Own Server: Interesting 2 part guide to getting your own server and what to look for.
Rons Guide: A good, if not kinda old, collection of tutorials for most things to do with web development.
Tutorialism: A digg like system for tutorial entries.

Time to play catchup

2006-07-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

I've got tons of tabs up in firefox right now. All waiting to be blogged about, so I've clumped them into groups and will be doing them that way. A few include, tutorials/how to sites, french everything, blogging/websites... etc.

Digg 3.0

2006-06-24T17:27:00.000-05:00

Digg 3.0 will be released this Monday. There are many places online to get commentary on the features and the press release given so I won't go into that, but here's my big reason I'm excited about it. I can't wait till Diggnation 51 is out. If it isn't out soon may not be a reason to view it. It's supposed to be preview of Digg 3.0. They will have a preview of it. Though if it isn't out early

Expanding the categories will be great. It will allow for more users to participate, not that that seems to be an issue, and for those who do participate to hopefully pick a better category. Otherwise everyone will just get more confused. I'm looking forward to the World News category. Digg is the place I get my tech news and more. I check it out at least once a day; more if I'm procrastinating.

I now live on my own. I miss my roommates but that's besides the point. I used to get my news from them. I'm usually on campus for the majority of my day so watching the news isn't high on my priorities list. My roommates generally keep me informed on the large things and anything of interest so this was never an issue. Now, I know nothing. I'll call up one of my ex-roommates and be like what's up in the world?

I'm hoping with expanded categories it'll help inform others and give people more options to the type of news they want to read. Also looking forward to not seeing any more stupid comments "How is this tech related?" They get old fast.

Iriver Clix

2006-06-24T16:15:00.000-05:00

I'm so excited! I just bought the Iriver Clix. I can't wait to get it. It's beautiful on the web and CNET was actually positive about it just gripping about the storage size. Which for CNET is pretty minor. I also bought the FM tuner/car charger along with it. That's my "practical" buy with it. I'd like the Wireless Cradle with Speakers that doubles as an alarm clock but with the FM tuner I'd be able to charge it in the car so traveling and such will be awesome.

Hopefully it will live up to my expectations!

If you're reading this twice sorry, it got deleted for some reason.

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Is purposefully giving women a chance sexist?

2006-06-18T19:54:00.000-05:00

Slashdot: News for nerds, or merely sexist? is in response to this article GNOME Reaches Out to Women on slashdot.org.

Here’s alittle on the Slashdot post and then the rest will talk about the article. The little blurb by, I'm assuming, the guy who wrote it isn't at all surprising. I swear the age of the posters at slashdot is just going up (not stating the obvious). I assumed, with so many people retiring, a younger, hopefully less sexist, workforce coming, and many of the internets' users being younger encouraging women wouldn’t be considered a bad thing. I know just because the work force is younger won’t dictate who reads and posts to Slashdot but….

As I said the post itself wasn’t what bugged me. The comments it caused disturbed me. Many were entertaining no big deals like this one “…The only feelings I could express at the command line were male feelings after all. unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep -- More proof Linux is sexist!...” by user faraway when commenters were basically saying women couldn’t use Linux because it was too complicated for them. But others were just demeaning.

The article in response has a good point. Firstly raising question to where the information came from, any proof of studies. She goes on to mention the whole point of Google's program. Helping students and encouraging coding etc. Nowhere does it say it is only targeting skilled coders or males. Sure it would be ideal for one opportunity to reach out to everyone but apparently that didn’t happen this year and the GNOME project felt the need to target women specifically.

Why not encourage women?

Word to Blogger do you copy?

2006-05-31T21:29:00.000-05:00

Sooo… I’m typing this in MS Word Beta 7. Checking out the Word to Blogger Add-In from Microsoft and Google…. Odd combination there. Anyhow looks like a good idea to me. I love the spell-check as you go of word. I know blogger has a spellchecker but I like this! It's so easy too. Just go to Publisher and Blogging to set up your information and then you publish it.

A whole bunch of Google

2006-05-28T21:46:00.000-05:00

If you've been using Google Calendar at all you may have become like me and it's now the only thing you use. I love it. I like how you can create different tags color coded as separate calendars that you can turn off and on at a click. An agenda is created for each week from google calendar and you can have it appear on your gmail. A greasemonkey script was created that achieves just that. Techlifeblogged.com has a great article with pictures that show you exactly how to set it up. Check it out. I'm sure soon Google will have them inter-connected in some way more than just a link to bring it up in the future.

Budgeting

2006-05-27T20:56:00.000-05:00

I found this cool new Excel spreadsheet that is setup to make creating and keeping your finances together very easy. I just started it a few days ago. I'm now getting paid monthly which is new for me and not the easiest when needing to pay bills and such. I really like the way Pear Budget works. It does all the calculations for you. You just enter in your constant, variable and invariable expenses and it does the rest.

I'm horrible at staying on a budget or recording any of my expenses. I know its important and I should keep it up but.... Here goes another try. I'll let you know if I'm still keeping it up.

Two Weeks Later

2006-05-27T19:32:00.000-05:00

Found a place to live, craigslist didn't help all that much. No one responded back to my inqueries. Sooo I found the only place I could that had a month to month lease... without seeing pictures. It's ok. You can tell the place is from the '70s and of course the day I need it my AC is broken. Already in the 90s, not at all normal and not comfortable with no AC.

Anyway. The job is pretty cool. I'm doing software design. It's weird sitting in a cubicle. I'm used to wandering around the company not sitting in the same place for 9 hrs. I'm in a cubical at the end of a row and I have a floor to ceiling window behind me. When I get bored I can just watch outside and see the downtown.

The usual headaches with designing software for someone. They don't know what they really want, keep trying to add stuff and really can't tell you if what you think is going on what they think is going on. Very confusing but a really good learning experience.

It's so nice being out of [University town]. [Working town] is sooo much bigger, like 8 times larger. (I'm either in a really large place (but I'm not) or where I was was not large at all.)

Granted this is my first weekend actually here so, ummm I'm watching tv and baking in my appartment. I kinda want some pudding. Maybe I'll head to target. Make it out of the appartment at least once for the day and the trash needs taken out.

Three day weekend here I come!!!!!!

Summer Dreams

2006-04-27T23:05:00.000-05:00

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.

Back to Monday.....

2006-04-23T23:22:00.000-05:00

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.

Tuesday.....

2006-04-18T21:17:00.000-05:00

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.

Monday........

2006-04-17T23:19:00.000-05:00

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?

Late

2006-04-14T02:38:00.000-05:00

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.

TopCoder and Ray Kurzweil

2006-04-13T16:26:00.000-05:00

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!

Wow

2006-04-11T17:51:00.000-05:00

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.

new blog

2005-05-08T17:49:00.000-05:00

I've found a new blog service that I like. I've moved all my old posts from here and xanga over there. MaPetiteChouChou Same type of stuff will be there instead so check it out.

Bye Blogger

Finals Week

2005-05-05T17:37:00.000-05:00

Wow, has this week sucked. I'm tired. It's thursday. Homeward stretch. I have an a- tho in one of my classes whcih is cool. My paper is done, project is half done. I should be working on that right now. But figured I might as well update this. I wrote a paper today in 3.5 hrs. That's an all time record for me. No guarantees that it's any good. But it's done.

Next on the agenda... finish and turn in project, study for exam at 8am, take said exam, interview at 1, work 2-5 and crash as soon as I get home after 5! perhaps go out if i wake up before 12 but we'll see.

next time i'm on here I'll be free!!!!

Long Live Procrastination

2005-04-27T18:09:00.000-05:00

I'm procrastinating, again. This will be the last time till after finals. I swear. Please stop laughing. I'm serious :(. Fine don't believe me.... I don't believe myself anyhow.

I switched allergy medicines. I'm now taking Singulair, instead of Allegra-D. I like Singulair, it's actually working. Though I didn't have time to pick up the perscription yesterday so I just took one of my leftover Allegras. Yeah didn't work all that well. I'm sure I'd be more misserable without it, but after 7 days of trying Singulair it was really working. This year has been hell here for allergies. The side effects the first few days of Singulair were, umm, to say the least, interesting/mildly scary. For me atleast. I'm not used to medicines affecting me at all. It was a trip for about 3 days. Hopefully only not taking it for one won't make that happen again. Any way. Found a few cool French websites and some regular tech ones too and some cool stories.

For the French one's I didn't realize they have a french Wikipedia or Wikipédia for the french way. Also found a French news site that I like keeps their own wiki also.

You remeber when you were little, in the middle of the eighties early nineties, those public access classes on PBS? Well you can get them here. The French one is pretty cool. 52 episodes, all in French. Cool way to do it and for me to keep mine up.

On to the tech....
I found a Firefox encryption plug-in for Gmail. It looks pretty cool. It doesn't run anything else just integrates itself into your web view of gmail. Haven't tested it out myself but wnat to soon.
Here are some good tips for writing secure php.
For emailing any size attachments FilePC looks like a good alternative: (also untested but concept is cool)

"FilePC allows you to email any size file to anyone, right from within your own email software."

Hehe this story is just entertaining. It's a rant about Why Geeks and Nerds are Worth it..... Some very good points, however does that also work for the Geekgirl? not just a geekboy?

I do not condone software piracy (need a disclaimer) but here's a good place if you have lost your serial keys or what not.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this news article: Congress legalizes DVD censorship

" It will soon become legal to alter a motion picture so long as all the sex, profanity, and violence have been edited out, thanks to a bill called the Family Movie Act, an attachment to the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act approved Tuesday by the House. The Senate has already passed its own version, and the President is expected to sign it."

This sounds good in essence, I guess, but apparently the directors don't like it. Even if they are getting money for the copy, unchanged, the person who creates a "prudish" version of the movie has really completely changed the disk. However, since that company has bought that disk, so they own it, are they allowed to mess with it like that and make money off of it?

This is just soooo American. I mean, we have clean (virgin) copies of CDs (which is great when you have younger siblings but you still miss something). Sometimes violence, homosexuality (are we trying to help people live in denial/ under rocks?), sex, etc... are actually artistically done or are a big part of the plot. I just don't get it. If it's in the movie don't watch it or read the book/screen play instead or even fast forward.

I'm done ranting (not really but i need to stop procrastining) so, that being said, on to ee lab reports.

already procrastinating

2005-04-25T15:30:00.000-05:00

Need I mention I'm already bored? Can I also mention I don't understand any of our male population?

Anyway, I've found more good stuff I want to put up. This blog isn't going to become a link repository, but for now.... it's the best I can do.

So without further ramblings....

Newest Revenge of the Bleep is out, check it out, sounds pretty good.

Have you ever wanted to learn Morse Code? Yeah, me neither but with this program, using cmd prompts you can learn the code in a more familar setting. I thought it sounded kinda cool. Might have to give it a try myself.

In the spirit of finals coming is an article on note taking: Recovering the Lost Art of Note-Taking , may be to late if you could have used this before finals time, but an interesting read. Found through LifeHacker.

I have found 2 new places for news. Backslashdot: news for noobs and stuff you've already heard. So if you missed it the first time, not that you can't always find it, you can see it there. Also GeekCoffee: geek news to wake up to.

LifeHacker has done an entertaining article about coming off of caffeine, they seem to be against my usual cold turkey method. Can't figure out why! Definitly informative.

They have also done a round-up of Decent/Free CSS/HTML templates. Seen a few I kinda like.

And that link to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, if you change the ending from book1.html to the other numbers of the series the rest are there. I tried that yesterday and it didn't work but today it is.

Continuation

2005-04-25T11:46:00.000-05:00

Some more of what I've found......

La justice interdit de protéger les DVD contre la copie -- Good french article about their dvd copying privileges. No english translation that I know of, but leave a comment and I can do a rough one.

carfree.com -- Interesting informative website about car free cities through out the world. I like their idea, but I enjoy driving, not that I do much now.

The Revenge of the Bleep -- This is from Leo Laporte's website, he got together a few guys from TechTVs old TSS (The Screen Savers = Bleep). Very entertaining. I hope it does become a weekly thing.

Technologies du Langage -- Another french blog that has technology of language stuff. Seems enteresting from what I've seen.

YourTotalSite.com -- Good site with help and ideas for your own site

MAILTO Anchor Tag Generator -- cool html mailto tag generator (like it says ;) ) easy tag to do yourself but if you have lots to put into it this is nice and easy.

ColorCombos -- Great site with ideas for color combos that work, and lets you test your own to see if they work.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 1 -- Like it says you can read the first book in his "trilogy" here. Don't remeber where I found this... but here it is.

EuroHacker Magazine -- This is the 2nd edition of this magazine. It's ok, not the best I've seen but some of the rants are decent. Not much tech stuff tho, lots of stuff about guns?

wooba.com -- Good blog from a writer at extremetech.com, more indepth than in the other article.

That's probably it till after finals or when I'm studying/procrastinating. Our pong game is going pretty well. It now plays music and sounds during game play. It's sweet!

Week in close

2005-04-23T18:38:00.000-05:00

2 more weeks and I'm done. Really only one of classes. 1 paper to write, 2 more projects. One finished this week the other finished next week. I'm ready. But in the mean time I was procrastinating not that long ago and figured I would update all with what I have found some online....

Gmail, PGP, and the End to End Solution -- Good article on using thunderbird and gpg encription with gmail.

A guide to Oracle, Windows, Linux and OS X commands. -- exactly what the title says. A good resource.

Webnotes -- A strange yet interesting idea to keep notes online, can put them on an active window on your desktop.

more later

Theoretical vs Realistic

2005-04-15T15:11:00.000-05:00

I hate theoretical crap. Theoretically this that and these should happen but eh, reality wise not so much. Sure in physics class I'd rather deal with the theoretical values and rules, but ya know, when programing, raising children, etc... theoretically doesn't work at all.

Granted the raising children is a long way off from programming, but if you've ever programmed you know that something may look like it should work in theory but some random "practical" quirk is there to turn theory into ideal. Maybe I'm just confusing theoretical with ideal.

the·o·ret·i·cal (thē'ə-rĕt'ĭ-kəl) pronunciation also the·o·ret·ic (-rĕt'ĭk)
adj.

1. Of, relating to, or based on theory.
2. Restricted to theory; not practical: theoretical physics.
3. Given to theorizing; speculative.

SYNONYMS theoretical, abstract, academic, hypothetical, speculative. These adjectives mean concerned primarily with theories or hypotheses rather than practical considerations: theoretical linguistics; abstract reasoning; a purely academic discussion; a hypothetical statement; speculative knowledge.

and here is ideal:

i·de·al (ī-dē'əl, ī-dēl')
n.

A conception of something in its absolute perfection.
One that is regarded as a standard or model of perfection or excellence.
An ultimate object of endeavor; a goal.
An honorable or worthy principle or aim.

adj.

Of, relating to, or embodying an ideal.
Conforming to an ultimate form or standard of perfection or excellence.
Considered the best of its kind.
Completely or highly satisfactory: The location of the new house is ideal.
Existing only in the mind; imaginary.
Lacking practicality or the possibility of realization.
Of, relating to, or consisting of ideas or mental images.
Philosophy.
Existing as an archetype or pattern, especially as a Platonic idea or perception.
Of or relating to idealism.

I suppose but now I just want to make it ideal vs theoretical vs realistic, i'm a realist, and cynical.

Our friend is here with her 1 year old little girl. Sooo cute. Anyway one of my roommates, we'll call her Midget (she is really short), is a Early Ed./development major. She is the youngest in her family, but becuase of what she has learned in school she thinks she knows everything about raising a kid. And what they learn are just theoretical methods. Those new "fad" trends basically. Sure some history behind it, and maybe even a few things that could be good, but the majority of it is bullshit. There has been a young kid in my family under the age of five up until I was 16. I also baby sat till I was 18, and still do periodically. It's all instinct, knowing certain psychological things before hand may be nice to have but ya know, parenting is the reality of that theory she learns. Shit happens in life.

It's just frustrating.

since i defined the other two i fiugre I should define Realistic. my english teacher would be proud: consistancy!

re·al·i·ty (rē-ăl'ĭ-tē)
n., pl. -ties.

The quality or state of being actual or true.
One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual: “the weight of history and political realities” (Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.).
The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
That which exists objectively and in fact: Your observations do not seem to be about reality.

idiom:
in reality

In fact; actually.

All definitions stolen from google->answer.com

Furthermore.... I hate you

2005-04-14T19:09:00.000-05:00

Not you, but I've decided I hate that word: furthermore. It just sounds so condescending and stupid. One of my partners used it in our paper, I realized I hate it to late to change it. But I really don't like the sound of it.

Have you noticed I've given up on tech and french content yet? Not forever, just for the next 2.5 weeks. Then it will be officially be summer and I will have time again. But till then, you will have to deal with my venting. Between school, projects, and other crap aka. roommate drama that's all I'm capable of right now.

I'm going home this weekend. I'm excited. Skipping my 2 monday classes and my organizations office hours. Granted I'm going for a doctors appointment. I'm getting my ear fixed again, finally!!! I like hearing. And thinking everyone on my left side is mumbling, and then if they really are mumbling not even hearing them, it bites.

oh well, time to work on hw, projects, and everything in between.

FAC

2005-04-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

I'm ready for the weekend, granted it won't be restful or relaxing, but atleast I won't have to go to classes. Anyway, enough whining.

Haven't really kept up much at all in tech stuff this week. School keeping me busy, friends too, out of town friend coming for this weekend. But i saw a great deal at amazon.com for a Canon PowerShot S410 4MP Digital Elph with 3x Optical Zoom for around $250. I originally had a SD100, great little camera, but it got stolen when I was in France. I paid $250 for it and it was only a 3.2MP. I want this camera! However I do not have the money so I shall be waiting. What kind of deals will await me then? Well none, cause for the same amount I can get even better! I like gadgets.

Speaking of gadgets, on CNN I found this article about Clocky:http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/04/04/spark.clocky/index.html (using a mac can't do hyperlinks).

That would be awsome, exactly what I need. If you don't read it, it's an academic project to make a clock that roles off the bed table after hitting snooze once. It hides itself, so that the next time it goes off you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Tho it would have to move around for about 20 min. I set my alarm at 6:20 to get up at, well technically I "plan" on getting up at 6:45, lately it's more like 7, today I overslept and it was 7:15.

I've done my procrastination now I must read hw for 15 min. Debating if I should take a nap or not. I'm afraid if I don't I'll be screwed drinking tonight. Lack of sleep and going right after I get off work not good combination.

PS. FAC=Friday After Class --- meeting friends out after work at 5, can't get too hammered tho, do need to get up tomorrow before noon.

jiwire wi-fi hotspot locator

2005-04-05T12:08:00.000-05:00

Cool site if you need internet access. Enteries for a decent list of countries, gives address and name of the establishment and whether the access is free or a paid providor.

Google Maps + Satellite

2005-04-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Look something up in google maps and you now have the option to see a satellite picture of it. Pretty cool, doesn't zoom in enough for me, but that would probably be kinda creepy if it really did. Definatly check it out.

Adsense

2005-04-04T10:40:00.000-05:00

I've joined the masses, I now have Google Adsense. If you are actually visiting please just clicked an add. I'm a broke college student!!! Leave a comment..... you click mine, I'll click yours!

Only new news I've heard is the Pope dying. It's sad, but he had to have been miserable for like the past year. He's much happier wherever he is, if there is something else. Should be interesting who they get for the next pope. Hopefully someone not quite as conservative. Pope John Paul II was decent as a pope but yikes he was a little behind the times.

Alternatives Électroniques

2005-03-30T12:34:00.000-06:00

Alternatives Électroniques -- french technology blog

pondering

2005-03-29T22:28:00.000-06:00

your touch sends shivers through my body

accidental touches: i swear that last one was on purpose

that smile, that look, the stares

mean anything?

something, nothing, everything?

I guess I'll never know

The end.....

2005-03-29T21:47:00.000-06:00

sort of. This project is now officially over. We turned in the documentation at 12am this morning. I was more tired today than yesterday. Definitely didn't make it to my 8am. Came home and crashed for two hours, ready for bed again, but i'm hoping if I go to bed by 11 or 12 I'll be fine tomorrow. Did I mention I've done jack shit today?

I dyed my hair. I have really dark brown hair as it is, so finding a color that will work is hard but Clairols Rosewood seems to have done the trick. It's now a nice dark auburn/red color. I like it, pretty sure no one else will notice tomorrow, but that's always the fun after changing something like that.

Guess I should go and do something, I feel like the past 5 days have been a waste. We had better gotten an A on that stupid thing.

Sleep

2005-03-28T19:16:00.000-06:00

I'd really like some...., sleep that is. Pulling 2 all nighters within about 4 days of each other, not the smartest on my part. Stupid school. I'm tired, bored out of my mind at work and should be working on documentation that needs to be done by midnight. Sooner that gets done sooner I'm asleep. Hopefully I make it that long. Since sat. night (whcih i got 5 hrs of sleep night) I've gotten 2 hrs of sleep, skipped 4 classes, didn't turn in a homework and missed a quiz. Not a normal thing with me, but this other class is a bitch.
I'm excited I now have official plans for this summer, no going to live at home or trying to find an internship (did I mention I gave up? I look horrible on paper). Take a few classes this summer, work part time and then only have to take 13 credits each semester when all my friends will be graduating. I'm looking forward to it, not them graduation. That'll be sad :( .
I'd like a social life again.

I'm in a bad mood, i'd love to just bitch someone out right now.

mysql

2005-03-26T16:17:00.000-06:00

I've lately dived head first into mysql. It's not to bad itself. Learning how to access it and manipulate it through java is a bit harder. I've never done any thing with databases so this is definitely learning from scratch. In the middle of a large group project for school is not the best time to start learning it, but definitely has helped me figure out what I'm doing. I found lots of useful website and figure I might as well share what I have found. May eventually write my own. If I was having issues finding specific things for java I'm sure others have.

In general it's not hard but a little time consuming to learn well.

MySQL Basics -- A helpful MySQL Tutorial: best basic tutorial for installation and beginning basics.

MySQL Reference Manual :: 3 MySQL Tutorial: Tutorial from mysql themselves going over basic functions of the database. Suprisingly good for an official document.

I used a few others googeling for certain commands but in general these 2 were the biggest help.

Best Extensions

2005-03-20T03:54:00.000-06:00

Making the most of Firefox is all about adding extensions. If you don't take advantage of them you're really missing out! Here are my top choices. Wouldn't load a computer with out them (not to mention firefox).

Adblock - blocks ads on websites, pop-ups and even most flash based ads
Tabbrowser Extensions - must have for making the most of your tab browsing experience. "single window" option is a must
gmail notifier - sits in the bottom tray and lets you know if you have email in your gmail account
SpellBound - Checks the spelling of highlighted text anywhere in firefox. Available in other languages also. I use English and French
ieview - adds a option on right clicking links to have it open directly in IE for those less than cooperating websites
weatherfox - gives you the weather in the statusbar/toolbar
LiveLines - adds rss feeds to live book marks or other rss feeds with an RSS icon on the status bar
SessionSaver - restores your last browsing session
Greasemonkey - user script manager
User Agent Switcher - adds a menu and toolbar button to switch the user agent information that a browser sends when asking for a website, you can specify the browser you want it to think you're using
ColorZilla - has an eyedropper for finding out the rgb % or hex number of a color anywhere with in the firefox browser, a color picker, and a page zoom

If you have problems ever installing extensions or themes, sometimes the install box won't come up, right click and save as... to save it to your hard drive and then drag and drop it into the corresponding extension or left frame of the theme box.

Soople

2005-03-20T03:40:00.000-06:00

Cool grouping of searches so far that I've seen. Soople combines searching google, specific topics, within a site, translation, related sites, and much more in one easy to use page. Other pages have a collection of calculators you can use, people find, reverse look ups and much more. All in all a great place to find what you might need.

Shred your data

2005-03-20T03:30:00.000-06:00

Found a good article about the importance, and how to get rid of data on a hard drive that you are going to sell back. Definitely want to make sure you completely wipe the hard drive. I've heard of many that are supposed to get rid of it, but the best seems to be the one the article talks about. Using shred from a bootable linux distro. Knoppix probably your best bet. Not sure when you'd want to sell your hard drives but I'm sure someone will find it useful.

Found where the music has gone to on MTV. 3am-? apparently is the best time to find semi-decent music. I love TheKillers. Their cd Hot Fuss is great. Mr. Brightside is my favorite and the music video isn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, I don't watch mtv all that much, kinda sad but I'm 21 and at times feel old watching 16 year olds on it. Oh well.

It's been a long week off

2005-03-20T02:52:00.000-06:00

It has been a long week off. I didn't get anything that I wanted done done. I'm thinking of just staying up tonight and getting stuff done. I shouldn't have procrastinated so much. Anyway.....

It's been awhile since I've posted. I've changed the color scheme, I like it a little better than the other one. Still looking for fonts that I like, but first thing first. Let me know if it's completely unreadable or whatever.

So, without further ado all the cool, interesting (at least to me) things I've found over my week of doing not a damn thing.

New Firefox Theme: Silver Skin ~ very cool, clean, modern, sleek design, my new favorite.

Lately I've been hanging around LearntoHack.org. Good site to brush up on hacking skills, or just to expand your general knowledge. One of the best I've found. I'm currently stuck on Moderate Level 1. Need to brush up on my Unix commands.

I've also been learning more about html, xml, css, aps, etc. with the tutorials at W3Schools. Lots of good infromation there.

Doing the hacking site found a few good cryptography sites:

Intersting information on how to trick yourself into not procrastinating.

Hacking Tools and Tutorials

2005-03-13T22:41:00.000-06:00

Cool collection of tutorials and tools all on one site. Just started checking out TheTechDomain Cool site.

Gmail Progs

2005-03-13T01:27:00.000-06:00

Very cool collection of programs to use with Gmail.

Unix stuff

2005-03-13T01:20:00.000-06:00

I'm not all that efficient in Unix but i found these sites pretty useful

Learn Unix in 10 minutes. -- Good basic information on Unix. You won't become an expert but you'll know the basics.

Rosetta Stone for Unix -- Matrix set up for showing the differences between different Unix OSs

Funny News

2005-03-12T21:26:00.000-06:00

Granted this is from the Inquirer, maybe that's why it's funny, it's still funny: Hackers put Bush in Power

This one is interesting. How much would you pay per mp3?

I read somewhere else that the WI governer has decided that it would be a good idea to charge a 5% state sales tax on internet downloads. Voluntary. Riiiiight, that will work. Some times, I just have to say, I don't like admitting I'm from WI.

Free Japanese Lessions

2005-03-11T15:46:00.000-06:00

Granted this is random but.... Ever want to learn Japanese? Yeah me too! Well this site seems like a good place to start and supplement your learning.
Free! Japanese Lessons

French Internet News Site

2005-03-11T15:35:00.000-06:00

LaVieDuNet.be --The Life of the Net, I belive be is Belgian country code. Looks interesting has subcategories in Society, Economy, Games, and more. This is where the article about the French pirate was.

SpywareBlaster 3.3 Released

2005-03-11T15:09:00.000-06:00

Go get it. SpywareBlaster is real time protection against over 3000 cookies, BHOs, and restricted sites. Helps keep your computer free of all that annoying extra crap websites and downloads can load on without your permission. I've been using it for the past 7 months and have not found anything on Ad-Aware or Spybot for quite a few months. Granted I think using Firefox is the biggest contributor there but you never know.

P2P legal in France?

2005-03-11T14:54:00.000-06:00

Found this site from slashdot. It seems the French government pardoned the charges brought against him from downloading more than 500 movies. Apparently since he wasn't sharing them or making money from them he wasn't doing anything illegal. Their argument was also that since they pay private copy fee when they buy computers and blank media it's sort of paid for. The article is in French so you may want to use bablefish to translate it.

Long Week in Review

2005-03-11T14:34:00.000-06:00

Wow it's been a week. Thank god for spring break next week! Since I never procrastinate or anything I found nothing to blog about. Riiiight, so I'm going to start putting all the interesting news and sites I have found during this week up in separate posts. Easier to organize them that way, since there are lots of them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Personal info: Skip at will: end is highlighted by tildes~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like I said, it's been a long week. They love dumping it all on us right befor we go on break. I had a test at 9am this morning. Not so sure it went well. My own fault, didn't give myself enough time to study for it. Not to mention I gave up for about an hour and a half to hang out at the bars with friends. I was good tho didn't get smashed just had a drink or two and came back to study for another 45min.

I'm looking forward to not having anything due for the next few days. I have stuff to work on, but I can do it on my own schedule. Up by noon, bed by 3-4am. My kind of hours. I'm sticking around here for break. Broke, so a trip is out of the question and my family is only a little under 2hrs away from here so I really don't feel the need to go there. Easier this way. Mom is coming to visit me sometime next week too. Groceries!!! Not to mention mom time of course. I'm looking forward to some me time, most people will be gone at least monday - wednesday. St. Paty's day should be fun though as people start coming back for the end of the week. At least a few of us.

Other than that this week as been hectic, stressful, and all around horrilbe. But it's FRIDAY!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm getting a case of beer for fixing a friends computer. I won't let them pay me but he insisted, so we agreed that that worked well. I like Coors Light. Should be easy to fix too, mostly just virus problems and spyware type issues. Needs cleaned up and some protection put on. It also looks like something disabled his anti-virus so will have to get rid of that right away. Forgot to find out if he was paying for Mcafee or not. I hate that program.

Look for a collection of random websites and interesting articles/posts I have found through out the week...........

Little reasons we (techs) have jobs

2005-03-07T21:06:00.000-06:00

My dad and I are the only two who really know anything helpful about computers and that type of stuff. My uncle knows some but it's more of a small side hobby when he has time. So majority of my immediate family calls our house when they have problems and depending on who is home and who it is, me or my dad will take it.

My mom's Uncle has a general knowledge about it, not huge but enough to kind of understand, or so I thought. My mom got an email today where he writes:

[my mom],
[ISP] now offers Broadband/DLS Internet.
Can you tell me what it is and why I would want it.
[her uncle]

I got a kick out of this!

Our family is always entertaining. My gramma is also calling often. She got an HP laptop, no one had any idea till we saw it, kind of wish she would have consulted us but... HP.... I just shake my head. She had best buy set up a wireless network for her since she has a laptop, desktop and printer. They made quite the mess of it and cost her $150 more than she needed to spend. The last time we were home we took everything back and fixed it up for her better. I have to say as random as her having wireless is, it's great to have when we're visiting family. Apparently she has a friend who knows computer stuff, which means more than my gramma knows but enough to get her in BIG trouble, helped her with everything. It was entertaining. She kept saying my friend told me this and that etc. I just kept telling the way it actually was. Her friend was basically reiterating what the BestBuy guys had explained and written down for her.

In the spirit of these fun, disastrous tech stories, here is another site that I just found off of digg that you may enjoy: techmenot.com

I like to call these the little reasons we have jobs!

Gotta love helping family!

WTF Start

2005-03-06T15:57:00.000-06:00

I found the best startpage. Fully customizable, allowing you to add up to 8 links and customizing the logo picture. Tho i kinda like the one they already have up there.

Anyway just click on customize and start putting in your links. The links show up above the google ones. It's a great page. I normally have google come up on IE and then my school page come up under firefox. Now the search box with this page is googles and you just have to click on one of the links to get where you need to go.

You can also have a RSS feed. It's meant for news I think, but then you can put in your own so theoretically it could be anything. I have slashdot for now.

The only annoying part is that it saves your settings in the address so after you make changes you have to reset your startpage with that new address. More an annoyance than anything, only takes seconds but still...

All in all a very good idea and a great page. Hope you enjoy it!

Found from digg.

Friday Tech Link List

2005-03-04T21:57:00.000-06:00

Here are some technology related links I have found randomly this week, mostly from sites I don't remeber now:

How Firefox works -- good article about the working so firefox
A consise guide to the major internet bodies interesting information on the behind the scenes of the internet.
The Smo: Battle of the blogging enginees - interesting review of 5 different bloggin engins

wordpress, blogger, pmachine, movable type, expression engine

protonic -- free tech support

Friday French Link List

2005-03-04T15:27:00.000-06:00

Been awhile, appears that the real world is trying to keep me from having fun! But anyway here are some cool tech/french sites that I have found and some that I have known about for awhile, all very cool:

RFI -- Radio French Internationale -- french talk radio and just an overall good site, also has a language section
Clubic -- French site with game news and some tech news
Standblog "un journal sure les standards du Web et autres futilitiés"
Infoly - information and documentation of the internet
Epsilon Light - for those passionate about computer information - Windows and Linux

tutorials, free games, bog and mini web protal +200 links
Epsilon - from the creator of Epsilon light
Weblogger.ch - a blog with different internet related info
Fluent French - a good informational document about french the way it really is from an American who lived there
comptoirs du monde - a blog dedicated to expanding knowledge on frequenty used french expressions

Let me know if you find cool French websites, tech related or not. Always looking for something to read to help my French!

The Rasterbator .... get your mind out of the gutter!!!

2005-02-28T20:39:00.000-06:00

But seriously.....

So i'm doing homework/procrastinating and I came across this really cool website! It's called The Rastorbator. It takes a picture that you either upload to it or give it the website of an image you found online and it converts it into a poster size:

"The Rasterbator is a web service which creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into extremely cool looking posters up to 20 meters in size."

It does it over the internet and converts any image into a huge image, spread over multiple sheets of standard paper, that can be printed out and put on the wall in order. It looks awsome and is a cool way to make unique posters. I'm going to try it out on s/t haven't decided what yet. but everyone should check it out.

It now has a standalone version that you can download to your computer and use regardless of being online!! Great way to make easy and cheap posters!

Bet

2005-02-28T18:06:00.000-06:00

per the previously mentioned bet, I lost. But this does mean there will be a party soon. Everyone who lost will be putting in a case of beer for the person with the closest date and our friend. There are atleast 8 of us in on it. That's a lot of beer and a very good party!!!

I was DD again this weekend. I had originally had other plans but since I did need to meet on campus at 10am saturday morning (an obscenely early hour for me!!) I was ok with it. It was lots of fun, hung out had a beer, some dancing and normal drunken fun was had by all.

Next week I refuse to be dd. Someone elses turn!

Cool Sites List 1

2005-02-28T17:34:00.000-06:00

A few tech related sites that I frequent often:

kevin rose dot com -- Past host for TSS on TechTV, good hacking/tech blog
Scopetech --brand new site set up like digg in the respect that you can vote on your favorite articles for the main page but ran by Dan Huard exemployee from TechTV
The Edge of I-Hacked -- Tech blog that I found recently
Avi Adir -- another interesting tech blog

Those are just a few that I check out regularly. Check them out.

umm... oops, I fell?

2005-02-27T15:39:00.000-06:00

Ok, this was hysterical. We have a bet going on with my friend and when she will have sex next. (that's a whole 'nother story, not covered in this post) One of the people in on it have our spring break as his date. He was conspiring with her to encourage her to have sex during that time, splitting the winnings, and she was like "sure i'll just happen to fall on a penis." Apparently that's what the kids are calling it today. I found that entertaining.

Flirt..... what to do tonight

2005-02-26T23:04:00.000-06:00

I enjoy harmless flirting. Flirting with a close guy friend or someone completely unavailable. If it can do no harm it's all good is my motto. With classes that are 9 to 1 male to female (remeber engineering guys, this doesn't mean the odds are good for me), you can be sure I generally flirt with the guys in my class. I don't discriminate. It means nothing, I just find it fun. You chit chat/normal girl talk with the girls and either are one of the guys on some days or flirty on the the others. For some reason it seems to work right now for me.

Is there anything wrong with that? The only thing I could think of would be the fact that, until recently, I didn't realize I was doing it! I know, I sound naive, but I honestly didn't, and I'm not all that naive. I know it'll get me in trouble one of these days, almost has already. There is a fine line between a flirt and the more insulting term for it, "cocktease." I think there is a difference -- avery fine line between the two. Almost invisible, sure but there none the less. A flirt is just having fun, not wanting anything back but a little flirty attention. Now, a cocktease, in my opinion, knows what they are doing and are going as far as they can without it no longer being just teasing, dangling the idea of what the guy wants but not delivering. I can understand how this can be annoying, but is just harmless flirting the same?

The guy undestanding it's just flirting is another big thing. How do you get that across? I guess by not crossing the line from flirt to cocktease. How? Haven't figure that one out. I've been called a flirt, even a cocktease, which no one else thought was appropriate but whatever he wants to think. Never been called a slut, tho if someone did I'd have a good laugh. They obviously don't know me!

That brings me to what should I do tonight. I was trying to do homework, but obviously, that isn't going on right now. Some friends are at the bars. Do I want to be around others? I have strong anti-social tendencies, I think it comes from my semi social anxiety issues. I'm not sure if I have the energy needed to be around lots of poeple I don't know. But waiting this long does mean they should be drunk which always makes in easier. If only I was too.

One of my room mates is a psych major. She asked me today if she could do a case study on me. Not sure whether to be insulted or willing? I'll probably just be indifferent. I'll explain more about that in another post possibly. This one is getting long as it is.

I do this when I procrastinate. Whole stream of consiousness. Gets pretty random but helps me emtpy my mind. If I do it I'll put a warning in the post so you can skip it if you so choose.

To call or not to call?

Past Posts

2005-02-25T16:10:00.000-06:00

Might have noticed that I all of the sudden have posts from December and January. I'm going through my old blog and picking out posts that I particularly liked and adding them under their original date.

I'm going to start doing a review of something every week. Either a computer related thing such as, software, freeware, games, hardware, etc. , books, movies, random shit..... This is mostly just to give me something different to do. Test my writing skills. I'm taking a technical writing course and I really like it. I think I've learned quite a bit.

I'm also going to start having a link list of links I've found around the internet and have liked every Friday. I'm going to try at least.

T-shirt Weather of the Midwest

2005-02-25T15:22:00.000-06:00

I live in the mid-west and it's cold. This winter was no exception. We had a few weeks where the windchill was consistently 20 below. That's chilly, you just don't spend time outside if you can help it. Lately it's been in the 20s and 30s. The mid to high 30s start feeling pretty warm, it becomes sweatshirt weather. I still like a coat. I lived in the south for 7 yrs, some things just rubbed off. Granted I didn't actually own a winter coat then, but still.

On with the story, today was 44 with a windchill of 37, sunny, and just a nice day in general! And half the people I saw were wearing tshirts. This is something I've been used to since I was very young. Yet, while living in the South, you get used to seeing people all bundled up in their winter clothes when the temp dips down below 50!! Perfect sweatshirt weather IMO. So funny to think of the extreme opposites. When the temp starts getting into the 50s here, watch out! shorts weather!!!

This is the time of the year that goes the slowest tho. Spring semester usually just drags. It's the end of February and we've only been back to school for 1.5 months! Soooo much more to do.

I'm trying to figure out what classes I will be taking next semester. I have no idea. I know of about 3 that I will take for sure, but the others absolutely no idea.

UPDATE: windchill is apparently not in the blogger dictionary, I need to pay more attention

Structured Procrastination

2005-02-24T18:31:00.000-06:00

This essay completely sums me up:
Structured Procrastination by John Perry

so funny that someone used their procrastination time to write this but that is what structured procrastination is. If you really don't feel like reading it, which I'm sure is most of you, here's the main definition:

"Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing ... However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important."

hehe, i find it quite entertaining

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ Sarcastic Much ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡

2005-02-24T18:19:00.000-06:00

I know, wtf are those stupid mini i things up there? Well, those are the "it" punctuation for today. Are you sarcastic? Misunderstood? And thought to be crazy? Well maybe you need to signal your sarcasm. Or you're just horrible at it and should stop, but no one's judging or anything¡.

Such a good example. Personally I'm not in favor of it. Kinda stupid. If you're not smart enough to understand me then you have no business reading my posts. I guess if I was targeting people out there it might be a good idea. Those "popular" celebrity bloggers (you know who you are) might want to try it out, but me, for now, I'll pass. Chances are if it comes out of my mouth it's sarcasm.

Procrastination at it's best.......................

2005-02-23T13:21:00.000-06:00

So I'm at work. I feel like procrastinating and what better way then to post to a blog no one reads? Towards that end I'm going to explain my blog name. (note randomness)

(Please read with lecture voice!) In French Ma = feminine version of mine, petite = little/small also feminine (since I too am feminine) , chou = cabbage which I belive is also feminie (strange, but it'll make sense in a min. sort of). In France this is considered a term of endearment. Kind of like "my little darling", but cooler 'cause it's in French, of course (biensûr). I've heard it as ma petite chou and ma petite chou chou, no idea which is correct but with the double cabbage is the way my mom, who doesn't speak a lick of French so the other one is probably correct, used it when I was little. Her friend in high school took French and called all her friends that, strange.

Could explain why I have taken French classes for the past 8 or so years. Granted not taking any currently, engineering classes are a bitch, but hopefully next semester.

I have to meet with that advisor today to switch my major over to the French for Professionals option that they just created and figure out how my study abroad classes transfer and what I still need to take. oy, looking forwared to it.

I proofed my friends paper the other day. 13 pages of a psych. study. Context was good, grammer was horrid. I can't really talk cause mine is really bad too but I do know how to make sentences sound like I'm over 10yrs old! Cleaned it up some, just made it sound more mature. Other than that I can't help, have no idea what the context should be.

zzzzzzzzzzzz t minus 15 min and counting!!!

2005-02-18T16:38:00.000-06:00

It's almost sleep time. I'm ready. It's been a long day to end a long week. Got my paper back tho. B+ not to shabby considering this is the first English teacher to like my writing. Went in to talk to him this afternoon, during my usual nap time, and he said that it was good, minor issues but all in all he likes my style and tone! I was on a nice high after that for awhile.

Not sure what's going on tonight besides Zs friends coming over. Should be fun, I've met one of the three that are coming and she's fun so should be a good drunkin weekend. I'm ready for it, well I will be.

Tomorrow I need to go into the office of a club I'm the computer coordinator for. I just got the position this semester, haven't touched a thing yet (i know i'm slow) andthe webserver crashes! Just my luck the guy before me is no longer in the state, he's doing a co-op. He set it up using Gentoo Linux, which I know bare basic linux stuff so i know nothing, and now he pretty much seems like a control freak. Kept it so that he gets the email along with me and responds. Talk about walking on someones toes!!! But he is helping me since it would take me forever to set up this server since I don't know what I'm doing. I could do it, just would be lots of time I don't have. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much!

I hope this class doesn't stay over. They're supposed to get out at 5 but the prof usually keeps them till 10 after and then i wait another 5 min for them to all get out so I can straighten up. Gotta love my job!

PS if anyone wants gmail invites I have tons so comment here with your email address and I'll send you one.

Hellish Week

2005-02-17T17:57:00.000-06:00

I'm done, my brain has quit for the week. Doesn't seem to care that at 8am I have a huge test but eh? not important. But I suppose I will continue to study. Hopefully not to many people will need help tonight and I'll just be left to do my homework in peace.

It's almost the weekend!!!!! I'll crash as soon as I get home, few hours of sleep and ready for Friday night! 24hrs from now hopefully I'll be asleep!!! Oh so sad that that's the biggest thing I'm looking forward to.
other than that not a damn thing going on. I'm boring, just call me captain obvious i know, haven't heard of any cool news or anything at all.

Microsofts anti-spyware will be remaining free, which since it's the wholes they didn't fix, in their software, umm ... yeah, they should feel responsible for it and try to help!

I need a topic for an instructions tech paper. No idea what to do, i'm thinking of maybe: How to design and build your own economy PC. but I don't know.

Did you know they can charge for silence? I didn't either but apparently on iTunes there are some tracks for 99 cents of silence. Go figure, gotta be illegal and the songs are even protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management). Everyone must go to PlasticBugs the guy there works for TSS (The Screen Savers on formerly TechTV then G4TechTv and now G4) . He has downloaded the silence with his free iTunes song from pepsi and has made it downloadable. Go protest against the RIAA!!!!

links and randomness

2005-02-15T19:17:00.000-06:00

If you're looking for gmails head over to isnoop.net, they have over 200,000 and have already given away around that many. I'll end up giving them over 100, I'm thinking it should be public eventually. Check it out tho.

Today my English Prof. said "There are certain cultures that do things better than other cultures", in context he was talking about different Amercian cultures like North South kind of thing. I thought it was interesting. I've lived in both places and it definitely is a whole 'nother culture!

I was checking out other blogspot blogs by hitting the next blog button, wow, lots of languages, especially Spanish, and random, one was a list of emails, one a list of news in cancer, and some really strange ones, half engilsh and half I have no idea. Very interesting.

I'm a huge geek

2005-02-15T15:13:00.000-06:00

Just gotta let my geekyness show. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy looks cool, didn't realize it was coming out this April 29!

UPDATE: I take that back, it's no longer at that link, but if you go there and read the read there is a link up to an official trailor at amazon.com.

well what do ya know

2005-02-15T14:39:00.000-06:00

I hate getting sick. That feeling you get when you know you're getting sick but nothing you can do about it? Yeah, feeling that right now. Everyone around we is coughing, sniffling etc. And lack of sleep on my part, 4 hrs tops of sleep a night, isn't exactly healthy. I funciton well enough but, I hurt all over this afternoon.
I'm also addicted to caffeine. Doesn't matter what form, any will do: chocolate (personal favorite), coffee, pop, whatever. Had a hell of a headache today, hid the rest of the bodies aches which is nice, but as soon as that caffeine headache was gone, my body just aches all over. I really should try and cut down the coffee but it's just too good. Having a friend work at a cafe is not the best idea. Free coffee whenever I want? Nope not quitting this addiction any time soon!
I usually go cold turkey at the end of the summer. Being at work at 7:30 is not fun, I'm not a morning person. But this year for some reason I just couldn't do it. The headaches are a bitch and two weeks are really long weeks if you have a constant headache through them.
I love my job, granted it's just for the school year but basically getting paid to do my homework is great. Lab monitoring is so easy. Sure I do actually have to do stuff from time to time but in general the teachers teach and just leave me alone. First few days they are a little confused, keep trying to get me to participate in their class! no thanks, already took this class once which was more than enough.
I shouldn't spread how great a job this is probably, don't need competition forming. Now summer job? That's a whole 'nother issue which is it's own rant in itself for another day!

humph VD

2005-02-14T10:52:00.000-06:00

Do we really need an infinite amount of reminders that its Valentines Day? I mean aren't all the happy couples enough? Don't get my wrong, it's cute, it's what I want, but please... anyone noticed the image for gmail and google? cute enough to make me gage. Granted I am just jealous, thats what I want, not to mention being horny, annoying as hell without a boyfriend. And it's not that I can't find one, I just don't try so this whole rant is my own fault and I acknowledge that but it still sucks! Ok I'm done venting now back to happy thoughts..... and time to study for three tests this week... lucky lucky joy joy!

Gmail Valentines day picture