Brian's World

Stolen Dryer

March 23rd, 2007 Posted in College, Life, Stupid People | No Comments »

I just got back from switching laundry around, I got there around 1 minute before the washers ended and I opened two dryers (the only 2 empty ones) and cleaned out the lint traps and threw in dryer sheets to do w.e dryer sheets do. I left the drawers open and casually just sat down waiting for the 30 seconds left to end.

Then this girl walked down the stairs clearly wanting to dry her clothes. She looked at one of the open dryers I had planned on used, inspected that it had nothing in it besides my dryer sheet, and then started tossing stuff in! Grr. Was it too hard to conclude that since the door was open on two of the machines, and I was tossing my dryer sheet in the other one that maybe I had already done the same for the other one? Apparently so.

I ended up using another dryer, after evicting someones brown towel and cleaning the lint trap. Of course I didn’t have any dryer sheet or anything.. she was using that. I used that one for my whites. Now I am stalling because I don’t want to go down there if she is emptying her clothes or anything even tho I don’t believe she knows they just ended.

I also have to meet with my advisor sometime, we were suppose to meet on Tuesday from 4-5 which is Senate time for me. I emailed him and he said I could swing by if I dropped him a call. So I dropped him about 7 calls between Wednesday and Thursday and I heard nothing back. I called him today at 10 am and he said he had class and would be back at 11:30. He didn’t know who I was though and made me feel very uncomforatble as he was in a rush.

CS 2 test at 2pm today, shouldn’t be too bad. Gen Psych is Monday, I dread that. I’m bad at stuff that I can’t relate to anything, usually I make up my own relations by I just can’t seem to connect.

Time to go steal my clothes before someone moves them.

Cheers!

Routers, GSoc, etc.

March 18th, 2007 Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

This post will be mainly technical and computer related.

This past week I recieved my FON in the mail. FON is a Wireless Access point provided for Free or Low cost by Fonera with hopes to spread public free/cheap wifi around the world. I was interested because it was free, and it has wifi, who doesn’t like free wifi? After I got it I learned it can be upgraded to DD-WRT an open source? (maybe) firmware for routers that supports lots of different features, bells, whistles, etc. Of course I upgraded it. Now I had my FON minus the Fonera sitting around and wanted to put it to good use. Bingo.

I hate RPI Wifi, the VPN is dreadful with Vista, and 802.1x authentication support is non existant, so I haven’t been able to connect to many wireless hotspots outside my dorm room. So, I grabbed my Fonera and the power cable and applied some advanced electrical tape skills to produce a truely portable access point, the power and router are all in “one”, all it needs is an ethernet cable (which i just didn’t want to tape into the bundle).

Here are some pics of the final product, minus the ethernet connection.

FON

I’ve also been looking for some summer work. Google Summer of Code has been in my sights since it first came out, I’ve emailed the projected the coordinator several times regarding high school students and under 18 and all that jazz.. but now that I’m over 18 and in college it looks like I’m good to go. I filled out one application yesterday, and am looking for maybe one more as a backup. I’m aiming for PHP/mysql driven stuff, hopefully I get chosen!

I had a dreadful ordeal on Wednesday, trying to digitize a VHS tape to my computer for editing in Adobe Premiere. It was awful,with the right equiptment I could have done it in 30 seconds but no, I have to jump through several dozen hoops. First the DV port was only DV in on the deck, so I couldn’t do anything with that. I dubbed the VHS to DVD and then started attempting to rip the DVD to an editable format. I tried everything, mpeg, mpeg2, xvid, divx,avi.. nothing seemed to like the format change. My final solution involved: DVD -> XVID AVI -> DIVX -> AVI. I got it done 2am on Thursday, long night.

Well I have some Diff Eq to attend to, and some PHP to attack, I’ll catcha later.

Break no more

March 11th, 2007 Posted in College, Life | 1 Comment »

Break is over, boo hoo. Well, I technically have 1.25 hours left, but there is nothing exciting I can do in that time, so I will dedicate it to sleeping.

Let me try and recap what happened:

I rewired the surround sound using thick expensive wires run through the holes cut for heater pipes, I hope they don’t melt. It wasn’t my idea though.. I just make it work. During the process I discovered we get HD channels, which aren’t fully working yet. I enjoy watching not working tv channels. I like to laugh at them. The audio “Digitial Out” from the TV going into the “Digitial In” at the surround sound/dvd player seems to be a decoration, but fiber is cool so the cable is there anyways. I’m not a huge fan of Koss, cheap but yea.. cheap.

I interviewed at the Elms College, for a position that doesn’t exist yet. Isn’t that super? In all honestly it was fun, the interview was fast and focused, everyone was in a rush that day, but I think I did a good job showing them who I am. I think I learned my computer skills aren’t very focused, which I think is ok. I’m good at a lot of things. I’m not a guru expert genius at any one thing, but I’m very competant in a lot of things. I like to thing of myself as a person that makes systems work together, I can integrate things. Until something opens up, I’m still interested in integrating your systems. Please email me.

I did a little coding, by that I mean under 100 lines.. nothing too thrilling.

I enjoyed being home for the week, it was relaxing to cook my own soup for lunch, it was unfun that I couldn’t go to the studio. I hope it never looks like I don’t care, because I do care and really wish I could be there. The force field is in the way.. hrmph.

Back at RPI things are going on, I just added “Comments” to Katie’s website..nothing fancy there. I thought of adding AJAX but decided it was too much work for too little benefit. I wish I had a course in AJAX or CSS or something like that, I get CSS and I get AJAX but my background is from the PHP side of things, not the J or the X parts. I consider myself good at XML because I make XML files from php. ‘Nuff Said. Lol. Someday that will be done, I just have to keep one upping the current system.

RPI TV may be busy, who knows. We need to write a Capital Improvement Plan, and make it happen. I think we do enough for people that someone should care, even if we have to film EBoard meetings.. eww? Apparently GM Week is coming up, which means everyone politically involved on campus goes out and does stuff. I will be in the sidelines filming, like always.

I never read Bridge to Terebithia, but **SPOILER** the girl dies ** / SPOILER**. I thought that was a lousy ending, especially since the girl reminded me of Katie, similiar haircuts I believe. So Katie better not die or use an un-approved rope swings. That would be silly.

I enjoyed getting to watch ER from 10:00am to 12:00 every day. You’ll note I never put an am or pm next to the 12:00 that means lunchtime, I don’t know what it is. I usually have to ask Windows.

I have class at 10:00am tomorrow, I hope the VPN is feeling lucky. My left thigh really hurts. Grr to it.
I’m sorry this post wasn’t very intelligent, I’m just not feeling much of anything at the moment.

Good Night Moon