Brian's World

Of course I forgot

February 12th, 2007 Posted in College, Life, Stupid People | No Comments »

I had a great blog planned for today, of course that means I forgot it. I thought of it earlier today, and.. well.. its still in earlier today. Maybe if I write for long enough I can flush it out.

Wait a second.. I’m starting to feel it coming.

BINGO

This morning I decided to have a bagel with butter, something I have 20% of the mornings here at RPI. Let me walk you through what made this morning so different. I got the bagel, there were only 2 plain ones left I could find, and I choose the one with a large flat part on it. I cut it, and then waited to put it on the toasting maching. I debated in my head which way goes up, the straight-cut side or the cooked curved outside of the bagel. I noted the person in front of me had their bagel going in with the curved side up, meaning the cut of the bagel was down. I decided that was not the way to go, as the bottom of the bagel will most likely endure more heat, and I like toasted, not on fire. After waiting for there to be enough room, I placed my bagel, cut side up. I slide over and cut a moderate slab of butter to be spread later and put it on my place. I then went over to get juice, knowing I didn’t have much time left. As I got back to the bagel area, I noticed a guy walking away with a plain bagel, one that had the same unusual flat spot mine did. I was suspicious, upon arrival I saw a bagel at the bottom of the toaster, covered in burnt spots, cut side up (implying it had been cooked cut side down). The guy had taken my bagel… grrr. I was mad, I found the last plain bagel and cooked it. Leaving the overcooked bagel to be dealt with by someone else.

Now I got back to my seat and started thinking and stereotyping. Why did football players have to be so mean? I know the person was a football player because they were wearing some identifiable t-shirt and the entire football team was there getting breakfast as well. Being and RPI student I concluded he must be smart enough to know the bagel on the bottom would be his, and maybe he saw how poor his cooking came out and just didn’t want it.

Then I decided stereotyping was bad. Why did I immediately start using “football” player instead of the guy? Was it because I have a notion, not preconceived, that football players exhert a specific behavior? I’m not really sure. Ok, I know. Throughout all my schooling some sports players, specifically football, have always been treated different and acted different. Not to dive into the details, I’ve never liked how sports always get more than other non-athletic activities. For example RPI is raising several million to build the East Campus Athletic Village.. who would ever think of expanding the very tight Student Union?

I have mixed feelings on a subject, lets say I died tomorrow.. would people go to my funeral and actually care or would they just file by pretending to be like yea.. umm.. No, I’m not thinking of dying.. but its an interesting conjecture. I think I use that standard to measure success, does something depend on me? Currently not so much… I would hope a few people would go just to make an appearance.. ok, I’m getting bogged down here and I want to head to bed.

Hello Goodfriend

February 8th, 2007 Posted in College, Life | 2 Comments »

Its been almost a week, by that I mean tomorrow will be one week since my last posting and an update is definately due, where shall we start?

Well my time usage seems to be balancing out…well kinda..I’ve been able to wake up before 7 the past couple of days, definately a good thing. My schoolwork has been done early and submitted, so far no scarlet failures… speaking of scarlet letters, well I can’t remember the example.. yes I can.

If you don’t know I play World of Warcraft, not nearly as agressively as my brother has but occasionally, usually once every few days. I’m very slow at it.. but my subscription was running out and I needed to pickup a gamecard, essentially a gift card for Warcraft. Well I went to the Best Buy in Crossgates, the Albany mall to find it. The had the thing in one of those huge security boxes, the size of a moderate textbook for a box, containing a gift card. I felt like I was carrying around a marking that I played, almost like the Scarlet A worn by Hester.

I also recently posted about Vista, well I can now tell you I’m running Vista Business Edition on my Thinkpad T60, no dual boot, clean install. Its definately different, I’m not a huge fan of it at the moment. The GUI is clean and shiner, but I dunno.. I feel like I’m using a Mac partially.. everything is dumbed down.. great if you don’t know what your doing, awful if you do. Drivers were not an issue, a few upgrade but no major component issues. My main blocking point has been the networking, it wants to do everything on its own. and then tell me it can’t actually do it but it wants to try one of 3 things to see if it can be fixed. I pretty much beat it with a stick everytime I want to connect. Cisco VPN is spotty, 802.1_x PEAP security can’t even find the network.. basic WEP and unsecured works fine. My trick, run windows update constantly.. good luck finding it though, no more website. If anyone is looking for advice or wants to know more about it let me know… I also figured out how to transfer my genuine office serial number around.. nifty..

So that project is almost done, I’ll be making a stop at the helpdesk tomorrow to see if they can install SecureCRT.. whatever that does, and checking out Macromedia Dreamweaver and Office 2007.. Pricey though. Oh yea, its fun to watch the bubble screensaver.

A recent RPI TV discussion triggered my thoughts on CHSBA again, an alliance between college and high school broadcast groups to share content. I really want to do it, but unfortunately I also have the Brispace project cooking.. I should blog more on this later.

Brispace has been stalled due to the Vista project, I will resume development as soon as I get the motivation to reopen Dreamweaver. I have the major part to write, and I’m afraid of it.

Tonight has been different, my roommate is out of town for the weekend so I cranked up my iTunes to play some of the songs that I haven’t heard in a while. (Note, iTunes is like the one thing that won’t run on Vista) I have some very weird music. I would export a list but I know noone would read it. Right now I’m listening to “Four Dead in Ohio” a song I learned of from my AP History teacher Mr. Reese.. Lets see whats next, another great one “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night” so I can look like a retard while driving. Ok, I made that line up. Far too often I skip songs I’m not in the mood for, but at some point I must have been in the mood for the song so tonight, no skip button. I’m pretending like its not there. Why you may ask? I only add songs for a reason, I don’t add entire albums unless I like all the songs, and I think each song carries equal merit, but we aren’t in the correct mood to evalute each songs merit at the same time. Sigh,, some relaxing Lord of the Rings music. Followed by Greenday.. a little hard to swallow but who knows.

I really feel like getting back into the ARG scene, I wish someone would call or email me with stuff to do. I really enjoyed my last project, it was fun.. over 40,000 visitors :-D…. of course no one can actually know what it was or what I did….. blah.. I shouldn’t be writing this should I

I just watched three shuttles crash on the RPI Shuttle Tracking system.

Oh yea, RPI TV should put the server in the Union Closet. I think it is a smart idea, or my web club should start and then buy a rack for other ppl to use.. hrm

Well, J-Minus is on… “After Midnight,”

I’ll be inbed before then

Use of Time

February 2nd, 2007 Posted in College, Life, Mistakes | No Comments »

I think time should be used effectively, and it shouldn’t be wasted. I also know that I waste a good chunk of time each day for some reason or another. Over the past few days I’ve been able to dwindle my todo list of 10 down to roughly 3 items, all of which are very difficult to accomplish. But I still don’t feel live I’ve been very effective with my time, sure I got everything done in time but tat doesn’t seem good enough for me. I must be missing something, I just feel it.

I definately picked the right CS lecture to attend, the Pointers and Dynamic Memory one.. eww. And he says Tuesday’s lecture is important as well.. blah.

Where was I.. right.. time.

I know I waste my time watching TV and recorded TV shows, but I feel I need some way to relax. My video gaming is a near minimum and I don’t think I could improve there.

I need to work on focusing in what I need to do, tuning other disctrations out. If I am able to finish my material in adequate time I’m sure that I’ll have more then enough time to be distracted.

I know I bring or have brought all the distractions on myself, which is what frustrates me.. but when it seems the world must stop spinning for a long period of time while I am distracted, I just get etryuiouytryuiopiuytr.

I frequently ask myself why.. not like asking me why.. then I would answer.. i ask myself why others why… it never returns an answer, but its a neat question to think about.

Right now I miss Ms. Boudreau a lot.

I hate it when computer science people say “this is dangerous, we need to be careful”. There is nothing dangerous about a computer.. especially a suduko program. The worst it could do is somehow overheat your computer and melt it or burn it out. So it smokes a little and smells like burnt popcorn? No ones dead.. Now guns and knives.. those are dangerous and warrant the real careful.

I also like to laught at people still using webmail for their email. I feel like pointing and saying Wow.