Bobbis.net

The concert on Thursday was cool. The weather was nice and the mosquitoes weren't bad. The vocalists that day was really good. Afterward we all went to Adrienne's to hang out and watch Hot Shots with Nerdig.

Friday, Colin and I hung out watching the premiere of Stargate Atlantis.

Tomorrow I will be going in to check out a duplex on the west side of town. $275 / Mo for a duplex sounds pretty good. I sort of know the guy who is looking for a roommate from FUG. In fact I found out about this offer though the FUG mailing list. Hehe, I got my current job from a mailing list. Let's hope this turns out good as well. If I do decide to take it, I will be doing a lot of moving between July and August. Moving at work and helping to move Adrienne and then this.

I'm thinking after summer class gets out and before school starts again that some of us will be able to go camping at Sailorville and go boating on a weekend. Discussion here.

Wednesday was another day at work and at school. Yippie. Next week we need to make a list for things that need to go to the ISU warehouse and move stuff to 301. Next week Tom will be on vacation following Clapton in the twin cities and C.B. My goal will be to get things cleaned up and organized around here when he's gone. I also got my hands on my Tom's old duel 1 Ghz G4. It has a few problems, like wanting to kernel panic and restart when it feels like it. I'm going to suggest taking it into AIT Service on Friday.

Church was nice. I got there early because I gave myself a good margin of error for the bus schedule (I'm taking the bus a lot more now). When I got there I found that the building was locked, and I had to wait outside with the people who made the food until Ben came a little before 6:00. The food was awesome, and I LOVE garlic bread. It seemed like a long time since I went to Wednesday service since the past 7 days has been so busy.

Tonight I will be going to the municipal concert with Colin, Adrienne, and Katherine. Since Nerdig doesn't have to work tonight, I think we are going to hang out after the concert. I will also be helping Adrienne move in two weeks. I know of at least one other person who is helping.

Some of us have been wondering what's going on with Meri lately. I had the idea that she was going to be back from AZ Wednesday morning, but I haven't heard from her. Perhaps a call after dinner. We want to know what's going on!

I should be getting home to get something to eat before I have to leave for the concert.

Later.

I got to work before 8:00 this morning. I'm going to try to be in by 7:30 from now on. This morning, though, I had to take my dad to the repair shop to drop off the van. If I didn't have to do that I would have been in at 7:30.

At work, in the morning, we cleaned out the bat cave. It was extremely humid and stuffy in there. Tom wants that to become our storage room, but I don't think that is such a good idea. That room has a lot of evidence of water damage and has no climate control. We ended up filling one and a half dumpsters with all the trash we hauled out of there.

I finally got my classroom clicker thinggy that I was have problems with working now. I called the company again, and they got me up and running. I wish I didn't have to deal with einstruction.com . I got a response to my informational email I sent them Friday. They suggested that I upgrade my browser to one that supports 128 bit encryption (umm, ok the latest build of Camino seems to support it very well) and to set my security settings in Explorer to low. At that point I just rolled my eyes and decided to drop it. They are not very organized, and it would be almost impossible to do anything about it. I got what I needed, and I suppose I'll leave it at that.

Our instructor decided to talk a little bit about how the IT system is set up at ISU. All the stuff he talked about made me laugh. I already work for technology on campus. I know a lot about what goes on. He even mentioned the grey list that was enabled today. I was the only person who had a clue what it was. I'm afraid to go into any detail in that class for fear of making the instructor look like an idiot after attempting to prove my point.

Tomorrow is Wednesday already. It will be nice to see some friends. Perhaps Colin and I can hang out after church. I can help him with ideas for ATX and I can get my "build a computer" homework assignment done.

Grades are in for Stat. I was surprised by the outcome. I'll have to grab my degree audit and double check, but I think I managed to squeak by the 2.75 GPA requirement to get into the MIS program. I have to look into that and talk to my advisor so I can get added to the class that will bring me to 12 credits next fall.

I want to cut down on the sugars and Mt. Dew. I remember when I went without Dew for a week and I felt really good (after a day or so of withdraw headache). Once cigarettes get killed off, they will be going after coffee and pop with the evils of caffeine.

Well, it's already 12:00. I had my nap today and I'm still really tired. This getting up early really messes with me.

Yesterday, I went to GC as I stated earlier. Ethan (my cousin's son) has grown so much. I didn't really feel the best Sunday morning, but I managed to eat a good pancake breakfast. I was tired the entire day, if I really had the opportunity I would have fell asleep anytime that day. On the way back Meri called me asking for something online, but I couldn't help her out. I learn briefly about what is going on which is basically explained in her blog. Good luck.

I got to bed around 12:00 that night, and about 1:30 I woke up feeling really sick. It took me about an hour to get myself back to sleep again. I don't know what is wrong with me. Hopefully I can shake the not feeling 100% off pretty soon. I slept in until I had to get to class, so I missed out on half the day at work.

Today was the first day of MIS 330. I have to say, after the 2 hours of the class, the only thing I really like are the chairs. I still don't quite understand what we are supposed to learn in the class, and it seems the Management part is emphasized more than the Information Systems part. I have already learned by talking to him once through email and once in person that the instructor is a complete morn when it comes to computers. I told him about my problem with purchasing the subscription and he just told me that no transaction is secure and that if someone does get a hold of my numbers that there is no liability. You know, I really don't want to hastle with liability and stolen credit card numbers. I'd like to know that reasonable measures are taken to prevent bad stuff from happening. I still haven't gotten a response from my nice email I sent the web site. I think I will just find a number and call them this afternoon.

Moving at work is going to take a little longer than expected. The estimate to have the room done has been delayed another two months to the end of September. In the mean time, it's looking that we may be moving into room 20 in the next week or two. Tomorrow, we are going to clean out what has now been dubbed the bat cave. This is the back storage room in 301. It is basically the area under the cupola.

Well, I finally know where the phrase "Hack the Gibson" came from. It's always entertaining to watch old "hacker" movies. I laughed when they were drooling over a 28.8 modem, or when they said RISC processors are the future.

Tomorrow, I am going to Grundy Center. My cousins who live on the east coast are going to be in. It will be nice the see them. My parents are planning for me to go to New York (not the city) for my winter break to visit my brother, even though he only has Christmas day off from work. What am I going to do by myself when he's working? That's something that needs to be answered before I decide to go.

I didn't mention this on Friday since I was too busy ranting about insecure credit card transactions, but I have been offered the job of server administrator if and when Chris leaves. His interview is Monday, and I suppose we will know if he has the job then. Things happen so fast sometimes.

Anyway, I must get to bed since I have to be up and on the road before noon tomorrow. Later.

I bought my textbook and interactive classroom device dohickey. To be able to use the dohickey I have to register for an account online, and that costs even more money. While registering for my account I came across something that unsettles me. After submitting my credit card information using the secure payment form the publisher's web site, my browser warned me that I was about to send a submission in clear, not encrypted. I tell it not let the action take place, as I am a little paranoid about my credit card information being sent in the clear. After denying this request a page loaded saying my payment was approved and that I should not cancel, go back, or close the browser window. I waited for a few minutes to see what would happen, but I became curious as to what it was doing so I viewed the source. The source contained a hidden form that contained all the information I had submitted earlier (including my full credit card number, security code, and card type). It was set to POST to an insecure URL and contained a script to automatically submit the data. I assume this is what caused the security warning I got earlier. I got an email stating that my payment was approved, so I believe the charge was applied to my card. I wonder how long, and how many people's information were sent in the clear, and weather or not they will fix this. I sent their tech support an email detailing what happened. It has been in my experience web sites linked with textbooks don't work too well. Accounting 284 comes to mind for me. I'm sure other people have had bad experiences with textbook web sites.

Right now, Colin is here and we are watching the season premiere of Stargate SG-1.

Already shaping up too be a nice day today [/sarcasm]. I am almost positive I failed my final today. Very little of the studying I did actually helped. This is why I don't like to study. I hate math with a passion. The only way to do well in a math related course is to work on lots of problems. Since I hate math, I don't like to work on lots of problems. I see no point to them. I can't feel too bad about my test though. In the time allotted only perhaps 5 out of the 50 people there actually finished. We were even given an extra 10 minutes. I really hope that the test is graded on a curve and that curve will come out a lot in my favor. It's terrible that this final is close to 50% of the grade. A new section of stat has opened up for the fall. Perhaps I should grab a seat just in case. Nevermind, stat is closed again :-(

Also, I realized that I have advised (computer wise) one of the authors of my text book. Dr. William Duckworth. He is active on the MUG's mailing list. I always find it interesting that I can help someone who has a Dr. in front of their name. I have to remember that even for astrophysicists things can be hard.

Both my co-workers are gone today. I'm here at work all by myself and it's raining out. I also have a headache, and my stomach doesn't feel the greatest. I figure it's because of the stress I have been under the last few days. I've got to spend $130 on textbooks for MIS 330 today as well.

Hopefully I can relax this weekend. Stargate SG-1 starts tonight. 2 hour premier. I think I'll check that out unless someone wants to go out and do something.

I was productive at work this afternoon. We got our xServe running the backups. We were quite amazed at the speed, until I tried to do something, and found out Tom didn't get ALL the servers, just the WWW server. I needed to recover a file, and it wasn't there :-( .

I got my stick of RAM today, and finished installing XP in VirtualPC while working on the scholarship system while doing random stuff for Tom on the xServers. I had 5 of my 6 virtual desktops working on a task. That extra RAM really made a difference.

Church was nice today. The music got all disorganized, but we are all friends and laughed at each other. It was fun. Also, the sweet potatoes were a little raw, but the chops were excellent. A little too quiet at dinner as well. Still had fun.

I hate saying no to my friends. I decided to be responsible and decline going to the municipal band concert tomorrow. I've got a final Friday that I really need to study for. I really shouldn't even be writing this right now. Good luck to Maggie for conducting, let me know how it goes.

Time for studies.

Ok, for the rest of the week, I really have to focus. I have another homework project due Thursday and a final on Friday. The only treat that I'm going to give myself until Friday after the final will be going to church. Yes, that's a treat. I haven't heard anything via e-mails, but I hope there will be food there as usual.

Last night, while I was working on my stat homework that was due for today, I listened to my classical music for the first time in a while when studying. For some reason, it brought back the memory of me writing COBOL in the wee hours of the morning. It actually became a little distracting. I don't like it when good music gets associated with a bad thing. I switched back to my jazz and became a lot more productive.

Today at work, I found out that Chris will be leaving in the next couple of weeks. Jason will be leaving at the end of the month, so that means I will be by myself at work in a few weeks. I knew this was coming. My last post was just about people leaving for their careers, and today the wheels are set in motion. I already am the most senior person at my job. I will probably be promoted to server administrator on top of my task of being Mac administrator. Looks like there will be more to add to the resume. I wonder if that will constitute another raise :-$.

Speaking of money, the good 'ol credit card company called again today. Apparently, Apple charges when they ship. They make a $1 debit/credit to my account to make sure the information is valid when they take the order, but apparently $1 isn't enough to red flag a mistake I made when entering my expiration date. So, the order did not ship and I had to call the credit card company and Apple to straighten things out. Ugh. The nice thing is that the credit card company had their end of the situation all figured out with me before Apple even got around to notifying me that the transaction didn't complete. I was already on hold with Apple when their email came. I figure they are just extra touchy about things right now, since my account is in transition between Mastercard to Visa. Also, how come it takes 5 days to SHIP a WARRANTY?

Anyway, I've got to get to bed at a decent time, so I'm not so drained this week.

Awesome day today. Most of the people who read this were with me most of the day, so I will not say much about what happened today.

I really appreciate the time I had to spend with my friends. I'm afraid, soon, people will start going off to do their own things career wise. People will be leaving the state, and it will become difficult to stay close. Perhaps I need to try harder to make friends at ISU. IMHO, consciously trying to make friends doesn't really work well. Not living in the dorms has really made me miss out on a lot of social opportunities. ULC has introduced me to another group of nice people, though the summer crowd is a little older and few in numbers. Though, people leaving is still going to be a problem with friends at ISU and ULC. I know I may be leaving when I graduate in a few years. It's sad to think about that, but it also makes me appreciate the time that I have now.[/en]

I can't believe I'm so tired right now. Perhaps we are starting to get old, but I know we are not that old. We still have a lot of life in us :-)

Good night.

PS: warship worship :-O Too lazy to change it now, and you know what I meant.