Bobbis.net

It has been a while, again, since I have posted. The latest news is that my brother and his girlfriend arrived Saturday from New York. Sunday was the family gathering so they could meet everyone. Lots of food and and so much chaos as usual. Gaila was gone to Minnesota for a bridge tournament, so she got to miss out on the family goodness.

My office was supposed to be moving on Saturday as well, but they haven't finished the air conditioning system. They got the part they needed two weeks ago and we have been waiting to move up there since August of 2004. There is only one little piece that needs to be done before we can move. Meanwhile, FP&M are making visits to measure and plan for making our current office into a classroom. The new move date is now October 15. Which reminds me, I need to get some scholarship work done really quick now.

Over the end of the week, I got subversion working for ATX. You can now download the latest development source of ATX via subversion at http://atxproject.net/svn/atx1/trunk/src/ . When ATX 2 gets going you will be able to find it at http://atxproject.net/svn/atx2/trunk/src/ . You can also browse the repositories at http://www.atxproject.net/websvn/ . Speaking of open source projects, #aim (an entirely C# AOL IM client started by a friend of mine) has been announced on SA and appears to be going well.

Wednesday was career fair. I wasn't really expecting much for anything, but I was willing to give it a shot. Wednesday morning I found that my nice "suit" didn't fit anymore, so I have to take some time between class to purchase a new outfit.

I made it to the career fair at about 5:00 PM. Most of my time was spent browsing around the floor of Hilton. I stopped by the usually places like General Mills and Cargil, but they seemed way too discouraged at anything that was below a 3.00. American Century Investments seemed they were in need of some IT Interns, but they are based in Missouri and do a lot with COBOL, and from the looks of their web site, they are not very advanced in the technology or even organized, which leads me to believe the IT environment there is not very pleasant.

I was on my way out when I realized there were a bunch of employers on the concessions level. These were mostly the smaller companies that actually had their IT people there instead of the generic HR person who doesn't know half a thing about computers. There I met two potential leads. One is with Atanasoft (I know, really bad PUN), a development outsourcing company located in the ISU Research Park. They primarily work with database systems. It seems like a good opportunity for me to get my hands dirty with coding. I have an interview with them Friday afternoon. We'll see how that goes. The other company also seems really cool. Source Allies is a consulting / outsourcing company that deals primarily with open source solutions and web applications. They seemed very enthusiastic and interested in me. I feel like if they could provide me with an internship, I could learn more about web development, but I suppose that will also mean I won't get very much into application development. They weren't looking for any internships, but they did seem really interested in me.

Anyway, I have class at 8 AM so I should get some sleep.

It has been a while since I've updated this. A lot has been happening lately and I suppose I really haven't had that much free time. Tom and I are done working for the Daily, and are glad about that. Church on Wednesday last week felt really good since I was able to take a break from constant work and actually socialize. This weekend Gaila and I spent a lot of quality time together. She had a banquet for her scholarship in the college of Ag on Friday and Saturday we went to see Batman Begins after having dinner at Gangelos. Sunday we rented some movies and I was able to actually sleep in.

I have joined the MIS club for some free swag and pizza before MUG meetings. ClubFest was lots of fun, being able to play around with an iPod nano. I have posted pictures.

Anyway, it's getting late so that's my update.

This weekend really sucked. From Saturday 10:00 AM to about 9:30 this morning I worked a total of 45 hours for the Daily. This job was only supposed to take Saturday, but thankfully we (Tom [my boss] and I) were able to get things up and running for them to get a paper out on Tuesday. I am exhausted and want at least an entire day off, which probably won't happen until at least Sunday. The reason it took so long was because everything was disorganized and the person who was suppose to let us know how things were supposed to work was not very helpful. The only good thing is that I will be getting some good money for it and it will look really good on my resume.

So, anyway, I'm really tired and would rather not be on a computer right now.

Laters.

I have stumbled on a blog giving accounts of a group of people in a New Orleans data center (that hosts somethingawful.com). The information provided in this blog is a lot more personal and more "real" than what you would get from CNN or any other new source. These people have been keeping their data center running through the disaster using gas generators and have been helping with what they can to keep order and security and are helping authorities with communications.

mgno.com

They are mentioned in a recent Wired News Article.

So, now that class has started I'm finding myself getting really busy. AmesMUG will be doing ClubFest on the 14th, AmesFUG needs some student leadership to keep the student organization, which I will probably get into. All homework and projects for MIS 331 are done as a group, so I will be needing to find time to meet with my partner when we need to do homework or projects.

This weekend I may be doing some work with the Daily to get their servers back up and running, for extra perks at work or perhaps an extra pay. I am also setting up a web site for my brother at JasonRearick.com, and now I have a month to get a web site and catalog going for my cousin who will be running an ad for it as part of the statements given by Greater Iowa Credit Union, which means this will be a fairly important project. I will, of course, be paid for this work.

I also am working to getting a subversion going for ATX. I have it running, but am now working on making authorization work so that only Colin and I can make commits while allowing anyone to checkout. I may even host a few other projects for some friends who are doing collaborative work.

Anyway, I got Pirates of Silicon Valley on DVD today, so I'm going to watch that.

Laters.

So, school has started and I've had all my classes at least once by now. Mondays and Wednesdays are very easy days. Marketing changed instructors, and IMHO they changed to a worse instructor who does not organize thoughts or ideas very well. Management seems like any standard business course, throwing terms and stuff around, though I have a feeling the instructor is going to rely on the book way too much ("This slide I'm not going to cover because the book does it"). At least I got the hint in this class. History seems cool. My professor is from England and is very interactive. Though if I catch someone drop one of those duel credit history/US Diversity courses, I'm going to snap that up and drop 201. MIS is pretty cool, and seems like it's going to be easy. Though, all the projects are going to be done in groups (rolleyes). I hope my partner is competent.

It appears MUG is going to be on Thursday nights (I believe it was last year). Last Saturday Ben R came down to help us move the MUG server to Tiger Server and change ISUMUG to AmesMUG on all things. Took us 7 hours to do.

Last weekend was also fun as Gaila and I went to Ottumwa to visit her extended family Saturday night to Sunday. Apparently I got the seal of approval (again). Sunday, I finally got on a horse.

I have books to buy, another "clicker" to buy and activate, and other stuff to take care of tonight. So, laters.

Colin, I refuse to let you design a program supported by COBOL on the backend.

So, summer is coming to an end. All that is left is the weekend and school starts again on Monday. Looking back on my goals for the summer, I only really accomplished one for moving into my apartment. This summer was another summer that found me wanting to learn Cocoa, but somehow I didn't get around to it. I also haven't done any major overhaul on my web site. I don't think I've done very much with my web site since last summer, and going a year without overhauling a web site of mine is a really long time. So, here's my list:

• Get apartment
• Learn Cocoa
• Work on bobbis.net
• PHP Bug and Feature request (project management) system
• Build or Buy Windows PC

Class starting next week. The following is my tenative schedule:

• Hist 201 Griffiths, Stine
• Mgmt 370 Hunger
• MIS 331 Tandradinata
• Mkt 447 Akili

I have had Akili for my intro Marketing class, and thought it was pretty interesting (and easy), so I'm taking this interesting-looking class to see if I want to pickup an emphasis in Marketing. MIS 331 will be learning C# .NET, and Mgmt 370 will be using the blasted clickers again! I added Hist 201 (Western Civ.) earlier this afternoon to fulfill a history requirement.

So, that is the overview of my summer and an outlook onto the fall. Right now I have to finish the Ag Support Information System so that we can set up our schedules in it.

Laters.