Quarterly Update

I’m the worst blogger in the history of the tubes.This isn’t even really a blog post, it actually started as a description of a photo on Flickr that got out of control in length and resembled a blog post more than anything else. So without further adieu, here it goes –I’ll include the photo as well to make it complete:

I’ve been doing a LOT of thinking today. Over the past couple days (starting Thursday or Friday) the huge changes my life has taken over the last month have really started to hit home. A quick look at my 365 photo set makes it quite obvious, at least for me. The Summer of 2008 will definitely go down in my own personal history book as the biggest life changing period of the early years of my life (assuming I live a long life). I feel like I’ve grown up more in the past 5-6 weeks than in years before now.

Here’s a quick recap:
- I moved out of my house in Rochester, leaving most of my furniture and other bulky possessions behind. I left Rochester about a week before I finished my studies at RIT, my final exam exam schedule worked out nicely like that (bunch of online finals).
- I graduated from RIT after 4 long years, with a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology with a minor in Psychology.
- About a week after I officially completed my university studies (for now), I left my whole family in Connecticut and went back to Rochester for a couple days to prep for the big move. I left Rochester on the 30th very late at night without even really seriously saying goodbye to my roommates…
- August 31st to September 6th I drove across the United States from Rochester, NY to Phoenix, AZ (3000 miles) with a friend I knew through various Mazda forum communities. See my photo set "trans-american zoom". One would think driving for a week would be enough to say "hey.. this is a really major life-changing event".. but it wasn’t. I made the move without even having a job here in Phoenix, but that didn’t phase me in the slightest.
- September 11th I spent the entire day (literally) interviewing at a friggin amazing company that I had done a phone and video conference interview with, and later that same day I was offered the job!
- September 24th I started my career, after over a year of having no job while I was finishing my studies.

Today I’m settled into my new career, loving every minute of it (exchange server meltdown and all). I’m working for a company that has for a handful of years in a row been named one of the top 25 medium-sized companies to work for in the nation, and it really shows in the way the company works. It’s a profitable company, expanding pretty fast, and independent (also a privately-held company), so no parent company meddling with everything. The people I work with are all amazing, every single one of them.

I think the shock of all of this will hit me again this coming weekend when I get paid for the first time and I can finally start paying my mom back for financing my trip across the country. I miss my family whenever I’m reminded just how far away I am (usually when my mom calls me because it just hit her how far away I am). I’d love to fly out for a weekend to visit, but I’d rather take that money and pay my mom back faster. My parents and sister are coming out in January to visit, so I’ll see them soon enough.

I do still need to return to Connecticut, as I barely hung out with any of my "back home friends" when I was there for a couple weeks before coming to Phoenix.

Outside of that, there’s still even more changes. Back in Rochester, outside of my roommates that I really didn’t hang out with much before moving, my social life was absorbed by my hobbies, specifically Mazdas/racing. At least a few times each month I’d be in Canada hanging out with the Toronto Protege Club. With the move comes a new car club. I definitely miss the Toronto Protege Club a lot, they’re really a top notch club that has no match. Since moving here, every weekend has meant at least one Arizona Mazda Club meet. They’re a great bunch, and I’m finally starting to remember people’s names and everything.

I also left themazdaforum.com, what was an awesome Mazda community I helped get up and running November 2007. Some childish crap went down on there and it ended with the "owner" of the site stripping me of all my administrative privileges, so I left without starting any drama and started kanseiranch.org (yes, no WWW, I don’t force that www crap like many other sites). There’s only 10 or so members on the site, and it isn’t really growing because I haven’t tried luring any of my friends from themazdaforum.com over yet. I also activated hosting on a few other domains I have.. but for most of them, still not totally sure what I’ll do with them. People have found out about the site through word of mouth. Sometimes I feel like I’m just talking to myself on there, but I can’t really expect everyone I know to follow me to each new Mazda site that I decide to call home. I do really miss all my e-friends on the old site. Hopefully I can return some day.

One thing in my life is certain –August and September 2008 went by in the blink of an eye, so I guess the old adage about time flying rings true for me.

——-

I guess to update anyone who might read this blog (perhaps the “sol 3 south planet” page is still active, I’m not entirely sure), I am still alive. I do a big of a daily “mini-blog” on my flickr photostream (www.flickr.com/photos/clauretano) as part of the 365days of self portraits project that I’m currently 109 days into. On top of that I’m still on Facebook of course and am on LinkedIn as well (http://www.linkedin.com/in/clauretano). If I get the free time I may start blogging more regularly, but I doubt it. Between work, the AZ Mazda Club, and hiking/running every weekend I don’t have a ton of free time.

Guide: Mythtv Frontend on Debian Testing (Lenny)

This is the first of a series of articles useful for any Ubuntu user transitioning to Debian (on which Ubuntu is based). Though of course they are very similar at the core, the ideologies and with that the communities are very different. The differing ideology leads to much less support in some areas that are just ‘point and click’ simple in Ubuntu. I’m writing these articles because I feel that things like this aren’t often documented by the Debian community, for a number of reasons that I won’t get into here.

Last night, I moved my desktop to Debian Lenny (from Ubuntu Hardy Heron, the version that will be released in April). I always keep my /home in a separate partition for just such an occasion. This morning I set out to get some of the apps I use on the desktop installed. Of course not being as focused on ease of use, I knew it wasn’t going to be just a few clicks of the mouse as it is on Ubuntu.

Step I: Setting up Repositories

The default Debian repositories have only free (as in speech AND beer) software, and because of some dependencies Mythtv does not make the cut. Third party repositories step in to fill the void. The obvious one to use for this is Debian Multimedia. To get started, as root open your sources.list file (/etc/apt/sources.list) in your favourite editor (vi, nano, etc). Your file will look close to this example:

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Lenny_ - Official Snapshot i386 CD Binary-1 20080128-10:37]/ lenny main

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Lenny_ - Official Snapshot i386 CD Binary-1 20080128-10:37]/ lenny main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

By default, the only difference seen in the example is the addition of the ‘contrib’ and ‘non-free’ sections of the repository. We will be adding a few new lines to the file. On the Debian Multimedia site, there is a list of available mirrors. For this guide, the list of ‘testing’ mirrors is of interest. You’ll notice there are no United States mirrors, so just pick whatever is geographically closest to you. The mirrors host CSS (Content Scramble System) packages, which is illegal in the United States under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. For me, geographically closest was the University of Waterloo.

In my sources.list, I added the following lines:

#debian-multimedia.org
 deb http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/debian-multimedia/ testing main
 deb-src http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/debian-multimedia/ testing main

After adding the lines, you’ll want to run ‘apt-get update’ to download the package lists from the mirror. You will see an error about a missing GPG key, just ignore it for now. When the update is done, you need to install the GPG keyring for the mirror, which is conveniently available as a package on the mirror. Just use ‘apt-get install debian-multimedia-keyring’, and follow that with another ‘apt-get update’ to be sure you no longer receive the error message. When installing debian-multimedia-keyring apt will warn you that the package is not authenticated. If you don’t feel comfortable installing without verification, you can download and install a .deb package of the keyring from the Debian Multimedia site.

Step II: Installing Packages

With your favourite package manager, it is now time to install the mythtv packages. For this step I used Synaptic. Just open Synaptic (it’s on the System > Administration menu), and in the search dialog search names only for “myth” to get a nice list of Myth-related packages. As this guide is for the frontend only (a backend guide will come when I move my dedicated server from Ubuntu Server LTS to Debian Stable), only a specific subset of the packages are of interest. For starters, mark ‘mythtv-frontend’ for installation. It will install mythtv-common, libmyth, mythtv-doc, mysql-client, mysql-client-5.0, mysql-common, and a couple other small dependencies. The following is a list of some other packages you may want:

• ‘mythtv-themes’, additional themes for the interface and OSD (inclluding widescreen themes).
• ‘mythvideo’ for browsing and playing videos. Useful for watching movies stored on an NFS server for instance.
• ‘mythnews’, an RSS feed reader.
• ‘mythmusic’ for playing music.
• ‘mythplugsin’ if you just want all of the above plugins and more.

There are some packages that you will not want installed for this guide, specifically ‘mythtv-database’ and ‘mythtv-backend’. The server hosting the tv tuner cards and storage runs these packages as well as a MySQL database server and optionally an Apache web server. Apply your changes, and once the installation is finished you can move on to the final step.

Step III: Configuration

This step is where some of the differences between Ubuntu and Debian get in the way. In Ubuntu, on first launch of the Mythtv frontend, it will prompt you to ask you if you would like to be automatically added to the mythtv user group. The frontend will not run unless you are a part of that group. It isn’t a big deal to do manually, but on Debian if you ran the frontend from the Applications menu and not a terminal window, you would never be presented with the error messages –not that the error messages at all indicate what the source of the problem is. If you can’t get past the lack of hand-holding, Debian is probably not an appropriate distribution for you.

Open a terminal window and switch to the root user (i.e. ’su’ and then enter the root password). To add your user to the mythtv group, we will use the adduser command. The syntax for this operation is ‘adduser [USERNAME] [GROUPNAME]‘. For example, I used ‘adduser chris mythtv’. Unlike most unix commands, it will tell you that it was successful. After doing this, log out and back in. A quick ‘groups’ command in a terminal will verify that mythtv is one of the groups your user is in. At this point, you can launch the mythtv frontend and do the database configuration from its full-screen interface or you can preconfigure it by editing a config file so that you can have the database information open on screen to just copy and paste. I recommend the latter just because it makes things easier. You will need to know the following pieces of information about your database server:

• The host name (if in your hosts file) or the IP address. Obviously the server needs to use a static IP address.
• The mysql username –default is ‘mythtv’.
• The mysql database name –default is ‘mythconverg’.
• The msql database password. This is typically randomly generated during the setup of the Mythtv backend server.

If you don’t know the username or password, it is easy to look up on the backend server. The information is stored in /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt (which is owned by user mythtv group mythtv, so view it as root). Again, this guide assumes that the backend server is properly configured to allow remote database access. With all the information properly set, you can now launch the mythtv frontend. The first time you launch it, I recommend launching ‘mythfrontend’ from a terminal window in case there are errors.

Step IV: Extra Configuration

Part A: Playing videos from a remote NFS server

To begin, the ‘nfs-common’ package needs to be installed. I believe it is installed by default with Debian Testing (Lenny). As root, edit the file /etc/fstab. At the end of the follow, create a new line like the end of the example below, changing the IP address of the server, the share on the server, and the local mount point as needed.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/sda1       /               reiserfs notail          0       1
/dev/sda4       /home           reiserfs defaults        0       2
/dev/sda3       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hda        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0 # Video storage on NFS server
192.168.0.10:/storage	/mnt/myth nfs defaults 		0 0

If you have not already done so, as root create the folder that you will mount the NFS share to. Following the example above, the command would be ‘mkdir /mnt/myth’. With the mount point created, issue the command ‘mount -a’ to mount any unmounted filesystems in your fstab file that are set to auto mount (i.e. any that don’t have ‘noauto’ as options). If your NFS server is configured properly, the command will return with no errors.

With the preconfiguration done, you can now launch the mythtv frontend to complete the process. From the main menu, go to Utilities/Setup, then Setup, then Media Settings, Videos Settings, and finally General Settings. In the “Directory that holds videos” box, input the mount point you used to mount the NFS share (or a subdirectory of it depending on the layout of your NFS share). Again following the above example, the box should read ‘/mnt/myth’. Save the settings, but depending on the other settings set in that section you may need to run the Video Manager (from the main menu it is under Utilities/Setup). It will scan the folder, populating a table in the database with a list of the videos found. Cover art and information about the movies can be input in the Video Manager by inputting the IMDB number for the item.

If this guide helped you get your front end set up or you have any other comments or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Windows Vista Taskbar Replacements (or: how to rice out Windows with OS X dock replicas)

Since most of the information out there when doing a quick Google search for “OS X dock windows” is from 2003/4, they all point to this mythical app called MobyDock. It seemed like it was just too good to be true, and it was. Not only did development stop sometime in 2003, the web site is no longer active, taken over by a cybersquatter. There are a few freeware docks out there, but not all claim to support Vista.

 

Before getting into the reviews, lets go over the computer that will be used for testing. Since I won’t use Windows by choice, the test computer is a computer at work that I use for Vista OS/Software deployment testing purposes. It’s a Dell Optiplex 745 with a 2.8GHz dual core Intel processor, 1GB of RAM, and an Intel 965 chipset with integrated graphics (full Vista Aero support). It’s running Vista with Office 2007 and plenty of other software being tested. It’s ‘Windows Experience Index’ is detailed below.

 

The three Windows docks that will be discussed here are RocketDock, RK Launcher, and ObjectDock.

 

RocketDock v1.3.1 (http://www.punksoftware.com/rocketdock)

Features:

• Minimize windows to the dock
• Real-time window previews in Vista
• Running application indicators
• Simple drag-n-drop interface
• Multi-monitor support
• Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
• Icons zoom and transition smoothly
• Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
• Positioning and layering options
• Fully customizable
• Completely Portable
• ObjectDock Docklet support
• Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y’z Dock skins
• Runs great on slower computers
• Unicode compliant
• Supports many languages and can easily be translated

 

Two features stand out there, those being support for ObjectDock Docklets as well as supporting skins from all of the other Windows dock players. I try to avoid anything from Stardock after dealing with early versions of WindowBlinds (back in the 98, 2000, and early XP days), so being able to use add-ins made for their software while using a competitors product was enticing. Thus, RocketDock is the first dock to be reviewed.

 

Initial setup is not needed. It launches and is fully functional right away. The configuration dialog is easy to navigate and pretty streamlined. I enabled a few options here and there to give it more of the OS X dock feel (minimize applications to dock, show running application indicator, etc. It comes with many dock themes, but I chose the ‘blank’ theme because I want it to look nice and simple. A problem arose right away as I tried adding applications to the dock. You can’t drag and drop an icon to the dock if you are using the blank theme. If it’s clear space, it’ll drop the icon right to the desktop behind the bar. Until I get things setttled I gave it the ‘Vista Black’ theme with 100% opacity so things don’t fall through (even at 100% opacity, the theme has built-in transparency).

 

A feature that would be nice to have is the system tray being a part of the dock. I know that the pay version of ObjectDock supports this. I’m already about to uninstall RocketDock because it isn’t doing what I expected. I click the Outlook icon, Outlook launches. If it is in the background and I click again, it brings it forward, nothing out of the ordinary there. If it is focused in the foreground and I click the icon, I expect it to minimize. No, it just re-focuses every time I click. Hopefully that is an option I missed in my quick configuration. No, time for uninstall.

 

If you hadn’t noticed, I have a zero tolerance policy on applications. Yeah sure, if I read about a new version I’ll give it another chance later on, but if it doesn’t do what I want right away it’s dead to me, and I promptly uninstall. RocketDock lived for less than 10 minutes on my system. It was a one night stand that left me feeling cold and alone in the morning. A check on their forums shows a feature request post covering all the shortcomings of RocketDock from 2004. It’s three years later, and nothing has come of that.

 

RK Launcher 0.4.1 nightly build (http://home.cogeco.ca/~rklauncher/)

First impressions are a great decider. The RK Launcher web site is the cleanest, best laid out website of all the docks in this little roundup.

 

The nightly build doesn’t include any installer application, but launching the main executable works just fine. Right away, I notice that it sits at the bottom of the screen (RocketDock sat at the top), and really truly mimics the OS X dock, even using the Finder icon for Windows Explorer (unless it’s a very slight change, like the nose facing the other way, it’s a dead ringer for the real thing. I smell a black turtleneck-clad legal team on the prowl). The icon for IE is a.. Clock, but a clock that looks eerily similar to the compass used by Safari. Gross, didn’t it detect that my default browser is Firefox and I have IE7 ‘uninstalled’ via the Programs and Features control panel?

 

Diving into the settings dialog, I shrunk the dock down to 24 pixel icons (magnification to 32 pixels), and noticed right away that it doesn’t seem to be using anti-aliasing on the icons, as I just am awash in a sea of jaggies when I hover over the bar. It only includes the default theme for the background, and doesn’t have a link right there to get more themes. I guess I have to go to their web site? A nice feature on the “Behavior” tab is “Show new applications”. I clicked it, and it automatically added shortcuts for all the running applications (including taskeng.exe, igfxpers.exe, hkcmd.exe, and dwm.exe.. ha) a quick right click on an app in the bar gives the option to “never show in dock”. RK Launcher steals focus any time you hover over it (it automatically gives focus back though), so I set it to never take focus. There was also an option to hide the taskbar, which was nice as I do believe that is the primary purpose of installing a dock application. Hiding the taskbar does leave the semi-round Bah, clicking the icon of the active application doesn’t minimize it. Another thing to be careful of is right clicking on a dock icon and selecting delete. You’re deleting the actual executable for the app! Lower down on the menu is ‘remove from dock’.

 

So far RK Launcher is firmly in the lead, as it has been 15 minutes and I’m actually living with it. Ok, a few minutes later and it is uninstalled. It’s just too lacking, too inflexible. I need more options.

 

 

ObjectDock (freeware version)

 

I wish I would have installed this first. It’s a much more polished effort, and after a while (maybe an hour) of tweaking things as I was working with it, it is 99% perfect. The desklets are a really nice touch. The weather one that it comes with has a really cool fold out interface (see image below), though for some reason the 5-day says “Today, Tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday” — tomorrow is Tuesday, but the temperatures shown aren’t the same for the two. It’s also great that it can totally hide the Windows Start Menu and taskbar, and you can just put a nice circular Start Menu button on the dock. Folders placed on the dock can be set to open explorer or have a cascading menu. One other thing that doesn’t seem to work properly is the ability to drag and drop icons on the dock. Shortcuts are placed where I initially drag them to, but once they are on the dock, I can’t move them. I don’t have the dock locked, so I’m not sure what is up. I know I haven’t said much about ObjectDock, but if you are in the market for a taskbar replacement or an OS X clone dock bar, you won’t be disappointed.

Nearly 3 months…

I’ve just been far too busy to blog I guess. I dunno…

Yeah I have an agenda, a reason to post today out of the blue. I’m at work right now, wiping 8 identical Dell Optiplex small form factor desktops to get junked. We’re getting a new staging area desk in the IT lab room here and we need to get rid of these old computers. I was just wondering if anyone who reads this (anyone? lol) would want these for a computing cluster or something of that sort.

Here’s the specs:

(I didn’t take that picture; found it online)

8 Dell Optiplex GX100 Small Desktops. I believe they have a 566MHz Celeron (lolz) with 256MB of ram, onboard video/usb/network, pci sound card, and an open PCI slot. Most of the hard drives are the same, but some have been replaced. I would know the size, but none of them will be done wiping their hard drives (8 rounds, each with 3 passes of Mersenne Twister ) for at least another 2 hours, and I’ll be gone by then. They may not all have the same processor speed, I’m not sure.

Why am I not taking them for my own use at the house as a cluster? That’s a gross waste of electricity and I can’t be a part of that . That’s why I posted this here, so that maybe someone at RIT (with unmetered electrical usage and no conscience ) would like to take them off my hands. I could bring them to campus if you’d like, or you could pick them up here. My boss wants me to send them to the shipping and receiving department tomorrow and let them deal with recycling them, but they are perfectly functional machines so that is a bit wasteful.

Maybe I’ll actually make a real bloggy post again soon. Things have been a bit crazy and different lately, though in a good/wonderful way.

Have fun at class today walking around campus in the rain.. I’m going back to work

Stupid maths lying to me about beauty

I did like 20 minutes of planning and calculations for a layout pattern for two framed prints I wanted to hang on the wall. The maths told me that it would be visually stunning, but I feel like I’ve been betrayed by one of my only friends in the world.

Well here’s a pic of the layout:

There’s all sorts of equal spacing in the layout. the three columns of horizontal spacing are all equal, and the vertical spacing between the two prints (light gray spaces) is equal to that horizontal spacing. It is all verticall oriented on the wall so that the verticle centerline of the layout is right on with the middle of the print to the left of it all (pre-existing, and the dark gray box in the png).

It really doesn’t look that great :’(

Yahoo! Go for TV

Wow. Well the filesystem on the 250gb drive in the myth box shat on itself about a week ago, so the apartment has been forced to watch TV live with the past week :'(. I read a short article announcing the opening of the Yahoo! Go for TV service, so I gave the HTPC a quick winXP install today (yes, I have a project, two papers, and a Discrete Math II homework assignment due tomorrow) and gave it a go. So far, I am very impressed. While watching TV there is no audio right now, though I'm using the Intervideo codec that I would normally use with the three tuners. The big draw for the Yahoo service is the On Demand content which, though limited in this early stage of the beta, works very well. If I had to describe the experience in one word, it would be "polished".

It integrates with Flickr, Yahoo! Photos, Launch (for music vids, etc), and has on demand content from ABC News, National Geographic, and a few other sources. It streams everything, but the buffering time is completely acceptable. The only ads that I have experienced so far are when watching music videos. Also, if you are watching a music video from a playlist (like say "Top 100 Videos"), when a video finishes it goes directly to the next one, already buffered, with no ads in between. Oh and the video ads are 30 seconds max, some 10 seconds.

Overall for being such an early beta it really isn't bad. Since there's no audio for the TV tuner cards (I still need to see if there's audio viewing the TV tuners in other programs), I haven't explored the DVR functionality of it other than browsing the program guide and stuff.

End of my polyphasic sleep experiment.

No, I didn't end my polyphasic sleep experiment because it wasn't working for me like most people. I stopped it because I've been busy and haven't been able to keep getting to sleep at the same time at night.

Oh and no, I wasn't doing one of those stupid "let's sleep for 40 minutes at a time" things. Sorry, but to actually get rest, and not just sleep, you need to get in at least 90 minutes. The only way you can actually reach deep/REM sleep in 40 minutes is if you are massively sleep deprived. I didn't do the typical "polyphasic / Uberman sleep schedule", rather I slept for a predetermined amount of time each night, with that amount being in multiples of 90 minutes. I tried to do 7.5 hours of sleep each night, but usually ended up getting 6 hours or 4.5 hours on days when I had class at 8AM (for RIT20051, Monday and Wednesday, and for RIT20053, Monday and Wednesday).

My Findings:

Even with as little as 4.5 hours of sleep, I was able to go through my day in classes without feeling continuously drowsy or falling asleep all the time. I always budgetted 20 minutes extra time in bed because I don't get to sleep that quickly unless there is total silence or nice soothing white noise.

In general I just felt like I had a lot of energy. This is remarkable considering that aside from green tea (which I cut off around July 2005), I haven't had any appreciable amount of caffeine since March 2005. In the more than a year since I stopped having caffeine, I have consumed 3 bottles of bawls, all of them spread apart over multiple days, drinking maybe an ounce or two at a time.

So Why Stop?:

It's week 7. At RIT, that means lots of projects due this week and next week, while at the same time the weather is getting nicer and getting everyone thinking about Summer already. Currently I'm feeling a bit swamped. I have to have a fully working prototype of my video game for IDM (in Flash) done on Monday. Tomorrow (Thursday) I have a 10-12 page paper due on designing automotive control systems with Cognitive Psychology and HCI principles due for HCI, which of course I haven't started yet. In 340 (Comp. Platform Fundamentals), I have a hardware paper (5-7 pages) due Monday and a 5 pager on e-Commerce security concerns and solutions due Wednesday. The only class that I don't have any huge assignments and projects for is Discrete Math II, because well.. it's just Discrete Mathematics. I do have an exam in that class (2nd of 2) next Wednesday. Of course with all of the projects and papers I haven't actually started them yet, aside from drafting an outline for my HCI paper since the professor wanted one.

On top of all of that, I had the phole co-op interviewing thing going on (which was really only an issue from last Friday through Monday when I had the interview and later got the position) distracting me from my schoolwork.

Basically, I just have been too busy thinking about starting my assignments without actually getting anything done with them. That has consumed a ton of my time. As days still have just 24 hours, I have been forced to make sacrifices. Unlike Mike, I took the sensible approach and instead of being completely irresponsible and inconveniencing everyone that I live with (and using the bullshit excuse of having hard classes and "trying to make dean's list"… bullshit, you are taking a couple intro courses, a beginning photo course for non photo majors, and University Physics III which you should have taken two semesters ago but you had to repeat courses), I decided that I needed to temporarily cut back on my sleep a bit. If I only have 4 hours to sleep, I'm not going to try and sleep for those four hours instead of just the three needed to keep it polyphasic. I didn't think it would be a big problem, but boy was I wrong. I have been falling asleep in all of my classes, unable to focus in class, and am just tired all day long. I told myself that I could catch up with sleep on the weekends, but we all know how well that works.

What now?:
I need to get back to opolyphasic sleeping so that I can get my life back in line, but where can I make a sacrifice? One obvious place is my web browsing time. I am going to begin limiting the time I spend online (reading forums, catching up on all the feeds I keep track of, etc). I'm going to shoot for setting 15 minutes for checking e-mail and responding to all the forum notifications I receive (usually 30+ overnight). I'll set aside 30 minutes to play Brain Age for Nintendo DS (which I usually do while eating dinner anyway). I'll set aside 30 minutes for updating myself with the forums I visit in the evening sometime (probably right after I'm done with classes for the day as a little break), and then another 20 minutes for checking the NetVibes page where I have all the RSS feeds I keep track of listed.

In all seriousness, this will save me a TON of time. I typically spend 5+ hours each day checking my e-mail and responding to forum notifications. I spend another few hours reading feeds and learning about all the new stuff going on in the world. Cutting this down from at least 8 hours a day to just over 1 hour a day will give me time to get all my work done (and done well) and even SLEEP. In all honesty, if I maximize my efficiency and stop the useless (but socially fulfilling) banter and chatting on the forums, I can get just as much done in an hour as I do in 8 hours now.

Though I am tempted to give up AIM/GTalk for the rest of the semester, I honestly don't waste much time chatting with people on AIM (unlike some people who bother people all day long and then make excuses for why there has been a bottle of rotting milk sitting on the counter in the kitchen for over a month now). I would say I spend a max of 15 minutes a day IMing people right now. Hell I'll just integrate that with one of my evening sessions of e-mail checking or RSS reading, it doesn't really matter.

Is my life lacking? I'm not really sure. If we're talking socially, from the standpoint of anyone who hasn't/doesn't spend a lot of time on very active online forums bonding with a community, then yeah. In all of my classes, there is a total of 1 person who I actually talk to. I don't hang out with anyone at RIT who doesn't live in my apartment, and even with my roommates I don't really do anything, I just live with them. They have their girlfriends (and Mike the random girls he bothers and creeps out online) to spend time with.

I can't say I'm really that unhappy with how things are though. At this point in my life, I really don't have time to be very social (in the real world, physical sense of the word). Funny how most people think quite the opposite way about college. They think they need to get out there and be as social as possible before they settle down and start their real life. I think I may be in a very small minority of people who actually go to and stay in college for the purpose of learning. I want to expand my skillset and knowledge so that I can get a great, exciting career applying it. Though people say that the friends you make in college are your friends for life, I'm pretty satisfied with the friends that I have made here up until this point. I feel like I'll have time later in life, when I don't have all these assignments burdening me, to be social and make friends.

This is also the reason why I don't spend hours of my day actively seeking a girlfriend (I wonder who I'm referring to here). I've never had a girlfriend, and although I think it would be great to have a close confidant of the opposite sex that I could also be physically intimate with, I really don't need the distraction right now. Either way, it's not like any girl would really be interested in me anyway, I'm way too boring.

So yeah, now that i just wasted a bunch of time in IDM writing this post, though it is not really an issue, as she is going over XML basics and using it in ActionScript which I don't really need to pay attention to, I think I'm going to end this post.

I've made it this far, I don't need to crash and burn during week 7 just because of a simple time management issue. I am going to stop giving up sleep to sit and think about doing assignments without actually getting any done.

I need to take a nap. I think I'm going to sleep from 12-3 before going to Discrete Math II later today (4-6) so that hopefully I have the energy to have a nice long session writing most, if not all, of my HCI paper. The finishing touches on the paper or any sections not completed  due to writer's block can wait until the morning since I don't have HCI until 2.

After HCI tomorrow I'll breathe a massive sigh of relief, though I have a ton of stuff due on Monday. I just need a little time to relax, and the day before a huge paper is due is a miserable time for that. 

So um yeah.. about that interview.

Today was the day I had my interview with Lenel Systems International. I rushed to get there on time as I was leaving a bit later than I would have liked to and didn't know what to expect with the Route 252 traffic (it was pretty bad last time). I managed to get there with 7 minutes to spare

I checked in with the receptionist and waited in the big lobby, staring patiently at the plasma screen that just sat there with a static image on it the whole time. I scribbled a few questions to ask them that I thought up into my folio. A man came out and said "Are you the 2 o'clock interview?" I got up, shook hands with him, and he asked me if I was Mike. I said no, I was Chris, and he said something about one of his co-workers must have already started interviewing this "Mike" character. He took me into a room for the interview and I greeted the head of QA; she seemed very nice. I gave him a copy of my resume as he couldn't find his copy, and then he started in on the typical questions. After 5 – 10 minutes of that another employee came in the room and said "Who are you interviewing? I think we might have the wrong people". Yeah as it turns out there were a few 2 o'clock interviews, one in the IT department, one in the QA department.. and I don't remember what the third was for.

I got a quick tour of their IT staff room and their server farm (mmmmmm) and then we found an empty conference room for the interview. Of course as I was sitting down another person came in to interview me also. Always with the double teaming, sheesh. They talked about their network setup, asked me some questions, I asked them some questions, they talked about what the job responsibilities would be, what the chain of command is like, etc.

The interview went quickly (I don't think they really felt like talking much either haha gotta love IT people), and he told me he would give me a call either today or tomorrow letting me know what their decision was. He mentioned that they had already interviewed seven people for the position and had one more today, for a total of of course 9 including myself. I thanked them and was on my way. They had to let me out of the building, because the doors are locked on the inside and out and they use an RFID RSA crypto keyfob (totally sweet) for entry/exit.

So yeah. That was it. Oh yeah, in case anyone read my previous post about this and said "hmm Lenel sounds sorta familiar", take a look at any of the card swipe or card/keypad access panels on RITs campus. All the ones that I have seen are Lenel ones. They make that sort of thing, so of course they have the crazy model at their headquarters.

Thoroughly impressed but feeling as though I didn't wow anyone during the interview, I made my way back to the apartment with just enough time to get changed before going back to campus for Discrete Math II.

In what I believe was a first out of the three classes I have taken with Dr. Shahmohamad, we got out early.. an hour early, because we were at the end of a chapter and the first section of the next chapter was much to long to try and start in the remaining hour of class.

Back at the apartment, I noticed that I had voicemail. Sure enough, it was my interviewing asking me to give him a call back when I got the message and giving me his cell phone number. I paced around the apartment for a bit, checked my e-mail, washed my face, and basically did anything else that I could think of.

After a few minutes of that, I made the phone call. He answered, we exchanged greetings, and then he got right on with it. He extended an offer for a summer/fall co-op working at their U.S. office doing end-user support (200+ employees), installation/imaging/repair of new computers, and assisting with the planning and deployment of a new IP phone system for the entire building. He asked me if I was interested and I just blurted out "Of course I am, I'm very excited about this".

He said that they would like me to start as soon as possible, and definitely by the week of June 1st. I told him that I might need a week off right after finals to go home and see my family and take care of some things (like possibly moving into a new apartment), and he said that was ok. The week of June 1st is the week right after finals week. He said that he would have one of the PR people send off the formal offer to me in the mail, and that they would like it sent back before the end of the week if possible. sweet

And then it hit me that I probably won't be able to go to NH at all this year. That makes me really sad, especially since my mom will probably be miserable if she has to deal with my father by herself for weeks and weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to get a long weekend so that I can at least have a few days of relaxation on the beach this summer.

Also I won't be able to hang out with my friends from back home of course. No big deal, right? It's just a summer, right? Well sorta. I haven't really gotten to spend time with my friends back home since last summer. After I'm done with the co-op of course I'll be plopped right into the winter semester at RIT, and then the Spring semester and then oh look.. it's been two years since I have spent any appreciable amount of time at home. ha

Oh well though, I knew about the whole co-op thing before I even applied to RIT so if it wasn't something I wanted to do, I wouldn't have applied or come here. I am very excited about this co-op and hope that I'll do very well and gain a lot of experience in the field, which will nicely re-affirm that I made the right choice in changing majors again. It isn't that I don't care about my friends back home (quite the contrary) but that this is something I need to do and I can't possibly pass up an opportunity like this. More than that, I need to co-op to graduate so I would need to do it sooner or later, and I'm chosing the former.

Sorry if this post came off as bragging or gloating, but for once something really went my way so I thought it was time to celebrate.

woohoo spending money before I even have it here I come!  

So I may not be returning to CT for a while after all.

I had basically resigned to the fact that I would have another free summer at home working a paltry 6 hours a week at barely over CT minimum wage (though at a job I love). It wouldn't be too bad though, as I'd get to hang out with my best friends from back home and stuff.

Well today I got a phone call with a 585 area code so I figured maybe it was the shipper that should be delivering my exhaust midpipe, but it was Lenel Systems (!). I had been tripled teamed by their staff at the job fair and handed off my Resume, and then a week or so ago I got a letter in the mail saying that they had received my resume and would contact me if I was qualified. o_O I know I am qualified, but my coursework doesn't prove that since I just transferred into this program after the fall semester.

The phone interview went well, and I have to go to their Victor, NY office on Monday (luckily I have a 4 hour break between IDM and Discrete II) for an in-person interview o_O. I'm really excited about this, because it's something I really think I'll enjoy doing full time

I'm crossing my fingers, I really hope this interview goes well. It would be VERY nice to get a little bit of the looming student loan debt paid back, and maybe a little on the side to turbo my car

So yeah, um nothing is concrete yet of course (and I'll likely forget to post about it when there's an update) but yeah I just thought I'd put that out there because I'm a bit excited.

I’ll just go ahead and assume that we’re all already set up Google Calendar

If anyone wants to add my public calendar, my gmail address is clauretano @ [you know the rest].

If you have any public calendars up yet (mine is just my basic class schedule right now, I had other stuff to do this morning), leave a comment.

Of course, as Ryan and I were discussing earlier today, Google doesn't seem to be a big fan of integrating with things such as iCal, Outlooks, etc (one exception to this is the POP3 feature of GMail, but come on .. it's POP3, that's nothing to write home about), but they do make it almost too easy to import ANY public .ical file for publishing (and of course indexing) by Google. It'll let you import files from Outlook too (In a csv file if I recall correctly, my favorite ).

Now Google knows precisely where I am (down to the room number, and as soon as I get precise latitude and longitude numbers for each room, they'll be able to plot me on a satellite view) at basically any time during the week. On top of that, they know what I look for on the internet, what I talk about in my e-mails, and every last word of every seemingly private conversation I have on GTalk. It makes me feel all warm inside

Update:

The company is developing software to make it possible for users to “synch” their Google Calendar with data in their Outlook software, said Mr Sjogreen. [Google Calendar Project Manager]