Today is Joelle’s 21st Birthday!  If you see her or have some way of contacting her, wish her a happy one.  I’ve got to get her a present this weekend (or maybe I already did…).

It has been a long time since I posted on this thing, so several items of importance follow:

First, an update on the RSS Challenge I mentioned that we had in COSI. I didn’t win, Ryan did.  My entry had some database issues and several bugs which needed to be ironed out.

An update on Android: We submitted our entry to the contest on the April 14th deadline and are now waiting anxiously to hear from them.  Winners for round 1 are notified on or about May 5th.

School: Last week was dead week (the last week of classes before finals).  That means I had a buttload of work to do and no time to do it all.  I had two programming assignments due last Thursday, a project presentation on Friday, another presentation this past Monday as well as write ups for each of those.  I had one final each Monday and Tuesday and I have two today (one of which is already over).  Good news is that I got everything done and turned in on time and I think I’ve done decently on all my tests so far.

I start my co-op on Monday and will be working almost full time from then until Christmas.  I intend to work on a few different things this summer, hopefully one of which will be Android (I really hope we win this first round).  When the fall gets here I’m thinking I’m going to follow along with the Cryptography course Tino is teaching via Ryan and Jake.  I’d like to take the course but I won’t have an opportunity since it’s only offered in the fall.

All that said, I have about 80% of my stuff packed and will be heading home tomorrow probably around noon.  Hopefully I’ll have time in the near future to mess with the theme and get the colors the way I want them (I know some of you have said it’s too light, too boring, etc.).

April Fool’s Day was welcomed just 18 minutes ago (EDT) and already there are a wealth of pranks littering teh intarwebs.

First, I present to you the Global Internet Maintenance Organization (GIMO).  The GIMO is the organization responsible for the cleanliness and upkeep of the intertubes and has designated April 1st as its annual “Internet Cleaning Day”.  The GIMO’s very own Alexander Gotham sent out a mass emailing just today announcing this to all internet users.  For more information, visit their website.

Second, Google released a brand new service today called gDay.  Powered by MATE technology, gDay seeks to provide the user with tomorrow’s search results today.  Check it out here.

Third, the author’s of XKCD, Questionable Content and Dinosaur Comics have teamed up to present what I find to be the most humorous April Fool’s Day prank I’ve seen.  Take a look at their respective websites, keeping in mind which you’re clicking on.  I think you’ll find the results quite amusing.  Of course, this will probably no longer be valid after April Fool’s Day is over.

Fourth, heeding the requests of the aforementioned Alexander Gotham of the GIMO, P-Dub of pdub.net has brought his site down for spring cleaning.

Fifth, Zach and Ryan officially announced the end of the Clarkson Open Source Institute.  All hardware is either being sold or donated with proceeds benefiting the K12 Program and the MCS Department here at Clarkson.

Sixth, I saw this link at the top of my Gmail screen last night, but at that time it didn’t actually go anywhere.  This morning, however, it leads to a new feature in Gmail known as Custom Time.  Check it out for yourself.

What a funny day.  I will probably update this list as I become aware of new pranks, so stay tuned.

Some news. Again broken into categories for your convenience.

Life - This past weekend consisted of a series of activities that took place back at home. In no particular order: pizza from Rossi’s, Sportsman’s Show in Harrisburg, church, dinner at Russell’s Steakhouse, grocery shopping and two appointments. Now I’m back at school and very excited because Joelle is coming to visit me tomorrow!

Books - I just finished reading Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It was an excellent book and I’m looking forward to reading the one’s that follow it, which I ordered yesterday. Check out my books page to see what else I’m planning to read.

New work - I’m going to be working with a high school student who is part of COSI on a website for some sort of cheese store (?) in the area. Should be interesting.

Databases Class - As boring as always.

Android - After a somewhat lax (is that a word?) week behind us, we should be picking back up this week and continuing to move forward. The new deadline for submissions is April 16th, so we have a good 9 weeks or so to get our project ready.

I guess that’s it for the time being.

It’s been far too long, blog.

This post is dedicated to new news. I will discuss this news in several categories. Enjoy.

My life: I miss home, Joelle, my family, and my dog. I’ve been back at school for almost 2 weeks now, just trying to slip into this semester’s routine and stay on top of my work.

Google Android Contest: As I’ve mentioned, a group of us from the lab have set out to build an application that will run on Google’s new Android platfrom (part of the Open Handset Alliance). Progress so far is very good and we’re actually hoping to have two separate submissions for the March 3rd-ish deadline.

Classes: They are going well. Most everything has been fairly straightforward so far but I’m expecting the workload to get somewhat heavier as the semester progresses. One thing I’m looking forward to is an idea Pat and I have for a project for our Computer and Network Security course. I’m not going to delve into too much detail here because I don’t want to leak information about it to anyone on the Clarkson campus (it could affect the results of our little experiment). If you don’t go to Clarkson and would like more details, let me know.

COSI: Maybe I should finish the time server project I started last semester. Hmmm…

K2CC: For those of you who don’t know, I’m a member of the Clarkson Amateur Radio Club. The club does a lot of neat projects, a few of which I get involved in here and there. Check out the wiki I set up. There’s a license exam coming up on February 2nd and I’m considering upgrading to a General Class license. I’ll let you know how it goes.

My Website: Recently added on the right hand side of my blog’s home page is a link to a calendar that shows my schedule. I’ll try to keep this thing as up to date as possible so that if you want to know when I’m available or what I’m up to you can check there. Also, I’m working on a photo browsing application (using some AJAX) that I hope to put up here at some point, I’ll let you know when that becomes available (it will probably be password-protected, so you’ll have to know me to check it out).

Clarkson: Is a mess. There’s construction vehicles all over and it’s become one huge mud/snow pit. Due to the abundance of dirt everywhere, maintenance has decided to use dirt to coat every slippery surface on campus. Not only does this make the surface somewhat less slippery, it contributes a great deal to the mud collection here at the University. This is as opposed to using salt which would effectively melt the ice and actually prevent a muddy mess, and that would be terrible.

Potsdam: It’s cold here (sorry, that’s not new news). This morning my computer informed me that it was -1. -1 is cold.

I think that will be all for today. I’ll try to post more often, I promise.

I’m writing this post from my bedroom… looking forward to a good night’s sleep in my bed. :)  Arrived home safely today around 1 and am very happy to be finished with school for a couple weeks.

Thought I’d update you all with an addition to the things to do list for break. Some of us from COSI have decided to participate in the Google Android Contest. We have a few pretty sweet ideas and work is to start over break with the hopes of having a basic prototype done by the start of the semester. If you’ve never heard of it, check out the site to see what it’s about. Should be a lot of fun.

Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired.

I can now say I’ve survived my first Dead Week at Clarkson University. Dead Week is defined on campus as the week before finals, during which no new assignments can be given and the professors cannot give any quizzes or examinations.  Therefore, the only thing left to do is rush to finish all the stuff you didn’t do that was supposed to be turned in back in September.

That said, I got almost everything done.  A portion of one assignment for CS341 will go unfinished and that’s mostly because I don’t have the first clue how to do it.  And that’s it.  The only things I have left to do are test corrections for CS345 by the final on Wednesday, a few minor additions to the project for CS350 and then the finals themselves (4 of them, one each day from Monday to Thursday).

Then I’ll be on my way home for winter break.  Plans for while I’m home include spending time with Joelle and my family, enjoying Christmas, finding some way to make some cash, hopefully going skiing a few times, fixing Mr. Woodruff’s computer, enjoying the new year, reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, setting up Tomcat on my computer and messing with Java (JSP, servlets, Java Beans, etc.) in preparation for CS462 next semester and my job the following summer, and probably about 209323 other things I haven’t thought of yet.  I’m really looking forward to being at home.

Hello everyone, hope you’re all having a great Thanksgiving! It’s good to be home enjoying the holiday with my family and spending time with the girl I love.

An update on classes… instead of COMM341 (which was a question mark anyway), I’ve registered for COMM440 - PHP and MySQL. I’m just hoping that it will be at least slightly entertaining and challenging, I would really like to learn something in that class. Everything else is the same, this 5 class line-up shouldn’t be too bad for next semester… the only class I’m a little concerned about is CS344…

In other news, I want an Ipod Touch and a MacBook Pro. Enough said I think.

VMWare Server 2.0 Beta was released just recently (check it out here). I downloaded and installed it on my Windows Vista desktop and have been very pleased so far. The biggest difference I saw right away is that the application is web-based. All the management functions and VM usage occurs inside your browser. I’ve found two issues I think I should point out:

1. I first tried running it in Firefox… this worked fine until I went to the VM’s console tab to view my VM as it booted. The program told me I needed to download a plugin for Firefox, so I clicked the link and the plugin wouldn’t install properly (it gave an error about not being able to write to something). So (using IE Tab) , I tried it in Internet Explorer. The plugin installed fine and I’m now able to view my VM’s console.
2. The first thing I noticed after installing VMWare was that it asked me to login. What was I supposed to login with? Good question. After doing some hunting online, I found that I was supposed to use the existing user account on the system. But my user account wouldn’t work. Upon further investigation it occurred to me that it probably wanted the administrator account. I had to go through the process of enabling that account and setting a password and I was instantly able to login to the VMWare Infrastructure Client.

With that, I’ll be off for the day. It’s time to pay more attention to the football game at hand. Again, I hope you enjoy your holiday.

So here I am, sitting in class… what better time to post?

I know I haven’t kept up with updating this thing like I should, but at least I post once in a while. Not too much going on lately… Clarkson University is not that exciting of a place. I am, however, going to visit Joelle this weekend. I’m very excited about that. Then, when I get back, it’s only a week until Thanksgiving break and after that only a few weeks until the end of the semester.

The next few weeks will probably consist of me trying to finish up a bunch of homework (programming assignments from CS341 and the project for CS350, namely) so that I’ll hopefully get halfway decent grades in my classes for this semester.

Registration for spring classes started today. Looks like I’ll be taking the following next semester:

• CS460 - Database Systems
• CS462 - Web Development (Java)
• CS344 - Algorithms and Data Structures
• CS457 - Computer and Network Security
• COMM341? - Web Design

Not sure about that last one yet. I’m not too thrilled with the idea of taking that class, but I need a class to put there and I figure I can probably get a good grade in that one without too much effort (I like easy A’s).

So it’s 11:03 Tuesday night and I just finished Part 2 of the Mainframe Contest about 20 minutes ago.  I got stuck while working on it last night and come to find out the part I got stuck on was really easy.  I could have easily finished the rest of the contest last night had I been able to figure it out.  I’m hoping I got mine in quick enough to be a winner for Part 2, but I guess we’ll see.

Overall, I thought the contest was very well structured and educational.  I think that it was laid out in such a way that you were told just as much as you needed to know to finish the task.  Each time something new was presented, some background information was given and I think that added to the “real world” feel that the contest has.

I will definitely add my completion of the contest to my resume, finishing it was no simple task and I feel as though I’ve really accomplished something by doing so.

Hanianianianiahchacha.

Another weekend at home to relax and visit with my family. Good times.

On another note, the IBM Mainframe Contest starts on Monday at noon. If you’re interested and haven’t registered yet, visit here. I’ve never done it before, but I’m going to give it a shot and see if I can win anything.