The Major

Blog

  • Still Haven’t Heard From SFSU

    I applied to San Francisco State University over a month ago. I heard from them once, saying they needed a residency form and my transcript from UMBC. Well, I had already requested a transcript mailing from UMBC, but I requested another, double-checking that it was being sent to the correct address. And of course I sent in the residency application. I haven’t heard from them since.

    I am thinking if I don’t get in…maybe I should concentrate on career certifications instead. Of course, I am still going for my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), but I am pretty close to getting it. So a CCNA is kind of like an associate’s degree in networking, then I could go for a CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional), which is kind of like a bachelor’s of networking. And if I am still up for it…I could go for a CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Engineer, I believe). That is like a doctorate of networking.

    Now, I am not just making the above comparisons for the sake of analogy. Those certifications really are comparible in several ways to the degrees I have associated them with. In terms of the amount of work required, they are maybe a little less work required, but not all that much. And in terms of the expected salaries for those who hold the certifications, they seem to be a bit higher than their comparable degrees.

    Anyway, it would be a damn shame if I didn’t get in to SFSU. But at least I have a backup plan.

  • How to Quit Things, and How to Start Things

    I’ve been wanting to write this one for a few weeks. I was kind of reminded to write it after reading Greg’s site, where he talks about quitting smoking.

    I’ve found that I start things and end things very differently. The only way I can stop doing something is cold turkey. If I try to stop doing something gradually, then I will always be able to find an excuse for myself that I can keep doing it more and more. And I think the only way I can start doing something is slowly. If it too quickly changes my normal day-to-day life, I think it will stress me out.

    Let’s take for example two closely related things: dieting and exercising. I’ve recently started doing both. This is definitely the most successful I have ever been in dieting, I think. And I owe that to the fact that I don’t let myself have a “break,” and eat junk food once in a while. I haven’t had any desserts or large amounts of cheese, red meat, et cetera, for several weeks. And the urge sure is there. Out drinking with William last night, I had a huge craving for a slice from Golden Boy pizza, which has become to be a bit of a tradition for us. If I had the “once-in-a-while” mentality, I could have easily told myself, “Hey, you had a crap time in NJ. You deserve a slice of pizza!” And then it would have been all downhill from there.

    Now as far as starting exercising, I’m having to take it slow. I think in the past when I tried to start exercising, I over-did it. It would end up screwing up other things in my life because of the extra time it took that I wasn’t used to yet. So this time, even though my exercise schedule hasn’t been perfect, I think it is working better because I am being reasonable to start. But at the same time, doing it this way has the same danger as above…where I can start making excuses. But that is just something I’ll have to work at.

    But so far it is all coming together pretty well. I lost about a pound a day for the first 10 days, which was actually frighteningly fast, but the past few days has seen me stay even, probably due to the interruption of my NJ trip. Hopefully I will continue to make weight loss a priority and actually get it done. Really, I am just looking to lose another 15 pounds or so, and I will be where I want to be. So if I just work my ass off for a couple of months at this goal, I’ll reach it. Easier said than done.

  • The Only Good Thing About My New Jersey Trip

    New York City Skyline

  • A Bad Start to My Trip

    So I am on my first trip for GuardianEdge Technologies. They sent me to Jersey City, New Jersey.

    To start the trip off, the woman sitting across the aisle found everything possible to bitch about. First her audio jack wasn’t working, so the flight attendant asked me to switch with her because I wasn’t going to watch the movie. At least I got offered a free cocktail or snack, but I didn’t really want it anyway.

    As a side note, one thing I have noticed about being on a plane is that I get some of my best reading and thinking done on a plane.

    When I went to go pick up my rental car, I found that it hadn’t been payed for yet…so that meant $400 out of pocket probably until the end of the month. I barely have it right now too after my trip to Reno.

    And then I ordered room service because I was funungry. I got chicken teriyaki…honestly mostly for the rice. And I get a call saying they are out of rice. Who runs out of rice?

    The food comes…no knife, the sauce is salty, and the soda is warm. Not impressed with this particular $180/night hotel so far. However, the room is nice and at least this one has already been paid for.

    Here’s to hoping my trip will get better and I won’t have to work overtime Thursday and Friday.

  • Been Meaning to do That

    Finally got around to touching the Pacific Ocean yesterday.

  • More Food

    Wow…I sure am funungry. Someone want to drive to San Rafael and bring me a cheeseburger? What, 4:30am too early for you? I’ll remember this insult!

  • Virtual Cheese

    Share with me a piece of virtual cheese.

    Ah, one of my favorites – Asiago. They stopped selling it at my local grocery store of choice, so I guess it will be an extra luxury for me now since I will have to trek to the cheese store for it.

    Anyway, we are celebrating because I just got past a major “roadblock” in a project at work. There is still a lot of work to do on this project, but the rest is just mindless. Now all I have to do is hit a few keys, read a book for a minute, and repeat a few hundred times. This is definitely better than banging my head against the beast that is Novell.

  • Don’t Cheap Out on Me

    There are certain things that you should never cheap out on when buying computer hardware. Here is a list…hopefully it can save someone some of the pain I have gone through in my years of geekdom:

    • Power supply. Go with Antec, or if you don’t mind reading for a bit, head over to Tom’s Hardware and read one of their PSU reviews.
    • RAM. Skimp on other things and get lots of RAM (hopefully 2GB nowadays). You will need it. Also, go with a name brand: Crucial, Corsair (my fav), Kingston, Mushkin, or OCZ.
    • hard drive. Worry about brand before you worry about size. Definitely do get Western Digital (I don’t buy anything else), and definitely don’t get Hitachi. There aren’t many things worse than a dead hard drive.
    • KVM switch. Go with a Belkin, and don’t get one of their shabby ones. Bad KVM switches will annoy the hell out of you.

    On side note, my arms feel removed from my body. It is a very weird sensation. And for some reason I can still type correctly.

  • Best Broken Program Ever

    My IM client, gaim, recently stopped working. I tried a couple of things to fix it, but for about a week I hadn’t gotten around to really trying hard to fix it. And then I realized how nice it was to not be online all the time. People don’t get the impression that they can bug you about whatever they want, whenever they want. And I don’t feel obligated to sit down for 5 more minutes when I was just about to go do something else, just because someone IMed me.

    And then there is the whole concept that people know when you are and aren’t at the computer. I didn’t like that from a privacy standpoint. So I turned off “idle reporting” so people couldn’t tell if and for how long I had been idle.

    But when I did this, if I ever forgot to put up an away message, which sometimes happened, I would get a couple people accusing me of ignoring them. That irked me.

    So I won’t fix my IM client. I am just going to use Meebo whenever I want to chat. And I will sign off when I don’t feel like it anymore.

  • Iraq War Deaths Animation

    This flash animation just brought out a lot of emotions. Sadness and anger.