We all know what Control-Alt-Delete is, but do we know where it came from? David Bradley at IBM created it as a method to quickly restart a computer when it would stop running. He was in a very funny video two months back with Satan...err Bill Gates...about how it was not supposed to be a well-known tool, just a developer’s shortcut. The look on Gate’s face was priceless...
So it was like a five minute job, I didn’t realize I was going to create a cultural icon when I did it. But I have to share the credit I may have invented it but I think Bill made it famous.
Anywho, David is now retiring from IBM after 28.5 years. He’s going to be teaching at N.C. state now. I have a feeling that Ctl-Alt-Del won’t be retiring anytime soon - at last not as long as Windows is around.
I was sent this article from Wired. It really doesn’t sound promising...
1 in 10 US technology jobs will go overseas by the end of 2004, according to the research firm Gartner. In the next 15 years, more than 3 million US white-collar jobs, representing $136 billion in wages, will depart to places like India, with the IT industry leading the migration, according to Forrester Research.
I just had to like computers didn’t I? I couldn’t have actually picked something less outsourceable to like - such as economics, finance, or engineering?
Oh, yes, and on another wonderful note - the fuckers didn’t cancel classes today. The roads are way worse than on Monday when they gave us a delay! WTF?
I spent some time today working on some outstanding bugs throughout the site. Comment system now actually remembers your information when you ask it to, instead of having the cookie expire when you close the window (oops). I also worked on tweeking the layout a bit. I changed a lot in the version 5.0 theme so it is much more unique from version 4.0. They are now actually different enough to warrent calling it a new verion. Version 5.0 is back to the default because I really like the changes I made to it. You can set your theme back to winter if you want on the stylesheet page.
We actually got snow today, and its still snowing as I post! If I’m lucky there won’t be school tomorrow. That’d be really nice. They had the nerve to have a firedrill while it looked like this (see photo to right) outside! Standing around freezing our assess off for no good reason. Bad planning.
In other news I got a new phone and upgraded my service plan. The phone I had was getting really bad reception issues. I talked to Verizon and I was able to get the phone I wanted for $59 after upgrading my plan - which I was planning on doing anyway. The phone is nice; its small and color screen. Its a flip-phone which I thought I’d never like...but its really not bad. I have 1000 mobile to mobile minutes now - they will help out a lot since most people I talk to have Verizon.
Classes are going well and boring as usual. And I’m still putting in as much time as I can at Circuit Shitty. I took off Fridays and Saturdays so now I can have free time where I can just sit around and lounge - like last weekend with Arielle. Mmmm doing nothing.
Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be.
Oh, and I spent the week learning RSS feeds and XML. If you want to subscribe to my XML feed you can right here. If you are a Live Journal user you can add "ForgottenExpns" to your friends list and my blogs will show up with the rest of your friends!
Yet another way to avoid doing some work...
Nickname in high school?Parrots. Got it in freshmen year in lunch. Don’t ask, its not a funny story, it just stuck.
Sport you were into?Ultimate frisbee. And yes, that is a sport ;)
Had a circle of friends?A few close ones, and a mix from other circles.
Best subject?Math and programming.
Worst subject?English, as it always will be. Didn’t help that the teachers were 3vil too (well, all but 10th grade).
A teacher you owe life lessons to?None really in high school.
A teacher you wanna kick in the ass?2 for this one. Mr. Aspite - 10th grade english teacher. His way or the highway, even in "group discussions." Seemed to go out of the way to make me look like a fool, even what the class was agreeing with me. Fucker.
Mrs. Hohwald - C++ teacher, calc teacher, and "Web master." She took all the credit (and got paid too) for all the work I did on the site since she was the official "faculty" Web master. Didn’t do anything beyond hand me things people wanted posted and got paid 9k extra a year for it.
Freshman year:Made new friends, relatively unknown.
Sophomore year:Freshmen year plus a few new people. Became known as "the guy to go to" for computer issues and piracy...ARRRR! Had to help way too many ppl with their Chem homework.
Junior year:Became school Web master, fairly well known at this point. Got g/f.
Senior year:Did as little as possible. Too busy outside of school with Web development to care. It was fun.
Your best friend was?Erik Jensen.
Your worst friend was?Dunno.
Cafeteria food sucked?Hell yeah! The cheese steaks looked like paper bags. Pizza was always burnt till the cheese was brown.
Most hilarious school rule?You needed a pass to go to the lav.
School uniform?Ha, no way!
How was the prom?As well as a prom can go I guess seeing as I’m not a dance person. The after prom party was more fun though.
Who was prom king and queen?I forget cause I never really cared.
Any achievements?Won a few Web site competitions, school Web master, humanitarian award for community service, sleeping with my eyes open while in calc :)
Were you popular?Not really "popular" but people talked to me and most knew who I was.
Best song that reminds you of high school?I don’t really have one. There are songs that remind me of people from HS, but none of HS itself.
w00t! After a long time Miho is back and screwing with Piro’s head!
Geez now Bill Gates is being knighted for "services to the global enterprise." WTF?
20 years ago today Apple releasted the first Macintosh. Wow, they’ve come a long way from the not-so-good "classic" OS. Yay X! Happy birthday!
So besides that life is good :). Actually finding time off for myself (this is rare). Loving the new sound system. Was able to fix Arielle’s NES and we are about half way through Mario 3 already (without warping - as per her request). Oh, yeah, and that class thing is going ok too :P.
Arielle found this and I just had to post it.
Ahhh, hear that? Its the sound of a real entertainment system. I’ve been thinking of getting one ever since I got my live drive last month - now that I have digital output and all. I broke down and got the Onkyo Home Theater System 760. Man, I thought my computer speakers were good, these kick. It took me a bit to get my sound card set up right to pass Dolby and DTS to the receiver without decoding it, but I got it. w00t w00t. Man, it sounds so good.
Hrm, what else? I’ve started my massive project to convert all my DVDs to files on my hard drive. I’m tired of carying around 60+ cases when I go back and forth from college. So, I’m encoding them all to OGMs - keeping the original audio (Dolby or DTS) and encoding the video at a high bitrate (~1100kps). About 1.3-1.7 gigs a movie. Already got a few done, they look really nice - even running some touchups to make them look better than the dvd copy.
Classes seem ok. I’m returning one book today that I relized I don’t need, saving $88 right there. Spanish is nice - he is starting from the beginning. Verb forms, etc. Couldn’t ask for any more than that! I had to write a memo for my english class; felt like I needed to attach a TPS report to it or something :)
Had a really nice weekend too (well at least part of it was really nice). Things are going well at the moment. I hope it stays like this.
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona , Arkansas , California , Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida , Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois , Indiana , Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky , Louisiana, Maine, Maryland , Massachusetts , Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri , Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico , New York , North Carolina , North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon , Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee , Texas , Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington , West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Washington D.C.
I need to travel more. Anyone wanna come with?
Well, I’m back at PSU. Movein went well enough. I felt like a change so I moved around everything in my dorm room. Looks oddly different, but better. Ended up watching the Eagles game after I moved in. I swear we suck. But we won. Yay.
I managed to wake up on time for my 8am, even having enough time for breakfast. This is very encouraging. Bi Sci 2 (evolution) seems like it won’t be too bad. The book is optional, so I won’t be buying it. I want to save money this sem. and only buy what I need. English 202C (tech. writing) is going to be some work, but it seems useful. Teacher isn’t bad. I sit here in IST 411 (distributed object computing) writing this now. Its the same teacher as I had for Java last sem. so it should be ok. The prof. is overall a cool guy, I liked the class last sem. so I’m looking forward to this class.
Today is my Dad’s b-day. I’m going to head down to Downingtown this evening to head out to dinner with him and Jess. I think I am going to build him a computer for his b-day. He’s been wanting one, and I was going to pay for a good chunk of it and make it for him. I’ll prob. head down after I catch up on some coding.
RIAA is really getting annoying. They’ve stepped things up a bit by now raiding piracy locations with Police/FBI look-alikes. They’ve hired a bunch of ex-cops to help them in their quest to eliminate piracy. The whole raid looks very official, with their cop-like outfits and their IDs, but they admit they have no police power. I think we should should go raid their HQ in pirate outfits! Arrrrrr.
As some of you may know, the Spirit rover has landed on Mars. What you may not know is that the rover has a blog. I never saw that coming.
New Years Resolution : Stop falling into pits.
