Homework
My history and astronomy classes were kicking my ass until about Wednesday of this week. I somehow managed to get a little ahead of the game. I feel good about it, but it’s too bad it won’t last. There are only two weeks to go in the classes before they’re done. I finished all of my homework for the week for my astronomy class (including a 10-page essay) on Wednesday, and I just polished off the last bits of homework for my history class for this week.
That means that my weekend is free! Yay!
I still have a presentation in my history class due a week from Monday, and I’m going to see if I can knock it out Sunday. Depends on the weather, really. If I can get the presentation done, then I’m done with the class, except for taking a couple of tests that I need to study for. Not a big deal.
I have some forum posts for my history class over the next two weeks, but they’re pretty simple and I can knock them out in under an hour. Lastly, I have a 3-5 page essay for my history class where I have to interview an immigrant. Good thing there are a few at work that I can talk to. Should be cake.
The end of these two classes (which have been quite tedious, time-consuming, and requiring lots of work) is in sight, and I can move on to my next two classes.
My next two classes are computer security countermeasures and speech communications. I did 3 years of speech and drama in junior high and high school. I can talk circles around most people, and I can handle almost any type of speaking engagement. Speech communications will be a snap. You may think that the computer security countermeasures class will be boring, but I love learning that kind of stuff. I’m really looking forward to the class. I’m taking it “guided independent study”, which means that the teacher gives me all of the reading/homework assignments up-front, and I get them done by the end of the 8-week class. I tend to blow it off for a few weeks, and then I really get into it. Depending on how things go with the history/astronomy stuff, I may try to get a jump-start on it, and get it knocked out early. Probably won’t happen, but it’s a good thought.
Crunch TIme!
I have two classes coming to a close this week.
Web and E-Commerce Security
I’m taking this class GIS. I didn’t really learn a whole lot from the class because I’m already pretty well versed in this area. I’ve been doing web development for 12 years now, and I’ve been heavily interested in security for the past 7 years. I’ve combined the two of them for quite some time. I didn’t expect much from the class going into it, but I did learn a few minor things. I’m glad that I took the class, but I would have rather taken it online or in-class. That just wasn’t an option because not enough people are interested in the class. Ahh.. welll.. No biggie. I still get my credits, and I hope to get an ‘A’ out of the class to boost my GPA even higher. I just finished the final for the class today, so I’m free and clear of this class. That lets me concentrate on what I need to do in my other class.
Early Christian Ireland 431-1169
I’ve really enjoyed this class. It’s given me a great amount of information on the language, society, culture, and politics of early Ireland. I plan on using some of that knowledge in my D&D world, Lauremor. Now comes the hard part. I have to write four essays as the final for this class. Each one has to 800-1000 words in length. The problem that I have with these essays is that my writing style is very short and to the point. I can crank out 300-500 words on a topic without a problem. Once I get beyond 550-600, I start to have trouble. The topics of the essays are archaeology, history, literature, and an “interdisciplinary” writing. I have until next Saturday to get them done, but I’m going to shoot for doing one writing per night to get them all done by Thursday night. I know I won’t keep to this schedule, but if I slip a little, then I think I’ll still be able to finish them all by Saturday.
To Do List
Here are a few things that I would like to do before I die. They’re not in any particular order…
1) Go skydiving. Looks like a rush, and I would love to try it at least once.
2) Get a book published. Ever since I was in my early teens, I’ve wanted my name on the byline of a book. I’m not sure why I want to get published, but it’s an urge that is there. I don’t care if it’s a technical book, a role playing book, or a fiction novel. I have the skills to do any one (or all three!) of those. It’s just a matter of honing my skills to the point where they are good enough to be published, and actually finding the time to get something finished. Someday…
3) Go back to Europe. I would love to spend a week or two in Europe just traveling around and looking at the sights. Kiara has never been to Europe, so I would love to take her there someday.
4) Track down an old friend of mine. Last I heard from him was around 1999, and he was joining a seminary school with the intention of becoming a Catholic priest. His eventual goals were to become a Franscician Monk, and tend to people in prison. I’m not sure if he ever met his goal or not. Shortly after talking to him when he was going to enter seminary school, he dropped off the face of the planet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him a few times, but I’ve always failed to actually talk to him.
5) Get a tattoo. Kiara will only let me get one that is “meaningful.” My idea of getting Tux (The Linux penguin mascot) is not “meaningful” enough, so I’ve decided to do a portrait of my sister on my arm. As you probably know, I lost her to a drunk driver 9 years ago. I think getting her portrait on my arm should qualify as “meaningful.”
6) Graduate college. I want to get at least a Bachelor’s degree. Maybe even a Masters. I already have all of the skills necessary to do my job, so this is more of a personal goal than a professional goal. Either way, it’ll be good to get that piece of paper in my hands. While I’m at it, I’m going to try to win The Lady Ada Lovelace Award for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Information Systems, Computer Networking, Computer Science. Yeah. It’s a long title. It goes to the person in the graduating class in CIS, CN, or CS that has the highest GPA. My current GPA is 3.778 (Damn College Algebra and Philosophy killed me), but I hope that I can pull it up over the course of the next 2 years to earn the award. We’ll see how it goes.
7) Have a child. What better way is there to ensure that part of you continues to exist in the world? I would love to have a son or daughter to teach, rear, love, and watch grow. Sure, they’ll make mistakes, and I’ll be there to pick them up when they do mess up and put them back on their feet. I’ll also be there to hold their hand when they need it, or lift them up on my shoulders in celebration of their accomplishments. This is probably the most important one to me on this list.
There are probably a few more things that I would like to do before I die, but I’ve got to get back to what I was doing before I started to post.
Irish Circles
I started a Irish history class last week, and we started off with studying archaeological evidence. There really isn’t all that much to study other than the various ring forts that were built. There are only a few hundred artifacts from early Irish history, and no writings that are known. Compare this to the Egyptians, Romans, Greek, or American Indian cultures, and it’s quite scarce. It amazes me that we know anything at all about the culture and society of ancient Ireland.
One of the lasting items are the various ring forts that were built. There are four Royal Sites (Cruachain, Tara, Dun Ailinne, and Emain Macha) that are heavily studied. They are not royal in the sense of kings and queens, but in the fact that they hold the most archaeological evidence available in Ireland. In one of the books that we are reading, there are many aerial photos and diagrams of the circles that were built. The remind me very much of the crop circles, and it makes me wonder if the crop circles were inspiration for the ring forts that were built.
I learned ages ago that it is easier to defend a circle than a square for many reasons. All of the ring forts follow this wisdom, but something that I wondered was why they were all circles. It seems to me that through trial and error, there would be some square, rectangular, or (maybe) triangular shapes. I asked my instructor if there were any non-circular shapes to be found. She said that there was one, and that was because it was built along a sea cliff. There was no way to build a complete circle around the fort. However, the one wall that they did build as a defense was built in an arc. Had there been room for a full circle, there would have been one.
It amazes me that a culture was able to build such perfect circles, and that they managed to hit upon the best defensible structure without any errors. Something in my conspiracy theorist mindset tells me that the Reptilian Overlords gave the secrets of fire, engineering, and warmongering to the Irish before fading into the background to watch the fruits of their labor.
Finished With Classes
I’m finished with my classes for this section that I’m taking. I was two classes (which is my normal load.)
My class that I was taking online was “Ethical Decision Making in Business.” It is a required class for everyone that attends my college. At first, I resented being required to take the class, but I learned quite a bit in it. After the class, I was somewhat happy that I took it. It wasn’t hard. It was basically a bunch of reading, and then a good load of writing my thoughts about what the reading covered. There were also online forum conversations that I held with my fellow students. The class was run by a lawyer, and we had to cite all of our resources (which is normal,) but we also had to address all of our fellow students in formal language. When replying to someone else’s post, we had to address them as “Mr. Smith”, or “Ms. Jones” or something like that. It was kind of awkward. We also had to sign all of our postings with “Mr. Blumingworth” or whatever our last name was. I probably missed doing that last part on half of my postings. Now that the class is done, I expect to come out with an A in the class. My grades have been superb so far through the class. I fell a bit short on my final essay, but I think I’ll still manage to carry an A in the end.
My other class was “Security Breaches” in regards to computer security. I tried taking the class several times in the online forum, but there were never enough students enrolled for the university to justify holding the class. This meant that I had to resort to taking the class as a “guided independent study.” This means that the teacher tells you which books to read, and then they give you all of the reading assignments, homework, and tests up front. You then have to finish all of the homework, tests, and other exercises before the end of the class. I teach myself quite well, so this worked out great for me. This was my second GIS class, and I plan on taking at least two more. I prefer the online or in-class forum because I get interaction with my fellow students. However, I need the credits to finish the course work, so I had to resort to GIS.
My next two classes are going to be “Early Christian Ireland (431-1169)” and “Web and E-Commerce Security.” I’m really looking forward to both classes. The Ireland class is online, and the e-security class is also GIS. I ordered all of the books that I need for the classes, so I should be set by the time the classes start on October 23rd. I have all but one of the books. The univsersity bookstore was excellent. I ordered the books one day, and the next day, I had the books in hand. It worked out quite well. The last book that I’m waiting for is “out for delivery” today, so I’ll have it in hand when I get home from work.
There is also an award called the “The Lady Ada Lovelace Award for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Information Systems, Computer Networking, Computer Science.” Yeah. Big name. It’s given to the person in a graduating class from the CIS, CN, or CS majors with the highest GPA. Two of my friends have earned the award, and I’m hoping to get it as well. My GPA currently stands at 3.75 (out of 4.00), but I’m not sure if that’s good enough to earn the award. Jhianna earned the award, but her GPA was much better than mine currently is. I’m hoping to be able to improve my GPA over the next couple of years. My GPA would be a little higher, but I got a C in College Algebra, and a B+ in a philosophy course. Everything else has been an A with a few A-’s thrown in. I’m through all of my hard courses, so I expect to be able to pull A’s in the rest of my classes. We’ll see how it goes.
Good Timing
My ancient PDA (a Handspring Visor from circa 1999) finally gave up the ghost. It was actually my fourth one. You could say that I was a loyal customer. About a year ago I told myself that when the Visor died, I would upgrade to a newer piece of technology to replace it. That time finally came yesterday morning. Fortunately, I have everything synched to my laptop, so I won’t lose any data.
The two bummers about this is all of the data entry that I’m going to have to do when I get a new PDA, and saving up the money to afford a replacement. One of those problems was solved yesterday when I got home from work. There was a check there waiting for me from Regis University. It was my student loan dispersement check for a little over $1000. Yay! That means that I can afford a new hand held as soon as the check clears. I went to the bank this morning and deposited the check, so I should have the funds tomorrow.
I looked at the HP iPaq PDAs, but they are very expensive, and run Windows Mobile. I think part of their higher cost is the licensing of Windows. The Palm PDAs looked niced, but the Z22 was too small. It was much smaller than my old Visor. I felt like I would be taking a technological step backwards if I bought the Z22. The TX was really nice. I liked the interface, the lack of a dedicated grafitti pad (which made the available screen space bigger,) and the color screen. After living in greyscale for so many years, seeing a PDA with color was amazing.
I also did some research online and talked to Fred about his Sharp Zaurus. I got to play with his Zaurus right after he got it a few years back, and I was very impressed. It also runs Linux as the operating system, which tickles me to no end. He has a 5500, but I’m going to shoot for getting a 5600. It has a slicker interface, and a larger battery. The bigger battery provides almost double the life of the 5500. I’ve found a few 5600′s on eBay, and I’ll probably purchase one of them sometime this week.
I’m really looking forward to the new toy!
Identity Theft
I’m a student at Regis University, and I’m using student loans from Sallie Mae to pay for the schooling. One of my loans was sold to Nelnet, and they recently lost a tape with student information on it. They were using UPS to ship an unencrypted tape to another facility. UPS lost the tape along the way, and that puts the rest of my financial future at risk. I hope for Nelnet’s sake that nothing bad happens with the tape. If I’m put out by their carelessness, then I see a lawsuit in their future.
I’m not a big fan of lawsuits. Lawsuits over hot coffee, getting fat at McDonalds, or similar items where the plaintiff had control over the situation, but chose to be careless make my stomach churn. However, in a case of gross negligence (like shipping an insecure piece of information via an insecure method) deserves to be handled in a different manner. I just hope that it doesn’t go that far.
Now I’ve got to spend money, effort, time, and worry over someone else’s mistake. I’ve got to sign up for reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to make sure that nothing bad happens to my credit. My credit is pretty good. Kiara and I have worked over the past several years to keep things good on our credit, and I would hate to see all of that hard work go down the tubes because of someone else’s carelessness.
The letter that Nelnet sent me told me to watch my credit reports for the next 12 to 24 months. That’s two years worth of diligence that I have to maintain because they didn’t encrypt data on a tape. Their letter also said that it was a “specialized tape” that could not easily be read. I know about tape drives. I own two, I’ve worked with dozens in the past. It’s not that hard to get your hands on the proper tape reader and read the tape. Since the data wasn’t encrypted, fetching names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and other vital information off of the tape would be trivial. I can write a quick Perl script to just do that in under an hour. It’s really not all that hard.
Here’s to hoping that nothing bad comes about from this…
Slacking Off
Wow. It’s been over a week since I’ve last posted. So sorry about that. Here are some things that are going on in my life.
Selling a house: We’ve had quite a few people look at the house. Some complained that it was a ranch, and they didn’t want a ranch. My question to them is this: Why the fuck did you look at a ranch if you don’t want one? Morons. Quit wasting everyone’s time. There have been some people that complained about the dog smell. We’ve taken steps to alleviate that problem, so it shouldn’t be an issue moving forward. We’ve had a few promising lookers. One said that it was up in the air between our house and another house. We hope they choose our house. We’ll see how things go.
Buying a house: Things are moving forward well on the new house. The radon test came back with a level of 21.3. The EPA suggests living in nothing more than 4. We’ll need to get a radon mitigator to take care of the problem. We tried to get the sellers to do this for us, but they said that “according to our research radon is not a health hazard.” Morons. I’m not sure which “research” they used, but it’s not the right kind, I’m certain. There was also some electrical work that needs to be done in the main junction box. They refused to fix that as well. However, their counter offer for the radon mitigation, and electrical work was that they would include their garden tractor with the house. They claimed that the tractor cost them $3500 last year. We went to Sears (it’s a Craftsman mower) to check on their price. The most expensive tractor that they had (with all accessories) came out to just a little over $2800. I got very pissed that they had lied to us about the price of the tractor. I was in a rage until I got home and checked my email. Our realtor got the specs on the tractor. We went to Craftman’s website, built out a tractor with the same specs, and it came out to around $3500. Looks like I got pissed for nothing. We decided to accept their counter-offer, and move forward with the purchase of the house. We’re scheduled to close on the 13th, which is a Thursday. We’ve got a few friends helping us move on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, I have about 14 friends showing up to help us move. I’ve helped tons of people move in the past, and I’m calling in all of my favors. Things should go smoothly.
School: I’ve registered for my Fall 2006 classes that start August 28th. I’m taking Astronomy and Security Breaches in the first 8 weeks of the term. In the second 8 weeks, I’ll be taking History of Early Christian Ireland, and Wed and E-Commerce Security. I’m really looking forward to my classes. Should be lots of fun. I hope to learn quite a bit in all of my classes.
Gaming: My friends and I suddenly became interested in the Hero system. We bought books, software, and source materials for the game. Hero Games made quite a mint off of our purchases, so they should be in business for a while longer. We created some Champions characters, broke some rules in our ignorance, recreated the characters, and played for about 5 hours last night. It was a blast. I’ve played Champions before, but it was about 13 years ago. I had forgotten how much fun it is to roll 12d6 for an energy blast! Rolling lots of dice is such a good feeling. We’re going to return to our regularly scheduled games of 1st edition D&D Saturday. We’re in the middle of cleaning out a devil infested castle. Should prove to be fun if we can ever get past the first room of the castle.
That’s about all that has been going on in my life. I’ll try to keep you updated on a daily basis for those of you that are reading my blog… if anyone is.
