Ramblings by Chase

I got registered for classes yesterday, all two of them that I am taking. I decided to take Data Structures (COSC 2203) and Calculus II (MATH 2013) this semester. I figured I needed to start somewhere and these classes are required before I can go much farther.

Registration went fairly smoothly. I was playing Tech Support for IT over there and things were really slow (in other words, things were running like they should), so I talked to my boss, who happended to be over there too, and jumped into line to register. I had to be readmitted to LU after having been gone for more than a semester, but they were very helpful with that as well.

I felt like I was a head of the game throught the entire process, mostly due to the number of times I have done it by now. Every time they went to ask for something, they realized I had already filled it out or had it ready to show them … they seemed impressed. So I am a LU student again, but I’m not sure how that makes me feel. :) It really doesn’t feel like anything changed, the summer just has kept going and a few classes have just been thrown into the mix.

I did get my van back as I previously posted. It felt great to not be forced to rely on the goodwill of my friends to transport me. I know they must have been getting tired of hauling me around, I know I would have been getting tired by now. The repairs ended up being just about what we expected, which was nice. If you ever need any transmission work done in Longview, check out B & B Automatic Transmissions on Hwy 80 “downtown”. The owner there “did me right”.

I got my van back! I got my van back! I got my van back! I got my van back! I got my van back!

Do I sound happy? I am!

It was another action packed weekend! Well, not really, but it wasn’t slow either. I wrote about Friday evening, that was a lot of fun. Saturday wasn’t bad either. Jimbo went to see his grandparents and stopped by the apartment on his way back and picked me up. After that I just basically hung around the Quad, helping people move in where I could, and waited. I was waiting for my father …

He was bringing John in from Houstion, but he wasn’t due in Longview until around nine. I “wasted” some time playing Deus Ex, really great game BTW, and right in the middle of my “training”, John and my dad walked in. They were about an hour early. Cool! So, since he was there for two reasons, drop off John, and get my van to the transmission shop, we took off and towed the van over to the shop. That went much better than I thought it would.

Unfortunantly, the shop doesn’t have a place to leave a vehicle after hours, nor do they have a key drop. So, I made arrangements to be there when they opened at eight. We decided to go grab a late dinner at IHOP before he headed south for the night. We sat around and chatted for a while, then gathered our things and headed back to campus. He dropped me off and let for Houston shortly thereafter.

When I got back to the Quad, they were watching a movie … I guess they couldn’t find the one they really wanted to watch. The one they ended up with turned out to be really bad … just plain stupid bad. I endured the rest of the movie … there were a lot of people in our lounge watching (somewhat unusual). After the movie I found a ride back to the apartment.

Sunday I made arrangements to get back to the Quad and I just hung around, and we did dinner … not much.

This morning I showed up at the transmission shop, which apparently decided to open at seven, not eight. Whatever, he got the van moved, after I gave him the keys. We made tentitive arrangements for communication … still not real sure when he will call. He said around noon, but I have prior engagements at about that time and will be away from my phone for several hours. We’ll see.

I spent a really great evening over in the Quad with everyone last night. I got off work at five and headed over, but nothing really happend until much later in the evening. About eight o’clock or so I met Justin’s parents again. Real nice folks. We talked for a while about work and school and all those things that you are “supposed” to talk about with the parents. At ten we had a “meet the leadership” meeting. The new freshmen coming onto the floor are all here and they were supposed to come to a meeting on the floor. Almost all of ours showed up, which is better than I expected.

We introduced all of the returning students that were there at the time, which were mostly in IMPACT in some form or fashion. Each returning student got a second to talk about themselves, then we started with the fish. We had each of them introduce themselves, tell us where they hail from, what they are planning on majoring in, and whatever else they could come up with quickly. Sounds like this group is going to be really cool.

After the introductions, we broke out the ice cream. We had four gallons of it for about twenty people, plus about nine liters of various sodas. As we ate the ice cream we just sat around, or stood (which I think most of us did), and just talked. Some of the new guys seem quiet, but none of them seem too introverted. We should be able to get everyone involved this semester.

We also have three soccer players. That is the one sport that we have historically had the biggest problem with … all of the soccer players that have lived in Q4 have left fairly quickly in the past. These guys seem much cooler though, and even ended up bringing some of their new teammates over to get some ice cream … which was fine with us since we had so much.

Well, time to head off to work since I’m sitting over in Advancement right now … and it is a bit warm in the room. Later …

Well, today is full of training time. Officially it runs in two hour blocks from nine until five. However, in reality the classes aren’t lasting two hours each, so we have been able to compact the time schedule some. OpenCMS seems to be a more manageable beast these days. After we made a few decisions about permissions and project settings, things have mostly settled down into a predictable pattern that only needs minor changes every once in a while.

At least with remote desktop I can use my work computer and get real work done from the computer lab that we are holding the training in. I only wish that I could access my computer in the apartment … I can’t wait until I get an internet connection up and running.

Wow, things have been moving fast lately. Like I said last time, I got moved into the apartment and now I’m down to the point of settling in. The complex seems to be very quiet in the evenings and at night, I guess having the bedrooms in the far outside corners helps reduce the noise at night from surrounding units.

I tried to get Frodo set up on the network at the apartment yesterday, but ran into problems very fast. Apparently Frodo isn’t recognizing it’s hard drive. So, I plan to use John’s computer in his room and throw the HD in it. Since he is running Linux, it should have no problems with the ext3 filesystem. Too bad Windows folks can’t read it :)

Scum and I are trying to figure out how to handle books.quad4.org while I am waiting for an internet connection. It looks like we are going to use Dotster’s URL redirection service to point the URL to Scum’s IP address at home, then redirect from there to his IP address on the campus. Unfortunantly that means that only people on campus will be ablew to use it, but it is only temporary.

Ya, it’s been a while since I posted. I wanted to post, but I don’t have an internet connection in my apartment yet and yesterday was insane here at the office. Friday after work I headed over to the apartment complex and signed my lease and paid the deposit. I grabbed the keys and headed for a quick dinner at Fazoli’s with Dwight. Once dinner was over (Thanks Dwight!) I headed back to the Quad to gather a few things up and then headed south.

The trip down went rather normal, nothing really happened at all. I got into LaPorte about 11:30 and ended up staying up talking until about 2:30. Saturday morning we got a trailer and headed over to a friend’s house who had said they had a couch I could have. They apparently had a couch and love-seat, in addition to several other items that they wanted to give me. The only problem was that the couch was about three inches too long to fit in the trailer. Oh well, we just took the love-seat for now.

Got back to the house and loaded up the rest of my junk in the trailer and my van and started heading back to Longview about four PM. The trailer seemed to do just fine behind the van for a while. I did say … for a while … because every once in a while we noticed a bit of smoke that would form, then quickly disappear. We have had this happen before and figured it wasn’t going to be a real problem.

It became a real problem just north of Nacagdoches. The van really started to smoke heavily and we began to worry a bit. It finally gave out on 322, not 15 miles from the campus. We added tranmission fluid, about four quarts, and got the van back on campus. We ended up grabbing the rest of my stuff from the Quad and towing the van and trailer up to the apartment complex.

We started unloading the trailer sometime around midnight on Sat/Sun. It went relatively well, as it only took two hours … even moving to a second story apartment. Most of my things are put away, but most of my books still need to be pulled out of boxes and put on shelves. I still am working on getting all of my utilities, phone, internet, blah, blah, blah all set up and billed correctly.

Well, happy surfing. I’m out of here ….

Today was kind of weird. I had nothing but problems at work, at least when it came to my program. Then just when things were beginning to look up and my luck change …. BAM! My computer freaks out when I tried to install a Remote Desktop program. It almost was acting like it had been hit by that RPC worm flying around, but the symptoms didn’t match that well. After trying to install the program, Windows asked to be restarted. Nothing new in the Windows world (and the one biggest gripes I’ve ever had about the OS), but upon restart things just came apart.

The computer (running Win2000Pro) booted normally up to just shy of the point where I would hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in. At that point, it shut itself off and proceeded to restart. I let it cycle like that twice before I got worried. I have run into a few cases where an install can’t finish till it reboots, then wants to restart again, so I let it go. After restart number three I got annoyed. After restart number four, I went and talked to the guys that gave me the program … he’s in IT too and in charge of that stuff. By the time I got back, it was working on reboot number six. I decided to manually power it off and let it sit for a minute. Again, I’ve had cases where a restart is messed up, but a hard power off and back on fixes it. No luck … off to the shop (in IT) for repairs. Used a dumb laptop that was even worse than my P350 desktop the rest of the day . Oh and the laptop had a touch network card … bump the cable and it drops the connection. Errr.

Anyways, the work day is over and guys start returning to the dorm tomorrow. I’ve spent the last few hours watching episodes of “Dead Like Me”. A really interesting series, but the only drawback is that it is only on Showtime. So I have to get it “other ways”. Well … later people.

As if in answer to my complaints on Friday, the ARRL newsletter kindly ran a story about the BPL stuff. But the real jewel I pulled out was this little story:

Ham radio distress call yields help from next state: When 83-year-old Walter Siebert, K3KBR, of Valley Lee, Maryland, started suffering serious chest pains July 15, he called 911. For reasons yet to be determined, no one answered. So Siebert turned to ham radio and put out a cry for help on 75 meters, saying he was having chest pains and needed to go to the hospital. Larry Wheeler, KG4RGN, heard Siebert’s plea in Williamsburg, Virginia. At the time, Wheeler was monitoring a net on 3947 kHz as part of Amateur Radio Emergency Service District 7’s participation in a Surry Nuclear Power Plant VOPEX (Virginia Operations Plan EXercise) drill. He notified the net to clear the frequency and contacted Siebert to get the necessary details. Wheeler then got in touch with the 911 dispatcher in James City County, Virginia. The 911 dispatcher in turn was able to reach the proper authorities in Maryland and get medical help to Siebert, who was hospitalized.

The ARRL Letter
Vol. 22, No. 31
August 8, 2003

Who says Ham radio isn’t good for anything? This guy might have died had it not been for his HF rig.

Anyone care to explain what the heck this means? ::

10.52.90.57 - - [11/Aug/2003:08:55:31 -0500] “OPTIONS / HTTP/1.1″ 200 3981 “-” “Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/5.1.2600″
10.52.90.57 - - [11/Aug/2003:08:55:31 -0500] “PROPFIND /work_stuff HTTP/1.1″ 404 304 “-” “Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/5.1.2600″
10.52.90.57 - - [11/Aug/2003:08:59:05 -0500] “OPTIONS / HTTP/1.1″ 200 3981 “-” “Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/5.1.2600″

I’ve talked with the guy (who happens to work in IT with me) and he has no idea what would have changed to cause this from his end. I did a little research, but couldn’t find much other than it’s obviously related to the Microsoft WebDAV junk. Come on, any ideas out there?