It’s been a while
It has been far too long and my only excuse isn’t really an excuse … I’ve just been too lazy. Oh, I could claim I’ve just been too busy, but in reality I have had time, just not time I really wanted to devote to a new entry. So I’m taking a new approach. I will take a few minutes on and off over the next few hours to compile a full entry. I usually try to write it all at once with no real time for proof reading or any deep thoughts, but hopefully this new approach will allow me to express a little more before I get bored and move onto something else.
Several things come to mind when I think of what has transpired since my last entry. Let’s get the work related stuff out of the way first.
We launched Web Registration for Spring 2006 with very few technical hiccups. We added a new ‘feature’ this semester that allows a student to see a list of books that efollet.com has on record as needed for the classes they have signed up for. Of course, this service is provided by efollet with the express intention of selling those books to the student, but I suppose it is useful to some people. I personally never buy from our bookstore unless they are the only place on Earth that carries what I need (and it happens).
The largest snafu this semester for web registration was that Student Accounts and Academic Records Service (the Registrar) didn’t coordinate properly and as a result had the tuition rates all messed up for some courses. When this was noticed on Tuesday afternoon I was asked to temporarily suspend web reg. Before we noticed it and shut things down, several students were able to register for a full load of courses at a small fraction of the cost. Now the school will not allow that to remain, but I’m sure it made someone happy for a while. Normal operations resumed Tuesday evening around 6:15.
I may be in the market for a new job before long. Part of my contract here at LeTourneau states that I must maintain a 3.0 GPA and finish no fewer than 6 credit hours each semester, all towards the eventual graduation in a computer science related program. Well, that will likely not happen this time around, and I’m already on ‘probation’ so no chance of a reprieve. As a result I’ve kept my eye open for job announcements in my field ([Web] programming) and took particular interest in their requirements. I think if it comes down to it, I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a new place of employment.
It seems that my supervisor (Mike) is a bit nervous about this as well. He has asked me to begin bringing one of my coworkers (Daniel) up to speed on stuff that I have historically handled myself. While Mike has hinted at a possible solution to the ‘problem’, he also wants to make sure that the school doesn’t take a massive hit if I do leave. Smart, but not really confidence building.
As I work with Daniel this week on a backup solution, I am realizing just how much some of the code I’ve inherited and had to expand upon really suck. I have had months or even years to familiarize myself with the code I maintain and trying to shove even a reasonable summary into Daniel’s head in such a short time is almost time wasted. He needs to understand the ecommerce stuff I’ve written, the Web Registration code, the new Campus Security system, and last but not least the card readers in both chapel and Solheim. More than a little information.
Speaking of Campus Security, I have almost completed the first phase of that project. They continually find things for me to fix, but I really did not expect anything less. I will just be glad when it is done … finally done.
Onto more interesting matters, for me at least. I turned 24 on the 2nd and I have to think about that number every time I’m asked (2005 - 1981 = ??). A few friends from school went out to eat with me at Olive Garden that evening and we had a great time just relaxing and chatting it up while complaining about our waitress. Dad and I played phone tag all day until I finally just called home and hit the jackpot. I got to spend a few minutes talking to each member of the family.
About a month ago I decided that I would go for it and install Gentoo Linux on my laptop. I had been intending to do it for some time, just never got around to it. Starting out I’d planned to leave Windows on it, just shrink it down to the smallest possible partition. By the time I got around to actually doing it I had decided that it was just too much work to deal with resizing the Windows partition and all the things related, so I ditched it and the IBM recovery partition completely. The stage 3 install went extremely smoothly and I had a working system overnight with Gnome 2.12. I think the OpenOffice 2.0 compile took as long or longer than the rest of the system.
I have my wireless card (Intel Pro/Wireless 2200b/g) partially working. It works on my WEP encrypted network at home, but I haven’t gotten it all working on the LEAP authenticated network at the school. It supports WPA/LEAP, and support appears to be in the latest baselayout for it, I just haven’t found the right combination of settings. Of course I haven’t spent too much time on it as it isn’t a super high priority. However, I found what looks to be a super slick program called NetworkManager that may help get everything running properly network-wise.
I compiled support for ACPI and CPU scaling into my kernel, but I haven’t been able to test any of the ACPI features out yet. The CPU scaling stuff really rocks! I have both governors and frequency adjustments set up so I can throttle things down for power savings, max them out for performance, or find several happy mediums depending on what I’m working on. It really helps on the battery life.
I do have one weird issue with MPlayer that I haven’t nailed down a cause to yet. If I’m watching a video in MPlayer and have text scrolling in another window somewhere (even on another viewport/desktop) the video gets scrambled. It almost looks like you can make out the text that is scrolling in the video itself. I think I’ll have to try some of the other video output filters to see if that helps.
My main desktop died a few months ago during a power spike. I can’t remember if I wrote about it and I can’t be bothered to search my archives. After removing just about all the hardware from the machine in an effort to isolate the fault, I did remove all the hardware and replaced the motherboard with the one slated for Legolas. Wouldn’t you know it, it booted on the new motherboard. So, not only do I need a new motherboard and processor, I also need a new video card as mine finally bit the dust about the same time (but I knew that was coming several months before) and a new root hard drive.
Enough about my computers, I know most of you couldn’t care any less since that’s not your main reason for stopping by my blog.
I went to Texoma this year to orienteer for the first time (outside of a little at TJOC) in several years, albeit on Brown. Dad and I got one of the “motel” rooms that are right there in the facility. I must say that it was very nice being able to run back and take a shower immediately. The first day was really bad for me. Not only did I have to get “back into the swing of things”, but I pulled some muscle in my back. It was bad news from the very start … literally. When the whistle blew for me to start, I went about 180 degrees away from the direction I should have gone which dropped me right into an area mark as off limits on the map. Of course by the time I realized what I’d done, I had already run down a fairly large hill that required me to climb a significant bit more than I would have otherwise.
Sometime between points two and three I pulled something in my back. I think it all stems from an old elementary school injury. When I haven’t run seriously in a while and then try, it almost always hurts. So, since I could barely walk, much less run up and down hills, I packed it in and headed for finish to check in. I didn’t plan on doing anything other than run that weekend, but I saw that Carl Bridges was pretty swamped at the e-punch set-up and I offered to help. Carl had come up with a new way to handle keeping and calculating times for non-e-punch competitors that made use of the e-punch software. It really saved us a lot of time and effort, not to mention helped guarantee accuracy.
The second day went much better. I offered to run early so that I could get back and help with e-punch stuff again. That was an excellent choice because the weather was awesome. Since I’d hurt my back the day before and didn’t wish to do it again, I decided to walk and not really push myself. Although my time wasn’t anywhere near where it should have been had I run it, I had a ton of fun and finally got my head all straightened out so I could actually navigate again. I didn’t have any real issues finding the controls (unlike many others I spoke with), although I did make some pretty bone-headed navigation mistakes that cost me time (don’t try to go through dark green with light green slashes).
Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I leave for a weekend my cable Internet connection goes down. Based off monitoring stuff I have in place, it appears to have died no more than about an hour after we left Longview. Just an hour! If you got caught as a result, I’m sorry. Longview Cable really has it out for me. Somehow they managed to not process my check in time and their automated system cut my account off. What company does that on a weekend when they know they will not be around for me to contact? Ahhh! I was able to get it back working Monday morning after the office opened. Let’s just say I was rather upset about the whole thing.
As I mentioned briefly in a previous post (just a little while ago really), I got a new kitten on Thanksgiving. My aunt has a cat named Samantha who had two kittens on October 12th. When my mother told me about the kittens I considered taking one, but they still needed some time with their mother and I didn’t have a way to get down to her house anyways. Well, it worked out pretty well in the end as my aunt was really trying to unload them onto other people on Thanksgiving and we were at her house for lunch. Somewhat on an impulse, I told her that I would take one assuming dad didn’t have a problem bringing one home for a few days. He didn’t have any problems with it at all. That got Erica all upset because he had told her she couldn’t bring one home (of course her’s would be hanging around a lot longer than mine would).
On the trip home that day Mocha, who didn’t have a name at that point, did really well once we got out on the Interstate. The other cats at home mostly ignored her puffing up, which seemed to bolster her ego. Really we believe that the others didn’t feel she was a threat and walked off. She quickly learned that she could climb my blue-jeans leg to get up into my lap if I was sitting down. The only problem is that she doesn’t seem to understand the difference between blue-jeans and my bare leg. Let’s just say I have a ton on cuts on my legs right now and they burn! I don’t get this scratched up orienteering.
Well, I figure this post is already long enough, not to mention the fact that it has been in the works for almost two weeks. I’m out of here …