Vista’s little time clock/calender is much better than the one in XP. Not only does it make checking dates easier, it also warns of impending doom (err. Daylight Savings Time starting/ending).
So it’s that time of year when signing up for spring semester classes begin. Once in upper division once every two semesters a one year plan must be filled out and a meeting with an adviser must occur prior to singing up for classes. Today, I was assigned my advisement date and time, and I went to check what day of the week it would be–they only gave a date and something about it seemed wrong (turns out they sent the wrong time and date). Upon clicking on the taskbar clock, I was greeted by a message warning that Daylight Savings Time ends on Sunday, November 2nd. This was a surprise as XP did not even warn when it would work its DST magic–Windows 98 would warn after it automatically changed the clock.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Ok, so for about a week we did not have internet at the house, thus one had to rely on the slow at times Internet on campus. The good news is everything is fixed up now. The 20th birthday seems to be an uneventful one, with little significance except one year older, and the end of the teenage years. A week ago the desktop was brought back home from work. The previously quiet machine roars compared to one’s laptop. And, no it’s not really faster then the laptop either. Transcoding a SouthPark episode, ~23min in length, to a screen resolution appropriate for my Zen took about 2.6 times longer on the desktop. So that makes a Pentium 4 @ 3.0Ghz (with HyperThreading) about 2.6 times slower than a x9000 Core 2 Duo @ 2.8Ghz. By no means was the test very scientific as they don’t have equal memory sizes, speeds, or operating systems. However, it is a rough depiction of the performance difference.
Oh, and Cysis still works on the desktop. Last Friday I presented it to some friends who thought it looked amazing. Then I let them know that what they saw was on more or less the minimum settings. The disappearing rocks problem leads to an awkward situation when you shoot at an enemy and they don’t even flinch. After unloading a few rounds you realize that there is supposed to be a rock there.
Depending on my whim, this blog may be down for a little while this weekend. I’m planning on grabbing the latest SVN of WordPress, installing it and placing up Cran-Berry. It’s a spring refresh, not a May one.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Spring semester week #1 is complete. My schedule this semester is much better than the previous semester’s. No more late afternoon classes, no more huge blocks of time between classes. This semester we play with the idiotic PIC microcontroller specifically due to it’s illogical command set, slip ups in its documentation, and other general oddities in it. That’s correct, we’re studying a microcontroller architecture that even the professor does not and would not use. An interesting general conclusion about the different departments/colleges at the U is that the CLA and biology departments tend to use more Macs, while IT likes either dells running Ubuntu, XP 64bit or Sun workstations running Ubuntu or Solaris. Having a professor that out right makes fun of Windows is a new experience, and actively trying to promote Linux is definitely new. Since his laptop’s gnome environment distinctly lacked distribution branding (as seen on Ubuntu and others), I’m sure he’s probably a Slackware user (which is cool since Ubuntu is overrated and Slackware originated in Minnesota). Though, I must say, I don’t approve of his favorite text editor (vi) and no I don’t even use its main competitor (EMACS), I’m a Gentoo user (hence I use nano).
Just a side note, I did a minor update to Breadcrumb NavXT. It should provide with some debugging information in know problem areas, and the “Bad user, no cookie for you” error message was replaced with something a bit more descriptive. Hopefully, the cause of the break in the WordPress API which causes the message to show up can be identified. Currently, it seems that running PHP in safemode can cause the problem to arise. More on that later.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Wow, the first full week of November is already the in past. As mentioned previously some of my projects are winding down now, and I should be getting more time to do things that have been neglected recently. Yes, that means Breadcrumb NavXT 2.0 will be getting some much needed attention. But more on that in a later post.
Last week, simply put, sucked. Exams, homework, and class projects combined to keep me sleep deprived the entire week. Added to the lack of time, the remodeling of our house required me to move my desk into a different room, which ate up time that I did not have. The homework was just typical and would not have been a problem had there been no exam. The project did a good job of eating up time, and we had only two weeks to do it (in reality that was only one as groups were assigned one week from the due date). As for the exam, I’d rather not talk much about it, other than it was first one that has scared me since high school calculus. I attribute this to the sub par calculus books those respective courses employed.
On deck for this week is a lab exam (in the lab with all of the broken equipment) and representatives from ABET will grace us with their presense for a different lab tomorrow. I guess the fate of the ECE department’s accreditation (for the next five years) rests in out hands (well more on the hands of our TA who was told by professor that he was responsible for making sure the equipment works on Monday). Since the logic boxes were not “built to spec”, things like the single step button on the counter do not operate as expected (though the counter does work properly in free-run mode), we have to try to keep that away from the ABET representatives. This may be difficult as we EE students tend to complain allot when broken equipment affects what we are trying to accomplish.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
October, admittedly, has been one of the busiest and all-around stressful months I have had. Things did not start off on a good foot, and the last day of this month will decide the fate of the next. Right now I’m really looking forward to Thanksgiving, and not necessarily for the festivities. By then at least one of the projects I’m working on will be complete, and the time off from school will be appreciated. For the last four weeks time seemed to be in short supply, but after this weekend the weekend excursion to the northern Minnesota wilderness will take a several month break until enough snow falls for snowmobiling (January-February time frame).
I really can’t wait for it to snow.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]