February 2003

I can’t believe the first of March is right around the corner!!

I’m going to be spending most of my afternoon in the MDL (fancy name for a workshop on campus) working on my project that’s due tomorrow. It should be interesting given that they haven’t distributed our toolboxes and we effectively have no tools to build with. I’m going to bring mine just so I have something to work with.

Tonight we have another Computer Networking review class. They are actually pretty beneficial, the instructor really knows her stuff. So anyway, I’m off to class. Have a good day!!

I just uploaded 70 more photos to my online album. I’m really getting into this! Once I exhaust my stock of digital pictures I have on my laptop, I’ll start the long process of scanning in my old pictures. Here are some of the highlights that I’ll scan first:

- The famous cupping pictures (I might make a website about that, it was too cool!)
- Various vacations
- RPI pics
- Pics of friends

Any other suggestions? Let me know what you think

Phase one of my evil plan is almost complete. I have created a space on my website for all my photos. If you’re interested in seeing a small sample of my photo library, check out my family Christmas pics at http://photos.lemworld.com. Let me know what you think!

Phase two should be in the mail

I bought my first digital camera on eBay this afternoon. A special thanks to my IED group who put up with my last second stress as I watched the auction count down to its end.

Why did I buy a digital camera? Well, I love taking pictures. But in the past year and a half I have taken a whole 4 rolls of film. That’s pathetic! Back in the days of high school, when I had a lot more disposable income, I would develop that many rolls per week!! Plus, there have been several times when I said to myself “I wish I had a digital camera so I could just take a picture of that and e-mail it to someone.” The thought of having to shoot and develop a whole roll of film to then have to scan in one picture for e-mailing is a bit daunting (and as I mentioned before, expensive).

The second phase of this is finding some good photo album software so that I can manage all of the digital photos. I still have 400 pictures of Cairo from this past December, but no good way to archive them on my website without lots of Photoshop resizing and manually creating thumbnails. I want something on my server where I can just upload a new batch of pictures, assign a description, categorize them, and have them available to the world!

The person I bought it from on eBay doesn’t accept PayPal, so I sent them a money order. I feel pretty confident about the transaction… they have been eBaying for over 2 years with only 1 negative feedback (which was a double-negative and doesn’t really count).

So that was the highlight of my day! Look for some good pictures soon

Ok, so it seems that I’m really starting to get worse about posting to my LJ. Of course, being two weeks, a lot has happened! I’m going to try to provide a quick update.

* Reading for CCNA exam – I’ve been reading about 200 pages per week in preparation for the Cisco Certified Network Associate exam, which I have to take sometime next week. For those who don’t know how it works, I have read this 1000 page book in the past month all about computer networking. It’s pretty interesting stuff. Anyway, the exam is administered externally (I have to go to a private testing center in Albany to take the actual exam). It’s still an RPI class, and as an incentive, in order to PASS the course you have to PASS the CCNA exam. It costs $125 per time you take it, so I have lots of reasons to pass!

* Lots of IED – I’m head deep in stuff for Introduction to Engineering Design (IED for short). We have to build an interactive ping pong partner. My part of the project is to design the control systems (in terms of using a small computer to actually run the game). It should be pretty cool. If I take some pictures, I’ll post them for all to see!

* Job Search – I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks looking for a J-O-B for this summer! Things are promising, I have two major interviews this coming week, one of them with Microsoft! Remember, working for Microsoft is every geek’s dream, whether or not they will admit it. Microsoft has a pretty sweet deal (lots of money, free housing, most meals paid for, free air fare to and from Washington state, and any other expenses).

* Work Stuff – I’m still working on a couple of major projects for work. Last week we unveiled our tenant training program (more info) which was a decent success. The idea is to teach students how to find off-campus housing without getting totally screwed. If you go to RPI, you should come to our next session on March 6th! I’m also working on finishing another huge project. The initial presentations we’ve given seem very promising, so we’ll see how it goes.

* Too Much Snow! – Of course, this wouldn’t be a complete entry unless I rejoiced/bitched a little bit about the snow we’ve been getting. But yay for me having kept up with keeping the sidewalks and driveway cleaned off. Certainly makes things easier to keep it shoveled even if only a few inches of snow falls!

That’s about all I have time to write about. I’m going to try to make a more concerted effort to write more often! I do keep up with my friends’ posts! You folks are cool for not removing me as a bad friend. I love reading your stuff, and will post some comments soon, ok?

I can’t believe it’s February already, and I have let my journal go another few weeks without posting anything. Here’s a little bit about what I’ve been doing during the past few weeks:

- Trying to find a job for this summer
- I’m still dealing with all the snow. I finally had a break this weekend when, for the first time in 24 days, the temperature rose to above 32 degrees F!! It’s about time this stuff starts to melt
- I’m doing more with the off campus housing program, trying to improve the quality of life for students who choose to live off campus. We had a developmental meeting last Friday and everything seems very promising. Hopefully by teaching the students how to find good housing, the landlords will have to fix their places up to attract the smarter students!

Ok, so that’s not an exhaustive list, but I sure got tired writing it! Lol… ok I’m going to bed soon. Have a nice night all