WHOO HOO!!! I'm at work again. What a surprise. I've worked on the GUI for my program and it's coming along fairly well. The other day I just tried to read through the code of some sample programs on the Sun website, but I couldn't get things to work. Today I actually read through the tutorials that went along with the sample code and I've come pretty far. I have the initial window open up and then you click a button and that brings up a open dialouge box (thats where you select the template). I've stopped messign with it for the night. I'm probably gonna waste the last half hour of my shift playing stupid Yahoo! games. They are dumb but very addictive.
When I get done with work. I'm heading back to my apartment with intentions of tearing down my entertainment center. That is gont to Michelle's apartment tomorrow. No more big TV and great DVD sound. I'm going to be stuck with my computer. I'm gonna keep a couple DVD so I can watch them on my computer. I still haven't had a chance to look over the Memento DVD. I'll have to do that once I get everything moved out and I'm sitting at home bored.
Life: May 2002 Archives
I'm at work again. Less than 24 hours ago I was here. I've put in 11 hours at work in the past 24 hours. I slept for 8, had class for 2.5 and that leaves me with a few hours of putz time. That was getting ready this morning, eating last night and lunch today. Fun stuff. I think these 3 weeks are going to suck. I got a call from a guy at work wanting to know if I wanted the shift I'm working today. I didn't realize what he meant right away, but then I rmembered that he never turned in the hours he was available for the summer, so he ended up not getting any hours. He was asking if I wanted to give up the hours for the whole semester. He's an odd one.
I haven't done much today. I was going to work on my program and get the DVD Garage updated, but then I realized that I didn't have the files for the program. I did update the Garage data with new releases of DVDs. I'll have to go home and find the program files. I had the program finished at one point over break, but I don't remember what I did with them. Hopefully I didn't ditch them. It wouldn't take long to reproduce, but I'd rather move on to other things.
Well, I'm bored. I think I'll go figure out how to make the program a GUI.
Who would have thought that the time that I didn't have anything to do would be the time that I didn't do any work on my site. I thought that the week and a couple days that I had off before summer school would have led to me updating and doing entries in the site. But that was far from the truth. I did come across some Java code online that allowed me to do what I want to do with a template for the DVD site. I have it loosely coded, but I don't have it working on the site yet. I would like to get a graphic interface, but I think that a web interface would be better and that would just be an applet. Fun stuff. I'm such a dork. I've spent a ton of money the past 2 weeks. Clothes, CD, DVDs you name it and I spent money on it. Took my parents out to Target and got a ton of stuff for the apartment that Michelle moves into on Saturday. I will be moving in there sometime later this summer. The stuff I got from target was crap that other roommates brought to the apartment, so I won't have it in the new apartment. I'm not looking forward to tearing down my electronics. My parents are coming on Saturday to help move. I'm going to movie my TV and all my electronics to get them out of the way. I'll be left with my computer and portable CD player for entertainment. I don't know if I will last. I'll probably keep a couple of the DVD's I've recently bought to keep me entertained.
I got the Memento DVD and that seems amazing. i've looked around at the discs a bit, but haven't had a chance to sit down an emmerse myself in them. The menus are confusing and frustrating. I got to the Sundance Anatomy of a Scene and then the power went out. It took me almost 10 minutes to get back to there and I bookmarked it this time so it wouldn't get lost. Got the Traffic Criterion but haven't had a chance to look at it yet.
I started back at the lab today. I get to work from 4 to Midnight twice a week. I figured that would be cool since my boss would leave around 5 or 6 so I could have plenty of time to do my readings for classes and all. Hopefully this day is not typical because she just left now at a quarter after 8. I have a bunch of reading that I have to get done so that's what I'm off to do.
I've come to work this morning expecting to study a bit for my exam today at 10:05. As I'm looking over everything, I understand it. I just have that anxiety that I'm going to go blank at the test. I usually don't have that feeling, but maybe it's a subconscious thing because I don't think I studied enough. I'm just trying to find something to occupy me for the last 20 minutes of my shift. I don't want to study anymore. For some odd reason, I require some "chill out" time right before an exam. I'm not one of those people who study right up until the minute the exam is handed out. I do my preparation beforehand and give myself a half hour to chill before an exam.
My brother sent me a couple mp3 albums. I haven't listened to them much. I played one or two songs from each one and I wasn't engaged by them. The music is very rough and unpolished. Corse maybe the word I'm looking for. I don't know. I put them on a CDRW so I could listen to them with my Volt. Luckily I also put the new moby on there, so I still have something decent to listen to.
I talked to my bro last night for a bit. It sounds like they may have found a house. From the sounds of it they put an offer, but I'm not sure. He didn't sound too sure of what was going on. One of his friends is his broker so that is nice. To make it even better the guy is a buyer's broker, so he is working for my bro and not the seller. I learned about all that crap in real estate. The one thing that I will have in my head for years to come, "The broker works for the seller, unless otherwise specified." I think that has been the only thing covered in the last 3 lectures of real estate.
I'm out.
I'm fried. I can't focus anymore. I actually sat down and started studying at 9:30. I've been looking over my public finance notes. I feel that I know the material but I'm worried that she is going to ask about little tidbits that she mentioned just in passing. I don't know why, but I'm always paranoid about this stuff. I have to get up and go to work for a couple hours before my exam. The exam finished at 12:45 and then I'm going to be studying for my International Bus. and Real Estate. There is a review sessions for the international bus that I'm going to go to.
Studying for those last two tests are going to be tough. I haven't opened a book for them yet, and I don't know how well I've paid attention during the last couple weeks during lecture. I guess I'll get to know the material fairly quickly. I really don't have a choice do I. It's a little too late to learn new stuff. The international business is pretty easy to remember and the real estate is a 50 multiple choice. I assuming the tests are going to the the usual final midterm. Lot's of questions on the material of the last couple weeks and general questions on the prior stuff. I'm going to bed.
I got my butt up out of bed yesterday morning to take my first exam at 7:45 in the morning. I can't believe they schedule tests so early in the morning. To make it worse, it was a full two hour final. I had to stay for an hour and a half of it. The exam was made up of 2 separate exams. The first part of the exam was on material covered since the last midterm. The second part was a cumulative exam covering the entire course. The prof wanted to make sure only an hour was spent on each part of the exam, so he handed out the first part of the exam. An hour later, he collected the first part and handed out the second part. I finished the first part with 20 minutes left and the second part with almost an half hour. The second part of the exam was easy. I was surprised at the questions. The second part may just have seemed easier because I knew the material of the questions better, but it doesn't matter. Now come the waiting for the grades to be posted. I expect that it will take awhile for the exam to be graded since it was written and the class has 130 students and only 1 TA. I hate waiting.
The next two days are going to be filled with studying. I have an exam on Wednesday and then the last 2 on Thursday. The exam on Wednesday is my Public Finance exam. I'm not too sure about the exam, but I'm not too worried about it. I just need to look over the material a couple times and I should be able to understand the questions. The prof posted all the lecture notes online and the notes are directly from the book, so I don't have to look over the book I can just go over the lectures. I missed a couple lectures after the midterm so I might have some catch up to do there, but everything else has been easy to understand.
The last 2 exams that I have are International Business and Real Estate. Both exams are based on practice exams that the professors send out. That is nice so I just go through the practice exams and I know that material on the exams. The international business prof changes the questions just a little to catch the people who have just remembered the answers, while the real estate prof doesn't change anything besides wording that may have been confusing. So those exams are on the bottom of my priority. I will probably study for them a little tomorrow and then after my exam on Wednesday.
I think I'm done with the garage programs. I ended up with 2 programs that did three things for me. The first program that I like to call MySQL2Web (catchy name huh?) creates a webpage for each entry into the database. The other program which I've named IndexMySQL takes the database information and creates 2 different webpages. One of the webpages consist of the DVD that are coming out in the future. The other page shows all previously released dvds in the database. So I'm done with programming crap.
I can now focus on my exams that I have coming up. For some reason I cannot get it in my head that exams start in a few days. I should be a bit more worried since my first exam is Sunday morning at 7:45 and it's the one I'm most worried about. But tonight I will start studying for it. I will look over the older stuff. I'm afraid of this econ class because I don't feel I have real grasp on the information and there now seems to be so much that is connected to everyting elsse. There seems to be so much to know when just one little variable changes.
Other fun news is that I'm out to find a different/additional job for the summer. The amount of students who want to work is more than my boss expected. So I have only 20 hours a week. And most of those hours suck (4pm until midnight). I guess I really can't complain since I cannot work mornings because classes and I only have from 1pm and on to work. I've applied for a part time job at the UW Credit Union, but I'm not sure how long it will take to hear anything back from them. I submitted an online application with my resume. I got a generic email back form the HR person saying that they receive a flood of applications so they are only able to respond to people who they want to interview, but I don't think it can hurt to call in a week to see what's up. I've also looked online at the student employment site. I found a couple interesting jobs. There are a couple that are accounting based, I'm not sure if I want that, but if it fits in my schedule and lets me get more hours I can't complain. There are also a couple other computer related jobs, more troubleshooting for a specific department. I'll apply to those to see what happens.
I finally broke down and bought a wireless router. The router I've been looking at is the Dlink 713P. It's been $150 and up for awhile. I only wanted to spend $100 on it, but I couldn't find it anywhere for that price until a couple days ago. I had given up on looking for the router at $100, but I came across a coupon for the Dell.com website and I search for the router there. It came up at $180, but it showed a $50 rebate. I looked at the rebate form and saw that it was valid a bunch of places like Amazon, Buy.com and a few others. I ended up getting it from Buy.com since they had free shipping. I know that I vowed off Buy a couple years ago because of the horrible service I received with one of my many purchases there, but I was sucked in with their marketing ploy of free shipping. Now I just have to wait and see when it's delivered. It has shipped but doesn't have any information on where it is coming from.
I've finally taken a break from programming. I've been working a lot lately on the MySQL stuff and java. I have completed 1 and a half programs. The first program I finished wasn't as extravagant as I wanted but could not think of a way to get it to work. I hoped to use a template, but I found it too hard, so I just hard coded the html into the program. It connects to the database and creates a webpage from the data. Each database entry outputs to a web page. The second program that I'm halfway done with makes an index page for the database. The final page will be an html file that will list the movies in the order of the release date. I have the code done to create the web page. I just figure out how to get to sort by dates then title. I think that has to be done with the SQL statement. I don't think I should have too much left to do, and I think I might end up finishing it tonight.
I've come to realize how much a geek I am. I love this programming stuff, but I get burnted out easily. When I took comp sci classes here at Madison, I liked them until I couldn't figure out what to do. There was such limited help that they offered you. You were not supposed to talk to anyone except the professor about your programs. This cut down on the learning that could go on. If you were having troubles, you could not ask someone you knew in the class, because it was considered cheating. I can understand why they do this, but to the extent they take it to seems extreme. I also recognize with programs, there is no way the professor can tell 2 programs apart from the code. But what I'm doing now, I can just do a search on Google and find what I want. I've become effiecent at reading through sample code and understanding what is going on. I'm such a dork.
Finally. I did it. I wrote a Java program that will tell me the titles in my database. I had to talk to my brother a little bit and had him install a Java MySQL driver. Once he did that, stuff started compiling and I was off. I ran into some more troubles, but I got the program to display the titles of the DVD in that database. With a little more work, I'll be outputing to an html document in no time. I'm up way too late.
I've been pondering this question for awhile. I own CD's but why do the record companies not want it electronically. I don't trade them. I want to have my music collection available on my computer. Why do some places offer you free streams of the CD when you preorder it?? And if I take those streams and record them, is it illegal?? I have a feeling that it is. The most obvious is that I haven't paid for it YET. I stress the yet part because I have placed an order (let's consider it a contract) but the store will not deliver the physical CD until later in May. I have no intentions of cancelling the order. Some people may figure that they have the contents of the CD so why pay for it, but I realize that these people make a living on their music and should get paid. I think that is the problem with most people who are trading music illegally online. One example is someone I worked on a project with. He was that I have a RioVolt and asked how much music of it was my own. I told him that all the music on the MP3 CD were cd's that I own. (I must confess, there are maybe 6 or 7 cds that I haven't paid for). He was amazed and stopped short of calling me stupid for paying for CD's when I can download them. He went on to say that 90% of the music he listens to was downloaded. His rationale for this was that it was underground hip hop so it didn't matter. I didn't point out that the small labels and underground acts are the ones who are losing out on the illegal music. These artists who may only sell a handful of discs will be hurt by just 1 person not buying a CD, 1 CD to a small label has a larger affect than 1 CD on a large label. That's just what I think. I think the record industry needs to look at what the people want. People do not want to rent their music (in the case of some online music sites), you pay a fee to be able to download music, but the minute you cancel your subscription you can no longer listen to the music you downloaded. I want an electronic version of a CD. I want to be able to use it where and when I please.
Sorry. This has all come up because I ordered the new Moby album, 18, from Amazon.com. When you placed the order for the album they allow you to stream the entire CD. I found a program called TotalRecorder that allows you to record any sound your computer plays. One night I started the album stream and turned on the recorder. An hour and ten minutes laters I have an MP3 of the album. The only problem is that it is one single MP3 that is an hour and ten minutes long. This is where another program steps in MP3DirectCut. I listened to the long MP3 once and wrote down at what times the tracks changed, went into MP3DirectCut typed in the times and saved the files. I burned it to CDRW, so I have enjoyed the new Moby CD for the past couple days. Is what I did illegal?? I'm guessing yes.
I love people watching. I don't know why, but I could just spend an entire day just sitting somewhere and watching people go by and listening to the conversations going on around me. I think the Union South provides the best people watching. I think the reason for this is the close proximity to the Comp Sci building. Today I was eating alone at the union and I could hear this group of guys debating over Jar Jar Bink function in Phantom Menance. They went on to complain that he was in the up coming Attack of the Clones. Other days I have heard discussion about how Microsoft wants to rule the world, analyzing story telling of the Simpsons (same group as the Jar Jar discusioin), Star Trek the Next Generation. I dont' know why I find this so entertaining, but I do. It seems that the stereotype of geeks fits so well with some of these discusions.
I'm just in a pissed off mood today. Nothing seems to be going well for me. I wake up at my usual time for work. I head out to work on time, so all is well. As I'm walking to work I remember that today is the first of May and that means that rent is due. I'm stuck, halfway to work and can't make to back to the apartment and to work in time. I would have done that, but the guy I work with is always late and I didn't want the overnight guys have to wait. I get to work and the guy I work with is there, so I tell him I'm heading back to my apartment. I made real good time; there and back in 10 minutes. So I sit down at work and begin my day. I do my usual rounds of reading websites. You know DVDtalk.com, Dealnews.com, FatWallet.com, CNN.com, and then the banking sites. I look at my Wells Fargo account and everything is in order with that. I then check my credit card. I had an odd charge back on the 20 for $63 from some French company. I suspected that someone got a hold of my account number and decided to charge some stuff. I called the card company once I noticed that and the response was that I could dispute it when my statement closed (remember this was 2 days ago, I called). I checked my credit card this morning and saw another charge for $64 from the same place posted today. I called the number on the back of my card and the person was very helpful. Unfortunately, the card company has to close the account and issue a new card to me. I then have to wait for them to reverse the charges after they look into if the charges were fraudulent. Fun stuff. So now I get to live with out my charge card for 2 weeks. I cut it up and threw it out so I wouldn't forget that I couldn't charge on it and be stuck somewhere without any money. Bastards. I get so pissed off. I have no clue how they would have gotten my card. I keep all my purchases at sites that are secure, but maybe someone was hacked and they got my card. Who knows, all I know is that it is a pain in the ass.
On the other hand, I'm trying to figure out Java and Mysql. I've been convince by my brother that if I get this working it will be so much easier. But I'm not sure of that. I don't have the background on it, but there seems to be plenty of tutorials and all to tell me about it. Things are going pretty slow, but I hope to get things done soon, because the page is not staying up to date.
