Time flies

Posted In: Academic, Work life, Everyday life — March 25, 2005 @ 12:14 pm — Peter

I can’t believe this week is already over. I was supposed to have a batch of software enhancements done by today, but it does not look like I will be finished. I spent quite a bit of time fighting with the Eclipse environment trying to get the Lomboz J2EE plugin to work. It kept giving me errors on my JSP tag library declarations at the top of a few pages. Nearly a day was spent backing through the last few stables release of Eclipse until I found a build that did not produce the errors. So, I’ll send the email out this afternoon asking for a few more days. The timeline I set for myself was a bit tight, I figured it would push me to work harder and get these tasks off my list. No hockey today since we got some snow last night. I won’t comment about it being the end of March and there being freaking snow on the ground! Nothing like the starting Spring with snow :/

Last week Stephanie and I finally committed to a new laptop. I have been stalking ads and reading reviews for several weeks. I came to the conclusion that we would not be able to find an absolutely perfect laptop for the money we were looking to spend. Overall, I think we came pretty close. We bought a Compaq Presario v2135us and we are quite happy with it so far. One of our requirements was an integrated SD memory card reader. We have various devices that use this type of media and would rather read data off the card directly, rather than use awkward proprietary software utilities to acquire data from each device. The card reader works great, however, it is not spring loaded. This is not a problem for people with nails that can grip the nub of the card that sticks out. That is about it. I love the computer otherwise. Some neat features it has are, a button to disable the touchpad, dedicated audio adjustment buttons, a great keyboard layout (the backslash key is in the right place!!!), and an overall rugged design. Funny that I decided to go with a Compaq. While I worked as a computer technician when I was 16, I hated Compaq computers. They were the most awkward machines to work on because they usually had a riser board that contained the CPU and memory. At the time, very few other computer manufacturers did this. They were also a pain in the ass to get upgrade components for. It seems they have come a long way since then. While laptops can hardly be compared to desktops with regards to using industry standard components, it is definitely easier to get upgrade components and stuff now a days. I’m contemplating reloading the operating system to remove all the crap they installed by default. I managed to remove most of it, but some of it remains, with no clear uninstallation option…

Last night I had class and we spent a good amount of the session talking about the Sarbanes-Oxley act. The class is now down to four people, including myself. Since there are so few of us, the professor is considering consolidating one of the class session to give us a bit of a break. I’m not so into this class. I’ve been doing very well, scoring A’s on all my papers so far… I need to get started on the course project soon so I’m not torturing myself with an all nighter to try to finish it up. I’m setting a goal to at least get some ideas organized and setup an outline this weekend.

I think I might take a walk around the building over my lunch. My legs are cramping and I need to stretch. I have alot to get done this afternoon and I probably should venture away from my desk for a bit. To help me concentrate, I brought a bunch of music with me today. The playlist is as follows… I’m not sure what inspired me to bring the Peter Murphy… We’ll see how I like it.

Bebel Gilberto - Tanto Tempo
DJ Krush - Meiso
New Order - (the best of) NewOrder
Nirvana - Bleach
Nirvana - Nevermind
Nitzer Ebb - Belief
Peter Murphy - Deep
R.E.M - Automatic for the People
Thievery Corporation - The Cosmic Game
Tricky - Vulnerable