whodawannahuh?

Big Changes Coming

2006-02-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

Make sure to check back this weekend for a big site overhaul. The reason for the lack of posts lately is due to my time being spent working on the style sheet for this page. (If you don't know what a style sheet is check out Wikipedia's entry for CSS). Have a great Friday everyone! =)

Stupid Verizon!

2006-01-21T07:51:00.000-05:00

After my long wait today was suppose to be the day that I finally had internet in my apartment. Upon arriving home and testing my DSL connection and finding it still not working I called Verizon. The first person I spoke to tells me that my account had been cancelled two days ago but he had no idea why. I then get transferred to someone who should be able to tell me what's going on. After waiting a few minutes I am informed by this new person that my account had been cancelled because the speed I requested, 3Mbps, was unavailable in my area. Apparently I am too far from the office containing the signaling equipment. Personally this could be a very reasonable thing to happen, minus them canceling my account without telling me. The reason this is totally absurd is because I live in downtown Boston, and when I say "downtown Boston" I mean I am right in the center of the city. How could Verizon not be able to give me service due to my location?!?!?!?!?!?!? All hope is not lost though, the person on the phone was able to give me a slower service, 1.5Mbps, that should be up early next week. While this means I won't get as fast a speed and I have to wait longer, it's better then nothing right? Plus with my new connection I can browse for other broadband services in my area =p On a much more happier note I finally found a place that sells congee! Like I thought it is not on the english menu, you just have to ask for it. Yum! =)

Unsecured Wireless Network No More

2006-01-17T08:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my Verizon modem finally arrived in the mail and when I got home I immediately began to set up my internet connection. The last time I set up a DSL modem with Verizon I remembered that in order to use a router with it you first had to log into the modem and disable its own router functionality. Knowing this I connected my laptop to the modem and entered 192.168.1.1. A login window came up and I entered some default information for the router and logged in. Once in I saw that there seemed to be a wireless linksys router contained in this modem, while this was pretty cool I had a much better router I wanted to us. Therefore I went about changing the password to the modem and then disabling the wireless abd router functions before logging out. After all of this, I logged back in to make a few more changes. Upon logging in I saw a completely different set of menus and the password was once again a default password. Thinking about this for a few minutes I realized that my laptop had connected to an unsecure wireless network a few minutes ago and that was the router I had changed the password to and turned off pretty much all functionality to... Oooppss. Someone in my apartment building is probably very frustrated right now with their router. They can't figure out why they can't connect to it, why it isn't connecting to the internet and why the password suddenly changed. While this was all accidental it definitely shows you why you should change the default password on your router and add some encryption on the signal. =p

Congee Expedition

2006-01-14T19:54:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know I happen to live in Chinatown. This means there are a lot of places that sell very yummy food close at hand. One food I have been unable to find since moving here is congee. Congee is a great breakfast food because it is cheap, not to heavy, warms you up and is very scrumptious. I think I have been unable to find it because it's one of those food items most restaurant's don't put on their menu, but if you ask they have it. I guess I'll have to start asking around and see what turns up! If anyone knows of a place in Chinatown that sells good congee definitely let me know! =)

Conversation Skills

2006-01-11T07:46:00.000-05:00

Is it bad that every time I've talked to my girlfriend this week she has fallen asllep?

What I Learned....

2006-01-09T21:58:00.000-05:00

Once again I have a link to an interesting article. The article is "What I learned@MIT." The main focus of the article is discussing different situations and comparing what the school was attempting to teach in different scenarios to what the author learned about the real world. In case you are too lazy to read the article here are some highlighted bullet points:

Trying to learn everything from scratch is a loser's game - take advantage of available literature.
So when I join a company and hear how smart the people there are - I'm not impressed. Unless they're also good people to work with. That's a lot harder to find.
Keep the design as simple as possible. Adding complexity just for the sake of it is just risk maximization - not something you want to do in real world engineering projects, unless you're graded on complexity and not a working result.

Obviously some of his suggestions and ideas are focused more for the tech audience out there, but I think even these can be useful in many other situations. For instance, keeping a business plan simple makes it easier for your audience to understand and digest which helps getting your work done and progressing in your field. Well I hope you all enjoy the article, my short summary definitely does not do the article justice. Especially since I am very tired and am probably not writing to my normal "high" standard ;) Good night all!

Apartment

2006-01-09T21:37:00.000-05:00

Ever since I moved into my new apartment people have been asking me for pictures. I finally got around to taking some so I thought I would appease my fan club and post them. Unfortunately blogger does not handle posting multiple pictures very well, at least I was having some difficulty getting a good format. This means you will have to wait for pictures until I get my server up in running. If you really need to see pictures just send me an email or im me =p The one picture I did post is of part of my living room (what you can't see is the bookcase with the Christian books and geeky computer books). Enjoy!

Goal

2006-01-05T21:29:00.000-05:00

Well I think I've finally decided that I am going to save up some money and buy a server. Once I do that I am going to start hosting my own webpage and blog! I plan to go with a Linux distribution for the server. Why you ask? Okay you probably didn't ask why but I'm going to tell you anyway =p One big reason is so that I can have more control over the setup of the blog. Another big reason to have my own server is I can use it to run a lot of different services without having to risk my main machine. Some services I am thinking about are ssh, vpn, and ftp. (The links take you to the wikipedia entry for each acronym if you are curious what they are) Getting the server up and running will be a fun process in it's self I'm sure. This will probably take me a couple months to get everything together and actually do, but expect big changes in the future! Of course all of this is assuming I finally get an internet connection in my apartment. By the way the picture is of Dell's new 30inch LCD display. It's only $2200 so feel free to buy me one =D

Gaming in Korea

2006-01-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

Today while browsing the net I found a very interesting article about gaming culture in Korea. It's a very long article, and to be honest I gave up half way through, but what I read was good =p The writer does a good job of explaining how the gaming culture developed; a combination of high prices on the original Japanese gaming consoles making everyone use a PC for gaming, the government putting broadband through out the country, and that during the down time in the economy a cheap business to start was an internet cafe. Very interesting to see how all these things worked out. While I like PC games I think I'm more of a console gamer. I prefer real time strategy games better on the PC, but for everything else give me a good console any day! Well enough gaming talk for one night, I'm off to do my QT, journal and maybe play some snes games on my laptop before bed ;)

Boston

2006-01-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

Well it's definitely been a while since I've posted on my blog, and a lot has happened in between. For all of you out of the loop here is a quick update from then to now... I took a new job and moved to Boston. Funny how such a thing can be summed up so succinctly. Anywhoo, I finally moved into my apartment last Tuesday. I've tried to set it up as much as possible the past few days, mainly because for the next two weeks I will be away in Long Island for my job. Hopefully by then I will have my internet connection all set to go -_- Once I get back to my place I will definitely post some pictures so you all can adore my first apartment =p Between arranging my place and tramping all around Boston with some Highrockers I must say I was very tired this morning. I woke up a bit earlier then I had to, not knowing how long it would take to get to the airport, I found out it is a 10 minute taxi ride. Next week I am definitely sleeping in longer =) While it's been a fun couple of days I am definitely looking forward to Friday at 6:30 ;)

Professional Phone Call Fun

2005-10-12T10:18:00.000-04:00

I found a new way to have fun while at work, making professional phone calls. Of course, these are not real professional phone calls they are just meant to sound that way. Here is the premise, since the majority of your friends do not have your work phone number they will not know who is calling them when they number appears on their phone's display. All you have to do is sound very formal and act like you are calling from a company to talk with them about a job. My first attempt at this did not go very well, mainly because about three sentences into the conversation I started to laugh, but next time will definitely go better! Here is the transcript of the phone call: person answering: "Hello...?" me: "Hi I'm calling for *insert full name here*" person answering: "Hi, this is she" *said in a very professional tone* After hearing her say that I couldn't help but laugh. Yes I know I'm a terrible person, but this will definitely keep me amused for a while! =)

Leptodactylous (lep-tuh-DAK-tuh-luhs)

2005-10-10T14:43:00.000-04:00

One of the bookmarks I have saved in my browser is a very nice word a day site. I really like this site because it supplies some very interesting words that are not common, and are rather fun to read and say. The name of this post is one of those words, yesterday's word actually. Leptodactylous (lep-tuh-DAK-tuh-luhs) adjective: having fine, slender digits. There are very few times you will ever have a chance to use this word in your life, unless you have a foot fetish. =p Another nice feature of the site is that each week the words are given some type of theme, last week was "words formed using combining forms." I know that makes no sense but if you go the site and check out the information they provided on each word it is rather interesting actually. These words can even make the most excerebrose people seem truly palmary. =p

Walk to Cure Diabetes

2005-10-03T08:59:00.000-04:00

On October 30th I will be participating in a walk to raise money for juvenile diabetes research. In order to raise money I need people like you to donate. If you want to donate please click on this link to donate. You don't have to feel the need to donate a lot of money if you don't have it, any amount helps. =) Thanks everyone!

Web 2.0

2005-09-30T10:04:00.000-04:00

In the past few years there has been a huge trend towards Web 2.0. Many people are unaware of these shift, because they don't know the difference between the original web, Web 1.0, and the new web Web 2.0. At the same time they have probably been using Web 2.0 on a regular basis. If I were to sum up the differences between 1.0 and 2.0 it would come down to one word "dynamic." Web 1.0 pages were all static pages. A user of Web 1.0 would go to a website read a page, click a couple of links and that's all there was to it. The pages were all generated before hand and the reader simple accessed them. Web 2.0 focuses on dynamic webpages that allows the users of the page to have some control over them. An example of a dynamic webpage is this blog. Every time you come to this blog, or any blog, the page us generated right then and there. The only html that exists before hand is an html template, the actually content (ie the posts) are stored in a database some where. When a user comes to this site some software takes the template and the entries and automatically generates an html document "on the fly." Pretty nifty huh? The reason Web 2.0 has increased a great amount in the past year or two is because of the increased popularity in scripting languages, such as php and javascript, as well as a wealth of information available for the newcomers in the field. Another very important reason Web 2.0 has increased in popularity is also due to a shift in the usage of the computer. People no longer use a computer to simple do research while in their office or lab. Many people view the web as a way to connect and stay connected to, well, everything. Why would I want to store my calendar on my computer? I want to have access to it no matter where I am, which is made possible with Web 2.0 (I hear Google is coming out with a calendar soon). I can also always have my e-mail because of sites such as gmail. A few examples of Web 2.0 sites are:

Flickr - post images, add tags to them and allow other people to comment on them
digg.com - post links, increase the links popularity, post comments on each link
wikipedia - create encyclopedia entries, users have the ability to edit any page at any time

This is a very small list of Web 2.0 sites out there, in the comment section post links to your favorite Web 2.0 sites. =) On a side note it was very hard to find a picture for this post. In the end I gave up and just searched for something with my favorite color, blue. =p

Ipod Nano

2005-09-29T09:44:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't heard a couple of weeks ago Apple released a new Ipod called the Ipod Nano. I was lucky enough to play with one for a bit at the apple store and all I can say is ...WOW. It is extremely small and light, you barely even know you are holding it. Plus the color screen is crisp and sharp. An interesting thing to note about the nano is that it replaced the ipod mini. This may not sound that interesting except when you realize that the ipod mini was the most popular selling ipod in the world! Apple was, and is, taking a huge chance in replacing it with another product. Although, I must say the nano is truly amazing. Their are two main differences between the mini and the nano. First off the nano has a color screen, but the most important difference is the memory type. The mini had a small hard drive while the nano contains flash memory, which is much smaller and faster. I actually ordered a nano a couple of weeks ago, but just yesterday I cancelled my order. Sure the nano is getting praise from every review you read but if you read the user reports there have been a lot of complaints about the nano getting easily scratched and more importantly the screen breaking very easily. Apple released a statement a few days ago saying that less than 1% of the screens were faulty and that everything else is fine. Personally I'm going to wait it out a few months and see what happens before I finally decide to purchase one. If you need a cover for the nano this site has gotten a lot of praise for protecting the nano from scratches. In conclusion though, WOW, they are extremely nice and I really want one =)

Portable Programs

2005-09-28T09:23:00.000-04:00

Lately people have been yelling at me for not posting anything to this blog, I've been rather busy with a few other projects I am working on. I will do my best to keep posting to this on a more regular basis. Today's post is about flash drives and how to make them very useful. In case you don't know a flash drive is a very small piece of hardware that you can plug into your USB port and it acts just like any other memory on your computer. It has become very popular lately to store files so you always have them with you, or to easily move files between computers. If this is all you are using them for you are missing out on how useful they can really be! As I mentioned above the flash drives acts just like any other memory drive on your computer, meaning that not only can you store files on it, you can also run applications from it. Think about how useful that is! No matter where you go in the world, no matter what computer you are at you will always have your favorite applications with you and all your settings. There are actually a few limitations to this I might add, while you can install programs to the drive doing so means it will only work on your local computer. A better way is to find applications that don't need to be installed. There are tons of them out there but it will take a bit of looking. If you want the easy way out just download this zipped file, it contains many good applications I have on my own drive. Some of the applications that I find VERY useful are:

Portable Firefox, a must have! Always have your bookmarks and settings where ever you go.
portable Sunbird, a portable calendar program, a great way to always have your calendar with you.
KeePass, stores and encrypts all of your passwords, plus it has a nifty auto enter feature. A very useful and safe program.
Restoration, this program allows you to undelete files. Extremely useful to have, especially if you accidentally delete your roommates final paper freshman year ;)
Autoruns, this program detects everything that runs on your computer when it starts, great if you find something is slowing your computer down and you need to delete it manually.

After that all the programs you put on are up to you. From the zipped filed linked to above, I've kept the cd/dvd burner program and I have a few network tools. I know some people who like to put a portable version of Open Office on there so that they can work on documents even if the computer doesn't have Microsoft Office. Well that's it for this post, if you have any questions drop me a line =)

Digg

2005-09-06T10:42:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard of the website before digg.com is a social book marking website. In summary a social book marking website is a type of site where a community of users can post links and a short summary about different interesting links they find online. What makes digg so special though is that once a link is posted people are allowed to "digg" the site, which means say they like it and increase it's popularity. The more popular the stories the higher status it has on the page. I first found out about digg not from any link but from a podcast I came across, Diggnation. Diggnation is produced, and I used that term lightly ;), by revision 3. Revision 3 puts out a ton of great videos and podcasts; systm, the broken, and diggnation. Every week in diggnation the hosts, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrect, talk about the stories with the most diggs that week. If you don't know them both Kevin and Alex were on TechTV for a while and are both very funny. The show is very well put together, with both an audio and video version. If you like you can subscribe to either the video or audio in itunes, just look for diggnation it's normally one of the top 10 . Another option is just go to the website diggnation.com and download the files through bit torrent. They actually prefer if you use bit torrent since it saves them a ton of money for their server costs. Definitely check these guys out =)

#

2005-08-30T17:02:00.000-04:00

Now for something completely random I learned today. As we all know the '#' symbol is called the "pound symbol," but this is not it's proper name! It's true and proper name is ... the octothorpe! Exciting stuff huh? You can impress your friends, relatives and coworkers by telling them to press the octothorpe next time you need it =p

Google Talk

2005-08-30T15:28:00.000-04:00

I need to get back to work on this blog. I've been using my free time lately to read up on computer related things; CSS, car computers, and google talk. Google talk is Google's latest application. There had been a lot of speculation about this program before it came out and to be honest now that it's out it's a bit of a let down. Normally when Google releases a beta application it is a well polished application that revolutionizes something. This time though, their beta application truly is in a beta state. The program doesn't have many features that other programs have, such as file transferring and smilies. The nice things about it though is, it has a very clean interface and is very easy to use especially the talk feature. The main obstacle facing google talk is that it's a late player in the market with a very small user base. With all of that said, I am very excited about Google talk. The reason I am excited is because it is based on an open protocol and Google normally releases an API for their programs. So, I'm excited not for what Google Talk is but what I can foresee it becoming, especially with Google in the process of talking to other companies (such as AOL and yahoo) trying to make their networks inter-operable. Maybe one of these days the instant message scene will be unified all thanks to Google Talk. In the mean time I'll keep using aim as my primary method of chatting but I will be using Google Talk to well... talk =)

TI Obsession

2005-08-22T12:28:00.000-04:00

I'm sure we have all at some point owned a TI graphing calculator, and I'm sure a lot of us probably had a game or two in it. A few games seem perfectly okay but some people take it WAY too far. The Make Blog posted a link to a site where people have found a way to play movies on their TI calculator. Why would you ever want to do something like this?!!?!? What is the point of downloading a movie onto a graphing calculator, do you really want to watch it with no speakers and a small blurry black and white screen? Even I'm not that geeky, close but not quite there yet ;) This is following the article last week when someone ported Doom onto their TI, apparently it had a really bad frame rate (not surprising if you ask me). People it's a calculator, use it to add and subtract don't try to make it into the worlds smallest pathetic laptop =p

Books

2005-08-17T09:25:00.000-04:00

While I didn't post about CSS yesterday I did buy two books from Amazon about it. The books I bought were from O'Reilly's. If you have never read an O'Reilly book you are missing out, they make excellent books on technology. I'm sure in the bookstore you have seem them, their covers are almost always adorned with an animal. I have no idea why they always use animals, they just do and personally I like it. Thinking about it, I have such fond memories of these books. The first HTML book I ever bought was from them, and I definitely had a lot of fun writing my geocities homepage (wow that seems like such a long time ago). The reason I think these books are so good is because they are just well written. They are clea,r concise, and informative. Some technology books jump all over the place or assume too much about what the reader knows. With an O'Reilly book they clearly state what you will need to know and give a logical and clean layout to the book. If you ever need to read up on a something dealing with technology, definitely check out an O'Reilly book first!

Opps

2005-08-16T15:04:00.000-04:00

Ok so I lied, I will not be posting about CSS today. I got caught up with some other stuff. I know you will all be crushed, but in the spirit of wasting time though here is another one webcomic site... Mac Hall Comics I'm not even going to try and post one of their comics because, they are a lot bigger then the usual three panel strip. Although, I'm a huge fan of their art work, not to mention their writing. It's a great all around comic, I hope you enjoy =)

Absent

2005-08-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

I feel like I've been absent from this site for a while, probably only about four days. Have no fear though, I have returned and will be making a posting about Cascading Style Sheets today. The post, like all the rest, will be fun and exciting! In the mean time I will leave you with this link to keep your self amused. It's a site called Addicting Games and it has a ton of them! Have fun, just not so much fun you get fired from you job or fail out of college ;)

Penny Arcade

2005-08-11T16:34:00.000-04:00

Yet another geeky comic to pass the time with! This time it's Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade is actually a fairly well known web comic, it has appeared in many publications and has a fairly large loyal following. The comic deals primarily with all kinds of gaming, as well as some very random things thrown in such as the cardboard tube samurai. well... Enjoy!

Attacking Aliens

2005-08-11T08:24:00.000-04:00

This is a completely random "article" from the New Yorker that I came across last week. I have no idea why the person wrote it or why it appeared in the New Yorker. If nothing else it is definitely amusing =) By the way, yes I know that image has nothing to do with the actual posting. I was looking for a picture of an anime style alien. I was unable to find one (google image you've failed me!!!!) so I gave up and chose something random that I liked. =p

Slow days

2005-08-10T12:52:00.000-04:00

Have you ever had days that just seem really slow? Well today is definitly one of them. Who knows what causes them to occur but when they do... -_- Hopefully things will pick up, even the sites I read seem slow today. Come on people pick up the pace and keep me occupied!

Verizon Business DSL

2005-08-08T09:20:00.000-04:00

The past week or two I had set up one of my home computers to run as an SSH server. The purpose of this server was just for the challenge and to see if I could do it, and to learn stuff along the way. Unfortunately Verizon must have noticed the data going to and from my home using that port and they closed most of my ports! While they had all right to do this, since it says in their TOS that you can't run any type of server on your home network. I was still upset though, especially since I was thinking about setting up an apache server and hosting my own website and blog! I spent some time yesterday trying to find a broadband service provider that would allow me to have a server running. I eventually found Verizon business DSL. It was hard to find any pricing for the service, since they check your phone number for availability and then tell me I already have DSL, but I was eventually able to get some details. Their bare minimum service is $39.99 a month, only $10 more than I pay now. Not only are you allowed to have servers running but they also increase your speed to 3mb download and 758kb upload, which would definitely be nice. To get a static IP address they want another $20 a month, but with a dynamic DNS account who needs one of those? Now I just need to decide if I want to upgrade or not... but knowing me I probably will ;)

Guess the Google

2005-08-05T09:50:00.000-04:00

Another day another link to entertain you and waste your time ;) Today's link is for Guess the Google. It is a rather addicting game that loads in 20 images from Google images based upon a search word. Your job is to guess what keyword they used to get those images! On my first try I was able to get 6/10 of the words, I'm sure I will get better with practice though. Have fun and good luck! =]

Endromorphine

2005-08-04T12:07:00.000-04:00

Have you ever noticed how every few months a new substance will be found that is good for you? Even if it is not newly found, it suddenly becomes widely known to the general public. Once this happens all people talk about is how certain drinks and foods are good because they contain a high level of this substance. One such example is anti-oxidants. I never heard of these until about a year ago, now all I hear is how good they are for me and what contains them. The latest one I've heard about is flavanols, which is found in chocolate. I think from now on when ever some one comments on the unhealthy food I am currently eating I will say it contains a lot of "endromorphines," which are suppose to be very healthy for you. To make this convincing I will have to be ready to answer what healthy benefits they provide. When talking about health benefits of these substances - anti-oxidants, flavanols and now endromorphines- you have to phrase it in such a way that it counteracts a negative without making a positive. For example if you said "They make me grow taller" people will think the substance is a fake miracle drug, but if you say "It helps keep me from stunting my growth," or if you are older, "Helps keeping me from shrinking" people will believe you. Feel free to use this miracle new substance when ever it suits you. Here are some more reasons why you use it if people ask. "It helps stop bone lose" "They help blood cells flow better" If you can think of any more reasons please add them to the comment sections, I would like to read them =)

Internet Explorer 7

2005-08-03T15:44:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, there has been a lot of buss lately about the new version of internet explorer (ie7). Originally Microsoft planned on releasing the new version when Windows Vista, the new version of Windows, comes out some time next year. Now they are saying they are going to have a release of ie7 before then. Microsoft says they are moving the release date due to users wanting it sooner, but I think the real reason is because of Firefox. Microsoft is loosing more and more people to the Firefox web browser and they want to stop migration and try and get people to return. Not only that but they are only releasing it for Windows XP and above. From all the information I've read ie7 will indeed have tabbed browsing and built in rss support. Currently the beta 1 version of ie7 does not support the css standard, but on the msdn blog they comment that it will be all set by the final release. The new version is also suppose to have a lot better security and even anti-phising tools. I have no doubt about the increased security since that seems to be what Microsoft is focusing on recently. Persoanlly, I'm looking forward to the new ie7, I've always been a big ie fan, although I'm currently using firefox. I'll definitely download and install the new ie when it comes out though.

Over One Thousand Visits!

2005-08-03T09:18:00.000-04:00

Wohoo! Today marks the day this blog past the 1000 visit marker! I'm sure about 50% of those visits are probably from me, checking to see how many visitors I have had or if any new comments were posted. In other news... I actually received a request to do a post about IE7 (internet explorer 7) which just went out to a select group of people in beta form. Later in the day I will make sure to do a post about this, I'm sure you all will be on the edge of your seats in anticipation. In the mean time... another comic I enjoy reading, foxtrot.

Blog Server

2005-08-01T17:10:00.000-04:00

I'm currently thinking about installing some server software onto one of my home machines, probably Apache, and migrating this blog over to there. The main reason would be just for fun, the secondary reason is it would give me a lot more control over this blog. My only concern about doing this would be getting some free blog software that is comparable to blogspot. It will definitely take me some time to get all of this done, although I'm really looking forward to doing it! =) If anyone has any tips or suggestions definitely let me know. When I was making this post I used google image to find a picture relating to the word "server." When looking through the results I came upon this little guy. Your guess is as good as mine what it has to do with the word "server," but I found it amusing non the less =p

Monday

2005-08-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

Well that was definitly a refreshing three day weekend. It was so refreshing in fact I can't think of anything to write about =p Rather sad huh?

Ahhhhhh =)

2005-07-29T16:05:00.000-04:00

I love having every other friday off =)

Dynamic DNS

2005-07-28T09:28:00.000-04:00

Continuing from yesterday's article about proxies and how to set one up, this post will deal with the annoyance of dynamic IP addresses. If you have a typical broadband connection then you most likely have a non-static IP address. This can be very annoying since tunneling to the SSH server installed on your home computer requires you to know its IP address. One simple way to get around this is to use a dynamic DNS service. What is a dynamic DNS service you ask? Once again I'm going to give a shoddy explanation and then refer you to someplace else, so here goes... A DNS service allows an internet domain name to be assigned to a non-static IP address, and once again for more information check out this wikipedia article. One good , free, place to set up a dynamic DNS account is DynDNS. Not only is there service free, but they also have a lot of documentation if you need help setting everything up. Once you have your openSSH server running ,and your dynamic DNS set up you are all set with your proxy. Update: I really like that fish =p

Internet Proxy

2005-07-27T12:42:00.000-04:00

Last summer, during my internship, I found that the company I was working for blocked certain sites I had attempted to go to. These sites weren't "bad" sites, just non work related sites. I found this very annoying because I had a lot of down time, and I wanted to use it to read up on the latest gadgets and such. After doing some poking around the net (like I always do) I found the best way around this is to use an internet proxy. In short, an internet proxy is simply a website that loads in another website. That way the information isn't coming from a"bad" site it's coming from the proxy site. That was a pretty slimed down explanation, check out this Wikipedia's entry if you want to get something more in depth. The site I used last year for this was proxify, it was a great site with a lot of good features, although to get all the features you had to pay a little bit of money. Today I came across this article on how to set up your own proxy server using your home computer, plus using SSH tunneling to encrypt the data going between the two computers (work and home). When I was reading this article I realized you can take this concept a little further. Since Putty (an SSH client) is a single executable you can put it in a flash drive. Therefore if you place both Putty and portable Firefox on a single flash dive you can carry around a complete secure proxy wherever you go, no matter what computer you are at. Of course you will need your home computer running for this to work, but this bypasses having to setup anything on your work computer and risk your employer finding out. Of course this is one of those things you take at your own risk, and if you get fired for doing this well it means you probably weren't doing it right =p

Piled Higher and Deeper

2005-07-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

During my laborious hours of uh..."work" I came across a very amusing webcomic called "Piled Higher and Deeper." The comic focuses on grad students at Stanford, specifically engineering PhD students. These comics are definitely keeping me occupied, I find the geekiness of the them amusing =) If you think the comic below is funny you'll definitly like the rest, don't worry not all the comics are as geeky as this one... just close.Sorry for the bluriness of the comic, I had to scale the image down to get it to fit properly. Just click on the image to see the full sized comic.

9AM

2005-07-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

It's now 9am and I've been at work for almost an hour. Even though I get to work at 8am, 9am is a very important part of the day. This is because, 9am is when most of the websites I read seem to be updated... lazy web writers! I'll keep this post short, I just wanted to point out that random bit of information. Time to run and read all the updates now =)

Laser Propulsion

2005-07-25T13:36:00.000-04:00

Every sinceI first heard of laser propulsion many years ago, I became fascinated with the idea of it. Lately my interest has been rekindled and I have been looking up information in my spare time. The idea of laser propulsion is fairly simple. A ground based laser shoots a beam of light to a craft whose bottom is highly reflective and focuses the light. The focused area is heated up to such a degree that the air is converted to plasma and causes a miniature explosion. This explosion is what causes the propulsion. Nifty huh? The original purpose of this concept,was to launch cheap lightweight crafts into space, to this date that hasn't happened. My question has always been, and what interests me about it, is why limit this propulsion system to just space launches. What about putting a system like this on the back of a boat and having the laser push the boat along? Obviously there are some problems with a laser propulsion system, intense heat and the need for a 10 kw laser. If work could be done to lower the power to about 1 kw this means of propulsion would become more feasible for alternate forms of transportation. I'm hoping to put some information together for myself and possibly try to contruct such a device. I'll keep you all posted if anything comes about.

Legitimate

2005-07-22T12:47:00.000-04:00

I feel like a legitimate tech blog now that I've made a firefox posting =p Update: Even more legitimacy, I spent the last few minutes deleteing comments from an internet troll. What an exciting day for my blog!

Work Arounds - Firefox at Work

2005-07-22T10:05:00.000-04:00

Here, where I work the network is set up pretty well. I can log into any Windows computer and my email will be automatically set up, my internet browser ready to go, and pretty much all is fine and dandy. One big issue I've been having is with my browser's bookmarks. When I log into another computer, sure I can access the internet but none of the bookmarks stored on my computer are accessible. This may sound trivial and pointless but sometimes I bookmark items that are very relevant to my work, and I need access to them when I am at work but at a different computer. There is a very simply way around this though! The work around I am going to talk about is actually useful for two reasons. The first reason, like I stated above, is that you can have your book marks where ever you are. The second is that even if you don't have administer privileges on your machine you can "install" and run firefox. What you need to do is download a copy of portable firefox. This program is designed to allow you to run firefox from a USB flash drive, but if you look into the program folders you will find one called "firefox." All you need to do is copy this folder, and all it's contents, to a network drive (preferably one only you can save onto). This folder contains all the stuff needed to run firefox, and a nice and simple executables file you can link to and open firefox whenever and wherever you want. Now that you have a copy of firefox stored on a network drive, where ever you are in the company you can open it and have all your settings and bookmarks ready to go. If your company doesn't have network drives you can use for this, simply purchase a USB flash drive and carry it with you (for this though you need to keep all the files that come with portable firefox). If nothing else, this works great for me ;)

Title Image

2005-07-21T11:40:00.000-04:00

Ever sine I removed the blog navbar from the top of this page yesterday it seems a bit too plain. I don't plan on re-adding the navbar back, so that means I need to add a bit more color to this page. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestion what kind of image I should add to the top? One idea I had was creating something with flash, but I would still need an idea of what the flash item should look like? If you're curious where I pulled this random image from, I search google images (a very useful tool!) for splash page.

Blackjack Computer

2005-07-21T11:26:00.000-04:00

Wow! Time really flies when you are reading a lengthy (very lengthy) interview about a man who created a blackjack micro-computer way back in the 70's. Some of the stuff he was doing was way ahead of its time; digital camera, wireless communication, networked computers. It is really amazing the things he was able to come up with and do. The picture to the right shows some of the computer equipment he used (not a great picture i know). It's a long read but also a VERY fascinating one, give it a look if you like -> black jack computers

Blog Bar Be Gone!

2005-07-20T16:33:00.000-04:00

While looking around a blog template site I found a snippet of code which gets rid of the Blogger NavBar, which used to be on the top of this page. After reading this, I leapt into action! I copied and pasted with such speed my mouse pad could be seen smoking (that or a lot of dust coming out of it). If you are curious, here is the way to do it: Copy and paste this code: #b-navbar{height:0px;visibility:hidden;} Paste it between these two tags: <style type="text/css"> and </style> Sweet and Simply... enjoy!

Weird Verizon Link

2005-07-20T09:16:00.000-04:00

Today I was looking up to see if my house was eligible for Verizon Fios, their new fiber optic service. While browsing around their site I came across this page. In this page they talk about what comes with the service, and they mention a router. They make the router a hyperlink and I decided to open it up to see exactly what the router was. I simply click "Open in New Window." When I go to this window I realize it's the same exact page I came from.. I check both urls and verified this. So basically, Verizon put a link on a page to take you to the page you are already on....WEIRD!

2009 Mobile Phone Prediction

2005-07-20T08:32:00.000-04:00

BBC News has an interesting article stating: "One billion mobile phones will be sold in 2009, according to analysts." One billion phones sold is an insane number to me! The article also states that Asia will account for 1/3 of this sale, another insanely high statistic. This leads me to the main point of this post, why do mobile phones in America suck so much? The argument can be made that the wide land area of America has slowed the progress, but this only affects the service of the phones not the phones themselves. Even so, there has been enough towers to cover the majority of the country for several years now, especially near densely populated areas. I think causes to this problem, one being Verizon. Sure, Verizon have great reception but they refuse to use sim cards, making it very difficult to swap phones. Who wants to have the hassle of finding a new phone, going to a Verizon store, having them switch your account over and then switch your phone book over, it's a pain! The second issue ( I don't think this one deems a full blown "problem" status) is the view of cell phones by people in America. Cell phones are thought of as a tool of communication. While this isn't a wrong view to have, it is indeed the original purpose of a cell phone, but today's cell phones are so much more. With cell phones being able to play games, take pictures, browse the net, watch videos, and make payments for items, how can we view them as just a means of communication? This view of mobile phones therefore has stunted their growth in America. No one wants to buy a phone for an extra few hundred dollars that can do all those things when all they want is have a way to call people. Obviously there are people who would like those nifty features, and are willing to pay for them, but until the majority of customers are willing the companies won't be carrying as many of those cool phones. In the mean time, I'll stick with carrying around a few more gadgets in my bag to make up for the lack of features in my phone =p

New Project

2005-07-19T12:53:00.000-04:00

I am currently in the process of picking a computer related project to fill my time. I think I may go with case modding. When I say case modding I don't mean some simple stuff like adding lights, I mean going all out and building a case from scratch. It will definitely require a lot of planning. My favorite case modding site is mashie.org, it has some great tutorials such as using carbon fiber for making cases. One of my agendas for this case is creating one with a small foot print. It obviously also has to look cool! I have a few ideas on my head but I will need to start drawing out schematics and plans and measure everything. I'm getting all excited just thinking about it! I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

PSP

2005-07-18T12:37:00.000-04:00

Even before the Sony PSP was launched I've been drooling over it, yes drooling. I'm even more inclined to get one since people have figured out a way to run homebrew applications of a memory stick and also re-encode dvds to a format that can be played on the psp. My only hesitation about getting one at the moment is they are so expensive, base price $250! Add that price with a large memory stick, a case, and of course games, and it will be well over $400! Even at such an exorbitant price, I still think I'm going to save up and purchase a PSP in a few months. What games would you guys suggest I get?

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2005-07-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

The new Harry Potter book arrived in the mail yesterday, just as amazon.com said it would. Plus they even lowered the price I bought it at, wohoo!. After getting home from bowling yesterday I immediateness went straight to reading the book Needless to say I've finished the book already, and what a book it was! This is definitely the most action packed Harry Potter book yet, not to mention darkest. JK Rowling does an amazing job of portraying the darkness and fear that was there since Voldermort returned. On a more tech related note, I also saw that the audio book has already been placed online as a torrent. There combined number of seeders and leechers was well over 500, which is insane! I wonder how many actively sought out the torrent and how many stumbled across it. Although to be honest I was a bit disappointed that the p2p community was not able to get their hands on a real copy of the book or audio book until after the release. Even though I wasn't planning on reading/listening to the book it would have been interesting to see the publishers reaction to just how deep the p2p community runs. Especially with how strict the publisher was being with security on this book. I guess it all paid off in the end though, the book came out when the publisher wanted with all the hype and fanfare. Plus it was a very good book which I highly recommend =)

School Motto

2005-07-14T11:01:00.000-04:00

While I really like UPenn's school motto, "Leges sine Moribus vanae," which translates to "Laws without morals are in vain." I would have been deligthed if instead we used this motto, "Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus," which means "Never tickle a sleeping dragon." If your curious where I got that from, it is Hogwarts school motto. And yes, I am a big Harry Potter fan =p

Links

2005-07-13T16:18:00.000-04:00

Here is another collection of links to pass the time! http://www.fark.com/ - a site with funny news posting, good for a few laughs http://www.bensbargains.net/ - a great site for amazing deals! (mainly tech products) http://www.imfurais.blogspot.com/ - my cube-mate's blog (we do the same thing at work...blog) Not many links today, although the first one (fark) will provide you with a lot of fun reading! If you have any fun sites you like to visit post them in the comment section =D

Harry Potter Torrent?

2005-07-13T15:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday there seemed to be a flurry of news over the accidental early release of the new Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince book. I was really hoping that the book would make its way into the hands of a technologically savvy person. Even though there was a court injunction dealing with the release of any information pertaining to the new book, it wouldn't be that hard for someone, with a little know how, posting the book as a bit torrent file on the net. When I got home last night I search for a torrent and was able to find one of the new book (or at least said it was, you can never be certain). I started the download and headed to bed. In the morning I woke up and unzipped the file to see if the PDF contained the new book. The file seemed to contain the book, although after reading a paragraph it was obvious this wasn't written by J.K. Rowling. You could tell easily because the characters didn't act like themselves, Dudley was being nice to Harry for example. I was a bit disappointed but I wasn't expecting much, plus I have the book pre-ordered and set to be delivered this Saturday (wohoo amazon.com!) What really struck me about this book was that it was almost 300 pages long! That means some one took the time to write a 300 page fake Harry Potter book. What could make so one go to such great lengths to have written it? Are they hoping to gain something from it, or is the knowledge that people are reading you work good enough? It would actually be a good way to get some publicity and your name out there. Around the time a highly anticipated book is about to be released write a knock off of it and post it around the internet. After the real book has finally been realized people will realize your book is fake, then you can tell people it was you. If they liked reading the fake book they may realize you are a good writer and wish to read more of your stuff. Obviously this is a risky plan, people could get angry for wasting their time reading a fake book, although technically it was their own fault =p Has anyone heard of something like this happening in the past?

Netgear Ninnies

2005-07-12T13:38:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I bought the Netgear WGM124 Pre-N wireless router. I'm a big fan of Netgear's products because they've served me well in the past, and this time seemed to be no exception.

After about a week I noticed I was unable to log into the router. Every time I tried I would get an error saying another administrator was online. I simply figured I had logged out incorrectly the previous time, to fix this I did a hard reset on the router and everything seemed fine. About a week after that the same thing happened again. While I know there really isn't a "right way" to log out of a router so I was beginning to get annoyed with this router. I knew no one else was logged into it and yet I still couldn't get in (all I wanted to do was upgrade the firmware!). I browsed Google but was unable to find any other problems like mine, so I decided my best bet was to contact Netgear's technical support. Well so far it's been over a week and I have gotten three replies from them and it's now working worse then ever. Their first reply told me to use the set up wizard AFTER I had logged into the router, see a problem here? Especially since that the difficulty I was having. In the next reply they told me to perform a hard reset. After thinking over it I decided it was my only course of action, so I went ahead with it. After doing this I still couldn't log in, and now I can't reset the passwords needed to sign on to my DSL account. Luckily I had another wireless router, 802.11b =(, and used that to email them back. I've found it's very hard to keep emails civilized when the people you are contacting to help you are making things worse, and they seem to have difficulty reading when you explain them a problem. After explaining to them I could no longer get online because of what they made me do ,and because I can't log into the router, they decided my problem was all about not getting online not the fact I still can't log into the router. This brings me to my current phase, I've emailed back Netgear support explaining to them again what the problem is. Hopefully they will find someone who can read and then at least give me a reply that is at least based on my problem. I'm not even asking for it to work, just to know they have figured out what the problem is!! Wish me luck with the Netgear Ninnies!

How To - Make your own Favicon

2005-07-11T21:12:00.000-04:00

For a long time I had been wanting to learn how to make my own favicon, but I was never able to do it. My main problem with making a favicon is I had no idea what I wanted to make was called a favicon. Even right now you are probably reading this and have no idea what a favicon is, Wikipedia has a good entry about them. To sum it up though, a favicon is the little picture that is sometimes next to a bookmarked page. The picture to the right shows three examples of favicons; Blogger Dashboard, ODP, and whodawannahuh. The html required for a favicon is VERY simple, it's one line. The hardest part is thinking of a good graphic for your page. To make an icon there are tons of free programs out there, just Google for an icon maker. As for myself, I used Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net. If you want an icon that will be easily handled by the majority of web browser's you're best bet is to use an image size of 16x16 pixels with 16 colors. Although, most modern browsers can handle larger sizes and more colors. A sample of my favicon as shown in Visual Studios is shown below:

Now that you've made your icon, make sure you save it as "favicon.ico", although once again most modern browser can handle different file formats. I like back compatibility though so I stick with the .ico suffix.

The last step is on the top lever of your website in the <head> section add the following html snippet , making sure to change it to reflect the location of your icon.

That's it! After seeing it once you realize how simple it actually is, it's surprising more people don't do it =)

How To - Do Nothing

2005-07-09T10:45:00.000-04:00

If you've been keeping up with this blog since the beginning you would remember that I started it because I had nothing to do at work. Well I've been at work over four weeks now and I still don't have any work to do. The past few days I've come to realize how good at doing nothing I've become. I actually have so much "nothing" to do, I have trouble doing it all in a day! I'm sure now you are thoroughly confused by what I mean by "having nothing." I use this term to refer to the act of doing things that have no relevance to work and are used to pass the time; reading websites, talking to coworkers about nothing in particular, the list goes on and on Once again, I've realized this knowledge may be very useful to some of you, and I have decided to write a post about it to help you out. Here goes... The key to keeping yourself busy with nothing is to have enough of it to fill the day and that every day the content of what you do changes. The first thing that probably comes to your mind is reading websites, and you would be right. Although, after a few hours of this it becomes very dull, but this can be avoided if you know what kind of websites to read. The two important factors when including websites in your daily line up are, how often the site updates and if there are ways to get involved in the website. For updating, ideally you would like a site that updates several times a day. The best sites for these are blogs, and what's even better is that there are blogs out there for virtually every kind of interest. You can use google to find blogs of your interest, and once you have found one you will easily be able to find others since blogs of the same interest end up linking to each other. Another good site that is always updated are news sites, every day the contents is different! The second criteria, involvement, can also be achieved through blogs or forums. You want a website that you can start and join in discussions. If you use these discussions, and if the websites have active readers, you will find yourself going back to these website often to check and respond to new posts. If the conversation becomes lively you will find yourself thinking about the conversation in between readings, which also helps pass the time. After websites, the second best way to pass the time is with books. Obviously most people can't sit there reading a book without being perceived as a slacker, but luckily there are ways around this. The best method is to use audio books. Buy some audio books on CD and either bring in a CD player or convert them to mp3s and listen to them. The reason I say this is the best way is because of its appearance. It appears as if you are hard at work in front of your computer using music to block out ambient noise, and therefore keep you focused, when in reality you are zoning out listening to a wonderful book. If audio books aren't an option the next best thing are hard back books. I must emphasis they have to be hard back books. Lets say you bring in a book with a nicely designed cover with bold colors and a large title, people will see this and realize you are not doing work and you will probably get in trouble. The wonderful thing about a hardback book is the cover comes off! You can sit there with a very plain looking book, and for all people know you could be reading a book about your job to help you stay on top of the subject area. This works even better if you fill your desk up with technical books exactly of this sort, even though you aren't reading anything like it. The last and final way to do nothing is talk to your coworkers. The reason I put this last is unless they also have nothing to do you will just keep them from getting work done and bother them. Even if you coworkers do have work to do stopping in every once in a while is okay. To avoid taking up too much of their time, the best set up is to assign each coworker a topic. For example you may talk to coworker A about sports and coworker B about computers. By having different subjects assigned to different coworkers you can hop between them all and end up spending a lot of time doing it! Plus it doesn't seem like you are wasting time because each coworker only knows of the 10~15 minutes you wasted talking to them. I hope this is able to help some people out there! Once again, if you have any comments or stories leave them in the comments section =)

Google

2005-07-07T12:57:00.000-04:00

Yes that is right, this blog is finally listed in Google! Although the site still has a page rank of 0, so more work has to be done. If you are wondering what a page rank of 0 means, it means that unless you are looking for my site you probably won't stumble across it. But hey this is a start right? Now I just need to figure out how to get inbound links posted so I can get a higher page rank. If anyone has a webpage feel free to post a link to my site and help out!! ;) Update: Of you want to google for this page one easy way is to search for "whodawannahuh" This will be the only site that comes up. I guess I'm the only one in the world odd enough to use such a "word"

New Site - downloadsquad.com

2005-07-07T09:06:00.000-04:00

While browsing my usual techy blog sites I stumbled across something interesting, downloadsquad.com. This site is yet another techy blog, but it focuses on free downloads. Check it out to see some pretty nifty things! One item that caught my eye was a link to a website with free screen savers. Ok, free screen savers are exciting but ones that are open-source and use the OpenGL graphics acceleration definitely are! Just so you don't think I've become a total geek, although some would argue otherwise, here is a picture from one of the screen savers. Come on... isn't that just cool looking? There are several other screen savers on the site so just hop over to http://www.reallyslick.com/ and check them out. I know I'm definitely looking forward to downloading when I get home. Especially since over the weekend I set up my 17in LCD monitor, which means I have dual display LCD (20.1 wide screen and 17in).... WOOT! Ok, I think after that last comment I have to admit it... I am a total geek who gets excited over screen savers and dual LCD monitors =p Update: I downloaded the "hyperspace" screen saver, as shown in the picture. Wow it is GPU intensive! If you are having trouble running it make sure you have the latest driver installed for your graphics card, and if that doesn't help turn off shading. For myself I had to turn off shading and the screen saver still looks amazing. =)

Console Costs

2005-07-06T11:32:00.000-04:00

A lot of buzz seems to be going around today about the supposed costs of the new PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles coming out. The prices that keep getting quoted are around $400 to $500 dollars, which in my opinion is insane! Although, this isn't that suprising when you think about how much more computer like the consoles have become; watch movies, play games, connect to the internet, etc. I wonder if there will ever come a point where there are no computer games, just console games. With such a high price tag though these machines will keep new comers and moderate gamers from buying them. Who wants to pay $5oo for a device that will use only occasionaly? Especially since the Nintendo Revolution is rumored to be around the $150 range. Gizmodo has a great little blurb about it: [Speaking to Japanese economic website Toyo Keizai, he stated that Sony’s aim for PS3 is “for consumers to think to themselves ‘I will work more hours to buy one’. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else.” ] Apparantly if it came down to food or a PS3 he wants you to forgo the food and buy the new console. If anyone is willing to forgo eating to buy one, will you get me one too...please? =D

Conclusion!

2005-07-05T16:29:00.000-04:00

I've come to a conclusion today! The past few posting topics have been all over the place, while I found them amusing and fun to write I really wanted to make a blog that had a general theme. This brings me to what my conclusion is... I've decided to write about what I know best technology! While the blog will still get random postings with my ramblings, most of the postings will be about tech oriented. If this doesn't get you all excited I don't know what will =p To the non-techy people out there you should still check my blog out I plan to elucidate the harder topics so everyone can understand them =) Well look forward to tomorrow's post dedicated to everything geeky! ;)

How To - Take a nap at work

2005-07-05T13:24:00.000-04:00

After only getting four hours of sleep last night I came in to work today and was exhausted. Luckily, last summer I learned a great way to take a nap during the day and today I was able to utilize that knowledge to my benefit. Since I consider napping to be a great way to pass the time, and that's what this blog is all about - passing time, I thought I would pass on this precious knowledge. During your lunch break or anytime during the day(if you are a bit more rebellious then I) you can take a nap in your car. You may know people that nap in their cubicles, but I submit to you that a car is a much better place. The reason the car is a better place to nap is due to the perception of someone who sleeps in their cubicle. If you are a cubicle sleeper, even during your lunch break, you will be perceived as a lazy slacker because no one will know it's your lunch break. If you sleep in your car no one will no you are sleeping and they will just assume you are in a meeting or doing work elsewhere. Obviously there are some down sides to sleeping in your car. One of the biggest problems is the heat, but this can be dealt with by to parking your car in the shade. By doing this you keep the sun from heating up you car. If there is no shade where you work buy one of those fold-able window blockers (also useful for blocking you from view when napping). Another problem is visibility, you don't want people to keep walking by you and seeing you sleep. The best way to avoid this is to park in some isolated corner of the parking lot. Although, when it comes to visibility and heat you want to make sure the heat precautions have priority. Now that you've set up your car and you are sitting inside you have just a few more steps to take. First, set you alarm! This is a very crucial step. Someone will notice you are missing if you oversleep and don't wake up for several hours. Next, if it is hot outside, roll down your windows. Don't just roll down the front windows, roll them ALL down, it helps a lot trust me. If it is too hot for even this to help, and you absolutely need a nap, just turn the air conditioner on full blast until the car is cold then turn the car off and fall asleep. The final thing to remember is RELAX! You are trying to take a nap, not impress people at work. Feel free to take your shoes off, un-tuck your shirt whatever it takes to sleep well, but not so comfortable that if someone found you it would be embarrassing. You don't want your boss to find you asleep in your car wearing nothing but your boxers. =p So that's it, a few simply steps on how to take a very nice nap at work, while not appearing to be a lazy bum. If you have any workplace napping stories you want to share post them in the comments section, I'd love to hear them. =)

Updates!

2005-07-04T08:47:00.000-04:00

Last night I spent several hours updating this page. I'm sure you are all impressed with all the amazing changes... right? Actually, you are probably thinking I wasted several hours of my life since you don't see anything different. =p The reason you don't see any changes, besides this new update, is because all the changes I made were behind the scene changes. I finally got around to going over the html of the template I used to make this blog. Some of the changes include adding meta tags for keywords and making the html friendlier for the googlebot crawler. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm having fun doing it =) There is one noticeable change to this website if you know where to look. I've added a favicon to this page. The best way to explain what a favicon is would be to give you an example... Have you ever bookmarked a page as one of your "favorites" and when you did there was a little icon next to the bookmark? That little icon is called a "favicon"( ie favorite icon). I've always wanted to know how to add one to a site, and yesterday I was fortunate enough to stumbled across a website with a very good explanation of how -> check it out. It's a pretty simple process actually, the hardest part is figuring out a cool favicon for your site. Let me know what you think of my icon! Or if you have any questions on how to do it just drop me a line in the comments section. =D

Identity Theft

2005-07-02T19:30:00.000-04:00

Over the past week I received a few e-mails from eBay saying my credit card was used to open an account. I logged into my eBay account to see if there was anything weird, nothing there seemed out of place. I decided the emails must be spam and didn't worry about them. Jumping forward to this morning, I received a phone call from someone who said they had just won the bid on a bike I had posted for sale on eBay. I was very confused, and told him that I've never posted for sale on eBay and they should definitely not buy it. Because of this incident I figured I should check into all of this. I e-mailed eBay explaining to them the situation, but I wasn't sure how long it would take for them to respond. In the mean time I bought a credit report just to make sure no other credit cards were opened under my name. Luckily nothing on the credit report seemed out of place, I even found out I have good credit =). Now i just had to make sure I kept this good credit and stopped this credit card information theft. A few hours later I received an email from eBay informing me that an account had indeed been opened using my credit card number and they had now cancelled the account. Well now I knew I was on to something. I immediately called the fraud center of my credit card and spoke to them, very nice people I might add. We walked through the past few days of charges to my account, nothing wrong there except the $1 charge and immediate $1 debit from eBay used to verify a credit card and open an account. Since no charges seemed wrong it was simply a matter of canceling this card and having a new card and card number issued to me. Well after going through all of this I can definitely see why Identity theft sucks so much. I was very nearly screwed in this whole ordeal, luckily I received that call this morning and I knew something was wrong. And I lived happily every after =) ... with my new grill I bought this morning!

Dumb Idea

2005-07-01T12:53:00.000-04:00

Last night, while eating dinner with Ji Hea, I had a brilliantly stupid idea. I decided it would be fun and exciting if Ji Hea and I each took a small red pepper and chewed on it. It didn't take too long to convince her and off we went. We took the peppers shoved them in our mouths and started chewing. At first all was well in the land of Oz, the peppers were chewy and waxy. After the initial few seconds of chewing the peppers split open and out fell the seeds into our mouths, this is when all the "fun" started. My mouth has never felt so much pain before! We both made a mad dash to the kitchen to grab some frozen grapes. We were taking frozen grapes by the hand full and shoving them in our mouths. My lips, tongue and mouth all burned for about an hour. Needless to say it was one of the dumbest ideas I've had in a while. =p

Google AdSense

2005-06-30T13:07:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, this blog will be slowly changing as I decide what suites it the best. One new addition, as of yesterday, are the Google AdSense links to the left. Why would I bother putting ads on my page you ask? Well think about it this way, this blog is free and the ads are free yet the more people who visit and click on the ads the more money I make. See the wonderfulness of this? Obviously it's not going to make me a lot of money, but it's still free money =) If anyone reading this page has any suggestions on what they'd like to see happen with this page just post a comment and let me know. I'd be happy to hear from you. In the mean time here are some more links the past the time http://www.fark.com - random funny news articles http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000907048883/ - an article about a sword fighting robot, i think it's cool! http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=ohchan39 - can you answer the age old question, is it sad for a 27 yr old to have a xanga? update: I've just added a Google search option on my webpage.

Verizon DSL

2005-06-29T15:58:00.000-04:00

Wow I now love Verizon! Why you ask, because they just doubled my internet connection speed for free. Yes you read that right, free! A friend of mine from high school told me if I called Verizon and asked them to increase my connection speed they would double it from 768K to 1.5M. Today I went ahead gave Verizon a call , and it worked like a charm. All I have to say to this is... WOOT! Who ever has Verizon DSL should give them a call and see if they will do this for you. I don't know if it's only local to Philadelphia, but it doesn't hurt to try right?

Money

2005-06-29T12:31:00.000-04:00

Ahhh the joys of pay day! Although pay day happens to be tomorrow due to direct deposit I get paid a day early every week, wohoo! Now that I have my first full time job I've been pondering on how to invest my money. Since I have very little experience (aka no experience) I've been doing a lot of researching; talking to friends, reading web pages and books. Everything I've learned so far tells me to invest early and often. This is all well and good but it leaves me with one very large question, how much should i allow myself to spend? If every penny I earned went to paying bills and investing I would have none left for fun. Sure I may be able to retire a little earlier, but I want to have some fun now (and a lot of it *wink*)! If anyone has thoughts about that put a comment on this posting and let us all know. I'll keep you all posted on any apposite information I learn about investing money. ps See, this isn't just a geeky blog. Just a blog made by a geeky person =) update: Here is a link I came across for some general investing tips.

Geeky Links

2005-06-29T10:06:00.000-04:00

As you may or may not have noticed, I've updated the links section of this blog. There are only a few links at the moment, but give them a try. Like the rest of this site they are a bit geeky and great for passing the time. Switching topics completely, Apple released itunes 4.9 yesterday. Normally something like this isn't even worth posting about, but the new itunes has integrated podcasting available. For those of you who don't know podcasting it's a way to allow people to publish audio files to the internet and let people know about it and have their software automatically download the files. (For more information on podcasting check out the information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast) Me, being the geek I am, as soon as I got home I downloaded and took it out for a spin. The program works pretty well for subscribing to podcasts. One thing I noticed though was the tricky-ness of apple. Normally I have my itunes set up to not show the itunes store, but in this release of itunes the podcasts are in the itunes store (don't worry they are still free). This allows apple to force users into their itunes store in order to subscribe to podcasts. Smart move if you ask me.

Starting

2005-06-28T15:44:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone! I started my first job a few weeks ago and have yet to be assigned any work, so I was sitting at my desk thinking of ways to pass the time. This helped a lot because it caused a lot of time to pass, but I knew I would need to eventually think of something. Well, you are reading what I thought of, make a blog! I have a vague, some what fuzzy, idea of what this blog will be about. This blog will be about the things I enjoy, so expect geeky sometimes random postings. Expect a lot of changes to start happening in the layout of the page as I get more acclimated to blogging, as well as figuring out how I want this page to look. On a different note, today is my birthday!