User Friendly

I was thinking about it, and I decided that it isn't cool to ask people to read two different blogs you write. I mean, it's pretty audacious to expect anyone to take the time to read what you have to say in one place, let alone two. So instead, I'm going to go ahead and write my post on my other blog as previously discussed, and then copy the posts over here. It will take me all of two seconds to move a post over here and will require less effort on the part of readers. I think this is the decent thing to do, since after all, I'm not Microsoft.

Just The Facts

Here is a fact that I am coming to accept: I will (probably) never experience life without Windows.

Now let me clarify this comment a bit. I am not saying that YOU should not ditch Windows. In fact I would recommend quite the opposite. It is indeed easy to get along without Microsoft products if you a computer user who does not mind putting forth a little effort to learn something new (allow me to suggest Ubuntu). However...I am planning on a career as a computing professional, not as a computer user, and this changes things a little. First of all, there are the numbers. Something like 90% of computers out there are running Windows, so to forget it exists would have a seriously limiting effect on my future. Secondly, there is pride. People with any kind of expert knowledge are always asked to do things outside of what is technically thier job. I know from being the son of nurse that everyone asks any nurse or doctor they know random questions about their aches and pains and they expect an answer. I also know that from having some aquantences that are lawyers that lawyers always get asked legal questions, I'm not talking about full scale consultations necessarily, but little one-off questions. What I am obviously getting at is that the same is true for computing professionals. I may not be an I.T. guy, but I am, and moslty likely always will be, asked to fix random little computer problems on a fairly regular basis. If someone were to ask me how to get a Windows machine up on their home network, then not knowing the answer would seem like a nurse not being able to take someone's temperature. Now while there is little fear that I would not be able to accomplish such a task at present, the fact is that the computer field changes quickly, and something like that could happen in the future if I ignore Windows for too long. Bottom line: if someone needs some Windows software written, they are not going to pay me to tell them how much better Linux is.

So in light of this I have decided to take up a little experiment. I signed up for a Windows Live account today (with all of the features I could stand), and I am going to try everything out and write about my experiences on my shiny new Windows Live Blog:

http://wshato.spaces.live.com/

This will serve multiple purposes. First of all, It will keep up to date on new stuff that is out there. Second, it will make me better informed when I discuss Microsoft products. I also feel the need to clarify something here. I do not have any intrinsic desire to hate Microsoft (just plenty of good reasons). I do sincerely hope that I find some cool software during this experiment. I am fully ready to praise Microsoft for any quality products that I find. I am also prepared to point out any flaws I find. Either way, it should be fun.

Success

I have been working with a friend at school on creating a connect four game for our networking class. It seemed at first like it would be easy, but of course there is always some catch. In this case, the problem was that after a player made a move the board would not update until the other player finished making his move. This went in lockstep with the result being that the display was always a move behind. I finally solved the problem tonight when I figured out that all I needed to do was create an inner class that implemented the Runnable interface (did I mention we were using Java) and do all of the input output in a separate thread. By doing this the program never hangs up waiting for input from a blocked socket. Which brings me to this point, threads are awesome. I go back and forth a lot on language preference between C++ and Java, but this is one area that is a definite win for Java. Of course you can program with threads in C++ if you use facilities provided by the operating system, but these are usually a little messy, not to mention different on every system. My other favorite language, Python, also has built-in support for threading but the implementation feels a little hackish compared to Java's. There are plenty of times when I'm digging through some ridiculously complicated, though supposedly "elegant", set of Java class libraries and I swear it is more trouble that it could possibly be worth, but at least for tonight, I really like Java.

It Lives

I've decided to try updating my blog again. I'm thinking I might turn this into a tech blog. Maybe I'll write more if I'm writing about something I'm really interested in rather than trying to write with no topic at all in mind. Also, I really like the new feature that allows you to follow other blogs.

Just a thought

So it has been about a week since the last time I saw Tabetha. I have been here at home schooling and working and she has been house sitting for her parents and doing research. We were discussing over the phone how whenever people are alone for extended periods of time they tend to revert back to old behaviors from before they were with someone. At the time it was just an observation but I have formed a theory as to why it is true. The past couple of days I have went to Starbucks to study for my chemistry test. Going to Starbucks to study is something Tabetha and I do together a lot. I noticed today that while I was there studying I became very lonely and missed her way more than I have the rest of this week. So this is my theory, if I ate the foods we normally eat and watched the shows we normally watch and did any of the other things we normally do her absence would be more noticeable, so instead I do completely different things. I'm not saying that I don't miss her when I do different things, just that I don't miss her as much. Fortunately she'll be back tomorrow, and I can stop eating a McDonald's.

A month later...

and I am posting again. It has been a busy month, but spring break has finally arrived. There are a number of things I look forward to over my break. They are:

1) sleeping till at least noon every day
2) eating dinner with Tab at a respectable hour
3) catching up on all of my assignments
4) sleeping till at least noon every day

As a side note, I realized today that I am capable of doing multi-variable calculus in my head, and yet incapable of tearing the edges of perforated paper. In the famous words of the late Dr. Paul Balshaw..."there is a place in hell for people who bind books like this". I realize that this is not 100% applicable, but I really wanted to quote Dr. Balshaw.

See you in a month or two.

Snow Day!

WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As much as I'd love to sit in a computer lab at school, I guess I'll just have to sit at home instead.

Here is a brief list of things that this class cancellation should make possible:
1) I get to hang out with Tab for more than 2-3 hours before going to bed.
2) I get to eat dinner at a reasonable hour.
3) I don't have to suffer the discomfort that follows sitting in a chair in a lab all night

Now my only hope is that this snow will bring its good fortune and then leave peacefully.