Instrumentality

Istep+ Online Administration Failures

2011-04-27T00:58:00.000-04:00

My 14 year old sister came home today complaining about the ISTEP+ test. I remember taking these tests via pen and paper, and was intrigued when my sister informed me that the test was administered online. I was at first proud that our academic institutions have embraced technology, but annoyed to hear flaws in it's delivery and execution.

This tech rant is about the serious technical failures that were described to me. Today, an 8th grade class of less than 20 students were to take (2) thirty minute tests. For a total testing time of one hour. Using a computer from the school's computer lab the test was administered and submitted online via web browser. It took the class over 3 hours to finish the testing for today, and tomorrow the class is to conduct additional tests. Here were the complaints my sister listed.

Server overloads
Connection drops
3 minute re-login periods to resume testing.

From the students point of view, this is very frustrating when trying to workout a problem. Breaking concentration and repeatedly being kicked out of the online test, in my opinion would be sufficient to throw the test out. Testing is hard enough as it is, why introduce technical difficulties and distractions as well?

I asked about test timing, for I would imagine would be difficult for the local administrator to fairly work this out. The timing is kept by the server for individual students to ensure all were allotted the same time, in case of technical errors. At least this was thought of, but again back to the two hours of class room time wasted because not all students weren't able to finish at the same time.

In my professional IT opinion, these failures and errors are completely unacceptable. I am appalled that the Information Technology division did not have these issues addressed. Based on just the basic knowledge provided, I assumed the following. The ISTEP servers could not handle the simultaneous load. Perhaps it was bandwidth or just not enough hardware resources to host the testing servers, or even poorly written software running the servers. I do hope it was not a combination of these factors.

If this was a bandwidth issue, I question the information assurance and security of the testing. Testing could be suspended if malicious attacks were targeted on test day. I will only briefly remind that distributed denial of service attacks have been increasingly more devastating.

I also do not understand the need for synchronous communications to the server. The the test could be written in a way that the entire test is loaded to the browser. Once completed then a simple submission would commit the students selected answers; much like online payment services. This reduces traffic overhead and network congestion especially if the school's network or internet service provider have only low bandwidth service(slow). I would assume this is the result of poor web programming. Second, I would probably also best guess this was also housed in a single data center in Indianapolis as the IT departments number starts with the 317 area code. This decision or lack of must have been the result of absolute poor planning and testing. The servers should have been distributed across data centers in the state to provide redundancy, mirroring and faster service. Perhaps, one would argue that rolling out servers to multiple private data-centers would be too costly, time consuming, and difficult to sort out contractually.

Then I would propose a Content Delivery Network such as Akamai Technologies or Limelight Networks (Amazon Cloud went down the other day, so no vote for them) could have easily solved that problem. So who's to blame? The State of Indiana's Department of Education. Think about that for a second, the DOE of Indiana IT division failed miserably. I will conclude on this note, if this were a hypothetical IT Provider through a commercial entity. I would bet some high level IT project manager or director would be getting fired over this.

For further information of ISTEP Administration. Here is the online manual. I found it interesting that there was very little to no information on the technical aspects of the computer administration. I think more "transparency" on this issue is required.
http://www.doe.in.gov/assessment/docs/ProgramManual.pdf

-Draft letter to the Department of Education and my local state congressman, -Shinigami.

Cyberwarrior shortage threatens U.S Security

2010-07-19T20:49:00.000-04:00

My comments on this NPR story

This story is so detached from reality. It is extremely difficult to even get into these type of jobs, even with the appropriate security clearances. The Department of Defense has created a Cyber Command, you'll find it's not a bunch of teenager enlisted recruits out of high schools on the fast track to hacking computer networks for their country. But rather senior military officers and civilians who know how to work the federal job market. Publish a story after interviewing a real worker, not some high school kid who exploits a game, We must have forgotten that kids EASILY exploit games everyday and get banned from it on video game networks such as xbox live or ANY Computer game. Computer Network Defense? Whatever. Information Assurance Technicians/Managers are chumps compared to the real pros. Any weak sauce network manager can employ a firewall, and do day to day traffic analysis and auditing. I mean the real bread and butter elite, Computer Network Exploitation and Computer Network Attack operations guys. With a over bureaucratic system, most of the real "hackers" might be hired by a federally contracted IT company, maybe, hopefully. The real talent hardly works directly for a government agency.

Another poor piece of journalism, spreading FUD with terms like "Cyber warfare" and cyber Warriors.

Natural Reader Pronunciation Editor File

2010-07-14T20:17:00.006-04:00

I've spent an entire two minutes on a Google search query twice in the past year. Just long enough to determine either it's not currently out there on the web or I am too lazy to dedicate my time on what could be a fruitless search. I fear the latter may be the more accurate truth.

I have a feeling I can't be the only one who's tried searching for a pronunciation editor save file, for my Natural Reader Software. I am currently using Natural Reader 9.1 Professional and was hoping somewhere published on the internet, was a pronunciation editor file I could easily import into my computer. Since I couldn't find one, I've since decided I'll publish my own editor save files freely available to anyone who happens to stumble themselves into my very own predicament.

Call it a minor annoyance, when my software using the female voice Heather, incorrectly pronounces a word while reading aloud to me an article from my favorite technology website arstechnica.com or Slashdot.org. Maybe I feel, something similar to a parent correcting their child on proper English pronunciation. I find that I simply must stop the playback and modify the pronunciation editor. It's also more satisfying to hear a censored word printed as F*** pronounced as it should be, really who want's to hear "f, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, instead of the more gratifying, "Fuck". The natural flow of content was just abruptly turn into a, "wait a minute, what?" moment. Clearly the author wants you to know it's the word, but for legal reasons can't print it, but I don't need my own computer to censor it for me too.

That being said, let me take this opportunity to praise about how much I love Text to Speech Software (TTS), and how I am amazed on the advancement and natural sounding TTS technology has developed into our time. As much as I and many other people loathe talking to an automated phone prompt system when calling a major business establishment, I urge you to take a moment and admire about the advancement and effort it took to make today's modern phone systems as user friendly and natural sounding than just a few years ago. I pledge to you, the single random person to be reading this thus far, that I shall post often an update on my editor files. Feedback is welcome. Download here

My view of Dualism.

2010-04-06T23:33:00.001-04:00

With the driving force of ambition and determination, man performs amazing feats of merit that shape and define our very being. We as humanity are blessed with sapience and cursed with free will. It becomes impossible for a single entity or deity to determine the fate of the universe, and whilst many try, often the disillusioned become lost in the meaning. Worry not of death and a journey into heaven or condemnation into hell, there are only two inevitable outcomes, the transcendence of the soul or nothing at all. As we carve our way chaotically through time, our finest hour will only come when our very existence is threatened to extinction, ironically we all knowingly acknowledge individually we shall all perish. Even as mankind preoccupies itself with the thought of survival and the perseverance of the flesh. I plead to you, fear not our demise, but the aftermath of our continued existence. For the worst anguish imaginable is life without purpose. A broken spirit.

Reasons to Get out

2010-03-10T14:16:00.002-05:00

Reasons to Get out
My Personal reasons NOT to re-enlist in the Marine Corps. For entertainment purposes only.

1) Mass Punishment
2) Nut to Butt
3) 4 men to one stall
4) Initial Clothing Errors
5) Improper Leave Documentation
6) Basic Allowance for sustenance is not proportionally deducted (meal cards)
7) Noisy Neighbors in Barracks
8) Group Showers
9) Chow Hall Nazis
10) Did you get the Word?
11) Standby to Standby
12) Hurry up and Wait
13) 15 minutes prior to the 15 minutes prior
14) Post formation formations
15) "Games"
16) Good ole' boy reward system
17) Rosters
18) CIF
19) 65 pound immobilizing body Armour
20) The "Important" pre-deployment training program (PTP) marine net classes quickly becomes waived required training
21) Deployment to Dwell Ratio
22) Canine and Equestrian (Dog and Pony) Shows for Brass
23) Plan for 3 pack for 5
24) Brainwashing
25) Working Parties
26) Formation Re-locations
27) Detailed Leave and Liberty Itineraries
28) Raking Sand or Mopping with a Broom
29) Zero Five PT
30) Death by PowerPoint presentations
31) Printers
32) Waste of Printer Paper
33) Morning Traffic Rush
34) Evening Traffic Rush
35) Every Marine, at one point in time will be referenced as a "motherfucker" i.e. This motherfucker, or those motherfuckers, or fuck that motherfucker.
36) Back in the Saddle Training
37) No Porn
38) Missionary only
39) Tucked in Civilian Shirts
40) Mass Communication Tool
41) Navy Marine Corps Intranet
42) PMO
43) Base Housing List
44) Acronyms
45) Personal Servitude
46) Cleaning till the Paint comes off.
47) Meetings and Briefs
48) Food "Not fit for human consumption" and "for institutional use only."
49) Mandatory Fun
50) Block Leave Only
51) Outstanding Naval Medicine
52) Why are we doing this? "It builds character."
53) Go to war and Garrison breaks out.
54) "Did you get that email?"/ Leadership by email.
55) Cliches and Buzzwords
56) More Chiefs than Indians
57) ORM Matrix Worksheets
58) 15 Character Password Requirements that expire every 30 days
59) Hard Workers are rewarded with additional duties
60) Safety Stand-downs
61) Submitting the same personal information at least once a week because it was previously lost.
62) Lack of, or interrupted sleep, (phone calls in the middle of the night)

The Entertainment Center

2009-11-11T10:44:00.006-05:00

As an avid reader of Slashdot, Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica, and Wikipedia. You could say Electronics and Computing is my hobby. By no means am I an old timer with years of wisdom and knowledge of computing trends. I'm barely 23 years old. I've managed over the few years to reconsider enthusiast performance computing, met others who shared similar interests and passions, discussing tips and trends in the computer market. A few years back the glamor of Case Modding, exotic paint jobs, LED Fans, UV lighting, overclocking and water cooling was all the rage. Aftermarket products enhanced the look or performance of a custom built mid-tower or full tower computer. Surely, I had to experiment with this new fad. Five years have passed by since, only recently noticing it was my only desktop computer I've ever built and owned. I've worked on a few other computer projects, often provided advice for others, moved away from desktops and computed mostly on laptops. The finer aspects of laptops. Portability, and size is what I though was the best. Power, performance into the small package. Two gaming laptops, an entry level notebook, and one netbook later; I've ridden that wave long enough. PC gaming continues to grow and look ever more promising. It's time to throwback, to days of custom built performance rigs.

The flashy market has only gotten flashier. Recalling my memories of other custom built rigs owned by friends over the years, a Full Tower behemoth, or a mid tower, plexiglass with dazzling illumination. I started researching a worthy competitor. Only this time life has changed the stakes. Now there is this woman that patiently waits for my return from a long days work. That lady cooks my meals, but more importantly plays computer and video games with. Marriage has now binded us into a permanent co-op. For better or worse, the person I'll share the Exp. Points with. is now my wife, and team kills will ban me to the couch. It seems the server admin god of life just added a new map and item drop whoring is no longer allowed. Talk about lame.

I can no longer put only myself at the center point. After all, I realize the best games are played with someone else. Borderlands, and Diablo 3, alone justify the cause. That 3 grand rig for me however, is no longer feasible, not one, but two must be built on the same budget. The woman I previously mentioned, a mainstream casual gamer, or whatever PC game I come home with and decide to play, is not a fellow enthusiast as I. Casual gaming aside, what's a housewife really going to do with an overclocked, low latency, high performance computer anyways? Myspace, iTunes, solitaire, and chain emails with my mother-in-law? Please. There will be no shenanigans of this sort. I'll just offset the budget in my favor and build the better computer and leave the leftovers onto hers. Not fair you say? Hey pal, I'm building and financing this operation here. So you can talk to me about ethics and equality later when your paying the tab.

My monthly subscription issue of Maximum PC arrived and presented me the best solution, building two rigs, one between the $700-1000 price range for the wife, the other around $1,500 - $ 2,000 for me. To be honest I have sort of grown fond of the AMD Phenom II processors and the Dragon Platform. Originally, following the advice of Max PC. I decided the wife's computer will run an AMD Phenom X3, and I'll installed the X4 in mine. All my research was done two months early. A bit later the HD Raedeon 5870 was launched, I cheered for the Nvidia smashing graphics card and changed the parts list accordingly. The PC market does not stagnate, but continue to innovate and improve. Unfortunately, I planned two months too early. Intel has released the Core i5, Suddenly those dragon platforms I justified on the price to performance ratio, just went out the window. Now I have to suck it up, and realize that Intel took the CPU crown in another segment market again. Even if that dragon platform looked so cool and shiny. - - That night I had to do some soul searching, I went to bed and slept on it. That next morning I woke up with a solution. I put some, but not all my pride aside, and decided to install the Core i5 processor into my wife's computer and I'd settle for Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Meaning, she would have the faster processor, even it's better and cheaper than mine. Suddenly it is hard to even justify my build, why not just install a Core i7 920 in mine? Because I want an AMD Dragon Platform Computer damn it! If I can't have my cake and eat it too, at least let me have some of the frosting, alright? Pardon, I was sidetracked for a moment. Ahem.

Quiet computing, also a new slogan by Antec. I think I like that theme, and add a bit of efficiency too. A no-nonsense computer cases without the pretty colors and unnecessary plexiglass, minus the bland and boring of a business class or office computer case. I essentially want to blend power and performance into an elegant package. To compare it to the automotive world, I'm choosing over the muscle cars and import tuners in favor of a Mercedes or BMW. A fellow colleague disagrees with this vision. He'd rather hear his computer, with 120 mm or 200 mm Case fans in full throttle spin, once only considered for server racks, now spool up like a turbocharger reading to dump that air into the desktop towers. He'd like to hear and feel the power emitting from his computer. Of course he's single, not paying the electric bill, and there is no room mate that acts like the local deputy(wife) complaining about noise ordinance either. No, it's settled, an Antec P193 Desktop Mid-Tower case.

That settles the computer case. There is just one problem. Where am I going to put them in our home? We have no desks, and I want an entertainment center too. A google search for two person computer desks brings up photos for a office style corner desks made for some cubicle, a gaming desk has great number of options and style, for one person, and what about the entertainment center? Clearly there is no pre-manufactured furniture piece that fits my need. To the drawing board! More specifically, I fired up Google Sketchup and started designing away. I finished my 3D master piece 8 hours later. Something about the model however, looks as if it was too big. A few emails home later, I discovered the table would not reasonably fit in the living room. I had to start from scratch all over again, another 26 hours of redesigning I completed a better piece. Something even quite marketable to couples living in studio apartments. Now to build it. But how? Although I have a little woodworking experience, I know enough that I need to hire outside help. A bit of consulting with other co-workers, and I learned cherry would be quite expensive. My father in-law, a master carpenter, suggested plywood. Only plywood would make the furniture look terrible and cheap. Cherry it is with a perhaps a stain of Walnut will place an estimate price tag of five large. Something to lose sleep over, but quality furniture is never cheap. But I also considered usefulness of having a piece of furniture that acts as two complete desks and and entertainment center. Three pieces of furniture rolled into one? Not bad at all.

Took at look at the concept photos.

Double Striped Thick Knee

2008-11-03T02:05:00.002-05:00

Here are some photos during my stay in El Paso.

Wife and I stayed at Biggs Army Airfield for two nights and visited the El Paso Zoo.In the Aviary this guy decided instead of us watching him do animal things, he decided to watch us do human things. That or he was waiting for some food, oh well, at least he posed for some great photos.
Below is a slideshow from my web album.

2008 taco cook off

2008-10-20T02:32:00.002-04:00

Location: Bucklin park El Centro, California

The wife and I drove an hour away to Live marachi music, a crazy paletro man, and good carne asada tacos! It was not as big as I was hoping with only about seven vendors actually selling tacos. Not only that but there was one vendor that had a sign claming to be the 2007 defending champs. However, on closer inspection they were only selling fish tacos. Once again they won the fish taco category, then again it is rather silly when there is only one other competitor. Besides that award is as about as meaningless as winning the best hot at a bratwurst competion. As for rest, the tacos were about priced at $1.00 - $1.50 each, with both corn or flour as an option, however since most vendors had there own standard of condiments i find it hard to pick best overall taco. one vendor had really good tortillas and awesome salsa, and another with great meat.

To bad this wasn't closer to home, this was a great way to have lunch on a saturday afternoon.

Wings Update

2008-09-24T15:21:00.002-04:00

Last Year I posted

"I've should have not gone out for wings last night."Man, I'm feeling it this morning, or I could be the 3 large cokes to go along with it."

Well here is an update to that.

$.50 Cent wing night tuesdays at Buffalo Wild Wings compelled me to try out wings the first time. The wings tasted damn good, but going home with the runs or puking in the parking lot afterwards made me to start disliking the joint. I figured it was the food and how it was prepared. I pretty much swore off the place.

Months later I was invited to Buffalo Wild Wings by a friend, who also found out my problem. Wings and Pop, is not a good combo. Tears up your inside, instead substitute my drink for beer. I was very skeptical that it would even work. Sure enough a unclogged toliet and vomit free parking lot 24 hours later proved he was right.

Lessoned Learned.

Orders

2008-08-17T00:21:00.002-04:00

I have orders to
8th Crime, J-Actionville, North Cackalaky.

Okay I'll be serious.

8th Communications Battalion, Camp Lejeune North Carolina

I should be there before Thanksgiving.

Toenail removal by a corpsman

2008-03-31T23:52:00.001-04:00

Toenail removal by a corpsman

Site 39, i sleep here, in the middle of

2008-03-29T13:52:00.001-04:00

Site 39, i sleep here, in the middle of nowhere

Enjoying A'C' Sitting in a hospital lobb

2008-03-21T15:05:00.001-04:00

Enjoying A'C' Sitting in a hospital lobby reading half a year old magazines.

Nong Shim Kimchi Bowl Noodle....MMMmmm...

2008-03-16T17:52:00.003-04:00

I writing this as I'm eating my second bowl of instant ramen, but oh no not just any instant ramen. Nong Shim's Kimichi Bowl Noodle!!

Currently my favorite choice of bowl noodle. While living with my folks as a kid, my mom used to buy the maruchan instant ramen noodles. I loved to eat them, and mom was happy because they were cheap! Over the years of living on my own I ended up buying Nissin Beef Cup Noodle a little under a dollar a cup, it was great while living in the barracks and having no other choice but to live by chow hall hours. After a while I end up getting sick to the taste, especially the chicken I don't know why, but I had to find an alternative. Then one day, in Walmart Aisle, was Nong Shim awaiting me. Ready to embrace me with wide open arms as I ran away from Nissin.
I stocked up on like 4 bowls, enough so the wife wouldn't questioned the instant rameny goodness. I poured some water into the bowl, nuked it in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Opened the kimchi packet into the steaming bowl awaiting me. Folks, it was like eating instant ramen for the first time all over again. Time stopped all together when my chopsticks left my mouth. Soon I had to find out one thing, as I wondered are there any instant ramen lovers out there on the web? Sure enough I found two great blogs.
http://www.mattfischer.com/ramen/ and http://ramenlovers.blogspot.com/

For the Record, March is National Noodle Month.

QOTD

2008-03-06T12:23:00.000-05:00

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

- Epicurus

AM Radio

2008-03-01T23:11:00.003-05:00

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Now playing: Spyra - Bath (DI.fm Premium - Ambient)
via FoxyTunes
I was driving 2 nights ago South Bound on I-15 past Temecula, CA. The government vehicle I was in was fortunate enough to have a AM/FM radio, and after scanning the FM side to find nothing interesting to hear. It is usually the same, Pop Music, Rap, Country, and being in southern California and so close the border the usual spanish statio ns. All bleh. I came to discover an intresting radio station, and after closer Listening it was being broadcasted from somewhere in Utah, and the local news was based in Salt Lake City. I asked my friend who was riding along during my journey, how is that possible. Now, my buddy just happens to be a electronic maintenance guru and knew a thing or two about my query. He explained to me how at night the Ionosphere bounces this to far locations. Pretty cool, I thought.

For a few months now I've become more interested in public and broadcasted radio, I listen to National Public Radio on KAWC 88.9 FM sometimes 1320 AM, depending on my location. I find I can usually get a whole daily segment of unbaised headline news for the day on just a short time span, a perfect way to start and end the day driving to and from work. I was just recently thinking, what If I could essential tivo public radio so I can record it and play it on my cell phone, I dare not say iPod, in fact I hate iPods and apple. No I use my new cell phone which has an FM radio (no AM capability unfortunately) and 1 gig memory stick to listen to music. I headed over to thinkgeek.com a cool website selling somenifty geek gadgets. I found the radio shark A 50 dollar AM/FM tuner that plugs into usb and can time shift radio segments. Maybe just maybe I'd might invest, or head over to radio shack and build my own.

Mice

2008-02-29T20:15:00.002-05:00

I've used many a mouses in my day. Touch pads, Nipples, Trackballs, Optical, Laser, A few years ago I used to swear by my Logitech G5 Gaming Mouse. By the way, I prefer Logitech mice and keyboards, they have nice quality products and are innovators in their fields.

While Corded Mice have better response time, the overall clutter of just another cable makes things messy. Especially those on laptops, for those heavy laptops users more often than not we end up being wired to some wall outlet. For some using the touch pad is fine, I've forced myself to get used to it. For others it is unacceptable, my wife uses a Microsoft optical notebook mouse, which again with optical mice suffer from movement problems on various surfaces, in fact I'm using my sofa's arm rest as the surface for my mouse, because, well I actually do put my laptop on my lap. My old gaming notebook was rather hot on bottom thanks to a beefed up video card.

So back to the question wired or wireless, most gamers will tell you stay corded, and I would agree, if your using a desktop, for laptop the best is wireless, high speed wireless should not be a factor even in intense first person online shooters in today's age. And after 2 years of constant moving around, the cable to my old g5 mouse became frayed and then unusable, then I upgraded to the MX revolution, a great mouse but the charger was terrible, the contacts on the bottom of the mouse were supposed to the touch the charging cradle, often I'd spend 20 minutes just making sure my mouse charged, the scroll wheel was awesome, sometimes I felt the mouse was a a bit bulky, I ended up finding out there was notebook version, but well it was too late, and then came to the problem of usb ports on the side or your laptop, having a dangling receiver on usb ports are susceptible to being bent or broken, not exactly lap friendly, and every time you have to stow your trusty laptop away in a bag or something, you mustn't forget to to remove the receiver. This new nano VX has as written on the packaging, the world's smallest receiver, and lo and be hold I plug this in on the side on of my laptop to see that indeed there isn't much stick out, probably about 3/4 inch of plastic from the edge of the chassis. Plug and play, Windows XP detected the HID complaint mouse and easily installed default drivers and the mouse work just fine. I saw no need to install Logitech Setpoint, no need for another memory hogging background application.

----------------
Now playing: Aspect - Hi Jack (Vocal Mix) (DI.fm Premium - Vocal Trance)
via FoxyTunes

Boycott Trendmicro

2008-02-11T23:57:00.001-05:00

Voting in 2008

2008-02-10T04:38:00.001-05:00

Alright this is my first year I plan to vote, and I'm saying right now this voting system is screwed up.
I guess I can consider myself an "independent." There are some things I agree with the republican party and some with the democratic party. I most particularly prefer Barack Obama and Ron Paul,
and though I'm military and most military are probably going to vote for John McCain, besides his military views I can hardly agree with anything he has. For awhile I made up my mind he was the guy, but I'm starting to strongly dislike him more and more. I don't know about you but I'm so freaking sick and tired of hearing about this election on NPR.org, it seems all the good news time is spent picking apart and analyzing this damn election. I hear these terms like Delegates, Super Tuesday, blah blah blah. I did my research on just about everything i need to know. Now I'm ready to vote, or am I. First and foremost I realized I hate political parties. I also hate terms like Liberal, Libertarian, Conservative, right wing and left wing.

From a technology stand point Barack Obama wins hands down. I also like how he actually has a plan to pull out from iraq, the only thing is I don't really think he understands how much asset is overthere and I have a feeling there is no real possible way to pull out. But whatever, power to him if he can pull us out of Iraq.

Hiliary Clinton? I just plain hate that lady, God help us if she is Commander in Chief, she has got some crazy ideas about "protecting the children" from the evils of video game in her time as a senator. Not only that she isn't known to give straight answers. She gives a MAYBE in issues like the REAL ID act, nothing more than "show me your papers" idea. I freaking hate that, How can you be a president if you aren't a straight shooter.

As for John McCain, power to him as vietnam vet and POW, I highly respect him in that aspect, but that guy has no agenda for pulling out in Iraq, again more republican agendas. Besides war is great for the economy, everyone knows that. More servicemen are going to continue to die, we are going to continue spiraling down into a deficit. I think that since he has already tried to run for president before, there is a reason why he didn't win that time. He needs to give it up already.

You know I like that Ron Paul guy, He very is direct with his policies and believes in a smaller government and I think that his deregulation and less taxes. Ideas like removing the IRS, although crazy, some of crazy is just what we might need. I think it would be interesting to see what he could do in office, just about everybody has an idea of implement this or that. Adding another law to already huge lawbook when in fact I personally think we just need more enforcement of the current laws, not making ACTs upon acts granting more federal funding for this or that, when last time i checked we are in huge deficit. Well whatever.

So on to my state primary Indiana. First and foremost Indiana is mostly republican. John McCain is getting lots of support so I think I'm kinda screwed in the Republican party, so I decided not to register as Republican, and then I read up on the idea of super delegates and some serious questions came to mind. I for one DO NOT like the idea of delegates in the first place. I believe nominees should by the common popular vote ONLY, not some big wig who is only going to solidify the victory for a winner, or in worst case scenario elect the against the popular vote.

So just the fact that democratic party has that...hmm I really don't like that. Besides I don't want to be called a democrat anyways. The democratic party has way to many ideas that coincide with a socialism and communism. And well, we all know how that turns out. I think I'm very liberal on issues regarding technology but conservative on most economic and health care issues. I don't like the idea that I'm paying more for social security today and going to receive less in the future, nor do I like the idea of the Medicaid, WIC or programmes that disqualify families based on income, WHY? Well first and foremost a program like WIC disqualifies families who have high incomes, I'm think What the fuck? Hold on a second, so people who don't work as Smart, MIND you I didn't say as hard, qualify for wic all at the expenses of the general public. TAXES yo.
but if I make to much I don't qualify, that is some serious whack. People who argue about tax cuts for the rich, HEY, rich people spend more money than any another tax bracket and spur the economy, putting more money back into thier hands so they can contribute back into the economy is great. I think a flat tax is better than a percentage based income tax. That or FICA should an option, not mandatory. But we all know that goverment borrows off social security like it is cool. Also a problem.

Yeah I think we need sales taxes, property taxes and to make up for it a much higher wheel tax.
Any carbon emissioned base car needs to have some high tax. That will give more incentive to buy better environmental friendly cars.
We need these taxes to pay for stuff. Why not just get rid of income taxes all together and just have sales tax. I think its whack your taxed for investments and savings that you earn. Everyone tells you about saving your money this and that, and you do it, but next thing you know the government thinks it should get its share of your savings.... if everything was taxed via sales tax, because we all know we have to buy things. It would be a lot easier.

well whatever on that. So back to the democratic party, As I said I'm pretty much decided on barack obama. He is rather young, full of great ideas and not like the rest of the old fogeys in Washington. The only reason I'd register as democrat is make sure he maintains his lead over hiliary. Other than that, as I stated earlier this whole delegate thing and also electoral college really pisses me off.

Oh by the way wanna know what helped make my decisions. Wikipedia.org
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-delegate.htm and CNET news

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Now playing: Mike Shiver & Ashkan Fardost present AM - Arise (Exclusive Hammer and Funabashi Remix) (DI.fm Premium - Vocal Trance)
via FoxyTunes

The Windows XP problem

2008-02-10T02:59:00.000-05:00

Microsoft is ceasing sales of Windows XP Pre Shrink Wrapped and OEM releases, after June 30, 2008, those of you who build your own machines, you have until Dec 31.

Meaning? Computers Sold After that date will come installed with Windows Vista. Microsoft's way of selling more copies of Vista.

Like or not, for those like me who rather sell a kidney than install Vista over XP. (Well I don't think there are any but, but I won't use Vista unless you pay me too.) For those who wish to downgrade,

Quote:

vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and more recently NEC, all offer the opportunity to downgrade to XP Pro."

Source:Slashdot

Infoworld has more details.

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Now playing: Armin Van Buuren - Shivers (DI.fm Premium - Vocal Trance)
via FoxyTunes

Comcast, Traffic Shaping, and the FCC

2008-02-10T02:53:00.000-05:00

Internet Service Provider Comcast has changed its Terms of Service, this change is the first in over two years. Section III in the Terms of Service now includes policies on Traffic Management.

Quote:

Comcast uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards." The company points out that it is not alone in the practice, saying that "all major" ISPs engage in some form of traffic shaping. Comcast does it to keep its subscribers from suffering the heartaches of "spam, viruses, security attacks, network congestion, and other risks and degradations of service" and to "deliver the best possible Internet experience to all of its customers.

Source: ArsTechnica

This however, did not come by until a recent investigation by the FCC which the issue was brought up by the Associated Press, and reconfirmed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Quote:

Comcast has been "caught" blocking BitTorrent traffic in some areas, according to tests performed by the Associated Press. The news organization claims to have confirmed that Comcast is blocking—or at least seriously slowing down—BitTorrent transfers, regardless of whether the content is legal or not. If true, Comcast's actions have serious implications for sharing information online, and by proxy, Net Neutrality.

This was originally sent as a tip by Vuze Inc, some the developers who made Azureus, the open source bit torrent client. This of course is in direct conflicts to thier company.

The Conclusion.

So now after some serious uproar about Comcast's Data Discrimination.
Yeah I said that right, and I know it may sound a bit funny, but its not funny anymore when your business relies on your internet traffic and then is given a side seat to someone elses. Comcast is hoping its fancy buzzwords are simply overlooked by thier ignorant customer; after all, Comcast is counting on each and every user NOT to use the entire 3 Megabits per second they payed for. For thier studies show only about half or less is in reality used. Thus, allowing the company to over sell the same tier to thier customers in a community. More profit for them, worse connection for you. But..., what about the 5 percent of customers who do use thier entire 3 Mbps. The whole pipe as you may say. Comcast knows that demographic is usually P2P traders and bittorrent users, the leeches of the network. Leeches or not they still pay for it. So in order to prevent the "heartaches of network congestion."

Quote:

Comcast has denied throttling BitTorrent traffic, saying that the ISP just "delays" or "postpones" it on occasion. One analogy used by a Comcast executive was that of trying to make a phone call and getting a busy signal for a time, until the call actually goes through. A more accurate explanation of Comcast's use of TCP reset packets, to build on the phone analogy, would be talking on the phone with someone and then both of you hearing the other's voice saying "hang up." That's the effect of the forged reset packets: convincing the BitTorrent clients that the other(s) have stopped responding.

If I was a comcast customer I would be very pissed, for those of you who are. You may weigh in on the proceedings to the the FCC on this issue. You have until Feb 13 to use the Electronic Comment Filing System for comment on WC Docket no. 07-52.

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Now playing: Rialdo Shepherd - Sour Mix (DI.fm Premium - Trance)
via FoxyTunes

My cat Tom

2008-01-06T22:42:00.001-05:00

A rescue cat from the humane society of Yuma, Tom is nine months. A happy, lazy, male cat. He came neutered and is litter box trained. One the great features about tom is he is leashed trained. Yes, that's right Tom, goes outside on cat harness and leash for walks. The thing about walking cats, they walk you, not the other way around. Unlike dogs. It is easier to go where the cat wants to go, of course with some restrictions. Tom has been me since October.

My Laptop Died!

2007-12-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

Oh noes..

my computer died! A circuit near the motherboard burnt out. My only guess is there was a lot of dust in that region and it shorted out. Sadly the only place I can find a replace for that motherbaord is on ebay. A nice $220 for a used mobo. Bah.

Anyways here is the part I'm buying on ebay

In other news. Unfortunately due to financial reasons like the one above I'm canceling my Christmas trip back home. Maybe in February I'll come home maybe sooner I really don't know yet.

I canceled my myspace account, I'm sick of it, I never liked it in the first place and full of ads and poor navigation and dumb quizzes. I'm on facebook only.

VICIOUSPC

2007-10-29T03:08:00.000-04:00

What ever happened to ViciousPC? 2 Years ago I ordered a laptop with my credit card for my buddy and roommate. It was the Ronin II Laptop from Vicious PC

Here was the original order

TEM ID: RONIN-CONFIG-554493992
ITEM NAME: [CPP4630] Intel Pentium 4 630 EM64T @ 3.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache [Add $1809]
[MNNTB00005] 15.4QuoteMark WSXGA+ 1680x1050 Wide Screen Active Matrix Color TFT LCD Display
[MMNT200004] Kingston 2GB (2 X 1GB) SODIM PC2-4200 DDR2 533MHz Memory [Add $116]
[HDNTB00011] 80GB IDE 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive [Add $150]
[VCNTB00004] nVidia GeForce Go 6800 256MB MXM Type III Video Modual w/S-Video TV out
[DVNTB00002] Internal 8X Dual Layer DVD+/- RW + 24X CDRW Rewritable Drive
[SWNON00003] Bundled Ahead Nero 6 OEM Suite DVD/CD RW Software
[SCNTB00001] Integrated AC97 Audio w/1 Mic-In, 1 Audio-Out/SPDIF out and 1 Line-In Jack
[SPCRESBS350] Creative Labs SBS 350 2.1 Stereo Speakers w/Subwoofer (Black) [Add $24]
[NCNTB00002] Built-in 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet Network Port
[NC11G00002] Built-in WiFi Wireless 802.11b/g NIC
[PTNTB00001] 1 Parallel, 1 Game/Midi, 1 Modem, 1 IEEE 1394 Firewire, 1 S-VGA Out, and 3 USB ports
[CRNTB00001] 1 Infrared, 1 Type II Card Bus PCMCIA and 3-in-1 Memory Card reader for MMC/SD/MS
[MSNON00000] None.
[SWWXP00001] Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with SP2
[DMZ81SP001] 14QuoteMark Width X 11.3QuoteMark Depth X 2.02QuoteMark Height. 9lbs.
[CBVPC00001] All Purpose Carrying Bag (MSRP $49.99, special promotion Yours for Free)
[WARRNB001] Standard Warranty - 1 Year Limited Parts, Labor, and Lifetime Tech Support
[BTNTB00001] 8-Cells Li-Ion Battery (Need to uninstall 4 screws & back plate to change battery) [Add $100]
[MDNON00001] None.
[SWSYM00001] Bundled Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005
[SWNON00001] None.
[SWNON00001] None.
, ,
ITEM PRICE: $2199.00
ITEM QTY: 1
ITEM SUM: $2199.00

-------------- TOTAL --------------
TOTAL: $2199.00
8.25% CA TAX: $163.28
Rebate: -$219.9
S&H: $55.00
DISCOUNT S&H: -$55.00
GRAND TOTAL: $2142.38

Anyways my roomie moved and purchased a smaller and newer laptop and sold me the ronin II.
Which I know currently have. My question is, What ever happened to them. I haven't yet tried calling them. But when I tried to visit thier webpage, it seems they have disappeared... All I seem to retrieve is this Taurus.Priced2go.NET. After further research on ICANN's whois here is the registry information

Domain Name: VICIOUSPC.COM
  Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
  Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
  Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
  Name Server: NS1.PRICED2GO.NET
  Name Server: NS2.PRICED2GO.NET
  Name Server: NS3.PRICED2GO.NET
  Name Server: NS4.PRICED2GO.NET
  Status: clientTransferProhibited
  Updated Date: 12-jun-2006
  Creation Date: 11-nov-2001
   Expiration Date: 11-nov-2007

The domain is set to expire in less than a month? My only guess is ViciousPC has gone out of business.
Not good, especially since, I was hoping to send in my laptop back to them to get refurbished.

The power source half works and the contacts to the battery somehow don't touch, so basically it doesn't work
without the power cord. The keyboard was sent in once by my roomie and I need to send it in again for repairs

This time the keyboard enter key broke off. One the internal cooling fans is dying and needs to be replaced,
although I probably could do that myself.
. From what I remember City of Industry is located
somewhere in Los Angeles and many Tech Companies reside there, such as Newegg.com.

Hopefully I can find a computer notebook repair company soon.

Here is some contact information I do have from ViciousPC from when I orginally placed the order 2 years ago.

Vicious PC - The Ultimate Gaming Computer

339 South Cheryl Lane

City of Industry, CA 91789

Your a nerd... Yeah so what?

2007-07-22T03:48:00.000-04:00

July 3rd, a very very important date. My wife would say it's the day we got married. I say it was the day transformers the movie came out.

Which I missed the opening. Just a few days ago my room mate and I went to see the movie, that was his second time. I had to have my wife remind me why I didn't see it that night. She gave me some excuse that the windshield wiper broke, it was storming that night (it's was true unfortunately) and the movie theater was 40 miles away.

I thought to meself, how good could a live action transformers movie look anyways?

AMAZING... I think my favorite movie was 300, now it has to be transformers. I think saying I had a hardon while watching the movie maybe exaggerating, but watching an AC-130 gunship rain bullets from the sky on an decepticon certainly had me cheering. So if your waiting for the DVD, free pirated movie or whatever. STOP
Go watch on it in theater already, you know big screen booming dolby surround sound and everything.

I happened to down a 16 oz rockstar, 160 milligrams of caffeine before the movie so I was really really wired.
(stats provided by energyfiend.com)

So what am I doing now? I downloaded a free MMORPG, Hero Online, and despite that I avoided MMO's like the plague, I'm actually enjoying it, minus the lag. Wireless gaming sucks when you have 9 other guys on your network and your host decides to torrent like a mofo.

I guess in the real world world I maybe a 20 year old guy, Enlisted in the Marine Corps, currently as a Corporal, and I could go on further saying that I'm married.

But on the dragon servers where I am 1st Dan 2 Kyu female physician. That's level 12 for all you world of warcrap players. I wield a long spear, wearing tiger armor, and lotus hairpin. That's what really matters. Oh yeah by the way it is free.
I downloaded it of bitorrent.com why? Well because it was free MMO so take that WOW.

I killed 19 greybears and 5 rouge's today....

What? Don't shake your head like that.
I'll poke you with my spear!

/me doesn't hate Blizzard, I actually diablo 2 with my wife.

Back in Arizona

2007-07-13T23:24:00.001-04:00

Alrighty, today I finished my last class in my week long seminar dedicated to building and developing websites. You know the web 2.0 way. Full of Cascading Style Sheets and the like.

I can finally go into working with dreamweaver 8 and using divs tags as my friend.

Anyways, I was trying to get this old dhtml javascript menu to work. I tried my darndest to put it into a div tag and it the location was relative to the page not the div tag I specific.

I was getting pretty angry. Then I googled for the creater of this conplex script.

Turns out I've been using outdated code. (As in 2001)

Anyways, some more net surfing later and I stumble across opencube.com quite intresting the niftiest menu creater website I've ever come across.

Now I can make CSS menus YAY!

And for those still wondering, no I haven't moved out of the barracks yet. I'm turning in all my marriage paper work tommorrow, so it'll move from there

Estimated Time probably would be mid august, but hopefully less

Only if I have to....

2007-07-06T21:39:00.001-04:00

I figured someone would send a lynch mob if I didn't post any pictures of the wedding. Anyways I published a few pictures on my photo album. More to come later as they come in.

shinigam.zoto.com

They Threw Bird Seed at me.

2007-07-06T20:40:00.000-04:00

I'm not used to wearing a ring. It feels different.

Anyways for all those who probably heard. I got married. It was quite the wild ride to get there.

It was if god himself threw out some challenges to see if I really wanted to get married.

Here's my timeline of events.

I left my work friday june 29th at 12:15 noon. Got home to my barracks room at about 1230 pm
Since I I had little time to pack all week. I rushed all my belongings into my suitcase. Knowing very well that I probably forgot something, and I did, but I'll mention that later.

I rushed to San Diego Airport from Yuma. A 180 mile drive. Mind you I haven't been to San Diego Airport in over a year and half, so I didn't remember how to get there. I asked my room mate the directions on how to get there. (Usually I go online and print them out, when ever I'm traveling, but I didn't have time.)

I heard him tell go all they way down Interstate 8 and don't go on I-5. So I drove and drove and drove. And before you know it. I was in Point Loma, I misheard him, he really said don't go north on I-5. I was supposed to go south on interstate 5. By the time I reoriented myself. I found the airport about 20 minutes later.

I still had to find a place to park. I found a parking garage with a shuttle service to airport. Perfect. I look at my watch. 4:30 pm.

"Shoot." I think to myself.

I remained calm and I call my airline to let the gate know I'm not going to make my flight. The customer rep, told me I'd have to cancel my entire flight and rebook a new one for 400 some odd dollars. I thought he was crazy. So I nonchalantly told him to cancel my flight.

I remember my dad used to go to the airport and purchase an airline ticket that day. How hard could it be? I soon learned my lesson.

My flight left to Houston at 4:55 pm, that last flight of the day leaving towards there. (But I didn't know that.) I get lost in the terminals trying to find an airline that flies to Baton Rouge.

It was either Delta for 855 dollars or continental. The same airline I just told to screw off..

After one hour I give up. I call my airline again, this time I'm not as calm and reserved as I was before. I manage to get my itinerary adjusted albeit, at nice chunk of change of 352 dollars. It was that or I don't go see my finance. So I booked a hotel over the phone at California Suites Hotel, a place I stayed at 2 years ago when I graduated boot camp.

A place my parents booked, but I never knew the cost until after I realized the price.

A fairly nice place to sleep with good security. http://www.californiasuiteshotel.com/ Still a hundred bucks a night still put a dent in my pocket. Dead tired, I leave the airport, hope a ride on the shuttle back to the parking garage. Pay my 9 dollar parking ticket fee and I leave. Finally I check in at the front desk of the hotel and I find my room. I use the room's internet, check my email, whilst debating to myself sleepy and hungry. I ponder the effort, of getting up going to my car and driving back in to San Diego traffic for a bite to eat. I decided against my hunger. I choose sleep.

The next morning, I still somehow managed to get stuck in traffic. I return to the same parking garage, trying once more this time to squeeze my nissan sentra into these ridiculously tiny parking spaces. That I pay 14 dollars a day for, no matter. I have more important things to think about. Luckily for me there was shuttle ready, so I quickly hop aboard. Arriving at San Diego Airport I'm confronted with a long line waiting to check in. I silently want to kick myself because I could've saved myself the trouble and checked in online. I check in my bags, and in horror. I see a 20 minutes line waiting to go through security. Jesus, my heart is thumping, I'm nervous, that I won't make it AGAIN. Security pulls me to the side, one of those random inspection things and wipes my laptop to check for bombs or whatever they check for. I throw on my shoes and run to the gate.

Final Call. I made it. I breathe a sigh of relief once I found my seat on the plane. I look at my second boarding pass and smile knowing that I have little layover time in Houston Bush airport.

How wrong I was.

Continental CANCELED my flight. And the next available flight to baton rouge was the next day. I wasn't about bear the bad news again to my finance. I tell her to go back to her aunt's where she was waiting for me the majority of the day.

There was another option. Fly into New Orleans, and my bags go to baton rouge. In New Orleans customer service will present me a travel voucher so I can take a taxi. Fine I settle with the latter option.

I fly into Louis Armstrong airport, walk around the airport, only to find every continental desk and kiosk is empty with no continental employees, to hand my travel voucher.

Now I'm screwed. I'm not about to make my girl friend drive 2 hours to New Orleans because the airline company screwed up. The first time I missed my flight, fine I accepted my responsibility of not being up and I ponied up the cash to fix my error. This time I just got screwed. I call customer service over the phone. I had to try 3 different numbers till I got someone live, explained my situation. Continental wanted me to pay the taxi and they offer to reimburse me. I was like no way. A taxi ride to baton rouge?! I can't afford that.

I speak to the supervisor, he soon finds 1 employee left. She works at baggage claim. I take the escalator downstairs explain to her my situation. After few long moments she gives me my travel voucher which I then give to my cab driver, waiting outside for me. A cab drive back to baton rouge, a sweet reunion with my girlfriend. And another drive back to Mississippi. PHEW!

The next day we drive to New Orleans, stay the night at fellow marine's apartment. Courtesy of my direct superior, it was his old subordinate he contacted that put me and girlfriend up for the night.

The next morning, I head over Marine Forces Reserve base in New Orleans, where my promotion warrant is faxed to the unit down there. A few long hot and humid hours later. A small promotion ceremony is held. My girlfriend pins on my corporal chevrons. We head back to Mississippi again, this time to get some long awaited rest.

July 3rd. I have everything ready. I check my uniform. I'm good. Or so I thought
My girlfriend and I pick up her best friend ( the maid of honor) about a hour drive north and then all 3 of us head towards Baton Rouge, LA. (By this time I'm tired of traveling) We arrive at my girlfriend's grandmother's house, 4 hours prior to the wedding which starts at 2. All the guests arrive everything is ready. At about 1:30 pm. I forgot my White Belt that belongs to my uniform and the I didn't pick up my belt buckle. NCOs have the marine corps emblem while junior Marine's belt buckle is just solid smooth brass. In horror I felt like I just ruined the entire wedding.

My father in law calls the local recruiting office where I'm rushed over there to borrow it for the wedding.

I get back to find out my finance forgot the marriage license back in Mississippi. A 2 and half hour drive back and forth to pick it up. Around 6pm the Justice of Peace comes back and finally he weds. my wife and I.

4 minutes and 52 seconds later. The ceremony is over.
But of course the guests want thousands of pictures. The cutting of the cake. My wife and I are getting tired of wearing our wedding clothes. Finally after the cutting of the cake we both go and change into something more comfortable.

(I noticed a put on a few pound since boot camp, since I felt the squeeze around the waist from my trousers.)

We left, my now grandmother in law's house whilst the guest threw bird seed at us. Since rice is no longer allowed.

That night we drove home. My wife and I were relieved that everything was finally over. We return the belt to recruiting station. I most certainly was giving a hard time for that one.

Okay, okay it is finally OVER. Christ I was tired and I wanted to get home.

Then the wiper's on my wife's truck broke, and it started to storm....

What was the worst part of it all? I missed the opening day of Transformers the Movie.

NMCI Logon For Yuma

2007-06-05T19:40:00.001-04:00

I was one pissed Lance Corporal when I wrote the old article years ago, after seeing some traffic referrals people aren't really interested how much I hate NMCI. Just read about NMCI on wikipedia they aren't going anywhere for a LONG time.

Now being a bit wiser and more courteous as an NCO. I'll see if I can give a few tips to you, I bet if your reading this yoour probably a marine using google to solve everything, your in luck. I wrote this as one of the guys who works in S6 data section.

Short an Simple for those trying to check thier email from outside the NMCI domain. Your probably looking for NMCI Outlook Web Access (OWA).
Your logon will be like mcdsus/firstname.lastname MCDSUS standing for Marine Corp Domain Server United States, I think not really sure but it makes the most sense to me.) You will be needing Active Client 6.1 the common Access card reader software installed on your machine and card reader which can be obtained from your data or isc section the software is available MCNOSC website, your better get this ahead of time on government machine, because MCNOSC requires CAC login, along with most marine corps sites.

f your looking for NMCI remote dial in support. Headquarters Marine Corps has a nice PDF on how to go about this.

For those who are checking in or getting a new account for your first time you'll be needing access to your respective unit shared drives. Save yourself some trouble print out your Annual Information Assurance Training Certficate, you know the one you did (or were supposed to do every year) but gaffed it off because you think your too busy to do it, WRONG Answer. Every Marine needs to have this training completed annually. I don't care who you are, eve if your some pissed off, salty,disgruntled Master Guns that eats boot PFCs for breakfast.

Thinking I'm bullshitting too? This isn't some local unit policy that I'm pulling out of my ass. I'm getting this from the Government Information Security Act (GISRA), Public Law 106-398, dated October 30, 2000. Here I'll go even a step further and give you the link to the document. www.fdic.gov/formsdocuments/1360-16.doc the training presentation will tell you the same thing

Basically, it's a federal mandate that every employee in the federal government needs to get this done. Seriously this takes about 20-30 minutes of your time.Your not even supposed to have an email account on NMCI, NIPR, or SIPR. if you haven't completed this training. Its nothing more than click through slide show and there isn't any test, just enroll in it in Marine Net and print out the certificate, and lucky for you this training should show up in your Marine Online account BTR folks. As for your ID make sure you know your 6-8 digit CAC pin number, otherwise wait until you check in to your ISC/Data before heading to Pass & ID (expect waits up to a couple hours on busy days over there.)

I bet you'd like me to make things easier if I gave the number of every S6 in yuma, but well that's not the best idea. Look for 2008 phone directory guide, or ask for it. It used to be on the stations website http://yuma.usmc.mil/info/newhere.html, but it turned out to be OPSec issue of posting government telephones to the public. Just call the number listed there an ask for the operator.

Lastly trying to just update your account info in the GAL? You can do yourself, either send a nice email to the helpdesk, or follow this steps. Start > Search > For People

Find your self by typing your account info firstname.lastname, make sure the drop down is set to active directory. Once you located yourself double click your name to pull up the properties (or you can right click and get the menu to select properties) You'll see the sections that are not grayed out you can just change them yourself. Apply or OK your changes and voila. This is actually the quickest way to do this, its about an average 2 day minimum business day turn around if you have you S6 do it. In fact the only thing that the ISC and Data can do is apply security permissions to the shared drive and manage the unit's email distrobution list. Everything else(New accounts, account changes, more computers etc.) is submitted via an electronic form which must get screened by an intermediary civilian called a CTR, that person then submits the approval to EDS. Yes, the civilian CTR frequently disapprove requests by marine data/isc sections all the time, mostly for incorrect information on the request or funding issues.) EDS is the primary contracting company Headquartered in San Diego California, that's where your helpdesk calls go to as well. EDS will either help you over the phone. That's usually a Tier 1 helpdesk personnel, then make a trouble ticket an escalate it to the according department. If it is a hardware related issues. EDS will contact the civilian BASE OPs, managed by Harris another civilian contracting company and actually work with your issue. On a good day this is usually handled in about a week.

Well if this post has helped, feel free to leave a thanks or just post any questions, I probably could answer. For the record this post is in no way an authorized or sanctioned government form. This is just a blog trying to the help the lost soul (I've been there all to many times)who often gets the run around by poorly trained individuals. Think of it as an unofficial guide.

The cat is out of the bag.

2007-05-29T11:12:00.000-04:00

She knows.

Who?

My mother...

She finally knows. Oh well, she threatened, she argued her point on how I owe her common courtesy, blah blah blah. I owe no-one anything. Period.

saturday night

2007-05-13T00:36:00.000-04:00

You know what it is like to live in barracks? Well it is very very similar to living in a dorm. Small cramped rooms and usually with a room mate.

Right now I'm smelling the aroma of popcorn emitting from someone's room. Currently I have not followed up on this investigation.

Imagine your significant other arising in the middle of night to raid the freezer for some ice cream. And not stirring you from your sleep, to invite you and share some. Sure the can easily go into defense about how they didn't want to wake you from your slumber.

Then again you can rebuttal with the fact that he/she knows you well enough to know that you've happily gotten up to ice cream.

Who wouldn't on a weekend?

I am very much guilty of being not interested in candy until I either pass by it at grocery isle or watch someone else eat it. Luckily, with all my fortitude (I'm using laziness to my advantage actually) I didn't get up to get popcorn myself.

Tomorrow is mother's day.

I could be like millions of Americans spending money to show care and affection by buying flowers or cards. I refuse, to place my concern of care for my mother on a materialistic show of affection that hallmark continues to thrive on, my money. Some my say it is the thought that counts. So if it that is so...

Tomorrow, I'll place a long distance phone call to my mom. Ask how the dog is doing so on and so forth, I guess this is where I have to say happy mother's day too.
Tell her about my life and what not.

Sounds terrible huh, not to really have to much care for it all. Personally I'm not a person who likes to tell people I love them. In fact I hate it. Words are cheap. Hell, publishing this is free for me on blogger.com. My preference is show. The things I do towards someone or another is my display of my affection of love. Purchasing something trivial like flowers will wither and die in a few days to a week time, or another card that will be put on displayed somewhere in her home for a while only to be placed in a box of other cards from many years ago.

So, my act of calling and pretending to care. Is really my way of showing, if there was something I could do for you right now, I would. That's my way of showing happy mother's day.
Me being in the Sonoran desert and her in the mid-west. Makes it difficult to do so however.

In retrospect, earlier today. When I woke up a friend's house, passed out from drinking the night before. She cooked breakfast, for the rest of her guests and me. Most of my friends are guys, either married or single. But even if I stay the night over. I refuse to let a buddy's wife cook breakfast for me. I really hate to inconvenience someone for it, especially their wife.

Me coming over for dinner that night and drinking into the night is fine. And as a good friend letting me sleep at his place since I'm drunk and can't drive home is cool too, but to wake up and then having his wife cook breakfast and staying to eat, is definitely overstaying my welcome. So I make it a habit of leaving before they can offer me breakfast, so I won't have to be impolite and refuse.
The very definition of: Thanks, but no thanks.

So back to the story, I found it heart warming I suppose is the best way to say it. To sit down and enjoy a home cooked breakfast. This time I was a female friend's house, I found it kind of hard to sit there and watch her cook breakfast for a 5 of us, by herself in her own home.

"Someone is about to actually make me breakfast..." I thought in amazement. "And of course there is nothing I can really do to help her, after all this is her apartment." I went back to watching a Mrs. Doubtfire, and older movie I have heard of but never watched until now.

When breakfast was made, Myself, Corey, and our lady friend Kerri sat at the small table. The other 2 eating in the living room.

Half way through our meal. It was Corey, who sat there looking a bit saddened and nostalgic, who said.

"This reminds me of home." When our friend Kerri asked him what's wrong,

Kerri being genuinely concerned. Most likely wondering why he suddenly paused from eating the eggs and pancakes she cooked and he staring at.

"I know what you mean, I haven't had a home cooked breakfast since Thanksgiving day of last year." I said.

Mostly as to explain what he was trying to convey for I felt the same thing too, and to also reassure Kerri that her cooking wasn't the issue of his perplexity

"Me either, well actually since last Christmas day." Corey replied.

"Kerri, I envy you. You can come home and cook home cooked meals in your kitchen." I said.

Most of us forget that the single guys stuck in the barracks, usually have to rely on chow hall or going out to eat for our food, so when do have the chance to sit down and enjoy a home cooked meal. Really goes out and means something. Especially if we have gone many months without one.

I'll have to make note of thanking mom for her home cooked meals over the years. I've grown to miss it. Speaking about home cooking. Mom told me years ago about and old story from Mexico.

Something about 2 lovers; a man and woman. I want to say it was around the days of the Mexican revolution, it was supposedly a common belief back then that depending on the woman's emotion that day, it reflected upon her cooking. So that if she was happy and in good spirits her cooking would turn out in reflection of it also. So overall her cooking was fine and tasted well, especially since she was in love with her husband during the course of their marriage.
Turns out, somewhere down the line, her husband cheats on his wife with another woman. Upon finding out later, she does not display her dismay to her husband openly.
However heartbroken, sad, hurt, and angry. She cooks for him that night as usual waiting for him to come home. Her emotions while cooking were high and running wild. Her tears fell into meal, her hair was disarrangement. Her face clearly showed her emotional turmoil. She ravagedly finished the meal, and placed it on the table.
At dinner the man and the wife eat the meal without a word spoken. Shortly afterwards they both died. The causes were unknown to most, for the food wasn't physically poisoned, but we know it was emotionally. She died from a broken heart, and he died of ingesting that painful heart ache that went into her cooking of the meal.

I think safe to assume if your girlfriend of wife that day is angry or sad her cooking probably going to show in how well it tastes, that's IF she cooks for you buddy.

I don't remember the story to too well (probably another thing I can ask mom about.) But the general idea, is that too explain common Mexican culture, and why we always offer food and drink to guests at our homes, and why we insist on it. I take it is our way of saying here is our thanks for you coming to our home. Please enjoy this meal.

Or maybe its a good explanation behind
Barriga llena corazon contenta.
or
Pansa llena corazon contena.

A full belly is happy heart.
A common Spanish parable my dad and grandpa used to say.

Sunday

2007-05-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

Today I woke up on the sofa of a buddy's house. My head was throbbing, and If remember correctly I ended up losing my dinner of boneless wings from chilli's on the toilet, It certainly didn't taste well going back up.

I don't even know what I drank last night. Add a mixture of 3 different hookah flavors, sex on the beach, white peach, and I believe some tropical punch mix. I certainly had fun. I one again lost in playing billiards. Some one dropped hot coals on me not once, but twice, and I went undisputed in air hockey.

I need to do laundry, clean my car, and whole list of menial errands to do.

I hate Sunday's its the whole feeling of man I have to work tomorrow.
I left my cell phone at home on accident. So I missed 6 calls from my girlfriend. and 3 voice mails, and I almost got pissed on by a dog.

And I'm probably going to watch the movie 300 again at 5.

09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

2007-05-03T02:11:00.000-04:00

"I've should have not gone out for wings last night."

Man, I'm feeling it this morning, or I could be the 3 large cokes to go along with it.

I did a nice an easy 4 mile run today.

ummm... no! It was an Indian 4 mile run.
I felt it for the better half of the day on my calves.

I could blog about something about my day. But if anything I'm tired so, that's all for now.

Resolution

2007-05-02T00:43:00.000-04:00

This blog is stale, and you know what it frankly sucks. It's been up for about 3 years, and over the past few years I've gotten a few reviews from friends and a few family members how they enjoy my randomness online.

I just finished googling how to blog. I just finished reading how to blog by tonypierce. Any who, I figured you know what, he's right, so in efforts I'm going to attempt to blog everyday. About anything, yeah that's right that means my dirty laundry is coming out. So read it, enjoy it, hate it.

So who here, assuming there is someone here wants to hear the juicy details about me?

Alright lets start with a good one. I'm getting married
No Shit? seriously no shit. In fact I'll be attending a pre marriage class this Thursday. Go me.
How about this one? I haven't told my folks yet. Oooh...Yeah now its starting to get good huh.

In fact, I don't even care to, I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually or another. I bet y'all are thinking talk about some ingrate son right there. Won't even tell his own mother or father about an import chapter in his life?

Yep, more or less. I've been living thousands of miles away from home now, and it's been about 2 years since I left home. (Joined the marines, fall all those new to the show.) It's not that I don't love or care about my parents and friends and family, but in fact its not something that should concern them.

Let me throw some background info out there, for the most of my teenage hood, I was low-key introverted guy, mostly keeping to myself. For the longest time I've always felt I had a different way of thinking, from my family and especially my extended family. I'm a person who feels weird at family functions and gatherings. Often I'll bring something to entertain me, a computer, a game, something that I can occupy my time and keep me entertained while the rest of the family socializes. I'll come to the dinner table share a meal, pretty much bullshit about life. Yeah school is good, this is my plans. Listen to everybody else's daily lives. So on and so forth. But, things most of my family I puzzled, things like:

why do I dislike Spanish so much? My family's native tongue, and my first language, but not dominate. Why I choose to speak Japanese? How come I don't have a girl friend yet? Why in the hell are you choosing to join the fucking marines during a war? I'm sure they were thinking that too. Why did you stop going to church and decided to a Buddhist? When you went to catholic school all of your elementary and junior high life?

And you know what, I'm kinda grew tired of the questions, the perplexed looks. Sure the general consensus is he's a good kid, just a bit weird, and possibly a dork.

Screw all of that, pretty much my senior year I grew tired of the visiting my relatives.

Moving on, I suppose as time has go on, life is for the most part constant back home. My sister grows a year older in elementary school, mom and dad are still working. It's my life however that keeps evolving and changing. Living and stationed in California 2005-2006, being deployed overseas 2006-2007, living in Arizona till present day. Meeting a wonderful girl. That yeah I met online.

Let me flashback abit, October of 2006, My girlfriend, at the time she wasn't but anyways, met my Aunt or vice versa. I introduced them to each other, now for my relatives this is the first time I formally or in fact show them anything about my personal relationship. I'm out in the open with it, at the time I said she's just a friend visiting, my aunt isn't stupid and i'm sure she saw something probably going on between us. But the way she persued the question upon how we met really bothered me.

"Where are you from?" My aunt asks,

"Mississippi/Louisiana" My girlfriend responds,

now my aunt is trying to put 2 and 2 together and figure out, how in the world did I meet my girfriend? Is she military? Stationed with me perhaps? I respond no. The light bulb went off, everybody in the family knows I'm crack with computers. This guy must have met her online... Bingo! that must be it. MMMMHMMM I've seen this before. Just look at the news.

Of Course she never said that', but I knew exactly what she was thinking just by her lit up expression.

"Nope" I responded nonchalantly.

"Then how?" she questioned again.

"We just met?", I deflected back.

"How? Online? I know it, it must have been online?" she responds, putting a little bit more emphasis on her words as if to let me knew, I wasn't fooling anyone.

"Nah"

And for the most part I became annoyed on how persistent she was. What business of hers was it on how we met? If anything I'll be giving her some ammunition as friend of mine would like to call it. I know all to well how eager should would love to gossip this to the rest of the womenfolk in my family.

After that I decided I'm tired of announcing my life to my family watching their judgmental thoughts formulating in their minds. Screw it, I'm just going go do it. And if I feel like it, I'll let them know afterwards, how about that? I'll give them something to gossip out. And maybe they (my family) can try to figure me out. Do I care of their wishes, opinions, gripes, bitches or complains? Nope, It's my life. Not theirs, I really don't need their input or unwanted advice on how to live life. It seems nowadays everyone and their mother wants to get in their 2 cents.

Sorta of a "you can leave, but before you got let me say this."

Nah, fuck that crap. No buts, I'm leaving, and leave your final thoughts on your side of the door I just slammed and walked out of.

See ya tomorrow.

random tid bits

2007-04-29T14:53:00.000-04:00

I've gotten into reading fan fiction. For those who already know I'm a subtle evangelion fan. A fellow colleague of mine has been writing an evangelion fan fiction for a while now, he recently asked me to read and review his works. I must say that I am nothing short of impressed. Regardless of whether or not your into "anime" his writings are very good.
I recommend reading his stories, In the Mind of a child and Undiscovered Feelings .

Elsewhere, I don't care who you are, if your reading this right now, you know that having no internet is not cool.
Anyways, what's worse is being stuck in a place where 'A' your browsing is limited to things such as a school, work, or government filter.

Today I'm writing about How I got internet to work on my laptop via my cell phone. As I previously mentioned last time I was at WTI. Here's my GPS coordinates. 32 36 8 N 114 12 22 W

Here's the things I had. A V3 Razr Cell phone. Service Provided by Cingular

Motorola Phone Tools, USB Data Cable , and laptop

A while back my cell phone wall charger broke,

most likely from abuse the wiring got frayed.
Anyways I went to best buy looking for a replacement.

Unfortunately I only found a portable charger
that requires 1 AA cell, I also purchased a car charger
Since I already had AA/AAA cell charger it would be easy for me to have a constant source to charge my phone.

Too bad my plan back fired, the cheaply made turbo charger broke. I believe the internal contacts shifted or something. And suddenly I could not charge my cell phone, Well while at WTI, another fellow colleague told me I could charge my cell phone using my usb data cable. Not only that however I can also use it to synchronize my contacts and type out text messages on my computer. Then I discovered that motorola phone tools also has an option to connect to internet, using my cell phones GPRS to connect to the internet. Now my cell phone plan Media Works 1500 bundle. Which included 1500 text messages and 5MB of internet, on my WAP browser, for a price of an additional 15 dollars a month. Well I realized I hardly ever text message second if I'm about to use my cell phone for internet I'll most certainly need more 5 MBs of data. So I switch to the Media Max + M2M for 25 dollars, which gives me unlimited data, unlimited cingular to cingular text messages and 200 normal text messages.

Anyways for those wondering how fast the internet was. I believe it wasn't to bad. A bandwidth of 230 Kbps which is about 4 times the bandwidth of standard dial up, not too shabby. However it was the latency(the amount of time) was terrible. I pinged google.com at 1500 millisecond. Something Dial up could do around 150-200 Milliseconds, or on a high speed around 20-60 milliseconds.

WTI

2007-04-08T03:36:00.000-04:00

I've been away from town for a while. I'm currently participating in a military exercise called WTI (Weapons and Tactics Instructor) You can read what it is from an old 2002 article. I'm out in the middle of the Arizona Desert. Probably the closest town would be wellton, At night it looks like it is about 3 miles out. Unfortunately things appear much closer in the desert when in reality I'm 15-20 miles away.

Speaking of unfortunate. I came across an arizona shrub, while laying fiber optic cable. Now for any of you who have ever worn sturdy pants and boots. For the most part your safe when it comes to spines, thorns and needles, but not when it comes to the Koeberlinia spinosa. This shrub is one mean sonofabitch. This plant takes no prisoners...

I was awalking down the street singing dowadiddy diddy dum diddy do.
More like in the dirt and sand...
When suddenly I feel this stab in my pants, I of course stop and look down and see this plant poking through my desert camouflaged trousers. I gently tuck at it only to feel it also is jammed deep into my leg. Now I dunno about you, but this motherfucker hurt. Now my sergeant was waiting for me to to keep going and he gave me 2 choices, either he pulls it out or me. It didn't take me more than a moment to realize "Oh, hell no!" he would all but enjoy pulling it out. Screw that. I slowly pull it out, amazed and how much of spines have gotten into my leg. Tossing it aside only to step a few feet further and get stabbed through the boot. D'oh!

Description from Link:
Armed To the hilt. These are among the sharpest of all Sonoran Desert spines!

Wish I would've known that sooner.

I should be coming back to civilization by the end of April.

The Way I see it by eno2001

2007-02-06T01:24:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps one of the most insightful posts about the state of the internet. In the following brief comment, I believe the author holds true about the current web 2.0 internet we see today.
The internet is degrading where we live in a life full of consumerism, click revenue ads. And pay to buy everything and anything. A marketing tool where we see billionaires made.

"...as soon as profit becomes the motivation in ANY area of life, the quality of that area decreases tremendously. In the case of Microsoft and the internet, this is quite obvious. Sure, they are financially successful, but they have as yet to prove themselves on the technical front. There are many things that I cannot do in Windows, that I can do on alternate platforms. To me, it's all about technical prowess and not popularity or financial gain. From that viewpoint, Microsoft is mediocre at best.

Just to give you a few analogies. Back before the web was what it is today, there was a time when Usenet was where you went for "community" and information. Back then, you could be somewhat more trusting that the person on the other side of the wire was what they said they were and the information was valid. You were interacting with the "best of the best" in the various scientific fields. At that time, the internet was not what one would consider a financial success. But it was much more successful as a tool for self education and research. (Hell, I got a response from Stephen J. Hawking that I was allowed to use in a college paper at a state school in the U.S. How cool is that?)

So why were things so much better back then? There was a natural filter in place. A barrier to entry. You HAD to be more intelligent back then to get on the net. You had to be able to deal with your computer at a deeper level than just pointing and clicking. Or, you had to be a member of an organization that was either military, research or academic. There was a silent selection process going on that ensured that people would be of a certain level of intelligence to be able to join in. As soon as Netscape was released to the Masses and companies like AOL switched from their private proprietary networks to the internet, that filter started to dissolve.

Today, ANY idiot with enough cash or access to a computer at work can jump online and post anything he or she wants to. They can be as "authoritative" as they want. Why did this happen? Because the true point of the internet (free exchange of information, ideas, collaboration on culturally and globally beneficial non-profit projects) was lost.

Instead it became a business tool to be used by one tech company to try and beat another one to death with. It became a pitched battle to be fought to the financial death of your competitor. So, Joe Dumbass was allowed onto the internet to cultivate and share his collection of porn as well as try and "hook up" with "hot chix". Jane Dumbass was allowed to get online and post her mixed photo album of baby photos, various lovers and erotic photos to say, "This is me and I rule. I take your man. I love my baby's daddy". The businesses don't care as long as they get their monthly fee paid. Yea profit motive. Way to go there. Taking what could have been a great way to augment collevtive intellience and once again (as with radio and television) and slowly turning it into another brain sucking avenue for profits and consumerism.

There was even an early time on the web where a search in Altavista would give you decent results on various topics without providing many links to companies that sell related products. But today, no matter which search engine you use, various searches inevitably turn up a lot of dreck that is meant to convince you to BUY a solution to a problem instead of BUILD one. It's no wonder that I've resorted to using Wikipedia when I have questions about things as well as AUGMENTING the information with the subscription databases that my public library provides to it's members for free. At least following those routes, one can avoid the McNet for the most part. "

Original Post on slashdot

Perform Act

2007-01-13T15:49:00.001-05:00

Dear Senator,

After finding out more information from Technology News Websites
about the Perform Act

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8609.html
and
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004587.php

I was greatly alarmed. This bills imposes restrictions to the freedoms of Internet Radio Listeners and broadcasters. Corporations Such as the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) are constantly pushing bills such as these into congress.

Personally I'm an huge advocate for freedoms on the Internet. To help curb copyright infringement often mislabeled as 'piracy'
I am Paid Subscriber to an Internet Radio station, that complies with current law as pays its respective licensing dues.

This law would force my favorite radio station to change its broadcasting technologies passing down costs on the consumer. And only to find out I can not make a recording of segment of radio for later listening, even after paying for appropriate dues? What's the difference of Watching Cable or Satellite TV. Something that requires payment of Monthly Subscription, and using something like TiVo to record my shows and watch later. This time, however its applied to Radio. Only soon to find out I can not do it. It will laced with Digital Restriction Management, A severely limiting technology that more often than not will also affect the quality of radio streams.

Internet Radio would have to face costs similar to that of Satellite. I already pay my dues. My Internet Bill and my Internet Radio Bill. Why would I be subjected to purchase another personally digital music player. I already have an 'mp3 player' I'd like continue listening to my radio shows and music on it. How much more money do I have to Contribute to Corporations such as the RIAA. Is it so wrong for consumers and radio listeners to have the ability and freedom to choose how they listen to music, where they listen and when?

As an American we have laws for good reasons. But when laws are forced upon us only to make us pay more? It's almost like the stamp tax act we read on history. Where England would impose taxes on all paper items. Even Playing Cards!

Please Say No.

Sincerely,

Lance Corporal Rodriguez
United States Marine

last.fm

2006-12-18T21:18:00.000-05:00

I haven't downloaded an illegal song for a quite a few years now. Lately I've been downloading free DJ mixes using bit torrent from my favorite DJ. Or listening to high quality internet radio.

I've posted about DI.FM gotten a few friends into it. It has to best selection of trance and very similar out there. Recently however I discovered last.fm Sort of a evolving music internet player. Remember what you liked and disliked offering new songs and artists.

Really just check it out. And of course like all decent internet radio if your not on high speed. Don't bother.

Smoking

2006-11-26T23:36:00.000-05:00

Today I started smoking cigarettes. And I'm hating life. I bought my first pack of Marlboro Reds
Yup the Cowboy killers. Why? We'll mostly because my girlfriend smokes, so in effort to help her stop I decided to take up smoking. She doesn't want me to get started. Despite how much I hate it. I smoked it, and it sucked so bad.
My lungs hurt, everything tastes funny. I got this wierd buzz. And the fingers and hand I smoked the cigarette with smell AWFUL. Not to mention i have headache too. I don't get how people get addicted to this things. Anyways, the I promised myself I will smoke as many as she does. Which is like 3 a day. I can barely finish one. They are so harsh. I begged and pleaded for awhile over the phone so she can stop tomorrow. because I don't want to imagine going through another one of them motherfuckers. Although I owe her a big one now. Somehow I think its worth it. But until then. I HATE CIGARETTES!

Veteran's Day Weekend

2006-11-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

Hello everybody. It's been awhile since I've last posted. For the most part everything has been ok.
Recently I attended my first Marine Corps ball. I had a blast, wish I had more photos of the event. I took my girlfriend as my date. I met yet another IRC(internet relay chat) member and stayed at her house for a few days. Anyways just yesterday I was admitted to the ER in Parker, Arizona. About 2 hours north from my home duty station in Yuma, AZ. Around 11:30 at night while laying in bed I became suddenly dizzy, my hands and arms were tingling. Head felt Dizzy and I had some slurred speech. My GF got real worried and called the paramedics. I was soon taken to the Local Hospital. Not much is known of what happened. The doctor contacted a Neurology Doctor in Nevada, and could not come up to a clear diagnosis. Besides some initial High Blood pressure and abnormally high level of Carbon Monoxide. Even though there was no Carbon Monoxide present in the house I was staying at. The Docs even checked my Girlfriend to rule out the possibility of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. I was put on on oxygen to flush out all carbon monoxide anyways. About a couple hours later from initially being admitted to the emergency room. I was quite fine. My speech became back to normally and all dizziness went away. I was discharged from the hospital around 3:45 am. And I'm due for a follow up on tuesday. As of now I feel perfectly normal, but the Doc doesn't want me doing any activity till I've been followed up on by Navy Medical.

Back to Work

2006-10-22T23:03:00.000-04:00

Well I've been there done that. In the past couple weeks. I've Been to Michigan, Indiana, Lousiana, Mississippi, and California.

Cities Visited: South Bend, Detriot, Chicago, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Gloster, and Los Angles.

And specially someone convinced me to do myspace. Despite all my badmouthing on it.

http://myspace.com/shinigam

and visit new photos at

http://shinigam.zoto.com

Well Back to Work in Arizona. Bummer. :(

One last stop

2006-10-04T04:17:00.000-04:00

I flew over the Golden Dome of Notre Dame Yesterday, now that was pretty cool. Anyways as you probably just figured. I've arrived back to visit my hometown with everybody in it. I leave back to Arizona Oct 20th.

Back!

2006-09-17T03:03:00.000-04:00

Its nice to be setting down, enjoying the fine things in life..
For me its streaming music off DI.FM Once again my life is jacked into a high speed interent connection. And for those out there who gave me a holler whilst I was half way around the world thanks. I've gone a shopping storm. Purchased 21 inch wide screen monitor today. That I swear is best thing since sliced bread. I'll probably be buying my own ride soon, so I get to and from work. Ah, back to the grind. But it won be before long, I'll be on vacation. Visting Friends and Family.

Its great to be back. And just in time to watch college football. Not a good day for the Irish though, left a sour taste in my mouth... But anyways
drop me a line say whatever, and turn up the volume!

Going Home

2006-07-24T02:02:00.000-04:00

You can go to another blog site, to see new and exciting news about iraq. This ain't it. I didn't do jack, Was bored for my entire deployment. This isn't OIF 1 or 2. That sums up my deployment. Watch Jarhead, take out the action, implement the boredom, and add some luxurys.
Yeah there was bombs that hit nearby, every here and there. I don't lose sleep over it. I just,kinda ingore it, kinda like people notice emergency vehicle sirens, "Oh that sucks, better move out the way." I'm not complaining about how rough life was out here. I'm sure the Gulf War veterans would scoff at the stuff I had out here. Hot showers, hot chow, access to internet and phones.
Even a post exchange. Yeah, I ate MREs, saw the fabled camel spiders. Encountered the heat and the sandstorms. But all in all it sucks out here. And don't plan on making myself look some hero, or sound more exciting than it was, I don't want to talk about this when I get back. Boring deployment, waste of 7 months of life I'm never getting back. Least I got combat zone pay, not like I shot anybody anyways, the theme out here is 'combat garrison'. Don't get me wrong there is other places and people out here that 'get some'. Just not me.

I'll be getting a new vehicle when I get back. Oh which should be hmm september.

I'll post pictures and maybe even some video when I get back into the states with a faster internet connection. Until then, stay cool.

-Out

alive and kicking

2006-03-09T07:48:00.000-05:00

You know I should be getting as much sleep possible before my next post. But of course. The internet is like an addicting drug. Anyways heres an update.

Iraq well its Iraq.

I was promoted march 1st out here in the field in some tent. To Lance Corporal.
E-3.

The funny thing is normally I would have so much to say. But since i'm exhausted as of right now. Can't really think of much.

I think the Montgomery-Gentry is coming here to the base. Who they are I have no clue. But I guess they are some one important. Anyways I guess it something to do while i'm out here. I'll let you know how the shows goes.

: )

Whale's Inside

2006-02-20T21:30:00.000-05:00

Deciding to do something my last weekend before I fly out the States, I was invited with friends and thier family to SeaWorld in San Diego, California. Beware of Gift shops... I purchased a stuffed Penguin. Because we all know penguins will take over the world. And for all you polar bear lovers who say no. Think about it this way. Polar Bears can only eat so many penguins. Eventually the Polar Bear defenses will be over run with hundreds to thousands of penguins.

Its official

2006-02-16T23:14:00.000-05:00

I got the offical word. Feb 23, Im flying out. Here's the hops
Yuma - New York - Germany - Kuwait - Iraq

I also hear I get to bring my rifle on the plane. Heh, take that airport security.

Disneyland!

2006-02-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

So Yesterday I check into my New Duty Station in Marine Corps Air Base Yuma, Arizona.

No more than 10 minutes of meeting the big chiefs they asked if I want to go to Disneyland. So of course with joy I shot my hand up in the air.

Anyways, I leave in 17 days to Alasad Air Base, Iraq.

I'll be doing convoy security. So I get to play groundpounder for 6 months.
checking for IEDs and stuff.

I even hear they have a Burger King and Starbucks out there too..

Anyways after I get back I plan to come home for 30 days. I try my best to bring back pictures.

Hard Drive Calculator

2006-02-05T17:26:00.000-05:00

I wrote this in Python. Its a simple calculator. Enjoy : )

# CHS Calculator
# Copyright (C) 2005 Gabriel Rodriguez
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
# Contact Me via email
# shinigam@gmail.com

print
print "Welcome to the CHS Hard Disk Drive Calculator"
print "---------------------------------------------"
print

# Print the formula

print "The formula for calculating Hard Disk size is: "
print "(Sector Bytes) x (Sectors) x (Cylinders) x (Heads) "
print "*note the industry standard size for sector bytes is 512"
print

# Input section

sectors = input("Please enter the Sectors: ")
cylinders = input("Please enter the Cylinders: ")
heads = input("Please enter the heads: ")

# Calcuations

sectorbytes = 512
bytes = sectorbytes * sectors * cylinders * heads
kilobytes = bytes/1024
megabytes = bytes/1048576
gigabytes = bytes/1073741824

# Print the results

print "This the Hard Drive size"
print "bytes: ", bytes
print "kilobytes: ", kilobytes
print "megabytes: ", megabytes
print "gigabytes: ", gigabytes

PCS

2006-02-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

Well, looks like my days are number here in 29 Palms. Somehow I'll manage. Finally Graduating Communications School. Not too shabby I completely slacked off hardly study and I'm leaving with 93 percent GPA....
Anyways. Looks like I'm going to Yuma, Arizona. I have feeling i'm going to be seeing the same old stuff here. Rocks, Mountains and desert. I don't about you but I'm already tired of sand. Anyways I'm moving this week.

That's Life

2006-01-09T01:36:00.000-05:00

I have a new online photo album. You can see what I'm up too.From, discovering an Oasis in the middle of the desert. To security at the rose bowl parade and game. To daily tasks, such as modding xboxes(still doing that heh.)
Here's the link to my photo album
And here's some organized galleries
&nb

Internet the joys and woes

2005-11-27T02:39:00.000-05:00

Ah yes, my own "reliable" connection to the world. Here is an update on my myself.
Finally I'm settled in. Where? Really in the middle of nowhere, 29 Palms California. I moved here about a month ago. Not much to describe. Desert, cold nights hot days. Cactus, Sand and Mountains. Everywhere. I mean there is nothing out here.

Living without my beloved pc which is sitting at home collecting dust really took its toll on me. I mean the only thing I had for entertainment was an iPod I filled 2 months ago on the night before redeparture to Sunny California. Life was getting dull. I discovered a few things to soothe and alleviate my hunger for connectivity. An Internet Cafe where I could stay connected to the world. At first I could care less about how much it cost. And believe me it costed way too much. Then I discovered a library with an decent selection of computer manuals and books. However the more I used the resources the more anxious I became. I had to have my own. Finally I put my foot down. I signed for a loan, ordered a laptop with the works.. really this thing puts my home computer (sandrock) to shame. It was great but it wasn't complete. Finally I got my very own internet connection.

However it wasn't it. It wasn't my very own, I'm sharing with my roommate. Its funny the things I'd be willing to share, laundry soap, food, money, pizza. But to share bandwidth.....is just to much. I have to draw a line. First and foremost we logged a complaint with our cable company stating this line is just unacceptable fix it pronto, cause we need, yes I said that right. NEED more bandwidth.

I'm currently in the process of implement bandwidth filters in my router using a open sourced firmware, for my router. God bless open source.

But alls not well in the internet, troubles have been pressing me. The news of dvd decrypter is to be removed from afterdawn. The data on my home computer is unaccessible. But even worse, my personal server with all my data is down, and perhaps for good. I've been trying in vain to contact the owner or admin to hopefully recover that precious data and perhaps work on data migration. But alas I fear much work would have to be done. My personal website is down, everything, email, subdomains, music. Just to much time and life. All with the dreaded 404 error.....

My wonderful mother has successfully shipped me half of radio shack. I can start so many projects now with all the electronics tools. And in other news I fianlly figured how to transfer files to and from my new phone via bluetooth. Woo.

Ah yes but enough about electronics and me. What about everything else people would consider life. Ah yes the world outside my room. Well another year has passed. A birthday and thanksgiving go by. and which means another year of shaving. Every morning I must wake up, look myself in the mirror and remind myself that I am Old. Shame. Elsewhere in the morning report. I've started school, learning my occupation to become a computer administrator in the military. Joy! Actually no, school is borning and I often squrim through the classes trying to keep my mouth shut. There is so much that is left out. Oh well....At least its easy for me. Heh Heh.

So recently I went to a pro Golf Game. The skins game. Where some big named golfers from the PGA went out for an Action Packed 9 holes. Who knew? I liked golf. Actually no way in hell. I went to provide security for players with about 60 other folks from the base. Turns out Tiger Woods is a jerk. Yeah I said it. I never want his autograph. He treats everyone around him like dirt. The rest of the players were pretty cool. But honestly, pro golf isn't very exciting. Not to mention the crowd of people were from the high end of society. I just felt sicked and out of place. OF course that night, I watched something much better. Football on TV. Good game. go IRISH.

If ya managed to get through this whole ramble and actually made sense of any of it. I recommend giving yourself a pat on the back. Sacrifces are made in the military. OH welll. Where is my straw so I can suck it up. Once again back to old bad habits. My schedule of late nights and sleepy mornings/afternoons continue to rampage. Woo! I got my camera now, so pictures should come soon.

SOI

2005-10-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

I'm off to the school of infantry.
Thanks to all those, family and friends that continue to support me.

I've done a lot of driving, while back home. But the same time i got to see some intresting places. I visited Western Michigan and Ball State University.
But it was worth it to see each and everyone of you again.

qotd

2005-09-19T01:41:00.000-04:00

Hangover n:
The wrath of grapes

graduation

2005-09-09T20:45:00.000-04:00

Graduation from high school. Yay...

Graduation from Marine Corps Basic Training. Now that's something.

I graduated as a Private First Class. I'll be home for a week or so.

From there who knows when I'll be back. I'll be off too Camp Pendleton California.

To the School of Infantry for 22 days and immediately following I'll be reporting to 29 palms, California. Located in the Mojave Desert. Woo!

So much to do in so little time.

Ship out

2005-06-11T21:36:00.000-04:00

Well, looks like that time has finally come.
I'll post pictures and stuff when I get back.
I'll miss you too heather.
Anyways, This is it for my wild weekend of partying. Time to open another chapter of life.

For those who ask why the military and not the civilian life. Simple. Jobs Suck

Watch this too funny commercial.

http://www.reallybadjobs.com/

photos

2005-06-06T02:30:00.000-04:00

Here is some of my better photoediting.

Yep that's me!

Regular or Decaf

2005-06-01T03:03:00.000-04:00

I switched from Decaf to Regular, I like french vanilla.

Averaging 3 hours of sleep a night, I'm delirious, Tody I fell asleep in the middle of my econmics test, 5 minutes later we graded the tests, I feel asleep again while grading it. Oh the person's test I was grading, missed quite a few, and I feel asleep through 10 of questions, I've could've asked the teacher to repeat those 10 questions, but instead of looking like an idiot, I just let it go. Call me an easy grader. Good thing I've refined the art of sleeping while sitting up. I'm quite good at it.

I'll say it right now, I'll be estatic when graduation rolls around. I've had my memorable all nighters throughout high school. There is a few though I can particulary remember. Junior Research Paper-unpublished long story, dont ask. Although I just let my mom borrow my paper last night for her class. Then there is my 'Japanese 3' art project, 2 all nighters. http://www.shinigami-427.net/artwork/

But this last one my 'Japanese 4' Semester Final has truly been the defining moments of my skills, stamina, and luck. For those who don't know,
Here's the story. On a lonely cold friday morning. My teacher is giving us the run down on the upcoming semester final project, One requirement is to have a picture of ourselves in picture of japan. The theme is a virtual trip. Moving on, turns out half the class has never done photoediting or has any idea to begin with. That same morning I take a look at my grade and Its not so hot. Well, the teacher asking for volunteers to help out classmates photoshop, all but one soul agrees. Being the class webmaster, I decided to raise my hand, waiting for afew others go up.. You know I took a hard look around the room and I knew I was in over my head. Sometimes I gotta stop being so generous. To bad I needed the extra credit. The teacher asks about how many students need thier pictures done. About 4-5. Fair enough. She then starts snapping away photos with her camera. Somehow there turned out to be more than just 4-5. This many
But here is the fun part, my Teacher gives me 2 days to get started. I've paced my self at about 1 or 2 projects a night.

Here is the twist no one knows about 2 days prior towards class. I formatted my computer, WindowsXP was just becoming too unstable. Way to much stuff on the harddisk and unfragmentable(?) sectors on my drive.
Deciding to install slackware linux 10.1, I was all set now...for those who know don't know. I'm still quite a neophyte when its comes to linux. Within 3 days I had to learn how to configure my system. And its sure not as easy just clicking the next button, and watching a progress bar do everything for you.
Here is the final twist, I've never done photoediting, Not even touched photoshop. Read this thread. Luckly I'm a quick learner as you can see here.

So as it stands I need to do 3 tonight, including mine own, prepare a speech, paper, scrapbook, brochure,and souvenir which is due 8am tommorrow morning. Yay!

electronic dragsters

2005-05-28T01:20:00.000-04:00

EACC-Industrial Electronics/Computer Networking.
End of the year, school is coming to and end. So we had to have some fun. Inspired by a Television event, power tool dragsters, Our class decided to hold a computer electronics drag race.

We have some professional photography, courtesy of the EACC photography class
For the post race celebration we decided to have some fun with a ramp. And the the RC car.

electronics.shinigami-427.net
A flash website, sound and movie editing is in the works.

The Wagon-Most Innovative Award
18 Volts Series Circuit. Stationary Axel. Mini Disc Wheels, 92 Millimeter Case Fan.
Inspired by Mini Discs
20ft in 8:48 seconds

The Maria
18 Volts Series Circuit, Dual LEDs, CD-Rom motor x 1 (Engines as we like to call them).
The original mouse racer.
20ft in 4:56 seconds

Papa's Got a Brand New Nag
Fastest dragster, Unoffical track record at 1.43 seconds.
18 Volts Series Ciruit, RC Car Engine disqualfies it from the competiton. Lego Chassis
20ft in 1:91 seconds

The Win Charger
First Electronics Racer
18 Volts Series Cirtuit,CD-Rom motor x 1. Metal frame courtesy from EACC machine trades, And yes that is a video card.
Did Not finish

Acer Racer-Fastest Offical Dragster
21 Volts, Dual Series Circuit, CD-ROM motor x 2.
Inspired by the acer mouse.
20ft in 3:02

The Mini Cheater
Lego Racer, Pull back motor
Just for kicks.
20ft in 2:72 seconds

Not shown

Power Tug
Skateboard and cordless screwdriver using a rubber band as the transmission.
20 ft in 13:45 Seconds

Script Kiddies

2005-05-18T13:54:00.000-04:00

Hahaha, I found this post to be very very funny.

Why is the thread spammed by nazi proxies?

Well, imagine for a moment that you're an angry male teenager midway through puberty. And imagine that you're too spineless to become a real vandal, or a skate punk or something.

One option that is open to you is to join an IRC channel and prattle on about how 31337 you are and how you will h4x0r t3h w3b.

Unfortunately, you don't have any coding skills. You can, however, download some network scanner with instructions on how to scan for ports that web proxies like squid use. Normally these should be closed to everything but internal networks, but nobody's perfect.

Once you've found one you update your browser settings to use said proxy and post stupid messages on slashdot. Since they're all coming from the ip address of the proxy server, the ip will be banned along with all the people who connect to the web with that proxy server. Then you go back to your IRC channel where you are the toast of the town for the next five minutes.

Sadly, deep down you feel sad and unfufilled and, as the months go by, you realise that you are unlikley to ever have sex in your entire life.

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149862&cid=12565099

Buddies

2005-05-14T00:07:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the least unexpected things in life, can bring friends closer together.

I'm feeling sentimental tonight. Today I was bold. I felt more natural.

Here's my time to say thanks to my friends. I went to the cinema today. Even though an unexpected turn off events came by. I enjoyed myself. Why? Was it because of the movie, no it was because I was in the company of a friend. I'm learning a valuable lesson in life. Its not what you do with a friend that brings you closer together, nay. Its how you spend it with him/her.

stars wars trailer parody

2005-05-12T22:31:00.000-04:00

From the spawn of this website, came a very funny video. Read the Cease and Desist letter.

Anyways I hosted the video here its too funny. Enjoy.

401

2005-05-10T01:59:00.000-04:00

Unauthorized access. I decided to edit my 401 page on my server. I made the pic in like 4 minutes in paint.

Restricted Area

Return of the Bots

2005-05-06T02:10:00.000-04:00

You know, I have to hand it to the people at cyberfungirls.com They provide me and lots of other guys with awesome entertainment. This is the third time I've been IMed by a bot. You guys probably know by now how much I love these things.

This ending has a slight twist. I can't wait till my next msg.

xstateofdelusion

Kids these days...

2005-05-03T00:00:00.000-04:00

What has happened in this generation? They don't know how to appreciate good games anymore.

Reading IGN's top 99 games. It could almost make me cry.

http://microsites.ign.com/kfc/top99games/8.html

Here is my anguish.

Number 1
Resident Evil 4---wtf?!
Number 3
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory---it's been out how long?
Number 6
God of War---Never even heard about this one.
Number 9
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas---Your joking right?
Number 10
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past---Say it isn't so. All the way to 10!!

A few other ones that worried me
Number 18
Halo:Combat Evolved---That's fine I can live with it.
Number 19
Halo 2---Wait a cotton picking minute. This ain't right.

The down right depressing stats, My eyes are red and watery.
Number 29
Final Fantasy VII---This is not right, I demand a recount.
Number 53
Super Mario World---I can't take it anymore. Someone hand me a tissue.

And final slap in the face
NOT ONE, Sonic the Hedgehog Video Game in the top 99

Some numbers not shown

Top 15 Games By Publisher

01. Capcom
02. Nintendo
03. Ubisoft
04. Square
05. Vivendi Universal Games
06. Sony Computer Entertainment
07. Konami
08. Namco
09. Rockstar Games
10. Nintendo
11. Nintendo
12. ESP
13. Nintendo
14. Vivendi Universal Games
15. Konami

Top 10 Publishers with best games in the top 30.

7 Nintendo: 2, 10,11 13, 23, 24
3 Konami: 7, 15, 21
3 Sony Computer Entertainment: 6, 16, 26
3 Square: 4, 20, 29
2 Vivendi Universal Games: 5, 1
2 Capcom 1, 27
2 Microsoft: 18, 19
1 Ubisoft: 3
1 Namco: 8
1 Rockstart Games: 9

Late Nights and RSS

2005-04-21T04:00:00.000-04:00

Some of you have noticed my addition of a music section on my server. Uploading a collection of my favorite recordings. Every so often I would have 'change log' on the songs I would upload, in simple txt format. However since I was starting to upload more often, and informing everyone isn't easy. I decided to make an RSS feed.

Well, This is my first time ever writting in xml, so using the power google, I searched for a how to.

How to implement RSS with, notepad, a server, and beer

Lucky for me I had all those. Including the beer(non alcoholic of course).

Unfortunately it have become quite late, at least for a school night I suppose. Stupid XML Parsing Errors. Oh well, I'll fix that tommorrow.

If your intrested, here is the script.
http://www.shinigami-427.net/music/Trance_Remix.rdf.xml

But for now I need some sleep. I'm starting to nod off...

Uber

2005-04-19T21:53:00.000-04:00

In the begiinning, when space and subdomains were limited. A lone server was plugged into mighty a connection.
And then the Admin said, "Let there be 2 gigs of space." and there was 2 gigs of space
The admin saw how good the space was.
The next nanosecond the Admin said, "Let there be 30 gigs of bandwidth. And there was 30 gigs of bandwidth. The admin saw how good the bandwidth was.
The following moment the Admin said, "Let there be unlimited subdomains." And the account was upgraded from 10 subdomains to infinite.
On the last keystrokes. The admin proclaimed, "Let there be 5 SQL accounts. And so 5 sqls happened.
Finally, The Admin saw all was good, and proclaimed his work as 'uber'
http://geekside-hosting.com

Yep shinigami-427.net was just upgraded.

Embracing spring and the warmer conditions. I decided to actually shut down Sandrock(My computer) from our long work during the winter. Finally some fresh air in ages. Alas, my work must not go unfinished. Using the available resources, Aries(my notebook), My adjustable lamp, and of course a hotspot of Wi-Fi. I continue...
Check out the actions shots
Cubicle anyone?
Still messy...

I love bots!

2005-04-18T23:43:00.000-04:00

Yes, I love the automated bots in Instant Messenger Sessions that like to cyber so much fun. Check out these conversations...

snowballs2543
The first time I around I was impressed by the programming of the bot.

whostolemyvibrater
The second time of course, I thought it was dumb. So I wanted to know what it would say when I knew what it would say to me.

Words of Wisdom From The Mentor

2005-04-10T03:00:00.000-04:00

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering." "Damn kids. They're all alike." But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world. Mine is a world that begins with school. I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me. "Damn underachiever. They're all alike." I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head." "Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike." I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me, or feels threatened by me, or thinks I'm a smart ass, or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here. Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the
switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

-Hacker's Manifesto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Manifesto

Shinigami

2005-04-07T19:57:00.000-04:00

There is a definition for shinigami in wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinigami

And of course the more appropriate text.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%BB%E7%A5%9E

Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks

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

This is for all of you, who who constantly mix them up.

Geek: very smart with good people skills
Nerd: very smart with poor people skills
Dork: dumb with poor people skills

Geek Syndrome

2005-04-05T02:04:00.000-04:00

So I figured out what I have.

Asperger's syndrome.
I've always and still do flap my fingers. I dunno it is stimulating. I've always hated Eye contact, and echolalia is something people poke fun at me for. Here is an AQ test
This my score
Agree: 2,4,5,6,7,12,13,16,18,23,26,33,35,39,41,42,43,45,46: 1 point
Disagree: 10,11,15,17,24,25,27,28,29,30,31,32,34,36,37,44,47: 1 point
Score: 36
Bram Cohen has it too.

Candy

2005-04-01T01:26:00.000-05:00

Ah yes my fellow bloggers, oh heck with it. They blog about me I blog back. http://allendsintime.blogspot.com/ and http://star32burst.blogspot.com/

Most people like to blog about the same stuff, you know school, work, relationships, current news. I like random stuff. So today I'll talk about eating candy. Choosing candy at the vending machine is harder than voting for politicians. Since many of you know I like candy. (The hardest part about overcoming an addiction is admitting you have one). Now that's out of the way.

You know that bittersweet feeling about 2 or more candies. Say you eat one, and want to eat the other. But since often affects after taste of the other. One must ponder the question. Which one first? One candy has become a master of that. Jelly Bellys. You make different flavors by combing them. Quite Intresting. You know what I hate the most. Being at a vending machine and having to choose what I want. Say Reese's peanut butter cups. Very tasty, but often goes by too short. But say you eat a box gobstoppers, that can taste good for few of them but one can quickly become bored of the same taste. Then there is one my favorites mike and ike. Not too sweet, soft, chewy. Oh heck with it. But the absolutely worst part is when you have 5 dollar bill you need singles. D'OH! Then again 5 dollars worth of candy maybe isn't so bad after all...

philosophy

2005-03-30T21:08:00.000-05:00

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well. -- Aristotle

geekside hosting

2005-03-30T01:31:00.000-05:00

Shopping for a good hosting company? Why not look into geekside hosting?
If you look closely You'll see the hidden image I put as my signature. For those of you who can not read japanese. It says Tadashi. And yes, once again I used my favorite image software. MSPaint

Death and Taxes

2005-03-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

Yes that deadline approaches, and I still haven't done them. Anyways for the young'uns out there and the rest of you who want to save a few dollars while filing taxes. Screw paper forms. I have pretty good post and info about it over at
southbendforum.com

Love?

2005-03-27T23:54:00.000-05:00

...to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow."

Marriage seems so cheap nowadays, my beliefs are firm. Upon the day of wedlock, it is an obgliation to be prepared to sacrifce my own life for the well being and happiness of my significant other. IF I had to choose between my beloved's life and my own. That answer comes easily to me. How could I sentence my beloved to her death. It would be impossible to live a life without regret. Rather I would die peacefully and happily knowing that if the need were to arise, my spouse would need not worry.
To serve and protect, Loyal and faithful, And to obey her wishes, with honor. I shall.

In order to live a good life one must act upon thier emotions.

Some say this is foolish for we can not let our emotions govern us. I say nay. When one makes a decision, it is improper to back down, we must follow through that decision and act upon it. That decision must be govern by emotion, for when the time arises for reflection we remember that emotion thus remembering the reason for the decision. Acting upon a decision without emotion will only lead to regret. A life full of regret is a sorrowful one.

GPL vs RIAA

2005-03-15T16:42:00.000-05:00

Here is a great post I saw on slashdot.

Read it here.

Halo2Sucks.com

2005-03-14T00:10:00.000-05:00

halo2sucks.com/top1000.htm Used my ideas 275-279

I have original emails for proof

X-Gmail-Received: 93224b62338a3805f984b0e1871a25fdb19314ce
Received: by 10.54.24.34 with HTTP; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:55:20 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:55:20 -0500
From: Gabe Rodriguez
Reply-To: Gabe Rodriguez
To: "support@halo2sucks.com"
Subject: halo2sucks
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Delivered-To: shinigam@gmail.com

few more things why halo2 sucks.
Where's my night vision?
That one marine sounds gay, like the south american heart dude from
captain planet.
Why does cortana "have' to stay back when your fought your balls out
in halo1 to protect her...
Cortana dating that thingy after credits roll.
Never replay a level the same way.. my ass.
The old annoucer, come on when you heard "Killtacular" you got that
warm and fuzzy feeling.
In the demo cortana was supposed to alert you, (Chief Ghosts!) now its
like, leave me here i have 'things to do' what happened to hacking the
covenant battlenet via chief's transponder system.
Chief runs so god damn slow..mark VI armor wtf...
Where is chief's remaining spartans.....?

--
Shinigami

X-Gmail-Received: d4cbccb307a0ed27448764683f87c0efedeacef2
Received: by 10.54.24.34 with HTTP; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:09:17 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:09:17 -0500
From: Gabe Rodriguez
Reply-To: Gabe Rodriguez
To: "support@halo2sucks.com"
Subject: Re: halo2sucks
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
References:
Delivered-To: shinigam@gmail.com

'library' just isn't the library, WTF is with the sentinel spawn
points. Look! I can shoot walls.
Wtf is up with the 'fog' in flood levels.

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:05:57 -0500, Gabe Rodriguez wrote:
> ODSTs are pussies...............
> having to log out in game when you have a friend. 1st player controls main menu.
> Map load time... wonderful.
> Flood, just plain gay, everything about them.
> --
> Shinigami
>

--
Shinigami

my creed

2005-02-24T01:08:00.000-05:00

I do not abide by a religion, rather set morals that govern my actions.

student rights

2005-02-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

Know your rights! From a slashdot article.

slashdot

l4m3z0r writes "This rather alarming article discusses a study of high-school students in which they were asked about censorship, protected speech, and other aspects of the first amendment. The results are extremely worrisome: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories." and this "Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.".."

This is intresting as well

folding

2005-02-09T01:39:00.000-05:00

Well, another way to save the world by sitting at home and doing nothing.
Folding@home. Created and Distributed by standford university. Its a global project in which users can use thier processors to help simulate folding of protiens.
What's folding?, Proteins essentially assemble themselves withing nanoseconds, However for a computer to simulate it could possibly take a very very long time. That's where the general people come in. Divide the task amoung many hands. In this case. Processors. After downloading and installing this program. Configure it to your tastes. Makes a cool screensaver. So what does standford university gain from folding. Well read thier papers and stuff. It helps them study against misfolding of proteins such as Alzheimer's. Feel free to join my team 42524.

folding.standford.edu

Read Page source..

2005-01-27T18:40:00.000-05:00

sbc.com

Right Click and view page source...

ALT="To all AT&T customers: we're here to stay" WIDTH="426" HEIGHT="60" BORDER="0" HSPACE="14" VSPACE="6"

Wow that's funny.

Cereals

2005-01-17T21:25:00.000-05:00

Its rare to find good commentary these days about important things in life. And no.. not sex, I mean like cereal. Saturday mornings were filled with cartoons, and cereal. Today in my pantry I discovered...Chocolate Lucky Charms. Kids these days have it so nice, satellite TV, and now this. But after further reading I came across an outrage.
Para su Familia rasin bran? WTF!?! And now, Reduced Sugar Cocoa Puffs, Reduced Sugar Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Reduced Sugar Trix. This is outrageous!!

What is america coming to.

Visit General Mills cereal website

10 Commandments of Raving

2005-01-10T03:06:00.000-05:00

*Thou shall not kill the atmosphere with overt sex on the dancefloor

* Thou shall offer gum, candy, and most importantly WATER to those raving nearest thou

* Thou shall not covet thy neighbors glowstick, niether his nitrous ballon, nor his ecstacy, nor his spot on the dance floor

* Thou shalt not holdest thy ciggarette while catching a groove on the dance floor. For other ravers might suffer burning flesh wounds or ruined rave gear

* Thou shall smile at the gentlemen or lady moving to the beat nearest to thou

* Thou shall not play gabber in chill room

* Thou shalt wear extra deoderant so as not to offend thy neighybor's nose

* Thou shall blow thy party whistle and wave thine hands in the air when the music lifts thine spirit

* Thou shall announce all disc jockeys prior to their appearance

* Thou shall provide free fruit so as to replenish the thirst and hunger of thy bretheren ravers

Water Cooling part 2

2005-01-08T17:15:00.000-05:00

This is the sequel to the water cooling project. So turns out The owner of the Water Cooling kit fried his cpu. The reason? Not enough water to circulate through the water block. Sigh...Anyways He proceeded to purchase replacement parts an AMD 64 3000+ and Abit socket 939 motherboard. That has "100 percent Japanese Capacitors for best quality" With what money, All I know is he supposedly is buying books for college. Anyways...This time part 2 was done at his house. Well cable management has gotten a bit better with UV tubing This fella here? He's for motivational support. He wasn't mentioned in the part 1 but he was there. Now everyone's gotta eat right? Well I think I ate something i wasn't supposed too. See I wear braces and I didn't take off my rubber bands while eating oreos, One snapped and I accidently swallowed it. Trying to find the correct parts in house and basement than actually building the computer... Abit mobo has nifty feature, LED error code Display A few hours and rubber bands later, we proceed upstairs to test and turn on the computer, we tested but alas time and sleep wore us down.

X-mas

2005-01-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

So i'm looking through some holiday photos and I came across some intresting ones I took. This year's strangest gift award goes to my grandma. But its no surprise since Grandma has gotten me socks or underwear for the past 3 years. I have no idea why.

What's in the box?
Socks!
and Sneaky too..

WTF...

School

2005-01-02T23:37:00.000-05:00

Sigh ,Winter break is finaly is over. Pity, I've had such a good time. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Neurogenesis

2004-12-31T16:53:00.000-05:00

Can it be true? Looks like some scientists (smart folks) have found out that mice can regenerate neurons in thier brains, making new neurons was once thought impossible. So now, I'm waiting for them to do it in humans. My question is do you think it will help me replace a few lost 'screws'

...and bears oh my!

2004-12-30T02:14:00.000-05:00

Hello and thank you for contacting us. We have shut down the website in
question.

Oh wait, just kidding. We haven't, since the site in question is fully
legal. Unlike certain other countries, such as the one you're in, we have
sane copyright laws here. But we also have polar bears roaming the
streets and attacking people :-(

The Pirate Bay's response to legal threats. Pirate bay Is located in sweden

http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/

Funny stuff : )

PCs oh my!

2004-12-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

Whew! Finally my 2 night computer quest has been finally completed. It started on normal wednesday. My friend came over, so that I may help him install his water cooling system on his computer. Computer Specs as shown
Processor:Pentium 4
Clock Speed:2.8 Ghz
Video Card:FX 5700
Memeory:1 gigabyte (512 x 2) dual channel pc 2700

I guess lately he has been having some problems with his computer. On the POST (power on self test) No video would display, The beep error code was High - Low repeating beat. After some online check, the memory was deteremined, So I then proceeded to reset the ram. Awesome problem solved the project begun.
Pictures of the project
For the most part we had everything.
The instructions weren't the greatest but oh well. As you can see a trip to walmart was made. Since the cooling system requires a special coolant. Distilled water was needed. A 10:3 mixture ratio with the supplied coolant was attempted then added. Heh, installing a 'valve' on a computer is one of the few times a ratchet is ever needed on a computer. Well before we actually hooked it up we tested it using my computers power molex connectors. I think that caused some error on my computer, more on that later. Anyways success! Liquid [flowed(?)] through the valves and tubes properly. Anyways from there it smoothsailing for the most part. We started around 8pm and was completed at around 2am. To ensure system stability I performed system benchmarks
using 3Dmark01 and 3Dmark03 I don't remember the exact score but here's a close number

3Dmark01:9994
default settings
3Dmark03:2901
(default settings but tested at 800x600 resolution)

Over all system temperature maxed at 85 degrees fahrenheit (29 degrees Celcius). CPU system temperature maxed at 129 fahrenheit (54 degrees celcius). These were recorded from the BIOS. From what I hear that's actually kinda high for a water cooling kit, but after further investigation the Aquarias III was engineered for quiet use. Extreme water cooling kits have louder pumps and fans. Anyways all in all. That night I finished testing at 5am. Time for bed. Well lo and behold my friend comes around ready to take his system home. Yawn...its kinda early. 'Oh its 3:30 pm' NVM, so we proceeded to pack up the system.

Back to my computer, after putting back the molex connector in place. I then tried to turn it on. Right after the POST i got an error message "Error loading OS" I was surprised what in the hell. I checked molex connectors, IDE cables, hardware was fine, I didn't understand. So I then tried using the Windows CD, I tried accessing recovery console
fine...doh adminstrators password. I made that 153 days ago, I sure as hell don't remember it now. So using another computer I tried to find a password removere. I guess its a bootable linux disk, nice using some of the linux kernel and the NTFS file system to hack away at passwords. Well anyways, for some reason beyond my knowledge it didn't work. So I tried reinstalling the operating system, without a format of course. Didn't work, so then after all this time it hits me. check in the CMOS setup, so I set the computer to boot floppy, cd, then hard drisk. Alright
it skips the windows CD , and boots from computer. However it didn't load normal. Windows was displaying only on one monitor, my left, which isn't even the primary one either. Networking was working either. Anyways after a second reinstallation, I concluded the master boot record was corrupted. Now to do that one must have access to recovery console which is password protected, lucky i have LC 5, so I booted that up on my machine (remember this is windows improperly working) Yes, it cracked my adminstrators password with ease. Good stuff I tell you. Anyways I finally get accessed to recovery console I type 'fixmbr' you'd think that would work right? Nope still same problem 'error loading OS' without the windows disc. I almost had, I was about format my hard drive, then it dawns on me again to check in the CMOS, so I did, lo and behold after some tinkering I saw my problem, Turns out somehow the BIOS was trying to load an OS from other HD with is NFTS formatted but no windows loaded on it. All I had to do was switch it to load from primary Hard drive. Man I feel dumb. Yep after some tinkering I'm back online. Sleep time...oh joy.

tech moderator

2004-12-20T00:03:00.000-05:00

Intresting, I became the technology moderator over a http://www.southbendforum.com/ it is a pretty intresting place. Considering it gets more posts and users than http://forums.sbtinfo.com/forums/

So if you wanna know some local news and rants about it, check it out its very intresting. Personally, I manage the Technology threads. "attempting" to update the board with a new articles a day. I'll say it has some flavor compared to the boards over at southbend tribune which generally discuss sports nah..just notre dame, and politics. Anywho give the SBF a whirl I like it, you may too.

Personal thoughts of a really good halo gamer.

2004-12-14T00:07:00.000-05:00

So be it. I'm another Fanboy, a crazed teenager who's video games have consumed our lifes. Has it always been this way? Not at all,

before my junior year, I was heavily in sports, I ran the best times in my life in track and cross country, sports was what I loved. That was never again to be performed again in my junior and senior year. So what is it that changed? To stay glued to computer and monitor, I've thought about the others around us who never understand it. The other gamers understand the need...the passion to engage is such activities, but do the girlfriends who show up these halo parties understand? Not really they just sit there bored until they leave disgusted. How about the other guys who are into partying and cars and stereos, they can connect somewhat but not the hardcore level. Perhaps it has to with men outdoing men. Heck its a lot of that. Listen to 'conversation between' gamers. Halo is perfect example to display male superiority, while I not be the strongest or fastest in the high school population. I am the City Halo Champion, that means more to me than breaking a personal record in running in which I will always be mediocre. I have no respect for other halo gamers, and yet I play with them. I'm constantly searching for new competiton and to play, trash talk and beat. I am a geek, and I'm proud of it. But I am not only a 'geek' I am an uber geek. The elite of geeks that is consulted by other geeks and nerds for halo advice. My junior year, was a crazy year, I discovered a passion for the game halo. I discovered skills that helped me land a job that I love and pays well. How is that possible, what separates me from the rest...I am not the normal gamer, i've never conformed to the norm. I constantly seek the limitations of a platform and attempt to break them. Can I even discribe to the average person without writing a term paper on what I know? Or the question remains would the average person care. Do I write this to offer a connection to the non-gamer. Or do I write this to seek an approval from the other geeks. Perhaps its both or neither. What I can say, Is the amount I've learned from non-conformity, it has its rewards.

Halo was never an online game, to begin with. Until I discovered xbconnect a tunnel software that essential tricks your xbox into believing it was on a Local area network (LAN). Thus creating virtual local networks across the country. At first I was labeled a noob. A newbie with no refined skills, a sore loser as well. After coming across the awesome discovery of halo played online. I told a friend. We were connected with a common goal to become better. Even playing at first we did not see it possible for other gamers to beat us like they did. And believe me it was a butt kicking, but after persistance we studied, halo. As remarkable or silly as it may seem. A skill was developed and refined.

I must say though as the more I progressed the less I played for fun. It was no longer about having fun. It was simply winning, and winning was fun. That's it.

I look back at those days of my 'newbie hood' and reflect of how I could have so much fun at a game even if it was losing, it was new and it was all good fun. But winning was sweet, and I craved it, it was my addiction. For a whole year my friend and I were on a path to become elite; online, and offline. Our normal friends who we got hooked into the swing we awed by our progress, they too wanted the skill. As time went on. Things became more organized, I began talking to more people about playing halo. Soon my friends and I were hosting lan parties at each other houses. For a year this went on. At least couple times a month would we get together for 3-7 hours and hook up to as many as 16 players. Time goes on. Competition became stiffer among friends. Heck i even remember a wager between a friend of mine on each other's skills, a 5 vs 5 tournament. Needless to say my team won and with the money I treated my teammates to icecream, and from then on gained much respect in the high school halo community. But it wasn't enough. I wanted more than fame from friends I want more. Much more, local competition. I trained, and trained hard and my efforts pulled of. I took first place my friend took 2nd. And it was great feeling. Now that the euphoria has worn off. I seek more, the bigger stage, state? Nationals? All though before i knew I didn't stand a chance, now.. now, I'm willing to go and see how I fair and what do I need to do get there.

Its hard to explain the addiction, its just there, the tenseness, my heart beats very fast, my whole attention focus on micro muscle movements in my hand. And the pure joy of seeing my virtual character dominate others. There is nothing like a hard fought battle only those did I have my true fun. That three shot kill intense action, or heart pound insane shot with the sniper rifle that took out 2 guys. It became more than just a game it was becoming art. Take timing with watches. Literally my friend and I choreographed and snycronized our game play to a precise second. Minute by minute we kept track of the enviroment, after playing so much we learned the average player's movements, able to predict and sense the others. It wasn't any longer playing to kill them, nay it was more it was being able to stay one step of ahead of em. Doing it stylishly, flawlessly. Keeping track of game statistics pouring over new stratgies and videos, its a passion a refined one at that. But none the less a passion, I can seriously say game play is no longer just playing a game, its art. To flow so smoothly, I can't describe the events to an unrefined eye of a 'shooting game' but stand and watch the whole game. And discover its a whole world and elements must be carefully pieced together. Some may say its a waste a time, I classify it as art much like ballet, dedication, determination is present. So when people tell me to get a life, I laugh, they are just another fish in the pond that could never understand. So my thoughts about halo2? Bah, its sucks, halo1 was much better. I'll give bungie its credit on campaign, Really the only 3 options I can really say make halo2 better than the first is the ability to change control settings within a game. Joining a game in progress, and finally being able to have 16 xboxs interconnected. Beyond that, give me halo1 anyday.. heh.

AOLs layoffs

2004-12-08T00:45:00.000-05:00

There has been a big layoff of aol employees. It must be hard for the those laid off to find new jobs.

I think even McDonalds would think twice about hiring them:

Manager: "So do you have any customer service experience?"

AOL Scab: "Well, I worked tech support at AOL for 2 years."

Manager: "We only hire people who will fuck up small stuff. We can't handle AOL sized crap here"
~sharkb8

Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho... its off to hell we go.

2004-12-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

People are inherently condemned to hell already because all people sin. That's the beauty of it: God doesn't send anyone to hell (because we're already heading that way)

This is a surprise. I thought that God was supposed to be in charge. Now you seem to be saying that God has no control over the rules of an inflexible system that automatically sends us to hell for "sins" (which are apparently unavoidable, since "all people sin"). The best he can do to fight the system is to save a few of us.

Poor God. Just another victim of an inflexible Universe that is beyond his control.
~tgibbs (83782)

Encryption

2004-12-03T04:12:00.000-05:00

I gotta give thanks to a friend of mine (espbyte) for giving me access to one of his SSH servers. Encryption is the only way to go.
In celebration thought I post a thought I saw on slashdot.org

Who relies on encryption? You, me, government, business, charity, church.
~Martin Blank (154261)

I talk to God (the Jehova one) over a 1024 bit 3DES encrypted tunnel. I don't want those bastards like Vishnu, Allah or Qetzoctl listening in.
~Stonent1

Video Game Discrimination

2004-12-03T00:24:00.000-05:00

Soo....I'm at friends house, playing an emulated game(nba jam: TE for SNES) on his xbox .
We picked team game option. Usually we pick the Utah Jazz. My friend normally chooses John Stockton, for his 3 point shooting ability, and I. Karl Malone, for dunking purposes. Well today on accident we played as each other's characters, I grew fond of the ability to shoot 3s... Well at half time, we had the option to change characters. My friend set the players on our normal characters
I wasn't entirely happy with the change, so I exclaim my fustration, "Awww, I'm the black guy now." hilarity followed.

Sleep

2004-12-02T04:06:00.000-05:00

I've decided to go with a new sleep schedule. It works quite well. Basically I'm awake from 7:00 am - 4:00 PM, Then I partake in the ancient activity of slumber until 9:00 pm, Completion of work until 4:00am, and then 3 hour nap from 4:00am - 7:ooam. Effective? Yes. Unusual? Possibly,
Knowing that everyone else is asleep.... priceless.

vocal trance

2004-11-29T05:14:00.000-05:00

So, music unites and divides us all. Its 2:14 am on monday morning and the soothing sounds of Vocal trance. I can never get enough. Its just one of those times... Sitting back enjoying the good things in life.

Current Faves?
4 Strings - Let It Rain (vocal club mix)
Castles In the Sky - Ian Van Dahl (peter luts mix)
Fragma - Man In the Moon (video version)

More to come!