Embarassment

If anyone feels like an idiot for blogging, its me. My new job has made blogging very difficult to do regularly. This is the reason for the lack of posts. Oh, and my evaluation of Vista? Nevermind. It lasted about two weeks, and then I realized that Windows Vista had nothing to offer me that I couldn't already get elsewhere.

So lets move on. I've been attempting to try and find a lazy man's way of posting photos on the internet without really dealing with managing a website and such. I found that Google has a nice offering with Picasa's web pages. I get to easily select the photos and upload them in a matter of a few clicks. I love this. Its so easy. So what's the url for our pictures? Here you go:

http://picasaweb.google.com/abjurina/

You can go there to see our pictures from time to time. Now that the weather is nice, we'll be taking shots pretty often, and I'll try to keep it updates much more often than my blog. In any case, if you read this blog, you've now got a way to check out pictures now and again. I'll try and get the blogging going more often once the school year calms down a bit. Its going to be a busy summer, but I want to continue the writing as much as possible. Also, if you are into technology at all, you can keep up with my other blog at http://hersheychristiantech.wordpress.com. I mainly write on topics of technology that are relevant to the parents and school community, but there might be some good jewels there for somebody.

I'm back (2-1-07 post)

Not that anyone is paying that much attention, but I'm finally taking the time to write more. I've been caught up with work and holidays and work and, did I mention work? Well, needless to say, I found a sliver of time to write.
I decided to recently become an early adopter of Windows Vista. I can't say that I've found anything to do back-flips about over it. It certainly has a nice interface and some neat eye-candy (if you are using the Aero features). However, when you've become used to so much not changing for 6 years in Windows XP, its a bit intimidating. I certainly applaud the fact that Microsoft has updated the operating system with some better and more useful applications. The Windows Calendar is quite useful, and well-integrated with Microsoft Mail. However it turns out that Microsoft Mail is little more than Outlook Express with some small changes. Another really cool application is the windows snipping tool. It allows you to take great screenshot clips anywhere. No more annoying pastes of a yucky bmp file into a Word or Mail document. Its actually quite handy. Well, I'll not make any more comments until I play with it more, but this is my impression as of one weeks use. There's plenty more to say about it, so stay tuned.

Entry for 12/20/06

I saw this article today which stated that Firefox's share in the browser market slipped slightly from last quarter. To be honest, I'm not surprised. I've been using IE7 occasionally, and I'd have to say, other than the annoying ads it seems to still allow, it seems to be quite a nice browser in comparison to IE6.



In other news, with windows Vista now on the horizon and scheduled for launch on January 30th of 2007, I will be soon ordering a copy for evaluation. Our school is building a new facility which will have two computer labs. We'll be equipping each lab with new machines and, if Vista turns out to be decent, new operating systems as well. It should be quite an interesting adventure this summer, as we try and take partial occupancy of the new building with our high school.

Entry for 11/28/06

I used to feel kind of weird about thanksgiving, feeling that it is just a celebration of American gluttony with more food than one needs to eat. However, over the years I've come to see other facets of this holiday. Sadly, I confess that this year I felt no thankfulness or even a pause of acknowledgment to God for these things. I know its wrong, and I certainly owe God an apology. I've found a great quote in our weekly faculty newsletter that needs to be shared. I know its past the thanksgiving holiday, but its still worth sharing:



“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” –Abraham Lincoln

So here I am at this conference... (Entry for 11/10/06)

...and I'm so loving my job. Our school sends us each year to the Mid-Atlantic Christian School Association (MACSA) Educator's conference, which consists of two days of workshops for teachers. The workshops are usually various subjects ranging from apologetics courses to get credits in Bible, to computer classes aimed at keeping people informed. The school not only pays for our way to the two-day conference, but it also provides us with 10 dollars a day for lunch. I find that quite astounding and benevolent.

Right now I'm taking advantage of the free wireless access here at the hotel where the conference is to write this blog. Its very encouraging to see that there are so many Christian School teachers out there with a desire to learn and enhance their teaching skills. Sometimes I think that Christian Schools get a reputation for having teachers that are too under-qualified to be a public school teacher. While that might be the case in some schools (even public), its good to see that these teachers have not only a passion for what they do as teachers, but also a passion and sacrificial desire to serve God as well.

Entry for 11-6-06

Well, its official: The Pittsburgh Steelers have now tied up the noose real tight and kicked out the chair from underneath. The scary fact is that the past two games were really lost when they defeated themselves. It makes no sense why a football team would consistently gain over 400 yards of offense and somehow manage to lose a game. I do believe that as of this writing, Big Ben leads the league in interceptions. Oh well, at least I have a fantasy league to be excited about.

I've decided to try out a few services I've been meaning to look at. One of them is Xdrive, which is a service of AOL. Despite my loathing of AOL in general, I'm really curious as to how useful it will be having 5 Gigs of online storage space at my fingertips. We'll see I guess. If you are curious, check out the service for yourself ( http://www.xdrive.com).

My job is getting kind of interesting as of late. We've finally gotten internet access down at this building (as you can see), and now I'm into the challenge of investigating some good content filtering software, as well as learning to how service and administer a windows 2003 server (of which I stink at). Needless to say, if it weren't for good friends 'In the know', I'd be really in bad shape.

Well, enough blabbing.

Latest update

Okay okay, so this time I've not made an entry is a very very long time. This is because my life has been turned upside down in a trillion different ways. To start we've sold our house and moved into the city. I started a new job teaching and doing IT admin work at Hershey Christian. On top of it, the new house we bought wasn't ready for 6 weeks (Due to some serious electrical work and fixes that needed done) so we ended up living with Meg's mom in one bedroom. This was quite an ordeal for starting a new career for me with limited e-mail and internet access.

Right now things are beginning to work out. We've finally gotten into our new home, which we love. I'm learning a routine at home and feeling pretty confident about the one at work. I've getting time to be online more often (although I don't think I'll ever be online like I was for the past two years). This basically means that I have no interesting links to blog about right now, however I will continue to try and find items of interest to share with you all. There may only be one or two readers of this thing, but that's enough to keep me writing either way.

Where have I been?

Wow. I've thought that I knew what busy was until I took this job. There is just so much to do. I'm way too busy to write to this blog as much as I used to. I'm also really enjoying this job a whole lot and I haven't even started teaching yet! Anyways, here's some summary as to the past month of activity:

-Started working with Hershey Christian School on July 17th. Process began with taking inventory and evaluating the hardware situation. I'm still in the proccess of analysis, but things are improving.

-Tried out Ubuntu Linux on my compaq laptop for two weeks. I would have to say that it was quite an initial learning curve, but it ended up being very nice to work with. However, having lived in a windows environment for pretty much all of my post-college life, I could not find ways to avoid using Microsoft software. In fact, the issues with wireless networking, printer compatibility, and other things just led me to give it up. I'd have to say that if I had lots of time, I'd probably still be running Linux right now. I just don't have the time nor the energy to invest into it.

-I've acquired a new laptop computer through my job. Being the IT Director gives me some priveleges of having a laptop. The machine is really cool. Its an HP Compaq nx7400 15.4" widescreen with 1 GB of RAM, an 80GB HD, and an Intel  1.83 Core Duo processor. This laptop has made things so easy for me in terms of managing all the 1 billion tasks I now have to do.

-We're moving. We sold our house and settle on it at the end of August. We found an old fixer-upper in the city with more square footage, and some charm. We'll be moving into that sometime in September, if all goes well. Between the new job and the move, there's plenty to keep me busy...lol.

On my way out (goodby programming, hello teaching!)

BAMM!!!! In just one phone call I was spared from spending the next two working weeks of my life surfing the internet with nothing to do for 8 hours to actually preparing myself for my renewal in the halls of teachings once again.

I get the opportunity to start work at Hershey Christian School on Monday (July 17th) rather than waiting any longer. This is great news considering I need to not only learn the setup of computers at the school, order equipment and set it up for a 3rd computer lab, but also orient myself with new curriculum and staff and also have my lesson plans in order. Yes, I'd say that getting started right away will be a good thing.

As for Weidenhammer. Can't say it wasn't a blast...yes I can...and it wasn't.

Just Bloggin' Nonsense

Ok, so I just got back from a WONDERFUL week with my family. The weather turned out perfectly, we got a ton done, and I feel well-rested and ready to...oh wait, I'm going to be leaving this job in a few weeks..so I guess I'm ready to do nothing...either way, I'll have plenty of spare time on my hands (Yes, at work) to write, so you may find an entry or two to peruse. In any case, don't come looking for much insight. I've got none to share...at least not right now.

Deactivated and loving it

Today I've been unofficially "deactivated" as a programmer at my job. I am kind of content about this, because I've decided a while back that I don't want to be programming for this company anymore. In fact, aside from the simple web-programming that I already do, I don't think I want to program ever again.

The GOOD news is that I have been accepted to be the computer and technology teacher at Hershey Christian School. I get to be a teacher again! I can't even express my happiness with this. The fact that God has given me the opportunity to get back into the job I  feel most confident in, and love the most. Its not Spanish, however i would think that my passion for technology currently exceeds my passion for Spanish. However, what really matters is what my greatest passion is, and that is teaching.

Why did I leave teaching? I didn't hate it. I chose to change careers as an opportunity to move back to PA and start a family. I also wanted to somehow use my computer degree before it became obselete. Now I'm able to use both my teaching AND computer degree. This is gonna be good...:-)

One of the best articles I've read in a while

I've just finished reading a very long, but very elightening article discussing the role of evangelical Protestantism in American culture. If you associate yourself in any way with Christianity, this article is a very very good read,

http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i42/42b00601.htm

PS: Please allot yourself about 10 minutes to read it as it is lenghty. Feel free to leave your comments on this blog, or e-mail me with what you think.

Here's one for T-Dawg

So I watched the last 15 minutes of last night's NBA finals game, in which the Miami Heat won. My assessment: Despite not watching a single regular season game or playoff game, I feel perfectly content saying that I've missed absolutely nothing all season, and last night was a waste of time as well.   Despite what Mark Cuban says, I don't agree with him: The NBA isn't rigged. Nothing so mediocre on the entertainment scale is worth rigging. :-)

Our Stupid Citizens

Report: Mother sues MySpace for $30 Million

What is our world coming to? When does a mother has the right to sue a website because her child  posted personal information about herself on the internet which eventually led to her meeting up with the guy and being sexually assulted? Her case? She claims that MySpace lacks security measures to protect teenagers from predators. That's like suing the city because I walk into a known crime area and get mugged. It makes no sense. I think that people these days expect their children to be immune from dangers without their help. I've got a better solution for this mother:  START BEING A RESPONSIBLE PARENT!!!!

Helment laws and other stuff

This week Big Ben gets into a motorcycle accident and smashes his face off of a car windshield. This results in 7 hours of surgery to his face. However, people still have the nerve to argue against wearing a helmet. Are people stupid? How is it that its a law to wear your seatbelt to protect yourself from crashes, yet its not a law to wear a helment? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

I suffered through my first experience with a pipe this past weekend. I have never smoked anything in my life, and really had no curiosity to until recently. The good news about smoking pipes and cigars is that you don't inhale the smoke and so, unless you would do it reguarlly, its not harmful. I've always thought that pipe tobacco smells okay, but let me alert those of you who have never smoked a pipe that it definitely doesn't taste like it smells. Particuarlly the stuff I tried..I think that it was called, Marijuana...haha...just kidding. Needless to say, despite the new experience, i don't see myself buying a pipe and tobacco anytime soon. Its just not my thing.

I bought a bb/pellet gun the other day as well. I bought it mainly to take out the bunnies in my back yard. However, I'm finding it hard to kill what I would consider a harmless little creature. I shot one the other day with a bb and a few pumps of the gun, just to make it run away. However, after watching it limp away in confusion and pain, I've decided to just use the gun for recreational target practice, which harms nothing but my pride of being able to shoot straight.

Work has been pretty busy for me lately. I hate it. I want to quit. I'm hoping to get back into teaching, where I feel my gifts and abilities are better used. I'm just not cut out to live the life of a programmer. I'm too much of a social person. I also enjoy helping and working with others. I just can't do that in an environment where I sit all day and type into a computer for 8 hours. Like the pipe smoking experience: Its just not for me.

Post for 5/23/06

So I've flip-flopped once again to Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3. I was enjoying using Maxthon as my browser of choice. However, the ever-growing list of extensions for firefox has wooed me back as usual. One of those extensions, in fact, is how I write this blog entry. A very convenient integrated blogging utility called Performancing.

Anyways, here's a link to a cool piece of software called visual task tips. It allows you to enjoy a future feature of Windows vista, where you can hover your mouse over the open program buttons in your taskbar and get a small thumbnail of what the program looks like. This becomes really useful when you have a lot of windows open at once: Visual Task Tips Web Site

If you are into photography, particuarly digital photography, and would like to learn more about some neat tips and suggestions to bring out your camera's ability, as well as your own. Check out this blog: Digital Photography School

Anybody looking for some great tools for organization that are available online, I've been finding my life to be extremely productive with the following tools:

Gmail: an online e-mail client thats quick, easy, well-organized, and holds 2 Gigs of e-mails.

Google Calendar (GCal): Possibly the best online calendar application I've ever seen. It allows additons of multiple calendars, e-mail, sms, and popup notifications, daily agenda e-mails, etc.

Tada list: this is a recent application I've found useful in helping me to manage my work projects. Its as simple as it gets for a ToDo list, and its free (just like the above applications).

There are other online applications that I've found either useful or beneficial to me. I'll share more about them later in another posting. What about you? Are there any online (web-based) applications that you rely on for productivity and organization? Feel free to share.

Entry for 5-11-06

So this is what the Chinese do when then become successful? Good thing there is communism then, or there'd be fighter jets flying all over the place: Check out the article here.

Personal thoughts:

-(for Tim): The NBA playoffs are in full swing right now. As of this year, I've not watched a single game and I still feel great!!!

- I think that success can be measured by the satisfaction one gets from his work alone. Despite the pay or perks of the job. If you only love your job for the pay and the perks alone, then you don't really love your job.

-Making yourself vulnerable and asking for help is the quickest way to acheivement in anything. Doing neither can be the quickest way to failure.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!!!

Just some info for y'all:  Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of a victory war fought between the the Mexicans and the French, after the French attempted to invade Mexico over a debt dispute that it claimed the mexicans owed them for aiding them in their war for independence against Spain. The victory for the mexicans demonstrated that the newly founded country of Mexico wasn't going to be bullied by anybody. (Until later, when the country was overtaken by drugs, political corruption, poverty, and pollution.)  Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT a celebration of Mexico's indepedence from Spain.

How many of you read this?

I'm curious to know how many of you are reading this blog. My suspicion is that maybe one other person reads this. Please feel free to comment if you ARE. It would really helpful for me in assessing the types and regularity of posts that appear here. Thanks in Advance.

Is there anything about this article that bothers you?

This article kind of bothers me. I just don't think we need to get this crazy about technology for churches. It just seems like its taking things a little "over the top".

Another Firefox Experience/Experiment

As usual, I'm "testing" out Firefox again. The reason being is that the extensions just keep getting better. It seems that many more websites are becoming more compliant as well. I will be attempting to use it as my standard browser over the next month and I'll give an update then.

For now, I can report that I've run into some issues that I had thought were initially belonging to Firefox, but actually could be attributed to some of the extensions that I had installed. This extension made websited load funny or not at all, and basically took away the cursor when I clicked in any textbox on a form. Very weird. It seems as though the crappy memory hogging issues are still there. From what I've read so far, the 1.5 series of releases has caused a lot of dissappointments among Firefox enthusiasts in relation to the memory issues and stability overall. The good news for them is that a newer version is already in Alpha, so perhaps it will redeem these issues a bit.

On a final note about this. I've decided to do my experiment using "Portable Firefox 1.5.0.2" rather than the regular one. This way, its easier to restore it if an extension messes things up.

Fun with Gas?

Here's an interesting interactive Map at current gas price averages in the united states...makes me wish I lived in Montana right about now:

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Somewhere I'd never want to be

Here's a place I'd never want to be:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2179463398999135184&q=tornado

Entry for 4-5-06

Here's a good idea, being implemented terribly.

Movies to be available for downloading and owning

Begin Rants and Info:

-From what I've been told, its April. But it seems that somebody didn't get the memo, because I had to drive to work in violent snow squalls this morning. I've thought of a new name for Pennsylvania that will suit us better: Canada.

- I bought a 19" LCD viewsonic Monitor for my computer. All I can say is "WOW!". After using a refurbished 17" CRT monitor with scratches on the screen that I found on eBay for about 4 years now, this is a nice upgrade.

- Never underestimate the benefits and luxuries of spending a little money on a comfortable computer mouse.

-If you keep a baby in the bathtub long enough, they WILL poop.

-Don't you hate when you have a pile of money and...nevermind, that never happens to me.

End Rants and Info:

Notes:

All 1.75 of you who actually read my blog might wonder why I really only post tech news articles on here. The reason, in my opinion, is because tech news usually doesn't depress me and make me feel paranoid about plane trips and government corruption. I like to keep my life happy, so introducing it to too much politics or stories of exploitation and crime in our world just brings a brother down. To that end i try to stay on top of things where I'm more qualified to make an opinion.

4-6-06 Edit

Uhh...Because this is EXACTLY what I want to do with excess toilet water:

http://www.realgoods.com/shop/shop2.cfm?dp=205&ts=6020334

Here is a good FAQ I found on running windows on a Mac...the trendiest thing going these days for geeks:
http://news.com.com/FAQ+Windows+on+Macs/2100-1016_3-6058163.html?tag=st.prev

What I find interesting is how much emphasis people put on "support" for windows xp...give me a break. This operating system has been around forever. If you need "support" for windows xp, then you either have not operated a computer in the past 5 years, or you have no idea what you are doing. Not once in my entire life did I ever consider, or know anyone else who has considered calling "windows technical support". There are so many forums, FAQ's and all-around windows "experts" freely available that it doesn't make sense to need support for such a tried and true OS. Just weird, in my opinion.

Entry for 3/31/06

In celebration of Apple's 30th anniversary, Wired Magazine online put out a 3 page collection of great quotes by Apple co-founder and brilliant innovator, Steve Jobs. They are certainly worth the read, Apple fan or not:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/mac/0,70512-0.html

And here is yet another article questioning the genius of Apple as a company. Some very good points raised here.
http://news.com.com/2010-1041_3-6056161.html?part=rss&tag=6056161&subj=news

Somebody attempted to make their own Mac Media Computer "homebrew" style. To re-quote on one of the comments for this thing: "Mission failed." Check out the ghastly pic of it here: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/homebrew-media-mac-164078.php

PCWorld has rounded up 101 great freebies available on the internet for that inner cheapskate in all of us. Some very good choices on this list. Well done, PCWorld:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124883,pg,5,00.asp

And in sports news, Verone Haynes signed a two year contract with the Steelers. Haynes happens to be one of my most favorite "behind the scenes" players for Pittsburgh. While he doesn't play that much, I think he's actually a lot better at what he does than people think. He's certainly got the power to get the ball through the line, etc. Way to go Pittsburgh on another smart move in the offseason. http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-steelers-haynes&prov=ap&type=lgns