It has once again been far too long since the last time I updated the site. A pile of interesting events and activities have happened since the last time I posted, and I currently have a few minutes that can be spent on this task so here goes.

Thursday started the long string of activities. The Black Eyed Peas were in town to play for an (almost) free concert series called dancing in the district. I was lucky enough to have a VIP pass from a friend who created the concert’s website. Consequently he gets free VIP passes to the show and was nice enough to take me with! I have never had VIP passes to a concert before, so it was certainly a new experience. It was, of course, no big deal, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. There was free food and drinks in the VIP tent as well as shade and seats. BEP was amazing as I expected. They were very high energy and put on an amazing show. At one point Will-I-Am started freestyling and playing the drums at the same time. It was pretty much completely out of hand and I was completely blown away. The crowd was very diverse and everyone was having a great time. All in all they were certainly the best Hip-Hop show that I have ever seen, and definitely rank up there among the best concerts I have ever seen.

Friday I woke up early and went to school. Right after I was done, Lea and I jumped into the car and drove to Atlanta. It took forever, but I have no idea why. When we finally got there, we quickly visited with Mike, Ryan, Kerry, and Marcy before heading to the rave. They are really good people and gave us a key to the house so we could get in when we came back. Despite my best effort, I couldn’t get any of them to come with us so we headed out by ourselves. We had an amazing time. This was probably the first real rave I have ever been to. The music was for the most part good, but there were certainly times that were less exciting. We arrived at about 11:00 pm and danced till 6 in the morning! I talked with a few random raver kids and it was fun.

On Saturday we hung out with Kerry, Timball, and Marcy for a while, grabbed some Indian buffet and then headed back home. On the way back I talked to Andy D. and found out about a party at Jeff and McCall’s house. The theme was blue food so we picked up some popcorn and colored it blue! We all just hung out and had a good time till around 3 when I left.

Sunday was no break from the madness. The same crew that was at the party went cliff diving at percy priest. It was fun to jump off a 30-foot cliff into the water, that’s certainly a new experience to me. After that we all went back to Jeff and McCall’s house again and had pizza. All in all it was the perfect end to a crazy-busy weekend.

Since then I have been trying to be more active. I have been running and am hoping to keep it up. Till next time!

Cheers,

Aaron K.

It’s been a while since the last time I updated the site, so I thought that I should get something new up here and at least comment on what I did this weekend. Before I go into all of that, I should start by saying that I had a great weekend. Last Friday was a really great day. I went to school and finally got my account on Vampire , Vanderbilt’s Beowulf cluster. I was able to start playing around with that during the day so that was certainly a benefit. During the afternoon I was talking with another student when he directed me to www.hulla-balloo.com a website that has a fun little “hack this site” challenge. Anyway I started playing around with the site and I got addicted. I spent about 2 hours going through the site and added my list to the top solvers. (I believe I’m number 276). I can’t say that it was all that difficult, but it was a lot of fun to play through and I highly recommend it to whoever is interested in a fun diversion.

After that, I jumped on my bike and rode over to JJ’s market where the Nashville 2600 meeting was happening. It was cool to meet some new people and hang out. After that was finished I jumped on my bike and rode over to Sarah Lind, Camacho, and Lucas’s house. Only Camacho was there, but I hung out and played frequency until we went over to another guys house to watch “About Schmidt”. I have to say that it was a pretty good movie and Jack Nicholson was very impressive in it. When that was over I rode back to my house, jumped in my car and drove over to Jen’s house (Jen is a friend of Lea’s that I met recently). We all hung out till 4 AM when it was finally time for me to crash.

Saturday was equally as fun. I woke up late (around 2:00 PM) and grabbed some lunch. I went out to ride my bike and when I came back I went to Bongo Java to get some work done ( I should be posting some of the results here soon). I stayed there for quite some time before I went over to the house again. This time I met up with Jacob McCuller and we chatted till the early morning. It was a really great time.

Sunday was a bit more chill. I just caught a movie with a few friends (28 days later) and relaxed. Overall it was a good time. 28 days later was an interesting commentary on the state of man, and how when times get really tough, there are very few people you can count on.

Well I think that is about all for the moment. As I mentioned before, expect some new additions to the technology gallery soon.

This fourth of July weekend has certainly been an interesting one. On Thursday night we (Kirk and I) left Nashville on a weekend trip to Atlanta to visit some old McGillites. The list includes Ryan, Kerrie, and the infamous Tim Ball. To say the least it has been entertaining. I have met some very interesting people including a few guys that Tim works with, a guy who goes by the handle acidus who is well know for some interesting work on the card swiping technology known as blackboard, and others. Everyone I have gotten the chance to hang out with has been very intelligent and that is truly refreshing. A nice break from the mostly stagnant life I had while working in Texas.

On a related note, I found it interesting to note that while chatting with acidus another kid that I know from Texas was mentioned. It seems that it is a small world after all since this guy knew two of the guys that I met at a small party down in Texas. I guess it is in fact a small world after all.

So far everything has been great. I am now absolutely, 100%, no doubt in my mind convinced that choosing to come back to school was the right thing for me. Keep in mind that I am not in any way shape or form excited about doing the long distance thing for an extended amount of time, but sometimes things just have to be done. Overall this will undoubtedly be one of the most positive experiences of my life. I fully intend on making maximum use of this opportunity to learn everything I can about everything I can get my hands on. To clarify that rather broad statement, I may offer some more specific goals, which include but are (of course) not necessarily limited to learning EE, reinforcing and growing more of my Comp E and CS knowledge.

I spoke with Timball tonight a bit about coding. He brought up a good point that I really think I should focus on. Basically he reiterated what I already knew. The only way to get better at coding is to code. But what he did mention that I found to be of particular use was to code small little things that don’t accomplish much, but can be used later. Te idea is to create small shell code that teaches you everything about that certain thing you are learning about, but doesn’t really do anything. Then at some later point when you are trying to make a real thing of that nature, you take out your old code, remember what it does and plug it in. In the end you spend less time messing with setting it all up, and more time writing the interesting parts. I need to get on this soon. I’ll throw it on the list, but higher up than a lot of the other things I have on there.

Well its almost 4 am so I really need to grab some sleep. I’m sure almost no one is reading this anyway, but here’s to a great weekend!

Good night!

I met my advisor, Dr. Schrimpf today for the first time and so far everything seems good. He is a lead professor in the Radiation Effects group at Vanderbilt. For those who do not know (Currently I would put myself in this group) the group that I will be working with studies the effects of radiation (from the sun or otherwise) on the world of microelectronic devices and circuits.

I was pleased to find out that my advisor seems to be a real down to earth type of guy. He is able to hold a conversation and has a personality. I know that seems strange, but I think that it is absolutely an important trait for a professor to have. If I am unable to relate to a professor, it could make it excessively difficult to work with him on a daily basis. All that being said, we moved on to talking about what I could do for my project. It seems that the group is looking for someone who can fill the role of CS/Comp E. guy to do simulations and work on VAMPIRE, Vanderbilt’s Beowulf cluster. This seems promising, but I am going to try to keep all my options open at the moment! That was mostly it for our conversation. In passing we briefly talked about his many contacts in France. He mentioned that in the future it could be possible for me to go over there to study for a semester or two. I’ll defiantly keep my ears to the ground on that one! Free trip to Europe!!! Wee!!

All in all I have a good feeling about all of this. I am going to get the opportunity to learn more about EE. I feel like this will really round me out as far as the geek factor goes. By adding in EE knowledge I will be somewhat knowledgable of CS’ish programming topics, Comp. E’ish things like microcontrollers, assembly, drivers, and Computer architecture and lastly EE will fill in the gaps of things like how to build power circuits, how to put together circuits to accomplish a goal, and of course how they all work. All in all I am very excited to be where I am at.

One last note before I wrap this up. I feel much more happy here already than I ever did at NI. Not to fault them any, but I already feel like I have more freedom, am surrounded by more knowledgeable people, have much more opportunity to expand my knowledge, and am in a healthier environment. There are certainly interesting times ahead for me!

It’s been quite some time since I last posted a story here. I am really going to attempt to update this every day and make it more of my live diary, but at the moment I am still moving and I do not have any Internet connection at home. But I digress..

Lets see, in short summary of what has happened since my last post I have:

1) Finished my last day at work. This was a strange experience. I have only worked there for a little over a year, but it really felt like one part of my life was ending and another was starting. There is certainly some people that I will miss there at NI, but I think that this change will be for the best. I am excited to move on and do bigger and better things.

2) Helped Barbara move to Harlingen, Texas. I helped her pack everything up and then I drove this crappy U-HAUL 4-5 hours south to Harlingen (almost in Mexico). Needless to say, if you have never traveled in a U-HAUL, don’t do it! The truck was horrible. It was most likely from the 70’s, smelled on the inside and felt like it was going to die at any moment. It was rather amusing when about half way to out destination, the truck started billowing dark black smoke out of the back. I was certain that the truck had met its match. With some luck it managed to keep running. The smoke went away and the truck carried us on to our destination.

3) Went to the beach on Padre Island multiple times. One of the real benefits of this area is the proximity of the beach. Located less than half an hour from the island, it is easy to run over there just to hang out. Can’t really complain about this at all!

4) Went to a party on the beach with the 3rd (now 4th) year med students. It was really fun. You are allowed to just drive up on to the beach and park. We had a nice cookout and a fire and just an all around good time. Later on in the night we turned on Barbara’s stereo (see the photo gallery) and turned it into a club on the beach. Too much fun!

5) Packed up all of my belongings into a Penske truck and moved back to Nashville, TN. Yes and it was a wonderful trip. I really cannot say enough good things about Penske when compared to U-Haul. Not only were they cheaper than U-Haul, but they had everything set to go when I arrived, the truck was a 2002 with less than 30,000 miles, and was in great shape. The ride was so much more comfortable than the U-HAUL crap that I drove in a week before that I would certainly never endure that hell again.

6) Started back at Vanderbilt! This is the most exciting part of my journey to date. Seeing all of the old buildings and experiencing the marvels of the new engineering building. I am still meeting the students and faculty here, but everyone seems to be great so far. My professor is in France at the moment, so I am working with another professor in the intrim.

So that is a summary of my month. I hope to become more regular at posting, but until I get a bit more settled in, that is a bit unrealistic. I would also like to say, that I am thoroughly enjoying my laptop/Ipod. It is quite possibly one of the best purchases I have ever made, but I think I will leave that to another story another time.

Till then, Bye!

It?s been a while since I last wrote an update about the struggle for a better computer screen. I am happy to report that this posting is being made from my apple laptop with a perfect 17-inch screen. Here?s a summary of what transpired.

Two weeks ago CompUSA called me up and informed me that my laptop had come back in, but had not been fixed by Apple. Upon picking it up I was handed a letter printed on apple letterhead mentioning that one pixel is not considered defective. I found this letter ridiculous for at least two reasons.

1. There were three dead pixels, not one ? This made me feel like the technician at Apple did not care enough to actually look at the problem. If you simply powered on the computer, you would see a single dark pixel in the corner. I suspect that the technician powered on the laptop, saw the single dark pixel had a good laugh at my expense and sent it back to me un-repaired. If you watched the matrix trailer as I had suggested in the repair instructions, you would see the pixel that became painfully obvious as soon as the background was made dark.

2. Even if the bright blue pixel in the middle of the screen was the only dead pixel, I still felt that Apple should feel some obligation to fix it due to its locality. We?re talking about an extremely bright dot placed almost directly in the middle of the screen. I understand that the yield on perfect LCD?s is low, but some leniency in your policy must be made for the location of the bad pixel(s).

Somewhat infuriated, disappointed, and saddened, I started exploring my options. Though I was fighting hard to avoid accepting this screen, I was starting to feel helpless. I considered taking the path of disputing my credit card, among other possibilities when my good buddy MJG decided that he had heard enough of this BS and decided to step in.

MJG is a real no BS type of guy. He is only 24 and is already very successful. A while back he started http://www.numeration.org/ a website that was originally dedicated to teaching people the finer points of network technology with a focus on subnetting. I will be adding a section both to his and my site discussing my travels into the world of cryptography in the near future. He is also the owner of a small web hosting company known as G&L hosting. You can find them at http://www.gl-hosting.com/. They offer extremely affordable web hosting solutions so check them out soon! But I digress.

MJG decided to be a really good friend and help me out. I am unfortunately only learning that sometimes being a jerk on the phone is the only way to get what you want done. Apparently I am still lacking these skills that it seems MJG has long since mastered. After giving him all the information he would need to be me, he called up Apple and commenced the bitching session. After an hour on the phone, and chatting with 3 or 4 different reps, he was able to get them to promise that they would give me a new screen to keep a ?switcher? happy.

The very next day a box arrived at my doorstep via Airbone Express. This impressed me in two ways.

1. They delivered the box via overnight delivery. All transactions that I had with them were paid by Apple and were overnight via Airborne. I was sent the box via overnight, they paid for the return shipping via overnight, and they returned the laptop to me via overnight shipping. This was more along the lines of the type of company I thought Apple was. It was nice to finally feel like they were taking care of things, and doing it the right way: Efficiently and Expediently.

2. The box that they shipped me was very nice and they, in what I am beginning to see as typical Apple fashion, thought of everything. The box was very well designed for transporting laptops and they even included the packaging tape necessary to seal the box back up. I realize that this is a minute detail, but these are the sorts of things that I expected from Apple.

So I shipped the computer off and tracked it on its way. It was received the very next day back in sunny California at 8:30 am. They had inspected it a few hours later, made the repairs and did testing all before 4:00 the day that it was received. When I checked again that night, it stated that it had been shipped. Needless to say I was impressed again. They had turned the laptop over faster than I would have expected, which had me worried that they had just looked at it and sent it back to me. The suspense was enhanced by the fact that I would have to wait as this all occurred on a Friday and Monday was Memorial Day. This meant that I would have to wait till Tuesday to find out what had happened.

Tuesday came, the box arrived, and I anxiously opened the box and powered on the laptop. My heart sunk when I saw what appeared to be a dark pixel near the same location in the corner of the screen where the previous screen had been. Upon looking closer I noticed that it was not a dead pixel, but a tiny piece of dust that was stuck to the screen. I brushed it away and started up a pixel tester program. I was elated to see that not a single pixel was dark or hot. A perfect screen!

So here I sit, typing this on a beautiful, brilliant, perfect screen. I owe it all to you MJG. You?re a real pal. Now if I could only find someone to teach me all of the intricacies of OSX. I feel like a child again trying to relearn how things work in this OS. But that is another story…

On Wednesday my 17” Powerbook arrived by airborne express.  I picked it up over lunch and return back to work, ready to officially become a “switcher”.  After starting it up, and getting a feel for it, I proceeded to download the 99 megabyte Matrix Reloaded trailer.  Much to my dismay, I was unable to watch the trailer due to a bright blue dead pixel in the center of the screen. 

Upset at this discovery, I called up the maczone to deal with the problem.  They informed me that I would have to contact Apple because they are not allowed to handle these situations.  I was a little annoyed at this point, but was willing to do what it took to get my laptop fixed.  Calling apple, I quickly got in contact with Tony, an apple rep.  I explained that there was a dead pixel in the center of my screen that I wanted fixed.  He put me o­n hold for something like 15 minutes while he was “looking up apple’s policy o­n it”.  When he returned, I was told that unless there was 4 or more “hot”, 4 or more “dark”, or a combination of 8 or more dead pixels, it was not a defect and they couldn’t do anything for me. 

Needless to say I was infuriated at this point, but the battle was not over yet.  Calling back to maczone yielded nothing but a waste of another 30 minutes.  At this point I was starting to accept this cruel fate.  The next day I called back to apple to bitch again and had some success.  After talking with the guy for a few minutes and explaining that dead pixel’s are a fact of life, but this particular dead pixel is absolutely unacceptable he issued me a case # and told me to take it to an Apple authorized repair center.

I took the laptop to my local compusa as that was the easiest place to go.  The apple guy there agreed with me and took the laptop.  Now I have to play the waiting game.  It went back to Apple via Airbone Express and I hope to see it again this coming week.  Until then, I’m out of luck.

I wish this process would have been smoother, but as long as the result is a fixed laptop, I am willing to brush off the experience and continue to buy into Apple’s products.  o­nly time will tell.

I am pleased to announce that yesterday I purchased a 30 gig iPod and a 17 inch apple powerbook.  The iPod was purchased at my local CompUSA (for extended warranty reasons), and the Laptop was purchased at an o­nline store.  I am very excited about these acquisitions and I think that they will prove valuable to me in the future.  I have already started playing with the iPod and it works beautifully. 

Last night Barbara and I celebrated our three year anniversary!  It was a truly wonderful experience!  We went to Reggiano’s Pacifico Restaurant, an upscale Italian and Mediterranean restaurant located in north San Antonio. 

 The meal started off like all meals should; with bread and olive oil.  After enjoying the bread, we ordered an appetizer that had some sort of grain patty, sausage, and shrimp.  I cannot remember its name, but it was very good and the presentation was excellent.  While we were eating this, the waiter brought us a plate of calamari that was gratis.  We followed the appetizers with salads.  Barbara had a very nice salad that had mixed greens, heart of palm, and olives among other things.  I had a salad topped with a whole quail, feta cheese, small pecans, and olives.  The salads were followed by the entrée.  Barbara had crabmeat stuffed shrimp and fettuccini.  I ordered a stuffed chicken plate that was surrounded by prociutto and served over angel hair pasta.  By this time we were stuffed so we each took a few bites while we had conversation and then had it boxed up.  Barbara ordered an espresso to cap off the meal while the waiter recited the dessert list.  We decided that we were much too full to attempt a dessert and passed o­n what sounded like a very good selection.  Two minutes later the waiter came back with a huge portion of tiramisu.  He said that he knew we were full, but really wanted us to try out their desserts.  Needless to say we went ahead and ate it because it was so good. 

 So three and a half hours, four courses, and two free dishes later,  we left having had a wonderful time celebrating our three year anniversary.  The food, the conversation, the atmosphere were all perfect.  I really could not ask for anymore. 

Here’s to three years of a happy relationship!

Well no o­ne ever said the transition was going to be smooth.  I have recently found out that there is still troubles with certain parts of the site.  I will try to get these fixed, but I must admit I have not had the time I would like to recently.  I’ll try to get this working as soon as possible. 

With that I would also like to say that these are some exciting times for me.  I don’t really want to elaborate just yet, but soon.  There are big changes in the works.