A Day Late

Today’s my last day of work till next Tuesday. I’m heading down to Sin City (Las Vegas to the lay people ) to watch the NASCAR Winston Cup UAW-Daimler-Chrysler 400 race (that’s a mouthful). This is starting to become a yearly ritual for a few friends and I. At least we went last year and we’re going again this year, that contitutes ritualistic behaviour doesn’t it? Hmm…I’m not sure ritualistic is the best word…it just brings up images of animal sacrifice or something along those lines. Then again, anyone who’s been to a NASCAR race knows it can be a pretty outrageous…and is basically a cult religion to many in attendance. So, I guess the word sort of fits after all.

I know what people are thinking. Aren’t you a computer geek? Isn’t that almost the antithesis of a NASCAR fan? Perhaps, but I attribute it to the couple of years I lived in Indiana (1997-1999). While there I went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, otherwise known as “The Brickyard,” quite a few times. Although I never did see a race there, I watched practice (both Indy and NASCAR) quite a few times. Since then I’ve been hooked or at least I’m a casual fan, anyway. I’d try and explain what I enjoy about it but I know the majority of the people that would read this still wouldn’t understand. I guess it’s just something you have to experience for yourself.

Anyway, as much as I’d like to go back to Indiana and go to a race, I quickly realized it wouldn’t be happening until I got out of school. But, going down to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a nice, convenient alternative. I also hope to visit some friends and see their new baby. So…until next week!

P.S. It took me a while to find a graphic for the UAW race. The first one I found was on the www.lvms.com (Las Vegas Motor Speedway) site, but curiously enough the actual image was on www.internetsoccer.com which seems to be some US Soccer website. Soccer and NASCAR…there’s two things I never thought I’d see mixed.

It was an interesting weekend. I planned on updating the RPM packages on the system over the weekend using Red-Carpet. However, it indicated there weren’t any packages to update, which I knew was wrong. I did some checking and it appeared that my RPM database was corrupted. The solution to that seemed to be running rpm –rebuilddb. That rebuilds the database from the header files stored on the computer. Well…do you know what happens if your headers are also corrupted? You end up with a database of RPM’s significantly smaller than you had before.

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It’s been a few days since I’ve posted an entry. Not because I haven’t had anything to say, just because I haven’t had the time to say it. All of my CS classes had projects due this week (1 on Tuesday and 2 on Wednesday). Now that I have them behind me I thought I’d take a minute to post. The project I did for my graphics class was kind of interesting. I wrote a program in C++ using openGL to draw a 3D sphere. Then added some functions to put the sphere in motion and have it bounce off the walls and such. We were only allowed to use the openGL functions to change the color and paint a single pixel. I added the ability to change the radius of the sphere, change it’s velocity components, add or take away gravity, etc. I also added a second sphere that would “cut away” part of sphere 1. All of this really wasn’t that hard to do, and I sort of enjoyed it.

I thought about posting the code for this but as is the case for most of the programs I write for my classes, I would never admit to writing such code. It’s a shame it has to be that way but it’s a result of the nature of the system. Specifically that mediocrity is passing. If I’m writing something for work or personal use I always take the time to make my code look nice and use proper structures and programming techniques. When it comes to my assignments for school…not so much (can you say global variables, and lots of them?). Maybe in the future I’ll take the time to rewrite this properly and post it. I’m sure all the future CS455 students would love that (assuming this will still be a required project).

I can’t believe another year has gone by and Valentines is here again. Quite a few years back a friend and I started referring to February 14th as Singles Awareness Day or SAD for short. Our thinking was, there’s no other day of the year, you’re more “aware” you’re single than on Valentines. Clever huh? Yeah well, she’s married now (the traitor!!).

BYU has an interesting department called the testing center. The idea behind the testing center is to provide a large building with proctors to administer exams for the university courses. This enables instructors to have their exams administered by the testing center thus allowing them to teach during a class where they would normally be giving an exam. It’s also nice for students because an exam at the testing center is usually administered over a few days and since its open from 10am to 10pm it provides schedule flexibility to take an exam.

All this is great but it has it’s dark side. If we didn’t have the testing center the instructors would have to administer their midterms during an hour they have for class. However, teachers who use the testing center tend to make their exams significantly longer than 1 hour. This is because there’s no set time limit in the testing center. I’ve honestly taken exams that I’ve spent over 3 hours working on. I think this is an abuse of the system. I’d much rather take a test in class for an hour then spend 3 hours sitting in the testing center. The testing center is truly a place I’ve grown to hate.

I recently switched the utilities at my apartment into my name and received my first gas bill last week, from Questar Gas. Well, I went online yesterday to pay my bill and went through the whole process. Entering my name, my account number, address, credit card info, etc. Finally I get to the confirmation page and it says in addition to my payment I’ll be charged a $4.00 “convenience fee” for paying online. WHAT THE ****!???

Since that time I’ve come up with quite a few slang names for Questar Gas. Now I’m curious, just exactly who is an online payment more convenient for? Me…or the company receiving the money? Honestly, I can’t think of another company that charges a “convenience fee” for paying a bill online. You know why they can get away with it? Cause they have no competition. It’s not like I can just switch gas providers. I think that’s what’s most infuriating of all. There’s nothing I can do about it (besides bitch and moan about it here). All I can do is send a check through the mail in which case they still get their damn money, so what do they care.

I was a little surprised when I read an article this morning, to find Kevin Mitnick, one of the most well known hackers (or ex-hacker I should say), is running Windows and IIS on his servers for his startup security company, Defensive Thinking. Hmm…IIS and Defensive Thinking. Now that’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. I guess not being able to touch a computer during his incarceration and probation did more damage than I thought.

I’ve added another blog to those I’m hosting on my server for another friend. We’ve pretty much grown up together and I mentioned him in one of my past entries. Anyway, now Mike’s married with a little one on the way. He lives in Vegas and sells drugs (specializes in smack, dope, crack, X and my favorite yam yam aka shanghai sally). Ok…so honestly he doesn’t have any of that. He’s a pharmacist for Walgreens, but which sounds more exciting?