(16 May 2008 - 1115)

 558 Days 11 Hours and 3 Minutes. That's how long it has been since I updated this site. Why? Well I'm not 100% sure but I can tell you that someone pointed out to me last night that I should start again. She was also proud that she made two of the things on my Pet Peeves list and thought that I needed to add another one up there. So here you go Claire, #8 :)

(5 Nov 2006 - 2218)

Ahhh school work. But never fear I will never let it stop me from learning :)

Lots of work this week but I took a couple of minute to clean up and release to the world my NZBHelper script. Hope someone other than me can find it helpful. Check out the Projects page for more. 

(2 Nov 2006 - 2112)

I figured while I'm at it why not throw another link up here.

http://www.cafepress.com/oldsarge

Take Back The UP! 

(2 Nov 2006 - 1839)

<PLUG>

Check Out NUDaily!

</PLUG>

(20 Oct 2006 - 1325)

After heated debatesover a recent letter  (my apologizes for it being a PDF) to the editor here at NU, I came across that most of the people don't know the difference between a fact and an opinion. Let me give you a quick lesson:

• Fact: Something that is know to be true through observation or is a unquestionable truth. Fex - Gravity is an undeniable truth, we experiance it every day.
• Opinion: A view, belief or judgment that is has insufficient backing to be a fact. Fex - This website rocks. While my opinion there might be (very few) people who disagree with me.

Now the thing about the letter, and subsequent rantings from a number of students, that really got on my nerves was that facts were disputed and made to be opinions. It is your right to believe that we shouldn't be in Iraq and that a less violent solution should have been used. Can we all see why that is an opinion? Now statements such as "Lying about the true motives for his war" or "…let’s just keep fighting for a president who refused to fight when he was called to war." are not opinions, they are WRONG. Not because I don't like them but because facts directly contradict them. Like this one and this one. If you really want to call someone a deserter maybe you should look into that past of  Billy, he never did anything and  left the country to avoid the draft. Not only a stained dress now is it?

(27 Aug 2006 - 2053)

So I'm back at the Wick for the big year so I figured why not start off with a big update. I put up the first of many "advice" columns that I plan on writing called Ask Dr. J. We'll cover topics about anything (well just about) so send in your ideas to the email / AIM at the left. Also updated the projects secion if anyone is interested.

It also occured to me that the front page is going to get a little.....large....if I keep posting. I've got to find a way to fix that...

(23 Aug 2006 - 1853)

Wow two days left till school starts. Time flies when your having fun I guess. You will be seeing more posts here in the coming days. Have to make the people at PayPerPost happy, apparently I need 20 posts in the last 90 days. I'm working on a new section "Ask Dr. J" so if you have a question about pretty much anything and would like to become famous get in touch with me. (Note to self: Where is my editor when I need her)

Also my July 29th Rant has been removed because of some copyright issues. Besides who needs to rant for more than a month anyway?

(11 Aug 2006 - 1801)

Sadly defCon is over. We had a kick ass time though, props go out Jeff @ Planet Hollywood for those. Only ~355 days till the next one.

You can also thank anyone staying in Las Vegas from Aug 2nd to Aug 9th for reminding me of a few more things that drive me crazy.

 (30 July 06 - 1554)

In my excitment of actually updating the website I forgot to put up the link for my Pet Peeves. Its fixed now. 

(29 July 06 - 2118)

Wow. Its been a while since I've updated this.  Lets see whats new. Created a "Pet Peeves" section. Its a work in progress because I can't recall them all at once, but I have the major ones up there. I also started rebuilding my IDS/File server box. It was just getting boring and I needed something new to work on. Check out Geek Stuff to get the low down on that.

(30 May 06 - 2113)

 Ok, Im constently getting crap from people who wonder "Why are you setting up tents" or "Hahahaa....Im getting paid to do something I like" or the always good "Im getting more money than you"

What do I have to say? Just this:

 Top 5 reasons to date a tenter

1) We stake deep

2) Good pole placement 

3) We can pitch a tent in public and not care 

4) We stake in the grass or the mud

5) We like doing it outside

....More to come

(19 May 06 - 2310)

It's a Friday night and while everyone else is out partying guess where I am. Well I'm not going to tell you but if you don't get it from the following feel free to take a bath with a toaster.

  I conducted a little experiment**. Everyone who has a cell phone has received a call they don't want. Now what do most people do......they hit the 'Ignore' button. From here we have 2 different and very interesting results.

1) 'Ignore'  really means the same as the 'Silence' option. The call is still allowed by the phone just the ringer has been muted. This is the way it should be done.

2) 'Ignore' halts the call and immediately sends it to voice mail. This is how it is normally done.

Now I know what your thinking:

"Ohhh but how do I know which one they do"

 Never fear....I went there.

  I'm going to use Alice and Bob to demonstrate the next part. So lets start: Alice calls Bob but Bobs phone is off. Bobs cell provider automatically forwards the call to his voice mail with no ringing - after all there is no opposing phone to complete the call with. Now Bob calls Alice because he noticed she left him a voice mail. The phone rings 6 times before Alice's voice mail picks up. Her phone was on but for whatever reason she was unable to pickup the phone.

Now we have our baseline. Phone off is no rings and phone on but no answer is 6 rings. So now we know that if it starts ringing the phone is on (rocket science I know). From this point we make the assumption that it is case 2.

But back to the good stuff: Bob calls Alice and Alice decided that for whatever reason she doesn't want to talk to Bob. She hit the 'Ignore' button.  Bob is immediately forwarded to Alice's voice mail. For those counting that's now 2 things we know. First we know that the phone is on. And now we know that there is someone at the phone actively ignoring the call.

How can we identify when someone is ignoring a call? Its quite simple actually - whenever the number of rings is less than 6 and the voice mail picks up. Another dead giveaway is the "half-ring" when the call is ignored halfway through the exchange.

Your probably now asking yourself whats the point of this. Well I suppose it works two ways. If you want to know if the person your calling is just ignoring you that can be helpful, but its more for those who ignore calls to realize that people know and that you should probably just hit the 'Silence' option.

 

** I only had access to 3 different phone with 2 providers. One really old phone, an older one, and a new phone. From what I found the 'Ignore' situation largely depends on your phone and who made it. Most phone have both options though.  This was far from scientific

(08 May 06 - 2239) 

Well exams have begun and as always there are the people with certain  majors that get out a week before everyone else. Whiskey - Tango - Foxtrot, Over.  I'm not saying that everyone should stay till the end, but it seems that it the same people everytime that leave the day exams start and the same people that are stuck till 2200 the last day of exams.

Common Profs, cut us some slack and work out a rotation or something. 

 (04 May 06 - 0735)

 Its been a while since this got updated. Damned papers and homework. I'm looking for something else that I can put up here and update more often, so if anyone has some ideas feel free to shoot me a IM/email. 

(21 Apr 06 - 0019) 

After finishing a couple sweet games of Blokus, I thought it was time for an update to the 'Stories' section. Oh and by the way.......

ITS RING TIME!!!!

(18 Apr 06 - 1745) 

Lets see. Im playing "Keeping Up With The Jones's". I refuse to let Eric beat me...

(14 Apr 06 - 2330)

Well I added some more pages to the site so the layout has changed a little bit. If your looking for the stuff that was here before check out the 'Stories' link.  Enjoy.

 --Wood