To Err is human, to moo bovine
Greetings to my fellow CIS 596 students. If you have come here from Google and are trying to rummage up dirty secrets about me keep trying, those are not on here. 
Seriously though, good luck finding stuff, I have a fairly large e-paper trail by now,
Beware Big Brother:
Well, the name change happened this Saturday. I am now officially a senior at Missouri State University and no longer a student at Southwest Missouri State University. Most of the changes are probably mealy cosmetic but it is nice to see that the university is finally repairing a lot of the facilities that they have been neglecting for quite some time. But the main objective of this name change is that the perceived image of the university will properly reflect its actual size. I know this is vague but bear with me I have some method to my random madness. The best example that I have been able to come up with is similar to the situation in Kansas.
The two main universities in that sate are Kansas State University and Kansas University aka The University of Kansas. These two schools are very well known and have fairly large student populations. Now, the two main universities in Missouri are Missouri State University and the University of Missouri. MU is larger than MSU true and they do get tons more of the state funding than does MSU. But both schools are fairly comparable in size (I do not have any statistical information right now so I am going on personal experiences as I have visited all four campuses several times in my life.) but SMSU did not have the public image, reputation, or what have you. Basically, whenever people hear the name Southwest Missouri State University (again, in my experience) I would hear comments like “which junior college is that again?” or “Is that a technical college or a junior college?”. This is a bit frustrating as SMSU/MSU is much larger than any technical or Junior college in this state and for some reason when people see or hear a directionality on a university name they have a stereotype that is attached.
I have attended my fair share of technical college courses and there is nothing wrong with attending a technical college and i am sure that there is nothing wrong with attending a junior college either I just have no experience with them. So, mainly the name change was a bout the image of the university and there is some more funding that may or may not come about if things go the way MSU would like, but who know.it has taken over 19 years to come about mainly due to the interference from MU as they tried to block every attempt to change SMSU to MSU so it is nice to “stick it” to our main rivals so victory is sweet I suppose.
The main thing that i have seen that are pretty awesome so far have been that we get a new shiny @missouristate.edu email/login ID and we get to customize the first bit so you can have something like vivecuervo@missouristate.edu instead of abc123s@missouristate.edu to list a really simple example that I am sure they will NOT allow us to do when they finally let us change email addresses, etc. We also get a rather significant increase in our email quota, the old limit was 10 MB. and now we get 300MB. I know that this i pretty laughable in these days of Gmail’s almost 3GB. of storage but for the students here this is HUGE! Finally, the website got a much needed face lift and it looks like it actually validates as XHTML 1.0 strict so maybe they finally dumped using those ugly Frontpage templates. It is faster, cleaner, and easier to navigate so i am in favor of that! I will let you know more later as I come across it..
The old SMSU site: (via Google’s lovely cache system)
The new, greatly improved, MSU site:
I read all the time and I like to share what i find online. I have been meaning to do this for some time so here goes:
Windows Got Ya Down? Try a Remix (via WIRED)
First up we have an article from WIRED about the uses of P2P networks such as Bittorrent to provide ‘mods’ of your favorite flavor of Windows such as XP. These modes are made independently and are not endorsed by M$ over at the Cube of Redmount. The authors of these mods claim that they are not pirating windows, but improving it.
There’s a lot of extra space on a standard Windows XP CD, especially if the downloadable disk images (the standard format for distributing pirated operating systems) are designed to be burned to DVD. That leaves room to add a whole library of complementary software — even multiple versions of Windows.
The Super WinPE Ultimate Boot CD 2004 Pro, readily available on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent, offers seven different versions of Windows XP on a single DVD.
In addition to two Chinese variants of Windows, the Super WinPE disk includes dozens of boot-time utilities for troubleshooting system snafus. One is an experimental “pre-installation environment” that uses a “mini-Windows XP” for system scanning and file recovery, similar to the popular Knoppix LiveCD version of Linux.
I have not tried any of these but the idea of running XP from a CD like Knoppix appeals to me and I know that I am not alone there so I might check into that at some point. If your curious click on the article title and give it a read. 
Barring None, Geek Camp Rocks (via WIRED)
Next up, we have an article that i am including just for sheer randomness. Apparently, the man behind the huge tech publishing company, O’Reilly Media. They do make some really awesome books and I would love to own more of them, but since i am poor I spend most of my time over at O’Reilly Net to keep up to date on some really interesting, and well geeky stuff. 
At any rate, he hosts a camp over year that is over a weekend and he invites a select few people to attend this event called Foo Camp. This is an inside joke for the IT community that refers to the use of Foo and Bar IE FooBar as variables, etc. Well, apparently those who never get invited decided to get together and form their own camp on the same weekend called, you guessed it, Bar Camp. Both events provide free WiFi and AC power for lap[tops and their are conference rooms that people can gather together and discuss whatever issues they are interested. Sounds a bit like a turf war to me but my inner geek wants to head to one myself.
One Device to Rule Them All (via )
This article discusses the possibilities that come from having a device that would be both a cell phone and a computer and there is some discussion about some of the various marketing possibilities that could arise from having such a device. It looks like there is one company already in place to provide these services called Amp’d Mobile and they will be selling combination devices and providing broadband quality multimedia content.
Armed with almost $70 million in venture capital, Peter Adderton, the company’s caffeinated CEO from Australia, believes the future will be composed of mobile entertainment at 60 mph, and the market will be driven by the audience with the most insatiable appetite for it.
I guess we will have to wait and see what happens with all of this. this has been a shorter entry than I thought it would be. now I’m off to return a PC that I have been repairing and then I’m off later tonight to the SMSU to MSU change over. I will talk more about what happened later on. Peace!
I have been in contact with the developer of the shoudtbox plugin, Jalenack and he pointed out to me that I was running an older version of the awesome Bad Behavior plugin. So I have updated that and I also installed the Bad Behavior Blackhole plugin as well to see if that helps keep things more update on the blocking front. In the options for that plugin I found a link to a plugin called WP-Dash that is a total replacement for the WordPress that lets you create your own sections, drag things, around, etc. I am actually the Quick Post widget that comes with it see how that goes. Take care everyone, Erik and I are heading out to Buffalo Wild Wings to start the weekend off right. Remember everyone “Wings, Beer, Sports. All of the essentials. :D”
I see that spambots have figured out how to use my shoutbox for spam . . . fantastic . . . grrrrrrrrrrrr!
I just updated to the newest version of the Kubrick “theme” by Michael Heilemann and Chris J Davis, which was released the other day, over at Binary Bonsai. Michael and Chris have stopped calling K2 a theme and instead are referring to it as a mod for WordPress. This is a first as far as I know but in my humble opinion this release is awesome and I can’t wait to see future releases. To see what I mean take a look at the Google Suggest style feature when you enter a search term. Nifty yes? Also, the bug on the comments page is fixed so Ryan, Keith and company can relax. I am getting ready for my first day back at SMS/MSU and reediting my templates to restore what I had on K2 Alpha 4. Take care all and good luck this semester! 
Ibusiness meaning to make another post for a few days but one thing or another keeps interfering like things tend to do. I’ve been settled into my apartment for about a week now, and I has been totally awesome! Its really nice to have your own place and to all of the daily routine stuff that you usually let other do for you, but have never had a problem doing them for yourself, if you follow me. At any rate the apartment totally awesome and I can’t believe we were able to get into this place considering how new it is (it was built back in March I think). I’m getting along with Erik and Eric (Peewee) just great.
On another note, classes start in the morning which I am not looking forward to but what can you do eh? I’m down to only 24 hours as i start what I am calling “Senior Year Mark II”. So if all goes well I should be done by this May and then its on to . . . well, I have NFI what I’m doing after that but one thing at a time. Here is a breakdown of the “fun” I have on tap this semester (with the lovely descriptions that you all love :).
MGT 364
Management 364: Quantitative techniques that aid the manager in making rational decisions. A study of the methods used in evaluating and selecting resources relative to achieving organizational objectives.
ENG 221 (I can’t believe I forgot to take this until i was a senior :/)
ENG 221 Writing II: Writing for the Professions: Practice in a variety of writing situations encountered by professionals: correspondence, proposals, documented research reports, abstracts, definitions, product and process descriptions. Emphasis on developing skills in audience analysis, analytical reading, critical thinking, research methods, and clear writing.
CIS 596 (IE IT Security, this is basically an independent study on whatever you want to do)
CIS 596 Problems in Business: Computer Information Systems: Technical or professional problems growing from particular needs which may require additional depth or breadth of study.
FGB 510 (IE E- Business)
FGB 510 E‑Business: Principles and Practices: A study of the basic principles of e-business from an applied, best practices point of view. Topics include the history and development of e-business, an overview of business‑to‑consumer (B2C) and business‑to‑business (B2B) e-business, the essential elements of online stores, payment methods, basic technological issues, competing globally on the web, building customer confidence, online security, legal issues, web site personalization, promotion, and customer service, competing as a small business on the web, and the future of e-business. A significant amount of time will be devoted to reviewing and analyzing existing e-business sites.
And one more thing before i go pass out in my lonely Queen size bed (I really need to have a girlfriend fall into my lap or something!), for all of you Warcraft II fans out there, ever wanted tog et all of the WAV files from the game that had you in stitches and use them as system sounds? Well, now you can just head over to this site and be Ready to Serve!
I found a plugin for WP that will supposedly drastically degree the amount of time that I have to wait while posts with pings/trackbacks post. Its called WP-No Ping obviously So here we go with a test post and one trackback.
Sorry I haven’t posted in a bit but I just finished moving into my apartment. I will update on that later but I just upgraded to Wordpress version 1.5.2 and I just want to make sure nothing broke with the upgrade. Post a comment if anything is not working. Take care!
I finally made some headway one my apartment checklist!
Furniture needed:
Path of commerce ravaged by my 1st. Financial Card:
Grand total including tax and assembly after much haggling on my part —– $382.59
Price of getting out from your parent’s roof and into your own place ——– $Freaking PRICELESS:”(I know the whole Mastercard thing is over used but I could not resist. :P)”:http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A//www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp%3FID%3D307%26rtn%3D&ei=uvb6QrTSKYe4atGcqZEO
I will work on the last two bits and pick everything up and move it with the help of my friends and a pickup sometime after 5pm. When I get time (and a freaking digital camera) I will try to get some pics up of the new place. I’m gonna call it a night as I have to go have the surgeon look at my teeth to see how I’m recovering in a few hours, then more shopping and work.
Roots of Strategy by Thomas R. Phillips
Idoru by William Gibson
