Sad days

In case you haven't heard, Don Knotts and Dennis Weaver have both passed away. Both kinda caught me by surprise, not from their age but how well they seemed to be doing. Don had been keeping his medical problems quiet from the public. Dennis Weaver was a cast member of 'Gunsmoke', 'McCloud' and more recently 'Wildfire' on ABC Family. While the name probably doesn't strike your memory, but I would be willing to bet that if you were to see him you would recognize him. Both were exceptional actors and will be missed.

I just got back from some mardi gras parades in downtown Mobile for Fat Tuesday. It was fun as usual but since I still have a bit of 'the sickness' I didn't feel all that good. We came home early since kc works tomorrow and since we were all a bit tired. Matt, Jeremy and CBot are all on the bad list since they would not come downtown. Matt said he had to 'work', it seems like the perfect time to come down with the 'sniffles'. Jeremy said he had to get tags (you had all month) and get a haircut (it can be put off). CBot is in the liberal northeast, in an area with a port about to be taken over my middle eastern peoples. But on top of that she is going to miss Game Night which was planned FOR HER!!

Anyway, time to rest...
~Kisea

Weekend Roundup

Its been quite a weekend. Mom came into town Thursday afternoon so I took her to the Python workshop and Picklefish. She was a bit lost with Python but was impressed about things because that was her first exposure to code. Later at Picklefish she had a good time meeting some of the crew and enjoying the good pizza.

Friday we carried my truck to have the brakes checked at Midas and while that was going on she wanted to go to Best Buy and the mall. So we did that and some other stuff. Later on the way downtown for the parade, we stopped at Dreamland for some BBQ. It was not as good and Big Joe Duke's but its the closest a restaurant can get I guess. We then continued downtown to the meeting place at the bicycle shop and BJD was there along with the other peoples. Mom got tickled that BJD kept introducing her as 'Momma Wright' and the spontaneous "WOOO's". Again, she had a great time.

Saturday we woke up and I had to take her to the thrift store on Schillinger, that is a requirement for her trips down. It was raining like crazy so we went to Panera Bread for some lunch which was most excellent. After lunch we went across the bay to the mall over there for some shopping. We then went to Dippin' Dots after a call to Jeremy to hightail his rear up there to talk. We sat, ate and chatted for a bit then it was time to head back across the bay. We got home and watched some TV and such then decided it was time to eat some dinner thus a trip to Los Arcos was in order. The food was excellent, best food from Los Arcos in a while. Then we came home and watched a movie.

Today, we woke up and got some Waffle House for breakfast. Then went to the flea market to look around. After that we went by Wally World for a couple things then back home. We packed up her truck and she left out for home.

I would be downtown now since she left to celebrate Joe Cain day but during all of the hustle and bustle of the weekend I seem to have developed a cold. So, I decided to stay home and recover for a big party day on Tuesday. Back to my mopping about now...

~Kisea

Its ALIVE! ! ! !

The Kubuntu Linux server is up and we now have a temporary website up and going. So, swing on by http://acm.southalabama.edu/ for updates from time to time. The new website is currently under development by our two excellent webmasters.

Mom is coming into town tomorrow to stay the weekend and catch a mardi gras parade among other things.

~Kisea

A Raiding we will go....

NO, I am NOT talking about World of Warcraft you crack heads! I just completed a transaction which will net myself one of the 3ware Escalade 8port Raid controllers which I have been trying to get. But, now that I have purchased one I have realized that I now need between 4 and 8 hdds to put on the card for it. Crap.

In other news, the ACM now has a Cafe Press store so go check it out from time to time because I may be placing some of my original ideas on tshirts there. All proceeds from the sales go to the ACM to fund fun things such as Speaker Events, game nights, movie nights and the such. Mark and I have been putting alot of time into the ACM lately to try to 'turn it around' from the mismanagement by previous officers and mentors (NOT Langan). I know some of you are not fond of the ACM or what it 'used' to be, but believe me there are some good people in place now and we are seeing the difference. Hopefully, in the not too distant future there will be some cool computer wear on there that you would like to order at a reasonable price, which will also benefits the ACM. The link is http://www.cafepress.com/ACMSouthAlabama

Also, we have the webserver up and running Kubuntu Linux now with Apache. While there is a lack of website we are one step closer to having a presence on the web again, which is MUCH overdue.

Thursday at 3:00PM in FCE 19 is the second part of the Python workshop series presented by the ACM and Mr. Whitston. All are welcome and refreshments will be available.

~Kisea

WHOO WEEE

BJD ribs were delicious (possibly more so than normal). It was quite a good turn out from the picklefish crowd. Fun was had by all who were there and for the ones who could not make it, it was your loss. I have a picture inspired by skrubby from a while back for those who weren't there I just have to get it from Kc's phone.

I've been watching Ebay a lot lately eyeing some parts. I want a Raid5 controller to use to store my data in a relatively secure way. I have been also eyeing a dual processor motherboard for the 64bit 66Mhz PCI slot to run the controller in. Its not a necessary thing to have but if I could pick one up cheaply then it would boost the performance of the controller.

Last Thursday, an Alabama Power truck came by and replaced our meter because they suspected it was 'stuck' which is why our power bill the last two months came to a whopping $11 and some change. I kidded with him that he could just leave it like it is, but all I got was a chuckle. We'll have to keep a close watch on the power bill to make sure they don't try to 'make up' what they think they lost over the last two months. Its going to be hard for them to do because we moved into the house at the end of October so if they use old data as a trending system to do this, then it will be invalid.

So I heard today that the U.S. Embassy in a country was attacked by protesters of the cartoon that ran several weeks ago depicting Muhammad in an unflattering way. These people will use any excuse to grumble and riot. They are even worse if it involves countries in the 'Western World'. I read that one was being interviewed and said something to the like of, 'wouldn't you get upset if your God was mocked?' Yes, we get upset but you do not see us burning, pillaging and otherwise taking it much too far. If your a muslim or whatever religion you may be get the F* over it.

Enough for tonight...
~Kisea

First official meeting

Well, we had the first official meeting with the newly elected officers and it seemed to go well. It was quite nice to basically fill the ACM Office with people, one other time I went to a meeting it was about 4 maybe 5 people in attendence. Everyone was helpful and non-negative, which was the opposite to what it seemed be the last couple of years. Mark and I actually ran a semi-structured meeting, not too formal but not so informal that nothing gets done. We made some headway of getting a website up and going. I donated some hardware to act as a new server if we host it ourselves like in past years. We formed committees for the banquet and programming contest and stuff. Since USA is hosting one of the three distributed programming contest sites, we are forming groups early to practice some in order to do well. Above all we want to keep it fun, but we don't want to come in last place either. So, i'm going to be helping Mr. Whitston with the groups in a mentor facility.

I spoke offhand with Rick Green about the presentation coming up on Friday (3:30pm in FCE 17) and it sounded really interesting. He estimates that its going to be somewhere between 1-1.5hrs or so. The majority of it is going to revolve around the GPL and Licensing, then towards the end it will start getting into why would you choose Linux, whats its advantages and stuff like that. Later on, he wants to have another presentation about Linux and start going in depth on that side of it. So if you can come, we would be glad to have you and your friends. If you cannot, then tell some friends and maybe they will come.

Today is Valentines day, so I asked myself to be my valentine and after several minutes of deliberating I agreed since....well....I didn't have anyone else to share it with nor anyone to spend it with. So, I guess tonight will be the same as the last.....umm....seven years or so and curl up to watch a movie...alone.

~Kisea

*Sigh*

Been a bit pooped the last two days. Met Doug, Casey and Skrubby friday night at mellow mushroom for a drink and to just hang out. Then met up with Skrubby and BJD to hang Saturday night to see a parade and some beer, again it was good. I have to say the sushi at the Liquid Lounge looked awesome so I must return. Also went the the Salug meeting, it was ok. Two or three of the people were a bit freaky and the rest were pretty cool.

Working on some stuff for the ACM which is taking up some time. Installed with the four new computers for the ATI lab on friday with the help of Mr. Lynn. Now we are having access rights problems with the EDE and the Debugger so we have to figure that out. Now we have five more machines to put in the downstairs labs and a server coming sometime to serve the debugger licenses and store projects etc.

Remember Uncle Owen Lars (Phil Brown) from Star Wars (The real one in 1977), well I was sad to read that he has passed away at 89 years of age. Here is a paragraph from the article on MSN.

Though Brown worked in stage and film for more than 30 years, many remember him best for his brief role as the loving uncle who tries to give Skywalker a normal childhood and keep him from knowing he has Jedi roots. Uncle Owen and his wife Beru meet an early end at the hands of imperial storm troopers.

Rest in peace.

****Service Announcements****
This Friday at 3:30 PM in FCE 17 Rick Green is going to talk about "What is the GPL and why might you consider Linux". Rick is a Systems Administrator for Lenzing Fibers where he administers 120+ workstations and 25+ servers in Mobile and a satelite office in NY and several remote users. Snacks and drinks will be available.

Thursday February 23rd, Mr. Howard Whitston is hosting the second part of the Python workshop in FCE 19 from 3:00 - 5:00PM. Again, refreshments will be provided. Copies of Python will be available.
****End of Service Announcements****

~Kisea

The votes are in...

Well, we had elections today to fill the posts which were vacated by the mass resignation of the previous ACM members and they voted me President of the ACM. Mark McCleary won VP, Rick Green Secretary and we have co-Treasurers. Some other people I don't really know got some of the other stuff like publicity, speaker chair and such so I'll have to get to know them. But I think the major posts are in good hands now that we can actually run it.

Rick Green an adult part time IT major who has a good working knowledge of Linux from work is going to give a presentation Friday February 17th at 3:00 in FCE 17 entitled "What is the GPL and why might I consider Linux". I will plug this again closer to the presentation date. Rick is the public relations office for South Alabama Linux Users Group and he will be giving a presentation with a second person on KDE this saturday. SALUG meets every second saturday of the month at 2pm, more information can sought from http://www.salug.org if you are interested.

~Kisea

Vaporware galore...and water....

The Vaporware awards for 2005 was released today and some familiar grumblings were on the list including:
10) High-def Tivo
8) Blu-ray/HD-DVD
6) Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
5) Starcraft Ghost
4) Windows Vista/IE 7
2) Phantom game service
and #1 is...drum roll please...Duke Nukem Forever.

It was recently revealed that last year $100 billion was spent on bottled water. While if Americans would spend $15 billion more on water and sewage combined we could have water with the supposed quality contained within those little polyethylene terephthalate bottles. But what is the hidden cost behind that you may ask? Making the bottles at the quantities wanted by Americans requires crude oil from which the plastic is derived. How much crude oil? Over
1.5 million barrels a year. YES, more than 1,500,000 barrels of crude oil A YEAR. How can you break that down...that would be enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for A YEAR!! Worldwide, 2.7 MILLION tons of plastic is used to bottle water.

On top of those facts, after the water is consumed those bottles must be disposed of. What do you do with your plastic bottles? Oh, you throw them in the garbage. How typical. Thats 2.7 MILLION tons of trash being produced worldwide. So, how much actually makes it to the garbage dump? Well, 86% of the plastic bottles used in the United States becomes garbage or litter on the side of the road. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals tied to a host of human and animal health problems. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. In addition, of the bottles deposited for recycling in 2004, the US exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as far away as China which means that even more fossil fuels were burned in the process.

Furthermore, 'Bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water. In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit,'' Earth Policy Institute (EPI) said. It added, ''It even advises people who drink bottled mineral water to change brands frequently because the added minerals are helpful in small amounts but may be dangerous in higher doses.'' So, what does 'mineral water' mean, well minerals are all around us. Rocks are made of minerals, jewels are made of minerals and so forth. It just means that its water with 'stuff' and no indication of what that 'stuff' is. According to the study, ''in a number of places, including Europe and the United States, there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than bottled water.''

What do you think about that?

~Kisea

Chili Cookoff

Well, the chili cookoff was a great time. Many good chili's and several good people to hang with. I can now say that I have eaten Gator Chili, Kangaroo Chili (RooStew as they called it) and Deer Chili. The Gator and Deer were good but the Roo wasn't quite as palatable. The Tater tot chili, Smirnoff chili, Degussa and DailyAccess were all good. For those of you out there, sorry you weren't here we had a good time. But it makes me wonder if my Taco Soup would be good for an event like this...anyway.

I've been doing a little web page design using CSS in Dreamweaver and I definitely not call myself very good at it, but its been fun playing with it.

~Kisea

woohoo

Well, the new machines for the labs have came in...well at least 4 of them have. They are supposed to be P4 3GHz, 1GB ram, 80gig hdd and 17" LCD monitors. They ordered a total of 10 machines, 4 for the Real-time lab to go along with the new software from Mentor Graphics. The other six will somehow be spread across the cscb 100 and 110 labs, I suppose for Thesis and Project work.

Matt and I met Doug and Casey at the .NET Users Group meeting last night. It was quite insightful about SQL Server 2005. They gave away several door prizes including a copy of "Head First Design Patterns" which I really wanted but was not on the receiving end. However, everyone got a coupon for 30% O'Reilly books. Doug even won a copy of ".NET Gotchas". I do look forward to trying to attend future meetings, anything that adds to my knowledge is good in my opinion.

Trying to set up a speaker event for Friday Feb. 17th tentatively entitled "What is the GPL and why might you choose Linux".