irrelevancy

I didn’t realize ZenPhoto didn’t have any kind spam protection active by default. I have been getting these poetic spam comments. It was kind of cute at first, but I’m over it. Let’s see how Akismet does.

This blog has not been abandoned, but I understand how one would come to this conclusion. I’d give you some nonsense about how I’ve been too busy and could even provide some vague details that would solidify this assertion. It wouldn’t be the truth. There just hasn’t been much going on.

School certainly takes a lot of time and thought, but these last couple terms have been easy. Too easy. I get bored easily if there’s no challenge and a school whose curriculum was developed for the lowest common denominator constantly disappoints. The core classes are okay and get more exciting the higher I go, but the general education classes are such a joke.

I don’t know where I got derailed. I feel like I just can’t get my head together lately.

Miscellaneous news. I turned 26. It’s not a milestone, an even number, or an aesthetically-pleasing one. People even seem disappointed when they find out. I eagerly await the day that someone comes up with a good reason for having your birthday on Christmas.

I think this blog has been going for just over 3 years. On the plus side, I think I sound more sane. Negatively, not as much variety around here lately. I guess there hasn’t been much of anything lately. School, excuses, repeat.

I vowed last year to take more pictures. Utterly failed. I don’t think I even took a photo since that declaration. I love photography and I would love to snap all day, but I can’t get over this irrational fear of what people will think when they see me with a camera in my hand.

2009 is going to be a big year for me. A lot of changes are coming. It’s too early to expand on that in a coherent way. There’s much work to be done. I’m terrified.

Getting worse at keeping up with this. Fudging dates just to have at least once a month, I’m so neurotic. Couldn’t get into the administration page for a while, PHP error about memory. I hope fall lasts forever.

As a Linux user, keeping programs up to date or even bleeding edge is very easy. Plus I usually refresh the operating system every six months as a new version comes out. Work is a different story. We use Windows XP on all the machines and I generally try to keep the systems very stable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like a fine Linux distribution like Ubuntu, where all the programs are kept up-to-date through the standard repositories or the fantastic PPA archives.

I’ve used Secunia’s website many times for research papers or curiosity and just recently noticed their Personal Software Inspector. I tried it out of curiosity and it was amazing how many programs were astoundingly out-of-date. Software I use frequently usually has an auto-updater or notifier (Firefox, Pidgin, OpenOffice, etc), but there’s a lot of little ones I either don’t use often or don’t think to check for upgrades.

Not only does Secunia’s PSI scan your entire system and tell you what needs to be updated, they also make it very easy to fix, having options to directly download the new version and other niceties. It can also start at boot and actively monitor software changes. Also, pretty graphs and statistics.

Secunia PSI

Ouch, you know it’s bad when you can’t remember the TLD of your own site. I’ve been busy, but not overwhelmingly so. I’ve just been so lazy the past school term. Students have been graduating and we’ve been losing valuable staff members, so it’s a little depressing.

I was excited about taking Linux Security, but I found it to be a little easy. I passed the class on the first day as the final grade depended upon getting root access to a test machine. I really think I need to get serious about getting ready for a career. Life can get too comfortable without advancement. I was stressing over writing a paper, but for no good reason. I do this every term: wait until the very last minute and make myself sick with anxiety in every previous moment. The paper earned a 100%. I need to have a little more faith in myself and just get it done!

I’ve been dying to see the new Batman movie, but I’ve been insisting on seeing it at the IMAX theater, which has proven to be very inconvenient. We drove all the way out there on Friday, but all the showings were sold out, so we caught The Mummy: Return of the Dragon Emperor Strikes Back or whatever. I can certainly understand the bad reviews. After Indy 4, I had enough of the father and son adventuring. I’ve seen parts of the first Mummy and I remember it being a little humorous, but this one was so contrived. I did like the style of the times (clothing, vehicles, etc), and I did enjoy the cinematography, particularly the gun fight during a light snowfall.