January 2004
I'm back in West Lafayette
I got back into West Lafayette today just fine. I arrived in Chicago yesterday around 10am and hung out most of the day. We went to Jamba Juice and to Woodfield Mall to walk around a bit. I tried calling the Apple Representative who emailed me on Monday a few times over the course of the past two days and wasn’t able to get ahold of him.
Me and Jacqui went to go see the movie “Peter Pan”...
December 2003
A Busy Day
I did a lot today but the end result was ultimately a new pair of shoes:
I also went out to where David is working and hung out, saw the house they’re building, and talked about all the stuff going on in our lives.
I also got an interesting email from an Apple employee around noon CST (10AM PST), but I’ll touch on that in my next entry. ;)
2003 Reflections
I just noticed today that Justin had done a “Friday Five” that I thought was pretty neat. So here’s go:
What was your biggest accomplishment this year?
I feel that my biggest accomplishment this year was finishing my Fall semester strong. I kept up the pressure on myself all semester long to do well, to do every homework, and to do well on every test and quiz. I still don’t study for tests...
iBook Update (Dec 26)
I hope everyone had a great Christmas ;)
I made my daily call to Apple today and I got a guy (didn’t catch his name this time) and told him that I was calling to find out the status of the repair of my iBook. As expected I was put on hold and I got to listen to their fabulous hold music.
The young man came back and told me that the unit had been put back on hold as it was awaiting a new...
Christmas Day!
This is a bit late in the day, but I’ve been marooned in a technology-free zone for about two days I guess.
While the break from computers was nice, I’m also glad to be back. I got pretty much what I asked for for Christmas. I got $310 in cash, some socks, and some nice undershirts. Everything a guy like me needs ;)
I’ve been trying to get some work done on this project for Jacqui’s...
iBook Saga (Dec 24 Edition)
I’ll make this one short and to the point. I was over at my Father’s house to spend Christmas Eve / Christmas Morning and it was around 4:45pm CST so I thought I’d make my daily call up to the Apple Repair place to see how everything was progressing and see if my laptop had shipped out on the 24th like the fellow on the 23rd had hoped it would.
When I got through (amazingly quick I might add)...
Grades Came Out Today
Long story short:
RF Communications – A
Analog Transient Analysis – B
Technical Writing – A
Electromagnetism & Light – A
Professional Issues in ECET – B
3.68 yeehawr :)
iBook Update: Rage Induced Violence Edition (Dec...
About 15 minutes ago I wrapped up another call to the Apple Repair line to see if my iBook had shipped today. I called in and got connected with Chris fairly quickly. I told him all my information but only told him that I was told that my iBook was supposed to ship out today and I was called to see if it had. He read the notes about my repair and said that they said that all testing on the unit...
iBook Update (Dec 22)
Well here it is, December 22. I’m back in Wichita now (got your email david!). Anyways I’ve been trying to get ahold of the “Apple Repair Line” all morning since I arrived and they’ve been having technical difficulties all morning. Random disconnects, error messages, you name it. I’ve checked the number that the fellow on friday gave me to check the status of my package on Airborne.com and...
Daily iBook Update (Dec 20)
Well I’m officially upset with Apple. I was told that it would probably be shipped out Thursday and I’d have the computer by Friday (which didn’t happen). I then called them up Friday to see what the deal was and they told me that it would definately be shipped out on Friday and it might go to either my apartment or my Grandma’s house (because apparently Apple is dependant on using the web...
A very good CSS resource
This list is a wonderfully categorized list of VERY useful web design links and resources from all over the web. From Fixing Your Thinking to Standards and Your Business to XHTML Fundamentals to CSS Hacks and Typography, Fonts and Stock Photography its got EVERYTHING ;D
Here are some other cool CSS/Web Design links:
CSS Valut
The Noodle Incident
The Layout Reservoir has a few...
Electronics Data bank
A visit to this site will explain how cool it is.
Daily iBook Update
So I decided I’d bug the guy manning the phones at Apple’s repair service again today to see what’d become of my iBook and if they’d been able to get that logic board overnighted last night. After going on hold for the requisite few minutes I got “Chris” and he took my information. Both times I’ve called in to get the status of the iBook (which still isn’t getting updated on their website) they...
Grades/Finals Update
Two finals down and one to go! My only final remaining is my ECET 307 final tomorrow morning at 8am. ick. I have pretty good news to report about my other classes, however. I found out on the ECET 304 front that my group got a 100% on the project paper we turned in and I received a 75% on the final. That left my grade in 304 at a very respectable 91.6%.
Last night me and Jacqui took our...
iBook Update
Today is day 10 of Apple having my iBook so I called them up this morning. I had previously tried to call them yesterday (was on hold for 25minutes) and I had tried to call them twice the day before that (30 minutes on hold the first time and the promise of a 1 hour wait the next time).
So obviously there is one dude manning the repair lines at Apple. I called at 9:30am and got him and he...
Atom 0.3 Spec is Out
The Atom 0.3 Working Draft is out and as always Mark Pilgram delivers his MovableType Template, examples of live feeds, and had updated the validator code.
In that vein, I’ve updated my Atom template here to be 0.3 compliant and I’ve also updated my Wordpress Atom feed generator to meet the 0.3 spec. Feel free to implement it in pre-0.8 versions of Wordpress because there has been some changes...
Quickies
MacZealots should be going live sometime between now and this morning. I hear they’re going to have some pretty cool shiznit up there ;)
To continue the apple theme, my iBook is still “In Repair”, as it has been since Sunday >:O
My first real contribution to an open source...
You might’ve read on my blog a few days ago I that I found myself in need of importing links from an OPML file into a Wordpress blog. I implemented some code to do just that except that it was made specifically for the feed I had available (a NetNewsWire OPML file).
One of the developers on the Wordpress team got inspired by my idea and implemented it in a more thoughtout way by using an XML...
QOTD: Who's your favorite male vocalists?
I thought up this a while back and made some little MP3 clippings but I never got around to actually posting my very own question of the day. The question is who are your favorite male vocalists. I don’t mean of all time or spanning all genres, they don’t have to be the best singers ever heard but they’re either fun to listen to, or they strike a particular chord (_ha_) with you.
I chose to...
Grades Update
Things are coming down to the wire in my final week of regulation classes of my second-to-last semester at Purdue. I’ve gotten an updated grade for my ECET 304 class as a whole, my test 3 score from ECET 307 and a little on-going story to tell about the 304 project. 304 Class Grade
Just a quick update on all things class-oriented. My score of 100% on my ECET 304 brought my test average up to...
My iBook: Status Update
So what’s the verdict from Apple so far?
12/03/2003 20595281 no image – system seems to boot Closed
I wonder if that means they concede defeat and they’re going to fix it :)
Edit: oops 12/3 was when I called them. The ibook is currently “In Repair”
More Circuit Design Links
A pretty cool site, some of the programs it links to are a bit out of date but a lot of the resources are timeless:
http://www.circuitsage.com/filter.html http://www.circuitsage.com/pll.html http://www.circuitsage.com/xvr.html
Found via this site was the TI/Brownburr FilterPro windows application. Its pretty neat, but it doesn’t do filter order calculations for you :) Not many of these...
Five Geek Social Fallacies
Funny, but somewhat true for some people ;)
Five Geek Social Fallacies
via random
What does it all mean!?
Somehow I think that Justin and Ryan are behind all of this :O
Predictions for 2004
Jeremy Zawodny makes some predictions for 2004. I agree with most of them except his precidions for RSS. RSS is cool and all. Lots of people use it, but its mostly tech-oriented people. If RSS ever does become “mainstream” in the same way that the WWW has then I think it’ll be in a fashion we don’t know of yet, and it’ll be completely transparent to end users.
Seeing RSS feed URI’s on...
Posted 3 Patches to the Wordpress Project
More for my own records than anyone elses, but I submitted three modification I made to the Wordpress PHP source last night.
Extended get_links() to support link offsets
The first two dealing with setting a list_offset when grabbing a list of links. Wordpress lets you manage your links from within the administratio console, which is nice. However, on the vanilla version of Wordpress when...
Amazing! Test Taker Extrordinaire :)
I took my ECET 304 (RF Communications) exam #3 last tuesday (I think I wrote about it here) and thought I did pretty well on it. I didn’t study for the exam (have I ever explained my stand on studying here…I should :) ). Anyways I got the test back today. The score I recieved was:
100
w00t ;) The average score was 69.5 :O
Other plans?
I really need to update my Atom 0.1 Feed Generator for Wordpress to meet the v0.2 spec sometime :P
My big plans for Christmas break and beyond?
To create a web-based (PHP of course) filter design package. Now that’s if I’m not deluged with contract work from Jacqui. I think that making an on-line filter design application on par with “Wfilter” (couldn’t find a link but its a cheesy windows app) wouldn’t’ be that hard to do. Heck I could even generate bode and plot plots if I ever got around to it :)
Side note #1, I wonder if there...
Search Engine Technology
Tim Bray at ongoing has been doing a series of post detailing how search engines/spiders/etc work. He has just published his most recent on Robots but there are a treasure trove of articles he’s written on the subject of search engines:
On Search: The Table of Contents
On Search: Backgrounder On Search: The Users On Search: Basic Basics On Search: Precision and Recall On Search:...
OMG Cookies
I got a mysterious notice saying that I have a package in the mail yesterday. So I get it from the main office and take it home and open it up. What do I find? COOKIES.
Thanks Grandma ;)
OMG Snow
iBook and Christmas Update
Christmas Break
The tickets are paid for and the plans have been made. I’ll be making a weeklong appearance in Wichita, KS from December 22nd until December 30th. If you know me from back home look me up and I’ll see if I can’t meet up with you. Davey, you know I’ll be spending some time with ya!
iBook Situation
The Airborne Express box arrive today and I’ve packed my poor little...
The Semester Is Almost Over
Well next week is dead week so that means that the Fall 2003 semester here at Purdue is coming to a close. That also means that I am taking tests, finishing labs, and completing projects.
One such project is an experiment board for one of my classes, ECET 304 or RF Communications. Its a simple board with three independant circuits. One circuit is a high speed RF amplifier circuit that...
My Poor iBook
I am sad/angry to write right now that my iBook which I bought around June 27th has gone flakey on me in the span of a few hours. I left the laptop on overnight as I always do and got up this morning and used the computer a little bit while I got ready for school. I packed everything away in my backpack including my computer (as always).
I then went to lab and when I finished I came to...
dailyphotoarchivestinyipod.jpg
This is an article that will match a failed referrer from images.google.com
THE iPOD MINI PHOTO YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS GONE AND HAS BEEN GONE FOR MONTHS!!!
Cool Stuff According to Clint
What’s cool? Well I’ll tell ya!
PHPiCalendar 1.0
Maybe you noticed, maybe nobody cares about my calendars (what??) but I’ve upgraded my “schedule” section to use PHPiCalendar 1.0. One cool thing that came into the phpicalendar tree around 0.9.5 is a publish.php that you can keep in your calendars directory under your installation that when configured properly will function as a WebDAV...
What happened over thanksgiving?
Well everything turned out fine! Jacqui had to rent a car to get us back to Chicago, but once that was done everything went smooth.
We drove the Dodge Stratus to Chicago and hung out for a day and spent Thanksgiving with Jacqui’s family and ate some awesome food cooked up by her parents.
Later on her Father informed her that they would be giving Jacqui her mother’s excellent 02’ Passat...
A little Tasks 1.8 hack
I was bored last night and lamenting over the fact that I never add closing notes when I complete my homework in Tasks so I thought I’d do some poking around and see if I could figure out how to disable that feature.
It turned out to be pretty simple!
removed distribution of modification on 01/22/04 at the notification of the developer