BUS COM 250 Journal Post

Let me start by saying that I love my job and that I'm grateful to have it. Not everyone gets the chance to work in a job they really love and get a decent compensation for it at the same time. If you came to me a few years ago and told me I would be a Tech Director for a school system, I probably would have laughed at you but I've grown a little since then. One of the best things about my job, other than being able to geek out and get paid for it, is the social network that I instantly became a part of when I was hired. Through different mediums such as listservs and Twitter, I am constantly connect to dozens of like-minded individuals who all work in education in some manner. I have come to rely on these individuals as a source of support when I need it as well as an invaluable source of research and information. No one can know everything, but everyone can know a little about something. When we all collaborate and share what we learn, it makes us all more knowledgeable in our professions. This brings me to my subject, the Acer Aspire One netbook. I am a religious user of Twitter. Twitter, in case you don't know, is one of the world's most popular microblogging apps. It's completely free and lets you communicate simply and quickly with anyone you like. Anyway, one day Dave Trask, a colleague of mine from Vasselboro, Maine, posted an offer from Acer onTwitter. Apparently Acer was offering free trials of their new Acer Aspire One netbook to educational institutions. The best part about the free trial is, once your 30 day trial is up, you have the option to purchase the netbook at a nicely reduced cost. On top of all of that, by participating in the offer, you automatically enter your school in a contest to win a new lab's worth of computers! How could I turn that offer down? Especially when all you needed to do to participate was fill out a short application and field a couple of phone calls from Acer? It was the perfect opportunity for me to test out a netbook, which I had been wanting to do for a while..without actually having to purchase one! Well, the netbook arrived yesterday and here's a quick run-down of the machine's specs:

Aspire® OA150-1126 Netbook

• Intel® Atom™ Processor N270
(512KB L2 cache, 1.60GHz, 533MHz FSB)
• Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
• 1GB DDR2 533 SDRAM
• 160GB hard drive
• Multi-in-one card reader
• SD Card reader
• 8.9" WSVGA (1024 x 600) TFT display,
Acer CrystalBrite Technology
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, webcam

I've got PCs running in my school that have worse specs than the netbook. I've been using it for two days now..and I've got to say, I'm impressed. The first thing that impressed me was the combination of size AND usability. I have an iPod touch, which is a full fledged computer in its own right, but I've had some issues with usability as most people do with devices of a small size. I was worried that the keyboard would be impossible to type on and the screen may be difficult to see. After about 10 minutes of use, I found my worries drifting away. The keyboard is nicely designed, the keys are curved and typing is easy. The screen is just big enough that you don't need to squint to see it, but people fighting off ocular degeneration may need some specticles. I am using the netbook to type this blog post right now and I haven't had a problem yet. As you can see in the specs it comes with Windows XP preinstalled, which runs beautifully on this hardware. It boots quickly and programs are snappy when they're loading.
The battery life is astounding! It makes every other laptop, even the Macs, look like power-hungry fiends. Just as an example, when I pulled the netbook out of the box and started it up, I didn't bother charging the battery. It was about half charged when I powered it on and I then used the laptop for 4 hours straight before deciding to plug it in. It's now fully charged and I will have to update you on how long the full battery lasts. Amazing.
They also did an excellent job designing the mouse software. They built in a copycat type of Mac-like multi-touch support, like the pinch to zoom in..etc.
The whole laptop weighs about a pound and a half to two pounds WITH the battery. It's small enough to fit into a woman's purse. We verified this when our HS secretary thought it be funny to try to sneak off with it in hers.
The only gripe I have with the netbook..and it's the same gripe I've had with ANY commercially crafted computer...is crapware.
Crapware is all that garbage software that they decide to load on the machine before shipping it..that no one EVER wants.
The crapware on this machine was particularly bad, because it was McAfee Security Suite. I classify McAfee as crapware because, in my opinion, it's one of the worst security suites in existence. It completely takes over your machine and you usually have to have a PHD in McAfee to figure out how to get it back. So, obivously the first thing I did when I received the machine was uninstall McAfee. And, being experienced with crappy security suites, I looked up the correct uninstall procedure ..and followed it to the letter. Everything SEEMED to go smoothly..until I tried to connect to my wireless network. My wireless adapter was being funky..it would try to grab its connection info from the DHCP server but then it would fail and give me the "Limited or no connectivity" error. Well..the macbook sitting right next to me said that my wireless network was fine..I knew it was the computer. I tried a few different things before I remembered..oh..McAfee was on here. I went into the startup programs and turn off a few processes that I didn't recognize..restarted and VOILA..my connection was up and running. It took about 20-30 minutes overall..but that is way more time than anyone should spend getting a brand new computer onto a wireless network.
Oh, and there isn't any optical drive in the netbook at all. This saddened me for a moment, and then I realized that I hardly use optical drives for anything anymore..and anything that can fit on an optical drive can fit on a jumpdrive..and if it's absolutely necessary to boot from a CD/DVD for any reason...Magicdisc will work fine for me.
End gripe.

Overall this netbook looks, performs and feels like a nice sturdy machine. It makes me wonder why technology couldn't have been a couple years ahead of its time ..so I could have had this through college, instead of lugging that giant laptop with me the whole time. I think if I add some more ram to this thing, I could use it on a regular basis.

One last thing..did you guys hear about the new 32 Gb RAM modules that were created by Samsung? Holy crap! I won't be able to afford them anytime soon but...it's nice to think about all that RAM. I could find no use for that much RAM in a workstation at this point in time but man..some server jockeys must be drooling over that right about now:)
You can find the article on it here.



Photo Courtesy of Gizmodo.com

Directed Study

Okay so as some of you may or may not know, I'm inches from graduating from NMCC with my second degree, this one in Computer Information Systems. I was sitting at my computer near the end of the fall semester and I realized that I only had 4 classes left to take before I finally graduated! I've been taking classes at NMCC since 2003 and I've never missed a semester..so needless to say, I'd like to get out of there. While attempting to do my schedule for the next (and final) semester, I hit a snag. None of the classes that I needed were being offered. First, I thought it was just a situation where all of the classes happened to only be offered during the fall, but then I remembered having to drop E-portal development and I was definitely taking it during the spring. This made me worry a little so I decided to talk to the Deptartment Chair of Business Technology about it to figure out what was going on. This is when things started to get hairy for me. He explained that the CIS major had been dropped and that none of the classes I needed would be offered..ever. All of this I found out just before Christmas vacation, which left almost no time to get the situation sorted. In the end they had managed to allow a course from my previous degree to be used as the final elective I needed, they substituted Speech for Business Communications II and although I had already taken advanced courses in Database Administration..it had been decided that they would put me in a Database Applications class which focuses on basic database knowledge..at a beginner level. I was excited to take a "cake" class at first..but after a couple weeks in there, the excitement has dwindled and I now refer to that class as "busy work" night. I'm not really learning anything new but at least I'm reinforcing my query building skills. Sort of..they dumb it down in Access so you don't really end up understanding how the query really functions.
Anyway, I digress. As I said before, I had 4 classes left and that only takes care of 3. I was originally given the option to take a Security + cert class with Joe McLaughlin but I found out a few weeks ago that the class was cancelled because of low enrollment. Again, I ventured into the Dept. Chair's office and he gave me two options. I could either take an Advanced Web Design class from Husson or I could try to get an instructor to administer a directed study for me. I had already asked Joe if he would do it and he basically gave me a hell no. Yeah..nice way to treat someone who helped pay your salary right? Thankfully, while I was in talking with Dwight(the dept. chair) one night, Brad Potter, who had instructed me in a few other classes, came in to the office. I related my situation to him and he offered to administer a directed study for me, even though the compensation isn't near what it should be. I am thankful that people like him exist, otherwise I might have been stuck in that institution forever.

Brad came up with a course based on Internet Research that was deignated as a 200 level business class and that is what was submitted for my directed study. I received an email from him today that outline my responsibilities:

1. Each week I would like you to find a couple articles online or in magazine from one of the following fields –

a. Server Technology – check out the Cray CX-1!

b. PC Technology

c. Software

d. Storage

e. Networking

f. Security

g. Social Networking – FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, et

h. Management of IT

2. Please prepare a 2-3 page paper on the articles for submission to me each Friday/Saturday

a. So first one will be due on February 6^th

3. Start a daily journal –with a paragraph or two entry each day – talk about something you experienced at work, something new you have seen, find out what a blog is (www.slashdot.org), an interesting RSS feed.

4. I will forward some more material each week, interesting articles, etc I run across daily

5. Let’s try to meet in person every 3 weeks for ½ hour to review progress.

I am actually excited about this because I will be graded on what I do every single day..and I'll get to share my nerdliness with someone other than my twitter buddies!

This brings me to the purpose of my post. I am going to be using this blog as a resource for my directed study. I will be posting my journal entries here for the instructor to read. You all may enjoy them as well BUT to differentiate my journal posts from my blog posts I will be preceeding my journal post with the course name and number. Thought I would give you all a heads up before you started seeing BUS COM 250 posted all over my blog. I will be making another entry later on tonight regarding the Acer Aspire One netbook I received today. Until then...you can be jealous..because I will be playing with it and you won't!

Who is King Jr.?!

Alyssa had a conversation with Kayla this morning that turned out to be quite humorous so I figured I'd share. Aaron is Alyssa's 6 year old brother and Kayla is now 7. This is what Alyssa wrote in a blog this morning:

"So Kayla was talking to Aaron last week and told him that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a bad guy while he was sleeping. I didn't bother correcting her, since I tend to sugar coat these sensitive topics. So this morning while she was getting ready for school she was like, "ya know the guy that got killed by the bad guy? He wasn't actually sleeping." I said I know honey. She then said, "Well, I thought he was asleep because he said he had a dream.""






Photo: Artfiles.art.com

I have been neglectful, but for good reason..

I have to apologize to myself for not taking the time to blog in the past few weeks. I apologize to me because, well..no one else reads this thing. With Christmas, New Years, all the new toys, work, and getting set for classes to begin..both at work and at college..I have completely lost myself in a tornado of things to do, things that need to be redone and things that probably will never get done. Add to all that the recent loss of a friend, and well..you can understand why I've been neglectful.

Before anything more, I would just like to say that on Sunday, January 11 2009 the world lost a great person. We will all miss you Katie Pictou. None of us understand why you had to leave us so soon, but you won't be forgotten. Rest in peace. For those of you who knew Katie, the wake will be on Thursday from 7-9 and there will be a memorial celebration in her honor at Northern Maine Community College on Friday at 3 PM. If you need more information you can contact me or the college.


I hope everybody had a good set of holidays. Mine were filled with many fatty foods which I will spend the rest of the year burning off. I got some great gifts from the family. For the first time in years I can easily say I have no favorites among my gifts, they were all awesome. Thank you everyone. I would like to take this moment to gripe about one thing, the jewelry business can bite it. That's right, I said bite it. For the first time since I've been with Alyssa I decided to buy her jewelry for Christmas. I wanted to make my gift to her this year special..and the best way I could think of doing it would be to buy something for her that she KNOWS I would never buy. Jewelry, to me, seems like a huge waste of money. Sure, it almost never loses its value and is timeless..and all that. But what function does it serve? It makes you sparkly. For some reason, women love sparkly things and we, as men, are required to provide sparkly things to them in order to appease them. It kinda reminds me of a penguin mating ritual. ANYWAY..Alyssa knows me well enough to realize that me buying jewelry for her would be no easy task on my part...it goes against everything I stand for..I thought it would be a great surprise. That was..until I got hustled. By a JCPENNEY clerk no less! I ended up paying a decent amount of money for a pair of earrings that were SUPPOSED to be, you know..actual diamonds. I made it clear to the clerk that I didn't want any of that fake garbage. A day or two after Alyssa had opened them and put them on..she realized that there were no actual diamonds in the earrings..and that they fashioned the metal around the FLAKE of diamond that was in it..to make the earring look as though it were a full, real diamond. I was more than a little perturbed and I did let the clerk who returned them for me know that I was pretty upset.
Don't let idiots like me buy jewelry, we just lose all our money.

I can't finish a blog without discussing at least one groovy new geek tool. Today's "Geek of the week" as my friends over at EdTechTalk would say, is going to be Dropbox. Dropbox is the online storage solution that all of us geeks have been waiting for. They're finally out of beta testing and are open to the public and I have no idea how I lived for so long without this app. The idea behind dropbox is to allow you to sync your files with "the cloud" almost effortlessly. To get started you simply go to getdropbox.com and download dropbox. Go through the setup process as usual and it will automatically create a dropbox folder for you. Once setup is complete..you're good to go. Dropbox gives you 2 gb of storage for free (50 gb if you pay 9.99 a month) and it automatically syncs any files you drop into your dropbox folder to "the cloud". For those of you who don't see the benefit of this, let me explain further. By dropping your files into this folder and syncing with the cloud, this gives you the ability to have an automatic backup and it also allows you to sync files across the internet to and from multiple computers. I, for example, use between 3 and 4 different computers throughout the day. I often need access to the same files on each of these computers and used to have to carry a jumpdrive with me. Now, I just store all the files in this folder, put the dropbox app on each computer, keep my account signed in, and voila...instant sync-age. Yes that's a word. It's cross platform compatible, so it won't matter if you're using a Mac, a Windows box or Linux. It also boasts a web-interface that allows you to see recent file transactions and updates. In this web interface you can also choose to see previously deleted files and have the option to restore them. This is all done through a simple user interface that anyone can use. Another excellent feature is the ability to create a shared space on the web. You can create a folder in your dropbox and invite others to share that space with you. This will allow them to have that folder in THEIR dropbox and all changes will be updated across everyone's accounts. My favorite feature is the "copy public link" feature. Inside your dropbox you will find a folder labeled "Public". With anything you place in this folder, you get the option to "Copy public link" which places a link in your clipboard that you can paste to an e-mail or website. This link gives anyone who clicks it instant access to the file that you copied the link for. Isn't it easier to copy and paste a link rather than sending an attachment? This is especially useful for me when I need to share Jing videos with people. Jing creates videos in .swf format which plays through Flash. If Flash isn't opened in a browser you need a 3rd party application to play it..with Dropbox they click on the link which opens in a browser by default and voila..instant flash video. Best of all..it's free..so you have no excuse not to try it!:)

Photo: Dropbox

I forgot I had a blog..

Eek..been a while since my last post. I forgot I had a blog for a second. Thank Erica for reminding me! New post..tomorrow..for sure, I promise!





Photo: Credit