University of Oklahoma Camp Crimson 2009: Day Two

Alright, so day  2 of Camp Crimson is just winding down, well kinda, but i’ll get to that in a sec. Any who, this morning we had the option to eat breakfast, well first family time was at 9am, and breakfast at 8, i’ll take the extra sleep and skip breakfast thank you very much! Anyway, we had a very short family meeting and then broke for the boat building competition. Well i had to take the Calculus Placement test this morning, so i stopped at camp office and got a ride over to the testing building on a golf cart driven by Tony Foster Jr. this guy is pretty much the most fun guy on campus, anyway, we sped to the building, i took about 50 minutes for the test, and it paid off because i got into the class i need to be in! Anyway, rode back to the camp office, checked back in, dropped off my calculator, and then took a very nice walk over to the building where my small family was for a informational session about academic success and what not. I got met back up with my group, then we went over to the south oval green area, played a few fun leadership games, and then went to lunch. For lunch we were treated to sandwiches at the stadium where we watched a multitude of people dancing around to random newer dance songs.  After lunch we walked to another presentation about academic success and what not.

After all of this we went to the art museum for an information fair about the various campus organizations. I was expecting more organizations to be represented, but i got some good info. The art museum was nice, if i actually enjoyed art, which is really not my strong point. From there we met back up in the dorm for family time where we discussed our plans for our chant that our small group has to make up. We then went to dinner which was very good, served up in the Couch Cafeteria. We then went to the relay races which was an absolute blast! I missed the meeting in the morning where they assigned people to some of the competitions, so i ended up only participating in the whole group activities, which was fine with me. We totally owned the competition at that. We then went to the pool party, where we had boat races of the boats (that i missed out on building) that were made of cardboard boxes. Our team took “first” in our round, now i say “first” in quotes, because the other team cheated, and we had all our team members to the other side before they did, there boat got there first, but our whole team was there before theres, oh well it was still fun. Then everyone hopped in the pool and began to go round and round in circles which created a whirlpool effect, you could pick up your feet and be carried around the pool the current was so strong. Then we turned the other way and found it very difficult to swim against the current.  After that was the belly flop competition, which was pretty awesome, at first some people were reluctant at first, but eventually a good 10-12 people stepped up to the board. You could hear the slap when people hit the water, and couldn’t help but wonder about how it really felt. After that was over everyone pretty much left the pool and headed back to the dorms where we are currently waiting for Retro Night to begin. Retro night is basically a giant party where everyone dresses up, well, Retro. I didn’t really plan much and just went to Wal-Mart and bought a white T-Shirt and wrote “Frankie Says Relax” on the front, and thats it, not much, but i wasn’t really too concerned. So anyway its been a great day, and i hope tomorrow is just as fun, although it will be shorter. Later!!!!

University of Oklahoma Camp Crimson: Day 1

Alrighty, so as many of you know, i am attending the University of Oklahoma this year to major in Meteorology. Well they have a 3 day orientation called “Camp Crimson” at first i was a little weary about attending, as i’ve never really been much of the social butterfly, but i figured it was worth a shot. I can say after just one day i’m glad i did.  I came into town last night and got a hotel to eliminate early morning driving. Upon arriving to the OU campus, i was greeted with jumping happy Camp Crimson staff on the street corners leading to the check in area, this made me feel really good about the impending experience. I parked my truck, grabbed my bags, and the first person i met in the parking lot was another camper, who coincidentally had the name of Zach, so that was just weird, him and i talked on the short walk to the check-in, we pretty much instantly hit it off, i haven’t seen him since that moment, but i’m sure we’ll eventually run into each other again.

So we walk up to the entryway, and theres probably 30-40 camp staff on either side of the walkway leading to the door jumping and screaming, like they were genuinely happy to see me. They asked my name, and Zach’s name, and upon learning we both had the same name, pretty much freaked out and became even more excited as we walked in. Walked into check in and were met by many friendly camp staff who again, seemed genuinely happy to see me, i got checked in, got my room key and went onto my floor into my room for the weekend, well lets just say that room leaves a lot to be desired, its a very basic room with white walls and not much in the way of coziness, now i have been in other buildings, and the other dorms are very nice. Anyway i got my room set up and had some time to chill, checked out the wireless, holy crap its fast, i was pulling 18mbps download! I’m sure that speed won’t stick around once 30000 people descend on the campus come late august, but its nice for a while.

So once 1pm rolled around our small family met up in the floor rec room, all the campers are divided between 3 “Families” and then within the families are multiple small groups with about 20-40 ppl in them. Luckily i got one of the smaller small groups, with only 21 people in it. We sat around for about 2 hours introducing ourselves, then we played a game where we had to come up with an adjective that either started with the first letter of our name, or rhymed with our name, well not many adjectives rhyme with “Zach” and so i was forced to go with “Zany Zach” yea i know, kinda cheesy, but it works. Anyway, after that we went to our whole family session where we learned a chant to sing for one of the OU staff members, it involved many dance moves and singing, but it turned out pretty good.  We then went to opening session, where all the families performed there skits/chants for the staff member there family is named after. Ours went quite well, and the others were very creative as well. From there we went to Dinner which was a delicious BBQ meal, we had the choice of Brisket or Chicken, the chicken looked a bit dry, so i went with the Brisket and was not disapointed, it was very tender and delicious. After dinner everyone went outside and we had “Crimson Chaos” which was a chance for everyone to meet up with new people and just get to know each other. They basically said random things and you had to find other people who had that same characteristic and meet up with them, and it lived up to its name, it was very chaotic.

After that came the “Tips and Traditions” session, which was basically talking about sports, so needless to say i was less than intrigued by this session, i played along with it, but at the same time, was just ready for it to get out.  After that we went back to the dorms for a few short minutes to change for the “Stuff at the Huff” The Huff is the short name for the athletic facility on campus. “Stuff at the Huff” is basically a 2 hour fest of Basketball, Dodgeball, Rock Climbing, Tennis, and Free Smoothies. Well obviously i’m not there as i am writing this blog post, but i have a math test that i have to take in the morning, so i stayed back to avoid wearing the crap out of myself. We have “family time” at midnight which shouldn’t take long (Yay!) and then i’ll be going to bed. I’m not twittering as much as i probably should, however, everytime i say something about Camp Crimson, the official OU Twitter Retweets it, so thats pretty awesome. I’ll probably be twittering more tomorrow, but tonight i’m pretty wiped, hoping for a goodnight sleep, and i think i’ll get it. Check back tomorrow for my adventures tomorrrow! Later!

Fueled by Mountain Dew… A night with Windows 7 Public Beta

All righty, so I’m sitting here on my iBook waiting for my Windows 7 Beta DVD to finish burning.  I started the download this morning from TPB, and am now patiently waiting.  While I wait, let me introduce you to my machine that I will be installing 7 on.  It is a HP Pavilion ze5170 Laptop.  2.0GHZ Pentium 4, 512 RAM, 40GB Hard Drive.  I got the computer free from my grandparents after the keyboard broke.  I took it into my possession, ordered a new keyboard off ebay, and now have a great laptop.  There is no battery, but thats not a huge deal for me right now.  

Well, it is 7:37 PM and I am currently installing it to my lappy, getting into installation was a lot quicker than with XP, so hopefully thats some foreshadowing? Idk, but install is going kinda slow, but then again, i am running it on an old machine.  Well, more to come!

Well, its installed, took like 30 minutes, which is SO much faster than XP, i only wish it had video drivers, i’m running with 32mb of Vram, so i would expect things to be slow, but wow, the windows move so slow, but overall i’m pretty satisfied.  I just need to see about getting some network drivers, even just ethernet would be fine at the moment.  Well, i’ll post more as i get further into the OS!

Being a Fanboy

Wow, the word “fanboy” is sure thrown around a lot these days, in magazines, TV, and podcasts.  Well what does it mean exactly? fanboy as described by wikipedia as: Fanboy (sometimes spelled fanboi) is a term used to describe an individual who is devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession.

Ok, so i am a Mac Fanboy, i think.  I own a PC, and i still use it about once a month, but I still have one.  Does that eliminate me from the “mac fanboy” criteria? Idk, but I really hate Fanboys with computers.  In the sports world, if u are devoted to one team, it makes for healthy smack talking and competition.  But as soon as people start dissing OS X, the Mac Fanboys come out and suddenly its a huge thing to be a Fanboy.  I really don’t get it.

A Podcast i subscribe to, Tekzilla, was talking about monitors on a recent episode, and brought up the apple cinema displays.  They said they were over priced and only a Fanboy would get one.  I will agree with the expensive part, but they are very sexy.  I think that u don’t have to be a total fanboy to get one.  It just annoys me.  But i think that it makes for healthy competition between computer manufacturers.  You don’t see Dell Fanboys, or HP Fanboys, its just Apple Fanboys.  Just cuz we are different, you don’t like us? Just cuz our OS doesn’t crash when we run 5 programs, you think we are less of a person???? You think just cuz “it just works” we are stupid?  I know I am sounding like a true Fanboy right now, but to tell u the truth, i would go out and buy a new Dell if i had the money, that is of course if i could put XP on it.  I don’t have a problem with Windows, just Vista.  I run XP on my PC and love it, when i get a Macbook Pro, i will install XP on it as well.  Not everything can be Mac in this world.  As much as i want it to be, it can’t.  And we just have to accept that both sides are gonna be there forever, then theres Linux, which, yea….. we won’t go into that….. But anyway, this may not have made much sense, but i just needed to vent lol. Later….

For all the cows….

Ok, the title has nothing to do with the article, i am listening to “for all the cows” by the foo fighters as i write this, i was drawing a blank for a title haha. Any way onto the business of the day. I recently found an amazing solution to a problem I have had forever. I live in the middle of nowhere, and no provider has good reliable cell phone service, we had just about every provider, Alltel, Cingular, Sprint, Verizon. No service in our black hole of a house. So we looked around and found T-Mobile’s Hotspot@home service. Its an interesting concept really, take a Wireless Network (Using either your standard router, or the special T-Mobile Router, but more on this later in the post) So we did our research, and the pricing on it, and decided to go for it. It started with my brother getting his phone. He got a Samsung Katalyst, which is a nice phone (considering he got it for free, sale baby) anyway, we tested it out at home using our standard WRT54GS router. Worked great, so i was getting excited, i decided i was gonna get a Blackberry Curve 8320, just about the sexiest phone ever (next to the iphone) Anyway, the time came, and i got my Blackberry, to put it lightly, I LOVE MY BLACKBERRY! I had a Razr on Verizon, and i could not use it all day without having to charge it at least once, and i charge it over night. The Blackberry can go 3 days of heavy use without dying. I can carry on a 9 minute convo with adam, and use like no battery, that would have killed my razr. So we love it, and about the router, is it necassary to buy the T-Mobile router? The phones worked fine with the WRT54GS we already had, but the attraction to the T-Router was the fact that it was free after Rebates! Woot! but in technical terms, it supposedly sets phone traffic before all other traffic, and it does a good job, although, i do notice some voice quality issues when watching streaming video/downloading itunes, which use up all of our 1.5mb/s (megabit, not megabyte as i recently found out, curse u embarq) anyway, but for the most part, never had a dropped call on it, good coverage inside and a bit outside the house, so i’m very satisfied.

Well now that my fingers are tired, i’m gonna keep typing.  I recently found out that our school technology director, Tom Sextro has a podcast on itunes that he keeps updated quite often.  I subscribed and downloaded all of them (like 80!) and listened to a majority of them tonight, he has some really good tips for schools on tech, I have recently come to know him more personally, and he really does know his crap, if u wanna check out the podcast, the link is right here its good stuff, really.  It really made me wanna create my own podcast, i love podcasts so much, i have 15GB of them on my Powermac, i love revision3 ‘casts, Tekzilla is like the coolest show ever (especially since Veronica Belmont is the new host, oh foxey lady) ANYWAY I don’t really think its that hard to make a podcast, Tom actually has a podcast with info on making podcasts, seems interesting, i hear u need a lot of space.  I got that covered, i have a basically blank 120GB HD in my PowerMac which should serve the purpose fine, i need to look into it.  I’m thinking like a 10-15 video cast, with random tech stuff, mainly mac, but cover some windows stuff to.

And on another note, completely non tech related, The Office is FINALLY back to TV (i hope ur as thrilled as i am) The Dinner Party was a pretty good episode, personally i still have “That one night” by “The Hunted” stuck in my head: You took me by the hand, made me a man, that one night (one night) you made everything all right……. Anyway, then this week we had Chair Model, which had some good lines, my personal favorite was Michael towards Oscar “hello oscar meyer weiner lover” and also Creed: “when michael gets a new chair, pam gets his old one, and then i get pams old one, that makes 2, now only one more” quite a hilarious moment for all the boys and girls.  I hope the rest of the season goes as well, i have a feeling it will end with Jim proposing to Pam, and then the season is over, grr curse u NBC.

Well thats a long post for tonight, i hope u enjoyed it, please comment on this, if u learned something, want me to rant/rave about something else, or just tell me how awesome i am. Later.

My Mac Story

Well, its kinda random, but i thought i should share with you all my Mac story, why i love them, and maybe it will inspire u to write ur story in the comments!

It all started in elementary school, back in the late 90’s, in the school library, we had old beige all-in-one macs, that ran an old system (i now know them as Performas) But i loved them, i thought they were the shiznit , fast internet, fast system, all around cool. then came the shining moment in my mac-life, one word: Clamshell! How i loved these little things, a built in handle, rugged plastic, i wanted one for so long (hell, i still want one) they were fast, wireless internet! who had heard of such a thing? it was crazy, and that was just in fifth grade. Then we moved up into middle school, we had iMacs, i loved those things so much, cool colors, cool CD drives, Mac OS 9!!! I just thought i was on top of the world. Then in Middle School, we got a new computer, the eMac, at this point, i was an emerging nerd, i spent almost all my time surfing the internet, and it was never for games, it was looking at technology, a bit of foreshadowing to my later life eh? The eMac introduced me to something that i had never seen before. Mac OS X!! Looking back i think it was 10.3 that we were running on those things. And then i found the love of my life. The Titanium Powerbook. All the teachers had one, and every chance i would get, i would look at them, and bask in the glory, i even calculated with my current allowance how long it would take to save up for one (7 years at $5 a week) I still really really really want one, the 1GHZ model is capable of running Leopard great, and thats all i need.

Into High School i went, my freshman year computer courses was divided up between a semester of Windows and a Semester of Mac. The first semester i was with Windows, to tell u the truth i loved it, at that point, i did not have a mac at home, but i did have a PC running XP, and so i knew all the little tricks and most people came to me for help (they still do) and i loved it! Then came my second semester, it was mac time, i worked on a iMac G5 for the entire span of the class, i remember the room, it was one wall of brand new G5 iMacs, a center table of iMac G4’s, and a wall of what i now know as Quicksilvers, i thought i was really lucky to be working on a G5. That room now has all Intel iMacs a few Mac Pros and a G5 Tower or two, all the iMac G5’s went to the Middle School. Anyway back to my story.

An annoucement was made that said that HHS would be starting a one to one laptop program, i was excited, kinda, remember how i said i never had a home mac? I remember myself saying when i heard we were getting iBook’s “I would have killed for a windows Laptop” I will never live down saying that, worst quote ever from me. Our school laptops are iBook G4, 1.33GHZ, 512MB Ram, 10.4.10. Not bad, but they load them with so many programs that they are really slow, it made me hate Macs, i thought all macs were slow and hard to work with. The oppurtunity came over Summer 07 for me to Purchase an ibook G4 from the Hays, KS School District for $200, i jumped on it, i got the ibook, and fell in love with it, it was snappy, fast, pretty, the perfect computer, it was running 10.3, not current by any means, but i loved it. I used the computer for a while and realized how amazing Macs really were when u could customize them to your every desire. well that ibook fell victim to a Logic Board Issue, and is now incapacitated, but before it died, i got a PowerMac G4 MDD for Xmas I LOVE THIS COMPUTER!!!!! I am typing on it right now, it is fast (except video encoding, but i don’t care). Mac OS X Leopard Rocks so much. Now that i am obsessed with macs, i have a Working: Performa 575, Wallstreet PowerBook G3, PowerMac G4, and Not Working: iBook G4, plus many working Peripherals, such as two printers, a few ipods, and random parts i pick up on craigslist and ebay and what not. Well i hope u enjoyed that, if u have a mac story u would like to share, feel free to post it in the comments, i would love to hear from u!! Later!

How To Properly Buy a Macbook Pro

Its been a while since i’ve posted any thing here, so i thought today i would write an informative article.

As much as a i love Apple Computer, i have to admit that the prices on some things are outrageous! For Example, the customization options on the Macbook Pro, today I am going to show you, how u can get a Macbook Pro for cheaper by customizing it yourself. I’m not quite sure if Apple considers the RAM and HD User-Replacable parts, the Macbook makes it incredibly easy to replace RAM/HD, we shall see now won’t we?

What I am starting with:

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 2GB memory
• 200GB hard drive¹
• Double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB

Base Model, the next model up is a 2.5 GHZ with a 512mb Graphics chip, we are gonna stick to the base model.

How I outfitted it:

Specifications

Accessory Kit MacBook Pro 15-inch Widescreen Display AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook Pro (w/or w/o Display) – Auto-enroll 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS – U.S. English SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM – 2×2GB Apple Remote Grand Total: $2,817

Ok, So I added Applecare for $350 (can’t find it anywhere else cheaper, except possibly ebay, but i wouldn’t go that way) But besides that, just an extra 2GB of RAM (for $400, which is actually cheaper, it used to be $700 a few months ago) and a 250GB SATA for $50 (I think i will stay with that though, $50 is cheap for that) So here is what we are gonna do: 4GB of RAM on Newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134373) $104.99!! That is a lot cheaper that $400.

Next is the apple remote, for $20 on Apple, i found one for $2 on Ebay, so yea…… Ebay is a good route to go on the non-system essential stuff.

So we have:

Macbook Pro: $2000

Apple Remote: $2 (give or take)

RAM: $104.99

For a Grand Total, of $2,107, which is $700 cheaper than Apple, Oh, and i did check and the RAM is user replacable (its under the battery) so that is no issue, you could get the RAM cheaper, i did a full 4 GB set (2GB X2) but u can get a 2GB Stick to add to the apple one for $50, so that makes it just over $2000, which is very nice.

Thats about all i got for today, latah.

Election 08 from a non-Voters eye

Well, i’m only 17, and i won’t be 18 until after the election, but for some reason, i’m really getting into the Election this year.  I am a republican, so naturally i don’t like obama or Hillary, and everyone accuses me of being racist or sexist cuz i don’t like them, and its pretty annoying.  But on the Republican side, its down to 2 (well actually 3, but we won’t worry about Ron Paul) anyway, I’m going for Mike Huckabee in this whole thing.  I had the chance this Friday (the day before the Kansas Caucuses) to see Mike Huckabee at the Ramada Hotel in Topeka, about 500 people attended the event, in a small room lol, but i really liked what he had to say, a lot of times, you like a person from there TV ads, then hear them speak and it changes ur mind, but not in this case, i really liked what he said, and it made me like him even more.  It made me happy this afternoon when i saw on Yahoo! it said that Huckabee took Kansas.  Now mathematically speaking, he doesn’t stand a chance of the nomination, but weird things have happened before, and who knows, he may pop out and end up beating McCain.  I don’t necisarily like McCain, he is a Veteran, and he is for the war in Iraq, which i don’t agree with the war in Iraq, i support our troops, but not the cause for which they are fighting.  But there are talks right now that are saying that Huckabee may be McCain’s running mate and be the Vice President, but in all respects, i don’t think McCain is gonna be president. I think Americans are gonna vote for a change of president, in the form of an African-American or a Woman, and again, not sexist/racist, but i don’t think thats gonna work, but again, i have no impact on this election at all, but ya, its fun to attempt to participate lol. Later.

Macworld Reaction

Well, its over, macworld has come to a close and we now have two new apple products, Macbook Air and Time Capsule.  First, the Air, i was really excited for this, i had heard that it was gonna be macbook pro stats in a super thin case, boy was i disapointed, 1.8GHZ max? 80GB Max? 2GB of Ram is nice, but with no expanibility, and no optical drive, for me, it is not worth the $1700, next the Time capsule, great Idea i think because  before u had to get a router with a USB port, quite hard to find, or use another computer, in theory its a very good idea, it not have been the highlight of macworld, but it is prolly the best thing that i see coming out of macworld, unless they drop the price of the air, then its alllll good lol

Macworld 08!!!!

So, anyone else as excited about macworld as i am? The worst part about it is being stuck in Kansas watching the streaming coverage on the internet, as exciting as this is, nothing compares to being there. I can’t even list all of the sites that I’ve found with rumors about whats gonna be realeased. UberThin Mac Notebook? 3G iPhone? New (hopefully better) Apple TV? I don’t know what is gonna be the highlight, but i know i’m excited as hell to watch the keynote. Today’s Cool mac link is http://www.coolosxapps.com my personal favorite from the site is mactracker. I think every mac fan should get mactracker. I’m not gonna tell u what it is cuz i want u to experience the magic. Also, Macheist is having a deal with like 12 cool apps for $49. Seems like a nice deal, I’ll def. be purchasing that soon. Later.