New Hobbies

So, my dad died over a year ago and one of the items I inherited was a 1983 Fender Stratocaster. I had initially planned to have it encased in a box with some of his other items and make a glass coffee table or something, but I had a tugging feeling not to. A guitar, especially a 1983 Fender Strat, isn't meant to be stared at behind a pane of tempered glass.

Over the Independence weekend of 2009, we had a family reunion from his side. One particular detail about the reunion that had a major impact on the decision I'm about to let you in on was the full-blown family band that played every night. This wasn't singing songs around the campfire. There were microphones, guitars everywhere, stacks of speakers and amps, keyboards, as well as a box full of other miscellaneous instruments, like tambourines, maracas, and a bunch of stuff I've seen but never heard the name of. Everyone was musically gifted it seemed. One person was missing though, obviously, both literally and metaphorically.

That was the weekend I decided to take up guitar. To honor my Dad, and hopefully, I can be come as gifted a guitar player as he was.

So, I've also recently purchased a not-so-used Ibanez acoustic guitar. Now I have two guitars and no skill. I can at least say I know the main chords. I'm still waiting for that epiphany where suddenly, it all comes together.

CS 2900

First, I'm going to say, "brilliant marketing." I'm paying to work for them.

Background: My college is rewiring their entire network infrastructure in their Computer Science labs over summer semester. They're running network wire for over 100 new computers in 5 different rooms. Each wire needs to be terminated to either a server block or a jack, both ends, 8 "twists" per wire and then certify the whole line, that's a lot of tedious work. That's just the beginning, there's still installing all the server software in the server rooms as well as a myriad of other details I won't go into.

Anyway, because this isn't a private college all the hiring of labor goes through the state's bureaucracy. Because the two instructors in charge of this project don't have much time, they have to do it themselves.

The Brilliant Part: They created a new elective class, CS 2900, and are having the students do all this work. Their pitch is, "this class will NEVER be offered again in any semester in the future" and "no school has EVER done this before, nor will they ever do this."

So, what do I do? I paid my tuition and joined the class, just to put it on a damn resume. I'm paying THEM to let me work. I'm thinking of dropping the class and saving my money so I can play video games and enjoy my summer, but the experience lasts as long as Moore's Law.

Compression Explosion

The URL shrinking explosion (oxymoron?) is really fun. How? Let me first explain how it works.

Step 1. Go to a url shrinking website such as TinyURL.com,is.gd, or bit.ly

Step 2. Copy and paste any website into their URL shrinking machines, and hit Enter.

Step 3. Copy and paste the new and improved URL somewhere else, like a web browser. Presto!

Here's where it gets fun. Notice the smaller URL? Try changing the last few characters of the URL into something else. For example. http://tinyurl.com/lme9l6 will become http://tinyurl.com/nekkid.

It's almost as cool as typing anything into Google.com and clicking the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, except it might have NOTHING to do with what you actually typed into the URL.

For added enjoyment, put a shady URL into an URL compressor and shrink it. Take the new URL and put it into a different URL compressor. Repeat. Continue this with other URL shrinking sites as much as you want and post the final link somewhere. Watch chaos ensue.

Have fun!