Net Neutrality

As the internet is so central to our lives its important to preserve it and help it keep growing.

for some reason Mcain (a guy that has no idea how to use a computer, let alone the internet) is trying to kill net neutrality with the "internet freedom act" that the telcos likely wrote for him.

Think of the internet as a mall, where people or companies can display and sell their wares (or warez) to customers. Customers pay a small fee (ISP) to get into the mall, then can browse around the shops and booths as they like. Popular shops in this internet mall are bigger to accommodate the traffic, and simply buy more floorspace (server space).

Now say you discard net neutrality. The mall owner (ISP) decides customers have to pay an extra fee to get to certain shops, and cant visit some at all.

Now how is this freedom?

Trying to fix things

You might have noticed that if you type myprivatelife.org into the address bar you are directed to a site my domain registrar put up. I am trying to figure out how to fix it without messing up the normal domain www.myprivatelife.org. If anybody knows whats going on here let me know how i might go about fixing it.

EDIT:
here is a screenshot of the current settings, i dont know if this will compromise security, but nobody really reads this anyway

Weekend

The weekend is here, and i am spending it sitting in the library doing homework and downloading windows 7. Normally i would pirate it but i bought it on win741 for 30 bucks. This way i don't have to always deal with hacking it to work when new updates come out. I actually don't have a computer to install it on yet, as the win 7 beta im using wont expire till next year. Anyway, i am supposto be writing a paper for communications class about an activity that i missed, so im trying to figure out how i am going to get that done. in all likelihood im not going to get it done at all.

Productivity

There is a movement of efficiency online and in ones life. Some examples are the zen habits blog, the lifehacker blog, and Getting Things Done system. These are philosophies that make a lot of sense and i have tried to implement in my own life.

I have integrated with google products in an effort to be more effective at getting things done.
Gmail pulls mail from all my email accounts into a central account, saving time checking email.
I have a comprehensive to-do list on google tasks.
I have all events and appointments carefully organized and planned out on google calendar.
Google voice takes all my calls and transcribes voicemails which are then sent to my email.
All my documents are immediately accessible on google docs and tagged for easy searching.
Everything syncs to my iphone which i always carry.
Everything is instantly accessible from my igoogle page.

This system does help with staying organized and getting things done. I am not planning any departure from my setup anytime soon. However, after using most of these tools for a few years i am noticing some unfortunate side effects. In the time i spend setting up everything, adding events to the calendar, task list, and on igoogle i could actually be getting things that needed done worked on. Having easy links to all my favorite news sources is a terrible distraction and combined with severe ADD (i would estimate that i have about a 40 second attention span) it is incredibly easy to waste hours upon hours reading random articles on blogs or reddit. For example, it has taken me more than five hours to write this, i've been working on it regularly and i'm not even finished yet. I shouldn't even be writing this, i should be doing homework, but for some reason writing makes me feel productive.

I write down most to-dos with google tasks but the problem is actually doing them. another problem with writing everything that needs remembered down is then not much effort is put into remembering those things. I don't remember most of the students names in my classes, and i know many of them. I cant recall the names of any of my professors either, but i can look them up if i need to.

My system is far from perfect, and even if you have the best system in the world, getting things done only gets so easy, and for the most part things are not easy, and sometimes require herculean effort.

And maybe its just me.

Home again

I was having a terrible toothache last week after a filling in a root canal came out. it also happened to be the week of midterms so it was rough. My sister needed some dental work done too so a trip to our utah dentist was planned. I have no insurance, but i get my dental work done by a relative that has a practice in utah. He does the work much cheaper than anywhere else, and considering the cost of dental work it is most definitely worth the nine hour trip.

I spent most of the weekend hanging out with friends and relatives, it was a much needed break from the stress of school and homework. On monday my sister and i had dental work done. Though i hate going to the dentist, it was a welcome relief to have my tooth fixed. he used a different filling material called fuji 9 that is supposedly stronger and shoudnt come out. I still have to go get the root canal fixed completely, he only temporarily covered it till it can be finished.

We drove back Monday night and spent the night in meeteetse, then continued home the next day. It was a fun break.

Busted

There are two things i hate: stupid people and crappy software.
Unfortunately at the school i attend i deal with both.

When i started attending this last summer i was dismayed to find that on all the computers the only browser installed was Internet Explorer7. The student accounts were also locked down to prevent software from being installed. I cant use IE, it's a piece of crap. I talked with the IT department and asked them if they could install Firefox on some of the machines around campus. one of the dudes was a Microsoft fanboy, he went off on how FF was insecure, then the other guy said that it wasn't compatible with their systems. Keep in mind that there are also macs on the network, and they DO have FF installed and work just fine.

after failing to convince the IT people, i resorted to attempting to bypass the security software on the computers. The student accounts are all hosted on a central server, so instead of messing with the software i decided to try a few exploits of windows itself. To my surprise the terminal had not been disabled on the student accounts, i was able to change the administrator password from the terminal using a little known command. I could then log into the computer and install FF or whatever i pleased. i did this for months. however, while i was vigilant about removing evidence from the compromised machines, there are always places to slip up.

Fast forward to yesterday, i got a call from the IT admin. I have google voice so i sent the call to voicemail and listened in, he left a message that i was supposto meet with him. when i went to talk to him today, he had another bigwig in there with him. They found the hidden accounts i created and they knew it was me. He asked how i got in, so i told him how.

Luckily, because all i had done was install browsers they let me off with a warning. No action would be taken against me as long as i don't do it again. However, they did not fix the hole that i used to get in because some of the management software uses it. If somebody else starts using the same tactic they are probably going to think its me.

You cant win i guess.

This is my private life
I have no friends to fear
I've got no problems no cross to bear
If you can find me
come and get me out of here