Information overload

It hit me while attending a lecture in one of my classes that i was unlikely to remember much of what the professor was saying. Sure i was taking notes, but who looks at their notes? Honestly the main reason i do is to appear studious. The classes are interesting but why am i having such difficulty retaining what is being said?

I have about 12 sites that i check daily plus whatever blog pops up in reader. I like staying informed and up to date on what is going on in the world. I sometimes spend hours on reddit reading random things on the internet. The majority of it is not important, and i make little effort in retaining it.

Perhaps being confronted with overwhelming information, the brain discards the information to make place for the anticipated oncoming rush of information the next day.

I'm a socialist

I have tried to start a computer repair business many times and i always end up failing miserably. I finally have realized why. First of all, i am a terrible businessman, second, i hate taking peoples money, and always under charge my customers. This may sound odd, but many times i am perfectly fine with accepting a thank you as payment.

I guess this means i'm a socialist, and the more i think about it i find it fitting. I like helping people out just for the sake of helping people out, and expect others to do so. It just seems like common sense to me. Why there is such a negative stigma associated with socialism i don't really understand. If everybody would contribute to the community we would all be better off.

yay for linux

I had somebody call me today needing some work done on their computer. Her xp installation was corrupted beyond repair, and it was a really old machine so i opted to recover the data and do a reinstall. It didn't have a dvd drive, so the disks that i had being all dvds were useless. The only iso i had was netbook remix ubuntu 9.1 from when i installed it on my sisters computer. i burned the image to a cd and attempted to boot it in her machine. It booted up to a point, then the launcher application crashed but the enviornment was still there. Being clever i used a keyboard shortcut to bring up the launcher and then launch nautilus, the ubuntu file manager. from there i was able to copy the files over to my external.

Employed

After passing out tons of resumes and filling out many applications and having no luck at all, my moms friend mentioned that she wanted me to help her with her business. I would be doing web design and managing the online aspect. She already had the basic sites set up so she just wanted some tweaks done. I have done some web sites before but just as a hobby so this was a fun new experience. The part i love about the job is i can do it from wherever i have an internet connection so i don't have to drive anywhere. So far i am really liking the job and i am learning a ton just by doing it.

While in Idaho at a friends place i was in need of a USB port to charge my iphone. i checked the cupboard next to his monitor and couldn't help laughing at the setup he had:



Thats a micro ITX motherboard using a power supply larger than the actual board, connected to a random collection of drives just sitting out.



He had gotten a few as prizes for some robot convention, and so he gave me one.
Its pretty sweet and also has composite video out so maybe i will set it up as a media machine.

Idaho

Wyoming gets old fast, so any excuse to get out of it is warmly welcomed. My sister and i both have many friends that live in rexburg and in a last minute decision we decided to drive out there for the weekend. Normally the drive is about four hours and goes through Yellowstone park, but as the east entrance to the park is closed its necessary to drive around it, making the trip about 6 hours.

The roads were snowy, but we managed to make it into town just as it was getting dark. I met up with my good friend Lauren, and my sister went and hung out with her friend Toni. The next day was Halloween and there really wasn't much planned so I installed ubuntu on Laynas netbook, talked politics with Toni's husband Dan (he's the chair of the college republicans) then headed over to my cousin house to play board games with the other cousins that had congregated there. Afterward we watched Nightmare before Christmas on netflix. It was quite late at that point but i was nowhere near able to sleep so i went on a walk around rexburg, got lost and managed to find my way back to Toni's place where we were staying. It must have been around three miles as i was walking around for at least an hour.

Sunday we drove back to Wyoming. The whole trip was incredibly quick but it was worth it.