Engineer retards

Since the semester is now over, it provides the perfect time for me to return home to visit family. This time around, the trip home wasn't to pleasant.

I drive a 2001 Focus SE, with a 2.0 DOHC that never gives me problems (these cars rock). I was on my way back to Grayson County, VA when my immediately starting over-heating and the check engine light came on. I quickly took an exit and found myself at an Exxon station with my car leaking anti-freeze faster than a school-girl leaking secrets.

Low and behold I found the problem rather fast - a torn hose. It was torn around the clamp. Simple enough - just unclamp, pull the hose tighter and reclamp.. right? WRONG.

Ford, what were you thinking by making a hose that has two different sizes on each end? I see why - considering the pipe coming out of the radiator is smaller than the chamber coming out of the engine. I'm sure theres a reason for it.. but it really makes things stressful when you try to fix a problem. I wish I knew why.. it seems to be a common trend with car companies these days.

Thankfully my father owns a rollback and I was able to get it hauled home (granted.. I had to wait from midnight till 7am in the morning due to phone issues).

I"ll leave it at yesterday just wasn't my day.

Final Exam of the Year

Well, this week has been enough to say the least. Now, in a mere 40 minutes I will take my American Literature final exam. WHOO!

As for other news I will be interviewing with Webmail.us next week. I really hope this turns out well.

Also - out of boredom I scripted my own to-do list. Granted, Ta-da List already does this.. and I do use that quite a lot. The issue that popped out at me was that I personally didn't always have time to boot up firefox and login to Ta-Da. Now, with my own little program I can boot it from my desktop via a flash interface and add away :). I will most likely post the code in the next few weeks once I touch up the visual pieces.

I will be out of town until Sunday night/ early Monday morning to visit family. If you need to reach me try the cell phone or e-mail.

Wish my luck, I'm off!

Exams, Stress, and Javascript

The title alone entails for a great read.

Or so you thought.......


It is that final week of the year that I usually find myself scurrying for all of my notes, library hours, and an enormous pot of pure black coffee. Yes, that's right folks, it's exam time. Fortunately this year is my true, last semester of exams. I will have two next fall, but hey - two are better than a full course load.

On to bigger and better things - my independent study has been approved. This means I get to dabble into the tech world and apply existing technologies to help the student body at large. What? Yes - I will be creating a true web site and application for the students of the new RU School of Communication. If you aren't in the program (or have been under a rock the past year), the Media Studies and Communications departments are merging together to form one school (about time right?).

With this - I will be creating a web site to assist in the process. What are my goals? Glad you asked!

• True web 2.0 application that provides databased content
• Calendar for upcoming events, presentations, and deadlines for applications
• The ability for students to rate their courses online
• RSS Feed capability for instant update notifications

That is just few ideas I've penciled down. I really feel that if all goes well this can be one of the first truly interactive and helpful department web sites Radford University has seen. Students, teachers, faculty and alumni will be the judge of this project's success though.

As for everything else - I'm stressed to the max looking for a full-time job. I have a nice lead though that I think will turn out well. I'm a confident kid with a resume to back it up.

Wish me luck folks

XHTML/CSS provide a better MTV experience

While scoping Simple Bits the other day I saw that the new MTV.com has officially launched. Granted, I was a huge MTV fan growing up. The web experience though, for years, has simply sucked. Engineered predominantly as a Flash based broadband beast, it kept a lot of dialup users from enjoying the experience (i.e. ME).

Fortunately Dan Cederholm and Simple Bits have put the power of XHTML and CSS to use and have really cleaned up MTV.com. No more do I have to wait 5 minutes for anything to load. It's clean, it's simple and it still has that MTV feel. Great job guys!

Plain and simple - web standards the evolution of keeping things simple is finally getting some mainstream attention. What is even more astonishing is that there are a lot of people that don't even realize it.