The joy of owning and using PC's unlike other computing devices (though this is about to change for the cellphone industry with the touted Open Moko (http://openmoko.org/) project), is the ability to modify and customize the system whichever way you deem fit. For most this starts at the Operating System level and of course there software therein.
Currently I am in the market for a new Lappy given that I had to give up my previous one a while ago. My taste for an Asus lappy is greater than ever. Yesterday whilst perusing through the ASUS site http://www.asus.com/, I found out that they are now selling barebone lappys; hot as ever. Given the predicted boom in the laptop market, maybe this is the way vendors should be moving to. Unfortunately non of the resellers had great deals on the barebones but it is a good start. There is a story posted on Digg that references Barebone notebooks or as they are also called Whitebooks.
Update: Here is a chat on whitebooks:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/trans/sysbuild/05_0729_tn_sys.mspx
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Languages
I promised to list the languages that I know ... Chronologically:
- Ekegusii
- Swahili
- English
- ---And now
- C++
- SQL (Yes this is a programming language)
- Visual Basic (ASP Classic)
- JavaScript
- Assembly for PC
- Java
- C (In the context of OpenGL)
- Assembly for MIPS
- ColdFusion (Did this with the MachII Framework)
- C# (.Net)
- Ruby (Ruby on Rails)
- PHP
- ActionScript
Grad School
After a 2.5 year break, I am headed back to class this fall at the University of Minnesota. My initial attempt to go back to school for my graduate school studies, which by the way was foobared (This is a term to mean that it did not go well), came about early last year. I was planning to enroll in the MS. Software Engineering that is designed to accommodate working professionals (I don't claim to call myself a professional, I just do what I do). The reason behind the denial was that "..you do not have enough working experience.." save for the fact that I had mastered 15 languages among them Assembly Programming for the PC architecture as well as the MIPS architecture. With that excuse I asked the then Program director what it is that I needed to do before I could enroll (Yeah there is this lawyer guy who asks Jesus what he ought to do to inherit the Kingdom of heaven... Know that story), well my now friend Dr. Program Director told me that I need to learn more programming languages and yeah add another year to my work dossier. Seriously I did not know what language to add ... by then I had Ruby in my docket.. what I did instead is become better at what I already knew and learn to resolve the language conflict in me. In a new post I will post the languages that I know.
To cut to the chase, I did reapply to the same program and starting this Fall I will be in class taking three classes, Software Engineering, Data Modeling and some seminar course.
To cut to the chase, I did reapply to the same program and starting this Fall I will be in class taking three classes, Software Engineering, Data Modeling and some seminar course.
A random thought
On my bus ride this morning, the guy sitted across the isle from me was reading a CMP published journal whose title was IX Figures .... Something... but essentially it was related to some IX Figure salaries kind of a read. I am not trying to imply that the guy was plausibly earning the IX figures. This got me thinking, in moments notice I was counting my figures to find out what that was and naively try to compare to what I currently make. I realized I make close to half the figures mentioned there, but rationally accepted the fact that I am an upper mid of whatever Figure range I falling. This got me thinking....
We have Mr. Gates, Mr. Buffet, and now a new name from Mexico Carlos Slim Helu. Granted these guys are not IX Figures but most of us try to think of ourselves over there. The question that I had in my mind is what do all these people have in common and what do I do to make their ends meet? I thought I had an answer .... "The Big Picture". All these people see the big picture and not how it all comes together. As the saying goes the devil is in the details.
Does it mean that if you focus on the big picture without much emphasis on the nuances, then you are destined for success? I am sure there are other things that have to come into play otherwise we would all be in the IX Figure or more category.
We have Mr. Gates, Mr. Buffet, and now a new name from Mexico Carlos Slim Helu. Granted these guys are not IX Figures but most of us try to think of ourselves over there. The question that I had in my mind is what do all these people have in common and what do I do to make their ends meet? I thought I had an answer .... "The Big Picture". All these people see the big picture and not how it all comes together. As the saying goes the devil is in the details.
Does it mean that if you focus on the big picture without much emphasis on the nuances, then you are destined for success? I am sure there are other things that have to come into play otherwise we would all be in the IX Figure or more category.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Is it over
I just completed phase one of my “groundwork” for the actuarial exam which I will be taking on August 23rd in MN. It has been a intensive 8 weeks of preparation and now that I am done, I will be doing practice exams for the next 4 weeks before I meet this exam I have been dating for such a long time..haha. Good things don’t come easy
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