Last week one of my assignments for the ISM class was on social networking. Social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, etc; the list of social networking sites goes on and on.

A former TechTV host, Chris Pirillo is now a professional blogger, and is an avid fan of RSS, Google AdSense, and blogging. Chris also hosts Gnomedex, an annual technology enthusiast conference.

Several times during the week, Chris answers questions on live video through Ustream.tv and they are posted throughout the week. A few days ago, he did one on social networking.

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

Although I have the video embeded here, you can also see it on his media blog, and I encourage you to view other videos of his.

Chris’ video feed can be viewed at Chris’s Live Internet Broadcast page. When Chris is not at his computer, the feed is often switched to one of many of the regular chatroom members that also stream. Under the video is the chatroom (#Chris), which is hosted by the WyldRyde IRC Network.

Wow, it seems like it’s been a while since I last updated, but it’s only been 5 days or so…guess it’s because I’ve been busy…

Wednesday I was working at my dad’s office doing filing work…apparently it only took me ~2.5 hours to organize, sort, and file what had to have been over 2000 pieces of paper. Although it isn’t work I’d like to be doing, it stills pay…too bad there isn’t any IT work for me to do there.

So last Thursday was when the final Information Systems Management assignment was due. Worth 80 points, that one assignment was worth just under 14% of our grade. I got all 80 points for the assignment, and ended up with a solid B for the class. So I finished up the summer session with a 2.0 GPA, but I wish it was better. I know that I could have done better if I had actually put some effort into physics. I’ll just have to put the extra effort into the next few semesters and hope I can get my GPA up.

Friday was “stay home and work on every project that has to be done before school” day. I currently have three projects that I need to get done before school starts, and if I can get to it, try to bring new life into a site I started last year but had to kill when I didn’t have much time. Most of the projects I will be able to work on during my vacation (ah, the joys of having a WAMP and IRC server running on my laptop. Two of the projects are web design-ish (a new design for one plus pages that need to be written or revised, and a completely new site that I just need to edit the theme a little and write some of the pages and make sure everything is ok before sitting down with the friends that I’m running it with), and the other project is porting an IRC Operator script from mIRC to IceChat

One of the things that had been slowing down the redesign was the 404 error page. I wanted to have a better one that I currently have, but I didn’t want to spend time on making it since there was a plugin that would do the same thing, and why bother waste time duplicating it. But it wasn’t working for some reason…which I figured out today. I guess the plugin doesn’t work when the site is in a password protected directory. Yes, I do have a test bed online even though I don’t need to…it helps to make sure that everything running fine on my computer also runs fine once it is published, but because I don’t want Google (or any search engine, for that matter) to index the labs it’s behind a password.

Saturday during the day was spent in New York City. My dad, brother, sister and I went to see the New York Mets play the Washington Nationals. The game seemed to go by quickly, with the Mets winning 3-1. There was another game that night against the Nationals, but that game the Mets lost. That loss was quickly avenged Sunday with the Mets winning 5-0 when the game was called in the 5th inning.

Saturday night was a friend’s graduation party, which although the people there were mostly younger than me, was still a good time. Later that night (as in much later, 1AM), I started looking at graduate programs in Computer Science, Computer Security, Computer Forensics, etc. One of the first places I looked was Rochester Institute of Technology, one of the places I applied to for undergrad and was accepted, but did not attend. Their website said it was possible to go through the program in 1 year, which seemed really quick to me.

Sunday was another sit at home and get work done day. It was productive, but at the same time it seems like I didn’t really get much done.

Well, that was my weekend. Work in 7 hours is going to come too quickly.

Books for another class I’m taken have been posted. Luckily, the class only required one book, a book I’m pretty sure I used a previous edition of in another class. I would use that book, but of course, I can’t find it.

The campus bookstore’s website reports that one class said no books are needed for it, and I hope that remains the case. There is only one class that hasn’t turned any information into the bookstore yet. If there is still no info posted on Friday, I’ll just email the professor (he’s also my advisor), and ask him what books are needed.

In other news, tomorrow is my last ISM class

This summer, I took two classes so I can take a slightly less loaded schedule later on. Of course, since I’m doing a double major, this slightly less load will still be 15-16+ credits a semester.

The first course I took was physics. Some people might ask why I took physics, because they think it’s hard. Well, it is, but this was my fourth time taking a physics class in four years. The last time I took a science that wasn’t physics was my sophomore year of high school. So it wasn’t the hardest class, but it wasn’t the easiest class either. Taking a 13 week class and only having 5 weeks to learn the same amount of material is harder than it sounds. Looking back at it now, I kind of wish I had taken it during the regular semester; I know that I would have gotten a better grade, and my GPA needs the help.

The second class I’m taking is online, and this is my first taste of taking an online class. Since it’s all online, the course goes almost double what the other summer classes go, and this one is still in progress. The way it works is that the professor assigns some pages in the book to read, and then questions to answer based on that reading. The assignments are turned in electronically, and the professor enters the grades and leaves comments on the system the school uses, BlackBoard.

There are two things that I don’t like about the class, one of which really doesn’t bug me that much. First, it doesn’t give you the hands on aspect of the class, which is Information Systems Management. During the regular semester, I’d imagine that some of the work done during the class is hands on, and obviously you can’t do hands on during an online class. I think it is this one thing that makes me wish I had taken the class during the semester. I like hands on tech work; it’s something I enjoy doing, and it would have meant a better grade.

The second issue I have is that the feedback the professor leaves is very minimal. Last night I handed in an assignment, and when I came back from dinner an hour and a half later, he had already looked at and graded it. I got a 40/40, and the same feedback that I get whenever I don’t lose any points - “Good work”. After two dozen of these, I’d like a little better feedback. It wouldn’t hurt to say what I could improve on, because even though I got all the points I could, there had to be something I could have answered better. It seems that the only sort of feedback I get that tells me something I could improve on is when I’ve lost points, and even then, it’s when I rush through a question and answer it without thinking that I lose points.

All in all, I think taking the classes during the summer was the right choice for me. I took a look at the number of classes that I still have to take, and just the number says I will need four semesters…but looking at when they are offered said it might be five. Taking these two classes means I will be able to be slightly more flexible, and actually be able to take the classes that are required for my major instead of required as part of the university’s core curriculum.

A Utah Valley State College professor has called textbook pricing immoral, and has revised his course so that there are no textbooks needed. That’s right - a college professor has eliminated textbooks from his class. The article mentions that the Government Accountability Office has reported that textbook prices has risen double the rate of inflation, something that I find amazing. There is just no reason why they (the publishers) cannot keep the prices inline with inflation. Oh wait, that means they would have to take a cut in profits, and who wants to do that?

For the first three semesters, I bought my books at the campus bookstore. Then during the winter break last year, it hit me. Why couldn’t I just buy the books somewhere else. I checked Amazon, and bought my books from there. I saved a good amount of money, and Amazon was the place I bought the books for my summer class.

So far, I have bought the books for two of the classes I’m taking in the fall. The books for the other three classes haven’t been posted yet, but I’ll probably be buying them from Amazon as well. Below is a list of the books I have bought so far.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to order the three lower cost books from Amazon - I would lose money if I did. The fourth book for the PL 101 class I could have ordered from Amazon, but didn’t. I’d just be saving a dollar, and not having to wonder if a book would get lost in shipping is worth that dollar.

By ordering Approaches to Social Research from Amazon, I was able to save over $20. I took $10 of that and bought a study guide that should be worth the money.

It should be interesting to see how much my other books cost. I just hope the professors tell the bookstore what books they want us to get so there’s enough time for me to get them from Amazon.

Woman recovers legal fees spent defending herself against RIAA - to the tune of $70000.

Going on a date but don’t have much money at the moment? Here’s 20 dates for under $20.

Recent study finds that 4% of teens online are asked for sexually explicit pictures.

Big cities say anti-terrorism funding is not enough.

Out of fear agency might be held liable, FEMA lawyers advice was to not hold tests.

As if they don’t have anything better to do, Congress committees are planning to investigate the Google-DoubleClick deal

And just because I think its cool that Luciano Pavarotti and Queen were able to sing Too Much Love Will Kill You in two different languages without needing to change the tempo or anything.

So I didn’t post anything on Wednesday like I should have. That’s because I’ve been busy with my project. The past two days have been either doing work on GeeksToGo, chatting on the WyldRyde IRC Network, where I’m a network staff member, taking care of other online responsibilities, or working on the project. So basically I’ve stared at PHP/MySQL/HTML for 10 of the past 48 hours.

I’m very happy with the progress I have made so far. When I started, it was nothing but an empty shell, and now things are actually coming together and looking nice. Although I would love to make it live as soon as possible, I know that it won’t be complete and ready to go live until mid to late August. I absolutely have to finish before school starts again, or it will have to be delayed until the Thanksgiving recess or winter recess for me have time to finish whatever needs to be done.

So for the past two years, the only bank account that I’ve had for myself (or at least, that I could access) has been my checking account. Last week I decided that I wanted to open a new savings accounts. The only question was where should I open it? There are a dozen banks in town, and several banks in the surrounding area, plus the bank on campus. So there were plenty of options for me to chose from; some criteria needed to be decided on to help me choose a bank.

So in the end, I decided on the following criteria:

• A high interest rate - the higher the better.
• No need to already have another account there - since I only have accounts at two banks, I didn’t want to limit my options.
• Online account access - I’m always online, and keep track of my accounts using Microsoft Money.
• Ability to open an account online by transfering money from an account elsewhere - I was doing this on a Sunday, and wanted to open the account that day.

After spending 30 minutes online, I had found the following out:

 
With the exception of Superior, all of the banks had online services. Not that it mattered…

There was a clear winner that met my criteria - I was opening an account with ING Direct. Although they have no branches - at all - I was fine with that, since I can just use direct deposit when I work, and if direct deposit isn’t offered at a job, I can just deposit the money into my checking account and transfer the money through that.

The entire process of opening the account took less than 20 minutes, but I have to wait a few days before it becomes active. Due to the nature of opening the account - online and entering another bank account to get funds - ING Direct makes two small deposits to the other account that you need to verify before the account is open. That doesn’t bother me since you start earning interest the day the account is open, and not when it is verified.

All in all, I wish I had known about ING Direct earlier. I would have opened an account there last summer instead of a year later.

So I’ve decided that I’m only going to post things during the week. My target is still 30 points, but for now I’m only going to try for it three days a week, and try to leave comments on other blogs on the other days during the weeks.

The site-related project is still moving along, although its going a lot slower now than before. But that’s ok, since right now I’m just going over everything making sure that there is nothing that will cause problems later one, and finetuning the design and layout of everything.

Although I posted three times yesterday, I still have my ideas that I wrote about before - the three posts I wrote didn’t involve my ideas, they came after reading some things in the news. Maybe I will just keep those ideas in the back of my mind in case I can’t think of something else to write about. Eh, we’ll see…

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/13664685/detail.html

A Gwinnett County mother says she wants answers and action after she and her baby were kicked off a plane. [...] Penland thinks her 19-month-old son, Garren, has a bubbly personality. But Penland said when they were aboard a Continental Express plane, a flight attendant became annoyed by Garren’s personality when he kept saying three words.

“As we started taxiing, he started saying ‘Bye, bye plane,’ ” said Penland. “At the end of her speech, she leaned over the gentleman beside me and said, ‘It’s not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up.’ [...] She then said, “You know, it’s called baby Benadryl.’ “

I’m sorry, but anyone that tells a mother, father, guardian…any person looking after a child…that they should drug the child, even with something legal such as Benadryl, deserves to be hated. Especially when they work in a situation such as this. What if something had happened during the flight, but the child wasn’t able to communicate with his mother because of the Benadryl?

There was no reason for the child needing to be quieted. He was saying nothing any child only a year and a half old says. I could see if he was saying “Plane go boom” or something like that, but “Plane go bye bye”? Come on, he isn’t some terrorist, he’s a baby with a limited vocabulary (as all are at his age). He wasn’t bothering any of the other passengers; some even went to talk to the flight attendant on the mother’s behalf.

I’m against lawsuit abuse, but I think that any suit filed in this instance is warrented, and I hope the flight attendant pays. This was not even close to being handled the right way by her. I seriously hope she is fired, there is no excuse for her lying to the pilot to make him turn the plane around.