Purplez, Breakz, and Technolust

Sorry everyone, its been a busy week. Much stress was had at work. On a positive work-related note, I got my ASP.NET calendar working how I wanted. I had to get it to highlight days that had events in the SQL server for. Then also show the details in a hoverover div.

On the WoW side a good amount happened too. Last friday I finally got my first piece of gear from Ulduar! I managed to grab the leather head piece from heroic Auriaya....and when I wear it I feel like my Druid is a character from Sailor Moon or something. I would link the item and some pictures, but I'm not at my personal desktop atm.

That night we ended up making some progress on Hodir, getting him to 25% on our last attempt (which happened to be the same attempt where we didn't die prior to enrage). Not that bad for my guild.

On the weekend it was another story. Well, most of the weekend I spent with my friend who came to visit me for saturday&sunday. She left prior to my sunday ulduar-10 raid, which I was excited for. On the saturday they downed everything up to Hodir, minus the IC. We went straight for Hodir....and spent the next 1.5 hours dying on him. Some players didn't understand the concept of moving to stay alive. On one attempt this mage died 3 times (brezed 2x obviously). That same mage also never broke 2k dps. In fact, the majority of the dps never broke 3k. I could do better than some of them in pvp boomkin spec with resto gear! /sigh

So once we FINALLY didn't all die on Hodir and hit his enrage timer, he still had 25% left. So we left him and went to Freya. We spent about 45 minutes on the trash and managed to get 2 elders down. I died so many times from random things its not even funny. DPS breaking CC, mob goes straight for me, spam heal myself, no one takes the mob off me, I die. Or how about the pulls where I would put 1 rejuv and 1 LB on the tank as he runs into the pack of mobs, and all of a sudden 3 of them run at me....with no intervention by anyone. When I played mage that would be a time I would frost nova to save the healer! In the end, we killed not a single boss.

Because of this frustration, I'm taking a break from raiding with my guild. I just can't stand it these days. The majority of them really are great people. Its an adult only guild too, so I don't have to deal with the problem that a lot of guilds have being immature children. I just can't stand raiding with them some times.

Oh well, it'll give me some more time to do some work around the house.


The big thing that I've been working on the technology side is the planning for a multitouch table. I've got some big plans, and I really hope that I can do this. Its going to be a lot of work. The main things I'm working on for it are finding out where I can find infrared (850nm specifically) light sources (I've found some good online retailers, but seeing if I can find local), how to program the UI, how I want to make the UI, securing a projector (I have access to one to test my designs with), and lastly a webcam with a ir bandpass filter. The rest is fairly trivial.

To learn more about this stuff, check out http://nuigroup.com

Since I had to spend all day at work today in a "diversity training" meeting thing (I don't know why...apparently everyone in this building has to including myself [IT] and maintenance) I was working on writting down my ideas for the UI and what I want to do with it. I was even working on the database design for how to store some of the information.

Now to learn OpenGL....

Bored Druid is Bored

EXTENDED DOWNTIME ARG

Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with the down time if they actually gave a realistic end time. If I was told originally that it was going to take this long, I would have started something else a long time ago. But the problem is I don't want to start something to do it for only a tad, then go back to WoW (seeing as I was waiting for it!).

ARG

:( I just wanted to relax after work :(

All this down time has made me miss horde though. Maybe I'll make a horde toon for me to play when I'm bored. I've got a druid (duh), a shaman at 73, a pally&rogue both at 58, DK at 60 (does that really count? :P ), and a mage at 71. I've played a warlock to low 20s before. I refuse to play a hunter because I hate pet management, especially to the level that hunters have to deal with. Any suggestions?

[edit] Extended again until at least 9:30 PDT (12:30 my time)....THATS IT TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE [/edit]

There Should be a Licence to Use the Internet

So while I was on the computer, my sister came up to me asking how to save her word document to a USB key. I explain that you have to plug it in, then go File -> Save As, and select the USB key from the drop down list. Easy enough.

No apparently that was too difficult.

EQUALS MASSIVE FAIL

So when I get to the laptop, the first thing that I notice is that the USB key (aka Nerd Stick as I call them) is plugged into the ethernet RJ-45 port.

Best part: I got yelled at when I pointed out that she made a stupid mistake.

Lets assume for a second that one does not know much about computers, but you have a brain that functions. You take this device that you know is a "usb stick" and that if you can plug it into the computer you can save your files to it. So you take a look at what the connector on the "usb stick" looks like, and try to search for something that kinda looks the same.

Looking at the usb stick you notice that its pretty rectangular. On the laptop (which in this case is a Dell Inspiron 1525) you see a few "slots" on the sides. There's some that it can't go into (ie VGA, s-video, etc), some that are far too small (ie mini-usb), and some that it might fit into. These would be 4xUSB ports, a HDMI port, ethernet, and modem. The ethernet and modem are pretty square though, and you have a rectangular thing, so it'll probably fit in one of the other slots much better. You try one port which happens to be the HDMI with various orientations with no luck. You do the same for what is the USB port. After flipping it over, it plugs in, and Windows starts talking about how its found some new hardware. Success!

NOW WHAT WAS HARD ABOUT THAT

Seriously, I've been told my entire life that my generation is the "generation of technology and information!!!!" but I have yet to see that. All through out my life I've seen examples like this one above. Its just sad.

Not even a little sad. Massive fail sad.

What do you guys think about the current generation and their ability to use technology? I think its so sad that, continuing with my rant about Facebook, the Internet really should have some sort of "basic training" or a quick exam in order to pass. You must be at least this not stupid to be allowed to use a computer.

/sigh

And the Big Three are Over

I'm of course referring to the big three exams that I had this term. These courses are Electricity and Magnetism (Phys 241), Calculus 3 (Math 227), and Quantum 1 (Phys 234). Now normally these could be quite the difficult exams to do well in. Given a good amount of time between each exam, it would be possible to do well in all 3. Sadly this wasn't the case with my schedule this year. Each one was right after the other, with E&M on Thursday, Calculus on Friday, and Quantum was this morning. This is why I haven't done more typing here due to not even having the time to properly study for the big three.

Lets start off with E&M. This course is basically what wrecked the big three more so than the exam schedule-ers. Our professor did a terrible job teaching the course. By the end of lectures, I looked back and realized that I have no idea what was going on. I spent hours just trying to figure out what was going on. If we had been taught properly in the first place I would have been able to do proper studying for this course, and devote more time to not E&M. I'm not trying to blame any of my poor performance on other people as I should have taken the time earlier in the year to get E&M right.

The part that aggravates me the most about this E&M issue is that people that didn't go to class did better over all. Why? Well they remembered that MIT has recordings of their lectures available for free on the internet. So instead of going to class they would use that time to listen to the professor from MIT talk about E&M. Not only did they learn what was going on, but they actually learned more as their course covers more material. Oh well.

Next was calculus. This one I really hope that I did moderately well on. This is because I almost failed calculus 2 last year. Being I got a 50% in the course. Yeah. So anyways, the exam went *alright* but, once again, if I had more a gap from E&M, I would have been able to be much more prepared. Our calculus professor was amazing. He did plenty of examples, and always did a great job of keeping our attention, especially with the class being at 8:30am. If I had the option to take one of my courses by him, I would pick him in a heart beat.

When I got back last night, I had only a few hours left in the day to study for quantum. Not only that, but I still had to do the course "task" where I had to find an example in a quantum physics book that related to the course, type it up, then submit it (along with a few lines of discussion) via the online website in pdf form. So that cut down on the time given even further.

When I sat down at the exam (9am by the way), I took a look at the questions.

1. This had to do with expectation values of a mixed state source. Construct the bloch vector, find expectation values, bla bla bla. This type of question was done very poorly on average by the class in the midterm, so I knew that it was going to be on the final. Because of that, I'm fairly certain that I got it perfect.
2. Here you had to do some work with a time dependent harmonic oscillator in an infinite potential well. I had no idea at all what do to. I basically left it blank.
3. I totally called this one the night before. It was a potential step function (which was obviously going to be on the final), but instead of going from V=0 to V=Vo, it was the other way around. It was one of the few options that we didn't do in class or on assignments so I figured that this was going to be the case on the final. Assuming I didn't make any stupid mistakes, I completely owned it.
4. Hamiltonian and time dependency question. No idea what was going on, but I made some educated guesses and some *non-educated* ones just to get as much written down as I could.

I'm sure you can see why I'm disappointed in myself. With even just one extra day after calculus I would have been able to review so much more of quantum that I could have aced the entire exam. That said I loved the course. Fascinating material. The professor did a good job, but not nearly enough examples in class, and sometimes we wouldn't cover the assignment material until the week after that assignment was due. Oh well.

Well now that the majority my exams are done with, I'm heading out in just a few minutes to go to a waffle party. Mmm waffles. Just one exam left to go, being my database class next friday. The exam should be a cakewalk.

Well I don't think that I should let Claire wait for me any more, so I'm going to wrap this up. I have a lot to type about last year still (like the adventure with my first and second roommate...mainly the first).

Until next time! Here's to hoping that I passed everything! *cheers*