Earthquakes!

One of the joys of living in Southern California is the occasional earthquake. I felt (what I thought was) a minor one go through a few mins ago. IM'd others, they all felt it too.

Turns out it's a 5.4 up on Long Beach. Cousin at Disneyland emailed back immediately saying it was strong up there, but since he emailed back I'm assuming he's alright.

Apparently the SF earthquake in the 80's did damage here so feeling it isn't that unusual.

But we're all good, still waiting to hear back again from my cousin but like I said he got right back to me the first time so I"m not too worried.

High Finances.... again

Here is the deal. I had worked out a budget so that I could stretch out the money I"ve already got in student loans almost until I graduate. Well the budget apparently isn't as realistic as I've tried to make it and it's just stressing me out. The plan was to not get any more student loans, though I am eligable for the 80/09 ones, trying to minimize the amount of debt I have coming out of college.

Well I"m reconsidering. Apparently I greatly underestimated my budget, and I'm doing things to cut back, eating at home, not going out much at all, but it's just not making it. With my home equity line of credit being drastically cut back due to my house being worth about 20% less than it did in January, my really low interest cushion is gone and the alternatives are credit cards.

Honestly I figure, at this point I either get the extra loans and stop stressing so much about every penny, or I could have to carry a balance on my credit card. The interest on the loan is hugely less and tax deductible, so it makes sense to just take it out, and honestly if you counted up all of my debt, while none of it is on credit cards, I'm not sure it really matters anymore.

The thing is I have to make this decision now as the next check is issued in about three weeks. I think I'm going to take it and then after graduation instead of X debt it will be X + 10 grand debt. I'm not eligible for any subsidized or free money, it's all costing interest, which I pay each month, and I've got most of it in a high interest savings account, just transferring X a month into my checking account.

I could sell my house and be free and clear, with none of my equity back and no where to live. I think the plan is my last class ends on May 2nd, baby cousin walks sometime that month and then my brother's wedding is Memorial Day weekend. That eliminates most of May for anything really serious. I'll send out resumes and maybe do an interview (maybe!!) or two but I won't take a job before the wedding, too much hassle. Then baby cousin and I are looking to go to Mexico, or Hawaii, or somewhere, and that would work after the wedding. Then a month after we'd get back I walk down here in San Diego, so if I do take a job somewhere else it will have to be after that date.

That puts me at August for a first paycheck assuming I have something lined up for after I walk, which realistically could happen. Taking out this next set of loans gets me just barely there, but with much less stress. I was just raised to abhor debt, a good attitude to have and why I'm agonizing over the decision. Ok not agonizing but writing out a huge blog post to put my thoughts in order. My mother is a saint and is paying for my health insurance, which actually allows me to do this. It's just adding X amount of time on to the time it will take me to pay all of this crap off.

And, tying this into the theme of the blog, I have 10 to 15 years less of time at work to pay this all of than someone who did this traditionally. I don't think that will be a problem but most people have their student loans paid off by their mid thirties, I'm getting more.

And before anyone says 'well duh get a job stupid' my internship isn't being picked up this fall due to no fault of my own, and I didn't know this until it was too late to pick up a random part time job for the summer. Damn kids took them all :) I'll start calling around near the end of next month to see what is available once everyone goes back to school. That internship last year made all the difference, I won't find a part time job that pays nearly as much as that internship did, but maybe something small will help alleviate the stress a bit. What I don't want to do is work full time as I'm about to start the real hard core classes and even if I have to eat peanut butter to make ends meet I want to rock those classes.

So my epic, and I'm sure most people have stopped reading by now, decision is to take out the damn loan, deal with the debt and have significantly less stress every time I go grocery shopping.

Homemade pizza

.... totally worked

Thank heavens for my iPhone's backup

Well, the less than a year old laptop had a catastrophic failure Saturday night. I tried running the internal tools that HP includes with the laptop overnight on Saturday to no avail. Called tech support on Sunday and after a very frustrating time talking to someone telling them that I've already done all of this, they said to escalate the problem someone would have to call me back.

Not cool

So I called them back today and got a slightly more helpful person that was having me run different diagnostics (I do learn something at least when I call these people) but I had to go to go have lunch.

While I was gone someone from the higher level tech support called me, and when I called her back she was MUCH more helpful. The diagnostic on both the hard drive and RAM passed, which were my first guesses on what was wrong so she's sending me the packaging so I can send them the laptop. After they get it it should be "7 to 10 business days" to get it fixed, which actually isn't completely obnoxious.

This is why I have everything important on my desktop, and I"m going to back it up again on my external hard drive in a moment. Thankfully all of my contacts etc are on my iPhone, installing iTunes on this desktop right now actually. It would have sucked to have lost everything there.

So I'm suddenly not portable for a bit, which means most likely not going to make it to AZ again this month. It's kind of scary sometimes how much we depend on our portability, at least I do.

I need to hang out here anyway, this is my one month 'off' and it's just going to get hard as hell from here on out. Nice break =)

U.S. edges Australia in Olympic water polo tuneup - San Jose Mercury News

U.S. edges Australia in Olympic water polo tuneup - San Jose Mercury News

Heather is quoted in the article.

Testing out Microsoft Word Blogging

They have a 'blog this' feature in Word 2007 and I'm just playing with it a bit. I bought Office 07 (the student version doesn't have Access which is annoying) because I could get the student version rather cheaply. It's got some cool features, this being one of them.

The thing I like the best so far however is oneNote. It helps me to organize in ways I didn't think was possible. Origionlly I thought it was only for a tablet, you take notes and it helps keep them in place, but it's so much more than that.

The best part is that I can input a document by dragging the icon over and then make notes on that document. I can then copy it back out into wherever. I did this for my presentation yesterday, we had eight questions to answer and I answered them on the document and then just put them in power point.

It also makes it easier to keep track of things beyond the myriad of folders I have all over my home network. My next project is to organize code snippets from all of my various classes and get them labeled according to language and function. That should make looking things up a TON easier.

So yah this is me playing with the new features.

Naturalism and Computer Viruses (Virii)

Still not sure what the plural is....

Anyway I had a presentation tonight in my Computer Ethics course where I had to choose from a list of cases and analyze it using specific criteria from the class. Long story short I chose a situation where a University was teaching about computer viruses in an attempt to educate people so they can combat them. The counter argument was that now more people can make them.

I don't buy that btw, if someone is going to make a malicious computer program, going to school is not how they're going to learn how to do it. But anyway I was comparing the situation to different schools of thought and the one that I'm the most proud of is the Naturalistic one.

Just for reference:


3.2. Naturalistic Ethics:

For the Naturalist, the baseline of value is that which is natural - that is, that which is in conformity with nature. Nature is good. One need not look beyond nature to some immaterial ideal for a standard of right and wrong. Rather, goodness will be found by living in harmony with nature. Evil, for the Naturalist, is a departure from this natural norm either in the direction of excess or defect (i.e., having, or doing, too much or too little of something which is naturally good). It is a breaking of the natural law.


My solution to the dilemma was to teach the course but have regulations guiding what is to be taught and how things are run. Here is the part I'm the most proud of:

5. Is this solution in accord with what is natural (not excessive or deficient) [Naturalism/Realism]? Explain.

This solution can be in accord with what is natural to a point if you consider the concept of survival of the fittest. In nature the strong survive, the weak culled. Computer viruses can eliminate those who are 'weak', those who do not protect themselves or can not overcome the attack. However with the regulations some of this is circumvented and some of the weaker or more foolish are able to survive.
 

I now have to take this, and the rest of the outline, and write a paper. I'm definitely going to expound on that point as it was a big hit in class.

If I can rock the midterm this weekend I'm pretty confident in an 'A' which will (hopefully) bring me back up to a solid 3.3 and give me a good jumping off point for the last part of this program.

Olympics

I have a second cousin (I think that is the correct term) on my father's side who is an Olympic Athelete. Her name is Heather Petri and she's on the Women's Water Polo team. This is her third Olympics, they won the silver in 00 and the bronze in 04 and they're number 1 in the world this year and favored to win the gold.

I've never actually met her but I'm still incredibly proud. In 04 they played her matches at weird times so I missed them. Hopefully as they're favored to win this year I can watch them at a relatively normal time.

It's something that I've never been even close to doing and I have such great respect for these athletes. It's just that much cooler that she and I share the same great grandparents and we dearly loved the same great aunt, who passed away not too long before the last Olympics.

So I send all of my good thoughts and confidence to Heather and the whole team and I'll be cheering back here for you!

My yard is fixed!

Almost completely!

I had the Handyman people come today and the very nice guy redid my drip system. It now waters all of the plants (minus the ones in pots and the one rose plant that isn't connected to anything else) which is better than the daily watering I was having to do.

I still have to water the ones in pots but that is much easier than the soaking of the trees etc that had to go on. Replaced the dead again flowers, and with dedicated water maybe they won't die this time quite as quickly. And the whole afternoon only cost me 300, and for what he did I'm very happy. If I had known how cheap it was going to be I would have done this a long time ago. Oh and I got out of the nursery for only 40 dollars, a record for me.

Not everything is done but all the stuff I couldn't do is finished. He also cut back the neighbor's apple tree that was blocking my lemon tree' sun and hauled away all the yard trash. My new spiffy composter will be in next week so that shouldn't be a problem again.

I'll take pictures when it all drys out and I'm happy with it. I had to cut the lavender WAY back and actually had him pull one of the lavender plants as I had too many and it was just out of control. Does anyone want dried lavender? I have bunches all around my house....

Break From School... and Grades!

Had just over a week off, it was great. Stayed at my grandparent's place where my biggest worry (which actually wasn't trivial) was trying to keep my dog from digging up the grass and harassing the skunk.

I failed on both counts....

Though Grandma, I forgot to grab garlic before I left!!

Got my grade for the last hardware class, got a B!! It keeps me at a 3.3 and hopefully this Ethics class will be another A to bring that up a touch. I'm running out of classes to get good grades in to bring my gpa up! If I can I really want to graduate with a 3.5.

I'll write a whole bunch on Ethics after I finish my homework. I don't blog much with computer courses because there really isn't a lot to talk about, but this one I should have stuff to spout off into the ether.

As far as house stuff goes I have a 'handyman' coming Friday afternoon to clean up the back yard and give me an estimate on finally getting the irrigation system to where I want it. Less dead plants that way hopefully. I want everything that is either in the ground or attached to a fence (or a trellis) to have automatic watering leaving just the potted stuff for manual. That way I can move the potted stuff around. The thing is my system has more than a few 'zones' and I'd like to use all of them, one for the trees (long but only three times a week), one for the roses (not as long but every other day or so) and one for 'everything else' (short daily). I want everything on drippers also, which may solve a lot of the issues, just give some things bigger drippers than others, and it will save water.

This project may be more than I'm ready to pay for right now but even if we can get everything on automatic and I just do the trees extra manually it will solve a lot of stress.