Chris' Updates

Whew! Maybe I should change the blog's title to "Almost-Monthly!" I apologize for the delay, but we've been busy bees. In the past two weeks or so, we've completed our unit's move into different buildings. And as the commo people, we've been particularly busy. When a department gets to their new office, they need their computers, network connections, phones, and printers working ASAP. That was doubly as important for the TOC (Tactical Operations Center), which is the communications hub of the unit. They had radios and e-mail in-boxes that could only be down for a couple of hours. Frankly, we worked our asses off. Things finally seem to be calming down, and we've finally moved our own commo equipment. The end of the move comes just in time for me to wish everyone a Happy Easter, and inform you all that I'll be headed home in a couple of days! I can't give you a specific time line for several reasons, not the least of which is that I don't ev...

Do I use my free time this evening to: Retool my class scheduling program to use XML input Play Rock Band Why is this even a debate? Is programming really supposed to be a fun activity? ... (Sigh) I guess I'll be social and play Rock Band.

Well, it's been just about a month since my last post, so I guess I'm a little overdue. Let's see... Probably my most exciting news is that I have a date for taking my two weeks of mid-tour leave. Of course, everything is weather-dependent and so forth, but I should be home sometime around April 17th, just in time for me and Ashley's first wedding anniversary! And I should be in good time to see Kelly's wedding as well! I'm very excited, and even though I'm trying not to, I'm counting the days. Work has been treating me well. We've been busier than usual, with many offices shifting around the base. We've been running new CAT-5 cables all over the place, enough for 4 office buildings. It's definitely different than sitting around in the office, waiting for something to happen. It's nice to get out of the office for a bit, but I'm not used to being on my feet all day. All the same, it's fun. Work on my class schedule programming pro...

Alright, this week seems to have been a return to my passions as a computer science geek and electronics nerd. To begin, my work planning for college has rekindled an old flame of sorts. I've had the urge to design a class scheduling program. This would take a list of the classes I want to take, and then use the class times for that semester to build the perfect schedule. Of course, that's a very general description. One of the most immediate problems that comes to mind is: what is a perfect schedule? It's a fuzzy, arbitrary goal. I have several ideas to make it more concrete, and if I get that far I'll probably incorporate them all. Another technical issue to be solved is getting the actual class times. I'll have to start by hand-entering the ones I'm interested in, but I wonder if there are better solutions. Perhaps the Computer Science department can hook me up with read-only access to parts of the school's database. Or maybe I can find a way to scrape t...

Is it me, or are there a lot of birthdays around this time of year? Many, many of the people I know seem to have birthdays in January and February. Perhaps it lends creedence to all of that astrology crap, and I just tend to hang around Aquariuses. Or maybe it reveals preferred times of the year to make babies. Who knows. The last couple of weeks of work have been relatively quiet. Sgt. Rhino is back from leave. He had an excellent time while he was home, but coming back was painful, both with the emotional parting and the difficult process of making his way back to Iraq. I get that report quite often, actually. Traveling with the military is less than glamorous. Sgt. Rhino has decided to step back a bit from day-to-day office management, allowing Sgt. Antonio to make project decisions and keep track of scheduling. Also, Sgt. Rhino has blessed off on the days off scheme. I'm very happy, because I'm still enjoying my reset days. Over the past couple of days, I've been plotti...

W00t! I'm happy to report that after a couple months of casually playing on and off, I've beaten Mass Effect on PC! I bought it back in September, and I scared my roommate when I cursed loudly while trying to install the game. The SecuROM DRM prevented me from launching the game until I could activate with the internet. It wasn't until a month later that I actually got personal internet and was able to start playing. (Does EA really expect me to have an internet connection in the middle of the desert?) I'll also say that it's a system hog; my new laptop, built specifically to play modern games decently, is barely able to handle the game. Having voiced those gripes, I'm very happy with the game. It's an original IP and storyline, and the backstory and plot are excellent! I was drawn into a galaxy of interesting alien races, clashing politics, and intense combat. Commander Shepard is a great lead character. The plot forces the player to make some tough dec...

I've just finished watching the inauguration of our 44th president. So much has already been said about the significance of this moment in history. Even though I can't lay claim to any African American cultural heritage, I was still deeply moved by the idea that we are closer to equality than perhaps ever before. This is one of the moments in history that I can tell my children and grandchildren about: those moments when you'll never forget where you were when you learned it happened. For other generations, those moments were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK. I don't quite remember what I was doing when the Berlin Wall fell, and my recollections of the Gulf War are fuzzy at best. But I do remember a fateful morning in my sophomore year of high school. In Spanish, my first class, there were rumors of news from New York. A small plane, perhaps a single-prop, had accidentally glanced off of a building. Anyway, no matter, class had to continue. But in...