Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Good Technology Articles (and others)

It’s been quite a little while since I did this, but the number of links I have open in Opera is starting to get large enough I think there’s something wrong with me. So, with that, have some more interesting links relating in some way to technology!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

And with 2012, we have the end of the world!

Ok, maybe not. Actually, definitely not; the odds of anything ending the world sometime this year are slimmer than the chances you’ll see a cow wearing roller skates while taking a plane flight across the Atlantic.

But don’t forget Iran!

Anyway, I had a really good break. We had a total of three weeks this year instead of the regular two, so that was a nice little change (I think; I’m at the point where the extra week gave me worse sleeping habits that will stick around for longer than I’d like). We got back here the second week of January, and started classes that Monday. It was interesting getting back to class since we’d been off for the three weeks, so people either didn’t want to work or just forgot most of the things from before the break. It was a week partially wasted, but not completely since it still served a decent use for catching up.

2011…what a year. I won’t bore you with all the details, so I’ll just list some of the highlights I get from looking at my calendar (ok maybe there are a few boring details in here, so you can skip to whatever you’d like):

January – I continued working at ITS Desktop Support, and was in the beginning ballroom dancing class, which I didn’t completely mind (fancy that!). I was enrolled as well in Systems Administration I which was certainly a challenge, but well worth it with the professor.

February – I officially left ITS Desktop Support after an extended review process, and started working at RIT Research Computing. I’ve been working there ever since, and have learned a ton about Linux video streaming, creation, and distribution.

March – The new quarter started, and I took Computer Crime, Information Security Policies, as well as a couple others. RIT Players put on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog which was fantastic and which I went to see twice.

April – I performed updates for the TJ Sun systems over the week of the 15th-22nd, which was one of my last major functions as a TJ Sysadmin. I’ve continued to “consult” since then, but nothing of that size (reinstalling about 10 servers and essentially recreating the entire lab’s filesystem structure, as well as Sun Ray servers). O.A.R. came to RIT, and I went to go see that with Shawn. One of the first concerts I’ve ever been to, I  remember having a pretty good time.

May – I was involved in my first Imagine RIT with the RC department. It was certainly an experience, one that I hope to help improve my public speaking skills with next year. I started working at IOMAXIS for my first official RIT co-op and met fantastic people and learned a ton.

June – I went to the wedding of two awesome friends, and traveled to St. Louis to my cousin’s wedding as well! It was a good month :) After the weddings I went off for a week to the Arlington Diocese WorkCamp, where ~400 high school teens worked on houses to help rebuild and give residents more safe and secure accommodations.

July – I went to the DC fireworks for the 4th of July; as usual, they were pretty spectacular. I had a slight bit of mouth surgery later in the month to get rid of a slight nagging problem, and that was July.

August – Starting off the month at the beach is great! I went down to North Carolina again with Youth Apostles to enjoy the sand/sun and had a fun time. I finished up at work for the summer, and started preparing to go back to school

September – Started my third year of college back up here at RIT. I continued working at RC, and took Network Services (one heck of a class). I started going to some SPARSA meetings, and started semi-regularly going to RIT events like evening movies, various student activities, etc. Also on my agenda was getting more involved in the Newman parish up here.

October – I managed to get out of the RIT area and headed off to Letchworth with people from Newman.  Other than continuing to actually become social and go to various events and BarCamp, It was a pretty uninteresting month.

November – I saw the 13th Animation Show of Shows when it was at RIT – this was a *fantastic* event of videos from large and small animators. After that I started getting more involved in Mrow.org services, so now I’ve pretty much rebuilt many of the services run  under the domain on two servers in my apartment. For Thanksgiving break I stopped in Baltimore for a couple of days to visit friends and had a good time exploring the city and having Faidleys crab cakes!

December – We started winter quarter and I took SysAdmin II, Advanced Routing/Switching, Perl for SysAdmins, and Human Resource Management. The course load is pretty intense, but the knowledge gain is worth it. In about the third week of classes I was given the offer to join a fraternity, which was something I never intended on or even planned for when starting college. Over break I met up with a bunch of TJ kids and helped organize the 2nd SAAA meet-up.


Over the course of the year, I had the chance to partake in activities and things that have helped me to become a bit of a more social person while still maintaining my personal ideals, beliefs, and work ethics. This definitely helped to increase the closeness of some of my friendships, which have been great to me and are wonderful things that I certainly couldn’t live without.

The year definitely ended on a high note, and I hope that 2012 increases in awesomeness and continues to deliver unexpected results for the better. Here’s to a fun school, interesting ideas, and absolutely awesome friends! 2012, here we come.