Christmas Letter

I wrote this originally right at the end of Finals week. I did not quite finish it up and then forgot about it. So I wrote the last few sentences and decided to publish it now. Enjoy!

My sister, Suzanne, asked me to proofread her Christmas letter the other night, and it got me thinking maybe I should write something like that. I, however, do not write letters for which to mail to people. I barely even know how to mail a letter to someone. So what do I do instead? I throw it on my blog for everyone to read!

The year started out pretty calm for me. My spring semester consisted of five major courses of which my two computer science classes were projects. Needless to say, I did not do much other than hide in my room reading or working with a team in a computer lab. When I did have a little free time, I found myself playing Call of Duty 4 on the PS3. I managed to get a 4.0 gpa for the semester which was the first time since I had lost my 4.0 overall the year before.

The summer was spent living in an apartment in downtown Des Moines with Chris Tuvera, a lifelong friend of mine. He was working an internship as a programmer at the Casey's headquarters in Ankeny while I worked an internship with Principal Financial Group. I was still in Information Services just as the year before, but I was on the Web Infrastructure team this time. My cubicle was about three rows down from my one the summer before. The job turned out to be an absolute blast. My team was really laid back and liked to have fun. I spent most of the summer writing small Perl scripts to help administrate and manage the environment Principal's static content web developers work in. Congratulations to those who actually understood what that last sentence meant. As of this point in time, it is looking like I will spend next summer working with the same team. My time outside of work was spent playing more Call of Duty 4, going to Iowa Cubs baseball games, or hanging out at my sister, Sheri's house. I also finally invested in a pair of left-handed golf clubs so I could get in on that action. I had a lot of fun playing on a team in the annual Principal IS golf outing.

As the summer drew to an end, I went on vacation back to good ol' Okoboji, Iowa with my mother and Sheri's family. Jamie, Sheri's husband, and I got in a solid eighteen holes of golf where I managed to get my first par on a 280 yard par 4. Let me just say it was pretty. Jamie and I took Jake, my 2 year old nephew, mini-golfing several times at the resort. By the end of the week, he was actually starting to get the hang of it. I still remain the family mini-golf champion. We spent an eventful day fixing bike tires so we could go on a bike ride. Jamie and I also introduced Sierra, my 10-month or so old niece, and Jake to the Star Wars Trilogy. The kids loved it to the point Jake requested on his own to go as Yoda for Halloween. I suspect I am forgetting something that was highly exciting, but the latest school semester makes it easy to forget things.

After vacation, I settled into my new apartment in Cedar Falls for the fall semester. My roommates consisted of AJ, Bobby, and Jared. AJ has been my roommate since we were randomly placed together our freshman year of college. Bobby is another vocal education music major who was good friends with AJ. Jared was our fourth when we needed four people for the apartment. He had lived on the same floor as AJ and I in the dorms for a year as well as being a music major for part of the time. We all get along well even if Jared tends to hide in his room more than hangout in the living room with the rest of us.

We have had a couple parties, but most of our time has been spent with friends playing Rock Band on the PS3. Our goal is to have completely beat the multiplayer band tour by the end of finals week. Then I will buy Rock Band 2 for next semester. I also went to as many UNI home football games as I could when Sierra and Jake were not throwing killer birthday parties. The season was topped off with a semi-final playoff game versus the Richmond Spiders in the UNI-Dome which was televised by ESPN. Curt, Jessa, and I made signs and waited the couple hours it takes to get front row seats for the game. I assume everyone knows it ended in a 20-21 lost for the Panthers. I have yet to watch my entire recording of the game, but I know I was on television once in the third quarter as well as the very end. Apparently, ESPN decided I was the person to zoom in on after the game to symbolize as the disappointed face of the UNI Panthers. Perhaps topping off the fun for the semester were two rock concerts I attended. The first was a Nine Inch Nails concert in Cedar Rapids which Jame and I drove down for. We got some amazing seats in the third row, directly straight out from the stage. By not being on the floor, I got to enjoy all the AMAZING special effects without having to make sure the old man, Jamie, was not killed by the mosh pit. A couple weeks later, a group of my friends and I went to a concert in Waterloo which had appearances by State of Shock, Papa Roach, Seether, and Staind. See the link for details on it. The best part of all the last two weeks is that Jessa and I are now officially dating. It turns out that if you can find a girl willing to run around until 3am every night, you can wear her out enough to get a date with her!

My classes this semester have not been terrible. I am taking Databases, Networking, Programming Languages and Paradigms (otherwise known as PLP), English History to 1688, and Exploring the West: History Seminar. All the classes have taught some pretty cool stuff except perhaps databases which I knew going into it. PLP was probably the most rewarding. Not only did I learn a lot about programming languages, but I have gotten along really well with the professor, Dr. Wallingford. It is turning out my undergraduate research may fall along the lines of this class with the professor acting as my advisor. I managed to get A's in everything except English History in which I got a B. It was pretty much what I expected. All in all, 2008 turned out to be a pretty awesome year.

On Fire!

So in case you have yet to notice, I have been writing a lot more blogs recently. One reason is because the semester is finally winding down for me. I have a couple more tests next week that I will really need to study for, but other than that, I expect easy A's. So now that I have extra time and have yet to figure out how to spend an hour here or there, I find myself writing blogs. I suspect I will continue to do so over Christmas break, but the time spent playing videogames and working on geek projects will definitely pick up.
The other reason I think I am writing a few more blogs than usual this week is because Jessa just started her own blog. There is a mild competition between us about who is the better blogger. I will admit the judging is kind of hard at this point since she has only just started. However, her first couple blogs are pretty good. She claims I have better flow in my blogs. I suppose that is possible, but I still am not happy with it. It is getting better, though, I feel. Meanwhile, I like her blog because it seems to be on a much more personal level than mine. The only time my writing really gets at something about me is when I am either overly excited or in a pretty bad mood. She writes about her everyday running and manages to turn it into a partial life story. That is impressive. Anyways, all I am saying is go read her blog. Peace!

One Reason I Play Videogames

I actually wrote this back in January as a note on Facebook, but it kind of matches my mood tonight. Therefore, I thought I would post it here.

Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 1:23 am:
So I think I finally found a reason for why I play videogames as much as I do. As most know, I'm a very mental sort of person. Everything I do is a thinking game. Makes it nice when come test time, but when I want to kick back and relax, it can be annoying. My brain never really shuts down even if I want to. Videogames though allow me to completely space-off for extended periods of time. I'm not thinking about anything, worrying, or trying to solve a problem. It's just playing a game. Most people probably won't get this, but that's ok. Most people don't get me. Anyways, it's 1:30am on a Saturday night and I really don't feel like thinking about shit anymore. So I'm going to go play some games for awhile until I'm tired enough to pass out.

Stored Procedures vs. Prepared Statements

At work the last few weeks, I have been doing a lot with SQL in a web application. I will not say I am an expert in the matter, but I do feel I have a pretty good understanding of the two options. Ultimately, a stored procedure seems to be rather annoying than useful. The problem I have is that the languages RDBMS provide for stored procedures tend to be pretty bad as far as programming languages go. So there is a reason you have chosen to write your application in a particular language. Chances are it is the best for the situation and provides a lot more power than the meager implementation offered by the RDBMS. That means you need to get some advantage out of using stored procedures to make it worth your while.

So what advanatages can stored procedures offer? Protection from sql injection is thrown out because you get the same benefits from prepared statements. I have heard some arguments about performance gains. The two primary factors coming from caching the SQL statements along with the round-trip-time to the database server. From what I have heard, most RDBMS these days cache prepared statements just as well as stored procedures. Besides, on today's machines, you have to write the world's most complex SQL statement before you will notice the hit on the server. Meanwhile, the round-trip-time (RTT) can be a valid argument. If you have a lengthy series of statements with some simple logic to control them, there is some potential benefit to using stored procedures. This would depend on how minute your timing issues are along with how many calls of this nature you would make along with the length of a RTT to the database server. In most environments, the time from the application server to the database server is only a few milliseconds.

Ultimately, your average web application does not have strict timing requirements. It tends to be more dependent on the speed of development along with the ease of maintenance. it never makes a large enough difference to worry about it. When I am developing applications, I intend to lean towards prepared statements and will only shift to stored procedures when I absolutely need to.

Rocking Weekend

My weekend pretty much rocked. It started out Friday afternoon with people slowly gathering at my apartment. We played Rock Band as we passed the time. Eventually, seven of us went out to Pancheros for food before heading off to a rock concert in Waterloo. The concert showcased Papa Roach, Seether, and Staind in that order with State of Shock as the opener. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we were shocked (pun intended) by the quality of the opener. They were just as good as the other bands. I will say though they are a lot better live than recorded. I still like their recordings, but they need to play their music a little harder in the studio. They're awesome live though. Seether turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but Papa Roach and Staind rocked. I had a little problem by the time Staind came out just because I was so exhausted from the mosh pit by then. It turned out to be about a 4.5 hour show by the time all was said and done. I think I have to tip my hat to Staind though as the best band there. Afterall, how can you top "Silence Gets Us Nowhere"??

After the concert, we went back and played a few more hours of Rock Band for absolutely no good reason. Well, okay, I sat there and watched because I couldn't sing due to losing my voice at the concert and I was letting the new people get their opportunity on the instruments. They were finally starting to get the hang of it by 3am.

Saturday came and with it UNI's FCS Quarterfinal Playoff Game vs. New Hampshire. I believe the largest lead of the game was 9 points with a combined total of 9 turnovers, 1 blocked punt, 1 blocked extra point attempt, and 1 safety off of the blocked punt. It was ridiculous. Fortunatley, UNI won 36-34. My boy, D. Law, did not have a great game due simply to our gameplan which did not get him ball much. We had front row seats again and got a few new people to join us. It sounds like one is willing to come back with us this week to the semifinal game. The cool thing about the semifinal is it will be on ESPN at 3pm on Saturday. We are making signs and intend to get front row seats again.

After the game resulted in the traditional run to Pancheros before making our way over to Tracy's. There was a party for Jordan who recently got back from spending a semester in Australia. Once the party wound down, we mosied back to my place to watch Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill. This was still largely the same group from the whole weekend (Jess, Andrea, Matt, Curt, and me). This again went until 3-4 in the morning by the time I had picked up AJ from a Glee Club Christmas Concert Afterparty.

Sunday was supposed to be a day of reading for my paper I have due tomorrow. I tended to put most of it off because there were a number of good football games on. We also played a bit of Rock Band along with ordering Pizones from Pizza Hut. I spent the day trying not to talk since I destroyed my voice between the concert and the football game. Anyways, that was my phenomenal weekend. I may have to blog next week about this upcoming weekend. It sounds like it should be about just as busy!

A Linux Success Story

So the other day, I received a phone call from my mother. My brother-in-law, Jamie, and I had just recently given her a "new" (used computer from my grandma) with Xubuntu installed on it. Then Thanksgiving break ended. So here's a paraphrased version of the phone call:

Me: Hello
Mom: Hello, is this a good time to talk?
Me: Um...(pause as I try not to die in Resistance 2 on the Playstation 3)
Mom: Well, I'll just make it quick then. Am I supposed to get something more than a black screen when I turn on the computer?
Me: Yeah...Do you see a green light?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Is it on the monitor?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Do you see a green light on the tower?
Mom: Let me look. No, I don't think so.
Me: Well you'll need to push the big button in the middle with the power symbol on it.
Mom: Give me a moment to find it. ... ... I'm not seeing it.
(Short period of time as I try to describe the big circle button smack dab in the middle of the front of the tower with the power symbol on it. I really don't recall how I did this as I was once again trying not to die while playing my game. Eventually, though, my mom found the button.)
Mom: Oh, I see something now!
Me: (heavy sigh because I finally died)
Mom: Well, it sounds like things are going so well. I should probably let you go.
(End of conversation)

The next day she called me about some random thing and mentioned how much she liked the new computer. This is the same lady who has a notecard with notes on it about how to turn on any computer she has ever owned. She implicitly said she liked a computer running Linux. Now if that's not a testimony to how easy Linux is becoming to use, I don't know what is.

P.S. I did have to teach her how to shut it down since the menu is in the upper right rather than the lower left...