Im back… Haven’t had time to post in the past few months, so here is me trying to get back in the swing of things. Lets see… the things that I have been going on since I’ve been gone…

1. Job Hunting

After a few weeks looking for jobs, I found one at Texas A&M working with GIS and Web Mapping Applications. Its nice and techy, just how I love it, and I don’t think I could have found a better group of people to work with.

2. House Hunting

I’ve been debating on whether to buy a house or rent… been thinking about it a lot, and right now after much research I am leaning towards just renting, although that is not definite right now.

3. ArcGIS Server and Geospatial Databases

Goes along with work, been swamped with trying to learn a whole new tech field that I was unfamiliar with. In the past month I have been overwhelmed with lots of new information that I had sort through, and its going along pretty well. ArcGIS Server is a big one-stop solution for mapping applications and geospatial databases used in lots of industries, and ESRI (the company that makes it) is the only company that has that offering. On the Web Application side, they are using ASP.NET 2.0… yay

4. Playing Pool

I usually make 2-3 trips a week up to Fast Eddies to relieve some stress and knock a few balls around….

So thats just a gist of everything thats been going on, for anyone left out there :)

In need of a techy geek? Hire me. Please :)

The University of Houston grabbed the Conference USA title yesterday defeating Southern Miss in a 34-20 win. The Coogs outscored Southern Miss 21-3 in the second half in order to clench the victory. The win gives them an automatic Liberty Bowl bid with a team from the SEC conference. Their record is now 10-3, and they haven’t won that many games since 1990. Go Coogs!!!!

The update to DigiCamCopy is now finished. The thumbnails should now display much faster than the original 1.0 version. You can find it in the download links to the right…

DigiCamCopy is needs to be changed a little bit on the back end. It is taking a long time to pull up the thumbnails of the pictures on the cameras when you have several pictures. Since my camera is not WIA compatible, I don’t wish to go the WIA route, but that would solve the issue, however I wouldn’t be able to use it myself grrr. Just not sure if there is any other way to get a thumbnail of the image without grabbing the entire picture contents first (without WIA), which is why it is slowing down.

DigiCamCopy is finally released. It allows you to transfer pictures from many digital cameras that connect over USB. When you transfer, you can choose to resize and convert the images to any assortment of image filetypes in just a few simple steps! You can also choose to remove the images from your camera’s storage from within the wizard. Try it out by finding it in the download links to the right.

Microsoft recently made the final version of Windows Vista available to all MSDN and TechNet subscribers via downloads on their site. This is far earlier than their planned late January commercial release of the product that will be available to consumers worldwide. Being an MSDN subscription awardee, I could snag my copy of it, but with dialup I would imagine it would take me until next year or so. Just have to wait until it is shipped to me in my next MSDN shipment. Even still, it will be a while until I will be able to install it, since you would probably want a DirectX 10 videocard as well as a more powerful comp in order to run it the way it was intended. The min specs specify an 800mhz processor and 512 megs but I would imagine if you do that it will run at a snail’s pace. Probably want no less than 1GB of RAM and a 2-3Ghz processor in order to run it without hiccups. Also requires 20 GB of space as well as 15GB of free space. Just have to wait until I decide to actually build a new shiny system (which due to a lack of funds, it will not be anytime soon).

If you care to download a brand spankin new kicker system to me in order to run it, then feel free :)

Thought this was a rather timely article, being that I have just recently got into the world of text messaging with my new phone. A guy in Singapore broke the record for a 160 character text message by completing it in a little over 41 seconds. It would probably take me about 5 minutes with my sloppy fingers and little keys. Maybe I just need a little more practice. Guinness here I come…

I recently came across a link to a free commercial version of Paragon Partition Manager 2005 from a deals site I was browsing when I was bored, and figured I would pass it along. It caught my attention because I was actually in need of one, since my boot partition is filling up and needs resizing. Best of all, it is free. Who can argue with that. It does require a serial, which you can register for from the download link posted above. All that is needed is an email address and a first and last name that you wish to use, or make up :)

Been trying to work out some kinks with trying to post Sprint Picture Mail on my blog, and I must say, Sprint is trying to do everything they can to prevent it. Why? I have no idea. They can’t seem to make a regular email with an attachment of the small 2KB photo with it to make it simple. No. You pay 15 bucks for PCS Vision and you have to send “a link” to whoever you want to send the photo to. The person you invited then has to click on the link to be redirected to a special Sprint site to view the photo. I think its just a bunch of baloney. Sprint would actually save bandwidth if you could just send the photo, instead they make all the people go to a Sprint site full of Sprint ads.

As far as the script goes, I simply email the pictures to an address that can be checked from my blog software. Then a quick little script runs and parses out the image file and posts it in the blog. It would be great if I could set it up to check automatically every few minutes for a new picture, and then add it, but I am having problems getting the cronjob to run the PHP script correctly. So it halfway works, its just that every time I want to post the pictures after I email, I have to navigate to a special php page to run the script.

At least its a start, and I have been trying to get it to work for the past couple of days, and I am getting tired of fiddling with it, so its good enough for now.

Ran into a WordPress plugin while updating that requires the poster to answer a simple math question before a comment is posted, so I am giving comments on this site a second chance :) It should help prevent spammers from posting tons of comments. Don’t get too scared, the questions are really simple addition or subtraction using single numbers, so it shouldn’t be too tough, unless you are like under 6 years old. Give it a shot by posting a comment below.

I have been trying to see about ways to automatically post photos from my Sprint phone to my blog, and it seems that its a little tricky due to the format of Sprint’s PictureMail. I have found a plugin that supposedly does it, but it works on WordPress 2.0, which I have yet to update (although I actually have done it in the past, but didn’t like it and went back). So in order to see if I can get it to work, I’m going to have to update it once more and see if I can manage to not break the site. So if this site looks funky or isn’t working, then that is probably the reason.

Just read this Yahoo News report that mentioned how Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down as Defense Secretary. The possible replacement? Texas A&M’s president Robert Gates, a former CIA Director. Just last week, while visiting my brother, there was an article in Texas Monthly titled “Agent Of Change”, regarding how gates has and is working towards changing A&M’s image in the mindset of the nation by “Re-branding Texas A&M”. I would guess now that he would have to step down as A&M’s president in order to fulfill that new role, kind of a bummer for A&M, but because of the importance of the new role, his decision should be respected. Its not all final yet, because his nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, but hes the 1st person in line to replace Rumsfeld.

Well, the Aggies’ Coach decided to lose the game this past week versus Oklahoma by not doing what they do best… pound the ball. Late in the fourth quarter, the Aggies had 1st and goal at the 6 yard line, in which a score would put them at a tie. Now Javorski Lane for the Ags is a 280 pound running back who can bowl people over. He is the second leading scorer in all of Division 1A football. What does the coach decide to do? Pass the ball on first down. Incomplete. Ok fine.. now lets run with Lane. Second play. Pass again. Incomplete. What the hell. Ok. Its four down territory. Lets run twice and try to pound it in both times. Third down comes. Another pass. Another imcompletion. What the hell! I was jumping up and cussing. They did not run the ball at all! Settled for a field goal, which made them behind by 4 points. The entire crowd at Kyle Field was SILENT after the aggies scored. If you have ever been to an Aggie game at Kyle Field, you would know how messed up that is. I don’t even recall the cannon firing, which is supposed to fire after every score. That is how shocked, confused, and apalled the entire crowd was. There was STILL hope after the Aggies got the ball back and drove down the field. They had 4th and 3 in field goal range, (remember, down by 4), and instead of going for it when there was about 3 minutes left, they decide to kick a field goal. A field goal, which still made them down by 1 point. They were assuming they could get the ball back and have one last shot, but Oklahoma made a simple first down and then ran the clock off. Game over. What a letdown.

As for the Houston Cougars, they played Tulsa, who was undefeated in Conference USA. A win over Tulsa would put their conference record at a tie, with one loss each, giving UofH the lead because of their defeat over them. The Cougars pulled it out by a large win, 27-10. Now the Coogs sit at the top of their division with only one conference game again, over Memphis, whose record is 1-8. With a game this week over SMU, they could win those two easy games, and go from 7-3 now to 9-3, which would put them in a fairly decent bowl game. Looking forward to watching them.

With A&M losing and UofH winning, it could possibly make it a UofH vs A&M bowl game when all is said and done. UofH can be 9-4 or 10-3 (depending on the result of the Conference USA championship game), with A&M being at worst 8-4, possibly 9-3 which would put their records very close. Who knows…

After spending too much time going over football, I think I will put this to rest now.