blog.emerick.org

Nothing much new going on… school and hockey thats about it… this weekend was good… just hung out and played some hockey…

School is going well… Deans list for Fall 2006 is out… you can see it here…

The work load for school has not been too bad… still keeping me busy but not overwhelming as of yet… hopefully it doesn’t get too bad… but I am sure it will around test or project time…

Still trying to work on the hockey website… my new goal (no pun intended) is to complete a public page everyday… should take no more than 2 weeks to get all of the public pages done… the private or admin interface will probably take a bit longer to design and work on… but it will all get done eventually… hopefully… need to work on the CSS and make it more user friendly and easy to read and what not…

Well thats all I can think of for right now…

later,
J!

As you may have noticed, I updated the theme sometime yesterday… Its a themed called Light…

I figured it was time for a change, and the new theme maintains a simple look…

I have been adding a few modifiations here and there… I have customized the sidebar to the right to include links to some other sites in the emerick.org network such as my flickr page… Also added links to OpenDNS and Firefox… The OpenDNS button will change if you are using OpenDNS’ DNS servers… you can see an example here at the OpenDNS button page… So if you are not using OpenDNS, give it a try, it is well worth it…

I have also customized the 404 error page… it looks very similar to Digg’s error page… you can see it here…

I am working on a few more tweaks that you will see as they come…

J!

yet another upgrade…

Just upgraded to Wordpress 2.1 a few minutes ago…

As usual, just let me know if there are any problems…

J!

Well we finally have gotten some winter weather here in Blacksburg… We got some snow, mainly ice yesterday and last night… had anywhere from 1/8″ to about a half inch of ice on my car this morning… i got up a lil bit earlier so i would have time to clear off the car of the ice… but its about time we have received some snow and ice as it has been unseasonably warm over the past month or so…

Currently i am just hanging out in Torg waiting for my next class as i have an hour break where i can go eat lunch and/or catch up on the latest news and email… so since i had a little free time i figured i would update the blog… maybe ill use this time to keep th blog more up to date…

Didn’t get a chance to outline the Christmas light controller project last night… so maybe ill try and work on that later tonight after i work on a few misc homework things…

nothing much else going on so i am going to go surf digg for a bit before stat… later…

J!

Firefox + FaviconizeTab + PermaTabs = productivity in Firefox

Here is my basic setup as seen in the screen shot below… I have 4 main tabs that I have open just about all of the time… one for Google reader, gmail, Google calendar, and Remember the Milk… those 4 tabs take up a lot of real estate on the tab bar, so to recover some of that lost real estate, I use FaviconizeTab… FaviconizeTab is a Firefox extension which eliminates the text from the tab and only displays the favicon for that given tab… the favicon for the 4 websites mentioned above are distinct and easy to use… now to keep those 4 tabs always open for easy access I use the Firefox extension PermaTabs which prevents the tabs from closing… Since these 4 tabs all have keyboard shortcuts it is easy to navigate them and such… but i just wanted to share my productivity tip for Firefox…

later,
J!

Well the first week of the spring 2007 semester is over… its going to be one busy semester as i am taking 18 credit hours… and have 5 classes on Monday and Wednesday… 1 class on Tuesday and Thursday with an additional lab on Thursday… 3 classes on Friday which i am out of at 1:10pm… you can see the full schedule here… one good this is that most of these classes are somewhat interesting so I should hopefully be able to stay up on everything…

One good thing is that books ended up only costing $180 this semester as i didn’t need a $100 book and my tech writing professor provides his own course packet so we do not need a book or anything… another thing that saved me was that Matt already had the engineering economy book and i was able to get the RF clicker device (RF remote for taking electronic quizzes and attendance in class) from Dave…

Already have a programming project due and a couple of homework assignments… its going to be a busy busy semester…

So in an attempt to manage taking 6 classes I am attempting to keep an up to date to do list… I am using Remember the Milk… Its a really nice ajax based to do list that is also integrated into my Google Calendar… I am using it to manage homework and projects for all of my classes as well as a grocery / shopping list that can easily be printed out and taken to the store with me… so far so good so we will see if i can stay organized throughout the semester and maybe beyond…

Got in a shipment of 50 SSR boards for my Christmas light control system… each SSR board can control 4 channels at about 1 amp per channel… so thats about a maximum of 3 100 count strings per channel which should be plenty… for larger control needs i have 16 10 amp SSRs… I am going to try and start the documentation of my Christmas light control adventure… I might start working on that later this evening…

Made scrambled eggs for the first time the other night… very simple to make just never made them before… they turned out pretty good… think i might start and try cooking more often… some good healthy stuff… any good healthy recipes out there that are not too hard/complex?

Well hopefully I will try and keep this blog more up to date this semester… assuming I actually have time and I am not too busy with my other projects and classes…

Well I am going to go watch some football… later…

J!

Just upgraded the blog to version 2.0.7… let me know if there is anything wrong…

J!

sorry for the lack of updates over break… just been taking a break from everything… but i figured i would quickly recap everything now…

Christmas was great! got a lot of good stuff as seen below… go to flickr to see the notes on everything that i got… cant wait to get back to school to play some hockey with my new stuff if you want to video chat with me you can now too! let me know and i can hook you up with some easy software for video conferencing…

on the 29th we went down to Atlanta for the Chick-fil-a bowl… that was fun, up until the 2nd half… we had a 21 – 3 lead going into the second half where the defense just kinda collapsed and Georgia managed to pull a comeback… but we had fun in Atlanta… the night before the game we went to a nearby mall and then out to eat at Outback where we met this nice lady who informed us about the Atlanta white house which we went and found after dinner which was pretty crazy… some guy made a pretty much exact copy of the white house… game day we went in the city early and just hung out around the dome and Phillips arena.. the CNN center is right there so we hung out in there till the parade… had some chick-fil-a of course for lunch… then went and saw the parade… after the parade we headed to the pep rally and checked that out.. that was fun, got to see the team walk… they had a hockey thing there for the Atlanta thrasher.. got to shoot some pucks around… made 1 out of the 3 shots… the other 2 were close … then we headed into the dome for the game where we got some food and met up with Erin who was sitting next to us… and watched the game… and GPS units are great for navigating in a crazy city like Atlanta… came in real handy…

atlanta white house:

View from our seats:

We got back to newport news late new years eve where we headed over to trav’s cousins house for new years party where we hung out with his family and played the wii…

Other than that, i have been trying to go to the gym on base every day during the week… its been about 60% successful…

so just about a week left of break… If i go see rachel the weekend before classes start, i will probably head back to school on thursday and then head to knoxville on friday maybe… otherwise i should be back at school on saturday…

btw, new season of 24 starts this sunday… make sure your DVRs are set up to record it or be watching it…

well i am going to go get some sleep or something… ill try and update more often from now on… maybe ill make that one of my new years resolutions or something…

Later,
J!

Just upgraded the blog to version 2.0.6… let me know if there is anything wrong…

J!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

2007 should be a good year…

J!