And we have round two of the bigwhoop interview series. This edition stars Eric Furst, telling us all about who he is (literally, everything) and what makes him tick. Read about it here.
I was going to use this space to bitch about how stupid fantasy football is, but then I got the interview response from Matt Jankowski. Since he obviously took a significant amount of time to answer my questions, I'm going to post them immediately, right here.
By the way, it is completely absurd that the fantasy football playoffs should be decided in the final weeks of the season when many teams are resting their star players or letting rookies get some experience. Really, it's just ridiculous...
I sent off a round of questions for Matt Jankowski to answer. Hopefully, he'll send a reply to me sometime soon and I can post the interview, such as it is, here. If it goes well I'll probably move on to my next victim sometime soon.
By the way, in case you are using AOL Instant Messenger (otherwise known as AIM) to perform your IM needs, you should switch over to Miranda IM, a free chat client that doesn't have the annoying ads that AIM does but still retains all of the same features.
And why don't we ever see a black Santa Claus?
What is the type of thing that can bring about a long (longest ever in fact) hiatus from the weblog scene? Busy helps a little bit, but not enough. No, the cause has to be something else. Well that something else has passed a few days ago, but it was not until now that I felt interested enough in making a post.
I have my laptop now. I installed Windows XP on it and have been steadily adding software to it over the past couple of days. I also got some Christmas shopping done. Now I think it's time to start pumping out mix CDs for friends and family.
It's good to be home.
I've been thinking about interviewing the Bigwhoop participants with the intent being that all of us (and all of you) would have a better idea of what each of us is about. For example, I know Eric, Andy, and Trent pretty well from the summer in Flagstaff, but I don't know any of the rest of the people that well at all. Perhaps I will have time to do this over winter break.
It's over. I didn't do great and I didn't do badly. Right about the middle I'd say, which is where I was hoping to be.
I have an oral final tomorrow morning in my class on galaxies. This will be the first oral exam of my life, and the current problem I am having is a nightmare where the professors ask me two questions that I completely botch, at which point they ask me if I know anything at all. Actually, the last part wouldn't happen. There would just be an awkward silence, which could potentially be even worse.
Fortunately, time marches on and this will all be over soon.
The numero uno star on my fantasy basketball team. Damn, he is something else. Just and try and tell me he isn't the best player in all of basketball!
Today, I bought a laptop. Since I spent an inordinate amount of time researching which one to get, I thought I might as well make a post about it. Perhaps one of my innumerable visitors will gain some insight into their next laptop purchase from the information below...
When I first started looking into getting a laptop, I had no idea what features I wanted. However, I did want to keep it under $2000 for everything (including carrying case, external mouse, etc.), which meant that the laptop itself needed to be on the low end of the $1800-1900 range.
After looking at a wide variety of laptops, I began to learn what sort of features were available and consequently what "class" of laptop I was interested in. It seems that laptops are generally divided into three rough classes:
1) desktop replacement: 8 lbs and up; basically, you don't want to be travelling with this thing if you can avoid it. Although these computers are powerful enough to do basically anything you could want a computer to do, they are prohibitabley(sp?) heavy and thus not something I wanted.
2) super-light: under 5 lbs.; here you're sacrificing computer power and screen quality to get the lightest possible computer. This is the opposite extreme; again, I didn't want to go this route.
3)thin and light: 5-8 lbs.; a nice compromise. You can generally get most of the features in a top-of-the-line computer without having a boat to drag around with you.
So, next to price, weight was probably the most important thing to me. The third most important thing ended up being something that I didn't expect when I started this whole thing out. Namely, the Spanish Inquisition--NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION! Our chief weapon is suprise. And fear. Our TWO chief weapons are--(er, sorry about that, getting back to the point of this post...) Right, so the thing that ended up being very important to me was having a widescreen high resolution screen: either WSXGA+ (i.e. 1680 x 1050) or WUXGA (1900 x 1200). This is because I have a strong desire for desktop real estate, particularly when I'm doing work in linux. I did for awhile consider WXGA (1200 x 800) resolution, but ultimately I realized that I needed more vertical space than 800 pixels.
In fact, it turns out with these two restrictions (not even considering price) you don't end up with an overwhelming amount of options. The first laptop that I found that met these two requirements was the Sager NP3790. I liked the look of the 3790 right off the bat and it came with a bunch of features that I thought I would use. But then I talked to my Dad over Thanksgiving; he suggested I check out Dell's website, pointing out the Inspiron 8600. I have to admit, it seemed to come with almost the same features as the Sager, but with a much better warranty at roughly the same price. So I was leaning in the direction of the Dell. But then the big sale on the Dell ended and it was $250 more expensive. Plus, I found Discount Laptops, which had the Sager with a 4 year warranty for about the same as the initial pricing of the Dell. These two things were the final nail in the coffin for Dell. So today I ordered the 3790 laptop with this stuff:
Total cost: $1780.00 through discountlaptops.com with free shipping and no tax. This comes in well under my goal of $2000, which will allow plenty of room to buy an external mouse, special backpack bag, and other stuff I might want.
The most useful resource for me during this whole thing was Notebook Forums, a place where people ask questions and receive answers related to laptop issues. In particular, this was where I learned of Sager's solid reputation and the existence of discountlaptops.com.
Finally, you might be wondering why I haven't mentioned Apple. Well, a comparably equipped Apple laptop priced out at over $3000. Yikes!
Here's hoping you found this useful.
I am currently very pissed off at the BSC system of [mis]management.
This entry has no content aside from the title and this sentence.
1) Face away from the audience.
2) Speak at an inaudible level.
3) Wait 15 seconds after each new slide to decide what to say.
4) Stare at pages of notes while glancing up at slides to decide what to say.
5) When not reading from notes, read from powerpoint slides.
Today's speaker was guilty on all counts. To be fair, he is not a native speaker. In fact, I would say that his problems with English were the main cause of his difficulties in general. About five minutes into the talk I wanted him to speak in Japanese. Sure, I wouldn't understand a thing. But at least he would have sounded more confident...
It's 38 degrees outside right now. 38 degrees. That's seven degrees colder than it is in San Jose right now. Not only that, but we're "scheduled" to have the temperature drop below freezing sometime tonight. And now the killer: our heater doesn't work! There aren't enough covers for me to put on at night...
Thanksgiving was great. The past couple of days have been extremely busy. Etc.