I figured it was time to change the generic ringtone for incoming calls to a more updated, well-known song. It’s Stu’s Song from the Hangover! Call me and give me a good laugh.
Here is a screenshot (a couple, actually) of my Facebook wall and the 96 HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’s I received. Here’s a little math for you: 96 comments out of 630 friends = 15.24%… I can’t believe that many people actually cared enough to wish me a happy birthday. Thank you SO much for everyone who sent me something; ou don’t know how much I appreciate the gesture of friendship!
Apart from Facebook comments, I had plenty of people text to wish me a happy birthday and a couple more call. Here are some of my favorites:
Susan Hargrave
Hazel Harwood
Ann Combes
Alex Glac
Philip Beechler
Wanda Hayes
And as for birthday presents, I got an awesome pair of Chucks from my friend, David Menzen, and two cards from my mom — one with money and one with a mushy gushy sentiment. Thanks, guys!
Here is my final schedule for Spring 2010:
It went through a couple of revisions:
- I had SPAN201 MW, but upon looking at the list of Clemson minors, I realized that I could not minor in a SPANISH, but rather SPANISH-AMERICAN STUDIES. Frankly, I don’t care about learning the politics of hispanohablantes or economics of those nations.
- I added MTHSC309 TTh, but I received an email stating that I would be dropped because I didn’t have the prerequisite MTHSC207 (in which I’m currently enrolled).
- I added ECON310 TTh. This is a 300- level course, so it should prove interesting. Curiously, ECON212 (in which I’m currently enrolled) is a prerequisite, but it’s not strictly enforced.
- I had APEC205 TTh (which would satisfy my CCA and STS credit), but the teacher who was originally teaching the course dropped it for another teacher who received horrible reviews on www.ratemyprofessors.com… so I dropped it.
- I added MKT301, another 300- level course for my Management and Marketing double major.
- Sitting at 19 hours, I thought everything was dandy, but Matthew, Mark, and Rob encouraged me to look into a seminar class, CPSC481. After attending one T 7-8:30pm session, I was hooked. The class is structured around building computer programs to solve basic problems (like the linked loop list, a classic interview question). Needless to say, that’s been added to my schedule.
- I had Intro to Swing Dancing W (for a total of 20 hours), but I dropped it to preserve my sanity.
At this point, I thought that I had the perfect schedule. I would have 1 MW class at 2:30, horrible TTh (from 9:30pm-8:30pm), and Fridays off. On Wednesday, I showed up to 104 NEWMN at 2:25pm for my Marketing class to find an empty auditorium. After waiting 20 minutes for Professor Gaubert, I trekked over to the Marketing Department in Sirrine and they informed me that he was “out of the country”. Apparently he is teaching abroad in Belgium and his classes won’t start until March 8. So now I have no MWF classes until March 8, when I will have only 1 MW class and keep my free Fridays.
So that’s the story of the schedule. My MGT201 class is all online, so I’ll use Fridays to take care of the workload for that. It will definitely keep me busy!
Speaking of MGT201, I think that’s the only class I have to worry about right now. The tests (3/semester) are 85 questions to be completed in only 1 hour, so we’ll see how that goes…
The other day I received a “video” of the HNW Winter Camp highlights. Since I have recently started managing the HNW website, I was thrilled to finally have multimedia content. When I put in the DVD, expecting to find an .avi, .mpeg, .mov, (or worse, a .wmv), what I found sent shivers down my spine. Instead of a video presentation, I was welcomed by a massive 300+ slide PowerPoint presentation.
In PowerPoint, it wouldn’t be too hard to automatically export every slide as an image. But in this particular presentation, the pictures did not take up the full height/width of the slide and therefore the background would appear in every slide. This simply would not do.
Firing up Automator, I was able to quickly throw together a script that would export every picture contained in the PowerPoint presentation to a folder, where i could later pick through the images to find those that would meet my quality control standards.
Is there a built-in Windows utility that would be able to do this? I think not.
Mac wins… again.
Do you realize that it takes less time to drive from Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, NV than it takes to drive from Charleston, SC to Clemson, SC?
MY WISDOM TEETH:
Wisdom teeth are third molars that usually appear between the ages of 17 and 24 (although they may appear when older, younger, or may not appear at all). They are commonly removed when they affect other teeth (become impacted), colloquially known as “coming in sideways.”
Wisdom teeth are often described as an example of a “vestigial” trait. Some argue that recent changes to softer diets which cause less wear on the teeth may be causing the third molars to be less useful, and, in fact, problematic in many humans. Alternately, it is possible that wisdom teeth were useful when it was common for humans to lose several teeth to decay by the age when they appear. They are generally thought to be called wisdom teeth because they appear so late, at an age where people are supposedly wiser than as a child when the other teeth erupt. Wide mind, not wise teeth.
Unfortunately, I have to have mine removed during my Spring Break. Yep. Another holiday sacrificed to surgery. Make sure to keep me in mind as I go under the knife 03/16/10 at 11:00am!
Have you ever wanted to know what day of the week a day falls on? Here’s your answer. This calendar is only 5.5 x 8.5 centimeters: a whole year behind a single business card!
Operation is simple:
- Choose the day you want to know (eg. 19)
- Draw a line with your finger from the day chosen until the month you want (eg. March)
Done! In two easy steps you’ve discovered what day will be March 19: Friday!
The difference in color of the months is to recall its length: in green are the months of 31 days, in orange are the months of 30 days and in pink is February that in 2010 will be 28 of days.
Just download and print! Have fun!
After an alleged terrorist unsuccessfully tried to detonate his explosive underwear on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, current and former American officials are now using the failed attack to push for more airport scanners to spot such explosives — and a lot more.
The safeguards that are employed in airport security policy are found using the “best response dynamic”: Each player chooses the optimal response to their opponent’s strategy from the last period. So, the T.S.A. best-responds to the shoe bomber Richard Reid and a terrorist plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives. We end up taking our shoes off and having tiny tubes of toothpaste in Ziplock bags. So, a terrorist best-responds by having a small device divided into constituent parts and hidden in his underwear. One part has to be injected into another via a syringe and the complications that ensue prevent the successful detonation of the bomb. In this sense, each player is best-responding to the other and the airport security policy, by making it a bit harder to carry on a complete bomb, succeeded with a huge dose of good luck thrown in.
What should we learn from the newest attempt to blow up an airplane?
First and most obviously, the best way to minimize the impact of terrorism is to stop terrorists before they can even get close to us. This appears to be the main failure of security policy in the recent incident – more focus on intelligence and filtering of watch lists is vital. Second, the best response dynamic should not be the only way to inform policy. There are already rumors that no-one will be allowed to walk around for the last hour of the flight or have personal items on their lap. Terrorists will respond to these policies by blowing up planes earlier in flight. Does that make anyone feel any safer or the terrorists less successful? The main problem is that terrorists are thinking up new schemes to get to nuclear power stations, kidnap Americans abroad and other horrible things that should being brainstormed and pre-empted. The best response dynamic is backward looking and cannot forecast these problems or their solutions. This second point is also obvious. The fact that a boy whose father turned him in got on a plane with a bomb suggests that even obvious points are worth making.
Honestly, I’m not concerned about being the 1 person in 10,408,947 to die from a terrorist attack on a flight. Be it an underwear bomb, a fire-breathing terrorist, or a toothpick, this is not going to dissuade me from flying. What I’m more worried about is losing my freedom. I don’t want to be searched from head to toe going through security — it’s just not flattering. I remember when my father chartered a private jet to carry the family to Florida — we drove right up to the plane, got on, and took off.
All these counter-terrorism measures are going to do is pump up the severity of the attacks as suspected terrorists compete for better ways to pass our security. Yet our freedom is still sacrificed. As they say: “Make something terrorist-proof and they’ll make a better terrorist”.
