1.29.2007
10:05pm

Florida Tech had a free comedian show tonight with Steve Hofstetter. Also on Wikipedia. Steve had some good material, most of it was clean and fairly intelligent. When discussing the idiotic stop signs on some highway merges in the Boston area, he happened to make fun of the type of car I own, a Kia Rio, saying they go 0 to 60 in theory. I got a kick out of that. There was also some good-natured bashing of various cultural and religious groups, standard fare pretty much. He talked about Harry Potter almost outselling the Holy Bible last year. He said that for some reason many people were drawn to a story about a young wizard defeating the evil lord of the underworld... oh and some people bought that Harry Potter book too. He's a Jew and thus said he liked the first half of the Bible but didn't care much for the second half after the plot changed and the main character got switched around. Steve also really dislikes Larry the Cable Guy, claiming that Larry gives blue collar comedy a bad name. There was a comedian from Boston University who was doing the pre-show and he was really funny as well. He won a comedy contest there and I guess that's how he got to tour with Steve. Nate got to attend the show for free as well since he is a grad student and Florida Tech doesn't distinguish between the two when it comes to sponsored activities. CAB and TKE were the organizations that put on the show.

Tonight Bill Gates will be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart which should be worth a watch. Vista's official retail release was today so that is going to be the subject of discussion.

Yesterday we had our first real project day for senior design. Ron and Matt came over around 10:30 in the morning and we worked on homework assignments first, then turned to the project stuff. We didn't have much luck with the Microchip processor, encountering some weird antenna effects from the connecting wires and also blowing out a voltage regulator at one point. Rolando went to buy a couple replacements at Radio Shack so we were back in business after a short delay. Right now we are trying to get some working assembly code that will allow us to control some LED lights with the keypad. Once we get that functional we can move on to the next step and try to get the LCD display working. It's a 240 x 128 model so we have lots of pixels to control.

On Saturday I was in Tampa for a while then in St. Petersburg on the other side of the state. Tampa was pretty congested to drive through because Gasparilla was happening on Saturday. It's this big pirate festival that happens every year and there is a big parade and lots of people partying. I haven't gone to one yet but Ron, Tim, Rolando, and some other people went back in freshman year to one of them. Downtown St. Petersburg is really cool; I had never been there before but they have this place called The Pier that has restaurants and shops and a big aquarium (Ron's girlfriend Courney works there). As the name implies it is a real pier that extends into Tampa Bay. The aquarium was closed for renovations but there was some other interesting stuff to do downtown. There is a street market (with its own web site no less) that runs every Saturday until about 2pm and there was a lot of different stuff there, particularly vendors selling food and spices and salsa dips and such. Also a lot of art and crafts type of booths. The Florida International Museum was running a showcase on canines with a very respectable $5 entry for students. I learned a lot about dogs and wolves and was surprised at how much technology they had integrated into it. Video displays, sound demos, and touchscreens were well-utilized. Everything looked really professional and they even had some very realistic taxidermy specimens of wolves. Also found downtown is BayWalk, an outdoor mall complete with 20-screen movie theater.

1.25.2007
11:50pm

I've got a new work email address... jeremy.gillow@hstx.com. Updated on contact page. Kinda weird that our new stock ticker will be HSX, but they couldn't buy the hsx.com domain name because it already belongs to the "Hollywood Stock Exchange." I still don't know whether the official abbreviation will be HSTX or HSX.

9:52pm

Well, the Board of Trustees dinner wasn't so bad after all. I did end up at a table that didn't have any other students, but sitting next to me was Kenneth Revay, the manager of Integrated Operations at Kennedy Space Center. He works in the big Vehicle Assembly Building. On the other side was Bino Campanini, CEO of Stottler Stagg and Associates. Both are Florida Tech alumni. After dinner President Catanese gave an award to the Trustees chairman who has finished his 4 years of service in that role, and then some of the athletic team students were introduced by their coaches. Athletics is a big thing that Dr. Catanese is pushing to improve at Florida Tech, for instance I did not know that one of our freshman basketball recruits is the tallest college bball player in the USA. 7 foot 7 inches, a little bit taller than Yao Ming.

1.24.2007
9:52pm

Day one of Harris Stratex Networks (HSX) is next Monday. I'm excited, even though it's unlikely we will see any big changes other than a new domain name and VPN access page. Not a whole lot of interest has happened since the IP conversion we did last weekend, which is still causing a few small problems here and there. Charlie and I had a talk today about my accomplishments and goals at Harris, and he also brought up the employment discussion again. He and I seem to agree that I would do fine in a field integrator role or as a lab administrator like I've been doing. I think field integration would be pretty exciting, since there is travel involved that often takes employees to unusual desintations like Romania and Algeria and Russia and such. On the other hand though, I've never done any overseas travel except a brief time in Italy so I'm not sure if I would like it after a few assignments. There's also a running joke at work about people who have to travel to Brazil, since they usually don't want to return to the USA after spending a little bit of time there. One of our integrators is leaving to take a job in Brazil and said he wouldn't stay even for twice his current salary; not because he dislikes Harris but because he likes Brazil so much.

Best Buy sends me "marketing emails" aka "spam" for being a Reward Zone member. There's an option to unsubscribe but sometimes they have interesting stuff in there like discount coupons or combo offers and such. Today's email had a link to a free magazine called Best which I flipped through very quickly. Lots of Blu-Ray promotion in there, also a nice graphic from Hitachi which I have seen before on their TV commercials.

Tomorrow is a Board of Trustees dinner at Florida Tech that I got invited to since I'm a member of Student Ambassadors. I know I'm going to be nervous, lots of big wigs will likely be there. Howard Lance, CEO of Harris, is on the board, which doesn't surprise me at all considering all of the stuff he's involved with. I went to the Student Government meeting tonight so at least that gave me a couple topics I can bring up if board members ask about things that are concerning students these days. Joe will be attending also so at least I have one peer to commiserate with if it ends up being very boring.

"Animals and children tell the truth, they never lie / which one is more human there's a thought, now you decide" - Savage Garden

1.23.2007
7:37pm

On my way home from campus this evening I saw the advertising sign on the local Midas car service shop. It said "We touch your car in all the right places." Trust the Midas touch indeed. I was late coming home today because I stayed for an employment information session by United Space Alliance. They are looking for computer science majors and engineers to hire for their space software development segment. After listening through the presentation I discovered that I would not enjoy working there. The location isn't bad, close to Houston, TX and with very affordable housing. However, due to its ties with the space program and government in general, there is a lot of red tape. Much of that is due to the stringent safety requirements for code that will be used on the space shuttle, which they also mentioned has the lowest bug count of any deployed software. With the current state of the space program, they don't need any additional complications brought on by faulty code.

Yesterday I received a dangerous piece of mail. Nope, not anthrax or razor blades or rattlesnakes. One of the newsletters I subscribe to sent along with the most recent issue an archive DVD with 299 back issues and photos. Quite an amazing gift to all the members but I didn't need that much time-consuming temptation dropped in my lap. Especially when they are nicely laid out, fully searchable PDFs; electronic archival done right. And no, it wasn't National Geographic. On a related note, Steve Irwin's final adventure was shown on Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel on Sunday night, called Ocean's Deadliest. I watched it and it was quite educational.

We've gotten some of the parts already for our senior design project which is good news. I think we are waiting on a couple sensors but that is all. This weekend (possibly earlier) the fun begins! Matt hasn't updated the web site in a little while but the home page is here. Dr. Earles gave us our first quiz in Fab Lab today, only two questions but we had an hour in which to complete it. An hour might have been overly generous but this is just the first one.

1.22.2007
9:38pm

Coming February 9th... Hannibal Rising. This time Hannibal is young.

8:46pm

First there was Scary Movie, then Date Movie, and now there is... Epic Movie! I think it's going to be hilarious. Where else will you find a spoof of Narnia, X-Men, Harry Potter, Nacho Libre, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Paris Hilton, Superman, Borat, and Pirates of the Caribbean? Speaking of which I still need to see Borat.

Thunderhawk Big Cat Rescue brought a few beautiful specimens to the Space Coast Cat Expo that occurred this weekend. I went up to see their educational show since it was pretty close by. Ray Thunderhawk is quite the character. They had a female lioness, female cougar, a male white tiger, and two tiger cubs with them.

1.21.2007
9:20pm

It was really nice outside today. I spent some time working on homework with Ron and Rolando, and we got through 3 out of the 5 assignments for this weekend. Afterwards we played some racquetball at the FIT campus with Javier. Ron and I had originally planned to play tennis so we hit some balls after the other two guys left. I need to get back into tennis again, it's one of the few sports that I actually like.

A cold front moved in tonight so it's down to 58 outside. Monday will be hot again but the rest of the week looks very promising. Dan left for Chicago yesterday, leaving behind only some furniture and food that he didn't have room for in the car. We'll probably see him again sometime before graduation. I'm thinking about going to see the movie Pan's Labyrinth, since it got a 96/100 on rottentomatoes.com. Might not happen this weekend though.

Our Internet connection at the house has been acting extra awful lately; ping times are up, the connection is dropping occasionally, and transfer speeds are down. I think Bright House might be getting more customers than they can adequately accomodate.

1.20.2007
11:17am

Wondermark: old pictures, new jokes.

1.17.2007
11:32pm

Message archives can be addictive things... beware. Google Groups and Yahoo Groups are evil places if you are trying to be productive. I've got a new (non-technology-related) topic of fixation and there is a lot of discussion content out there to occupy my free time. I'm not dropping any hints about what that topic is, but I will say that it's something I can't come close to realizing personally for a number of years. It will require money :)

Today while searching for information on a Sun Fire X4500 server, I discovered that Sun Microsystems has their own video collection on Youtube. I enjoyed their short "The IT Guy" series. Sun is somewhat hypocritical in pointing to Intel Xeon as a hot-running processor, since their own UltraSPARC III designs run quite hot as well. The new Sun Fire V245 customer machines that I'm working on at Harris have CPUs that idle in the 65-75 degree Celsius range.

Seagate announced a new Savvio 2.5" hard drive with 15,000 RPM platter speed yesterday. It will supposedly be even faster than the 15k 3.5" SCSI disks and still comes in 36/73GB capacities.

I always enjoy finding new comic strips that are amusing and well-drawn, and Sandusky is one that I just came across recently. Only three strips per week, but they are all in color and it's not syndicated anyway.

1.16.2007
9:04pm

From Digg today... 20 short animations you must watch before you die. Some require that you click the video window to open in Youtube instead of the embedded player. "Manipulation", "The Monk and the Fish", and "Gopher Broke" are worth watching at a minimum.

1.15.2007
9:10pm

Not all commercials are created equal. Foreign ones in particular tend to be much better than those shown in the USA. Here's one that I really liked; make sure your speakers are turned on. This one is funny too, if not somewhat inappropriate.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are some horribly bad commercial videos that never should have been made. Here's one from Microsoft about Windows/386 that was making the rounds in the blogosphere today, ironically hosted at Google video. If you want to see the really weird stuff, skip to the 7 minute mark and watch from there. I feel sorry for the people involved; I'm sure they never expected this to turn up on the net.

1.13.2007
4:07pm

Last night was a long one... I was at work with the rest of the admin team until 11:45pm. We did manage to get just about all of the major servers switched over to the new network, with just a few remaining problems that were going to be tackled today. Then of course I came home and didn't end up going to bed until about 3 in the morning. I didn't have to go back in today so I've just been relaxing at home. I submitted a job application at Raytheon earlier but that's about the only meaningful thing I've accomplished so far. Tonight I'm heading over to Ron's place to help him set up some new speakers that he bought and also to work on the first communciation systems homework assignment; after that we are having a going-away party for Dan since he's going back to Chicago next week.

I took this picture the other day after parking on campus because it was quite comical. I also got one of Ron wearing his new Corona slippers that he got for Christmas.

1.10.2007
11:59pm

It's very painful to lose a member of the family. Mikayla, the older of our two shelties, passed away at home in Christiansburg. She was ten years old and smaller than normal for the breed, but I thought she would stick with us for a few more years at least. Mom had to break the news to me today, as emotional as it was for her. Farewell Mikayla, and thank you for being such a wonderful and loving dog. I will miss the wagging tail and face kisses, and you can be sure that I shed some tears in mourning.

1.09.2007
7:45pm

The first two days of class in my last (undergraduate) semester at Florida Tech are over. I can't complain yet, because we haven't been given any assignments thus far. Even the overly-sarcastic Dr. Earles didn't have an assignment for us today. What's more surprising is that we won't even have a laboratory component in Microcomputer Fabrication Lab until sometime in February. We have to learn about lab safety and chemical handling and that sort of stuff first. Today we did a walk-through of the lab though, and there is some cool stuff in there; some people are doing laser research so they have some powerful lasers in there that require special safety glasses. Also there is a separate photolithography room with the usual tinted yellow windows and lights. Two of my professors this semester are adjunct professors from local industry; the guy teaching Communication Systems is from Intersil and the guy teaching Control Systems is from Conexant. I think it's a good thing, because we should get some inside information about what engineers are working on in the present day. Our Control Systems professor actually spent most of the class period today giving us good advice about education and employment. I'll have to actually learn some MATLAB stuff this semester but that shouldn't be too painful.

I have Dr. Grossman again for two of the classes, Senior Design and Electro-optical Communications, so we'll see how that goes. Senior Design won't even meet regularly, we just have to work on our project and turn in regular status reports. Also, I'll be running Student Ambassadors for the remainder of this semester so hopefully everything there goes smoothly. Next week there is a club recruiting fair so I'm hoping we can find some sociable and enthusiastic people.

The temperature finally dropped last night, and a steep drop it was. When I went to bed it was 80 degrees in the house and when I woke up in the morning it was 72 in here. I didn't need a jacket outside during the day but it's fairly chilly out there now. By Friday it will be back up to highs of 77. The new season of House starts tonight!

1.08.2007
9:10pm

Drool-worthy pics of some new subwoofers and drivers from CES 2007. Via ssabipro at AVSForum. The new SVS Ultra 13" model is going to be awesome.

1.06.2007
10:32pm

Oh yeah, there were pictures from the trip. Nothing from inside the compound though. I wasn't sure if they allowed photos by visitors and I decided to err on the safe side.

5:58pm

I'm finally back from my road trip today. It was a lot of fun and made for a nice carefree day before the semester starts Monday. I set out around 7:45 this morning and headed down to Vero Beach to get gas since they had the cheapest price of any town/city along the trip according to gasbuddy. When I made it to the Fort Pierce area on I-95 I got off on SR-70 heading west toward Okeechobee. I've never been on SR-70 before but there isn't much to see anyway. That highway seems to feature three main things: lots of citrus, lots of cattle, and lots of sod farms. That's about it. I saw some signs along the way that said "Beef. It's what's for dinner" and "Enjoy beef. Real food for real people." I'm not kidding about that second one either, it was actually posted right there along the highway. The sod farms are about the most boring kind of farm that I can imagine, because not only is sod inanimate, it also doesn't grow very tall so nobody would know you were farming sod and not just growing a really huge front lawn. One of the sod farms I passed had some huge arches at each of the entrances flanked by some bronze lion and horse statues. It might have even been called a sod "ranch" but I don't remember for sure. Maybe there are sod cowboys (sodboys?) too. Urban Dictionary is telling me "sodboys" isn't a real or slang word though.

After 60 miles and change on SR-70 I got onto US-27 southbound. It is even more boring than SR-70, but the speed limit is 65mph which is surprising for a limited-access highway. Maybe that's why it is called "Bloody 27" according to Wikipedia. It had plenty of real billboards but no amusing promotions of beef and/or citrus consumption. I did see some that were exclusively Spanish language, an indication of the primary workforce on the farms around there.

I didn't go on the road trip just for the sake of driving around the state of Florida, although that still is not out of the realm of possibilities for me. I really like driving, even in my 96-hp Kia Rio. This is a flat state anyway, you don't need much engine power here. Anyway, my destination was a small 10-acre refuge called Vanishing Species Wildlife, in Palmdale FL. (At < 1,000 residents, I guess Palmdale isn't big enough to warrant a wikipedia page). I first heard about them about a year ago via Zorin's photo blog on his volunteer experience there. They still have a facility in Davie FL but the one in Palmdale is new as of 2006. "New" being a loose term here since the sanctuary took over the site of what used to be an alligator farm, so the main buildings are not new at all. Just a little bit south is a real alligator farm and attraction called Gatorama.

VSW has quite a variety of animals, including an indoors "reptile room" with about a dozen snakes, a ball python, bearded dragon, monitor lizard, tarantula, and a few other interesting species. The toad they had sat so still it looked like a plastic decoration in the terrarium, not even blinking its eyes. The other indoor section has some animal furs contributed by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission, and a number of skulls and teeth and other fossilized bits. Not as exciting as the snakes, but it was cool to touch an alligator skin without a live alligator wearing it. I also learned that the spiked parts on their backs are called scutes. The outdoor part of the complex is where the rest of the animals are kept, including some free-roaming ones like a peacock, some chickens, and a few house cats. A pair of roosters followed closely behind our group during the whole tour, possibly expecting some food handouts. They looked just like this guy. Right outside the front of the building were a few birds in cages, including an African Grey parrot. They are supposedly the most intelligent birds in the world, and our tour guide Mike said that the parrot has been known to say "come over here, cat" when one of the housecats walks in the area. A nocturnal honey badger was next, and he chirped with dissatisfaction when Mike woke him up. A large green parrot in the cage beside it was making a loud wailing noise, trying to get some attention. Once we gathered around, it shut up and made a nice display of its feathered wings for us. After that it was on to the male Osceola turkeys, appropriately called "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas". Somebody on the tour asked if that's when they were scheduled to be eaten, which got a good laugh, but of course the two turkeys are there for display not to butcher. I've never been up close to a turkey before, but the males have a beard of hair in the front and the waddle is warm to the touch. Adjacent to the turkey/chicken area was the turtle pond, the most impressive one being a large snapping turtle, called "Shotgun" because a Florida state trooper found the turtle riding in the passenger seat of the car that he was confiscated from. Near the pond was a screened-in hut containing a number of small alligators and a lone crocodile. They also had a section with some even smaller juvenille alligators, only a year old and about 18 inches long. We learned how to tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile: the teeth exposed on an alligator with it's jaw closed will all be pointing downward, whereas with a crocodile there will be a combination or upward and downward teeth showing. The snout of the crocodile is also more pointed. Moving along, the next section had a number of gopher tortoises, spur-thighed tortoises, and hares living together. No joke about who wins the races was made but I was thinking about it nonetheless.

Toward the back of the property they had a pond covered with duckweed that was home to a pair of full-grown alligators. Mike said that they have been consistently producing a new batch of hatchings every year except last year, because the nest got flooded out with too much rainfall. He also said that ducks usually eat all the duckweed on the other ponds, but for some reason no ducks wanted to hang out in the alligator pond. A paddock nearby enclosed some donkeys, emus, ostriches, a couple llamas, and a pot-bellied pig. Next door was a hedgehog, a couple de-scented skunks, and a coatimundi, which looks similar to a racoon. Speaking of racoons, they had three of them in another section of the sanctuary. Quite mysteriously, the padlock to their cage was lying inside the cage in a locked position and no lock was on the door itself. Mike figured that someone must not have latched it fully, and the racoons must have pulled it inside the cage and managed to latch the mechanism. We watched as one industrious racoon grabbed the padlock and attempted to open it with force with his dextrous hands. When that failed to work, he dunked the padlock in water and tried to open it while giving it a good soaking. This continued for several minutes. We also saw one of them groping outside the cage door searching for the remaining slide bolts that were keeping the door secure. Near the racoons we also saw a couple vervets, some groundhogs, a triplet of pheasants, a couple African servals, and a bobcat. I had been wanting to see a serval for a while, and they are a smaller cat than I expected. Still, they are pretty tall and the ears are proportionally the biggest of all cat species. They also had a female wolf and a male wolf/dog hybrid living together, and they seemed to be the most anxious of all the animals; they kept pacing around the enclosure in loops. A few more monkeys (can't remember the species name) and a small African wild cat wrapped up that part of the tour.

The star attraction, and the sole reason that I even gave VSW a second glance, are the big cat species they house there. When I arrived, a group of people were moving one of the lions in a transport container to a truck, where it was going to be sent to the University of Florida. That particular guy is an Asiatic lion, an endangered species close to becoming extinct. Mike told us that most Asiatic lions seem to have a genetic or neurological disorder that researchers are trying to pinpoint. I didn't get to see that lion, but VSW had two male African lions and a single lioness. The lioness and the Asiatic lion were companions, as they both were purchased as cubs by the Discovery Channel for a video feature. When they got bigger it wasn't possible to keep the lions so they ended up at VSW. One of the African males stood up from his nap to take a look at us, but no roar or even a growl from him. The male lions were also the only big cats that weren't supremely interested in the small kid that was taking a tour with his family. Small humans look an awful lot like prey. A total of nine tigers are kept at the Palmdale location, most of which are Bengal tigers but there were a couple Siberian tigers as well. The male Siberian was 400 pounds, but they expect him to be 800 or more when fully grown. Mike had him stand up for us against the chain fence, and the bottom surface of one front paw was about the size of both of my hands laid side-by-side. One of the female Bengals lives with her two male offspring, named Cheech and Chong. Mike informed us that although the boys are about fully grown and larger than mom, she still is the boss. Coincidentally, about that time we discussed the similarities in some animal behaviors and human behaviors. Two other Bengals were still young, about a year old, and less than half the size of the full grown tigers. Despite being the largest of the big cats, the tigers were easily the most energetic and playful. They make a delightful chuffing sound [wav] when they desire attention, and they kept doing that when we were hanging out near the fence and when Mike scratched a couple of them on the neck. We saw one of the Bengals climb carefully atop her water tub, then slowly lower almost her entire body down into the water. If you had asked me beforehand if a tiger was going to fit in there I would have never thought it possible. Three leopards had their enclosure set a little ways off from the lions and tigers; the two males were melanistic with black fur (also commonly called black panthers... like Florida Tech's mascot), but the female had natural coloration that was absolutely captivating. One of the males used to travel in a circus before he came to VSW, and the female is used for educational appearances at schools and the like. Next to the tiger enclosures were the western cougars, four total split into two sections. Two of them were a mated pair and I think the other two were both males. One of the males was found in an apartment in Tampa; it instantly reminded me of the full-grown tiger that was found in a Harlem apartment. while not technically classified as "big cats", cougars are physically larger than leopards and they are the biggest cat that has the ability to purr. We heard them making some low rumbling noises but nothing that sounded quite like a purr. Like the tigers, cougars also have a way of calling for attention by making a chirping sound [wav], but none of the cougars made that noise when I was there today. Last but not least, two Florida panthers were on display. As rare as they are, Mike said that occasionally the crew will see a wild Florida panther hanging around the property.

After the VSW tour was over, I kept going down US-27 through Moore Haven and Clewiston, until I got to South Bay. They are all very small towns, although Clewiston did have a Super Wal-Mart. I took SR-80 over to SR-715, up to US-441, and finally east on SR-76 back to I-95. I basically made a big loop around Lake Okeechobee. However, due to the dyke built around the lake it is impossible to see any of the water from the surrounding roads. It's the 4th biggest lake in the US. There's even a tiny airport on the east side. Most of SR-76 follows the St. Lucie Canal which is one of the outlets for the lake. SR-76 looks a lot like SR-70 but it doesn't pass through any towns. I detoured off I-95 through Vero Beach and up A1A to Melbourne. I wanted to drive by Chris's new place and see what the house looked like. Oh, as a side note, there are a ton of retirement communities / country clubs in Vero Beach.

Ok, so after all that I've been sitting at the computer for about 4 hours now. It's time to read some more of Stephen King's IT. I still don't know what the plans are for tomorrow but it's likely going to be more reading and lounging around the house.

1.05.2007
7:40pm

Scott is in town for a week doing some on-site work at Harris. His rental car was a free upgrade to a red Mustang coupe so I rode along with him for lunch the past two days. Fiesta Azteca yesterday and Beef O' Brady's today. Beef O' Brady's has a $5 lunch special which is pretty surprising for a sports pub. He and his wife have their first baby on the way due this spring, a girl to be named Dakota Grace. He definitely wouldn't consider moving back to Florida but he does wish they had bought a house right across the border in Virginia. Apparently the sales tax in his area is 9.5% and they get taxed on groceries too.

Right now I'm watching about 14 of my fish all try to get their share of a food tablet on the bottom of the aquarium. There is some pushing and shoving going on :) I lost the larger of my two snails yesterday, he (she?) started floating and that is not a good sign with a snail. The smaller snail is still alive and usually on the move. I did a partial water cycle but nobody else was exhibiting weird behaviors.

1.04.2007
11:30pm

Happy Birthday today to my Mom! Over the Christmas break I showed her how to use the iTunes store so I got her a gift card to buy some music or videos.

Yesterday and today I did some location research and job searching online. I've been trying to find out more about other places in Florida besides Melbourne and Orlando. I've driven through some other places briefly but there are still a lot of regions in this state that I have never visited. Pretty much any of the large- and medium-sized cities are going to have IT-related or engineering-related opportunities, but I'm also checking to see if there are any smaller options since I'm not a big fan of heavily populated areas. Melbourne/Palm Bay isn't too bad, but it is still growing somewhat and the growth is causing some problems. I think if I decide to stay at Harris in Melbourne for the long term, I would not buy a house here in the main part of the city but probably somewhere off I-95 that isn't very crowded yet. That wouldn't be for a while though, since renting is the more economic thing to do until the housing prices finish their downward fall. Rolando's Dad is already planning to put this house on the market as soon as Rolando and I finish school in May; he wants to sell before the prices get too low.

I did find an informative article online about the current housing situation in the US: http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html. Focuses on the Bay Area but some things apply across the board.

While I was doing my Internet browsing I had a David Attenborough documentary on crocodiles playing on TV and following that a documentary on the Florida Everglades water management. Surprisingly, not on the Discovery Channel but on PBS. Some "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "King of Queens" balanced out the educational programming...

1.03.2007
6:12pm

Florida Panther losing in developers vs. environmentalists battle. Personally I think anybody who buys a house in panther territory should be required to sign a waiver saying they understand they might be attacked and possibly eaten by one of the big cats. Just because somebody developed the land doesn't mean that the new owner can automatically keep out all the wildlife that used to occupy that space.

1.01.2007
1:35pm

It's 2007! Happy New Year!

Now that it's well after midnight, I need to get to sleep so that I can get up at a respectable time tomorrow. My flight isn't until 6:45pm but Mom and I are going to Roanoke early to have lunch and do some shopping.

On Saturday, I went with Mom and Dad to visit Aunt Brenda and Uncle Andy in Knoxville, TN. Their two kids (my cousins) Zack and Abbey were there, but Zack just had his wisdom teeth removed a few days ago so he was under the weather. They took us on a tour of Knoxville, which is a much bigger place than I had thought. My aunt works at a plastic surgeon's office at the hospital, and my uncle works for Pepsi so we drove by those two places. We ate lunch at a local pizza place called the Mellow Mushroom, which was on the expensive side but very tasty. After doing some shopping in the afternoon, we had dinner at a nice place called P.F. Chang's China Bistro. It's Abbey's favorite restaurant and it wasn't hard to see why; very nice and great service.