Lazypud
Ok! so yeah, I have been busy and unmotivated for the past three weeks. Work has been going well. The semester has finally slipped into finals making the days much easier at work. Professors + students + busy = staff gets left alone.
Speaking of finals, I have one this entire afternoon. Taking classes and working full time is no good. I respect the people who are able too constantly take courses while working or with more classes - it's difficult not having any time for social obligations.
RANT: Taking honors physics has scared me away from pursuing an intense higher education again (PhD!). Being out of college for a few years then going back - it's way more difficult for me to be modivated. I already know exactly how much I don't use the majority of the classes. I'm even more aware at how friviolous group projects and examinations are and that their intended concequence is to force someone to study. Taking tests and silly projects may help me learn the material a little better - but it really makes it difficult to enjoy the material. There's no time to focus on very interesting points in the material due to review days and constant examinations. I loved the occasional class period where my 'aged and wise' professor stepped forward on an aside to discuss things within his field of research - mass extinction events caused by nearby high energy gamma ray bursts or his personal thoughts behind some of the universe ending hypotheses. The tight schedule of examinations prevented many of these asides - he'd literally say "oh no I cannot go into that, we must finish this."
These tests and assingments are, so far, the best way to assure that students going into a critical field know their shit. I want my pharmacist to pass a rigiorious instruction in chemistry and biology. I don't think someone dabbling in physics for personal interest and use needs to be treated to the same 'fail out' course intensity. Higher education should spend some resources focusing on a more casual scientist - someone who's interested to use the material in their garages and back yards, but isn't smart or modivated enough to pursue a true scientific career. I think it would lead to some neat innovation or discovery. I guess this whole attitude is the same reason I dropped out of Mechanical Engineering so long ago.
MEATSPACE: Not much has changed. The city of lawrence has decided to rip up the street infront of my apartment 6 days a week - making me very thankful that I can sleep through a bear attack. The improvements that the city is throwing into the street right there makes me believe that the old "historic" building I reside in's days are numbered. The building's new neighbor - a huge hotel, presumabally for rich sport fans, is about 50% complete. I'm expecting a developer to come in and level that corner of campus when it's a bit closer to completion. I would have said First Management's (the worst fucking management company ever) refusal to fix anything inside the apartment was an indicator - but they don't fix shit anywhere. ever.
Otherwise all is good. My teeth extraction was kosher - I had a great 5 days laying around playing GTA4 and Dwarf Fortress while dead to the world from codine. Oh! So earlier the week I got my teeth out, some kid got put into a coma because he went without oxygen for 5 minutes. Aparently whoever setup the NO2 tubes in the surgeons new office didn't properly setup the oxygen feed - the kid only received nitrus for about 5 minutes and still hasn't woken up. I only heard about this from coworkers and couldn't find anything on the web, but still! Kinda cool to dodge that bullet.
VACATION: I'm looking at scheduling a Vegas trip with some buddies in the stead of the usual trip to Burning Man. 4 days in luxury, huge buffettes, free drinks and showers sounds more enjoyable (this year) than 10 days of dust, drugs and MREs. I'm also trying to rope someone into going to PAX with me afterwards.
I am planning on taking some time this fall to take a handful of weekend courses:
SIG SAUER - Armorer and 101 courses
On-Point Tactical - Basic Scout
Urban Excape and Evasion
Oh, and I can't forget the yearly snowboarding trip to Durango. Purgatory and Telluride are high on the list!
Remote VNC & Dynamic DNS
My buddy Drama asked me last night while drunk & bowling how to install a remote desktop on his daddys puter, so he doesn't have to go there or suffer through painful family phone support. I didn't find any good guides immedatelly, so I wrote him this as an e-mail. Maybe 2 other people in the world will find it as useful, so it gets BLAGGED.
The software I use is TightVNC. Very useful. Basically here are the steps:
1. install tightvnc server & viewer (for testing) on your dads puter
2. open a port you can remember in the router pointing to that computer's ip (I use something like 54545 or 54000 for mine)
3. run the tightvnc server, set a GOOD password, set it to start by default with the computer.
4. test it a couple of times with the "allow loopback connections" option selected. connect to it using the tight VNC viewer and the IP of your dad's house (www.whatismyip.com) followed by the port.
- it'll do a fun recursion thingy here if all is well!
5. go home
6. drink a beer
7. setup TightVNC viewer on your puter
8. connect to your daddy's IP and port, view that shinznat.
Now, to avoid having to ask him to give you his IP whenever you want to connect, set up a service called "Dynamic DNS." Here's how to go about setting it up:
1. setup a free account at a place like dyndns.com.
2. subscribe to the free "Dynamic DNS service." It's hidden pretty well in dyndns, but you'll find it, I believe in you!
3. navigate to the DDNS service on your router. it's in Setup > DDNS tab for DD-WRT firmware
4. set it up with the account information provided to you by dyndns. I used h.dontexist.com because it makes me laugh.
5. set the update intreval to something sensible, every 10 days is fine for most ISPs, some cable companies are much quicker on their IP rotation and should be set to 1-3 days.
6. ping the connection to a port you know is open on the router. You should see it resolve to your dad's IP
- @engelhaft ~ $ ping h.dontexist.com
- 64 bytes from adsl-76-250-254-231.dsl.tpkaks.sbcglobal.net (76.250.254.231): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.559 ms
7. fire up TightVNC, throw in your dynamic address (h.dontexist.com) and port, connect, do whatever the hell it was you wanted to do.
8. fap
^_^