Well I just realized that March is about over and I haven't posted much yet so I thought I'd come and update the page a little bit. I would have done it more often but there hasn't been anything notable happening. I did get Postfix running with virtual users looked up via LDAP at work. Its pretty cool although it was a bit of a hassle. I tried Qmail and Exim first and wound up not caring for either that much. Postfix's configuration seems to be the best of them all but I still don't think its up to the level of say Apache. Since its on a FreeBSD box I also installed amavisd-new from ports and a virus scanner and am quite pleased with that setup. The spam filtering seems to be quite effective although I need to figure out a couple other things like wildcards in whitelists, and subject tagging in addition to blocking. Overall very cool and highly recommended though.
I've been up tonight doing homework, the most recent thing was a program for my C++ class. I didn't think it was possible to make user defined functions add excess work and code bloat but this project has proven me wrong. I emailed my instructor for my half semester Intro to Networking class to see what I got.
"John,
Your final grade for the class is "C"
Your grade on the final exam was: 92%
Your attendance was poor. The attendance quizzes added up."
This is the same instructor that asked me for help when his labs didn't work. This is the same instructor who was telling people that the order of the wires on network cables didn't matter as long as both ends were the same. I am positive without a doubt that I am far more qualified to teach a networking class than this man. But lack of attendence gets me a C. Excellent message....it doesn't matter what you know, being there is all that matters. I also appreciate that he completely left off his grading scale as well as the breakdown of value off his syllabus. He's a cool guy, but needs to polish his teaching methods some..... If you want to take attendance grads, I won't be happy about it, but at least show what percentage of your grade they will make up.
I picked up a an Archos 20 gig mp3 player last weekend and played with it for a while before taking it back. I bought it in a moment of weakness but thought it would be pretty cool to have. Luckily it was buggy. It stopped during playback a time or two and about 1/3 of the times I turned it on, only the middle 2/3 of the lcd would come on. It made it exceptionally difficult to read the display. The controls also sucked. I didn't exchange it and think I'll just wait a bit before getting a new one since I'm still not positive I'd use it all that often.
I think this weekend I'm going back home since I didn't last weekend. It kind of sucks because I really don't have anything close to the time. I have a bunch of projects to finish for school. I really should work on some stuff for work. I need to do dad's taxes. I need to fill out a FAFSA, and apply for some other loans since I'm about to be forced into like an all-ramen diet.......
I'd really like to get a new laptop too. I like my thinkpad but 300mhz is just getting too slow for the amount of multi-tasking I like to do. I'm tired of trying to get sound to work with freebsd on it too so it'd be cool to have one that wouldn't require voodoo to get working. Oddly enough I'm somewhat attracted to the Apple Powerbooks with their sexy sexy lit keyboard and bsd-based OSX...but wow you pay for those. I'd like to try another thinkpad too but I feel somewhat ripped off by the crappy battery in this series and their neglect of everyone who experiences its problems. I'd probably get a Dell.....I want a big screen and integrated wireless. While its cheaper than a powerbook, apparently its still an expensive taste so it might have to wait for a while....
Well I'm put a pizza in the oven so it should be about done. Yes it does feel odd to put a pizza in at 2:30am, but I didn't eat dinner, I'm awake, and I'm hungry. After I pull that out I think I'll put in a favorite, Office Space, eat a couple slices, and get to bed and decide if I'm driving home tomorrrow.