Life, Technology, and College...(Not Particularly in that Order)

For those who don't know, I will be attending my second semester at Erie Community College - North Campus starting on January 23rd, 2006. During my first semester I had no gripes or complaints other than the fact that some of my teachers who will remain unnamed, lacked the knowledge of the course material and was clearly not prepared to teach the class in which they were assigned to teach. But of course, for a community this is understandable. Now going into my second semester I must say the Associates Degree which should have only taken me Two Years to recieve is slipping further away. But wait...It's not due to me failing any classes, especially when I finished the first semester with a 3.44 GPA with nothing below a B. But instead it comes to the fact that all classes rely on classes in which I can't take yet. This is mostly due to me scoring not as good as I should have on the placement test in math last summer but there is more. Then I since I need to fill up credit hours I'm looking into other fields to try to find a suitable minor, since I'm majoring in Computer Science, when I come across TeleCommunications. This would be great or so I thought, but it turns out it was not. First off all the classes are at South Campus, which isn't a problem since I can drive to class, but the problem lays in being they are not offering the Prerequisite to the class I want to take at all this semester. Which is kind of dumb in my opinion, teach the follow-up but not the class before it. So there are some gripes and growing pains about college to start.
Next off Technology. While doing my normal scan through Digg today I ran across this story How Go Daddy Lost A Longtime Customer to A Phisher. The only thing I have to say is that after reading this it really makes me want to have my own dns servers setup here for the company. So fi anyone has any ideas on how to go about with an easy Windows Based DNS server drop me a comment. Other than this I've been doing a lot of work and dealing with life, so that's all I got for now. And in case you didn't know yet, I'll be unavailable for the next couple days as I am taking care of family issues after the recent death of my Grandmother.

Making the Switch

After two years of having Verizon Wireless out here in the Alden area I've made the switch and it couldn't come at a better time. My contract with Verizon Wireless ends on January 17th, 2006 so instead of renewing it I decided to try Cingular Wireless out one more time. I previously tried it when it first rolled out service in 2000 and was less than impressed. Back than I had dropped calls in places I had full service and less that admirable sound quality on my phone. But it's been about 5 years since that time and GSM technology has come a long way since then. So first before we get into my review of Cingular's Service let me list the reasons I decided to drop Verizon Wireless in the first place.
Verizon while it's touted as have great reception, prices, and customer services, I find it falls short in some of those areas. For instance when I first got my phone I had great reception in my basement where my room is, where as now I get crappy reception, frequent dropped calls, and shady reception in other areas around town. And yes, I'd always keep my phone with the most up to date prl's. The prices I can't agrue about but the customer service I found to be very bad and difficult to deal with. I mean I'm paying the bill here but whenever I had to take to Verizon on the phone they didn't even care to talk about any issues I've had or at least the CSR I've gotten had been that way with me.
Now on to Cingular! First off Cingular has begun to put themselves in a position that helped Verizon get to where it is today. Cingular starting January 2nd, 2006 had begun selling Phones and Service in RadioShacks WorldWide, replacing Verizon Wireless. Then I decided to get the Motorola Razr V3 Black which yes, I know Verizon has a CDMA version but Verizon cripples their devices which Cingular so far and to my knowledge has not. Next is the GSM network, which to my understanding works in 3 parts. The first part takes up part of the tower to connect to the call, when that is done it move on to part two and frees up more space for other people to connect to the tower to place and recieve calls. The second part is when you are actually connected to the call and having your conversation. And finally after that it frees up that part and moves to part three which disconnect the call. So this is done to allow more people on a tower at a time and compared to what I've read it allows up to twice as many people on a Cingular tower comapred to Verizon and their CDMA technology.
Now after getting Cingular again I was skeptical but after playing around a bit I must note that the sound quality is fantastic, the Motorola Razr is fantastic, and customer service is very helpful and willing to work with you on various issues. So hands down Cingular so far seems to be a great buy and even better when they launch their Ringback tones equivalent AnswerTones sometime this Spring.

What's New with Life?

Well it's been a long time since I posted here, so I figured I'd give everyone an update. The past few months have been somewhat a RockyRoad. I left the Erie County Home where I was working due to problems with their management. And have been unemployed. Recently I was hired at GameStop in the Eastern Hills Mall where I am a Seasonal Sales Associate.
On another note for all of you that have been to my house, your next visit will be a little different. This is because my room has moved. Yes, you heard correctly I changed rooms from my upstairs room to something a little more comfortable and livable for me.
The formation and start-up of RockyRoad Ent. is taking off to a slow start but there are some projects in the works which at this time I don't feel like disclosing to all. This is mainly due to the fact that I'm not one to go about and brag or mention a product until I have a working prototype because some project just don't work out and I don't want to get any hype around something that won't be pursued or even remotely in a workable state, at least not now.
As for everything life is good, I guess. Nicole and I are not together, but then again what else is new. I'm currently dating this girl Lauren from Holland. And you can usually find me at the clubs on any given Saturday Night, and sometimes Friday depending on what's going on. If you ever see me I'll be with my 3 boys, Bob, Dave, and Alan who are are Staff members at Utopia. So until next time, Party On!

Quick Update on Mozilla FireFox and More Company News

Well I've been having some problems with Mozilla FireFox lately wanting to print out websites to my printer. So what did I do? Of course, being me I uninstalled FireFox all the extensions and installed Deer Park Alpha 2 with the minimize to tray and sessionsaver rewrite extensions. To my amazement after taking time to get everything setup correctly, it very stable. So far it hasn't crashed once and it got me to clean out extensions I never used with one exception being the Mozilla released PopupsMustDie extension which has yet to be updated to work with the new Deer Park Alpha 2 which was from July 17th. But I must say I'd encourage people to take the plunge and help Mozilla test Deer Park Alpha 2, and see where Mozilla is taking the future of Gecko and the Mozilla Foundation itself.
On another note, I've have enlisted the help of a fellow website developer I went to school with to design the next generation RockyRoad Entertainment website. So stayed tuned for more information about that and who this lucky developer is....In the mean time check out InBedBy10.com (hint, hint).

Impluse Buying Update, Again!

Ok, so of course as you all know my wireless keyboard and mouse came into today. I must say I was impressed, as the product was suppose to be OEM but came with everything. This included the keyboard, mouse, reciever, instruction booklet and even batteries. Although it did come in a box label that it should only be given out with new computers. But other than that it works flawlessly and is a great addition to my desktop pc, ecspecially because of it's integration with Windows.
In other news, I bought another new toy for my soon to come Mac Mini. This time it was a DVD Burner, which my desktop system already has, which I plan to put in an external enclosure. Since Apple wants $100 for the super drive I took a shortcut and paid $40 for a SAMSUNG Black IDE DVD Burner Model TS-H552U/BEBN BLK - OEM which has support for DVD+R Dual Layered Discs. So this should round out my Mac Mini when I get it. As for the enclosure if anyone knows of any good places to buy cheap but great external enclosure for a drive like this, let me know.