The Forces of iMac

The forces of iMac prepare for their invasion of the land of Dell.

Long time no Update

It has been a while since I have done an update. Last one was about being back at school, this one is about being back at work. My last school term ended up being extremely busy, but thankfully it is my last busy one. Some professors seem to think that your world should revolve around their class. I tend to disagree. Next school term I only have three classes, so it shouldn't be very intensive. I even have Tuesday off, which is always nice. But the most important news is that I am again back at work, making money, and finally making progress on my thesis. Only have three more months to complete all the work and a majority of the writing. Hopefully I am up to the task.
In other news, Yoda has unfortunately been showing an increasing aggression towards strange dogs, which does not make me happy. Hopefully, we caught it early enough and with strict training we will be able to help him get it under control. So, he has started a very strict training regime which involves daily obedience work as well as obedience work in close proximity to other dogs at least three days a week. Beth's dad was thankfully very willing to help us out with this problem, because I do not think I would be able to handle it on my own. Most importantly, he has several dogs that are very well trained and ignore Yoda while they are working, so it allows for a great setting to work with Yoda in. Yoda appears to be improving, so hopefully everything will work out alright. Another advantage to this strict routine is that Yoda is becoming very precise with his commands. So, provided that we can get his aggression under control, we should easily be able to at least get his Canine Good Citizen Certification.
One other very important update, pending one grade, I will be walking with honors in December. In order to not walk with honors, I would need to get below an 82 in the last class I am waiting for a grade in, which I had the highest grade in the class with only one lab grade remaining. So, I should be walking with honors. So long as I can keep my last three class grades above a 92 average, I will actually graduate with honors.

Back at School

I'm back at school now. Been really busy with school work and such. Lots of reading that needs to be done. Not to mention the professor who thought no other professors give out work during the first week, so he should give out extra. Which means almost 100 problems, the majority of which were far from what I would call easy.

All of my free time has been spent playing with Yoda, walking Yoda, or playing on the 360. Not nearly enough 360 play in my opinion though. Been 3 days since I was able to play I believe. Yoda really loves going for walks though, and it is good for me to get up every once in a while. Sunday, Tuesday, and Saturday make great days to go for walks with my schedule.

I also do not like my senior seminar class. Not only is there a ton of reading for it, but instead of the Professor standing in front of the class and spewing his opinions, he expects you to give your opinions so that he can respond with something that trashes your opinion, usually accompanied with a smile which sometimes resembles a smirk. Crazy Liberal Studies people.

Video Game Voters Network

I have recently joined my first politically motivated group. I feel it is the first group that I agree with all of their views. Everyone should go and check it out at The Video Game Voters Network. If you are a gamer, you should join, and let your politicians know how you feel.

In other news, my claim with Paypal progresses slowly. I now need to get a document from a repair shop stating that my power supply does not work with the company's letterhead and contact information. So now I need to see if I can get a computer shop to write one up for free.

Xbox 360 and Ebay Fraud

Everyone should get an Xbox 360. Such a nice gaming experience. Now I just need an HD TV. It is even better in HD. Call od Duty 2 looks amazing in HD, pretty good on a regular TV. For some real entertainment, you need to get Perfect Dark Zero and play multiplayer games.

On another note, I was recently screwed by a Chinese seller on eBay. I'm currently in the process of resolving it so I can get my money back. The seller acted like he was in the United States, but when the package arrived, it was obviously sent from the People's Republic of China. I'll update as information comes in.

Dog Treats

A common ingredient in many dog treats is propylene glycol, which is used as a preservative. It is also used in antifreeze and deicing solutions. It is consider safe for consumption by the FDA, however in large quantities it is believe to cause similar problems as the other more dangerous ingredient used in antifreeze, ethylene glycol. Since continued exposure to significant quantities might pose a health risk, owners should attempt to limit the number of treats they feed their dogs containing propylene glycol.

NEWS
I am back at work now. This should mean more frequent updates. Maybe even daily updates. I also noticed my web traffic has increased heavily so I am going to look into a way to put that traffic to good use and make some money. I think this is most likely because if you search for "Random Information" on google, my blog is the second one in the list. Check it out, I'm really proud of it.

Google Search

Harmful Dog Food Additives

Many dog food companies will add chemicals to dog food for various reasons. Some are added as preservatives. Ethoxyquin, BHA and BHT are commonly used synthetic preservatives. Ethoxyquin is a pesticide, and yet some companies use it to preserve dog food so that their product will have a longer shelf life. Ethoxyquin, BHA, and BHT are all potentially cancer causing ingredients, and yet they are allowed to be used in dog food. Various natural preservatives, such as Vitamin C and Vitamin E can be used instead and do not create the health issues of the synthetic ingredients.


I let Yoda run free on a 20 foot lead on Sunday. He loved it, and he also wore himself out, which was nice. A tired dog is a much better behaved dog. I will probably let him go for a run tonight as well if it isn't dark when I get home. If not, then I will probably take him for a jog on a heel. That way he will be able to burn off some of his excess energy. I have tomorrow off work, so that I can take Beth to have a test run at the hospital. It will be nice to not work until 6 one night of the week. I will be back at school in a week, and then I will home early a lot more often. It will be good for Yoda because I will be able to spend more time with him.

Distributed Computing

Distributed computing is a great thing. It is the process of sharing computation over several processors. This is the concept behind the linux farm, which is a group of Linux computers which share their computing power, in essence you have one very powerful server. This is great because not only can you have a server capable of computing faster than existing servers, but as a home user you can take several old computers and use them together to get a high speed server, for whatever you might need a high speed server for.


So today was clean out the back room at work day. This meant free computers to anyone who wanted one. It also meant, since I was doing the cleaning, I got first pick on all the reject computers. So I picked up a nice, very small 600 Mhz PIII that is going to replace my existing 450 Mhz firewall/router. It is even smaller than the current one I am using, and much faster as well. It should work out nicely. I also got two 500 Mhz PIIIs that I am going to use for who knows what. But when I come up with an idea, it will be great. I will probably just use them to fool around with different linux based servers at my house, but I might go all out and use them with the 450 Mhz I have freed up from the router in a little distributed computing setup. It would be a neat thing to play around with. Maybe I'll set it up to try and calculate the next digit of Pi or something. Not that it will be fast enough to compete with the current distributed network that is calculating digits of Pi, but I am sure there is some other obscure digit out there that no one really cares about that I could try and calculate. Let me know if you come up with one.

Voltage, Current and Resistance

Voltage is the potential energy between two points for a flow of electrons to occur. This flow of electrons is called a current. The material over which the electrons flow(conductor) will have a certain resistance to the flow of electrons. Typically, a material's resistance to the flow of electrons will be constant, and so you have a direct relationship where when you increase the voltage, the current will increase. The mathematical representation for this relationship is known as Ohms Law.
Ohms Law
V=IR
You can also increase the resistance across a circiut by adding resistors. If you maintain a constant voltage across the circuit, as you increase the resistance the current will decrease. In this case the resistance and current have an indirect relationship.


News for today:
Yoda continues to do well in his training. He really doesn't like the pinch collar I got for him. When you put it on him he acts real sad. But when he has it on he behaves perfectly, so I know he knows exactly what he needs to do. Hopefully if we continue training him with the pinch we can get him to a point where he does everything perfectly without the pinch collar on. When we took him to the pet store over the weekend we realized that he needed a pinch collar because he got way to excited and wasn't able to focus on his training. Maybe next weekend he will be better. Although I think I will take him PetSmart this time, because I didn't like most of the bones they had at Pet Supplies Plus.
A week from Friday is my last day at work before I go back to school. It will be nice to be back in classes, plus I will have more time off. I will still be just as busy because of studying, but at least I will have some time throughout the day available to get things done in, so I don't have to do everything at night. Most importantly, I will be getting home earlier than 7:30PM each night, which will make training Yoda before dark much easier, especially as it gets closer to winter

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