I Am. When?

Compared to the other nations of the Earth, the United States of America is a young and inexperienced country; while the land has seen its fair share of much older nations rise up on its soil, the country itself is still in its youth. Despite our young age, this is a great nation full of know-how, ingenuity and purpose.

Throughout the history of this nation there are two phrases, historical quotes if you will, that exemplify this drive, determination, and ability to overcome obstacles. The first occurred on July 20, 1969 at 4:18pm EDT when Neil Armstrong announced to the world, "The Eagle has landed." The second occurring each and every Thanksgiving morning as a country proudly declares, "The Turkey is in the oven."

Happy Thanksgiving.

Before I get into the whys and hows of getting my tattoo, let me start off by saying that if you live in the Tampa Bay area, or can get here, and are thinking about a custom tattoo, go see JD (John Dixon) at Psychotic Ink in St Petersburg, FL. JD has a relaxed, laid-back attitude, is a great artist and does phenomenal work. He is one of those rare people that are truly "about the work."

Now onto the story…

About 20 years ago, I had decided to get a tattoo. I just wanted one for no better reason than "because." At the time, I drew up a custom piece that was centered around my joining the Navy as a Nuclear Electronics Technician. The drawing was a skeleton of an American Bald Eagle perched on a typical "Navy" anchor ("USN Nuke" written on it) with a mushroom cloud in the background. I had planned on getting the tattoo on the left side of my chest; however, for reasons I won't get into, I never got the tattoo.

Continue reading "The Tattoo" »

I have posted an updated version of the Proverbs PHP Web Event Calendar which is available for download from the Proverbs Calendar link in the menu bar. This update includes a few minor changes, most notably forcing IE7 or IE8 in Compatibility View to use the non-css calendar displays (because IE7 is horrid with CSS).

The update also includes a Polish language file provided by Matthew (Thank you for the file Matthew).

Maximizing Your Bachelor Degree

This last, and long overdue, part on getting into a good graduate level program covers the seldom mentioned criteria that many (most? all?) schools use when selecting candidates for entry: the value of your bachelor degree. The obvious side of this would be knowing that some schools are considered better than others, but that knowledge doesn't do you much good unless you plan on transferring to one of those "better" schools. Instead, we will focus on the courses that make up your degree.

Take a minute and dig out the requirements to earn your degree at your current school. It should consist of a bunch of required courses, a few courses you can pick and choose from, and "other" courses. These other courses could be anything from courses to meet the minimum credit requirements, to liberal art courses (such as needing 3 communications credits that could come from a variety of places), to specialized focus courses for your given degree. Hold onto that list. Open a new web browser and go to the undergraduate program for your major at one of the colleges on your graduate school list. For instance, if you are currently attending Brown with a major in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon is probably on your list of graduate schools, so head over to the CMU Computer Science undergraduate website.

Once you have found your way to the undergraduate program website, see if you can find the degree requirements for your chosen major. Every college website I have been on has those requirements posted someplace, usually as a PDF file. Found it? Now compare the degree requirements from your current school to those of that prospective school. More than likely, unless they are both state universities within the same state, you will see several differences between the degree requirements. Your school might require one semester of Chemistry, while the other school requires two; or maybe your school allows you to choose between three advanced programming topics such as Compiler Design, Database Management Systems, and Operating Systems, while the other school requires Operating Systems. These differences are actually pretty damn important in the aspect of graduate school acceptance.

Continue reading "Getting Into Graduate School - Part III" »

An updated version of the Proverbs PHP Web Event Calendar is now available for download from the link in the menu bar above (The one labeled Proverbs Calendar). The update includes two new language pack files (Portuguese and Hebrew), as well as a few changes to the way the language pack files are handled. Most notably, each language pack file now controls the HTML charset values for the calendar to allow each language to be displayed correctly.

Thank you to Paulo Roberto Gaefke for providing the Portuguese file and Oleg for providing the Hebrew file.

xkcd had this great comic strip up today (shown above). Of course it got me thinking about how I have been neglecting my own pet physics notions and that I really fall into the same realm as the comic (what scientists respectfully call "quack science") with those notions. Let's face it, I do not have a degree in Chemistry or Physics (let alone a PhD), but I do have a few things going for me.

Continue reading "Quack Science" »

I just received an email from Asbjorn Aamot of www.aa-mot.net that contained a new language pack file for the Proverbs Web Event Calendar. Asbjorn was kind enough to translate the language files to Norwegian (Norsk).

The calendar has been updated with the new language pack file and is ready for download. Many thanks to Asbjorn for taking the time to create the new translation file.