Portability or Reliability

Many people would say this is no argument and that they have had their laptop for longer than their desktop has lasted and I would say one thing to them “are you sure?” Many people flat out ditch their desktop when they get a look at that shiny new laptop of theirs but really is the desktop still able to function when you pull it back out when your laptop is annoying you with important updates and getting a hard drive or disk drive replaced? As a generation I believe that Generation Y, as my generation is called, throws away technology too quickly for something faster, cooler, cheaper, or smaller. A netbook is only a quarter of the power of a barebones you could get at tigerdirect for the same price though we go for it because it travels more easily and it’s lighter. Tablets are more for reading and light work such as word documents or note taking.

My barebone pc was built at the day when vista 1st came out, in fact, on that day I begged my dad to take me and get a copy for our new machine and he did because he did not already order an OS or get one ready yet. Vista actually runs great on my desktop and doesn’t have too many crash situations playing the sims 3 but that is the only real reason I need it. My laptop is not a powerhouse so I might get a couple hours of good or adequate game play on every 3rd boot up of Windows 7 While Fedora works flawlessly (after you get the drivers in) every time I start it and has a beautiful desktop to compete with Windows in efficiency and Mac in great looks. When I use my laptop with Fedora It feels as if I actually can get something done and am not bogged down as much until I try printing something out from google docs on the school computer and windows there, unsurprisingly, crashes or freezes if I even look at it. Commodore OS and Fedora 15 were really my favorite distributions even though Ubuntu is by far easier to use and I would never recommend Fedora to a beginner.

Do you use Linux? how does it compare to your PC or Mac?

Math is Easy

Anyone who is above pre-calculus know that I’m joking by saying that and some people would know if they were in Algebra II as well. I have a couple of problems I’m having trouble with but will ask my teacher tonight about them. Since the beginning of the new year I decided to switch my major to math, am I very good? Somewhat. Do I have fun doing math? YES!

Most people don’t have fun doing math homework and I don’t understand them, if you are doing math homework you are problem solving and preparing for a tax season somewhere in the future. I’m not the best at math but I want to be a math teacher, why? I want to be a math teacher because it’s challenging, you aren’t just naming facts like a zombie or creating useless things that don’t matter much like in art class. Sure, it’s pretty but how many of your childhood drawings do you keep, and now, how much math do you remember from your past years? the amount in the second category should be larger since each year expands on the knowledge from the past year. Why not teach if you like teaching, just teach the kids your subject instead of focusing on the subject focus on something more meaningful like the kids in your class.

Why not teach? Would you ever think of teaching your favorite subject?

My first car, and how it is hard to replace.

This isn’t the love story of a kid and his first car, nor a financial story about how I have no money for a new one. I have been waiting for my car to keel over and die on me since 2012 started, why you might ask? Well it is a simple story. In Michigan they use salt on the roads in the winter that give the under body a lot of rust and it was only a matter of time before I would have to replace something. I was planning on keeping it until the repairs really were killing me to pay because I got the car from my parents after they had owned it for a while and put around 100,000 miles on it, at the end of its life it had around 200,000 miles and the insurance company gave, or is giving, me $6,000 to replace it! Someone rear ended me the other day which is why I have been thinking about this more and more recently and it is amazing how I look at the cars for sale here around the same age and many of them look brand new! I still don’t trust them and I wouldn’t want to buy one without asking if anything is wrong but they are very nice looking Automobiles. The problem isn’t quality but the price and the quantity available. In Ventura so far I have found 3 pages of Crown Victoria’s and one ford escape and 3 ford escorts, all of which I like but also know that the gas is expensive for 2 out of 3 of them and that the escape has a chance of not being to California’s standards. I wanted to put that money toward a new car so that I could use it for the rest of college and into my career for a while but it seems that all of this has a way of not working out since the insurance would be over $200 a month which is more than the car payment! The most direct route is to get a used car with half of the money and assume the other half will be gone within a few years for repairs and gas. I have no clue what car to get I look at reviews and am in a confusing maze of annoying pop-ups and crazy sales pitches. The only thing I know for sure about these cars is that half of what is said on the sellers page is made up BS and the other half is still suspicious. I wish I was in good enough shape to ride a bike 12 miles to school but I seriously doubt I’ll be in that good of shape in less than a year, much less a month. I just am not sure how to handle this car buying thing.

I love school, typing not as much.

My right wrist has been killing me because between school and working at Target as a cashier it does not get a break at all! typing is not a one hand thing to most people because most people are taught the correct way to type, which I admit I’m using right now to a certain extent, and don’t try anything else. my counselor once caught me using this method and was amazed (for some reason) that I could type that fast with only one hand while I was flipping through notes with the other. I now realize that writing in pen and pencil could also be a problem because of always using one hand so I’ve been doing 3 things that can cause this so it’s probably a good Idea to see if there is any good way to fix it. has anyone else had any problems like this?

why write a letter? (and why handwritten?)

I saw a post on RowdyKittens.com about handwritten letters and I was thinking, why? I was born into a time where handwritten letters became a novelty rather than a common occurrence I got a couple handwritten letters before, they were both from my father while I was at summer camp working. They weren’t much but I still have them somewhere in my room. Rowdy Kittens brought that back to memory and I’m now considering sending a handwritten letter to a college with my check for paying to apply. I believe that colleges would look down upon me if I do that, I have a computer but I would rather spend a week writing the perfect letter for them in pen than typing it with an official letterhead saying Alleriotech or Year of Linux because I want it to be personal rather than professional. I think they probably get hundreds of typed letters a week and might not take a second glance at them but maybe a handwritten letter would show that I care more. A computer is easy, it has spellchecker, a dictionary (which I used to look up the spelling of occurrence), and sometimes templates. I want to stand out and not be one of a hundred letters, I’d rather have the one handwritten letter that gets looked down upon than the hundreds of typed ones that don’t get a second look. What do you think?

“I cannot suggest you do that” the cry of Northridge

Today I called the CSUN Admissions office because I was annoyed that since I was in Community college they said I could not transfer until I got 60 credits so I called Northridge to ask them and the, first off, confirmed it then I asked if I could have them just ignore the semester I spent at moorpark and they said “I cannot advise you to do that” I asked them again on this time asked if it were possible, I got the same answer! I asked a third time just because I really needed to know if I could do it, not if I should but just was it possible, and what do you know: she  said the same thing again! I don’t get mad that easily so I said goodbye and hung up the phone. I was just wondering why this happens? When I was in high school everyone said “go to college” and now I’m trying to get into a four year university and they are rejecting me because, rather than taking a year off school because I couldn’t get in, I went to Community college and could only get useless credits because they were full to the brim. I’m willing to let the 2 classes that I took that were transferable go without receiving credit but why can I not transfer? The way that the school is crowded I will be lucky to get my general ed out of the way in 3 years so I just want to get out of there and start working towards a degree instead of taking useless filler classes because I cannot get anything else.

resources, where are they?

I bought “The Tiny House Book” by Jay Shafer but found nothing in it about doing the electric or plumbing in a tiny house (not that I was expecting it to be detailed). I did, however, find the free Popomo plans also missing everything to do with plumbing and electric plans. This missing element is the only thing I was specifically looking for in plans (which is why I will write it out in excruciating detail once I do find out how to do it). I cannot find much online about plumbing and running electric to a tiny house and will be a pain to find in books but most of it should be alot like trailers, motor homes, or regular houses so I will check out some Dummies books and look for specifications online that are for bigger houses and make them try to work. Good luck to others who are looking for the same things, I will be researching and will put another post up later with ideas.

Tiny Dreams

Last Year my family moved not only across the state but across the country for my dad to accept a job in California, I could have stayed behind in our house that we were about to lose because we could not afford two places to live, but I came to California and I’m living with my parents in an apartment during my first year of college and last year after we moved was my senior year. I recently learned of a teenager who is only 16 and building his own tiny house and I want to do the same thing in my own backyard, but we don’t have a backyard to build it in. As I see this problem I think about how far my family came when we moved we had a 2 BR 2 bath house in a nice neighborhood and on a corner, now we’re renting a condo above garages for almost more than we can afford (that’s California for you) and I have to wonder where do I start in sizing down my life if I wanted to move into a tiny house when I move away, do I start with the books I don’t read, the movies I don’t watch or even the video games that I don’t play without friends? I think that I will start with the most sizable possession which is all my crap stowed in boxes that I still haven’t opened since I think that we’re moving in a year anyway so whats the point?

This is the start, I Am Going To Start sizing down my life soon in order to keep my room clean and fix what damage I’ve done in wanting all these things that I realize now that I really don’t need. I’m making an oath now to start getting rid of some of the things I have only for decoration and start actually using the things I do have more instead of asking for more things I don’t need (though I still want a chromebook because it won’t kill my back taking it to school). Anyone else ready to take the Tiny Dreams challenge?

College Started…

I’m very excited to be going to college this year as it is the first year for me but I have to ask one question, how do people handle the reading? I am trying to stay organized but I have a hard time getting through to my brain to get it back into organize mode! If anyone is actually listening and has any suggestions I would be happy to hear them, as long as they’re not from the Apple personnel who keep losing their Iphones, lol, but seriously: how do you deal with the reading?