Tim’s Blog

My new laptop arrived in the mail today. It is a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ640. It has a 13.3 inch wide screen display and a Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2 GHz. I upgraded the ram to 4GB. It is small and beautiful.

It also came with Windows Vista. Since I need a windows computer for programming a microcontroller in one my my classes, I decided to give Vista a shot. When I booted up the computer, I found that Sony had decided to fill the computer with crappy software so the first thing I did was reinstall Vista. That’s one thing that Microsoft figured out, the installation process is much better than installing XP. Immediately after booting, I remembered all the things I don’t like about Windows, I had a hard time finding all the drivers I needed, and some of them wouldn’t completely install. I am going to give it a shot though, we’ll see how long it lasts before I upgrade to Windows XP.

It is currently -16.6 degrees fahrenheit outside. Earlier tonight, when it was about -15, my roommates and I did an experiment. We took a cup of boiling water outside and threw it in the air. The first couple of times we didn’t throw it high enough and the water fell back to the ground. Then we threw it about 30 feet into the air and all the water disappeared into a cloud. The cloud floated away and dissipated. It was the first time I have ever seen that happen.

For Christmas I got a RFID reader and an assortment of tags. It has been a very fun toy to play with. I mounted the RFID reader at the entrance of my room and attached it to my desktop with a long USB cable.

A C program runs in the background of my computer and when a RFID tag is read, it executes a shell script with the 40 bit encoded number as an argument. The shell script then compares the code read to the code for the RFID tag I keep in my wallet. When I walk into my room, I brush my wallet against the reader and my computer unlocks. When I leave my room, my computer locks. For feedback, I have a sound play when I leave the room, and a random song starts playing when I enter the room.

This is the setup that I have been dreaming about for a long time. Now I have a security card for my room.

New Snow (Cumulative)

Past 24 Hours: 25″
Past 48 Hours:26″
Past 72 Hours: 32″

Today’s Forecast

Periods of snow. High near 20. Wind chill values between -1 and 4. South southwest wind between 10 and 13 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.

I’m headed up now. It is going to be awesome!!

Good news: My server is back up and running (on one hard drive).

Bad news: My laptop started smoking.

My winter break was as follows: Bozeman -> Bellevue -> Molokai, Hawaii -> Schweitzer, Idaho -> Santa Barbara, California -> Bellevue -> Bozeman. In Bellevue I went to an eagle court of honor for one of the boys at my old scout troop. I saw a bunch of my scout buddies, including one who just joined the Army. After about a week at home, almost all of my Dad’s side of the family went to the island of Molokai for Christmas. We went to the beach, went snorkeling, hiked to a waterfall, swam in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall and generally caused chaos wherever we went. After Hawaii was snowboarding in the powder at Schweitzer for three days. Then after a week in Santa Barbara with my Mom, I flew back to Bozeman. And now it’s back to school.