bohnsack.com

A Festivus for the rest-iv-us

It snowed last night and this morning in Albuquerque.

If you work in a Unix shell all day long, I highly recommend the suggestions found in Working more productively with bash 2.x.

Blog spammers hit this site hard during the night. I'm getting more that sick of it, so I've implemented some fairly serious measures:

• Renamed my comment scripts. I did this three days ago, but it didn't get it done.
• MT Blacklist This has been running for a long time, but it increasingly doesn't get it done.
• SCode Captcha Turning Test for Movable Type I installed this today and have high hopes that it will end the war (for now).

I'm thinking that the Turning test addition is the ultimate, but I also recommend this list of anti-spam measures.

Among the reasons why Firefox rules on high as Sultan are the many extensions that are available for it.

Some of my favorites include:

• Spellbound - Allows you to check the spelling in any HTML text entry field (like when you post a blog entry or comment on one)
• Dict - When your run across a word you don't know the definition of, just select it, right click / select the "Define" option, and you'll be staring at the word's definition in half a second. If this kind of thing interests you, I also endorse Dictionary Search.
• Linky
• Bug me not

My company had its Christmas party at the High Finance last night. It was my first time up the tram. Quite exciting.

After dinner, I took some pictures of the Albuquerque lights ~ 4,000 feet below:

I was accepted and have been enrolled in UNM's Electrical and Computer Engineering Masters program since late 2004. Classes started on January 18th 2005. I'm taking the Computer Networks and Systems track of Computer Engineering with thesis option. This plan requires 24 hours of coursework + one hour of seminar + 6 hours of thesis. Here's a tentative list of work that will be continuously updated as progress is made:

I'm also adding the Computational Science & Engineering Certificate to my program, which only adds a 3-hour elective and requires that my thesis contain a significant computational component. CS481/ECE437L (Operating System Principles) wasn't on the last of acceptable electives, but I asked, and it has now been accepted as a suitable elective (for me at least).

How much does it cost to get an MS in Computer Engineering at UNM with in-state tuition? The following is an in-progress accounting of my major expenses:

T-Shirt folding magic (via jwz). Mare sure you watch the video.

This site shows you the political donations that were made by companies and their employees.

I would not be disappointed to receive one of the items on my Amazon.com wish list as a Christmas gift from you.

Or not.

Dean has one hell of a blog.

Although an anglo-centric marketing person would recoil in horror after exposure to its impossible to pronounce, spell, or remember name, Ubuntu Linux, a user-friendly strain of Debian, seems worth checking out.

I'm pretty sure we're in front of a fairly significant economic upturn. How do I come to this conclusion? Well, it's admittedly not scientific, but I keep my resume on-line and fairly well up-to-date. Because of this, I'm periodically contacted by recruiters, who find me via their web searches for Linux, Clusters, Web, Perl, or whatever. Lately, the number of inquiries I've received through this channel has increased dramatically.

In the last month or so, I've seen serious inquires from Amazon.com, Google, LANL, and a host of smaller shops. When I got home this evening, there were phone messages from two new recruiters! The frequency and quality of these calls and emails continues to increase. As I received few similar inquires in 2002 and 2003, and none were nearly as exciting as the ones I've been receiving lately, I don't see how this development can be interpreted as bad economic news. This is good new folks. I'm seeing a big change in my particular market with my particular skill niche, and I hope it's an indicator of more a widespread economic upswing. I think it is.

For the record, I love my current job, and I find Albuquerque to be a very enjoyable place to live. In addition, I'm starting a graduate program in January at UNM. This adds up to: I'm not going anywhere for a good number of years. The Google thing was tempting for certain, but I'm happy and very confident in were I'm going where I'm at.

BTW, this is my 500th blog entry. It seems amazing that this thing started way back on August 9th, 02000.

Do not under any circumstances follow this link if you're at work or are offended by vulgar language, but if you enjoyed Team America, you might apprecieate this video remix of its theme song.

I'd like to add the S&P 500 index to the list of American things worthy of laud, as yesterday saw a three year high:

It turns out that the real Che Guevara wasn't very good at anything. In fact, he couldn't even ride a motorcycle. (via hog on ice who wonders: "How long will the left continue to idolize this sociopathic, underdeveloped, unsuccessful, spoiled infant?")

In other Che news, Burlington Coat Factory has been airing television ads featuring Che Guevara T-Shirts - Google for more on this topic.

And it don't stop: Now even the smallest rebel can express himself in these awesome baby Che Guevara onesies.