I couple weeks ago Anna was sitting at the table petting our cat, Bert, and apparently he licked her…

A: Bert just kissed me.

Me: Oh ya?

A: Ya. I don’t really like cat spit.

Me: Oh.

A: Why doesn’t he give me a regular smooch?

Me: Well cats don’t really

A: have… lips

That was just very visual for me, a cat having lips.

Intel, along with some other companies are developing a new type of RAM.  RAM is one of the main parts of the computer that makes it go fast.  It is like a hard drive in that it stores data, but it is much faster (and smaller), but it requires power to store data.  It’s not used to store your files, it is for loading the programs into when they are running.  That way they can run faster then if they were running right off the hard drive.

This new RAM is called PRAM, or, phase-change RAM. From what I read it seems like it should be faster and cheaper, and it also will not require power.  This all sounds cool to me, but what really got my attention was the way it’s made.

PRAM is based on chalcogenide glass, which can be altered using the heat generated by an electric current. Heat changes the physical structure of the glass to either a crystalline or amorphous state. Each of these states has a distinct electrical resistance that is used to represent the ones and zeroes needed to represent stored data in binary terms.

- PC World

That’s awesome.  What kind of a goof ball would think they should try to heat a piece of glass into an amorphous state to represent binary.  You can call me a geek all you want with my programming and whatnot, but the guys who think this stuff up are the real geniuses.

I recently bought the Windows XP Professional Upgrade version, to upgrade my XP Home computer. The Upgrade went just fine, but then when I tried to activate it I had a problem.  I also could not enter an address into the address bar of Internet Explorer
I spent hours pulling my hair out trying to figure out why it would not activate, and possibly would have cast myself out the window. Then I stumbled upon this post in a Microsoft forum. It solved my problem and it looks like a lot of other people’s as well. I have the instructions here too, simplified a little bit.

If XP Pro will not activate (an error report box appears after you click Activate Windows) and you had Internet Explorer 7 installed before installing the upgrade, do the following -

1. Go to My Computer
2. Click Tools->Folder Options…
3. Click the View tab
4. Click “Show hidden files and folders”
5. Close My Computer
6. Click Start->Run
7. Enter the following command without the quotes “%windir%\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe”
8. Follow the steps to remove IE 7 and then restart your computer

You should now be able to activate Windows and Explorer will work.  The problem must be that XP Pro trys to install the old version of Internet Explorer and that goofs everything up.

This is another incident from a restaurant. Chipotle this time. I was sitting across from Emma, and apparently had gotten a piece of something caught in between my teeth…

Emma said, “You have something red in your tooth.”

After I tried to get it out, “Is it gone?”

“You need a ‘pick-tooth’.”

Once I realized what a ‘pick-tooth’ is, I said, “Okay, I’ll try.”

“No, you won’t try, you will [do].”

She hasn’t even seen Star Wars yet and she knows one of Yoda’s sage proverbs.

I just went to login to my Gmail account, and on the main page it said that Google was introducing a new feature – Gmail Paper.  It’d be a thing where you can select however many emails you want, click Paper Archive, and then they would print out all the messages and mail them to you, for free.  It would even print photos if they were attached to the emails.  At first I thought, sweet, I can see them doing that since they would print ads on the back of the paper.  But then I logged in and the Paper Archive button wasn’t there.  I logged out and thought about it for a while, and then went back to the site, thought about it some more, and thought, no way.  That’s an April Fools.  Of course they haven’t actually said that it’s an April Fools yet, but I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t.

I feel kind of dorky for falling for it at first.

http://mail.google.com

We were out at a restaurant getting some food from their homeland, and I leaned over and asked -

“Hey, Emma, how’s that rice?”

“None of you’re business,” is all I got for my kindness.

I was up at the place I go for my computer classes (from here on to be referred to by its name – TechSkills) talking to my instructor. We were just kind of shootin the breeze when I asked him what he thought as far as me getting a job or internship somewhere. He got, what I thought to be a puzzled look on his face and it seemed like he was thinking for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but I sort of thought that he was going to say that I shouldn’t do anything like that just yet. Then he went on to say, that just the other day he had talked to a local software company that writes .NET code and uses SQL Server (precisely what I use), and that they were looking for an intern.

So I wrote up a little resume type thing, and he sent it to the company. So I’m just waiting to here back from him now. This was on Friday. Actually it was pretty late Friday, right around when he leaves work, so he might not have been able to send it until today.

Microsoft Certified Application Developer, that is.  In addition to my normal school, I am also taking some computer courses.  My main focus is the .NET Framework, which I’m not even going to give a brief description of right now, but just know that it’s really cool for a programmer, and that its end product is software-consumer satisfaction.

When I am all done I will be an MCSD, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer.  I am planning on taking five courses (if I finish all of those in my 12 month time limit, I will take some more): SQL Server, VB.net, XML and Web Services, ASP.net, and Architecture.  I am finished with the first three (upon completion of the third is when I got my MCAD certification), and just started ASP.net about a week ago.

With what I know so far I’m pretty sure I can get a decent job somewhere (and I’ll be looking in the next month or so), and when I’m entirely done, I think I’ll be able to make some sweet do-ray-me.  Of course I need experience too, but that’s what the first job is for.

I’m writing a research paper on the founding of the USMC right now, but for some reason I had the urge to write a brief summarization of it.

Marine combat has been around for thousands of years, the Greeks, Egyptians, all those good guys employed marine warfare. But marine forces that were more directly related to the birth of our current United States Marine Corps started happening in the 1600s. King Charles II of England had the Royal Marines, of which the American colonials were a part of since roughly 1740. I think it’s safe to assume that once the American Revolution started, those loyal to England remained part of the Royal Marines, and those loyal to America left. But I did not read that in any of my books.

In 1775, the Continential Congress ordered the creation of 2 battalions of marines, thus forming the Continential Marines. Captain Samuel Nicholas was put in command of these battalions, as well as given the responsibility of recruiting those 2 battalions. As any Marine will tell you, that recruiting took place at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. Captain Nicholas is considered the first commandant of the Marine Corps.

The Continential Marines fought and led many battles during the Revolution, but afterwards, they kind of dissolved. There wasn’t an immediately obvious need for them. In the 1790s, however, we started to get into trouble with the Barbary Pirates and France. So Congress ordered the creation of the Department of the Navy, and shortly after that a “Marine Corps.” And that is when the actual United States Marine Corps was founded. And of course they have served as America’s finest in all of our conflicts since then.

Once I am done with my paper, I’ll probably post that up here. Which should be in a few weeks, following the class schedule.

I am starting a new category of posts called AE Quotes. And it is going to be funny/cute/weird things that my little twin sisters say. I’m doing this for 2 reasons:

1. The can be quite, accidentally funny at times.
2. For remembrance sake.

I should have started doing this a long time ago, but I just got the idea today.

So to start this series off, this is something that the E of AE Quotes said -

Sometimes when I get back from running, I’ll lay down on the floor because my sisters like to bring me ice and put towels on me and stuff. So I had just returned, and was laying on the ground when she started to blow air on my face from an inflatable sword that had a hole in it. I couldn’t feel the air, and she asked,

“Do you feel that?”

“No.”

“You just felt air blowing on your face.”

Ya they don’t take no for an answer.

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