Post Something Here

As is the norm when I find my way back here, I want to blog, but I'm semi-unsure what an appropriate topic would be. More specifically, a topic that I have any knowledge and insight on that would be worthwhile to share. I suppose I could share the latest happenings in my life. By squatting my name in a domain, I don't have a lot of reasonable expectation for privacy already, and have added to that fact by posting a brief life history.

In the time between my last post and today, quite a bit has happened. My dad passed away at the beginning of April, which was easily the most difficult day/week/month of my life. I doubt I'm over the shock even yet, but it is easier to handle the loss now than it was a month and a half ago. It's just weird coming home expecting him to be there watching TV or something and him not. Mom and I have been trying to completely change our lives in the meantime and take over the tasks he had been doing.

Also since that last post, I finished up college and graduated. I have my diploma. It's official. That was one of the happiest days of my life. Walking up, shaking hands with the TTU President, and knowing that I'm finished with undergraduate college was a major reliever of stress.

At this point, it's welcome to the real world for Chris. I've started working full time and have already experienced "Real Work" in terms of what a full time engineer does. Tomorrow morning, a new intern starts and I get to train her (yes 'her') in all the stuff that I used to do as I transition on to customer tasks. That's going to be a strange experience, but not as strange as me not (necessarily) going back to school in the fall.

I'm a real man now. Well, more of a man. I am no longer in school. No longer dependent on parents. No longer expecting an education in a classroom environment. Now I have to take care of my own bills and expenses.

The real world sucks.

Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit. I've already been taking care of a lot of my own expenses and have grown more independent. I've worked for several years in the "real world" and have a general idea what to expect. The real world does suck, but it's not as bad as some college graduates who, all of a sudden, are on their own and have no idea how to fend for themselves. Their parents paid for their college education throughout the past 4/5 years, and they haven't really had to pay for anything. Now the money's run dry and the need for food is still prevalent.

This is why I feel like I was blessed for being forced to pay for my own stuff. My parents helped out only when I absolutely could not take care of it myself. They went into more debt for me after I couldn't pay the bills. Because of that, I feel more independent than others. I feel obligated to pay back a lot of what my parents did for me, now that I have a good paying job.

I full heartedly believe it is important to pay for everything you can and not to rely on others, especially parents. In the off-chance that your reliance runs out from overuse, what are you then going to do? Whereas if you've been taking care of yourself thus far, if you must fall back on someone, it'll be easier for them to help you.

Something to think about.

Today's post, boys and girls, is on the subject of piracy. Piracy is the act of copying music or software for your own use without paying for it. Circumventing any security and just really saying "Um, mine" to the software companies. It's rampant and its destroying America and families. And I'm here to put a stop to it!.

Actually, no.

Piracy is copyright infringement. Simply put, it is not theft. Theft is taking something for your own and leaving the original owner with nothing. Since the method of purchasing music involves making a copy from the servers upstream, piracy is not that much different. They make copies of the music for their own and leave the original untouched. Hence, piracy != theft. (Does not equal)

So why is the DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, and half of the world all up in arms about this? Because their claim is that piracy robs them of potential sales. Let me break down the pirate into three different categories.

1) Someone who stole the music, listened to it, decided he hates it, never buys it.
2) Someone who stole the music, listened to it, loves it, purchases the album.
3) Someone who stole the music and never intended on buying it in the first place.

Which one of those three robs the music industry on a sale? Only number 1. Number 2 actually increases sales and number 3 will never ever ever rob the music industry of a sale.

Piracy has caused a lot of uproar with lawsuits from the RIAA as they take people to court suing for a ridiculous amount of money. An example: Last June, the RIAA filed a lawsuit looking to get $80,000 per SONG from a copyright infringer. The jury awarded them $1.92 million.

To put that in focus:

Ignoring the jail sentence, the maximum fine for a Class A felony is around $30,000.
Ignoring the jail sentence, the maximum fine for a Class A misdemeanor is around $3,000.

It costs you MORE money to copy 1 song illegally than to murder someone. Again, this is ignoring the jail sentence, as a life sentence will likely cost you in potential money you could've gained. Then again, you've got free room and board for the rest of your life.

It just bothers me that the MPAA, RIAA, and DMCA, can get away with this ridiculous malicious activity. It's further proof that the justice system still doesn't understand the Internet and how it works. Marketers are still trying to apply 20th century plans for 21st century technology. The justice system is doing the same thing.

Blegh.

There's a lot that I'd like to blog about. In the past week alone, way too much has happened. For some reason, I'm feeling a bit stressed; I have a feeling I know all the causes behind it, it just doesn't make sense why I'm stressed. In addition, I've had to deal with the frustrations of people I know and the people I'm around.

But I won't talk about that tonight. Another night, maybe.

Tonight, I just wanted to blog in hopes that my troubled mind will calm down and I can start doing stuff again. Apple came out with the next greatest thing in feminine hygene prod...what's that? Oh ... the iPad is a tablet machine that is supposed to do less than the iPhone does, but faster.

I suppose you can tell that I'm not thrilled beyond belief by this technological breakthrough. In fact, I saw a picture posted to Reddit this evening that described my feelings exactly. Apparently, Google responded to the iPad by releasing their own "tablet"... Google engineers quoted as saying development "took about six hours."

The iPad isn't all that great. But it's an Apple product and the fanboys will buy it up as soon as it goes on the market and Steve Jobs will get richer and richer. I would consider buying one myself if it weren't for two deal breakers.

1) It's insanely expensive (I still think the Kindle is too expensive to be worth it.)
2) No multi-tasking functionality.

Seriously? No multi-task? I know $150 netbooks that have more functionality than this thing. Seeings as how the iPad is an oversized iPhone, why isn't that functionality already in place? But I digress...

I'm having a rather difficult time finding comfort lately; both physically and mentally. I've got so much I'd rather do and 0 time in which to do it. Not necessarily bad, but I'm tired of school. I want to be done. I've got a fair amount of homework whose due date is rapidly approaching and yet night after night, like tonight, I put it off. This is not going to end well.

In addition, I'm seriously considering grad school. I need to. I should. But I'm tired of academia. I absolutely loved the college life (what little I've participated in), but academia can go away.

Add that to the fact that I'm currently single, just starting to get to the social level I want, have no serious ties to home except for my job, and still live at home (because it's cheap). I live a decently conflicted life. By June, I hope to have some of this resolved. Maybe I'll feel better. Who knows? Welcome to the real world probably won't seem that much different since I've been testing the waters out for the past 4-ish years.

Overall, I'm not sure what to expect of this upcoming semester. New technology is coming out, I'm "learning" new information, and I'm about to enter the next stage of life. This stage is a long one. I've got my gripes. I run through various scenarios in my head multiple times daily over things that bother me. Usually so that it doesn't happen in real time.

That all being said ... I wish things were a bit differently handled. I wish things would happen ... better. I can't complain too much because I've live a good life with good friends. But that "good"ness makes the bad stuff stick out like a sore thumb, and I just have to figure out how to get around it.

IMPORTANT! You need to follow these instructions EXACTLY or the script to generate your code will not work on this site!

1.) Join the site by clicking the "Create new account" button on the right-hand side of the page. You must be a member of the site to actually get your free stuff!

2.) In the address bar, copy the entire address and paste it into an email to send to your friends.

3.) Send this to everyone in your address book.

4.) Lastly, say goodbye to any friends you may have had before you sent out this nice friendly blogspam.

***************************************************************************

Every so often (READ: once daily), I get an invitation on Facebook that says "Free _______!" with identical instructions. Join the group, click "Invite your friends", type in some javascript that automagically selects all of your friends, click send, and then go visit some site that somehow knows if you invited all 423 of your friends instead of just 422 of them.

Sites outside of the Facebook conglomeration have no idea how many friends you've invited, or if you've invited any at all. Facebook only reveals to the group or page owner how many people have added that page to their profile. In essence, the group owner can see the join count rising, but wouldn't know who's to blame for that rise in numbers.

In addition, in may cases, the site they tell you to visit is an off-Facebook, bad site that wants nothing more than to infect your computer or get information from you. Case-in-point: Just for kicks, I navigated to a Blogspot blog that redirected me to some other site that presented me with the following warning:

"You must disable or remove Adblock to visit this website."

First of all, I should have to disable anything to visit a site. Secondly, I run with Adblock in most instances (and have run with NoScript) in others to protect me from malware running in the specific sites. Why should it matter to a content owner if I'm blocking their ads?

I cautiously disables Adblock on this site just to see what was so super secret that required me to view ads. On the resulting page, it reinformed me that I needed to invite all of my friends and then enter my Facebook.com email address, else the script would not mark me eligible to receive my free gift. Note that no ads were visible on the page.

This is known as a scam. At least in my book, it is. As far as I know, if you set your privacy settings in Facebook to keep people from seeing your email address, typing in your email address on this form so they can compare it somehow to the group will not work. If it does, then Facebook has some explaining to do about why outside random no-name companies offering free stuff have access to information that some people on my "friends" list do not.

Mozy.com offers what they call "Free Account Friday" where you can post in your status that you've entered the contest, then post on the Mozy Facebook page. On Monday, the representative randomly chooses someone, befriends them for a few minutes to verify the status and then awards them the prize.

All in all, I've seen way too many of these pop up recently and I felt the need to express my concern. I will never give any of my personal information to any of these types of groups just because I know that what they're tricking people into believing is not physically possible with the technology Facebook provides through their pages. You should totally be careful about this as well.

So it was a couple of days, but I need to post the remainder of my story before 2009 ends.

Entering college was a completely strange and new experience. Not that I hated it, but it was new. Trying to find classes that first semester; I really felt out of place. I wasn't a complete fan of some of the buildings, and if you looked at my first semester GPA, you'd realize that I wasn't a complete fan of my classes. I ended up getting through it, luckily, and will be graduating in May.

During my college career, I joined up with the Goin' Band from Raiderland. I was worried during the audition process because there were cuts. In fact, I didn't see my name immediately when looking at the list and was worried I didn't make the band. Luckily, I did. At the pressure of friends, I rushed Kappa Kappa Psi. I haven't regretted that decision yet.

My sophomore year, I started doing better in most of my classes. I was involved in a couple of honors classes that didn't always agree with me. I was an active in the Alpha Omicron chapter and getting ready to take on leadership positions. I had also become a bandwagon driver and began to work more heavily with the band program.

In my junior year, I had become the Recording Secretary for KKY as well as the webmaster. I began to take on different roles inside the organization just to get things done and make them better. Classes were getting better. I finished my lower level core classes and was able to start taking classes in my major. That was getting fun and exciting as well.

That spring, I got the wonderful opportunity to go to Baton Rouge for the Southwest District Convention. Wonderful experience where I got to see a taste of KKY and TBS in the rest of the of the nation. Those of us in KKY that went also got to bond more with our sisters. They hit a series of unfortunate events and we were able to take care of them in many drastic situations.

That summer, I got yet another wonderful opportunity. I traveled to Phoenix, AZ for the KKY/TBS National Convention. This was truly amazing. I met so many different people that were there to promote the band program. They were there for the same reason. The workshops were extraordinary. The people were friendly. I made many new friends, several of which I stay in occasional contact with and one that I stay in regular contact with. It was truly a memorable experience that I will not forget for a long time. I can hardly wait for the next one.

Going home, we took a sidetrip to Vegas and got to do some casino hopping. It was a lot to do in one night, but I did get to see a lot of the big hotels, the fountain show at the Bellagio, and lose 3 bucks on the slot machines. Well worth it, in my opinion.

This fall has been surreal as it's become more apparent that I'm finished with Goin' Band, I'm almost finished as an active in KKY, and I'm almost finished with the college life. I'll get through it, but it's yet another change I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for. Or ready to experience.

Throughout these last 5 years, I have been working with an organization that I truly enjoy. It's been an incredible experience and I've definitely learned a lot. I know that through my work here, I'll be more ready for any real world situations after I get out of college.

Overall, I do have a few regrets of how I spent the last several years. I would definitely like to change them, now that I'm about to graduate and leave the undergrad college life. Who know what the future holds, but I'm sure anxious to see it. All in all, a wonder 2009 and I hope that 2010 is just as amazing.