WesBarth's Blog

Improvised Blog Topic

wesbarth — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:07:45 +0000

Since I don’t know what the blog topic for this week is, I’m just gonna talk about my plans for Thanksgiving Break are.

They are very simple plans that are rather generic. Work on my final project for EE100 and hang out with friends and family if I have time to do that. Sad as that seems, that project is due on the 3rd of December and I’ve got to make a poster presentation for it and print it at Kinkos (I’m not sure on the spelling). While I figured I knew quite a bit about computers, what I’m having to do for this project is actually quite different than what I am used to. Networking between computers, multi-threading using the POSIX standard, interfacing for command prompt programs, and making even calculators I can do, but this time I’m actually interfacing with the real-world through a Digital-to-Analog Converter. So sadly, that’s going to take up quite a bit of my time. At least I’ll probably still get a good Turkey Day dinner with my family and indirectly my cats. They love Thanksgiving Day and one can probably guess why. Lots of delicious food that day. I must say though, after that’s all done and enjoyed, I’m going to enjoy the break from school to be able to work on my project. Gotta love Thanksgiving Break

Thesis Statements

wesbarth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:29:22 +0000

Sadly, neither of my papers, two or three, strongly supported the thesis statements. Infact, they were barely there.

Here are my thesis statements:

Books should not be banned from High School levels and up. Below that level, banning can be justified.
Space program should live on?
I wasn’t very sure about this one since my third paper really was just rambling.

Stress Tips

wesbarth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:47:24 +0000

It’s getting close to the end of the semester. Things are piling up as expected. Sadly, that includes stress. As we get more stuff to do, we have less time relax and releave our stress. Though during times like these, I usually just start to sleep more and enjoy what free time I do get. If I don’t have any freetime, I make it. Usually my work goes to the trash when I’m stressed anyways, so doing it won’t help me at all if I want good grades. That doesn’t mean I stop doing it at all. Worst thing for your nerves when everything is piling and is due is to put stuff off until later. Too much free time will leave you time to forget or, in my case, worry about your upcomming due date and whether you will do a good job on the project. Thinking about a stressfull project just brings more stress and less solutions. A ten minute break helps flush my memory and I have to rethink everything I’ve been doing thus allowing me to catch conceptual flaws and the like. Another thing you can do in your free time is do something you enjoy doing. For instance, I found a PlayStation1 Emulator that allows me to play my old favorites that I grew up with on my laptop. I just put in the disc, load the emulator, play the game. Great fun for me and definitely helps me forget about all the stuff I’ve been doing for a little while, thus enabling me to have a whole new set of ideas for my work. Then again, it might be the fact that the menu has soothing music. Either way, it helps me out and releaves a good bit of stress, but then again, my back is gonna kill me if I sit here hunching over my laptop any longer.

Summary:

Sleep
Set aside free time.
Don’t slack off.
Do something fun in your free time. Preferably something that gets your mind off of your work.
Don’t sit hunched over on the floor all the time.

Halloween fun

wesbarth — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:22:38 +0000

Well, for Halloween, I went Trick or Treating as wrong as that sounds. Twas my last chance to go have fun on Halloween without going to some party or just hanging with friends like I do any other time of the year. So, even though I’m borderline to old, I went with some friends from highschool that luckily were still young enough. Unfortunately, it was very cold for some of my friends so we have to cut off at 9 pm. I must say that I am still quite sad that I can not go trick or treating anymore. I’m going to miss those good ole days when I was young enough to go gather candy and do funny tricks for people that ask.

Another bad side that I noticed again this year was a group of teenage guys ringing the doorbell at 10 pm long after our lights were out. They knocked and rang the doorbell quite a bit probably trying to wake people up. I must say that really irritated me because they were probably the reason that some of my friends had to be home by 9:30 pm anyways due to complaints of people who were pestered by such trick or treaters that try to get as much candy as possible even if it means waking up people that were asleep.

My big fear of tiny things

wesbarth — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:42:59 +0000

Well, quite frankly I’m afraid of spiders. Creepy little things they are. I know it’s kinda stupid to be afraid of them, but they just creep me out when they move. I’ve gotten better about them though I still insist on smashing them with something big. One might call that cruelty to life, but there’s supposedly enough spiders in the world to be one for every three square feet so I really don’t care. What’s two or three spiders per month going to the population of billions of spiders. Sure they kill insects too, but so do I if they enter my room. However, say a spider stays in one spot in a top room corner then I deal with them. So long as they stay away from me, they might be safe. Then again, in the corner, I can’t reliably smash them with anything and I don’t want them jumping onto me…

My Superpower Choice

wesbarth — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:01:38 +0000

To choose a single super power is very hard. Personally, I’d like invisability, time control, telepathy, and etc. I wouldn’t want all of course. Teleportation could get very tiresome after a while. Who knows, maybe I’ll teleport to in front of a fighter plane going super sonic. I can gaurentee that neither the pilot or I would be very happy about what would happen in the nano second after that if of course we ever found out. But after consideration, my choice of power would be telekinesis or the ability to apply a force with your mind. Many things can be done with that from moving volatile items to peircing the strongest of materials. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how I would use it for peoples benefit. I could do a wide variety of things from lumberjack or construction working to saving peoples lives by performing sergeries without needing to open them. Cancer could get destroyed by using telekinesis on an atomic level to pull molecules apart and remove the cancerous cells from the body without even needing to use the body’s waste system. Obviously, it would be very diffult to know what to do with it other than just grab another Mountain Dew out of the fridge while doing programming. Though I must say that buying soda would be interesting if you didn’t even need to get out of your chair and only needed to use telekinesis to fly money and a camera over to the store, grab a case, pay for it, and fly back the camera and case back home. Can’t do that with warm food though sadly. Food from BK would probably cool down by the time it gets to you, but that’s just life.

Fall Break

wesbarth — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:02:57 +0000

Well… Fall Break… That was fun. I thouroghly slacked off to my heart’s delight. I went hiking on Friday in hopes of being in that incoming storm. I was rather upset that it postponed till 5 pm to actually hit. The next day, I ended up going to Parkway Mall with my friends to hang out and plan Holloween a bit. Lets see… Then I actually got some work done on Sunday. Changed the oil in two of my family’s cars. Sadly, one of the cars was still a tad bit warm when I drained its oil… I highly recommend waiting at least two hours before changing the oil in a car after it has been run. Boiling oil was used in warfare and as a punishment for a very good reason…..

Sadly, as far as school work is concerned, I got absolutely none of it done. But then again, that is why I consider it a break. Lots of time to relax before getting back to work.

Breakup?

wesbarth — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:02:16 +0000

Well, I would talk about my worst breakup since it has more details, but I won’t, because it was the worst. The best was rather uneventful, thus making it the best. Literally, my girlfriend at the time chose to break up with me because I could not dance. Didn’t matter much by that time anyways since we couldn’t get together often anymore and had completely different types of friends. So really, it was just the easiest breakup. No hard emotions, just people moving on with their lives.

Parking

wesbarth — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:49:45 +0000

Parking at UAH. What a pain. Really I shouldn’t complain since I never have a problem parking and always find a very good spot where I want to park every day Monday to Friday. However, that spot I park in every other day is pretty far from where my classes are just because I don’t want to have to deal with parking anywhere near Morton Hall. I much rather be running out in front of cars that have to stop for me because I have the rightaway as a pedestrian, but I really must say that I feel sorry for the people always trying to park near the major areas during the day. I say during the day because I have a “night” class (I was confused when I first heard that my 5:30 class was considered a night class) at the Shelby Center and I’ve always parked in the same general spot every time. And there’s hardly ever any other cars in my way. For those that tend to have issues parking at Shelby, I would suggest parking in front of the Engineering Building as there’s typically a few slots open there even in the middle of the day and is a short walk away. I would complain about the parking costs, but I keep remembering that the pass is good for 13 months if I’m not mistaken, so there’s no worries there and it only gets slapped onto the tuition once which helps me in calculating what my spring tuition will be since it will probably be lower than the fall.

On a brighter note, I do find it funny watching people that can’t properly back out of their spaces and they take forever doing it, stopping and going even when no other cars are near them or even in the lane. Reminds me why I park in the less crowded areas.

On Partsch’s “Unbounded Misrepresentation”

wesbarth — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:07:17 +0000

It was far too obvious that this article was certianly against blogging. I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with specific parts of this article. As was quite simply stated, institution journalism is based on a collective view or a sponsored view by the owner or investers. The article went on to state that blogs are the views of their writers individually though I noticed that the article used “her” as the pronoun for the writer of a blog. While that may not be important, it stood out to me as I was reading. I noticed that the writer was being rather defensive of editorials and that blogging is of mere amateurs playing around with things they should be much like old nobility noticing peasants voicing an opinion of their own. I disagreed mainly with this overall opinion that blogs are like voices of people who do not matter or rather that the voice of the editorial should be more powerfull than that of the bloggers.