Inspired Intuition

At this point, it’s kind of ridiculous how many weeks I am behind on blog posts. It is a recurring todo item on my personal calendar, but I never quite find the time for it in the day. The worst part about that is that I have content for the blog. LifeHacker did a new summary of the MUST have free apps for the Mac, and I am meaning to supplement it with my 2 cents. I have started my internship (been doing it for 3 weeks now) and have already learned plenty of topics ranging from DNS to proper unit testing in a real development environment to learning Python (which is a very fun language). Sprinkled in amongst such activities and learning experiences, there have been news posts worth my comments (in my opinion), and other developments in my personal life that I have debated discussing and just haven’t for the same reason that there hasn’t been an update before now, I didn’t do it.

So, with that being said, I am working on a post on one of those subjects for later this week and hope to get that trend going again. I’m thinking that the first subject will be all the issues I’ve had during the past couple weeks with WordPress due to upgrading BurgerBlog to WordPress 3.0 without taking a database backup. So frustrating.

See you later this week!

Yeah, that’s right, I went to Israel. It was pretty awesome actually to get to see the country, not to mention it was an experience I won’t ever forget. Most would say that they won’t forget seeing Israel because they are more religious now, or because a sight in Israel really touched them, but for us, this trip was all about the connections to others that we made. The group of people that we had the opportunity to go with was absolutely awesome! I could not imagine a better group of people. By the end of it, we were more akin to family than simply close friends. I will go through some of the sights we got the opportunity to see, and then talk about the best part of the trip a bit further. The trip itself is called “Taglit-Birthright” and is a free opportunity that college students can take advantage of, if they are between the age of 18 and 25.

So every day was basically non-stop. We were doing 12 hour days from the time we touched down in Israel. Our plane left Newark airport at 2:30 PM on 5/10, and hence landed at 7:30 AM on 5/11 (local time) in Israel. Not one to waste time, we were seeing sights all day WITHOUT any sleep for pretty much any of us. We landed, and started the trip in Jaffa. From there, we went to a market for lunch and then moved on to Independence Hall in Tel Aviv and Rabin Square. Independence Hall is where the country was declared a sovereign Jewish state, and Rabin Square is where Rabin (one of the leaders of Israel in the 90′s) was killed during his term. We then ended the first day on Mount Scopus.

Mount Scopus deserves a little bit more of a description. Firstly, it is just outside of Jerusalem, and gives a gorgeous view of the city along with the Dome of the Rock. Also, it is the home of one of the Israeli universities and did I mention it is gorgeous up there at sunset? This is where they welcomed us, officially, to Israel, served us challah and wine, and provided some music to encourage some ethnic dancing (of which there was lots of). At this point, we have ONLY had one day in Israel, and that hasn’t even included sleep yet!

The next day started with a tour of the Jewish Quarter of the old city, and a little exploring around there, but was focused around the visit to the Western Wall. I had REALLY high expectations about the connection I would feel when I got to touch the Western Wall, but I unfortunately had TOO high of expectations for the experience. When I touched the Wall, I only saw all the people around me who were affected more, and I regret not taking the moment to truly go within myself. I wish I had allowed myself to be more introspective, but sadly I did not, and this is the ONLY regret of my entire trip!

The Western Wall was followed by dinner and a thing they called the “Mega Event,” but that was just a huge opportunity for them to talk about how great Birthright is and how it has been around for 10 years, etc. The next day started early with a talk from a man named Avraham Infeld. As speakers go, Avraham was amazingly good, and the sad room he talked to us in was an embarrassment to the message he was trying to tell us. The greatest quote from him was that “Judaism is not a religion” and that it is a culture and a people and a connection that we all have. He continued by telling us many stories about his life experiences, how he grew up hearing that Judaism is not a religion, and that to others, Judaism is a religion and not a culture. It depends on the person, their upbringing, and many other factors that shape that opinion in a Jew’s life. However, the crux to it all was that we are all a family. We are connected to each other in an almost indescribable manner that goes deeper than any religion truly can (he also inserted a plug here for all of us to move to Israel). His talk was definitely a highlight and learning experience!

We then followed Avraham’s talk with a visit to Yad Vashem. For those who don’t know, Yad Vashem is a Holocaust Memorial Museum. But calling it that understates its importance and connection to anyone and everyone who has learned about the Holocaust, not just Jews and other peoples who lost loved ones during World War II. You can equate much of the memorial to the one in Washington D.C., and as a result, many of the images had been seen by me before and were a little less profound, but the final room is where I was truly touched. Of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, they have managed to collect in this final room boxes upon boxes of identifying information for 3 million of the men, women, and children who died. For many of them, this includes pictures of them before the war and information about their birthdays and country of origin. For others it is simply a name and the signature of a relative who survived saying it was so. Seeing this room, being able to truly grasp the enormity of 3 million, really hit home for me compared to the entirety of the rest of the memorial.

The next day, we met the soldiers who would be with us for the next 5 days, and volunteered at a local soup kitchen. Since the soldiers were THE highlight of the trip, let me say a little bit more about them here, and then I’ll move on to a description of Mount Herzl. In America, we imagine soldiers as burly men, or the depiction of them in Jarhead and other movies. Israeli soldiers are very different. Their military is based upon all men and women serving 3 years, and being in the reserves well into their 40′s (or maybe right up to 40). As a result, the soldiers are no different than myself when out of uniform. The group of 8 soldiers who joined our group for 5 days had something even more special than that. They connected with us. Each and everyone one of the 40 people who went to Israel in our group. We hung out with them at night, joked with them during the tour, cried with them at Mount Herzl and at departure, and connected with them at a level akin to the lifelong connections that people typically make over the course of years. All in just 5 days! They are our family, and we are theres. As if the group of people we flew to Israel with weren’t awesome enough, we got there and met these soldiers who truly resonated with us and will always be part of the memories that this trip gave each and everyone of us.

Mount Herzl is what Americans would call a cemetery for the Israeli soldiers who have died for the state of Israel. To Israeli’s, and clearly to anyone who visits it, it is more akin to a memorial of what people are capable of when they truly believe in their cause. There are stories for each and every grave, some of camaraderie, others of bravery, and many of commitment and believing in what they fight for. Even to the most staunch anti-Zionists, the stories that accompany the sight of the graves is moving.

Shabbat services were led by a member of our group, and would have been great if the other buses had been more respectful. Also, I have never heard so many diverse and different tunes for the same songs. Who uses the tune of Yankee Doodle? The next day was Shabbat, and the first time that we had some time to relax, and we used it! The majority of the day was spent sleeping, and it was a good thing that we got so much rest, because the next day started with hiking Masada. For those who don’t know, Masada was the site of the Jewish Zealots’ last stand against the Roman Legionnaires where, the night before the Romans were going to overrun the outpost of Masada, after a terribly long siege, the Zealots took their own lives to never surrender, so that they would “die as free men” instead of under the whip or sword as defeated men. The hike up was not easy, since we climbed up the Snake Path (a series of many, many switchbacks that took us up about 400+ meters in elevation to the top), but the hike back down was on the Roman Path, which was a straight shot done, and much easier to do.

After our hike, we got to ride camels, and float in the Dead Sea before we headed to the hotel. Israel without getting the experience of riding a camel is not worth the money, I’m glad we got to do that, even if the ride was short. Floating in the Dead Sea is… painful. Imagine the saltiest water you’ve ever seen (it creates salt crystals on the bottom in lieu of a sand bed) getting into any cut, nick, or orifice, and multiply that by 4. For anyone who had a cut, it stung like hell. If you got it in your eye or nose, that hurt to no end and you were out of the water in a snap to rinse. But just staying in the water eventually causes is to get into areas that most prefer not to talk about, and that stinging is just annoying. With all that being said, floating in the Dead Sea is a true experience!

The highlights of the next day were a nature walk in the Tel Dan Nature Reserve, standing atop the Golan Heights, and rafting down the Jordan River. The walk was really cool because the area was very nice, we got to see the ruins of a Canaanite temple, and we were able to see the border of Lebanon. Later that day, we went up the Golan Heights and were able to look out from atop the mountain, through the haze since it was a bit rainy, and see the border of Syria. Then rafting down the Jordan was TONS of fun (once people got into the mood of it). We started out with a bunch of people who just didn’t want to be splashed by the cool water, but by the end of it, everyone was splashing each other, jumping from one boat to the other, and dragging people into the water. It was tons of fun (and I ended up with a broken sandal from the experience).

The following day was the saddest day of our entire trip. It was our last day with the soldiers, and saying good bye to people who we had connected to so thoroughly was difficult at best. You know the song Absolutely (Story of a Girl)? Well we cried 40 rivers that all drowned the world!!! We sat in a circle and basically kept talking about how much none of us ever expected to connect to each other and to the soldiers at half the level that we did, and there were SO many tears! The rest of the day from then on was pretty much shot. That evening was Shavuot, which was delicious! The rest of the night was spent with everyone just kind of going to bed. The next day included bnei mitzvah services and naming ceremonies on the beach in Nahariya, which were beautiful! We hung out on the beach for the rest of the day and then were surprised by some of the soldiers when we got back to the hotel. It was so awesome to get to see some of them just one more time and we went out that night and had a great last night together at a couple bars on the beach. Was a stellar way to end the trip minus the fact that many of us didn’t bother going to bed since we were leaving the hotel at 4:30 AM.

Overall, the trip was absolutely awesome! There are precious few moments in life that I would be willing to trade for the memories that I have from Israel. I love everyone who we were with and all 8 soldiers! You are all awesome and that was the most fucking Taglit trip of my life!!!

I know that I’ve been away from the blog for a while, and expect to be away until at least Friday, if not Monday of next week. Yes, I know that I consider Friday a normal post, but I am not considering TODAY a full post in any way. Essentially I just wanted to fill in my limited reader base with why I have been absent.

Initially it was just a level of laziness and not really wanting to blog about anything over Spring Break (the week of March 22-26), and then last week I just didn’t really think about it. Funny how getting out of the habit of doing something makes it hard to get back into the routine. Regardless, I’ll actually have something worth talking about after this coming weekend because my family and I are attending a family reunion for my father’s side of the family tree. Should be interesting, if not enjoyable. We shall see either way.

Till then.

The weekend was definitely a busy one. Between having/attending a party at a friends’ place and then spending the rest of the weekend doing homework (had an assignment for my Algorithms class and a group paper for my Ethics class to finish), it was a very busy, but productive weekend. I got all the work done (eventually), and had a great time Friday night! I’d rant a bit about my Ethics assignments not being clear enough, but I don’t think that’s really necessary when I have better fodder to write about in the form of my Marketing online homework submissions.

So the system is called Management by the Numbers and the site/product is completely new. At the beginning of the semester, they provided us with accounts according to the school we are in and the number we were on the roster (I assume that’s how the number was generated at least). So, the format would be gtxxx, and they initially gave EVERYONE in these classes the EXACT SAME PASSWORD! I noticed this immediately in the email that they sent out to us regarding what our login credentials were. As someone who wants to professionally doing information security for a living post undergrad, I just cringed when I saw this. To make matters worse, I did the first assignment on the WRONG username because ALL the passwords were the same. Of course, I didn’t realize that was the issue when I saw a 0 for the grade, but only after contacting the professor and TA about the issue did it become apparent “Aaron, your username is gtxxx.” “OH MY GOODNESS, I did the homework on the wrong username, I did it on gtxxy.”

After further discussion, I discovered that the company was “working on” a password change “feature,” which I consider standard in ANY login system. I almost asked for a contract to write the code to do it in PHP out of frustration, but thankfully I didn’t because I have had a bunch on my plate this semester. Overall, it was really disappointing. The funny part, that’s not even what I wanted to show with this blog post.

When I was doing the assignment that was originally due tomorrow, I found a few interesting bugs in it (causing the due date change). The first one had to do with an algorithm that was used to obtain the answer for a problem. It was supposed to be:

(($23.90 – 10) / (.71 * $23.90 – 10)) – 1 = 0.99

Instead of:

(($23.90 – 10) / (.75 * $23.90 – 10)) – 1 = 0.75

You see, the .71 in the correct answer was because it was supposed to have a 29% decrease (in this problem, since that number is dynamic) in price for the comparison, but the algorithm had been setup for a static 25% decrease in price instead. This caused correct answers to be completely wrong.

The more interesting bug, pictured to the right, had to do with precision. They were taking the number out to multiple decimal places, and requiring precision according to that, but the dollar amounts were automatically rounding as we expect cents to do. The end result was that a correct answer was STILL wrong. Of course, this was extremely frustrating for me at first, until I thought to myself “I wonder if it will accept the decimal written ALL the way out (I think I did 6 places just to be over accurate). It worked of course, since the issue had to do with their accuracy, but displaying it as a whole cent was extremely confusing. Regardless, I have finished the assignment and the due date has been pushed back to this Thursday now.

So, I’ve switched hosting over at this point to windfirehosting.com, a hosting reseller account that some of my friends and I setup a while back. My hosting account was going to expire on the 14th of the month and I felt like it was time to move it over. So the last 10 days or so have been spent waiting for DNS registries to reflect the changes I have made to them, getting the DBs moved over, and uploading all the files. I ran into a few interesting snags while doing the migration, but also learned quite a bit in the process of doing it.

First, I used to be hosted at Startlogic. They did a more than adequate job of hosting my sites over the last 6 years along with keeping their 99.whatever% uptime. There was only one snag that I was aware of that caused a loss of access to my sites, though that one lasted about 24 hours. Regardless, they did a good job of hosting me, but their prices increased in one of the previous 2 payment cycles to $6 per month from $5 per month. Not a huge price hike, but noticeable, especially when my friends and I have already setup this reseller hosting account for a cost of $5 per month. The solution, to me, was pretty obvious: just move my sites over to it.

There was one downside to this, Startlogic had all the domain names registered through them. This meant that I had NO idea what was involved in this process or how to modify it. So, after calling Startlogic’s support, I found out that I could downgrade my account instead of moving registrars too so that I could just manage my domains through them, and that I just had to change the domains to point to the new name servers. Of course, that’s skipping about 20 steps in the process of getting there, both with their tech support and with DB issues, cpanel access issues, and FTP access failures, but you don’t want or need the full story there. Once I knew how to change the name server information, I was all set… minus the fact that it takes 24-48 hours for registries to reflect the changes. So literally 6 or so times a day, I would ping the domain names to see if they were pointing to the correct IP yet. Took a while, but they finally were pointing to the right place, then I was able to solve the DB issues, then things became much smoother for the second domain (I chose to move one domain at a time so that at least mostperfect.net would be up and running while I made changes to rachelburger.com).

So, assuming that all goes according to plan and Startlogic doesn’t just decide to close my domains (which are renewed), or change where they are pointing, this should be the new home of the websites that I run (for personal use, not including the other websites that I manage). Overall, it wasn’t too painless, but I didn’t want to post to a database that was just going to be migrated shortly thereafter, so I postponed posts till now. I should have content for the next few posts, so till next time.

The weather outside is positively… frightful! It’s basically a tease of “here’s some snow… but there’s no reason it should be cold enough for any of it to stick to the ground and roads so just keep dreaming of that snow day that you should have had students!” What a waste! Regardless, it is extremely wet and just plain not fun outside right now. Hopefully the rest of this week will be nicer, considering that I think it’s supposed to get back up into the 50′s and 60′s again.

So I am SICK of GT Housing. They really did not do a very good job of taking care of us during the course of the past year, and enough is enough. I’m now looking for an off-campus apartment to share with my roommate for the Fall and Spring semesters. The plan is for a 2-man apartment that is near Tech and hopefully relatively well furnished. We should be able to get our hands on a deal that is relatively cheap, and are aiming at about 700-775 per month per person including utilities. A more complete list of what we want in an apartment presently:

• Furnishings: we are college students and hence don’t have to desire to go out and get furnishings only to move it in the next 12 months from the signing of the lease.
• Washer and Dryer: we aren’t going to a laundromat under any circumstance, if the washer and dryer isn’t at least in the apartment complex then you can forget it, but most of the floor plans that we’ve seen so far include washer and dryer in most 2-man apartments.
• Parking: if we can’t park at the apartment, what’s the point?
• Safety: being able to safely take a walk outside is a no-brainer.
• A kitchen with dishwasher, stove, oven, and fridge: without these we wouldn’t eat, end of story!
• Bathroom per bedroom in the apartment: we have no problem with sharing a bathroom at present, but boy would having one to ourselves be nice!
• A balcony that we can sit on: 2 reasons for this, we would be ensured not to be on the first floor, the most commonly broken into floor in most apartment complexes, and we would not have to walk out of the building to enjoy some fresh air.

Some bonuses

• Being able to have pets: I would love to be able to have a pet in my apartment, my girlfriend wants to get me a kitty for my birthday (which I would LOVE), but if we find a sweet deal on a nice place with the only stipulation being no pets, we might just have to take it.
• Having a shuttle/bus to and from Tech would be great!
• Being within a shorter driving distance is preferred.
• Being to the east of Tech would put us closer to Agnes Scott, which would be a big bonus for both of us since we are both dating Agnes women.

This week we are going to do some apartment shopping and will be making some calls. We are also going to try a site called promove.com. It looks pretty cool, but we don’t have all the details about how to actually utilize their services. Should this list change, I’ll post accordingly.

Alright, so first off, if only people wouldn’t post spam to these WordPress blogs. As a lot of you know (yes, all 3 of you readers), my girlfriend is keeping a blog while she is studying abroad in China this semester. Unfortunately, China blocks blogs in general, so she just emails me the posts and I update the blog for her. This also means that I have to do all other maintenance and advertisements though through her Facebook and Twitter accounts, but that’s beside the point. The maintenance is the important, and sometimes annoying part. She gets a bunch of spam comments from all sorts of sources, and it’s funny how most of them actually read like a normal human commenting. Some have the shit grammar that would be expected, but a few read normally, and almost pertain to the post. As a rule though, I have noticed that if there is a website listed with the comment, or if the commenter makes their name something that is a product name or a site name, then I just delete them. As a result, I’ve probably deleted a few legit comments from her blog, but it is difficult at best to tell what’s legit and what’s not. I haven’t installed a captcha system (the pictures with the random characters that you have to type in so it makes sure you aren’t a robot), so I can’t eliminate the spam unfortunately.

As for the “Playing God” part of this post. This is actually an old article that I meant to write about a while back, but it reminds me of Jurassic Park… They are trying to resurrect the Galapagos Tortoises, the ones that were there before Darwin’s famed visit. You know how fruit farmers will splice together certain strains of plants to make new produce like Nectarines from Peaches and Plums? Well, that’s what they are trying to do with tortoises and breeding. At least they aren’t trying to transfuse the DNA of the ancient animals with modern embryo or whatever nonsense they had in Jurassic Park, but it’s a close second in my book! Here’s the article: Mother Nature Network.

I have been waiting for this to happen on one of the carriers and it has finally come about. Verizon is now willing to support Skype as a mobile app! Of course, after further reading, it looks like it won’t behave properly over wi-fi and will exclusively use Verizon’s network, but still this is great news for either mobile companies to lower their prices to compete with Skype’s low per minute costs, or just switch everyone to a data plan. We shall see which happens, but most notable is the fact that this reduces, nay, basically eliminates long distance and international calling charges that we would normally incur as long as the person we are calling has their own Skype account and is online. Also, it is worthy to note that when you are without wireless signal but have wi-fi, can always just hop on the laptop to make these phone calls at pennies to the dollar.

What I’m waiting for now is Skype to have an enterprise solution that will switch entire businesses to Skype… course that probably will require Skype to get a bit larger.

So I am mildly surprised that I am finding the time to write a post today considering my work load. It isn’t even really a matter of a huge homework load as it is that I have been pretty busy from when I woke up this morning till now when I am taking a break from doing my algorithms homework. Had 2 group meetings, attended my professor’s office hours, attended my classes today, and did homework for the rest of it. Overall, I’m impressed that I can say I am feeling comfortable about where my work is at.

In other news, I am thinking about looking into the described “waiting to happen” disasters here for a future blog post. Possibly for Friday? I was thinking about writing instead about one of my other planned posts like college student finances and my opinion on how it is done (and how well it has worked for me).

Lastly, this weekend was Valentine’s Day as so many of you got to enjoy. Unfortunately, I was unable to spend the “holiday” with my own girlfriend since she is 14,000 miles away and all. It was actually really depressing this weekend with my lack of motivation to do my homework and my desire to procrastinate leading to me reading about how great everyone else’s V-Day had gone with their significant other or as “Singles Awareness Day” for them. Overall, Sunday was not the greatest, that is until I got a phone call from my girlfriend wishing me a happy Valentine’s Day, which brightened my entire day. Moral of the story? It is amazing what a simple phone call can do for someone’s mood, especially when all they want is to hear from that certain someone.

Firstly, I really have to figure out a better way to remind myself to do blog posts than my present system. Working on it so I don’t miss days like I did with last Friday.

So, why do I even have an opinion on what the teaching process should be? The answer is simple (-edit: the answer turned out to not be simple at all, but rather long winded and possibly off point-), I have been exposed to a large number of different teaching styles and techniques over the course of my life because of the diverse schools I have attended so far in my life. Personally, I love the Montessori technique and entire methodology and will, to this day, claim that it is a HUGE contributor to my present level of academic success (we won’t discuss how hypocritical it is to try to measure your own academic success in any manner other than GPA, and even that is flawed). For those people who don’t know, Montessori focuses on teaching the student at the student’s pace and giving the student tangible ways to see how intangible, and sometimes convoluted, concepts work. I may have missed some other principles of the Montessori technique, but those are what I got out of my own Montessori education.

Unfortunately, my Montessori education only lasted through 6th grade and from there I went to a more traditional school setting that included desks in rows and a teacher lecturing at the front of the classroom. This of course was simply a precursor to college, but it was on a small enough scale that I was able to continue to learn at “my pace” simply by having the opportunity to easily learn 1 on 1 with the teacher if I so needed. I did learn that I suck at receiving things in an auditory only format and I am STILL a slow writer (by hand that is, computers have really changed that).

My college education is now upon me (and somehow is only a year from finishing already…), and I am seeing that not all teachers picked up or experienced the better teaching practices along the way to becoming a teacher themselves. I have experienced some of the best and some of the worst teachers at Tech in 2009. The two professors that I consider the best that I have had while at Tech were good because of similar, but not exactly the same reason. The first, during the spring semester of 2009, was quite simply engaging and knew all of the students who attended class by their first names. The second one was a little less engaging (a much larger class), but the subject was one that I have a great amount of interest in (Information Security).

In the fall, I also had the incredible misfortune of taking a course from the worst teacher in my educational career (i.e. my entire life so far). The professor was unprepared for class, couldn’t answer questions in class without lots of thought, and would usually opt for answering a question in a later class. Overall, I learned nothing from this professor in a subject I had hoped to learn quite a bit from (Computer Networking 1) and am now unable to take the follow-up to this course because I don’t feel that I have the knowledge required.

So that whole long introduction brings me around to why I am even writing this blog post in the first place. It is my belief that the teacher should understand a subject better than his or her own students and that the teacher should come with the expectation that he or she are going to teach the students something new during the next class period. Instead, I have lately been confronted with a teacher that expects us to learn the entire concept BEFORE class on our own and then come to class so she can tell us that we are either wrong about what we learned, unguided, or that we should have learned the information already so that she can ask rhetorical questions of the classroom at large and not give anyone the time to answer. Overall, while the course is VERY structured with in class assignments every time we meet for class, so it is pretty easy to keep up, the professor’s style and attitude towards us as students completely turns me off to the course as a whole. I will of course finish out the semester with this class, but I do not find her teaching style to my own benefit. For all future students, it is her last year teaching this course, so don’t worry about it.