Sunday, September 27, 2009
Win7 Part 2
I can't figure out how to fix the boot loader for 7, so I'm cutting my losses before I do much configuration. I'm reinstalling, carefully this time.
Windows 7 Install Log
I've given in. I'm going to give Windows 7 another try. We get the RTM free through the MSDNAA. The last time I tried, I was using the RC and couldn't install a HP Laserjet 4100, the most standard laser printer in the world. So I gave up, but now I'm back.
Here's what happened so far:
Backup: I wanted to install Win 7 at the beginning of a my RAID 0 array for maximum speed. I took all the data on my storage drive, and distributed it across my XP array and an old IDE drive that I keep around for times of need such as this. Total time to backup ~120 GB: a couple of hours.
Next, I needed to repartition my storage array. I found a pretty nice, free tool (EASEUS) which allowed me to place a 100 GB partition at the beginning of my storage array. I made another partition out of the other 260GB in that array to use as storage. After deleting partitions, reformatting, and moving all of my storage data back to my new storage partition, I was ready to install Windows 7 several hours later.
We get images from Microsoft over the local LAN. Download time for the 4 GB image of 7 was only a few minutes. Then I realized I didn't have a DVD to burn it on to. I scalped a DVD from a kid down the hall. Burning the image with ImgBurn took a while. I took a few days off at this point.
This morning, I woke up, placed the DVD in the drive, and restarted. I had to change my boot order to boot from the CD first. The installer opens up and begins extracting. I wait. A little less than an hour later, it claims that it needs to restart. When XP restarts during install, you are ready to boot off of the hard drive. Apparently, you must boot off of the DVD again with 7. It finished installing and then restarted again. This time I was sure it would use the hard drive. But alas, NTLDR was missing. I tried to boot from the DVD again; it loaded NTLDR from the DVD and proceeded to boot me to 7. (As of this writing, I still have to use NTLDR from the DVD, I can't boot directly from the hard drive).
First thing I did when I got into 7: open up IE 8. After blowing through some initial setup, I promptly went to getfirefox.com and downloaded the real web browser. Next I got some essentials: Notepad++, Daemon Tools Lite, FoxIt PDF reader, Pidgin, Java, Flash Player, and Eclipse. For some reason, flash player doesn't seem to be taking well. I also had to get some sound drivers since 7 didn't install a default one.
Here goes my restart after install the drivers, see you on the other side!
Here's what happened so far:
Backup: I wanted to install Win 7 at the beginning of a my RAID 0 array for maximum speed. I took all the data on my storage drive, and distributed it across my XP array and an old IDE drive that I keep around for times of need such as this. Total time to backup ~120 GB: a couple of hours.
Next, I needed to repartition my storage array. I found a pretty nice, free tool (EASEUS) which allowed me to place a 100 GB partition at the beginning of my storage array. I made another partition out of the other 260GB in that array to use as storage. After deleting partitions, reformatting, and moving all of my storage data back to my new storage partition, I was ready to install Windows 7 several hours later.
We get images from Microsoft over the local LAN. Download time for the 4 GB image of 7 was only a few minutes. Then I realized I didn't have a DVD to burn it on to. I scalped a DVD from a kid down the hall. Burning the image with ImgBurn took a while. I took a few days off at this point.
This morning, I woke up, placed the DVD in the drive, and restarted. I had to change my boot order to boot from the CD first. The installer opens up and begins extracting. I wait. A little less than an hour later, it claims that it needs to restart. When XP restarts during install, you are ready to boot off of the hard drive. Apparently, you must boot off of the DVD again with 7. It finished installing and then restarted again. This time I was sure it would use the hard drive. But alas, NTLDR was missing. I tried to boot from the DVD again; it loaded NTLDR from the DVD and proceeded to boot me to 7. (As of this writing, I still have to use NTLDR from the DVD, I can't boot directly from the hard drive).
First thing I did when I got into 7: open up IE 8. After blowing through some initial setup, I promptly went to getfirefox.com and downloaded the real web browser. Next I got some essentials: Notepad++, Daemon Tools Lite, FoxIt PDF reader, Pidgin, Java, Flash Player, and Eclipse. For some reason, flash player doesn't seem to be taking well. I also had to get some sound drivers since 7 didn't install a default one.
Here goes my restart after install the drivers, see you on the other side!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Homecoming, and home coming to me
This weekend is homecoming. You know, the football game that I won't be attending, and that no one cares about. What exactly is the point? And what's up with the homecoming queen? It is beyond me. Anyway, Homecoming is a time when parents are invited to come see their little babies who they haven't seen in four whole weeks (and not long enough for the students). My mom is one of those caring, emotional types who just can't stand not seeing me for extended periods. It's irritating at times, but I know I'm loved when I need it.
My parents and littlest brother were going to come up to visit this weekend. My brother hasn't seen The Bonfire yet; he was going to bring his girlfriend (not sure if he's actually asked her out yet, but he has plans to). I was at least pleased to get to see him, we get along pretty well. I see my parents just to make them happy. I put on a smile and pretend like life is great here. I see it as my job to make them not worry about me.
Well, they aren't coming anymore. Mom ended up in the hospital with a seriously infected insect bite of some variety. So now her situation has taken precedence, hotel reservations have been canceled, and I will now spend the weekend alone, as usual. I'm not very happy about it though. Maybe I'm worried about mom, but that's not why I'm upset, at least not consciously. It's probably mostly stress about projects and homework at the moment. If you ever consider becoming an engineering student, consider this first: You will do projects. You will do a lot of projects. You will do projects for every single class you take, and they will all involve a group of people who don't work as hard as you do. It's quite infuriating. I end up doing about 75% of the work on a three person team. But if I didn't, then my grade would suffer, and that is not an option.
My mom is by far the best child I know. She is single-handedly taking care of both of her parents, no thanks to any of her four brothers, particularly the one who lives in the area. She has been leaving work to drive them to doctor visits, doing all of their prescription management, and filling out health insurance paperwork. Grandpa has been suffering for over a year now from a motion disorder where he constantly grinds his teeth, can't control his breathing, and can barely talk. After mom visited about 5 doctors over the course of 6 months (these things take forever), they finally identified his problem (some motion disorder). Even better, there is a simple fix for the problem. The problem is, the pill costs $4,000/month. To put that in perspective, that's $48,000/year, more than most families make in a year. My grandparents are living on medicare alone, so they of course make nowhere in the vicinity of $48,000/year, not to mention the costs of raising my cousins.
After an incredible effort by mom to fill out endless paperwork, we somehow managed to slip through all of the insurance loopholes and got this magical medicine for free, not a dime out of pocket. This is a good thing, since they don't have a penny to spare, much less a dime. The good news is that Grandpa started taking half-pills last Thursday. By Friday afternoon, all of his symptoms were gone. He is now just like the man I grew up with so many years ago. I can't wait to see him, and see his quality of life improve so much. I can't even imagine being trapped inside his body like he was. He really is quite strong and mentally capable still. I have much hope for him still.
My parents and littlest brother were going to come up to visit this weekend. My brother hasn't seen The Bonfire yet; he was going to bring his girlfriend (not sure if he's actually asked her out yet, but he has plans to). I was at least pleased to get to see him, we get along pretty well. I see my parents just to make them happy. I put on a smile and pretend like life is great here. I see it as my job to make them not worry about me.
Well, they aren't coming anymore. Mom ended up in the hospital with a seriously infected insect bite of some variety. So now her situation has taken precedence, hotel reservations have been canceled, and I will now spend the weekend alone, as usual. I'm not very happy about it though. Maybe I'm worried about mom, but that's not why I'm upset, at least not consciously. It's probably mostly stress about projects and homework at the moment. If you ever consider becoming an engineering student, consider this first: You will do projects. You will do a lot of projects. You will do projects for every single class you take, and they will all involve a group of people who don't work as hard as you do. It's quite infuriating. I end up doing about 75% of the work on a three person team. But if I didn't, then my grade would suffer, and that is not an option.
My mom is by far the best child I know. She is single-handedly taking care of both of her parents, no thanks to any of her four brothers, particularly the one who lives in the area. She has been leaving work to drive them to doctor visits, doing all of their prescription management, and filling out health insurance paperwork. Grandpa has been suffering for over a year now from a motion disorder where he constantly grinds his teeth, can't control his breathing, and can barely talk. After mom visited about 5 doctors over the course of 6 months (these things take forever), they finally identified his problem (some motion disorder). Even better, there is a simple fix for the problem. The problem is, the pill costs $4,000/month. To put that in perspective, that's $48,000/year, more than most families make in a year. My grandparents are living on medicare alone, so they of course make nowhere in the vicinity of $48,000/year, not to mention the costs of raising my cousins.
After an incredible effort by mom to fill out endless paperwork, we somehow managed to slip through all of the insurance loopholes and got this magical medicine for free, not a dime out of pocket. This is a good thing, since they don't have a penny to spare, much less a dime. The good news is that Grandpa started taking half-pills last Thursday. By Friday afternoon, all of his symptoms were gone. He is now just like the man I grew up with so many years ago. I can't wait to see him, and see his quality of life improve so much. I can't even imagine being trapped inside his body like he was. He really is quite strong and mentally capable still. I have much hope for him still.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Homework, Bloody Homework
Hello, faithful followers, of which I currently have 0. If you're out there, let me know...
I don't mind homework so much. Especially if I'm doing math, or even better, writing code. I do love code. I love music. I love writing, especially if it's not a technical document. I love reading novels (but not textbooks).
The worst part about being a CS/SE is the mind-numbing amount of textbook reading and technical document writing that ensues. Of all textbooks, I really can't imagine anything worse than a book on project management or how to gather requirements and specifications. Then come the technical documents on project requirements, project specifications, project plans...the list goes on forever. I would love a good essay every now and then, especially about a novel.
I would be saving myself considerable amounts of reading, group meetings, and homework by dropping my SE major. This seems like a particularly good option since I don't ever want to manage a software project. That would be total torture. And yet, I persist. I think having knowledge of software engineering will make me much more marketable instead of being simply a CS. I really want to do math-computer science work, possibly research related.
Perhaps you can tell, but I like to write. That's why I'm doing this blog. After an incredible amount of work in high school AP English (thank you, Mrs. Mayer!), I'm not half bad either. But pit me against other college engineering students, and I look like Charles Dickens. So when we have technical documents to turn in, and my team churns out a list of six items for a document that is supposed to have a title page, I'm naturally concerned. As a result, I end up writing about 80% of all "group" papers with my name on them. I have to go through and edit everyone else's work so that it makes a paper that I would turn into my AP English teacher. Because that's the standard I hold myself to now, and probably forever. Why should it be anything less? Most of the professors won't know the difference (a few would), but it just isn't in me to do the minimum necessary.
I don't mind homework so much. Especially if I'm doing math, or even better, writing code. I do love code. I love music. I love writing, especially if it's not a technical document. I love reading novels (but not textbooks).
The worst part about being a CS/SE is the mind-numbing amount of textbook reading and technical document writing that ensues. Of all textbooks, I really can't imagine anything worse than a book on project management or how to gather requirements and specifications. Then come the technical documents on project requirements, project specifications, project plans...the list goes on forever. I would love a good essay every now and then, especially about a novel.
I would be saving myself considerable amounts of reading, group meetings, and homework by dropping my SE major. This seems like a particularly good option since I don't ever want to manage a software project. That would be total torture. And yet, I persist. I think having knowledge of software engineering will make me much more marketable instead of being simply a CS. I really want to do math-computer science work, possibly research related.
Perhaps you can tell, but I like to write. That's why I'm doing this blog. After an incredible amount of work in high school AP English (thank you, Mrs. Mayer!), I'm not half bad either. But pit me against other college engineering students, and I look like Charles Dickens. So when we have technical documents to turn in, and my team churns out a list of six items for a document that is supposed to have a title page, I'm naturally concerned. As a result, I end up writing about 80% of all "group" papers with my name on them. I have to go through and edit everyone else's work so that it makes a paper that I would turn into my AP English teacher. Because that's the standard I hold myself to now, and probably forever. Why should it be anything less? Most of the professors won't know the difference (a few would), but it just isn't in me to do the minimum necessary.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Engineering Education
I haven't told you where I go to school yet, and I'll keep that under wraps for a bit, though it wouldn't be hard to guess, I think. For the most part, our profs are amazing. They are really helpful, always available, and knowledgeable as well. This school is supposed to the best. The #1. Too often for my taste though, I find examples of substandard work in progress.
The other day, I was in my economics class, Managerial Economics. My professor (whom I really enjoy) assigned us a Lagrangian maximization problem. As a math major, this shouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, I consider myself to be lacking in the general knowledge of mathematics. Even though I should have learned Lagrangians long ago in Calculus 1, 2, or 3 (before my freshman year), I don't remember how to do them. I think most people don't, but as a math major, I feel like I'm sort of obligated to remember this type of thing.
This Lagrangian maximization was a bit special though, because it had an inequality constraint. After searching the internet up and down, old calculus assignments, asking a math professor, and asking my Econ professor, I finally discovered one way to solve such a problem.
To maximize (or minimize, of course) the function f(q) with a constraint such as q <= 300, you could add a "slack" variable in. Now my first intuition was to add a variable like 's', to make the inequality an equality like this: q+s = 300. Although you would expect this to work, when you take the partial derivatives, you will discover that the Lagrangian multiplier effectively disappears! The solution, it turns out, is to add s^2, rather than s. Mathematically, it makes no difference of all, of course. But when you take the partial of f with respect to s, now you get 2*s*lambda, instead of just lambda. Since this problem is now a nightmare to solve by hand, you need a good friend like Maple to do it for you. As a math major and an engineer, I am always trying to figure out WHY things work. It drives me completely insane that I have NO idea why you have to add an s^2 rather than s, since it should make no mathematical difference. But no one has been able to explain it to me, and no internet site had a satisfactory explanation. So I must accept it for now. The irritating part of this problem is that my Econ prof had no idea how to solve the Lagrangian maximization with the inequality. His solution was to "assume it was an equality". This means that you are assuming about 100 things about the function and its partial derivatives which may or may not be true. What if the constraint isn't binding (the global maximum is less than 300)? What if f(q) isn't parabolic? It's completely ridiculous to make such a rash assumption. I am appalled that such an invalid assumption is being made. It offends me as a student, as a math major, as an econ major, and as a inquisitive human being. You make wild assumptions in high school. Now it's time to play ball. You face all of your worst mathematical nightmares like a big boy and solve them.
You'll figure out soon enough that I'm pretty smart. I really don't like to brag about it, and I didn't even accept that I was smarter than most people here for a long time. I'm finally coming to grips with it though. I thought that by coming to "the best" that I would be mentally stimulated, but that isn't the case to an astonishingly large extent. Some days I am disappointed in my college, and its #1 rating. My roommate and I often wonder if it really is the best. And we are demoralized at the thought that it really might be. Could this be the best that the world has to offer? MIT wouldn't have me, though I don't know why. I suppose I don't play enough sports or something. I'm a CS major for crying out loud. I'm not supposed to play sports, that would make me weird ;-).
I was walking around the campus lake today, and I spied a very large turtle. It wasn't the largest turtle I've ever seen. It wasn't a snapping turtle, it was just the standard Speed Lake turtle, except monstrous. It was at least three times the size of the next largest turtle I've ever seen in the lake. He didn't mind me much, he wasn't even looking at me. I've always wondered how turtles grow inside their shells, and I do believe I've discovered the answer! This largish turtle was "shedding" the outer layer of his shell. I could see parts where the outer layer was gone, and there was dark, new shell underneath. The rest of it was all dried out and falling off.
The other day, I was in my economics class, Managerial Economics. My professor (whom I really enjoy) assigned us a Lagrangian maximization problem. As a math major, this shouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, I consider myself to be lacking in the general knowledge of mathematics. Even though I should have learned Lagrangians long ago in Calculus 1, 2, or 3 (before my freshman year), I don't remember how to do them. I think most people don't, but as a math major, I feel like I'm sort of obligated to remember this type of thing.
This Lagrangian maximization was a bit special though, because it had an inequality constraint. After searching the internet up and down, old calculus assignments, asking a math professor, and asking my Econ professor, I finally discovered one way to solve such a problem.
To maximize (or minimize, of course) the function f(q) with a constraint such as q <= 300, you could add a "slack" variable in. Now my first intuition was to add a variable like 's', to make the inequality an equality like this: q+s = 300. Although you would expect this to work, when you take the partial derivatives, you will discover that the Lagrangian multiplier effectively disappears! The solution, it turns out, is to add s^2, rather than s. Mathematically, it makes no difference of all, of course. But when you take the partial of f with respect to s, now you get 2*s*lambda, instead of just lambda. Since this problem is now a nightmare to solve by hand, you need a good friend like Maple to do it for you. As a math major and an engineer, I am always trying to figure out WHY things work. It drives me completely insane that I have NO idea why you have to add an s^2 rather than s, since it should make no mathematical difference. But no one has been able to explain it to me, and no internet site had a satisfactory explanation. So I must accept it for now. The irritating part of this problem is that my Econ prof had no idea how to solve the Lagrangian maximization with the inequality. His solution was to "assume it was an equality". This means that you are assuming about 100 things about the function and its partial derivatives which may or may not be true. What if the constraint isn't binding (the global maximum is less than 300)? What if f(q) isn't parabolic? It's completely ridiculous to make such a rash assumption. I am appalled that such an invalid assumption is being made. It offends me as a student, as a math major, as an econ major, and as a inquisitive human being. You make wild assumptions in high school. Now it's time to play ball. You face all of your worst mathematical nightmares like a big boy and solve them.
You'll figure out soon enough that I'm pretty smart. I really don't like to brag about it, and I didn't even accept that I was smarter than most people here for a long time. I'm finally coming to grips with it though. I thought that by coming to "the best" that I would be mentally stimulated, but that isn't the case to an astonishingly large extent. Some days I am disappointed in my college, and its #1 rating. My roommate and I often wonder if it really is the best. And we are demoralized at the thought that it really might be. Could this be the best that the world has to offer? MIT wouldn't have me, though I don't know why. I suppose I don't play enough sports or something. I'm a CS major for crying out loud. I'm not supposed to play sports, that would make me weird ;-).
I was walking around the campus lake today, and I spied a very large turtle. It wasn't the largest turtle I've ever seen. It wasn't a snapping turtle, it was just the standard Speed Lake turtle, except monstrous. It was at least three times the size of the next largest turtle I've ever seen in the lake. He didn't mind me much, he wasn't even looking at me. I've always wondered how turtles grow inside their shells, and I do believe I've discovered the answer! This largish turtle was "shedding" the outer layer of his shell. I could see parts where the outer layer was gone, and there was dark, new shell underneath. The rest of it was all dried out and falling off.
My first blog
Hello, big world. I've written blog-ish material before, most of it on MySpace (I shamedly admit). The problem with that is that people know who I am, so I can't really say what I'd like. I never even attempted a serious blog on Facebook (a more appropriate college social networking site), not only because my friends (and enemies) are on there, but also parents and other "adults". I can't possibly express myself when I'm under pressure to impress. If you read much, you'll find that I'm quite a perfectionist. I've clearly written about my life before, but what really inspired me to actually begin a real blog on the internet was the movie Julie and Julia (corny, I know).
So here I am writing this blog. Anonymously, mind you. I'm sure that if someone who knows me read this very long, they'd figure it out soon enough, but the point would be to never let that happen! I hope I can find some readers who will be interested in my life. I'd like to let people read and react to my thoughts, but I would never let anyone I know into my head. I'm a guy. It's how I work.
Perhaps a brief introduction is relevant. I'm a junior, in a very small engineering school. I'm majoring in Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Mathematics, with a minor in Economics. To give you a heads up, I intend this blog to mostly be stuff about school. But you wouldn't have to understand the technical aspects to appreciate the blog (I hope). I have an encrypted document (CS style, I know) for all of my really private thoughts, so you won't get to have them (most of the time).
So here I am writing this blog. Anonymously, mind you. I'm sure that if someone who knows me read this very long, they'd figure it out soon enough, but the point would be to never let that happen! I hope I can find some readers who will be interested in my life. I'd like to let people read and react to my thoughts, but I would never let anyone I know into my head. I'm a guy. It's how I work.
Perhaps a brief introduction is relevant. I'm a junior, in a very small engineering school. I'm majoring in Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Mathematics, with a minor in Economics. To give you a heads up, I intend this blog to mostly be stuff about school. But you wouldn't have to understand the technical aspects to appreciate the blog (I hope). I have an encrypted document (CS style, I know) for all of my really private thoughts, so you won't get to have them (most of the time).
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