I wanna go to college too!!

   So as the quest begins to find that “Perfect” college for the idiot ( My Son ), we find ourselves sitting here in a La Quinta motel just off the Massachusettes Turnpike near Worcester ( Thats “Whoosta” to you Massachusettes folk ) Mass. Today we started out on the road bright and early to SUNY IT. Now on the surface, and the website, SUNY IT looks like an awesome school. And, to give it it’s due credit, I have to say that I myself would LOOOVE to go there.  However, If you ask me if I want my son to go there… the answer is, Only as a last resort. The Computer Science department is the Colleges biggest draw, and I am sure they give a quality education. The buildings look very well taken care of, and it’s extremely small size, despite being layed out over quite a few acres in a scenic / rustic type of countryside atmosphere ( is this a run-on sentence??)  is very appealing to me, not to mention they offer an inexpensive Masters program attainable in as little as 4 1/2 years.  However, it didn’t take 20 minutes of glancing around at the other prospective students, and a look at their acceptance minimum requirements, to realize that there HAS to be better out there. I don’t mean to put the school down, because from the sounds of it, it looks to be a school where the students that had trouble in high school, just might be able to pull off a Bachelor’s degree, possibly a Master’s. Such a small school, where everyone seems to know everyone else, and in my mind I have no doubts they do, is the perfect school for those of us not gifted with excellent learning abilities. For this reason, I give mega kudos to the school, and would encourage any kid wanting the degrees but cursed with brains much like my own, to apply and go for it. I know “the idiot” has a better future. And the food ( free lunch ) pretty much sucked.

     I haven’t had the chance to do crap on the website. So Sue me!

    So i gave the wife a new GPS for our anniversary. ( Happy Anniversary! ) It took us right to the doorstep of SUNYIT. ( Yes I really did buy it for HER!) Then we trekked here to Whoosta, Mass and it took us right to the doorstep of the hotel 3 doors away. ( Oops )  We found our way here anyways. Then we asked it to find us food. Spent almost an hour going less than 5 miles away. After going to a couple places that aren’t where the GPS said they were, it took us right to Friendly’s, where i proceeded to continue the non-diet eating I’d done all day.   Thank God the gps found our way back to this damn hotel, because despite being just a few miles away, we must have made 6 or 8 turns to get here. I like it.

    We’re off to M.I.T. tomorrow.. We really aren’t expecting “the idiot” will get in, but it’s the school I’d like to see him at, and we’re all rooting for him. If you happen to know anyone that can assist us in this venture, we’d appreciate the help.   Thanks

       Signing off and goin to bed in Whoosta, Mass.    Nita 

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Special Bob, Phd.

     So my son just wants to go to college, what’s the big deal. It turns out the only thing easy about going to college is…..That’s it!!  There is nothing easy about going to college. Well maybe going to college is easy, that remains to be seen, but getting accepted, well there’s another story. It takes a college degree in organization ( Hence the Phd. in the title ) , to schedule all the crap associated with this. Lets see, there’s the chat with the guidance counselor ( over and done with, for now ), campus visits, I know I’ve got MIT, RIT, Geneseo, and SUNYIT scheduled and registered.  Actually MIT didn’t require registering, dunno what’s up with that. I still have to do RPI I believe. I think. I hope. Whatever. I’ll do it in a minute.

      Deadlines. Every single freaking college has these “deadlines” like the worlds going to come to an end if you don’t meet them. And since all the colleges have them, and none are the same, you have to keep track of them all ( Somehow ). I set up an online calendar at www.30boxes.com . It seems to do the job, although I’m not super happy with it. Anyways, myself, the kid and the wife can all go there and see the schedule of our visits at anytime. Now I just have to input all the deadlines in there… 

   It’s not over, once all the colleges are happy, it’s on to the scholarships. I need more time.  Got any to spare?  Enough ranting for now. The only update I’ve done to the website is add Google AdSense so that now everyone gets ads on most of the pages. Someday maybe they’ll send me money. Time will tell. Thats it for now. Ciao. Special Bob OUT!

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Updates

  I have added several new links to many of the pages, mainly the shopping, techy tools, and, mostly, the online applications page. Check them out, there’s some really awesome stuff in there.

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Cool new toy – PayPal Security Key

 Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeee it came. Not that it’s lifechanging or anything, but it’s a new gizmo/gadget/toy and whenever I get a new one in the mail, well, I smile, because I like toys. And it’s only $5.00.  How can you go wrong? When you can buy these things for like $30.00 everywhere else, It makes me smile, even if it can’t be used everywhere..yet!  What is it? (Does this sound like a commercial?) With absolutely no kickbacks or other monetary exchange to my benefit, I am happy to announce that I have received the new PayPal Security Key. Everyone who uses PayPal should go get one. ($5.00=cheap) You can get one at https://www.paypal.com/securitykey. What’s it do? Well it is a little device that can attach to your keychain that, when you press a button, gives you a 6 digit number. The number changes every 30 seconds too. Neat huh? Well the neat part is when you activate it on PayPal. As a security measure, you will now need to add this 6 digit number to your password to log into PayPal. Since it changes every 30 seconds, you have a constantly changing pasword, that only you can know, because only you know the number on YOUR Security Key, which is different than every other person’s that owns one of these gizmos. Sweeeeeeeet! Even sweeter?  It works at Ebay too! YES!!!

 Try it out, let me know what you think. There’s another little feature of this thing that’s not advertised, however was recently covered on Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast. It pertains to something clled “OpenID”. I’ll blog it when I sign up. 🙂  Hasta La Vista Bay-Bee!

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Why I didn’t go to college

 Holy higher education Batman!! I didn’t want to be bothered with the whole college thing when I was a Senior in High school, so  I “stupidly” joined the Navy.  It was a great idea at the time. Free education, travel, room and board….can’t beat it eh? Fortunately for the kid, He wasn’t so “smart”.  A good dose of college and a degree leads to much more money. Guess I taught him something. I read online or in one of them business magazines, that a college graduate will make more than a million dollars more than the non-college grad, in their lifetime. If thats an average, then this kid’s gonna make millions more.

    But first, there’s Deciding on the college, and getting all the necessary requirements filled. So with him deciding on a Computer Science degree, we narrowed the schools down to MIT, RIT, RPI, Kettering, and SUNYIT. We’ll probably add a couple more, but it’s a start. The chance of an MIT acceptance letter is slim, but alot better than any lottery, and I’m not about to stop buying lottery tickets based solely on the odds.

   Now that we have college names, theres the ” What are the requirements to apply”. This is where we learn that there is such a thing as “specialized SAT tests”. I put that in quotes because that’s not what they are called, unless you’re an idiot and you read this blog.  They are really called SAT Subject Tests.  Specialized 1 Hour SAT tests in biology or chemistry or physics, and Math I and Math II. MIT ( and only MIT  of the ones we picked “I think” ) requires one science and one math subject tests to be taken.  What’s the difference between Math I and Math II???  Beats the tar out of me. That’s one of the great mysteries I have yet to find out. I’m sure it’s somewhere on www.collegeboard.com , but I have yet to find it. I’m hoping our meeting with the guidance counselor next week will shed a little light on it. In any case, looks like he’ll be spending Nov, 3rd taking more SAT tests, in addition to the regular SAT he takes on Oct 6th.

   So now the college Visits… We schedule RIT for October 8th. Great, Columbus Day, perfect. The Kid and I both have the day off anyways. The following day I take a vacation day so we can visit MIT. He has that day off school also anyways. Strangely MIT requires no registration to visit like the others. But wait…now we also want to visit SUNYIT and RPI.  RPI is easy, We can visit them on October 19th.  It’s a friday, I’ll have it off, and the kid can miss the day from school.  SO now there’s just SUNYIT.. And they have 2 open houses a year.. only one in the fall…on a day I can’t make it great!!!. But wait, there’s a “Discovery Day” we can attend… CRAP!! it’s on October 8th….Colombus Day. We register anyway, and now I have to reschedule the RIT visit to another day. Veterans Day Open House is a sunday.  I think I have it off work, but have to find out… So we’ll go then..

I can’t wait til we start working on Scholarships!!

I’m in a good mood tho…Weight Watchers has me down 30 lbs!!! as of Tuesday. In a couple years I should weigh 50 lbs at the rate I’m going 🙂  Lets hope not. Guess thats it for now. Website has been on backburner for a few days, as I sell stuff on Craigslist and get ready to send the kid to college next year. Oh yeah, if you want to donate to a deserving kids future, email me and I would gladly accept any and all donations via Paypal, Cash, Check, Money Order, S&H Green Stamps or Joraian Dinar. That last ones Jordan’s currency and just thrown in there to flag the blog by the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, RIAA, NRA, CPA  or whatever other idiot might be spying on me and think I’m a potential terrorist.

        Terror maybe, but certainly not an ist!    Adios!

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For Sale

 Wow. I spent the last hour posting a bunch of stuff on Craigslist. I already have people inquiring about the lawnmower and dining room hutch. Good deal. If you don’t know what Craigslist is, check it out at www.craigslist.com .  It’s like your local classified section of your newspaper, only free… awesome eh.  Cleaning out the garage and getting ready for “ugh” winter. Sold the plow truck last week. Fun!  Now it’s bedtime. Seeyas!!

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Diet? What Diet?

   So I get up this morning to the wife making me eggs and bacon. ( Egg Whites and canadian bacon,,, good stuff ) Just to make sure I’m full, because I know we are going to the NY State Fair today for a while, I mix up some cottage cheese with a touch of honey and some cinnamon. So we’re off to the fair, and first thing we do is walk like 4 or 5 hundred miles to a location a friend of ours is waiting to start in a parade. We are not walking in the parade, thank god, so thats a plus. However, the parade is ending back where we entered the fairgrounds, so we just have to go the 4 or 5 hundred miles back to where we can meet after the parade is over. Ok, I’ve gotten enough exercise, lets eat!! For starters.. Fried Dough!! yum.. covered with sugar and cinnamon. Perfect. That ought to curb the urges for all this delicious fair food. Oh wait, the wife wants bbq pork. I think I’ll take a 1/2 lb bbq burger while we’re here. Mmmmmm..Pretty good burger. That’ll hold me over for sure. But wait, there’s more.  Lets get a beer, and while we’re here, them there fried pineapple chunks dusted with powdered sugar look good….taste good too. Yum. Ok, so now what. Maybe it’s time to stop eating? But them Garlic Chicken wings sound really tasty, I wonder if they are as good as Buffalo Wings. I Love garlic stuff. Nope. They aren’t quite as good as Buffalo wings, but they were sure tasty! I think at this point I am probably setting a food eating world record anyways, so I might as well go for the gold. Since my ankle is killing me for having walked the equivalent of back and forth to the moon, I figure food is a good painkiller today. Hence, the Onion Petals, or deep fried onion or whatever… We seek.. we find… they’re out! How the hell can ya be out of onions??? So I order the smothered French fries… covered heavily with cheese and bacon. Not bad. Not as good as the Onion I was hoping to devour, but the plateful weighed at least a pound, so they made up in quantity, what they lacked in taste. My stomache is probably in shutdown mode, but after standing around for a while, watching Joe Diffie sing songs like “Welcome to earth ( 3rd rock from the sun ),” and “Prop me up beside the jukebox”, We’re ready to go home. But wait, I can’t leave without going over to the “Enormous Onion” place and fulfilling my onion desire and getting the extra horseradish sauce. I just about had it killed off when I got to the car.

          Forgive me Weight Watchers for I have sinned….

                    All is good now!         ( And I’ve added some links to several of the techie pages, as well as a very handsome picture of myself on the home page )

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I’m getting old.

    Yeah, real old. So like I’m the geek in the family right? And so I have to call my son to figure out how HE converted video files for playing on his Gigabeat. That’s the second or third time I’ve called him for computer related tips in the last couple weeks… how can I not feel old? He’ll be going to college next year… Here come the expenses.

      As for the website, All I have had time to do lately is add things to the “Links”. I turned my old Wiki into a place for me to quickly put linnks to interesting stuff. Stuff I hope to add to the website eventually, if it’s what I think or know it to be. Thats the best I can do for now, work has been taking a toll on me.

    Personally things have been A-OK, considering I have lost some more weight, having now lost 27 lbs last weigh in. It was enough to get the 25 lb “I did it” magnet from weight watchers. It’s not much, but it means I weigh 5 bags of sugar less than I did.

   The laptop repairs don’t stop. Ok, maybe they have stopped, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing some cheap memory at Best Buy this last week. I bought a 1 gig ddr stick for the wifes desktop. That went in smooth, no problems, and I finally hooked up the spare printer to that computer too. Again, no problems ( although I haven’t tested it yet ). I also purchased a 1 gig ddr2 sodimm stick. I figured I would upgrade the stepson’s laptop with it. His laptop is an E-machines with 512 mb, of which 256 is being used by his graphics.  It was equal in price to the laptop lcd I got for his sister, so I thought the upgrade was a good “fair” deal. When I pulled his cover off and found just one 512 mb sticvk ( I was expecting (2) 256’s) the idea that the wife’s laptop might also have a 512megger. The math was simple… 1 gig for each one of them.  So I took the stick out of the wife’s laptop and added it to the stepson’s. The computer worked great. Now add the 1 gig stick to the Wife’s laptop and tada…. the thing runs for 2 minutes and everything starts giving errors. Great!… I uninstall a few things, try this, try that, even revert back to a previous restore point. Nada. So I try something I am sure will tell me the 1 gig stick I just bought is junk. I swap it with the (2) 512 meg sticks in the stepson’s laptop. Voila, everything is great… Life is good.

       I’ll end on that happy note, since It’s waaaaay past my bedtime. Seeyas!

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Special Bob’s Laptop Repair Co.

  Ok, so I fixed the supervisor’s laptop  last week, but then my stepson’s Laptop stopped being able to connect to the internet. Eventually a restore point from 3 days earlier saved us there. I then decided the next night to tackle what I had been delaying doing. Replace the LCD display on a laptop my daughter gave me. Somehow it had gotten totally mashed. Well it turned out to be quite the success and now the step-daughter is loving it.

     I heard from Marty today from good old Norman. Actually I checked my email today…think it came in a couple days ago. Got a video of a bullrider he recorded on his cell phone.      The Bullride

     Thats it for tonight… If I sound tired…. zzzz

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Work Work Work

    It’s a beautiful August day outside. Not too hot, not too cold. I could be outside enjoying it, however, greed prevails. Since people are on vacation, and in good old Norman, OK for training, there is overtime galore here at work, and I’m sucking it up like a hungry newborn heifer. Sure, I have no home life. Pretty much no life at all. But the paychecks for the foreseeable future are going to be looking pretty sweet.

         I obviously haven’t had time to update the website, but I have been collecting more and more stuff to add to the website. I haven’t forgotten about the Calendar idea, and hopefully will be able to work on that soon. In the meantime I have updated my Toshiba Gigabeat mp3 player with an awesome firmware update called “Rockbox”. It turned an almost impossible to use device into the dream machine of mp3 players. Now it plays videos, and I can copy mp3’s on and off it with windows explorer. It couldn’t be easier. I thank my son for the idea, as he is the one that originally tried it. I’ll add the link for it somewhere on the website when I get a chance.

      In my spare time I have managed to lose another pound, install a ceiling fan/light fixture in my kitchen ( Thanks Carmen and Annie ) and repaired a laptop of one of the supervisors at work that wouldn’t boot. A monitor on my backup/print server computer at home died while I was in Oklahoma, and I still haven’t found time to replace the monitor and figure out why I can’t print from the other computers in the house, yet. My guess is we also had a power failure and the computer needs to be booted up. Maybe tomorrow. theres always tomorrow, but I think I will be working latye tomorrow too ( More overtime cash, yea baby ). Another thing I’ll be doing is adding “Combined Community Codec Pack to my laptop. It’s supposed to give you the codecs to allow you to play audio and video files on Windows that you normally wouldn’t be able to. I’m hoping it lets me use Windows Moviemaker to save video files as mpeg’s so I can play them on my gigabeat.

     Well I guess thats it for now… I’ll stop balabbing away for now and become more productive… I have a long enough list to. If you haven’t sent me an email lately, give me a shout.. I need your email address. 🙂   Seeyas

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