Sorry about the comment problems yesterday

Categories: Web Site
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Published on: March 7, 2006

Yesterday, I added more text that would cause a comment to be automaticly dropped. Well I forgot the ending ) on one of the lines. So I appologize to every one since the comment sections was not working. All this work to try to stop spammers don’t they get it, they are one of the (if not the) lowest form of life on this planet, that is assuming they even have DNA (sorry Rob for the bad joke there). I am going to be looking into adding some sort of image verification to my site soon.

Chapters

Comments: 3 Comments
Published on: March 6, 2006

OK, as I promised here is a post that has some real content in it, and for me this is also some big news, probably the biggest news I have shared on my blog since I started it up in July of 2004. Back then I had been work here in CASOS group of ISRI in the CS department at CMU for only 7 months. Now it has been about 2 years and 4 months since I started my programming job here in CASOS. Well last month I found out that the funding for the project I was on might not continue. Well that means I did not know at that time what the future would mean for me. So I started a bit of a passive job search. This involved posting my resume to Monster, Dice, and Pittsburgh Technology Council.. One of my goals was to stay in the Pittsburgh region, I love this city so much. Also my father knew some one with connections in Union Switch and Signal So I contacted him, and got my Resume into Union Switch and Signal. Well I had the interview on Tuesday (Feb 28th) and received an offer letter on Friday (March 2nd).
For me this is both exciting, since I have wanted to work there from the time I was at Pitt. And a bit sad for me I have worked here at CMU since August of 2001. Well I guess this chapter of my life is coming to a close (March 17th) and a new chapter of my life will start (March 20th) I will have to say this is about the 5th chapter of my life. The 5 chapters are, pre-high school, high school, Pitt, CMU, and now the new chapter, I don’t know how to define it, but I just know that a new chapter in my life is going to be starting.
I am going to miss all the people I have made friends with here at CMU. I never realized how many people I know until Friday till I happened to find myself in Wean Hall (handing in my 2 weeks notice) and I decided to stop by all the people I knew to say “hi”, and there were a lot of them.
Another thing that is happening with this chapter change in my life. Well first some history, I have always wanted to play an instrument. I have tried the piano 3 times in my life, and well never learned it. Well the other day I was in the Irish Design Center and saw an Irish Tin Whistle. It looked simpler then the piano, so I thought what the heck I will give it a try. I have a friend Wendy who runs the Flute Academy here in Pittsburgh. She was able to find a teacher for me, at a reasonable price. So last Saturday at 8:30am I had my first lesson.
Finally one new thing for me here, is that all of these new life changes kind of dictate I need to be away earlier in the day, and be at places around 8:30am. So I have to change my sleeping habits. So the way I read this, no more staying up till midnight and getting up at 8am, so I am thinking of making the time I head to bed to be 10pm and getting up at about 6 or 6:30am.
So basically what I am saying in this post, is that I am looking at a new chapter in my life, and the one I am in right now will be coming to an end on the 17th, I guess I will just think of the 18th and the 19th blank page between the 2 chapters of my life. Well, on to new things, I will always remember my time here at CMU with fondness, I will miss it, but times change and we must be willing to change with them. I once had a teacher back in the 8th grade that said that those that don’t change are either dead or stupid.

A second Red storm on Jupider

Categories: News
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Published on: March 6, 2006

Rob over at UnSpace is running an article on a second red spot that might be soon to form on Jupiter. I wonder what the time table for this think might be like since weather on Jupiter last much longer then on earth, a storm here on earth can blow up and then die within a few of our earth hours, while the Red spot on Jupiter, is a storm that has been raging on Jupiter for as long as we could see it via telescopes.

Meetings, Meetings and more Meetings

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Published on: March 5, 2006

I am not much of a fan of meetings. Yesterday, I had to go to two meetings, they were not that bad the longest one of them was about only 45 minutes, with a few short breaks. Today after church we had one of those kinds of meetings that most people hate, it was about 1 hour and 45 minutes, with out any real breaks. Well it could be worse, I have been in many meetings that were about 3 hours long with a 15 to 30 minute break in the middle. But I really don’t like long meetings.
While at this meeting today at church, I leaned over to my friend Matt and said “Welcome to Pergatury” I know I am bad.

WPLUG Fun

Categories: Friends, WPLUG
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Published on: March 4, 2006

Today after the WPLUG meeting, a few of us decided to go out and have some fun. We first went down to Dave and Busters, but that was a mistake, after and hour and a half we decided to go to a different place since they had such poor customer service, they still did not have seated us, and we were told there was still an hour left before they could seat us. So we went over to Eat-n-Park. The 6 of us had a great time, we felt sorry for the server since every time she came up to our table we were in an odd point in the conversation.

A night with friends

Categories: Church, Friends
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Published on: March 3, 2006

First off this is not the post I promised in the post where I talked about a big post coming I am planning to put that up on Monday night.
Tonight we had a function at church; we had dinner and then watched a movie. The movie was Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog 7. After watching it all I can say is wow. Krzysztof did not make any characters that were clean in it. If you are looking for a movie that is about 50 minutes long it is a good movie to watch.

Sorry about the lack of posts with content

Categories: Blog Stuff
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: March 2, 2006

I have been busy as of late, so I have not had any really good posts to put up as of late. But in the next few days I will be putting up a major post.

The test failed

Categories: Blog Stuff, Web Site
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: March 1, 2006

I was hoping that the anti-spam things I had put in place would have alowed me to stop blocking IP address, but I was getting more then 100 spam comments a day so I had to reblock all the address I had blocked before, I am sure glad I had backed up my .htaccess file.

Testing

Categories: Blog Stuff, Web Site
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Published on: February 27, 2006

I have had some good experience with the 2 new additions to my spam blocking. So I am going to put the full test to it, I have renamed my .htaccess file, and have turned off the IP blocking. I am going to see if the new anti-spam things I put in place will work. If this works I will not have to ban IP addresses anymore. I have had times when my own family can not get on my site because they got a new IP address from a dynamic pool and it had in the past been used to spam my blog. I will run this test for about 2 days and see what happens.

A note on Memes and Quizzes for my friends

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Published on: February 27, 2006

I know many in the blog community like to do Memes and Quizzes. And I kind of like them too, but if you wish to tag me on one, please do me a favor, please email me at mpop(at)mikeoconnor(dot)net so that I know that I have been tagged.

The iPod was filled to 100%

Categories: Geekdom
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Published on: February 26, 2006

Well today my 40Gb iPod got the final mp3 that filled it to 100% capasity. So I had to start to cut down on what is uploaded to my iPod, so I set it up to not upload any file that is not check. I went in and unchecked a bunch of the podcasts. I know that there are other ways of not copying podcasts over, but they do not meet my needs. The 4 ways I know of to not copy othem over are: Do not copy any, Copy all, Copy only the most Recent, and Copy unplayed ones. I find sometimes I want to relisten to some that I have listen to before, or that I have more then just the most recent one to listen to. So I just set it to copy all that are checked, and then I unchecked them all, then I went over to my play lists, and told it to check anything that was in that play list. That freed up about 15Gb of space. So I should be set for a few more months before I have to go though and uncheck a bunch more again.
When I fist got my iPod back in Dec of 2003 I never thought I would fill up the full 40Gb, but then I started to listen to podcasts and the space on the iPod started to get eaten up really fast.
To give you an idea about how many mp3’s (aac’s) are on the ipod, there are 4825 mp3’s and the time counts to (based on what iTunes says) 65 days 7 hours 42 minutes and 44 seconds

New Logo for my site, a new icon for me

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Published on: February 23, 2006

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. So with that in mind I have worked on a new icon for myself. I hope that maybe some day it will become synonymous with me, just as many know my by mpop, and when they hear mpop or see mpop they think of me, these people are my friends at WPLUG. The new logo is at the right of this post. I hope to make a larger version of it later.
Let me explain what the icon has in it. First the base of the image is the O’Connor Family Crest (hay this is because I am an O’Connor), above the Family Crest is a modified version of the Luther Seal (this is because I am a Lutheran), the modification I made to the Luther Seal was to replace the black cross in the center of the red heart with a gray Celtic Cross (since my family name comes down from an Irish heritage). Finally I have on both sides of the O’Connor family crest 2 penguins, Tux the Penguin the Linux mascot, this is because I am really big into Linux. I believe these images on the icon I made help to describe who I am.
I would love to hear what my friends think about the new icon I have put together. If the response is positive, I am thinking I might try to get it printed up an put on a T-shirt for myself, or would that be to egotistical?
Also if you click on the image to the right you can see a larger version of it.

Some fun Irish Music

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Published on: February 23, 2006

I found a band called Brobdingnagian they do some fun Irish music. They got some good stuff. You can get their music off of iTMS.

Santorum and Bush at odds over the port Sell to the United Arab Emirates

Categories: News, Politics
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: February 22, 2006

As many probably know Bush has threatened to veto any bill that would block the Port transfer to the a company run by the United Arab Emirates. Well today I got one of Santorum’s campain E-Mail (yes I am on the email list for his campain, I did sign up for it, so it is not spam, it was requested, spam is unrequested) and in it he says
“That’s why I’m concerned any time it appears as if we’re not taking the terrorist threat seriously enough. As I write you,the control of six major U.S. seaports– including the Port of Philadelphia– could be outsourced to the United Arab Emirates, a nation that was implicated in the events of 9/11.”
and he goes on to say
“after learning of this troubling situation last week, I took immediate action to call for an investigation and a stop to this transfer of control of our ports:

Last Thursday, I requested that the President intervene and use his authority under the current law to prevent this sale;

I have requested that the U.S. Senate investigate the matter to determine if and how the application of the law needs to reflect the realities of a post-9/11 world, and;

I began discussions with a bipartisan group of Congressmen to determine what we could do if the administration doesn’t rescind the contract.”
so I think this kind of puts Mr Santorum and Bush at odds over this issue, I will admit I have not decided how I feel about it, but I don’t think we should let knee jerk reactions guide us here.
For those of you that would see the fill text of the email You can see it at Rick Santorum’s ReElection site
This could be intersting to watch how all this falls out.

Short Wave listening last night

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Published on: February 21, 2006

I had a great time last night listening to the Short Wave radio. I will admit I stayed up way longer then I should have. At about 1am this morning I started to pick up The Voice of America for Africa. It is always fun to tune around the Short Wave bands to see what you can pick up. I also was picking up some station that was playing Blue Grass music. I also found a station with some nutty right-wing nut jobs, they were so far to the right they made me look like an ultra-lib 😉 and if you know me, you know I am very conservative. Also I had my ham radio on (VHF) and I heard some people talk about how the HF bands were open, first one question if you like HF why are you on VHF talking about how great that they are open get on HF and have fun, and what I heard only confirmed what I was hearing last night on the Short Wave Radio bands, that the SW or HF (about the same area on the RF spectrum from about 1Mhz to 50Mhz) are wide open, and it is going to be great fun, for both Short Wave Radio listeners (me) and the HF Ham Radio Operators.

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