The Great Data Migration of 2006

I finally gave up, and bought a USB flash drive. I got a spiffy, 2 gig, aluminum one from newegg.com that only cost me 40 bucks plus shipping. Supposedly, it's a little slow, but I can't really notice anything as I have nothing tangible to compare it to. It transfered my 80+ MB pictures folder to the drive in 40 seconds, which comes out to about 2 Mbps. Ah well, so what if legacy Ethernet was 5 times faster?

It's gonna be really useful for transferring all of my data from my PC to my new laptop at school. It irks me that they only give us our laptops once were at NCSSM. If they let us have the computers beforehand, we could migrate all of our data and install all of the software that we wanted on the laptops beforehand. However, now that I have 2 gigs of space to play with, I can take all of my files, plus some other stuff to expedite the process of downloading/installing software. Methinks I can get an install package of Firefox on the drive, and not even have to download it to the laptop.

Speaking of which, I'm gonna be spending a load of time instailling software to the new laptop. First of all, if I want to set it up as a dual-boot machine with possibly Fedora core 5, that'll take at least a few hours. Then there's Firefox, OpenOffice, iTunes, some incarnation of Myst, probably Dev C++, definately a Python install package, and possibly several other things I'm forgetting.

Yup, I'm a nerd. Guess we established that 3 paragraphs ago.

How to Use a School Computer 101

Now that I've escaped the system... I mean CMS... I should probably write down what I've learned over the past two years about how to get around the stupid, completely locked-down computer systems they have.

In 9th grade, they didn't let me take a computer course other than Computer Applications I, which was extraordinarily easy. Thankfully, Ms. Camia let us do pretty much anything we wanted with the computers for most of the class. I had plenty of time to find workarounds for the different blocks the school system has on the computers.

The big thing you have to remember is that with the Altreis Client software they have installed on every computer in the whole school system, anythime they want, they can look at exactly what you're doing on your computer.

In the Networking class I took last year (which was awesome, by the way), we got to take a tour of the campus the day before spring break, to take a look firsthand at the different servers, wiring closets, etc. around campus. In the computer lab, the school's head tech guy (I don't remember his exact position) showed us some of the utilities he could use remotely. He pulled up Altreis Client, and (randomly) picked the computer in my English teacher's classroom. In the split seconds before the guy could shut down the window, we got to look at my teacher's inbox, including a sligtly embarrasing e-mail from a parent asking about her daughter's poor grades.

Here's what this means. If you're just messing around a little on your computer, getting around the blocks to, say, check your e-mail, surf the web, and play some games, they don't care. Too many people do that sort of thing for them to worry about it on a case-by-case basis. If you're thinking about doing something even semi-illegal, save it for home. They can catch you, and they can nail you.

The biggest thing you will need to get around is the blocks the school system puts on certain internet sites. They use some web filtering software on their servers that blocks sites that are classified as anything they don't want you to see. This means no games, no forums, no pretty much anything that you would normally do at home.

Standard MO for avoiding this kind of web filter software is to find a website that acts as a CGI proxy, such as www.parkersproxy.com. (This particular site may not be online anymore, but it's one that we were able to use for months.) The problem with this technique is, of course, that they can block those sites too. The solution? Find another site. Googling web proxys usually doesn't work because they've usually blocked all of the proxies that have been around long enough to be ranked relatively high on Google. What I would reccomend is to join a mailing list from your home e-mail that sends out new web proxies every few days. (You can do this at peacefire.org.) The sites on the mailing lists are often blocked after just a couple of days, but by then, another mailing comes out with new sites for you to use.

Anyone who has tried to use the crummy version of IE on the school computers knows that they have installed a version of the software that doesn't let you download pretty much anything. The simple solution, if you will always be using the same computer (for a class or something), is to download an alternate web browser, such as Firefox or Opera. You may need to change the internet settings of Firefox to configure the default gateway, etc. correctly. You can try checking Internet Explorer to see if you can find that info, or check with your school's resident computer geek. (There's always at least one.)

Installing software on the computer, in itself, has not been a problem in the past for me. The thing is, they regularly check the start menus, and delete all of the icons other than the software provided with the computer. Since you can't directly access the hard drive (without the workaround I'm going to show you), it can be a pain in the butt to access your software again. Make sure that you either install the software in your own directory, or install it to the hard drive and create a shortcut in your own directory.

In their seemingly infinite wisdom (or not), the school system trys to keep you from accessing the hard drive on your own computer. All of the data of the school system is stored on their own remote servers, and then downloaded into your computer when you log in. As I've said, you can install things to the hard drive without too much problem, but they try to keep you from accessing it. (On a side note, I was amazed when I accessed the hard drive of my Comp Apps I computer for the first time that there was so much software installed to it by former students, that they were just not able to use.)

A workaround may be to try to use Internet Explorer or Firefox to try and access the C:/ directory, but when you try it, it gives you some sort of "permission not given" error message. But when we try to do the same thing in Opera, alas, it works just fine. The directories appear like hyperlinks on a web page, which is fine for accessing them, but you can't rearrange files or do most anything you can normally do in Windows Explorer. One thing that I did not try, but would probably work, is to download an alternate Explorer-type program to access the C drive.

Okay, a few last tips. First of all, don't put too much stuff into your directory. Keep the amount of data in your directory very low, below 256 MB at max, and they won't get too suspicious. (Microsoft Office files are extremely bloated, so a quarter of a gig for a student's directory is possible.) The kid who sat in front of me in Comp Apps I put 2 gigs of emulated Nintendo games on his computer, and he almost got into some deep trouble. If my teacher hadn't put in a good word for him, he could have been suspended, easy.

Make sure your teacher is at least somewhat okay with what you're doing. Don't try installing a bunch of stuff on your computer if your teacher never gives you any free time to mess around with the computer. My Comp Apps I teacher didn't care what we did, so I could do all of this stuff to my computer at will. You know your computer teacher better than I do.

Again, don't do anything too illegal. Save your filesharing software for home. If you're gonna put emulated games onto your computer, keep them to a minimum. Don't visit websites, especially the ones they normally blocked, looking at stuff that's NSFW.

A good practice is to save files that you wouldn't want the school system to directly see in folders named something like "schoolwork". This most definately will not keep them from finding something really bad that you want to hide, especially becuase they can just search for a filetype, but it's a good practice for something like storing a few MP3s in your directory.

If you've got a lot of data, save it to the hard drive, and use a technique listed above to access it. They only routinely check the students' individual directories.

Ok, that's pretty much everything I've learned. (I may edit this later if I remember something.) Remember: Use common sense, and don't do anything they would kick you out of school if they caught you doing.

'Ben Stein's Money' was real?!?

Remember the game show on Comedy Central, Win Ben Stein's Money? Twas a great show. The premise was that three contestants competed to literally, well, win up to $5000 of "Ben Stein's Money". In the final round, the one remaining contestant would go head-to-head against Ben Stein. If the contestant lost, he won the dollar value he scored during the show, and if the contestant won, he got the whole $5000. (Here's a clip of the show from YouTube.)

With the YouTube clip I found tonight, I could pause it at will, so I read the disclamer text that appears at the end of the episode (that flashes by too fast for you to read). Here's what it says:

"'Ben Stein's Money' is the prize budget furnished by the Producer. Ben Stein keeps the prize money in the prize budget won by the contestants at the end of each production period. If during the production period the contestant's winnings exceed the prize budget, Producer pays the overage."

You know what that means? "Ben Stein's Money" was actually Ben Stein's money! A prize budget was set aside for the contestant's winnings, and Ben Stein kept what was left at the end. So, when Ben Stein said he was defending against the contestants taking his own money, he really meant it!

They really should have made it more clear that it was just not figuratively "Ben Stein's money", but that it was real. Not that the show wasn't great.

I miss the great shows from Comedy Central like Win Ben Stein's Money and Battlebots.

Ok, I was off by .10%

I'm fond of mocking the interest rate (APY, really) on my bank account, which I joked was around .25%. For some reason, Wachovia doesn't post the interest rates of their bank accounts on their websites.

Turns out, I was wrong. Based on the statement I go ttoday, the APY of my savings account is more like .35%. Oh, joy.

If I'm using the rule of 72 correctly, that means it'll take something like 200 years to double the amount in my savings account. Remind me too look into investment options that can actually come close to beating inflation.

(Yes, I know savings accounts are for saving, not investing. But that still doesn't mean I can' t mock it.)

A series of tubes? No, more like a highway.

I was pondering Senator Ted Stevens's speech on why he opposes network neutrality. I knew that he's wrong, but I couldn't figure out why he was wrong. I suddenly figured it out.

The internet is not like a series of tubes.

It's more like, forgive the cliche, a highway.

Any data to be sent across the internet gets broken up into little chunks, called packets, and (basically) get addressed to the computer where they're headed. It's a lot like filling up freight trucks with the stuff you need to send across the country. The packets get individually sent across the internet, and are reassembled at the other end into the full amount of data.

That's why data I send doesn't slow down data you send. Even if I'm gonna be sending a greater total amount of data across the internet, you get to send a packet just as often as I get to send a packet.

That's why it takes much less time to send a web page across the internet (just a few packets) than, say, download a video (lots and lots of packets).

What network neutrality says is that internet service providers cannot give special treatment to packets from companies that give them money, or block packets from companies that don't. For example, an ISP that doubles as an internet phone service cannot give special treatment to it's own packets, and slow down the packets of, say, Skype or another internet phone service.

I'm concerned that the lawmakers in DC will make a huge mistake over network neutrality because they do not truly understand how the internet works, and why we need this abstract concept called network neutrality.

Oh, and if it takes something like a day for Senator Ted Stevens to get an e-mail, it's becuase someone's system is on a time delay to either send or receive e-mail messages at a certain time of day. It's not that traffic on the internet has been slowing his e-mail down for hours and hours.

Bowling = Pain

Either something is wrong with the way I'm bowling, I have some wrist problem, or I'm just the weakest person I know.

I went bowling tonight with my dad. Even when using the wimpy, pink, 8-pound ball, my wrist was sore, and I almost pulled something at the end of the night. (Yes, that's what I'm blaming my scores of 59 and 86 on. Back in 9th grade, I was often over 100.)

Remind me not to go bowling again. (Soon.)