Software for My Finances

I really want to become better at budgeting my money and tracking expenditures, and I'm looking for some software that will help me do that. It needs to support multiple accounts, give me reports about my spending, and be simple use. There are lots of products out there that fit this description, but here's a catch - I also want it to be a cross-platform application since I am always switching among my Mac, Windows, and Linux OS's. Also, (and this is just the computer guy in me talking) I want it to be free and open source. Does anyone know of a piece of software that fits this description? After some searching, I think I might need to develop my own program that fits this description. It could be a big project, though. One idea is to create a server application that I could access remotely via a secure web connection. That way, I could balance my checkbook from anywhere in the world.

Working Out Working Out

It took me a while this semester to work out my Rec Center schedule. Usually, I push exercising to the back burner while school is going, but I wanted it to be different this year. So I decided to actually schedule out the times I would go exercise just like I would for any of my classes and labs. This means I have dedicated Rec Center time that takes precedence over everything else. Since I used Google Spreadsheets to create my schedule this year, I simply email it to people when I'm trying to make plans with them. They can see that I've blocked out time for working out, so they'll have to pick some other time that works. It's been working pretty well so far.

The Kingdom

There's a new movie called The Kingdom which opens Friday, but I saw it at the Village Center Cinemas tonight at a special free pre-release screening. It was a very good, very exciting movie. The plot involves a small team of FBI investigators traveling to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack against some American expatriates working for Saudi oil companies. During their visit, they get caught up in the fight against the terrorists and participate in an intense hunt for the attack's mastermind.

Problems with IE

It's come to my attention that Dupyshon.com doesnt' play well with IE6 or IE7. I'm working to rectify this problem, but it's going slowly since school is taking precedence right now. Who uses IE anyway? Firefox is way better.

Device Library

I'm starting to understand what the topic of my research will be. My research group is studying medium-grain reconfigurable hardware. Up to this point they've had to do all of the place-and-route operations by hand to set up experiments. This can be time consuming and error prone, so my first task will be to compile a library of often used structures - like adders, multipliers, shifters, etc. The library will be incorporated into the existing CAD tools and speed up the place-and-route process quite nicely.

Paris Hilton in Rwanda

You can see in DupyNews that Paris Hilton is planning a goodwill tour to Rwanda. If she truly wants to help the people of that poor country, more power to her. If she's doing it just to clean up her image or become another Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt figure, she's in it for the wrong reasons. It might be more effective for her to stay home and donate some of her millions to professional organizations that are already working in the area. My hope is that she is shocked and disturbed by what she sees in Rwanda, because that might cause her to change in a way that really will help the world.

Well's Drive-In

Yesterday I went to Colfax. Kristen had forgotten her CDs in her rental car when she exchanged it for the fixed-up Equinox, so I had to go fetch them for her. After getting the CDs from the auto body shop, I went to lunch at Well's Drive-In. Well's is an old Colfax fixture that I'd never visited before. It used to be a drive in, but now they serve sit-down customers only. When I first got there I was a little disappointed to see that the menu was kind of expensive. I decided to go for their less expensive burger but to splurge a little bit on a blueberry milkshake. Upon the arrival of the food, I immediately understood why it leans toward the spendy side. They give you a lot! My burger had two quarter pound patties, ham, bacon, and all the fixings. I could barely get my mouth around it. A big basket of fries accompanied the burger. They were hot and good, especially with the horseradish-infused fry sauce. The milkshake was a little thin for my liking, but it came in gigantic proportions as well. The server handed me the milkshake glass as well as the nearly full mixing cup. The mixing cup had enough milkshake in it for two full refills. Everything tasted really good. I always enjoy the chance to support small-town businesses.

Charlie Rose

Have you ever noticed that Charlie Rose lives in a black hole? How do they create that effect on the set of his show?

Kim and Jeff's Wedding

This weekend Kristen and I went to the west side for the wedding of Jeff Dunlap and Kim Berg. It was a fun trip because we got to see a lot of old band people (Kim and Jeff are former band members). We spent one night with Vic and Karl and one with my parents. Jaron came along to see Mom and Dad.

Living in Sloan

If you can't tell by the subject matter of my most recent posts, this week has been practically consumed by this program I'm writing. Which means I'm pretty much living in Sloan. I go home to sleep, but that's about it. The rest of the time (18 or 19 hours a day) I'm working at the computer. The good news is that I'm getting stuff done, but the bad news is that it's going extremely slowly.

One interesting side effect of these marathon programming sessions is that I'm actually eating better for the most part. Since I'm so busy, I don't have any time for junk food. Since I'm lazy and a cheapskate, I buy the cheapest stuff they have at the espresso cart in Carpenter (garden salads).

Another interesting (although not nearly as positive) side effect of sitting at a computer all day is that I've become (literally) painfully aware of how un-ergonomic my typing techniques are. I've made some adjustments and things are already feeling better. Still, everything in the lab (the desk, the chair, the screen, etc) is working against me.

rsync

I've just discovered the power of rsync, a Linux utility that allows you to synchronize files on different computers via SSH. This is exactly what I've been looking for because I need a safe and secure yet easily accessible way to store my files for my CPT S 560 class. Here's a quick summary of the command:

To download changes from a remote location -
rsync -ave ssh --delete user@server:folder path

To upload changes to a remote location -
rsync -ave ssh --delete folder user@server:path

The --delete option takes care of files that have been deleted from the source by also deleting them from the destination.

The folder argument specifies the source folder to be transferred. If this argument ends in a trailing slash (/), only the contents of the folder are copied. If there is no trailing slash, the folder is copied along with its contents.

The path argument is the destination to which the files are to be copied.

DupyBoot

Right now in CPT S 560 I'm working on a booter which can boot a hard disk into different partitions. It's a pretty big program, and I've been working hard on it. Here's a shopping list of milestones to complete. The crossed-out ones are finished.

read MBR
printf()
printi()
printx()
printl()
prints()
gets()
decompose()
get_block()
read superblock
read group descriptor
read root inode
navigate through inodes
write to high memory
read directory
chain booter
load Linux partitions
read extended partitions
load extended partitions

Pipelining

I forgot how interesting it is to study CPU pipelining in computer architecture. The ideas are pretty simple and really effective. They're also ingenious. Concepts like forwarding always leave me thinking, "Wow, I would never have thought of that." In class, we're just about to start talking about branch handling, which is when things get really interesting.

fdisk

I'm writing an fdisk program for my CPT S 560 class right now. An interesting thing I've found is that it only works correctly if I have superuser privileges. At first I thought this was just a mistake in my program, but a non-root shell doesn't even recognize the fdisk command in KDE.

Jott Test

This is a test of a new service on the Internet called Jott and that allows me to post to Blogger using my voice on the telephone.
Click here to listen

Powered by Jott

Idaho Game

This weekend I went to my first-ever Cougar football game as a student. It was so much fun! We played Idaho and won the game 45-28. The Vandals are pretty good this year, and they kept up with the Cougars for most of the first half. It was strange to see Rob Akey on the wrong side of the field, wearing black and gold. Kristen came down for the game, and we sat with Alison, Kristian, Laura, Katie (Nick's girlfriend), and Justin Vance. We were saving seats for Courtney and Lindsey and some of their friends, but they ended up being late and sitting somewhere else.

At first I was a bit disappointed that the Cougars had such a tough time with our Idaho neighbors, especially considering the strength of the Pac-10 this year. However, looking back at the game makes me think that the Vandals are simply a lot better than they've been in recent years. After all, they played pretty competitively against USC a few weeks ago. Still, the Cougars need to step it up, because there are no more 'easy' games this season.

WSU vs. U of I and the Weekend

The game last Saturday was the culmination of lots of work by the Cougar Marching Band. Needless to say, we were all very tired and had finally managed to get this show all down memorized, which was pretty great. We were glad we got it accomplished. Next week we have Monday off and we start on a new show.

The game on Saturday was good (Cougs Won!), but I must admit I am a little hesitant about our defense. They seemed to step up in the second half a little more, but the game with the Vandals was still a little too close for comfort. We probably should have beat them by more points than we did. But the Cougar Marching Band has a plan.

Starting on the first gameday of October, the Cougar Marching Band men will kick off, BEARDS FOR BOWLS!!!!!! This is a tradition in the CMB started by Kylan, and now being administered by myself and another trombone. There will be subsequent posts on this topic later. Stay tuned: life goes on...

Cadence

In my VLSI class, I'm using a software tool called Cadence to do all of my design work. It's a professional grade application that costs lost of money and works really well. Of course, the learning curve is pretty intimidating, especially since I tried to ignore all of those lectures about device physics during my undergrad. At first I was afraid that this program would be just as buggy as the Xilinx software I used in 324, but that's not the case.

Racquetball

Yesterday evening Jaron and I went to the Rec Center and played 4 games of raquetball. It was really fun, and I'm not even sore today! I had a little more experience from my days of playing with Weston, but Jaron had more stamina. We laughed at our clumsy looking selves a lot and I gave Jaron a big welt on the hip from one misdirected shot. We'll have to play again soon.

Febreezaholics

Have you seen the new series of Febreeze commercials? They pretty much consist of people burying their heads in things (stuffed animals, furniture, curtains, etc.) that have just been Febreezed and inhaling "the freshness." I seem to remember some news stories about pets dying from the fumes after being locked in cars that had been sprayed with Febreeze. Is is really safe to breathe in Febreeze? Maybe the product developers have discovered that smelling Febreeze can be habit forming. The best way to ensure repeat customers is to make your product addictive. Perhaps we'll soon see groups of Febreezaholics Anonymous popping up around the country.

Letter from New Guinea

When I was in eighth grade, my cousin Alex and I visited our missionary grandparents in Papua New Guinea. We spent six weeks there visiting, exploring, and experiencing new things. Along the way, we wrote emails home to tell our families about what we were doing. Last weekend when I saw my grandparents, they printed out a copy of one of the emails I sent. It described a trip we took to the coastal city of Madang, and I've included a copy of it below.

Dear Mom, Dad, and Jaron-

Yet another message from New Guinea! I'm writing this when you guys are at Ft. Flagler with the Backmans. I look forward to when you get home so we can talk on the air again. It's too bad we had a bad signal last time, there were lots of people cutting in and the static noise got worse as time progressed. I believe I got the main jist of what you said though.

We flew in on the twin yesterday, after dodging some major cloud cover (we had to climb to 14,000 and almost double our flight time). I got to ride copilot and wear the headgear, listen to the weather guy and other planes talk, watch all of the instruments and see all of the buttons and levers, and have a flight stick in front of me (just in case I had to take over the plane). Jaron, you would've had a ball! I think this is a better deal than Alex got because the twin has many more knobs and whistles than the 206. I was really excited and pleased to get your email, Dad, and am looking forward to more, also ones from Mom and Jaron. I'll try to write when I can and/or remember. I'm very disappointed to report that I won't be bringing home any puk puk heads home in my luggage, as the market was closed on the day we went in (the resort is 15km from downtown Madang) because of some Provincial Government holiday. It was called "Americans in Town!" day, aka "Let's Take a Day Off" day. The thing is, only the market and supermarket were closed, so it wasn't to [sic] bad. It still put a damper on the fun I had been having, but I've almost recovered. Alex says they probably don't have them anymore, but I think that's just a way for him to hide his disappointment. To make up for the loss, we both bought statues of men in ceremonial dress. They're pretty neat looking and a good deal, too- K10 for a 14 inch wood carving. This was a lot cheaper than buying a real ceremonial mask (K80). Maybe I'll get that later. I'm keeping an eye our for something like that, perhaps a storyboard and also other cool stuff.

Snorkeling was totally an amazing experience for Alex and I. We really should've brought an underwater camera to document all of the awesome types of fish and coral. My favorite kind was the Angel Fish. I don't know if you have ever seen one, but that's okay because I drew a picture of it and all of the other commonly seen fish there. We all spent multiple hours in the water, too many to count, seeing brain coral, black sea urchins, and all sorts of tropical fish that you might see in an aquarium at the zoo. This was way better than the zoo, though, because you get to be in the water, feeling the sun on your back, looking around, and interacting with all of the different forms of life. Some of the interaction I could've very well done without, the kind where you scrape all of the parts of your body against the coral and emerge from the water all bloody and hurting. Luckily, all of the pain and scrapes were over with y the second day, except two of my scrapes were infected when some flies landed on them right when I was climbing out of the water. The infections were feeling pretty bad by the time we went to town on Monday (the one on my leg made it hard to walk) but we bought some iodine and Hydrogen Peroxide and it is pretty much all healed now.

One interesting incident was when Alex and I (we only had two pairs of snorkels, Grandma and Grandpa's, because the "fully equipped" dive shop was out of rentals) encountered a real live reef monster. No kidding, either. It was the biggest thing we saw while we were there, with an amazing gill or mouth, we're not sure which, on top of it's body toward its head. It was a good cubic foot, with large flapping fins that looked like pieces of bone webbed with skin. We asked the grandfolks what it was, but they had no idea what it could've been. We think we woke it up when we were digging through the sand (it's white; I'm bringing some home) for shells. It had a layer of sand covering it, which made it look like a swimming rock at first, so I think it was sleeping under the sand until we bothered it. That was a pretty amazing time and we followed it around until it hid under a bunch of coral.

Another great outing to the water was when Alex and I went out after dark. This was kind of scary, but Grandma and Grandpa let us take out an underwater flashlight with us so we could see the water immediately around us. The light beam actually bounced off the top of the water and back down (interesting to me, maybe nothing new to you) and we saw great things even with the limited visibility. The little fish seemed just like Dad to me- they went to sleep wherever they got tired and had no trouble getting to sleep in such uncomfortable positions. We almost ran into a few that were deeply asleep. It was fun to wake them up and see them scurry away with surprise. I even saw a whole school of fish that fell asleep with each other. We saw a new kind of fish (apparently nocturnal) and two big crabs (also apparently nocturnal), which made it all the more worth while.

Madang is a realy great place. There was so much left that we didn't get to see that I want to go back again. You all would've loved it there, maybe we should take a vacation here sometime (Alex says "That would be some vacation!!").

Now for some responses to your email. First, I can't wait to taste the jam on some fresh baked bread! I've been telling Alex about all of my bread philosophies and rating and anylizing [sic] the bread we eat. Some of it has been pretty good (like Grandma's) but still doesn't measure up to the stuff back home (neither does the powdered milk- a few days ago I drank some unmixed-in chunks when I was finishing it off). Jaron- you play too much on the computer! Don't you have anything to do while I'm gone? (like, writing coded messages, perhaps?) I've been reading lots of books in the past week, (don't worry, Mom, I have my Gameboy and all of the movies for the plane) how about you? More about Cadet Janeway? I haven't talked with Grandpa yet about EPC, but I'll get all of the dirt when I get a chance. Sounds like everything's fine and normal there, with Jaron still stinkering away...

Well, goodbye for now. I'll write soon and talk to you on the air.

Seattle Game 2007

This weekend, WSU played against San Diego State at the annual Cougar Gridiron Classic game in Seattle. Kristen and I made the trip to see the game, and we had lots of fun. We left after my lab on Friday and arrived at my grandparent's house in Renton around 11:30PM. The next morning, we had breakfast with my grandparents, my parents, my aunt Cretia, my cousin Alex, and his wife Kara. We arrived in Seattle around noon and ate lunch at Oujimaya. Then it was off to the Qwest Event Center to watch the band. It was fun because we ran into a bunch of former band members as well as Neil and his parents. At the game we sat with my parents and grandparents and our friends Michelle, Dan, Victoria, and Karl. The game was pretty entertaining in the beginning, but then the Cougars started to pull ahead. The second half went pretty slowly, but I won't complain because the Cougars came out on top, 45-17. Kristen and I really enjoyed watching the band and seeing our first-ever CMB halftime show performance. It's much different to be a fan than a band member, but I think I will enjoy just 'spectating' this year. After the game we found Jaron (who was playing in the band) and went to Red Robin for dinner. Today Kristen and I went to church with my parents and grabbed some lunch before the long drive back to Pullman. It was a busy weekend, but I had a blast.

Don't forget to check out the new album on DupyPics.

Recapping the Past Few Weeks

Apologies for anyone who has been waiting to hear from Jaron (me) on recent activities. I've been a little tied up as of late with school and all. But I think I'm ready to get everyone caught up on current events.

All my classes are going pretty well. I find most of the classes interesting, and only a few are slightly strenuous, but I expect that I'll be able to get over that feeling with a few more weeks. Most interesting of all, I find that somehow all my classes have been popping up with similar overall topics, really just philosophical questions that have been around for a long time. In Political Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and Criminal Justice I've been faced with these questions: Is mankind and human nature basically good or evil? Do human beings have free will or not (are we really in control)? These are very engaging and deep questions. The free will question is especially difficult for me to have an idea of, but I've figured that even if mankind doesn't have free will, everyone is essentially responsible for their own actions.

Anyway, enough of that for right now. I have to summarize my latest adventures. On Labor Day weekend I went mountain biking for the first time, resulting in a lot of walking and a badly scratched up right leg. But I did it with people I enjoy and I didn't complain, because it really was fun. After that, I cut an onion for a brunch meal and teared up because it was a very potent onion. Later in the week I went frisbee golfing and had a really bad score (again with friends, so it didn't matter).

I read the Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, which is pretty engaging when it comes to inculcating serious thought. Every time I think about that book I'm reminded that someday I too will have to die, and yet it doesn't bother me right now, because as Paul says, "To live is Christ, but to die is gain." I hope I can have that attitude when I know that I must die soon. I still have to write a reflective essay on that soon.

One adventure I had a couple of weeks ago was a hike up the side of Steptoe Butte, about 30 miles north of Colfax. I might get the pictures onto my computer and then Flickr sometime. It was fun, but we got a lot of seeds and burs in our shoes. We could've driven to the top, but that would've been no fun at all. I'm thinking that might be a good bike ride, but all uphill.

Marching band leaves for Seattle on Friday, so we're getting the show and the tunes ready for game day. I'm a little bummed that I can spend as much time as I'd like back home, but there will be other vacations. If you live close to home when you're in college, consider yourself blessed: don't think about how close you are to parents, but how close you are to their love and generosity. If only we could all see the upside to all things, maybe we'd praise and thank God more.

Which brings me to a particular blessing that has been exciting as of late. I'm attending a Foundations for Marriage Bible Study class at One-Way Books as of late, it's on Tuesdays at 4:00 taught by Doug Busby, the pastor at E-Free in Pullman. It is really an eye opening class, and I think I'm really growing into the community there, including a lot of my friends from WSU. I checked out their statement of faith on their website, and it looks very consistent with the Word.

That is a lot of stuff, but I haven't written in a while, so that's what's been going on lately here. Praise and glory to God, my love to my family, and to the brothers and sisters in Christ, God bless and guide the USA, Bones Rock, and Go Cougs!

Nick's Birthday

Yesterday was Nick's 21st birthday. He and some friends took a tour of the Pullman bars last night, and I met them at Pete's for a Wiley. Happy birthday, Nick!

Big Stories Coming

I have a couple of big stories coming in the coming days. The first is a post about the Labor Day camping trip at Wallowa Lake. The second will be about the big car accident that Kristen was in yesterday. (It's okay, she's alright!) I have pictures to go with both stories, but I haven't uploaded them to Flickr yet. That, and the fact that it takes time to type the posts, is why the stories are not available to you already. Stay tuned, though.