Driving, the Final Frontier

There is one thing that most people can not do well..... drive. It seems that people have learned bad habits from each other, and actually encourage each other to continue driving poorly. Good drivers are not rewarded on the roads because they are taken advantage of. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there and driving is one of the times that you well get run over if you don't take what is yours.

The worst place that I've found as of late is Interstate 40 around Oklahoma City, especially to the east. Earlier this summer I was in an accident where the traffic stacked up in front and behind me and I was ultimately the sandwich in a pileup. The driver behind me creamed me, and to add insult to injury, wasn't even insured.

I noticed that people drove poorly before, but even more since my accident I've noticed that people are too much in a hurry. They will get on your tail, whip around you, cut back in right in front of you, they just don't realize the risk that they are taking every time they drive with impatience. They would rather get within 10 feet behind you, switch lanes 3 or 4 times and cut right back in front of you, than get to their destination 30 seconds slower.

To make matters worse, they don't seem to care about the right of way anymore. If you can get your car in the intersection, you must have the right of way, right?

The frustrating conclusion that I've come to through all of this is that there is nothing you can do about the poor driving habits that people have. You have to share the roads with these people, there are no other routes you can take to avoid them. You can't change them, you can't even get out of their way, they will be determined to get right behind you, even if you're not where they're going. Most of them want to go 5 or 10 mph over the speed limit, but want to speed while remaining in the right lane. They will fly over to the left lane to make a pass, but they refuse to understand the concept of leaving a reasonable amount of space.

Seriously people, you've been watching too much NASCAR! We're not drafting off of each other, let me ask you this, how often do you see a big pileup in a NASCAR race? Too often, maybe you should learn that racing everybody to where you're going is dangerous.

Unfortunately, people don't even realize how big of a risk it is, they don't see the danger they escape on a regular basis. My only solution is hope that someday we have cars that drive themselves, because it doesn't look like our roads will be safe anytime soon with so many bad drivers out there.

The dangers of small markets

This week I've been helping my dad update some of his computer hardware, so we've been taking some of our older computers apart and trying to gather up enough hardware to make a pretty decent computer.  We decided that all we needed to buy to update one of his computers was more RAM.

This evening we set off to Shawnee, the closest town of a decent size, to find a computer hardware store.  It turns out there really isn't a good option there either.  We found a store called "Computer Masters" that sold some basic computer hardware and did repairs on computers.

While we looked around before we were helped, I noticed that they didn't have a whole lot of selection in hardware, they more or less just had 8-10 of the same item for each category.  I looked at some of the prices and thought, "Wow, that's a little higher than I expected."  Then we asked the guy who was helping us if we could get two 512 MB sticks of DDR 400 RAM.  He quickly pulled it out of his cabinent and told us it would be 70 bucks for each stick, which would be $140 for the whole thing.  He then added that it would be $90 bucks for a 1 GB stick of RAM.

I was in shock. You see, after just buying and building a computer out of parts I knew that this was way above market value.  I called him on it and he got defensive, telling me that he had been doing this for a living for 20 years and he knew a lot about computers, how his RAM was better than the stuff that I would buy off of the internet, all sorts of stuff.

I was upset, until I got home.  Then I looked up the prices for his RAM. That frustrated me even more. I could buy the exact same hardware he claimed was worth $140 for only $58 at newegg (newegg.com) There was also 5 dollars shipping, but no tax, whereas he would've charged tax on a $140 item, which runs up to be around $11.  I also would've purchased one retail item, whereas he could purchase the same hardware in bulk for a cheaper rate.  He had marked up the price at over 250% the cost that I could personally order the exact same model and brand of RAM.

It sickens me for people to take advantage of people who don't know any better.  Plenty of consumers in the Shawnee, OK area that want to upgrade their computers could well spend 2 and a half times the amount that they need to only so that he can make a bigger buck.

The real kicker was that he claimed to know more than I did about memory and was dead wrong.  When I told him I could find a better deal, he told me that the Corsair RAM I bought was junk compared to the Kingston RAM he bought.  Let me say that I give a slight edge to Kingston, they do have good products.  However, after looking at fairly competitive products, I discovered that the Corsair memory sold at 3 dollars cheaper, had the same
customer satisfaction rate as the Kingston alternative, and actually had slightly faster access rates.  Not to mention that the top selling item for that category was Corsair, and not Kingston.  So it was cheaper, faster, had the same satisfaction rate, and out sold the RAM that he claimed was better than the "junk".

I'm sorry, I just had to throw my experience out there as a warning to those that don't know a lot about computers.  If you go into a local computer store, there is a good chance you will get taken for a ride.  It's a sad reality, and I do feel for local business owners, it is tough to compete with online vendors, but trying to pull a fast one on your customers is not the way to fix the problem.  A 150% markup is inexcuseable and I strongly reccomend avoiding Computer Masters for your computer hardware needs.

Had I not known what was fair value, I would've spent 80 dollars more than I should've today, and that is just not a good feeling.

So far so good

This is an update on my PC, I received all of the parts on time from Newegg and they all came in good condition. I promptly put it together and have been using it for several days now. The entire process went smoothly, and I highly recommend building your own PC if you are somewhat knowledgeable and want to save yourself a couple hundred dollars.

Barry Bonds

I'm not sure if you've been following the sports world lately, but I've become quite a baseball fan over the years, especially recently.  The big news in the baseball world is that Barry Bonds has finally broken the home run record for the most home runs in a career.  He passed Hank Aaron, who has 755 home runs in his career.  This is probably one of the most confusing times in baseball history.  It has taught me a lot about life, and how to conduct yourself.

"The end justifies the means."

This is absolutely the worst idea ever.
The way that you conduct yourself is key
to how people perceive everything that you do.
 Here is a list of athletes that have broken
 significant records that are seen in a good
 light amongst the media:

Michael Jordan, Cal Ripken Jr., Reggie White, Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods and Nolan Ryan.

They all have accomplished great
things in their sport, and there are
others as well.  The important thing
is that these players all have character.
  They believe in supporting others, they
 are not self-centered.  Even Tiger Woods,
 who is an individual player with a decent
 sized ego, holds himself in a manner that
 does not put down others.

The way that you treat others affects how
they will view you, today and tomorrow.
 You can have a record for the most number
of home runs, you can be the best player in
your sport, and still not be a hero.

O.J. Simpson, Barry Bonds, Pete Rose, Dennis
Rodman, and Terrell Owens all have been fairly
successful in their sport.  However, they are not
generally liked by the public.  It doesn't matter
how many championships you have or how many
records you hold, or even how much money you
make.  At the end of the day, to have teammates,
coaches, family, friends, and fans that respect you
is more valuable than any personal accomplishment
that requires you to put yourself and your ego before
everything else.

I just want to say that I do aspire to do good, even
great things in this world.  However, I know that
nothing that I have done or anything that I will
do would be possible without a loving God,
wonderful family and friends, and teammates /
coworkers / fellow citizens of the community.
 I hope that I carry myself in a way that appreciates
others and takes care of the people that are important,
because when my life is over, I want people to see my
life in a good light.

New PC

    I am a Computer Science student at Oklahoma Christian University (oc.edu) and I am very much into computers and electronics.  I spent the first seven semesters of my college career as a computer engineering student before changing my major to Math and Computer Science.  While I have spent endless hours fiddling with computers and learning more about the tech field in general, not to mention the countless days I've wasted playing video games during my childhood (and adulthood), I actually have never had the experience of purchasing my own computer or building my own from scratch.

    Today is that day that I can proudly claim I have become a geek.  I purchased all the necessary parts from Newegg (newegg.com) and am awaiting their arrival so I can assemble and use
 my first PC.  I have been planning this build for 
several months, and am very excited about it.

    Here are the specs for the system:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+(65W) CPU
  
• 3 GB Corsair DDR2 667 RAM
  
• 1 TB (1000 GB) of HDD (500 GB Samsung + 500 GB WD) Sata 3.0 Gb/s
  
• ASUS 18x DVD+R 8x DVD+RW 8x DVD+R DL Burner
  
• 19in 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD monitor by Hanns-G
  

    All supported by an ASUS barebones system with an AM2 socket motherboard, onboard Nvidia GeForce 6150 with built-in card reader and Gigabit ethernet.

    I will update in a few days when I put this together, hopefully I can report all working well on a Debian GNU/Linux operating system.

The Benefits of Open Source Software

    I am a big supporter of open source software (wikipedia.com). Many of my posts will be open source software (OSS) and GNU/Linux, a popular OSS operating system.  Since many computer users are completely unaware of OSS, let me explain a little bit about what it is and how it is used.

    Open source software is used and developed by many hobbyists and professionals worldwide.  Some popular examples of this would be:

Google uses open source software on their servers, a variant of Linux.

Amazon, MCI, Motorola and IBM all use Linux.

The web browser Mozilla Firefox (mozilla.com) is open source software.

A large portion of the Internet is hosted on BSD and Linux servers, both are open source software.

    Without any knowledge of open source software, it is still likely that you use it every day.

    The vast majority of open source software is available free of charge. This does not mean that the software is of less value or usefulness to the consumer, it is merely a byproduct of the nature of open source software. The development model is much different from proprietary software.
   
    Many software companies still develop their products using proprietary software, and do not allow others to see the source code for their products.  This means that a very small group of concentrated programmers create the program.  While this is very good from one standpoint, it also has many drawbacks.  Open source software benefits from having many different people with different skills and viewpoints develop software from their own perspective.  Many different experts in the field can also check each other's work by inspecting the source code.  If there are security flaws, more efficient ways of providing a solution to a problem, or if new features can be added, that can easily be done by open source developers since they have the source code.

    Well developed open source projects will have many of the following characteristics:

It will be available free of charge

It will run quickly and efficiently on current and old computers.

It will have many different features that are all integrated into the main program

It will be very secure, and not susceptible to viruses and / or spyware.

    From time to time I will be adding links and report my findings on various things relating to computers, technology, OSS, and Linux.  I only hope that I can provide some insight and point you to new things that will enrich your computing experience.