Stephan Segraves

I have been itching to play a few rounds these last few days, especially since the weather has been awesome (yesterday the temperature hovered around 70°). What frustrates me is the fact that I left my clubs in Houston thinking that the weather up here would turn sour really soon and it’s done exactly the opposite.

Gmail gave me 4 chances to invite other people to use the service when I first got my account. I was able to give those out pretty quickly but then two weeks later it gave me 6 invites and I gave those out (it wasn’t as easy as the first time) and now they’ve given me 6 more!

If anyone needs a Gmail account just send me an e-mail at ssegraves [at] gmail dot com.

Mozilla.org has undergone a redesign and it’s a good one. I really think the colors work, the new navigation look really cool, and of course, the CSS is perfect (for the most part).

If you reload the page a new screenshot shows up on the right side.

The first day of classes are over and I guess the only thing to say is that this semester is going to be extremely easy. My two MIS professors told me that I would be bored in their classes and that I may only learn a little bit. My Management class focuses on corporation management and decision making/communication at high levels in a business. It seems like a fairly interesting class so I won’t be too bored in there. Political Science will more than likely be the most uninteresting and boring class I have taken in college. The teacher is boring, the subject matter (for the most part) is boring, and it’s a class full of freshmen who have no idea what’s going on.

All in all I am pumped for this semester and I’m wanting to make it a good one, so here’s hoping for the best.

I have updated my class list to reflect the upcoming semester (which starts Monday). It looks like it is going to be somewhat of a breeze so that’s a relief. In all honesty I am ready for school to start so that I can get back into a groove of a schedule and not sitting around waiting for something to do.

I will probably be purchasing a bike here in the next few days since I live so close to campus. I am all for a less expensive way to get around.

Well, I haven’t been called by the doctor’s office yet about my blood work. It’s making me kind of anxious but I know it takes time to run tests and get results, I just wish they could do it a little faster.

Tomorrow is the last day of work for my co-worker Andrew. He’s moving to San Antonio to work for the IT part of USAA. He’s pretty excited about it but it’s going to leave me with a lot more responsibilities here at work. I guess I am ready for that but I really liked having his knowledge of database design here to correct me when I was wrong. It’s kind of like a safety net.

Ah, well, I’ll probably go pick up a few relational database theory books just in case.

I just finished reading an interview with a Microsoft Security Program Manager in Wired and something that manager said struck me as being the slickest way to slide around a question and not give a decent answer.

The question was:

Wired Magazine: It seems like Microsoft is fighting a losing battle with IE and exploits. Is it?

Microsoft PM: Software written by humans will always contain errors. We’re fundamentally changing the way things operate, to help to make software more resistant to attacks. We’re two and a half years down a much longer road; it’s more of a 10-year timeline.

Wow, how about you give a little more vague response? Everyone knows software is inevitably insecure and that only certain measures can be taken. Why not just tell us that everyone at Microsoft is sitting around dumbfounded by these exploits… At least then we’d feel like we weren’t being cheated.

I have been thinking about just using my Gmail account as my primary e-mail account but I am somewhat reluctant for a few reasons.

• No true POP3/IMAP support. This is a big negative for using Gmail because I like my current @badice.com IMAP account so much.
• More capabilities with using a local mail client. Using something Mozilla Thunderbird gives me the ability to have multiple signatures, unlimited space (as big as my hosting account), and more control over what my e-mail looks like.

As of right now I am thinking of buying another domain personalized for me and using that domain for e-mail and a personal site. Still haven’t made up my mind though.

School starts in 6 days and I already have a couple of my books (I am still waiting for another to arrive in the mail). Half.com is a God-send. Being able to buy books at such a reduced price is great and the two that I’ve already received are in great shape, so no dissappointments there.

It seems that everyone and their mom is switching to WordPress for their blogging needs. Chu Yeow did and it seems that he is already very happy with the change.

I am putting the final touches on the database design for the new version of badice.com. I designed it with flexibility in mind and wanting to have the ability in the future to expand it. The one thing I am dissappointed about is the fact that my host does not allow InnoDB type tables. Because of this I am forced to make sure all updates, inserts, and deletions are carried out in the program instead of internally in the database. From a systems design standpoint it is the wrong thing to do. Why?

1. More code
2. More of a chance to miss a small detail. With a parameter in the database design (with InnoDB) you can have all tables reliant on another table delete their records related to a record that is its parent.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but you catch my drift.