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I’ve decided that I want to take a deeper look into my finances. I’ve been using Mint.com to track all of my accounts and spending habits but now I want to do that using the financial software I use, GnuCash. Before today, I treated my credit card bills as one transaction on the same day I paid it, so I don’t have a sense of exactly where my money is going, without looking at Mint.com. Starting today, I will begin to enter every transaction I make using my credit card. I wish I had been doing this earlier, but like they say “better late than never”. This isn’t the first time I had been doing something for a while, decided to change something and wished I had been doing it all along.

Total was my last day at DeVry University. After almost five years of going to school part-time (not counting the two years I spent at Penn State), I finally have my Bachelor’s Degree. I received my Associate’s Degree in October of 2008, so everything I’ve been taken since then has been general education classes required for my Bachelor’s. I’m glad to be done but not looking forward to the loan payments I’ll have to start making in a few months. Today also would’ve been my mother’s 65th birthday. I wish she could’ve been alive to see me finally graduate.

Technorati Tags: bachelor's degree, DeVry, graduation

Tonight, I turned my old MythTV box into a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. Originally, I was going to go and buy a Linksys NAS200 but then figured there had to be a way I could reuse the MythTV box. I stopped using the MythTV box when Cablevision started removing more and more channels that didn’t require a set-top box. I would prefer to have something with a hardware RAID built-in (either RAID1 or RAID5/6), but for now I’m just testing it out. I googled for ‘free NAS’ and found I had three options: FreeNAS, OpenFiler, and Ubuntu Server Edition.
I chose FreeNAS because it was a smaller download, and seemed to be the NAS software of choice. It supports a software RAID (0, 1, or 5), which is OK but I’d rather have a hardware RAID, so I’d have to install a RAID card into the computer if I wanted to use a free software option. I like that it can monitor the hard drives and email me if it detects an issue. It’s based on a different operating system that I’m not too familiar with but it is close enough to Linux that I don’t have too much to learn.
If I wind up running into any issues, I’ll probably skip OpenFiler and just install Ubuntu Server Edition.

It’s been a number of years since I’ve actually made a New Year’s resolution. I decided this year I would make a few. My New Year’s resolutions for 2010:

1. Graduate DeVry with my Bachelor’s Degree
2. Get the race car up and running
3. Save up enough money so I can get my own apartment
4. Play golf at least once a month this summer
5. Lose at least 10 lbs

Technorati Tags: New Year's, resolutions

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been running Windows 7 on my home PC. I tested out a beta copy of Vista, for work, when it was available and despised it. I didn’t like getting bothered every time I wanted to do something and get asked if I really wanted to do that something. I was hoping Windows 7 would fix that, and it has for the most part. I still get asked when I want to install programs I’ve download off of the web. Hopefully, when Windows 7 is the majority version of Windows used, there will be a way to verify that the program you downloaded and are trying to install is legit and it’ll only warn you if it’s not sure (similar to drivers are digitally signed).
I like Windows 7 compared to Vista and am slowing getting used to it. I figure it’ll take me a few months of using it before I’m as proficient as I am with Windows XP. I do like how they’ve reduced the buttons in the taskbar to just the icon and it changes to a stacked icon if you have more than one instance of that program running. I also like how I can minimize a video, while it’s running, and watch it by just mousing over the icon in the taskbar. I still don’t care for all my programs being listed in the start menu. I prefer the way it is in XP where it cascades into columns. Because of this, I’ve begun pinning some of the apps I use frequently in the task bar. I even pinned the command prompt so I don’t even have to do ‘Windows+r –> cmd’ in order to check or renew my IP address. Another neat “feature” is the 3D version of Alt-Tab called “Flip 3D”. It’s the same thing as Alt-Tab, except you see each window from an angle and they shuffle like playing cards.
I don’t see myself running back to XP anytime soon and Windows 7 seems to follow the “every other version” belief I have. Ever since I’ve been using a Windows machine (back when 3.11 was out), Microsoft has gotten every other version of their OS right. In my opinion, 95 was horrible (mostly because it was completely different than what I was used to. A transition to a start button and taskbar would’ve been better); 98 (especially 98SE) was good; Me never should’ve been sold, XP has been great; Vista could almost be considered as bad as Me was, if not worse.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about cloud computing, where most of the work is done on the Internet. One of the first uses of cloud computing has been web-based file storage services like Dropbox and FilesAnywhere. There are three main choices, that I know about right now, when it comes to online file storage (if you don’t count typical FTP/SFTP file servers, etc) – Box.net, Dropbox and FilesAnywhere.
Box.net offers 1GB of storage for free with a 25MB file size limit. For $10/month, you can upgrade to 5GB of storage, and a 1GB file size limit. You also have the ability to view the previous five versions of a file, with the paid membership. Right now, unfortunately, Box.net doesn’t have a utility to upload/sync files to their storage from a Windows, Mac or Linux computer, but they do have an iPhone app.
Dropbox offers 2GB of storage for free. Files uploaded to Dropbox via the desktop application have no file size limit. There is, however, a 300MB cap on files transferred via the website. For $10/month, you can upgrade to 50GB of storage; or for $20/month, you can upgrade to 100GB of storage. Dropbox keeps snapshots of every saved change in your Dropbox folder over the last 30 days. If you upgrade to one of their paid versions, they offer a service called Pack-Rat, which keeps an unlimited amount of previous versions and deleted files. Dropbox also offers an iPhone app.
FilesAnywhere offers 1GB of storage for free, and doesn’t appear to have a file size limit for uploading, but free accounts have download limits of 10MB per-file and 25 downloads/day.
I have an account with all three services, but if I had to choose only one, I would choose Dropbox. They even offer a way to get up to 3GB of storage for free by getting other people to sign up. They add an extra 250MB of storage to both my account and the person who signed up, when they use a referral link.

I finally got to go to my first Devils game at the new Prudential Center in Newark. It’s a very nice arena and I really like how convenient it is for me to get to a game, since it’s only a 2 block walk from Penn Station Newark. I don’t have to worry about fighting traffic to or from the arena, like I did when they played at Continental Airlines Arena (now called Izod Center). The next game I would like to go to would be against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden.

Technorati Tags: hockey, New Jersey Devils, Newark, Prudential Center

I had off this week from work to use up some of my vacation time, so I thought I would take some day trips.
I started my vacation week of day trips with a visit to the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum on Sunday. I haven’t been there since I was in the Cub Scouts (probably 6-8 years old), but some of it seemed familiar. I didn’t get a chance to see the Concorde while I was there but hope to maybe see it soon.
On Tuesday, I drove up to Cooperstown to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This was another place I haven’t been to in a long time so some of it did seem familiar but some of it seemed new to me. While there, I also stopped in to see the Wax Museum which is down the street from the HOF.
On Wednesday, I went down to Philly to check out Eastern State Penitentiary. I went there last year for their Terror Behind the Walls haunted house and decided I wanted to go back and tour it during the day. I also walked around the outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and saw the infamous Rocky statue.
On Thursday, I got to tour the new Yankee Stadium. I got to visit Monument Park (the one in the old Stadium was better), the Yankee Museum, and the Yankee dugout. If they Yankees were on a road trip, I would’ve also been able to visit the locker room. I’ll definitely go back next year when they’re out of town so I can check that out. I just wish I had toured the old Yankee Stadium while I still had the chance.
I ended my vacation week of day trips with a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The last time I was at the Statue of Liberty, I was probably in middle school. I do remember that we were allowed to go up into the crown then and the stairs were very narrow. We were in a constant line, slowing going up the stairs to the crown.

Technorati Tags: Cooperstown, Eastern State Penitentiary, Ellis Island, Intrepid, museum, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium

I hardly post to this blog anymore since I’ve been using Twitter. A lot of other people I know (not personally), have also severely cut down on quantity of blog posts and are using social networking site like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook to say what they need to say instantly. Over in the sidebar, I have my last five tweets and the last three photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr. I really don’t have much to write about anymore that I can’t do in under 140 characters.

Technorati Tags: facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter

It has been one month since I purchased my iPhone 3GS. So far, the only thing I miss is having a flash for the camera, and I really don’t miss a flash that much. I have my Canon A590IS if I know ahead of time that I’ll be taking pictures in no/low light. I wish AT&T and Apple would get off their high horses and allow the Qik app in the App Store. I tried Qik out when I jailbroke my iPhone 3G and loved the idea of streaming video TO the Internet. I haven’t replaced my iPod with the iPhone yet. I figure as long as the iPod still works (even though I seem to have to charge it every other day instead of once a week like when it was brand new), I might as well keep using it.

Technorati Tags: 3GS, Apple, iPhone