Summer is done and over with for me, and it couldn’t come any sooner.  This summer was pretty much uneventful. Two summer classes and nothing out of the ordinary happened, except for the short time Linette was here, and of course the US Open…. The day Andy lost his mojo… in my opinion, I think he’s overrated.

Now that Linette is back on St Kitts starting her 3rd semester there, I’m up starting on my senior year.  This semester I’ll be taking PHI 014 (Ethics), FIN 101 (Intro to Finance), HIST 105 (Ancient Egypt, Greeks and Hebrews), LEGL 020 (Intro to Legal Systems), and AH 003 (Gods and Kings).

Today was fairly uneventful, ethics was cancelled because of the freshman/ incoming transfer convocation, which left me with 1 1/2 hours of nothing to do, so I got some of my books during that break as well as the new parking stickers.  Seems like there’s a distinction between commuter and resident students now.  Only new thing is that the commuter students get their own parking lot, which is still fairly small.  I think they should expand the commuter lots into the area behind Starr Hall, and have the residents park on the north side of campus, since their dorms are there anyway.

Finance class was a bit interesting, Prof. Papaioannou… try saying that, seems like a fair professor, but I guess only time can tell.  The class is full, but I suspect that the class will shrink as the semester goes forward.

Final class of the day, was an eye opener. Prof John Walsh, for Hist 105.  This guys doesn’t look like you’re typical University professor. He walked in with a Hawaiian shirt on, ipod earbuds hanging inside his shirt and his bag.  I was like, this guy can’t be our professor.  In any case, the guy is pretty much straight forward with rules.  When class is in session, he talks, and when he stops.. He’s done.  If a student’s cell phone rings, he answers it.  At least he doesn’t kick them out of class, and marks them absent like my Calc1 professor did at Nassau.  Other things, no exams, and only 2 papers, but I think these papers need to be written really well to get a good grade.  Professor Walsh says he’s a liberal and believes that government should stop passing laws that interferes with people’s lives and that young people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.  He feels that young people doesn’t know enough of the facts and that it’s unfair that young people have the same voting power as he does.  So my guess is that he feels he’s knows enough facts to make informed decisions.  An opinion that I can relate to.  Too many decisions out there are made on half-ass information, which leads to half-ass solutions, which can lead to disaster.

I’ll try to be more up2date with this blog now that school is in session.  I have something I can bitch about now 😛

Well, Spring Break started officially for me at 2:10 on Tuesday.  Unofficially, however, it started earlier than I liked.  Tuesday started out as any normal school day.  But when I went to move my car, I found a big old bolt stuck in my rear right tire.  So I decided to put my old rims and tires in the back and the newer rims in the front.  When it came time to remove the wheels, I couldn’t find my wheel lock key.  I took everything out of my trunk to look for that key, but after an hour of searching, I came to the realization that I had misplaced or lost the key.  Called up Jesse, to bring my car to his place to have it broken off.  Got there around 1pm.  His dad went to get his tools.  While he was doing that, I decided to look in my trunk one more time.  Hoping that it would magically appear.  And guess what?  There it was.  I was both relieved and pissed.  1 1/2 hours later, I had my old rims in the front, and the new ones in the back.  I’m guessing that when I was rushing to get my wheels switched out in the morning, I was rushing, and I just didn’t see it.  Either way I missed my classes that day. 

Spring arrived on Sunday, but this weather seems to say otherwise.  Yesterday and last evening it rained and snowed, and it left about 1/2″ of a coating on the ground when I woke up.  Supposed to be cloudy and raining until Sunday. 

2 more days….

Sorry I haven’t been posting here.  Been posting over at http://spaces.msn.com/members/robnapiza it’s Microsoft’s attempt to break into the blogging market.  It’s pretty cool, you can upload playlists from windows media player, you have 10MB’s of space to upload snapshots, and it’s pretty convenient if you’re an avid MSN user, you’ll have everything in one location.

Here’s a quick update of what’s been going on.

1. I’m a bit tired of this snow and cold weather.  I know I complained about the lack of snow earlier in the year.  Now I wish I never said that
2. Still adjusting to life at Hofstra, just had my first series of tests.  I didn’t do so well, at least in my opinion.  At least I have the remaining tests to make it up.
3. My brother finally got a call back from the DIA, and got the job, so he’ll be moving there in next few weeks.  I’m just glad that he’ll be moving when I get back.  However, I wish he wouldn’t go, we don’t talk much, but it’s nice knowing he’s around.  I’m gonna miss him.
4. My cousin’s sweet 16 is coming up, and she’s having a sweet 16 party on April 1st.  Originally I was told it was going to be March 26th, so I booked my flight based on that date.  Then I hear it was moved to April 1st, and now I’m not gonna be here for that.  Which really sucks.  I’m supposed to have a candle with my brother for her.  Now I can’t.  Gotta see if there’s something that I can do.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell for now.

24 days left before I leave to St Kitts to be with Linette again. For some reason, this time around seems longer. Just can’t wait. As an added bonus I get to say that I went to the Caribbean for Spring Break… hehe
The remaining 24 days won’t be boring though, I have 4 exams coming up, 3 next week, and one on the 17th. I also have a term project outline due for my marketing class on the 17th as well. As you can see I will be quite busy.
That’s it for now.

When Service Pack 2 was released for Windows XP Home and Professional, it was promoted as being an essential upgrade to secure Windows from virus and worm attacks. However, I don’t think that has been the case. The Windows Security Center and its default options of having Windows Firewall on was to help protect vulnerable installations of the operating system. Since the release of SP2, I personally haven’t seen any less vulnerability announcements, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen an increase in attacks towards Windows, maybe its because of Microsoft’s annoucements of it being more secure, it has given attackers more of an incentive to disprove Mr. Gates. In any case the point of this was to show that despite the security hoopla of Windows XP SP2 being secure Microsoft has just released another set of patches to make their OS “more” secure. Below is a list of patches that claims to secure the OS and its applications. Maybe Microsoft should do a lot more regression and QA testing before releasing products out to the public. I heard this saying somewhere before, treat your computer like a car, it needs regular maintenence, without it, it will one day cease to function the way it supposed to. With that in mind, Microsoft should follow that, test, test, test, troubleshoot and more troubleshoot, an untested car can kill someone, an unsecure OS can take your livelihood away.

Edited: Feb 17, 2005

Decided to remove the whole message of the security bulletin. If you want to read about the MS Security Bulletin please go here

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=42105

Just got back from Serli and Evan’s to see their newborn son. Pictures are up on my website for all to see.