Death of a Thumbdrive

Well, my Sandisk mini Cruzer gave up the ghost last night. Not a bad drive though, and I’ll probably get another one someday. It lasted me a year (which seems to be a little over par for me) and it went through the washer and dryer a couple of times. I tried using it yesterday though and couldn’t get any OS to enumerate the drive, so it was more than simply a bad partition.

After verifying that neither Linux, OS X or Windows was going to verify the drive, I promptly took it apart and beat the flash chip into 4 pieces. Gotta keep that data secure since it had my private keys on it.

I still haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to buy a new one right now. I don’t honestly use it that much… I generally just stick to scp and transfer things like that back and forth. I’ll probably end up getting one after the first time I need it though… we’ll see.

Semester Grades

My final grades for the semester came back, I didn’t do too badly, though I’m sure I could have done better had I put more effort into it. Oh well, lessons learned, profs I’ll never have to take again.

I passed all three of my PE classes:

  • Beginning Archery
  • Beginning Rifle
  • Leisure Sports
  • Both Orientation to the Social Sci and Themes in Western Civilization with one of my favorite professors at Tech came back as As. So did CyberLaw.

    History of Michigan and Historiography were both Bs, but I shouldn’t have that prof again, which I’m happy about. American Foreign Policy was a B too, though this was mainly procrastination and a lack of interst on my part. I’ve discovered that I’m far more interested in domestic politics than international. While I do enjoy the broad overviews of international politics, the details just don’t seem to engage me. It seemed as if everytime I’d work on a discussion of international relations, I’d bring the focus back to the domestic details. Oh well, perhaps International Law over the summer will go well.

    In the spring I’m scheduled for some fairly interesting classes, hopefully I can get my head into school a bit more:

  • American Constitutional Law (SS3660) – I had this prof for CyberLaw, should be interesting.
  • Social Problems (SS3710) – I’ve heard stories of Dassbach, at the least… it should be entertaining.
  • Military History of the U.S. (SS3505) – Terry Reynolds, one of my all-time favorite Tech profs.
  • First Aid/CPR (PE3985) – What? I non-0 level PE course, crazy!
  • Broomball (PE0210 L02) – Oh, yeah!
  • Techniques for Teaching Math (MA3910) – I get to learn to teach via manipulatives. Block time!
  • Speech Communication (FA2090) – The one class I’m probably going to dread.
  • Winter Break has come again

    My third fall semester at MTU is now over. I don’t have any of my grades yet, but they should be coming in soon and I’m fairly confident. Most of my friends have left town, but I’m going to be staying for work.

    I doubt I’ll get to many customers calling, but I’m going to be putting some work into our intranet site and add a few features. Since it is written in PHP and uses a MySQL backend I’ll be learning a bit about that as well. One of my roommates has kindly loaned me a couple of O’Reilly books (SQL pocket reference, SQL in a Nutshell and Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL) which will come in handy.

    It looks like I’ll be leaving Houghton on the 23rd and driving back up on the afternoon of the 31st, straight from my cousin’s wedding reception (perhaps I’ll take the time to change clothes). I should be back by midnight though and I hear rumour of a New Year’s party at my house if anyone is interested (it will probably be BYOB and we have a couple of couches that are comfortable enough to sleep on).

    1 Exam Down

    Well, my first exam is down, and I think it went pretty well. I believe I should be getting an A in that class, which excites me because it is a 4000 level course, my first.

    Today will consist of yet more studying, this time for Themes in Western Civilization and my CyberLaw course. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some research for my policy paper in too. I think I’ve decided to go with a paper on how trade with China has been normalizing their government.

    This is just a little something I’d like to leave you with, it was a friend’s away message:

    ‘Twas the night before exams and all through the dorm
    Everyone was studying (and not looking at p0rn)
    Their clothes for the next day draped over their chairs
    Not necesarily clean (but who the f**k cares?)
    Those ill-prepared were giving up the fight
    Due to the fact it was starting to get light
    The 11th hour slowly drew near…
    “Let’s get it over with so we can all go get beer!!!”