Kim's Blog

I came across this article - Does Technology Make You Happy? and it was actually pretty thought provoking. A lady asks various people if it makes them happy, all from answers of No because when techonology isn't working (i.e., when the internet isn't connecting, or a cell phone battery dies) they are very displeased, and other answers Yes (i.e., because it helps them get stuff done like homework, and helps them enjoy things they love like writing and photography).

So does technology make all of you happy? If it didn't... what are you doing as a CIS major?!?! lol Just kidding. But ya, I'm a geek, technology makes me happy.. I get excited over new gadgets. Don't lie, I know you all do too...

So I've been using my boyfriends laptop for the semester (mainly for my independent study because it has visual studio on it) and somehow using the wireless internet everywhere I go, has become a problem, seeing as how I ran a spyware check on it and it found 87 traces. I literally cannot use the internet without 15 popups every couple of minutes. So with a Spyware remover (Webroot) that I have, it removed 87 traces. The problem is, there is STILL spyware! My question is.. whats the best way to get rid of it? In the past I've removed it from the regedit, but I can't seem to find it in there. Anyone have any home remedies they can offer?

What was everyone's favorite part of the class (either IS 449 or IS 696)? I would say mine would have to been the mini projects. I really liked the trial and error process (even though extremely frustrating at times) of the coding. I still can't figure out my last mini project! (I'm really crazy if this was my favorite part of the class and my most frustrating part, huh?)
So here's a look at my final mini project. I thought I used DOM, but apparently I didn't...? I guess taking the inner html out cancelled out all my DOM methods. I don't know how fixable it is, though. If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears.

On Kae's blog he talked about Paired programming, something gone over in the Menlo presentation, and he was talking about how we experienced pair programming (I wasnt the one that got annoyed with Kae, by the way, lol, it was another group member) and actually, in my opinion, its such a good idea. Because as Dave was typing the SQL code in and we were getting errors, me, as one of the on-lookers, was able to catch a couple errors. If you have that second pair of eyes, or even third pair, programming is more understandable.. and come on, if you have that many eyes lookin at some code, you're bound to find the error, lol.

In response to Thomas's blog... First off, LOL! When I first saw the Title of the post my mouth dropped, I'm like "Oh no he did NOT!" then I saw the post and I was like, "Oh... Okay" Its actually a compliment! lol.. Code Beauty, huh? I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. Don't we all hate our code to be unogranized and sloppy? Make it nice! Make it flow! Make it Neat! It's much easier to find mistakes. Just an opinion. :)

In response to Praneeth's Blog, I know exactly what you mean! I was just with a friend yesterday helping him pick out a computer and he wanted this fancy smanshy computer with a huge harddrive and all these fancy gizmos on it (the live tv, etc.) and I'm like.. seriously. What do you need that for? You have everything you need online, you arent going to be buying a bunch of games that use up a lot of hard drive space, etc. Especially for the common user.. So I dunno, I guess in a way desktop applications (outlook, photoshop, word, etc.) is being outrun by so many online services. Is that good? Who knows.. saves me some space though. :)

Our group (Kae, Dave and myself) got a lot of flack for what our audience is. And the first thing I though of was... Isn't it obvious? Sports fans! Thats obviously our audience. But the deeper meaning behind it is, what does the USER want? What will they get out of our website? So after some consideration, (as you saw on Kae's blog) he added a Discussion Group, I don't think its up and running yet, but at least it will give the user a reason for going there, as opposed to just a YAHOO group posting site, because thats a little informal and strays from our actual website.

So a little input from people.. Do you think a discussion group draws attention to a website and brings users back? I personally think so, but I just wanted to get some feedback. Aside from technical stuff and MORE fancy gadgets on our page, we're trying to make it geared more towards the user. Does anyone else have any ideas?
Check out our new domain/page!

So I'm going to go see the new Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie (ya, I'm a dork) today, and honestly I did NOT want to go to Hollywood.com because its a million clicks away from what I'm looking for and I'm like Hey! Why not use Jeff's spiffy mini project? But I couldn't find it! lol.. I just thought it was funny some projects are actually useful in everyday life. So Jeff, are you going to keep your website up for a little bit for all to use? If so, can we get a link? :)

So I'm working on this project where I'm supposed to access a database (I used Microsoft Access to save myself trouble, however it seems to be MORE trouble) using Visual Basic in a web application. I've built the layout for the webpage, got the database to do a page onload, but I cannot figure out for the life of me how to save information into my database. Anyone know any tips/tricks or a good information source on how to do this? I have professor Lee helping me, but we're both kind of stuck! Heres a screen shot of one of my pages that I want the user to enter data into, and theoretically pushing the button that saves it into the database. So like I said, if anyone knows how to do this with an access database using visual basic, I'm all ears! Thanks!

So its winding down towards the end of the semester, some people are graduating, others not.. I was just wondering, has anyone interviewed for any jobs? I interviewed for a couple so far. Today I had one for this company called Awecomm Technologies. It was mainly a programming job, they asked a TON of questions about object oriented programming, and if you're like me and had Saxon, well, lets just say my skills are limited. I told them I'm learning Ajax and they seemed interested in that though, I felt proud I was actually able to explain it! Anyways, heres some helpful links for interviewing:

http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewquestionsanswers/a/interviewquest.htm

http://www.collegegrad.com/jobsearch/Mastering-the-Interview/Ten-Tough-Interview-Questions-and-Ten-Great-Answers/

Don't make the mistake I did though, don't sound too "generic". When asked "Why would you like to be a part of this company?" I replied: "I want to grow with the company, help expand, and make a difference with your company". or something along the lines of that, make sure you research the company (which I did, I was just a little too nervous to remember anything, lol), and give a little fact about their company with some of your responses. Just a little friendly advice!