In the course of pursuing my Master’s degree, I’ve written many papers (with more yet to come). In the interest of helping out others (and to toot my own horn) I’m going to be adding them to my Google Docs account and “publish” the links here.

Please be aware that, even though I wrote them originally for school, they are still copyrighted. If you wish to use them outside of normal “fair use”, please contact me. Heck, even if you link to them, quote them, or whatever, please let me know. I would like to know who’s benefiting from them.

The first couple of papers that I’ve uploaded are listed below: > more <

Well, I figure it’s about time to harvest the power of the Internet and see what happens.

I plan on getting out of the Navy next June and so I’m starting to get my resume in order and see where to send it. Naturally I’m looking at Monster, et al. but for many large Internet job sites, it’s like looking for a job in the classified ads: you’re just one of several thousand resumes mass mailed to prospective employers. It’s even worse now in the digital age; it takes nothing to email a resume so a lot of people essentially spam employers in the hopes of “shotgunning a job”. > more <

I’ve said this among my close friends and family for a while: we need to stop sending so much money and aid to Africa. It’s just like giving hand-outs to homeless people. Not only that, but we have kids who are homeless or underfed here in America. Why do we keep sending food and money overseas when we can’t even take care of our own?

Today I found a perfect article that reiterates my argument, only in a better fashion because the interview is with an African who knows what the problems are. Der Speigel Online interviewed James Shikwaki, a Kenyan economics expert. Here are a few choice quotes: > more <

I finally bought a USB wireless adapter for my laptop so I can now use the Internet at my leisure, in bed. I no longer have to struggle downstairs just to check my mail. Because of this, I’m going to try and get back into the “blogging rhythm” again. (In case you didn’t know, most search engine optimizers (SEO) recommend blog sites add new articles every few days to keep them “fresh” with search engines. The more frequent the activity, the hire the ranking, in general.)

So, with this article, I wanted to continue on with my last post about computer file systems. I was going to talk about some of the Linux file systems but decided it probably isn’t necessary right now. Even though I use Linux at home, most people still use Windows so they probably don’t care about what file systems Linux has available. Plus, most Linux users either already know about their file systems or know enough to find out more if they need to. > more <

Choosing the right file system for your computer can have a large impact on how well your computer works. I won’t claim I know everything about file systems, but I will share what I know, which should be enough to give you a basic idea of how these things work.

According to Wikipedia, a file system is “a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them.” Most people don’t think too much about the file system, if they think about it at all. > more <

After making a comment on a fellow GIDBlog site, I realized that it would make a good topic of discussion. The original comment I made was that, by playing Gran Turismo, I’ve learned quite a bit about cars that I didn’t know before. Obviously, it’s a game so a lot of real life aspects can’t be duplicated exactly, but much of the premise of the simulation is still applicable.

For example, I never realized how much tires affect the car. It makes sense though. The tires are the only part of a vehicle that actually interact with the environment, in this case the ground. Having poor quality tires means your are more likely to lose that precious ground contact. Once you lose good contact, you no longer have control of the vehicle. This means not just when your tires actually leave the ground (like when you go over a cliff) but when you lose any type of traction. If you brake too hard without anti-lock brakes, your wheels will lock up and you lose control. If you go over a “washboard” road or hit a speed bump too fast, your tires will momentarily lose contact with the ground and you just can’t drive on air very well. > more <