My computer science course (CSE-101) is so basic, and driving me rather nuts. Our 'programming' consists of using a graphical programming environment called ALICE. It reminds me of a paper by the famous computer scientist E.W. Dijkstra (whose work resulted in a number of routing protocols based on the shortest path first algorithm he developed).

Here is an excerpt (emphasis mine):

"Not everybody understands this sufficiently well. I was recently exposed to a demonstration of what was pretended to be educational software for an introductory programming course. With its "visualizations" on the screen it was such an obvious case of curriculum infantilization that its author should be cited for "contempt" of the student body", but this was only a minor offense compared with what the visualizations were used for: they were used to display all sorts of features of computations evolving under control of the student's program! The system highlighted precisely what the student has to learn to ignore, it reinforced precisely what the student has to unlearn. Since breaking out of bad habits, rather than acquiring new ones, is the toughest part of learning, we must expect from that system permanent mental damage for most students exposed to it." -- E.W. Dijkstra (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)

Just watched the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time since it originally aired. Possibly the greatest episode of Star Trek ever made. It's got a great story and brings back some characters we hadn't seen in a while (Tasha, Q). This is what Star Trek is about folks, when did they lose that?

I bought an Acer Aspire 1410 Netbook for school use, it's small, good battery, and fairly speedy. Core 2 Solo SU3500 (1.4ghz), 2GB memory, 250GB HD, Win7 Home Premium, all for $420. It's got Intel integrated graphics but it manages to play EVE which kinda surprised me. That's not what it's for though and should serve me very well in class.

I finally got my old Motorola VST200 cordless phone working with Asterisk and successfully made a VoIP call with it! This phone is a classic, it looks like an ancient cellular phone and even flips open but it's a regular PSTN cordless phone. There were many moving pieces here, first I had to find a new battery for it which I did some weeks ago. I had a Digium TDM400P from years ago when I was last playing with Asterisk that I had to get working on OpenSolaris, as I no longer run Linux. Fortunately the guys at Solaris VoIP had a port of the Zaptel drivers. Unfortunately the newer Asterisks use DAHDi instead of Zaptel and nobody has ported that and I didn't want to play with it to see if there were more than name changes. So I just used Asterisk 1.2 which isn't a big deal for something that I'll probably never use. After much fiddling I finally got it working. What to do with it though?

I'm uploading more videos from my collection to Youtube, including the one Cody requested when his dad threatened to shoot him with the spudzooka. Check them out here: YouTube.

Went dove hunting with Uncle Mark and Stephen today out by Florence Junction. I did pretty good, got 11 birds, limit is 10 but I gave one to Stephen and we wound up with 28 total birds. Of course I gave all of them to Mark because I'm not a fan of the taste of dove. It was pretty hot today, though didn't break 100 while we were out I sweated like a pig and got a decent tan.

Had to visit 3 places to get my hunting license last night, Sports Authority ended up having them. Big 5 was out of migratory bird stamps, Walmart's sporting goods staff was AWOL as usual, and the Sportsman's Warehouse has closed shop.

Well I got banned from EVE on the 31st, 4 days ago. I have not heard any reason yet but suspect it maybe because of my IP addressing changing from moving back home. I opened a petition but no response, I can't even log into my account on the web to check it. I sent an email to support today. I'm not pleased, I spent good money (if not a lot of money) and as a paying customer I deserve some response.

UPDATE: I've been unbanned and give 15 days credit. They said my account had been logged into by a hacker possibly due to a keylogger, but I have my doubts as I take pretty good care of the old computer's security. I have taken to copy and pasting my password (the long randomly generated one they give you) instead of typing it so that shouldn't happen again. Fortunately I didn't lose anything in my account.

I have been playing EVE Online while on summer leave and have enjoyed it so far. It's different from other MMOs in that the game world is much more realistic, pirating, scamming, and all that good stuff is legal provided you don't exploit bugs. The game mechanics allow you to do that kind of stuff and nowhere is completely safe from PvP, it's pretty awesome.

Eve is a game about virtual conquest. It's just like any other strategy game out there, although in Eve, the tokens moved about on the playing field are actual players. Everything in the game is put there to drive the big strategic theater, and although certain things might need to be balanced for the plebs, it's all small potatoes. What matters is gaining territory and crushing your enemy.

#	From	To	When	Reason
1	Phoenix	Frankfurt	June 2006	stationed in Germany
2	Frankfurt	Huntsville	October 2007	Raven SUAV class
3	Huntsville	Frankfurt	October 2007	back to Germany
4	Frankfurt	Phoenix	December 2007	Christmas leave
5	Phoenix	Franktfurt	December 2007	back to Germany
6	Frankfurt	Phoenix	February 2008	pre-deployment leave
7	Phoenix	Frankfurt	February 2008	back to Germany
8	Iraq	Phoenix	February 2009	mid-tour leave
9	Phoenix	Iraq	February 2009	back to Iraq
10	Frankfurt	Phoenix	June 2009	post-deployment leave
11	Phoenix	Frankfurt	June 2009	back to germany
12	Frankfurt	Phoenix	August 2009	end of Army service

Well, I made it back to Germany after much trials and tribulations. Flew to Dulles with no problems, and even got started on the next flight but about 40 minutes out they said we were going back because of mechanical difficulties. Didn't say what but it didn't seem to serious and nothing was noticeable. They dumped some fuel which I got a picture of I'll have to post one of these days. They got us another plane and we sat on the taxi way for hours until they pulled that one back. It was having problems with the video system and was playing their annoying 'soothing' music very loud for hours and was driving everybody nuts. I hope that wasn't the only reason they canceled that flight, they should have just turned the stupid thing off. In the old days nobody had all that fancy stuff and they survived. ;) So about 3am I got to my room in the Sheraton hotel in Reston (paid for by United of course). Many, many long lines and all very tedious and frustrating. Next flight was 5:15 on Sunday, that one went without problems. Train and taxi trip back to Baumholder and here I am before noon on the internet. They hooked me up while I was gone, I was hoping they would so that's pretty awesome. Will post pictures later, now that I have a net connection I can upload all the stuff from after mid-tour leave.

Went over to Uncle Marks this evening for some Pizza and the ASU Baseball Game. Matt and Steven came over, it was good to see everybody. Mark has a new dog named Molly who is pretty cool, and Steven brought Abby, they played all night and licked everybody constantly! ASU lost the game in the 9th, it was 3-2 and Texas got 2 home runs, Mark was disappointed. We had Pizza and Wings, then some Ice Cream later, good stuff. We're going to go to the Black for a day trip on the 28th, looking forward to it.

Made it back to Germany yesterday, finally! They put me in the Charlie Company barracks since Alpha's barracks are so much smaller than all the other buildings, Southard is over there too but I'm not sure which room. 90 day loss, hurray! Started reintegration today, got through it first, even before HHC, don't ask me how I wasn't trying. Want to get my car BAD and go eat at Poseidon's (a greek restaurant) with the guys. USAA screwed me over though, paid for my insurance on the 28th of April and they still haven't posted my documents. Have to wait a couple hours for the international agents to come in so I can call and bug them and hopefully get it today, otherwise it'll probably be Monday. Signed up for internet access almost first thing, supposed to send somebody out on the 5th but I'm hoping it's already hooked up and I can just plug in and go. Unfortunately the power supply to my DSL modem hasn't arrived in the mail yet, why didn't I pack it in the same box as the modem?

Well we're on our way back, some of us anyway. I'm on leg 2 of about 7, so still have a ways to go. This has been a very boring and stressful deployment and I'm glad it's over. That may seem like a contradiction but those of us out here with me will totally understand what I mean.