Probation stinks ...

Today is a big day and it’s Friday, than the weekend. After 2 weeks I may see Bob again. He may have already moved to this new apartment! It probably won’t look very good, but he lived in a small house, so his apartment at least has to be the same size. He says it has a pool.

I have to convince my school I can go back to school, even under probation, I can make the grade at school. Dad and I had a long talk about staying in school. I haven’t done very well last semester. I did pass my classes though, but wasn’t enough in the school’s opinion. He once thought I was in denial since I “denied” the fact that I wasn’t making the grade. The school's dean put me on probation because in their view I didn’t want help therefore I didn’t want to be there. That is untrue. Most of the time, this is the reason for probation. I’ve been asked this question many times before, and I learned it’s better to admit you’re in denial. I knew if I didn’t, I would just yet into a complex loop of lies. At first, he didn’t believe me when I told him that I was paying attention to whatever was said at school. I never was talking to anyone during class 95% of the time, therefore I was listening and doing most of the assignments during class. College is going to almost guarantee me a job with good pay, so staying in school will be a good idea. I like to be a technician as my career, and I don’t really like Cisco. I don’t think anyone does…. I hope that I’ll do well on my final chance to do great. I plan to do the writing questions after the review questions in each chapter in the Cisco book during the summer so I’m not behind during the year. It’s better to be safe than not – in case I get stumped in Cisco. I had a taste last year in Cisco1, and the course is entirely at Cisco.netacad.net reading and doing the tests online. It’s the 21st century way for big corporations to have proof that a particular student is succeeding or doing poorly. Cisco handbooks are hard to understand anyways, although reading is understanding, right? I started to get ahead of myself and pondered how it was a conspiracy against me in my head. Speaking your thoughts out loud can be dangerous. So after a night of pondering….I concluded conspiracies are more trouble than their worth so I stopped thinking of this nonsense, and paranoia and started thinking of how I can ensure success over there. Had this never happened, I wouldn’t have gone through the grief of having dad telling me to get a job instead or stay in school. I was a nice student, hardly ever rude, and asked a lot of questions. So it wouldn’t be a conspiracy. I also had a habit at handing my work in late in both classes.

The top blog on the Modblog talked about how CISCO deals with hackers….and it just so happens that I am apart of that small group that takes CISCO classes though-out the Fall – Spring schedule at WITC. How do you think I feel about hackers? It is true that many businesses buy CISCO routers for the sake of having the most sound hacker proof router out there. Truth is any router or switch board can be hacked, Cisco just follows the rules of IEEE more closely than most. This little routers and switch boards have their own firewall to block alien data from entering. I like to use alien data because it sounds cool not that people use “alien data” as a technical term. Businesses are also coming to Cisco because the networking giant guarantees Gigabit bandwidth luxuries all the time. All the government buildings stick with CISCO because they fear they won’t get high quality support from other vendors, Hewitt Packard is an example. Time is Data, therefore data is money. I’m going for the A++ certification at school. A++ is 2 grades lower than the Cisco certification, but I’ll still receive a good salary in the end. If you have CISCO certification than you achieved the Doctorate of Networking and everyone will want you working for them. In A++, you can take the test for free, and can re-take the test for better competing scores as long as you pay extra for them. Hopefully half of those employers who want CISCO certification employees also want a few A++ certification employees. Hoping that’s the case.

I like to say I love my Yahoo.com account. The only junk email I got in my account is from those Tigerdirect spammers and the Nintendo Webring I signed up over a year ago. They keep sending me news I don’t want. I unsubscribed to it and they wouldn’t stop sending me emails. When ever some gamer puts in a comment it is sent to everyone’s email address. MSN messenger is great, never had spam on it, ever. Only one bad thing that MSN messenger doesn’t have is an option to receive offline messages. I use Trillian so I have my AIM, ICQ and MSN accounts online whenever I’m on. I also have X-Fire, that’s not my primary account.

My cousin, David, is in Japan somewhere now. He’s getting Internet sometime, so I’ll speak to him soon. I wouldn’t be surprise if he learns to speak fluid Japanese while he’s there. I never picked up a second language myself. His cell number is out of service, must have been a domestic only cell phone number? That sucks! He says Japan is 6 hours ahead of our time so I’ll have to wake up at 1pm to talk to him. That’s disappointing. Two weeks ago he mentioned that he’s probably going to log onto Diablo 2 there soon. He didn’t call me this week yet. I wonder if he lost interest in me? I want that Panasonic Q console. It is a Gamecube / DVD player hybrid. If Nintendo still sells that in Japan - that would be very cool or the PSX (PS2 / DVD burner hybrid). Both of these consoles are rare in the USA, but than again I have two DVD burners. So if you wanted to record TV shows onto DVD than that would give you that option. Hearing how much PS2 breaks down after usage, I wonder how the PSX will hold up. Don’t get this confused with the abbreviations PSX meaning Playstation versions 1 and 2. PSone is version 3 of Playstation. The first Playstation released in 1994 had an expansion port for the GameShark or similar port. As Sony decided that there is no need for it, the Playstation version 2 came out without the extra port. This helped drive the price down. The PSone is about half the size as the PS version 2, and was released in 1999 bringing Playstation to 99 dollars.

I beat Star Trek Elite Force II…it was fun, a little short. It’s funny, the aliens act human. The blue guy is very funny. Fighting the Romaneons was strange, I thought they were on our side. Maybe they were renegade Romaneons? I’m thinking I’m going back to play Diablo 2 as my primary choice just because it’s online and the game is so addicting. I read somewhere that the game is unbalanced in gameplay, but after playing it for years, I realized that it’s not the unbalanced gameplay, it’s the straight forward hack ‘n slash gameplay that never gets old. I have friends on Xfire that play Diablo 2, and I like to meet up with them. It feels like I’m getting something accomplished there. With Mountain Dew by my keyboard and Winamp playing my favorite playlist, I am ready for battle. My account could also be used in Warcraft III, but I’m not a big Warcraft fan. The battles are too short and I dislike the Player vs. Player aspect. That’s one of the reasons I played Neverwinter Nights last year. I thought I could fight hordes of enemies in dungeons. My friend, Bob, hates Diablo 2, so he’ll never play it. My cousin, Brian, is in love with Diablo 2. I never play him though. He plays on US East, I play on US West on Battlenet.

Freeware Pick of the Day

Xfire 0.14 – Xfire.com – A gaming chat client that automatically loads and connects to the server another player is using. It shows that a buddy/friend is playing a particular game. The client has not yet included popular instant messengers like MSN, ICQ and Yahoo. I have a feeling that it will incorporate them as new releases come available.