Apple

I consider myself one of the luckiest college students ever. In evaluating my university experience so far, one thing really stands out.....my job as an Apple Campus Rep.

Without going into detail, I will just say that I feel extremely fortunate and lucky that I have a job where I am still learning from it and enjoying it after two and a half years. I really feel like I am at the top of my game, and it will be a very bittersweet moment when I graduate, and I have to leave it behind.

fear? what fear?

Yesterday, I put a significant dent in my fear of heights. My roommates and I went to Hoosier national forest to climb "the fire tower".

This tower is 80 feet tall, and the stairs are very steep. About halfway up I realized how high I was and my fear started to kick in. I then decided to go back to the ground.

I stood there for about 10 minutes looking at the tower, and I decided that this summer is all about doing things I wouldn't normally do. Slowly but surely, I made my way clear up to the top of the tower to take in an amazing sunset. Now I know, without a doubt, that I can do anything I put my mind to.

Summer starts awesome

I just moved into an apartment for this summer, and I really got lucky in the roommate department. I am sharing an apartment with 3 guys that are active, and know lots of people. In the last 2 days we have grilled out twice, had tons of people over, and we went swimming with a bunch of people at Lake Monroe.

I really hope that this sets the tone for the rest of the summer. If so, it's gonna be a blast!

Spotlight on Tiger

I will now join the legions of other bloggers out there and offer my review and impressions of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger".

I must say that I am very impressed with this release. There were no snags during installation, and I have only been affected by one application that does not work (microsoft virtual pc... not much of a loss). Two of Tiger's features have had a significant impact on how I use my computers. Spotlight instant search technology, and Dashboard.

Spotlight
So what's the big deal about this thing? All computers can do some kind of search, right? That is true, but the real question is how WELL does it search. Spotlight combines 3 different search techniques. File Name search, Content Indexing, and Metadata. Meta-who? Metadata is information ABOUT your files. Things such as Author, date modified, the folder a file is in, the program that created a file...all of those are considered metadata. Spotlight utilizes these search methods to INSTANTLY search your drive. As you type your search query, spotlight is already providing you with results. There is no need to hit a "search" button. The biggest benefit I have had with this so far is being able to find emails that contain serial numbers for programs I have purchased. Now I only need to type "alarm clock" and it will bring up my serial number for Alarm Clock Pro. It is amazingly fast and simple.

Dashboard
Have you ever heard of Konfabulator? It is a program that allows little programs to run on your computer. Things like stock tickers, weather checkers, calculators, etc. are applications that are small enough to have running all the time. The problem with these programs until now was the fact that even when you are not using them, they are taking up processor time and RAM. Enter Dashboard. Apple takes this idea to a whole new level by hiding the applications when you don't want them, and they don't take any system resources unless you can see them. I can't tell you how many times I have already used this to check the weather or even just play around. This is a whole new concept for computer use, and I don't think windows will ever catch up to this one.

All in all, Tiger is an extremely solid operating system release, and I highly encourage you to check it out at www.apple.com/macosx

Parents

As I may have stated earlier, I am going to be graduating Indiana University with a BS in Informatics in December of this year. Of course, all of the big graduation stuff is happening now, so it all feels sort of anti-climatic to me. One of the graduation events is the big Informatics banquet this friday. I was not on the list to graduate in May, so I did not know about it until our Assistant Dean invited me to it. I never thought that these academic gatherings/celebrations were important to me, but finally, I am starting to feel like a valued student in Informatics because people want me to attend this event. Magically, it is instantly very important.

This invitation was extended to me on Wednesday at the Senior Capstone fair where I was showcasing my year-long group project, so all of this is very last minute. I called my mom today and told her about it. Mom and Dad are coming to town anyway to help move me to my new apartment. Of course, they both have events to be at the next day, and the banquet is from 6-9PM. I spoke to her a second time today, and THEY ARE COMING!!! I am so happy right now! They will be able to meet my fellow classmates and my professors. Like I said before, I never thought this would be important to me....but now I am TOTALLY looking forward to it.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, I have AMAZING parents.