To all of my readers here on MySpace, I am inserting a special message at the beginning of this post (which is actually a reprint from my other blog at http://matthewlipford.com). I apologize for not posting here at all over the last year. I can't believe that I still have subscribers at all. Life just took over. Between my girlfriend, school, and work I just haven't had time to blog like I used to. Perhaps that will change soon. Anyway, on with the post:

Wow. I'm not even sure where I should start...

Yes I am. I'll start at the beginning.

On the morning of Friday May 08th, 2009 at the absurdly early hour (for me at least) of 6:15 in the a.m. I was awakened by the shrill screech of my alarm clock. I have some rather hard feelings about my alarm clock, but I am generally submissive to its demands. It makes a lot of noise: I wake up and begin my day. This day in particular was not something I was especially looking forward to.

I graduated from Macon State College on this particular Friday, with a Bachaelor's of Science degree in Information Technology. It's been a long time in coming. And despite that fact, it still seems to have gone by so fast. I was not particularly concerned with attending said graduation, but since my Mom does not subscribe to that school of thought, to graduation I would go. But, I digress...

So I woke up, and ate a bowl of cereal while my coffee brewed in the pot. Then I showered and I got semi-dressed up (and was customarily semi-uncomforatable as a result). My girlfriend and came over, and we rode with my Mom to Macon, where we were dropped off for various reasons. Me, so I could find my place and sit in misery nearly forever, and my girlfriend so she could secure seating arrangements for those in my family who were attending.

I ended up in a room with governed by as little order as possible. In fact, the only order I could sense in the room at all was many rows of chairs set up edge to edge. I was told to sit in the first open spot past the second row. I did as I was told. More and more people began to file in, and the room became steadily louder and hotter. I was strongly reminded of the feel of a high school cafeteria during lunch. Lots of conversations, little bits of each floating into one ear or the other.

Anyone who knows me very well, can likely ascertain that this sort of situation (lots of people, in an unfamiliar place) is not something I tend to take well to. I did the only sensible thing I could think of and pulled out my phone to share my thoughts with the world via Twitter. It was, I would later realize, my first live-blogging experience. This went on for about an hour, with observations and thoughts travelling from brain to fingers to phone to interwebz, and then it was time to start the ceremony. We were told to silence and put away our phones, and my live-blogging experience ended rather abruptly.

Several hours later, it was over. I became a college graduate. Very exciting. But wait...there's more. Just not right now. This post is long enough, so I'll conclude the story of May 8th, 2009 very soon.

Wow. Talk about getting caught up with life. I suddenly realized today that I haven't posted a blog here since January! And since there are a decent number of my subscribers who are still with me, despite the lack of output of any sort, I thought I should check in with you all and provide a small update on my life.

Well, I'm still in school, though it is looking like I may graduate someday (probably in May of 2009, if all goes according to plan). My grades are still good as I made my second ever 4.0 this past semester.

I am currently enrolled in 3 classes (9 hours) for Summer semester. I've always liked going to school during Summer semester because it's only 8 weeks long. Normally I get ready for the semester to be over after a couple of months, so Summer is the perfect length for me. It seems like you just get started, and the semester is already over!

It turns out though, that Summer semester is only easy if you are careful about which classes you take. I ended up choosing fairly intense classes this semester, and now I'm kind of feeling the crunch.

I'm taking the following classes:

• Introduction to Information Assurance- this class is a general survey, and (as the name implies) introduction to the field of Information Security. Mostly, it consists of a reading a couple of chapters a week, and responding to discussion questions and turning in a case study each week.
• Senior Capstone- this class is a very free form, group project oriented class. The entire class is one big project, of our choosing. And during the Summer, this project is on a very protracted time schedule.
• Web Development- this class is a thorough introduction to web development techniques and methods, focusing on XHTML and CSS. Lots of little web page assignments to do, and turn in each week.

I haven't had any tests in any of my classes so far this semester, but I have two coming up this week. I'm sure I'll do fine. The only one I need to actually study for is the Information Assurance test.

Let's see, what else is happening in my life right now...

I've been working on getting my own website up and running for a little while now. It's a blog (powered by Wordpress.org). You can find it (if you're interested) at http://matthewlipford.com. Feel free to sign up if you want to. It's still a work in progress, but I blog there on at least a semi-regular schedule (which is obviously more than I say about my blog here on MySpace).

I'm still watching too much TV, and I'm still reading as much as I can. My girlfriend and I are still getting along very well, so that's good. My hours at work have been cut a bit, so money is somewhat short right now. It came at a good time, what with school keeping me so busy this semester, but not having any money sucks no matter how you slice it.

I've been super obsessed with iTunes and my iPod Touch (still) for the last few months. I've been buying and downloading (mostly downloading) music at a breakneck pace, far faster than I can effectively listen to it all. I finally got a new cd head unit in my car a few months back, so now I can plug my iPod into the car stereo and listen to my iPod while I drive. I love it.

I'm now thinking that when my phone contract is up I'll probably switch away from Verizon and get an iPhone. Not that I have a problem with the service I get from Verizon, but the iPhone is just so damn awesome! I actually wrote a post on my other blog a few days ago about the new iPhone announcements that came out at WWDC this past Monday. You can find that here.

So, I guess that's about it for now. Thanks for reading, as always, and your comments, thoughts, questions, whatever are always welcome. Have a great day!

My test from a year ago has been reborn, and brought up to date with the new year! How well do you really know me? Take the test and find out!

Create your own Friend Quiz here

I've kind of been absent from my blog lately. Depending on how much you actually read my blog, said absence may have been noticed, or it may not. Anyway, my cat woke me up WAY before I planned to get up, and here I am. Sitting in front of the computer, having already checked my usual regimen of websites and various mailboxes, with nothing to do. And it occurs to me that I haven't written a blog in a long time. So I thought I would try to let anyone interested in on what's been going on in my life the last couple of months. So here goes:

I may or may not have mentioned in my last blog or two that the store in which I work was relocating out of the shopping mall we had been residing in. I was pretty excited about the move, because it indicated to me that I would no longer be working my dreaded 11 hour Saturday shift. This shift is when I wrote 90 percent of my blog posts over the course of the last year or so. I tended to find myself with copious amounts of free time during that shift, especially during the first two hours or so.

So, flash forward to now. The move is complete, and I have been transferred to our other store, which is much closer to my house. I work less hours overall now, but tend to have more to do while I'm at work. Thus, no new blogs.

But that isn't the only reason I haven't been writing. For some reason, I haven't seemed to be able to find the words. Which is not to imply that there wasn't anything worth writing about. Hell, given my propensity to write about tech/geek related errata, I had goldmines of appropriate fodder the last two weeks with the coming and going of CES 2008 and MacWorld 2008. I just can't seem to find the drive to sit down and write. I even wondered if I had said all that I had to say for a while.

Having said all that, here's a quick update on the current state of my life: I got my first 4.0 in school last semester, which I was pretty excited about. And I have a girlfriend now, which I'm also pretty excited about. I've been broadening my musical horizons (via my iPod, iTunes, and Limewire), again, very exciting.

Now with the geek stuff: While I haven't been writing in my blog, I have discovered something in a similar vein. I think the appropriate term for it is "micro-blogging". I'd been hearing about this website and service (free) called Twitter for a few months. My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I signed up.

The site is really simple, and the profile setup process is really quick and painless. The gist of it, is you copy code and paste it into the places you want (I have one on my profile page, and I'm going to paste one right below this paragraph). The code creates a little "widget" on your page that links back to your Twitter account. Then you update your status in short blurbs and the update is fed out to all of your "widgets".

The cool thing is that you can update it either through the website or through your cell phone (via text messaging) or through an IM client. I like it because I can always find time to make quick updates, and the text messaging allows me to make updates from places I just couldn't accommodate in my real blog.

Plus you can choose to "follow" people and have their "twitter" fed to your page (or your cell phone) so you can always see what they are up to. I think it's a pretty neat idea, and I'm still playing around with it.

Anyway, I encourage you to go check it out if it sounds interesting.

I promise I will try to not be absent so long this time. But hey, you can alway check my Twitter and see what I'm up to.

Thanks for reading everyone, and have a great day (week and/or month, if applicable)!

First off, I just want to say that I am in full support of the fact that the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike. I hate that my TV addiction is going to suffer this season because of it, but that's what has to happen to get things straightened out. Being someone who likes to write (and who would love to be able to write for some of my favorite TV shows) I am all for the writers getting their cut of the proceeds as people buy their favorite shows on DVD. More importantly, I think it's imperative that those same writers get their due from the fact that the Internet is going to continue to supplant cable TV in most of our lives.

Having said that, we are already starting to see the fallout from the strike. I am linking to the Wikipedia article on the 2007 strike below, for anyone who wants some information about it. If you didn't already know, Wikipedia may very well be the sum of all human knowledge. It is awesome, depsite the fact that I would never use it as an official reference.

Writer's Guild of America strike 2007 on Wikipedia

Moving on, I want to talk about why I am most upset by the fallout of the strike. I watch A LOT of TV, but my favorite show (by far) is still Heroes (still the best show EVER).

The show had seemed to falter a bit during the start of it's second season and many (myself included) were wondering if it would ever regain it's footing. Well, it did so (quite admirably, I might add) with this latest episode, entitled "Out of Time". I could write an entire blog about what all went down in this episode and where I think things will go from here, but those blogs don't seem to generate much interest, so I'll spare you all. I'll just say that I was right about Kensei.

Instead, I came across an interview with show creator Tim Kring, where he talks about where he thinks the show went wrong with the first few episodes of this season. So I am posting a link to the transcription of that interview below.

Tim Kring interview at Entertainment Weekly

I was very dissapointed to find out last week that the planned mini-series spinoff of Heroes, to be called "Heroes: Origins" was pulled off the table for this season, with the blame being aimed at the writer's strike. Some folks had speculated that the real reason the spinoff was pulled was because of dipping ratings lately, but I'm pretty sure that Heroes is still one of the most popular shows out there, and even if the ratings are dipping, they'll be back up soon I'm sure.

Beyond that, I was even more dissapointed to find out that in all liklihood, the second season will be effectively cut in half, and will end after either the 11th or 12th episode, which should air in mid to late December. The current story arc, Volume 2, titled "Generations" was already scheduled to end at that point, with Volume 3 starting in the second pod of episodes beginning in January. However, there is now word that the last episode in Volume 2 has been shot with 2 different endings. If the strike does not end soon, the alternate ending will be used, and the last episode of Volume 2 will serve as the season finale, with Volume 3 starting  at some undetermined point in the future, possibly even as late as next fall.

This news couldn't really come at a worse time, considering the fact that "Heroes" was SO good this past episode, and the upcoming episode ("4 Months Ago") looks to be even better. I hate to think that just as the show is finding its groove this season, and recapturing some of that magic that it had last season, it will be forced to stop and risk losing that momentum.

Anyway, if you have any thoughts about the strike, or Heroes, or whatever else is on your mind feel free to comment. Thanks for reading everyone, and have a great day!