Happy New Year!

 8, Microsoft, School, Windows  Comments Off
Jan 012013
 

I know I do not post onto my own website that much, and many would think it is because there is Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ available for posting. Why bother with a personal website that you have o pay for when there are free options available?

Well, it is not because of the free options that I have not been posting to this website.

The truth is that I tend to get so caught up in other things that I end up not working with this site and it just sits here and lags.

Well, not anymore.

Now, I am going to set this site up to be the main source of information, and from here it will post to Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and any other social network I decide to send it to. No more leaving this site sitting around collecting the electronic equivalent of the dust that is collecting on my Mac and eventually onto my iPad (when I get my hands on a Microsoft Surface Pro!)

And speaking of Microsoft…

If you have not yet upgraded your computers to Windows 8, I suggest you do so immediately! This is quite possibly the most amazing version of Windows ever created!

It is super easy to use, looks absolutely wonderful, and is so stable I managed to max out my 8 gig of RAM and it didn’t go into the dreaded BSOD.

I am loving myself some Windows 8 right now! I installed it onto my Toshiba laptop and plan to also install it on my desktop soon. It is just that good!

In other news, I managed to survive another semester in college. Only three more semesters to go before I am back into the working world… or maybe grad school. The semester ended just before Christmas, and I didn’t get my final grades until after Christmas. I got 4 As and 1 B, and I have to tell you that getting that B is totally amazing since I was failing the course at the middle of the semester! But I managed to pull it out! And not only that, but brought my GPA up from a 3.29 to a 3.44 overall!

Now I have a full schedule for the next semester starting at the end of January. 18 credit hours, commuting Monday through Friday, and there from 8 AM until as late as 10:30 PM. It’s going to be hectic, especially since I have a Statistics class, and I can’t stand Stats! I have already dropped it once, but it is a required class for my degree, so I have to take it eventually.

At least this time when I take it, it is being taught by someone who was born in the area, and not someone who barely speaks English. I swear, the man said Toyota Corolla twelve times, and I had no clue what he was saying until he wrote it on the board. Stats is complicated enough without throwing in a barely comprehensible professor into the mix!

Also in the schedule is Introduction to Ethics, which is interesting because even the professor teaching it says you can’t teach ethics. We’ll see where this goes!

Everything else in my schedule is related to my Accounting and/or Finance majors. Yes, I am dual majoring! And it is amazing how many people say I am crazy for doing it, but the simple truth is that by adding the second major I only added 1 semester and 4 classes to my workload, spread out over a three year period. It was a no-brainer in my book!

But then again, many of the people who are saying I am crazy are about half my age. And it seems to me that the younger generation aren’t as eager to move up the ladder as my generation is/was.

But that it is another post altogether!

Anyway, time to move along, and quit boring all of you with my rambling.

But before I go, just one last thing. My plan is to keep to a more set schedule of posts. I have not decided if it is going to be once a week, or twice a week, or what have you, but I will be using this site more often.

Now, to get to studying for the tests I have to take before the semester starts!

 Posted by at 16:51 PM

Microsoft Surface, or Why My iPad Will Soon Become A Dust Magnet

 Misc  Comments Off
Jun 222012
 

surface_Web   I caved in at the end of March and broke my “No Apples” rule by purchasing the latest iPad. I have been intrigued with the iPad since they first came out, but was hesitant to purchase one because (a) it was made by Apple (and I hate Apple’s, both the fruit and the company) and (b) it seemed to be a little too much money for something that was so much less than my Toshiba laptop, which actually cost less than the cheapest iPad and had 20 times the storage space.

I own a Mac laptop. In fact, if I look up, I see it sitting on the top of my desk… collecting another years worth of dust. I haven’t used the Mac in over three years, and all I ever used it for before the power cable died (again) is to play DVD’s while I sat in the Laundromat doing laundry. It was not my “go to” computer for anything, because my Windows desktops have always been much more powerful than the Mac.

So I am not saying I hate Apple products without ever having used one, like some people I will not mention.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 19:50 PM

And another semester begins!

 Misc  Comments Off
Jan 202012
 

Hard to believe that Monday starts a new semester of school for me. Fortunately, my classes are only on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, so I do actually start classes until Tuesday. I get an extra day!

But, I didn’t exactly get done what I had planned to get done over the break. I admit that I completely slacked off.

Did I re-read my accounting and taxation books like I planned? Nope!

Did I work on the other half of the accounting project we worked on in class last semester like I planned? Nope!

Did I write anything other than the few posts I put onto my website? A little. 15 pages as an extension of the Chapter’s End story that is posted here on the website, but nowhere near as much as I wanted to write.

So what, exactly, did I do? A lot of movies and games on Google+ and PS3! A lot of web-surfing, and contacting my congressman and senators regarding SOPA and PIPA. Also, a LOT of BBC America (I swear I am addicted to that damned station!) I did, though, download all of the audio files that go to the French textbook for the class that I had to drop last semester. Now I have all of the materials to do the workbook and lessons on my own.

But I am ready for the new semester. I have all but one of my textbooks, and the missing one isn’t available online and according to the school bookstore it’s not in stock there either. We will have to see what happens with that one.

I have my Livescribe pen all charged, emptied of last semester’s classes, and new notebooks ready to be used.

My Zune is all synced and charged so it can go back in my truck and I can listen to it one the long drive back and forth on those days i have to be in school.

My laptop is charging and should be ready to use on campus, though I did get an email saying the school had updated the wireless system security, so it may not work when I get there. We will see what happens on Tuesday.

So, here’s to a new and, hopefully, better semester at school! Only 2 and one half years left before I get to graduate!

 Posted by at 22:40 PM

Dear Senator @ChuckSchumer …

 Misc  Comments Off
Jan 192012
 

Dear Senator Schumer,

I applaud you and your office staff for embracing Twitter as a means of communicating with your constituents. It is a great platform for getting information out there.

However, there is a problem that I came across after I discovered that you were following me on Twitter. I was flattered that you would do such a thing.

Then I saw the little quip on your profile that reads “Office Automatically follows all followers. Follows, Replies ≠ endorsement” and it dawned on me that there was a problem in how you and/or your office was using Twitter.

The fact that follows and replies do not equal endorsement is fine. That is how it should be. But it is the policy of automatically following all followers that concerns me.

There are, according to the 2010 US Census stats, 19,378,102 people living in the great state of New York. And if all of those people were to get a Twitter account and follow you, then your office would automatically follow all of them. If all of those people tweeted just once per day at the full 140 characters allowed by Twitter, your office staff now has to read more than 2.7 billion letters! At an average of 6 letters per word, we are looking at over 452 million words per day flooding your Twitter account! I don’t think the US Tax Code contains that many words!

And do you really need all those tweets of Jane Doe complaining about having a stomach ailment that makes her use the bathroom 40 times a day, or that John Doe has decided to break up with his latest girlfriend after just 3 days? Do you really want to read 19+ million tweets that show just how dumb and disconnected some people really are?

Yes, this is a drastic scenario I have put forward, and the likelihood of it happening like this is extremely low, but I think you and your office staff see my point.

Please don’t waste our tax money by having to have dedicated Twitter readers on your staff. Only follow those people who truly matter, such as other senators, your advisors, and those “civilians” that you know personally, not the population as a whole.

As for me, you can unfollow me. I won’t be hurt or upset. I am just an adult student attending university in western New York. I may be a constituent, but I am not important enough for you and your staff to follow me or my website on Twitter. And I am positive that more than half the people you follow on Twitter are just as unimportant as I am.

Sincerely,

Daniel McCue, a concerned citizen of New York

 Posted by at 13:59 PM

Now blogging mobile!

 Misc  Comments Off
Jan 132012
 

Back in November, I changed my mobile phone provider to AT&T so that I could a Samsung Focus with the Windows Phone 7 operating system. I am now writing this post on that phone with the WordPress app.

Why did I decide I wanted Windows rather than an Android or iPhone?

Because having played with an Android phone and with the iPhone 3Gs and 4, I felt that the Windows platform was just more intuitive and easier to use and understand.

Yes, I could probably do this same function (writing a blog post on my phone) with those other operating systems, but with an iPhone I would have to use iTunes which was out of the question. With an Android phone I wouldn’t have to use any particular program, but I didn’t like the way the phones worked.

Windows Phone 7, however, has practically no learning curve, has office built into the system, and has a much better on-screen keyboard than the other systems.

So, now I can update this website much more frequently as I am no longer tied to a computer in order to write. Overall, I think this is going to be great!

 Posted by at 14:32 PM
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