Computer Architecture Week 1

My life first...class stuff last!!

PERSONAL

Well, I sit here at the Wisconsin Dells, in a room at Chula Vista while my son sleeps. We are in town for a Youth Championship Football Tournament. I just realized that daylight savings time has occurred and it is really 7:15, not 8:15. This is both a blessing and a curse. You see his team won, which for all involved is good. It was a close game with both teams evenly matched. That was the blessing. Now the curse. Had they lost we would be playing at 10 this morning, done by 12 and home around 2. We don't play until tonight at 6, done by 8 and home by 10; which with daylight savings time will seem like 11. It is not easy getting my son up at 5:30 am for school on a normal night let alone add in all of the above. Yikes! Oh well lets hope they win so the ride home is more joyful than not. The good thing is he will be beat and most likely will sleep. As for me, well...it is what it is!! Any other parents feel the same way about these sports tourneys? Blessing vs. Curse??

The other thing is we need to be out of the room by 10:30. The game is at 6 so it will be a long afternoon. I suppose I could find out if we could stay in the water park, but the team needs to be out of the water by 1 so not much leeway there. I may drive a bit to get into town but not sure how much is open on a Sunday in November. Oh well it may just be a time killer.

Ahhh.....the life of a devoted parent. At least I brought my laptop and have taken the opportunity to work on my portfolio stuff albeit with a 1Mbps connection. We are at the end of the complex so I assume the signal has really faded down here. Boy to think that I was used to dial up connectivity and I thought that was great; then to be spoiled, somewhat, by a cable connection, I feel like I have reverted back to the stone age. But at least I have a connection!!


Oh yeah, we had a great buffet dinner last night and I had way more than my share of King Crab legs....so tasty!!


CLASS

Anyway, I should blog a bit about the class. A new class brings a new blog. This class is all about "how a computer works--from the inside". Class 1 had us look at various components of computer hardware as well as watch a movie exploring the innards of a computer by following a group of students through large oversized pieces representing computer parts. This was both fun and interesting. The visuals helped with a few explanations and understandings. Overall I think it was worthwhile. The most interesting part was the computer simulation where we illustrated the operation of a computer without actually being a computer. We followed a path that added two numbers. It was a lesson in logic, really. I did find it interesting that the number of steps necessary to add two numbers, quite a few for such a simple step.

I am PC person. As far as navigating through the inside of a computer I do that quite a bit more than the normal person , I think! I am always opening up my computer to clean it of dust. My 7 year old loves to watch and I point out the parts. In fact, we recently, literally, tore apart our first computer, an IBM Aptiva from 1999. I explained the parts to him and he seemed to really enjoy it. He refers backs to it and wants to tear apart another one. I would actually like to build one with him. My only regret is not saving the parts. I have upgraded my computers with hard drives, memory, ZIP drives (on the Aptiva). I have reinstalled operating systems after severe crashes. Just for fun at times too just get a nice new clean running computer again. Last August after updating my XP to service pack 3, I got caught in the endless reboot loop that had plagued many people. I spent hours searching the forums looking for an answer and a way to bring it back to life. I finally did and still don't have perfect running system nor do I have service pack 3. I plan on doing a re-image this Christmas break after grad school ends. I don't like problems but I love the challenge of conquering them and winning. I will spend an awful lot of time trying to fix a problem myself before just giving up and doing an OS reinstall, although I have done that many times.

Well enough babbling.

Later!