Weekend

Ok it is the weekend before finals for all of my eight week courses and I find out that I will have to go Baton Rouge for a funeral. Imagine having to drive to Louisiana and back in one day while having to deal with family after a loved one has passed. It was an extremely long trip there even though it only took two hours it seemed like forever. When I got back I had to start studying and working on my final project. This was one of the longest days ever.

Finals

This week has started my finals in all of my eight week courses. These finals have started to really get annoying and I am glad that come Wednesday I will be done with these classes. Monday started with one final and my final project due and Wednesday I will take the second final for this class. This final is stressing me out because our teacher allowed us to look at the final because he figured it wouldn't make any difference weather or not we knew what was on this test.

Questions

1. Is the paper too technical.
2. What would be a good way to revise it.

Rough Draft

Reform of the Campus Network

The campus network has many problems and due to these problems it is plagued with down time. Some of the problems are due to the lack of equipment and some is due to the fact of outdated protocols and operating systems. The current network is established with multiple points of failure. The campus is also using the 2.4 Ghz frequency and this frequency can be used up by any piece of electronic equipment that uses this frequency.

The design of the network also has a lot to be desired. There are many points in the design that disperse the work load but at the point of the internet it has one point of failure. To resolve this problem there needs to be multiple exit points throughout the campus network. This allows for one piece of equipment to be brought down for maintenance while the other takes care of all routing of traffic. There should also be a backup to the backup this is because if during the maintenance there is a failure the backups backup can take over. This also goes to a good rule of thumb that most network engineers go by and that is for every link there should be two backups.

As for the lack of equipment the campus doesn’t have enough access points. It isn’t that they do not own enough of them it is that they do not use them efficiently. The campus should have an overlap of fifteen percent in the wireless range. They do have this but the downfall is where they got there information. The technical briefs for the equipment give a general range of use but does not account for line of sight issues. This could be fixed by the rearrangement of equipment and instead of using the technical briefs they use field studies and visually see what could be causing interference in the line of sight.

Another problem with the network is that the frequency used by wireless networks is 2.4 Ghz. This is only a problem because there is only eleven channels that this uses and they can be used up by the use of too many 2.4Ghz electronics. The solution for this is not easy and could be controversial. There is no way to change the wireless frequency so to fix this problem you have to remove as many 2.4Ghz electronic devices as possible. You could do this by prohibiting phones and other devices that work on this frequency.

One of my most dreaded problems is the outdated systems. The system that causes me the most grief is the ORCA accounts. This system is a Linux based system that seems to not have ever been updated. This is a very simple fix all that is required is an update of the operating system. This can be done at midnight if need be but it should be done.

The final problem that I have noticed is that there is no kind of authentication. This can cause a problem in that if students using the network are trying to buy stuff from any website their credit card and identity is out in the open. This means that anyone can grab their credit card number or social security number or any other vital information. This is the worse of the problems with the network because this can cause life long problems for students, such as bad credit.

Family

My view points on family may differ than some but to me there is a pretty simple way to describe family. Family will always be there for you regardless end of story and therefore you should always be there for your family. Don't let anyone disrespect your family or hurt your family because no matter how many friends you have chances are they won't be there for you in twenty years but you family will. Friends are great don't get me wrong but if they disrespect your family then they aren't true friends. Never put family aside for anyone no matter how important you think that someone is.

Eight Week Classes

I have two eight week courses this semester and they are extremely difficult. The courses are fast and there isn't much time to get all of your work done. Along with that at the end of these courses there is what is called a skills based assessment which if you don't pass you fail the entire course regardless of your test scores. I just finished up my first eight week and am starting on my second, but after this one I still have two more that I have to take to graduate.

A Soldiers Welcome Home

Well for those of you who don't know I have a twin brother in the military and he has been deployed over seas for about a year and a half now. He is fixing to come home now and honestly its about damn time. My brother and I have always been pretty close and now we are even closer. I can't wait to go home this weekend and see him for the first time in almost a year(because he got two weeks leave midway through his deployment). My dad, brother and I are all looking forward to sitting on our front porch and smoking a good cigar together along with a good cold beer.

Home

Well since I've been down here I haven't gone home very much actually I haven't gone home at all until this weekend. I really needed to get away from Hattiesburg for a couple of days so going home was the best option. It was relaxing to be back at home in the country and with my mom and dad. When the weekend was up I was ready to come back but now I was refreshed with good sleep and good home cooked food.

Random Road Trips

Last Saturday me and all my friends were watching the LSU vs. Florida game on TV and when LSU won the game we all decided that it would be fun to go to New Orleans. We left at around 11:00 p.m. and got there at about 1:00 a.m. When we got there we headed straight for Bourbon Street were we had a great time. We left there at around 3:oo a.m. and got back Hattiesburg at 6:30 a.m. it was a long drive considering we had such little sleep.

Skills Final

Last week was one of the worst weeks this school year. The reason for this is that I had a skills final and it kept giving me problems. I had three attempts to pass I failed the first two attempts and the day before the third I was extremely nervous and stressed out about it because if I failed I would not be able to pass the class. I went in at 7:15 in the morning and started the test at 7:30 thankfully I was able to pass the test and this time it only took me two hours to pass.

Ole Miss

This weekend I went to Oxford to watch the Ole Miss Florida football game. Of course the Florida Gators won the game even though Ole Miss did better than expected. The funnest part of the game was tail gaiting in the Grove there were thousands of people there and even more alcohol. The party in the Grove lasted for hours we didn't leave until about ten that night.

College

Since I have moved to Hattiesburg I have gotten use to not getting much sleep and working on homework all night. Living in the apartment complex that I live in most of the people are students but they all like to party and stay up late. I enjoy this as much as they do so naturally this means I am always out and about with them. I have finally gotten use to the lack of sleep at night and have started sleeping more during the day to compensate.

Labs

Ok for the second week in row I have had a lab that has taken twenty four hours to complete. These labs are for my core classes and are ridiculously hard and time consuming the class that has this lab is ITC 331 and from what the professor said it is not our hardest class. What makes things worse is that this class is only an eight week course and is extremely fast paced. This class is by far going to be my hardest of this semester.

Long Weekend

Okay this weekend started out great I went to Starkville on Friday to meet up with some of my friends for a backpacking trip to Sipsey Alabama. We left Starkville early on Saturday and got to Alabama about noon and hiked in. We set up our camp and started planning what we were gonna do the next day and once we got through deciding that we went bouldering for about an hour. The next day we hiked twelve miles through the Sipsey wilderness and when we got back to camp we decided to go ahead and hike out that night. On Monday I left heading back to Hattiesburg around five o'clock and got back around eight or nine. On Tuesday me and some of my friends had to write a lab report for our class we planned on this only taking a couple of hours unknown to us was that we weren't going to able to get into the online lab until ten o'clock at night so we wound up staying up all night working on the lab when we got through it was six in the morning so we just stayed up and went to our eight o'clock class and turned in the lab report.

New School Year

This school year has started out rough, I have lost my girlfriend, my car broke down, and my brother has been deployed over seas with the military. Even though it started out bad it has slowly gotten better, I have met allot of new people and have partied allot. As far as actual classes goes most of them have been great. The eight o'clock classes I am taking are the only ones that I have regretted, mainly because I haven't gone to sleep until one o'clock every night. I now know better than to take any. This weekend will also be fun because I am going to Alabama to go backpacking with some of my friends.