CNN did a story on the Masters of Science in Security Technologies (MSST) program I’m enrolled in at the U. The story can be found here. I’m in the story for a few seconds of talking and clicking around on my computer at work (I’m clicking on the database app I created, not Solitaire). Except for my appearance on ‘N Sync’s website many years ago, it’s probably my broadest media appearance yet. I’m so proud!

As for the MSST program itself, it’s going very well. Our first course, dealing mainly with the psychology of terrorism, is already over, and it was very interesting. Ron Krebs, the instructor for the majority of the class, handled the class exceptionally, with a very good balance of lecture and group activities, as well as engrossing readings. I and several of my classmates were interested in taking a course he is teaching in the fall, but the workload just isn’t something I could handle while working, planning a wedding, and electioneering. Our current two courses, on critical infrastructure protection and science and technology in security, are also very interesting. They are pretty broad courses with a number of guest speakers lecturing on their particular expertises (cybersecurity, biosecurity, food security, pandemic preparedness, and so on) and they will provide for a good base upon which we can expand in later classes. They are also great at scaring the crap out of us.

In a little more than a month, the summer semester will be over and I’ll be 25% done with my degree. Not bad. Next on the to do list: thinking of a capstone project.

• Current Mood: Hump day
• Currently Listening To: "Let It Bleed", The Rolling Stones

Hey, is this blog still on? It appears that I haven’t updated it in quite a while. The end of session got in the way, then the MSST program started and then we moved to a new place. During the move, I had yet another example of how important it is to back everything up on your computer.

I moved my computer over, plugged everything back in, and turned it on. Windows 7 refused to boot, halting at a blue screen. When I tried to boot into safe mode, I could see that the problem was with a file called CLASSPNP.SYS. I found this thread with a similar problem, but unfortunately replacing the file didn’t help. All the other searches I did turned up people with the same problem, and no solution. Eventually, I had to reinstall Windows to get it working.

Fortunately, though, I had backups of all of my data, and so I didn’t lose anything, most importantly the paper I was working on for class. It did take several hours to reinstall all of my programs and get everything looking right again, but I didn’t have to spend many more hours recreating documents. Remember: always back up your files, and back them up to more than one place!

So my nifty SportyPal app on my new phone, which keeps track of my bike ride home, tells me that I pretty reliably burn about 420 calories during the trip. Because I’m a geek, that got me wondering how much less energy is used while biking versus while driving. I crunched a few numbers, and this is what I came up with.

420 kilocalories (1 kilocalorie = 1 food Calorie, yes, it is confusingly stupid) is about 1.8 million joules of energy. My car gets around 22-23 MPG in mixed driving, so let’s pretend that my trip home uses 0.4 gallons of gasoline. One gallon of gas has around 125 million joules of energy, so my drive home uses 50 million joules. That’s over 25 times as much energy expended as biking, which is needed to move all that extra weight around.

Another fun fact: if it took 50 million joules of energy to bike home, that would require using about 4 pounds of body fat as energy. If our bodies used as much energy traveling as cars, people would have a far easier time losing weight! Considering how much waste heat would be generated in the process, though, we’d have to have huge radiators attached to our bodies somewhere.

• Current Mood: Sore
• Currently Listening To: "Red House", Jimi Hendrix

Despite working in tech, I am not a terribly techy person. I am not an early adopter. I don’t have a lot of gadgets. I may have three monitors on my desktop computer at home, but I’m not one of those people who constantly upgrades to get the most performance. I didn’t have my own cellphone until 2005, and I always believed in getting the cheapest phone I could. Smartphone? No way. But I finally broke down and got one, and color me an instant convert to smartphones.

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• Current Mood: Mesmerized
• Currently Listening To: "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", CSNY

I recently read the book “Liar’s Poker” by Michael Lewis, about Wall Street in the 1980s. I’m not sure what prompted me to pick it up from the library: I’d heard of it several times before, and maybe the current financial mess made it apparent that revisiting some of the excess that got the ball rolling was in order. Surprisingly, I did find a significant connection between that time period and today, enough so that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to argue that the recent financial collapse was the direct consequence of actions set into motion 30 years ago.

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• Current Mood: Decrepit

Last week I was admitted to the University of Minnesota’s brand-new Masters of Science in Security Technology (MSST) program. I’m very excited to be in the inaugural class, and I’m glad that I finally found a graduate program that fit my needs, after spending a few years looking and coming up empty.

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• Current Mood: Full
• Currently Listening To: "The End", The Doors

I’ve been busy lately, what with doing wedding planning and holiday planning, in the midst of what is apparently going to be the biggest snowstorm ever in the history of Minnesota…ever, if you believe the news stations, and I don’t. It’s snow, people.

I’ve also gotten sick of the health care debate in Congress, but if you really want to cut health care costs, use a neti pot. I started using one two years ago and haven’t been sick since. Some studies show that it isn’t my imagination that it actually accomplishes something. Give it a try.

• Current Mood: Full of holiday cheer
• Currently Listening To: "The Man In Me", Bob Dylan

On Saturday, Julia and I got officially engaged. Although we’d been planning things for a while, the actual activities were a surprise to her.

We started off at WA Frost in Saint Paul, where we had an absolutely delicious dinner of scallops, filet mignon, and three different desserts, accompanied by a great pinot noir. The staff there was great as well, as they gave us a very nice table right in front of the fireplace after I tipped them off to what we were doing.

We then went to the St. Paul Hotel, where we had champagne and strawberries dressed up in little tuxes. The brunch Sunday morning was great too.

The wedding is set for October 9th, 2010 at the Minneapolis Public Library downtown.

While Minnesota has a lot going for it, when it comes to drivers, no other states has more idiots. I’ve driven through a lot of states in this country. I’ve driven in a couple places in Europe, including on the Autobahn. Nowhere are drivers as stupid as in this state.

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• Current Mood: Chilly
• Currently Listening To: "As Tears Go By", The Rolling Stones

Here’s my computer desk. Three monitors definitely helps…