2006 October » Woodruff Research

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At the worst time…

Posted at October 28, 2006 3:10 pm | In Personal | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Technology

The keyboard in my Dell laptop is apparently shot. I’m just sick of dealing with it.

So I ordered a 17″ MacBook Pro.

2GB of RAM, 100GB 7200RPM hard drive, sweet video card, everything I need.

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Podcasting

Posted at October 27, 2006 10:07 pm | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Media, Minimal Perfection, Podcasting, Sidestream Media

Jordan and I have finally decided to create our own podcast.
We decided to call it Minimal Perfection (reasons outlined on the site).
It should be pretty interesting.
You can check out the website at http://minimalperfection.com/.
If you have any suggestions for content, please email me, or post a comment!

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College

Posted at October 25, 2006 3:33 pm | In Personal | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: MCC, School

I got accepted to Monroe Community College today. Woot!

Planning on the 2+2 program at MCC that will allow me to automatically transfer to RIT as a junior when I’m done.

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Fable: The Lost Chapters

Posted at October 24, 2006 3:46 pm | In Gaming | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Gaming, Microsoft

I got Fable: The Lost Chapters for PC the other day. I had spent the afternoon with Diggle, and we were trying to think of good games. I mentioned Fable, and Dig reminded me that I hate Xbox. I looked on Wal-mart’s website though and saw they had a PC version.

So 9 hours of play later, I have 3 wives, 1 divorce, own 4 houses, a sweet plate mail suit complete with pimp hat, and have completed the quests up to where your mother gets kidnapped (again). Off to fight Jack of Blades!

Fable

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Re: Teaching Again

Posted at October 21, 2006 8:50 am | In School | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Research, School

As I posted here, Jordan and I taught IT Essentials again on Friday (yesterday). It went pretty smoothly. We didn’t have any technical glitches this time, thankfully. We used the overhead speaker with no problems.
Mrs. Villone wrote the lesson plan for this class. She created an “interactive activity,” where she wanted kids to come to the middle of the room (we sit in a semi-square) and pretend to be hardware that was trying to talk in a computer. For example, we had a keyboard that wanted to get something to show on the display. So the keyboard would tell the external data bus, who would tell the CPU, who would tell the memory, and so on. Unfortunately it didn’t go exactly as she had planned, and over all I’m not really sure anyone got anything out of it.
We showed another LabRats.tv video, this time on BIOS. I think that the class actually learned a lot from it, but it was slightly off topic, and not everyone paid attention.
My offer still stands to anyone who is thinking about dropping the class because you aren’t learning the material. Come see me, and I will make sure you understand the stuff.

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Only 30 cans of Mountain Dew to go!

Posted at October 20, 2006 4:53 pm | In Random | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Misc

How many cans of your favorite soft drink can you take before kicking the bucket?

Thanks to Jordan for posting this.

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The Rest of My Life

Posted at October 19, 2006 5:39 pm | In Media | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Media, Quotes

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

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Teaching Again

Posted at 10:47 am | In School | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Research, School

Jordan and I will be teaching IT again on Friday.
This time Mrs. Villone is writing the lesson plan.
We’re going to show another labrats video (on BIOS), so that should be interesting.
I’ll write more tomorrow.

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Teaching IT

Posted at October 16, 2006 4:15 pm | In School | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Research, School

Today Jordan and I taught our IT Essentials class.

It was quite the experience. We only had one glitch. Jordan had edited an episode of LabRats on CDs, DVDs, and how they work (burning and such). I tried playing it through my laptop speakers first, which didn’t work so well. No one could hear it. So then we tried to use the overhead speaker that is connected to the projector, but that had too much static… By this point we’re really having fun. Jordan went to one of the computer labs and snagged some USB desktop speakers. Guess what? The didn’t work. So he had to go to another room and get some really crappy regular old speakers. But they worked. Just goes to show the biggest and best, and the latest and greatest aren’t always the best for the job (that overhead speaker in the room cost a pretty penny ).

Anyway, we also talked about memory (RAM), video, and storage (tape drives, external hard drives, etc). It was a pretty fun time other than the above mentioned incident. I had no idea what it was like to have to be up there teaching. I mean I’ve done public speaking before, but to actually be responsible for teaching material to your peers, that they will be tested on later… scary stuff. I have to admit I was pretty nervous.

If anyone from the class would like a copy of my notes, or some extra help, feel free to see me or send me an email. I’d be happy to help. I know some people are seriously thinking about dropping the class, and I’d hate to see that happen. If it’s really just not for you, I get that. But if it’s just because the stuff is a bit difficult, please see me and I will help you.

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