Joe's Randomness that is blog

1/12/2005

Updates galore

Well, its been a while since I've updated my blog. Figure I should do it now or it may not get done until the end of January.


Lets talk some about my class this January, Imagining Technology. It rocks! I really can't say anymore. We watch movies that deal with technology and cyberpunk, we're reading one book that is VERY good (Snow Crash), we write a few papers (it is our upper level general studies class, after all), and we play Second Life. And I'm doing fairly well so far too! I rocked the first essay with a 93 (class avg was a 78) and I got a 98 on our first reading quiz. I'm sure I'll do fine on the homeworks we have based around Second Life and our final project (watch movies, create wiki's). I love being able to say that I really truthfully enjoy an upper-level class at college. We need more classes like this.


Another reason I felt like updating now is because of the speaker I saw this afternoon. M. Szulik, the CEO of Red Hat (makers of Linux and other things open source) spoke about open source technology and some of the difficulties it faces in a global market that is 94% monopolized by one company (any guesses?). He also spoke about how leadership should never be underestimated. Red Hat, a company that started by giving things away for free (and they still do. . .go ahead and download Fedora) is now a key player in trying to get M$oft to release their strangle hold on computers. It really hit a brain cell in me. . .here's a guy that, at the height of the company after going public, could have walked away from it all with almost $1 billion in his pocket, but he chose to stay and be a leader to a company that he has greater asperations for. If that's not inspirational, I don't really know what is. I really need to start looking for jobs soon. . .good thing Red Hat is only about 50 miles away or I might have to move closer to Raleigh.


I'll try updating more before the end of January. If that doesn't happen, you can blame Second Life and tringo for taking up all of my time.