Srepetsk.Net

As a service to other RIT students and myself, I’ve created a 4-year course planning schedule which I’m using to plot out my 4 years here at RIT until graduation. It can be easily extended to include a 5th year if you so choose. Each year is a different sheet in the Excel file, and I’ve included a “Pre-Y1” sheet for credits received before entering RIT. The main sheet is a high-level overview of the total year courses, and lists the abbreviations for each type of course – i.e. E for Free Elective. Please feel free to download and use this for your own purposes, and you are more than welcome to leave comments here for future versions!

I’ve only been involved with Sun for the past two or three years, but it’s been great while it lasted. The employees are excellent, the software fantastic, and the opportunities for fun more than can be imagined. I vaguely knew the Sun name before I started high school, but my involvement in the Sysadmin program at TJ brought me to working for Sun for a summer, and has given me extreme joy, especially when our AEG proposal was accepted, and through all the great employees I met and became friends with. Scott McNealy presented at TJ in the spring of this year, and is in my mind one of the most respected capitalists in Silicon Valley due to the way he ran Sun, and the motivations behind their moves.

Meeting at TJ on a foggy and misty December 26th, the first SysAdmin Alumni Association event consisted of Jefferson graduates of the classes of 1991 up until 2011. The ‘new’ SAAA group briefly met up with the group of Sysadmins that have been meeting at the Annandale Fuddruckers since around 2000, and introductions were made. Members of SAAA trickled in over time after 2pm, and story sharing between the two groups took over much of the talking (with an obligatory Emacs/Vim discussion). Bodies from the “older” admin group included Mr. Don Hyatt, the first Syslab faculty director, Ilia Mirkin (01), and Brent Metz (98).

As Sun Microsystems experiences these hard times while negotiations with the EU take place, it seems a fair number of Sun bloggers have left in order to pursue jobs elsewhere, or for retirement. The other day I saw a really creative farewell notice on a Sun employee's blog, that was based on the Dr. Seuss book . The book, a popular gift for students graduating from high school and college (my high school once made a video montage of teachers and faculty reading parts of the book), carries some themes applicable to all aspects of life.

Well, maybe not just quite yet, but a study to be released in the near future is expected to report that greenhouse gases "pose a danger to human health and the environment", which would be the first step to limiting emissions, and lead to a (hopefully) more fruitful climate summit in Copenhagen.

[1] http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/epa-sets-carbon-crackdown/

An article at The Guardian caught my eye earlier. On December 7th, an editorial about the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Council meeting will be published by "56 newspapers in 45 countries", and urge the leaders at the summit to set goals for greenhouse gas emissions. The goals of the editorial are noble, and I sincerely hope action is taken, and quickly. Having (hopefully) many years left on this Earth, being left with an inhabitable Earth that isn't being overrun with floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes would be just a small gesture of hope in our generation by those currently in power.