Leedberg.com

The online home for Greg Leedberg, since 1995.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Yowza

Wow, I haven't written here in a while... there's a reason for that, though... life is crazy here at Cornell!

It really has turned out to be quite intense. Assignments aren't necessarily harder than I'm used to from UNH, there just always seems to *more* going on.

But, things are going well overall. The security project has been well-planned, and is now smoothly being implemented. We're making a lot of progress on our AI project as well. It can actually play pretty well at Othello now. Databases has proven to be my hardest class, by far. I understand the concepts fine, but it just seems to be so hard to actually translate knowledge into good grades on homework and tests... oh well. I still like my project management class, although the two hour 8am timeslot is starting to take its toll.

I interviewed with Intel, and got two inquiries about jobs... unfortunately, they were both west-coast positions. I'm looking more for something in the northeast (which I don't think is THAT picky!).

Red Sox won the World Series last night (reminds me of the quote: "Only America could hold a competition involving all American teams and one Canadian team and call it the 'World Series'"). History was made... even though I'm not a big baseball fan, being a New Englander, it was great to see the Red Sox finally win and break the curse.

I've been experimenting a lot with VOIP lately. I've always been interested in communications, and computers, so VOIP is a natural interest for me. Over the summer I started using Skype, and used it for a while here for all my calls. Skype lets you make calls over your computer for free to other Skype users, or (roughly) 2 cents a minute to regular phones. Lately I have been using StanaPhone. Skype is very well known, while Stana still has a very small userbase. But, I've been enjoying Stana more. Skype has a better client program (it's set up with a "buddy list" like IM) and has better sound quality. But, Stanaphone has no delay in the sound (Skype sometimes has a > 1 second delay), Stana gives you free incoming calls, and a free, real, phone number so people can call you from a regular phone. You also get voice mail on Stana, and Stana is SIP-compatible, which means you can use any SIP software client, or hardware device (so you can use you regular phone if you want). Skype is trying to be more innovative, and using their own proprietary protocol. Which is noble, but won't let them last in the communcations market. What is Alexander Bell had used a proprietary protocol when developing the first phone? If you're interested, check out Skype or StanaPhone.

Well that's it. If I haven't talked to you in a while, leave me a message in my message board!!!