Man, that thing will vibrate your whole head

The title of this post was taken from a post on a forum I visit, so I can't take any credit for it, but I thought it was fitting with what I'm gonna write about.

UPS delivered my Sonicare Flexcare toothbrush & UV cleaner today. It's my first time using a Sonicare - the only toothbrushes I've ever used before were the manual kinds and the battery operated ones they sell in grocery stores.

Anyway, I let it charge up, and gave it a try tonight. Wow, that's some intense cleaning action! It'll take a bit of getting used to, but I'm really loving it already. I kind of want to just brush my teeth again just so I can use it. After using it just once, I don't know if I could ever go back to using any other toothbrush ever again. And, no, I'm not being paid to write any of this (I wish I was!).

The commercials weren't kidding - it really does give you that "dentist clean" feeling. My teeth have never felt so clean after brushing them.

After brushing, it recommends to put your brush head into the UV cleaner to clean the germs off of it, so I did that. I can't really tell either way if the head is actually cleaner or not though. There's really no way to know unless I put it under a microscope or something. The UV cleaner is really quiet and the only way to know that it's doing anything is from the blue light on the front of the unit and the blinking green light on top. Other than that, you really wouldn't notice that it's doing anything.

Before today, I wouldn't even consider spending so much ($179.99) for just a toothbrush. I still think it's probably way out of a lot of people's price ranges for home dental care, especially since you still have to change the brush heads as often as any other toothbrush (every 3 months). But it works really well and really does get your teeth nice and clean. And, at least for me, it's kind of fun to use.

Ooh, iPod Touch... gimme, gimme!

So I never actually got a chance to play around with an iPhone because the person who I know has one didn't go to a certain event that I was at last month.

But now Apple's released the iPod Touch. Oooh, sexy! I really don't need the "phone" features of the iPhone since I barely ever use my cell phone to begin with.

I'm really most interested in the built-in WiFi it has. When I was hanging around in airports last month, that would've been so much nicer to have than my lousy Nintendo DS Browser. Sure, the DS browser works, but it stinks when there's a hotspot that requires a username and password because the login screen doesn't show up at all even though you can see the network.

The iPod Touch looks really sweet though and it's really tempting, but at its current pricetag, I don't think I'll be getting one. For the cost, I'd rather get myself an Xbox 360. I think I'd get much more use out of that than I would the iPod Touch. And I'd also rather have more functionality of a UMPC (that's Ultra Mobile PC for you folks who don't know the acronym) than the limited functionality of the iPod Touch.

But really, my interest in the iPhone has dropped and like I said earlier, I don't need the "phone" aspects of the iPhone, so the iPod Touch is more my thing. I'd really love to upgrade my iPod since I have an old 20 gig HP iPod, but what really stinks about the iPod Touch is the limited space you get. For something that can play videos, you'd think they'd give you more gigabytes for your money instead of LESS storage space than what was on previous (music only) iPod models. That seems just plain idiotic to me. That doesn't change the fact that I still want one though.

Apple iPhone

So the Apple iPhone is finally out. It seems so cool, but way too much for me to afford right now. I haven't read any iPhone reviews or anything, so I don't know if it's worth the money, but I really want one.

I probably wouldn't use a lot of the features that are built into the iPhone, but I definitely think I would love the touch screen. I mean, hey, look what the Nintendo DS did for gaming with it's dual screen and touch screen. I play my DS way more than anything else, including my Wii.

Anyway, getting back to the awesome iPhone. If it really does all that I've seen it do in videos, I think I would love it. I do think it might be kind of weird to type on an all touch screen... no tactile feedback or anything since it's an on-screen keyboard. That might be kind of weird at first since you can't feel your way around the keys like you can with anything else that uses real buttons. But, what do I really know? I'm just a person who wishes that I owned an iPhone. I don't actually have one.

If anyone wants to get me an iPhone as a gift, I'd really appreciate it. My birthday is coming up, ya know (or in case you didn't know... my birthday is coming up... hint , hint). ;)

Insomnia

For some reason, I just couldn't stay asleep tonight. I don't know why. But I wouldn't exactly say having just one night of sleep would qualify me as an insomniac. It's just one night, right? Hopefully.

I think I only got about three hours of sleep total. I know I was up past 1 AM and got up at around 4 AM. I've been awake since then, but I think it's because I turned on my laptop and just started visiting a bunch of websites.

Wow, my laptop battery is still charging! Last night, I unplugged the power from my laptop so that I could see how long my battery life was. It didn't last close to three minutes! How can it go from 100% to 0% that fast? I really don't like the thought of having to buy a new laptop battery because they're expensive! I'd rather get a new laptop than spend on a battery. So anyway, I plugged it back in and hours later, it's still only 47% charged. WTF? I wonder if maybe the battery wasn't making contact (with whatever it's supposed to make contact with) somehow and maybe it really was never charged at all.

Uh, anyway, I'm gonna try to get back to sleep now before I'm just as drained as my laptop battery. I'll probably end up waking up in another 2 and a half hours. Hopefully this is just a one time thing and I'll be able to sleep normally tonight.

Quality of recorded audio conference calls

This is related to my post below. A little gripe about the quality of some recorded audio conference calls.

If I ever owned a big company and wanted to start comparing conference calling plans with several different conference calling companies, and I wanted to offer downloadable versions for those who missed the call... I would want to sample the quality of other calls that a certain calling company has previously recorded. They don't even have to be real calls, just demo calls with people connecting to the call from across the globe.

Like I said in my post below, I've never attended a live conference call before, I've only listened to ones that have been pre-recorded. Very often, the calls I've heard have such terrible quality that you can barely even hear the person speaking sometimes. I don't know whether that has to do with the kind of telephone a person is using or if they're using a VOIP connection or what.

But if I was paying conference calling centers to record the calls for me, I would expect them to at least try to enhance the audio quality of the downloadable version. I don't want it to sound like people are buried underground or something. If it's a service I'm paying for, even if the poor audio quality is on my end, I'd want to at least get my money's worth and have a great clarity, enhanced recorded versions of my conference calls.

Audio conference calling

I've always heard pre-recorded conference calls before. I've never actually attended a live audio conference call. One reason is I'm not around during the time of the scheduled conference call. And another reason is because the number you need to listen in on or participate in the call is almost always a long distance phone number for me.

We don't have long distance calling plan at home and I don't want to use up my cell phone minutes just to attend a call. I wish these conference calling services or conference calling centers would offer toll free numbers that you could dial into. If people are already shelling out the bucks to pay a conference calling company to host their calls, they can at least offer an 800 number for people who want to participate. Maybe there are conference calling plans that offer toll-free numbers, but they're probably more expensive to use. I don't really know since I've never had to compare prices for such a service.

Maybe I should look into a VOIP service or something that would allow me to make calls using my computer. It'd really be nice to be able to get in on a live call for once and not have to wait a day or two for the downloadable version of a call to be available because then you're behind everybody else in learning what the big news was.

A review of Coleman College's / Coleman University's CIS program, part 7

7/6/09 UPDATE: Coleman College is now known as Coleman University - this review was written for their classes that I took in 2005-2006, so some things in their curriculum may have changed since then.

Sorry it's been a while since part 6, but finally, here's part 7.

The final mod of Coleman College's CIS program. The capstone project - I don't remember the names of the actual classes at the moment and we always just called the last mod the "capstone" anyway, so that's all I'll be referring to it as. This is where the networking students and the programming students combine once again to build a system.

The networking side will build a network to house the application that the programmers create.

The first part of the class covers all the steps to systems design and implementation. The instructor I had would try to cover that as fast as possible so that we could dedicate the rest of our time to actually building the system itself.

For the programmers, the afternoon class was VB2. During lecture we were taught things like databinding, using a datagrid, and just all kinds of things relating to our application and how it would access our database. This was because in VB1, we didn't use a database at all in our projects, just text files and arrays. Databases make it much easier to navigate through your records. I absolutely loved the whole project. We were given specs and just left to program everything from scratch. I like these types of projects because it really tests what you've learned. The only thing is, I wish it had been in a different language than Visual Basic .NET - I would have enjoyed it more if our project was coded in either C++ or C#.

And since we got our project done early, we had time to get into some ASP .NET stuff. That was kind of neat, but it really wasn't a lot of time to learn it that much. I think a class with just ASP .NET would be great. Coleman College has probably started one by now since their curriculum always tries to stay current, but I don't really know what kinds of things they teach there now since I haven't been back there since I graduated.

Anyway, so what's the big deal about the capstone?? Well, at the end of it all, we have to do a big presentation of our entire system. Students are required to dress up in business attire and basically present it as if they were presenting it to a board of directors of a company. We have to cover things like feasibility, scalability, and all other kinds of -ilities and whatnot. Then we demonstrate how the system works - the networkers talk about their backup plans, data storage, security; the programmers give an overview of the program and show what it does - what data it collects, where it's stored, and give a quick runthrough of the application from beginning to end. It's at least a 40 minute presentation, and they invite the entire school to come and watch it - all the other classes and even the graphics department; and they entice people with snacks so that people will come and see it.

So if you're one of those people who hate public speaking in general, the capstone presentation is a killer - especially if you have a really small class or sometimes you may even be the ONLY person in your class. And you really have to know your stuff in case there are any questions. So if you don't like public speaking, consider yourself lucky if you have at least 3 people in your class since that way you won't have to talk as much. And consider yourself unlucky if you're the only person in your class. But, hey, once it's all over with, you're done because the final for both the morning class and the afternoon class is a piece of cake compared to giving the presentation.

So that's the capstone. I really loved the VB2 project in the class the most. Like I said before, I would have preferred if it was in a different language than VB, but I really have no control over that. ASP .NET - eh, I would have not wanted it covered at all if we really weren't going to delve that much into it, but I guess it was a nice little bonus. The presentation - mine went fine and I was less nervous during it than I thought I was going to be; everybody in my group got full points for it.

Overall, would I recommend Coleman College's CIS program?? Well, yes and no. Yes, if you know absolutely nothing about computers at all - you'll really learn a lot here. No, if you've already self-taught yourself some programming through online tutorials, books, or training videos, or even community college classes. If you already know how to write programs that work, you really don't need Coleman at all because I felt like with every mod, I was just always learning the basics of every language all over again. And it always seemed like there was not enough time to get into the more advanced things or not even enough time to write something that wasn't a CONSOLE or mostly text-only, non-GUI application. If you're already familiar with computers but don't know anything about programming at all, you'll find the first couple of mods a bit boring. But Coleman is a great way to go if you want to learn a lot of the basics (plus some advanced things here and there) of several programming languages quickly - in about 7 months, if you take classes during the day.

If you don't have the money to spend thousands of dollars (you can get a loan, but who wants to pay back loans?? They definitely push for loans in Coleman's financial aid department), you can always go to a community college. It'll take you longer to get your degree, but it's much cheaper and you'll probably learn more than just the basics of each language.

For me, I kind of wish I had gone the community college route and saved myself some money, but it's kind of annoying to do that when not all of the classes I need are offered every semester. Sometimes they rarely offer them at all. With Coleman, you don't really have to worry about stuff like that because they're required to provide the classes that you need, at least for the core program. Really though, Coleman is only worth all the money if you just want something fast-paced and are a quick learner. The teachers there are excellent - always willing to help you out no matter what, at least the teachers that I had.

If all you want is a Computer Science degree and don't care how long it takes you to get it, a community college would be your best option. It's a lot more affordable and your credits would transfer anywhere if you'd want to get a bachelor's degree at any other school. If you go to Coleman, you can only transfer your credits to other ACICS accredited schools. So if you go to Coleman, you're stuck with having to complete your Bachelors and Masters Degrees with them too... which would cost you even more $$$.

That's it for my review of the CIS program. I hope I've helped someone in making a decision. I might go into some non-CIS related stuff in the future, but that's all I have to say (for now) about their CIS program.

Here are the links to all of the parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, more thoughts