Confessions of a College Student Working at Best Buy

Hey there, Eric here

slayer188 — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:18:25 +0000

Hey guys, sorry for the long break. I’ve been busy with school and I actually kind of forgot about this site. Same thing with Alex probably. But, I’ll be posting more often hopefully. See ya soon

Castle Crashers!

slayer188 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:19:35 +0000

Hey all, Eric here. It’s been a little since I posted, so I’ll just give some random news.

Do you own a PS3? Do you love side scrolling games that have an arcade type feeling to them? WELL, Castle Crashers would be for you. Soon, Castle Crashers will be released for the PS3 (I have read that it is rumored to be released on August 27th, but on their website, they say 2010? but we’ll see). Castle Crashers is a 4 player game that originally came out for the xbox 360. The game play is a standard side scrolling game that involves 4 knights going on a quest to save a princess. Pretty typical storyline, right? Well, its not just straightforward gameplay. In the xbox 360 version (and probably the PS3 version), there are a lot of secrets and unlockables hidden throughout the game.

Overall, I wish to say that I’ve played the xbox 360 version of this game and it is simply amazing. I hope that the PS3 version is just as great, if not, better.

For more information, check out their website at: http://www.castlecrashers.com/

Peace all

Matlab for Mac Users

slayer188 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:59:07 +0000

Hey all, its Eric again. I’m going to provide you all with a way to access matlab on a mac. I actually have no idea if this works at the moment, but my summer courses are telling me that this is the way to do it. I’ll post again if it doesn’t work. Windows users, you will have to hold up a bit because the instructions for that are more complicated and contain pictures. So maybe i’ll try to upload a pdf or something. I’ll figure it out. For now, enjoy mac users.

ACCESSING MATLAB FROM PERSONAL COMPUTERS

(Mac ONLY)

To access Matlab from your personal computers you must

1. Get a Terpconnect account

2. Connect to SSH client to your personal computer

3. Type terpconnect.umd.edu as the host name

4. Enter your directory ID and password

5. Type tap matlab at the prompt

6. Type matlab –nodisplay at the prompt

7. Matlab appears

Getting a Terpconnect Account

1. Visit http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/topics/getting_started/

2. Scroll down to TerpConnect and select “Here’s how to apply for a TerpConnect account

3. Enter your University Directory ID and Password

4. Apply for account

They will notify you once you have been approved for a TerpConnect Account

Getting SSH client

You must have a TerpConnect account first.

Visit http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/documents/4/4979/ to learn how to connect to SSH from your

Mac.

Getting into Matlab

Then you will be directed to a shell with a prompt.

At the prompt type: tap matlab

Press Enter

Then type: matlab –nodisplay

Or jutst: matlab

Note, it must be lowercase m.

And the Matlab prompt should appear.

Matlab?

slayer188 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:00:55 +0000

Hey all, Eric here. Just wanted to give a bit of information to other UMCP freshmen who are going into the STEM fields. While on campus, I have had the privilege of being able to get used to the campus and various programs and such. Matlab is one of those computer programs that I have been using lately because it helps with long equations, plotting, programming, etc. Engineers and Mathematicians will have to love this program, or so I hear. But to be exact:

The MATLAB product family provides a high-level programming language, an interactive technical computing environment, and functions for:

Algorithm development

Data analysis and visualization

Numeric computation

The MATLAB product family provides a high-level programming language, an interactive technical computing environment, and functions for:

-Algorithm development

-Data analysis and visualization

-Numeric computation

For all of you UMCP who love to do work on your own computer on your computer, yes there is a way to run this program on your laptop. I will post directions for this a bit later. But all I wanted to do was say that I may be providing Matlab tutorials…perhaps. Thats all for now.

32gig iPhone 3GS

shadowxalex — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:21:11 +0000

Alex here with some news. I just bought a 32gig iPhone 3GS white from Best Buy. The experience was great (not just saying that because I work there either) and not to mention there was a problem, not because of Best Buy but AT&T. I wanted to upgrade from my Motorola Krzr K1 that I bought 2 years ago to the iPhone and AT&T gave me an upgrade early, december to be exact, BUT my sister destroyed her phone so we had to use my upgrade to get her a new phone.

Then AT&T gave her an early upgrade, june to be exact, so I decided to use her upgrade to get my iPhone, and that is where the problem arose. Since I was using her upgrade I might have been stuck with her number but I wanted to keep mine. Thankfully the Best Buy associate was really good at her job and I was able to keep my number! Thank you Best Buy!

But this post isn’t really about how great Best Buy is but more of a first glance review of the 3GS, this is NOT a full review, that in a couple of weeks after I put it through some tests.

First lets see the specs (note I’m reading it right off the box). It supports UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900/2100MHz) and GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) so it has the potential to be used as a global phone. Built in Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) no wireless n though but wouldn’t really expect that on a cell phone. It has Edge, GPS and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Unfortunately I cannot find the battery information so if someone knows it feel free to comment with the information.

Now as many of you might know now the 3GS has a couple of new features that you will not find in the 3G model, these new features include the compass, video recording and voice commands (just to name a few).

To start off lets talk about the compass. Personally I like this but it’s not all that great just by itself seeing as you need a connection in order to use it (but it’s like that in all the other phones as well) but it’s really good if you are using it with the maps application because this way you can see which way you are going and it gives you a better GPS experience, plus this will make turn-by-turn directions a lot easier. It is a nice app to have but honestly I don’t see why it needs to have its own dedicated app (some may disagree but this is just my opinion).

Now onto the video camera. It is VGA but the quality is actually not that bad. Once you take a video in the preview section you can trim it, unfortunately the trim functionality is not all that strong. You can only trim from the sides, so you can’t trim the middle part and add the ends together, and it is destructive so once you save it the original is lost, so be careful. Hopefully they will fix that in an update.

The voice command feature is really well done. I have been using a Motorola Krzr for a little over 2 years and the voice command on that was amazing so when I was messing with the iPhone’s voice commands I was impressed that it was most robust. It picks up the numbers really well and also it picked up the names of people that my Krzr could not understand. So I was impressed by that.

One more thing that I want to point out is that the 3MP camera is really great. The auto-focus works flawlessly (at least it did for the 10 minutes that I’ve been messing around with it).

Ok well that is it for the first look at the 32gig iPhone 3GS. For those who thing 3GS is a new network (i.e. Edge or 3G), like my mom, it does not mean that. It is still a 3G phone (but you can turn off 3G to save battery like I did) but the S in 3GS stands for Speed because it is faster then the previous models.

Helpful Links for UMCP

slayer188 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:02:42 +0000

Hey all, Eric here. This is just a list of websites for College Park that I have obtain from my summer program (yes, I took summer courses before starting college). Please use these wisely and enjoy .

This website contains most information related to your account at maryland. I call it the everything website.
www.my.umd.edu

Letters and Sciences Department Website
www.ltsc.umd.edu

Computer Math and Physical Science Department Website
www.cmps.umd.edu

Computer Science Department Website
www.cs.umd.edu

School of Engineering Department Website
www.eng.umd.edu

Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP)
lsamp.umd.edu

University of Maryland Undergraduate Catalog
www.umd.edu/catelog

Student Records and Information About Accounts/Classes etc.
testudo.umd.edu

A Website Dedicated to Teachers (Includes Average Grades From Previous Classes and Reviews From Students)
http://www.ourumd.com/

Website Dedicated to Student Organizations
http://stars.umd.edu/

Freestuff!! (obviously from the URL)
http://freestuff.umd.edu/

How to Obtain Tickets for Sporting Events
www.tickets.umd.edu

A Website That Teachers Will Use to Post Lessons and Whatnot (Ie. Blackboard)
www.elms.umd.edu

The Health Center Website
http://www.health.umd.edu/

University of Maryland Library Website
http://lib.umd.edu/

Campus Recreation Services at College Park

http://www.crs.umd.edu/

Book Website! (I hear that books are a bit cheaper at bookholders)
bookholders.com

ubc.umd.edu

http://www.marylandbook.com/
End of Book Websites

A quick word…

shadowxalex — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:07:06 +0000

Hi everybody, Alex here. Just want to clear up a misconception real quick. The title of this blog is called Confessions of a College Student Working at Best Buy but its kinda misleading because there are two authors for this blog. Anyway Eric and I are both going to the same college but only I work at Best Buy (so only I get the wicked discount).

So a word about the blog now. This blog will talk (or write if you want to get technical) about college life and technology but are not restricted to those categories. We plan on talking about every piece of technology that seems interesting and those that do not but we will also discuss issues in the news and review different games and possibly movies.

Well that’s all that I wanted to say.