April 11, 2006
Well, today was a very good day. I had my first official date with the beautiful Danielle Yvette Dignon. We went to Pancho's and we officially decided we were a couple over dinner. We've been unofficially going out for a couple weeks though. Danielle is a freshman studying biology at SUNY Albany. She's in Air Force ROTC and a member of Our Savior's Lutheran's worship team. She graduated from Niskayuna. We met through RCA (Rensselaer Christian Association) at RPI. We are both huge Stargate and sci-fi fans. It is also awsome that neither of us have had a romantic relationship before, so we get to figure out everything together. I guess that is the biggest update.
In other news, I also am applying to the Coast Guard's officer program. I passed my military physical a few weeks ago and placed in the 99th percentile on the A.S.V.A.B. a week or two before that. I still have a narative, a few review letters and an interview in Connecticutt or Boston to go to before I'm done with the application. I should find out if I made it in the early fall. I'm not sure what I will do until then, but it needs to be a job locally so I can work on developing my new relationship with my wonderful girlfriend.
Archive
September 11th, 2005
Well, well, well. I'm guessing anyone who stumbled across this site probably thought it was dead after not being updated for a year and a half. The truth is, the hosting company that hosts this page had to change their main hosting center because of a problem with their Internet connection, but I wasn't able to get a stable enough connection to download my site to be able to move it from their old servers to their new servers. Rather than put in the needed time and energy to fix it I just let it sit and then when I tried to retrieve my site in class the other day it worked. So anyway, now the site is up on the new server so it should perform much better and be easier to update.
So what has happened in the last year and a half? Well, I'm now in my Senior year at RPI which is incredibly hard to believe. The super secret project for GameCube Café was the E3 DVD which was delayed by a year and then ended up falling pretty much through the floor because Nintendo dropped a big fat goose egg and gave no useful information about the Revolution. Since that was our main marketing point we were kind of sunk from the get go. The DVD came out really nice though.
In other news, I started playing a MMOFPS called PlanetSide in January. I immediatly became a fan. Basically it is a futuristic war sim. You take the role of a soldier in one of three empires battling for control of a planet called Auraxis which had a bunch of advanced technology on it, some of which caused the planets continents to each split to being their own planet. (Wierd yes, but it gave them a reason to expand the game and make different types of climates and such.) Each continent/planet holds up to 133 people from each of the 3 empires and you battle for control of bases on each continent. (You capture bases by either hacking a terminal in the base and holding it for 15 minutes or by hacking that terminal, picking up the LLU (a ball basically) and getting it to another one of your bases.) The reason I love it so much is that it is like a real time strategy game, but every character is a real person. You level up by getting kills and helping capture bases. This gets you BEP (battle experience points) and when you get enough you get a battle rank (BR). You can also get command experience points(CEP) for helping with captures while leading a squad. There are 25 BR levels and 6 CR levels (BR 1-25 and CR 0-5) BR gets you implants for special abilities (3 total), Certification points (1 for each of most battle ranks), and cosmetic changes such as armor color. Command rank grants different special abilities such as placing 4 waypoints on the map for all squad members(CR1), revealing the locations of all friendlies on the continent (CR2), EMPs that take out or disable all mines, turrets, vehicle weapons and implants in the area of the EMP (CR3 - CR5 getting bigger each level), Revealing enemies in an area on the map (CR4 and 5), Orbital Strikes from space (CR4 and 5) and the ability to send messages to all players on your empire on the server (CR5). Each CR also has a cosmetic armor change and access to a command chat channel with others of that CR level within a growing area. (CR2 - base, CR3 - region, CR4 - continent, CR5 - server) I joined up with an outfit (guild/clan) pretty early on called Forgotten Soldiers. They are probably one of the best outfits on the server. I worked my way up through the outfit and I am now an officer with them. I have a BR23/CR5 character and a BR13/CR0 character. I'm also involved with several websites related to PlanetSide. http://www.forgottensoldiers.us/ is the homepage for Forgotten Soldiers. http://www.ncallianceps.com is the website for the New Conglomerate Alliance (NCA) which is an alliance of various tactical outfits. http://www.emeraldnc.com is a community site for all people that play an NC character on the Emerald server. A friend of mine from PS and I started it about 3 weeks ago. Mostly I do coding on all these sites automating different things based on stat tracking and such. All in all, I love the game because it is so tactical and so large scale.
In other big news, I have decided to break from my original plan to start a company writing computer graphics and video software. Instead I plan to apply to the FBI as a Special Agent. This decission came about when I realized that the FBI is looking for Computer Science majors and I realized they pay on par with the rest of industry. I hope to work with both computer related investigation and SWAT. I may even eventually try to make it on to the HRT (Hostage Rescue Team [Think FBI version of the SAS.]) I can't apply until I'm 23 though, so it gives me a year to kill after I graduate. I have begun to workout to prepare physically and I am also learning Arabic, continuing my training on rifle marksmanship and will be applying for a pistol permit in December so that I can work on pistol marksmanship.
Ok, I think that is quite a bit for now, I'm sure there are things I have missed, but I can always bring those up in future updates. Hopefully I'll be updating this again in less than a year and a half. Until then, later.
March 3rd, 2004
Wow, I have let this site sit for a long time. I had a Flash site up for a while, but then I realized that Google couldn't read it, so I dropped it in to a subfolder. I haven't had a chance to update the site at all because I have been really busy with Gamecube Café. Since December I have been the IT Director at GameCube Café. I'm also involved with a super secret project there. Shh, noybody even knows there is a secret project yet, except my readers. Stay tuned to GameCube Café for more details about the project in a couple of months.
August 13th, 2003
Ok, havn't made any updates for awhile. I've been working at RPI over the summer. DC/LA was really cool. Mel Gibson was there and I made big connections to the company that makes MediaShout.(PowerPoint like software for churches.) In fact they offered me a co-op which is really cool because there programmers are mostly RPI graduates and the programming devision is based in the Albany area. Then Soul Fest was really cool too. I was able to get on stage with Jars of Clay, 6 Pence None the Richer and Five Iron Frenzy. I met lots of cool people, heard lots of cool music and had a lot of fun. My family is going to Disney next week which is fun, but it is kind of a let down that it turns out that the Lathrops are going down this week and we will miss them by a few days. It would have been really cool to be able to hang out with Niffer and Aimee down there some or at least to have bumped in to them once or twice. Then it is back to school.
On another note, I found two really cool features of AIM. First, I found one a lot of people know about, you can forward messages to your cellphone when you are off AIM by going to www.aim.com/wireless/. I signed up my cellphone account under ajh16cp. If you need to get ahold of me, you can IM me there if I'm not on. The other is AIM Security. If you get a free E-mail ID Certificate from www.thawte.com, then you can encrypt IMs and digitally sign them. It is really cool and gets the lovely lock icon next to your name. (Once you have the certificate you can use the Security options tab to import the certificate.)
March 28th, 2003
I just got my first domain names. I actually got two domain names, but the first was a typo. I'm going to use the first one as a media server and I will be moving my site to www.ajhenderson.com over the next few days. I will also be able to be reached at aj@ajhenderson.com. If you are interested, my media server is www.sythesismedia.com. The site should be available by Sunday night. As soon as Road Runner or RPI updates there DNS table I will be posting this site to its new location. I will still continue to make updates to this location as well, but the media will be transitioned off this server. (And I will finally actually have some free RCS space. :) )
March 26th, 2003
Ok, my FreeBSD system is up, but DNS is a pain in the butt. I just posted my Media Studio: Imaging portion of the site. You can link to it here. Enjoy. It was my first work with hard-coded HTML, so don't expect too much. Right now the photocopy collage's are just place holders, but everything else is working. Its fairly simple right now, but I will try and make it better as we get in to the utilities I'm more familiar with.
February 20th, 2003
Hey all, I just generated a couple of PGP keys. They are under AJ Henderson on PGP's server or you can download the public keys here. If you don't have a clue what PGP is, then don't worry about it.
January 24th, 2003
Excel 2003 went really well. It probably wasn't the best Excel ever, but it still rocked. You can check out photos from the tech crew at http://brooksroy.com/pictures/Excel2003/ . I worked on tech crew and they actually had my all access pass this year. :) I just finished updating my site with some photos of my friends. They are available here.
December 27th, 2002
Merry late Christmas everyone. Hope you all had a good one. I'm working over in the distance education office over winter break. I got an X-box and a printer for Christmas. : )) As a semi-important update note, you should download Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1 from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html if you haven't already done so. This update will allow you to use Acrobat web-forms like the ones on this site and it will also allow you to verify security certificates for Acrobat documents. (Also used on this site.) Anyway, despite much frustration and confusion surrounding my grades, it seems like most of the issues have been cleared up and I am officially a sophomore now. Yeah. : ) Anyway, I'm at work now and should probably get back to what I'm working on. I'll post next semester's schedule soon, but until then, I'm taking Discrete Structures, Models of Computation, Studio: Imaging, and Intro to Visual Communication.
November 9th, 2002
Well, I now am officially a CSCI/EMAC major. I did the paperwork Friday. I found out that there may be another possible schedule for next semester. This is good because I would have had class for 6 hours straight on Thursday. Even with my new laptop battery, it would be pushing it to make it 6 hours. Anyways, I have to get back to work on my "report" for Comm Theory. If your in my group (or my class for that matter), you can get the interactive peer review form here.
October 21st, 2002
Oh, boy. Midterms this week. How exciting! An IM conversation prompted me to post an old research paper from high school. If you are interested in human development and mental illness, or just like different theories you might like it. I have some research to back it up, though I would love to formalize the data more. Here is a link to the report in PDF format.
The True Nature of Attention Deficit Disorder
Oh, yeah. I also organized the site a little. You can now access all PDF documents through here.
October 10th, 2002
Intro To Communication Theory Notes on Social Construction of Reality are available here. (Requires Acrobat Reader 5.0)
Social Construction of Reality PowerPoint is available as a PowerPoint file or a PDF. (Requires Acrobat Reader 5.0)
You may submit your answers to the questions here. (Requires Acrobat Reader 5.1)
Note: Question submission is by e-mail. It is not anonymous.
If you wish to verify the integrity of these files, my signature verification file is available here.
The MD5 fingerprint for verification is 77CF D0E0 6F6B 32C9 59D1 9DEC 0A9D 13ED.
September 30th, 2002
Well, last week was interesting. The good news is I played my first two games of paintball ever last (over a week ago) Sunday. Don't ask me if it hurts to be hit with a paintball, I still don't know:). I got the game winning hit on the second game and I didn't even get splatter on my clothes. Now the bad news, I couldn't find my keys after paintball. Even worse, my laptop was locked to a folding table. So, I had to borrow the table from the camp I was as and bring it home until I got a replacement key on Wednesday. Then the next day at school I accidentally forgot to put up my hangtag for an hour and I wound up with a No Permit ticket for $36. Now more good news, the ticket should have been for "Hangtag not properly displayed," which is only $11, so I can get the ticket waived completely because they screwed up. Then, this past Sunday we used Scuba gear for the first time in class. It was really cool. Breathing under water for the first time wasn't as weird for me as most people say it is. I guess maybe I have just a little too much faith in technology. Though as long as it works, what do I care.
September 8th, 2002
Lets see, school has been interesting and fun so far. I've signed up for SCUBA certification and bought my gear. I'm REALLY looking forward to SCUBA. I want to learn to SCUBA Dive, skydive, and fly, so learning to SCUBA dive is a big step. I can't quite figure out what my DSA professor means by "constant" memory on my project, oh well. I guess that is what I'll have to do after class this week. The laptop is working out great. Rensselaer Christian Association rocks and everybody should at least check out one meeting. It's sort of funny, I'm getting more sleep on weekdays than I am on weekends. I guess that is a change from high school. I'm working with Video's for Change over in the incubator chamber as a part-time editor/consultant. I'm also working with UPAC Lights and UPAC Sound as a tech. I'm glad AIM exists, cause it is a really easy way of staying in contact with my friends that are out at college. Oh, and I got one of those wireless optical mice. It's really nice when I'm working with Maya. Maya, for those of you who don't know is a piece of computer graphics software. Alias/Wavefront makes a free copy called Personal Learning Edition. It's available at http://www.aliaswavefront.com/ . It has a really good tutorial if you have never done computer graphics but have been interested. If you want any help with it, just IM me or e-mail me and I can help you out.
August 20th, 2002
Well, Navigating Rensselaer started today. I'm down in the VCC updating my site. Looking forward to a great week. (How can it not be a great week when you are getting a 1.8GHz laptop:) (I have an old 233MHz piece of junk at home.)) Can't wait to meet all of you and get started with classes. For anyone that is wondering, my class schedule is currently
CSCI 2500: Computer Organization - Monday and Thursday from 2:00 to 3:50
CSCI 2300: Data Structures & Algorithms - Tues. and Fri. 10:00 to 11:20 and Wed. 6:00 to 7:50
ARTS 1010: Intro to Audio/Video (hopefully changing) - Tues 6:00 to 7:50 and Wed 2:00 to 3:50
IHSS 1969: Communications and IT (changing) - doesn't really matter since I'm changing the course
July 6th, 2002
Welcome to my site. I'm proud to have the first student web-site of the RPI Class of 2006. Anyone who thinks they had their site up before me, e-mail me a challenge. It's pretty minimal right now. Basically figured I would try to be the first freshman to get a site up with some info about me.
Name: AJ (Andrew James) Henderson
Year: Freshman or possibly Sophomore pending AP scores
Home Town: Clifton Park, NY (I commute)
Address: 18 Algonquin Road
Clifton Park, NY, 12065
Phone: (518)-383-1603
Birthday: June 25th, 1984
Major: Comp. Sci. / EMAC
High School: Shenendehowa High School
AIM: AJH16
E-mail: AJH16@nycap.rr.com or aj@ajhenderson.com
Best/Favorite Subjects: Math and Computing with Science as third.
Hobbies: Computers, Technical Work, Video Editing, Sound, Lighting, Laser Tag, Singing (modern Christian worship band - check out www.mp3.com/gravitysangel ), Programming, Computer Graphics, Volleyball, Golf, Tennis, Computer Gaming, Archery, Marksmanship, hoping to pick up Scuba
Favorite Movies: Star Wars, Mission Impossible 1 and 2, Tom Clancy Movies.
Please e-mail me or IM me with any suggestions for my site. Or just contact me to talk. Whatever.
-AJ Henderson