Cosine's Corner

I hate to sound like a Mac fanboy but, you really get what you pay for with computers these days. If you look at similar desktop and laptop PC solutions, you're going to save maybe a couple hundred dollars and have sub-par hardware that doesn't perform as well with the software and possibly uglier. Sometimes you'll end up spending exactly the same amount or more for the same hardware and still have a drop in performance because the software you're going to be using isn't tuned with the hardware like you get in a Mac.

As expected, my Darfur article got published. Not to say that I knew or had high expectations of it getting published, but I'd been told by Gary Thompson and Nolan Dalla that it was "very well done" and "stunningly good" respectively and knew Nolan was going to send it out to his media contacts. But where it got published first was totally unexpected! So far it's gotten published in two places. I can't express in words how excited I am about this. My Darfur Article on MSNBC! and My Darfur Article on The Hendon Mob and My Darfur Article on PokerAllStar Can you believe it? MSNBC is where I got published for the first time that wasn't Concord's newspaper! Coming up soon: The Chronicles of Tim Huber as observed by Justin Grathwohl the WSOP PR Interns . It'll be a story about love, fame, fortune, and stupidity. I'm sure anyone who's met me recently has also probably met Tim as well and know what he's like. It will be a good, funny s

In a day and age when the broadcast and cable media are reporting on the misdeeds and slip ups of celebrities, some might begin to wonder exactly what is and isn’t newsworthy. What these channels hope to gain in ratings with this “entertainment news,” where hours upon hours are focused on famous people, they lose in newsworthy stories from around the world; stories that it seems the American public does not want to be informed about. In particular, one major story going on in a small place called Darfur in Africa.

Every morning when I wake up, I open up Firefox and it brings me to my iGoogle homepage. I spent about 30 minutes to and hour reading the latest headlines from the BBC, Google News, Slashdot, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. I've been following the story and rumors of Dell providing desktops and notebooks with Linux on them for quite some time now and have been thinking about how I feel about it. Well, I feel really good about it. With a major OEM supporting Ubuntu it will be a very short while until other manufacturers follow suit and at least start putting out better drivers (closed source or open source, doesn't matter to me). This, in my opinion, will be the beginning of the biggest boon Linux has seen since the 2.6 kernel. When a major player like Dell steps up like it has, it will only be a short time until they start releasing drivers publicly for people to download for their older Dells that people have chosen to install Ubuntu on and even newer models. After the next coupl

So, those who've read my previous posts may be wondering how Vista is working out for me after loading all those applications and daily use of my laptop. Well let me tell you, it's great. While Vista is a bit more resource intensive than previous versions and other OSes (Linux, Mac OS, *BSD) it utilizes those resources that it's keeping to itself rather well. I rarely, if ever, have any kind of inconvenient slow downs or bogging of the system unless there is actually something using up the system like virus scans, WoW, AIM (6.1 has this weird flaw that it'll lock up and hog some serioues resources), or anything else disk and CPU intensive just like any other OS.

With my finals over and the school year wrapping up, I decided I have a little bit of time on my hands this weekend to do a clean install of Windows Vista Home Premium. Now, it didn't take long at all for Vista to install. The clean install actually went a lot faster than the upgrade did. It took ~45min to install and take me to the desktop. Right now, I'm using IE7 (shudder) on this clean system. But, some may be wondering "but why Justin? Why did you do a clean install instead of stick with the upgraded system?"

Thanks to my buying a new laptop in January I was able to get in on Acer's Express Upgrade program to get a free copy of Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit version. Note, this isn't just an upgrade disk. It will let you install a clean version of Home Premium and the disk is also bootable. So far, it hasn't been too terrible. Due to the laptop being "Vista Capable" and coming with Windows Media Center Edition 2005 already installed, upgrading to Vista wasn't a horrible process. My laptop is an Acer Aspire 5100-5022, the specs can be found here - which is where I also bought it. It cost me $740 when I bought it and I think I got a pretty good deal at the time. Especially considering the free upgrade to Vista Home Premium. The newer model of the Aspire 5100 laptop (5100-5033) does come with that as well and is down to roughly the same price I paid for mine in January. It features all the same hardware except 20 more gigabytes of hard drive storage space.

The Faculty Senate is deliberating the motion for a vote of confidence regarding Concord University’s Vice Presidents. After the motion was presented in the Faculty Senate floor, some faculty members started trying to rally more support for this action by approaching SGA President, Sean Noland. The unnamed faculty members Noland told about asked for the Student Senate to vote in support of the Faculty Senate’s motion for a vote of confidence. As Dr. Charles Brichford explained, what happens with a vote of confidence is if the deliberating body votes a majority of “yes” to the motion, it shows confidence in the entity that they want to show support or no support. And if the majority vote is “no” it shows no confidence and that it is urged that the entity in question be replaced. These kinds of motions are usually aimed at replacing chiefs, presidents or anyone in the position of highest authority.

With a new position being proposed in the Student Government Association comes passive aggression and controversy. This has already happened with the resolution 04182007A, which creates (or was going to create) the new Legislative position “President Pro Tempore.” This position would be a significant boon to bringing more power over to the Legislative side of the SGA from the Executive Board. One of the major shifts of power the resolution proposes is taking seemingly major responsibilities of the Vice President. The major ones being the coordinator of all standing committees and “[to] serve as ex-officio member of all the committees and commissions of the Student Senate…” This position will also be elected by the Senate directly in a fair election with no bumbling election committee to gum up the works. During Wednesday April 28’s SGA meeting the SGA Affairs committee proposed a motion to defer the resolution to the committee. What the committee’s motivations were to bring

Soon, very soon the time will come when control of the on-campus television channels will once again fall into student hands! The SGA Technology Committee is preparing a survey for students that will be used to get an idea on what channels should be available on the campus television. It will be deployed on ELLIE (http://ellie.concord.edu) for all students to access. However, at this time it is unclear if it will appear before or at the end of this semester or if it will be printed out and handed out to all returning, on-campus students in the Fall semester at check-in. The survey will bring new channels to the floor like SciFi, BBC, and many others if students so choose. How the channels are chosen is through a package selection from DirecTV. Each package includes several channels and a cost of that package per outlet. For more information about the TV survey contact Lonnie Bowe, Chair of the SGA Technology Committee or Rick Dillon, Director of Housing. The Technology C

The play “How I Learned to Drive” by Paula Vogel is chock full of everything a good play should have and some things some wouldn’t think a good play would have. It’s full of humor, sex, and some dark issues. The play pans out in a series of events starting with a monologue from the main character only known as Li’l Bit. It goes from when Li’l bit is 17 about to enter college and bounces from her apparent present age of a full grown to even younger ages, as young as 11 years old. The story takes place mainly during the 60s when Li’l Bit is a teen. I was lucky enough to be allowed to sit through a half-cue, half-lighting rehearsal to observe the play. The play runs about an hour and forty minutes and does not have an intermission. However, despite this long run time with no intermission it isn’t a hindrance to the audience at all. The play itself is double cast, meaning that each night the cast alternates. Whoever played lead roles the night before plays the supporting cast the ne

To sum up this movie in a nutshell it’d be “this is the manliest movie ever.” With all the action and violence you’ll walk out of the theater with a beard and a new crop of chest hair despite what your gender may be. However, going into this movie expecting a deep, intertwined story is a huge mistake. This movie does not require one, it’s that awesome. The movie is based off of Frank Miller’s graphic novel (comic book to some) “300” and reflects heavily on it. Some may point out historical inaccuracies but since the movie isn’t based on history but a graphic novel and it has characters with giant blades for arms, it’s pretty easy to get past those inaccuracies. When the trailers came out it became an instant favorite of many internet communities and was quoted massively. Even more so since it’s been out for a couple weeks. Places like 4chan.org were particularly enthusiastic about taking various images from 300 and putting in alternate text for a good laugh.

Clarke Buehling is quite literally an international sensation in the musical arts. Touring all over the U.S. and Europe , he performs a unique style of banjo playing hailing from the 19 th century. He performs as a solo artist and with his band The Skirtlifters. Musical talent isn’t his only skill; he has been making his own gourd banjos since 1984 but only takes them as custom orders. He is largely famous for his older style of banjo playing using old sheet music from the 1800s and old rags and jigs from their eras. He’s played this style of music all over the world in places like England and the Netherlands . He has also played at many folk concerts, colleges and festivals around the nation. He plays and teaches the violin, mandolin and guitar, as well. He’ll be playing in M-105 in the Fine Arts building Tuesday April 24, 2007 at 7 p.m.

In an interview with Tim Barnes, Director of the Center for Academic Technologies and he explained the difference between the CAT and the Computer Center and the various tasks that the CAT handles. The main burning question that students seem to want to be answered is “what does the CAT do?” Well, the answer is really quite simple says Barnes, “it’s administrative versus academic.” Put another way, Barnes explained it as a matter who you would report to for something to get fixed. If when someone reports to get something fixed, in regards to technology, they report to a division head (math, science, English, etc.) the people that would show up to fix everything would be from the CAT. However, if they report to a department head (financial aid, registrar, etc.) the people that’d show up would be from the Computer Center .

A couple weeks ago it was reported that the registrar’s office did not have a link to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), but now they do! But most readers are probably wondering “what’s it matter to me?” Well, that’s what this article is for! It may not be clear what the NSC is to some, so here’s an explanation. The National Student Clearinghouse is a central database that links all of the federal and private loan lenders. The database holds all the information of a student’s enrollment status, estimated graduation date (which can be changed), and other information pertaining to your loans and school information. This seems a bit scary privacy wise, but it’s built to benefit student, educational institution and lenders to keep an easy, open line of communication. And if there’s one thing this campus desperately needs it’s more open communication.

Last week on April 3rd Concord and Bluefield College ’s chapters of Alpha Chi hosted a teleconference between the Center for Academic Integrity and the Executive Director of the Alpha Chi Honor Society. In this teleconference they discussed issues regarding academic integrity and academic dishonesty. This panel of people included student and faculty representatives from Concord University and Bluefield College . It also included representatives from the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI) at Duke University and from the National Alpha Chi office at Harding University . The representatives were: Dr. Dennis Organ - Executive Director of Alpha Chi, Mr. Timothy Dodd - Executive Director of the Center for Academic Integrity, Dr. Rob Merritt - Virginia Kappa chapter Sponsor, Michelle Stubbs - a student from Bluefield College and Kappa member, Dr. Daniel Anderson - Professor of Business at Bluefield College , Dr. Stephen D. Rowe - West Virginia Beta chapter sponsor, Ms. Corrie M

Kimono Japanese Seafood and Steak House is not your typical Asian food restaurant that you’d find in Southern West Virginia . While not being particularly cheap, you’ll get more than what you pay for in food and entertainment. When walking into Kimono you will see some of the standard and traditional decorations of any Japanese steak house as well as seeing the occasional pillar of flame from one of the grills surrounded by a group of people. However, if a reservation was not made in advance you just might be waiting for a few minutes for a grill to open up unless you are there for the sushi bar. While there, it was about a ten minute wait until a grill was available since we didn’t make a reservation. All in all, not a bad wait time for a restaurant that was packed.

Last week I published the article about Fiancial Aid and the registrar's office and I'd like to add some updated information about the registar's office. Quoting from my article: "[Carolyn Cox] had told me that in late 2005 they were supposed to get a link setup with the National Student Loan Clearing House and was told it’d only take a few days to setup. However, they (being the computer center or the CAT) never set it up and have yet to do so as they’ve been in “testing stages” since last spring." It is actually up to the Computer Center to deal with all technologies in all non-academic departments and offices. So this was the fault of the Computer Center. Thanks to Steve Meadows in the C.A.T. for clarifying that for me. Today, a student wide e-mail was sent out from the registrar's office stating the following: "The Registrar's Office is pleased to announce to the students of Concord University that we are officially members of the National Studen

One would think that with this school being a university that it’d be a little more sophisticated in the ways of working together both locally with each other and with national networks and databases. However, that is largely not the case. Like many students here at Concord I receive financial aid. Each semester I dig myself a deeper hole into debt all in the name of education. And each semester I, like many, have to deal with the Financial Aid Department. Sometimes this is an easy and pleasant process, but more often than not it is a huge burden on any student wanting to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. Each semester whether you want to or not a student is going to have to deal with the Financial Aid Department. And most often when a student goes in they’re going to have to wait at least five or ten minutes. The waiting even happens when there is no one else waiting! It’s nearly as bad as sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Once the blue moon rises, you’ll b

My opinion requires a small preface. I am not a smoker. I don't smoke sometimes, I don't smoke when I drink and I pretty much don't smoke anything. However, most of my friends are smokers and I don't have any problems with smokers in general. But for some reason a lot of whiny people getting their panties in a knot about having to deal with minuscule amounts of cigarette smoke in the open air. It's a generally accepted fact that cigarette smoke and more specifically carbon monoxide, can give you cancer later down the road. It isn't a guaranteed thing though.

The Beckley Center. A mysterious entity that not too many Concord students are familiar with until they actually have to take a class there for some unexplainable reason. To the common Concord student, there is little need to worry about this place in Beckley since it has little impact on Athens students. However, President of the SGA Sean Noland believes otherwise. Now that it is later in the semester, President Noland says, “now that Higher Ed Day is over, the Beckley center is my primary focus.” But what exactly does President Noland have in mind for the Beckley Center? Well, for one he wants to see “better representation for them” here in Athens from business decisions to even in the SGA.

Have you ever had on of those emergencies where there is a sudden need for a condom? Let's face the facts, at one point or another many students have had a need of a condom but they either can't snag one from a buddy or the availability is zero. Well fear no more! This week Jessica Cook, SGA Ombudsman, is ordering two condom dispensers available on campus during most hours of the day. However, these wonderful contraptions will be placed only in the Student Center restrooms; one in a Ladies and one in a Gentlemen's. The condoms will cost fifty cents each and availability will be whenever the Student Center is open. The condom dispensers should be appearing sometime within the next month or so and will be ready for use probably by the time their presence is noticed.

If you're anything like me, you almost always have a little monetary trouble picking up all those expensive books at the beginning of every semester. This is largely because of the cost of books in the bookstore, but if you're also anything like me that's the fastest, most convenient way to get books. Sometimes ordering books online just isn't fast enough when you need the books now. Well, fear no longer about having problems getting those books. There's an initiative trying to be pushed through by a few individuals that will bring this dream to fruition. It's been in the works for a little while and all the kinks are trying to be worked out.

Last semester one of our staff writers wrote an article about the very same student organization I'm doing my article on, Wiccan M.O.O.N. However, this article will provide actually useful and correct information regarding this organization from a past member and long-time practicing pagan, myself.

Magician Mike Super will be returning to Concord on Thursday, January 25 th at 9pm on the Subway stage. Talented and versatile, Mike Super has been creating the impossible on numerous college campuses across the country. Becoming extremely popular, college students voted for him for various awards. In 2003 he won Entertainer of the Year among other national awards from APCA, NACA, and Campus activities magazine.

Disclaimer: If you do not understand that this is only a theory and perspective I came up with based off of history, government, failing foreign relations and aid and will cover a lot of controversial territory. However, I do appreciate ideas and criticisms, just keep your replies civil in tone. This is just a possible perspective, I am not being literal in my own beliefs and opinions.