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Surviving College With Gear And Sanity Intact?
Mshift2x writes "Like many others, I'm shipping off to college for the first time in a few days. I'm excited, nervous, and a whole array of emotions at the same time. I'm sure many slashdotters have gone through this already, and I'd appreciate any wisdom, suggestions, or thoughts the community could provide." More specifically, phrogeeb writes "Per our earlier Slashdot article on laptop lock insecurity, I've been looking around recently for other options as far as keeping track of my laptop and other semi-expensive and certainly valuable (for a college student) stuff in a dorm room setting. Any ideas? I'm looking for both laptop-specific and comprehensive solutions. Locks? Alarms? Video cameras? Trip wire? (A few serious suggestions would be appreciated.)"
rottweiler ;-)
just tell all the chicks you meet that you had a front page post on slashdot. They love that.
When you meet the "morpheus" on your floor, remember to swallow the blue pill and not the red one.
"Locks? Alarms? Video cameras? Trip wire? (A few serious suggestions would be appreciated.)"
You forgot landmines.
Don't use a video camera. That's just creepy.
though a Trip wire-still photo (with flash) combo would be hilarious.
Just kick someone's ass your first day. They'll leave your stuff alone.
Do not pack everything at once...you won't have anywhere to put it when you get there. Pack essentials and work on extras later. As for laptop security take it everywhere with you. Bed Shower class home etc...
I'll be in the same boat next year, and already at a high school of 300 students I've had a couple hundred dollars of money and murchandise stolen or broken. I can imagine it would be much worse in an enviroment with thousands of people around, especially the crazy roommate.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
In my college days, I didn't have any high-tech gadgets at all, I only need to worry about people stealing my lecture notes!
But seriously, don't bring too many expensive devices, and if you have to, don't show off them in the public.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
If, when you spend awhile in college, one day you feel sick and disgusted at all the hypocrisy, phonyness, and lies of college life, don't let go of that thought - that's your conscience!
Either kick the crap out of someone the first day or become someone's bitch. Then nobody will mess with you. ... Wait, that's something different.
There's only one thing that is almost guaranteed to work, and thats locking your door. When you sleep, go to class, take a dump, take a shower, lock your door. If you don't you're just asking for trouble no matter how well you trust your floor.
Depending on your dorm layout the person responsible probably doesn't live on your floor. That said there's plenty of outsiders who might pass through looking for goodies. If you live near the ground floor don't let things be easy to spot through the window, and keep it shut with the shade closed when you're gone if you're on the ground floor.
Presently here, but not there.
Get Renter's Insurance. That way you no matter if your security fails or not, you can still replace your stuff.
... that you wouldn't want to be able to replace with little or no pain.
I look at dorm life as slightly less intrusive than a sigmoidoscopy, and without the pain (but sometimes the same amount of noise.)
Laptop? I would either have it on my person or security-cabled to my desk. That's probably the only valuable thing I'd have with me in a dorm setting.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Pad lock on door.
Insurance.
Job done.
C-x C-s C-x k
Most campuses offer insurance policies for your dorm room. They aren't that expensive ($25-50) and will replace the gear if your stuff gets stolen. Granted it won't keep your stuff or data from being lost...but it will help replace it.
Oh, wait. This slashdot. n/m.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
is the one the on your door. Virtually everyone I knew who had anything stolen from them freshman year in my dorm had left their doors unlocked or open - even for a second to go to the bathroom. If you have an incompetent roommate, then I'd hide your laptop whenever you leave the room - prefereably in your underwear drawer. Or better yet, take it with you and surf in class if you're lucky enough to have a 802.11b school (like mine).
...keep your gear safe by wearing a rubber. Remember, wearing a condom is a small price to pay so as to not be called H-Thrilla for the rest of your life.
Posted anonymously for a good reason.
I know that people sell things like safes, etc. to paranoid college students, but honestly, don't waste your money. Take a few minor precautions (a laptop lock is a good idea for use in libraries where you're going to be up and about getting books and want to anchor your effects in a secure location) but basically you need to remember that, by and large, college kids are really stupid and naive, and they leave lots of expensive stuff lying around everywhere. It a criminal comes into your room trying to steal some quick booty, and doesn't see three iPods and a digital camera lying out in plain sight, he/she will go on to the room next to yours, where said items will amost certainly be in plain view on a desk. Lock your door; you'll be fine unless your college is in a really bad area. Also, for the love of god, lock up your bike. As far as more general advice, heck, I'm still figuring college out myself, but I'd say be open and don't slack off too much. Also, take advantage of what will almost definitely be the best library you'll ever have access to, no matter where you are.
Several software packages are available which use your webcam as a security monitor, and record only when motion is detected. You can then quickly review video from only the periods of time when something interesting may have happened. Google can provide specific links.
The best advice I can give you is keep the stuff with you at all times. Its the only way you can really stop them from getting stolen, unless of course you are mugged. Its worked for me fore years.
"I'll be in the same boat next year, and already at a high school of 300 students I've had a couple hundred dollars of money and murchandise stolen or broken."
Damn! Talk about a rough school. All they did at mine was take my lunch money.
1. Don't let the laptop out of your sight unless you have to, unless it's locked behind a private door (i'm serious).
2. Since you will have to, buy insurance on it. It's about $75 a year for $5k of coverage and that covers everything in the room, including your clothes.
I had someone walk into my room, and steal my camera from me while my roommates weren't looking (I was gone at the time). There isn't much you can do to stop that, except buy a safe.
Second, try something like stuffbak.com (I haven't used it myself, but i hear good things). If you leave it somewhere and a good person happens to find it first, you get it back, and they get a reward.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
...because your gear can be replaced. Chances are if you are living in student housing all your stuff is covered under your parent's home-owners insurance. If you're renting off campus, drop the $100-200 a year for renters insurance. Worth the peace of mind.
Remember, your laptop can be replaced pretty easily, a whole semester's worth of work can't.
Dont live in the dorms
Rent your own apartment, and if you choose to have a roomate to share costs with then interview them first to make sure they arent the type that would steal stuff from you.
Your biggest asset besides beer money and more beer money --- i2hub.com.
Freshman year (I'm a senior now) we had a prankster on our floor that hit overnight and early in the morning, doing everything from moving peoples' towels out of reach in the showers to rolling an open can of salsa down the (carpeted) hallway. I had the room at the end of the hall on our side of the floor, so I went ahead and bought a 20' usb extention cord and mounted my webcam in the corner of the hall outside my door, set it to motion detect and left it on for a week. Boom. Video, a prankster caught and everyone lived in peace once again.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Don't use any gadgets! Use pencil and paper, they're cheap!
*patiently waits to be modded up to +5 Insightful even though this answer isn't the least bit helpful*
"Derp de derp."
go for broke. the cliche is true: its the best time of your life. in general, don't be afraid to rock the boat and demand what you want, from IT or anybody. You'll probably find that you can game the system in some way, despite policies you'll find problematic. Also, always lock your door, and make sure your roommates do too...and make sure they don't get drunk and piss all over your desk. (it happens)
(With homage to Please, we all understand that you can build a "Most Excellent" PC with glowing neon lights and water
Another good thing to do is to get to know the people in the rooms around yours. That way you get the added protection of people keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior, or, if they're kindof shady themselves, you know to keep an eye on them.
This post approved by Shampoo.
Living on campus is a money racket for colleges.
Rent housing in a nearby ghetto (there's always one) and get broadband. You'll enjoy yourself much more not living beneath the college administration's thumb, you'll receive a basic instruction in how things work, and you may not even need roommates to pay for your dwelling.
Also, consider downloading scans of textbooks and auditing classes, if you are a college student on a minimal budget (you will not receive credit for audited classes, but some of us value knowledge for its own sake, as opposed to knowledge as a means of obtaining a piece of paper with a seal of approval on it.)
If the dorm fire alarms at your school are anything like most, the freshmen will be spending quite a bit of time outside at 3am. Lock your door. Lock your door. Lock your door.
Laptop locks are handy, but not that secure, and you won't necessarily find the requisite lock receptacles on all desks or tables. You can tie it around a leg, but that's an invitation for somebody to walk by and snag it with a piece of clothing or something and have it crashing to the floor. Restrained, but broken.
The best idea is not to leave stuff unattended in places you don't trust. More often than not you'll be fine, but there's always that one time you go down the hall for a Coke.
A better idea is to get an inconspicuous little suitcase lock and put it on your backpack, or the pocket holding valuables. This may sound silly, but remember that laptops aren't the only expensive thing you have in there: laptops have serials and can be hard to fence. You're about to spend $400 on books, all of which at the beginning and end of the semester can be pawned for cash.
Finally -- it costs marginally more to add items like a laptop, PDA, etc. to insurance. Ask someone who plays an instrument; they'll tell you.
Write down the MAC Address of your Laptop. If yoru laptop gets stolen contact who ever runs the DHCP server on campus. They will be able to tell you what the last IP Address of the laptop was and where it was plugged in and when! (what dorm should depend on what subnet). I have recovered laptops for people using this technique at my University sometimes finding it is plugged in right as we checked! Call the local cops and they bust right in and your laptop is back! Nick D
The topic says it all, really.
Don't leave your stuff out where just anyone can see it. Keep stuff within arms-length. Stay alert of your surroundings. That means don't jam to the music at full-volume, allowing someone to come up and jack your gear.
If your roommate seems like the type to take your stuff and pawn it, nip any possible problems in the bud. Lock up smaller valuables, talk to him or your RA, or move (if possible)
Consider what you actually need to bring. I personally have to have my entire material goods packed into a dorm room, but most people can leave stuff at home. Do you need to bring your diamond-encrusted iPod, or will the regular one do?
But, most of all, just have fun. Remember that it is all material goods. My CD Player in my car got stolen, but I left it in plain sight in Atlanta. My (more expensive) amp was safe, because it wasn't visible from outside, but it would have been easier to steal. You most likely will have problems finding girls to talk to than having stuff stolen. Unfortunately, I don't know nothing about that. You might need to go to another site....
1) Primary computer too big to be easily stolen
2) Laptop too crappy to be attractive for stealing
3) Roomate who had similarly expensive computer gear, hence there being a shared interest in protecting one's stuff.
4) Not letting my personal portable gear out of my sight.
5) Leaving unnecessary yet expensive crap at home.
No locks, tripwires, security cameras, security alarms, etc. were involved.
The real stuff that tends to disapear isn't your hardware, it's somebody nicking a CD or two, clothes that dissapear, etc. At this point in life, I probably would have left the CDs at home and stored them on my hard drive.
In fact, the main thing that walked off when I was in college was a leather jacket that dissapeared somewhere around move-out.
Also not that your posessions may be, either currently or optionally, covered by your parent's homeowner's insurance.
Oh yeah, and engraving your name on the really fancy expensive posessions.
Gentoo Sucks
I'd hate to get all relativistic on you, but it's an official physics standpoint that objects at rest can be stopped if regarded from another frame of reference that is moving with respect to the original frame. Just so you know.
Go crying home to mommy, college boy.
You can get the best locks you want, but your roommate will have hours and hours of privacy to try to break them.
motion.sourceforge.net/
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
Like me.
You need:
-An ex-military minigun (or other electronically-fired automatic weapon)
-A Person in Room detector
-An ISA interface card
-A little knowledge of programming in QB (ok, a lot)
-A bit of thought into a good excuse to give the police when the ask why Joe next door got ripped to shreds by a minigun when he came in to borrow a calculator
And you'll be all set for your stuff to be safe.
You'll also have to invest in some sort of a method of disabling the gun (RFID tags, a numeric keypad, a timer before it fires, etc.) unless you're willing to live with not being able to get into your dorm either.
Simple!
FGD 135
*blinking cursor*
Mark your stuff, too. Record serials and scratch an identifier in a semi-inconspicuous place. Most PDs keep databases of recovered stuff.
Forget the Laptop, build a Desktop with the solid steel Antec Performance Plus case and fill it with lead weights at the bottom and keep both the drive-bay lock and the side panel lock locked at all times!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
A few suggestions:
1) Talk to your roommate(s) and get a guarentee from them that they will lock the door if they are the last one leaving your place, even if it is to take a dump. You wouldn't believe how stupid many students are...many students at my university actually left their doors unlocked at ALL times (because they were lazy).
2) If you have a laptop, some dorms come with lockable dresser drawers. You can get a combination or padlock and lock your laptop in there if you plan to be away for the night or longer. Only catch with this is you probably wouldn't be able to leave the laptop on while doing this.
3) If you have a desktop, they make these cords that actually stick (or as I put it, practically wield itself) to the side of the computer and then you wrap them around something that can't be moved easily (desk, dresser, even bed). You can then lock it, preventing anyone from stealing your desktop without actually physically moving the piece of furnature it is attached to (thus raising the risk of being caught) or cutting the wire (which is extremely tough to do, requires heavy duty clippers that most college students don't own).
4) See if you can get theft insurance. You might be able to get this for relatively cheap. If you keep regular backups (yeah yeah, I know, a big if), you should be safe.
5) Have tough passwords on your OS's. At least that way if the computer gets stolen, they can't get to your data as easily (if they are good with computers) or at all (if they are dumb and plan to drop out of college).
First rule of dorm life: Don't go nuts on the 'sexy' looking hardware.
Everyone in the dorm will eventually walk by your door and catch glimpses of your computer/stereo/whatnot.
Don't go for a case with bling-factor-- get a nice subdued thing that screams "boring machine". Quiet cases are a godsend in small rooms--- I've built ten systems using Sonata cases in the past three days for college students.
Stereo wise (assuming you have a separate stereo)--- get the least obstrusive thing you can find. If it looks pricey, it's a target.
No one looked twice at my first generation Harmon Kardon equipment until the day I chose to escalate a Loud Music During Quiet Hours battle with some Carmina Burana. ( The Ormandy recording, for the curious.)
Second-- think before you start blabbing about how cool your hardware is.... you don't know if the people behind you in the line are going to be in awe of your hardware, or if they're going to wait till you go home for a weekend to break into your dorm room. I'm not saying you shouldn't be proud of your hardware (what self respecting geek isn't, anyways?)..... but for pete's sake, talk about something else at first, until you're able to discern if someone's an asshat or not.
Well, I was in the military living in the dorms. My way to prevent theft?
1. Locked the door to my room when I wasn't in it - deadbolt.
2. Didn't flaunt what I owned.
3. Kept the stuff tucked away in the room (don't leave it out in plain sight).
4. Don't spend your off time (or in your case, out-of-class-time) drunk.
First of all, congratulations. You're going to have a good time, as long as you understand that life is what you make of it. Don't expect hundreds of other slashdot geeks to come knocking on your dorm room door. Go out and meet people.
EverQuest does not count as 'going out and meeting people.'
As I recall, 90% of all laptop thefts occur because they get left unattended in libraries, cafeterias, study rooms, etc. Get yourself a nice shoulder bag for your laptop, and get used to the heft of having a laptop in it -- then you'll instantly know when it's not in there and you've forgotten in.
If you're paranoid about security in the dorm room, talk with your parents about renter's insurance. They can probably put a quick rider (or floater? IANAIS [insurance salseman]) on their homeowners' insurance for you and also cover your rented goods. Renters insurance, for the level of stuff you have, should be like $10 per month, I think. Be nice to your parents.
Lock your door, especially if people know you have the latest 256 MB nVidia QForce M-39 transponder video card in your ultraportable laptop.
Again, good luck.
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
I had a friend who got a laptop stolen. As he was also running a side business as an alarm installer, this pissed him off. So he installed the most ridiculously HUGE alarm system, everything you can think of...Then got his new laptop stolen because he didn't have it on.
What it really all comes down to is: Keep an eye on your stuff. Lock your doors, keep your valuable stuff out of plain sight.
A weird one: Where I went to school, if you lived in the better part of town, you were MUCH more likely to have your stuff stolen, even if you took precautions. If you lived in the "bad" part of town, you could leave your doors unlocked---and this is New Jersey we're talking here.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
You can purchase computer chains that have pads that glue to your laptop and then you can use a heavy-duty padlock to keep it in place. The only drawback is that you'll have to stick a nasty metal pad onto your laptop.
Another option to consider is a small set of drawers, lock box, or a lockable chest/trunk where you can keep valuables in.
Ultimately, just about anything you try to secure in your dorm room can be stolen. Somone could just walk out with your lock box or chest/safe, after all. Be sure to acquire renters insurance if you're truly worried about theft and just do your best to secure your belongings.
If you go overboard with security you'll probably end up getting lazy with the day-to-day routine of securing and locking up your valuables so keep your plan as simple as you can!!!
When I was in the dorms, very few students locked up their dekstop computers and so far as I know, none of them were stolen. Learn about the type and amount of theft in your dorms. The risk is generally greater for those on the first floor since it's easier for thieves to get in and out, but that doesn't guarantee safety.
Later, once classes start to kick in you can start to distinguish yourself as the alpha-male of the technology realm. But if the first impression people have of you is a computer geek, then they won't bother to get to know you and you won't have an opportunity to know them.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
When I started college, my computer was a 486-33MHz. Any potential thieves would have done better to raid the refrigerator.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Behave like a psychopath, start your own murder for hire business and post information about it on your door, make it known you plan to take over the world, and then develop a reputation of divinity...
Worked for me!
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
If people in your hall are scared of you, they won't mess with your stuff.
I just play with knives a lot, and no one dared to steal my PowerBook.
Not off campus housing. I also was worried, but sometime deductible on homeowners insurance are quite high (if you roof gets blown of your not up-***-creek, but if a window is broken your just gonna pay for it yourself. val1s
1) Keep your nice stuff away from the door. If you are REALLY on a destructive dorm floor, you will probably get at least one nice splash of undesireable fluid on your door.
2) Keep your nice stuff off of your floor. If someone sets off the sprinklers in your hallway, it will fill your room up to about an inch before you can count on it being turned off.
As a past RA at Virginia Tech, i'd say the cheapest and most effective thing you can do is... LOCK THE DOOR... That means, when you walk down the hall, when you go around the corner, when you shower, when you sleep, if your not there to guard the gear... the door must do. It sounds simple ehh... and it truly is. I never had a single residents stuff stolen when their door was locked and there were over 1000 guys living in my building (side note: scary, I know... ). Now that we've gotten the locking of the door down we will move onto more difficult topics... build raport. Build it with everyone on your hall. Basically if your cool with the guys on your hall, they will watch out for you. If your not, they'll steal your stuff, or be less likely to stop someone from doing so. One more thing to consider is that if no one knows you have expensive gear they will be less likely to try and steal it, this means don't flaunt it.
Has anyone used any soundproofing equipment before or have any suggestions or recommendations? Do the soundproof mats you can hang on the wall actually work?
Get a full tower case. Let them try to steal that.
Just relax, do your thing and don't worry about it.
I didn't have anything stolen, most roomates and housemates were excellent.
Even the jerks tend to be not horrible they have to live there too. If they're really really horrible, there is always a way out. The schools have policies to deal with it.
I disguise my laptop like a bong so that no one will bother it.
I can't emphasize that enough. Get up, and actually make it to those classes that you or your parents are paying good money for you to attend. Most professors don't care if you go or not, your roommates certainly won't care, and unless you live at home, you're parents won't know if you do or not, until you flunk out. Too many of my friends, when they first taste the freedom of college, decided that since no one is forcing them to go to every class, they don't actually go to any of them.
I don't care how smart you are, if you don't attend the classes, you won't learn the material. Trying to keep up by just reading the textbook won't cut it anymore. You will often cover things in the class that won't actually be in the book, but will help you understand the material better.
Oh, and don't forget to do all those papers, homework assignments and to study for the tests too.
A good way to make sure no one messes with your own stuff on your computer is a guest account. Make sure you log yourself out when you walk away. Windows and Mac OS X both allow you to leave programs running and pop the login screen back up, and I'm sure Linux can do it too.
It might also be a good idea to log activity in case you need an alibi. Point being thouogh, if people are going to mess with yuor machine, they're going to mess with your machine. If you want that to happen in your account, be my guest, but this can save a few headaches.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Take the bare minimum with you. Get a big, solid trunk/footlocker (or build one!) and a good lock, and put all your valuables in it when you're out of the room.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The important stuff includes condoms and a small stash of private, high-quality hard alcohol. The only way you'll regret buying them is if they're never used.
Sadly, keeping your sanity is pretty much a failed prospect. About 95 per cent of college students go insane during at least four times in their college careers (namely, Finals). Just remember to go insane in ways that do as little damage to yourself and others, and you'll be fine.
As for keeping your stuff secure, that can get tricky. Keep your laptop by your side whenever you go out with it (and I do suggest that you take it with you for note-taking). Your room should stay secure if both you and your roommate keep it locked 24/7. If you cannot trust your roommate and/or said roommate refuses to lock the door, talk to your Resident Assistant (or whatever he or she is called at your school)--usually these are the people living on your floor of the dormitory who are older/senior to your grade level and charged with taking care (read: managing, not babysitting) of you and your fellow floormates. If this fails, work your way up the food chain until you can get an acceptable solution worked out.
As others have said, use common sense. Don't display your shiney, new iPod in your window or whatnot. Also make sure your machines have at least a modicum of security; if employing a WAN, for instance, make sure it's secured with a password and 128-bit encryption (minimum). Data theft can be as bad or worse than physical-object theft, as I'm sure you well know.
Finally, make sure you make friends (or at least allies) on your floor. Even if you aren't a big, buff, and physically imposing guy or gal, this can help keep your toys secure. Think of it as a tiny neighborhood watch system--people will be more inclined to report a suspicious person casing your joint, or just plain old robbing it, if they know and like you.
Anyhow, don't stress about college, remember to have fun, and be the best student you can. College is not like high school or prep school, so enter into it with an open mind and a willingness to adapt.
Cheers,
Undefined Parameter
Eat the Path.
Most people seem to be posting about laptop security, but I wouldn't have that as my primary concern. Don't sit around in front of your computer the first week; go out to parties and form your social webs. Number one piece of advice I can offer is to relax and enjoy the ride. The first week or so was a bit disorienting for me..
As for security, don't leave your laptop unattended when you're not at home. Not that you should do this, but no one ever locks their doors at the dorms I live at; people just walk into the apartments and hang out. The worst that happened over the year was someone's brand-new bike got stolen because it was left outside, unlocked. Some stranger must've passed through and found a bike for the taking.. I had thousands of dollars of equipment on my desk in my room and didn't really worry about it getting stolen. I guess it really depends on what college you go to and what kind of people surround you.
Don't sport around some snobbish $200 laptop bag. Get a $30 army surplus bag or the like and use it. It'll have more room for your books, anyways. Utility bags are rigid enough to hide the form of what's in them. There's always someone on every campus (or airport or train station...) looking for some idiot to put down his trendy look-at-me-I-can-afford-a-laptop bag.
I just finished my first year in the dorms, and nobody stole anything. I think in general, we were all cool with each other thats why, and nobody had any reason to steal anything. Then again where i go to school, its pretty ritzy so a 200 dollar ipod may not be good enough for some. But the only thing that got stolen was an old dreamcast, but we left that out in the open in the living room for 4 months before anything happened.
We even had one guy leave his room open, windows open 24/7 regardless. He was in class, it was open. He was sleeping, it was open. He never lost anything. I think just don't get on anyones nerves, and if people in general like you, most people won't steal from you.
Multiple Kegs, cold and on tap the entire time. No matter how techno weenie you are, if your are the beholder of beer, you'll get at least 1 chick.
Locking your ddor won't work, as several keys in a dorm will unock several doors. (There are only so many combinations of tumblers).
Most colleges give out free condoms. Use them. Daily.
Have fun!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
You should consider password-protecting your installation, in terms of boot-up, awakening from sleep and from the screensaver. Make sure you don't share your HD across the network, and be wary of file sharing programs that can create insecurity. Freshman year, this guy brought a girl back to his room, but his friends decided to play a prank on him by putting a loop of gay porn on his computer.
Long story short, he walks in with this girl to three guys enjoying themselves relentlessly agreeing with each other.
And if you do password protect your computer, DO NOT write the password on a sticky and put it next to your monitor. That increases the probability of something like the above anecdote occuring.
Directed at the first question:
... not all at once. Studying actually does help you get better grades (who knew?).
My most valuable advice at school is to not be blinded by the expectations of friends, parents, dollar signs, significant others, etc, and to instead find yourself and your niche. Study what excites you. Enjoy going to classes, at least in-major ones.
If you don't feel you're enriching your life and enjoying your classes, you're in the wrong place, and it's not going to get better when you graduate and get a job.
I sold computers in retail for 3 years in high school, in college I was a Unix network admin for about 3 years, and now I've got a job as a tech for a local computer sales/repair/networking company. I went in thinking I wanted to be a computer engineer, or a computer science major, but I hated it - YMMV, but for me, it was completely devoid of any critical thinking and was all memorization and "think fast!" stuff. So, I got a history degree - something I thoroughly enjoy. I enjoyed going to class for almost every history class I took, and I found a love of and deep appreciation for Greek lit. Someday I'll get my teaching cert and go teach high school, but I don't regret switching majors a bit; in fact, I wish I had done it earlier.
Some people go to school knowing what they want to do. If that's not you, recognize it quickly and find something that excites you.
Also: Get involved, but don't overextend yourself. Join a club, or do intermural sports, or volunteer as a DJ at a student run station, or go to the football games, etc. Just
~Will
sig?
Get a wearable computer and wear it all the time, even during your sleep :)
Good luck with your studies. Do not get very expensive equipment with you and do not make enemies.
be paranoid. assume you will be robbed at some point. as has been mentioned lock your door everytime you leave. if you have roomates who leave the door open request to be moved. invest in a strong lockbox which can hold all of your expensive electronics(laptop,ipod,cam etc.), if your dorm comes with a lockable storage unit/ closet, goto homedepot and buy a latch you can screw into the closet to be used as a point to affix a bike lock to. get into the habbit of putting your stuff in the lockbox, chain the lockbox to the closet, lock the closet door, then lock the room door. another thing to be aware of is fire alarms. my freshmen year we had 512 false fire alarms. its the perfect opurtunity for someone to steal your stuff.
...you know, the kind that are $3 at the supermarket. I guess they're called "slaps" or "flip flops" or something else depending on the part of the country you're in.
This is because dorm showers become extremely filthy and disgusting with normal dirt during the week, and even moreso on weekends when you have people vomiting in them and the cleaning staff is usually absent. You do not want to walk around in those suckers barefoot. If you do, your feet will be absolutely filthy by the time you get back to your room and you're going to have some smelly-ass sneakers at best and smelly-ass sneakers AND athlete's foot at worst.
As for laptops? Uh, don't leave them unattended or unlocked.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
If you have high end flashy electronic devices to bring to class, don't brag about them being big time expensive, and hold on to them. Don't leave them on a bench in the library while you go look for books, keep them in your backpack and cary that around with you. If someone wants to give you trouble, and try to take your stuff from you just contact campus police--they should be easy to find(lots of schools have blue light thingys that will call them). Better to call campus police and look like a dork than lose a $3k laptop ;)
Boxing Equipment Reviews
you'd be surprised how easy it is to break into college dorms.
also, make sure you get a trustworthy roommate.
Treat your penis the same way, lest you contract malware that even Norton Anti-Virus won't clean up.
I'm not exactly a sage old man (I'm merely a sophomore), but there are some things I've learned: /., you're probably more interested in a college's academic program more than its party school ranking. It's a lot harder than what you're used to (and this comes from someone who blew off high school and was fine). Don't skip classes either, there's a lot of money invested in that 8 AM lecture (or 7:30 if you go to Purdue).
1) Dorms are your friend, and your home to friends: Regardless of what you're like, you're bound to find someone with whom you can hang out. Don't be afraid to knock on some doors.
2) Colleges have lots of neat convocations and clubs...join them and check things out. You'll probably try and join different stuff from the things you were involved in back in high school. I've switched from somone involved in band and speech to someone in fencing and our physics chapter.
3) Study. If you're on
4) Have fun. Your life takes on a whole new meaning, it truly becomes yours in a way that wasn't possible back in high school. Make the most of it.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
I just moved my son up to Michigan State University, and his roommate brought up a small locking cabinet. Both guys have a key, and they put their wallets, checkbooks, etc in there. I believe they intend on keeping their laptops in there when not in the room.
It's large enough to use as a stand for a TV or stereo, and can hold other stuff like beer and vodka bottles
We all know that there are millions of pimple-faced teens lurking about /. but most of the time, they stay out of sight with their GNAA posts getting quietly modded down to -1. No need to bring them to the fore with an article like this.
Incidentally, I am a pimple-faced teen, but I am not proud!
Everything. Especially the MAC addresses of all your devices. Most people who would steal a laptop wouldn't be smart enough to change it. When I was in college I would occasionally run into a student who had the foresight to do that. When they came in to report something stolen we could help them out. It's relatively easy to search a network for a specific MAC address and determine which ethernet port or WAP it's connected to. The only people who got their gear back did that, or got really lucky.
If you have a laptop, get insurance. I got burglarized my freshman year, although they didn't see the laptop under all my papers. They did find the playstation 2 though.
If you're worried about data lost, get an external firewire or usb 2.0 and a long cable and hide it away. They're not going to go through your stuff just to find where the usb cable leads to.
As for other matters that are far more important than any laptop:
Make new friends, but keep your old friends from home just as close. Friends from college are different than friends you grew up with. If you're computer science or computer engineer (I assume something along these lines since it's slashdot) make friends in your major. Stick together and do homework together. There's no need for competition and you'll connect with them on a specific level since they share your interests.
Of course, use the internet to find books. Go to the campus bookstore ahead of time, get the ISBNs and go to cheapesttextbooks.com and find the best deals. They search all the sites, like pricewatch, for the best deal.
And finally, don't underestimate the power of alcohol. It can make great friendships, but don't abuse it too much.
Remember to lock your door, always!
Get a steel footlocker that will fit under your bed. Lock it with a good padlock.
Install http://www.stolenlaptop.com/anti-theft tracking software.
...but in my experience has worked best in deterring people from stealing my crap. I live in a relatively small community though, so the rules are probably different in larger areas.
;)
Do something to customize your stuff. Most any piece of electronic equipment I get that could be stolen (this mostly applies to stuff that leaves my room, like mp3 players and the like) I customize by painting it with everything from random anime characters to abstract geometric patterns. Just be sure to use acrylic paint and seal it. It's much cheaper than it sounds, as the only paints you need are red, blue, yellow, black, white, and (if you want) flesh tone, plus the cost of the sealer.
Why do this? People will be less willing to swipe your stuff if you can easily identify it as your own or if it looks so unique that it would be difficult for it to be fenced. This also has the added benefit of making your crap look that much more awesome.
You could go the opposite route and dress it up as something that isn't worth the risk of stealing. Make it look like a relic from the late 80s/early 90s and someone is less likely to swipe it for a few extra bucks in favor of something that looks like it's actually worth something to a fence or pawnshop.
Add this to all the other standard tips (lock your door, lock your case if you feel paranoid about your hardware [or at least make it hard to open], don't let things out of your sight for too long and don't loan your stuff to someone you don't know very well) and you should get through those good ol' college days with your hardware happy and relatively healthy. Just watch out for spilling beer/soda/bawls on keyboards, it's a real killer.
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
Ultimately if someone really really wants to steal your notebook. They will. There is nothing you can really do.
:). Insurance is frequently overlooked, and while getting your laptop stolen would be shitty - being unable to afford to replace it would be far far worse.
The one thing I've recommended to friends of mine, and I will be purchasing one myself - is a backpack with a notebook slot. They are a bit less obvious on campus than traditional laptop bags which will reduce your likelihood of someone just walking past and grabbing the bag when your not looking (as they would be expecting textbooks not a laptop in a backpack).
But ultimately you need insurance. I don't know what insurance policies are like around the world, but I'm a unviersity student with 'tenant' insurance, not in dorms though, its only a $500CDN deductible if my laptop gets stolen, be it on campus or from my home. As well it is replacement insurance - not cash value insurance - so that I don't get a lower payout as my laptop depreciates in value - they would be paying for me to replace it with a laptop of equivalent value in the future.
That's what I've done to protect my shiny new IBM Thinkpad T41 that I love so much
I thought the correct thing to do when you lose your "really good paper" is to get really stoned and do Apple "switch" commercials.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
After watching the crime reports at my school for the last 4 years, I can safely say that one of the biggest (easiest) things you can do is:
Never, ever let your door stay unlocked when nobody is in the room or when you're sleeping. Same goes while you're in buildings around campus - make a habit of leaving valuables unattended, and they will disappear.
If you have a roommate, make sure this is clear as well. I've had good luck in that area myself, but if you end up with someone who doesn't like the idea, change that situation ASAP.
1) Don't accept invitations to any parties by people named 'Bluto', 'Otter', 'Boon', 'D-Day' or any other aliases. Names like these are used to avoid the legal consequences of one's actions and often lead to problems that could get you kicked out of school.
2) Never let anyone borrow your brother's car. It will be damaged, and you will have to pay for it.
3) Make friends with the dean your first day, and try to join ROTC. The Corps is a fun and exciting place where you will develop character and self esteem, and also get to dress in military uniforms to impress the ladies.
4) Toga parties are for delinquents too childish to be responsible members of the college community. You are better off finding the real events to enjoy your time, like garden parties and pep rallies.
5) Food fights are bad. You will do much better helping out on parade floats.
Remain Calm, All is Well,
M
and other such anti-theft devices is that when you stumble home drunk at 2 in the morning and decide to check your emails or listen to some music you begin to regret balancing that bucket of flourescent dye above your desk.
An unlocked minifridge, full of beer and Malibu, with a stack of porn on top, is not only guaranteed to prevent further intrusion into your stuff, but it will, like flypaper and often just as sticky, entrap any pests and hold them fast until you return.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Bad advice if you plan on not flunking out before your sophomore year, and/or you want to avoid pissing off the people sitting behind you in the lecture hall who'd rather be able to pay attention without being distracted by your AIM conversations.
audioLibre - freedom of music
This is advice coming from a college senior who will graduate in Dec. Take full advantage of the opportunities school can offer you to try out new fields of interest. If that class on post-Ottoman Hungarian literature seems interesting, audit it. If you find yourself strangely drawn to the curling club, join it. College is the time to have new experiences and discover talents you didn't know you had. Don't worry about whether it fits into your career plans. Just develop your talents and someone will eventually pay you to use them (at least in my experience).
As for gear I haven't had any problems and I dont employ any uber security methods, other than data security which really doesn't help for gear getting stolen, so I'll answer the sanity part since few people have.
Pretty much every one of these I violated my first semester, and have since changed and had a significant improvement in my college experience.
Don't bring 6 computers, two monitors/keyboards/mice, two PDAs, a PS2 + dreamcast + gba, a stereo, two TVs, a dvd player, a few old hardware for "conversation pieces" and your laptop. I did this my first semester, and while I won the "most geeky person in hightower hall" contest (not a real contest), I had no need for all that stuff. Bring a laptop, one desktop, one test machine, a TV, one or two game consoles which at least one should double as a dvd player, and some speakers. Maybe a PDA if thats your thing.
Cancel your Everquest (or whatever) accounts. I was a 4-year Everquest player and got to college and found out that Everquest didn't work on the university network. I was pretty pissed off about it for two weeks, but after a month or so I realized that I was much better off than had I been playing Everquest. I didn't even care about losing my multiple level 65's with 200+ AA after six weeks.
Get involved. We have a linux users group here at my university which is really active and very awesome. Met a lot of my now college friends this way. I'm sure your university will have an ACM chapter, an IEEE chapter, and a bunch of other geeky stuff. Join all of them. You also have a good side effect here of resume-whoring.
Don't be afraid to have fun. If you get arrested a few times, its no big deal. Do stupid stuff often and without premeditation. You'll have alot more fun this way.
Go to class at least half the time.
I'll be leaving my first year soon as well, and I picked up a pretty cheap locking file cabinet. I figure if I lock my room door and put valuables in the cabinet, I'll be OK.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
You need common sense..
If your a geek you know there is no such thing as fool proof security.
You need to use your head and not make it easy to see/take.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I was going to mod you up, but you are anon.
:
Actually this is the smartest thing I expect to read in this thread, while also being the simplest and cheapest.
Lock your damn door, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It doesn't matter if you are in the room, not in the room, just running real quick down to the bathroom or across the hall to another room with the doors open. If you don't have one foot in the door and one foot out the door, throw the deadbolt.
As for your sanity, here are some rules for life in college
1. Sex. Women do all their freaky stuff in college, so have an open mind and hit as much of it as you possibly can. Buy a big box of condoms and some good lube (google for 'millenium id').
2. Class. A good education is important, but don't let it interfere with #1.
3. Network. Not TCP/IP, but people. Every job you get in the future is going to be because of who you know, so get to know a LOT of people. Get to know them well so they don't forget you.
4. The Law. Graduating from college doesn't erase your law record, so don't get arrested.
5. The Dollar. You are going to get a lot of offers for credit cards. Credit cards are not 'free money'. If you can't pay cash for it, and if you haven't managed to save enough money to buy it in the last 6 months, what makes you think you are going to earn enough money in the next 6 months to pay for whatever you are considering putting on plastic? Graduating from college doesn't erase your credit history either, so don't screw it up.
6. The Warez and MP3z. Add #5 and #6 above up and decide if you can afford it. I'm guessing you probably can't, so don't do it from your own computer.
7. Take a few classes for personal enrichment. You aren't going to meet the best chicks in your software engineering classes.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Hey, you can get a Sentry Fire Safe large enough to store a laptop, all your media, and your class notes and assignments for 175.00. It'll protect your laptop from everything up to a near nuclear strike, and because it's got a steel shell it'll even give you some shielding from EMP. More importantly, it'll keep your roommate's grubby little mitts off your stuff.
I highly recommend one. They rock! As a side benefit, if your R.A. decides to snoop around for "haxors" he won't be able to get HIS nosy mitts on your stuff, either.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
...or come finals time, you'll never get a moment's rest. And that is a serious suggestion.
Howdy.
Don't let people "piggyback" into the dorms. Most dorms have keyed entrance somehow. If you use your key to get into the dorm/hallway, and somebody comes up behind you, make sure they belong on the hall. If he's going to visit a friend, either make him call their friend from the locked side of the door, or escort him to their friends room (and back out if nobody's home).
Simply put, don't let folks who don't live in your hall onto your hall. This will either (a) make you very unpopular, or (b) result in a culture shift on your hallway to one of security. Odds are, (a) will occur.
Such is the price you pay for having high priced stuff.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
This won't just be useful in the (unlikely) event that your laptop gets stolen. If your computer should happen to suffer a hardware problem, or one day just stops booting because of corrupt software, your backups make it much easier to make the decision to reformat and clean install.
To address the possibility of a dorm fire, meteor strike or other catastrophe, burning an extra copy every once in a while and giving it to an off-campus friend for safe keeping isn't too difficult either.
Paranoia works.
Lastly, try to get a room to yourself and don't make any friends. This last tip will especially help you to fit in around here - angry hermits who can't get dates ;) Just kidding, I love you guys. But seriously, your own room, no friends. Also, grow your hair long and say enigmatic things like "Did you know that I can see your room from here?" even though you're inside your own room and you have no idea where the other guy's room is, or "Now where's that Stryker saw I left on my bed..."
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
No, not the trunk of your car. A steamer trunk, a large rectangular piece of luggage commonly used before air travel was common. Keep it in the closet or at the foot of your bed, or use it as a coffee table. Keep valuables in it when you are there, and use it for shipping or storage when you leave. And lock it!
Thieves will look for something smaller, lighter, and obviously valuable before they tackle something big, heavy, and possibly containing only your winter clothes.
Yes, go to class! The rest of us need someone to get the notes from.
As a corollary, don't oversecure your stuff. Naturally, you should take basic precautions like locking your door and keeping expensive stuff out of sight, but for anything above that, ask yourself whether it's worth the effort to install and monitor things like alarms or video cameras. If you have a laptop and you're worried about it, taking it with you is probably easier than finding all sorts of ways to secure it in your room. Spending all your free time worrying over whether your stuff is safe is definitely not a recommended way to spend your college years; hope for the best, plan for the worst, and get out and have fun!
One time in freshman year I left my brand new laptop in the cafeteria and it was still there the next day. The manager of the place had picked it up and was holding it in his office. All I had to do to prove it was mine was describe what it looked like !
Let me first state that I am a rather into computers, chess, and many other things people consider dorky.
However, if you are a real nerd, don't go out in public, don't make friends, and let yourself get walked on, you will get taken advantage of. This may include someone swiping your valuables, punching you in the face at a party to impress friends, etc. I simply suggest you get out, and have some fun. Who cares about a laptop, in the grand scheme of things? I would rather have a long night ending with a woman I didn't know 6 hours ago naked in my room, than to have the security of knowing some material object I own is safe and sound.
Just my thoughts. Again, I emphasize, that I do a lot or nerdy things. However, I have also learned to not care about some of the smaller issues in life, like the objects I own, and the security that I will never have.
--If I said something interesting it probably wasn't correct
Don't bring it to class. You do NOT need a laptop in class just to take notes on. A pen and paper work just fine, or a small microcasset recorder to just record the whole thing. With very, very few exceptions, classes that require the use of a computer in class will be held in a computer lab.
Don't bring a laptop just because it's neat, as it's an invitation to have it taken. It you insist on having something elceltronic, a PDA is probably the way to go as it's cheaper and less obvious.
You should at least purchase a cable lock for your laptop - they're about $15, and worth it. Sure you can cut it, but laptop thieves are looking to grab something and walk away without anyone noticing - they'll move on if yours is locked up. And obviously don't leave your laptop bag lying around.
Ask your parents to call their insurance company and see what is covered. Many homeowners policies specifically include dorm room coverage, or you can add it for a nominal yearly fee (like $30-$50). You can also get a renter's policy (about $50-$100/year depending on how much coverage you want), but some of those specifically don't apply to dorms, so check on that.
Write down your MAC address (aka hardware address, ethernet address: 00:12:34:56:78:9a) for all your cards. Many laptops are stolen by other students. Your IT department, if they're halfway competent, should be able to track MAC addresses on the network (certainly they can if they use DHCP) - it's good to report this when your laptop is stolen. I work in IT and every year we recover 2-3 laptops this way. Some thieves are pretty stupid.
In fact, write down all identifying information of your laptop and keep it somewhere. You'd be surprised how many stolen laptops show up on eBay. I can think of several times where laptops were recovered by the campus police posing as buyers on eBay, and they could match the serial numbers because the student wrote them down.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Second rule: Lock up the good stuff, if you absolutely must have it. My freshman year, I had a wooden footlocker box I made myself, and stuck the biggest damned Abloy padlock I could get on it, with a decent hasp. My keys went into a separate box at night, and the key for THAT got put on a wire on my ankle- even in the shower. I was (and remain) paranoid about security, but (on the bright side) I never had anything stolen until I went off to graduate school.
And, as others mentioned, get insurance if you do decide to bring the expensive stuff that you CAN'T lock up.
I always find that a NRA Lifetime Member sticker on the door sends a clear message. Maybe a couple of shooting targets with holes near the bulls-eye taped to the door will add to the effect.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If you own a safe you just let people know you have something worth stealing.
Find a responsible roommate ASAP. Locking the door when you leave won't do crap if your roommate doesn't do the same. This may not help for your first semester as most universities insist that you suffer with your randomly selected roommate for at least one semester, but should improve there after.
Also, find a roommate you can trust. I've heard plenty of horror stories about the roommate being the ultimate thief when everything was settled. Again, this may not help your first sememster/year, but make it a priority. At least then you only have a small peice of your college life to suffer with minimal effects in your room for fear of theivery.
You should keep any important paper on the school servers. Unless you are at a shitty school, they'll provide you with space on a central server. Hell, most likely the school itself will, and so will the specific department you are affilated with. If your paper is going to take longer than one sitting or is complete, SSH it to the server. Then, should your computer fail, you still have access to it with no problems.
Keep on the lookout for a girlfriend. You won't be so sad about your lost gear when the biggest thing on your mind will be how to arrange your next private moment.
Arranging entire nights is a big effort when you're a starving college student. You might be pawning your gear for motel money, anyway.
Also, you won't believe how calm and sane you can be about flunking tests and getting Bs in math for the first time in your life when you're getting serious ass.
Jesus saves....And takes 1/2 damage.
if you are majoring in any respectably difficult topic in college, you are not going to have time to worry about your stuff being stolen. with that said, get the insurance. also, get a shitbox computer, set it up at home on mom and dad's dsl/cable line with a no-ip.com dynamic dns address, setup rsync on the home computer and your laptop, and be done with it. if it's stolen, it's stolen, but your data will not be gone if you rsync daily with a scheduled task or cronjob, and insurance will pick up the bill for the new equipment. and as others are saying here, if you go minimalist, you'll find you dont NEED half (or more) of the stuff you own.
I was off-campus, and my parents' Homeowner's insurance covered me when a bunch of stuff got stolen from a friend's car. I ended up getting the highest estimate on everything I could find, then buying most of the replacements on clearance... I think I came out about even, even after the $200 deductible, although I'm still sore about the unique items I lost (a few Zip disks full of work and a carrying case decorated with about 3 years of stickers and various ephemera)
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Do your homework as soon as possible, the longer you wait the more homework will be stacked up with it.
Grades are determined on Friday Nights:
A students take notes from class and notes from chapter reading and combine them
B students take their notes and file them away
C students watch the D students start to drink.
College is about adapting
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
Espically if you bike is going to be sitting in one place for a long time (like you live in a dorm or something). Get a GOOD U-lock (like a Kryptonite) and lock it around the frame and front tire, not just the tire. Then get an additonal heavy chain lock (one of the kinds with a cover on them to help screw bolt cutters) and lock that around the tires and frame.
Really, theives LOVE stealing bikes and even a good U-lock can be defeated without a whole lot of trouble. You want to make yours look much harder than anyone else's hence the double locks. Even that is still no gaurentee.
Go to a fishing store and buy 50 of the smallest hooks you can find, and some small fishing line, ties hooks to line, hang lines from roof. If someone trys to take your stuff, they will get a face lift.
-Joey
Wire your stuff to explosives. Yeah, it'll blow up your stuff, and your room, but it'll at least take the thieving bastard along with it.
I'll let you in on a little secret: you won't need to bring your own supercomputer to get your coursework done; the college will actually have equipment available for anything that requires major horsepower. You don't actually need anything bigger than a boombox to fill a dorm room with music. A junker bike is great for getting to classes across campus. An AlphaSmart, an old Pentium I laptop, or even a TRS-80 Model 100 will be all the portable you need for taking notes in class. The smaller fridge and microwave, the better. And I can assure you (I was working there at the time) that CmdrTaco didn't have a cluster of G5s in his dorm room when he invented /. If you need an alarm or other security to protect it... you've got too much.
Then just get in the habit of locking your door to prevent casual theft, and you're all set.
In terms of general advice for incoming freshmen: take as many classes outside your major as you can get away with. Your advisor will probably steer you into as many classes in his department as he can, but he's biased (it's his speciality) and he has an agenda (more students means more money for the dept), so you have to bring your own sense of perspective to it. If you're majoring in Geek, that stuff's important to getting you a job, but the arts, lit, philosophy, psych, soc, geology, languages, history, etc. classes are what's going to make you a more interesting - and interested - person in the long run. (It might even save you from a lifetime of celibacy, by giving you something else you can discuss intelligently.) I made the mistake of ignoring my interest in art the first time through college (focusing too much on the Comp Sci degree), and ended up going back to pick that up... but by them I was an "older student", which took a lot of the fun out of it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Seriously. You can lock the door religiously, but you'd better damn well hope your roommate is just as responsible. I'm convinced schools do their best to create "odd couple" situations, so there's a good chance you're going to be sleeping next to some guy you'd never in a million years talk to or trust otherwise. I had a bit of theft at school, and it was all directly related to my club-kid roommate and his sketchy friends.
My advice? Don't own anything worth stealing. Buy a used laptop for a couple hundred bucks. It'll be dated, but it'll get the job done, and most important, no one else will want it (and if they do, buy another and you'll still be saving money.) Back it up religiously, hide your data in a few locations, get a webmail account and send everything you worked on that day to yourself nightly. Life is much easier if you aren't carrying a two thousand dollar laptop around with you at all times, and if you remember that your work is more important that your machine.
The same goes for other electronics-- get a cheap stereo, you don't need a nice one in a tiny room. Same goes for TV, Microwave, etc.
Yeah, your stuff will look like crap compared to everyone else's, but chances are it won't be stolen. And if you don't go nuts buying cool stuff you might have some money left over for socializing, which will put you way ahead of the game. You'll make more friends if you can afford to hang out than you would by having a nice computer.
Oh, and if people think you're weird or poor, tell them you like "retro" computers. That usually works.
I just got the stuff from RIT, although I imagine it's about the same for most colleges. Numbers:
Coverage, Deductibles: $50, $100
$2000, $55, $50
$4000, $75, $70
$6000, $95, $90
$8000, $115, $110
$10000, $135, $130
$12000, $155, $150
Personally I have the minimal. Everything in my room put together is worth more than that, but if any single item is stolen I am covered. I'd recommend ANYTHING to ANYONE who has ANY laptop.
I recall one theft ring that could have easily been avoided by a locked door. The crooks would walk down a first floor hallway, knock on the door to see if anybody was home, open the unlocked door, and haul the loot out a back window to an accomplice. The rooms that locked their doors avoided it. What a concept! :).
My gear and me survived all four years, and nothing was swiped during that time. By my senior year I would have been a treasure trove with my Kodak DC120 (the first consumer megapixel digital camera), a fancy P233MMX notebook, and let's not forget my Newton 2000! I miss those days..
www.lonseidman.com
When you have your laptop, the most important thing you're doing is hanging onto your laptop. While you're working on it, its always in your sight. When you store it, lock it up and know who has access to the room.
Yes, its that simple. No, a $30 device isn't going to do a better job than active self awareness.
Make backups of data just in case.
The fact is, most people who lose laptops at college are victims of their own stupidity. There are plenty of careless people on a college campus so thieves don't need to extend themselves very far.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Rule number 1: You will lose the first few copies of some important paper, like your senior thesis. Get into the habit of making multiple backups early so that it's an ingrained habit when you get down to the crucial semesters. Five backups on separate CD-ROMs or various other devices is not too many. Yes, I am hypercautious, why do you ask? (My friend Ruth lost 3 copies of hers. Damned floppies!)
Think about how long it would take to rewrite the paper.
Rule number 2: Learn to plan your time now. This applies double if you found high school easy. Your study habits probably aren't up to snuff, and many colleges fail to get this point across. It's not an unreasonable idea to take classes in study methods.
Programming classes tend to expand to take up about 4 times what they took at the begining of the semester. You must be prepared for this.
Rule number 3: Explore more than just the class listings.
Of course, College is all about exploration. Don't limit yourself to interesting classes and recreational pharmaceuticals. Find out all the resources students have on campus. You might discover not only clubs, gyms and recreational things, but study and tutoring services, counseling for the tough times, cheap legal services (which we hope you won't need, of course) and facilities like darkrooms and sound studios.
Oh, and Rule 4: The amount of beer required to make you feel like you are a hip sexy guy is exactly equal to the amount required to make the person you are interested in think you are a drunken idiot.
You're in college. Learn how to be hip and sexy without alcohol. Here's the first clue: acquire self confidence. Learning a martial art is useful for this.
Have all the fun you can.
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
Bullshit. Bring them all with you and show them off - frequently. Lure girls to your room and have some sex (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sex for you subscription holders). Your fancy electronics will suck in two years anyway. Get them stolen now and your parents can buy you newer fancier things. The bottom line is: bones heal, chicks dig scars, and America has the best doctor-to-daredevil ratio in the world.
ive always enjoyed the idea of putting a gps chip in my laptop. if i ever misplace it i can just go find it. but then i'm more concerned about being drunk and doing stupid things than my stuff actually stolen.
to leave your stuff alone!
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Allo et bonjour from le fanclub de Vanilla Ice de France!
TU A LE FAILEZ!
pls go home u r a loser thx.
When I went to college we didn't have laptops and desktop PC's to deal with in the dorm rooms. We didn't even have a phone, and cell phones were still a few years off. We had a 20" TV and eventually got a VCR so we could go rent porn for entertainment. Computer work - all of which was for programming classes - languages like Apple Pascal or Cobal - was done in the computer lab once you had written the code on notebook paper first. I envy today's college students.
The subject line there says it all. You're there at college, first and foremost, to better yourself.
/after/ you've done what needs doing. You're there to impress other people with your thoughtfulness and hard work. You do this so that they later on think of you when there is an opening where they work, or the little start-up they're assembling needs just your type of talent, or when they're the person doing the hiring.
Drinking, sex, love, gaming -- they are enticing distractions best taken in measured, infrequent doses. You can have fun
Don't allow yourself to stay depressed. Don't allow yourself to become bored studying. Don't fixate on what you miss about home.
Studying is hard work, and sometimes it's shit work. That's part of preparing for the useless drivel that your boss is going to require you to do after you graduate. Studying is like jogging for the mind. Sometimes it's very hard to get started, and then harder to keep going steadily.
Study, get plenty of rest, eat properly, excercise. Set a schedule for everything, then stick to it. Even schedule your recreation time. Be strict with yourself.
I really enjoyed college, and wish that I had studied harder. I fucked around waaay too much, and graduated with a 2.8 grade point average (plus two academic suspensions). I've learned more since college than I did in college because I've been trying to make up for the pointless laziness I had through college. If I had my act together, I would have been where I am now ten years sooner. I could've retired at age 45 with the investments I am making, but now I won't be able to retire early until age 55. Ten years squandered.
If you get the chance to study abroad, study at sea, or even join the Peace Corp, do it. Experience everything you can. You may think you know what you want to do in life -- but if you haven't investigated everything, how can you be sure?
Best of luck.
Do not have sex with, or buy drugs from, anyone that you have known for less than two weeks.
Don't even worry about it - there's no reason to go to college these days, anyhow. 5 years ago, you could make as much with a high school diploma as with a PhD. Now, it's the same, except the numbers are much lower.
This is very simple actually: Get renters' insurance and stop worrying about all the rest of it. Bottom line is that there's just no way to ensure in a dorm environment that everything is safe. Even if you lock things down like a government agency with high tech surveillance and alarms, your roommate will leave the door open one day and then it all is for naught.
Renters insurance will cost you for the year far less than a single piece of security equipment, probably about the same as a cheapass webcam which would probably get stolen too if it ever comes to that. Back up the critical data to cd and leave it with a friend in another room from time to time, and password protect your laptop in hopes that whoever steals it won't be able to hack in. Beyond that its just not worth the headache to try to keep an eye on everything, its just equipment that you can buy again down at Best Buy with the insurance check should somebody ever get to it. Besides that, the best security system on the planet won't help you if somebody steals your bike from the rack in front of a lecture hall, or snags your iPod in the cafeteria while you're not looking. Insurance will cover all of this and you don't have to worry about making sure its working every time you leave the room.
Get some insurance, and get some sleep.
Fear is a great short-term motivator.
Just look your new roomate square in the eye and recite the following:
Hi, I'm [Your Name Here].
I'm your new roomate.
You know, I like the looks of you, kid.
I think we're going to get along famously.
Which bunk is yours?
Great.
This is my laptop.
If anything happens to it I'll be upset.
If it disappears, I'll kick your ass.
If it gets damaged, I'll kick your ass.
If the neighbor steals it, I'll kick your ass.
If the building burns down and my laptops in here, I'll kick your ass.
In fact, if someone in my psych(o) class spills coffee on it..... I'll kick your ass.
If anything at all happens to my precious laptop, I'll probably kick your ass.
I love my laptop.
Disclaimer: this approach works best if your name is Tank or Bulldozer as opposed to Alphonse and... maybe if one eye is a litte bigger than the other. It helps too if you don't need phone books to see over the steering wheel.
On the other hand, In the words of Tenzin Gyatso "Try to help others. If you can't then at least don't harm them." I guess that means something like lock it up.
You could try either approach, it's up to you really.
After thinking about it for a while, I think I'd use a log-chain on the laptop.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
I'd suggest just having stuff that isn't worth stealing. Use laptops, gadgets, etc., that are at least 2 years old and worthless but still get the job done. Is there any reason you'd need the latest laptop to browse the internet or write a term paper?
Do all the stuff you are supposed to do:
Exercise 30 minutes a day 5-6 days per week. Find people who want to exercise with you, and mix up your routine with fun things. This is, I think, the most overlooked thing at school. Exercise will give you more energy and a higher IQ.
Take vitamins every day, especially on the days you are hung over. Vitamins are pretty cheap, especially if they give you a little bit of an edge in avoiding sickness.
Drink lots of water. Drink 3 glasses of water right before you go to bed if you have been drinking, and drink another 3 when you wake up after drinking.
I presume you are going into a scientific or computational field. Make sure you have a firm grasp in math and physics before you jump into your other courses--these subjects provide the mental framework you need to succeed.
If you aren't already thinking about it, consider getting a minor in business, or try double-majoring in business along with your primary degree. Figure out the registration system, and locate areas of overlap in requirements for your liberal ed and major classes.
Do your homework right after class, and enjoy your evenings.
When you visit friends and family back home, do not try to show them how much smarter you are than them. Instead, try to understand what they are saying.
Get on a regular sleep schedule.
I've got a 17" Powerbook G4, Rev. B and a blue iPod Mini -- little did I know when I purchased these items that I was also laying down the cash for their built-in sex appeal. Honestly, how many laptops have guys sending you pick-up lines over the local coffee shop's Wi-Fi?
Don't leave it out of your sight in public areas. Seriously, that is the only thing you can do. If you want to leave it lying around unsupervised, you should expect someone to steal it. There is absolutely no way to stop a determined thief, and they are not unfamiliar with measures people take to lock or hide valuable items.
As for your dorm room, close and lock the door when you or your roommate is not there. Your room has an effective lock and if it doesn't work they will fix it for free. Trying to protect your stuff if the room is open to anyone is a lost cause, but it is very simple if it isn't.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
you insensitive clod!
Agreed wholeheartedly. If you work-study in your school's IT department, it's great for your eventual resume (and trust me, you want to be thinking about that now, too) but your social life will be shot to fucking hell whenever the slightest computer malady hits your dorm/floor/apartment building. Vapid clueless silicone-chested nursing majors and hulking monolithic sports-scholarship leechers will beat down your door looking for answers.
That said, reaping the rewards afterwards... particularly from the girls... might not be such a bad thing. ^_^
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Know you're floormates. After a few days you'll get the feel of who you can trust and who you can't. There isn't allways the need to lock up everything you own and bolt the door if all your neighbors are around with their doors open. I mean come on, you're in college, not prison. Just use your head and lock up when you'll be gone for a class or lunch or something.
Know you're roommate. Similar reasons as above. It's best to get any possible problems out of the way. Find out if he smokes, if he drinks, all the basic lifestyle stuff, and find out a way to work together. Very important: come up with a system for keys. I suggest always keeping your key with you, and making sure your roommate does the same. That way when you do lock up, you won't need to worry if the other guy can get back in.
Know yourself. Know what you'll need and what you won't. You will need MUCH less than you think you need (at least tech wise), so plan accordingly. Sure you can't imagine life without all four of your desktops and your laptop, but in reality, how often will you be able to use them? When it comes down to it, college takes up A LOT of time. Tehre's a reason why you're living there, and it's not to give you any freedom! College (at least for freshmen) takes time, and is not conducive to lots of tech toys. Well, I hope that helped a bit.
Never had a problem. Surprising how many people, especially low-life, are afraid of snakes.
Check out Safeware.com. For under a hundred bucks a year, they'll give you $2000's worth of insurance coverage that includes theft and accidental damage (such as spilling coffee all over your keyboard or dropping your laptop on the bus and acquiring a hefty dent), neither of which are covered by warranty.
Don't get one. Get a desktop. It is cheaper, more powerful for the money, easier to work on when you are at it, and much less likely to get stolen. Really, you do not need a laptop if you are on any major modren campus.
I work for the University of Arizoan and we have computers EVERYWHERE for student use. Most buildings have general access labs for any student and almost all departments have departmental computer labs. Espically if you are living in the dorms, there is just no need.
As for in class, you probably find you laptop a detrement rather than a benefit. Most people I see with laptops in class are noodling around with the games or surfing the Internet (if there's WiFi near the classroom), not taking notes. Now if what you want is a distraction, then get a GameBoy Advanced, or just don't go to class. Most don't require it so if you really aren't going to listen, might as well just not go.
Really, I know laptops are trendy, but they are generally just an overly expensive gadget for university students, not a useful tool. I never once found myself sitting in a class saying "Damn, this owuld be so much easier if I had a laptop." I often found myself bored and wishing I had a distraction, but ultimately I wouldn't be learning if I did that, and I could just go somewhere else if I didn't care about learning that day.
Here's the real answer. Get a gun. And then make sure everyone knows how badly you want to use it.
It is very interesting that one needs a topic on Slashdot where gazillions of people tell him to lock the door. And there are cases when do not lock it. I live in a two million Central European city and it's as simple as breathing to lock the doors. No sane guy would leave his door open. Not that locks help too much, anyway, but that's a different story...
You sound a lot like the person I was when I entered college: excited, naive and more than a little neurotic. (In fact I'm pretty sure I submitted an ask /. along the same lines!) My best advice to you would be to treat these next 4-6 years as a ride and just see where it takes you. Both times I went off to college (I count studying abroad as basically starting college over again) I arrived with some sort of "plan" and completely jettisoned it within about two months. Pardon my language, but there's just no predicting what the fuck is going to happen to you in the near future. Not quite the same as high school, huh? It's simultaneously the best and scariest part of college. Scratch that--the best is that your parents pay for everything, but you don't have to live at home :) If my 5-years-ago had seen the person I am today, I(t) would have, like, died. The same thing will probably happen to you. So I say, just sit back and enjoy the ride.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
The one with the "This side towards enemy" notice on one side. That should work. Just don't take it on any airline flights. Unless you plan spending your spring break, and then some, in Guantanamo.
Backup to CD everyday or when you have finished anything major, keep the backups well away from your laptop, so when it does get stolen or smashed, you have the chance to recover quickly. The biggest item of value will be it's contents, not the laptop itself.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
The only regrets I have (I'm now married, with child-no fun allowed) are what (who) I didn't do in college. I never tried acid. I never got wasted every night for a month. I never slept with a hooker. Actually the biggest regrets I have are for the chicks I never did. Except for the fat girl I woke up next to, after drinking tequila. She was naked but I had my clothes on so I hope nothing happened but the fear is still there.
As for school, it doesn't really matter what you do. Once peak oil hits, it's all a white line nightmare and, unless you're good with a supercharged V8 and a crossbow, you'll be dog food.
I drank what? -- Socrates
If you are unfortunate enough to be robbed, you'll at least have a list to give the police.
On the other hand, people tend to borrow a lot of things in college like movies and games. Sometimes even without your permission (ie if a roomate borrows or loans out your stuff to a friend). When things are out of your sight for a long time, if you're anything like me, you'll tend to forget about them, and never get them back. So if I could do it all over again, I'd definitely keep better track of the stuff I had.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Serriously. Don't get a roomate unless they are your best friend. I stayed in the dorm rooms for 4 years and durring that time I have not had anything stolen but I had one roomate that I could not get off of my computer even so I could do my homework. Another decided to throw 40lbs of books on my HP-48GX Calculator the day before my physics final :(
most theft happens when you are passed-out-cold
Make a list of all the equipment you have that is valuable, include the serial numbers, and have your parents add these things to their home owners list.
Keep backups of all your important files.
And live dangerously, but with piece of mind. If anyone steals your stuff... it will be replaced by the insurance company with a brand new items.
Also, don't eat the green acid.
I've always found you can't beat a rocking chair, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a shotgun.
And use a good lock, not one that someone can get through with bolt-cutters in about 3 seconds.
Best Slashdot Co
i spent a lot of time my freshman year MUDding. When I finally quit, I realized what I'd been missing.
College is an amazing time to meet people your age. Get out there. Do not hide in your room. Try not to be shy. Go to parties, get drunk. Don't do thing's you'll regret, but go have fun. It's the only time in your life you'll be surrounded by people your age in a consequence-free environment (even if you do break the law, usually the campus police will give you a MUCH lesser punishment thant he state.).
So there you have it. Go make friends and try to have as much fun as you can. Don't study too hard.
Good luck.
1. Back up ALL important data regularly.
2. Encrypt ALL sensitive data.
3. Get insurance on the laptop.
I bet you a new laptop that this will turn out much cheaper in the long run than a stockpile of "high-tech" anti-theft equipment.
Heck, if insurance weren't such a highly regulated industry, I'd suggest that the students themselves form their own insurance "agencies" to cover their stuff -- everyone pitches in a premium, and when the class graduates, whatever is left is refunded to the participants.
Of course, people are prone to abuse the system, and it would probably devolve into more of a headache than it's worth... Or not?
It's a simple solution that may not help if someone really wants to steal it (isn't much you can do about that other than locking it to something immobile... though that can just be cut in seconds if they have a bolt cutter). Stuffbak plus some lockdown would probably be good. That way when they steal it and can't use it, they'll return it for the reward ;)
OTOH, if you just leave it somewhere, Stuffbak alone does wonders.
From there, just make sure you back up essential files. Hardware is replaceable. Data rarely is.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Keep your gear away from your stash and visitors will probably leave it alone. 8-)
Or have a good fake ID. Then you can buy beer for everyone else in the dorm, and make money too!
Oh, and start fires in other people's rooms. Between that and urinating on everything, you WON'T be trifled with.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Buy a good quality locking trunk and a drill. Drill through the bottom of the trunk into the floor and bolt it to the floor. Sure you might have to pay for repairs when you leave (maybe not), but it sure beats replacing a laptop, video camera and whatever else is tempting to those inclined to steal.
Search it out for yourself if you are interested.
But don't trust keys in a dorm to do anything more then keep honest people honest.
The worst thing to do is be so paranoid you make yourself a target. Don't take anything irreplaceable.
A locked cabinet in the closet is a good idea (on the shelf). But only if it can be bolted down.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Slightly OT as far as tech is concerned, but what the hell:
;)
If you're going away to school you likely haven't drank like you will in the next 4 years.
My advice is take it easy when you hit the booze at your first dozen parties. Stick to what you can handle, honest, you don't want to know what your "friends" will do when you pass out
As far as tech is concerned I wouldn't let "weird" people you don't know well into your dorm a lot.
If you are watching them then sure, but don't just leave it open and have people over cause theft is big on res in some places.
Ummm don't invest too much in tech gadgets because you'd much rather have it for a pizza and beers here and there when you are down and out on cash and student loans. Saving some money in your account is always good for a rainy college day! Also books are expensive and unexpected costs sometimes.
My recommendation is not to buy any new tech when you go to college that you can avoid (sub $100 is okay) but don't go buying a new computer. Yours will do fine.
Oh and don't buy any games. Please. This will be the best time of your life--don't be stuck in your dorm playing LAN games while there is hot pussy for the plucking.
(don't flame its the truth!)
One of my friends back in college had a 20th Anniversary Mac that he treasured, but he suspected his roommate was using his computer while he was gone during the day at classes and work. Being the nerd he was, he borrowed a bunch of equipment from the lab he worked in and hid a tiny camera aimed at the computer along with a VCR recording in SLP.
He managed to record his roommate wacking off to porn in front of his computer. He spent hours cleaning off his keyboard with rubbing alcohol and q-tips.
I had a dorm single for two years. Crowd control, dude.
tell your roommate to lock up also! i once woke up to a very large set of nostrils staring down at me because my roommate left for his early theatre class and left the door unlocked. even though the guy was cool and my neighbor, having a huge football player's head in your face going,"WAKE UP, FOOL!" was not fun. if your roommate is lax or not respectful of your property, start looking for a new one right away.
Seriously, you don't. I went through my college as a computer science student without any fancy computer equipment. The school lab provides for pretty much everything you need.
One of the best things I did was to join one of the research labs, thus gaining 24/7 access to the lab's equipment (I scored a key!), and I suggest you try and do the same. This will not only get you involved in some really cool projects, it might also pay your bills (though likely minimun wage), and it will help you establish good relationship with professors who run the research lab/projects.
During my college years (only about 4 years ago), my friends around me were taking our loans to get laptop computers, and they believed that it will help them in their classes. However, I have to say, the best note-taking tools you will ever have in class is still your pen and paper. Even if you can type as fast as your professor can speak, it's still impossible to draw things as quickly as your professor can draw diagrams on the board.
(A bonus for taking your notes on paper: when it comes to midterm time, girls will have to spend more time studying with your or borrowing your notes, rather than just download your notes from your laptop)
Honestly, I did not see how having a laptop helped with any of my friend's grades. If anything, it put a big dent on their student loan, distracts you from your actual work (oh, let me see if I can get Quake3 to run on here...), and when it gets stolen, it's that much more trouble and money to replace it (shit! my term paper was on the laptop!).
I survived fine using school provided equipments. And when I got to a point where I needed access to a compiler at late hours (after the PC labs are closed), I go to my work place (the research lab) and use the computers there. PC (Windows) labs were always full, so I was forced to go to the old UNIX terminals that no one uses, and that's where I learned most of my UNIX skills.
It doesn't hurt to have a Knoppix CD in your pocket, either.
I did the dorm thing for two years, said screw it, and moved into an apt. with two female grad students (I was a male undergrad). One basically moved in with her boyfriend after a couple months, still paid rent, and the other spent most of her time in Europe (as I was in the Midwest, that was pretty cool). The side benefits of added security and privacy were also augmented by the fact it cost half of what the dorm did, and was a hell of a lot cleaner. The cleaning staff in the dorms tried, but there were at least 20% of the rooms with mice in them when I lived there. In my own place, I did the cleaning, so no mess, no mice.
Teach the school thugs how to download free pr0n from usenet. After that, you won't even need to lock your dorm room.
I just purchased $4000 worth of personal property insurance from these guys. They're endorsed by a fair amount of large universities. My policy is one year long and was a $75 premium and has a $50 deductible.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Trust me.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
"Like many others, I'm shipping off to college for the first time in a few days..." You are just leaving now? I am starting my third week! Oh, I get it, you submitted it 3 weeks ago and it was just put up now. By now, you've already had your laptop stolen, so this is no use to you now.
Napalm
lots and lots of Napalm. Nothing keeps would-be thieves at bay like Napalm. Except maybe Landmines, but they're a bit harder to get/make than Napalm is.
Respect yourself, value your time, do not help others with computer problems. Do not feel obligated. You will not get play from girls this way. Charge per hour, say you're too busy, tell them to go to student services and wait in line. Hours will go down the toiliet installing some stupid windows driver for people who will look upon you as a servant after you "helped" them.
Bring a crappy computer to school, use the computers in the labs where you can collaborate with others face to face. You'll stay on task better. Your classes are what you'll be judged by after graduation. Unfortunately the people doing the hiring will only look at your gpa, and will totally discount any IT skills gained outside of class in a college environment. Stop screwing around with linux and reading slashdot and do your scheme project and cpeg lab. If you were smart enough to pick up linux in high school you can catch up during the summers on changes during the school year.
Get to the gym get in shape, lay off the tripple big grille burgers in the student centers.
Mines. Kaboom...
I'll add three: Get up Early. Do the homeworks. Work in the summer.
. html instead. It'll make getting up much easier.
Nobody gets up at 8am in college - be the exception. If you don't want a class first thing, get to the gym every day. It's a habit you'll thank yourself for when your thirty five and your waist measuement seems to want to progress with your age. Can't get up in the winter? Take the $130 you were going to waste on an MP3 player and buy a SunRizr http://www.lighttherapyproducts.com/products_dawn
Do your homework. 9 times out of 10 the tests are going to look just like the homework. Do every problem. You're paying $100 every time you walk into a class, you may as well be prepared.
Work in the summer, not during the school year. Work you @ss off at two jobs if necessary, or do a co-op program (work/school alternately, usu as an intern-type job in your field). School schedules aren't always a good match for work schedules, no matter how flexible the employer is. Focus on the school work, play when you have "slow" times, make money when you don't have classes to worry about.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dilbert: What are you doing with my spreadsheet program?
Dogbert: I've decided to take over the world, but I can't decide whether to amass an army or found a religion. I'm calculating which would involve the least loss of life.
Dilbert: (looks at the monitor) Why are you counting law students as only three tenths of a person?
Dogbert: It doesn't drop to zero until they pass the bar.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Don't trust your roommate. My roommate stole my wallet, my computer AND my weed.
Whilst kensington locks are quite easy to bypass, they are an effective deterrent, although downright unneighbourly :) These can be modded with screamers if they are not removed correctly. But by and large they arent helpful and give the impression that you are an anti-social, anal retentive prick :)
:)
:) they are, after all, just gadgets and if they get nicked, you get the insurance upgrade without loss of significant data.
Perhaps a large, heavy piece of furniture with a robust lockable compartment; served me very well in my dorm days at uni (Swinburne UoT in Melbourne, Australia; go the Swine!!)
Furthermore, we mod. our laptops here at work to "phone home" whenever connected to the internet; this has allowed every stolen laptop to be recovered over the past 2 years. I wont go into details or our IT guys would kill me
Otherwise, backup important files and keep in a safe deposit box and insure the devices against theft
err!
jak
Like others have said, try and password protect as much as you can. I'd say password protect your BIOS and logon. And instead of letting a screensaver activate or having none at all, lock your computer and turn the screen off. Also, lock your door when you won't be around. But I don't have to worry about that because I commute to college :p
Can someone explain what the members of this set are and why?
{semi-expensive and certainly valuable (for a college student) stuff}
I'm trying to picture what in my dorm room would have been (b) certainly valuable, but only (a) semi-expensive? For instance, _my_ laptop was very expensive, but I'm pretty dubious about its value. And does stuff have different values for college students than for other people?
If the set had been {portable and resalable stuff}, I'd have understood.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
For all you college newbies, I put together a list of everything you'll need in your first days in the dorms...For some reason, 1 in every 3 dorms will contain the major these fine, high class items:
1. Lots and lots of christmas lighting (red or blue is always a nice touch, no 'icicle' crap).
2. Large annoying black light.
3. Overly large poster of either:
a. the guy from animal house
b. The matrix or some other sci fi movie
c. Some cool pattern that glows well with your overly large black light.
4. If your parents can afford it, an entertainment center that should, as a rule of thumb, take about 1/2 of your living space.
5. At least 2 huge full size computer towers that by no means will fit under your desk, 'forcing' you to put them in plain site thereby, letting everyone see your modded case and UV treated IDE cables (see 2).
6. A large collection of PS2's, Xboxes, and maybe some dreamcasts to fill up the entertainment center.
7. A TV whose size would normally be used for a room 5-10 times the size of your dorm room.
8. A sofa that you would either find at your grandma's house or at a 1970's garage sale.
9. A massive, stereo system with at least a 3L rating( to measure the 'Level' rating, turn your stereo to 25% power and see how many floors above and below you people can hear your stereo).
10. A couple bean bags to trip over when you come back from keggers.
11. Twenty photos of people from High School that no one knows or will care about in college.
12. The highest quality $99 futon your can find.
13. Some clothes or whatever and maybe books.
<...one final rule is that for every dollar you spend on clothes/furniture you probably want to spent about $1000 on electronic/computer equiptment. This rule can also be used when spending on your car stereo system vs car maintenance.
Have fun!
50 cal ammo cans can be bought from army surplus stores. They have a waterproof seal and clamp shut in a manner that can be locked. They are big enough for CD's and small electronics like PDA's, transformers, Laptop powersupplies. The cool thing is that the cans can be locked individually and if you line them up on a shelf, you can run some braided steel cable through the handles on the opposite ends from the locked openings and lock the whole bunch to a bed frame or some other large object. Roommate selection is best. Find someone that is not going to be a d*ck, and stick with 'em. Avoid having parties in your room, thus avoiding getting stuff accidently broken or taken "by mistake".
There has been several good posts regarding how to protect your stuff from being stolen and I sugest you take their advice.
But if, heaven forbid, your equipment gets stolen, minimize your loss by having always some form of off-site backup.
Store files in storage provided by your college, or buy one of those USB keyrings and make sure you copy your important data into it regularly. Or if you have a friend you trust enough, copy your files into his machine (and maybe he'll copy his into yours). Encription would be a good idea in this case. Now, if both machines get stolen the same day your are one unlucky SOB.
No sig
Locked doors are important, but unless your dorms use key-cards, master keys are probably in circulation. As a staff member, I had stuff stolen out of a locked desk drawer in a locked, private office in a restricted-access building. But that's no excuse to leave your door unlocked, just don't rely on this as your sole protection.
And now for my 8 simple steps to minimize loss:Most of the above apply equally well to other gadgets as well as notebooks.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
At some point, usually after 2-3+ years into the college, you realize that NOT ALL of the FREE BOOZE needs to be drunk.
When you understand this, you can actually graduate.
Sex. Women do all their freaky stuff in college
Obviously you've never met 30- and 40-somethings at Burning Man or similar...
Da Blog
Sell your laptop and live without it. The college has a computer lab. Use it.
Don't bring anything to a dorm that you can't afford to replace or can't live without, because your stuff WILL get trashed, or it WILL get stolen. That $3,500 Alienware laptop is going to disappear so fast you won't know what happened. That or it will be utterly destroyed by your roommate's partying, or idiotic mis-use.
And don't use your roomie's computer, because if you do, he can blame ANYTHING that goes wrong with it on you. Use the PCs in the lab. That's what they're there for.
If you insist on music in your room, go to Best Buy and get a small, cheap portable CD player and headphones. Maybe one that plays MP3 discs. NO iPODS! Too likely to get stolen.
Also remember that anything you carry into that room you're eventually going to have to carry out. So forget your huge home desktop, too.
And don't whine to me about "well what if I need to write my term paper and the lab's full?!" well then, stupid, maybe you should've spent less time partying and more time doing your schoolwork. Finish your work early so it isn't an issue.
The only students that actually NEED a computer full-time to do work are programming students, and they'll likely have Linux boxes with command-line interfaces that nobody else will be able to use anyway. In that case I suggest a small desktop with a locking front panel. The heavier the better (less likely someone else will want to walk off with it). Better if it's painted some garish color (so you can identify it if someone DOES walk off with it). Use a strong BIOS password at boot-up and at login. And for God's sake don't let anyone else use it, EVER!
If you can get an older laptop to do this to, you'll feel better about mucking it up.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Write your name on your CD's and DVD's. It will settle the dispute when you change roommates...
I think the whole concept of picking locks for security cables is ridiculous when you can easily cut the cable using any halfway decent wire cutters from home despot for $7. I worked at a school computer lab with thicker security cables than the Kensington crap and we had a number of cables locked using locks with lost keys. After all, why pick the lock when you can cut the wire in much less time? (granted, it's not the easiest thing to do, but for us rock climbers with good hand strength, it's pretty straightforward....it definitely helps to have sharp cutters!)
In the end, the best security for your stuff is to look into getting some variety of insurance for your stuff (if you feel adequately paranoid -- also, I'm not completely sure if homeowner's insurance will cover stuff at school, but I seem to recall hearing it does). However, the best security is common sense. Don't leave your dorm room unlocked and don't leave your laptop in the library when you get up to get a book.
This message was approved by me, a moderator point holder.
Another program like Ztrace is Absolute Laptop Retriever (the home-user version of their corporate Computrace program). Located in Canada: https://www.laptopretriever.com/ Direct from Toshiba (USA) $100 for 3 years: http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=2 75734&seg=HHO&rcid=-26364&ccid=1291043
I take 4 computers to school with me every year.
I have a HP laptop, athlon 2400+ desktop, a Samba server, and a junker that I play around on sometimes.
I leave all 4 in my room, with no problems. But then again, I have more of an on campus apartment. It has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room. its a pretty nice setup. I leave my stuff unlocked, and I've never been worried about it before. Just be on good terms with your roommates.
I did have a few crappy roommates early on. They claimed they had never went into my room, even though I came back on a sunday afternoon, and there were beer cups all over my room and the bed was messed up (yes, it had mystery stains too!).
Luckily, I expected something like that to happen sooner or later, and I had a webcam hooked up and hidden on a shelf, with motion detection software running. All it took was me emailing a picture of them in my room to one of them, with a nice little note attached saying I have more, and have them backed up at home so its no use destroying my computers, and if you do it again, I'm forwarding this to housing. They never did it again.
You've hit the nail on the head. Have stuff that nobody wants to steal, or at least, that looks like stuff that nobody wants to steal, but that does the job good enough for you. And make sure you can live without it.
I had a crappy bike in college, but it looked really flashy. I left it locked up, but with a crappy cable lock. It got stolen.
I had a great bike that I built myself from an aluminum frame with a bunch of great components. I painted it with a tooth brush, and the handle bar tape looked like it had been put on by a monkey on speed. Don't even get me started on how old the leather bindings on the rat traps were. It looked like crap. I left it all over, unlocked. The only time anyone touched it was when the campus cops picked it up because it wasn't locked.
Most thieves, especially on or near a college campus, are looking for the easy theft and the easy sale. The want to grab something, unload it, and buy their booze/pot/coke/etc. So, don't make your stuff easy to steal, and don't make it look like it's worth stealing.
On a similar topic, don't ever buy something that looks too good to be true, either. It was probably stolen from someone else. People that buy stolen stuff are what cause stuff to be stolen.
BTW, emacs is the ultimate note taking engine. Abbrev mode and outline minor mode make it simple to get down the things your prof is saying in the correct structure.
When I was moving out of the dorm my sophomore year, my brother was there helping. We left his Powerbook laptop in my unlocked dorm for not more than two minutes, and it was gone without a trace when we returned. This was on move-out day, when virtually nobody was in the building anyway. Obviously, one crook knew that and was taking advantage of it.
Like he said, NEVER leave your room open, no matter who you think is or isn't around.
1) Don't schedule 8:00 a.m. classes. Never. Not for any reason.
2) Go to class every session and sit in the second row. When you later have to argue/beg for a grade, it'll be much easier if the prof recognizes you. This will almost guarantee you a B.
3) Never fall into the trap of thinking that you don't need to know what one of your classes teaches. The only things I regret about my education are the things I didn't pay enough attention to, and now have to learn in a time when learning isn't my full-time occupation.
4) Buy a bottle on N-Acetyl-Cystine and take 2-4 before you go out drinking, especially on a school night. You will thank me.
5) Unless you're taking out loans to attend a private university, don't graduate too fast. You'll want to, by the end, but remember that the real world will always be there for you, whereas you'll spend the rest of your life remembering college fondly, even if you're happy with your family and career.
6) Try as many things as you can, it'll help you learn you who are.
7) Good luck.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
get a nice heavy fireproof box then chain it to your bed
(Scratches head)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
When I was living in the dorms if was always quite convienient to put a bike lock though my closet doors. I suppose it depends on how they are setup, but if you can, DO IT
I brought my XT when I went to college (early 90's.) It was still fine for playing the original few Wizardy and Bard's Tale. Who's going to steal a 10 year old computer? :)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I'll echo the previous posters, lock your room door even if you are only going to the next room and only for a moment.
If you are going to have a bike, don't use a cheap combination lock like your high school gym class. Thru-hardened locks are harder to cut (with bolt cutters) than case-hardened, but thru-hardened can be broken by freezing with freon then shattering with hammer blow(s). Personally, I suggest $60 or more for a motorcycle-quality lock as a good idea. A round key lock (like a cola vending machine) is said to be almost impossible to pick.
If you have a car, many radios can take a 4-digit security code. If stolen, the radio is useless. Use this feature. Make the thief input all 9999 codes to piss him off. Keep your tapes and CDs in your room when not in use, and make sure they are only *_copies_*.
As for the laptop, I can only suggest removable storage to protect your term papers, etc. One school I attended (Ohio State, 1984-1985 year) have me *_one_* lockable dresser drawer, put your backup media and CDs here. A side benefit is you can protect from untrustworthy roommates as well as outsiders.
Also, if you see someone prop open a door to your building, say, during homecoming weekend, wait until they walk away (or don't, if you're bold) and remove the prop.
Don't *ever* take your laptop into a common room. I took my PowerBook Ti in there to do calculus with friends, and a stupid water fight ended up sending a full bottle through the screen! AppleCare considers that my own stupidity, and $1500 later, I have a second screen :( In short, keep them in padded or better yet hardshell cases when not in use, and never use them in a place where people have even the slightest chance of getting rowdy. And in college, that's almost everywhere.
Get yourself some fine sandpaper and scuff up your laptop, iPod, PDA, cellphone, etc.
Spraypaint it "safety yellow" or other color of your choice.
It will still function, and even better, function under your control, because noone will steal that ugly stuff!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Gear -- Laptop security hardware
:)
Unless you bring your laptop to every class with you every day, or leave it in your car from time to time, your laptop will be out of your sight for several hours/day. As in, sitting on your desk where your roommate(s) and other dorm buddies might -- if they are the unseemly type -- consider stealing it and selling it while you're gone. In this case, no laptop security hardware will save you -- time is on their side, and your hardware, at best, is a lock strapped to a probably-wooden desk.
That said, a laptop lock is still better than nothing, and for that reason, is worth the investment.
Mostly though, I wouldn't worry *too* much about physical security unless your roommate is untrustworthy. Of course, you won't know that until you've lived with him/her for a few weeks, will you?
Now my other subject:
Sanity -- Self-discipline, time-management, and happiness
Here are my 3 main tips:
1) DO NOT SLACK OFF LIKE IT'S YOUR SENIOR YEAR IN HIGH SCHOOL, EVEN FRESHMAN YEAR. Your GPA is King if you want to go on to grad school, med school, law school, etc.. That said, you really only need a minimum of a 3.1-3.2 or so to get into grad school or law school. Med school is harder though.
2) DO NOT SPEND ALL YOUR FREE TIME LEARNING LINUX/*BSD IF YOU HAVE NEVER HAD EXPERIENCE WITH THESE OS'S. They will eat up all your free time (compiling god knows how many libraries you also have to download first, manhandling config files, reading poorly-written documentation, etc.). Learn them over time, but do not live them as I did. OSS is a very small subset of life.
3) DO NOT GET (too) BIG INTO THE CAMPUS LAN-GAMING AND WAREZ SCENES. Warez is too legally-risky these days, and besides, it requires lots and lots of manual searching; Google doesn't cut it here, and thus it takes lots of time to get the philez you want. It usually isn't worth it.
Welcome to the reasons I voluntarily dropped out of a major, well-funded, well-respected 2nd-tier science/engineering university, and will now be finishing up my degree at a shitty, underfunded 4th-tier liberal-arts state school.
Oh, and one more:
4) Don't fall into the "I wanna be a God admin/coder" trap and ignore women (or men, if you prefer) and dating for your 4 years of college. This has been the biggest reason I am a bitter, unhappy man in my early-mid 20s. I am only just now learning how to date women, and am still a virgin. [1] Most guys (about 73%) get laid by the time they're 18. Me? I might as well be a hardcore loony-bin Christian straight-edger waiting until marriage for sex, so far as I count, statistically.
I have a monetarily-successful life (almost certainly) coming to me in spite of all of the above, because I have managed to determine and pull myself up from my failings, but in doing so, like I said, I'm as bitter and unhappy a man as anybody I know.
I have discovered after years of soul-searching that money isn't everything (and if you read my previous posts, you will find that I am a diehard believer in the free-market, and resultingly, money transactions). Friends, love, laughter, and the free time and freedom to choose your own path in life are. Of those, my life is sorely lacking the first 3 (of any quality, at least). Money makes all of those things easier to obtain, and it makes those things go more-smoothly and easily. But money is the means, *not* the end...
Don't waste the most-vital years of your life geeking-out like I did. Go out, party, get drunk, get laid every weekend. Do your homework too, and if you're in CS or Engineering, you may well have to sacrifice a party or two to do the assignments, but what I have just described is a far-better balance than I have achieved the last 4 years in school.
Work hard during the week, and party hard on the weekends. That is how co
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
If you are extremely paranoid go buy a 386 laptop and use dos4.
Glue his room key to his hand so he never forgets to lock it.
This is solid advice all the way around.
I'm 45 years old, and its nice to know that things have not changed in 25 years. God, America is a great country.
Try to apply this to more than sex. If you're going to a good school, people are doing a lot of freaky cool stuff. Get involved, and keep an open mind. Don't give into conformity when it comes to any group, jock or geek- try a lot of things out, figure out what you like, and persue it.
If your college doesn't have lots of crazy/cool/fun stuff going on, and you aren't finding anything you really enjoy, transfer, take a year off, or at least find some new friends. It's a big world and there are lots of options, so don't squander your time doing the same old BS. Find a way to grow, learn, find talents you didn't know you had, whatever.
2. Class. A good education is important, but don't let it interfere with #1.
Actually, yes- class is very important, but never let your schooling get in the way of your education. Focusing too much on grades and toeing the line can make you miss out on truly educational experiences. Learn everything you can from wherever you can. Work hard on your classwork, work hard on your social life, work hard on your soul. And remember: Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
3. Network. Not TCP/IP, but people. Every job you get in the future is going to be because of who you know, so get to know a LOT of people. Get to know them well so they don't forget you.
True. Knowing people can be a great resource. Also, learning how to deal with people can be a great resource, and college is a good time to practice on a wide variety of people. Ignoring all that, knowing lots of people and staying pretty much on people's good side will make college a lot more fun, whether it's useful or not.
4. The Law. Graduating from college doesn't erase your law record, so don't get arrested.
In other words, a little mischeif makes for good memories, but keep it light and harmless. One really bad mistake can screw your life up for several years, so just try not to get into too much trouble.
5. The Dollar. You are going to get a lot of offers for credit cards. Credit cards are not 'free money'. If you can't pay cash for it, and if you haven't managed to save enough money to buy it in the last 6 months, what makes you think you are going to earn enough money in the next 6 months to pay for whatever you are considering putting on plastic? Graduating from college doesn't erase your credit history either, so don't screw it up.
Not really going to add anything here. I just quoted it for repitition. This is one you can't hear enough.
7. Take a few classes for personal enrichment.
I have to shout this, being slashdot and all: DON'T JUST TAKE COMPUTER/ENGINEERING COURSES! Take some philosophy, psychology, literature, etc. You know, useless stuff. Read some Plato. If you don't like it, find me in the forums, I'll talk to you about it.
This hooks in nicely with my adaptations of #1, #2, and #3. College should be opening you up to new things. Try things you don't know about. Make friends with good people you don't understand. Take classes about interesting topics that are over your head. Learn a musical instrument. You'll be glad you did.
Most of all, have fun. If you don't like what you're studying, then what you're studying is preparing you for a career that you won't like. Find something you love, and study that, and you'll figure the rest out later.
What else... what else...? Ok, I can only think of one more thing. Don't believe everything "smart people" tell you. Smart people can be wrong too, professor or not. Stupid people can be right. Like I said before, keep an open mind and learn whatever you can where you can. If someone says something you don't understand, don't just assume he's right and you don't understand, and don't just assume he's wrong, and therefore not worth paying attenti
Common sense
-Out of sight is out of mind. If you are not using your laptop keep it hidden. If someone breaks into your room (you really think they change the locks on your door every time a roomate leaves?
-Keep a copy of classwork on university servers/accounts. That way if your laptop gets stolen you still have your data. Tar/gzip/ftp works nicely here. Not your porn/mp3 collection, but essays/papers/assignements. Servers are in 'server rooms' in locked buildings and are backed up. Your PC probably isn't.
-Get rid of your laptop bag. Get a backpack that is padded for a laptop. You don't want to advertise that you have one.
-Be careful of roommates/suitemates. Unless you know your roommate(s) or suitemates from highschool. Also, you never know who *their* friends are.
-It only takes "a second" to take something. Just like people who leave kids/pets in sweltering cars. ("I was only going into the store for a second..") so might your laptop.
Remember, at the end of the day. Its all common sense, and what would the cost be to replace this stuff.
Other than that... have fun. Its college for crying out loud.. lock/hide the laptop.. find a chick and a kegparty and have fun.
-HockeyPuck
I used an iBook during my Master's degree for writing my thesis. My office-mate happened to be the shared printer for the entire 3rd floor of my building and practically everyone in the building had a key to my "office". I used a laptop lock to anchor it to a wall mount at all times, and when I was not in the office I placed a book and sweater or jacket over the laptop and set my lunch in front and it was almost impossible to tell there was a computer under there. I never had a problem despite hearing abouth 5 thefts of laptops in my building during that 2 years!
Lock it up, but also disguise it so it isn't in plain sight.
Check out episode 3 of TheBroken.org.
What could possibly go wrong?
"I'm shipping off to college for the first time in a few days."
You know, since you were just there a few days ago, I'd think you'd know what to expect by now.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
i recently moved into college, a long with all of my electronic goodies...pretty much the only valuables i own. for "security" i have used my webcam along with motion ..http://motion.sourceforge.net/. it works great. starts taking a bunch of images when it detects motion, and along with convert you can make a nice mpg of what happened while you were away... only problem is if my computer is stolen, i can't really see who stole it!
State Farm offers a PAP(Personal Articles Policy) that will cover your laptop computer against theft, accidents, fire, etc. I have a policy on my 12" Powerbook and it costs me $30 a year. The same policy also covers my mobile phone.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
0. DON'T BRING THE FUCKING COMPUTER - Get out of the dorm room where you and your nerd friends are playing UT 24x7 and MEET some PEOPLE. A good excuse to meet guys/girls is to ask them if you can borrow their computer to 'type your paper' (wink, wink, knudge, knudge, say no more). You will be more than happy to help them with their Intro to CS class in exchange...
If you do insist on carrying that boat anchor to school with you, then:
1. Get a _good_ laptop backpack - if you are lugging a laptop around, you'll want a backpack that can stand up to some abuse and be big enough to carry your books, snacks, H20 bottles, underwear, condoms and some change...
2.a. Have a discussion with your roomie - make sure he/she understands that you value your things and are a willing participant in helping them protect theirs.
2.b. Bring an old tube sock and one BIG bar of Ivory soap - This is for when your roomie doesn't seem to grasp what 'lock the door, you fucking idiot' means...
3. Get some insurance for your stuff. If you are under 18, you may need to get a parent or guardian to help you with this. Yes, it may be a little expensive, so...
4. Get a part-time job. 5 hours a week racking books in the library, or delivering pizzas can really help you pay for insurance or those lifelong disabling habits your parents really don't want to finance (namely, cheap beer and cigs)
This space for rent
Document everything you own and KEEP THE RECEIPTS! Document the expensive contents of your dorm room. Note serial numbers of everything. If something does get stolen the cops will need the serial numbers. That is they will need it if you ever hope to get it back, ever. Most of the more reputible pawn shops will call the local PD to see if an expensive item that's been brough to them to pawn is on the cops' hot sheet. Without your S/Ns and descriptions the only way you'll ever get your items back is dumb luck, pure and simple. Have a copy added to your dorm's Housing and Dining file (with the contract and whatnot). Photos might be useful too.
Keep your doors locked. I know it sounds silly but keep them locked. Even if you're just running down to the crapper for 5^h10^H^H15 minutes. Make sure your roommate understands your concerns and locks the doors when he leaves too.
Make friends. Make friends with the folks on your dorm floor. This will be your best defense against theft in your dorm room (except for the 20,000-volt electric fence around your desk). You might not be the type to make friends easily but try. Your friends will keep an eye out for each other. Way back when I was in the dorm my friends looked out for my stuff like I did for their's. We always took note of new people walking down the hall (especially if they were hot chicks... :-) ). Friends are your best defense against theft.
Don't take an expensive computer to the dorms unless you have a room to yourself. Keep it simple. Wait until you move off campus to build a billy-badass computer. You could also put your kick ass computer in a piece of shit looking case. Use duct tape and primer on it. Make it look like a complete piece of shit. The goal is to make people think it's not worth stealing and pawning. Hell get yourself and old circa-mid-80s IBM case and retrofit it to hold your new dual Xeon mobo. Call it physical security through obscrutiny. It might work. *might*
You might not be able to keep someone from stealing your computer but you can always catch them in the act. Get yourself an ultra-slim and silent computer anda digital camera. Hide both units and aim the camera(s) at the door and computer. You just might catch a face. It's always possible.
First, about security...I have had pretty bad luck as a victim of crime in the last twenty years or so: a stereo, several car stereos, a car, bikes, and more stuff than I can remember. Both my wife and my ex-wife had credit cards stolen. It's true that locking your door/car, keeping stuff out of sight, and not leaving stuff lying around in public places helps a lot, but it's important to remember that shit happens, even if you're careful. Don't take stuff to college that you can't afford to lose, make sure that your insurance covers your situation, and don't be afraid to call your folks (or whoever) when you need help.
Now, if I may, a little academic advice: comp sci and math classes are important, and will definitely make you a better programmer. However, I think it's important to spend as much time as you can in humanities classes. There are six billion other people in the world, some of whom you will need to deal with personally, and it helps to know a little more about where they're coming from. Anything from History to English will teach you that. Also, the humanities classes are where the hotties are. Look 'em in the eye and actually listen when you talk to them, and you will get all the trim you want. Just ask nicely.
Finally, if you can, study in another country for a year. I have never, ever met anyone who studied abroad who regretted it.
I'm going into second year in a couple weeks. My first year was great, definitely more fun then high school, the people are smarter and more interesting. I only locked my door when I went home for a weekend and I never had anything stolen. Never underestimate the ability of a final exam to rape you. But also never underestimate mark shifting either.
I'm moving back onto campus this weekend (junior year). Keeping your door locked is the best way to prevent theft. Make sure your roommate knows that he should lock the door also. Also have your roommates cell phone number, in case of situations you forget your keys (if applicable) Always carry your keys around. Don't be too paranoid over security, but just make sure you keep your eyes on your stuff, like never leave your notebook in the student center or library unattended. As others have said, you don't need a laptop for notetaking. Often it proves a distraction if you're school has wireless Internet enabled. It also isn't a time saver if your professor starts drawing diagrams. Better use pen and paper. Although, I'm learning it now, it's best to socialize. College isn't like HS, there's all kinds of people out there and many may have the same interests as you. Make the best of your time for the 4 years or more you stay there, trust me time flies when you're in college.
I'm dead serious. Keep them in a safe place. I used to work academic tech support, and we got a call from a guy who'd been getting abuse emails, even though his computer had been stolen a week prior. It's a good thing whoever stole it set it up as a warez server on our network, or he would never have gotten it back. We had implemented campus-wide MAC address registration that fall, so we were able to match it up. Of course, he never would have known to ask, but you, good slashdotter, do know to ask your campus IT if your ethernet card has hit their DHCP server anywhere, or if your wireless card has hit any of their APs. On a heavily urban campus, this is somewhat less useful, but if you're in a college town, there's a decent chance that your stolen gear will get used on campus.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
(Bluto Blutarski)
Note: If you don't get the above reference, RENT ANIMAL HOUSE NOW!!!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Locking the door is the only way to go. Even when you are in the room.
:) Goddamn football players... granted, he was a really nice guy, and it was all in good fun, but they scared the shit out of me.
:)
When Halloween comes around, and the "cool guys" on your floor are looking for someone to play a prank on at 2 AM, your unlocked door is an obvious target.
Don't be a mark - lock your door ALL THE TIME.
Yes, it happened to me.
By the way, if you fancy yourself a "cool guy", get yourself a scary mask, sneak into an unlocked room, put your face inches from the sleeping freshman, and wait. It won't take long...
Stop being a slave to consumer culture. Be happy with what is sufficient. Get a nice, big, beige tower case, put a Pentium 133 in there. Get a nice 14" high-radiation monitor. Hello World will compile on there just fine, use school iron to run projects that need the horsepower. You don't need a printer or a scanner or any digital gadgets. Video games?! This is university! You should be working on either sex or school.
Date hippies, get a summer job in the trades, and graduate without debt.
You can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor.
Unfortunately, my whole world came unraveled when I began to suffer from a mental illness called schizoaffective disorder.
It turned out to be a lot worse than it had to be because I would not seek treatment. I thought shrinks were for crazy people, and I didn't think I was crazy. Well, it turned out that by the time I got to see a shrink, I was crazy.
If you think you're mentally ill, get help from a mental health professional. Most colleges have some kind of counseling center, and often have staff psychiatrists and psychologists.
Life was pretty damn grim for a long time, but it got better because I finally got help.
I finally got my degree in physics, in 1993, after transferring to UC Santa Cruz.
This advice is particularly pertinent to college students because schizophrenia, manic depression, and schizoaffective disorder almost always strike a victim when they are a young adult. I knew a number of other people, both at Caltech and UCSC, who became quite crazy when they were students.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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I got through college without a TV, Stereo, iPod, Computer, DVD collection, etc. (granted this was 25 years ago!) and did just fine.
Best Buy can have you arrested
As for your sanity, here are some rules for life in college : 1. Sex. Women do all their freaky stuff in college, so have an open mind and hit as much of it as you possibly can. Buy a big box of condoms and some good lube (google for 'millenium id'). 2. Class. A good education is important, but don't let it interfere with #1. Do you understand what you are saying? You should've mentioned not approaching #1 until you take a dermatology class to identify "bad goods" on the girls' Poopdecks and Tuna-buckets. #1 needs to be re-enumerated to 1-B and #1 aka 1-A needs to be read as "Dermatology class" in order for your list to have purpose. And I didn't go to college! This shows that people who go to college are the rejects of society that need more "investment" to prove their worth at "sea."
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
No matter what, Even if its off campus at a seminary, even if they charge more for it, GET A SINGLE! It'll save you a lot of headaches later on. As for laptops, for me, I've had no problems with it except for a few accidental drops from the desk to the floor, and trust me IBM Thinkpads are built like tanks. I've got an old A31, and while I did loose a USB port on it somehow, it still works, and I've chipped this thing more times than I can count. As for security, I've got just the solution for you. There's actually a company called Computrace (http://www.computrace.com/) It will help you track down a stolen laptop. The way it works is it installs itself in a way so that not even an Fdisk can get rid of it. What happens is when a laptop is reported stolen, a flag is placed in the datacenter. When the laptop is connected to the internet, it silently reports back home, and gives information that allows the theif to be caught. While I can't say that i've had my laptop stolen, I'm glad to know that if it is ever stolen, I just put in a call and they go to work on recovering it.
You will get distracted and sucked in by people going to parties inviting you along, people ordering pizza, people watching a reality show, people playing multiplayer games, women you want to flirt with walking by, people shooting water balloons between dorms with a big rubber slingshot, people doing all sorts of stuff but actual schoolwork.
...Find a library.
Take it from me (I did really poorly freshman year and had to take some time off from Cornell). Bring your work to a LIBRARY on campus, find a quiet corner, and plunge right into the work. Take a short break every hour. Get done and go home feeling a LOT better about goofing off. (Note: Do NOT do your work in the computer room of the library. Too easy to websurf.)
Just do NOT try to do work in the dorm. Even if you see people working... they are not you. You are distracted by shiny things, and rightfully so. Working is less shiny, yet enables you to continue to stay at school and enjoy ogling all those fine women and use that insanely-fast internet connection for who-knows-what.
Oh, and if you have an empty period in between classes, don't goof it off. Do some classroom reading under a tree somewhere. You will enjoy your extra free time.
1. Share a rather large porno collection on the campus network and then stay up to the early morning (which I'm sure most slashdotters did in their days in college) and check who connects to your computer for some late night masterbation. A lot of idiots name their computers after themselves. Then all you have to do is look their name up in the directory and scare the living piss out of them when you call them up and ask them if they are enjoying your wonderful bukkake clips.
2. Spring semester is the best. If you have freely available condoms, usually from the RA, they make great waterballons. (Make sure to save a few for the weekends!) Living on the top floor is the best, especially when girls are sunbathing in the quad. They're easy targets.
3. There are usually a lot of parties the first couple of days of the semester. Go to them. You will meet people there that you will be friends with for at least the rest of your college years. You will also meet a lot of hot drunk freshmen girls who will do anything now that their fathers aren't looking over them.
4. Go to class. I find that even idiots that attend class end up passing in the end. Talk to your teachers, make sure they know who you are. This will give you leeway in the future if you need it. Most profs don't give a shit about you if they never saw you in class.
5. Don't get serious with any girls until at least your junior year. You'll never have an opportunity to have so much sex with so many different girls ever again.
Time makes more converts than reason
This is on the money issue. Read any book you can by this guy (Robert Kiyosaki). they are invaluble.
RArr!
Get a big tower case and a 21" CRT. Stencil your name in huge letters on everything. Back up offsite to a vaulting system far, far away. Then don't worry about it too much.
Aye, spent too long mucking out the bilges, did ye?
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Technically it was ok at my university. At least, it was part of the university policy which hadn't been updated for about 50 years. Let me see...page 47.
"All rifles and other firearms must be on register with campus security."
That's it. I know some of the ROTC guys kept firearms, but that's about it AFAIK. I had a Gurkha hanging on the wall for decoration...or defense.
do you work in the library, finish it and then do whatever you want...mixing play and work didn't work for me, it just made play less playful. finish your shit first, then go play. if your study area, library, wherever, if you keep going to this place at least an hour a day, you will have a pleasant and successful college life. and remember, ultimately, it is - the relationships that you build - what damange you don't do to yourself in college - getting "it" out of your system is what will matter in the end. and it will be over very quickly. good luck. it's a great ride.
Go to a christian school.
You're going there to learn, meet people, grow up, and have fun. None of this requires laptops and computer equipment. A computer is needed for writing papers and accessing online resources. Other than that, it's likely to get you in trouble.
I'd bring a decent stereo and an ordinary, used laptop - no other electronics. Spend your free time hanging out with new friends that you make, exploring the college town, and doing the sort of things that you don't already do.
Or have we collectively forgotten how to handwrite?
I have one very important suggestion for you. It's not so much about what you do in college as it is about what you do afterwards. But you can get started now, even before your first week at school. Here is my suggestion:
Don't graduate.
Don't start a career.
Don't get married.
Don't have kids.
Don't get old. Stay a teenager.
That way, you will always be able to do those things *later*, but you will never regret the things you didn't do. Or can no longer do.
Trust me.
Even worse: Three nights ago, my buddy next door and his roommate had a very stragnge thing happen. At around 2 or 3 am, Drunk College Student walks into their room without waking either of them up, and proceeds to lay down in bed. Only the bed contained my buddy's roommate. I'm not sure why, but he didn't force the guy to leave right off, instead he tried to sleep and ignore Drunk College Student, and after 2 hours of failure, he attempted to remove the intruder. They ended up having to go get the RA to get the guy out of their room.
So remember, its very good habit to lock your doors at night.
My advice is this: Before you even THINK about hooking your computer into the network, make damned sure you have a firewall in place and your anti-viral software is up to date. Depending on the size of the school you'll have anywhere from 2,000 to 20,000 computers on the network, and the odds are better than average that they will have virii on them.
If it's a long way away... bring your computer. One computer. You don't need two. Really. They're a pain in the ass to haul, etc., and you'll really only use one most of the time.
:)
:) Lessons from HARD-EARNED experience.
If you're a Comp. Sci/Comp Eng. major, perhaps you'll need more - in your junior year.
Freshman/Sophomore years you'll do mostly general studies. If you need different OS's - VMWare.
DON'T bring your big-ass home stereo, your big TV, your 1,000+ title DVD collection, your XBox, all that shit. Yet. Stay outside, don't be a hermit.
Get acclimated to the school, and your roommate first. Use the PC for email & turning your handwritten notes into {database/spreadsheet/long fucking word doc/whatever} your desired format.
After you're comfortable with your roommate - 'cuz if you hate him/her, you'll have to move all your stuff - again! - then ask Mom/Dad/whoever to ship your MP3 player. Talk to your roommate about gear - you won't want a big-ass 6-speaker surround sound system in your room. It ain't big enough, and you can't play it real loud unless you're looking to earn the deserved hatred of everyone on your floor.
If he's got a DVD player, you bring the speaks, etc. Or get a feel for something. Hell, just punch the video output of your video card to the TV/AV receiver, and you may not need a player at all. Plus, the Geiss visualizations will get questions asked (wish I'd had it back then!).
DO bring good clothing, your hygiene stuff, etc. Get out, meet people, get to know the people you're interested in. Go out. Learn the city you're now living in. Learn the campus. Do bring an open mind. Do bring a bit of cynicism and self-reliance - you're on your own now, for the most part. You'll feel better having to rely on yourself instead of others. Yeah, Mom and Dad may have to help you from time to time, but this is a transition period.
DON'T bring a U-Haul full of shit. Honest. You're likely to move a lot the next 4-5 years, and you have to track and move all this crap. Worry less about the material trappings of your experience, and do the social and education thing.
Well, having survived my first year (I'm in Boston, MA, so that's no joke), here are a few suggestions...
/lock up the front wheel with a cable of U-lock all the time/ (locking up the bike goes without saying). I got my front wheel jacked last week because I didn't lock it up.
1) Get a Kensington lock for your laptop. It's a cable that'll plug into the lock part of your laptop. Nobody wants to go through the trouble of lifting a laptop under that kind of security.
2) Keep your dorm room locked and windows closed. It seems kind of obvious, but it's less obvious to take the suggestions seriously.
3) Some people I know have safes which work pretty well. These are kind of bulky and a pain, but it's a thought.
4) If you get a bike,
A friend of mine with a mechanical bent had a very sinister idea. He put a 6 inch sharpened steel spike underneath the bike seat, inside the shaft the seat is secured to. A small steel bolt & pin horizontally through the shaft kept the seat from dropping onto the tip of the spike (a couple of inches.) He removed the pin at night when he locked his bike up.
No one ever touched his bike - thankfully. Setting traps like that can get you in a hell of a lot of trouble, despite whatever cruel gratification you'd get from causing your would-be thief immense pain. He was a crazy enough SOB to ride the damn thing with a spike under him, IMHO.
1) Don't get drunk. I'm not saying don't drink, but don't get drunk. I believe the statistic goes that 1 in 5 girls are raped in college, and that alcohol is involved in most of the cases. Besides, don't you want to remember your fun and sexual experiences? I'm glad I remember mine.
2) Don't accept drinks from others or leave your drinks behind and pick them up later. I don't care if s/he's your best friend, turn it down and get your own drink. Doesn't matter what time of day it is. Be careful. If this doesn't make sense to you, reread #1.
3) Read "The Debt-Free Graduate", "You Are Smarter Than You Think!", all college advice books, and anything by Patrick Combs. Good advice there. Check them out at your college library or at the college bookstore. I ran into these my fifth year of college, and I wish I had read them sooner.
4) Major in your passion, not what your parents or teachers suggested you major in. I majored in Computer Science and I don't regret it. Unfortunately, I majored in it too late in my college career, and it didn't work out, so...
5) Always have a backup plan when things don't work out. If you end up not majoring in your passion for some reason, at least come out with a degree, even if it's a Bachelor in General Studies.
1 - Don't schedule any classes before noon, especially your first term. You are going to want to sleep in, now that you don't have to be at school every morning.
2 - Don't miss any classes. Just showing up will guarantee at least a C.
3 - Don't miss any assignments. Just handing in your assignments, no matter how bad they are, will guarantee a passing grade.
4 - Don't join any clubs, groups, frats, teams, etc. Seriously. The only reason people join that shit in high school is because it helps you get into college. Now that you are there, who needs it?
5 - Don't eat acid, mushrooms, ectasy, sniff k or smoke dust, on a school night. When you do, don't let it become a habit.
6 - Go ahead - smoke all the weed you want, as long as you don't screw up rule 2 and 3. PS - You can't drink all you want - that will fuck you up.
7 - Bring at least two weeks worth of weed with you. That way you can meet and greet all the hottie stoner chicks, and have enough to go around.
8 - Remember, you are there for two reasons: to get extremely freaky, and to get a degree. If you slashdot, you have to be smart (I think the lowest IQ here is about 120), so goddamit, get at least a 3.5.
9 - Don't bring ANY DVD's or CD's or VHS tapes with you. Put all your music and movies on your PC or CD-R's - everything that can get stolen, will get stolen.
10 - For your literature courses, take British lit - because every single solitary work you read is in the public domain, and can be downloaded from gutenberg - and if not, available at B&N on the cheap.
11 - Look online for all your texts - older revisions are usually OK - except if you are taking CCNA classes
12 - Take CCNA classes! AND TAKE THE GODDAMN CERT TEST! Its the most valuable thing you can do before getting your BS and can lead to meaningful and well paid summer work.
13 - Don't miss any naked parties.
14 - Remember - get a 3.5 or better! You are too smart to be stupid.
15 - Don't forget - DON'T JOIN ANY FRATS! As a member of Tau Kappa Episilon, I can tell you that it was a grand waste of time, and totally screwed up my life. Fraternities are completely useless, and despite all the lies to the contrary, they are nothing more than drinking clubs.
I don't know but I've been told:
The eskimo pussy is mighty cold!
Sound off!
Lose weight!
Cut your hair!
Dermatology class is good for you!
http://www.pac-safe.com/ A small one chained to your desk could work. Probably a little extreme for what you need. I use it to lock down belongings in hostels/trains when I don't need to access to my stuff.
In the final days of the semester while everyone is running in and out of there rooms preparing for final inspection, wait for that asshole next door (the one that lets his / her alarm clock beep for 6 hours straight) to walk to the dumpster with an armful of garbage. Run in and grab all the thickest hardcover textbooks you can find. Sell them. Repeat several times. Order newer, better electronics with your ill-gotten booty.
Other classic dorm stunts include:
In all honesty I don't advocate any of these things, but you should know that these are the kind of goings-on that occur in a dorm. Hopefully this will help you understand what you ought to be prepared for :)
Take common expectations and generalities (such as this) with a grain of salt. There are millions of young adults entering college this year and the common threads of experience of which we speak contain all the acuity of sitcom stereotypes. Decide what you want out of college and then strive to live your life accordingly. There's no right way to do it, and success and failure remain yours to define.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. -Bernard Berenson
Claymore mines....
Make good friends, real friends. That's the best thing to get from college. As for locking up all your stuff. Ditch the stuff, you'll have books to read and papers to write. There will be plenty of other distractions to fill your time. Get involved in clubs or the local community. Get physical, outdoors. Hikes or bikes or jogging, swimming, etc. Keep your mind clear, strive for a perfect GPA, push yourself to the limit. See what you can achieve at those limits. A college education is no guarantee of anything. College is a big business, you have to make something of the experience.
Some other poster suggested having sex often and in quantity....
Forget about having sex as often as possible, that's lame and you're sure to pick up something that will stay with you forever. It's not worth it, don't go there. Too many partners will only bring misery and woe.
Good luck and smile often.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
1. Bring one computer, one small stereo, and no other gadgets.
2. The sex is overrated. Drunk, drugged, and nervously clueless college girls are as passionate as boiled eggs.
3. Figure out if you want to be a good student and, if not, what's the minimum you need to do.
4. Socialize.
5. Have a goal, even if a work in progress. "I want to do something like" is better than "I dunno, i'll figure it out when I run out of pot."
6. No ideas are taboo. Not even National Socialism or the Unabomber Fan Club. No matter what they tell you.
You do realize you've just depressed the hell out of all the geeks out there who will never have sex in college...much less in life.
There's a silent majority of people for which sex doesn't play a major part in their life. For one reason or another, mostly looks and the inability to socialize, there are some who will go their whole life without the sex you describe as "freaky". I've longed for "freaky" sex with a hot college chick all my life, thing is, now I'm old enough to be their dad. If I were you, I'd simply shut the hell up about how great sex is in college, because it pisses the hell out of us who don't get it to no end. Keep your sexual acts to yourselves. It just isn't good for a person to know about the enjoyment other people are having.
So piss off!
LAND MINES, im sure there on Ebay!
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
High school kind of sucked for me too. But sticking with a small group of friends is going to come back to haunt you later in life. Even if you're the smartest guy since the guy who invented sliced bread, it's networking, networking, and networking that opens doors. And no, I don't mean the kind of networking with packets and frames.
So most people around you are stupid. So what? I did my undergraduate degree at a school where many of my classmates and friends were people who got into MIT but couldn't afford it. You know who I wished I could have met? A good plumber, and a good electrician. Lucky for me, my family is already good friends with an auto mechanic, or I'd want to meet a few of those too. These people may not be brilliant, but like most other professions, they are good people and bad people in the field. Find the good people, and help them out when they need it, and they'll return the favour.
It's not hard to network. You like computers. Is that all you like? What about (for example) gourmet food? Why not join a dining club? Sure, the members might not be the brightest of people when it comes to computers(or even other subjects), but some of them might surprise you with the breadth of knowledge they have on their favorite dishes. Or perhaps its old movies you like. Then find a film club and share your interest with others. You don't have to be the best of friends with these people, but if they can at least like and respect you, and you maintain contact with them, they'll bring opportunities to your doorstep, as you will with them.
Hey, I admit it. I learned a heck of alot about computing at my university's ACM Chapter, and as a Computer Scientist, I found that valuable. I also learned about debate and dispute mediation by competing in the Model UN, and about how fiscal decisions were being made by attending Student Government Finance Committee meetings (which were open to the public, and which helped me figure out how to get more money for the clubs I liked). The lessons I learned, and the people I met in each are valuable in different ways.
I must concur with your last point, though. CompSci majors are really cool people.
Keep your bike indoors. I got mine stolen quite easily, despite it being locked up with a solid kryptonite lock and wire. It doesn't take much to take a bolt cutter and snag a 350$ bike. Also, make it known you are a volatile and dengerous person. =)
I've been going to the University at Buffalo for the past week and have already started my classes. What I've found is that being prepared with your valuables such as your computer and other devices of entertainment is the least of your worries.
You should be concerned the most with your roommate or hallmates. These are going to be the people that are there for you and let you down. Your laptop stolen because your mate left he door open when they went to the bathroom? One of their friends comes over and messes up the entire room because they were wasted?
I don't believe that valuables are stolen by strangers who lurk on opportunity, but rather people that've met you and know. Trust me, you'll get to know a ton of people if you live at a big school. You really need to get serious with your mate and set the ground rules hard with them so this shit doesn't happen.
Keeping your sanity is a completely different topic, seeing as the constant bombardment of parties, beer, girls in a strange and new environment is enough to throw anyone off track. Just try to stay out of trouble and survive in your classes, because that's what is really important and why you are in college to begin with.
Buy a cheap old powerbook. I own a Powerbook 540c that I use for school. It has onboard ethernet, a color screen, and can read dos floppies. It cost me about 40USD a few years ago. A cheap yet quality old computer like this will let you do your work and not be tempted to play the newest games(maybe some bolo or Maelstrom!) when you should study. You also will not break the bank if its stolden. I keep a server at my parents house and ssh or sftp into it for backups. MacX also alows me to play some x based games when Im in the mood.Its also Vintage cool!
Try to aviod clutter and gadgets if you can. They will not help you and you will not have room for them anyways.
As far as protecting the junk you have, join the NRA. Really. At least put an NRA sticker on you car or maybe hang some targets on your walls. There is nothing scarier than a gun toating, Macintosh using, Science/Eng/computerscience/informationsystems nerd all hopped up on caffine and looking for his laptop!
Have fun too.
as a freshmen who just moved into college I can say the NUMBER ONE THING is keeping your door locked. I have my laptop and my desktop with me. My roomate has a laptop. We also have a TV, stereo, cell phones, etc. I'm not worried about the stuff getting stolen (in my dorm room at least) 'cause we keep the bloody door locked.
the other thing I would say: don be an idiot and use common sense. i.e. if you're walking around at night by yourself dont pull out your ipod to change a song.
--Aaron
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
ps-be wary of the combination of credit cards, alcohol and women ; )
harmonious design
Keep your important papers on a couple of floppy disks that you keep in your bag at all times.
It helps if there is a clean separation between work space and play space, and your laptop will quickly become your play space. Use your floppies to work at labs, where you can print things out or fall asleep without worrying about someone stealing your gear. Or you can type up your papers on the campus lawn on your laptop, but working with floppies gives you the freedom of choice.
As for protecting expensive gear... good luck. The only thing truly sacred in a college environment is your backpack. Keep your laptop in this at all times. If you are going to sleep in a lab or at the library, use the bag as a pillow so nobody can steal it. If your dorm is at all worth living in, your door will be open at essentially all times. And even when it's not, it takes approximately 15 minutes to figure out how to pick most college dorm locks using coathangers and string (hint: those easy-to-use disabled latches pull downward!), or a bit longer to learn to pick locks the traditional way. But if it's with you, it's basically safe.
The ______ Agenda
most excellent advice, however I would like to expand a tiny bit further with the researching of professors. I found that the rate my professor is most excellent and has had every teacher but 1 of the ones I looked up for this semister (freshman in year, but sophmore in hours/credits).
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I was gonna say, you're a Slashdot reader, I don't think that's gonna be a problem.
I'd advise against always locking your door, if you are in it or not. Even if you are going to the bathroom, just close your door. We had a kid on our floor who lived at the very end of the hall, whenever he would go or do anything he would always lock his door. You want to know what we called him? ANTI-SOCIAL. But the guy was also a nut case...anyways, in the very beginning of school, don't even offer to help people with their computers unless they specifically ask you. In high school I worked in our computer labs for several years, but when it hit freshman year, I pretended to just know the basics, it was a long time before I would let on that I knew more. Because as soon as people figure out you actually know more, people will try to take advantage of you. Also whenever people know your into computers, they automatically have this preconcieved notion that you are just a nerd. I started going to the length of just telling people I was undeclared. I think theres nothing worse than be pre-labeled and not given a chance.
About alcohol, try not to go too crazy. I had friends who would get so shitfaced they would have blackouts and not remember anything. Once such night the three of us got jumped - I was pretty well looped but still remembered what happened, which was enough to give police the information they needed. If it was up to the other two, they would have no idea. Also, just as a nice thing to do, look out for your other female dorm mates on your hall/floor. Unless you really have some sexual chemistry between you and another dormmate, you and your dorm mates become almost like a family. A lot of frat guys like to take advantage of drunk girls, so they need to be looked after.
Bah, when I was in college, stealing a computer required a truck and many strong men.
People were always giving my slide rules lustful looks though..
If you're using a Mac, I read about solutions that require the software and a subscription. What you do is install the software, create a dummy account on your computer to encourage the thief to log on using the dummy acct. and hopefully connect to the Internet. Once that is done, the company pinpoints the thief's location and can retrieve the laptop for you.
Okay. I've spent most of my life around guns. I even competed nationally when I was a bit younger, in rifle and pistol. I've got about five now, having pared down my collection to only my favorites. They stay locked in a closet, in a series of key/combination boxes, seperate from the key/combination boxes in which I keep my ammo.
There is nothing in the world that makes me angrier than some half competent twit walking around with a pistol. Any and every time someone waves a gun in my presence I have to restrain myself from jumping him, taking it away from him, pistol whipping him across the face, then kneecapping his sorry bitch ass with his own gun. Technically, if the line from the barrel crosses my body at any time, that's assault with a deadly weapon, which means, legally, I could use deadly force in self defense.
Chances are if you need it, you won't have it, and if you DO have it, you're just as likely to get shot with it as to shoot someone else.
I don't give a shit if you buy or if you carry, but learn how to use it with respect, and never take it out unless you plan on killing someone with it. And if it is ever pointed in my direction while you're showing off to your friends, you had better pray I'm not carrying.
Tip: if you are taking English lit, make a lot of your notes in the novels and poetry books. This will save you a ton of time during in-class exams and will even help you with term papers. For novels, I used to write topic headers on the blank pages at the front/back of the book, then note the pages with notes on them. This helped me ace my English degree.
-- SYS 64738 --
Keep a little usb camera running in a background process, writing to your network drive with protection such that it requires a password to delete the video-log file. Or, have it email a secure acount with still pictures whenever it detects movement.
For prosecution, nothing beats video of a crime in action.
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If you don't usually lock your door and come back from class one day to find it locked, thinking about coming back later. Nothing quite like unlocking the door and opening it just in time for my roommate's date to scream "oh god!!!" straight into the hallway...
many people that I know have avoided losing too much because their houses/dorms/rooms were such a mess. My GF had hundreds of dollars on her table left alone because the thief didn't have time to sort through underwear, clothes, CDs and other chick stuff. Leave CDs and cheap but appealling items such as Playstations, (loose) CDs and broken laptops strewn around so that a prospective thief can't just slide your consumer electronics off one shelf/desk into a bag. Decorate your laptop with stickers and/or with a designs etched with a soldering iron to diminish its resale value (hey, it's not going to be worth much in 2 years anyhow).
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Locking your door is a good idea, but not when your roommate is in the shower. I learned this the first time my roommate locked me out. But he didn't. He did it again the next year.
All you need for college is a notebook and a pen. A cheap laptop is nice if you can afford one, but you can always use the school computer labs. This is good because it forces you to dedicate time to a particular place and makes you become more social. You will learn better time management this way and a better sense on how to estimate time on a project.
Lock your dorm room door and you will probably have a personal closet in your dorm room that you can also pad lock. Keep your laptop locked up whenever you are not using it.
General advice:
1. Meet as many people as possible and hang out with these people as much as possible. If you really put yourself out there in the first month, meeting people will just happen for you because of the connections and friends that you made right off. Meet peolpe in your classes. You will have group projects and it is easier to work with friends than just classmates.
2. Get involved on campus! Anything. Campus clubs, fraternities, sports teams, etc. You will find people you like in each one of these. Even if you think you don't belong, that's all the more reason to do it.
3. Take Vitamin B Complex before drinking. It helps with hangovers.
4. Go out on the weekends. Be social. Meet women.
When college starts, you can always tell the upperclassmen from the underclassmen - by how much "cool stuff" they bring. After packing it between home and college a couple times, you just don't bring what you don't need.
Burglar proof items - 8 track tape decks, Ford Pintos, an old girl's schwinn bike. (You can buy an old 8 track cartridge, cut it down, and slap it on the face of your stereo - burglar proof.)
* Most schools are required to provide access to equipment for low income and foreign students. Keep your debt down. Use it.
* Don't take out a loan to buy a computer. When you finish paying for it, you'll have paid twice its value for something that was obsolete before you graduated. (Make do with the clunker from uncle.) You don't have time to play (game of the month).
* It doesn't matter how hot you computer is, Mr. Moore will get a faster one for the kid next door.
* A good digital camera is great for library research. Saves on those overpriced copy machines.
* Don't believe half of the stories about wild sex and drinking. They are too embarressed or were too drunk to remember what really happened. (He didn't do it with the hot chick, the ugly blimp from psych class turned him down. Ever read Hemmingway? Same thing.)
That won't help a bit. You can still end up spending a LOT of money following this advice.
Make up your mind. That is surviving college with gear or sanity intact. You cannot have both. You cannot have a cake and eat it. This is very important to understand. Not only because in order to save your equipment and data you have to develop a certain level of paranoia, but--even more importantly--because the more insane you seem to be, the lower the probability that people who know you will steal your property is. (Remember that most of theft in colleges is done by people who know their victims.) If you act and look insane enough, those who know you will be scared to steal anything from you. I have personally observed this phenomenon and it appears that some people are rarely victims of theft (or any other crime, like murder or rape) even when they don't lock their door, mostly because people are afraid of them. For example, you might try to look not only very aggressive, but also act like someone who cannot control your anger, even against your own will, while talking about guns all of the time, showing your interest and fascination thereabouts, having guns in your room and showing them to everyone, which might have the positive effect of scaring all of the people you know, including potential thieves. You have to keep in mind that people are scared by things they don't understand, so a certain kind of psychotic look and sociopathic behaviour is usually more scary to most than the violent attitude alone. Please try to keep all that in mind. I hope you the best luck in surviving college with your precious gear.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I had no end of fights with her. She couldn't believe that our suburb of 500,000 people could have any risk of crime. I finally managed to get her to lock the door after Campus Security posted notices about a wacko who would open unlocked doors and climb into bed with girls. I don't think they ever caught him.
I'm not super paranoid about security. (I grew up in a smaller town, but now live right downtown in a major city.) But I do think it's important to lock up your dorm room or dorm house. You never know who's going to wander in.
I love my computer, it is an endless source of entertainment for me. I've tried many kinds of personal (as in no other people involved) entertainment including books, TV, movies, etc and while I do like others (books espically) nothing comes close to my computer.
Well it is expensive, and I would be pissed if someone took it. There simply is no "something else" that would replace it. I can live without it, of course, but I really don't want to.
pawn the laptop, buy some rubbers!
Unfortunately, some colleges are getting smart on the paper usage and have started to charge a per-sheet fee for printing.
Still cheaper than a printer, though.
And if your campus is still huge, get a bicycle, not a car. Good for your health, saves you a ton of money on gas and insurance. Just lock it up like you would anything valuable.
Don't just lock it, deadbolt it. Many college freshmen (myself included) learned how to card a door in a matter of seconds. Also, consider taking up some activites or intermurals. Not only will you get in better shape, but you can make friends that you normally wouldn't. Join a club, any club, and participate! Most college campusus have a million clubs. There is always the ACM too...
Many of the threads spoke about credit cards. One word of advice I can give is to establish a good line of credit. What I did was apply for a credit card, and then use it to pay for my books. I then paid the bill through financial aid. This way they could see that I was "responsible" and paid my bills on time.
What? Me worry? NEVER.....
Have you toured the campus already? Where will you be bringing your laptop, and who runs those buildings/places? You might be able to get a suggestion from the departments on where to chain/lock your laptop up, and which ones to avoid. It's doubtful that you're the first person who will ever have had their laptop stolen while on campus, but at least they can point you to the people who have, and you can learn from their mistakes.
Regarding general college advice.
1) Beer is like skins. Used incorrectly, it wastes your processing cycles, but if used correctly, can sell your product (in this case, yourself).
2) Meet lots people at orientation. You may never see 80% of them again, but the few others will eventually introduce you to their circles. This is the point where everyone doesn't know anyone, so if you screw up, no one will remember it. In fact, I'd say the social events are the only required events. Even if you're tired as hell, make yourself some coffee, and go anyway. But you have to sleep sometime, so...
3) "Don't have sex without protection. Don't drink too much. Date rape (actually, any form of rape) bad. Cheating is not nice. So's plagerism." If you already knew all this, you probably don't need to go to most of the "required" orientation lectures. Go check with a few friendly upperclassmen on which ones you need to attend, and which ones you can sleep through.
4) Read tomorrow's lecture. If you're learning the material during lecture, you're behind. More generally, plan ahead, and when you get to the point that when finals roll around, you get to sleep at normal hours during the reading period. That puts you ahead of everyone who had to reread the entire book during reading period, and are taking their finals while looking like zombies.
5) Don't take 8:00am classes unless you
a) must take it, and it's only offered at 8:00am
or
b) it's a class that is so fundamentally great that you're willing to take the hit. And it's a BIG hit.
Note that if it's a), try to get it out of the way freshman year, because at least you're still in the habit of waking that early from high school. And if you're a morning person? You'll quickly change to a night owl. Trust me.
6) Everyone wants something. Most (if not all) of your freshman profs want to go work on their own research, not mold promising minds that will regularly erase everything they've tried to impress through overzealous application of alcohol and go off to major in something completely different. But even some of those profs will gladly spend a few minutes talking about their research. So check their webpages, and if you have some curiosity as to what they're doing, ask them about it during office hours. If nothing else, you may at least make a good impression, and at best, you might find your major or come up with a fun research project.
Go and meet your professoes. Really. This was advice I got from the dean my freshman year. So, I took it. The almost never see anyone during office hours so go sometime in the first week say hi and chat with them for 10 minutes. Most are just floored since it so very rarely happens. Some will resent it but that tells you that you should probably dorp the class since oyu probably have an asshole. Nearly all I've met have chatted with me about the class, their research, the university, etc.
There are two good side effects of this:
1) If you need help, you are much more likely to get it. Maybe you want in a class in the future, and the professor remembers you and lets you in. Maybe you need some advice, and the professor give it to you. They are generally much happier to help those they know, and that have shown some initiave and intrest, than those that never say anything.
2) Grades. As mentioned by the parent, they'll give you more leanincy. Not even just for begging, you can just generally slant the grading in your favour. It's just human nature. They feel that they better know you, so they are more likely to cut you some slack.
Sex. Women do all their freaky stuff in college, so have an open mind and hit as much of it as you possibly can. Buy a big box of condoms and some good lube (google for 'millenium id').
:(
I really don't understand how so many people are totally care-free about having casual sex. I fully acknowledge that I'm paranoid, but I'm scared to death of getting my girlfriend pregnant, and this is despite being extremely careful and having a really trusting relationship. How on earth do you people not go mad worrying that you might have gotten a girl pregnant from one of your wild and crazy flings? Supreme trust in condoms? Knowledge that abortions are easy? I just don't get it.
I'm worried that I won't be able to enjoy sex care-free until the day (if it ever comes) that I truly want to reproduce.
Like someone else said, women do the wildest stuff in college. Everything after that is tame in comparison. Don't get as drunk as everyone else. If you get drunk and pass out, you'll miss too much stuff.
Lock your room all the time. People LOVE to play practical jokes in college. Finding shampoo or vaseline in your bed isn't much fun.
If you're in the dorms, learn to do your own laundry before you leave for school. It sounds stupid, but people often depended on an older sister or their mom for laundry at home.
Don't lend your stuff to everyone. Especially credit cards, cell phones, cars.
Try to scope out the TA's that care about teaching. Avoid the losers that don't care, and have no teaching skills. Same thing with professors. Believe it or not... some are there just to do other stuff and don't care about their students.
Learn to manage your time. You'll have a lot of freedom. Part of a college degree is an effort in discipline. You can't play hoops, ping pong, read comic books, and get drunk all the time, skip class, and expect to graduate in 4 years with a 4.0 GPA. Balance.
Lastly, budget your money. Don't be afraid of asking chicks/guys out on dates. It's not worth the fear. You only live once. Have fun.
Do you have an Ikea near you? Cheap furniture. Very cheap. Great for college. If you're in the dorms, get your bed "lofted" if at all possible. Talk to a sophomore if at all possible. The RA probably won't be that much help. Lofting gets the bed up... higher the better. Then move couch, TV, fridge, etc into room. Consider bringing your own rugs. Get good slippers for going to the showers. You'll end up with more than a few cases of athlete's foot otherwise.
Similarly, my friend's roommate failed to lock the door one night and one of their hallmates drunkenly walked into their room half-asleep and took a leak all over my friend's couch and roommate's GIRLFRIEND's pants. Took about 20 minutes, an RA and the threat of a call to the uni poilice to get the guy to admit he'd done it and apologize for it. So yeah, lock your door when you're asleep, or copy the womens restroom sign in bright red and tape it to your door...
(PS one defense against thieves is a really smelly/abnoxious roommate, mine stunk and while all #1 was pretty much off-limits in my room, girls have rooms too, usually cleaner and nicer)
If the college you chose makes you worry about security on campus then choose a different college.
If you think security is a worry at all colleges then beware, because you're setting yourself up for a life of paranoia.
Getting stuff stolen is an annoyance, but not the end of the world. Keep backups and remember that once you graduate you'll be able to get a far better system anyway.
If you are going to Case Western Reserve: get a box of Kleenex and some porn. That's the only action you'll be seeing, buddy. Oh, and don't loft your beds. Ouch!
Now I'd better make a call to ensure *someone special* doesn't read /. today...
Does your mother have a sister?
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
Find out what the campus offers in the way of server space. Most give you a campus web and e-mail account (www.some.edu/~foo/). Backup your schoolwork to the campus account (if you have a folder off your website root, even better).
Go to the campus computing center or bookstore and find out what Academic prices or hookups they have before you buy software. MS is making deals with more and more colleges where you can buy full-versions of MS-whatever for ~$5/CD on-campus. Adobe, Macromedia and others have non-commercially licensed, full versions of their software available to students as well.
One of the most overlooked reasons to lock your door at all times is because while the damn drunks can never find their own room, they'll sure as hell find an unlocked door.
The next gamble is: Are they lookng for a bedroom or a bathroom?
1. Drink. None of that pussy "I don't drink" shit. Learn to suck it up and drink like a real man, that's what college is for. Trust me, soon enough you'll have all sorts of annoying health problems and aging concerns, and you'll have to moderate your drinking. College is your chance to get this out of your system and give your liver a good working out.
2. Have sex. Meet women and fuck them. Seriously. If you followed step 1 above, you will find step 2 much easier. I promise. If you still don't know how to do this, learn. Study the art of fast seduction if you need that sort of thing (Google is your friend), or just be yourself if you have more luck that way. Freshman year is tough, but by the time Junior year rolls around you should have your game on and the Frosh chicks and ready for action. Don't bother with the Junior and Senior chicks, they're getting banged by the grad students, or people with real jobs and incomes. Don't waste your undergraduate years in some long distance relationship or any of that crap, and don't stick with the first girl that gives you some booty. This lesson goes for the rest of life too. And if you are gay, please feel free to replace "chick" with "dude" in the above paragraph. And if you are female, well, go screw some underclassmen and stop hogging all the senior dudes.
3. Make friends and connections. The people you meet in high school and college (if you go to a good high school, maybe more there than college) are the connections you have for the rest of your life. These people are critical for building your career. You will help them out and they will help you out. Join a fraternity if that's your thing (preferably one where people aren't complete morons - my friend's frat at MIT had more multimillionaire entrepreneur alumni than I can count), or get involved in extracurricular activities. In the end, this is as important as your grades - your grades will be useful for grad school if you go that route and to a lesser extent for your first few jobs. Beyond that, the most that will matter is "cum laude", "magna cum laude", etc. People still are impressed when I say I graduated from Harvard in Physics, magna cum laude.
4. Study. Go to your classes. Except when it interferes with 1, 2 or 3. Your parents are paying for an education, get it. And not just in the area you are majoring in, branch out, take some other classes. But don't get obsessed with pulling straight As at the expense of the friend-making and networking. And definitely not at the expense of getting laid and drinking, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Remember, we all end up dead someday, don't forget to enjoy life while you're young.
After you've done all of the above, you are welcome to fit a few hours in of sleeping and securing your damned laptop/bike/whatever (jesus, who has time in college to obsess about their _stuff_? don't bring too much expensive shit to college, just the bare minimum, and expect to lose some stuff or have it "borrowed" out of your dorm room, etc.). Sure, play computer games, unwind, download tons of MP3s, warez, whatever floats your boat, but don't let that stuff get in the way of what really matters (see points 1 through 4 above).
You may think I'm crazy, but I have no regrets. I think I sacrificed a summa cum laude along with a few hundred thousand brain cells to Bachanallian revelry, but I will never for a minute regret it. If anything, I can only say I wish I hadn't taken on such a ridiculous workload junior year when I finished my physics honors requirements a year early, and that I hadn't worked full time at my company senior year instead of partying heartily and pursuing goals 1 and 2 above.
The best laptop lock you can use at college is your door lock. Keep the door locked when you're not in it and you won't have a problem. If you're going to leave for a few minutes just lock the thing.
Sure it takes a few extra seconds to get that girl into your bed when you come back but at least then you'll be worrying about her and not your laptop!
There's nothing to say that a big-ass full tower case with a 21" CRT can't turn in respectable FPS in Quake 3, plus a full tower doesn't build up as much heat.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
- Keep your dorm room locked.
- Keep your laptop in your backpack and keep it with you at all times.
- Bring lots of quarters for the laundry machines.
- Buy your books from Amazon or B&N online. Schools inflate the prices waaay high.
- Use lubricated condoms - the dry ones are uncomfortable (for you and her both).
Oh wait, you read slashdot. You won't be needing that last one.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Yeah, there's a long story there.
Ah what the heck, I'll tell it. Not like anyone is going to read this anyway.
So, I went to visit a, um, friend, that lived on campus. I rode my bike up, and like I normally did, I leaned it up against the bike rack outside her dorm. No lock. I'd been leaving it unlocked for a long time, maybe a couple of years and it had never gotten stolen. Why should I worry?
I came out the next morning, went to breakfast, grabbed my books out of my gym locker (I was a boy scout, always prepared and all that), and went to class. Physics always makes more sense after a night of heavy, um, studying. Afterwards, I went back by her dorm to grab my bike to head home for a couple of hours of shut-eye. No bike.
I'm sure my reaction was typical. F*ck. F*ck. F*ck. Storm about a bit. Stamped my feet a good bit. Looked to make sure someone didn't move it to the next door to f*ck with me. Probably pretty funny to watch. Then, shoulders bent, I started to walk home. Thank god the Capitol bar was on the way home, and I had enough cash for a couple of pints.
I'd give you a link to the Capitol, but it couldn't do the place justice. Let's just say it's the best place on earth for a pint after your bike has been stolen. Heck, it might be the best place on earth for a pint regardless of whether your bike has been stolen or not. Thanks Stephanie for rebuilding after the lighting strike.
Anyway, I moved on. I no longer was spending nights with my friend, nor was I mourning my bike.
Losing the bike was the last bit of incentive I needed to finish my other bike project. Pissed as I was, I made my new bike from bits I had laying about the house (okay, back yard, shed, basement, you get the picture), which was twice the bike that I had lost, look like crap. I painted it with a toothbrush, and made the handle bar tape job look like crap. It worked well, though, and it actually made my commute to school easier. So, really, I didn't mind that much that my bike had been stolen.
For a while I locked the new bike up, just because the other one was stolen, but it wasn't long until I got too lazy to lock it up. After all, if this one got stolen, I had another at home waiting to be built out of parts, and that was fun for me.
To put beer on the bartop, I took a job working with the campus food service. I know, I know, you probably hate me and all the other people that forced that crap down your throat. Sorry.
My main job was handling the catering for events on campus. I delivered food, especially breakfast treats like bagels and coffee.
One day I jumped into the catering truck with a tray of (what else) doughnuts and assorted pastries for the campus police and others organizing the yearly auction on campus.
You see, each department would retire things, like computers, decks of punch cards, hydraulic rams, or APCs (yes, APCs, they were used for explosives research) that they no longer needed, and those would be sold at auction. I dropped off the tray of goodies, and took a look around at the swag. I never bought anything at these auctions, because they always sold the stuff I was interested in (like computers) in lots that put them out of my price range, but, like a good geek, I liked to drool over the things I couldn't get, like Linotype machines and welding rigs.
Wandering about, I came across, in a dark corner a bunch of bikes. In case it's not already obvious, I'm a bike scavenger. You have a bike part you don't want, give it to me, I'll figure out something to do with it. I thought, maybe nobody will be interested in these crappy bikes. So, I took a close look.
That's when I saw it. My old bike. Yup, tjere it was. Nothing wrong with it except cobwebs from storage. It was sitting there, ready to be sold to some yahoo that couldn't appreciate all the work I'd put into the damn thing.
Luckily I knew most of the campus cops (don't ask how), and I was on a friendly basis wi
Use a real etching tool, a steel punch set, or at least indelible dye on any item you don't care about the resale value of.
It's possible... but more likely the resident sneak thief will get himself a sweet new ultra slim and silent computer and digital camera.But if you're lucky, he'll leave the rest of your electronics for next time.
Addicts steal from their friends and family first, and are the most common dorm ripoff artist.An earlier poster's suggestion was to be the friendly neighborhood paranoid psycho -- the dude who isn't unfriendly or hateful, but is just way to into guns and things with sharp edges.
The dorm experience sucks. Here are some particulars:
1) Being pennied into my room and other stupid pranks.
2) Having my laundry stolen.
3) Not one, but two abusive asshole roommates freshmen year.
4) Food so fucking bad I came home Christmas break with the freshmen negative 10, because no matter how hungry I am, I won't eat crappy food.
5) Not being able to open the windows because of all the fucking wasps in the eaves.
6) Freezing my ass off in winter (top floor room, northern exposure, concrete walls without insulation) and broiling in summer (no AC).
7) Elevators with thermal touch sensors which would light up every time the temprature was above 80 Fahrenheit and stop on every goddamn floor.
8) Ignorant loud neighbors.
9) Having to pay for all the vandalism by the drunks who can't hold their liquor. The $3000 elevator repair bill really sucked.
10) Autocratic asshole RA's and dorm guards.
11) Dry dorms.
12) Dorm inspections in violation of 4th amendment and a boatload of renter protection laws.
13) Urine stained sheets which no amount of bleach would clean.
14) No place to park my car.
15) Dorm sponsored "mandatory" social activities. At least no one gave me grief for blowing these off.
I can't speek to the typical school exp. cause my room mates are conservative hypicrital bores. I do know the collidgecally: Get in get out...get laid.
I meen by this is: I don't give a shit how hot the women are, the fun shit is good, so's the weed and acid. NEVER NEVER NEVER stay cause you'd like to put off life or are chicken shit.I did now I'm regreting it. DTA: Do not never never trust any fucky body. I did. Now I'm kicking myself cause I had some good CD's that were OG for some bands. Now are collector stuff. If you "kinda like it" take it as a minor. If your REALY like it make it a major, personal growth shit: Pass Fail. period.
Period.
If I was a teacher the "my dog ate my laptop" excuse will not cut it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Regualr guy:
"Great! I'm off to collage, need some tips on the best places to party, the best clubs, and where all the hot chicks hang out."
Geek:
"I've been looking around recently for other options as far as keeping track of my laptop and other semi-expensive and certainly valuable (for a college student) stuff in a dorm room setting. Any ideas? I'm looking for both laptop-specific and comprehensive solutions. Locks? Alarms? Video cameras? Trip wire?"
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Common moderators, this is completely off topic...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If your school is like mine, iTunes will be very popular as a means to sharing music on the network. Before you go to school, convert all the cd's that you have to mp3's and share them with iTunes. If you don't have many, use gettunes or ourtunes and download them there till you have a collection. Also consider borrowing a cd collection from a friend whose music tastes you admire to convert. I have started several conversations talking about the merits of someone's collection, and iTunes helps out a ton when you are djing a dorm room party.
2*31*37*263
Also, the hot chicks are all taking Psych or Sociology.
Speaking from experience, both recent and remote, the parent is both oh so right and oh so wrong.
NEVER date a psych major. I would seriously recommend staying away from the discipline entirely as the temptation is usually irresistible. I'm convinced they learn stuff in those classes you couldn't learn from navy seals interrogation training.
I have no idea about the Sociology majors, but I do highly recommend entomology if you can take some of those classes. I've met many a very cute, super-cool bug-loving girl in my day, and have found their worth and demeanor to be much more reliable.
Of course, most generalizations are crap, but the thing about crazy Psych majors stands up to the test of time. Do yourself a favor and run like hell when that cute psych student starts making eyes, you may end up a research subject.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Thanks for the new sig
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
The best way I protected my stuff was to be a broke-ass bastard all through college. I had no money and therefore no stuff to worry about. That way, when you finally get some really good gear, you appreciate it so damn much that you don't let it out of your site. I sleep with my powerbook now.
I have a really expensive laptop that hasn't gotten stolen yet. Here are some tips: 1. Brand-name computers are easier to sell. People buying fenced stuff will usually go "WTF is this crap" if it doesn't have the Dell logo on front. 2. LOCK YOUR DOOR. 3. WRITE DOWN YOUR MAC ADDRESS. 4. Get along with your roommate - if he parties, go out and party with him a couple of times, if he plays lan games, play a couple of lan games with him. If you're friends with your roommate, making compromises will be a lot easier - I mean, it's much less presumptious to stumble into your dorm at 4:30 AM after hours of drinking if your roommate's been out doing the same thing. Fuck the video games - go party. There is a time and place for being a drunk asshole, and that place and time is college. Go hog-wild - get all that shit out of your system then.
This is mainly reiterating what has gone before, but I would advise that you buy a desktop computer rather than a laptop. Take lecture notes with paper, though not at the cost of listening to the lecturer. As soon as possible after the lecture transcribe your notes to your computer. The act of transcribing them forces you to reread and think about them while the lecture is still fresh in your mind.
Partying advice: Alternate soft and alcoholic drinks. Always have at least one drink fewer than the person you are trying to chat up. Party with as many different people and in as many different styles as you can over the course of the year. Never worry about not being cool enough to go to any particular party; it's staying in your room that's not cool.
Security: As has been said, always lock your door and make sure everything is insured.
Those who do not learn from Dilbert are doomed to repeat it.
All your stuff is going to be stolen and/or broken. Just deal with it.
what about a desktop? they are so much harder to steal.
Posters recognized by their sig,
60+ lbs., unremovable. Of course, that might be a bit of a problem to those of you who can't run with 80 lbs. of stuff on your back. *sigh* I am such a failure as a nerd.
He must've changed his sig, because it's not there now.
Thank you very much for saying that... it's posts like these that make me regret opting out of moderating. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I am actually going to university for the education, not for the glorified brothel.
First, you have to understand the psychology of the thief, and them make him NOT want to steal any of your stuff.
The simplest way is to make it not worth their while, and I personally think the fastest way is with a can of spraypaint and some artistic licence.
Ever wanted to spraypaint your deck cool camoflage colours just like the 'leet Hackers in That Film With The Cute Girl? Go ahead! You'll screw it up, repaint it silver, get funny bubbles on the case where the paint reacted with the plastic, and accidentally wipe off the key labels with acetone... and then your gear will be completely unique, instantly recogniziable, and often unsellable at pawn shops.
The more beige and standard your gear, the more likely it will get nicked.
My laptop got "stolen" (possibly by someone I knew) some years back, and turned up a few days later under a nearby tree. It was covered in unique PsiCore stickers, and whoever had "borrowed" it had failed to even get past the linux login prompt... CLI's are another great theft-prevention device.
Some final words of advice, since many, many other threads seem to be filled with hints on how to have Frequi Sex with Crazy Girls...
1. Never forget: Safe, Sane, Consensual.
2. Everyone else in University is having a LOT less sex than they say they are, or you think they are. (Trust me on this.)
3. The ones that tell you they're having sex don't realize how badly they're doing it. (One night fumbles simply don't compare to a lover who knows you well. Trust me on that too.)
4. Crazy girls are fun, but they're still crazy.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Six computers and two TVs ...? I don't know if even the most modern dorms are designed to handle that many electrical devices being plugged in, even if every device isn't switched on at the same time and you're using proper surge protectors/extensions.
You should note that many old colleges still have some dorms in use that were built over fifty years ago. Each two-person room might have only three electrical outlets, and that's it. Also, don't count on the sockets having the third hole for grounding. Since surge protectors have three-prong plugs, you might have to pick up an adapter at Radio Shack or Wal-Mart.
Fortunately, if you're in college now you've got a less obsolete environment, and if your data lives on a laptop, you need to make backups and store them somewhere outside your backpack. Sure, insurance might cover replacing your laptop if it gets stolen or banged up too hard, but it won't cover losing your notes for the term or the draft of your thesis. CD-Rs are cheap, and you're going to treat your laptop like a laptop, so expect it to lose a disk drive once or twice before the rest of the machine fries.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So, let's make some assumptions. First, you are going to use a condom because of concern over STDs. She is going to be on the pill because she wants to finish her education.
Condoms, when used properly have about a 3% failure rate per year.
The pill has about a 1% failure rate per year.
I would guess that many sexually active college girls are will to have an abortion.
So 1% * 3% * 50% = 0.015%
Now this means roughly that you could fuck like bunnies for 100 years and have about a 1.5% chance of having a child. Or you could have 100% chance of years of sexual frustration.
So, my advice is this: experiment a little but be smart. Combine two good birth controlo options -- you end up with *REALLY* favorable stats. Learning to face up to calculated risks is part of growing up. I don't mean to belittle you at all. There a lot of people who should know better who don't and spend thier lives worried that they're going to get carjacked when it's more likely that they'll die in a household slip and fall.
BTW, I'm getting old. I don't regret *ANY* of the women that I shared sex with. I do regret a few that I didn't.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
In my block anyone could open anyone elses door just using a credit card. I didn't have anything missing but sometimes I had a few unpleasant additions (and once someone tossed a girl into my room tied up in a sleeping bag).
1) sell your existing machine to an unsuspecting fellow nerd.
2) buy a smaller machine (e.g. an acer travelmate c100 or its successor the c110 they're only about $1000) or look on ebuyer.com
3) invest in a rucksack briefcase.
then, get into the habit of either carrying your machine around with you evveerrryywhhheeere.
after a while you will not notice that you constantly have a small lightweight computer on your back, and after a while nor will anyone else.
do not be put off by strange looks: style your life around the confidence of being a nerd.
if it helps i can find out where you can get "ubergeek" t-shirts.
Trip wire and Claymores. Make sure they face in a direction where nothing of value is stored - like your balls.
YEp college is a necessary evil !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Compelling post mostly because I am in a similar phase of life. Since I was sitting here deep in self-analysis *anyway*, might as well contribute to the mass confessional (aka group circle wank).
I spent virtually all of my college life nerding out at a highly technical university with very few girls. When not nerding out, I made periodic attempts to socialize (become involved with the rave scene etc) and, for a slashdot poster, I guess I made decent progress. However, I would quickly burn out and lose faith when I was trying to promote a party Friday night or whatever and walking around the dorms just found a bunch of guys playing counterstrike typing "pwn3d j00 m4mm1e b1tchz0r!!!1" or doing sets while all the girls were huddled in the library studying, or leaving for home to be with their parents, etc.
I've heard the vast majority of colleges have active social scenes, but at least one tech school is mostly silent on Saturday night, aside from "Terrorists Win!". No lie.
So eventually I just gave up, moved off campus, found a good part time job that rewarded me for hacking cool stuff 20-40 hours a week (on top of the 40 hour course load), and recently graduated knowing basically only the same five male friends I had freshmen year.
Sometimes I adopt the mindset in your post and worry I just opted out of the best part of my life. The thought is profoundly depressing. No doubt it is difficult to develop the social skills girls/women require if you do not do so along with your peers--the vast majority of women obey a very specific, inelastic, social ruleset and many aspects of that ruleset are challenging for highly technical, introverted males.
All of that aside, the last 10 years really have blown the lid off of some fscking awesome technology. I have deeply enjoyed thousands of hours spent on OSS, coding, etc, and draw spiritual satisfaction from my geek pursuits. As powerful as sex is, there are some people who just get off on technology (insert sticky kb jokes here), music, math, etc, more than on a skank sorroriety girl (which frankly is what most of the boring easy college girls classify as). Telling a technical person to drink/snort up and tag a skank is like telling a bunch of skanks to spend Saturday night optimizing a *BSD kernel (heh theres some fun for the ACs in that quote).
Anyway part of becoming an adult is realizing that pop culture and modern society impose a lot of BS in the name of social conformance. You'll probably have to reject a metric ton of that BS to feel OK about your interests. I know first hand you will not agree from within the depths of depression, however: there are at least a few women who value uniqueness and will pull you into their world assuming you don't write them off as sluts, freaks, etc, or write yourself off as an inadequate social reject. I bet many women are potentially sympathetic but lack the social initiate to break rank with the Animal House hoards.
So to wrap this post up... Modeling highly technical systems is an amazing talent for which you may be highly compensated. However using that talent to model your own mind quickly becomes counter-productive. Socialization demands empathy with another person; if you are stuck deep in self-analysis you will not have mental bandwidth for him or her. Also trying to force yourself into a value system inconsistent with your past is probably not going to work, instead you need to use your rational abilities to address emotional/social concerns, yet without violating the narcissism constraints. College and life are just a case of discovering the right tradeoffs, very similar to the art of hacking.
Further Reading:
"This Side Of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Go grab it on Gutenberg.
Further Discussion:
brane at sdf tod lonestar tod org
I don't know but I've been told:
The eskimo pussy is mighty cold!
According to this, you've been misinformed.
Whenever you read a story like this, if you aren't a complete retard, you have to wonder. Doctors are pretty lousy at identifying the cause of rashes, and rashes from embalming fluid would have to be pretty damn rare.
So, we pop off to Snopes, and what do we find?
Of course, it's an urban legend
2) DO NOT SPEND ALL YOUR FREE TIME LEARNING LINUX/*BSD ...
Agreed! Just go to http://www.downloadable-shit-for-your-brain.com/ instead...
Don't panic, man. You should thank God you've been saved from all the hassles, fights, distractions, embarassment, emotional trauma, guilt, regret, diseases, pregnancy, financial burden, and other ripple effects that could have totally wrecked your life.
I have discovered after years of soul-searching that money isn't everything.
Perhaps, in a few more years of soul-searching, you will discover that sex isn't everything.
Patience... There is a time for everything.
There is a time to have sex,
there is a time to not have sex.
Life will reward you for waiting for the right person and the right time. It will curse you for acting foolishly. That's why it's so important to remain sober-minded - so you can make decisions that are truly in your best interest. Consequences, my friend. One stupid move could ruin your life.
Heaven and Hell are real...
The Creator is Merciful and Just...
that's all.
accurately define good according to a criteria and seek it out.
Jesus christ, why would you by a new car in college?
If youve got a lot of gear to protect one of the large secure steel tool cabinets you see on building sites would do the job. You can buy them from most professional building supplies stores. They are very heavy duty and have plenty of locking and anchoring points. Only downside to this is that it is a bit of a clumsy solution and you have to remember to lock it when you leave. But it will be the most secure you are going to get, short of buying a safe.
Alcohol poisoning is a real threat. Someone in your dorm the first year is going to end up in the hospital -- and might even die.
I almost died my freshman year -- I remember drinking way way way too much, and then waking up in the hospital.
Other than that -- be sure to have a supply of condoms on hand -- and use them. You don't know where that stuff has been.
No horror stories to share there -- I kept meh junk wrapped up and clean, and had my share of fun.
Other than that -- enjoy it. The rest of life is dull in comparison.
Dorm rooms are very, very bad for getting things stolen.
1) Get insurance just for this dorm year at least
2) Lock door, even when going to loo! I had my minidisc stolen this way; gone for 20secs
3) If you have a bike sell it and get a cheap one; I had my bike stolen, left for 10mins 500 yards between my friends in the pub and myself, locked up with an (only) average padlock.
4) Don't leave anything in kitchen. Maybe even food...
5) Remember everything you own is a liability. This is why all this slashdot gear is weighing you down. Like the film says, Let go.
A blog I run for the wealth
> Lock your damn door...
Even that doesn't always help. When my brother was at Temple, his dorm room was robbed with several others. The thieves waited until the dorm was empty during spring break, and they used a fire axe to hack their way through the walls. They went down the entire length of the hall clearing out every room.
There's no protection that's perfect. However, it is fairly cheap to insure your stuff on your parent's home owner's policy. Otherwise, you can look into a renter's policy (very cheap and wise for other reasons).
Best way to keep your stuff safe at college: find a fraternity with brothers you trust and join it. I can't even begin to describe how nice it was not to have to remember to lock my door every time I wanted to step out for a few minutes/days/weeks.
guard your towel with your life. nothing worse than waking up later for class, rushing to the shower, and getting out to find your roomate(s) have used your towel to wipe up their spilled soda/beer, puke, or other more intimate bodily fluids. you will wish they had stole your laptop ...
The only method that works if you have a roommate is for that roommate to be a trusted friend of yours. Otherwise you just have no idea what's going to happen to your hardware when you're not there. It would be nice to be able to assume that your stuff will be safe, but in my experience there are more and more devious morons getting into college each year so it's hard to keep anything safe. Of course, when I lived on campus I was utterly careless and never had a problem. One more note: If you let your hardware be known to everyone then you're going to lose something.
I am feeling fat and sassy
I know that in my dorm room I used to keep things that I really wanted secure in the ceiling. In most dorms, you can take the ceiling tiles, so I removed one, placed stuff on another tile, then replaced the original tile. Sure it's a pain in the neck, but no one expects anything to be up there except for empty beer bottles anyways.
Another thing I happened to come across in my dorm was that there were cement walls between adjacent rooms, even in the ceiling, save for a hole where the heating pipes went through (which happened to be great conduits for running network cable across the floor :-) ) - you may want to look around up there for anything besides an adjacent tile for a place to put stuff on. In my case, there was a cement ledge close to the walls that seperated the rooms that worked extremely well.
~ ><>
Just remember to cough after you turn your head, son.
please ignore the first couple of posts, since ... filth/dirty. so ... your ...". don't forget :) eat healty and not use too much coffee. fresh air can work wonders!!! last note: if you want /need a girlfriend find one in the local town/city not on campus!!! (IHATESLASHDOTWYSIWYG!)
these guys (and gals) seem to have gone to
college, so to develope skill to become the next
pr0n star.
first off i'd recommend, to mark your territory.
do this by checking out the whole campus and
getting familiar with it (escpecially the
library).
i would recommend you take notes on plain white
paper like you fed to the printer. get a nice ball
point pen, pensil, eraser, some color and a ruler.
you're much faster using paper to take notes and
especially make drawings(!) or diagrams.
also bring a hi-res digital camera so you can
take pictures of the calk board or projector for
later comparession. a laptop is heavy, needs to
boot up and runs out of batteries. you don't need
to always bring all your notes to one class. get
a big folder and a small one. use the small one to
bring the notes of the last few classes and keep
the big one in your dorm (mega archive).
don't forget to get a handy/portable xerox
machine.
of course you'll need a computer, but i'd
recommend a full tower "desktop" with the latest
GPU/CPU and muchos ram plus LCD. it's gona be
handy to write/print reports etc. i'm guessing
for the same price as a laptop you could get more
ram,cpu,gpu power, since like said, you wouldn't
need a laptop in class!
next, be clean! be tidy! bring enough clothes
and/or wash them frquently. you don't want to be
the smelly/untidy guy. okay, untide is okay, all
briliant men are. but don't be dirty!!!
next be sure to secure your privacy in your dorm
room. this is your room! tell you're room buddy
to go the social function room if he wants to
party with his mates. this is very important. if
people start to notice that your room is receiving
alot of visits, they'll naturally want to know
what is going on and voila, your room becomes a
a high volume area with, of course, a greater
chance of theaft or
room is your castle, make this clear to your
"roomy".
don't write in books! take notes on a seperate
piece of paper. make "hyperlinks" on this sheet,
say "book title xyz, page 123
to add the date to everything you note down.
if you leave college, you'll get the chance to
resell the book(s), IF you haven't scribbled them
full.
also archive all notes! you might be able to hand
them to a "freshman", when you leave college and
maybe he'll even be really really glad, that the
professor acctually will use the same test
sheet with the same questions!!!
don't date (too much). sex is a distraction. so if
you need that, go jogging or (what i recommend)
go rollerblading! never forget to do enough
sports. if you're not a sporty guy, now is time to
practice (go swimming for example).
get a good library of hump-hump, techno music.
i know it doesn't work with everyone, but the
hump-hump rhythem helps me get into the zone when
learning and sometimes if learning for a test, the
same tune(s) you where listening to while learning
for the test is repeated/listend too just before
test, it is possible to "remind" the brain.
that's bout it. be serious about it. keep your
privacy. only after you lost it, will you notice
how hard it is to get it back!!! someone trying to
visit your roomy, in say the first week, and gets
put down by you, will be less offended, then if
your roomys friend had unlimited accese for a few months!!! also the library is agreat place to learn. it has a good smell too
From my experience of 4 years on campus, I noticed that generally, you have enough time for two of the following three:
.. )
... now, I tried to eliminate 3 and almost succeeded - unfortunately, this revelation didn't occur to me until the last year - and I really believe that this is the right way to go.
:-)
1) Do your school work (that includes all those cool programming projects you want to do)
2) Have a social life (talk to people, and I don't mean IRC by 'talk', play sports, party, etc
3) Play computer games
Geeks usually do 1 & 3, while jocks 2 & 3
Of course, there's people who somehow have enough time to do anything they want - I remember reading an interview with one of the people who helped create the modern networking, I forgot his name, and he said that while he was an undergrad at MIT, he had a full time job 12 midnight to 8 AM, went t to class/did research in the lab during the day, and was a president of his fraternity. That was in the 60's. To this day, the answer to the question 'When the hell did he sleep?' still eludes him
As far as laptops go, don't leave it unsecured. Definitely lock your room, even if you are going down the hall for a quick shower. Yes I took my keys to the shower with me and locked my dorm when I left. You'd be surprised how many people I knew had their dorm broken into by leaving it unlocked when they went to the shower. I also had an apartment that I shared with three other guys. One of them I knew, the other two I didn't. Since I didn't know them and since they shared my apartment I never let them know that I had the laptop. I just never trusted them enough.
As for the college experience, my biggest regret in college was not traveling more. This doesn't mean a thousand dollar spring break (unless you can afford it); I'm talking road trips and visits to your college friends that live across the country when you are on break. One professor told me this and though I didn't believe it at the time I certainly do now. "Travel now while you have no responsibilities. When you graduate you won't be able to take as much time to go travel and may never end up going everywhere you wanted to." My fiancée studied abroad in London for a year. She still raves about the fun she had there (while I sulk at not even going farther than my home state for my college years). If you can swing it you should look into this.
But above all else, beware of credit card debt!
That is my $0.02. Good luck at school.
In 4-1/2 years of college, including numerous rugby parties and road trips, I never had anything expensive stolen from me. I had plenty of hi-fi gear, albums, tools, TV, Burmese Python, etc. all of which was potentially valuable. However, I once had all of my jeans stolen from the laundromat. Since my wardrobe pretty much consisted of jeans (it was the middle of winter), I was hosed. Because I lived paycheck to paycheck (still am!!!) and habitually squandered my earnings (still do!!!), it was a tough month or two.
Moral of the story: Don't forget about the little things, as they become valuable once they are gone.
1. Get some self respect and a backbone, stop the self-loathing, if you don't love or like yourself you're easy prey into conning yourself that your not worth anything and that you don't have ability to accomplish great things.
2. Excercise and eat right, it will make a huge difference in how you feel about yourself, your self esteem and your motivation--it feeds off itself in and endless loop, success breeds success. (Plus you'll attract way more girls if you're not the pillsbury doughboy).
3. Stand up for yourself (whether it be students or teachers doing childish things)
4. If you see a woman (or guy friends/acquaintences) being exploited or fucked with/picked on get some of your friends/quality comrades together immediately and stop the bullshit, do it with tact, not violence, no one likes suspension/criminal record. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
5. Stick with it, take a "no holds barred" approach to your life and your goals... you come first put NO ONE first before you in your life. Do not get caught up in putting too much emphasis on finding women/relationships and petty false images that other people are living 'funner' lives then you. If you spend too much time thinking about chicks or spending your time entertaining yourself your life will suffer for it later, best to develop your personality, soul and interests now then get too caught up in distractions. This does not mean you shouldn't socialize but you dont have to "milk college for all its worth", most people over-rate the college experience. Anyone worth his salt and intelligence will tell you that.
6. Older People's college nostalgia tends to obscure, color their exagerrate their views. Don't buy it. You can be just as happy forgetting about your college days being successful and independent as long as you don't neglect improving yourself and expanding your horizons, stagnancy kills the soul.
And avoid sleeping with anyone on you hall. It probably wont last, and it makes things weird.
Or you could end up getting married to them after you graduate, like three couples I knew in my hall.
-Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
to get respect stab the biggest guy playing frisbee with a shiv (sp?) and yell "I'm nobody's bitch".
Just dont say how good your kit is - or infact just say that everything you have is really old and not worth stealing - then people wont take your stuff - the better option is to insure everything; then if anything is taken you're not out of pocket - also keep a back up of work / assignments on the college network - schedule a backup DAILY - without fail, cos lecturers wont take ANY excuses... Even stolen equipment...
David Beckham is a bit stupid, but Steven Hawkins is a crap football player.
Besides locking up, always keep your valuables out of plain site. Thieves are lazy, they want the biggest pay check for the littlest amount of work and if your stuff is not in plain view it will look like a lot of work.
Infrared security beams attached to a control box. When beams are broken, the control box will release the rottweilers, THEN lock your door and coat the intruder with a powder of STATIC FREE AND ELECTRONIC SAFE...stuff. Then an armored APV will burst through the wall, a bunch of guy's saying hup hup hup hup will jump out with M16A2's and launch teargas and hit the intruder alot.
SLEEP.
Seriously, get eight hours a night. Go to bed, don't sit up all night. If the words are swimming before your eyes, go to sleep, get up early, and finish in the morning. I find that the first couple hours after I wake up are the most effective time in the day. Of course, I use forty five minutes of them swimming, another hour and a half playing my violin, and then anything left over gets used for ancient Greek. Physics and math must wait until I start work.
Get to be known (in a good way) by dorm staffers. I knew a guy in college who had his locked room looted because an imposter told one of the dimmer RAs that he was my friend and had been locked out by his roommate. RA opened door, not knowing friend by sight, and imposter ran off with everything.
And get a strong bolt for your bike. If there's room, keep it in your room. Crooks sometimes have bolt cutters.
By all means, enjoy an evening walk. Just don't habitually do it at 4 in the morning. Campuses still have crime, and some major universities are located in the wrong part of town.
#1. Party: Socialization will be very important in your future work. Be a geek, but be a geek that parties. Get drunk on weekends. Have some girls without paying money for them.
#2. Projects: Practice is the best way to learn. Go to class, take a few notes, then try to pratice. If your graduation is close related to computers this is even more easy. Usually professors always have good projects in which you can participate, talk to them.
#3. Enough grades: This item depends on what the market expects from you. Talk to several empleyers and try to discover what is enough for them, keep your self a little bit above the enough. If you focus too much in grades, you won't be able to focus in other more imporant things.
#4. Parents: Don't ever forget your parents. They are working really hard for you to get this opportunity. Always thanks them, and always visit them. Respect your parents, and raise your kids to respect them, and respect you.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
... Rush a fraternity/sorority or two or three. Not saying you have to join, but you'd be surprised how the stereotypes - and this goes for any stereotype - get thrown out the window and you may find a group you fit in with. Me personally, I ended up joining a Greek fraternity where nearly every member of the house was an engineer - mostly computer science or computer engineering. A real bonus when it came time to study past exams or networking with old Alumnus (see #3).
Even if you don't join, you'll still get free food, free beer and a way in to all their parties - a plus if you're a guy trying to meet chicks (see #1).
I'm sitting here reading these replies and thinking how sad it is. Every school is different but I can tell you there are still many schools out there where crime is very rare. My freshmen year I went with security at the top of my mind. I had a security cable and full cabinet for my pc, a secure box for other gear, etc. My roommate and hallmates turned out to be my best friends in the world. A few weeks after moving in, all that security seemed more then a bit lame and bite-in-the-ass. By my senior year we lived in a house with no locks on the door, hell, people coming in and out at all hours, huge parties, the works all with a number of PCs, a unix (real unix not linux) box, laptops, nice stereo gear, and more and never had a single thing stolen. Use your head but still trust your neighbors. And most importantly, enjoy these four years (strike that, make it 5 or 6), works is nice but a lot less fun then college....
I recently purchased a home. In not the best neighborhood (there are two soup kitchens within 2 miles, and 4 ABC stores in the same range)... I converted one of the rooms with external access into an audio studio. I worry a lot about security.
What did I do?
1. Every piece of equipment gets a steel cage. The design of these is simple; take standard steel stock, cut with a dremel, and build a rectangular prism that can contain the item in question. Yes I had to learn welding. Put in crossbars that prevent the item from being lifted out and a decently sized padlock. Most items I have been able to position the crossbars so that the item is useable while in the cage. With a laptop this would involve a bar at the top of the keyboard and one at the bottom. Pretty? no. Secure? yes. When you have $10,000+ worth of equipment and the first day you were at your new home you met a fine gentleman walking by how had "just got out" for "gettin caught up shanking that bitch girl o mine", it's worth it.
2. Video surveillance. It's visible. I designed and printed a custom sign to the effect of "premises under wireless video surveillance" with a diagram showing the camera, the computer, the internet, and the server. Indicating quite clearly that you can't just steal the computer and take the tapes with you. In my case I bought a bunch of tv cards and real wireless/wired surveillance cameras. With the size of a typical dorm room you could probably get away with a webcam. I coded up some Windows software that saves pictures off site whenever the frames have a certain amount of difference in them; I'll be glad to dig around and find that program for you if you want...
3. All my equipment has serial numbers on it. One clearly visible tag, one tag inside the equipment somewhere. The numbers and locations of tags are on hardcopy in my records safe. Local pawn shops are required to wait 30 days before selling new goods; plenty of time to call every one in town.
4. Insurance. If all these measures fail me, I'm still insured for full replacement value.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
at one time i didn't lock my room,
somebody actually hid "grass" in my room for somebody else to pick it up.
so lock your room.
Instead of relying on security "methods" that are unreliable, you could just make sure that everything that is important to you goes with you when you leave the room. For instance, don't leave your PDA or MP3 player lying around. Take your laptop with you, too, because I'm pretty sure there was a ./ report that the security locks are unreliable and can be defeated without actually cutting the wire.
I'm racking my brain. What swear word has three *s?
I'm a physics TA at a Canadian university. My advice:
Attend classes and do assignments. Of the 30 people in my summer intro to physics courses 15 people came to classes. 3 of these were pity passed with marks of about 60% because they tried hard and the prof recognized them. Of the 15 who did not come to class or do assignments 3 passed on their own merits. The others I will see again in the fall or winter term.
Also lockers are not a safe place to leave valuables. Gym lockers are fairly isolated (yeah a slashdotter in the gym-right) and things often get stolen from them. Lockers in actual building are safer unless someone sees you putting a laptop or iPod etc in it.
Finally, take non-CS type courses and get involved in activities. I am a woman and I find a well rounded person much more attractive than the guy who spends all his time with the other guys playing video games. (Oh yes, buy a good lube to go with your free condoms- it's very important)
People are on good behavior first out of hte gate. Then, when they're more comfortable with those around them, after usually 3-5 months into the school year, they start taking what they like. Don't fall into the trap of trusting those you've made your friends in the first of the year. One of them will screw you somehow.
- Sig this!
"My other laptop is an AR-15."
Dude, you are going to college and you are worried about being robbed? I did not go to college here in the US but I'd say you should feel pretty safe in there. Any kid who can pay college tuition here in the US should have no reason to rob anything from you. It does not look to me like you should feel paranoid about it.
When I was in school I had a two draw file cabinet, it was small enough to fit in my dorm room yet I could lock the top draw with my valuables and put a two cinder blocks in the bottom drawer. You could also take and drill a 2" hole through both sides meeting in one corner of the cabinet and run a bike lock through the holes and your bed frame. I never had a thing taken during my 4 years in school.
This may sounds somewhat intuitive, but don't lock your bike up to stationary objects that can easily be dismantled.
In college I had my bike locked up to the outside on my front porch which seemed safe enough. Silly me. The theives easily removed the wooden slats from the porch and took the bike without a hitch.
Some suggestions:
1) Most dorms have a storage room for bikes with chains bolted through the floor. Even if its a pain to get your bike in and out use this room.
2) When you live off-campus or in an apartment or house, always take your bike inside. if you do not have floorspace to keep the bike in the foyer or your room, buy hooks to hang it from the wall/ceiling.
3) Although you might like your bike's fancy paintjob and pristine components, get out the paint, sandpaper, and the tape. Make it look like a piece of crap. Experienced bike theives will even go for decent components so the more unrecognizable/superficially flawed they are the better.
Finally, don't live with idiots. (read: people who are mentally deficient at locking doors)
You pay through gazoo if you have a low deductable, especially for computer gear. These days you get a low end laptop for the price of the deductable.
...do people take self defense seriously and not rely on always absent law enforcement officers to provide them with a false sense of security.
This works great when done correctly, in high school I had a friend (we'll call him joe smith) who had two TI-85 calculators (about $80-100 each at the time)stolen so when he finally bought a third one he painted rainbows on the front and back and wrote 'Joe Smith is Gay' in purple. He never had that one stolen and when people asked him about it, he just told them he did it to keep his third TI-85 from getting ripped off. I just covered mine with racing stickers which worked for me since I was the only person who actually knew anything about cars.
Basically if you make your stuff blatantly unique enough, then thieves will go for something less obvious.
And to add on to #1 of the parent, knowing and talking with your professors is very handy for more than just grades and homework. They are great sources of information on the college internal affairs and can oftentimes be great resources for things other students don't have access to. For instance, becoming good friends with one of my profs enabled me to get a computer-related job when I was in a crappy, manual-labor student employment. I was able to use several profs as great references for employment because when they were called, they never said, "Who???"
There are some pricks out there and there are some great, insightful, inspiring people. Try to find those and rub elbows as much as possible, you'll be forever grateful.
Blog,Twitter
I would just like to echo and affirm all the warnings about staying away from credit cards. It is really quite shameful, but as a freshman in college you will be inundated with credit card offers. Do yourself a favor and just say no. I know you'll be tempted, but trust me when I say that debt is like a black cloud hanging over your head. Even if you can make the minimum payments (and then some) without difficulty, being in debt still sucks. IMHO the only things worth going in debt for are a home and a reasonably priced car. If you ignore my advice and get the credit card anyway, try to follow this rule: don't charge things like food and gas, only charge durable goods. When you have a big pile of debt you need to at least be able to look at something (such as a big screen TV or a nice laptop) and be able to SEE why you're in debt; however with things like food, you have nothing to show for your debt.
I asked him about it, and was told that he'd had an art-major friend do it using some sort of a thin enamel that wouldn't block small openings (like grills) but dried solid as a rock. The idea was to reduce the resale value to virtually nil while making it painfully easy to recognize, thus presenting a VERY unappealing target to thieves. So, do you know any art majors?
Go to class, and learn some crap, even if you have to do it in spite of the professor. Get to school a couple days early and stick around a couple days so you can party before and after the semester.
Good luck!
Try to get into a co-op program. Not the housing kind of co-op, but a work/study kind of co-op. Not sure how many of the large corporations are doing it nowadays, but I co-op'd with IBM back in the 80s. Best thing I did for my education and carreer.
Co-oping does three really big things for you. A) It gives you a first look at the working world and allows you to change gears and shift your career based on REAL WORLD experience. B) You get $$ for college. C) You graduate with a resume.
Basically I did 2 years of undergrad, then alternated a semester of work and a semester of school.
I did 3 co-ops with IBM. One in NY, and 2 in VA. The NY coop taught me that I didn't want to code all day long, and VA got me intersted in VLSI, the last coop I did reliability and FA.
The downside of cooping is graduating later than all your friends. You may feel a little out of step with the rest of your class because you keep coming and going. Rent is *EASY* because there is usually someone that drops out and is willing to sublet for a single semester. Summers on campus are easy and cheap because EVERYONE is looking to unload.
You're more focused when you're back on campus after having a 4 month working stint...and you have $$ in your pocket and don't need to get a p/t job to support yourself.
Mom and Dad paid for my first 2 years, then they picked up just tuition the next 2 years. My last year I picked up the tab. That's what felt *really* good.
Oh, and my biggest regret: not taking a world religion course.
A good friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body.
You can't take it w/ you when you die. Free yourself from your attachment to worldly things and watch your stress levels drop and your bank account grow.
[o]_O
You learn 20% in the classroom, 80% outside of the classroom - College isn't all about the classes; they are important, don't get me wrong. No one pays $20K/year to hang out. But I learned the most outside of class in the form of social interaction, mental and psychological reform, and changing and honing of my beliefs and feelings. Understand that concept and you'll make a productive 4 years.
Party like it's on sale for $19.99 - You'll never get to do it again, and even into your twenties you'll start to slow down and start saying things like, "I used to be able to do that" in reference to long nights of drinking and partying where 3pm was breakfasttime the next day. I'm not saying you need to get so wasted every weekend that you can't see straight; have a few of those, but at least go out, have a beer, and socialize as much as possible.
Appreciate the opportunities - Picture this: it's a Thursday afternoon. The weather has just gone sunny and warm, the kind that makes you feel like everything's great. You have class at 2:30. A friend says, "Too bad we have class, we should go have a beer by the river and enjoy the weather." What are you going to do? SKIP THE CLASS! Don't do it every day, but in cases like this, you'll gain more from that skip than you would have had in class. This situation hit me during senior year; all my roommates were in the same class with me. We actually sat down, wrote and email to the prof, and apologized, saying that the day was too nice to spend inside, we hoped he understood. Then we left and went out by the river, had some beers, and shot the shit. A great, happy day. When we came home, we found an email from the prof, saying, "I don't blame you."
Women are fascinating creatures -- meet some - This is obviously for the guys, but girls, feel free to reverse the idea. Women are really fascinating creatures, and I'm not talking about just sex. Their unique perspective on life and ideas and views are great stimuli for the mind; find the interesting ones and hang out with them. Cultivate great friendships with women of all walks -- even if they never turn out to be a date or a lay, there's nothing like walking across campus and being able to yell out, "Hey, Erin!" and having that cute blonde wave back at you enthusiastically, stop and talk to you. How's that for an ego boost?
That being said, I would agree with the "get laid" sentiment to some extent. At least, there's a lot of women both interesting and just plain attractive that I wished I had gotten up the guts to approach and ask them for a night of passion or at least some friendly exchanges of pleasure. So give it a shot, you'll be glad you did.
Your friends are your rock - Make friends. Lots of them. Of all types of people, backgrounds, and interests. Don't limit yourself to geeks or any other group. Knowing people of all walks gives you the power of connections, of knowing who to contact when you need something. Need a great, raucaus party to go to? Are you going to contact a geek? No! Contact that football player you made friends with in the caf line. Need an 'in' on the setup of wiring in the buildings? Call up the weird guy that studies blueprints you saw last week! I could give a million examples, but have friends. Call them randomly. Take them out for beers at 11pm. Go over and give them 'stress breaks'. Anything.
Respect your sleep - I don't mean don't stay out late or anything -- that's fine. But respect sleep for what it is: a chance to refresh. Something that makes you think clearer. If you schedule your classes in the early mornings and you're a night owl, you WILL SUFFER. I don't care how "dedicated" you are -- when push comes to shove, and it will, you'll be screwed. Know yourself, admit your weaknesses, and get over them. Watch your schedules so you can get naps and sleep appropriately.
Take Naps - Piggybacking on the above, take naps.
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Ya, because the huge titted nursing students always bypass the hulking monolithic sport-scholarship leechers as they beat down the path to the techno nerds who fixed their machines. Get a clue, and get out of your parents basement already. The fantasy that hot chicks will do you, just because you help them is just that, a fantasy. They will play your zitty ass so you WILL help them, but please, they wouldn't fuck you to save their lives, let alone their hardrive. Watch it happen. Ever notice that hot chicks wear the shortest skirts, lowest cut tops, on the days when they need your help most? I used to know when assignments were due, or when tests were scheduled, just by watching what a couple of these girls wore to class. If you can see her nipples, or her gash, there is something due, sure as shit. Granted, I am not talking about all girls, or even all hot girls, but please, stop selling this fantasy to the poor geeks out there, who are convinced they are gonna get some from Chesty Chesterton. It ain't ever gonna happen, not when she can give the same shit away to the loaded sports hero, who can actually give her better social standing, better toys, better bods, better genes, and a better support payment 4 years down the road.
Aside from a stint on the first floor where drunks stumbling in would fiddle with the doors for laughs, I rarely ever locked my door in school.
Hell, I rarely even closed my doors.
:wq
Utilize the 2nd amendment. ()
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Don't go to University thinking you have to measure up to someone else's standards for what you have to do there (e.g. the list from one to seven posted earler). The most important thing about University is developing your sense of self and preparing yourself for your real life. To that end, do expose yourself to different aspects of university life: go see a lecture, some art films, a ska band, but don't feel that you have to drink 14 Coors Light's every night and try to hit on every skanky chick in your dorm to get the "true college experience".
Like a lot of Slashdot readers, you may not be physiologically wired to enjoy people hanging around you in close quarters for eight months at a time. This is not a fault with you, don't be afraid to go read a book or surf the web somewhere quiet, like the library. It would probably also be good to find a place off-campus where you can escape the pressure for a while. Keeping fit and active is also always an excellent idea and should help with University stress.
.. was from my pop, and now I pass it on to you. It got me through many a sleepless code-slinging night:
"Illigitmos Non Carbordundum"
Most professors are one-person moral suppression teams. Professors are mostly adults without responsibility and they are not held accountable for outlandish words, spoken or written. The longer they live like this the more infantile they become. Your best teachers are your fellow students. Work with them. Do not let your prescribed course of instruction get in the way of your education. Finally, it is probably best to take the time to graduate.
Yarn and safety pins worked pretty well for my mittens when I was in school...
Here ya go for when you get into the swing of things. http://www.frustratedstudent.com
You aren't going to meet the best chicks in your software engineering classes.
Ah, here we have a marvelous example of the attitude that keeps the best chicks out of your software enginerring classes. Asshole.
Sincerely,
A chick who attends software engineering classes
Claymores!
That said, I'd actually reccomend against an expensive bike if you're just using it on-campus. A decent 10-speed will get you everywhere you need and can cost you less than $50 at your local Walmart, much much less if you check out yard sales. Since you're on campus, equipment breakdowns are less of an emergency and more of an inconvenience.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Lock your damn door, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
But keep it open when you're there (and are awake and decent). You want to be social, don't you? At a tech school, just having your door open could make you the most social person around (sad but true).
If you're on the ground floor, don't forget about the windows. One year I watched the guy in the room next to me walk into the building, open his door, and run outside. It turns out that when he opened his door, he saw someone climbing into his window trying to steal his stereo. The building I was in had flimsy screens that would fall out with a slight nudge, making entry simple when the window was open for ventilation.
Oddly enough though, I made it through a year with an unlocked door with almost no trouble. My roommates (I had 3 that year) had trouble remembering to bring their keys with them, so they never locked the door (these doors didn't lock automatically when closed). On the night before I moved out at the end of the year, someone swiped my cheap phone, leaving all of the computer equipment untouched (that was the same night someone put a dead squirrel on my windshield, but that's another story). Thieves are strange, don't think you can understand what they're after.
1. Sex. Women do all their freaky stuff in college, so have an open mind and hit as much of it as you possibly can.
If you're at a tech school, this might be little or none. Don't obsess over sex - women at that age, while appealing, are probably still somewhere between "Oh my god, you'll never guess who looked at me in math class!" and "I wonder what I can get him to buy me if I wear this dress?" Mix in a male/female ratio that is highly in their favor, and you have enough emotional trauma for an entire season of after school specials. If you manage to find a good one, go for it, but you won't know that until you get to know her. Learn to talk to people and get to know them as human beings and not sex objects. Chances are, you'll have fonder memories of late-night conversations that go nowhere than of easy scores. Listen, talk, and don't be afraid to take a few chances.
2. Class. A good education is important, but don't let it interfere with #1.
Don't miss lectures. You still will of course, but don't get it in your head that you don't need to go. Don't fall asleep in the lecture until you've finished going through the day's material and are sure that you understand it better than the professor. If you have to cut corners, don't read the book, especially if it was written by one or more professors at your school.
3. Network. Not TCP/IP, but people. Every job you get in the future is going to be because of who you know, so get to know a LOT of people. Get to know them well so they don't forget you.
This might apply at the more well-known schools, but at the smaller ones, the only people there who will be of any importance will have dropped out by their Junior year (they will go back to get honorary degrees and have buildings named after them though). Instead, learn to talk to people. If you can't grab someone's attention from a crowd and get a clear and concise point across, you're not ready to graduate. Work the career fairs, even if you're not looking for a job. You'll still get lots of experience dealing with people, and if you come up with your own unique angle, they will remember you next year (even if the representatives are different). And there's plenty of Free Stuff to grab while you're there...
4. The Law. Graduating from college doesn't erase your law record, so don't get arrested.
And remember, at schools where the students are too geeky to think up good pranks, the cops might have nothing better to do than enforce laws pertaining to the possession and consumption of alcohol. If the police want to have a chat with you when you're out walking late at night, be ca
Another thing which I found invaluable was keeping coffee in my room. The average dorm faucet could produce water hot enugh for instant coffee and being able to drink it on the way to class without having to stop anywhere was a great boon, as I had trouble waking on time. That said, be wary of dorm water... while it passes more safety tests than your average bottle of spring water, I've seen sore throat epidemics due to differences in the amounts and types of minerals. Drinking fountains are almost always safe, but faucets may be less so.
Shower shoes or a cheap set of flip-flops are invaluable for shared showers. Also, bring a shower caddy for your soap and stuff, preferably one that runs a chance of hooking to the shower curtain bar or faucet in case your shower stall's hooks and soap dishes have been ripped off.
Lastly, as regards data transfer, invest in a decent-size USB memory stick and buy a lanyard for it. There are few things more invaluable than quick data transfer when you find out that all the printers in the lab you're in have died and you need to sneakerware your paper to the next building. And a lanyard means you'll be keeping the USB stick with you at all times, sparing you that trouble of remembering which floppy or CD you put your paper on. And backups are invaluable... if you get mail space or server space, consider keeping a copy of all of your papers and programming assignment in both of those places as well as a hardcopy version. It will save your bacon numerous times as well as make you popular to friends who take the class later. Oh, and for books, buy or borrow as many as you can from people who've already taken the class. The book store prices are ridiculous both for buying and selling, and from another person, you get a good chance of getting their notes as well. Just beware of versioning issues...
Above all, have fun! While the next 4 (or 5, or, 6, or whatever) years will determine your life, the experience of college is also highly enjoyable and is a big part of the growing experience. Join a few clubs. Go to parties. Form study groups. Enjoy yourself.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
... do you, like, work for Maxim magazine? :)
The point of a broad education is one of the big differences between the UK and US education systems.
As far as I know, in the US people do a major course and several minor subjects. wheras in the uk we specialise very early on.
for example I dropped all non science courses at the age of 16, not becuase i was struggling but because i was only allowed to do a max of 4 subjects from 16-18 (physics, chem, biology, computer science), and then at uni (college) i only studied one thing for 3 years.
in some ways this is good in that we gain a very thourough knowledge of a subject, but I would have liked to have been able to study literature a little and still remain a scientist.
Make the best of the system you guys have out there and meet some non geeks!
It's My Tea and I'll Drink it if I Want To!
Nothing beats a Claymore!!
Because everybody knows that in college, its shank or be shanked!
Start at least one business while you are there..!!! If I had I would have been retired when I left... and this can help pay for stuff... :)
1. of course is true
You're in an environment where many people are independent for the first time and want to give freedom a whirl. Youthful hijinx ensue. However, in between 1 and 2 should be 'Develop a love of good alcohol. Develop a love of bad alcohol.' College, of course, offers unparraleled drinking oppertunities and, thanks to budgetary constraints, beerbonging camping trips, beer gardens, or sunday mornings, you are going to discover the diffrence between the two.
Networking with people is, of course, imporant but, if you are living in res, you have unparraleled LAN oppertunities. If you where to whip out some of the 'ol Doom or UT2004, entertainment and, of course drinking, would follow shortly.
Don't get arrested. Come close though. Work out the diffrence between 'Police' and 'Campus Cowboys.' Campus Cowboys, of course, have no real power.
Credit Cards are not free money. The t-shirts credit companies give you are, however, free. If you keep signing up for teh same credit card you may never have to do laundry again (provided you also invest in some beer promotions). Don't settle for crappy radios or pocket organsiers, only the finest for you.
Warez and MP3s are pretty staple for universities. Everyone has computers, and internet HENCE competitions for who can get the most porn, most mp3s, most movies, most episodes of Adult swim cartoons, are all a nesseccary evil. Still purchase CDs of course (something trendy and indie, just to show you are hip and with it).
Try your hand at being a psuedo intellectual. It's fun. Sit arround sipping wine and eating cheese and discussing the political affairs of whereever and why you hate whoever and what kafka was really on about. The less informed you are the more pretentious and amusing this is. This is, afterall, why most people go to unviersity. Say something deep like 'why are we really here at all?' and don't answer with 'to obtain a frag count higher then God himself' and you might have a reasonable chance at goal #1.
Take classes for personal enrichment or just for fun. Chances are, at your university you have to have some breadth which allows you to justify taking 'Dinosaur Earth', 'Women of the Bronze Age' (misleading title if i ever heard one), and 'Wine Science' (300 level science credit at UBC, really tough though). They add to your degree and, as stated, will allow you an avenue to #1. Avoid ellectives that you don't find interesting or that will take time away from the courses that matter. Language courses are a good avenue to women. Women studies isn't. Everyone thinks that it's this great idea no one else has thought of. Don't do it!
Also, clubs are important and fun. Surf clubs or Skii/Board clubs (depending on location) are good for meeting people, getting some excercise, and generally are great avenues for drinking.
Also, despite what people say, always leave your door open. Sure, when you go out, you can close it, but other then that unwelcome visitors and random drop ins are what make the day interesting. Your in university anyway. You shouldn't have anything of value in there except for your computer and possibly stereo. Leavnig your door open will just make accomplishing any one of the points on the list easier (though, while achieving #1, closing the door is polite but not nesseccary)
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
>> I've longed for "freaky" sex with a hot college chick all my life, thing is, now I'm old enough to be their dad. So teach at a university, dad.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Leave all your expensive crap at home. The more I read about people bringing their X Boxes, super stereos, etc. to college, the angrier I get. You're there for an education number one, number two, there are far more interesting things to do than sit around playing your X Box all day.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Major in more than one thing. My sister graduated in May with a Sociology degree, and is having an impossible time finding work. Econ and Business degrees are probably the most applicable to the real world, so think about those. English, Lit, Communications & friends show that you know how to convey ideas well to others.
Bring cheap shit. Lock your doors. Keep renters insurance. Keep backups. All of these file under one central dogma: Use Common Sense / Shit Happens . Every single time I went joyriding on an unlocked bike in undergrad to get from one dorm to another, it was because somebody didn't use their head. Yes I'm a bad person.
Drink. Party. Have a good time. The last week before we graduated we had a "Senior Week" where all the seniors joined in on barcrawls. It was actually sad seeing people let loose for the first time ever, with graduation looming 4 days away. Seriously. I specifically remember hearing one guy turn to me and say, "Why didn't I do this earlier in college?"
Grades matter...but they're not everything. The amount of work generally required to go from a C+ to a B is generally pretty small. To go from a B to an A- though, is different. 3.0 is the magic number for a lot of grad schools and the like. Plus (in the US at least) that's the cutoff for driving insurance discounts. Getting into schools with a 2.9 or 2.8 isn't impossible, it's just a lot more work. Trust me on this one.
Meet people. Hook up with as many chicks/dudes as possible (depending on preference). Not surprisingly, parties are a great place to get your pinky stinky. Just try to use common sense, even if you're blotto'ed.
NETWORK WITH YOUR FRIENDS. Believe me, every single friend with a good job got it from networking. Make sure you keep tabs on as many people as possible from college, and don't be afraid to hit them up for possible job leads. I'm currently doing this (again) after putting off grad school for a bit.
Just remember: these WILL be the best days of your life. I didn't believe it when I went into college, but coming out I quickly came to that realization. Don't blow it. Take advantage of everything around you. And if you're at a big school, don't be fooled by the 4-and-out mentality. Unfortunately I went to a small private college where unless you had an extra $35K/yr to blow, you HAD to get out in 4 years. Take your time, learn what you want to. And don't forget to smile when you're walking around campus.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
it's costly...
I lived off-campus, renting a room from friends of my parents. They were an older couple who valued their peace. This meant that:
I still managed to make lots of friends, despite missing out on the whole dorm experience, by joining clubs and lurking at various related hangouts, so I wasn't an anti-social loner or anything. But it saved my sanity to have a place I could go and get away from the noise.
Disclaimer: I'm somewhat introverted by nature (in that I need to be alone to recharge) and I'm not a party animal. This worked for me but it really depends on your personality.
On the other hand, I spent most of my non-sleeping time on campus so I don't think it would have been a problem for me were I an extrovert, nor do I think I missed out on campus life in general. It was just where I slept and kept my stuff.
All this advise is fine and good, but completely unneccesarry if you go to the school I went to.
There are only 24 people in your class freshman year and we don't even have locks on our doors. You can leave cash laying out on your desk with your door wide open and come back a week later without a dollar missing. Computers are left all over campus without a worry. Plus since there were very few girls and all of them engineers as well, no real need to worry about #1. I had a girlfirend for about a month freshman year, but once that ended there weren't any new girls around so you just didn't really have to worry about it.
I am not sure if this is a good way to keep your sanity, but you always knew your stuff was safe.
Do this. No one will ever want to steal something like that!
meh
There is a device out that consists of a part that attaches to your laptop and another part that you wear on your person. If the two get too far apart (ie: your laptop is walking away), your laptop will start screaming. If I were to get a laptop, I would get one of these for sure.
..just good enough to get the job done. Say a Celeron 400 should do it. OK get fancy and splurge for a P3 700.
No one would dream of stealing it - but you can install and run anything you need to on it.
Spend your money on beer and summer activities.
Ok, then maybe my "really boost the odds in your favor" was an overstatement. The parent is right, some people are just ignorant, and there is nothing you can do about that. I think even if it "doesn't count," it should still show something about the character of the person: they actually found work while in school.
I found that it helped *me* in my job search. Also, and when *I* was hiring people, it mattered. In fact, on more than one occasion I hired a current student instead of hiring a recent graduate with no experience. Three reasons (maybe not great, but it was my thinking at the time):
1. The student is making an effort to get work experience.
2. I could pay them less for approximately the same skills (which I estimated at "Zero, but trainable" for both).
3. I could contact professors I trust at the school and get their personal opinions of the current students. Only one of the recent grads was even recognized by the professors I knew.
The downside was having to work around a student's school schedule, but that only bit me in the ass twice in 2 years (and both times I was able to put in weekend time to compensate).
That said, the way I found the students I hired was through the school directly, instead of passively receiving resumes. So, more advice to the students: find which professors have industry ties and let them know you are interested in work positions. Professors are frequently approached by alumni looking to poach talent.
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Safe means use a condom and/or other means of avoiding STDs and pregnancies.
Sane means you are in your right head - if you're drunk or tripping your judgement is out the window, if you are doing it merely to fit in or look cool to your peers that's not sane.
Consensual means you both know and agree with what's going on. If either you or your partner is insensible becuase of drugs or drink you can't consent and it's rape. Don't do it to someone else and don't let yourself get into a situation where it can be done to you.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
use wifi for #6
OK, for your expencive stuff, you get a safe (even one of those small fireproof boxes) that has a plastic coating, with a metal handle. on the inside you put some kind of high voltage generator, (and ground make sure you have a good ground) and then in the back of the safe (kinda hidden), you put a key-switch, so if someone see's the safe and trys to open it or take it, they get shocked (make sure it's a good shock that will put them out for about 10 minutes) and if you need to open the safe, turn off the switch in the back, open it up.
.
The other thing i recommend is get some of that cable for chaining up a bike with the plastic coating, tie it to the biggest piece of furnature in the room. and build a little circuit that you hide inside the case that puts out the loudest noise possible.
or drill a whole on the bottom of the case, get one of those "personal alarms" from radioshack, so if you pull the string it sounds an alarm. and put the string through the hole and duct tape it to the floor, so an ususpecting theif will pick it right up and . . . .
set a BIOS password on all your computers (and on a desktop, solder the little jumper together so nobody can reset it)
if you have a nice monitor, find a way to secure the video cable so that the only way to take it is to cut off the connector.
put stuff in your car if you don't need it in your dorm.
You don't need security. You need to go out and interact with other students, professors, townies, etc. You overestimate your risks. You misunderstand what measures make you safer. Relax. Enjoy. Learn.
I had two roomies... both with a few things that really irked me. The first was a druggie and the second liked to "borrow" my stuff while I was out... he used my speakers and stuff but mainly the problem I had is him using (taking) my powerbook... while I was at work cable lock your lappy and take your cable for your speakers... and don't leave your cd spool out lest it grow smaller while you are in class or at work... good luck at school.
Take your courses seriously, but don't overload yourself during first-year. 12 or 15 hours is plenty. Treat your school work like a full-time job. Work at it all day, six days a week. Then take the evenings off. Take one full day off each week. The evenings you take off from shool work are when you get the _other_ half of your education.
There is an easy way to get A's. All you have to do is pay attention to what the prof says is required, and then do it. It is easier to kick-ass for the first part of a semester, get those things done, and then be able to coast a little at the end. It is much more stressful to coast at the beginning of a term, and then try to catch up later.
The social education is important too. Choose your friends carefully. Pick good, loyal, trustworthy people. The best and surest way to make a friend is to be a friend. If you are lucky, you will have them for the rest of your life.
I'm saying these things from hindsight, of course. I didn't do it this way in my own freshman year. I wish I had. But, I guess it worked out ok anyway.
Stephen Hansen, Ph.D.