I've slacked on my posts these last few days

Quite a bit has happened in the last couple of days, which is part of the reason why I haven't been updating often enough. I've completed all the reading on methods of Data Mining, basic algorithms, and ways to attack the problem. That was all very interesting, but I was more then ready to be done with the reading and on to the application.

I decided to start learning about how to use Weka, an open-source program that contains many algorithms for data mining, as well as several GUIs for running and comparing them. I still wish that I knew more about the different algorithms (when and how to apply them, what kind of input they like, exc.) but I'll have to figure that out as I go along. I did some extensive experementation in Weka with several small databases that it comes with, which has allowed me to gain alot of familiarity with the ways to crunch and interpret the data.

Mostly I'm waiting to get my login to the server so I can start mining Deseret Book's customer database. I don't know yet what my objective is in doing that, but I think it will likely take some time to familiarize myself with the tools we use to extract information from the server, clean the data, and put it into at minable database. However, I am looking foreward to getting some mining goals so I can know what I'm looking for. Reading about how these programs work is great, but I'm getting tired of just reading.