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| Zatko, Amanda, Jared, Kris, and some other dudes and gals, including parents, are going down to Jamaica tomorrow at 7:25 AM! We'll be arriving somewhere where a bus can take us to Sandals at Ocho Rios by bus presumably. We'll probably be at our hotel by 1pm hopefully. I have to be at the airport at about 4:30am officially, but might be getting there by 5am. There will be an butt ass ton of pictures when I get back. Probably on my facebook profile and I'll link them here. I'm long overdue for a vacation. Peace. |
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Don't we?
For the past two days my brothers and I have been working on my lawn. It's exhausting. It'll be awesome when it's done. I'll have pictures up in about a month. |
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These two new songs could be said to be written for Kodie, since one was before I went to pick her up at the Vet, and the second one when I got her home and all fed (2 full cans of soft meaty dog food!).
The first one, a Mother Fing Jam in G, can be downloaded here. It shows why I love my new found experience of fingerpicking, and also hammering on two notes at the same time with two different fingers on two very different strings. You just have to put on headphones and listen to it to tell where I'm talking about. Otherwise, it's just I hear a rhythm in my head and play along.
The second one, Long Jam, here, starts off finding a rhythm to play along with, then plays around in D for a while.
Kodie got her whole bottom row of teeth pulled :( The front though, none of her big teeth. These looked real bad in the past week or so, and I noticed two of them, at least, were really loose. So they're all gone. She's fine though. They said in a few weeks, if I want I can go back to the hard food, if Kodie will eat that stuff still! I gave her some soft food, and it was like meat with gravy. Two full cans, and she just ate it up. She was starving so we'll see how she is tomorrow. If she's still excited about getting food, then I actually have to learn how to portion it for her! Usually when the bowl's empty I fill it and it won't be empty for about a day or so. She's very good about eating that food because she doesn't like it :) It's only when necessary. But I bet I could keep filling her bowl up with this soft, meaty, gravy covered food and she'll just keep eating it.
I watched the HBO show "In Treatment" tonight and really liked it. I was like "I should probably watch that show, it's on a couch, and there's no room for bad acting, so it's probably excellent or really shitty". Then as I was thinking that, it came on. It was probably an "On Next" thing. It's on HBO. It was excellent, I must say. Might watch it some more. |
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I was sick Monday and Tuesday, but when I went downstairs after two days of bed ridden disgustingness, I noticed my dog wasn't eating anything, hadn't eaten for two days. While I would have been flattered if she stopped eating because I was sick, I know they're smarter than that :P I tried to give her her favorite treat and she turned it down.
Today (Wed the 12th) I was fine on maybe taking one more day off to fully recover, but I had to get the dog to the Vet, and I might as well go to work after that. I was feeling like total garbage up until about 2:30, though, and then from about 3:15 onto the end of the day. Took Kodie to the Vet at 9 or shortly after, was in work by 9:45. I missed the phone calls from the Vet because this is how delirious I was all day: we're in sort of a lunch meeting at work, and I'm like "Hmm, if my phone goes off... blah blah, should I check to see if it's on? Nah it's fine"... 2:30 rolls around and I'm like "Man, they still haven't called me..." The office closes at 3 and opens again at 6. I check my pockets... no phone! No idea. It was in the car. I may have even been delirious about Kodie not eating for 2 days since I was totally out of it for 1. But just her energy level, it was soooo low, and if you know Kodie, you know she's nothing but energy most of the time. You *can* calm her down, but usually she does much more stupid and funny things when she's all crazy :)
It's like, of course Vets can say "Oh we have to check for everything" and charge you for it all... but it's not even that expensive. But you can tell that Kodie has some bad teeth and might not be eating because it hurts her. But the Vet's gonna do blood tests, spool tests, all this stuff, might as well. And you can't say "I think it's just because of her teeth", even though in the end you may be right... because us lay people don't know.
I know I can't say that because in my profession, it is also best to be thorough. I know sometimes I can see the answer WAAAY before I even begin looking into code, lots of times I can tell you the exact file the problem is in, and almost never can I tell you what line it's on. Sometimes I boggle my own mind on how quick I come across some of these answers.
Just that it's probably way less expensive to find a problem with your pet relatively soon after a scheduled appointment so you don't have to get all the tests again :)
She'll be fine though. She may never be able to eat hard food again, but I'm sure the Vet will tell me what kind of food to give her. They called me at like 7 and said I could pick her up after giving me the lowdown on her condition and how none of the tests they've done led to anything (no kidding!?). They said I can take her home or leave her overnight because she has another thing tomorrow. Leave her overnight?! Yeah right. They tell me she can't eat any food, even though I took her there because she hadn't eaten any food for two days. Plus, the lady doctor assistant was like "I gave her some of the i/d food (some sort of dietary food for dogs), and she ate it right up" And I was like "That's good! Was it soft?" And she's like "Yeah, it was soft". But I get Kodie home and they gave me this 3/4 full tin of that food and told me not to feed her because she's having a procedure done tomorrow to her teeth. I'm like "Ok. No problem"... Yeah right. She's gotta be starving, so I give her almost all of the can of food. There's hardly any left :) But now she seems real good. She had so much energy tonight out with the neighbor's dog, it was great :) |
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There's probably two subscribers to my feed, and one of them yelled at me :p But Google Reader should be back to business now, shortly after showing 400+ new items from this website. Atom has an ID that it uses, and Google Reader apparently keeps track of your read items by that ID and doesn't care about the date at all, evidently. So, new items showed up back to the beginning of this website.
So, will there be 400+ new items every time I post? No. It has all those IDs now, which are new and changed, and unless I change them, they won't show up again.
I can't just write a post apologizing though. I have to talk about the new cool thing that I'm working on here at home. I've talked about it before but apparently, wasn't able to carry through with it. Reasons were mainly that my laptop proved to be way to slow after the initial "wow" factor of installing Ubuntu. (My reaction now would be more "Wow, FreeBSD on a ThinkPad RULES!") The thing I'm talking about is my seamless integration between front end Javascript and backend Java. I wrote about it here. But I've made a few changes.
First, instead of the backend generating XML, it'll just read XML and spit out results in JSON. I'm kind of partial to that technology because of the name... it just kicks ass. I got my first foray into JSON last week at work. Initially, our backend PHP was just returning a few things, like 3, for the front end Javascript to parse and spit into HTML on the website. What the final requirements called for was way more complex, and I didn't want to have to come up with some naming scheme, because it would just get so ugly. Some things were related to each other but not to everything. It would be something like this:
"What is my name?:Jason,Steve,Albert:Jason:True: Jason,80%:Steve,5%,Albert:15%,2000,Elite"
This is like a quiz or trivia, where the question was "What is my name?", the possible answers "Jason,Steve,Albert" comma separated, the correct answer "Jason", whether that person got it write "True", and finally the percentages that other people guessed, the total points for that user "2000", and their ranking "Elite". And that's not even all of it. It has to include the next question, and all of those possible answers. Painful. So instead, this is what it looks like:
{
"LastQuestion" : {
"Text" : "What is my name?",
etc
},
"User" : {
"Points" : "2000",
etc
},
"AnswerPercentages" : {
"Jason" : "80",
etc
}
}
Much easier to maintain, much easier to read, much MUCH easier for the front end to parse! This can be parsed like this... assume your callback function is called "callback" and is passed whatever is returned from the server, e.g. the JSON code above:
function callback(data){
var obj = eval(data);
alert(obj.LastQuestion.Text); // will alert "What is my name?"
}
Yup, it's that easy.
Next affair... I'll need, and will build over time, a large Javascript library for building out websites with the data returned from the server. Tables, forms, etc. This will generally be a pain in the ass and is attributed to me delaying this project for as long as possible. Ugh.
If I get tired of that, then something's gotta give, and I'll either stop this crazy experiment or go crazy writing Javascript for hours and hours. Thank God for FireBug. |
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After about an hour of programming, I have my URLs in a search engine friendly format! This has many other benefits as well:
For instance, I don't have to know the ID of the news I want to link to, just the title. So, I can make a link to a news item I have previously written by typing in the title in a format that it expects. For the news item titled "The Guitar Player", the link will be "the-guitar-player". Click here to test.
Also, if I want, I can modify my "text writer" component in JSF, to search for strings like "[[The Guitar Player]]", and to write out the url, namely "/news/the-guitar-player". Or I'd have to make it "[[News|The Guitar Player]]" if I want to add more dynamic linking, say for photos, downloads, comments, etc. This is much like a Wiki works. It can be a "news wiki" or a "wiki blog" or something ridiculous like that.
Also, after I save this, it will probably write out all of the news in my atom.xml file... it might take a while, there'll be 454 news items! That's ok though. I'll probably have to delegate that task to a new thread, so I can get to adding more news right away.
Categories are changed for rewriting purposes. "Labels" have not been updated yet. I have to make a new page because a "Label" object can pertain to Downloads and Pictures, so I have to list results for each, or modify the URL rewrite filter to accept "/picture/label/me" and "/download/label/music" to list pictures of me and my music downloads, respectively.
I don't run Apache HTTPD, so I had to write the URL rewriter all in Java for Tomcat. It wasn't too bad. Regular Expressions are neat.
The meat:
String url = ((HttpServletRequest)req).getRequestURL().toString().replace(HttpUtil.getBaseUrl((HttpServletRequest)req), "");
if (rewriteConfig.ignoreUrl(url)){
chain.doFilter(req, resp);
}
else {
String location = rewriteConfig.getLocation(url);
String rewriteUrl = rewriteConfig.getUrl(location, url.replaceAll("/" + location + "/", ""));
if (rewriteUrl != null){
RequestDispatcher dispatcher = req.getRequestDispatcher(rewriteUrl);
dispatcher.forward(req, resp); // forward the request
}
else {
chain.doFilter(req, resp);
}
}
url is the requestUrl stripped of the host. This is so I can make it work on dev (http://localhost:8080/jtccom) and production (http://www.jasontconnell.com/).
This filter is called for every request, so I have an "ignore" map set up. This tests if the URL contains a ".", since every rewritten url will only contain numbers, letters, and the occasional "/" or "-". This is a HashMap for quick lookups. So, it won't attempt to rewrite calls to "/js/someFile.js".
The "location" part of the request is "/x/", so for news it will be "/news/". The location is "news". This is so I only have to loop through rewrite patterns for news, not for everything.
The pattern is written as "([0-9a-z-]+)/?" so if I pass in the whole URL (without the host), "/news/my-news-title", it won't match, so that's what the next line does, removes "/news/" so it's just "my-news-title". The getURL function returns the rewritten URL, so like "/news.jsf?title=my-news-title". I created a new unique column for News, and my "DaoWeb" interface has a "ChangeListener" property, so if I create a news or change it's title, it updates the "TitleKey" in this case. Pictures are just forwarded by their picture id for now, so
"/picture/23" as an example.
Coming soon: News by date span! /news/2008 for all news in 2008. /news/2008/03 for all news in March 2008! /news/2008/03/23 for all news on my birthday this year!!
Tune in for more updates. I'm cranking now, and Java is like riding a bike. I also fixed a few bugs. |
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I have seen a lot of 2008 predictions in the areas of business and technology, so I thought I'd add some that I was disappointed to not see.
#1. There will be a huge boost of business in the area of personal defensive equipment against big cats. Due to the zoo mauling a few weeks ago by a tiger (lion? forget), this will be estimated as a major threat that could happen to anyone anywhere. Marketers will try to push this on anybody who just lives in the same city a zoo is located. Items will include a steak hook that can be worn on the back with sirloin steaks that should be changed every four weeks. Also, a big ball of yarn with sedatives soaked in should be the second top selling item.
#2. Cricket will overtake baseball as the popular "innings" and "runs" based game in the USA. Look for major league franchises to start popping up in major cities throughout the country by around March. Philadelphia will have a team, called "The Philadelphia Phickets" which many Philadelphians will just call "f%@# its", which wouldn't be unheard of with the popularity of the acronym for "First Union Center" before it changed to the Wachovia Center, raising its popularity tremendously in Philly. Also, MLB All Stars like Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins will become addicts to the wicket and the 'silly point' and ultimately switch professions.
#3. 30s and 40s style blues will be the thing in 2008. Young kids and old will throw in their Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker albums, some will learn guitar, some will learn harp, all will learn soul, and we'll see around 300 new bands all performing Mississippi River Delta blues into a can recorded onto a phonograph. Eight track digital recording will see a huge dip in profits. As will any electricity based recording equipment and even instruments. Old acoustic guitars are the new gold.
#4. The internet will show its age. People will find a new way to communicate... speaking. Merchants will find a new way to hawk their wares... mainly I see door to door sales (with sales men or women knocking on your door to sell you things and let you try them out before buying) as the main means of income this year. This will inevitably force people to places they haven't been in a long time: outdoors, in order to avoid all of the interruptions during their personal communication time. This will lead to the next method of sale: markets. Also, as a side effect, people will stand by merchant booths and tell you what they think of products that they are selling. This will lead to a kind of "social networking" as I like to call it. People will say "Hey, do you want to be my friend?" Then they will exchange pictures and addresses, and each are welcome to stop by any time. As long as you're not one of those door to door salespeople, you are welcome. To show other people who they're friends with, they'll have a bulletin board of their friends' pictures, along with their addresses and interests, which will no doubt lead to some extra trips to their house by the salespeople, if they are deemed to be in the target market.
So now for some resolutions. Yeah, I never follow them. But this year, I won't either. So, I can basically set any goal and be guaranteed it won't be met.
#1. Make a million dollars. This is pretty easy. I just have to work six to eight jobs simultaneously. Actually, closer to 14 but I figure the interest I can gain from all the extra dough might be enough to put me over the edge.
#2. Make a million friends. If I do this, I can probably ask each of them to give me a dollar and then I'll have two in the bag.
#3. Make a million songs. If I do #2 and make a song about each of them, I can charge them each a dollar for their song so they feel like they're getting something for their money, accomplishing these first three at once.
#4. Make a million enemies. Let's see, I can do #2, make a song for each of them, charge them each a dollar and tell each one of them after they paid me that I gave everyone else their song for free. Then call them a sucker and laugh at them.
#5. Start a war. Do the first three, then make a million enemies that weren't once or are my friends, and start nasty rumors about both sides. My friend Jim once got arrested for inciting a riot, this would definitely win bragging rights.
#6. Travel to outer space. With a million dollars I'm sure I can hook up with one of those X Prize teams and book a flight.
#7. Quit drinking. Ok, that one's ridiculous.
So, pretty reasonable. Let me know what you think in the comments. |
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Let's see. First thing is my new putter came. I'm golfing with it tomorrow. Next, I ordered a bunch of CDs from Amazon (namely some Cracker that I didn't own yet, Nirvana that I once owned about 13 years ago, and Busta Rhymes, which I've never owned), and an electric shaver. It's the Braun 360 Complete with the self cleaning thing. I'm lazy and don't like wet shaving anymore.
Another thing is I ordered an iPod touch! 16 GB. So I'll be able to have all of my music on there still, plus room for about 7GB more, and more battery power, which is the big thing for me. I've wanted a new iPod for a while, and luckily I waited long enough for this beauty. Today, I was the only one in our room at work after 2:30, and I wanted to blast Beastie Boys for the remainder of the day. I went to plug in my iPod to the speakers, and after about 3 minutes of play, it died. I'm pretty sure there's no battery capacity left. I tried to borrow a coworker's USB adapter but it wouldn't charge. I think this model only charges through Firewire, not USB. Another HUGE thing about the new iPod is the interface. Mine shows just a list of Artists or whatever I select, and I can only shuffle all of the songs. Today I wanted to shuffle all the Beastie Boys songs I have, and I couldn't. I'm not sure if I can do that on the new one, but I know you can shuffle songs in an album, so I'm just hoping you can with an artist.
One last big thing. On Wednesday, my employer offered me a full time position as a Sr. Web Developer (really, a Sr. Developer who does a bit of web development and a lot of other development, like our code generator, multithreaded apps, database stuff, etc). I was contracting there for about 10 months over the past year. It's a job I really like, so I'm thrilled. |
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Talk about a few horrible months. However, things are starting to look up. My connection between my MacBook Pro and my Windows PC used to be horrible after I updated my Mac to enable 802.11n, which I had to pay $2 for. My MacBook Pro has all my music on it since I run iTunes and stuff. But the Windows PC, having games and stuff to play on it, has the good speakers. I'd try to play music on the PC, and it would play about 2 seconds and then rebuffer for a longer time than it actually played. SO slow, and no way to listen to music. Today, I switched from WPA-PSK to WPA2-PSK on the router, and voila! Shit's fine.
Hmm, other bad stuff that's happened to me since the worst day of my family's life, June 2nd. Let's see. My car died partially, but thankfully for the quick aide of a neighbor senior master mechanic, it's back up and running. My DVD player won't turn on anymore. That totally sucks because the speakers are awesome and I go surround sound from my TV with it. I didn't get my paycheck from Friday until today. Meanwhile, I was broke. I'm supposed to be paying bills and stuff, and I have no money. Today the fire alarms, which Jeff had taken the care to install all connected, so if something is burning in the basement, the one right above your head in your bedroom goes off too. Today, I smelled what I was sure was urine in the one that was the culprit for all of them going off. I'm sure it was a mouse. They're taking over the world. I threw that alarm out, but I can get another one on Amazon.com, so I'll do that too. But they were going off for about an hour before I figured it out. It sucked, I was deaf for about 20 minutes. My amp died too.
After what I've been through, I'd love for something to be easy and not frustrating as f@#%@#$. F@#%@##. I hope everyone else is having a good time. |
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Actually, in the time it took to write that title, I thought of a few things that wouldn't kill me to have. Some notes:
1) I got a MacBook Pro: This thing's totally sweet, and I use it all the time at home. It's goddamn beautiful. I use it for music, movies, browsing the web, chatting, working, and damn near everything that you use a computer for. Except playing games and watching stupid content that was made for Windows, like WMVs.
2) I got a new gaming PC. It's got killer specs and I can play Rainbow Six Vegas totally maxed.
3) My car will be paid off in October, and it's still running pretty damn good. I love that thing. The radio's kicking, the acceleration rocks, all the windows work, and the trunk is still as comfortable as ever. When that thing's paid off, it'll be worth about $40 to anyone else, but $1,000,000 to me. No f%@$ing way is anyone getting that thing from me.
4) I could stand to get some clothes. I bought some jeans and some new socks online, and that's pretty convenient, but have you ever ordered clothes online? I was ready to basically eat $40 on these jeans if they didn't fit, because returning them wouldn't be fun. They fit pretty nicely. I have another pair coming, but I definitely need to get rid of the stuff I don't wear and buy a whole new wardrobe. Oh, and I ordered some socks.
5) I need a house. Every month my money goes to helping my brother's money earn money. Or something. I need a house so that I can own something that appreciates, instead of something with actual negative value, like my car. And definitely not rent.
6) I got a Wii. 'Nuff said. Super Paper Mario is da bomb.
7) Movies galore.
8) Music galore. 2200+ songs. I really have no interest in growing my music collection, although I'd definitely consider getting all of G Love's albums. I'm usually pretty satisfied with my music collection, and I never get sick of it.
9) I got 4 fluffy pillows.
10) I quit smoking.
11) Probably could use some lovin'
12) My voice is back baby. I can hit all the notes
13) Today's Friday the 13th
14) Tomorrow's the Phillies game, and I found my cooler, I bought a boombox, I am charging my camera battery, and I'll be picking up lots of beer and a 6 foot hoagie tomorrow. 15 other people, as in humans. Don't forget ice. We'll be way up in section 330. I can't forget the tickets, either. I made a playlist on my iPod called "Baseball game". It starts off with "Lively up yourself" by Bob Marley and ends with "I saw her standing there" by the Beatles. I have another song about a 17 year old girl on there. Can you guess it? I admit it's a bit obscene. (OMG hint!!!)
15) Running out of things to put here. I have a wallet...?
16) Oh yeah, so, I don't *need* anything else besides a house and some clothes. The house will open up tons of needs though.. like a fridge... some rugs.. paint... kitchen stuff... a maid... etc. But for now, I'm just leaving it as a house so as to not feel overwhelmed.
So, there you have it. I'm not going to bed but I'm definitely not typing anymore. I gots me some Super Paper Mario to play. |
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In 4 days, any resolutions that you didn't complete last year will have to be "rollover resolutions". And if that's the case, you just feel like crap. You're like "Damnit, I should have gone to Africa like 6 months ago." And trying to squeeze in a 40-pound-in-four-days diet is pretty excruciating.
Luckily, my resolutions from last year only take a few days to complete. Like, getting and keeping my room clean. I'm on break now but I've been at it for like 2 hours. Yes, it's a f@#%@#$ing mess. Imagine if every piece of mail you got for about 18 months you just threw on your dresser instead of throwing in the trash. Then add in the deprecated hardware like old KVM switches, old video cards, etc, thrown into that mix, then also imagine boxes that you planned on throwing out a year ago, but they could also make good tables for other crap. Also, throw tons of stuff, like laptops, cd cases, other boxes, on the other side of your queen sized bed. Next, have two computer cases that won't ever be used again somewhere in your room. Throw in an already full closet, and make this room about 8 feet by 16 feet with a queen bed, bookshelf, computer desk, dresser, laundry basket, guitar and amp, and a computer chair. Yes, it is rather hard to move.
Thankfully, it'll be fully clean before the New Year if I go at it pretty diligently. Like, 2-3 hours a day. It's easy, I have off this week, and throw in some coffee, throw on some Bob Marley, have a few trash bags, etc, and I'm well on my way. It already looks like you could put an extra bed in here. Anyway, that's what I'm up to. Other things that I have to do is join a gym OR get a mountain bike, but those might be rollover resolutions. Whatever :P Other resolutions include never being late for work. It's not like I was though, but after a while I might start showing up 15-30 minutes late, just like in Office Space. Hmm, what else? I have ideas for software that I have to get done, and I haven't written any Java in 6 months at least. I have to get back into that, definitely.
I'm afraid resolutions are like wishes, where if I tell every one of them, I won't get any of them done. The other secret ones are the important ones, so I'm not gonna say. |
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Today I had a side job to go to. It was fun. Some of the worst written code I've ever seen. It could lead to more, if I do a good job.
Tomorrow, there is a gathering at Jim's parents' house, which of course means that Jim and Kate are back from Japan!! After three years. And Seamus is coming to America!! He hasn't been here yet! That's crazy-whack-funky. They will be going to the UK really soon though, within the month. Of course, while they're here, I will probably be drunk the whole time. I'm definitely looking forward to that.
With my extra income from the day's hard work, I ordered a wireless router, which couldn't come fast enough. I'm starting to embrace the future a little. I now have 3 things that use wireless (2 laptops and a PSP), and will eventually have no less than 5 things, when I get the PS3 and Wii. Beaner will be connecting to the router with his Mac as well, so there could be 5 things connected at any one time. Mainly, I'm getting it because I don't want to use my neighbor's with my Mac (as I've stated before), and the wire I have for my Mac is about 5 feet long, and it has to use up most of that length travelling from where my router is, around my desk, and onto my bed, where when I finally get to use it, I have to leave the Mac in one single spot, can't lean back on my chair comfortably and use it, etc, etc. It's a "wireless-N" router, meaning it's got 3 antennas and support for the future 802.11n I guess. Good times. |
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Yes, I haven't a thing to say. Black Friday came and went, and I bought nothing. Thanksgiving was at my brother Scott's house. It was a good time. I was thinking of buying a wireless access point for the house so I could use my Mac and PSP without logging on to my neighbor's wireless internet. That's not as bad as if I had no internet at all and used theirs. Partially because it costs them nothing extra, but I should really get my own, especially since I've bought songs off of iTunes and paid bills using the wireless... it's definitely not them I'm worried about snooping in on my transactions, and it wouldn't really matter anyway since the encryption on transactions between my computer and the server is strong, so snoopers will only get garbage (public key encryption...). I've been playing some games lately, like Day of Defeat : Source, which is a good time usually. Also just got back into Company of Heroes. I was playing Neverwinter Nights 2 for a while there. I'll get back into it. I never stay into any one game for too long. I have no PS3 or Wii yet. I plan on getting the PS3 first though. After Christmas. Well after Christmas. Like, March. 2008. We'll see. The Mac is my primary debt right now...
I was looking into possible new cars. My Monte Carlo SS is still good, but I just want to change it up, as always. I was looking into another American car company, this time Ford. The Fusion looks like a nice ride. I'm digging silver with black interior, no matter which car I get. That's sexy. Back when I bought the Monte Carlo, the other option I had was a Passat... silver with black interior. I like that combo a lot. I'd say my two favorite colors are, in fact, black and silver. And when I shop for clothes, or get dressed in the morning, I'd look for some combo of the two, but also with clothing, I don't mind a nice dark or navy blue. Hence my website being silver. I know a black interior will be like a stove in the summer, but as long as I look cool.
I think I'm gonna program. I need a nice brain exercise. |
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Have to help pay for certain recent purchases (see previous post...) I can't wait til that thing gets here.
Basically what I plan on using it for was everything that I used my Mac Mini for (until it blew up), which is like watching my X-Files DVDs at night to fall asleep to (as well as any movie I have), recording music on there using Garage Band, keeping my photo collection, editing movies from my digital camera (I have a Quick Time Pro 7 license that's currently not being used), browsing the internet, chatting, and getting started with Ruby and Rails.
So basically my other two computers currently in commission will only be tasked with one responsibility each. Actually, the Linux Laptop will be my primary Java programming machine as it is now, and the gaming PC will no longer have any software installed on it other than games, but that's also my large capacity storage machine, since it's the only one I can actually add hard drives to, seeing as the other ones are laptops. It's got about 330 GB of HDD space. Right now it holds my music collection, all the backups of everything I've ever done with computers (including my original websites, both in ASP and Perl! They're a blast from the past), and tons of other random stuff like images and screenshots from college. The new Mac will have 160 GB of HDD space, so I might have to get a dedicated backup drive to put in the gaming PC.
It's funny too, because most people are all about having multiple monitors for a PC, as it leads to higher productivity since you can read a spec on one screen and program on another. Everybody at work has multiple monitors. I fear that I'll need to do that at home if I get used to it, so I'm the only one in work that has a lone monitor. That and my current video card setup can't support more than one. It could get expensive, since right now I'm using a 19" Sony that I bought for 350 bucks a few years ago, and it works marvelous for my purposes. I'd much rather have multiple PCs than multiple monitors. A network leads me to be very productive. A KVM switch is wonderful. It's all about how quick you are on the computer. I can switch between computers in a bat of an eyelash, depending on the KVM switch.
Although nowadays with multiple cores in CPUs (my first multi-core CPU will be the Mac), you can easily run two computation-intensive apps at the same time. But still I'd much rather have two multi-core computers, and KVM between them in order to get shit done :D |
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My brother and I already bought loads of candy for about 3 lucky kids out there who'll get one Reese's Piece each, and the rest are for us. KitKat, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (my favorite), f#@%ing Reese's Sticks, other Reese's peanut butter and chocolate mixtures (best invention EVER), Snickers, Twix, etc, etc, etc. Loads of candy bars who are getting free advertising.
Also, I put up a comic in honor of this special day, over at Addicted Comics. Don't forget to fall in love with that site and send me secret love letters every day. If you can't read the words, just right click and view the image by itself. They're usually in the form of..
http://www.addictedcomics.com/files/addicted000#.JPG
where # is the episode number. I think the second one is lowercase "jpg" instead of uppercase. I can only keep things consistent for so long. |
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Like for online casinos. But no more.
However, "people" will still be able to add comments with no problem. It's sort of a "CAPTCHA" (search google for "Turing Test") design, but without the images. My site's not big enough to make actual "people"'s lives a pain, so this will just get rid of the most low tech comment bots.
I've been playing with the idea, as simple as it is, for a while now, trying to figure out if there's a better way to determine if the "thing" posting a comment on my site is actually a "person", and not a bot. I'm sure this method will be hacked, and I'm sure I'll have to write some more complex solution, but for right now, it'll get rid of them. Unless they already have that work around. We'll see. Great thing about them being "bots" is that I could even post the code and they'd have no idea :P
And the ultra-super-best thing about it is it doesn't reveal itself as an error. There won't be any error message, it'll just say "OMG GREAT COMMENTZ!!"! and go to the home page, so if the bot doesn't verify that the comment has actually been posted, the author of the bot will have no idea, and be like "w00t, more free advertising of my uber awesome casino site... man, that jasontconnell is such a sucker." |
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| Just plug in http://www.jasontconnell.com/atom.xml into your feed reader. I'm not sure what version it is (versioning apparently got out of control since the 0.3 version of last year), but it should be "1.0". Maybe. If your feed reader doesn't read Atom, then throw it away and get a new one, because it's w3 baby. |
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I feel like Beavis and Butthead. That time when there's nothing on TV until many hours later, and they have to find stuff to do to kill the time. "Hey Butthead, I think I have to throw up..." "Cool, that should like, take some time."
I've been working out, playing video games, watching more comedy, playing guitar, etc. I'm running out of stuff to do. I could get in my car and drive around, but that costs gas, e.g. money. I could play more guitar but my finger's about to fall off. I could hit golf balls out front, but that could cost lots of money. I'm golfing tomorrow with my Dad, that should be fun. We're going to Paxon Hollow where I once shot a 41. Err, on the back nine. I had like 4 birdies in a row. Missed 2 putts on 18, else I would have shot 39. Motherf@#$@#$@#. Til tomorrow.
I woke up today and felt like death due to the fact that I've smoked like 4 packs of cigarettes in 2 days. And I hadn't worked out since Monday. I had to work out, it expands my lung capacity if something like that happens. And I have to find something else to do besides sit and drink coffee and smoke.
I could watch TV, but that's boring. I've already seen the first 4 "SportsRise"'s and "SportsCenter"'s on Comcast and ESPN respectively. I have "Syriana" and both times I've watched it, I paused it to go to the bathroom or something, and never got back to watching it. So, as it stands, that movie makes no sense to me. I guess I should see the end eventually. Not today though, I have the attention span of a goldfish. I might work out again, that's about the only beneficial thing I can do, besides program more, but see my note on my temporary ADD in the previous sentence about why that's impossible.
Guitar's fun though. I've been playing more Jimi, learning how he does some stuff that makes his songs sound like no others. I like his Blues album best. I love "Once I had a Woman", and "Bleeding Heart", and "Born Under a Bad Sign". When I first heard them, I had a sliver of an idea of the notes he was playing, but now as I play more and try to immitate, it's becoming more clear. He's just a genius.
Video games are frustrating right now. They're much better enjoyed after a long day of work.
I laugh at the titles of the messages that land in spam in my gmail account.
I'm gonna take a shower.
[Update] It's weird. I got the job WOOHOO!!! But the weird thing.. I'll explain later. Gotta go fill out paperwork and stuff. |
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First, here's the problem:
When you "subfilter" labels, all of them are returned and there's like a thousand of them.
Second, here's the solution:
And check out all this DOM scripting to accomplish that! |
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This is different from the last one. I went through, for about 4 hours, painstakingly labeling each and every picture. It led me to a few conclusions:
1.) I take too many damn pictures of the same thing. I guess taking them isn't bad, but I don't have to upload 40 pictures of the Phillies game I went to a year ago. Then every picture gets the same labels "philadelphia, sports, phillies". It was very boring doing that.
2.) There has to be an easier way to label stuff.
3.) Labeling stuff sucks. I'm glad I'm done.
Also, I went ahead and got rid of download categories and replaced them with labels.
Labels are a centralized thing. If I create a label called "ducks" for example (there are pictures under that label!), then that label will show up as a choice for downloads and for pictures (and later news), whether or not there are downloads labeled "ducks" or pictures labeled "ducks". When you search the filter in downloads for labels like "duck" then "ducks" will show up. This will lead me to develop something cool in the future. Like, search a label and list anything that has that label, whether it's a download or a picture or an X or a Y. It will be pluggable.
If you want to see how I input labels, search pictures for the label "labels". Also you can search for "java" and "dev". Those two will give you a bunch, whereas "labels" will give you the four screens I took of "dumb web" and how it handles labels. |
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I decided to make everything have labels, and pictures are the first to be converted. There's more work to be done, but use the filter for most of your label needs. In fact, with the filter, there's really no more work to be done... I don't know, I'll probably think of something. So, now I have to go and add labels to all of my pictures... 226 of them.
But it took about a day to get the labels up, only because my data list that shows the pictures always goes back to the first record after I save a picture. It's pageable, and the first page was easy :) But after that, it goes back to the first page, so I have to keep track of what page the picture was on that I just added labels to. So I had to fix that. Now it'll keep go back to the last page you were on. That makes life easier. But isn't that what software development is supposed to do?
I've been hacking away at this site and my shared stuff (dumb, dumbweb, filter, etc, etc, etc) that I use on all my websites ever since I told my work that I won't be coming in anymore. Well, I actually just turned down the position offered to me, which was to do with VBScript, which I can't do. Not because I don't know it... it would just be a huge change in how I think when I program. If a language doesn't support standard object oriented features, then I'm f@#%@ed. I have a hammer and everything looks like a nail.
The other day I went to a User group meeting for Philly on Rails. I don't use rails or ruby, but I might start soon. Zatko said he'll play Dawn of War with me if I learn ruby and rails, so I have to since that's the best game ever, and I haven't played multiplayer yet. Actually, we have to play first then I'll learn Ruby. Jared went too. We were the bomb. |
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First, notice the "Possible count" on the bottom right.
Then filter by this text exactly : Cigarettes and Carrot Juice
Then notice what it says. Cool huh?
Then, notice the help icon! I know they don't look great, I'm a n00b when it comes to CSS and DHTML. Plus, I hate Internet Explorer because I use the w3.org specs and they never work on IE. So, if you use IE, there's no support. Download a real browser.
But you're not a real programmer if you don't support IE!!
I'm a lazy programmer, as I've said many, many times. It might work... I did some standard checks, but haven't tested it. I'm on Linux and a Mac. No IE.
So that's it. I could go on explaining what I did but I'm not terribly proud of the count stuff. I did it and couldn't help but think I hacked it together. It's just not beautiful yet. |
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Also, you've probably noticed the news categories on the left of the main page are gone
(<---- psst... over there)
This is due to the filter destroying this page and taking up all the landscape, and no need to list categories anymore since you can just filter by them, and Todd wanted to know when I replied to his comment in "The end of the world".
So, now my website seems VERY busy. I want to add more crap...
I started to reply to Todd, then had to go to work, saved the text in a file on my MacMini, went to work, came home a few hours later, then the Phillies were playing the Yankees and our fearless genius leader, Charlie Manuel, had set the lineup so Abreu and Howard were sitting and Chase Utley was playing first... it was something I had to see... they won!! Amazing. I was being sarcastic about Charlie being a genius. Oh, and I watched game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, and was cheering for Edmonton so that probably doomed them, since Carolina won the Stanley Cup, those b@#tards. So, I had to work on that stuff after those games. Now it's like 2am and I have to go to bed. So, probably tomorrow Todd :)
Out of curiosity, due to the fact that when my web game comes out, it will require probably tons of disk space, I checked the amount of space left on my hard drive on this server. It's an 80 GB drive. There are a few websites on it, and one with lots of images, and this one has lots of images, and there is a lot of data in my databases, and of course Linux and software like Java, Tomcat, GNU tools, etc, etc, etc. Lots of stuff. There are three partitions, and one's not a file system (maybe it's a backup?). Here's what the "df" command in Linux returns. I was like "SWEET!"
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 75790304 4175216 67765112 6% /
/dev/hda1 101089 9324 86546 10% /boot
none 252864 0 252864 0% /dev/shm
Basically, I'm using 4 Gigabytes for all this junk. Well, you can add it up. The boot partition has a 101 MB partition, which is nothing compared to the 67 GBs I have left on hda2 (Linux doesn't use C: or D: like Windows. HDA is the first hard drive, and 1 or 2 [3,4,5, etc] refer to the partition). In other words, I have plenty of f@#%ing room. |
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So far I am 0% done my web game. This is as of Friday night at 10:20 (or as my Linux box shows the time, 22:20). So far, I have two documents written on it though. One is a functional specification. The other is a technical specification. Working in the software world, you learn to depend on these two documents. Here is what they are:
Functional Spec: (Sometimes refered to as the f@#%ing spec... by me only apparently. Commonly refered to as the Design Document) This document gives an overview of the various use cases of the software. During the functional spec, you lay out that this is indeed a software solution to an otherwise real world problem. Say you are designing an email program. You will say that the user will be able to send and receive emails, using at least one server. They will be able to view the entire contents of emails, and have a hierarchy of folders to hold archived emails. They will be able to flag emails by importance. The solution should filter spam automatically, determined by a number of factors, some of them user specified.
Now, a technical spec, on the other hand, takes the functional spec and builds out, in detail (as much detail as you can before you start writing actual code in an [in this case] OpenDocument text document), each high level feature of the functional spec, and defines exactly how each feature will interact with other features. This makes it simple to write software. If you hand me a functional spec and a tech spec, and say "Get to work, you lazy bearded b@#%^@", I will reply with "Yes, Sir, may I have another?!?" As you can see, these are highly desireable in the field of software design and development.
Note also, that when "speccing" (actual word in IT) out a set of "Design Documents" (you can also refer to the whole set as "Design Documents", as well as just the functional spec... Software is flexible like that, and everyone knows what you mean by the singular form, and that you mean the group in the plural form)... where the f*@#! was I? Too many parentheses. Oh right. When speccing out design documents for your own, home brewed project, it is a much more enjoyable scenario. Like, I can be going through and say "You know what... f@%! that feature, no one will use it and they'll all probably send hate mail to me if I include it", whereas in work, you have to do it because it was predetermined that we don't care about customers enough to make them happy, therefore the feature must stay. Also what makes home project docs more enjoyable is that it's your s@#%. You get full credit, people worship you, girls send you pictures of themselves in bikinis, guys question their sexuality, etc. It's just cool.
Anyway, I have to get back to work. It's speccing out to be much more complex and detailed than what I first imagined, however, I'm speccin' I won't go past my two week estimate. (O Brother, Where Art Thou shout-out : "I'm speccin' you'll be wantin' them chains knocked off". Great movie). |
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My web game. I'm becoming increasingly sick of the internet and it's "nothing fun to do for a 5 minute window of time to waste". I was looking for something to easily scan images in that I create on paper, but the only thing I can find got bad reviews. It was a "pen scanner", literally 8.5 inches wide and about 1/2 inch thick, and you roll it on paper to scan it, but people were saying how the quality was diminished. I do have a flatbed scanner, but it's a POS. Basically, I wanted to make the site look professional, since I can't draw with a mouse. I used to draw as a kid, and was pretty good at copying images from, say, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trading card, and scaling it up to fit onto a standard art pad (10x14 i think). I would color it in and show it off. One time I drew a picture of Homer Simpson and said to my oldest brother, "Want to see a picture I drew of Homer?" He said sure, so I showed him, and he was like "Man, I was expecting something pretty bad but that looks just like him!" I also did pictures from Marvel comics like Wolverine and the Fantastic Four. They were fun. Point is, I used to be able to draw, and remember enjoying it a bit, and think I can still do it with the right equipment. Like this picture I drew in work at my last job:
Pretty f@#%@ing sweet, huh?!? Anyway, I'm going to just program the site this weekend during times of soberness (Three day weekend!!!), see how far I get, then do some art for it later. It'll be fun, and like the original post says, there's nothing like it out there. |
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I just got through a round of updates. Now it's much awesomer than it was before. For instance, blah blah blah something internal that you won't see, and on top of that blah blah blah more geeky stuff blah blah, and not to mention blah blah my night was incredibly boring.
But honestly, I made a bunch of fixes and changes, and have a bunch more to do. Then this site will RULE. Or at least the software will.
And I HAVE to fix that system clock so posts that I make at 10:45 on May 10th don't get listed as May 11th by default. I can modify the date value on the News item through the website now, sorta.... only the date since that's how it's configured. Damn... what good is awesome software if you don't use it to its fullest capacity?! |
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Don't click on the news subjects on the left. I forgot to update that when I did the huge site update. I didn't test that either since testing is for losers. And I haven't been home for like 3 days... well, I have but yesterday I watched the Phillies game. They won 9 straight. Longest streak in baseball this year. The age old question is whether this train will stay on its tracks or will explode in a spectacular derailment. Stay tuned.
[Update] Site's fixed. My new "dumb" doesn't require a link object and my old site code was trying to use the link object, resulting in an invalid cast. English: It was f@#%@ed up but now it's fine. |
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This website was version 2.0 when it first came out. While nothing has changed about what you see, there's a whole buttload of new stuff that I get to use to make it easier... not necessarily easier to add data to the page (like for existing things like News and Polls, etc), but easier to add new stuff to the page. If I wanted to add a forum, for instance. Or, create my attachments thing. Or other stuff that I had in mind.
The software will need more updating now that I see it with a lot of data on the page. My news list is 19 pages long. What's good about that is that I'm now paging the data, and wasn't before. But what's bad about that is it's sorting in the wrong way!! I see the very first news I posted first.
I do get a lot of added functionality though. Due to a constantly increasing level of laziness, I never had functionality for things like viewing all the comments in News, or deleting them. I would log into my server, start up "MySQL", and find the comment that was anti-JTC and either edit it to make it pro-JTC, or just delete it due to that laziness factor mentioned earlier. Now, I have all that functionality, and more to come in the future as I whip together some more XML files. It's so easy, and if you go to stringed.org, you can see the software by logging in with username = demo and password = demo123. I just configured it for my data on this site, and it's all I need. It's awesome.
So look for more updates since updating this site in the immediate future will be as easy as falling asleep in a long meeting after lunch. |
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| I'm upgrading this site to use the software found behind stringed.org. Who knows what'll happen after that. I might even get around to fixing the poll bugs and possibly change the site to resemble something awesome. I have ideas. |
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I'm still looking for a house. It's fun, since Mara is my Real Estate Agent! We're like the coolest people in the world, and here we get to go together and look at houses! Billy doesn't come with us, or else it'd be like cool overload for anyone in our path.
I've recently been linked by some websites out there. One is at the Philadelphia newspaper, the Inquirer. Dan Rubin is a writer there, and has a "blog", and was "anonymously" tipped about an article here. The post that links it is here.
Also, one of my videos on here, which I uploaded to MySpace, was linked. Actually, they linked it from MySpace. But it's linked on a guitar learning site, here. So that's cool.
Megan has linked me for like months and I haven't returned the favor. I know, I'm horrible. Head on over to read a bunch of funny stuff and drop her a line.
And, I just got asked to go to Berkeley for work, but it's optional. Either this month or next. Should I go??! |
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Hey weekend dwellers! Time for the bi-century Friday update! This week, I started looking for a house, got pre-approved for a mortgage so they can know my range, and spent about 21 hours going through house listings, daydreaming about living there based off of 4 100x100 pixel images, allowing my imagination to run rampant. One house only had a 100x100 picture of the front, and in the back I imagined a giant waterslide and pool, and kind of a small theme park named Jasonland where you can buy cinnamon twists and ice cream, soda, beer, and tickets for the rides. I know when I see that house I'm going to be terribly disappointed.
There are a lot of nice houses for sale in my town. It should be fun.
I've gained a new nickname, but I'm not sure how I got it since I was RIPPED that night :) Rastaman J or something, since I have been known to lose myself to some reggae once in a while :) Plus they had this band there that did my favorite music styles... reggae and blues. Beer + favorite music + girls = @#$%@#$!#@!^#$%*%^$%^^#$%#$@#$@# WASTED DANCING FOOL!!! HAHA it's fun.
Nothing going on this weekend except more drinking, possibly some video games, and hopefully some celebrating Flyers' victories all weekend since they lost last night :( |
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Awesome week. On St. Patty's Day, went to Mara and Billy's apartment with a case of Harp beer (yummy, it was the first I've had of them), stayed there until around 7:30 waiting for Billy's sister with a bunch of people, pounding beers and joking around. Great times. Then went to see Blackthorn at the aforementioned Irish festival. There were a lot of Miller Lite kiosks set up... I mean, a lot. Like 30. In this huge clubhouse. We were already blitzed by the time we got there so the next 5-??? beers were just fuel on the fire. I felt great though. Irish music, lots of people there (I heard 1500 tickets were sold), a ride home, tons of beer, hardly any recollection. The things legendary nights are made of.
The next two days were allotted recovery days. I needed them too.
I had asked off Thursday and Friday, and being a contractor, I'm not given any vacation like regular employers are, but I can take days off and / or be sick, just like regular employees. Even take a 3 month vacation if I wanted to. I just don't get paid :p Mara calls me up on Thursday night after my parents had taken me out for dinner. She's like "Hey, I have a lot of left over beer, wanna come over and help me finish?" They had to work the next day too! We stayed up until 1am, drinking and playing @#%^hole, at which I am a master. I went from @#%^hole to president in one hand, after being @#%^hole the whole night. Then kept presidency for the last two hands, before we ran out of beer :-P I was like, "You guys are out of beer, I'm leaving ;-)"
Friday night was a great time too. My friend Anthony, who has a few years on me, was born 3/24, as opposed to the date of gods, 3/23. So close, Anthony... better luck next time. He had an e-vite going... meet down town, get wasted, watch NCAA basketball... lots of girls! I've not been known to pass up such invites... err, e-vites, rather. Good times had by all. It was a bit crowded until the Villanova / Boston College game ended in 'Nova's favor. In overtime. One of the bathrooms flooded, I asked the bouncer if we were gonna drown. Good times.
And the award goes to:
For most times kissed: Friday night... don't ask
For best/most vibe put out: Friday night. I just stood at the corner of the bar and put out the vibe (ala Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber), which was the reason for the first award :)
For most trashed I've ever been without actually blacking out and/or passing out: Definitely St. Patty's Day
For quietest night that was still a f@#%@#ing blast: My birthday at Mara and Billy's
For the best dance performance: St. Patty's Day, by a long shot. I don't remember much and there was Irish music there. I do remember one time this girl came up to me and told me to calm down!
For most embarassing moment: I'm never embarassed :) I'm sure I do things that would embarass my friends, though. They'll have to weigh in :-P
For best time: I don't know, different factors weigh in differently. I had different types of the best time each of the three nights. It ROCKED :-D
Lesson learned: Drinking should be done in moderation if you only want to get moderately hammered. |
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Today I turn the ripe old age of three cubed.
Brief history of life since college:
Worked, partied, unemployed for a few months there, worked more, partied, made some trips to places like Cleveland and Delaware and Rochester, worked, had a few girlfriends in there, did some side work, wrote some software, learned some things, lived in a few places, worked at a few places, met a lot of people, made a few friends, then BAM I'm three cubed.
Although, I can only hope the rest of my life goes that slow. I know one day I'll wake up and be four cubed! So, today I ask, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm four cubed?" That's how John and Paul really wanted the lyrics to go.
This part of the year is always the worst, health-wise. Last week, St. Patrick's Day, then six days later, my birthday. I'll be in downtown Philly this Friday... 19th & Chestnut. Supposedly they're going to have $3 SoCo & Lime. Should be rediculous, but it will definitely make me feel like death for the rest of the weekend. It took me until Monday to recover from St. Patty's Day, I'm sure this will be three cubed times worse. |
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 Ahh, St. Patrick's Day. On a Friday. When does that ever happen?!?
I was going to bring in my flask filled with Irish Whiskey and go to town during work, but decided against it because I'd be going to the bathroom all day :-P Honestly, I don't have a flask or Irish Whiskey, so I fibbed. But you know what I mean.
We're having an Irish dress contest in work. I wore blue jeans and a blue shirt. I was going to get a green jeff cap and an orange beard (my beard grows in orange for some reason anyway...), but I ran out of time. It won't be the first time I don't win something :)
During St. Patty's Day, I'm always reminded of the time that I had the chance to spend a month in Ireland. For work no less. I ended up not going because they wanted to bring back the other guy who was already there. Scott, a good friend of mine... the bastard. So I didn't go.
I'm bringing my camera tonight. I want the world to see what the Irish beer garden is. Holy crap I can't wait! Plus, listening to Blackthorn is always the best. It's music that you can't help but just go crazy to. I remember the first time I saw them. I was like "Ummm... yeah." But the NEXT time... hoo boy. I've seen them a ton of times; twice sober. The one time they played at a big park near us, and the other time at the high school. I don't recommend seeing them sober.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Go Flyers!! This is gonna rock. |
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I disabled the polls for now since apparently a computer program has been voting. And I've been getting random comments that are obviously attempts at spam, which might also be done with a computer program. Or it could be someone I know trying to fool me into thinking a computer program is doing it. If that's the case.. STOP!!
Not to mention spam mail. They found me. I had jumped ship on hotmail because I was getting loads of spam. Last night, I empty my gmail spam folder and go to bed. Around eight hours later, I check gmail... 31 new spam messages, all with the raunchiest, most disgusting titles. I'm going to put in a request to gmail to have an option to hide the fact that I have new spam mail. I don't need to know it's there.
Report to Gmail
I get tons of spam now for some reason. However, I can't avoid knowing about it. You know the old saying, Out of sight, out of mind. Gmail currently displays the amount of unread spam messages as bold text, along with the word "Spam". Is there a way I can not let Gmail let me know that I have Spam? An option to automatically mark it as "Read" or possibly not even have a spam folder, and just delete it, letting spammers know that their efforts are futile when sending to a Gmail account.
Thank you. I appreciate the excellent spam filter immensely. I would just rather not have to delete them every day and sometimes not even read the titles of these spam messages.
Another spam story! This one was by me. I was writing this program in work that would send an email from command line because apparently Microsoft doesn't have one built into their SMTP server... you have to have Exchange Server installed. But, it was to go along with "Performance Monitor" (perfmon.exe), as an action to take as part of an alert. Well, I tried to get it to work, and it just wasn't working. (My program was working, but it wasn't getting called by the performance monitor action... and NOTHING works when it's not running :p). I had it set up to email me and my coworker who works out of North Carolina, checking a system performance metric every 20 seconds. But, the metric was like "When CPU usage is over 2 percent", which is like all the time. So basically, if it had worked, we'd be getting emails every 20 seconds. But it DIDN'T work! So, I went home, blah blah blah, came in this morning, opened email, and found 4000 new emails!! Apparently the server restarted last night and that was what it needed to work. We were cracking up about it! |
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The end of February is here! Which can only mean two things...
1. Damn February is short!
2. My birthday's coming up!!
So hop on over to your local video game / electronics / clothes / car / house store and pick me out something! I accept money as well. 4 to 5 bucks digits would work. More news coming about that later. |
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stringed.org has been updated again. What's up there is the result of my latest efforts, where I started it over, wrote some new controls for it, fell asleep and drueled all over it, etc. The "Remove" functionality doesn't work, I've yet to find the best way to do it. There are some kludges in the software, but none that were avoidable. So that sucks. I can offer a huge explanation about that but I have other things to attend to.
As you can tell from the site, there are a few very confusing things going on. First off, this might be the most confusing form ever. But that's ok. It'll really be used mostly for this sort of thing. And it won't be too confusing with only one child form (just a book form for author) as opposed to any number (books have chapters, so that's a form, and there could be an infinite amount of inputs on the screen... this won't ever happen for me).
It's not done though. I still have a few things planned for it, but it's really close. I can't see the rest of the site taking much more than a few weeks. I have to get to work on my "Salzburg" game so I'm the first to market. Not that I'm making money on it, but it just shows originality to employers if you're the first to market an original and creative idea. Then I can get jobs anywhere :)
Word. |
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