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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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It's very, very young. Basically, last night, I went from being able to only add a new "Author" to being able to edit and delete them, as well as detect that a book has an "Author", and when editing a book, to show a list of authors to choose who wrote that book. Feel free to try it out. There will be bugs for a long, long time, and I've noticed quite a few on those two simple objects, so just bare with me.
There are quite a few object types that I need to support in order to be able to convert this website over to the new system. First thing's first, though. Naming the software! Considering the fact that it's using the same exact version of "dumb" as this website, and the whole front end is built using information collected from "dumb", it's only right that it be called "dumb web" (read about it here).
So far, the development is progressing nicely. I hit a few speed bumps last night, but just glided over them and now it's just a matter of supporting more object types. Right now, you can see that "Foreign Keys" are supported (if you know your database talk), as well as strings (like Author name and Book title), and another type of string that I'll just call a "long string" (or "text" to the db folk), which is tested with a biography on the Author object. Other object types to support would be dates, files, many to many lists (like news can be in many categories), one to many lists (a poll's answers are entered in a list), and a potentially long list of others. It should be fun, and will probably never be done.
Check out the site here. I prefer that everyone access it without the "www." in front, because it just looks cooler, but the non-cool way is still supported... for now :-P |
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It was awesome! Here's a report.
Friday, went home, ordered pizza, played an NHL 2k6 tournament with my brother and his friends, and WHOOPED ASS. During my off time (96.4 percent of this weekend) I was writing software for stringed.org, and got somewhere with it. I got my hair cut. I watched football. I drank coffee. Flyers played on Saturday (won 2-1 vs. the Penguins). Some guy (a coworker) beeped at me today because my headlights were on as I was walking away from my car into work.
I'm so awesome at NHL 2k6. At least vs. my brother and his friends. I lost one game to Bean's friend Drew, and I apparently don't take losing too well, because the next game I was ahead 8-0 at the end of the 2nd period! I won 9-3 as Drew took out his goalie looking to score 5 goals in the last minute and a half. Then me and Bean played an extended tournament final on Saturday, best of 7, and I won 4-3. OK, it was only best of 7 because I hate losing, and kept saying "Best of X" where X is the next odd number after Bean jumped up to win the previous one. I am a sore loser, but it's only because I'm awesome and I will win most of the time. :)
The Flyers' game on Saturday was on NBC instead of its usual spot on Comcast Sportsnet or Channel 57 (UPN). I hate NBC games. It's only the announcers. On the other two channels, we have great announcers. Jim Jackson, Gary Dornhoeirififfer (no idea), and Coatesy (like, coat-sey). They know about the Flyers, who's great, certain players' tendencies, what they do well, etc. Watching that game on NBC was the worst experience watching a Flyers game EVER. Those guys are complete idiots. They probably have never played hockey in their lives, for one thing. Also, everyone in the NHL world who is not a fan of the Flyers gets word of this player on the Penguins named "Sidney Crosby", and they just want to make out with him. You could tell that they were expecting the Penguins to win, just because they had Sidney Crosby. After they said his name everytime, I swore I could hear them kneel down in honor of him. All they kept saying was "Crosby's out there now" or "Crosby is excellent" or "Man, I love Crosby" or "Can I have Crosby's children?". At one point, Jeff had switched channels, and it had been a few minutes, so I asked "Yo, is the Sidney Crosby show back on yet?" Also, showing the complete lack of Flyers knowledge of the announcers, they say towards the end of the game "Michal Hanzus has had an excellent defensive game." If they had seen one game, they would know that he plays an excellent defensive game EVERY game. He's a forward, but he's still incredible. Another thing about these f#@%$!#! as#!$@oles is that they don't pronounce anyone's name right. Jim Jackson is great at this. He seems to have studied different languages so he knows how to pronounce "Radivojevic" and "Desjardins", and other tough names.
Getting told that my headlights are on is nothing new to me. My car seems to be the only one that keeps its headlights on for a few seconds after I lock it up as I'm walking away from it. I've owned it for over 3 years now (-3 months while it was being repaired after the accident), and I always get told that if people are there to see it. I do tell them that they'll go off, and I thank them for letting me know, but have they never seen a car that keeps its headlights on for a few seconds? They're daytime lamps so they're always on when the car's on.
[Update] Here's an idea of how big Crosby is in the NHL... the Pittsburgh newspaper (Post-Gazette) has a section on their website called Crosby Watch
Haha!! I read an article, the "At 14, Scout sold on Crosby" one, just for material to post on here. I found this:
"Two, three guys in the corner, and he always pops out with the puck. From the waist down, his legs must be unbelievable."
He hopes that it's not all that's unbelievable below his waste. |
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[jason@linux 1-jtccom]# cd albums
[jason@linux albums]# ls
jason
[jason@linux albums]# cd jason
[jason@linux jason]# ls
album1 album11 album13 album15 album2 album4 album6 album8
album10 album12 album14 album16 album3 album5 album7 album9
[jason@linux jason]# cd album14
[jason@linux album14]# ls
[jason@linux album14]# cd ..
[jason@linux jason]# cd album15
[jason@linux album15]# ls
bikekick.jpg fable001.jpg fable002.jpg fable003.jpg
bikekick_t.jpg fable001_t.jpg fable002_t.jpg fable003_t.jpg
[jason@linux album15]# echo w00t!!!
-bash: !: event not found
I found the images and downloads that make this whole website the most boringest in the entire internet!!! At least I don't have to redo everything! Man, that just made my day. GO FLYERS!!!
They aren't back up yet, I'm downloading everything now, and soon will put all the crap in their proper folders.
[Update ... 12:22 AM] Everything has been restored! Woohoo!! Download away |
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This update of the web server has been a giant f@^#@ing migraine... Tomcat will just delete stuff. And for some reason, there's no events showing up in the calendar, but that's probably my fault. (Actually, I paused to look at the code, yup, it's my fault... you might not even notice since I'm updating it right now). And I'm not sure when my host does backups, but I'll ask them for a copy. But, to make sure that I don't lose everything if this happens again, I'm running a daily cron task (WTF is this?) which will backup that directory into a new directory. Of course, if the whole hard drive goes bad, then it's a whole different problem. Well, hopefully they give me a copy from sometime before Saturday :)
[The next morning] I'm on an incredibly small amount of sleep today. That has to do with Civilization 4 and I can't remember what I did after that to stay up as late as I did. Civ, as it's called, is the best game ever. I have a few posts on it going back since it came out in late October. It's amazing that I've ever left the house since it came out. With an introduction like this, "Sid Meier’s Civilization is a turn-based strategy game that challenges players to build and expand an empire, throughout all of human history, and become the most powerful ruler in the world.", how can you not get f!#^@ing addicted?! I heard someone once say that cigarettes are more addicting than heroin, but Civ is more addicting than anything I've ever known. I seriously need help! Good thing there's a help group (shout out to NAOT) out there! If ever a game needed one...
There's a new song up (Christmas Blues), and a lot of the songs have been restored, but not much of anything else. Still waiting on the hosting company to let me know if they have a backup. For Pete's sake, it's been 7 hours and still no contact! I'm kidding, they rock. |
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First, the good news. The website is running on a brand new webserver (Tomcat 5.5.12), and using a brand new Java (Java 5), the web apps are no longer owned by the super user on the system (however, you can't run a server on port 80 [http] on Linux without being root, so it's still runs under root), and all the web apps are now in their own, separate from Tomcat, folder. I found /usr/local/webs to be a convenient place to put everything. This makes future upgrades to Tomcat a lot easier. It all still works, as you can see by reading this... I just had to take about a day to update it :( It sucked.
Now, the bad news. By a slip of the finger, I deleted my whole website and had to rewrite everything. Ok, maybe not. I'm not *that* bad :) But, stuff was deleted. Namely, my pictures and downloads. Fear not, I have backups. But, I have to put them in the right folders, and I have different stuff on different systems (songs have recently been staying on my Mac Mini rather than being copied into a central location, so I have songs on two systems), and images, well, I hope I have backups of them. Actually, I probably do, but it will probably be easier to delete them from the database and reload them because the software on this website takes care of a lot of stuff, like making thumbnails and putting them in their respective directories. That sucks. Does anyone know if Linux has a "Recycle Bin" or "Trash" place where deleted files go? I tried using debugfs but it didn't show any recently deleted files :( They're probably somewhere but the f#@$!$!@ if I know...
Happy New Year, I'm getting blitzed tonight.
Apparently, the Java Calendar object's "roll" function doesn't work as I'd expected! Until it's fixed, the month showing under January 2006 is December 2006! Woops. I looked at the code and it would obviously only roll the month value, but you'd think if it was January rolling back one month, it would roll back the year as well?! Oh well. It'll be fixed whenever I upload it... |
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Subtitled: Guess what I bought yesterday?!?
I know I should be saving (I think I have a post on the subject as far back as... oh yeah, yesterday), but that money's in a different account, the "Do Not Spend" account... but if there's money in my "Bills, Life Support and/or Devious Pleasures" account, that S@%@#1 doesn't stand a chance. Not even in my most glory filled moment of resistance to the evils of temptation would have I been able to resist the technologically marvelous beauty of what is known as the PlayStation Portable (PSP).
And, thanks to the neighbor with the unsecured wireless router with SSID of "linksys" (you know who you are) for letting me download the update to it with no problems :)
(Actually, I think it's my cool neighbors, Tom and Lisa. Thanks guys!) |
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It's different for me when I look at my savings account online and see *only* credits, and no debits. I'm trying to save a bunch of money this year, which will be one of my New Year's Resolutions, but I figured, why wait until then? Some of my other New Year's Resolutions are to play video games more often, to make time for more programming, to cut down and possibly quit smoking, and of course, to work out and lose some of my excess weight. I want a mountain bike.
Anyway, I like earning free money, and watching this interest stuff accumulate is fun. Right now I'm earning $0.18 a month. When I get enough saved up, I'm opening a money market account, then the free money will really start pouring in. That's not for at least 2 months though. There's a minimum amount required to open one at my bank, and I'm about 40% of the way there. Should be fun.
Happy New Year!
Yesterday I was just about the sickest that I've ever been. I was awake for a total of 4 hours between 1 am yesterday and around 7:40 this morning. I couldn't move. I had a hard time moving this morning too, but I managed.
I was able to get a gift for my Mom. Thanks for your help ;-) I asked my Dad for help, and he came up with something decent. I went up to Boscov's (Shout out to Zatko) and got a bottle of perfume. I went there on Friday, the 23rd. Traffic wasn't all that bad at 4 PM (work let out early). At the Granite Run Mall, Boscov's is attached to the mall, but has its own entrances (like most big stores attached to malls), so I parked near it, found the spot that sold the perfume I needed, paid for it, took a walk around the first floor of the mall, and left. It was my best experience going Christmas shopping that late. I've gone to the Springfield Mall on Christmas Eve, and I would not recommend it. |
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I don't ever wish to win the lottery or be rich or anything like that, but if I did (if you don't play, you can't win...), I thought about what I'd do with it. Obviously, the smart thing to do would be to invest it somehow. Somewhere. I'm not too smart financially, so I wouldn't go with stocks or bonds or other financial things that I have absolutely no idea about. The obvious thing for me would be to go back to school. I am always buying books and learning stuff, so it's obviously obvious :)
Where I would go to school would be two places. Some kind of video game school (like Full Sail), and an elite institution for technology, namely, MIT. I think I'd go to MIT first, though. I'm all about getting a PHd from MIT. Besides the fact that it rhymes, that pretty much says "I know what the f@#%@# I'm talking about." I would make complete use of my time there. I'd be lost for the first year (it's been a while since I've done ANY math), but if I had money, I could just hire tutors for $100 an hour, and they could teach me math. It would be easy. I have a math mind, but it's not like riding a bike.
MIT first, also, because I'm more interested in Computer Science than I am in any one field of it. Creating video games uses multiple fields in CS, but it's not the whole of Computer Science. It's math, 3D graphics, artificial intelligence, and algorithms for other things like physics. You see physics in games today, but it would be neat to see other sciences, like Chemistry :) But that's going down another road.
Anyway, if you have an extra bazillion dollars lying around, I wouldn't mind having it :) I must be a geek, because I can't even think of anything else that I'd use it for. |
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I logged into gmail this morning, and above my mail list was something I'd never seen before. There was a button to customize, but before clicking it, I noticed the "new" section said "New! RSS feeds and more". So, that's what that is. Now, I have to have an RSS feed, because I know that the millions of Gmail customers that visit my site will just want an easier way to not have to visit my site. That's probably why I didn't do RSS in the first place, it's just a mechanism for ensuring that you never have to visit a site again, unless you accidentally click a link or something.
Also, there are two more songs up. "Experiment" and "Shadeland Blues". Enjoy! |
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This weekend, although more like today and up until the Eagles game tomorrow, I am the only Connell in the area. Parents went down the shore, and all but one of my brothers are spending this fine weekend in State College, PA. Penn State (10) plays Wisconsin (14), and they are all big PSU fans. Well, Beaner's just going up there to "see college"... yeah, that's it.
I went to a birthday party last night, so I couldn't go. I wanted to go to the birthday party, though. It was for Mara who hit the big 1/4 * 100 mark. We had a blast. There were around a bazillion people at Reed's in Blue Bell, and about half of them were there for Mara. Good times. I love the deal, you tell them you're with Mara's company, you get stamped, and you get 50 cent lager drafts until 7:30. Of course, at 7:28, Billy and I go up to the bar, he orders 4 lagers, and I order 8! The bartender asks, "Do you have 8 people!?" Whereas my only answer was to point back at everyone behind me, laying my inclusion finger on half the room. I had 3 of those twelve! I then proceeded to tear up the dance floor.
I'm not sure what people think of me when they see me dancing (frankly, I don't care :) ), but when I see guys dancing on the dance floor, usually I'm like "Man, that guy's got no rhythm" or "HAHAHA that's funny" or "...". Some girls have a gift out on that dance floor that earns all eyes on them. That's probably why I go to a bar with a dancefloor... me dancing isn't the best thing, I'm positive, but sometimes I observe best from close range.
So, I sit here, Connell-less and pantless, waiting for the Eagles game to start tomorrow, when all the Connells will come back in droves. I can do something tonight, but I think I'll stay in and play video games on my leaking computer. That's right, it's leaking. Having liquid running through your computer is usually a pretty good idea, but the consequences can be detrimental. Right now, it only leaks when I turn it on, and it only leaks onto my DVD drive. I just wipe it off and continue to play, but eventually I have to buy more liquid for it (it's not plain old water... there's stuff over at Koolance that I am encouraged to buy). I think I'll play Call of Duty 2 on my clan's server, all F%^@%@ing day. |
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| I haven't given a coffee update in ... ever. Well, once I did. Anyway, I'm lost as to which coffees got here during which months. I'll just tell you I'm drinking a blend called "Reggae Blend" during my "working from home" days. Actually, I'm working on a new video game. Fresh idea. Screw this web stuff, I'll get to it later. This game will be everything I've ever wanted in a strategy/RPG/economic game. I might play it exclusively, and I might play it exclusively, if you catch my drift. Meaning it might be the only game I play, and I might be the only one playing it... dumbass ;) |
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Today, I left work at 4, being my last day and all. We had gone out to lunch to celebrate my 5 months of service, all too short was everyone's sentiment. Four of us from work. My boss, 2 coworkers and me. We had a great time and the food at Maggiano's (12th and Filbert) is delicious. I got some rigatoni with some kind of incredible cream sauce and chicken. My boss ordered chicken parmesan and knew he wasn't going to eat all of it, so right away he gave one piece of chicken to me to take home. Also, being my last day, they insisted that I get dessert. This was music to my ears. They have the best pound cake ever. Ever. I sat and ate pound cake, and Towanda got coffee. It was bittersweet, just like Towanda's coffee, as she told us, she put too much "Splendid" (at least I think that's what it's called) sugar substitute in it, and only took a few sips from it.
It's amazing how short five months is, but it's amazing how long it is at the same time. Manoj (my other coworker that was there) and I had a great time working together. As did my boss Dave and I. We just joked around when we could, and were serious when we had to be. Funny guys, fun times. We all went to a few ballgames, work sponsored of course. I was the expert. Everyone would ask me about the game, about the Phillies, who to watch for, who's good, who stinks, etc. It was before the All Star game, before the Polanco trade, so the answer to the "who's good" question was Placido Polanco and Bobby Abreu. Of course, Chase Utley too, but he didn't play at the games that I went to with them, it was the time when Chollie would swap Polanco and Utley depending on the pitcher. Our boss (my boss' boss) worked out of Chicago, and he would conveniently be in Philly during the work sponsored Phillies games. He's a big fan of baseball, so he wouldn't need to ask me about the game, only about the Phillies. He noticed that the batting average of the Phillies as a team was in the mid 200s, which is pretty good, and wondered why they were so bad at the time. It's all about hitting with runners in scoring position. The Phillies season is an altogether different story, however... But we had a great time at those games. Five months is a long time because those games seemed like forever ago.
It was my first job in the city. I was a total n00b when it came to public transportation, but my luck always turns up. I got to the trolley on the first day. Obviously, having no idea how to get on the train or where to buy tokens, or how much anything was, or even what stop to get off at the train when I got going on it, I was scared to death. Waiting at the trolley, this guy comes up. He looks very familiar, but I don't say anything. He goes in the trolley first. I go in and am a total n00b, so I'm trying to pay, asking how much money it costs and everything. I pay and head to find a seat on this jam-packed trolley. I head up, and Chris, my brother's friend, the guy waiting for the trolley with me, recognizes me right away, and has a seat available for me. We shoot the sh%t, but I'm lost, so I have to ask what the f@#% the deal is with public transportation. He sets me straight. Buy a card, he says. He also will show me where to go when we get there. He works at 5th street, I worked at 11th, so he was on the train the whole time I was, and saw me to my stop. I had mastered public transportation, thanks to Chris.
It was very interesting working in the city. Everyday you'd see someone who you thought was either on an incredible amount of drugs or alcohol, or they were just plain crazy. We have ash trays outside of our building, so you'd see some people rummaging through them to satisfy a nicotine craving. Or they would ask you for a smoke, or maybe some money. I gave them money because I'm an optimist, always thinking they would spend it on food and not drugs. At least I gave the more seemingly sane people money. Like today, this guy comes up, and says "Can you help out a hungry man?" following with stuff about God. I said "I think I can help you out", and he said something about God seeing me give him money. I smiled at him. I accidentally started pulling out a $20 bill!! He's like "that'll do!". I told him I can't. I could, but it's my last day, and if I give him a dollar, he's well on his way to eating. Only if he had came to me earlier, I had a piece of chicken he could have had, but by this point, it was on the 19th floor of my building. It was worth more than a dollar though, when you meet someone like that, and are able to help them out a little.
So, I got home today at 5pm. I was going over some last things with my boss until 4, then went and said goodbye to everyone. My boss and I sat out front of our building and talked for a bit. He's displayed sincere discontent with what was going on. My department had cut my position. It wasn't finalized until two Mondays ago, September 19th. Manoj and I were the only developers in the department, and now it's just Manoj again. What we did every day was a lot more work than two people can handle. We were a good team, led by Dave, a good leader. I have gained some great experience to put on my resume. Also, I have outstanding references. My boss was "Employee of the Quarter" last quarter. That's out of, oh, nothing huge, just a couple thousand. There are 250,000 people employed by the company, but I think that award was just a departmental award. His boss, the Chicago-based- except-when-the-company- sponsors-a-Phillies-game boss, had sent my resume to other departments in the company. I was floored. However, nothing turned up there, but I can see myself getting called by them in the future, having been pushed by him, someone way up in the company and a great guy to boot. It's overwhelming, the lengths that great people will go to, the offers those people will make, the friendships you can make in 5 months. Afterall, it seems like such a short time.
My brother and his friend were out front drinking when I got home. I headed out to join them. I had a beer, sat with them for a bit, then decided I was going to eat my chicken. It had been 3 hours since I had last eaten afterall. Soon after, I felt like every bit of energy had just left my body at once. I was completely spent. I crashed right there on the couch, right after I had mustered up enough strength to put the fork down. I soon stumbled up to my bedroom. I almost seemed drunk, because I was relying on the wall to guide me, yet I had only one beer. I woke up at around 11pm.
I checked mlb.com. Phillies won, Astros lost. The Cubbies have now taken two games away from the Astros. We could be on the verge of a miracle. However, Roger Clemens pitches next for the Astros.
I'm going to play some video games. Good night world. Go Phillies / Eagles / Flyers! |
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Today, I have ceased development on this website. I will still be making news posts, uploading music, adding photos, etc, but I won't be making new features or even fixing bugs. I won't be able to! Actually, I will be able to, but just pretend I won't. I'll be "branching" the code used in this site, sort of backing it up if you will, rewriting all of it, hence breaking this website on my local machine. I will have backups though. There are a few things wrong with it.
First and foremost, I have ideas. Lots of ideas. I will be building a new site, called stringed.org which will just be a showcase of technology. This was explained before. If there is news on there, you might see posts like "Jason is t3h l33t" and just utter garbage like that. Come here for the real news :) It will just be test data, and it'll probably be open to the public, so you will also be able to log in, or just click an admin link, and edit things and input crap, just like I can! It'll be fun for everyone.
Second, I have ideas :) Ok, so that's the same as the first, but I have to reiterate the fact that these ideas could be life changing. You might be working for me or for one of the companies I will own in a few years, so you might want to respect these ideas. The future is easiest achieved in a non-persistent world. That's a cool quote that I just made up. You know all the movies about the future (most fresh in my mind is Minority Report) where everything is different. Buildings are futuristic, cars, houses, everything. We won't ever get there because it will just be too expensive to tear down a building and make it "futuristic". However, in software, it's very easy to tear something down and re-do it. Not for gigantic companies, but for us "hobbyist" software developers. True, I do it for a living too, but I do the hobby stuff more passionately :) That's because I only work on the cool stuff at home. I am doing cool stuff at work though that I haven't done anywhere. I'm rambling. Anyway, if I can just get a good idea in my head, like I have now, I can throw away most of what I have done and start fresh and build my idea. It might not be life-changing for everyone, but I'll get a kick out of it... :)
Third. I just always think things should have three points to them. Three is the magic number. But really, I'm someone who quickly bores of programming. If you've written one input screen, you've written a thousand. If you've updated one table in a database, you've updated a billion. Same thing with most tasks in programming. However, if you have written something to automatically generate SQL for you and update a database, then you don't have to write that thing again, and you never have to write SQL or anything to update the table AGAIN. I wondered when I got done writing "dumb", and still was doing repetitive tasks, like scheming a database out, building input pages, building output pages, building backing beans, etc, if it could all be automatically done for me. That is what I plan on figuring out with this new design. I will find an answer, and that answer will be the future :) For me anyway. I'll buy you a hoverboard when I'm there. |
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| Yup, check out the little menu item, second row, second from the right. Take a poll! The first one I put up is a "multiple-selection single-vote public" poll. So, they will be checkboxes instead of radio buttons so you can pick a few, it will also only let you vote once, and it's public, you don't have to be logged in to use it. Look for more polls in the future. |
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I started using my Mac Mini more because the other day, a friend asked "Yo, what are you using your Mac Mini for?" And I said "Music" and "Watching Movies". I then thought, that's obviously not enough usage out of the thing, although it is getting used every night when I throw in "Contact" or another movie. Being out sick today, and my chair breaking yesterday while I was in it, leaning back, falling flat on my neck, I decided that I'm going to try the iPhoto program that came with my Mac. I like it. It recognized my digital camera as soon as I put it in, and I clicked to import all of my pictures and movies. There were 74 of them, but most of them are already on this site, I just haven't deleted them from the camera.
So my chair broke yesterday, and being out sick, and doing some work from here, I needed a new chair. So I went to Staples to see what they had. I started sitting in them, and was happy with one, then saw this other one. It was brown. It's like suede, like our couch material. I sat in it, leaned back on it, and almost passed out. They had chairs there that have massage features on them, but this one was the one I wanted. It didn't require a battery and it was so comfortable. It didn't have a price tag on it, so I asked the lady at the checkout. She didn't know. The dude came by, and off the top of his head said "$180??" Damn. But, he went back to check, it was only $120!! I didn't have to break the bank.
I paid the $120 for the chair and added a $10 donation to the Red Cross for Katrina. So far I've donated $11 to the cause, but I'll eventually give more, because that just looks awful -- me buying a $120 chair for comfort while computing, and the victims just get $10. I'll make a big donation soon, like $100. That should help. I owe for September 11th, whose anniversary is coming up on Sunday. I was in college when it happened, but I really don't remember anyone trying to collect for the Red Cross. Another reason I didn't donate anything was because I was in college at the time, making $5 an hour at a job I would work about 5 hours a week. Plus, I figured the economic impact of something so terrifying would prevent me from making any money ever. That wasn't the case, but it wasn't until March, after I graduated that December, that I got my first job.
So, this chair.... awwwwwww this chair :) It's really nice. Padded arm rests, tilting seat so you can lean back, very soft back and seat, decent wheels, suede like upholstry, big neck support, and a very high back. I'm still sort of traumatized from the incident last night, so I'm afraid to lean back too far in it. Another cause for fear is that I put this thing together. I'm a software developer, stop looking at me funny :) Anyway, it's really nice! :) Here's a picture.
Yeah, you know you want it. Check out the pictures of my broken chair here. |
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Don't try to contact me, I'll be fishing, or drinking, or golfing. Or sleeping. Signing off. Peace out, motherF#%#@@#ers!
Word. |
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| This morning, I wake up, look at my clock, and it says 9:00 AM. I figure, I'm not getting into work anytime soon, so I call out. After I call out, I try to think back on if I had slept at all that night. I really don't remember. I head downstairs to brew up a pot of coffee. Kodie is barking at me and trying to bite my hand, but I don't remember letting her out of her cage. Jeff always puts her in her cage when he leaves for work. My coffee is ready. It was super quick. Way faster than normal. I start to pet Kodie when I hear something downstairs. It sounds like scratching. I go down to check it out. The clothes dryer is on, but it didn't sound like the clothes dryer at first. I head back upstairs and check my email with my freshly made cup of coffee. My air conditioner is off. I didn't turn it off! Something's going on here. I have tons of emails from people who I haven't seen in years trying to sell me Viagra. This is crazy. My curiosity got the best of me. I went into the gaming room, opened the window, and decided to take the 20 foot plunge! Yup, I was still sleeping, I woke up and it was 4:49 AM. Stupid dreams. |
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| I have an ear infection. I really can't hear out of my right ear too well. It sucks. I changed the picture at the top of this website to reflect that in fact I don't call it a blog, and to give it a subtitle. I am enjoying the ride, which is just my way of saying that life is grand, except today with this ear infection. I took 3 different types of medicine, including an extra large helping of Advil 200mg caplets (3 to be exact). The pain was gone and I was fast alseep :) However, now that I'm awake and sitting up, my stomach is killing me. I really don't like being deaf. It's not a tumor. |
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I ordered the motherboard and got it shipped FedEx, and Linux and the mug a few days earlier and it was shipped with UPS. I got the cheapest method of delivery that I was offered on the respective sellers' websites. The Linux and the mug website offered UPS ground for almost free. The motherboard offered FedEx Saver for $3. UPS had a bit of a head start, but they didn't know that they were racing. The shipping methods used are considerably different estimated delivery times, to be fair to UPS. I'm not trashing any company here, I was just having a little fun. But, they both have a little work to do to catch up with DHL. I placed an order at 8pm one night, it shipped from somewhere in the middle of Ohio, the next day I was getting out of the shower in the morning and DHL was there with my package. That was crazy.
Anyway, some more details about the shipping methods:
UPS - BASIC service from California. UPS Ground, essentially. This has an estimated time of delivery of 5 days.
This same service from FedEx claims to take 4 days. Who knows. I'll stick with FedEx Saver. It's like second day delivery without the money.
But, all this really means is that I'll be able to play games tonight and hold off another day on developing the new crap I need to do for this website. Woohoo :) Sorry, UPS, you're still the bomb. High five. |
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I never reported this, but I broke my motherboard on my very expensive gaming computer a few weeks ago. This is how I described the mishap on a forum I visit:
my F#%$@#!ing motherboard broke... it was my fault though. stupid crazy ass place for a 5 gallon bucket of paint... i'm kidding, i tried to put in a pci card but there wasn't room, and i snapped one of those little chip things that sit on the motherboard and make them work...
Woops. So, eventually, after like a month, I decided to finally replace it because I want to play video games like I do sometimes. So, I ordered the motherboard. Here is that forum entry:
I miss playing games sometimes, but I want to play F.E.A.R. more than anything. The demo is out. So I ordered that b@#$%@ today. Plus, I have a 250GB secondary hard drive on there, with no room in my other computers for it, and I need the space. I hope I got a good one, it'll definitely be better than the last one though... it got a score of "5 out of 5 eggs" on newegg.com. plus it has a very similar layout to the other motherboard, which is HUGE. the last thing I want to do is empty out my liquid cooling and recut tubes to make that s@#$% fit.
It's thundering and lightening here pretty bad, I'm scared so I'm gonna go under my desk. (19th floor is a lot closer to that stuff than the 1st floor).
hopefully, by friday, you'll hear me mumbling sweet nothings to you on teamspeak after I put a bullet through your mother F@#%@#$ing dome.
A few liner notes. Teamspeak is a program used for talking to other people over the internet for free and in real time. There are a few people that I talk to, but I haven't been on in a while, because it's normally used for trashtalking in games and coordinating strategies in a first person tactical team based shooter. FEAR is going to be a cool game. And a motherboard is a very necessary, very fragile computer part. I ALWAYS censor myself, on any webpage I go to. Anyone who knows those words can tell right off the bat, but what if little kids visit? I can't make them not read it, so I figure I'll just make it safe for everyone, for the most part. These posts are "as is".
The other part of this story is my converting every other computer I have to Linux. When Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn) is released, I won't and can't go buy a copy for each computer I have. If they're lucky, I might buy one for the gaming PC. Here is the post about me ordering Linux. So that's also on the way.
It's a race (as the title indicates). Linux and the coffee mug are somewhere between San Pablo, CA, and Drexel Hill. They left San Pablo on August 6th at 5:01 AM. It's anyone's guess where it is now. The motherboard was ordered yesterday, and left Los Angeles, CA at 9:16 AM today. However, Linux and the mug were shipped through UPS, and the motherboard was shipped through FedEx Saver and is estimated to arrive on Thursday, August 11th. Obviously the UPS package has a bit of a head start.
Place your bets! |
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This one is not the one that was left out of the previous upload. I'm going to save that one and make it a "previously unreleased" song in a few years when I sell my first album. The new one is called "Put Your Feet Up". That's exactly how I recorded it. It rivals those showoff moments like Stevie Ray Vaughan's playing behind his back or Jimi's playing with his teeth. It's all about showing off. I was leaning back in my chair too, which has arms, so it makes it difficult to solo down the neck... so excuse any mistakes :) And listen to it how it's supposed to be listened to, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, and just relaxing. It is a relaxing song, but the chords I used were neat. They can be solo'd over in blues scales or in Jazz scales, so that's what I did. It reminds me of SRV's song, "Lenny", which he wrote for his wife. That song rules.
I just added another song. "Winding Down". Download that one too because it rules. You can put your feet up to it too. |
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I was at Mara and Billy's place last night. We played A$$hole. But instead of the normal drinking mechanisms, which are those beautiful red plastic cups or straight from the artistic glob of green glass that is the Yuengling bottle, we used Pilsner glasses. Beer doesn't stand a chance in these things.
It's like they were perfectly crafted through years of testing. The world's top minds got together, got bombed every night, and the next morning reworked their current designs and got ripped again that night. There is no better way to spend tax dollars. Cheers to those guys for their hard work. |
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| Actually three, but I haven't uploaded the other one yet, I'm still listening to it. The new ones are "August" and "Out of my Butt". Click on August 4th on the calendar. Out of my Butt is great. |
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Only on my laptop though. I don't much like the distro that I installed, for 2 reasons. It's Mandrake Linux 9.1. First reason, they made it too much like Windows. Second reason, here's the website. I don't think it's supported anymore! Woops. It was the only copy of it I had that was already burnt to CDs. I have Shrike (Red Hat 9.0) but in ISO form on one of my computers. However, I don't want to get into that for its big company and proprietary additions to Linux. RPMs are a Red Hat addition, which are mainly used for installing applications. When I use Linux, I don't double click applications. I use this server, and everything involves running gzip -d on it first, then tar -cvf, since they're just binaries with no install. You set them up manually, drop the script into /etc/init.d/ (which on my current installation happens to just be a symbolic link, like a windows shortcut) and you're done. It's beautiful. However, since I can't use Mandrake, I'm going to install Gentoo Linux. Their website is still up, they are still developing and supporting the latest kernels, and have added some neat things using standard linux techniques (unlike Red Hat's RPM). You can still use Red Hat without ever once using an RPM, so, really, I'm just not using it because I want to try something different :) Red Hat's still darn good.
Here's the funny thing. I actually bought Gentoo Linux. Well, I paid to have CDs with the software delivered to my house. To do this with Windows, you're looking at $179 (cheapest that I ever got it on ebay) PER COPY (per computer!). The beautiful thing with Linux (if you know how to use it), you buy a CD for ranging prices (I've seen $1.50 plus S/H), and you can install it on a bazillion computers. I paid $9.99 for the install CDs and $9.99 for the packages CDs. Plus I bought a mug :) I always contribute to Open Source software that I like. I paid $20 for a free FTP client, FileZilla. It's nice though, but sadly, I won't be using it anymore, as it's only available on Windows.
I've had Linux running as a desktop before, but ever since I got this server, I've been learning more and more about it, so I now will feel more comfortable using it all the time, and I'll probably learn more on the desktop, and I'll be able to do cooler things on the server. That's a cool prospect.
Anyway, geek me up in the comments again. |
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I live in the only town called "Drexel Hill" on the entire planet. I can't say the same about where I work... Philadelphia.
I like taking the bus in the morning. I used to take the bus to school between 1st and 3rd grades. We moved to within a block of the school during my 3rd grade. However, some things have changed, some good, some bad. For instance, we used to bounce up and down on our seats so that when we hit a bump, you would bounce much higher, which would prompt laughter from all over the bus. Our bus driver back then was a giant a-hole. We pissed him off pretty good. When you would miss the school bus, that's it... you had to walk. Jeff and I missed a few times and would trek the multiple side roads and one main road into school. The school bus was free for me. Now, you see different people every time. Some people you see a few times a week. Now, I would have the option of taking my car, but I find it a lot more enjoyable letting someone else drive, plus parking anywhere besides in my driveway sucks. Now, it's anyone's guess if there will be people at the next bus stop. Now, you almost never see kids on the bus. And now, my destination is a lot cooler.
That paragraph is stupid.
Work is cool because sometimes we'll talk about stuff at my manager's desk. Work related stuff. But, I get in by 9 and all the sudden it's 11:30 and I haven't done any programming, research, analysis, design, or whatever I'm doing that day.
I saw someone get punched yesterday. This man and woman were arguing at the bottom of the escalator, and she threw a pretty decent jab and caught him under the chin. He was calm and didn't have a fit, so that was good. It could have taken a much worse turn if he had really been an angry type of guy. I didn't want to have to whoop some ass.
Man, this post really sucks.
This just in...
Top Sports Cities (Article Registration required. The origin is The Sporting News)
1. Boston
2. Philadelphia
3. Detroit
4. Miami
5. Los Angeles/Anaheim
6. Houston
7. Baltimore/Washington
8. Dallas/Fort Worth
9. Atlanta
10. New York/New Jersey
Individual Sports
Baseball: St. Louis
NBA: San Antonio, Texas
NFL: Green Bay, Wis.
NHL: Philadelphia
College basketball: Philadelphia
College football: Iowa City, Iowa.
NASCAR: Bristol, Tenn.
NFL : Green BAY?!!?1?11 We have so many more people than them, the best and most raudy fans in the F@#%!#! world, and we get to the NFC Championship game EVERY YEAR. That's bull. I don't even know that we win Hockey, but we'll take it :) I like all Philly sports, but it's a football town. I can't wait to see the Flyers, next year's Sixers, 10 years from now's Phillies, and who doesn't freakin love the Eagles. Green Bay sucks and I hope they lose every game this year. Oh, and I know someone who will be terribly offended that Philly also wins college basketball. Anyone who lives in a little city called "Lexington" in that small southern state known as "Kentucky". Those guys are nuts. |
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With some luck, this web page will be running on a new backend in a week or two. While I do find it easier now that I don't have to write ANY SQL to update, insert, delete, or get objects from the database, or create the tables for those objects, I am incredibly lazy, and don't want to have to build many of the web pages that I build when adding a new object type. It's a pain and a waste of time since they all do the same stuff, just with different types of data. Being a programmer in every sense of the word (the good programmers tend to be very good due to incredible laziness, their laziness drives them to think creatively. If I can do a task once that will eliminate a repetitive task later, you could bet the house that I'm going to do it), I decided that the current website is just not easy enough to extend or even maintain. I'll be testing this new software out on my new site, stringed.org, which was named because of my love of stringed instruments and classical music sometimes (coincidentally, stringed.com was going for over $1500). It will be my software showcase.
It's one of the more sporadic news entries, I just need to get to work on this stuff because it's a challenge, therefore FUN :) Geek me up in the comments. |
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I used to have a quotes section on my old website where I could just put in hysterical stuff that I said. This would make an immediate addition:
"Friday's coming like there's no tomorrow."
Oh man, I kill me.
(It has to be said on a Thursday. And if you're not familiar with the "like there's no tomorrow" saying, it's similar to these other ones:
That dude downs those hamburgers like it's his job!
That girl slam dunks like nobody's business!
These are just clever alternatives to these:
That dude downs those hamburgers!
That girl slam dunks!
As you can see, saying something with more words in it is funnier.)
Some of the quotes I had on there were really stupid, but my comedic abilities have obviously grown significantly. I can now think of dumb random s@#%@ in no time flat, and it'll usually be pretty funny to me. And because you visit my site, you would have to endure it, suckers. I'll add that as a to do item. |
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Thanks, everyone, for coming to the game on Saturday. I usually judge how successful a party is by how sunburnt I am, how little I remember of it, and how much money I have left in my wallet. The wallet one is usually a shock, like "I spent $80 last night?!!?" but never have I had more money than I started with, so that made it extra successful :) If anyone got too wasted (I won't point fingers) then please forgive them, for they know not what they do after many, many beers, and not drinking that much just might not be an option for them during this stage of their life. Don't get too angry, I am talking about me, so don't be like "what a DICK!!! he drank more than me!!" :) I got home that night, ate some wawa (thanks Tom!) and turned on the news because I wondered how the Phillies did that day.
So, thank your guests for me if they aren't on this email. I hope everyone had as good a time as me, and I hope we can do it again soon.
Love Always,
Jason
Yes, I said "Love Always". And NO ONE said anything about it! I was expecting a "awww, I love you too" or "dude, you're never coming out with us again..." Something. I had to mention it to someone and she had "figured you just must be an emotional type of guy...really emotional". Oh well, it was fun :) I had way too many beers that day, but I sent that email on Monday, so they had to figure it was not from the alcohol, right?! Unless I was bombed at 11 am on a MONDAY. On the first day of my New JOB!? I don't care that I only waited 8 hours before pointing out the error in their ways. They still should have checked their email and responded to me right away, putting every bit of the email under intense scrutiny. As if they have more important things to do with their lives.
We were at a Phillies game and I did wonder how they did when I got home. It wasn't really from the beer, we got in the game at around the 5th inning, got to our seats, and then a few people went to get cheesesteaks. I didn't get back to my seat until the 7th or 8th inning, and before I knew it, it was over. What a blast!
[Later on...] Ahh, the glorious jokes that come out of mistypings and misspellings:
Tom: I won't tell a sole
Me : i'm glad you won't tell any shoes
Tom: shut up
Or just quality humor about drinking...
Me : i like lyrical humor, but i can't get it out when i'm drinking. i can hardly form words, let alone think of long words to say |
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Here are two things that might make you laugh.
Coming up to a "left arrow green light" today, the left arrow green light went out, meaning oncoming traffic will soon be coming. After the light went out, the car in front of me went, I went, and I look in my rear view and TWO MORE cars went!! It was worth a post. I laughed and laughed and laughed.
Another story came into my mind. My friend, John, and I were coming home from somewhere that makes you cross the trolley tracks up near Garrett and Burmont. Well, we start to cross the trolley track even after noticing that the lights are blinking. Keep in mind they don't have those things that drop down and are normally made of wood painted red and white. We swore we JUST got over the tracks, and John looked in his rear view, and ANOTHER car made it over fine!! Trolleys do have brakes, but still, that thing was close, I was in the passenger seat and it was coming at us from that side. Sometimes I count my blessings :)
I don't have anymore :( |
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I rarely watch TV besides sporting events and sometimes the news, but when I do, I manage to find entertaining stuff. Last night was the first show of the new season of "The Surreal World". The last one, with Chris Knight, was good. I did watch most of it. The new one has people in it like "Pepa" from "Salt 'n Pepa", and Balki from that show, and a couple of good looking women, and a dirtbike pioneer, and of course, Jose Canseco. It's going to rule.
Another show, on that same channel (it's a Godsend), is that fat show I had mentioned before, where everyone has a set amount of weight to lose, and they form teams, and whatever team loses the most weight wins. This is mildly entertaining when it's just normal people, but now there are personalities on there that most of us would know already. That girl from the Snapple commercials (Wendy), the lead singer from Warrant, Victoria Jackson of SNL, Phil Margera (Bam's dad who gets the S%@!#^# kicked out of him by Bam in pretty much every episode of Jackass [I don't watch the new one]). Of course there's more, but most worthy of a mention is Gary Busey. This dude rocks.
Let me clarify something though. I don't care for celebrities any more than I care for us "normal" folk. I don't know why, but if I saw someone who I don't consider an "extraordinary celebrity", they might get a second look from me if they're lucky. Not all celebrities are created equal, and of course, it's all opinion, but I find that there's an elite group of super talented folk who deserve it. Probably a topic for another discussion. Basically, don't expect this to become a hotbed for celebrity talk. In fact, you might as well get it all out on this post. There's a reason I don't have categories on the left entitled "TV" or "Celebrities". I don't watch TV really, and I find it a waste of time to talk about other people, anybody, either in a nice way or in a bad way, but especially in a bad way.
Anyway, back to Gary Busey. So, this guy, you may have heard, was in a huge motorcycle accident, had a huge change on his outlook on life, appreciates it more and everything, and became a philosopher of sorts. And these other people laugh at him when he comes up with stuff like his acronym of TEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More) and when he states that his team was put together by a power greater than himself and it's a sign. They laugh at him. Those guys, whoever they are, have no idea what he's been through and how he perceives life. They should just STFU in my opinion. But, whoever got this group of people together are geniuses. They know what people will clash, put them on the team together, and it becomes entertainment for all of us, defending Gary Busey or ripping on the Snapple girl. It's not even worth that much time talking about it, and I've wasted 8 minutes of my life. The disrespect shown is unbelievable. I was in an accident, and if I claimed that it changed my life, and acted like it like Busey does, I'd pity anyone who laughed at me, but he's probably too nice for that.
Sometimes I catch the first show of a season (last night I caught 2), and then never watch it again. We'll see what happens. I want to see if Bam's Dad loses 80 pounds! He considers mowing the lawn on a RIDE-ON MOWER exercise, it's hilarious.
Something else that's funny: I saw the Hulk Hogan reality show last night, where his daughter who's 16 wants to go on a date with a 22 year old, and Hulk's having a hard time letting her, and finally agrees to it after buying GPS tracking equipment for the car. OK. She's 16. The one scene had her coming out after getting a shower, in very skimpy bra and panties. Hulk, any guy who watched that episode has now lusted after your daughter. That's no estimated guess. Hulk, minding who his daughter dates at 16, apparently doesn't mind that the rest of the country now has very little left to imagine of her. |
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As you may know, I take the trolley and the El into work everyday. Trolley to 69th Street, then 69th to work. You may have heard that there were subway bombings yesterday in London, and that had caused alert levels to rise here in the lovely USA, but only for rail lines (which I think is dumb, but that's another story for another time, like in 10 minutes). However, I fear nothing, so I continue to go to work on the train. Call this whatever you want (courage, heroism, Godlike symptoms), I'm a stud.
Mainly, this courage comes from my lack of fear from dying or losing a leg or something, but also it comes from necessity for a paycheck. You might ask, what good is a paycheck if you're dead? Well, I'm sure that no one who has received a paycheck posthumously can answer that question, so why would you be asking me it? Like I know? Are you racist against dead people?! Ok, don't make me play the dead card on your ass. I'll have civil rights all over it.
So now that I've covered my utter lack of fear from anything (except bugs flying down or up my shirt), let's ponder why it's dumber than Kodie to raise threat alerts here in the United States. These also happen to be more reasons that I'm not afraid of an attack.
1) Coordinated attacks usually happen at the same time, hence the word "coordinated". By the time we heard of London's attacks it would have been too late already. Plus, there's like a huge time difference, so rush hour in the morning there is like sleepy time here. Rush hour in the evening there, if it's 5 o'clock, is lunch. My point is, terrorists would have suspected that the USA would have taken steps to prevent an attack here after hearing of the one in London. So they would have either coordinated an attack or just decided to attack one place.
2) Terrorists are not stupid. We probably insulted them bigtime by raising threat levels on only the public trans systems. Seriously, do you think, if attacks are only slightly coordinated, like 5-6 hours apart, that they would perform the same types of attacks? Meaning, bombs on subways?! Come on. I give them a little more credit than that.
That's not to discount the police or metro police who stand by the turnstyles everyday, looking for anything suspicious. But that brings up a question. They're always there. I thought the threat level was raised. Shouldn't they be "stepping up" security? They have the same amount. Oh well, I still feel safe. Plus, SEPTA has these signs, and has had them for as long as I've taken it, in their cars that say "Nothing can stop a train faster than a forgotten bag" or something like that. And it also warns to keep an eye out for this activity. I think it's brilliant. But, we're only Philly, what interest would al Qaeda have in us? I have no idea. |
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"This update installs a permanent copy of Package Installer for Windows to enable software updates to have a significantly smaller download size. The Package Installer facilitates the install of software updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems and other Microsoft products. After you install this update, you may have to restart your system."
From my latest Windows Update. Well, WTF??!? Do I have to restart it or not? I'm not installing it because that is the dumbest thing I've ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on.
I've had it up to HERE ;) with Windows on a personal level. Sure, I'll still need one for games because of the monopoly they've created with good PC games. Or I have to stop playing PC games altogether, which I'm not ready to do. At least not until the PS3 comes out, or the PSP comes out with good games, or the Nintendo Revolution takes shape.
My gaming PC isn't even working now since I bought the new 4 port PC/Mac KVM switch. It works fine with my other Windows PC. And, it even works fine until Windows starts up on that gaming PC, then it FREEZES ALL OF THE OTHER COMPUTERS attached to the KVM. I can't make this stuff up. I have no idea. The KVM maker says the USB port is not getting enough power if it has that behavior, but it works before it gets to Windows. This would lead one to believe that either the drivers are not compatible (I tried to uninstall and get the latest from somewhere, ANYWHERE, at least two times, but Windows says they are the latest drivers), or that, although hard to believe, Windows is at fault somehow. I just bought a PCI 5 port USB card, so we'll see. I'm hoping it works because I need that computer. I didn't spend all that money on it so it can sit there and freeze my other computers. If you think I'm lying about these symptoms, I'll gladly record it before the USB card gets here.
So, I'm thinking, now that I don't really need Windows (since I have a Mac), I can install Linux on my two non-gaming PCs. This laptop actually has Linux on it. I installed it first, before Windows, which exposed a horrendous bug in Windows. Since I installed it on the first partition, Windows automatically designated the next partition E:, thus making it have no C: drive. Well, if you run into weird things happening in Windows, check to see if you have a C: drive. You can make it seem like you have a C: drive by going to start>run then type in "cmd" then type "subst C: E:". (Replace E: with whatever drive Windows is installed on). That will return it to "normal".
So, now that I'm installing Linux, you will see a much happier person behind the text on this website. I might buy you flowers if I see you. I might let you sit in my seat on the subway. I might (if you happen to be a bum) give you my change or buy that gold necklace off of you for $20, to help you get all hopped up on cocaine and liquor. Yes, these will be better times for everyone. It might even have side effects, you never know. They might lower the oil prices, stop the war in Iraq, hell, Israel and Palestine will make up and say "Dude, I'm sorry I took over your land in the 60s, but God said it's ours" to which the much more pleasant Palestinians will reply "Hey, man, I know it was yours, we were just getting comfortable, no hard feelings? We'll just go move in with Egypt, it's all good." Ahh, world peace at last. |
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For the last day and a half, I put some pretty major work into this website. However, the only parts you'll see are in the comments section, and now a News post can have multiple categories associated with it. The thing about the last one is it's not easy at all. You need a few things.
#1 Table structure
#2 Change all your code that uses just a Subject in the news table
#3 Create a dual select box (which I needed anyway)
#4 Create a data list control to list each subject associated with that news post underneath it.
Numbers 1 and 2 were simple, but time consuming. However, numbers 3 and 4, with a new technology and very little documentation out there to go on, can be particularly daunting tasks. In the end, the amount of code written was not at all proportional to the amount of time spent on it, but that's usually the case in Computer Science and programming. You think and think and think, then the easy work begins, unless of course you're using a technology that you aren't too familiar with, like JavaServer Faces. I've written web controls in the technology before. The menu control, for instance, and the calendar control. However, unlike the menu and calendar controls, the Dual Select list is an input control, and the Data List control is an interation control, neither of which I had developed in JSF, up until this weekend.
Here is what the dual select list looks like:
And here is the short amount of JSP code that writes out all of the categories under a news post.
Now the code to "plop" a dual select list onto a page
Simple.
Now I just have to go through all of my news posts and properly categorize them. I'd rather drink gravel. |
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There was a miscommunication. I thought everyone wanted to go, but then everyone realized I was serious about going, so they all backed down :( Actually, that's not true. Scott wanted to go, and still may.
So instead I stayed in, cooked some burgers on the grill, lost much of the hair on my left hand, pet Kodie and watched the Phillies get manhandled by the knuckleball of Tim Wakefield. Now I'm going to add some features to my website. It'll be a Friday night to remember. |
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I don't feel like typing a lot, so this is a quick list of short, to the point, pieces of crap:
Tone Loc is playing tonight at Reeds in Blue Bell. I'm going and so are a bunch of my freak-show-seeking friends. I'm going to ask the bartender for a funky cold medina, then receive a fake laugh, as if that's the first time that particular bartender heard that particular joke on that particular night.
I thought about something that I used to think about when I was a kid. Could people join hands and connect around the world? Then, my new age, internet techy brain mangled it into this other thought. It would be cool if there were chained links from one webpage in one region to another webpage in the next region over, and the link on the next webpage linked to a region next to it, and so on and so forth.
Then, another idea popped in from this. You could probably send a search engine into an infinite loop if you could trick it into going around and around. This would involve changing the links and content on each linked page, but it wouldn't get anywhere except around the world an infinite amount of times. I guess that's getting somewhere, but it's not helping its cause in searching the web. Basically, one thread would be useless out of many threads of execution that make up a web spider's software. But, it would be neat.
I've been going to Barnaby's of America pretty much every Thursday for the past 2 weeks. It's not a false statement, but rather unnecessary to use "pretty much every Thursday" and "for the past 2 weeks". Oh well. More words == more chance someone will read something.
I've been listening to Candlebox on shuffle during my commute to and from work. They are good. Great. They rock and write good melodies, and they have good guitar. A while ago I got so into them that I even researched and found out that the lead singer has another band. I bought an autographed copy of their album. The new band is Kevin Martin and the HiWatts.
Wednesday I spent my commute to work listening to "Sexy and 17" by the Stray Cats. I listened to it 6 times straight, and then 3 or more on the way back. There are no words to describe that song, you basically just have to listen to it 100 times.
That ex-KKK member got 60 years for the murder of 3 people. He's like a million years old. Justice was not done in this case, even by the furthest stretch of the imagination. 40 years had passed. Way to go, Justice.
Some people think that guns should be banned, that the 2nd Amendment is old and for "militias", which are pretty much near extinction. That'll work like the Prohibition of Alcohol in the earlier part of last century, by all accounts of the quick run-through in my head. I think less things should be banned, but I can post a book on this topic.
Ahh, the critics. Read the comments:
"Contradictions in your post.. do you want to type or not? "I don't feel like typing a lot" ... and ... "but rather unnecessary to use "pretty much every Thursday" and "for the past 2 weeks". Oh well. More words""
Obviously not a soldier in the Battle of Logic. If not wanting to go to work meant not going to work, well, consider half of America on vacation. Or, want to be a millionaire? It takes a little more than wanting. This further justifies and explains my comments. Tune in next week.
[check back for more]
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| I put up two new songs that I created with the assistance of my Mac and GarageBand, a program that CAME WITH my Mac Mini. They are called "Jazz in June" and "Funkin A". I have to make the Downloads page easier to navigate, somehow. |
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That's right! Mac Mini. 1.42 Ghz G4. Ram to be upgraded in a bit. Installing the latest software updates right now. And I almost have my first song written in GarageBand. This thing's sweet. At 1280x1024 it's a sight to behold. I will have some pictures up soon, as soon as I clean up my room a bit :) It's got a bunch of new trash from the purchases today. I also got a new 4 port KVM switch so I can have all of my 4 computers hooked up to one keyboard, monitor and mouse. Technology is amazing.
The first shot is the Mac information and a shout out to Cracker. The other shot is FTP access from my Windows PC to my Mac. It works beautifully. I'll have photos up soon. |
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It might be time to get a Mac. When you start getting emails with subject lines that say "24 Month Financing on all Apple PowerBooks, iBooks and Mac minis" and you have the card in your pocket that makes this statement even more compelling (a MicroCenter card), the temptation becomes so great, it's hard to stay the whole day of work.
Mac mini
1.42GHz / 1.0GB PC2700 DDR RAM / 80GB Hard Drive / SuperDrive 4x DVD±RW Drive / 54Mbps AirPort Extreme Wireless Card, Bluetooth Adapter included / 937490
It's a beautiful thing. Going for $999.97. OR
Apple PowerBook G4 15-inch
1.67GHz / 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM / 80GB Hard Drive / SuperDrive 8x DVD±RW Drive / 732552
which goes for $2299.99. The card is what I bought my current Wintel laptop on, and it was nearly identical in price, and that's long been paid off, so I can do it. But with 24 months "same as cash"!?!?! That's awesome. It could be around $100 a month for that PowerBook.
The only thing that I have an urgency about getting a Mac is that they will soon all be converted to Intel. While I have an Intel laptop, I am pretty much a lover of all things AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and a hater of all things Intel. I had my previous AMD, a 1400 MHz Athlon, from when I interned at QVC during the summer of 2001, until just a few months ago. A fan on the motherboard died, making this awful racket at first, then eventually fried itself, rendering the whole thing broken. So I bought a replacement mobo, CPU and some RAM (I had everything else) for less than $400. An Athlon 2800+ and 1GB RAM, and a top of the line (for the CPU) Motherboard. Sweet dealin'. I don't use it for games. My gaming PC, if mentioned on this website, could endanger my life ;) It's a beaut. 64 bit Athlon FX-53. That's all I can say.
So, I'll be taking advantage of this Macintosh "Giveaway". 2 years same as cash, it's practically a giveaway. I'll just walk in, pick one up, and walk out, and feel like I've rented a movie, at least in the same financial range, except I'll have this beautiful piece of machinery.
Which one should I get? I could save money, I have some ram at home too, but no "gig-sticks"... The Mac mini only takes one stick o' RAM, so a gig or a 2 gig stick would be optimal, but I'd have to buy one :(
Keep in mind, you Mac freaks... I am not converting, only "adding to my arsenal". Actually, I'm getting one because of the newest Mac OS X and the iLife '05 (particularly GarageBand). I'm not an artist so don't expect some new l33t Mac art or anything that artists do. I'll have some music up here, though. I've always been a big fan of classical music mixed with blues (at least, from what it sounds like in my head), or reggae and classical and blues, or swing, or rap and swing and blues and classical. Yeah, I haven't heard them either, let's see what I can do.
I think having a Mac will be pretty wicked sweet. |
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For the meantime, the Phillies are now tied for last place with the Marlins, and are 1.5 games behind the Nationals. The division is volatile. A win yesterday and we would have been in first place. We lost. It's tight. My heart can't take it. Check out the pictures in my album.
In other news, I now have an air conditioner in my bedroom, so it won't be a billion degrees in there anymore. It was steamy. With the temperature around 92 and the humidity at around 110%, it gets a bit harsh on the sweat glands. Even through the thunderstorm we had, which was apparently (by my guess) caused by the world not being used to 110% humidity... that's usually unheard of, except in these parts. So Mother Nature tried to make us feel like the world was ending. That was quite a thunderstorm. It shook the house and it rained a lot.
In yet other news, I now have a cool domain name. I've narrowed it down to one, it's ahead by a half-a-length, with a few others pulling in closely, but it's predicted by industry predicters that this domain name will win, or will at least be a website in the future. It's a neat domain name, no doubt. It's a .org, and the .com counterpart was already taken, and the owner was asking for $2,250, like I have $2k+ to spend on words... actually, not even words plural, just a WORD. $2k+ for one single word, that, when by itself makes no sense. The internet is going to hell. I'll tell you the domain name later :)
In yet other breaking news, I will start to have a weekly feature on here, for one week. Then it will turn into a bi-weekly, and eventually a random thing, then inevitably a never again. Tune in!
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| I'm going downstairs in the A/C. |
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I'm second and third guessing my domain name decisions... I have too many ideas for names. There's not one thing that, I feel, can aptly describe what my site is about. Especially when it's all done, except for the content. The content will never be finished :) When I get some cool recording equipment, I'll eventually have some good tunes on here, although "Show Off" in my music downloads is pretty good.
I just keep typing stuff into Network Solutions' text thingy there, and seeing what names are available, and at the end I'll email myself the list. Today I compiled a list of around 30 domain names. I think I really like one of them though. Maybe. We'll see tomorrow. |
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Or at least get discounts on their cars like their employees do!
Source... |
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A while ago I bought a QuickTime Pro license. I wanted to make the movies smaller so I could not have to worry about going on for 3 minutes and having people download a movie all day long. I had formatted and reinstalled Windows after I bought it, and I couldn't find the registration key for a while, but I found it. So there are 2 new movies up there for your viewing and listening pleasure, and they are all a lot smaller than they would be without the magic of Apple software. View the movies here.
[Update] I've simplified (but not beautified) the process of downloading. You will be prompted with a link after you click download, so that way you can right click and save it instead of opening the file in the browser. Also, I've added a file size to each download so you get an idea of how much free time I have... oh and how long it'll take you to download. |
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I ordered some things from Outpost last night (that's another story, my love affair with Outpost.com) which came today (see why I love them?) I got a new digital camera. It's neat, it records videos and has zoom unlike my other one which isn't very powerful at all.
The other thing I got was 1 GB of memory for my laptop. A huge upgrade from 512, it's the computer that does the most work for me. I thought it would be a nightmare replacing RAM in such a compact unit as a laptop. But, I found 2 manuals on hp.com, one for the lower memory module and one for the upper memory module, which I had to flip off the keyboard and get into the guts of it. I'd always be maxed out on memory after about an hour of using it... unacceptable. I work on that thing for about 5 hours at a time. I'm so used to it I could do everything on there blindfolded with my arms tied behind the chair. This is the more impacting purchase of the day. The camera is cool and everything, but just because I got a new camera doesn't mean I'll be using it more than the old one, except during the honeymoon period.
Also, we got a new couch for our living room, I'll take pictures of it with the new camera and put them up. I'll probably install the Canon software that came with the camera, until I get sick of it. |
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I just added comments to pictures, so now you can comment and tell me what a good looking guy I am. Or the opposite. But I will warn you: if you call me a good looking girl, I'll probably get upset. The photo albums now take a nanosecond longer to load. I have to figure out how to do it without making trips to the database. I can do it but it won't be backwards compatibleable, if you can read that word. I made it up kinda. The earlier stuff I made don't have what I call a "Count Property". The news has a comments "List Property" but no comments "Count Property". I can just add them in there, but it's a few hour project to take out all of the extra code that I wrote very foolishly when I could have just done it the way I'm thinking and make it really fast. Damn I am smart and yet stupid.
Other updates include some bug fixes, a new control to format text, some new bugs, and the content management system is up here but I won't be creating content with it until the menuable objects thing is done. I'd rather do a little work now rather than a lot of work for the remainder of the life of this site :) Someone once said that the lazy programmer is the smart programmer. I'm not so lazy but I make up for it with my smartness :-D I'm kidding... but I think the smart programmer tends to think of ways they can be lazy, so I think the other way around. Anyway, I could make a whole news section on the philosophy of the non-industrious ultra brain-powered software developer, but I won't. |
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I'm not really superstitious about this, I'd just thought I'd mention it in case you are reading this and you forget until now, and then you become all nervous and won't travel or do anything but sit at home and play with your rabbit's foot. :) It'll all be over shortly, hang in there.
But it reminds me of one of my favorite Cracker songs, "Lonesome Johnny Blues".
"Lucky number 7 passed me by. Lucky number 7 called my name and passed on by. Well he came back don't you know, with his brother 6 in tow, and that's how number 13 wound up at my side."
Quality stuff. |
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| This server now has 1000 GB monthly transfer. I have an 80 GB hard drive on here, if I could fill it up, I could transfer the entire contents of the hard drive twelve and a half times. Or, more practically, if I have 100 MB of stuff on this website, i could have 10,000 people a month view everything I have on here. Even more practically, I'll never use 1000 GB a month. That total, however, includes my FTP and SSH usage, although SSH is really no percentage of 1000 GB. Using SSH, I may transfer 1 GB every 10 years :) The cap used to be 100 GB and I never used it, but the websites I have on here before this one hardly got used, although this one isn't used much either, but I visit it everyday :) Anyway, feel free to hoard my music. |
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I've decided to show 3 months on the calendar for my own personal reasons. I know there will never be anything new posted to the site in the future lest I unveil what I've been working on in my basement for 10 years, that which has previously been called science fiction, but still, the clock on the server still says May 2005. It's so simple to change it. The only thing that I have to fix about this site is that I can't reload it in Tomcat. It'll re-compile JSPs if I upload them, but I need to restart the application, and something in the server.xml file in Tomcat is preventing me from easily doing that (right now I have to go to the Linux shell and restart Tomcat, shutting down every site on this server...)
Next thing I'm working on is a simple content management system so I can easily add pages with stuff on them, and after that the forum, and then finally a poll system. The casba will be rocked. |
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| Woohoo! I have a calendar now. The site is nowhere near done. Keep checking back for updates. I'm going to add a forum and some kind of cheap content management system. Those two are going to be added just because I'm using this same site for different sites. I just change the images and stylesheets, remove systems or leave them the same, and voila, you won't recognize it as being the same exact software but it will be :) |
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I have a cool idea for the calendar. Aside from people being able to add dates to it, the calendar is now a project. It will include a web component and a few pages. Basically, now I'll be able to show, for instance, a small "newspaper" icon on a day that there was news. Of course, I like making these things easily configurable, I'll also be able to have an icon that signifies, say, a new Photo Album added, and on the date the photo album was added, that icon will show up on the calendar. It's going to be neat. Other "calenderable" things I have are downloads and links. This thing is going to be cool.
So also, the calendar control will be clickable and you'll go to a page, when you click a specific date, and it'll show you all the neat things that happened on this site on that date. |
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I have a few more things I want to add before I call this site finished for now.
Forum
If I want to use this site to replace many other sites I've written, the first thing I need to write is a forum. It's going to be complete garbage compared to what's out there, but you know what? I don't care. The other sites up, the Connell site and the Bygrave site both have forums with messages in them, so I can't just ditch them. So, at least I have to make them for those sites.
Calendar
Same thing as above, those sites have calendars with dates in them, Kate would be mighty PO'd if I just erased them. She may be in Japan but that doesn't mean I have no reason to fear her :) She will be back and I will hear it, believe me, even if it's 2 years from now! I'm partly kidding, in case your name is Kate Bygrave... :)
Also, I'm going to have to make the page wider so I can fit the calendar on the right side. They'll be up by this weekend hopefully. Other things I want to do is make the news "pageable", sorta like Google Search Results (the clicky numbers at the bottom). Instead of having "Goooooooooogle" it's probably going to say "w00000000000000000t" or something wicked like that. Alright, it's 11pm, time for beddy-bye. |
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| I've just updated my website to a whole new interface, but also to a whole new "back-end" too! You probably can't tell, but the new web page was programmed in 100% pure Java. Using JavaServer Faces as the presentation layer, a custom middle tier and data access tier, and for the persistence tier, I'm now using MySQL. It's worlds beyond what my old website could have even dreamt about becoming :) This website is like my old website's wildest dream. It would be like a man with no legs or arms (my old website) dreaming one day of becoming a professional basketball player (my "6'10'' tall, with a giant vertical leap, speed like a cheetah, and can make a jumpshot from anywhere" new website). That's how good this new website is. |
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| July 2010 |
|---|
| Sun | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | | | | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
| June 2010 |
|---|
| Sun | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | | | |
 |
