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

MBPRO 15/2.16 CTO
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-2x1GB
160GB Serial ATA Drive@5400rpm
SuperDrive 6X
15" Widescreen Display
BkLit Keyboard/Mac OS
Country Kit

That is one fine piece of machinery, right there.

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.

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."

I started a new site and I'm going to link it here, even though I said I wouldn't tell anyone about it. I'm just too impatient. It's not for young audiences, which is why I didn't plan on linking it here in the first place, since this isite is so f#$@ing clean. Anyway, it's an online comic with characters that have no names or history for that matter... pretty much whenever you read one you won't be lost. You can view the latest at www.addictedcomics.com. It'll be fun, and cover just about everything under the sun.

And I mean, RIGHT after midnight.

Here's what the last few items of news look like if I select just NewsDate from mysql...

| 2006-08-29 00:00:19 |
| 2006-08-30 00:00:11 |
| 2006-09-05 00:00:41 |
| 2006-09-07 00:00:43 |
| 2006-09-08 00:00:13 |
| 2006-09-08 00:00:46 |
| 2006-09-10 00:00:03 |
| 2006-09-23 00:00:22 |
| 2006-10-05 00:00:53 |
| 2006-10-07 00:00:07 |
| 2006-10-10 00:00:40 |
| 2006-10-11 00:00:29 |
| 2006-10-16 00:00:19 |
| 2006-10-16 00:00:19 |
| 2006-10-17 00:00:22 |
| 2006-10-17 00:00:27 |
| 2006-10-19 00:00:11 |
| 2006-10-20 00:00:33 |

Don't ask me, I just write the sh@#%.

Actually, I know exactly why. Time didn't matter before I had the feed, but now all my items are showing up as "12 AM" and I hadn't the foggiest. Well, I had an idea, but it needs to be fixed, that's all. Time is of the essense.

Just plug in /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.

Kira, my neice, turned 7 today! I headed over to my parents house today after work because we had a little party for her, and they were all going to see the Monsters Inc on Ice at 7pm. We colored, drew Halloween stuff, and ate cupcakes and brownies after dinner. Then I came home and napped while watching game 7 of the NLCS, which is still on and in the 7th inning.

Multifantaskular -
adj. Describes someone who gets many things done in a short amount of time.
Use: That dude can program, write up specs, design a database and provide UML at the same time, he's multifantaskular.

© 2006 Jason Connell

I plan on using just "Atom" as it is the W3 standard. As you can see here:

public class AtomSource {
private AtomCategory category;
private AtomPerson contributor;
private AtomGenerator generator;
private AtomUri icon;
private AtomUri id;
private AtomLink link;
private AtomUri logo;
private AtomDefaultText rights;
private AtomDefaultText subtitle;
private AtomDefaultText title;
private AtomDate updated;
}


Implementation to follow, and I'll have a link up of the feed and some readers, although I highly suggest Google Reader. I'm just implementing the bare minimum to be valid and readable by Atom readers because I have more important crap to do.

World world = WorldFactory.getWorld("Earth");

I have the world... now all I need to do is save it. Is the world capable of saving itself? Can it be as simple as

world.Save();

??

I don't think so. I need a World Saver.

WorldSaver savior = new WorldSaver();
savior.setNeedsSaving("Everything");
savior.setPriority(10);

Now I have the world saver. We just need to save our world.

savior.save(world);

Phew!! Just in time too, the s@#$ was about to hit the fan.

Woohoo! Had to take care of some things right away, like last month's car payment, other bills, video games that came out or are coming out next week, etc, but I still got some left. So I'm having a contest! Just kidding. That would be fun.

Actually, I'm starting on a new web project!! This one will be t3h sweetz0r. I'm not telling anyone, either, so it'll get no visitors for like a year, until people start linking it showing the funny things that are on there. In order to do this, I must own or upgrade a few things. #1, a scanner. I have one in my basement but it's like 200 pounds and made of wood. #2, a sense of humor. I have one downstairs but it's old and weighs 200 pounds, and doesn't work all that well sometimes, and other times drastically misunderstood. #3, artistic ability, some paper and magic markers or art pencils, an outline pen (black ink used to make comics that you find in the paper or a comic book), because I have none of any of those. #4, inspiration, which I can get just by observing the goings-on around me. #5, a MacBook Pro! They're just beautiful. Bean got a MacBook, and he can go online using our neighbor's wireless and check fantasy football scores from in front of the TV. Errr.. Pat does that actually.

So, it's time to create and to entertain.

Until then...

"if i didn't know any better, i'd'a thought a bunch of retarded monkeys worked on .NET 1.0 - 1.1"

"those retarded monkeys now just write examples of 2.0 stuff on the internet"

From a whole chat with my friend Seth, complaining about how useless and stupid .NET 1.0 - 1.1 was, and how useless the examples of everything in 2.0 is now. It took me 6 hours to get this thing I'm working on now to work (no thanks to the internet), and Seth said he looked for weeks and couldn't find anything on his problem.

Went to dinner, for Tom's birthday, with the gang last night, then over to Casey's which is 3 blocks away from my house, basically an open invitation to get obliterated. I'm disappointed with myself, because on the walk home, I was still able to stay on the left sidewalk with no problems, and I made it home without once passing out for an hour in someone's driveway.

Gia probably has a million photos from the night, I'll try to snag some. She can keep the ones with the ass (me dancing or whatever) and with the ass!! This girl was sitting at the bar on the enclosed porch, had the whole inside bar as her audience, and her shirt and pants went into such a configuration that half of her ass was sticking out. We probably should have told her, but looking back, who got hurt here? Nobody.

I was overly stuffed the whole damn night from our dinner at JB Dawson's. Holy crap that was a lot of f@#%^ing food. That's the worst. It's not bad usually, when you can just lay back and watch the Phillies on an overly full stomach, but when you have to walk around, dance, talk to people, come up with funny things, etc, and pile a lot of beer on top of all that sh@#%, then it becomes a bit of a chore. It was delicious though.

Highlights from the night:
J-Bomb
Gia and Michelle dancing with me was fun, and made me look like I was a stud. I don't have to worry about people thinking that I don't know what I'm doing, dancing-wise, because I rock the mother f23%#ing casba at that. But to make them think I'm a stud is something I'll gladly do.

Tom's new picture on myspace. Myspace stalking. Thankfully, NOT leaving messages on myspace last night.