me -- shut up

bb -- did you just tell yourself to shut up?

me -- i was preemptively telling you to shut up about asking if i told myself to shut up

I wrote a post for work about using XMPP to send task notifications through Google Talk.

I was at the "Heroes Happen Here" launch event for Visual Studio 2008 and a bunch of other software that still lags behind open source offerings. I knew we were getting free software (Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, Windows 2008) but I didn't know we were getting Vista. It was a pleasant surprise because now when games start coming out that only work on Vista, I'm ready and don't have to spend $400. And that's all I have to say about that. Thanks Microsoft!

It was generally a good time. Four of us from work. We got there and registered with 40 minutes left to go until the first event, so we headed out to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch. It's across the street from where the event was hosted, at 12th and Market (Marriot). Mark lost his sunglasses so went back to get them while we went to the market. We ended up going to Famous Frank's near the Beer Garden, and then ate at the Beer Garden. You have to buy beer in order to eat there, which we did. Mark doesn't drink, so I said if he gets accosted about having to buy beer, I suggested he just buy one, put it in front of him, and I'll drink it. He didn't, but a couple got thrown out before he got there because they weren't boozin.

We left and went to the first show, which we were late for. It was my friend and former coworker, Danilo Diaz, giving the first developer track talk. After that, we got our free software, checked in with the second talk, and left after 10 minutes because it was general crap.

During the first talk, it was stuff that all of us have done already. The only interesting feature about 2008 and .NET 3.5 is Lambda expressions (which I'm not even really impressed with), and they weren't even covered. Way to go Dan :P We were talking through a lot of it. When he showed the Javascript debugger in Visual Studio 2008, everyone cheered, and I said, kinda loud, "Firebug!!". Some dudes behind me laughed. I was texting a coworker stuck back at the office, checking if I could get internet on my iPod, and just generally being a jackass. I was there for the free shit. We learned nothing new. Everything that was covered, one of the four of us have already done, and it's just like "Oh, yeah, look at this code in source safe, and here's some other hints about it." I don't know one person who (besides my Java friends :P) hasn't done ASP.NET AJAX and used UpdatePanels. It certainly didn't need all that time to go over it.

Oh well, Danilo works at Microsoft now, and I've never been impressed with their code examples or presentations, so I guess that just comes with the territory. Do they say "Keep it short and don't cover interesting stuff" ? I don't know, there might have been people there that haven't seen that stuff. Who knows. Maybe I'm just at a very technologically advanced company. That could very well be it, but I can't understand, then, why I've been doing PHP for the past two months :)

Other than that it was a good time. It helps when you're like best friends with the people you work with.

Thanks for Vista, suckers.

I just bought two "compilation" albums that should keep me occupied for a couple of days.

Eddie Cochran
Buddy Holly

Greatest hits or whatever. I get the morning shift in work, of music. We throw on tunes and rock. Friday I put on the Beastie Boys "License to Ill", and previous installments included Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns n' Roses, Blind Melon, and I forget what else. It's a good time. Time to mix it up with some 50s rock.

So, some big weeks lately... This week:

Monday: Paid off my car on Friday and got the title on today!

Tuesday: Received second iPod Touch that I didn't order, and assumed I'm on some sort of iPod touch weekly subscription, for only $400 a week! I sent it back. (It was Amazon's fault, not Apple's :P )

The rest of the week... I will finally be buying my house! My parents sold their house and move on Halloween. They are hiring movers.

My keyboard's kinda screwed up because soda was spilled on it (not me!!). The keys were really sticky, so I pulled a bunch of them off and wiped behind them with a wet paper towel, but my "I" key will never be the same (although it works fine, it just sticks up a little more than the others), and my "0" (zero) key (and hence, my "close parentheses" key) makes some weird noise when pressed.

This month and next are big months for gamers:

Crysis Collector's Edition DVD-ROM with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $59.99
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $49.99
Sim City Societies with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $49.99
Super Mario Galaxy Wii Pre-Release
Ships 11/12/07 $49.99
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune PS3 Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $59.99
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Wii Pre-Release
Ships 10/23/07 $39.99


That's my shopping cart at EB games.

This Friday will be the first time all of us from work head out to the bar since we hired a bunch of new people, including me! We're gonna get wasted.

I'm 3-3 in Fantasy Football this year, winning the last game by 2 points! Tony Gonzalez had a huge game, and Muhsin Muhammad has finally started scoring for me. My team stinks, though. It will be miraculous if I finish over .500. I only had 76 points, and really only got points from those two and the Eagles D. No one else contributes. This week I play my brother Scott. He'll be at the Eagles game so I'll have to call him and tell him I'm whooping his ass.

I joined Netflix finally. It's gonna be a great way to finally watch all those movies I haven't seen yet.

I'm also trying to quit smoking. It's rough, and I know drinking will make it really hard, but the trick would be to go back to quitting after a long night of drinking with a few smokes here or there. Drinking in Philly is a lot easier than in the suburbs.

This post has a little of everything.

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.

I can imagine a lot of things I don't like. The smell of crap, certain food, cheap coffee and most light beers, stuff like that. I haven't really not liked a lot of people in my lifetime. You'd have to really bug me. However, I don't discriminate between something that I don't like and get paid to do, and everything else. If I don't like something, no matter WHAT, I let people know.

I have certain ways of portraying my dislike for everything. If there's a stink of crap in the air, I'll either leave or spray something. I don't buy cheap coffee or light beer, and I don't buy or eat food that I don't like.

In contrast, if I love something, I indulge. Music, people, certain foods (although I have been getting just salad for lunch lately), movies, programming, everything. If I love it I will try to get as much exposure to it as I can. I've been listening to ONLY Bob Marley for about 3 months straight now. See my music post (search music for title in the filter above) for examples.

I can't imagine another way of expressing dislike. It may come up in conversation or something, and you can say "I hate crap." But really, if you smelled crap, you wouldn't just say "I hate crap" and then continue to breath in the fumes. If you don't like something, the only way to take action against it is, well, to take action against it.

There is a tough situation in there though. If you don't like something, but that something really loves you. Like, I might not like a certain person but they'll really like me. Conversely, I might like smoking and coffee, but that stuff is bad for me. This makes for bad situations.

I can't imagine how many people are in a job that they don't like. I couldn't imagine being in a job that I didn't like. You get paid for it, it takes up your whole day, you have to go against your desires and inhibitions and go to bed early in order to be on time for it, you get bossed around (unless you're the boss), you have to deal with people that are sometimes less fortunate in the intellect department, and best of all, you're stuck there until something better comes along. I don't know how to deal with a job that I don't like, except by showing that I don't like it. Acting like you would when you open a bathroom door and you are overwhelmed with crap. "OH GOD THAT WREAKS!!"

So, to my surprise, the way that I show I don't like stuff is not the way to show that I don't like a job. Apparently, you are lucky to be there. You should express your gratitude for having a job that you don't like by going against your instinctive knee-jerk reaction of displaying dislike for a job. And God forbid you do anything other than work for 2 minutes and your boss sees you not working.

Some other things you might not know about me. I'm not the best. I'll explain. I don't look down on people. Some people might show me that their idiots sometimes, but if they're in a position that requires not being an idiot, then I'll accept that they might only sometimes show idiocy. Likewise, I'm not the worst. I don't see people as being better than me. Ever. That's not to say that I'm as good as anybody in everything. That's just the simple, God given fact that "All People Are Created Equal." I hold this truth to be self evident. So, to insinuate that you're better than anyone, because that someone made a mistake (or 11), is saying that you're perfect. Ok, Perfecty McPerfect. So, when a boss shows disrespect to me, I in turn show disrespect to them. Their TITLE in a JOB at a COMPANY might say to them that they are better than me, but that's a joke. If I ever use my professional status in a stupid job as an excuse to disrespect anyone, please shoot me in the f%!#$ing temple.

One other thing, because of this, a side effect is not necessarily giving a rat's ass of what anybody thinks of me.

Remember the thing about not liking something that likes you? I didn't like this job but my boss really liked me in the job. So, in effect, my job like me. This was a tough situation, as I've said, and one that likely drew out the time that I was there. Due to other circumstances outside of my control, I was also obligated to be there longer than I wanted. Not obligated because it was my job, though. For the same reasons I'm not obligated to breath in crap and drink shitty coffee.

So, overall, the moral of this story is that I'm done with bad jobs as soon as I start them and find out that it's a job I don't like. This will prevent many headaches in the future. If it's bearable, then it's bearable. If it's a bad job, I'm f@#%@#$ing out of there.

I'm getting sh%@faced this weekend. New job starts on Monday.

But I never tried installing Windows on my Mac before. I bought Parallels and entered the name of the VM, my name, and my Windows product key. Clicked "OK" or something, and moments later, I had Windows installed. Parallels is a neat program, I didn't have to do anything after that to install it, it probably got all my settings from the Mac and used that for certain Windows settings (Timezone, etc). It was sweet. So now I can use it to make money :)

I have a project to do with a local school. I needed Windows, SQL Server, and Visual Studio .NET 2003. Luckily, I bought no new software for this. I own 2 copies of Windows (one is still installed on a computer that I haven't turned on in about 8 months, and one on my gaming computer which is running all the time...), I borrowed SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, and I am using ICSharpCode's SharpDevelop, which is pretty neat. And Open Source. e.g. Free.

I did all the original work while working for a company about 3 years ago now. I tried to instill some better programming practices in them while I was there, but alas, it's been a pain to relearn how to use all the code. It's coming along though.

"I have my cell phone and a full tank of gas.
I can meet you for lunch or whatever works best.
If it all goes as planned, we'll have a f@%#@ing blast.
Then go back to work and fall asleep at our desk."

The first two lines were in an actual email from me to Laura and Audrea at HCMI. I noticed they were very poetic, so I added to it :) It's like the best poem ever.

Today I conducted my first two phone interviews. You know the ones where you're calling them and they're trying to impress you so THEY can get a job? Yeah. Talk about a power trip. Of course, they have to respect you, or you're like "Hey, f@#%@ you buddy!" It's just funny. Later, I thought, "Man, they'd act different if they knew I stay in my PJs until 5pm on Saturdays, or if they knew I sit at home during the spring, on the couch, and watch the Phillies every day. Or if they knew my room was a mess."

I have no problem with side work, meaning, the extra money. Today I was chatting with a friend, and this is what I told him :)

[17:35] jasontconnell: i'm working tonight... i hate saying i'll do work at home because then i'm stuck working at home :)

[17:36] jasontconnell: wish you could say you'll work, not work, but also get work done, and then get paid for it

[17:36] jasontconnell: but the whole getting work done without working part is pretty tricky...

Yes, that part I haven't quite figured out. Another thing is that I like working on stuff, but when it starts cutting into my Wii time, it just gets offensive.

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.