I am somewhat at a loss for what to write about today as it’s been pointed out to me that lately my posts have been “too boring.” I’ve at times thought that my ramblings can get boring, but lately I did not think this was the case. My definition of boredom, or what I think is boring, might differ from what everyone else thinks, however, so I could very well be wrong when I think that my posts are interesting. So right now, when it comes time for me to try to think of something interesting, I am at a complete loss for anything to write. I don’t want to just write something random that might bore someone and turn them off from reading this site in the future, yet I also don’t want to create something that is completely contrived for the sake of trying to keep a reading audience coming back. Quite the conundrum, isn’t it?
For the sake of trying to be interesting, I’ve decided that today it’s time to revisit Rick and his adjustment to the real world. So how is it going? Well, I’d say blech, but MS Word gives me the red underline of death denoting it thinks it’s not really a word, so I won’t use that. How about meh? Nope, don’t like that either, do you Word? Umm…maybe blah? Whew, Word’s going to let me get away with that one. So there you are, I’m blah. What, that’s not very descriptive? Too bad I don’t really care.
Ok, so that last sentence came off a little bitter. Well, that’s because it was. I seem to be a little grumpier lately, but for reasons unknown to me. I’m not really grumpier towards people more than I usually am, but in general I’m just a little more not happy. Thinking about it here at work, I’ve concocted a few hypotheses as to why I might be that way. I dare you to use the scientific method to prove these!
Hypothesis one: I miss the college atmosphere. This is a definite possibility. As much as I enjoy living at home, there isn’t nearly as much to do at home as there was at SJU or CSB. If I wanted to find something to do, on any given night I could probably find something to do or get some people together to do something. Now, I only have available to me what I have at our house and my social circle consists of me and Ryan. Classes were also much more enjoyable then work. Sure, classes were often a lot of work, but in comparison I felt much more fulfilled when I was in class and doing homework than I do at work typing out thousands of words a day in a program manual.
Hypothesis two, a corollary to hypothesis one: I miss having friends around. I’m not knocking my family here—they’re fun people to hang out with, but not being able to get together with a bunch of people to watch a movie, or play volleyball, or go to a play, or go out to eat, or whatever else you can think of is somewhat personally taxing for me. All of you that do have close and constant contact with your friends, know that you’re in a wonderful environment. It’s something I am very jealous of. The varied contact of different people is starting to be one of the main things I miss.
Hypothesis three: I’m just a bitter, old bastard masquerading as a 22 year old, normal guy. This hypothesis seemed to be the most viable at first, but then I came to realize I’m not really that old.
Hypothesis four: I lead too much of a geek lifestyle. Yes, I am a geek, nerd, dork, or whatever derogatory term you’d like to refer to me as. I delight in watching anime (Hellsing at the moment). One of my favorite pastimes is reading comics (Dr. Fate right now). I play video games daily with my brother (D&D: Heroes). I read classic literature and philosophy for fun (I’m halfway through Stoker’s Dracula). By these habits combined, I am Captain Nerd. Since I lead this lifestyle, the constant misconceptions about this type of life being superimposed on me could have, over time, led me to revile my own image. I kind of doubt this, but it is a possibility.
So, which hypothesis is it? I’m not sure, and frankly, after enumerating those, I don’t care anymore. I’ll stick to just telling you that I’m stuck in blah mode right now. I’ll let you know when I get out of it. Until then, my posts might be boring, but that’s the way it’s going to be.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Do I Have to Stop Buying DVD's Too?
I have a few wonderfully amazing things to tell you all this morning. The first being that a cup of coffee, on average, only contains about six calories. If you add cream or sugar or other additive the calorie count goes up in leaps and bounds, but you average, black, no-additive cup of coffee only has 6 calories. This is an amazing piece of knowledge for me simply because I drain coffee by the pot here at work to keep me “motivated” enough to keep going throughout the day. If there were as many calories in a glass of coffee as there was in, say, a can of pop (about 100 or more depending on what you drink), I would be one overweight dude.
The only downfall from drinking so much coffee during the morning and early afternoon at work is that if I don’t get very much one day and don’t have any caffeinated drinks at home that night, I’ll wake up with a mondo caffeine withdrawal headache in the morning (like I did today). Let me tell you, it’s no fun crawling out of bed feeling like your head was used for a kickball at recess at one of those “alternative” schools. Once I start pouring my morning’s fuel down my throat it all goes away, however, but this only reinforces my addiction. I never in my life thought I’d be addicted to any substances, but I now realize I am. Yay! The first step to curbing my addiction is admitting I have a problem. Unfortunately, this is all the further I’m going to get in my rehab because I just so happen to love my addiction.
The other piece of information that I have involves a court ruling against 321Studios. They make a piece of software called DVDXCOPY, which I use. This software let’s you make backup copies of your dvd’s onto dvd-r’s or +r’s or rw’s or +rw’s or –ram or what the hell ever format of dvd recordable you use. Quick side note, they really need to get one unified format for writeable dvd’s. Anyhow, back to what I was saying. They were sued saying their program violated the copyrights of the dvd’s that would be copied. 321Studios argued that it was fair use for people to back up copies of their movies. 321Studios lost.
You can read an article about the case here [update: the article has been removed]. I can see where the movie studios are coming from because they don’t want people just borrowing dvd’s from their friends and then copying them. I can also see 321Studios side of the argument in that it is fair use to backup your movies. I have to side with 321Studios, but on one condition—once the dvd makers will replace a scratched or broken dvd at no cost to the buyer, 321Studios should stop selling their software. Until then, people should be able to back up their discs.
See, I made copies of my transformers box sets because I didn’t want to constantly be opening the huge case it came in and possibly scratching the discs. If I somehow scratched a disc or broke one, I’d have to go buy a brand new $50 box set. Now with DVDXCOPY, I can quickly make a “player” copy of the disc. This copy is what I use to watch while my box set sits nicely in my room displayed. However, I wouldn’t be so worried about accidentally scratching my discs up if the dvd maker (Rhino in this case) would opt to replace discs that get broken for no cost. This way I wouldn’t have to make player copies of the discs.
From the court case, making copies of discs for backup and purposes such as I described is not illegal. You have every right to do it, just not in as good of a format. Quote the article: “She said blocking people from making perfect digital copies of their DVDs did not unconstitutionally hamper free speech or fair-use rights. People were free to make copies of movies in other, nondigital ways that would give them access to the same content, even if not in the same, pristine form”
Ok, so I’m supposed to do what? Record it onto a VHS in my VCR? Ok……oh wait, I CAN’T do that because of the CSS encryption on a dvd. It won’t let you record onto a vhs. All you will get is crappy picture and muddled sound (I know because I’ve tried). So that option is out. What other options do we have? Ummm……I really don’t know. I suppose we could break out an old betamax recorder and see if that works. Why do we have to record a dvd onto a format that takes away from presentation of a dvd?
It’s so frustrating to know that judges are trampling all over people’s fair right use without any regard for what they’re doing. Most people aren’t in favor of this program because they’re pirates. There’s been over a million copies of this piece of software sold. Are there really that many pirates out there? Wow, if there are then we really are in trouble, but my guess is a lot of people but the program for the same reason I did or maybe because they have little kids and they don’t want them messing with the $20 dvd they just bought their kid so they make a copy for them. That way the kid can wreck the copy if he/she wants and the parents don’t have to go buy a new copy.
I’ve already vowed to stop buying cds that are associated with the RIAA and I’m almost to the point of not buying dvds either because of crap like this. I’ll just stick to netflix or something else instead of giving my money up for something I can’t “fairly” use anyways. Maybe Orwell made a mistake when he titled his novel “1984”. I think he should have called it “2014” or something like that because it looks like we’re heading in that direction a little bit each day.
The only downfall from drinking so much coffee during the morning and early afternoon at work is that if I don’t get very much one day and don’t have any caffeinated drinks at home that night, I’ll wake up with a mondo caffeine withdrawal headache in the morning (like I did today). Let me tell you, it’s no fun crawling out of bed feeling like your head was used for a kickball at recess at one of those “alternative” schools. Once I start pouring my morning’s fuel down my throat it all goes away, however, but this only reinforces my addiction. I never in my life thought I’d be addicted to any substances, but I now realize I am. Yay! The first step to curbing my addiction is admitting I have a problem. Unfortunately, this is all the further I’m going to get in my rehab because I just so happen to love my addiction.
The other piece of information that I have involves a court ruling against 321Studios. They make a piece of software called DVDXCOPY, which I use. This software let’s you make backup copies of your dvd’s onto dvd-r’s or +r’s or rw’s or +rw’s or –ram or what the hell ever format of dvd recordable you use. Quick side note, they really need to get one unified format for writeable dvd’s. Anyhow, back to what I was saying. They were sued saying their program violated the copyrights of the dvd’s that would be copied. 321Studios argued that it was fair use for people to back up copies of their movies. 321Studios lost.
You can read an article about the case here [update: the article has been removed]. I can see where the movie studios are coming from because they don’t want people just borrowing dvd’s from their friends and then copying them. I can also see 321Studios side of the argument in that it is fair use to backup your movies. I have to side with 321Studios, but on one condition—once the dvd makers will replace a scratched or broken dvd at no cost to the buyer, 321Studios should stop selling their software. Until then, people should be able to back up their discs.
See, I made copies of my transformers box sets because I didn’t want to constantly be opening the huge case it came in and possibly scratching the discs. If I somehow scratched a disc or broke one, I’d have to go buy a brand new $50 box set. Now with DVDXCOPY, I can quickly make a “player” copy of the disc. This copy is what I use to watch while my box set sits nicely in my room displayed. However, I wouldn’t be so worried about accidentally scratching my discs up if the dvd maker (Rhino in this case) would opt to replace discs that get broken for no cost. This way I wouldn’t have to make player copies of the discs.
From the court case, making copies of discs for backup and purposes such as I described is not illegal. You have every right to do it, just not in as good of a format. Quote the article: “She said blocking people from making perfect digital copies of their DVDs did not unconstitutionally hamper free speech or fair-use rights. People were free to make copies of movies in other, nondigital ways that would give them access to the same content, even if not in the same, pristine form”
Ok, so I’m supposed to do what? Record it onto a VHS in my VCR? Ok……oh wait, I CAN’T do that because of the CSS encryption on a dvd. It won’t let you record onto a vhs. All you will get is crappy picture and muddled sound (I know because I’ve tried). So that option is out. What other options do we have? Ummm……I really don’t know. I suppose we could break out an old betamax recorder and see if that works. Why do we have to record a dvd onto a format that takes away from presentation of a dvd?
It’s so frustrating to know that judges are trampling all over people’s fair right use without any regard for what they’re doing. Most people aren’t in favor of this program because they’re pirates. There’s been over a million copies of this piece of software sold. Are there really that many pirates out there? Wow, if there are then we really are in trouble, but my guess is a lot of people but the program for the same reason I did or maybe because they have little kids and they don’t want them messing with the $20 dvd they just bought their kid so they make a copy for them. That way the kid can wreck the copy if he/she wants and the parents don’t have to go buy a new copy.
I’ve already vowed to stop buying cds that are associated with the RIAA and I’m almost to the point of not buying dvds either because of crap like this. I’ll just stick to netflix or something else instead of giving my money up for something I can’t “fairly” use anyways. Maybe Orwell made a mistake when he titled his novel “1984”. I think he should have called it “2014” or something like that because it looks like we’re heading in that direction a little bit each day.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Working From Home
It’s been really hard lately to actually write just about anything to put up on here. I’ve been so entrenched with other writing that this always seems to get put on the back burner. Besides my writing at work, I’ve been doing cd reviews for www.decoymusic.com which has taken away some of my free writing time. Well, enough excuses, everyone hears excuses for things all the time. I’ll just call myself lazy as well as busy.
In the writing of the Indy manual at work, I have reached a milestone as of today. I broke the 40,000 word barrier. It’s so hard to believe that I’ve cranked out that much writing on this thing and yet I still have so far to go before it’s finished. I’m guessing that when I started on the manual there was probably already between 5 and 10 thousand words written, so if I look at it in a very conservative light, I’ve put in around 30,000 words of typing for this manual over the last month and a half, and that’s after you take out all of the time I spend on the website and on the help files. I think I might keep a running total of words typed per day. I’m interested to see how much I crank out per day since over the last few days as I’ve focused very heavily on writing the manual, I’ve been able to put down 1,000 words.
Part of the reason that I got a good chunk of that hammered out was that I worked some from home this weekend. I want to take Friday off to spend with Kristin and go to a concert so I decided to put in some weekend hours to offset what I’d be missing. It always amazes me, but I am so much more productive when I am at home as opposed to when I am at work. I know, I know, it sounds weird, but I really am more productive sitting at home in my flannels.
First, I think I’m more productive at home simply because I am at home. When I get up, shower, drive 40 miles into the office, and sit down in my cube, I have already lost motivation. I know that I am there for the next 8 hours and often that fact is enough to make me lose interest in what I’m doing. While I’m at home, though, I’m overcome with the thought that I’m not at the office. I honestly would feel guilty if I wasn’t being productive at home because it would feel like I’m stealing Kingland’s money. I’ve been brought up from my childhood to believe that I have to work for every cent I make. There aren’t any freebies (although if I find some, I won’t hesitate to pick them up).
I’m also more productive at home because of the environment. I can set my laptop up on the kitchen table, smell my coffee brewing, and glance outside and see our dogs playing in the snow. I’m refreshed and I can delve into my work uninhibited by thoughts of how long I have left until I can leave the confines of my cube. I also don’t have to worry about getting dressed up. Heck, showering becomes optional. I can sit in my comfortable flannels and a t-shirt while working instead of having to shower, put on nice pants and a sweater for work.
The surroundings are also so much more hospitable at home. I can grab a snack whenever. I can have Karma, my dog, sitting on my lap while I work, or have Sammy, my cat purring next to my computer. The music can play at any volume and it’s not confined to my headphones. I feel so much freer, and because of that feeling I can focus more on my work. I also probably work for more hours when I’m at home as well because I’ll take breaks to throw a load of laundry in or to watch a clip of the news and by doing that I feel like I need to work more, so instead of putting in an 8-4 workday, I’ll more than likely put in an 8-6 or 8-7 day with a few intermittent breaks.
You know, I really don’t see much of a reason for me to have to drive to work every day. All I need access to is the manual I’m writing and the test server so I can play with the program. I can put the manual on my microdrive and bring it home and I can access the server from home. Done and done—I have everything I need accessible from my house. I might try to work a few days every now and then from home, but I’m not going to ask until I have a stable job here because I don’t want to make it look as if I’m lazy and just want to stay home and pretend to work. For some reason kids who just got out of college have a somewhat lazy stigma attached to them. Go figure.
In the writing of the Indy manual at work, I have reached a milestone as of today. I broke the 40,000 word barrier. It’s so hard to believe that I’ve cranked out that much writing on this thing and yet I still have so far to go before it’s finished. I’m guessing that when I started on the manual there was probably already between 5 and 10 thousand words written, so if I look at it in a very conservative light, I’ve put in around 30,000 words of typing for this manual over the last month and a half, and that’s after you take out all of the time I spend on the website and on the help files. I think I might keep a running total of words typed per day. I’m interested to see how much I crank out per day since over the last few days as I’ve focused very heavily on writing the manual, I’ve been able to put down 1,000 words.
Part of the reason that I got a good chunk of that hammered out was that I worked some from home this weekend. I want to take Friday off to spend with Kristin and go to a concert so I decided to put in some weekend hours to offset what I’d be missing. It always amazes me, but I am so much more productive when I am at home as opposed to when I am at work. I know, I know, it sounds weird, but I really am more productive sitting at home in my flannels.
First, I think I’m more productive at home simply because I am at home. When I get up, shower, drive 40 miles into the office, and sit down in my cube, I have already lost motivation. I know that I am there for the next 8 hours and often that fact is enough to make me lose interest in what I’m doing. While I’m at home, though, I’m overcome with the thought that I’m not at the office. I honestly would feel guilty if I wasn’t being productive at home because it would feel like I’m stealing Kingland’s money. I’ve been brought up from my childhood to believe that I have to work for every cent I make. There aren’t any freebies (although if I find some, I won’t hesitate to pick them up).
I’m also more productive at home because of the environment. I can set my laptop up on the kitchen table, smell my coffee brewing, and glance outside and see our dogs playing in the snow. I’m refreshed and I can delve into my work uninhibited by thoughts of how long I have left until I can leave the confines of my cube. I also don’t have to worry about getting dressed up. Heck, showering becomes optional. I can sit in my comfortable flannels and a t-shirt while working instead of having to shower, put on nice pants and a sweater for work.
The surroundings are also so much more hospitable at home. I can grab a snack whenever. I can have Karma, my dog, sitting on my lap while I work, or have Sammy, my cat purring next to my computer. The music can play at any volume and it’s not confined to my headphones. I feel so much freer, and because of that feeling I can focus more on my work. I also probably work for more hours when I’m at home as well because I’ll take breaks to throw a load of laundry in or to watch a clip of the news and by doing that I feel like I need to work more, so instead of putting in an 8-4 workday, I’ll more than likely put in an 8-6 or 8-7 day with a few intermittent breaks.
You know, I really don’t see much of a reason for me to have to drive to work every day. All I need access to is the manual I’m writing and the test server so I can play with the program. I can put the manual on my microdrive and bring it home and I can access the server from home. Done and done—I have everything I need accessible from my house. I might try to work a few days every now and then from home, but I’m not going to ask until I have a stable job here because I don’t want to make it look as if I’m lazy and just want to stay home and pretend to work. For some reason kids who just got out of college have a somewhat lazy stigma attached to them. Go figure.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
A Nice February Run
I always feel like such an old man when I decide to talk about the weather, but again I find myself typing away about it. Usually I only try to write about it when it’s out and out weird or at some extreme, and today is really no different.
Yesterday it was a little over 40 degrees out! For anyone not from the midwest, this would seem ass-cold, but for us up here in the Minnesotan outback it was rather balmy. Heck, I even decided that it was good enough for a run outdoors. I definitely needed a chance of pace from running on the treadmill. Sure, it’s a good source of exercise for me during the winter, but it just can’t compare to the wonderful outdoors. Besides, looking at the same wall every other day gets real old real fast and considering there isn’t anything but reality shows on tv anymore, I rarely turn on the tv while I’m running. I will usually listen to cds, but that still doesn’t help alleviate the sheer boredom for my eyes.
The run outside was pretty good. By the time I had gotten home it wasn’t quite 40 anymore, but it was still warm enough for a run, so I suited up in some semi-warm clothes and took off. About halfway into my 2.5 mile run, I really started to regret my stupidity for not wearing gloves. I always run the first part of my run into the wind so I have it easier coming back, and as anyone knows wind combined with cold temps makes it even colder. My hands were pretty freezing so I turned around and cut my run somewhat short. It was definitely wonderful to be able to spend even a little bit of time outdoors instead of being either in the Kingland office building, my car, or the house.
Of course, since I live in Minnesota and all, today it’s raining and by evening it should be snowing. Tomorrow more snow/rain. Wonderful. I wanted to get up to St. Cloud this weekend to visit Kristin, but if the weather isn’t going to cooperate, I’m not going to try to fight it. It was only a couple of weekends ago where I was stuck coming home in a huge snowstorm. I’m not exactly the biggest fan of driving for twice as long as it would usually take me in horrible weather conditions. If only I knew how to fly and/or teleport. Stupid laws of physics. They should be more like guidelines instead of laws. Then life would be way more interesting.
Now a quick update on the whole Dynamic Forces situation. After sending emails to the head of their company threatening legal action, I finally got someone to call me. Apparently they’ve been swamped with orders and everyone has been out in the warehouse packaging orders so that’s why no one could answer the phone. I was told that all of the orders, sans on book, would ship today so I should have them by next week. If not, they’ll be getting even more angry emails/phone calls from me. I’ve been assured that they’re shipping, but I’ll only believe it once I see the items in my hands. This has easily been the worst experience with a retailer ever and I will never buy from them again……unless they’ll allow me to kick each worker in the face personally with every order. I might think about it then.
Yesterday it was a little over 40 degrees out! For anyone not from the midwest, this would seem ass-cold, but for us up here in the Minnesotan outback it was rather balmy. Heck, I even decided that it was good enough for a run outdoors. I definitely needed a chance of pace from running on the treadmill. Sure, it’s a good source of exercise for me during the winter, but it just can’t compare to the wonderful outdoors. Besides, looking at the same wall every other day gets real old real fast and considering there isn’t anything but reality shows on tv anymore, I rarely turn on the tv while I’m running. I will usually listen to cds, but that still doesn’t help alleviate the sheer boredom for my eyes.
The run outside was pretty good. By the time I had gotten home it wasn’t quite 40 anymore, but it was still warm enough for a run, so I suited up in some semi-warm clothes and took off. About halfway into my 2.5 mile run, I really started to regret my stupidity for not wearing gloves. I always run the first part of my run into the wind so I have it easier coming back, and as anyone knows wind combined with cold temps makes it even colder. My hands were pretty freezing so I turned around and cut my run somewhat short. It was definitely wonderful to be able to spend even a little bit of time outdoors instead of being either in the Kingland office building, my car, or the house.
Of course, since I live in Minnesota and all, today it’s raining and by evening it should be snowing. Tomorrow more snow/rain. Wonderful. I wanted to get up to St. Cloud this weekend to visit Kristin, but if the weather isn’t going to cooperate, I’m not going to try to fight it. It was only a couple of weekends ago where I was stuck coming home in a huge snowstorm. I’m not exactly the biggest fan of driving for twice as long as it would usually take me in horrible weather conditions. If only I knew how to fly and/or teleport. Stupid laws of physics. They should be more like guidelines instead of laws. Then life would be way more interesting.
Now a quick update on the whole Dynamic Forces situation. After sending emails to the head of their company threatening legal action, I finally got someone to call me. Apparently they’ve been swamped with orders and everyone has been out in the warehouse packaging orders so that’s why no one could answer the phone. I was told that all of the orders, sans on book, would ship today so I should have them by next week. If not, they’ll be getting even more angry emails/phone calls from me. I’ve been assured that they’re shipping, but I’ll only believe it once I see the items in my hands. This has easily been the worst experience with a retailer ever and I will never buy from them again……unless they’ll allow me to kick each worker in the face personally with every order. I might think about it then.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
So Happy!
Yippee! My job just got a little more fun…well, maybe not fun, but a little easier on the old hands. Since I’ve started here January, my keyboard has been a basic, no frills, pile of junk. The keys weren’t the most sensitive so I’d often have to pound out the keystrokes when typing, which kind of sucked for my fingers, but it’s not that big of a deal (and I don’t want to seem like that much of a typing weenie). When writing a lot of text, it does get a little bit annoying because I’ll often miss keystrokes from not hitting the keyboard hard enough which is a pain because it takes me out of my rhythm. I know it sounds dumb, but it’s true.
Over the last couple of days we’ve also been going through all of the hardware in the office since we’re going to get upgrades eventually, and putting together all the spare parts and old components that aren’t used so that they can get transported back down to the Clear Lake office where they’ll get rid of it all. While going through a bunch of the junk in the server room we came across a brand new, still shrink-wrapped and in the box, Microsoft Elite keyboard--professional edition. I told Tom that I’d kill to be able to use it for my computer. He told me to take it since it’s probably just been sitting in the server room for a while anyways.
Oh, it’s so heavenly. I have a MS Elite keyboard at home that I love so it’s nice to have one at work too. I simply adore the ergonomic layout of the keys. Also, this one has all the hotkeys for controlling winamp and surfing the web, which I will make heavy use out of. There’s also two USB ports in the keyboard so when I finally get a new computer here at work, I’m just going to hook my palm pilot up here and synch it because I really don’t use it for personal use anymore. Anyhow, I’m just really stoked that I get a brand spanking new keyboard that frickin’ rocks to use here at work.
I know it may seem very odd that just yesterday I was on a rampage about how Microsoft sucks and today I am happy because I get one of their products. In reality, they do make good hardware. I love their keyboards. Their mice are pretty good. The Xbox is unbelievably sweet. Their wireless networking hardware has worked great for me. The only real problem I have with them is their software. It always seems broken or it doesn’t work like it should. I wish that their software would start to work as well as their hardware. If it did, wow, we’d have one heck of a company on our hands.
Ok, now that I’ve gotten my nerdage out of my system today (and yesterday too), I can take a chance to talk about valentine’s day. I know, usually this would entail me ranting about how it is such a gender specific, manufactured holiday that goes against everything that I believe in. I still hold those beliefs, but you’re not going to get to hear about them this year.
For valentine’s day weekend I went up to St. Cloud to visit Kristin. I got there Saturday afternoon. We hung out at her place for a while. I gave her her v-day gifts, which happened to be a big poster of Legolas from LOTR and a home-made cd lamp. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I don’t. Basically, what I did was take a big stack of cds, drill the hold a little bigger, put a neon light down the middle, make a top and a bottom out of wood, and put four dowels around the discs to hold them in place and to hold the top and bottom to each other. It looks kinda like the warp core from the Enterprise, but not nearly as cool. My dad and I put it together and it didn’t turn out half bad. I have more parts for making one for me now, but I still have so much clutter in my room as it is that I’ll probably wait to finish for a while.
Kristin gave me a few really cute things for v-day. She got me a bag of kit kats (which I ate over the weekend—I have no willpower), a big cookie, a little St. Ben’s bear, and a sweet silver ring for my thumb. It’s got really neat tribal designs on it that I love. She also colored me a picture that was really cute of Lilo & Stitch. I was quite happy! Later we went over to one of Kristin’s friend’s houses for dinner. We ended up staying there the entire night since we fell asleep on the floor at about 3 am. We slept in pretty late, had some breakfast, played some cards, watched some Smallville, and then I had to go home and she had to go to work. It wasn’t the most exciting v-day ever, but somehow it still seemed perfect.
Over the last couple of days we’ve also been going through all of the hardware in the office since we’re going to get upgrades eventually, and putting together all the spare parts and old components that aren’t used so that they can get transported back down to the Clear Lake office where they’ll get rid of it all. While going through a bunch of the junk in the server room we came across a brand new, still shrink-wrapped and in the box, Microsoft Elite keyboard--professional edition. I told Tom that I’d kill to be able to use it for my computer. He told me to take it since it’s probably just been sitting in the server room for a while anyways.
Oh, it’s so heavenly. I have a MS Elite keyboard at home that I love so it’s nice to have one at work too. I simply adore the ergonomic layout of the keys. Also, this one has all the hotkeys for controlling winamp and surfing the web, which I will make heavy use out of. There’s also two USB ports in the keyboard so when I finally get a new computer here at work, I’m just going to hook my palm pilot up here and synch it because I really don’t use it for personal use anymore. Anyhow, I’m just really stoked that I get a brand spanking new keyboard that frickin’ rocks to use here at work.
I know it may seem very odd that just yesterday I was on a rampage about how Microsoft sucks and today I am happy because I get one of their products. In reality, they do make good hardware. I love their keyboards. Their mice are pretty good. The Xbox is unbelievably sweet. Their wireless networking hardware has worked great for me. The only real problem I have with them is their software. It always seems broken or it doesn’t work like it should. I wish that their software would start to work as well as their hardware. If it did, wow, we’d have one heck of a company on our hands.
Ok, now that I’ve gotten my nerdage out of my system today (and yesterday too), I can take a chance to talk about valentine’s day. I know, usually this would entail me ranting about how it is such a gender specific, manufactured holiday that goes against everything that I believe in. I still hold those beliefs, but you’re not going to get to hear about them this year.
For valentine’s day weekend I went up to St. Cloud to visit Kristin. I got there Saturday afternoon. We hung out at her place for a while. I gave her her v-day gifts, which happened to be a big poster of Legolas from LOTR and a home-made cd lamp. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I don’t. Basically, what I did was take a big stack of cds, drill the hold a little bigger, put a neon light down the middle, make a top and a bottom out of wood, and put four dowels around the discs to hold them in place and to hold the top and bottom to each other. It looks kinda like the warp core from the Enterprise, but not nearly as cool. My dad and I put it together and it didn’t turn out half bad. I have more parts for making one for me now, but I still have so much clutter in my room as it is that I’ll probably wait to finish for a while.
Kristin gave me a few really cute things for v-day. She got me a bag of kit kats (which I ate over the weekend—I have no willpower), a big cookie, a little St. Ben’s bear, and a sweet silver ring for my thumb. It’s got really neat tribal designs on it that I love. She also colored me a picture that was really cute of Lilo & Stitch. I was quite happy! Later we went over to one of Kristin’s friend’s houses for dinner. We ended up staying there the entire night since we fell asleep on the floor at about 3 am. We slept in pretty late, had some breakfast, played some cards, watched some Smallville, and then I had to go home and she had to go to work. It wasn’t the most exciting v-day ever, but somehow it still seemed perfect.
So Happy!
Yippee! My job just got a little more fun…well, maybe not fun, but a little easier on the old hands. Since I’ve started here January, my keyboard has been a basic, no frills, pile of junk. The keys weren’t the most sensitive so I’d often have to pound out the keystrokes when typing, which kind of sucked for my fingers, but it’s not that big of a deal (and I don’t want to seem like that much of a typing weenie). When writing a lot of text, it does get a little bit annoying because I’ll often miss keystrokes from not hitting the keyboard hard enough which is a pain because it takes me out of my rhythm. I know it sounds dumb, but it’s true.
Over the last couple of days we’ve also been going through all of the hardware in the office since we’re going to get upgrades eventually, and putting together all the spare parts and old components that aren’t used so that they can get transported back down to the Clear Lake office where they’ll get rid of it all. While going through a bunch of the junk in the server room we came across a brand new, still shrink-wrapped and in the box, Microsoft Elite keyboard--professional edition. I told Tom that I’d kill to be able to use it for my computer. He told me to take it since it’s probably just been sitting in the server room for a while anyways.
Oh, it’s so heavenly. I have a MS Elite keyboard at home that I love so it’s nice to have one at work too. I simply adore the ergonomic layout of the keys. Also, this one has all the hotkeys for controlling winamp and surfing the web, which I will make heavy use out of. There’s also two USB ports in the keyboard so when I finally get a new computer here at work, I’m just going to hook my palm pilot up here and synch it because I really don’t use it for personal use anymore. Anyhow, I’m just really stoked that I get a brand spanking new keyboard that frickin’ rocks to use here at work.
I know it may seem very odd that just yesterday I was on a rampage about how Microsoft sucks and today I am happy because I get one of their products. In reality, they do make good hardware. I love their keyboards. Their mice are pretty good. The Xbox is unbelievably sweet. Their wireless networking hardware has worked great for me. The only real problem I have with them is their software. It always seems broken or it doesn’t work like it should. I wish that their software would start to work as well as their hardware. If it did, wow, we’d have one heck of a company on our hands.
Ok, now that I’ve gotten my nerdage out of my system today (and yesterday too), I can take a chance to talk about valentine’s day. I know, usually this would entail me ranting about how it is such a gender specific, manufactured holiday that goes against everything that I believe in. I still hold those beliefs, but you’re not going to get to hear about them this year.
For valentine’s day weekend I went up to St. Cloud to visit Kristin. I got there Saturday afternoon. We hung out at her place for a while. I gave her her v-day gifts, which happened to be a big poster of Legolas from LOTR and a home-made cd lamp. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I don’t. Basically, what I did was take a big stack of cds, drill the hold a little bigger, put a neon light down the middle, make a top and a bottom out of wood, and put four dowels around the discs to hold them in place and to hold the top and bottom to each other. It looks kinda like the warp core from the Enterprise, but not nearly as cool. My dad and I put it together and it didn’t turn out half bad. I have more parts for making one for me now, but I still have so much clutter in my room as it is that I’ll probably wait to finish for a while.
Kristin gave me a few really cute things for v-day. She got me a bag of kit kats (which I ate over the weekend—I have no willpower), a big cookie, a little St. Ben’s bear, and a sweet silver ring for my thumb. It’s got really neat tribal designs on it that I love. She also colored me a picture that was really cute of Lilo & Stitch. I was quite happy! Later we went over to one of Kristin’s friend’s houses for dinner. We ended up staying there the entire night since we fell asleep on the floor at about 3 am. We slept in pretty late, had some breakfast, played some cards, watched some Smallville, and then I had to go home and she had to go to work. It wasn’t the most exciting v-day ever, but somehow it still seemed perfect.
Over the last couple of days we’ve also been going through all of the hardware in the office since we’re going to get upgrades eventually, and putting together all the spare parts and old components that aren’t used so that they can get transported back down to the Clear Lake office where they’ll get rid of it all. While going through a bunch of the junk in the server room we came across a brand new, still shrink-wrapped and in the box, Microsoft Elite keyboard--professional edition. I told Tom that I’d kill to be able to use it for my computer. He told me to take it since it’s probably just been sitting in the server room for a while anyways.
Oh, it’s so heavenly. I have a MS Elite keyboard at home that I love so it’s nice to have one at work too. I simply adore the ergonomic layout of the keys. Also, this one has all the hotkeys for controlling winamp and surfing the web, which I will make heavy use out of. There’s also two USB ports in the keyboard so when I finally get a new computer here at work, I’m just going to hook my palm pilot up here and synch it because I really don’t use it for personal use anymore. Anyhow, I’m just really stoked that I get a brand spanking new keyboard that frickin’ rocks to use here at work.
I know it may seem very odd that just yesterday I was on a rampage about how Microsoft sucks and today I am happy because I get one of their products. In reality, they do make good hardware. I love their keyboards. Their mice are pretty good. The Xbox is unbelievably sweet. Their wireless networking hardware has worked great for me. The only real problem I have with them is their software. It always seems broken or it doesn’t work like it should. I wish that their software would start to work as well as their hardware. If it did, wow, we’d have one heck of a company on our hands.
Ok, now that I’ve gotten my nerdage out of my system today (and yesterday too), I can take a chance to talk about valentine’s day. I know, usually this would entail me ranting about how it is such a gender specific, manufactured holiday that goes against everything that I believe in. I still hold those beliefs, but you’re not going to get to hear about them this year.
For valentine’s day weekend I went up to St. Cloud to visit Kristin. I got there Saturday afternoon. We hung out at her place for a while. I gave her her v-day gifts, which happened to be a big poster of Legolas from LOTR and a home-made cd lamp. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I don’t. Basically, what I did was take a big stack of cds, drill the hold a little bigger, put a neon light down the middle, make a top and a bottom out of wood, and put four dowels around the discs to hold them in place and to hold the top and bottom to each other. It looks kinda like the warp core from the Enterprise, but not nearly as cool. My dad and I put it together and it didn’t turn out half bad. I have more parts for making one for me now, but I still have so much clutter in my room as it is that I’ll probably wait to finish for a while.
Kristin gave me a few really cute things for v-day. She got me a bag of kit kats (which I ate over the weekend—I have no willpower), a big cookie, a little St. Ben’s bear, and a sweet silver ring for my thumb. It’s got really neat tribal designs on it that I love. She also colored me a picture that was really cute of Lilo & Stitch. I was quite happy! Later we went over to one of Kristin’s friend’s houses for dinner. We ended up staying there the entire night since we fell asleep on the floor at about 3 am. We slept in pretty late, had some breakfast, played some cards, watched some Smallville, and then I had to go home and she had to go to work. It wasn’t the most exciting v-day ever, but somehow it still seemed perfect.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Again, Microsoft Blows
Ok, I got something that all of you dorks out there are going to love……especially if you absolutely hate Microsoft. So my latest project at work has been to create an asp page (which is a web page that has a bunch of code for the server to execute). This page had to display all of the folders in a specific directory along with all of its subfolders and files. For each file, the name of it should have linked to the location of the file so that if you clicked on it, the file would download.
So I created the page as best I could, but for some reason it would sometimes work and at other times wouldn’t. I looked online for help but couldn’t find any. I asked Joe for some help and we worked on it for about an hour or so before we finally gave up. Right as we were giving up, though, we figured out the problem…..and it wasn’t because of what we were doing—microsoft’s visual basic 6.0 was broken.
In the code that we had, the pathname of the file was determined, but that can’t work for a hyperlink because certain characters have to be made into associated code for a hyperlink to work properly. For example, if you had the file: C:\thisfolder\this subfolder\file.here you would not be able to have that as your hyperlink. There can’t be spaces in hyperlinks so you have to run the filename through a URLEncoder function. This would make that file name read C:\thisfolder\this%20subfolder\file.here because spaces turn into %20. Well, the URLEncoder function didn’t do this, it instead turned all spaces into a + sign so none of the hyperlinks would work. How the hell does this make it through their quality assurance testing? Because of it we either have to upgrade to ASP.NET or install a different webserver simply to get this type of a page to work. Un-frickin’-believable!
So an hour later……and two days of wasted work later, we scrap the page since it won’t work. We’re going to try and switch over to Tomcat (a different webserver) and serve the pages as jsp’s (which is the non-MS way of doing these pages). I’m still more than a little pissed right now, but I’ll eventually get over it. The main reason I’m so mad about it is that I could have spent those two days working on the gargantuan manual I’m writing. It is supposed to be done in like a month and a half and I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that considering I’m learning how the program works as I’m writing the manual.
Ok, vent session over. Now I must get back to work, however, since I’m operating a few days behind. I’ll probably never get this site completely updated either. I have a new menubar system that corrects some issues that the current one has, but I don’t know when I’ll get it up. Eh, I’ll let you know when and if I do. Until then, everyone please raise their middle fingers in a worldwide salute to MS.
So I created the page as best I could, but for some reason it would sometimes work and at other times wouldn’t. I looked online for help but couldn’t find any. I asked Joe for some help and we worked on it for about an hour or so before we finally gave up. Right as we were giving up, though, we figured out the problem…..and it wasn’t because of what we were doing—microsoft’s visual basic 6.0 was broken.
In the code that we had, the pathname of the file was determined, but that can’t work for a hyperlink because certain characters have to be made into associated code for a hyperlink to work properly. For example, if you had the file: C:\thisfolder\this subfolder\file.here you would not be able to have that as your hyperlink. There can’t be spaces in hyperlinks so you have to run the filename through a URLEncoder function. This would make that file name read C:\thisfolder\this%20subfolder\file.here because spaces turn into %20. Well, the URLEncoder function didn’t do this, it instead turned all spaces into a + sign so none of the hyperlinks would work. How the hell does this make it through their quality assurance testing? Because of it we either have to upgrade to ASP.NET or install a different webserver simply to get this type of a page to work. Un-frickin’-believable!
So an hour later……and two days of wasted work later, we scrap the page since it won’t work. We’re going to try and switch over to Tomcat (a different webserver) and serve the pages as jsp’s (which is the non-MS way of doing these pages). I’m still more than a little pissed right now, but I’ll eventually get over it. The main reason I’m so mad about it is that I could have spent those two days working on the gargantuan manual I’m writing. It is supposed to be done in like a month and a half and I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that considering I’m learning how the program works as I’m writing the manual.
Ok, vent session over. Now I must get back to work, however, since I’m operating a few days behind. I’ll probably never get this site completely updated either. I have a new menubar system that corrects some issues that the current one has, but I don’t know when I’ll get it up. Eh, I’ll let you know when and if I do. Until then, everyone please raise their middle fingers in a worldwide salute to MS.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Dynamic Forces = Thumbs Down
I don’t think I’ve ever before, in my entire life, been so completely frustrated and angry with one company before. I’m also quite sure that it’ll be pretty damn hard for any other company out there to be a worse business than Dynamic Forces. Since I can’t get a hold of anyone at their company, I’m going to get some venting out of my system here. Sit back and be prepared to be amazed by the completely and utterly appalling business practices of a supposedly upper echelon comic retailer.
A little bit before Christmas, DF was running a special where any new orders would have a $25 gift certificate to use. I thought to myself, “sweet! I’ve got $25 to play with to order some comics I’ve been wanting.” Little did I know of the horrors to come. Since this seemed like a really good offer, I told my brother, parents, and Kristin about it. That way each of them could put in an order too. So in total, there were six orders made by five different people (I accidentally made one order without using the gift certificate, but I thought I’d make the order anyhow). All of these orders were made between the 19th and 25th of December.
In their ordering policy, they stated that all orders placed could take 4-6 weeks for delivery. It seemed like a small price to pay for using their gift certificate. Oh, it should also be noted that everything ordered in all six orders was in-stock (or at least they claimed it to be). Anyhow, I waited until the beginning of January to check the status of the orders. All of them but one said they were processed and waiting to ship. Great! They would soon be on their way. Mid January rolls around and it says there is a problem with my dad’s order. I call them up and find out that his credit card number was invalid (which it was), so I gave them a new one. The rep then told me my dad’s order would then be mailed out. I asked what the progress of one of my orders was and I was told that I was also shipping.
January finally wraps up and February starts. Wondering why none of the orders have gotten to their destinations, especially my dad’s, I call up DF again. Everyone was busy so I left a message. I also sent an email. A few days pass and no response to either. The orders should have arrived at their specified places by now, especially since all of our credit cards had been charged (mine on the 20th of January). Finally, half of my dad’s order shows up. I then call to see where the other half is. No one there again so I leave yet another message. Two days later the other half arrives. That’s good. 1 order out of 6 has arrived.
This entire week, wondering where all the other orders are, I called the DF number 3 times a day, each time given their answering machine. I should take the time to note here that their telephone number is not toll free so I’m accruing long distance charges while trying to get a hold of DF. I left a message each day with an order number, name, and phone number to call. There has still been no response and no orders have shown up. It is well past the 6 six maximum stated that it would take to ship. I am going to look into filing claims with the Better Business Bureau to try and reclaim the money spent on the other orders.
I tried calling again this morning. Their customer service line again kicked me to their answering machine. There’s always been an option to press the 0 key to be connected with their operator, so I thought I’d try it. It rings and I get kicked to their answering machine. I will leave another message when I call again today. I am beyond furious at this point. Why is it so impossible to get a live human being at their company? If it comes to it, I would love to try to take some sort of legal action against DF because they’ve pushed me beyond my sanity limit in the way they’ve handled my family’s orders. In the words of the Simpson’s comic book guy: “Worst customer service experience ever!”
A little bit before Christmas, DF was running a special where any new orders would have a $25 gift certificate to use. I thought to myself, “sweet! I’ve got $25 to play with to order some comics I’ve been wanting.” Little did I know of the horrors to come. Since this seemed like a really good offer, I told my brother, parents, and Kristin about it. That way each of them could put in an order too. So in total, there were six orders made by five different people (I accidentally made one order without using the gift certificate, but I thought I’d make the order anyhow). All of these orders were made between the 19th and 25th of December.
In their ordering policy, they stated that all orders placed could take 4-6 weeks for delivery. It seemed like a small price to pay for using their gift certificate. Oh, it should also be noted that everything ordered in all six orders was in-stock (or at least they claimed it to be). Anyhow, I waited until the beginning of January to check the status of the orders. All of them but one said they were processed and waiting to ship. Great! They would soon be on their way. Mid January rolls around and it says there is a problem with my dad’s order. I call them up and find out that his credit card number was invalid (which it was), so I gave them a new one. The rep then told me my dad’s order would then be mailed out. I asked what the progress of one of my orders was and I was told that I was also shipping.
January finally wraps up and February starts. Wondering why none of the orders have gotten to their destinations, especially my dad’s, I call up DF again. Everyone was busy so I left a message. I also sent an email. A few days pass and no response to either. The orders should have arrived at their specified places by now, especially since all of our credit cards had been charged (mine on the 20th of January). Finally, half of my dad’s order shows up. I then call to see where the other half is. No one there again so I leave yet another message. Two days later the other half arrives. That’s good. 1 order out of 6 has arrived.
This entire week, wondering where all the other orders are, I called the DF number 3 times a day, each time given their answering machine. I should take the time to note here that their telephone number is not toll free so I’m accruing long distance charges while trying to get a hold of DF. I left a message each day with an order number, name, and phone number to call. There has still been no response and no orders have shown up. It is well past the 6 six maximum stated that it would take to ship. I am going to look into filing claims with the Better Business Bureau to try and reclaim the money spent on the other orders.
I tried calling again this morning. Their customer service line again kicked me to their answering machine. There’s always been an option to press the 0 key to be connected with their operator, so I thought I’d try it. It rings and I get kicked to their answering machine. I will leave another message when I call again today. I am beyond furious at this point. Why is it so impossible to get a live human being at their company? If it comes to it, I would love to try to take some sort of legal action against DF because they’ve pushed me beyond my sanity limit in the way they’ve handled my family’s orders. In the words of the Simpson’s comic book guy: “Worst customer service experience ever!”
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Idiots
Ok everyone, my first review has been posted over on Decoy. Check it out at www.decoymusic.com This review is for an indy band named Dualesc. I’ve also got reviews for Closure, Pace, and Local H in the bag and they’ll be going up as the week goes on. I’m hoping to take over as one of the main reviewers there. No offense to any of the other reviewers there, but there are some pretty crappy writers that have posted reviews and also there’s a little too much fanboy ranting in a chunk of their reviews.
In other news, I believe I’ve found a new calling in life. I’ve decided that I should really work in the vehicle safety industry. I know that I’d be good at it because I have so much experience with unsafe drivers. The only difference is that instead of focusing on features that would protect you from other drivers, I would design features that protect other drivers from you.
All too often people do dumb things while they are driving and never realize it. For instance, yesterday as I was driving in to work on the four lane highway, HWY 14, into Rochester to get to work, I was almost involved in an accident because of another driver’s stupidity. I was in the left lane passing slower traffic on the right. At an intersection without lights, but a stop sign for the crossroad, a car stops, then pulls out into the right lane DIRECTLY in front of me. I have to slow down, swerve into the right lane, and give the guy a one-fingered salute all while screaming epithets at him and avoiding hitting other cars.
I’m sure you’ve all had similar situations, so I propose a new mandatory addition to all cars. In the steering wheel, instead of an airbag, a boxing glove on the end of a spring will be installed. This is for the safety of other. Any time that you do something stupid on the road, such as cut someone off or fail to use your blinker, an alarm will go off accompanied by my voice stating, “Nice driving, asshat.” At that moment, you will have a half second to prepare to get pummeled in the face by the boxing glove.
I wholeheartedly believe this would solve many of our problems. With the assistance of computer sensors to measure the wheel’s turning in relation to use of a blinker and the distance/speed of any cars you pull out in front of, this feature will be easy to implement. Also, a sensor can be installed to keep track of what lane you are in so that, by chance, if you manage to do enough stupid things to get the living snot beat out of you and pass out, the car can be computer controlled to drive into the closest ditch or median. Once your car has reached a complete stop it will then explode killing you because you are frickin’ retarded and should never have been driving in the first place.
I think that over time this method would eventually eliminate many unneeded accidents. It would also cause people to drive much more carefully, especially on early mornings when the roads are slightly icy. Instead of getting into accidents and making me wait in traffic for 45 minutes, causing me to be extremely late for work, I would be able to have a nice, smooth trip to and from work.
In other news, I believe I’ve found a new calling in life. I’ve decided that I should really work in the vehicle safety industry. I know that I’d be good at it because I have so much experience with unsafe drivers. The only difference is that instead of focusing on features that would protect you from other drivers, I would design features that protect other drivers from you.
All too often people do dumb things while they are driving and never realize it. For instance, yesterday as I was driving in to work on the four lane highway, HWY 14, into Rochester to get to work, I was almost involved in an accident because of another driver’s stupidity. I was in the left lane passing slower traffic on the right. At an intersection without lights, but a stop sign for the crossroad, a car stops, then pulls out into the right lane DIRECTLY in front of me. I have to slow down, swerve into the right lane, and give the guy a one-fingered salute all while screaming epithets at him and avoiding hitting other cars.
I’m sure you’ve all had similar situations, so I propose a new mandatory addition to all cars. In the steering wheel, instead of an airbag, a boxing glove on the end of a spring will be installed. This is for the safety of other. Any time that you do something stupid on the road, such as cut someone off or fail to use your blinker, an alarm will go off accompanied by my voice stating, “Nice driving, asshat.” At that moment, you will have a half second to prepare to get pummeled in the face by the boxing glove.
I wholeheartedly believe this would solve many of our problems. With the assistance of computer sensors to measure the wheel’s turning in relation to use of a blinker and the distance/speed of any cars you pull out in front of, this feature will be easy to implement. Also, a sensor can be installed to keep track of what lane you are in so that, by chance, if you manage to do enough stupid things to get the living snot beat out of you and pass out, the car can be computer controlled to drive into the closest ditch or median. Once your car has reached a complete stop it will then explode killing you because you are frickin’ retarded and should never have been driving in the first place.
I think that over time this method would eventually eliminate many unneeded accidents. It would also cause people to drive much more carefully, especially on early mornings when the roads are slightly icy. Instead of getting into accidents and making me wait in traffic for 45 minutes, causing me to be extremely late for work, I would be able to have a nice, smooth trip to and from work.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Slowly but Surely
Ugghh, I really didn’t think that redoing my site would be that much of a big deal, but it has actually turned into quite a chore. First, I’ve gotta redo the menubar on the side since it stretches a little too far down so that you can’t see the last choice or two if you have a resolution of 800x600 or so. Also, when I started this site I really didn’t know crap about web designing and I can tell now just by looking at my older pages. Some of my old journal entries from way back in 2002 and 2003 are terrible. All I did was write them out in Word and then have them exported to html. Word puts so much crap in there that’s not needed and also the formatting makes it almost impossible to modify down the line. I’m just going to format the table size for the older thoughts and move them over to a Frontpage format and not worry about the rest. Man, I should just start from scratch, but there’s so much I want to keep. Oh well, it’s all a nice learning experience if anything.
I still might be a little lax on new updates, but hopefully I can do something constructive with this site over the weekend or next week. Tomorrow night my family is going over to my grandma and grandpa Gebhardt’s to have dinner to celebrate grandpa’s birthday. It was a couple weeks ago, but with the bitter cold and his unfortunate stroke, it’s been hard finding a time to get together with them. I honestly don’t know where all of my time in the day goes. It seems like I’m stuck in a routine that sucks all my time away while not letting me feel like I accomplished anything. I go to work, come home, mail anything I sold online, lift or run, shower, eat, play video games with Ryan, watch tv, read, and then hit the sack. Repeat the next day, unless it’s a Friday because then I’m usually headed to St. Cloud. As it stands right now the real world is a far cry from college in the coolness category.
One new thing that I’m kind of stoked about is I am now writing music reviews for Decoy Music, an online music news site. Check it out at www.decoymusic.com . Jared got me hooked up doing reviews there since he’s already writing for them and they needed some new writers. My first review, which should be up shortly, is for a small Canadian band called Pacer. Read the review there for further details. The next few discs on my list are Dualesc, Local H, and Break the Silence. Check in often for new stuff.
Again, this wasn’t the longest entry, but at least it wasn’t the shortest. Once I get everything ironed out with the format I finally decide on for this site I should get back on track for getting new content up. Until then, check out Decoy Music or simply imagine what you think I’m doing right now. It’s probably more interesting than what I’m actually doing, but that’s cool by me.
I still might be a little lax on new updates, but hopefully I can do something constructive with this site over the weekend or next week. Tomorrow night my family is going over to my grandma and grandpa Gebhardt’s to have dinner to celebrate grandpa’s birthday. It was a couple weeks ago, but with the bitter cold and his unfortunate stroke, it’s been hard finding a time to get together with them. I honestly don’t know where all of my time in the day goes. It seems like I’m stuck in a routine that sucks all my time away while not letting me feel like I accomplished anything. I go to work, come home, mail anything I sold online, lift or run, shower, eat, play video games with Ryan, watch tv, read, and then hit the sack. Repeat the next day, unless it’s a Friday because then I’m usually headed to St. Cloud. As it stands right now the real world is a far cry from college in the coolness category.
One new thing that I’m kind of stoked about is I am now writing music reviews for Decoy Music, an online music news site. Check it out at www.decoymusic.com . Jared got me hooked up doing reviews there since he’s already writing for them and they needed some new writers. My first review, which should be up shortly, is for a small Canadian band called Pacer. Read the review there for further details. The next few discs on my list are Dualesc, Local H, and Break the Silence. Check in often for new stuff.
Again, this wasn’t the longest entry, but at least it wasn’t the shortest. Once I get everything ironed out with the format I finally decide on for this site I should get back on track for getting new content up. Until then, check out Decoy Music or simply imagine what you think I’m doing right now. It’s probably more interesting than what I’m actually doing, but that’s cool by me.
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