for the curious and uninformed
Saturday, April 26, 2008, 02:30 AM
It's been a while since I've blogged and a lot has happened, but I'll try to keep it relatively brief.
I've been saving for about a year now and tomorrow I'm finally getting a new car -- a 2008 Volkswagen GTI -- hells yea! I had them get me the one that I want from Chicago yesterday and I get to go pick it up in the morning.
As for the Escort, I had originally talked about digging a big hole, driving it into it head first, and then melting it into a big puddle of goo using absurd amounts of thermite ... *sigh* Unfortunately I have instead promised it to a family member that appeared to need it. I figure they can have the car if they feel like fixing all of the steering issues, dings, hot-wirings, etc. Good by my little torquey Green Go...hello ROAD NINJA!
I left my Engineering job at Win.Net Internet to take a position as an Applications Engineer at Humana (back in January). I have to put up with with Microsoft technologies every day but at least I get to do computer programming full time instead of in between other projects. I'm on a team with a friend from both High School and a previous Tech Support job, so that makes it a little better too. Also, I can walk to work from where I live -- now that's a perk!
Other new toys include a new bright red couch, a big flat-screen TV, and I built a Home Theater PC. The HTCP's power supply went out before I really got to get it fully setup though (I was so pissed). I'll let you know more about that once I get it going again.
Also, a PSA for computer programmers who have to do at least some web development -- use jQuery! It's like JavaScript without all of the suck. It basically allows you to easily query and dynamically modify the page. If you ever plan on developing a remotely interactive website, I implore you to go and check out jQuery's website and the ever-so-handy Visual jQuery documentation website. I have already started a few jQuery plugins of my own but I may just expand on that effort and create a whole suite of high quality widgets. Here's hoping that I can find the time.
Another programming ToDo worth mentioning here is iPhone hacking. I have the SDK and I've been playing with it a little bit but I don't have any great ideas for applications that I would actually want to share with the world yet. So if you come up with any, let me know.
Speaking of free time: school's...out...for...summer -- well, almost anyhow. I have one more final in my Analysis of Algorithms class on Tuesday and then I'm home free. I may take Summer II classes, but I'm pretty sure that I'll leave my Summer I for catching up on personal projects.
Vic and I decided that due to circumstance that it would be better if we broke up. That was back in late January/early February. I reconnected with Tracy, an old flame, for a couple of months but eventually she decided that I am too stoic for her taste. [edited after original post] :-/
I had a Thunder party but it wasn't quite as crazy as last year. I didn't get any pictures this year, but I think that a few others did, so I'll try to track them down and post them on here sometime. Which reminds me -- image gallery updates coming soon. ;-)
I hung out with Talina and her daughter Amaya a little bit tonight while she waited on her boyfriend to drop off the key that she needed to get into the apartment of hers that she managed to lock herself out of. That was cool. Her kid's a cutie -- for spawn.
Well so much for a short post. Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you only update every few months. I've got a pretty full day in the morning, so I'm off to try out this sleep thing that people keep telling me about.
EoT
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the little post that could
Saturday, November 24, 2007, 01:23 PM
Okay, so I've not updated in a long ass time. Again. I suck at this whole having free time thing. Anyways, I'm back in school and it's taking up just about every last bit of free time that I might have.
Late in Fall Chris Sexton, Dave Bradley, and I competed in the ICPC at UK. I think that we did fairly well, coming home with 5th place in the end. Not bad considering it was the first time that we got to group up and it was the first time that Dave had been exposed to any kind of high octane computer programming like this. Next year I think we'll be able to pull together a little better, practice a bit sooner, and kick even more ass.
My car broke. I fixed it. And with the new found (false?) hope that my car will continue working properly for a while, I was able to, in good conscience, buy a few new toys that I've been wanting to get for a while.
The ones worth mentioning are the MacBook Pro w/ Mighty Mouse and the iPhone. I think my Official Apple Fanboy Sticker is in the mail. ;-)
Actually, I'm running Ubuntu Linux on my MacBook Pro most of the time, however I will say that the new Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is pretty awesome and I do boot into it occasionally to play around. I've also been play with my iPhone a bit and I'm hoping that one day I'll get around to writing an application or two for it. Having a touchscreen UNIX computer that fits in the palm of my hand is every true nerds wet dream, so ya, it's pretty cool. I also bought a networked printer/scanner/copier thing, but it really isn't interesting enough to say much more than that about it.
I brewed some Sima, which as the recipe clearly states, was delicious. I adjusted the mixture a little bit by switching out the white sugar for cane sugar, but other than that, I just followed along.
Thanksgiving went okay. My brother didn't show up because he had car problems or something, but other than that, it went fairly well. My aunt Lisa's bird kept squawking cuss words and things, so that was pretty special.
Vic and I are still doing pretty well. We're a little time constrained because she's busy with artsy assignments for school and I'm busy with both nerdy assignments for school and work, so we have to work a little for this, but we're doing alright. Oh yeah, she shaved her head a while back and is now bald. Oh noos! ;-)
Jordan got me started on this new band Rabbit Junk, and they're pretty amazing, so go check out this video. no seriously. like, right fucking now.
I leave you with more nerdy news: for my networking class I'm writing a keyboardless, multiplayer version of the old gorillas game from QBASIC (old DOS stuff) using Python and PyGame. I'll try to get a version of the game up once I get it working. Wish me luck!
-- wooooooooooo! wooooooooooo!
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Lazy beach? Yes, please!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007, 08:51 AM
So today is the last day of this little vacation that Vic and I took to the beach in Wildwood Crest, NJ. The trip has been wonderful and I don't think it could have possibly been any better. Vic's in the shower washing away the sand and packing up a few things and I'm (blogging and ...) trying to figure out how to get back to home sweet home without paying a pinky-to-lip, billion dollars in toll fees. :-)
So, this morning we decided to get up a little early and mosey around along the beach. I had this crazy ass dream where I ended up having to fight somebody for my life (with a bo-staff of course), and I apparently woke Vic up with my flailing. She was in the middle of trying to get me to stop squirming and I launched myself out of bed and started running towards the door. By the time I made it to the doorway she yelled, "Creature! What are you doing?" in her slightly irritated WTF voice, at which point I snapped out of it a little bit. I looked at her, looked at the doorway, looked at where I was standing, and finally I replied simply, "I was having a weird dream..." as I sleepily crawled back into bed. These are the kinds of things that go through my head when I sleep too much.
When I sleep too little, it seems that my brain works almost in an opposite mode, and I end up being overly brainy (though still a little crazy). I come up with things like coming up with a formula that might help to more easily calculate a certain type of prime numbers. This idea was hatched while driving on the way here after having not slept for about 27 hours. Vic was asleep in the passenger seat and I think we were somewhere in Maryland. I just started thinking of something to take my mind off how much I hated both seeing mountains and dealing Maryland'ss slow ass speed limit. I'm still researching if it's a crazy, crackpot idea or if it actually might be useful to somebody.
Another fun thing that Vic and I did here at the beach that I feel must be mentioned: while we were swimming in the water, she got on my shoulders and we would slam ourselves into waves while screaming "YAR!" and other piratey things. Oh yeah, that's right, we really are that fucking cool. :-)
To write about later:
late night beach fun
meteor shower
Anyways, I have to jump off of here now. It's my turn in the shower and then we've got to get packed up and head out.
l8r ppls
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vacation cures workaholism
Thursday, July 12, 2007, 09:20 PM
And we're off!Chris, Josh, and I are all taking a vacation to St Louis for fun. We're currently about 75 miles from our hotel.
We don't really have much of a plan for when we get there aside from simply getting away for a few days, and considering the month I've had. Mainly with all of the working nonstop and the long hours that I've been putting in.
Aside from working entirely too damn much, I've been hanging out with Vic and doing my part to reassure her that it's not just her -- her family really is insane. She got her tattoo finished and it turned out really cool. The pool is open now so we've been swimming a lot lately too.
Jordan and I made some mead that should be ready to switch over to secondary in a couple of weeks. I tried some from his last batch and it was pretty tasty, so I can't wait to test out early bottles of my new batch in about a month or so.
I'm sending this from my phone and I'm tired of typing so I'm gonna jump off of here.
Bet on when I'll update next. It's fun! Everybody do it
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to blog, or not to blog
Friday, March 23, 2007, 02:58 AM
Okay, it's safe to say that I've procrastinated this update for long enough.
I'll try to recap all of the things that have happened since my last post in January...what the fuck...JANUARY, holy shit people, a lot of things have happened since January.
Firstly, Abby and I broke up. After a few talks over the past few months we came to the fairly mutual conclusion that it wasn't working out very well because our lives are just pulling us both in different directions.
We went to the new bar eXile that popped up across the street a few times. It's pretty sweet. We saw a chick who got stripped and whipped, albeit lightly, so that was fun and interesting.
My server has made it to yet another year of uptime. w00t!
I met a chick named Vic. She's pretty cool. :-) We've been talking incessantly since we met the other day. We're currently attempting to fill the holes in each others pop culture knowledge.
Parts of the movie Saved! to the Satanic Mantra from Cradle of Filth
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mbh4THxwJ3E
And since I'm tired, here's a few music videos:
Evans Blue - Cold (But I'm Still Here)
Gym Class Heroes - Cupid's Chokehold
Now I want to go swimming, damn it.
more to come...
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