http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php http://unenthusiastic.com/interface/feed.png http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php Copyright 2008, Kyle Davis Kyle Davis en-US SPHPBLOG 0.4.7.1 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry080426-023010
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]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry080426-023010 Kyle Davis Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:30:10 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080426-023010 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry071124-132347
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!]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry071124-132347 Kyle Davis Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:23:47 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=07&m=11&entry=entry071124-132347 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070815-085126
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]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070815-085126 Kyle Davis Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:51:26 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070815-085126 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070712-212030
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]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070712-212030 Kyle Davis Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:20:30 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=07&m=07&entry=entry070712-212030 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070323-025858
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...]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070323-025858 Kyle Davis Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:58:58 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=07&m=03&entry=entry070323-025858 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070120-014623 - School is going well, but it has me pretty busy.
- Work is also going well, and it has me even busier.
- Abby coined the phrase "word vomit", which is hilarious.
- Josh has been reactivated and has to go back into active duty...
- We finally got the issues worked out with Cody's car.
- Most of the issues with my car have been worked out
- I still haven't posted pictures because I've not had time to work out a few bugs in my Simple Image Gallery project that are postponing further updates.
- I have a lot of projects that I'd like to work on but not enough time to actually get around to working on them, even with the insomnia :(
- On Sunday, I'm buying myself a Wii -- WHEEE!!
]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry070120-014623 Kyle Davis Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:46:23 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=07&m=01&entry=entry070120-014623 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry061114-042436
HELLO...ELLO...ello...ello...

Anyways, here's what's been going on,

Abby and I did the whole court and judge song and dance and we got a paternity test. The test results show that Jeff is Susie's biological father, so we finally know for sure. Susie's birthday is coming up so I'm pretty excited about that. It should be fun watching her play with the wrapping paper on everything. OOH, and then Christmas! :-D

Abby got a job where I work but in a different division doing paperwork stuff. So far she seems to really like her job and I think we've been coping with the weirdness of dating a co-worker fairly well.

College is going pretty well, though I've been pretty hard pressed to keep up with all of my homework and projects lately. It wouldn't be quite so bad had I kept my original school schedule but a week or two in I decided to test out of one of my classes and take another, slightly harder, course to fill the extra time.

Jordan, Guy, and I joined a new team from IUS as we all went to UK for the ACM ICPC, a programming contest. Our geeklihoods were tried and tested as we were locked in a closet with 30 other teams for 5 hours straight trying to create solutions for as many of the problems that we could muster. We finished 5th place, which is pretty good.

Abby and I threw a Halloween party, too. It went pretty well despite the 8 or so people who bailed at the last minute. I dressed up as Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and Abby dressed up as a deranged 50's housewife. We went all out. She died her hair blonder and I went black.

I found yet another TV show to be addicted to. Abby and I have practically fallen in love with the new Heroes show on NBC. It's almost disturbing how much we like this show.

I will be posting pictures soon. I've been putting it off for a while mainly because I've not had much time with everything else going on, but I finally got them all together tonight and I'll post them in the next few days.

And now, I should probably go and make myself sleep before I go back to work.]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry061114-042436 Kyle Davis Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:24:36 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=06&m=11&entry=entry061114-042436 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry060828-200912
Last weekend we decided to go shopping all day. It was more of an excuse to go driving around and explore, but whatever. We ended up going by Pamida in Salem since they're going out of business, where I picked up the darky dark of chocolate. This chocolate is so dark, it's practically powder! From there we ventured to Edinburgh since neither of us had actually been there. We'd forgotten the stroller for little Susie so we found the office and, as we'd deparately hoped, they had a "stroller". And I say "stroller", in quotes (quotes are those funny little marks right next to the word "stroller"...FUCK...oh well) because it was more of a race car. After zooming her around in it and making the appropriate reving engine and screeching tire noises Abby and I noticed that not only did she have the coolest little yellow race car there, but it also came equipped with the complete safety package -- real honest to god rubber baby-buggy bumpers. How cool is that. I never thought I'd see the day, but now I have and as such my life will surely be much brighter henceforth.

Also, I think my girlfriend is a house stalker. She sits in their driveways late at night thinking of them. She has recurring dreams about them living happily ever after together. She calls them from unlisted numbers and then hangs up when she thinks that they might be on to her. Well, maybe not that bad, but she does have a bit of a fancy for old victorian style houses.

Cody brought a PS2 over as a sort of rent repayment for staying over so much. While it's cool as hell, I'm sure I'll end up getting way to distracted by it sooner or later. So far I've avoided it. Mostly by trying to avoid direct eye contact with it and the occasional running and screaming "YOUR NOT THERE! YOUR NOT TALKING YOU'RE JUST A PLAYSTATION!!" over and over as I flee to safety of my bedroom. I'm sure I'll give in at some point, but so far I'm ahead of the game.

I've been writing more code lately, which is good because I was beginning to wonder if I'd chopped all of my free time into chunks too small to fit in any good hacking sessions. To get started I finished all of my Java homework one day last weekend that I still haven't turned in from the class I tested out of last semester. Also, Jordan and I took a few days to collaborate over the past two weekends and we wrote a frontend to the PyCrypto library in Python. The idea is to create a simple interface to make it easy for people to use Cryptography in their every day life. The command line version is done and the GUI should follow shortly. We should be releasing it into the wild soon.

On to the bad news. Work sucks lately. A few troublesome issues have been giving me headaches. So much that I created a little game to help ease the pain. First, take one Vicodin. The, hit yourself in the face with a hammer -- until it hurts. Return to the first step. [infinite loop - stack overflow - segfault]

Tomorrow I start school up again. I'm not going full time, but with the two classes that I'm taking it's pretty close. It feels so weird going back after not going during summer since last year I took classes nonstop. Wish me luck.

Oh, and Friday's my birthday. I think either we're going to go out to a karaoke bar or maybe main street lounge, depending on who's involved. I'm not entirely sure what's going on but I'm sure there will be pictures. Now if I could only find the time to actually post them...]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry060828-200912 Kyle Davis Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:09:12 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=06&m=08&entry=entry060828-200912 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry060805-114134
I am so motivated lately that I only have bad days when I don't get "enough" done. This "enough" business is a fairly unrealistic goal but hey, that's how I work. I'll keep striving to do more and eventually I'll just explode and feathers will go everywhere. Won't you clean the little pieces of me up, put them in a box, and burn it?

Here're some things I've done this week to be happily overly productive: I rewrote TLA, a blog thing I have that you can't see. Went through nearly every article of clothing that I own and got rid of about 2/3's of them, as to make room for new clothing purchases.

I didn't just do boring stuff though, I also watched entirely too much anime! Well, I didn't think it was boring...anyways, I watched a new one called Flame of Recca. It's about a kid who can make fire come out of his arm, so I had to watch it. ALL OF IT! :-D

Today, the part of Kyle will be played by somebody who actually gives a shit about his car... I've got parts to fix a few things on my car, which I'll be attending to as soon as I get done writing this. Also, as to enhance my autocare experience, I'm making a trek to Bloomington to get a tire replaced. The tire is under warranty so it won't cost anything but the nearest store is up there since the local one has fell into the void. After that I'll probably pick up where I left off on the whole buying new clothes thing. Also, I'll be dragging Abby and baby along with assuming that I can get ahold of them.

Ring ring ring

Announcer: Next time on the Unenthusiastic Blog...STUFF. How does it happen and who cares?]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry060805-114134 Kyle Davis Sat, 05 Aug 2006 15:41:34 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=06&m=08&entry=entry060805-114134 http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry060716-005739
In the past week or so I think I've watched like 120 episodes of this anime called Naruto. It's safe to say that I kinda like it. The big issue that I have with it though, is that a fair portion of every episode is a recap from the last. Granted I understand why they do that, but it's a little annoying when you watch them all in a row.

Aside from that I've just been busy as hell. I'm getting rediculous amounts of stuff done at work, so that keeps me pretty happy. Though it's kinda like a drug, the more I get accomplished, the more I hate all of the other things that I still have left to do. I guess that's why they call it workaholic.

As far as the home life goes, things have been good as well. I got a bunch of stuff cleaned around the apartment lately and, while I'm not finished, I have made up a list of goals that I can work towards in hopes that by using it I can keep myself more focused on getting things done.

Tonight Abby, Susie, and I went to the drive-in and watched the new Pirates movie. Aside from the cliffhanger ending, it was pretty good. I can't wait to watch the follow-up to see what happens. We thought about staying for the Cars movie that came next, but it was getting late and uncomfortable in my car so we decided to head home.

Oh, and for those who'll get a kick out of this, I let Abby read American Gods and she's really liking it. :-)

And to soothe the threats of eye stabbage, I'll try to work in a little more time for instant messenger in the future. Well, it's time for more Naruto! Bye!]]> http://unenthusiastic.com/index.php?entry=entry060716-005739 Kyle Davis Sun, 16 Jul 2006 04:57:39 GMT http://unenthusiastic.com/comments.php?y=06&m=07&entry=entry060716-005739