FiveSpot

063008 What's News?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:33:27 GMT

I need to find a better way of tracking my stocks.
Recently, I read about an investor who had a unique, but familiar take on stock investing. This guy's idea was to pick randomly, and research religiously. by picking low price stocks, buying regularly, and selling when there is a profit to be made, profit is made, and wealth is built. I think that this is the idea behind the term "Day Trading". up until now, my strategy for trading has been to buy regularly, and if I come upon hard times, I check my stocks. If I can sell without making an obvious loss, I do so. When i say “obvious”, I mean there are several methods of calculating the value of a stock, based on the price at the time of purchase. there is First In, First Out (FIFO), Average Price per share, and some others that i don't remember. Up until now, I have simply looked at the averages. Everything I buy is below the X year moving average. If it's above the X year moving average when I need money, I sell. Recently, I decided to start buying low priced stocks. When I say that, I mean less than $25. I am testing a concept with # stocks now. they are all near the 52 week low, and the 52 week high is more than double for each of them. I know why each of these stocks is currently tanking, but I did pick them randomly. My sell point is the 52 week high, and my risk is bankruptcy, which would cost me less in current dollars than my current monthly gasoline expenditure.
What else is news.
Hung out with the Brother this weekend. He, Weez and I went out for coffee at the new Mill Mountain Coffee Shop. Ran into an old friend from way back when. No matter how much I want to leave Roanoke to make more money elsewhere, I will always consider it “home”. We all sat to chat and catch up on old times and new possibilities. Weez and I are getting acclimated to the idea of life in NoVA. I told mammy that once, and she asked what I hoped to find up there. I pointed out the fact that a security clearance here is worth about as much as an Associates' degree, but up there, it could mean the difference between getting the job or not. I also pointed out the fact that she and RS8 seemed to be doing a lot better when they moved back than they were when they moved up. She agreed with both points, and pointed out that if when they moved back they came back with a little more money, and a perspective that had changed greatly. She asked if I was creative enough to change my perspective without changing my location. I said that I am not, and I don't care to be. I love DC, Weez loves DC, and DC has the money to support us. We have pushed, and the wheels are turning. Sooner or later, these wheels will carry us to a place we both like. Soon, we will have a home in our nations capital, with her 14% tax rate and lack of congressional representation. At least we can own guns there now, thanks to the Supreme Court.

Too much progress

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:08:40 GMT

Is there any such thing as too much progress? for years, I have been cycling through the revolving credit door with the intentions of "one day" seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. within the span of two months, I will have eliminated all of my credit card debt, and moved the rest to a MUCH lower interest rate. The wild thing is, I never really had a solid plan of how to do it. Whenever things are going too well, I always look to the sky for the anvils to fall on my head. Actually, it's good news all around. Debbie, Aaron, and Allison are leaving to go on a 3 country cruise tomorrow. I would rather have her spend the efforts on complete debt freedom (house, car, credit cards), but even still, it's something to be celebrated. I have a couple of great ideas for applications, and one that I am 75% complete on. One of the great ideas is something that I would call a "profit point tracker". I am sure that something like this already exists at a cost far higher than my hourly wage. The basic idea of the application is to
track stock prices, and the purchases, which are made on a regular schedule. If the price of a particular stock increases to the point where it would result in a profit if sold (based on the purchase price of a previous date) the user is notified, or the sell command is issued. Since I have been trading stocks, I have noticed a distinctive problem with the task of "day trading" is keeping up with the prices, and the purchases.

Personal Metric Systems

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 07:16:11 GMT

Personal Metric Systems
I don't know ANYThing about Artificial Intelligence. With that being said,

I have a vivid imagination, and I fancy myself a writer. Right now, I am

imaganing something that I would call "Personal Metric Systems", or

PMS for short. The system I am thinking of would be a classic R5 AI. By

that, I mean the system would have a complex understanding of the

hardware it exists on. Install it on a laptop, and the first thing it learns

to "understand" is the screen, keyboard, Serial Ports, touchpad, etc.

Attach something to the USB ports, and the understanding grows (via

external driver programming) to understand what it is attached to,

whether it be a mouse, or an external hard drive. The basics of R5AI

require keeping metrics on devices, or "apendages". Naturally, this data

is stored on the hard drive in the form of a database. It is important to

understand that metrics tracking is the basis, and that additional

"understanding" comes only through external programs, which are

added on an "as needed" basis. As far as I am concerned, if a

framework is provided as an open source theory, the rest of the world

would probably be happy to compete for the chance to write the best

"appendage driver". This is where it gets complex. A "language

processer" could be written to attach to the keyboard appendage. That

processor could be coded to track words, separated by delimiters and

punctuation to "understand" what a person who fancies himself as a

"writer" is typing. If the "language" is English, and the processor is

coded to understand English, the AI would then have the ability to

"analyze", research, and compare the keyboard input against the "in

memory" intelligence. Right now, that would consist of a continuous

search based on the text retrieved from the internet via the network

interface card. part of being a "computer" and not a "device" these days

means having a "hard drive". a system that understands that it has a

100 gigabyte hard drive with 80 gigabytes to spare would "manage" its

memory to fit the available memory, so it would be more sophisticated

than a system that has a 20 gigabyte hard drive with 1 gigabyte to

spare. If "devices" are recognized as "appendages" and managed in the

same manner, a person who communicates the fact that he "wants" to

purchase a house in a particular zip code could be "alerted" through the

"mobile phone" appendage when he is near a house for sale in that ZIP

code. By the same token, if one of the "appendages" was a home

security system, and another was a mobile phone, an application could

be coded to alert the home owner when the alarm is tripped. Because

the "alarm to AI to network to Mobile phone" path would all be open

source, it would costa lot less (nothing) than the same system through

a proprietary service, such as ADT.

Sex in the City

Sat, 31 May 2008 07:06:06 GMT

The movie SUCKed. I am going to say that I thought that the show was cool, because it follows a lot of the literary standards I learned in high school. One word, Product Placement. The entire movie seemed to be constructed by runway fashion labels. The movie seemed to have even less meaning or relevance to real life than the show, and that's saying a lot. The movie made a sad display of the entire "HollyWood using blacks as tokens" thing very well. There was a black character. She was peculiarly acted, and notably a side character, never having any interaction with anyone but the main character. If she had been a dream, the story would not have changed. Hollywood is made up of Liberals. Liberals love charity. Liberals also love mascots. For Hollywood and the Liberals who infest it, blacks exist not as individuals with personal desires, but as a nameless, faceless group of puppets to be exploited for the exaltation of the puppetmasters. When blacks start straying away from the chicken and grits bullshit they are feeding us, they simply throw us a bone. One day, I hope to see an article in the hollywood magazines entitled "guess who's NOT coming to dinner"

O. S. Blues

Fri, 30 May 2008 03:43:53 GMT

I need a new Operating System. Right now, I am feeling a bit resentful about the fact that I can't get a legitamite copy of a fully functional operating system and feel good about it. Linux is free, but you need a PHD to do simple tasks on it. It (Knoppix) comes with a slew of applications, but getting the sound card or the network card to work is like pulling teeth. At work I have laptops, 2 desktops, and a slew of servers (literally, it's a slew. not 4 or 6, but a slew). The work machines run WinXP, and the servers run various versions of Windows Server. These are not my machines, so I don't want to get too deep in the habit of doing non work related programming on them. For those of you who do not know, I am a programmer. For the rest of you, I am typing this on my new Linux box ($80US). The Linux box is cute, in the same a child threatening you with a knife is cute. I had to change my home office around to accomodate the fact that this machine (The OS on this machine) will not accept any of my wireless cards, dispite the fact that they ALL work on my various Windows PCs. A few years back, I sold Kletus on the idea of buying a Mac using simple logic. I say "Kletus, you are not a programmer. You are a user. The one thing you always hear about Macintosh is the fact that they are 'user friendly'. I use PC, because I am a programmer, and my job depends on my proficiency in that O.S. You can have the benefit of the new Mac O.S., which can read the same office documents as my Windows PC". As far as I am concerned, that logic still holds. At the same time, I would not buy a Mac because what you save in ease of use, you pay for in hardware costs, software costs, and the fact that the licensing model is actually more restrictive than Windows. I have NO doubt that Mac is not the operating system for me. By the same token, I am getting sick of the whole Windows thing where I have to install some new piece of crap update or add on every week and run the risk of crashing something that already works or using a TON of space for no good reason. Today I removed something that was called the "MS Office Time Zone Tool." It was 19 megabytes. I don't know how many time zones there are off the top of my head, but even if there were 19 of them, I can't think of a good reason why any application would need one megabyte per time zone to be effective. Of course, that brings me to Linux. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what's wrong with the whole model. There is a solution, but I have spent a lot of time trying to be a good APPLICATION programmer. I don't know that I could be effective or even useful at trying to learn O.S. programming. Of course, there IS a need for it.

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:43:35 GMT

How many next time?

Sun, 18 May 2008 06:30:56 GMT

Al qaeda attacked American interests 8 times during Bill Clinton's presidency. When GWB took office, they got us one good time, and we decided to strike back. Of course, we are no safer, but we also have had no signifigant attacks by them on civilian interests. How many times will they hit us during the next Liberal presidency? No matter who wins, we will have a Liberal in the White House. As far as I can tell, Liberal means "make friends with the enemy." Of course, they are not inclined to want to be friendly, just because we speak in lofty platitudes, so one would have to assume that the next Liberal in office will lay down a certain number of American lives on the altar of pacificm. How many will we lose?

Problems and solutions

Sat, 17 May 2008 04:02:51 GMT

Problems present themselves to you like large sheets of paper, convincingly painted like brick walls. You might break your head on them, or rip them with a finger
. Tonight, I spent a bit of time debugging the Cortana application. I had come down without my USB A-B cable, and I had the most recent version is stored on my CrackBerry. After working on it for a while, I had remembered that little fact. I like debugging, but sometimes, I think I make it an exercise in obsession, not problem solving.

Graduation

Fri, 16 May 2008 04:09:40 GMT

We just came from the graduation at GMU today. Myrtle's 6 month timer has started. I spent some time talking to Wilma and her man Brock Chinworthy. I didn't really take note of what she said, but in essence, I think she was making the point that it is counter productive and un-conservative to arrest foreign invaders at the work place, because these are people who come to America to work, and when we prevent them from doing so, we make the problem worse, because we prevent them from earning the best dollar, which is the untaxed dollar. This point is strengthened by the fact that we know that there is a limited number of people who can be deported in any one day, month, or year. For every
invader that is deported from the workplace, there is one that is not deported from the prison system. For every invader that is deported from the workplace, there is one that is not deported as a result of being involved in the social entitlement system.

Wiki on my App

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:14:56 GMT

For the applications, I always include a link to a WIKI site. The Wiki I use is JSPWiki, and it resides on a development server I use. If someone using my app wants help, they can click on the Wiki link. The page that they are taken to is simply the [Productname] space [ProductVersion]. I started including the ProductVersion because I was running into issues when more than one version were in play, but I plan to go back to using the product name alone, because I think major splits can be thought of as new applications, deserving of their own names. The cool thing about JSPWiki is, the page does not have to exist. You can simply create a link to it, and the first time someone tries to go to that page, they are given the option to create the page. This allows for dynamic content, or in my case, dynamic help. If I want to include a set of help pages for dynamically created application pages, I simply have to supply the application page name, and JSPWiki does the rest.

Knoppix

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:15:59 GMT

I recently installed Knoppix on a desktop machine of mine. I was surprised at how easily it went on. In previous installations, I found that it was impossible to get the application installed without knowing the intricacies of Linuxdom. Unfortunately, one could not learn intricacies of Linuxdom unless one were able to imitate a strong knowledge of Linuxdom. Linux users frequently seem to see themselves as the worlds elite, being forced to deal with the rest of us plebes. At any rate, I found the tutorial at IronGeek.com and got my install on. I won't make any mention of the problem that arises from the fact that you need a third party tutorial simply to install an operating system that is capable of running from the CD. I won't bother to mention that. At any rate, I got the install on, and soon noticed that the sound card was not working. Fortunately, there is a Sound card application. Unfortunately, it thinks that it will not run correctly in XWindows. At the behest of the sound card installer, I dropped to a bash window. Since then, the machine boots to the bash window every time, and I am unable to get a GUI window back up and running. I have tried every variation of "Start XWindows from BASH" that I can think of, but I get nothing useful. I have found that I can get back to the GUI by starting my machine with the CD in place. Of course, that means that I can't use my CD, which is why I installed Knoppix to the hard drive in the first place.

I did eventually stumble on the command, which is [startx] at [http://wolfrdr.tripod.com/linuxtips.html#xwindows].

Sacrifice and benefit

Mon, 12 May 2008 04:24:18 GMT

He who claims to want to sacrifice some for the benefit of others never wants to be the some. He would gladly define the benefit and play the part of the others.

StumbleUpon - olegneps web site... - StumbleUpon:

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:03:04 GMT

StumbleUpon - olegneps web site... - StumbleUpon:

Hey bub (I couldn't tell if you were a male or a female from the Androgynous image.. Was that intentional? I can see that the tag calls you a "guy", but is that "guy" as in "male", or guy like "She is one of the guys"?) I was wondering why you called me an obnoxious and shallow idiot. I have posted a lot on StumbleUpon, and I was wondering which post(s) drew the reaction. By the way, your negative reviews are from Stumblers whom you have flagged. Is this a way to draw attention to your profile? I can say quite honestly that I would not have noticed anything interesting or noteworthy about you, had you not tagged my page. Is there some sort of benefit to doing so? Is this like Web Graffiti? Please be more specific with the response than you have been with the initial contact or the image. I would also appreciate it if you could enlighten me on how I can be as smart and cool as you. Should I commit myself to watch 10 hours of BayWatch a day? Should I run down to the local convenience store and buy some Number 8 Sunglasses? I am wondering how long it is going to take for this little girl to change her image so I can post the current one up for comparison. Little Oleg says she likes hacking. The only problem is, most real hackers wouldn't even consider putting an image of themselves up next to the word.

SuperMemo 2006:

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:00:50 GMT

SuperMemo 2006:

Right now, I am smug as a bug in a rug. It's getting towards the end of this class, and I am glad to see that everything (except for the bill) is shaping up nicely. Right now I am installing Visual Studio on my personal machine. Lately, I have been unsure about how I can or should work on projects for KHC. Up until now, i have been doing it all on my work computer, which seems like a great alternative to carrying a second machine. We have had another round of layoffs, and I don't want to be in a position to be reprimanded. As much as I like the idea of Java, I find it hard to believe that anyone could bang out applications in Java as fast and easy as I do in .Net. When I look on Planet Source Code, the Java applications seem to be rudimentary at best. Today, I got frustrated with how much arbitrary information I am required to know. Actually, I am less frustrated with the requirement, and more frustrated with my ability to know it easily. At any rate, I banged out a little memorization and testing application modeled after SuperMemo. I called mine ButterMemo, and I will be posting it up on Planet Source Code when I get a chance. At some point, I would like to add a grading function to keep track of what the user has been quizzed on and what answers were incorrect. The basic idea is that the popups would show reminders at intervals. An item that has been shown would go into a queue for that user. Every now and then, the user would get a question (chosen from the recent reminders) that they have to answer. If they answer correctly, that card is pulled from the users queue. If they answer incorrectly, the card stays in the queue. So far, I have the cards and the questions, but not the grading.

TIM WISE ON THE CREATION OF WHITENESS (CLIP):

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:24:55 GMT

TIM WISE ON THE CREATION OF WHITENESS (CLIP):

There are a few things he missed. With illegal immigration, Illegals have killed more Americans since the Iraq war than the Iraq war. Illegals can receive social services even though they don't pay enough taxes to cover for it. For most, the problem with "Illegal Immigration" is not so much with the "Immigration" as it is with the "Illegal" part. As the Native Americans, the French, or the Dutch can tell you, unchecked immigration will destroy any nation. With the levies, The Army corps of Engineers spent more money in LA on the levies than anywhere else in the United States. For those in the know, the local government (starting with the structure) is the biggest obstacle to progress. The levies are not the domain of the federal government, but of the state and local government, which has been spending the money given by the Federal government for the levies on everything but the levies. Other than that, it sounds pretty interesting. I had no idea about the cause of "racism" as we know it.

Bitter Americans

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:47:52 GMT

Bitter Americans:

Damned right I'm bitter. I can solve problems, but they always seem to pop up. It always happens when I think I have it all under control. I have two jobs. I work as a software developer, and I have a second job with my family's small company. the Family business is two hours away, and I only go in occasionally. For the most part I can do what needs to be done online. Occasionally, I stop to think about what I make, spend, and am taxed. This always seems to put a chill on my mood. When I think about what my taxes go to, It puts me in a bad mood. I have been studying Liberals and their thought patterns for a number of years now, and I have come up with a few notes.
A Liberal is a person who:

Thinks that Mercury is a better alternative to Carbon, but still claims to want to save the enviornment

Derides others for being "Patriotic"
Whines that "their patriotism is being questioned" when others call them "unpatriotic"
Claims to appreciate freedom
Consistently backs America's enemies, even though America's enemies hate America precisely because of our freedom.
Demands free health care for all, but shrinks away when confronted with the real costs.

We are all born Liberals.
Having a fundamental understanding of the nature of mankind, and of the nature of the world allows some of us to understand Conservatism. Conservatism is not the natural progression of things. For some, more time and experience simply serve to solidify their view of the world. More often than not, I find that a Conservative can understand where a Liberal is coming from. This is because we have all been there. We were all born as children, and children are all told the same things. Share, be still when you are told to, go out and play when you are allowed to, don't hit back. Liberals have no ability to understand Conservatives. This flaw is not a result of the inputs, but of the processing. When I talk politics, I don't do so with the intention of converting the unwashed masses. As a conservative, I have a tendency to accept that people will believe what they believe because that is what they believe. I try to stay away from what I would call "value assignments". To me, A value assignment means that someone might hear what you think, and rather than accept the conclusion and challenge the evidence, they have more of a tendency to just assign a value to the conclusion, and ignore the evidence. Because I am a Black Conservative, I often hear this come through as a charge that I have been "brainwashed". I find this charge particularly troubling, because it assumes first and foremost that all blacks are supposed to think alike. From there, I could go into any of the long number of logic flaws, but I think that anyone who would have read this far would have a basic understanding of my point.

Tatt artist fed up with parking

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:56:08 GMT

I think more people should respond to incompetent governance with relocation. It is the government that needs the people, not the other way around. Governments take for granted the notion that people will put up with a lot and rarely will cite the government for a move.

High fences make good neighbors

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:33:19 GMT

Rahsaan was full of fire. The Object Library had given him so much energy. He had worked on it all day at the office. It was coming along nicely. When he got home, he took off all of his clothes and started playing HALO. He was just starting a game when he heard a knock at the door. It was his neighbor. He had never considered himself to be an unfriendly guy, but he was really starting to dislike the neighbors and their kids always knocking on the door. This was especially annoying because they would always do it during the “decompression hour”. When he got home from work, he liked to spend at least an hour not talking to anyone. It had been the same when he lived with his wife. It had taken her a few months to learn about it and to get over the initial offense. He had lived in this location for a year, and they had not caught on. The neighbor needed a ride to the bank, and to the garage to pick up his car. Rahsaan had already put on his clothes, so he agreed to make the drive. When he got in the car, he continued to play his audiobook (Clarence Thomas) while his neighbor talked. The entire trip was less than a mile. Rahsaan was unsure as to whether or not he should be annoyed because the trip was so short (why not walk) or glad because the trip was not longer (Gas prices were $3 and rising). The local coffee shop was having trouble with the Ethernet connection, and he had offered to provide support in exchange for free coffee because he liked the fact that they were so close. He had imagined himself walking to the coffee shop, but never liked carrying the laptop.

Random Application Development

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:38:52 GMT

Random Application Development

Rahsaan had been having another one of his famous bouts of enthusiasm. This was like depression, but different. Some people get depressed and find that they are unable to function. Rahsaan occasionally found that he had an idea in his head that would not go away. He felt as if he had no choice but to pursue the idea with the object of his enthusiasm. He hated the way his abilities seemed to be in some way or another, dictated more by his emotions, and less by his knowledge of the applications he dealt with on a regular basis. This time, it was a search engine. He had been up for a week thinking about some sort of search engine application. He was amazed at the fact that he was able to get a mock up working in only two days. The application would connect with websites, and download the page. After that, it could parse the HTML and pull out links and HTML tags. The thing that he was not able to get together was the purpose. What would be the purpose of the application? Was he going to try to out Google Yahoo? Would this play into his obsession with Artificial Intelligence? Without a purpose, all action was “Random Application Development”.

A couple with a purpose

Rahsaan and Debbie had similar desires. Both of them wanted to advance their ideals. Both of them wanted to build passive income. Neither of them had any idea how to pursue either passion. Rahsaan had often fancied himself as a writer. He considered Debbie to be a great thinker. He had often wondered about how the two of them could make something useful out of their wasted energies. They had been watching “Sex in the City” for about a month now, and to some extent, that was where his flavor for narration had come from. Earlier that night, the two of them had been in Barnes and Noble. He was thinking that the two of them could try listening to audiobooks together. Both of them had been into political books lately. He had also considered the possibility of the two of them learning a language together. He didn't really see where the PAC would come out of that effort. He had also considered the two of them putting forth a coordinated effort on selling her art. That was not a PAC action either. The question remained. What was to be done with all of the wasted energy.

The Tree Climber

It was early in April. Rahsaan arrived with a heavy plastic box in the back of his car. Debbie was busy painting. She stepped outside, giving him the “mother hairy eyeball” as he opened the hatch of his car. She took off her headphones as he pulled his skateboard out of his car and put it on the driveway. He lifted the box, and let it drop onto the deck with a sliding “whoomp”. He started to pull the box to the side of the driveway.

“Can you give me a hand?” he said with some effort in between grunts.

“Vaat Are you Dooing?” she replied, with a bad imitation of a Russian accent.

“I am going to build a tree thing” he replied.

She stepped forward, and ripped the top off of the RubberMaid box with a violent velocity. It hit him in the face. He fell back, cursing her. When she looked down, she saw what looked like a mass of clay-like shapes in various shapes and sizes. She put the headphones down, and started to help him. When they had moved the mass halfway across the yard, they came to a soft wet spot. There had been heavy, drizzling, precipitation that week, and the skateboard wheels simply could not support the weight.

“Are we going to the Sycamores?” she said.

“Yup” he grunted.

When they had reached the trees, she asked him what the plan was.

“I am going to drill these climbing posts into the tree.” he said, as if he were describing making a bed with clean sheets.

“If you climb that, you are going to fall and bust your fucking head.” she replied, as if he were describing how he was about to jump off of a building.

“You are going to get electrocuted using a battery operated drill in the rain!”, she said, yelling for effect.

He had heard her, but he didn't really like either of the possibilities, so he looked right at her, and pretended not to notice anything she had said. He pulled a drill out of the box, picked up a clay piece, and started drilling it into the tree. His cell phone was vibrating on his hip, and she could see that it was his mother calling. At that moment, she had decided that she would forgive him for the nights when he would go over to his friends place and get drunk playing HALO 3 until 3:00 AM. She had made that decision about the last time he had “guys night in”. He would have to earn the next the next occasion. He would not get it for free.

Random Application Development

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:37:39 GMT

Rahsaan Pringle

The Search Engine

04/04/08

Table of Contents

Random Application Development 2

A couple with a purpose 3

The Tree Climber 4

Random Application Development

A couple with a purpose

Rahsaan and Debbie had similar desires. Both of them wanted to advance conservatism. Both of them wanted to build passive income. Neither of them had any idea how to do either. Rahsaan often fancied himself as a writer, and he considered Debbie to be a great thinker. He had often wondered about how the two of them could make something useful out of their wasted energies. They had been watching “Sex in the City” for about a month now, and to some extent, that was where his flavor for narration had come from. Earlier that night, the two of them had been in Barnes and Noble. He was thinking that the two of them could try listening to audiobooks together. Both of them had been into political books lately. He had also considered the possibility of learning a language together. He didn't really see where the PAC would come out of that effort. He had also considered the two of them putting forth a coordinated effort on selling her art. That was not a PAC action either. The question remained. What was to be done with all of the wasted energy.

The Tree Climber

It was early in April. Rahsaan arrived with a heavy box in the back of his car. Debbie was painting. She came outside giving him the mother hairy eyeball as he opened the hatch of his car. She took off her headphones as he pulled his skateboard out of his car and put it on the driveway. He lifted the box, and let it drop onto the deck with a sliding “whoomp”. He started to pull the box to the side of the driveway.

“Can you give me a hand?” he said with some effort in between grunts.

“Vaat Are you Dooing?” she replied, with a bad imitation of a Russian accent.

“I am going to build a tree thing” he replied.

She stepped forward, and ripped the top off of the RubberMaid box. When she looked down, she saw what looked like a mass of clay shapes in various shapes and sizes. When they had moved the mass halfway across the yard, they came to a soft wet spot. It had been raining that week, and the skateboard wheels simply could not support the weight.

“Are we going to the Sycamores?” she said.

“Yup” he grunted.

When they had reached the trees, she asked him what the plan was.

“I am going to drill these climbing posts into the tree.” he said, as if he were describing making a bed.

“You are going to fall and bust your fucking head.” she replied, as if he were describing how he was about to jump off of a building.

He had heard her, but he didn't really like the possibility, so he pretended not to notice. He pulled a drill out of the box, picked up a clay piece, and started drilling it into the tree. At that moment, she had decided that she would forgive him for the nights when he would go over to his friends place and get drunk playing HALO 3 until 3:00 AM. She had made that decision about the last time he had “guys night in”. He would have to earn the next the next occasion. He would not get it for free.

Five Things Happy People Do - Print - MSN Lifestyle:

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:53:11 GMT

What's news?

Allison got me and Debbie hooked on "Sex and the City". She has the entire show on DVD, and we have been watching like true fans all week. I am having a serious issue. I upgraded a server from classic ASP to ASP.Net 2.0. I have been coding in .Net for more than a year, but I just realized that I am using ASP.net 1.something or another. At any rate, my server uses one version, and my development environment uses another. I have tried upgrading the .Net on the machine, but that does not seem to have any effect on the development environment.

LearningTree.com

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:03:26 GMT

03.20.08

LearningTree.com in RockVille, Maryland

I am at a LearningTree.com Class. I think my questions are the best in the class, but I am probably not the smartest guy in the class. Yesterday, lunch was provided. I am partnering with this Chinese geek. He is from Hong Kong. This guy is so awkward. I like him, though. He has many annoying habits. I do as well, so I am not going to slight him for it. Thomas is cool. He is a young, intelligent, Black man with a college degree and a real profession. I want to be like him when I grow up. I think I pissed him off today when I asked him what Fraternity Life was all about. Chris (the instructor) is awesome. The guy has a mind like a steel trap. When most people speak, it is less like a playback of a recording, and more like a stream. When he speaks, he utters well formulated words that are less in the way of “utterance” and more to do with true “communication”. I think that it is easy for normal people to communicate their understanding of a particular matter, but truly intelligent people can communicate a holistic view of a scenario devoid of their understanding. A good communicator will communicate the scenario worded for your understanding (not according to their understanding) in hopes that you will get it. He reminds me of Joe Thomas, who knows what he said a minute ago, a day ago, or a year ago. Joe expects you to know as well. Chris reminds me of a trainer I had while working at a collection agency, named Jason. He is an all around good guy, and I think highly of him. Aleein is an intelligent, Black, cheerful (overly perky) woman. She is married to an IrishMan and has two kids. She speaks geek fluently, and has an annoying habit of correcting everyone (even me) on technical terms. In the conversations I have had over the past few days, one common theme is that of no loyalty to the job. I think we have all communicated the fact that we are loyal in personal relationships, but when it comes to employment, we are perfectly willing to jump from ladder to ladder, if only to go up one rung. This is detrimental, but it is not entirely our fault (in my opinion). I bet everyone here knows someone who has been “downsized”, or “chopped” from the payroll for the sake of the bottom line. It is in the nature of honest business. Business thrives on efficiency, and having a “Rank and Yank” mentality is the most successful method of existence. With that being the case, businesses hire intelligent people, who will also seek to better themselves by any means necessary. That can easily mean dropping the job that pays your way through school for another position, just because they will pay you more for having gone to school. If (when) I employ people, I will hire people who are undereducated, if they can convince me that they are undereducated by circumstance, and not by choice. If (WHEN) they leave my firm for another, I will not be resentful or taken advantage of. I will consider it a cost of doing business. If I were to hire well educated people, and pay them for their education, I would still be expected to contribute to their betterment. I would imagine that hiring less educated people and contributing to their education would cost less in the long run. Education is priced to be just out of reach. The educated people make just enough to send their children to school. That is kept in check. The salaries of the educated are controlled by so many other factors that it would be senseless to try to identify a controlling factor. A person can leave college and make $35K, or $350K, depending on the interpretation of the need. Salary increases are expected. Salary decreases are unheard of. Secondary education is pricing itself out of existence. As this happens, other forms of education come into practice. This is evident with the number of “certifications” one can get without stepping foot on a college campus. Colleges are meant for the children of the college educated parents. Tuition assistance does not, could not, and should not keep up. It only assists in allowing the price of tuition to outpace the ability of the student (or the student’s family) to pay. Unfortunately, tuition for self or child does not count as a significant reduction to the tax burden of the working family.

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:06:53 GMT

· 01.09.08

o Blogs vs Social Networking

§ For some time now, I have noticed that whenever I run into old friends, people don’t ask for phone numbers anymore. They don’t even ask for email addresses regularly. Now, everyone asks where you do your social networking. The usual form of the question is “What is your MySpace?” I do think that social networking sites are cool. It’s an idea that I had thought of a long time ago. With that being said, I am not really a social networker. As I said, I have a MySpace, a FaceBook, and I even have a StumbleUpon. According to my habits, I am more of a blogger. I enjoy LiveJournal for the simplicity, which is the lack of advertisements. I also like it for the fact that I have had it since 2003, and as far as I know, all of my work is still online, still in the form that I created it. Longevity may not sound important in the world of instant online profiles, but what we do takes our time, and that gives it some value, even if the account we do it on is free. Free service providers that disappear don’t do a disservice by offering service for free, but a certain amount of effort is wasted with every free account that disappears into the ether without a trace. Every now and then, when I write, I stop to think, am I writing for myself, or for the nameless, faceless audience that could be lurking about, reading the site? The real answer is “I blog to blog”. I am not compiling a book, there is no massive underground audience clinging to my every word, and I might never read what has been written. With that being said, how does social networking fit into it all? While it seems like a good way to keep up with people separated by time or distance, I often find that when I check on the sites of people I know, I find out less about what is new in their lives, and more about what new Social Networking applications are popular with the rest of the 50 million users. Of course, if they do not fancy themselves as writers, it might be unfair to expect them to put details of their lives in writing, just because I do it…

Hape://Bertha.de

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:22:54 GMT

· Hape://Bertha.de

o BirthDay Funk

§ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PodOfFunk/~5/209000705/funkpod_30.mp3

§ I have some BirthDay funk, but it’s not like a down feeling. Actually, it’s like a great excitement. Tomorrow, I will be 34 years old. Because my birthday is so close to the New Year, I generally spend the nine days in between thinking of “resolution candidates”. When the deadline rolls around, I usually settle for what I think of as “recent improvements” in my behavior, as I have never been the type to improve my own behavior intentionally.

§ So what’s news?

· Lots of news, a lot of it is great, and much of it is not for consumption by the general public. Nothing extra special, just not very interesting. For example:

o Every year, I come up with a new budget and a plan to be debt free by the end of the year. It is usually not very realistic. This year, I actually make enough income to make it a remote possibility.

o I am fully geeked out. I have two different bar code scanners. One is a light pen, and the other is the light gun type.

o I just got a degree, and I am going back to school. It is an online college. The future looks bright, but the web sessions that pass for classes are not so exciting. The courses are easy, but the assignments are like an Easter egg hunt. The professors don’t put the assignments with due dates in the syllabus. You have to go looking around for them.

§ What would you want to be asked if you were being interviewed?

· That is not a rhetorical question. I am actually writing this for my blog and to send to myself on http://FutureMe.org. I like to talk to people, but I can’t stand superficial conversation. When I say this, I mean, I can’t stand conversations about celebrities, or complaints about “the system” or “society”. Needless to say, I often find myself wishing I had better questions to get people to expand on what they think about life the universe, and everything. Thinking more on it, I should probably develop some questions. What would the future me want to be asked about? While I can’t think of anything good, I can put down what comes to mind. Actually, these come from the book “All about me” by Phillip Keel.

o If you had no commitments to others, what would you do?

§ I would maximize my education and work experience. I would make my dwelling where ever I found the highest paying job. I think the online education thing is good for the lifestyle I live. It is also good for the lifestyle I would live in such circumstances. I would always keep putting in resumes with different firms. When I get a new job, I would stay for a year. This would be long enough to satisfy the apartment lease. When the lease is up, I would start the job hunt again. I would continue to take classes in the field as opposed to classed for a new degree. I would do this because the industry is always changing, and the moves would be costly to perform, no matter how paltry the new dwelling. I would live meagerly. I would not take huge apartments even if I could afford them. I would also not take anything without a washer and dryer. I would invest all I could in traditional investments, and in my own business, which would have a forwarding post office box, if necessary. For my “own business”, I would do application programming, which I have a lot of great ideas for, as opposed to service programming, with which I have a lot of experience.

o What is a dream you have had more than once?

§ This is a bad question for me to ask, because I don’t have a real answer.

· I dream often of climbing on something big and moving, like in “Shadow of the Colossus”.

· I dream a lot about chasing something very small that moves very quickly. The recurrence is the fact that I always move very slowly, if at all.

· I dream of being lost in a big place, with a series of closed off areas. There always seems to be a choice of which area to go to next, and each area seems more inappropriate than the last. It is not always the same setting. Sometimes, it is like a Wal*Mart, other times, it is like a hospital, other times, it is like a cave. In every instance, there is never any going back, and there are always multiple choices, and there is always someone calling me by name from an unknown direction.

o List 5 things you would like to accomplish within the next year. This is my own question.

§ Debt Freedom

· Credit cards are a real pain in the ass, especially when it is so easy to keep using them and paying them off than it is to simply cut them and pay them off. My mother recently told me about prepaid cards, which are not the same as the secured cards. A prepaid card can actually accept money from direct deposit. They look and work just like other credit cards, except for the fact that they appear to have no connection to your credit, and they extend you no credit. They are simply a spending mechanism, nothing more. I thought of this idea years ago. It is good to see that the rest of the world has caught up.

§ A good schedule

· Many people try to avoid the 9 to 5 lifestyle. I aspire to it. I would like nothing more than to set a schedule, and follow it for two weeks in a row. I would be ecstatic if I could do the same for two months. Time and money are separate commodities, but time, like money is a highly valuable commodity. If you don’t know where it is going, it is easy to waste a lot of it. If you can not account for it, you can count on the fact that you are wasting it.

§ One (1) or zero (0) packs of cigarettes every month.

· Currently, I smoke One (1) pack of cigarettes every week. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is so hard to not smoke any that I have been considering hypnosis as a method of elimination. If any readers have tried it, please feel free to offer your opinion on the matter.

§ Successful completion of all classes I am taking.

· This is less of a hope and more of an expectation, as long as I don’t get the rigorous travel schedule I had last year at this time.

§ An initial release of one of my applications.

· I have a lot of good ideas; some of them might even be considered good ideas. All of my applications are 75% complete, as far as a release is concerned. I write these applications for myself, and that 75% represents what I need them to be to be functional to myself. That last 25% would represent my confidence in the fact that others would find them useful, if I were to move them to completion.

Programming Paradigms

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:24:58 GMT

If you design it, you can’t build it;

If you make it, you can’t test it;

If you learn it, you can't teach it;

If you take care of the syntax, the meaning will handle itself;