[	Tags	|	butterthug, codethug, da projekts, daydreaming, inspiron	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	Styrofoam : Couches in Alleys	]

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.

[	Tags	|	chilltyme, da projekts, daydreaming	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	contemplative	]
[	music	|	Rush247	]

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.

[	Tags	|	bits, blah blah blah, blog, butterthug, chilltyme, codethug, comedy, complaining, daydreaming, disappearer, education, el politiko, epundit, excercise, happytime, ponderation, questions, reflectives	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	bouncy	]
[	music	|	PodFunk	]

·      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.

[	Tags	|	bits, blah blah blah, blog, buena vista, butterthug, chilltyme, comedy, complaining, daydreaming, disappearer, event, family, frission, frustration, happytime, humor, inspiron, jobthug, laughing, lucky, monday, observation, optimistic, passingtime, ponderation	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	cheerful	]
[	music	|	The crazy lady upstairs...	]

• 08.19.07.What's News?

1. This morning, I woke up in Roanoke. Last night, I had arrived at about 2AM after an all night session doing battle with the Active Directory at KHC. Weez and Kdev were going to visit Nan in Troutville. I needed to go back to BedRock to pick up a paycheck and a graduation check. I stopped at the spot and picked up a fat new MTech 440 Steel. This thing is a full precision WetWorks tool. It's too cool to keep for myself, but I can't decide who to give it to. It looks like RedNeck Goth, if there is such a thing. When I got to BedRock, I noticed that my oil was due for a change. Standing in the office, I almost started to work more on the network, but I thought better of it, because it's a Sunday, and the JiffyLube would probably have been closed by the time I left the office. The nearest JiffyLube that I could think of is in Forest. Of course, I could think of Forest easily, because that's where the JCrew outlet is. I got the oil change and stopped in at JCrew. I picked up trousers and some socks. On the way back up to RockTown, I stopped by Buena Vista. Buena Vista is a small (really small) town between Roanoke and Harrisonburg. It's more or less across the interstate from Lexington. The proximity and low house prices make it a prime location for our next home. I drove around until I found a real estate office. Looking at the house prices, my jaw dropped. Some of the new estates that are going up could not easily be classified as “houses”. Many of them cost six figures. By the same token, there were plenty of decent looking 3 and 4 bedroom houses going for under $100k. I thought about the possibilities all the way back to RockTown. It's a good thing I had that to think about, because my MP3 player had no more charge, and I am not in the habit of carrying a lot of CDs on the road. On top of that, I was a little tired from staying up so late last night. Getting back to RockTown, I laid down for a little while, played Halo 1, and thought about going on a hike. When I went to the window, I saw that it was sprinkling from an almost cloudless sky, such a beautiful thing. I went to Wal-Mart to get some basics. I'm planning to head back to Roanoke tomorrow, because my grandmother is visiting from Newark, New Jersey. I am going to ask to work half days from home this week. Walking into Wal-Mart, my new JCrew trousers set off the alarm with the sewn in RFID tag. They come with a cloth-attached tag that you are supposed to cut off when you buy the clothing. I resent the fact that anyone would expect me to take scissors or knife to my newly purchased clothing, so I usually leave the tags on. The RFID tags are no good after going through the washer and dryer, so it's never an issue. Of course, you don't wash Leather trousers, and this pair of trousers was just purchased, so the tag worked fine. Does Wal-Mart sell leather trousers? I walked into the store with a short list of items to pick up in my head.

• Deodorant

• Vasaline
  

• Bunny Food

• Lotion
  

• Vegetables

• Motor Oil

• Trail Bars

• String
  

• Bottled Water

• Duct Tape
  

• Tooth Paste

• A Kazoo
  

• Milk

• When the alarm sounded, I continued to walk normally, and no one approached me. I also forgot everything on my list. Looking around the store, I remembered a few of the items, but I started to get nervous about leaving. Should I just walk out like normal? Should I say to the docile little woman at the door “It's OK, it's just my funky trousers”? Should I make a break for it? How far could I run with these trousers on? I wondered around the store until I remembered a few of the items on the list and went to get in line. Leaving, the alarm sounded, and again no one approached me. Personal note to self: Don't pay for things at Wal-Mart. Walking to my car, I thought a lot about how nervous I was in the store. I thought a lot about how embarrassed I would have been if I had been apprehended. I thought a lot about how odd it would have been to have my ass kicked by a woman while wearing leather trousers. Note to self... I digress. Apparently, I mused on the subject a bit too long, because when I got back to the apartment, I was still in LaLaLand. The sprinkling had turned into a small summer storm, and I wanted to get into the apartment without getting soaked. I backed my car in, turned off the wipers and lights, put my MP3 player and charger in the grocery bag, grabbed my bag, locked the door, got out of the car, and remembered that the keys were still in the ignition. As I stood looking stupidly into the quickly fogging windows, I could hear that the engine was still running. I could also hear the storm growing in intensity. My apartment has about a 6 inch eave, so when you step outside, if it is raining, you get wet. I tried to prop my bag up in front of the door so the MP3 player could stay relatively dry. I am not a big guy, but apparently I am more than 6 inches from front to back. I found that I could not make a call without getting soaked. I ran out to get under a few trees in front of the apartment. I have another set of keys in my desk drawer at work. Paging through the list of co-workers, I called the ones that I thought might be available. Voice Mail, Voice Mail, Voice Mail. Some of the students in a house across the way were standing out in the rain drinking water out of red Solo cups and screaming “Woo!” In unison. As the rain intensified, they started picking up the cups and taking the table inside. Apparently, they didn't want the rain water. I ran up to the door just as the last one was closing it. Knocking on the door, I heard “Oh Shit, that big black midget is at the door!”, “Put that shit out”, and “He looks like a cop”. I have been called a lot of things in my life, but... I digress. A sheepish looking girl came to the door and I told her about my naughty keys. She said that she would look, but she thought everyone was using plastic coat hangars these days. 30 seconds later, she came back and said that they had no metal coat hangars in the house. Note to self: Become a cop and arrest the whole lot of them. I ran back to the grove of trees and looked around. I went to knock on another neighbor, Juan's door. Fortunately, he was there. He did have a metal hangar, but it was a HUGE gold colored hangar that was for some reason, neatly unwound and straightened almost perfectly, except for the hook at the end. I thanked him, and proceeded to start scratching up my brand new car. The door locks in my car are not electric, but they do have rubbery nips at the top, so there is nothing for a hangar to grip on to. I went back to Juan's door to see if he had a tennis ball, and he was like “I never would have guessed you to be a YouTube addict... Are you a cop?” Before I could answer, my phone rang. It was JoTho, from work. JoTho is an ex immigration officer who had never actually retired. I don't think he turned in his weapon, either. He has threatened to shoot me several times.

• “Rahsaan”

• “Pringle, Didn't I tell you not to lock yourself out?”

• “No, sir”

• “Alright, I'll be there in a minute.”

• “Great, I am at...”

• Click

• 3 minutes later, The phone rang again. It was JoTho.

  • “Where are you at?”

  • “I'm at my apartment, It's a stones throw from Calhoun's. I have a spare set of keys in my desk at the office.”

  • “Fine, GodDammit!”

  • Pregnant pause...

  • “JoTho?”

  • “Here is what I am going to do. I'm going to go to the office and get your keys out of your desk. After that, I am going to bring your keys to you. You are going to be waiting for me and your keys at the bar at Calhoun's! YOU HEAR ME PRINGLE?!?”

  • “Yes Sir!”

  • Click

  • When I closed my phone I looked around the room and Juan, and the two women he lived with, and the two babies they had were all looking at me with big eyes and wide open mouths. I guess JoTho didn't lose his touch. I thanked them and ran downtown to Calhoun's. JoTho time is weird. He could be 45 minutes late, or he could be 45 minutes early. Either way JoTho was my boss, and if he said to wait for him at the bar, I was going to wait for him at the bar, no questions asked.

[	Tags	|	daydreaming	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	cheerful	]
[	music	|	Professor LongHair : The call me...	]

As a developer, the first and most important site you will design will be your own. A developers site will be constantly changing, so the separation of content and style are essential. While the setup of websites for developers and designers varies greatly (you can get an idea by looking at existing sites), one thing that they all seem to have is a portfolio page. Of course, a new developer is not going to have a large portfolio, but that does not mean that the portfolio page should be excluded. After designing the company website, design a site to serve as the portfolio website. Make it business specific, it should relate to a particular industry. For this, it makes sense to look at existing sites. If necessary, re design an existing company site. And try to sell it to them.

In my experience, I have found that a particular method that works nearly every time it is tried. The down side is, it is difficult to do, so it is easy to stop trying. The sales plan is as follows.

[	Tags	|	blah blah blah, blog, butterthug, chilltyme, complaining, daydreaming, disappearer, education, family, frustration, happytime, pain, ponderation	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	cheerful	]
[	music	|	Professor LongHair	]

• What's news?
• Deb will be flying off to Greece & Italy tomorrow.
• In a way I would like to be going, but I am taking two classes right now, and I am actually thrilled to not be able to go for a reason other than money.
• If all goes well, I will be free of my most troublesome debt at the end of the year.
• That in itself is cause for celebration.
• KB is in the hospital.
• He has some sort of 'mystery disease' that could be related to his time in Iraq.
• If all goes well, I will be graduating next month.
• I am SOOOO excited!
• I have Katari's mp3 player.
• It is a Pocket DJ, just like mine, and it has a cracked screen.

[	Tags	|	.net, blah blah blah, blog, butterthug, codethug, coding, complaining, da projekts, daydreaming, frustration	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	Neighbors getting high	]

• 05.08.07
• Well Happy Anniversary! A year ago today, I started at SI International. I remember when I got there, I felt seriously outclassed by the other talent. Now, a year has passed, and I feel seriously outclassed by the other talent. It seems like I have a great knack for the impressive new technology that's always on the bleeding edge. I like working for SI, even if I am now part of a project that helps Immigrants get into the country. At least it is helping them get in legally. In fact, some of my "ShotGun Innovations" May be credited with streamlining the process, making it easier to distinguish who should stay, and who should go. I got a little bit frustrated tonight. earlier, I went to the Artful Dodger after work to work on some work. When I got there, I didn't have my charger, but I did have a full battery. My machine took forever to boot up, and I didn't have the reading material I had printed up to read with me. When I did finally get up and running, the project was locked, some problem with Visual SourceSafe, I think. Also, the network at the coffee shop was down, so I couldn't get online. I came back to the apartment, installed Visual Studio on the DeskTop, and started sorting through my CD collection. I am trying to get File backups, Applications, and application backups organized into the various CD binders. The kids upstairs are getting high, making a lot of noise. I need to go to bed, even though I am not tired or sleepy.

[	Tags	|	.net, asp.net, blah blah blah, codethug, coding, da projekts, daydreaming, optimistic, passingtime, podcasts, what are tags?	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	awake	]
[	music	|	Sly & Robbie	]

1. 05.03.07
1. Right now, I am sort of frustrated, because I am so energetic. I am tired, but wired, all at the same time. I recently came up with a couple of cool RAD (Random Application Development) ideas that I have actually started to work on. As I recall, both of them were described earlier in another BLOG, so I won't bother to re-hash the whole thing. At any rate, both applications are working in beta form, and are providing me with basic usefulness. I could see both projects being useful on a larger scale, but I don't know how to convince others of this. Right now, I am debating as to whether or not I should just use the apps, or try to distribute them in some way. I guess I should examine why I want to publicize the apps in the first place. On one hand, I simply want to support the whole open source concept, but on the other, what good does it do to put it out if no one uses it? If I have to hold every potential users hand throughout the entire process to keep them interested in the concept, but it's still open source, so there is no money involved, the apps are not open source, but open ended liability. Looking at the Flash Card Reader on Planet Source Code (http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=5671&lngWId=10), I currently have no comments. Does that mean that
1. no one bothered to look at it (not likely)
2. everyone who looked thought it was shit
3. some liked it, but didn't bother to comment
4. No one could figure it out.
2. I guess I'll never know. That's the bad thing about open source, the lack of monetary involvement deprives the developer of an essential metric. It also deprives the user of any sway they might have over the developer.  I can imagine The conversation (if there was one) between Open Source Developers and Open Source Users to be something like the following.
1. "Why should I add your most desired feature in the next release, What's in it for me? You are not paying me for it? I gave you the source code, add it yourself. Don't forget to keep me posted so I know what you have come up with."
3. While I don't want to be like that, I have a job, and I am not looking to create another one. I think this would be useful, and I want others to. Maybe that's the major issue. I want others to find it useful. People don't generally find software useful, but rather, they find the software that best delivers the usefulness that they want. The product is not to be the focus, but rather, the features and ease of use associated with the product. That is certainly what is missing with both of these applications. Both are written for me, by me, and the ease of use has taken a back seat to the function. That's fine for me, but for another, it would be an impassable roadblock.

[	Tags	|	acerola, blog, codethug, comedy, daydreaming, el politiko, family	]
[	Current Location	|	Elizabeth	]
[	mood	|	contemplative	]
[	music	|	The couple upstairs smoking pot and coughing	]

1. In life, conditions are always changing. We can live our lives in small towns, and surround ourselves with close family and friends, but any time there is interaction between humans, variability is introduced. In our own minds, we go from needing variability in our youth, to needing more stability as we age. The part about the youth is evidenced by the fact that teens so often have an insatiable desire to go to the same place. Where exactly is 'out' located, anyway? Once I had ventured so far as to ask my stepdaughter where the mythical land of out was located. She looked me as if I had just sprung a new appendage from my forehead, and said, 'out there, and not in here'. Needless to say, I slept much better with the mystery solved. In a way, I like having teens around. Teens remind us that we need to get out and see the world around us every now and then. As a software developer, I am constantly trying to balance the structured and changing concepts. In real life, we can't stop to debug our errors. In a way, I think that part of the appeal with video games has to do with the ability to 'do-over' when a fatal mistake has been made. In real life, I think that the majority of the fatal mistakes we make don't happen in an instant, they take time to manifest. I am not discounting the power of the catastrophic disaster, there are plenty of these to be aware of. My point is that, because the catastrophic disasters are catastrophic, they are the ones we are more likely to pass along to each other. When I was in the service, we were once out on Bivouac. We found ourselves so bored that we resorted to playing an odd game. We got out a map, and took turns finding the location specified by a spotter. The spotter would give some set of letters from the location (usually the three closest to the middle), and the rest of us would try to find the spot. After some time, we noticed that the smallest names were not the hardest to find, it was the L A R G E names that would be sprawled across the map. In similar fashion, I think that the hardest dangers to spot are not going to be the most catastrophic, the catastrophes are advertised, as evidenced by the VA Tech shooter. The hardest dangers to avoid are the ones that mope along, because you can never outrun them.

[	Tags	|	daydreaming, drinking, wheelspinning	]
[	mood	|	chipper	]
[	music	|	The Band : Up On Cripple Creek	]

Tonight was confusion and uselessness, epitomized. I tried several projects, unsuccessfully... BorderVote.com (jsp), BudgetThug (java), BumperStickers (CafePress.com), LiveJournal. Nothing useful came of tonights endeavors. I couldn't even accomplish getting a demo copy of Win2G SBS installed successfully. I did manage to get a beer & some smokes, though. I am finishing up, getting ready to hit the sack. Tomorrow, tomorrow... I REALLY need to start plotting before I start drinking... Even one beer cuts productivity by 75%. Now that I think about it, a good game would have been more valuable than this. Of course, none of the aforementioned tasks were in my task list, or even in my Projects database. Maybe it doesn't take a specific plan, as much as it takes adhering to a general one.