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Hape://Bertha.de [Jan. 9th, 2008|12:23 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ]
[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.

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11.26.07 What's News? [Nov. 27th, 2007|12:09 am]
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[Current Location |Elizabeth]
[mood | accomplished]
[music |Loituma : Laka's Polka]

  • 11.26.07 What's News?

    • First of all, I'm enrolled, registered, and getting ready to go back to school to get my degree.

      • I'm excited, nervous, and eager. I have always thought of myself as the type of person who would always like to be taking a class, just to always be in the process of learning something new, but now, I'm thinking that I'll be glad when it's over, and I can finally start making some money with what I have learned. I don't know if that has to do with getting older, or with the fact that I have seen so little return on investment from my education. Even the job I have now, which is in my desired field, near my desired salary range, was obtained more or less as a fluke. I got the position and my first raise before I got my degree, the position calls for a higher degree than I hold, and I sometimes wonder if I still have the position because I don't have the required education, and thus, get paid less than I would if I did have a 4 year degree. I guess the real benefit of the degree (for me) comes with the job hunt. So many positions have turned me down due to my lack of education, always telling me that they were impressed with my experience.

    • Should I take the job in NoVa that's offering me $12k more per year?

      • When ever I am feeling dissatisfied with my current position, I like to 'Monster' around for new jobs. Recently, the JobHunt got a bite, and it seems like they might make an offer. Of course, the cost of living up there is higher, but could it be that much higher? I should find the Ttox, he would know. Maybe smack some sense in me.

    • This is depressing.

      • Of course, we all know it, but it helps to have it reinforced. I found the site because I was looking for proof that a smelly man was actually a great turn on to women, due to Pheromones and such. This is a hypothesis of mine that was questioned by Vino's girl last week. I didn't find the proof that I needed, but there is a lot of other interesting stuff on this site.

    • Work's going great.

      • I hate to be like “if there is nothing to complain about, there is nothing to write about”, but I have little to complain about, so little seems worth the effort to write about.

    • My Dell Laptop computer is on the Fritz.

      • A while back Vino asked me to look at his machine, which is the same as mine, to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. I'm no laptop tech, but he said he would probably throw it away and get a new one before he spent money having it repaired. I couldn't get it fixed. Tech with a desktop generally involves swapping out suspect parts with parts that were known to work from other 'Frankenstein' machines. At that point, my machine was working fine, so I didn't want to make his problem into my problem. Now, My machine is acting funky, and I, like him, really am not interested in a game of “Polish the turd”. I have 2 work laptops, I guess I can use one of them.

    • Thanksgiving holiday was a blast.

      • I have so much to be thankful for, I don't know where to begin.

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07/11/07 [Jul. 12th, 2007|12:00 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , , , , , ]
[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.
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032206_Derridas [Mar. 22nd, 2006|12:11 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , ]
[mood | accomplished]
[music |Variable Speed Fan in MyrtleSan's LapTop]

Tonight, I had to refactor the application. I don't like Refactoring, it represents wasted effort. In some cases, refactoring isn't so bad, like when it represents reorganization due to some newly gained knowledge. In some ways, that is the case here. I needed to get ahold of the wild Array issue. Arrays in DotNet seem to want to be a central part of their functions, rather than simple variables to be passed around at will. For example, it you can't simply pass a variable from one function to the next and grab an index, like you would in Java. You have to massage the Array, taking it for a walk, and asking it about each of its indexes. I could be wrong. I hope I am. The current model is simple, one function accepts the text, frames it, parses it, and steps through the array. with the exception of the first and last item in the array (the start and end), each word is added (with validation) to the vocabulary table. All items (including [Start] and [End]) are added as context links in the database. Now that I think of it, this could probably be done in JavaDotNet with no loss of credability on my part. time for another ReFactoring... Damn. EveryThing I do is an expiriment in something else. I just pinched into my nose and pulled out the biggest, thickest, blackest nose hair I have ever seen. If I had this typr of hair on my head... I mean it, this hair was thicker than anything on my body, it was like a cats wisker... I also remember where I was when I first realized that people were paying attention to me, without my trying to be noticed. I thought about putting the nose hair into page 47 of my DotNet book, but as I was turning it in my fingers, it literally JUMPED out of my hand, and landed squarely in between the 'N' and 'M' keys on Myrtle's laptop. I am about to start looking for something to pry off the keys.
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NorthWind [Mar. 5th, 2006|04:48 am]
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Damn, I have so much to do. I just posted a new script on Planet-Source-Code.com. I am trying to fill out the security clearance forms for the new position. It pays A LOT. I have an acceptance letter, I just need to prove that I am not a terrorist. I got a security clearance once, but my downfall this time might be the fact that I have had so many part time jobs to pay for my classes. Is that fucked up, or what? If I don't get it, life will go on. So what if I dropped the $500 class to take more time to fill out all of their forms. There are other coding positions out there. Damn. I hope I get this one. I feel like I deserve it, I want it, I need it. Actually I don't need it, I have a good job, and I am thankful for it, I actually would feel weird leaving it, because I spent 5 years applying for a position at this particular company... Everything I do is an expiriment in something else.
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Three Road Trips [Jun. 16th, 2005|10:30 pm]
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[mood | accomplished]
[music |Boards Of Canada]

 This is my first speech in my SPD100 class at Virginia Western Community College 
  • Body of Speech
    • There are as many approaches to travel as there are travel budgets.
      • My wife likes to plan every detail, actually writing out the word 'itinerary' and trying to make it relevant
        • She likes to travel in extravagance, looking for the best places to eat and sleep, and seeking out specifics for entertainment.
        • My wife planned a trip to DC for New Year's Eve in 2000.
      • I just write out the abbreviation 'I10' and do a quick search for the nearest convenience stores.
      • I generally make plans to 'check out' an area, researching just enough to be convinced that we are going someplace that is worth our time and effort.
        • I have to travel on the cheap, so I want to travel to either visit someone I know, or check out a place I want to get to know.
        • Prior to getting married, I did a lot of 'couch & car' tours, sleeping either on someone's couch, or in my car.
        • I generally don't make plans to attend an event while I am traveling, because events are usually populated with people, and there are plenty of people (that we actually know) at home.
        • I planned a trip to Savannah
      • The itinerary dictated to us a 3-part trip starting at VA Beach
        • The first stop was Virginia Beach
          • Debo's mother, son, and nephew were staying at the ThunderBird hotel.
            • This is perhaps, the oldest and cheapest hotel on the beachfront.
              • The air conditioning didn't work, but the lump in the mattress turned out to be a half pound of marijuana, which I left in the second drawer of the nightstand.
          • I went to go skate Mt. ThrashMore, where Mike Vallely was discovered by Lance Mountain.
        • The second stop was a campground in northern NC.
          • We stayed at the John H. Kerr Reservoir
          • A guy with 4 teeth and a shirt that read 'Rebel Dawg', complete with flag, came over to offer me a Fire Starter when he saw that I was having trouble.
            • I put away a stereotype on that night, and I have not had the need to dust it off since.
        • The third stop was Carrboro, NC
          • We stayed with my friend Jacob, where we ate healthy organic food, and went Barhopping.
            • After one band had finished playing, we entertained the entire bar with an extemporaneous, on stage conversation about the acceptance of money as 'currency'.
          • When we got back to Jake's house, we hopped a fence and crashed a party.
            • With the exception of one Texan, everyone there was from Mexico.
            • I got to try out my Spanish because only one person there spoke English, but we had to go when the cops came.
          • The next day, I met Jake's mother for the first time (I have known Jake since high school).
            • We gave differing accounts of the same embarrassing events.
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