Farewell Rosewill…Helloooo Acer.
So the 19" Rosewill widescreen monitor I bought in 2002 has finally kicked the bucket. I wrote to the company (and felt 40 years older doing so), complimenting them on a superb product that lasted much longer than expected (I honestly only hoped for 6 months for the price), and to see if they had any more in stock that they could replace/sell. The specific product was discontinued about 6 years ago, so I'm thinking probably not. So far no response, but who knows; time will tell.
So I went to Best Buy (ugh), and proceeded to make the fastest sale in ever. Picked up a 23" Acer LED monitor for $169 (This might actually be less than what the 19" Rosewill cost in 2002). So far, it's fantastic. It's like my eyes have never seen before. And now I'm seeing many mistakes on websites I've worked on that my old monitor just didn't show me.
This has not been one of my best weeks. I'm really loving the new job, but it hardly leaves any time to do anything except work. I love the work, it's much more FUN than what I was doing before. I find I work from home a lot, and regularly put in over 50 hours a week. I'm not sure entirely how I feel about that, but at least it's mostly enjoyable work. Recent transitions in leadership are rather underwhelming; but overall, still a pleasant work experience. It's kinda sad now that I look back on what I've been doing for the last 6 years, compared to now.
Today wasn't too bad, though I was fighting with Drupal for several hours (Goddamn I hate Drupal. Especially the old-ass implementation they have on the current site). Finally got the feature in for the client, and GOT THANKED. There are times when I absolutely love this job. Getting credit and even praised for my work is fantastic. That happened another day last week, and I think it was one of the best days I've had this year. A truly wonderful feeling. But I digress...Did some training for a co-worker, worked on and tackled some weird issues, etc. But it was a long day. Decided to grab a burger and a beer at the pub near our place. That may have been a mistake. Too early to tell.
But now I have a sexy new monitor. And a list of websites to fix. 
wordswordswords
So I would blame the weather being nice and cold for me being forgetful and not updating this internets thing, but the reality is I was just lazy. Not that I think anyone's really just hanging on to every word I type (cept the spammers in the quotes section, ni hao guys!), but there's facebook and such for that.
Been really busy recently, working a lot and trying to get things done as best as possible. The presentation from 6 months ago went decently well, I've never been a good public speaker but I think I got most people's questions answered at least. Technical issues not withstanding, it went ok I think?
Managed to get a week off of work over the Christmas holiday season, so visited with family and hung out with friends. Possibly best Christmas ever, but we'll see if next year can top it! Did I mention I've been working a lot? Yeah, I've been working a lot. Currently I'm the building/technical representative for a major infrastructure upgrade that's going on where I work. They are ripping out and replacing all the old data wiring, and I'm in charge of answering their questions, keeping track of everything, and preventing as much downtime as possible for the staff and students during end-of-year work and end-of-course testing/assessment. I'm not gonna lie, it's a bitch. Though I do typically get to take off early on Fridays because of all the meetings and out of hours work. I suppose that's a trade off for not getting paid for overtime worked. /sigh
Eventually got around to releasing the new version of the Eminence website for my guild. I'd been rebuilding a few versions for the last couple years, but haven't gotten one to a releasable state until recently. So far the review has been positive, with a few graphical bugs to work out. Got some great input from some of the guildies on images, color schemes, etc. I'm glad it's becoming a collaborative project!
I've been doing some freelance work as well; not really planning on it, but I got volunteered 
I'm toying with the idea I had a few years back of starting a small business doing PC repair for the local area. I usually end up making about $20 or so an hour doing repair work, and usually get a job or three a month. I had been thinking about commercializing and setting up rates and such, but I'm not sure it would work well considering my availability. I had been planning to market towards local small businesses, rather than have them pay $100/hr or something to the big companies to fix their issues. I've think I've gotten more varied work experience from this than I have from my real job. 
Also working on HP and Dell certification, tests are coming up soon and they want me to be able to order warranty parts. Yay. By the way, where's the A+, Network+, and Security+ certification reimbursement I was told I could get when I was hired 3 years ago? Or for that matter, the tuition reimbursement that made me choose this job over another that offered it? bleh.
Speaking of who, I may be moving this summer. I've talked about it before, but I do still want a change of pace, scenery, and most of all WEATHER! I know my best friend is planning to move this summer to be closer to family, and I think I may move as well. I've toyed with the idea of becoming a police officer as well. I've always wanted to do so, but never had the opportunity. With the benefits attached from becoming one up there, it kinda seems stupid not to try. We shall see.
Well that's about all I can think of at the moment. Brain buffer running low, need sleep and all that. I'll let you know if the Space Pandas invade or something, but other than that it may be eerily quiet around here for a while. You know, like normal. ;D
Rain, Rain, Go Away — No Wait, Come Back!
First good rainstorm of the season tonight. Was pretty sweet Windows are open, AC is off, its somewhere between 50-55 in our apartment. Perfect weather.
Long-ass week coming to a close now. I caught a cold on Friday sometime, and it kicked my ass around 'till Wednesday. Outta sick days though, so Day-Quil and caffeine have gotten me through the last couple days at work. I think it's finally clearing up now though, which is good. Should make the weekend all the more enjoyable!
I ended up working on a project with some of my family members on Wednesday (more to come tomorrow!). My grandfather invented the G! Panel, which is a modular paneling system for geodesic housing. It's actually pretty sweet; I'm not sure what his marketing plans are for the future, but it sounds like a design project might be coming my way sometime. He is entering his product in an online product promotion video contest, and enlisted the help of several family members in scripting, casting, shooting, and post-production. I was able to snag a GL video camera from work, along with studio/stage and editing time. It should be a pretty good looking and fun project! We spent a few hours shooting on location at a geodesic home, and a few mock locations. More filming and post-production starts tomorrow.
I haven't been playing anything a whole lot this week, on account of my insides trying to get outside. I did make it to 21 on my templar in Aion, which is fun. Scored a sweet deal on a lvl 22 stigma, so whenever I manage to get around to leveling... Sammi is beating me! She hit 28 sometime today, and I've not moved from my ~20 position in a while. Did a little PvP in wow on the warrior, but nothing much to speak of.
Dani found a working WoW private server/emulator, so we played around on there for a while. Ran around spawning a private army of Lich Kings, getting them to follow me around, and slaughter random NPCs. It was pretty sweet. Also spawned Algalon in an ocean and slaughtered him for fun. >.>
Getting paid tomorrow! Finally my bank account will no longer be negative. -_- After I pay the bills, I might have enough to buy food. This sucks. I applied for a job yesterday, at Blizzard Entertainment. It's a Night/Weekend Network Ops Tech job, which is pretty sweet. More or less my dream job, and working for Blue sounds awesome. Unfortunately it's in California. So, if they do want to interview me, it's going to cost over $600 just to get there and back. I almost hope they don't want me, but at the same time I really want that job. :/
Off to sleep I suppose, more work tomorrow, more filming, and at some point I probably need to start working on that big presentation for next month. Farewell!
Snappy Title 37 Not Found
Well, the weekend is about to be over. Back to another week of work! This week might be a little more interesting; I got roped into presenting a session on Moodle Administration at the upcoming HECC conference in November. And by interesting, I mean I have to pull a presentation out of my ass on a topic I was going to the conference to learn about. Ha. Still, a trade's a trade: I get to go to a day long seminar on Network Security, so at least I'll be getting something out of it.
Didn't quite make it to 20 on Maelfas, I got sidetracked with crafting and PvP in WoW. Made it to 19.5 though, so the next half level shouldn't be too difficullt to burn out. I was going to go to Morheim to start the campaign quests for level 20, but I can't get most of them yet. Ended up broke and grinding mobs for crap to cash in A few brokered items sold though, so I was able to get a NICE shield and enchant it. Should help out the survivability. Still trying to decide whether or not to spend some manastones for crit and attack to speed the damage, not sure if it's worth the cost for the gear that will be replaced in a few levels. Then again the leveling is kinda slow, so it might make that go a bit faster. We shall see.
Raped in WSG for a while on my warrior. People always complain about a level 50 in the 50-59 bracket. Sure, I might not be able to do a lot of damage to a 59, or at least that's the assumption. I threw it in the raid's face every battle though as I was #1 DPS on the ally side. L2play. Not that I'm trying to be elitist or anything, but that's pretty ridiculous to get on my back about being too low to make a difference and yet I'm putting out the most damage of 10 other people. They're all idiots, and I'm apparently better. Maybe that is elitism, but it sure as hell seems to be right to me! My plan for my warrior is to level her to 58 solely through battleground experience, then romp through Outlands and Northrend. Still haven't decided if I want to keep her as a 79 twink, or dual-spec Arms and Prot and replace Haf as my main. Time will tell I suppose, as I've got a ways to go to 80 
Pix managed to find me on AIM tonight so I ended up logging in to WoW to tank Anub'Arak in the Trial of the Crusader 10 man raid. We made significant progress but couldn't manage to get him down. Only a few percentages away from the final phase, but our DPS couldn't stay alive long enough to get him there. Something to work on for the rest of the week, looks like. I was going to back to House-- (Oh my god this show is hilarious. I can't believe I never watched it back then. I'm about halfway through Season 3 at the moment; lolol.) but WoW seemed more fun at the moment. About to watch the new episode of Family Guy and Cleveland before I fall into the blissful embrace of nothingness we humans comfortingly call sleep.
Found out Erin's having a themed Halloween party. The theme is "Famous Historical Figures" -- My original idea of going as Hitler was shot down as some girl already called it So now my choices are between Eva Braun (Hilarious, but where do you get a gigantic dress?) and Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill! The possibilities of ensuing debate and hilarity sound...intriguing. Just gotta figure out a churchill costume...I suppose I can just find a white suit, top hat and monocle; no one would know! Or maybe that was KFC's Colonel. Hey, maybe that would do >.>
And as I said, the weekend's about over, so I do believe I'll call it a night. Farewell, 1's and 0's!
Job Application: Round 3
FIGHT!
Well, we'll see how this one goes. Found another school corporation looking for techs, and this one is hiring for a webmaster. Score. Maybe. Updates to follow.
Also, 2 weeks until vacation! Woo!
LDAP/eDirectory
So, this week I developed a PHP authentication schema using the LDAP functions. This was designed as a modular component, to be reusable throughout further web applications. Also means it's nice and portable. I don't have the code here at the moment, but when I do I'll release. Basically, our script connects to your NDS eDirectory server, and binds anonymously. To incorporate context-less logons, we then search for the provided username (cn) in your organization's tree.
Due to the nature of ldap_search(), you can also use this to require users from a certain tree; aka only your staff (no students), etc. This is just done by specifying OUs. eDirectory requires a TLS connection for encryption between the webserver requesting the LDAP info and the eDirectory server itself. This is nice; provided that you have an SSL connection to the page where your authentication sits, your security is already done for you! passwords will not be sent in plaintext between the NDS and web servers.
This script would be especially useful to those building web applications for use in a Novell environment, but with a few modifications it could work with other LDAP schemas too, including MS Active Directory.
In other news, I reapplied to join Indy Powerplant, and I'm planning on going to the Stompfest LAN Party on Mar 29-30.
[ASP|Access] Transportation_Web
Hello again, it's been a while since I've thrown out some free code, so here you are! I've been doing a lot of development under ASP and IIS, and this is one of the scripts I built from the ground up. It was designed to help track official changes to our students' transportation methods, but can be adapted to fit almost any project. This is an ASP (Not ASP.NET!) Web interface to an Access Database. It can create, modify, and delete data depending on the user's access level. The super user can modify and create other users in three separate classes. Feel free to use as much of this code as you want without a link back. I would like to know if you use it, and what for if possible, so send me an email or post a comment. Thanks, and enjoy the code!
Download: Transport_Web-2008-02-01_final.zip [32k]
I hate winter.
I love the snow and all, but to hell with getting sick. I've been messed up a bit for a couple weeks now, and yesterday it all just kicked my ass. Ended up taking two days off from work just to sit around on meds to try and clear it up. I hate meds almost as much as I hate being sick. Figures, vicious circle and all that. Well, I've also used these few days to work on a few projects.
In work life, my company is forming a new department, a Web Apps Team, to design, build, and integrate in-house and open source web applications into our existing management infrastructure. Sounds fun right? Well except for the fact that they still haven't figured out what kind of server they're going to give us, sure. I'll post the code to the Transportation thing here in a bit, it's a good example of how to build a basic ASP/MSAccess Database system running on IIS. They've got a few projects in mind for us, so it will be interesting. I haven't heard anything about a pay-raise, but who cares at this point--it's going to look fantastic on my resume: From Desktop Technician to Web Application Developer in less than 5 months? Beautiful.
In the world of IWM Entertainment, the wheels of profit turn slowly. Actually they don't turn at all since I've not done any real work for a while. I had been working with a client for a design piece, but had to drop it because of time constraints. There are currently two projects at IWM that are under some form of development; phpMyBlog which will either be released to soruceforge or sold retail, and phpMyCMS [fuegoCMS]. fCMS is a retail product, and varying versions have been under development for a couple years (I can't seem to stick with the base code and end up rewriting it.) Anyone who wants to help develop on these projects (and thereby split the profits), send an email to admin[AT]intarwebmachine[DOT]com with a resume, or list of skills and sample of your work. We are looking for HTML, CSS designers, experienced PHP/MySQL coders, and platform-level C/C++ developers.
Since I've been physically incapacitated, I figured I'd do some shopping:
- Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 I figured it was about time I upgraded from Jasc PSP7; Nothing wrong with it, but you can always use new software. That and I can't buy a new license for it anywhere.
Price: $ 49.99 @ BestBuy.com
- Lot of 7 Star Wars Books How can I go wrong? $9 for 7 great books, plus shipping. Now at least I'll have something fun to do in my free time aside from loitering around on the Internet.
Price: $ 9.00 @ eBay.com - Foxconn G31MX-K Motherboard Cheap board for my new PC. Dunno if its value is any good, but it was only about $70. Supports my Core2Duo 2.6gHz and my Celeron 3.6gHz, whichever I decide to use. More info below.
- LiteOn DH-20A4P-08 DVD Burner Cheap burner for my new PC. More info below.
And that's about it, except that I started playing Counter-Strike: Source again. You can find me on Indy Powerplant's GunGame server if I'm on, or my local Iceworld DeathMatch Box.
Happy Fraggin'.
Long Day
Wow. I just got home from work; 11 hours isn't the longest I've worked (I pulled a 22-hour day at Taco Bell; actually it was 34, I grabbed a 4 hour nap between close and open in the office) but it's been a while. My feet are killing me.
Had a meeting today; more boring than fixing computers, but a welcome distraction. Found out that no one has upgraded the labels or maps of the wiring closets for 5 years. Wonderful.
My boss managed to convince the business office to cover the charges for me to go to the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here 2008 Launch Wave on April 3rd. This is the Indiana launch of Microsoft Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 (Katmai). No word on the keynote speaker, but it'll probably be Steve, or one of the other local MS reps.
Still gotta finish up the CSS on this project for a customer, It's taken so much longer than I thought it would, I feel bad for making them wait so long. I have a love/hate relationship with CSS. Actually, most of it is that I need a CSS book, and for all browsers to be 100% standards-compliant. Ergh.
Anyway, if anyone is in the area on Apr 3, let me know so we can meet up at the conference. They're dropping promo copies of all three software packages, and registration is free; Not something you wanna miss if you can help it.
I'm off to work on this website; Whose leg do you have to hump to get a dry martini around here?!
In-House Development
Don't ever try this if you work in education. Well, I take that back. Don't try this if someone above you would shit biscuits if you ran an unauthorized webserver on a workstation in your building.
It's not that I deliberately antagonize our network staff, its just more like...testing borders? Anyway, in two days I learned ASP, Access, and IIS; and created a full-featured web application solution to solve a problem at our building.
Network did not like this solution. At all. eventually they got overruled by the IT Manager, because none of them could create a better solution in the time he gave them (which was what, like 4 hours?). Anyway I would have preferred to create in PHP/SQL and sit it on the linux box, but there's no way I could ever touch that. 
Anyway, in the end we now have a solution to our problem. However, I won't go on another Dell rant here, but suffice to say that the workstation I put this on got /.'d by ~40 users. Still dunno how that's possible. We're in week one of debug/live testing internally, and no major problems so far now that it's on a different box. I'll add a link to the code whenever I get around to uploading it.
Categories
- Code (8)
- Holiday (6)
- Life (41)
- Politics (3)
- Tech (19)
- Uncategorized (52)
- Video Games (13)
Archives
Blogs I Read
- Dani's Blog
- Hyperbole and a Half
- Nobody Likes Her Very Much
- Reflections
- Ryn's Blog
- The Google Blog
- The Word of Notch
- Thoughts by Kerf
Web Comics
- Ctrl+Alt+Delete Comics
- Dark Legacy Comics
- Darths & Droids
- Girls with Slingshots
- Least I Could Do
- Nerf NOW!!
- Questionable Content
- VG Cats
- XKCD
Supporters
- eminence online MMO news and social community
- IWM Entertainment Website design, development, and application hosting.