Current Status

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So, my “3D Modeling & Animation” class technically ended about 3 hours ago and due to everything that’s happened this week I wasn’t able to complete my final three projects, so my nice little A turned into a ‘Losers D’ but oh well, I passed the class. On Monday I start “Information Literacy” and “Multimedia Design II” which should be ‘fun’ (read ‘fun’ with MUCH sarcasm). I can’t wait to finish college and be done with all this crap… I mean, I’m glad I’m back in school, still learning, yadda yadda… but the stress is killing me.

Speaking of stress, it’s been getting so much worse lately and really screwing with my depression. To make matters worse, Thursday night I went to the gas station around 11pm to pick up cigarettes and chatted for about 5-10 minutes with the employee before heading back to my car. When I got out there and got situated I went to turn the key and …. fucking thing wouldn’t start. I tried it a few times over the next couple of minutes and figured, “I have that roadside assistance coverage through Verizon that will cover a jump start, 10 mile tow, etc. and they’ll send someone to see what’s wrong with the car and I can have it dragged to Monro or somewhere where I can get someone I know to take a look in the morning.” I knew if I just called a random tow place or had them take me to a random garage, I might as well drop my pants and bend over, cause there’s no way I can afford this shit to begin with and you know how they charge ‘random’ customers, especially ones in emergency situations. I kept telling the lady on the phone the address of where I was (since although it’s part of a Verizon thing, they can’t seem to use GPS and find me) and she kept putting me on hold to call their different providers and see if anyone could come get me. Here’s the kicker, she spoke great English and from what I could tell, they didn’t outsource this service to some other country like most companies do now days… so I’m not sure if she didn’t understand the city I told her I was in or the ‘providers’ she spoke with are idiots, because according to her, at least 5 of them told her that I must have miscommunicated (or lied) and that I was somewhere in New Jersey and probably playing a joke on them. When she told me about that part, I told her the city yet again (I spelled it to her EVERY time) and I even gave her the zip code telling her I was at least 4+ hours from New Jersey. She put me on hold again and contacted more of their providers to see what could be done and this time when she came back on the line she said a few of them still gave her the Jersey story, but the ones that claimed they were in (or knew) the area wouldn’t come out because it was after hours… one even stated “I don’t feel like going out in this crap” since it was raining pretty bad at this point. At least I know whoever the rude/lazy fuckhead was, he was local, but she couldn’t give me their name because of policy. All in all, I spent over an hour on the phone with them and got nothing out of it. I called a friend that was sleeping and asked him to come get me so I wouldn’t have to walk in the rain with no jacket or anything (it was rather nice out when I left the house) and he said he’d be there as soon as he could… (I think it ended up being less than a half hour). After talking to him a nice guy that was pumping gas decided to check my car and see if he could help me and after checking a few things he said “From what I can tell, it sounds like it’s not getting fuel” and a passerby got on the wet ground and slid under my car, they had me try to start it and he said the fuel pump didn’t sound like it was making any noise so they both agreed it was dead. Once the rain let up for a few minutes (just after 2am) I went back inside and told them that I would have the car moved as soon as possible and I was told that I had until noon or it’d get towed. At that point I’d have to go back there to find where the car was taken and would be handed a bill by whoever came and took it. I got home and was obviously pissed/depressed so I went online to talk to a few people to see if that’d help and I guess it did a little, but not as much as I would have liked. In the morning I called a few people and we all went back to the car and at least got it dragged out of the Handicap spot it’d been sitting in for the past 10 hours or so and we pushed it to a spot that wasn’t directly in front of the store. A little later in the evening the guy came back with me and hooked up a diagnostic system to the car and it said that there was a failure in the fuel pump and something else… (can’t remember the other thing) and we strapped the car to the back of his truck and dragged it back to my place. It’s been sitting there since and I have a feeling it’ll be sitting there for awhile since I can’t come up with the money to get it fixed.

Some of the guys I talked with after getting home suggested I put a donation button on the blog and see if I can get any help, but I’ve always been a person that feels like that is begging and there’s normally people out there that can use the money more than I can… (like with Social Services and things like that) but in this case, I’ve already had to cancel appointments and other things because of the car and I have the appointment next week to finally get the braces put onto my legs, they just have to call when they come in, so I’m not sure when it’ll be. So at the bottom of this post is a donation button to see if anyone is willing to help out, but I don’t want this to appear like I’m either begging or that I’m trying to get donations so that I don’t have to pay out of pocket… I’m just so damn broke and my disability checks barely cover my basic bills anyway. If people do manage to help out, I’ll find some way to thank them properly and I’ll remove the button if I come up with enough money so that people don’t keep sending anything in if it’s not needed for the car.

Category: Misc., Please Read

Blog Update…

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I just figured I’d do a quick update for now mentioning some of the changes I’ve done to the blog this morning.

  • Changed the background (and a few ‘behind the scenes’ features)
  • Changed the “Share the knowledge” link set at the bottom of each posts (originally displayed only when you selected the post)
  • Went back through each post made so far this year and corrected spelling errors and added tags. (I’m too lazy to go farther back)
  • Fixed issue where first word in post topic was different color than the rest of the title
  • Will be adding/changing/removing some of the other pages sometime soon… (I have a few ideas already)

I’m also looking at a few other ideas of things to add if I can find valid plugins that don’t piss me off like some I’ve tried.

Category: Misc., Please Read

Rant(s)

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“Explain Later…”

In regards to the last post where I said I’d explain later… I planned on explaining it, but since I wrote that post around 3am Sunday morning and got a phone call BEFORE noon in reference to being suicidal you can piss off… it’s not worth expanding on since that fuckhead will probably call them on me again. Just for the record, I’m not suicidal, I have NEVER been suicidal, and NEVER will be suicidal… sure I have many issues with depression and have gotten to the point where I had thought about it before but would NEVER act on those thoughts as I know that no matter what shit I’m dealing with, things HAVE to get better at some point, some how.

College

Let’s kind of jump to the beginning for those that don’t read my blog or those unfamiliar with online based colleges in the United States. When I was diagnosed with Cancer in Jan. 2007 they pulled me out of work and left me with nothing to do, except of all the doctor appointments… Part of the cancer treatment caused an issue known as “Chemo Fog” that pretty much destroyed my short term memory so I can’t really remember a lot of what I did for the first year or so, other than doctors, but in Sep. 2008 I decided since I still can’t work I should try college to help with the boredom and since it was after I already suffered the spinal damage a traditional “Brick and Mortar” college was out and IADT was the second online college I looked at and decided it’d be the best for me. I started working on my Associates degree in Oct. 2008. I would have graduated already but I kind of fucked up 2 classes and took 3 months off last summer for medical leave, so instead my final two classes end Oct. 2nd this year so I assume my actual graduation would be sometime in Oct. (just before my 30th birthday on Oct. 28th).
A quick refresher on how classes work at this school is that they take the typical 11 to 13 week class and compress it into 5 weeks so in this environment you screw up or get behind you’re pretty much fucked. The plus side to this however is that they alternate where you have a single class (like now) and then two classes together, back and forth.
Now let’s jump to present day, I’m almost at the end of Unit 4 (week 4) of my current class; 3D Modeling & Animation; so that will end on the 5th of June, but although I did great the first two units/weeks of class, the Professor seems to have a ‘teaching style’ that doesn’t exactly match anything I remotely call useful and even after talking to a friend that knows his way around 3D Studio Max (the software we use for this class) and reading numerous tutorials online I still can’t get a certain ‘feature’ to work that the Professor says I need to have on my current project before I’m allowed to submit it… I’m going to give it one last try than fuck it, I’ll submit without it and if he docks my grade too much I’ll just bitch because it’s bullshit.
Anyway, the ‘icing’ on the cake, once I finish this damn class (as long as I don’t fail) I’ll have a weekend off and start two of my final five classes, then a 16 day break, another class, a weekend off, then the final two classes that I mentioned above that end the beginning of Oct.

Three parter… 1 Rant, 1 Not, Some Images

Conversation with a friend… (Not a rant)

I was talking to a friend of mine online late Monday night/early Tuesday morning and I talked about a local place called “The Face”. I haven’t been up there since last Aug. and told her that I would go by the end of the week to take some photos and maybe some video for her. I was supposed to have a class at 11am Tuesday and the Professor needed to cancel it 20 minutes before it was supposed to start, so I decided I’d pop a pain pill and take the long uphill hike to get her some photos.

My stupidity and my family (The Rant)

Well, for some damn reason, after going up there on and off for 20+ years I couldn’t seem to keep the trails straight so the roughly 30 minute hike took me over an hour to get up there and my legs, back, arm, and a few other places have hurt a SHIT load since. Now, where does the heading fall into this? The stupidity was going on this hike in 80-90º weather and taking way longer than it should… The family part… well, my Grandmother (on my Mom’s side) meant the world to me while she was alive (she passed in 2001) and has continued to change my life. When she passed, apparently her request was that her ashes be released at The Face, which my family honored and my Uncle took care of. Now the reason for mentioning these two things together is that I’ve been to The Face on average a few times a year and it wasn’t until the day AFTER my last visit up there that anyone bothered to tell me that my Grandmother’s ashes were up there. If I had known, it wouldn’t really change much, but I would have had a static place in mind where I could go when I just wanted to remember or be with her.
Rest In Peace Dorothy.

The Images

MySQL, PHP, IIS, AD, and a few others

So the server I talked about a few posts ago decided that although I had automatic “Windows Updates” turned off it would do them anyway and one of them managed to break the MySQL/PHP integration I had in IIS 7.5 so as I repaired that Active Directory decided to randomly lose information on two of my systems. Anyway, I’ll keep this short, since I was already running out of room on the server (it had about 4.5TB of hard drive space and 6GB of RAM) I ordered another 6TB of hard drive space and stuck another 2GB of RAM in and realized I needed a larger power supply to accommodate the extra hard drives which I picked up, but now that I have all the new hardware it no longer fits into the Server Tower Case I had everything else in, which leads me to the last rant of this post….

Best Buy

Best Buy offers two different forms of “Best Buy Cards” one with a MasterCard logo, one without. I have a card with them (the one without a MasterCard logo) and figured I might as well go to there website and order a new Case for the server… I found a really slick case I want that is mainly designed for ‘show’ but more importantly will fit ALL the hardware. I add the case to my cart and figured, what the hell, I’ll get some other random shit while I’m at it and added two other items to my cart… now here’s the reason to bitch. Out of the three items in my cart, one of them (the case) was marked internet only and the other two gave me the choice to pick them up in the store if I wanted. I decided I’d have all of it shipped to me and save me the 50+ mile drive to the closest Best Buy store, I continued through checkout and made it to the last step to find out that although they have BOTH cards listed as valid payments they do NOT except the card I have for any online purchases. I contacted the phone number on their site and asked what the suggestion was since they claim the card can only be used in store, but the case, which was my main objective, is only available online. The lady was nice although the ‘resolution’ was beyond crap.
They pretty much said to get the hardware I want/need using my Best Buy branded card I have to drive the 50+ miles to go to the store, use my card to purchase a gift card for a minimum of $5 above the total (with shipping) of the order and than ask if they will allow me to use their internet in store (which they are NOT required to do if they want to be dicks about it) to place the online order with the gift card. If they don’t allow me to use their internet in store I’d be stuck having to drive all the way home to order online since I don’t really know of any places with public internet in that area. Now, for those thinking “Why not just buy a Best Buy gift card at Walmart or some other location?” and the reason I can’t do that is because the whole point is to charge all of this hardware to the Best Buy card in the first place. Fuck it, if they don’t allow me to use their internet I guess I could just tether my iPad to my Android based cell phone in their parking lot and order it that way, but that’s not the point either… what a waste of gas… I think if I don’t find this case somewhere else, this may be the last time I buy anything from Best Buy… not that losing $5000+ a year in sales just from me would hurt their overall business, it should help one of their competitors.

Explain later…

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It’s time to fly….
It’s time to cry…
But when is the time to die?

Category: Misc.

Balls

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So, I’ve been meaning to write again for awhile, not that many read this, but for those that do, you know I’m kind of a lazy bastard when it comes to this. Boo Hoo.

The point behind this post is that after I had my last back treatment I talked with my doctor and they are going to be making a cast of my left foot/ankle (I think up to about mid-shin range) to create a new form fitting brace per-se to help my body compensate for the differences cause to my balance and ability to walk that was caused by all the spinal damage I’ve suffered in the last three years. Sadly since I didn’t write this stuff down when I got home I’ve forgotten most of the important details, but I guess I’ll find out a better overview while I’m sticking my leg into the gel/paste/whatever they’re going to use on Wed. morning. In other words, I’ll write more or at least try to explain it better later this week. (Maybe some photos if I get really bored)

Ok, it’s just after 2am my local time Tuesday morning and I have a class in just under 9 hours, but this is my first one for “Unit 2” (second week of five) and got my grades for last week. I knew I had a good feeling about this 3D class since I’m carrying a perfect grade. After I finish this class I only have 5 left until I get my degree, so I’m really happy about that and if everything goes well I’ll be finishing a couple weeks before my birthday so I’m trying to come up with a sweet ass idea to celebrate my 30th birthday since most of mine in the past have kind of sucked.

I guess for the last point of this post (for now anyway) is if I get any more ‘good comments’ on a few of the stories I wrote for school, I might try to get a hold of my previous English Professor for more inspiration on how to continue the story, since the one I’m thinking of expanding was originally going to be broke into about six parts and I’ll create a new page on the blog to use for the story as I add/edit it until it’s finished since my Professor said I should look into Copyrighting it and possibly trying to find a way to get it published in something. (I’ll obviously copyright it before I post any of it on the blog)

Later…

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , , ,

Issues with new server… School, Health, etc

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Third times a charm…. So the first part below was written a couple weeks ago and I’ve kind of been lazy with resubmitting it. Mainly I just didn’t give a damn. So, I’m tweaking the original post and adding some more since a lot has changed since then.

{Originally written on April 5th I think}
Ok, so not that long ago we had really shit weather here in New York and it half fried my old media server (running WHS) and I figured instead of redoing that system I’d just rip all the hard drives out of it and put them into my new server. It took a couple tries getting Active Directory and DNS working correctly in my LAN (partly because of my ISP) but once I had that working properly I migrated over 4TB’s of data to the new server. After moving the data over I had access to the rest of my Microsoft Partner, TechNet, and DreamSpark software so I started adding a few more roles to the server that I was going to need in the long run and that’s when the shit hit the fan. For whatever reason after adding either IIS7 or HyperV (pretty sure it was HyperV) the server got so bogged that it took like 10 minutes to make simple changes via RDC. Since I’ll need IIS more than HyperV I kept that and removed HyperV again. The system is still kind of bogged, but responding a little quicker. Now, while trying to install Exchange 2010 it couldn’t find IIS (I think because I didn’t leave the IIS6 compatibility) and it recommended doing a reinstall of IIS7 (which fucked up my PHP and other stuff I added).
Now, every time the server reboots, DNS and part of Active Directory refuse to start correctly although they are set to automatic. I can manually turn them back on if I RDC back into the server, which is the least of the problems. Viewing the localhost via the standard means (http://localhost; http://SYSTEMName; http://ExternalIPAddress) all work to show the default IIS7 welcome, but refuses to allow PHP, ASPx, etc. from working; so pretty much I have access to standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, that’s about it.
The reason behind writing this post is to state the current (messed up) configuration of the server and the configuration of what I want to achieve. If there’s anybody out there reading this that can help, feel free to email me. Even if it’s just to point out more reading material I should check out so I can get this done. I normally don’t have these kind of problems, but the person I always went to in the past for Server related issues was JJ (the VP that passed away last July).

{Sometime in the middle}
I fixed the server issues awhile back and have even created some new test/temp sites for beta and demo purposes which worked out well. Essentially I got annoyed and ripped out all the spare drives, leaving just the system drive and formatted it to start from scratch. In the end, I have setup the below and have everything configured properly (about time)…

I left out HyperV this time around to save the hassle with the extreme system lag, although the hardware is supposed to fully support it. After setting everything up and configuring it I added the other drives back and began moving/organizing the 4+ Terabytes of data (again). Enough of that crap… 🙂

{Present Day}
I decided to post this “now” useless draft from my new iPad… Yes I’m laying in bed bored and my laptop is resting on its private chair instead of on my legs. I got the iPad in the mail last week but was busy busting my ass off with college and wanted some real time to play with it before I wrote anything about it. Since there are reviews and sites dedicated for and against the iPad all over the place I’m not going to bother. I will say this though, it works great for my needs and to quote/paraphrase Alex Albrecht of Revision3 (originally stated on Diggnation and repeated on The Totally Rad Show; both on Revision3) “The iPad is the best pooping device… EVER!” (I also highly recommend checking out Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show, AppJudgment, Scam School, and the rest of the shows on Revision3, but be warned, pending on the show you’re watching, they swear more than I do 🙂 )

Now most people I know had Spring Break last week while I was busy trying to pass two pain in the ass classes. I’ve had this week off instead and promised myself that I would do nothing but play video games and relax but that idea went out the window. I haven’t even turned my Playstation 3 on yet. I hoped to have finished Final Fantasy XIII before classes start back up, but that won’t happen at this rate. Oh well, I still managed to get about 7GB of photos and over 40GB of music organized and properly tagged as well as create a special website for a very special young lady’s birthday. I’m going to be setting up a form of contest on one the sites sometime soon, just not sure on which or with what details yet. Stay tuned, either way there will be special first place prize.
So long story short, I still haven’t put Exchange Server on the system yet and will look into that later. I passed the two ‘pain in the ass’ classes mentioned above, so I only have 6 classes left until I graduate with my Associates Degree in Computer Science (Web Design) in early/mid October of this year. I start 3D Modeling & Animation on Monday (with Open House Access starting Saturday) and get to play around with some of the newest Autodesk software like 3D Studio Max and Maya among others. Should be fun.

How I feel?

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How my life feels...It’s after midnight and I wanted to get another quick post in before I get back to my school work. (Yes, I’m just taking a short break.) I have to finish watching the last Live Chat that I missed last week due to the transfer so that I can get working on writing the rest of an IP.

The real reason I’m writing another post this soon from the last one is as the title says: “How I feel?” Well, as I briefly mentioned in the last post about chest pains, it was stress induced so I agreed to talk to a psychiatrist and figured this is way freakin’ cheaper! 🙂 I’m not looking for comments, just venting. The image on the right kind of describes how I feel, but I’ll let you figure out if I’m talking about the window or the frame.

Nathan has been a great friend, letting me vent whenever I need it and he’s around, while it’s a pain in the ass to get a hold of anyone else. Even the people that were on vacation and didn’t do any traveling, they still managed to be too busy when we talked more than once about hanging out. I’m not mad, just a little disappointed.

So, let’s start off by describing what feelings a ‘normal’ person should have and compare that to what I think I may have:

Financial Security Disability doesn’t pay shit; College is expensive as hell; not allowed to work, you do the math
Loved by others Not that I know of…
In love with someone else Yes, but I could never tell her
Socially Accepted At a red light, heading home from my treatment, someone heard the music (in Yiddish) in my car and yelled “Terrorist”
Pressure to succeed College is stressful, the little I can do for my company is suffering
Love Life What’s a love life? I don’t remember…

I might add some more to that later, cause it’s depressing. Well, Robin Williams was just on TV and I actually laughed a bit, so I lost my train of thought.

Category: Misc. | Tags: , ,

A lot of shit…

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I've got my eye on you

So, 15 days ago on the 15th I wrote a post that got interrupted by taking my roommate to work and forgot what I was going to write about. A lot has happened since so I figured it’s after 4am and I can’t sleep, which is very typical, I’d write a mass pile of shit into one post. In the last two weeks, whenever I remembered what I wanted to write, I didn’t have the time and whenever I had the time I couldn’t remember anything. Man, I really hate my memory problems. I’ve collected a bunch of random crap I’ve wanted to toss into a post for awhile now, some to test new features, others just cause I’m THAT bored.

Um, let’s see… where to start. Earlier this month I finished the latest set of “pre-qual’s” for Microsoft and upgraded my Partnership status for myself and helped one of my technicians do the same. I’m loving some of the new benefits. I ended my last class for college on the 20th with an A and started two new classes on the 22nd and typical me; I’m fucking up left and right in one class and doing ok in the other. I think this is going to be the first class I’m in where I’ll actually be requesting the tutoring as opposed to tutoring everyone else.

On the 23rd I went to my normal back treatments and was having severe chest pains the entire drive down there. They were a little worried about hooking me up to all the equipment and I don’t blame them. Other than the pain in my chest I felt fine, but that shit just wouldn’t go away. Later that night I went to the hospital to get it checked out and they said it was stressed induced and gave me a shot of something to calm my ass down or relieve the stress, whatever… shit just made me loopy for like an hour but the pain went away shortly after, so that’s good.

I’ve finished installing and configuring the 2 new servers for my house and upgraded the rest of my computers to Windows 7 Professional (Win7 Ultimate on my main laptop). I still have some other ‘roles’ I want to add to the main server (like WDS and WSUS to name a few) but I’m going to wait until I can get my grades up in my one class without the other suffering so that it will help me overall with the stress.

Near the end of next month I’ll most likely be heading to New York City for a day or two for a couple conferences, I hope my college schedule works out so I don’t miss much there. It’ll be kind of nice and act like a mini vacation as well, so that’s good.

I have to attempt to take a power nap now since I have back treatments later today and have 2 classes tonight, so I’m going to start taking notes on one of the multiple devices I normally have with me so that I can keep my head straight since I’m stressed/preoccupied with thoughts of class and don’t remember the rest of the things I was going to put (yet again). There were a few things I do remember, but I don’t have the time to deal with writing those now, so I already took notes of those.

Wave Hello Later

Man……….. WTF?

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So, it’s been a long ass week and I’ve been bashing my head against the wall due to homework among other things… I figured I’d write a new post since I added a few new features to this site and have been toying around with some ideas for the wiki.

Sadly since I started this post I had to run my room mate to work so he’s not late and I forgot what the hell I was going to write about. 🙁

Guess I’m just gonna take a nap… screw it. I’ll write more later.

Category: Misc. | Tags: ,

Server issues, Wiki, Akismet, and other random thoughts

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The weather here sucks so bad I’ve precanceled my back treatments for tomorrow cause there’s no way in hell I’m going to drive an hour in this shit. On the plus side to this weather, I’ve had time to work on some of my sites and servers. The web server that hosts this site, the wiki, etc. was having some stability issues over the last week and after some emails back and forth with the guys that run it, everything has been resolved (as far as we can tell) and all the sites/domains are back to 100%.

On the topic of the wiki, since the server was having stability and speed issues I decided to change the back-end software that runs it to something that utilizes a database to see if that helps. Sadly the new software uses a different form of Wiki Syntax so it’s taking a little longer than I originally planned. You can find out a little more info about that clicking the link in the last paragraph.

Akismet, a plugin, addon, whatever the hell you want to call it, works wonders. For those that don’t know, it takes all the comments sent it and checks them for Spam links and other things to detect and combat unwanted/useless shit. If you jump to the very bottom of the page (in the footer) you’ll notice a little box that states how much spam has been detected and avoided. Sadly the software isn’t 100% accurate and has caught a few comments that it shouldn’t have, but the best part of the software is that once you’re acknowledged the poster as valid it wont bother auto-blocking them (it will still check each post, but will allow them to show if they aren’t marked as spam). I’ve had friends comment about Akismet being crap software how it misses a lot of stuff etc. and they sent me a screen shot of their control panel, practically bragging how shit it was… I took one look and just responded “You moron”. The comments listed as spam WERE spam. Spammers have gotten smart to some of the software used against them and started writing canned responses that at first glance seem valid and you allow those through… this is when they have the chance to pretty much spam the hell out of you before you notice. When you’ve written a post for example like the “Happy Holidays” post I wrote a little while back and get a comment that says something along the lines of “Wow, great post, although I don’t agree with what you’ve said or done 100% I still bookmarked your blog and plan to keep reading it later” you’d think, that’s cool, allow the comment, but if you actually read the sender/poster’s information you’d realize that the comment came from “Free Viagra, blah blah blah, for more info visit this great online pharmacy…..”.

I swear, I don’t believe in “capital punishment” (fully anyway) but I think that every found spammer should have a finger, thumb, penis, etc. fucking cut off… the first time they get caught, they get to name the body part they lose, the second time they’re caught, they take a consensus of those targeted by the spammer to vote on what that asshole loses. I forgot the rest of the point I was going to make, so oh well.

I have less than 2 hours to complete my homework, so I’ll get around to doing that and add more to the blog later. My head hurts.