Life… or whatever you wanna call it!!!

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Barely halfway into the second month of the year and it already sucks. I managed to prep some of the data for migration and one of the former external drives started throwing SMART status errors although the drive passes all diagnostics 100% so now I have to replace a 1TB internal SATA for pretty much no reason. Guess I’ll try to stick it back in it’s original enclosure and hope. (About a week after I originally tested the drive, it’s started tossing a bunch of bad sectors, that equal about 7% of the drive, so it’s a good thing I decided to replace it anyway. I have a new drive on order).

Thankfully, that waste of fucking time (a.k.a. Interface Design class) is over and I wont have to deal with that useless “Professor” anymore. She’ll never be in a spot to read this blog either, not that I’d care, but her ‘teaching’ methods are beyond fucking stupid. How can you ‘teach’ people to write/use a certain type of programming language by clicking around fucking context menus and not comprehend that the way the students view what’s going on is via the internet so that NO MATTER what kind of web conference software is used, there WILL be lag. It’s mainly because of this, that I tutored more students than any past classes.  I talked to one of the “Academics Advisers” since mine left for Medical School (Congrats Chivonne), and they’re having the “Chair of the Department” review all my work and correcting the grades that the useless bitch seemed so full of.

I love tutoring the students, it gives me some pride in the fact I have the knowledge that they look up to, but some of the students tend to just be like “Hey AJ, I don’t get this project, can you show me?” and have me do their work for them practically. I have talked with those people and told them I will no longer do their work (since one had the gall to brag they got a higher grade on the work I did for them than what I earned on my own project).

Another part about tutoring, and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy tutoring most of the students, but one of them (not the ‘cheater’) has to have the same shit explained 50 times and after they finally ‘get it’ it has to be explained again the next fucking night. Thankfully, they’re starting to understand I do this because I like doing it, I’m not paid, so if I get frustrated, piss off… I’m not going to deprive the rest of the students altogether cause they can’t fucking figure it out. I mean, I understand that people have different levels of learning, different mental capabilities, etc. but this is College, so I’m not going to treat students like little kids, we’re all adults here.

And speaking of all being adults, I do apologize to one of the students that I tutor with the fact I was having a very bad night (due to my depression, etc.) and while trying to explain a few things to her, I did tend to swear a lot that night, and although I didn’t say anything derogatory about religion, race, etc. I understand and acknowledge some people of religious beliefs do not like to hear vulgarity, even when it’s just typed.

On a different note, I picked up some new hardware last week after one of my back treatments. It’ll help out in the long run, but still need to get the replacement drive. With the prices at the store I was at, a 2TB is a shit load better deal and the obvious extra space is a plus, but those guys were out of stock. Since I don’t start my new classes until next Monday (the 15th) I should be able to finish re-arranging my setup (where my servers, desktops, etc. are setup with the TV and Home Theater) tomorrow after I get home from my next back treatment. (Speaking of which, Hi Chad)

Some good news for February is I got my College Stipend earlier this month and should have both my State and Federal taxes back by Friday so I’m not as broke as normal. Things are kind of looking up since I can afford to take care of some crap I’ve been putting off for months.

Last note (from stuff I remember), I’m going to create a special post/topic about the Student Wiki where people can post comments there for topics and ideas of what we should do or add to the Wiki since I have that locked to our contributors (to help stop vandalism). I’ll post more about that later when I figure out exactly how I want to go ahead with this idea.

I got side tracked and forgot the rest of the shit I was going to write… so fuck it. I’ll write another post after I get back from my trip to Verona on Friday with some of the guys…

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Long week….

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I pretty much finished my college work early which is a surprise, so I’ll upload when I get home. I also have a general write up at home of how I plan on redoing / changing the main network, but won’t have time to implement it for a few days. Granted it will probably take a couple days of writing new code and moving shit around to finish.

I have my normal back treatments on Tues. and Thurs. and will be traveling to Philadelphia for a day sometime soon.

I’ll be heading home sometime soon… back to another long week.

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , ,

Stress…

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I’ve been busting my ass off with college trying to play catch up and earlier last night I managed to get fully caught up so I have time to relax. Too bad that will only last a day or two. I decided to make a new post and write about a bunch of things that have happened recently and my damn memory problems made me forget most of it. (Damn Chemo Fog)

I guess the main part of this update is that I have current intentions of changing around some of the domains and sub-domains I run and migrating some more of the sites / info over to this site so that everything is more centralized. I hope by the end of the month I’ll figure out what I’m doing exactly with the Blog Hosting that I was running since those Chinese Spammers ruined it for everyone else.

Personal Side:

  • Started second ‘set’ of back treatments last week and will continue to do them twice a week for the next 10+ weeks (94 mile round trip each time).
  • As I’ve mentioned in the past with my medical problems, I went through Chemotherapy and lost all the hair on my body. Prior to Chemo I was a blond and afterward the hair on my head grew back dark. The point, I dyed my hair on Thursday and I’m blond again.

College Related:

  • Classes are a pain (like normal)
  • I should have my degree around Oct. of this year (unless I have to move classes around or take medical leave again).
  • We have a new contributor to our Student Wiki.

Projects and Gadget Related:

  • Verizon finally ‘helped’ me with the complaints I’ve had for months, so I’m getting a new Droid tomorrow.
  • Jen bought me a new 3rd Generation iPod Touch (64GB) for Chanukah and I’ve found some sweet apps to go with the 40GB of music on it already.
  • Started talking to Martomo (not sure if he wants me to put his real name in here) about getting the old “Black Market” project back up and running again. Sometime in the near future we may be looking for some extra help. (It’s an Open Source project, so don’t bother asking if you think you’ll get paid, it’s all volunteer). Once we take the new version out of beta it will be listed on the Projects Page.

Server / Domain Side:

  • As stated, will be migrating some of the other sites over to here soon.
  • I just noticed a small ‘typo’ from my last post that I over looked while moving everything over to this site, I’ll change that next.
  • After the sites are merged, I’ll post more info on the Server Status Page here.
  • Adobe Contribute is Awesome for doing these updates, makes everything so much easier.

Since this is kind of long at this point, I’ll hold off on writing more until I can organize my thoughts more or have some updates to anything listed here.

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy New Year, Happy Holiday’s, and um… other stuff.

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No idea why, but the date listed above states Jan. 01, 2009, yet this was written on Jan. 01, 2010 and shows the correct date in the control panel, just not on the site.

Well, it’s almost a new decade and yet again, I spent most of the holiday season alone, but it’s not that big of a deal. Below is a list of random shit… different points I want to make, different things that have gone on without a post, etc. (Trust me when I say ‘random’ as some of the topics will just be ‘all over the map’)

As you can see, the URL for my blog has changed and I’m still setting up the new software, so there’s no RSS yet, no multi-user, etc. at this point in time. The main reason for changing everything around is two-fold…

  1. I got BEYOND sick of random Chinese spammers signing up for blogs on my server. I was providing a service FOR FREE to people that wanted to create legitimate blogs without having to pay for a service. I did this as a side project outside of my company so that there were less ‘restrictions’ on what can/cannot be posted, but still included a Terms of Use agreement. These spammers ruined it for everyone as I’ll be locking down the old Blog Hosting and possibly just forward that sub-domain to a nice little page that states the full reasons to this. In the month of December alone I ended up deleting and banning over 300 users from China that were signing up for obvious spam reasons.
  2. I wanted to allow myself and future users (sign up policy is yet to be determined) to utilize 3rd party software (such as Adobe Contribute) to author/post entries to their blog without having to fully sign in, etc.

The posts you see in this blog (prior to this one) were all copied/pasted from the old blog (I loved the software back-end I used for that service, and I’m still getting used to this new stuff, so be patient with layout, etc.) so some of the posts have obvious font issues, where text may be out of scale within it’s own post. Oh well.

(At least until I get more used to this new Blog software) I will probably be merging the “Server Status” blog into this one, but I’m not sure how I’ll be able to fully separate those posts as I don’t really have the time/patience to go and edit all my personal posts to find/remove any ‘adult language’ and I know it’s kind of unprofessional to have official company related news hosted on a site that does use swear words.

On a totally different (sad) note, it pains me to inform the friends and clients of ICT/CSC (if they haven’t read it in the Wiki yet) that my personal friend and ICT/CSC co-founder JJ passed away last July. The text below is the dedication posted on the Wiki in full:

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 our company suffered a terrible loss. It brings sadness to my heart to inform our customers and friends that JJ (our Vice President) passed away from medical complications. I’ve never been good with dedications or putting these types of feelings into words, so I’ll leave this simple.

JJ, born Joshua (Yehoshua) Jaeden in November 1980, lead an interesting life. We knew each other for most of our lives and he was like a brother to me. JJ is survived by his older sister Nava (Hebrew for ‘beautiful’), his mother Adina (Hebrew for ‘gentle’) and his 2 year old son Joseph (Yosef). He spent his final days surrounded by friends and family and although his medical issues ultimately ended his life prematurely, he would want those that care to know he didn’t suffer.

I return to college on Jan. 04, but I hope that throughout Jan. I’ll be able to rearrange the rest of the sub-domains, remove the ones that are no longer relevant or maintained and update the rest so that they have a more merged feeling to them. My goal is to knock the overall count down to something small and try to make kind of a community out of it. Due to my on going medical issues, college, and the lost of JJ, I believe at least for now, it’s time for the company to take a small leave of absence. Technically we’re not closing our doors and will continue to take some contracts as they come in (mainly due to the fact I haven’t talked to our lawyer in regards to the legality of saying “Hey, we’re closing for awhile, but we’re still here” so we’re going to still maintain a presence just in case.

Speaking of college, as long as I don’t manage to fail any classes (or take the summer off again) I should be graduating with my Associates in Computer Science (Web Design) in mid-October 2010. I took last summer off due to medical reasons; I would have got my degree in Aug. 2010 if I went straight through.

It’s 2am so I’ll post more information later today, when I can organize my thoughts a little better.

Category: Please Read | Tags: , , , ,

Hope these scale right…

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The second photo is the old tv sitting in front for size comparison.

Category: Misc.

Birthday… and other stuff…

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Ok, so it’s 12:49am on Oct. 29th and I haven’t updated in months (again…) but since I did a lame update about getting that new Samsung Omnia (see about three or so posts ago) right before my trip to Las Vegas, I figured I’d post about a few things just to put something new on here.

About a month ago I gave the Omnia to another person that was on my Verizon account (You’re welcome Squirt) and switched over to a BlackBerry Storm 9530 (by “Research In Motion” Limited) but (what is now) yesterday (the 28th) was my 29th birthday and since it was a rather uneventful day, I decided to treat myself to my own present.

I’ve had a Vizio 26″ Widescreen LCD for awhile now (couple years) and wanted something new… so I got myself a Vizio 42″ Widescreen LCD cause it’s just that fucking awesome. Granted, it pretty much drained every bit of my spare cash, but I’ll be doing some computer work over the next week that will replace 90% of what I spent. Once I finished reorganizing my bedroom for the TV I put the small one in front of it just to see how much different they looked and I literally laughed out loud and thought the new TV had some freakish bastard child or something. If I get the ambition (and remember) I’ll take a couple pictures tomorrow for the hell of it… I just have to finish hooking up the desktop computers to the TV and get the other shit (I mean ‘spare parts’) out of the way.

Um… I’m talking to Oleg (which was cool he called my ass from Mexico to say Happy Birthday, when most people I know in the states didn’t even bother) so I’ll update more later. (Hope tomorrow, maybe not)

Category: Misc.

What the hell?

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Third time’s a charm….  (You’ll see what I mean with the pasted entry below)

Ok, so I know I promised to make a post about my Las Vegas trip when I got back and I forgot… I got busy playing catch up at college and dealing with all the other bullshit in my life, but I was talking to Oleg earlier and he reminded me (yet) again that I should make a post.  So I uploaded a bunch of photos to the photo gallery here but my laptop is having network issues so I had problems with the 5MP images timing out a few times but got the ones I want up (for now) and wrote a nice little post and went to submit that…  fucking internet timed out again and I lost what I wrote so here I am, giving the post a second try.

Since I don’t go back to class until April 6th I’m going to reinstall Windows on my laptop which should fix all the problems. Oh and for the people that look at the photo gallery and are either too lazy to click the images to see the fullsize ones that have a description or just didn’t know you could, the picture of me with Teller might make you laugh. The dumb bitch that had my cell phone got the flash stuck on and aimed in my eyes for well over a minute before she figured out how to take the damn picture. I swear I saw spots for like 20 minutes. Oh, and the photo of me with Penn… yeah, he’s that tall, I’m 5’10″…  Anyway, Penn & Teller are both awesome guys that really enjoy their fans.  You can read more about them at their site.

I’ll post more later if I get a chance (and remember).

Category: Misc.

Sorry for the lack of posts…

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Below is a post I wrote around 2:30am on Feb. 26th 2009, I didn’t post it right then because it was still a hard topic for me to deal with.

It’s around 2:30am and I have some more personal things to take care of in the morning. I’d like to thank the staff/faculty of IADT for allowing me to have this time off from school to mourn the passing of my paternal Grandmother. It’s hard losing a family member and even though I don’t get along with a lot of my family most of the time, we’ve been spending some time together lately. I think the part that’s getting to me the most is that my maternal Grandfather is the only one left… so this post is in memory to each of them.

Rest In Peace
Blanche L. Phillips
April 19, 1922 – February 23, 2009

(Back to present)
The funeral was yesterday and it was hard to look some of my family in the eyes, but everyone seemed to get through it. On a lighter note, one of the Sheltie dogs we have here at the house gave birth to a few puppies a couple hours ago. She ran and hid under Nick’s bed when it happened, so we found three puppies and we’re pretty sure that’s all she had.

I leave on Tuesday for my week long trip to Las Vegas, it’ll give me a chance to try and forget about everything that’s been stressing me out lately (I hope) and you never know, maybe I’ll come back rich as hell. I probably wont post anything again until after I’m back.

Category: Misc.

Time’s running out…

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Samsung OmniaLess then a month away… I’ll be in Las Vegas. WOOHOO, this will be my first ‘real’ vacation in a VERY long time, so I figured I’d go in style. Sadly all that really means is I traded in my old Motorola Razr V3mm to a new Samsung Omnia (pictured left) touch screen, Windows Mobile device.

I’ve tweaked the living hell out of it so it looks nothing close to that screenshot anymore and if I get really bored, I might post some screenshots taken right from the phone (via “My Mobiler”).

Oh, for those of you going “Hey, this post is just about the changing of a cell phone?” all I have to say is “Yeah, so what? I’m fucking bored, deal with it.” 😛

Now, details on my Vegas trip:

Getting drunk and gambling at random times throughout

Category: Misc.

What the hell?

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Why do people seem to go out of their way to piss me off? I’ve been working on a few projects lately (mainly for personal things, helping friends, doing art, etc. and a couple for work) and even though a lot of these aren’t ‘required’ tasks or have a deadline, it’d be nice if I could actually get shit done instead of having random little script kiddies (who obviously don’t know what the fuck they’re doing) come to mess with me.

An example of this from this morning (little tard has been pissing me off for two days now) is when I writing a program in python to automate some script creations I need for an HTPC project, I was visiting some friends and fellow programmers in an IRC channel when this little bastard decided to join the room and start with me about claiming I stole his girlfriend last week. First off this kid lives in another state and the biggest laugh I got is the prick acting like he was only 14 or 15 years old (He never would admit his age or the girl’s age either). For the people that don’t understand me laughing at his age, is unless he’s dating someone around a decade or so older then him I wouldn’t even talk to the girl…). After like a half hour of explaining to the moron that I have no clue who he is or the girl is he says “Well, fuck you, I’m going to hack you and mess your world up.” and about 5 minutes later my firewall picked up some ‘attempts’ of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). I just went back to laughing more at this kid since he couldn’t even plan the attack correctly. I went to my old reserve of viruses, trojans, etc that I have on one of my file servers and let’s just say, this kid isn’t happy anymore… (or online for that matter)

Now, as you noticed I said this shithead has pissed me off for two days, but him coming into IRC was this morning… the reason behind this is I noticed some attempted attacks over the last two days coming from the same person, didn’t know why they were doing it, but I traced the IP from those attacks to the idiot this morning.   It made me doubt this kid even had a girlfriend in the first place or if it was just a ‘reason’ to use his ‘L33t’ hacker skills that were barely higher then a low-end Newb.

I got distracted after finishing that point with a movie that’s on and chatting with a friend from college, so I forgot the other things I wanted to include in this post, so I guess I’ll just make another post when I remember.

Category: Misc.
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