Tag Archives: Hardware

Surgeries, Relay for Life, other things…

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*Medical*
As mentioned in the last post, I had a consult with a doctor (April 22nd) for a series of surgeries that were long overdue. It took awhile for my insurance to give authorization, but I had the first surgery on June 3rd and everything went well. They knocked me out for it, so other than some swelling, there wasn’t too much pain. After which, they scheduled my second surgery for July 20th (later today) but thankfully there was a cancellation back on July 1st so I had the second surgery at that point and there was a lot more pain this time around since they didn’t knock me out and had to cut the bone in a few places. I still have to deal with them at least one more time before they’re done, but thankfully all of the surgeries should be done. There is a possibility that the second surgery was done improperly (the way they cut the bone) and I have to see another doctor and a lawyer to see if they deem it malpractice or if it’s just a case of ‘well, it wasn’t what we expected, but we technically didn’t do anything wrong’. The biggest problem I’ve had the last month and a half is the antibiotics they gave me after each surgery has severe side effects with my other medications, so I had to cut them cold turkey to take the other. I finished them the first time around and got back on my normal meds thinking it wasn’t that bad cause I had over a month before I had to do it again, but it ended up being maybe a week back on the meds before having to switch again. Anyway, that’s over with and I’ve been back on my normal meds for a little over a week now and I’m starting to feel better again but still have the occasional pain (which is nowhere near as bad as the back pain I usually have, so it’s not too bad). Next up, I have a few other things I want to ‘fix’ about myself but will probably prioritize my foot.

Oh, and because of my diet change due to the surgeries, I’ve lost pretty much all the weight gain I had with the other medication (which they switched to a different kind if I didn’t mention that already).

*Gadgets*
Is it considered a gadget if it’s headlights for your car? I had an issue a month or so back with the passenger side light going out because of the wiring and now it’s the driver side, so I found a set of factory replacements (entire assembly) on Amazon that will arrive next week. I guess there’s no night driving until then because I don’t want to get pulled over a second time since I probably won’t be as lucky and get a ticket.
As far as real gadgets, I’m still looking for a used Mac for sale (has to be able to run Yosemite) so I can get back to writing iOS apps. I’m guessing the Mac Mini would be the most cost effective, but can’t really afford to spend money on a system right now. If someone has a Mac that runs Yosemite but doesn’t want to sell it, maybe we can work out a deal allowing me either remote or direct access to the system to allow the Objective-C compiling. (They have to allow me to install XCode and have admin access to it.)

*Programming*
As briefly mentioned above, I’ve been writing iOS apps in Objective-C but currently have no way of compiling the code to really test. I am however getting back to writing the framework I mentioned in the last post after about 2 months of inactivity (mainly due to the surgery and not being able to concentrate). I’m going to push the branch probably this weekend with the Template Engine, a few other helper classes, and the base skeleton view system after I write some documentation about the progress and usage. I have however lost a lot of interest lately in the HTPC community (which is the main point of the framework) so progress will be slowed or the framework itself may be repurposed for some other use.

–Edit–
*Relay for Life*
I wrote it in the title and forgot to write it in the post, but this year’s Relay for Life was last Friday and sadly I forgot and missed it. That makes 2 medals I’m missing from the last 8 years. Makes me wonder if there’s a way I can get the ones I’m missing so I have the full set. I was in Chemotherapy when the Relay happened in 2007, so 2008 was the first time I went. I’d have to check, but I believe 2010 is the other medal I’m missing.

Category: Misc. | Tags: , ,

My car… and a Charity

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*What I’m Watching or Listening to Now*
The South Park Movie – Bigger, Longer, and Uncut

*Quote of the Moment*
Saddam: “Let’s start by building a big statue of me, right over there where that fat kid is standing!”
Cartman: “Hey, don’t call me fat, butt fucker!” {Lightning shoots from Cartman’s hands}
Kyle: “Yeah Cartman, Do It!”
Cartman: “Damn, Shit, Respect my fucking authority”
Saddam: {Screams} “Hey, you need to watch your mouth brat!”
Cartman: “Dog shit taco”
Saddam: {Screams more} “Quick Satan, do something”
Cartman: “Try this on for size….. Blood Drips, Frozen Tampon Popsicle”
Saddam: “Hey buddy, I know I was mean before, but don’t worry, I can change!”
Satan: “Oh!”
Cartman: {Sarcastic} “Ok”
Most of the entire cast: {gasps}
Cartman: “Not…. …. Fuck, Shit, Cock, Ass, Titties, Boner, Bitch, Moth Pussy, Cock, Butthole, Barbara Streisand”
Saddam: {Screaming in agony} {To Satan:} “What are you waiting for bitch, destroy him!”
Saddam: {To Satan:} “Come on you weak stupid cum bucket, save me!”
Satan: “That’s it, I have had enough of you” {Throws Saddam into the pit of hell}

*College*
A few nights ago, I spent somewhere around 5-7 hours writing different papers for my Cultural Diversity class and I wanted to thank Nathan for being the great friend he is and keeping me on point with my homework by keeping me from getting distracted and also to bounce a couple ideas off, of things I wasn’t 100% sure if I understood or something I just read wrong apparently. Ironically chatting about stuff that wasn’t even relevant for the assignments gave me ideas that I wouldn’t have normally had. Similar to the way Hugh Laurie’s character of Gregory House gets inspiration from the oddest things on the show House. As far as my other class, I’ve finished writing the framework for my new portfolio site and have it running on my test server but don’t want to move it to the production server and main domain until I add more and tweak it out a bit more.

*Work*
Tuesday the 15th was the Survivor’s Dinner for this year’s Relay for Life but sadly due to a useless trip I had to make for a doctor’s appointment (will explain below) I wasn’t able to make it to the dinner and as far as I know it was still held on schedule.
Either way, with the Relay being 149 days away (from the time of this post) we now have two ways of donating

  • My Relay for Life personal donation page
  • Via the link near the top left of the blog. When using this link; the company “GoFundMe” which provides the service; takes a 5% cut, but the remaining 95% is collected and added manually to the personal donation page.

As many of you know, in my personal life, I’ve been trying my best to show my support to The American Cancer Society, mainly with the “Relay for Life” since I was diagnosed back in January 2007. Originally I was collecting donations via Word-of-Mouth and presenting them throughout the year, either by a check to their local office or in person at one of their events. However this year, I’ve decided to ‘step it up’ in hopes that I/we’ll be able to donate more money, more often.
If collecting donations via GoFundMe works out, we may randomly cycle through a few different charities throughout the year and possibly figure out a way for our customers to help in deciding which charities are featured.

*Medical*
There’s been non-stop medical issues, complications, doctor appointments, etc. so far this year, but thankfully once the latest few things get straightened out the rest of the way, things should calm down sometime soon. I’m pretty sure I pissed off one of my doctors last month because after I got the last refill on my medications he stated he would no longer prescribe my medications and instead I would have to see an actual pain management specialist from now on. The problem with that is by the time they were able to get me a doctor for that I was scheduled for my initial appointment 62 hours after I ran out of medication and the doctor was in a really inconvenient location that was all hills and shitty roads full of pot holes. A.) My back, stomach, and bladder can’t handle that kind of drive. B.) My car can’t handle that kind of drive. C.) Even with GPS, it’s “Boonies” enough to still get lost… and D.) You get the idea.
So after I made the drive over there today, I explained to them that I wouldn’t be able to do that, so they called my primary care doctor to inform them and I stopped there on the way home, however my doctor wasn’t in the office today so they claim someone will give me a call tomorrow to let me know what’s going on… I guess I’m going to have to continue popping Ibuprofen like tic-tac’s and pray that it keeps enough of the pain at bay, if they don’t figure something out tomorrow I’ll have to head back to the Emergency Room and see what they tell me, but probably wont help me much in the long run.
I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and may contact my back specialist to start a new round of treatments since the services they provided seemed to be the most helpful yet, granted I’ll most likely wait until I finish college so they don’t interfere with each other anymore.

*Birthdays*
Christina – Feb. 15

*Gadgets*
Pre-Ordered my Verizon iPhone (32GB) at 2:47am on Feb. 3rd, a full 13 minutes before the pre-order officially started and I received it on the 7th. I love Android devices, don’t get me wrong, but to me, the largest benefit to the iPhone is the fact I already have an iPod Touch (64GB 3rd Gen.) and an iPad (64GB Wifi) so I no longer have to buy a second copy of a program specific to my phone when I most likely already owned a similar app for another device.
I finally got my 4-bay eSATA RAID Tower that I plan on JBOD’ing with a few 2TB drives to add some more storage on the Media Server. Although I probably wont do a write up on the new eSATA tower, I may still get around to doing a write up on the Media Server Automation that I have setup on the Windows 7 Ultimate x64 tower. Depends on how well I can concentrate on doing it… and how lazy I feel at the time, so you never know.

*Travel*
I’ll potentially be out of town for a few days this weekend, depends on if I can get away or not, but if I can, it should be peaceful.

*Updates/Upgrades*
Got some great ideas coming up before the end of the month, will let you know details later.

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

Spam, Gadgets, Doctors, and College… (not in order)

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*What I’m Watching or Listening to Now*
Finished a 4 hour Smodcast Marathon and now watching the newest episode of Kevin Rose’s Foundation (Guest this week, Jeff Smith of Smule)

*Quote of the Moment*
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. – Henry Adams (1838 – 1918)

*College*
On Monday (2/7) I started both Cultural Diversity and my Portfolio Presentation classes, so I sent the usual email to my Professors about my medical stuff and a few other pieces of important info like I always do and they both responded the way everyone else has. For some strange reason when I logged into the campus last night to write some of my Discussion Board I noticed they changed my instructor for my Diversity class without telling me, so I shot off a new email to her as well before writing something like 5 or 6 DB’s (only required to write one for today per class). Obviously haven’t gotten anything back yet for that, but oh well, after my doctor appointment later today I’m going to visit a few people out of town and going to have them give me a hand (mainly for concentration reasons) with some of the homework before I go to class tonight.

*Work*
As most of you know, for the past few years we have been supporting the Relay for Life, held by the American Cancer Society and this year is no different. On Tuesday, February 15th the Kickoff Event starts in the Community Room of SUNY Morrisville (Norwich Campus) at 5pm with the Survivors Dinner, with the Opening Ceremony starting at 6:30pm at the Fairgrounds where they are normally held. As always, we’re trying to raise money for the event and all donations are welcome. (We donate multiple times throughout the year if you’d like to donate but can’t get the money in on time.)

*Medical*
I’ve been going through the next steps for a majority of the issues I’m dealing with now and things are going well for the most part, things are advancing but some of it slower than I’d like. As people may have noticed from prior posts, I normally don’t have any issues talking about my personal or medical issues, etc. but a majority of what I’m dealing with now, I’ll probably be vague at best if I bother to post on it since there are a few things I’d like to keep personal in my life.

*Birthdays*
No one’s name pops in my head right this second and I’m too lazy to look right now, so if your birthday is this month, let me know and I’ll add it, otherwise… :p

*Gadgets*
As of a few hours ago, Verizon and Apple have opened up their ordering systems for the new CDMA based Verizon iPhone and it requires the latest version of iTunes to be able to activate it. Since I got my 32GB Verizon iPhone back on the 7th I must say, it’s just as I thought it would be… I’m not going to go into the whole “OMG, it’s an iPhone on Verizon” or even a normal “iPhone… yay!” type crap, I’m just glad that since I already have an iPad and iPod Touch I no longer have to purchase a second copy of a program just to use it on my phone which is what I had to do on my Android based Droid X. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the Android OS, but as stated, I’m sick of buying a secondary copy of an app just to have that functionality since I most likely have something similar for my iPad/iPod. I guess it also helps that I managed to sell my Droid X to a friend of mine (with accessories) for roughly what I ended up paying for the iPhone, so it worked out great.
I’ve also got the new drives for the Media Server in and I’m just waiting on the new NAS RAID (eSATA) box to arrive (should be here by Friday) so that I can migrate some of the drives out of the tower and JBOD them into the NAS box (for power consumption reasons) but this will allow me more room for airflow in the server box as well.

*Travel*
Currently have an upcoming trip planned where details may be given later, pending on contract negotiations.

*Updates/Upgrades*
Logged in last night to check a couple things and think of a ‘game-plan’ for the current post and noticed that I had 249 spam messages from a lot of morons and a few dumb-asses. After deleting all the spam and upgrading all the plugins I started to write some code for a new project, but hit a little mental road block so I took a break and ended up writing the DB’s that I mentioned above. After the DB’s I talked with a friend on Yahoo for just a bit before starting this post and I keep getting side tracked with everything else going on. But anyway, it’s just after 6:30am so I figured I’m going to attempt a short nap and after I finish my stuff today I may write another post or add more to this one.

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

Customizations, Opinions, and My Mood? (::Updated::)

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(::UPDATE::)
I know I said I would do the update on Monday after the doctors, but for some reason I was hyper as hell that entire day and felt very weird. Anyway, I didn’t get home until kind of late, got side tracked with schoolwork and a project, then to top it off when I finally fell asleep around 4 or 5am I pretty much slept ALL of Tuesday away. I got up once around 5:45pm when a friend stopped by and woke me up, I used that time to have a pee break, apologized to him, sending him away and going back to sleep. I got up around 4am this morning (Wed.) and have felt like hell. In fact, less then 5 minutes before signing on to update this post I was standing on my porch (can’t smoke in doors) and vomiting over the railing, no clue why, but it’s typical in my life these days.

*What I’m Watching or Listening to Now*
“Wicked Lake” (2008) – So far this is a really messed up movie… can’t really call it a ‘horror’ movie, but it’s about as far from a ‘family’ movie as you get. Since I’m working on other stuff and writing this I’m not overly paying attention, but what I’m assuming are all family members (the guys) all need to die for being this screwed in the head and the stuff they’re doing to the hotties. ::Update:: Turns out the hotties were some kind of creatures that killed all those asshole dudes. hehe.

*Quote of the Moment*
“Welcome to Mexico!”
“I’m in Mexico?”
“Well, technically you’re in Southern California, but who the fuck can tell the difference anymore?”
– From “Rise: Blood Hunter” (2007)

*College*
As I mentioned in a previous post there was a class I had taken that I failed, partly because of doctor appointments (a.k.a. lack of time), partly because of my depression screwing with my concentration and motivation, and partly because this class is a continuation of a previous one and the ‘refresher’ wasn’t exactly coming back to me, so I know what I’m doing, but I was too damn frustrated trying to remember how to do it. Anyway, the point of that is I’m in that class again and I think this time around I’m starting to remember and for some odd reason just feeling overall ‘better’ about it this time around. The only issues I’m having now is that I’ve managed to move doctor appointments mostly to a single day per week, so that day is obviously useless as far as getting work done, but the tremors in my hands (and legs) keep me frustrated enough that I can’t draw the required illustrations for my projects, hell, I can’t even trace images well enough for people to not think it was a 2 year old that did it. Class starts in 10 minutes.

*Work*
I’ll be adding (at minimum) two new projects by weeks end that should go live by the end of the month. Beta testers needed and more details will be provided to those that qualify. ::Update:: One project scraped due to time issues, but still need testers for the other one.

*Medical*
A large pile of appointments throughout the month, but thankfully I managed to stockpile a majority on Mondays and Thursdays as opposed to having them on random days/times that can screw with everything else in what I’m forced to call “My Life”.

*Birthdays*
Russ on Jan. 29th
I couldn’t find anyone that I had birthday information on in my address book, so if I missed yours let me know for next time.

*Gadgets* ::Updated::
So, Verizon finally made it’s official announcement that it’s bring the iPhone 4 to its network and once it goes on Pre-Order Feb. 3rd I’ll be ordering one of those. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Android OS (especially on my Droid X) but since I already have an iPod Touch and iPad I figured why be forced to by apps for Android when I probably have something that already works for the iPhone. Another incentive is that Marc broke his original Droid and doesn’t have insurance, so instead of paying a butt load to fix his (busted screen, but still works) he’s going to buy my newer Droid X and I’ll use that money to offset most of the iPhone cost. Only crap part is that the new iPhone’s wont start shipping until Feb. 10th, but at least it’s not on that joke network… *cough, cough* AT&T *cough, cough*.

From images of the Verizon iPhone compared to the AT&T version it appears there were a few changes, most notably an antenna fix (for the ‘death grip’) and the fact that it now runs on a CDMA network, but I’ve been looking at some “Gelaskins” for the device (among others) and wanted some reader opinion. All three of the images below were taken from Gelaskins website and will be removed upon their request if required (yes, I did NOT ask for permission to use the images, but at least I’m not hotlinking and wasting their bandwidth).


Some of the other Gelaskins I’m looking at for other devices may make it onto the Projects/Gadgets page, but most likely not until I purchase them (or get a nice surprise gift)

*Travel* ::Updated::
I was supposed to have two conferences this month (one in NY and one in PA) but thankfully the one in PA was rescheduled and the NY one isn’t that far of a drive, I may just say screw it and turn it into a long ass day trip instead of staying overnight. To hell with over priced hotel rooms when it’s only a 2 or 3 hour drive away. ::Update:: I managed to lose the paperwork for the NY meeting so I guess I’m not going to that one either this month… oh well, they know my medical history and it’s not like I get in trouble if I’m a no-show, they just carry on like it doesn’t matter.

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

I just want to cry….

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As soon as I’m done writing this, I’ll be working on some college work until I pass out most likely. This post might be kind of a cluster of crap since I originally had a ‘game plan’ on how I wanted to organize the post, which I planned on using that layout for the first post each month, kind of an ‘all around’ update so it had kind of a similar feel each month. Well, between the last post and this one things went from bad to worse… shit has hit the fan and it’s spraying ALL over the place…

Hell, things change so fast… between when I started to write this post and what I’m writing now, I ended up going back to the hospital and to the police station… I’ll get to the ‘normal’ stuff in a bit, but I’ll start with a few of the big ones… With all this new shit, I wont bother going into the stuff I mentioned in the last post as this one will be long enough, so I’ll do that part later.

*Medical*
A little back story to the current situation:
Back in 2006 I had a normal ‘primary care’ doctor that sent me to a different hospital to get some scans. Long story short on that part was that I ended up going to an Oncologist and was diagnosed with Cancer. About a month into my cancer treatments my primary care doctor retired so I essentially went to my Oncologist for everything and after I finished Chemotherapy is when I damaged my spine. My Oncologist ended up prescribing me my pain medication that I’ve been on for over two years now, but my ‘normal’ Oncologist ended up having his own medical problems recently and is currently in the hospital waiting on a transplant list (I wont go into deeper details for his privacy). Anyway, with the main Oncologist not able to do his work they finally got around to bringing in a new ‘main’ Oncologist. This new guy changed some policies but none of the patients were notified until they went in and were like “Um, what?”. The main new policy change states that no prescriptions will be written for pain medication if it’s not 100% cancer related, as in the person has cancer that causes pain and can not be operated on, or the patient is actively going through Chemotherapy or Radiation and even then, the medications will be as low of a dose as possible.
This new policy change wouldn’t bother me and in fact makes perfect sense with all the rampant drug abuse in the area… hell, some druggies in this area have not only resorted to robbery/theft, but it’s led to violence in some cases. I’m all for this new policy to help cut down on availability of controlled substances that people abuse like crazy, but it would have been nice for them to give people a bit of a heads up so that what happened, shouldn’t have. Now, although my spinal issues were a result of having a weakened body from Chemotherapy, it’s not actually due to cancer. For those that don’t know much about the way it works for Controlled Substances, is that you get your prescription like normal, but they NEVER have refills available on the bottle, so you have to go back and see your doctor every month to continue receiving the medication, again, this wasn’t a problem for me since I have a valid reason for having it and have the pain to warrant it. Every month I would call early the week that I would run out to give them a reminder/heads up, and normally the day before I was out I would drive the 45 miles to pick up the prescription (again, being a controlled substance Doctors can NOT phone in this style medication to help cut down on druggies making fake phones calls or whatever other scam they plan on using).
Now here’s where the new policy screwed things up, since it wasn’t technically cancer related they could no longer renew my meds and told me (four days before I was going to run out) that I had to go through my primary care or have them refer me to a pain management program since my spinal issues are going to essentially be chronic (life long). I no longer had a primary care doctor since my original one retired/quit/whatever so I was able to get a new primary care about a month ago (after the last refill though) and they are the ones that prescribed the anti-depressants I mentioned. (Backtrack a little) On Wednesday I tried to call my Oncologist and kept getting a busy signal so I went to their office and that’s when I was informed about the new policy so I drove to where my new primary care doctor was and was informed that my doctor was currently out having surgery (having it, not performing it) and that the other doctor was doing double duty since he had to cover her patients as well and they said they couldn’t fit me in for at least a week and a half, but I’m going to be out of state pretty much all of next week. I drove back to the Oncologist as quick as I could with a hope that I could explain to them that my primary care was unavailable and essentially say “Look, if you could do it this one last time, it will give me roughly two weeks after I get back to town to get my primary care to see me and either decide they were going to help or send me to an official pain management place (my Oncologist can’t send me directly to a pain management group because a ‘specialist’ can not refer a patient to another ‘specialist’ without it going through primary care anyway). I managed to make it back to my Oncologists office roughly 5-10 minutes AFTER they all left for the day so I went to the receptionist and said something like “Um, here’s the situation …. have any advice?” and they called a Patient Advocate and handed me the phone. After explaining my situation for like the 4th or 5th time for the day she asked for my phone number and said if I didn’t hear anything by 10am Thursday to call her back. I also spoke to a family member that happens to work at the hospital and asked them for advice as well. Not sure which of the two did it, but someone managed to get the office where my primary care doctor was to call me and although a few hours earlier they said they were fully booked and had nothing I was asked “Can you make it here at 8:45am?” and I was like “Sure, I’ll see you first thing in the morning”. A few hours later I realized I had an appointment to have an oil change on my car at 9am and I accidentally missed the last appointment with them because of doctors, but I figured the oil change wouldn’t change much adding another 100 or so miles on the car before I see them and since I had to be at another doctor appointment (for my back) 45 miles away at 10:30am I just went to the first doctor in the morning and called the garage while sitting in the room waiting on the doctor. It’s kind of funny, I was told that this guy probably wouldn’t write the prescription for me anyway since he’d never seen me before (I normally saw the other doctor there), but we talked for a bit and I gave him my whole history and explained about my trip next week and that’s why I was in a rush to make sure I wasn’t without my meds for a couple weeks, one of which spent out of state where I’m going to be doing a lot of walking which will aggravate my back even more. This doctor was very nice, respectful, etc. and kind of surprised me kind the random things I heard kind of freaked me out. So, the doctor filled it and said when I get back in town to schedule an appointment with the other doctor (which I already had one with her for later in the month) and we’ll get it straight on if they’re going to be responsible for the pain management or if I’ll go to an actual facility or however they do it. Anyway, I took the paper to my normal pharmacy and they didn’t have enough to fill it so I went to two other places, each with the same story, not enough on hand, so I called the phone number of a pharmacy I was at earlier in the day (after the back treatment I stopped to buy new pads for my “Tens Unit”), still have no idea why I didn’t think to ask them the first time I was there, so I ended up wasting a lot of time and about 30 miles or so worth of gas. They had enough so I drove back down there again and gave them the info but they informed me my insurance wouldn’t cover it unless I picked it up the next day so I told them I’d be back in the morning (Friday morning). Friday comes around and I picked up my meds then went home to clean and pack for my trip. The cleaning/packing didn’t last too overly long before I ended up having other shit to deal with, all the while I had forgotten that I left my pill bottle in my car. I ended up leaving to visit a friend in an area that has no cell service and hung out there for awhile (more on that later). At one point I was asked to take two of the kids to go pick up some of her stuff from the place they used to live at and on the way there I drove by an area that had enough service for me to get a text message saying my friend was in the hospital so I hurried the kids up and when we got back and took the stuff inside (thankfully they didn’t make me carry anything) I mentioned the text and said I had to go see how my friend was doing, the same two kids asked if they could go with me and I allowed it. We all made it back to town and since he wasn’t home from the hospital yet we went to Wal-Mart and goofed off a little, but once he got back he txt’d me and I was able to catch up with him to find out he got jumped by a couple guys and he told me about all of his injuries. Once I knew he was relatively ok I took the kids back home and hung out for a bit when all of a sudden I heard over a police scanner that there was an assault near my house and I recognized the info. The guy that jumped my friend went to his house to find him and since he wasn’t there the guy punched his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach and she was in the hospital. I rushed back to town again to see if she was ok and I knew that they would have moved her from the emergency room to maternity on a different floor and having been awake that long my back was already hurting so I looked for my medication while on the way only to find out that my entire pill bottle and a pack of cigarettes were missing from my car (and yes I have proof that neither of the kids stole from me, therefore it was stolen earlier in the day while I was cleaning/packing) so I went to the police station to report the theft and was told by the cop that they were too busy and I should come back in the morning. After leaving the police station I went to the hospital to check on them and the pain was so bad that I stopped at the ER myself to see if they could help and ended up explaining the entire situation a few more times before they gave me something to last me until I can get an official police statement in the morning. *Small Update* Went back to the police station at 8am and talked to a cop that treated me like I was making the whole thing up, yet didn’t really ask any relevant questions and he said “Well we can look into it but I doubt there’s anything we can do” and was going to leave it at that, I had to ask him for something/anything to give my doctor and all he gave me was a post it note, at least it had a case number on it. So, next step is to call my doctor first thing Monday and pray.

*College*
With the crap from above and a few other things I’ve fallen a little behind in college and will be busting my ass off as much as I can up until the time I leave for my trip/vacation. I’m sorry Matt, I’m trying my best to catch up and make this up.

*Travel*
This upcoming trip is partly the cause of stress I’ve had since it put me in a time crunch for the medical stuff above and a few other things, but I think once the trip starts it will really give me a change to get some of the relaxation I need. I’m going to be spending pretty much a week out in Nevada just relaxing (and still trying to keep up or get ahead with my college work). I can’t wait until I get to leave and I just hope everything goes great (or ‘well’ at least) 🙂

*Gadgets*
Since I’ll be traveling this month and I was eligible for an upgrade with Verizon I ordered the new Droid X to replace my original Droid but they’re currently back ordered and if I remember correct they wont be shipping it until the 18th or 19th… that sucks, but still nice upgrade (although it’s not shipping for a couple weeks they already billed me the cost of the upgrade).
Got a new ‘toy’, the “Digital Entertainer Live” by Netgear, which essentially allows you to stream video and other media from the internet or a local computer directly to your TV… Sounds all well and good and after running the 2 separate 6-part updates it seemed to work great. Hell, it even played the copy of the South Park movie that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 spaz on over the network. The only real problem(s) I found with it is that it’d be more useful in the living room to have a centralized device instead of having to jump back and forth on the game consoles to play some files that one system may not like, but since I’m not going to run that long of an Ethernet cable and the device can use a Wireless USB device I figured all is well, but the device is coded with a lock that will only allow one of three different Netgear wireless devices, none of which I have or willing to pay for since that’s bullshit to use that form of hardware lock. Anyway, after I finish writing the review I’ll probably send it back since I don’t have any good use for it in my room and like I said, not going to run that long of an Ethernet cable and no way I’m going to waste time looking online for one of the very specific Netgear Wireless device that would pretty much only be good when used with the Netgear DE-Live.
Sometime after I finish college I plan on adding a new page to the blog that’s dedicated to some of the random gadgets I own or would like to own, for example talking about some apps I really enjoy for my iPad or for use on my Android based Cell Phone (will be a Droid X by then). I also plan on adding a part to that page that is essentially hardware reviews and previews of things I either get or use for myself and/or my company.

*Birthdays*
Today (Aug. 7th) is Squirts special birthday and since she knows about how my luck has been the last couple days she understands why I did what I did. Anyway, Happy Birthday, I promise to make it up to you.

*Game Plan*
As you may have noticed lately I tend to keep the same format for the individual topic heads, well the original game plan mentioned in the last post was that the first post each month I would essentially do the same topics in the same order and just do updates about whatever I missed and the reason for it only sticking for the first post each month (although I’ll probably make it a habit) is so that I can include things like Birthdays which obviously will change often, but wont always include everyone, I’ll add them as friends/etc. remind me of their birthdays. I also plan on migrating some of the things into additional pages on the blog so that a few of the things are more organized, but that might have to wait until I’m done with college since I’m so swamped right now playing catch up because of all the crap.

*Quote of the Moment*
Quote 1: > When life gives you lemons… go fuck yourself.
Quote 2: > Why do people insist bad things come in threes? They should be more realistic and say twelve. (PQ)

*Updates/Upgrades*
I’ve sprinkled some of the intentions throughout this post but I’ll get to more later, especially the things I mentioned/hinted at in the last post.

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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.

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.

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

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

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…

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