Saturday, December 30, 2006

My Car

So, Dec 19th, I was goofing around coming home from M-Tech. I was goofing around and jumped some railroad tracks at around 30. Some tracks this is no big deal, however these ones were like a jump. Here is a picture of the ascent and descent coming off the tracks. "picture --> / \ <--" . See, its basically a jump. I ended up braking the cross member that holds up the transmission. :eek: . So Thursday (Dec 28th) I got it towed and fixed. When they towed it, here were the conditions of my car.
1. Broken cross member
2. Couldn't shift out of drive (yes its was sitting in drive for 9 days straight) due to #1
3. Flat tire. I'm guessing the jump may have caused this but am not positive.
4. Dead battery. Seeing as I couldn't get out of drive I couldn't take the keys out leaving it in the on position ("not running").

So I got it back and it was quite less than what friends/family told me it was probably going to cost.
Friends/Family Verdict: $700+
Estimate from Rays Auto: $200 - $300 + tow
Total (including tow and tax): $306 (without tax like $299.9x)

I was pretty happy and had the money to pay for it. w00t!

In the end, I learned a lesson. Screwing around in the car can cost you money. For me, putting money into getting my car fixed is probably one of the last financial things I want to do, so lesson learned.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Cheap Shot

So tonight, I decided I would go to the basketball game going on at my highschool with my brother and some friends. It was all going good, had a good time until I go to leave. I wait around for a while to let the parking lot to clear, and my brother and his friends left to go to Burger King while I was gonna go straight home. So about 10 minutes later I decide to finally walk out and leave.

I go walking out into the parking lot all by myself, and I feel this sharp pain in the side of my face. This black kid had run up behind me and punched me in the face and took off running. Then it happened again, only it was a different kid and a different spot on my face. I thought for sure they were gonna rob me, so I was just trying to stay standing (which I did). Then I here "hey man, are you all right?", I respond with yeah, I guess so, then this asshole has the balls to run up and punch me in the mouth and take off running like the other two low life pieces of shit. The first two pissed me off enough, and then the shit with the third guy. Oh man... I look around, and this kid was about 15 feet from me and asked me if they had done to me what they had just done to him. I said yes, and see my brother standing there astounded as it had happened to him to, and he walked out about 5 minutes before me.

The 3 guys had run off to who knows where, so I went and let the principal know so if he saw any of this nonsense to continue hopefully he could catch them. So I left, as did my brother, and I went home. So now its a few hours later and my face still hurts..

So I got cheap shotted not once, not twice, but three times... Such a great night.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

World Of Warcraft

When I hear people saying that they play World of Warcraft, the only thing that comes to mind is "why?". Why pay for the game, then have to pay a subscription to play each month. Maybe I could understand if it was like $4-$5 /month "maybe". However its like $15. Forget that, I will go play GuildWars that has only a one time buy the game fee.

Then, the other day I here WoW is giving away free 10-day trial accounts. So I decided why not see what all the hype is about. I downloaded it (over 2 gigs) so it took a little while. Then I run it and it has to download a small 3 meg update. No big deal. Well they run off what seems to be torrents, and it took about 20 minutes for the download to start working.

I finally get in game, setup my character and move into the realm (which took forever of me choosing which realm. most seemed to be maxed out). I move around, figure out the controls and what not and decide to take on a wolf. Easy piece of cake killed it no biggy. After wandering around for a while I got extremely bored. I MEAN BOOOORRRREEEDDD!!!. The coolest part of that game I found was that you can run and jump. Other than that I don't see why people just don't play GuildWars instead. At least in GW you can't run through guys/animals which makes it a lot more challenging than WoW. While graphics wise WoW were about the same, both quite good, the level seemed to blah. It was a Anarchy Online level. You walk around and see the same stuff you would in any other game. The detail in GW is a lot better than WoW could ever bother to achieve.

So I leave Blizzard with these final words. Drop WoW and release Starcraft: Ghost already.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Great Sony Article

I will just put it right out there. I don't like SONY. Two main reasons

a. Installed a rootkit on your computer (a couple years back). (that was cool when it came stumbling down)
b. They are like Apple once was. "Our hardware is the greatest. Nobody else in our competition will use it" (PPC instead of x86)

They have the cell processor which is probably bad ass. However, if I remember correctly, the cache and memory speeds were absolutely horrible for it. (haha suckers)

So in essence, this blog post was to point you to >> TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net (SONY Article) which sums it up pretty well. It also includes a pretty disturbing animation of SONY crapping on its fans.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

2 for 3

The voting results are in.. and I was 2 for 3 of the things I found important. My man Fred Upton won by quite a bit. Also the banning of affirmative action in some areas also passed. Unfortunately Jennifer Granholm won (Democrat). Personally I think that if we didn't have this 2 party (the major ones) system Dick DeVos would have won. However since he is a Republican and so is GWB he got screwed.

2/3 isn't bad I guess...

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

First time voting!

So today was my first time voting since I just turned 18 a few months ago. It was a lot easier than I thought.. w00t!

I always gotta vote for Congressmen Fred Upton. He has helped out my dad majorly so he has earned my respect there. Also, he is the only one I have seen that has ran a clean campaign. The commercials I here are not about how his opponents f***ed up, but what he has done and why we should re-elect him. That my friends, is a true campaign and earns even more respect.

As for Governor here in Michigan, I voted for Dick DeVos. Jennifer Granholm in my opinion has not done a good job and needs to go. 1. She claims to be the reason Google is opening another spot here in Michigan, when in reality, its because one of the founders grew up in Michigan. 2. She vetoed a bill that would keep people from being on welfare for a lifetime. Now I am not against welfare by any means. If a person/family really needs it, then there is no problem there. What I get pissed about is the people who live off welfare because they are to lazy to get there fat ass off the couch and get a job, or abuse it. I have seen many times someone goes in and buys a 12-pack of pop on food stamps. They walk outside open it up and dump all the pop out. Once they do that, they take the cans back in for the 10c return on each one. So they spend $5 of tax payer money to get $1.20 in cash to buy drugs or some other stuff... Talk about low life.. Dick DeVos if he wins will be curing this problem. 4 years is plenty enough time to find a job so I support him.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Wireless router

I am not gonna tell you I got a new wireless router. Although I do need one as my DLink DI624 sucks horribly. I went out of state this weekend to my aunt an uncles house. Down in Elkhart(sp?) Indiana. So I had my laptop with me, just to get some work done on the shopping cart. I picked up a wireless signal from it that was unsecure. Seeing, as my uncle works for Comcast I thought I would mention he needs to tighten his security up a bit. So I go tell him, and he tells me he doesn't have a wireless router. Then I told him, well one of your neighbors do then. That night we go to a restaurant place to pick up food. I decide I will take my laptop with me just to see how many we pick up. In a 15 minute drive I picked up at least 25 routers half of them being unsecure. I was surprised at that. I found out, that Comcast uses 2Wire gateways for its users wireless connectivity. These were the only ones I found secure. I was simply amazed.

So, a weekend I thought I would be without the internet, turned out that I was on a nice good connection anyways. So I leave you with this.... Rock On!! Broadband

Jeff

Thursday, October 19, 2006

=( Didn't go through

Well, O'reilly Media said no for there e-books. Totally understandable and I knew it was a long shot. However I must say this, they responded quite quickly, and were nice about it. They included a reason instead of just saying ("your nuts").

On another "The Departed" is an awesome movie. Its not the typical movie where the main character is a hero and lives happily ever after. ALL the major characters die. How sweet is that!

Monday, October 16, 2006

Major Update For HitMyServer

So, lately I have been working like mad to get HitMyServer.com done. With this I have added some cool lightbox style features.

Another big thing is I sent off an email to O'Reilly Media asking for permission to use electronic versions of some of there books. I am figuring they will say no as I cannot offer much, however I have already gotten one publisher allowing me to use their books. I am hoping they will allow at least a few books because of what HitMyServer is based around.


Oh yeah.. Tigers are going to the WolrdSeries!!!!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

and the tigers win the series

The last time the tigers won the World Series was back in 1984 I believe. This year they have been on a role. They beat the New York Yankees in the first series of the playoffs. Nobody thought that they would win but they did.. So screw you all =) . Go Tigers!!!!

Monday, October 02, 2006

My birthday

So Saturday was my 18th birthday. w00t w00t. I didn't do much as usual. Had a friend over and we played a lot of Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour. I went to best buy with some extra $$$. I bought the Logitech G5 mouse and a joystick that has throttle and z-axis as well.

I plan on starting my checking account tomorrow. I have waiting months and months to get one so I didn't have to have cash around.

Other than that, it was a pretty boring weekend. It does beat last year however, when I worked extra hours on my birthday.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

misc.

Well, here is what has been going on. Whether it be work, school, freelance it doesn't matter its in this post.

#SCHOOL
School started Tuesday.
1st Hour: Programming
2nd Hour: Drafting
3rd Hour: Contemporary Themes
4th Hour: Cisco

#WORK
Nothing new.

#FREELANCE
For the children's cancer fund. Wow, what a mess up there. For some reason, after noting that part of their site is in ASP while the part I am doing is in PHP, I for some reason did not pay attention that they were not running Apache. So my mod_rewrite did not and will not work. Along with having the webhost run a SQL query to use the "old" authentication password. However, we are in the testing phase.. w00t w00t.

#OTHER
My stupid car had a leak in one of the gas lines. I was expecting it to cost a few hundred dollars. However, thanks to Rays Auto, they got my car done quick, and it was only $120. So hopefully, I can still get my laptop soon.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

damn you sessions

So, I am working on a project for HereNextYear. Basically, they have a client "Childrens Cancer Fund" and I am re-working their online donation page to work with Authorize.Net . Fun Fun. It also allows them to have teams sign-up, kinda like when people come to your house for a 5K run pledging how much money they will do. However, the teams have their own little page, with the donation form on it. So using some mod_rewrite I have it so they can do www.domain.tld/TeamName/ and it will pull data from a database based on their team name. Well I was having problems in the fact that, on one section of the page it returned the team_id session as one number, while on a different part of the page it returned something else. After 2 days of dicking with it, I finally found the solution, because of another session variable, I managed to catch the value and it was odd. What makes things weird is, 1. it was html that wasn't even wrapped around <?php ?>. 2. Why it was actually causing the problem. So here is the bugged code.

<body bgcolor=#ffffff marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" background="images/ccf_bg.gif">

Here is the fixed code
<body bgcolor=#ffffff marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" background="<?php echo PATH_TO_DISPLAY; ?>/images/ccf_bg.gif">

Basically I have a PHP constant that holds the url to the base project. That way, with the mod_rewrite I don't get anything funky like, www.domain.tld/teamName/images/ccf_bg.gif . Thats what the PATH_TO_DISPLAY is. That was my fix. After 2 days, it turns out something so random I just don't know what else to say..

Well thats it, for now. I gotta get this thing done.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Second Weekend At RSB

So this weekend was pretty cool. I got off at like 9:30 this morning. w00t. We did some cool drills, that were related to medical / evacuation stuff. There was a competition divided into two teams, whoever won got to pick the PT(physical training) exercise the loosing team had to do. Luckily my team won all four rounds. I got to see some hand to hand fighting (not to hard, no injuries), with some moves to get the person on the ground. Overall it was a pretty good weekend. I just really have to work on push-ups and running so its not so hard on me. Thats about all the interesting stuff this weekend. So I leave you with this .....................................

Friday, August 11, 2006

shopping cart of the future

So, I am currently working on a multi-site shopping cart, that is URL friendly. That way if you were to have a cart it wouldnt be cart.php?cartid=12353456346&productid=3246346346346235246232346325 instead it is like /yoursite.com/products/HotDog. Now isn't that a crap load easier to remember. I think so, also works better for search engines. Thats all i am gonna tell of the project so far, as there is still a lot to develop and a lot that is a secret. I gotta tell you, when its done it will be a BAMF (bad ass mother f***er) ('thank you Dane Cook for that one'). With loads of stuff other subscription based carts don't have.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

$$$$$$$$$$$

Guh!!!! What do you know. Another almost record breaking profits quarter for the gas companies. Exxon gas(i believe) holds the record for #1 profits, and now for quarter 2 of 2006 they also hold record #2. (not gas stations, but to those who provide to them.) I am not sure about you guys/gals, but I am tired of them saying "oh the tensions in the middle east is driving prices up". Oh bull shit, thats why the last few years your profits sky rocketed. Unfortunately I have to buy gas for my car contributing to their profits. $3.10/gallon is outrageous and you gas companies can burn in hell (seriously). Those in Europe, yes I know your prices are a lot higher, but this is a lot here in the U.S. I remember the days where everyone was outraged at $1.50 now its over double that in just a few years. :(

</rant>

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

impatient

guh!!!!! At the end of the last school year, (last week of may), when I started back working at the school, I asked about possibly graduating in January 2007 instead of May 2007 as I would have enough credits at the end of the first semester. I was told, that I would be notified before school starts up again September 4th. However, I have little patience for almost all things, so I am waiting, and waiting and waiting, to see if I get to graduate early. How sweet would that be.

Come to school the first day of the 3rd marking period, but have graduated the Friday before. w00t w00t. Then I could get to laugh at all the students ... "haha your ass still has to wake up everyday and come to school" type thing. One could only hope, and I am hoping alot. Though I will probably go to basic training early if they will let me. So I would have 9weeks gone down in Missouri, come home for a month or two, then go to Oklahoma for another 7weeks and 1day. Though I am not sure what I want to do. All in one or split op, even if they would let me do it.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

First Weekend At RSB

Well this weekend was the first weekend at RSB. Don't ask me what it stands for as I don't know. However, it is for, the National Guard, before you go to basic training (ie. boot camp) you can learn a bit before you go, so you don't make as big of a fool as you would before hand.

Overall it was ok. I am quite sore from it. Lots of marching and standing. I knew I wasn't it shape, but dang, I am in horrible shape. Had to do 2 mile run Saturday around a track. That horribly sucked as many can imagine. (no i didn't get within the passing time). Seeing as I felt horrible that morning (woke us up at 4:xx) and was ready to puke, I lasted through the push-ups and the sit-ups. Though for the run, I threw up 4 1/2 times. Now your asking yourself, how do you half way throw up. Here is how, when you have threw up all the liquid in your stomach, and your body is trying to throw up but nothing is coming out. :( . But hey I made it the full 2 miles, and was not last to finish. w00t w00t!!!

Well, better luck next month.

Monday, July 10, 2006

haha !!! i knew it

After months of figuring myspace has been putting out adware, it finally came true. Some of you know, my bro is an avid myspace user *shudders* , and his computer is always messed up. Spyware Spyware Virus Spyware ... Myspace is the only place I ever see him go, so I figured they did it. Well I did a basic login on a clean system (freshly formatted) and nothing. I was so disappointed. Until today I saw this lovely article Zango Spyware on Myspace. Now this isn't myspace's fault, and I am not blaming them. I just knew, that with all the shitty "profiles", there had to be spyware. According to the article, some of those "free video" blah blah blah, require you to install Zango in order for the videos to play. Well guess what Zango is spyware. Not all video post things are spyware, but some are. So USER BEWARE, your pc is gonna get messed up. So those of you who thought that I was nuts saying it was spyware infested.. Well I laugh in your face.. muwhahahahaha !!! <highpitchedvoice> bitch's </highpitchedvoice>

Saturday, July 01, 2006

EON8

This was probably one of the greatest (in my opinion) experiments out there. What is EON8 you say? EON8 was a website (currently down as it has had so much traffic the past few days) that was mysterious. Mysterious by having all sorts of encrypted data all over the place not only on their site but on some forums as well. They also had a counter that was counting down 0 and reached exactly 12:00 AM July 1, 2006.

There was quite a bit of hype about this site being a terrorist organization and would launch massive attacks or even possibly the end of the Internet. The really cool thing that made this so well is that it spread all over the place. The site didn't say it was the end of the net or gonna launch a massive attack, it was just a site with some encrypted randomly generated numbers and a few pages where access was restricted by means of a username and password, and a count down timer. Oh yeah, and it had a status indicator, and at 12 it changed to deployed. What helped things out, is that people say "The Planet" the datacenter that hosted the site, hosts "Terrorist" organizations so people just automatically assumed this.

Even the eon8 irc channel at gamesurge.net was packed with hundreds of people including the creator of the site himself..

So what was this experiment? The experiment was to see how easily people believe in things. EON8 did not have anything on their site saying they are terrorists, or that anything was actually gonna happen.
"As of July 1st, 2006, the E8 Project has completed.
The purpose of this project was to determine the reactions of the internet public to lack of information." - http://www.eon8.com/deployed21b.php

So to me, this is one of the greatest experiments in my opinion.
Great Job man.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

w00t ...

Well today I officially joined the Michigan National Guard. While it was a very long day, I am glad it is over. I went to bed last night at 1:00 AM but had to get up at 3:45 AM to eat breakfest and head over to MEPS (processing crap/physical) . I spent most of my day there. I got home today at about 4:00. The car rides their were great. My recruiter and his assistant are funny as hell especially when together.

Thats just about the most of my day.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

so in recent news

:National Guard
-------------------------------------
Well, my physical for the National Guard was supposed to be for last Thursday but got pushed forward to this Thursday. My biggest problem is being underweight. Currently I am 1 pound over the minimum, but my weight is constantly changing. So I am hoping that I can make it through that part. Anyways I get to stay in a hotel Wednesday night but will be away from my pc/internet :( .. Bummer.


:MySpace's $30 Mil law suit
-------------------------------------
So some 14 year old girl decided "oh i will go meet this guy I met on myspace.com". Well this guy wasn't so nice and ended up raping her. Even with my pure hatred for myspace, they should not get sued for this. How f*ing stupid do you have to be to go meet someone you met on the internet. Both her, and her parents need to be poked in the eyes several times for this. I mean damn, use common sense once in a blue moon.

:Bill Gates to be out of day to day operations of M$ in 2 years
-------------------------------------
Yep, bummer to see ya move on. While I prefer Linux of Windows, I still like alot of Microsoft's software. Programs like Visual Studio, Microsoft Flight Simulators etc. Glad to see that he will be focusing on his foundation with his wife. What a very nice guy.

:Digg v3 coming soon
-------------------------------------
I cannot wait for this. Saturday when the new diggnation podcast is released Kevin Rose will share with us some of the features of the up coming digg.com version 3. I saw the leaked images, though they looked similar to the current I have full faith this will be some awesome stuff.

:Billing System
-------------------------------------
Well I am re-coding some parts, to make them more workable, more AJAX (yeah baby!!!), more input security as well as url based security. I am no longer using Smarty template engine as I realized its a piece of crap when you need to do runtime template switching. So I will be changing that out with this new current one I like and modded. Also will change smarty out from hitmyserver.com.

Monday, June 12, 2006

asvab

What is a "asvab". It's the test you take to get into the U.S. Military. So I took mine today as I am joining the National Guard to pay for college. The test covers all sorts of things ranging from math(a whole lot w00t), science, electrical, wood working and other stuff. So when I was there, there were 7 others taking the test ranging from us young people to a few older guys. I was told I got the highest score outta the 8 total. I received 83% on the test, which qualifies me to do pretty much anything including being a doctor(screw that). When I left the testing center, the recruiter told me that the other people where getting like 12%-30%. Damn, how dumb do you gotta be to only get that. I mean seriously, math being most of the test the hardest problem was like
"2x^5 + 3y - 2x x=4 y=3 what does that equal"

So Friday I gotta go to Lansing get a physical and crap. The biggest worry is that I might be a bit underweight. So guess its McDonald's the rest of the week to gain some weight. Seeing as when I am on a fat day I weight 130lbs :( ... Fat food here I come.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

weekend away

Well I was gone all weekend out of state. I saw the oddest thing, at least in my mind. A drive through donut shop. Oh of course we stopped and got some (through the drive through, no need to go inside) and might I saw they were excellent. I was out of town at a graduation party and the weather was quite nice most of the time. I saw what was like a funnel cloud but not quite one. I took a picture but not on my camera so I don't have it :( Over these three days, I luckily only managed to get a sunburn on my face and right forearm. Hopefully tomorrow everything will be back together.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

mischievous me

Well, I typically not a type of person to bug people or be mischievous but today, I decided to use my software voice changer. Its a pretty neat little software gizmo.

Anyways, so today I called up Hewlett Packard (HP) to bug there Tech Support. Although they are pretty busy as there crap sucks, especially Desktops/Laptops, I wanted to have some fun as I won't be on my pc Friday morning till sometime Sunday. So, round one, I turned on the voice changer and did the Darth Vader thing. "I am your father" Round two, was a dare, doing the customer who's computer won't work, and it turns out the power is out. This guy (different from the first), didn't know really what to say at 2 points. He was silent to a point where I asked if he was still there. Anyways if you care to here them, here they are

Call 1 (2.4 MB)
Call 2 (10 MB)

Sorry for the slow download, due to its a server here at my house, as I don't feel like uploading them to one of my sites

Cya

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

:( ... bye bye

Well, the torrent community took a big hit today. Torrent tracking giant ThePirateBay had its servers siezed today, as well as a few of the staff was brought in by police. The Swedish government and police are on a phishing expedition to shutdown ThePirateBay. They decided they will take the servers and "examine" them for anything illegal. If the Swedish government isn't corrupt (politicians / police not being corrupt don't come very often these days), hopefully we can expect the site to be back up at the end of the month. The site is up now, well a page saying they took our server.

Read more of this....
MPAA Being Gay Over The Siezure Of ThePirateBay Servers

Monday, May 29, 2006

Well I setup a blog

Well I have finally setup a blog. Never really done to much of this stuff here. My life is pretty boring most the time. When I don't have school, im working on computers at my school (go figure). I like to fix computers, as well as program, PHP currently.

I have a few sites that I control.
darkecho.org << just a goof around site nothing biggy.
fusechosting.com << guess by the name of what that is.

My current project is a webhosting billing system. That is coming along pretty well. A friend who does very nice work www.deonya.com designed the main layout of it. Still alot of work to do, but hope to have it ready to go by the end of June.