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Friday, June 27th, 2008
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8:31 pm - Things are awesome
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So much has happened, and I kept putting it off, telling myself that I need to register a new domain so I can have a real site for once, where I can set up my own blog, host my own pictures (instead of linking to pictures on other hosts... all of my old entries here are missing the attached pictures, so I am hesitant to put anything here anymore).
I will still be registering a domain soon, and starting up my own site to centralize all the awesome little projects i've worked on, as well as get some pictures up, but for now, here's what's gone down:
I am living in North Seattle (Technically Shoreline) with Ursula, who is now my girlfriend.
We have two kitties, named Kuha and Zoe. They are daughters to one of the housecats here, which got pregnant and had a litter of 3 kitties. We secured 2 of them, and they are totally wonderful, aside from the whole 'chewing through the cable that connects the Wii sensor bar to the console' thing. But with a little splicing, the sensor bar works again, so all is well.
I am co-partner in a business called Callsteward.com, and created an online application to facilitate labor dispatch for unions, particularly those involved with the entertainment industry. I code everything, and my partner Ed handles the business side of things, and we split profits 50/50. New clients come slowly, but they really dig the software, so hopefully I'll pick up a decent amount of money over time from recurring membership fees.
I am still the webmaster for estradasphere.com. I set up and maintain an online store for them, and in exchange I make a cut of every purchase that goes through. It's not a lot of money, but having a little bit of "surprise" recurring income is never a bad thing. I obviously can't depend on it to pay bills or anything, so it's all bonus money. Yayz. The store is actually making a killing these days, and the band is doing a lot of business in the way of digital downloads, which have almost no expense attached to them.
I am involved in a contract with an internet startup called Evolanding.com, based in downtown Seattle, and I am tearing it up down there. It's basically all the things I am savage at (PHP, MySQL, Javascript/AJAX, and processing massive amounts of data) wrapped up into a nice little package. I am having so much fun working there, it is seriously the greatest job I've ever had. And I've learned a few things working there that I have been able to carry over to callsteward.com to make it even better. I am now a goddamned wizard using the PHPTAL/TALES/METAL templating system, which is helping me redo pages on callsteward into XHTML compliant pages. All the guys I work with are pretty awesome too. I was told they were all freelancers prior to signing on with evolanding. Wicked. The company even bought me a case of Monster at Costco after seeing me burning through multiple cans every day.
I also may end up on google maps soon, as the camera-car drove by me as I left work yesterday. If that camera was running, then soon I'll be visible on google's street view, standing in front of the 4th and Blanchard building.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the people I moved up to Seattle with betrayed me upon arrival, and left us (Ursula and myself) alone in the city to find housing. So I don't really know too many people here, so I spend most of my time coding, and occasionally going out on photography adventures with Ursula. So socially, things are kind of lame, but professionally, I am doing really well for myself, so I can roll with it for now.
It does get kind of boring sometimes though.
current mood: goat
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(5 vicious attacks | enter the fray)
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| Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
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5:12 pm - Havoc
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I can't control my emotions, and they are destroying the productivity of my rational mind.
I fight it though. I am experiencing the happiest thoughts ever, and I am actively crushing them one by one to keep myself from gaining too much false hope. It leaves me feeling really shitty inside, but I know that in the long run, it's better this way. Self preservation and all...
I just have to keep telling myself that nothing will work out, and all I can do is damage control, which means saying as much as I can comfortably say so when the inevitable happens, at least I can look back and know that I did what I could.
That should minimize the regret aspect of it, at least.
I feel like I'm making a total fool out of myself, and I can't stop.
And I have no idea where to go from here.
Good thing I'm resilient as fuck.
current mood: Fucking retarded
current music: Kotiteollisuus - Minä olen
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(1 vicious attack | enter the fray)
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| Saturday, October 13th, 2007
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10:32 am - Progress?
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Today I fought against every rationalized excuse I had and won.
Today I traded uncertainty and hope for certain failure.
I guess that's just life.
current mood:  sad
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(enter the fray)
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| Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
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6:47 am - Finntroll!
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I went with Nathan and Ursula to see Finntroll in San Francisco on Thursday. Despite getting lost multiple times on the way to AND from the venue, it was a great night! After Apocryphos (the opening band) played, I got kind of tired and propped myself on a barstool off to the side and chilled out. This very punk-rock looking girl came up to me and started talking to me, it was pretty surreal. She gave me a no-doz to help get me back in sync, and then just hung out for a bit. We chatted about Finntroll, then the government, then (surprise) anarchy. Hehhe. It was pretty fun.
After the show, I saw her outside and thanked her for the no-doz, and she gave me a business card, and asked me "Do you like fighting?". I didn't really know how to answer that, so I told her that I didn't like the negativity involved, but it was kind of fun to wrestle. So she tells me that now and then she and her friends get together and beat the shit out of each other, and if it sounded like something I was interested in, I should get in touch with her, because she shows up in Santa Cruz once in a while.
Yeah, so I have nowhere to go with that story. It's pretty funny though!
I finished my latest revision of the estradasphere website. It's pretty fun! I also scored a gig designing some sort of call stewarding scheduler thingy for this dude on the east coast who runs a theater. It looks like I could potentially score some serious money on this one, so this should be pretty fun too, provided I can focus on it long enough to complete it.
Focusing is hard these days. My idle thoughts seem to concentrate on one of two things. The first, is that I met a really great girl, with a lot of the same interests as me, a similar life story (complete with the whole 'getting fucked over by a college' part) and a love of Finland. Being around her is wonderful, and makes me smile when I think back on it later. Second, is the fact that I am too complacent in every aspect of my life, but in particular, this very moment.
As far as relationships go, I figured if I waited long enough, something would have to give. For once, I feel like I can't just deal with this like similar situations in the past, where I would suck it up and wait, and wait, and wait until the other party was no longer in my life, at which point I would immediately start burying everything, trying to forget all the half-feelings that I choked off before they could fuck up my life. I can't let this die like that, it means too much.
But what is it, even? Am I just intrigued because the probability of an attractive girl sharing interests with me is a mathematical anomaly?
I just want to wrap my arms around her and hold her...
I'm hoping that eventually this marginal impetus will gain some momentum and force me to take a step forward out of my comfort zone. All in due time...
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(1 vicious attack | enter the fray)
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| Monday, October 1st, 2007
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6:49 am - Isolation
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I'm quitting smoking. I made the decision about 2 weeks ago, and haven't bought a pack since. Granted, I am bumming 3-4 smokes a day off people, but that's still improvement over a 15-20 per day. But now I'm done, completely. I won't be having another. I need to be able to do this.
A long time ago, I tried to do the same thing with people. When I started college at RIT, I met a few people who, over time, probably would have developed into good friends. Instead, I was thrown out and forgotten by everyone I knew, banned from campus, and left alone in Rochester NY without a single soul to talk to. It was really lonely at first. For almost 3 years I had no friends barring my housemates, who weren't very good friends anyway.
I played a lot of video games. I fucked around on my housemate's computer, wishing I had my own, but determined to learn what I could so I'd be money when the time came for me to get my own. I was completely alone and didn't have a single person to talk to. So I tried to convince myself that needing people was a weakness. And I did it. I convinced myself through non-stop destructive thoughts that I was alone, and strong enough to take on everything by myself, and that feeling lonely was a weakness, a signal from a weak mind of an individual who wasn't content with his own self and needed someone to complement his weaknesses.
I essentially shamed myself into viewing relationships as liabilities, so I wouldn't be disappointed or upset by my constant loneliness. Instead, I drew power from it, knowing I had no obligations to anyone, no one to impress, no one watching my actions who could think less of me for things I might do or say. I ran with this for a long time.
Now, I feel fucking stupid. I exist in a role that I don't want. I don't want to be an accessory to life. I want people to want me around, not tolerate me. No one knows anything about me. I don't volunteer information from my life because I don't want to bore people. I've met a lot of people who love to talk about themselves, and I can't imagine myself being a tool of such magnitude that I would ever be that person.
It's not that I am uncomfortable with revealing things about my life. On the contrary, I find myself wishing, screaming inside that anyone would ask me about who I am, what makes me the person I am. But as life has proven to me for a long time, people don't care. I am just this guy who no one knows anything about, who happens to be totally savage with technology and can fix everyone's problems.
I build up everything inside, and I never have an outlet to let it out. This journal is the closest thing I have. It lets me express myself, but in a forum where I know no one is being forced to endure it. Anyone who reads this does so on his or her own volition, so I don't feel like a douchebag for bring up my problems while conversing with someone.
There is an exception though. I have a friend who listens to me, ask me questions, talks with me about life, and gives me an outlet to just let things out. One person I feel I can communicate with at an unfiltered level. Right now, that is very important to me, and is helping me deal with the uncontrollable negativity rampaging through my head 24/7.
I used to be really good at playing the role of devil's advocate. I had to be, because my life was bullshit from day one, so I had to work hard to find the silver linings in seemingly worthless scenarios. Now everything has inverted, and I find myself finding fault in even great situations. Negativity at every possible opportunity. This is where everything goes wrong.
Every single thing I do has to be completely rationalized first. If I see even the slightest hint of a potentially bad outcome, I abort the thought process. I do this with everything, actively discouraging action every step of the way, fighting against anything that could bring change into my life. The uncertainty drives me crazy.
Every aspect of my life is grating on me now. I used to be content with everything, but that contentness was forced, because the alternative was to be unhappy. So I shut it off. It seems that the unhappiness might have been exactly what I needed to force my hand on things, because left to my own devices, I would rationalize almost anything and continue on, unphased. I had no drive to improve, because I was content.
Now it's all crumbling. I hate my job. I hate the shallow interactions I have with people. I hate that I went so long alone that I struggle with daily interactions. I hate that my life has been devoid of affection for so long that even a hug seems like a distant dream.
I hate that, for years, I deluded myself into thinking if I lived as a good and righteous person then one day someone would show interest in me and a relationship would magically appear. This was the biggest lie I ever told myself, that somehow I could refuse the gender role that was assigned to me at birth, and still have things work out. But they don't work out. Women don't ask guys out, it's not their 'job' to be the aggressor. Oh no, it is definitely mine. Thanks, society.
I'm over all this bullshit. I need to find a way out of this non-stop despair that is eating at me all the fucking time.
The first step is to stop imagining that everything I do is intrusive to the world around me.
Start... now
current mood:  confused
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(12 vicious attacks | enter the fray)
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| Monday, September 17th, 2007
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8:07 am - Hesitation
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A few weeks ago, Randy asked us if we could house one of his friends who was moving down to Santa Cruz until she could find housing. Being the hospitable crew we are, we agreed. So as fate would have it, we magically acquired a new housemate, who happened to be totally beautiful. She showed up at a bad time, as I was already feeling a little withdrawn from humanity, but I tried to be friendly. I tried to make conversation. I pretty much failed at everything. I couldn't even make eye-contact with her. With most people, I get this feeling that the amount of time I am holding eye contact is excessive, and I immediately break it off. With her, it was different. I felt guilty just for looking at her. If her eyes met mine for even a fraction of a second, I would drop my head or look away. I felt guilty for finding her attractive, I guess. I don't even know why I would behave like that, but I feel shame for it.
She chilled here a few days, passing the idle time by playing Zelda on the gamecube and taking wicked bong rips with us. Invariably, the same situation would play out; her playing zelda while I tried to work on my guitar hero editing program. As I sat there, going over the same methods over and over, trying to make the numbers 'stick' so I wouldn't have to read it again, I kept thinking "There is a beautiful woman in the same room as me, with a fondness for weed and video games. She also likes some of the same Finnish prog bands I like. Is there nothing I could maybe start a conversation about?". Yet I couldn't. I sat there, silent, trying to distract myself from the situation by processing routines for merging and splitting vectors of raw audio samples, but thwarted everytime by this lingering feeling that I should be saying something.
One night, she asked if there were any parks nearby, so I checked on walkscore.com and found one a little way down the road. I gave her the directions to it and as she stood up to leave, I thought for one second "Maybe I should ask if she wants company" and INSTANTLY I was negated by my mind telling me "don't intrude on her space". So I stood there by the door, staring at the floor, trying to understand if this is the way I should feel about the situation I was in, and I couldn't come up with an answer. I just looked up and said 'good night' and then walked over to the computer again.
What is wrong with me?
After she left, I started thinking more and more about how terrified I am that society will view me in a bad light, and trying to rationalize my actions. I'm in unfamiliar territory as far as relationships are concerned, so even if I wasn't going through a crisis it would have been disastrous, I'm sure. But the timing was not kind to me, and I immedately started questioning why I ended up like this.
My sole intention was to not cause her discomfort while she was staying with us. Would thinking that I found her attractive make her uncomfortable? Who knows, but unless it's certain not to cause tension, I can't do anything. It's so fucking debilitating it drives me crazy. Avoiding eye contact, looking away from her so she doesn't think I am staring at her, avoiding talk because I don't want to seem like I am making small talk with an ulterior motive. All of this is MY perception of what HER perception of me will be, and I understand it is 100% totally fucking idiotic that I think this way, but I can't stop. I must have seemed like a complete shut-in, but I CANNOT STOP THIS.
I've been actively refining who I am for a while, and I like the person I have become. I do good things and make a lot of people happy, inspire others to think and learn, and see people learn from my actions and become better people. It's out of hand now though, as I feel more and more guilty for things I do or say. I play devil's advocate at every junction in my life, weighing possibilities and considering potential outcomes. I have stripped away aspects of me that polarized people, in hopes of keeping closer to a larger group of people. I don't feel like there is any me left, just a cold calculating machine of priority tables and robocop-like embedded rules that cannot, under any circumstances, be broken. Every decision is like a chess move, where I need to consider what might happen later on. 6 moves from now, will someone find fault because I made a bad decision?
I fought with myself for a few days, trying to find any way to justify initiating a conversation, but never 100% certain it would be welcomed, so I remained silent. She found a place, moved out, and I sat up alone, trying to figure out what happened. I felt alienated before, and suddenly it was worse, as if everything was amplified, every fear, every hesitation. I felt like I wasn't even human anymore.
A few days later, Randy came into town. He came outside while I was smoking and asked me what was wrong, and I told him nothing was wrong. He asked again, and I made up a lame joke and tried to force out a laugh, which I couldn't. And then I broke down crying, unable to lie about something that was scaring me to death. And as I stood there crying, trying to understand why the path I chose was so merciless and lonely, he tells me that he did everything he could to get me and his friend together, but she fell in love with him.
And I remember, at that moment, just being struck completely dumb. I couldn't even interpret the words he was speaking into any sort of emotion. I was lost, and the timing of his announcement was flawless. If she had appeared and vanished, I could handle that. I didn't need to know that this dream girl who was right here was considered by someone (other than me) to be a 'match'. I don't need other people to validate my initial feelings. Without him telling me that, I would have been able to marginalize everything I had felt by assuring myself that any imagined potential existed only in my head. I can't even tell myself that now. I wish I could un-know that piece of information.
How far does it go? Did she even need to stay wth us? Was this whole thing a plan by Randy to get us together? I have so many questions that I don't feel comfortable asking, which leaves me hypothesizing on so many fucking tangents it drives me crazy. The thought that keeps coming back to haunt me is "Could I have done something and made a difference?".
I used to be able to walk to work with my music blasting, and just process information on the way. Sometimes I would be mentally laying out the framework for a new class, sometimes I would just listen to the music and 'see' how the song would look if I were to put it into guitar hero. I used to think about technical things, and make sense of things. Now the numbers are gone. I don't think in math and code when I walk to work anymore. I think of what a sorry fucking excuse for a man I've become. I think of what I could have done differently. I think I had an opportunity where I was inspired to action, and I ignored it. And I think of her smile, which I somehow managed to see once even as I whipped my head away from her in the interest of "not being intrusive".
I feel straight up BROKEN now. I don't think my mind works the way it is supposed to. Everything I do is motivated by fear. I am open and accepting, with a lot of insight on a lot of different things, but the only friends I make are the ones who are outgoing enough to strike up conversation, because I can't do it. I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of crossing boundaries that I can't place. I don't know what is acceptable in relation to specific people or groups, so I resist making any movement at all so I can be guaranteed to not cross any invisible lines. And I guess that is how I killed my personality and became a boring, scared, lonely man.
current mood: sad
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(enter the fray)
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| Thursday, September 13th, 2007
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10:37 am - Lonely
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Lately I've been feeling isolated from the world around me, like I can't communicate on the same wavelength as people, that every conversation I have is just a matter of gleaning information from given phrases, then a challenge to construct a relevant reply. It feels mechanical, like there's no emotion in anything I say.
I have a lot of deep thoughts about a lot of things, and the best I can do is base-level conversations with people about entirely superficial bullshit that, in my mind, is barely worth creating a conversation around. I feel isolated and lonely, like the rest of humanity has some sort of secret that everyone possesses but that I seemed to have neglected along the way, and just noticed it now.
I am a good person. This is my motivation in life. Honesty, Justice, and Knowledge. I always try to be the best person I can in every situation, helping people who need help, trying to help people deal with their problems by playing devil's advocate and presenting alternate ways to think about what has happened. But I can't ask other people for help. I don't think people will understand the issues I am going through, because they feel unique to me.
I feel like I have no one to talk to. I feel lonely, but at the same time I feel weak for feeling this way, so it makes it hard to talk about. I went so long thinking I could counter society's cool stance towards me by reversing the balance of power. Instead of being sad that society didn't want me, I'd instead make myself independent of society, so I could at least take solace in the idea that it was my idea.
But now it is all hitting me at once. I was wrong. I can't exist in this protective bubble and hope to form meaningful relationships with people. At some point, I will need to step out of my comfort zone and talk, but I don't know how to do it. I feel awkward and out of place all the time, and the problems I'm dealing with are things that a normal person would have ironed out years ago. I am playing catchup, and I don't know who is patient enough with me to understand my stunted growth in the area of personal relationships.
I also turned 29 yesterday. More of the same really.
I kept myself happy with numbers, code, and doing good things for people whenever it was in my power. Making other people happy used to be enough, but now, I am thinking of myself, and I can't make myself happy without other people. I don't know how to change this, but I want to make my happiness independent of other people.
But is this the right way? Isn't this partly how I got into this bind?
How do I bring into existence something that I don't even understand, and may or may not even possess in the first place? I want to feel like I mean something to someone, yet this very want strikes me as whiny, that I can't be content with what I have, and I just want more. I'm torn all the time, between my cold, independent state and a life where I have vulnerabilities, but feel closer to people.
I'm going to see a counselor in 2 hours. Maybe this will shed some light on things.
Probably not, though.
current mood: ristiriita
current music: Threshold - This is Your Life
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(1 vicious attack | enter the fray)
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| Friday, July 6th, 2007
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2:02 pm - A whirlwind of events, culminating NOW
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I am going to register as a republican so I can vote for Ron Paul in the primary. He is a man of integrity, with a voting record that never deviates from what he believes, and I think he is exactly the sort of person who can fix what has gone wrong with this country (which is a whole lot of things).
I remember having a discussion with a friend back in Rochester before the 2004 election, and having a hard time understanding why he was planning on voting for Bush. Now, there is little consolation in being 100% right about telling him that it was a stupid decision, but you know, some people don't have any sort of forethought, and I'm hoping, Dave, that you realize how bad you and your fellow short-sighted republicans have fucked things up on a whole new level that no one could have even fathomed.
I also hope, Dave, that you learned your fucking lesson.
I got banned from xbox live for having a modded console. OOPS. So I can still download and burn any number of copied games, but Microsoft has deprived me of the freedom to pay them for the one thing that was allowing them to get any of my money. Hehhee. Killer business strategy. In the long-term though, losing my 50 bucks per year is just a drop in the bucket relative to the estimated 1.05 billion dollar loss Microsoft is going to take by increasing the warranty period for the 360 to 3 years, due to 30-33% estimated failure rate. Nice!
I am now the webmaster for estradasphere.com. In three weeks I threw together a pretty savage php/mysql driven website, which still has a few quirks, but damn, the way it works is so goddamned magical. Enter information once, and have it propagate to every relevant section of the site.
Sometime in the next 5 months (most likely in December) I will be moving, along with the band, to Seattle, Washington. This is going to be awesome for a few reasons. First off, Santa Cruz is expensive as hell. For comparison, I searched seattle craigslist for 2BR apartments for 800 or less. I found a whole slew of places, while the same search in Santa Cruz will not return even one hit. In Santa Cruz, you can sometimes find a studio for 800 bucks. Sometimes.
Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful here, all the time, but it also is so full of greedy fucking douchebags that it just isn't worth it. To sweeten the deal, the band has already found a place to set up the studio, and it's in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. According to wikipedia, "Ballard is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, not a suburb of Seattle. Incorporated as an independent city in 1890, it was annexed by Seattle in 1907, but has retained much of its old Scandinavian flavor."
Scandinavian flavor? Well, I'm there. It's no secret to people that know me that I am a Finn trapped in an American body (and country). I was born in the wrong country, and moving up to Seattle may introduce a whole new cultural dynamic into my life that I can dig. Perhaps I can even find lutefisk there? I am fairly certain I can!
Meanwhile, I am listening to shitloads of amazing music, with a vast amount of it coming from (surprise) Finland. Everything I listen to shows up at my last.fm page, and as of right now, my top ten bands, and their home countries, are:
Estradasphere (USA)
Frank Zappa (USA)
Finntroll (Finland)
Waltari (Finland)
Stam1na (Finland)
Die Apokalyptischen Reiter (Germany)
Disillusion (Germany)
Pain of Salvation (Sweden)
Devin Townsend (Canada)
Ayreon (Netherlands)
We have a new kitty in the house! His name is Sid, and he's adorable. I have put some videos on my youtube account (HERE). He loves to climb up my leg while I sit at the computer, then jumps and climbs my shirt and perches on my shoulder and just chills out and purrs. Totally adorable.
Things are fucking awesome!
current mood:  chipper
current music: Graveworm - I Need a Hero (Bonnie Tyler Cover)
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(1 vicious attack | enter the fray)
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| Thursday, April 19th, 2007
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6:45 pm - Hilarity
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So this clip was posted at a torrent site a frequent. I guess it is an audition for some sort of Idol show called 'Starmania'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD6dKvVFzog
The song he is singing is Naglfar's "The Brimstone Gate".
Someone later came up with this little combo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJTqvFCU6GA
Lots of other clips can be found by searching youtube for 'starmania', but nothing is as awesome as this one!
current mood: Triumphant
current music: Naildown - Save Your Breath
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(enter the fray)
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| Friday, April 13th, 2007
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7:29 pm - Hahahah
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Your search - "aids related car accident" - did not match any documents.
Your search - "power metal tambourine" - did not match any documents.
current mood: high
current music: Koyaanisqatsy - Overture 3030
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(1 vicious attack | enter the fray)
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| Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
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8:56 am - Hilarious
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So it's 5:30 at the gas station, Phil's behind the desk in the office working on the daily reports, and I'm in the back collecting garbage to take out to the dumpster, and as I walk out of the back room, lo and behold, I have a gun pointed right at my goddamned face, with some tweaked out motherfucker screaming at me to get on the ground. Dude fucking grabs the entire cash till, knocking everything off the counter, and books it out the door. What a fucking douchebag. I'm fucking pissed.
On the positive side of things, I modded the fuck out of my xbox 360, and I am now living large and destroying legions of zombies.
current mood:  angry
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(1 vicious attack | enter the fray)
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| Sunday, January 14th, 2007
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4:31 pm - Awesomeness
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Things are fucking sweet these days! Me, Ree and Bobby are kicking it in our new crib, which is monstrously spacious, which Bella (the kitty) is digging. Prior to the move, the cat was kind of on rotating shifts with whatever dogs happened to be living with us, so if dogs were out, and one of the dogs was an asshole, she got confined to the room. Now she has free run of the house, and lots of fun little toys to play with, so she's having a lot of fun. She's also totally retarded, but that's a story (stories) for another day.
About a week ago, I KILLED Freebird on expert in Guitar Hero. After practicing for months on our piece of shit busted-ass guitar, I was introduced to another dude who played the game, and wanted to try the first one, so I brought my hard drive down to his place and plugged it in. His guitar was in good shape (they are still learning how to finish songs on medium, so it hasnt taken a beating yet) so I used it to play freebird, and man, I fucking NAILED the repeating blue/yellow/red/green pull-off part, and actually had star power left after all the difficult shit was done. Quite a savage performance if I do say so myself!
I cut back to 4 days a week at the gas station, to maximize the amount of time I have to code for my other job, which is more awesome than I can possibly describe. I get paid to do math. I love it. And since the first three math books we processed went as well as they did, it seems the company was offered more books to convert, which means my contract is getting extended, and more money for doing shit that I love to do. Oh man, things are good indeed.
With my newfound riches, I bought a new mp3 player, the 60gb x5 by iAudio. Quite simply, it rules over every other mp3 player out there. Here are the main reasons why.
1. Plug it into any computer and it shows up as a USB drive. Period. no software needed to put songs on (itunes, nomad explorer, dot dot dot), and no drm restrictions to prevent you from copying every song on there to another computer. Plug it in, pull it off. Done. Thats fucking money.
2. Can play songs based on directory structure, rather than a tag database like every other mp3 player uses. That means any songs that arent tagged wont cause problems. My shit is usually tagged flawlessly, because I'm anal about that, but I'm working two jobs now, so I dont always have time to sit down and fix little errors. Playing via an explorer-like folder navigation system is something I have been craving for a while, and a company finally implemented it. Sick.
3. USB Host Mode: plug the usb host cable into the side, and it provides a female usb connection to plug other devices in. Plug in a USB flash drive and move songs onto it, regardless of the proximity of the nearest computer. Rip digital photos off cameras to free up space. And i haven't tried this one yet, but i have a feeling that two x5s could be linked in this fashion to allow restriction-free music sharing between two portables.
4. Built in mic: seriously, record shit with it. Badassssss!
5. Line in/Line out jacks: run a line in to it and do on-the-fly encoding to whatever format. Could potentially be useful for live shows, if i could get an eighth inch plug.
6. Plays everything. mp3 obviously, but OGG and FLAC too. Other formats too, that i dont really care about. iPod can eat shit. OGG and FLAC are nice formats to have access to.
7. User managed firmware options. Throw anything you want on there, it doesnt matter. This isnt some itunes one-directional update scheme, all i do is toss a file in the firmware directory and reboot, and it's there. I'm currently running Rockbox, which is burly as all fuck, and auto-generates a logfile to send to my Last.FM account.
60 gig for 300 bucks, including shipping and 8% CA tax, and superior in every way to the ipod. Jesus. I hope more people pick up on this beast, because the ability to transfer files from one device to the other even in the middle of the desert is a hell of a feature. No limitations!
Apple and Sony can both eat shit.
current mood: Fucking Ecstatic
current music: Pain of Salvation - Disco Queen
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| Thursday, November 16th, 2006
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6:15 am - I am a computer
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Every now and then, I find myself wishing I was a robot. Usually this happens when I get hurt or sick, and I find my human body to be nothing but a liability. Right now happens to be one of those times, as I totally rocked my back carrying an amp down some stairs, and for the past week or so I have been in a world of hurt. On the plus side, at least I can walk now, which for two days was not something I could do.
I got the math programmer job, so I am now officially being paid for what I like to do, and that makes me happy. Essentially, what I do is process math textbooks (basic to intermediate algebra) and convert static end-of-chapter questions into dynamically generated versions of the same questions, using variables in place of the static values. This, of course, is intended to prevent cheating by reducing the chance that two students will have the same questions. I love math, and i love coding, so I'm really having a ball with it.
Guitar Hero 2 is driving me fucking crazy. I cannot, for the life of me, finish Free Bird on expert difficulty. My best thus far is 75% completion. I laugh now when I think of Cowboys from Hell and Bark at the Moon, and how I used to think those were hard. Free Bird isn't just hard, it's infuriating, because the first 50% of the song is easy as hell, but you MUST DO IT every time you play the song. Then, around 50%, it starts getting crazy. Then, around 75%, it buries me in a mountain of lightning-fast hammer-ons and pull-offs (seriously, that red-yellow-blue-yellow-red stretch gives me fucking nightmares).
I'm also doing some java coding on the side, creating a program to import songs from the original guitar hero into guitar hero 2. I've been developing little tools to do specific tasks related to the game, and eventually I hope to create a full piece of software to allow people to customize their guitar hero2 game. Thus far, I have a tool to strip all songs from the game and reindex all the other files, and a little program to inject a new song into the game in place of another. Now, i'm writing a program to organize all the midi events from a GH1 song into the appropriate places in GH2, so that I can play the old song with the new hammer-on pull-off system, which should make it a lot more fun. Crossroads is going to be awesome once I'm finished.
From there, I plan on actually adding new songs into the game. Eventually releasing a sort of GH1.5, with all the original gh1 songs built around the GH2 engine, with a bunch of original songs injected in. Really, I just want to put the song 'way of thoughts' by Koyaanisqatsy in there, because I think it would be a lot of fun. We'll see how that goes. I've got pretty ambitious goals regarding this project, and being stuck on my back most of the day these days, I'm not making the progress I'd like to be making.
So many goals, so little time!
current mood: sore
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| Friday, October 27th, 2006
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7:20 am - hooray.
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So I've been plugging along at this gas station for almost a year now, dealing with long nights of tedium and boredom, not really taking any steps to go anywhere better. That's a problem I have, a general lack of motivation to go anywhere in life. It's not that I don't want to, but honestly, I tried to do things with my life, tried to get jobs that would be things I would enjoy, rather than just ways to scrape by whilst paying my rent and having almost no money left for 'enjoying'. I've dealt with a lot of failure, a lot of rejection, and I am more or less demoralized. I've learned that, without a college degree, the opportunities for computer work aren't so good.
The other day though, I saw an ad on craigslist for a "Math Programer" position. Really, that says it all, and is everything I could possibly want in a job. So I applied, stressing my math background more than the computer aspect, because really, while there are tons of people who can program like me, not everyone has the math down like I do, so I figured I had a chance. And it looks like I called it right, as I got a phone interview within 3 days, and today I have an in-person interview and math proficiency test. This thing could really go somewhere, and I'm positively giddy right now, to the point of not being able to sleep. Even as I tucked math classes away one by one under my belt, I always had this nagging thought in the back of my mind saying "math isn't going to get you a job", and now I'm so glad to have proven myself wrong. And relatively speaking, it is guaranteed to be better paying than what I have now (even with my insulting 25 cent/hr. raise). So today I'll see how this pans out, but it's looking pretty good, and I am anxious as fuck to finally get a decent computer job.
Other awesome happenings: A 10-song demo from guitar hero 2 made its way onto the internet, where it was promptly downloaded by me. Yay! I finished all the songs on expert, with the exception of Reverend Horton Heat's "Psychobilly Freakout". That song is ridiculous, and is going to take me some practice to complete. But I'm very happy with the smoothness of the hammer-ons and pull-offs in the new game. I'm also pretty amped on the tracklist, particularly with Megadeth's "Hangar 18", which promises a shitton of fun in multiplayer coop mode. Also appearing on the list of songs:
Dethklok - Thunderhorse (yeeeeah!)
??? - Trogdor (yes, from homestar runner... TROGDOR COMES IN THE NIIIIIIGHT!)
Dick Dale - Misilou (this is going to be fun!)
Final Fantasy XII leaked onto the net, where it was also download by me, and then played for nearly 60 hours in the span of 10 days or so. It's fun as hell, as does a really good job of blending real time combat with real time movement, free roaming sort of combat. It's really interesting, and pretty hard too. I can't remember the last time I died so many times in a Final Fantasy game. In fact, it was a pretty brutal ass beating that occured the other day that has disenchanted me for the time being, so I'm on break until I get the initiative to redo the 1.5 hours or so I had accumulated that was lost when I got murdered by that motherfucking Deathscythe. Brutal.
Estradasphere is wrapping up their monthlong tour soon, which means two of my housemates will be returning fairly soon. Making this fun is the fact that our rent just got jacked up by 10%, with the landlords citing 'increased energy costs' as the reason. Meanwhile, the county average rent increase was 2.9 percent, and our house has SOLAR PANELS supplying much of the energy. So, basically, much like 99% of the people in Santa Cruz, they saw a quick buck at the expense of some people who could barely afford to pay the already ludicrous price for their shitty house, and went for it. Santa Cruz is full of people like that, and it makes me sick. But alas, what's done is done, so we are questing for new housing, and as soon as the band returns, the house hunt begins. Jen and Adam are moving into a place of their own, leaving me, Lee, and Bobby to track down another place.
I hate looking for housing here. Seriously. There are so many fucking flakes here who have rigid lists of qualities for what they want in a housemate, and they don't mind at all disqualifying people who eat meat, or smoke, or happen to be male, or own electronics, etc, etc. Flakes, a whole city of flakes. It makes it so hard, these aging liberal douchebags who pretend on one hand to be all about good vibes and this 'one love' bullshit, but when it comes down to renting a place, if you aren't exactly like them, they're content tossing you to the wolves. And then, even if you fit their cookie cutter definition of 'ideal tenant', it becomes an extortion game. "How much can I take this sucker for before he folds and I can't bleed him dry anymore?". The whole business makes me sick.
But, it will all work out.
It always does.
current mood: anxious
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| Monday, September 25th, 2006
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12:10 pm - Horay
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Albums currently in heavy rotation at my place of employment:
Augury - Concealed (2004, Canada, Progressive Death Metal (think Origin meets Opeth))
Die Apokalyptischen Reiter - Riders on the Storm (2006, Germany, Experimental Death Metal)
Estradasphere - Palace of Mirrors (2006, USA, Experimental/World/Fusion (Instrumental))
Koyaanisqatsy (spelled from memory now) - From the Yearning to Burst the Perpetual Circle (2000,Germany,Prog (Instrumental))
Disillusion - Gloria (2006, Germany, Doom/Gothic (some drone-y stuff at times))
That's all for now, as nothing new and exciting has happened. I am coding a lot these days, and having a blast. Pretty soon I'm going to be setting up an actual website, to host all the little projects I've done, or are currently working on, starting with my guitar hero score extractor and my 'kunio-kun no dodgeball' translation, which i havent touched since november 25th, 2001. Around that time I had some hard drive issues, and lost some of my files i needed to translate. So I more or less gave up, but found out a few days ago that the rom file was still online, via the archive.org "wayback machine". I snagged that bitch and looked inside, and none of it made sense anymore. Heh.
I checked out the hex of the original, and busted through in record time using the new techniques i've learned in the 5 years i've been ignoring the game. Relative searches and Thingy tables, mostly, which make everything so damned easy. Before I knew it I had a full table, and had all the Japanese kana mapped to the romanji spelling, so the left pane was all hex, and the right pane was every word, spelled out right there, waiting for me to translate them.
I'm doing a lot of research these days too. Research, of course, being the term I use to refer to times when I am -trying- to code, but instead end up reading up for hours on things that I didn't know yet. Like trying to work with 3byte midi events in a web environment (seemingly impossible without resorting to java or flash). It seems like it should be so easy. A midi file is just a series of 'events' which tell the computer what to output. These events are tiny, a byte for the operation code, one for pitch, and one for velocity. Javascript can play a midi file no problem, meaning it is tearing apart that file into it's composite pieces and processing them. So why is it that I can't have it read 3 bytes I send it?
A roadblock. Brutal. I have some seriously epic plans in store with regards to my coding projects. I am going to make some awesome shit soon, just wait.
current mood: high
current music: Koyaanisqatsy - Way Of Thoughts
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| Sunday, September 10th, 2006
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7:26 am - A long overdue update
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After a slight prodding on my myspace page, I decided I should probably get caught up to date here. I've been insanely busy, and updating this thing was my last priority, so bleh.
First off, music. I recently downloaded an album by a German band called Koyaanisqatsy entitled "From The Yearning To Burst The Perpetual Circle". It's fucking sick. It's almost like what dream theater would sound like if they killed James Labrie and decided to just shred all the time. It's got some really atmospheric parts, and some pretty heavy parts, but throughout the entire thing, it's an onslaught of shredding guitar, crazy signatures, and tons of keyboards. It's really beautiful, and I guess these dudes are releasing another album in 2007, but this time, with a vocalist (female, in fact).
Also in music, Estradasphere is heading out on tour at the end of the month. Tour dates can be found on the website, estradasphere.com, and I suggest everyone make an effort to check them out, as they're creating some of the slickest innovative music that can be found these days. Some of their songs, including a new one ("Smuggled Mutation") can be heard on their myspace page, http://myspace.com/estradasphere. Dig it.
Speaking of the Estradasphere website... If you attempt to register for their forum, you'll notice the standard cut-n-dry registration process has been replaced with a custom front-end. That's all my doing. ;-] It was a little rushed, and had more than a few errors when it went live, but now it seems to be working pretty well. My contribution can be found at http://estradasphere.com/board/register.php, and contains a few fun toys, such as a server side 8-bit font, a random sheetmusic generator, and a virtual keyboard which must be used to play said random tune in order to gain posting rights. Completing the tune registers the user for the board, so those who wish not to be members of the board, do not play the tune. ;-]
That's right, anyone who wants to post needs to learn how to read music. Haha.
Anyway, the real beauty of the code isn't visible, but underneath that font generator is a preloaded font set comprised of tons of tiny gifs, which wasn't the original plan, but after coding this monstrosity, i uploaded it from MY site to their server only to find their GD (the php graphics package) was out of date and didn't support a function i really needed to use, so i had to code a workaround. Also awesome: the virtual keyboard, which is just one picture (generated via a php script, so if i want to make a bigger keyboard, i can change one variable and BAM), with the value of the key being pressed determined by a single calculation involving way too many modulos and ceiling/floor functions.
I've been working on other sites too. http://rockbox.psychocydd.co.uk, a metal bittorrent site, is kind of a playground. Originally, I showed up there and it was really slow, and the server kept dying because of excessive resource usage. After talking with the owner, and convincing him that i wasn't a total douchebag out to destroy the site, he gave me full access to the server, and I fixed every single problem. After fixing everything, I coded some extra functionality into the site, and continue to do so every now and then. It's a lot of fun, because not only do I get to help out a site that has helped me out in a huge way, but I can direct potential employers to it as an example of my work. Hell yeah.
I also did a quick repair job on http://myspleen.com, a bittorrent site for humor shows and cartoons, which is where i get most of my adult swim stuff from (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab, Metalocalypse, etc, etc). Not too long ago, something broke, and while people could upload torrents, the torrents weren't being placed into the location where the public could download them. This required manual intervention from the mods, as they had to grab the torrent from the tracker, and then place it into the torrents directory. The owner of myspleen wasnt so keen on giving out login info, so I requested files one at a time via AIM, and directed him regarding what changes to make. Within an hour, everything was working again, and I got my name on the front page. Again, Hell yeah.
I also was totally smitten by the newspaper girl. And you know, she has a boyfriend, and she just moved to Washington, but I can't stop thinking about her. It's not often I meet an attractive female who likes metal, wears viking runes around her neck, and (this is the kicker) actually hangs around and talks to me for extended periods of time. Before her departure, I had something to look forward to at work, and hauled ass to get as much shit done as possible so I'd have more time to relax and talk. Standing outside the gas station, Finntroll playing through the speakers at the pumps, and just talking to her, feeling like time had completely stopped, leaving me in total tranquility. I have a really hard time talking to girls, but something about her made it so easy. And her eyes, I don't even know what to say, except she had the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen. And I see her eyes over and over again in my memory, everytime I see the newspaper van pull up to the store I think about her.
I thought when she left, things would simmer down, but not so much. She's still there in my thoughts, smiling, looking at me with those enchanting eyes, distracting me from thinking about coding, or any number of other things which are guaranteed to be more pressing matters.
At least I beat Bark at the Moon on Guitar Hero. In fact, I've beaten every song except "The Breaking Wheel", which, due to my inability to do up and down strumming (I play it with all downstrokes, which makes me really precise on most songs, but there is a ceiling to how fast i can go) is simply too fast. But everything else I have knocked down and tied up, scoring 5 stars on almost every song.
I've been having some computer issues lately, but have been too poor to take care of them.
1. The hard drive storing my videos (music, movies, tv shows) starting having read/write errors, and i couldnt afford to replace it
2. My monitor threw a fit, and now will stay on for 5 minutes before powering down on it's own, and filling the room with a nasty stench
3. Not really a problem, but since I don't have a mac, testing my pages in Safari hasn't been possible (aside from using someone else's mac, but that kind of fucks up the repeated incremental updates way of doing things)
4. (the worst) I knocked my mp3 player off a file cabinet at work, and instantly fucked up the HD inside. No music at work. :(
I also met (through Lee) a totally badass dude named Scott, who showed up out of nowhere like some sort of guardian angel and helped me out in a bunch of ways. He works in IT, and came across a lot of free computer equipment. After hanging out for a little while, it seems that we both share the same love of technology, computers, networking, all that fun stuff. He's a tech guy, which is great. I don't know any tech guys, I know musicians, so I don't really have anyone to talk to about tech stuff. So I'm talking with Scott, and we hit it off quick. After hearing about my computer issues, he gave me:
1. New hard drives (SATA!) to take care of my storage issue
2. a 15 inch LCD monitor to fix the monitor issue
3. An emac, for testing pages in a mac environment
4. A Dell Axim, to play music at work
Now, obviously he didn't have to do this. Most people wouldn't. Most people would come across free equipment and instantly see dollars signs in their eyes. This guy passed up money so he could help me out with problems I couldn't afford to fix. That sort of kindness is rare, and it makes me feel really good to know this guy. I share that same attitude to helping people, and sometimes it seems that I'm the only one willing to take a loss to help someone. Finding someone who will lend a hand when it's 'economically viable' is easy, but finding someone who is willing to help at cost to himself is not so easy. This guy knew me less than a week and fixed every problem I had, and I can't even describe how awesome that is on so many different levels.
In return, I'm giving him probably the one thing he doesn't have yet, a totally pimped out modded xbox, the perfect addition to any home network.
So that's a chunk of life, in a nutshell. Lots and lots of coding, with so much more to come. I've got some epic ideas right now, and I am planning on unleashing some seriously sick shit on the internet, the likes of which have never been seen before. I finally came up with ideas that haven't been done yet, but that I think people would be interested in. And really, that's the hardest part. I wish I had more time though. I have so many things I want to do, and never enough time to do them all.
I just want to code. All the time.
current mood: badass
current music: none (peeps are sleeping)
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| Saturday, July 22nd, 2006
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7:21 am - Music
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First, I have reached 87% completion on "Bark at the Moon" on expert difficulty (playing the game Guitar Hero). Pretty soon I should be able to actually finish it! I'm tearing shit up on that game now, having completed all standard songs on expert with the exceptions of Bark at the Moon and Cowboys From Hell. I'm also claiming a decent amount of high scores, only to have them snatched back by Lee or Bobby, but it's cool, because we're all forcing eachother to continuously get better and better. The thing with Guitar Hero, you see, is that there is no way to view the top scores for the songs. The only way to see the top 5 for a song is to finish the song on that difficulty (to see expert scores, finish on expert, etc). This means that foremost, you can't view the scores of songs you can't complete, and even if you can finish the song, having to play it just to see who has the top score is silly. So...
So I wrote a bit of PHP code that can take a GH data file (stored on the memory card) and extract all the scores from it, then display them in an easy-to-read chart, to make seek-and-destroy missions more effective. Anyway, you can see the end result at http://www.mmu96.com/gh/gh.php and laugh at how few scores I have.
On the 16th, I saw Emperor in LA, and it was fucking awesome. Samoth couldn't get into the country because of some bullshit where if you burn down a church or something they won't give you a visa, so they had a replacement, but the show was great. The opening bands, Crematorium and Goatwhore, were pretty weak, so rather than watch them, me and Lee went out and drank heavily, then came back to find goatwhore playing, so we went and drank more. And then watched Emperor. The tickets were 75 bucks (after ticketbastard fees), and as if that wasn't enough to drop on a single show, I bought an Emperor hoodie for 60 bucks (brutal) to replace my grey one.
Also awesome: Ihsahn having trouble getting his guitar on for the encore, because his newly donned shoulder spikes were getting caught on the strap. heh.
And as if that wasn't enough awesomeness, Me, Lee, and his 2 buddies from Georgia went to the Thine Eyes Bleed/Children of Bodom/Mastodon/Lamb of God/Slayer show in San Jose on the 19th, with backstage passes courtesy of on old friend of Lee & Co. who was touring with Mastodon. So we watched the first three bands (I had never heard Thine Eyes Bleed before, they were pretty sick), then went backstage and partied and missed Lamb of God and Slayer. Hehhehe. The guys from Thine Eyes Bleed were really chill, and a lot of fun to hang out with.
I also snapped this pic- from L to R, Darryl Stevens (Thine Eyes Bleed drummer), Jaska Raatikainen (Children of Bodom drummer), and Lee Smith (Estradasphere drummer)
OMG SO MANY DRUMMERS
current mood: high
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| Thursday, July 13th, 2006
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6:10 pm - Played, again.
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So it seems I've been fucked over by another college, without even attending a day of class.
I applied to Cabrillo College, and met with a counselor to verify that I would meet in-state tuition requirements, because I couldn't afford to pay out of state tuition (I had been here a year, with documentation, so I was told that I would be considered in-state). So all was well and good, until I had to get a root canal and spend 400 bucks. So I tried to withdraw online from the class, but couldn't log into the online system. Checking my email, I realized a registration email was never sent, so I didn't even have a password. So I figured I'd wait until the registration confirmation arrived by mail and take care of it that way.
So days pass, and on June 21st (the day after the class started) I got the form in the mail, claiming I was out-of-state, and that I owed them 850 bucks. The registration form was dated the 7th and postmarked the 20th, meaning it was sent at a point where I would not know about the extra 700 dollars in fees until it was impossible to cancel the class. So I called the number and left a message, and waited. Finally, today someone called me back, and when I said I wanted the class canceled, I was told "no, it was your responsiblity to verify your status" (which I did, via a meeting with their own fucking counselor). When I pointed out that I would have canceled immediately after learning of the 850 dollar bill, and that they had a responsibility to send their mail on time, she said (exactly) "As soon as you registered, an email should have been sent out. (pause) Maybe not".
I caught the 'maybe not' and asked why she said that, and she replied that "it appeared the email was never sent". So thinking maybe she realized now that i had no way of knowing about the extra fees, asked again if she could eliminate the class, and she told me know, and said it was still my fault. So somehow, when a counselor lies to me about my residency status, and they fail to send my registration info via email, and then they print out my confirmation and sit on it for two weeks before mailing it out the DAY THE CLASS STARTS, I somehow am to blame, and I should pay them 850 dollars.
Right now they're thinking "boy, this is the easiest money we've ever made, and there's nothing he can do about it". What a fucking scam.
It bothers me that souless people like the bitch I talked to can exist.
current mood: angry
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| Saturday, July 1st, 2006
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7:55 am - An Internet Riddle
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I am having a lot of fun with this, so I thought I'd share.
http://deathball.net/notpron/
More or less, it's a riddle, which tests some very specific internet-related skills.
Have fun, try to catch me at level 14.
current mood: high
current music: Devin Townsend - Triumph
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| Friday, June 16th, 2006
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8:13 am - MySQL
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As mentioned in a previous post, I've been learning a lot about PHP and MySQL by throwing myself into a perilous and complicated situation and working my way out bit by bit. In my time working on the rockbox site (http://rockbox.psychocydd.co.uk) I've mastered JOINs, learned about indexing and proper JOINing for fast queries, some neat authentication tricks, and so many other things. The code I was working with was complex and devious, so I had to push myself just to get up to speed. And it was awesome, because I got a really good grip on PHP and MySQL.
So Habib tells me that he has this website he needs to finish, but he was swamped with other work and the guy who did all the code left, and when they moved the page to the new home server, a lot of things broke. So I tell him what a PHP beast I am, and he hires me to fix the things that are broken. That in itself is totally awesome. But it gets better. I'm checking out the various queries that are failing, and find one that looks like this:
SELECT * FROM users, resumes WHERE users.ID = $currentUser AND resumes.RESUME_ID = $resumetodelete
Now, since I assume the typical reader of this journal probably doesn't do anything with mysql, here's a quick lesson.
SELECT * FROM is a command to get all data (* = all fields) from the two tables users and resumes. the comma between the tables performs what is called a CROSS JOIN on the tables, which basically creates a set of data rows consisting of every possible combination of a row from users and a row from resumes. WHERE tells it to narrow down the data by applying contingencies to the data. In this case, in order for a row to be retained, the ID field must be equal to the current variable named $currentuser. in addition, because of the AND, the RESUME_ID from the resumes table must be equal to the $resumetodelete variable.
Now, I realize that was a shoddy job of explaining it, but basically, there is a serious problem here, caused by the fact that a CROSS JOIN generates all possible combinations of data. Adding to this problem, the $resumetodelete variable was being passed in the URL, meaning it could be modified at will. Because no comparison was done between the two tables, a row of data would be generated every single time the query was passed, and since it didn't check the owner of the resume, it allowed manual typing of the resume id, and deletion of other people's resumes.
Buried in syntax, one little mistake. But dangerous as hell, just from using the wrong type of JOIN. And I learned enough in just a few weeks to dig right into the heart of this mass of foreign code and find the damned achilles heel, and goddamnit, it feels fucking good. I try not to pat myself on the back too much, but this was the ultimate victory over all space and time, and was a welcome reality check regarding just how much I learned. So I am working on this site, knocking off problems one by one, fixing half-coded routines, adding functions that were called but never actually written, coded a secure password reset system, added authentication checks to admin areas... I'm having so much fun with this, and making loot too, so it is 100% total glory.
Also glorious: Bobby moved into Dave's room. This is awesome for so many reasons, some of which include:
- he eats meat
- he shreds tons of megadeth guitar solos
- he plays castlevania music on the piano in the living room
- he brought a controller for 'guitar hero' into the household and corrupted all of our lives
Ah, guitar hero... I'm pretty fucking shitty at it, but slowly getting better. At least the cramps are starting to fade, once I can play without it physically hurting me, I bet I'll do a lot better, but right now, my left hand wasn't meant to bend in those ways. But it certainly is a hell of a lot of fun to play. Bobby totally shreds at that game, and has pretty much every single high score on expert (I fought long and hard to capture the record on Thunderkiss 65, so he doesn't quite have a monopoly). Me and Lee are gaining ground, but not very fast. Adam played a few times the first night we had the guitar, and managed to complete several songs on expert, despite never playing the game before. He just 'got' it, instantly, it was sick. No learning curve at all.
I can't wait for the Nintendo Wii.
It is going to be glorious.
current mood: totally badass
current music: Strapping Young Lad - Far beyond metal
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dieselmachine's journal