I normally love my job. In fact while working on the blackberry web site today using a real blackberry for once, I thought back to all those journals where I talked about wanting to do mobile development and there I was doing it. It's coming along quite well. I even wrote an excel parser that would take the excel based menus for the week and notify the mobile user what specials were up for the day.

Anyways, so I love that and then at about 6:00PM just before I left for work one of my co-workers asked me to take on one of the projects he is working. The work is for a good cause/site. It's the Ride for Roswell Site

Unfortunately, the kind of work it is, it is the kind of work I hate more than anything in the world. It is a squishy mix of old and new crappy machine generated code to wade through. The machine generated code looks like it comes from a combination of dreamweaver and the on site WYSIWYG system that writes the most mutated code I have ever seen. In fact only a machine with no emotions and not a human could write such disgusting code. capital, lowercase, css, markup, style tag, font tag, argh



The thing is it is not specifically the fault of any programmer but rather the system they used. It has a CMS system that involves a WYSIWYG online text editor which creates the crappy code. Unfortunately, now that they have this WYSIWYG editor they are going to crave it and I got the job with only about 10 days to fix it all up and make a new cms or fix the old one.

For the sake of the future me, I see no point in working in classic ASP and VBscript, the language that was used to write the system in the first place so it will have to be a quick re-write. I wish I could have had a little more advanced time to not just patch it up.

I hope it is not the beginning of a series of horrible fixer uppers or I am going to relocate to California. I hate fixing up mushing human/machine, old/new crap code. That is exactly one of the main reasons I wanted to stop being a professor. It thought I was going to be a developer.

All this data entry for the themes upgrade is making me ill. It is really bringing me back to all those mind numbing jobs I had as a teenager. The worst data entry job ever was working for Sorrento cheese.

They had this giant main frame computer and wanted all the data entered into a windows one in excel. I spent weeks sitting in a refrigerated room entering numbers and adresses into the system.

What confuses me looking back on this, is why it wasn't it automated. I mean having the human in between left plenty of room for error. Especially one getting like $9.00/hr.

I had about 15 jobs like that during he summers of high school.    

I smashed my toe the other night on a toolbox in the middle of the kitchen floor in the dark. Yesterday, I could barely walk. Today it feels a little better but its bruised and swollen and I can't move it much.
I hope this isn't the beginning of a lifelong "bad" toe.

It's weird how the chat box has become such a huge feature of the site. Tonight there were so many peeps chatting. Someday I will have to build a more rebust system.

Right now I have spent the last two days entering all remaining messy text data into the database. This is especially important for the theme system. With it in the database I can begin to analyse the relationship between the colors and teach the web site to build themes for me.

In response to Jim's comment on my last journal:

I would like a reasonable upload rate >1mbps with a static IP. The cheapest quote I could get without a two year commitment or an insane installation fee was through adelphia which quoted me at $99/month.

Verizon would be alright if we had a phone line but we don't as we all have cell phones. They refuse to sell me a static IP with a reasonable upload rate without first buying a business phone line which too much extra with the three mobile lines we already have through sprint. The last time I checked they wanted to charge me about $120-30 per month plus taxes and a $100 installation fee along with a contract. Maybe things have changed as that was last semester.

Any other ideas? I tried some other DSL companies that offered to sell DSL without phone service but none of them serviced the area.

I am a little depressed but I am sure it's the weather. I really can have no complaint in life. I got love, a great job, good food, cute pets, and almost too many friends. I guess the problem must be the weather or the server. or the weather's affect on my feelings for the server.

Sometimes I find myself really hoping for global warming. Like in that movie, Where in The Hell Is North Tonawanda . I suppose it is almost here because it has barely snowed yet and here we are approaching mid January. Its the greyness that really kills me. I don't want to leave Buffalo. I love it here in tems of the people, the size of the city, the housing, food, etc. It is just that I spend so much time sitting inside thinking about how horrible it would be to go outside. Maybe I should just try and get into freezing rain and mud. I mean if I could just overcome my aversion to those two things, I gues soutside could be funside.

I slept really crappy because I was up till 6am updating the server. That last thing I saw before I fell asleep was that PHP 5.1.1 and all the extensions I needed had finally compiled. Thank god that's over. I had to upgrade to the new version of PHP so that the server was compatible with the new site code.

Honestly, I am so sick of maintaining the site from afar. I really need to get my server at home connected. (e:terry) doesn't want me to pay for it to be here. At least not yet because it costs around $100/month. There are many days where I spend 5 hours doing a 2 hour task because I have to do it across the network. I mean there are ways I could offset the cost, for exmaple hosting other sites. The thing is that I don't have time for another job at this point and the thought of being responsible for more sites sounds sickening.

I think so far I spent about ~$5000 and way more than 3000 hours of work on this site. That is assuming that I only worked on it 20 hours a week. While recently, I have been holding true to that, before I definately spent many more hours than that. Especially during the time when the site's abse code was being developed. There are so many things I had to redo because of lack of experience in 2003. The 20 hours are not just programming. I do server maintence, graphic design, PR, testing, answer customer service questions, deal with optimization of the database, fix old bugs, and make new stuff. Its pretty much like being a one man volunteer company.

The remember bufflao site is just going to die unless I get a connection and more importantly some serious volunteers because I can't afford to spend more time on another long distance internet project at this point. I think the idea is so great but I have yet to score even one committed volunteer.

I was going to try and work with artvoice but I am too afraid I will get dragged into a lot of other stuff and I can't afford the time right now and having the server across town is frankly just far away as having it in Vancouver. At least that is my thinking at this point. I also cannot manage to have a daytime business appointment with anyone.

The dinner party looks like it is going to be a success. (e:matthew), (e:terry) and (e:lilho) have done a fantastic job. Now it is my turn.

we made it to the ball drop. I put a video of the Bufalo, NY 2006 New Year's Ball Drop on paulvisco.org

It is definitely only a myth that First Night is alcohol and drug free.

I hope we make the ball drop.

So we get to my mom's house and she is cooking the giant scallops I saw at wegman's. Of course thy are wrapped in bacon, yum!