So yesterday I was bashing forums [inlink]paul,4156[/inlink] and today I was at howardforums to look and see if they had any updated info about firmware for my cellphone. While I was there I looked at a post about the difference between the tmobile version of my phone and the sprint one.

Someone asked, which is better GSM(tmobile) or EVDO (sprint)? One answer came like this. On eline response with about 15 lines about the War. Is that ever necessaray, I think if I built a better forum application one liners would only be allowed as comments and quotes would just be banned. Maybe a link to user baout the info where they could find it and that would be it. If that was the case you would not have to click through 35 pages to find about 10 lines of meaningful information.



I think the answer is a programmatic solution. I am going to write code that eats phpBB and other popular forums and distills them into tiny infomration pages minus userpics, minus quotes, minus animated gifs and minus style.

This one is even weirder They have a link for everything they do. Click the link to see it. Do they really need a itunes user link? Here is the site that makes the stupid bars.

I love squid and I love my phone. This is what happens when they mix.


I am addicted to fresh squeezed orange juice. I had three glases today. maybe $10.00 is an excessive orange juice bill.


So all the money I used to spend on partying and going out, I just spend on food nowadays.

Discuss is coming along very well. I actually integrated with estrip by changing only like three lines of code. The userbase system for it is totally modular so that t can work with any system that has user logins and keeps track of email addresses.

I am so tired from working on the site time issue till like 8am. You have no idea what it is like to read through 10,000 forums of crap to get to one obscure reference to something that might help but which inevitably does not.

Worst feeling: Remote rebooting a machien that you are barely on speaking terms with and hoping that the machine comes back to life after a remote reboot - even if it's not fixed - because it's locked in a basement far away from you and its the middle of the night.

[size=m]Forums[/size]
They are about 90% wasted whitespace, animated gifs , quotes of previously quoted quotes of previously quoted quotes, and personal quotes and song lyrics tacked onto a minimal amount of information.

I really hate those forums where the last post has every other post quoted and inside of it.

What should have happend is that 80% of responses should have simply been comments on the original post and there should be one central document. Much more liek a wiki.

Like when some asks a serious question and then the first four pages of responses on a forum are just one word repsonses saying, "no idea" or "word up" it is insane. Especiallys seeing as most forum/message software is so poorly deisgned that each one word response recieves a userpic, seventy five buttons of some nature, a userpic a date stamp, a location, an some sort of animated gif.

Here we have an example one response that says "bosssss" ironically in response to one post that said "word" and it takes up the whole screen. It is a perfect exmaple of when a forum is not needed. They could have just had some way to comment on the original data posted.



[size=m]Tangent: IE for Mac Dies[/size]
I was so satisfied when I found out that Microsoft has offically discontinued that piece of shit browser to the point where you can't even download it anymore. I got to put up a message for the rideforroswell site. It was the most satisfying moment of my web programming design career.

I am going to write a poem about what it feels like to search forums till 8am.

[size=m]Disgruntled Forum Victim[/size]
google, yahoo
search, search, search,
read, next page
You suck, no you suck, no you suck
read, next page
(Your) a noobie. (know you're) a noobie, remember that simpsons episode,
read, next page
don't you know it is you are a noobie,
twelve more pages of grammer about not the topic

reboot, wait, reboot, wait
reboot, wait, reboot, wait

next, next, next. skip to last
tanget, way to many pretty colors of higlighted an quoted irrevlevent text
maybe I missed it on page 47
read, previous page,
animated gif, twelve page useless quote, animated gif
read, previous page,
fancy javascript that crashes the whole page to diplay a dancing banana
read, previous page
recap of the first three pages
back to where you started
animated gif
next forum

reboot, wait, reboot, wait
reboot, wait, reboot, wait

search, search, search
read, next page
My computer is the best, (know) my computer is the best, no my computer is the best
not again
read, next page
Animated gif
read, next page

reboot, wait, reboot, wait
reboot, wait, reboot, wait

Next forum, search but it's broken
quote in a quote in a quote in a quote, in a quote, in a quote to say it is in fact newbie
10,000 pages read,
the contents of one tiny pamplet distilled
maximized inefficiency
die forums, fucking die

So you may ask how I eventually solved it. Well I tried every possible boot option for dealing with time and power on linux and eventuall clock=pit worked.

What can the story behind this be?



I found a link to my High School reunions photo gallery Everyone looks so much larger than I remember. I specifically remember being jealous of how sporty these guys were. I guess times have changed.

socker, socker




Even Chris B got fat? Maybe it's just a weird angle - swim team

I spent the day doing a million different programming tasks at work then during my break I did some design. They bought me the new Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash so it seems like there may be some designing afterall.

My discuss program looks a lot better with a skin on it. There are already two themes. This is the brown one. I have been looking for something to do in brown and purple and this is it, I guess.





I promise I will release it for beta testing soon. First I need to put the finishing touches on it. Basically it is like a group email/document editor - chat program where you can upload attachments for everyone to look and keep track of changes. When the dicussion is compelete. E.g. the document has been fully edited and agreed upon, is it exported and removed from the system.

The system is not a repository for the info but more like a tool to create a document for a group of people without having to rely on lots of emails. Plus instad of having to send all the attachments all over the place, the people come to them,

Yesterday I day I had to move some data to a computer that was not networked to the web. It had been a long time since I had experienced that. Usually I just use my phone to reach out the the web when the computer can't do it by itself, so basically I have been like a walking network access point for years now. I didn't have my phone with me and so I tried to use an ipod shuffle to move the data and for some reason the computer would not accept it as drive. It just never popped up. We actually tried two different ones.



I could have burned a CD but we are talking about 1K of data. It was so tiny I could have just printed it out and typed it back in. It was about 1 page of text. Then one of my coworkers suggested a floppy. I had totally forgotten that they existed - have you young peeps even ever seen one? I remember punching holes in the big ones. Well not the really big ones but the 5 and 1/4 ones.

Anyways it worked and was really fast considering it was a 1k transfer. I think it was really 4k in the end because eof the file structure. Long live the floppy, lol.



On another note, have you noticed more places are moving toward the automated cashier. I hate that. Who wants that. Obviously not the consumer and obviously not the people who want jobs. I think there is no reason I should have to check myself out when I am buying their product. Have Americans because so "Automated" they can't even handle a simple sales transaction with a human. Home depot has them now.

Remember a while back I was ranting [inlink]paul,4123[/inlink] about some local design company that I thought did the most horrible web designs . Well I ended up having a meeting with Mr. Flynn himself today and he really does have no sense of web style. Seems like a nice guy but just look at this



It has enough faded white to make me feel like I am in heaven or that I left my computer out in the sun too long. Yuck and the drop shadow is out of control. If I had him as a student I would have given this design an F- .

I wish they would have let me just design and program The Ride For Roswell Site instead of just "draping" his tacky photshop skins over my quality content adminsitration/editing system. The Ride For Roswell Site suggests nothing about a bicycle race accept the new "Intro To Digital Media Art/Look Mommy I Can use Photoshop To Make A Collage" splash graphic.

At one point he actually suggested that I stick a big bright yellow star across the "splash page." He had printed out a photoshop doc to show me what a big yellow star looks like. It was horrific.

During the whole thing I never let on that I was a designer. I just pretended to be a clueless programmer with no opinion because I knew that if we discussed it I was going to start laughing. This is the only reason I want to finish my thesis. So when this issue comes up I can say that I am a "Master of Fine Arts."

On another note yet still, the new chat was a huge sucess. Yeah for SQLite. I am going to convert much of my life to it. The new discuss application is based on it. You can play with it soon.

Google has an extraordinary amount of information about its users. It logs all the searches made on it and stores this information indefinitely. Because every computer has a unique IP (internet protocol) address, every visit to every website can be traced back to the computer making it - a fact which is well known in geek circles but remarkably under-publicised outside them. (Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist, was given 10 years in jail last April for "leaking state secrets" after Yahoo! in Hong Kong handed over information linking his IP address and his e-mail to the Chinese authorities.) Users of Google's Gmail service, who are already having their e-mails scanned to place targeted ads, have given the company their identity, a full record of all their searches and copies of all their e-mails, stored indefinitely. Users of Google's Toolbar are inadvertently giving the company a list of not just all their searches but also of every single website they visit. And, as the lawsuit makes clear, all this information is potentially vulnerable to subpoena.
Quoted from: Big Google is watching you - Sunday Times - Times Online

I have said this for so long.

Basically, I am saying that belief in God is not totally harmless for everyone or the advancement of science unless believers do nothing to act on their beliefs when they conflict with science.

Religion is not a hindrance to advancing as a people scientifically, intellectually, or otherwise. To state otherwise is patently false and ignores the totality of human existence. [inlink]jason,298[/inlink] --jason

Jason, don't know about patently false, that sounds like a bit of an exaggeration in country where we have been fighting to teach evolution [inlink]paul,3438[/inlink] in school for a century and where people are dying of all sort of diseases that can be cured or alleviated by advancements associated with stem cell research.

I think you could say, "Believing in religion, without acting upon it, is not a hindrance to advancing as a people scientifically, intellectually, or otherwise. " But who believs in religion without acting upon it. And if they do, do they really believe?

I would like to use this example speech at whitehouse.gov by the President George Bush in regard to Stem Cell research as an example of when religious influence hinders science.

I've asked those questions and others of scientists, scholars, bioethicists, religious leaders, doctors, researchers, members of Congress, my Cabinet, and my friends. I have read heartfelt letters from many Americans. I have given this issue a great deal of thought, prayer and considerable reflection. And I have found widespread disagreement . . . Thank you for listening. Good night, and God bless America. --GW Bush

I don't want the social and legal policy I am subjected to based on my ultimate executive's prayer power in any way.

Surely, we can develop other methods of getting stem cells in the future so that we can avoid having to use embryonic ones. But the embryonic stem cell method exists here now and many people could be helped by the research that will be dead by the time we catch up with other methods. Furthermore, I am terrified of other countries having access to this technology before we do. Especially China.

Saying "I believeeeee in God" has never hindered me in any way, and it never will. -jason

That is fine for you because you are the one believing but what about the people whose lives affected by the social and legal policy agenda set forth by the believers. Belief in God is not safe in a free society where the people with the belief are also able to make social and legal policy based on those beliefs, for people that do not believe in the same God or do not believe in God at all. And if the people making policy that believ in God do not let God's desires influence them, then do they really believ in God?

There isn't anyone alive who can say with any matter of truth or authority God is real or not.[inlink]jason,298[/inlink] --jason

I think this is precisely why many people are uncomfortable submitted to the desires of God's moral and ethic code.

So I have this lingering love for (WIKIPEDIA - Happy Hardcore) Happy Hardcore music. You can hear it here It is the music I program to most. Well tonight n Rochester there is a happy hardcore night at a bar there and it is 21+. Most often these events are fully of youngins but the fact that it's 21+ makes me want to go and dance it up. Plus it's somehow related to the murder mystery game clue.

Too bad none of my friends like to dance anymore. Well (e:lilho) does but she is in NYC.





--update - This was the worst event I ever attended. It was at a bar the size of merlins with a 4 x4 dancefloor that had also had the turntables on it. However, they did give out free shots for Oprahs birthday.

I was thinking about (e:decoyisryan)'s journal [inlink]decoyisryan,1[/inlink] where he mentioned that he went to school for Public Communication but doesn't have a lot of experience. It kind of sounds like my brother (e:mike) who is also working retail in his post degree period. In order to take the next step you really need to just go ahead and do it.

For a long time I was addicted to school. I think it was because I was convinced that working was not interesting, judging by the ridiculous jobs I had in the past. I went so far as thinking that I wanted to be a professor.

Eventually, I decided that if I couldn't have the job doing what I liked, that I would just pretend I did and dedicate my life to a project I could prove myself with. What a good idea that was. At some point it developed in this site. So ya, it and other related projects took up a lot of my personal time but honestly, it was worth every minute as I advanced my skillset a 1000% more than I ever did in school. Then I found the job I have now which made it all worth it.

I would say, take on a couple resume builders in whatever it is you like to do. If you get good at what you do, you eventually will start to be knownfor it and make a place for yourself.

Speaking of which, (e:decoyisryan), if you ever want to do some Public Communication stuff for this site I would be happy to get some help. What kid of stuff do you do?

So today, I did so many things at work. I got much further on my discussion application, I receieved and installed Visual Studio.NET and built a Pocket PC Phone app(lame one), rebuilt a flash movie for the Roswell Site, and built the splash page for the new wirless network coming to Roswell in conjunction with Verizon. I really do love SQLite. I think I am swearing off MSSQL for now. Although, its not very hard to switch back and forth.

Here is the verizon splash screen after I redeigned it a little bit.


Here it was originally.


For dinner we tried to go to Jimmy Macs. Although, not even though not one table was filled they told us it would take 15 minutes. As we were not in the mood to wait, even for the yummy bacon Cheese Burger [inlink]paul,3944[/inlink], we went to Saharagrill. I am a big fan of fatoosh. I guess (e:terry) and (e:lilho) do to , judging by the size of their trough sized fatoosh bowl.