I had a much better day programming today. At work I met with the Human Resources guy who I am working for and we were able to clarify a lot of questions I had about the employee evaluation system. I still had to wait to make some changes because the database guy had the day off today and I do not have privileges to change anything.

Almost no one was at work today. It felt weird being there alone in the evening but it was pretty productive. I got a lot of programming done and the system seems promising after all.

I also came home and added a whole lot of new features to surebert including multi file upload via the mini surebert flash file but exposed as a javascript service. I wish I had bothered doing that before. I should be done with the new version this weekend and then I will add it to estrip. Soon you will no longer need to upload one file at a time, thank god.

I am also excited because tomorrow I am getting my new Wifi camera that will speak to my journal. It is the Nikon s7c I love the idea of high resolution wifi communication between my new fancy camera and my journal.

Quotes from

It's the day after Thanksgiving and you're sick of turkey...join Knowmatic Tirbe for another helping of...

HAMBURGER HELPER V.2

featuring the infamous KNOWMATIC TRIBE SOUNDSYSTEM...

Christ Sinister a.k.a. Mr. Ass, God Morgen, Marcos, Xotec...with assorted special guests, perverts, deviants, farm animals and sociopaths.

ALL DOOR PROCEEDS to benefit the GOOD TIME KID FUND (Mr Ass' mounting medical expenses due to his ongoing battle with brain cancer).

Chris came thru his surgery surprisingly well, however only time will tell what effect the chemo and radiation will have on the remainder of the tumor still in his skull...the doctors could not remove the entire tumor, because it would have adversely affected his speech and comprehenson skills. Chris is tolerating the chemo very well (not surprising given all the chemicals he injested over the years...heh heh)...Average life expectancy for his agressive cancer is usually 18-36 months, however his doctors are optimistic about his chances to survive and thrive. We continue to keep hope alive!

One scary fact I learned the other day...one chemo pill costs over $200 dollars! Chris needs many in order to beat this....Medicaid has been helpful, but it doesn't cover it all and does not begin to cover all the costs for the specialists that Chris has on his side.

So please, come join us for a night of high wierdness and the future funk that only the Knowmatic Tribe can provide...

suggested "donation" is only $5....the flyer is done and about town tonight.

I wonder if he is treated by the group over at

I have been cleaning the kitchen this morning while making cranberry sauce. I love to make cranberry sauce - it tastes so good. I often question why it is we only eat it one time a year.

I always make it with oranges and ginger. I think it tastes best that way. Best of all cranberry sauce is very easy to make. Some cranberry's in a saucepan with some water/orange juice. Cook till they are mushy add sugar and orange zest to taste. Lots of sugar in my case. Then I generally take some of the seeds off the top when they float up, although I don't think this is quite necessary.









The lime video

::Download Flash Video::

There is also this mouse living in the cabinet in the kitchen. I think his name is rupert. He has horded so much food it is insane. It actually smells like mouse in the cupboard which is digusting. I want to clean it up really bad with the vacuum. In fact my super vacuum would make the task a breeze but (e:matthew) insists that if we clean it up he is going to go into the other food. I don't think this is a very effective way of combating the mouse. He wants to catch him and set him free. I want to smash him. I guess we are just different like that. I feel like at this point he has invaded my space and forfeited his right to niceness that say a mouse outside my house would get.







While I was waiting I decided to clean up the kitchen. I was listening to my pandora station as I mostly do when listening to music. They had an add for a new device that plays pandora stations. I think I want one of those for christmas.



Pandora is often very good at picking music for me but sometimes it starts to mutate my taste sin a really fucked up way. For example my kimya station. I like kimya. Pandora thinks that means I like girl indie rock so it starts to give me lots of girl band music. There is lots of lesbian rock music in it. Now I would not really think of Kiya as lesbian rock music but she is a female indie artist so that isthe connection. Sometimes girl rock like Indigo Girls or Melissa Etehridge gets in there which are kind of like country music. Because I don't give those the thumb down (either I am busy prograing or cooking in this case) it continues on along this horrible path. It assume that mellisa etheridge is kind of like country music so it starts to add country music which inevitably leads to a song about jesus, defiantely girl rock music about jesus is not my thing but I let it go once again because I am busy. I think it starts to get an attitute at this point. It thinks, "So you like jesus girl music and country." Lets go ahead and try gospel and that's where no matter what I am doing I put my foot down. It's the craziest mutation of my like for Kimya as she is definately not gospel music.

I also realized it wa sthis sick blend of girl bands that is bringing me down. On Friday I am switching back to techno.

I just woke up after passing out at 7 from a horrible headache. I am so hungry because it hurt so bad I couldn't eat dinner before. I have had two of these headaches in the last week resulting in me going to bed as soon as I get home from work, weird. I never really had them before but they are the most terrible pain it makes you to throw up.

I think part of it is stress and the other part is that my new office is barely warm and my neck gets tense when it is cold. Today I just wore my scarf. I think my cubicle gets coldest because it is near a window.

The guys on the other side of the building have very warm cubicles that get sun. I am jealous. I just might buy a freakin space heater for in my cube.



The picture of the computer on the floor is (e:enknot)'s old one at work. Doesn't it look sad thrown on the floor and all naked.

My heater finally came for my home office. It makes the room really warm but it still smells a little weird.



I am so glad tomorrow will be a feast. Oh shit, I forgot to make cranberry sauce. I better get up early.

I had this idea which will make stuff easier in the future but it requires some retrofitting. I hope my heater is at home when I get there.

After reading the omgblog I started to think that maybe my blog was too boring for pop culture loving americans. I guess that is okay with me. I wish I had more freetime to write like back when I was a student and was busy communting around a lot. I think commuting is the best time to blog, although it is potentially life threatening.

Well, it took long enough but today was graduation day celebration with my family and it was great. We went back to marotto's It is a delicious restaurant in Buffalo. I had lobster tail. I haven't had it in years and it was exceptionally delicious.

I am determined to eat more of them which I know is cruel or something. I want to order them from this online store in Maine They have jumbo 2.5 Lb ones for $26 and I have some graduation money to use up but the problem is deciding to have them shipped dead or alive. If they come dead I have no guarantee how fresh they are. If they are shipped live it is cruel.

I updated the surebert site. I decided to start making demos. I a thinking about writing a book on javascript programming? I really have so many other things I could do with my time, but I figure it may be good and then I could promote surebert.



There is a furnace vent in our bedroom that basically opens up into a chimney. You can see the sky. It is so weird. I cannot imagine the original purpose of it. Here is a pic from it

Looking Down


Looking Up


Betty Crocker makes these Warm Delights that allow you to "bake a cake in your microwave." They require a lot of work and make a lot of waste. The bowl they "bake" in is basically a Tupperware quality piece of plastic. I would never buy one but my mother had like 5 flavors she got on sale so I figured why not try it. It did taste good.

::Download Flash Video::

I got a graduation card from (e:mike) and my parents but there was one more envelope. It turned out to be a graduation card form Nonna that she put together before she died because I was suppose to graduate when mike did. Remember, that she had the stroke on his graduation day. It was sad to think it will be the last card I ever get from him although it was nice to have an extra one.



(e:mike) bought me goldschlager and enough lottery tickets that I got tired of scratching htem and had him do the last one as an additional gife. I actually won a $1 on a coupel of them and one an additional take 5 that I need to go get. I love lottery tickets but not the ones that you have to think about.


The might leaf tea company makes this really awesome tea. My father got some for my mother in California and then they found it at bluemountain on elmwood at 509 Elmwood Avenue




My mother also had these tea blossoms that (e:mike) in Boston.


The other day one of our server freaked out at work. I hate windows.


I a down to 145 pounds. That means I lost half the weight I had gained at the gym before buying the house. It is time to go back to the gym. I really need to commit to that.

First of all my system at work is coming along great. Secondly, at lunch today (e:terry) finally expressed an interest in something career wise. He will be happy and we will be rich. He and (e:mike) are going to go to pharmacy school together. Considering they are the two of the smartest people I know, I am sure they will enjoy it and then there will be two doctors of pharmacy in the family - which means I should never die without an inhaler when there is a cat around.

Does anyone know anyone/a company that can update fireplaces with lining and vented inserts? I need to get an estimate ASAP. (e:matthew) heard it is not healthy to use the ventless ones.

Ironically, when I type (GOOGLE - line a fireplace buffalo, ny) line a fireplace buffalo, ny into google it gives me my journal from last week.

The full size I found on the net was better

People camping outside of Best Buy From now until Friday in order to get a Playstation 3 first. There are over 39 people with tents. On channel 2 news they did an interview with person number 39 who was asked, "Why wait half a week in the rain for a gaming consol?"

He explained, "The playstation 3 is more than a gaming system it is a like a computer and it is a calendar!" Need I even say, who the fuck waits half a week outside for a calendar. What a idiot. What made him even say calendar? Is it even a calendar and if it is - is that not the least remarkable aspect of the device?

P.S. Does anyone else hate the channel 2 site Do they not have enough money to redo. It definately looks like it is is designed by an intern. I guess it's not like Channel 4 looks any better.

Paul is very busy. Very busy indeed. He is upgrading right now. Upgrading to the new PHP 5.2 which has a bunch of benefits that I will not bother explaining. Maybe the server will get all crazy tonight.

Yesterday, my boss and I, were waiting at the ATM when a guy went by with jugs marked radioactive, hm. I wanted to get a pic but by the tie my phone loaded the camera app it would have been over. I really need to buy a camera with the money from this side project I did for my boss. I am so sick of not being able to point and shoot even if the camera has the advantage. Once I have that and my new fancy heater you will see more of me on my journal.

On the work front I am busier than ever but I still like the job a lot. A project I projected would take 2-3 months ended up being delayed by other people for months until this month and now it is due on Nov 28th. I have no idea if this is realistic or not. I have made a lot of progress but today the database adminstrator locked out my password by accident when refreshing the test database with data from the production database this morning. Then when that was worked out my user did not have permission granted to view my custom tables, then the tables had triggers which went haywire after the upgrade from the production database.

I really believe that in this case having to work with a database administrator has only made the process a hundred times slower. Every time I want to make a change I have to run it by administrator and then they make the change to the tables that I need for the application, argh.

Sidenote: I have a hard time giving up any control over the development process.

Luckily, most of the database building is over. Now it is really time to work on the data. Basically, the system is made to allow for online evaluation of thousands of employees which is a complicated multi-tiered process. A person's supervisor initiates the review of an employee. This would be easy if the system that records who is who's supervisor was accurate but hundred of people have supervisors other than who is their actual supervisor which makes things more complicated. There are also a multitude of unions which negotiate the questions that are used to evaluate the employees. This means that normalizing the questions on the forms is generally impossible because the questions themselves have been negotiated by the unions.

To make matters more complicated many of the questions are questions to. e.g. the question and the answer are both blank and are dependant on the individual user position and are filled out by the supervisor at the time of review.

Once the supervisor is done reviewing the employee, the review is passed onto the reviewer, which is generally the supervisor of the supervisor but is also often not the case. They can add comments, then the employee gets to respond. Then the head of HR and then finally it is over.

I actually have it pretty under control. The only problem is the shear volume of the questions would are still being inputted.

P.S. It feels so freaking good to not be in school anymore!