I’m house-sitting for someone next week for about eight days. This person has a separate guest house on their property that I will be checking out too. If it looks good, then I’ll be moving into it over the next few weeks, so looks like the house-hunting is just about over. Best part: it’s in South Tampa, not far from Arnold’s place (and work).
I’m going to start working on SCS017 again tonight right after I read a script that Carl sent me (sorry, been busy man).
Looks like I’m not getting all of the old blog posts. I would surmise that Archive.org only scrapes the page and doesn’t do deep link inspecting. I had an option set to only display the five most recent entries on the old site, so I’m only getting five entries per month. But, I guess that’s better than nothing. Maybe I’ll have some old entries somewhere else. I’ve gotten all of 2004 and 2005 now transferred over to the new site here.
“To be reborn is a constantly recurring human need.” -Henry Hewes
A while back I stopped supporting this site. A lot of things took over my life, and, frankly, I purposely neglected it. With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, why would I need to keep up on my own site anyway? Why deal with all that work and custom code? And to top it all off, I never wanted to market it, so no one really visited. The result: into the dark, dank corner of the internet it slipped. And was forgotten.
Until one day, about a month ago, I wanted to get some data off the site. I literally hadn’t visited it in over a year. And, lo and behold, the site was down. Glitch? No problem, I’ll fix it. So, I logged into the admin console at the hosting company and to my horror I found the site was gone. Just. Gone. No files, no nuthin’.
I contacted customer support and asked them to restore the site from backup. After going around with them for a couple of days, they finally came back and told me the credit card I was using to auto-pay for the site was declined seven months ago (my card expired and I never updated my account info). On top of that, I shut down my Exchange server in early 2009, so I wasn’t getting email sent to those domains, which I thought was fine. Guess where the hosting company had sent the payment error emails?
So, they only kept three months of backups of the site. They cancelled my account due to payment failure. So, chewbode.com and all it’s lovely contents and hard work went bye-bye.
I was irritated for a couple of weeks. Then, one day, I realized that the reason that I was irritated wasn’t because of the hosting company’s lack of backups, but that I let all that history
(four years of blog entries, photos, stories, etc.) slip from my grasp. I missed my data. I missed the site – the site I had decided I didn’t need in my life a year prior.
Proof was in the pudding, as they say. It was time to start rebuilding the site. As of now, there is simply this blog. Nothing more. But I will continue to build the site and will make it better than the old one.
To be continued…
I made a lot of progress on a website that Jeff and I are developing. Most of the work I’ve been doing is Adobe Flash-based, which I’ve never really done a lot of. The next step is to figure out how to make a Flash file data-aware. I’ve set up an entire development environment to test this.
Devin sent me this just a few minutes ago:
Some people…have the idea that evolution is a fucking system of…
“oh i need flippers, i’d better grow some” type bullshit. 😛
It’s more like “Oh shit look at that freak over there with the flippers hahaha OH SHIT I AM DROWNING OH GOD SAVE ME FLIPPER BOY”.– Quote #95326 by Anonymous (Bash.org)
I played World of WarCraft a bunch last night for quite some time. I’ve been trying to devote a few hours a week to it. The monotony of it all is finally wearing off. I’ve also been playing a bunch of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed too (as a matter of fact, I’m going to play that right after I post this entry).
I e-mailed my recruiter today to see if the job down in Bradenton will happen or not. No news yet.
Sick Thought of the Day: Snot in the mouth.
Sickly sweet Pepsi. Acrid black coffee. Almost empty water bottle. Belly hunger gone for now, cashews helping.
Upgrading suncoaststudios.com. Backing up data. Will upload DNN package. FTP. Book done. Render almost done. Increase farm.
Moved websites. SQL Server started. Need to run cabling. Who buys the fax machine? Hank helping later today. Network switches are loud. Got spare mouse. Yelled at end-user. Tested video cards. Ordered power supply. Waiting on hard drives. Move coming soon. Need desks. Condition battery. Keys in the top drawer. DLL today. New voicemail! Stacking cables. Where’s VoIP? Tired.
Sick Thought of the Day: Undigested mucous plug in the base of the throat. Gargle phlegm.
I’ve added a new section to the Digital Archive called Movies. This is the new framework that will house both my DVD collection (pending) and film reviews, which I have decided to start doing as of yesterday. Currently, there are three movies up there that I’ve seen lately: Man of the Year, Jackass Two, and The Pursuit of Happyness. The only one I’ve actually reviewed though is Man of the Year.
The reason I decided to start writing movie reviews was, firstly, so that I could remember the films I’ve seen. There’s nothing more annoying to me as buying or renting a movie that I’ve already seen a long time ago and hated. I also began reviewing for those of you who want to see what a movie is about and what my thoughts are on it (not that I’m a film critic, per se, but sometimes I might have a good idea or observation).
Once I finish reviewing the remaining two films up there, I’m going to start building the DVD collection, which will be similar in fashion to the Video Game archive.
Sick Thought of the Day: Baratuba.
I got an early-morning call from my mom that my sister needed a ride home from the vet’s office. Evidently, her ride (a friend of the family) had to go to work and couldn’t wait around for her while my sister finished getting the paperwork finished for getting her cat’s nuts whacked off. I picked her up around 8:45am and we then went out for breakfast at McDonalds and then stopped off to take a look at a house they’ve been looking at buying.
I put up a new section for my family today called the Wish List. It’s an area of the site that we can get to that allows up to build Christmas (or birthday, etc.) lists and then make notes on the lists so that we all know what we’re getting each other for said holiday. Of course, the person that entered their list into the system won’t be able to see the comments of others, therefore won’t know what they’re getting. I’m brilliant.
I also worked on the Digital Archive some today. I’ve started to re-work the PC Video Games. When they are all re-done, I’ll make that new section show up on the site (right now it’s hidden and I’m the only one who can see it).
I think I will play some Dark Star One for a while until Shauna gets home from work.
Sick Thought of the Day: Shits that look like states.
Oh, there is so much to blog about today…
First off, I got laid off from work this past week. My last day was Friday. I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to write about this major event in my life, and, for a while, I was bitter about it all. I even was opting at one point to write this nasty entry about it all. After giving myself a couple days to reflect on it all, I’ve decided to just state some simple facts about it. I was laid off Friday because my job was phased out. The software and most of the systems I’ve worked on over the past seven years have been going away this year, and the last big software package I supported is being shut down on December 1st. I was officially let go around 10:30am on Friday, and they gave me the option of staying the rest of the day. I immediately packed up my stuff. What was the use of staying there for seven and a half more hours? Plus, I really didn’t want to go through the entire emotional ordeal that surrounds someone leaving – people stopping by, asking about the details, hugging, crying, etc. I guess I’m too much of a pussy for that stuff.
So, I told the guys what had happened and Jeff told me to get my stuff together and we’d go to lunch. I said goodbye to my boss, John, and to Chad, both of whom I’ve worked with in the department for the past 2 years or so. Me, Jeff, Schafer, David, Kelly, Paul and Peter all got into our cars around noon or so and headed downtown to Two Senoritas for lunch. I had my usual, the marinated chicken burritos. We sat there, laughed about things, talked about the future and, in general, had a lot of fun. These guys are a fun bunch and I’ll miss hanging out with them everyday, playing Tap-It, and talking about disgusting things. Thanks for the fun guys!
As for me, the company gave me a seven-week severance package and paid out my vacation time. I don’t have and precise plans yet, but I have my recruiter looking into things and should be on the warpath for a new job after Thanksgiving (I’m told next week is dead for recruiting).
Well, what else is going on?… Well, after telling Schunk about everything that happened at work, he and I went out to the Sarasota Ale House for drinks Friday night. We talked about stuff, and one of the topics that came up was that we hadn’t been to see and R/C air shows in a while. Well, it just so happens that there was a show going on this weekend, so we headed out this morning to go see it. Me, Jon, his daughter and his dad all met at Jon’s house around 10:00am this morning and then proceeded to head over to the airfield. I snapped a bunch of photos and uploaded them to the Picture Gallery. Anyway, I had a couple of big hot dogs (of course) and a Diet Coke, and we sat and watched the pilots qualify. The field was hosting the 2006 Corvin Miller Memorial Contest U.S. Scale Masters Qualifier. We watched several exquisite aircraft fly. At one point a custom-built jet took off and I stood there and just took in the awesome smell of the kerosene. Mmm. We stayed until about 11:30 and then headed back to Schunk’s, where I soon departed for home.
I’ve also caught up on my comic book listing, and that’s now current in the Digital Archive.
Yesterday I picked up a copy of Cars on DVD and Shauna and I watched it last night. Great movie. I was amazed at the complexity of some of the scenes. The textures were amazing. Top-notch, Pixar. Top-notch.
I’ve also started reading Stephen King’s new book, On Writing. I’ve made it all the way through the third introduction.
Sick Thought of the Day: Heat the iron, stick the tip into the sphincter, make the room smell like burnt dog hair.