Foo-Blah!

Moved

2005-10-26T22:01:00.000-05:00

I've moved, a while ago actually. Jokerr.com

Firefox Developer Interview

2005-09-12T20:55:00.000-05:00

I read this interview the other day on Tom's Hardware. It was an interesting read and had a couple of quotes that I really liked. One in particular when asked about being more "IE compatible",

"We also have a special rendering mode called "Quirks" that we use to support some IE-only programming features. Because we prefer to stick to the standards, however, this is a last resort."

Mongol Tired...

2005-09-07T02:33:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's 2:30 AM EST and I'm just now leaving work. That's not bad you say? I was up at 4:00 AM CST this morning, to catch a 6:00 AM flight! So now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to crash....

My Brother Matt

2005-08-27T21:27:00.000-05:00

Last time I spoke of Matt he was in a serious accident and nearly died however a lot has happened since then. First a review. On Friday April 22, 2005 around 3:00AM Matt was driving his truck home and somehow managed to plow into the back of a semi. Alcohol was not a factor however we do know that Matt was speeding and the semi was parked in the on the road. Both were at fault. Moving on, when he hit Matt managed to take a 2004 Chevy Silverado and turn it into a El Camino. He suffered sever brain trauma by fracturing a good section of his skull and impressing it 1.5 cm. Along with that he shattered the bone under his left eye and had a large laceration on his left leg. Needless to say the first 72 hour were critical to ensure that there were no more brain hemorrhages and that he would pull through. Matt pulled through with flying colors, moving around a lot in bed and just being Matt. Apparently its a good thing to be a stubborn ass! Matt spend the next 2 months in the hospital, a good month in ICU, where he continued to get a little better everyday. After the hospital he was moved to a nursing home/rehab center and stayed there for about a month. During his time there he again continued to recover exceedingly well. Around 2.75 months after the accident he began to speak and even started walking. He still had the absent minded stare in his eyes but that too went away at a miraculous rate. Finally after 3.5 months Matt is home. People say that there is no God and miracles don't exist. Well my brother is a miracle. By all accounts he should be dead. The fact that he's alive is a miracle. Then the fact that I can hold a conversation with him and discuss things that take cognitive thought is a miracle! It's been 4 months since the accident and Matt is doing very very well. He has a long road ahead of him but we're all just glad that he's with us. Thanks to all that have been keeping him in your prayers.

IAH

2005-08-25T23:48:00.000-05:00

You may or may not have heard about two ladies running through security at IAH, Houston International. Just incase here you go. Two ladies ran through an un-manned security station at IAH. 15 minutes later security monitoring the cameras noticed it. They then shutdown the entire airport. No plans were allowed to leave and those planes that were landing were not allowed to de-plane. I was one of the many who were stuck on a plane that wasn't allowed to de-plane. Finally after an hour we were allowed to get off the plane. Those that didn't have any connecting flights were allowed to leave however everyone else was stuck. Security re-screened around 300 people in the C-B Terminal link and God knows how many in the other terminals. After it was all said and done, they never found the ladies and determined that they were confused. TSA later said that they are no longer looking for the ladies as it seemed to have been an accident and there is no reason to believe that they did anything dangerous. Nice....

Late Night

2005-06-27T21:24:00.000-05:00

I travel for work, part of the job. But man did last night suck. I had a 5:10pm flight out of San Antonio to Houston to make a 7:10pm flight to Charlotte. Not too bad. I get to the airport with plenty of time to spare, too much actually, and grabbed a bite to eat. Wouldn't you know that at the time my flight was supposed to be boarding, the previous flight was boarding. Turns out that my flight would be 40 minutes late arriving and thus forced me to find other means to get to Charlotte. The counter attendant set me up with another airline and everything was good. Or so I thought. My flight in DFW, another airline, was delayed by an hour and a half! I finally landed in Charlotte around 12:30am only to stand in line for 30 minutes to get my rental car. Finally at 1:30am I got to the hotel room. Gotta love the late late nights....

Champions Yet Again

2005-06-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

"We are the champions. Yes, we are the champions. No time for loosers for we are the champions, of the world." Talk about a great series. Detriot vs. San Antonio, it came down to the wire but we emerged victorious. We dominated the first two games, they dominated the third and forth. We snuck one by them in game five. Detriot did the same in game six. Game seven came down to who would make the least amount of errors and fouls. San Antonio was that team. Hats off to the Pistons though, they put up a great fight and almost took it from us on more than one occasion. We've won the championship 3 times in the last 6 years, 1999, 2003, and 2005. All we need to do now is win next year :) And on that note, GO SPURS GO!

New Site

2005-06-14T21:42:00.000-05:00

I have a new website now, jokerr.com. I'll be blogging to both until I get it set up the way I like it. Can't seem to find a really great php based blogging system....

Pray for my brother

2005-04-24T07:29:00.000-05:00

My brother Matt was in a sever car accident early Friday morning. The accident happened some time around 3:15 AM about 5 miles from his home. Apparently he plowed into a semi which proceeded to tear the top of the cab off. After 1-3 hours (we don't know for sure how long it took) EMS was able to get him out of the truck and airlifted to the hospital. He has an open fracture on his left knee, bruised lungs, contusions on his liver and spleen, and a depressed skull on his left side. As of last night the doctors were slowly weaning him from the sedative and ventilators to get him to stabilize on his own. We are still in the 72 hour window for letting the brain heal from the massive trauma. After the 72 hours the doctors will work to see which motor skills were affected in the crash; movement, verbal, sight, etc. So if you're reading this, please pray for my brother. Like I said earlier, his name is Matt Kerr and he needs all the prayers that he can get. Thanks.

Laptop, I'm Sorry.

2005-04-16T17:55:00.000-05:00

Well it seems that after I bashed my laptop the other day that I discovered some interesting information. It seems that Win Server 2003 has some of the worst driver support arround. So it's not entirely my laptop's fault that the BroadCom drivers won't work under anything but Win2KP/XP. So, Laptop. I'm sorry.

What the hell is that?

2005-04-14T14:17:00.000-05:00

I have been checking out Atom API the last couple of days trying to dive into it as much as possible, and I thought to myself, lets check out my atom file. I go to http://foo-blah.blogspot.com/atom.xml and I had an error. Error parsing XML namespace ?! What the hell is that? Fortunately there was no real harm done. I log into Blogger, edit the entry, and republished. Still, I’d like to know what’s up with that.

Speaking of what’s up with that. Why does my profile still only show 63 posts, most recent is November ’04? If the post count is updated based on when ever Blogger updates their indices I could understand that, but you update your indices every time you publish a post. Am I missing something?

Bad laptop. Bad!

2005-04-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

A little over a year ago my parents bought me a laptop for graduation. No not high school graduation, college graduation. While I could have used the laptop in college for obvious reasons, I was excited that I had a new computer. My folks bought me a Dell Inspiron 5100. It’s a nice little laptop with 20gig hard drive, DVD/CD-RW combo, 256Mb of DDR ram, ATI 7500 Mobile graphics card, and a 2.66 P4 processor. Like I said, it’s a nice little computer, designed for basic use, some programming, and/or a small server. So what’s the problem you ask? I’ll tell you. The Inspiron 5100 model laptops (and a few others) use the Broad COM 440x drivers that are only supported under Win2K and WinXP. This sucks big-time since I installed WinServer2003. Now I’m stuck with a server that can’t serve! In the past I had Gentoo Linux installed on it and it gave me some trouble. Looks like I’ll be installing it again. Hopefully the new Gentoo 2005.0 install process works just as well as my last install.

2005-04-13T21:27:00.000-05:00

Da jokerr

Cars

2005-04-13T17:41:00.000-05:00

The other week I took a day off of work/studying to go down to the valley to attend a funeral. While traveling I called Steph after dinner. The first and only thing that I heard was, "Josh. I've been in an accident and I can't find a tow truck. ". After calling back numerous times, calling friends, and family to check up on her it turned out that she was three houses down from a friends house whom I called. Thank the Lord she was fine. She did manage to rip out the bottom part of the car though. The frame was bent, twisted, etc from the front of the car to the steering wheel. So, after taking it into the shop the insurance company deemed it as a total loss. While I was upset about the car I was happy when they told us that the blue book value was $5k. The car was a 2000 Chevy Cavalier that cost $13k. I was expecting $3k at the most, but I'll definitely take $5k. After doing some car shopping we are now the proud owners of a Pontiac G6. Nice car that gets some good gas mileage and has a decent size engine. So alas, we're now in even more debt :)

MCSD.NET

2005-04-08T11:12:00.000-05:00

One of the requirements with my job is that I become MCSD.NET certified. The certification included 5 exams, one of them being an elective. I've taken the first exam and got an 840/1000. An 84 is not too bad. I did really well in all topics but one. Thankfully they told me the topic that I need improvement on. So if you'll pardon me, I'm off to review and study for my next exam.

Seattle

2005-03-23T22:48:00.000-06:00

My first business venture has taken me to the wonderful city of Seattle. It’s a really cool town way up in the mountains. As I describe it, keep in mind that I’m from San Antonio. The weather is pretty cool up here. It’s about 45 degrees here and the locals consider it spring. But surprisingly, it’s not that cold. I wear a coat but it’s mainly because of the wind. What I’m really surprised at is that it hasn’t rained once yet. The locals say that they’re in a drought because it hasn’t rained in the last 45 days or something like that.

We’re staying at a hotel called the Edge Water Hotel. It’s a really nice hotel right on one of the lakes. My hotel room overlooks the water and the beautiful hill/mountain sides. Behind the hotel is downtown Seattle, part of it really. The architecture is something like that of Sim City. The really clean/cool looking tall buildings built right on the mountain side. There are lots of skywalks between the buildings and elevators that take us from sea level to 40 feet above, which is the elevation of one city block away. Its really one of those things you have to see.

Other than that, the Space Needle is pretty cool, but nothing to go crazy over. You can actually see the Space Needle and both the Seahawk and Mariner stadiums from the hotel. There are lots of seafood places here so you can always get your fill of fish and chips. Dr. Pepper is kind of rare here which is really detrimental for me :) However, I can still get my hands on some. All in all it’s a really cool city. A little crowded for me but really nice. If you get a chance to come up here, take it. Especially if you’re from San Antonio!

Jobs

2005-03-23T00:15:00.000-06:00

Been a while since my last update. I'm now currently employed with Avanade. Its a really nice company with lots of perks. I've got a lot of training to do along with work but its all good. I'm actually looking forward to the training. It will really enhance my career. We also have TV and cable internet too. We're getting the digital phoned installed on Friday. We actually got a sweet deal. 250 channels, broadband, and phone (unlimited local and national calling) for $95 a month for a year. WOOT! Anyhow, I'm heading off to la la land so I'm out.

Monday's Interview

2005-03-09T09:59:00.000-06:00

Monday's interview went pretty well. I started off by meeting the manager (whom I would be working for) and the team, all 12 of them. The manager said that we would be waiting for one more person and then we would go to lunch. Cool, I thought to myself, lunch with 3 people, myself included. Well, it turned out that everyone went, so there were 15 people total. While it went well, the manager asked me later why I was 'quite' during lunch. I had 14 other people staring at me, asking me questions on occasion, and talking to each other, not me. I wonder why. I jumped in on a few conversations, but didn't go into the long in-depth conversations you have with friends. Despite my being 'quite', the interview went rather well and I should be hearing either a 'no thanks' or a 'we want to offer you $x'. On the flip side, Avanade said that they are going to make me an offer! So we'll just have to wait....

Interviews

2005-03-04T09:35:00.000-06:00

Ok, I have an interview with Avanade today at noon and one with Rackspace on Monday at noon. There is an interesting story about my interview today. The Sunday after my first interview with Avanade I was at Church and was discussing my job hunting with some friends. In the midst of our conversations, a lady came by and asked whom I had my interview with. I was stunned but told her who after the shock wore off. Things like that don't happen by coincidence. I talked to this lady for about two minutes trying to get to the point to formally introduce myself but she left. It turns out that her husband is the regional director and wanted to know why he hasn't heard of me. The first phone interview that I took was more or less a technical quiz with I did OK at. There were about 40 questions ranging from a vast array of topics. Anyhow, I did another phone interview with the regional director about a week and a half ago. That interview went better and I get to meet with him today. So pray that this will work out. If it doesn't, then it wasn't meant to be....

Updates

2005-03-02T11:17:00.000-06:00

It’s been a long time since I updated my blog but I do have a reason. If you recall from my previous blogs, we are without TV, phone, and internet at our house. Thankfully my mother lives in town and she does. Anyhow, on with the updates.

The company I was working for went under about 2 weeks ago. So since Valentines Day, I’ve been gainfully unemployed. On the flip side the day that I was laid off I had a phone interview with Avanade. They seem to do large scale framework design in .NET. I’ve also had 2 phone interviews with Rackspace and I’m meeting with my hopefully soon employer on Monday. It’s been really weird not working, I haven’t gotten to do any of the things I thought that I would be able to do. No video games, no movies, nada. I’ve spent 6 hours in front of the computer searching for another job. Thank the Lord it will pay off in the end. Speaking of “Thank the Lord”, Steph and I have been saving quit a bit of our income just incase something like this happened. Even after we bought our house, we still have enough in savings to make it through the end of the year if I go that long without any income. So thank the Lord that we are financially sound. As far as finding the job and getting laid off, I know that it’s all in the Lords hands and he will not lead us astray. Proverbs 3:5-6 says it all, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Steph and I have a new addition to our family, our puppy Dusty. She is an Australian shepherd / blue heeler mix. We actually got her two days before we were all laid off. Aside from barking when she has to go (she is only 8 and half weeks today) and nibbling on our hands, she is a good dog. We’ve got the “potty” thing down pretty good. The only time she has any accidents is when we’re gone for 2+ hours. It seems that dogs can only hold it for as many months old that they are. Example, she is 2 months old which means that she can only hold it for 2 hours tops.

Gmail Agent API - Mail Notifier - Address Book Importer * Johnvey.com

2005-02-09T19:31:00.000-06:00

Gmail Agent API - Mail Notifier - Address Book Importer * Johnvey.com

I just saw this and thought I might check it out in the futur.

Withdrawals

2005-01-12T08:00:00.000-06:00

We moved into our house about a month ago and we still have no internet, phone, or cable TV! Ok, phone is a little bit of a stretch. SBC services out to where we live but its $30 a month for a basic no long distance land line. Steph and I are waiting for Time Warner to come out to where we live because we can get unlimited call anywhere we like for just $40 a month. Likewise we know that we could do satellite but once again we're waiting for Time Warner. As for internet, we've shopped around only to find that dial-up is $60!!! I'm not paying $60 for dial-up. So the long and the short of it is that we're waiting for Time Warner. They have a package that includes cable TV with some extra channels, broadband, and the phone service for $130 a month. Not bad considering it cost more separately. We've been told that we should be getting service first thing in February. I count the days.

Embarrassing

2005-01-06T07:02:00.000-06:00

Technology - canada.com is reporting that Bill Gates got a taste of his own medicine when Windows crashed and wouldn't respond while giving his keynote speech!

SuprNova.org ends, not with a bang but a whimper | The Register

2004-12-20T14:00:00.000-06:00

The Register is reporting that Suprnova is dead. Rest In Peace.

Casa De Kerr - We're In!

2004-12-17T06:57:00.000-06:00

We moved into our house last weekend and it looks great. I'm just now blogging about it because we have no TV or internet access in our subdivision yet and work has been crazy to say the least. Alas, I'm blogging now. We closed last Thursday and moved in the next day. The move went rather well. The movers and the fridge were early and nothing was broken. We decided to move the small stuff ourselves which worked out pretty good. The only hiccup in the day was that someone had to be at the apartment between 8:00am and 12:00noon because someone from Grande was coming by to pick up the modem. Of course they never came by! We finished moving everything over by 5:00pm instead of 2:00pm which was the plan. Anyhow, Steph and her mom stayed at the house for the most part unpacking everything that day. Wouldn't you know, the house was 90% unpacked the day we moved! Everything was unpacked by Saturday save my study which I finished on Wednesday. As far as the house, we had a few wrinkles to iron out. We still had some pipes sticking out of our backyard, missing the touch-up kit, cover for the attic, and a few other small things. All in all it was great. The construction manager fixed everything we pointed out and then some. With everything done I can now say with pleasure, "Hey Lucy, I'm home!"

Guys Night Out

2004-12-04T07:12:00.000-06:00

My church life group had guys and gals night out last night. It was without a doubt, a lot of fun. We stayed at the Mowrey's parent's house out in Bourne. Mowrey's own a 6k sqft house on top of the hill that looks over pretty much everything. The house is decked out and one could only dream of house sitting for a week. I love the house but I don't think that I could live there. Too much house for Steph and I, even if we have 2 kids! Anyways, Mr. Mowrey is really cool and down to earth guy which is awesome considering most of the people that I've met whom have such a house are arrogant jerks.

Moving on, there was a total of eleven guys including myself. We played Texas No Hold'em and basketball into the wee hours of the morning. In fact the only reason that I'm writing this at 7:22 AM is because I couldn't sleep for four hours. We played a round of poker with no betting to show the new guys and I must admit, it's weird playing with 11 people. After the first round we all bought in for $5 bucks. I got second place loosing with an 8 high strait to a 9 high strait! At least I got $10 bucks for second place. The next round we played I got spanked and broke even for the night. When we move in next week I will be investing in poker chips. It was a lot of fun and we'll definitely have to do it again.

We played b-ball outside where I found a whole new meaning to "don't judge a book by its cover". Kevin is nice guy who is in his early to mid thirties. He's about 5"10' and weighs about a buck fifty. He just had his first kid about 9 months ago and is probably one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I'll be honest, my first impression of him was; nice guy, feel sorry for him if he's ever in a fight because he doesn't stand a chance. Anyhow, Kevin is to quote one of the guys, "A black man trapped in white man's body". Kevin schooled, no owned, no embarrassed everyone out there on the court. He made Kobe Bryant look like a rookie! This guy was driving the lane like no one was there, made all of his outside shots, and just kicked our tails.

All in all guys night out was a blast. I'm looking forward to the next but first I have to move into my house. We'll be closing on the 9th of December and moving in on the 10th!

A Little Odd

2004-12-01T21:42:00.000-06:00

Just thought this was a little odd.

Blogger is not updating my blog count. Been at 63 for the past 2 months now?!

Blogger's spell check marks "Google" as a misspelled word?!

Blogger doesn't have a built Google search or just a search utility for a specific account?!

Google Deskbar

2004-12-01T21:34:00.000-06:00

I just downloaded the Google Deskbar and the development SDK. I've written the infamous "Hello World" and I'm planning on writing some more plugins here in the near future. The only thing that's a little odd is how you load and unload the plugins. You load them by placing the dll in the plugin directory. Unloading is another story. You're supposed to hit some key sequence to unload all plugins but as soon as you unload them, they are reloaded! Thus making it pretty difficult to update/test a plugin. Maybe its just PEBCAK but then again, there's not a lot of documentation about on the API....

Switching Back And Forth

2004-12-01T21:25:00.000-06:00

It seems that we are making the switch again. First it was ASP.Net, then JSP, and now we're doing PHP. I come from a PHP background so its a welcome change but I was actually wanting to go with JSP. I just purchased the Struts book and was ready to start "going to town". Now I'll be "going to town" with PHP. In all honesty though, I'm anticipating another switch back to one or the other by this time next week.

No I Don't Write Dilbert

2004-11-30T07:13:00.000-06:00

When you work in the technical industry you will find yourself reading Dilbert a lot. As I read them I send the links/images to my coworkers to point out how almost everything Dilbert goes through we go through. That in turns begs the question that I get at work, "Do you write Dilbert comics"? No I don't but the man who does is a genius.

PS2 Repairs

2004-11-27T21:00:00.000-06:00

I have just successfully fixed my old PS2! You might recall from my earlier blogs that I had a PS2 that crapped out on me. I kept getting the infamous Disc Read Error that plagued the first wave of PS2s. I went out and bought a new one and have been using it since. I actually got a good deal for the new one. $150 for the console, network adapter, and a free game that I haven't played yet. Anyhow, I never trashed the old one so for a while I was contemplating on what to do with it. Well I fixed it and now have a second PS2 and no clue what to do with it. Oh well!

Quote

2004-11-26T06:13:00.000-06:00

To err is human, but when the eraser wears out before the pencil, you're overdoing it a little.

King of your throne!

2004-11-24T16:15:00.000-06:00

I just saw this on slashdot! I seems that some has found a way to turn the annoyingly abundant AO-hell CDs into something useful.

I made the old new

2004-11-24T13:11:00.000-06:00

Ok, I know that this is considered a travesty to some if not a lot of geeks out there but I have to say it. I am just now playing Half Life. No not Half Life 2, Half Life! I have never Half Life nor Counter Strike until recently. I found the Half Life Platinum Collectors box at the store so I decided to give it a try. 5 Half Life games for 30 dollars. I installed it last night and I'll be playing it over the weekend. Geeks, please forgive me.

Home for Christmas

2004-11-23T19:31:00.000-06:00

We just came from our house and we have carpet in now. We still don't have a driveway yet but we have carpet. The arch as has been fixed and it looks good so we're just waiting for them to finish the trim and prep the house for the walk thru. Thus we should be moving in on the 10th of December!

Plans

2004-11-15T19:34:00.000-06:00

Our anticipated closing date for our house is November 23. That's our date until something interesting happened. While checking in on our house I noticed that our arch on the porch was a little low. In fact, the top of the ach is 82" from the ground! That’s less than seven feet! I called our builder and basically told him that we're not closing until it’s fixed. Coincidently the builder has not been able to contact his brick expert. Probably because he knows that he's in deep trouble. It turns out that there are five like houses. All of the houses have different arches! Two of the houses have the same arch just at different elevations. Our house and another like ours are too low and another doesn't even have an arch. So in the long run we'll probably be closing the following week which will push back our move in date. Any Thanksgiving Plans I had are now up in the air.

Christmas should be better. We're going up to Dallas to visit the family. Both sides of my family live in the Big D and we haven't seen them for almost a year. In fact the last time we saw them was on our wedding day, which means with everything going on we didn't really see them. My dad whom I haven't seen since January will also be coming down from South Dakota. It will be great to see him again! We were planning on going up to OKC too but that's been ruled out. Either way, this will be a good Christmas break. Especially since Steph and I will be married for one year as of January 3!

Double Talk

2004-11-12T07:19:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems that once again we've been screwed. We were told that one of our clients would configure their web server in preparation for our ASP.NET-Mono-MySQL application. Then yesterday about an hour and a half before I left we were told that we would have to configure their server and install our application. Not too bad of a demand in itself except for the fact that we only get 1 hour to do it. The entire time we were developing this app, we were asking for a box to simulate the clients running environment. We got a box when were 90% done with the app but we were not able to run the same distro. That entire situation sucked big time with no real requirements/specs and we never developed and tested under the correct environment. Oh well, lets just get this over and done with.

Making the switch

2004-11-11T10:45:00.000-06:00

No I'm not talking about IE to Firefox, I did that back when it was called Firebird. It seems that we will be switching from ASP.NET to JSP! This is a welcomed changed for the most part coming off of the difficulties we've had with our last application. We had to make an ASP.NET web application for a MySQL Database( not supported) that would be hosted on a Linux box (Mono development) and need to generate PDFs (again, not supported). We did it but it was interesting to say the least. Anyhow, I'm familiar with Java having come from a Java background and then developing with C#, so I'm not concerned about that. I am concerned about handling Autopostback functionality in JSP. The only thing that I really liked about ASP was their Autopostback functionality. Select an item in a listbox, and I could easily populate another listbox. I haven't been able to find anything similar in JSP. It's not a problem with forms however. In fact Java has more functionality than the .NET platform. This will be an interesting switch...

Casa de Kerr update

2004-11-02T07:29:00.000-06:00

Things are moving really fast with our house. We will be closing the 23 of this November! I'm a little skeptical though. They still need to brick the front of the house and grain the back yard. Though, they have done a great job and have always been moving at a fast pace. Anyhow, we'll be moving in the first weekend of December. I was planning on enjoying my Turkey Day :-)

Another Big Delay

2004-10-20T18:39:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems that I am becoming rather bad about blogging. In my defense though, I'm building a house and it takes a lot of my time. Anyhow, the house is coming along smoothly and we should be in by the second week of December. In other news, I was baptised this last Sunday. I've been a Christian for some time now but I have never been baptised. So needless to say, I changed that. I'll blog again later, after I get some free time...

The Long Delay

2004-10-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while since my last blog. I've been keeping busy with the new house, work, the side job, marriage, and just life. So where to start first? The new house is coming along great. It seems that the builder works on a group of five homes at a time. We happen to be the only single story in our group of five. They have the ventilation in and the plumbing but the electricity should be in later this week. I'm staying on top of them so all seems to be going well. I noticed some boards that need to be replaced so we'll see how fast I can get that done.

Alas, our boss finally delivered on his promise to feed us. For two weeks he promised to take us out but had to cancel. Finally on Friday he delivered, literally. He brought three pizzas which was perfect. As it turned out, we each had our own bets to see if he was going to cancel again and we all agreed that if he did hold up to his word he would bring pizza. The only gamble was from where would he bring the pizza from? Domino's was the answer and we were happy that he held true to his word...finally :-) Aside from pizza, we're still trekking along with our ASP.Net + C# + MySQL web application. Its fun in a sick, demented way. Everything we do usually ends up having to be redone because of one thing or another. It keeps me busy so I'm thankful for that, but at the same time, it gets frustrating....

My side job is going good. I've had one client every week this last month and thus far everyone has told me how glad they were that they called me. Maybe I'm being naive, but it really didn't come across as the fake 'yeah, you did a good job. Uh, sure, I'll recommend you.' Everyone has been more or less like 'thank you sooo much. I'm going to recommend you to all my friends!' That being said before I even open my mouth and ask if there is anything else. So, Lord willing this will pick up.

Marriage. Steph and I are doing great. We've been married nine months to the date and it has been the best nine months of my life. To anyone reading that is either thinking of getting married, engaged or just married, allow me to give you a little bit of advice. Marriage is the best decision you will ever make IF you realize that not every day will be a honeymoon. Expect problems and be prepared to work them out. When you and your significant other work out any problem, from which restaurant to a big one, you'll find yourself even more in love with him/her. Paraphrasing the Bible, guys, love your wife as the Lord loved the church. He was ready to die for it. And gals, follow the lead of your husband. We men may not be right nearly half the time you are, but we need you to stand beside us, not in front.

I guess that's it for now. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Casa Update

2004-09-27T20:43:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems that our house should be ready by the first week of December! This is a whole month and a half earlier than expected. Since this turn of events, I'm going to our new house every other day to stay on top of things. Anyhow, things are coming along smoothly for now. More to come on this later....

Slashdot | Ask Jeeves Looks to Outshine Google

2004-09-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

Slashdot | Ask Jeeves Looks to Outshine Google

Yeah, and I'm the great and powerfull Oz!

My Birthday

2004-09-18T17:54:00.000-05:00

This Friday was my birthday and I turned 23. They guys at work gave me probably one of the most interesting presents ever. I usually get some of the chocolate cupcakes from the vending machines at work when we go to lunch. Well, as we went to lunch, Jason stayed behind to “finish something up”. To my surprise they bought some of they “cup’n cakes” and stuck two candles in them. What made it even more interesting is that they had to make the candles out of a Styrofoam cup! Needless to say that was pretty awesome. My wife gave me one of my favorite pictures of us from our wedding day in a nice plaque with our wedding vows and first dance song engraved in it. It too is an awesome present. As for the rest of the day, we went out to the Tokyo Steak House for dinner. Tokyo Steak house is one of those restaurants where they charge you an arm and a leg and they cook in front of you. It was good but not THAT good. We could have gone to the Fire Hut and paid half the price. But I’m not complaining. We didn’t pay! Any how, thanks to everyone.

Cheesecake Factory

2004-09-16T09:45:00.000-05:00

We went to the Cheesecake Factory last night. We've been before but I've never blogged about it. It’s a great restaurant but the food is a little pricey. I recommend the Shrimp Scatter, it’s a big plate with a tone of shrimp! Steph and I eat there for $30 with tip.

It didn't like it!

2004-09-14T07:14:00.000-05:00

Well hell, no luck in the emerging problem. Needless to say, I'll be hitting up the forum again tonight to get a solution!

Emerge Woes

2004-09-13T21:45:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems that I am now subjected to a common emerging proplem. docbook-sgml-utils seems to be error that many people are having and I'm in the process of fixing it. A nice thing about Gentoo is that if you have a proplem, odds are that someone else has a similar problem and there are a whole slew of people willing to help. On the flip side, if you have a problem in Winbloz, you're assured that a ton of people have the same problem and you'll be lucky to have a solution in 6 months! Good luck XP SP2 users :-)

Eating my memory away!

2004-09-13T08:02:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems that something is eating up my memory on my Winbloz box. Its been rather finikey since I removed XP SP2 a couple of weeks ago. I did download a desklet, Object Dock but that doesn't use up but 4 of my 768 Megs. I checked it for spyware and viruses but none were found. The only conclusion that I've come up with is that it might be FireFox. This is puzzling me since I was running 9.2 without any propblems. 9.3 just seems to be eating up my memory. Maybe I'll reinstall Winbloz, its about time to do it anyways....

On the upside, my Gentoo Laptop is doing great. I used the Gentoo 2004.2 Live CD and it rocked. The 2004.0 worked but had to do some tweaking. The 2004.1 Live CD used the wrong modules at boot up and made installing fun! But like I said, the 2004.2 rocked and it was the cleanest install I've done yet.

A Virgin Blog

2004-09-13T07:08:00.000-05:00

It seems that half of the office now has a blog. Welcome Da Big Guy!

Kilgore

2004-09-10T06:52:00.000-05:00

We when to the big and exciting city of Kilgore last weekend for Labor Day. Its usually a 6 hour drive without traffic and we made it up in 7 hours. We made good timing except when we hit Austin. We got stuck behind 2 accidents and one flat tire. Thankfully we didn't wait too long to get around them. Moving on, Kilgore is an East Texas city with something like 11 thousand people. It’s a nice quaint little city. Longview is their neighboring city with a population of 75 thousand I believe. As you can tell we were living it up! To be fair, Longview does have a mall and some nice restaurants and Kilgore does have the world famous Rangerets. The Rangerets were the first to do the high kicking dance routine, so I'm told.

The nice thing about going up there was that we caught up on our sleep. There is obviously not a whole lot to do besides visit with family and it was rather relaxing. We did end up going to a McAlester’s while we were up there. McAlester’s is a deli chain that I've personally only seen as far south as Waco. The have really good tea but I think that if they tried to move down here to SA, Jason's Deli would wipe the floor with them. Jason's Deli has a really good foothold here and they offer a little more than McAlester’s. Salad bar and free ice cream are the big one that I noticed. Anyhow, all in all we enjoyed our trip up there but we did not enjoy the 6-hour drive home in the rain!

3 Free GMail Accounts

2004-09-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

I have a couple of GMail invites left and I will give them to the first three people who email me. I'll check my mail when I get off of work later today. I ask that if you already have a GMail account, please don't ask for another, you already have one!

Why I Don't Gamble

2004-09-02T07:19:00.000-05:00

I went over to Jason's last night to play poker again. We've been playing every Wednesday for the last couple of weeks and it’s been fun. Last week I started off slow but then my luck changed and I won some big pots. This week was another story. It seemed that my 'Kerr Curse' came true again. The 'Kerr Curse' is that in almost everything luck related and some sports; basketball, pool, bowling, etc, I'll do really good one day and then I suck for the rest of the month! Thank God we were not playing for money!

Just sad

2004-09-01T07:24:00.000-05:00

It turns out that a group of people have taken over a school in Russia. CNN reports that they have let about 15 kids go but still, this is just pathetic. What kind of person endangers children to get what they want?! Also, it turns out that some radicals from Iraq have executed 12 Nepalese people. And what did they do, nothing!

Eterm

2004-08-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is really starting to get to me. I'm trying to install Eterm on my Gentoo box but to no avail. I get the same error message, everytime! I've tried what the forums suggest with no luck, and even though I told Jason that I've already done it, I've tried emerge -UD x11-terms/eterm. This is called frustrating....

127.0.0.1

2004-08-30T07:11:00.000-05:00

We'll, it seems that our house is moving right along. The builder already has the forms up and they have begun laying down the plumbing. This Wednesday is our "pre-construction" meeting and they'll be telling us what to expect. This is also the start of the fun process of watching the builder like a hawk. While we like the builder seeing as how they are #2 on our top 5 list, you can never be too careful. If you're wondering why we didn't go with our #1 choice the answer is simple, money! Our #1 pick wanted 50k more than we were willing to fork out! Other than that, we just need to finalize the type of loan we want. We can't lock down on an interest rate until late November / early December so we've got some time. But all in all, we'll probably do a 7-10 year ARM.

Why isn't this illegal?

2004-08-24T14:18:00.000-05:00

M$ in all of its glory and wisdom has a nice little feature Windows XP to make it auto download SP2. My question is, isn't that illegal? I'm all for updates, only when I feel that the update is worth it. But having my computer download something that I don't/might not want?! To get around the auto download, M$ has a tool kit to 'hack' the registry, but still, that's messed up.

A Little Bit Of Everything

2004-08-23T07:02:00.000-05:00

Haven't blogged in almost a week! So here we go, a little bit of everything.

The Shi'ite Cleric Sadr and his militia are still holding up in the temple in Najaf. Smart move on his part, holding up in the 'holiest shrine'. Forcing the Americans to play it safe. Last I heard, the Iraqis are telling the Americans to let them handle it. More power to them I say.

The US Government has decided to change the OT laws for some people. CNN had the article. I haven't read the new law but it should be interesting.

M$'s SP2 is getting some bad reviews. It seems that a lot of applications, including their own, break after installing SP2. Not to mention some nice vulnerabilities.

P2P != Illegal. About time if you ask me. Software doesn't commit piracy, the people that use it do. Check it out here.

And last but not least, M$ is filing for another patent, gasp*! But the best part is that they're filing for patent on sudo! Slashdot has that article.

It Didn't Like It!

2004-08-17T06:14:00.000-05:00

After having played around with XP SP2 some more, I've come across some interesting information. It seems that there is a long list of applications that SP2 has broken. Some of which are M$ apps?! The list of programs can be found here and the means to fix the problems can be found here. Thought interesting enough, M$ is telling you to find the problem and fix it yourself. I thought that's why we use windows, so that it could think for us...

My Little Pinky

2004-08-13T14:18:00.000-05:00

There was a funny scenario we had at work a couple of days ago but I've been forgetting to blogging about it. It seems that Jason has less power in his hands/arms than Michele does with here fingers. Jason was trying to stable 20+ pages together using a standard stapler but could not. So Michele simply presses down on the stapler with her fingers and successfully staples the pages together. Oh the embarrassment!

XP SP2

2004-08-13T07:06:00.000-05:00

I've recently downloaded the new Windows XP Service Pack 2 at a whopping 270Megs! Checked the MD5Sum and did a virus scan. Everything checked out ok, so after backing up my system I did an install. Oddly, after getting about 40% of the way done, I get an error saying that it couldn't find a certain dll?! I chose to cancel the install and after it backtracked to 20% the install started over again and everything was fine. M$ added a 'new' security center to manage the built in firewall, auto updates and virus scans. I must admit that I did not feel comfortable telling M$ to register that I was running Norton. Why the hell do they need to know what virus scanning software I'm running? Additionally, the new version of IE now has a built in popup blocker and an add-on manager. I haven't used the new IE and probably won't, FireFox is still great. Style XP and Nero are now pooched though I haven't tried reinstalling. Other than that, I'm still playing around with it.

Hurry Up! I Have To Stop At The Red Light!

2004-08-12T07:06:00.000-05:00

I get to work at what some call and 'insane time', 7:00 am. I'm usually out the door by 6:30 am and hardly ever hit any heavy traffic, nor do I ever see any cops. The way I go to work allows me to see some interesting drivers out there though. My favorite type of driver is the one who goes 10-15 mph over the speed limit just to get around the car in front of him and wait in line. The car that just got passed was already doing 5 over and was 1.5-2 car lengths behind the guy in front of him who was also waiting in line! It gets better. When I get within the last few miles of work I hit 3 traffic lights. Bare in mind that the speed goes from 40 to 30 by the time you hit the first light. I myself am going 50 and slowing down as I approach the first light. However, I get passed by people going 60-70 that seem to want to get to the red stop light before I do?! Is there a point to this madness that I'm not seeing or is it just me?

What Do You Mean Sodas Are Bad For You?!

2004-08-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

Its true! Sodas are bad for you, however I still drink them. I've been drinking sodas since I was a 'wee lad'. I would have two or more a day for the longest time. After a while I was forced to cut back to two a week if I was lucky due to the family food budget. Though every time we would go out for whatever occasion I drank my Dr. Pepper like there was no tomorrow. As life continued and I got a job, I once again found myself drinking two to three a day. College was the worst. Being a computer science major you need your caffeine, there's no way around it. And since I don't drink coffee, sodas were the next best thing. Two to three turned to three at the bare minimum. Needless to say this was not a good thing.

By the time I finished college, 3.5 years baby!, it had been four plus years since my last visit to the dentist. To any dentist reading this, no I did not floss. Not too long after starting at my present employer I received my health and dental insurance. So the first thing my wife did was schedule me an appointment with the dentist. I was a little nervous to go to the dentist seeing as how my last dentist would dig that pick in my mouth and make me bleed. Thankfully my dentist is cool and so are his assistants. My mouth was safe...sort of. While he said that my teeth are in good shape he did tell me that my bad soda drinking habits have come to bite me in the butt. It turns out that I burned through half of my enamel, the protective layer on your teeth. If I kept drinking sodas the way I was, he told me that I would have 7 cavities! He 'ordered' me to pick up some special toothpaste and use it everyday after I brush and floss. I have to keep it in my mouth for a minute, spit it out, and then I can't swallow or drink for 30 more minutes.

My first visit was three months ago and since then I've cut back on the sodas drastically. What was once an average of 40 sodas a month is now 10! Thankfully he noticed an improvement in my enamel layering and told me to keep it up and I won't need any fillings. W00T! So let this be a lesson to everyone, sodas will tear up your teeth bad. If you still drink them, as I do, remember these three little steps.
1. Drink with a straw if possible and drink it all at once, don't sip on it.
2. As soon as you’re done, rinse your mouth out really well with water.
3. Don't brush for an hour, if you do you are helping the acids break down your teeth!

Tastes Like Burning!

2004-08-09T07:22:00.000-05:00

While I don't taste like burning, I do feel that way. Some of my family came down from the Big D this weekend and we all went to the coast. We all put sun tan lotion on but somehow we all got burnt! After looking at the bottles of sun tan lotion, we found that they expired a year ago. Nice. So no I'm a walking crispy critter!

It Rolls Down Hill First!

2004-08-06T14:22:00.000-05:00

The company that my company works for, Company X, is under the gun right now. Seems like everyone is running aground like chickens with their heads cut off. Ever since the Enron and MCI World Com scandals every large company has to go through audits. Some have called these audits the "Accountant and Lawyer Employment Fund" seeing as how they get the most business and money. The short version is that companies have to conform the SOX audit named after too guys in congress or something like that. The audit is designed to ensure that there is always a chain of command that must be followed so some ass can’t say ‘Write me a check for $50,000,000’ without approval. It just really sucks because of all the details that a company must conform too. While I’m sure it will be nice in the end, the process of getting there is not fun. For example, Company X needs a report or data pull for this audit and they always needed it 'two days ago'. So they wait until it’s late to tell you about it and blame you for not providing it on time. Our view of the situation is, 'I need a report and I needed it two days ago. I don't know what I need or how you’re going to get it but I know that its late so where the hell is my report!'

Aside from that, we delivered an application that manages two separate systems. Company X wanted this so bad that when we gave it to them, they haven’t touched it yet! They’ve had the application for four months and have not touched. No with all the audits they want us to teach them how to use it and add more reports to it. The problem is that the reports they want added would break the way the system was designed. Company X asked for the system to follow a specific procedure and we delivered. No they want to break the procedure.... Go figure! In the words of Henchfig, “I’ll just kill myself.”

Its Blog Thirty Somewhere

2004-08-03T14:18:00.000-05:00

Its been one of those days! One of those days where you work your but off only to find that you worked in vain. You realize that all of your work to solve a problem was useless and you find yourself right back to 'square one'. Well, that was me today. Me and my co-workers. We're working on a new App that will cut a six hour error prone job down to 30 minutes and remove 95% of all the old errors. Seems that you can never remove 'User Error'! Anyhow, we busted our chops for the entire day to realize that we had to keep starting over. Alas, to be fair we did manage to find the solution. Was it worth what we went through? No. Brain melts are not fun!

Case De Kerr and the New Beginning

2004-08-03T07:06:00.000-05:00

Well, its official. Steph and I are moving forward with the house. We'll get the high-tension beams that we want along with other 'stuff' and what not. I still don't expect to be in our new home until mid to late January. Still, it’s exciting to say the least. While doing our house shopping, we managed to land ourselves a Thomas Kincaid painting, mounted and framed in a beautiful cherry finish for $90! If you don't know anything about Thomas Kincaid, you're missing out. He is an awesome artist and his paintings are sold for big bucks! We got away with highway robbery to get a painting the size we did in mint condition for $90 bucks.

Aside from the house, I'm moving forward with my plans to start my own side business. I'm going to start a computer consulting company here in SA. My target customers will be mainly home users for now, but we'll see what happens. I've been working with some friends of ours who started their own business and have done rather well. While I don't expect to make the 6 to 7 figure income they have made, I'm sure it will bring in more money. Only time and God will tell.

Casa de Kerr Part 2

2004-07-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

Well, the wife and I have been looking all over for a better deal on a new home. Thus far we haven't found anything comparable. Lets be honest, 121.5 for a new home in the NE side, Judson school district, 4k off in options, and a good rate for the lot. That’s a damn good deal. We only have one concern though. Steph's company does grounds testing and they have found that the soil has a high plasticity rating. While this is not great, we can still build if the builder uses 36" braces for the foundation instead of 30". While I'm not 100% sure what they mean, I do have a really good idea as to what to look for. Steph's company has also offered to inspect the foundation whenever they do start building. The only thing to do know is to talk with the builder and see if they'll build on 36" braces. If not, I guess that's a sign not to build there. Deal or no deal, I will not risk my family's well being.

Quote of the Day

2004-07-27T07:41:00.000-05:00

This is probably the best quotes I've seen, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if real life supported control-Z?"

Slashdot Vs Work's Web Filter

2004-07-27T07:40:00.000-05:00

Go figure, it finally happened. Our web filter at work has blocked games.slashdot.org. This suck big time. Now I have to wait until I get home to get the all my game related tech news.

Casa De Kerr

2004-07-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

My wife and I have been browsing for houses for some time now and we have seen a variety of builders. We've looked at homes from as low as the 80s to as high and dreaming of the 250s. We'll after looking around we've secured the possible new Case De Kerr. It will be a single story 2082 square foot home located on the North East side of town by Rolling Oaks Mall on top of a hill. The best part is that we're getting this house for around 130 with options. They'll be raising the base prices about 5k in a 2 weeks and since we secured a lot we get 4k off our options! Not to mention, since the land is not in the Hill Country we saved an additional 20k alone! Plus we also get two weeks to cancel and get a full refund. Needless to say I'm stoked about this.

Wurzbach Parkway

2004-07-23T07:10:00.000-05:00

I used to live on the Norht East side of town off of O'Connor and Naco. I remember the headaches of when the city began working on the Wurzbach Parkway. While the idea of providing a 'quick' route to get from I-35 to I-10 is nice, the construction was a major pain. The project lasted for about 2 years and despite being a major pain, it was doable. When the parkway was 'completed' I was happy because I had a faster way to get to work. Or so I thought. The speed limit is 45mph. Who the hell goes 45 on a 4 lane highway? Despite the fact that the speed limit is 45 and all the cops do 60, I still used it from time to time. Now that I live on the North side near the 281 & 410 area I have the other 'half' of the Wurzbach Parkway right by me. Yes the speed limit is 45 there too, but it does take me right to I-10.

To recap, there are essentially two halves to the Wurzbach Parkway. One on the North East and the other on the North side. Which means that there is a big gap in the parkway. And where did the city, in all of its wonder and glory, decide to run the parkway thru? Bitters and 281! For those of you who don't live in SA, Bitters and 281 is a nightmare. Traffic is fine if you're on 281, a nightmare if you're on Bitters. While some might say, what’s the big deal, you won't fully understand the situation unless you live by the area. The NE side of the parkway stops at Bitters and Jones Maltsburger. Now the city can finish the NE side of the parkway and make it run right by the airport. The only problem is that they'll then be building over houses and small businesses. As for the North side’s parkway, I live right by it. It just stops at Blanco road, mainly because of the apartments right in front of it! The city has bought some of the buildings from the apartment complex and has torn them down. But just 100 yards behind the torn building are houses! All around that area are houses! Needless to say, it will be interesting to see how the city pulls this one off.

The Country that Cried Wolf

2004-07-16T07:01:00.000-05:00

CNN is reporting an article about an anti way billboard that was to be placed in New York's Time Square. The billboard was blocked by Clear Channel but after some negotiations, the billboard will go up. So what’s all the fuss about? The billboard is to have an image of a bomb with the words "Democracy is best taught by example, not by war." by it. Clear Channel rejected the billboard "because the image of a bomb would be offensive in a city that had been a target of the 9/11 terror attacks." There are a couple of things I find wrong with this.

To start off, doesn't it seem a little strange to place an anti war sign in New York where attacked on 9/11. When 9/11 hit, everyone including New Yorkers wanted retribution. I'm sure the New Yorkers we're "screaming for blood" more than others since they were the one hit. Based on that, we then again tell the world that we will not tolerate terrorism and we're going after all terrorist. We even warned other nations that if they harbored terrorist, they were acting as a threat to us. Everyone was in unison with this statement. The mission was to rid the world of terrorist and the USA rejoiced. So we go kick Al Queda's butt and everyone is happy. But remember we said that we're going after all terrorist. It only makes sense that we turn our eyes to Sadaam. My question is why the hell is America upset with the war? America wanted the damn war. America screamed, "Give me blood" and they got it. America screamed, "Take out the other possible threats" and they got it.

OK. I know some of you are thinking what about the CIA's false intelligence, the prisoner abuse, beheadings, etc. First of all I'ld like to point out that Bush apologized to the world about the prisoner abuse and the Secretary of Defense said that it was ultimately his fault. Shit rolls up hill. I've never heard of or seen another country admit they were wrong like that. The beheadings were going to happen one way or another. The prisoner abuse just added fuel to the fire. Now the big one, the CIA's false intelligence report. I seem to remember that the CIA was reporting that Sadaam had 'weapons of mass destruction' when Clinton was in office. If we had known that the Iraq didn't have 'weapons of mass destruction' should we have still gone to war? Read the paragraph above. Iraq was harboring terrorist and lets face it, Sadaam needed to get the boot.

America wants action and as soon as they get it they claimed to have never wanted it. As for the billboard's words, "Democracy is best taught by example, not by war." Yes democracy is best taught by example. But when words fail, action is required.

"If we don't get no tolls, we don't get no rolls"

2004-07-15T07:09:00.000-05:00

It seems that the city of San Antonio is planning to put a toll road on 1604 from I-35 to I-10. This is a pretty good chunk of road, 19 - 20 miles I believe. The reason they say is because of all the horrible traffic at 1604 and 281 which is halfway from I-35 to I-10.

While I'll admit that intersection gets pretty bad, I don't understand the city's logic in adding a toll road right there. Lets see, we have a 4 lane highway (2 lanes on each side) with bad traffic and we need to help it get better. So lets put a toll road there. Not too smart. The 1604 - 281 interchange gets busy for a reason, its the only way for those that live in the Hill Country to get to the city. Yes there are some back roads, but they'll take you twice as long. If there we're quicker ways for the thousands of people to get home besides 1604 and 281, we wouldn't have this problem. So instead of trying to make the 'quicker way', they want to make it worse.

Aside from the 1604-281 interchange, 1604 is still a 4 lane highway with a small medium between the 2 sets of lanes. The city's idea is to add another lane to each side for either something of another. I need to read up on that part still. The question is, 'is there room for another lane between the 2 sets?'. Yes and no. Yes there is room. No there is not room because of all the overpasses over 1604. The support for the overpasses go right dab in the middle of the lanes the city is thinking about adding. Needless to say this should be interesting.

I'ld like to point out another observation. While driving through Houston a couple of times I've noticed that even with their 8 lane highway, their toll roads get backed up all day long. Maybe its me but that didn't seem to alleviate traffic....

Sony vs The Redmond Giant

2004-07-15T06:57:00.000-05:00

As any real gamer knows, the PS2 has done exceptionally well. It outsells both the Xbox and the Gamecube world wide and has the most games available. While one might argue that the reason they have more games is because they came out before the others, I'ld just like to point out that if you consider the games since all systems were on the market, the PS2 has had the better titles. Moving on, Slashdot has an article where M$ says that their Xbox2 can take Sony's PS3. Is it me or are they dreaming?

IE Vulnerabilities

2004-07-13T12:39:00.000-05:00

Slashdot is reporting 4 New "Extremely Critical" IE Vulnerabilities that are getting ready to poke their heads out. Once again I feel 'warm and fuzzy' inside.

.NET + Oracle

2004-07-12T07:47:00.000-05:00

At work I wrote a small application that connects to an Oracle db and queries it after the user has selected certain fields. Its small, simplistic, and it works for me. Problem, no one that I installed it for has Oracle installed on their computer! Nevermind the fact that all the necessary DLLs to connect and retrieve data from Oracle were installed. No you must have the Oracle client. Maybe its me, but that seems rather annoying.

Windblows continuation

2004-07-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

I've installed Windblows on my PC and once again downloaded some of the updates with my Gentoo box. The funny thing is that when I checked to see if there were any updates using Firefox I got a funny error message:

Thank you for your interest in Windows Update
Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.
You need to be running a version of Internet Explorer 5 or higher in order to use Windows Update.
Download the latest version of Internet Explorer
Once Internet Explorer is installed, you can go to the Windows Update site by typing http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com into the address bar of Internet Explorer.
If you prefer to use a different Web browser, updates to Windows may be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

Rather amusing since Internet Explorer is the most insecure web browser in the face of the planet!

Windblows

2004-07-07T21:22:00.000-05:00

I have two machines at home, a laptop with Gentoo and a PC with Windblows. The Gentoo box has been stable since I got it configured correctly. That took me about a week off and on but it has been we'll worth it. Minor annoyance but not bugs/crashes/blue screens of death. On the other hand, my PC has been reinstalled numerous times. In fact, I'm reinstalling right now! Why do you ask, because its WINDOWS. The installation process is a no brainer, just load it in the CD-ROM, point click and your off. The only problem is that as soon as you connect everybody and their dog can own your box. I've been pretty good about keeping my box secure as possible. I do the updates through my Gentoo box, installed Norton and keep as much spyware off as possible. Yet some how I always get funny things happening to my Windblows box.

For starters I noticed that my internet connection was going rather slow. Just for S&G I reboot my Windblows box and sniff some of the traffic that's comings from it. Lord and behold I've got open ports and traffic running in and out of them. After investigating I learned that an anonymous person installed some crap on my box while I was away. I guess the question then is why didn't Norton pick up on it. To make things better after reinstalling I managed to keep the box pretty clean. Then my boss asks me to install IIS, it was like painting a big target sign on my box. Sure enough after running it for 2 weeks, I've been noticing those funny quirks. I guess this is the reason M$ Sys Admins get paid well, they have to bang their heads against the wall every damn day!

So why do I use Winblows if its such a pain, good question. Unfortunately for me my family has a very difficult time adjusting to anything they don't already know. I've shown them Gentoo and all of it's Open Source Linux glory but they just can't get over that small mound. Plus the only other reason I run Windblows is for games. Lets face it, if you want to play games, you pretty much need Windblows. Yes I know there are ways to run Windblows under Linux and that some games are Linux compatible, but my machine couldn't hack running a Virtual PC and a game and I don't have any of the games that are Linux compatible.

Winblows, its a loose - loose situation.

4th of July

2004-07-06T19:12:00.000-05:00

Went to Atlanta this past weekend. This was my first time to visit the east cost state and it was nice. First of all, Georgia has some really pretty greenery. Lots of trees and the costal climate keeps everything nice and green. There is also a Japanese vine called kutsu, I'm most likely slaughtering that, that grows over everything at the rate of one foot a day! Needless to say its overrun most of Atlanta. Moving on, Atlanta has lots of hills. I was there for 4 and half days and I never saw a single story house! I'm from San Antonio and we have the "hill country" here. But Atlanta has some really big hills. On the flip side, Atlanta was very...congested. Lots of pretty land, but too many people.

Anyhow, the reason for the visit was a birthday/mini family reunion/family picture visit. We surprised my wife's sister on Friday at Chili's. Upon getting back to their house we were 'surprised' by the in-laws. Later on that night as my brother in law and I go have a 'guy's night out' we picked up my wife's brother and his wife. Full House has nothing on this. I was amazed that we were able to pull this off. We had this planned for a month and a half and my wife's family including herself can't keep secretes. All in all, it was a great vacation.

Open Source vs M$ - Good Documentation

2004-06-30T14:52:00.000-05:00

Developing can be a trial if you don't have good documentation. At the company I work for we develop console applications using C#. Its nice, very similar to Java, that has its pros and cons as does any language. VS .NET comes with a nice IDE in which one can easily create a form and what not. I came from a Java background and the transition was smooth for the most part. However there has been one thing I've noticed about migrating to .NET, Good Documentation is hard, nay, impossible to find. In the open source world you can find some good documentation on anything. .NET has the mediocre MSDN and a handful of M$ zealot forums. In the event that you think you found what you're looking for, you have to pay to get access to it. Maybe its me but that contradicts M$ mentality of needing to invite/capture more developers. Granted M$ is not in charged to of the forums, but it is a turn off. What's better is that as soon as you pay to get access to the code, its a bunch of crap! On the flip side, if I need to look something up in the open source world, I can at least get my hands on some source code to get a better understanding of a problem. In the event that I do have to pay for some open source code, which defeats the purpose, its 9 times out of 10 exactly what I'm looking for. Bottom line, if you have to pay you're going to get crappy code in .NET and great code in open source.

PS2 Praises

2004-06-29T06:58:00.000-05:00

I bought a new PS2 over the weekend and happy times are here again. With the new PS2 I received the network adapter and an AV Off Roading game for free. Not to shabby for $150. Since then, I've been busy playing Metal Gear Solid 2 and watching the DVDs I couldn't on my old PS2. Now the only thing to decide is what to do with it. Some have told me to just throw it away. But there has to be some use for it. It plays 45% of my movies and games, and about 90% of my PS1 games.... Only time will tell.

Selling Out

2004-06-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

Recently my boss asked if I would install Microsoft IIS on one of my machines. I was perplexed to say the least as to why he would ask me to do such a thing. It turns out that I might start doing web development on M$ IIS. We'll right after I installed it I had this deep feeling of guilt, like I had sold out. I've used Apache for some time now and its nice. Bloated with options but nice. What have I done, I've installed IIS, probably the most insecure web server known to man. Script kiddies rejoice, you know have a new target!

Slashdot | Corporate Servers Spreading IE Virus

2004-06-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

Slashdot | Corporate Servers Spreading IE Virus

"...the flaws affect every user of Internet Explorer, because Microsoft has not yet released a patch. Moreover, the infectious Web sites are not just those of minor companies inhabiting the backwaters of the Web, but major companies, including some banks..."

Makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it?

PS2 Blues

2004-06-25T06:59:00.000-05:00

When the PS2 first came out at $300 I told myself that I would only buy one if I was in the right place at the right time. I wasn't going to be like some of the freaks out there that called every store everyday just to here the same thing, "They will arrive in x days." So one night after work I went to the local 'Wally World', that's Walmart for those who have never heard that expression, and there it was. A couple of PS2 sitting right in front of me. Needless to say I bought it that night and was awed by its power. I've played many games and watched many movies on my PS2 but no more. Some of the games I used to play and movies I used to watch are no longer playable on the PS2, Disc Read Error! I can play/watch them on other people's PS2 but no longer can I on mine. This just perplexes me. I've taken care of my PS2, it cost me $300! I've kept it in proper storage conditions, haven't dropped it, hit it, or anything like that. It just doesn't work! Any ideas/hints/do this/etc would be greatly appreciated.

GMail

2004-06-24T07:41:00.000-05:00

Alright, now that I've had my GMail account for a couple of hours, I can only say one thing. WOW! Not just a wow, but a WOW! 1000Megs are very nice to say the least. I have a yahoo account I use for business and it has a nice 100Megs. I've just read on Slashdot that msn is increasing their free accounts to 250 and paid members to 2Gigs. So in the long run I'll have 1600Megs of email storage, 2 hotmail, 1 yahoo, and a GMail :-). So how does GMail stand up against the mighty M$ and Yahoo? I'm glad you asked.

Storage - This is a no brainer, 1000Megs vs 250Megs vs 100Megs. I would take the 1000Megs for free over the rest of the competition any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Point Google.

Conversations vs Emails - For the most part there is no real difference. A conversation is an email. There are some cool features that conversations have but I haven't messed with them yet....

Folders vs Labels - Almost everyone has used a Yahoo or M$ account. You know how to create folders, mark them read, and move them around. We'll you can do the same thing with GMail but it might take some getting used to for all the n00bs out there. In GMail you don't have folders, you have labels. Labels are essentially folders. The big hurdle to get over is that you don't actually have folders, you apply labels to conversations. For example, I apply a Slashdot label to all conversations that I get from slashdot. If I want to see every conversation from slashdot, I can simply select the Slashdot label.

Searching - GMail is into searching. This makes sense since GMail was developed by Google, the world's best search engine. Basically, if you want you can keep all of your conversations in the Inbox and when you want to find something, just search for it. This allows for fast and easy means of finding any conversation. Point Google.

Starring - Haven't messed with this yet but from what I can tell, its marking an conversation as important. An yes, there is a Star link that will display all star conversations.

Conclusion - So far GMail is on top. I'll be sure to update this in the near future.

Playstation 2 - A Continuation of Metal Gear Solid 3

2004-06-24T07:14:00.000-05:00

Bad news sports fans. Last night I placed my MGS2 disc in my PS2 only to have it tell me that there was a Disc Read Error. Disc Read Error!!! Could it be that my disc was scratched? No, the disc was clean and scratch free. So what to do, what to do. I reset my PS2, place the game in the tray, and bam! Disc Read Error! OK I thought, I'll just try it again, make sure the tray is clean and what not. After inspecting everything I put the disc in the tray, reset and lord and behold, Disc Read Error! Why I ask. Why is this happening to me? The game works, I've played it before on my PS2 and have kept it in the proper storage container in the proper temperature, so on and so on. WTF?!

Script Kiddies

2004-06-24T06:26:00.000-05:00

Script Kiddies, script kiddies, everywhere I turn I see script kiddies! GO AWAY! I have just recently set up apache on my Gentoo box and have hence forth been subjected to a great array of scrip kiddies. 99% of the kiddies are using Windows 'attacks' and the one in a million that actually try to 'attack' Linux are pretty lame. 'Sigh' - What the hell are you people thinking?! Either do some research about the place you're trying to 'attack' or get some better scripts!

Welcome to Gmail

2004-06-23T19:19:00.000-05:00

Success! I have landed me my very own Gmail account thanks to one individual Dan. Dan, you're the man!

Working with 'Tards part 2

2004-06-23T14:35:00.000-05:00

I'm back at work, again, and felt like blogging about the 'tards I work with, again. FYI, for those of you who don't know what a 'tard is, preform this script s/'/re/, it will help. I'ld like to take this opportunity to take about my boss's boss. This person works for the Company X that I talked about previously. I kid you not when I say that this man has a BS, nay, Doctors in BS. This man can BS himself out of any situation!

Your first question is most likely, we'll if he's that good, what makes him a 'tard? Thats a good question, and its a little difficult to explain. You see this man has been working for Company X for seven years and knows less than the new employee that started working there a few days ago! I'm talking about the most basics of basics. Good business ethics, how to address your hire ups, how to address your subordinates, everything!

On the technical side of the conversation, he'll ask me or one of my co-workers a question. We'll reply in the most fundamental way possible. He'll smile, nodd, and leave. Two minutes later we receive and email asking us to take care of the problem that we just told him how to fix!!!!! I'ld go on but I thnk you get the idea.

P.S. He never washes his hands!

Metal Gear Solid 3

2004-06-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

This game look awesome! I stayed up the other day to watch X-Play's MGS3 preview and man does that game look Bad A$$. The graphics have always been great but the game play looks sweet. This will be the greatest Metal Gear game to date.

I've played the original MG for the NES and at the time I was too young to know that it was a good game. At the time I was into Mega Man, Zelda, and Super Mario Brothers. I was 7 years old! Time went on and I played MGS for the PS1. That was a milestone game. Admist I never beat it, due to many outside factors, it was still a cool game. The same can be said about MGS2 for the PS2. I get really into it and play it for hours. However something always happens that takes me away from the game. School, work, family, friends, just too busy, etc. For me, I can't play a game, stop playing for a couple of months, and then pick right back up. Its just not the same. The same thing happended to me with Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and The Legend of Dragoon.

I promise this now, with God as my witness. I will not only buy MGS3, I will beat it! I will then proceed to play it again and beat it again. And so on and so on.

My Gentoo thoughts

2004-06-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

I've been a Gentoo user for a couple of months now and I must say, its damn good Linux distro. Emerging is a great way to update your system! I've used the package system on Open BSD, it was nice but the folks at Gentoo are a little more up-to-date. I can't wait until Gentoo goes completely non-profit. Once they do I'll be sure to donate!

I won't beg for GMail anymore

2004-06-23T07:09:00.000-05:00

I've decided to take down my other blog, Give Me GMail Please. Why, because I was browsing different peoples blogs and found some really desperate people begging for GMail. There was one site, that I can't remember where it was right now, where the author posted "Gmail" or "GMail?" every hour on the hour! I don't want to be associated with these people. Google, forgive me!

My First ./ Point!!

2004-06-23T07:06:00.000-05:00

Slashdot | When Think Tanks Attack: "Re:In other news (Score:1)
by jokerr (618070) on Wednesday June 23, @07:59AM (#9505398)
How can anyone be surprised? Though this isn't the first company that has done this, it is getting old. 'We don't have any real proof that open source is bad, so lets just get our customers to say it for us. While we're at it, we'll give them some sort of compensation.'
[ Reply to This | Parent ] "

Working With 'Tards

2004-06-22T21:52:00.000-05:00

The title is actually a bit misleading, let me explain. I work for a contract company making/designing/building/etc home grown software. It’s a nice job and I get to do something that I enjoy. The problem lies with the company that we have our contract with. I will refer to the company that hired us as Company X. Company X is a Fortune 500 company located nation wide. It’s a nice company filled with a bunch of 50 year old adolescents that cry when they don't get their way. So what you ask. My company has the same types of people you say. Yeah we'll this is my blog! Anyhow, the employees at Company X are the most computer literate people I've worked with. It doesn't help that they're still using Windows '95 on sub 400MHz machines! If they click on a short cut that points to nowhere because the out-source IT company failed to re-ghost the machines properly, its immediately our fault. After spending 20 minutes to explain the situation to the boss's boss, that's right I said 20 minutes to explain a bad shortcut, I'm finally able to fix the 'problem'.

I gets even better. When we do have an actual problem, we get the lecture and then we're unable to fix it because we don't have access. Imagine, if you would, you're in charge of fixing legacy software that you didn't write. When someone has a problem you fix it on your machine because you had to spend time and money to research the problem. With the fix in hand you go over to the person with the error only to realize that you don't have access to actually fix it for them! Speaking of access, I'm a developer and I don't have access to run anything on my own machine. I can compile and say, "Man, that's some gorgeous code!" but I can't actually test anything. And to those who were wondering, no my dead line hasn't changed. Three weeks without 'run rights' and I'm still being hounded to finish my work.

Sorry about the rambling/venting, just getting this off my chest. To paraphrase, I develop software but can't actually develop because I don't have rights. I also fix legacy software but can't actually fix it because I don't have rights. Fortunately, 90% of the errors on the legacy system are user errors and just require me to strategically tell them to RTFM without actually insulting them. Man I'm glad my job title isn't IT Support! Enter sarcasm here.

I don't get it

2004-06-22T21:08:00.000-05:00

I don't get it. WTF are these militants thinking? So your pissed off that the world is against you. So why do they take it out on civillians. Doing so has indeed heightened (sp) the level of fear but doesn't this fall under war crimes? I mean, take it out on military personal. Don't get me wrong, I think beheading someone is sick. Hold them prisoner and if you HAVE to kill them, just shoot them in the head or something. Anything more civilized than beheading. I just keep telling myself, we all reap what we sow.

GFX Card Blues

2004-06-22T18:47:00.000-05:00

A travesty has occurred. The fan on my GeForce 3 Ti500 has died. This really sux for me since it was my best card. For now, I'm stuck playing UT2004 on a 32Megabtye TNT2 Card at the lowest possible settings...

End users

2004-06-22T14:36:00.000-05:00

There is an employee here at work who is a real hoot. I'm in charge of maintaining an Access '97 application that is to say the least, buggy! We'll amist my many trouble tickets I see to, I've meet some really interesting people. One person in particular said something to me that was the funniest thing I've heard. The application had an error and displayed a message box, it that much right at least. Or so I thought. While he was venting on me he said and I quote, "The box says OK, but its not OK. I don't want to click on OK because its NOT OK. Do you understand, its NOT OK!" End users, gotta love'm

Slashdot | WinXP SP2 Sacrifices Compatibility for Security

2004-06-22T12:53:00.000-05:00

Slashdot | WinXP SP2 Sacrifices Compatibility for Security
Its about time!

Slashdot - News for nerds, stuff that matters

2004-06-21T15:02:00.000-05:00

Slashdot - News for nerds, stuff that matters
Just had to get my props to the "warm green glow"

Gmail and the pains of web filtering

2004-06-21T11:16:00.000-05:00

I want Gmail. I can't say it any other way than that. I want a 1000Meg email account! Great, who doesn't you ask. And what about the rest of the title you ask? Well, I work for a contract company located at a Fortune 500 company that uses a web filter. I'll admit that web filters are nice and all, but they blocked the Gmail site! I know that those reading this are saying, "Well duh! Gmail is a web based email service and good web filters block that!" I have no argument against that, but damn it, I want to do some more reading up on it. I want to bask in the wonderful information about how great Gmail is/will be once it goes live. But instead I have to get second hand info from slashdot. Don't get me wrong, I love slashdot, but its just not the same....