• 17:44 will i ever feel ready fro the mighty AssDragon 6?!?!!?? bit.ly/jCxQc #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 15:09 wrote an article on website multiple background layers u.nu/6wp9 #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 15:12 Let's kick out the jams or die trying!! #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 14:49 can't decide what's simpler -- html/css/javascript/php/mysql or nes/asm!! XD #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 18:06 @jonbro thanx!! #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 22:41 such a birthday nerd!! i launched new layout for firteendesign.com and started a compo on battleofthebits.org on my b-day nerdy nerd nerd!! #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 19:02 My tower is running again. Trying win7 over Vista, smoother but has it's own quirks. Is xp really the best microturds has to offer? #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 14:07 wish i could teach myself to quit resting on the mouse before my wrist sounds like a cement mixer #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 12:57 alright -- teh Geek Squad has my tower, backed up most things and noticing for the first time my laptop is kinda slow. =D/ #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

Yay spending more money i don't have! This time I we have a 320gb HDD and a Universal Power Supply so power outages don't lead to catastrophes anymore. Moving all this data is taking forevers!! This is a whole new adventure in hard drive crashes. When I bought this Dell it told me there was a RAID system in place. The problem? I only knew of RAID systems running two drives in parallel so you always have a backup copy of your whole physical drive. But what it was really setup to do was tie the two drives together into one big drive. I didn't realize that until I already had all my programs installed so I made partitions which is silly because you have to move both drives together to recoup crap. But I'm glad I did partition, the last power outage fukt my C drive. Windows won't load, not even in 'safe mode'. The safe mode startup screen had yet another option 'repair windows' which didn't work of coarse. But since it couldn't detect the C drive it asks for drivers to run it, a file dialog box popping up. That box is letting me copy+paste files with no status window. We shall see in a few more minutes if everything copied over alright. Seemingly, I only lost stuff I had on the desktop which includes a couple of songs and clutter. Hooray for organized data. So far I'm feeling lucky.

The final crash happened just before we left for camping. Camping was great, we partied hard and ate great. But I couldn't let go of my stupid computer problem the whole time. It was a good two cold nights -- NO don't let the fire go out!! I don't care if we are leaving!! =(


Over a week ago I had the new experience of 'cleaning out my desk'. The people at WDET were sad to see me go. I'm still not sure if the radio station or the university is paying for my full time replacement who I got to meet. I guess it doesn't really matter. It's kind of a bummer but I really am not much of a Detroit fan either. The job had some pretty cool perks but when I had a hard time against the technologies I always got way more anxious than I would at home. Damns, and I was just setup with my own phone number at that desk too!

At the McDonbald's and the book factory I used to love yelling "You're Fired! Clean out yer desk!" and I refrained from repeating that while I was there! xD Poor bastards have to stay there fretting over their volatile work environment. Somehow I've managed to collect a small chunk of change in my account so I'm ok for this month....


Did a b-knox show in Pittsburgh wednesday night. It was a lot of fun even though the sound was a little screwy and there were only 20 people present including performers and their girlfriends. Silly chiptunes, how do you make the peeps come out?!?!


Holy shit everything copied over!!! Hooray for laptops as secondary machines. Now off to Best Buy to get my money's worth on their crappy Geek Squad warranty coverage.

• 00:29 Lost one of my jobs, had a computer crash, went camping, now i'm in Pittsburgh. #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

• 15:11 kind of bummed I got laid off today from my part time computer technician job at WDET =( #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

My boss at WDET just asked me if I was ok with him asking his boss if I can have more hours. Yes, I'd rather pickup an extra day at a radio station than delivering pizzas. Funny thing about delivering pizzas as late as I do, sometimes you get commandeered as a taxi. Kids so drunk, righteous with a five dollar make it worth the extra 5 minutes to drive them the 7 blocks they easily could have walked in their numbed state.

I hear cabbies make good monies. But I have no idea what that means. It could be pretty much the same. The pro is I wouldn't drive my own vehicle. The con is I would be sitting in a car non-stop for at least an hour at a time and no free crappy food. Got to love that free crappy food. When am I gonna remember I like rice and vegetables again? =o

Today's goal might as well be : Close all them damn tabs!! =O
Which typically includes making a post somewhere...
OH! I'LL GET TO THAT MICRO-PROJECT JUST IN TIME FOR IT TO NAG AT THE BACK MY HEAD, DISTRACTING FROM TEH MACRO-PROJECTS!! =D/



So, anyways, been composing a lot lately. I think I'll blame the lack of OHCs on BotB. Kind of my fault, not writing the code for the new BotB to host OHCs. The damn things always take at least 90 minutes. Do a few of those in a week and I can see why I'd neglect time for writing whole tracks. But I do miss them and so do the BotBrs... =(

Pretty sure if I gathered all the loose tracks I got right now I'd have an album on my hand. Baron Knoxburry hasn't had a prominent release since before I quit the factory. 2009 could be a good year to build some netlabel cred.

So lemme list the prospective candidates here so I can close these silly tabs --

jahtari - I've got my first thoroughly dub track about 90% done. If I do two I should be able to pull off one of their net7" releases. Unless 'disrupt' hates them, but I think I'll be ok.

monotonik would be a good land but not so sure if I'd be accepted. Discovered kahvi & crazy-language both of which have artists I can find on soulseek (appealing criteria).



..and now teh Content Management Systems

Firteen Condos is a mildly, half-realized concept. I don't even like the name. I thought of 'webDojo' but when I told littlemarph she askes, "What's a dojo?" And on top of that there are already several [web/net]dojos to find. I thought I'd make up a word, webdles. It's available but it's singular version, webdle, is not. I'm trying to make a system that can run multiple wordpress-style sites and I'm really not that far off if I would just buckle down on it. The good news is I hardly ever need to update the FECES framework code anymore, which could also use a renaming.

I clicked on an ad for CushyCMS the other day. This is a new style of website system that caught me by surprise. You manage your website functions from their site, it logs into your server and uploads the changes via ftp. Meanwhile, the user doesn't need to code shit. I got inspired by the three minute intro video, rebuilding the Firteen Condo GladAdmin.

Simple CMS is another cute one. Well cute as in "zOMG I didn't just see the word 'twattery' fly by in their flash demo, did I?"

I mean, it really just wizzes by fast, but it;s there. Yes, I am tired of twattery too. Especially when it comes to my buzzword flow.

There was another one all together that started this but I can't find now. The layout was really nice and what I noted was the hosting reseller program. "Come host your site here and then host others site on your space and then they can do the same." Which makes it a pyramid scheme. Crazy.

Ning announced it is now hosting 1 million social networks. Now that's a CMS. They'll even host yours for free, putting their little banner across the very top. Form follows function and so all these 'social networks' look the same even if they change the colors and graphics. The three column layout feels rigid when looking at the different sites.

I do like the Ning's Latest Activity box. Reminds me of yer Facebook home page. Showing activity on BotB has been a hodgepodge of two boxes so far. One shows the most recently updated threads (including comments on entries) and the other a truncated list of announcements sent to the IRC bot. The real trick is grouping the activity, or deciding what activites to display to a botbr -- all site activity, or just that related to their own. The thing I really care about is minimizing redundancies on screen which Ning doesn't seems to do. BotB doesn't have the 'add friend' thing and I'm not considering it either. Hmm.. more brainstorming is required. I do know I'm ready to look over the laws of OOP again. lol



...and this funny computer I got...

..doesn't want to remember my monitor settings or where my desktop icons are when it reboots. It's also highly sensitive to power outs. The chkdsk screen always freaks me out. Sometimes one of my RAID drives gets marked 'criticial' in red. But right now they are both like that and I can't find the thing that lets me reset their status.




jajajjaja look at this post...

I'm really living!! =D/

Y'all, I've snagged more dub than you can shake a spliff at!

Damns.

Every dub compilation has their own version of the artists' story. Dem is genie, smart boi, no work good with dem wid studio, build dem own studio, have catchy name, release dem many world hits, reggae nebbuh da same, Babylon craps dem pants.

lol

Remembered my damn login to facebook the other day. I think my last login was about 18 months ago before that. I remember finding about 5 friends and then what? I come back now and my gmail address list zooms me up to over 100 friends. MegaLOLz. I even got 16 pics of myself without doing anything. EPIC WIN!! And the best part, it's fun now, not only that, but the UI is so freakin' easy it inspires. If I could get Battle of the Bits even half as intuitive I'd craps dem pants!!

• 12:47 while trying to get my twitter2livejournal technologies running i realize i don't even know how to poops #
• 14:10 zOMG and now I can post on facebook and it'll twit to livejournal at midnight =X #

..and yer a twit 4 readingz! =0

I've been lurking, every great once and a while plowing through a couple weeks of friends' entries. Aggregated RSS feeds must be taking over my wakeup, scroll, & peruse time. I'm glad twitter doesn't really interest me.

I think I wanted to do a big New Years post and catch up with 4 months of activity. Well it's more like 8 months now, I think, since I posted shit. Old man Time is such a bastard. And not necessarily that young, hip trailblazing type of bastard. More like the snow and sand. Desolate. But with life. Like the Earth. So there. Bastard time already.

It's the dawning of a new age! Yarg!

Yes, so I could try to review the year 2008 like it's the day after New Years but it seems a tad silly right now. Especially since 2008 seems to just blur from when I moved in my parents' basement in Sept. '07 through to today. Let's see, I quit my job for freedom and the hopes of something better and what I found is rather a variation of the same. Well, yeah, my schedule is much more flexible now which is cool but I'm always broke. Well, not as broke as a few months ago.

What have I been doing for money? Moonlighting a few days a week. It kind of needs to stop. Soonish, I guess. Two days a week I work 10 hours at WDET public radio in Detroit as a computer technician, assisting the engineer. Often times that second day is followed by a shift of delivering pizzas for the mini-single-building conglomerate Mr. Pizza/Burrito Joint/Groovie Smoothies until 3 or 4am. Then, when the store is closed, we stay for another 45 to 90 minutes closing the place up. But because the combined incomes of both these jobs is not enough to pay my bills I still find odd jobs and wee bits of webwork here and there.

I'm riding an ongoing wave of novelty for the most part. From week to week I have a different opinion on what I'm doing with myself. I don't miss the factory (except for it keeping me fit) but I do miss what it provided. And so, at times, I think I feel a little regret but probably only because I struggle to pay the bills.

But, really, it's only one bill I struggle with -- the minivan payments which are as much as the rest of my bills combined. Yes and for sure, I was feeling cocky when I left that book binding business. I figured I'd be working 15 hours a week at $30/hour within six months. HAHAHAHAHAHAH oh noes epic fail! =D I also believed the Counter Cosby had momentum but really we were plateaued and adding on a couple more shows a month only seemed to hurt us in the long run. Meanwhile, recently, we fit all the gear into the O'Neills' Honda CRV proving once and for all that my investment decision was completely unnecessary. I'll keep paying for it over the next 13 months or so.

A couple months ago littlemarph found a job posting for a website guru at WUOM U of M public radio. Full time and within walking distance, I totally fucked myself by not even trying mostly out of a current mood of self pity. Pretty lame. Down on myself because my resume gets me in the door but then my lack of 'selling ones self' & appearance scares them off, or that I lack a substantive web portfolio (I just finally liking where Battle of the Bits is at a couple weeks ago), and partly because I feel some kind of loyalty to my boss. But the fact I worked for a competitor would have obviously made me a more attractive candidate.



I mean, who wouldn't want to hire this guy?!?!?! Don't you know?!?!?! I gave a workshop at BlipFest '08 in Brooklyn, NY?!?!??!?!



Yes, and I discovered my favorit chip performers ever, Meneo from Barcelona. They like to preform naked, I was crashing with them over at Glomag's place and I got an open invite to visit and play. Now if I could just muscle up $2k for a weekend jaunt. I guess local parties and a couple trips to Pittsburgh will have to do. I just hope, next year at Blip, we get an after party akin to the previous one, naked heathens in a basement bar.

I have to say, going to Hawai'i twice last year was totally awesome. I took part of it with me and I can feel the air if I try hard enough. I'm looking at green grass on the other side all the time. I really have to be stripped of so much before I remember to breathe regularly. Meditation? What's that? Depending on the internet for business just seems to mean your business is never complete (or ready for that matter).

I still have too many projects. A handful of websites, a couple music acts, another movie (the rough draft is actually almost done?!?!?) and working to pay for a van I don't need. Well, I need it to do my jobs that I got to pay for it... better be careful or that mileage will go over the alloted amount. I bet it adds up fast at 10¢ a mile. =o

ummm... I wanted to end this on a positive note coz I don't feel crappy at the moment. I'm just sharing :D/

Silly, silly van.

My 3rd week at WDET as Computer Technician and I still have no clue what i'm doing. Well, I do what I get asked to do and I seem adept at those things. Funny being a second hand.

Good gawd, I've got about a week to be ready for this Famitracker Workshop at BlipFest. I hope I at least practice once instead of just winging it! =X LOL sure it'll be great. =D

I've got an interview for another part time computer job. This one is actually doing the PHP/MySQL stuff. Plus, I've got two leads on pizza delivery positions -- I need fast cash. I need to quit feeling like a horrible person every time I go out to buy groceries. That's just silly. I deserve to eat.

I can't believe how hard it is to get a job going. On the flipside, filling my gas tank for under $40 kind of blows my turds out teh waters!! I want out this financial hole.

I think my last post was kind of a downer.

Since then:
I got my Argentinian pesos through Western Union from Ui.
I got a new commissions check from Vault of Midnight.
I got a birth certificate.
I got a part-time job at WDET from which I am making this post on my first day.
I got my car insurance restated.
I got my plane tickets to Blip Fest next month where I might do better than breaking even.
..and I found my FRICKIN glasses!! =D

Now if I could just find another part-time job I won't feel weird asking to borrow enough money to get caught up on my van payments. I mean, shit, I just got a sweet job in Detroit. Why would I want to fuck that up? It's nice to just hop in your vehicle and get errands done. Plus, if repo man comes I still owe for the duration suck!

I've been getting mad code done on BotB and hopefully the upgrade will get posted on the new site by early next week.

I can find gas for under two bucks. I blame 'that one'. =p

Seriously been having some problems lately. Two weeks ago I corrupted my hard drives by simultaneously file sharing and mounting virtually a disc image. So I shut the thing down before we left for Chicago. I had also lost my glasses which make driving in foreign places much easier.


on Counter Cosby

The gig in Chicago was funny in that we brought more folks to the bar than any of the other local bands. Because I am so broke ppl were pitching in to pay my way at restaurants. I was also bought a ticket to see Old Crow Medicine Show which is some contemporary youngins playing classic-style blue grass. I had a real hard time enjoying myself until friends got me all fucked up. Crazy spending four days in Chicago with no money at all. Good thing for credit cards -- I picked up a phat pair of pants for $16 and I got a outlet/wallsocket costume for twenty-something just so I don't gotta listen to O'Neill bitch about my halloween apathy.

We played WCBN last night. Playing the Pig tonight. Playing a Howell bowling alley tomorrow. Playing somewhere in Hamtramk next Friday...


on Baron Knoxburry

I asked to do a Famitracker Workshop for BlipFest 2008 and they accepted my proposal. I wasn't asked to perform and my ego sort of told me I wasn't going if I had to pay to get in. This way I am staff and can wander anywhere I want and not feel awkward about it.

Also -- I got asked to do ROM Flier music again. This time they wanted Monster Mash all chipcored out but I got all excited and made a big medley of 8 tunes. Happy Helloween, bitches.




on being borked

Funny when you finally decide you need a job how trying a process it quickly becomes. It takes any place at least two weeks to get back to you after an application even if you keep bugging them all the time. blank75 got me hooked up with an assistant IT gig at WDET which starts Monday. Too bad I can't find an authentic social security card or birth certificate. I sent for a new birth certificate proving I am legal equity for the USA, got to do the notary public thing at kinkos and everything, but I don't think it will show up within a week. Also got a lead on delivering pizzas for Little Sleasers and the I might become Blind Pig staff sooner or later too.

I've been having a hell of a time getting money Ui sent my from Argentina via Western Union and the Vault at Midnight sending my commissions check to my old apartment address. Apparently mail forwarding only works for a year and then your car insurance defaults when you stop getting your bills because they never update your address when you check the 'this is a new address' box on their envelope, drawing bigger arrows pointing to it every month. So I got my insurance reinstated but I'm almost two months behind on the van payment. Repo man, how much longer I got?


on computers and web sites

Yeah. So I got back from Chicago and my desktop was having serious problems due to the hard drive corruption. I don't think I lost all that much except for the partition that disappeared with half done videos on it and a few little files. Kind of a bummer. So I ran out to Best Buy, my card with them had expired in April '07 lol. So I signed up for a new one and they gave my unemployed ass $2k credit in their store. I picked out this nice little unit with dual monitor support but it didn't support one of my monitors. Then I had a fever for a few days, tried working on my laptop but couldn't concentrate, eventually got better and exchanged the nice little unit for a tank tower desktop machine. There is a learning curve for Vista and I got a copy of XP running on a virtual machine which is proving rather handy.

I have been having a real problem being motivated to do website code. I don't have any more work or clients. In hindsight maybe I could have joined every freelance website I could find because responding to craigslist ads isn't getting any response. I do have a PDF resume now but I don't think FirteenDesign™ really showcases my talents too well. The BotB upgrade has been very slow -- maybe if I was starting from scratch rather trying to map the old into the new it would be easier. For those of you missing the old firteen check out lackofreality coz we is back even if most of it is broken; the news part works.


Anyways... I don't think I have ever been this broke in my life. To rub it off, I must be slightly depressed because all I feel like doing is waiting for someone to give me a job. I mean, there is only so much you can do each day to push that along. :P