So I am not really done. I just have moments with social networking. Perhaps I am looking at things from the wrong perspective. I sometimes get so disappointed with society that I entrench myself in a position and refuse to budge. I have had this issue with things other than social networking such as Apple Inc... For a brief moment I reflect on what this says about my character and I cannot say that I am excited about it. I believe that I am just too quick to dispense with what the masses say. Is it side affect of my career? Doubtful. If anything I should be embracing all of the mainstream trends that make my livelihood that much easier to acquire.
As not to diverge too far from that which I discuss a fresh paragraph will allow me to refocus. If you are anything like me you are asking yourself what the title means. Actually, I just lied. If you are anything like me you have already googled the title. Don't read into it. I crafted the title as more of a punishment for assuming that I am THAT predictable. Honestly, it was the first thing that popped into my head when I started to write.
Classes and work have bound my time quite nicely but I expect both to begin to wane in the coming weeks. I will likely succumb to house hold projects until the fall semester starts. Great technological advances seem uncertain at the moment. Maybe one day I will get around to making this web log easier to update thus allowing for more frequent updates. We'll never know (lifehouse). Your lucky numbers are 5.4, 8, and i. Thanks for playing.
In order to have a successful post title, one must utilize the name of the title in a very cliche and obsessive kind of way. If I were truly talented I would produce a web comic which made some subtle or profound insight about life as a(n) <insert title here> comic would. (please see links to the left) So in order to achieve some sense of meaning and self-gratification I instead make a cleaver post title and tie it to the same ends. I have not made any great technical enlightenment since my last post but I did get married (which was nice) and I also decided to give up all faith and concern for the United States after the collective display of blatant idiocy in the recent election. I survive and I pay taxes for now. Maybe one day I will have an effect on the world that will make it a better place but it seems that people would rather live in controlled environments, be completely maintained by an overarching power, and have no true free will or capacity to make decisions for themselves or think freely.
On a lighter note, I have been blessed with a pretty happy life and little stress. I have a wife who loves me above all else, I have what I would consider a nice house, and I work an enjoyable job where I get along with my coworkers. However, it has recently occurred to me that not everybody is so lucky. Other people have beef with life and my heart genuinely goes out to them. Because I have never walked a mile in their shoes, I am not convinced that I can truly help them aside from just being there for them when I am needed for whatever I am needed. In light of this, I have come to the realization that it is my role to be there for those who need me. This is a bit of an awkward kind of statement coming from me because I am far from a social butterfly and I seldom care for others because of my low opinion of society. At any rate, I am putting it on the record that I am going to truly try to see the good in people and instead of not liking them, I am going to really try to find out why they are the way they are and see what I can do to help them. I believe that this is the best contribution I can make to society. It is not like complaining about society will ever fix it.
On a socio-technical note. I have really became fed up with social networking. A few kiddy scripters put out some hack markup to allow the unwashed masses to produce eye-sores of "their space" on the web. Do not misunderstand me, not all of these pages look like chewing tinfoil sounds. There are those who respect the culture. But I am willing to wager that most of these pages have no business being on the world's number one front for commercialization. You know what... I do not even know where I am going with this anymore. I am done.
I still do plan to work with this site. It just is not moving at the pace I would like for it to move. However, I am going to take a lesson from my brother though he may be unaware of it: Just because you are only update a site once every 3 months does not mean it is not worth the effort. His site is pretty good and he very seldom ever updates his site. So, in his footsteps, I am taking the same relaxed approach to building this site. Yeah... it has been 6 months since my last update. But it is all cool. I will update it when I get around to it.
In the same spirit of slacking off, I am also not going to set any kind of public goals for this site as I have for so many other before it. I find that I set these insane goals, fail to meet them, loose heart, and let the site die because of it. So I am officially not setting any kind of goals for the structure of this website outside of its incipient purpose.
Lastly, to put into perspective just how relaxed the development of this site will be, I would like to publicly announce my engagement to my spectacular girlfriend of almost 3 years. <3 So with that said, I am done for this update. Check back from time to time for a potential update. I’m out.
One of the major platforms of my technical knowledge advancement has been developing a deeper understanding of *nix operating systems. That is much more easily said than done; especially for a simple Windows admin such as me. I have been playing with the distro known as Ubuntu. I have Ubuntu 7.04 installed on my machine and I have been tinkering with various aspects of it. I have also recently become very acquainted with the GRUB boot loader. I made the mistake of installing Ubuntu and then installing Windows while still desiring to keep my Ubuntu installation. This, of course, completely torched GRUB. I was provided with the opportunity to use Ubuntu's live form to recover GRUB. After recovering GRUB, I then had the task of configuring it for dual booting. In retrospect, I can say that I grew a lot from that situation.
I also have the option to play with IBM's AIX at work. It is a little less forgiving than Ubuntu considering the only access I have to it is through ssh. I am really surprised that I am trusted with root privileges on it... but I suppose that is the only way to learn. The real kick is that I only have access to the production machine; I have no permissions on the development or the staging machine. The purpose of the box is to serve as our main financial database. It is running oracle, which I am not very familiar with. But I really don't play much with the database side; I deal more with the general OS side of the machine.
All this is to say that I am very Linux challenged but I am really working on building those skills. One of the missions of this blog that I am setting forth with this message is the personal endeavor to gain a better knowledge of Unix / Linux environments. So don't be surprised to find occasional post having to do with *nix or a how to on something *nix related.
After almost a year of no blogging, I have returned with a new fire for web development. During my exile from all things web development I have grown a lot in my knowledge of computer science in general. I really hope to apply some of this knowledge to this new blog which I have named Project.* for the time being. I suppose I could elaborate more on the name but I really don't feel like it at the moment. Besides, as I have already stated, the name is temporary.
Now I will give some treatment to the purpose of this reborn blog. The blog is (as it always was) really more for personal use. I am going to be building a content management system for my use and personal/professional development. I have been tossing around a few ideas for how I am going to organize the blog. The front running consideration is categorizing each article by general subject and offering directories for users to delve. I still will need to think about it for a while. At any rate, this is all I have for my reemergence into the web development & blogging communities for right now. Stay tuned.
Update:
I just want to take a second to pay my respect to Beta3 for guidance in styling this blog because I couldn't style my way out of a wet paper bag. My design abilities were greatly increased in working with Beta3. You can see more examples of Beta3's abilities by checking out this. I would also mention the valuable input I received from my brother (author of Archtype-k) and loving girlfriend. Thinking about my styling experience brings me to an interesting point of wisdom that can be found in web development: just because you know the language, doesn't mean you know how to use it. I am familiar with the rules and syntax of CSS however I have very little stylistic talent. All the CSS knowledge in the world can't make up for a lack of talent. That is why talented individuals such as Beta3 are prominent members of the web community. Leaving you with that to chew on, I'm out.