As with many coding projects, programmers often rely on code libraries published by others in order to avoid having to “reinvent the wheel” so to speak. For the clothing site I’m designing for a friend, I’m using the new version of Drupal for its base. This new version broke compatibility with all the existing modules, including one called E-commerce which I kinda need in order to run the store section of the site. They’ve released a beta version of the new module (which doesn’t work, but I’m not sure if that’s their fault or mine for not following the installation instructions exactly), and hopefully a final release is forthcoming before too long.
Luckily tomorrow should be slightly warmer so I won’t be freezing to death outside (just uncomfortably cold, but I’m used to that with baseball). Two games, each 7 innings, means that I should hopefully be home around 5:00 or 5:30 (starts at 12:00, 2 games @ ~2 hours each, 30 minute break in between). I’ve left myself an out for Sunday if I don’t want to deal with that game, and the next one after that isn’t until the 27th. Less games = more spare time for me (which will promptly be taken over by other projects, but that’s not the point).
Personal - Dallas
As I reread my title from yesterday, I realized that it reads as something that it doesn’t mean. What would have been a better title is “The Record Remains Unbroken” since that’s the actual case; the streak I was on was broken. Oh well, I’m not going to change it because if I did, this post would be kinda irrelevant now, wouldn’t it?
I have my first Discrete Math test tomorrow, but I don’t expect it to be that hard. I caught up on all my homework (which isn’t graded, hence why I was behind) and used that as my review, so in the morning I should be good with just looking over my notes once or twice. After that, I get to go home. Saturday I have to come back out here for 2 baseball games — it better be warmer then, or I’m going to be an extremely unhappy trainer…
Personal - Dallas
Had I posted yesterday (and I could have, a 3 sentence mini-post at 11:59) I would have broken my posting streak record, but instead it ties my longest at 20. My explanation for it is that breaking my record again so soon might cause the world to implode or something. That’s a good theory, don’t you agree? Shut up.
I essentially completed my first task today (which took me all of about 3 hours across 2 days) at the office which impressed the person that I’m there to help. I don’t go back again until Monday, and then I’ll apparently be learning more about the process that will be used to setup the new servers. I’m not sure what will happen first: the time arrives for the network migration to take place or I finish every conceivable job that I can be given. I wouldn’t discount the latter from happening too much yet…
Personal - Dallas
The good news is that they don’t want me at the same time. The bad news? I kinda wish the second one didn’t.
I started helping at company #1 today, and one of my big tasks there is going to be extremely interesting. I need to use a “fox and hound” in order to sniff out which network cables correspond to which drops, but sometimes the signal is so weak that I can’t hear the sound it makes. Very, very interesting work I have ahead of me there.
The other company is the one I interviewed last week with for an internship this summer. I’m letting them “provide [me] with further details” before I actually decide; I don’t want to do it, but chances are I ultimately will so that I don’t have to deal with my parents if another offer doesn’t present itself. Unfortunately, it’ll probably impact my HP baseball playoff helping, but that is just volunteering anyway.
Personal - Dallas
Aside from going to church, that’s all I did today. Sure, there was the occasional break to surf the web and talk to friends online but no games at all. The little bit I have let can easily be finished tomorrow morning, and then I can devote my 3 hour break before my test to reviewing and studying. Shouldn’t be too difficult I don’t think, but it very likely might take me close to the whole time to finish if there are a bunch of problems that require a lot of writing.
After the test I’ll be off to the office I’ll be helping at. We still need to decide if it’s worth it for me to even go over there Mondays and Wednesdays since it will only be for about an hour (as opposed to 2-3 hours on Tuesdays and significantly more on Fridays), so this week will probably give a good idea about that.
Personal - Dallas
The majority of today I should have spent doing homework and studying for my Intro to Financial Accounting test on Monday. Reviewing everything that is going to be on it, working through the mock exam, and rereading parts of the book would have been a great idea, right? Well, I don’t necessarily do every great idea that comes into my mind.
This afternoon I spent quite a bit of time playing FFXII which came to a net gain of…nothing. I’m not a fan of dungeons that let you get all the way to the boss, proceed to let you die, and then make you restart over from the very beginning. A save point once in a while would be nice, but who am I to say what should be in the game or not. After that, I went to the HP Senior Play tonight which was Arsenic and Old Lace. Maybe it was just knowing the story better than The Tempest or maybe it was just that it wasn’t Shakespeare, but this one was much easier to understand and quite entertaining. After that, I came home and watched the Season 4 premiere of Kim Possible that I taped. I’m just about halfway through Season 2 of my torrented files, but Disney Channel showed the “series finale” movie that led nicely into the first episode of Season 4. Finally, I’m making this blog post after which I will go take a shower. Maybe then I’ll get to doing some HW. Just maybe…
Personal - Dallas
Well, instead of the episode being released today in the evening, my friend apparently decided he couldn’t wait any longer and posted it at 12:01 this morning. I haven’t seen any of the final episodes, so this was just as new to me as it was to everyone else (ok, so maybe not exactly…). If you want to go watch it (and you should!), it’s up on their website for download.
I had a weird last minute internship interview today (as in, they only contacted me about it yesterday), and I wasn’t really all that impressed/excited about what the project I was going to be working on was. They said that they would probably be making their decision by next week, but I hope they don’t give me an offer so I don’t have to debate whether or not I want to accept it.
Personal - Dallas
Tomorrow will be when the first episode of the machinima I worked on this past summer with a bunch of my friends from HP gets released. The Heretic is a prequel to a series that all of them did the year before which won a bunch of awards and became the second most popular series after RvB. Everyone is really anticipating the release of this first episode, and I have no doubt it’ll be anything less than pure greatness.
After all the time I spent finishing up my Powerpoint today, I didn’t even present it this week. That means that I technically have another week to work on it, but since I’m pretty happy with its current state, I probably won’t do all that much to it. This is also good because of my two tests next week and the fact that I’m going to start to help my ex-teacher’s husband. Even when I’m not playing games there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the world.
Personal - Dallas
A couple of minutes ago, the solution to my live TV streaming problem hit me, and amazingly it’s something that I’ve not only thought of before but actually sold my parents on getting. The device I’m talking about is a Slingbox, and it’s sole purpose is what I need it to do: send live TV to a computer. Granted, it was (probably) originally designed for its features to stream TV over the internet, but doing it on a LAN works just fine. The only potential downside to this is that it would tie up my dad’s laptop so that he couldn’t be working on it while having TV on his monitor, but that problem can be solved with what I was thinking about for a small frontend for my MythTV solution. Sometimes I believe I just overthink things a little too much…
Tomorrow evening my Powerpoint on China is due, and I’m almost done with it. My big problem is that I’m really interested in a couple of the areas (language and history), but the others I sometimes have to resist banging my head on the desk when I’m doing them. I will admit that I wasted a bunch of time trying to find some specific things for the language section that never really turned up, so that put me an hour or so behind where I optimally would have been. I have two blocks of time tomorrow to work on it though, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting it finished before my class.
Personal - Dallas
About a week ago, my chemistry teacher at HP (who I was a lab assistant for essentially for 2 years) emailed me with an offer: the business her husband works for needed some IT help, so she was curious if I might be interested at all in a part-time job with them. I’ve talked with both her and her husband over the past week, and today I went to his office to get a better feel for everything. Everything seems like work that I wouldn’t mind doing (very logical, prodecural, organized stuff), so assuming no issues arise, I’m going to start helping out next week. My strange schedule presents a weird problem with just how much time I’d be able to devote to doing stuff (especially once baseball starts), but it’s only for about 2 months (that’s when the deadline is for this work I’ll be helping with, and he told me that they won’t commit to anything beyond that date currently). Unless I absolutely love it, I probably won’t stay past that, but stranger things have happened (like me doing baseball again this year).
I have a giant bruise on my leg from the “incident” this past weekend to which my mom was mildly happy since she was amazed I appeared not to be hurt. It’s on the outside of my upper thigh, so my wallet continually hits it and causes me pain (especially when I’m sitting). Hopefully it’ll be gone before too long, but I guess I shouldn’t really complain considering what could have happened.
Personal - Dallas