Twev1701.net

The movies at the drive in were most excellent last night. I reccomend seeing either movie, those being “RV” or “The Benchwarmers”. Both movies were quite funny, and well worth the money

However, I ended up eating something that really hates me. I was up most of the night with horrible stomach cramps, and woke up this morning feeling like there was an elephatn sitting on my stomach. I called off work so i could try and get this beat out of me. So far, it’s still there beating me up.

On the bright side, since I really can’t move around too much without extreme discomfort, this is giving me time to print out quite a few traffic reports for the site and get some other various computer work done.

As for me, it’s back to reports and  organizing files. Later…

I just got done cutting the grass for the first time this year a few minutes ago. Man is the ground dry out there! My dad made a comment to me last week that when he cut the grass, the ground was like it uaually is in late August. I can now saw from experience, that he is 100% correct. I am literally covered head to toe in dust from the dry ground. Hell, in some palce the grass literally ripped out of the ground as I ran over it with the lawn mower. That’s how dry it is out there!

Well, time to hop in the shower and get ready to go to the drive-in while Jess goes to the grocery store for snacks for tonight. Later…

Ahh…a few free minutes. Actually, I’m writing this at work on my Pocket PC. It’s just me here this weekend, and I have to fax out information to all of our installers, which means I have quite a bit of downtime.

Sorry I haven’t posted in some time,but it’s not due to laziness…I just haven’t had the time. In fact, I’ve barely been on the computer at all in the past week. I may get a chance to hop on possibly Monday morning before work, if not, I’m off Tuesday and I really need to get a few things in order online. I would hop on tonight and get some of it done, but Jess and I are going to the drive-in tonight.

Generally speaking, things have been good – gas prices aside.

Speaking of cars and gas, I recently got a new car. I’m driving a 1994 Buick Century now. It was my grandfather’s car, and only has about 37,000 miles on it. It feels like an ‘old man’s car’, but it’s all good. Right now I’m in the process of transferring over my stuff from my Neon, and cleaning out the Neon so I can sell it. Sadly, the era of The Neon is over.

I’ve been monitoring the site’s traffic for the past two weeks, and there has been an extreme surge in traffic this past month. After analyzing all of the traffic data, it appears to all because of my Weekly Wallpapers. So, I’m going to watch the traffic for another month or so, and if it warrents it, I’ll either increase my hosting size, or get new hosting all together, and open up a new all-wallpaper website. Not only do I think it would be fun, but it should also help quench everyone’s wallpaper thirst more than once a week. Since I have a few gigs of pics, I think I can pull it off. I’ll have to get my PHP man JP on the case to start some gallery code for me!

Speaking of new projects, that ‘project’ I mentioned a few weeks a go may be pushed back a month from it’s original release date of May 2006. It’s a rather involved project to get off the ground, and to achieve the quality I want, I need more time. Although since only about 6 people know about it anyway, it’s not like I’m letting a lot of people down.

Today was a pretty good day. After sleeping in from being up until 4am working on the site, Jess and I had a nice breakfast. After that, we got ready and went to Bert and Kelly’s house for their daughter’s first birthday. We don’t get nearly enough time to hang out with those guys and it’s a shame because thay are really great people. Hell, the bertman and I used to hang out almost every day back in high school, and now, we’re lucky if we get to hang out once every six months! Hopefully with this new job and hours, I’ll be able to see them much more often.

While the Bertman and I were talking, the conversation of course turned to the subject of video games. We’re both hounds for nostalgic gaming, and we started talking about Duke Nukem 3D. Years ago when we were really into the game, I started making a map of our high school, but never finished it. It’s always bothered me that I never sat down and completed it, and it something I’ve been wanting to do for years. After talking with the Bertman, I decided to come home and put toagther a nice little DOS box using vintage parts. Truth be told, I had one already setup up with an ethernet card that I made a few years ago as a print server. So, I dig that out of the attic and hook it up tonight.

Behold…Windows 3.11!!

The only issue I seem to be having is with the Sound Blaster 16 card that in there. I have the original driver floppies and will have to re-install them tomorrow.  But as they say, that’s for another day. For me right now, it’s time to end this day and go to bed…I’ve got work in 8 hours. Later…

As you can see, the new design has been finished and uploaded.

Since I had planned to be in bed about 3 hours ago, this is going to be a very short post with a better post to follow tomorrow…er….today….er…after I sleep. Later…

This Sunday, we’re heading doen to Brnadi and Steph’s for Easter Dinner, and we’re supposed to discuss wedding flowers (oh joy!). So, I’ve been trying to get Jess to let me have the boutonnieres that I want. Originally, I was going to have a small broadsword going through the flower. However, after thinking about this for a few months, the idea just didn’t have that much appeal anymore. What I really wanted to do were communicators from STNG (Star Trek The Next Generation…duh! o_0). Anyway, Jess has finally given in, but she wanted to see what it would look like first. Well, I could have drawn one or even gotten a flower and one of the communicators I have here, but that would have been so un-g33k. So, I turned to my friend, Photoshop. But, I just didn’t stop at the boutonniere. I took some a pic of me in the tux, a few pics of me and JP from his wedding, and a picture of the chapel where the wedding is going to be held. With the magic of Photoshop, I was able to make a pretty accurate representation of not only what the boutonnieres may look like, but what JP and I will look like on my weedding day standing in the chapel. Granted, the lighting doens’t match too well, but it’s just a mock-up.

Enjoy this glimpse into the future!

The backend upgrade went off without a hitch last night, however, the frontend upgrade is going to take some time.

I was looking at various themes last night, but the ones that had the type of layout I was looking for, lacked the features I wanted. The same was true when I found a theme that had all the features I wanted — the layout sucked.

Knowing that I would have to do a little mix & matching, I started opening up the files that made up the themes and looked at the code. That’s when my headache started. To get what I want, I have to delve into 4 different languages — HTML, PHP, CSS, and AJAX. Now, I know HTML pretty damn good, a wee bit about PHP, and just a bit of CSS. So, as you can tell, this is going to be a total learning experience for me.

To be honest, I’m not sure when the new frontend will be ready, let alone uploaded. This is one of the advantages of having your own web server at home, I can code and test everything locally before uploading all the finished files to the ye old interweb.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the coding.