Still Alive

11.27.2006

Since I skipped any entries last week:

Mom! I'm still alive!

Part of my lack of blogging is due to my cable service (and thus my cable modem) going out every once in a while. For the past 2 Sundays it's been off. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing - it forces me to do the things I put off when I want to watch TV or surf the net. I finally got the old portable DVD player set up with the treadmill in the garage, so now I can't use boredom as an excuse for not walking on it.

It is a little frustrating for the cable to keep going out. Makes it hard to do my independant web development while looking for jobs.

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Vinnie Mac: The Boss?

11.14.2006

I applied for a PHP programming job with WWE. I got back a standard automated reply:

Thank you for inquiring about career opportunities with World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. If your qualifications match our current staffing needs, we will contact you directly. We welcome you to apply for other openings as they become available.

Please make sure to return to our web site and update your profile periodically to ensure that we have your most current information.

Best regards,

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Human Resources

This is one of those jobs I think I have a 1% chance of getting, mainly because it's in Stamford, CT. Commuting is out of the question - according to Google it's 997 miles from my house to the WWE offices. Nobody pays relocation expenses anymore. For the cost of living difference between Athens and Stamford, I would have to get a 81% raise just ot break even.

But....

In that 1% I could get a call and be just the person they're looking for. In the modern age, telecommuting isn't impossible. I've seen the job listed for the past 3 weeks and it looks like it hasn't been filled yet. I could work for Vince!

1%...

I'm calling this one Plan Z.

Permalink programming/interweb random

My Series of Unfortunate Events

11.10.2006

The past few days have been frustrating. Most days go by without inc1dent, which I've come to accept as the norm. If a problem does pop up, it's usually nothing that I can't fix without too much thought or discomfort. This week I was thrown a couple of curves that managed to throw my week off kilter.

Wednesday evening I got a call from Mom out of the blue. It seems we had each been thinking of the other and it had been a while since we had gotten together to chat. We could chat on the phone, but every once ina while you just need a face-to-face with your Mom. Nashville is pretty much the halfway point between us, so we agreed to meet there. It was 4:45, so I was hoping that I would miss the rush hour traffic by spending most of my quality time on I-65.

15 miles from home, 1 mile south of the Tennessee line, 87 miles from Nashville, traffic going north on I-65 stopped. I had just passed the last exit on the Alabama side - actually I had managed to come to a stop past the off-ramp but before the overpass. Over the next hour I moved 12 car lengths. Thanks to the advent of cellular technology Mom and I kept talking off and on while I was stuck and she decided to turn south once she got to Nashville and kept on coming. We ended up meeting at the Shady Lawn Truck Stop in Elkton (better known as the home of the World Famous Boobie Bungalow Club). Mom and I got our talk in while having some fine dining at the Shady Lawn. I even got home in time to watch the news and found out my delay on the interstate was due to 2 18-wheelers sideswiping each other causing all types of vehicular carnage. Everybody was ok, though.

Yesterday was going to be a good day. I woke up refreshed and focused. I had things to do on my to do list and I was raring to go. All was going well until 4:45 (I'm starting to see a pattern). I was ftp'ing files to my webserver for testing when the phone rang. It was a recruiter for one of the job postings I had sent my resume off for, and he needed a cover letter. He was going to email me some details and I should incorporate them into my cover letter. No problemo. I turn back to the computer and it's locked up. Odd. I reboot the computer and it waits.

And waits.

And waits.

I try booting into safe mode and it never starts up. I try booting into the verbose, message ridden safe mode and see that it's getting hung up on the MUP.SYS file (I later found out this is used when running multiple operating systems - WHICH I'M NOT!). The file must have gotten corrupted somehow. I'll just stick in the XP disk and have it load the file back. So I load the XP disk....

... and it can't recognize the hard drive, probably due to it being 2 drives with a RAID 0. A software RAID 0 managed by the BIOS. That's important, I would find out. All the XP disk sees is a big, unpartitioned, unusable drive. Crap.

I then remember all the rage of Knoppix - a flavor of Linux that can run on a bootable cd. Thanks to my handy dandy laptop from work, I'm not completely cut off from the world. I manage to download a copy of Knoppix! Thanks to a little coaching from Jer, I burn my very first iso image to a disk and now have a bootable disk and I can boot up the computer! Once I'm in Knoppix, it even shows my big honkin' 800G Disk.

Except it can't open the drive.

I search the net, trying to dust off my Linux skills. I remember something about having to mount drives. Oh, here's an article on the net about setting a raidtab so Knoppix can set a raid partition. I type all of this stuff in and it does no good. Then I come across a little tidbit on a message board that makes my heart drop. Linux can't read Windows raid partitions (and vice versa). My raid partition is a software partition created for Windows, so that must be the reason that I can't open up the drive.

Welcome to Screwedburg, population me.

After hours of fighting with the computer, I went to bed at 2:00 in the morning hoping I would come up with another plan (I had run out of letters for naming plans long ago). I woke up and thought I would try booting in safe mode one more time. I went through the steps and saw it get hung up on the MUP.SYS file again. Dejected, I just left the computer and ate some breakfast. I came back half an hour later and found the normal Windows desktop waiting for me. I could do stuff! I could rescue files! I could replace the seemingly corrupt MUP.SYS! So I did all that. I rebooted and the computer got hung up again. I rebooted again and the computer started right back up without a problem.

So I've resigned myself to the fact that there's something wrong. The only thing I can think of to fix it is to rebuild everything and get rid of the RAID drive. I've got all my data backed up thanks to 2 external hard drives along with a web server I hide stuff. But I really hate doing that. The computer always ends up fighting me whenever I attempt something like this.

Permalink mom random

Fore Rendering

11.06.2006

Today has been my day to try and organize all the little projects I've got going on. Parts have been more frustrating than productive, but overall I think it's been a good day.

One of my projects (at least I'm pretty sure it's one of my projects) is the upgrade of the website for the golf course Gina works at. I'm trying to pump up the "wow, geewiz" factor by sneaking in a little Flash intro page, if for no other reason than it's a good excuse to boost my Flash skills along the way. I'm also using Poser to create the animation that I'll import into Flash. If everything works out right, there'll be a golfer hitting the ball which will swoop up as the camera angle zooms in to the ball in mid-flight. Once you get close enough, you'll see the golf course logo on the ball, and then the logo will come off the ball and form the logo for the page. It's a good idea, at least I think it's a good idea, but I don't know 100% of how I'm going to do it yet. But that's part of the fun of learning. It's the frustrating part, too, but I'm trying to be optimistic.

Here's an early render of the 1st set-up shot before the animation starts:

The animation for the swing is all set up, all I've got to do is have the camera follow and zoom in on the ball. After that, it's the fun of figuring out how to integrate my golf ball/logo idea. It's a good thing I love playing with the boat load of graphics programs I've garnered over the years!

Permalink programming/interweb

Insert Tab A Into Slot B

11.01.2006

A couple of years ago (I think) I got sucked into the world of the Star Wars Miniatures game at one of my local comic book shops. I'm easily drawn into new games, but seldom do I actually get around to actually playing any of them. The appeal of the SW Minis game is the collectability of the pieces, much like the trading card games that are out there now (ala Pokeman and Magic: The Gathering).

After amassing more of the figures/pieces than I had intended, Jerry and I got around to playing a couple of games. They were "learning the rules" scenarios, but they played out quickly and helped to show how fun the game could be - especially if we went ahead and figured out all the optional and advanced rules. One of the drawback when playing was that Jer and I would forget what was what on the 2D map. Walls with red lines go to the ceiling and block line of sight, a different color represents low cover which serves as a to hit modifier. I'm sure that anyone who has played this game more than a handful of times knows these rules, but it still something that a beginner has to look up more often and thus slows the game down a little.

Tangent to the days of ResGen and the scenry building skills of JD. JD had an expert hand at making scenery, which in turn made whatever game we were playing more fun. Epic Warhammer 40,000 wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if it weren't for the terrain and ruins that JD had made. When we started to play Frag, JD got on the local plotter and made a huge map for which he then made elevated walls, walkways, debris boxes and crates. These were the things that added to make the play more enjoyable.

While surfing around I came across a site that has paper models and dioramas for the Star Wars Miniatures game. (After signing up) you can download PDF files that can be printed, spindled, folded, and mutilated to make your very own 3D Star Wars gaming map. I've printed and tried out some of the files for walls, and I think this is going to work out pretty well. It's been a while since I put my arts and crafts skills to work, but it's very calming to have a little project away from the computer.

This first pass was printing out test walls (for lack of a better term) on regular old paper. I think to do this properly I need to get a heavier grade paper. Right now I think that building the scenery is going to be as much fun as to when we get around to playing another game.

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