Jeremy and Ruzena’s Blog

For those of you who are unaware, Ruzena’s father is in the Navy. He was deployed to Iraq a couple years ago. Thankfully, he made it home safe and sound. He wrote a book about his experiences, which I highly recommend to anyone who really wants to know what’s going on there, directly from someone who was there. I’ve got my copy and have been reading through it, as I have time. It’s very well-written and does an excellent job of conveying how things were for him.

Get to it on Amazon, by clicking the book cover below. It’s not that expensive, and you’ll learn a lot from it.

Edit: Amazon’s currently sold out, at the moment. Get it at eCampus, or (if the site will work for you) search for ISBN (9781604418613) on Publish America.

Digg It

I’m trying out a new time tracking software I ran across the other day. RescueTime drops a little light-weight application onto your computer that monitors what applications and websites you’re in most frequently. I’ve got the widget for my top 10 activities of the last week on the sidebar, now. Keep in mind I just started on Wednesday.

Overall, it’s a relatively accurate little program. It lets you tag your own applications and sites, so you determine what’s referred to as “personal”, “procrastination”, or “work” to take from a few off my list. As you can see, I haven’t been working very much on my computer for the past couple days. I classify “work” as time that I spend doing things for Omega Vortex. Planet AT&T is one of my tags and will probably appear on my top 10 eventually, the more I use my laptop for day-to-day tasks at the store.

My only complaint is it seems to do all of its data management in YAML and it often chokes on various things. It also seems to completely lose the data intended for the request it tried to send when it does choke. Right now, I’ve only got a little over 8 hours logged into RescueTime and I’ve spent way, way, way more time on my computer than that. Edit: As a followup to this, it just tried to process another update and failed because it didn’t like something about the blog. So, it just randomly loses data. The whole last 30 minutes went without being logged. Hurrah. Maybe it’ll lose less data if I make it send updates more often, but they’d probably hate me if I spammed them with updates every 5 - 10 minutes.

Another complaint is that, from the error messages, it seems to be written in Ruby … but, I won’t go there.
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with it. It just needs some work on its data delivery and not completely losing data when something goes wrong. I’d be cool if it threw out the offending entry in a parser error, but it seems like it just bails out on the entire request and doesn’t try again.

I’m hoping to use the time tracking in conjunction with my new phone to hopefully get myself more organized. The time tracking will be a motivator to stop procrastinating and doing other things when I should be working. The phone is a very easy way to keep track of important times and dates, because I’m very forgetful. Especially, when I get involved in something and lose track of time.

So, here’s to hopefully becoming more productive. I really need it, about now.

American? Voting Democrat? Can’t decide between Hillary and Obama? Surely, you’re not voting for that war-mongering, piece of trash, wanna-be-straight-talking, I-don’t-know-anything-about-economics, another-100-years-in-Iraq-is-fine-with-me, face-it-people-this-man-is-Bush-with-a-different-name McCain, right?

Read this. Now.

What can I say? I’m a schmuck. I love flowers.

Thank you so much, Jeremy.

I just wanted to take a second and wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day!Now…just to say a few things though…

I don’t care if you’re dating.  I don’t care if you’re the best boyfriend or girlfriend in the world.  I don’t care if you hate Valentine’s day because you’re not dating or you hate it because other people are and you’re jealous.  I don’t care if you hate the holiday because it makes you sick (with envy, greed, annoyance, etc).  I don’t care if you hate Valentine’s day because you think it’s overrated.  I don’t care if you hate it because people try to outdo other people by buying the best presents and it annoys you.  I don’t care if you hated the Valentine’s Day parties in Elementary school and into Middle and Highschool.  I don’t care if you don’t want to go to a Valentine’s dance.  I don’t care if you hate Valentine’s Day because you think it makes you and your significant other look like everyone else.

I really don’t care.  Just don’t be so emo about it.  Suck it up.  Honestly, Valentine’s Day isn’t meant to make people feel bad, it’s meant to just be a good time when you can express how much you care about your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/mother/father/etc.  You don’t HAVE TO BE DATING TO ENJOY VALENTINE’S DAY.

Sorry to turn this into something else but I get sick of people whining about how much they hate it.  Just enjoy it for one second of your life.  If your friend gives you a flower, don’t think of it as cliche.  Valentine’s Day is just a day when you can appreciate the people you have in your life and possibly give something to them for being the person they are or receive something for being you.  If you’re bitter because you haven’t received something then maybe you ought to examine your own life and see the bigger picture.  It’s not about what you receive in physical gifts but what you as a person can give to your friends around you.

Again, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day and just say that I appreciate each and every one of my dearest friends, relatives, and teachers and also that I appreciate JP for always being there for me.  Thanks you guys. (you know who you are) Also, thank you to those who sent me cards. (mostly my family) They made me smile.

I love you.

No.

I’m glad Barack Obama took the time to explain his religious conviction and how it relates to the way it drives his views, as well as how he understands that we live in a country that is not only Christian.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a comprehensive list of 1 Sign that you’re a lousy PHP Programmer.

1. You write a list of 40 reasons someone is a lousy PHP programmer when over half the reasons don’t apply to every situation, much less a lot of real-world situations.

Honestly, I wanted to tear this one to pieces with a really long entry outlining why certain points on that list were just ridiculous. I won’t bother. If you’re even a mediocre PHP Programmer and understand certain concepts, you’ll be able to do it yourself.

Granted, there are some common sense points in there, but most of the valid points on his list are just that: common sense. There are a few noteworthy items that aren’t common sense, but I was so taken aback by some of the outlandish claims that I can hardly count those. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, if you feel your IQ drop while or after reading that list.

Disclaimer: I don’t really think this person is a lousy PHP Programmer, but I do think it was in poor taste that he BSed a list like this and included points that are completely unreasonable.

Okay…so this is completely random (not really) but I got these for my birthday. Is anyone else that reads this blog a fan of Hoops and Yoyo?

If you’ve never heard of them, they’re the endearing little…kitty, bunny, and mouse (?) trademarked from Hallmark and used on their cards and e-cards. I would have to say, the e-cards that you can send with these guys on them are the best e-cards I’ve ever seen and the most enjoyable to watch.

“You are sooooooooooooooooo cute.”

On a slightly different and more classy note, lookie what I made the other day! =D

That’s all folks. =)

I announced it last year, so I’ll do it again this year. Today is Ruzena’s birthday.
She’s now 19 and even more beautiful than she was at 18. She’s aging very well, I think.
Happy birthday, sweetheart.