Month: December 2003

2003 Ends …

Just about to head off for my final job of 2003 … This year it’s The Interns at Whiskey Tango where I work for the bar and not the band … My pay will be substantially less this year … Probably about 10% of past years … Maybe The Interns will tip? =)

Haven’t been playing Counter-Strike as much … Played Monday night for what looks like 9 hours … Played about 4 hours on my server, then another couple hours scrimming on pick up games .. and then an hour or so goofing off … the server sits idle most of the time … That P4 2.4G machine sitting there doing nothing … I’d move the CS Server to a wimpier box, but then the server wouldn’t run well when people did join … It stinks …

I think my appointment for the follow-up on the MRI with a neurosurgeon is January 26th … Before I go there I have to get a CAT Scan done … I have to bring the MRI and CATScan results with me … I really hope this is a no surgery case … I don’t like the idea of surgery and especially when it has to do with me and my spine … My neck has been hurting the last couple weeks … I don’t know if it’s psychological or not … I really don’t think so, I think it simply just hurts … I don’t think I could stand living with this pain … The other concern is the insurance that I have … I don’t know if it will cover the tests or the neurosurgeon … My wife spoke to the insurance company and they said they will cover a neurosurgeon office visit, but not a consultation … So it’s all in the billing … Insurance … a rant I will leave for another time …

I hooked up my brother with one of these MovableType sites on Christmas day … Registered his name and popped him up on a web server … Same server as this site as a matter of fact … a FreeBSD 4.8 Server running Apache Web Server and using a MySQL database on the Windows MySQL Server … In the coming weeks I will complete the “computer room” and get the DNS Servers and MySQL server over to FreeBSD machines … The Bugcheck crashes aren’t fairing the network very well … Yeah it’s only every month to month and a half, but is still a huge hassle … Too bad Windows is the way it is … Besides the fact of these errors with no offered resolution, those servers run fine …

Anyway … that’s about all the has been going on … Web work has continued with many site updates for multiple customers and the birth of some others … Not all of the sites that I mentioned previously have panned out … Doesn’t mean that they won’t, just that other people must have ideas and take a while to act on them as well … so …

Happy New Year!

MRI Results

I got the results back from my doctor on my MRI … Apparently the MRI showed I have some problems in my neck … The letter written on the MRI report said that I needed to get in touch with a neurosurgeon, and there was a prescription for a CAT Scan paper-clipped to it … Just the mention of neurosurgeon scares me, but I don’t know that it necessarily means surgery is something that needs to be done in my spine … I just hear the statement in my head “We will do this, but understand that since we’re playing with your spine, we may paralyze you for the rest of your life.   Sign here.” … and bands complain about the cost of production … It’s cost me my neck and the tingly feelings in my left arm which should be reserved for the ensuing heart attack for someone my age and weight who smokes.

Speaking of which, before this test was even done, I have decided to quit smoking cold turkey for this New Year’s … I have been tired of all the radio commercials .. especially the one from Megan where her father quit “too late” … I look at my 5 and 2 year old and think that it’s a good thing to do at this point … I sincerely hope that I can accomplish this … I have been smoking for ~23 years …

Well, Merry Christmas with this information, huh? But I will start reading some of the presents that I shipped to myself with the others … Going to start looking into this CSS layout thing for sites since I am hearing more and more how embedded tables will break down the road … I think it’s almost the same thing as the Open Source/Proprietary argument, but I think if it works, it makes more sense for the client browser to do the work with sending less information down the pipe … In the long run it will save bandwidth etcetera for both parties … thus making the sites load much faster … That seems to be one of the major concerns as of late too, and wouldn’t you know it, I was able to purchase a book on that topic as well …

I also brought a couple other books into the house that also had me thinking about my mortality … The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride … Classics …

Bob Stanger Dies

Shocking news heard by people in the industry … Bob Stanger died December 2, 2003 of a heart attack … He was in the process of moving into his brother’s house … While moving, Bob suddenly had a heart attack and was gone …

Bob originally started coming out and taking pictures of bands, and one time when he was out I asked if he would want to put the pictures in the paper … Then Bob was known as the Out On the Town photogrpher … Many people didn’t know until well after his death that he had passed, and it has come as a shock to anyone who would not have expected this, obviously … Someone so young … Bob was believed to be in his late forties … and yes, that’s still young …

Mondays … Ugh!

Mondays are sometimes the worst day of the week, but for me, it’s my day off … In most instances, this is a good thing, but this Monday is an OOT Monday … It is also The Whiskey Tango‘s Christmas Party … not to mention that there is a Skylab match tonight that I will miss … This is also probably the first “real” entry in the MovableType Weblog that I have made … I spent yesterday installing and configuring it before watching the Eagles loss to the 49ers … Then that night I took all the entries from the old bLog and put them in here … After I did all that, I realize that there is an import feature to this one, but I didn’t use it …

The other reason for this is that I did a search to find the possibilities to host ASP pages on a FreeBSD Server … I put in Google “Apache ASP” and a site that some guy did just like this one had a reference to asp2php … Because Chil!Soft sold out to Sun or something, it would cost about $495 to enable an Apache server to run ASP pages … asp2php is an open source app that will convert the language instead … I liked the way this guy’s site looked, and I found that he was running MovableType … So I visited MovableType’s website again and reviewed the requirements and lo and behold, I figured I would give it a shot …

You see, Franco from Bigg Romeo has been telling me for months that bLogs were the wave of the future for web sites and that I should look into getting something and setting it up … I set up a bLog for him just like the one I was using here. I don’t know why he wasn’t into it or whatever, and I know that the MovableType Weblog was one of the examples he explicitly sent me to, so here we have arrived at this version of DavidPierron.Com …

I’m not really into how these Weblogs are CSS based … either that, or the CSS is written poorly … I have made little changes here and there, and the one that bothers me the most is that it will sometimes throw what should be seen on the right (calendar, etc) and wraps it down to the bottom of all the bLog entries … A table wouldn’t do that … So I have to read up on CSS a little bit and see if there’s a way to change that … Right now it’s called a “float” so maybe that’s the keyword to mess with …

Anyway … That’s about it for now, I must get back to the OOT and getting as much done as I can before I have to go to my place of work on my only night off … So much for Mondays off … =(

Banner Day

I think for the first time ever in my life this has happened … In one day, I was approached by at least 4 different potential customers … (I seem to think there was a 5th, but if there was, it escapes me) … Two were via email, and two were in person … Now, if they all pan out, that’s another story … but I was impressed with this little turn of events …

MRI

I had an MRI done, and I don’t know if they’re all the same, but I had the one where you’re loaded into a tube … I never thought I would have issues with it, but I did … Shortly after being loaded into the tube I had a brief period where I almost called out and had myself removed … But, I talked myself out of it … Shut my eyes and got it done … I knew it had to get done, and if I didn’t do it then, I would have to do it eventually … and other means may have been … worse …. After that initial feeling of distress passed, my heart pounding, then the sensation of having to throw up, I was able to get through it by closing my eyes … I think anyone should be told this … Just close your eyes … even before you’re loaded in … cause I think that’s what freaked me out … Having the ceiling of this tube about an inch from my nose … Forget about the pounding noises they say you’re going to hear … They were more like buzzing sounds … like someone cutting wood with a power saw next to your head … The nurse had put earplugs in my ears before I went in … She informed me I could scratch an itch or something when I didn’t hear the loud noises, but in all honesty, I don’t think I could have moved my arms … So I didn’t even try … That may have freaked me out even more … In between each “scan”, the nurse came over a speaker somewhere over my head … Or technician (whatever they’re called) … The whole time there is a stream of air blowing over your head and down through the tube towards your feet I guess … This also helped after I shut my eyes, cause you could imagine you were just on your back at the beach or something … It’s the same thing for rides at an amusement park … If you close your eyes on any ride, they’re all about the same … You feel like you’re in a car with the top down … It’s when you open your eyes that you realize you’re going in circles way above the ground, etc …

So, to sum up .. when getting an MRI, close your eyes … wear earplugs … and realize that you will hear power tools next to your head … If you know all this ahead of time, I think you’ll be fine … I was after the first minute or so …

Work – Work – Work

I have been really busy working and then doing some more work … Working 6 nights a week at The Tango and all the computer work as well … But a couple things that happened since my last entry over a month ago are this; I renewed my T1 contract for another 3 years … Savvis has been a great provider and has served me much better than Fast.Net ever did … In fact, Fast.Net went Chapter 11 and recently had an asset sale .. so good thing I got out when I did … The other thing that really isn’t such a big deal is that I ran a network connection to the sound booth … I am now able to be online from The Tango … So those were a couple things worth mentioning …

Latest web site I did for Y-Not … I sent a semi-rant to a customer of mine about the benefits of PHP, I will copy and paste that here:

PHP is not only web … there is a CLI version that will come with the Windows version, and where it used to be standard on *nix, you can still install it … I use PHP script all the time to do scheduled tasks … Most notably on the Windows server to open an Access database and see whether an artist’s touring schedule was update and if it was, and email is triggered to those on an elist that wish to be updated of such things … The other thing I really dig about PHP is that you don’t need addition components to complete tasks … No AspEmail .. AspUpload, etc … all can be written simply using PHP … Conditional includes as well … It’s incredibly robust … AND it runs on every platform … So, when I write a PHP web page or application, I can put it on either Windows or FreeBSD servers …

Additionally, I bought Zend Encoder http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-encoder.php … so I can encrypt my PHP source … Additionally with a custom PHP function, I also can encrypt web site source utilizing JavaScript … I just recently put up http://www.ynotrocks.com … Pixxar did the site, and I did all the rest … It is completely PHP powered, and they have FTP access to all my scripts, but downloading them is useless, they’re all encrypted … Additionally, if you load any page from that site, click View Source and see what you get … So you can’t even swipe my HTML easily … another thing I do is, I do a check within my scripts to make sure I’m running on the domain they were written for … If not, the script exits immediately with an ICUDesign.Net copyright message … and lastly, all the scripts will expire on a specified date … I set this site for Jan 1, 2005 … So even if they move to another host and think they have a running application, it will eventually fail on them … (of course the MySQL server connection is hard coded, and that will shut them down first but they could override their local DNS and run their own local version of MySQL server using my domain name, but the expiration of the scripts cannot be tricked) …

So there you have it … this is my latest update to my busy world …