Category: Stuff

Court

So I have to appear in court about my truck being parked on the sidewalk … I have parked my truck next to my house on the sidewalk for years … It started with the bread truck, and then when I got the box truck that took its place … Never had a problem except the occasional ticket that I paid and didn’t mind paying because I felt much safer with the truck parked right outside … When this CLIP program started in Philadelphia, one of my illustrious neighbors felt it was their part to call in my parking the truck on the sidewalk … There was even a period there where I got a ticket every day … I can’t remember if that was before the CLIP program, but we got word back that someone up the block had a bug up their butt about me parking the truck where I have for years … Eventually, I was served a notice that I had to “Cease maintaining a private parking area” and I had to move my truck … I had 10 days to comply or something … So for a couple weeks I parked the truck outside of my sister-in-law’s house … When that blew over, I just started parking the truck back where I always had, on the sidewalk … This last violation to “Cease maintaining a private parking area” was a summons to appear in court …

So I go to court … and explain all this … that I have not constructed anything to maintain a private parking area, and that I simply park on the sidewalk … I said that I would move the truck, and I paid $48 court fees … Our government hard at work …

iMac

Okay, so the iMac arrived Monday, and here it is Thursday and I finally got it moved to my desk … I also cleared a ton of stuff off of my desk including 3 computers that were stacked on one corner … That’s where the iMac is now, but more toward the front … In using the iMac for a short time I have realized that there are some key differences … Like “Home” and “End” don’t function the way that they do on the PC … Also Control-Arrows don’t work the same either … I would use the Control-Arrows to quickly go through words while editing … but Alt-Arrow serves this purpose now .. The Control-Arrow goes to the beginning or the end of the current line … That was one of the first things I noticed …

The iMac came when in the middle of working on the Out On the Town so again, I didn’t have a chance to dive into it … What I did do however was to set the machine up and turn it on … When I turned it on it played a nifty little tune and presented me with the setup screen … I think at that point I realized that the machine had OS X Panther on it … Kind of a hassle since I had purchased Panther from another seller on eBay because this iMac was only supposedly coming with Jaguar (OSX 10.2) … This iMac also has an AirPort card installed, and I don’t have a wireless network, so I will be removing the card and selling that on eBay … It appears they normally go for about $75 … Anyway, so I went through that process, the machine was booted … Now what?

After a while of clicking around and exploring stuff, it became pretty obvious that there was nothing to look at on an empty system … There weren’t any more songs or anything … So, hmmm … Let’s pop a DVD in there and make sure this thing plays DVDs … There’s no button on the front to open the tray, so I looked around the System Properties thingimajig and couldn’t find anything … Then through loading some other programs I loaded what I think was the DVD Player … Ah! An EJECT icon … I clicked on that … Nothing … After trying that many times, I figured that even though I clicked it 9 times, the tenth time of clicking the mouse harder didn’t make this iMac understand that I meant business, so off to the web I went …

Eventually through some surfing and what not, I found that there is this key on the keyboard that opens the drive tray … *sigh* … What was the first movie played on my iMac? The Blues Brothers starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi … I didn’t play the whole movie, just enough to get to the opening song so I could hear the music through the iMac as well … The shape of the iMac’s 17″ screen works out well for the letterbox movie … Full screen, I thought it was very impressive … My own personal movie theater! So next was to pop in an audio CD … The Police Outlandos d’Amour … Roxanne … I “imported” Roxanne and I found that it created a Mac specific file … After doing some reading while on the laptop from work and stuff, I think I can change the import properties so that I will get MP3s instead … It went pretty quick …

So, two things right off the bat … I didn’t need extra software to play DVDs and I didn’t need extra software to RIP a CD track … Both of these activities I had to pay for on the Windows side …

I have downloaded and installed some stuff from the ‘net … Windows Media Player (for displaying web content in wmv format) and an IRC client (Snak) … A couple other things, and I did download Eudora, but I didn’t install it .. I want to see what’s up with iMac’s Mail program before I run Eudora on the Mac … I really wish Trillian were available for the Mac …

Anyway, it appears I have typed much, so I will stop this entry here … but more in the coming days as this experience unfolds …

Update

So Alex was upset that I didn’t update the bLog here and mention the fact that he visited and helped me clean up some of “the Shop” … In fact, what he did was throw away things I have had a hard time parting with … I admit it … I keep everything … Why? I don’t know … I guess I think that I will eventually use something, or I will refer to it, or something great will happen if I get rid of something that seems to hold some sort of value … Okay Alex, there’s your mention, now get back over here and let’s do more …

Why no update til now? Been very busy (sorta) … Many things on my plate right now … I find that sleep very much gets in the way … I also find that lack of sleep makes waking hours not as productive … We really need to get rid of this sleep thing … There just isn’t time for it … I have also gone off on many tangents that keep me away from doing actual work … There is also this thing where when on the web, one link leads to another link and that leads yet to another link … 4 hours later, what was I looking for? So, along with sleep, I think we should work on piping information subliminally to the brain while we’re doing other things so that we don’t have to go looking things up …

eBay is the devil … No matter what, if you go to eBay, there is something that you’ll want to buy … I have been toying with the idea of getting an iMac … it’s BSD backended with the OS X operating system these days … This will further my separation from Microsoft who I have had nothing but bad things to say … The longer I have been running Microsoft systems, the more I have been exposed to nothing but problems … In the past, the thing that turned me off about the Apples was their proprietary hardware and software, now there is a break in there with the possible ability to run Open Source software on their machines … Once I receive this iMac that I purchased off of eBay and get to know it, I am sure I will share my experiences with it … I hope for great things, but I will certainly be honest if those things aren’t as great as I expect … I have to reiterate though, I am not “anti-Microsoft” … I am just disappointed with the results I have had with Microsoft … I could certainly go into specifics, but I don’t feel like it …

So in passing yesterday, my wife says ‘You know you have to get the dye for this Cat Scan.’ … WHAT?! I didn’t know I had to get the dye for this Cat Scan … Made my last night not very enjoyable, and I think I have a bit of stress over it … People I mentioned it to said that it wasn’t a big deal, so I offered that they go in my place … No one offered … She says that they asked if I was allergic to shellfish … So now they’re going to shoot up my neck with seafood … Just what I was looking forward to do today … Having health problems sucks … In many more ways than one …

That and in the course of the last couple days we find out that the MRI cost $5,000 … I sincerely find that hard to believe … I would buy $500, but this is supposedly what someone told my wife … So, the crappy insurance that we could afford pays $1,000 towards outpatient testing or something, so I am now in debt $4000 … I should put a PayPal Donation link on this site now? I had a CatScan (no dye) before, and it cost $600 … I cannot believe an MRI costs $5,000 … Another thing to keep everyone informed about … (This is a short semi-rant on insurance; I’m SURE this will get even better in the future).

And that’s just some of what’s been going on … *sigh*

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 … =(