Purple Haze

Yes a Jimi Hendrix reference is much needed for the day I am having. While I am still a few years away from the 27 club, I am starting to feel like that is where I am heading (tis kidding). With my job I have to be on “call” for 1 week every couple of months and well this week has been rough already. To the point I am so far behind I am not sure I will be able to catch up. Furthermore the calls just keep coming in. Why me?

Other then that I am suppose to go to Carowind’s this weekend with my most perfect girlfriend and some family members. Unfortunately my server may come in before then and I will be stuck trying to get it up and running for this company (why did I volunteer for this project again?). I need the break but I need to be done with this project more. BLAH!

Overall I can't say it all is too bad...but then again the song I am currently listening to...Born Under a Bad Sign...Jimi Hendrix.... Omen? 0_0

The perfect woman

Well I want you all to know about the most perfect woman in the universe…and guess what…she is all mine :p gravel in envy! Yes I do have the most perfect, beautiful and precious little woman on the face of the planet. She is my happiness, my raison d'être (reason for living) and there is nothing in this world that I wouldn’t do or give for her. I could sit here and go on for hours about how wonderful she is and never touch the tip of the iceberg. She simply is the best and I has her! ALL MINE ;) (and I don’t share). So now I must list some of the wonderful things she does for me!

• Loads of sweet kisses
• Bountiful amounts of warm hugs
• Numerous splendid back scratches <-- heaven
• Vast and vibrant conversations
• Millions of awe inspiring glances (and stares)
• Playful chases <-- likes to be chased ;)
• Softest pillow in the universe
• Perfect travel companion
• Continuous spirit up lifter
• Confidence builder extraordinaire
• Other unmentionable but very pleasant pleasure giving things
• Loves the unlovable (me) unconditionally and without fail

I have no idea how I lived so long without her in my life and now I know that I could not bear this life without her; she is mine and mine alone. I shall keep her and never let go!

My Axe wishlist…

Well as you all know I am trying to learn how to play the guitar again…hopefully I will actually learn it this time ;) Anyway, much to the displeasure of my girlfriend I have been looking at new axes!!! Not that I am actually going to buy one (her fear)…but it is nice to figure out what you want so that maybe one day you can buy your dream (like when I ever learn to play it)?

Even though my current axes aren’t anything at all to write home about that doesn’t mean I am not pretty particular in the guitar I would want ^_^ They have to have the right blend of solid sound and good looks. So I figured I would look at the axes from a few different places, the axes I have been looking at are (from price low to high):

Schecter Hellraiser C-1 FR Electric Guitar
Cheapest price found: $799.99
List Price: $1,149.00

Schecter is an up and coming force in the guitar world. As the most price effective guitar maker in the batch I am looking at, they don’t compromise quality or sound just because they are the low ball in the price market. I have read several hundred reviews from different independent sellers who all rank the guitar a steal for the price. As well a personal friend of mine (who can tear up a guitar) who works in a guitar store suggested that brand to me over some of the more expensive axes he sales.

Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster HSS Electric Guitar
Cheapest price found: $1,199.99
List Price: $1,714.27

Fender is a staple in the industry and the Strat produces legendary sounds, this particular model caught my eye and all of the reviews for it are equally as impressive. Granted you take most reviews with a grain of salt but still this one has a lot of positive feedback. Slightly higher priced then the Schecter and it begs the question of if I would be paying for the name, but it would still be highly considered.

Gibson Les Paul Standard Double Cut Plus Electric Guitar
Cheapest price found: $1,549.00
List Price: $2,388.00

The most expensive of the group but then again the Gibson line of guitars are arguable the best rock guitars on the planet. I never care for the SG model (even if Angus Young plays one) and of the Les Paul’s this one was my favorite both in sound (you can here the guitar played on Gibson website) and in looks. It doesn’t have the range of features the other Les Paul’s might but it is a tight package none the less.

So there you have it, My Axe wishlist, lol.

On a side note, woot 50 unique visitors…unfortunately now there are at least 50 crazy people in the world (after reading my blog I am positive I drove them insane) ;)

Bad Day

There is a song by a comedian named Paul Thorn that plays here locally, it goes along the lines of a guy having a bad day…and I mean everything goes wrong. So to make him feel better his chorus is “It’s a bad day, it’s a great day to kick somebody’s @$$” That is how I am feeling right now. Nothing has gone right for me. First I get the new parts in for the server project and after failure to get it working and several hours of tech support I decided I have had enough and I am sending the thing back for them to fix and install the OS. O_O mood was not good.

Then I tried to play the guitar, my fingers decided they wanted to hurt from the start and so I said well…I need new strings anyway let me just change them and I will deal with the pain later. Upon trying to take the bridge pins out I break one (hey they are like 30 years old so not all my fault) but that meant I couldn’t play my guitar. U_U mood reaches very low levels.

She then calls me back to ask me to see her for supper, but I have already made plans with my 2 best friends to go fishing so I had to say no… however it may thunderstorm this afternoon. So it could be an option but either way I don’t like having to turn my girlfriend down. It is just that I really need the relief of hanging with my friends (who I haven’t seen in months) and doing some fishing so her asking and I having to say no really didn’t help things. (I swear if something goes wrong with my fishing…Hammer really REALLY loves fishing…I will…..). x_x mood starts digging a deep deep hole.

Finally, remembered that I forgot to account for 2 bills that are direct draw from checking account, both posting yesterday…so I over drafted my account…which I have overdraft protection that kicks and only costs me 10 bucks….but still you know life just sucks sometimes. X_X mood is somewhere in china right now.

Blah.

A new leaf or self improvement?

Life is ever changing and those who sit still let life pass them by. I don’t want that nor do I intend on failing to achieving the things I want. I am really not one to quit things very easily, especially if it is a goal or dream of mine. So I have decided to do a few things.

First I want to start a Bible study with my girlfriend. I think it is important in any relationship to grow together and that would also include doing so in our relationship with God. So Bible study it is, hopefully it will go well and we can learn from each other ;)

Secondly I have decided to learn how to play the guitar…yet again. This is difficult task as I have no musical ability, but I figure if I play a little everyday then I will eventually pick it up…or at least I can die with no regret to having at least given it my best effort to do so.

Can’t climb a mountain when you get winded over a mole hole so I figure I will try to learn the basic chords (A, C, G, F, E) playing each until I get them down, then I will factor in changing between them until I can change between them at random. Hopefully I will get to the point I can do this fairly quickly in a few months. At least enough that I can play a basic song or two.

Next is my web design, I love web design and I want to grow my ability in such. PHP, CSS and dynamic insertion are my short term goals to learn, and then I want to build a gallery system with them. I figure this gives me a goal and tools to learn in achieving those goals.

Next is debt management, this year I have done very well in managing my debt and assets from the aspect of keeping track of them. I now need to work harder at reducing my debt and increasing assets. This is really hard for me as I am an impulse buyer (just ask my girlfriend why I am not allowed to go to the grocery store, lol) and due to college/stupidity I have a rather large hole to work out of :(

Then there is working out, nothing serious just getting in shape. Push ups, sit ups and the like are easy non-time consuming activities you can do at home and have no excuse for not doing. So I am going to start!

Last is a time management schedule, you can’t achieve the world without knowing how long you have to do things in. Don’t get me wrong, it is a loose thing but at least it will help give me some structure. Even if I don’t follow it, if it makes me more self conscious about time and what I am doing with it then I should at least gain that.

You can call it what you want. New leaf, self improvement whatever but I find that people that only look at their state of being and try to change things once a year get too caught up in the aspects of everyday life and thus fail their goals. I am trying to move to a state of continuous improvement and eventually look at how I can better myself everyday. Little changes go a long ways in life so why not make them?

Wish me luck ;)

Parlez-vous le français?

J'ai étudié le français pendant trois semestres et je ne peux pas me rappeler une chose!
(I studied French for 3 semesters and I can not remember a thing!)

My girlfriend and I went to mountains and the shops in Boone last weekend where we found a little French store. My girlfriend then preceeded to give me a hard time because I spoke to the store owner in French. Nothing hard just your basic Bonjour, comment-allez vous aujourd'hui? (Hello, how are you today) Of which he respondeded bien, merci beaucoup (well, thank you very much). That was the extent of the conversation and it lead her to poke fun at me <_<

She is taking her second semester of French and it shames me to say that while I did study french for 3 semesters in colloge I really don’t remember it like I should. Much less ever hope to be fluent. This did however spark my interest into a popular phrase in French (at least one everybody in english knows) and what it really means is very interetsing.

sacrebleu or sacredieu

Quote from Wikipedia
“Sacrebleu is an old French profanity, meant as a cry of surprise or anger. It would be equivalent to gosh or by Jove. Most likely, it comes from old blasphemous curses relating to God, used from the late Middle-Age (some are attested as early as the 12th century) to the 14th at the latest, with many variants: morbleu or mordieu, corbleu, palsambleu, jarnidieu, tudieu, respectively standing for mort [de] Dieu (God's death), corps [de] Dieu (God's body), par le sang [de] Dieu (by God's blood, the two latters possibly referring to the Eucharistic bread and wine), je renie Dieu (I deny God), tue Dieu (kill God)... Those curses may be compared to the archaic English [God']sdeath, sblood, struth or zounds (God's wounds). Thus it would be in modern French je sacre par Dieu and in English I curse by God. They were considered so offensive that Dieu was sublimated into the neutral syllable bleu, which sounds similar and literally means "blue", but there may not be any etymological connection.”

Granted the article did go one to say it is most commonly used in a humorous manner these days, I just found it interetsing that it was actually a phrase of sacrulage.

Runs off to look at other old phrases and their respective means.

Down the rabbit hole

Life is much like falling down the preverbal rabbit hole as it turns out this, has been a wild and out of control week. I got the server manufacturer to send me a new motherboard (but I had to pay to upgrade to a server class one <_<) and a new DVD burner as it turns out it was defective too. Hopefully it will arrive sometime next week so I can hook everything up and be done with this project until then…blah with it.

I am also trying to get out of debt (paying for college wasn’t easy) and while I started off good this year I have, overall, been failing miserably. I figured out that I could transfer my debt to 0% credit cards and at least save in interest. All was going good with it until I had a mishap where I fat fingered an account # and bam it was rejected. The credit card company took its sweet time in letting me know and thus I missed my due date.

I scheduled the payment like 15 days before the due date and still they won’t work with me. The new 8% rate isn’t bad, it is just the principal that this really wasn’t a late payment (it was a fluke). I then missed another payment due date because to the company changed my date to 7 days earlier then the last statement x_x and given how darn busy I have been here lately I having had time to check my statement…life is so not fair. Anyway there goes another 0% interest card.

I feel like I need to stop having a life for about a year so I can achieve my goal. Seriously stop buying anything, but then what? How do I go on living like that? Maybe I could sell off my stuff. I could sell my guns and while that would be easy to do, I HATE parting with my stuff… I have a nice anime collection but I know absolutely no one who would be interested in buying it…back to hating to sell my stuff.

At least with the anime collection being gone my girlfriend would be happy... I just feel so frustrated at life, the more I try the less I succeed and all the while it just passes me by. I look at people like Paris Hilton who is so darn privileged and does noting to deserve it. When was the last time she had to work for something?

I just want some consistency and stability in my life and for once to have the things I work so hard for to actually start paying off for me. Whatever, there is no point in being upset about things you can’t change.

For now I will continue my freefall down the rabbit hole.

Tablet Mayhem

Well I recently bought a Wacom Graphire4 6x8 USB Tablet with Pen and Mouse (Silver) to use with the graphic design that I do, I knew that the Wacoms’ where the best on the market but having little experience with them I decided to try out one of the lower end models.

The detailed specs for the model I bought are as follows:

• Two programmable ExpressKeys for convenient mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts plus a handy scroll wheel
• Integrated pen compartment and a separate pen stand for two great ways to keep your pen handy
• Transparent photo frame for easy personalization with photos and artwork (fun samples and template included)
• USB connection for quick installation
• Graphire4 Pen and Eraser has 512 levels of pressure sensitivity for natural brush control
• Graphire4 Pen and Eraser has patented cordless, battery-free technology for a natural feel and superior performance
• Graphire4 Pen has 2 programmable buttons right at your fingertips
• Graphire4 Pen features pressure-sensitive eraser for easy fixes
• Patented cordless, battery-free technology means mouse is entirely hassle-free
• Scrolling fingerwheel for easy navigation—also functions as a third programmable button
• No ball to gum up, so it always moves smoothly
  

Sounds great right? Wrong!!!

The 6x8 area on the tablet corresponds to your whole screen, not just the surface area of the window for the program you are using to draw items in. That made the drawing area much smaller then the already small 6x8 drawing area on the tablet. :(

Given what you are drawing shows up on the screen and not where you are drawing on the tablet surface area you can’t look at the drawing like you normally would. That is a difficult transition for a typical artist but not too bad after some practice.

Still there where other issues.

The response time was about a second off and sometimes was a little jerky (not cool for GFX design) this made it very hard to draw things. Moreover when you drew something on say a normal piece of drawing paper and then tried to use the tablet to “trace” the stokes…you got a very different result. I wasn’t very happy with this product and have since returned it.

I think I would like to try the Cintiq model as the image is on the tablet itself and it boasters a much better response time / sensitivity. But who has that kind of dough lying around? Maybe I can find a GFX store that allows you to try out products?

You can check the Cintiq out here:
http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/

Till next time, Blah. lol

Stupid People

I recently started a network installation project for a company my uncle works for and have had nothing but problems (none of which has been my fault, either). Turns out the server manufacture is full of IDIOTS! I hate stupid people, granted technology isn’t the easiest of things but you would think people would at least be smart enough to check things out first. Basically I cannot install the operating system or anything else onto the server I bought due to the fact they put incompatible hardware in it. I spent a lot of time (including a day of vacation) trying to get the setup complete but to no avail.

The motherboard is an Intel DQ956GF Desktop motherboard and not suppose to be used for servers as it is designed for...go figure, Desktop PC’s. Per Intel’s website the chipset doesn’t even support the XEON class of processors.

Here is the link to the supported processors for the DQ956GF:
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/dq965gf/sb/CS-025970.htm

Just because they use the same socket doesn’t mean that it will work to the fullest of its potential. A perfect example of this is because it is a Desktop motherboard the device drivers for the board aren’t designed for the OS I am using, hence why I can't install them. I bought a SERVER not a desktop PC; it should come with Server compatible hardware IMO.

I mean Intel has a server class of boards for a reason! The motherboard needs to be a S3000AH class per Intel. This offers not only support for the processor but support for device drivers for SERVER operating systems. I sent the server manufacture an email but as of yet no response. I plan on calling them tonight, wish me luck :(