Adventures in Zephux

I think I’m going to start updating randomly on Twitter. Why? Nothing better to do lol. http://twitter.com/ChadwYn  I get bored easily. Seems interesting though, usually I use it just to follow Megatokyo comic posts, but now I will actually (at least for a few days) be using it to update about my life. If any of you get bored feel free to stalk me on it.

P.S. I played Apples to Apples last night at a dorm party and it was pretty glorious. I also met a girlie that was rather interesting. We will see how that goes. More updates later.

     Lately, I haven’t felt like doing much. My house is a mess and could easily require several hours of cleaning. My yard is almost two feet tall now. My car has water spots because (I do still wash it, because it is my love) I was too lazy to dry it. Nothing at work gets done. I go right home, and watch movies all day… I haven’t even gone grocery shopping, so I’m probably going to starve to death soon. I’ve been in his routine before, and there is a simple explanation for it. A good friend of mine, who was once a girlfriend of mine, recently returned after being gone all summer. And for some reason, when I’m with her… which seems like all time, well is all the time… I can’t get anything else done, I can’t even thing about anything else. I get so incredibly lazy. This happened before for several months while we were dating. And I HATE! not being productive. Absolutely can not stand the idea. It makes me feel like I have been wasting my life. I need to accomplish something and fast. I think I will work on that tonight. I’ll let you know how that goes in a few day. Just thought I would come on here and rant for a bit.

It’s my 20th birthday. Unfortunately for me, I have to work today, but other than that I’m hoping the day will go alright. So far, I didn’t get enough sleep, I got a splint from the wall… yeah, already… and was late to work. This could be a long and semi-painful experience. The worst part is that I am extremely unmotivated. I can’t seem to make myself accomplish anything lately. I spend a lot of time in my head. I haven’t done anything really since the breakup. And I knew it was coming, you would think I would have prepared better. 4 years, 15,000 miles, and 1 engagement later I have trouble focusing on anything else… enough depressing talk. It’s my birthday and I’m going to enjoy it.  =D

I got my first paycheck today, after coming back full time on July the 28th. It has been a long time without getting paid so I was very excited… Well, bad things happened. There is an unexplained $800 missing. The only thing it says is “sal adj” which I assume means salary adjustment. If my paycheck was maybe $10927420837 I wouldn’t complain, but since that is more than half of what I am supposed to be getting I feel a little gyped. HR doesn’t even know why it got deducted. They are supposed to contact me monday, and hopefully, tell me that my money has been sent out. Ugh, businesses suck.

On a much happier note, My birthday is the 18th   =)    I will be 20 years old, I’m finally out of that whole teenager thing. And considering I am not even 20 yet I think I have accomplished an aweful lot. I have done game programming, stock trading, computer repair, electronics design, any other type of programming imaginable, and kept my own life in check. Purchased a brand new car off the lot, am working on a master’s degree, and had several long term relationships. I feel rather proud of all that I’ve done, however, once in my life I would like to finish a project. I promise someday to release bitdestroyer, I think think that was the best idea I’ve had. Anyway, sorry to talk myself up so much, but again, going to be my birthday, so I think making myself feel better is warranted. =D

Finally, after three months of summer classes, I am back on my full-time co-op schedule. I, unfortunately, didn’t do so hot in my classes, this was the worst semester I’ve ever had and the only one where my gpa (for the semester, not overall) was less than a 3.0. That leaves my overall at around a 3.1. The last couple days of finals I started to get really sick. I thought my neck was out, no big deal, just give it a couple days of sleeping properly and it will be fine. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way, Friday was worse, Saturday was terrible, and Sunday I felt like death and had a super high fever. After that I thought it was about time to look into this, but since I don’t have health insurance I had to settle for having my mom and girlfriend both diagnose me. They decided it was strep. I got some antibiotic and started taking that on Sunday morning. By Sunday night I wasn’t much better, but I went to sleep with intentions of going to work on Monday anyway. By the time I had woken up I realized there was NO WAY I was going to get to work. I thought I was dying. Another scan at my throat revealed white dots (A sure sign of strep) so I called in with the excuse that I was contagious and I was because I had not been on antibiotics for at least 24 hours yet.

After suffering through Monday on the couch, Tuesday morning (this morning) finally showed up. I don’t feel like killing myself thank goodness, but I’m not completely better yet. Most of the soreness in my throat has gone away, the fever has subsided, all I’m left with is a pain in the neck and a headache like you wouldn’t believe. I have been hopped up on ibuprofen for the last few days to avoid feeling my brain, but I don’t think that will work much longer, because it seems no matter how much I take at this point it feels like my brain is going to explode. If someone walked up and put pressure at just the right place on my skull I am fairly confident that there would be some splash damage. Hopefully, by tomorrow everything will feel better but right now I thought it would make me a little less inclined to try and create that explosion if I ranted to the internet.

p.s. I took my car apart last Wednesday and installed that iPod connector (which my Zen player is currently connected to) and it works great. I was a little scared to rip up the whole center console and take out the radio on my brand new car, but all in all I’m glad I did, that FM transmitter bologna was killing me. I have $1000 speakers damnit and I want to hear everything loud and clear lol. Well worth the time, money, and effort. Now I just need an iPod (even though they are evil) so I can change songs with the nicely placed buttons on my steering wheel.  =D

Since summer semester has started, I haven’t posted anything at all. For that I apologize. However, it is coming to a close next week (about time if you ask me). This has been the semester from Hell. I’ve still been here at my co-op job part time, but the school part is what has been killing me. The class lineup is a nightmare. If I was actually the type that did homework, I would probably have hogtied a professor by now. Actually, that’s probably not a half bad idea. It wouldn’t take much =)

Some other events have rolled out in the past few months. I did get those white evil fluff ball kitties (I stole my mom’s) but recently surrendered them back to her. They were originally my sister’s and she wanted them back. Also, I got out of the relationship I was in. It only lasted about 3 or 4 months and was fun, but it just wasn’t for me. I think that girl has moved on, I’m happy for her. I, too, have moved on. I am back with my ex-fiance. We have been on and off for almost four years now. I’m hoping it will work out this time, she’s the only person that has ever really made me happy. I was talking a lot before about jumping on a train and just riding until it stopped, it didn’t matter where I went. I actually would not do that now. I’m happy enough with my life that I would stay right here. She’s a good distance away so I only see her on weekends, but for now it’s worth it.

The other thing that has happened is really big… I BOUGHT A CAR! My truck for some reason was being dumb and refused to start when I would tell it too. I decided that instead of pouring money into it (every car I touch breaks) I would just say “forget it” and buy something new, I mean brand new off the lot new. That way, not only would it be beautiful, but would also have a long warranty so I could stop worrying. It can break all it wants now and I don’t care. Just for the sake of showing off (cause I’m an arrogant prick like that apparently… I’m just proud of the car, I think I paid enough to show off a little, give me a break lol) It’s a brand new Arrest Me Red, Mazda6 (Zoom Zoom is the Mazda saying if you didn’t know, hence the title). It’s a good car, I got a 72 month extended warranty (that’s 6 years for you non-math people). It also has a Bose sound system, heated leather seats, a moon roof, spoiler, insert other favorite option here. It’s fully loaded. I ended up with an automatic because there were no manuals left in red on this half of the country (it’s an ‘08, the ’09s don’t come out till the end of next month). I did test drive a manual Mazda3 and also an automatic. The 3’s are zippier because they are lighter and have the same engine, but don’t look nearly as sporty and have far less room inside (not to mention would have been $5,000 cheaper with all the same options lol, but money wasn’t the point). I like the 6, that’s what I went there to buy. They just happen to have a fully loaded one and I couldn’t resist. Don’t worry, it’s the end of the model year, so I talked them down to a very nice price lol. Well, I’m done bragging about my new baby, but someone had to hear it (my friends are pretty sick of hearing about it).

Expect to see a lot more getting done on the site now that school is finishing up. I’ll be back on co-op full time as of July 28th, so I will have much more freetime to write and work on projects, and I do have a few projects in mind despite my lack of usuable income (having a semi-financed car sucks, I want it paid off, I’m hoping to have it paid in full by December). It also looks like I’ll be on the robot team for the school next semester, so I’ll post all my info on that in a randomness or something. Also, maybe make a hardware section for it. I gotta get back into the groove here, I had so much nice content for a while =)

I had been closely monitoring Craigslist.org for free kitties for about two weeks. I finally found some, six weeks old, and absolutely adorable. I made arrangements to pick them up this Friday (tomorrow), but there is a problem. My mom has decided to get rid of her two beautiful, long haired, white kittens who are about sixteen weeks old. Both females, just like I wanted. She asked me to take them. I could easily say no, but I love them. I could also ignore the problem and take both sets of cats and just have four, but really? four cats? that is a little excessive. I think I will stick with two. So, after setting up the meeting and everything I had to tell the woman (who was at this point holding the cats for me) that I was no longer interested. It wasn’t a big deal, but I was looking forward to the tiny ones. I might end up with more after all, because it looks like my mom’s other cat (Cloe) is pregnant. So she will have a whole litter of kittens to deal with. I might just have to steal some.

I, also, am still working on the house, of course. Today, I need to weed whack the entire back yard (it is too tall to mow) and also clean the fridge (it smells funny). Since I am heading home to Cincinnati this weekend I will also need to rotate my tires (which I did early in the week, but then realized that I didn’t follow the rotation I should have and I need to switch a few of them) and clean out the back of my truck to haul some more stuff (I am still without a dresser or a computer desk, both of which are necessities). I have been a busy bee, but eventually that house will be livable. There is a maintenance guy coming tonight to look at some of the problems that are not my responsibility (my brother’s ceiling light doesn’t work,neither does one of the basement light sockets, and the kitchen faucet has horrible water flow). This whole house has been a huge project, but it was fun none the less. Anyway, Point of the story? I GET MY KITTIES THIS WEEKEND! I AM SO EXCITED! I LOVE KITTIES!

Yesterday, Eric (my fellow co-op, the useless mechanical) and I were commissioned by the engineering manager to do some time trials on something called the spoolers. What they do is spool the aluminum foil onto the little cardboard rolls. We were to record the speed every minute on each of the nine spoolers (there are eighteen, Eric took nine and I took nine). That means that every time the second hand on the clock (which we jacked from someone’s office, why do they need a wall clock? We need a stopwatch) reached the top we would walk down the line and record the speeds, this takes about 35 seconds. So, we would walk back and wait for the clock again. The trails last an hour each. We did this twice yesterday. It was painful.

Today, I got here at 5:15am instead of 7:00am. At the end of yesterday, the engineering manager decided that we should have another trial from 5:45-6:45am. Eric and I agreed because that means that we will get to leave early some other day. Unfortunately, that meant I had to manage to get my lazy butt out of bed at 4:30 in the morning; no easy task. Then, do extremely tedious work for an hour before coming upstairs at 7:00 to do my regular job. Want to know the best part? He just called me again, to ask if we could do it all again tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with the extra work, and I will love the time off, or the pay that is coming, but It’s just so early. I am definitely not a morning person =)

I went, earlier this week, to my first guitar lesson. I think I told you earlier that I was trading computer service for lessons from a guy I found on Craigslist.org. He preferred that I brought my acoustic guitar to the lesson, so I hunted it down at my mom’s house (where it hasn’t been touched in year). A couple of the strings were broken, so I bought a new package and set it up, unfortunately, it no longer holds a tune (I think the neck is warped). Well, that’s okay, it was a cheapy anyway. I think we got it ten years ago for around $100. I decided to stop by Strauss Music Co. on Bardstown road (where they have a great selection by the way) just to check out new ones and see what I wanted. I found a real winner (although, due to my current financial situation, I’m going to do some more shopping before I buy it) it is a smaller guitar, it’s full sized, but the actual body of it is not as wide, which seems a lot more comfortable to play. It’s solid wood and still sounds very nice for it’s price and size, and it’s not plywood. There was a problem though… It was $250. Which isn’t bad as far as guitars go, but it’s out of my current price range. I was looking more around $150 or so.  I want to stop by Guitar Center in Florence next weekend when I go home (my mom lives in the Northern Kentucky/Cincy area) just to see if I can get something cheaper, but I really have my heart set on that one. I can’t remember the brand or anything like that, but I sat for about 20 minutes just holding it and strumming randomly, it felt great.

The real point of the story is, I saw an $8500 guitar there. Wow, I played a $2000 one, but the crazy expensive one costs twice what my truck is worth. That is sad. I had trouble debating whether or not I was even worthy to touch the tag and look at the price. For some reason though, the $2000 one that I played was much more attractive.

I’m finally working on getting the house I rented setup. Yesterday, I bought a mop, some cleaning supplies, some glasses and a pitcher, also a screwdriver set, a shower curtain and some rags. I cleaned the kitchen up a bit, installed the shower curtain rod (which was a pain since there weren’t studs next to the shower, now half of it is just in drywall and I’m pretty sure it’s going to rip out lol, but I’ll fix that later), and freshened the upstairs. Now I really need some kind of vacuum and am in dire need of a lawn mower. (my grass is like a foot high) But it’s coming along pretty well. I actually have a bed there now, that is an improvement.

If you read my latest randomness (I like it’s 38) you will get to read my story of the evils that are involved in creating an entirely virtual PC. Well, I decided to do this more at home just to test it out (and see how fast I could get them to run on top of my Vista installation). So far so good, I am using the trial of VMWare Workstation now instead of the Qemu I was using at work. I used VMWare back in my senior year of high school, but it seems to have greatly improved since then, the speed is amazing. I will be doing some tests against Qemu to see which I like better, I will be running an XP environment, Ubuntu, and possibly an Arch Linux. I’ve done Arch once before and enjoyed it, but it’s time consuming. This a work in progress. Maybe I should try running Vista from a virtual machine, lol, although, I don’t see that going well. Also, I think I have a copy of Server 2008 to test now, I will be posting a randomness about Vista and 2008 eventually. That’s pretty much everything that is going on, still no BitDestroyer work being done… because I’m a bum =)

I finally got fed up with the Fedora installation on my home server, so I wiped it and installed Vista Ultimate. I hadn’t done much looking into Vista, but now that SP1 is out I thought it would be a good idea (Service Pack 1 would usually imply that they have made some major fixes). I expected it to be about a year after release until I installed it. So far, I have got to say, it blows away EVERYTHING I am used to, Linux, XP, doesn’t matter. It is pretty nice, although I haven’t tried any gaming on it yet (it’s my home server, hence, no graphics card, only cheap integrated graphics). I now, however, have a new task for it. Since I am finally getting a home (p.s. I start moving stuff in this weekend) I will have a bigger need for this home server. It’s going to be doing some real work for me, here is the general rundown:

TV Station - Hooks to my living room TV and plays all my videos, movies and shows.
Network Files - Just feed my file shares over the network
In house music - Play music through the surround sound
Online Audio Streaming - Me and my bro are gonna do a talk show
Web / cgi proxy - Why not make it a web server too?
Ftp - So I can access all the files on the share from anywhere
Mail - Why not? the servers already there
BitDestroyer - It will be the main server for my BitDestroyer game.. when it works
SQL database - Necessity for web
Jabber - I want a jabber server.. just because
Gizmo available for calls (or skype)… I want people to call me!
CS:S server (or unreal tournament 3) - When I get my gaming rig assembled, Ill be needing a server for one of these.
VNC - … of course. What good is it if I can’t tweak it from afar.

All of this will work in Linux except the TV station. For some reason Linux keeps messing up my video playback, and wont play windows formats.. blah blah blah, you get it. So my switch back to Windows is necessary for this server (I dont want Vista though, I’m trying to get Windows Server 2008). And all of this is easily doable from a Windows Machine (with the exception of the necessary downtimes when I reboot… that is going to suck, but should only be for 5 minutes every three days or something like that). I am excited about getting it set up and working. If it functions as well as I would like it too, I want to register it as Azerious.net or something of the sort (Azerious is one of my names) to run a website on it. And if successful this blog will most likely be moved to there, but maybe not. If it works really well and I get all the dns issues and stuff worked out (I’m thinking zonedit) then I might *MIGHT* migrate KreepyIndividual and KiPCs there to save myself on the hosting fees, I mean I am already going to be running it 24/7 anyway. I’m already paying for the electric, why not host those as well and save myself the monthly fees.

Looking back, this was a better story for a randomness, so I’ll post it there too. Ill also, I’m sure, post an update on how well it’s working when I get the internet connection at my house working. Should be early May or late April here. I can’t wait to get my stuff in there.