Adventures in Zephux

I finally posted a new randomness today, after more than 4 months. I know, I’ve been lacking, but I thought this one was good enough to make up for it. It’s a short story I was working on, I think it turned out pretty well, it’s randomness number 39 in case you are interested. http://www.kreepyindividual.com/rand_randomness.php?rand=39   It’s a little blasphemous, so if you are religious and easily offended I would probably avoid it. However, I had a lot of fun writing it. Please leave a comment on it telling me what you thought, I’m not the best writer in the world, I know, but I try so give me a break lol. I do what I enjoy. Anyway, take a look, and check back because I am getting more and more bored at work recently, which means more and more content on the site. Thank you and have a good day =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

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!

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.

I am actually starting to feel better (thank god!), so I have been working a little harder. Still nothing new for the site (but should be real soon), however, in life I made a pretty good deal. On craigslist I found this guy who teaches guitar lessons. He is supposed to be really good, so I thought I would email him and ask him if he would be willing to do an unusual trade. I was willing to trade him my computer services and IT support for his musical training. Sounded fair to me, and he thought so too. So, for only the price of my amazing self-taught skills, I get to learn the guitar, which I’m guessing usually costs at the least $15 a lesson. In return I have to help him get a website up and running and tie it to a merchant account, but that doesn’t sound too difficult, also he has some basic computer repairs to do, but again, trivial for me. I am very excited over this trade. I like this barter system. If there had been computer in medieval times, I could have been a wealthy man.

On another not, I was busy working on my KiPCs site so that I can actually get some more computer business. Only the services tab actually has pages, but there is quite a bit of content up there, and I now have the layout just how I want it. Tomorrow I am going to start the actual PC advertising side of it, where you will be able to configure your new PC with all costs included and it will spit you out a nice quote. This will take some work, but I am talented enough with PHP that it shouldn’t be too bad. I am actually looking forward too it. Should help my business move along a bit. I am also going to start (as soon as I have the website fully functional) handing out those nice little business post-it notes I was talking about. Hopefully, this will bring in a couple more builds for me so I can afford my new baby =) I’ll talk about him on KI eventually. The software setup will be interesting.

     Wow, can’t believe it’s been a week. Well, I haven’t written because 1) I have nothing really exciting to talk about, and 2) I’ve been sick, and I still am. I got pretty sick on Saturday and since Sunday I have been popping Ibuprophen and sucking down cold medicine every 5 hours or so. It has made me feel much better, but I’m still in a drug induced trance for the most part. It has left me very tired and I can’t seem to remember what I did yesterday… That’s not normal. Hopefully, I will start feeling better soon and then I will be normal and functional again.

     Before I got sick, I was working on my KIPCs.com website. The new layout is done (and looks quite a bit *cough* identical *cough* to my Kreepy Individual layout, except with a nice light blue instead) I just have to get some of the content ready. This is what is taking most of the time. I want to build a custom computer configuring program in PHP, shouldn’t be too difficult really. I am not concerned. I just have been too lazy to sit down and do it. I have been advertising a bit on craigslist and such, and when I get the website up I am going to buy some of those annoying post-it notes with my info printed on them to stick on cars and such, randomly. I know, it’s obnoxious, but hey, it gets my name out there, right? and it’s a cheap and convenient form of advertising, so I don’t want to hear it. =) 

      Also, I rented a house last, I guess it was, Thursday. I did give up on that fixer-upper job I was looking at after they pushed my move in date back. I think I mentioned on the first I was going to see one, well that is the one I ended up renting. It is ginormous, has WAY more space than just me and my brother need, but I am comfortable with having too much space. I’m fairly certain we can find a way to use it. I want to put a workshop in the basement, so I will have space to work on computers, and work on that Mame cabinet… that will really happen someday. It was a little expensive, but still less than a mile from school, so I’m stoked to actually move in. I am heading home (Cincinnati) this weekend and I will be bringing my full size bed with me. That means I can finally start moving stuff. I slept there Saturday night with my girlfriend. We just threw a sleeping bag and comforter on the floor of what will be my room, just to break the place in. You always have to sleep somewhere shortly after renting it.  We were going to leave the heat off since it is April, and the electric is still in the rental companies name, so I felt bad. But at about midnight we realized that if we did not do something, we were going to freeze to death. So we finally turned it on. And then had to drag the sleeping bag over to vent. All in All, it was a nice experience. I can’t wait to actually live there. It needs some cleaning though, the fridge stinks, so that will need to be cleaned out; the floors all need to be swept; the bathroom needs a real thorough sweeping and mopping; I’m going to attempt to get the paint off all the windows (when they painted they did the window frame very sloppily and painted half the windows);  I also need to purchase some blinds, maybe some curtains, and definately a rug or two, because the hardwood floors will be killers if I don’t, plus it will stifle the echos. Going to be a big project I fear, but I have time.

     With the exception of the sickness, it has been a good week since I have last posted. I’ll post about how the move in goes, and about what’s going on with the websites when I finally get some stuff done. I need a new project for my randomnesses, I haven’t done anything entertaining in a while. Unfortunately.

Today I was supposed to move into my new house. Unfortunately, they called me and said they hadn’t even started the cleaning yet (remember that I said the whole house was basically in pieces). So, I think I will just say screw the deposit and try to find another one. This company (Winterwood inc) is very unprofessional and can’t seem to get anything done by deadline. I have an appointment at four to see another house about .3 miles from that one. It’s 400 sq feet larger and has a full size, unfinished basement. That way me and my brother can start a fight club not really.

Based on the pictures, I like it better, but unfortunately it is a significant amount more expensive. I think it is worth it though, just to get away from this other company. I’ll know when I see it if it is right for me. It’s still close to school, which is what my initial attraction to the first one was. With either one I am going to have to start a huge project on fixing up the yards. I want so plants, maybe some flowers. Something to pretty it up. Both are very bland right now, some color wouldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, that is about all that is going on in my life right now. I wish there was something more interesting (besides the fact that I can pick up internet in my office now with that wonderful little external wireless card I bought) going on. My life is getting boring. That means it is time for a new project. When I get into the house and get some tools, I want to start on my Arcade Cabinet. It’s been years in the making.

     Yesterday, I had stated how I was done with KreepyIndividual.com and was currently working on the new layout for KiPCs.com… False. I got more wrapped up in Kreepy Individual than I had intended. I started really looking at it and decided that I didn’t like how it was all square, so I made images to make the whole column look rounded. I like how it turned out (still needs a little work, my gimp skills aren’t phenominal). That got me looking a little more indepth into the code and I realized some of tags that I was using, <center> for instance, were far beyond deprecated. So, I ran my index.php page through the W3C XHTML Validator and I had something like 100 errors. Wow, that’s a problem.

     However, I trudged through it this morning and got my index page down to NONE! My homepage is now 100% XHTML and CSS valid. Which is good, I guess. Looking back, the time might have been better spent doing something else, like the KiPCs layout I was talking about, but it was entertaining anyway. The big green text that said VALIDATED made me feel a little better about my work. Now, I only have 20 or so more pages to do (which should honestly be a breeze now since the actual layout is validated and that’s where 80% of all the code comes from) and then I will have a fully valid site.

     My goal for today is to write my review of the His Dark Materials Trilogy, that I finished reading last week, and to write my long overdue review of the movie Jumper. I think my site is in dire need of some more content, as it seems to just be hopelessly floating. I would like it to, eventually, soar. I’ve got a few more articles to write, but if anyone has an ideas on some problems for me to solve, I’m more than open to suggestions. Some more tutorials never hurt. There is a place for that in the forums, actually. It’s hard to keep me on one project, can you tell? I desperately need to complete BitDestroyer before my brother throws some sort of hissy fit. I told him to stop complaining so much and just learn how to code so he could help me, but no… He would rather me do it. Well, that’s fine, but that also means it will get done on my schedule, and that doesn’t look promising since I already did the major outlining code of it, it’s just small, tedious work now and that’s usually when I get bored and the project never gets completed. So, good luck to you my beloved child, but you may not ever really exist. (False again, it is functional… kind of. You can connect and exist on the map, but there are no processes running nor do you have the ability to move or do anything. That counts as existing, right?)

     We will see what happens as the day moves forward. I do have some actual work to do, here, at my job, but after that I will get started on one of those reviews. I would like to see atleast one of them posted before 3pm.

     Isn’t the internet a scary thing? Most of my life is now virtual (lies! ha! But it is a dream). I want to document pretty much everything that I do (but I’m a lazy bum, so unlikely that this dream will ever see even a glimmer of the light at the end of the reality tunnel). So, I have set up this blog for the mundane stuff that can’t possibly be considered interesting enough for a randomness. This is just to document what I am up to on a daily (or not so daily, as it will become, trust me) basis. I will start with now.

     I am still working on a complete redesign of all of my sites. Kreepyindividual.com just saw it’s new template come to life. I officially installed all of my new code yesterday (still working out a few kinks) and almost everything seems to be functional. I don’t think I lost any content (a magnificent feat, that’s how you know that your modular site is really modular). I didn’t have to change any actual pages, just all the layout code, so I guess I coded it properly, that was the plan. I am now working on KiPCs.com, which is my business website for KreepyIndividual Personal Computer Systems and Kevin C. Kurtz Computers (the service side of things). Yes, I am an uber-geek; don’t make fun of me, it’s rude.

     So, that is today’s (and probably a lot more than just today) project. After that I would like to get the BitDestroyer site functional (kreepyindividual.com/bitdestroyer), it has some content now, but I need it to look good… It would also help if I eventually finished coding BitDestroyer I suppose… Definitely couldn’t hurt anything. It was coming along okay, but then I found myself a new lady friend and have been rather distracted for the last month (hence, not a single KI post in all of February), but I thought the new layout would kick it up a notch and I posted several new pages that I was withholding for the new event. (I think I will use this to post more personal stuff, I don’t like to talk about anything really personal in my randomnesses, the site was never meant for that, it was supposed to be a geek site… my personal life (or lack there of) should not be involved… much).

     I guess only time will tell if I actually use this or not, but either way, WordPress is some impressive software. I highly recommend checking it out if you are in need of a blogging package. I discovered this from fredart.com (the guy who owns MegaTokyo, my favorite online comic). He uses this as his blogger as well. Thought I would give it a shot.