Function of Lyfe

To start this out, I’m just going to let everyone know I was a little bored at work and to answer a couple of your questions… no I did not ‘think about this for a while’ and I didn’t find this online anywhere.  I’m just bored.  Plain and simple: bored out of my mind.  So here you go: The Function of Lyfe.

So i have a theory about birthdays : up until youre 30 they are really cool – theres always something to do /celebrate – then from 30-40 they gradually get dull as you’re dreading turning 40. once you turn 40 – you’re old – and your ALMOST to 50. once you hit 50 and until you are 65 you lose track (thats what grandkids are for – reminders of how old you are in the little card). then when you’re not allowed to work – you still sorta forget and have the mindset of.. another year without running out of money. once you get to be 75, each year is just as awesome as it was when you were in your 20s. except instead of.. sweet im a year older.. its ’sweet, another year down!’ then when you turn 85 and realize you have to have someone change your bedpan or give you a bath, you start to hate them as its, ‘another year in this hellhold’ . then when you’re 90 and eating through a feeding tube (assuming you’re alive) you start thinking. and realize life is a quadratic function- you start having someone change your diaper, teach you to walk, take care of you, then grow and become independant – then you start to need help from other people. eventually you recess back to when you were born – having people change your diaper and feeding/bathing you because you’re too helpless. Of course, death is acheived when you start to think too much about this. The notion of a ‘circle of life’ hits you and you start to think. you have babies and take care of them, so when you regress to their position in life, they are there to change and take care of you. so technically thats a polar function? I think. So then your brain, being so confused, gives up and says to itself, ‘To heck with this.’ Hypothesis: people die of thinking too much. All school’s going to do is teach us about quadratic functions and polarities which will allow us, in old age, to skip the last 15 years of our life as we will already understand the function of life. And someone should sue Disney for the Circle of Life stuff – because that takes away an additional 5 years of thought. You’re brain will already know about the circle of life – and functions. I’m going to die at least 20 years before I would have without TV, MOVIES, and MATH. – assuming I can bike home safely.

Scheduled Phone Issues

Ever since I bought my first Pay-as-you-go cell phone, the life expectancy has never been very long. The first phone lasted about 3 months before it broke while I was sitting down. The second and last pay-as-you-go phone found itself covalent bonding with a brick wall when it wouldn’t accept a $20 phone card I was trying to upload. From that moment on I figured I might as well get a phone on a plan with some large company. There were a few things wrong with this rational:

1. I went with Sprint. Great phones, Great coverage, Crappy service. As long as you dont have to deal with the customer service, you’ll be fine! However, as soon as something goes wrong, you’re screwed.

2. The phones with a service plan cost 3, 4, and 5 times as much as a normal phone! With sprint if you are within the 12-21 month range of having your service and your phone breaks, you will get 75 dollars off a new phone. If you are at the 22+ month range, you will get $150 off your phone. Sounds good right? Well, their cheapest phone in the stores is around $250!!! Replacements are Extremely expensive.

3. Phones = problems. You cant have a phone and something not bug you. Either the camera isn’t good enough, the reception sucks in important areas (like at your desk where you work).

So, my first Cell phone on a plan… was in a horrible dispute between me and the wall. We both won however the phone was pummeled into oblivion. Pretty much, the screen on the top stopped working and a couple of the keys stopped working. When i went to the store to get a replacement, they didnt have any. They offered me something like.. $50 off a new phone. I had been paying an extra $7 a month for insurance which didnt apply to whatever was wrong with the phone. So, I went ahead and bought a new phone… the Upstage.

Remeber when I previously mentioned that theres always something about a phone that bothers you? Well this had EVERYTHING wrong with it. I always had to flip the phone around, the case was annoying, it didnt get good reception at all… it was just a $350 disaster!

Well, the way that phone died: I went on another hour and a half to two hour bike ride, and in the middle it started to rain heavily. When I finally got home and opened my backpack, water poured out. When I sifted through the clothes and the towel to get my phone, it was really messing up. Determined to get my contacts off the phone, I took it completely apart and dried each individual part (this was the day after it stopped working). Now I can sorta make outgoing calls if I navigate through the contacts list and press the Talk button. I cant talk though, but I can hear. One screen doesnt work, the other is water-marked.

So, I was pretty pissed when the cheapest phone in the store was $100. Talk about a very basic piece of crap phone. So Amazon.com here I come! I’m now waiting for a Palm Treo 650 to arrive in the mail, hopefully on Monday. The phone is in “Like New” condition and cost me a whopping $110 (including shipping). When it arrives in the mail, I’ll stick a few pictures on here, but I’m really excited, and antsy to make sure it works! The lady I bought it from assured me it will work just fine or she’ll give me a full refund.

So, I guess we’ll see what happens.

Successes and Failures

I heard a quote and had a thought:

The one who walks through life without mistakes,
Has walked through life not having accomplished a single thing.

There is a lot of truth in both.. but think about this:

Without failure, how would we know how to define success? And without success, how would we know how to define failure? Which came first, and which is more important in life?

If we don’t have failures, how can we learn? But when failure deters the want or persistence to try again, how can we ultimately reach success? How do we know our successes are successes and not just a really good failure which we accept as a success from the lack of determination to do it just a little bit better?

haha, I’m really bored at work (now add confused w/ a headache).

Certificates ≠ Experience

-People want to see a certificate
-Don’t trust: certificate = legitimate experience
-Don’t think: they’d rather pay twice as much for the same thing
-Skeptical of talent/ability when examples are right in front of them.
-Don’t research cost of a website

Everyone wants a web page these days. Most people are completely happy using a free service online with pre-coded templates they litterally drag-and-drop some pictures and text to call their own. For those who want to add a little more personalization, a domain purchase (around $6.00/year) will suffice. For all others, there are 2 choices, aside from coding, imaging and creating the site from scratch: Contract a web design firm to make it for you, or get a freelance web designer.

Going through a company to create your site can be a little pricey. Upwards of $400 for a simple site and over $1000 for a flash website. Freelance designers can get away with charging less because they benefit from the profits 100% where a company would have to pay their employees who worked on the project.

Going through Craigslist, I’ve found a few people who were searching for freelance web designers. Working with html, css, javascript, php, and a little my-sql over the past 6 years and having extensive Photoshop CS experience, I figured I would be a likely applicant for this one-time job. I called, set up an appointment, and then was amazed by the ignorance displayed by these two individuals.

When I first met them, they seemed very polite and professional (both are pretty much a given in any meeting of this sort). After talking for a short while, they asked about my qualifications, examples, and experience. I showed them the homepage for a website I made (as a joke) which happened to show good design properties, my deviantart account, and a handful of pictures saved in my photobucket albums.

I told them a little about where I work, and the fact that each newsletter I create is a single-page website. They seemed to be impressed so far until they asked about classes I’ve taken and certifications I’ve gotten. It was hard for them to grasp the concept that I’ve never taken a single class nor had any certifications in the web design/coding field. They then started questioning the legitimacy of my job! “Why would any company hire you without classes or certifications?”

I talked for a total of about an hour going back and forth about my ‘lack of qualifications.’ Then they asked about my age… this is always downgrades my ‘experience.’ When they found out I was 20, and had 7 years of coding/ graphic design experience, they really flipped.

I decided to tell them about my AutoCAD certification and my job at the NRAO in 12th grade. In the end, I figured they weren’t even worth my effort. Some people just assume that if they aren’t capable of something, no one else is.

After they explained a little about what they wanted their webpage to be like, I asked them how much they were planning on spending. I let out a little laugh when they said $200-$300 dollars. They wanted about 9 pages, flash banner (with links) and custom (full screen) background images for each page. I told them they should call around and see what kind of prices they could get a company to charge. I always charge about half of what a company will charge (I’m still making about 40-50 dollars an hour).

Flash websites (even flash banners depending on the intricacy) can start the cost around $700-1000. Simple websites with a few pages, custom graphics, etc generally start around $300-$500. Again, they didn’t believe me. I was managing to stick around and continue the conversation until they started saying I was naive… “You’re too young to understand what you are talking about,” and “Your 7 years experience probably inst as full as someone who’s gone through college for experience.”

I almost flipped a verbal shit on them! First, I explained that smart individuals do not get a Web design degree. The field doesnt pay enough to rationalize all the loans they would have to pay back. Then I realized I was talking to two very dogmatic people. There was no convincing them. I wished them good luck w/ their websites and finding someone to make it on a low-budget. I gave they my number (they wont be calling) as a nice gesture and went along my way.

Just thought I’d share this with you all.

Speeding Shrubbery

Have you ever had one of those moments where you had to stop and wonder if you just saw what you thought you did? Well on the way home after work on Friday, I passed a police car going about 15 over. Of course the blue lights went on and I figured I’d been caught (again). Well, the cop passed me and pulled over to a bit of shrubbery lying on the side of the road. I, naturally, kept driving by (except this time I was going the speed limit) acting like nothing was wrong. Jokingly I told myself that the cop was just red-green colorblind (my car is red…and sorta shaped like a shrub) but looking back, he probably noticed the bush in the road and figured that was more of a safety issue than giving me yet another ticket.

(You know you have too many tickets when the police call you by your first name and recognize your vehicle…)

Anyway, hopefully you’ll find this almost as amuzing as I did.

When picking a phpbb host

PhpBB Hosts and Support

How does one decide which Host to invest their time and effort into when creating an online community based on the phpbb open source application? Over the last 8 years I’ve joined many phpbb hosts, established and supplied a basis for my forums to grow and of course, dealt with the administrators and moderators of the host’s Support Forum.

Even though how simple choosing a host may sound, it’s a little more difficult than making a Google search and clicking on the first one with FREE in the title. These days, anyone with a few bucks and minimal coding experience can be a ‘Free phpbb host’. The goal of this article is to educate you on what to look for, what to look out for, and immediate warning signs to indicate a poor host.

Host Support Forums are usually open to the public! Before creating a forum with any host, consider browsing through the support forum. Not only is it a good place to learn a few basics about phpbb forums, but you can also see, not only the consistency in duplicate problems, but the quality of support coming from the moderators and administrators. A good Support Forum will have an easily navigable structure to help get the member’s and contributor’s questions answered quickly and efficiently. If you notice that there are lots of posts ranging over a few days regarding the same problems, then the host probably isnt stable.

Stability in a host is KEY! Members of your communities will not stay if your forum lags (freezes), posts are displayed immediately after submitted, or their new messages alert displays a rediculously large number (in the millions for example). The main goal of most online forums is to get as many members to accumilate as many posts as possible. The higher the numbers, the more successful the forum appears to be. This is NOT the case with a support forum!

If a hosts support forum has thousands and thousands of posts in the General Support section, and is only hosting a few hundred forums, it’s safe to say the host is not stable. I’ve signed up with many forums where the support forum is rediculously off the charts in posts and members.

One other side-fact: Features of a forum are not always good to have. Since phpbb forums run from a my-sql database, any database intensive modifications (mods/features/etc) will cause the forums to slow down. A host which advertises dozens of modifications most likely will run a little slower than one with a few.

Host provided services: database backups. Perhaps the single most annoying thing about phpbb forums, is when an upset moderator (or worse, another administrator) of your forum decides to go A-Wall and deletes all the forum posts, threads, categories, etc. ALL FORUMS except for ONE which I’ve associated myself with charge to create a backup for you. PROPHPBB.COM is the only forum which offers this service for FREE. I can not stress to anyone reading this how important it is to have a backup of your database. There are so many things which could go wrong, and a backup is your key to escaping those stressful times. Below is a breakdown of the perfect example of a BAD HOST.

FreeForums.org: Claiming to be the #1 Free phpbb Host on the web, they have surely proven themselves wrong with their arrogant owner/developer/administrator, lack of knowledgable moderators and their inability to successfully run/operate/manage a phpbb host. This is not a vendetta i have against them, but a reflection on their service.

I guess to start this off: Not everyone can be #1! Anywhere that states they are #1 probably is not (unless backed up by proof linked on their homepage). It’s generally safe to stay away from these hosts.

Moderators are as young as 14 with the moderator status given to them from both a lack of interest from other members, and their personal ties to someone already on the Moderator list. Adequate support is not given half the time, and they believe they can never be wrong. Any dispute between a moderator and member ends in a temporary or perminent ban of the member from the Support Forum! (This is not a professional approach to handling the situation)

Freeforums.org has been blacklisted from many ISPs! This means that email programs such as gmail, hotmail, and yahoo view the emails from Freeforums.org to be SPAM, therefor creating a perminent block of their emails. This is a blatent sign that the owner/developers do not understand how mass email works. By allowing the members to email as much as they want to whomever they please, they set theirselves up for failure in that department.

To add to the endless list of failures, Freeforums.org created a Graphic Request forum in their Support Forum. This was a GREAT idea! Now people would have a place to request a custom banner for their forum, however FF.org placed a rule that only Graphics team members could fill the requests (at the time, they had 1 member who wasn’t all too familiar with photoshop and how to optimize coloration/ flow and design techniques when creating graphics. (over 200,000 members, and 1 Graphics Moderator… do the math – not one of FF.org’s smarted moves).

Being a graphics designer for over 50 clients worldwide, creating more than 1000+ graphics over the last 9 years, I’ve found a sense of happiness and fulfillment in creating graphics for other people. I’m currently a Graphics Creator on a few different forums here and there and a freelance webdesign and graphicdesigner. I created a few graphics for the other members (not being a Graphics designer on Freeforums.org) and that account was perminently banned without warning. One rule of Hosting: If you are going to ban someone, first, make sure its a legitimate reason and second, tell them why they are being banned. I had to email the Ownder over 15 times before I finally got an answer a couple months later.

Now you know what not to look for, lets go over some things which point to a great host. Prophpbb.com is an example of a continually growing host run by the previous owner of EAmped.com! If any of your are familiar with the service given during the time of MdValdosta’s participation, you will already begin to get a sense of nostalgia.

First, the forum if running off the latest phpbb3 package which is fully stable. Unlike other forums, mdvaldosta picks and chooses the mods before installing being careful not to have anything too database intensive. Also, only fully stable mods are being considered as he wishes to avoid hosting problems. (Downtime is at an all-time low. Compared to other hosts, prophpbb.com is flawless in that area).

The support team is impeccable (as stated from the other members) giving complete answers in a timely and efficient manner. 99% of the support tickets are regarding How-To’s (how to make a link, and other instructional questions). Occasionally a newly installed template will have a glitch, but nothing that wont take an hour or so to fix.

MdValdosta also does an extrodinary job at informing the members of any work, installations which are going on (especially if its going to cause some down-time). Since most of the forums are based in the US, he will do database work late nights and early mornings when the lowest number of people will be online. He hired a Moderator in the UK so we can have semi-round-the-clock service.

Overall its a great host. It does lack in features compared to other hosts, but the forums run much quicker, there are minimal problems associated with the host, and of course the database backups are completely FREE.

Please leave replies with any questions, concerns, comments, or suggestions and I hope this proves to be useful to someone.

Teh Media

This post will definitely have large portions of text added to it at a later date, however for now, I must get the point across. The media needs to take a more-active role in trying to help Americans to save gas by taking advantage of the Mass Transit systems, ride a bike, or walk to wherever they need to go as much as they could. The below comic is an example of a clear statement pertaining to gas. If we continue to waste gas just like we are doing today, it will eventually lead to our destruction.

Stick figure death idea influenced by the AIM conversations with Laura.

Englibic…the new English and Improved Arabic

So in my random quest to find answers for the unexplained…I thought to myself, “What would happen if we combine the styles of Arabic and English lettering?” With the help of ALT Characters, I have created Englibic Lettering! It’s all mine.. patented and copyrighted. Just…by…me…haha! Pay tribute my minions!

.ʇɥϬ!u ʇʂɐľ əƿɐɯ I ʂə!uʍoɻq əʂəɥʇ ʇuoqɐ ʇʂod ɐ əĸɐɯ oʇ ƿəʇuɐʍ ʇʂɳʆ I

…mmm Brownies

Past Present Future

So, I’ve had a lot of people ask me what I plan to do with my life. Walking around the downtown mall, at a concert, or out with people, one of the first questions people often ask me is, “Are you going to college.”

Honestly, I hate answering them because along with the answer comes assumptions. I’m not a lazy person. I’m not an unskilled person, unteachable nor dumb.

My freshman year attending PVCC (Virginia) I was the passenger in a car accident. Going back for a minute, I was taking 19 credit hours and making A’s (and 2 B’s). When there was something going on with my ‘friends’ of course I’d skip class! I mean, I made sure I wasn’t skipping too many, I always found out what I missed but I figured I was having no trouble in the class, so why should I stay if something else popped up? Now, my friend, Bryan, and I were meeting some other friends at the John Paul Jones Arena to eat pizza, drink slurpies and stuff our faces with donuts (this was a normal thing for us, but this time we just started a little earlier than normal).

Anyway, we were cruising down Massie Rd (see map below) a little faster than the posted speed limit (I was the passenger). The driver of a white Audi A6 coming out of the Law School decided he wasn’t going to look both ways before crossing the road…nor actually stop at the stop sign. Bryan swerved to miss the car, drove over the median, and hit one of the steel night lamps posted all around the campus. The poll was not only seperated from the lamp part, but the huge concrete base was lifted out of the ground! Bryan did a really good job of aiming the car so the poll would hit on my side.

My right hand went through the windshield while my left went into the stereo, my knees pushed in the dashboard, and the pizza box in my lap kept me from even touching the air bag while my seatbelt popped off from the pressure (recalled). To put it simply, Bryan got air bag dust in his eyes while I was completely f**ked up. He has to get out of the car to run around the other side to pull me out of the car. I couldn’t feel my legs, nor my right side. The pizza box withstood the pressure of slowing me down from about 50mph to 0 in a split second which definitely had it’s mal-effect on my spine. I had a quick adrenalin burst as soon as I got out of the car which lasted about half a minute before I collapsed. I don’t really remember a lot after this point. I remember flashing lights, I remember seeing a blur of my dad, and this really cute girl working on the Ambulance. I don’t know how many classes I missed because I couldn’t stand up, let along walk. Eating was proving to be quite difficult. I missed about a week and a half of classes. (5 periods of each class) Now, as I mentioned earlier, I skipped a few classes. This accident pushed me WAY over my limit. The reason the school did not allow me to get away with it as an excused absence was because I had previously skipped classes. According to the school, I was irresponsible (I mean, I only had A’s and B’s… jeeze).

My first semester I had to Withdrawal Fail out of 4 of my 6 classes. For those two classes I missed quite a bit. I did not do so well on upcoming tests. I got C’s in both of those classes. So you do the math: 13 credits of 0 and 6 credits of 2 going towards my GPA. My grants were revoked, my scholarships taken away and my Stafford loan canceled. I actually received the NSF Scholarship (full tuition paid for PVCC students transferring to UVa) but that was also revoked. Pretty much a GPA of /63 is enough to discourage anyone.

This whole situation caused too much stress at home, so I decided to move out (big mistake). The following semester I took 2 classes. Both I WF’ed out of again because my girlfriend at the time, was attending school in North Carolina. She was having a mental breakdown (seriously.. going psychotic) and needed me to be there for her. I went down there for 2 weeks, racked up a $1000 debt on 2 cards for gas and food and bills I had to pay with money I wasn’t making (I’ve paid one off so far.. the other one.. not so much).

I took another class the fall semester of last year and got a B (a little confidence booster) but am still working a full time job. I decided to do something no one my age should do… I bought a new car. 13,000 loan from the bank means that the bank owns my life. Insurance is through the roof. After my accident, something clicked in my brain. I’m not afraid of getting hurt. Ive racked up so many driving tickets it’s not even funny. I wont go into all the details but I lost almost all interest in going to college part time.

This leads me to my plans for the future. I’ve sold a lot of my things, still working on getting rid of the rest. I’m enlisting in the National Guard later this week. I’ll be shipped to Lackland AFB for training which will last just under a year. When they send me home, I want to attend UVa at Wise, Virginia. The government will pay for school and I’ll get a nice bonus check which should last me a while. I will have enough in savings, if I can live reasonably and not blow the cash on useless crap, to last me a few years without needing to get a full time job. Hopefully I will be able to find a scholarship which will assist me in paying for food among other necessities.

Talk about ‘Everything happens for a reason.’

Hook’d on The Hook

Charlottesville’s weekly life saver! Without the information revealed in each edition of The Hook, I’d have no escape from my ‘friends,’ ‘family,’ or all the shit that goes down in my apartment that drives me up the wall. In a way, this is my anger management, my way out: this is my escape from life. Every Tuesday I’ll grab an one of the magazines from York Place, go grab a slice of Christians Pizza, sit outside and immerse myself in the readings for hours. Of course, the rest of the week, I get to enjoy the benefits of the read. Concerts are revealed, plays and events are listed, classified are of interest: It gives me something to do just about every day of the week so I don’t have to go home, or hang out with my ‘friends’ (aside from the few I actually like to hang out with).

I’ll probably update this post a little later tonight.