Notice of change coming

Well, I finally did it. I finally got my own domain and web hosting. In the next few weeks, I will probably be changing the layout of my blog and moving it over to my website, which is TeamHAMRacing.com.

There's nothing up there yet, but very soon there will be. Team HAM is the name that bounced out of my brain one early morning while driving to an autocross when talking with Diana about what we (Diana, Chris, and I) could call ourselves and my first thought was MAH, but then I thought HAM sounded better (and it also put my name last. . .I dont like the attention of being first usually). So its been a few months since then and I got the sudden urge to make a move on using that, so I went to GoDaddy.com and got the domain name and web hosting for 2 years, for under $130, with an account I don't think we'll ever use half of the features of (I think 5gb storage, 500gb of bandwidth, 1000 email addresses, 25 mysql databases, support for PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, and probably even more stuff but thats what comes to mind).

Keep an eye out for it. It should be a fun little side project and I think we'll all enjoy having our own webspace. No more need to use yahoo/cardomain, johnnysays.com, or webshots for uploading files online.

I don't know why I'm writing this

Probably because I'm bored and just realized I havent written a thing in this blog for almost 1/4 of 2006. A quick update on things.

-My job is going well. Got a $1/hr raise for my 6 month evaluation (doesn't sound like much but comes out to a little over $2000/yr). We're currently working on a few fun websites right now. OutdoThat.com will be a photo sharing/voting website where the top ranked photos can win cash. And to help us get started, we're offering cash to people who just submit photos, since we can't really take a photo ranking site live without photos. JohnnySays.com is a very simple website about Johnny, some random guy that hangs out around one of my boss' pawnshops and is pretty entertaining. Pretty much we'll just be posting video's of Johnny and the stupid crap he says.

-In other job related news, I recently got to drive my boss' 94 Dodge Viper RT/10 which was insanely fun and quite scary too. I think if I get to drive it again sometime, I'll be a little more relaxed in it and can maybe see what it can do (besides go insanely fast).

-Car news. Diana, Chris, and I attended an autocross school run by a local club in mid-March which was a lot of fun, despite the drive there and back (it was about 2.5 hrs each way). But we learned a lot about what to look for and also got advice from some of the people there. I got to use Diana's fathers Miata for the even (shhh. . .he thinks it was a defensive driving school). First time driving a rwd and it went fairly well. I did get it sideways once, managed to take out a few cones, but continued on. I also got to do some fun runs in a 2004 corvette z06 with a guy thats done the evo autocross school more than 20 times and also does various other racing around the country (he's participating in One Lap of America this year in a new M3). The week after that, we got to put our skills to the test in an actual autox event in Greensboro. Chris and I had a successful day in his car. I finished 2nd and he finished 3rd in the novice class, losing to a modified Subaru STI. If we had competed in the non-novice classing I would have finished 2nd in the regular class anyway, which is a good confidence boost that I'm getting pretty comfortable on these tight autox courses. The next two weeks (Apr. 23 and 30) we have events to look forward to. Hopefully we'll get some video of the events (in and out of the car). Lets hope the weather stays beautiful like it was this weekend.

Other random thoughts:
-I like driving in Gran Turismo 4 with my wheel and pedal set (yet more good practice for autox. . .same princples apply but much faster speeds)
-I need some new shoes and am thinking about getting driving shoes from Piloti (blah to them being uber-expensive. . .$80)
-I am still saving up for my new car (I've decided on a 2005 Subaru STI in black or white)
-My desktop still kicks ass even though my graphics card is so outdated now its no longer made so I have to keep my eyes open for any good deals on used 7800gt's if I hope to run in SLI
-Lost is the best show on television
-South Park, while I love the social commentary the show provides, needs to do some episodes that DONT rip on something thats overexposed in the news
-Diana's dad wouldn't take the money I offered him which slightly upset me (when I had his car for the autox school, I broke the rear plastic window and was offering half of the repair cost of it)
-I want to go karting sometime this summer, maybe at VIR. . .must get more information about it
-I want to drive the Viper some more because I like being scared

As predicted. . .

I did not update around Christmas, but indeed after I have built my desktop. To catch up with things.

Work has been fine (just about done on a site that I did completely by myself, from concept through implementation in about a month).

Christmas was good. The few days leading up to Christmas were a bit depressing though. Diana went to NY to visit family so I was alone from the Wednesday before the holiday up until Christmas night (yeah, I spent Christmas morning sleeping, not with friends/family). But Christmas night was great. . .Diana came home and then my mom also made the trip over from Nashville and stayed with us until Tuesday morning.

New Years Eve weekend was awesome. My friend Jeff came up from Charlotte and stayed for a few days and also Mike was in town visiting Laura so they hung around most of the weekend too. So much Scene It was played. I really don't know much about movies. . .

That's about all that has happened since the last post besides the building of the desktop, which is awesome btw. Only spec that changed since the last post in terms of the components is the power supply. I found a GREAT deal on a used PC Power and Cooling 510w SLI-ready supply. They are pretty much the best power supplies on the market (and as such, are very expensive new, but I got one that is less than a year old for $80 off the new price). Pretty much everything went together nicely. Wiring in the P180 was a bit tricky. No way I could really hide wires, so I mainly tried to keep it organized in a way that wouldn't hurt airflow in the case. I think it all came out very nicely. And the best part is. . .it hauls ass in gaming (as was to be expected). I ran the 3dMark05 test after getting everything installed and working and scored a 7401. If I ever decide to overclock, there should be no problems hitting 8000. And then when I throw a 2nd card in there in SLI. . .watch out.

Anyway, here's the link to some pictures. The P180 Hotness

And my favorite picture. . .



Sweet. . .

An update on things

Hmm, last post was a long while ago. Some of the things I've done since the beginning of November:

• Learned ASP (or enough to get by) at work, but this is sort of still on-going, while still doing 10 other things at the same time


• Participated in my first autocrossing event, which was too much fun for words


• Built my first desktop computer (for my mom because damn. . .she needed a new computer)


• Went to Nashville for Thanksgiving, ate way too much food for the 3 days I was there, did the whole Black Friday thing and got some good deals


• Went through the hiring process at work (funny, I'm still on probation yet I was pretty much in charge of hiring a new person)


• Began gathering parts for my desktop build which will happen after Christmas

Thats pretty much it. Here's some more in-depth details.

Autocrossing was insanely awesome, but it really made me realize a few things. First, I suck at driving. Second, I suck at driving because my car sucks. I really wish my car was in better order because I could just put some suspension mods and I think I'd fair much better. But I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a car that really isnt worth it. That being said, I am actively doing my best to save money so I can maybe buy myself a new car sometime within the next 6 months. I'd like a miata (for autocrossing purposes) but I can't picture myself with a miata as a daily driver. More than likely I'll find a Subie and it will be great.

Black Friday was a good shopping day (though I spent far too much money). Best Buy was the first store we visited and I ended up getting Billy Madison and Minority Report on DVD for $4 each and also a copy of Call of Duty 2 for $25. Almost worth the hour long line we had to stand in. After BB, we stopped in at CompUSA. I ended up buying a $150 case for my computer build. Luckily, there was a $50 mail in rebate. The case is awesome. Its the Antec P180, if you're curious. Check it out on Newegg. We also stopped in at Target for the Family Guy movie, an air mattress, and Grand Theft Auto on PSP. The two final stops included Burlington Coat Factory (where I got a super-heavy-duty jacket) and Staples (where I got a wireless router for the apartment).

Apart from the case, I've also been doing some other shopping for my desktop build. I got an extra 120mm fan for the top of the case (with green LED's no less), some non-ugly wires for floppy and DVD drives, a nice stylish wireless keyboard (and mouse too but I already have a Logitech G5 so the mouse isn't needed), and tomorrow I'll be getting my floppy drive/media card reader. Since my case only has one 3.5" external slot, I figured why not combine the two drives that I put in my mom's computer. After Christmas, where I'm hoping to get some money, I'll hopefully be ordering all the rest of the stuff I want. As of now, I'm going over my budget a little bit, but I am getting better things that should last me 6 months-1 year longer than I was originally planning. Parts include: Abit An8 SLI-ready mobo, AMD Athlon64 3700+ (San Diego core), 2gb of Corsair XMS RAM, evga 7800gt, Seagate 250gb sata hdd, NEC 16x DVD burner (much like the one I already have in an external enclosure), and an Antec TruePower 2.0 550w power supply. Hopefully I'll be happy with that for at least a year and a half to 2 years before I even think its necessary to drop another 7800gt in and run in SLI. The only thing I might buy before a major upgrade like that is another hard drive to either run in raid 0 (if its another 7200rpm drive) or be a gaming-only drive (if its a 10000rpm drive).

That's really about it. As a contributing member of society (by that I mean having a job and not sitting on my ass all day doing nothing), I have grown to appreciate weekends so much more than when I was in school. There's nothing quite like being able to sleep in until 10am. I'd like to say I'll update around Christmas time but more than likely, my next update will be after I have my new desktop built, so who knows when that will be (once the desktop gets built, I'll pretty much be playing games on it constantly). Until then. . .

The New Job

So I've been at my new job for 2.5 weeks. I think I made the right decision coming here. I don't wake up in the mornings and feel sick at the thought of going to work. And apart from much less stress, I like the environment here. Its much more relaxed. And because of that, I feel as though I can get more work done.

So, my job here when I started was to finish building the front and back-ends of a website, elitevaluecards.com. There was a lot done, but the database had yet to be started so I had to finish up probably close to 80% of the back-end programming, along with creating the database. Glad to say, I did that in about 1.5 weeks. We officially took the site live yesterday afternoon and I haven't seen any problems with it yet (that weren't able to be fixed immediately).

Right now, I'm working on fixing the website of the guy that was here before me made. Seems like there's a lot of session problems so people get logged in when they shouldn't and get logged off when they do certain things. Yay for having to deal with code thats supposedly complete but doesn't work correctly! I think I may just try to re-create everything on my own for when we set up a subdomain for our primary website. Would be fairly simple I think and then I'd have a better understanding of exactly whats going wrong if something did happen.

Until then, we will limp along with our semi-working website.

Questions I have been unable to answer:
1)Is there a simple way to synch two databases on seperate servers (when the server's don't allow remote access)?
2)Is there a reason in MySQL 4.25 that TRIM(username) wouldn't turn the username 'somedoofus ' (notice the space) into 'somedoofus'?
3)If I want to see if the last time something was updated (I have a date for the last update, format 05/05/2005) and check if that last update was greater than 2 weeks ago, shouldn't the SQL be something like date_sub(last_update, interval 14 day)? Because thats not working. . .

Am I a bad person?

So, my previous post said I was hired by New Horizons. Now, 3 weeks later, I write here as a Joe without a job at New Horizons. That's right. After months of job searching, I finally got a job and quit 3 weeks after being hired. But, I do have a few reasons. First is because I was offered a job here in Burlington doing web programming for a small company. Pay is comparable and I don't think I'm going to wake up feeling sick everyday. While I don't think I totally botched anything at New Horizons (hey, they didn't fire me), I just never really felt comfortable there, especially in a teaching environment. There's a reason I wasn't anywhere near being an education major. I'm not that kind of person (meaning I can't ever really see myself talking to groups of people all day pretty much every day). Way too intraverted for that.

It was a real tough decision for me to quit working at New Horizons. It seems like my job offer timings were just terrible. As soon as I got hired, I had two other companies looking at hiring me, and one extended the invite. I still actually feel a little bad about it. I didn't even work at New Horizons for a month so I don't think I really contributed that much. I'm sure that they'll be just as fine without me though.

Apart from being offered a job 1)closer to home and 2)in my field of study, I also feel that I can perform this new job much better than being an instructor at New Horizons. I don't think I'd ever truly show my true potential there because of the teaching environment I'd be in most of the time. And if I don't feel 100%, I know thats going to show in my classes. And if I can't give 100%, I don't think I should risk potentially losing customers of a company. At least in programming, I'm not directly responsible if things really go bad (as long as I get my programming done).

So, this coming Monday, I begin my 2nd "real" job with the ECA Group here in Burlington. Maybe I'll actually be able to write more in the blog (I don't think I did for the past few weeks because I didn't want to just totally rip on how I felt about my job with New Horizons).

It is good to know that if I ever need to take some computer classes or certification tests, I know a great small company in Greensboro that I wouldn't have a problem giving money to.

Finally

Some good news to report. Yesterday, I was offered the position at New Horizons. I officially begin work there this coming Monday. Hopefully I'll take to the job and have a fairly quick adjustment period (I'm not thinking they're going to give me a lot of time actually).

Based on what was said today when I was filling out the tax forms (I hope I did that correctly. . .I have no real clue what it all means), I'm apparently going to be travelling to Virginia Tech fairly shortly after a week or so of training/orientation. It would seem to me that they should let me work in the office at first, to get me somewhat used to what they do, but hey, if they think I can handle it, whatever. There has to be a good reason why they chose to hire me.

Also (since I don't want to talk about it in my other blog just yet), the season premiere of Lost was this past Wednesday. Wow. Just wow. The opening segment, I think, may be the finest 3 minutes of television I have seen. Not because of what you see (some guy waking up, working out, etc) but because of what you can see. There's so much going on in the scene. I've watched it probably 6 or 7 times, just trying to figure out what some of the images mean. We have the computer, the guy typing the numbers (we assume) on the computer, cleaning up a meal that I don't believe he ate (leading many to believe that there was someone/another set of people living there besides the guy we see), having a mash-up of stuff in there from all different time periods (some stuff being very recent, like the washer/dryer), and the medicine with the numbers on it. It all went by really really quick when it aired but being able to go back and freeze-frame during the scene really lets you see what you might not normally see.

Can't wait for the rest of the season to really start picking up.

And out of the blue, my phone rings

So I got a call from Dealerstaff this morning. It's been at least 2 weeks since they last contacted me (when they said they'd be setting up an interview for me soon) and they called to tell me that I have an interview tomorrow morning. That was nice to give me less than a full days notice. . .

We'll see how this one goes. I still haven't heard back from New Horizons yet so my hopes are dwindling on getting a job there.

Job update

Well, I did say it was good when I was going to car sales training. That hasnt really turned out so good (call me crazy but I'm actually losing sleep over the fact that they may try to scam me out of $900 if I dont get a job from them and they arent doing their job in keeping in contact with me/setting up interviews for me). But this new update is actually good. I applied to a company in Greensboro called New Horizons Computer Learning Center (they have franchises all over the country and a few international ones as well). Anyway, its for a teaching position. Technology teaching. Hmm, sounds similar to what I was sort of doing for the past two years while I was in school.

Anyway, I applied over the weekend, got a call back on Tuesday, preliminary interview today (Wednesday) and am going back tomorrow to give a 15 minute teaching presentation (so they can see if I am actually able to talk about computers without feeding BS into the minds of others). Luckily, the topic was fairly wide open (anything from their basic Windows XP class, which is really really really basic). I'm currently preparing how I want to talk about using and creating documents with WordPad. So, if all goes well tomorrow with my presentation, I may be getting a nice little cushy job doing technology training. Woot for a job possibility. . .thats actually putting my college degree to work!

My new obsession

Well, its not really an obsession. . .yet. As seen from my last post, I am a fan of the show LOST. Since there's so much going on in that show (and we've only seen season 1), I decided to create a blog so I could post my own thoughts about the show. I'm currently working on the layout of it so I have not really begun to post any relevant information about the show yet. But I will soon. I figure as long as I dont have a job, I should at least me learning or doing something involving computers, besides playing video games. This blog is helping me learn more about Photoshop and CSS (which I don't really care for anyway, and trying to format the blog really isnt making style sheets grow on me to the point I would say they're the best creation for web programming in the history of the universe).

So, use the link in my sidebar to get there or follow the link at the end of this posting. Either way, check it out if you havent, give me feedback, or if you know anything about CSS, help me figure out how to make the page look not like crap.

The-Hatch: A blog about LOST