What the hell am I doing wrong?! Must collect them all!

Just a heads up to who ever reads this.. chucked a new website out on the net.. www.wangnet.org There's CSS, a blog, a resume, and every thing!

Haven't posted here in a while.. so first post of 2008!

http://news.com.com/An+urban+parking+perk+The+automated+garage/2100-11394_3-6141298.html?tag=nefd.top

Ok.. am I the only one that thinks this is a bad idea? What happens in a power outage - you can't get your car. I would imagine there is diseil generators to keep basic functionality, but what happens when the lights go out? What happens when the zombies come? I recoginize the need for space, but really, how energy dependent are we willing to go before technology bites us in the ass?

Or maybe I just want my damn car and not have to deal with Hal the GarageRobot?

I have looked into the face of awesome... and looked back. The Rob Zombie & Anthrax concert was stunning as was irritating. Apparently the crappy 'mid america center' was selling two general admission tickets - one to the floor and one to the stands. The ticket holders on the floor got access to both the pit and to the seating, while the seated folk only had access to their chairs.

I was not aware of this, and promptly sulked through Anthrax, and enjoyed the first quarter of the Zombie show from a nice vantage point. After about fifteen minutes of this, I decided to make my break for pit and slinked past the DB security they had. I was in like Flynn and I was blown away.

I would cry, but I no longer am capable of that.

I heard that I might be investigating how to disassemble my mp3 player's software. Shuuush. It's a secret. They - the company that produced my mp3 player - may or may not have their libraries writen in c++.

I am enjoying the... joy.. of real work finally. After about a month and a half of 'test projects' I get to do something that will be used and implemented. Yeppie for me!

I just thought the world might care.

I am sitting here... trying to implement the 'shared' member/variable/class type in VB.Net and I am getting pathetic errors by the compiler. Why, oh why, can't the compiler give me a bit more data than "An unhandled exception of type 'system.data.syntaxerrorexception' occured in the system.data.dll. Additional Information: Sytanx Error." Arg.. Arg.. ARG!

I thought the world might want to hear my frustration.

On a completely different side note, the end of Stephen King's Gunslinger series was amazing and great. Well both endings actually. I was pleased with the first, and finally accepted the last. The journey was great, and Mr. King your opus was stunning. I was curious with the potential hubris complications by inserting yourself in places, but you pulled it off. My hat is off to you, sir.

So long, farewell, Au'voir, auf wiedersehn... er... sorry.. I didn't quite mean to bust out a 'sound of music' song... but as of Friday the 13th (January)... tomorrow.. I am quiting my position at my company... I have spent seven years, eight months, and about five-ish days working for this place. It's going to be hard leaving... the familiarity, the friends, my reputation, and so forth. Saddly, as a previous post mentioned, we have gone through a brutal layoff session... NINE days before christmas... but my new job will have me doing programming, which is more what I wanted to do since.. I don't know.. my high school career and my college graduation..

So I say so long First Data Resources... I gave you everything I could, and your employees my heart.. From the days of card act, to lost stolen, hotcalls, fraud detection, team leads, QAs, and testing..

so my company is having the threat of layoffs and selling a large portion off for a month or so now... apparently the ball has been moving, and right in time for the holidays. hopefully I am not part of the gutting of my company, but then again I am not sure if staying around in the wake of the aftermath when people are picking up the pieces..

Ok, so here's the fun. My room mate and I are engaging in a new focus for our alcohol consumption, and I am looking for help.

The first rule, if it's is malt liquor then it must be one of the following:
1. animal themed
2. the label must look like it was drawn by a third grader
3. be in an a foreign language
4. have more than 8.1% alcohol per volume

So far we have amassed the usual suspects:
old english
colt 45
mickies
steele reserve 211
and a few others that.. but they are blurry

Some regional ones we found were:
Ojo Mal'e (Aka the Evil Eye)
Cocquie (It means some Puerto Rican frog)

The Evil Eye apparently has branched out into 'green apple' malt liquor, and that's on the list for this next weekend.

Second rule, when it comes to liquor-liquor my room mate is running for 'bird themed' bottles. Clearly wild turkey has come up, and so has Old Crow. Last weekend it was 'The Famous Grouse' - which has positivly the dumbest looking bird on it (www.vgcats.com inbred chocobo dumb).

So does anyone out there have any suggestions or sightings of the liquor path we are following?

Thanks,
- modi

So I picked up a webcam on the random this weekend. It's a nice little do hickey, usb, up to 30 fps, and about 4 feet of cable. It's nice and all, but is there known way to improve the camera resolution, or transmission rate (you know, to get my 30 fps)?

Oh, and is there any fun webcam sites, or programs I can use with it - to fully geek out!

So it Halloween at work, and my attempts to undermine my department is working. I bought a ton of pixi-stix and have decided to hand them out to the people who really shouldn't have sugar... because they are hyper enough as it is... So I dolled them out, and will wait for about an hour to let the sugar set in and they become really obnoxious..

Additionally everyone is bringing kids in today.. so I hope their dental plans are up to date..

And we might be making a trip to Kansas City to visit 'the beast' . It is an open format (choose your own adventure style) haunted house that is a 40 minute run time!

http://www.kcbeast.com/

WOOOOOOOOOT!

So I am trying to find a working email address of Jack Thompson - the loony attorney in Miami that is on some irrational crusade to end all video games. I have some personal insight I would like to impart, but his comcast address has been canceled.

Anyone out there know a different route?

This is the currently confusing I have, and I am wondering if this is standard. I like to keep on top of my hardware upgrades, and have finally gotten around to upgrade my Flash BIOS on my two-year-old motherboard. My usual dealing with hardware updates is just going to the company's site, plugging my information in, and downloading the appropriate update (Nvidia, my firewire card, and so on). I did my usual procedure for the motherboard, I fill out the information, and then it hands me a screen telling me they would get a hold of me in 24 hours. I thought that was bit odd, but no big deal. They do call me in 24 hours to tell me they have an upgrade - it's been tested, and would optimize my system to current. "Wonderful", I said. Then he added it would be $69.95 to do the upgrade! I tried to explain that I already HAVE my board and the software that came with it, but just want the update. For free. Like every other piece of hardware in my box. We go around a bit, and I tell him I will get back to him on it.

Is this normal? I get why software companies have paid updates for their products, but for a hardware vendor? Is this company trying to gouge me? Is there something I am missing with my 'Flash Bios' update? My previous motherboards had free flash updates, but those were back in the day.

Side note, while talking to this guy he kept correcting me that it's not a "motherboard" but a "mainboard", and went as far to say "I don't know about updating your motherboard, but your main board we can handle". Is there really a difference? This guy tried to say there was but refused to enlighten me.