The weather here sucks so bad I’ve precanceled my back treatments for tomorrow cause there’s no way in hell I’m going to drive an hour in this shit. On the plus side to this weather, I’ve had time to work on some of my sites and servers. The web server that hosts this site, the wiki, etc. was having some stability issues over the last week and after some emails back and forth with the guys that run it, everything has been resolved (as far as we can tell) and all the sites/domains are back to 100%.

On the topic of the wiki, since the server was having stability and speed issues I decided to change the backend software that runs it to something that utilizes a database to see if that helps. Sadly the new software uses a different form of Wiki Syntax so it’s taking a little longer than I originally planned. You can find out a little more info about that clicking the link in the last paragraph.

Akismet, a plugin, addon, whatever the hell you want to call it, works wonders. For those that don’t know, it takes all the comments sent it and checks them for Spam links and other things to detect and combat unwanted/useless shit. If you jump to the very bottom of the page (in the footer) you’ll notice a little box that states how much spam has been detected and avoided. Sadly the software isn’t 100% accurate and has caught a few comments that it shouldn’t have, but the best part of the software is that once you’re acknowledged the poster as valid it wont bother auto-blocking them (it will still check each post, but will allow them to show if they aren’t marked as spam). I’ve had friends comment about Akismet being crap software how it misses a lot of stuff etc. and they sent me a screenshot of their control panel, practically bragging how shit it was… I took one look and just responded “You moron”. The comments listed as spam WERE spam. Spammers have gotten smart to some of the software used against them and started writing canned responses that at first glance seem valid and you allow those through… this is when they have the chance to pretty much spam the hell out of you before you notice. When you’ve written a post for example like the “Happy Holidays” post I wrote a little while back and get a comment that says something along the lines of “Wow, great post, although I don’t agree with what you’ve said or done 100% I still bookmarked your blog and plan to keep reading it later” you’d think, that’s cool, allow the comment, but if you actually read the sender/poster’s information you’d realize that the comment came from “Free Viagra, blah blah blah, for more info visit this great online pharmacy…..”.

I swear, I don’t believe in “capital punishment” (fully anyway) but I think that every found spammer should have a finger, thumb, penis, etc. fucking cut off… the first time they get caught, they get to name the body part they lose, the second time they’re caught, they take a consensus of those targeted by the spammer to vote on what that asshole loses. I forgot the rest of the point I was going to make, so oh well.

I have less than 2 hours to complete my homework, so I’ll get around to doing that and add more to the blog later. My head hurts.

Barely halfway into the second month of the year and it already sucks. I managed to prep some of the data for migration and one of the former external drives started throwing SMART status errors although the drive passes all diagnostics 100% so now I have to replace a 1TB internal SATA for pretty much no reason. Guess I’ll try to stick it back in it’s original enclosure and hope. (About a week after I originally tested the drive, it’s started tossing a bunch of bad sectors, that equal about 7% of the drive, so it’s a good thing I decided to replace it anyway. I have a new drive on order).

Thankfully, that waste of fucking time (a.k.a. Interface Design class) is over and I wont have to deal with that useless "Professor" anymore. She’ll never be in a spot to read this blog either, not that I’d care, but her ‘teaching’ methods are beyond fucking stupid. How can you ‘teach’ people to write/use a certain type of programming language by clicking around fucking context menus and not comprehend that the way the students view what’s going on is via the internet so that NO MATTER what kind of web conference software is used, there WILL be lag. It’s mainly because of this, that I tutored more students than any past classes.  I talked to one of the "Academics Advisors" since mine left for Medical School (Congrats Chivonne), and they’re having the "Chair of the Department" review all my work and correcting the grades that the useless bitch seemed so full of.

I love tutoring the students, it gives me some pride in the fact I have the knowledge that they look up to, but some of the students tend to just be like "Hey AJ, I don’t get this project, can you show me?" and have me do their work for them practically. I have talked with those people and told them I will no longer do their work (since one had the gall to brag they got a higher grade on the work I did for them than what I earned on my own project).

Another part about tutoring, and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy tutoring most of the students, but one of them (not the ‘cheater’) has to have the same shit explained 50 times and after they finally ‘get it’ it has to be explained again the next fucking night. Thankfully, they’re starting to understand I do this because I like doing it, I’m not paid, so if I get frustrated, piss off… I’m not going to deprive the rest of the students altogether cause they can’t fucking figure it out. I mean, I understand that people have different levels of learning, different mental capabilities, etc. but this is College, so I’m not going to treat students like little kids, we’re all adults here.

And speaking of all being adults, I do apologize to one of the students that I tutor with the fact I was having a very bad night (due to my depression, etc.) and while trying to explain a few things to her, I did tend to swear a lot that night, and although I didn’t say anything derogatory about religion, race, etc. I understand and acknowledge some people of religious beliefs do not like to hear vulgarity, even when it’s just typed.

Oh a different note, I picked up some new hardware last week after one of my back treatments. It’ll help out in the long run, but still need to get the replacement drive. With the prices at the store I was at, a 2TB is a shit load better deal and the obvious extra space is a plus, but those guys were out of stock. Since I don’t start my new classes until next Monday (the 15th) I should be able to finish re-arranging my setup (where my servers, desktops, etc. are setup with the TV and Home Theatre) tomorrow after I get home from my next back treatment. (Speaking of which, Hi Chad)

Some good news for February is I got my College Stipend earlier this month and should have both my State and Federal taxes back by Friday so I’m not as broke as normal. Things are kind of looking up since I can afford to take care of some crap I’ve been putting off for months.

Last note (from stuff I remember), I’m going to create a special post/topic about the Student Wiki where people can post comments there for topics and ideas of what we should do or add to the Wiki since I have that locked to our contributors (to help stop vandalism). I’ll post more about that later when I figure out exactly how I want to go ahead with this idea.

I got side tracked and forgot the rest of the shit I was going to write… so fuck it. I’ll write another post after I get back from my trip to Verona on Friday with some of the guys…

I pretty much finished my college work early which is a surprise, so I’ll upload when I get home. I also have a general write up at home of how I plan on redoing / changing the main network, but won’t have time to implement it for a few days. Granted it will probably take a couple days of writing new code and moving shit around to finish.

I have my normal back treatments on Tues. and Thurs. and will be travelling to Philadelphia for a day sometime soon.

I’ll be heading home sometime soon… back to another long week.

I’ve been busting my ass off with college trying to play catch up and earlier last night I managed to get fully caught up so I have time to relax. Too bad that will only last a day or two. I decided to make a new post and write about a bunch of things that have happened recently and my damn memory problems made me forget most of it. (Damn Chemo Fog)

I guess the main part of this update is that I have current intentions of changing around some of the domains and sub-domains I run and migrating some more of the sites / info over to this site so that everything is more centralized. I hope by the end of the month I’ll figure out what I’m doing exactly with the Blog Hosting that I was running since those Chinese Spammers ruined it for everyone else.

Personal Side:

• Started second ’set’ of back treatments last week and will continue to do them twice a week for the next 10+ weeks (94 mile round trip each time).
• As I’ve mentioned in the past with my medical problems, I went through Chemotherapy and lost all the hair on my body. Prior to Chemo I was a blonde and afterwards the hair on my head grew back dark. The point, I dyed my hair on Thursday and I’m blonde again.

College Related:

• Classes are a pain (like normal)
• I should have my degree around Oct. of this year (unless I have to move classes around or take medical leave again).
• We have a new contributor to our Student Wiki.

Projects and Gadget Related:

• Verizon finally ‘helped’ me with the complaints I’ve had for months, so I’m getting a new Droid tomorrow.
• Jen bought me a new 3rd Generation iPod Touch (64GB) for Chanukah and I’ve found some sweet apps to go with the 40GB of music on it already.
• Started talking to Martomo (not sure if he wants me to put his real name in here) about getting the old "Black Market" project back up and running again. Sometime in the near future we may be looking for some extra help. (It’s an Open Source project, so don’t bother asking if you think you’ll get paid, it’s all volunteer). Once we take the new version out of beta it will be listed on the Projects Page.

Server / Domain Side:

• As stated, will be migrating some of the other sites over to here soon.
• I just noticed a small ‘typo’ from my last post that I over looked while moving everything over to this site, I’ll change that next.
• After the sites are merged, I’ll post more info on the Server Status Page here.
• Adobe Contribute is Awesome for doing these updates, makes everything so much easier.

Since this is kind of long at this point, I’ll hold off on writing more until I can organize my thoughts more or have some updates to anything listed here.