Cody

So we officially have reached 100 posts!  Ok, we haven’t I have since I’m the one who writes on here pretty crazy though if you ask me.

Anyways, that wasn’t really my point in coming on here, it’s been 10 days and I’ve said nothing so a real quick update (since I always tell people if they want to know what’s going on in my life to go here, may as well keep this up to date huh?).  Gonna be heading out towards St. Louis on bike around Wednesdayish of next week.  And the big reason why I’ve been gone is because I’ve been working on www.applymyway.com a new website idea that I had.   The idea behind it was that I was bored and thought I should create a girlfriend application (yeah, don’t ask because I don’t know).  I mean I’ve got the means to do so… so why not?  Then the idea grew into… why not make some money from it?  So the plan is within the next 2 months (hopefully MUCH sooner) to have a fully functional website where you can create your own applications (for whatever you so desire) and they’ll be hosted on my site.  Smaller businesses can create profiles on the site and host their own applications too, to be more professional, and for a small monthly fee those people can get the ads removed from their application so that it really looks professional.  Much like Lowes has an online application process that is not hosted by them… well I could be that person (not that I’m going for any big accounts right now anyways).  Also the big thing with the site once it’s all ready I plan on releasing it to all the major social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, MyYearbook, and StumbleUpon to start with).  People will be able to create applications for whatever and put links in their profiles so that their friends can fill them out… sort of like all the retarded quiz sites that are going around… anyways, the goal is to have you guys help me and hopefully it will grow virally and I might actually be able to start coding full time
That’s about it that’s new and going on with me.  It is back to coding for me… if you visited the site you know that the only thing up is the user registration system (which is fully functional), currently working on the user profiles, and then to the actual application process… should have the profiles done later today, if not tomorrow, then the rest will be ready soon (soon is the best estimation I can give, may get it done a week after I get back from my ride, may be a month).

<disclaimer> Warning, reading this entry may cause loss of attention, dyslexia, or other more serious syndromes commonly associated to rants by Kodie that have no moral, point, or concluding thought… in fact I’m not sure if this one even has a common theme.  You have been forewarned. </disclaimer>

Every man’s art

“A man can be an artist at anything. It just depends upon how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death, and he’s about to paint his masterpiece, just stay out of his way.” I absolutely love that line…. It’s so true though isn’t it?  I could sit here and give you some word perfect definition of what an artist is, but what’s the point?  Who could really define an artist anyways?  If there ever was an artist I most certainly am one and most certainly could not define for you what one is.  Art is not solely based upon how good someone is at something, as Creasy’s friend put it in the movie Man on Fire (which by the way is an awesome movie).  No art goes much deeper than just some measurable value of how “good” someone is at something… of course that is a big factor, but art has a much deeper emotional, almost spiritual aspect to it.  Which is in part why it is so hard to define what an artist is.  There has to be an attitude about it as well.  Creasy most definitely was an artist… an artist of death at that too.  How would you like for that to be the way you are remembered?  That would be freaking awesome!  To be known as the guy who was so good at death, yes death that single handedly sent a shock wave through the community of criminals in Latin America.  When I die I don’t care how much money I’ve made throughout my life, or care what my accomplishments were… I just want the words on my gravestone “He made an impact” don’t even put my name just that line, but only if it is true.

A circle of job security

Most of you guys know that I’ve been working for  Viacom as of late… which at first I did something, and actually helped them to make a couple of websites not only more secure, but more fun for the participants.  In fact I deserved every penny that I earned if not more because they surely made it back in advertising cost.  However my job with them has simply become what my cousin described as a circle of job security.  My job any more is to give third party “expert” reports that give another guy a job to present these reports to a board of directors and eventually gives another guy a job to do programming on the websites… the programmers however are making sure to keep their jobs by purposely not taking all of my suggestions or ignoring them on later website projects so that I might review that website give the SAME kinds of report and begin the cycle all over again.  Things aren’t all bad with it since this circle has reached a major apex it looks like I’ll have some money to pursue some of my passions, which leads into my next section (since I do make more money than both my parents when I’m working full time).

Forging a passion

When I say that I’ve got a lot of money from this cycle of job security I really do mean it.  There is a lot on the list of what needs to be done with the money however… being that I might be moving out here shortly means we need monies for rent, food, etc.  There has been another option presented though, if my mom marries Scott which has been a serious discussion here lately then they’re looking at moving into Scott’s place and I’ll be taking over the house (including the house payment).  So I’ve got to keep a good reserve of cash for numerous reasons of those being that this cycle can’t last forever, someone is bound to either catch on, or the new sites will end eventually.  Although I need a cash backup there are a few things that are on the list of being purchased one major thing is some stainless steel rings for Xandra (yes Tiana Xandra will be finished but since I can no longer find the black I’m going to have to go with a purty stainless steel option instead, which isn’t too much of a heart wrench since the blackened mild steel is dirty, and it must be oiled to keep from rusting so wearing it is just bad.).  The other thing that crossed my mind with the expendable funds was to get a sword *insert ominous smile here* Now there’s a few things that go into me wanting a sword… first off it must be from a time period that I know a good deal about and has to be something that fits my fighting style.  For me the most obvious choice was a Katana they fast moving single/two handed slashing swords, which is a great fit for the way I like to fight with a sword.  The problem with Katana’s is that I don’t really want to cut into my cash reserve and spend over $800 on a sword… and in fact would like to spend less, but I know that with swords you don’t really get less than $800 and being an artist who does not compromise on the price of my jewelry I understand and would never be so rude as to ask them to go lower.  Mediocre Katana’s start at $1,200 and go up to $1,700 for one that you can actually go out and play with… which was another huge requirement for me, I need to be able to use whatever sword I get… I don’t do SLO’s (Sword Like Objects) a big reason why I don’t own any of the swords from the LOTR movies because they’re just not swords they’re 100% overpriced SLO’s and couldn’t be used for a sword if you wanted.  I then started looking for European swords, especially either Celtic, or Roman short swords (the Celts invented the sword style used by the Romans and the Romans improved upon it with brutal efficiency and made it the most feared weapon of it’s day).  In this search I found a company by the name of Generation 2 which is based in the Philippines and makes great functional swords of high quality steel.  They make swords in the sub $300 range that will hold up to a lot of punishment with a quality constructed hilt (often the hilt is the weakest point in any sword no matter how good it is made).  The problem with Gen2 is that they make UGLY swords.  No kidding, all of their swords come with a mirror finished blade, and often black VERY shinny accent pieces.  They’re also often times a little heavier than swords of the time period as well… which I’ve heard they’ve improved upon.  All of this kept bringing me back to a company that I’ve lusted for one of their swords for a long time Albion.  If you know anything about swords you know Albion, and in turn brings us back to art.  Albion has made sword making into an art, and they are unmatched in beauty, historical accuracy, and quality of construction.  There are two styles of sword that I would go with either a Roman short sword, or an Oakeshott XII I could go with an Oakeshott XV possibly… but XII is really where I like to stay because they still retain their slashing ability.  The further up the Oakeshott scale you go the closer to a rapier you get and to be honest yes, most the time when I go to kill you I’m going to stab you, but I want to be able to cut your heard off when the mood strikes… and lets be honest you’re not going to cut someones head off with a rapier, I mean you could if you sat and sawed on it for a while… but that’s getting into the realm of sadistic.  That’s why I like the Oakeshott XII it’s not like the Oakeshott X where it’s like the viking swords and really just a big metal club… type X’s are clumbsy and you really need to keep them in motion and just crush your enemy with the first couple of blows… which is fine for people like Chris who like to fight like that, but for me I want a nimble sword that I can also stab with.

After weeks of invested time into “where should I get a sword from” and “is it really worth it to pay double the money for an Albion when I could get a sturdy sword for less?” another solution came to mind.  One that is not new either and that is “Buildeth me an army worthy of Mordor.”  oh wait… NO!  that’s not the thought that came to mind… jeez, what’s wrong with you, get out of my head, you are hence forth banned from taking over my body to type your random movie quotes.  Begone demon!  The thought that actually crossed my mind was to build my own forge and make my own swords :-D  Problem here is that it’s a good 3 years down the road before I start pulling out quality stuff and probably 4 before I can really make swords… I can do blacksmithing here pretty easily, but need more equipment for full fledged swords.  What I was going to do was get a cast iron anvil from this tool company that I buy a lot of cheap crap from, build my own forge, and build a small concrete covered patio section in my back yard since I’ll be taking over responsibility of the house here pretty soon anyways.  Problem is that everyone I’ve talked to online or read articles about beginning blacksmithing says absolutely do not get a cast iron anvil… which is fine, a quality Peddinghaus (<– the best) anvil will only cost me $600 shipped.  Problem with that is after paying that then I don’t have the money to build a shelter area… which kind of ruins the whole forge idea… so unless the cycle of job security continues then I think I’m just going to get an Albion… which may make me sad in the long run that I can’t make my own… but if I got a Peddinghaus and had nowhere to work at then I’d be just as sad…

Moral

Moral of the story is “Don’t be like me. Don’t you be like me!” *shakes dog* for those of you who have seen As Good as it Gets and could relate to the movie as much as me
Oh, and I really wanted to put a bit in at the top about how even in Creasy’s sin God still used him as an instrument of his wrath.  In the Bible God say’s “Judgment and vengeance is mine”   But sometimes God uses men to play out his vengeance.  Much like Samson who pulled down a temple to pagan gods onto himself destroying many evil people in the process Creasy pulled down a temple of corrupt money driven men onto himself destroying the hostage machine in Mexico City, and sent fear though all those in Latin America doing the same things.  Just like Samson it was Creasy’s sin that got him in the situation he was, but once there God used him as a mighty weapon to pour out judgment upon an evil peoples.

I finally got my head cut off.  Generally do for summer anyways, but it’s been something ridiculous like 8 months since I’ve had a “haircut” now that’s not to say I haven’t had a few inches here and there trimmed off but uh… well take a look.

Oh and as a special bonus both pictures contain my newest creation, a necklace with an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ worked in as the centerpiece… I like to call it Nerd Bling.  You guys are the first to see it and if I can get a line on a large supply of old processors I plan on actually making a whole jewelry line of Nerd Bling and possibly nerdbling.com or something started to sell it Problem is the only ideas I have thus far are the CPU necklaces, RAM Bracelets, and possibly some necklaces/charm anklets with old keyboard keys spelling out peoples names and what not… just gotta get TONS of old keyboards for that part.

Then after I lost 6 inches of hair… kinda odd since it’s been so long with long hair, but showers are much faster, and it’s so much cooler

Yesterday the internet server for our work went down, so page submissions were slow, leading to them saying we didn’t need to come in today. In my time off I took the time to get caught up on some much needed rest, and also worked on some “house cleaning” items around my site. I’m sure the first thing you noticed if you’ve been here before would be the new template, which took a while to get working and the way that I wanted it to look with my banner. Next thing I worked on was the banner itself.

Last night, while working with Tiana on some Flash stuff I realized that my banner looked like crap on IE… so I went ahead and fixed it. I then moved on to finish the intro (which still isn’t finished but should be very soon). Afterwards I plan on making the rest of it, the “hidden” aspect so to speak. With the new template I would also like to remove the sidebar that is currently there, and replace it with a flash banner sidebar. Instead of having simple text links they will be in flash and much more entertaining. Working a lot hasn’t really left me much time to play around with my flash stuff. Either way I need to get this site pimped out with flash banners and things that actually look/work well since it is my goal to have a flash animation company up and running by mid-summer.

Ok, so I’m sitting here at the LAN for this month, and had to leave a little message about it. I know that many of you who read this (which is like 3 people) don’t go to LAN’s so by the end I’ll try and get some pictures, and what not else. Hooked up is the title of this article, because that is the title of this weekend!
[Update]Yup, so here I am revealing why the title of this weekend was “Hooked up”

First off I got to know some of the people at the LAN a little better.  Things were somewhat smaller this time, mostly just the core group of hardcore nerds.  Well there’s this guy there that’s at all the LAN’s and I really don’t know how old he his, gotta be quite a bit older.  Anyways… he’s a bit off… not like “wow he’s schizophrenic” talking to himself and everything kind of off… just slightly.  So there’s not a whole lot of people who talk to him, most the people at the LAN are guys between 15 and 20 (rather immature at that too).  Because I actually talk to him and everything he invited me to go with him to Pierponts to eat.  At first I didn’t want to because I really have no money, and paying $5 for pizza and pop was cutting it close for me… after a couple of other people denied him I reluctantly agreed deciding to just get something for like $10 no matter how I had to accomplish it.  My heart sunk when they handed me the menu and I realized that the ONLY thing on the menu for under $15 was a tiny little house salad… all the steaks were starting at $35 for a 10 ounce steak, and went up to $50 for 16 ounce steaks!!! Luckily they did offer a dinner special with a 28 ounce bone in rib eye for $28… before I continue, do you understand how big a 28 ounce steak is?  Imagine a steak that could devour your head in a single bite, then double that, add a few extra inches and you’ve just about got it… Surely this had to be a mistake on the waitresses part saying 28 ounces, especially with the prices of the other stuff on the menu.  Whatever, it was something that I could at least afford with the cash that I had in my pocket.  After dinner Sam simply paid for everything… I wasn’t exactly expecting it, but after talking to him for some time I did find that he works as an x-ray technician, so he makes a good living.  It was a very good meal, and getting to know Sam was interesting, he’s pretty cool, and I think that it gives me a very unique mission field going to all the LAN’s.

Then there is always the constant barrage of prizes and everything that are given away for raffles and everything at the LAN’s adding to the “hooked up” weekend
Unfortunately I didn’t get so many pictures as I had planned on being able to put on here… and the few I did get weren’t amazingly great.  Low light when everyone has their monitors on just makes for blurry pictures, there is no way around it.  Plus as soon as I got to the LAN when I first turned my camera on guess what… yup, low battery.  This is the second time I’ve done that too.  I use the camera all throughout the month bringing it all over and it being fine, then I go to the LAN forgetting my second set of batteries, and as soon as it is turned on the batteries go on a downhill slide.  I wanted to get a picture of the steak, but had my camera sitting at my computer at that time… hehe. [/update]

So for those of you who missed out on the excitement of waiting outside in the freezing cold for your chance at a Playstation 3 you’re in luck! Thanks to Capcom’s new game available only for the Xbox 360 (it’d be kind of pointless if it were available for the PS3) you can relive the experience and fight off hordes of vegetative state college students who as a zombie horde follow the upcoming release of all gaming systems!

If you missed out on that excitement, and STILL don’t have an Xbox 360 (what kind of heathen are you? You don’t have the latest and greatest gaming system? It’s been out for a year now, go back to the stone ages where you belong!). Then I guess you could just read this blog entry for a brief overview of the excitement of staying nights in the cold, windy state of Kansas outside of a Target awaiting our opportunity to purchase a PS3.

Unlike most of my entries this one is going to be mostly images as I had nothing better to do while freezing my haunches off than to take tons of pictures with my new Canon PowerShot A540, which by the way takes freaking awesome pictures! I’ve got to scale most of them back a little bit to increase loading times, and save myself on some bandwidth… so they won’t be as pretty as they could be, but it’s still a good camera I promise.

The day started out like any other… With Jordan holding $700 cash outside of the Western Union store…. ok… well… maybe not like ANY other day but close enough. The story actually starts a little before this, which I should briefly cover. Around 4pm on Wednesday November 15, 2006 I get a call from my cousin Jordan because I was playing Counter-Strike and he wasn’t sure if I would respond to his messages on Xfire. The first thing he say’s to me is “Cody get ready we’re going to go make some money, dress warm.” Oh great… the last time I heard this sentence it was “Cody get ready we’re going to make some money, drink a lot of water for the next couple of days” Next thing I know I’m being hooked up to a machine that sucks my blood out, separates the plasma and puts the blood back into my body. Going twice a week to the Plasma clinic for a month to make a few bucks a trip. I close out of my game so that I can give this demented man my full attention. “Alright Jordan what’s the scoop?” “Playstation 3 launch is soon (duh) and the presales are selling for a minimum of $1200 on eBay.” So what exactly does this have to do with me? Next thing I know I’m being explained to how we’re going to hit up Best Buy and camp out for the next 2 days awaiting the release of PS3 so we can get one and hock it on eBay. Cool I’m game! It’s not that cold out anyways, why wouldn’t I care to camp out for a couple days to make a little money. As it turns out Jordan only had this idea because his older brother who lives in Kaliphornia was doing the same thing… well neither of us had any money either… so Joel sends us $700 via Western Union (hence the picture).

So now our journey can begin! At this point in time it’s already 7pm, I mean we’re running late, which is partially due to the fact that Jordan doesn’t have a hurrying bone in his body… partially due to the fact that Jordan has an insane girlfriend who’s getting all pissy texting, and calling him every 5 seconds because he cares more about camping out for a game than he does for her… which is the same stupid thing I hear EVERY LAN party we attend… every freaking time Jordan is late because his woman wanted to spend time with him and he’s off playing games with me… It’s once a month that I get to hang out with my favoritist cousin in a room of 100 people several who’ve become good friends just relaxing and playing games all night… chill out woman!!! jeez…

So the journey begins! Between us trying to go to the store to get some snack food (mostly a couple boxes of donuts since they sell them for $2 after noon) and energy drinks. I got the usual Bawls, gamers choice and Jordan constantly being called from his brother, and his woman we didn’t make it to our first Best Buy until 8:30pm. It was basically packed! This image is actually from the second Best Buy we went to but you get the idea. Every BB is supposed to have 26 PS3’s and there were 31 at the first one we made it to. After much driving around and several stores visited we finally got a good list of all the stores that should have PS3’s. Of which Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Circuit City were the only ones that didn’t take presales and you had to camp out… so the journey goes from scavenging BB’s to checking any and all of these stores.

Turned down by Circuit City

Driving around…

Even more driving around….

After much adieu about nothing Hope is finally kindled on the side of a Target! After some questioning, poking, and proding we found that this Target was supposed to get 20 PS3’s… of course Sony released only half of what they promised so we weren’t expecting any miracles… BUT at the time we arrived we were 10 and 11! Which was fine because we only had enough money for one anyways… Now to make sure it wasn’t all just hear say we talked to the people at customer service who very openly disclosed that they were not allowed to say exactly how many they would be getting… er… ok well lets put it this way (as Jordan said) there are 9 people outside, would it be worth it for us to camp out? To this she very clearly gave us the green light!

After a quick chat with some of the other blokes waiting for the almighty PS3 we decided to nab ourselves a tent! I’m actually rather glad that we stayed at a Target and not a BB or somethin where we wouldn’t have this option.

Anyways, we both posed beside our new purchase as Jordan bought the tent and I got us a couple air matresses so we didn’t have to sleep on the cold concrete.

Oh yeah look at that muscle man, one handed! Thank you, thank you, please no flash photography.

I never concluded this story… but that’s partially because it still hasn’t ended… never the less. What story is ever done? Basically we sat in line forever, froze our butts off in the cold, and no, I did not get a PS3. The store was saying they would have 20, which we knew wasn’t going to happen, but being 10 and 11 in line we should still be fine correct? Especially with the assured answer of the clerk… uh… yeah… they got 7 so we went home after 2 days of freezing, starving, joyous camping with nothing more than a tent, and a couple of air mattresses. Jordan still went on to purchasing other toys and selling them on eBay using my account (as it couldn’t affect me right?) haha… yeah… that has turned out to be interesting… and lets just say it could affect me.

If you started reading my last entry I’m sorry… While I was writting it I got side tracked, started pacing around my basement speaking what I had to say instead of typing it out.  Then when I went to type it out nothing would come.  So I decided to actually use some of them crap I have on my computer and begin voice blogging… which didn’t turn out so well.  I ended up getting interupted like 3 times and freezing between things I wanted to say because I couldn’t come up with the words… and just general chaos.  Part of the problem is that when I speak I like to be able to walk around and I was bound by the six foot cord on my headset.  So I listened to my recordings, wrote out a “script” and went at it again… it was better, but when I listen to it now I feel like it’s scripted, I can tell… we’ll put it out there and see what you guys think anyways… I’ve still got to cut out messups, and pauses, then compile it all into flash (since that’s the only way I really know how to do this).  I’ll try to post it here, but if it won’t let me I’ll definitely post it into myspace, and force you all to listen
Hopefully things turn out ok,  it might be a tad odd to start with… but I plan to continue voice blogging and hopefully I get better at all of this.

Ok, so 2.2ghz was never enough, and 2.64 was getting old… so I figured that I’d push on my CPU a little harder. I thought I was running into instability problems from my Chipset so I got a heatpipe cooler for it (the extreme spirit II from Thermaltake). When I ran into instabilities with my overclock I started upping the voltage little by little to the chipset, which didn’t do anything… so I put it back at stock and started pumping volts into my RAM since I can send it to 2.9volts w/o voiding the warranty. Neither helped stabilize the system but when I got the CPU to 2.4volts it has been running perfectly stable on Prime95 for 8 hours now! I’ll come back and post some Screenshots when I end Prime95 with everything so it shows the time it’s run stable and what not.

Only 55mhz faster than what it was running before. I’d push it to 3.0ghz if I had a spare mobo sitting around, along with a more powerful PSU, I’d also like 6 Vantec Tornado fans in my case rather than these generic fans that barely move 40cfm each. CPU is sitting pretty at 33° Celcius, Chipset 27°C, and RAM 31°C (sorry I use thermal probes so I can’t give screenshots for those, and if I did it’d say that my CPU was running at 22°C because my motherboards heat sensors are retarded).

Aight, so I’ve finally got a personal blog, I’d better get it listed on Blogshares at least!

Laying in bed this morning I was rudely awoken at 9am yeah, just 5 hours after I had gotten to bed I hear the phone.  Generally I’m pretty immune to hearing the phone in the mornings, and it didn’t really start getting my up until I heard some loud guy with a name that I didn’t recognize blabbing about a fax machine, and he needed my help to get it working or something.  I instantly started going through the list in my head of people I had helped with computer issues before and people that I had built computers for… nope… no gruff, loud man came to mind… I kind of just passed it off… but it still worried me “maybe there was someone that I had talked into purchasing a certain fax machine and it wasn’t working for them” “possibly I had helped someone in the past with their computer and they gave this man my name”  Still, how and WHY was this man calling my house?  Was it someone who tracked me down from online?  Had I wronged this person before and they were just now catching up to me?  The thoughts kept coming… My mom finally came into my room and asked if I heard the message.  Still half asleep I’m like “yeah… sort of” she replies “Well Ed **** (this is the most public blog I have so I’m not gonna go leaving last names around the net of people who don’t necisarily know their name is being put online) wants you to take a look at his fax machine, he says it is sending faxes but won’t recieve anything.” “uhhh… ok… I don’t really know that much about faxes.” Not to mention I was still rather confused as to who it was in the first place.  Finally figuring out who it was and what not I went up to Platte City to take a look at Ed’s fax… I don’t know how but I fixed it.  I pulled the ink cartridges out and put them back in and not 5 secs. later it pops out a message saying “power failure occured during some faxes this morning” then the faxes came out…. ok, whatever…

 He then asked me to take a quick look at his computer (I don’t know if it was because he didn’t want to pay me for nothing, or because he didn’t want me to feel like I didn’t do anything).  Of course as soon as I touch the thing I’m grumbling about the trackball mouse.  I’ve sort of spoiled myself with my computer… of course I purchased and build the whole thing so it is set up to run the way I need and want it to run.  When I log on I immediately notice the “norton” icon at the bottom of the screen… which always means trouble… so if there are problems this is going to be a hit or miss on whether or not I can solve them, depending upon whether or not I can shut down Norton and make sure it doesn’t come back after restart.  Luckily the computer isn’t too infected or messed up because I’m able to get Norton off without a hitch.  Going through the basics I do what I do and start getting my usual set of programs…. only wishing I was connected to my network so I could set them up with my Defrag program, and all my optimization software… but anyways I start with Firefox, same place I always start, I hate IE with a passion and don’t like to use it.  Then comes AntiVir downloads and installs quickly… so I’m thinking things are going to be good.  An hour later this thing is STILL not done!  I don’t know if its the P4 1.8 or the HDD that is slowing this down…. but a 28GB hdd should never take this long to scan for viruses… not to mention it’s already had 40 warnings (yeah, Norton Anti-Virus is pretty much crap).

At least this little adventure does keep me from having to go give more plasma for money.