I just had a look at the webstats for January, and I see people are really looking for me via search engines. The one thing they may have failed to notice is that my middle initial might allow them to better locate me. What's said initial? "M".
That is all.
This post should be from vf0.0.
By the way, can someone tell me how the Bears and the Colts are both going to the Super Bowl?
I've made a signifigant amount of progress with SkuddBlog vf0.0 today. Now, you can post, edit, disable, and enable posts. If I recall correctly, the comments portion is done and working properly for non-moderators. I need to be able to enable, disable, delete, and ban comments. I am planning on using the Spam Project database for the bans, but we'll see how it works out.
Also on the agenda, the Spam Project is going to need to be integrated into the blog. I want to set it up so that ban type can be selected (auto, manual), and allow the blog admin to be able to review and ban/unban certain IP blocks.
For now, I am going to finish up some loose ends with this new-fangled blog thingy, then wait around for a certain someone to get online, and head to bed.
I'm not a big fan of "New Year's Resolutions" or anything like that, but this year was a very opportune time for me to set a goal in my life and attain it.
Since I was changing jobs, changing housing, and basically plunging into a completely different lifestyle than I have been used to for so long, I was at a really great risk for stress. I've been really fortunate to have a close friend who is willing to let me rent a room, and to live close enough that Mom and Dad can still visit (and vice-versa). However, having worked a manual labor job for so long, and having dealt face-to-face with customers so much, I've pretty much been shocked with the sit-around-and-hardly-move job I now have.
The sheer volume of work that needs done on a daily basis at the office is enough to stress anyone out. The thing about it, that amount of due work is just the same when I leave at the end of the day as it is at the beginning. It would be really easy to let that get to you, especially when there have been some rather complicated issues throughout the day.
I made this decision to not stress about things, though. It may be look at as a bad mental state to get in, but I've decided that when I leave the office, the work stays there. It's not my business to have to run, and the staff is large enough and fully capable of handling nearly any situation that may arise.
Then there's the living situation... What does it gain me to worry about everything? I mean, the transmission in my car has been acting funky, the EGR valve on the thing is defective (it's stuck shut, if anyone is wondering -- no big issue). I sleep on a mattress on the floor, and my shower doesn't drain properly (though it should be fixed soon). What's important is that I have a place to live, I have food to eat, I don't have to be out in the cold, and I have a fairly reliable means of transportation. On top of that, I have a loving family, caring friends, and nothing else could really be better!
So, my resolution: Don't stress about anything.
The contents of this blog, while stemming directly from my brain, may not accurately represent my true thoughts, feelings, or emotions. Emotion is very difficult to express in text, and it's very dangerous for anyone to try to read it in such a way without fully understanding the proper context.
Okay, so now I'm getting the whole guilt trip thing from everyone at the shop now. Things are starting to fall apart rather drastically, and everyone is trying to pin the blame on me.
Tomorrow night, after work, there's going to be some sort of shindig at the shop. They're going to close the other quick lube early so that everyone can get down to this one, but aside from that I have no idea what's going on. Boss Lady told me that if I had plans for the night they were to be cancelled because this was more important. Bleh. That means that anything after 6:00PM on my schedule for Thursday has been postponed or cancelled. Lovely. I guess I'll just have to come back home for a meal with Mom and Dad sometime in a week or so.
All I can say is that if any problems occur at the shop, anywhere from disgruntled customers to employees leaving, I'm NOT responsible. I tried my hardest to instill a sense of respect in my crew, and it appears as though they just developed a bond to me instead.
So I caught this post on Slashdot a bit ago, about the jib-and-jab between OxFam and Starbucks.
To put it bluntly, OxFam is calling it "unfair" that the coffee farmers in Ethiopia only get $0.03 per cup of Starbucks coffee.
Here's where it pisses me off: In the OxFam video, they even claim that Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Okay, so that means that $0.03 per cup in their economy is probably more like $1.00 per cup in ours. That means that these farmers back in Ethiopia are making a pretty decent buck off the coffee that Starbucks is selling, and that [in their economy] the farmers are making a nice living from doing such business.
What's more, how does OxFam know that the Ethiopian farmers are only getting $0.03 per cup? Do they know how much coffee can be brewed from 1 pound of beans? Do they know for sure that the beans used by Starbucks are 100% Ethiopian? Do they have full access to the entire trade records, between Starbucks and the coffee suppliers?
I didn't research anything beyond watching the two videos linked to in the Slashdot post, so don't take my $0.03-versus-$1.00 claim for fact: It's not. What I do know is that a) the cost of living is completely different in Ethiopia, and b) there are far more expenses that are funded by various percentages of that "Tall Carmel Frappucino" that I paid nearly $4.00 for the other day.
Am I going to boycott Starbucks? Pfft...
Let me take this a step further: What about all these philanthropic organizations? Do you really think that UNICEF gives 100% of that money you sent to poor little Miguel? Sorry, they don't. Starbucks can't do any better, either.
If even 50% of the money you spend at Starbucks went to Ethiopia, it would cause economic turmoil so bad that the world would fall apart. It's how business works, and it's how we all survive.
Apparently I am still out of shape. I moved about 6 of those Rubbermaid containers to the basement yesterday, and a couple of them were pretty heavy. The rest, I moved out to the front room of the house to prepare for transferring them to where I'll be living for the next couple months.
Last night, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I was tired, but something was keeping me awake, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. This morning, I sat up in bed and checked my e-mail just before my alarm went off, and while I was still tired, I had fought for half an hour to get back to sleep.
I got done checking my e-mail, and went to step out of bed. CRASH! My lower legs were so sore and cramped up that I fell to my knees. When I finally got back on my feet, it took me four times as long to get out to the kitchen as it normally would.
I took a hot shower, which helped some, but I'm still having a fair bit of trouble standing and walking. Right now, I've got my feet propped up on one of the remaining storage containers, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get around and about today.
So, call me Mr. Hob-a-long; I'm going to try to get the rest of my junk stuffed into this last box and get my laundry done.
I've been in such a cranky and stressed out mood lately that I've just been banning all of the logged IP addresses in the Spam Project.
After I get moved and situated (hopefully within the next couple weeks), I'll be fixing the Spam Project up a bit, such that all the logged entries are banned, but I can review and modify them later.
I typically don't recirculate forwards that I get in my e-mail, but this one was worth sharing:
May peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your debts. May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet of $200 bills. May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your lips! May your clothes smell of success like smoking tires and may happiness slap you across the face and may your tears be that of joy. May the problems you had forget your home address! In simple words...
May 2007 be the best year of your life!!!
After tomorrow, I only have two days left at the shop. It's going to drag by, and I'm not going to get anything accomplished towards moving next week. Bleh!
A while back there was a contest on Preempted to see if anyone could figure out how to determine the proper suffix to a number (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.) with their own code. I don't remember what I submitted for the challenge, but I do remember it was bloated and really ugly.
I just decided to try it again, and I came up with the following:
function MakeSuffix($num) {
$lastDigit = substr($num, -1, 1);
if ($lastDigit == 1 && substr($num, -2, 2) != 11) $out = 'st';
elseif($lastDigit == 2 && substr($num, -2, 2) != 12) $out = 'nd';
elseif($lastDigit == 3 && substr($num, -2, 2) != 13) $out = 'rd';
else $out = 'th';
return $out;
}
For some reason, my stats have been off for quite a while... I've gone back through and cleaned it up, though.
I think the primary reason for the discrepancy is that I'm sharing the "blog_bans" table between both the Spam Project and other semi-legitimate bans. I've run a couple queries though to update the pie chart, and I've fixed some bad code in the chart generation.
- Use animated backgrounds on your web pages
- Use sounds on your web pages
- Use gaudy colors on your web pages
- Use all kinds of graphics on your web pages
- Animated graphics cause this to be of higher priority.
- "Clip-Art" is highly discouraged as well.
That is all.