Today I am 33

Today is my birthday. I am 33 years old. I have accomplished a few things this year.

Learned to use DDE and VBA to automate 100s of hours of manual data entry.
Learned how to query SQL records with javascript and export them to table and spreadsheets.
Finished recording a CD and held a 2 piece rock band together.
Maintained a great married with Penni.
Found some new good music: Dethklok, Amon Amarth, Lisa Germano.
Maintained a respectable vegetarian diet, even bought some vegan skate shoes.
Joined a LUG and went to the SouthEast Linuxfest.

I have failed as well.

Failed to get back to my scientific ideal weight.
Failed to increase drumming skill, basically hovering at the same technical level as last year.

Oh well, I will try harder in 2010

giant salt water fish tank in the middle of the waiting room

Woke up early to go with my wife to her primary care physician. There is giant salt water fish tank in the middle of the waiting room with a handrail around it. It is probably there to stop little kids from head butting the fish tank.

The main belt that powers the power-steering broke on the band van. Scott with I were going to fix it yesterday but I had to work over four hours and it was too dark to work on it outside.

I had lunch with penni parents on thanksgiving day. They gave me a nice portable laptop desk with fold out legs for my birthday.

Practice had been going well and I am a little less worried about the out of state gigs next week.

Emily Dickinson with a 4 track

Rainy and windy, drinking lots of coffee. 7 days till my birthday. I'm too worried about my classes and out of states shows to enjoy it. I need to plan something fun for my days off. Hmm, what is fun? Crazy music? Coffee? Vicious Sarcasm? (crap! :/)

Listened to the Lisa Germano - In The Maybe World album while driving the van home from practice. The "into oblivion" song is epic, really sad and creepy. The whole album has that "crazy woman with a 4 track" feel. Good stuff.

Welcome to the Fall

This has been a very busy couple of weeks. The rush to finish up the Rita's Gift CD and finish my two online class, AND to organize the string of out-of-states shows has stacked up like bricks on my chest. Penni has been great through the whole ordeal. I am the luckiest guy in the world. I'm considering taking a break from classes and trying piano lessons. If I could rip out a mini piano jam during a drum break, it would be very impressive.

Work is going well. The web front-end that I built for the weekly ATB data has been well received. I am thinking about rebuilding another database into a web tool using a GPL'ed JS library called sortTable from LUG Radio's own Stewart Langridge.

I have been listening to the new deathklok album way too much. I have been looking for more good metal and stumbled on to some new Sepultura stuff. It is good not to have to worry about an Emo melodic nu-metal chorus popping up mess up a good metal song.

The vegetarian thing that I am trying is working out ok. I have lost zero pounds from it and feel the same. I will probably have to eat a little turkey for thanksgiving but that isn't that big of a deal.

Woo.

Blogging excitement!

Listening to the Melvins, Taking a walk...

IMG00006-20091108-1447.jpg

At Fish Taco with Penni, sitting right under a 200 pound wooden painting.

Black(berry) Power

This is a connectivity test from the bb

Stuck in a dealership waiting room. Rod Stewart is rocking out live on some corny morningshow. Feels like the beginning of a Stephen King story.

Practiced on the !drum set after being away for a few weeks. My left hand doubles and triples are a litte weak but it felt great to be back.

Frozen Pad Thai for dinner. Installed hplip print driver in !ubuntu for coworker. Trying TinyCore Linux in VirtualBox on my the !Debian Lappy.

Whats the deal with all the closed down indian restaurants in charlotte?

Cold, rainy and windy. Listening to RadioHead Kid A, driving to work after 4 cups of coffee. Good times.

The Southpark Ruby Tuesday's installed a new saladbar sneeze guard that makes is impossible for a 6ft tall guy to reach the food without limboing

Working on mixing the new Ritas Gift CD and drawing up t-shirt designs in !GIMP and !inkscape all evening with my !ubuntu laptop.

I have 'Goodnight Elizabeth' by the counting crows stuck in my head. :

Bought groceries. Fixed my ride cymbal stand. Ate half of a watermelon for dinner. Learned how to create text along a curved path in !Inkscape.

Pizza for dinner, ordered a new snare !drum rim. The drum store guy said it was stretched and warped... Why can't I have nice things?!?! :(

Took a nice walk with @BADP3NN1 after dinner. Bought a $25 Nvidia card from ebay in hopes of getting Penumbra running on my spare !ubuntu system

A lady at the blood drive is laughing like The Joker from Batman. The horror.

Giving blood

Installed !ubuntu-studio & Eclipse on my eeepc.Jack, Sooper-looper & my m-audio Uno seems to work fine.There's only 2GB left on the SD-card now.

What happened last month?

I started micro-blogging on identi.ca using Gwibber on my Ubuntu ThinkPad. Identi.ca is piping all my updates to Twitter and Facebook. There are a ton of Linux people on identi.ca, I posted a few replies to some linux questions and helped some folks. It sounds weird and nerdy but it is actually pretty cool. you can read my crap here:

http://identi.ca/bgryderclock

At work I have been working with IS to get the data correct in a CSV from StaffWare. I have been working through a AJAX for Dummies Book and The BlenderNewbies.com tutorials. I miss my on-line classes. I feel like I have forgotten half the Java and C++ stuff i learned. I have been eating better and lost 11 pounds. I am trying to work back to my marriage weight with lots of salads and not eating at midnight. Whee.

Dog Puke in the bed, Pouring punch for the Elderly, xorg.conf for a Wacom tablet, Running Debian Testing, JavaScript book, NetBeans IDE

May 2 Saturday

I went to Penni's retirement home to volunteer pouring punch for the elderly. She really appreciated it. Penni cooked spaghetti for us. I watched a few JavaScripting video tutorials and crashed early.


May 1 Friday

I met with the Dialysis Error project power user. I have a new scripting project adjusting small balance account of the STAR system. I ate lunch with my boss at Max's. I swear I saw Ashby there. I covered the afternoon billing while the SysAdmin was using up some flextime. Penni crashed early. The dog crawled under the blankets and puked on the my side of the bed. I had the lights off when I went to bed and laid down in the puke. Awesome. I showered and Penni changed the sheets. and we crashed around 4am.

I sat up my xorg.conf for my Wacom tablet with this post:
http://udim.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/wacom-bamboo-and-debian/

I replied and added some tweaks:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “stylus”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “stylus”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “eraser”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “eraser”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “cursor”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “cursor”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “pad”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “pad”
Option “USB” “on”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Generic Keyboard”
Driver “kbd”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc104″
Option “XkbLayout” “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”

Driver “mouse”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen “Default Screen”
InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
InputDevice “Configured Mouse” “CorePointer”
InputDevice “stylus” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “eraser” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “cursor” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “pad” # no core events
EndSection


April 30 Thursday

I sent chuck a VBA example of returning values from a function for while-do-Loop control.

Do While SomethingImportant(str) = False
If MsgBox("wanna give up?", vbYesNo) = vbYes Then
Exit Sub
End If
Loop


April 29 Wednesday

I finished scripting the standard note for the manager of the Financial Counseling department. I got the NetBeans IDE installed and I was able to step through a looping function. I customized colors of the IDE like my others. I ate lunch at Subway with the crew. The billing department asked me to run the SSI receive updates job. After work Penni and I went to target and ate dinner at chick filla. Later I worked on setting up my Debian system laptop and created a partition for xubuntu with a VirtualBox virtual machine for XP and PcAnyWhere.


April 28 Tuesday

I regeistered for Fall Online Classes at CPCC. I Did the paper billing and STAR balancing while my coworker was out. I walked a lap during lunch and covered the SysAdmin's desk during his meeting. My JavaScript book arrived. I installed of copy of Debian testing on my laptop I really like it.


April 27 Monday

I had a meeting on the employee satisfaction survey results. I got lunch at Niko and ate with the break room crew. I worked on the hand-keying form of the small claims database. Chuck emailed me a copy of the VBA stuff that he wrote. It looked good. He has made a lot of progress on 2 weeks. I went to the practice space there was no construction yet, the owner said they did not get to our room yet, nice. I wrote the owner of the BlenderNewbies.com site about going on a podcast to promote the site. He replied he probably will when he gets everything moved and setup at the official dot com site. Nice Guy.


April 26 Sunday

I went to the park with Logan, Penni and her Twitter friends. We talked about LiveCDs and loading Ubuntu on a Mac. Penni fixed veggie tacos. They were great. There was a note on the door of the practice space about construction on one of our room's walls. We labeled our ProTools rig cables and moved everything off the wall, Fun and productive! Later in bed I watched half of a blender tutorial and crashed around 1am.

Gig at QCU, a BlenderNewbies.com DVD, Scripting standard notes in STAR, Penni's Grillin', a laptop for my Dad, and Scott's messed up tooth/face.

April 25 Saturday

I woke up early went to the grocery store to get cash for Penni's drinks at the gig. Penni rode with me to the practice space in the van. We ran through the set before the gig, later Jessica met us at the space. We loaded up and all rode in the van to the gig. We had a little time before load in to Scott and Jessica walked 3 miles in the 90 degree sun to get Nachos. They returned sun burned and miserable. Ah... Nature. Chuck showed up and helped us drag gear on stage and load up after the show. Chuck is awesome The Crowd was great. There was a lot of Metal bands there and a lot of face paint but everyone was cool. We unloaded and met Chuck's wife at Skyland for post gig food. Me and Chuck talked about VBA stuff at the table. Scott was exhausted and in had a lot of tooth pain at the end of the night. A full day indeed.

April 24 Friday

I entered 5oo plus standard notes into STAR with my scripting-via-VBA stuff. I ate lunch with the usual crew in the break room and took a quick 15 minute walk. This was my Homie Miss A's last day. The guys on the Linux Outlaws podcast read my email on the air about the BlenderNewbies.com web site / DVD. They pronounced it bee-grew-dur-clock, Awesomeness. I went to practice. Scott was really late so I worked on solo stuff (playing with lights off, para-diddles, rolls around the kit, etc) We played through the set twice, I was really tired.


April 23 Thursday

The manager of the Financial Counseling department send me the final list of records to script into STAR. He only wants the first 549 records processed. I walked a lap during lunch. Later I bought a 2.5inch external hard drive enclosure to copy my old laptop to my new installation and a new battery for my dad's ThinkPad. We rescheduled practice to Friday so Scott could go to the dentist and have a tooth removed.

Apr 22 Wednesday

There was an issue with the Star balancing, apparently, there was a small translation that was missed and over looked by my coworker. I walked a lap at lunch and listened to the DethKlok Album (yes, still listening to the DethKlok album) I covered the Sysadmin desk while he was in a meeting. I tested some scripting stuff. It is a real pain when STAR crashes and the window handle is still open. (Reboot often folks!). I ate some left over pizza and drove the van to practice. Dad called and we talked about his laptop. Scott said he canceled practices because he went to the hospital because his pulse was going crazy and his chest was hurting. We ran threw the set and I ate a big salad after practice


April 21 Tuesday

I researched using Javascript with ADO and SQL and found this https://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/7/14/13942/7643 Netbeans can handle Javascript but there is no handy WYSIWYG html page builder. The SysAdmin and I ate bought lunch for Miss A at Brixx Pizza.


April 20 Monday

The Manager of the Financial Counselling department asked me to double check my unique records list. I was correct. I emailed him a xls file of the that shows the proof. I ate lunch in the break room with Kursty. Scott canceled practice. I did some more blender tutorial.


April 19 Sunday

Penni had to work for a few hours. I worked on more blender tutorials. My stomach was messed up all day. I went to practice early, The Shekere that I bought sounded great as a giant shaker. We recorded guitar and cymbals. I bought a cheap JavaScript Book and sent ten bucks to TreeClock to help with Server costs.


April 18 Saturday

Penni had to work. I worked on blender video tutorials all day. I posted a question to the BenderNewbies forums and the owner wrote me back quickly. I helped Penni's Dad move a couch in to his house. We went to Lowe's and I bought Penni a small steel patio table and chair for grilling. I assembled it and set it up for her. She loved it.


April 17 Friday

I had lunch with my boss at Miguel's and printed the paper billing. My Blender Newbies DVD arrived. I finished the Financial counseling Department manager's cobra letter address list. My boss approached me about rebuilding the ATB database. I want to do it with javascript/ADO.


April 16 Thursday

I did the Month End report PDF. I tried to walk a lap at lunch started coughing. I bought groceries and refilled my albuteral inhaler. I went to practice and we recorded more redemption dot txt drums. Penni made me a tuna fish sandwich when I got home from practice. I love her so much. I bought her another knitting bag on Ebay.

April 15 Wednesday

I did the paper billing and the STAR balancing while my coworker was out. I ate lunch with the usual crew plus Dave at Showmars. Scott cancelled practice for his root canal. I made a funny song about Scott's messed up tooth/face and emailed it him. I worked on Dad's laptop went to bed early.

April 14 Tuesday



I showed the medicaid automation tool to the medicaid power user per project instructions. She was polite but was not excited about the automation. She said enjoyed the data entry. Wow. I called Walgreen about inhaler and worked on the Small claims database. Penni grilled chicken outside with the mini-grill. I ordered the BenderNewbies.com DVD for 38 bucks and watched two new SouthParks. I sent Chuck a Word doc with more sample VBA code. I also bought the SquidBillies Vol 2 DVD.

April 13 Monday

I worked with a member of the legal department on the small claims database. Star is giving us the defendant's County as numbers. They were OK with it. I ate lunch at Showmars with the usual crew. My homie miss A is leaving CHS in two weeks. My stomach was messed up from all the Easter home cooking. Penni is going to see about refinancing our town house with the credit union. I ordered a new bigger 320GB laptop hard drive. I called Chuck after work. He was having some issues with variables. I went to practice and Scott had a funny story about how he had to eat bean and cold bread with his family for Easter. (family events are hell for vegetarians).

April 12th Sunday

I woke up and went to Penni's parents house for lunch. Penni bought a grill and returned it for missing instructions and then bought a from different grill. I helped assemble it. I finally finished the last of my 220 CodeLabs. I watched a new family guy. CorspeGrinderClock emailed me and asked me to add some more detail to my Collab part. I am a terrible animator.

April 11th Saturday

I woke up late. Penni went out to pickup some tailoring and then we went to Statesville. Traci brought her dog and we brought Logan. I hooked up Mom's DVD player to the my parent's TV. Traci had a letter that a happy parent sent to her bosses boss. Traci's dog pooped on my parents bed. I got it up with some paper towels and Traci took the top sheet off to wash. Logan was good. We got home and played scrabble. I ordered a used ThinkPad for my Dad on Ebay. I will probably install Xubuntu on it. Penni wants a grill. I Recorded Penni snoring on the couch. It was adorable.

The BlockInput Function, Mupen64Plus/TetrisSphere, ReactOS, Blender, Java homework and VBA lessons for Chuck.

April 10th Friday

Good Friday; I had the day off. I slept until noon, showered, cleaned up the living room a little and went to get lunch with Chuck. We went to his place and i gave him a three hour lesson on VBA in Excel and Word. Later I went to the wine shop and the grocery store for Penni. It was raining and thundering all night while Penni napped on the couch. I am the luckiest guy in the world.


April 9th Thursday

Penni visited me for lunch. We went to Arby's with Miss A. I found a simple API call called BlockInput that disables a user's mouse and keyboard, it is awesome. When the STAR data finally arrives and I can start scripting, I am going to kick so much ass. I covered the afternoon billing when the system Administrator was in a another meeting with an SSI Rep. I worked with the Server Admin guy on test config script for IE . The power for the building flickered off for a few seconds, Surprisingly no PCs died. I ate lunch with the System Administrator at Miguel's. After work I went to practice and recorded the first part of redemption dot txt. Scott brought Jessica, They are a cute couple.


April 8th Wednesday

I ran the ATB database import and rebuild the Small Claim import function and showed a print out of the fields to the Legal department's power user. I covered the afternoon billing when the system Administrator was in a meeting with an SSI Rep. I called off practice because I was still sick and constantly coughing.


April 7th Tuesday

Sick; sore throat, snotty, weak and achy all day... awesome. I went to work but left early and napped on the couch all evening. Penni cooked for me and brought me orange juice. I submitted more java homework and install a Nintendo 64 emulator called Mupen64Plus and Tetrisphere. Later that night, I ran Penni out of bed with my constant coughing. I felt terrible.


April 6th Monday

I walked a lap during lunch. Later at home, I tried some microwave Veggie sausage stuff. Penni said it smelled terrible, It was weird, not sausage-like at all, but it was pretty good. Penni ordered some doggy weights for Logan. No practice today, Scott was getting another root canal. I added content to the blender page on the help.Ubuntu wiki. My mom called and invited us to Easter lunch next the weekend. Penni was sleeping. She sat up and asked for a peanut butter sandwich. I fixed her one, she ate it and went back to sleep. Later she woke up and asked "Why is there a napkin with peanut butter on the coffee table?". Sleep eating. Ha!

April 5th Sunday

Penni went out to eat lunch with an old friend from her work and then went for a walk with her buddy from Twitter. I stayed home and worked on Java all day. I went to practice, Scott was late, we mixed some new recording stuff.


April 4th Saturday

Penni and I went to guitar center. I bought a clamp on tambourine snare thingy with an old gift certificate. We ate lunch at cheesecake factory. I worked on blender skinning all evening. It is pretty intense, i have not mastered it yet. Penni and her twitter friends were closely monitoring the missile/rocket launching in North Korea. I crashed at 2am.


April 3rd Friday

There was an issue with the server that my Outlook was set up on. It was messed up all day. My Boss wanted everyone in the department to fill out a spreadsheet, taking inventory of all the STAR files that our automated processing and databases use. I walked a lap during lunch. My department went to a meet and greet the the new members of the SSI document imagining team. I talked to a Server Admin guy about the weird error that the synapse Startup script causes with my database ADO connectivity. After work I order a pizza for dinner. I checked out QT builder for Linux by Nokia and the open source "clean floor reversed engineered" windows-based project ReactOS. I hopped on a ClockCrew Collab for CorpseGrinderClock and worked on it to 5am.


April 2th Thursday

After work I went to practice. I played hard and my arms were killing me. A big piece of Scott's molar broke off. He was in pain all night. After practice, Penni fixed me a chicken sandwich. I love her so much. I showered, paid my taxes from the scary letter from the gov'ment and crashed early.


April 1st Wednesday

My boss is back from his vacation. His PC still has not been repaired and returned. I met with the supervisor and a Power user for corporate billing department. I needed more STAR fields to complete the automation. I met with my Boss to discuss a few new projects that popped up while he was out. I ate lunch at showmars with the usual crew. I went to practice early and worked up a sweat playing along to the KMFDM Adios album. (Paradilles to Industr/Techno... Try it!) Scott was late. We ran through the set without vocals. It went surprisingly well.


Apr 31st Tuesday

I talked with the corporate billing department's supervisor and scheduled training with their Power User for my STAR scripting project. I worked on a few tutorials from the cheap API books I bought online. I found an EXE file on the book's CD that returns all the API functions installed on my local PC. I walked a lap at lunch. I helped with a rough CCSM install. Am I crazy or was the password was not all caps a month ago?


Mar 30th Monday

I worked on the Dialysis Error Automation Database import function all day. I sat up Avery Wizard on a co worker's PC and added editable fields on another co worker's PDF form. I ate lunch with my homie Miss A. My Coworkers saw Jashby at the local Salsaritas. I walked a lap during lunch. when I got home I took a short nap, worked on re-familiarizing myself with blender and ate a giant salad.


March 29th Sunday

I slept late and went with Penni to Izzy's for breakfast/lunch. Penni went out to the park and walked with her friend from Twitter. I worked on JAVA Turningcraft labs all day. There are only twenty more to do. There was some confusion and I missed practice, thinking Scott was busy. We watched American dad, family guy and the new Simpson's.

APIs and API Books, My New ClockCrew Movie, My Wacom Tablet, Dialysis Error Automation Projects

March 28th Saturday

Penni woke me up early for breakfast at Izzy's. The Clock Crew movie scored lower than I hoped (2.54/5.00). Penni and I had dinner with Penni's parents at the Kabuto's by UNCC. Later Penni and I played scrabble over the FaceBook.com. She won by 2 points.

March 27th Friday

Rainy again, I ate lunch with Kursty and met with Kou to finalize her department's Project. I covered the sysAdmin desk while he used some flex time. I bought groceries, ate some weird soy Chicken fillets, took a long nap and submitted my Clock Crew movie to Newgrounds.com at 2am.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/488834


March 26th Thursday

It was rainy again, Penni said I was saying "Wheres my running crew" all night. I gave blood and took the QA Database down to fix a small issue. The boss's boss's boss got a nasty virus. My boss's hard drive crash while she tried to log on his PC. I was a able to save his desktop settings with a Linux LiveCD. I went to a late practice and overdubbed the slow bass drum part / BleepLabs part.

March 25th Wednesday

Window Handle of the Beast!


I bought some used book online for API stuff. I brought them into work for reference. I went to practice and worked on more recording stuff.

I found this code to set the wacom bamboo fun function keys to keyboard keys:

# Set the "FN1" button to "control c" (usually copy)
xsetwacom set pad Button2 "core key control c"

# Set the "<" button to "-" (zoom out in Gimp)
xsetwacom set pad Button1 "core key -"

# Set the "FN2" button to "alt f1" (open main menu in Gnome)
xsetwacom set pad Button4 "core key alt f1"

# Make the ">" button automatically type "xsetwacom rocks"
xsetwacom set pad Button3 "core key x s e t w a c o m space r o c k s"

# Set "FN1" to double click
xsetwacom set pad Button2 "dblclick"

March 24th Tuesday

I Worked with some API stuff to control mouses and holding it to a specified area of the screen. I sat up the director of Billing with CCSM walked a lap. I got the import files for Dialysis Error Automation Database. Chuck called, Penni and I got sushi with Chuck we talked to 11pm. He wants to create some test with Excel and VBA. it is pretty easy, I will show him.

March 23rd Monday

I Pulled the data that Queried for the database i ran Friday evening. I deleted a bunch on old backup copies of database and cleared up 20GB of space. I walked a lap during lunch and met about with a bunch of management and IS about an automation project. Chuck called, he is back in town from Japan. I went to practice and recorded more individual drum tracks. Scott and Jessica are doing well. They are hanging out and sleeping to 4pm playing Galaga and eating a lot of pizza, Awww.

March 22nd Sunday

Penni and recorded some audio for the flash movie with my Linux laptop and audacity. The Best takes were the ones that we did together. Penni's dad stopped by with his Laptop, I think it has a bad video card, the VGA did not work with a LiveCD.At practice we record just cymbals and high-hat parts on the new drag part. We are trying to over dub individual parts to make the song easier to mix. Crashed early.

March 21st Saturday

Penni woke me up 4 hours after I crashed. We went to Izzy's for breakfast, then the yarn store, then to Target to return something that Penni ordered online. We bought some torchieres and one of those automatic daily shower spray things. Penni and I talked about ClockCrew movie plot ideas all day it was fun. She is the best. I put the lamp together and crashed early.

March 20th Friday

I made a Database to loop through the a shared network drive to report on old files and hidden directories that are taking up drive space. I told my boss about it and started it running before I left for the day. I bought a drawing tablet from Best Buy. It is the Wacom "Bamboo Fun" version. I had to do a few simple terminal commands to get the pressure sensitivity to work.

It was easy: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom

I brewed some coffee and worked on a flash movie to 5am.

March 19th Thursday



I showed the manager of the Medicaid Department my Web Automation Tool and had lunch with my Boss at Miguel's. I posted to the clock crew site and then went to practice.


March 18th Wednesday

It was rainy and cool this morning. Last night I accidentally elbowed Penni in the face, this morning she asked do I have a black eye? :( I ate lunch with the usual crew at showmars and solved the "test top window" issue, I post the solution to the access forum that I posted a question. Scott called and canceled practice mysteriously. I posted on the clock crew boards and researched 2d animation in Linux. I discovered that I have 44 more mini homework assignment to finish before the end of the online class.

March 17th Tuesday

I went in early to cover the system Admin for the first part of the morning billing, walked a lap during lunch, and worked on window handles all day. I submitted some Java homework and went to the dentist. I received another email from RabidClock, he's cool. I watch a few clock movies. I missed those guys,.. I am going to try to balance a wife, a band, a job, an online class, and the ClockCrew... I need to just get rid of the TV completely. I ate a giant salad and crashed late.

March 16th Monday

My Boss asked me to change the 2821 letter database and the old Credit Processing Database to show user names instead work-list mnemonics. I went to Walmart with Kursty for lunch and worked on better understanding window handle API stuff. i received an email from RabidCLock. He asked me to come back to the cc. I checked out the ClockCrew.cc site and saw it was now a good balance between Spam, Art and programming. I wrote him back.


March 15th Sunday

It was raining this morning. I woke up late and watched new American Dad episodes. I installed the extra GooTool package and played a bunch of extra World of Goo Levels. I folded up laundry. Scott called practice off. He was tired from driving back from the beach with Jessica. Penni and I watched some new Simpsons, Family Guys and had coffee/muffins for dinner while Penni worked on knitting.

Updates in route, busy working on a flash movie...

Bought the World of Goo game, QA Database Rollout/Fixes, OpenOffice.Org appears in CHS, and No I don't want your Dick's Sporting Good Score Card.

March 14th Saturday

Woke up late, had cookies and coffee for breakfast/lunch, watched a lot of American Dad episodes, played Scrabble with Penni and won. We went shopping for Penni's clothes and more DIY stomp box switch parts. We met Penni's friend from Twitter Erica and her boyfriend Evan for dinner at Cabo Fish Taco. They were cool, we all talked about external hard drive problems. Penni said "Stop talking Computers, I can't understand any of you!", it was adorable. We got home and Penni napped on the Couch and finally went to bed at 3am. I stayed up to 5am and beat the World of Goo Game. (This is why don't own any game systems!)


March 13th Friday

It was rainy all day, I ate lunch at Miguel's with the usual crew. I took the New QA Database offline for about 30 minutes after lunch. I added fixes to catch Print shortcut keys and to display a better message when the ADO Recordset mysteriously refreshes. The database now jump back to the record that the users were working before the refresh event. This is the biggest database (coding and number of users) that I ever rolled out. Having the all the data in a SQL server instead of huge local tables made the it run a lot faster. I was able to create "Debug Versions" of the database that specific users could be productive in and generate useful error messages. At the end of the day I put together the Month End Reports PDF files, published them on SharePoint, and sent out the notifications.

After work Penni and I watched the "Step Brothers" movie, it was OK, generic Will Ferrell crap, Nothing that will you any smarter or change your like. I noticed that the LinuxTVserver harddrive is getting full. I researching setting up a external usb drive that will stay mounting as read/write. I have been running Linux for ages and i should have that memorized by now, oh well.


March 12th Thursday

I added some code to the QA database to handle a weird ADO Data Provider Error in FORM_OnError event (Hurray for Response=acDataErrContinue!). This is the first time I have used that form event. I need to add that code to my Google knol. I ate lunch with the usual crew at ShowMars and had a salad. I took a walk outside during my short break. I found out that my company's information support department is testing OpenOffice.org with their Project Managers. They are hoping to cut licensing costs with the free open source application, Hell has Frozen over! Woo!

There was no band practice because Scott was at the beach with his girlfriend. I bought the full World of Goo game. This is the first game that I have bought for Linux. The purchase was very simple, Their site linked me to a PayPal page, I clicked submit, a link to a DEB file was sent to me 10 seconds later.

I looked up open office's version of VBA. It is called "Basic" (exciting huh?). On the surface it is exactly like VBA, but deeper there are some weird "Universal Network Object" stuff (Obj = createUnoService("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop") I need to look for some books on that stuff...


March 11th Wednesday

I found some code sample to jump to the previous record when the QA ON_Error Event hits. (DoCmd.FindRecord strFind, acAnywhere, , acSearchAll, , acAll) I just have to catch capture the Previous AccountNumber that the User was on before the mysterious ADO refresh happened. At Practice we played the full sweaty set.


March 10th Tuesday

I worked on the "QA data provider n/a" issue all day. I worked an on_error event to deal with it. My boss called my Send Input to STAR function "Splitting the Atom" in a meeting with Executives and VPs. That was pretty funny.

If I heard a Support Analyst was splitting Atoms in a business park by the Charlotte Douglas Airport, I would quickly pack and drive toward the west coast as quick as possible.

I walked a lap at lunch and took a short walk during my 15 min break. After work I bought some low profile ankle weighs at a Dicks sporting goods. The guy at the register was pushing the score card really hard, it was super creepy. He probably gets off on it. I remember doing weird stuff like that to pass the time when I was a kid working a crappy retail job. I need to think of some nice one-liners to shut that down.
"Really?... Can your Score club Membership Card bring my daughter back to life? No?... *(Rub eyes and sigh deeply.) Credit, Please..."

Later I ordered a pizza for Penni and had salsa and chips for sinner. My sister emailed me that Ani Difranco was in town this week. I told Penni and she was not too excited about it. I submitted some JAVA homework and we played scrabble. She quit in the middle of the game, I don't know why, she was not that far behind. It was weird. I has expecting some huge argument to pop up, but none did. Oh well.


March 9th Monday

Daylights savings time messed up the coffee timer this Morning. (Curses!) The QA database rolled out. There was a tiny issue with the "SQL" file import. I found an easy temp work around it. The whole day was pretty stressful. I accidentally worked through lunch because of all the Database stuff. I ate a late lunch at Niko's and read a little more of the Stephen king book from Jury duty. I walked around outside during a short break. It was warm outside. I Showed my boss my write to star stuff. He liked it a lot.

I went to practice. The band next door was rocking out and we couldn't do demo mixing stuff so we ran through the full sweaty set. I got home early was really tired. I downloaded an Elton john's Greatest hits album from mp3music.ru, burned it for Penni and I crashed early.


March 8th Sunday

I woke up at noon. I stayed up too ate playing with Ping.fm and Identi.ca. I worked on some JAVA home work and played scrabble with Penni and won. I went to practice and played a little of the set and worked on the new drag part. We added a mean echo-y electronic part to it. I washed my sweaty practice clothes in the sink and came home. I ate a giant (whole head of lettuce) salad and crashed early.

A Big Snow, A Fried Router, My VBA Knol, DB Rollouts, and Entering Data into STAR with Access

wE aRE tHE hARDESTCORE!!!1


March 7th Saturday

I woke up at 11am. I had some coffee/cookies and worked on my Google knol (http://knol.google.com/k/brian-gryder/vba-code/). Penni and I went to the mall to return some stuff she ordered online. The mall seems to be getting dumber and dumber as more intelligent busy people are shopping online. We were invited to go to Celebration Station with Scott, Jessica, Ricky, and Trish. We checked it out and decided to just do sushi 101 instead. After dinner we played scrabble and Penni won. Penni set the clocks for daylight savings time and crashed early.

March 6th Friday

I worked on a database to show what I can do with the new "Input-Characters-to-STAR" function. The Manager of QA called and wanted to roll out the new QA database that Friday. I took a quick lunch, walked a lap, loaded up the SQL server the live data and rolled it out at 2pm. The supervisor for QA found a debug where the department combobox was not jumping to the correct records on key presses ("B" to jump to "Billing" .. etc). I tweaked the OnCurrect event and fixed the bug before 4pm. After work Penni and I went to her parents house to hook up her dads router. We then went to the grocery store, came home and cooked a frozen pizza for dinner. Penni knitted and napped. and I finished some JAVA homework and played the "WORLD OF GOO" demo on the Linux Laptop. I finished the game at 3am, it was awesome. I should buy the whole game.

March 5th Thursday

I ate lunch with the usual crew at ShowMars, I paid for Miss A, she always grabs the tip when have no ones. I loaned her the Squidbillies DVD. I took a short walk after lunch. I figured out how to input characters into STAR. This is a big Deal, It creates a LOT of automation possibility. It felt really good. I bought pennis dad a new router. His Linksys/Cisco router was acting really weird. I went to practice and work on java homework while Scott mixed.

March 4th Wednesday

I remoted into the CMC-Union Billing Department manager's PC with GoToMeeting and talked with her about deploying a Rebill Database. I rolled out the 2821 Letter Worklist Database to the users. I was pulled into a RightFax meeting and wrote up some OSRs for access for the RAC audit team. I went to a late lunch and walked a lap. Scott called off practice. I watched an X files episode with Penni, I think I drove her crazy. I cannot help but talk to/through cheese Sci-Fi. I installed KDE, LXDE, Fluxbox, and XFCE with only one synaptic upgrade on my main laptop and somehow uninstalled my network manager. I fixed it by copying the deb packages from Getdeb.net with a flash drive.
March 3rd Tuesday

I emailed the power user for the Credit Processing Department to meet and review the new 2821 Letter Worklist Database. I updated the ATB database and fixed a huge employee move OSR . I ate lunch with my homie Miss A at ShowMars. I felt a little weird after lunch, so I took a break and went out for short walk in the cold. I felt better afterwards. The Sysadmin was pulled in a late meeting so I covered part of the afternoon electronic billing. On the way home, I picked up a pizza and cookies. Penni and I dropped off a PC with Edubuntu at Penni's parent house. Later, we watched a new Sponge Bob episode called "The Big One". It was awkwardly written and edited with weirdly random dialog. It is probably getting canceled and this episode was the bottom of the barrel. I ate way too much pizza for dinner and felt terrible.


March 2nd Monday

It snowed hard last night. My boss called at 6am and let me know the office was opening at
noon. Penni stayed home, knitted and shopped online all day. Our home router was fried when the power blinked off. I bought a new router at best buy on the way to practice. Scott called in late for practice so I worked on Parradiddles to KMFDM. I showed Scott the Unknown Henson extra on the Squidbillies DVD on my laptop. He liked the New Rita's Gift Logo (the bunny on a Big Wheel) that jokingly hacked together. He mixed and I worked on the DIY kill switch pedal. After practice I stayed up and configured the new router. I crashed around 1am.

March 1st Sunday

I woke up late and installed Edubuntu of an very old 128mb 250mhz PC for Penni's Nephew. It is very slow but works good enough for pre-K games. Penni and I played scrabble, I won. It started snowing very hard. I called Scott and cancelled practice. The power blinked off for a second and the Internet was down all night. I watched some Simpson FLVs files on my laptop in bed and crashed early.

Credit Processing's 2821 Letter Worklist Database thingy, Insane waitress at Frankie's, Sushi 101's satanic basil shrimp and Kpersonalizer gone in 4.2

Feb 28th Saturday

It was raining all day. Penni woke me up early to go to H&R block for our taxes. Then we went to a store on Central to for Penni's incense stuff and then to Cabo fish taco for lunch. Penni wanted the waitress's boots, so we went to a shoe store to find them (Wifed!). We also went to go to a radio shack to buy a project enclosure to make a double line kill switch for Scott's rig. Later we had coffee, played scrabble, watched the squid-billies DVDs that I ripped to the linuxTVserver and crashed around 1 am.

Feb 27th Friday

It was rainy all day. I worked on the 2821 productivity database reports all day. I was looking for a easy way to combine a local DAO recordsets and a ADO recordsets from the SQL server to sort and push out to excel. (rs1 + rs2 = rs3) I could not find a quick and easy way to do it. I ended up writing the DAO recordset to rows 1 to X and writing the ADO recordset to X+1 through the X + recordcount. I ate lunch at Salsaritas with the whole Special Projects crew. I talked to a project manager about a badly written OSR to move around a bunch of PFS Specialists. After work I made some reservation, showered and ate dinner at Frankie's with Penni.

At the restaurant the waitress kept saying "Awl Riiight"

How is the calamari? It was good... AWL RIIIGHT! Did you have Diet or regular? Diet please.. AWL RIIIGHT!

She sounded totally insane. After dinner we played scrabble, I won. I worked on java homework, watched some new family guys and tried to run Kpersonalizer in 4.2, but Kpersonalizer is gone, Why? Kpersonalizer was a great way to quickly turn the desktop eye-candy all the way up or all the way off. There was a thread in the KDE.org forums that There is a "Welcome Widget" in development that will replace it in KDE 4.3... SuX0rz!!!1 >:( Penni and I finally crashed around 3am.


Feb 26th Thursday

I fixed the issue with the ErrorEmployee field in the QA database. The field was bound to the full employee name but the record from the SQL server was the Employee ID, thus the field was blank because the record was not in the combobox's list. I talked to the QA power user and manager about a work around. I changed the combobox list to employee IDs and added a hyperlinked "?" beside the field that to show "User ID: LastName, FirstName" on the click event. I went to an I.S. appreciation luncheon and later that day We had a Department meeting at Nikos with my boss and boss's boss. They were discussing stopping PA employee "Hand Holding" to focus on Application Development. I left work late so i texted Scott and got to the space later. We worked on mixing and left early because Scott was tired. Later at home, Penni and I watched family Guy. Penni crashed but I stayed up and worked on java homework. Eclipse is really great for generating correct getter/setter syntax. I post a thread in the online Java class about the SourceForge RoboCode Project.

Feb 25th Wednesday

I met with my Boss and the supervisor for Credit Processing to show them the rough draft of the 2821 letter Worklist database. They gave me a small list of feature requests. My homie Miss A was out sick. I walked a lap during lunch. I found a issue with the QA database rebuild with the ErrorEmployee combobox showing no user ID. I went to practice and we worked on mixing all night.

Feb 24th Tuesday

I worked on the 2821 Worklist database's sorting and printing all day. I walked a lap at lunch listening to the Anti-Mother album. The STAR Itemized Bill printing and E-collect were down all day. I called my sister to check on her Windows XP virus that popped up last week. I have not heard back from her so she is probably OK. I called Scott to check on his progress on recording vocals. I was kinda bummed out so I listened to the RadioHead Kid A album driving home. ("How to disappear completely" is freakin' awesome!) I took a shower and went to Sushi 101 with Penni. I had the Basil shrimp, it was terrible, hellishly-too-spicy, torture! After dinner we went to the grocery store. Penni wanted some pimento cheese and humus (Gross). We watched family guy and drank coffee. I worked on customizing the KDE 4.2 laptops colors, panels, and icons.

Feb 23rd Monday

I worked on 2821 Worklist database all day by 4pm I had the gut's of the application pulled together. I wrote a function to open a CSV file as ADO recordset, it's cleaner that the "docmd.transfer text" thing or manually coding to delimiting fields. SSI Hot key and Star Itemized bill printing went down. I walked a lap during lunch and later. Scott called, he wanted to work on vocals solo so no practice for me. I picked up cookies from Harris teeter on that way home. I ate a big salad/chips and salsa for dinner and later and later cookies and coffee. Penni had some spaghetti and started knitting a vest. She is knitting a lot. I worked on the old Lappy KDE 4.2 install. I added an auto-start event to get KnetworkManager started on log-in.

Installing KDE 4.2 on a Thinkpad with 256MB ram, Running AcidRip, Dreams about pressing F8, QA database testing and the working on a "Drag" part

Feb 22 Sunday

Penni woke me up at 8am to shower and go shopping at Target. I got a coffee at the mini Starbucks inside the store. It was surprisingly good. Penni bought some clothes and I got a pair of cheap sunglasses. We returned home and I showed Penni how to remote into the LinuxTVserver and watch Hulu.com videos on the TV. Penni went out to have dinner with one of her friends from twitter. I worked on upgrading my old 256MB ThinkPad to kde4.2. I tried to do it without upgrading to Ubuntu Intrepid. I some how hosed my kdm-kde4 login manager and X-org modules. X-org has really improved in the last year, crashing it is quite difficult now, but I managed to do it! Go Me! I gave up and started upgrading it to Intrepid from the terminal and went to practice. Scott worked on mixing and re-recorded some guitar parts. After practice I has some coffee and finished the upgrade. KDE 4.2 looks great and runs surprisingly fast on only 256mb of Ram.

Feb 21 Saturday

I did not sleep well, I was dreaming about watching a debugger F8 through loops of recordsets (God that is depressing!) I slept late and ate junk food all day. Penni worked all day on knitting gloves and napped. We played scrabble twice an won. I picked up Burger King for Penni at 11pm. We napped on the couch after a late dinner and finally went to bed at 3am.

Feb 20 Friday

The SysAdmin created a SQL database for me to start the 2821 database. Several QA department users and telecommuters logged in to test the new database. There was one weird issue where the QA power user was unable to change one record in a specific table but able to change the other records . I walked a lap at lunch listening to the Poison The Well, Versions album. The SysAdmin emailed me a clip of code to drop an ADO recordset into a Excel spreadsheet in one step instead of looping through each row. I owe him lunch for that. On the way home I picked up some groceries for the weekend at Harris teeter. I fixed a couple of frozen pizzas and played scrabble with Penni while I was ripping media to load to the Linux TV Server. I am using AcidRip instead of DVD::RIP now.

Feb 19 Thursday

My homie Niki was back at work today from visiting family in Virginia. It was good to see her. I finished the list of changes that the QA Power user gave me and added a function in the On_Current event to deal with behavior of the Status=Closed/Open/Pending with empty user input fields. I walked a lap during lunch and listened to more of the Nine inch Nails Ghosts Album. I picked up some burger king food for Penni and took a quick nap after work. Scott called, He wanted to do practice later so he could record Jessica's brother Ben. I listen to the Mountain Goats, Tallahassee Album on the way to the practice space. I heard Ben's recording it was a live acoustic cover of the song "23". Ben is great. He needs to start a band, maybe with Davie all-star and Danny, that would be awesome. We worked on recording more versions of the "legal drag" part.

Feb 18 Wednesday

My Boss found an error in the Month End Reports that were published late Tuesday. The error was not my fault, (Woo-Hoo!) I was tapped to work through lunch and fix them before any upper management noticed it. After fixing the reports, I ate lunch at Niko's, It was cold and rainy so I could not walk during lunch so I sat in a booth and read a little of the book that I bought for Jury Duty. On the way back to the office, I noticed my front right tire was low. I used some flex time and left early to inflate it. As I was inflating it I heard air hissing out through a pin hole. I went to Harris teeter and bought a few cans of fix-a-flat and drove home to google local tire shops. I found one of south blvd and got 2 new tires. I listened to the Nine Inch Nails ghosts album and read more of DUMA KEY while my car was being worked on. Later I when to practice and worked on the "Legal" song's "drag" part. Practice run a little late. I called Penni and she told me about getting coffee with her friend Tommi. She has just moved to Africa for her husband's job and this was her first visit back in the states. She told Penni one of the Guards that her husband hired had raped a neighbor's young daughter. Tommi was trying to get the local police involved but the victim's mother was trying to cover everything up and not make waves. Penni and I are worried that Tommi is going to get hurt over there. She said money is tight and if her and her husband decided to move back now they could not afford to ship their clothes and personal belongings.

Feb 17 Tuesday

I started working on the new Credit Processing 2821 Worklist Database. I met with the power user from the QA department. She typed a list of bugs/improvements. Her list was organized by the tab in the application was made fixing them easier. Most were just requests for rewording labels, button text and message boxes. I walked a lap at lunch, it was cold and windy. While walking, i listened to the first 8 songs on the Nine Inch Nails ghosts album. There are 48 tracks on that album. I had never listened to them all. I received work that the Month End reports were available for publishing. I worked an hour and a half over to finish assembling, linking and publishing the PDF files. when I got home I ate a huge salad for dinner. I looked online for all black skate shoes, they were pretty hard to find. I ordered some shoes and Penni finished knitting a hat that she was working on.

Feb 16 Monday

Worked, Went to practice and worked on writing a new slow draggy part on the end of the "Legal" song.

Black Hole by Charles Burns, Jury Duty, Valentines Day, Custom Strings for WHERE clauses and My Systolic blood pressure

Feb 14 Saturday

Woke up early, Penni had stomach problems and was up all night. I had some coffee and worked on Java homework all day. Penni and I went out and bought groceries and returned a RedBox movie. As we passed the Cheese Cake factory Penni said she saw a few hundred people waiting outside, that is pretty insane. The Cheese Cake factory is really overrated. We returned home and I had a frozen pizza and a salad. Penni called the police on our neighbors for playing music too loud at midnight. She said it was loud in front of the townhouse too. I can sleep with low bass bleeding through the walls but Penni cannot.

Feb 13 Friday

I woke up early and remotely logged into my work email to change my out of office message for one more day. I went to the second day of jury duty. During a break, I called the flower shop and sent Penni some pink roses for Valentines Day. At lunch I grabbed another turkey burger from the courthouse cafeteria and walked to Target to get a Stephen King book. It was a long walk but i made it back in time. We returned a guilty vertict. We got out later than the judge estimated, around 3:30pm and I had to cancel my dentist appointment.

What I learned from my peers through the jury selection/deliberation process:

50% of all people, Black, White, Male, Female, Young, Old, Rich and Poor, are completely insane. If you are ever forced to be judged by your peers, Good Luck!

On the way home from the courthouse, I bought a headphone to RCA cable to hook up the server audio to the TV. Penni got me a card and took me out to dinner at Bentleys on 27th for Valentines day, It was great. I gave Penni a box set of the X files. I moved the server out of the TV stand and sat it up behind the TV. It runs cooler there but it is a little louder.

Feb 12 Thursday

I went to jury duty at 8am. While I was waiting, I read a black and while graphic novel called Black Hole by Charles Burns. It was great. I plowed through it in about 4 hours. It covered the dark alienating hormone-driven weirdness of been a teenager. There was a lot of loneliness, drug-use, suicides, and a sexually transmitted disease that turns people into deformed freaks. It was amazing. It made me thankful that I survived those teenage years. A lot of kids are not so lucky. I need to find some more Charles Burns books.

I ate a turkey burger from the courtroom cafeteria and then walked from the courthouse to the main bus terminal, looking for a book store. I was selected to set in a jury on a criminal case. Whee. When I got home, the VGA to RCA converter I order arrived. I hooked it up to the TV/server and put the server in the TV stand. There was not enough room for the computer to get cool air with the door closed. I copied some Media onto the server and tried it out. Penni was impressed. I had a salad for dinner and crashed early.


Feb 11 Wednesday

I ate at Showmars with the usual crew and brought lunch back to my homie Tzoua. She was stuck at her desk covering reports for Niki. I ran a couple reports for her and emailed them off to help out. I added a Manage Users tab to the QA database. The database is finally ready for testing. I bought a book for jury duty/waiting tomorrow and I rented a Family Guy from the Redbox. There was no Practice while Scott battled with recording vocals. Scott and Jessica are officially dating now. I made a salad for dinner and took a nap with Penni. I woke up, made some coffee and beat Penni in scrabble.

Feb 10 Tuesday

I added a custom select statement ComboBox to the Pull Raw Data function. it allows the user to type in a custom "columnName='filter'" string that adds a where clause to the SQL statement that query the information. The strings can be saved to a local table with the press of a button, and are editable.

I walked a lap during lunch and listened to Portishead. I went to the grocery store bought stuff for ground turkey tacos. Penni Cooked the meat and shells while I showered. I ate them all and then took a long nap on the couch. I woke up and played Penni in scrabble. She won. I researched Photo Theremins and crashed early.
Feb 9 Monday

I went to my doctor for a check up. My systolic blood pressure was 90. It need to be lower. I blame it on the setting around that I have to do while Scott is mixing at the practice space (and been a weak gluttonous pig). I plan on seriously working on it. I went in to work and walked a lap during lunch. I wrote a function to pull raw data in the QA database. I went to practice and we ran through a few song. Scott and Jessica are an item now. Aww. I was feeling kinda weird/medicated from the exercising/not eating as much sugar as usual and crashed early.

Feb 8 Sunday

I slept late, played scrabble, ordered a VGA to RCA converter, and went to the practice space for solo practice. Scott stopped by for a while. Scott was bagging on Robert Smith. For some strange reason I have a soft spot for the guy. I remember buying the single to "High" as a little kid. At the space, I worked on the bass drum line for Mermaider and blood ocean with a click and my ipod. I need better beater control. I finished up the BleepLabs kit and came I picked up cookies and a salad on the way home from the practice space. I watched a new king of the hill more Simpson FLV files in bed.

Zombie ADO recordset fixed with cursortype=aduseclient, DVD::RIP settings, bass drum line on Blood Ocean, KDE 4.2, and Mangione's sucks

Feb 7 Saturday

Woke up late, went with Penni to the knitting store, bought some Pocky and went to meet her friend for lunch at Quiznos . We were a little lost and my buddy Scott googled up some directions there, quality guy. We came home and i worked on some Java homework while Penni napped. She woke up, I made some more coffee and we played scrabble. I won. I ate about 5 boxes of Pocky with coffee, then cooked Penni some spaghetti, I test ripped some DVDs with DVD::RIP on the LinuxLappy to check out the different in quality with the different settings. I Called chuck in Japan and we talked for about an hour on Skype. He is doing well, the classes are hard but he is worked hard and making progress.

Feb 6 Friday

I accidentally brought Penni's keys to work with me. I had to run them home for her around 9am. My boss emailed everyone to get the total hours the Special Projects team has automated for 2008. The sysadmin has racked up many hours with Boston Workstation. My power user buddy needs to report the total hours automated by my Medicaid web tool. There was an email about the small claims database import file having unavailable information from STAR. My Boss hopped on the chain, and the AVPs and executives were copied on it. We are going to wait for the bug in STAR that is denying us the data to be fixed before proceeding with the development of the small claims database. I still working on the QA database reporting, sick of programming excel to format ADO Recordsets to look like MS Access report; lots cell formatting, lots of counting loops while incrementing down the spreadsheet. I need to find a 3rd party plug-in to do this...

I ate a quick chicken pita for lunch at Niko's and walked around the loop during lunch, listening to Dethklok. (Yes still on Dethklok. The bass drum line of Blood Ocean is amazing, He switches back and forth from a 4/4 16th note pattern to a double triplet (24th note) pattern. awesomeness.

Penni and I played Scrabble and Penni won. I am so proud of her.

Feb 5 Thursday

I worked on the reporting for the new QA database all day. I ate lunch with my homey Tzoua and the sysAdmin at Miguel's and nerded out with Database/Programming talk. After work, I called Scott, he wanted to buy a vocal mike and record vocals super late at night so I let him have the practice space to himself. I stayed in and played scrabble with Penni and won.

Feb 4 Wednesday



It snowed! I checked the News and there were a lot of wrecks due to ice on the road, so I drove Penni to work. I worked on handling some new financial codes in the ATB database and formatting Excel reports from the new QA database. I ate Nikos for lunch. There was no practice. Scott wanted to do a late night solo vocal recording session. I downloaded a KDE 4.2 preview live CD, It was pretty good. KDE gets a bad wrap so I posted a compliment to the KDE forum. Chuck called, he is doing well in Japan.

Feb 3 Tuesday

I worked on the productivity reporting for the QA Database rebuild. My homey Kursty had a weird pink splotch on her head. I tried to fix Penni's dad's router but there was a weird issue with his Cisco resetting to 192.168.0.XXX instead of 1.XXX. We ate dinner at Mangione's. The calamari was OK but the rest of the food was terrible. Later I beat Penni in scrabble.

Feb 2 Monday



I added an import log to the QA database and worked on a weird "zombie object" ADO error that popped up. I fixed it with the ADO.cursortype = aduseclient. I ate Nikos with the crew. I met with the manager of the QA department and the QA power user about the qa database reporting. I went to the bank after work and then out for groceries with Penni. There was no practice because Scott and his friend needed to vote on some animal cruelty bill in Rock Hill, quality guy. Penni and i stayed home and played scrabble. I won. We watched SquidBillies and ATHF.


Feb 1 Sunday

Penni had to work at the retirement home for a super bowl party. I watched some Simpson FLV files and went to the hardware store for wires and drill bits. I drilled the holes for the case of the BleepLabs Thingamakit. Penni taped American Dad for me and was asleep when I got home. I watched more Simpson files in bed before crashing at 2am.

Gig at the Alley Cat, QA Database Imports, soldering the BleepLabs Kit, SquidBillies and Drawn Together DVDs

Jan 31 Saturday

I woke up late, had coffee and got the house ready for my family's visit. My Dad brought down a spare tire for the van. We went to cheesecake factory. there was a thirty minute wait. My mom/dad were drinking and cutting up. The Manager came over to check on us, it was a little embarrassing. After dinner everyone came back to my house for coffee and scrabble. I won. Later, I download a lot of Simpson's episodes FLV files from the Watchsims.com site.

Jan 30 Friday

I finished the BO import function and added a neat wizard-based MS office chart control to the QA database rebuild. It works great with the "Views" that are setup on the SQL server. I made a card for Traci's birthday, bought my mom a VCR/DVD player combo and two Neil Diamond "Live in Concert" DVDs. I bought a used Drawn Together too. DVD I played scrabble with Penni and she won. Penni said we are going to start saving the scrabble scores and add them up and see who is the long-term winner. Penni's dad lost his job due to his company closing down. She was pretty upset.

Jan 29 Thursday

I worked on the Business Objects import and created an import log function. The Manager of QA called and asked for it to be finished Feb 15th. I said it is possible but I cannot write it in stone. I can get pull off it and assigned to a different project for my boss in a second. I ate lunch with the usual crew at Salsaritas. I fixed the manager of the Correspondence Department's printer. I went to the practice space and soldered on the worked on BleepLabs kit while Scott worked on mixing. I powered the kit up. The sound and one of the LED antennas things to work. Success!

Jan 28 Wednesday

I finished the STAR import and tested it on fifteen different files. The imports ran really fast. I emailed some screen-shots of the times and quantities of claims to my boss & Manager of the QA department. Everyone was happy. I ate Nikos for lunch with the usual crew and started working on the QA Database rebuild Business Objects import function. Penni texted me. She was about upset about her coworkers giving her grief over evacuating her residents for a fire drill.

I went to the blood drive across the street and there was a long wait. The guy in the chair before me had his needle pop out and bled all over the chair and floor. Comedy! The hematologist seemed a little frazzled. she cleaned up the chair and i went next with no problems.

I went to the practice space took my BleepLabs kits and soldering kit. I worked on it while Scott mixed the last recording and removed a lot of copied octave parts. They sound great in quiet parts but make the tremble of the guitar distortion sound static-y.


Jan 27 Tuesday

I worked all day on the new QA database STAR file import function. I am making it display the number of records and total lapsed time fir imports. That way the database can "defend itself" if a user calls it slow. I still have a blister on my foot from walking outside during a breaks with dress shoes on.

I uploaded video clips of the Alley Cat gig and a clip Scott of throwing a chair at me in the hallway of practice space. Good Times. The SquidBillies DVD that I bought on eBay arrived. Penni and I ordered a pizza and watched it, while I upload the pictures that Penni took at the gig and sent them to Scott to post on MySpace.com. Penni took great picture, I did not have to edit any of them.

Jan 26 Monday

My department went to the CHS Arts and Science counsel meeting and all had Niko's for lunch. I worked late remoting into a legal department telecommuter PC to install PDFCreator. I went to the practice space and we sat to the gear from the show. We also hooked up the cheap mixing monitors.

Jan 25 Sunday

I slept late, bought Bojangles for breakfast and went to the space to get ready for the gig at the alley cat. We loaded up the van and went to the venue. It is a huge place but has no load in ramps. We had to carry all the 8 by 10 cabs and gear up a flight of stairs. fun fun fun. We played, got paid and split. I hurt my shoulder unloading the cabs at the practice space. (I am soo out of shape from recording/mixing...) Penni took some good video and pictures at the gig. And she taped American Dad for me when she got home. She is so amazing!

Cracked Bloody Thumb, Cheap Studio Monitors, Sucky King Crab, Obama Inauguration and ADOrs.CursorLocation = adUseClient

Jan 24th Saturday

I woke up freezing this morning. Penni had all the blankets and would not stop pulling them back. Later she said that I mumbled " Give me some covers, You Monster" in my sleep. I finally got up an 11am. Penni said she did not sleep good. she napped on the couch with her dog while I drank coffee, ate popcorn, and finished/submitted some Java homework as ATHF DVDs played.

Jan 23rd Friday

Someone stole my coworkers cell phone and another employee's wallet at work. Someone tried to use the stole wallet's CVS card and the store got video footage of the checkout. Strangely the store showed a picture of person to a CHS manager. Usually Stores only communicate that information to the police, so angry victims do not confront the perps and get their heads blown off. The manager was unable to ID the person from the photo.

I am basically finished with the QA tab of the QA Database rebuild. I checked out the previous database's import functions, it was a list of chained macros that ran queries and other macros. It is impossible to debug/move so i am starting from scratch. I am going to try to validate the import files without pulling it into a local table and avoid blowing up the database file size.

After work Penni and I went to the McCormick and Smitts by South Park Mall. They have "King Crab (from Dutch Harbor catch by the S.S. So-And-So, featured on The Discovery Channel's Worlds Deadliest Catch" on the menu. Penni got it. It was not great. I got the Salmon Penne and it was also not great, money well spent. After dinner we went to the target and bought scrabble. Penni said she was a scrabble master. I slayed her by 66 points. We crashed early at midnight.
Jan 22nd Thursday

I showed the SysAdmin my ADO recordset issues and he showed me this weird "ADOrs.CursorLocation = adUseClient" property that made the form editable. Awesomeness! the changes are instantly written to the SQL tables. I ate lunch at Miguel's and picked up the check for the sysAdmin (that ADOrs crap was driving me insane). I took the van to the practice space. We ran through the set and moved some stuff around to make room for the new cheap monitors.
Jan 21st Wednesday

I was having trouble updating an access form bound to an ADO record set. I worked on it for hours. I ate Niko’s for lunch. After work, I went to the practice space. I went to Sam Ash with Scott in the middle of practice for new strings and cheap studio monitors. My right thumb cracked and bled from not playing hard for a month during recording. I played some GodheadSilo for Scott in the car.
Jan 20th Tuesday

There was a lot of snow and ice that morning so I drove Penni to work. My boss was out on PTO. We sat up a TV in the break room so everyone could watch the presidential inauguration. Black President Y'all, R0X0RZ! After work I picked up Penni and we went to Penni’s parent house to eat tacos / set up there a new router for Penni's dad.
Jan 19th Monday

Slow day, I walked during my break and ate Niko's for lunch with the break room crew. I came home and downloaded some podcasts. I made the bed, shower and went to practice early. We ran through the set three times and I washed my nasty practice clothes in the sink and hung them on some boxes, There was no snow outside yet.

Jan 18th Sunday

I created the QA errors sub-form part of the QA Database rebuild. Everyone was excited about the predicted snow tomorrow Penni called me two times at practice asking about me driving her to work in the predicted snow.

Coffeemaker burnt out, 45 minutes late for family dinner, Java classes, Replacement AKEA coffee table arrived damaged, ATB database tweaked

Jan 17th Saturday

I woke up from dreaming that I was working on the QA database, that is very depressing. I see MS access databases in my dreams, Damn. I came downstairs and got some coffee and worked on Java homework all day while Metalocalypse/ATHF DVDs played and Penni napped. I submitted a months worth of homework. I cooked spaghetti for Penni for dinner and I snacked on popcorn and Wheatsworth crackers. I uploaded a 70 second clip of Davey All-Star up Facebook. It was better formatted with Kino, the file was 9MB.



Jan 16th Friday

I started on the second tab of the QA database rebuild. I am using a function that will only select a power-user-specified number of records to prevent users from swamping the SQL server. I ate lunch with the usual crew at Salsaritas. I tweaked the credit processing database alpha split and met with with managers of the legal department about installing PDF Creator for the telecommuters. The replacement AKEA coffee table package arrived and a huge ding on the table top. We are tired of calling AKEA so we will just live with it. We assembled it and crashed at 11pm.

Jan 15th Thursday

Penni called and canceled the cable. This will be good for us, especially during my Java class. The old practice test EXE files from TrainerSoft will not work for the telecommuters through Citrix. I walked a lap at lunch it was cold and windy all day. I showed the manager of the Variance department how to create link table to the variance SQL database. I went to Practice. We ran through the set. Scott was going crazy because of his guitar tone. He needs his 400 watt Carvin head to sound like his 150 watt Marshall Combo. He was literally beating his head against the wall. I just practiced para-diddles on a towel and waited for his mental illness to pass.

Jan 14th Wednesday

I tweaked the ATB database for two new hospitals. I ate Nikos for lunch with the usual crew. I took a walk during my break. A UPS guy stopped by and picked up the box of messed up AKEA parts. I went to practice and we reworked the intro for the Legal song. I left practice late. Penni was really mad.

Jan 12th Monday

I ate lunch at ShowMars with the crew. I worked on the QA rebuild stuff. My homie Kursty was out sick. I started my online Java class. Scott was late sending me a terrible flier to scale for printing. I took my Linux laptop to the Practice space and We worked on fixing it all night. Later printed out at Kinkos and then I came home and crashed.

Jan 11th Sunday

Our coffee maker burnt out. Penni and I went to target and bought a new one. There was mis-communication between Penni and her parents, thus we were 45 minutes late for lunch at Rock Bottom. Penni's parents and sister was there. Her sister made us a cake. I went to practice and Ryan and Danny stopped by and we played a mini set for them. I came home, watched Drinky Crow and crashed.

Wedding anniversary, Chuck/Anna go to Japan, BleepLabs, Saurbraten and Dethklok = Awesome!

Jan 10 Saturday

I woke up late and loaded up the car with leftover tile and sold it back to the Tile Shop. We ate lunch at Mexicana 1900 and picked up some dog food at the grocery store. We came home and Penni napped while i emailed the Boone drum shop guy about the price of a 28 by 24 chrome bass drum without the split latch and looked for Linux games. I installed a physics-engine-kit/game called "Phun". It is pretty intense.

Jan 9 Friday - Wedding Anniversary

I woke up hella early to take my homie Chuck and his wife to the Airport to fly to Japan. I posted to the Linux Outlaws and LottaLinuxLinks forum about the 2H4U game. I picked up Penni's necklace from the post office while she was out running errands. I gave it to her and she loved it. I recorded her with my new flip recorder and posted it up to FaceBook. The video was 40MB and took forever to upload. I need to research how to better format video with Linux. Penni bought me dinner at Bentley's on 27. She had the king crab and I had some weird fried lobster dish. She loved hers, she was adorable. I was super tired from waking up early so i crashed at midnight.

Jan 8 Thursday

PTO day off! Penni and I ate at Izzy's and got a new battery and an oil change for the gear van. I went to the yarn store with Penni and a girl there showed Penni how to do some new thing for knitting gloves. Penni is knitting a lot now, she is getting very fast. Chuck called and we scheduled the 7am Airport trip. The guys at BleepLabs sent me the right parts, quality dudes! I mailed my broken phone back and received a mail slip about Penni's anniversary gift. I ordered a pizza and researched installing quake on Linux, It is still a pain. You have to buy the windows version and copy/paste the wad/pak thingy into the appropriate folder, no thanks. I installed and played Saurbraten all night with ATHF playing in the background while Penni was napping.

Jan 7 Wednesday

There was some nasty domain issues today that scared a lot of managers and caused a lot of support desk calls. I sent Penni anniversary flowers and ran the ATB database update. I created an outlook pst file for 2009 and sat up a ton of sub-folders for my boss's boss's boss. I got home napped, showered and went to practice. We ran through the set and were very very rusty from recording and setting around editing for two months. I was pretty sore. I washed my nasty practice clothes in the sink and hung them up in the practice room.

Jan 6 Tuesday

It was dark and rainy all day. I worked on the Quality Assurance Database Rebuild and The Medicaid Web Automation Tools. I had lunch with the usual crew at ShowMars and emailed Chuck and Neil some links to Dethklok songs. I installed the Numpty Physics game, It is a lot like the Magic Pen game. You can install User created boards. It is pretty awesome. Penni and I ordered a pizza and crashed late.

Why is Dethklok's DethAlbum so good? I'm not a huge fan of straight Metal but it is really really good Scott likes it too. I love the Metalocalypse show, maybe I am not being objective about it. The lyrics are freakin' great:

"I'd rather you be dead than ponder parting with my second home;
I'd rather you be dead than consider not opening a restaurant"

• 1 Primary heavy metal subgenres
  • 1.1 Black metal
  • 1.2 Death metal
  • 1.3 Doom metal
  • 1.4 Drone metal
  • 1.5 Folk metal
  • 1.6 Glam metal
  • 1.7 Gothic metal
  • 1.8 Groove metal
  • 1.9 Industrial metal
  • 1.10 Metalcore
  • 1.11 Neo-classical metal
  • 1.12 Nu metal
  • 1.13 Post-metal
  • 1.14 Power metal
  • 1.15 Progressive metal
  • 1.16 Sludge metal
  • 1.17 Speed metal
  • 1.18 Stoner metal
  • 1.19 Thrash metal
• 2 Cross-genre terms within heavy metal
  • 2.1 Alternative metal
  • 2.2 Avant-garde metal
  • 2.3 Christian metal
  • 2.4 Extreme metal
  • 2.5 Rap metal
  • 2.6 Symphonic metal
  • 2.7 Viking metal

*note: Never confuse Death metal with Doom metal.

Jan 5 Monday

I worked on some Medicaid Web Automation Tools Bug. I ate lunch from Nikkos with the usual crew. The at Guys BleepLabs wrote me back and said they would sent me the right parts. I bought the DethKlok album from MusicMp3.ru. Traci and Mom called. I went to practice and recorded the electronic drum for part four of Full Circle.

Jan 4 Sunday

We ate breakfast at Izzy's. I bought groceries and a soldering kit for the BleepLabs thing. I started assembling the thing-a-ma-kit and emailed the BleepLabs site about some weird potentiometers in the kit, I went to practice and redubbed the drums for the last part of Full Circle.