For this entry I'm going to spend most to all of it preparing for tomorrow's interview. And perhaps indirectly prepping for the first day of the job. You know, that other minor thing happening tomorrow.

The lady related to this interview I have apparently forgot to send me some minor details about tomorrow's interview so I had sent her email mentioning that if there was anything left to send to be sure and send it before 7am California time since that was around the time I would be leaving (I happen to know she's on the east coast). I sent that email either Saturday night or Friday night, can't remember now. Probably Saturday. In any case she responded tonight with some details. Namely that the interview would be of the "behavioral" variety. She also mentioned a link to a web site that kind of summarizes and explains what to expect in a behavioral type interview. 

Keeping in mind it's not as though I have never been in a behavioral interview in the past. In fact I think I have done relatively well with them. My interview performance the last several months has prompted me to want to prepare, so lets go through some things here. Also, I should probably think of some questions for them for the inevitable do you have any questions for us? that will come up.

I'll just go through the included bullets points one by one as best I can. The first one is integrity. I'd like to believe I have some fairly solid integrity traits some where inside. I think I would define integrity as holding to principals even in the face of adversity or an obvious easier and quicker way out. Right?

Lets see, examples... well I did for instance screw something up at the place I worked with a particular batch file. And this just so happened to have corresponded with a network outage. So the people that ended up calling me were asking about the thing I screwed up as well as the network outage. I could have said it was all the network outage although it seems obvious that would not have held water for any length of time or I could have just come clean right then and there. Which is what I did actually. Okay I'm not sure if that's a good story I want to bring up in this particular interview or not. Not sure they'd let me use batch files after that. Not sure they would let me any way. 

Another example? 

I'll move on now to some form of question about a bad situation I was able to resolve or otherwise turn into a positive. I think I know this one. I was manually installing applications on literally a thousand PCs and was extremely frustrated. It was one of the most frustrating things I have done for the longest period of time probably in my entire life. I did learn a lot about silent installs and launching applications via HTML hyper links that I don't think I would have. I turned something incredibly frustrating into something that ended up teaching me a lot in other words. Not sure that's a good example.

Or on a more positive version about a success story example I could talk about those batch files I wrote that would register an ocx then install some MSIs all one-after-another. The OCX of course being a dependency on which the MSIs depended. Actually I also wrote a batch file that would do a DIR command on three different folders, re-directing them to a text file then set up a scheduled task to run said batch file once an hour every hour 24 hours a day. Also deleting the old text file if it was there. That was definitely a success story I think. At least, the guy I wrote it for seemed to appreciate it quite a bit.

The next bullet point actually was "personal accountability" which I think is some how connected with personal responsibility which I suppose if they use the term I could bring up in an effort to draw a distinction but I would not mention any politics directly of course. Just that the two concepts are related in some subtle way and that my "personal philosophy" I make every effort to live up to is that of personal responsibility. 

I would say personal responsibility is more something you do yourself voluntarily, whilst personal accountability is the result or consequence of an action. In other words if I screw up personal accountability is my being held responsible for the screw while personal responsibility would be my one-hundred percent truthfulness readily admitting the screw and accepting the concequences. It's a subtle dinstinction (in my my mind) but it is still there.

Next, bullet-point-wise is Passion for excellence. I don't actually know what that is. Other than simply stating I'm going to be "balls to the walls" amounts of effort every day to provide the best possible customer experience (in some many words) I don't really know what they want to hear out of that one.

Next is teamwork. Well I did create that way of converting a thumb drive into a bootable PE environment via the WAIK. I created and made available a Ghost image of it then created a word doc explaining how to re-image the thumb drive. There was the above mentioned installation of software on the thousand PCs as a team effort. That was a tough thing actually, everyone having separate excel spreadsheets and then having to combine them all. Actually there's lots of instances in which I attempted in some way to benefit the team at multiple jobs. Although those efforts were not always noticed by the ones that mattered most.

Track records of success? I guess I kind of mentioned that with some of those examples.about batch files and so forth.

Well I could probably keep writing for another hour but it's getting late so I think I'll just go to bed now instead. Obviously there will be a post of some relevance tomorrow.

Yes, it's time to upgrade the black berry. I've been using it with the same OS and mini-Opera browser for years and it was starting to get a little stale. Pretty much every day that I used it for calls or with the browser I would pull the battery out and put it back in to force a reboot. Please it's a good idea to back up things like the address book and if it will back up my mail then that as well.

So I downloaded the latest blackbery "Desktop manager" and kept getting error messages with it not connecting. I wanted to rip out opera before anything else ya see. Really the error was from connecting the black berry to the USB hub I had set up but since one of the suggestions was updating the system software of the device I hit that. Well it didn't really finish because it seemed to be such a faulty connecting between the PC and the device. So part way through the device OS update process it just stopped and wouldn't go any further. So I finally just connected it directly to a USB port of my PC and tried again. As I write this it has gotten past where it stopped on the first attempt and is on a step that could theoretically take up to and including a half hour. I don't know if it will really take that long. The delay certainly won't be on the PC's end considering the core i7 cpu I got in there. I have a feeling I should have just started this before bed and let the laptop do it over night or something. Waiting like this kind of sucks since I can't take my phone with me if I want to leave.

I had some small number of plans today but accomplished very few of them. I did go for another walk around the neighborhood, jogging a very minimal amount of it. And I am planning on getting up at like 6am tomorrow morning as a practice for my coming first-time-in-8-months work week. So I gotta go go to bed way early. Like 9:30 or something. Since it apparently take about an hour to fall asleep. Although I'm tired enough this time it may be shorter.

Apparently the blackberry update is done so I'm going to check that. Well it completed and I ended up wanting to add some "documents to go" and a "task list" or something to the device so I'm right back to where i started from with the current operating taking up to and including 30 minutes to complete. I expect it will take a lot less time than that since it has to do a lot less this time around then last time and last time it took way less than 30 minutes.

I also worked on the "back plane" of my server. By which I mean I took the back plane apart and looked inside. No really indicator as to how I would fix the current issues it is having nor any way to tell if the remaining two bays will continue to work into the future. I think I'm just going to check that peice of garbage and go back to the 5 1/4 - to - 3 1/2 adapters that I mentioned previously.

Of course speaking of my server I need to go back in and start deleting stuff. As it turns out larger and larger capacity hard drives keep getting cheaper and cheaper. So it's a lot easier to simply continue to add newer, higher capacity drives instead of re-organizing. Which isn't necessarily a good idea since it will be a mess taking up that much mroe space. Of course, what I should really do is a combination of adding space and organizing and then mark all the drives as "duplicate data" so it is all redundant on more than one physical drive. Although that will effectively cut the storage space in half at least the data would be backed up with that much more confidence. All my important documents of course are backed up on multiple computers as well as "in the cloud" thanks to DropBox, which I obviously like quite a bit.

How I feel about the new black berry OS will have to wait for tomorrow. Although I just noticed my address book as apparently been wiped out. Maybe I have a copy of it stored some place. It seems like the desktop software really should have made a bigger deal about this will wipe your address book or something to that effect. I think it's going to take a while to re-build that unfortunately. 

It seems like, some how, a lot more of these entries should start out with something other than Today, I. I mean I'm not sure how else I would start a post but it still seems like on some level there should be some other way or perhaps just a lot of vareity of startting posts. Guess I'll have to work on that.

Well I managed to continue my balancing act I've been keeping up since yesterday, at least I think I did. I can only hope I haven't grated on the the lady's patience enough I blew my chances. I did manage to call and confirm the interview time, so I'm glad for that.

I also took apart my server to see if I could figure out why it was skipping one of the hard drives when it got to Windows. Appaerntly  the "back plane" has some non-working spots. Which should have been obvious from the lack of lights in those spots and the lights in the spots that were working. Also the little fans on the back of the backplane don't work any more. So really the thing is pretty much failed electrical-wise. So my choices are to either take the backplane out and then take it apart  to see if I can find any obvious severed lines or any other reason it would be not working or to simply get rid of the backplane and book up the hard drives with some random 5 1/4 - to - 2 1/2 adapters so they fit in the optical drive spots. Only problem is I have no idea where the front plates for this particular chassis are. I'll probably try the take apart thing first and go from there. I mean two out of the four spots work now but who knows how long they will last considering the other two have failed as well as the fans not working. 

Since it was sunny for the first time in seemingly weeks I also went for a little walk/jog around the neighborhood. Actually I did that yesterday as well but forgot to mention it. Today I actually did a few stretches before I went. Not sure yet if it really did any good. Although my joints didn't hurt nearly as much so it must have helped.

Other than all that I had the bright idea to [first wash then] use my sleeping bag as yet another layer on my "sofa couch" in addition to the "mattress" the sofa couch came with and the foam padding from my last bed. As I write this I would say it is actually pretty comfortable.

I haven't done a lot of studying of late for obvious reasons but I guess I have an excuse now. I don't remember what else I was going to write so I guess I will just end this post now.

"Choices"

Today I have some choices to make. I found out the start day and time of the new job I have agreed to take is Monday at 9am. I also found out I have passed the technical interview of the salaried position and they want to send me to the first in-person "team" interview at 11:30am either Monday or Tuesday.

I am having difficulty figuring out how exactly I will be able to accomplish both starting the position and getting myself to the interview next week. Perhaps if I asked mentioned an important errand I had to run on Tuesday and therefore needed a little bit longer lunch. Or perhaps if I asked if the interview could some how be at 7:30 or 8 on Monday, although some how I doubt they would be willing to go for that. Well all I can do is ask, right? Oh and the interview is "expected to last an hour" so making it on a lunch break may or may not work. The real advantage actually is that by sheer coincidence the place where I would interview and the place where I am starting next week are within a few miles of each other. So it wouldn't be that bad of a drive getting from one place to another. If I am remembering correctly actually. I'm pretty sure I am though. Actually it's not too late in the day I could just drive down there and find the building where I believe I would be interviewing and then time how long it takes to get from one to the other roughly and that way I will know.

So I have no idea what I am going to do. I mean obviously I want to keep the job I'm signed up for in case i don't get the salaried position but I would want to go for the salaried thing if they wanted me, I assume. But if I tell the staffing service I'm entertaining the salary position will they drop me off that job and find someone commited to a position or will they let me keep working there? I'm so confused!

....several hours later....

Okay I've called a friend of mine from a former job to try and get some advise about the situation and see where I should go with it and I now think I have a much better grasp of where I should go with it. I'm now really, really glad I managed to keep him as a contact because he seems to be able to figure these sorts of things out with relative ease and clarity. And apparently I won't be driving any place to test driving times between locations today, I will have to do that tomorrow or over the weekend.

I think I feel like moving off that subject so I will mention something else, however minor it may be: namely that I managed to change this blog's template ever so slightly so that it defaults to an Arial font. Because you see I have been manaully changing it this whole time up until now (and by that I mean since January 1st or so) so finally I went into the template, looked it over, and since there was a style defined as "body" with a list of fonts I just put "Airal" as the first font choice. Then updated the blog which took a while since this entire blog is like six megabytes or something like that and abbree catabree everything is my font of choice. Some how I doubt anybody really cared about that but it was an accomplishment for me I here we are.

Other than that there was one thing I think goes back to night before last actually I was working on that DOM project and actually managed to make it "append" rows on to a table at the push of a button, taking the value of a input box or text box or whatever they're called with it.

So to re-cap all I have to do is put in an open/close table tag with an id="table" or whatever id I want and then I can simply append rows with to that table then I can create cells and append the cells to the rows. So there's jsut a table. Theoretical rows I create (TR tags) then theoretical columns are create (TD tags). Then the TDs are appended to the TR and the TR is appended to the table. The actual HTML, if you were to view source, still just has the one humble little unpopulated TABLE table tags and that's it. But as I click the input button more and more rows/cells are added to it. Yes, at least to me this is really quite special. It was actually made much more possible when I finally learned the append object of the DOM doesn't actually use parenthesis in VBScript whilst it does in JavaScript. That minor little detail really did mess me up for a while. Actually I found out from this specialty forums site called visualbasicscript.com which has been incredibly useful so far. I'm starting to realize my ambitious HTA probably isn't all that ambitious at all. Not when compared to what the real power-programming geeks of VBScript can can do.

There's still a few things I would like to "flesh out" and learn for this project.

Well originally I wanted to just get this blog entry out of the way so I could start filing my taxes but a few minor things like what to do with this situation caught my intention so I haven't finish the blog or started my taxes. I'm actually some-what looking forward to the taxes because I seem to always get everything I paid sent back to me which is obviously a good thing and often a pleasant surprise since I forget most of the time I have that extra bit coming in at the beginning of the year. Of course if I were really smart I would simply put in the exempt on the tax form. Still I would much rather have a surprise of getting money than a surprise and owing money if it came to that. Since it hasn't come to that yet I'm not sure if that would make a difference or not. And I could probably use that extra money per week. So ya, exempt on the tax form would have been smarter.

Ok I think I'll finish with this possibly too long blog entry.

"Waiting"

Today I was still waiting on any news from the staffing service. You know minor details like where I would be showing up, what I would be bringing with me and some form of dress code perhaps. Also, I expected I would have to get a urine test for the standard drug testing. So in all likelihood, everything else being equal so to speak, I think my first day will likely be on Monday. Since that is the first of the month it would really make sense in any case.

Other than that all I really did was go for a walk since the weather is apparently shifting to some form of pleasent in place of the consistently-miserable it has been. For whatever reason I just haven't been able to sleep the last few nights even though I feel tired and I am in bed. I just lay there seemingly wide awake for seemingly hours I didn't feel that bad when I woke up though so I guess I did get some not terrible amount of sleep.Actually the lack of sleeping probably has something to do with a lack of exercise or even menial, seemingly irrelevant stretches and jumping jacks or whatever. I think even five minutes of something like that per day would probably help quite a bit.

So I went on the walk trying to make myself tired. Did a little tiny bit of jogging but not enough to really get myself sweating profusely like when I go on that five-mile thing.

After the walk I did drive down to my Dad's house to have dinner with him, his wife as my Grandma. After dinner we played a card game called baseball. It's sort of strange game but I actually won the second series of hands so I guess either I'm getting or I just happen to be lucky for that particular shuffle. Yes that is about as dull as that sounded. Good dinner though.

On the way home I decided to stop by at a Borders and look at the books. I wasn't actually planning on buying anything, just browsing the books and studying the DOM book I had brought with me. But instead and seemingly without realizing it I started reading this VBScript Programmer's reference book and before I knew it was really time to go home. So I took the book up to buy it and mentioned a coupon I had recieved in my email and the guy ran it through at the 33% off price like nothing. Geuess I should have mentioned that to the border's people when I bought the two DOM books a few nights ago.

Well two things about this: one is apparently I have picked up a former habbit of buying things I may or mayn not need or ever utilize I thought I had finally kicked. It was PC games for a while there, now hopefully not but I think i think this habit has shifted over to PC books. Still PC-something eh?

The second thing is apparently VBScript as a programming language is pretty much dead. There's few to no books in any of the stores and the books that are available are usually pretty old. The one I bought today was from 2007 and I think it is about the most recent available. But I rationalized it since I really do need a handy up-in-front-of-me type reference for the innards of the language. It's enough to find stuff on the internet but sometimes it's to know what I need to do just not exactly what the thing is called that I need to find. So the book fits the bill.

It's too bad everyone including Microsoft is moving away from VBScript but it is a pretty easy language. And my rationalization for learning this language as opposed to say JavaScript which can do all the same stuff for what I ami trying to do right now is that VBScript does have some passing similarities to VB and by extension VBA so presumably I would have a slightly easier time being able to read VB/VBA code and also VBScript seems like it is the favorite of existing administrators and it would certainly be nice to be able to look at someone else's code and decipher/read it with relative ease.

I did come up with some cool ideas for the HTA I'm apparently hatching right now and I made some notes in the HTA code in the form of comments describing those ideas. Not sure yet I'll be able to really implement all the stuff I keep thinking of. but considering how easy it apparently is to spend a lot of time and how much I enjoy working on this HTA I will likely make some kind of progress.

Since I'm trying to go to bed earlier these days in prep for the new job I am going to bed now. I'm surprised this post lasted as long as it did.

"Offer"

Today I got an offer. Actually it's through a staffing service and I haven't actually talked to them never mind interviewed for the position or with this company. Which seems weird. According to the staffing service lady the company had lots of resumes and some how narrowed it down to me as the only candidate left and then decided they were making me an offer having never spoken to me. Apparently for whatever reason that is just the way this company does their hiring. Of course the initial run will be for two months at which point they can decided to renew or not renew my contract. Oh, and it's for $25/hour.

Okay that just by itself would be super-fantastic-news any day really. Except today I also had a "technical phone interview" for a salaried permanent position. A position that has two in-person interviews assuming I passed through the phone technical interview.

The $25/hour thing was like sign-the-forms-now and they're-making-you-an-offer and all that so it's not like I could rationalize saying no, I want to wait and see if I get this salaried position or something. So I took it. 

And actually it was literally like two minutes after hanging up with the technical phone thing that I got the call telling me I was being extended an offer. Which I am glad for actually because this information would likely have distracted me during the technical interview. Which I did quite well actually. The questions seemed rather easy to me. Very basic sorts of questions it seemed.

So I said terrific I accept the offer in regards to $25/hour position and went down to Sacramento to sign the tax forms and what-have-you. On the way back I stopped by where I think the office is just to see what it was like and be able to acknowledge that I had been there at least once.

When I got home I sent all the various recruiters an email informing them I had accepted an offer but that I would be emailing them as soon as I needed another position and thanking them for their time and work on my behalf. Or whatever. I was really just trying to keep them in the loop. But also I emphasized I hadn't technically started yet so it could still fall through, so to speak. I tried to word it as best I could but it probably did not come out very well written. I just wanted to get the email sent out to each individual person as quick as I could so I could move to my other plans for this evening like cooking dinner, making phone calls, writing in a blog and possibly that thing that may or may not be important:  showering and some form of hygiene.

So no apparent progress on the PHP or DOM fronts yet today. May be I'll be able to work in some reading on one of those two and maybe not.

Actually I had a couple hours leading up to the phone interview I could have read quite a bit but instead I decided to jog my memory about stuff related to the position. Didn't want to pollute...or whatever...my mind with other thoughts about PHP or the DOM or whatever else. All I wanted was job-related thoughts, pure and simple. And possibly that helped quite a bit. Then right after that there was the offer and the driving down to fill out forms so I didn't read after the interview either. 

Oh and one thing I have found some what rare about phone interviews is the interviewer actually calling at the agreed upon time. But this guy today really did call at the agreed upon time of 3:00 right on the dot. No half our early or not calling at all for him, heh. So that at least I really appreciated.

So really that is all I have done all day today: stuff related to this job and that, filling out tax forms, yada-yada-yada...I don't think I have anything else to add on any subject so I am going to wrap this up now. Wish me luck at my new job...

"Perot"

Today I got the new wheels put on to my car. I also paid them to re-align my wheels as needed which ended up costing me another $60US. On top of the $770 I already paid. Talk about insult to injury. At least my wheels and tires better damn well be fantastic for whatever remainder of life the car has in it! Which I imagine isn't a whole lot.

I also got not one but two calls for two more recruiters. Actually one was the same of the previous job, the on I interviewed for and didn't get, ya her. She called me about a completely different job/position at the same place. Not sure I want it that bad but I said I was interested anyway. Not a lot to lose in that regard I think.

The other call was from a company I was kind of sub-contracted to at my last job, Perot systems. Although they were purchased by Dell recently so I guess it's "Dell/Perot systems" now. Anyway I'm quite excited about that. I mean it's hard to really get my hopes up at this point considering the number of disappointments I keep having so this is about as excited as I get these days.

I passed the little pre-screening thing the recruiter put me through and I have already got an email saying I will have a "technical phone interview" tomorrow/Tuesday. She made it sound like the interview process is moving through quite quickly so I'll know relatively soon what may or may not happen with this sudden turn of events.

Other than the calls and getting new wheels for exorbitant prices I sat down and really played into the DOM. I learned that although JavaScript syntax may indicate a (" ") is requried apparently VBScript isn't always going to agree. With the appendChild method for instance. In VBScript there's no (" "). Learned that the hard way, eventually.

Since it's almost midnight I guess I should wrap this up. Wish me luck!

"Niece"

I have no idea what I should really make this entry about since I did relatively little since my last entry. Pretty much all day today I played with my Niece who is a very mature 2 1/2 years old. I say mature because she seems so smart for 2 1/2 and when I show pictures to people and ask them to guess her age the response is usually "between 4 and 6".

Anyway to say she is quite a character would be to put it mildly. Observing her just makes me wish she had one or more other two year olds to play with at any given moment. She seems some how frustrated by the old people she is currently surrounded by. My sister is six months pregnant though so I guess she'll have a play mate soon enough.  Still some how seems a shame for the poor kid right now.

I could once again write about my adventures with "the DOM" but there isn't all that much yet to report. I do learn at least a little more with each passing day so at least I feel like I'm making some degree of progress.

I did actually do some amount with the PHP book today, namely going through some of the code in the SQL chapters, creating the theoretical database and adding some records. Luckily the book I am using has an official web site with all the code I can copy/paste for setting up all the records in the tables. I think one reason the PHP thing has turned into something of a chore is that I could easily spend four or five hours just on one chapter entering in the code, experimenting and taking notes on the chapter in Word. And who has that kind of time? Well I do have that kind of time technically that doesn't mean my interests don't occasionally shift this direction and that though. So that's like four hours a day at least. Not much else I can get done if I spend that kind of time on the one thing. Obviously I need to get up earlier.

I won't talk too much about jobs because that always depresses me other than to say I have accomplished some of those things I have had every opportunity to do in the last seven months or so but some how haven't. Like getting rid of a ginormous 19" CRT that must have weighed roughly 45 pounds and also getting rid of a worthless early-1990s era laptop that had a fried BIOS and I should never have purchased to begin with. Actually I knew that when I bought it but I will bought it anyway. Obviously that was an incredibly stupid decision. I even pointed out to the guy the BIOS was fried and it wasn't ever going to boot again. Then I stupidly bought it anyway. So yes, I'm glad to be rid of it. And the monitor. It allowed me to move some of my crap  in to the closet where the CRT had been sitting. So as I had mentioned before if there were any mental sub-conscious blocks about working because I had those minor little things left to do while not working I seem to be slowly clearing them away a little at a time.

Okay I can only think of the two more things left to go on about, which may or may not be related. Firstly the weather has been rather horrible. Always cold and rainy and mainly miserable.  Us poor California people aren't necessarily accustomed to this sort of thing. And secondly I should really vow to do some exercises and stretches, even if there some slight amount, ever day. I mean even if I can only do one or two push-ups and about the same for sit-ups (not that I'm admitting as much) if I do that every day I'll eventually get stronger and better at it. Right? That's the theory anyway. Also, maybe I should just tough it out and go on that five mile run/walk despite the rain and wind and miserable cold. Maybe.

I think this will be all for tonight.

"Moon"

Tonight I watched a little movie called "Moon". Obviously low-budget, if I had to guess, it really wasn't all that bad. It really only had the one actor. Well one actor, possibly his double and this HAL 9000-like computer A.I. system that may as well have been another character. The computer's voice was Kevin Spacey actually. I recognized the main character from a movie from roughly ten years ago called Galaxy Quest. He played the "plucky comic relief" sort of character. Named "Guy" as I recall. He wasn't so funny in Moon but then he wasn't really supposed to be. The obviously did do a great job on this low-budget movie because I really did buy that he was on this moon base. Some of the exteriors were obviously CG but I was able to look past that. Actually I kind of wish it could have continued on further with the story. Really seemed like it had some other places to go. But that would require one or even two more actors. Couldn't have that could we?

Next I'll mention the LAN party i went to last night. I showed up around 7:00pm which was apparently later than I should have. I thought it was just supposed to start at 7:00pm but every body looked like they were already up and running and whatever. So I guess I'll try and remember that for next time.

There were probably roughly 20 to 25 people there playing. When we first started it was a lot of TF2, which was pretty fun. I started with the "Heavy" class and ended up playing that exclusively. Mostly because I forgot how to change classes but then I realized I was doing pretty well so I just kept picking it. I didn't have L4D2 or MW2 so I didn't do much whilst everyone else seemed to be playing that.

Eventually we played the old hated game, BF2. I hate that game because it goes something like this for me: Play for ten seconds, die, play for ten seconds, die, play for...12 seconds...die...repeat that about 30 times and the end. Lots of random deaths for some random perch of some well-disguised sniper. No feedback or anything else as to what I'm doing wrong or how to improve. But I played anyway. Probably got about 3 kills the whole hour or however long it was that we played. I disliked it, if you haven't gathered.

Around 11:45 or so my eyes started to water so I decided to pack it up. My eyes were watering because I was using the my big 27" or so TV as my monitor and at really high resolutions it can only be run at 60Hz. And if I (and I can only assume most others) sit too close to a monitor running at 60Hz my eyes will start to water and burn badly. So I could either stay away from the screen for 30 or 60 minutes or whatever or I could leave. And since I would rather be sleeping then at a LAN party not playing games I packed it up. Over-all I think I had a good time.

Other than all this I did spend some time learning still more about the DOM and inserting content into a web page. I'm drawing from a number of sources actually. Books, web sites, the samples in the editor I use called conveniently enough HTAEdit. Actually HTAEdit is an incredibly neat free-forever shareware application that really seems like it deserves more credit actually.

Any the only real difficulty I have run into so far is trying to translate some of the JavaScript code into VBScript. I guess there's just some VBScript quirks or features or whatever that I am just not that familiar with. For instance I re-wrote this one JavaScript function from a book in VBScript but when I then try to run the HTA it's like it's automatically just running the code in the function for some reason even though the function has not be called. So then I tried making it a Sub instead of a function and it still game me the same error. I'm sure there's an obvious reason for this but I just don't know what that could be at the moment.

I don't think VBScript is that bad of language actually. I guess just being locked to IE and Windows as it was while JavaScript is seemingly universal has just kind of killed it. For that matter Microsoft's JavaScript called JScript may or may not still be called that. I keep seeing references to JavaScript on Microsoft's site now. Maybe they just gave up trying to have their own locked-in technologies like that I don't know. I think at least for client-side all that stuff has been left by the way-side for a little thing called PowerShell. I haven't yet started on that.

Of course my VBA hasn't actually got to the XML part yet. Either opening an existing or writing a new one. I think I'm on the writ track though. Maybe within a week if I keep working like I am. Course with all the people calling me about jobs maybe I'll have one within a week. Okay not really. I just keep getting more and more depressed don't I? Not feeling a lot of incentive to get any hopes up at the moment.

Okay I'm starting to depress myself here. That's enough job-talk. Actually I don't' think there's anything left so I guess that's enough in general.

"LAN"

I'm ending up writing this entry much earlier in the day than normal to get the post "out of the way". Of course that not usually a good sign one is really enjoying something if said thing has be done to get it out of the way so to speak. I mean it's not that I hate doing entries it just sometimes seems like a chore when I could be doing other things like reading my PHP book.

Actually I don't think I'm going to make my artifical deadline of January 31st for the completing that book since I don't think I even read it for the last two days. I did read parts of another PHP book and I did read parts of those two JavaScript/DOM books and also last last night I found some great pages on reading and writing XML files using VBScript in the form of an HTA or plain WSH type application. So I feel like at least that part is now some-what within reach. Or at least it is "come together" that slight much more.

The only other thing of note for today in the LAN party I am planning to go to tonight about 6:30 or so. Course I could show up earlier to make sure I get a good spot. I actually haven't purchased one of the main games they are apparently going to be playing which I imagine will take away from some of the fun of it all but between the PC and the car repair plus those two books I bought last night for no particular reason I just don't think I want to spend another $50. Maybe that's just me.

Actually a week or so ago I actually re-purchased Battlefield 2 via steam. It was a combo pack with all the little expansions/add-ons and a some-what reasonable price and I can only hope steam does in fact keep the thing patched as necessary. I still have no idea why a game with so much emphasis on online play would lack an auto-updater. But there ya go.

To be honest I don't actually like BF2 as a game. Outside of LANs I don't even play it, ever. But I am apparently in the minority since it is played extensively at pretty much every LAN party I go to. So I know I have to have it. And actually I have forgotten my account name and password yet again so I'll probably make yet another account for it. I just don't care that much about it and never play it. I don't even know why an account is required. I'd like to be able to play at a LAN and just play without a stupid account name. At least when I change 3D settings the re-calculating phase that used to take a seemingly long time now takes hardly any time at all.So there's that.

Well I've got PHP to read so I'm going to wrap up this little abbreviated entry now.

"Depressed"

Well maybe that's over-exaggerating a little. I don't know that I'm really that depressed. My ego isn't exactly in a state I would describe as healthy but I don't think I'm that depressed.

I found out that I did not get the job I interviewed for yesterday. I was actually feeling a little confident, I had some feeling of a glimmer of hope on some level. A hope that maybe this long, long trek of unemployment and indistinguishable day after day would soon be coming to an end. And wham I'm cut back down to size quite efficiently, aren't I?

But on the some-what better level I am receiving a quite regular flow of calls and emails from staffing services about open positions. In fact today I had a meeting scheduled for 10am with a staffing service. Unfortunately I never looked closely at my dry-erase board nor did I switch the TV to computer monitor mode in time so I just forgot to go. The poor recruiter just calls me and says "we're supposed to be meeting right now". I then remember I had the stupid meeting and apologize profusely for forgetting. We re-scheduled for 2:00pm instead.

I thought it was a mostly  good meeting but then I thought my interview went "mostly good" as well.

Actually on the interview I thought my hands-on was about the best part of the whole thing for me and the feedback the recruiter got was that I was too slow. Had I realized I was supposed to be fast rather than thurough I would have finished in five seconds instead of being methodical like I was. But the guy didn't see do it as fast as possible he just said to troubleshoot it and walk him through my logic so that is what I did. I wish these people would just make up their minds on the stupid rules and stick to them.

I think I actually do know what I did wrong though. I asked this one question, I knew it was a stupid question even as I asked it, and I just get this feeling that question just lost me the job, didn't it? and now I think that was probably the correct assessment.

As usual I also did not get enough sleep. I always have trouble sleeping the night before an interview for whatever reason. I don't know what the deal is with that. Even writing some stuff out in the blog didn't really help.

I was also a little less than fully prepared. I didn't go and look up vPRO and AMT or North/South bridge to make myself intimately aware of the whole history and all the functionality and what each part does. Which I obviously should have done. More than obviously.

So any combination of those things is what really cost me the job. The comment about being too slow on the hands-on portion though really still bothers me. I mean what the fuck. Isn't thoroughness important? I mean if you wanted me to go as fast as possible why not just say that. Seriously. What...the...fuck..

Ok, fine, whatever. Lets move on to something slightly more light-hearted: namely that I just bought two new books after that 2:00 meeting. I don't even think I should have bought one but I bought two. This was because they both discuss more or less the same thing but in varying degrees of detail. Namely the "document object model" as it related directly to manipulating XML documents.

The one book discusses the DOM in great detail and in a very well written way. But doesn't really go into XML specifically. The other touches on the DOM relatively lightly but goes into using the DOM to manipulate XML documents quite extensively. I really really wish I could have one book that covered both of these subjects with the detail of the respective books. Since that wasn't an option I just bought both books. Probably not necessary but i think I they will come in handy at some point in the future. At least I hope so considering the money I spent on the respective books. I mean I have to utlize them now. Jeeze they were expensive.

I also for some reason took my car in to the place that both sold me my tires and usually changes my oil on account of I lost the sticker that tells me when my next oil change is due as well as my two front tires seemed to be going flat rather quickly.

So the guy tells me I've got another 1,000 miles left before I need a change and then he checks the tires. Then, 45 minutes later, he finally mentions the chrome on my wheels is digging into my tires (something like that) and causing them to leak. He showed me how the damaged wheel and how the chrome was flaking (or whatever).

So then I had to order four new wheels, which along with labor was like $730. So great, on top of that giant cost of my new PC I now have this. I also put this on my credit card.

Actually I left mid-way through this entry well partially to make dinner and partially because I got a call from a lady who was possibly in India about another job. She wanted me to make some modifications to my resume as well as get something fax to her. I guess it seemed out of the realm of possibility that I wouldn't have a fax on account of no land line. And no scanner either. So I drove around a few places trying to find a fax machine I could use but everybody was either closed or didn't have a fax any longer or whatever. And for some reason the same job came in within minutes of each other from two different people at the same staffing place. You'd think they'd have some kind of system to prevent that kind of doubling-up on solicitations. But I guess not.

Well I'm sure there was something else I was going to write about but I think I'm tried of this blog so I'm moving on to my next thing for tonight.

"Anticipation"

Yes, I went to the interview today. It was an interview unlike any I have ever had before.

There were actually three stops along the way in this interview, and two other cnad

Okay I am going to interrupt my own blog to say I have some how broken my wireless keyboard. I don't know what I did but it just stops taking certain keys after a few words. Keys like delete, backspace and L. I  put in fresh batteries hoping that was the issue and it appeared to start working for a moment than it was right back to the issue. I also did the re-connect buttons on the keyboard and the receiver to end up with the same issue. I then uninstalled and re-installed the driver for the keyboard and it is happening. Actually on my last install of Windows 7 the keyboard and mouse actually showed up as a "microsoft keyboard and mouse" thanks to a driver found by windows update and I thought that happened this time as well but it just says HID Keyboard/mouse now so I don't really know what is going on. So I switched to a USB keyboard connected to my laptop to finish this post. Which is fine actually because this is pretty comfortable.


Okay now on with the blog. Where was i? Right. The interview had two other candidates there at the same time and there were three stops along this little interview "tour" or whatever. My first two stops were interviews with two sets of people each in two separate rooms. The first one I'm not actually sure how well I did. I just got the feeling I wasn't quite hitting all the right notes with the interviewers some how. The second stop with the two different people I thought I did much better but then one of these did things like ask me about the PC I had built for myself and ask if I play any games. The last stop was a more practical test that involved working out some pre-set issues with a motherboard laid out in front of me. The guy at this stop mentioned the issue would be a memory error but he wanted me to go through the steps and talk through all the troubleshooting thoughts I was having as I was having them. So I did this, checking each possiblity as it occured to me. Finally I removed the last remaining stick of memory and replaced it with another, powered on the motherboard and it booted to Windows. Obviously I'm skipping a rather large number of steps I took but I'm just cutting to the chase. I am some-what confident I actually finished that troubleshooting step faster than at least one of the other candidates.

So I'm fairly confident I scored relatively high on two of the three stops of the tour. I was actually supposed to find out by close of business today what the decision was but as I was actually expecting I was not called. I expect sometime between 8am and 12pm tomorrow I will receive the call informing me of good or bad news.

I'm actually getting a fair number of recruiter calls lately. In fact when I was walking to my car leaving the interview I turned my phone back on and I had a voice mail from another recruiter about another position.  And i got two calls yesterday. So ya, at least in theory, I have some options if I don't get this position I interviewed for today. In theory.

Also the weather was rather bad today. I mean i realize I'm just a California guy and weather is relatively mild compared to pretty much every place else in the world but the weather was just awful. I mean 40mph gusts, driving rains, seemingly horizontal rain which I don't see very often...it was just awful. Made the trip through the parking lot to the building where the interview was that much mroe difficult actually. And on the way home with all the torrential rain going up a hill my car was making an unusual sound. I don't particularly enjoy unusual sounds coming from my 230k mile car. I think it was just the water getting reflect up into the under side of the car...or something. Luckily it didn't stall or break down or anything. But i wasn't sure for a while there. I got behind some other cars and used their tracks through the rain to make sure I had good traction and that seemed to help a little why people would try to go 70mph in such horrible weather I have no idea. Just seems really bad some how.. In an unsafe-way I mean.

Tomorrow I actually have another generic meeting with another staffing place. I think I mentioned it in yesterday's post actually. Although if I get this job the meeting will be rather moot anyway. Not necessarily bad to keep my options open for whenever the next time is I am looking for a job. Which could very well be tomorrow. So there ya go then.

It seems as though I actually had something else to write out about. Not sure what it was now though. I could mention I've been kind of watching a show called Trueblood lately. Although I've found it's best to so NOT watch that right before going to sleep. Shows apparently affect my dreams lately. Which I haven't really noticed before some-what recently. So after one Trueblood I watch two ToS episodes, Diggnation and Hak5. Some hopefully there's not too much Trueblood floating around up there still so as to continue to cause bad dreams. Or perahps merely disturbing dreams as much as anything.

The show actually isn't that bad. Obviously nothing like Buffy which is an obvious comparison to make. And it's obviously aimed at an older audience than buffy. Probably the 21+ crowd if I had to guess where buffy was obviously aimed at high-school aged kids.

And they seemed to have gone out of their way to make differences. For instance in Buffy when a vampire is staked they just burst into dust while in Trueblood they explode in to a bloody mess. The complete opposite affect in other words. They vamps in Trueblood also seem to degrade into a burned up mess some-what slowly as opposed to just being turned to dust rather quickly like Buffy's universe. So ya, differences. And the whole premise is different anyway. The whole point of Trueblood is not to find and kill bad vampires. Not yet anyway.

I've watched up to the early episodes of the second season so far. And I still think it's too early to really say one way or another if it's going to be a truly great show. I think it shows some potential but I'm just not sure it is truely great yet. I keep waiting for the premise to be more obviously stated or some over-arching storyline to present itself. But I don't really see so much yet.

Oh one thing I did want to mention was an episode of ToS I saw today. I forget the exact episode name now, it was something like A taste of Armageddon. Something like that. Anyway the Enterprise was taking this diplomat to a planet to establish regular relations come hell or high water no-matter-what. The people of this planet told them to NOT come but they had no choice. So Kirk and team go down to investigate and find that the planet is at "war" with a neighboring planet.

But here's the twist: the war was like some kind of chess-by-mail kind of deal in that the two planets would send hypothetical weapons back and forth and the casulties woudl be calculated by a comptuer. If a particular citizen was flagged as a casualty that person had to show up to an instant-death type of booth to be killed (kind of like the "suicide booths" in Futurama actually). All the numbers were tracked and both planets kept track of the deaths. In this way all the cities of the planet along with the culture and infrastructure were kept intact. And this "war" had been going on for 500 years.

But then the real twist came up: a theoreitcal hit was registered on the orbiting Enterprise. Which meant all crew members had to be vaporized so their death could be recorded. This, the people of the planet argued, was necessary in order to avoid an actual war involving real devestating weapons being used by both planets.

So Kirk decides to issue "general order 24" that involves the enterprise wiping out all kinds of infrastructure and cities within two hours. And also he started destroying the vaporizing rooms.

Eventually Kirk actually destroyed the calculating computer that was connected to the other planet's equivelent computer. He did this because he knew neither planet actually wanted a real-life devestating war that would wipe out cities and cause slow agonizing death by starvation of millions of people. In other words the fear of devestating war was incentive enough to prevent war at all costs.

Ok this is a fairly obvious metaphor for the cold war of the 1960s. Having weapons pointed at each other and the credibility of both sides that both are willing to use them effectively neutralizes both sides and neither is willing to nuke the other.

But it also points out that taking the absolute horror and hell out of war so citizens can sit comfortably in their livig rooms relatively unaffected by it will only serve to remove any and all incentive to figure out a way to STOP the war. This almost seems like a lesson that could be applied to today now that I think about it...

I should also point out I actually left out several plot points so if you want to watch the episode it isn't completely spoiled for you.

Lastly about ToS I would say I'm starting to grow accustomed to it's 1960s nature. In the same way I grew accustomed to subtitles in foreign movies, the singing in certain musicals and possibly old English in various Shakespearean plays, I'm starting to grow accustomed to ToS's grossly outdated technology and style. And when I see episodes like that described above I really see how it's worth watching and start to realize just why this show is so beloved by so many.

Ok that's it for tonight.

"Excited"

Today I am excited about tomorrow. I am excited because I officially have the interview scheduled for tomorrow at 10am, scheduled to last rough two hours as part of a "hands-on" interview. Apparently I'll be demonstrating my skills instead of simply talking about them. Something to look forward to! I still don't feel like I have nearly enough information to effectively prepare for it but all I can really do is my best. I know my mad skills and I know I can demonstrate them to people given the opportunity so that is what I will have to do.

Today I actually received two additional calls from two different other people. One was for an as of yet unnamed hospital chain and the other is for a company about 25 minutes away. 

The hospital one I am scheduled to go in and meet the recruiter on Thursday for a general-purpose meeting apparently and the other I have merely been submitted. I told the lady I had an interview tomorrow which was probably a mistake. I should always lie about that and just say I have nothing lined up. Because though at the moment I suppose it would technically be a lie if the job falls through or I don't pass the interview that it will be true enough at that point. And telling her I have an interview only serves to further incentive for her to put more emphasis on someone else who did say he did not have anything else lined up (whether true or not).

I am just not that good at lying apparently. Or it just doesn't come to me as easily as it it comes to certain parties. But I'm cynical enough these days I know these recruiters will pay me $10 less than everyone else and screw me over 10 ways to Sunday without blinking an eye so it's actually a vitally important survival mechanism to effectively lie when it comes to job recruiters. At least in the IT/tech industry. And no, I'm not being cynical about this. I'm speaking with...well not excactly 10 years of experience but pretty close actually. 

That's what kind of weird about this recruiter wanting to have a generic meeting with me before discussing the name of the hospital or filling out any paper work. What...does he think I'm some kind of amateur? Does actually believe his fancy recruiting Jedi mind tricks are going work on me. Dream on buddy, dream on. I know I'm looking for droids and I know exactly what they look like. I may be a typical faceless drone but I am still immune to your what-not...so there.

Well I've just stepped away from the blogging to install some new lights and take a shower and stuff and now I see it's approaching 11:00pm. I should probably call it a night what with the big day tomorrow. I should probably try and remember to install the printer so I can print out my resume and whatever else in case I need it. It'll be fine, really.

"Breathing Room"

I'm glad I'm making some amount of progress on this room each day. Maybe if I keep this up I will eventually have a half-decently organized room...

That's about all for today really: I put five of the large number of storage bins along side the book shelf/entertainment center and a sixth is acting as a bed-side table sorta deal for remotes and my PHP book. Which I did read some of today though I have yet to actually finish the entire chapter I started. That is what I will do after this blog post.

I also hooked up the receiver for my wireless head phones so now I can watch a show over the network as loud as I please without regard to keeping anyone up.  I also used windex to thoroughly clean off my desk. There are but a few things left to truly open the room up to maximum...roominess. I'm not sure I'm really going to use the sofa-bed in bed-mode though, although there is actually sufficient room now.

In other news I don't think I have mentioned before I actually started watching Star Trek: The Original Series (ToS as it will hence-forth be known) thanks to netflix. I haven't even completed the first season (of 30 episodes no less!) but I am already quite enjoying it both on a sci-fi I haven't seen sort of level as well as a "oh, that's what Futurama was talking about" sort of level. I think once I finish watching ToS I'll be able to go back and watch through Futurama and enjoy it that much more thanks to now "getting" all the in-jokes and references to ToS. In fact almost every episode is full from top-to-bottom of ToS references and jokes of one kind or another. I have already gone on to Netflix and posted a review of ToS in which I spent most of the review imploring Trek fans to go and rent Futurama and laugh hysterically at all the jokes.

I am also renting the show Fringe from netflix, which I am also enjoying. I remember watching the pilot and really, really enjoying it. for whatever reason not everyone liked that first episode but I thought it was great. Since I fell behind in episodes I didn't even start watching the first season so I may always be behind in that show since the DVD set always seems to come out right before the new season premieres.

I also tested out a few games I have installed, re-setting the video for wide-screen and making sure they work. I then played some Dragon Age for a little while. For whatever reason my mouse wheel doesn't work with the game so I can't zoom out and in. I also have to say it really feels like some kind of NWN: The next generation. And I mean in that in a complimentary way. The first NWN was actually incredibly good. The first one was made by Bioware and Dragon Age was also made by Bioware (the second by the oblivion people, the developer of which escapes me at the moment...Bethesda?) Anyway obviously much upgrade graphics, improvements to the engine, the characters all seem to be on a much larger scale and having a "war hound" is certainly pretty awesome. The only question will the mods for it be add-ons for the main quest like Oblivion or will there be completely independently generated mods/quests like the first NWN? Actually it'd probably take about 15 seconds to find the answer to that but I don't really feel like it at the moment.  And I really haven't made it much past the sort of "starter area" anyway so I don't know what kind of a game it will end up being or if the plot will be any good.

Since I can't think of anything further I guess I will conclude this entry.

"Wide Screen"

Well this is my first blog post using my super-great wide screen TV/monitor of twenty-something inches (I went to say 26 or 27, I don't remember). I'm actually sitting a fair distance back from the screen which is just as well since the resolution I'm running at only support 60Hz. And why is that bad you ask? Because too close up that frequency really makes my eyes sore and watery. But way back here at roughly six feet it doesn't seem to be that bad although I haven't perfected the universal font sizes yet so the text is rather small. In fact I can only barely see the text, though I can make it out clearly. I'd still prefer if it were one or two sizes smaller. Actually I'm pretty sure there's a setting for Firefox, Chrome, IE and every other browser that allows you to set the default font size I just haven't done it yet.

The other monitor that I am creatively referring to as the "4:3 LCD" is to the left of the main TV/monitor, both are raised up thanks to some motherboard boxes. This isn't really working though so I am going to have to find another solution.

Today I did pick up a light, LED-based actually, so my room has a little more light and I can read some place besides the living room. As it turns out it's more of wide-format flash light than the kind of light that will do any good in a wide-open room but it's rotatable so I was able to use to read so I'm happy with that.

I did test out one of the main reasons I did this whole thing which was so I could sit on the sofa-bed in sofa-mode and watch TV on the big monitor when I was wasn't it using it as a monitor. And I have to say it did work and it did work rather well I think. I do actually have some wireless headphones to utilize although it would be a chore I think to reach the TV to plug them in and take them out. This is in addition to the "real" headphones I have connected to the PC.

Which leads to the other point which should probably go without saying which is that I have successfully hooked probably everything back up to power and network and whatever. My main PC, the server the switch, it's all connected to the internet. Even the receiver for the wireless keyboard/mouse reached far enough I didn't have to dislodge it from it's sticky-taped perch beneath my desk. Same for the headphones.

Actually I just fully comprehended...myself. Namely that the wireless headphones would be to broadcast everything from the TV including that which does not come from the PC whilst the other headphones are just from the PC. Since the PC's audio isn't connect to the TV there's not chance of getting the same audio from the both of them. Right? 

There's still a couple of unanswered questions about this setup but it's not really a question that I will figure something out. For instance USB DVD drive access for the PCs: some standard place for them both or something more within reach. I do have a USB hub. And my PC hardly ever even needs a DVD. Oh, I'm working on it. Just stand back...

Oh and the interview. Hmmmm. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. I don't know if I should study one or more subjects in preparation or if I should just brainstorm and walk my mind through some of my accomplishments. I'll have to work on it much more tomorrow. Assuming the interview isn't tomorrow.

You know that last post where I said i had this idea and I'd better write out so I can do other stuff? Well guess what. Yep, I did it. I went to the Ikea and purchased what are creatively called a "sofa bed". Some people I hear like to call them futons but I guess the swedes do everything their own way, eh?

For various reasons as soon as we can back from the ikea with this new bed we took the old matress/box spring to the dump. When I finally got back to the condo I started to move stuff around, then move it some where else, then move it again. And the lack of an over-head light in this room didn't exactly help. Finally I got a large portion of my crop moved out of my room so I could move the dress so I could pull back the desk then move the dresser into place then move the desk into place so on and so forth. Then I actually assembled the stupid bed. After all that.

Since then it's just been a game of tetris moving various pieces of furniture to different places in my room to see how if at all well it will all fit together. Finally, at long last, I think I have a winning combination. I'm still surrounded by endless piles of boxes and crap piled on top of other crap but at least I'm not set up to use my roughly 27" wide-screen/flat TV as my monitor with the LCD (the 4:3 kind) supplementing it. as it so happens the two are about the same height even though the 4:3 LCD is a 19".

I also have to eventually plug everything in to power. Some to a regular power strip, some to the mere surge protector side of a UPS and the most important stuff to the actual UPS battery.

I actually started this re-organization project around 4:30 or 5:00 today and I was still going at 11:00 tonight. That's when I decided to go to the grocery store to buy some dinners and have some dinner. And since today is almost over also make a blog entry per my commitment for blog posts. Almost missed it.

Now this was actually my first trip to the Ikea. I could write about that experience if I wanted to but I think I will save that for tomorrow. Hopefully to be writing it my my actual desktop instead of my laptop whilst sitting on my new count. Although it's actually not that bad of setup. Quite comfortable. Ok that's it for tonight. Just made it by 15 minutes.

"Futon"

So every so often something like this happens: I think of something that I think is incredibly neat or a good idea but I can't do anything at that one moment then no matter what I do I just can't stop thinking about that idea. Maybe it's an OCD thing or something, I don't know. Sometimes writing about it or other-wise thinking it through helps make the obsessiveness wane a little so that is what I am going to do now since I actually would like to be reading my PHP book instead of think about this.

Alright already so what am I thinking about? Well due to my recent purchase of a pile-o-parts for the new PC (which is still awesome) I am rapidly running out of room in my bedroom. In fact to get to my laundry I have to slide a box out of the way, get the clothes I want then slide the box back.

I have also been thinking about when or if I would like to move into my own apartment. My current place is pretty crowded and my room has no light to read by so on and so forth.

So then I was brainstorming about how I would have this new imaginary place-of-my-own set up.

As it turns out my TV was sold to me as a PC monitor (it's 1080p 27" or so deal-ee). I mean it has a TV remote and a TV tuner but what with the DVI/HDMI/VGA ports it works just as well as a monitor.

So I thought okay in my new place, the place I have in mind being rather small, I would have my TV setup on a table or what-have-you then my desk in front of the what-have-you and there's my TV as a monitor. And possibly my current LCD to the side of that. Then when I want to watch a video I'd simply move the chair out of the way and sit on the futon sofa to watch or convert it to a bed and lay down to watch, either way.

So i was thinking about all these possibilities and how I will so do this when I move into my own place when it occurred to me I probably could simply do some re-organzing of my the way my current room is set up and do the same-bloddy-thing.

This would involve getting rid of my bed in favor of either a futon or simply a sofa that converts to a bed. Then then other-wise useless dresser thing that takes up so much room would be the above mentioned "what have you" for the monitor and probably the PC as well. Then either my current desk or a newer/smaller desk in front of it and...well obviously I would have way more room this way. Might even be able to fit a game console or two in my room.

On a brief side-note I'm thinking about getting rid of my 360. I just don't use it often enough and when I do I'm usually afraid it will break at any possible moment. Also apparently the hard drive is broken since it won't boot when the drive is on and will boot when the drive is off, with 100% consistency. I'm going to go out on a limb and call cause/effect on that. Still have a Wii though. So there's that.

Ok, now, where was I? Right. Futon. Of course alternatively I could make some hard choices about some crap to get rid. Even if I did that I still just have too much furniture for that tiny room. I'm just outgrowing it. I guess.

I think I feel better now. I knew that whole thing would loop in my head into infinity until I did something with it. In fact I'd probably think about it into the night and literally lose sleep over it. And that, among many other reasons, is why I am writing in a blog every day for a whole year.

Now all I have to work on is light for the room and I'll be-all-set-maybe.

Ok the only other thing I'm think about, on the subject of lighting, is a pair of safety glasses I saw at a home depot this one time. It was a pair of safety glasses with these two little LEDs on either side. I thought I could use them for reading since light is apparently such an issue for me. There's probably better solutions out there. Those safety glow sticks for instance. Lamps. I hear they're living up to the hype. Okay that last one was just funny. Point is I need light.

Now all I need is some place that sells futon sofas.

"Together"

Today I did actually finish putting together my new uber-PC in its case with all the fans powered up and blah-blah-blah. And I have to say it is rather fast.

One bit of news though: last night after I had submitted my post I decided to see if I could fix that little issue with the system only recognizing four out of six gigs of memory by putting the third memory stick in the only other slot it could go into. I wasn't actually expecting it work. I was all set to order another 2 gig stick. But I put it in the other slot and powered it on and...OMG it worked! Six gigs baby!!

I still have yet to finish installing all my applications or activating Windows so I can install MS Security Essentials but in almost every way I am completely back to where I was on my last system.

I have to say I already knew Firefox portable with Foxmarks (Xmarks?) was pretty sweet but this just reminds me of how good it is. All I had to do was make a new shortcut and run Firefox and then was my browser, all my bookmarks, add-ons...everything. I did have to re-install flash but that didn't really matter since I needed to update the version I had anyway I think. Anyway Firefox portable w/Xmarks == good!

Other than that I went down to my Dad's house for dinner for a couple of hours, which was quite good. Had some of that old in-person kind of gaming with tangible playing cards. I know weird right?

Well since I'd kind of like to install dragon age: origins on my new PC I think I'll end this post early tonight and get that started.

"Pile of Parts"

Today I received my giant pile of PC parts and I set about putting the thing together. It was a lot more of a pain then I thought it would be, at least at first. I have learned enough now it's better to put the memory sticks and processor into the motherboard before putting the motherboard into the case. Which work pretty well actually.

The ATI 5870 card I purchased was large. I mean I had an idea it was going to large but didn't some realize it would THIS large. I mean the box for the card was almost as large as the motherboard box, if that means anything. The card itself it actually much more compact than a motherboard but that's probably because the circuits are folded over on each other or whatever.

I actually started the OS install before I had technically finished putting together the actual case. So just the minimum in hooked up, not the fans or the second hard drive or anything. I had ordered six gigabytes of memory but so far the system is only recognizing four gigs of it. That's six gigs in the form of three 2 gig sticks. So what I'll probably end up doing is ordering two more gigs of memory for a total of eight gigs.

I am actually quite impressed with Newegg for their prompt shipping: I ordered all these parts, including a rather large chassis in a rather large box, on Friday and received them all today, the following Wednesday. I would definitely classify that as very, very impressive.

I also installed the OS on a spare 40 gig hard drive I had laying around apparently. Not sure when I got it or what if any condition it is in but I didn't really feel like over-writing my current PC's C: drive for the new PC first.

I actually had this bright idea of downloading all the drivers for the motherboard and graphics card ahead of time and putting them in my dropbox then all I would have to do is install dropbox on the new computer and oh look all the drivers. Well I was having this annoying issue last night with my internet going up and down at random and apparently the driver files I downloaded were currupted. I'll also mention randomly before the ATI graphics drivers are installed the "Windows experience index showed a 1. One of the most powerful graphics cards on the market and I get a score of 1 from Windows?

Well I've just re-downlaoded the ATI CCC drivers, installed and rebooted. Lets see what score I get now...

Well apparently my overall score is rather low on account of the hard drive. Windows gives the whole system the score of the lowest scoring peice and that component is the 40 gig IDE hard drive I installed on. So the whole system is a 5.0. My current system that goes back four years or so gets a 4.3. The worst part there as well is the hard drive, which gets the 4.3. I guess the Core i7 and this fancy motherboard really speeds up even old IDE drive transfer rates. Or perhaps the RAM has something to do with it. I don't know.

The graphics performance on the other hand is as follows: on my old system "Gaming graphics" gets a score of 6.6 whilst my new system with the fancy ATI gets a 7.8. I assume that a rather big jump. I don't know that I really have a good mark from one place to another as to the significance of jumping from a 6 to a 7.

The card actually came with a couple of games which I actually wasn't expecting. One is on an actual CD the other is a key code to claim the game on steam.

And steam is actually one of only a couple of major things I have to get installed over there, the other being MS Office.

Both of these things will go much smoother once I actually put the secondary drive into the new system.

But here's how I am going to get steam all of its associated what-not over to the new PC: first I'll mention on the old PC that steam is actually on the secondary hard drive, labled P: under something like P:\program files\steam. So on the new PC I will rename that folder so it's something like P:\program files\steam2 at which point I will install a fresh copy of steam to P:\program files\steam, and login with my account without downloading any games or doing anything else. I will then make sure stream is completely closed and in a non-running state and I will rename this fresh steam install folder to stream-fresh or something to that effect and I will renamed the above mentioned steam2 folder to simply steam. Now I can run the normal steam shortcut and besides logging in again everything should be as it was. Although often times I end up re-downloading/installing some of the games anyway, go figure.

Office I'm just going to do the old fashioned way. I should really go through and figure out how to automate that shouldn't I?

I am currently re-downloading the audio driver from Biostar for the I-don't-know-how-time-est-time...maybe they just have a corrupt file on their server or something. This last attempt it actually got through the whole thing, it had like 2 seconds left estimated for download completion and then it just stops and says there was some error for an unknown reason. WTF?!? So now I'm downloading the driver file directly to the new system instead of on a different computer to drop box. Although maybe the dropboxes just hadn't synced yet and that was why I got the error.

Actually all the drivers were found by Windows 7 (64-bit). There actually were NO question marks or explanation points or anything in the device manager. Of course there all generic. At least in the case of the graphics it didn't seem to do much of anything what the the score index of 1 and all.

So yes, this is pretty much dominating my attention at the moment. And I'm sure it will continue to do so until I am satisfactorily using it as my primary machine.

Oh and I should find out if I have a second interview tomorrow. Wish me luck.