Confessions Of A Jackass

Yeah, I've been keeping secrets from you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me dear readers! It was only for your own good though! I swear! What I'm trying to say, is... well.... its kind of hard, but... well....... I have a new blog. It has every post this blog has, including the last one (written a few minutes ago). I wouldn't have said anything, but I just made a really cool header for it, and I want you all to see it (courtesy of B Mag). So yeah, I'll update on both for a while, but otherwise update your bookmarks to http://tschwab.wordpress.com. Eventually, it will be the exclusive lens into my life, so get used to it!

Tradition

Jason brought up an interesting point a few minutes ago. Most of my blog posts are posted at obscene hours. I figured, why break tradition? So here we are - 4:30 AM, and I'm going at it.

Today was a good time. I slept in, and was pleasantly awoken by a phone call from Ms. Hogler. We had a nice morning chat, and by morning I mean 11:30. Hey, let's face it, my job is pretty cool. Alas, Monday is looming on the horizon, and it brings evil tidings. And by evil tidings, I mean training at 8:30 in St. Louis Park. How will I survive? The weekend will be the light at the end of that long and dark tunnel. I can't wait! :)

I had this grand plan that fully formulated, like all good plans do, in the shower. I schemed ways to distribute the files across my multiple hard drives in a way that would allow for the installation of three separate versions of Windows. I have Windows XP right now, but I also want Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003. Vista because it is damn sexy (let's face it), and Server 2003 because Billy and I are going to experiment with setting up our own blogs, an exciting prospect that Jason might go in on with us. We'll see. Right now I have Windows XP and Vista co-existing on my machine, the project that occupied most of my afternoon. I will be wiping the hard drive with Vista on it, however, and partitioning it so that both Vista and Server 2003 will have homes. That is a project for another day - tomorrow, err, today... when I wake up.

After that I went downstairs in search of food, which my house is currently lacking. After some digging in the freezer, I discovered a bag of frozen french fries and went to work. In 30 short minutes I had constructed a mound of delicious french fries with Chipotle steak seasoning (don't ask). They were good. I took my mound of fries out to my dad's office along with the Thinkjesuspad and began working on my dad's spreadsheet. It was boring, as I was just fiddling with the formatting to meet my father's exact specifications. Dull work indeed. The fun VBA programming will commence when I wake up though; I'm looking forward to it.

Queue yet another exciting, albeit short, phone call from Michelle while I was desperately searching for my sandals as my parents were taking the family to Chilis for dinner. Michelle was also on her way to dinner with some friends, so we parted ways for a time to fulfill our dietary needs. I talked about Vista and baseball with my parents and brother at dinner.

We then sped home, and I was nearly immediately picked up by Jordan. We were off to see the movie Click starring Adam Sandler. I conversed with Billy and he decided along with teh kr3z to join us, which was nice. We had a good group going - Kyle, Jordan, Jason, Adam, Billy, kr3z, and myself. Nothing to compare with Michelle's dinner companions, but still a nicely sized group.

The movie was good. I laughed a lot more than I expected to. I've come to realize that Hollywood has destroyed any expectations I have of any film I see. Seriously, I walk in to the theater, and unless the movie is Pirates of the Caribbean 2, I'm not expecting anything good. I've just been let down too many times. Unfortunate, I know, and more than likely the primary reason for declines in revenue (not piracy, yarrrgh). If you keep your eyes open, you'll find that, in the end, piracy really only does good things for the world, like booty, and rum. These are two things the world cannot do without, believe you me.

Anyway, we departed from the relatively short movie (1hr 37min) for Jason's crib. I took a detour for some more phone conversation goodness, but rendezvoused with the fellows for some late night fun. Jason and I watched some soccer on ESPN classic, and decided that all good soccer players are Jamaican. Then we sat on our laptops for a bit, swapping good programs. I also got into the Picasa Web beta, for which I am very excited. Also, Windows Media Player 11 is kick ass and just replaced iTunes as my media player of choice. Get it at Microsoft's website. Do it.

Kyle eventually joined Jason and I for a viewing of The Girl Next Door, which is such a good movie. I haven't seen it in a while either, so it was fun to experience. Jason and I were in ridiculously good moods, so we laughed uncontrollably on several occasions. It was a great time.

After the movie we left Jason's. Kyle and I had a good conversation out at our cars, and then we parted ways. Which leads me to the here, and now - sitting at my computer, tired as fuck. And with that, I bid you all fucking adieu. Until we meet again...

Can You...

... just pour unheated spaghetti sauce on hot, freshly cooked noodles? I'm not sure, but I just did. The results: well, the sauce is not really my type - it's very chunky and full of weird things that I'm not really ok with. That doesn't mean you can't pour sauce on hot noodles, I'm just not digging the sauce. Oh well, I'll live. Actually, I just added a lot of italian seasoning, so it tastes better. The second best part of living at home (the first being free food), is the freedom to experiment with that free food.

Okay, now I have to do a different type of experimentation. One that, sadly, involves learning a lot of Excel's nuances. In fact, the last of my eBooks just finished downloading. I'm off.

I'm Trying Not To Fall Asleep

Really, I am. It is not my fault accounting is so boring. It would help a bit if it were actually challenging, but I'd classify it as tedious if anything.

I do get the joy of reading about gains in the stock market, and realizing what I'm missing out on. In reality, the market's current state (that being very volatile) is no good for small players who don't have much invested, because you can't afford to ride out of big dips; risk is just too great. That doesn't mean much when Google stock goes up 4%, however. From the Journal:

"Google (Nasdaq) rose 14.96, or 4%, to move back over 400 at 402.13. The Internet search company continues to gain market share, says research firm comScore Networks Inc."

Think if you were a heavy volume day trader. If you bought a ton of shares and rode that wave, you would've made a fucking killing.

Ok, enough of that. So, I've recently discovered Microsoft's new competition for Google. Some of you may know about it, but I just recently happened upon it (thank you Internet Explorer 7). The service is called Windows Live and, frankly, it kicks ass. I ran a few test searches on Live and on Google. The results were almost exactly the same. All other things being equal, I see no reason not to use Windows Live. It looks sexy, while offering the same functionality. Not to mention, a lot of their services are still in beta stages, which is always an exciting time when you get involved in testing cool new services.

Now if only people would relax their insatiable appetite/love for news about Google, and start giving other competitive services share of the spotlight. Hey, at least in the Google frenzy less time is spent ridiculing innovative Microsoft products, right? Right?

I'm A Confused Young Man

It's true. I just can't decide what I want. We're talking about this blog, people. I'm not going to get into the details, but all of a sudden, I want my own domain, my own from scratch css template, and more posts per day. But do I really want all of that? I'm not sure. Rest assured, I'll make up my mind in a few days.

The timing couldn't be more unfortunate, of course. There are some exciting things I'd like to write about, but I just can't bring myself to do it while this blog is in a state of disrepair. Well, I should just get off my ass and fix it, right? I'm not so sure. When I began to consider switching blog hosting services for the second time, my first thoughts were, "I'm such a blog whore." Is this how its going to be? I'll have a blog for a couple months or a year, and after that time I'll just throw it away for another one? Leaving a swathe of decrepit blogs in my online wake just doesn't seem desirable. Hmm, it seems I'm talking about exciting things regardless of this blog's current condition. Anyway...

Then again, this really has nothing to do with some fleeting tendancy of mine, but entirely with growth. I started out with Xanga. Xanga was cool. Xanga popped my blogging cherry. It had everything I needed to start writing shit (literally, haha) on the web. It got old pretty fast. I was looking for more customization. I wanted more, damnit. I wanted my own template, with content of my choosing. Let's face it, Xanga has limitations in the customization facet of web blogging. I have no idea if this holds true for the pay service and I don't care.

So, here we are - Blogger (yeah, no url needed, *looks up*). Blogger lets me edit my template! CSS is a powerful tool. For supporting evidence, I refer you to the Zen Garden. Additionally, I can use a variety of Blogger hacks to add new and innovative functionality (though clearly my skills in the implementation department are suffering... haha). Alas, I'm left wanting still more. And, are you really surprised? I'm a driven guy. True ambition knows no bounds.

So, I'm probably going to buy a hosting package for $8 a month. I'll install Wordpress. I'll apply this cool Windows Vista theme I found today in lieu of my from scratch template, which will be under development. I can't really say anything beyond that, because frankly, when I had my Xanga blog I never considered it would eventually be on Blogger, or that I would eventually want to leave Blogger.

So yeah, I could write about all of these other exciting things that have been happening, but I won't. I have to go eat with the family now. You could ask me about these exciting going-ons, ya know?

P.S. This post was written in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. I haven't decided if I like it.
P.P.S. Without you, where do I belong? Without you, how can I go on? ;)

Testing Various Changes...

This post exists mainly to test new features I'm in the process of implementing right now. Additionally, though an auxiliary benefit, this post exists to humor myself. However, this statement brings to light the concept of uniqueness. I would contend that most if not all of these posts exist to humor myself, and I'm ok with that. Then again, it is 6:00am, so who knows.

Officially, Under Construction

This is so much fun! Yeah... not! Why won't the fucking Name, Email, and URL fields align next to the text? I don't fucking know! Why is my current template set up so the entire post is made on the main page instead of unique pages for each post? I don't fucking know! WHY IS THE TITLE OF MY BLOG IN PINK?!??! I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!!!!

Actually, it really isn't that bad. If it were easy, it wouldn't be any fun. Right now, it's kinda fun. Kinda sorta fun. It will be nice to have a unique and fully functional blog, incentive to press forward, I guess.

My current objectives are to get unique pages set up for each post, with small (paragraph or so) previews of posts on the main page, and a "Read more..." link at the bottom, ala Engadget. If I can manage that by wading through an ocean of foreign CSS code (seriously, there are div tags everywhere and I haven't the slightest clue as to the purpose of any of them!), the comments should automatically transfer to the post pages, instead of at the bottom of each full post on the main page. Once I fix this, I'm going to move on to adding other new and amazing things.

New Comments. Pink.

Well, new commenting system, say hello to blog. Blog, this is new commenting system. It isn't perfect, as one of our Einsteinian readers has already discovered. I like the pink though. Adds to the flavor. Anyway, I'll be troubleshooting the new system, and adding new stuff throughout the evening. One.

I'm Done Entertaining Myself...

...with the game of guessing who 'Anonymous' is for practically every comment. There are times where it is all too obvious who is hiding behind the veil of anonymity, and others where it isn't so easy. Now it's just fucking annoying. Jason is the only exception to this. He has a Blogger account.

What's the solution? I'm not asking my readers to all get Blogger accounts, unless you have a lot of friends with Blogger blogs or you yourself have one, then you are being a bitch, and I'll have to get drunk again.

The solution, as I see it, is for Google to stop being retarded, and make the comments interface similar to that of Jason's blog, which is just like the Engadget setup. If anybody knows of a solution to this problem - some sort of code I can put in my pages or anything similar - to fix this problem, please let me know.

I don't want, nor am I going to switch blog platforms again, so something better happen damnit.

(This post was written with oddly light-hearted intentions, I'm not actually all that mad, but I will force identification if possible to humor myself, mwahahahaha)

Big Monitors With Surround Sound

Jason Reed, inspiration to us all, recently finished a four page blog entry, and inspired me to make an uncharacteristic day-time update.

I was over at Jason's house on Father's Day to pick up a 35mm male to 35mm male audio cable, because in my boredom I decided it was high time I attempt to plug a computer into our 47" Plasma TV. The adventure in technological wonders was defiant of the norm. First, it took me roughly 30 minutes to figure it out. Generally, these things are very drawn out and frustrating affairs. This one was neither. Second, I was not required to purchase any additional cables or components. Well, ok. I did buy a 35mm to L-R RCA cable from Jason the night before, but that was before I decided to pursue this endeavor; I just wanted the cable for its usefulness. Prudence pays off, it seems. I'm getting ahead of myself - time to back up a bit.

Ok, so I take my laptop, 35mm to L-R RCA cable, power adapter, power extension cord, and a stack of DVD's down to my basement and begin to investigate. The receiver has a "PC" area of inputs on the front panel, consisting of VGA video and 35mm audio inputs. There is also an S-Video input next to the "PC" section, but that is considered "Input 4" and I don't have an S-Video cable so it doesn't matter to me right now. So I plug the VGA cable stolen from my second monitor into my laptop and accordingly the receiver. After some experimentation, I realize that I need to get the TV into "PC" mode, which required I peruse the instruction manual, which told me to press the big fucking PC button right below the power button on my remote. Grand. Of course, with the amazing Thinkpad, I'm able to set up a "Presentation Profile" for my TV, which runs a test to make sure the resolution, color depth, and refresh rate are supported by my monitor (also making sure everything is properly aligned), and allows me to disable the LCD shutoff power save option and screensaver whenever I'm using this profile. Basically, if anyone tells me I made a mistake in shelling out the extra money for a Thinkpad, I'm going to laugh at them. Moving on.

Alas, the audio presented a small problem. In retrospect, a bit of careful thought would have made the obvious apparent to me. Well, that didn't happen, so I made the trip to Jason's house thinking I needed to match where the audio input goes with where the video input goes - on the receiver. However, I failed to realize the receiver sends all audio signals to the Bose sound system device, which then controls which peripheral signal to receive audio from. So, I didn't really need the 35mm audio cable, because I was supposed to plug the audio into the back of the Bose device, which accepts RCA inputs, meaning my newly purchased L-R RCA audio cable is perfect for the situation. Once I figured this out (10 minutes tops), it was a simple matter of feeling around behind the Bose device and stabbing the RCA cable into the inputs, then switching the Bose device to "AUX" mode. And then, I watched the intro of Lord of War on my burned DVD with my father. I also tried out one of the GSN High Stakes poker episodes I downloaded. Both worked magnificently. I was pleased.

However, I did note that the DVD playback through the VGA cable was of the same quality as that played through the expensive HD component cable. Yeah, something is not right there. I'm willing to bet something was improperly set up. The next step is to bring another DVD player downstairs, and then to plug that into the HD component cable to verify that it is not just the Bose player sucking. If it turns out the Bose player is not crap, we will have a real problem on our hands, i.e. I'm going to be making phone calls to people who set our shit up and demanding they come out and fix their retarded mistakes.

With that, I am off for a short while. I hope most of my readers are enjoying Father's Day.

Golf Or Bust

So, I decided last night it would be a good idea to watch Double Jeopardy at 2:00 am. Yeah, that movie is NOT that good. Definitely not worthy of 2:00 am viewing status, but alas, I was deceived by my own judgment. So I woke up at noon today. So it was a bad trade off, no need to rub it in.

When I woke up, it was very sunny and very hot outside. I remember looking out my window and remarking to myself, "I have to do something outside today." Well, that statement was contingent upon the weather situation as it was at 12:00 pm.

So, I sat around for a while on my computer, checking my downloads (Sex and the City season 5 and Boiler Room finished... yessssss!), reading a few articles from the journal and the news in general, and talking to a few people. I was easily motivated to take a shower today, so I took care of that early in my day, as in, once I was done on my computer. I think my shower experience would be greatly improved if I had tunes playing, among other things I can think of ;), while it takes place. I'll have to work on that.

So, I had this urge to do something outside, and I decided that golfing would be a good activity to partake in outside. That was the plan. Go hit some golf balls. Jason had mentioned his interest in getting together just before I started Double Jeopardy last night, so I figured I'd call him and see if he were interested. Good plan? I think so. It probably would have been a good time... Yeah, a real good time. Probably would have been. Great friendship building experience, ya know?

Well, I'm looking around the house for my weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, because the computer screen was hurting my eyes, and I realize that my parents hadn't picked it up when they got the mail. Alright, fine. I have Boiler Room paused, and nothing else going on, so I'll make the effort to walk outside and grab it. Well, I begin my walk down the driveway, destination in clear sight. Nothing eventful happens, I reach the mailbox and retrieve the goods. I turn around, take two steps, and proceed to get rained upon like no other. What? What in the fuck? So I run into the garage, and call Jason.

Me: Dude, it's raining outside!
Jason: What? (I hope it wasn't on MY coat!)
Me: Yeah! I was walking to my mailbox to get my paper, and all of a sudden it starts pouring out.
Jason: Well, shit. Do you want to hang out and see if it clears up?
Me: Sure
...

So we decide to hang over at Jason's place. I pack up my clubs, laptop, a can of Vault, and of course, my WSJ, and proceed to get in my car and drive the 30 seconds to Jason's. Well, as it turns out I did not need to pack up my clubs at all, for the weather was not quite satisfied with just ruining my plans. It wanted to rub this amazing fact in my face, so the rate of downfall increases. A lot. I had my wipers on full speed. I did get to see an old guy driving his bike through the torrential sheets of downpour, so I wasn't the only one shortchanged by the sudden shift in weather.

Anyway, I arrived at Jason's and we sat around for a bit doing our own things on our respective computing devices. Jason was looking at some cool web design site, and I was reading some more news articles. Michelle delighted me with a short but ever amazing conversation, cut off by dinner time, which definitely takes some getting used to when you've been living the amazing life of a college student away from family.

And then we went golfing. On the Xbox. Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2005!!! Wha-wha! We took a break and ate some pizza, and then we went back to golfing. We've played the front 9 of Pebble Beach, and some skill games, including "T-I-G-E-R", which is like HORSE or PIG except with golf clubs and targets scattered about crazy terrain, like a canyon or a weird valley. Word to your mother, we're dangerous!

So yeah, I guess we might be watching a movie in a bit. Later dear reader.

There Is A 50 Fuck Limit For This Blog

You can't fucking say fuck more than 50 times on this blog. There is a 50 fuck limit. If you do, censorship will ensue. With that said, 48 more to go. And here we go.

Oh my, so much has happened since my last update, I don't know where to begin. This is going to a fucking problem, but what the fuck am I going to do? Deal with it, I guess. This 50 fucks in one fucking post is a fucking horrible idea. Too late.

So, Jason and I are having a conversation right now. He just returned from Flashbelt, which is a three day convention/conference for web designers/developers. If you are interested in Jason's experiences, I suggest you click the link to my right, as he was actually there. I am really excited for him, for a few reasons. First, earlier today he logged on AIM and started chatting with me, while at the convention. All of a sudden, he started freaking out. Apparently the director of the convention walked up to him with full versions of Dreamweaver 8 ($400) and Contribute 3 ($80) and threw them at him. Free! Amazing! Not only that, but upon further conversation with him just now, I've learned that at least one guy is interested in seeing a portfolio, because he would accept Jason's quality of work any day. And this kid is only part-way through his second year in art school people. We both talked and I decided he is allowed to purchase a castle with Tom Buckley and myself. We will do something exciting with our trio of giant domiciles. Like pillage the countryside. Yeah bitch! Power wheelin! Fucking right.

Ah, rambling is fucking fun. So, Jason is a guy who is going places. Word. Moving on.

I started class on Monday. Yeah, can't say I'm a fan. The teacher is typical Carleson crazy. 'Nuff said. There are seven "students" in the class who are at least 30 years old. There are almost enough where I could imagine they wouldn't feel awkward, but alas, not enough. They still stick out and I hate it. The schedule is insane too. We have a quiz on Monday (the third class), on chapters one through three. Oh, and we're covering chapter three in that class, before the exam. Yeah, crazy. It will be a short two months, though, and then I'll be done.

I'm really fucking tired, but the show must go on. Fuck.

So, Michelle is back in Wisconsin now, which is sad, but I will be visiting her soon. I must say, after all the talking up, I am excited to see Green Bay. If it sucks, I will be angry, but I can't imagine it sucking, so yeah.

We had a smashing good time during her last few days here. There was The Break Up, which is one of the saddest fucking movies of all time. There was the dinner at Old Chicago, 40% off, wha-wha! Thank you Andrea for that unexpected, but ever so amazing gift! I hardly know you, but I'm fairly certain you are awesome. There was the visit to my parents house, and the watching of Austin Powers, which was extra awesome. There was the painting of her apartment's ceiling the day before inspection and fine assessment. That night there was also the drinking of a bottle of wine, and the viewing of Sex and the City. I currently have torrents of seasons one through six running (which brings to light the concern of sufficient hard drive space...). There was some cleaning, and doing laundry. All in all, it was a spectacular time.

So, I've downloaded GSN's entire series of High Stakes Poker, which consists of exciting coverage of an invite only, mostly pro (a few amateurs), high stakes, CASH poker game. It is not a tournament so play is casual. Casual, yet there are many $100,000+ pots. Unbelievable action. The most intense moment was the last hand of one game, when you get to see pocket kings beat pocket aces, with both players going all in before the flop. Unbelievable turn of events. Imagine how pissed you would be, losing 150 large to trip kings.

Yeah, I've become enamored with poker lately. Sadly, there isn't really a good way to get involved, as I've discovered. I have no knowledge of any running games, nor do I have any means of finding any. I do have the promise of a $50 game at the commencement of this coming fall semester, for which I am very excited. Until then, I suppose it will be low stakes games here and there, and play money games at Party Poker the rest of the time. Since day trading is out (at least this year, next... maybe...), I'm considering playing poker with a portion of my summer assets throughout the school year, probably online. I have to look into it more though, so no assurances yet.

Let me tell you this, though. There are tables at Party Poker - they only happen occasionally - where people play play money as if it were real money, and it is exciting. I've done fairly well in some of these situations. By fairly well, I mean I've held my own against people who are better than myself. Word.

So yeah, summer is boring. I've begun my work out regiment though, and I'm excited for that, though the rain owned my plans to go running tonight. I was considering going out anyway, and I was even going to make a playlist on my iPod and then put it in a plastic ziploc bag to protect it from water, but the intensity of the storm and the lightning scared me off. It was close though. Instead I finished watching National Treasure. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Yeah, its really late, and I'm really tired and I miss Michelle and my left eye is really itchy and irritated so I'm going to bed. If I forgot anything else, and remember it later, I'll make another fucking post. We have yet to reach the limit.