2008

Krissy’s been teasing me about what she got me for my birthday. She said it’s something I have wanted for as long as she’s known me, and then something else is two of the same thing just different colors. I can wait until Sunday to find out what she got me, I just want to know what it is that I have wanted for as long as she’s known me. I don’t think there is anything that I have wanted for that long, I know I have wanted a cell phone, but the plan was to wait until the insurance stuff and our stuff was up here and then we get a plan, so I doubt that is it. I guess I will be waiting until Sunday, since I can’t seem to figure it out.

Bathroom Vanities can really make or break a bathroom. Vanities don’t solve all your bathroom decorating problems, but having a new one is a great way to spruce up an old bathroom. Take the one we use, it has no walls, no shower, but it doesn’t look half bad because it has a Bathroom Vanity that is only a few months old.

I know we have been looking at houses and apartments for rent, and what we have found is that a lot of them don’t have much when it comes to Bathroom Cabinets, so we’ve added that to the list of must haves. How many times do you have a bathroom and just wish you had more storage? We are trying to avoid that at any and all costs.

If you haven’t noticed, there is a new section to the Funbox section. Contact Tables are Message Me, Add me kind of tables that you will find on Myspace and MyJokeCafe. They work 100% with both sites, and I will continue to add more when I create them. I also have some more that need to be edited, but those will need to wait for the time being. I have other Myspace stuff coming, I just don’t have a timeframe yet as to when. I also have a new Fanlisting/adult section coming soon, I was just approved for it so I am hoping to get started on it soon. Of course it will be a subdomain and only linked off the Fanlistings page with nothing explicit shown there.

I would like to change the way I do business eventually. See right now everything is transferred into my Paypal account and then I have to transfer it to my bank account. One day I would like, when I am making a lot more money, to be able to accept credit cards, this way the money would be deposited right into my credit card, usually the same day, or at the very latest the next day. With that system I wouldn’t need to wait to get the money from Paypal into my bank account, which usually takes around three days to do so. The fees would probably wind up being the same either way, so the only thing that would be different is the time it would take for the money to be in my account.

My whole life I have wanted to be a computer programmer. Not just that, but I wanted to make games. Now I do not have a degree, I would one day like to get one, but for the time being I am content. See I have been freelance programming for the last few years. I have finally seen one of my biggest accounts to date go live this past week. Myjokecafe has been in the works for years and there is still a lot that can and will be added in the future. While I realize the site isn’t a game, it does have games on the site. They are just not under a heading called games, they are under a heading called Play Jokerino.

When you play Jokerino, you win jokerinos, which can be redeemed in the auction area for real products, like a Casio keyboard. There are a couple of Flash based games in there that I didn’t write, though I did modify them. The other games though, the ones that aren’t Flash based, I created. Yes, Flip the Joker, Black or Red, and Deal Me Out are all programmed by me. Now I realize they aren’t to the same capacity as say Halo, or Call of Duty, but it is a good start if you ask me, and I don’t expect it to be my last. I am always experimenting and learning as much Flash as I can, so Flash games aren’t totally out of the question for me, it is just going to take time.

Even though I have no extensive formal education in this, I think I am doing pretty well. Eventually maybe I could collaborate with the likes of Cliffy B, or the guys at Bungie, but for right now I am happy that my dreams are becoming realized.

I don’t think I will ever forget that day seven years ago when four planes changed the way America thought, and the way the world looked at America. It was a horrible day, the events were like something you would only expect to see in a movie, only it was no movie. Unlike most Americans, I do not believe that 9/11 changed everything, after all we had been attacked in ’93 and on other occasions that were technically on US soil. I think we need to look at what had happened and move on from that. I don’t think that there was anyone in the Eastern Standard Timezone that wasn’t affected by that in some way, some may have lost a loved one, some may have looked at that as a wake up call live each day as if it was your last, and some may have looked at it and decide to take a stand in some way.

Personally I took it as never do something that you can’t do with your whole heart and that you believe in. That is why I decided to freelance and work for myself, of course sometimes it can be hectic, but I don’t believe that it isn’t worth it. I would like the pay to be a bit nicer, but it has grown as I have gotten more experience with things, so hopefully the trend will continue and I will get more money as time progresses.

We must never forget the lessons that were put in our hearts instantly the day we saw those towers on fire, or when we saw the sky turn black, or when we saw the plane that was taken down by the passengers so no one got hurt, or when we saw what happened at the Pentagon. We must never forget those lessons or that day.

Krissy’s dad told me that they got an alert today saying that there is a potential virus going around where you will receive an email that says you got a Hallmark card waiting for you, but when you open it, the virus takes over your computer. I have been told that not all Antivirus Software is fit to handle this virus, but seeing as how it has been out since February, I don’t see how it wouldn’t be up to date.

I am pretty sure that while some anti virus software isn’t able to deal with this, Cyber Defender can. Even if they aren’t up to date, if you have one that is, the software can potentially work together in groundbreaking new ways to make sure your computer stays clean. I have never seen any other antivirus work with other security software, they usually want to be the one and only on the computer and freak out if they aren’t, but I guess that’s why Cyber Defender is better than the others.

The Social Networking site I have been working on, myjokecafe is finally up. I was up until 6:30 this morning making sure everything was how it should be. A lot more people are joining than I thought would have in the first day, which is great, I just hope the growth rate continues.

After working on this social networking thing, it could be just a few hours before we finally open it up. I am very excited, so I will post something here when it is finally live. I just hope that it will finally be up tonight.

I opened an account online for Bank of America. I didn’t realize that it would take such a long time to have the money transferred from one bank account to another and then to get the account information in the mail, along with our debit cards. This is the last time I open an account with any bank online, it isn’t worth the trouble. Honestly I thought going into a bank with Krissy was a big hassle, but waiting for everything to go through and get the paperwork in the mail is an even bigger one. If you are thinking about opening a bank account online, take my advice and don’t. It is a huge hassle, and going between bank accounts when you have bills can be very hectic.

Ever since I linked my blog to my Myspace blog, I seem to get more and more traffic every time I post. There is no writing a bulletin, or sending messages to read my site for my newest blog entry, it is all right there in my Myspace blog, that people can come across naturally just by going to my profile. I think it is a great way to get people coming back to my profile and my site, I just wish I had thought about it before when I had the account with over 12000 friends, but if I don’t get deleted then I might have that many soon, afterall it has been only a few weeks and I am approaching 3000.

I have been thinking of other ways to promote my site, I have been thinking about cross posting it to MyYearBook, MyJokeCafe when it is open for registration, and maybe even Xpeeps, but I am not sure. I know that I need something promote it well. I have been looking into Network Solutions for their internet marketing services, which I may end up doing if I can start earning enough revenue from my ads, and other private advertisers. While I think that may be a way off, it also might not be as far off as I think, or at least I hope it isn’t, this way I can have a good amount of traffic, and then expand with new traffic, and maybe then I can concentrate more on this website, while still keeping my clients, just working less hours for them.

Sarah Palin spoke tonight in her acceptance speech for the Republican Party’s nomination for Vice President. She spoke a lot about her family and how proud she was of all of them, she spoke about how she has more experience compared to er party’s rival, Senator Obama. She mentioned one key thing, one thing that makes her different than any other candidate, in either the Presidential or the Vice Presidential nominee, and that is that she would be an advocate for children who have disabilities.

Having a special needs advocate in office for children is good in theory, but we must not forget that there are millions of children who go undiagnosed with disabilities every year. I was in middle school before I was diagnosed with ADD and dyslexia, which some would say is too long to go to school without anyone noticing. Now I went to many different high schools. I started out in St Mary’s (Cardinal Mccaricks) then I went to Sayreville War Memorial High School. From there I went on to NJ Regional Day School, and finally Collier High School. After high school I went to Brookdale Community College and finally Delaware Technical and Community College. Needless to say, I went to a lot of different schools. None of the schools were alike in anyway.

In high school, the teachers will teach you something one way, and depending on how long they have been teaching, they will not even try explaining it another way. Why? Because the majority of the kids learned it that way and if you don’t then you have the problem. I guess a percentage is fine for them. I’ve long thought about becoming a teacher, the problem with that is there are so many different rules you need to follow. The students need to learn X amount of things by the end of the semester, and by that time, they are mainly studying for the finals and won’t remember anything after it is over.

I remember one of my teachers, a US history teacher who was leaving after the school year to return to Colorado, made us do some interesting assignments. One of them was a PowerPoint presentation representing different colonies. The requirements were that you used interesting graphics, sound effects and a colorful background, this way he wouldn’t be bored and neither would anyone else. He then wrote up the test for the 13 colonies based on our presentations. One of the questions was that we had to match up who gave the presentation to that state.

If I were to be a teacher, I would let him, and the rest of my teachers who wouldn’t conform guide me. Of course doing so would probably get my teaching license revoked. Granted I could probably do that in a special ed environment, but nonetheless I believe that kids, who are perfectly normal by today’s standards, need to have their minds stimulated in alternative ways. What good is it if you make them learn by the book, for the book?

Any teacher can get up there and lecture from the book, maybe even give a PowerPoint presentation from the book, but if that is the case then why be a teacher, when the book obviously has the answers? Teachers should be there to stimulate and educate. To go beyond the book, to make learning come alive, not to make learning a dull experience.

I started this out by saying that Sarah Palin would be an advocate for disabled children. While I applaud her for that, I do not believe that disabled children, should get any better an education than students in a “normal classroom environment”. Why can’t all students do those kinds of fun presentations? If you want to teach about cameras, then why not make a giant camera obscura that you can climb into? If you want to teach about weight distribution, then why not have the students make bed of nails? Reading about it and doing it are completely different things, I believe that teachers are rushed, which makes the drop out rate in this country unbelievably high.

What is the point of the Regions test, if the only thing the students learned was from a book instead of experience? Knowing Shakespeare is great, but only reading Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet because you are short on time is ridiculous. Find a different way to teach it, show the movie, go to Shakespeare in the park, put on a school play all your own, the point is teachers, find a way to make learning fun and don’t be the kind of teacher who you had in high school.

There is an old saying that the best way to learn something is to teach, if that is the case then maybe openning up the way you teach your students could help you learn a thing or two about yourself. Nine months may seem like a long time to the high school class you have, but if you think about it, it is only a short time in their lives, one that which will be gone just as soon as it had started, you may remember some of your students, but if you don’t step up as a teacher, then what is the chances that they will remember you years down the road? Maybe by teaching things that aren’t traditional you will teach them not to be conventional, maybe you will teach them not to conform, that standing out is okay and that being your own person will help you reach far greater happiness than if you conform to what people think you should be. You will only be in their lives for a moment, after that moment you can fade away, or you can stand out. The choice is yours.