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I’m at work right now, like I am every Thursday at this time, and there should have been a realtor appraising the house. He is supposed to be one of the best in New Jersey, so hopefully he will sell our house quickly, before my mother loses it to the bank.

Work goes by so slow since we can’t go on AIM or anything, but I did get some new layout ideas, which I hope to be up soon. It isn’t anything to be impressed with, but I don’t want to post it without making the graphics for it first. Then after the layout is up I can get back to making content and advertising the site. Maybe by the end of the weekend.

My poor girlfriend Kelly lost her webspace, her laptop power plug went, and she lost her wallet in the same week. Sad I feel so bad for her Sad

Ever notice how online we cannot be bothered to type out whole words on the internet? U instead of you, im instead of I’m, are we really that busy that we can’t type out the entire word? I’m guilty of this oh so common way of typing. What makes me actually think about it, is the fact that when I write a paper or a blog, it doesn’t even register to take shortcuts and use shorter versions of the words. Why is it that on the internet talking to our friends, that they deserve anything other than our utmost respect. I guess it is because saying sup is really how we talk when we’re face to face with them. If a professor IMed you online would you talk to them with such casualty?

Recently another form of typing hit the web, 1337, or leet. This is using numbers and other characters as letters. People actually type whole conversations this way. An example would be: |-|3110 |-|0\/\/ 4|23 |_| 2o|4`/. Reading this actually hurts my head, trying to convert it to english, and people use their own forms of typing to come up with their own language, so one leet speak isn’t exactly the same as another leet speak. Why do people feel the need to make up their own alphabet? It started when handles were taken and people had to come up with unique ways of getting the name they wanted, but now they type it as if it was english.

Writing in leet doesn’t make you seem smarter, actually it makes you seem like you have a lot of time on your hands, and if you have that much time, then type out every word you would normally abbreviate in some form. Of course maybe typing with the abbreviated forms of words, or in leet talk is showing that the internet isn’t formal and that what we write online in an email or an IM or even a blog should be considered freedom of speech and not be looked at any other way. Anything that it written online is the soul work of the author and it is their views of the world, and writing like that is how they express themselves, and therefore should not be criticized on how they type, or what they write.

So the cable guy came and installed the new Optimum Voice service. It turns out that the line was shot so he had to drill a new one, so to prevent packet loss. With the new service, we get digital cable, which I need to pick up the cable boxes tomorrow. I am actually caught up in my classes so this weekend will be spent doing some work around the house, watching the digital cable, and spending time with my girl.

My birthday went alright, it was the first one without my grandmother which was tough, but it was okay all the same. My mom actually got me a six pack and a cake, while my father seemed to forgot, and didnt even call me at all, but that’s how it usually is.

So onto better news: video games!

In the coming weeks there will be a lot of video games coming out, that I want. Ultimate Spiderman, X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocolypse, Age of Empires 3, plus the XBox 360, but I doubt I’ll be getting that anytime soon. The only reason I even bought the original XBox is because of Halo 2, and I only like the online play of that, the campaign mode is lacking.

So it is my birthday as of 12:02 AM I was officially 21. My life is okay at this point. My grandmother has moved on to a better place, I have a good girlfriend, and I am content with school. I may move to Delaware in the coming months, but I don’t know if that is so bad. I can still go to New Jersey and use my father’s address as the mailing address, that is only if I wanted to go to a college in New Jersey. I am not sure yet of where I will end up.

So being 21 doesn’t feel much different than being 20, only now I can go drink and not lie about my age. I was going to go get some beer at midnight, but instead I played X-Men Legends. I started playing that last year, before I got XBOX, but never finished. I didn’t remember the story, so I restarted the game. I want to get X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocolypse, only because you can play as Magneto. I love a lot of comic book heroes, the X-Men movies were kind of not up to par, although the second one was a lot better than the first. I hope the third one is pretty good. With the rumors that Omega Red and Pheonix will be in it, it sounds pretty good.

Superman is looking like it might be promising, although with the current television series, I don’t know how big it is going to be. The Superman movies with Christopher Reeve were alright, but the overuse of powers in the second one kind of took away from it, though the second was better than the first. Maybe it will bring a good video game, like Spiderman 2 did.

So I am going back to working on the layout, which I don’t know when I will get done.

So I’m at work again with nothing to do and just sitting here bored out of my mind I figured I would try my hands at my new layout. I get the Gimp and I realize that compared to Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, this thing is crap. Okay it isn’t really crap considering it is free, but it needs more features. So I started making things in MS Paint and porting them over to Gimp and it just isn’t the same as Photoshop. Oh home computer how I miss thee. I think I am going to need to install Photoshop on my laptop and bring it to school. It’s weird I bought my laptop for school and have yet to bring it. Probably due to the fact that I need to install .NET for Visual Basic and C++, and it won’t install on my laptop. I need to get that working. By Monday I must have it done.

So I will hopefully be going to Ramapo to see Kelly this weekend, but I don’t know yet due to the fact that my mother wants me to do some work this weekend and stuff. Maybe I’ll sneak up there Tuesday morning if I can’t go there this weekend.

My birthday is this week. Twenty-one years old, old enough to drink, old enough to get drunk…legally. LOL. Smile

So it is my first day back to work, apparently there are new rules due to the fact that a few people didn’t do much work in the summer. So the new rules include no instant messaging, no games, no excessive talking to other student helpers, no trying to date people in the lab. I think the only rules that are going to be hard is the no instant messaging and no games because it gets so boring here at times. Plus I am trying to work on the new layout, and Gimp and Gimpshop don’t even stand up to Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro.

My mom is home right now shampooing carpets and this weekend she said she’s giving me spackle and paint and that I need to get the walls in shape. She’s really trying hard to move quick, now that she doesn’t have my grandmother’s extra income. The fact remains that depending on when she moves, I may not be able to go until I am done with the semester, which means I might need to stay at my father’s house until then. What fun. If my mom wants to sell the house, that means I will need to clean my room. Now I can have a clean room no problem (maybe). Since I moved in, I haven’t put anything away and all my stuff is on the floor, so I will need to put that stuff away before she gets it on the market. To earn some extra money, I may be selling a 800MHZ Linux PC on Yahoo! Auctions, once I get it together and such. If that sells rather quickly, then I may sell a custom Mac, I know Mac’s can’t be customized, but I am working on adding a second harddrive, and formatting them both with a fresh install of the OS.

So it has been a few days since the actual funeral and I seem to be somewhat alright. I think I knew somehow that the end was near and I had to get ready for it and now I must griev in my own way.

I have a class tomorrow, which is my first Unix course which I haven’t even opened the book yet, that’s what class is for. I bought the laptop so I could do my work elsewhere, but for some reason .NET will not install, I need to look deep into that, but I just haven’t had much time. So this week I will be trying to catch up with classes, work, and getting the site updated a bit. I’m thinking of a new design coming soon. I think that I could make something somewhat better looking, with more space for the forum and words and not so much space for the blog. Also I am planning on taking all the 2004 postings and putting them on a archioves page at the end of the year, but that is still months away. So just to let everyone know I’m fine and now stressing and grieving in my own ways.

My grandmother just passed away. I’m relieved in a way that we didn’t need to pull the plug, and she went on her own terms. She did everything on her own terms, even when she had no idea what she was doing and that was frequently, she did it her way. That was one of her favorite songs too, it’s what got her through so much. Frank Sinatra’s I Did It My Way was her favorite song and that’s the way she lived her life, not caring what others thought or how they saw her. Everyone saw this as her being a bitch. In a way she was a bitch, and she passed it on to my mother and me. She also passed it on to the woman whom she loved and thought of as a daughter. My grandmother was the biggest bitch one could ever know, and despite all her bitchy ways she still came through whenever you needed her. She helped me get through the tough times, spent nights in the hospital with me when things weren’t so good. We had the biggest sceaming matches ever and fought like crazy. She would even come to threaten me. Afterwards we both grew closer because we knew we were more alike than we ever realized. She had lung cancer and she didn’t even know it until a few days ago. She told my mom’s friend whom I went to get that she could die happy knowing that everyone was well and that we’d all be okay. She helped raise me when my father wasn’t around, and she was the most influencial person in my life. Through everything she went through and everything that was going on with the family, one thing could definitely be said about her, she did it her way.

We miss you.

[Edit] After using my recovery CD from my laptop it worked, after discovering my XP CD was scratched. Everything is up now, all four harddrives and the DVD burner. Now I can get everything reinstalled and get to working on the site once again.[/Edit]

So I am formatting my harddrive after it crashed. I am installing it on a 20 gig harddrive so not to lose any files and then moving all my site files to a seperate partition, that is if it decides to work at all. I might need to get a new XP CD if that’s the case I’ll go to my school and get XP Pro from them and use that. Either that or try and install Windows 95 and upgrade to XP, the only problem is that I am not sure if my motherboard supports 95. With all this computer stuff I’m trying to get done, and the fact that classes start on the 6th, I won’t have much time to get it done, so I am focusing on the computer more than the site. Once everything is settled, I will be putting more effort into the site.

In other news my grandmother is almost out of oxygen from her backup tank since we brought her to the doctor the other day. We may have to bring her to the hospital soon, she is in congestive heart failure and she has gout. What a week it’s been.

I got my wired network up again, and now I’m fooling around with the wireless one. After the wireless one is up and running I am going to get the printers and file sharing all set up.

My grandmother came home yesterday with oxygen, which she never had before. We think she is having a problem breathing due to the fact that she was on some alzheimer’s medication, which she was never on before. What’s strange is that at a previous time, we were told she didn’t exhibit any of the signs that a alzheimer’s patient or a pre-alzheimer’s patient exhibits. It wasn’t too long ago that we got this diagnosis.

by leprakhauns on 18 Aug 2005 08:40 pm
So I bought a laptop today, so expect more update after I get everything up and running. The laptop is a Compaq Presario. I know it isn’t the best laptop out there, but seeing as how I will be using mostly for programming, it is a good buy. What I hate about new computers is all the crap that comes with it. All the excess software that you will never use and just takes up space.

My grandmother is scheduled to come home on Saturday, so it is a mad dash to the finish to get everything done. Deadlines usually get me going, so waiting ’till the last minute isn’t a bad thing. Well I’m going to get back to clearing the laptop of the unneeded junk.

This is my first movie review:

Summary: Deuce Bigalow European Gigalo picks up a few years after the first one left off. This time Deuce (Rob Schneider) goes to Amsterdam to investigate the recent murder of gigalos. While in Europe he is coaxed back into being the bumbling gigalo by his pimp TJ. He is pimped out to woman with problems each more ridiculous than the last, including a woman with a baby fetish and a woman with a penis for a nose.

This movie can be described in one sentence: a bad sequal to a not so great movie. The movie throws ridiculous situations at you, that would never happen in real life and expect you to laugh at it. The most ridiculous one being Sneider’s character’s attachment to his dead wife’s artificial leg. It is unbelievable and too ridiculous and uninspired to laugh at. I give it half a shamrock out of 5 shamrocks.