MikeBrum.com

Well, it’s Thursday (and also pay day). Too bad rent’s due. Eh.

Tonight, I’m going to be getting some food with Kel and her friend Danilla. Kel’s going back to Florida next week, so gotta say some good byes. Then on Saturday, it looks like I’ll be bussing down to Newport again to get all geeky with Nick, Joe and Pat. I hate the bus! Bah!

But, that’ll be the last D&D game for a few weeks. Mariah’s arriving on 3/6 and we just have a bunch of stuff to get done and my next couple of weekends look blocked. Hopefully Nick will get motivated and actually prepare BEFORE Saturday so we can get a lot done. If not, then it looks like we’ll be stuck waiting for a bit.

Not much else is going on. Though I do have to say that I’m REALLY excited about Mariah getting back to Boston! Other than about a month in June before the wedding, she’s here for good. Her pooch is going to be brought down around 3/23 by her mom & step-dad, so that will be weird. I’ve never owned a dog while I was living in an apartment, so this is going to be a learning experience. Hopefully it won’t be too big of a hassle. Oh well, not much I can do about it. The dog comes with Mariah – it’s a package deal :)

Well, my lunch break is coming to an end. I’ll undoubtedly write more as things develope.

I made one of those friend quiz things. Feel free to check it out here: http://crazy-ted.friendtest.com.

Some people (namely Pat and Elly) have decided to take the quiz twice. Elly did after finding out a few things, but Pat did after I basically told him all the right answers :) So taking that into account, Mariah is still in the lead of the non-cheaters. :)

Either way, enjoy. It’s something pass a few minutes.

This weekend wasn’t too bad. When I got home from work on Friday, I had received two items I had won from eBay, a 4-port router and a 10/100 LAN / Modem card for my (Mariah’s) laptop.

Since I wanted to stay online, I decided to futz with the laptop and get that all set up. Much like the way my luck goes, it was anything but smooth. It got to the point where anytime I tried to connect through the card, something (IE, Netscape, AIM) would crash. So, after a bit more than an hour of that, I gave up.

I ended up talking to Mariah for a while and we both got offline around midnight. I couldn’t sleep so I had the ridiculous idea to screw with the router. Surprisingly enough, the setup went VERY smooth and I had all 3 of my PC’s online and working without issue. Additionally, getting my laptop squared away wasn’t difficult at all and everything works great now! I’m very pleased with the way things are working with it! (And I can even play MechWarrior 4 again!!!)

Saturday consisted of me taking the bus down to Newport to hang with Pat and Nick. Saturday night consisted of playing D&D with Pat, Nick and Joe, after he arrived later that evening. Everything went really well. It was the first time we all played our characters together since we converted them to 3rd ed. from 2nd ed. We’re all considerably more powerful and working well together (roughly speaking). We ended up playing until about 5:00am or so. At 5:30, Joe and I left and I actually drove back to Brockton. I got right on the train without crashing at Joe’s and go home around 7:30. I was asleep about 8:00am. Needlessly to say, it was a LONG day!

Yesterday was overly uneventful by all measures of the word. I have no idea what is in store for this week, though we’re playing D&D again next weekend… which hopefully won’t run as late into the morning!

I’ve been wanting to get the pair of 3/4″ double flairs in that Mariah left me when she stretched up to 1″. They just haven’t been giving at all. I got the 3/4″ non-flared acrylics to a point where there’s no problem at all. They slide in and out without any pressure at all. A very smooth fit. But, the double flares just weren’t doing it.

So, I’ve been moisturizing my lobes for all of a couple days now and decided that it’d be worth a shot to see where the double flares were at. I did a nice lobe massage and then put some moisturizer on the flares and *VOILA* – they went in!

They look a little larger than the acrylics looked in my ears. Very nice :)

I’m going to try to upload a few pics. I don’t think I figured out the problem I’m having with the thumbnail routine I wrote. They’re probably going to look really shitty, but still click the pics and see the full sized pics that don’t look shitty at all!

Well, it’s President’s Day or some crap so I didn’t have work. Can’t beat a free day off.

Anyhow, I rolled out of bed around 1:00 or so. I just continued to go back to sleep after I woke up. I can’t say it’s a bad thing. I stayed up rather late most nights since Friday and I generally don’t get enough sleep anyhow, so it was good.

I talked to Mariah for a bit and then we both took a break to shower. After talking for a little while longer, I decided to go out and take care of a few chores. I wanted to stop by Tower Records and drop off an application for a part time job because I need to do some saving for this summer. When I get to the counter I ask the guy for an app and he gives me one. After the guy behind me finishes up his purchase, he hands me his card and says, “If you know how to use a computer, give me a call. We’re always looking for help.”

Now, I think to myself, “I know how to use a computer!” and after I finish my app at Tower, I head over to the address on the card, which is all of 2 blocks away from Tower. I go in, talk to one person and show him the card and tell him the gentleman’s name that told me to call. Well, the person that gave me the card is actually the owner of the company! So we talk about me, the company and pretty much what the company does. He basically told me to send him a resume with some contacts and that he’d get ahold of me in a few days after checking them out! He wants to see about some part time stuff and maybe entry level jobs to see where I fit in. He was already mentioning a project for running reports for some marketers he has in the Baltimore area as a “test run” so to speak.

This could very well be the “break” that I need to get into the web/technology industry. And it was so very random. If I were a minute earlier or later getting to tower, this never would have happened. Needlessly to say, I’m both really excited and weirded out (in a good way) about today!!!

After that, I went up to Virgin (where Tower USED to be) and wanted to get the phone number to call one of the managers about an app that I put in there about a month ago. When I was in there, I ran into Leza, Pat’s girl, and she was just about to go to lunch. So we grabbed some food and I talked about my really wacky job experience and just shot the shit. I got the number and I’m going to call a manager come tomorrow or Wednesday. Looks like they’re hiring again, so it should be pretty good with Leza and another manager, Asia that are pushing for me to get a job.

After that, I talked to Mariah about my day then started in on laundry, which I have to get in a few minutes, and also did some grocery shopping after I threw it in the dryer.

All in all, I’d say this was a really good day that really picked up my spirits. I really needed this. Now, I just need a break and hopefully something will work out with this company!!!

Wish me luck!

I grabbed this from Nick’s LiveJournal. It’s surprisingly accurate… though I think I can do better next time!

Are you Addicted to the Internet? 77%    Hardcore Junkie (61% - 80%) While you do get a bit of sleep every night and sometimes leave the house, you spend as much time as you can online. You usually have a browser, chat clients, server consoles, and your email on auto check open at all times. Phone? What’s that? You plan your social events by contacting your friends online. Just be careful you don’t get a repetitive wrist injury… The Are you Addicted to the Internet? Quiz at Stvlive.com!

Well, I futzed around with the webcam last night. For some reason it wasn’t fixed. Well, I guess the *real* reason was because I didn’t do it right. But what I did *should* have worked. Hmm…

I think I need to re-do my page header & footer. I currently have it so that from the opening <HTML> tag to the content box is the header. Then I insert the page-specific information and then the closing of the cell to the </HTML> tag is the footer. So, what this means is that I can’t add onLoad() calls in the <BODY> tag. I think my manual call to the function further in the script isn’t executing the same way as from an onLoad() call, but I don’t see why that would have any effect on it. All I do know is that it was working prior to my implementation of the header & footer… so I’m going to give it a shot.

So, it looks like I have some code finagling to do… which shouldn’t be *too* difficult… as long as I can find all the references to my webcam page on here.

Wish me luck.

I think I know what I can do to fix my webcam page. I just got into work a few minutes ago (it’s just past 8), so I can’t work on it here. But I’m mainly writing this as a reminder to myself to get my ass around to fixing it tonight, so don’t mind me.

I think it has to do with the fact that the image source is hard-coded into the page, and not dynamically generated initially. I think with this little change, everything should fall into place. Keep your fingers crossed.

I think I REALLY need to pick up a book on mySQL soon. I’ve undertaken the task of trying to set up a developement server here at home. Now that’s a pain in the ass!

I have PWS set up without issue. I then installed PHP and that’s working fine (finally). Now, Ive installed mySQL. I believe that it’s working without issue, but then again, I have no clue what the hell I’m doing… so I could be horribly wrong.

I use mySQL as a backend to CrazyTed.com, but that’s just using PHP as an interface for it. I have little control in the way of the actual mySQL server itself, which is what I’m trying to install and administer for the developement server. And to say that it’s confusing is an understatement.

So, I think sometime this week I’m going to pick up a mySQL book and dive into that.

I’m also looking for a copy of winXP to put on one of my other machines to see what it’s all about. If someone has a copy I could eval, let me know.

Well, I’m going to be futzing around with this image crap… hopefully I’ll figure something out.

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Well, the first pic of my fat forehead is black and white. B&W pics seem to take thumbs just fine. The color pics, on the other hand, aren’t so forgiving. I’ve tried playing with the resolution of the picture I initially upload, I’ve played with the compression of the actual thumbnail… still nothing. I have no clue what the deal is. GAH!