MikeBrum.com

Well, my septum feels 100x better than it did on Saturday and considerably less achey than yesterday. Two VERY good things in my book. The only *bad* part is that I was cleaning it this morning and it was all kinds of nasty. Not just *some* kinds of nasty – ALL OF THEM! I’m sure nobody’s overly interested in what goes on in my nose, but it definately has an effect on me.

I’m going to keep up with the salt soaks and hope that drains the relative nastiness. They went a long way to relieve the pressure and pain, so now that I can do a better job in cleaning, I think it’s just a matter of time before things clear up.

I’m not fond of nastiness in my nose.

Well, my septum is at 4g right now. I stretched it up finally last night. God did that fucking hurt. I got a taper in with little problem and only slight stinging. Then I got a plug that went in after it and it only got through about 1/2 way. How fucking lovely. On top of that, it was grooved for o-rings, which is undoubtedly why it got stuck. So, either I push it one way or the other and feel pain due to the groove, so I decided to push it through.

So, after it was finally in my nose fuckin’ hurt and was running like nobody’s business. No real surprises though. I just hope it stops hurting sometime soon. I made up some sea-salt-water and did some rinsing. Hopefully it’ll go a ways to keeping it less sore and relax a lot sooner.

And, as to be expected, my nose is sore this morning. That’s not the worse part by far though. What’s happening is that since my nose has a constant ache, it’s making my eyes water a bit more than normal. Then, with my eyes watering, it makes my nose run more than normal. And with the constant running of my nose, I have to wipe it rather frequently, thus making it ache more, perpetuating the circle. What a pain in the ass!

I wish my nose wasn’t ALL cartilage, giving me some sort of ease with stretching. Oh well… I’ll just have to make due with it for now. Though, I’m expecting my nose to be hyper-sensitive and sore for at least 4 weeks, maybe as much as 8 weeks, which was how sore it was when I stretched to 6g from 8g.

Well… it’s Friday, so that’s one thing to look forward to!

Yup, I’m still here. Just haven’t posted in a bit. My online presence has wained a bit the past week or so. It comes and goes, so it’s no big deal.

I’m having a strange urge to re-arrange my room. I have no plans this weekend, so it might be a viable project. We’ll see though… I’m thinking moving my computer desk and setup alone would be quite a bitch! Actualy, I’m sure of that.

But… we’ll see. Maybe I’ll just feel lazy and not want to do anything at all. That’s definately a possibility too.

I added three items to the BME jewelry classifieds that are too small for me:

• 1/2″ Stainless Taper – $20
• 5/8″ Bamboo Plugs – $25
• 9g(ish) Stainless Tusk (real cute!) – $15

I can take some other pics if anyone wants. Just be sure to click the thumbnails to see a full-sized image. Shipping’s free on all of them too. Can’t beat a deal like that! :)

Hope to sell the pieces soon. Contact me if you are interested in any of the pieces.

Well, it’s Wednesday and today’s going by fairly well. Work’s moderately busy which is “just about right” in terms of work load and how the day moves by. But for those of you that things are moving slowly for (and that’s probably why you’ve come to my site), here’s some links:

• Dark Energy – Here’s the deal… up until recently, scientists believed that the universe’s expanse had 2 possible routes – it could start to contract if the density of the universe was greater than a particular value or it would continue to expand indefinately if it was smaller than that value. It turns out that from recent evidence that the universe’s expanse is actually accelerating.
• The SoloTrek – this thing is just really dangerous and really cool. I want one!!! Take that Buck Rogers!!!
• Is the mayor the mayor? – only in South Carolina can something like this happen it seems. Sure countries all over the world have screwed up their voting… but they never forgot to actually do it!
  
• Personal Satellites – I want one of these too… too bad I’d have to build it myself. : )

Ok, that’s it for now. No new pics since I’m at work. Enjoy the links though!

Well, I’ve turned at least one of the webcams back on. I’m not sure of the second one because it slows my computer down a lot. Maybe I’ll turn it on when I’m not doing that much. Either way, it’s been about a month since they’ve been on. Seems that Mariah doesn’t like living under a microscope 24/7. Hmmm… we’ll have to find some compromise there.

Not a whole lot is going on right now. I got some food and I’m VERY full. Ugh… makes me want to go to sleep… even though it’s only ten of eight.

Well, I’m going to mozy around here a bit. I have a few things that I have to try to do tonight. Though you’ll probably see my ass sitting here watching TV or fucking around on my computers.

And just for fun, here’s a few images…

I spent some time today screwing around with headers and footers. I’m pleased to say that they’re both working excellently! Actually, the main page is now running with the new header and footer without issue.

I had to spend some time futzing around with it though. Here’s the deal for the programming types: PHP has a function called virtual() that allows you to run scripts through it. Sorta like an include() statement that will execute a script and then include the script’s output where it’s called. Overall, pretty snazzy.

Well, it turns out that the virtual() function calls scripts relative to the current working directory and not from their absolute paths. So, in my home directory, I can call the script similar to this: virtual(“cgi-bin/perl_script.pl”); without issue from the header. But – when I use the header on a page that’s not in the home directory (such as my webcam page, the file that was being looked for was http://www.crazyted.com/webcam/cgi-bin/perl_scipt.pl – obviously the wrong one.

So what I had to do was fancy little programming to assertain the current working directory, figure out how many levels it was from the home directory, and then pad ‘cgi-bin/perl_script.pl’ with the corresponding amount of ‘../’s needed to point to the cgi-bin directory.

It seems like a shitload of work for a little Perl script (actually the “Countdown To…” script on the left that you see), but I came up with an elegant way to do it in about 10 – 15 lines of code that will work from any directory on my site, no matter how many levels it might be away from my home directory. I’m quite pleased with it and it’s portability. Oh, and for referance, my webcam page is working with the header & footer as well. I used it to test it out.

Now don’t you feel enlightened? :-)

Starting sometime next week over the course of a week or two I have some big changes planned. Unfortunately for everyone, I don’t have any aesthetic changes on the board right now. The vast majority of them are going to be getting rid of the .shtml files and replacing all of them with .phtml files where applicable and using .htm files whenever the .phtml files are not needed.

I’m also going to be making some header and footer templates to cut down on access time and redundancy. Right now, I have all of the same information captured for the layout on every page. Let’s say for just 10 pages, that’s a lot of “wasted” web space. While I have a shitload of space available on the server, there’s no reason to take up all that room if I don’t have to. Plus, if I want to change the look of the page, in theory, all I have to do is change the header and footer and the content will format itself to the page settings. It won’t go *that* smoothly in practice, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than re-formatting 10 separate pages – believe me!

That’s about all that I have planned thus far, but it’ll take a while. Oh- I guess the funny thing is that to get all of my pages to reflect the new header and footer scheme I have to go in and edit each of them separately. It’s the last time I want to do it, so it’s not looking as intimidating as it normally would.

And if you’re wondering, it’s the page-by-page editing that keeps my page looking the same for so damn long. : )

FYI: The site will be up and running at all times during these changes. No worries there!

Well, I got the laptop that Larry hooked me up with running on my network with no issue. Very cool. It has a small HD, so I don’t have a lot on it, but I’m working within my limitations. I do need to get some more RAM though. 16M isn’t going to cut it for long. Even another 32M would go a LONG way. (I’m used to 256+ on most of my machines)

One thing that I’m curious about (and don’t know how to do) is set up a file transfer from my main computer to my laptop. I can set up basic network shares, that’s not the issue at all. Specifically, I have my webpage files kept on my main computer. My laptop is going to mainly be used to remotely work on my site when I’m not at home or commuting. So, I’d like a small batch program possibly that I could easily run that’d copy files from my main computer and overright any files on my laptop in a specific directory. Anyone want to lend me a hand with that??? It’d be GREATLY appreciated!!!

Oh, and one more thing… as soon as I get my laptop up and running and everything installed, guess who has ceremoniously taken it over… yup… her.

Eh – she’s cute so I’ll let it slide… this time.

Well, I’m back at work today. I really don’t want to be here. Oh well. Not a hell of a lot I can do about it. It’s weird though. I figured that at least some shit would have happened since I’ve been out for over a week, but practically nothing has happened at all. I guess it’s a good thing.

I have a bunch of little things for me to take care of that I’ve been working on all morning, but it’s hard to stay focussed when it seems that it doesn’t matter a damn bit if I get 1/2 of my work load completed. It’s not condusive getting work done for me. I need motivation to complete tasks, else they don’t get done. Not good.

In other news, nobody has really mentioned anything about my labret. I’m rather surprised. A few people did say the liked it, but other than that, it seems to go unnoticed. I think Mel said it best when she said, “It looks like it’s always been there. It just fits.”. If that’s why people aren’t commenting, then I would have to say that it’s a damn good thing. Some piercings just don’t look good on some people. That’s all there is to it. I’m just glad this one works.