workaday day....
2008-06-26 23:53:49Alright.... so this is how it is.
Wednesday, get a call from the Steminator. Bob and I were driving home from work, so it's ~3:45PM. "Asuka's dead."... meaning, his car's dead. His call, in my mind, already meant I was going to be driving to Jersey. And I was right. I got home, showered, and put my already packed bag in my car and was on my way to Jersey by 4:45PM.
Got to Jersey around 1:30AM, BS'd with Eric and Natalie for a bit, went to a "Genuine" Jersey Diner, then got ready for the return trip. I let Eric take the helm of the 3 for about 3 hours while I tried to catch some Z's, but by the time he hit the mid-way mark in PA, I was awake and wanted to drive. We got to the Colossal hotel around 11AM.... So I've been in a car for a while. And I do it all again Sunday/Monday.
Colossal's going "well". I mean well in a loose sense, there hasn't been any drama, any major screw ups, or anything bad... yet. However, the dominos are in place, and one little push will set off chain reactions everywhere. Hopefully, that won't happen though. :)
I've been up for an ungodly amount of time.... I need to check email, do some work, then crash in my tent. My tent's set up in main. :) Shit yes, Lunar Child.
Jeefy out.
Stateless
2008-06-18 20:41:24The past few days have hit me rather hard, for various reasons. I was sick one day, been getting slammed at work, and over all feeling like I'm in a rut. This doesn't bode well for my Colossal experience, and I'm hoping I can kick my own ass out of this. I could bitch more, but I think that covers the "I'm in a slump" message quite well. Onto better things.
I'm pretty sure I've figured out a way to enforce/error check HL7 messages for my parser. It'd involve a little leg work up front, but the payoff is well worth it. Based on the message segment types, regex's will be applied to the message to check for validity and possible errors. Hooray.
I suddenly became really tired really fast, so I'm gonna cut this post short. Sorry all! :)
matsuri meeting and other whimsical pleasantries
2008-06-08 23:32:46So the matsuri meeting was this weekend. I must say it was incredibly productive, exceeding my own expectations of how much would have gotten accomplished. Programming was one of the big issues ("Gasp! Who shall take on the Herculian task of Programming? John and Jeef? Are you fucking morons?") After the majority of the room started leaning against John and myself, Kyle became the next likely candidate.
Now, I'm going to be blunt. It's my blog, it can be read, I don't care. Kyle, is a trouble maker. He's known as a trouble maker. He hasn't not caused trouble. He's irresponsible, a con alcoholic, and if I ever did Jerry Springer: Con Edition, he'd be the first guest on my slug fest. Hell just to make it interesting I'd leave some swords on the studio set just to see who stabs what. I do not like nor accept people that cause drama in the con world or my personal life, past or present.
That being said, when people questioned why he was looked over, I was rather blunt. I don't trust him. I don't feel he's capable of handling programming from start to finish, I don't think he has the necessary skills and capacity to handle it. Etc. Etc. Obviously he didn't like that, and took it as a personal offense. Again, I cannot stress enough what is said regarding Con Business SHOULD NOT be taken seriously.... just because we're friends doesn't mean we're friends when it comes to business.... alas, people are stupid and incapable of such separation.
When brought to the board vote, the John/Jeef combo was crushed. (As a note, that didn't bother me, it wasn't some personal thing to "take it under my wing" and make it my own, it was simply the best scenario out of the scenarios played out in my head.) But... when it came to "who else could handle programming", Dusty did something unexpected and threw his hat in. Had I known he'd have done that, I'd have opted for him over John/Myself earlier. With this, I was pleased.
Ben said some necessary yet unnecessary things at this point, noting that Dusty should take Kyle under his wing. Frankly, I love the idea. It means that Dusty, who is capable, is going to be able to monitor and potentially nurture Kyle and we get to see what he's made of. However, I don't think that Ben should have sugar coated it the way he did, in an effort to pacify everyone. I don't think everything should be or needs to be a sugar-coated piece of candy with lovely gooey insides. But, once the candy was handed out, we moved on to other things.
Publications is moving along well. I like the program guide design, and I hope everyone gives Rachael some more pictures for the back cover. She does earn points for creativity, as well as points for the T-Shirt idea. Though I like the idea of staff shirts, and the idea of staff polo shirts, I wish we could have locked it down to a few select colors for a sense of uniformity. Doesn't bother me too much though. :)
Ops was pretty basic, and since Bob doesn't give one shit about the convention, his status report was "Yep. Yep. Nope. 4 batteries per walkie. Yep." Done. I can't blame him though. Dealer room, I'm still iffy about. Maiku brought up the same point I was thinking once I heard how much space Ren left behind the tables... I mean, they need room. Serious room. And if they dont' get room, they will MAKE room behind the tables. That being said, dealers wanting more space behind means less space up front, less walking space, bad things. :\ We'll see.
Guests are guests, there were some minor issues there, but I think they were all resolved. And with the planning of the next and final meeting (which is up here), we brought the meeting to a close. I had to jet because Tanner's been under the weather with his pain meds (post-neutering).
Nothing really noteworthy happened after the meeting. Today's been kinda lazy. Got some storm chasing in. I've purchased a new camera for myself (Canon PowerShot S5IS) which should arrive here shortly. That'll be a blast to have fun with (And drop the CHDK firmware on it.) Also, saw Kung Fu Panda, which is absolutely amazing in every way. Still need to watch Macross Frontier 10... :)
Anyways, work tomorrow. I get to dive into the lovely httpd.conf files of our web servers, and hack them to pieces. HAET.
night
so about them updates
2008-06-05 20:53:40Stating the obvious, I've been busy.
I'm working on a Placental Requisition System/Registry thing, which is apparently a big deal. It's been in the works, but the scope, players, and immediacy keep changing. But hey, now it's actually getting done. Meetings and all that are scheduled, means it's important.
I've found out that the HR Database project that I was working on with Laura is being put on hold due to a lack of time on Laura's part to contribute. Though I'm glad that I have one less project on my shoulders, I really wanted to get this done. Not only would it have been fun, it would have been a very useful tool for Laura, saving her a lot of time. Sad face. :(
The New Frontiers registration system is almost up and running, that's taken me this long to do thanks to the wonderful world of Novell Netware... I hate you. So hard.... As a sidenote, I hate APIs that are case sensitive in their variables as well as their values. I should not have to type "No". I should be able to type "NO" or "no". Absolutely rediculous.
I never did post about php|tek... it was an incredible experience. I don't think I could sum it up in words and do it justice, so I'll just leave it at that. It was a blast, I loved hanging out with everyone, and I hope to do it again soon. CHICAGO!~ Coming back from tek, I managed to wrangle myself into some more side projects (rework the HL7 PEAR module, start up MI-PUG, ???) It's taxing my time even more, but I can't complain too much when I'm having fun. :)
Speaking of fun, ahh Matsuri. I put a mibbit widget onto the matsuri homepage and linked it to #otakushirts so people could come in and chat and whatnot. It's actually being used, which I'm happy with. There's a Matsuri meeting this weekend, I'm heading down Friday to work things out with John and whatnot. I'm sure it'll be a dramagasm and I'll get a headache before Saturday's meeting is out, but I've accepted that, which allows me to focus on the serious matters.
Summary, life's going pretty well, though there are some rough edges that need smoothing out. Progress is progress though. Time to hit the sack. :)
php|tek: day zero
2008-05-19 19:39:36Sitting here in the lobby of the Sheraton hotel in O'Hare with a lot of the php crowd chilling. I've only been here since 3PM or so EST, but it's been pretty awesome so far.
That's all. :) I'm too lazy to really type out a summary for today. :)