Day late…

If you haven’t caught on to this series yet I have mother issues.   Because I have my mother issues I need to sit down and logically recognize what they actually do to me.  Things my mother has made me.

Growing up I was extremely self conscious of everything, how I looked, who had what, etc…  What has happened as an adult is that I just don’t care.   I don’t care what you have.  I want what I want for my own reasons.   As I’m getting older I can care less what society thinks about me, so essentially I’ve become the polar opposite of my mother.   Though Xie will tell me that isn’t always the case.

Because of growing up in my household I learned to thrive in chaos.   This is great in some of things I do since I can make order out of chaos (well at the same time creating more chaos around the thing I made in order).  Unfortunately for those around me this isn’t always a conducive environment for those that deal with me.

I get my anger from my father, and I’ve spent many years getting that in check and controlling.   It’s something I have to deal with.  I have learned however people like my mother are the ones that are most likely to set me off at a moments notice.  This is why I didn’t marry a girl like dear old mom.   My father after the divorce seems to have his anger issues in check, can we say common denominator?

I base(d) alot of what I know about relationships from my parents and their interaction.   When things aren’t going well in my own relationships I’m completely oblivious since things aren’t explosive like my parent’s relationship was.  While our child isn’t born yet we don’t know truly who the enabler and the disciplinarian will be.   I’m pegged for the enabler, and that’s not necessary a good thing.   If I get that from anyone it’s going to be my mother.   I just need to make sure my son doesn’t become a spoiled brat.

Frustration at stupidity.  The exasperation I get over comments that are idiotic, that comes completely from my mother.   I have mentioned her belief that ninja humanoid turtles were possible. I used to do all of her proof reading for her college homework when I was in high school, and I was responsible for the rewrites.  When I was about fourteen she said she was smarter then me.   What she may have meant to said was wiser, though I don’t think that was the case, since if she was wiser or smarter she would have said the word wiser.   Also for anyone wishing to defend her on that one, she still says she is smarter (Oprah must have told her she was).  I have a standing offer to pay for an IQ test so we can settle this once and for all, if she is write (highly unlikely) I may just kill myself since it will be proof that intelligence means nothing. On a side note recently I was just talking about sitting for the Mensa exam.  I don’t know if I’m Mensa smart, I may not be, but I’m confident enough to actually sit for the test.

The last thing is I get insane over little requests people ask of me.   I better be in the right frame of mind because I can go ballistic if it’s something they can do for themselves.   I’ll give you the story I use to describe this whenever I talk to someone about her.   When I was in high school I told my mother I was going to be taking a bath (yes I’m a boy and I like baths get over it).  She acknowledged me and said she was going ot cook dinner.  At this point everything is fine and dandy.   About 10 minutes later I’m in the middle of reading a book and my mother starts screamiming my name.   Now this isn’t a your in trouble name scream, nor was it a where are you at name scream.  What it sounded like was the “OMG THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE” scream.   I threw on a towel and rush down the stairs.

Well the emergency?  My mother needed a wash cloth to do dishes .  Her answer about me being in the bath?  “I forgot”.  In ten minutes she forgot what she had been told and acknowledged (and I’m sure she heard the bath water run) and put all of that aside for her immediate need of a wash cloth.   To make matters worse, she thought I was down in my room.   Now our family was a plit level.  The kitchen on the main floor, the bathroom on the second floor, and my bedroom on the lower floor.   In theory give or take ten feet I would have had to expend the same amount of energy to come from my room or the bathroom to come to the kitchen.   She would have expended half the energy (minus the energy to start yelling) to go down to the second floor and get it herself.  It was absolute pure laziness.   I pointed it out to her, and she didn’t care.   She wasn’t old or invalid, she was healthy and approxiamately the same age as I am now.   The worst part, I was dripping wet, freezing, and I still had to get the washcloth.

I was a sucker and should have said no, but I was a mama’s boy.  That story though is an example of many many things that are quite similar.   Because of her necessity or decorating the house for the holidays, I now loath decorating for the holidays/  I have never had a christmas tree in my  house, that may change next year with the kid on the way.   Compared to my mother’s house and her record breaking three christmas trees she did one year, my house will be quite sparse.

My mother likes to tell people how things are to be decorated and have everyone else do the work.   After the divorce I became the man of  the house.   I learned to loath the holidays.  When your mother is healthy you shouldn’t be fifteen and being Santa Claus setting up the tree late at night for your siblings, but yet I was.  I love the holidays, I just hat emy mothers version of them.  These days though i’m preferring Halloween over Christmas, black and gory for the win.

Ok  I’m stopping now otherwise this will become the post that will never end.

Read Part 1 Here

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My mother is obsessed with her house.   She thinks it is the most important thing in the world.  Above keeping adequate food in the house even.   If she needs something she’ll beg, plead, and cry until she gets her way.   She is as spoiled as she has made any of her children.

Her rational seems to be that people will look at her as a better person if she has a nicer house and furniture (a screwed assessment in my belief). Not only will they look at her as a better person, I honestly believe that she thinks it does make it her a better person. Should could have been Mother Theresa and feeding starving children on the streets of Calcutta and she would still be a terrible person in her mind if she didn’t have the greatest modern style in her house.

My father did amazing work remodeling the house of my parents originally bought it. In the end it was a useful, functional, and livable house. My step-father isn’t too shabby at work also, yet his designs are not as well thought out. He (with I’m sure my mothers chiding) turned half the garage into a ten foot by ten foot dining room. It was cramped and never felt right. It also negated half the garage and made it so you couldn’t pull a car in any longer. To make matters worse he had to put one to two wall jacks for various services into each wall in the room. Idiotic for a dining room. If you need that kind of outlet space get a surge protector, because I know her didn’t put a better breaker in the house.

My mother must have reached the realization at one point that this was a bad spot for a dining room. So she turned the front living room into a dining room. At first line this doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize there is no atrium or anything, so the dining room is the first room you enter when you walk into the house.

The last time I was there the house was so transformed you could hardly recognize it anymore. What used to be a livable space that felt like a lived home is slowly being transformed into a model home that just has residents. It is not a place you would ever feel comfortable in. While it doesn’t look bad, it looks like no one lives there except for the mess, maybe weekend renters that haven’t cleaned up yet. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

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Read Part 9 Here

People in the security world were all pretty sure that users never paid attention to dialog boxes.   Ars Technica printed information about a study performed North Carolina State University that proves that the security professionals were correct.  Most users only want to get rid of the immediate annoyance and don’t read what is happening on their screens.

We already know most people don’t read their end user license agreements – but come on.  How many fake windows dialog banner ads do you need to load and have bad things happen to your computer before you learn.   Unlike other childhood cause and effect lessons, we don’t lear clicking the button is bad like the stove is hot when we get burned.   There is a mantra I’ve always enjoyed, “If Stupidity Can’t Hurt, Then It Should Cost”.   I’m rather happy that most users that click and click and click to punch the monkey or get rid of fake banners hads more then likely spend hundreds of dollars keeping their computer in running order after the spyware has had a field day.   I do feel sorry for their family members that have to fix it for free though……

For More information click the link below (Ars Technica)

Fake popup study sadly confirms most users are idiots

Picture from here

I was listening to the last weeks episode of Net@Night and they were complaining that the Twitter community has become fragmented.  This is true in the online world, as well as the offline world.  We are all not friends.  Sometimes I think what you read, listen to, watch, or have to say is utterly idiotic and reprehensible.   I’m sorry.   I do.   I also know that some of you think the same things about me, especially those that are completely fed up with me.

We call places like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.  social networks.  They are and they are not.  If you consider High School an experiment in social networking I guess they are social networks.   I prefer to think of them as “Social Platforms”.   These are sites and applications that allow you to be social, but you don’t have to be.   I enjoy going to a movie with someone else and don’t really enjoy going by myself.   That doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there that don’t enjoy going by themselves.   Some people join social networks for the games, some for the functions, and yes most for the social aspect and the ability to connect with people.

I’ve written before that I use different social platforms in different ways.  Some communities, like twitter, I take an active role and participate in, others I hang back and show up when I receive a comment on some piece of work I’ve commented on.   I just don’t have time to be a good community member and interact exclusively (or a lot) on the literally hundreds of social network sites I belong to.  Giving the lack of time in being able to deal with all of them, I write once and post everywhere.  I deal with comments and such.

I won’t add you to my friends list if I haven’t dealt with you in some sort of capacity.  I add you if I’ve met you through online gaming, real life meetings, or I’ve had some sort of conversation with you.   I won’t add you if you thought I look interesting and just want to chat (don’t worry I’m not requesting friendship form you if you look interesting either).   Heck I don’t even like some of the networks I’m a member of.  What does this mean though?

Does it mean I’m not networking socially?   I am and I’m not.   I’m hanging out with friends or exchanging ideas with people I know.   If your coming along for the ride, more power to you.  I’m not going to these just to meet you, some unknown person to me.   Until I know you I don’t want to network with you.

What does this mean in general?  I’ve pigeon holed myself into these social platforms.  I’ve become cliquish in a way that also existed in high school.   Just because I haven’t welcomed you with open arms doesn’t mean I refuse to get to know you, it just takes time.   This is what happens to the splintered groups amongst all of these social platforms.  They have their own secret hand shakes and communities that exist on the platform.   This is actually quite a good thing, this is how you fulfill the niche market.   One size doesn’t fit all.  I do believe your data and the data explicitly shared with you should be able to be moved to another platform, data should be open and you should be able to make your own decisions over the data and meta data you create.     Splintered communities online just show us the social model that we have in the real world can replicate and exist online.

Because online communities begin to form and evolve organically the same way they do in meat space, we know that they are real true communities.   They aren’t Utopian society love-ins.  Just because your friends with Bob and Jane and I’m friends with them doesn’t mean we have anything in common to talk about.  Personally I have issues with Bob and Jane on some things, what if those are the things that you have in commonality with them?  I would then hate you.   I don’t want to hate, but I don’t want to get to know you either.     That’s not a bad thing.  Like real life we need to get to know each other first.   You don’t give everyone on the street you meet your phone number – why would you add them to your friends list.

It’s not necessarily about hiding information from them.  There are a lot of people like myself who literally broadcast their information broadly and openly across the internet.   You really aren’t gaining too much beyond more access to direct communication to me by being on my friends list.   I think these leads us to rethink the idea of friend lists.

Now go friend me on every possible social network you find that has a Creeva.

Picture from here

A couple weeks ago when the VCMA had their concert in Vermilion, OH there were school teachers wandering around the downtown area (the picture above is not my hometown) protesting.   I can’t say I understand completely what they were protesting, but before I go into a rant about the protesting – I’ll give you my understanding from what I got out of it and what others told me.

The contract from the local school district had been changed; previously the school district paid for the retirement of its teachers or supplied a portion of it.  Recently however this had been changed to put the burden on cost to the teachers who will have to pay their own retirement compared to the school district footing the bill.  I don’t even live in the same county as my past hometown, so my diatribe has no bearing other then outside views since my taxes will not be raised, nor will the quality of education my children receive be impacted.

The first thing that comes to mind – welcome to the real world.   I know a ton of people that went into public service or civil servant positions for the retirement.   It didn’t matter what the job was, it just mattered that at the end of the career they received that fat benefits and nice retirement package.   They could be a janitor or they could be a mailman, as long as the benefits were there at the end of the career they would be happy.   I’m so I care about what I do now and though I should be worry, I’m not thinking about the end of my career yet.  No one I know professionally get’s their retirement paid for by their employer anymore, that notion is old and out of date.

If a company in this day and age announced it was going to have an all inclusive retirement package for its employees there are a few things that come to mind.   The first being, what person is going to stay with a company for the 25-30 it takes to qualify for a retirement package – jobs don’t work that way anymore, very few people in this day and age start at a company at 18-20 and retire from that same company.  It’s idiotic and small minded in so many ways, to believe that you will be with the same employer.  The second is how far would a stock drop in a publicly traded company that announced something like this.   In the age of profits and margins an announcement like this would be considered fiscally irresponsible by the share holders.   However our tax money goes out to support all the public servants of our local, state, and federal governments.  Personally I understand the point of unions – but I don’t think anyone should get the guaranteed contracts that union works receive.   It should be dog eat dog and fight for the best value for the dollar instead of bringing down the people at the top and raising those at the bottom.  This is my tax money and the billions that the government could save by not offering automatic benefits are enormous.

There is another reason though I don’t have respect for the protest.  My freshmen year in high school my (then future) band director was up for retirement.   He decided that he wasn’t going to retire and he was going to keep teaching for another 3 years.  The next year was my first in band (other then a brief stint in 5th grade) and David Henry is now the metric I judge all other band directors against.   My senior year was his final year.   In a side conversation with him one day I asked him why doesn’t he just keep going?  He told me and a friend that he lost 15% (these numbers maybe wrong but it’s been 14 years and the intent is still the same) of his pension because he went on and taught the last three years.  He was happy to do it and would have done it again.   However, if he continued for another three years he would lose another 30% of his pension, and that he could not afford to do.

David Henry at the VHS Alumni Band Practice in 2007

Why is this relevant?  Well the teachers I saw protesting were all obviously younger then I am, and I’m not that old at 32 – the most they could be in their career is 10 years and that would still be stretching it.  I’m sure that most of them got into it for the idea of having summers off and the decent retirement package.  Some did it for the pure joy of teaching, and for those I would hope they would have done the job diligently regardless of the benefits at the end of the career.   One of the largest arguments that I’ve heard is that teachers are underpaid.  I won’t argue that, but at the same time almost all of them knew the pay rates before they started.   Feeling bad because they make 30-40k a year is just as bad as feeling sorry that the check out clerk makes minimum wage.  There is no surprises, they knew the scale and the pitfalls going into the game.   They could have done something else if they wanted to make more money.  They should do what they want to do because they enjoy it, not because of the money they make now and in the future.  I don’t see any of the love in teaching in them that I saw in David Henry.

Maybe it’s unfair to compare them to Mr. Henry.  He is one fo the two teachers that influenced me most heavily in my young life, though both of those teachers taught at teh same school district that these teachers are protesting in.   These are just my thoughts, take them to heart or throw them aside as you see fit.

It seems that hi5 doesn’t use the same friend finding connections method that other sites do.   Because of this I accidently spammed over 700 invites to people that I know personal and professional.  I’m not going to send out another e-mail as a retraction.  It still is a pain in the ass.

Normal social network searches your contacts list and finds people that you know already on the service.  This is all fine and dandy.   Then when you click ok it then lists your friends not on the service and wants to know if you want to invite them.  At this point on all other services I click no.   Hi5 however hid what is normally the second page option down at the bottom of the screen and then proceeded to spam everyone on my contacts list.

I feel like an idiot – but live and learn.

For those curious which wordpress plugin’s I use on creeva.com, I thought I would post my plugin page for you to check out.

Enjoy:

Add Meta Tags	1.6	Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives. This operation is automatic, but the generated META tags can be fully customized. Also, the inclusion of other META tags, which do not need any computation, is possible. Please read the tips and all other info provided at the configuration panel. By George Notaras.
Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button	.9.1	Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts using any service and browser. [Settings] By MicroPat.
Admin Big Width	1.0	enlarge your wordpress administration. By XoraX.
Admin Management Xtended	1.0.1	Adds AJAX-driven options to some admin management pages with CMS-known functions like toggling post/page visibility without having to open the edit screens, plus changing page order with drag’n’drop. By Oliver Schlöbe.
AJAXed WordPress	1.19.2	A plugin that incorporates the best AJAX WordPress features and wrap them in a single framework–including such features as inline posts and comments, the ability to paginate posts, submit comments, thread comments, edit comments and posts inline. The Admin panel is under presentation tab. Need Help? Visit the Official AWP support thread or try reading the full documentation. By Aaron Harun.
Akismet	2.1.5	Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.
All in One Adsense and YPN	1.62	Inserts Adsense or YPN code in to your blog posts. Ad position can be random or pre-defined. By linewbie.
All in One SEO Pack	1.4.6.8	Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By uberdose.
Berri Technorati Reactions on Dashboard	2.0	Shows on the Dashboard the Technorati Reactions of your blog. Widget for the main admin page. By Alberto Varela.
Blog Metrics	1.0	Provides blog metrics based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post, now with a widget! By Joost de Valk.
Brian’s Threaded Comments	1.5.18	This gives you threaded comments and a “wandering” comment form. By Brian Meidell.
Chunk Urls for WordPress	2.0	This plugin shorten urls in comments so that they won’t break your site. By whoo.
Clean Options	Beta 0.9.6	finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table By Mittineague.
Comments number Restore	1.0	Hyper Cache is an extremely aggressive cache for WordPress. By Satollo.
Dashboard: Draft Posts	1.0.2	Displays draft posts on your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard. By Viper007Bond.
Dashboard Editor	1.1	Allows you to customise the dashboard. By Aaron Harun.
Dashboard Widget Manager	1.3.0	Greatly enhances your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard by allowing widget re-ordering and storage of preferences on a per-user basis. By Viper007Bond.
Different Posts Per Page	1.7.1	Show different number of posts in home, category, search or archive page. By MaxBlogPress.
DJ EmailPublish	1.5	Publish your article to other blog by email. Visit Options/Email Publish after activation of the plugin. By Der-Johng Sun.
Enforce www. Preference	1.3	Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www. By Mark Jaquith.
Facebook Comments	0.25	Copies comments from your imported Facebook Notes back into your blog entries. Took Thomas Albright’s version (http://thomasalbright.info/index.php/2007/05/27/thomasalbrightinfo-facebook) and then edited by James Low (http://jameslow.com). Made to work with Feedburner feeds by Aaron Harp (http://www.aaronharp.com) By Adam Hill.
Facebook Dashboard Widget	0.9	Display your friends latest status updates, posted items and/or notifications on your WordPress dashboard. Make sure you enter your feed details on the options page. By Chris Chrisostomou.
FeedBurner FeedSmith	2.3.1	Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Flickr comment Importer	0.1	Add Flickr comments to your blog posts. Configuration Page By Donncha O Caoimh.
Flickr Manager	2.0.2	Handles uploading, modifying images on Flickr, and insertion into posts. By Trent Gardner.
Flickr Photo Gallery	0.93.2	This plugin will retrieve your Flickr photos and allow you to easily add your photos to your posts. Configure… By Silas Partners (Joe Tan).
Fluency Admin	1.1	WordPress 2.5+ only. A rethink of the WordPress admin interface giving it a slightly more modern application-esque feel, inspired by Steve Smith’s Tiger Admin. Firefox, Safari and IE8 only. IE7 soon. By Dean Robinson.
Forgot the Category	0.2.1	Hate forgetting to select a category when you write a new post? I know I do. This plugin won’t let you. By Dan Coulter.
Front Page Excluded Categories	1.1.1	This version uses a comma separated list of *excluded* category ids. By Sean O’Steen.
Genki Youtube Comments	1.2	Insert YouTube comments into your post’s comment By Genkisan.
Google XML Sitemaps	3.0.3.3	This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.
Instant Upgrade	0.2	Upgrade your WordPress-Installation with one simple click (Go to Manage » Instant Upgrade) By Alex Günsche.
LiveJournal Comments	1.0.3	This plugin displayes a number of comments in posts crossposted to LiveJournal. You can see how if works here. By Alexander Bishop.
LiveJournal Crossposter	2.0.5	Automatically copies all posts to a LiveJournal or other LiveJournal-based blog. Editing or deleting a post will be replicated as well. Original plugin by Evan Broder. By Arseniy Ivanov.
Live Space Sync	1.01	A Live Spaces rpc plug-in By William, priv.
Maintenance Mode	3.2	Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options ? Maintenance Mode to get started. By Michael Woehrer.
Meet your commenters	0.9	When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. By Alberto Varela.
MySpace Crossposter	2.0a	A plugin that enables automatic crossposting from WordPress to MySpace. By Roderick Russell.
No Flash Uploader	1.0	Disables the Flash Uploader of 2.5 By Dion Hulse.
NoFollow Free	1.5.5	Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget. By Michele Marcucci.
Official StatCounter Plugin	1.0	Adds the StatCounter tracking code to your blog. After uploading this plugin click ‘Activate’ (to the right) and then afterwards you must visit the options page and enter your StatCounter Project Info to enable logging. By Aodhan Cullen.
Ping.fm Notifier	1.0	A plugin that send a notification to your Ping.fm space after you publish your post. By Creeva.
Plugin Central	1.11	WordPress 2.5+ only. Automatically installs and updates WordPress plugins. By Vladimir Prelovac.
Postie	1.1.1	Signifigantly upgrades the posting by mail features of Word Press (See Quick Readme) By Dirk Elmendorf.
Post Template	2.1.3	A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. When activated, you can check your new template management page and the option page. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale. By Vincent Prat.
Reveal IDs for WP Admin 2.5	0.7.5	Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5). See Options Page for options and information. By Oliver Schlöbe.
Routes	2.1.6	Adds route-based geographical information to your blog. By Jennifer Hodgdon, Poplar ProductivityWare.
Script Compressor	1.3.1	This plugin compresses javascript files and css files. By Regen.
SEO Friendly Images	1.11	Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well. By Vladimir Prelovac.
SezWho	WP2.1	A plugin that improves community engagement by showing universal web-wide profiles for participants and by empowering the community to rate comments and post. You need a key to use this service. Get your key at SezWho. By SezWho.
SimpleLife	1.2	SimpleLife is a fully configurable simplepie based plugin to produce a lifestream on your wordpress powered blog. Makes use of the excellent SimplePie. Either use the widget or place <?php simplelife(); ?> in a page template. By Kieran Delaney.
Simple Tags	1.5.7	Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.
Social Homes widget	2.2	Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons. Current services include del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Twitter, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Zooomr, Utterz, StumbleUpon, Digg, LiveJournal, MySpace, Jaiku, Pownce, VIRB°, and FriendFeed. By Elie Zananiri.
Twitter Tools	1.2b1	A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Configure your settings here. By Alex King.
Twitter Widget Pro	1.1.4	A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username and link parsing, feeds that include friends or just one user, and can even display profile images for the users. Requires PHP5. By Aaron D. Campbell.
VideoWarrior	1.0.3	Yet another plugin to include Videos from Youtube and Google Video By Sixtus.
WordPress.com Stats	1.2.1	Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
WordPress Database Backup	2.1.5	On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage ? Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.
WordPress PDA & iPhone	1.2.1	This plugin helps the users to view your blog in a pda and iPhone browser. By Imthiaz Rafiq.
WordPress Reports	0.87	Generates reports from Google Analytics and Feedburner data By Joe Tan.
WP-PageNavi	2.30	Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-Print	2.30	Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-ServerInfo	1.30	Display your host’s server PHP and MYSQL information (integrated into WordPress Admin Style) on your WordPress dashboard. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-SnapAvatar	1.1	This plugin puts the commentor’s website screenshot where there is no gravatar. By Neacsu Alexandru.
WP-SpamFree	1.8.3	An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well. By Scott Allen, aka WebGeek.
WP Contact Form III	1.4.1	WP Contact Form III is a simple drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. Go to Options -> ContactForm III to configure. Challenge (antispam) mod by Doug Karr. Original script by Ryan Duff By Kristin K. Wangen.
WP Limit Posts Automatically	0.7	Limit your posts automatically. This way you don’t need the use of the more tag. You can limit posts by letter, word or paragraph and apply it to home, categories, archive and search. By Jens Törnell.
WP Security Scan	2.2.64	Perform security scan of WordPress installation. By Michael Torbert.
WP Super Cache	0.6.4	Very fast caching module for WordPress. Once enabled, you must enable the cache. Based on WP-Cache by Ricardo Galli Granada. By Donncha O Caoimh.
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]]> http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/what-wordpress-plugins-do-i-use/feed/ 3 http://creeva.com/2008/05/05/presentations-scare-the-hell-out-of-me/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/05/presentations-scare-the-hell-out-of-me/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 03:35:27 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2769

Now I’m not going to say that I’m incapable of giving presentations, I’ve given my share. I’ve taught training classes. I’ve given pitches and reporting data to CIOs of fortune 500 companies. I’ve given a couple public presentations a a convention. I’ve done this before and I’ll do it again. That doesn’t make it any easier. We’ve moved up from being a high school student that used note cards, now we’re adults that use power point presentations. Essentially it is the same things, but now everyone else can see your note cards. Since everyone else can see them don’t be a complete putz and read them verbatim.

I can say at the beginning of one training class I did read the slides verbatim, but I told the class I was going to and that I was forced to show them the slide show. After the idiotic power point presentation I taught them properly.

Why then am I scared or nervous?

I think it deals with scope. The smaller the audience the easier I handle it, I can control the crowd and the conversation. Handle things coming from 6-7 people at once is my specialty. On the other hand large scale presentation when you are passing the 20 people mark, that’s my weakness. It really is no different and I don’t know why I have a problem with it. It’s a demon I wrestle with. For the most part I prefer to be the problem solving, the implementation guy, the brains. I don’t like being the presenter or the front man.

So this is what I’m facing tomorrow. Wish me luck.

I was randomly thinking about my past the other day and teenage mutant ninja turtles popped into my head while driving.   Out loud I said (quite loudly out loud) I can believe my mom is so freaking stupid.   My wife turns to me and asks what the hell I’m talking about.  (She won’t argue that my mother sometimes lacks common sense and because of this her intelligence is somehow in question).  I told her a story of something that happened 18-20 years ago.

My whole family was driving back from my Grandparents in Greenville, OH.   I enjoyed the TMNT cartoon, but my brother was the action figure collector of them.  (BTW shout out to my favorite turtle Donatello).   I being a normal pre-teen was trying to argue the possibilities of mutant ninja turtles existing (the way lots of pre-teens argue and defend things even when they don’t know the whole facts).   My father explained that it wouldnt work at couldn’t happen.   My mother trying to talk about sex gracefully in front of her 4 children (the oldest myself)  asked my father what if “a lonely guy and a turtle..” My father cut her off right there and gave her the “If you are truly that stupid how do you manage to breathe look”.

He then went into a basic biology 101 talk about how species had to be compatible to reproduce.   This unfortuantely I think shut me down and my mutant turtle theories.   That is until mutagen is truly dumped into the sewers, then we’ll see who is right on the ninja turtle arguement.

But, needless to say a woman who was in her 30′s or just about, thought the humans and turtles could not only be sexually compatible (wouldn’t the guy actually have to get busy over the turtle eggs?), but they would also have viable offspring similar to ninja turtles.    I must receive all my intelligence from my father, or my Mother must have got a skip year on her side’s intelligence gene.

This was the same woman who at one time was talking about getting money from her parents (they deny it) to pay off the house when she was going through marital troubles.  She had a grand plan living off of child support and possibly alimony.   Now for those that don’t know child support was non taxable and she had lived that way for a couple years when I was a teenager.    Her theory was if she got the money she would put it in the bank so she could deduct her mortgage payments and get a tax refund back.   I think that even after an hour of my explaining to her that she had to have taxable income and pay taxes to qualify for a refund at all, and if you haven’t paid any you weren’t going to get money back from the government just because you have a deduction.

If only my father was an idiot, I could say I was the milk man’s kid.    When it’s my mother, I have to hope I’m my father’s illegitimate child with a nuclear researcher that died in a radioactive experiment after I was born, and he met my mother and they adopted me.

Nuclear researcher….hmmm…I brought it full circle, I wonder if I have any turtle DNA in me.

If the idiots truly will inherit the earth does that mean that those with intelligence should give up?   At what point will the tipping point be reached that the idiots outnumber the rest of us?

SWG, what a long strange journey it’s been.

So I’m here finally quitting Star Wars Galaxies for the last time.   I don’t play anymore and the latest CSR announcement about accepting AFK game play as the norm was the straw that broke the camels back.   One person said I need help if this is the reason I quit.  I retorted that since I don’t play and have continued to pay as token support for SWG and Intrepid’s survival that I’m more mental for continuing a subscription.

The long journey with Star Wars Galaxies began almost 5 years ago.  I purchased that game at launch and dealing with the launch day crashing I managed to create a character on Gorath.  My wife played with me and we ooed and ahhed at the online world.   It was the first MMO for both of us and we loved it.

Two days later Gorath was down and I wanted to get in and explore some more.  Originally I wanted to be a smuggler ala Han Solo, but I decided for a laugh I was going to create an Entertainer.  Intrepid was the server that was available and chose to land there.  Choosing my planet and destination I landed on Talus.   I wanted to Tyrena since that was where I hung out for a day on Gorath and I was familiar with it.   After earning enough money on Talus I moved to Tyrena and never looked back.

The first day in Tyrena was an experience.  I hooked up with other entertainers; of course they were all ATK since AFKing didn’t exist yet.  The pseudo leader of the cantina at the time was Kathryn, who more or less had business ideas galore.  She had us running advertisements around the shuttle port for a tailor named Bifein.  There were many of us there in Tyrena, and while I’m sure I’ll leave some important people I’ll give out some of the names.  The entertainer crowd was formed by Agaar, Neena-Marie, Silentbob, Xie ‘lanthia, Candyce, Punasti, Moya’, Alich, Kathryn, and Lanfear.  Most notable customers were Astrolite (Sliced the first Light Saber in SWG), Blood (founder of EIS), Shinjo (Intrepid’s Original Bad Boy), Nemo (Intrepid’s First Master Architect), and Davinci (arguably the best Weapon smith and quest master that Intrepid ever saw).

The group of Tyrena Entertainers formed Star Dragon Entertainment, I was the spokesman and comedian of the group, Xie more or less controlled the dancers and organization of the groups. She also named the band. Star Dragon entertainment folded into SCO which became SGO. Some members like NeenaMarie stayed with them until the NGE hit. SCO was Intrepid’s first guild ever built by Nemo.   I was asked to be head of the entertainers but I declined I wanted a guild of my own.

Back when we had to pay for training all the entertainers would pool money together to get a new skill, since the person getting the skill could then train others for free.   We were very communal and worked together to get things done.  Xie and I mastered Entertainer and decided to go out in the big huge world.   We visited Mos Eisley, the busiest and most bustling area of activity in the galaxy; there were 4-5 full groups of 20 players playing in groups at the same time in the Eisley Cantina.  It was insane and fun but definitely too busy for me.   We journeyed to Naboo, where the people there acted like they had a pikeman’s lance shoved up to you know where, but almost as busy as Eisley.   Finally we wandered to Coronet where we met the second group of people that we would forever refer to as friends, Imcus Vree, En-chi Lada, and Chon Wang.  We performed together and called ourselves the Def Stars.

Around this time Period a tailor out side of Coronet had just mastered a certain box of field wear that allowed him to craft gunmen’s duster.   The place was insane with shoppers and Mokilok was the king of tailoring on Intrepid for a time because of it.   I still own the Mokilok Duster I purchased that day.   When I managed to visit once to get a custom order he had built himself a throne surrounded by torches and to say the least he was a unique individual.   A weapon smith outside of the Coronet was close to mastering and was known for making the best guns at the time.  His name was Idunno Udunno.   While I know I won’t remember all of them, Idunno, Zarina, and Mokilok were pivotal in creating the group that was known galaxy wide as the Corellian Mafia.

During this time I made money traveling from Cantina to Cantina across the galaxy selling instruments.  I made a healthy profit off of it.   Though one time I got stuck on Rori for a few hours until Davinci could wire me enough credits so I could fly back to Naboo. I was known for crafting instruments and was one of the main sellers in the Galaxy.  So much that Moya’ made everyone promise not mention that he was selling instruments and cutting into my sales.   I do know that Neill who still posts on the Entertainer forums made a special request for me to fly all the way to some out of the way Cantina to deliver him a special crafted instrument.  Thankfully just as prices were starting to kick up I managed to start buying weapon power ups off the bazaar in Coronet and taking them to Tyrena Bazaar and sealing them for a profit.   I made a pretty penny (for this time period) and then one day I was tipped 276521 credits – still an important figure for me.   All my friends at the time thought I was rich, and I thought for the longest time that it was credits gotten through an exploit (that should tell some of you how bad inflation is today).

One day Xie and I being master entertainers were invited to a “Masters Ball” since there were so few masters of any profession at that time it was an honor and a select few.  We wanted to take friends to share in the event as we were allowed to bring any guest we may like.   Xie took along Moya’ and I took along Alich.   They were both still working up in the entertainer profession and thought it would be nice to have them mingle along with us.   Little did I know that the two wookiees thought that these were traditional dates.   This became apparent when Xie lost her life and Moya’ mourned the loss, I had to explain to Alich that my lekkus don’t swing that way.  Though I still heard about it from Moya’ for years.  I just mention that Moya’ managed to watch his date murdered and didn’t do anything to stop it.

Moya’ did manage to get me back.  Talking in the Tyrena cantina with En-chi Lada, Moya’, Candyce, and  Xie I believe; I was complaining that the cantina didn’t have any restrooms and as far as I could decipher I couldn’t find any public restrooms at all.

Moya’ then told En-Chi and myself that he had seen a restroom over in the Tyrena hotel. The Tyrena Hotel? Why that was just across the street. I had been holding my bodily functions for so long and salvation was so close? Why had the Galactic gods tormented me so by having a restroom so close by.

En-chi and I rushed over to the hotel in hope of relieving ourselves.  We searched that hotel from top to bottom (ok it’s only one floor but there was another argument with Moya’ over elevators). We started screaming at Moya’ . Moya’ came over and started trying to find this infamous restroom. It seems the wookiee thought a decorative alcove was a restroom – it seems that you should never tell a wookiee how to get to the indoor restroom – always walk them there.  On a side note because of this incident I finally built a restroom in my house and that toilet got a lot of use.

I parlayed my money into more buying and reselling and eventually got the credits over 1 million after a couple weeks.   Around this time period Davinci sent me a tell while I was performing in the Tyrena Cantina, he told me “Ding, I did it”- after clarifying he had made the highest damage laser rifles in the galaxy.   He named them the widow maker – there was another customer so Davinci held a number guessing contest to choose the buyers.  Since I was buying two I got two guesses.  All said and done I managed to get both the highest DPS rifle on the server (I still own it) and the lowest mind cost rifle on the server (Xie still owns hers).

Going back to the funny incidents there was a player named Clark Griswold on the Intrepid who managed to loose the waypoint to his house.   A server wide search north of Theed went on to looking for his house.   Out of a joke En-Chi and I managed to buy and identically styled house and place it down.  Naming it Clark‘s house.   The next day cheers were going on that someone had found Clark‘s house.   En-chi and I were rolling over this.  Clark went to the waypoint and tried to get in but didn’t manage to get through the door.   He then figured out the ruse and realized it wasn’t his house.   A big outrage started from certain people on the forum and En-Chi and I owned up to it instead of slinking away.  Afterwards it was quite a joke and everyone laughed.

I worked in starting the first museums on the Intrepid server, trying catalogue and save every little thing I could find.   Padre helped me in my hunt on collecting anything and everything rare.  I never sold a donation and every donation I received when I closed the museums later was donated to other people, or I still have them.   It was never for me, I never made a dime off it.  I did it for the server community and that’s where I spent most of my money.   Unfortunately two days before my public opening someone else opened a museum.  I can say I started the first museum on Intrepid, but mine was the second opened to the public.   Mine was made of 4 medium Naboo buildings filled to the brim.  I was quite proud of that.

A new person came onto the scene at this time.  His name was Keltrien.   He had big ideas and bigger ambitions.   After working through some starter thoughts on the message boards for a few weeks he decided he was going to run a server wide festival.  He pulled it off with Xie and I gathering entertainers to perform and his working the money makers on the server for donations.   Groovefest was born and Keltrien said it was good.

Keltrien went on to run many more Groovefest and whether it was from direct help or indirect (renting vendor space) I helped him whenever I could.  I can say the other festivals the server has seen since have never been as big as the one’s Keltrien threw.   This was an atmosphere with hundreds of people milling about, shopping, and having a good time.   Keltrien managed to start a city on Tatooine just to hold Groovefest events in.   Keltrien went on to start a regular weekly speeder bike competition and a droid fighting competition.  Keltrien did a lot for Intrepid’s community and he shouldn’t be forgotten for that.

Keltrien however didn’t own a monopoly on large scale events.  Another event started was a music performance competition and it was arranged by Jerik.  Jerik started the IJB (Intrepid Jam Bonanza) competition.   Most the Def Stars had stopped being entertainers, but Xie and I thought we would enter one last competition as the Def Stars.  There were only two of us and we needed a third.  We recruited Moya’.  We rehearsed and polished our macros for the competition.  The day of the competition we managed to get our guild hall.  We showed up at the competition with the DEF guild tag above our heads.   Ironically you would have thought this was a normal music competition, by today’s standards it was but then it was something different.   They wanted to know who wanted to go when, we fought for and won the right to go last place.  The entire competition went on and then we were on.  Everyone thought that it was going to be the same song arrangement.  For the entertainers in the group that can audilize it, we played Starwars1 – with 2 mandoviol’s and an omnibox.  So we had a true rock and roll sound.  Not only that we sung lyrics.  Singing lyrics was unheard of in the cantina or in competition.  None of the other competitors sang, some think we demeaned the competition.  But to every other non entrant there it blew them away and we won.   Ironically for all those on Intrepid that have to endure all the entertainers singing in the cantina now, you’re welcome.

Here are the lyrics as performed at the IJB by the Def Stars

The AFK Entertainer

I’m the afk entertainer
And I know just where to stand
Another AFKer
Another macro band
Today I am your healer
I may have won your creds
But I know the game
You’ll forget my name
And I won’t be here for a jawa beer
If I don’t stay on the star charts

Chorus:
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro

I’m the afk entertainer
And I’ve had to pay my price
The things I did not know at first
I got free training, NICE!
Ah but still it comes to haunt me
My tailor I need to pay
So I’ve learned to dance
With a macro and hot pants
I rub their neck and give my macro a check
As they tip because their BF goes way

Chorus:
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro

I’m the afk entertainer
Been all around the worlds
I’ve said “tip me” in every cantina
And I’ve spammed with my dancer girl
I can’t remember faces
I don’t remember names
Ah but what the heck
I give my macro one last check
‘Cause after a while and a thousand galactic miles
The grind is still the same

Chorus:
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
TIP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now we won a million credits and to put it into Intrepid’s current inflation terms – that would between 150-200 million.  That’s how much purchasing power that bought.  I wanted to use the money to start a city – “New Tyrena”.  We purchased our city hall and were ready to go, I was going to be mayor and Imcus was going to be the city planner.  Well the city planner profession was scrapped, but Imcus was still the designer.  We spent weeks looking for a spot and finally found one.   We were ready, the City patch came, and we were too slow.   The planet was already capped.   A week or two later SOE decided to raise the planetary caps and we managed to get our city down.   Symphonia was born and it still stands there today.

We spent a couple nights packing up and moving all the museums from their current location to Symphonia, these building became the back wall of Symphonia’s main quad.   We grew and flourished and focused on DEF being an entertainer only guild and Symphonia a city dedicated to the arts.   Then because of personal reasons I had to quit the game suddenly without telling anyone except I sent a message to Moya’ .  I gave Moya’ access to my accounts to move things around but I wasn’t logging in.   They held a funeral for the character Creeva in Symphonia, and it was SWG’s first as far as anyone could tell (this was Jan 2004).  Looking at screenshots I’ve seen of that day it seems at least 50 people showed up.  This was to a funeral in a video game.   Imcus and Moya’ wrote a song called Sgt. Creeva’s Band.   I was touched even being outside the game.   The museums were saved and life would go on.

After a month or two I managed to get things straightened out so I could log back in.   At this time I was welcomed with joy.  Imcus had taken over as mayor and still is to this day.   The museums grew and life went on.   Well I’m sure there are some significant issues that happened around this time, more Groovefest and such.  A dark peril started circling the galaxy the AFK entertainer and the hologrind.   The AFKing had been growing for months but grew to a peak when Monika unlocked the first Jedi Akinom on the Intrepid server.   I was there in Coronet the first night the first Jedi was wandering SWG.  It was awe inspiring.  My RL friend Astrolite managed to slice her light saber, getting the no trade item across via droid storage compartment – now that’s a true smuggler.   The appearance of the Jedi showed that unlocking professions was the path – this lead to the hologrind.

The hologrind was a way of life the cantina were piled full of AFKers just trying to master the profession so they could move on to the next one.  What made matters worse in SOE’s attempt to encourage this they gave everyone holocron’s for x-mas.  Some people received two since there was a bug where some players never received the first one.    This further increased the use of holocrons to discover what profession you needed next to finish your path onto Jedi.     I can say that I never opened my holocrons and it is still on display at the Entertainer Museum in Symphonia.   The golden age of SWG was over and a new dawn was coming.   I was a strong anti-afk advocate but in the minority the ATK entertainers were overwhelmed. 

There were good times and bad times during this stage, DEF had added more members over time.  Amber and Siri being the most notable.  Outside of Moya’ and Imcus, Amber has been the longest member of DEF.  Siri was the largest cross server superstar (out side ourselves of course :P) to join the guild.   The guild however wasn’t growing and disagreements on who to bring and who not to lead slowly to a partial dissolution.   Xie had wanted more of a consensus instead of taking weeks to guild a member and she wanted to step down from being the decision maker of the guild, she was mostly the decision make since she was the tie maker or breaker and was kind of the unofficial leader because of it.   Moya’ and I were doing the museum thing, especially with starting the Wookiee Cultural Center in Symphonia.  Imcus was busy chasing his Jedi dream (no holocrons were used as far as I know) so Xie was kind of left holding the back. Things had come to a point and the SWG combat upgrade hit us smack in the face.  

Xie and forced the issue with the guild on two fronts.  Because of the combat upgrade I was going to leave the guild for awhile, I was respeccing out of entertainer and I didn’t think I should be in a guild called the Dedicated Entertainment Foundation without being an entertainer.   Xie wanted more cantina time for the guild and thought that while DEF should remain, if they weren’t going to be in the cantina’s and actively working as entertainers that we should take entertainment out of the guild name.   Ironically Siri left Intrepid forever to get away from the fame and because DEF never really supported her in the guild.   Things were quickly creeping up.

SOE finally decided to give entertainers a little bit of love and brought out a new song and dance via a theater quest and at this time Jerik decided it was time to do another IJB.   There had been IJB’s since the first but DEF resisted entering them but this one was rumored to be the last one.  DEF had members enter in the other band’s to perform in the IJB but we didn’t compete as a group.   For the last IJB we came together again (except Xie who sat it out), since Xie wasn’t there we weren’t going to use the Def Star name.  So we came up with the Def Spurs.    The Def Spurs came in second, there was some controversy over this since the winning band had gotten a do-over because they screwed up.   I still think that comes with territory.  I stilled performed a lot at this time and with the big credit duping scandal there was massive in game protests.  Xie relayed news to me at work and a fledging Intrepid organization came into being.  The INN – the Intrepid News Network.   Ironically their news coverage made it to the major gaming blogs and they were an Intrepid staple for some time to come.  

Whichever Groovefest it was at this time – I did my own protest song.  Which caught on quite a bit:

Soe Idiot

Don’t want to be an SOE idiot.
Don’t want a galaxy that under the new regiment.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The SOE mods tried silent it.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the Intrepid nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
More nerfs and bans coming tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Well that’s enough to argue.

Well maybe I’m the sad little boardy.
but I’m not a part of a duper minority.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the Intrepid nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
More nerfs and bans coming tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Well that’s enough to argue.

Don’t want to be an SOE idiot.
Giving bans to 11 year old innocents.
Merchants are all in hysteria.
It’s going out to idiot developers.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the Intrepid nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
More nerfs and bans coming tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Well that’s enough to argue.

Everything building up and Xie and I took the guild aside and explained our concerns on what had been happening and our thoughts.   Because of a continual lack of consensus and everyone wanting not to hurt anyone else’s feelings, Xie and I left the guild.  Her for lack of entertainer focus and not changing the guild name to reflect it, myself for leaving entertainer.   From my understanding the members left behind in DEF feel we betrayed them and had a united front against them in our leaving.   Xie and I each had our own reasons just the timing happened the same day.  

I stayed a member of Symphonia, maintained my museums and my vendors.   My vendors were pulling in millions a week, that’s saying a lot for a player who only bought low and sold low.  I would say I only crafted less then 1% of everything I’ve sold.   For this sake of argument I will also include gathering resources as crafting since I never had lots for harvesters.   I kept all my resources regardless of quality at identical pricing and maintained some of the best prices on the server with the largest variety.  For my rarities, I would buy out other vendors and then make my prices the cheapest in the galaxy.  I made huge profits on quantity instead of price gouging.

The combat upgrade was in full effect and the silver age of Star Wars galaxies had come to a halt. 

I could discuss the village and other grinds and stories that go along in this time, but I still have more to tell and this tale is already quite lengthy.  We fast forward to the NGE, ironically because I was moving across country and internet service would be spotty I quit SWG for awhile.  Xie had quit a few months before me.  

After settling into a new house that I bought I decided it was time to check out SWG again.  I conned Xie into coming back with me.   We both wanted to be in an Entertainer guild again, but knew DEF was not focused that was anymore.  SO we started STARS – the story of STARS is here: http://creeva.com/2006/08/08/the-story-of-star/  we resurrected at the time the idea of an Intrepid news source at http://stars-of-intrepid.blogspot.com and the biggest hit was the Intrepid History quiz: http://stars-of-intrepid.blogspot.com/2007/01/ips-intrepid-quiz-how-many-can-you.html

We did fall into the same stagnation as we did with DEF though and it fell it apart.  It just proves that no matter how passionate or dedicated you are that no true entertainer guild that promotes ATK survives on Intrepid.   We also managed to start a new city called Pirates Retreat on Rori, it started falling apart after the housing cleanup.  That’s fine, I never really wanted a shuttle, but many residents did.   So all in all I founded two cities dedicated to entertainment and two guilds dedicated to the same.

For my in game tales I’ll leave it at that.  I’ve been an active member since launch in the Intrepid and Entertainer forums.  I was in the running for being the first musician correspondent.    I wrote many tipping, etiquette and performance guides for entertainers on the forums.   I did what I could to promote ATK entertainer all the time.   I started the infamous IPS on the Intrepid forums and it lives on today in its fifth generation.  I will miss it.   I will keep posting until I can’t anymore, but my account runs out March 1st. 2008.  Ant with that I’ll be gone from in game so I’m posting this now while I still can.

Some of you are going to deride this tale that I’ve relayed.  That’s fine, you are not the ones I’m trying to reach.  SWG has been a place for friends and communities.  Friendships crafted here transcend the game and forge real life bonds.  I may not be an entertaining superstar in real life, but I am now playing in two real life community bands.   The friendships I have there are not as strong as the ones I’ve made here.   I’ve spent 1/6 of my life on Intrepid.   It has been a good journey.  I’ve made friends I email daily. I’m working on a real life business venture with Keltrien.  I have had dinner on the coast with Moya’.  These are real thing and real people.

Some people think this is just a game.  It never was met to be.   It was a community.  A community you can’t find anywhere else, I’ve looked.   You can’t get both sides together and socialize and have fun.  Either the social side is terrible or they keep factions apart.   For those of you that understand what I’m saying and have that, hang on to it.   Literally 99% of the people I counted closest to me are gone.  It is my time to join them.  SOE not policing any AFKing for any professions was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

No you can’t have my stuff.  I will be logging in tonight though.   I do make one last promise to Intrepid and then I will be silent on what I can offer.  I promise as long as there is at least a few days notice, I will be back the final month of the game.   The final day I will be performing in the Tyrena cantina, I will perform there that day, until the servers go black never again to alight.

To end on a corny note, May the force be with you, always.

I want people just to be.   It’s that simple we are all equal and different.  Pointing out the differences, whatever our meaning, brings about one group hating another group, because the other group stands for something they are against.   I think that people need to stop voting the party line, there is no possible way every democrat or every republican can believe everything their parties believe in.   Of course many people will only vote for their own parties.   We treat this like a game, that the parties are football heroes and elections are games.  The presidential election of course would be the party’s superbowl.

We should not be behidn the parties like it is a game.  This is about leadership and our future.   If you say you would never vote for the opposite party then the one you think you belong in, well I’m sorry you are as narrow minded and idiotic as anyone whoever put sheets on their head and terrorized African-Americans for the sake of moral safety and decency.   Fighting for your party or candidate is a great thing, make sure you do it for the right reasons.

I’m attempting to archive files and want the MD5 to be unique on each file. So I’m attempting to make a digest of the files I’m creating. Wikipedia describes MD5 digesting like this:

MD5 digests have been widely used in the software world to provide some assurance that a transferred file has arrived intact. For example, file servers often provide a pre-computed MD5 checksum for the files, so that a user can compare the checksum of the downloaded file to it. Unix-based operating systems include MD5 sum utilities in their distribution packages, whereas Windows users use third-party applications.

Now I’m aware that there are ways to spoof an MD5 hash, so in effect you could modify a file and maintain the same hash. This however isn’t my concern, at the moment for my needs I am generating and MD5 from a group of files and some of these are zero byte files. What I was not aware but I’m sure is common knowledge that zero byte files will always produce the result of d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e as it’s hash output.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an idiot for not knowing or thinking about this.

Essentially when the MD5 is calculated it looks only at the information of the file and not the file per say.   A friend I was emailing  described it like this:

 Think about it this way. You have 2 boxes, one is red and one is blue
and you also have a clipboard. The clipboard says on it contents, 1 red
box, 1 blue box, both of size 0 (this is the filesystem metadata). Your
md5 program asks for the location of the box from the clipboard, walks
over to the box and opens it up (not caring about color, shape, size,
etc). Grabs the contents (in this case nothing) and runs nothing through
it’s magical hashing process.

Now I am aware that getting a checksum of a file or packet looked at the packet in general and would usually be limited since most checksums included in OS’s are usually 8 bit’s I believe.   I thought this was superseded later by MD5 checksums and their ability to be 32-bit.   I thought MD5 would at least look at the file name since a file named test1 and a file named test2 would still be unique files even if they were zero bytes in size.   What I thought paraphrasing my friends scenario is that MD5 would look at the box, the size, and the contents as a complete package – taking the file name into account for it being unique.   Sadly I thought wrong.

MD5 has it’s flaws and in recent years has been broken and can be spoofed.   Hopefully the next iteration will add a little more authenticity to a file being unique instead of just the contents inside of it.    Bob may be male but that doesn’t make him any less unique then Larry who is also male.   If MD5 was looking at images it would count them as being equal in this regard.

MD5 used to be something that I understood better then I actually did.   It’s like the guy you knew at collegebut ran into years later.    Originally you would have been fine if he had dated your sister.  However now that you know him better and find out the things he has done wrong you feel  that you don’t know him as well  as you thought you did.   This makes you trust him less.   Unfortunately one of the most commonly used purposes of MD5 is to promote trust.

I recant what I said originally in the title, I don’t hate MD5 – but I don’t trust it the way I used to.

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Evolution it seems accounts for a lot of our strange ideas about money.

The idiot author, who is trying to argue sensibly on psychological effects of human beings missing the point of his original question.   I would definitely prefer to earn 50k while everyone else earned 25k then 100k while everyone earned 250k.   The author of the article seems to miss simple economics and the inflationary price that would be involved if you are on the low end of the pole.

I would truly be richer in dollar value with the first option – and the author of the LA times thinks I’m an idiot for thinking (realizing he is an idiot) that. 

If you mail the spammer enough times, they may take you off their mailing list. They may also call your local Post Office to ban you from any further postage-paid mailings to them if you include your name and address anywhere on or in the package, so if you enjoy this type of revenge, keep it anonymous. After I mailed MCI six packages (tires, shingles, rocks, etc.), they banned me from mailing postage-paid packages from my local post office, but I can still drive 1 mile to the next post office with no problems.

Hutchinson Police Chief Dick Heitschmidt from here

Idiotic statements at their best.

I kept meaning to get to this but it was a low priority for the most part – and the moments when it was a high priority I had no internet connection I could get on via another device to troubleshoot and fix it.

Theoretically the way I had been doing should have worked according to documentation online. However since this is kind of a niche use the documentation may not be up to date and some people may have already known the work around.

Since fighting this issue and making it a PITA to track down and troubleshoot I wanted to post the answer so some other hapless sould doesn’t have to endure the pain of fixing it.

I managed to get the following information from this site:

Connection Name: tzones

Data bearer: Packet data

Access point name: wap.voicestream.com

User name: N/A

Password: N/A

Authentication: Normal

Homepage: http://wap.myvoicestream.com

Advanced Settings (Handsets not equiped with WAP 2.0 may skip this section)

Proxy serv address: 216.155.165.050

Proxy port number: 8080

So I enter the proxy server into my PDA’s browser and it now works. Like I said according to the next article for straight through non-wap traffic this shouldn’t be required – so more work possible getting the laptop to connect (haven’t tried that either but will tonight….maybe).

Another thing I’m going to track down since I can’t host my own server is seeing if I can set up my PDA to use another proxy other then t-mobiles (curse Verizon for not allowing servers – btw they balked at me because I wanted a business class DSL so I could host and I gave up after trying to explain it for 3 hours – the loss of being able to VPN home is not worth the pain of enduring idiot questions like “why would you have a business class connection at a residential address”.

On a side note to show how much I use my cell phone for calls these days now that I’m no longer a consultant, my cell phone had been missing for a week. I had checked online and there was no unusual activity so I hadn’t left it in public or had it stolen. So every now again over the last week I was tearing up cushions and putting them back – only to repeat the routine a day or two later. Crawling on the floor to search the nooks and crannies of couches and cars. Finally last night out the corner of my eye I saw it – it had stayed hidden for a week under a reciept on the coffee table.

AARRRGGGG

I could go on and say alot about Joe, but I feel it’s more suited for him to talk about himself in the little bit of writing I still have copied away of his. I had saved these on a web page seven years ago and they had managed to survive. I figured now is the time to make sure they stay saved and not lost into the Internet oblivion.

The original site is here

The following contains I wrote or Joe wrote (his is in Bold) all those years ago:

A Tribute To Joe Cyrek

5-14-81 – 6-1-00

Screw The Beer We Have Everclear

Joe was a good friend, a little brother, a loving son, a gifted writer and artist. He was some one I could call on if I needed a hand, as he was to most people. These pages are designed for you, the readers, to share memories of him. If anyone has any thoughts and stories they would like to share I will post them under the memories section. For us that are still in mourning and still will be somewhat for the rest of our lives remember what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger………sometimes though I wish I was a little weak.

For everyone on me about getting this done I hope you understand that dealing and getting through this is one of the most painful things I have done in my life. I haven’t got my tatoo yet, but I will…that happens to be more of a money issue than anything else. I hope other people contribute pictures and memories of Joe otherwise this web site will continue to stay very small.

Sincerely

Brent M. Gueth

Joe was not just a poet he was an avid writer of any kind. He was supposed to be my Gothic style web page designer. He just wanted to write, he had a dream of going to college and becoming a reporter or freelance writer. Please take the time to read his writing and appreciating his unique style. The first is an intro of Joe’s Alter-Ego Damien PuckDraven Darkling.

Well the best way to begin is to introduce myself. I am…
Damian PuckDraven Darkling.

I am a rare breed. I am a mortal vampire along with darkling decent.
I am just of the young age of sixteen, yet I have seen much of this cruel world and have been through hell and back. Yet I do not regret a moment of it. As a matter of fact I rather think I enjoyed my life thus far, always wondering what tomorrow had in store for me. I love life on the edge of insanity. I have only recently come to understand my type of life I am living. It is not as dark and gloomy as the fictional books and movies make it seem to be. It is rather much more clear, yes much more clear through my eyes. It just changes your whole view of life, it just makes every small thing hold some form of interest, no matter how small and trivial it may be. It sill some how holds a wide spectrum of interest. Now I must get back to the subject at hand to tell a so called chapter of my life.

It all started upon the godforsaken night of October 31st. I was in the company of three friends, and for personal reasons, some will be given false names. The two females were Kat and Selissa, and then there was Sam, Selissa’s boyfriend at the time. Me and my Kat were also together at the time, soul mates. Yet in secret my once beloved friend selissa had other plans for me…she wanted me for her own. As for me, some strange reason my insides screamed no, not to get involved with her. Yet she did successfully tear me and my beloved Kat apart. Until this day I don’t know why I allowed this to happen. So it was a lovely night and we were out terrorizing the town, even though my town is nothing more than a speck on the planet, we still had our times. The normal scaring of the neighborhood children to death, out thrill to watch them cry.

Oh how I miss those days, running with the darkness, it was the best time of my life, no our lives… So now back to the task at hand, we are all now separated and relatively hate one another. The sad part is that Selissa did this to benefit herself, and she lost also. Yet what she did not account for is that I am not a normal person to be messed with and my and my Kat still love one another as the best of friends. Now has come a time to teach a long overdue lesson to Selissa and the other one who tried to harm me, Evelen. Evelen tried to get into my mind and then got it will to her dismay it did not work, yet she will pay. They both shall pay for their sins of corruption, deceit, and inflicted pain. Now comes the time for me and my Kat to have our revenge, and oh how chaotic is shall be. I want to reek such a havoc upon them, yet you must understand that there is a million things worse than death, and I know them all.

I now will let you have a slight glimpse into my mind. I am one of a dark souled decent, yet not so dark that I can’t see the light of reality. I enjoy the stranger side of life, well not only because of the fact I drink blood, but also with that aside, I am still different from the rest of humanity. I was born to be this and am glad to try and fit the shoes of the olden times Darkling lifestyles and beliefs. I am a kind of Darkling that enjoys pain, and knows the best ways to inflict it upon others. Yet I will not harm you unless you try to harm me first. After you try that, you are fair game to me and all my insanity. “I think the splash of blood is divine, and if you are my enemy I shall drink your blood like wine.” This I strongly believe in, so don’t test it unless you do not value your life.

Here are a few of Joe’s poems:

A CANDLE BURNS AT BOTH ENDS AND WILL NOT LAST THE NIGHT. BUT ALL MY FRIENDS AND ALL MY FOES, IT DESCENDS A LOVELY LIGHT. UPON THE HOUR OF TWILIGHT’S EVE I SHALL STILL HAVE ONE ACE HIDDEN UP MY SLEEVE. AS A DARKNESS CRAWLS ACROSS THE LAND THERE IS STILL ONE TRUE GOLDEN MOMENT OF GOLDEN BEAUTY IN THIS GODFORSAKEN MAN. NOTHING PURE IS LEFT IN THIS SOUL, SO ALL I LOVE AND ALL I HATE ARE OF NO MEANING ANY LONGER. FEELING OH SO LOST AND SO ALONE AND EVER SO NUMB. LONELY A LIFE IS IT IF YOU CAN NOT TRUST. I DO NOT AND MAY NEVER TRUST AGAIN.

BITE THE BULLET

FREAKS CREED-WE MAY BE FEW BUT WE ARE STRONGER THAN ALL.
WE MAY TAKE ON THE WORLD AND WE WILL FALL FROM GRACE,
BUT WE WILL TAKE THIS WORLD WITH US A WORLD ENGULFED IN FLAMES.
YES WE MAY FALL TO THE BOTTOM BUT THAT IS WHERE WE THRIVE
THE WORLD WILL COME WITH US AND IN OUR LOSS THE OTHERS WILL GAIN
NOTHING BUT RECYCLED PAIN. AGONY IS SUCH A STRENGTH TO THE ESTRANGED.
TO THRIVE HERE IS TO SIMPLY SURVIVE
TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE YOU ARE HATED FOR WHAT YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN,
IT IS SAD.
ONE DAY WE WILL THRIVE AND CONTROL THIS WORLD.
THEN IT WILL BE FREE TO BE WHO YOU ARE.

MaLkAvAiN
MaDnEsS

WeLl Im MuSt SaY We ArE NoT DoInG TO InSaNE LaTlEy. As A MaTtEr Of FaCt LaTeLy YoU AlL HaVe BeEN RaThEr SaNe AnD IM SiCkENd By This So I ImPlOrE YoU To JoiN Me In My MALKAVIAN OnSlaUgHt We MuSt OrGaNiZe AnD Be A cLan AgAiN JoiN Me AnD ReMemBer YoUr INSANITY OR FORGET It I ThiNk . WeLL I LiKe JElLyBeaNS AnD SMall KitteNNS IN SoUP AND MiNiTuRe HorsES NamEd WiLd BiLl MaKe NoT SeNSe. HAvE YoU DrIvEn A HeBrEW LaTlEy?????

WeLl GooD ByE I MuSt Say Or Is IT No MoRe NoDDlEs In A CaN Of SpOOnS I CaNt RemEMbER AbOut ChiKeNs In SmaLL ShoEs .

LoVer
DiaB NiTtreL AnD HiS LeaChEs Of My BiG ToE

Shattered

Madness and confusion tears and pulls at my soul
Now my final stand broken I have no one to whom I can consul
My insane love has taken a heavy toll
Too heavy for me to be able to control
And now my heart lay still upon my window sill, black as coal
I am still falling through my collapsed dream
And pain, despair, sorrow, and confusion flow through my heart like a stream
The only thing heard is my dead soul’s silent scream
Then in a flash of moonlight, you can see my soul on its knees in the black light
Then out the twilight, demons take flight
And the devil lays claim to my fallen soul
Whom no person, not even I myself could control
Now my black heart remain still as it under the will of an unforeseen soul
My soul can now only pray for rain to wash away its pain and for this it has no more then enough lonely time to kill
Here hours seem like days, while your soul spins around in a haze
You search for one thing to stand true, yet your last in your own mind’s haze.

Torn

Feeling oh so lost and alone, can’t help the one I love so dear. I cannot go home ’cause I must keep near. My soul feeling abandoned and mistreated. My heart is utterly defeated. Yet the hope holds true, oh so true. For the light inside still burns bright and my dearest of friends will not give up the fight. Yet to see one so strong, in such a weak state, it burns my soul in two. I’m barely able to keep control, doing this on my own. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. Being so strong for everyone else’s sake, yet wanting to break down and fall apart.

Below is what I wrote about Joe all those years ago

My Personal Memories Of Joe

By

Brent M. Gueth

I first met Joe at the Haunted Schoolhouse in the 1996 season, one of the best seasons as far as I am concerned. I was working graveyard in my usual fashion (a story for another time) getting a ton of scares, and in comes this idiot acting like he runs the place telling me that I am doing it all wrong, and this was a kid over 5 years younger than me. He told me his name was Joe Cyrek and he was surprised that I never heard of him (like most the egos of the schoolhouse work). He started banging a shovel across the entranceway to graveyard crawling up the walls and hanging upside down from the garage door. I told him he was crazy and I would continue doing things my own way, he shrugged his shoulders and wandered off to cause mischief somewhere else in the maze and to hopefully pester someone else. After my accident in the schoolhouse (it goes along with that story for another time) I will say Joe’s way definitely influenced my method of working the room. I was he idiot banging the shovel against the entranceway, crawling up the walls, and hanging from the garage door. Not to let Joe’s ego get to big, he was not the sole influence for this behavior, but he did give me a second perspective into how to work the room.

For the next couple years I did not have much contact with him, seeing I was semi retired from the Schoolhouse. I ran into here and there at the Moore residence and he always said hi. I said hi back, but I told my then Fiancée to ignore him and maybe he’ll go away. He kept trying to talk to us and when we left we would turn to one another and go is he your friend? I don’t talk to him so he’s not my friend.

In the 1999 Schoolhouse year a group of us were talking of role-playing dungeons and dragons at the end of the night. Well this guy (Joe) asked if he could come over and game with us. I told him that I didn’t'’ care, the more the merrier. He asked if he could crash over my place, I cleared it with Autumn, seeing I didn’t want her to have to wake up with a stranger or strange person for that matter in the house. Well he came over created an elven thief character, Damien PuckDraven Darkling, with a double long sword – think Darth Maul with swords instead of the light saber.

He was real excited about getting to airbrush the sign of the schoolhouse. It was almost like his coming of age at the schoolhouse. He was one of my guides. Every night he wanted to bet that he would not get the first fiend award, we had to keep telling him that the award was for the younger generation and he missed his chance once upon a time. He had a real fetish for glow in the dark make up and loved roaming/ working the ramp.

At the end of every schoolhouse night Joe came and stayed over and usually we gamed I think he missed one night of gaming the whole season. He became a constant fixture upon my couch. Sometimes he stayed days on end always the thoughtful son checking in with his mother. We did a lot of things together but all in all not that much. We gamed went out about town which we all no is not much played video games, role-played, went to borders, then around the beginning of December Joe disappeared for about a month. There was an altercation with another one of our friends who will remain nameless. Then around January he started showing back up again. Autumn and him started competing in Final Fantasy 8. The whole problem I had with that is when one of them found something the other had missed they restarted the game all over again, and it is a long ass game. We all saw Dogma together and I managed to get Joe on the boat that was Kevin Smith is the greatest thing ever.

Around February we started going to the Flying Saucer Coffee Shop which many of you know was a big part of Joe’s life, he always talked about how cool it would be to work there. We usually spent at least every Saturday they and a day or two during the week. His favorite beverage was a 25 oz. Brian’s Comet. One time Sean bet him a free Brian’s Comet if Joe could drink the full 25 oz. one in less than 20 seconds. Joe did it in 17 seconds. He always said he was going to work to get it down to less than ten. He said the answer was a larger straw.

Joe always told big stories wanting you to think he was larger than life. In some ways he was, in other ways he seemed to feel inadequate.

He never wanted his family to know he smoked so he would always send me into Speedway to buy his Marlboros from his grandmother Sandy.

Then there was Marcon, the one thing that we had talked Joe into (not much talking required), that we actually followed through on. I was in a separate car than the one Joe, Autumn, and Jonathan took down to Columbus. I rode with Griffaw on the ride down. We left roughly 3 hours after they supposedly left. When we reached Ashland I got a call on my cell phone, from Joe, that they needed the directions again because they forgot to copy them down. They were only 45 minutes ahead of us on I-71.

Looking back Joe and I never did a lot but we did things he loved, go to the coffee shop, role-played, watched Kevin Smith movies, we didn’t have to always go out and be off the wall. I really enjoyed just hanging out with him. He was one of my best friends.

these crw designs are what I am considering for a tattoo

o

Here is what my sister wrote – she was 12 at the time:

		IN MEMORY OF: JOSEPH M. CYREK 1981-2000
	Joseph m. Cyrek ,19, died suddenly Thursday, June 1, 2000, as a result of an auto accident on SR 2 in BrownHelm township. He was Born May 14, 1981, in Fairview Park and a lifelong resident of Vermilion. He was a manager trainee for the Flying Saucer Coffee shop, Elyria, and had also been employed at Harrison Manufacturing in Birmingham. He was a graduate of EHOVE career center, where he studied carpentry. He enjoy volunteering at the Haunted School house for friends of harbourtown and wrote articles for the “imprints” section of the Sandusy register. Cyrek, 8415 risden rd, had just worked a night shift at a new job and was traveling west on SR 2 toward his Vermilion home about 6 a.m , when his red 1997 ford ranger pickup truck rolled over and landed on its left side along the high way in Brownhelm Township by SR 2 rest stops, according to the highway Patrol, Cyrek was thrown from the vehicle and landed about 10 feet away in a westbound lane on the road, according, to the Elyria post of the highway patrol i loved joe he was so funny and crazy at some times but still every one loved him. It was really hard for me to go to school the next day i found out about what happened, because every one was talking about it and i started to cry.I know lots of poeple cared about him. I just hope every one is ok. -Branda Gueth- this is a picture of joe working at the haunted school house , he has SCAREY make up on!!

That is all I have – I wish there was more but there is memories – more memories then I can ever write up that are precious to me. Joe left us before the days of myspace memorials and I don’t plan of doing anything like that. This post is enough – my affirmation that he is alive in my heart and thinking about him can still make my eyes water. I have a picture (the one my sister used on her page) up in a spot I can see it every day in my house. Joe I feel is the guardian angel that sits over my shoulder and keeps me from truly growing up – I still hope one day even after all these years I will wake up and find out it was all a dream.

I still haven’t got that tattoo I promised – but I will – I promise that I will.

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