Monday, April 28, 2003
New look, same great (?) content. Yeah, I changed the layout a wee bit, just the look pretty much. I am bracing myself for complete conversion over to PHP, but I need to design a content management system first (I know, theres a million, I just want my own :) So, give me feedback on whether you like the design or not, and i may change back if I or nobody else likes it.
If you are a geek, you may recognize the look from somewhere. I got the whole graph paper design at the top, and the whole logo in general from another site. Just the idea. I did all the images in photoshop and they are all original. As with the code for the site. It is all hand written in HTML as usual. Just as I borrow ideas from other websites, I dont care if you use my code or stylesheets, but try not to make an exact replica. I design my site to be unique, not just "another site". Anyway, the code for this page is not optimized at all, so please report any bug you see to me either in person or by email destillman@yahoo.com
thanks.
Here's another update with the whole Osama bin Laden in Redding post. Well, I talked to the guy whose dad looks like Osama (who also has a suburban in the same color and lives on that side of town) and this is what he had to say:
skipnickerson (7:48:29 PM): you know that Osama post thing?
destillman (7:48:41 PM): yeah
skipnickerson (7:48:51 PM): I'm the guy who's dad looks like Osama
skipnickerson (7:48:58 PM): and I really think it's my dad
skipnickerson (7:49:08 PM): he was over there, the other night, with our suburban
He said more about how funny it was and how everyone laughed when they heard it. Here is what his girlfriend (who is the person who told my friend that my friends friends boyfriends dad looks like Osama... lets just say its a long story) had to say:
mattedgloss (7:30:30 PM): i'm a friend of steven's
destillman (7:30:34 PM): oh, hey
mattedgloss (7:30:56 PM): the girl with the boyfriend whose dad looks like osama
...
mattedgloss (7:43:02 PM): you should have seen my face when he mentioned the silver suburben
destillman (7:43:15 PM): lmao
mattedgloss (7:43:38 PM): i was like, "ummmmm.........."
mattedgloss (7:43:58 PM): "anthony's mom has a silver surburban"
Yeah, it we talked a bit more about it, but I just thought it was really funny how small Redding is, and how everyone knows someone who knows someone whose dad is Osama bin Laden :) Oh, and if you have no idea what I am talking about, listen to this
Sunday, April 27, 2003
Oh man, big weekend. I am dead tired right now. Friday was the Chico Invitational track meet, which was a big thing for my school. We have a team of 15 or so kids who go to every track meet hosted at a local school and record all of the results in a computer. There is a laptop computer at the finish line hooked up to a camera that digitally records every racer who finishes down to the millisecond. All of the times are loaded in a database. At the same time the races are going on, there are people at every field event with a palm VIIx handheld computer which is also synced with database. As you could imagine, this takes a whole bunch of coordination and stress on a few people (did someone say... rachael?). Well, the chico track meet was the biggest meet with (as far as I know) over 1000 high school competitors there.
I was a part of the team that went there; my job was to record all of the data for the high jump. It rained for the first part of the day, which really put a damper on everyones mood, especially the electronic devices :) I won't go into details, but it was pretty bad... however, we did get everything into the computer and compiled into a database. It can be viewed online here which is a page on geocities.com/westvalleytrack. Yeah, look at that page, then think of all the time it took to ENTER all that data. :) Thats what I did on Friday from 8:30AM to 1:20AM on Saturday.
Then came the LAN party. Tony hosted in his garage, and it was fun. It was the first LAN where I haven't made it all night. I was just exhausted after working in Chico all day. The part I was awake and 'present' for was fun however, playing mostly Unreal (as usual with this group). I took a nap in their mobile home/trailer thingie at about 2 because I couldn't stand. Thanks Tony, and Tony's parents!
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Remember that Osama bin Laden clip I posted? (see 4/16) One of my friends read it, and IMed me about it... here is what he had to say:
PewterBird2002 (8:17:17 PM): i was telling a friend about that osama clip today
destillman (8:17:26 PM): lol, that is funny
PewterBird2002 (8:17:29 PM): i had forgotten that her boyfriends dad looks like osama
PewterBird2002 (8:17:35 PM): even he says he does
PewterBird2002 (8:17:45 PM): i mean her boyfriend
PewterBird2002 (8:17:59 PM): and then she said that his mom drives a silver suburban
PewterBird2002 (8:18:09 PM): they live on that side of town
It went on to talk about how it could have been him... I thought it was funny, anyway. :)
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
At school we use a program called LotusTM Notes. Their servers are called domino servers. According to Anthony, that is because "if one server goes down, they all go down". My teacher laughed. That's all I have to say about that.
Monday, April 21, 2003
Ahhh, the feeling of having your freedom that you crave ripped from your grasp as society forces the youth of the nation to be educated.
Today is my last day of spring break. From here on out it is 'put your head down and go for it' until the eleventh of june. School sucks. However, I have made a decision; a decision to play the game of school - and win - no matter what the cost. I am sick of losing. I don't want to fail out of high school or college and wind up being a self employed computer programmer/web designer for the rest of my life.
Just thought I might get that out. Just a thought :)
Saturday, April 19, 2003
768... 768. That is the number for today. Why do you ask? If you hang around computers, you probably already know... if not, think. What is 256+512? yeah, now you're getting there.... I got a RAM upgrade!!! Yup, good ol pc2700 ddr ram. A 512 MB stick for $60 from frys, with a lifetime warranty and a quasi name brand. In addition, in my trip to frys, I got a new CPU fan for the LAN party (at the last one, I had a pretty hot CPU) I just installed the new one a few minutes ago with some arctic silver 3 and my cpu dropped 16 degrees (that's in celcius) under high-load conditions!!! Thats a friggin whole bunch if you didn't know. I am impressed. It's kinda loud when on full blast, however, but what can a guy do?
Oh, and why was I in Fremont to be able to go to fry's? I was visiting my sisters in San Jose and Davis for Easter, plus just to say hi :) Good trip, got to talk a lot with my sisters, so that was cool. Yeah, all that, plus the Fry's gods are pleased... seriously, what more does a guy want? Oh, I got issue 19.4 (finally) if that has any significance to you whatsoever... it has to do with a certain 4 digit number :) (yeah, Pavel, if you are reading this, I am a complete lamer)
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
This is a really cool website [+]. They basically take police scanners, record the good parts, and put them online. The one that really interested me, however, was a (100% real) sighting of Osama bin Laden at the walgreens on Churn Creek. [+] Yeah, in Redding, the town I live in. THE Osama bin Laden. Okay, while the sighting may not have really been him driving away in his 4 door suburban (that's a direct quote from the sound file), it IS a real recording from the police scanner. Yes, Redding cops DID investigate a sighting of America's #1 most wanted criminal. At walgreens. What is this world coming to?
Blogger was being stoopid so it lost my template with all the "friends" links I noticed. I want to see if anything else got messed up, but I need to study. I have 35 math assignments plus 2 of the big unit problems that take an hour to finish. I am done with 21 of the smaller ones, though, so I am getting there.
I got a new pair of contacts today, with both a stonger perscription in my left eye and bigger lenses because I guess I have big eyes 8-) I dropped my dad off at work so I could go to my appointment with the optometrist.
This sucks. It is spring break. I have my dad's car. I am home alone all day. The only thing my concience lets me do is homework. [sigh]
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
After doing algebra II homework I don't understand in the least bit, I went with my parents to respond to an ad in the paper about a dog someone was giving away... Well, sure enough, an hour later we walked out of this nice womans house with a new member of the family named Mister. Or Mr., whatever. He is a slightly overweight 8 or so year old beagle. He is actually pretty cool as far as dogs go. He is perky enough, without being "there" all the time like our last dog (if you knew our last dog, you KNOW what I am talking about). I guess the lady was giving him away because it used to be her dad's dog, but he died a while ago, so she got the dog. Anyways, now he is ours, and we love him. We have a few pictures of him, but his eyes are pure white in all of them but one, so I decided to just put up this one... [+] ... It is of the dog, my dad, and myself (thats the dog in the middle there). Expect a page on him with more pics in a week or so, when I have more time for the website.
BTW, blogger is being lame on me and not working entirely correctly. It is the first problem I have ever had in the year+ I have been using it, so I am not complaining, but it just sort of happened at a bad time, you know?
anyway... We got a dog! :)
Monday, April 14, 2003
So much to say with so little time...
I am working on about 30 or so (maybe more... don't want to count) Algebra II assignments I have to make up. Not to mention the physics, new media, and History projects I have lingering on the back burner. Actually my physics teacher basically told me that, well, since you have been gone for 5 weeks I think I should give you 5 weeks to make up all the work you missed. Awsome. Score one for Mr. L...
Anyway, I was up at Shasta on Saturday for the pond skim. That was awsome. Basically they set up a pond that you can go down a hill into and make a big splash and get wet and get hypothermia, etc... in. I didn't do it. My dad got a few pics and a video or two, so I will upload those when I don't have so much on my back...
After snowboarding (BTW, yesterday was closing day :() I went to a LAN at a kids house. I think his name was Kelly, but who knows. There was lots of CS, Battlefield 1942, and even a bit of UT2K3 which was awsome. I got the full version with all the patches, so I am stoked. There was lots of food, people, and cases in this kids' garage, and even a cat stuck up in the rafters. I think my cold cathode made a big hit with the modders :) Speaking of modders, this guy from Davis had THE most modded xbox I have ever seen. Most of it was DIY mod chips minus the soldering, but he also had a new DVD drive so he could play burned games, had tons of emulators (SNES, NES, etc...) and even a new OS which I forget the name of. Seeing as how it had a fat DVD drive on top of it, the case was never on, plus the splash screen had a blue xbox logo (instead of the slime-green it usually has). That's just a start, I'm sure. I wish I had a camera...
As for logistics... I am on spring break as of today (took me a while to figure out what day it was, I got eighteen hours of sleep) and might/might not go to my cabin in trinity center tomorrow. After that, i might go to san jose on Friday depending on if I get all my homework done, and there is plenty of it. I will. But we shall see.
I think that covers it. Big weekend. Not to mention cool april nights, but thats a WHOLE other story :)
Thursday, April 10, 2003
I was on TV for my school again today... After school at about three o'clock we did a deal for local veterans. While I was gone many of my friends interviewed veterans from WWII and did reports on them for the Library of Congress to add to their database which was really cool. I caught the tail end and did some tape transcribing and then today I ran the powerpoint presentation that we showed to the vetrans, our parents, and a few members of the community that decided to show up. Since I was the A/V guy, I had to get their early, early enough to be one of three students there when the TV lady arrived. She interviewed me and asked me a few questions about the project (even though I was absent for the majority of it ... I mostly said a bunch of BS based on some facts) that was later aired okn the 6:30 news. I recorded it on my computer, but for some odd reason all I got was the video, and no audio to go along with it... One of those things that happens. I did, however manage to take a screenshot of it [+] and put that online. Don't mind my hair... it was acting fun today.
In other news... I am going snowboarding with Zach at Shasta on Saturday, so looking forward to that, and then I am going to go to a LAN party a friend of his is hosting in his garage. We shall see if it is any good or not. Mostly CS I would guess... that seems to be a LAN party favorite. I haven't played UT2K3 over LAN yet, so maybe we could get that going on. Who knows. Someone from the LAN could be reading this even as we speak, so I shouldn't say too much before I know anything, you know?
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Well, as you can see, I got my new domain up and running! Thank you SO much, YellaT for all the help on your end and for hookin me up with the free webspace. As my first PHP/MySQL project, I wrote a simple forum where you can post your name and a comment and such. Please write stuff or else if I feel like a lamer I will take it down. Also, don't abuse it, because I did make an admin panel too to delete posts. You can find it here. Thanks again, YellaT!
Monday, April 07, 2003
Well, today was my first day back at school in 3 weeks and my fourth in 5 weeks. I have a bunch of work to make up, but the teachers are all being pretty cool about it, plus I have a week off next week that will make it a bit easier to catch up on. I guess everyone was glad to have me back, so that was encouraging, along with I found out that another kid at my school had gone to the same program a few years ago, so it was good to know I wasn't alone. I talked with him a bit and we shared war stories for a bit, and it was fun to be able to relate to someone about it. Anyway, after school I went to see my eye doctor and got some contacts, so I don't have to wear glasses anymore! It was crazy cool, but still weird actually TOUCHING my eye, if you know what I mean. I will get used to it.
Another big thing happened in my life today. Well, in the world of computers anyway. I registered my first domain name. I purchased www.stilldavid.com and got some hosting for it (thanks SO MUCH YellaT for all your help and all!). Expect my site to be moved there this week or as soon as we can work out all the bugs with the hosting and all. That was a big thing for me, so expect me to be writing crazy php for it (when I'm not doing homework of course). Well, I'm out. Homework...
Wow. The day after. I am home. I am still getting over it. It is the funniest feeling in the world to get back to the "normal" life if it really is normal. Doing every small thing I used to do, small things like, taking a shower for the first time in three weeks, typing on a computer, eating real food that I don't have to make on a camp stove. Yup, no more oatmeal or cream of wheat for me for a while. I had three breakfasts yesterday, one at the hotel, one from heaven on earth (one of their huge cinnamon rolls) and one at that restaurant in Mt. Shasta that everyone loves.
Anyway, I am sure everyone (?) is wondering how I am and how the trip was and all that. For starters, I am doing very well. I am alive, well, healthy, more in shape than when I left, etc... but I also had a change in mindset. It is one of those things that you can't really explain over the internet, because this is just a bunch of ones and zeros. If you really want to know how I AM, ask me in person. I could tell stories for hours, so watch what you ask for. I just want to get across that is was a good change. I feel more alive than I ever have. It's hard to explain, but I feel like a new person in a way. I can only say good things about the program. Although I was kinda the odd one out the whole time (like I said, ask in person), I still felt like I got a lot out of 'trek'. It was a great experience and the staff did an awsome job. I can only say good things about the program. (ain't that right, Peggy?) I think in the future I might post a little bit more of what actually happened as far as physical things, like what we did, ate, where we were, etc..., but I want to talk to Freer before I say too much. All I will say is that we were snowshoeing in Oregon for three weeks. No trail or anything, set up your own tent, cook your own food that kind of thing. I will see if I can post pictures (not of people, I would assume) of it and stuff like that, but that is all going to have to wait. Just know it was a good experience. Challenging, demanding, get that feeling like you don't ever want to see snow kind of good, but good nonetheless. :)
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Phew, I am home. Actually at home. I just got out of the shower. I had three breakfasts on the drive down. Life is good. More later as I have a bit more time to decel. Pictures, I hope, and a short video of me walking into my room the first time. [deep sigh]. I miss home.