My girlfriend’s computer got a virus. She thinks it was from a popular VOIP client that rhymes with “ripe”. I gotta say that that sucks. So she spent an hour or so trying to uninstall the program, but she’s getting weird error messages and it’s just frustrating her, so she said “screw this” and shut the computer off for now.

Okay.  So now I’m online doing research and trying to find out what the virus is and how to combat it so that she can get back online and all that.  (perfect timing, I suppose, as she just bought an iPhone last night)  In my search, I’ve been finding all the standard BS sites that are just trying to sell something, but then I came across the winner!

Here’s the full article, but the gist is this:  Dude states that there’s a new virus out there and it’s the worst he’s ever seen! (OMIGOD, whatever will we all do?!)  He then goes on to say that normal viruses gain personal info from your computer so that the hacker/naughty people can exploit it for their own nefarious purposes.  Yes, yes, we all get that.  BUT WAIT!  He then goes on to say that this new virus actually replicates the DNA of known illnesses such as the flu and ebola and it transmits them over the web!!!

NO SHIT!

My favorite is where he says that he was talking to his sick girlfriend (she’s in the US and he’s in Ireland) and after talking to her online, he then contracts the flu as well!  (that sound you’re hearing is the theme to The Twilight Zone)

It actually gets better than that, especially after one reads the comments, but I’ll let you read it for yourself.  Where?  HERE!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Oh hey!  We’re leaving for Reno tomorrow!  It’s 9:30pm and I ain’t done shit yet!  In fact, we, as a unit, haven’t done shit yet!  We gotta look in the fridge and see what we have and therefore what we can make to bring for food.  And that will tell us what we need to go to the store for, which we haven’t done yet.  Oh yeah…I gotta do some laundry as well.

Good thing we need to get up SUPER early to hit the road to make it there in one day.  Sweet…

And I haven’t charged all the batteries for my various electronic devices!  I hope the local grid is at 100% cuz I got the camera, the iPod, the HD camcorder, the beater old point-n-shoot and who knows what else I need to power up…

Hmmmm….let’s see how this goes.

Popularity: 31% [?]

“get together your shit, and move your ass to a proper toilet”

- Fishbone

Now that I’ve decided to get my shit together vis a vis this very neglected blog, I’m trying to make sure that everything that is important will look completely awesome and all that shit.  The thing that sucks is that the feature that enabled one to click on my pics and have them enlarge with a cool animation…that seems to be broke.

DAMMIT, JIM!

So now I’m all pissed.  Gonna have to go into all the code and figure out what the hell is going wrong and why can’t the particular plugin work right n shit.

More later…

Popularity: 43% [?]

How many times can I say that I’m changing the look of this site, and then do exactly that, only to abandon the site altogether to rot like the raccoon carcasses I see on the side of the road during my morning rides?

Apparently a lot.

However, I’m gonna get back on that horse and start ‘er up again.  I’ve been learning a lot about how the web works in the last year.  That sounds weird, but working in web development has shown me when to do what, and why.  Also, the advent of Twitter and Facebook have had an impact on how we as a society view the web and how we affect and interact with it.

I’ve come to realize that Facebook has alleviated my need to tell the world the weird things that happen to me on a daily basis.  The screwy thing about that is that the short nature of Facebook posts doesn’t allow for a long-winded and descriptive dingdong like me to really get into it.  I know you can post Notes, but if I’m going to waste a lot of energy telling bored people a bunch of useless information, I’m going to do it right here.  And of course, that goes double for Twitter.

The main thing I’ve noticed, and what makes me realize that I need to blog on my own site, is that since I’ve gotten a smartphone, I pretty much only surf Facebook and Twitter when I’m on the throne.  That means that not only am I just surfing in a very superficial way, I’m also not using the full capability of those sites, since I rarely visit them on a computer.

Okay, there you have it.  Look for more posts soon enough.

Popularity: 33% [?]

In this day and age, if you possess any level of celebrity, then you are going to be a target. And the worse the scenario, the bigger the target you are. How many Michael Jackson jokes did you hear last year? I rest my case.

So imagine my pleasure when I saw this out there.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Hey there dear reader. I’ve recently gone through some changes in my life. To get right to it, I’ve started using Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client, and now it’s a lot easier to manage multiple email accts through the one interface. I realize that that’s soooo 2005, but I’m slowly catching on.

The point here, though, is that I’m going to be no longer checking my Yahoo email address, and if you read this and would like to pre-empt the email I’ll be shortly sending out, feel free to text me or send an email and I’ll update you as to how to address any future emails to me.

Thank you for your readership.

Popularity: 31% [?]

So here I am, on the throne
Quietly crapping, all alone
And as I type on my website (they’re all the rage)
My girlfriend is commenting on my Facebook page

I posted something, and she went to see
And posted her comment right back to me
If she’d spoken to me, that’d been just fine
But in this day and age, it’s all online

And so I wondered, “what’s the appropriate play?”
How to respond in just the right way?
The answer came quick, cuz I’m no chump
I wrote me a poem while taking a dump

Popularity: 36% [?]

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything on this here blog. Funny thing is that I’ve been in front of the computer a LOT in the last few months, and I haven’t thought about this website a whole lot, and the few times I have been working with it, it’s been behind the scenes trying to get a new look in place. That’s been frustrating me to no end. It’s a really cool look that I want to work with, but the main reason I like it is a specific feature that I can’t seem to get up and running. DAMMIT! To that end, I’m now installing a MAMP server on my laptop in order to test the entire website on my computer before I upload it to the internets. That way I can both save lots of time by making sure what I want to see is what you see, and so that what you see IS what I want you to see. For now you’ll see what you currently see, and that’s subject to change without your approval. Take THAT!

So if I’ve been at the computer and not blogging, what the hell HAVE I been doing?

I recently got my hands on some more software and have been learning how to use the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, for one. I taught myself to use Photoshop, and while I’ve gotten very familiar and fairly proficient at it, I learn new stuff all the time. One thing I’ve learned in the last year or so is that Photoshop is excellent at what it’s designed to do, which is manipulate photographs. What I’d been doing (and what a LOT of people do) though, is I’d been trying to use it as an image CREATION tool, and Photoshop falls short in that arena simply because that isn’t what it was designed for. So learning to use Illustrator and its Pen tool has been consuming most of my computer time recently. At least the time spent in front of the computer that wasn’t actually work-related, that is. I’ll probably add a page for illustrations and designs I’ve come up with once they start getting better and I stop feeling like a newbie at it.

That’s all for the moment, as MAMP and WordPress have finally downloaded and I have to install them and get set up.

Till next time

Popularity: 29% [?]

I gotta say that I like this theme, even though I installed it and then promptly stopped blogging. I haven’t been able to get the lead article to properly display an image with it though.

Consider this a test.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Zeno watching mashups…

Popularity: 29% [?]