Captins Log

Well, theres been things happening all over the place and I haven’t had the energy to mention any of them… but I will now, because I’m procrastinating. First off, a big huge thanks to Chip and Dave for sending me a years subscription to Netflix. That was absolutely kick ass and we’ve already rented our first movies. At some point, once my ever-ongoing redesign is complete I’ll work in the Netflix MT plugin and, for no reason other than general intrest, you can see my rentals.

Last weekend was also Lauren’s mom’s birthday. We went to the Alamo Drafthouse and saw the Last Samurai. The Drafthouse is one of those dinner and a movie places where you order before the show starts and get to chow down while you watch movies. We had one in NH that I only got to go to once or twice, Chunky’s in Pelham I believe. The Last Samurai actually surprised me a little. I honestly thought it was going to be either another Brave Heart or another pointless Tom Cruise drama where its in his contract to get naked at least once and shoot half a million bad guys. It was not either of those, thank God. It was actually pretty good. If you try and forget what a complete moron Tom Cruise actually is it’s very enjoyable. Cool sword fights, nicely filmed, good story and NINJAS! Aw yeah. Can’t be a cool movie without ninjas. Loft kind or otherwise. (Sorry, lame CS joke).

Also, I finished Crimson Skies. Solid, kick ass game. Very pleased with it. If everyone else on the planet hadn’t already given it high marks (100% tomato meter!) I would be compelled to say more, but seeing as how most everyone agrees with me, I’ll leave it at that. I’ve now moved on to ESPN NHL hockey. Legwond is my bitch. (That one is for Jason). I’ve also hooked up the Xbox to the router and I plan to give Xbox Live a whirl (or at least the two month free trial) in the next little bit.

Lastly, for Nagle, I’m going to mention the Patriots. They beat the crap out of the Colts on Sunday and now they’re coming to Houston for the big dance. The preparation the city is going through is a bit crazy. There are 8 (!) different city wide celebrations. Parties galore. Think Savannah on St. Patricks day and you will have a vague understanding of whats about to happen around here. It’s nuts already and the teams haven’t even come into town. It’s the only story they have on the local news, it’s on the radio, it’s everywhere. I plan to sit at home and ignore most of it. I’ll probably have the game on, but lets face it, New England is going to completely destroy Carolina. There isn’t really any other way. Obviously I’m proud of the home town boys for making it, but seriously, who’s going to stop them? Not Carolina I can assure you. So, game excitement wise, I’m not that interested. I’m a hockey man remember. Commercials might be my draw this year, but that’s a little sad as well. And I’m sure as hell not watching Survior after the game like the network would like you to. They can go strait to hell with that reality show crap. Whats that new shit Fox is peddling? My big obnoxious fiance? Who the hell thought that up and why haven’t they been fired yet? *end rant*

Lets see, what else. Oh, I’ve gotten my hands on a complete Red Dwarf episode collection. Yippee! I’m thinking about transfering them to DVD (we have a burner at the office) and making my own box set. Other than that I’ve been working a lot. We’ve had a wedding every weekend so far this month. There’s always enough at the office to keep me busy, almost too much. But it’s going well. Lauren’s been working hard too and everything is pretty good. I’ve started putting our wedding album (or at least it’s layout) together. That will be our next project. It should be cool.

That’s about it, I should probably be getting back to work.

Matt out.

Quote of the day

Quote of the day… or perhaps my life:

“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off.”

I’ll tell you more later.

Nifty!

I’m at work, playing with Dreamweaver at the moment and I’m trying to convert our companies web site from Microsoft “I can’t make web page programs for shit” FrontPage to Macromedia Dreamweaver. This is mostly because of my hatred for FrontPage and my constant insistance that we stop using it. Mostly I just complain about it. That usually gets the job done. Anyway, so I’m using Dreamweaver MX and I’m looking through documentation to find a quick and easy way of converting the whole site, frontpage extensions and all, into a DW site. Low and behold I find this: the Macromedia Extension Manager. You’re probably saying “so, it’s just a plugin control system”. That much is true, but when you pair it with a FP conversion plug in, like this one… here, you’re life becomes oh so simple. Hell, Macromedia realizes people are switching so they even offer a Macromedia FP Migration Kit and easy to follow instructions. Cool huh? This of course has caused me to lose half my morning to the downloading of cool new Dreamweaver plugins. Most of which are completely useless but some I might just have to try out on my own.

Lastly, to follow up yesterday’s post, MT-BlackList is now installed and is working quite nicely. I already received notification of three blocked comments. It doesn’t block based on IP addresses, only on content, which is a far more usefull system anyway. I’ll explain more later. Gotta get back to work.

Black List

I’ve found the preverbial last straw. It’s in the shape of journal comment SPAM. It’s going to stop. I’ve already put two calls in to the ISP it’s originating from but they said the account is a dial up and it would take some time to trace back the offender since the IP address keeps changing. I call that stalling. Hell, they’re probably in on it. Regardless, as of tonight I’m installing MT-BlackList and banning not only the content, their IP ranges but even yahoo and hotmail email accounts in total. I’m not fucking around anymore. My appologies to anyone with a yahoo or hotmail email account. The ban will be temporary unless there is reason to extend it. I’m also looking for some way to validate email addresses within the system. Locking out things like “fakemail@yahoo.com” since, obviously, it isn’t real. I doubt something like that exists. Maybe I might talk to Chip and see if he’s interested in a little programming. Arg.

I had this whole other post…

Actually, I had several. They didn’t make it for one reason or another. Mainly because I just haven’t really had anything I’ve wanted to talk about for a few days now. Christmas was fun. My family came into town for a week. I think we bored them to death. My sound card broke but I fixed it. Project Gotham kicks butt, Medal of Honor Rising Sun will probably get traded in, possibly for the new Crimson Skies. ESPN NHL is the bomb. It really needs to be played by everyone who ever loved video-game hockey. We’re talking old school, Sega, ’94, Brody-playin’ kind of game. It’s what hockey should be. Complete with Barry Melrose’s mullet.

I’m at work now. It’s rainy and nasty outside and our 11:00 appointment has yet to show up. Actually, the boss isn’t here either. I’m the only one here. Which is why I’m posting now instead of tonight after I get home.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The photos from our wedding come down off the website on January 15th. If you’re going to order some, do it now. I can’t extend them only without the lab charging extra for it.

That’s about it. I’ve spent the past week trying to think of fun things to do with my family. I’ll let you imagine how much fun it’s been. Yeah… about that much.

I’ve got a few ideas for a redesign for this page. Like Chip said ages ago, it just doesn’t seem right for docholoday.com. I’ve got something a little more artsy and different in mind. You’ll like it. Of course, that’s only if I ever get a chance to work on it. Since my weekends are completely messed up that translates into “it’ll be a while”.

Actually, I’d like to talk about that for a minute. I work Saturdays. That’s fine, a lot of people do. But if I go to church with Lauren on Sunday I don’t get to sleep in and it pretty much kills most of the morning. Mondays Lauren usually needs me to do something. So, no rest there. Then Tuesday I’m back at work. I really don’t see how this system is supposed to work. I don’t have any actual down time.

This, I think, is the main reason why normal, middle aged people go to bed just after Letterman’s opening monolog each night. Somehow you require more sleep when you work. People really should just take two days a week off and not do anything. Nothing. No trips to the store, no soccer practice for little Billy, no anything. People should sleep, for two days strait before going back to work. I think everyone would be much less irritable on Monday if they had just gotten out of bed after 48 hours. At least I would be.

Oh well, I should go do work now. Later.