New Blog 4 U 2 Poop On

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | Helpful | 3 Comments

So, it’s not totally finished. I am missing several of the features I want, and it’s not integrated with the new site yet, but I think it’s close enough to stop using old blog, which Is good because I am sick of importing new posts into this thing.

Everybody will need to register to make comments, and the first time you post a comment I will have to approve it before it appears on the site, but after that you will get your own profile and very soon your own icons that will use the global icon from http://www.gravatar.com . Only reason it’s not there right now, is it is having issues with people’s old profile names and writing the names twice since there is no icon.

For the next week the blog might go through changes, so don’t be surprised if something new gets added or looks different the next time you visit. Again, everybody needs to register, but I am possibly considering using the user login from this database and integrating it with the main site to extend functionality of thesmartass’s other pages.

Please let me know what you think of new features etc…

In other news, my Smartass 6 Outline file has vanished into thin air.? I ran all sorts of search on this computer, my memory stick, my terabyte etc.. just to see where it went, and when I couldn’t find it that way i used some hardcore data recovery software, which found Smartass6 Outline.lnk (a .lnk is just a shortcut), but I restored the deleted shortcut and it looked where I thought it would be but could not find the doc.? So somehow the outline I spent the better part of a day working on has just vanished, and I am not happy camper.

New Design This Week!

Monday, May 22nd, 2006 | Helpful | No Comments

So today, I slept late, and then set myself to work, well at least to work after I watched the tv shows I had missed.? Then I started working on the new website design.? It is super annoying trying to work on it on my roommate’s laptop (though a little more bareable since I hooked up my wireless mouse/keyboard, 20″ monitor to it.), because it chokes all the time because I am doing too much at once.? Well that and I filled up the (smaller than my ipod) hard drive with all the shows/stuff I downloaded while having my computer out of commission waiting for a new motherboard.

Well I worked on it all day.? I didn’t go outside except to pickup pizza at 8pm or so.? I felt mildly bad about hogging my roommate’s laptop all day, but he did make the offer and he does have 2 other computers (just not located in as convenient of a spot), so I decided to just keep monopolizing it.

I spent most of the day working on the new blog, which when I launch the new design will be somewhat integrated into the site, and another chunk of the day Trying to make a different style of page work, which was a big time waster…

Well, since I have a new giant outline for the site that I worked on the other day, I think I will be able to follow it and launch the new design this week.? It won’t have all the features, and definitely not all the sections outlined, but it will be a good start.

I wanted to just have the new design just appear one day with all the new features, but with the work I am doing I think it will be best to do it in pieces, starting with the new blog.

DaVinci Code

Sunday, May 21st, 2006 | Life, Smartass | No Comments

Oh you thought my long day was over did you???? No, I just thought it logical to break it up into multiple posts so that you would actually read it…

See when I was at the resturant I got a call from Ken asking when I would be home and saying he would be home about the same time so we should go see The DaVinci Code.? It made good sense to me so I called him and said I would be home in 20 mins or so.

Of course, I wasn’t… Apparantly somebody decided that it would be a good idea to have a multiple car pile up on the highway BEFORE all the lanes narrow into one due to construction. So I sat and waited, and waited some more, and waited some more.? Eventually getting past the accident, I was still stuck going slow for another several miles due to construction, so when I got home it was just before 10pm.

Well we were not going to let that stop us, so I very quickly took a much needed shower and we went to the theater.

I had never read the book, and hadn’t even seen previews for the movie but I figured it would be pretty good with all the hype.? After all, it had some gorgeous dark haired foreign woman in it (and that Tom Hanks guy).? Movie didn’t really dissapoint.? If you have seen National Treasure that is what this was like… Only based on religion instead of national history.

Now no doubt will this movie piss off some fanatics, since it trys to prove whether Jesus was just a mortal man or not. Which led to an interesting story line for the movie/book.

When I got home, I put another pound of moisturizer on my now red skin and fell asleep instantly.

Cold Lava

Sunday, May 21st, 2006 | Helpful, Smartass | No Comments

Slept a little better last night.? I mean not enough to get a cookie for or anything, but better.

Rob wanted to bike, we wanted to leave.. But it was his trip and he was going to ride, so we decided to take down camp and then go into town.? I was not about to walk around in the sun all day shopping so I stopped into the visitor center on Route 66 and got a pamphlet for the Lava Cave.? Figured we had enough time to go there while Rob was riding and since I had his vehicle, I figured I should make use.

It was further out than the pamphlet said it was and once we got to the roads leading to the cave, I really hoped that it was worth it because the roads were absolute shit to drive on.? I was glad I was in a big ass jeep.? Got there and read the pamphlet a bit more.? It said we should have 3 light sources per person and wear warm clothes since at the warm end it’s 45*.

That sounded like a nice change to me, of course we were kind of unprepaired and searched for light sources and only found 2.? My shitty flashlight that needed new batteries, and a coleman lantern.? Good thing Peg (again, wouldn’t be my first name for a cute asian girl, and it’s not really her name… but whatever) thought to bring that lantern because it was SO helpful giving us more light than anybody else that was wandering around the cave.

Cave wasn’t all that exciting, but it was far better than sitting around the camp site or wanding around Flagstaff.? It was about a mile long and some points I had to really scrunch up in order to get through.? After awhile I did wish I had some harder shoes since the ground terrain was all lumpy old lava which is not as flat as I had hoped.

We get back to camp and Rob is sitting in a chair staring angerly at us as we pull in.? Seems even though we left his tent (like he wanted), and his clothes so he could change… We had not left him the cooler.? So he was all pissed off, but such is life.

When he got (mostly) done packing up and being angry we went into town one last time for some dinner.? We at at some mexican place where we got 2 cute waitresses for the price of one, and the food was not bad either…

Left for home, when we got to Tempe I convinced Rob that we should go out to the Ice Cream Place he had been raving about all weekend (Coldstone).? Gotta say, it is a VERY impressive ice cream place.? There wa a big snaking line to get it as well.? I ordered a dipped waffle cone with “Knights in White Chocolate” Ice Cream and it was Damn Tasty, though next time I will remember to get a spoon even for a cone…

Left there and unpacked jeep and went home…

Pastey White No More

Saturday, May 20th, 2006 | Helpful | No Comments

Ok, I couldn’t sleep all bloody night. It was like 40 something and a tent and a comforter were not enough to keep me warm. So at 5 am or so I got sick of trying to sleep and got up. I had no ipod, and no book since they were in the bag that I left at home, so I sat and restarted the fire the slow way (stiring and adding pine needles and oxygen). With that running again, I just sat there for a couple hours… WooHoo..

When everybody was up we went out for breakfast, where I was glad to make use of their facilities and then I had some eggs and fake chocolate milk. We tried to kill some time by wandering around downtown Flagstaff, but it wasn’t all that exciting to me since I have never been one to enjoy shopping / browsing without purpose.

Well the reason Rob wanted to go camping in the first place was so that he could go Mountain Biking, which is not really an option for me so when he went out for that, Peg and I went to go hiking.

We walked for a long time, but it was kept more interesting by the fact that I had to write down everything I wanted to say to her along the way, and lets just say my typing speed is a LOT faster than my handwriting… So that kept me occupied.

When we get back to the camp our fire pit was filled with soaking wet dirt, so I proceeded to point out to Rob that I was right, but he still insisted that they were just being nice since he hadn’t gotten a ticket.

Went into town to a bar there and had a “stink burger” and some tasty beer. Then we went to a different bar and played some pool. While playing pool I saw a sign for Absente (Absinthe Refined), and decided to try it. Gotta say, for what I paid for it, I am dissapointed. I drank it straight the ritual way and it was not at all harsh or potent. Ok, so I know that it doesn’t have the stuff in it that makes Absinthe fun, but they charged me $6 for a little drink, so I was still expecting a little more bang.

Left, went back to campsite, started another fire above the wet dirt ;) and drank some more beer. I needed to drink lots of beer because I was hoping to just pass out so that I could get to sleep, since not only had I not slept for shit the night before, but now… I was extremely sunburned and was talking about how much it sucked everytime I got goosebumps on top of my sunburned skin.

I was going to publish the somewhat interesting rambelings of the notebook I had been using to communicate with Peg all weekend, complete with scribble lines and all on the blog, but after awhile something got written in it and I decided it was safer to throw it in the fire and forget about it.

Only one more day, I will have to avoid the sun though, so no hiking…

Flagstaff or Bust

Friday, May 19th, 2006 | Helpful | No Comments

So today I left to go camping with Rob / Peg (his roommate). Her name is not actually Peg, but who am I to contradict… Anywho, I was running a bit late so I decided to forgoe stopping at the bank and rushed out of the house to make sure that I at least made it to the liquor store. Why you ask? Well I was told that beer trumped everything else… Even me…

Of course upon leaving the house I discoverd that I had left one of my bags at home, but I had gone too far (a couple blocks) to go back. So I figured so long as I had my tent, air matress (what… you try to sleep on the bloody ground), clothes and beer that everything would be ok.

In one way it was good that I didn’t turn back because the liquor store was being run by idiots who couldn’t find their own heads if there was a video camera up their ass, but then again… I do believe that I didn’t get charged for my purchases (won’t know for sure until I check with credit card statement). In another way it was crappy that I didn’t turn back because I got to Rob’s and he wasn’t ready to leave…. and well I could of made use out of the things that I left.

The campground was a bit different from what I am used to. We had to go over some nasty dirt roads to get there and then there were no facilities, and (though Rob argued it with me) no camp fires. We ignored the last part since even with me knowing I was right and he was wrong, I really wanted fire and would of been uber pissed not to have one.

Well, everything is still going fairly smooth at this point… Perhaps tomorrow will be as well.

6.0 Outline

Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | Helpful | No Comments

I spent a ton of time making a big ass text outline for the new site tonight. I wrote down all the sections I wanted, the way I want to style the pages, the scripts I would use, spacing etc…

With all this out of the way I think the new site will be done before I anticipated. I have never actually made an outline like this before, but now it’s just a nice roadmap for the site that I will be able to follow.

I didn’t work on the actuall site at all today, but I did look up some scripts and found that some of the ones I wanted to use would have problems working with each other ; (.

Oh well, it’s progress at least, oh and the other day i swapped out the random script on the site. Now that it has been going for a couple days I can honestly say that my old random script really sucked, since this one doesn’t seem to play favorites so much.

Oh, and BTW: Happy Bob Day~!

Dismantling The Demon

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 | Helpful | 2 Comments

So you saw that I decided the motherboard fatherboard was bad and had to send it back. Well my ram is bad as well. Granted I blame the mobo for the ram going bad, but now it’s bad and needs to be sent back. So I sent the mobo to MSI and the RAM to Newegg, and then I thought about it and decided that the case I bought for my new computer was too cheap and I got what I paid for.

So I also ordered a new case, one with tons of airflow and decided that it will not be portable at all, in fact I think this will be bigger than the biggest case I have ever had, but it doesn’t matter then once all my parts show up all my shit will work correctly and quite honestly I would pay pretty much anything at this point to make that happen as it’s wasting way too much of my time.

So yes, sad as it may be I had to dismantle the computer and will now not have it rebuilt for at least a week ;( .

I took the time to copy my website to my new big ass usb memory stick (thanks for that jon!). Of course all my appz are corrupt now so It will take time to get my roommate’s laptop to have all the shit on it I need, but it’s better than not having a computer to use at all.

This time will be slightly harder than the last time I lost my computer since without my computer, I have no tv shows to watch, only dvd’s I have already seen… So no tv, no job etc.. Basically I will get to exercise, read and work on my site… although I really don’t want to work o the site much on a laptop… Maybe I will hook up my monitor, keyboard, mouse and it will seem like a normal computer…

I am reading more… I just read an almost 5oo page book called “The Game” by Neil Strauss. It’s this book written by a guy who was considered the world’s number one pickup artist at one point. It was interesting to see how he came to be that way and then dropped it all for one woman. I don’t want to be like this guy, but there is definitely some lessons to be learned from his experiences.

Yep, good times.

Christians Figured Out That Rock Is Evil

Monday, May 15th, 2006 | Helpful | 2 Comments

Did I mention? XM got rid of the bitchin’ christian rock station (the torch) that I listened to when everything else sucked. I mean there was always stuff I hadn’t heard, and none of it was what so ever preachy. Now they have some bullshit called Enlighten, that is just stuff I would never listen to like Sandy Patty etc…

Granted my mother would like this station, but I don’t, and there were pleanty of open numbers they could of stuck this on and not had to get rid of my “poser christian rock” station.

Bitches

Will Drill Holes For $38

Monday, May 15th, 2006 | Helpful | No Comments

So yesterday I had this really GREAT idea. See my car key gets stuck on my keychain. The hole is fucking tiny, and it’s annoying. So I decided that I would make the hole bigger. It would not be a big deal since I was just drilling in an area of metal right?

Well apparantly it was a big ass deal. Since the next time I went to move my car It wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t turn over at all. Now at the time I didn’t even think of the fact that I had drilled a hole in my key, since well, I didn’t drill into any electronics!!!!

A day later and $38 dollars shorter ($35 for a new key, $3 for new windshield washer fluid since I spilled all of mine when I nocked the pump out in the dark trying to get at the battery in case I needed a jump start) and I find out that vibrations can kill Chevy keys.

Well lucky me, some other people bitched about the tiny virgin holes on the Chevy keys and Chevy redesigned them to be as loose as throwing a hotdog down a hallway. So I at least made my key’s hole wider, though I didn’t want to have to pay $38 bucks to do it, but shit happens….. To me…..