Rearranged

Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | Life, Rants | No Comments

So I got home and my roommates thought they were being clever and rearranged the living room. I get it… They wanted to have the couch so it was looking directly at the wall where the video gets projected.

However to do this they:

1) Threw my projector on top of a bunch of stools and flipped it upside down so that they could stick the couch in front of the projector… (It had been on the ground in order to get the full wall to be used for projector). Not to mention how safe I feel that that nobody will sneeze and knock over the tower of stuff that is holding my $2500 projector up.

2) Moved the couches into a place that totally eliminates the possibility for me to have my computer in the same room as the projector.

Now this was one of my main things when I moved in. Must have the ability to have my computer within an exact proximity of the projector and stereo and the ability to have a chair in front of it that can rotate and watch the TV.

I suppose since my desktop has been out of commission for awhile they have simply forgotten that I needed those things, but just last night I acquired something that Should let me hook up my desktop again. Once it is running I will need to have a f’n chair to use my computer.

Okay so fine, they forgot about the desktop and a chair. Fair enough. However I have already told them on more than one occasion why I can’t move the projector up off the ground. Seems that nobody was listening.

A projector spits out a specific angle when you shoot the beam forward. If you go and throw it up on a tower it will still be outputting at the same angle, which means it will be displaying the picture Mostly on the floor. To fix that you tilt the front of the projector up at an angle.

However when you do that it makes it go into a trapezoid shape where the top of the shape gets much smaller in order to compensate for being tilted at an angle.

This means to make your picture a rectangle again you need to go in and crop it to the smallest point of the trapezoid. Also noting that if we were to tilt up the projector up as high as it needs to go the fan would get in the way.

Now they didn’t notice because they were playing a super-wide screen blue-ray movie. Which means that despite most of the projection angle being on the ground they are still getting most of the picture towards the bottom of the wall. However they basically cut down the size of my tv by about 3 feet (and made it so i can’t watch it and work on my computer).

I almost went out there this morning and grabbed my computer, projector and ps3 and moved them into my room.

However I did not because I’m sure they were too stoned to realize they did either of these things… but still I will feel like a dick telling them they need to change it back.

Now IF we could hang the projector from the ceiling it wouldn’t be on the floor and the dog wouldn’t be getting in front of the beam. Still couldn’t have the couch there, but we can’t put the projector on the ceiling because there is a giant fan/light on the ceiling. If we could do that and flip it upside down it would project at the same angle that it did on the floor and would cover the entire wall still.

So I am at a quandary. I am rarely let things annoy me for longer than an hour, but nothing I say about this will make them happy (move stuff back, move it into my room, shove couch forward another 4 feet which is blindingly close so i can have room for a chair behind the couch and cut down size of picture by 3′ etc.. etc…. ). No matter what I do or say I will be the one causing the problem, and it’s total BS.

Update: Still not moved back. Roommates have agreed to remove the fan so projector can be on ceiling and say I can move the couch as needed when I build my computer desk and add a chair.

The Future of The Smartass

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 | Site Updates | 3 Comments

By putting this in writing, I am setting myself up to make sure I actually do these things. If I don’t do these things in a reasonable amount of time I fully expect the visitors of this site to bitch about it.

So here is the road map of what I plan to do with this site in the next 6 months.

Rip-Off Theater (Top Priority)

1) Speed Increase: Currently there is 20,000 videos on the theater page. However because of how I am having it pull information from the database it is taking too long to load the page. I didn’t foresee this and will have to make it pull the information differently.

2) Edit in place for all visitors: The plan is that each video has a description, a thumbnail, a year, imdb link, etc.. So I am making it so that you can just click on those text fields and edit the information and when you are done it submits the information to my moderation queue where I can approve or discard these changes.

3) Comments on each video: Basically I want to clone the comment system from digg.com, which means I won’t really have to moderate it since other people will just vote the comment down

4) Other small tweaks: New content colored different color for 48 hours. Thumbnails, Screenshots, RSS feeds for each individual category & sub-category so you can keep track of or just

Site Login

1) Need for creation: This has become essential, to give people only one vote on comments, and the ability to take credit for what they write and content they submit I need to make a user login for the site.

2) Instant Universal Login: I am not content with just another perpetual registration form. I plan to integrate “prefpass” or something similar into the site. What this means is that to register on my page all you will need is an email address and if you are logged into any other popular site (myspace, yahoo, openid, aim, aol, facebook) you will then be logged into my site. Registration will only take a couple seconds.

3) Merge all my databases together so there is just one login: Then when you go to my blogs, the forum, the theater, games page etc.. you will only need to be logged into the main site and your username/profile will follow. When I first launch the login though it won’t be so nicely merged in the forums/blogs, but I do plan to fix this.

User Profile

1) Create your own site: Choose your own radio station, pick artists that you like and only have their artwork show up on page, or upload your own background and avatar. Set a favorite last.fm or pandora radio station, generate a friends list with other people on the site. Choose a bunch of forms that you use a lot (login to gmail, or myspace, a google search engine, torrent search etc..) to have appear on your profile.

Artwork

1) Database Conversion: I am going to take all the artwork and insert them one by one into a database listing the artist name, title of the artwork, and the website for the artist or a place to get the artwork. This information will output in a corner of the site everytime new art loads.

2) Ability to submit new artwork: Great for actual artists, or just for somebody who wants a certain picture on the site. You will be able to choose public or private if you want to just have your own selection of pictures to load when you load the site.

3) Profile integration to choose your favorite artists, and turn off the ones you don’t want to show up. These will also probably be given tags to help sort them.

New Games Page

1) Clone Theater + Toggle Opitions: This will happen as soon as I finish the theater page. What this means is that to load a game you will choose the type of games and the system (even offline games/emulators). An alphabetical list of all games will load, but you can then filter it down to just a genre. Then before the game loads you will have checkbox options like disabling sound, Choosing size, graphic smoothing, etc and it will load the game.

Things on the theater like descriptions, comments, thumbnails, screenshots will all be included.

2) Ability to upload new games: Basically same as the theater page, only with an upload option. You will be able to upload flash, offline games, roms for the systems we have on site.

Okay I was in the process of writing more things when I stopped writing and am now in the middle of a conversation and a good documentary series in my theater (7 Ages of Rock).

This is part 1. Look for part 2 soon.

My 555th Post on the Born Smartass!

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 | Life | 4 Comments

It seems like just yesterday it was 8pm on 08/08/08 and I was telling you of how the world would end in 1234 days. Now I have just noticed that on this blog I have written 555 posts.

My thought on the matter is that the world is trying to tell me something with all the number patterns. It’s something like what happened to the dude in The Number 23 (hmm, I finished the design for version 2 of my theater 3 days ago… 2… 3…).

Perhaps the number patterns are to indicate that the site is on the path of infinite expansion. Right now I am working my ass off to make some things work behind the scenes, but when those get completed I will be able to start creating a vast number of self-updating sections.

You should start to see the changes trickling in over the next few weeks, so be sure to come back as I can assure you there will be another 555 posts yet to come.

New Theater Launched!

Monday, August 18th, 2008 | Site Updates | 1 Comment

New Theater Launched: Please add all comments and suggestions below. I plan to keep adding features to the page so if there are any you would like to see please tell me below.

New Theater Launch Tonight (Seriously)

Monday, August 18th, 2008 | GP, Site Updates | 2 Comments

So if you haven’t yet heard I am launching a new version of Rip-Off Theater.

It will be AMAZING and all the visitors will be able to add information about the videos and submit new content, report broken links etc.. When everything is working how I want it to I will also adapt the games page to use the same format.

Anyway, I REALLY wanted to launch the theater page today. However (skip next part of paragraph if you don’t want to hear a bunch of excuses) foresee an internet explorer bug that would set me back 3 hours, then 3 phone calls from family members to set me back another hour and a half. Lastly I got through those issues and decided I could launch it tonight, however I just happen to notice that my filter menu seems to have broken today.

Looks right but doesn’t work and well, that is a rather important feature and I do not want to be dickin’ with the database and php code very much when the theater is launched.

I have to go to court later today(very confusing writing a blog post just after midnight. Is it today, or tomorrow.), but when I get back I will work on fixing the issues and launching the theater.

Then I will start adding a massive amount of data to it.

It’s worth it folks. When I am done adding all the features I plan to add this will be the best movie site on the net!

Am I Right, Or Wrong… The World May End In 1234 Days.

Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | Helpful | 4 Comments

This is just a reminder. Quite some time ago I prophesied that the world would NOT end in 2012. Well the countdown is still active on this post: What is supposed to happen at the end of 2012) and is indicating that there is 1234 days left to live if I am wrong.

So live it up people. Hate to be wrong and you would only have 1234 days to live, as you would be pissed off at me for a few seconds and I wouldn’t want that.

Already another Steve Urkel Day has gone by and my sister is no longer around to remind me of all of these important events anymore. So I need your help to keep track of things like this and the world ending.

Fucking “Rockstars”

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 | Life, Rants | 2 Comments

2 nights in a row there will be no sleep.

Last night I got to bed just before 3am. They were recording some new songs. However it doesn’t seem all that smart to START recording drums/guitars/vocals at 8pm on a Sunday.

Tonight dude came home from the bar with an after-party. However it was just a big sausage fest where some dude stole my lighter.

There was only one single girl who was pretty alternative and didn’t know when to stop talking. However I was a bit amused that she got Andrew to agree with her on her anti-christian views since he makes a big point to tell me how much time he spends at church.

Bah… Anywho, Mike&I were watching a movie when they came back. Actually a rather interesting one called Pathology… But they came back and killed the movie.

Dude promised he would have everybody out by midnight and then after 12:30 he had to start a movie. Well sort of… It’s actually a shitty British version of Jackass.

Anyway, I have had a lot of Brandy and in another glass or two I will be able to just pass out and bypass that whole need for quiet thing to go to sleep.

In other news I am REALLY far on the new theater design / database entry etc… I expect I should be able to launch the new automated theater design before the end of the week.

One of my good friends just got back from the Army. Of course he lives in Atlanta so I probably won’t be seeing him anytime soon, but it’s nice to have another friend to talk to again.

Okay, seriously “Dirty Sanchez” is not nearly as funny as Jackass. Just an FYI. Total weak-ass ripoff.

Religious People Can’t Take A Joke!

Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | Life | 15 Comments

Okay look, I am, at least as best could be described Agnostic. Yet just because I may have a different belief structure than a lot of other people, I don’t go around and tell other people their religion is wrong unless they first try to tell me mine is.

However, maybe it’s just because I believe in freedom of speech and religion that I feel I shouldn’t have to be ‘careful’ of my words and walk on eggshells around people who have certain beliefs and ideas.

10:38:53 PM James says: oh and what was that about jesus riding a giraffe?
10:39:31 PM M says: it’s my response to one of the theology on tap topics:
10:39:42 PM M says: did jesus ride a donkey or an elephant: faith at the voting booth.
10:39:57 PM M says: jesus was totally a libertarian.., and he rode a giraffe!
10:40:19 PM M says: theology on tap is where young adults get together at the bar to discuss faith issues.
10:40:23 PM James says: cool. i thought he rode mary magdalen :)
10:40:24 PM James says: haha
10:40:25 PM James says: j/k
10:40:29 PM M says: that’s disgusting.
10:40:56 PM James says: yes yes, i am a terrible human being
10:41:11 PM James says: which will be proven someday when i publish my book
10:41:18 PM James says: … as “fiction”
10:42:25 PM M says: it’s just that i’m so sick of people making fun of my religion.
10:42:30 PM M says: like my faith is fair game.
10:42:42 PM M says: especially when i’ve never pushed my faith on anyone.
10:43:12 PM James says: i’m not bashing u/christianity in any way/shape/form
10:43:26 PM M says: you just made a sex joke about my savior.
10:43:32 PM James says: so?
10:43:37 PM M says: it’s not funny.
10:43:50 PM M says: not to me anyway.
10:44:02 PM James says: wow, why on earth would you try to find a way to take offense to a joke?
10:44:37 PM James says: had i made a similar joke about anybody but jesus you would have laughed with me
10:44:59 PM M says: i don’t need to try to take offense, i was offended.
10:45:38 PM M says: can we just leave religion out of our dialogue?
10:45:46 PM James says: well i don’t know what to say. it was just a joke
10:46:02 PM James says: so i need to walk on eggshells now?
10:47:23 PM M says: no.
10:47:27 PM M says: just avoid religion.
10:47:35 PM James says: i tell racist jokes to my black friends. i tell religious jokes to my religious friends. i will refrain from doing that with you anymore (eggshells).
10:47:36 PM M says: or at least making jokes about it.
10:47:43 PM M says: thank you.
10:48:21 PM James says: but i feel bad right now, and i don’t think i should
10:48:52 PM M says: then don’t.
10:49:15 PM James says: not that easy
10:49:37 PM M says: well just feel bad for upsetting me but not for the content.
10:49:46 PM M says: if you think it’s amusing, i can’t fault you for that.
10:49:58 PM James says: i still care about you and am not trying to hurt/offend you. but it seemed harmless to me and still does
10:50:10 PM M says: if you don’t think you should feel bad, then simply don’t feel bad. power of the mind.
10:50:27 PM M says: i’m not all up in a tizzy about it. it’s fine.
10:50:33 PM M says: seriously.
10:51:50 PM James says: alright well enough discussion for the night. I’m all tapped out. g’night ~
10:53:55 PM M says: i’m sorry.
10:53:55 PM James says: [Auto-Response]: going 2 bed
10:54:19 PM M says: guess standing up for myself has it’s consequences. good night.

Yes, it is within this girls right to be offended by my words, and it is within my rights to offend her and yes, faith is “fair game”. However what the hell (oh shit, I should of more carefully chosen my words here 2) is the point of getting offended over what was very clearly a joke? So what if it’s a sex joke? I mean both of us are adults and talk about sex to each other now and then.

I know there are a bunch of Christians reading this blog entry, so I would like your opinion. Are you offended by what I said? Am I now on bad terms with the J-Man, or will it take another offensive joke to do so?

Legs Up For Jesus

Little Lucy went out into the garden and saw her cat Tiddles lying on the ground with its eyes shut and its legs in the air.

She fetched her Dad to look at Tiddles, and on seeing the cat he said, as gently as he could, “I’m afraid Tiddles is dead, Lucy.”

“So why are his legs sticking up in the air like that, Daddy?” asked Lucy as she fought back the tears.

At a loss for something to say the father replied, “Tiddles’ legs are pointing straight up in the air so that it will be easier for Jesus to float down from heaven above and grab a leg and lift Tiddles up to Heaven.”

Little Lucy seemed to take her Tiddles death quite well. However, two days later when her father came home from work Lucy had tears in her eyes and said: “Mommy almost died this morning.”

Fearing something terrible had happened the father shook the girl and shouted, “How do you mean Lucy? Tell Daddy!”

“Well”, mumbled Lucy, “soon after you left for work this morning I saw mommy lying on the floor with her legs in the air and she was shouting, “Oh Jesus!!! I’m coming, I’m coming!!!” and if it hadn’t been for the milkman holding her down she would definitely have gone, Daddy.”

The Model That Loved Me (Not Quite Enough)

Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | Life | 6 Comments

So I’m at the bar tonight. It was a “special night” as there was some modeling thing going on and the gorgeous women outnumbered the guys at least 2 to 1. Seemed ideal for me to go… AND wear my “T-Qualizer” shirt since it gets me tons of attention.

Within 5 minutes of being at the bar I had 4 girls come up to me who wanted their pictures taken with me (always a good time). One of them insisted on shoving her tits between my arm for the picture (this amused me since it was her being pervy and not me).

The night calmed down a bit from there and it went on until eventually I struck up a conversation with some other hot model girl who told me I was the coolest guy she had ever met and she wanted to buy me a shot.

She went off to go do that and I had a guy 3 times my size threaten me and tell me that if I went inside he would beat my ass. So I waited until she separated from him and then I walked in and grabbed her and moved her away from “mr. kick my ass”.

Her friends were leaving and so was the angry guy (who gave me another dirty look) and I asked her if she was going with them or me and she choose me. So good start right? So she decides she wants to go get a drink at an Irish pub she knows, but she has REALLY bad sense of direction. I mean she tells me the cross it’s at and I start driving there but she insists that Elliot road is perpendicular to Ray Rd and I try to politely tell her it’s not but she was insistent to keep sending me in the wrong direction to get places and I was willing to let her.

So we eventually show up at a bar that supposedly one of her friends was at. We stay in the car for a minute and make out and then proceed to go in the bar and NOT find her friend. Seems he was not at that bar but at one with the same name at Tempe Marketplace.

Fine, fine whatever… Lets just get on with it.

So we get to this place and she keeps telling me how “in love with me she is” and how “i have never liked a guy enough to introduce him to my co-workers”… blah blah.

So on the way into this bar we get carded and I show my Rarotonga license (the only one I have since Arizona cop stole my Arizona license a month ago and I never got another one), and the guy won’t let me into the bar.

He insists that he will only let me in with a passport if I don’t have an Arizona ID. I say “DUDE, I am nearly 28 years old”, but he just spouts some crap about policy and won’t let me in.

So the girl goes (Georgia) goes in and I talk to her over the fence. Then she gets kicked out by one of the guys that works there because he says she’s drunk. She however sees it as her getting kicked out because she was talking to me (on the outside). So she walks around to go back in.

Since I could not go back in I asked her if we were done then and she kept saying NO… No No, of course not. However I didn’t see how it could work any other way. She was in, and I was out so I just walked off and drove home.

Never did get her number. Suppose I could have gotten it if I tried, but I was rather annoyed that I couldn’t get into a bar for the first time ever and the girl who kept telling me how much she adored me was able to get in.

Anyway, it’s cool. It’s just one more thing to boost my confidence. Though I really need to start getting pictures with all these hot girls I am dating.

Man does it suck to trip the fuck out and do it alone.

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 | Life | 4 Comments

Ok. This is the first post to describe my experience last night. I was trippin’ and decided to create a bunch of new things in various places on the web. It all started with a rather unique personal ad. The bastards at Craigslist have flagged the ad for removal. I CAN’T imagine why!?!?

After this I have hours of video footage I recorded. Against my better judgment I have decided to make it into a movie of what it’s like to trip.

I have very busy schedule so it will probably take me a few days months to turn all the footage into a movie (and a trailer to put on YouTube).

Below is the personal ad that was removed from Craistlist.
—————————————-
HOLY SHIT the curtains are making me trip the fuck out~~~

so yeah, my coordination is all f-d up…

~~i just dropped my laptop~~

& it’s guts fell out….

man does it suck to trip the fuck out and do it alone….

My computer just froze, BUT i don’t blame it… it’s probably still pissed from when i dropped it (and it’s guts fell out).

So now I have lost, all that I was writing about… fuckedy fuck it was something about me and how I’m so cool and blah BLAH blah

NO WAIT, then I said there was my website (www.thesmartass.info) and how you’d need to like it! ~ since it is a vortex that has sucked my soul and all of my time into it.

Grr, what was i writing it was pure GENIUS…

some amazing thoughts ABOUT how as the world transcends i’ll become a billionaire…

Blah Blah Blah day in and day out

i am sick of working for the man …… THEN there was something about

how i was running my own company and taking a stand
some crap about how I’M a computer man.

ok now some of it’s coming back, to some of you i must seem really wack (YES wack is a term used by old people, but now I’m bringing it back just like Justin did with that “sexy” crap).

Can you taste purple? This is all I’m asking!!!

Life is short, and should be used well, so that you don’t end up ~in hell~.

and i don’t want to hear ~ all about how Jesus is love CAUSE

BLAH blah blah: I’m all tripped out~~~

Ok, no it’s cool. I love the discussion, especially when it’s over and THEN there comes a nice religious fucking….

Can you taste purple? This is all I’m asking!!!

boy (<--me) meets girl (<--you). It's really all so simple ~