JohnA lifeBlog

I am SO freaking tired of the authorities blaming everything on 9/11. In this case, a Best Buy customer was taken to jail because he paid a bill using $2 bills.

As always, this behavior is acceptable, as noted by the sheriff department spokesman, to defend against the terrorists:

Commenting on the incident, Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey told the Sun: “It’s a sign that we’re all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world.”

read more | digg story

So, after almost 19 months in the world’s worst “loft”, I am finally moving on.

That’s right, starting tomorrow, I will be moving all of my crap (most of which is junk I’ve ordered from woot.com) to my new house.  It’s a 3 bedroom / 2 bath house with a 2 car garage, small tool shed, nice backyard, and a doggy door! Finally, I’ll be able to get a pet.  Still trying to decide between a dog and / or cat(s)… not sure yet.

Also, the kick ass thing is that I am going to turn one of the bedrooms into a fully calibrated home theater, and re-introduce movie night!  Blu-Ray / HD-DVD + 7.1 Surround + 1080p LCD FTW!

I’ll take pictures, etc. as I get settled in.

Finally, the entire country is starting to wake up to the awesomeness that is Merced, California.

New book ranks Merced fourth worst place to live in U.S.

I mean, where else can you find a place like Merced? I mean, look how easily one can find a job! And don’t get me going on the quality of our air.

Civic pride… such a wonderful thing.

Right now, my step-mom and my sister are in China.  For those who don’t know, my step-mom runs RainbowKids, the internet’s largest and oldest international adoption publication.  She is also mom to 5 adopted children from China & Korea.

Anyway, she is posting on a special blog while she is there, so be sure to check it out!

http://adoptblogger.blogspot.com/

One thing I have realized lately is that I am not using my blog to its fullest potential. I post numerous articles about current events, but I do not see it as a vehicle for recording events earlier in my life. As I read my favorite bitch blog Violent Acres, I realize that I have an opportunity to “brain dump” my past. That being said, here is the first in a series of posts dealing with my immediate life in the dot.com bubble of the Roaring 2000s.

Back in 1999, I was content. I had moved on from Bible college, and was again working at my first true “career”. I was a web developer for Elliott Wave International. my primary focus was on the e-commerce portion of the site, something that proved useful later on in life. At the time, there were no concepts such as PayPal or Google Checkout. Hell, there were maybe 5-10 companies that offered payment gateways. In fact, at one point, Microsoft was offering to throw many thousands of dollars our way to implement Microsoft Commerce Server. We even bought a WebTV to see how our platform worked.

Anyway, my best friend was graduating from Georgia Tech, and he was offered a killer deal for a newly formed startup called NetEffect. The salary was almost twice what IBM was offering, so he accepted. Being the stand up guy he was, he recruited me as well. He told me about how awesome the place was, and how we would both get thousands of stock options, making us rich when the company went public. We both drank the Kool-Aid, and I turned in my notice.

Elliott Wave International is an interesting company. It was founded by Bob Prechter, though he is mostly hands off in dealing with day to day operations. But when I gave my notice to the IT Director (Warren, a great guy), he immediately told Bob, as one would expect.

Bob, who I respect like my ultimate mentor, sat me down in my office. He told me that the bubble was about to burst, and that I was risking attaching myself to a sinking ship before it had even left port. Ultimately, he was right. But in my youth, I still had the goose-like eyes on the ultimate brass ring… work hard, and make a fortune when the company went IPO. I told him that I appreciated all he had done for me, but that I had to pursue this opportunity. Ultimately, he gave his blessing, with a strong caveat. He told me that when the company failed (not if), I was welcome back at Elliott Wave. He is such a generous man.

My first two days at NetEffect were something out of a comic book. At this point, I had only met my new boss and his top engineer at The Varsity in Gwinnett County. I hadn’t seen anything else official. No contract, no paperwork, just a handshake and a smile.

When I arrived for my first day of work at the NetEffect offices, I was floored. They had rented out 2 floors in a skyscraper that was in the heart of downtown Atlanta on International Blvd. Who knows what the rent there was.

If you want to see the next installments, please Digg! this article.

We were in a “classroom” with about 20 other new hires. The first day was boilerplate HR, with a slightly-less-than-sincere pep-talk from the CEO, Brian Wilson.

After a day of paperwork, training, and other crap, we were treated to a dinner at the Benihana’s restaurant located in the building. This was the first of many meals I would take at this particular restaurant.

In the months that followed, I would have enjoyed many meals from that same restaurant. But alas, that is tomorrow’s story.

So tonight I watched the series finale of 7th Heaven. To be honest, I stopped watching the show weekly around 3 or 4 years ago. But seeing that this was the series finalie, it seemed appropriate.

But after sitting through this “event”, I can only imagine the pain regular viewers have had to endure. I can only imagine the pain the viewers must have endured with “Evil Ruthie”

To be honest, I am glad I stopped watching when I did. I didn’t waste 4 seasons on Lucy and Ruthie drama.

So, I made some hints earlier about comparing HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.  Thankfully, I have an insane NetFlix account, which I have enabled for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

The bottom line for the fans, whenever a film is released in both formats, the picture & sound quality in my reference theater is the same. But, as subjective analysis, we have to take a detour.

HD-DVD uses VC1 as its advanced codec, while Blu-Ray uses AVC as its advanced codec.

Maybe it is because I own a first generation HD-DVD player, but I have had more problems with my HD-DVD player than any other component in my hardware stack.  In terms of next-gen content, the HD-DVD player is second to Blu-Ray.  But if you are watching legacy DVD content, the upscaling on the HD-DVD player is so far ahead of the PS3.  Frankly, the PS3 upscaling sucks.

Anyway, at this point, using lots of source material, I will say this.  Blu-Ray presents the most professional and talented next-gen format.  So much for guessing early…

For the most part, I’ve tried to keep politics of this blog, but this video really makes you think. According to the VoteVets press release, Major General (ret.) John Batiste, the speaker in the video,

was commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division from August 2002-June 2005. During this timeframe, he conducted combat operations in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The division was deployed to north-central Iraq from February 2004 until February 2005 and included 22,000 soldiers from active and reserve component units from throughout the United States. Batiste twice voted for President Bush and is a lifelong Republican.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPIi03wSfY[/video]

I hope Bush will follow through and listen to his commanders on the field, and the majority of Americans.

Don’t even think about posting A1 52 90 26 B4 E1 EF E6 3E A4 B0 9F 1C E4 0B BA on your own website.

Thanks to Ed Felton, the aforementioned integer is now a bona fide circumvention device as defined by the DMCA!

However, there are about 2¹²⁸-1 other ones available, so be sure to hurry over to his blog to get your own!

Update: That’s right you haters!  Try as you might, you were unable to register a1529026b4e1efe63ea4b09f1ce40b@gmail.com before I did!  So, feel free to send me a message there… if you want to risk distributing a circumvention device, that is.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weOcrP7u7Y8[/video]

This is simply cool to watch. I love stress tests, be they virtual or in the real world.

Via The Consumerist