JohnA lifeBlog

How appropriate is it that as I write this post, I see a Mormon ad on Food Network… They are doing better than other “Christians”, I guess.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote earlier on OKCupid… It hurts, but represents the truth as I perceive it.

I changed my religious preferences from Not too serious about Christianity to somewhat serious about agnosticism. How come?

Over the last year, I have become more and more convinced that living a good, “Christian” life is an example of living in pain, fear, and regret, than living a life of virtue and hope.

My decision to live a “Christian” life has brought me nothing but pain and loneliness. I’ve seen no benefits in the face of a myriad of pain.

There is much more to this than I have chosen to write, but I am not comfortable with expressing more than I already have.

No more. I have suffered for far too long in the pain of an uncertainty that is reflected in organized religion.

So, literally more than two of my readers have asked about my home theater, since I talk about the fact that I watch movies non-stop. So, here we go. What makes up my home theater? Let’s break it down.

• 1080p 42″ LCD Display, courtesy of woot.com
• Outlaw Audio 1070 Receiver
• e:XL-26-B1 Fronts
• e:XL-C Center
• e:XL-150 Rears
• e:XL-S12 Subwoofer
• PS3 60GB
• XBox 360 Premium
• Tivo HD with 2 Comcast CableCards
• Vista MCE Server with a combo HD-DVD / Blu-Ray player, powered by the nVidia 8600 GTS video card and the Razer Barracuda 7.1-out audio card.
• All controlled via a Logitech Harmony 880 remote
• Oh, and a Nintendo Wii

There are various add-ons not discussed, but that is the gist of it. Let me know if you have any questions.

Normally, when I post an anniversary post, I post the Second Act’s opening tune from one of my favorite musicals (Rent), then do the math of the song Seasons Of Love.

Tonight, I’ve decided to proceed differently. Although you will still be subjected to Seasons of Love…

The truth is that, I hit the 5 year mark recently. And wow, how life has changed. There is so much to talk about, and a future to predict, but let’s start small.

When I moved here, I did so because my bestest friend in the whole world asked me to. I was living in Pensacola, FL at the time, working a lame but profitable job. We talked, and somehow he convinced me that my best opportunity was to cash in my bank account, pile everything I owned into a U-Haul, and just see what would happen. When I arrived in Merced, I had no extra money, no vehicle, no friends, and no hope. I have gone back to my first blog posts, and was floored at how awful my situation was. For reals… check out these posts… they were not the posts of a person who was looking forward to the future.

Over the months and years, things changed. I bought my first Mac quite some time ago, even though I hated the idea of being a Mac person. I lamented the fact that I couldn’t drive. I hated that I moved to a place I’d never seen.

But through all of this, I have persevered. I have survived, and, to be honest, I have done amazingly well for myself. I came, I saw, I cried, but in the end, I conquered.

At this point, our business will continue to grow leaps and bounds beyond what we could imagine. I mean, even as I write this, we have been hiring people left and right to TRY to keep up with our growth.

I am now in a position where what I do matters… especially outside some kind of appointed committee. At this point, every single line of code I write impacts thousands of people. Isn’t that cool?

Apple doesn’t want me, and Amazon won’t consider me because I cannot recall the properties of basic Java objects off the top of my head. To the large corporations, I say, F**** YOU!. Here I am, helping merchants earn insane amounts of money every single day. If you cannot see past my lack of a college degree, or the fact that I haven’t memorized the JDK specification, then sadly it is your loss.

As for me? I plan to keep writing code, keep forging relationships, and keep giving presentations (where you’ll probably find Amazon.com’s All-Star developers taking feverish notes). Not that I am bitter or something…

So, 5 years have passed since I moved to a place I didn’t know, with a future uncertain. Today, I feel like I’ve (pardon the expression) pwned the folks who followed the traditional path. I am sincerely grateful that the recruiter from Amazon.com passed me by because I couldn’t immediately recall the primitives of the JVM. I am grateful that I didn’t have a Ph.D., which is why Google didn’t hire me.

I am content. I am happy that I am me. And, to be honest, when Google calls me and my partners (as they ALREADY HAVE), I can be pleased to know that they need me far more than I need them.

My future is in innovation… not in the past. Happy 11th Anniversary, UltraCart. I hope you are “content” on only being in the top 8,000 of every single internet site in the entire world. It’s not Google, but at least I can watch what I do make a difference in the lives of thousands of individual entrepreneurs around the world.

Oh, and we truely “Do No Evil”… something that GOOG seems to have forgotten…

I just donated $100 to Sen. Obama’s campaign. It was only the second time in my life that I have contributed to a Democrat’s campaign.

We need someone to unify us. Someone who will work to unite America, not divide her. That man is Barak Obama.

God bless America. And God bless unity and progress. Thank you, Mr. Obama.

But… I watched this earlier.

Tonight, Barak Obama completely blew the competition out of the water in demonstrating what it means to be a statesman.

Life is about reality, and leadership is about being honest, and building up a nation, not dividing it.

Thank you, Mr. Obama, for helping me remember what it means to be a proud American.

As much as I wish I had my own question-mark suit, I did choose to claim my small share of “free gub’mint money”, so I applied for the free DTV conversion coupons offered to help offset the cost of making the transition to Digital OTA.

On Sunday, I went to teh Wal-Mart and bought one of both models they offered for the plain-jane NTIA approved converter boxes. One was branded RCA, the other was branded Maganvox. Thanks to the delightful coupons, each only cost me around $13 out of pocket. I returned home happy and eager to see glorious 480P on my lame analog TV.

Except, oh wait, I couldn’t receive ANY signals. From anywhere. Since i live in the worst place to live one could imagine, it is not surprising that I failed at the even basic task of trying to find a SINGLE digital TV station with a plain-jane antenna.

Here is the deal, friends. You should apply for the coupons ASAP, as Congress only approved a pittance for this program. In fact, when I went to purchase these converter boxes, there was an adorable couple in front of me debating the merits of the (sadly) only two remaining units. In the end, they put them both back on the shelf, at which point I swooped in like an eagle and put them both in the cart.

Later, the same couple came up to me in the Pharmacy section and asked if I was buying both. I replied that indeed I was, and they asked if I had applied for the government coupons. I said that I applied on the first day that they permitted, and then showed them the coupons. They were impressed with the coupons, and said that they were curious about the boxes features. Most interestingly, they didn’t understand that they could use said converter boxes at any point prior to the Feb 2009 cutover. When I told them it would let them get a digital signal today, they said “But doesn’t that cost money?”

Sigh. I talked to them for about 20 minutes to explain what the real deal was. But what concerned me is the fact that this nice older couple, who applied for the $40 coupons early, had NO IDEA what the DTV conversion meant. I told them what to expect, and how to deal with it, and they were happy, confused, and grateful. The bottom line? The general public is screwed if they don’t subscribe to Comcast or DirectTV…

Anway, back to the whole Over-The-Air thing. Since I am the coolest person you know, thanks to my super-leet connections, I am going to ask the gang at the awesome Antennas Direct to send me some antenna I could use to try to evaluate these boxes properly, then post the results. Until then, keep reaching for the skiis!

So, I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to beta test Delicious Library 2.0. The best feature so far is the HTML export. To show you how cool it is, take a look at my abbreviated gallery. I only included High-Def and Games in this gallery, but you get the idea:

JohnA’s Delicious Library

So far, I am impressed with the new version… the Delicious gang has done a great job!

Wait a second… strike that, reverse it… thank you.

I have a number of things I need to write about, so I’m going to pop in a movie and get to it. I’ll be posting an update about my Costco situation, commenting on the Government “Free Block of Cheese” DTV Converter Program, how cool DropBox is, and finally mention that it’s my fifth anniversary of the great move west, so start shopping for some wooden gifts.

So, I had to move this blog to a new server, which has totally messed up the MySQL database that Wordpress uses, so all of my old posts have lots of weird symbols in place of things like quotes and apostrophes. Go Unicode. Anyway, I’m going to try to figure it all out soon enough.

In regards to my last post, since I sent the message, I received the latest edition of the Costco member magazine Costco Connection, which contained a feature about their optical department. This article included the following verbatim snippet, with focus added by me.

I have not heard a single thing from Costco, so I have printed out my letter and am sending it snail-mail. I have to admit that I am incredibly disappointed that they did not even acknowledge my e-mail correspondence. So much for being customer-focused…

UPDATE: Here is the PDF of the letter I sent in case you’re interested… Oh, and for the fellow Mac addicts in the audience, yes, I did use Pages to write it.