Ionrock Dot Org

Today I have spent way to long on a stupid template for a site. I don't know why this has taken such a long time. I realize that there are some definite gaps in my knowledge of css. My boss (John) said to me once something about "cascading" and ever since I feel like I have a better idea of what css is really all about. I know there is still a ton more to learn. It sounds like I am working on a dissertation or exploring a religion. In a way this is true. When you start to get paid for something there is a certain pressure to really understand it more than common folk understand it. I have definitely been feeling that lately. I also have been feeling like css has some religious conotations. Maybe it is more of a cult. The short and skinny is that is that I am kind of tired of messing with css and tableless layouts. The longer story is that I am just plain old tired.

A friend of mine posed the question of what is too much to say on a blog. I am sure others have pondered the same thing, so I am sure I am not exploring new territory. In my case the high ground is probably best to take and just leaving things at me feeling a little tired is enough. If someone wants to become best friends they can contact me, exchange numbers, etc. and maybe we can talk more about my "feelings." In the mean time I will remain a mysterious figure that creeps in the darkness of the Internet, lurking for articles on css and design, while realizing more and more that coding for design is not nearly as rewarding as coding for a solution. Does that make sense?

My musical side has also been very busy (... that sounds a bit like something I would have said when I wrote poems in the 7th grade based on the number 3). We have been practicing and things have been happening. Once again, I am going to be vague and just "things" are going on my band. These are good things and I am very excited and, to be honest, things have been pretty surreal. I am not one to toot my own horn, but we seem to have been very successful and those successes only seem to become more and more viable. You never think it will happen to you. If you are reading this, wish me luck. We will need all the support we can get. Playing in a band is hard enough, but when it is tied emotionally to both your own ego and that of your spouse, music becomes a sometimes bitter sweet addiction that makes you euphoric and depressed at the same time. It is nice to know that I can always exit my artistic side for a simple function or query to a database to bring me back to the world of binary numbers and curly brackets. Enough crappy imagry, I am going to work some more ;)

The other day UME played with eX-GIRL. It was a a really cool show. They are a band from japan (google is your friend if you want more info). They take the japanese mainstream and expand it to become a subculture. It was good to say the least. Tonight we are playing with Don Cabellaro and White Whale at the Proletariat in Houston. It should be fun.

Well, I am even more glad about my choice of blogging software. I am sure everyone has read about MT and the recent license change. I never really understood the draw of it. It is written in perl, which makes no sense to me at all. I tried to install it on my server but it was just a pain in the neck. After using php, having to have something like a cgi-bin just seems ridiculus. In any sense, this seems to be good news for WordPress. I wish Matt and company good luck with their new friends.

It never made sense to me why MT was so popular. It was a pain to install, the license was not free, and it was written in perl. Now I know the perl argument is pretty unfounded but, the fact it was not free and hard to install just made it pretty stupid to use for the long run. It always seemed like investing a lot of time and effort into something that did not have especially nice features and that could eventually be taken away without notice. I am now pretty glad that I let that blogging system go and went with WordPress for my blogging needs.

I am now in Texas and I am enjoying myself quite a bit. My computer is not in good shape as it seems that my hard drive has been corrupted to some extent such that I cannot reinstall windows. My "I wish I were a ultra hardware guru" side of me says that when I installed Fedora Core 2 Test 3 (I can't resist beta software), it messed up the MBR of my hard drive so that windows just can't seem to boot up. I am not sure how I am going to fix it or even if I am going to fix it. I have been using fedora and I like it alright so maybe once I get some crucial media and disk reading things going, I will do some rearranging and go all linux, all the time.

I have been very busy with work which is a good thing. I am getting done with projects and getting ready for more. I hope I have time to work on the UME site and finish up this site since no one actually goes to it at the moment. For the most part life is good and I have no time to write anything more than simple "this is what I am up to" posts. Fortunately, life is much more exciting and fun than a blog.

It is finally done. I have finished the semester and I see why people are so happy to get out of school. I know for a fact that I took my first degree for granted. I wish I had studied more and really learned everything I studied but I just did not have a passion for History. What is really cool is that for the first time I think I really learned something that I wanted to know in school. My database course, while having its faults, was a really good class. I learned a ton and found it useful in everyday life. My networking class was nothing but a pain. What I learned can be summed up in one sentence (The difference between a router and a switch is that a router directs traffic using IP addresses and a switch uses MAC addresses). There was calculus and music, both had their moments. I am just rambling a bit while I come to grips that I won't have any more classes all summer. Ok, I think I am done.