05312K3
I've gotta learn PHP and mysql db stuff for this site I'm remaking. I've never had an opportunity to mess with it because the server this site is currently on doesn't have PHP or mysql or..anything beyond perl. I have about 4 days to learn how to do what I need to do, and so far that doesn't seem too difficult of a task.
New layout's almost done. I have a lot of content to add when I get it up.
Also working on the Final Darkness and cDeatH sites. AND I'm working on the stuff at work. I keep myself busy with this stupid bullshit just for the sake of being busy with stupid bullshit.
05172K3
I finally got my job back. In the past two days I've made some ads, worked on a redesign of two sites (one of them you can see here), and did some other stuff that I don't remember. I'm not getting paid as much, but I'm not worried about it right now. That redesign I put above is for lake247.net and it was supposed to be based off of the old HOPS site. I was inspired by yaxay.com for the colors.
New layout for this site coming soon. I'm actually so bored of the one I showed earlier that I'm scrapping it. I have a better idea cooking up right now.
Right now I'm at my mom's house. She left with my aunt and cousin for a week to go to North Carolina for her vacation, so I'm watching it until she gets back. She stocked the fridge with Faygo orange cream soda, lettuce with 7 types of salad dressing and some feta cheese and banana peppers, a bunch of microwavable pizzas and burritos, fudgicles, a few packs of oscar myer cheese dogs (which are fucking excellent) and a bunch of sandwich meat. And my mom's poor. I don't know why we don't ever have anything like that in our own fridge. Instead my grandma fills it with instant grits, boxes of cheese bought in bulk, and who knows what else, leaving room for one of those coca cola fridge packs. I don't want to know what's in the fridge in the kitchen in her part of the house, but I know I can't eat it.
I got a ton of stuff done on Final Darkness. I've re-written all the characters. Some stuff I took from the original story, some I took from the current story, and some stuff I made up. But it's all good. After working on the characters I did the story sequence of events (like a story board), which is 100x better than the current story. I kept a lot of stuff from the current story, but most of it I completely threw out the window. You'll still see some of the same jokes that were in act 1 of the current story. I took the ending completely from the original, and it kicks ass. Now all I have to do is take the story board and put some filler in it. Y'know, stuff like dialog and transition. I'll get started on act 1 ASAP..probably while I'm at work.
05102K3
Last night I was going through some stuff that I haven't looked at since I moved from the old house and I found a black notebook that I haven't seen in a while. I just figured it was one of my many notebooks full of shitty blurbs of writing. The cover was worn and there were impressions of pen scratches all over it. I opened it up and all the paper was a bit yellow from age. The first page was a list of comic book titles and issue numbers, and their value. I remembered sitting in my room one night with my boxes of comics all around me and the latest issue of Wizard; I was cataloging them and getting the value on them to see what the total value on my comic collection was because I was going to sell it. The last 3 issues on the page are Deathblow #0, Wolverine #50 and The Darkness #1/2. Then I remembered - those 3 titles were where I got the idea for Final Darkness from way back when we first started the RPG project. I remembered writing those three titles and suddenly, all at once, I had pretty much the entire story in my head. I turned the page and at the top was scratched and bled with black ink - "DeathQuest," which was crossed-out, because that sounds retarded has hell. Right next to it - "Final Darkness." There was a paragraph that was all scratched-through. It was a horrible intoduction to the story. Underneath it was the re-attempted intro, and then the character bios, and then the origins of Dethlocke, Sandman, Rezor and the Darkness Warriors and Shadow People, and then about 3/4 of Act 1. I had finally found the original and superior version of my Final Darkness story.
Shortly after writing that long ago, the RPG hype died down in CD and everyone lost interest, so I didn't write anymore. Then about two years later I started writing it again, which is what you see here on this site in the literature section. Why is the original so significant, and why am glad I found it? Because the characters are better. The origins are better. The history is better. The character and plot development is better. The dialog is way better. The way Sandman turns into the main villan is better. Dethlocke's origin is better...in some points (I'm not going to tell you Dethlocke's origin in relation to either of the versions). The Sandman lineage is laid-out better. It just kicked a lot more ass, and obviously I had something back then that I don't now. The current version was just me trying to remember the original. So, I'm going to re-write most of act 1 and possibly act 2 to add in the better points of the original (though some things from the new version are a little better, like Twiztid and Pretzel). I'll try to redeem myself, despite not being very talented. :)
I got a pretty cool idea for the new site and I'm working on it now, so it will be set back a little further. Hopefully this will tie-in nicely and I won't have done hours of work for nothing.
05082K3
Right now it's about 7:45 AM and I retired last night (or this morning, rather) at around 4:30. My grandmother woke me up at 7 because the pool guy is supposed to be here between 9 and 10. I don't know why I need to be up so damn early.
Ranting about school classes
I started school Tuesday with my first class being VB.NET 2002. I've only been in one class of it and already I hate it. It's such a waste of time, and such an easy language I could have just as easily bought the book and learned myself if I really wanted to (and I don't). The teacher is this crabby, old woman that could yell into a megaphone without waking anyone. I can never understand what she's saying because she speaks really low and quiet. On top of that, she doesn't even know the language. She knows COBOL and a little bit of VB6. And, as if all that weren't enough, we're not allowed to do anything with the computers sitting in front of us except for doing the lessons or whatever in the book. So basically I just sit there half-asleep until it's time to leave, because I'm sure as hell not learning anything. Hopefully psychology won't be anywhere near as bad.
Update on the new site
I finally got some time to work on the site. I took the design I've mentioned before and I changed a few minor things. It still looks pretty much the same, but the way the site will operate is totally different. I was going to have a module-loading interface, but since this server doesn't have PHP, added on to the fact that I don't want two dozen i-frames on the main page, I've decided not to do it that way, even though it would have looked a little cooler. I guess I'll go ahead and show you - click here. I put comments all over it for your annoyance enjoyment. It should be up pretty soon, along with some new images for the portfolio, poems for the literary archives, aim convos for the messenger mayhem section and maybe some other stuff. Maybe even a new section if I feel like stretching the nav bar.
Ranting about my crazy grandfather and telling of last weekend's events
Now, about the pool - here's how it went down:
I think it was Friday. I was sitting at my desk, looking around at how messy the room was and thinking how great it would be if it were all clean (but I'll be damned if I'm the one who's gonna clean it) when my brother walked in to tell me that a part broke off of the pool's filter housing after he put some chlorine tablets in, and that he had to shut it off. I checked it out to discover that the water pressure had blown a faucet off of the bottom of the filter housing, and the tip of it was broke off and still in the threading. I tried getting it out through all sorts of methods, but nothing worked. Just at that moment my grandmother came home, so I told her what was up and said we'd have to get someone over to take care of it, or that I could just plug it with some pvc and a cap. Then she made the mistake of telling my grandfather about it. He came out, looked at the valve that blew off, then told me to put it back on. I said I can't because the threaded part is broke off, so he suggested that I should get a new one. I explained to him that a new one wouldn't do any good because I can't get the broken part out of the bottom of the filter housing, and with it still in we wouldn't be able to put another valve in. Then he told me to turn the pump back on, and water started shooting out of the hole, so I turned it off. Then he turned the valve on to the drain pipe and told me to turn the pump back on, and it started shooting water out and draining the pool. My grandmother asked why he wanted to drain the pool, and he started mubling on about totally unrelated matters, so I turned it off. Then he said that all we need to do is get another valve to replace the broken one. My grandmother reminded him that the broken piece was still in there and that a new valve wouldn't do any good without taking it out first. Then he started to drain the pool again, and I turned it off. Then he told me to go to the hardware store to buy another valve. At this point I swear my grandmother was about to have a heart attack. I suggested plugging it, since we don't need the damn thing anyway, and he said that if we plugged it we wouldn't be able to drain the pool. I told him that that's what the drain pipe is for, and that we just had the damn thing on twice. He told me to get a new valve like four more times throughout the rest of the day.
Last weekend continued
The next day, my uncle came over to take a look at it and to see if he could get the piece out. Again my grandfather told me to get a new valve about a dozen times. Then he kept asking what was wrong with the pool and why we had the pump turned off. My uncle couldn't get it out so he left. I went back inside and about an hour later my grandfather called me out to tell me that water was shooting out of the bottom of the filter housing, and to go get a new valve.
Last weekend continued
Sunday rolled around. I woke up around 9 and I started working on the site. My monitor turned off and my UPS beeped. After about three minutes the power came back on, and then went back off, then back on, then back off, on, off, on, off, my UPS sounded pissed off. My brother went outside to check the breaker, only to find my grandfather switching the main breaker on and off and my grandmother yelling at him to stop. It turned out he totally messed up the power box for the pool pump and couldn't turn it off, so he was trying to find the breaker to turn it off..and kept turning the MAIN breaker on and off for no apparent reason. My brother just flipped the pool breaker down and came inside to report the incident. I went out to look at the pool's power box and the timer was all screwed up and the power switch was in a position I've never seen before. The door to the box was bent and I couldn't close it. I asked him why he turned it on, and he said he didn't want the timer to turn the pool on. I told him it was already off, and the timer only works when the power switch is on, then he started rambling on about stuff...I couldn't understand what he was saying because he kept jumping from subject to subject. Then he told me to get a new valve.
Last weekend conclusion, events of a few minutes ago and more ranting on my crazy grandfather
It is now 10:10 and the pool guy just left. He took the broken piece out and put a plug in the hole, and then fixed the power box. My grandfather was telling him stuff the whole time but the guy just ignored him, which was probably the right thing to do. Just after he left, my grandfather said that he would never call that guy again because he screwed us over. His reasoning behind this was that the guy didn't put the valve back on, but just plugged the hole and now we won't be able to drain the pool. I told him that the valve was for draining the filter housing (but it's not the only way to drain it), and that the drain pipe is for draining the pool. He told me we better put the valve back on just to be safe. Instead of arguing with him, I just told him I didn't know how to take the plug off. Hopefully he's not going to actually try to take it off and put the broken valve back on. I'll have to kill him.
05032K3
I haven't been online for more than five minutes at a time since my last post. My grandparents are driving me nuts - mostly my grandfather. He keeps saying he needs me to stay home to help him with something, but he won't say what it is until we actually start on the project, but..we don't start on it. He just rakes leaves or watches tv all day and then he'll say tomorrow he needs me to stay home. I haven't finished Craig's website and I haven't been online in ages so he's probably pissed at me. Oh well. He probably wouldn't have paid me much, anyway. About the only time I get to get online is around 2:45 (it always just happens to be around that time everyday), but that's when my brother gets home from school and he stays on the computer all damn day until about 10:35, even though he has a bedtime of 10:00. And my grandmother won't do jack shit about it, because he's supposed to be doing his homework or something. Even if he says he has no homework, he's still allowed to stay on. So I'm on about 1 hour a night, leaving me no time to do anything I want to do, like finish this layout or finish Craig's site or whatever.
In other news, I start school again Monday - VB Programming and Psychology. Psychology should be alright, but Visual Basic...ugh. I have no use for VB, but I wanted more than just one class for the entire semester, and, since everything else was filled or closed or something of that sort, it's pretty much all I could get. Oh well, maybe there will be some unsuspecting, hot, nerdishly-innocent babe with a nice rack sitting next to me like there was in my software class.
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Contact:
craigsucks at gmail dot com