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Wow, I feel like a dead beat.

Ace London — 2007-12-10T23:09:31+00:00

I haven’t posted in way too long. I agree with SyNth, this was a good site, but now its time to take a new direction. I fully support SyNth in his redesign.

Site to be redesigned

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2007-11-14T22:33:41+00:00

Well, this site's seen better days. I've decided to start working a couple of utilities that'll replace this site. All the old content will remain in a separate section of the site but I had to clear out the comments table because there were too many spam comments for me to sort through. I also disabled comments because I don't want to deal with it for a bit.

A year in the life

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2007-09-10T19:33:55+00:00

So its practically been a year since my last post.

I decided to post today because a) I need a break, and b) there too much homework.

So whats been up for the last year? Well, here goes......

Soon after my last post, it was about time to think about housing for my sophomore year. I hated dorms so I talked to my parents about getting an apartment, and they agreed with me. It turns out that Fairfax apartments was expensive, but still cheaper than the dorms. Dorms were costing us about $6000 for the 9 months of school, and after some accounting, I figured out that Fairfax would cost me $5500 for 12 months in the case of a one-bedroom apartment shared between two people. That was very ideal for my situation because I wanted to stay in Pittsburgh during the summer to work and I liked space.

Originally, Gates (my roommate for the second semester of school. Yes, thats his first name) and I and Nick had wanted to get a 2-bedroom apartment to share between the 3 of us, but it turns out that Gates's parents are not very reasonable when it comes to housing. They forbade Gates from going off campus housing, which we had to do in order to get Nick in since he does not go to CMU. If we had done the 2-bedroom apartment idea, it would've actually come out to about $4800 a year. Figures that it turns out to not work... too good to be true I guess.

Even earlier on Alycia and her friend had planned to share a 2-bedroom apartment with Nick and I, but it turned out that there'd be space issues. Girls take up so much room... bleh. Oh well, that was nice but I think Alycia got a good place anyways. She didn't need to be in Oakland. Oakland was expensive... her 2-bedroom apartment for 2 people is probably 1/4 the price of our 1-bedroom apartment.

Anyways, Nick and I settled on just rooming together, and it was pretty nice. We have a huge living room which was very empty when we got here since we were used to living in tiny little cubes called dorms. Gradually, however, it's been filled. Between the entertainment center and a couch/futon and various other items of larger size, its actually become a very nice living room.

The bedroom is, I think, well set up too. Half the room is our computers and etc. I actually have a decent amount of space now. Even though my 3-monitor setup takes up my entire desk, I wouldn't have it any other way. It's better than last year when I had one of my monitors balanced on a stack of computers. The other half is our bunk bed which we got for a very nice price. $200 for a brand new wooden bunk bed was a great deal and I am very happy with it. I made sure to get one with the bottom bunk being a full sized bed so that Heather would have room on it. That was great for the summer when she stayed over quite a few days when we went to work together.

This summer was somewhat monotonous. Nick had pulled me into WoW. That meant that other than eating, sleeping, and working, all I did was play WoW. It was quite a life-saver though, since I would've been bored out of my mind if not for WoW. Either that or I'd be working waaay too much. It really is a fun game, which is probably why 10 million people play it. I did make a healthy amount of money though, enough for my hobbies. I upgraded my computer and basically bought everything I'd need/want for the rest of the year.

Otakon in July was a highlight. I drove there with Heather and Lauren. It was quite a trip. I really liked the hotel room I had booked about 6 months in advance. I had no idea what the place would be like until I got there, but fortunately it was not bad at all. Of course, Otakon was one hell of a money drainer. The tickets to get in were $50 a piece. Hotel room was $300 for 2 nights, and parking and gas added up quickly. That was before we bought anything at Otakon. We definitely went nuts on the money-spending.

Even though I said it was monotonous before, it was nonetheless a fun summer. I've never done so much coding in my life, and I enjoyed every minute of it. In 3 months I've become a bleeding-edge AJAX coder. We were writing our own AJAX libraries because we thought the pre-made ones were too bloated and didn't have what we needed. It was absolutely amazing, being on the bleeding edge and doing things that no one else was doing. I also learned a lot about databases and management of large data sets. SQL joins and searches became as clear to me as the back of my hand. I actually liked working... as weird as that sounds.

Anyways, school started on Monday, August 28, and that day was RIDICULOUS. I have never been so tired in my life. It turns out that Mondays and Wednesdays I have to go to one of each of my classes. This means that I will hate Mondays and Wednesdays this semester. It's truly going to be exhausting, especially with my hope that I will go to at least 95% of my classes so I don't average a 2.3 GPA like last semester.

This semester is going to be insane. I spent 15 hours on homework last week, and it looks like thats the way it'll be for the rest of the semester. 15 hours of work every week with breaks only for test weeks. WoW doesn't help either. I'm just about at the point where it gets really fun. I'm JUST about done with leveling, (lvl 59, to get 60 today hopefully. Level 70 is the level cap so once I reach there I can actually start doing the fun stuff like arena and raids).

All in all though, I'm decently happy with where I am at this point. No computer troubles for a while now, and everything's pretty well set up.

Computer-wise, the network in this room is pretty insane now. I've set up Windows Server 2003 to be the domain controller and set up my own domain in my LAN. Its truly a Local Area Network now. I have full control over the WINS, DHCP, DNS, and Active Directory services and any computers I need to set up take minutes to set up now. Networking is a breeze with the full setup I have going. I've also upgraded to gigabit because I've been splitting up the locations of my drives since the number's been rising. I have 6 large capacity drives now so it doesn't all fit in one computer anymore. I have 2 main computers with the drives. Matrix, running Windows Server 2003, is the domain controller. I have my pair of 200GBs running in RAID-0 in that one, as well as one 250GB SATA drive as the C drive. It runs as the file server, print server, WINS server, DHCP server, DNS server and just about every other service server needed on a distributed network. I even have Azureus running all the time with time-scheduled seeding/downloading times and a remote-control service. In my main daily-use computer, Ichigo, I have a pair of 80GB, SATA, running in RAID-1 acting as my backup drives, and a 250GB SATA drive as main storage. Finally I have a 40GB PATA drive as my system drive. I've moved pretty far away from my old systems with a single point of failure. If I get infected by a virus or anything serious, it only takes about 4 hours to be completely back online and cleaned. This was actually tested last year and proven (I accidentally released a virus on my system... >_<)

Alright, I think thats about enough for updates for the time being. I have to get back to homework.

Here! We build here!

Asuka Maxwell — 2007-03-13T16:21:06+00:00

Hello all you daddys and dolls,
I think I'm going to start posting news from now on. I'm a member of this here group, so I should start paraticipating a bit more. I've ignored the masses for too long!
So...let's see, I have a facebook, a wiki entry about myself, a myspace...UMW is boring...I really should finish this essay for English...and the girl in the next dorm room had better answer her phone!! >> Dont worry I'll get better at this as time goes by, just really random thoughts right now. Will post later, I promise! ^-^

http://laurengreider.pbwiki.com/
http://groups.msn.com/GundamWingsLastStand <-- my group

I feel like Dr. Phil, cept i might accually be useful!

Ace London — 2007-03-13T05:02:01+00:00

Holy hell. Where did this school term go? Next week is finals here at Kettering.
*has stroke*

And now: tonight’s main event: Subject Hopping With ACELondon!
ACE: Thank you! Thank you! I hope you enjoy the show!

My life has changed a lot since Asuka and I broke up. It happened in December. I didn’t post cause I was all emo, and I didn’t want to infect the world. (shit’s contagious!)

I still care about her, and she will always have her place in my heart. If any one who reads this, if any one reads this, and knows her (in person) and likes her: GO FOR IT.
It may be the best decision of your life. She is a great girl, she deserves to be loved. Treat her well, or you’ll hear from me.

This one called LadyRavan has stolen my heart now. Its locked in the safe in her room, in her dark and scary castle. (3rd tower from the north end, top floor) If anyone knows the combo to the lock: don’t tell me! I am happily doomed to love her forever. It’s the good kind of doomed.

Sadly, she was afraid the first time I said I would love her forever. She misunderstood I think. She seems to believe that this traps her in a relationship with me till the end of time. That’s marriage, this is dating. It’s not <i> QUITE </i> as scary as marriage. What I meant is that she has her place in my heart, and that will never change unless she makes it change. She is always welcome in my arms for a comforting hug, even if we do break up. Just like Asuka before her.

It is impossible to compare girlfriends that you like. I can say lots about the ones I don’t like easy. But when you really care about 2 girls at once and someone asks who you love more, your heart explodes, and you brain says something stupid. But since I will probably get reamed if I don’t say it: My dear Asuka, you are a close 2nd to my LadyRavan. There I said it! HA! Right now, the other 146million American women are being ignored, save a very few.

And the Moral is: Always Wear Pants!
I mean…
Treat you special someone the way they deserve. A.k.a., the best you can. Don’t force a relationship to be too serious, you’ll end up getting hurt. Remember: it doesn’t matter if your 15 of 50. There is no reason to take dating so seriously that it hurts. It’s all about fun. If you end up marrying your high school sweetheart, good for you. But don’t think just cause you date someone that you are bound to them for life. Just have fun. That's what it's all about!
And it IS alright to cry when somebody dumps you. Hell, I’ve cried before when I was the one doing the dumping. Losing somebody you care about hurts. But just remember. It just wasn’t meant to be, and if it was, it will come back. And you CAN still be friends. Asuka and I are. We are mature enough to see that we still care about each other, and that’s just fine by us.

-ACELondon

pandora's box

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2007-02-17T06:41:39+00:00

how does the world
in its
sad...
broken...
greedy...
selfish...
corrupt...
state manage
to operate?

perhaps a small glimmer of hope...
the light in pandora's box...
the reason for prayer...
the reason to believe in an almighty...
the belief that,
perhaps someday,
something better might
happen
come by
cross paths

but reality
realism
and society
all say otherwise
and the truth,
is that nothing is
free

I haven't written a free-verse poem in forever, so I wrote this one.

Sullen Spring

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2007-02-07T19:26:21+00:00

'ere the soft sullen rain falls
though no person may be there to listen
and no evidence left is all
besides jewels upon stems that glisten

lost is the brief flight through
the thick polluted air
and the cold in which it flew
such to land o'er there

perhaps though the real reason
though not immediately lucid
is the symbolic change of season
to the warm from the frigid

Written for Monica L.

Homework

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2007-01-30T22:18:34+00:00

Well, I've been in this situation many many times, and I'm sure everyone else has too...

A soft fluorescent
glow illuminates the
hours of work ahead.

Existential

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2007-01-28T07:28:05+00:00

Yeah, I've decided it's that time of the day/month/year/whatever to write another blog post. This time, however, it won't be as depressing as the last... well, all of them. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Honestly, I think my life's just a lot of half-completed projects and a couple of completed ones. The completed ones? High school, I suppose, could count as one. Maybe stuff like "make my own website" would count as well, though this website is long overdue for a renovation. I'll probably make it all AJAX-y since I've been pretty intensely working on AJAX pages for work.

If you don't know what AJAX is, it's what makes Google so amazing. It's the system behind such stuff as GMail among others. Look it up on the big amazing internet, like on wikipedia or something. Anyways, I've been working with AJAX on the bleeding edge. Yes, bleeding edge... which means when something breaks, it collapses and implodes. I'm to the point where I'm very comfortable with AJAX now, which is good. I just feel better when I code with something I feel comfortable with. It's just nice not having to spend half the time looking up syntax or prewritten functions for a simple operation I have to do.

Anyways, where was I? Bleeding edge, right. I've been writing really cool stuff with AJAX recently and I feel like it's a pretty good time to implement it here. However, there's always something going on. When I came back to CMU, I was going to work on stuff for work. However, since Gates and I went to get a Wii, it's been distraction after distraction. I originally wanted to finish a website for StuCo, work on the Hamerschlag website, and finish the project for work, but all I've managed to do recently is some work on my project for work. All the rest of the time is taken up by Zelda (Twilight Princess for the Wii). By the way, that game is amazing.

Anyways, even though Gates is my roommate for this semester, we happen to have schedules that directly conflict with one another, which really sucks because we really don't have any time to hang out with each other. It started out this semester with EVERY time slot that he was at class I was free, and vice versa. This really sucked considering that we hung out a lot last semester. Y'know, played pool at the UC, ate lunches & sometimes dinner together. It was really fun last semester, but so far this semester we haven't really had much time at all to do any of that because our schedules conflicted almost directly.

I really hope that once the swimming season's over that we'll have time to hang out again. I miss the lunch + pool after ECE last semester. That was really fun.

Well, I suppose I should wrap up my thoughts... I like to limit my thoughts a bit as to not overwhelm my reader(s?). I suppose I should write more poetry, it's been a while since I wrote any. Oh well, so much to do, so little time to finish anything...

Not everyone's stupid it seems

SyNthetiC PaRadoX — 2006-12-15T07:27:17+00:00

It looks like there are still sane people out there! I just read a very good article on how people treat their peers in customer service jobs like shit and how that should change. Linked below:

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/59/two-phrases-that-destroyed-american-culture