Fancy Blog Title *Bling bling*

FANCY BLOG POST!

I haven't posted in a while, life has been going well I suppose. I"m taking care of my mother and feel like I'm kinda bleh.

Anyhow I've been working on beefing up my Java skills as well as getting in to Portlet development for new stuff coming in at work. Part of me likes PL/SQL work better because I don't have to deal with JAR FILE HELL! *Scary Music*

You see, when you do Java development you can sometimes use extra libraries to create your programs. These libraries are stored in files called JAR files. Now a project called Maven has made this less of an issue but it is still an issue over all. Anyhow much love to the Eclipse development platform, it's really great for doing this stuff.

PS. I liked the old blogger UI better for editing posts and managing the blog. I knew where everything was.

It's all fun and games....

Till one of the logs you are tossing in to the back of the pickup truck bounces and hits the rear window. Then it's *CRACK!* and you see the beauty that is a spiderweb start to go all over the back window. Oh well truck gets fixed tomorrow and nobody got hurt.

In other news I'm bouncing between games right now. I've been enjoying the customizations available in Champions Online but also found Star Trek Online to be appealing. It's seriously awesome to fly around the galaxy in my own ship like that and it's not as complicated or demanding as I heard other games like Eve Online are.

I can live with this. CO has some decent RP in it, I need to find some in STOL. I've been keeping an eye out at Deep Space 9 but so far Quarks has been rather empty. I found out one thing though, when you do make contacts and get in to social groups you can not only meet in public places but also your own ship as well.

I've been exploring my own ship a bit. It's not as vast as a full starship might be but there's a bridge, engineering deck, and a crew deck you can invite people to and hang out at. My ready room is a bit lavish but nice.

I've played some of the PvE dungeon queues. So far things aren't bad, I like the fleet engagements where you rescue star bases. The only down side is when everyone goes their own way all over the place and people get caught in the initial second wave of assault ships that come in on their own.

Nothing like having around eight torpedoes and several disruptor blast take your back shield from 100% to 0% and cut half your hull away in about a second. :) That was a fun first time when that happened, I now stick more to packs of ships when playing those instances.

My tactical captain is fun but my Vulcan science captain will be interesting to play as well. I'll have him in ships named after famous Astrophysics people.

One final thing for the gamer types. From sitting around and listening to chats it sounds like there's more of an end game progression in STOL then there is in CO. I'm still leveling my characters but I'm anxious to go on these Borg Queen encounters. :P

Life slowly goes on...

Life feels like it's slowly going on. It's weird in a way since it was feeling like it was whisking on by. Then after all the crap that happened last year now it's slow. Mixed blessing I guess.

On another note I'm having fun preparing a media center type setup. I've bought several movies and TV shows on DVD for this and plan on getting a nice big screen TV for the rec room in my house. I'm pretty sure my selections wouldn't be that appealing to women unless they're in to old comedies like The Munsters, Gilligans Island, as well as really old sci-fi movies that are mostly before the 1960's.

Does it show that I'm really sick of what is on TV these days? :)

Education In Iraq

Here's an interesting little article on what happened to the Universities in Iraq after the American invasion and occupation. Have a look see.

On a personal note I'm still alive, well, and working. It's like I'm in some sort of bleh zone but not bad just bleh. Anyhow, have a good day everyone.

Edit: I just took a peek at the analytics of this blog. While it's nothing at all to write home about I noticed there are people from way more places in the world then I initially thought would be looking at this thing at least once. Anyway my gift to you in good will is a hello world program in two languages. :)

// Java
public class HelloWorld {

public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Hello world!");
}
}

--
-- PL/SQL
--
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON;

DECLARE

BEGIN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Hello world!');
END;
/

Huh.. my day feels a little better. Thanks!

Aging

Did you ever look at the world and say, "Hey that used to be a corn field." or "Hey that used to be a woods with deer." or maybe even, "I remember when mustangs were running there." Looking at those places these days I see businesses and cheap but expensively priced row homes. Human progress is really going forward but the price seems like too much sometimes as the world you once knew suddenly becomes more and more of a concrete jungle.

The world is an emptier place...

Two weeks ago from this Friday my grandmother had passed away. This was a woman who played in the local symphony, got straight A's, was an artist, played the violin, piano, and other instruments in her younger days.

Two events changed her life in a big way. The first was when my grandfather was killed in World War 2. He died on D-day on his first jump from a plane. He was shot and bled to death before his boots hit the ground. This loss combined with an accident in a factory left her in a mental institution for 14 years of my mothers childhood. My grandmother received shock therapy along with other treatments.

She never was declared legally sane but she lived with me for all but three years of my life and was a wonderful woman that lived till she was 90. My Mother (her daughter) and I will miss her.

Today's WTF brought to you by....

The Crystal Cathedral Church! This wonderful mega-church has done well over the years. The pastor Rev. Schuller has built up a nice size church and done really well for himself and his family in the process. Recently the pastors wife fell ill and an email was sent out to members of the church asking for hot meals to be delivered to the church so their limo driver could pick them up and take them to the reverend and his wife.

Check out the WTF, story here. Ooooh does it get better!