blog.emerick.org

Sorry there havent been any updates lately… been crazy busy with school and hockey…

I have 2 projects going on plus a lot of homework and couple test scattered here and there… school has been keeping pretty busy….

Hockey has been going well… been keeping the website up to date… www.rhc.org.vt.edu… go there and check it out… got the stats page up and going… I want to completely rewrite the backend of the site to allow for more features and easier queries… right now there are some pretty crazy SQL queries going on inorder to get the data from the DB in one query and reduce the load on the server… with my new DB schema which is very similar to the one in place now, those queries would be a lot simpler… plus add some AJAX, RSS, and some other web 2.0 features… that is when i actually find the time to do so…

Also need to start working on my christmas light controller as thanksgiving is approaching… and i need to start building up the infrastructure for the control system so that i can get atleast 64 channels going this year…

Just got a new book today… iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it… its a pretty good read… there are many similarities between Wozs youth and mine… its pretty interesting… my favorite Woz story would be when he buys sheets of US currency and when he goes to pay for something, he will cut the bills from the sheet and hand them to the cashier… could lead to quite some interesting situations… i think im going to go read some more as well as work on this homework…

So much to do, so little time…

later,
J!

UPDATE: we did finally recieve our security deposit back…

Well at least 4… We have been trying to get our security deposit back from Raines for awhile… They apparently sent it last week… Well when we went in today to see what was up, we found out why it never made it to travs mom…

first they had travs mom’s name spelled wrong… somehow they got whitehead out of winstead… then they got the street name wrong, lepton instead of lipton… then they left news off of newport news…. and to top it off, they werent even close on the zipcode… 21468 is no where near 23608… not sure how they screwed up every part of the address except for the state…

And the guy that opened the envelope with the check needs a leason on opening envelopes because he about tore up the check trying to get it out of the envelope… i dont know why it was so hard to open that envelope but he was struggling…

So instead of having them resend it to travs mom all the way across the state, we tried to get them to reissue the check to us… however they said they couldnt do that… not sure of any business that cant just void a check and cut a new one, but then again this is Raines… so in the end they are still sending it to travs mom who will hopefully get it by monday and transfer us the money…

For all of those who are looking to rent/buy in blacksburg, i highly recommend they do not choose Raines…. They are another reason why Foxridge is continually voted the #1 community in Blacksburg…. definately glad we moved…

any ways, thats the end of my rant against raines… avoid them…

In other news, i have just been busy working on projects and homework… which is why there havent been very many updates… Hockey has been going good… we are 1-1-0… i have one goal and one assist… we have a game tonight at 8…

I have a new simple design in mind for the blog… when i get some time i will work on getting it created… ill start with the root index since that will be more of a template when i go to create the wordpress theme… also need to work on a new photo gallery and see about getting my MMS server back up and running…

Well i am going to go to class, later…
J!

This blog has been up and running for 1 year now…

I have been sick the past few days… sore throat, stuffy nose, cough, etc… all thanks to dave for getting everyone in the apartment sick…

Other than being sick not much else has been going on… just resting and doing some homework…

The hockey league starts tonight… Should be a good season hopefully… still working on the new website… as a temporary fix i need i need to write some php scripts/SQL queries to calculate the stats for the league… once my new backend is in place this will be included but as a temporary measure that is my goal this weekend…

Well not much else to write on… tired and sick is all…

later,
J!

Gnomad 2 does an awesome job managing my Dell DJ… Its a very simple program which gets the job done with no fluff and what not…

awesome program…

just wanted to post that before i get back to workin on this homework…

Later,
J!

Here is how to set up your intelliexplorer mouse from microsoft in ubuntu so that the thumb buttons work like they do in windows… This has been discovered from this website…


cat /proc/bus/input/devices # find which event the mouse is on
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

After the existing inputdevices section add this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Microsoft Intellimouse"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event3”
Option “Buttons” “7″
Option “ZAxisMapping” “6 7 5 4″
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “no”
EndSection

Note: replace the bold event3 with the even found in the first step

Now add this above the mice in the serverlayout section:
InputDevice "Microsoft Intellimouse" "CorePointer"

sudo apt-get install imwheel #installs imwheel...


Add the following command to your startup commands in the sessions manager…

imwheel -k -b "89"


Finally got around to setting up multiple monitors in Ubuntu… it turned out to be quite simple actually…

I installed the drivers for the ATI video card and ran a simple command

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r) #Okay if it is already installed
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a
sudo aticonfig --initial
sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv
sudo shutdown -r now
sudo aticonfig --dtop=horizontal


This will make ubuntu much easier to use with my new 24″ monitor…

later,
J!

Finally took the time to upgrade the blog to version 2.0.4…

If you see any problems let me know…

here is an idea of how the blog will look in the future when i have time to work on some coding/CSS for the new blog design…
This is the zen_minial theme that i found… just going to make a few modifications to it and go from there.. we will see how it turns out…

It will be very minimal and simple…

the design of the blog has been put on the back burner as i have been tasked with managing the RHCVT website… so i am recoding the backend of that site to make it function a little better and what not… so once that is finished i will start working on the new theme for this blog…

Later,
J!

had a good weekend…

friday: had a little party here… just Katherine, Megan, and Meredith came over and hung out, listened to some music and watched some tv… Erin and Freno stopped by after work for a little bit…

saturday: Game Day! the rain let up and it was a great day for football… Travs friend Kammy was having a tailgate party and her parents came down and cooked some sloppy joes and some awesome cookie cake… then we all walked to the stadium… We have some awesome seats… left goal post 2nd row right behind the band… good seats… Watched the game… we beat Northeastern 38 to null… we left right around 3rd quarter as everyone else was leaving… got some sun on the forehead and top of my head… After the game travis, tyler, erin, katherine, megan and i all went to a thai restuarant off of main street… i had the chicken pad thai (?)… it was pretty good… would probably go with the chicken fried rice next time… it was a good dinner… Then we all headed back to katherine, megan, and erins apartment where we hung out till about 11:30 when we went to their friends birthday party where they had a clown… the clown was hilarious… did some face painting and some balloon art… after the clown party we went back to their apartment where we watched waiting… pretty good movie… after the movie we came back here around 3am…

Sunday: sunday was a nice relaxing day… caught up on some recorded tv and homework that was due monday…

Monday: rainy all day… just some classes and a trip to walmart… gonna watch the FSU/Miami game…

Later,
J!