I'm a code monkey and I've been writing web code for about twelve years. People often think that because I work on the Web that I can fix their ailing computers. Sure, I probably know how to fix it, but I just really don't want to because most people suck. MONKEYS RULE!
Inspired by someone else's "sushi for lunch" posting, I decide to have sushi for lunch and post it here. This was the "Ichiban Sushi plate" from Ichiban in Pensacola, FL (http://ichibanpensacola.com/). The plate consists of: Chef's choice 10 pcs. nigiri and choice of dragon roll with soup or salad.
It's past midnight and I have decided that I will do no more web coding and/or debugging for the evening. I'm beyond the definition of tired. My brain is "M.I.A.","K.I.A.", and "D.O.A." If I keep going, I will start to seriously hate my job and my life, and that would be unfortunate.
While I was driving home tonight, I noticed that the car in front of me was straddling the two lanes of the road. What made things worse was that it had started to rain really hard with lightening and thunder all about. The car would then start to speed up and then slow down and start speeding up again and then slow down. Then they ran a red light.
At that point, I figured that I was behind someone drunk and kept my distance from them. The world has a way with dealing with stupidity. I just hope their insurance is paid off.
Yesterday, Virgin Mobile USA announced that they will pay $39 million in stock to buy the high- end niche wireless mobile service provider, Helio.
Will this mean that Virgin Mobile users will have access to the fancy phones that Helio offers? I guess only time will tell. Since both company utilizes the Sprint Network, any improvements in coverage and call quality is in Sprint's hands.
Personally, I've been using Virgin Mobile since Hurricane Ivan hit Pensacola, Florida in 2004. The category five hurricane made me realized that everyone in my family needed a way to keep in touch in the event that we were separated during an evacuation. So, I headed out to the Target store and bought a couple of phones.
I managed to get the phones set up just in time before the storm made landfall and the powers went out. Luckily, we didn't have to evacuate out of the state. The cell phone did prove useful in contacting our relatives and friends to let them know that we were okay since the phone lines were down for several weeks.
Even with my post-paid mobile phone service with Cellular South, I still keep a Virgin Mobile pre-paid phone in my hurricane kit just to be safe.
Remember in the 80's when rival gangs would find each other "fighting" in the streets or subways, but the fighting wasn't actually violent fighting. It was actually break dancing?
For those who do, the company Lasonic has something for you. It's the i931 High Perforance Portable Music System which not really that portable if you look at it. What you're seeing is a full sized 80's-style boom box that has a docking bay (resembling a cassete tape bay) where you can plug in your iPod classic.
It also has the obligatory FM/AM radio and supports USB flash drives, SD/MMC cards to playback MP3 files.
Take a walk into the minds of those who work in the field of Marketing! Please be warned that there is foul language in this video. So, keep the kids away!
Baptist Hospital buys out West Florida Hospital in Pensacola, Florida
Thursday, June 26, 2008
I just finished watching part of a televised press conference announcing that one of the local hospitals, Baptist Health Care, has announced the purchase one of their major competitors, West Florida Hospital.
In Pensacola, Baptist Health Care, West Florida Hospital, and Sacred Heart Health System fought to be the people's choice for health care services. With this announcement from Baptist, it would seem that there will now only be two choices for medical services in the area.
I feel for those who will find themselves redundant in this merger. Whenever large companies do this kind of thing, they always look at the big picture and never seem to concern themselves with what happens to the little people that work for them. I wish anyone that has found themselves seeking a new job good luck.
Last Tuesday, the fortune cookie I got with my lunch read, "Keep your eyes open on Thursday for something unexpected."
Well in hour, it will be Thursday for some reason I am filled with excitement and dread. It would seem like this little piece of paper has managed to get under my skin and unnerve me. What kind of "unexpected" should I be looking out for? Will it be the good kind where I get some kind of gift or prize? Or will it be the horrible kind where all my servers get fried by lightening?
Tomorrow, I think I'll make it a point not to eat anything with tomatoes or have lunch any place that serves a buffet. It'll just be my luck that I'll end up in the ER again for food poisoning and be hospitalized for four days. Then again, I might actually be lucky and win a million dollars or find a date that won't try to steal my car. Yes, lets dwell on the positive. No more negative.
Jim Davis' Garfield the Cat said it best: "I hate Mondays"
Things to make anyone's Monday crappy:
One of your company's websites gets hacked (vandalized) by zealous script kiddies making you realize that you need better defenses but you don't have the budget for it.
Your cell phone won't accept emails from your server's hacking alert system.
The network of digital signs that you maintain gets zapped by lightening.
Learning that George Carlin died and that your dream of catching his show the next time he is in the South will never happen.
You accidentally sit on your only pair glasses at work making you consider using tape to hold them together thus accentuating and validating your geekness
Learning that the reason you can't call your relatives abroad is that a typhoon had just blasted through the country.
Finding out that that 900 people are missing or dead from a ferry accident caused by the remnants of the typhoon in your mother land.
Today, the world is less funny. One of the greatest comedians of all time, George Carlin, died of heart failure this past Sunday. He was 71.
I remember listening to tapes of his performances when I was in college. His comedy not only made you laugh but it also made you think. Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" is a great example of this and such is now a funny part of our cultural psyche.
Back in 2002, a friend of mine and I drove to the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, MS to try to catch one of his shows. We went there knowing that his show had sold out, but we went there anyway and hoped someone would cancel on their tickets. Unfortunately, no one cancelled and we ended up spending our money at the casino. We never did see George in person, but we did see his limo.
I had always planned on catching one of his shows if he came back around the south again. I guess that will never happen now.
In the last few weeks, it has rained in Pensacola during the middle of the day. It typically starts as early as 11 am and usually lasts until about 2 pm. Except for a few days, the rain's arrival has been pretty consistent but it's intensity has not. Often, we are treated with a simple shower that cools us down from the sweltering heat, but other times like today, we are dealt with the kind that carries lightening and thunder.
When I was a kid, my uncles and aunts would tell me that the lightening and thunder was God being angry at the world, and that the rain were the tears of the angels as they cried for humanity. Despite now learning the truth about such weather phenomenons, I sometimes like to think that my uncles and aunts were telling the truth. Right now, I'd like to think that God is angry at the price of gasoline.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a lottery ticket and forgot about it. As I now recall, I had placed it in my laptop bag for safe keeping, but as the saying goes: "out of sight, out of mind."
This morning, I went through my laptop back looking for my iPod charger. I didn't find my charger but I found the lottery ticket. I wasn't really excited in finding the ticket because I knew that no one won the jackpot and the prized had rolled over to the next drawing. Yet, curiousity got the best of me and I went online to see how far or close my numbers were to the winning ones.
To my surprise, I apparently got three out of the six numbers. This means that I won a total of $5 which means I broke even because that's how much I originally spent for the ticket.
During one of my drunken web surfing sessions, I found a cure to my indecisiveness when picking a place to go to for lunch. Behold, the WHEEL of LUNCH! Go to http://www.coverpop.com/…eloflunch/ and enter your zip code and a query parameter which can be a type of restaurant or food like "Taco Bell", "vegetarian", "chicken" or "babies." Then click on the proceed button to spin the wheel.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you combine 23 flavors to create the unique taste of Dr. Pepper, then doesn't that combination of flavors equate to 1 actual flavor? So, Dr. Pepper actually only has one flavor.
I miss you. I miss your voice. It's been so long that I've started to forget what you sound like and it's tearing me apart inside. I miss our late night talks about nothing and everything. Some nights I wish that everything since that day was all just a long and horrible dream and that I would wake up in a world where you're still with us. So far, the dream continues and I'm still missing you.
I decided to try out the tumblr ultra-simple, micro-blogging service to see if my picture messaging service is compatible with their system. To my surprise, it does.
So, if you're curious at what I'm snapping pictures of while roaming about town, check out http://bytemonkey.tumblr.com.
Someone at work told me that I was "thinking too much" on one of several small projects that I was working on. With that remark, I take TOTAL offense.
What am I supposed to do? Not use my brain when I work on my projects?
If that is the case, perhaps they should hire a sock monkey to do my fucking job. It is this type of irresponsible attitude (stupidity) that is causing our whole planet's social, cultural, and economic state to decay to unrepairable state. This is not even mentioning the lack of optimized and effective productivity at my workplace. Everyone just wants their shit done yesterday for half the cost (sometimes for free) regardless of the resulting half-assed quality of the product.
I'm sorry but I don't ever plan to "not think too much". In fact, I plan to think so much for the rest of my life until it kills me. If more people thought more, perhaps we wouldn't be in Iraq and the price of gas would still be $1.45.
I'm sorry for the late post about this subject. I'm still recovering from the heart pounding excitment from last night's NBA championship. It was a Cinderela story. A team considered to be the worse a year ago rises to the top to claim the glory. In the end, the Celtics' defense strategy proved to be the key to their victory over the Lakers' fancy offense. Score: Celtics 131 Lakers 92.
Here's a picture of my new camera. This is a Canon PowerShot SD750 Digital Elph with 7.1 Megapixels. It's not cutting edge but it's new to me. Besides, Maria Sharapova told me to buy it.
I took this picture using the camera on my new Motorola ROKR z6m. As you can see, the picture quality is ok. On my previous post, the picture was taken with this camera and the image is awesome.
Finally, I have taken a picture of my new Motorola ROKR z6m to post online. It's not as sophisticated as my old Nokia 6265i but I think it's a worth successor.
So far, I’m trying to get over all the apps that I’m losing by switching to this phone. Nokia was very accommodating to the open-source program development community. Motorola is not. Phone call quality on the Cellular South network seems to be pretty good with this phone. The MP3 player is cool but I now have an iPod so it’s not that important to me. The reason I chose this phone was because it is a slider like my now defunct Nokia 6265i.
Now if only the picture messaging system on Cellular South would work right with Blogger and Utterz, then I think I’d be happier.
By the way, I took this picture with my latest shiny purchase – a Canon PowerShot SD750 digital camera. I've been wanting an ultra-compact digital camera for a while now. Then, I saw Maria Sharapova on all the ads on cnet.com telling me to get one. So I did. Yes, this monkey is a sucker for a pretty face.
I am a excited. I found out last night that a new X-Files movie is coming out on July 25th. I am a big fan of the television series for 15 years and seeing it come back on the big screen is like giving a hungry monkey a ripe banana. Oh happy days!
I'm just getting back from watching "The Incredible Hulk" movie at the Bayou Rave Theatre. I'm happy to report that the movie does not suck. The imagery/graphics was well done and the story/plot was very entertaining. I always enjoy the tributes to the past tv series ("lonely walking" theme and cameo of Lou Ferrigno) and the required cameo of Stan Lee. I also love how they tie-in this movie with Iron Man and Avengers movie.
I give it two thumbs up. Go see it! Maybe you should take your Dad with you. It is Father's day after all.
One of my coworkers came into my office on Friday and told me about a dream that they had.
She said that someone bearing a resemblance to me (but not exactly me) approached and invited her to join a video game competition. When she agreed to join him, my doppleganger apparently added, "By the way, we're competing against the Devil Incarnate."
Before the game, the Devil turned into two teenagers from the International Baccalaureate program. I asked how she knew they were from IB and my coworker said they acted like they were from IB. As a scarred veteran of IB program, I instantly recognized what she was talking about. It was the snobish, high-intellectual elitism that we were all supposed to have.
During the so-called video game competition, the fight evolved into a ideological debate between Catholic and Protestant theology. After this event the dream becomes somewhat hazy as most dreams do. My coworker said she remembers digging through her closet looking her Disney World All-Access Pass for some reason that she couldn't remember.
After she tells me this whole story, I ask her what she had for dinner. Perhaps, I thought that she had eaten something that would upset her stomach and cause her to have bad dreams. Calmly, she tells me that had had a Krystals sandwich before she went to bed.
How many times do I have to tell you people? Don't eat fast food before you go to bed. If you do, then you'll end up dreaming about the Monkey and the Devil playing video games for the sould of humanity. People never listen.
Well, I have come to conclusion that picture messages from Cellular South to Utterz will not work. I'm sorry for everyone who had to endure the garbage text that my picture posting has left on Utterz.
I'm now making an effort to clean up these posts off of Utterz. For those who listens to posts on your phone, you will no be free of what sounds like computerized demonic chanting or a math teacher high on whiteboard markers.
I have stapled a note on my tail to remind myself not to send pictures to Utterz. Occasionally, I may slip up, but I promise to clean up what I leave behind as quickly as monkeyly possible.
Looking forward, I hope that one day Cellular South, Blogger, and Utterz will able to play nice together, but I won't hold my breath. I will give bonus points to Utterz for actually acknowledging that I have problem and for giving a glimmer of hope that someday this will all work. The other companies just gave me bovine droppings for answers or just totally ignored me. So, good work Utterz. Two thumbs up and a wagging monkey goes out to you!
Well, it looks like Photobucket's photo sharing link works, but this doesn't solve the problem of not having a direct way of posting photos to my blog or even to Utterz. I guess that I'll be stuck doing old fashioned text-posts and voice-posts until I figure this out.
