Matt's Journal

2007 New Years Resoluitons

2007-01-03T03:50:27Z

On December 31st I came up with a few new years resolutions. On January 1st I put a little more though into it and came up with a huge list of resolutions. Semi ordered (within categories) my new more though out list of resolutions for 2007 are as follows:

Eating

Order at least one new thing on the menu of a usual restaurant every month

Chipotle no more than 3 times a week. Crunchy tacos & steak no more than once a week.

Extra crappy fast food no more than once a week on average (specifically, Taco Bell, KFC, McDonalds, Jack in The Box, Quiznoes, Wendy's, In & Out)

Eat a fruit or vegetable 3 times a week (apple, banana, carrot...)

Do not eat after 11pm more than once a month

Health

Get health insurance by end of January (counts as finances as well)

Work out 4+ days a week (even if it's a weak workout)

Weigh around 155 by end of July

Finances & Life

Launch Renvtp or drop it

Have at least $5k in a long term savings account (pref 10% of all income this year)

Have $0 credit card debit going into the New Year

Move Out for at least 6 month

Gamble at least $100 (pref in Vegas or Tahoe)

Buy a NEW car with a warranty

Buy an SLR camera

Travel

Go camping two or more times with friends (at least once where I must sleep in a tent)

Take at least two photo oriented trips (skyline or greater, using the new SLR)

Visit another state at least once (snowboarding on the Nevada side of Tahoe doesn't count)

Fly on a plane

Driving

No more than one speeding ticket after driving probation is up (0 during)

Drive on a race track at least once

Other

Finish at least Spanish 2

Go on three dates (same or different girl)

Make out with at least one girl (date not required)

Remember to wash sheets at least once a month

None of these goals are very unreasonable here. Hopefully I'll remember to review them at the end of 2007 (probably the next time I'll blog).

Mental Clarity via Writing

2006-03-28T23:31:58Z

Blogs are a good way to write down and organize your thoughts into more coherent streamlined ideas. This is probably true of writing in general. The problem is the resulting writings may end up in a form that only the author can really understands. If such a result is published it may be misinterpreted by the general reader since it was written to make since primarily to the writer. The other problem is if the result is clear enough that anyone can understand it do you really want people reading it? This of course depends on the topic. In the context I'm talking about, writing is more of a vent than a message. In such a case publishing is probably a bad idea.

Rereading things you've written about your life, published or unpublished can trigger memories that you have completely forgotten. Sometimes these memories are feelings and are quite powerful. That being the case should thoughts that were written for organization even be saved knowing that there is a chance they may be stumbled upon later? Or perhaps there's a reason people forget things. Do I really want to experience this feeling of hunger again later? Or once it's satisfied, if ever, should that be the end?

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Drivers License

2006-03-07T22:36:28Z

After two months of suspension I finally got my license back! Glad I got the terms changed or I'd have another four months to go. Now I'm on some sort of driving probation for a year.

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Monopoly, Bar and Karaoke in Sacramento

2006-02-22T21:23:18Z

I had a fun weekend. Tom, Adam and I went to Sacramento to hang out with Dan. Essentially it was a two day party since there were seven to ten people at the house at any given time. Saturday night we went to a bar and played shuffle board. We also played Monopoly and drank at the house. Sunday morning Brad woke up around 9:30am and came down stares to make a coke and play Mario Sunshine. Three of us were sleeping in that room but I woke up and joined him till around noon when everyone else seemed to wake up. After lunch we watched Saw II which I absolutely didn't want to do. The movie is pretty much as gory as you'd guess. In the evening we stayed home and hung out. For a while we played a word game called Catch Phrase which was a lot of fun. After a bit of channel surfing we ventured into Comcast's On Demand section where we discovered karaoke. I'm sure we annoyed the neighbors till around 3:00am with a large group of us singing. Around 3:00am five of us started a quick game of Monopoly which ended up lasting till about 6:30-7:00am. Some crazy Monopoly events took place and kept us all up and on the edge of our seats till the game was over. Monday we all slept till about 2:00pm since we were up so late playing/watching Monopoly. After a quick lunch we pretty much took off back to San Jose. The only time I used my laptop on this entire trip was to look up a hit for Mario Sunshine when Brad and I got stuck.

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My New Phone

2006-02-11T23:41:51Z

Until about two days ago I forgot I had a blog. I guess nothing really important has happened that’s made it worth updating. Today still nothing too exciting has happened but I'll talk about what I've been doing anyway. First my license is officially suspended. Not driving is a pain in the ass, but I hope to get my license back after my hearing in two weeks. It was suspended for having too many points on my license from all the speeding tickets. The details of that aren’t really too important though.

About a week ago I switched to Verizon and bought a new phone. The phone I got is the Windows Mobile 5 based XV6700. It's got so much customizability compared to the Sidekick II that just about every feature I didn’t like I was able to change or find a program to replace. The main complaint I still have about the phone is the lack of AIM client. I'm used to being on AIM 24/7 with my Sidekick II and the solutions for Pocket PC are completely out of date or complete crap. This inspired me to figure out how to write my own client. I found an open source free AIM TOC library that I have modded to work on the .NET Compact Framework. In the last week I've learned a lot about C# and the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework, neither of which I've used before. Today I have a rough working client with lots of bugs, but it can still sign on and chat a little. It's not ready to be my official AIM client yet though. Not too bad considering it's my first real C# application. I'm actually really interested in this Windows development stuff now that I've worked with it (turns out its pretty easy). The client I'm writing is going to be very basic with only a buddy list and chat capabilities. I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks I'll have it working enough to use as my only AIM client for my phone and give it to anyone who wants it.

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Sand Boarding and Religion

2006-01-18T06:00:07Z

Over the weekend I visited Alex in San Louis Obispo. On Friday evening I picked up his little sister and made the three hour drive down south. The first thing we did after unpacking was eat at Firestone. Firestone is practically a tradition when visiting SLO and as usual it was good. After Firestone we walked to the theaters around the corner and watched The Producers. I didn't know anything about it when I agreed to watch it and everyone had conveniently forgot that it was a musical until the movie started. I guess it's for the best that I didn't know ahead of time or I probably wouldn't have been so willing to watch it. The movie wasn't too bad. Weird is the probably best word to describe it in my book. After the movie we went back to Alex apartment and watched a couple of episodes of South Park before going to bed. No one slept very well that night. The train loudly came by several times during the night and I could hear lots of traffic outside the window I was sleeping under. It probably didn't help that I'm slightly longer then the couch I was sleeping on. The next night went a lot better when I moved to the floor.

Saturday when we woke up it was raining. The plan was to go sand boarding but walking to the dunes while it's raining just didn't seem like a good idea. Sometime while we were all taking showers and eating lunch the weather cleared up. Sand boarding was back on! It was actually nice that it had just rain because it packed the sand down a bit and made it easier to walk up the dune and slide down on the slick surface. Of course you couldn't ride down the dune over the same spot twice because your tracks would leave huge marks that would cause you to trip over the front of the skateboard. At one point we decided to make a ramp. This was not the first time in sand boarding history that we've done this, but it went a lot smoother than previous attempts. Alex wouldn't try the jump because every other time we've made one we ended up tripping over the front of the board. I was more than willing and when I finally waxed the board and got it moving again I just plowed right though the ramp like it wasn't there and continued at least half way down the dune before losing my balance and falling backward off the board. It was a lot of fun. We also all spent plenty of time running and jumping off the top edge of the dune. Jen took pictures using my phone of all major activity that afternoon.

After the sand, before dinner we all needed to shower again. For dinner we went to Woodstock Pizza across the street from Firestone. There are about three really good restaurants in town that I usually hit when I go to SLO and we hit them all over the weekend. The last was Splash Café for lunch, but we're not that far into the weekend yet. After the awesome pizza we walked to the theaters again. This time we had already planned to watch The Chronicles of Narnia. Jen was the first person I've come across who also wanted to see the movie and together we convinced Alex and Melina to go (actually we convinced Alex and Melina was drug along). It ended up that I was sitting next to Jen during the movie and worked out really well because we kept making comments to each other. When it was over I found out that Alex and Melina were also commenting to each other, but they were making fun of it where Jen and I were actually into it. Now, I didn't remember the book at all but I know that I had to read it in the fifth grade. On the way home Alex mentioned that the story was the bible rewritten for little kids and explained how. I didn't know this before and this was our second encounter with religion for the weekend. The first was the South Park episode we watched the night before about Scientology (which I've seen a few times already).

After Narnia we went back to Alex's apartment once again. This time we watched Wedding Crashers. Just before the movie Jen started making brownies and as soon as they were finished Melina and I broke into them. They lasted abut 12 hours total and the majority was consumed within the first half hour. After Wedding Crashers, which everyone but me had not seen and ended up really liking, we went to bed.

Sunday morning/early afternoon we woke up and went to Splash Café for lunch. As usual it was quite good. Pretty much as soon as we got back Melina and I hit the road for San Jose. Melina had a party to go to and I was supposed to meet Katie across town at 6:00pm. Three hours later we were back in town and I cleaned up and unpacked before leaving to meet Katie.

A few days before I was trying to make plans with her and she ended up inviting me to a church collage group called Take 2 that she goes to. I got a vague idea of what it was before agreeing to go. I've sort of wanted to see the other side of the religious debate and this was an excellent opportunity. The meeting was much better than a normal stuffy mass like I've previously attended. The atmosphere was defiantly more comfortable but still a little weird. Actually the only awkward feeling I had was when everyone was singing to the band and clapping and I was just standing there reading the lyrics on the screen.

After the group Katie and I went to IN-N-Out to grab a bite to eat. While eating she asked what I though of the group and that sparked a fairly lengthy conversation for a fast food visit. We ended up talking about why she believes what she believes and why I believe what I believe. The result left me with a little better understanding of how Christians see the world and left me thinking about questions I've never fully thought out. The biggest one was "why are we here?" That night while lying in bed I started thinking about all kinds of questions and different thoughts. Some had conclusions and some are still open. I started writing down some of these thought in my phone since it was the closest writing implement. I'll need to continue organizing and exploring these ideas for my own piece of mind. Having been a day or two since talking about religion with Katie I think I was a bit hostile in my questioning and defense. I told Katie she should watch this documentary that I had recently seen called The God Who Wasn't There. It talked about some of the things she brought up in our conversation and am curious how she'll react to the holes in the Christian timeline that the movie presents. With a little luck hopefully she'll find some time this week to come over and watch it.

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Railroad Museum and Snowboarding

2006-01-11T23:44:34Z

Last Friday night Adam and I went to Sacramento to go snowboarding with Dan. The plan was to hangout on Saturday and get up early Sunday to go to North Star. Friday night when we arrived we watched a couple of movies. Saturday instead of sitting around in front of our computers all day Dan decided we should go to the train museum. Adam had never been and I hadn't been since a fifth grade field trip so I didn't remember it much at all.

The museum was pretty nifty. Before you get to walk around you have watch a short twenty minute video about the history of trains and the building of the intercontinental railroad. Once in the museum they have a bunch of different engines and cars, some of which you can walk through. There was one engine that was probably longer than the length of my house and was massive compared to the others. One of the passenger cars was hooked up to some sort of motor system and shook as you walked thought. It simulated what you would feel if you were actually riding the train. Getting off the train car and not having the ground move felt weird.

Right outside the museum is old town Sacramento and the Sacramento River. The river was probably up twenty feet from the last time I was there. It was amazing to see so I took a few pictures with the camera on my phone.

That evening after dinner we went to the theaters and watched King Kong. My review for the movie is up on my movie reviews site. After King Kong, Adam and I stayed up till around 2:30am watching Kim play Super Mario Sunshine. I was actually playing for a part of that time. The game is just like Mario 64 but with the ability to shoot and hover. I loved Mario 64 and I think I'll continue playing Mario Sunshine next time I'm in Sac.

Sunday Dan woke us up at 6:30am and we were out the door around 7:00am. Snow wise we couldn't have chosen a better day to start the season. Almost every run at North Star was open and covered enough to ride with out worrying about messing up our boards. It had snowed Saturday night so conditions were great. Unfortunately, due to the great conditions the resort was packed. We spent most of the day on black diamonds and it was really fun. I like when a run is steep and flat, perfect for carving back and forward or just riding straight and hauling ass. I fell about five times, three of them were on the same run and the other two times I fell on my wrists. I probably should have been wearing my wrist guards all day but I took them off in the middle because they were getting sweaty and cold. Of course the second time I fell on my wrists I wasn't wearing them, not that they helped much the first time. We didn't go off any jumps all day. I frankly forgot there was a terrain park until the end of the day because I was having such a good time already. I can't wait to go again.

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Matt's Movie Reviews

2005-12-29T08:38:02Z

Monday night Adam and I watched a couple movies, which is actually pretty common for us. In the past two years I’ve blogged about several movies, some of which were the focus of a particular entry and some of which were just casually mentioned within the drama. While I was thinking about the second movie that night, it occurred to me that I have enough content in my old blog entries to create my own movie review site. I certainly see enough movies and I usually at least mention a blurb about them if they are even slightly significant. I ran the idea by Adam and he said “do it”. So I immediately started a rough spec for a movie oriented, blog type site. Using my “projects/” framework I had a rough working site within two hours. The next day (Tuesday) I made a nice layout for the public part of the site and went though all my old blog entries porting the relevant ones to the movies site. As of this afternoon the site exceeds my original goal with comments, ratings, RSS, a new review and is ready to be viewed by all. I used the first address jokingly though of, mattsmoviereviews.com. Enjoy!

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Pool and the Messy Room

2005-12-24T10:33:06Z

A couple nights ago (Wednesday to be precise) I went and shot pool with Katie. We went to the AMF Oakridge Lanes which is actually a bowling alley that happens to have half dozen pool tables. I didn’t realize it had been so long since I’ve been there because the buildings inside was nothing like I remember. The lanes and the pool area were in the same places but where you pay was different and there was a huge airport style lounge as you walk in the door just to the right. They had three nice widescreen projectors in the lounge and the whole place looked really nice all made over. Everyone else must agree because it was packed.

Just as I remembered the tables at the bowling ally weren’t so great. Luckily my company more than made up for them. It wasn’t so much about the game anyway. Pretty much everyone has their own variation of pool. Playing with Katie was different than playing with say Adam or Alex. It’s not like its tense playing with Adam or Alex but playing with Katie was just so relaxed. When she’d scratch or foul I’d always let her try again (if she didn’t touch any other balls) and we didn’t have to hit our own ball in first. I enjoyed giving her pointers even if she did ignore them half the time.

During the game I took a picture of her with my phone to set as her caller id photo. I was holding the camera up for a long time waiting till she noticed so I could get approval. Unfortunately she didn’t approve and held her hand up to block her face. She told me I should take a picture of her soda cup instead. I replayed explaining that her soda cup wasn’t going be calling me and took the picture with her hand in front of her face. Immediately she wanted to see how it turned out and I showed her. After setting it as her caller id photo she had to try it out. For as much as she didn’t want her picture taken I thought it was funny how interested she was during the whole process after the photo was snapped. One of these days I’ll redo it without the hand in front of her face, but this’ll do for now.

Inspired by a recent conversation with Katie, today I cleaned my room. For awhile it has been kind of bugging me how much crap was on my desk but I hadn’t done anything about it. So it became the first thing I cleaned and got me into the cleaning grove. Next I cleaned some stuff off the top of my dresser. Then I reorganized the crap on the floor next to my desk and at the end of my bed. I was able to get almost everything off the floor long enough to thoroughly vacuum the room. I even got the hose and little extension piece and vacuumed the edges of the room as well as some cobwebs on the ceiling (which I never do). Once that was all done I moved onto my closet. I decided to get rid of a bunch of old school binders as well as boxes for products I’ve had for over a year and haven’t touched in that time. I ended up clearing off a couple of and quickly refilled them with stuff that wasn’t in the closet before. Everything is so clean now and it feels really nice. I especially like how clean my desk is since that’s where I spend most of my time. We’ll see how long it lasts with Christmas in a couple of days.

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Shooting Dogs

2005-12-21T05:16:18Z

Last night I finally got to see a movie that I’ve waited a year and a half for. It was the movie we were extras in while working in Rwanda last summer, Shooting Dogs. It finally leaked out onto the internet. I was amazed that I was actually able to see myself and all of my friends who were also extras (except Sean, didn’t see him for some reason). It was cool to see a movie about Rwanda actually filmed in Rwanda (unlike Hotel Rwanda). I defiantly recognized the scenery. Other than that I didn’t like the movie that much. Tom and Adam would agree that Hotel Rwanda did a better job making you feel for the Rwandans. Nonetheless it was a great experience to be apart of the movie. They paid us, though not too much and gave us awesome food which made it really worth while. If you enjoyed Hotel Rwanda and want to see what the country really looks like then see Shooting Dogs.

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Racing the Lude

2005-12-18T00:15:32Z

Today I raced my car at the Sacramento Raceway and as I predicted I ran about a 17 on each of my runs (actually slightly higher). Not bad considering my Prelude is stock under the hood and it’s only the mid range Si model. I got to run three times before it started raining and the track closed. It was quite fun. Dan rode in the car with me on the first run. It was only one car at a time at that point. On the second run no one road with me and my start was the worse of the three. It was “test and tune” day so no one was really racing each other, just trying to get their own personal best times. It’s a good thing too because my second and third runs were head to head and both times against different Corvettes. It’s a sure sign that you’re going to lose when you look at the car next to you and the driver is wearing a helmet and your not. The track rules state that you have to wear a helmet if you run faster than a 14. Needless to say they smoked me. On the third run Adam road with me and by the time we got to the end of the track my windshield had quite a few drops on it. I knew right then that I wasn’t going to run anymore so I just parked my car and went to the stands. After about five minutes it started raining a little harder and we decided to leave. As we headed down the stands toward the car all the cars in the racing line started going down the side of the track slowly toward the exit because the track was now wet and closed.

In the morning while waiting for check in and lane assignments I got to talk to Katie for a bit. She was passing through Sac to pick up her parents and I tried to convince her to come to the tracks but she wouldn’t have it. I didn’t expect her to be anywhere near Sac so I wasn’t disappointed when she couldn’t stop by. But it didn’t stop me from asking. How cool would it have been if she showed? Today I had a lot of fun today and would definitely do it again. I guess I’ll have to wait till next season.

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Katie

2005-12-15T06:45:20Z

A day or two after Christmas in the Park, Katie and I made plans to go back and go ice-skating (in a group). We were planning to go Wednesday night, tonight. Unfortunately she had to bail due to some last minute baby sitting obligations and we tentatively rescheduled to Tuesday night. That unfortunately didn’t workout either. To my surprise, Tuesday night she signed on and told me that she no longer had to baby sit and that we could go do something but she’d like avoid down town and stay in South San Jose. This was excellent news. We ended up going to Johnny Rockets for dinner then walked over to Starbucks to continue talking for about an hour or so. She is skillfully sarcastic and I absolutely love it. Its subtlety placed yet clear enough to tell she’s being sarcastic and I found it quite entertaining. She talks quite a bit and I of course keep egging her on by continually asking questions. I was probably a bit quieter than I should have been but I enjoyed listening so I kept asking questions. It’s funny; when I ask the right questions (ones with passionate answers) her face lights up and shows an awesome smile. This evening worked out really well and I had a good time.

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Christmas in the Park

2005-12-09T09:40:48Z

So first things first, gastrac.com is the name of my new gas app. It’s not up yet and when it does go up it’ll be completely private (invite only). The reason for this is because I don’t have permission to use a lot of the resources I want and I want to use a lot of external resources. A week or two ago Dan took it upon himself to get me permission to use the logos of the major gas chains and to try to get a hold of some station databases. I of course have no problem with him taking some of the work load off me. Yesterday he found out that we were denied permission to use the Chevron logo and that no one at Chevron thought it was a good idea to give out their customer’s database (station list). As a result I’ve had to take maters into my own hand, something I probably should have done from the beginning. I need to “obtain” the data through free sources on my own. So I’m currently in the process of doing that. Once the site is up and running I’ll have Dan go back to the big chains to show them the site. Hopefully we can get permission to use their logos at that point. With a little luck I’ll have the data I want and the site up by the end of the weekend (déjà vu? I swear I’ve set goals like this before and not reached them). We’ll see how it goes.

Today has been an interesting Thursday. I woke up to about a quarter million Chevron station addresses, which is more than I expected. Sure that’s interesting to me but probably not to anyone else. A couple entries ago I wrote about Drop Dead Fred, a movie from my child hood which was awesome then but turned out to be really bad now that I’m older. Today I got to relive another child hood memory with the myspace girl who inspired the revisiting of Drop Dead Fred, Katie. Tom and I met her and a couple of her friends at Christmas in the Park in down town San Jose. Last time I went there was in high school with a couple people and I really don’t remember it. Before then the last time was when I was little. The thing I remembered most was the retracting Christmas tree because I always though it was tacky. Well it’s still there and just as tacky but not nearly as tall. Funny how growing up shrinks everything.

Across the street from Christmas in the Park was the out door ice rink. Unfortunately we were too late to go skating because the rink closed while we were walking through the park. I’d consider going back earlier in the evening to go to the ice rink. Katie was cool. She talked a lot but a lot of the time she was talking to me and I liked that. I wasn’t sure what to expect. There were two scenarios in my head. The nice comfortable one that took place and a different awkward one where it’s just like “Hi”, “Hi” and I talk to Tom and she talks to her friends and we just look like were following each other. Fortunately everyone was very friendly and we all mixed and got along very well. I’d defiantly hang out with them all again.

When Tom and I first arrived we had a few minutes to kill while Katie and her gang found a parking spot. I needed a drink so we located a drinking fountain. The first one I tried unexpectedly sprayed me. What a nice first impression that must have been to see me with an unexplained wet spot on my sweatshirt. No one said anything though, maybe they didn’t notice.

Walking through the park was pretty quick. We went through the middle and around the outside maybe twice and ended up at the food stands area. Adam had mentioned the hot chocolate was good and I passed that info onto Katie before we meet at the park. Turns out they do hot chocolate right in the park. It’s got marshmallow, whipped cream with chocolate, sprinkles and a cherry on top with a Santa head toothpick. Most of us got one and we all stood around just talking and sipping or hot chocolate for at least an hour, if not more. I had an excellent time.

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Gas App v2

2005-11-11T09:18:28Z

For the last few months I’ve been working on vacation property management software with Dan in my free time. Someday we hope to have a nice little business from this idea and this week marks a very important milestone for that goal. We have finally finished the first version and sold it. Now, I expect a few more bugs/change requests to come back and I know there will be another section to design but a customer is already using what we’ve put so much time into. It feels good to have your effort put to use and not thrown away.

This project spawned a few other projects for me which I have talked about in previous journal entries including my “projects/” directory and the first version of my gas application. Taking what I’ve learned from all three projects I’ve recently redesigned my gas app to support more than just myself. Since I made the first one, I’ve shown a couple people and now there are about eight cars in four very separate locations using the system designed for just me. It makes me a little nervous because all entry is done on the honor system and it’s very primitive at this point. As is, it doesn’t scale well for a large user base. Since the first person I added to the application other than myself, I’ve wanted to create a new multi user friendly version. Everyone I’ve showed the application to has had a million and one ideas of what could be done to make it even cooler and a lot of those ideas I’ve already had and wanted to implement myself. Unfortunately just working on a fun idea that doesn’t make money isn’t practical. Since we now have a customer using the vacation properties site I have a couple days to take a brake from it. This gives me a little time to work on, you guess it, my new gas application. Right now I have a couple ideas of how to make some money with it (without advertisements everywhere), but my main goal is to build something that has very little maintenance and builds a user base while being fun/interesting for the people using it, especially myself. One of my professional goals is to make a successful site with a large user base (preferably not just users but a community). We’ll see if this ever takes off and achieves that.

I actually planned on working on the new gas app at Super Happy Dev House last weekend. By the time the LAN rolled around I had already designed the database as well as the user registration system. At the last minute I decided to make an invite system just for fun, but that was the least of my problems. I helped set up SHDH with about seven other people. We worked on setting up from about 2:00pm till maybe 6:00pm when we decided to go to dinner and then kept getting things setup once we got back. It was actually a lot of fun getting ready (except having to drive my Dad’s truck full of gear). At the Dev Houses they now have presentations where anyone can have fifteen minutes to present an idea or project they are working on. They went for about three hours from 10:00pm to 1:00am and I watched then all because they were so interesting. Before they started, when David came in the house and told the room presentations were about to begin and the first one was about gas I literally uttered “FUCK”, which got a few laughs. The very first presentation was a guy presenting his idea to make a gas tracking application. It was a great idea, one I’ve had on my brain for months and had already written a rough version of. He seemed more interested in playing with a new technology than anything else (in my opinion) and didn’t seem to care that I had already written this idea when I told him about it. I see no competition there.

I got a little off point for a minute there. At Dev House I planned on working on this new gas app but ended up spending most of my time watching presentations and by the time they were over I was getting tired. That night I got very little done and have been itching to work on it ever since. Now I have some free time to do just that. In the last two days I coded all of the user system that I had previously designed, and none of the actual gas receipt tracking stuff. I started writing a way to add cars to a user but realized that I really need to sit down and finish designing the system before I go any further. That is my plan for tomorrow when I wake up. Then Saturday and Sunday I need to code as much of it as possible since I’ll likely have bugs to fix in the vacation properties site on Monday. If all goes well I can have something working by the end of the weekend and in the next couple of weeks have it will be ready for the public and put online. Tonight I bought a domain for it but I don’t want to give it out till its working.

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Girls....

2005-10-25T20:23:13Z

matt: I guess I should figure out what it is I'm looking for really
matt: I can think of a few traits but its a bit general I guess
matt: er, to many different types of people can fit the same traits
adam: yup

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Drop Dead Fred

2005-10-24T22:18:28Z

Inspired by a profile I read on myspace last night I downloaded and today watched a movie from my childhood called Drop Dead Fred. When I first encountered this movie my brother and I were attending Rainbow of Knowledge daycare around the corner from our house. If I remember correctly we started watching the movie at daycare before the owner realized it was PG-13 and turned it off. Later my brother and I saw the movie in the video store and our parents rented it for family movie night. As a kid I loved the movie because it was fun and over the top funny, but as I kid of course I didn’t understand it the way I do now.

Now that I understood what was going on I really didn’t like the movie. It irritated me to see the main character Elizabeth’s life go down the hole and having no one to support she decides to cling to her knowingly unfaithful husband who’s leavening her. Most people have a fear of being along but to work as hard as she did to get back an unfaithful ass hole made me feel sorry for her. Throw in the “mega bitch”, her controlling, selfish, mentally abusive mother who things she can set her daughter straight by treating her like a five year old, makes me appreciate my own mother. To top it all off she rediscovers her locked away imaginary friend who also treats her like she’s five and tries to make her laugh by being destructive and ignoring her constant please to go away. Seeing people be destructive for no reason is not cool and even a little scary wither they are imaginary or not.

I think next time I want to watch a movie from my childhood I’ll stick with Labyrinth.

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Working Toward Sac

2005-10-16T08:45:28Z

Not a whole lot has happened the last few weeks. I went to Sac again to work with Dan on our Vacation Properties project and instead worked on a site for his work. It should have made me some quick cash (once the check comes). I’m kind of disappointed in the progress on our site for the four days I was there, but I had a good time doing other stuff. I think we just got burnt out from working on his works site. The night I got there went to Hooters for Joshes birthday and a bar after that where I learned and played shuffle board for the first time. One afternoon after Fry’s Dan, Brad and I randomly went hiking in Grass Valley where we tore holes in a small damn. Another day a big group of us played Ultimate Frisbee in the park. I wish we brought some water, but other than being thirsty really fast, it was really fun. After Frisbee we all showered and went to the movies and saw Waiting which I wasn’t too impressed with.

Dan and I also went and looked at two more apartment complexes for me. Neither of us was impressed with first one, but the second one was actually really cool. The part that has me seriously considering this complex is the move in deals. There are no pet rental fees, no short lease fees and a free months rent with a six month lease or two free months rent with a one year lease. It had everything that Home Coming had (the complex I looked at a couple trips ago) except the attached garage. The garage was detached but the free months rent and cheaper monthly rent might make it worth it.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to move at the beginning of October like I wanted to because the job I was hoping for ended up being outsourced. Despite not having the new job I opted not to stay at American Wireless (my Moms work) when they asked me to stay till the end of the year. I feel like the job was holding me back and really didn’t like it there. The job wasn’t in my industry and the hours were awkward and I wasn’t really making enough money to maintain the lifestyle I’ve made myself accustom to (which isn’t even that expensive).

Much to my convenience, Dan recommended me to a friend who was looking for a programmer for a project at his work. I sent my proposal to the guy last Thursday and hopefully it will be approved (I expect a few revisions first). If all goes well this project should pay for my six month lease in Sac. My new plan for the next few months is to finish up the Vacation Properties site by the end of this month and finally make some money off of it, then hopefully start the project for Dan’s friend and finish by the end of November. Assuming this new project goes through, I plan to move as soon as it’s finished. I don’t think Dan will let me move before then anyway.

There are three main reasons for wanting to move to Sac. The first is the fact that I’m 22 and I feel its time for me to live on my own. I’m really excited of the though of my own place with only my own things. The second is how much closer I’ll be to the snow. Just a short two hour drive versus four hours from San Jose. I already bought a season pass for Northstar and Sierra at Tahoe which I plan to use as much as possible this winter. The third reason is projects/work. Dan and I have grand plans for the next version of our Vacation Properties stuff but we need time to work on it. It’s really hard to do projects together when we’re two hours apart. I’ll probably get a day job as well, but not until after I’ve already moved.

No real girl drama to speak of once again since I’ve really not been looking and haven’t been talking to anyone. Who knows, maybe next entry will be more entertaining girl wise.

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Coding, Coding, Coding

2005-09-22T23:34:15Z

It’s been almost a month since I last blogged, so what have I been up to? Well, lately I’ve been back into coding. All that seems to be on my mind is how to optimize code I’ve recently written or where to check for possible bugs. It’s weird to be excited about a project again. Actually I have about three projects going and they are mostly connected.

The most potentially profitable one is the vacation properties site Dan and I have been working on forever. I feel like I’ve been making a lot of progress on it lately but there aren’t a lot of results to look at. Its one of those “I rewrote all the backend code better, but it really doesn’t affect the frontend” type situations. We have a few new ideas with where to take the site but I’m not ready to discuss them just yet.

Another project that I have going is a simple gas receipt tracker. I wrote it as a web application that I can use from my sidekick. When I buy gas I can go to the site and enter some information like the station, gas grade, how many gallons I bought, how much per gallon, the odometer reading on the car, etc. and have it give me back a nice little report with some interesting stats. The two stats I like reading the most is how many miles per gallon I got on my last tank and how many miles more I could have driven at the same rate. I’ve got all these ideas for the application that would make it usable by the general public, and likely free (since I can’t think of a way to make money off it), but since it’s not a money maker and it works as much as I need it to right now I probably won’t be spending much time on it for a while. I showed it to Andy (eger) a couple weekends ago and he loved the idea. I even added his car so he could start using it. This, amongst other things inspired me to finally set up trac to keep my ideas in. For those of you who don’t know what trac is, it’s a software project management system that has things like milestones, bugs, documentation and so-on.

The other important project I have going on is a directory just called “projects/” which contains all the libraries I’ve written and commonly use in my projects. It includes Smarty with all the directories to support it as well as some custom plug-ins that I use all the time. It’s also got the active records class’s I wrote originally for the vacation properties site but decided to separate out because they are useful anywhere and not actually just to that project. My active records are quite similar to Propel but written in php4 and have a bunch of extra stuff that I wished propel had (or maybe it did and I just didn’t know how to use it).

I guess a 4th project would be my “gen/” directory which is a simple Smarty based file generator. I use gen and some templates I wrote to produce my active record base and skeleton classes similar to Propel’s generator. The difference is my input file is a lot simpler and it supports concept types (like password or state in the US). I’ve also got it producing simple CRUD (without the D yet) templates and php files. Since the generator is generic it can generate anything specific to the tables in the input file. The generator it’s self is really simple and already works. What I’m really working on in this project is the input templates whose output I use in the vacation properties and gas projects.

So yea, coding on the brain. No new females in my life so no girl drama to write about. I guess the closest thing (which happened a couple weeks ago) would go something like this:

I subscribed to this girls blog on myspace a while ago because it was interesting to read. One day after a couple weeks of her not blogging I sent her a message, asking her to blog. The next day she did. It’s possible that it was a coincidence but felt powerful anyway.

Now isn’t everyone glad I blogged and shared all that technical stuff? Probably not what anyone was expecting to read but hey, it’s what’s going on.

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Rope Swing

2005-08-23T23:23:36Z

Two weekends ago I went with Tom, Adam and Jeff to Huntington Lake to go sailing on Tom’s boat. We had a good time. That Saturday night we went to a bar and had a drink (which really isn’t like me, but there wasn’t much else to do in the middle of the night there). I was the only one without a laptop since mine was in Dell’s position for repairs. Tom’s Verizon EVDO card was really nifty. It allowed him to connect to the internet at a decent rate, which he shared with the other two laptops via wireless.

Sailing was really fun. We all got really burned the first day which caused us to wear long sleeves and pants the second day. We also built a sandcastle on a rock in between two islands on the lake. Always gotta be building something.

Last weekend Adam and I went to Sacramento to visit Dan. I got some details about the job opening his company has but I still can’t do anything about it till I’m closer to finished with my current job. Hope the position doesn’t get filled before then. I also looked at two apartments in Dan’s complex, both single bedrooms. The first one I looked at was pretty cool but somewhat cramped compared to the second one which seemed really open and spacious. Looking at them has me totally excited about getting my own place. I hope this job works out so I can move there.

The main reason we went to Sac was to go to the river (Discovery Park to be more specific) and play with Dan’s wave runner. We ended up finding a really cool rope swing and spent a lot of time swinging into the water instead of riding the wave runner. Dan and I were getting some major air. It was so fun. We also built sand caves on the beach. Like I said earlier, always gotta be building something.

That evening after we all had a chance to shower we went to the state fair. The fair was huge! We spent around $30 each to get in, eat and ride three rides. Most of the night was just walking around exploring more parts to the massive fair. Our three rides were, Space Ship 2000, Euroslide.com and this other one I can’t remember the name of but you sit in big cage thing and it spins in two directions. It was my favorite of the three but also the most expensive. Getting off the ride resembles being buzzed. Pictures of the fair and all three rides are on my flickr.com account.

Last night I had the urge to get Mrs. Fields cookies. Adam picked me up and we went to Oakridge to fulfill that urge only to find out Mrs. Fields was closed. The trip wasn’t a total loss though. We ended up watching The 40 Year-Old Virgin. It was pretty funny, but not nearly as funny as Wedding Crashers (which I’d like to watch again sometime).

Tomorrow I’m getting off work an hour early to go with my brother and some of his friends to the Sacramento Raceway where my brother is planning on running his car. It should be an interesting experience as I’ve never been to any car races before (legal or illegal).

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Wedding Crashers

2005-08-08T06:40:08Z

Last Friday Adam and I installed my new front door speakers. After that we tried eating at Classic Burger. Turns out they are great for there shakes, not there food. Eventually we decided to go to the movies and make Jeff drive. Neither Adam nor Jeff (mostly Adam) were too excited to see Wedding Crashers but I made them go anyway. I was even having some doubts after some of the commercials but we all came out of the movie loving it. I don’t remember the last time I literally laughed out loud at a movie. After the movie we went to Cardinals Lounge. It was pretty busy there and it took a while, though not nearly as long as the last time we went to Denny’s. After food we decided to go back to Jeff’s house. I was there till almost 3:00am. I haven’t been up/out that late in a long time. I was lying on the couch with my eyes closed for the last forty-five minutes to an hour while Jeff was trying to get me to finish off his rum. I probably would have if I wasn’t super tired and driving home to go to bed, or if he offered it to me before we went to the movies.

Saturday was pretty uneventful till the evening. I don’t even remember what I did in the afternoon other than download stuff. At 5:00pm Alex called me and asked me if I wanted to go to the movie with him, Chris and his sister. I was supposed to go to SuperHappyDevHouse but I was only going because I had nothing better to do. Alex’s offer was something better (in my opinion). The movie we ended up going to started at 10:10pm but Chris and I hung out at Alex’s since around 5:15pm. We had Indian food for dinner that Alex’s Dad made to eat with their house guests. It was very colorful and very good. Everyone thought I was weird for taking a picture of it.

Today I slept in till maybe 12:30pm or so. It felt good. Actually good probably isn’t the right word. I just didn’t want to get up so I didn’t. Not having to is what felt good. In the afternoon I watched Evolution with Alex and Chris at Alex’s house. In the evening I started watching a downloaded copy of Stealth until Adam and Jeff came by to drop off the tables. After the tables we went to Jeff’s and watched last Friday’s Stargate Atlantis then immediately came home. It was about the shortest trip to Jeff can remember. Tomorrow is back to the grindstone.

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Festering Thoughts… unREAL

2005-08-05T06:56:04Z

So Adam and I watched this pseudo-documentary tonight called unREAL that was about a couple of couples who just ended their major relationships (within the last month or two). The movie was sort of about the aftermath of major breakups, though it was manipulated and influenced by the producers to make things more interesting.

Even if the whole movie wasn’t real some of the content was real enough to get you thinking. One of the things that got to me was a segment where an ex-girlfriend returns to her ex-boyfriends apartment to pick up a few of her things and they end up in a fight. You could tell they knew just how to push each others buttons and they didn’t hesitate to do so. It was clear just how frustrated they were with each other. I know the feeling and hate it. In fact I was getting frustrated just watching the two minute segment. When she left the apartment the guy just lied on the couch and uttered, “oh my god” in disbelieve. I can remember a few times walking away from the door steps after an argument or talk literally uttering to myself, “What the fuck just happened?” while walking to my car.

That, “what the fuck just happened” feeling is how I’ve felt from last Saturday till sometime Monday. It’s was eating at me until I finally decided “I give up”. I had this set condition in my head. If she brought it up and we resolved it within a certain amount of time we’d be fine. That time was up yesterday and no progress was made. It was time for action but I didn’t do anything about. This morning at work I wrote down what I wanted to say in the simplest form I could and then tweaked it the whole time I was working. After lunch I decided to send the writing in the form of an email. Almost immediately I regretted trying to cut someone important out of my life this way (which is essentially what the email was), but what can I do now? I’ve felt weird about it all day and watching the movie this evening is only making me think about it more. Actually, she called during the movie and seemed in a really pleasant mood, she must not have read it yet.

I guess what I’m really upset with myself about, is that I’ll have probably hurt her and I hate doing that. But making her happy is a challenge I’m no longer up to either. It’s a shitty time and a shitty feeling but in the long run it’s probably for the best. After all, I’ve put so much thought into it this week that maybe I did violate our agreement and get too attached yet again.

To me it feels like we are back in a loop. I recall having and expressing major doubt about starting again in fear of this position, yet I did it anyway. We’ve tried doing things different but it still feels like we ended up right back in that fucking loop. This time I felt far less attached so when the bad part came around again breaking out (essentially cutting her out of my life) was a piece of cake, in my head. Turns out not to be the case because obviously I’m still thinking about it. But I still don’t see an alternative. We’ve tried friends, we’ve tried dating, neither of us want a real relationship with the other, so what’s the point?

Unless she’s kept up on my journal, when she reads the message it’ll probably feel like it’s all just come out of left field because last time we really talked I was desperately trying to hold on. I had this thought in my head that if we can get past this dumb argument we wouldn’t end up back in the loop. That conversation ended with both of us saying we were satisfied when neither of us really seemed to be. So since then everything has been festering up in my head and today I’ve finally popped. Tequila anyone?

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Quicksilver and Tequila

2005-08-02T07:49:37Z

What to do, what to do… Drink it away? Sure that works for a little bit. In the end it only adds a head ach to your thoughts which makes them physically hard instead of just mentally hard. Think they are going away anyway so it’s all good.

Yesterday Adam and I went on our semi-weakly hike. This time we went to the Almeden Quicksilver trails and brought Jeff and Vess with us. We drove up Hicks road until we found a parking lot. It turned out to be right near the trailheads we wanted. Some other hikers who were just getting back to their car told us where we should be and we moved the car. From the parking lot we hiked to the old quicksilver mine. It was about 1.4 miles to the mine and we decided to hike another half a mile to a cemetery. I found the cemetery somewhat disappointing because it was merely a white picket fence around some grass with no view and no headstones.

Walking felt good; I was very impressed with myself because I only got tired about two times the whole trip. For those of you too lazy to do the math, we walked a total of 3.8 miles round trip, not bad at all for us. Eventually we want to get a GPS so we can see where we’ve gone and get a possibly more accurate reading of our walking distance. Though, I’m not ready to drop $100+ for one of those yet. After the trials we went to ~~Happy~~ Classic Burger for shakes. I swear they have nicotine in them because they are really addicting.

Andy Smith had “minor festivities” for his birthday at 7:00pm which we all planed on attending. Of course, it was after 7:00pm by the time we left ~~Happy~~ Classic Burger and I still needed to shower, badly. After my shower I meet the rest of the guys at Safeway and we headed to the party in San Francisco.

As usual it took me a while to warm up to all the people I didn’t know. I guess a few shots helped. I think we left the party around 12:30pm and Jeff and I were thoroughly buzzed. I felt it walking up and down the stairs at Andy’s but I really didn’t notice it in the car. It wasn’t till I walked down the dark ally into my dark house that I realized the booze hadn’t worn off yet. I took my shower (yes another one, this time out of habit) and couldn’t wait to go to bed. I thought lying down would feel really good, but it really didn’t help. I wish I ate more before the party.

When I woke up this morning I still felt like crap like I did when I went to bed. I probably should have bought something to eat off the food truck for breakfast but I really wasn’t in the mood to eat. I think one less shot and an actual meal before drinking next time will help a lot. Oh, and not to drink on a work night so I can sleep in the morning! Good thing this is not a habit. I don’t know how alcoholics could do this every day.

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I, Stealth

2005-07-30T09:04:58Z

I definitely feel something that I’m not enjoying and it’s kind of got me down. I don’t even know what to write here. I think the timing is off for discussing it anyway.

I ended up going to the movies tonight with Jeff and Adam and watched Stealth. I really enjoyed it, got my mind of things. I enjoyed The Island the other day as well. I think if overlook the unrealistic stuff in movies and just pretend things are supposed to be that way in the world they are portraying, then movies are much more enjoyable. It’s like freeing my mind or something.

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Movies, Movies, Movies…. Sacramento

2005-07-28T08:28:26Z

So far this week I feel like I’ve watched more movies than usual. On Monday I watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Janine. Tuesday I saw The Island with Adam, Jeff and his friend Brianne. Tonight I watched Jaws at Dave Weekly’s movie night with Jeff, Erica, Erica’s friend and a bunch of other people. I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing tomorrow I’ll watch another movie. We’ll see who wants to watch what.

The last few days I’ve been really looking into moving to Sacramento. I’m trying to convince Jeff that he wants to move there with me. I’m surprised that he’s actually considering it. I found out for sure when my current job ends so I can plan for the move. My last day is October 5th, exactly three months from when I started. Hopefully Dan’s company will still need a programmer or I’ll have to rethink the whole moving idea. Of all the apartment complexes I’ve read about online, the one Dan currently lives in sounds the best. It’s a little pricy but it has everything I want (AC, pool, attached garage, fridge, washer/dryer in the apartment, other appliances, takes pets, walk in closet). If I can’t convince Jeff to go, the floor plan I’m looking at for a one bedroom cost about $1100 a month. As long as I’m working I think I’ll be able to afford that.

One of the perks to moving to Sacramento is the fact that Janine will be there. She’s defiantly not the primary reason for wanting to move there, the job is, but her being there helps. If I was just following her there I would be looking at apartments closer to where she’ll be living. The complex I want to move to is about five minutes from the house Dan will be moving to. My best estimate, the complex relative to Janine’s house in Sac is about the same as my current house relative to her current house.

The other major perk to Sac is how close it is to Tahoe. It’ll be much less of a big deal to drive to Tahoe for the weekend from Sac than it is now in San Jose. Dan bought a season pass to Alpine and went all the time last winter. If I’m in Sac I’ll be able to join him.

We’ll see how it all works out, if it all works out.

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Ebay, BBQ and Some Alone Time

2005-07-25T04:07:06Z

Today I won new door speakers for my car on ebay. I’ve needed them since I got my car. I don’t know if the driver’s side door speaker is blown or just really crappy but when the volume is up to loud (not unreasonably loud, just not residential street quite) it cracks where none of the others do. Anyway, I can’t wait to get the new ones and install them.

A couple days ago when I was going to bed really late I saw part of an infomercial for an inflatable 5-in-1 couch/bed thing. I’ve always wanted an inflatable couch for watching movies on my computer with out sitting in my office chair. Sure my bed is nice, but I don’t always want to be lying down and as a couch my bed is horrible. I’m not one to phone order, especially off a TV, so I went to the website and left it open for a few days. Today it occurred to me, I should check ebay for this nifty 5-in-1 thing. Turns out a few people are selling them. I bid on what I assume is a used one but lost. I decided I don’t want to play around with this bidding crap so I found a “buy it now” auction for a new one (the correct size) and “bought it now”. I’m sure it’ll be at least two weeks before I get it, but I think it will be great for movie watching.

Yesterday I went to Crystal’s going away BBQ. I took Jeff so I’d have someone to talk to. The cheese burger I had was pretty good but the BBQ as a whole wasn’t to exciting for me. In the two, two and a half hours we were there I think I only talked to Crystal for maybe five to ten minutes. There was a lot of her family there including this one little cousin of hers. The kid is a terror, just as he was when I was dating her (but a bit older). The whole time I kept thinking about Janine. Jeff would be talking to me about Ruby (a programming language for those of you who don’t know) and a bunch of times I’d zone out wishing I was at Janine’s.

Before the BBQ Janine and I took Eddie on a little hike at Alum Rock Park. The trial marker said it was four miles to the rock we went to, but I think round trip was only about a mile or so. Eddie walked at least half way up the hill by himself. Unfortunately we forgot to bring water and there were about three shady spots the whole way up. I was sweating like a pig by the time we got back to the car. After the hike we went back to Janine’s house where Eddie went down for a nap and we started watching Something's Gotta Give. She had to go back to work around 4:00pm and I was supposed to go to that BBQ for Crystal so we didn’t get to finish the movie.

After the BBQ I was supposed to hangout with Alex, but it took a bit longer at the dealer than expected and I didn’t end up seeing him till this afternoon. So I called Janine and ended up going back to her house. I got there around 10:30pm and Eddie was still up. We started the rest of the movie around 11:00pm and by the end Eddie was a sleep. Shortly after the movie Janine’s Mom went to bed and we got some alone time. Once she was in my arms I had a really hard time letting go. In fact I didn’t let go till almost 2:00am. It’s a good thing it was a weekend night. It felt so natural to have her in my arms, I absolutely love the feeling.

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