Rex Flex

Well, it’s finally launched. After a very intense and stressful two months, we’ve created a social networking site from scratch. The company I work for, PROACE, partnered with the ROT Rally to create a site where bikers can communicate year-round. There are still quite a few new features that we’re planning on implementing, however since it has finally been launched, we’re finally able to settle down and take it easy for awhile.

Please, go sign up and let me know what you think. The site is, http://www.riderrally.com/

Speaking of the launch of RiderRally, Josh, Drew and I made it out to the ROT Rally last night, and it was crazy. I put a few pictures up at riderrally.com and you can go check them out here.

A couple of weeks ago, a co-worker of mine showed Drew and I a site that he was using to listen to music called Muxtape. It’s a pretty cool site that allows users to upload up to 12 songs to create their own mix tape, which is then public for everyone to hear. Last week Drew began going through a bunch of them and found some good music from bands I had never heard of before. So, for the past week or so, I’ve been listening to a mix of MGMT, Gogol Bordello, The Decemberists, and Of Montreal. I think that getting some new music has really helped me be more productive during the day (once I look up the lyrics of the song I’m listening to and start singing along :D).

These are a few muxtapes I’ve been listening to recently:

• 1989
• Omar12 (Omar)
• Rexxx (mine)

The past few weeks have been pretty fun. Last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night I was having heart palpitations, which were lasting for about an hour to an hour and a half. When these happen for me, my heart feels like it’s racing out of my chest. I’ve been having them for the past year or so but never really thought anything of them since they’d go away after a little bit. What made these a little different is on Wednesday night I was having some chest pains as well. So, I decided to head to the E.R. After waiting for a few hours, they got some blood to run some tests and came back telling me that nothing looked abnormal. They gave me a holter monitor to wear for 24 hours so they could try and capture a recording of one.

The day after I drop it off I get an urgent phone call from the doctor saying that while I was sleeping my heart would stop beating for about 4 and a half seconds, making very low beats per minute. Soon after that I’m scheduled to see another cardiologist that specializes in heart rhythms. After talking with him he said that:

1. The pains were probably heart burn
2. My heart stopping while I sleep is probably from me snoring so much
3. The palpitations are most likely caused by an extra electrical connection which causes the electrical signal to pass through and back into the heart continuously in an endless loop. (Supraventricular tachycardia)

I have to wear another monitor for about 30 days to see if I can record a palpitation. After that they can make sure that it is actually supraventricular tachycardia and we can go from there. From what the doctor said it’s not very unhealthy to have it, it’s just annoying to feel. There’s a procedure to fix it where they go in and singe the extra electrical connection. There are also some pills you can take to control it, but who wants to be constantly taking pills?

That’s what’s been going on with me lately. 21 years old, dealing with heart problems ;) . Nothing new on the iPhone development; I am having a lot of fun with the Mac, though.

It’s been over six months and two quarters since I’ve posted anything. So at the beginning of last quarter, I began working on an ongoing project here at Neumont University known as NORMA (Neumont ORM Architect). This is the most complex project I’ve ever been apart of.

Last quarter I was working along with Josh, getting verbalizations working for the ORM subset constraints. After we worked on that for about eight weeks, we were assigned the task of creating the framework to make it possible for end users to generate a PHP back end once they get their information modeled. We were able to get this done successfully in 10 days.

This quarter I’ve been working on reverse engineering a database to ORM. This task has had its complications, but is coming along smoothly. When this is done I’ll be teaming up with Josh again to get the framework setup to generate a Java back end.

Also, since the release of Internet Explorer 7 (and its support for alpha transparent png’s), I’ve decided to go back to the old layout on the site. I’ve always thought it looked nicer, however it didn’t play nice with IE7.

I’ve also been on a team of a group of coders known as Revolutionary Networks. We’ve been working on a portfolio type project which will, in the end, display each of the members in Rev Net and display certain details such as which projects they’re working on, which technologies they know, where they’ve worked, their resume, etc. It’s a very in depth project that’s been going on for awhile.

Quarter 5 here at Neumont University has started. Luckily I got into golf class so at least I get to have a little fun in between all of the work. This is what my schedule is looking like this quarter.

• Golf
• Game Programming
• Calculus
• Algorithms and Data Structures
• Development in the J2EE Framework I
• Projects IV

I’m pretty excited for the Projects class. This quarter I’m working on the PHPGedView project. Which is currently ranked #2 on the list of most active projects on sourceforge. My group is responsible for creating an Open “Source” Repository so that people can easily find more sources to look up information about their family tree. It’s a very interesting project and I can’t wait until we get past the database design and start the coding.

I also landed a grading position this quarter, so I have some source of income. I’m grading the Topics in Software Development, which is a class that all of the new students have to take. It’s pretty interesting to see the different things that get turned in and the different ways people decide to do things.

I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again after giving it up for about a month. I’ve decided that I’m going to finish leveling my Rogue and transfer it to Kalecgos since they’ve opened realm transfers. Most of the people that I used to play with decided to give the game up, and I have some friends on Kalecgos, so.. goodbye Tichondrius.

That’s really all that’s going on right now. Since it’s 1AM and I have Golf bright and early in the morning, I’m going to bed.

The other day Trip told me about something called Pandora. It’s a cool little program that lets you listen to music and build your own station. You add an artist you like, and then it’ll start playing. You then say if you like the song or not, and it goes from there.

It uses information found from the Music Genome Project to hone in and figure out exactly what you want to hear. Very cool.

Trip also showed me something called Digg. This is a cool news site that shows you popular stories from across the internet. It’s pretty cool, too.

We’re walking around Wal-Mart today, and my roommate Josh tells me that koala bears have *two* vaginas. I didn’t believe him at first, but I looked up it, and it checks out. Male koala bears have a *two* pronged penis. This gives me a whole new look on life.

Source: Here