Rex Flex

I have just upgraded this blog to the latest version of WordPress.  I really like where WordPress is going and hope they keep up all the good work.

And as always, DreamHost made the entire upgrade process a simple one-click step.

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.

Well, it seems as though my computer has finally bit the dust. Last night I noticed it was running a little slow, so I closed amarok (it sometimes uses more resources than it should. It was still running sluggish, so I ran ‘top’ and saw that ‘amarokapp’ was using like, 97% CPU, which means when I closed amarok, it didn’t completly quit every thing out. I went ahead and ran ‘killall –9 amarokapp’, and this is when I ran into trouble. Suddenly my computer cuts off, I look down and the orange hdd light is steady, along with the green cd-rom light. I hit the reset button, but it did nothing, so I held down the power button for a few seconds for it to go completly off. After that, it wouldn’t start back up. So, I am now without a desktop. Right now I’m using my laptop, which has a 2.8ghz celeron and a whoping 128mb ram (talk about bottle neck). It’s running gentoo linux, which makes it run a lot faster than when it had windows xp installed.

I had the phone interview with Northface and everything went very well. I decided to go ahead and apply, after all it’s just $35 and a couple hours of my time to fill out the online application form if I don’t get accepted. If I do get accepted, I’ll be in for a lot of work for the next couple of years.

Prom is tomorrow, and I have to go try on my tux tonight to make sure it fits and everything. I’m going to go pick up my check from work at 1PM. Work has been on and off for the past few months, but supposedly 750 boards have been shipped, and 2000 more are on the way. That should keep us busy for awhile.

I’m really just ranting now, but this post is really just here to let you all know that my computer is down, so I won’t be on aim/yahoo/msn/jabber as much. When I get a chance I’ll make the page IE compatible and get all the other pages up. I wouldn’t worry about making the page look nice on IE, except a great majority of my hits are coming from users on windows, running IE. Speaking of hits, they have been coming in pretty steadily. I think this is because of jokes and other strange articles that get posted that other sites link to.

That’s really all I have to say for now, if for some reason you want to donate to the Rex Needs A New Desktop (RNAND) fund or the Rex Has Future Hosting Bills (RHFHB) fund, shoot me and email and I can give you further directions ;).

It seems like this weekend has been a movie marathon for me. Last night I watched Great Expectations and Kingdom of Heaven. Both movies are really good and I’d recommend them both. Today was more of a comedy movie day, I saw a double feature consisting of Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. If you get a chance, watch all four of those movies, they’re all really good. I’ll probably watch Great Expectations again this week before I have to return it.

A few weeks ago I got a letter in the mail from Northface Univsersity and it sounds really interesting. I filled out the form to have them contact me. When they called, we talked for awhile, then I had a phone interview scheduled with one of their admissions representatives for Math 10th, at 7PM. It really sounds like a neat school and I’m really interested in going. Monday morning I’m going to talk to my old high school counselor about it and see if she has any suggestions. Class there isn’t like a regular college where you take a class here and there. Here you go to class from 8AM to 4PM, with an hour lunch mixed in there somewhere. The problem with that is I can’t really be expected to work much (if at all), if I goto class during the day and get a lot of homework that I’m expected to do it at night. Me not working could have a pretty negative effect on me going there.

I’m planning on writing a theme/layout/template that matches the site for the photo gallery. After I do that, I’m going to write the downloads, projects, and tutorial pages, all to match the blog site. It should be a pretty cool site when I finally get it all up and running. Today while I was going through my site stats, I noticed my first referrer. I was linked on TalkLeft about the article I posted on the REAL ID. It’s something that should be strongly opposed by anyone that has any respect for a person’s freedom and privacy. I hope that everyone reading this will visit the EFF site and send a letter to their representative. It’s simple and takes less than two minutes. On that note, I’m out of here, off to bed so I can get up and talk to the counselor.

If you visited earlier, you may have noticed the theme was being modified. For now I’m going to keep it with this theme until I get the one I’m working on completly finished. I’m just about done with it, so be on the look out.

I’m really liking wordpress, it’s very easy to create a new theme and manage everything within my blog. With starkBlog I would have to go in and edit some source or something of that nature, which wasn’t too bad as long as you knew php (helping to code it didn’t hurt either). Using this really makes me realize that starkBlog has quite a ways to go before it can even compete. All of the “big bloggers” are using web applications such as wordpress, movable type and all these other huge projects, that starkBlog is just too small for them to even think about switching. There are so many features in all these big applications that starkBlog can’t even compare.

Today I went into the DPS (Department of Public Safety) to get my five year driving record to get my first ticket dismissed. It’s weird I have to go get a five year driving record when I’ve only been driving for about two and a half years. It says that I have no convictions, which is a little weird because of my speeding ticket, but I’m not complaining. Tomorrow I’m going to run over to the court and get my ticket all taken care of, a full four days in advance I might add. I need to get on the ball with things, I have a report due for class in about six and a half hours, that I haven’t even started yet. I think I’m going to write it on the Mona Lisa, but I’m not quite sure; it’s for humanities.

I’m going to be working on getting the comments moved over sometime this weekend. I’ve got so much going on lately that I’m not even going to be able to think about it for awhile. My girlfriend is getting cable, so I need to go over there and setup her network maybe sometime next weekend, because I’m such a nice guy. We chatted for about three hours tonight, well me and her mom chatted for about two hours tonight about what all she’s going to need to setup the network and we chatted for about an hour. It’s a simple wired network. I’ve never dealt with a wireless network and I’ve heard a lot of bad things (Jon) so I figured a wired network was the way to go.

Anyway, I’m going to get started with my project, so I’ll talk to everyone later.

My check sent to DreamHost has finally cleared, and the hosting has been setup. You can now access my site from http://rexflex.net. I’m planning on importing all of the old news from starkBlog into the new blogging system (wordpress). I’m going to go with wordpress for all my real blogging while starkBlog receives some more work. When starkBlog is suitable for everyday use, I’ll then import everything I’ve entered in wordpress thusfar, back into starkBlog. You still with me, here? Anyways, wordpress has several advantages over starkBlog, obviously, it’s more mature and has many more options. I don’t plan on hanging starkBlog out to dry, though. You can see all the latest developments at http://stark.rexflex.net/ as soon as I get it all setup.

It’s almost 4:00AM and I have a huge economics final in about six hours. Please excuse my while I go crash.