//v3nt: mark II

An Open Letter

2009-02-27T07:22:00.000-08:00

I would like to know what I did, what I said, anything at all that meant I didn't care. When did I neglect my daughter? When did I say I didn't want to hear what the doctors, the nurses, the surgeons had to say? When did I refuse to learn, refuse to do, whatever my daughter needed? Please, tell me why you act so surprised when I take such interest in her wellbeing.

If Namine needed blood, I would drain my own to the last drop. If she needed a heart, I would cut my own right out of my chest.

You know who you are.

/rant done

A series of tubes

2008-08-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

I promise I'll try to update the site more often.

A day in the life

2008-01-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

Screw it

2007-06-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

I won't delete Waffle5 on Blogger, but I've removed everything. The comic now exists on Wordpress here.

EDIT:
Never mind. Use the blogspot address. I'm stupid.

Waffle5 is up and running

2007-05-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

So I haven't had a chance to update this blog with the news: Waffle5 is now functional. All the old comics are uploaded, and I'm adding a comic a day until I run out of old ones.

I think the layout is pretty good. Better than the old one, if I dare say.

I have hit a couple snags, though. I originally wanted to have news on the site, and I've (sort of) accomplished that through RSS/XML feeds and another blog called waffle5news, but I think I'm just going to trash it altogether. I'll enable comments on the comic, but I won't have news news.

Word of the day: "different-y"

2007-05-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is.

If you go here you can download the template called "Neo" -- the very same that I am using. It not customized too much yet, but hopefully that will change soon. I also plan on making a whole link section just for Blogger hacks. It's not Blogger Beta anymore; the "classic" Blogger is dead. It's too bad, in a way; I really liked this design. One of my future projects, at least something I'd like to do if I had oodles of time, is to convert it to the new Blogger. But the XML can be tricky, and even though it's Google, the XML isn't completely well-formed. Run that fucker through validation and you get all kinds of errors.

Speaking of projects, I also hope to get Waffle5 up and running again soon. I'm in the process of uploading all my old comics to some free web space; I'm about a quarter of the way through, right now. After that, I'll see if I can't get a scanner that doesn't scan things in psychedelic colors. They're black and white inkings, for crying out loud.

Anyhoo, I'm currently trying out a new look. I have some brand new logos I'm gonna slap on there when I manage to remember my thumbdrive at home.

In other news, I got a raise. A big one.

This is a test

2007-04-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Testing, testing. Commencing lightbox test in three, two, one:

GO.

First post in forever

2007-04-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again. It's been a long time. I have much to say, and surprise of all surprises, little time to post. I do want to point out, however, that v3nt has expandable comments again. The formatting needs some work, but it's there.

KILL ME NOW

2006-11-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

What? WHAT?? WHAT!!!

Dracula Begins? You must be joking. Paul W.S. Anderson, I will end you.

*bangs head on keyboard*

Frustrations and dilemmas

2006-11-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

As much as I love what Blogger (and Google) has enabled me to do, I must complain.

If you go here, you'll see what will soon (as in next month!) become the new home for Waffle5. On the right, you'll see a little sidebar entitled "News." (By the way, don't click on the "This is a test" link.) What I wanted to do was use RSS to feed news posts right into the main page, but Blogger only allows post feed links. I can directly feed comments, but not posts. Ah well, you can't have everything.

But to make matters worse, it doesn't feed updates all the time. Perhaps I shouldn't have deleted the test post. Well, I have some more ideas, and will try them out soon.

Au contraire

2006-11-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

Nonsense, Laura. If you disagree with me, I want you to say so. I want your opinion, I care about your opinion. What makes us human is our differences. What good is it if I parade around what I think - my opinion, nothing more - and don't listen to others? I learn nothing. And what is there in that?

So speak, listen, learn, and above all, teach. For you know things of which I am ignorant - oh, there are so many things.

To go on a side rant here - after all, this is my personal space, anyway - this is where the lutheran church falls short. So many people wrapped up in their own lives, their own cares, their own knowing, if you try to speak to them and teach them, you are, metphorically speaking, struck down.

My wife has encountered it time and time again. She works in a lutheran daycare. She has five-year degree in childcare, and before we got married, she worked in a state-certified daycare. Because the management of that unholy place was lax and apathetic, she took over management at a teacher's (or mayhap an aide's) pay. If there is anyone who knows about daycare state certification, my wife is your man (so to speak).

Well, back to my main point. The daycare she's at now wants to get state certified, and the director knows of my wife's experience, so she (the director) asked her (my wife) to let her know of anything that comes to mind. Jess has, and does, but every time she does, she is met with disdain and disbelief. Jess knows and does enough to rate a teacher's pay, but she's stuck at being an aide. There are no raises, except for when she would get promoted to being a teacher. But that will never happen until a current teacher leaves. That, you may recall from a previous post, has happened three or four times, and never has my love been promoted. Keep in mind, this is a so-called christian environment. Sometimes, I do wonder why I believe what I believe when the sponsors and defenders of said belief do not support it with actions.

But then, that's why it's faith.

Oh, yes

2006-11-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

My boss told me I can listen to music as I work.

This makes my day.

Updates on all fronts

2006-11-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

If you read my blog, you may have discovered that I plan on bringing my old comic strip back to life. Well, I updated the layout of the new Waffle5 today. It's got a rotating banner again, although I may mess with it further. It looks a little crapish in Internet Explorer 6. I'll have to wait until Monday to check it in IE 7, but it looks better in Firefox 2. I can't imagine it looks too much different in FF6.

In other news, my boss told me I'm very valuable.
PAUL GAINS INT +10

On Thursday night, my sister and I went to see Lemony Snicket at Alverno College. It was a blast. I also got Book the Thirteenth, The End, autographed by Daniel Handler. It is rather unfortunate the Mr. Snicket himself was unable to attend his own book signing. The autograph reads as follows:

To Paul, who ought to know better.

I consider myself very fortunate, indeed.

You might recognize this

2006-10-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

It's making a comeback.

DO IT NOW

2006-10-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

Links Galore

2006-10-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for IE 7? Check out some developer tools to help prepare here. I might go there later and go through that stuff in more detail.

Fedora Core 6 is released! Oh my. Six ISOs... I'll be spending time at my parents' house, I think.

And something I discovered today: the official Google Mac Blog.

Foiled again

2006-10-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

It seems that Blogger doesn't want any comments on the main page. I'm afraid, kids, that this means no Expando-Comments. Sigh.

There is a hack available, but I tried it and it's not to my liking. It slows down the page load considerably. No one wants a slow v3nt.

I added another link section: Software. Just a few things that I use fairly regularly. Firefox 2.0 was officially released today (as opposed to the unofficial release yesterday). I also added Neowin and Slashdot to the links list.

I'm still working on the layout of this thing. I'll get right eventually. And then I will die from sheer happiness.

Update:
I just thought I'd mention that the widget format of Blogger Beta coding is very, very similar to Java's Struts Bean Tags. Joe would be so jealous. This has proper if/then/else structure.

Holographic Bat Girl

2006-10-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

So Jerod responded. You'll see his blog link up there with James and Laura. If Matt actually made posts, I might be tempted to put his link up. But on the other hand, I think one MySpace link is bad enough.

Update: HOLY MALONY

2006-10-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Posted on old v3nt.

hey paul its jerod, just got married and I have a computer connection again, you can get in touch through my myspace page just search for romowarrior and you will find me, I hope you are doing well haven't talked to you in a while, well talk to ya later.

jerod

Labels > You

2006-10-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

About time. Blogger added label management to Beta. When Blogger Beta first came out and I set up Mark II, I set up a link list and manually added labels. Now it's an option to automatically add a list of labels. How cool is that?

So yeah, Nerf has a sniper rifle now. We'll have to get two.

I finally got around to updating Mark II again, and I added James to the list - only to find that he's not going to update his blog again. Sigh. Well, James, feel free to comment on here and stuff.

Word of the day: "woog"

2006-09-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Mark II is updated. I've rearranged the links on the side, so they now have their own little curved box section. It was a pain in the ass to do, too. In Beta's new format, you can't have duplicate classes. So, where I used to have something like this:

<div id="sidebar">
Friends
</div>

<div id="sidebar">
Links
</div>

<div id="sidebar">
Posts
</div>

Now I have to have this:

<div id="sidebar1">
Friends
</div>

<div id="sidebar2">
Links
</div>

<div id="sidebar3">
Posts
</div>

This means that for each additional curved section, I need to duplicate already existing code. And I don't think I can create a "parent" class for all subsequent classes to inherit from, either.

Next project: expanding comments. This is gonna be tricky.

Brought to you by the letter F

2006-09-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

How am I supposed to get things done when other people never respond? But I digress. (No, this is not aimed at any of you. Things are just frustrating sometimes at work.)

No, I really am not comfortable discussing it. But I do appreciate the sympathy and care.

I was going to work on Mark II today at lunch, but life got in the way. Over the weekend, which was supposed to be relaxing, Jess and I discovered the joys of being over four hundred dollars in the hole. Our fantastical bank decided to hold our deposits and continue on running the transactions, resulting in multitudes of overdraft charges. Yeah.

So today at lunch I switched banks. (This is, after all, the third time in two months that this has happened. Enough is enough. I have a bachelor's party to plan.) It won't actually be complete until two weeks from Friday, since I have to rearrange my automatic deposit information, but for all intents and purposes, it's done.

I heard nothing but good things and raves about the game Project: Snowblind when it came out, so I rented it using a free rental coupon I had. I am disappointed. Maybe it's just that I'm spoiled on games like Killzone (which, for all its shortcomings, is an awesome game) and Black (which also has shortcomings, but is also kick-ass). But give me a break! Timesplitters: Future Perfect was better than Snowblind. I guess I'm a little tired of the whole

You are a technologically enhanced super-soldier. No, we won't call you a cyborg. But you're like Robo-Cop, only with shiny arms.

Really, now. And the shiny weapons in Snowblind annoyed me more than anything else. How can you be covert and sneaky when your gun glows flourescent blue? Oh yeah, and when the assault rifle get low on ammo, it turns from blue to orange (well, maybe it's yellow; I'm colorblind, after all). Yeah, that's a good idea. I am also sick of Half-Life 2 gravity gun ripoffs.

O NOES!!1 ITS A WAVE-MOTION CANNON LOL!!!11one

It's okay if you didn't understand that one. There are many things we don't understand, and may never be able to.

Recursion is fun!

2006-08-31T15:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a tip, kids. Never start a VNC session with yourself.

For those of you who don't know what VNC is, it stands for Virtual Network Control. And it allows you to connect to another computer and control its mouse and keyboard. Yes, it's like Windows Virtual Desktop, only it's free and comes in all flavors: Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix.

My dad, genius that he is, decided to establish a VNC session with the localhost. Sigh. (For you non-geeks, of which I know James is not, localhost is the computer you're on.) The result was a million windows coming up all at once.

Force-quit! Force-quit! No, that's not quitting an application with your Force powers.

Anyhoo. I digress.

James, I suspected as much. After re-reading some of the postings, I concluded that you must have been talking to Laura. Heck, it's my blog, so I assumed that in not addressing anyone by name, you must have been talking to me.

I should know by now that I should never assume. I guess I never learn.

I won't have a chance to toy with Blogger's new addition to Beta, but I downloaded my current template in XML format (you can do that now), and I'm going to look it over tonight. I guess the format is completely different from CSS and (X)HTML that we're used to - of course it would be, with all the changes they made (like free-form re-arranging of blog content, among a host of other stuff). We'll see if I can't totally overhaul it in the near future.

MySpace is teh fail

2006-08-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

I removed Matt's and Jackie's links, since they only have MySpace accounts. I'd hate to have happen again what happened to James. Yick. Maybe I'll add James' blog.

Jess's grandma will be ninety-eight years old this Saturday. How crazy is that?

Update:
I removed the labels from this post, since all attached labels seem to be reverting themselves to lower case, and they are indeed case sensitive. I may have to change previous posts' labels to lower case.

Update noch einmal:
OH SHIT YEAH BITCHES!

Oh yeah

2006-08-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should mention here, since it has been elsewhere: Jason got engaged. Scary. I guess I have to grow up.

Holy crap, I'm getting traffic!

James, I never said you never liked me. I said Andrea never liked me. To be more accurate, I never felt liked by her. Clearer? Thank you. I did say you don't associate with me anymore, and that is true.

I'd like to make it a fallacy.

Birthday madness

2006-08-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

I got about twenty dollars worth of gift card stuffs for Noodles & Company. Needless to say, after the wretched, wretched church meeting last night, we went out and bought so many noodles (and company!) that we now own 51% of the company.

If Andrea were still reading v3nt, this is where I establish that I am using sarcasm to make a point. But she's not, so I don't have to do that.

I also got a gift card for Starbucks (which is conveniently located by nearly every Noodles & Company, so it's all good). And a Vampire Hunter D toy - no, excuse me, that's "action figure." He comes with a sword, an extra hand, and a stone pillar. I'm not sure what the pillar is for, aside from standing on and looking cool.

I mourn your vaccuum, Lauron. May its successor be blessed with sucky-ness (that's a compliment for a vaccuum). We'll have to plan for something soon. And yes, New Year's should give us enough time to clear both our calendars. (I always have trouble with that word.)

Breathe in, breathe out

2006-08-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Man, I need surgery so badly. I am almost constantly in pain.

I can't wait until Jess and I can get a little more money saved up. I can't afford to have the operation I need right now, even with insurance.

Paul is sad.

Expando-Links: The Return

2006-08-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

I was messing around with some JavaScript on my blog, and this is the result. If you look on the right, you'll see that "Links" and "Labels" are now Expando-Links©.

Man, now if only there was something I could do for those comments...

Suck and blow

2006-08-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

So I downloaded the IE 7 beta 3. It's okay, all things considered. It's got tabbed browsing! Ooh, that's, like, new or something! One of the websites I use at the office, however, no longer works with IE 7. I'll have to keep an eye on that.

Oh, look. Another site.

2006-08-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

Marston, Marston, Marston. What ever will I do with you?

I've tweaked the layout a bit. I think it's pretty cool. Unfortunately, I can't change it around the way I'd like - Blogger hasn't enabled that feature yet. Still, this template is better than most. I like this color scheme a lot, anyway.

I added another link: Blogger Status. Could be useful.

It's my birthday on Tuesday next week. I'll be twenty-six. Wow. Even seeing it written here doesn't make it seem real. I'm having a little get-together with Matt, maybe Jackie, Jon, Laura, my parents, brother, sister, and grandparents. It's gonna be fun. We're having lasagna.

this is a test

2006-08-14T14:42:00.001-07:00

this is a test post, just to see how the formatting works.