I never intendid to use that theme that long

Seriously, I installed that last theme temporarily while I searched for a new theme then a year and a half passed. This theme was recently posted on smashing magazine and I just fell in love with it so I installed it and did a few slight modifications and here we are. There is a little bit too much space in the header and those links up top there are not in the right locations, but it’ll do until I learn how to fix it.

Also one of the sites I built is now live at www.bwhawksoccer.com. The header was done by my friend Ryan Power and the xhtml was all done by myself and Kari Root. The xhtml validates as strict, because I’m awesome.

Next quarter I am taking “Introduction to Web Development Software” which I guess is just about Adobe Dreamweaver (lame), but I’m not sure what the other class I am going to take is. Rasmussen keeps insisting that I take classes online despite the fact that they advertised a 100% in classroom and at every chance I get I reaffirm that I don’t want to take classes online. Hopefully they will get their act together and get me in a solid programming class like Perl. Bye for now.

-Josh

This title is a pretest for a loop

You can decide if that meets the qualification for you to continue or to skip it and move to the next one.

I am deep into development on two sites right now, www.bwhawksoccer.com and www.tlcelectronics.com , (what you see there right now is not my work). The first one should be going live in about a week and the second one might take a couple weeks because the company is still trying to figure out exactly what they want.  Important things that I have learned,

1. XHTML Strict means nothing to IE6

2. Alpha transparencies with PNG mean nothing to IE6

3. Everything you want to do with javascript has already been done, so just use their code.

4. I want to be better at graphic design, but that’s just not going to happen, best to leave that to the pros.

I am also deep into a class on programming logic.  For loops, and while loops and structured programming and IPO charts and uml.  Delicious.

And then there is interpersonal communications… it’s so boring.

I got a very small link on laughing squid today thanks to doctor popular.  Check it out.

 

-Josh

Minnesota Passes historically bad legislation

We are already over taxed and passing this legislation was a huge mistake for Minnesota. Why doesn’t the pioneer press report the facts of the legislation instead of the touchy feely environmental crap, shouldn’t the loto dollars already be going to this? And I love the arts, theater, etc, but the government should not be passing a sales tax to support it.

Not only does it raise our taxes it also amends the Minnesota constitution in a move that says “let’s take two completely unrelated things and make people vote on them like they are one thing”. And this amendment gives a dissenting voice to those who chose to have no voice at all.

It does make me wonder if this amendment had already been in place if this bill would still have passed. Should they subject it to it’s own scrutiny?

This is a message to Pawlenty and the Minnesota Legislature, STOP TAXING! STOP NEEDLESS SPENDING! Let’s fix some bridges and potholes and do the things that the government supposed to do.

-Josh

I have not even been writing reviews

Sorry for my lack of updates, but I have not been updating much lately.

Work is going the best it has all year, knock on wood. School is also going well. Wife is good and dogs and house are well.

My M1330 on the other hand has had some problems that have caused me stress. I crashed it the other night and I’m having a nightmare of a time getting it back up to stable performance. I had a marathon session with Dell today and got nothing at all accomplished, last time I had to call Dell (5 years ago) I got the best service I have ever received from a company today I got just about the worst service. I asked for documentation specific to my M1330 on how to reinstall Vista, which drivers are specific to my machine and so on… seems like an acceptable request right? My dell service tag identifies my specific laptop and they should know exactly what drivers my laptop needs, right? Well when I asked this very simple question I was met with the audible equivalent of a stare. Why on earth would I need to know what drivers my laptop uses? After much poking and prodding and restating the question the guy (guy was supervisor of first person I talked to… first person was completely useless…. I mean that…. she told me everything from ‘it’s caused by Google Chrome’, to ‘your memory needs to be reseated’, and my personal favorite ‘windows update is breaking everyone’s computers and Dell recommends that you turn it off because it’s not compatible with your hardware’… but I digress) the guy told me that I need to install the chipset driver first and when I asked if Vista would recognize my chipset driver on installation he said ‘yes it would, but it might not be the best driver’ so I asked ‘how do I know what the best driver is?’ he back peddled and basically the whole conversation was a waste of my time and utterly (utterly) useless. Finally he provided this build order for reinstalling Vista….

Install the Hardware Drivers on the Portable Computer

Install the appropriate hardware drivers. Locate the Drivers and Utilities CD you received with your computer.

For the system to function properly, you must install your hardware drivers in the following order:

Desktop System Software or Notebook System Software

Chipset or SMBus driver

Processor Driver (if applicable)

Video

Audio (sound)

Input Drivers (keyboard/mouse)

Modem (Desktop computers have a separate CD for the modem)

Network Card

I mean wow… right? That’s just the kind of documentation that I’m glad I paid extra for.

Alright, enough venting. Time for me to get back to my javascript studies. Bye!

-Josh

Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2 came out today and I picked it up first thing this morning. After about an hour of play I’m going to fill you in on the bullet points.

1. No more solo tour. You can create a band and go through the world tour and it doesn’t matter if it’s just yourself or if you have three friends with you.

2. Quick Play; Play all songs. Now in the Quick Play mode there is an option to play all the songs in a category (i.e. apprentice, or genre).

3. The goals and ‘levels’ of the world tour are much better defined. It tells you exactly how many stars you need for a specific thing, and how many fans and so on.

4. All of my downloadable content just works.

5. World Tour over xbox live is finally an option! I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure it’s good to go.

Now the caviat. I’ve been pondering and wondering for months now about weather they are going to let you play the disc songs from Rock Band 1 in Rock Band 2 and then answer is YES! BUT!! Yes, but you have to buy a license key over xbox live for 400 points! Kinda bull shit if you ask me considering I already paid for those songs. But I’m stuck at the mercy and ponied up the dough.

I have not tried the drum trainer yet, so I’ll report back on that later.

Otherwise the game is exactly the same. When I use the game I feel ripped of for being charged again for essentially the exact same game that I already own. But then I realize that the set list owns and if I were to buy each of those songs over xbox live it would have cost way more than 60 bucks.

-Josh

Lookout! It’s a pirate juggler!

I swears.

I’m good at the flashes.

-Josh