Ramblings and Writings

Life is busy, and business is good (see what I did there?)

2007-01-26T11:34:18Z

So, in an attempt to keep my writing skills a step above dusty, I've decided the blog is the place to practice again. This decision was influenced slightly by the fact that someone purchased for me a year's subscription to Livejournal. One of these days I'll actually conjure up a halfway alright layout for this thing. Maybe soon, if my short-term plans go as...planned.

Some of those short-term plans have gone off rather nicely already. Last weekend/over the course of this week I moved from my downtown Bellevue studio apartment to the downtown Bellevue one-bedroom plus loft above it. This hardly counts as moving, honestly, as my doors are roughly three feet apart, and my address is exactly the same with the caveat of my apartment number incrementing by one. I absolutely love it. Honestly, I have more room than I really know what to do with here. Currently my desk is in the living room, but I'm going to move it upstairs to the alcove in the loft, which has a little cutout looking over the living room. The living room ceiling is vaulted, as well. Pictures will be forthcoming when I complete the "set up the home theater" and "get things situated where I want them" phases. Setting up the home theater is complete so far, I just need to acquire some more wall anchors to mount the front right speaker channel, and an area rug to put under the TV and couch to cover up the wiring running across the floor. Aside from that, it's good. For those wondering, my home theater consists of:

42" Westinghouse LCD HDTV
Klipsch Quintet III 5.1 speakers
Klipsch Sub-10 10" subwoofer
Yamaha HTR-5930 5.1 receiver
XBox 360
PS2 (These last two don't really count as theater, I guess, except that the 360 is generally the DVD player, too)

I'll make sure I grab pictures of that, too. I'm self-important like that. I'll get pictures of my new desktop setup, as well. This will include pictures of Metis, my new computer. Specs~:

Intel quad core 2.66GHz currently overclocked to 2.92GHz
4GB of CorsairXMS DDR2 800MHz, 4 CAS latency
1x500GB Seagate hard drive
Intel 975x motherboard
Enermax 1000W PSU (you'll see why on the next line)
GeForce 8800GTX 768MB PCI-Express x16
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card
Lian-Li aluminum case
HP LP2465 24" 6ms LCD monitor
Logitech X-540 5.1 speakers (for now, I may upgrade later)
Sennheiser HD595 headphones (for when you need to absolutely shut out the entire world)

I really, really can't complain at all about my desktop setup anymore. Whenever M-Audio and NVidia get their shit together and get release version Vista64 drivers out, I'll be upgrading from XPPro32.

This post has grown long, so more will come later.

An interesting quiz, and then some other things

2007-01-12T19:16:09Z

YOUR REPORT CARD:
Category	Grade
Love	A+
Friends and Family	A
Body	A+
Mind	A+
Finance / Career	A
Your Life's Average Grade: A+
'What is your Life Grade?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Apparently I rock at life. I guess I kind of knew that, though. I blame TheBigN for this one.

In other news, life has been fairly calm lately. Most things are the same as they always are. I code a lot, and spend too much time playing video games. I did join a gym, though. Right across the street from work, which is damned convenient. I also got some contacts, so future pictures will, in all likelihood, lack the glasses. General response seems to be that I look better without the glasses. I agree.

Still managing a men's clothing store, and not particularly happy or unhappy with my job. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either, so it does the trick for now. Contemplating dropping a resumé at Amazon for one of their web applications developer positions. Been tinkering with Mason lately in preparation for that. Actually, all of my code lately has been either Mason or C#. Sometimes I remember that I had a friend named C++, but he never calls anymore. Or I never call him. Or something.

I did finally get my tattoo. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Xero did the art for it, because he rocks that way. Also picked up a few other things recently. Finally got my laptop, which I'm pretty happy with. I never thought I could be happy with a 17" laptop, but there it is. Finally got around to getting a TV that doesn't suck, and my 360. Those have been eating the majority of my spare time lately. Trying to finish Gears of War and Condemned before I go to Florida.

Oh yeah, I'm going to Florida. Dad's getting married on Valentine's Day (amateur!), and I'm best man or something. Going to be in Pensacola for a week, 2/12 - 2/19, if anyone is in that general vicinity and wants to get their hang out on. Otherwise I imagine it's going to be a wedding...and six days of getting caught up on code. It'll be good, though. I need a proper vacation, and I haven't seen my dad or my little brother in about two years. Seeing my grandmother should be interesting, now that she's realized I rock at life, which makes her wrong about several things. There's some backstory there.

No I'm not sharing.

A minor addition

2006-12-05T12:38:24Z

I finally added a little bit to the writing I posted a few entries back. Also did some editing, and I think it's more cohesive now. Not that it's particularly cohesive at this point, being fairly short yet. It's over here.

A last minute invitation

2006-11-23T06:35:22Z

If you're in (or willing to make the drive to) the Seattle area, Phil and I wound up with both of our respective family gatherings being cancelled, so we decided to do our own Thanksgiving things. His psuedo-girl is in town, and we've got eight or 10 friends coming by. We got a ton of food, so if you want to drop by, or you don't have plans for dinner, give me a call and get directions. Going to be cooking all day, planning on eating at 6:00. Going to have all three LotR limited edition DVDs going throughout the day. Good times ahoy.

Tonight in Bellevue

2006-11-17T09:47:09Z

A crane toppled in Bellevue this evening. This sounds like less of a fluke when you realize that there are at least six cranes that I know of currently standing around the central downtown Bellevue area. Those are just the ones I see on my way to and from work every day.

The official cause of the accident is still unknown, but initial reports claim that the crane was lifting too much weight. As it fell, it split into two pieces, taking out the side of an apartment building, completely destroying one end of a shopping plaza and shaving a sizeable piece of corner off of an office building. One death has been reported so far, but the general consensus is that it's the only death in this accident. Amazingly enough, it's not the crane operator, whom fell some 200+ feet in a crane box. He was extricated by firefighters with naught but a hand injury.

Some poor guy was actually in his apartment when six or so tons of steel came knocking. An unfortunate ending for anyone.

It occurred to me on my way back from an otherwise fun night out (which I'll write about tomorrow) that most people will miss what I think is the real tragedy. It's not the construction foreman responsible for the load the crane was lifting losing his job. It's not the untold amount of damage that several executives are going to be sweating for the next few months. It's not even the death of a man whose name hasn't been released yet.

Atheists and agnostics aside, the majority of the people in this country believe in some higher power that is ultimately in control of things. Customarily, even in war, individuals take a second to make peace with this being when they are entering into a situation that may result in their spark being extinguished. This man didn't get that opportunity. He was just hanging out at home, and then he wasn't.

The way I see it, it's not the crane operator or the foreman that pays the moral price at the end of the day here. It's the guy that had things that he left unsaid. The real tragedy here is exactly that. A man died, and things were left unsaid.

I understand that this assumes some things about the life of a man whom I've never met, but for the sake of argument I'd be willing to bet he's an average person, and the things I have to say about this situation apply to the average person. So, with that in mind, it gives one something to think about.

May he rest peacefully.

…and we commit his body to the ground;
earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust to dust.
The Lord bless him and keep him,
The Lord make his face to shine upon him
and be gracious unto him and give him peace.
Amen.

A bit of backstory (NaNo)

2006-11-11T04:39:46Z

It was the kind of room you would picture in a parentally owned suburban basement. The kind of place where you’d expect to encounter frightening entities like ghosts, or teenagers. Scattered halos of light from LCD’s of varying size created an effect that would give an optometrist nightmares.

The subtle hum of a laptop made counterpoint to the unsubtle hum of a pair of towers. The occasional click and whine of hard drives chimed in to create a melody he found comforting.

It was his domain, his fortress. The soda can parapets, pizza box crenellations and perched and purring calico sentry protected him, but from what? His job? His friends? Six months out of college and he was already making a name for himself at his new job. It had cost him, though. Perhaps he was protecting himself from making the same mistakes again.

It had been two months now, and he still flinched every time the phone rang. He couldn’t decide if hearing her voice on the other end would make things better, or just drag back to the surface everything he had thought and felt since she left. It hadn’t been the best of partings. The kind of breakup your friends talk about when you’re not in the room.

He worked too much. He called it buying in; she said he’d sold out. Never mind that his work endeavors had paid off shortly after she left. He had called her, but she never called back. He was frustrated, but he couldn’t really blame her. They had both made difficult choices.

A software design question for everyone

2006-11-06T10:15:31Z

So I'm developing a piece of software for Pocket PC phones running Windows Mobile 5.0. The concept is automated response to missed calls. If you call me and I don't answer, you get an automated response from me in the form of a pre-defined text message containing something along the lines of "Sorry I missed you. I'll be at work until 9:30pm. You can reach me any time thereafter." Just as an example.

One of the questions I've run into while designing this is an issue of people whom lack SMS packages in their cell phone plan. I know, that doesn't apply to a terribly large sub-section of the populace these days, but it does apply to some and I have to take that into account. I just haven't quite decided the proper manner in which to do that. Ergo:

Option A) Have a user-maintained list of contacts which will not receive an SMS response

Or

Option B) Only send automated responses to people already on the user's contact list.

I'm leaning towards B, but wondering if that much restriction is really necessary. Of course, with option B one would still have the ability to maintain a "Do Not Send" list (probably denoted by a checkbox option in the existing contacts system.) Any input?

The other question that came to mind while designing this was that of e-mail response. Should an option to send an automated e-mail response be included? It's one of those business vs. personal phone lines, I think. From personal experience, people that have a mobile phone for personal use generally don't have e-mail access on it. Of course, there are people like me >.> At this point I'm leaning towards including the e-mail capability, but making it so that it only applies to a user-defined list of contacts. I'm interested to hear thoughts and opinions on this particular feature.

I'm also interested in hearing other ideas for features, or even other applications for Windows Mobile PPCs. Thanks guys.

It's on

2006-11-01T13:25:36Z

National Novel Writing Month is officially on. This is easily the largest project I've ever taken a stab at; should be fun. Got the writing blog community site up and running with WordPressMU. Registration is open, so if you write, and you're looking for a place to share your work, make yourself an account at http://pregnantpens.com/blog

I got word today at work that the director of operations wants to have a meeting with me when he's back in town on the 10th to discuss a promotion offer. More details when that actually happens, but it's sounding good so far. Of course, they always do. Not much else going on right now, really. Between work, NaNo, a small software project and maintaining pregnantpens, it's going to be a very busy holiday season. At least we finally have all of our employees in place. Finally, I'm not sweating how to stretch four people to fill seven positions without anyone burning out or quitting.

More as it comes.

Home again

2006-10-27T18:21:47Z

Vacation was good, but it's good to be home. I was really, truly bored for the first time in probably a year. It was glorious...at first. By the end of the fourth day, I was ready to get home. Being somewhere where your mobile phone actually works is nice. There's some magic line in the interim between Olympia and Tacoma where EV-DO suddenly just turns back on. I've decided I don't care for night time train rides as much. All the scenery is inside the train >.> Birthday was an overall success, though.

Now that I'm home, it's back to full swing on the NaNoWriMo front. Ninjastu had mentioned putting together some sort of writer's circle for peer review and whatnot. I was planning on buying a new domain and setting up WordPress, so we could do it that way. Any suggestions on domain names, send them my way. I'd like to get this set up this week so we can start using it right alongside NaNoWriMo. I'm open to ideas.

Vacation

2006-10-22T22:10:43Z

Catching a train at 5:30pm to go spend a few days with the family and get a little vacation in before the holiday season starts up at work. Probably won't be checking e-mail at all for the next few days, so if you need something, call my mobile.

Another long one turned under

2006-10-15T08:15:40Z

I've realized that I'm quickly losing motivation at work, and this is bad. Granted, it's completely understandable (or should be, at the very least), given the asinine amount of time I spend there, it's very bad. I'm left hoping that this three day vacation next week is enough time off for me to re-focus and get my shit back together. This job really is my ticket up and out, assuming I can trust the current trend of events. I'm not really sure where this line of thought is going.

I am now the proud owner of one of these http://www.samsung.com/Products/MobilePhones/Verizon/SCH_I730ZKVXAR.asp and let me just say, it's about damn time. This phone is all kinds of slick, especially when it's free. Hells yes. Sadly enough, I'm already twisting it into another tool for use at work. I wonder if I can get the company to reimburse me on a portion of my bill or something. Extra money is always nice.

Aside from work, I'm kicking around the idea of jumping in for this year's NaNoWriMo. Recent events in my own life and that of a friend might make for some good basis, but I don't know if I could expand that into 50,000 words. I've never tried anything of this magnitude, but if I've learned anything about myself over the last couple of months it's that I'm pretty capable of just about anything I actually want to do. I guess mom was right all along.

As food for thought, I've been reading through a friend's old blog entries, mostly because I find his point of view to be interesting and well educated. Really gets the wheels turning.

I guess I didn't have as much to say as I thought I did.

Movin' on up

2006-10-11T18:22:38Z

You know work is engaging when you can take time to update LJ.

That, or I'm working open to close today, and the mall is just dead. Damn you, Wednesday. There is some good work-related news, however.

I just found out that I'm going to be made operations manager on a five person management team. Something they're putting together as part of the giant expansion program they have in place. We're opening 10 stores next year, and my team would go in, do all of the store setup and merchandising and then train the new staff. Pretty wham bam stuff, too. The target is a week for everything. They want me to set up the operations side of things. Set up the point of sale system, the pin pad, all the bank stuff, all of our front- and back-end retail management software, and then do a large portion of the staff training. Travel expenses paid, plus a per diem, with a salary increase on top. No word yet on what the salary will be, but I'm not here for the money at this point.

On top of that, I should be getting a small raise when I get bumped to salary in a couple of weeks. Plus all the management staff is getting a raise after the first of the year. In the meantime, I'm still making alright money, and I'm still working seven days a week. I had a day off yesterday for the first time in two weeks. We finally raised another keyholder, so we all get at least one day off a week starting as soon as Dave comes back from LA next week.

In non-work news, things are pretty much the usual. I'm dating a girl I met pretty much completely at random, and that's going very well. Got a free gym membership, so I've been working out. The guy that hooked up the membership wants me to work with him on some very marketable sales-oriented software, so I'm thinking about that. Probably going to be writing some software for my own retail management system at work, too. The Microsoft RMS software is pretty good, but it's very general-purpose, and the backend management stuff is okay, but that's about it. A lot of things that I don't need in a specialized case like this.

11 days to go until vacation time. Taking three and a half days off to go back to the home town and visit for my birthday. I'll be in the Rochester/Olympia area the 22nd and 23rd. I'll be heading down to Toledo on the 24th, and then catching a train back to Seattle the evening of the 25th. If you're going to be around while I'm in town, get ahold of me.

The kidney strikes back

2006-10-02T23:24:12Z

There was screaming, there was crying, even some pain induced vomiting. In the end, the stone is gone.

I feel like I should be listening to Eye of the Tiger or something. I am a fucking tank.

Kidney stones

2006-10-02T01:19:38Z

I am swimming in a sea of percocet and cranberry juice.

Something like an update

2006-09-12T17:26:53Z

So where the hell have I been, anyway?

Well, I'm still living in the same place in west Seattle. I quit working at Sharper Image about two months ago now. In that period I started a new sales job with a very young company that's hitting a little bit different demographic in the men's clothing arena. In the seven weeks I've been there I've gone from part time sales to assistant manager, and there's some talk of store manager soon. The joys of getting in on the ground floor in a company that's going somewhere. I'm really enjoying my job. I'm not enjoying working seven days a week, though. >.> With college starting up and one of our employees being - quite literally - deathly ill, we're dealing with a serious shortage of employees. If you're in the Seattle area and need a job, come see me at Road in the Bellevue Square Mall. >.> Seriously, my next scheduled day off is the 29th. XD

Things are otherwise well. Getting a lot of reading done on my bus commute, and playing a lot of guitar on the days I don't just come home and crash. Playing EVE-Online again, too. I went to PAX a couple of weekends ago, and that was pretty awesome. Hung out with Uller and let my nerd out for a while. Got to hang out with Jerry (Tycho) and MC Frontalot a little bit. Got called a dick by Front's mom >.>

I'm currently working on putting together a new webcomic with a couple of friends. Once we get some things we want in place, we'll put it up somewhere and then you'll have to deal with me plugging it. Because I never use my LJ to plug things. >.>;; I have a birthday coming up, too. I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do, but I want to do something. I haven't done anything for my birthday since I was 15 or 16. There's likely to be a party at my apartment at some point in October, though. So if you're going to be in the area, get ahold of me. I've had a serious lack of seeing my friends lately. A lack of much real social interaction at all, really. Funny when you figure I work in retail.

I'll write more later. No, really.

There was some shit

2006-08-31T03:47:21Z

Jake: Shit, it lives
Sayoji: shit no shit?
Jake: Shit, shit
Sayoji: what the shit?
Jake: omgwtfbbqpandabearSHIT
Sayoji: polarbearshit is bigger
Sayoji: hmm

onel33tpanda @ 2006-07-18T00:01:00

2006-07-18T07:04:01Z

So it turns out the crazy bitch that propagated all of this drama for me recently with the impersonation is an ex-girlfriend that I cut off pretty abruptly and none too nicely. Typical Jake fasion for crazy bitches. Said ex has been "contacted" by the authorities. Pretty much planning to throw the fuck down on this one.

The good news is that I've been able to get ahold of pretty much everyone and get shit straightened out. Still waiting on messages back from a couple of people (call me, Lex), but I think I've managed to clean up the mess. E-mail me or call my cell, get in touch with me. I'm not really dead =/

Update

2006-07-17T08:07:55Z

I made a few phone calls to friends in various places, and managed to get my MSN account back. Messages from there (jake@nuwen.net) are legit now.

Some fucked up stuff

2006-07-17T07:46:45Z

So here's what's up. Someone stole my USB thumbdrive, which has my passwords (I know, stupid) for most everything on it. They've been masquerading as my younger brother, telling everyone that I died in a house fire last month. Most of you know this is complete bullshit, but someone just called me in tears because of this shit. From what I could gather from Chris, it's someone that knows me, and decently well. Where I'm from, where I work, my music, a lot of personal info.

The question you should be asking yourself is how you know if this is really me, or whomever is pretending to be me. Here's my cell number

206.817.4314

Call it, you'll get the real Jake. I have a new MSN, jake.mcknight@hotmail.com, at least until I can get MSN to give me the old account back. I still get my e-mail at jake@nuwen.net, but I can't log into MSN with that anymore. I also got my AIM back (they didn't change the password on that one for some reason). Please, get ahold of me.

I might just be a big fucking nerd

2006-06-15T03:25:38Z

Via text message:

Rick - What's up?

Me - I tried to call you, but caught an exception for non-working numbers.

I guess it's only funny if you're a coder. It's not really all that funny even then, but it made me giggle.

Six weird facts

2006-06-13T22:34:37Z

Got tagged by Gyg

1) I forget to eat all the damn time. I don't mean I ignore my stomach. I completely forget to eat.

2) I have completely anti-social hobbies that I spend almost all of my time on, but I hate being alone.

3) I'm actually nervous as fuck around girls. I'm one hell of an actor.

4) I have no motivation. Like, at all.

5) I think myself in circles all the time. Always trying to analyze every little thing.

6) I'm obsessed with dissecting systems and understanding them.

Not all that interesting.

Tag: Caol, Ebetha, Asp, Arashiz, Ali

Random interjection

2006-06-09T10:03:47Z

I want to dream
Like we used to
In full color
Numbly watching ourselves consumed
Agony engulfing endlessly
These arrogant, stoic,
Disillusioned puppets
How we envied
Their resolution
But the stereo echo
Of your voice
Kept such celestial beings
In skyward homes
Asymptotic orbit
Kept our hands free
From falling moons
And collapsing stars
Bringing that luminescent aggressor
To chase somnolent comforts
Open your eyes
Share this with me
Awake is the new dream

Was the body found?

2006-05-11T03:50:39Z

So I'm all moved into the new apartment, as you can see. Things are moving along. I've had a million things crop up that have needed my more or less immediate attention, so I haven't had a chance to tackle things that I should have had finished months ago >.< I know I've gotten a whole mess of shit done, but I feel like I'm not going anywhere because none of the big stuff is out of the way. Hell, none of the medium stuff is out of the way. I really, really need to hammer out a metric fuckton of code. Other peoples' shit is riding on my shoulders right now, and I'm not getting it taken care of like I should. I'm sorry, guys.

In less depressing, self-motivational news: I'm dating someone again. It completely snuck up on me, too. That's where the awkward drunken hilarity comes in. Ali (my new roommate) has this friend, Katie. Katie came over last Wednesday with a bunch of booze to hang out, have a little "house warming". The three of us got really drunk, and Katie and I ended up hooking up. It just kind of progressed from there. Everyone is still adjusting to the whole thing, but I'm sure it'll all be fine.

Went to Bremerton yesterday and spent the day with my brother. Crashed at his place and then caught the ferry back home to spend the rest of my afternoon with Katie and Ali. Made an okay dinner. Tried my hand at chicken fettucini alfredo, but the alfredo sauce didn't turn out as well as I had expected. Oh well, the girls liked it, and it'll be better next time.

=o

2006-05-06T02:59:27Z

I'm all moved in. Hilarity ensues. Drunken hilarity.

Moving

2006-04-30T03:52:02Z

Moving to the new apartment tomorrow, so I'll be without internet for at least a handful of days. Feel free to call my cell.