Poor ol' Michael doesn't have a personal homepage or anything, so the nice guys of the cyberworld let him have his own little place here. The spewings here may or may not have anything to do with Legend of the Red Dragon. They are nothing more than Michael's little rants and raves about who knows what and updated whenever he has something to say (which is usually about once a month).
And still he rambles on...
Webnesday, March 29th, 2000, 4:15am
Ahh.. The good ol' rambling page. Ya know, its funny. The first ramble page
I did started out as me redo-ing the index.html .. I got pissed off about
something or another, and just started typing.. Next thing I know, I had
typed a good 3 pages worth. I thought, "Why not?", cleaned it up, and dumped
it on the site.
The wierd thing.. Seems people actually look forward to updates on the
ramble page.. Not sure why.. <shrug> .. I very rarely say anything
about Lord here since this would be my "personal" page, complete with
disclaimer. Ah well. Suppose its similar to the whole webcam fad.. You want
to get into someone else's life and be able to close it when ever you feel
like.. (yup, Im into webcams too..)
So whats new.. Lets see.. Im incredibly bored up here. Theres always
something happening here in the office.. Some new project getting started
while another is being finished up.. Had a tech meeting yesterday, and I got
2 more projects added to my list. Well, I get to finish these projects for
the people that started them.
And Ive decided that Im not going to work the 9-5 shift anymore. Oh, Ill be
here in the office during those hours. I just wont be working. Always seems
that during those hours, while everyone else is here, I'm getting pulled in
a million different directions, answering a hundred questions, and having
eveyr part of my brain picked.. Soo, Ill just wait until everyone leaves so
I can get some of my own work done.. <grin>
Speaking of my own work.. If you have a subscription to the INETLibrary, you've seen some of my
work recently. Weve got a contract with Screaming
Media. They ftp into one of our machines, upload current news items, and
then go away. I got to write a little bot that imports those items into a
database, and then produce html's of each item.
Ive worked on several other things as well, but nothing as big. Ive stayed
busy fine tuning other projects, finishing others, or acting as "consultant"
to the other techs (aka answering "how do I..." questions..). Weve recently
opened a remote office in Omaha. I get to train them. This would be the
second team Ive trained. The first team has already finished 2 projects per
person, and theyve been "set free" for about a month now. Spose its a good
thing that theyve produced more work than I have after I trained them. (isnt
it? <g>
As you can tell, work's good. Ive always got something to do, Im constantly
under pressure to learn something new, always challenged.. Thats the hardest
thing to do nowadays.. To stay interested in your work.
Outside of work, however, things are lots different. Ive struck out on the
dating scene (not that Im looking anyways.. wait, thats the sour grapes
theory..) Theres absolutely nothing to do for fun. Well, if I wanted to pay
$200 a semester, I could get involved with the local college radio program
(they have computer courses.. but for some reason, i dont think theyd have
anything to teach me. and im not going to spend a lot of good money for a
bad class).. Ah well. Looks like Ill just drink a bit more coffee, read
another book (been reading a lot of the AD&D books lately), and
get s'more coding done.
As you might have seen, there has been a lot of changes here on the site.
Well, nothing directly noticeable. Ive moved everything to my own server and
domain name (Thanks Justin for hosting me for so long). Ive been doing some
CGI work for the site..
Ive got a download counter.. This will help me (as well as everyone else)
keep track of how many times something has been downloaded, and thus if
something is popular or not.
Ive got a usernews.cgi.. This allows other people, besides myself, to post
news to the news page here on the site. Why would people want to do that?
Apparently, this site is rather busy. The counters are continuously being
used.. heh.. So why not post your news in a place where everyone already
goes to instead of trying to pull them to another corner of the internet?
Thats another reason to use my usernews.cgi .. All the Lord stuff on the net
is all over the place.. Why not have it in one central place? ("because,
michael, that makes sense..." <g>)
Ive got one other CGI that I can think of at the moment (Im sure there
are others, Ive just forgotten them).. thatd be an igm rater / lister / thing Click there, and
youll see an example.
Theres other things, but well, if i told all my secrets, Id have nothing
to tell you next time. (Wait. this is michael were talking about. hes so
full of hot air, he'd easily have something to say)
all of the fun things Im working on for the Lord site will be done for
the Lord2 and Teos sites as well. Everyone should contact Bobby Queen and
tell him to let me "adopt" his Lord2IGM site (the whole central location
idea again.. Not to mention, I could find some volunteers to help maintain
it)
Something else.. If, by some freak of nature, you're able to get in contact
with the author of an old IGM.. As in, the guy stopped supporting /
developing / doing registrations a long time ago.. Tell him to contact me.
Why should he? Ive got an idea thatd be good for his igm, my site, the
people that wanna register the programs.. What if I could offer
registrations for the various "deadware" igms from the site? That way, he
doesnt have to hand out his source code to everyone. The public gets a
registered version. I could ask a few questions (Name, bbs name, etc) to
help keep track of where all the program is being used. Etc. See? Told ya
it was a good idea. Now to get these deadware authors to go for it.
And as you might have noticed.. Lord 4.05 public beta has been released.
So far, things have gone incredibly smooth. Ive received a few bug reports..
But not for 4.05pb (yay!). If you send an email to
e_maus@covingtononline.com with a subject of "send me lord" (no double
quotes), my email bot will send you the latest lord exe's as well as any
other goodies I have waiting (new menusets, etc) .. The bug reports Ive
gotten so far have been for these snapshot exe's. (Hey guys, sorry for the
display problems. Ive been cleaning those routines up, and tweaking them)
More Good News Its been approved. Ill be "adopting"
Lord2 and Teos as well. (Ya didnt think I had lord2 and Teos sites for
nothing, eh?) The contracts have yet to be signed, but Im sure they will be
soon.
Quick query.. Theres a picture of me floating around on the net thats a
good 5-6 years old.. Want to see a newer one? One thats about 2 weeks old?
Then click here. Theres 3 computers
there.. 2 in the picture. The one on the right is the webserver.. The one in
the middle (the one with the broken webcam sitting on it) is my work
machine.. Theres another (to the left of the phone) thatd be my ol' dos box.
the Lord-Lord2-Teos-bbs box. See that white coffee cup? Ill drink 3 or 4 of
those a day. Each time, filled with 3 shots of expresso, a little hersey's
syrup, and some milk (aka a triple shot mocha) .. (quick did you know: Ive
had red eyes in every picture ive been in for the past 8 years.. Its true!)
Welp, thats plenty of rambling for now. Ive got a search engine to build
for the inetlibrary thats gotta be done by morning :)) Enjoy!
--Michael, 5:00am