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Quick note! Im going to host a small competition.. Ive been putting these ramblings up for almost a year now. I think its time someone else got a chance to speak. Send me your best rambling (max 5 pages), and Ill put the best one up here!


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