Shattered Reality

This comic pretty much says it all….Mario Party always did have those quirky things that just pissed me off so much that I wouldn’t even feel like looking at the game’s case for the months to come.

I’m pretty sure part of my first paycheck is going to pay for this. I’d also like a high-definition TV, to pay off my car and school loans, a new camera, some lighting equipment, and who knows what else.

My mom just got back from the VA Hospital after meeting with her brothers and sisters and doctors over the condition of my grandfather. I don’t know his age, but he fought in the Korean War when he was still very young. He has suffered with Multiple Sclerosis for most of his life, inhibiting him to a wheel chair for countless years. My mom grew up hearing from doctor’s that he may not be around in the years to come; she is now 42 years old and he’s still with us, but is now slipping quickly.

By all definitions of MS, most of its victims would have died years and years ago, but my grandfather has kept his grasp on life, maintaining enough strength to hang on. He has resided in the Veteran’s Hospital (VA) for most of my teen years, and at 20 years old I now see the MS taking what life he has left. What the MS does is it shuts down his body over time; on top of it, he suffers from heavy depression and dementia, which is like an early form of Alzheimer’s. Sometimes he has what seems to be a full recollection of those around him who come to visit and things that happened 15 years ago; and then there are times like today where he doesn’t recognize any of his sons or daughters, some of whom he sees on a rather frequent basis.
The doctors say that he may not still be with us five months from now, and there really is nothing that can be done to help him at this point. The MS has affected his swallowing greatly, so all of his food must now be pureed. My grandfather has always said that he never wanted to be put on feeding tubes, but that say even that wouldn’t help at this point.

The next course of action I’m told is that everyone will have to start planning for funeral arrangements, and the other necessities that go along with the passing of a loved one. One of the saddest things in all of this is never having that grandpa figure in my life; I hardly remember my grandpa before he was in a wheelchair and living in nursing homes or the hospital, and my father’s father died when I was only a few years old. I never grew up with a great-grandfather in my life, either, and the same will be true for my children. I won’t be able to bring my newborn child to my grandpa and watch as his eyes shine and his face lights up with a smile at the proof of being a great-grandfather.

Yes, it’s true. A man shot a duck, injuring it in the wing and leg. Thinking it was dead, he took it home and put in it the fridge. Two days later, the man’s wife gets quite the scare when she opens the fridge and the duck lifts its head up. They proceeded to take the duck to the vet (yes, the vet) after having shot it with the intent of eating it two days earlier. The vet told them the duck probably survived due to its low metabolism.

Crazy.

So I thought I’d pop in and let everyone know that

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!

I know, I’m excited too! What job? Wow, someone hasn’t been reading since day one ;P I am the newest Web Developer at Layer One Media!!
I start next week Friday, which is good because in the mean time I can get myself as caught up as possible on ColdFusion by Adobe.

For those who have become annoyed by MySpace defaulting to Ireland for the main site (ex: IE.MySpace.com link at the top, Irish flag, etc), you just have to change your Preferred Site & Language.

To do so, follow these steps (it takes not even 30 seconds):

1. Log in (dur)
2. Click “Home” in the upper-left hand part of the part to return to your home page (where you see if you have new messages, comments, etc).
3. Underneath where it says “Welcome, [YOUR NAME]!“, right below Edit Profile, there’s a link that says Account Settings; click that. (Or you can try clicking this link to jump right to the page.)
4. Now scroll down, and the second to last option is Preferred Site & Language and it has a drop down menu to the right. Click the drop down menu and select www.myspace.com - English (or whatever your preferred site/language is).

That’s it, you’re done!

While you’re there, you might as well adjust your Time Zone setting if you haven’t done so already. I notice that a lot of people have goofy times on the messages in the inbox and comments and bulletins because they never set it to their correct time zone.

That’s all for this installment, kids!

So, I’m sure there has to be at least one person who’d like to see me go to this year’s php|tek PHP Conference, right? It’s only $750…..no? Damn it. I’ve wanted to go to one of these, ever since hearing about the PHP cruise some years back.

I’ve been super busy this past week getting my portfolio account on deviantArt up and going. After sorting through 11,000 some photos of mine, I narrowed down the best of the best and put them online, making many available for purchase as prints and other goodies.

You know what I get annoyed with myself over? Forgetting I have RSS feed subscriptions. I’ll boot up my laptop some days and realize that I haven’t checked the darn thing in a week or two, and as I’m subscribed to LifeHacker and Make Zine, I get quite a few items in there. So, I often find myself spending an hour or so pouring through all the new entries, catching up on the latest cool thing to do with your iPod or the newest way to stay productive (good for you college kids who get distracted while writing papers).

As of yet, I haven’t heard from Layer One Media, however last Friday they did e-mail me saying they were planning on making me an offer!! I’m really stoked on this, but as my friend points out, it’s not 100% until I walk in my first day. (Still excited, though!

I recently created a photography page of some of my very best work, which you can check out at:

http://www.myspace.com/shatteredrealityphoto

PLEASE, if you like my work, or just photography in general, check it out. If you like what you see, add me to your friend’s list and tell one of your friends about me. I’m also interested in constructive comments, so if you have intelligible feedback about my work, please let me know!

All the best!
Mike

You know what’s nice? Putting clothes on straight from the dryer. That’s nice. My house is usually so horrendously cold that any bit of “free” warmth is jumped upon, rope-tied, and used to keep me from an icy grave.

After learning about this GTD craze thanks to Hyaline Skies, I ventured out to Barnes and Noble today and picked up two Moleskines: one regular and one pocket-sized. For a while I have been in great need of a more organized way of keeping track of things; my current method of Post-It notes everywhere has started to take its toll. Save for the tabs, I have my pocket-sized GTD Moleskine all set up, but I’m still debating putting in my own tab for journal/blog entry ideas. I’m leaning toward not doing so simply because I have the larger Moleskine I picked up which will be used as my pen-and-paper journal, which I can always go to for blog ideas.

Today’s Tuesday, meaning tomorrow’s Wednesday… Do I get a gold star for that one? The reason I mention it is because I hope to find out tomorrow whether or not I landed that job at Layer One Media; I have confidence in how I did at my second (first in-person) interview. I know I sort of botched the first question, which was a hands-on display of how I would layout database tables for a store selling DVDs online. Considering I had roughly 7 seconds to think about it, I think I faired okay; that and I got bonus points for erasing it when I was done. The rest of the interview went well, and we saw eye-to-eye as far as salary requirements go, which always makes thing run smoother. I’ll keep everyone posted when I hear more.