“Explain Later…”

In regards to the last post where I said I’d explain later… I planned on explaining it, but since I wrote that post around 3am Sunday morning and got a phone call BEFORE noon in reference to being suicidal you can piss off… it’s not worth expanding on since that fuckhead will probably call them on me again. Just for the record, I’m not suicidal, I have NEVER been suicidal, and NEVER will be suicidal… sure I have many issues with depression and have gotten to the point where I had thought about it before but would NEVER act on those thoughts as I know that no matter what shit I’m dealing with, things HAVE to get better at some point, some how.

College

Let’s kind of jump to the beginning for those that don’t read my blog or those unfamiliar with online based colleges in the United States. When I was diagnosed with Cancer in Jan. 2007 they pulled me out of work and left me with nothing to do, except of all the doctor appointments… Part of the cancer treatment caused an issue known as “Chemo Fog” that pretty much destroyed my short term memory so I can’t really remember a lot of what I did for the first year or so, other than doctors, but in Sep. 2008 I decided since I still can’t work I should try college to help with the boredom and since it was after I already suffered the spinal damage a traditional “Brick and Mortar” college was out and IADT was the second online college I looked at and decided it’d be the best for me. I started working on my Associates degree in Oct. 2008. I would have graduated already but I kind of fucked up 2 classes and took 3 months off last summer for medical leave, so instead my final two classes end Oct. 2nd this year so I assume my actual graduation would be sometime in Oct. (just before my 30th birthday on Oct. 28th).
A quick refresher on how classes work at this school is that they take the typical 11 to 13 week class and compress it into 5 weeks so in this environment you screw up or get behind you’re pretty much fucked. The plus side to this however is that they alternate where you have a single class (like now) and then two classes together, back and forth.
Now let’s jump to present day, I’m almost at the end of Unit 4 (week 4) of my current class; 3D Modeling & Animation; so that will end on the 5th of June, but although I did great the first two units/weeks of class, the Professor seems to have a ‘teaching style’ that doesn’t exactly match anything I remotely call useful and even after talking to a friend that knows his way around 3D Studio Max (the software we use for this class) and reading numerous tutorials online I still can’t get a certain ‘feature’ to work that the Professor says I need to have on my current project before I’m allowed to submit it… I’m going to give it one last try than fuck it, I’ll submit without it and if he docks my grade too much I’ll just bitch because it’s bullshit.
Anyway, the ‘icing’ on the cake, once I finish this damn class (as long as I don’t fail) I’ll have a weekend off and start two of my final five classes, then a 16 day break, another class, a weekend off, then the final two classes that I mentioned above that end the beginning of Oct.

Three parter… 1 Rant, 1 Not, Some Images

Conversation with a friend… (Not a rant)

I was talking to a friend of mine online late Monday night/early Tuesday morning and I talked about a local place called “The Face”. I haven’t been up there since last Aug. and told her that I would go by the end of the week to take some photos and maybe some video for her. I was supposed to have a class at 11am Tuesday and the Professor needed to cancel it 20 minutes before it was supposed to start, so I decided I’d pop a pain pill and take the long uphill hike to get her some photos.

My stupidity and my family (The Rant)

Well, for some damn reason, after going up there on and off for 20+ years I couldn’t seem to keep the trails straight so the roughly 30 minute hike took me over an hour to get up there and my legs, back, arm, and a few other places have hurt a SHIT load since. Now, where does the heading fall into this? The stupidity was going on this hike in 80-90º weather and taking way longer than it should… The family part… well, my Grandmother (on my Mom’s side) meant the world to me while she was alive (she passed in 2001) and has continued to change my life. When she passed, apparently her request was that her ashes be released at The Face, which my family honored and my Uncle took care of. Now the reason for mentioning these two things together is that I’ve been to The Face on average a few times a year and it wasn’t until the day AFTER my last visit up there that anyone bothered to tell me that my Grandmother’s ashes were up there. If I had known, it wouldn’t really change much, but I would have had a static place in mind where I could go when I just wanted to remember or be with her.
Rest In Peace Dorothy.

The Images

MySQL, PHP, IIS, AD, and a few others

So the server I talked about a few posts ago decided that although I had automatic “Windows Updates” turned off it would do them anyway and one of them managed to break the MySQL/PHP integration I had in IIS 7.5 so as I repaired that Active Directory decided to randomly lose information on two of my systems. Anyway, I’ll keep this short, since I was already running out of room on the server (it had about 4.5TB of hard drive space and 6GB of RAM) I ordered another 6TB of hard drive space and stuck another 2GB of RAM in and realized I needed a larger power supply to accommodate the extra hard drives which I picked up, but now that I have all the new hardware it no longer fits into the Server Tower Case I had everything else in, which leads me to the last rant of this post….

Best Buy

Best Buy offers two different forms of “Best Buy Cards” one with a MasterCard logo, one without. I have a card with them (the one without a MasterCard logo) and figured I might as well go to there website and order a new Case for the server… I found a really slick case I want that is mainly designed for ‘show’ but more importantly will fit ALL the hardware. I add the case to my cart and figured, what the hell, I’ll get some other random shit while I’m at it and added two other items to my cart… now here’s the reason to bitch. Out of the three items in my cart, one of them (the case) was marked internet only and the other two gave me the choice to pick them up in the store if I wanted. I decided I’d have all of it shipped to me and save me the 50+ mile drive to the closest Best Buy store, I continued through checkout and made it to the last step to find out that although they have BOTH cards listed as valid payments they do NOT except the card I have for any online purchases. I contacted the phone number on their site and asked what the suggestion was since they claim the card can only be used in store, but the case, which was my main objective, is only available online. The lady was nice although the ‘resolution’ was beyond crap.
They pretty much said to get the hardware I want/need using my Best Buy branded card I have to drive the 50+ miles to go to the store, use my card to purchase a gift card for a minimum of $5 above the total (with shipping) of the order and than ask if they will allow me to use their internet in store (which they are NOT required to do if they want to be dicks about it) to place the online order with the gift card. If they don’t allow me to use their internet in store I’d be stuck having to drive all the way home to order online since I don’t really know of any places with public internet in that area. Now, for those thinking “Why not just buy a Best Buy gift card at Walmart or some other location?” and the reason I can’t do that is because the whole point is to charge all of this hardware to the Best Buy card in the first place. Fuck it, if they don’t allow me to use their internet I guess I could just tether my iPad to my Android based cell phone in their parking lot and order it that way, but that’s not the point either… what a waste of gas… I think if I don’t find this case somewhere else, this may be the last time I buy anything from Best Buy… not that losing $5000+ a year in sales just from me would hurt their overall business, it should help one of their competitors.