Benfalk Blog

Today was a pretty descent day.  Late last night before I went to bed I pulled out one of my sticks of memory and my computer system seems to be running a bit more stable now, but it still locks up on me… so at least I can use my computer over the weekend, just not for gaming — which really, I haven’t been doing for some time now.

Work went by pretty fast for me.  I did the old “Eight and skate” to get through the Friday so I could get my run in after work with as much sun light as possible =) .  I set up one of my buddies from work with there own blog site, and tomorrow I’ll probably help him get it started. His site is www.samiamrunning.com.

As I was running around the cemetery today I couldn’t help but notice the same lady who comes in and sits down by a grave a couple times a week =( .  The next time I see her out there I think I’m going to ask her if she is okay and if she wants any coffee or something and I can go get some.  It makes me feel bad to see her as she’s been frequenting that plot for over a month now…

I have some big plans for the weekend.  Tomorrow I want to go into work and get caught up on as much as I can and then help my buddy with this blog.  I’ll finish out the day *hopefully* working on that user library for CodeIgniter.  As for tonight, I’m going to try and finish chapter 7 of my C++ book.

Today was a mixed bag, but I’m going to have to say it sucked =( .  I managed to make some descent headway with my kiosk project today; however, my day was riddled with interruptions and I’m going to have to take a day to get caught up on other things on my board.  I am going to go in Saturday and get caught up as much as possible.

My day got worse when I realized I couldn’t run tonight because I had to take some stuff down to my mom for her to take to my youngest brother in Maryland where he is stationed…. but that wasn’t the worst part of my day yet.

He's dead Jim!

The worst part of my day was this!  I’m not sure when I did it, whether it was last night after Lucas left or this morning.  But I was playing around in the bios overclocking my system here and there.  When I got back from dropping off that stuff to my mom my screen saver for Linux was locked solid, which I have never seen before =( .  Lucas came over and tried to play Warhammer on my computer and it dropped to desktop twice, blue screen of death’ed (BSOD) once, and dropped strait back to the bios for the last attempt.  I reset the bios back to factory defaults just to make sure but it was to no avail.  I ran a memory test and behold…. it’s dead <sigh>.  I’ve order new memory from NewEgg but it won’t be in probably until some time next week, going to snag some from my computer at work until then so I can at least use it and see if the memory is the only thing bad in it.

On a slight plus note, my user library for CodeIgniter is coming along well . . . .

Today was a fair day.  I was rushed for awhile this morning trying to take care of some problems that I had managed to put off until today.  I worked on some pretty intense code logic today and made some pretty good strides on some of my miscellaneous code for some of my projects at work.

At some point after lunch today one of the people from engineering came down with a C# VB problem which I tried to help him with.  I was looking at his code and ended up comparing it to some sample code I found on google and it seemed like it should be working but it never would…  It turns out that his problem was .NET does not like running programs from anywhere but your local system.  Once he saved his project on his local system instead of the file server it worked just fine =) .

I ended up going to Pizza Hut after work to eat at the Wednesday pizza buffet with Lucas and in some ways I wish I wouldn’t have gone, but oh well.  I am curious to see how the grease from the pizza effects my running tomorrow.  I worked on my library some tonight, but mainly ended up watching Lucas play Warhammer, an MMORPG that is made by the same company that claimed a good five to six years of my life that I am now trying to reclaim =\ .  I don’t want to get sucked into another game like Camelot, pray for me.

Today wasn’t the greatest day for me.  It started off bad when I waited almost forty minutes to vote this morning… which has never happened before.  I’m assuming a lot more people showed up to vote this year than in years past as the people running the voting booth seemed overwhelmed by the mass turnout.  I don’t plan on staying up and waiting to see who wins the presidential race, I think I’ll just check tomorrow morning when I get to work and make it a surprise.  Just so I could say I did, I am predicting Obama wins.

For some reason it seemed like I was in a battle with myself most of the morning.  I kept wanting to code some miscellaneous odd ends for some work projects I have cooking in my head, but I stayed the course and hopefully finished my “Linux FireFox Kiosk” system for work!

I left work at 4 today so i could get back with plenty of sunlight and ran 10.2 miles tonight.  My legs felt great the whole time and I’m pleased with the absence of pain in my joints right now =) .  I was hoping to work on my user library some more tonight but I feel extremely tired…. I think I am going to take a nap and see how I feel after that; I suspect I’ll wake up from my nap and go to bed though =D .

EDIT: I ended up tagging along on a trip to WalMart where I got the following items haha…

My WalMart Items

Today was on okay but frustrating day.  I was working on some code logic at work today that had me puzzled most of the day.  Near the end of the day the topic of “yesterday” came up and I thought back to when I had the opportunity to make a choice and go further out for college and study game programming at some place like Westwood.  Instead I didn’t… I puddled around at a local college and just scooted by, barely walking away with a two year degree in computer networking =\ .  If anyone where to ask for my advice on college my advice would be this, if you are not fairly sure what you want to do after high school DON’T go to college strait out of high school just because everyone else is.  Sit out for a year or two and work some tedium job and wait until you find something that grabs your interest.  Maybe it’s bad advice, but it’s the advice I am offering anyone reading this.

Enough on “yesterday”, had to get my two-cents advice in for the day I guess.  I’m still working on that user library for CodeIgniter.  I’m going to try and dedicate three hours to it tonight, but I probably won’t finish it yet tonight… good and bad at the same time.  Good in the fact that it’s going to be fairly robust with quite a few features and options; but, bad in the fact it’s just going to take longer to code out and test!

I spent the first hour when I got home working on my upper body.  Did the bench-press and curls and before I go to bed tonight going to see how many crunches I can crack off.  I will say on the plus side my knees feel pretty good for just having ran 15 miles yesterday =) .

I had a fantastic day.  Today was the rollback for daylight savings time, so an extra free hour of sleep was an awesome start to the day =) .  Right when I woke up I felt energized and ready for a run; which I missed yesterday.  I changed into running clothes.  Made a half coffee, half milk drink and put it in my “Livestrong” thermos, grabbed my iPhone and weights and off I went.  I did my first half a mile out to the cemetery with my two five pound weights to get me warmed up a bit faster and shed them as soon as I started my first loop.  Originally I had only intended to do eight loops which would have put my distance at 11.4 miles or so, but I opted to do ten loops for a total just under 15 miles today =) .

When I returned from my run I changed into different clothes, ate a big helping of pasta with tuna and veggies, and proceeded to drift in and out of sleep on my futon for the next couple of hours.  My right leg hurts, similar to how it did after last Sunday’s run, but nowhere near as painful.  I have been stretching about every three hours or so today and doing ten minute icings on it.  I’m hoping when I wake up tomorrow it will be feeling even better.

When I finally got to the point where I could stay awake without feeling tired I began working on my user library for CodeIgniter again.  My goal was to have it finished last night, and I would have been; however, I decided to change how it works in some pretty drastic ways which I believe will give the library more versatility. I have been working on the library for about two hours total today and I’m still not done with it… my new scheduled release date to the world is tomorrow night hopefully of just the raw library.  I want to also put together an “installer” package developers can use to easier incorporate it into their systems.

I read about 15 pages in my C++ book today.  I feel like my added time of working on my Hybertrofy project has slowed down my reading time… but ohh well.  Before I go to bed tonight I hope to get some more blocks of code hammered out in my user library =) .

Side Note :: I bought this shirt from shirt.woot.com today

The Walrus vs The Eggmen

Today was a pretty great day.  Mom called my brother early this morning and said that we didn’t need to come down today to clean up around the house as she was going to be visiting our grandma who was sent home from the hospital today =) .  Lucas and Mason left for Lucas’ place to watch some Ernest movies, so I elected to stay back and read some more in my C++ book.  I am about half way though chapter 7.

At 3pm Lucas came to pick me up for one of my cousin’s weddings today.  The wedding was fairly average and we got a chance to talk to our uncle Dave who just came back from an elk hunt in Colorado.  Unfortunately he didn’t get bag one =( .  On the spot I made the final decision to host the annual LAN party we have the day after Thanksgiving and told him to make plans for it !  He is having problems with his computer from home so after we left the wedding reception we made a quick pit stop by his place to pick up his PC.  I plan on fixing it tomorrow, but it sounds like some of the boot files for Windows XP are corrupted.

Tonight I have been working on the same user library for CodeIgniter.  I am going to stay up tonight until I get it finished, or at least well laid out and ready to document.