Benfalk Blog

Needless to say…. today was a mixed bag for sure.  Work was okay today, I spent most of the day preparing a PC for the owner, which didn’t bug me really as I guess I could use a break from some of the coding projects I have been working on.

Through the day I kept eyeing a monitor on NewEgg that I couldn’t resist.  Acer G24 Monitor Specs Needless to say, I eventually broke down and bought one; which I know I shouldn’t have done but I really want to get one.  To justify it I am going to try and find some odd end paying jobs I can pick up to leverage the unexpected cost I put on myself.  After awhile I had no regret of buying the monitor and even now I still don’t have any regret.  When I got home tonight however I began to second guess myself as a real unexpected cost has cropped up =( .  My system is still unstable!!!  We put my old memory in my brothers computer and ran the memory test and my old memory is fine.  Low and behold as well, I am getting memory errors with my new ram.  I put my old Phenom processor in the motherboard and ran the memory tests again to see if they would return and sure enough they did.  I ordered a new motherboard for my system as that is the only other thing right now I can think of that is bad.  So as of tonight I have spent a good chunk of money that I shouldn’t really be spending as the economy is doing terrible right now…

On the plus side, I will be done with my user library tomorrow I’m pretty sure.  I’ve been working on it with my laptop as it is doing fine job of a stand in sitting on top of my computer case.  I have a 15.8 mile race tomorrow morning so I’m heading to bed at 10:20 tonight.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a rewarding day for me.

PS: My faith in AMD is wavering and has completely died with MSI… I think my next system is going to be Intel and ASUS based.

Today was a pretty interesting day.  I was tired most of the day due to not going to bed early last night as I had planned.  I was lured to stay away and help my room mate with some PHP code he’s working on for one of his classes.  I told him the follies of too much embedded PHP code and I personally cannot stand it.  Right after lunch I found out I get to visit our Canada plant to oversee the installation of some new equipment.  I didn’t do any coding today as I was swamped working on computers.

When I got home from work I went for a run in the cemetery while listening to Pink Floyd on my iPhone.  I only did 8.8 miles tonight, but I was working on my speed again.  I used a GPS program on my phone to measure my distance, time, and pace on my last lap. I averaged a 9 mph pace for 1.35 miles, which had me pretty happy =) .

– Depressing side note, my system is showing signs of instability, done posting for tonight. . .

Today was an okay day at work.  I spent a great deal of my time today chasing down problems users were having here and there.  As pointed out by my brother this morning I had to renew my license before him and I could rent a vehicle; which we are planning to do so we can drive to Maryland to pick up our youngest brother for Thanksgiving.  Over my lunch time I drove down to the local DMV to renew my nearly one month expired license.  I was shocked at how fast I was in and out of the place! =)

When I got back I still had fifteen minutes of lunchtime left and was pleased to find that the memory I had ordered showed up today !!!  I thought and worried about my ram in my computer off and on since my system started becoming unstable.  I wanted so badly to rush home after work and test it out but I knew it had to wait.  As such, immediately following work Lucas and I headed to Enterprise to rent our vehicle.  From our online scouting we had it priced at about 25 dollars a day; unfortunately, the dingle berry who was helping us told another story.  He told us it would be cheaper to rent it for the whole week and that it was going to be about $260 =\ .  Dumb-founded, we left with talk of returning tomorrow on our decision.  When we got back to my place we popped on the Internet and came to the conclusion that the guy was trying to get us to rent a luxury car instead of the standard that we indicated.  I think tomorrow I’m going to just schedule the renting of the car online and skip the renting salesman.

I am happy to report that after the new ram was put into my computer it hasn’t glitched, crashed, or stalled yet! =)  I’m going to shut it down and start up a memory test and head to bed early to get caught up on my sleep…

Today wasn’t that great of a day.  The memory I ordered from New Egg didn’t come in today.  I checked the tracking number to see where it was and boy was I astounded…  It started in Edison, NJ via DHL and actually went past Fort Wayne to a town in Illinois =( .  From there it was tendered from DHL to the tried and true, fifteen paid vacation days a year, USPS.  Of course today is Veteran’s Day so, “No Ram For You!”  Oh well, hopefully I’ll have it by this Thursday, or by some miracle tomorrow.

When I got home I started working on my user library yet again.  While I was at work I had an idea to segment and break apart the library a bit by segmenting the functionality into separate classes and so far it has really helped.  I was working away on that until Lucas stopped by.  Apparently he went over a speed bump too hard and now oil is leaking out of his car at an alarming rate =( .  He drove it down home to check things out and didn’t realize how bad it was until he got down there and ended up taking our youngest brother’s car home as it’s available for the time being.  I felt bad for him as I could tell how upset and worried he was about it.  I’m hoping it’s something simple we can solve on our own.

I guess for the most part my day was a blurred, disapointing waste =\ .  Oh well, always tomorrow right?

Here is an update on my Top Knot.

The Knot on Top

Today was descent for a Monday.  Coming into work with a clean cubicle and a better list of things I need to get done this week really helped a lot.  I worked on a couple minor code segments to a web display system for most of the morning.  After lunch I fought phone calls and did some miscellaneous gopher work.

Strait from work I headed to WalMart to get some week supplies of tuna, veggies, and pasta.  When I got home I changed into running gear and did some speed work on my treadmill.  I started out doing a quarter of a mile at 5mph pace to warm up my muscles then did quarter miles runs from paces varying between 8 - 10 mph.  After 2.75 miles of speed treadmill work work threw on a sweatshirt, sock hat, and light gloves to do some real speed work outside =) .

My outside speed work consisted of all out sprints which totalled distances of about an 1/8 of a mile or so, followed by a minute walk, 3 minutes of jogging, stretching, repeat.  After my legs were jello-fied I ducked into the apartment workout room and did some leg lifts to help break apart my leg muscles some more to hopefully bulk them up a bit more to get some more distance speed under me.

Since my run I have been working on my seemingly never ending user library project haha.  I’m going to try my best to finish up the library tonight with the aid of some of the best green tea three dollars can buy =) .

$3.00 Green Tea!

I’m not sure where the day went =\ .  I woke up at 7:30 this morning and was hoping to get a run in, but the rainy weather with temperatures in the mid thirties all day kept me from doing any such thing =( .  I ended up watched Lucas play Warhammer for about a half hour or so, then we went down to our parents house to take a vent fan out of their attic for the winter.  That was pretty much an in and out operation; we where back in Fort Wayne by about 12:30 .  I spent the next couple hours finishing up the base of my user library !!  I am still going through it to do some bug checking and probably over lunch tomorrow I’ll post it up.  Then, in a couple days I’ll through up a back-end admin interface to it.

I tried to finish chapter seven of my C++ book today, as I did not finish it on Friday like I was hoping to… but again I have failed.  I fell asleep for about 3 hours while Lucas and Vince continued to venture through the world of Warhammer.  When I woke back up I skimmed through my user library code and put in some extra functions to automate some common tasks and then found myself skimming through YouTubes.

After Lucas packed up his computer and left for home Mason and I played a couple rounds of “Magic The Gathering,” a strategy card game that I used to be into BIG TIME.

Blue & Black Lockdown Deck

Here is snapshot of the cards in my favorite blue and black deck I built back in college.  If you know any mechanics to the game, this deck locked down an opponent and won by take away their card pile hehe. The cards from left to right, top to bottom :  Scalpelexis, Polluted Delta, Isochron Scepter, Obsessive Search, Volrath’s Stronghold, Circular Logic, Boomerang, Counterspell, Merfolk Looter, Careful Study, Tainted Isle, Planar Void, Propaganda, Web of Inertia, Mist of Stagnation, Sapphire Medallion, Tormod’s Crypt, Island, Swamp.

Today was a pretty nice day.  I got a lot cleaned up at work this morning and didn’t have anyone bothering me as it was Saturday =) .  I gave Sam a quick crash course on how to use WordPress and where to look for new templates for his site.  When I got home I noticed there was pieces of egg and pumpkin all over our porch and I was pretty upset about it.  What makes it worst is I am sure who did it; these two snot noised kids who need disciplined like nobodies business.  I saw them last night playing with a metal broom stick beating up a pumpkin and I found that same broom stick on my porch this morning.  Next time I see them they are going to hear from me.

My room mate Mason wanted to go to the Asian store to get some pork noodles so I tagged along to check it out.  I got 100 pack of Jasmine green tea for $2.90, which is a heck of a good deal.  Lucas however didn’t like the store, he was literally on the verge of barfing a couple times.  After the Asian store we went a mini epic to Best Buy and WalMart looking for some cheap GameCube games and to my surprise they are not being sold anymore =( .  When we got home I made quite a bit of headway with the user library for CodeIgniter, I really hope to have it finished by tomorrow night!  Around 4:30 or so in the afternoon I fell asleep for three hours.. which is just what I needed to refresh my train of thought.

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.