Archive for February, 2004
Monday, February 16th, 2004
Hey hey… have I ever mentioned school is a real pain in the ass? It’s like a thorn in your back and it’s at the exact place you can’t reach so it’s a bit difficult for you to try to take it out. It’s not a very sharp paint but it’s the slow-continuous-dull pain that doesn’t seem to go away.
Sometimes it tricks you into thinking it went away yet, you realize a bit afterwards that it’s something that you became used to so your mind nulls it out with normality. All up until the pain gets worse so we’re looking at like an infinite cycle of the same thing over and over again.
As everyone seems to be mentioning, past weekend was V-day… hope everyone had a good V-day weekend. I worked basically all Saturday – like I said before, work is like the only thing that I’m happy to deal with… isn’t that weird? I just can’t wait until I’m in the work force… but I can’t wait until I own my own business – at least, that is my goal for the future anyways.
What do I want to do after college? Welll…. I’d have to get a job to save some money, all the while, I work on building up my business plans and capital. Not sure of the timeframe for all these goals but certainly, I definitely won’t be doing the things that my friends here are dreaming of doing… such as research, working for huge international corporations, or anything else like that. You might ask: “What are you doing at Tech?” Well, if you’ve ever had a deep conversation with me, and not many have… you should know my feelings toward our society and how we have made it necessary to earn a college degree in order to be successful. I believe this to be untrue but it’s true that our society has made it a necessity… so I grew up believing in this and I have this idea that if I don’t get a college degree, my plans will fail horribly. So that’s why I’m here. 
hmm… maybe I need to work on an MBA or something since I seem to be working toward a business-oriented career?
Got a little sidetracked there… Anyways, back to my plans… while I work to save the money needed to fund a business, I’ll be formulating my business plans. I’ll definitely need to start relatively small since failure is a possibility but I’m hoping to have backup plans so I don’t screw myself over 
The industry that I’m planning to work in is very volatile… things can change abruptly although it hasn’t for the past decade or so. I guess these are the risks I am willing to take to reach my goal.
It’s not a far-fetched goal at all. It is very plausible and I am going to work towards it unless Tech introduces me to something that I actually like. Well… actually, there are far-fetched sides to my goals; I guess these are my dreams but again… I just need to take everything one step at a time and I can’t get too far ahead of myself.
Just for the record of my thoughts and preliminary plans… timeframe for this is probably before my late 20s. Wait wait… I forgot about my student loans I gotta pay off 
So hopefully before my 30s…
Don’t laugh 
Posted in School | No Comments »
Friday, February 13th, 2004
Umm… I’m having trouble sleeping lately. I go to bed relatively early and I find myself lying awake for hours. I think it’s stress.
I suck at stress-management. I feel like it is my downfall. I need to fix this soon…
Posted in My Life | No Comments »
Thursday, February 12th, 2004
Here’s the Super Bowl XXXVIII Commemorative Game Ball:
Uhhh, heh get it?!
Posted in Fun Stuff | No Comments »
Thursday, February 12th, 2004
Hhahaah, I found this on couple of GT xanga-er’s websites, so here it is… my top 15 places I should live:
1. Charlotte, NC (wow, home sweet home?)
2. Norfolk, VA
3. Richmond, VA
4. Hickory, NC (what da…)
5. Bergen-Passaic, NJ
6. Louisville, KY
7. Chesapeake-Virginia Beach, VA
8. Hampton, VA
9. Raleigh, NC
10. Durham, NC
11. Nashville, TN
12. Oklahoma City, OK
13. Chapel Hill, NC
14. Greenville, NC
15. Alexandria, VA
There were 24 cities/towns listed and 7 of them were in North Carolina. How bizarre is that…? Maybe where you grow up has a very high influence on what kind of place you want to live in. Heh, it listed Atlanta, GA as my 17th place and Roanoke, VA as the last place.
Posted in Time Out! | No Comments »
Sunday, February 8th, 2004
Disclaimer: The following is a joke, nothing but a joke – do not take offense to the joke. This actually lightened my otherwise crappy study night.
The Madam opened the brothel door to see a frail, elderly gentleman.
“Can I help you?” the madam asked.
“I want Natalie,” the old man replied.
“Sir, Natalie is one of our most expensive ladies, perhaps someone else?”
“No, I must see Natalie.”
Just then Natalie appeared and announced to the old man that she charged $1,000 per visit. Without blinking, the man reached into his pocket and handed her ten $100 bills. The two went up to a room for an hour, whereafter the man calmly left.
The next night he appeared again demanding to see Natalie. Natalie explained that no one had ever come back two nights in a row and that there were no discounts. It was still $1,000 a visit. Again the old man took out the money, the two went up to the room and an hour later, he left.
When he showed up the third consecutive night, no one could believe it. Again he handed Natalie the money and up to the room they went. At the end of the hour Natalie questioned the old man:
“No one has ever used my services three nights in a row. Where are you from?”
The old man replied, “I’m from Philadelphia.”
“Really?” replied Natalie. “I have family who lives there.”
“Yes, I know,” said the old man. “Your father died, and I’m your sister’s attorney. She asked me to give this $3,000 to you.”
Some things in life are certain: Taxes, death and being screwed by an attorney.
Posted in My Life | No Comments »
Friday, February 6th, 2004
Believe it or not, I used to do loads of design work for the web. This was, of course, prior to my webdev and sysadmin days… I think it really started back in the days when I started to work with MS Visual Basic 3. I’d spend so much time on making a gui for a program – making sure everything is perfectly aligned and well organized. I’d spend days on end, just sketching out a graphical interface; implement it – then stop working on the program itself. I remember working on this one email client – the GUI was beautiful. It was about 75% coded as well and major aspects of the program were beta’d to Mars and back! Again though, I never finished it but stored away the *.frm’s and *.bas’s I wish I still had those programs, I’ve never shown them to anyone except maybe when my sisters passed by me working on it… but they probably had no idea and no interest in it.
Anyways, got into HTML through Geocities. I saw someone have a web page and I thought: “Cool, I want one of those!” and made one in Freshmen year of high school. Then I realized my first web page (which sucked by the way), was just text placed in different colors and sizes. That was boring so I saw these graphically intense web sites and was like WOW. This is where Photoshop came in… tutorials and whatnot. Sitting and experimenting with photoshop – learning it’s powerful features that allowed me to create graphics.
Next logical step was… make pages for other people. Webmaster’d high school web site for couple of years. Between the Sophomore year I started and Senior year… my designing ability quadrupled. You should see the crappy web site I made for Myers Park High; they thought it was good and I even got some kind of award from Char-Meck Schools. Anyways, senior year, I realized how crappy my own creation was… so I made another design. I’ve worked on it on and off for a month or so… but Senior year got SO BUSY with IB orals & exams, college apps… blah! Not only that but I was helping a friend start a company earlier… which turned out to be a bad idea because he just ditched me (thanks alot, I learned a lot) with the non-profitting company with 4 employees. I was able to sell the remnants of the company for a very very minimal profit though (go me!)
Yes, so the new MPHS design you will see below was NEVER released or seen by anyone who would’ve motivated me to work on it for the benefit of my work and also the benefit of the school. The teacher who was in charge of my work as a webmaster would’ve been thrilled but I just never had the time to get it finished.
1) Some conceptual 3D work I did when I JUST started realizing pseudo-3D with photoshop was boring… shadows and highlights is overused so you need to either go with a completely 2D graphic or go all in into 3D. Don’t try mixing 3D with 2D unless you know what you are looking to get – I hated this combination because it was so… corny. Like I said, this 3D attempt was corny.
2) The Myers Park high school design I was talking about… the ‘design’ prior to this that I worked on as a Sophomore… hehe, was SO CRAPPY. But I got so many compliments for some reason… at least some of my friends were honest and told me it sucked. I actually think my OLD OLD design is more aesthetically pleasing then the current web site
3) TruePixel was a web development firm that I founded back in Freshmen year of high school. This site lasted… what… oh let’s say about 6 months before I got swamped by Tech. I’ve shut it down obviously but I did get quote requests and completed couple of designs under the TruePixel brand. I am hoping I can get this back up and running again… maybe hire couple of freelance developers to take on the work while I do some of everything else that needs to be done.
4) Six different logos that I worked on for 6 different clients. Of course, I started by doing volunteer work… then I started doing design contests on online communities. The first contest I won was a $50 amazon.com gift certificate which I bought a book with and still use today
Oh well, just thought I’d share what I used to do. I am really hoping I can get back into this whole designing thing. I used to enjoy working with pleasant clients… although there were a couple that were just downright rude/annoying. I still would like to take some classes on color theory and graphics design coures so I can learn some of the graphical techniques properly.
Posted in Work | No Comments »
