Quick Update

Alright so I'm gonna try this blog thing again. So here's a quick update that I'm not dead and am very much alive. Since my last post I got engaged and moved into a new apartment in a new city. So there's your quick update until I have a little bit more time to sit down and think of something good.

Baltimore Rant

Its been awhile since I've posted a rant so I figured now is a good time. And this time I would like to say to the people that designed the city of Baltimore to please go play in traffic or jump off a bridge somewhere. For some reason the powers that be let there be one major road into downtown from the beltway and other major highways in the area, 95/395. This is bad enough on its own, but then they put both the Oriole's baseball stadium and Raven's football stadium beside each other at the same intersection that lets 395 into the city. Baseball season causes bad traffic but realistically its a few mondays and sundays a year so I can put up with it. But baseball has how many hundred games a year? In the past 2 or 3 weeks I've spent atleast 6 days sitting for 20-30 minutes not moving on a HIGHWAY so they can let traffic out of the stadium. I know the orioles stadium was there long before baltimore grew this overcrowded. But I would think someone would say to themselves hey this is the dumbest thing in the state lets build another road out of the stadium and let some of this traffic out on the other side so it doesn't bring the whole downtown area to a screeching halt every day before and after every game. But apparently that wisdom eludes anyone in a public office. So I shall continue to sit half an hour each way going to and from work every day there is an orioles game. Or go around it and spend an extra 30 minutes anyway with the added distance but I suppose in some ways that's better then just sitting still atleast you get a sense of moving towards your goal.

Bit Of Programming

Recently I've been trying to learn some Java programming. So I'm always looking for little things to do just to check my learning and work through some logic. I started the other day trying to move an old text file of movies I have bought and some information from them from a text file to a spreadsheet with the intention of eventually moving to a database system. I was importing it and decided to just try and change the file from its current tab delineated setup to comma delineated. Its not necessary but it was a way to to get through some logic in my head so I figured why not. I tried a couple different methods, but below is what I came up with. I'm sure lots of people have come up with better ways, maybe programs that can deal with large files, but I don't have anything with more then a few hundred lines and it seems to complete them all in a second so I'm sticking with this for now. Figured I'd post it in case someone else was looking for some help with a similar problem. If you come up with a better idea let me know I always like learning more efficient or better ways of doing something, but keep in mind I've been learning java for only like a month or two now and going at a very slow pace so I may not understand something too complex hah.

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import static java.lang.System.in;
import static java.lang.System.out;

class ChangeText {
 public static void main(String args[]) throws FileNotFoundException {
  String Answer1;

  PrintStream diskWriter = new PrintStream("test1.txt");
     Scanner diskScanner = new Scanner(new File("test.txt"));
  while(diskScanner.hasNext()){
   Answer1 = diskScanner.nextLine();
   Answer1 = Answer1.replace("\t",",");
   diskWriter.println(Answer1);
  }
 }
}

Waste Some Time

While I was down at college I had a lot of time to kill. And 2 roommates to kill it with. So eventually Halloween came around and we're poor but want to have something to give the kids that come up to our apartment. So I go out to SAMs and buy a bag of dum dums the little tiny suckers, its gigantic must've had 1,000 of them in there. And then we had I would guess...4 kids show up. One of which just had a mexican flag on his back and that was his entire costume. We weren't sure what that wassupposed to be so he was known as "mexico kid" or "mexican flag boy". But I digress. Now we are bored and have hundreds of dum dums sitting around the apartment.

And so Dum Dum Battle Arena was born. This is without a doubt the dumbest thing we did down there ,and one of the dumbest things I did in my life, followed closely by building makeshift flamethrowers in elementary school. So the basic idea is you set a play area, in our case our entire apartment. Then everyone gets a couple rubber bands and a handful of dum dums. Then you use the rubber bands to launch the dum dums. You can use it like a slingshot. But after some trial and error the best method seemed to be to spread out your thumb and index finger. Then stretch as many rubber bands across there as you could. Then load the instrument of torture by pulling a dum dum back across the rubber bands and letting loose the dogs of war on your opponent. Which in this case was always Jason. The only rule was don't aim for the TV or computers. And the winner is the last man standing. That was about it for rules. We should've added helmets and maybe some eye protection but that would've required extra effort. You wouldn't think a little dum dum would do a lot of damage but those things fly fast and are pretty hard so you get a nice welt where they hit you.

So that was one way we killed way too much time. If you decide to try it out don't hold me responsible for any hurt body pats, holes in the wall or broken glass that will result from it. But boy was it a fun way to blow off some steam after a bad day of classes.

End Of An Era

I've been listening to Don And Mike on the radio since probably 1997 or 1998. And as of last friday they went off the air presumably for good. Don has decided to retire. Which I can understand he's been in radio for longer then I've been alive and been doing this same "show" for almost my entire life. And after all that's happened in his personal life in the last few years you can't blame the guy for wanting to get away from everything. In his place Mike will be starting his own show. It actually started yesterday but I don't live anywhere where I can get a good radio signal to listen real time. And I wasn't home to listen on the internet. So I'm hoping today to get a good listen to it. It should be a good show Mike is very funny but will no doubt be in for some rough times ahead with the changeover. I'm sure he's more concerned about it then any of the fans ever could be. So its a little sad, like when your favorite tv show goes off the air. But at the same time its exciting that there will be something a little different to listen to.

It also makes me wonder sometimes how fun it would be to just sit down and talk to my best friends for an hour or two and put it out on the radio or the internet and see if there would be any kind of interest in that. But sadly I am not nearly as interesting or funny as those 2 so it would probably get listened to about as much as this blog gets read, which is to say not much hah.

Firefox Extensions I Love

I use firefox all the time, its the only browser I use unless I'm working from home then I'll load up IE only because 90% of our software is web based and only works with IE. So I shall share the extensions that I can't live without and think everything should have installed.

1)Adblock Plus - It will automatically block ads on most websites, flash, javascript, popups almost evreything which is wonderful. And you can set it up so it blocks specific things if there is something it misses. You can also set it so it does not block ads on your favorite ad supported websites so they still get advertising money.

2)ForecastFox Enhanced - This is pretty simple, it puts the next couple days weather forecast with temp. and precipitation and warnings somewhere in your browser. You can choose where it goes and how many days ahead it shows. I like it because now I don't have to go to a website anymore to get the weather, I can just glance up when I want to know.

3)Greasemonkey - This addon lets you get different scripts that change how certain webpages look. My favorite is for youtube it moves the comments out of the way and gives you an option to make the video bigger since anyone with a decent sized monitor knows that youtube videos are pitifully small resolution for no real reason. Although it doesn't help video quality atleast you can see the blockyness bigger. And their website greasespot.net has links to thousands of different scripts for almost every website.

There are more addons I use a lot, but those are the 3 I use the most often and think everyone should check out.

Addendum To Below

Thought of a few more things that I need for my little being prepared kick I'm on. A decent first aid kit, bandages, medicine, vitamins. The usual stuff. I have one I bought when I first moved out on my own, but as with everything that's been used slowly through the last over a year as I get various small injuries. So I probably need to replenish it at some point. Was also thinking some more about food. How well do peanuts keep, I know they are good for like potassium and maybe some other stuff. And lets face it, honey roasted peanuts taste awesome. Even if they are a bit salty and would probably add to dehydration. I'll have to pay attention the next time I buy a giant tin of them.