So did I get owned or pawned? I mean, I’ve played chess.  In chess, my pawns are expandable.

This gamer lingo, which I like to dub as l33t 2.0, is pretty confusing…I mean, apparently, you’d rather pwn someone rather than own..but its pronounced the same…as some have graciously told me along with being a noob and the situation being an epic fail.

..so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

These terms get to be confusing to pronounce.  Havent had this much trouble since ‘daemon’, which I like to pronounce ‘day-mon’ and not ‘dee-mon’.

I hate the internet.

So I’m being bombarded by requests for FaceBook, twitter, Linked-In, blip.fm…..’So what’ you say?  Well…(using twitter as an example) it seems that if I don’t get to those requests, the friend decides to stop following me.  If I do happen to get to the approval, I get DM’s saying to follow them on FriendFeed or FaceBook.

Personally, I like to wait a few days to make sure its not a bot.

Anyway…I’m seeing the ‘MySpace Friend’ disease spread all over established social sites.  I mean, Linked-In?  WTF?…Isn’t that supposed to be professional connections and references?

..so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

FaceBook clobbered MySpace.  How?  By keeping it exclusive.  Sign in to view…Only add REAL friends…Only use real names….The safe feeling you got encouraged you to invite your friends, post pics, etc…

But, it seems that those days are over with people trying to become the next Tila Tequilla and try to get to 10,000 twitter followers or 10,000 FaceBook friends.  Twitter is already doomed, but Facebook has a chance if they start enforcing those rules that made them the leaders of the industry to begin with.

…..but keep your friend requests coming….I still approve them.

So my new employer has a client that wants to implement the slide player API. “No prob” I say, with confidence since I see that there is an AS3 version….”It’s gotta plug right in if it’s written in AS3…”

Well…two days into it and I’m stumped.   I can get the slide video player to load my AS3 chromeless player but cant get the stupid throbber to stop….Read the API you say?  Well, its based on the youtube AS2 API and it contains an event listener that was listening for onStateChange.  There’s no !@#@! onStateChange in AS3!..and to add insult to injury, Google came up nada!

…so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

Well, I finally read the fine print and figured out I needed to send event calls thru the root object ( in my case, a movieclip which the document class extended) when the video state changed:

switch (ns.state) {
case “unstarted” :
this.dispatchEvent(new Event(“onStateChange”,0));
break;

…and voila! All is well in the world….for now….I have a few more events to dispatch.

About eight years ago, I traded in my pica rule and became one of NandoMedia’s hot shot web designers. I was already high off of a successful three year print run at the sister company and figured, “Hey, its design. How hard could it be?”

Well…Halfway into my first web design project, my fearless leader at the time (Stan) reminded me of something that I already knew from print design, but didn’t take with me when I went digital:

design around content.

…so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

The internet is living library of content. No content = no internet. Yes, you could argue that some sites offer no intellectual value, but whats the shelf life of those sites? You’ve heard of this concept before, actually…”Clean Design” or “Clean Interface”

I had this one manager at Duke tell me otherwise. We argued for 30 mins before I conceded to get the meeting back on track. I used my years of experience, other professional testimonials, google…nothing could change her expert Communications opinion. Ironically, her strong suit was content. Go figure.

So I’m screwing around on my pc, specifically about to look at my apache logs and thinking about blogging ‘How Google is Evil’ and instead of clicking Program Files, I click Documents & Settings. I ask myself, “why did I just click this?”.  And then I see it…..User MCX1.

WHAT THE !@$%^&!!!!!!

..so I freak out.  User MCX1 has been on my computer since May. How can I miss this? I run virus scans daily. I look inside the folder, frantically clicking around for traces of trojans….and then I see it. Recent Documents/WINBOM.Ink.

OMG!

I take a look at these shortcuts.  They go nowhere.  I see an Ink to a folder called sysprep.  At this point I decide to unplug the cable modem right after I google WINBOM.

“This article describes the path order that the Microsoft System Preparation (Sysprep) tool uses to locate a Winbom.ini Answer file”……..so its an official file from Microsoft.  Still shady.  I google MCX1 user. “If you have any problem with your current MCE-to-XBOX360 configuration and you have to set up a new connection (with new XBOX password)”. I start reading the page…

!@#$!!@#!#!$!@#@!

..so what the !#@$ is that supposed to mean?

I’m a dumb-ass.  I set up my XBOX/MCE crap back in May and haven’t used it since.

So…while I restyle and retool this blog, I’ve been watching tv.  Nothing really on, so I decide to watch the edited for TV version of Any Given Sunday.  I’ve seen it before.  Pretty good movie.  Nothing special, right?

Well, I get to the part where Al Pacino’s character has Jamie Foxx’s character over for diner and I actually listen to their heated dialog.  “Team, Leadership & Tradition vs  Self, Determination & Taking Chances” is the theme and , if you haven’t seen the movie,  the discussion ends as a stalemate.  By the end of the movie, Jamie Foxx’s character learns about teamwork & leadership and is able to attain his goals by trusting and leading the team and Al Pacino’s character learns to take chances.  Its a great learning movie.

…so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

This movie is great because it can teach managers how to lead by example and not by orders or you’ll hear someone say in a meeting (hopefully in an Al Pacino-like voice): “He’s tearing this team apart!!!”

So its summer 1991 in the quaint town of Raleigh NC and I’m fresh off a year long stint at your local neighborhood high school. That year was special. It was filled with French class antics and other Sophomore tom foolery.  My summer love at the time was Tennis…so everyday I would play tennis in the park league and sometimes after practice, hop in the public pool near the park.

One day, however, I see something that will scar me for life, My French teacher….not as a patron, but as a worker…a lifeguard at the public pool. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking right now….”So?”.  Well, Lifeguards aren’t usually called Mr. and are referred to by first name….and usually younger…and female….and hot…or at least the ones I pay attention to.

We see each other and speak. Someone refers to him as his first name. He responds.  My partner in crime, also a student of his, uses his first name. He responds.  I state the question: “So I can call you by your first name? huh?”.  He says yes.

Summer’s over.  Back to school. First week of school we see him.  We refer to him using his first name and he threatens to give us detention if we call him that again.   Seemed pretty unfair at the time.

…so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

Teachers have it bad.  Low pay, zero social lives, dangerous work environments and now, if they have second/summer jobs, at the mercy of student patrons.  Looking back I know realize my teacher deserved to be called “Mr”, even at the public pool.

I was wrong….and now I get to blog about it.

So….here in the so called metropolitan area known as Raleigh Durham, I’m noticing more gas stations limiting the amount of gas you can charge to your credit/debit to $75. What was once an annoyance has now become a viral epidemic and I find myself without a full tank of gas but I guess that translates into less drive offs or non-payment somehow.

I mean…at first, I would simply accept it and drive off, perhaps filling up later in the week.  But now….Now I just run my CC again and get the extra 5 to 10 gallons I need to top off the ride.

So what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

Doesn’t VISA, MasterCard, Discover, etc charge a service fee each time anyone swipes?  Last time I checked, I wasn’t paying that fee….So now, the jerks who own these stations have to pay double fees if people want to fill up…and let me tell you…when gas is under $4, I top it off.

Yeah…so I’m phasing out the RR home server since its way cheaper to host elsewhere (and I need a laptop).  The one thing I’ll miss, however, will be having my own email server…my mail on my own server, no ISP’s or government types snoopin around….no “Carnivore” (ref: Swordfish)

But, I think a combination of the Road Runner rumor mill (TWC might be migrating to a per MB service) and continuous bad service are the motivational points fueling this effort. No more bragging  to friends, no more trying to outsmart TWC NAT or watching bots bombard my Apache server with IIS requests

so what the !@#$ is that supposed to mean?

a) I’m not gonna pay extra for upstream/downstream.  They (TWC) are lucky I pay at all.

b) even though I will have a non ISP email server, It still wont be in house…which means a copy of my email will be on a server I don’t control (…..POP accounts get backed up just as much as IMAP accounts)…and I don’t like that.

c) I can turn off my desktop, which has accumilated atleast 5 lbs of dust.