Re: Hola?
Fri. Feb 12
Yeah, unfortunately I get a lot more visitors for the articles I write than I do for the personal stuff. So far this year 21,104 people have visited my site! Had one day where 2,662 came!
Home Page
I'm Homeless!!!
Mar 08
I'M FINALLY 100% HOME FREE! Today, the couple interested in my house finally signed all the paperwork and "closed" on the house. I've wanted to write more about the process and how things were going but for some superstitious reason, I waited until it was all finally over. Gone are the days of throwing away $1,381.44 a month and the $16,577.28 I wasted over the last year in a futile effort to keep my credit score at a decent level. Foreclosure and credit scores really aren't as bad as society makes them out to be, it's all scare tactics fabricated by the banks.
Putting It Into Perspective
From November 1st of 2008 to November of 2009, I had 26 house showing, 15+ open houses and dropped the price $10,000. Pretty much nothing was happening and it appeared that I was going to be sitting on it over another winter wasting my money and time. Then in late October, a couple looked at it several times and made an offer of $148,000 which was $11,990 less than I had it listed at. At this price 'we' would have lost roughly $19,000 split in half. At this point I was plenty happy with the offer and was glad just to get the heck out of the place
As usual, nothing could go easy. I went to court and a probama judge basically did nothing. At this point I was 100% ready to give up, I was worn down to the point that if all I had to lose was a hundred points on my credit rating, oh well. The first thing I did was go out and get a credit card in an effort to help my score while I stopped making payments. As November wore on I waffled back and forth on whether I would make December's payment.
Thanks Upper Management
Then out of nowhere our entire Marketing department got outsourced to a totally awesome marketing agency with super cool audio effects on their home page and we (as in the majority of us) got laid off. "Well that makes my decision easier" I thought. December's house payment was skipped. Ironically if I had made December's payment this entire process would have been pushed back another month and probably cancelled.
In the meantime, for whatever ridiculous reason the people that made an offer on my house still wanted the place, I hated with ever fiber in my body. It was difficult for me to fathom that somebody could desire something I despised so much but I digress. Ultimately all "parties" agreed on a short sale. My credit score would likely be hurt just as much as a foreclosure but at least I wouldn't have to live in hell for another year.
I ended up finally finding a job (at a company I will keep to myself and at a time I will keep to myself and moved to a location which I will keep to myself). As the months (i.e. 3 of them) wore on I started to panic more and more. Would I come home some night and find the place on fire? What about if I woke up one morning and the basement was filled with water? Then there's the furnace, how much longer will that thing last? It looks like it's as old as the house? I was just waiting for Finagle's law to come into effect...but it never did. For those months nothing ever went wrong. I was shocked. "How could this be?" When everything that could go wrong did for the past year nothing did during the short sale process. The place still stands, the basement is dry, and the furnace works like the day it was installed.
Then I expected some crazy amount of money to be due at closing which I knew would be a huge issue, but it never came. $0 was due and it was all over. So here I sit, in disbelief that I'm finally homeless.
Fin...
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How Many of Me (1) - Kate Hu
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Re: Hola?
Thu. Feb 11
Seems like your site is going more technical web stuff than personal updates lately. ...Personally, I'm in it for the news and updates. ...although I suppose we could resort back to phone and email b...
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Re: Hola?
Wed. Nov 11
Yeah, I'm planning on going up to Bowler for Sat & Sun. I was going to ask Nick when he is going up to see if I could hitch a ride. Most likely I'll end up driving myself because I can't stay for the ...
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Tech: Google vs. China: How It Will Affect Web Workers
Mar 16
First let me start with this won't be my typical "how-to-like" article which I typically write on my website. I haven't posted many of those over the past month mostly because I was in the process of moving but I'm settled in again.
I've been following the Google vs. China fiasco online, mostly through my RSS feeds, and I've begun to ponder on what a Google-less China would be like. China has 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the earth's population, and is poised to overtake the US as the #1 country in internet users. While China flat-out blocking Google.cn is a big deal (and I suspect this would include all of Google search such as Google.com), what if China blocked all of Google's online services?
Google vs. China
If China decides to block Google an all its services it could be a headache for web developers.
What Makes Google?
To start out with, go and take a look at all the services Google offers >>
Let's say China decides to block everything that is Google i.e. all of Google's online services. Think of all the services you use that are hosted on Google's servers? Here's a list of just a few things I can think of that would be troublesome to web developers:
- Google Hosted Javascript Libraries such as jQuery, MooTools etc.
- YouTube videos & specifically all those embedded videos around the internet.
- Chinese users would no longer be tracked in Google Analytics.
- You website would lose all the Chinese traffic Google was sending to it via Google search.
- Feedburner would no longer work in China. You would lose any Chinese RSS feed subscribers.
- Embedded Google Maps would stop working.
- What about all the Gmail users in China?
- Using the Google Site Search feature on your website? Not in China you aren't.
Other Problems
I don't have specific cases for these products but I'm curious as to how a 100% Google blockade would affect these Google services since they can be embedded in external websites:
- Google Checkout
- Picasa Embedded Galleries
- Google Translate Widget
- Blogger
So What?
I did a quick search and if China decided to block Google and its services this won't be the first time so perhaps this would only be temporary. Another argument might be that Google isn't a big player in China like their native Baidu search engine. Statistics would help this argument, but even if Google Search isn't a big player in China, I have a feeling many of their ancillary services are even if only behind the scenes.
Aftermath
If China decides to go through with this, I'm predicting that a schism will occur in the internet. There will be the People's Internet of China and the rest of the world's. If China gets away with this, it will be a lot easier to for them to block other, smaller, websites.
Other Takeaways
One takeaway I got from this brainstorming exercise was how reliant many of our websites are on third party providers. Its difficult to build a website nowadays without linking to a resource from another site. Will that site/service be there 5-10 years from now? What happens when it's discontinued? Maybe its web developer job security and I should stop complaining?
What do you think about it? Speak your mind below -
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Photo Gallery
Photo 1 of 5: I ended up playing 3 hours of Skip-Bo with my uncles for our Christmas party this year which was probably the first time I've ever done that. I assure you, we did not talk about politics the entire time, well, yeah we did. Neal Grosskopf (0)
Review: ZDoom - A Doom Source Port
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Oct 06
I've always enjoyed playing old school videogames from my youth. I'm constantly reminded that graphics are nice, but gameplay is the most important factor in a game. Recently I got the itch to play Doom 2. I cranked up my install of Windows XP, installed the game (if you can call it installing) and played it. Unfortunately the game is so old (almost 15 years) that I was unable to use the mouse in the game. After 15 minutes of playing terribly, I looked for a solution. I first found a mouse driver but that didn't work. Next I tried an old school joystick I use to use but that didn't work either. Finally I found on a Doom wikia, a source port called ZDoom.
Back in the 90's Id released the Doom source code for Linux. Some savvy people took this code and converted it for Windows. The next step was to enhance the game to make it playable with modern technology. One of these enhancements was a source port called ZDoom.
ZDoom adds many of the features of modern first person shooters. You can now jump and crouch. The game also lets you define custom controller options (something that was lacking from the original Doom.) Because of this I was able to apply my tried and true FPS controller settings to an old school game like Doom 2. In a way, this made me a super-player and made the game much more enjoyable.
Probably the coolest thing about ZDoom is the modders went back and updated many of the textures in the game for higher resolutions. I can now play Doom 2 fullscreen at 1920x1200 without extremely blurry graphics. The graphics don't look earth shattering but I will say they look good enough that I can once again play the game without being distracted by the blurriness.
ZDoom also comes with an updated network play option that supposedly makes it easier to play against friends. I haven't tried this yet but it would be fun to play with friends.
A few other features the game includes is an updated HUD that is much more useful than the original Doom 2 HUD. The new one shows you your ammo for each weapon along with with other stats like secrets found/total secrets and enemies killed/total enemies.
Overall ZDoom takes a classic game and makes it playable again along with a few modern conveniences we come to expect from modern FPS. I give it a 8/10.
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Video: Google Asks People: What is a Browser?
Being a web designer and often hanging out with mostly tech savvy people, I think we sometimes forget that not everybody cares or knows as much about websites as we do. This video is a great example of how little people know about web browsers and is a wake up call for many of us who want users to switch from IE6 to something better. Neal Grosskopf (4)