kevinsnet

This is my little brother. I should be embarrassed, instead, I love it. You should totally go digg this, cause if you do, I'll love you forever. I promise. <3

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I've been quite busy as of late dealing with Inerail work. We've had problems with our datacentre (or more importantly, their transit) going up and down while we're not looking. Usually the problems are fairly brief but sometimes they're quite drawn out. Even the brief ones hurt, because of what we do with VoIP. Makes things slightly annoying. Unfortunately, we're running out of capital and with a lack of stability we're losing customers, so we're not able to get our stuff somewhere more reliable yet. I've been racking my brain for a solution and I think between Chris and I we've finally come up with one, but we're still gonna need some money to pull it off. We're hoping for a small business loan of some sort.

There's not much else I've been doing really, I went on a WoW kick for a few months (level 47 Shaman yay!) but I've had to back off because I've got so much to do that things are getting hectic, so I haven't been playing that really, at all. I've barely had time to blog anything, so all my updates have been done by Twitter. I went LARPing last month, enjoyed it so much that I'll be going again next month after my trip to the UK.

Now that things with Inerail are starting to settle down at least a little bit, I'm gonna try to update my website, not another total makeover, but maybe just a facelift. The layout is just so boring and monotonous, I wanna do something slightly different with it but I have no idea what.

Ah well, we'll see. ^_^

...ended up downgrading back down to a basic LJ account. I still have CSS control over the main page, just not the individual comment pages. Good enough for me. Don't really feel like dealing with the ads. :P

So I've just been redesigning my site to make sure everything renders correctly in IE (as much as I hate to, but I'm on the hunt for a job and having a broken site really won't help matters). And while I was doing that I decided it was time to make some updates I've been meaning to make, improve some stuff here, fix this, tweak that, make sure everything still worked smoothly after the migration from my old VPS to it's new home on Inerail's servers. During this I decided I wanted my LiveJournal to better mimic my site's layout, at least partially, so it wouldn't look to bad. Granted, I've got some nifty PHP that polls both my LJ and Twitter for posts and puts them on the site as well as RSSes them for combined output, but I still felt my LJ should look half decent. So I signed up for the ad-filled plus account (actually, the ads aren't all that bad. I was expect to have a sudden relapse to my DeadJournal days, the ads on there were horrible, but this doesn't even come close) and slapped in some custom CSS (some of which makes the ads slightly less ... intrusive?) that helps the LJ's layout to mimic that of my site, and if I do say so myself, it works quite well (at least in Safari and Firefox Mac, haven't tested it in any other browsers yet, but I will xX'). I'm quite pleased.

During this time, I got curious, and actually READ all my old LJ posts [most of the older ones being friends only anyway], which date back to July of '05. Then I also decided to read my old DeadJournal (dating December '01 to roughly August '03, with a few occasional posts afterwards). Man, was I an angry, pissed off, angsty, depressive cunt as a highschooler. How did I have any fucking friends?! :P To my friends from Shawnee? Thanks, I appreciate it. ^_^ ... some of that actually takes me way back though, I had a lot of fun reading all that.

For those of you who haven't heard, CompUSA is closing down. S'about time too, it's been long in the making. Everything must go, we're having a full store liquidation. We figure we'll probably be employed up until the end of January when they'll finally let us all go. It's kinda weird being in a closing store. The place is pretty much a constant state of "last day of school". Simply, no one cares. About anything. At all. It's great :P

On the other hand this has left me looking for a job. Got a few leads, hopefully one of them will pan out, been sending out CVs all over the place (yay for craigslist ^_^). I got myself a LinkedIn (some of my friends recommended that as a way to go). We'll see what happens. In the meantime, myself and a business partner have started a small IT consulting, hosting, software dev, and design company. Check it out: Inerail LLC. If you're my friend and you buy some type of hosting (VPS or dedicated or colocation or whatever), I promise you get a discount :P (There, that was my obligatory shameless plug.)

Unfortunately, CompUSA's closing put a rather large kink in my plan for education and emigration. I have to figure out how I'm going to go about these things (seeing as how the two of them were kinda tied together). With luck, it'll just have temporarily put them on hold, although I'm *still* looking for a better way to actually move country, without the pain and price of a 4 year education from another country. If that's what it takes, though, I'm up for it. Sadly, I hope this doesn't delay my plans. They're already taking longer than I would've hoped. By several years -_-. Ah well, we'll see what happens.

But no matter what, I'm excited ^_^ I'm packing currently (or, rather, have been supposed to been packing while I've been doing all these journal updates and readings and whatnot) as I have a flight in ~18 hours to LHR. I get to see everyone again, yay ^_^_^_^! I've missed everyone. I'll be "in town" from the 27th to the 4th, figured I haven't missed RF's new year's party since the first time I went over there, might as well keep a good record :P

Will this be updated perpetually from this point on? I hope so. I'm gonna try to put the effort in. This week you should expect a semi-longwinded post showing how I have absolutely no life that discusses two things very near and dear to me: technological standards, and science fiction. ^_^ Yah, that'll be a doozy, I know.

If you read this on my website's blog page I think you'll find that I keep a decently updated twitter feed that also blogs to that page, or you can hit that directly, but my website produces an aggregate RSS feed of my twitter and livejournal. My facebook status is also now synched to my twitter status.

(click to enlarge)


...oh my god, I love it. Way to go apple, I think it's great :D some people seem to think it's rude or ugly. I completely disagree. I burst out laughing the first time I ran a windows box on the same network as my macbook, and I think it's absolutely wonderful.

...keep up the good work ^_^

It seems that Apple have gone and reserved MSN addresses ending in 'mac.com' as I was just forced to change mine to kleacock@messengeruser.com (if you have me on your contact list, it *should* be updated automatically, but I may not be able to see you online until you sign off/on again) ... but what does this mean? Best I can tell, Apple have reserved the domain so they can setup a Windows Live IM server of some sort. But, it's not for internal business because A) they use iChat for that, and B) their internal domain is apple.com. Theory is they're setting up a MSN server for .Mac customers in conjunction with the AIM access? Maybe all-in-one (Jabber/MSN/AIM) messaging with the one .Mac address? That'd be kinda cool...ish...

UPDATED: The link was incorrect and has been corrected.


Almost all my trip pictures are uploaded now: http://kevinsnet.com/iSharePhotos/?1677

Honestly, who didn't see that one coming?



(...stupid LiveJournal changed the posting system on me, posting HTML doesn't happen the same way xx')

I'm finally on my holiday to the UK. It's about time. I've only been here a few hours and it's already relaxing. Woot. ^^

Flight was nice, slept on it. Not too bad, other than the fact that the airline didn't serve any food I wasn't allergic to. Jerks. I was rather hoping the flight would be pretty empty due to the supersitition behind the date; sadly, it wasn't. In fact, it was a pretty packed flight. Oh well. Still wasn't *too* bad.

Here's to a good holiday.

....I turn 21 tomorrow... Jeez. I'm old :P

So, for my birthday, I got my hands on a Sony Ericsson P1i. Summary of things to follow: It's dead sexy.

Symbian UIQ3 is quite nice, the wifi works well albeit it's range is rather limited, however it's not as much a drain on the battery as you'd imagine. The whole unit seems to work well. 3.2 MP camera's not bad either ^^ The half-QWERTY keyboard takes getting used to, and I'm still doing that although I'm getting better. I'm quite quick with T9/predictive text in general, so we'll see how much quicker I can be with this keyboard. The handwriting recognistion is absolutely wonderful though (and anyone who's seen my handwriting can attest -- my handwriting is *terrible*).

So then the reason I got the P1i -- applications! The first thing I install on it? Duh, an IRC client. It's quite nice to have a phone that can do IRC *well* now. Followed shortly by PuTTY for UIQ3. SSH on this thing is beautiful, although things like irssi/vi *may* (and they don't always) have trouble with the screen arrangement. Actually, it does quite well despite the screen arrangement. The web on this thing is also wonderful. Proper CSS/XHTML! Not WML! (although it'll do that too!) I can also rotate the screen in a single click and browse in landscape mode (take that iPhone)

But last, my pride and joy. This phone solves a problem (in a rather workaroundish fashion) that I thought I was gonna need a $300 GSM repeater for...
Problem: I get *NO* service in my house. No one does. Doesn't matter what network tech (CDMA/GSM) or provider, it won't work in at least one place in my house. I promise.
Solution: Using Fring (if anyone else has Fring, let me know. I'm 'cmantito'), I can connect to Skype from this phone over the 802.11b connection and then forward my GSM calls to my SkypeIN (or SIP, but my SIP account is on the fritz right now) number. It'll then be delivered over the Wifi to the Fring Skype client where I can pick it up, or further ignore it and it'll get forwarded to a voicemail box (not my GSM provider's, nor Skype's (since I can't check Skype Voicemail from the phone itself, a different one). This voicemail box automatically turns voicemails into a WAVE file and emails them to me. This means the voicemail comes to me on my computer (Thunderbird) as well as directly to the phone via the IMAP PUSH email over 3G/EDGE/GPRS or Wifi (if I'm at home, it'll be Wifi, no 3G/GPRS/EDGE coverage) so I can still get the voicemail easily. If my voicemail provider is on the blink and it can't get through to the voicemail provider, it'll be taken my Skype VoiceMail instead -- not as convenient, but a safety net of sorts (I don't trust my voicemail provider). If I'm not at home and I'm out somewhere and I have GSM (3G/EDGE/GPRS) coverage, then it acts like normal. Phone calls come in over GSM and I can take or ignore it, if I don't take it, it get's diverted to AT&T's voicemail, where I can pick it up like normal.

Works beautifully! This post? Made from the phone, by the way ^_^

Had a new job interview today, IT dept for Samaritan Hospice (a medium-sized non-profit local hospice organisation). Altogether it went well, I think I impressed them. Now we wait the week out and see if I'm offered a job ^^ (*is hopeful!*)

I also booked my plane tickets for another holiday in the UK to see everyone again -- 11/9 to 21/9 (I picked 11/9 cause it's the cheapest day to fly, the irony doesn't hurt either. Makes me laugh.)

And yes, I realise this is my first post in a while, but it's the first time in a while I feel decent enough (mood-wise) to actualy post. I think that's a good thing ^_^

And now, my ride to work is here, so I must go, since my transmission is bust and I'm going to need either a new transmission, or a new car.
Buhbye!

"The New AT&T " on Google Video

This clip from the Colbert Report about the new AT&T (Cingular) name makes me giggle til I can't breathe anymore. I just can't help but watch it repeatedly. So it goes up here too. ^_^

I've done some re-design work on my website (Kevinsnet.com) and now my LiveJournal (kevinsnet) is powering portions of my "blog" page. The comments system (which isn't in yet, but will be soon) is separate from LiveJournal's, meaning that comments posted on LJ will stay on LJ, and comments posted on my site will stay on my site. I'd prefer my site be used, but this works too ^_^

LiveJournal makes a good backend for powering the Blog section because it's designed for it. I trust their code more than mine. They already have a system for managing posts, editing them, and controlling them in place. I'm just utilising it. Ultimately, I think this works well. I did it on the previous revision of my site, albeit not so elegantly (from a code perspective) as this time.

I'm gonna try to keep on top of this. As much as I like the idea of it, I don't have much time. But I'll try. ^^'

1. YOUR REAL NAME

Kevin

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (first three letters of your name, plus izzle)

Kevizzle

3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three of your last)

K-Lea... xx'

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (fav color and fav animal)

o.O ... Purple kitties?

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, first 3 letters of mom's maiden name)

Leakerab (leaky crab? -.^)

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (favorite color, favorite drink)

... Purple Pepsi ...

8. IRAQI NAME: (2nd letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your last name, any letter of your middle name, 2nd letter of your moms maiden name, 3rd letter of you dads middle name, 1st letter of a siblings first name, last letter of your moms middle name)

Eacamse (...what...the...)

9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne)

-.- ... Softsoap

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother & father's middle name)

Anne James

( I'm overdue for some of these... )

Wow. I never thought I'd consider something like XM Radio to be worth the money. I picked up one of the radios at work (yaydiscount) and signed up for a month so I'm not held into any kind of a contract or anything. Already had it two days, I think it's worth the money. The main reason I'd thought about it in the first place is because my car has issues with it's FM radio (it works; barely) and tons of issues with it's CD player (it doesn't work). But at least this gives me something to listen to in the car, and with no commercials either. When I replenish my funds, I may consider getting the home unit, so I can use it in surround sound (whee!), that'd be quite neat to at least try.

Oh well, I lied. But wait, this is a post, so did I? Hmm...well, we'll just have to wait and find out :P [I really do want to start posting more, but things keep happening that would be not-so-good to post about, so I don't bother :P, soon though, I swear it >.<]

This...is an update? I know I've said it before, but maybe this time I'll mean it, I dunno. I'll *try* to keep it updated...

mkdir /tmp/suitcase; mv /home/kevin/* /tmp/suitcase; cd /tmp/suitcase; wget http://kevinsnet.com/suitcase/PKGBUILD; makepkg; pacman -A suitcase

KEVIN GO AIRPLANE