.:: Yolospat ::.

With my oxygen tank in tow. There are a few things I need t pick up at Lacy’s Pharmacy. Due to past experience this oxygen being administered via nose cannula does two great things. It makes sure the body gets the oxygen it needs, and it also dries out your nose to the point of daily nose bleeds. Vaseline only goes so far. Back in 2004 I remember that my nostrils were lined in bloody scabs. I don’t want that to happen again, so I’m going to get a mask and alternate.

How am I feeling? Well, I wrote a big long email to work about the situation and everything that was going on and I heard nothing back, which only means one thing. They are planning my hopefully “temporary” replacement. I have heard back from my boss and his boss however saying to take as much time as I need to get better. That was nice. I just don’t do good sitting idle so I’m going to learn something over this next week and it’s going to be amazing. I just don’t know what it’s going to be yet. Maybe I will drive into ruby and learn rails and gems.

I’m pretty certain I can make something really neat and cool with that to come back and WOW everyone with. I’ll try at least. I usually only WOW myself. WOW.

I’m digging out my ruby books now … and spending the rest of the night in programmers heaven (best time is when everyone’s asleep, like now)

But I sure knew that I’d had this experience over and over so many times.

(noun) deja fait
the type of dream in which one wakes up, showers and goes to work; often causing distress when one wakes up to the reality that the whole morning must be relived.

Is it pronounced like “fought” or “fiaaa-et” or .. how? I need to know these things.

Yes. Finally got rid of that desk I’ve had over the last few years that was s wobbly as hell. It was the type of desk that could give at any minute. When I bought my townhouse in Colorado they had left such a deck in the upstairs loft. My Mother touched it and it feel to pieces. That’s where this desk was heading, Propped up with TV stands it was on it’s way out, no doubt. I know most geeks out here will understand me when I say my home office and my computer room is my “Domain” … if I’m not at work melting under florescent lights, I’m home in my home office with ambient lighting and a half standing desk.

When I was first given this desk I was told it was “brand new” by a former boss. The hell it was. It has scratches and stickers and gashes all over it. It was one of those desks you would fin in an ally way somewhere thinking great things about how you can use the parts and a little duck tape to device some device to take over the world. I was told I could buy it from him for $50 bucks. I opted against the $50 bucks since I was getting not only extremely used furniture *promised brand new) and there weren’t eve enough bolts to hold the damn thing together. Long story short, it was time for me to have a proper desk and I found the exact on I wanted. I spend the majority of my time in my home office and I was missing that zen factor. Not only was the office cluttered but I had had to have a med for all our fur babies. They follow me everywhere one my oldest has to be right up there with me no matter what. It’s always been our “thing” my Neves and myself bond.

So, with the help of my Mother I splurged on something that would last a lifetime. I got me not only a really nice deck, but one made of light color of mahogany. It has all the nooks and crannies I need. The sucker is HUGE. It takes up a whole corner of two adjacent walls of my home office. It has everything I need, and it’s completely beautiful. I can finally have my own space again and I can finally chill with myself and de-stress and be marry as they used to say. I don’t feel like I have a cock-pit anymore. I feel like I have put in my dues for this desk and finally, I’ve gotten it. I’ve always felt at home on a computer, at my desk but never like this before.

My life from now on is getting my chi (is that the right word?) Balanced, my life balanced and to be in in a place where I am most comfortable. I estaablished that with this new desk in my space, in my zen. The most simple thing one could think of, a desk. Makes such much difference. It’s the little things. It doesn’t involved medication. It doesn’t involved doctors appointments. It just involves a a new set of scenery in a place already so comfortable.

PS – My XBOX Life name is “Yolospat” … didn’t see that one coming, did you?

I’ve been seeing a lot of blogs out there talking about this “new” blog editor called “Blogo” which is really cool and fun and easy to use. Why does every one thing that Blogo is “new” … it’s been around for a while. Over a year at least which is a while when it comes to the tech world.

I’m using it now and I never thought it was really that “great” as an editor. Personally I use MarsEdit and I haven’t found anything that works better than that.

I will even throw an image in there just like they did on the podcast I re-watched.

That being said, maybe I’m bias but Blogo doesn’t look much different than it did when I used it the first time. It doesn’t do anything that makes me excited

I hadn’t installed MacPorts since I reinstalled OS X and it feels good that its finally back So much easier to install programs. Plus, I’m a geek. What “normal” user would actually go through the mess and even the understanding of MacPorts. Heh.

So I’m going to try and condense down the Colorado trip the best I can. I’ve noticed that when I”m really emotional about something the best time to deal and/or write about it in a political way is after the fact once I got all my bearing straight and the emotions don’t out talk my logic.

The first night I got in Uncle Don and Aunt Donna meet Mom and I at at the Armadillo in Lasalle. I couldn’t believe how much some parts of the towns had changed, and how other parts of the towns hadn’t changed at all. Like for instance, Platteville. Still the same. The old house I grew up in still looks the same. Grandma Berry’s house still looked the same inside and out. See, Grandma Berry can’t see much more than light or dark but when I got up close to her she grabbed the bangs of my hair and started whispering “jenny jenny jenny jenny jenny” and when I finally spoke and said “Yes, Grandma, it’s Jenny” she started crying. She can’t forget me. I might not have been home for 4-5 years but you can’t forget living right next door to your grand daughter watching her grow up all her life. Seemed like my Mother and I showing up was center of attention and we all know how much I hate that.

I got to see some women, whom I used to give piano lessons to and babysit sit. Now they are grown and have more children than I have pets.

Of course going out to the farm made me miss Uncle Joe and Aunt Martha so much I made Mom promise she would set up a meeting with them too before I left to go home. took pictures of Morning Fresh Farms and then jumped down to Mespaigh cemetery to see the ranch and to see my dad. He was doing ok. I talked to him a bit. I think Mom did too. Sort of weird talking to stone, but whatever. Seems like that was a completely different life back then when he was alive. I think we were all different people back then. I’m sure I would have had a whole different life. Would I change it? I don’t know where’d.

After all the crying and seeing all the family I met all my friends up at the Armadillo in Fort Collins. It was strange. It was so surreal I almost felt drunk without drinking.

It sure was a great night. I never realized now much I missed my friends until that very moment. I had never felt so home sick, for everything back. For my old job back, for my old house back. Not my old life tho. No way. No how. I told them next time we come I’ll being the hubby so they can all meet them. I only want to talk about the good parts of the trip so I am going to not talk about doctors and appointments and news and all that other stuff I went to to. I sure didn’t have problems falling asleep at all.

Zed Shaw – The ACL is Dead from CUSEC on Vimeo.

Forgot to mention, if you ever wanted to play around with the code for LiveJournal here are the SVN repositories.

The main SVN repositories are here:

http://code.livejournal.org/svn/livejournal/
http://code.livejournal.org/svn/ljcom/

And a Trac frontend to all of them is here:
http://code.livejournal.org/trac

Most of my blogging goes on over there because it’s personal and it’s stuff that I feel the whole world needs to know.

If you have an LJ let me know and I’ll add you.

It only takes one single person to make WoW not be fun. It’s those people, I need to not be around.

This change in weather has been kicking my ass. This morning I was so sore and stiff. The pain lately has been a lot worse too, especially in my legs. My feet have been swelling up all weekend too so I’m trying to keep them propped up as much as possible. I have the just-got-run-over-by-a-mac-truck feeling today and lately.

I found a web site Friday night that streams the police scanner at Scan Cobb. When I was growing up my Father was a fireman and we always had a police scanner playing 24/7. I used to have a mobil scanner, but I don’t anymore so it was exciting that they actually stream this stuff. It makes me feel like my Grandma Reba who still has her scanner going all the time.

Tomorrow is my husband and I’s 2nd year anniversary. It’s amazing.

The other day when I was at CVS waiting to pick up my prescriptions I was sitting in the pharmacy waiting room tucked way in the back beside the pharmacy counter, reading the Twillight series on my Kindle which goes every where with me these days. I thought I heard my name called, so I put my kindle in sleep mode, stood up, peered around the corner only to find out there was another “Jenny” they were talking to. So I sat back down and punched in the two keys that bring the kindle out of sleep mode and the screen freaks out on me. It looked like a broken LCD with thick black lines running horizontally except for 3/4′s inch on top where the screen savor was. The kindle screen isn’t an LCD screen. It’s electronic paper.

So I called the Customer Service number I got from my kindle owners manual. The phone rang about 5 times and to my surprise, a live human being (I think) answered. I told him my problem, he ran me through a few steps like holding down the reset button in the back for 10 seconds. Nothing helped, my screen was still foo-bared.

And just like that, he told me he was overnighting me a new Kindle. Wow! That’s not where the surprises ended, however. When I got home from work I eagerly tore open the amazon box waiting for me on the kitchen counter, shaking with kindle withdrawals. I got it out, plugged it in, went on the amazon site to register my new kindle which took 5 seconds, and HURRAY! It was registered. Since I’m reading the Twillight Series by Stephenie Meyer, they were the first books I downloaded from my book repository on Amazon servers.

Then panic hit. I didn’t want to go through page by page to find where I left off. If you have seen these books, you would know they are quite thick. So I opened the first book fully prepared to go page by page hundred’s of times. With my jaw on the floor, the book opened right to the page I left off. I didn’t realize that the kindle sync’d my bookmarks too! Way too cool.

I love my Kindle.

Work has been busier this weekend then it has for a long time. I’m merely “on call” which means I only get called if there is a “Priority 1″ or “Priority 2″ system outage. Mainly, one of our sites has to be completely down, or partially down. This weekend, it seemed like everything was down, especially the last 48 hours. I’ve gotten calls back to back all throughout the night up until this morning. I feel bad because my poor husband got woken up each and every time the phone rang. As for me, I’m exhausted as I’ve had little to no sleep.

The good part about all of this is I get some days off due to all of this. I have a doctors appointment Tuesday at the FFC with Dr. C anyway, so I’m going to take that day off for sure.

I’ve been lax with updating my wordpress plugin’s and such lately too so I plan on getting my site all up to date today. I’ve also finished a few afghan’s that I’ve made for friends which need a few finishing touches and hopefully I’ll get those out in the mail this week. Pictures coming soon on that.

Now for WP maintenance.

Mom went home today. She’s flying on a plane right now. She texted me before she left letting me know the plane was leaving late. She’s so excited about her new (my old) iPhone. She’s texting me left and right, she’s taking pictures of things and sending them to me, she’s just so excited she can get her email all the time. She’s quite addicted to her email. I’m proud of her for learning all this fan-dangled technology (her words, isn’t she cute?)

On the way back from the airport Brendan and I went by Harry’s Whole Foods and got some yummy guacamole and blue corn chips that are really good. Oh ya, and cereal. OMG, this cereal is so good. I don’t remember the name but I’ll take a look at it later.

Now that I’m officially withdrawn from university I have more time for WoW. My priest is up 65 (Cumbersome) that I leveled mainly for the guild, since I already have a 70 priest on horde side. Found out today one of our officers who has a shadow priest and told me they didn’t want to do anything other than shadow (thus the reason for me making a holy priest) just respec’d holy in my absence (since my Mother was here). Ahhhh. Such a nice backstab. Feels fucking great. Lots of guilds need priests, so at least I have that in my favor. Moving on.

I’m getting daily use out of my kindle. I didn’t think I’d be using it as much as I have been. It’s become as close to me as my MacBook Pro. Speaking of mac, I’ve been working on some cocoa programming using xcode. I somehow feel completely free now that I’m not in school. It feels great, my doctor was right. That was too much stress for right now.

After being bed-ridden and in pain, I’m finally back on my feet and I’m trying the best I can to not over-do it. I have to hand it to my doctor. He’s the only one that has put all his time and effort into helping me through this, explaining every little detail and why things work like they do, and most importantly, being aggressive on getting handle on the pain so that I’m comfortable. Every single time I walk out of his office I’m reassured that I will get through this, no matter what it takes or how long it takes. I do feel like I’m getting a little of “me” back … baby steps.

Ok, now, onnnnnnnn to the gadgets. I’m a gadget whore, and anyone who knows that this would be coming soon.

I got the Amazon Kindle!

I have a lot to say about this little device. It’s totally and completely amazing. It has electronic paper instead of an LCD screen and it can hold a change for 2-4 days. My list of great things the Amazon Kindle can do.

1. You can download books right from Amazon Web Site and most of the Kindle books are half price of what the actual book would cost.
2. It’s so thin and so light. I don’t have to lug around all those java and xcode books around anymore. I just put them on my Kindle!
3. It’s so easy to read. No more trying to keep the page open so you can read the words that seem to trail all the way down into the spin. Ugh, I hated that, especially in bed
4. The Kindle is going to pay for itself with the amount of books I get from Amazon (and now having all those books with me all at one .
5. You can change the text size in the book so for those of us who are used to squinting. There is a setting there for all times.

And … Bedtime

I’m still recovering from feeling like dog shit at the end of last week and over the weekend. Health complications, as usual.

I’m bombarded with make up assignments in school after missing the last few assignments in my Java class and with my nose to the grind I’m trying to get those completed both tonight and tomorrow before I have another class that begins. Ugh. I’m also on call for work somewhere this week. I also haven’t made an appointment for my treatment day. Ugh. So much to do, so little resources.

Now to get started hoping that there isn’t an emergency at work …

I’m a bit pissed of at WoW tonight. This is the second time I’m getting caught up in this mess. I level a character with others saying “yes yes we’ll play together, blah blah” and “why aren’t you 70 yet” “I can’t wait till your 70″ blah blah … and yet, they don’t help me level, they don’t even play with me (ok, maybe twice, but still)! Classic sucker, that’s what I am. Gah people are so fucking selfish.

I did just pass the 60 level mark with my new alliance priest. I missed healing, I’m a damn good healer, it’s just my character. Mage is too, when I’m in a mage mood.

Getting up early tomorrow to see Brendan off to his first day of orientation for his new job. Just weird. I’m going to have 6+ hours all to myself. For the first time we’re going to be car swapping. Having one car all the sudden, sucks. With gas prices, what’s the point of two cars? I could totally see myself on one of those little scooters. My husband and my Mother already said, no. Damn.

I’m downloading LOTR Online, on Crossover Games. I have a level 8 Lore-Master who throws ashes from her pocket. It kicks ass.

I love add-ons in firefox. I love them to the point that I over do it sometimes. I install experimental ones. I experiment in writing some. That leaves my Firefox very bloated and swelling with a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t need to be there. The best part about it, is I simply Export my bookmarks, AppZapp Firefox, re-install and import bookmarks to start all over again on a clean plate.

Firefox, I love you.

MacBook Pro, I love you more. You make my life smile.

With receipt in hand, my new iPhone won’t be here till Wednesday, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

Heh.

Sometimes you have to indulge on what makes you happy, so you can temporarily forget about the monster that’s destroying my body.

You know what sucks about being on a no yeast diet? Just about everything. I can eat whole wheat bread, but I’ve been eating subway for the last week and frankly, I’m a little tired of it. My doctor told me that when I crave sugar, it’s the yeast talking and starving. That’s creepy, but it makes sense in a way.

I’ve also been craving Yogurt. For me, that is weird. Yogurt with granola on top. Hmmmmm. I just had some, but I wish I had more.

We had a fire drill today at work. It was like a flashback from elementary school, only the gathering area in Adult land included an ice cream cart. I cheated and had an ice cream sandwich. That’s why I had the yogurt. Because I felt guilty.

Thankfully I’m still allowed to drink coffee :: chug ::

It has been a very long tiring day. I went to my long anticipated appointment today to see the specialist that people travel 2, 3, 6, 12 hours to see. I feel almost spoiled having this clinic 6 miles away from my home. When I first walked in it wasn’t like any other doctors office, where there is the typical waiting room and a big front desk. There was just a room off to the side where the receptionist came to greet me and asked my name. After I told her it was like a whirlwind. She took my 24 page questionnaire that I had filled out prior to the appointment (yes, I read the directions). The “waiting room” looked like someone’s living room. Very zen. Not even 5 minutes later a nurse comes out and introduces herself to me, to my Mother and my Husband and told us that she will be taking care of me today and asked me back to one of the rooms to take my vitals. After vitals I was shown to another room with a glass round table and cute little chairs that went around. The only thing that reminded me I was in a doctors office was the seat where you can either lay down or sit on the end (you know, that massage table looking thing that is in every doctors office). Dr. C came in and introduced himself. He is Indian, so I was really scared upon meeting him because I have the worst time understanding people from India because of their accent. I really have to listen hard to pick out the words, I don’t know what it is about the indian accent.

Anyway, he started talking to me right away about why I was there, and that he was positive he could help me. He did a pressure point test on different places around my whole body, and talked about my previous medical history. Doctors usually don’t look over your chart until they are in the room with you but he had already read my entire packet that I had brought with me just 15 minutes previously. He first started to explain to me why my body was acting like it was, and even explained to me why my body is acting like it is, and where the pain was coming from and he guessed that I had been sick for a lot longer then 9 months since some of my symptoms date back as far as 8 years ago when doctors couldn’t find an explanation for my migraines, or for my irritable bowel, or the reason why I always felt off balance. Everything seemed to come together like a puzzle, and everything started to make sense. I think it was at that moment I started feeling a bit hopeful again, even after he said I was one of the more severe cases he’s seen in a while.

I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia along with Chronic Fatigue. When I told him I had a full time job and that I went to school he couldn’t believe it. He said that his other patients had had to go on disability long before the point I was at. I told him that I didn’t have that option since my Husband hasn’t gotten a job.

Dr. C then went into the program he was going to set up for me. He prescribed pain meds, muscle relaxers, Ambian for sleep, and an anti-fungal since my yeast levels were high. He wants to start me on 9 different natural and organic supplements on Friday and get me to the point I can ween off all synthetic drugs (chemical drugs you get in a pharmacy) while maintaining pain management and getting my body back to working correctly.

After meeting with Dr. C I was taken in a little room to have my blood drawn. They took 1 liter of blood!! I’ve never given that much blood in one sitting before, I felt a little woozy halfway through when they had me drink apple juice which He also had me do an IV treatment. I was lead into this room with 12 recliners and about 6 people were in there with IV bags hanging over them. I felt like I was on the cancer ward getting ready to get chemo therapy. One of the IV bags was medicine for the pain and stiffness and the other bag was for my memory and concentration (what they call Fibro Fog). The IV treatment lasted 2 hours. After that I got an energy shot in my butt and the nurse went over my medication schedule with a booklet about each med, when to start each med, and how much of each med to take. She said she would call me in the middle of the week sometime to check on me and see how I’m doing. Wow. That’s all I have to say about that, is wow. They were so nice and it was clear they really were all about the patient, and the patients needs.

I have more to write, but right now I’m too tired.

My Mother goes home tomorrow. I’m really sad about that and I’m going to miss her.

Just making a test right now, posting this from Textmate. I’m also going to test inserting an image through Textmate using drag and drop.

Inserting image didn’t work, trying to find out why

Nothing like messing up some hidden apache2 file somewhere deep inside /etc/

Well, I did. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Maybe because my brain is dying. I was riding the rail the other night with ruby and after realizing that I had installed my gems incorrectly I reinstalled. Then I got an idea for a Java program I was working on so I jump over to Netbeans 6.1 and I realize that I had a gem I wanted to install there too, so completely distracted (doesn’t take much) I start installing some gems and plug-ins and … oh noes.

CRASH!

There goes Netbeans 6.1 … I try to open it again and I get this:

Just great. After many searches through the Googlespere I find out there is some apache file that calls Xalan.jar and makes it a very unhappy jar file breaking some class that Netbeans 6.1 calls. So I had another Bright Idea™ (I really should be careful about those big idea’s). I’d just delete Netbeans 6.1 and re-install. Nope, didn’t work. I thought I would re-install apache2 with macports. I got this error:

Great, so the all mighty macports won’t even install apache2 again. I went to xMod and let it check and fix my files and permissions. Ya, didn’t work. So, I had to do the long road. Reinstall completely with my last Time Machine backup. But, then I had another Bright Idea™ .. I re-named my /usr/local folder and try to re-install apache2. With success I got:

Yet, it didn’t fix my Netbeans 6.1 problem. Sigh. Let me go try out another Bright Idea™ …

I have been, BUSY. So busy that I’ll be writing to my advisor tomorrow to drop one of my classes. I think I’m going to drop Java, I think. I’ve been staying late at work mostly due to our lack of competent support staff. I’ve had to fix a lot of mistakes lately for people. It’s extremely frustrating. I’ve been handed this huge job of configuring and maintaining the Altiris Helpdesk, including custom automation, setting up notify rules, and building custom forms that integrate into the software and database itself. I’m not a DBA, but I feel like I’m soon becoming one.

The other night I was playing around with Ruby on Rails. It was a lot of fun. Even with all my web development experience, I never really learned about database stuff. I just knew how to set up MySQL to work with whatever web application I needed. After playing with Ruby on Rails I learned a great deal about SQL syntax and how to install, and create databases (through command line). Fun stuff. Dangerous for me however, because my idea bank really starts to expand when I learn new things. When I get to work Monday my head was exploding with all these idea’s for Altiris Helpdesk and how I was going to make it rockin’. I’ve already done some code customization work to it that was noticeable to everyone right away so that was good. Even a little encouragement and the idea’s in my head explode. That’s where I get into problems. I have to start one idea and take it all the way, then start another idea. I tend to switch what I’m doing about every 5 minutes, it even annoys me. Point is, there are some things I want to start working on now, like the custom forms but that’s not exactly the most important or demanding feature they want implemented.

So when I learned that the IT Director wanted to get the email notifications and automation running first I thought, shit. I’m going to have to document all of this. My mind works with visuals so to make these automation tools the idea’s explode but if I don’t get them down in a flow chart of some kind I get lost and I can’t keep up with my brain. So I spend a lot of today writing those logic flows out, and I spent a lot of that time being completely distracted with down systems and down networks.

I’ve been so busy dealing with work fires (you know, shit just breaks sometimes) from our sites it’s emptying my tank fast. I was on a conference call for 2 hours tonight, and on the phone with network engineers for an hour and I wasn’t done working on putting these fires out until midnight. That’s a 14 hour day today people and keep in mind that I’m a full time student. Yesterday I wasn’t done until 10 PM. Do not want fires, I want to work on these projects and get my homework done and stuff.

I’m still not feeling well.

Am I sure glad it’s Friday. Altho I didn’t go to work 3 days this week I did work from home which granted me the privilege to get a hell of a lot done. It’s been a hard week when it comes to health. Ever since I moved away from where I was born and raised I’ve run into nothing but problems with the health care system, and I long to have my old doctor back. Going back to Colorado however, isn’t an option and I must seek and find what I’m looking for here. It’s just going to take time and energy, the two most non-abundant things in my life.

I haven’t gotten a chance to catch up with my RSS feeds yet. I can usually keep up daily with them but with the amount of school work I’ve been up against I haven’t even played WoW. I don’t usually during the quarter but when I have a little bit of time I at least log on. Not this quarter, however, and I fear it’s going to reflect the rest of my degree program. Onward and upward, someday I’ll be happy I did it. Right?

I truly do love education and I love learning. In fact I would probably go to school the rest of my life if I didn’t have any other responsibilities or family to provide for. Things being how they are, I’m looking forward to that time I can actually have to sit down for a while after coming home from work. It only makes me stronger I suppose, and I’m learning those time management skills I always wanted to know. I didn’t exactly want to be forced into learning those however, lol.

I don’t have to work this weekend so I have the next 48 hours to do with as I please, in a very responsible manner. I was fully expecting to be working this weekend so it was a nice surprise. I have two movies from Netflix to watch … which I might do as I’m looking up information for my System Administration class.

Might as well get started.

Right now I’m arguing with myself on what to do. It’s already 1 AM but I feel like I need to get more homework done. Do I jump into some java code, or do I jump into a 5-10 page paper about system administration? Or do I simply go to bed and feel defeated?

With all the mess from the medical stuff I’m far behind and I want to catch up. I’m finding my time becomes less and less lately and it’s stressing me out in such a bad way that my health is failing. There really isn’t much I can do about it at this point in time, so I have to carry on and try my best.

Both projects that are due are pretty huge. I have to be semi-coherent for both which I am right now, I just don’t know which to choose. Sleep is something I haven’t been getting enough of obviously, but I don’t want to feel like I’ve not gotten anything done. I’ve been on call this week for work and tonight has been a busy work night for me too, which again pushed school off to the side. Sigh. I think I’ll start my paper …

All I have to say about Acrobat.com‘s new web office launch is, whoa.

For the first time, it looks like Google will have some serious competition.

I just tired out Buzzword and ConnectNow and I’m completely blown away so far. Doesn’t webex make you pay an arm and a leg?

Beautiful interface, beautiful design. But then again, it’s Adobe, it’s sort of what they do.

Good job Adobe, very good job.

This is a little embarrassing, but I just had to do it. I was running out of desktop space.

So I decided to mount my 20″ Dell wide screen monitor and my 13″ LCD HDTV to the wall. I feel like I’m in a cockpit now.

My new set up in my office

I can’t get over how incredibly easy Apple makes it to learn their framework and to dive right into Cocoa programming. I’m a member of Apple Developer Connection because my passion is creating, coding and developing. When I first dove into Cocoa and Objective-C programming and signed up for the ADC program Apple pretty much got out a silver tray and handed me every tool I would need to create neat, fast and stream-lined OS X and iPhone applications.

The Library’s Apple offers are huge and they are actually built into XCode (the apple developer tool). I’m a visual person so I’m much more prone to video than I am having to read gobs of technical jargon. Apple takes care of people like me and with my learning style. They offer both introductory video’s, advanced video’s and everything in between. Not only can you find these video’s on the Apple Developer web sites but you can also find the video’s on Apple’s iTunes and download them to your iPhone/iPod/Touch to take with you.

Like I said, I thrive on this stuff …

I recently downloaded two albums on iTunes the other night. Low and behold, my Macbook Pro crashed and my last backup was from two weeks ago. After I got it restored with Time Machine I noticed I had lost those two albums (like seriously, that’s $21.00 I didn’t exactly want to throw out the window).

So I wrote to iTunes and told them what happened.

They wrote me back and said, here is your music!

So I wrote them back again, because really, what company actually cares, right? This is what I said:

Can I hug you? :: hugs ::

Thanks so much awesome Apple People (And Ray who helped me)

Jen

It’s sent to a general iTunes box of course and not even one hour later I get this email:

Dear Jenny,

You’re very welcome. Thanks for the hug!

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Thank you for being a valued iTunes Store customer. Have a great day, Jenny!

Sincerely,

Raymond
iTunes Store Customer Support

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

In all honesty, I’m not that valued as an iTunes customer as I don’t pay for music that often (I’m pleading the 5th on this). Now I feel like only buying my music from iTunes. Apple made me feel special, once again. I thrive on this stuff.

Well, I had quite the day. This morning I was installing some software and in the middle of it it stalls, everything froze and I did the worst thing possible. I lost patience and held down the power button to reboot my mac instead of waiting. When my Macbook Pro started back up it was at the start up screen with the apple logo and the rotating gear. FOR A FREAKING HOUR. Sigh. It wouldn’t boot. I tried everything, I even tried restoring from Time Machine, but nothing was working.

Then I start freaking out … Because I have a shit load of homework to get done for the projects due tomorrow and I’m already wasting hours trying to get my computer back up.

I rush to the apple store right before they were going to close. They thought it might be the hard drive but I made an appointment to have it checked out for tomorrow today at 12:15 PM.

When I get home, I just figure I’ll try to restore the hard drive by reinstalling a fresh copy of OSX. Previously in safe mode it wasn’t seeing the hard drive and after using first aid and trying to repair the OSX volume it failed. This time, when doing a fresh install it saw the hard drive and it took the install. Then when it was back up I restored everything but the applications folder from Time Machine (because it was faulty software that did it in the first place I think). Then I selected the applications that were critical to school and to my functioning from Time Machine and HURRAY! My Mac is BACK!

Granted it’s 2 AM and today was completely wasted and I’m going to be going through some serious crunch time in getting this Java homework done, but ..

But I haven’t felt a personal connection with a computer in a long time. Years actually. This is 100% due to the frustrations of Windows. Ever since I got my Macbook Pro my computer experience has been restored and I have this personal bond with my projects again. Weird I know, but I am a professional computer geek who wants to know the ins and outs of everything dealing with technology.

I’m just glad I’m back. I didn’t want to suffer through using my Vista computer while my Macbook Pro was sitting in the apple store getting fixed. That reminds me, I have to call and cancel my appointment for tomorrow today.

I recently moved my site to This* (one of my sites, this one will be going shortly) and I know I’ve written about them before but I have to write about them again, because they impressed me with personal touch.

I got an email from Jules, the Technical Director who was proactive and manually moved my site without waiting to hear back from me.

Hi Jenny,

As a new client of ours and having been with us for a couple of weeks now, I’m just e-mailing to check up on the service you’ve received so far. How has everything been? Do you have any comments, suggestions or other feedback for us that may help us improve the service for yourself and others in the future? Any and all comments are welcome so feel free to speak your mind!

–
Best Wishes,
Jules Robinson – this* Technical Director

I emailed Jules back quite the book.

Hello Jules!

Let me start out as saying I have never been treated by any company as I have been treated by ThisWebHost. My jaw is still dropped to the ground thinking back through the few weeks of my new membership with you.

I give you, and This* a standing ovation :: stands up and claps ::

The extremely quick set up was completed 45 seconds after I hit the “sign up” button. I was extremely busy at work that day and I didn’t get back to you about moving my site, yet you were proactive and completed it for me before I had a chance to check my email (and I know full well that it’s NOT part of the hosting plan to manually move sites, it’s only part of the plan to move sites that had certain cPanel services). My site has been blazing fast, and you guys are AWESOME.

I’m a software engineer and I’ve been in the “business” for 10 years now and I have never seen IT folk so personable, friendly, and helpful. You work for an extremely wonderful company and I hope to find a company with as much integrity when I graduate from college.

I’m going to tell a little story that happened to me the same day I signed up with This*. I went to get my hair cut at this new Fantastic Sams close to my work. The gentleman that cut my hair was extremely kind and talkative and we sat there talking 30 minutes after he was done with my hair. It wasn’t but 2 days later I get a card in the mail from him to say thank you for the conversation and he hoped I had a good time with my family who was coming into town. It wasn’t one of those thank you notes that was pre-printed. He took the time and energy to thank ME, when he was the one that cut MY hair. The point I’m trying to make is, This* did exactly that. You go the extra mile and you truly care about the care of the customer. Consider me your permanent customer, and I’m in the process now of transferring my other two sites over.

Please feel free to forward this to your boss, their boss, and their boss. I want to thank everyone!

Jen

YES! They are really that amazing.