The way Eric Gach does blogging.
Life
not sure… just ugh.
Dec 14th
Well, I’m not really sure what to write here right now. I just feel so ugh about myself. I’m so tired of feeling lazy and lethargic. Once again, I’ve let myself slip from doing what I should be doing. I’ve stopped jogging, I’ve stopped lifting weights, I’ve stopped trying. It just reminds me of how weak I am, and how easily I can fail if I let myself. I’m tired of it. I want to be a better person, for myself, and for everyone close to me. Its just so frustrating to be doing so good for a while, then just quitting completely. I hate it!
So, really this blog post isn’t because I want you to feel sorry for me, its because I need to voice how I feel, and because I want to make a promise to everyone. I promise I’m going to start again, and I’m going to stick with it, no matter how much I hate it or don’t want to do it. What I really need is accountability. I suck at holding myself accountable, and I know it. I need people to push me, and hold me totally accountable for what I’m promising right now. I’ve already started tonight and I feel great. I’m working on this post between weight lifting and running. I’m going to at least do it every other day until my body gets used to it again.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent my frustration with myself and to be able to hold myself accountable by looking at this post. All I have to say to myself is… JUST DO IT! 
Happy Thanksgiving!
Nov 26th
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Just thought I’d post a quick note to say I hope everyone is getting lots of yummy food today! I’ll post more over the weekend of what I’ve been up to lately.
Life & Updates
Nov 10th
Well, its been a bit since my last post and I think its time for another update. I’m still looking for a job, haven’t had any luck finding much yet. Might have a part time job lined up until something else works out though, so that’s good On the other hand, I’ve had some time to work on dev.php-oop.net So far its been mainly backend work, so there’s not a lot more to show for it, but I’ve taken some time to implement a new password hashing using crypt and blowfish. I’m also trying to work on the password reset form to make it work better. Currently it just resets the password, but I want it to e-mail the user, then the user must click a link before the password is actually reset.
On the other hand, my jogging is going well. I’m not keeping up with it as good as I would like, but I have managed to go as far as 3 miles in one time. I also went this past Sunday and jogged with my friend, we both ran to see how fast we could do a mile and half. I managed to run it in 12 minutes and 51 seconds! I just hope I can keep doing it and keep running further. I would like to participate in a marathon sometime soon as well. I’m also, starting this week, lifting weights with the weight set I just got moved in. I’m hoping between that and running, I can make up for the last few years of my life that I just haven’t tried anything to get into shape. Hopefully I’m making up for lost time at this point
Life & Changes
Oct 24th
Well… things have been changing in my life lately. I’ve had to move back to my home town and look for a job in the Kansas City area. I’m currently living in a house my parents own until I can get a job and a place of my own. Kelsey had to move back in with her parents for the time being until sometime in late January or early February of next year. Its hard on both of us, but we’ll make it through it. I’m currently looking for employment in the St. Joseph, MO or Kansas City area, so if anyone knows of anything, please feel free to let me know.
On another note, with the lack of work I’ve had lately, its given me time to work on php-oop.net again. I’ve actually been working with the dev site to get things going. I started with a total rewrite because I wanted to take a totally different approach to the back end of the site. I didn’t want to use a framework, but I wanted the same structure. I wound up using my own SiTech library for the back end to make it more MVC like. I think the approach is working wonderfully. I’ve learned new things and made tweaks to SiTech to improve functionality and how it all ties together. If anyone is interested in participating with either SiTech or the development of php-oop.net, please let me know. I could always use some extra help.
A couple of other things I’m trying to do more/better is writing in my blog, and jogging each day. This is the first post after a while, so we’ll see how that part goes, but the jogging is already going great! I started Monday (the 19th) by jogging almost 3/4th of a mile. I can say that Tuesday, my legs were so sore that it killed me! Wednesday I went jogging again, but I’m not really sure how far I made it. Thankfully after that my legs weren’t as sore, but still hurt Thursday. Yesterday (Friday) I went jogging again and actually made it a full mile! Since we ran on a track, I also did a lap of sprint/jog where I sprinted the straight parts, and jogged through the corners. It was really great, and I’m happy to say today my legs don’t hurt at all. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to push it up to where I can go every day instead of every other day.
Well, here’s to hoping things go as planned… I’ll update again later this week.
Summer Plans…
Mar 2nd
I figured its time to post about my plans this summer. I’ve been talking with mah hunnies about moving this summer, and I think we’ve finally made a decision on who what when where how. We’ve been talking for a while to move back to my home town St. Joseph, MO and we’ve finally decided to do that this summer. It will most likely be at the end of the summer, but we’re looking for a house to rent. I’m really excited about it and really can’t wait. I don’t have an exact date yet, but we’re thinking around the end of August.
We’ve been looking for houses to rent around the area and have found some decent places, I’m just hoping that there will still be good places around the time that we’re wanting to move too. I can’t wait to move, it’ll be exciting to have a change and be somewhere different from the past four years. We’ve both decided though that a couple of her sisters are going to make the move with us, that way its easier for her to adjust without her whole family there, and they get to experience something new and exciting too. I think it will be an exciting experience for everyone and I can’t wait! I’ll update more as the time gets closer.
Seven Things
Jan 11th
Well, I’ve been tagged by Lig to write seven things about myself. This should be interesting… Here’s my seven things:
- I’ve been coding for about 10 years now. I started when I was about 15 by learning HTML and Perl. Shortly after though, I picked up on PHP3 and the journey began. I used to love being an admin on the EvilWalrus website, and actually gained most of my knowledge while coding on the site. Now I enjoy languages such as PHP, Python, C/C++ and C#.
- I’ve been with my girlfriend Kelsey for over four years now. She is my everything, and I plan to spend every minute of my life with her. I want to travel the whole world with her and see everything we possibly can. She is the most amazing person and the most amazing thing to ever happen to me. I honestly can’t wait to make her my wifey
- I’m actually adopted. I love my parents who adopted me very much, and I’m also so happy that they were able to give me more than I ever expected as a child. I don’t know my birthmother at all and I don’t have any desire to. I have a paper with her name and her mothers name on it, but there is no name or any information for my birthfather.
- I’ve been to over twenty states during my childhood while traveling with my parents. I’ve also been to Cancun Mexico three different times, to Hawaii four times and Pearl Harbor twice. I’ve been able to ski in Colorado, snowmobile in Wyoming, and watch hot air baloon show in New Mexico. The thing I remember the most from all the traveling though is in Hawaii when we went downhill mountan biking. We had to get up at 4am in the morning and take a bus ride to the top of a mountan where we watched satallites orbit above us, and then the sunrise.
- I don’t get along with my family very well. I’m very close to my parents and grandparents, but not at all with any of my aunts, uncles or cousins. It’s partially because I’m the second youngest out of 25 cousins and partially because I feel like an out cast and not accepted into my family.
- I was home schooled from 7th grade all the way through high school. This was for a couple of reasons, one is because of all the traveling I was doing with my parents. Another is because the kids at the private school I went to loved to pick on me and I hated it. While I enojyed home schooling, I feel like I missed out on a lot by not going to high school.
- I actually know how to do a lot more than use computers and program. My dad is a developer, so while growing up I learned a lot from him. I can operate several types of equipment like tractors, backhoes, loaders, bulldozers, and skid loaders. I’ve also had to lay sod, pour and curve concrete curbs, and do lots of odd jobs for him. My favorite thing is when he would get new land and there would be buildings that we had to tear down and destroy. I’ve seen some of the hottest and biggest fires from burning the debris. My dad has shown and taught me a lot of things that I’m very thankful for.
Well, there’s my seven things.I hope its been as interesting of a read as it was for me to write. Now for my seven people… ok, only five, but I’ll add two more later.
- Adam Ward – Because he’s been an awesome friend over all these years.
- Joey Smith – Because he’s been an awesome mentor and friend, and he’s given me my start into Linux.
- Cody Brocious – He’s always been there to talk and help. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in Python without him.
- Philip Olson – Because we still need to get that windows site done!
- Graham Christensen – I know he’s been tagged already, but I haven’t seen anything yet and would love to.
Last but not least… the rules to pass on!
- Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
- Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some wierd.
- Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
- Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.
I’m baackkk!!
Oct 31st
So, as most of you haven’t noticed, since no one really reads this thing… I lost my server over a week ago. Now I’ve finally gotten everything back and setup on a virtual machine, thanks to my friend Adam. Even though I was a wee bit (heh) behind on payments, he was still a good enough friend to hook me up with something that works for both of us. So now I can post all of my ramblings again that you probably won’t even read. 
Nothing real exciting has gone on lately… I’ve caught a cold, that’s really it. I guess on another side note, I have been working on somewhat of a new exciting project. It’s a custom gallery I’ve built for myself. As it is currently it doesn’t really do much, but I have been working on the admin side of things to get everything going the way I think it should. Right now it adheres to a current directory layout parsing images and spitting out thumbnails. While I was developing, I figured… hey, why not do movies too? So I did… it also makes thumbnails for all kinds of movie files. I even added embeded HTML to allow for playing the videos, though I prefer the FLV method.
I’m not really sure when I’ll have a good preview available… I just kinda work on it when I’m bored. Anyway, I don’t have much to say besides that, so I’ll let you all get on with not reading this. Will post again soon, I hope.
Finally Settled…
Mar 20th
Hey all. Just wanted to update everyone on what’s going on. I’m finally all moved and settled in to the new place. It was hard moving everything, I think the only thing that didn’t survive the move was my back but everyone is alright, so that’s what matters. Kelsey and I have our own place that we’ve got settled in to for now. Most of our stuff is in storage… but now the hard part about that is going through everything.
I had a bit of a problem with internet, but got that resolved as quickly as possible, though it did cost me a hotel stay. Right now my main issue is that everything is very slow with internet, but it was that way before the move. Apparently my cable company doesn’t want to fix a problem that’s been looming for months, and now it’s so saturated that I can’t hardly SSH anywhere without a 2-5 second lag. I’m planning to get DSL, but I’m not sure how soon that will be.
Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know the latest. I also wanted to tell everyone thanks for the support during this hard time. I just hope everything keeps going good for us all.
Status Update: Part Deux
Mar 6th
Just wanted to update everyone on the latest. I’ve found a temporary place to live until I can get things sorted out enough to find a more permenant home. Right now I’m back in the apartment and have the power on, though I have no running water since the water lines ran through the basement of the house. I’ll most likely be moving this Saturday/Sunday… but I don’t know how that’s going to effect internet and such. I’m hoping I can get all that hooked up by then. I’ll update again once I’m all moved.
Status Update
Mar 3rd
I don’t even know where to begin with this post. I’m really just posting to let everyone know that I might not be online a whole lot of the next few days. As some of you know, I live in an apartment above my girlfriend’s parent’s house. Well, last night around 3:30am there was a fire in the basement… everyone got out okay, but the house is devistated. It only burnt the basment and a little of the room above the basement, but everything in the house itself was destroyed by smoke. My apartment just got a little smoke in it, but everything is ok up there. I feel so bad for my g/f’s family because they basically lost everything.
Right now I’m staying in a hotel for a couple nights until I can get power hooked back up to the apartment. From there I’ve got to get in and get all of my stuff packed up, and then find a new place to live. The g/f’s family has already got a couple things lined up for them as they’re getting a lot of help, which is good. I don’t know how long it will take to get power back, or even if I will be able to. So my connectivity will be very on/off for the next few days at least. I’ll keep everyone updated as to what’s going on… I just ask for prayers and thoughts as we go through this challenging time. Thanks.
