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Been busy myself. Not much time to talk, but, I've had to deal with a half dead PC (OS
issues), been kept extremely all month. Pretty much sums it up.
Yeah, my thing is Microsoft needs to quit trying to be like everyone else (hint: make something unique, like
Tim said). Instead of ripping off other people's software and trying to add a bunch of USELESS features,
they ought to try to make an OS that actually runs STABLE, and secure.
Steve, yeah, I've been extremely busy at school, busier than I would like to be, and I'm just not around on the internet that much or that often. Just a few minutes every now and then to check the forum, not really fully active. I will get back on AIM soon, which might be very soon, as I finally have some breathing room this weekend.
I know we discussed these things last night, but I think I'm going to post them, kinda of like making a note of all of this:
First of all, before I do any site designing, I'm going to have to have a good discussion with the client to see what they want. And that can vary so much. For example, a big company (like one would actually contact me), may what something very slick and professional, using all the tools such as CSS and XHTML. On that, we team up and figure something out (since you know that better than me, I could do layouts). This would probably require regular maintenence (assuming they want any). Also, say a small business (example, a local business in Cambridge), may just want some kind of simple page that just explains what they do, has their logo, and contact information. Something like that would be a cheap, simple layout that I could do in no time, that may require no maintenance.
Any place that wants a site, will have to get their own hosting service. I don't feel we have the capabilities to it (I mean we could, but I don't recommend it). And we all know that it's not that expensive to get hosted, as long as you pick the right service (GoDaddy.com <– plug).
As for what I'm uploading, it's stuff I've done in the past (ranging from old MP sites to stuff I've done in school), which shows simplicity and complexity (a lot of the MP pages are simple, and some of my school pages are more involved, like my Dodge Viper flash site).
So, that means, like you said, we need to get our butts moving on getting MI up to snuff. I don't have much going on this afternoon (just got calc 1 at 6pm), so I'm going to start getting things organized and start working towards completion of the MP site (which is mainly getting the rest of the pages updated and uploaded). I don't think the art section of my page will be completed anytime soon, cuz I'd really like to have an automated gallery to work with, but I don't know what I'm doing about that just yet.
So, I should be around most of the day, Tim; holler if you wanna discuss anything else.
I've kinda got into this mood now, and I'm really wanting to get things done (this is rare, so I might has well take advantage of it).
PS — Oh yeah, I need to get around to making some new, more professional looking banners, so we can incorporate the system site wide.
Well, that sucks, Dell will more than likely ruin them. Colvin and I have always had strange issues,
I think in part cuz we dig deeper into our systems further than most people dare to go (I'm always optimizing
Windows to make it run faster, every little bit helps). My problem this year is all this junk I have to have
installed so I can just get on the internet, it's not nice and easy like it was at SCAD where you just put in
your ID number and password. Here, we have to run this login program called Cisco Clean Access Agent, which
doesn't do much but slow your system and it's access to the internet (on top of the fact it always has an
'error 87', which no one knows, the IT guys, and Cisco themselves, what it means). Then we have to
run Mircosoft's anit-spyware program (which doesn't catch anything, nothing, and anyone out there
who's running it thinking it's awesome, run something else like Spybot or Adaware, and then see if you
think the same about it after one of those 2 programs catches thousand's of things MS's
didn't). Windows firewall HAS to be turned on (like Colvin said, it's not a real firewall, and all
it does is hog resources). And on top of all that, everytime a new update or patch for XP comes out, we have
to update, and 99% of the time, that's the cause of most problems (the other thing, only computer's
running XP have net access here, Linux, Macs, or any O/S other than XP can't get on).
Colvin has a
great outline posted above. I agree, Firefox is the best thing to happen to the internet, since the
internet. I normally don't have these kinds of software problems (other than the reload thing, but Tim
and I have proven that most systems do require a reinstall every 6 months to stay in top shape), until I got here at
this school. I've always had bad luck with hardware, but that's a different topic in of itself.
Dude, I feel your pain. This install has been runnig good on me since last July; little crashes here
and there, mostly caused by program errors, nothing big. But, this weekend, it got worse. Saturday, I
was playing a little NFS: Most Wanted, and the game crashed. Ok, it's done that to me before, nothing
big. I was thinking of rebooting but didn't feel like it, so I was just browsing my hard drives, looking
for something to do, when Explorer suddenly crashed. I was going to reboot now, except, I couldn't.
Windows start systematcally crashing every program that was running — I was no longer in control — things were
crashing faster than I could hit the OK button. So, I took things into my own hands and yanked the power plug
(this is NOT recommended, as you can easily damage data and/or your hardware — if do if shutting down or restarting
does seem to work — for some reason my computer never reboots when I hit my reset button, so I dont' know
what's up with that). Ok, so I waited a little bit, turned it back on, and like Colvin, was in a constant
state of rebooting, didn't even want to go into safe mode. Finally after like 6 times, it ran checkdisk,
twice, and Windows finally started. Problem solved, or so I thought. . .
Sunday, I was working a
little in Maya, got finished with what I needed, saved, and closed the program. A few seconds after that,
Explorer crashed again. This time, I was trying to reboot as fast as I could, but as soon as I hit 'Start
— Shut Down', this dialog box with nothing but gibberish popped up, taking up half the screen. And
Windows started crashing everything again. So, I did the manual powerdown again. Powered it up again,
this time checkdisk ran the first time, and found all kinds of damaged and orphened files. I wasn't the
least bit happy at this point. Once Windows booted, it I got a message right away saying my current copy of
the registry was damaged, so a copy was loaded from a backup. I was a little worried, but everything seemed to
be working fine; until I loaded Photoshop. Once PS loaded, I got an error message saying that PS's font
reader was corrupt. And later, I found a few of my smaller programs weren't even loading. Now
I'm mad.
So, I've spent the last couple of days reinstalling things and trying to locate the
source of the problem, as this has never happened before, and I did nothing Saturday that I haven't done 10,000
times before. I've been running Norton Antivirus, Spybot, and Adware 3 or 4 times a day, just to make
sure it's not an infection of some type. Nothing so far. I almost believe it has something to do
with all the junk that the school makes us run, just so we can get 'net acess, like Cisco Clean Access Agent
(which is a completely buggy, worthless program).
What I really need to do is format and reinstall, but I
don't have time here at school, so my advice is that if you get stuck in a college dorm, which makes you
install junk cuz the IT guys thinks this stuff keeps their networks safe, get yourself a spare hard drive, make an
image of your install before you go to school, and if crap like this happens, just ghost it, and your back on your
way (unless you feel like spending a weekend reloading when you have a buttload of homework you need to get done on
top of that).
Yeah, I know for a fact that CSS would make our lives easier, especially if we changed any layouts on certain sections of the site (and would help me as I won't have to make layout and graphical changes to the MP Info page – assuming I ever get to updating and uploading that section). I dove into some CSS last spring, had a chance to learn a good chunk, but was quickly losing interest in everything at school (as I just wanted to get home for summer break), and kinda skipped out on that part (as well as the Flash site, Scott knows about that), so I really don't know as much as I should. But it doesn't seem all that difficult to use, so I'm sure we can get it into the site at some point.
By the way, Tim, if we wanna get a lot of these projects done, we're gonna have to get some free time, on weekends or something, and become coding freaks, in order to get anything major done (kinda like that time we had that one summer when we rebuilt our old computers, like my 133MHz, that was fun).
So, I'm seeing this as a way to build more up to date, and professional pages, to keep with the times and such, since the site is such a much bigger project than it used to be.
Ha, I know what you mean, it seems I'm sitting in front of my computer all the time. I just have a
a few large projects planned for this summer. As for any exploring that I might do, the stories and pictures
for those can be found over at the Attic forums, http://www.atticinc.org/. Scott, maybe if you get
some kinda interesting job over the summer or something, you could probably post all the exciting things you're
doing at that; I know I'll probably be complaining about work here, or in the lounge.
Woo, now that Colvin has found the tapes, I can't wait to start capturing and editing, and then make the DVD. Will be nice to see all that stuff again.
Sounds great. It's going to be awesome once we have this system working. One thing tho, at
the moment, uhmm, I forget the link for the update tool. So, whenever, just post it, or if I'm on, IM it
to me. You might have it already posted somewhere here, I'm just too lazy to look at the moment.
Man, I wish we had the time to update out pages. You seem to be making some progress. Technically, I
have some free time now (beginning of quarter), but really, I have absolutely no content to add. Sad really,
been wanting a stable site for years, and now that we actually have one, I don't have anything to put on
it. I'm sure by summer, I'll have something going on that I can or something. I can't
wait to see this stuff finished and working, it's gonna kick major butt.
Ha, that would be great, full stockage of drinks, but man, would that sucker be a pain to tote to LAN
parties. Funny as hell tho.
Yeah, I just now got to looking at that. Those are sweet systems. Giving me some ideas that
maybe someday down the road, I should build a custom system like that, maybe go with a gaming fridge setup.
That way, all the components would stay cool, and I could keep some caffinated drinks in there for those long
sessions of gaming.
