Brian's World

Summer has come and is going

Another summer is winding down. I’ll be moving in to RPI 8/20 (the first day I can) and classes start on 8/27. I’m moving in early to make sure I have time to do what I need to do and all. I might not stay up there that entire week, since I’ll hopefully have a car, but I haven’t thought much about it. Right now my car is in the stupid shop, the Air Conditioner died and it needed an oil change. Of course, they are taking 3 days to fix the AC because they keep finding more and more wrong with it or something, which is why I dislike how cars are manufactured today. I think cars should be like computers, completely modular. I can easily upgrade my computers Hard Drive, RAM, PCI Cards, DVD Drive, etc… heck, I could even upgrade the processor (though I don’t advise it); my car… well I can upgrade the radio no I can’t, its an accord. I can put stickers on it, get a paint job, and hang scented trees inside. Nothing very deep or intense. Maybe I’d like to upgrade the Air Conditioning component of my car. Maybe it needs to be replaced. Yes, Yes… I know very little about cars, but I know they are a very complicated machine, and if it was broken out into smaller, easier to manipulate components, maybe it would be easier. But what do I know anyways…

In other news, I am extremely tired today. I had to run around the highschool running \\shhs2\Software\gpfix.vbs to patch the registry on >50 classrooms. Stupid group policy. I actually like group policy, as I do with a lot of Microsoft products, when they are working. We recently “took” a domain controller offline (its registry crashed) and the network slowed down. Mainly because our DNS isn’t configured correctly; but I wish these things would fix themselves. It can’t be impossible to write a tool to go through you’re windows network and say “Hey, idiot… we’re looking for a domain controller that isn’t there… delete it at location x”.. but no, windows will hide that error message. Oh, it was funny when a linux box took over for DHCP, we were all panicking.

I’m still tired, and I want my car to drive itself. Don’t say its not possible, because if you do you should be slapped with something, possible a.. hrm, no good ideas… but I know they can drive themselves, because I said so.

July

July is almost done, and I’m not very pleased. This summer hasn’t been as eventful as I, or others, would have liked. And there isn’t even a month left. I’ve had several projects that I’ve been really interested in, Digital Signage, creating a custom CMS to replace shschools.com, doing some extensive TV related work, etc etc. I’ve just barely been able to get it done.

This is probably because of my work situation, my morning job isn’t completely challenging but its not the environment where I could zone out and work on other code without getting noticed. We’re also in a rush, time and money are running out and there are so many things to do. It doesn’t help that I have very big ideas that would be really cool, but I know the limits of what I can try and not try, and my ideas are definately on the “not try” list.

My afternoons at MassMutual continue to be boring. We’re spending most of our time “validating”, which makes no sense to me. If the reports were built correctly, there is no reason the data would be different; and if it is different, its certainly not our fault, or the reports fault. Blame the database conversion people. I dunno, I know that if my script is run correctly it will produce a correct report, but it only does what you tell it to. It won’t join tables that haven’t been setup yet, and it won’t magically understand what you want it to.

TV has come up lately in a brainstorming session with Katie. I like brainstorming, and I love Katie, so it was a pleasant time. If you happen to know of a good slogan for a daily high school news group named “Tiger Times” please let me know! I’m confident the ideas can be implemented, its just a matter of time and effort.

Sometimes I wish I had clones of me, so I could be hey, you… go write that code, you over there… go fix Katie’s computer… you, watch the massive amounts of TV I have recorded but never found time to watch.

Its 7:00, when I usually get together with Katie. I should go.

Where (do) I go wrong?

Let me tell you a few things about myself. My name is Brian Michalski, I’ve been alive for a little while. I have a brother, Kevin, and a Mom and Dad. I have 1 living grandparent (grandma on mom’s side), the rest are dead.

I consider myself decent with a computer, I can generally trick them into doing as I please. My web development language of choice is PHP with MySQL as the database. I spend a good deal of my spare time working with computers, learning different technology things, etc.

I don’t think I’m half bad at directing TV news. While I lack any formal training, I run a pretty tight ship. Unfortunately I don’t have means to practice this skill at the moment.

I dislike a lot about myself, most of which I find very strange and difficult to understand. I have no problem picking up a piece of Business Intelligence Reporting software and ripping it to pieces to develop a better solution, but I have a severe problem planning an afternoon with friends. I’m experienced camping in the woods for a week or two with minimal contact, but going for a few days away with others seems to be impossible. I can do a complete overhaul a shuttle tracking system in a matter of days, but I haven’t once in my lifetime been “invited” to a party with more than 10 people. [Note: I’ve been invited through someone else who was invited, but thats a different degree of invitation, I was referencing first degree]. I can safely say that any hours I’m awake after 11pm have been spend with 0-2 people. (0 implying alone, 2 implying my brother and Katie). Most people would attribute this to some video game or antisocial behavior I exhibit. I don’t think so, I’m not a video game addict (I’ve barely played more than 10 hours this entire summer), nor do I stare at a TV for all hours of the day. I don’t exhibit antisocial behavior, I engage in conversation and don’t like to outcast people. Personally I make a very good wall flower. The majority of my friendships have technology at the core of them.

All of these things I’m not uncomfortable with, some make up the very fabric of me. But sometimes they upset me, because I try hard and I just can’t seem to change. I’d like to say the forces limiting me are out of my control but theres no easy test for that. I just don’t know.

Alas is the life of Brian