Learning Something New

I try and make every project an opportunity to learn something new. Whether its a new way of thinking about an old problem or something I just never took the time to understand. I’m also trying to accept help from others whenever I can. I find that I often develop my own idea of how something works and input from someone outside of the problem can often shed new light on the matter. I never want to become so full of myself where I start overlooking valuable input from those around me.

Work so far has been an amazing opportunity to learn and grow and I’m glad I’ve been pushing myself like I have. I’m finally starting to realize my potential as a developer and there’s a lot more fun to be had.

Nothing Goes Bad

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I spend a crazy amount of time creating content for free on the internet. Whether it’s posting to one of my many blogs or working on one of the plugins I maintain in the WordPress repository. I do these things mainly because I enjoy helping others and I especially enjoy hearing how my plugins and blog posts have helped people with their own projects.

I also put these things on my resume because I spend a lot of time working on them and believe they’re one of my strongest selling points as far as defining who I am as a web developer. It is a little disheartening however when you put a lot of time and effort into something that ends up getting little to no traction online. It’s hard not to feel like I failed or did something wrong.

Ultimately I try not to let this get me down. If my plugins and posts help just one person then they were worth it. But then today, I was meeting with a potential client who in fact used two of my plugins for their own clients’ site. Something I had developed a few years ago with little to no traction on the internet ultimately was the deciding factor in getting this new job.

So be proud of everything you create whether it gets the response you were looking for or not. It’s a little piece of you on the internet and you never know who’s going to run across it a few years down the line.

You'll Get What's Coming To You


Photo by Ezy Brenizzle

I pretty much live my life by the motto “What goes around comes around”.

Basically I don’t do anything to other people I wouldn’t want done to myself. If someone else does something to me I don’t like, I turn my other shoulder and see if they’re doing something I like the next day. Everyone gets as many chances as they want.

If you know me at all then you know this isn’t a spiritual thing or some righteous hippie movement. Well OK maybe you might think it was the hippie thing but its not. It just had to do with my view on life. I see people waste their lives away in unconstructive arguments and its just not worth my time.

I do however enjoy a good constructive argument. This is mostly why I love my job … because my boss loves to argue with me.

But my point is that I believe my quality of life is dramatically increased by this lifestyle. Granted I am not perfect, yet, and sometimes life does get the best of me. I am however extremely content with my life choices so far.

So bring it on. You’ll get what’s coming to you and I will move on to bigger better things … hopefully.

Gamer Fo' Life


Photo by Soprano For Now

Every weekend I have set aside about 4 hours in which I can play Counter-Strike. I can’t help it. I was one of those computer nerds who would bring their computer to a friends house so we could lan. Good old lan parties. Sometimes I’ll mix it up and play a little DOD or TFC but recently I’ve been a huge scoutsknives fan so I rage A LOT of CS.

So enough Greek for those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about.

Lets bring it back a little. What games were a big part of your childhood? It could be anything from Lincoln logs to Sega genesis (Sega was pretty clutch).

I would have to say that original Nintendo sculpted a large part of my early video gaming career. I remember a lot of Mario/Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros 3, Golf and some crazy chess like game where the pieces were creatures that would battle and stuff. I also went on to own such classics as Zelda and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

So video games aside, I used to like taking stuff apart and putting it back together. This led to my love for K’NEX – “The World’s Most Creative Construction Toy”. I probably played with them until I was like 16. I would try and make it cool by building actual functional items like folder holders and alarm clocks that always missed my head. Not gonna lie I, actually know where those two glorious orange boxes of connectible trinkets lies. Good thing their not in this house because I would have already stopped writing this and started building a rollercoaster.

OK enough about the dam k’nex. Favorite childhood game had to of been Truth or Dare. It was always a win win situation that would result in me learning something new about life or… er… the human anatomy. I know everyone has played it at one time or another. It was the “break the ice” game that entertained us through puberty. I think as a result of that game I’ve … (this is the first time I’ve gone back and read what I wrote and said um …. maybe I shouldn’t go into detail).

So there you have it. K’Nex, Nintendo and Truth or Dare are the games that dominated my childhood. So now it’s your turn …. TRUTH: What games were a big part of your childhood?

Things I Can't Stand

I find myself repeating myself over and over again when rationalizing the things that I say and do. I usually just wouldn’t give a dam but for my friends and family I’ll repeat myself as many times as they like. For the rest of you I’m making a list of things I can’t stand:

  • People that don’t have good relationships with their parents. I understand that in some cases there are good reasons to not have relationships. This is more about a girl I know that is a bitch to her mom for no good reason. She is also incredibly spoiled … but ya. I’m a family man.
  • People that aren’t open minded. This ones simple. I hate people that refuse to step outside of their little safe box.
  • People that are racist. I’m pretty laid back when it comes to this stuff but people in my family have not been so lucky.
  • People that try and push religion down other people’s throats. I went to 8 years of christian camp, youth group, bible studies and catacombs by choice. It was a great time in my life but I have since moved past it. Your not going to teach me anything I don’t already know. I choose to have my own beliefs or disbeliefs of my own and you can enjoy the same privilege. Lets keep it that way.
  • People that think they know everything. Because I know I know everything and that’s all that matters.
  • People that judge me by my age and appearance. If everyone started judging everyone else by how they presented themselves and their accomplishments we would be a lot better off as a society.
  • Parents that shelter their children. I was a camp counselor for years and have always loved working with kids. My younger stepbrother is one of the coolest kids I know. A lot of over concerned parents ruin their children’s youth by instilling fear. They do this out of compassion and their own fear but they don’t realize the real danger they’re doing. The odds that something will happen to your child are only decreased by such a microcosm of a percentage that its not ever worth trying to figure out. The truth is that child psychologists believe that your kid is alot less likely to have a normal social life when they grow up do to a lack of basic survival skills we develop in adolescence. Basically… let your kids be kids.
  • The Police. I know a few cool ones … but they’re about to retire so we’re all screwed. This is just because of my own personal relations with cops up to this point.
Well that’s about it for now. I’m getting to tired to think.

UMass Homecoming

This past weekend was homecoming at UMass Amherst. I would have written about this sooner but I’ve been pretty sick the last couple of days.

So I arrived Friday night at the current president of my old frat’s house. A couple of the guys had already arrived so we immediately went inside and started the festivities with some beer pong. I won my first game of beer pong of the weekend in triple over time so i decided to call it quits and go undefeated.

We then went to the bar where we waited in line for about 30 minutes. While waiting in line, this girl behind me asks how many people are in front of my. I told her about 15 or so and she then calls me an asshole.

?^&*^(?

I was very confused at this point so in my semi drunken stupor I replied …. I think I’m more of a douche bag than an asshole. She agreed and continued to be a drunk bitch. I hate drunk bitches.

So we finally got inside and I bought a pitcher of the fine stuff …. bud light …. which was gone in about 2 minutes. I’m pretty sure one of my buddies just grabbed the pitcher and chugged it.

I had enough at this point so me and a couple other guys left early and went back to the house to drink with the rest of the underage kids.

The next day was tailgating galore. It was great to see so many old friends.

That night I went out and bough 7 30s to contribute to the nights stockpile and the party began.

Note: Girls …. writing stuff across your boobs will get you extra beer

I’m sorry but I’m a guy and when I’m drunk … not gonna lie… it works

The night was great tho. The sox won. I got really drunk. We all danced and drank till the wee hours of the morning.

I finally decided to crash at around 4AM at my buddies house down the street. So I’m just about to pass out when my buddies roommate comes storming in drunk yelling WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU. He flipped over his couch and he’s throwing shit around. He yells WHY IS EVERYONE SLEEPING …. ITS DRINKY TIME. I just put my pillow over my head and prayed form morning.

Finally morning came. It was a lazy Sunday. Me and my friend Pat drove down to Springfield where we went and saw Max Payne. Then I dropped him off in Gardner and was back to the North Shore by arount 7.

Monday morning I woke up sick as a dog. I guess my body cant handle it anymore. Oh well. I’ll be back there some time next month for Round 2

Frat Boy Antics

UMass homecoming is right around the corner and that means one thing for me. Drunk weekend with the brothers. I miss the good ol’ days of doing nothing, drinking a lot, and playing wiffle ball.

First off I want to clear the air on any preconceived ideas about what frats are like. I’m sorry if you had a bad experience at once, just remember, ever frat is different. Our frat for example went from 4 members in ’04’ to 20 by ’06’. We were very proud of our small numbers. Furthermore, we were all geeks. Well, geeks in the sense that we were all either comp sci or marketing majors in some form or another.

In ’06’ we acquired a full size frat house. 16 bedrooms, 4 living rooms, 2 basement rooms and 2 bathrooms. Well the 2 bathrooms part kind of sucked. There was only one shower …. and it was open….. that got interesting.

Best part about this frat house, I was president. I had the biggest room in the house. Next best part? I wasn’t even in school. I had dropped out after my freshman year and had been living in a frat house through what would have been my senior year. I think it’s the best thing that could have happened to me.

After I dropped out I began teaching as an interactive web and animation teacher. The time off from school gave me all the time in the world to prepare lectures and research new trends. I think those 3 years out of school were the most learning I had done my whole life. Once I took off the filter that is “curriculum” I began to learn more about the stuff that really interested in me.

Granted …. I was very on productive during this time. I was always broke and relied on food that was given to me. Everyone used to hang out in my room because of my SWEET SETUP, so there were always leftovers. I was very skinny back then, lol.

So looking back, I miss it. I learned so much during that time and had so much fun. That frat was the worst and best thing to ever happen to me.