Burning up

For school, we have to do, well, lots of stuff.
I missed one test (as in; didn’t make it.) and failed 3 assingments. I have to hand in another tomorrow, which isn’t done and can’t get done, so that makes 4. Sure, I can re-do them all, but it just sucks that I even have to.
But, I gues it can’t be helped. The reason for this is simple: We do group tasks, and this period, three out of the five people in my group are idiots. Really, they are. One already stopped, and the other two are just waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay under the level they should be. Just this moring, we where sitting in a PC lab, trying to get some C++ (Or, well MS VC++ .NET ) done. In C++, you device every class into two files. In the header, you define variables and functions (Or fields and methods, as they like to call them at school) and in the source, you fill the body of those functions. (Little explaination for the non-coders: In the header, you tell the compiler (= program that does something so it’ll work.) how it looks, what it has. In the source, you tell them what is does exactly.)
This is needed if you want to use one of your classes in another one of your classes. (You have to include the header.) Easy, right? (Well, it is if a teacher explains it, and you have a book that has 10 pages that cover the how and why. (The basics anyway.) )
But, for some reason, those two guys just don’t get it. So, me and the guy that does know what he’d doing explain. Then, five minutes later, they ask us `Ok, and now tell me how I do that` (Took them five minutes to release they didn’t know that.. come on.) So, we explain that. Twenty minutes later, something doesn’t work. They say `Jory, can you take a look?`. Sure, I’ll take a look. It is, after all, part of an assignment that you guys are making together with me..
So, I look at the screen. And what do I see? Well, a lot, but not the header/source structure I told you about twenty fucking minutes ago, moron!
So, I tell them to clean it up, and then I’ll take a look (I’m not cleaning it up for them; I do need to get some coding done myself, otherwise, this thing won’t get done in time.) And now, the two off them have the guts to tell me that I need to just do my work (Which, apparently, is clean up there mess..) so they can do there’s?
Well, I’m sorry guys, but I can’t.
I gave that a try, and look where it got me: 3 assignments and 1 test behind!
I don’t have the time nor energy for that. (Well, OK, maybe I do have the time, but then, I’d be working non-stop.)

That god it’ll all be over in 3 weeks and 1 day. Those three weeks in Itally will do me good.

sweet!

As you may know, I study do become a programmer. I’m mostly interested in hardware controlling stuff right now, though that may change. As a part of this study, we have to learn C / C++. But, because they couldn’t find good books that take all the work our off there hands and free compilers for that feel we aren’t ready to deal with memory management, we are getting Microsoft Visual C++ .NET instead. Oh well, its mostly the same, just managed code (=memory hogging. WinXP is mostly make in this, so is Office, so now I see where my RAM is going..) and some extra’s are build-in.
So make sure we learn it quickly, we have 1 of 2 full days of it teach week, this whole semester. I don’t mind, programming is something I enjoy doing. I do, however, mind being in school untill 5, having nothing to do but some stupid exersize I can finish in an hour or so. So, I don’t. Me and Robbert (the guy I work with; they want us to work together and learn from eachother and stuff.) normally leave at about 4. (Meaning, I’m home around 5, and he is home around 5.30 ~ 6.) But, yesterday, this other teacher (lipa) happened to be in the classroom as well. When we stood up, he said ‘Boys, its not 5 yet..’. So, Robbert walks over to our real teacher (vejr) and asks `Is it OK if we leave?`. The conversation that followed put the biggest grin on Robbers face.
lipa: *points at watch*
vejr: *looks, not understanding*
lipa: Its not time yet.
vejr: Its late already, they can go.
lipa: Its just 4 o’clock, this class doesn’t end untill 5.
vejr: I know, but these boys know what they are doing. They are just about the only ones that haven’t falling behind.
Robbert: *walks out with huge grin*
That was sweet.

Something else thats sweet: New PC. :hyper:
Ok, so its just a P4 @ 2,4 GHz, 256 MB Ram, 38 GB HD, but thats OK. It means people will be on this PC less, meaning I can use it more. (And also, another PC to play with, without the risk of screwing up the PC I use. )

Annoyences

Lately, I’ve been annoyed a lot. Its mostly because of people acting plain stupid / annoying. ( *gasp* yes, annoying people annoy me *gasp* )
A little example: (And I know that if this person reads this, he’ll know I’m talking about him. But honestly, I don’t give a ####.)
On irc.freenode.net#zetaboards
The guy in question (Lets call him John Doe) posts a link in the channel (without anybody asking for it, mind you) and asks what we think of it. I click the link, nothing there really, just 1 line of text, some logo and an ad.
So I say that its empty, I say I don’t like the ads, and I joke that he shouldn’t be using www.
Now, sure, I can see if he didn’t get it was a joke, but he goes offensive right away.
Things like `I’m using the ads to promote the use of .co.nr domains`. (First off, why? :s) and then, he tells me to reload.
He says he made the ads blend in better. So I look, and see no difference. So I tell him that. Turns out, the whole frikken site if full of ads. ( :wub: noscript) So I tell him that I’m only seeing that one ad, and have the rest blocked.
Him `boo`.
I explain I have most ads blocked as I find them annoying.
Him, again `boo`.
At this point, I’m annoyed and decide to ignore the window (it was in query.)
A little while later, still on irc.freenode.net#zetaboards
John Doe sent me another query.
About one second later, I get pinged.
John Doe: jory
John Doe: read ur pm
A few minutes afterwards, again on irc.freenode.net#zetaboards
Pete is saying that he’d like to see an IF Trivia Live soon, and that he’ll talk to Stephen about that lateron.
John Doe asks what it is. Pete explains. He asks when the next is planned.
Read you fool! Pete is saying he’d like to see one soon. Does that not mean that non are planned soon?

Then, the topic about the http://komnir.com/knife/ challenge.
That could be a good topic. It could be helpfull to those that are stuck. To bad that some people are posting passwords or direct links to levels in it. Or giving `clues` that are totally wrong, or are otherwise lying.

Then for some things that happend to me last week at work.
First off, customers. I truly do not get these people.
A few things about them I don’t get:

• Why do you always come when I’m eating my lunch? I am verry willing to help you about 7,5 hours of the day, but not when I’m having a break. Yet, you always come, exectly then? :s
• I work there, so I know what I’m talking about. Now, sure, I don’t know every single fancy latin name you found in some magazine, but I can do you one better: I can get you the plant you want, not the guy that writes for the magazine wants. I have been doing this for about 3,5 years now, so I think I know what I’m talking about.
• (This is somewhat of a followup on the last one, actually.) Why, when I say you should use that furtaliser, don’t you beleave it, even when I explain exactly why, yet when my boss tells you `its better` you’ll be ahead and buy it?
• See that pricetag right there? That is how much it costs. It says `€1, 10 for €8,50`. This means, if you but one, you pay one euro. If you buy 10, you get 1,50 euro discount. So, no, I will not sell them for €0.50 each. Not to you, not to the next guy, not to anybody. (####, I don’t even give my own mother discounts.. thats why she always pays to my boss. :p ) Its why we have pricetags, actually, to show you what the price is.

Also, I installed ADSL for my boss yesterday and today.
Pulling the cables and stuff was OK, I got everthing setup relatively fast (taking into account I never did it before) but then, there was a problem. See, there PC is kinda old, so it doesn’t have an ethernet card. There wasn’t one in the installation pack eighter.
So I went out to buy one. Put it in (#### you @ compaq for making casings that are such a pain to open.), installed it (Win98 really does suck…) and plugged in everything. When that was done, I installed some software there ISP gave them. It was mostly just clicking and waiting for it to check, as its designed to guide your trough the installation of everything, laying out wires, etc. which I had already done. Then, again, a problem: It wanted a password. We had no idea where it was, so I gave the helpdesk a call. `I’m sorry but I can’t give you that. I can tell you the username is [boss's name]@adsl-surf`. So I changed that. Goodies, now, the password isn’t wrong anymore, as the username doesn’t excist. So my boss gave them a call, there was lots of confirming it was really us, and they gave us the (right) username and password. I finished setting stuff up and internet worked.
But, in the mean while, I had to hold back from cursing trought the phone about 20 times. Even my boss said the helpdesk guy was an ###. (Fun thing: him `now start IE. Clear the URL bar. thats the bar where you type the internet adress. Now type in 10.0.0.138` Me `login on the router? sure..` him `er… yes`)

So, yea, I got annoyed a lot lately.
And I’m tired. So good night.

Where do those files go?

I’m just wondering, where exactly do files go when you send them over MSN transfer?
Its not a direct connection, thats for sure. You see, a guy from my class wanted to send me a project, over schools network = super fast. Even if it had to go over the internet, still killer (100MB I beleave) connection. According to trillian, transferspeed was 4.8 KB/s…. Not what I call fast.
So, I assume the files are send to MSN servers first. They have to deal with loads of connections, so they *should* be fast, can’t imagine they are on some slow connection. :/ So, what do they do with them? Scan them on stuff? (Or, like the guy from school suggested, some federal bureau wants to scan them first, just to make sure you don’t plan some terrorist act. [/consperacy-theory])

I also don’t like the idea of people being able to read my email. (Yay for having a domain name, ) I don’t have anything to hide (this does not mean I will let you see my inbox, so don’t ask) but the idea that my emails can just be read, I don’t like it.
See, I care for my privacy, or what is left of it anyway…

In other news: First drivinglesson today.
I think it went pretty good.
Also, next week = vacation!

Oooh

According to the Zend.com PHP Cerfification self test, I’m ready to take there exam.
So, I guess I can not honestly say, I am good at PHP.
I have to egmit, I wasn’t 100% sure on all my awnsers, and the score I got wasn’t all that great, but hey, if they say I can do it, sure..
Maybe I will, this summer.
Because it would be frikken cool to be ZCE.

Somewhat related note: Pete got the same score as me. I’m starting to have a good feeling about ChimeraBoards.

On a more random note: wordpress.com was having some problems yesterday, and it seems at least one comment went poof (Kezzie on `Just don’t do it, ok?`) and perhaps more.

way to go WP.com

Pete pointed me to an `error` in one of my categorie names today.
So I changed it. Turns out wordpress.com and its fun fun fun categorie stuff decided that if the name changes, so must the tag.
So the tag is auto-changed. But, post are not updated. So then, half my posts where missing a categorie. Wasn’t that much work to fix for me, but it would have been les work for them to make it decent in the first place.

Note: it still won’t work right; if you click the Computing / Programming link in the categorielist, it finds nothing.

CP Site

CodePhobia, the coding board we all know and love, will soon have a website.
It won’t be anything fancy, just a little bit of information on who we are and such, and we are going to try to get the last 10 posts from the board on it as well. (AJAX + portal, I think we could do it that way.)
My job is the backend coding. Wrote templating engine yesterday and some other small things, finished it all up today.
So now Pete/Sani/Nicola can do the designing, and hopefully, by the end of the week or so, it’ll be done.
Oh, and we’ll need to write a few pages, but I’ll leave that to the others as well.

school == lazy

This weekend, I took a look at some of my older coding.
While going trough it, I noticed that, due to things they explained at school, I really did get a lot better.
I’m much much better at modulating things now, which is great, because moduler code = reusable = les code to write in future.
So, school == moluder code == reusable == less code to do in future == lazy.

hosting :hyper:

:ph34r: my new site, http://jorygeerts.com/.
There isn’t much there yet, mostly because I don’t have the time to set things up / write stuff I want right now.
But thats OK, as I pay $0 a month. Go go lifetime packages.

oh come on

As you guys probally know, I do almost zero support.
But today, I thought, hey, lets give it a try.
Lets see if there are some unawnsered topics there.
I found one that had two questions, to wich nobody had awnsered.
It was about to go to page two, into forgottenness.
So I awnsered both questions.
I just forgot one tiny little detail in the first one.
So this other guy sees the topic (wich he probally wouldn’t have read if I hadn’t posted.), reads it and things:
Hey, that guy posted some links to the documentation, lets just quote some lines from that, ad that little detail he had forgotten.
Correct me, sure, if I forgot something / am wrong, by all means.
But don’t repost something thats by far less good support and ad that tiny little detail somewhere in it.
Now, if its something the person that had the question needs, he may thing: `This is already been posted…` and ignore it, causing him to mis the verry reason you made that post.

Weird, when I started this post, I wanted to rant.
Now, I just want to make the support forums a better place.
(Not that the people that could learn from this read it, but still…)