Giving in to MySpace

Well, this blog has pretty much been dead ever since I got on the MySpace vibe...

Catch me there or be square!

Tournament

So, I found out there is a Jiu-Jitsu tournament in Dallas, TX on February 10th and I'm thinking I'm going to go. Only problem is, I'm at the top of my weight class and I will want to be in the one lower than the one I am in now, since I'm not in the greatest shape. So, I have 1 month to drop 11 lbs. If I can do it, I'll post about tournament times and directions!

Wish me luck!

Bad Movie Experience

OK MPAA, want to know why no one wants to go to the theater anymore? I went to see Black Christmas last night, a fairly lame gorefest. Here is what bothered me:
1) At least 5 cell phones went off during the movie
2) People have become too retarded to realize that kicking the person's chair in front of them actually disturbs them (or they just don't care because people suck)
-- I'm 6' 2" and I managed not to do it once, the 5' 6" adult behind me couldn't go for 5 minutes
3) People talked during the movies - try having a usher kick these people out
4) It was a rated R gorefest that about 20% were under 15 to see, and I know I saw an 8-year old
-- today's kids watching horror flicks, tomorrow's serial killers without a sense of morals
5) No real plot
6) 8$ per ticket - I could buy the movie when it comes out on DVD for the 16$ it costs to get 2 people in to see it at the theater

I really, really think the MPAA needs to focus on fixing the movie going experience instead of stopping downloads. Downloads happen because the movie experience blows.

Irritating Confusions

Confidence is not cockiness.

Intelligence does not imply a lack of social skills.

Attractive does not mean shallow.

Healthy/muscular does not mean jock.

Rich (in life and money) does not mean snob.

Opinionated is not pushy (at least not always =P ).

Nice does not mean pushover.

Happy does not mean oblivious.

These are a few things that I have been noticing in the people around me. Lately, it seems as if people (in general) are wanting to find negative things in the good. It is so frustrating. So very, very frustrating...

Life's too short to worry

I've been watching a fairly new acquaintance wrestle with making the decision of what is next in life. In a similar fashion, I am faced with basically the same question but different choices. Do I start a business? Go back to school? Climb the corporate ladder? Get married and do some traveling? Get married and pop out some kids?

I don't know, and I do need to figure it out. However, it is not something that I can figure out on a single weeknight, or even in a full blown weekend. I need to ponder each alternative, but not let it weigh down the moments I am living now. I can honestly say, this is a new concept for me, and I'm hoping it leads to a little less stress and a more carefree attitude towards living.

Just a thought that I thought I would share...

Single Again

Just to update the status of my personal life, I've been back to being single for about a month now. I'm back on match.com to find new friends, and maybe even a girlfriend. Silly, I know, but try working in software engineering to find single, interesting women. They are few and far between.

Anyway, I'm working my tail of in jiu-jitsu, probably a week or two away from deploying the new zachcalvert.com (which hasn't been updated in about 5 months), and back on the dating scene!

Wish me luck,
Zach

Life Now

Well, life now consists mostly of Jiu-Jitsu, work, a Tuesday poker game, and making my way up to Arlington to visit family and friends. I've got to say, life is much, much more unsatisfying down here, but then how long does it really take for someone to get acclimated to new surroundings? I miss my best friend, my girlfriend, family, and even all the little streets that I had learned to get around so easily.

I'm very appreciative of the position I have now due to the fact that I have paid off my car, I am completely out of debt, and I can even afford to put back quite a few bucks every month. However, I'm still figuring out whether or not I made the right move by coming down. If I had take then time to really look, I probably could have found a better paying one up in Arlington and stayed in my nice, cozy, apartment, with all of the friends and family that make me happy. Then again, I love what I am doing at work, I'm learing new cutting edge technology, my bosses try very hard to keep me (and the rest of the team) pleased, and I very well might find myself on the brink of some very cool projects.

I'm sure I'll be much, much happier when I get Angie down here...

New Blog

Well, I received a comment that my last blog post was too nerdy for this one. So be it. Announcing Zach Calvert's new nerd blog! Check out http://devscribbles.blogspot.com/ for details.

The AJAX Blues (SlideShow Finished)

I finally finished my AJAX (combination of languages used to make web-browsers more feature rich for you non-techies) SlideShow today with the ability to dynamically add/remove pictures.  I’m really happy about it because of all the nightmarish problems with Internet Explorer’s caching mechanisms.  Apparently, IE will cache xml based on the URL and not include the parameter list on the hash lookup, including retrievals for the Microsoft.XMLHTTP object.  It also behaves the same way with images. 

 

For example, let’s say you use the XML HTTP object to retrieve xml from http://www.zachcalvert.com/RetrieveSlide.do?slide=1, you will get the stored cache data for http://www.zachcalvert.com/RetrieveSlide.do?slide=ThisChangedButIECacheIgnoredIt, even if it is being called repeatedly within a web page.  In my opinion, javascript calls within the same page should never be cached; it is obvious this is intended as dynamic content.  But of course, I’ve never written a browser either…

 

This creates a huge nightmare when your servlet is dishing out dynamic xml/images for the same call in a javascript timed function.  Finally, it dawned on me, you can use regular expressions to direct the servlet calls in your web.xml, so now I juse use the date object to get the seconds of the day and submit the slide retrieval / image retrieval with the seconds appended to the http link.  The same servlet always receives the call and everything magically works.

 

While it is complete, I do not yet have my newly designed website available online.  I plan on soon looking for a new hosting service that will allow me to manage my own Tomcat.  We’ll see….

Cruising

September 17^th is almost here!  In case you are wondering, I’m excited because we will be traveling to Jamaica, the Caymans, and Cozumel!!! We have planned to swim with dolphins in Jamaica, feed stingrays in the Caymans, and drink ourselves into a stupor in Cozumel.  Oddly enough, the day I signed up for the stingray event, Steve Irwin died from a stingray barb.  Anyway, I’d rather not think about that nasty little coincidence.  We are going to be relaxing, playing poker, and having a 7 day, much needed vacation.  I can’t wait!