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http://www.twobitbucket.com/dayve

WordPress Twitter Plugin

For awhile now I was simply using the Twitter RSS feed to display the last 5 posts that I made at Twitter.  I was thinking of developing my own widget to have more control as to what information is collected and to cross-post between the two web applications.  As always I searched the WordPress plugins and it appears someone has already made one, a decent one at that.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools

This post is kind of useless for blogging purposes but it gave me an opportunity to test out the plugin with all of it’s settings.  This post should appear on Twitter with a TinyURL link back to this entry.

I am not a perfect man …

… but my wife Laura makes me want to be the best person I can be.  She is the perfect person in my life and helps me maintain the balance of who I am as a man.  I still make mistakes in my life but when you are with a woman that accepts who you are and what you are about you realize that this is what love is all about… acceptance, tolerance, understanding and most of all friendship.  My wife is my best friend, I share everything with her, something that does not come easy for me.  She brings out the best and sometimes worst in me, but only because I am an extremely passionate person about certain subject matters and she allows me to speak my mind freely with an understanding that I am not like the rest and that is okay. 

Laura, I love you so much.

PS.  It doesn’t hurt that the sexual relationship we have is absolutely phenomenal.

Walking With Dinosaurs

Yesterday I had a fantastic time with my Katie-Bug at the “Walking With Dinosaurs” show at the SaveMart Center in Fresno, California.  My wife was kind enough to get us tickets especially after we watched the behind the scenes PBS/BBC special about the “making of” this theatrical show.

Katie was extremely excited the entire day.  When we got to the venue she immediately saw a shirt she wanted that had a picture of a Tyranasaurus Rex that said “The King Has Returned” so I bought it for her and she put it on right away.  We walked around a bit and then found our ways to our seats about 20 minutes before the show started.  It was then that Katie’s entire demeanor changed.  After looking at the set and hearing the distant creepy sounds of roars she becamed a bit unsettled, which I found very cute.  She told me that she did not want to sit in the seats until the show started so we left and waited outside the entry for a bit.  It was then that she was telling me she knew she was nervous because “I fart a lot when I get nervous.”  I know, I know, a bit too much information but I thought it was one of those funny kid moments that I had to share.  She kept rambling on nervously about all sorts of things, I imagine to keep her mind off off being a bit scared as to what was coming.  I kept trying to convince her that this was going to be fun and not to worry.

The show was going to start in minutes so we got back to our seats and Katie kept her bag of cotton candy in her face, peaking out every now and then to grab a glimpse of what was going on.  I was holding her in my arms as well and I could feel her quivering, again I did my best to calm her down.  She finally starting getting into it and no longer blocked her face.  The show ended up being a blast and you could tell everyone was anticipating seeing “the big guy”, Mr. T-Rex himself… actually Mrs. T-Rex from what I could gather because she came out during a scene where she was protecting her young one.  The roars that filled the stadium from the T-Rex startled Katie a bit and she plugged her ears. 

All in all we had a wonderful time.  She ended up loving the show as did I.  It was also fun to just spend a night with her which I don’t get to do all the time so it will be marked as one of those memorable moments in time.  I forgot to bring my camera but ended up buying a program that has a lot of information and great photos in it.  I also found this great shot of the T-Rex from the show on the net.

Mrs. T-Rex

Click on the above image to see it in it’s entire glory.

Cliché but … Wish You Were Here

The hopes and dreams of seeing all the original members of Pink Floyd go on tour is now over, Mr. Richard Wright has passed away, a victim of cancer.  I have been a Pink Floyd fan since childhood, more so than my fanaticism of the band Nine Inch Nails. 

I remember being absolutely devastated when the album “The Final Cut” came out which marked the departure of Roger Waters and what I had believed at the time to be the end of Pink Floyd and in a way it was.  The Pink Floyd I knew and loved was over.  David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright did everything they could to keep the vibe of Pink Floyd going but it just wasn’t the same for me until that fateful day when they all played together live on stage with Roger Waters for a Live 8 concert.  I was in heaven and had hopes of a reunion tour that I would have done anything to have seen. 

Sadly Syd Barrett and now Richard Wright are no longer with us but I have very fond memories of a band I loved so much.  Rest in peace Richard, it was a great ride and I thank you for all the joyous moments you gave me as a fan of Pink Floyd’s music.

Richard Wright 1943 - 2008

 

Pink Floyd: The Last Renion @ Live 8

Last.FM/Twitter Fun

I was recently introduced to Twitter which is a pretty cool little feature that acts as a “mini-blog”.  I know it sounds rediculous but it gives you the ability to send short messages, not exceeding 140 characters, which can then be viewed by everyone.  The nice thing about this feature is that you can use SMS to update your messages with ease.

Back in the day I did a lot of development with collecting information played by members of the Burning Souls Forum community.  I got pretty obsessed with all the statistics and signature creations using ASP, ASP.NET, PHP and the GD/GDI libraries.  It was quite fun.  Those days are over, especially since I moved the forum from a server I had in my house to an external host which has really had a negative impact on the community but that is another story.

Since being introduced to Twitter and being on vacation this week I decided to dust off the part of my brain that used to program on a daily basis and whipped up a combination type signature of information from both Twitter and Last.FM.  I am quite please with the result:

Looks simple but there is a lot going on in the background which I will spare you the details of.  Doing this reminded me of some of the frustrations that come with programming and while I miss some of it, I am really happy with what I am doing now with current job at Diebold.

Goodbye Mr. Harris

As I approach the ripe young age of 40 I have been giving more and more thought to how I became the person that I am today.  Fortunately for me I have both my mother and father to thank for that.  Both were quite strict and while I may not have agreed with all the punishments I received in the past I completely feel their style of parenting was very good.  The proof is quite easily pointed out in the current generation of whiney, disrespectful, lazy kids that I see in abundance every where I turn.  But that is not the point of this blog entry.

As I mentioned, my parents raised me the best way they saw fit for a kid having to survive on the streets of Brooklyn, New York.  I met my birth father one time around the age of 12 and he ended up being a flake.  I don’t consider him my father at all, he is a closed chapter in my life… well almost.  The problem is I still carry his last name and unfortunately his first name as well.  My “real” father, Donald Ferrick, is the only person I considered my dad.  I did not know he was my step-father until about the same time I met my birth father.  I am not sure why my dad never got around to it but it was my understanding that he was going to adopt me, in fact I carried the surname of Ferrick until I started high school and that was to prevent any red tape that may occur in my official school records.  My parents divorced so that may have something to do with it never happening.  Regardless of my parents separation I still visited my dad and considered him my dad to the day of his death some many years ago.

2008 rolls around and I turn 40 years old in a few days.  I’ve been giving a lot of thought about who I am and seeing many of the qualities that my dad had in me.  I have decided to pay tribute to my dad and finish what he intended to do so many years ago, I am officially changing my last name from Harris to Ferrick.  It is not official yet but I already feel comforted by the idea that this is finally going to happen.  Though there is nothing I can do to carry on his name it is still the right thing to do in my mind.   My mom seems very happy about this and is eager to know all the details so that she can assist my brother Jeff with doing the same thing.  My wife Laura is a bit concerned about all the effects this will have with bills, credit cards and so on but she respects and understands my decision… she is such a perfect life companion for me.

Guess Who’s Back?

You’re very lucky to have found me.

Unfortunately I was not able to recover my posts from my blogging in the past.  Fortunately the Way Back Machine still exists and I will painstakenly be restoring all my posts from 2003 and on.  It will be an ongoing process but I plan on getting all of my past blog entries back.

Two Bit Bucket?

Since I was asked … it is what I thought to be a clever combination of Two Bit and Bit Bucket: 

Main Entry: two-bit
Pronunciation: ‘tü-’bit
Function: adjective
1 : of the value of two bits
2 : cheap or trivial of its kind : PETTY, SMALL-TIME

Main Entry: bit bucket
Pronunciation: bit buk´it
Function: noun
1 : a computer’s trash can or recycle bin: In networking scenarios, the term is used to refer to the place where a firewall, router or proxy has discarded a packet.

Burning Souls Forum – 5 Years Running!

Today marks a small yet meaningful milestone in the NINternet community.  5 years ago Burning Souls Forum became official.  I remember the moment as if it was yesterday, yet when I think of all the people I have been introduced to it also seems like a very long time.  If you have not heard this story on how BSF started then here goes…

I was interested in developing a Nine Inch Nails web site around 2001.  I would have done one earlier, but my life was quit hectic  between 1996 and 2001 with my departure from the Navy and a long and difficult divorce from my x-wife. 

By the time I felt ready to proceed I decided to look and see what NIN sites were already out there.  Two web sites caught my attention which was BurningSouls.com and 9InchNails.net.  I quickly discovered that the webmasters of these sites were Jay DeBard and April (can not remember her last name).  I decided that creating my own web site was not worth the time, especially when these two sites had an abundance of information.  So I took a different approach and composed an email which I sent to Jay DeBard first explaining that I enjoyed visiting his site and felt that I could offer him some of my services in order to help him make his site even better.  I gave recommendations and some coding examples.  I figured it he did not respond, I would send the same email to April.  To my surprise I did receive a response from Jay.  He allowed me to convert his web site menu system which was originally in JAVA to a DHTML version.  During that time, I was a DHTML guru (there is a reason I am mentioning this part) and Jay liked what I produced so he used it. 

After many additional discussions, I recommended to Jay that we create some kind of community where we could share interests with fellow NIN fans.  At the time, the only discussion forums out there were at NineInchNails.net and SeemsLikeSalvation.com (not sure that was the real address).  I initially recommended an IRC channel but we both agreed that not many people accepted IRC nor would they be able to easily find it so I created a JAVA portal that gave easy access to the IRC room.  Needless to say, nothing much happened. 

During this time I was an active participant and eventual moderator at a popular DHTML website (told you there was a reason for mentioning the DHTML guru portion earlier!).  The site I moderated at was Bratta.com which was run by the DHTML master Thomas Brattli.  At the time he had a discussion forum that was done in ASP (a programming environment I was becoming quite fluent in) which was an open source product from ASP-Dev.com.  I immediately proposed to Jay that we have a discussion forum but his server was based on Apache.  I told Jay that I would be more than happy to run the forum from my server at home until we figure out the logistics of where this new discussion forum could go.  He agreed and I was on my way to configuring the site. The official date the site went LIVE was March 1st of 2001. 

Not much was going on in the early beginnings of BSF so I continued spending a lot of time at the DHTML site which was going through some major changes as well.  Thomas Brattli decided to amp things up and opened up a brand new DHTML site called DHTMLCentral.com and in this major upgrade, he started using Snitz Forums which offered so much more customization.  I decided to immediately make the switch as well and found myself in a very strong ASP community.

As we continued to try and market the site we started having some small conversations with new members that were just “checking us out”.  Unfortunately I can not recall the exact specifics as to how they came on board, but some of our first moderators were wendy, sc4r4b and cold.  There were 2 other moderators at that time that were eventually banned for their piss-poor behavior.  I think it was then we realized we wanted a different type of community, one that commanded a lot more from the fan base that was quickly growing.

The rest is kind of history.  The community continued to grow for several reasons some of which included community input on the development and future of the discussion forum. Keep in mind that when BSF came about, NIN was not touring, neither were they releasing any material.  It was brought about on the end of the Fragility tour so try to imagine building a community with nothing much in the way of any new NIN information.  In all honestly, while thinking back, I tend to feel these were some of the best times as well though I am amazed at what BSF has become today.

… Present day BSF.  The community I am part of now, notice how I didn’t say words like administrate, run, host, or anything like  that.  I truly believe that BSF has become bigger than myself.  I know I could leave at any time and this community would continue to exist and strive.  The reason for that are the many people that have similar goals and interests in our little home on the Internet.  There are so many people I have come in contact with in this community.  While I may not like everyone, and I am sure not everyone likes me, I’m very grateful to be part of this community, my extended family.  The many discussions through the forum and chat have opened my eyes to a world that does not exist in my physical location.  So many things I have learned and been introduced to that would have never been achieved in my residence.