..and now summer can begin

I know that summer technically started back in June, but I've been stuck taking a Hypermedia course at UB. Thankfully that is one quick exam away from being over and my summer can officially begin.

Big plans thus far include, a couple O's games, Artscape, Nine Inch Nails, Journey @ Hershey Park, and a nice 5 day trip to my favorite town LAS VEGAS!



I love Vegas, I seriously want to retire there. Iusually go with a group of people but this time I'm going solo which I'm really excited about it because I can do whatever I want whenever. I'm not even that big on gambling anymore(though I will for free drinks) I'll probably catch some free shows eat like a king and update my wardrobe (vegas has some of the best shopping in the world)and of course spend a nice hunk of time by the pool.

I've got a nice suite at The Stratosphere with a view of the strip, which cost all of $60 for 4 nights (because I'm a rated player). I've already decided if I get on a hot streak and make some money I'm going to see Jerry Seinfeld, I think he's at the Mirage but it's a solid $150-250 a ticket.

I can't believe I was considering going to Ocean Shitty, Maryland instead.

Anyway back to class...

Overall I'm pretty disappointed in the class, and I had low expectations going in, the XHTML stuff was mostly review but the course sort of fell apart when we got to CSS which is what I was primarily there for. The instructor started out strong with explaining structure of a style sheet and font styling, but when it came to positioning she completely dropped the ball, we spent 2 hours watching her fail at a 2 column lay out in class, followed by her canceling the next class than never coming back to it. I basically had to teach myself to get through the final project.

I think the key to getting better at CSS is going to be practice, practice and more practice. I don't take another coding class until January to I need to take some initiative to do it on my own. I suppose I'll be spending a bunch of time on Zen Garden and experimenting with a Style Sheet for this blog and my MySpace page.

Sunday - Blogday

I've been slacking again, I think it's because I've been spending so much time on the computer for work and school that I really have no desire to look at it when I get home. Maybe it's because I haven't had that much going on to blog about.

HYPERMEDIA

Well I've completed the 3rd project though I am not really happy with it, I was not able to get CSS to do the positioning that I wanted to do, I'm actually getting quite lost on positioning and Wendy's failed example monday followed by a canceled class on Wednesday did little to help. Oh well my project is valid and functional it's just not where I want it to be design wise. + I was highly frustrated knowing I could simply do this in tables in all of 5 minutes. Oh well.


ROOMMATES SITUATION

Situation RESOLVED. It's great having Jessica here it's been a while since i lived with somebody who was fun and I could hang out with. Of course there is cat (jack) and I had to help move all of her heavy ass furniture but I survived, barely.

One of the positives so far is the change of scenery, during this long 3 day weekend we've been to The Pickeled Parrot, Looney's, Max's, The Brewer's Art, The 13th Floor and Red Maple. If Jessica weren't living with me i'd have gone to Waterfront, Waterfront, Waterfront, Max's, and Waterfront. So this is a good thing. Granted the bartenders at Waterfront are probably struggling financially with me gone but I'll make it up to them next weekend. I don't want to lose my 'regular' status or my drinks to suffer.

WORK WORK WORK
Sylvan is back to busy again and I finally was able to get my coveted CS3 upgrade as well as a bonus OSX-Lepord upgrade as well. I also managed to catch up with a few former co-workers having drinks with Dana on Wednesday and lunch with Jen R on Friday(mmmm.........PF CHANGS.........).


OUCH ME FOOT!
So what started out as a small cut on my small toe has turned into an infected blistered, atheltes foot like fungus which was so bad I had to go to Patient First on 4th of July and get a prescription ointment and spent the forth hobbling around the house and watching the fireworks from my deck. :(

The good news is that it cleared up quickly but I now have to be one of those guys who wears shower socks at the Gym, whom I used to make fun of. -sigh-

WEEK AHEAD
Well I have to get my CSS shit together this week because the class if almost over. Other than that my big plans involve cooking dinner tonight (a belated shrimp alfredo I was supposed to cook Thursday), finishing a pair of big projects at Sylvan (SAW IP BOOKS and Q3 Print Kit), and a drunken sunday brunch at Waterfront.

Blog Slackin

OK i admit I've been slacking on posting my blogs, which is strange because I've been writing them I just havent' had time to post. Here is one I wrote last week. More current thought provoking commentary to come.

ODDS + ENDS

Odds & Ends & Random Stuff

The Roommate search – Well Rachel is officially out of the house as of last Saturday. On one hand I’m sorry to see her go because she was a good roommate, she was clean, quit, and paid the bills on time. She wasn’t even home ½ the time. On the other hand though she was kind of boring to live with, no drinking no bar hopping. No fun.

The search has been pretty long. I had found somebody perfect about a week ago but she ended up flaking out on me. One minute she was ready to put down the deposit the next she dropped of the face of the Earth, didn’t return any calls or emails. Anyway I never have a shortage of interested people. I’ve only had 1 weirdo so far; he was probably an entire blog entry in and of himself but to briefly summarize him:

He pulled up what looked like an abandoned ice cream truck from the 70’s, wore a dirty wife beater, smelled horrible, and had a hunchback/limp. Couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.

Bar-Hopping – My regular bartender at Waterfront, Heather, broke her foot and is out of work for a few weeks, this has greatly affected the quality of my drinks and forced me to explore other bars. I don’t like other bars (except Max’s which is too packed on weekends) I like Waterfront. Oddly enough in my travels I stopped at the Horse and actually ran into heather who was there drinking. Hopefully she is back to work soon on I’m going to have to start drinking at her house.

Father’s Day – Originally I had gotten a pair of O’s tickets for me and my dad but he didn’t want to get his ass off the sofa so I took my step-father instead, who I knew I’d have a better time with anyway. It was a close game but the O’s lost in extra innings 5-4. No big deal but lastly, I have to rant about one thing.

TO THE OBNOXIOUS STEELER FANS AT THE GAME WHO ACTUALLY WERE PATHETIC ENOUGH TO BRING THEIR ‘TERRIBLE TOWELS’ TO A BASEBALL GAME, KINDLY KISS MY ASS!

This isn’t a football game you inbred moron, I realize you people confuse easily but just remember if Bennifer isn’t laying on the ground twitching in utter agony it just isn’t a football game in Baltimore. Another clue to the fact you weren’t at football game was the score (Pittsburgh actually won). So while I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy sister/cousin screwing schedule to leave the side of what ever mountain you live on and spend your welfare check here in Baltimore. Please leave the terrible towel at home in the future, thanks. -Markus

(now I’m ready for football season!)

Hypermedia Week III

Well I have to say this definitely a good class to take over the short summer semester I don't think I could take it for 16 weeks. Not that Wendy isn't good it's just that I already know 95% of this junk and it's really hard staying awake long enough to catch that 5% that is new information.

Is the whole class so quiet because they are like me and already know this stuff?
I just sit there is silence so I can get this over with as quickly as possible. Any questions I do have are really advanced and will just confuse the rest of the class. I liked last semesters class much better but that again code doesn't exactly bring out anyone's personality. I would think the more and more time that goes by the easier that class has to be to teach. I mean hell, I know a kid in middle school who can write HTML code.

Oh well, at least I got a solid 6 points out of 5 on the quiz. The next class however is something that I do need help with FORMS. Its always been my weak spot I never can get them to work right and I either go to a website that writes them for you or I pay a developer friend to do them for me.

My super awesome 1st assignment is up

http://scooby.ubalt.edu/~nowowiejski

Wikipedia is a natural spot to find content that has all the list types she wants to see and you can make your project about anything you find amusing, Kramer, Rasinettes, or in my case 'The Ultimate Wager' SLAP BET! The reminds me I owe my friend Jessica a smack…

Hypermedia Part II

Well another week down. I have to say I found Monday's class to be much better than the Wednesday class. There were several points on Wednesday when I felt like the instructor was just rambling and I honestly have no idea what the point of the last 30 minutes of class even was. Actually I was getting really annoyed, because I thought the class ended at 7:30 but apparently I am wrong. Sucks because Fells Point parking gets pretty hairy after 8pm. Oh well. It's only for a few weeks.

Monday was a good review of basic HTML tags, which have seemed to have changed a bit since I learned them in 2001 or so. My question is why? Did "italic" really need to be changed to "em"? Really? Are you sure the code jockeys didn't just need to avoid going out and actually getting a job instead of coming up with endless sets of pain in the ass rules? I guess I just don't find code that interesting, I can do it, and usually pretty well but I don't see where it's even mildly interesting.

Anyway the 1st assignment looks pretty easy, and pretty boring too but what ever. I don't see many late nights this semester if any at all. There is nothing wrong with that as far as I'm concerned.

On a positive note – it appears my company if finally letting the creative department upgrade to CS3. Hooray!

LOST?

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

Well I've now watched and re-watched the finale and I thought I'd put my thought and ideas down now so we can all come back and laugh at them next year at this time. Overall it was an awesome show, but not quite as good as last years finale, probably because it had a darker story to it.



It appears Jack now needs to get the oceanic 6 and dead Locke back the island together, I'm not going to even venture a guess on how they will pull that off though I hear a submarine has worked in the past. I wonder does he have to bring back Walt and Desmond too? Or is it all a bunch of BS and he's being manipulated by Ben so Ben can get back to the island.



Locke



Well after being thrown at a window, shot, blown up, etc etc it appears that Locke if finally dead. I suppose the island was done with him? My guess is the island had to be 'moved' again so Locke was sent off just like Ben was. I highly doubt he commited suicide so the big question is who killed him? Ben? Widmore? Richard? I'll go with Ben, it was pretty conveint of him to be at the funeral home when Jack arrived. How did he know Jack had been on planes trying to crash? Did Kate tell him? I suppose the real question is will Locke rise from the grave when returned to island, sort of like Christian Sheppard?





Jin



OK, I know it's likely that he is dead but this is TV Drama, with ghosts, moving islands, and 'time traveling bunnies' it's highly possible he jumped off the freighter before it exploded. He'd easily be found and saved by Daniel and the people of the Zodiac raft. Also it appears Sun is interested in getting back the island now. Why? Perhaps 'jeremy' paid her a visit and let her know Jin was alive.






Desmond and Frank



What happens to these two? I assume widmore is going to track down and intorgate Frank that is unless he gets killed first. Would Sayid go as far as to kill Frank on Ben's command? Also what happens to Desmond, he's one of my favorite characters, mainly because he's drunk. I hope he doesn't get written out of the story.






Where the F- did the island go?



I can't believe they actually moved it, Where? or should I say when? My best guess is that it moved in the future. I'm starting to wonder how many times the island has 'moved' that sound and light were just like when the Hatch imploded. Did the island move than too? Does Locke have to move the island again later?

Claire -



Is she dead? that whole thing was really weird with her just walking off with her father leaving the baby and than being in the cabin. WTF?



Richard -


Is he a time travler or just ageless? I'm betting on time traveling, He seems to be able to get to to the island and back with ease.



Jacob -


I admit I care about this story in the least, I don't know why it just doesn't intrigue me. Is it just 'the island' ? is it Locke resurrected from the grave? Is it Christian Sheppard? Christian really intrigues me because he has started appearing to other characters (hurley, locke, micheal)
I keep waiting for him to appear to Jack.




Other mysterys I still want answers to:



The Numbers, I was glad to see them return on Hurley's Odometer but this one better have some plausible answers to it. Anyone else notice when Sayid shot the guy outside of Hurley Hospital the time was 8:15? Sure you did.



The Smoke Monster - WTF is it? How did Ben get it to come help him, Will Locke now be able to control it?



The 4 Toed Statue - I mean you can't just have a 4 toed statue for no reason.



I'm sure I've easily left out 1/2 a dozen other mysterys like the Sawyer thing, Mr. Abaddon (old walt?), or Widmore, but I could go on forever. I'll assume next season is about them getting back to island and the final season will be back on island but who knows. They could start next season with them already back on island and tell the how through flash backs.

On a final note I read Harold Perrineau's interveiw on Dark UFO where he whined about being killed off and than basically dropped the race card and said the writers don't know how to treat black charcters.



Harold you're a douche, that is all.

HOW Conference Journal Day #4

And finally the last day, I have decided at this point I am not a big fan of conferences especially conferences in cold cities where I don’t know another single person. Today started later than the other days, perhaps they felt people needed some time to get over their over priced drinks from the night before.

I had one session to go to which was about email design, this was something that I needed to take for work and helped me out with a lot of ideas but I wont’ bore you with the details. Designing Emails is just slightly more glamours than creating a Power Point template.

The closing keynote was by Bill Strickland from Pittsburgh who had been rehabilitating inner city kids through his school that emphasized that in the right environment anyone can do great things. Sort of like the Eddie Murphy movie where the Dukes switch him and Dan Akroyd around over a dollar. I was sort of impressed with the guy, though I’d like to see him come here and turn some of Baltimore’s ‘finest’ around. [Good luck buddy!] I failed to see what it had to do with design or the rest of the conference at all. Another poor speaker choice.

Finally free I hit the streets of Boston, I took a trolley tour and had lunch at Cheers, enjoyed a walk through Boston Commons and Beacons Hill which reminded me of Fells Point sans the floating ass smell. I’m not a big history buff at all but even I found the revolutionary war sites to be interesting to visit.

Overall I don’t’ think I’d want to live in Boston, it’s too cold, even in late May and I’m sorry they sound ½ retarded when they talk. Its funny when your drunk but if you’re not careful it sticks. The accent took me a week to shake. It was still a nice city though, cleaner and less crime ridden than Baltimore but what city isn’t?

My trip home was long, my flight was delayed and I was stuck sitting at the gate for 4 hours. I might consider going to another conference if I was going with a group and it was somewhere different. (VEGAS) But honestly I think I’d rather just keep up my AIGA membership and actually go to see the speakers they bring to you rather than the other way around.