SuperJason’s Personal Blog

Spam has just gotten way too bizarre these days.  What the heck is with this guy?  Is he going to kill himself and THEN eat his dog?  Or the other way around?  How do I call “1–800”?  So many questions…

Good day to you my friend!

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (obviously non-legit url removed) are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..

 

My dog and I are still alive

We ordered some software where I work, and they sent us an email with a download link.  When I tried it, it was giving me a 404 not found error.  So I emailed a reply with this message:

Our download is not working.  Please check it out.

Also, I downloaded an installed the trial for now.  Is there a way to enter our key and turn it into the full version?

Thanks,
Jason

And here was the hilarious response:

Hello Jason,

There is problem with web. People work on it.

Regards,
Olga.

So I would just like to inform everyone on the Internet that THERE IS PROBLEM WITH WEB.  But don’t worry, PEOPLE WORK ON IT.

Source: Onion Sports

ASHWAUBENON, WI—Green Bay Packers front-office officials have informed three-time MVP Brett Favre they can wait for his decision on whether or not he’s planning to retire for “as long as it fucking takes.” “This is a big decision for Brett Favre, and we can’t deny that he’s the heart and soul of our team, the most important Packer, the most important person in all of America, and the center of the whole entire universe,” Packer general manager Ted Thompson said Tuesday. “It’s not like we have to make any major decisions that all hinge on whether or not he’s returning, after all. We’ll just ride around on our lawn tractors on our farm in Mississippi while we wait for him to make up his goddamn mind.” Favre would not say when he might announce his decision, admitting that he was “too much in awe of what Mr. Brilliant Genius Thompson did with the 4-12 Packers last year” to commit one way or the other.

The basement has been carpeted!  It’s awesome.  Photos coming soon!

My friend ObiShawn found this bizarre laptop photo Averatec AV4155-EH1 on Amazon.com:

I sure hope the photo is skewed, or that screen won’t be looking so good after awhile.

This isn’t what my new stereo looks like, but you get the idea…

Log4net 1.2.10 was released today.  It’s the .NET logging DLL that I use in just about everything.  Their last version works great, but it was a little troubling since it was labeled “beta”.  People can finally stop asking where the non-beta version is.

Another handy utility that is very useful when used with Log4net is Chainsaw (get it, cutting through logs).  For instructions on how to get it working with Log4net, check out this blog post.  Basically, I have a config file for Chainsaw that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd"><log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/" debug="false"> <!-- Allow Chainsaw to receive and process UDP messages on the fly --> <plugin name="UDPReceiver" class="org.apache.log4j.net.UDPReceiver">  <param name="Port" value="8090" /> </plugin>

 <!-- Allow Chainsaw to parse log messages --> <plugin name="LOGFILE" class="org.apache.log4j.varia.LogFilePatternReceiver">  <param name="fileURL" value="file:///C:/Log.txt" />  <param name="timestampFormat" value="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS" />  <param name="logFormat" value="TIMESTAMP [THREAD] LEVEL LOGGER NDC - MESSAGE" />  <param name="name" value="WebApps Log file" />  <param name="tailing" value="true" /> </plugin></log4j:configuration>

This configuration file also lets me open up my actual log files, and it turns them into a nice format that makes it easy to filter, search etc.  I love the fact that it will recieve UDP messages and let me see what is going on in real time.  It’s pretty awesome for long running services, etc.

If you’re not using log4net in your .NET projects, do yourself a favor and start now.  You’ll thank me when the customer has an issue and it saves your %^#.

I’ve finally completed my surround sound system for the basement.  Last weekend I picked up the final components.  I’m using my awesome Sony speakers that I bought a couple of years ago when Sony still made good speakers.  Since I didn’t buy the whole surround system at the time, it was tough piecing together something that I think will work.  I bought the best Sony center channel that I could, and I’m really hoping the sound is reasonably close to the front speakers.

I also picked up a 7.1 surround receiver (Sony STR-DE698) to power everything:

It should have enough inputs and outputs to keep me satisfied for a while.  I’m really disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be a way to switch between components on today’s home theater systems.  The best you can do is switch your TV input, as well as switching your receiver input.  I could route everything through the receiver, and use it as the switch, but it only has 2 component inputs, and doesn’t even support HDMI.  When I asked the guy at Best Buy for one that had HDMI inputs, we showed me the only one they had.  It was nearly $1000.  It shouldn’t cost that much to do something that most people would want to do!

I listened to the Sony surround speakers, and they were nearly the worst thing I have ever heard.  I decided to go with some Yamaha’s, because they looked cooler, and sound awesome.  I’ll be mounting them flush on the walls.  They’ll be perfectly placed to look good, and meet the Dolby Digital 5.1 specifications.

Now I’m trying to find a good deal on the Logitech Harmony 880 remote control.  I think that will make the whole system very easy to use.  The problem is that it retails for $250.  Apparently there was a deal through Dell where you could get it for $80, but I missed it!  I’m keeping an eye out for another deal like that.

 Keep an eye out for a future post where I’ll be talking about how I’m using home automation products to automate all of the electrical systems in the basement!

I entered Ryan in a Fotki photo contest.  If you have a Fotki account, be sure to go to http://contests.fotki.com/contests/57s1/8017.html and vote for his picture.  The contest is titled “The cutest kid”, and I think we can all agree that it’s Ryan.  Vote, vote, vote.  NOW!  Stop reading this, and go vote.