|
|
 |
October 31, 1998
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
News Archives
Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
News Links
External URLs that have cropped up in the course of the News history.
October 31, 1998—Halloween
Okay, it's bad back time again here in Davisonville. Just when you thought it was safe to go back and start lifting small objects -bang!- no soup for you. So what we're really talking about here is a small strain (I think, I hope, I pray). Nothing a little Ibuprofen can't solve. Given a couple days, I should be good as new. (Here I'm using the word "new" to mean "dinged up beyond all repair.")I've started to fiddle a little bit with Adobe ImageReady, and I'm prepared to pronounce it a pretty useful software tool for web designers. Lots of cool features, but the best has got to be how it will shrink down the size of graphics files. Very helpful.
It's turned somewhat cold and rainy the last few days. We even turned on the heater, something we don't normally get around to until at least late November. Personally, I'm hoping that the sun will re-emerge, and we'll get back up into the mid-80s where we belong. Everything just changed too suddenly for my tastes.
I've completed another song for the album, this one called Now I Know. It's about the choices I made in life and how instead of looking back with regret at roads not taken, I reflect on my life with a sense that the path I'm on is better than what could have been. It's about finding faith through love, but more on that in the liner notes. I've also posted the latest track listing for Undeserved.
October 28, 1998
It's cuts day for the Boys' Varsity Soccer team at St. Francis, the day when some hopes are fulfilled and others are dashed. Making cuts is easily the worst part of being a coach. Fortunately, as the Assistant Coach, I don't have to deal with this process other than to give my input as to who I believe should be selected. Ultimately, my responsibility ends there, though that has yet to keep me from feeling badly for the guys who don't make it.I've ordered Adobe ImageReady, a professional web graphics tool. Although I've already optimized all the graphics on the site (using the ImageReady demo), this should be a good long-term investment when it comes to the work I do in constructing other web sites. As a neat bonus, ImageReady also can use Photoshop plug-ins. We'll see how it goes, but I'm pretty confident that this will be a good step forward.
October 27, 1998
It took some crazy airline routing to get me there and back, but I'm happy to report that Dave and Melissa's wedding in Eugene was a great success. I'm also happy to report that there were hundreds of pictures taken (I think Dave's brother Kevin told me he took 160), so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to post a couple once the film is developed. All in all, a glorious weekend, and I was honored to serve as the Best Man.All that beauty contrasts pretty sharply with the sweat and toil of the soccer tryouts which I returned to yesterday. Final cuts are Wednesday, and without a doubt, that's one thing that makes me oh-so-happy that I am not the head coach. This year in particular, with 15 returning players, opens slots on the team are at a premium. What that will mean for some players is that though they would have made it any other year, they might not make it this one. That can't feel good for the high school-aged ego.
October 24, 1998
Whew, has it ever rained chaos around here during the last few days. I've been working on an HTML coding project with a tight deadline and that plus the start of St. Francis High School soccer tryouts have really chopped out all my free time in the last few days. My apologies as well to those of you who have e-mailed me and not heard back. Normally my turn-around time is a little faster, but as I say, chaos is currently king.On the brighter side, of course, is that I really do love doing this stuff, and to my way of thinking, getting paid to do what you love to do is what the game is all about.
Also on the brighter side, I travel this weekend to Eugene, Oregon to serve as the best man in my friend Dave's wedding. Happy details on Monday!
In Internet news, my Slip.net connection has once again gone to pot. This can only mean that the problem is on their end as I first suspected, and frankly, I'm outta here. Look for a new URL for this web site and a new e-mail address within the next couple weeks. I've given Slip.net at least half a dozen opportunities to fix any problems, and I'm sorry to say that they appear to know less about Internet connections than I do.
October 20, 1998
Tomorrow marks the start of the new soccer season at St. Francis High School. I'll be headed back for my third year as the Assistant Coach of the Boys' Varsity team. I won't make any predictions other than to say that I think we'll be competitive in every game, and I'll be surprised if we don't win more than we lose.Regarding my weekend upgrade to MacOS 8.5, I discovered that except for a brutal incompatibility with part of Adobe Type Manager 4.0.2, just about all my software runs really well, even WriteNow 4.0 which as recently as yesterday I thought was gone for good.
October 19, 1998
The United States government opened their case against Microsoft today by essentially calling Microsoft CEO Bill Gates a lying SOB. (I believe he's now free to append those initials to his name.) I couldn't agree more, but I wary of the government's ability to win this case. Not that I don't think that they have the legal merits to win, I just don't know if they have the ability.I re-formatted Zeke's hard drive to use HFS+, a new filing system that Apple introduced with MacOS 8.1. I won't go into the technical details, but suffice to say that I now have almost 100 MB more of storage available to me with no speed penalty. That rocks!
One of the Apple Demo Day volunteers I hung out with on Saturday works at My Simon, an on-line buying service. Basically, you tell Simon what you want to buy and it goes and finds the lowest price available on the net. It looks like an interesting way to buy products. Check it out, and let me know what you think.
October 18, 1998
Back to The Island ("food & grog") for today's Steelers game. There's something very primal about a bunch of guys getting together to drink beer, eat hot dogs, and yell at a big-screen TV. It's a emotional release you really don't get in day-to-day living, and I'm going to out on a limb and say that's probably a worthwhile thing.For what it's worth, MacOS 8.5 seems to have solved my ISP connection problems. I don't know if that means that the problem was on my end, or if that means that 8.5 is smart enough to deal with my ISP servers' problems. Frankly, I don't care. The Internet is working for me again, so I'm a happy man.
October 17, 1998
I volunteered and put in my few hours on Apple's "Apple Demo Days," a computer store event featuring MacOS 8.5. In addition to a cool 8.5 polo shirt, Apple also gave volunteers a free copy of MacOS 8.5.The event itself was very pleasant, and I was able to meet and greet all kinds of Macintosh fans as they bought the upgrade. We even sold a few computers. A lot of people have told me that I ought to work for Apple or at least be selling Macs for a living. After today's experience, I think they might be right. I had a lot of fun!
What was even better, though, was that I got to go from that fun thing to play in a soccer game. I've been getting together every Saturday for a few weeks now to go out and kick a ball around, and since the atmosphere is casual and relaxed, it's really a lot of fun. We've got the high school soccer season starting up on October 28, but I'm planning on doing these Saturday get-togethers as long as the weather holds.
October 15, 1998
Well, it appears to be "here we go again" in ISP land. Since I returned from my vacation last month, my internet connection has been as unstable as the stock market, with refused log-ins and dropped connections right and left. I've called tech support repeatedly and fiddled with everything possible setting I can think of but to no avail. So it looks like, for the second time this year, I'll be changing ISPs.The move from Alink, my first ISP, came because they wanted to charge me for "files transferred" from web site. Well, that plus they were $10 a month more than Slip.net. Of course, I never had a busy signal or a connection problem with Alink. Since the 22nd of last month, I've had nothing but connections problems with Slip.net.
If anyone knows of a good ISP (right now I'm looking at MacConnect and MacLink) who serves the Bay Area, please let me know.
October 12, 1998
This was in many respects a "grading" weekend for Erin, thanks to the close of the first six weeks of the academic year. Progress reports due Wednesday, don't ya know!For my part, I entered everything into St. Francis' latest software purchase, Integrade Pro 5.0. I'm sorry to say that the program could've used a little more in the way of beta testing, because try as we might, the spreadsheet reports simply refused to print all the students. Afterward, of course, I found the Integrade Pro 5.1 updater patch on the web site which solved all problems. (It was released Friday, so I don't think St. Francis High is aware it exists.) On the brighter side, IP 5.x really flies on Zeke, and everything—now that I've got the program patched—will be easier next time.
Speaking of next times, I'm looking forward to the next time Dennis and I get together for a little QuakeWorld action. For those who don't know, QW is more or less a souped up version of Quake running over the Internet to allow multiple players.
Dennis and I went over some of the character class basics for a while, then spent another hour blasting away at each other. As told Dennis early on, the set up for QW is rather complex, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone if the game itself weren't so darn fun. If you'd like details, e-mail me and I can fill you in, but you'd better have a 28.8k modem and 100-MHz PowerPC at minimum).
October 10, 1998
Still plugging away on the music album, I've now figured out 11 of the 12 songs I want to use. I've been revising music and lyrics a lot in the last two days, and everything has moved a whole lot closer to a point where I can start actually recording things.October 8, 1998
I went for a big long 7-mile hike at Rancho San Antonio yesterday. First time I've been out there in a while. They've added a whole other section of who knows how many hundred acres onto the preserve. Pretty neat, but also very steep, with a climb of 600 feet to about 2800 feet over the course of about 4 miles. I think I'll save that hike for a different week (...month...year...).I was lucky enough to see my first bobcat at San Antonio, and that was cool. Made up for only seeing one deer and a bunch of quail on the rest of the hike.
Watched the St. Francis girls volleyball team last night go 3-0 versus another nameless, faceless high school squad. The Lancers are currently ranked #1 in the nation, an honor I'm not wholly convinced they deserve. They're a great team, no doubt, but I think it remains to be seen whether they're as good as the press they're getting. Of course, it's hard to argue with a record of 14-0.
I also finished Chapter 4 in the Adobe Illustrator 6 "Classroom in a Book." There's still another 7 or 8 chapters to go, but I'm ready to give these books my seal of approval. If you're looking to learn an Adobe program (PageMaker, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, Persuasion, Photoshop, etc.), these books will show you the way. Running about $45 each, they're expensive, but they come with a CD-ROM tutorial and $45 is still a lot less expensive than wasting hours randomly trying different things. It's also less expensive than doing a class.
October 7, 1998
Finished Chapter 3 in the Adobe Illustrator 6 "Classroom in a Book." I also worked my way through about half of Chapter 4. Boy is that program starting to make a lot more sense.My friend Dennis and I got together on FICS to go over the King's Indian Defense and the King's Indian Attack. Dennis has been looking for a solid opening that lets him not worry excessively if his opponent goes out of book, and I think the KID and KIA fit that bill really nicely. As White, I'm a proponent of the KIA, and as Black, I use the KID against 1. d4 exclusively. Sometimes I play it against 1. e4 as well.
I forgot to mention the other thing that had kept me from posting to the site in recent days: I was upgrading my friend Sal's PowerBook 190cs. Boy are those fun little machines. Turns out the 190, a 68040 machine, is plenty capable, too. I hopped on the Internet with it and networked it to Zeke without any problems whatsoever. And, man, you have got to love the portability of the thing. I don't know if I can ever justify spending the money for one, but PowerBooks rock.
October 5, 1998
Sorry for no update in last few days. I've been pretty feverishly working on a web site re-design for HR Dynamics, Inc., a human resources company based in the Seattle area. Check out the above link and see what you think of my work.My hope, of course, is that you and everybody else will like what they see and that I can parley this into an increasingly active web site design business. I've been doing my personal web site for about a year and half, and in case anyone hasn't figured it out after all that time, I really do love doing this HTML and design stuff.
I also took some time over the weekend to play a loosely organized game of soccer with a bunch of "over 30" guys. I'm happy to say that I played pretty well, though I've been incredibly sore since then. Of course that won't stop me from coming back next week to do it again.
The "Good News of the Weekend" award goes to my friend Dave who's getting married and who, in a display of incredible courage, even asked me to be the best man. Who knows what I might say during a toast?
Seriously though, Dave and I have been friends since third grade, and we went to elementary school, middle school, high school, and college together. We've seen each other through a lot of ups and downs over the years, and I'm definitely stoked to be part of this "up."
October 1, 1998
It's been another good long wait, but we should see the next Seal album on November 17, according to Entertainment Weekly. I've loved his first two albums, so I have high hopes for this one, entitled Human Being, as well.I've posted information on "Apple Demo Days," a volunteer opportunity for Mac-heads like myself to get out and hawk the benefits of MacOS 8.5. See MacAdvocacy for details.
I've been playing of late with Go Live's CyberStudio 3.0, a professional level HTML editor. It's levels more advanced than Adobe's PageMill 3.0, but the learning curve is pretty steep too. Via Erin's wonderful educational discount, I can pick up CyberStudio for around $180 versus a $50 upgrade for PageMill. I'm torn.
I've kept the "Time to Get Crackin'!" article at the bottom of the News page since the effort is still on-going. In fact, we've still checked less than 4 percent of all possible key combinations. There's still plenty of time to get involved.
I've updated the Chess section with Game 10 of my on-going battle with Al Starfy. I've also added chess board graphics to Starfy Game 9.
