Chris Weldon’s Blog

The third and wonderful “conclusion” to the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy was released last week, and I had the opportunity to take my wife to go see it two days after it came out. Suprisingly, the crowd at the movie theater was small, with the show being only 3/4 of the way filled. But, that’s to be suspected with the college crowd almost completely gone for summer.

The movie is slow to begin, but quickly ramps up once the underlying story is presented. Then, when you least expect it, it hits the ground running with a nice full-town battle ensuing between allies (?) and foes. ‘Tis unusual without the biggest character of the story, Jack Sparrow, present. Fret not, however, as his re-appearance is one of peculiarity, but undoubtedly reminds you of the Jack Sparrow you knew from the other two movies.

As many people have claimed, there seems to be more battles and more fighting in this movie than in the past two. This, I can agree with, but likewise disagree with. The difference between At World’s End and either of the other two movies is the complete interweaving of all characters that had been introduced up to the final movie. A lot of drama and arguing ensue, yet there’s always the ever-so-often hint of humor.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of this movie was the addition of more “traditional” things from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney. You hear more songs and see things that are oddly reminiscent of the ride, should you have had the wonderful opportunity of riding it before.

Overall, this nearly 3-hour long adventure is one well suited for any Pirate fan, and in my case, I can only hope the DVD is right around the corner.

4.5 / 5 Stars

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Well, it has been quite a few days (maybe closer to 2 weeks) since I last updated. So, in an effort to get everyone up-to-speed, and to have a somewhat politically motivated post, I’m taking extra time out of my busy hectic life to give you, my audience, and update.

First and foremost, I’ve been busier than ever at work (CIS). I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but I switched to Customer Applications from the Operations group. It meant a new title (yay for promotions), more money (always helpful), and likewise a plethora of new tasks and responsibilities. Then again, it doesn’t exactly help that the project that I’m working in is in serious distress. But luckily, I’m able to program quick enough to put me 12.5 hours ahead of schedule today. Go me. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring this project back on-track to the point that we’ll be able to actually deliver it on-time. For the most part, I’ve been able to program the past week or so, but before that I was doing a combination of consultations, analysis, and down-right project engineering for this customer because they needed everything including servers, SSL certificates, etc.

Second, Melissa and I are still moving things over from the apartment into our new house. We have most of everything (large things at least - we’re missing quite a few smaller items, and still my big fiberboard desk which will take a boheameth to transport over to the house). Most evenings are spent going to the apartment, gathering stuff, and moving it back to the house. The past couple of nights, though, we’ve had reprieve due to the bad weather and having to go to Houston for various things (such as Melissa’s recital, having a wonderful Italian dinner with her grandmother, etc.). This relaxation time has given my back a break, but sadly I’m still not getting much sleep at night. I’m anxious for the day when we finally pay-off the new mattress that we’re getting - it should cure all of our problems as far as sleeping is concerned.

As far as my business is concerned, I have a customer for my business who seems to think I can be at their beckoning call 24/7/365 for programming issues. I agree that for server issues they have to be resolved FAST (and for the most part I make certain they are taken care of at that speed), but programming issues take time to analyze, engineer, program, test, and deploy - not something that a large set of changes can be done in a short amount of time. Not to mention, the fact that this customer almost expects me to come to their office location at the drop of a dime is absurd - especially when the requests they have (which have to happen immediately) can be typed up and sent to me - that’s all that’s going to happen when I get them, type them up and put them in my bug software. Why waste my development time when you can type up the requests? These are the type of people that really push me to get out of this business.

Additionally, for anyone who is considering getting webhosting (and is not smart enough to go to www.cerberusonline.com and sign up for the best hosting in the world through that website!) should NEVER consider HostGator for a hosting provider. We have some reseller accounts through them and they have the WORST restriction, signup, and fee policies on the face of the planet. I won’t get into details, but trust me when I say do not trust them.

Well, my ride is almost here, so I’ll update this post about Vetos and Cheerios later. Give me a holler if you haven’t talked to me in a while. AIM: Nschinden15

Political, Random

Well, I know it’s been a while since I’ve last updated, so I just wanted to let everyone know I’m still alive and kicking. I suppose I’ll give a quick update as to my situation in life so nobody is left out of the loop.

On April 12, Melissa and I closed on our home! That’s right, we’re officially the owners of a new home! We’re so excited and up to this point we’ve already done a massive amount of things to it - mainly painting. The living room is nearly done, one of the bedrooms is completely done, the office is still undergoing paint, as is the master bedroom. Keep checking back for pictures.

Recently I also changed positions within CIS. I essentially got a much needed promotion and changed to a new group, Customer Applications. I’m no longer working on Keystone like I used to - and I’m fairly happy about that fact. I’m working with quite talented programmers and I’m getting the opportunity to use some of the programming styles I’ve not been able to do for CIS for a long time.

Anywho, I need to get back to work since this project I’m working on is EXTREMELY behind schedule. I’ll update again once we’re completely moved into our new home!

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Howdy everyone!

I’ve finally finished the move of my blog to the new server, and everything (including my photographs) have been restored! Please browse around and don’t hesitate to email me at chris at chrisweldon dot net should you notice anything that’s broken.

Random, Software Development

Howdy y’all!

I apologize for my site being down yesterday evening. I’ve been switching hosting providers and there’s been a couple of hickups along the way. Once I’ve verified that this setup should work for my business’s customers, I will be switching them over here and myself over to the corporate server. So, in the meantime, the photos portion of my website will be down because, well, it takes a lot of space.

Take care, and I’ll chat with everyone when I return from Qatar.

Random, Software Development

Well, Melissa and I have officially done it. We’ve signed a contract for buying a house. Now, for those out there who haven’t bought a house yet, this doesn’t mean that we have the house quite yet. Signing the contract simply means that we guarantee that we will buy the house assuming we are able to obtain financing (ie: a mortgage).

The process began with me and Melissa discussing that during the entire time of us trying to figure out what we wanted to do to try to get a house, we admitted defeat in trying to get a used house. We’d have to have at lest 3% of the purchase price of the home AND get the seller to pay the closing costs in order for us to close on a home. This was through Wells Fargo. Additionally, we were really concerned about resell value for several of the homes that we were looking at, and we figured out that if we were to buy a new home, we will get quite a bit more resell value in 5-10 years when we move out and are looking for a better home for our family. Additionally, newer homes will more than likely sell quicker than a used home which could potentially be 20 years or older (we were looking at homes that were already 25 years old).

So, Melissa and I agreed to buy a new home built by Main Street Homes in a new subdivison in Wellborn (south end of College Station). The home we were looking at was priced at right about $125K, and Main Street Homes did their own financing which would allow for us to roll the closing costs and down payment into the cost of the mortgage. This means “$0 Down and $0 Due at Closing”. In all actuality, it came out to be about $750 due at application time, but that’s supposedly it.

When our Realtor came out to sign the contract with us, she did a walk-through of the place (1577 Square Foot Plan) with us, and then pointed out some serious damage on the home in the Garage. When we confonted the sales person, she said that she had a 1655 square foot plan that was a corner lot that was still up for sale. When we drove down to check it out, I found out that I had been looking at that lot before, and was quite pleased with it. So, we came back and agreed that we would buy it. From roughly 5PM - 9:30PM that night we were signing contracts, reading paperwork, and talking about the home. But, when it was all said and done, we had a contract signed and a mortgage application in hand.

The stressful period has begun, because Melissa and I are honestly concerned about whether or not we’ll be approved for a mortgage. We’re extremely enthusiastic and excited about getting this new home. So much that we’ve already starting picking out paints for the various rooms. But, the mortgage application process will take approximately 2 weeks, then final verification and approval another 2-4 weeks after that. So, we’re looking at 6 weeks from this past Thursday’s Date (3/1) before we have the final go-ahead. Hopefully everything will run smoothly during this process, but we’re very skiddish. There is so much data that we have to provide them, and they’ll likely be asking for more information that we’ve either forgotten to provide them, or they say they need but didn’t request in the first place. This will only extend the process. As it is, I wasn’t able to send the materials on Friday because of the fact that there are several fields on the Mortgage application that I’m uncertain as to how to fill them out (such as Life Insurance Value and Face Values), fields for the sale cost of the home, etc. I tried calling the sales office for Main Street Homes, but they refused (claiming ignorance) to help us. So, I’m stuck calling the single loan officer for this company. The fact that this mortgage company is rather small makes me kind of fearful, but at the same time, Melissa and I have no real choice because of the fact that we don’t want to be dependent on my parents for down payment assistance.

But, my parents are just as enthusiastic as we are, and I’ll more than likely be updating with details of how things go, as they go. I’m also crossing my fingers that I hear back by Tuesday on the status of this new job in CIS I’m trying to get (a serious bump in pay and responsibilities). Kim in Keystone is nice, but I’ve gotten really tired of the project because it moves so slowly and I can’t exercise a lot of creative freedom with it. I’m not giving my hopes up, but they could have potentially found someone more qualified than me, despite all my qualifications; but, I’m still hopeful.

Anywho, I’ll update when I’m not so busy, or am bored. Hopefully later this week.

Random

For the past 3 weeks, Melissa and I have been on the hunt for a home. We’ve been throwing enough money into our apartment complex, and since they decided to be punks and tell us that we can’t get credited for the “Internet Credit” that they had been letting us do for a year and a half, we’ve decided it’s finally time that we move towards ownership rather than renting. Not to mention, painting and home improvement projects are fun!

But, Melissa and I didn’t realize how difficult this home search thing was going to be! We’ve spent countless numbers of hours sifting online at the various different homes that are up for sale, including having our realtor take us by at least 8 or 10 of them - only to find that most of them are not as impressive as we had hoped they would be.

We ended up sending an offer to one home. They had started asking $129K for it, then they went down to $124,900. The home is old and in “okay” condition. From what we can tell, though, there are foundation issues with it. The owners seem to think it’s just “settling” - but diagonal cracks from a window tell me otherwise. We went ahead and shot an offer of $120,000 and having them pick up $5,000 in closing costs (because we won’t be able to close on a home if we don’t have the seller pay for the closing costs). They flat out refused the offer and wouldn’t even consider counter offering.

So now Melissa and I are considering these new homes that have been built by Main Street homes on the south side of College Station (Wellborn, actually). They do all the financing themselves, so closing costs and “down payments” will be rolled into the cost of the mortgage, so we don’t pay a dime at the time of closing and moving into the home. The home we want is about $125,000, but with $11,000 in closing costs the final mortgage price will come out to being close to $136,000 - making our monthly payments roughly $1,360. This is doable for us if Melissa goes to work full-time, or if I get the job I’m hoping (but not betting on) getting with Customer Applications @ CIS.

In any case, it’s about lunch time, but I felt like rambling about how difficult it is to do the home search thing.

Random

Lately many individuals have been asking me whether I’m depressed or down. I don’t know where they’ve been getting that impression, but from what I can tell, most people think I’m exhibiting these factors.

I suppose maybe I am. Lemme explain what’s been going on in my life:

1) My business is failing. Sure, we got another client to “agree” to sign on with us recently, but there’s been no contracts signed as of yet and the workload for this website will be huge. Past that, the business doesn’t have any income, and Tom and I haven’t been able to pay ourselves this month or last month because we have no money in our corporate account. All bills for the company have been going on our credit card. This debt is racking up quick, and it is admittedly depressing me.

The sheer amount of time and effort that I’ve put into this business, only to see it not pay off as well as I thought it was going to, has effectively made me feel really down. I guess the big thing that ended up pulling me down this far was the fact that one of the potential half a million (yes $500K) clients has not come through yet - and it’s already 1.5 months after when we were told the deal would have been signed and we’d be working on it. The next meeting for it is on February 28th - a hell of a long time from now. The business world moves too slowly, and it’s really aggravating me.

2) My job @ CIS sucks. My boss doesn’t do any work to help our project progress - she’s been doing other “administrative” things, which will effectively add more for us to do in the future. Job Security: No problem here - there’s more than enough work cut out for us (or should I say me)? The problem that I have with her doing the things she’s been doing is that we’re a two-person team. A reasonable expectation for this would be that she would have her boss handle the administrative tasks (such as dealing with big businesses and the issues with their contracts), dealing with other departments, etc. This would allow both of us to work on the project together. We’d get a hell of a lot more accomplished this way than the manner we are currently taking.

Additionally, I’m only an IT Associate - literally the lowest of the low on the chain. I make shit wages, no where near what I should be paid in the field. In fact, all the work I’m doing should be earning me $45-55K a year, but I’m stuck at a measly $32K. The fact that I’m doing nearly 100% of the work to keep us on track (which a timeline really doesn’t exist in our group) really makes me want to tell my boss they should be paying me more.

Additionally, I feel my efforts would be more worth my time if I were able to exercise the things I’m fricking trained for. I’ve been to 2 conferences this past year (1 this and 1 last fiscal year) to learn about new and emerging technologies in PHP and the development world. I’ve learned a LOT from there. Here’s a list of things that I want to do (and feel SHOULD be done) because our applications are all left in the dark ages:

- AJAX
- Image Stylization
- PHP5 OOP
- PDO
- Web Services
- Much much more

My boss absolutely refuses to allow me to add things such as the above. The reason? There is none. Generally she just tells me that’s a bad idea or “most people don’t like that”. The issue I’m starting to have more of that is the simple fact that most people in the department actually “don’t mind that”. JavaScript is the culprit. I admit that I haven’t interviewed nearly all different departments, but 4 out of the 5 that I have interviewed has said they honestly don’t care about JavaScript.

The application we are working on is using coding concepts that are still PHP4, and more than likely will remain that way if I’m not allowed to implement anything cool, new, and what the web is moving towards. My boss just doesn’t seem to understand where web content is moving towards and that many new technologies do exist and are there TO BE USED!

More things include using tools to develop and maintain our apps. Things such as trac, subversion, and other tools would be EXTREMELY helpful for us, as we’d be able to trac our code better and finally have documentation for our application. But, anytime I try to recommend these things to Kim, or heaven forbid install them, she tells me we’re not going to consider it now. “We’ve got too many other things to deal with.” This mainly involves moving from one server to two newer servers, which has been going on for 6 months now….I swear this move could have been taken care of in a reasonable amount of time, but the fact that it’s still going on is really depressing.

On the upside, a couple of new positions in another department are about to open up, and I’ll be applying for them, because I want to get off this dead end project.

In Summary

I suppose I have been a little depressed as of late. I’m going to skip out on my TREC (Engineering Competition) later tonight because of this fact. I needed some alone time (and probably need more). But I need alone time that doesn’t involve work or anything else. Just myself. Hopefully Sunday will lift my spirits, as Melissa and I are going to look at a potential first house for us. We’re not telling our parents (so Courtney, don’t even think of mentioning this to mom or dad!) because my parents especially think this will probably be a bad idea. Most online things are telling us that it’s not that bad, and for a few hundred dollars more a month, we’ll be on our way to OWNING, instead of keeping with the renting cycle we’ve been on.

Enough. I’m done with this post.

Random

Well, I just upgraded Serendipity to v1.1 . Additionally, I decided to pick a new theme which I’m pretty happy with. FINALLY, I figured out my problem with the code snippets causing code to spill outside the theme range…it was because of the bbcode module.

For an others out there having this problem, open up the following file:

serendipity_event_bbcode/serendipity_event_bbcode.php

and remove the one line that has   in it. That replaces spaces with that code. The issue is that when code would normally wrap to multiple lines, this will force it outsdie the standard bounds of the block because it’s all one nice long string.

Random

Check out the game my buddy Tommy found at:

http://novelconcepts.co.uk/FlashElementTD/

It’s guaranteed to lock you in and keep you occupied for a while.

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