Just a quick update. Doing good so far this past week with cutting my soda intake down even with everything that was going on. I’ve only had a few cans all week!

This week was an exciting week of downed internet services, wild kids, kids getting shots, middle school breakups and uncooperative schools among many other things.

Each year my son goes back and forth from me and his mother, 1 year with me 1 year with her. Each year usually all we have to do is give them the last schools name and state and they get all the information from the other school including shot records. This year they wasted a a whole school day running me around only to come back around to the way it normally was ALMOST. I had to get the last local school he went to, to send papers to them first and provide the normal 2 proofs or residence THEN they contacted his school where his mother lives to get the rest of the information. On top of that we get a letter Saturday evening stating the my oldest daughter still needs a shot. Yeah… 1 day basically before school. because of my sons school jerking us around all day I didn’t get her to the health department soon enough to get her shots so I had to take her the next day so she missed a day and a half of school. The youngest one got to go to school the first day just fine she had been enrolled already last year.

I know that had I enrolled my son earlier things could have been settled sooner but usually there is no problem and I didn’t see a point specially with how much i been having to work during the day trying to get things settled. The economy is hard right now and work is sparse. i have looked into getting a job for some company but I haven’t had a “real job” in 5 years and the trade I’m good at I don’t have the tools for. The only jobs I could probably get would be minimum wage and that amount of  money minus the cost of having a job(gas/taxes/maintenance) is less money then I make now. Sure at least then I can just say “oh I’m doing the best I can I have a real job” But I’ve never been a real job person and its mostly worked out for me… mostly… I’d rather not just fall in line and be mediocre working at some crappy place with my biggest possible advancement being a shift manager or something.

Even with the kids going to school now they are still WILD when they get home. Plus with no cable they are bored out of their minds. I plan to fix that though. I remember back in Texas we didnt even have tv at all. Not even local channels. The kids where never bored then. They would create epic battles in the yard using sticks and their imaginations. Now they are lost if the tv gets shut off for an hour. I still make sure they get outside time and we go to my moms to swim and to the park all that good stuff but its not the same as constantly being forced to use your imagination. tv has always bored me to death. Very few channels can keep my attention because I crave knowledge and a challenge not this mind numbing bullshit thats all over the stations now-a-days. Science Channel is really the only station that most of the time can keep my attention.

So as I stated above my internet got shut off. Yeah Fuck me I’m a loser endangering my kids poor them and their lack of artificial entertainment right? For most people cable is the lowest of priorities in the bill list. For me its a bit different because its how I make money but still pretty low on the list. Because things have been so slow bills get behind and I been using the past due balance to know when to pay the cable bill. It’s been the same drill for a few months now. Past due bill comes, they shut to tv off but not the internet. I call and pay what I have to and it gets turned back on. Everything is fine and dandy and I can drag out paying it as long as possible so other things more important like electricity and food gets taken care of. Well this time they decided to play a little game with me. maybe they figured it out and didn’t like the game so they took our deposit and paid off some of our bill, thats great you say right? WRONG! it made my bill look smaller but it was still that far behind so when I see the normal past due amount I am not alarmed. Then POOF cable boxes are on but no picture… internet stops working… then I notice a guy leaving in a truck with a ladder on it. I call brighthouse and they say oh you have a past due amount of blah blah. So I pay blah blah and then call them back with the confirmation number to get it turned back on and guess what they say. “Oh no sorry that wasn’t enough you have to pay the full amount PLUS a new deposit because we closed out your account.” We have had brighthouse for more then a year. Always paid just recently having issues. They completely closed the account out. Not suspended it or turned our boxes off they killed our account. So after a few hours of phone tag on a fucking pay phone we get someone to help so we only had to pay the rest of the balance and they would bill the deposit. so… $300 later my ass is hurting and I ask when can it be turned back on. They say closest time is Saturday! I say its fucking Wednesday what the hell. Sorry closest time. So the rest of the week is vacation. I spend it watching movie with the kids. The important thing is my kids are healthy and in no danger what so ever and they are in a nice cool and comfortable house even if it was void of the brain rotting tv for a few days.

I wont even mention the crazy only on jerry springer shit that also happened because I would rather really just not.

In conclusion… when it rains it pours and thats not just a saying…

I think that a few things need to be addressed on the blog entry they added called Shenanigans. In the post they say this:

Two weeks ago, amid an atmosphere of pride and boasting about Emerald traffic, a silly idea was hatched.

This idea was to target a blog owned by a creator of a malicious viewer, and boast of the traffic Emerald has captured. The method for doing this was to add links to the Emerald log in page linked to said blog. Each time anyone logged in, our page loaded up and also the other page loaded up – simply to show off our volume of traffic.

This was not a DDoS. This was a poor attempt at boasting that failed miserably. Once we discovered this, these links were deleted and the dev concerned was disciplined.

The entire Emerald Team offers it’s sincere apologies for concern, panic, worry, mistrust and disappointment felt by our users because of this. I can most strongly assure you that this will not happen again.

Sincerely,

The Emerald Dev Team

I call bullshit. From the information I gathered it WAS a DDos attempt (all be it a shitty one) targeted at someone who pissed of Phox and he was retaliating like he has done so many times before. Silly idea really? And the best idea was to say it was targeting a blog of a malicious viewer? Really? Even if it was an attack on a malicious viewer there is no justification for involving a whole community unknowingly in illegal activity such as a DDos. You can call it what you want but thats what it was… a DDos. What good is an apology to someone who got there ISP contacted and their internet shut off because of this “silly idea”. Whether others where involved I don’t know but you do seem to insinuate that the dev team had this idea not one person.

Lets not forget about this blog post way back when that big data mining incident was outed. I over looked this because I figured it was an honest mistake and they had good reason for gathering the data. BUT After seeing time after time the things that are happening I am more then sure that that information would probably have been used improperly and maliciously. Whats to say with this new way of hiding code they don’t do something similar and put even more important information at risk.

Everyone that knows me or reads my blog knows I havent used emerald in a while. At least not faithfully and when I do its the source code pulled from them and compiled myself not a prebuilt binary. I have been using the official SL2 viewer for various reasons. I even posted on it. One of the reasons I didn’t really mention was my growing distrust for the dev team. I try not to listen to drama and gossip but I can’t ignore my personal dealings with people. I have been a very avid emerald user since the beginning of my sl and I love the viewer. But all the events that have been happening have completely killed my trust in the developers of the project. I cannot trust this Phox person and he has access to something that allows him to do whatever he wants without anyone seeing in a viewer we all love. This is not a personal vendetta against Phox I do not know Phox outside of the news he generates and the things he has been accused of.

I suggest everyone make their own judgement on this and not take my word for it but I would be extremely careful using the emerald viewer anymore. At least until Linden labs deals with the situation if they ever do. After all emerald being in the TPV agreement does put LL in some type of liability.

SO! I decided to quit drinking Pepsi! yes I did, I have done it before and I can do it again. I don’t think I will stay on a strict no Pepsi/soda diet but I will avoid it as much as I can and see what happens. I haven’t had a can of soda all day and it’s starting to hurt a little bit but no big deal I feel calmer A little depressed to but thats to be expected. I will confess I did drink a fountain drink from the store though so thats a little cheating but not as bad as 6 cans of soda. Today I drank mostly water and tea. I know tea has caffeine too but the amount of tea I have drank today is nothing compared to normal and it is probably helping me from being in to much pain. It’s too soon really to tell if it is helping my focus/on task problem yet but I am more then confident it will. Worst case is it doesn’t really help but I am a bit healthier and I can look for something else that might help.

Maybe I should try meditating like a jedi…

Heres a little inspiration

Right now I have tons of projects and people pulling me in many different directions and I am very confused on which direction I should be going. Its been a long time since I have had this much choice and freedom of what I want to do and I don’t feel I am handling it very well. Lately I don’t accomplish much at all and now is when I should be accomplishing the most. I feel rather scattered most of the time and I can’t seem to get a good grip. I have started trying to focus on 1 thing at a time and I know this will help but focus on 1 thing has always been my problem. My emotions seem to be going nuts too maybe because of the stress I’m sure. Or maybe I’m pregnant? Oh snap!

The biggest problem with this scatteredness is I am hardly making an income now and we are relying mostly on my gf’s income. This on top of a few other major unexpected expenses has put us in a pretty bad spot. I know that with everything that is brewing we will be fine soon but it is a lot of stress and it makes a person very scared. I have faith that we can get through this I just hope that everything doesn’t collapse before money starts coming in.

I’ve always been too embarrassed to post when I have financial problems but honestly I don’t care and I’ve come to the realization that it is natural. Everyone who isn’t born rich struggles at 1 point in time in their life or more.

What disappoints me the most is that I let things become this way. That we became so dependent on 1 thing or person. With all my capabilities I still managed to settle for what was easiest. Well the power that gave others has caused us issues for years and now we are in a really bad spot. BUT! No more will “all my eggs be in 1 basket”. That just isn’t going to happen. Maybe thats why I am going into so many different directions. I am sure I will find a middle point and organize things. My family needs it and I need it.

Anybody have any “stay on task” tips and tricks?

digitalfiz falls asleep at the keyboard at 2am

The one thing I don’t understand is why its any different for me to pull up a chair and sit with friends and talk in a virtual world or to do the same in the real world or why its wrong for me to spend the rest of the night on the computer but ok to watch tv for the rest of the night. I know that some consider the internet to be very impersonal but with places like SecondLife and Blue Mars it can be a very personal experience to interact with someone. In those virtual worlds you are what you want to be and that avatar is you. it’s not just text its something you made personally and the interaction with others is very personal.

I’ve never been a person to blame my problems on some word some doctor made up or decided to call the problem but I will say that the anxiety I feel when I just think about having to deal with people in real life hurts, its not just a fear it physically hurts and it’s just not something I have to deal with this day and time.

When I do think about it, I feel stupid for the things I feel incapable of doing. It’s stupid that when my neighbor catches me outside I feel panic and I have absolutely nothing to say to him but in a virtual world I can meet someone I have never met before in my life and talk with them for hours. It’s stupid that when I go to the store to shop for groceries that my head feels with blood and so much anxiety sets in I can hardly see straight while I try to gather supplies. It is stupid that I get so frustrated just trying to find the groceries I am looking for knowing that I have probably passed what I am looking for 5 times and still cant find it. I feel retarded when I go to the DMV or somewhere that requires you to wait in line or a waiting room and the person sitting next to me looks at me like they want to have a conversation but I cant think of a single thing to say because I am so nervous I can only think about how much longer do I have to sit here.

I will say that this is not always the case. Sometimes if I am preoccupied with a project in my head sometimes I can go to the grocery store or another public place and not have a single problem at all because I am somewhere else in my head. I have tried to use this technique when I go out and it has help a lot but it is very hard to block out the fears that set in. The sad thing is the fears I have are unknown fears. Its not something specific its just fear and anxiety.

I want to say to everyone that tries to explain to me how unnatural it is to live the way I do “trust me I would give anything to not have to deal with what I do everyday.”

Some might say its unhealthy. I say its just like anything else. You are responsible for your health not anyone or anything else. If you eat healthy and get exercise that you will be fine just like with any other things you might consider more normal. I have a belly I have this belly not because I sit on the computer all day, I have it because I sit on this computer all day and choose not to eat healthy or do my morning exercises

Some also might say that you don’t go out and meet people and that you need a normal social life. Who’s job is it to say whats a normal social life? I have more friends online then I could ever imagine having in real life. There is no way I would be able to interact enough and keep up with as many friends I have if it was in person.

The point I am trying to make here is that virtual worlds and the amazing amount of different ways to communicate and entertain yourself on the internet make it easier for people like me have normal lives. yes, I said normal because no matter how weird it seems to you or others its no different then other types of entertainment of communicating. Its not different to spend the night watching tv then it is to spend the night on the computer reading the news or chatting with friends or just goofing off playing some FPS. It’s no different to get up in the morning and check your email, the weather and the news then it is to get up go out your door scratch your balls and pick up the news paper. Its not weird its just a different way of doing things.

Online you can be what you want and who you want without restrictions (well legal restrictions but still ). Online in virtual worlds like SecondLife I am a vampire, I am a builder, I am a mentor and I am a friend to thousands. Out in the real world I am just another person, just another number.

Things I miss from Emerald Viewer:

1. Being able to see someones true online status from their profile
2. The command line features emerald has like: tp2cam, flr, gth and rezplat to name a few.
3. Being able to get UUID’s or people and objects either by viewing profiles or right clicking objects.
4. The preprocessor, currently broke in emerald anyways.
5. The built in AO.

Things I like about Viewer 2:

1. The UI, its just sexy.
2. The favorites bar at the top for landmarks. Removes a whole hud for me and provides a browser like familiarity to the game.
3. Being able to create outfits without having to “copy items”. very useful for no copy items being able to be in multiple outfits.
4. MoAP: media on a prim. Very awesome.
5. Graphics enhancements.
6. The extremely customizable UI. You can pretty much make the internals of the viewer look any way you want.

Things I hate about Viewer 2:

1. The fact that I am having to pretty much relearn my tools again. But who actually likes this anyways?
2. Thats it…

All in all the only reason I am using viewer 2 is because the 3rd party viewers like Emerald are falling behind and have no plans on updating to the new UI. While they do plan on adding some of the features of viewer 2 they refuse the UI like its the plague. It will be their downfall I think.

I wish I could code C++ so I could just take the features I like of Emerald and port them to Viewer 2 but sadly I don’t I do plan on trying to dive into C++ and learn a bit about it maybe learning enough to do what I need with the viewer. I wonder who else has done the same as me and actually gave viewer 2 an honest try…

It would be a win-win for everyone, and there would be none of this crap about racial profiling and this method would eliminate a long and expensive trial. Justice would be quick and swift. Case Closed!

This is so simple that it’s brilliant. I can see it now: you’re in
the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter an announcement comes over the PA system, “Attention standby passengers we now have a seat available on flight number…”