Lewies Blog

It’s been agreed for quite a few months now that I’ll be getting a new computer for my nephew next month. It may help to offset many of the holidays where I haven’t been able to aford much at all. I still don’t have much cash to spare, but at least I have enough credit with Dell to purchase a new system.

Shopping on the Dell website sometimes requires very much time. They sell so many different systems that you can customize to be the way that you want them. You can make what appears to be two identical systems, but end up paying an arm and a leg for one over the other.

In the end, I found a combination (2.4GHz, 512 RAM, 80 GB HD) for about seven hundred dollars. This is a system for school work as well as a game called Ultima Online also known as UO.

The game is about eight years old, but it is alive and kicking. I’ve been in and out of the game many times and even got to play it during the beta. I picked up the gold edition tonight for roughly ten dollars and created a new account (free for fourty five days). Angel found that we still have access to my brothers account, so I’ll probably change over to it and activate it on pay day. An aged account has some advantages over new accounts such as the ability to receive special items every year and during software upgrades.

Here is a list for all of you hardware buffs, or if you are just interested in what I purchased.

Last week I had been denied to purchase medications through my insurance plan at my local pharmacy. The response was that I would have to apply for the prescriptions through mail-order to get the low price. I was left with the option to pay a little over $100 for each prescription that I was purchasing.

Since my wife still had plenty of scripts, I decided to hold out. We had agreed with our family doctor that we would start seeing a specialist to take care of our specific needs. Unfortunately, we waited too long to do so. I found a specialist on my plan that was close to home and scheduled an appointment. To move the appointment closer, I set up two appointments throughout this week rather then showing up together in the week after.

Today a bombshell just dropped on me. My wife has one day remaining on her prescription. I had a few of hers that I’ve been splitting in half for myself, since she takes twice the amount of the same prescription as I do. Mine were left over from the last time this happened and I’m going to let her have what little I have left.

This still puts the two of us in a bad spot. These are not medications that you just stop taking. Once you stop taking them, withdrawl symptoms are almost unbearable. I figured that I could tough it out if it came down to it, but I didn’t want to put her through that misery.

I ran down to the gas station on an errand for my wife. I saw an ATM machine and started to wonder if it would let me withdraw a large sum of cash that I didn’t have. In the past, I’ve done this without realizing it and have gone so far as $600 below zero. At the moment, I was only 96 cents in the red, so I gave it a go. Listening to the cold hard cash being shuffled was music to my ears.

Tonight I’ll be able to rest easy and reorder those expensive scripts. My wife will not have to suffer. We will be able to see our new doctor in a normal state of mind. I may even ask the specialist if there is a different medication that isn’t so dependent upon and may even be cheaper if it isn’t covered by insurance.

Mom called asking where the specialist was located since she’ll be taking my wife on Friday. I put the address on our message board for her to look at when she comes and visits her tomarrow. She’ll probably find some directions on the internet to find them. From what I remember, the woman on the phone stated that they are located in a building behind a 7-11 store.

Last night I took the last of my medication. I went ahead and dialed the number for the Wal-Mart pharmacy and entered my Rx number. Along with mine, I also put in an order for my wife’s prescriptions as well.
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My coworker invited me into her office today and presented me with a few t-shirts and a cap that she got from the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2005 (a.k.a. PDC). I still need to catch up on some PDC blogs about what went on this year.

Angel took a look at the shirts when I got home and took to the Intel 64 sports sweater. There was another shirt advertising Automated QA and one for the PDC conference itself. I love wearing these shirts around the house. I can get messy and not have to worry about ruining the shirt since it’s just a promotional item.

Today I’ve done a lot of mucking around in Crystal Reports. I dealt with exporting as Word and Excel files and emailing them as attachments. I also got the html version to print without our sites template when the end-user prints it out. As always, there were tons of formatting issues and troubleshooting with the report. I’m just glad that it isn’t like the old days where I would spend days hunting down dll’s, hot fixes, and patches on the Crystal Reports website. It’s been a few years, but I’m doing ok with them.

Tags: PDC, Developers, Conferences, T-Shirts, Free, Crystal Reports, Work, Angel, Shirts, Clothing

So I was browsing technorati the other day with blogs that link to mine. A new one showed up called Kapil’s Korner. Kapil leaves comments on my blog from time to time and he wrote something about the website statistics counter that I use in his post, “The Sunday Punch“.

Along side the mention of the counter, he also talked about a few other things that he uses with his blog such as 43Things, Blogrolling, and Tag Cloud. I knew about 43Things and Blogrolling, but Tag Cloud was new to me. I went on over to the website, created an account, and submitted my blogs feed.

Almost a full day later, the service started assigning a few tags to my blog. Two days and I had over 250 of them. The service is pretty cool. Not only do they give you a page to land on, but they also have javascript that you can display on your own blog. Also, they create the tags for you.

Technorati on the other hand, requires you to explicitly identify text as a tag. You may have noticed all of my tags at the bottom of each post. Technorati also doesn’t generate tag clouds on a per-blog bassis. I’ve been working on my own little programs to automate the process of creating tag navigation on my blog, but it is tedious.

Well, so far I like the service. It is creating tags that I hadn’t thought of. I wonder what it will look like as time progresses. An interesting note is that the bottom of each page states “Content Analysis powered by Yahoo! Search“. I wonder how that is done exactly.

Tags: Tagging, Tag Cloud, Services, Free, Blogging

What a busy day. I was awakened early and spent a while going through finances with my mother in-law. We headed on out and got all of our shopping done. By time we were done with everything, we had second thoughts about taking the kids to the Renaissance Festival. We were tired, it was hot, and finances would be much better when the next pay check rolls around.

To make up for it, we took the kids out to McDonald’s and then headed on over to Toys ‘R Us. I went outside and took many pictures of my niece in her princess outfit. She got changed and we all started playing hide-and-seek. After that, the kids and I were playing in the back yard and bugs started to come out so we went inside.

Earlier, I had picked up an Atari Flashback 2 system at Wal-Mart for roughly $30. It has 40 games built in and two joysticks. If you find yourself acquiring one of these things, the first thing you want to do is throw out the joysticks. They just don’t work. You have to press the joysticks very hard in the direction you want to move. Fortunately I had 5 joysticks in the attic from my Atari 400 (God rest its’ soul).

My niece started begging to play it as soon as I started getting things running. My nephew soon followed suit and they were occupied for hours. My mother in-law just looked at me and laughed. It was amazing to see these young kids get a kick out of playing the old games when they have the newer game consoles to choose from.

I’m all beat, but I’ve been told that they had just as much fun today as if they had actually gone to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. That’s a relief and makes me feel all nice and happy.

Tags: Video Games, Family, Shopping, Finances

I just checked out my xbox 360 account and saw that someone had completed there offer. Now I just need seven more of my friends to complete an offer as well. So I’ll just go on and explain the program and hope for the best.

What you do is sign up and complete an offer. Most offers require the use of a credit card, but give you a free trial with no obligation. I signed up for a trial to Audible. Audible is a service that provides audio books that I listen to on my iPod when I commute to and from work.

It may take a few days before your offer registers as being complted. Different offers take different amounts of time to register. Also, before you complete an offer, you’ll have to verify your email address as well. After that, it is as simple as giving a referral link to your friends to sign up.

Some of you may be skeptical. I was skeptical about another offer by the same company for a free iPod. I went with the program anyway. Sure enough, after I got all of my referrals, I got my free iPod in the mail.

Tags: Xbox, Xbox 360, Video Games, Free

My brother is a health nut. Actually, he’s just a vegetarian. I check in on things from time to time about vegetarians, organic food and what not. I came accross an article advising how to be frugal about organic foods. There were some helpful tips to avoid the high priceson being frugal.

One tip that caught my eye was the following:

If you have room to raise your own meat, you can save even more.

I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say that I’m a dirty thinker. I almost died laughing. Anyhow, my brother doesn’t eat meat at all. Last I checked, that was pretty much the definition of a vegetarian.

The article went on with a few other tips. Some were “no-brainers”. Others had me wondering what planet the auther was from. I’m sure my brother already considered most of these tips. Any how, for the rest of my readers, here is a summary of the tips:

• By in bulk
• Buy direct
• Cook from scratch
• Make your own soy milk and tofu
• Grind grain for bread
• Join a co-op
• Buy uncertified food from farmers
• Hunt for coupons on the internet
• Grow your food

Tags: Brother, Health Nut, Vegetarian, Organic Food, Organic, Food, Tips, Frugal, Meat, Dirty Mind

I finished listening to the second half of the Eragon audio book today. I have been listening to it a lot over the weekend hoping to be done in time for the release of Eldest. I saw that Audible now lists Eldest in two volums for the second book. Each volume is split into two files for easier download. Eldest is 23 hours and 33 minutes long. Eragon was about a third less then that. It looks like the same person who read the first book (Gerard Doyle), is also reading the second book as well.

I applied my last book credit for this month to the first volume of Eldest. I have until September 9th before I can download the second volume with my replenished credits. I had run out of audio credits and I don’t want to buy the volume out rite even if it is at half price. I still save about 75% by using book credits instead.

I wonder how long it will be until the final book of the Inheritance trilogy will be completed. I hope that Christopher Paolini doesn’t get writers block. Dragons and Magic really catch my imagination and it thirsts for more.

Movie Rumors

As far as the movie goes for Eragon, I’m starting to see rumors of actors being cast. Ed Speleer has signed on as Eragon. I’ve also heard rumors in other places that Eragon will be played by Garrett Hedlund. Sienna Guillory will play the part as Arya. Other actors will be Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Irons, and John Malkovich.

Tags: Eldest, Eragon, Audio Book, Audible, Inheritance, Trilogy, Dragons, Magic, Imagination, Book, Gerard Dyle, Christopher Paolini, Writers Block, Credit, Ed Speleer, Garrett Hedlund, Sienna Guillory, Arya, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Rumors, Movies

Woke up and started converting a few sorting algorithms from Java to C#. I thought about it and realized there was no reason to do so, so I just deleted the project.

I tried playing a few free games online. Most are just not that great. It isn’t inspiring at all when I want to make one on my own.

Went to get gas for the car, lawn mower, and weed wacker. Got to the pump and reached for cash but didn’t have any. Looked for my card and couldn’t find it. Went back home.

Watched Constantine. Really good movie. I like movies that file the bible under the Science Fiction category. Really cool stuff.

Found my card in my wallet and got gas. Tried to cut the lawn but ran into some problems and stopped.

Watched a few South Park episodes, took a shower, blogged.

The End.

Tags: Sorting Algorithms, Java, C#, Programming, Games, Online, Free, Lawn Mower, Gas, Car, Weed Wacker, Constantine, Movie, Bible, Science Fiction, South Park, Shower, Blogged, Recap