6/7/01: More unpleasantries.

A while back I checked my site logs, and found where I'd been linked from.  After some fascinating discussion with the A*Teens fans on their BBS, I decided to update the A*Teens hate page with a link to a log of those conversations.  What started as a simple flame war quickly became a full blown rant against the music industry in general.

Second, I added What If? to the Gallery.

5/22/01: A*Teens updates

Honestly, after writing my little A*Teens hate page I never gave them another thought, but I've apparently been mentioned somewhere because I've been getting hate-mail from 14 year olds for the last two days.  This prompted my to take another look at the A*Teens home page and it has completely re-affirmed my deep-seated hatred for this vapid product of a group, this complete and utter tool of the music industry and their focused marketing.

So, I've updated the A*Teens hate page with my newfound insights.

5/7/01: I'm back.

Well, those who know me personally will tell you that I was never really gone, but I certainly haven't worked on the site in the last year.  That may all change here soon, though.

Programs, projects, and such:
I've developed a few little pieces over the past year, and though they were added to the site, they never truly got the full treatment.

5/25/00: Minor additions and some advice.

Never, ever feel guilty about hanging up on a telemarketer.  They LOVE it.  I'm not being sarcastic, either.  They honestly love it.  I've had a few friends in the phone-harassment business, and they told me so.  To them it's the quickest way out of the infinite-loop hell that is their job.  Have you ever noticed that when you say "I'm not interested", the schmuck on the other end of the line always counters with "But don't you want to..."?  That's because they HAVE to.  It's in their little script.  They HATE having to go through the exit-path crap every freaking call.  They must say that exit-path stuff a thousand times a day.  When you hang up on them it's one less time they have to repeat the same crap.  SO, in conclusion, hang up on them, they would thank you (If they could still talk to you, that is).

4/7/00: XML Goes public

No, not "Extensible Markup Language".  I mean, I'm good, but I don't have THAT kind of free time.  No, I'm releasing "X-Wing Mission Launcher" to the public.  It's a little utility I've been cooking up partly as an exercise in VB6 programming, and partly out of my own frustration with the process of running custom missions.  If you happen to have LucasArts' X-Wing, go check it out.

3/2/00:  

Bwahahahaha!  I just passed my final MCSE elective, and I'm certified!  I'm an MCSE, and an MCP+I to boot.  What's next?  MCSE+I??? maybe, maybe my MCSD, I want that one.  It'll give me a chance to do some more actual coding.  Creativity is good.  Administration is good too, but given the choice between being the architect or the construction worker, I'd rather be the architect.

Of course, I realize that I only get to keep this title for a year or so before it means nothing.  Now that they've released Windows2000 I have to go and upgrade my MCSE just to stay current.  Thank God they don't release new versions every year, or no-one would ever get anything done but maintaining certifications.

2/1/00: 5MCSE/6

Passed the TCP/IP test.  Got my best score yet, which is odd, since this is the test I felt the worst about going in.  Oh well.  One more test and I'm certified.  Next up... IIS4.0

There's something about studying stuff that you know is on the way out that makes you stop and say "Self, why am I doing this?".  But every version of everything is on it's way out all the time, it's just that you don't usually know the exact moment of it's expected demise.  The new versions of everything are just about to be released to the general public, at which point I'll have to start studying stuff all over again.  But the good news is that I won't have to do six entire exams to keep myself current, just two or three update exams to show that I know what's changed.

1/24/00: Rediscovering the classics

I recently got nostalgic for the classic space-combat sim X-Wing, and decided to play it again.  Unfortunately, my disks rotted out long ago, and I couldn't read them.  So I thought to myself, "Hey, didn't they make a CD with ALL the LucasArts space games on it?  Surely there must be a used copy for sale somewhere."  A trip to Half-Price Books and five bucks later I had my own "Collectors Series" CD.  I couldn't wait to play.  But something was different, they'd WORKED on this game let me tell you.  The old flat-shaded polygon rendering was replaced with full-out texture mapping.  This thing looks beautiful, let me tell you.  Not only that, but when I first had X-Wing, the Web barely existed.  Now there are squadrons, and on-line competitions, a whole community of stuff out there.

SO, I think I've found my new addiction, and it's a classic.  I'll be putting up some X-Wing pages shortly.

1/1/00: Okay, so the world didn't end

12/26/99: Time for the next holiday

Well, Christmas is finally over.  Life returns to normal, at least for a couple of days.  Once I've finished pulling down all the lights from the bushes and house, we'll have a couple of days to relax before the end of the world.  Of course, that also means you have only a few days to read this before your computer stops working, and the looting begins.  Get your last few virtual frags in while you can my droogies, soon the bullets will be real.

Ahem, yeah, right.  I expect the phones to stop working, and for lots of water-mains to burst.  This has nothing to do with the date, but everything to do with everyone turning everything on New Years Day to see if it still works.  Everyone will be so tied up calling their Grandmothers to see if everything is still working that the phone systems won't be able to handle it.  Everyone will turn on the water to see if it's still working, too.  I don't expect a power problem, because everyone can just look at their alarm clocks to see if the power is still on, there won't be the kind of widespread "testing" that the other utilities will be seeing.

If I'm wrong, then I'll just say that I enjoyed our little computerized, mechanized world while it lasted, but I'm glad I know how to make my own chain mail.

12/2/99: 2MCSE/3 (Four down, two to go)

• Passed "Enterprise" with a 661.  This test was adaptive, so I have no idea what 661 means.  It is impossible to get 1000 on the test like the others I took, but the minimum is 560 for this particular exam.  I got the minimum number of questions, though, so I must have done pretty well.  Presumably any question I missed would be replaced by another, increasing the total number of questions.  Nobody seems to know how to figure out a percentage on an adaptive exam.
  
  Oh hell, I passed, who cares.

12/15/99: New opinions

• Added a short article about New Age Musicians that I've been meaning to write for quite a while.

11/11/99: More writings and a change of mind.

• Nope, sorry, the Ad-Square had to die.  It's turning out to be MUUCH more annoying than the banners.
• Added Lonely to the Gallery.

10/28/99: The dreaded "Ad Square"

• Boy, is that little square in the corner annoying or what?  Still it's better than pop-up ads and due to it's size it is less likely to "Clash" with the pages it's defacing.  I guess we'll all have to re-think our title bars now.  For instance, right now that little bastard is sitting on a picture of me, and it won't go away unless you click the "X" (When it finally appears).
  
  The good news is that the Ad-square is compatible with Frames.  Maybe I'll resurrect my frameset, now what did I do with that button-slab I created.  Oh well, maybe I'll do some radical redesign in the near future.

10/2/99: MCSE/2 (Three down, three to go)

• Passed the third MCSE test (Server) with a 799.  Not nearly as good as the other two, but since the questions on the test in no way resembled the materials I had been studying, I suppose I feel pretty good about it.  It would be like if I took a philosophy class, and on the last day I was given a psychology test.  Sure my score may suck compared to the people in the psychology class, but the fact that I passed when I had studied for a completely different test is pretty cool.

9/28/99: MCSE/3 (Two down, four to go)

• Passed the second of my MCSE tests (Workstation) with a 900.
  This means that I'm now an MCP, and I get to display this snazzy logo on my site.  I'll park it later, I'm thinking about some redesign anyway.

8/17/99: Feeling kinda mellow

• Added Power Cycle to the Gallery

7/8/99: More hate-prose

• Added Sucks to be You to the Gallery

6/3/99: Minor changes

• Moved the Colorado poem into the Gallery.
• Moved the Colorado article to the Opinion section.
• Added You Know Who You Are to the Gallery
• Fixed some table design flaws in the navbar.

3/11/99: ShadowBox Fire

• Well, my old theater burned down earlier this week.  Read all about it here I haven't been involved with the company for about 4 years now, but still, I'm kinda bummed.  I helped BUILD the freaking place, and now it's charcoal, along with almost everything in it, including one very cool set-piece I made for "Dawn of Infinite Dreams".  The crystal (Made entirely of Plexiglas shards) is probably a pool of goo they'll NEVER get off the floor now.  CRAP!

• Other news: The family survived the death-flu recently, all are well now (more or less).

2/1/99: Whole site

• Sorry no updates for a while. I started a new job, and I've been a bit busy. With any luck the updates will be resuming shortly.
• Added a spiffy image pre-caching trick to the NavBar to better support my scriptless rollover buttons (Thanks Hank)
• Specified the text color for the table of contents since apparently Netscape is too dim to carry the stylesheet-specified body-text color over into the table itself.

12/23/98: Whole site

• I slightly modified the navbar at the bottom of every page to "Pre-cache" the red versions of the buttons by loading them at 0-size. If anyone knows a better way to make an image invisible, I'd appreciate the hint. This should eliminate the need for modem users to hover over the buttons for a few seconds before the image changes the first time.

  All this goes to prove that dynamic content, hover buttons, and such ARE possible without scripting.

12/14/98: Gallery

• Fixed the Perseverance poster to eliminate the spelling mistake (Oops)

12/8/98: Gallery

• Added "Death wish"

11/17/98: Quake2 configs page

• Added some documentation pages for my configs.
• Enabled the table on the main page to load the individual info pages.

11/13/98: Quake2 configs page

• Updated Quake configs. Added Single-shot sniper mode to the wcAux.cfg file. Check it out.

11/17/98: Quake2 configs page

• Okay, the table at the left works now. Clicking on any of the titles in the "Info" column will take you to the info page for that item.

11/13/98: Quake2 configs page

• Sorry about the table at the left not doing anything yet, I've been working on something else and haven't had the time to update the page as often as I was there for a while.
• Added Single-shot sniper mode. A new way to kill from a distance. I think I'm gonna like using this one. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and decided to finally write it. Binding to szSingle allows you to zoom in, fire your weapon, and as soon as you stop, the display will zoom out automatically, allowing you to get on your way instantly.

11/5/98:

• Re-installed counter on index page.
• Converted color-changing navbar buttons to DHTML, eliminated JavaScripts. This makes the page load faster, but you'll have to hover over the buttons for a second or two before they will change color the first time. I think this is a nice tradeoff to speed the download for modem users. LPB's will get the spiff, HPB's can see it if they really want to.

11/1/98:

• I've begun the conversion to Style Sheets. Every time I change something, I have to spend too much time updating the individual pages, so I decided to make the commitment and add the style sheets. The only thing you will notice so far is the fact that all my links turn red when you move your mouse over them. This is more or less a reminder for ME, so I can tell where I've been. Also, the navbar buttons turn red now, by a completely different process.
• Updated the Q2 configs file. The demo-recording layer is now included.

10/29/98:

• Well, I've decided to ditch the frames. I've found that there is just no peaceful coexistence between frames and Geocities' popup ads. SO... It's back to the Navbar. I've fixed it to be a little more flexible, it won't push Tina the troubled teenager off the side of the screen any more.
• My Quake2 configurations are now available on the Projects page. They also have their own page available here. I suppose I don't really have an appropriate section for them, I'll have to make a Quake2 section. Maybe tomorrow.
• My table of contents has been taking up too much space, so I'm collapsing it into a table, which now leaves room for the headlines section above.

10/28/98: Quake2 configs page

• Added the Demo recording layer, and Stupid grenade trick to my configs. Fixed some missing binds, and moved a few keys. I'll be attacking the main keyboard soon, as soon as I decide what I want to do with it

10/26/98: Quake2 configs page

• Okay, so I decided to release my Quake 2 configs to the world. I personally think they rock, and I have kicked much ass with them. I hope you increase your fragcount as I have.

Last updated 12/04/01 Site contents Copyright © 1999-2001 Mel Grubb II