I don't have much time to write, but I wanted to check back in, so I didn't miss out on blogging this weekend. I just got back from the Chiefs game. Same old stuff, different day. I don't know if I mentioned before in my blog that I recently have stopped drinking socially for the most part (again, but this time for good). Alcohol has kind of lost it's flair for me. Anyway, I just got done with a weekend of baby sitting a bunch of drunk friends and I am sure glad it is over. That can be so wearing. I am just exhausted. On a positive note, my guitar playing is rapidly improving. It turns out it must just be like riding a bike, because I am re-learning everything and really enjoying it all over again. I've spent the last 10 years or so kind of away from the instrument. Sure, I'd take it out every now and then and strum a song, but actually trying to play the instrument with any degree of skill I've avoided for a while now. I guess music just tired on me, but I've found it really still is one of my true passions. I don't think I've mentioned that I have a rental property in Lee's Summit. My renters moved out October 31, so I've been working a lot on that house. I may have found a potential renter. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm going to try and give a technical blog this week. I'll see what my schedule allows. Everyone, have a happy rest of the weekend!
Jake
Last weekend I purchased a new guitar amp for my bedroom. I had certain criteria in mind when heading out for the purchase. First, I wanted something small and portable. I have tons of music equipment, but I needed something that was easy to fit in the bedroom and didn't take up much space, but had a good sound and packed a punch. The second thing I was looking for was hopefully a digital recorder built in. Often, I will be playing my guitar and come up with something cool and rely on my memory to try and piece it all back together later. That worked ok when I was 16, but at 31, not to say my memory is shot, but I think I have a little more running through my mind on an average day. Anyway, it's a lot harder to remember good riffs than it used to be. I went out with a budget of $300, but admittedly when I left the house, I talked myself into spending up to $500. I was introduced to the Line 6 - Spider Jam and fell in love immediately. The amp is so cool. It took me about 5 minutes of playing with it to realize I was buying it. First off, the sound is excellent. It has great control over sound, and also has tons of built in preset sounds, so if I want my guitar to sound like Metallica's Master of Puppets, there is a setting. If I want it to sound like 311's Down, there is a setting as well. It has ton's of band sounds, as well as different sounds for different moods that were put together by their studio musicians. Another cool feature is that it has built in drums and songs that were added by real musicians and not generated through some MIDI device. It records up to 34 minutes (I think) and has effects loops for vocals, accoustic guitar, bass, and drums all through a mic input, which you can record through the digital recorder as well as your guitar. You can layer your recordings, loop, punch in, so if you have a cool riff that you come up with and then want to solo over it, it is very simple to do. It's got outputs to push your recordings out to the computer or to some other recorder. It has an input for a foot pedal as well. I plan on buying that after Christmas. We'll see if I can hold out that long. All in all, I think it has every feature I could want in a small bedroom amp. It cost me $449. I would recommend this amp to any guitar player looking to add to their collection.
Happy strumming!
Jake
Wow! It's been a long time since I last posted. Time sure flies by. Funny enough, even though I haven't posted since March, not a ton of things have changed. Sure, summer came and went and football season has started and now is half over. College basketball is starting up. Me and my dogs still live in the country. I'm still single and looking. I am playing my guitar a lot more often now and still follow sports religiously. I took a trip a couple weeks ago for the second vacation I have really taken in my adult life. This one was about 9 days, so it was sure nice to get away for a while. I went on a trip to Orlando and played in the Golf Channel Amateur Tour Team and National Championships. I didn't do very well at all. In fact, I competed in the Jones flight and finished dead last. I had a blast and look forward to doing it again next year. I think now that it is not brand new to me I'll do better next year. I went down with the mindset if I shot 85 every day I could win it. I turned out shooting 104, 94, 104, 95. So, I think my nerves got to me a bit. Oh well, chalk it up to a learning experience. From a technology perspective, since this is a tech blog, I have been working a lot with .Net 3.5, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 at work lately. More with the .Net stuff then the other two. Mostly, as a DB I'm still using SQL Server 2005. And yes, I still have systems on 2000. How many of you out there use LINQ? I don't care what flavor of LINQ, but I am curious. I have started with it and I think it's awesome. However, I have noticed that there really isn't a ton of info out on the web about it and it seems like most everyone who posts out there is posting very basic concepts. Does anyone have an opinion on LINQ to SQL and it's future? I have heard rumors that it will become a dead language in .Net 4.0. I sure hope that isn't the case, because I like it and see it has a place. I hear the real push is for the ADO.Net Entity Framework. I've played with both recently and from a development standpoint, at least at the basic concept level, I don't see much of a difference. Sure, you call different methods to insert, update or delete, but that's it. You can still use the LINQ language to interact with the enumerations and objects. Tell me your thoughts! I'm off to work!
Take care!
Jake
I'm back. Today, I am not feeling great, so this post will be short. I just wanted to drop in and write again. It's been since January and I need to get back in the swing of things. So much has happened since my last post. Lately, I've been working on getting my office in order. I have been unpacking sports memorabilia and putting books on the shelves. I have some old books. I ended up throwing away my Windows 98 manuals and also found some old GW Basic manuals that I pitched. I have a bunch of books on C and C++. Do you all remember Jini? I have a book on that too. That never took off, but some other technologies have been built that accomplish the same kinds of ideas, so I guess it wasn't a complete bust. Oh, and I have about a million Golf Digests!!! Ok, enough rambling. Look for some tech articles from me coming soon. I feel like writing and teaching and all that good stuff! Talk to you later!
Jake
Long time, no post. Sorry about that... I've been really busy at work. Still working on the tickletrader.com site. Feel free to link to me on your sites or blogs! I can use all the help I can get.
REQUIRED - Promotional plug to my site:
Internet Jokes on TickleTrader.com
Ok, now on to business. I have been working on my online presence lately, and this blog was part of it. I also started building my myspace page that had been sitting rotting away for quite some time. I signed up for an account in 2005 and never did anything with it. Anyway, my space is getting better and I wanted to share. Feel free to check it out:
Jake's MySpace Page
I have a few really cool things on there, a flash background, a cool music player, of course my TickleTrader.com Random Joke Generator (A MUST FOR ANY MYSPACE OR BLOG OUT THERE), and I found recently Spring Widgets tool which you can display your blog from a different site on myspace or a few other places out there. Check it out on my profile and see if you like! I think it's neat!
Later!
PS - DON'T FORGET TO LINK TO MY JOKE SITE :)
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MySpace
Hey, I am playing around with my TickleTrader.com site and making some progress... I now have the ability to rate the entries and bookmark or copy to your blog or site. An example link would be:
Money Jokes on TickleTrader.com
or
Dinosaur Jokes on TickleTrader.com
or
Snowman Jokes on TickleTrader.com
Coming soon you will be able to put up content and comment on everything. As well as email, and other features. I am also going to have some random content widgets that you can put up on a social networking site, homepage or blog. It is a neat project. Sorry for all the ads. I am trying to pay the bills, but getting people to come is hard. I will probably shoot more links in some blog posts. Feel free to help out and link to the site as well.
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According to mlbtraderumors.com and Sports Radio 810 WHB, the Kansas City Royals have traded pitcher Billy Buckner for Alberto Callaspo from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Yuck!
The Tigers had a great season but tonight wasn't their night. MU loses the Big 12 Championship game to the Oklahoma Sooners 38-17. It was a tough one to watch. OU dominated the second half and Missouri never really had a chance. This loss drops MU from the #1 ranking and will kill any chance Chase Daniel had at winning the Heisman Trophy.
I feel like I've said this before, but I guess there is always next year!
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When you gotta go, you gotta go. Last night in the Kansas State vs Oregon game, Bill Walker was seen peeing in a towel or two right on the court in between plays. Here is a clip. It isn't the greatest, but I haven't found anything better. From what I hear, the towels just sat there by the bench and no one would touch them. I feel sorry for whoever had to clean that mess up. Couldn't he just find a bottle or something?
If you find any better clips let me know!
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Jake's Blog is proud to annouce our exclusive interview with the jolly old elf himself. We recently took a trip to the North Pole to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at Santa's Workshop.
JB: Hi Santa! Or should I call you St. Nick?
SC: Santa will work for me. How are you doing son?
JB: A little cold. How do you hack it up here? I think it's time you start thinking about some beachfront property. I hear there are some great deals on timeshares these days.
SC: Ho, ho... oh, you are funny. We like it up here. We don't get much in the way of distractions, so we can work year round to make little boys and girls happy everywhere.
JB: You work year round? Don't you give vacations to your little elf buddies?
SC: Living here, serving the greater good... who needs a vacation?
JB: Ok Santa, everyone wants to know: Have I been a good boy this year?
SC: Umm. Sure.
JB: So what am I getting?
SC: You'll be pleasantly surprised.
JB: I see that conversation is going nowhere, eh?
SC: You've got it.
JB: Ok, just a few questions and I'll let you get back to business. Is Rudolph really a reindeer? If so, does he really have a red nose? And if so, can he really fly?
SC: You are quite curious. What do you think?
JB: I think you aren't going to tell me.
SC: Ho, ha, ha.
JB: Tell us, how do you make all the toys for all the girls and all the boys.
SC: My elves actually don't make a lot of toys anymore. We've found eBay is much easier.
JB: eBay Santa?
SC: Yes! In fact, I am setting up my own eBay store. My elves have got quite good at surfing the net. They've taught old St. Nick a few things here and there. I'm well on my way to being a Power Seller. I sometimes advertise on Craigslist too. I have had to find a way to unload a lot of these old toys up here. Hand-made just doesn't get the same reaction as it used to.
JB: I take it you are doing well for yourself then?
SC: In the immortal words of Dave Chappelle mocking Rick James
(cut off by me)
JB: Whoah! Santa! This is a family blog.
SC: Sorry.. ok, I'm rich, without the rest of the line.
JB: So the North Pole has gone tech savvy?
SC: Most definitely.
JB: Any chance we might see a Santa blog or some YouTube videos in the near future?
SC: Yes. We are working on a few things. You might even see Santa in a mankini from my trip to the Carribbean. Mrs. Claus was quite the hottie when we dressed in matching red and whites.
JB: Ok, bad picture in my head there... next topic... do you Text too?
SC: Yep... LOL. If you notice, the NoPo, that is text for North Pole, is quite large and there are quite a few of us around here. It's easier to keep up with texting with our new Blackberry's too... oh you haven't seen these yet... look around the Christmas tree at your cousins house for a sneak peek.
JB: Why not my house?
SC: You weren't THAT good this year.
JB: Last questions Santa. How do you do it? How do you go to every house on the planet in one night? How do you get down the chimneys? What if the house doesn't have a chimney? What if it's an apartment? Do you go up the fire escape? The world wants to know!
SC: Magic of course. How else would it get done? Can you actually picture me trying to climb down a chimney or around on fire escapes? I'd get myself killed.
JB: Ok, I can see your point, but how do you expect us to believe there is really magic?
SC: You are the one interviewing Santa Claus. I'd say anything is possible!
JB: Fair enough. Santa, it's time I get back to my life in the midwest. Can you give us a ho, ho, ho?
SC: Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!!!!
JB: Thanks Santa! I'll leave out the cookies and milk... you're looking a bit heavy, so fat free and skim will have to work! I hope you are bringing me a white Christmas this year! Umm, any chance I can borrow the sleigh for a bit? It's a long way back home!
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