V's Vociferations

Banked Track Roller Derby at the Cox Center!!!!

2009-10-26T14:27:00.002-05:00

The time is nigh! Come join the Red Dirt Rebellion for our second home bout!!!!! We will host the Route 66 Rollergirls from Amarillo.

WHERE: Cox Convention Center
WHEN: Doors open at 7pm, bout starts at 8pm
HOW MUCH: Seats will be $12 at the door, kids $7, pit passes $17. Pit passes are on the floor, up close and personal with the action!

The bout will end around 9:30ish, come watch us kick ass, then go to your Halloween party! I will be going to the box office Wednesday evening to pick up more tickets, if you want me to pick some up for you, let me know!!!!!

We are in the MAIN ARENA for this one! It is going to be BAD ASS, trust me you don't want to miss it!!!!

<3,
V

Red Dirt Rebellion's Second Home Bout Oct 30th!

2009-10-13T10:24:00.004-05:00

Promo commercial

Global Warming

2009-08-18T09:52:00.002-05:00

I know I know, everyone is bitching about it and everyone has something to say. Since this is my blog I guess I get to share my opinions. I'm in agreement with the late great George Carlin, if the planet Earth didn't want us here, it would shake us off.

I found this interesting article that supports my viewpoint on the whole global warming "thing":

Contrarian Expert Asks: "Does Unstoppable Global Warming Occur Every 1500 Years?"

lessthanthree,
V

Music Rants

2009-08-11T12:29:00.003-05:00

As most of my friends know I'm a huge metal-head. I've been listening to metal for a good ten years now (wow I feel old!) so I've seen bands come and go, been to more concerts than I can remember, and have a pretty impressive t-shirt collection. That being said, I have fallen out of the scene a little bit. I used to care more about the newer bands and finding underground bands. I really am behind the times a little bit in that sense, but I still try and find out and listen to the newer bands that are popping up. Let me step back a moment, keep in mind when I first got into metal, I listened to bands like Slayer, In Flames, Cryptopsy, The Haunted (Marco Aro era), Arch Enemy (Angela had just joined), At the Gates, All That Remains, Dark Tranquility, Dimmu Borgir, Opeth, Vader, Darkest Hour (when they first came out), and many others. All these bands are still around today which is great, but the scene seemed so much different back then, more Swedish, more separation between the genres, not so much crossover. There were black metalers, melodic death metalers (me), hardcore kids, and just plain death metalers. Now bands seem to be crossing all genres, throwing melodies, grunts, grindcore, and double bass into everything. I think it's great, it's really fresh and interesting and maybe not always original. The problem with some of the newer bands is copy cats. There were always copy cats before, but the giants were so above all the copies, everyone knew who started what and who to credit. Anymore alot of the bands sound the same, once one new crossover band comes out, another one pops up, and another, and another.

I am a firm believer in originality and uniqueness. That's what was great about System of a Down, NO ONE sounded like them, there still isn't anyone who sounds like them. They have a totally unique sound. Another problem with newer bands are the lyrics. Granted a lot of metal bands have sh!tty lyrics, but some of these bands it's just ridiculous enough I don't want to listen. It just seems to me that the older bands I used to listen to, the Swedish giants had more interesting lyrics than these newer bands. They are trying I will give them that, but it's just ridiculous in a lot of instances. I mean, look at Opeth, their songs are practically epic poems, compared to say Five Finger Death Punch (whom I'm not a fan of). Even hardcore has lost it's inspiring lyrics. Hatebreed is probably one of the most inspiring bands to listen to (IMO) and some of these newer hardcore bands just don't get. Sure there is no topping Jamie Jasta, but still, I think they could do better. I guess it's that age old complaint, young kids may be able to play, but they don't know how to sing the blues.

lessthanthree,
V

Blogging

2009-07-24T15:29:00.002-05:00

Blog-a-Mania!

2009-07-08T13:20:00.002-05:00

Okay so I'm feeling exceptionally "bloggy" today. C# pisses me off sometimes. There are a lot of great things about it, but in a lot of cases it's just not as flexible as C++. I was trying to serialize a class that contained lists. This works fine in C#, however, the lists have to have public properties to be serialized. I didn't want to make the lists public, I wanted them private. I did a little research and found you can implement ISerializable, which seems straightforward enough, but this still didn't work for my private members (unless I was implementing it incorrectly). I remember in C++ you had to implement a Serializable interface as well, but I don't think it mattered if your members were private or public. I need to do some more research to see if it can actually be done at all in C#. It's not a huge deal for me to make them public, but I don't want to admit defeat! :)

Second thing that was perturbing today, I can't find any Iron Maiden the Trooper Hi-Top Vans in my size. Granted I probably could have looked longer, but I found some low tops in my size for $35 including shipping! That's a great deal so I went ahead and ordered them. I hope the site ACTUALLY has them, because I'll be pissed if they turn around and say they are out of stock (like every other site).

I'm also really excited about our FIRST HOME ROLLER DERBY bout this weekend!!!! Wooooo! I have posts below with the specific details but it's going to be awesome. A great bunch of gals from Arizona are flying in to play us, there's going to be amazing half time entertainment, the only thing that really sucks is moving the track to/from the Cox Center. But for those great events there is usually a struggle so I'm happy to help. I'm really happy to just be a part of all of it. It's going to be great, come out Saturday and be a part of history!

lessthanthree,
V

This Saturday!!!!!

2009-07-06T12:02:00.001-05:00

Red Dirt Rebellion is putting on their very first roller derby bout! Come watch banked track derby in action! Only $10 in advance at the Cox Convention Center downtown OKC. Doors open at 6pm, bout starts at 7pm. Yes there will be beer, and halftime entertainment!!! Listen people, we've worked our @$$es off for this, so don't bail out now!!!!

If you need tickets contact me!

<3
V

Red Dirt Rebellion's First Bout!

2009-06-12T12:27:00.002-05:00

That's right! After so long, lots of practices, the roller derby league I play for is having their first bout at the Cox Center! A banked track team, the Arizona Derby Dames is flying in to play us! The bout is July 11, which is a Saturday, doors open at 6pm, the bout starts at 7pm. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and $8 with a military ID (kids free). Come watch us skate, it will be tons of fun!!!!

<3
V

Abortion Kills

2009-06-08T09:52:00.002-05:00

Let me preface this by saying I'm not by any means a religious person. However, no matter what you do or do not believe killing an innocent person is wrong. I'm assuming the majority of people agree with me on that note, regardless of what you believe. However there are some people that because of their beliefs would disagree.

Recently, an abortion doctor was shot and killed simply because he was an abortion doctor. Usually, people are against abortion because it is the killing of a fetus, and for some they believe the fetus has a soul. So this "suspect" believed he was doing the right thing by killing the doctor who performed abortions. I am assuming he did not think the doctor was innocent since he was responsible for performing the abortions.

Normally, when someone is accused of murder in this country, they are kept in jail, given a fair trial, appointed or hire a lawyer. However this man felt like it was his responsibility to take "justice" into his hands. Well, regardless of what beliefs you have, you by law cannot do that. However, what I still don't understand is, the accused is no better than the doctor himself, I mean, from the accused perspective. He kills the doctor for killing unborn babies. That just doesn't make sense to me, I can understand that he doesn't see him as innocent, but killing him isn't going to fix the situation in any way. Abortion is legal in this country, and there are thousands of other doctors out there performing them every day. There are a lot of laws we have that we may not agree with, I know I don't necessarily agree with all of them myself, but I don't go around killing people because of them. That is what makes this country so great is the diversity of beliefs and cultures.

Just to give some insight into my opinion, I think abortion should remain legal. One of the articles stated that the doctor had previously been attacked numerous times by activists and continued on in his career. I think that is very admirable. Women should have the right to choose, as it is their body. I definitely believe in many cases, the baby should be delivered and given up for adoption, since there is so many couples out there that can't have children and adopt every day. However there are many circumstances where I would agree abortion is the best choice, like for example if a woman was raped. I cannot even imagine the mental and physical anguish she must feel from that traumatic experience.

When I hear about these kinds of activists, it is extremely upsetting, because they are forcing their beliefs on you, even from afar. This story was obviously nation wide (global because of the internet) and therefore you are forced to hear about his actions and his opinion in the media. People need to have a more open mind and to be tolerant of others beliefs. That is the main problem with human kind right now, there is not enough tolerance. We can not live in peace if we do not have tolerance.

That's enough ranting for now.

Less than three,
V

Twelve Years in the Making

2009-06-02T15:46:00.002-05:00

Tragic Kingdom was the first album I ever bought. I was thirteen and primed for a hot female rock n roll chick to look up to. One day, on MTV, there she was, singing I'm Just a Girl. "YESSS!!!" I thought to myself, and listened to that album non stop for years. I remember writing notes to Emine and signing them as Gwen. We were soooo bummed when we didn't get to go see No Doubt and Bush together, man that would have been the concert of the century! However more than a decade later, I have finally seen No Doubt and believe me they did not disappoint.

They played pretty much the entire Boom Box album (greatest hits) with the exception of a few songs. There was a large screen behind the band that showed different videos during the songs. They were very bright and colorful (a nice contrast to all the metal shows I've been to ;). During one song (I can't remember which one now, one of the slower ones) they featured a video of clips of the band from back in the day when they started. It was really neat and gave you a sense of "look how far they have come." The stage setup was pretty cool, it was all white, with a large semicircle sloped platform of which the drums sat in the middle. The entire band came out initially in all white suit type outfits, which really worked nicely with the lighting. Of course there were costume changes and by the end of the night Gwen had on a sparkly silver and black top and Adrian had on a Dallas Stars jersey, pink tutu, and tube socks... HA!

The Sounds and Paramore both opened. I hadn't heard The Sounds before but I knew they were Swedish, so they already had my attention (I have a thing for Scandinavian bands). They were pretty good, really reminded me of Blondie and Abba. Paramore was next and I'm already a huge Paramore fan so I was really looking forward to seeing them again. They played a great show and everyone was really into them. It was interesting to see so many different age groups represented. There were the young 14 year old girls all the way to 30 year old woman. That of course makes me feel old, since I'm on the older end of that scale, but whatever.

I haven't uploaded pictures yet, I should do that tonight and they will be on facebook. All in all it was an AWESOME concert and if you get a chance to catch it, please do. I will definitely try and get floor tickets the next time they come around.

Less than three,
V

New Beginnings

2009-05-27T14:06:00.003-05:00

Congratulations people! Congratulations to all those new graduates, freshly born to the real world, or maybe just the partial real world. I think college is only partial real world, really it's the best of both. You still have the freedom to do what you want, but confined enough it's not so scary. It doesn't seem that long ago that I graduated, but sitting at my sister's high school graduation the other night sort of brought me back to another time and place. It seems even in the real world people confine themselves though, I mean depending on what career they go into. You confine yourself in such a way that you're not free to just leave or move when you want. I suppose you could, but there would be large consequences for doing so. I don't know, I just think it's interesting to think about.

On another note, my work is offering a Weight Watchers program so I was talked into doing it. It actually works out because my stomach does best when I'm on Weight Watchers and I had been thinking about doing it again. I haven't really lost any weight yet, I don't expect to lose a lot really, it just helps out my stomach and helps me to get in shape a little better. Really it makes me feel better all around, I feel like I can skate better, drink more, have more energy, it's all around good. I recommend it.

One of the first bands I got into back in the day (seventh grade, sixth grade maybe?) is No Doubt. I was very sad when Gwen left for her little solo business. I do love Gwen, but I was not such a fan of her solo material, so you can imagine when I found out they were touring together again I bought tickets! I still have never seen No Doubt, so I'm very excited to be seeing them in Dallas this weekend. A band called Paramore is opening for them, whom I'm also thrilled to see, I'm a big fan. It will be fun and I'll get to hang out with my sister and Jenn, two people who definitely fall in my "favorite people" group.

Okay, I better get back to work... code awaits!

Less than three,
V

New Babies

2009-05-20T14:13:00.002-05:00

Hola mis amigos! I recently returned from Phoenix. One of my best friends lives out there and recently had a new baby boy!!! He is so adorable but cries a lot :( I feel very sorry for my friend because he is so colicky. Really it makes me have more respect for my mom since I hear all too often I was a colicky baby as well. Visiting her always forces me to put my life into perspective, because she's hit all these lifetime milestones before me. She got married a couple years ago, now has a baby, is a homeowner, she has just created a fantastic life for her and her family but she's only three months older than me. Trust me, I'm in no hurry to have a baby or anything, but it is crazy to think about her and I growing up as kids, having fun, learning about the world, and now all of a sudden she has a kid, whom will grow up and learn about the world in his own way. Not only that, but the world was a lot different in 1995 than it is now. Man, where does the time go?

I also found out I'm officially on the roster for Austin, which means I will officially be participating in the Battle of the Banked Track 2 in Austin, TX June 20-21!!!! I would love for anyone who can to come down that weekend and party in Austin with me!!! I'm really glad the summer is almost here, I think it's my favorite season, even if it does get unbearably hot.

Less Than 3,
V

(Oh that rhymes!!!!)

Get your car washed by hott roller girls!

2009-05-06T14:30:00.001-05:00

If you guys are in the Oklahoma City area come out Saturday and get your car washed to support Red Dirt Rebellion!!!!!!

Creating an ODBC Connection

2009-04-28T14:50:00.002-05:00

Okay, so after searching way to long for the exact steps on how to do this I came across this plain but extremely helpful page:

Creating a New ODBC DSN

Maybe because I didn't realize I needed to search for "ODBC DSN" specifically but I did not see any Microsoft pages that answered my question. I can easily enough step through the dialogs, but I could not for the life of me remember where that stupid connection manager dialog was.

Also I just want to add that my boyfriend rocks because he can make bomb ass curry from scratch :)

That's all for today!
V

I <3 Banked Track!

2009-04-24T14:19:00.002-05:00

What is going on? It's hard to believe that most of April is gone! We had an amazing time in Japan. Pictures are available via facebook. I don't want to post the link here, since this is pretty public, but if you're interested in viewing them, send me an email or message. We visited Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and Miyajima. We also rode on the bullet train! It was so exhausting but so worth it. The food was amazing, the culture is different, but easy to adapt to. There are a lot of things about Japanese culture that I wish Americans would pick up. It seems like the Japanese are always aware of others, very helpful, thankful, and giving even to complete strangers. We never had once person say a rude thing to us, or act in an offensive manner. I also NEVER heard their cell phones, ever, the entire time I was there. I supposed they keep them on silent as a courtesy to others, wouldn't that be nice? I always keep my phone on vibrate at work, however outside of work it's always on audible. It seems like anytime they are in public they keep their phone on silent. The whole trip was a blast and I highly recommend it. Next time we want to fly into/out of Tokyo and visit the northern part of the island and also visit an onsen.

While I was away, my roller derby league held a bout a couple hours from our hometown. I was sad to miss it, but everything went well, and we were a huge hit. As a surprise, our board of directors and helpers set up the track for us!!!!! Last night at practice, (their first practice since the bout, and my first practice back from vacation) we all walked in to a beautiful banked track all set up and ready to skate!!!! It was so exciting and such a thrill to actually skate it. So if you're a girl, live in the OKC area and want to try out roller derby, come and skate with us, Red Dirt Rebellion!!!!!

That's all for now!
V

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!

2009-03-17T11:04:00.003-05:00

Exactly one year ago I was watching the parade in the main road in downtown Dublin Ireland. Oh how I miss Ireland, however this year holds new adventures. We're leaving for Japan in less than a month and I'm psyched! I can't really speak any Japanese but thank goodness two of my travel-mates can :)

The new duplex is GREAT! We're really enjoying it, it's so spacious and nice but it does seem a little silly to just be paying rent every month when we could be buying a house. The only complaint I have is the yard is full of sand burs (stickers) and people tend to track them into the house. We purchased some weed killer and seed to try and get rid of them, but from what I understand it's a long process. Ah the joys of having a yard!

I'm excited next week I'm going down to Dallas to visit one of my best friends. We're going to a Dallas Stars game (hockey) on Saturday night and Sunday we're driving to Austin for a TXRD bout! She's also getting me some Sprinkles cupcakes for my birthday. I <3 Sprinkles cupcakes.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Find a shamrock and drink green beer!

V

Extended MAPI Implementation

2009-03-09T14:51:00.005-05:00

Howdy! Welcome to yet another programming post. I have spent an entire week figuring out the extended MAPI API and implementing my own class to send emails with attachments. This is pretty old school, since these days you can simply use the SMTP built in functions in C#, but as always, I don't have that luxury. I'm working in Visual Studio 6 MFC.

I found several different implementations and learned alot from each one, but there was one I benefited more from than the others. This wrapper is called TI_MAPI. I was able to look at the source code and figure out what the heck is going on and how to get what I needed to send a message.

First off, you must call MAPILogonEx which will give you a valid session pointer (assuming the call succeeds). You can then use this session pointer to access other objects and interfaces as needed for sending an email message. For example, I used the session pointer to retrieve my Outbox folder from which I created a new message, recipient, attachment, ect. It is really a whole chain of objects you must create/retrieve to get to the next one. I will not detail my wrapper class but give you helpful links so if you run into the same task I did, you will have many sources at your disposal. Oh, one thing to keep in mind when Googling this, there is also a "mobile" version of MAPI. Be sure to check the top of the MSDN page before reading, as the mobile version is different than the "outlook" version.

Lastly, pay very close attention to which flags are getting set. There are properties for each message, recipient, and attachment as you will see in the source code linked below. The flags are very important and those used in the source code may not be exactly what you need for your project. Each function (in MSDN, see links below) will list available flags and you can search on these to get more information.

TI_MAPI
If you're sending an attachment, and the recipient keeps getting a "winmail.dat" file instead, try this approach: SGriffin's Forcing Plain Text
MAPILogonEx
IAddrBook
IMAPISession
IMessage
This is a list of numeric error and success codes that may be returned from extended MAPI. They are different from simple MAPI.

That should be enough to get you started. I would have loved to have this list and source code from the beginning! Happy coding!

V

Moving Day

2009-02-27T14:44:00.002-06:00

For the past year and 9 months or so I lived in Westwood Park Apartments in Norman, on Robinson between Berry and 24th. If you live in Norman, I'm sure you know exactly where I'm talking about. They are nice apartments, fairly clean, laundry facility, swimming pool, and gym. Even though this is a college town, these apartments are pretty quiet, not a lot of parties or anything (except mine hehehe).

I did however have several "flooding" issues with them. First off, only a few months after I moved in a very heavy torrential thunderstorm hit one night (as they often do). Many places throughout Norman flooded as did my new bedroom. I woke up that morning, stepped out of bed to a sopping floor, of which my toes went "squish" in the carpet. I currently have my aunt's bedroom set, very nice, solid wood, and with some help was able to lift up the dresser and nightstand on 2x4's so nothing would get damaged. I slept in the living room for over a week while they drained and cleaned the carpet. They did take care of the issue quickly, but their solution to the flooding was to dig a giant trench from my apartment to the drain, quite unsightly but it worked nevertheless. There had to be mold in the walls or under the carpet because I was sick for like a month after this.

The second flooding offense is leaky windows and door. Every time it would rain heavily (as it often does here) my window would leak into my bedroom (right by my bed) and "drip", "drip", "drip" onto the windowsill, waking me up in the middle of the night. I always had to get a towel to put there to collect the water and dampen the sound. I would soon realize after placing my towel on the window that the door was also dripping and making a noise. It would drip just outside the door on the metal piece that runs along the bottom of the door frame. Quite annoying, yet they did come caulk the window and the door frame (twice).

Lastly, I am one of those "lucky" tenants with a washer and dryer in my apartment. I found out that my washer would leak all the water out when draining from the wash or rinse cycle. This would soak the laundry closet which backs up to the wall my computer was on. I realized this one night when hooking up an external hard drive, went to plug the thing in and the carpet was wet... under the power strip. If that's not a hazard I'd like to know what is. They did eventually fix this, but I found out there had to be mold on the carpet since it leaked every time I did a load, and the closet always smelled musty.

The worst offense though happened while I was moving out. I was tired, I had been packing all week, I had about 7 people helping me move everything out so we could get it done in one day. I was moving some blankets from a corner in the bedroom when what to my surprise, they're covered in mold. GROSS! Apparently the upstairs bathroom had been leaking down my wall (for quite some time) and I didn't realize it. I had a pile of blankets and garbage bags filled with blankets in the corner. There was also a huge spot of mold on the carpet and on the wall. I was actually sick the next day, not surprisingly.

I painted my apartment when I moved in, which meant I was supposed to paint it back upon moving out. I went to talk to management about the mold, and other problems I had experienced. They weren't willing to negotiate with me on the painting, or reimburse me for the blankets I lost. I decided I wouldn't paint it back or clean for that matter, since my deposit would be lost.

Overall it wouldn't have been a bad place to live in, had all the flooding and mold issues not occurred. I would not recommend it though. The new place is great though, well so far anyway. It's a 3 bedroom duplex with a 2 car garage and 2 bathrooms! It is just south of highway 9 by I-35.

I just wanted to warn anyone who is looking at Westwood Park Apartments, and share my experience.
V

Inspirational Tampons

2009-02-08T14:23:00.002-06:00

I'm going to the bathroom the other day and I look down at my tampon (still in the wrapper) and it says "Go for it!" Every month it seems like they change the damn tampon packaging and I can never find the ones I like best. This month I had tried some new "sport" tampons, which means they're basically the same but with different wrappers.... inspiration wrappers apparently. During the following days, I began to pay closer attention to the phrases, one of my other favorites being "You can do it!"

I just don't understand why someone in their marketing department thought, "Hey, let's put motivational phrases on their tampons! That way, when the girl is tired and takes a bathroom break, we can encourage her to keep going!" I mean seriously, who would think of that? If this is going to become the new fad I want to see comedy tampons, with lewd jokes on the wrappers, or maybe devotional tampons with bible verses on them.

Threads in .Net

2009-01-30T13:04:00.004-06:00

Working with Windows Services can be quite tricky. You can't debug them like a normal application or a .Net site, you have to attach a process to them once running. Also, one important thing to remember is if you have multiple timers firing at different times, if they and their callbacks are not on different threads, weird things can happen. I ran into this issue recently. There are two different Timer classes in .Net (that I'm aware of, there might be more). There is System.Timers.Timer and System.Threading.Timer. To ensure the events will be processed in different threads you must use System.Threading.Timer. It is very similar to System.Timers.Timer, but when you initialize the Threading Timer, you pass it the callback function, the object (to be passed to the callback function) or null, the start time, and the interval. You do not have to enable/disable the threading Timer like you do the Timers Timer. Once you initialize it and set it's callback function with interval, you're all set!

This may all seem pretty trival and it is, but for someone who is new to window's services and timers it is a very important distinction!

V

I'm on the News!!!

2009-01-26T17:51:00.002-06:00

Exciting news! The other night at roller derby practice, a dude from News 9 came out and shot some footage of us skating and interviewed our coach! I'm in there for a split second, I'm wearing a pink shirt with our logo, grey shorts, white skates with pink wheels and my hair is in a pony tail, see if you can spot me out!!!

Roller Derby on News 9!

Split Post

2009-01-19T11:31:00.003-06:00

Okay this is going to be a multi topic post, just FYI.

VISUAL STUDIO SUCKS SO BAD SOMETIMES!
I use Visual Studio for developing. I use versions 6, 2003, and 2005. Each version has its own quarks, like 6 crashes and usually takes down your machine with it if you try and step through break points to fast. VS 2003 is just generally slow to load, build, run, anything. There were a lot of issues fixed in VS 2005 but in doing so new problems were introduced. For example, when working in .Net, all your compiled webpage dlls and pages are saved to a .Net Temporary Files directory, which is all well and good, except it never deletes old files. That means, each time you compile new files are generated and the IDE runs slower and slower. The only solution I've found is to a) work in a "Pre-compile" mode, which is not optimal for development or debugging, or b) to in every once in a while and delete those temporary files. Of course to delete them, you must shut down Visual Studio, make sure to end all processes related to your project and usually end the asp_net process as well. Another issue I'm running into with Visual Studio is the "designer." I'm working on a windows application in .Net C#. You can design forms and controls in a "designer" mode, a WYSIWYG type editor. If you use any third party software, or some special formatting for your controls forget the whole visual part. It will fail to render, and prompt you to re-build your project (which now takes 5 minutes because you've re-built it so many times and the files in the temp folder keep increasing.) It usually doesn't matter though, because it still won't show up. There is a .Designer.cs file, but if you try to edit that manually it simply won't take the changes over to the actual control itself and won't compile. EXTREMELY frustrating.

NON-PROGRAMMING PORTION OF THIS POST:
Okay, so now that's out of my system for now! I'm excited because lots of new things are approaching on my horizon. I will be moving soon, which is good, my apartment keeps leaking from all different places. My bedroom has flooded, my windows and door have leaked more than once, now my washing machine is backing up (and I mean there is a LOT of water) in the closet. It will be nice to live in a bigger place with nice appliances and all and no leakage! Also, I'm going to Japan in April... WOOOOO! I'm very excited about that, I have never been so far from home. One of my best friends is having a baby in April. I may be in Japan when she has it, but she lives in Arizona, and I'm in Oklahoma, so I wouldn't be there anyway. I plan on flying out to see her in May or June.

I'm ready for it to get warm again. Not necessarily HOT like summer, just warm, like springtime. I've enjoyed the last couple days being close to 60. It's great jogging weather, if you can run with the wind at your back. Hope you all are enjoying the nice weather as well!

V

2009

2009-01-07T12:23:00.000-06:00

So far this year is shaping up to be very interesting. I've actually been pretty down for reasons I'd rather not put on public display (at this time anyway). Those of you who know me know why, and I've already talked to you about it, so again there's no need to tear my heart open on the internet.

Instead I think I'll try to blog about things that make me happy. I'm getting really psyched about roller derby. We recently got our very own building!!!! Our track isn't set up or anything yet, as we have just signed the papers, but it's still very exciting! I have never actually skated on a banked track before, which is what are league normally skates, so it should be interesting. I've heard lots of stories from the girls about past practices and bouts and I'm really looking forward to it.

Tomorrow is the Big 12 National Championship. I'm not really a big football fan, but it is the Sooners, which I am an alum myself, and my friends are having a watch party, it should be fun.

This weekend Foreigner will be in town, and I was talking about going with my mom for her birthday, but in light of recent events, this may or may not happen. Either way her birthday is soon and I'm going to do my damnedest it make it great for her! [Side note, I didn't know that's how you spell "damnedest" thank goodness for auto spell check] My mom is the awesomest mom ever and she deserves the best birthday I can possible give her. I won't put what all I'm going to get her, in fear that she suddenly becomes super tech savvy and figures out how to read my blog (chances of that happening 1/10000000).

While I'm on the birthday subject, my friend Jenn had a birthday Dec 30, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENN! Also, my friend Jessica is having a birthday tomorrow, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS! I don't like to write too much about actual people, because this is a public venue and I don't know if they would appreciate that or not, however, I don't think they would mind me wishing them a happy birthday!

Alright, lots of work to do so I better get back to it. Happy New Years guys and gals!

V

Merry Zmas and Party till it's 2009!

2008-12-29T11:04:00.000-06:00

Yes Zmas!!!! I think I've had some function, party, event, and/or Zmas related activity to do every day of December. It's been pretty rough, but it sure has gone by fast. Pretty soon it will be 2009. I remember when I was kid, thinking, someday it will be the year 2000, but it seemed so far in the future. I feel like now, it's not even that cool anymore... just blah one more year. I suppose a better way to look at it would be, what does the next year hold in store?

I'm hoping to pay off a good chunk of debt, travel to Japan, camp at Yellowstone, go to Colorado for Christmas, save some money, stay in shape, learn more about Roller Derby. That sounds like a pretty good year. I may not accomplish all of those but hopefully the majority of them. As I get older I get more and more nostalgic for the past. I miss being a kid, when time went by much slower, you could remember individual days, rather than having weeks fly by. It is a little daunting to think as I get older time will only go by faster, so it is that much more important to do what you want to do, and not waste it.

Wow, so I didn't mean for this to turn into some sort of "count your blessings" or "new year's resolution" type of post. Ah well, drink some champagne and party like it's 2009!!!!

Vanessa's Adventures in Programming: Part Deux

2008-12-10T15:13:00.000-06:00

Don't forget your memsets people!!!!! For the love of god, if you malloc a chunk of memory, please memset it. If you're performing strcpy, strncmp, etc. on it, you can (and probably will) get crazy multithread lock and or access violation errors. In old school C (in my case very old C++ that thinks it's C) malloc, memset, then you can use the memory.

Of course, I guess you could always use calloc() but I never do. I don't know why. Just wanted to share because I just wasted a good portion of my time tracing down some crazy access violation error, only to realize it was caused by a strncmp call on my memory I didn't memset.

In conclusion, always memset after mallocing.

V