These are the thoughts of Matt, unless otherwise indicated.
Alright, listen up…
If you’ve been to by blog since December 1st, you’ll have noticed it was a boring blue blob, pretty-looking but that is about it. It seems around that time, Michael Heilemann decided to remove the Vader theme from K2 since it was “old and rarely updated anyway”. Well it may have been that, but I know there are probably several blogs that were using that theme including this one. I do hope that it is officially added back in soon… otherwise I’ll just start repackaging it!
I finally pushed out version 1.0.0 of mattfast1.com, with the final conversion of some pages from HTML to PHP. The site itself will not reflect the changes made until the automatic updates occur, sometime around 1:02am PDT (-0700). If you have any problems with the site after this automatic update, you are encouraged to let me know.
If you want to read the release notes, here’s the [ link ].
Wow, it’s certainly been a crazy ride, right? Especially considering the last time I actually penned anything here was nearly 5 months ago. I’d be surprised if I had any readers anymore, other than spambots and stalkers… but I digress.
I have goals. Short-term, long-term, and in between – I have them all. One of the things I’ve realized, though, is that many of my goals are currently undefined. One of the reasons I haven’t even touched this site in months is because of a lack of stated goals concerning the site, which has lead to a lack of motivation. What this means for you is that you definitely have less motivation to read my writing, and in the world of Web 2.0, that’s commiting suicide.
So here’s the bottom line: I am stating a goal to write a blog post every week from here on out. Any more than that will be a bonus. I think the current state of the world brings me no shortage of things to write about. I also intend to finish the “quick” project I started over two years ago to bring my websites into the 21st century, by recoding into PHP and potentially linking content in from all of my online sources. Long-term, I will probably look into redesigning my website. The modular design of my PHP-driven code should help in that.
My writings will also probably become more personal, about things that affect me on a day to day basis. This means that occasionally, this blog might host stories about virtual chickens, the Geek Squad, and computing technologies in general. This blog will hopefully become more well-written. I reserve the right to kill off old, poorly-written entries, although things like the outing of Bill Smith Auto Parts (who it occurs to me now that I sent the CEO an email about the quality and quantity of posts by one if its employees here, and nothing appears to have come of it) will stay until the end of time so people can read about these types of business failures.
As seen recently on the Blog of helios, there have apparently been some issues with some techs believing they are being pushed out of their jobs by open source software.
Of course when I see this post referred to on Twitter and various other social networking sites, original posters are referring to “Geek Squad-style techs assaults open source advocate”. Which leads directly to posts claiming “The Geek Squad brutalizes open source advocate”. It goes further, but you get the drift.
My issue with this type of thing is that the original post, made on the Blog of helios, makes no allusion to The Geek Squad – or to any other company, for that matter. In addition, I can tell you that The Geek Squad does not automatically schedule recalls, as indicated in the article. The affair is against the entire character of The Geek Squad, and I would expect anyone who has made it up through the ranks as any Geek Squad Double Agent to execute on the values of the company and leave us in a much better light.
One of the mottos of The Geek Squad is “any computer, any coordinates, any time”. Even if Microsoft Windows disappeared off the face of the planet tomorrow, the vast majority of computer users would still require assistance – and The Geek Squad would still be assisting them. Users transitioning to Mac OS are a good example – yes things are still done in roughly the same way as in Windows, but there are enough differences that people has needed help transitioning. Geek Squad is still in the infancy of supporting alternatives to Microsoft Windows – but support them they will, and they will do it admirably in response to the kinds of challenges and changes found within the computer support market today.
Disclaimer: mattfast1 is an Agent in the employ of The Geek Squad in the United States of America. The views expressed in this article may not be the same as the views held by Geek Squad/Best Buy. For any official views or opinions, please contact Best Buy at http://www.bestbuy.com or The Geek Squad at http://www.geeksquad.com.
I have cleaned up the posts on my site – it has gone from 375 public posts to 29. There are a couple reasons for this cleanup – 1, I noted that there was some fairly strong language in most of my “angry teen years” posts from High School and shortly beyond, and I wanted this to become a more family-friendly blog. 2, it was a necessary step for me to realize my vision for this blog, which does not involve complaining about school or jobs which I do not have any more, or be riddled with lame memes.
I also plan to move the blog to a different address, and this will cut down the work – don’t worry, when I do change addresses, I’ll make sure the current blog.mattfast1.com address redirects to the new one.
In addition to this blog being automatically updated from the Wordpress Subversion Repository on a nightly basis, installing new features almost as fast as the Wordpress team adds them, I have changed the \’default\’ avatar that appears when a comment is made from someone who doesn\’t have their email address tied to a Gravatar account. It used to be the \’mystery man\’ default avatar, that everyone\’s probably used to seeing on blogs that have Gravatar enabled.
Now, I\’ve changed that \’mystery man\’ to Wavatar, which will automatically generate an avatar for you, based on your email address. As an added bonus, any other Wavatar-enabled sites will give you the same avatar!
I have created more security measures for my domains. Now, any access to mattfast1.com, mattvandusen.com or vandusens.us (and their subdomains) by those in certain troublemaking countries will be denied. While in the interest of security I\’m not going to reveal my exact methodology for these filters, let\’s just say it\’ll take a bit of effort for them to break through. Continue reading ‘New Security Measures’
Welcome to the new release of Matt, which includes several code enhancements including fewer memory leaks, a cleaner environment, and a less restrictive parent set. Several key components have been rewritten from the ground up, and new features have been added, including the ability to process the A_COHOL environment variable without causing an illegal error. We promise this new version is faster and more productive than older versions, and urge you to upgrade immediately.
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