MERVERNATION News

02/24/2000

The 23rd was my last day at my job. I sent out a goodbye e-mail to all the people who I got along with and wished them well... I also got a person or two saying the last post on this page was a little harsh. whats wrong with it? This is just my little space on the web where I am allowed through the freedom of speach to post whatever I want and people through the freedom of web are allowed to read it if they want... I didnt write anything directly aimed at anyone. the post was a generalization of how I felt and no one has to like it, agree with it, or read it. anyone who doesnt know me has no way of knowing where I worked and therefor it cant be said I was trashing any one person or place... actually I think I was being kind considering all that has gone on there in the past year and a half... I was told by former people of the company, before I even started there that I would see the biggest employee turn around I have ever seen. they were right. I counted the termination notices before I left and in just 18 months, there were about 60 of them... either people get let go, or they see how the management works and they bail out right away. One person made a point that if I tried to get a recomendation from my last job now, and they saw or heard about this page and the last post that I wouldnt have much luck getting the recomendation. good point, but who cares. I actually put a link to my page in the goodbye e-mail. I dont want my name associated with that place anymore in any way. Chances are this place already has a bad enough reputation in the job market of this area that a good recomendation from them will hurt me more than none at all. on that note, this will be the last post about the place. like I said.. I guess this is for the best in the long run. I have a couple of possible places to go tomorrow and check out... be back to normal postings tomorrow. I guess now I have plenty of time to work on this page any my music... this also frees up time to go work on Daves computer -=(see button on right)=- :)



02/21/2000

Well isnt this fun... today they brought in the guy that they hired to replace me so that I could train him on stuff for a smooth transition. I thought they hired this guy cause he has so much more experience and know how than me.... what a crock of shit. the truth is that the new VP of finance doesnt like anyone who has too much more time here than he does. hes bringing in all his own people and getting rid of anyone he doesnt like. I guess thats the corporate way.. thats ok I guess. ever since I started here people have told lies to me, and about me. they have tried to get me and other people in trouble. they shift all blame on MIS so they dont have to do any work. they make tons of promises that they dont keep. they pay you crappy, and they cheat you out of overtime. I have wanted to leave here for quite some time now, but never really made any efforts to leave. now I have to go. I guess in the long run this is a good thing, but I dont have any work lined up and I hate the thought of not having a job for even 1 week. I have been handing out resumes left and right. I hope I can find SOMETHING by the end of this week. If anyone reading this page knows of any computer jobs in the NY/NJ/PA tri-state area, PLEASE shoot me an e-mail and let me know.



02/17/2000

Wow, this site had about 200 hits yesterday from the link on NEWGROUNDS. thats nothing for some sites, but its a record for this one. lol... so with all that traffic, I didnt get any feedback on the song or this site. Im not complaining, I just like to know what people think of my stuff. the other strange thing is that Flannelman didnt report a new song on digitalfl00d. normally hes on top of that faster than you could imagine.

in other news, I found out the other day that I was going to be losing my job next week. I have started looking for work in a few different places. hopefully I will find something, I dont want to have any idle time.... wouldnt it be nice if I could get paid to make cheesy techno songs? lol. I will keep updates on the work situation so those who care will know whats going on. thats about it today. probably post more later.



02/16/2000

New Song Done!
Song number 3 is done, its to my satisfaction, and is now available for download in the SONGS section to the right. This one is called "Pichno" because its a techno song with a sample from a game on NEWGROUNDS.COM called "Picos World". Any regular reader knows my rule about not using samples, and anyone knows theres an exception to every rule. This song exists with this sample because I was given written permission from the samples creator to use it. It was just him with a microphone and a wav recorder. NOT a free domain pre built "use it in your own music" sample. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. and again, I dont hold anything against people who use free domain music samples,.. a lot of the stuff is really good when they work it together,.. but for me, its either origional or nothing... So give it a download and tell me what you think of it.
I first sent it to Tom Fulp, the creator of newgrounds and Picos World, and heres what he said...

Awesome! This is great! I'm posting it on newgrounds, with a link to your site! Thanks!!!

So thats a good thing... and now its on to the next song... hopefully I can turn something out in a week or two.



02/13/2000

Bud Shootout my ass!
First the last chance qualifier... ricky craven and jeff burton WAY out in front,.. all of a sudden, dale jarret must have flipped on the cheat switch because he came out from no where and ended up wining the thing... now in racing thats not uncommon, but on restrictor plate racing its not so likely. so this advances jarret to the Bud Shoootout itself. he starts dead last and somehow manages to win that thing too... dont get me wrong, I like jarret, but something is up with him since about mid way last year... you cant just get better over night like he did. now.. the other day was daytona front row qualifying... jarret got the pole, and his new team mate, ricky rudd, got spot number 2. both yeates cars... I honestly think yeates has found a new way to pull the wool over the officials eyes. Poor Martin was in for a pit stop, and his crew jumped out a little too quick and he eneded up hitting the one guy. he tried to miss him, but it threw him up on the windshield. the guy is ok, but needless to say, Martin finished last.... Big wreck on the last lap... sterling marlin moved up in to bobby labonte, labonte spun sideways in to ricky rudd, rudd goes upside down, rusty wallace goes down in the grass to miss everything, and off drives jarret waving his hands to everyone cause he won. hopefully the Daytona 500 will not be anything like today.



02/11/2000

Well last night I fell victom to myself again... there I am working on the new song like a good little MERVERNATOR and what happens? I come up with a new sound, new baseline and immediatly being developing yet another song. I swear this happens every time. I always start another and then have 1 more unfinished thing, and 0 more finished things. I cant help it.. I hear a tune that I like and I dont want to lose any motivation on it, so I develope it to a point of a great begining and then save it. Then once that happens, I have lost track of what I was working on first, or I run out of time in a day... one of these days they will all be finished and I can hopefully start on some new projects... new projects that well end up pileing up just like the current projects. lol. oh well,.. hopefully when its all done it will have been worth it. what makes it worth it you may ask? to me, its worth it if my cousin Hoagie enjoys listening to it over and over. lol.. and some other people too, but hes one of the ones I look to for opinion. hes like me,.. "you can never buy enough electronica" and we have similar tastes in trance and techno.. since its really hard to evaluate your own work since I always tend to be to hard on myself, I like to know what someone with the same taste thinks before I make it a final product. Another person I like to hear from is Dave (See button on right) hes always good for an opinion... Last night my friend Immortalis called me and heard some of the new piece over the phone and thought it was really good... he actually called to tell me the horrible news that Jim Varney (Ernest) died. That really stinks. That guy was awesome and I am sure he will be missed by a lot of people. He was also the voice of Slink the dog on the Toy Story movies... talk about disney movies, I found out there is going to be a sequel to my all time favorite Disney Movie, The Little Mermaid. In this one, Ariels Daughter, Melody, dreams of being a mermaid and having fins... though the plot might seem a little cheesy and predictable, Im gonna buy it anyway because its gonna rule cause its The Little Mermaid. So back to the music, Hopefully this weekend I will finish SOMETHING... of course if it happens to hit sunday at 12:00 PM Im stopping. even if I am in the middle of something great, I will stop. why? First NASCAR outing is this sunday with the Bud Shootout. My guy Mark Martin drew the pole for the event. Last year he won it and I hope the same happens again this year. its just a little 25 lap race with a manditory pitstop between laps 10 and 12.. just a little preseason event to get everyone excited. I know I am.



02/10/2000

Theres nothing going on today. I have been sitting here messing with some laptops all day, just converting data from old units to new units, and working on random issues at they come up. I have been listening to #1 Crush by Garbage on repeat almost all day yesterday and today. Im not sure why,.. Im not depressed or anything.. I just think its a real good song... talk about songs, providing I dont run in to any problems, I should be finishing my current project tonight. If so, I will upload it and make it available right away... talk about MP3s,. this Napster thing keeps getting worse. each time the release a new beta version, something else stops working right. the main thing being that its impossible to resume a file now. it used to work just fine, but now it tells you the file is unavailable even though its still there. this is making A LOT of half done MP3s float around taking up space and fooling people thinking they are getting a whole file. thats the good thing and at the same time, the bad thing about MP3s.. you can play them even if they have been sliced and diced in to little pieces... I was building a computer for someone last night, and when we got it all loaded, the sound was sitting there looping and it wouldnt stop. it didnt cause any crashes or anything but it was quit annoying... so I installed a path for 98 and all of a sudden it was working fine... so I go over to this guys other computer which is EXACTLY thing same,.. I had built it for him just a few weeks ago... but the sound on this one was perfectly fine. So I figure, what the hell, and I install the patch on this one too, and then next thing I know.. I reboot and the thing comes up and the sound is looping like crazy... I uninstall the patch and it goes back to normal... todays Tech Tip... If it isnt broken, do go stiking your fingers in it.



02/09/2000

Heres a good one for those of you who have to deal with MS-Windows on a daily basis at their jobs... If the system is on a network and normally logs on to a domain or pier to pier setup, you are supposed to get a log on prompt when you start your system. however sometimes things happen in the world of windows and your log on prompt decides not to show up anymore.. but you notice that if you select START, SHUTDOWN, CLOSE ALL PROGRAMS AND LOG ON AS A DIFFERENT USER, or in 98, you pick START, LOGOFF.. all of a sudden you have a log on prompt and your able to get on the network.... let me tell you I have seen this before at my other jobs but was never able to fix it, and recently here at this job I saw it again.. this time I found a fix... it is a registry change so get yourself in to regedit, and get to this path... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Network\Real Mode Net ... you should see a key called AUTOLOGON with any value. simply delete the key and exit the regedit program. the changes are saved immediatly so go ahead and restart your computer. all should be fixed now. if anyone else has any interesting bug fixes like that, please share them with me and I will post them here... I think Im gonna do a lot more tech type posting from now on... and still post the normal junk too. :)



02/08/2000

Ok,.. Flan was indeed busy. He sent me an E-mail today and explained that he was not ignoring me, but he was just very busy and he hasnt had his e-mail account functioning at work which is where he has time to sit and type all day. Im glad thats cleared up.



Wow, Im actually getting a decent amount of hits each day lately. nothing like some of the other sites I go to, but its an improvement for me, and hopefully it will get better. Im going to try to post more each day to give the few people that like the content something to read.



I learned an interesting lesson with my Windows NT Server the other day.. I tried to log on and it told me the domain server wasnt available, which is strange because my NT server also works as my router and shares my DSL with all the other computers... the internet was working fine so that was proof that the server was on line. so I hit ok to skip the domain log on, and it actually let me connect to the shared resources such as the user files folder, and the internal ZIP drive in the server. funny part about the ZIP drive though is I lost long file name support. so I started looking around on the NT system and went to services, and saw that the WORKSTATION service had stopped... ok, maybe a reboot will fix it... nothing. so I start looking around on the net and find some interesting facts. one of them applied to me perfectly. If you have a multi homed NT server (meaning you have 2 network cards in it) and you have more than 1 protocol on each one (meaning more than just microsofts TCP/IP) then you could have a problem where a protocol is trying to allocate the same static space in the routing table and the end result is the Workstation service not starting (who knows) so naturally I had TCP/IP, and then I also had IPX/SPX, and NetBEUI. I have the other 2 because I often boot my systems in to DOS 6.22 to play games, use old programs, do BASIC programming, etc.. and I like to get to the server if I have to. I also have that 386 system I set up specifically to play games, and I use WIN 3.11 to get stuff I downloaded off the net, off of the server. So the advice I found was to remove NetBEUI from one of the NICs... well the NIC that was tied to the internet doesnt need anything but TCP/IP anyway so thats a good place to start. I disabled the protocol from the NIC, restarted the system, switch over to my other system, and punch in my password.... BAM! INSTANT LOG ON!... and the ZIP drive came up with long file names again. funny part is, I never applied IPX/SPX or NetBEUI to the net side NIC in the first place. apparently when I applied the protocols to the first NIC, NT automatically gave them to both. the other strange thing is how long it was working fine before it decided to stop the workstation service.

All in all, thats the only problem I ever really had with that server that wasnt my own fault. its been running a good 2 years straight now with virtually no problems. the only other problem besides this protocol thing I ever had was when I has RAM in the system that was not matched. NT server likes matched SIMMS and if you add something thats slightly off, it will blue screen at any given time. I changed the RAM, ran an NT recovery install, and have been good to go to this day.... normally I bash Microsoft products, but that NT server has been reliable enough and has done what I wanted it to do that I feel its one of the better network server options... I wouldnt use it for web hosting, but I would definatly use it again for LANs and WANs. (both of which I have at home (by definition anyway))



02/07/2000

oh boy, did I call it or what. I knew this would happen. just like I said always happenes, someone took what I posted the wrong way or took it personally and seems to be mad at me now.
Apparently Flannelman is ignoring me becuase of this show of opinion, and wont return any of my e-mails. (I could be wrong, he might just have no time to reply, but hes never not replied before)
my friends kept asking me whos side I was on and what I thought of the whole thing, and I got kind of tired of hearing about everything and posted my non polarized thoughts here... untill now I have satyed completely mute and had all my friends... oh well, live and learn I guess.



02/01/2000

I have been sitting here in the middle of a war between my friends for quite some time now. I remain silent as always but still I have my opinions on all aspects of the going ons with the whole thing. sometimes its VERY hard to not say anything. especially when there is something to be said to each person. why? because no matter how you put it, someone will always take it the wrong way and get offended. Today I got an E-mail which had a story in it.. it pretty much says 100% how I feel in this thing. and it does it without pointing fingers.. which is exactly how I always try to make my points. I feel the best way to begin to resolve a conflict in opinion between 2 people is to evaluate yourself first. I hope whoever reads this will take it the way its meant to be, and finds the value in it that I did.

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by.

The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter agreed, but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career.

When the carpenter finished his work, the employer came to inspect the house. He handed the front door key to the carpenter. "This is your house", he said. "My gift to you."

The carpenter was shocked! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it differently.

So it is with us. We build our lives, one day at a time, often putting less than our best into the building. Then with a shock we realize we have to live in the house we have built. If we could do it over, we'd do it much differently, but we cannot go back.

You are the carpenter. Each day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Your attitudes and the choices you make today build the "house" you live in tomorrow.

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