Dad's Battleground

It's... ALIVE!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:10:00 +0000

The Kia is running. Why did it take so long? Here's a list of what I replaced.

All 16 Valves.
Head Gasket, Intake Gasket, Exhaust Gasket
Motor Mounts
Front Calipers
Brake Pads
Front Tires
Power Steering Belt
Alternator Belt
Alternator Mount Spacer (Lost it, then found it later in the street)
One Head Bolt (Lost it, then found it later in the yard, needed it anyways, one was messed up)
Three valve cover gasket bolts (They break so easy! Josh broke one and I broke the other two)
Fuel Filters
Cleaned the Fuel Injectors
Some little Vacuum Hose connector
Valve Cover Gasket
Distributor Thingy
All 4 Spark Plugs

I think that's everything. It's been so long and my brother helped me out a lot. He showed me that I can do it, which I know I can now. It's useful having an extra set of hands though.

Blood (literally it's on the exhaust manifolt and valve cover), sweat, and not many tears went into getting this car running again. I'd like to thank my mother, for letting me park the POS in her back yard for almost a year. I'd like to thank Karen for her support as well, my father chipped in too. Thank you Ally for encouraging me when the Kia kept up with a new problem every time I worked on it. Pretty much everyone in the family has helped me put this car back together some how.

Thank you.

I made mistakes when repairing this car, but I've learned from them. I'm a much better mechanic now. To anyone reading this that I don't know, I cannot stress enough how important it is to replace your timing belt if you have an interference engine.

Now, I just wait on the DMV for a day pass, then I can get it smogged.

In case you're wondering, I'm not playing World of Bore-craft anymore. I did get my epic flying mount shortly after that post, and it went downhill from there. I tried to play it tonight (I haven't played it in over a month) to relax a bit but It's just not fun anymore. I just got bored with it, and I had better things to do. Like say I don't know, look for a job? Still no luck there...

My student loans are due now, what kick in the balls. Damn you economy!!

I have this great idea though, and I want to follow through with it. I like this idea so much I'm going to write it down so later on when I'm not doing it I can say hey I'm going to work on that now.

Requiem for a dream, have you heard that song? It's EPIC. Here's a link to youtube with the song. Just a slight warning though, it has some gore (maybe a lot of gore) and a little nudity. Nothing my family can't handle though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEF6D32HNMI
It's a really good AMV too... which stands for... er.. Anime... Music Video? I think? Whatever.. Why don't I just embed it? Because it's kind of gory and has some nudity! Oh the humanity.. is that a pun?! No.

Anyways listening to that song got my brain turning and whenver I listen to music I get really great videos playing in my head. Here's the script for the animation I want to make.

*Slow intro with violin and cello playing* Me driving home in my Kia. I am happy and loving my car.
*First big bumpy thing* Car stalls.. I pull over... dramatic fades for effect
*First big ahhh chorus* I open the hood... see the timing belt is broken...
*Quiet Part afterwards* Car getting towed... getting tools ready... setting up everything
*big horn thingy blowing* Dramatic montage of me turnin wrenches with my bro
*just before the cool part with teh dundundunnn!* My bro says "The valves... are bent"
*awesome dundundunn parts* Ordering Parts... finish with a dramatic "Order" click
*Quiet part* Borrowing the PT.. go in to work..
*quiet part continues, chorus starts* Dan says to me, "Sean, we need you downstairs"
*chorus builds up* as I walk down the stairs
*at end of chorus before the dundundunns* Boss says "You're all fired!"
*dundundunns go* rage sequence of me thrashing the kia back together
*more dunndunduns* montage of putting car together while family is supporting me
*for the dramatic finish* wrenching the last bolt down, slamming the hood, and starting the engine.
*quiet piano at end of the song* driving the kia off into the sunset

Hopefully my amateur drawing skills and non-existent animation skills will be enough for the fantastic vision I have in my head. There's even more going on in there right now, and each scene begins with the setting "dramatic". Man, I just want to start drawing a story board right this second and throwing together a windows media maker story board! As it is though, I'm up late and Ally is dragging me to the dreaded Renaissance Faire tomorrow morning.

If you read all of this post, thank you.

Zombies Invade World of Warcraft! Your guide to survi.... BRAAINS!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:58:00 +0000

The Lich King has managed to infect each capital city with roaches, vermin, and crates which infect players. The players can either try to cure themselves or turn into a zombie.

Once you turn into a zombie, the only escape is death! This was a great event by blizzard, but they made it too easy to grief other players. I was one of those griefers. I would run into the auction house blow up and everyone would be infected.

There's also an exploit that lets you kill lowbies but I'm not going to tell you how to do it. If you really want to do it, you'll figure it out, but you shouldn't be doing it anyways!

Not everyone was laughing after I killed everyone at the auction house. Including an officer in my guild who kicked me after she was caught in the destruction.

I could not stop laughing. It was so easy to kill everybody. But, it got old after a while. A LOT of people were complaining. I checked out the forums, people were crying, quitting, flaming, and canceling their accounts.

Man! I don't want to have to run from the graveyard! Most just gave up and went AFK!

The best things about this event.

ZOMBIES!
BRAINS!
Listening to everybody cry.
It actually feels like the Lich King is invading.

The worst things about this event.

Lowbies have a hard time turning quests in.
Lowbies die almost instantly if they are turned into a zombie because of high level players.
It gives griefers a way to easily grief mass amounts of people without being banned.

How to make this event better

Let the Argent Healers (They kill zombies/cure you instantly) come back if you do a repeatable quest. For instance, the Auction House Argent Healer kept the AH safe, but after she died it was grief-o-rama! She didn't respawn. If her ghost was there, and people had to kill zombies, loot them, and turn it in to the ghost to have her come back to life that'd be fun.
After you die from being a zombie, give the player a buff (that the player can remove if they want) that stops them from turning into a zombie. Have it weaken the player by 10% or so, and last for 10 minutes. The problem is you can run through the damage most of the time from zombies, but one hit and your infected, and then you're dead.
Put Argent healers by quest givers in the level 1-20 zones. People just joining this game will get frustrated and quit because they don't know that they can run to a zone the town over and still quest instead of dying repeatedly to zombies.
No more durability loss from dying as a zombie!

Oh the carnage. Isn't it ~~the best thing ever~~ horrible!

Stormwind was an absolute mess. Each skeleton on the ground is a person that's died. Not a NPC, but an actual player that had to run back from the graveyard (poor babies).

Shattrath wasn't doing much better.

What a pretty UI! I mean, oh god the destruction.

I had a conversation with my guild officer before they kicked me out.
[Trade Channel] Someperson: Tassi is the one that keeps killing everyone in the auction house.
[Guild Chat] GuildOfficerPerson(GoP for short!): TASSI! WHAT THE !@#$ING HELL!
[Guild Chat] Tassi (me): I srry! Lich King made me do it!
[Guild] Tassi has been promoted to rank "Prison Sex".
Tassi has been kicked from the guild.
Tassi Shouts: BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!

World of Warhammer-Craft Online Age of the Frozen Reckoning King

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:45:00 +0000

I apologize in advance, as this post was written late at night, probably makes no sense, and spans over the past year of all my screenshot saving endeavors.

It really is nostalgic you know, browsing through your computer looking at screenshots. I don't have very many on this drive because it's fairly new. Even thinking about when I got this drive brings back memories (mainly memories of being employed). You know what? I don't like being unemployed. Mostly it's that whole not making money thing.

Anyways, I found some good pic's I'd like to share. I found a bunch of World Of Warcraft Screenshots (these are the oldest, they're from July), a few Team Fortress 2 screenshots, a screen from Warhammer, and one video from Spore I'd like to share. Maybe I'll add a few pictures of spore I found as well. I'll start off with the largest set of pictures, the World of Warcraft ones which sort of tell a story.

It all started one evening as a I logged into my 30 something shaman to go questing.
As an aside I just noticed I wrote "logged into" instead of the usual "logged on to". Maybe I play too much. Do you say you logged into something or logged onto something? Does it even matter?

How peculiar, a balance druid? At this level? Doesn't she know that feral is the fastest talent build at her level?

Why wait for cast times?

Why suffer through horrible spell animation?

Why eat and drink after every three mobs when you could keep going as feral all day long?

I didn't understand why then, but I do now. She's taking it slow. She (maybe a he in real life, but it's a she ingame and I'm sticking with it) doesn't care about leveling to 70 the fastest.

Her eyes are not on the finish line, but on the road she's traveling.

Perhaps that is a problem I have, and I think you'll notice it in a lot of gamers today. Maybe you even suffer from a bit of get-to-the-finish-line-now-itis. Do you look up every possible build, strategy, tips on all of your games? Do you discuss and debate every minute detail of a game you're playing? Do you follow guides that tell you exactly what quests to do in each order?

Do you even read the quest text anymore?

I haven't. I stopped reading quest text in Warhammer about 4 levels in. By the way this character I made looks kind of like my wife.

Anyways! Back to the pictures. I started playing Team Fortress 2 again, and here's some pics I found from it.

In case you don't know, when you die in Team Fortress 2, it zooms in on your killer and gives you a nice long opportunity to take a picture (hell, it even freezes time). The first one is probably two seconds after that spy killed my while I was playing engineer and my turret blew him up if I had to guess. The other two are just random.

Last but not least, here's me messing around in Spore. I think I used a money cheat after I finally unlocked the PlanetBuster to buy 5 of these puppies. In the video I leave a planet I just destroyed, move to a new planet, suck the life out of it, and destroy it.

You see I learned something today. It's not about getting to the end fastest, the best way, and with the best possible character. It isn't about the best score, the best creature, or how far you are in a game. When it comes down to it, I was missing out on a lot of content, and a lot of fun. At the end, could I really look back at the experience and say "you know what? I really enjoyed getting that PlanetBuster."? No, I couldn't. I shot a meaningless missle which I didn't earn at a meaningless piece of rock. It wasn't memorable, and at the end of that I felt like a cheat. I was bored. And I quit playing spore for a while. So what I learned is this.
Slow down, take your time, and enjoy the journey!

The Best Firefox SEO Add-ons

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:17:00 +0000

I work on web sites all day, doing Search Engine Optimization for their pages. There's a few add-ons that make my life easier, so here they are.

Customize Google - This add-on lets you change a ton of different options, but the main reason I use it is so that I can have 100 search results on one page. Is that sweet or what?
LinkChecker - I actually found out a website had been hacked using this tool. I ran the tool and there was over 16,000 links. I use it to check all pages I put up in case I mispelled URL while editing the page. I use this addon the most.
Stealther - When you're logged into Google or just have cookies on you get skewed search results. For pure search results, this is the easiest way to see your true ranking. Turn it on, run a search, turn it back off. Firefox is supposed to release a "Privacy Mode" soon which does the same thing, but I'll still keep this addon.
NoScript - Not really a SEO related add on but if you block Google Analytics before going onto your site you won't see your own visit on your reports. Sure you can set it up through analytics to not count you, but that's a hassle when you have a lot of sites.
SearchStatus - Adds page rank and Alexa stats to the status bar (or in my case with my overbloated status bar) to the left of the top menu.
Web Developer - I use this to find out where divs are, then make changes to the css live inside the browser and then copy the changed code to the css file. Makes life so easy.

There you have it, another small portion of my add-ons. I have 21 in total, which I'm not sure if that is something to brag about or feel ashamed of.
If there are any add-ons I'm missing out on that are great for SEO please leave a comment and let me know about them!

Another Top 5 Firefox Add-ons List? Hurray!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:27:00 +0000

I've seen dozens of Top 5 or Top 10 firefox addons lists, and it's about time I added mine to the pile. I'll try to keep it short.

#5 Download Statusbar - Pop up windows are annoying, even if you're the one opening them to download something. Get rid of the downloads window by having your downloads show in your status bar. This is a must-have add-on.

#4 Forecastfox - It's simple, put in your zip code, get the weather. I like opening the radar and not seeing anything around me.

#3 Fission - This add-on makes a progress bar show on the address bar. It looks great. Ok it's not really a necessary add-on, but it adds a bucket of style to the bland address bar. The best part is you can change the color if you have a special skin.

#2 Foxmarks - I used to love finding sweet links at work, but I hated having to email them to myself so I can go back to them again at home. What Foxmarks does is download your bookmarks between your computers. So say I find a couple good links at work, save em, go home and there they are on my PC!

#1 StumbleUpon - This thing has caused more late nights than high school Counter-Strike LAN parties. Easily, this is the best time waster ever. Besides videos of kids jumping in 4ft deep puddles, I've also found very interesting applications, tutorials, articles, and pictures. If I could only have one addon, this would be it.

Forecastfox and Fission aren't must haves I guess, but to me they are. Did I leave out your favorite add-on? Let me know!
I'll be posting my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) / Web Develepor FireFox add-ons soon.

How to add a poll inside of a post on blogger.

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:22:00 +0000

Update: October 28th 2011. Wow, blogger still hasn't added this functionality? What a bunch of slackers! Thank you for all the comments!

Here's how you add polls inside of your posts on blogger.

IF YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO ADD A POLL SKIP TO STEP 6!

Step 1) Log into your blogger console for the blog. And go to your layout tab.

Step 2) Click the Add a Page Element.

Step 3) Click the "Add to Blog" button underneath where is says Poll.

Step 4) Fill out the form.

Step 5) After you fill out the form, click save and you'll be able to move the poll around. It doesn't matter where it is if you're going to put the poll inside your post. I just leave it there.

Step 6) Now click View Blog on top, and you'll see your new poll. Right Click somewhere in the document and click "View Source".

Step 7) You should have a massive source file, no worries though. Hit Ctrl-F and type in the title of your poll. Mine was "How useful was this guide?" Once you find it, highlight the iframe tag and everything between it up to iframe as shown below.

Step 8)Ctrl-C (or right click, Copy) and paste (ctrl-v) the text into a notepad file. When you go into writing your post on your blog, click on edit html.

Step 9)Now paste the iframe into your html, and add the title of your poll right above it.

Did you find this guide very useful?

Step 10) Now post it, and you can go back into layout and Remove the poll. This won't stop the poll from being in your post as far as I can tell. Good luck!

WARNING: Update August 15th 2008- I'm editing the post now with no problems. Blogger must have fixed whatever was wrong. Please leave a comment if you still get this error. After I posted this guide, it had some typos in it and when I went to edit the post the edit block went blank and I couldn't change anything. Be careful! I had to delete the original post after copying the source code and pasting it into a new post.

Other Notes: This is kind of buggy right now, and blogger is working on adding polls inside of posts automatically. Additionally, you can edit the size of the iframe in the html to make it a little bigger/smaller in case you end up with a scroll bar in your poll.