Rinsefirst

Halloween in the middle of the week should be lost… I think someone should redo the calendar so that any holiday involving nighttime enjoyment always falls on a friday or saturday… Similiar to how thanksgiving always falls on a thursday. Just think, if Halloween always fell on a friday, you could trick or treat as late as you wanted because there wouldn’t be school the next day.

Of course, I haven’t tricked or treated for a few years now. Instead, my family has the wonderful tradition of going over to my cousins to for Halloween dinner (it stems from when we were little we went trick or treating with them). It’s always a blast, always fun to tell stories, and always fun to catch up and tell lies about Harry Potter. (Although more of those lies become true every day).

I might post pictures later tonight (if I take any) for now, I just wanted to write something to test out a feature of my blog. Later for now.

I purchased Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii online, and it arrived early this morning. I did my best not to take it out of the box prior to finishing all my work for the day, because I knew once I started, I would be on an unlock quest. Amber came over played Zelda DS while I worked away at unlocking everything for about 3 hours… I still have a long way to go. I’m rather impressed with the gameplay and I’m just happy to say it’s finally on the Wii. I’m glad all the games are making their way… Plus….

It was announced today that Smash Bros. will have a stage builder… I know the game being delayed sucks, but at the rate they are adding features, it’s hard to complain… By the time they launch, they’ll have 50+ characters, stage and character builders, and a whole new game mode (that I haven’t even imagined). Who knows, but their blog at http://www.smashbros.com/ is fun to read.

In other news, another item came in the mail today that I ordered last week. My first –unedited– somewhat published book. It’s basically the first 1000 posts from Rinsefirst/JJ’s Domain in print. I have to admit, I’ve very impressed with the quality, and I must admit that I am just LOVING randomly flipping pages to find posts that I remember writing, but don’t ever get to see because of the way the blog is formatted here… There is something to be said for having it in print. See the pics below. For now, that’s everything.

I have recently decided I need to get a little more Web 2.0 ish. That means more Ajax in what I do. More usability. More everything. It’s always good to stay fresh.

Most recently, Alex Micek has introduced me to the fine javascript library known as mootools (http://www.mootools.net/) . This has lead me to try to produce a few applications using the tool, that I thought I would share with you. It will be awhile before anything really useful is put together, but it’s fun to build stuff non the less.

Here’s what I’ve managed to put together so far, using both AJAX to save the data, and sortable to keep it sorted in some way… Hope someone enjoys its… Realize, however you leave the letters, it will appear that way for the next person to see it:

Code is here (for now): http://pms.jrcorps.net/

I will be working on it on and off over the next few days, so feel free to keep checking back to see how it changes.

Maybe it’s because I grew up a white middle class male in suburbia. Maybe it’s the fact that I was born in the 80’s. Maybe it’s just me. But when I see articles like this one, I have to wonder… why is this news? Why does the media think 2 women at the helm of both the space shuttle and space station is worth press?

It’s the same question I have for the people who think about the first female president… Or first African American judge. I mean seriously… Our entire lives we are told that all people are created equal. At the moment of doing something bad towards someone considered to be a minority, the red flags go up and it becomes a hate crime.

My question is… what this minority stuff? I can’t ask that question because I’m not one I guess… but seriously… How can you expect the children not to see race, gender, orientation as being something to stereotype a person by if we create minority groups? Or when someone makes a big deal about women accomplishing something for the first time? I mean until this stuff is normal… We will all naturally segregate…

Just think… if we lived in a world where being gay wasn’t unusual, then when JK Rowling stepped out and said Dumbledore was gay, we wouldn’t have articles on that either.  Speaking of which: Why would you do that? Why would come out after all 7 books were released and say that to 25 kids? Was the idea to stir up press? Was the idea to give us all second thoughts about the relationship between Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore, or worse, the relationship between Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. But alas, she at least clears it up and informs the young children that Dumbledore was in fact in love with Grindelwald.

I suppose the fact that I’m writing a post about the problem in fact makes the problem exist as well… So let it be known, this post doesn’t exist, because the problem needs to go away.

So I’m trying to figure out if this is something I intended to have happen, or if this is a bad thing.

It seems today, that I have come dangerously close to maxing out my first credit card, a credit card that I haven’t even had for a month. That said, I haven’t had to pay a single bill yet (it’s coming in like 10 days). I haven’t actually maxed it (like I still have a couple more hundred to go). I don’t have that high of a limit. I also have enough money in my checking account to cover it. Combine that with the fact that I got the credit card to start charging the bigger wedding purchases to (so that I get 1% cash back and a little extra time to move money around from some investments).

It’s still strange though, knowing that I… Justin Gehring, master of finances, can easily max out a credit card i no time flat, and with little to no red flags going up anywhere in anyone’s system verifying that I am doing something that I should be doing.  I mean seriously… How is Visa not allowed to let me sign up in under 10 minutes, and then charge almost to my limit immediatly after getting the card… Craaazy business in my mind.

In other news, I thought I would mention some of the things I purchased (I’m sure I’ll write more about them in the near future):

• Pre-ordered Guitar Hero 3 Wii Style (Dang Nikki having me play way to much while in Chicago)
• Paid to publish the first 1000 posts of my blog into a paper back book. More on this later (when I get it)
• Paid to get a microphone for my computer (I’ve been needing one)
• Paid a LOT of money to photographer(s) for the wedding. More on that at our other site later.

In any case, I must admit I like things showing up at my door day after day… It’s just fun.

So for those of you who don’t know, I was out of town for a ‘vacation’ of sorts for the first time in a very very long time… I mean, I’ve had trips to Nebraska here and there to see family and to work on the farm, but this… This was solely to see Nikki and get away from it all for a little bit… I almost did manage to get away from it all, but alas, the servers just won’t let me not talk to them on a daily basis. But that’s a story for another post… For now, it’s photo time: