Dan Mayer's Blog

I am off to my first day at my new job... Wish me well.

So far work is good. The commute isn�t bad and everyone around the office seems nice. I haven�t had a real project to sink my teeth into yet which has been a little disappointing but it always takes a little while at a new job to really find your place and start making a difference. Hopefully I will start to slowly get my fingers involved in a few different projects to keep myself continually busy at work. Until then when I have down time I can just use the time to generally practice coding and learn new technologies better or work at learning new languages that would be useful while working here which is pretty cool. I always like having time to learn new cool things about programming and computer technology.

Using this package caused a little more problems than one would have believed, but it was by far still the best option out there. I found some other beens, but they only would successfully upload Ascii files and were not writen properly to write out image files or other binary data. After having a problem with a few other packages I went to use Jakarta's java fileupload and after figuring out multiple issues and reading alot of documentation I got all of it working as I wanted. I thought I should share th links I ended up using that were usefull and helped me get everything working.

File upload wrapper take a look at ProcessFileUpload.jsp

Jakarta's how to use the fileupload package

If you have any problems let me know and I can probably help you out.

I ran into a very odd error while running GNU tar on windows XP under dos or the cmd.exe (dos emulator). The error must be incredibly rare since i only found one other post with similiar problems. I will first explain the error and then how it was fixed or resolved.

here is the one link that I found with the similiar GNU windows tar error
tar error

my error:
C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\exe>tar cvf tester.tar news
tar: Cannot add file news: No such file or directory (ENOENT)
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

news was a standard directory. the error we found was occuring because we were in the C:\dev\*.* directory apparently dev and aux (as the other user was having that error) are some sort of key words that screw up the program, I dont know why. I do know that moving tar.ext and my directory to a folder c:\temp or any other c:\*.*.\dsmayer\sandbox\exe and it would work. So if your having any erros similiar with GNU tar I suggest changing directories and seeing if that fixes your problems. Taring under cygwin in this directory worked fine it was only a problem when taring in dos. Good luck post any questions, comments, or other issues relating to GNU tar on windows here.

Sorry I have been horrible at updating my blog lately. I have been busy and still on and off sick. I am really getting tired of feeling sick a good portion of the time. I seriously haven't felt perfectly well for like 3 weeks. Lately it has been my stomach bothering me... that seems to have passed so we will hope my cough goes away completely soon and I can get on with doing things normal like. What is normal like you ask? Well honestly I dont know since I am doing the new job and the 9-5 thing which is actuall 7-6. I wake at 7 each morning to get ready to go on time and then drive in traffic... then I get to leave work around 5 and drive in traffic getting me home around 5:45. So basically, I have free time from 6 till bed, but since I am trying to wake up so early I am trying to go to bed early... so I am trying to start winding down by 10:30 or so to sleep by 11:30... meaning that I have about 4:30 hours a day to eat dinner and do what I want. I can deal with this for awhile, but the commute is really pretty crappy when you think about how much time it wastes every day.

I have had some time to work on my website lately and I will be unvailing some really big changes soon, which should be cool. I am happy to have some of that stuff going, just cause it has always been a cool and interesting hobby and their are so many cool things I could do with it. I want to go skiing this weekend, but since last weekend i didnt get my car checked out cause they closed by the time I made it there, I have to do that this saturday. I guess I could go up sunday, so maybe I will think about that. Oh well.... anyways all seems well at the new job and they have me working on some stuff now so that is good. Alright, peace out...

Well I am moving closer to having all sorts of loose ends tied up. Which is nice, soon I should know exactly how much I will get to keep after taxes. I am also making some progress on some website stuff. I am trying to add at least one function a day to my site, which so far seems to be going well. When I have more time I add big stuff when I dont have much time I just add one little function that I need, but it means I am always making some progress which is good.

Work is going pretty well which is nice. I got frustrated and stuck with something dumb today, but that is bound to happen once in awhile when your a programmer you just get stuck and can't think of away to fix the problem. I came up with a solution, but by that time I was so frustrated and annoyed that I had to rest a bit. I am having a poker night on wendsday so that should be a good time. So hopefully all will go well until then.

Alright... All seems well. I am digging the new job, learning new things, having fun, getting paid days off, free trips to mexico from the company, and doing well all around. I have been having fun in pretty much all aspects of my life currently. I am even dating someone and enjoying that as well. So there is a positive update for all those out there that have read my far to many negative updates. So yeah fun stuff.. I have also had alot of time to work on my own projects lately. I have been coding and managing up a storm for a new project. I just hope my partners stay as into it as i am.

I get my health insurance in 8 days and I am pumped cause i have had a cough for like a month or more. Also i havent had like a general check up since before college. It will be good to make sure i am still healthy and doing well and see if my cholestoral has dropped at all.

Anyways that is the update for now and I will try to be better, but there is new stuff popping up on my main site wastedbrains almost every day right now.

Rewritten Past

We have to discard the past
although it keeps a grip
dust falls on thorns
as if it would crash unwittingly
There is nothing, there was always what we were, we are not.
It all has to be filled
Memories mean nothing.

Stripped from the words of Pablo Neruda's Past

this is from our writting section check it out...

It is always annoying when i am the computer guy and comptuers piss me off so much. I was installing a new fan in a computer with a broken fan on the processor. It is one of my secondary boxes that I use for a media server. Anyways i spent over half an hour trying to get the old fan. The piece holding it on though was designed to be simply installed but nearly impossible to move. So After trying unsuccessfully to remove it with every tool i could find that would be usefull I was getting made, at this point i had cut myself on the case and cards twice and was bleeding all over. I am trying to change a freaking fan why am I dripping blood. I take a break to cover my wounds and drink some water, I had broken a sweat by this point. I go back and still cant get the old fan off and while yelling curse words just reach in with my hands and being pulling and yanking the fan as hard as i could. Finally some of the plastic snapped that was holing it on and off came the fan... i go to install the new fan... of course it latches on tot he same little plastic i just broke off, so i cant attach the fan... i lay the computer on its side put the fan in place and call that good enough. My new fan had a similiar attachment but with an added release mechanism for easy removal... who in the hell would make it impossible to remove the fan. This was far to complicated and frustrating, and painful. I am still bleeding as I type this, and it is quite possible i broke the entire computer i have been to afraid to try to turn it on until i calm down some.

I love computers, but man i hate it when they just dont work as they should and do my bidding.

well i needed a printer so i got the cheapest one i could at compusa... oddly enough the cheapest one had a built in scanner... so i have scanner fun for no real reason... but it is fun none the less.... so here are some drawings I have done...

alright here is a post to my neglected blog. It always falls behind... Anyways i have been doing a ton of programming, but sadly none of it is very interesting or new right now. Alot of the stuff I am doing I have done before, but I am trying to build up a system which I can use to explore some new ideas and I need a nice simple toolset built up before doing anything else all the interesting. So it might be awhile, before I have any really interesting things to post on here, but i will try and we will see when I get a chance to get back to my AI interests.