Dan Mayer's Blog

Getting sick should be more like playing tag as a child. Once you give it to someone else you don't have it anymore, and their are no tag backs!

Rid the bus, cough, exit bus... bwhahahaha public places would be cold transfer centers.

What makes you happy? What makes you enjoy life and make it worth everything? I guess right now I have to many options and paths I can choose from and I don't know what I should really focus on... So when it comes down to the simple parts of life what is really the most important? What should you strive for? What do you change your life for? When do you stop and realize this is what life is supposed to be about? So share some of the greatest moments of your life some of the best decisions you have made, and some of the biggest regrets... tell me in private if need be but, If you had to say what made life what would it be?

I have been notified by the State of Colorado, that my information was stored on a stolen computer and I may now be at risk for identity theft, yippie for that.

Do not install windows media player 11, especially on media center PCs. It is nothing more than DRM (Digital Rights Management) software that takes away abilities and legal rights of the users for the benefit of the movie and music industry. If you installed it you just lost the right to watch movies on TV! If you uninstall media player 11, you get those rights back. Uninstalling requires 2 reboots and three visits to add/remove programs...

After installing windows media player 11, I tried to record Hoosier, a movie. I received this message, when trying to record. I then tried to just watch the movie live with out recording and received the same message. I could not even watch the movie because of the copyright protections. I could still watch and record TV shows and everything else I tried.

After uninstalling media player 11, you can see my movie reappear. No issues. Now realize I PAY for cable and what cable does is deliver content to you. If I hadn't owned an old TV, I couldn't have watched this movie.

So the MPAA/RIAA says that they can put a copyright flag on TV and I can't record or watch it on a device that could possibly record it. So why am I paying for cable for the content I get to watch over cable. If I can't even watch it on my media center (my primary TV setup), what am I paying for? The cable companies pay for the rights to the play the movie, based on my subscription and advertising fees, I am delivered the content which I should be able to view as I choose. It is legal and has been set in law that you can record cable TV for personal use because you paid for that content and putting it on VHS was considered fair use of content. Fair use is disappearing with technology that makes it easier to use our rights. I lost a completely legal recording of a movie to watch for myself when I wanted because of installing media player 11, which works for large corporations while throwing away and ignoring my legal rights to view my fully paid for cable. This is a sad state where Microsoft is selling you out because there isn't competition and because big business pays more than you or I. For shame, I am so angry I barely know what to do except say, Linux Myth TV here I come...

My Brother and his long time girlfriend and my long time friend Meghan "Doc" Dougherty are engaged. I am very happy for them both, I wish them both the best of luck, life, and everything else.

I am going to be the best man for the wedding which is nice, the wedding date is September 15th 2007, so as of then my family will grow.

It is very exciting news a very long time in the making.

Well I guess my fifteen minutes of fame is being extended a little longer. Yesterday evening CBS came and filmed an interview with me about energy drinks. After the interview they taped a bunch of my friends drinking and trying new energy drinks. So I will be on national news this Sunday. Likely some of my friends will be on as well. It was kind of crazy having a news crew over to my apartment for the afternoon to film everything, but I enjoyed the experience and getting to see how that all works, over 5 hours of set up and filming for 3 to 5 minutes of actual air time, crazy. I had no idea energy drinks would ever get this big, but it is nice to be the default energy drink expert.

So find your local time and channel and you can catch me on CBS,
CBS Sunday airtime and channels

I have said it for a long time now that XML and SOAP are bloated and most of the time the wrong way to do anything. Well it seems lead api developers are agreeing with me, it might have been the decade of XML but I hope to slowly see it fade to a hardly used only when needed standard, instead of the if it doesn't use XML it obviously isn't designed well.

Soap i wasted so much time and clock cycle for projects that you never did well and were always replaced.

let me say now I'd never choose to use SOAP and WSDL again. I was wrong

Hey for those that missed the CBS video or wanted to see it, here is the video clip that I recorded.

Energy Drinks on CBS

I have heard the java string class will finally get the isEmpty method in an upcoming release. Lets hope it is in 1.6, because I can't wait much longer, I can't for the life of me see why this was ignored for so long. Why have I had to put this in so many freakin if statements when this could have been fixed by adding a very easy and simple but amazingly easy to read and useful method.

String randWord;

/*
random code or back in forth between many different classes
*/

String someFunction() {
if(randWord!=null && !randWord.equals("")) {
/*do something*/
}

....
}

all of this could just be replaced and make the code so much more readable with the isEmpty function, becoming the following...

if( !randWord.isEmpty() ) {
/*do something*/
}

I want this functionality and I want it now... I guess since java is now opensource I should just go override the String class to add one simple function! So much value and so simple.

I hate spam, but sometimes it is really funny... I got a spam email with the best title, it just made me laugh...

Title: "espionage walnut"

Be afraid of the walnut, be very afraid. "Thats Mr. Walnut to you!"

It is nice to get a couple of days off to spend with friends and family, I hope everyone has a good time.
peace,love, and stuffing,
Dan

I found this pretty impressive.

My grandfather passed away this morning... I am sad. He was with family and had no pain, he was a great man and he will be missed, but he did go in the best way possible.