Okay, everyone knows Jadakiss is a nice lyricist but on his new album there are a few things which I question…

First of all, he says “Wanna hide somethin’ from a n*gga put it in a book.” Kanye later says “I told her I’m Nigerian, that’s straight up n*gga”. Then again Jada says, “The average n*gga don’t appreciate nothin’.”

I’m not afro-Canadian or even close to “black” but I think this goes too far. It’s not only racism, but against “black” people in general, and it also insults Nigerians. Nigerians can’t help the what there country is called nor what their ajective is in English.

The problem is that Jada and Kanye know better. Even though “n*gga” may be a word used way too often and in a negative conotation in hip-hop. These two men know better and should be working harder on their rhymes to make these expressions make sense in a positive way.

I hold these two men in higher regards than most MCs and I expect that they will “Do The Right Thing”?

I have seen 2 versions of I, Robot. First, I saw the Sealab 2021 episode, which is great. Then, I saw the movie, just now, featuring Will Smith. It was pretty damned good too.

I went to IMDB.com and it only got a 6.5/10 rating which kind of disapointed me. Maybe I was just lucky that I never really paid attention to the trailer. I just saw a spot on G4Tech TV the other day and I wanted to see it after that. I’ve heard that the trailers give away the whole story which is quite likely. I don’t watch TV except for at work during my breaks so I never really see trailer, except maybe the odd one on the net.

I would give the move a 8/10. It wasn’t a great movie, however it was very entertaining and that’s what I want in a big summer blockbuster. Will Smith does his usually cool good guy role and I’m so glad they cast the Sandra Bullock look-alike as the female role instead of the real Sandra Bullock. I would have liked seen this movie done as an anime instead of a live action though. I think if it was done in the style of “The Second Renaissance” from the Animatrix, it would have been an amazing movie. They could have even thrown in some style from “Akira” for the chase scenes and it would have blown people away.

So I was talking to one of my friends in Korea on MSN about a chick he was going to meet and this is what I said after I saw her picture:

[08:40:22 PM] Damien : dood that chick looks like an ajuma (old lady). how old is she?
[08:40:33 PM] Friend : 25
[08:40:36 PM] Damien : what?
[08:40:42 PM] Damien : sounds like shes lying
[08:40:44 PM] Friend : that what she says
[08:41:05 PM] Damien : maybe in reverse dog years. lol
[08:41:13 PM] Friend : might just be the way she dresses and does her hair
[08:41:17 PM] Friend : haha
[08:41:23 PM] Friend : reverse dog years
[08:41:43 PM] Damien : i just laughed harder than i have laughed in a long time
[08:42:08 PM] Damien : oh damn. i dont remember the last time i made myself laugh so hard.

HAHAHA. Reverse dog years…

I worked most of the day on VDot. I didn’t get a lot done but there are some serious improvements. Here is what I did today:

• Added a Calander search ability. This will show you what day there were messages added and if you click on the day then you can see those messages.
• Added a text search. This is fairly limited right now as it only searches for a single string in the subject and body fields. I hope to make this a little more flexible so that I can search for multiple strings and you can choose which fields to search on.
• Fixed some formatting issues. Site looks pretty snazzy to me.

I am tired and my brain is full of too much code and my place is too hot even with the fan on so I have to go lay down and watch Simpsons.

Later…

So after I got home from work today I wanted to go get some beer since it was pretty hot. So I jumped in the Trooper and took a ride down to the local beer store. Then on my way home I decided to stop at Safeway and pick up some groceries so I didn’t have to cook anything (being on the second floor of an old house gets a bit hot when you have the oven on). So I got my groceries and I went up to the counter where this blonde girl working the till was complaining about how hot it was, when it was reasonable in the store. She asked me how I was doing, I said, “Okay” and asked her the same question in return. She was quite for a while and then she said, “Sorry, for not being too talkative.” What? I don’t care if she talks to me… Then she takes my Safeway and Airmiles card, reads them, and says, “Thank you Mr. ‘Gahbrielson’” Umm, that’s “Gabrielson” but whatever. Then she gives me my cards back and I pay for my stuff. As I grab my cards, I made sure to use my left hand so that she could see my ring. When the reciept prints out she grabs it and examines the bottom way closer than normal and says, “Thank you Mr. ‘Gahbrielson’”. I said, “Uhh, yeah, thanks.” The whole time she was giving me this weird/uncomfortable looks. Now I don’t know if she was just doing some new Safeway customer service thing or if she was tryin’ to get close to me, but it was weird as hell and I didn’t like it. In the future I will try to avoid Ms. S at that Safeway.

P.S.
The new roots albums is TITE!!!!!!!!!! Better than their last two albums or so. Getting back to the original. “Everybody is a staaaaar!”

As I was laying in bed last night, I couldn’t get my mind off of VDot. Yes, that’s how much of a geek I am.

Anyway, I thought of some cool stuff that I want to include in VDot.

• Localization: This is quite feasable with ASP.NET 2.0. I think that VDot will initially be available in English and Korean (thanks to my wife) and hopefully some of our Polish friends can help with the translation also.
• dotMSN: This is a cool library that allows MSN Messenger access. I hope to use this for forumn reply notifications and posibly new user creation authentications.
• DB: I am going to move away from XML because ASP.NET 2.0 has simple user management in an Access database. Although this may increase the size of the app, this should help to speed up queries and make complex queries a lot more simple.

I can’t think of anything else right now but I know I have a bunch of ideas in the back of my head somewhere. I’ll have to keep a notepad by my bed.

VatoBlog is DEAD!

Sorry folks. Although it may be dead, that does not mean that it can’t be reborn into something better. A few days ago I mentioned that I was thinking of redoing the app in ASP.NET 2.0 and that is what I have chose to do.

Last night I began development of VDot, which will be the tentative name for the new app. I am hoping that most of the app will be new code. In fact, I think I am going to move away from XML and back to Access for cleaner code and simplified data access. I just miss using SQL to query data.

ASP.NET 2.0 has some nice features which I will be making use of the help minimize code and size. One of the things I really love about it is the Master page ability which kind of acts like a template for pages, since all the pages in VDot will have the same layout, this will greatly decrease the amount of code needed and simplify updating pages.

Anyway, I hope to have a version of VDot out sooner than later. Stay tuned!

Yeah, you need Korean fonts to display the title properly, so what?

Anyway… There is a street here in Regina, actually it is 11th Avenue. It has a bunch of asian stores on it, its supposed to be like a little Chinatown but whatever. There is a store there called “???????????? (Seoul Mart)”. Of course it’s a store for Korean products owned by Koreans. I went there again today, this is my second time to go there. This time the owner of the store was working the counter, well actually it was some little punk 12 year old when I walked in but the owner was there when I paid for my stuff. So I got some stuff and I went to the counter with it. While he was ringing it up, I asked him if he knew where I could buy some ???? (soju). He said, “I have some at my house, but I am not allowed to sell it.” Since he doesn’t have a liquor license. He then asked, “Is it for you or your students?” I thought, “What? Am I in Korea again? My students?” So I said, “It’s for me.” He was quiet for a while and then he said, “What day is good for you…?” While he was saying this, I thought, “Oh, maybe he will sell me some under the table.” Then he continued, “I will invite you to my house.”

WHAT? I just met this guy and he is inviting me to his house. I mean, he seems cool and all but I dont’t want to go to his house do I?

So I said, “No thanks, you don’t need to do that.” He just smiled and was quiet again. When I was paying for my stuff, I explained my circumstances and how I had just returned from Korea and so on. I asked him again if he knew of any store that sold ???? (soju) but he didn’t so I said, “Thanks” and left. Now, that I think of it some more, I should have said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” but that would be kind of weird. I need to start shopping there more often and get closer to this guy.

I’ve been happy and I’ve been sad
When you are sad, you feel like you will never be happy
And when you are happy, you never remeber being sad
But when you are sad, things seem more real
Happiness is just a memory
I’m good at being sad

For the last couple days, I’ve been doing some Photoshop and ImageReady training. They are both pretty cool apps. I’ve made a few images for the new VatoLand & VatoBlog.

I have also begun playing with Visual Studio Web Developer Express 2005 Beta 1. It looks like there are a lot of cool new features in ASP.NET 2.0 and I have begun thinking about rewriting VatoBlog again to take full advantage of ASP.NET 2.0. I have also begun to think about changing the name of VatoBlog to something else. If you have any suggestions for the new name let me know and I will keep you posted of the decisions I make.

Peace…