It’s been a while since I’ve actually posted an update, so I thought it was about time to, since there’s a lull in the chaos here at Planet.

I’m currently half moved in to my cousin’s place, now. I’ll be sharing an apartment with him and his girlfriend for the next year. I love my parents, but I really don’t feel right living at home after being on my own for so long. Once everything gets settled and I can get my desk and stuff up there in my own room, it’ll be a lot better.

I’ve been working at Planet AT&T as a Sales Rep for almost two months, now. Using it as supplementary income to allow me to cut back on consulting work at OV while other projects are in development. It’s a brain-numbingly easy job, but now that I’m living in Jacksonville it’s a bit of a chore to come in to Gadsden to work. Not to mention with gas prices rapidly increasing, it’s starting to get to the point where I don’t make enough to justify the expense of coming here. After my hourly pay goes away in the next week, it’ll get even worse. The job is entirely hit-or-miss commission, and we don’t make a dime off of 95% of the business we do here, bill payments and pre-paid cards. Chances are, I’ll quit soon after the hourly runs out. I found out they use PHP on their intranet, though. I may take a stab at getting a job there doing PHP stuff. We’ll see.

In other news, I’ll be visiting Ruzena in June, so I’m excited about that. By then, it’ll be six months since the last time I’ve seen her, so I’m really looking forward to seeing her again. I’ve missed her a lot. Six months is really too long to go without seeing each other. Hopefully, I can get things together so I’ll be able to move up to that area, within the next couple years. It’ll be nice when I can just go see her whenever I want, instead of having to plan out trips, make sure they’re okay, spend money on tickets, and only get to see her for a week at a time.

As for Omega Vortex, things are moving along steadily. We’re about to start a plan of expansion over the coming months that includes hiring new developers, unveiling new services, and announcing key partnerships and acquisitions. We’ll be announcing and releasing a new product soon, making some changes to our OmegaFlash solution to bring it back under the umbrella and prepare it for Omega Matrix integration, as well as prepare integration points for the rest of our upcoming Educational Suite.

Well, that’s a pretty cumulative update for what’s been going on lately.

Well, Ruzena wanted her own blog that she could girlify up and such as much as she wanted to. Plus, her readers were primarily her family and such, so my technical posts were confusing people. After a good amount of time blogging together, we decided to split the blogs apart and each have our own place.

My blog remains here. You can view her blog at http://www.ruzenathibault.com and if you would like to keep reading the entries in a combined form, you can use http://www.jeremyandruzena.com … It isn’t completely setup yet, and if anyone knows a Planet-type software built in PHP or a plugin for WordPress that will make it behave like a Planet-type software, that would be great.

Anyway, maybe we’ll both blog more.

For those of you who are unaware, Ruzena’s father is in the Navy. He was deployed to Iraq a couple years ago. Thankfully, he made it home safe and sound. He wrote a book about his experiences, which I highly recommend to anyone who really wants to know what’s going on there, directly from someone who was there. I’ve got my copy and have been reading through it, as I have time. It’s very well-written and does an excellent job of conveying how things were for him.

Get to it on Amazon, by clicking the book cover below. It’s not that expensive, and you’ll learn a lot from it.

Edit: Amazon’s currently sold out, at the moment. Get it at eCampus, or (if the site will work for you) search for ISBN (9781604418613) on Publish America.

Digg It

I’m trying out a new time tracking software I ran across the other day. RescueTime drops a little light-weight application onto your computer that monitors what applications and websites you’re in most frequently. I’ve got the widget for my top 10 activities of the last week on the sidebar, now. Keep in mind I just started on Wednesday.

Overall, it’s a relatively accurate little program. It lets you tag your own applications and sites, so you determine what’s referred to as “personal”, “procrastination”, or “work” to take from a few off my list. As you can see, I haven’t been working very much on my computer for the past couple days. I classify “work” as time that I spend doing things for Omega Vortex. Planet AT&T is one of my tags and will probably appear on my top 10 eventually, the more I use my laptop for day-to-day tasks at the store.

My only complaint is it seems to do all of its data management in YAML and it often chokes on various things. It also seems to completely lose the data intended for the request it tried to send when it does choke. Right now, I’ve only got a little over 8 hours logged into RescueTime and I’ve spent way, way, way more time on my computer than that. Edit: As a followup to this, it just tried to process another update and failed because it didn’t like something about the blog. So, it just randomly loses data. The whole last 30 minutes went without being logged. Hurrah. Maybe it’ll lose less data if I make it send updates more often, but they’d probably hate me if I spammed them with updates every 5 - 10 minutes.

Another complaint is that, from the error messages, it seems to be written in Ruby … but, I won’t go there.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with it. It just needs some work on its data delivery and not completely losing data when something goes wrong. I’d be cool if it threw out the offending entry in a parser error, but it seems like it just bails out on the entire request and doesn’t try again.

I’m hoping to use the time tracking in conjunction with my new phone to hopefully get myself more organized. The time tracking will be a motivator to stop procrastinating and doing other things when I should be working. The phone is a very easy way to keep track of important times and dates, because I’m very forgetful. Especially, when I get involved in something and lose track of time.

So, here’s to hopefully becoming more productive. I really need it, about now.

I announced it last year, so I’ll do it again this year. Today is Ruzena’s birthday.

She’s now 19 and even more beautiful than she was at 18. She’s aging very well, I think.

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

This could very well be unhealthy … But, I can’t help but think there’s got to be someone out there who’s worse. Much much worse …

I guess it could be worse.

After being undecided for such a long time, Ruzena bought me a book for Christmas. Not too long ago, I approached her with some questions. Some concerns that lingered in my mind. The same concerns that drove my conversion to agnosticism and eventually atheism not all that many years ago. Even since I’ve accepted Christ and brought Him back into my life, there were still questions that remained unanswered. She found the perfect book for me.

Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith (at Amazon) is one of the two books in the compilation book she got me for Christmas. It arrived here yesterday (late gift, I know ), and I’ve been reading some of it today. In two chapters, this book has managed to outline every question and uncertainty that I’ve had for Christianity and has managed to answer one of the major questions. I’m looking forward to reading more of the book, because I’ve always had a thirst for knowledge. I want my questions answered.

Christians and Atheists alike should have the opportunity to sit down and read this book. Really take in what it says and then think through your arguments for and against faith again. I know I will.

And thank you again, sweetheart, for an excellent choice in gifts. It is practical and serves a good purpose.

There’s someone, or someones rather, out there who’s been a little too interested in my personal life and business, lately. You know who you are. I’ve shown more professionalism in my pinky finger than you and everyone else you’re associated to, bar one person.

Go away. Leave me be and stop harassing my friends. I don’t know who you think you’re fooling, but you’re all the farthest thing from professionals, much less good at what you do.

Someone told me once that whoever said “Money Can’t Buy Happiness” never had any. We’ll I’ve had some, and I still say money can’t buy happiness. It’s not about the money. Money’s nice to have, but in my mind nothing will ever beat being able to help someone else and make them happy. That’s what brings me happiness.

Taking what looks like a hopeless situation and turning it into a success … That’s what brings me happiness.

I’m up way too late tonight, but it was all worth it. I’m incredibly happy that Ruzena has the perseverance to not give up even when the situation looks bleak. It also makes me happy that she trusts me enough to let me take control and do whatever I can to help. Because of her will to keep fighting when, admittedly, I would’ve even thrown in the towel and called it a night, I was inspired to do all of the research … handle all of the technical aspects of the problem she faced in order to try and help her succeed. And she did succeed.

I’m proud of her and words can’t describe how happy I am that I was able to help her like that. Everything I’ve gone through … everything I’ve learned … accomplished and failed … attained and lost … It’s night’s like this that are making it all worthwhile.

I’m looking for a way to get in touch with Congressman Ron Paul regarding a … rather important issue that I can’t detail publicly here. If anyone who may read this happens to have information on any possible way to contact him, via postal mail, e-mail, going to any upcoming appearances, anything … Please let me know. I’m willing to travel to get the information that I need, so don’t worry about location if I have to go to some appearance.

The more information on this subject, the better. Thanks.