If you look to the top of my web site, you’ll notice that I added something to make the top of my site look a little more special. I added a fun little combination of graphics and text that displays a user’s IP address. I’m very excited about it for some reason.

I am trying to think of ways to actually make my RSS feed useful. I read an article online about feeds and I got some ideas, one of which I put in use. Said idea came to me when I read the word quotations. Now, my RSS feed contains only snippets of interesting ideas included within the actual post. So far I like the idea. Hopefully I can still find some more ways to keep my RSS feed interesting and updated.

Regarding what I’m looking at while writing this post, I am trying to find out how to use MySQL to make my blog more of a blog, in that it might include more than one post on a page. I figured out how to do this with text files (in a weird, unsatisfactory method), but it would work a lot better with sql. Of course, once I get the sql-nuked script working, I will make both versions of the current blog (one post per page and more than one post per page) available for download. They are still good, very simple scripts for people who cannot use mysql.

Regarding the title of this post, I want to build a shed - a very simple shed. I also want some video games to play and to ride my bike. Oh, and roller hockey, I want to play that.

I’m adding this little snippet hours after writing the original post: I think I may have figured out how to use mysql in making blogs by following tuts on spoono, so look for the new news program very soon. Also, I appear to have developed a shockingly easy pagination method that I’ll discuss more about in the very near future.

1. Too many guys (should be none),
2. People scare me.

And those are the two reasons why MySpace is stupid!

Regarding some actual news, information, or semi-intelligent thoughts, for those who do not already know, I am going to RIT. That’s about all I know. There is a dual degree program available for computer engineering, and as far as I know, I am not in it. I would like to be, but i do not know how to be in it. I hope I can still be in it.

I’ve been working a lot lately. Today I popped around 40-50 very large bags of popcorn (maybe more, probably not less). These bags are large (very large). For those who are popcorn cooking virgins, the act is not a calm one. At only two points in the entire 210 minute process did I have chances to rest. Those chances were short-lived (about 20 seconds each). It was insane. I was supposed to work tomorrow, but someone switched with me so I can play baseball. The game better not be cancelled. Since I am no longer working Friday, I work for a total of 30.5 hours this upcoming week. I want money: large amounts of money.

Here is a special piece of information to those who are lucky enough to live in Buffalo and read this site within the next nine hours: Jerry Seinfeld will be at the Dipson Theatres in the McKinley Mall for a private screening of Prairie Home Companion at 10:30 AM. Get out your cameras, ’cause Jerry’s coming to see a movie!

To reiterate, it will really suck if baseball is cancelled tomorrow. I need money, and I better not be passing up a chance to make money for no reason.

The other night I began reading The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. I did so after being convinced by Vicki that I should read the book before I try to invest my millions (Whoops, paradox alert: if I truly had millions, why would I bother reading The Automatic Millionaire?). So I read the first chapter about the author David Bach’s meeting with the automatic millionaire, one of his students (who was thirty years older than Bach; the teacher has become the student, apparently). This is when I realized that the only concept the book relies on is a farce.

Before I continue any further, let’s discuss the point of Millionaire for those who are unfamiliar with the work. Bach’s "one-step plan" is actually a series of steps toward becoming a millionaire in the very distant future and retiring early (the millionaire Bach meets with retires in his early fifties). The first step of one total step is to take your money and start paying off debt early (mortgages, etc.). The second step out of one is to stop amassing debt. The third and final step of the one-step plan is to cut down on how much you spend on worthless, over-valued things and save more money (while not necessarily taking in more money). These steps are great and I really like how Bach emphasizes that people need to save more (instead of making 50% more but spending 100% more), but I have yet to find an irrefutable reason to follow Bach’s three-step one-step method. I also disagree with Bach’s mathematical system, in which any combination of numbers adds up to one.

Here is my problem with Bach’s plan. Becoming an automatic millionaire relies on being niggardly and cheap for the young, fun, vivacious part of one’s life in exchange for having all the time and money in the world when one is old! In addition, there’s no guarantee that one will even live long enough to ever become a millionaire. Hence, Bach’s plan has a very high chance of failure in that if one dies before retirement, he fails. His plan is rooted in living a "now" that, although possibly acceptable, is limited all for the sake of achieving a "then" that probably will not even be that great if it ever comes.

For those who don’t grasp what I am saying, most likely because I am horible at explaining things, I’ll use an analogy. Bach’s plan, applied to sports, would imply that one should spend the majority of his life training and building the skills necessary to be succesful and then only actually competing in the sport when one is around the age of 50. Sure, one will have a lot of talent, but at some point the body starts to age and becomes unreliable. All the talent and resources in the world mean nothing once one can’t move due to a broken hip! This is what Bach’s plan is: save money for the entirety of life before retirement. The problem here is clear: no one knows if they will even reach retirement and if that point is reached, what about all the times one was required to limit himself when he was still young and sprightly?

The root of the problem is simple and omnipresent: People die. It happens. And Bach says to forget about that inevitability and assume that "it won’t happen to you; you’re exempt from everything in the world that seeks to destroy life." My feeling is that people need to accept the inevitability of mortality and live in the present. Spend today, buy a latte; it won’t make you evil or poor. Plan for the future but don’t let the prospects of consequences ruin what you have or can have now.

Today I worked and also received my paycheck a day early. We usully get the checks on Thursdays, but I guess today was different. I digress: I am thinking about framing my check. Why would I do something silly like that? Well, this paycheck was for the nearly innumerable amount of $4.86 (I think it was 86 cents). Yes, that’s what one gets if he or she lives in New York, gets paid minimum wage, and works for only 45 minutes. This coming week makes up for it, however. I am scheduled to work a total of 35.5 hours, which before taxes equals about $239 and change.

For those interested in even the most minute details of my life, you will be excited to hear that I have finally found a reliable alarm clock (I am assuming it will be reliable; I only used it today). The new alarm clock is the alarms on my phone. I can set the phone to ring at certain times during the day. The phone rang and I woke up on time this morning.

Regarding my web site, I am trying to find some graphics I can throw in with the large amounts of text. They’ll help to liven up the pages some, I hope. I just have to build up the impetus to actually find some images and put them in the pages.

Again I made the mistake of making a post without actually having anything to write about. Whoops.

Can’t read the title? Well, if so, either because you cannot read Japanese or rectangles, depending upon your computer’s support or lack thereof for Japanese characters, it says "nihongo," or Japanese.

Why the Japanese title? Because I am trying to teach myself Japanese. Simple Japanese grammar seems to make sense despite the idiotic sentence structure (subject object verb or I web sites love). But, I would have to guess that if you grow up speaking and understanding that way, anything else would probably seem strange. Anyway, what I am trying to teach myself at the moment is the Japanese character alphabet called hiragana. It is the primary Japanese set, the other set being katakana (which, as far as I know, is used for foreign sounds). There’s also the set of over 1,000 Chinese characters called kanji (the title is written in kanji). Today was set aside for all of the hiragana characters based on "a." Should be a blast.

For those who dislike Japan or anything related to Japan (not that I’m a big fan of the country, it doesn’t sound like that great of a place), check out this site. It has a few very interesting articles about Japan and its culture. Good to pass some time.

Well, the Sabres’ season is done. Pretty upsetting. What’s good is that there’s another season just a few months away during which the Sabres can do quite well and then not win the Stanley Cup. Can’t think of a better way to spend seven to eight months out of a year.

Then again, one can’t forget about the off–season. This is a time (for the Sabres) classically spent by making very few trades and hyping up any obviously minor transactions that do actually occur. However, in the Sabres’ defense, the Lydman transaction had a big impact in the playoffs (he was +13 after game 6) and the Numminen transaction had a big impact during the season. I don’t know for sure what other moves were made during the off-season, but the Sabres, although making some good ones, still did not make any trades for players who were big at the time, just like always. This year should be no different.

コーリー
(That was my name is Japanese, using the katakana set. If you got squares, download some language support.)