I have been thinking about just using my Gmail account as my primary e-mail account but I am somewhat reluctant for a few reasons.

• No true POP3/IMAP support. This is a big negative for using Gmail because I like my current @badice.com IMAP account so much.
• More capabilities with using a local mail client. Using something Mozilla Thunderbird gives me the ability to have multiple signatures, unlimited space (as big as my hosting account), and more control over what my e-mail looks like.

As of right now I am thinking of buying another domain personalized for me and using that domain for e-mail and a personal site. Still haven’t made up my mind though.

School starts in 6 days and I already have a couple of my books (I am still waiting for another to arrive in the mail). Half.com is a God-send. Being able to buy books at such a reduced price is great and the two that I’ve already received are in great shape, so no dissappointments there.

It seems that everyone and their mom is switching to WordPress for their blogging needs. Chu Yeow did and it seems that he is already very happy with the change.

I am putting the final touches on the database design for the new version of badice.com. I designed it with flexibility in mind and wanting to have the ability in the future to expand it. The one thing I am dissappointed about is the fact that my host does not allow InnoDB type tables. Because of this I am forced to make sure all updates, inserts, and deletions are carried out in the program instead of internally in the database. From a systems design standpoint it is the wrong thing to do. Why?

1. More code
2. More of a chance to miss a small detail. With a parameter in the database design (with InnoDB) you can have all tables reliant on another table delete their records related to a record that is its parent.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but you catch my drift.

I had my blood work done this morning and I have to say that it was not as bad as I had thought it would be. Yes, being there for 4 hrs. was a little annoying but both of the nurses were very good with their needles and I only had discomfort once. Now I get to wait for the results…

I’ve been watching people move in all over town, either into the dorms or apartments. I am ready for the school to start and get back into the groove of class. I am about to finish working on the classes list and some other little site maintenance.

Tomorrow I will be going in for a regular blood test plus a blood sugar test. The doctor told me that the blood sugar test will take a total of 3 hrs. with the regular blood test taking about 20 minutes.

For the blood sugar testing they will take my blood sugar level when I first get in. They will then give me this thick sugar liquid and take my blood sugar once an hour for the next 3 hours measuring any change that may occur.

I am somewhat worried about the results of the test because it will reveal if I am hypoglycemic or diabetic.

So that will be my exciting Friday. The alternator on my truck was totally shot and completely draining the battery but that was fixed tonight so everything is good again and one less stressful thing to worry about.

Google started trading today at $85 a share which is a good deal lower than what was originally planned. Here is a take on the IPO and what can be expected.

Personally I think the IPO will be a flop… There will be a big interest for the next few days and then it will simmer out and people will realize how little of a deal it really is. What I am truly worried about is how Google will handle itself and the decisions it will make now that it is public.

This should get interesting.

Lubbock has had some great weather the last few days and will probably continue to have good weather for a few more. The temperature today is supposed to be around 78 with a light breeze, just awesome!

Now, if I felt 100% I might even like the weather more but my head pain just won’t go away.

I am having serious troubles getting my USB Linksys adapter to see a hidden Airport network. If anyone would like to help me in getting this thing setup I would greatly appreciate it as I have spent the last few hours reading and searching and still found nothing that helps me with my problem.

If you have any ideas please send me an e-mail at ssegraves [AT] gmail.com

I’ve been looking for a decent PHP editor for Mac and PC for the last few days but have been unable to find anything really great. There is the Eclipse Project, which looks very good and with a plugin can do most of the PHP work I need it to. Zend has a development environment that would be perfect but it’s pricey and is written in Java (and I’m not sure how good their coding is). The last one I looked at was ActiveState’s Komodo which looks awesome but only works on Windows and is again, somewhat pricey.

If anyone has any opinions on what editor would suit my needs please send an e-mail to ssegraves [AT] gmail.com

My main requirement is a color syntax highlighting, class browser, works on both Windows and Mac OS X, and intellisense would be nice.

We have recently started restructuring a site to include some new elements to make managing it easier. When we first set out the design of the new features was straight forward and my coworker and I both felt we had a good grasp of what was going to happen on both the database side and in the actual interface. We were dead wrong.

Development started out on the right foot but as we added certain functionality we began to realize that the functionality was beginning to change other pieces of the software. The result was database problems that could not be resolved through rewriting queries and making table changes, to fix the problems we would have to restructure the database completely. Not an option at this point.

The solution? Inform the client of the bigger requirements and the change of certain elements and let them make the call.

Basically I hate being in a situation like this, it is not fun for anyone and it just adds costly time to development. Was it a problem of foresight for my coworker and I? Personally, I think we could have taken more time to lay out the needs and the changes that would occur but I also think that there were certain things we wouldn’t be able to see effected until we put the system in action.

This makes me lean much more to modular design in software, with components completely seperated from one another and linked by a central “switchboard”. Hello, Java! Java’s OO design forces this onto the developer (for the most part) and makes software development a much more modular process. C/C++ do this as well but since they do not force it like Java there are ways to get into sloppy, nonmodular code.