Author: Joe

Categories
Adventure

Jury Duty in Atlantic City

Yesterday I had to do my civic duty and participate in jury duty. This time it was in sketchy Atlantic City not the fairly new building in Mays Landing. I had to park in a parking garage a few blocks from the courthouse.

The parking garage was pretty gross. The walk from the garage wasn’t too pleasant either. I don’t know how they have jurors make that walk. I honestly wouldn’t want my mom to be walking in that part of town.

When I arrived at the courthouse I had to go through a metal detector. I made it through on my first attempt, I felt so proud. Then I had to wait in a line with some fairly miserable people (it is jury duty after all) to get registered, etc. Many people were talking about how fed up they were with living in New Jersey and how they were hoping to move someplace else. I’m pretty sure it’s the cost of living and taxes that primarily had them up in arms.

Then I took a seat and waited and waited some more. Luckily one of the cases had settled early that morning, so they would only need our group for one potential trial. The woman next to me turns out is the sister-in-law of someone I grew up with. She was really cool, and destroyed me in two games of checkers on her iPad. Apparently I’m pretty bad at checkers. I did defeat her in a game of air hockey however. I was surprised at how many iPads people had brought there.

As we were being led to the courtroom like cattle a former co-worker’s husband recognized me and we chatted a bit. Mr. Battistelli shared my views on Atlantic City (or at least the part where we were situated) and it was cool to see a familiar face.

As we got to the courtroom for jury selection, I stood hoping not to get called. This just wouldn’t of been a good week had I been selected. It was most entertaining listening to some of the excuses that people had once they were called up. After about an hour and a half, the jury was selected and we were sent home.

They really need to come up with a way to make the process a bit more bearable. iPad checkers and air hockey are my suggestions.

Categories
Video Games

Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country ReturnsI finally beat the last boss on Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii. This game was really challenging, like some of the old school platformers that my brothers and I would play for hours on end growing up. I must’ve tried to beat that last boss over a hundred times before I finally got him and brought the bananas back to the island.

The rest of the game of really well done and did justice to the old Super Nintendo Donkey Kong Country games. But again I must stress how difficult the levels were overall, but how rewarding it felt to beat them. I genuinely felt excited upon beating some of the levels.

I didn’t try the co-op play, but supposedly that’s pretty cool too. There’s also some hidden levels after beating the game, but I haven’t been brave enough to attempt them.

Categories
Sports

Disqualified from the Rat Race 10K

I ran in the Rat Race 10K trail run with NGM. It was in Wells Mills Park in Waretown, NJ. Getting there was a breeze, just hopped on the Parkway to exit 69. It was nice not having to spend as much time in a car as the last few races I’ve run in.

The weather wasn’t as kind as the car ride over. It was freezing out. I know that March can be quite a fickle month weather wise, but I wasn’t expecting such a cold day when we signed up. Oh well, I was a bit more bundled up and ready to go.

There were probably about 300 or so people there and we all gathered around the start line. The organizer’s son treated us to a Japanese song that he sang for all the recent earthquake and tsunami victims. He was very much into and excited about his performance and it was most amusing and a great start to our race.

The race itself was a really nice trail. I was thrilled to be running in the soft sandy soil of the pine barrens. The past couple of races have been on some mean rocks and have been taking their toll on my old man knees and lower back. The trails were great, with some very cool planks covering some water parts.

I finished with a time of 38:29. This would have been a personal best by a half hour at least and meant that I was an incredibly fast human being. However, 60 or so of us runners had apparently taken a wrong turn on one of the trails and ran more of a 6K than the actual 10K. We were disqualified from the race and the looks of the first group of legit racers when they saw all of us already at the finish line was great.

There was a free lunch afterwards that we drove to. I ate an entire basket of cheesy poofs just because they were there and we left before eating there. We drove to the Ocean Breeze Diner which was nearby and got a yummy lunch.

Even though I ran the wrong way and was disqualified from the race, it was still a really good time. I think I’ll have to go back and run there again, it seemed like a really nice park.

Categories
Development

Add Fields to User in Drupal 7

Drupal User Manage FieldsI remember hearing that you could add, edit and arrange fields for storing user data in Drupal 7, but initially couldn’t figure out just where to do this. This pretty much does what the Profile module had done in previous versions.

Just go to:

Configuration > People > Account Settings

Then click on the Manage Fields tab, and then just manage the fields just like you would for a Content Type.

It’s so simple. If you feel that you need more features than what’s provided in core, the Profile 2 module seems like something worth checking out.

Categories
Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 3

Day 3 was pretty cool. I walked over to the West Egg Cafe for an early breakfast. Got blueberry and granola pancakes which they called crunchberry pancakes. They were massive and very good.

The Keynote Speaker was very entertaining. It was usability expert Jared Spool. He gave a good presentation, and had much of the room laughing at times.

Workbench: Managing Content Management

About the Workbench module. This modules seems great and will be a perfect fit for atlantic.edu to manage users and the content publishing process. This is a very exciting module and I look forward to using it.

Drupal Commerce: Setting up Shop on Drupal 7

This was an excellent presentation. It’s great to see just how much hard work goes into module development. I’m going to have to seriously consider whether or not to go with this one right away or not. Great job.

Drupal 7 Theming Basics

Wasn’t a big fan of this one. There were a lot of errors on the slides, it seemed a bit hurried.

Building awesome user interfaces with Drupal 7’s Form, AJAX, and Theme systems

I was just plain old burned out at this point. There was some cool stuff demonstrated, but I thought it was a bit too much for me to follow at times.

Night Exploration

I walked over to the massive Apple Store then stopped by Giordano’s to get some dinner. I went with the Italian beef sandwich not the deep dish pizza. I then walked in some other random stores for warmth, stopping in the Giaradelli store for a yummy peanut butter something sundae. It was great.

I then stopped in the Disney store to see if they had Thanos. They didn’t, but oh well I continued to explore more of Michigan Ave. The shopping is really weird to me, Floors are kinda small, but many many stories tall. I know it makes sense given the buildings here, but it still seemed rather strange to me.

On my way back to the hotel I let some bum sucker me into a shoe shine. Yep, that’s right I got my sneakers which should of been thrown out 4 months ago shined. I feel so dirty and scammed right now, but just didn’t have it in me to say no. I’m really getting exhausted from this whole adventure.

Categories
Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 2 & Exploration

IMG_0749I work up early and took a walk around the city in the rain to find something to eat for breakfast. I would up at some simple bagel shop. It was nothing too special. Then the sessions began.

Views Demystified

I found this session to be very useful. It started a bit on the slow side and I was beginning to feel that it was going to be a waste of time. But then out of the blue the attachment display was mentioned. For reasons that cannot be explained I wasn’t aware of this in Views. This alone was amazing to discover.

Making Beautiful Maps

This session was ok. The openlayers library and TileMill are two things that I will be checking out. The guys were extremely knowledgeable, but at times a bit too much over my head.

Design Thinking

The panel was great, but I really didn’t like the session. There really wasn’t any solid point to it for me. They just played a few videos and just seemed to be winging it at times.

Baby Got Backend: Content Administrators are Users Too

This was a pretty goos sesssion, the content admins are very important to me when developing a site. They had some very useful tips. I just wish they had shown some actual examples.

Drupal 7 JavaScript for Developers

I didn’t know what to expect, this can be a very difficult subject. The presenters did do an excellent job though. Good suggestions of examples and going over #states was great. Some very useful stuff here that I’m bound to use in the not too distant future.

Lego Store

I did make a trek (actually just 3 blocks or so) to the Lego Store. They had some amazing sculptures there. Including a life size Darth Vader and R2-D2! So glad I stopped here for some photos.

I also managed to walk around the city a bit too. Some amazing buildings here, with impressive sights all over the place. I never got that creepy feeling where you feel like you have to be on alert while walking around. It was really pleasant minus the damp rain.