Nat Arem's Blog

Not too much to say. I downloaded the Express edition of the program from MSDN, bought a book on Amazon to learn console apps (see here) and I started playing around with some of the tutorials on the MSDN website. It seems pretty simple to do basic programs, hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the language as things get more complex. Starting at the console level should probably help with that goal. After I work through this book, I’ll probably pick up a copy of another more advanced book to help with Windows Apps and maybe the Cookbook. After that I should be well on my way to being able to write what I have in mind (various things, nothing too concrete right now).

gl to me.

I’ve never been a smoker. I’ve never even tried a cigarette. But this is pretty sick.

If you’ve had money frozen in NETELLER for awhile, you can go get it now. They finally started allowing US members to withdraw. Tell your friends.

I P2Ped my money out 6 months ago at a 1.9% transfer fee. Since I had it in a 5% annual money market, I guess I made a small amount of money on the decision to take it out. But it was basically breakeven.

Update.

I recently received this comment: “you pay tax on money market account interest. it was a loss”

I also get to deduct the 1.9% in fees that I paid. I’m pretty sure it was about breakeven.

I’m finally back in Atlanta after a three month excursion around the country/world. And it feels good to be back. I realllllly like this city and I’m excited to spend the next year (at least) here.

The drive down was relatively uneventful. I left the Philadelphia suburbs around 10:15 AM with a carful of stuff. I didn’t have a trailer or anything. My trip looked something like this…

I stopped the first time primarily for gas and the second time because I saw a Quizno’s sign and I was freaking STARVING by then. I hit a ton of traffic just after the first stop — it seemed like it was probably just VA weekend beach traffic because the road was just crawling at like 10 mph for about 30-35 miles and I never saw construction or an accident. There were just too many cars on the road for everything to run at normal speed I guess. Kinda frustrating, but it happens. Other than that, it was a smooth trip and I got to my apt at almost exactly midnight.

After a few hours of unpacking and setting stuff up, I’m exhausted. It’s almost 3 am and it’s time to sleep.

I just got my first one of these porn spammer invites on facebook. Of course, like everyone else, I get like 2 a day on myspace. This completely ruins things because one of the major things that I liked about facebook v myspace was the lack of fake girl spammers. Opening up facebook to non-edu emails was good on some levels, but I really hope they find a way to keep this under control a little better than that piece of crap website known as myspace.

Bonds, a known steroid user, about to break one of the most-cherished records in American sport at least partially because of cheating.

Mike Vick, once the face of the NFL, about to end up in court and maybe jail over what essentially amounts to animal murder.

Then it turns out that NBA games have been rigged for at least two years by one crooked ref being controlled by the famed Gambino crime family in NYC. And maybe there are more refs, who knows.

And then the Tour de France, already starting without Ullrich, Basso and Landis because of doping, ends up kicking out the best team in the race (Astana) because of Vinokourov and the very next day, the likely race winner, Michael Rasmussen, is out of the Tour for being shady and lying. Of course, the Astana team leaving takes out another one of the best Grand Tour riders in the world, Andreas Kloden. The field basically doesn’t include the supposed 5 best riders in the world. At this point, who knows how good they or anyone else is at cycling?

And to top it off, Gary Player says that he thinks 10 PGA golfers are probably using steroids.

This is nuts.