So as a parent, you get to say awesome things like that all the time. Over the last 2 months my youngest daughter has just become affixiated with Winnie the Pooh. So of course my Wife and I try to get a couple things for her here and there that are related to Winnie the Pooh. But I find myself saying the funniest things. I think the best one was Last night when I asked my daughter if she was “brushing her teeth with Pooh”? We purchased a Winnie the Pooh toothbrush for her this weekend. But it doesn’t just end there, you get to say things like “Do you have Pooh on your ball?” or “Is that Pooh on your sock?”. If you figure out how to say these things at the right time, you get some really weird looks come back your way if you are out in public.

*Personal Side-note:
I really love being a Dad! I could not picture my life any different. I have a level of pride that I think could never be broken, but it only grows every day. I am just so so proud! Everything I do is always about trying to make a better life for my family and making sure that my kids have a good life. I have another little one on the way and I can’t wait!

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“Uh Oh!” as my daughter would say. I was tagged to write a poem, yes thats right, me. Kelly Cho tagged me in her poetry post that was originally started by Stretsh’s meme to see how poetic bloggers are. Lets see, its been somewhere around 10+ years since I had to write a poem, so lets see if I can put something together here. This will be an original piece, and I do mean piece, by RJ “Bobs” Matthis. I definitely know I am not a poet, but lets see if I can have fun with this anyway

The PHP Tree…

From your roots that were planted by Rasmus Lerdorf
To your expanding branches fed by Coder’s hard work
Oh why do people refuse to use strtotime()?
The correct function for the job makes your app sublime

Using substr() I can return chosen partial strings
Or I will start a while() loop that returns many things
Always use a switch() statement if options are many
Too many elseif() statements will drag you down plenty

Filter the input and always escape output if User Entry
Security is most important, not just complementary
Preventing MySQL injections is a very important thing!
So always be sure to use mysql_real_escape_string()

My PHP Tree, how beautiful are your functions
Since finding you I have never felt any compunction
Using your objects & functions makes me a happy fellow
Oh PHP, you have had me ever since typing echo()

by RJ “Bobs” Matthis

So thats it, that is my poem. Basically the logicalness you would expect from a programmer, you’re just lucky I didn’t throw in some binary chains (010101010101) in there somehow. So if you are interested in sharing your poetic spirit, I would like to tag the following 3 people: Saman, 2Perfect, & Melanie

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What or Who the heck is that?:
I was feeling like posting a real personal post. Something that helps you all dive into my personal world and is not just about Tips, Tricks, Comments, or Nonsense. So I wanted to let you all know about a tight group of friends I have.

Saman, myself, and a few of our friends refer to ourselves as the “Goldeneye Dogs”. Its just a name we gave ourselves many years ago. The 5 of us were constantly getting together to have Nintendo 64 Goldeneye sessions that would last pretty much the majority of the entire day. Every party, get together, pretty much anything always involved the Nintendo 64 and the video game Goldeneye. Its funny that a simple thing like a video game could impact and strengthen friendships as it did. This simple game helped create a “bond” that will last our entire lives.

The friendships are much older, but I think it was sometime around 1998 when we first called ourselves the Goldeneye Dogs. Of course it didn’t just come with a group title, we each had our own nicknames. Straight out of Reservoir Dogs of course. Saman is Mr. Brown. I am Mr. Blonde. Theo is Mr. White. Kyle is Mr. Pink. And Matt is Mr. Orange. Eventually we of course outgrew the majority of all that silliness. But it has always remained special to all of us. In fact, at my wedding, all the Dogs were my groomsmen and I had all the Dogs wear hankies with their designated color. This is why from time to time you may see Saman and I refer to each other with our nicknames in comments or posts.

Saman has recently informed me that a Half Life 2 Mod was created called Goldeneye Source. It is modeled off of the old Goldeneye video game. Completely updated and beautifully designed. When I found this out, I went and purchased a copy of Half Life 2 so I could play this mod. I will be posting a review about it soon along with a couple screenshots.

Here are a few funny pics of the Goldeneye Dogs as [kids] for you all to enjoy:

Goldeneye Dogs 1998
Holy Crap that was 9 years ago! I was just a punk kid working at Blockbuster
L to R: Brown, Blonde, Pink, Orange, White

Goldeneye Dogs 2000
This was taken at Saman’s goodbye party. He was leaving Colorado for California. Normally, you would think I accidentally transposed those, but for some reason Saman actually was going back to California - who does that? He wised up and came back.
L to R: Pink, Orange, White, Brown, Blonde

Goldeneye Dogs 2004
My Wedding. Brown was unable to attend but was there in spirit
L to R: White, Pink, Blonde, Orange, My Buddy Kory

The above top left logo image was designed by Saman to represent the Goldeneye Dogs. He did such an amazing job on the graphic. You may wonder why the logo has Saman with an afro. Maybe if you razz him enough on his site about it he will post a picture of the most beautiful afro ever grown.

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A horribly tragic event occurred yesterday at Virginia Tech. An extremely troubled young man by the name of Cho Seung-Hui was the gunman in a very deadly shooting rampage that has left at least 33 people dead.

Events when so unbelievable like this one occur, everybody of course starts asking the WWWWH’s (When, Where, What, Why, How’s?). I’m not sure if you have also been hearing it on the radio and such, but when callers call in to talk to DJs, so many have been saying “Its because of Video Games”. We so want to be able to blame something other than the perpetrator. It is so hard for us to believe that a human being is capable of such acts so we always try to find what MADE THEM DO IT.

We have to stop this blaming behavior that goes off on obscure tangents. When you go off on a major tangent, you are losing sight of what is important. The families and loved ones of the poor victims. Your cause is no longer about supporting them, but rather a cause that is just about your cause. The simple fact is there are just some crazy people out in this world. I’m not saying some are not MADE crazy by events in their life. I’m just saying that crazy people do extremely crazy things.

I can guarantee that even if my Nintendo Wii started glowing with a heavenly Aura and God’s voice came out of it and told me to do things I felt were not right, than I would check myself into a treatment center, because I’m not crazy. If somebody did act on what they were told and had seen, but they knew them to be wrong, and still did them anyway, that is a crazy & troubled person. Playing Video Games does not set you up to be a bad person now or ever in live. If it did, could you imagine the chaos our world would be?

So please, instead, focus on the victims, their families, their loved ones, all involved. Please after reading this right here, put them in your thoughts and have a moment of silence for a short period of time and let your cause be them.

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So you want to know what really grinds my gears?
Most Online Return Policies for Defective Items and those Copy and Paste Emails!

I purchased a stick of memory online a few months ago. The memory stick finally got to me and sure enough, it was a bad stick. I contacted the company from which I purchased the stick from - ZipZoomFly.com - and told them about the defective product. I requested that they send me a replacement stick along with a prepaid return label so I could return the defective product back to them. A few days later I received an email from someone in that organization that was just a copy and paste of their return policy, other than that no real attempt at solving my issue. It stated that returns have to be paid for by the customer, the returned product would have to go through testing, and then they would send me the replacement after they found the memory I received to be bad. I repeated my request, after all, they sold a defective item and I was not wanting to pay shipping for an item that was defective and not my fault. It wasn’t the cost of shipping, its the principles I hold dear on business transactions. You sold me a part that was claimed to be a brand new working part, thats what I bought, thats what I want, so take this back and give me what I bought from you.

Now I know I’m spoiled normally when it comes to good service, the majority of the technical buying I do is for my employer. When products are for a business rather than an everyday consumer, vendors bend at every request most of the time. “Something wrong with that part, sure thing we will get you a new one out right away, please just return the bad part with the included shipping label”. When it comes to my employer, this is what happens about 98% of the time, you are a business and a vendor does not want to lose you. But as an everyday consumer, you will see that most Online Companies treat you like dirt when it comes to defective returns.

So long story short, I just kept getting copy and paste emails back from ZipZoomFly.com. The memory stick was a Corsair memory stick and had a lifetime warranty. I decided that if I was going to pay to ship it anywhere, it would be to Corsair. I didn’t want to have any further dealings with ZipZoomFly.com period. Corsair on the other hand was great. I received constant email updates about where in the process my new and old stick were. I think there were about 5 update emails all together that I received from them. All typed out by an actual person. Now that is service and I was very grateful for that. That brightened up an overall bad experience. Oh by the way, they confirmed that the stick was bad, so I was not making it up.

The Outcome:
I will try to buy Corsair more when I can, both at home and at work, that service experience was excellent. I will never ever buy another thing from ZipZoomFly.com again. If they come in cheapest on a pricegrabber or whatever, they are not going to get any further business from me. They had the opportunity to save my business, but copy and paste emails are not the way to save a customer.

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