I can no longer in anyway be considered a minor. Now that I'm 21 there's nothing I can't do... except run for president... and pull social security... and get AARP. Okay, some milestones left. I plan on celebrating the situation by getting some Mike's Hard Lemonade tonight after work and doing some celebrating.

It's more than just my birthday, however. It's also the second anniversary of my blog. Several months ago I did a little "look back on stuff I did" type post. However, this highlighted primarily minor things (such as buying an iPod or bowling really well). It never delved much into the major things and when it did it was kind of half-hearted. Today I'm going to reflect on the major milestones.

Applied for Job (October '05) - This would have to be the biggest milestone for me. As much as I hate to admit it Wal-Mart has completely changed me as a person. I'd like to think I'm more mature now and am a more socially adept person.

Became Cashier (January '06) - Had I not ever gotten on a register I probably would be a nicer person now. I know most of my current attitude developed during my time on a register because customers treat their cashiers like crap.

Rediscivered Drawing (April '06) - In this list I've given so far I'm pretty sure this is one of the only positive ones. This may seem fairly minor but it does play a large role in my decision for what I want to ultimately want to do for the rest of my life.

Driver's License (May '06) - That was only about three years too late. Not necessarily a major thing but it did bring me up to two out of three of the biggies (job, license, GED).

Kathleen (March-July '06) - I never said anything in my blog about this but I did kind of almost have a girlfriend. Her name was Kathleen and she was a cashier. It started she'd always sit across from me in the break room and we'd talk and laugh. This began sometime in March right before I went to grocery. I didn't realize it until it was too late. This actually played a significant part in my return to cashiering. When I came back in May I had to wait until her and her then boyfriend broke up before I made my move. I had resumed the conversing during break thing to ease into things again and one day I got the balls to ask her for her phone number and that was the beginning of probably one of the best times of last year. We'd text message each other all the time and we'd chat in the break room and I even bought her lunch once. However, I began to get a little obsessive (and posessive) and she ended it with a simple, yet cliched, message. The text in panel two is an exact quote of what she said. This sent me into another deep blue funk for quite a while. The only good thing that came out of that whole mess (aside from some much needed wisdom) was a new cell phone.

CSM (December '06) - This was something that I had worked my ass off for. I was in my gotta move up the chain phase at this point. It started off a little rocky but I got the hang of all the little technicalities. It was the stress of being bombarded from all directions by everybody that got to me in the end. After I shed the red coat I got complaints from a lot of cashiers saying they wanted me back. It's nice feel loved.

The Future (January '07-present) - As most of you know late in January I got my Mac mini but there's an interesting tale around that that bears more importance than just getting a really cool computer. I called in snowed in the day it came (partially true) because I had to be there when it came. As fortune would have it Full Sail called that day wondering what my plans were. The problem was I had no plans for anything at all. I knew I wanted to go to college in the fall but that was about it. I had talked to Full Sail sometime during the old house rennovation in '05 but I hadn't taken them up on anything. But, anyways, they called and I said I'd like to attend in the fall and I'd like to tour the place sometime in the spring. This was the catalyst. Something clicked and soon after that I got into the GED classes (for me just a formality), took the GED and passed, and finally enrolled into Full Sail. This is where I stand today.

When you look at these events as a whole it's like a very intracite yet well laid out puzzle. I have been a little slow in getting to where I'm headed but I've had a lot of time to get my head on straight and learn essential skills I'll need later. When I get to college I'll be able to fully focus on school because I won't have these things in the way. I know what it is I want and nothing is going to stop me from obtaining that goal.

I'm sure you've noticed the archives bar over there so I will swiftly move on to a cooler topic.

As the title suggests I own an Xbox 360. Now I can proudly call myself a Wii60 person. I've been wanting one for a while mainyl for the Halo series but also it's extensive online cataloge of awesomeness. For instance I can download HD quality Headlines clips... FREE! It freakin' owns. The only thing that's going to come back to haunt me some day is the small hard drive. I could've bought an Elite but I got a Premium instead. I stupid. I own Crackdown and Halo 2. I was originally just going to rent Crackdown (for the H3 beta of course) but I tried the demo and was like "Hey, this isn't a bad game" so I bought it. Of course, I haven't necessarily been playing these games. No, I've been playing Phoenic Wright 1. It still kicks ass. In fact I'd go so far as to say that case number four was my favorite yet.

Well, I could go on about such things for a long time, but I think I shall get soome sleep.

Okay, so heaven isn't rejoicing the fact that I've got the site running under good ol' dxprog power but I hate thinking up titles. As you can see comments and categories are back. You can't necessarily comment yet, but things are in place for it. Also archives are gone at the moment but those should be up tonight sometime. It'll be the first thing I work on after I get back from work. Until then enjoy what is and forever will be... PurpleFusion!

Since there's not much to write about that's happening in my life at this current point in time I will instead rant on a cornucopia of things. Note - these rants are very, very biased.

MySpace profiles. We've given power to these people to change the design of their profiles. Bad idea. Why, you ask? Because it seems a good chunk of the MySpace population doesn't understand the basic fundamentals of good design. Readability is the first thing that comes to mind. Green text against some sort of fractal design background is enough to induce some sort of crack induced brain trip upon those who are to look upon it. I will say this: that horrible piece of shit you call a MySpace profile layout doesn't necessarily reflect upon you as a person. I say this because I've got friends and family on MySpace. In closing, though, you can't expect the users of a place where they themselves have... questionable design practices to be better.

Carts. Don't be a douche bag. Put the fracking carts in a damn cart corral. Never, EVER put your carts up on a curb or on the grass. I will kill you. Slowly.

Grammar. Has this completely gone out the window? Seriously, since the advent of instant messaging and e-mail everybody's grammar and spelling are simply atrocious. Their, there, and they're are one of the worst offenders. Nobody knows how to properly spell angel (many times transposing the "e" and the "l"). Nobody cares. And to think is the next generation of human being that we will have to hand the keys of the world off to when my generation gets old. It sends shivers up my spine.

Well, I think that covers most bases. If I haven't offended you please feel free to e-mail me and I'll do my best to correct said situation next time I rant. Peace out!

This is the name of the new site backend I've been working on. Now, for anybody who's been paying attention I haven't written a web engine since Tetra 2. The last time I worked on it was sometime back in '05 I believe. Back then I was extremely proud of my little creation but I look back on it and think to myself "that is one bloated piece of crap". It really was. Over 2500 lines of code. In comparison my new engine is only one or two hundred lines of code and almost as powerful (or it will be).

From a design standpoint Purple Fusion is way different from Tetra. Tetra was built around an object-oriented core. From an interface standpoint this was very clean. However, it did lend to some slowdown and made adding new modules cumbersome at best. It also limited what you could do with a module (to a degree). The new engine completely throws objects out the window (almost, the main class is PurpleFusion and that's the only one) and goes for a scriptable approach. Each page is it's own seperate page script that makes calls for getting data, displaying templates, etc. This makes creating new pages incredible quick and eliminates redundant code. Here's the script for the front page:

<page title="Home"> <template:page_head> <db:entries limit="15" sort="entry_date" order="desc"> <loop:entries> <dblink:category_name table="categories" link="category_id"> <field:entry_date type="date" format="m-d-Y"> <field:entry_body type="standard"> <process:data> <template:entry> <end:loop> <template:page_foot> <end:page>

As you can see it borrows from SGML's tag structure. Because of the tag structure it's very human readable and makes for quick prototyping. I'm incredibly pleased with the way it's going right now and hopefully I'll have it running this site in a couple of weeks. Now that I think about it I could even speed things up by generating a cached version of the source code and just include that instead of parsing the page all the time. Yeah, this rocks.