matt randles development & music

lateness

I’ll post in a week he says, been busy he says….

Yeah well, been working loads and decided I could natter on about my trip forever - i’ll upload all my photos to flickr and choose some to summarize the trip instead!

brb gone to the moon

well, im in south africa and realised its been agessince I posted - ill post some stuffs either sunday night or early next week - tiredness depending…

That's not what I ordered...

drew:

…Can I send it back?

That’s exactly what I wanted to say.  I had about 10 really smartass things to say back.  But I couldn’t.  I was frozen.  Speechless.

Zip back a few weeks.  I had parted ways with Strands, and got the most amazing opportunity with GOGII in LA as Director of Community.  Dream job.

A move to LA was imminent.  But first, a trip home to Philly to visit the folks and friends on the east coast.   I hadn’t gotten to see them much.

I noticed a lump on my neck.   Not huge, but being that I’m in lots of pictures and perhaps may look at myself in the mirror a bit, it was noticeable.   I talked to my mom about, she’s a nurse.   She suggested it could be anything.  An infection, etc. etc.

On my trip home to Philly I decided to stop in to see my family Dr.  Hadn’t seen him in a while, plus I wanted to get rid of whatever I had.

He ordered a CTscan and bloodwork immediately.  Again, could be anything.   Plus I had no symptoms, no sore throat, aches, nothing.   Good stuff.

The CTscan showed a mass in my neck and chest.   He passed me on to a wonderful Oncologist.  He ordered a lymph node removal and biopsy.

Less than a week later, I got a diagnosis.

Hodgkins Lymphoma.

I said nothing as the Dr. told me.   I was prepared for anything or nothing, but mostly the worst case scenario, since I’m a bit of a hypochondriac.

Tests were ordered to “stage” the Hodgkins.   A week went by with a few tests…heart scan, lung test, PETscan, bone marrow biopsy (ow. for reals).

Stage 3, the Oncologist told me before I got my first chemo treatment yesterday.   One of 12 over 6 months.   Every 2 weeks.

I have Cancer.

Before I was staged, I spoke with a friend of mine about it and shared an idea I had for a site called BlameDrewsCancer.   See, I am trying to stay lighthearted and optimistic that since studies show that Hodgkins Lymphoma is 90% curable…I should do SOMETHING.

I’ve been blaming my cancer for everything.  Lost keys, wallet, Phillies losing.   Sixers picking a bad coach.   Twitter going down and/or being slow.

Surely cancer can’t withstand that type of beatdown.  But why do it alone?  I wanted to welcome ANYONE to blame ANYTHING on MY cancer.   I’ll find a nice company or a few who will match each unique person on Twitter who blames something on my cancer using the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer, with a dollar that will go to the American Cancer Society and Make a Wish Foundation.

My life is changed forever.

I have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me.

I also have the best family, friends, colleagues, and co-workers any person could ever wish for.

I will win.  And I will dedicate all I have in me to help others who are far worse off than I am, and I will do what I do…educate.

Cancer discussion upsets some people, makes them uncomfortable.  It is nothing to run away from.  Medicine is amazing these days.  Technology is amazing.

I will share my experiences here on my blog.

And if my blog ever goes down….then I’m just going to #BlameDrewsCancer

Server building

Realised I hadn’t given an update on the home server situation. Well after getting the new case etc I found the board to be broken … didnt matter what OS I tried, the network wouldnt work, some sort of IRQ problem. After sending the board back it was confirmed broken and replaced within 6 days, not the fastest but the customer service was seemless to be fair.

Now, I’ve decided not to run virtual machines on it (yet) as I like the fact its silent, not getting under strain for long periods of time and doesnt need a load of case fans to keep the air flowing! But I have set up a few things on there ready to get going on a few projects!

server build

So, my development server has hanged a few times over the past few months, then a few days ago it hanged, and refused to come back. Considering the age of the machine, unavailability of replacement parts and it looking like a motherboard problem, I opted for a new one!

I purchased myself a mini itx system with onboard 1.2ghz processor (fanless) and a gig of low profile ram. This server never runs anything major, and when it does I have no problems with waiting. The aim here is to have a system with enough grunt to run my day-to-day development work while remaining quiet and unnoticed for the most part.

I did run into one snag almost immediatly tho, my old case was designed for the system in it, it had custom power connections and a very old connection for the front power and led’s. So I splashed for a new case and a corsair power supply.

Even tho i’ve yet to slam an OS on it, I did run damn small linux from a cd to backup my data and the thing is next to silent…

updating looks

Ok, so I re-skinned this little ol bit of me on the web again… I prefer it light…

development

I’ve done a lot of research this week. I’ve been thinking about optimization to reduce costs of hosting. In the past I’ve always been write once, refactor a gazillion times. For my current idea/project I’ve been thinking about optimization before starting, researching technologies to get an idea or where to start…

Anyway…. very quiet on here lately as a result of the amount of reading i’m doing. Also been wondering about the random nature of my blogging, thinking maybe I could write down the tips i come across in one place, if only to act as a giant notepad for myself..

slypoll

Yeah, been a heck of a long time since I did something good and showed it off a bit. Soon will be time, I’m working on (as a project) slypoll.com. I’ve just taken the existing site offline (keeping existing polls up till I finish playing).

There’s still a fair way to go, and this will be hosted on new hosting, so there’s that to sort as well. I might preview some bits on here or via twitter/twitpic from time to time before it goes live as well.

Why? Because I want to? Its mainly a test on how good a site I can make on a bootstrappers budget…

Anyway… another short post… keep watching this space (and @slypoll and @wehttam)