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I’m Zend Certified! October 29, 2004

Posted by Ben in : General , comments closed

Just thought I’d toot my horn here, though most folks that read this blog probably won’t know what “Zend Certified” means. In short, it means that I’ve passed standards set by Zend for know-how to program PHP.

From the Zend PHP Certification Study Guide:

The Zend PHP Certification formally confirms the recognition of specific abilities and skills acquired and developed by the examinee. In other words, how predictably is the person likely to perform when applying PHP technology to a business problem? Have the examinees reached a predefined minimum standard in both academic and practical experience needed to produce quality work?

And since most don’t know what PHP is exactly (also quoted from the study guide):

PHP is the most popular Web-development language in the world. According to estimates compiled in April 2004, there are over fifteen million unique domains—and almost two million unique IPs—on the World Wide Web that reside on servers where PHP is supported and used.

The term ‘PHP’ is actually a ‘recursive acronym’ that stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. [. . .]

So, in short, it’s basically a programming language used mainly on, but not restricted to, the Web. As of August, the number of sites using PHP was right at 17 million.

I’ll blog about my experience with and thoughts on the test a little later on my techno-orientied blog, if you’re interested in reading that sort of stuff.

Enterprise Saves Itself October 19, 2004

Posted by Ben in : Sci-Fi , comments closed

Well, they’ve finally done it. After three seasons of alluding to a temporal cold war that had fans reeling and refusing to watch the show, the writers of Star Trek: Enterprise, have finally brought an end to the underlying storyline that threatened to destroy the Star Trek universe timeline.

I have a DVR, so I didn’t watch the “Storm Front” conclusion until last night, and I can say that, even as an avid viewer of the show, I’m glad the storyline is gone. Now, Star Trek fans shouldn’t have a reason to complain about the timeline, and it appears that they’ve got some good writers this season that will abandon the full-season story arc and return to the small 3 and 4 episode mini-arcs that were popular with ST:TNG.

I think it’s a great move, and I can’t wait for the Brent Spiner episodes airing in a few weeks, where he plays an ancestor of Dr. Soong, who you will recall is the “father” of Data.

The Sims 2 September 21, 2004

Posted by Liz in : It's a Sims Life , comments closed

The Sims has been an addiction of mine for sometime now. I own all of the expansion packs except one (Makin’ Magic); I was a beta tester for the Sims On-line (which was great until it went public and all the parents bought it for their 12 year olds. :( sob ) So when I heard that they were working on a “new” real Sims I jumped for joy and waited in much anticipation!! For a year now I have been drooling and counting down the days for the Sims 2 to come out! Finally it has arrived, and yes, I had to have it on the day it came out!!

The Sims are now alive and better then ever!! They have fingers, facial expressions, and grow up!!! Those annoying kids that would never grow up, well instead of killing them by building a wall around them or making them dive into a pool without a ladder to get out…. well, you can just let them grow up! Yes, those pesky little kids become teenagers, adults, and then old farts later to die of old age. There are some other things that your sims can die of, but I haven’t experienced any of those yet. I guess if you want you could still kill them off; sometimes it’s nice to have a ghost walking around the house at night.

As if the fact that they have fingers now wasn’t cool enough, the sims have real goals in life! When you make your sim you pick what their goal in life is to be. Some of the goals are: Romance, Family, Money, Popularity, Knowledge. So, as you play, you are to help them out with tasks that will make them reach those goals and in the end die a very happy camper! If they don’t reach for their dreams, well it makes them very sad a depressed and can make them very sick.

A cool feature that is totally new to the game is the video capture mode. That’s right folks, you don’t have to settle for just still screen shots, you can record those memorable moments. By moving it around (it is taking some work to learn all this) while the event is happening, you can capture it at all sorts of new angles. What do you do with these videos after you have made them? you ask. Well, you share them with your friends and others in the Sim community of course!! :D

One of the cool things that you can do with the Sims 2 game is that they give you your own sim web page. You can post blogs about your game experience and upload videos and photos of your game play. Here is a link to my sim page, but I haven’t uploaded much to it yet. Some people have put a lot of work into theirs already, but hey, I have a husband and a dog to take care of too. Can’t ignore them all the time… have to feed them just like I have to feed my sims. :)

Surving Ivan September 17, 2004

Posted by Liz in : General , comments closed

Everyone who has been watching the news has heard about the crazy hurricane season this year. We, like many, have been keeping a watchful eye on Florida and groaning everytime they say, “Here comes another one.” Well, last night Ivan tried to play it’s game on us; instead we played a game. We played Scrabble by candle light after dinner. We lost power around 5:00pm and it did not come back on until a little after 1:00am. I am now thankful for having a gas stove; it came in handy as we were able to eat dinner. (just had to call my mom and have her give us a ring on the cell in 15 minutes LOL)

While eating dinner with every candle in the house lit, we watched our back yard turn into a swift moving river with a few little waterfalls. It was quite pretty looking although it made taking Ashley out into an adventure. Which, by the way, she would forget what she was out there for and play in the water. Labs like water a little too much I think!

We were lucky, though. Not much water came into the garage and the only damage we recieved was our leaking front window and all the pinestraw washing away out of my garden, taking a few of my plants with it. We have some neighbors that weren’t so lucky and have trees that came down and hit their houses.

Oh for the score of the Scrabble game:
Ben: 217
Liz: 214

60 Minutes Is Wrong September 12, 2004

Posted by Ben in : Politics , comments closed

A while back, a liberal acquaintance of mine confessed to me that a feels the media does tend to lean toward the left in their news reporting specifically because they forego the fact-checking process on stories that come their way when the “facts” support their own personal political views. Sometimes, though, this means they deliver news that is absolutely wrong, as many bloggers are pointing out concerning a recent story on 60 Minutes about President Bush’s service record and documents relating to it that 60 Minutes claimed were authentic.

Bloggers have reviewed the documents and evidence themselves and have concluded that they are falsified. Jay Currie has the scoop on this.

Review of LiveJournal Panel September 6, 2004

Posted by Ben in : General , comments closed

I posted a review of the LiveJournal panel at Dragon*Con on my technology-oriented blog, BenRamsey.com. It’s entitled “Uninformed Bloggers At Dragon*Con.”

Dragon Con… Freaks or just having fun? September 6, 2004

Posted by Liz in : General , comments closed

For an early birthday present this year my in-laws gave me two tickets (so Ben could go with me of course) for Dragon Con so I could meet Anne McCaffery. We had a great time and did get to chat with her as she signed my books. Thank you Ramsey’s for the tickets; it was a really great experience and we both had a lot of fun.

Ben and I woke up early on Saturday and packed an overnight bag and headed on our way out the door to Dragon Con in downtown Atlanta. We parked our car and walked up to the hotels that were hosting the event to have a look around. Wow, was my first thought… these people are a bunch of freaks. Mind you it was Belle and Snow White walking across the street followed closely by some kind of monster. (I think it was going to eat them.) As we get a little closer you see more and more costumes walking around. Then oddly enough you start feeling like you are underdressed… maybe I should’ve worn something more than just a Buffy and Spike T-Shirt. It was wierd how I had found myself thinking I should have some kind of costume on… that I am the freak. Well maybe I didn’t get that dramatic, but next year I think I will have to do at least a little something more.

Now the parade was really something to see… and yes I did take pictures, but really it is just a glimse of what it was like to be there. The work and money that some people put into their costumes is unbelievable. It was also cool that many dropped into their special pose if you asked to take their picture. Now there were some people that walked around dressed up as… well, let’s just say Ben and I would look at each other and shrugged. Thankfully those were not too many as we were mainly surrounded by Storm Troopers, Fairies, Klingons, and the other creative costumes. So over all I would have to say that the people walking around all dressed up are not freaks; just having a huge amount of fun.

Saturday night after a long day filled with fun we stayed at the Hilton courtesy of Ben and hotwire.com. Have to say that I am kind of disappointed. I had a little higher expectations for it. The room was nice, but I really thought that it would’ve been a little fancier. It was funny though.. waiting on the elevator to go to our room I heard someone make a comment “There are some more of those people”. They had seen our Dragon Con badges. LOL So we may not’ve been wearing fun costumes, but we might as well have been because evidently with or without the costumes you are labled as one of “those people” if you attend Dragon Con.

Ben and I walked around quite a bit and went to different tracks and I will not bore you with all of that. The coolest thing was I meet Anne McCaffery and her son Todd McCaffery and got to hear them read a chapter from the next Pern book Dragon’s Blood. Anne is such a great strong reader… it was a great experience that I will always hold dear… now Todd needs to work on his reading a bit.

The only thing that we didn’t get to do that I wanted to was to have a beer with a bunch of Klingons… but there is always next year.

Wedding Photos are up August 27, 2004

Posted by Liz in : General , comments closed

The wedding photos from Steph and Justin’s wedding are up and ready to view. They are a low resulation so they will fit on our web site. Please e-mail me if you have any questions or to place an order. www.liz(at)benandliz.com (writen out so I can’t be spamed.)

Stephanie Got Hiched August 24, 2004

Posted by Liz in : General , comments closed

Yes leave it to baby sister Stephanie to make life more interesting. She met a great guy named Justin Jones and hooked him good. (Yes folks, this one didn’t get away. Really we couldn’t of picked a better guy for her. He treats her like a princess and is awsome with Joyanna.) Well, they are so perfect for each other that they just couldn’t wait to get married… and so yes we put together a wonderful and beautiful wedding in only 10 days.

August 21st was the wedding day at Woodstock City Park’s gazebo with the reception at the 1904 house. The ceremony was beautiful even with the heavy downpour of rain that thankfully did not last too long. I was bestowed the honor of being the matron of honor which became interesting when I was asked to also be the photographer as well…. not something I would do again, although I was able to pull it off with Ben’s help. (I couldn’t have done it without him. Thank you Ben) The photos will be be up soon to share with all of you.

Ben Ramsey Writes Dragonball Z Movie August 24, 2004

Posted by Ben in : Movies, Random Stuff , comments closed

Stumbled across this link and thought it would be cool if it were me, but it’s not.

Sigh

Apparently there’s a screenwriter in Hollywood with the same name. Does this mean I have to change my “by name” if they ever make anything I write into a movie?