:: BleakGeek.com ::

Through the past couple of months, I’ve done extensive research on web hosting companies. I have used many companies in my past through different websites and through all of my history these are my recommendations. If you are looking for some high quality hosting, while not paying a lot, and still getting what you want, I would recommend Site5 and InMotionHosting. Site5 is geared a little bit more towards a personal user type and InMotionHosting is geared towards the business side of things. I have personally used both of these companies and they are my top recommendations.

If you are looking for a free web host, I would recommend XMG Free. I haven’t used them myself yet, but I’ve heard good things about them. They offer a lot of good services for very cheap.

As far as e-mail goes with all of these companies, except f2o, I love their service. I use the gmail service for my central hosting location to store it all, but I haven’t had any problems with either of the 2 companies I’ve used. If you would like a gmail account (since it’s only beta right now), you may contact me via e-mail or IM and ask for an invitation or check this site to see if they have any available invitations.

I have been wanting to get the RSS feed from a friend’s site, but her site was on Xanga. Xanga is in ASP and does not offer RSS feeds that validate. I obtained the script that formats the aspx version of RSS that Xanga does provide (but does not validate), and am willing to let anyone source it. You may link up by using this.

http://xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=USERNAME-HERE

This will let you get a validated RSS feed from a Xanga user. I will try to post some more hosted scripts for other sites that do not provide validated RSS feeds. Hope this was helpful to someone. Please link back to me if you use this script.

edit: I long time ago removed the script and never updated this post, but instead I linked back to the actual site because they now provide an RSS feed for users.

Phew, sorry folks. It’s been too long since I’ve had a chance to write about my life here. This was meant to be a blog about my life and turned into something else. Lately, life has been pretty crazy. Most of my classes have a lot of reading in this and this takes up a lot of my time. I have recently joined COBS and that has taken a grasp on my time as well. I have become a part time web master there so I am helping design their new site structure. As for CCV, I have declined my work opportunity there because I feel that I will have my plate full this semester. I am taking, yet again, 17 units. 5 classes (English, Psych, Health, Accouting, and Exodus/Deuteronomy) along with my 3 units of COBS Internship.

I also have soccer starting up. We have a practice tonight and a game on this coming Tuesday. I haven’t played soccer in about 2 years, so it will be very good to get back on track with it. Soccer has always been a passion of mine and I have loved it my whole, just about. Laura and I went shopping at the mall yesterday go get some stuff such as some shinguards and some shorts. A couple shirts too, for working out and running. It was a very successful day I think, even though we returned during traffic.

Not much else going on in my life right now. Work, Soccer, Classes, Girlfriend, Family…that’s about it really. That’s enough to keep anyone busy though. I am very busy and that can be both good and bad. I like to stay busy, but not too busy. I wasn’t very busy last year so I went home every weekend to see some friends, but this year I rarely am going home because my life has moved from home to here at school where it should be. That’s all I have for you right now.

Currently playing: The Format - A Mess to be Made

Here is another update on David Dingman II. The Dingman family, on my dad’s side, was able to raise over $40,000 to help pay the costs for which insurance were not going to pay. This included the operation for his grapefruit-sized tumor in his brain. As stated before, David was diagnosed early May of 2003 and has been going through this experience, if I can call it that, since then. Please keep him in your prayers. I do not recall the exact date when he will be having the operation, but I will find out soon. I will keep posted here about his operation and health.

Recently, my webhost for j0n.org went down and were very unresponsive. This led to me wanting a new webhost because I was sick of their hosting situation and support. Through this process, I also changed my domain name from j0n.org to bleakgeek.com. I am now being hosted by site5.com and am quite happy thus far. They have been very helpful and look very professional. I hope to be happy with them.

Continuing on, I’m starting up soccer on Thursday nights here. School work is picking up and work is going well. I haven’t really posted here in a while because of my hosting situation. I’m really like accounting and intro to Lit now because of the content of the classes. Psych is going to be a bummer because I do not really like the professor, but we’ll see what I can do about that. Otherwise, my classes are going well. Hope everyone is doing well and I hope you like the new design of my site. Let me know if you want to see something on here or want to just chat. God bless

On a later posting of News.com, it was reported that a 32-year-old Brazilian has a cell phone virus that could spread world wide and cause much distress. Certain directors of Antivirus research companies are saying that is a very serious threat to the world. The worm virus is being called Cabir. [WARNING] Be careful about what you install on your cellular devices and/or phones. It is possible that a virus could be installing on your device/phone. Just keep a sharp eye out for them. (Full Article)

Recently, as reported on News.com, Google is gearing up to provide free telephone services for those people that have broadband. They are looking to further their market share to more than just the internet because they feel they have the power to do so. Google realized that there was thousands of miles of unused fiber optic cable around the world; they decided to move on that and use it to it’s full advantage. In Japan alone, 10% of house holds have VoIP (Voice over IP) phones and Google also wants to partake in that market share over there. (Full Article)

As you can tell, I have updated the site a little bit. I’m changing around the look, once again, and you should notice some differences soon. I also updated some images under my image gallery, so you can check them at out http://gallery.j0n.org under the Spain section. Hope everyone is doing well. Drop me a note sometime ; )

Update: I made some more updates. Can you find which parts of the site I updated? Post your guess under comments!

Here’s an update on my second cousin, David Dingman II, and about his operation. A doctor was willing to perform his skull surgery for free, as reported by Mercurynews. The procedure to take place here in Los Angeles, CA, which is scheduled for Feb. 2nd, 2005. The family still has to help pay for the anesthesiologist and other hospital fees, but the $40,000 in private donations they’ve received since the case caught the public’s attention earlier this month will be sufficient, Dingman-Grover said. Much more to read in the article, you feel free to read it yourself. (Alternate news site)

Finally. Everyone here at APU has finished the first week of classes. Some of my classes are still going through the instructions, but most have already started lecturing. I will just give you a rundown of my schedule. I have Accounting II, which will be an AWESOME class, Exodus/Deuteronomy, Intro. to Literature, Health, and General Psych. Hope everyone had a great holiday break!