edward fox's reality

There’s something beautiful about the following words: “I incorporated my own business.”

Yesterday was one month since I’ve moved forward with a business model that may not be original in terms of purpose but shall be unique in the quality of service. Though I still cannot give too many details about the business (as the web site goes live within a week, but not yet!), it is mainly a technical support/training company for home users with the possibility (and hope?) of expanding to small to medium-sized companies in the future.

Am I confident in my abilities? Somewhat. I love challenges, and this has certainly been a challenge. I know there are many challenges I have left to face, but it’s been a fun road so far. Once the road turns from loose gravel to asphalt then from asphalt to gold, I’ll be even happier.

I just know that no matter what happens, I’m excited to see where it takes me. Experience is something that you can never get enough of, no matter how much you achieve. I just know that I have to do this. Just once, I want to start something, and finish it. No matter the outcome, I will consider it to be successful. No matter how much money I make (or don’t), I will be successful. In my mind, this is one big, happy learning experience, and I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can!

…and this won’t be the last time I incorporate my own business. )

I left voice mails for two different people yesterday. I’m 100% sure they’ll (a) never read this blog entry and (b) never know I was talking about them. I left brief messages, because we all know that most of the time, voice mails are ignored– they’re now treated like a missed call from an unknown number. Who cares? It’s just a voice mail, most of us say.

I’m one of the few that actually will check their voice mail as soon as possible. I can usually answer my phone anywhere, whether at work, home, or school, depending on how important the lecture is… but sometimes, I just can’t answer fast enough. Thankfully, there’s such an invention as a voice mail, but most people don’t even bother to leave me voice mails. I guess they assume that I received their missed call notification, even though I may not have had service at that time, which may have explained why I didn’t answer the call…

…but perhaps we didn’t think about that.

On top of that, I love people’s surprised reactions when they don’t even realize that they have a voice mail, while others blatantly will tell you, “Oh, I never check my voice mail.” OK, so disable it. You can do that? Seriously? Why yes, you can! It’s pretty easy. Dial “611″ from your phone (without the quotes, heh) and ask for it to be removed. Simple as pie!

But why would anyone want to do that? Perhaps that message was important, or maybe it could be saved to blackmail one of your exes! Who knows? The possibilities are genuinely endless, but without a truly plausible scenario for a voice mail (or so it seems), the reason for voice mails on cell phones is depleting. Now, it seems, text messages are taking extreme precedence over the need for voice mail. With text messages, they usually will receive it within a few seconds (unless they are in a poor coverage area). I know with Sprint, sometimes it would take up to an hour to receive a text. GSM networks (T-Mo, Cingular, etc.) are just better with this kind of thing.

But I don’t think that text messages should replace voice mails completely as far as importance. I think you should check your voice mail… it’s just a respect thing. Wouldn’t you want someone to do that for you?

It seems like we’re all losing respect…

…but that’s for another blog.

CHECK Yo’ MESSAGES.

There had been hacks before so that people could download artist’s tracks from MySpace even though the ubiquitous “Download” link was nowhere to be found. Now, MySpaceValley.com offers a solution for those of us who wish to violate copyright laws in the United States and other countries. Without further ado, here’s the link:

http://myspacevalley.com/mp3dl.php

It’s really simple. All you need is the URL of the artist’s page, and then you will be able to select the MP3′s that artist has available for download. I have heard this site’s script works with Windows computers running Internet Explorer and Mozilla, but failed on Mac OS X systems running Safari. Hopefully it works for you!

Happy pirating. Kidding!

Note: I do not condone the illegal transmission of copyrighted material. Provided for educational purposes only and should only be used on files that you are able to download through the regular “Download” link method.

Here’s some randomly exciting news. My last post was the 400th one I’ve posted. This is number 401. Wow. That’s a hell of a lot of hours of sitting, typing things that no one reads. Ah, I kid. I know people read this, more often than I expect them to. Thanks for being a reader of my blog. I look forward to writing many more entries.

It turned three years old on March 4th of this year. How exciting! Congratulations to my blog for surviving so many years of confusion, server switches, redesigns, and, of course, me! There are plenty of other things going on in my life that I’m not sure you’d care to hear about, but I thought I would stop and give my server the belated respect it deserves… Happy B-Day, Mr. Blog programming code… stuff. We love you!

-Frederick

P.S. This is a pathetic blog entry. =)

I was told I had a great personality but they decided to seek someone else for the position to be filled. That’s why I’m never too confident when it comes to employment… I’m sure something else will come up soon. Now to scrounge around for food a little more.

All this “new” talk probably makes me sound a tad ungrateful. In reality, however, it’s just the opposite. You’ll see shortly, but first a word from our sponsors.

YOU CAN BE APPROVED TODAY! Do you have $199?! Do you want $3,000 Minimum for your Trade?! Well, then….oh wait. I don’t have advertisements. I pay for my web site with my own money. Back to the blog entry.

I’m not going to be too forward, but I have been offered a job interview at a company. Statistically speaking, I have a 50% chance of getting into the job. It’s a small 10-person company that consults with individuals and small businesses for computer / technology repair. I would be doing clerical work, primarily with Microsoft Excel.

Realistically speaking, however, I will have about a 95% chance of scoring the job due to my scores on the exams. Pretty sweet.

So… I’m going to do something special for all of my friends and you’re all invited… but I’m not going to tell you what it is until I actually get the job, because that’d be a huuuuge disappointment for all of us. I am sure I will, but sometimes, surprises are nice, right?! I’ll post a blog within 30 minutes of finding out I got the job. I should know by 12PM on Friday morning. WISH ME LUCK!

In case you haven’t noticed, I actually put together a new MySpace layout. It wasn’t made entirely from scratch, but it’s a design I really like and plan to stick with for a while. It’s very clean, simple, and neat, and I imagine I will be putting and changing the background to have a picture to suit my needs, moods, and feelings. Check it out for yourself: http://myspace.com/drnx …

I’m also trying to lose the weight I put on since mid-2005 and trying to go even lower than that. It’s another 40 lbs. till I’m where I want to be, but at 10 lbs. a month, I’ll be more than set for the trip to California I’m planning with my friends this summer. Want to come along?! I’ll take as many people as two or three cars can hold. I’m getting a new car (hopefully a Gallant Ralliart… or a Jetta) so people won’t feel so squished the way they do in my present vehicle, a 2005 Nissan Sentra 1.8S.

Granted, it is just a MySpace, and it may say simple things, but these simple things mean more to me than you can imagine. A lot of things and people mean more to me than you can imagine. But that’s all for another blog entry. Take care everyone, and enjoy my new MySpace.

P.S. I’ll be keeping everyone updated at least once a month on how my weight loss is going. I’m not going to say how much I weigh now, nor my target weight, until I’m within 10 lbs. of it!

P.P.S. My trip to Cali and Vegas will have a much more thorough blog entry regarding unofficial dates, things to do, places to see, etc. And yes, we are definitely drinking, and yes, we are definitely gambling. K THNX.

This is a “Trash Entry“. It’s entirely useless and serves no value, but is moderately informative, so I’ll let it live so you can suffer through a pointless ensemble of complaints with information twisted into the end.

Rated “T” for Trash.

As you have most inevitably been informed by your co-worker, friend, teacher(s), bosses, family members, news, news, and … oh, the news, too, there is a WINTER BLAST headed STRAIGHT FOR US! Head for the hills, head for your cars, head for your homes! Old Man Winter is a-comin’ and he’s a-comin’ for you.

But seriously… How far is too far? How whiny is too whiny? How freaked out is too… freaked out? When will these rhetorical questions stop and the madness begin?!!?!??!?!…….. Uhm… Let’s see…

Now.

This is one of those blog entries where I act like a friendly moron, so if you were looking for something intelligent/insightful/other fancy “I” words here… look forward to my next blog entry, arriving tomorrow.

I was amazed that in most of my classes, at least 5-25% of the class time was taken up by talking about how cold and dangerous it’s going to be, as if we’re all newborns just emerging from the womb, just being exposed to the harshness of the elements of nature. Do we really need to be reminded so thoroughly, by everyone? People act like it’s the Apocalypse.

I am being a bit sarcastic, though. In Texas, it’s rare that we have to face such harsh, cold temperatures. To some, a high of 35F is just another day of winter, particularly those up North.

The cold weather does pose a number of unidentified-by-most threats that you should consider. Be careful with the roadways. Tomorrow isn’t much of an issue, but Friday will be. Also, make sure your pipes are all patched up and faucets near windows should be left to drip slowly… but you already know this, I’m sure…

That’s all for now…

So I attempted to do an abstract-yet-related subject for this blog entry. Was it successful?… Find out, by the end of the entry.
New York was rather interesting. However, I’m going to simply fill everyone on in what happened during the weekend, and in the past, that I didn’t know about until after the fact.

First, let’s start with the fact that my car was broken into on the North Lake College campus of the DCCCD schools in Irving, TX. Was that too descriptive? My precious Escort X50 was stolen I got it at a great price since I had an employee discount when I worked at Best Buy, and I did not take a picture of the serial number. I’m doing my own investigating which will pursue a number of different routes a thief could take with his newly acquired merchandise. I figure I have about a 40% chance of getting back my radar detector. I already replaced my window. I was going to take pictures of it, but forgot.

So that was the tragedy that happened this weekend, but apparently, there was another tragedy that happened a few months ago.

A shooting occurred south of Rock Island (what I call “Zone 1″ of 5 “wealth zones” in Irving, with “1″ being the least gross income per capita, and “5″ being the most) at an apartment complex. My friend apparently knew the guy who shot someone, but it was unintentional. He was shooting his gun into the air and somehow managed to shoot and kill someone else in the apartment complex. The complex is now shut down… Amazing. Makes me wonder, the whole, 6 degrees thing. You are connected to everyone by only six steps… really makes you wonder. Really.

This entry has nothing to do with New York, or my life, really, or to San Marcos. It was just one of those fillers. An entry with lots of shiny pictures [and such] will follow within a few days. I have a week’s worth of schoolwork to catch up on now…