Hey all!

It hasn't been a month since my last blog writeup, however when I leave on my trip to Tucson at the end of the month I plan to write nearly daily entries about my experiences at the Meeting of the Minds trip. For this entry, I am going to do things a little bit differently. I'm going to discuss some information regarding my own life, mainly because I feel like there are some things I'd like to share that I myself am proud of about myself. I will however close this with a few SMF updates.

• Some personal news
• The good stuff - SMF related updates

Since a young age I have been shy to people, generally speaking. I feel like I am finally passed that nutshell. I had a presentation to present in one of my classes, and for the first time ever I don't recall being particularly nervous at all, I felt quite calm. I have started exercising, and--you will get a kick out of this--I have started dancing. Oh, nothing remotely good, just some silly stuff that goes along with whatever music I listen to (yes, I've thrown some dance songs into the mix). I find dancing to be one of the funnest things I have ever done in my entire life. It puts me in this nice soothing zone, helps give off a good "natural" high feeling, and certainly provides a decent workout experience. I have lost a decent bit of my extraneous "fat" in the last few weeks. I've never considered myself really overweight, but now I feel like I am finally at a rather decent weight and in not too much time I will be able to knock off the remaining extra "fat" that I don't need. I am doing this mainly to feel better about myself, feel more confident, and most of all, get in better shape so I don't sit on my butt all day next to my laptop doing nothing all day. I am on my school's cricket club, which is a nice change for me, to be able to get more involved with some after school activities. Cricket sure isn't popular in the U.S, but that doesn't stop it from being fun! Don't ask me why, but I also have been playing some baseball in the cold snow with my friends, it's freezing cold, but somehow I am able to have some decent fun from it.

I've been eating virtually no junk food lately, seldom drink much Mountain Dew or any sugar soda anymore and have worked toward eating more nutritious food. The nice thing is I haven't even had the urge to eat all the food that is bad for you. Sometimes looking back, I get a little discouraged about how I lived a lot of my life thus far, but it only serves to motivate me and make me feel good about my future that I am working on making as good as I possibly can. Alas, not too much luck with girls yet. I figure I'll get a chance to work on my social life in college and hopefully make the most of it (by getting involved, not getting drunk). One of my problems I feel is I don't really blend in too well to any one clique at my school. I like to consider myself a geek, and in someways I can claim that title, I am after all a computer programmer and know a decent amount about computers, however I don't always think of myself as insanely smart. I don't even know how I would classify my friends, they seem to be similar to me in many ways, but it's a little weird sometimes because I have a wide variety of those who make up people I consider to be my friends. I think there is something to that 6 degree theory though, as somehow I am surprised to see one friend talking to another friend when I had no idea that they had even met before.

One final thing about myself, I have started to write some poetry. Basically I write whatever comes to mind first and try to mesh certain ideas together to try to develop a meaning into the poem, or allow the freedom of interpretation of what the poem could mean. No one has ever seen any of these poems yet, I'll probably start by showing some of my work to my mom. I doubt I am that great at it, but I do it as a hobby and find it rather relaxing to do. Some of them rhyme but not the majority of them, I think I have one about love, some about feelings and emotions, just all kinds of stuff, much of it doesn't even reflect my own life but me trying to get in the head of someone else and expressing how I would feel if I was put in that person's situation. Hopefully I'm not too bad as I plan to frequently write poems to anyone who is foolish enough to date me in the future. (Oh the dreadful horror of reading an awful poem, day after day)

Anyways, on to SMF! I have spent less time on SMF lately. For you guys, that may suck, but for me it is in fact good. The Online Manual is slowly coming along. (I'll define it as slow, you can define it as slow as a turtle if you must) If there are people who come across this blog entry who want to help work on documentation for SMF, please send me along a PM, or email me at akabugeyes(at)simplemachines(dot)org. The more people I can find willing to help, the less tension there will be in making deadlines and we will be able to provide documentation updates to the public at much more rapid rates. Remember that every little bit helps! If you find something as small as a typo, don't hesitate to let us know about it. Fixing typos helps improve the quality of the documentation. Albeit a small amount, it still helps. I really want to remove that barrier between team and non-team that currently seems to exist in certain areas such as with documentation. My plan? Well I've already worked with the idea of a "Documentation Help Squad." shadow82x and Walmart-Security are the pioneer members from this community that hold this title on the Online Manual. But there's a secret. I'll accept anyone to the squad. Interested in joining it? Contact me, and you shall be added. There are currently no incentives offered by being a part of the squad, which is something I would like to work on changing. Team members get a nice shiny badge and a certain level of respect from the community. Of course I like to find people that just do it out of the kindness of their heart and like to help people because it makes them feel good. While I expect many of you would fit that qualification, sometimes a pat on the back and a "thanks" doesn't cut it enough for everyone, which is why it is understandable to want incentives. I can't promise everyone Mercedes and brand new iPhones and computers (No really, I can't...) , but I'll try to come up with some ideas. (Even if it means writing a poem to express my thanks )

I am REALLY looking forward to the trip to Tucson to meet the team, I realize I am now starting to sound like a broken record as I have expressed my excitement before, but well, I am EXCITED. Very, very, very E-X-C-I-T-E-D. I'll try to put up some pictures of me during the trip and hopefully pick up a nice cowboy hat. Everyone will have a chance to hear my voice during the talk show we are going to have. My voice tends to sound bad over machines, but I'll try to cover some good ground in terms of documentation during the show. Please send in items that you would like us to address concerning documentation so I have stuff I can talk about and prepare for. (Oh and did I remember to mention I was excited about the trip?)

Okay this is starting to get looooong. Why do I get so talkative online? I guess it fits well with my Documentation badge. So long folks. Until next time, it is your lovely friend, akabugeyes! If you read this entire blog entry, you truly are bored. Oh and for the record, I spent multiple days writing this, I couldn't manage all this in one sitting now, could I?
-akabugeyes (Jack)

Previous Blog Entries (and some updates)

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Quote from: Well, if it isn't that buggy boy (November 20, 2007)The internet in my opinion is all about communication and convenience. We can express ourselves on it, and get involved in discussing whatever we want with people from all over the world.

And in a nutshell I have just said my life's story to the entire world. See just how great message boards are?

Quote from: Where in the world is aka.bug.eyes? (October 7, 2007)A good question comes up from this MotM, how will we employ enough resources to continue rocketing out support while a decent percent of our team body will be out on business? Simple solution really! We have employed a team of trained monkeys! These monkeys shall not disappoint! They are well experienced on linking to the Online Manual and telling users to search to get the answer they need!

Getting these monkeys trained has been a difficult task. They take all my Mountain Dew (they run entirely off of it) and always take my keys away from me!

Fun's over, back to serious stuff (September 6, 2007)
Yeah! Got a new laptop (May 27, 2007)
Where has aka been? (May 17, 2007)

Quote from: Just checking in (April 23, 2007)If I mention too much I know others will stop reading this soon, but if I mention nothing at all, I also know people will be just a little annoyed at me for reading this much without having a point.

I certainly didn't follow this idea this time.

Living on SMF Island (March 31, 2007)
Online Manual 411 (November 19, 2006)

Very nice, glad to see your life is in order.  Over the past year or two, the same has happened w/myself, especially the fact of picking up a sport or two.

SMF: The team idea sounds great - you may be receiving an email from a mysterious user going by the name of "tor" for joining details

All in all, hope things stay great!

Not a bad blog read, but heck it was long.

I'm glad to hear your becoming more active away from SMF. haha

Quite a few odd parts about it too. I would also like to see more people joining in helping with the docs. It feels nice helping for a project you truely love. So if you like SMF try to contribute to it!

Have fun atTucson!

SySRoot74, thanks. I'm glad to hear you've experienced similar things recently. It feels great doesn't it?

shadow82x, yes it sure was long. I needed a moment to recollect on myself as so much was happening to me at once. I thought some of the things going on in my life would be worthy sharing as I tended to keep it on a positive note the entire way through. Sure everyone has problems, but that is not something you want to hear about all the time really.

And yes, it has definitely been a nice experience for me to help out with SMF. I assume someday I won't have the time for SMF that would be expected as a team member, in which time I would step down but still try to contribute to the project when I could find some time. Until then however I want to work on doing my job the best I can, which is working on making the Online Manual more and more useful. Obviously I cannot do this entirely on my own, so I naturally have to set my eyes out for people who have a passion for SMF and would like to help out and who perhaps have decent writing/editing skills. I've already had a few people expressing their interest in helping out since I posted this blog, which is exciting for me, as I didn't even write this entry particularly to recruit helpers (that blog/post I had planned for a later date), but it seems like it may be having that effect, which is really awesome.

Welcome to getting older, just so you know bug but I dance, and i just got my ex into same dancing, cant wait to get back to Finland so she and I can dance together

But as for eating healthy be careful and watch what you eat as you still need correct things in your system