Beside being a web and software developer, I also have a family. For the past couple of months, my grandfather has been going through chemotherapy for multiple cancers. It started with cancer in his blood, which led the doctors to find cancer in his esophagus and elsewhere in his body. I suppose it’s possibly caused from the drinking and smoking he did earlier in his life.

I’ve watched him slowly degrade from the energetic man I looked up to as a child, to what he’s become due to the cancer and chemotherapy. A walking skeleton with flesh pretty much sums his appearance up now. The doctors said that the cancer could spread to his brain, and after the past few days, it seems that has happened. He’s delusional and paranoid. He has barely eaten anything in the past three days, and has started to live in his own world.

I spent the better part of Saturday night and Sunday morning making sure he didn’t some how injure himself. After being awake for over 24 hours, I finally crashed around 6am Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon brought more delusions. He thought that the bathroom was the den, and attempted to use the bathroom near one of the couches. He started walking around the house with no pants on afterward.

Later, we found him in the kitchen with all the stove burners on, and the sink filling up with hot water. He started rambling about getting the gas and electric company, and having my grandmother arrested. After a couple of minutes of that, he started spouting about my grandmother and uncle stealing all of his money, and put his finger in my uncles face, who grabbed his wrist. I quickly grabbed my uncles hand, and sternly told him to let go (The urge to punch my uncle in the face for that almost got the better of me). I started to lead him in to the living room to sit down, when he started ranting about the food being poison. I assured him that was the same food we had eaten earlier that day, and got him in to the recliner in the living room.

I sat down with him, while my uncle made him a cup of coffee. He asked why this was happening to him, and all I could do was shake my head. He then started talking about god, and how “the rest of them” were the devils servants, referring to my grandmother and uncle. He then put out two fingers, and drew a cross in the air, stating that he had forgiven me of anything I had done in the past. I smiled and got his coffee.

I’ve been periodically checking on him for about 4 hours now. He’s been asleep for about 3, and hopefully that will help…

-Nito

Yesterday, I posted about how I found some of my old writings on a data disk.

This is another one of them, but it’s more along the lines of: wtf was I thinking when I wrote this shit?!

Entitled: Numeric Prophecies

Now, for all of those that think they know
Come in and take a look
‘Cause i’m not your typical, or about average stalker
I’m a riddle, entangled in rhymes
Sift through, and find a numeric talker
Wouldnt you like figure me out
Learn how my twisted mind works
Although I use numeric riddles
Its not as easy as one, two, three
Take me to a doctor
As he performs psycho-analysis
His mind will be on overload
My riddle’s forever engraved
As for the rest of you
Take a grasp on this
There is nowhere to hide
A dog is mans best friend
Always at your side
But one day that dog will turn
The process of nature
And the cycle of life
Ones blood for another
But its yours that it takes
Have you figured it out
Or do you need more time
There is an answer
Numeric of course
Try a percentage
A few fractions to add
If it werent for our mothers
There would be no sins
But if there werent any fathers
How was the world to begin
The world turns
And life progresses on
There are shadows at your side
In the midst of all its chaos
Think about it for a few more years
And maybe you’ll have a solution

After installing Windows 7 on my main box, I started going through old data cd’s, looking for anything I may need to throw back on it. While I was going through some from years ago, I found a few songs or poems – or whatever the fuck they are – that I had written. These may not be suitable for younger people to look at – not that most of my posts are anyways… I will be randomly adding one every once in awhile. Possibly when I have nothing else to write about.

These were most likely written in very bad times in my life, and misspelled words are common in my work. I can’t really be assed to make corrections, so they’ll be posted with the errors (as-is).

These are by all creative rights, my property. Any use of them without written or verbal permission from myself is infringement, and I will sue the fucking shit out of your ass for every penny you have. I will also make sure that I get any and all pets you have, so that I can rename them, and post pictures of them in retarded ass clothing with signs in the picture of things animals may think.

This is one of my darker ones, and it seems I didn’t finish it – or I did, and just didn’t save it? Or it’s possible that I wrote the rest on actual paper, and it got tossed away… The document title says it’s called “Prom Night”..

Hey there buddy, youre invited to the prom
But its not the standard usual dress
Its trench coats and other peoples flesh
No need for a date, we supply the girls
Our diminions of death, laced in black pearls
With hell as the setting, fire lights the room
Sit down, take it easy, and pop a shroom
Shes not real, just stay in your seat
Time for orderves, and youre fresh meat
Carry you to the pit in the upstairs loft
Barbequed ribs, so tender and soft

I just got back in to software development after about a year and a half of focusing purely on web development. I can thank the Raptr client for that, because their newest version of the client is disgusting. It hogs all TCP connections, lagging any online games you may be playing, and slowing web page’s to a crawl. I decided to write my own, with a few additions that I feel would benefit me. In doing this, I *borrowed* Raptr’s games list, adding more games they didn’t have listed. I encoded it in Base64, in case I decide to make it a public application, and thus the hunt for a much simpler Base64 decode function started…

Encoding/Decoding Base64 shouldn’t take hundreds of lines of code to do. I was looking for a simple way to decode a base64 text file, without having to use write up an extensive module. In my journey for a cleaner, more simplistic code, I ran across a nice snippet from Tim Hastings which is probably the simplest way to do this.

First, you’ll need to reference XML in your VB6 project:
Project -> References -> Microsoft XML (Any version => 2.6)

Public Function EncodeBase64(ByRef arrData() As Byte) As String

End Function

Test the above function by using the following code, which decodes a encoded string back in to it’s original text.

Public Sub Main()
Dim strData As String
strData = EncodeBase64(StrConv("ohaithr", vbFromUnicode))
Debug.Print strData
Debug.Print StrConv(DecodeBase64(strData), vbUnicode)
End Sub

The output should be..
b2hhaXRocg==
ohaithr

*Thanks again to Tim Hastings for posting this on his blog.

-Nito