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How's it going, guys?

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 7:32 pm
by Pete
Hey guys!!

You guys are reacting like I'm some kind of celebrity or something!

I remember most of you...and didn't really think that any of you were still active in the QB community. I'm glad you're all still around though.

I never told anybody about this site, so I'm wondering how you found out about it....but that's allright, I guess. I was gonna do a grand re-opening a while ago...back in January...but other things came up and now it doesn't look like I'll get it done until May or so (when classes end again).

Now I'm a freshman at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. I'm at Ithaca mainly because I got a full scholarship...full tuition, full living expenses, and even some spending money on the side...plus they bought me a new computer. It was too good an offer to pass up. I'm a Television-Radio major because of the scholarship, though I wanted to do film. I'm doing communications, which is the complete opposite side of the spectrum from programming. Which is probably a good thing--I was never really that great of a programmer. When I did my site, I was more of the middle-man to help programmers communicate, I guess. I'm more into the creative stuff than the nuts-and-bolts stuff anyway.

I graduated from high school last year, saluditorian, class of 2003. In case you didn't know, Pete's QB Site was more of a middle school free-time activity than anything else. I was a young-en in the QB community... most of the QB programmers were in their late teens and twenties, and there I was, running a major QB site at age 13. Halfway through my freshman year of high school, I got burnt out with QBasic. One day I just said "screw it, I'm done, I don't care anymore" and stopped updating my website and stopped hanging around the QB boards, stopped talking to QBers on ICQ, stopped checking my QB email addresses, etc.

There was one point midway through '99 where QB stopped being fun and started being a chore. I kept plugging on for a few months, but didn't have any enthusiasm or any motivation...and I eventually came to the realization that I didn't really wanna do my website anymore.

Last semester, I took a very, very, very basic web programming course. I mean so basic that I don't think I learned anything the entire semester. I went to class once a week (out of the three class sessions) and got an easy-A. The class taught basics of HTML and JavaScript, which I've been doing since I was in seventh grade. But while I was in that class I was inspired to expand my knowledge of web programming, and I decided to start learning PHP, MySQL, XML, and learn a bit more about Perl Scripting than I already knew.

I made a website for a bunch of crappy (I mean REALLY crappy) videos my friends and I made during highschool in my free time. (You can also see what I look like if you really care...I know that I never put a picture of myself up on my old site and people actually asked for one back in the day.) Oh, and don't make fun of these...these were for fun, and we weren't trying to do a good job.:
http://www.thunderbirdatlatl.com/ohcany
And updated my dad's website:
http://www.thunderbirdatlatl.com

I got so I was addicted to web programming for a few months. Then one day I was thinking "hey, I should go check out that whole QB thing-a-majigger I used to do".... so I went to my old website, checked out a few of the other sites I remember from back in the day... and then I came up with a crazy idea--to redo my QB site so that it is automated...updated by the users....and always current... but takes NO maintenance from me (because I'm one lazy S.O.B.) That's my goal.

And that's where it stands right now. In a perpetual state of undoneness. I have all intentions to finish this once classes let out. I'd do it during the semester if I had any free time...but alas, I'm working on the crew for four student TV shows and taking a little class called Documentary Research. It's a junior-level class that takes up probably 30 hours a week of my time. There are six class sessions every week, plus three or four long group meetings. Here's a little taste of Doc: I just got back from my Spring Break, which went from March 5th through 15th. The ENTIRE time I was out shooting the documentary (which is on Hate Radio), and we're only half done with the SHOOTING...let alone the editing and the written 300+ page proposal that's due at the end of the semester. Two days ago, I was being frisked at gunpoint by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. These guys run a big white supremacist concert every year called NordicFest, and I went to interview the Imperial Wizard and one of the Imperial Knightshawks about this concert and their appearances on radio. No joke. And it was scary as hell. These weren't just guns, they were assault rifles.

Anyway, that's why I'm not gonna have free time to work on this site until classes are over (or at least Doc is over). I do have all intentions to get it done, though!

If you guys want, you can post ideas or feedback on the message board about what you think I should do to make Pete's QB Site once again be a real, reputable, up-to-date haven for QB on the internet rather than just an unupdated ghost town like it's been for the last few years.

Great talking to you guys...I'll check back here every couple days just to see what's up. I might even swing by NeoBasic, you never know.

--Pete