I seriously feel like I’m the last person who still pays for music, movies, books, software and games.

Everyone around me is ripping off one thing or another. One grabs game ISOs, one grabs AVIs of movies that just hit theaters, one’s got a key generator for pretty much any program out there and another has HDDs full of music from newsgroups.

This really gets under my skin, especially when they offer me the free stuff and I turn them down. I’m usually called a sucker for paying for this sort of thing, and that sometimes causes me to go off on them.

You see, as a web developer I deal exclusively in intellectual property and digital property. I don’t produce a tangible product. When a worker produces something that you can touch, then everyone understands that taking it without paying for it (assuming its creator charges for it) is considered stealing. Somehow, when the product in question is digital, then that common sense is lost.

“If I can rip it, if I can download it, if I can copy-and-paste it, then it is mine,” seems to be the mantra of the pirate.

I get paid to produce code, something that can be easily “copy-and-pasted” if you know where to find it. If I was charging for that code, and I found that someone had copied it and then went on to distribute it, I would feel just as violated as if someone took off in my car during the night.

This barely scratches the surface on how much it bothers me, but I should stop myself before I bore you. What do you think, do I take this too personally?

Like many full-time web developers, when I am not coding at work I am coding at home. Those projects are usually favors for friends or family who want to post photos or some other simple thing. The project I am going to describe doesn’t fall into that category.

Sometime in the mid 90s I put together my fraternity’s first site on Geocities. Ever since then, I have been attached to this site in one way or another. Sometimes I was the sole editor and developer, other times I just approved new users, and still others I just dealt with really light administrative work like setting up new email addresses.

The fraternity’s current leadership has decided that the site needs to be fully revamped from the ground up. It needs to communicate to the students on campus as well as keep the brothers (both undergraduate and alumni) in touch with each other. Their plans are ambitious, and they’ve asked me to helm the development of this site.

As I work through this project, I thought it might be interesting to share my experiences here.

So far, I have a very rough outline of the requirements. The site will be divided into three major sections:

1. Frontend - the part of the site that all visitors will see. This would include content like a guestbook, photo gallery, and mission statement.
2. Forum - a private forum for communication between fraternity members. For years this has been the primary method of communication between brothers who moved away from the New England area, and was recently subject to an attack.
3. Backend - another private area of the site that will function much like a knowledge base. A member directory and our constitution are examples of what would be stored there. Additionally, this is were site editors will be able to post content.

Given the short amount of time between now and the beginning of the school year, it is unlikely that all three parts will be completed. Once we have specific requirements of what each section does, we’ll need to determine which absolutely must be ready by September.

I have already chosen Drupal as the CMS. I’ve played with it a bit already, and I think it’ll meet the group’s needs easily.

Some fell gaming-related demon blessed me with a dark blessing. A curse, if you prefer. He bestowed upon me the ability to corrupt game consoles manufactured by Microsoft with a touch, and (in some cases) just words. It only works on Microsoft consoles that have numbers in their name.

I will attempt to impart this power upon you. Perhaps if I teach you the steps I take in destroying the souls of this consoles, you will be able to reproduce the end effect.

1. Move the Xbox: Where you currently have it, move it. The longer it has been there, the greater the chance the console will suddenly fail. Bringing it to a friend’s house isn’t enough. You must rearrange your desk or entertainment center or where ever your console calls home. Put it in a new spot. This sudden shift in its placement is enough to fill your Xbox with self-doubt. It will think it isn’t good enough for your gaming needs anymore, and it will cease to work. Congratulations, you have killed your Xbox 360.
2. Say that it will die: This is so simple that I didn’t think it would work. I mentioned to a friend that “everyone else I know who owns a 360 has had it red light on them. Why hasn’t yours?” He accused me of jinxing him, which I laughed off. Then it died within the week. When my 360 was off being repaired, I said to Nadia that “I don’t understand why mine died again and yours is still working. As bad as that thing sounds, it should have red lighted by now.” Then it did a week later.

For my own Xbox 360, I performed step 1 twice, each time killing my system. For my former neighbor (he moved after seeing witnessing the strength of my eldritch might), I only performed step 2. For Nadia’s 360, I did step 1 and 2.

Pray that I don’t speak of your console.