Author: Tim Froehlich

^^

I’ve had a really good weekend. Friday was nifty, spent it playng games and talking to people, ordered out for pizza and wings, lots of fun. Saturday’s SAT II wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. It was pretty easy, but the diagram of the heart and of the grasshopper almost screwed e over. Other than those, I only omitted 3 questions, I think I probably got 11 wrong, which gives me a 750. For those who don’t know how SAT scoring works…every question you get correct is +1 point. Every question you get wrong, you get -.25 points. Every question you omit does nothing. That’s your raw score. They use some table of conversions to get a number between 200 and 800, 800 being highest. To get an 800, you could get a 77 raw score minimum, etc. To be above 700, you can get a raw of 68. Pretty easy.

I’m probably gonna take Thief back…I just haven’t been interested in it enough. I dunno what I’ll get in return, maybe Gladius, I dunno. A new controller would be good, considering I have two not-so-great controllers. Meh.

Sunday was nice, too. I went to church (with donuts as my breakfast) and there was a pretty weird kid in our Sunday school class…from Tennessee. Pocketwatch, shirt and tie, apparantly his family is buying a vinyard and already have a piece of property up here. Kinda weird. After church I went home for an hour and took care of the dogs. Went to Miller’s house where we played Halo and watched a bunch of animations and stuff. Went home for an hour, took care of the dogs and had a fn time at Sam’s house. We watched The Pianist. That was a hard movie to watch. Bah. The’yre kicking us out.

^^

AH….summer is like, almost here. I can taste it. I’ve had a good couple days recently. I’m getting a significant amount of sleep. 7-8 hours is definately the best dose. School has just gone down hill. I can’t work when I’m this hyped. Which is bad, considering important things are happening. Oh well! Gotta go mow a lawn soon. It’s finally nor raining! I love rain, but only when accompanied by LOUD thunder. I hear no thunder.

Moving on, I still haven’t recieved a reply from the Computer Room. I’m just gonna walk in, and get them familiar with me. Eventually once they know I’m competent I’ll ask if I can work. I really hope I can. I bought Thief 3 the other day at the store, that’s been jolly good fun to play. Sunday night I spent at Daniel’s house, we rented Gladius, that was also loads of fun. Went to the very boring Memorial Day picnic, and came home. I stress the boring part. It was indeed boring. Meanwhile I keep trying not to think about how I’m definately not a ninja. Don’t ask.

I need to get going, perhaps post something later.

Woot.

LATER UPDATE (next morning): (woo) I ended up doing some weed-whacking with the new trimmer we got…that’s really tiring. Oof. Arms hurt. *yawn* Being Friday morning, I’m still waking up. Bah. SAT II tomorrow…I’m not too worried. I think it will go well. It’s sort of an experiment, to see if I can actually get by on any test without studying. I’ve done it all year, but this is probably the best test. 5 days left of school….man…I can’t believe it. Woot!

O.o

I got a full 7 and 1/2 hours of sleep. I feel really, really good. I feel energized…prepared for school….HAH! It’s true, except for the ‘prepared’ part. We had to memorize this script…I barely even have a good understanding of it. But that’s okay, nobody else does either. Anyways…Peter’s here in the Math Lab…once again terribly amusing. 😛

Blah, I have nothing to write about. Poo.

O.o

Back to the school routine…only 12 days left! I wish I could just get them done all in a row, and be done with it all. Alas, such is not possible. Err…brb.

Had to switch computers. At the moment I’m watching Jing get owned in a flash football game. Terribly amusing. He just got ZAPPED!!!

Ahem.

O.o

Yes, I stayed home from school today. Too much work and way too tired.

Some friends have created a Halo-related blog, for the purpose of coordinating Halo events and information in the Ithaca area. I’ll post on there occasionally. It’s still in the works. Give it a look.

Linkage

The name is pending a change, but we’re trying to figure something out.

…

I’m pretty cozy right now, sitting in my chair, doing homework. Had a pretty average weekend, started some studying, nothing amazing and new. I’m looking forward to this weekend…Memorial Day will allow for an extra day of sleep and some fun at the picnic. I want this week to end right now. My general outlook on stuff is bleak and dull, I just wanna get some rest. I think I’ve gotten all my dates for the finals…those kinda ticked me off. School ends June 11th (Friday). My first exam is for German. This is the killer annoying one.

German – Monday, June 14th, 8:15 AM – 12:15 PM.

Then…

Math – Tuesday, June 15th, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM.

And…

Biology – Friday, June 18th, 8:15 AM – 12:15 PM

Not to mention…

Biology SAT II – Saturday, June 5th, 8:15 AM – 9:15 AM

Blah. Lots of finals. More than I expected.

O.o

This certifies that I, Salandarin,
Have Become Cooler
Than I was Before

 
at

That’s proof. Eat it fools.

Nothing much happened today except for FALLING ASLEEP HALF A DOZEN TIMES DURING SCHOOL. Was so tired…soo…soo…tired. Still am, but not as much. Blah. Ate cookies, got crapped in Halo, pretty non-descript day. Blah.

O.o

Woo…I did some mroe poking at my video card, I’m hoping to O/C it higher, after I clean up the actual physical computer. Maybe up to 650 mem mhz, and 310 core mhz? Who knows. I need to get 3D Mark to test it, but the program is gigantic – it’s in pure .exe format, not even zipped. BLAH.

For those of you don’t care about computers, I’ll stop talking about them. Anyways. My dad decided to ship Christophers computer without my actually finishing all the crap. Which really annoys me, but hey, there’s some kind of LAN game going on around me…I think I’ll join in.

O.o

Quick agenda of my day.

-Woke up.

-Accidentally fell asleep after getting ready and missed bus. Luckily dad stayed home sick, so we had the car.

-Went to school.

-FINALLY finished the DDP project after school.

-Walked to Commons, went to Dollar Store, bought things (food).

-Walked to Ben’s house, let his dog outside for a minute.

-Walked to Zach’s house, stared at rifle, discovered the physics of a swirly bottle thingy.

-Walked to my house, stared at guns, played Foosball (all this for a total of 10 minutes).

-Dealt with Dad’s crankiness Zach and Ben had to leave really early.

-Went to mow an overly obsessive and really moronic lady’s lawn.

-Came home, ate stuff.

-Posted on blog.

Stuff to note:

-Overclocked my video card by about 10%. Noticable difference, still haven’t completely tested reliability.

Core Clock IS: 290 Mhz Memory Clock IS: 599 Mhz

Core Clock WAS: 270 Mhz Memory Clock WAS: 540 Mhz

Processor temperature has definately risen, I was averaging about 33 C before, I’m now up to 42 C, though that’s partially due to the weather. I’ll do some vacuuming, prolly fix then fans, that should help a lot. Yay.

O.o

*sob* STOP BEATING WITH THAT STICK! I’LL POST ALREADY! DARN YOU ALL!

…um.

…hi.

Weekend was amazingly boring, but that’s okay. I finally finished my Halo 2 madness, having seen the videos dozens of times. Daniel is finally back, managed to talk to him a good bit today and yesterday. I burned him a CD full of all the Halo stuff. I also found a program which actually allows me to burn my normal CD-R’s. WOOT! So today I walked with Zach and stuck around at his house till around 4:45, came home (it’s only a 5 or 10 minute walk, yay!), comaplined to dad about getting the review book for Biology….which I think he now has. As of now, my feet hurt. I never walk much, so it’s a new and hard-to-accept change. Yay.

O.o

I promise, no more Halo 2 posts…really! I haven’t really done all that much recently. At all. I’m sitting here watching Peter attempt to go to a wesbite…terribly amusing…ah…they’re trying to see his scores…anyways. Rofl…wow…so easily distracted. Hahaha…

woo

O.o

Yes. I know I haven’t made a real post all week. Yes. I know you don’t care about Halo 2. Yes. I know I’m obsessed. But I don’t care! EAT MORE HALO 2 ARTICLES AND FOOTAGE! The footage is minimal (only ~20 seconds) but it’s actualy gameplay stuff. THere are currently three places to retrieve this footage, but only by streaming, tiny, annoying-ness. Gamespot, IGN, and the E3 main site have it. There’s also some interviews and more articles to look at.

The E3 Main Site video is also stuck together with other game footage, but the Halo 2 stuff is at the beginning.

Footage 1 (E3 Main)

For Gamespot, scroll down to “Gameplay Footage 1”.

Footage 2 (Gamespot)

You actually have the option of downloading the video at IGN, fortunately. I’d actually rate the IGN one as best quality.

Footage 3 (IGN)

Gamespot also presented their view on Halo 2, and IGN posted two more volumes of impressions. I love Gamespot, they’re usually reliable. These two volumes are also much sorter (~one page).Woot!

Impressions 1 (Gamespot)

Impressions 2 (IGN)

Impressions 3 (IGN)

YAY!

O.o

After 6 hours of sleep, I’m back at school again…hoping more E3 stuff will be released by the time I get home. w00t! I sent Daniel (he’s off in NC, for his yearly trip to Hattera’s) the screenshots and IGN review of the demo. I forgot to add the link to that too – the IGN review has a LOT of meat to it. I think the next thing in store for E3 this week is a real multiplayer game. I hope so, at least!

IGN Article

There’s also a Gamespy review. I despise Gamespy, but it’s a read for those seeking, nonetheless.

Gamespy Article

Finally, two new links for the E3 video have been released. These two are the best quality and best resolution – but requires a 30-40 minute download wait. Stupid FilePlanet.

Video 7 (227 MB)

Video 8 (337 MB)

*spazzz*

UPDATE: A really nifty IGN interview of Pete Parsons (Bungie Employee) is up. Reall good stuff, though whoever posted it did a poor job, some questions are mixed randomly or cut off mid sentence. Still really good!

IGN Interview

w00t

UPDATE2: A picture of the Halo 2 regular and Halo 2 LE box has been shown, though not confirmed.

Halo 2 Boxshot?

O.o

Alright. I’m in E3 hype mode, forgive my Halo 2 madness. But I must give you at least a few links to the best stuff coming to the market – November 9th. In the midst of E3, Bungie.net released 10 new screenshots apart from the Real Time Multi-Player Halo 2 Demonstration. I provided multiple links for the video. All the videos are the same, but for safe-ness, I posted all easy access hosts. I doubt many people use Bittorent, but I’ll provide the link for that one too.

Videos

Video 1 (25 MB)

Video 2 (In four parts, 25 MB total)

Video 3 (25 MB)

Video 4 (Bittorent) (Higher quality, 65 MB)

Video 5 (100+ MB)

Video 6 (13.4 => 14.3 MB)

Screenshots

Screenshots

These screenshots (Excluding one can be downloaded in a much prettier form, in a .zip, too!

Screenshots (.zip)

Unfortunately, two of these screenshots were hosted elsewhere, so I have to have seperate links for those two.

Rogue Screenshot 1

Rogue Screenshot 2

In case these are pulled off the web too, I saved them to my hd, and will host them personally if need be. In my frenzy I’va also saved every signiivant Halo2 screenshot to my hd as well! WHOOOO YEEEAH! I love E3.

I’m too busy to post much else right now…until tomorrow morning…

…

Stayed home from school today, and I was going to work on school stuff, but I still woke up at 2:00. Mowed a lawn, went to Scouts, about to finish that work up. I’ve spent a few hours working on Christopher’s new laptop – installing and deleting crap. I’m hoping to give him some videos of stuff, to entertain him. Not much to say, really…

!!!

Man, what a jam-packed day…a lot has happened for just one day. Woke up, went to church, Sunday school was pretty darn boring…got home, gave my mom a hug and cleaned most of the house. (Dusted, vacuumed, sorted) and reogranized the basement. That was nifty. Brian dropped his computer by for fixing again…hopefully I can do it right this time. I really hope so. Ate some grilled chicken with bbq sauce for dinner…again…that was good. Did some poking in Brian’s computer, determined it needs a good old format. He’ll come by later tonight and drop off his CD’s, which I will then use to format the HD. I’m supposed to have that back to him tomorrow. Tomorrow also includes the Boy Scout meeting and some lawn mowing, so that’s gonna be a busy day. In top of all this, I do have a hefty load of homework…an easy set of German, but Math is killing me…Biology will take some time, too. As the final topper, I once again have approached problems.

I’m walking a fine line right now, between blaming my genetics, and just being stupid. Genetic depression/OCD, methinks, is really only a minimal issue in my life…having it still breeds self-reproach, however. It comes to mind a lot more being Mother’s day…I just wanna think and feel normal for a while. I’m gonna try and concentrate on schoolwork, get down to studying for the SAT II, try and finish this school year with a 4.0. Perhaps the work will get all this crap off my mind…I don’t know. However, my situation seems not so far from what SK was like…one would think I’d have learned my lesson the first time through. I’m quite aware that none of this really makes sense…but, I doubt it really needs to. Someone needs to invent a concentration pill. Think about whatever you wanna concentrate on when you take the pill, and poof, there you are, consumed with school for a full 24 hours. Of course, druggies would probably just say Ritilan, but I’d prefer something legal, non-addictive, and unharmful. That’d be just dandy. As I contemplate how not to be stupid, I shall finish my homework on Quadratic equations.

O.o

Alrighty….. been having a fairl good few days here, nothing spectacular, but life has kept on moving – which is a good thing. Spent Thursday doing various stuff…stayed after school with Ben to work in DDP. I’ve been on a roll of incompetency…he managed to do at least twice as much work as I did. Normally I’m pretty competent in there…oh well. In any case, we got most of the work done. Walked home with Ben and Zach afterwards, perused the Dollar Store – lots of fun. I downloaded Litestep yesterday….truly is a wonderful thing. At the moment I’m contriving to get a screen shot, but I have yet to do that…I’ll get one up later tonight. I think it looks really neat-o. Because there’s nothing on it! Bwahaha. So I’ve spent my night looking at code and changing stuff, instead of going to the Spring Fling (dance). I feel accomplished.

O.o

Whoo, confusing day so far. Having an ortho appointment at 11:00 – 11:15 ish. Which sucks. A lot. Paul gave me a nifty C++ book, though I now need a program to try whatever I learn in it. I feel so ungeekish….I was just introduced to a group of guys who are actually making a game. And it’s actually 3D. Chances are it will suck, but even so. I feel so pitiful now. :-/ Oh well.

Comics.

O.o

Prety average day, I managed to get some sleep, all good stuff. Uncle Jim left while I was gone, he’ll be back for a day later next week. 5 week reports come up this Friday…I’m fairly sure I did pretty well, but for a while I had some low grades because of missed stuff. I’m not too worried. In other news…got back my Halo PC CD, and I was gonna download HaloCE (Custom Edition) and the HEK (Halo Editing Kit), but it seems a bit in over my head. When I have time, I’ll try it out. For now, I think I’ll wait until I have a good amount of free time.

O.o

Today has been funky, ups and downs, it’s been somewhere between a “…” and “O.o”. Biggest factor was alack of sleep, I only got 5 hours of it last night. Rents randomly tell me that my uncle will be here in 5 hours (he’s here now). Not a bad thing, he’s cool, just sudden. Gotta do lots of reading…only I homework I have to do tonight. Must make timeline of the book. Must read 100 pages. w00t. In any case, I must be going to do important things. As a side note, I hooked up my stereo speakers (as in full size speakers, that are as big as my moniter) to my computer. Sooner or later I’ll bother setting up surround sound, but not right now.

OH! I keep forgetting to post my school schedule.

»Math 10 Honors

»Global 10 Honors

»English 10 Semester Double Periods Honors (Semester 1)

»German 3 Honors

»Physical Chemistry

»PLTW: Digital Electronics (w00t!)

»Intro to Programming: 1 (Visual Basic :-P) (Semester 2)

»Intro to Programming: 2 (Java! :-D) (Semester 2)

»PE

It’s gonna rock.