Category: high school

…or I Shall Taunt You a Second Time! (…)

I am sick. As in, actually sick, not the “oh, i feel abnormal, TIME TO STAY HOME!”. I went home around 3rd period yesterday, although my mom didn’t pick me up until 6th period. Kind of defeated the purpose, although I did get some sleep in the nurse’s office. I stayed home today, and my sneezing’s gone, but I’m coughing a little more, and my head feels akin to cotton. I would have actually preferred to have gone to school, not for the fun of it, but because I still haven’t finished all the work in chemistry. Hopefully I can get it all done in the two days left. I’m going to school tomorrow, sick or not. Staying home has been boring (not completely boring, but I beat Chaos Theory, and nobody’s been around to play online with). Speak of which, I think I’ll give my thoughts on Chaos Theory’s Single Player.

[geek]

So, Chaos Theory. I’ve talked it about it a lot before, and I have to say it lived up to it. The SP is amazing in general. There’s always three or four ways to solve things, but that makes the game easier, since the designers can’t predict what you have to do. Compared to the first and second’s levels, these are a good bit longer (they usually take an hour to beat, but once you know them, you can run through in about 15-20 minutes easily). There’s more enemies, the enemies are smarter, the graphics are better, think of whatever you can and it’s better. With one exception. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

A short BULLETED!!?!?! list of what’s improved:

  • New Weapon: Knife….the indestructible coolness goes on…
  • Level Complexity: As mentioned before, the levels are longer, and more complex. There’s always 2 ways to get to one destination, if not more, and usually 3 ways to kill any given guard (besides shooting or running up and knifing them). The game allows you to play however you want, now that alarms only increase the difficulty of taking out any given guard. In pandora tomorrow, 3 alarms meant you failed, but here, 4 alarms is the limit. It just means the guards are super-alert and fully equipped with rifles, body armor, and helmets.
  • More Maneuvers: You can kill people from just about anywhere, in any direction. The new moves include neck-snapping from a pipe, pulling over edges, shoving over edges, 4 non-lethal attacks, 5 lethal stabs, the list goes on. In addition to more moves, there’s WAY more chances to use these moves. Remember in the first SC, where you got to use the split jump once? I used it three times total, and probably used the edge grab half a dozen times, at least. Ah, the satisfaction.
  • Smarter AI: Multiple enemies will breach rooms from multiple directions, move between cover, switch from pistols to rifles as they find more disturbed items in the levels, notice broken lights, opened doors, etc..
  • Opportunity Objectives: These are always simple, but add just a little more interest to the levels. It’s always about finding an X number of something (weapons crates, microphones, phone lines, whatev). While simple, they usually don’t make you go searching the entire level again once you’ve gone through (with one exception, heh), it’s just a nifty little touch. Obviously these aren’t required to beat the mission.
  • Success Rating System: At the end of each level, you are rated on your stealth skills, based on whether you killed enemies or incapacitated, alarms triggered, bodies found, and number of times identified as an intruder (as opposed to being suspected). A 100% requires no killing, no bodies found, no alarms, and never being identified as an intruder, as well as getting the opportunity objective. The non-killing objective is the hardest, as it takes longer to knock someone out, and nearly impossible to do when they’ve identified you.
  • OCP: The pistol is equipped with an alternate fire, which is an electrical distruptor. It distrupts electrical objects for about 15 seconds, so you can keep moving past. This is important, because cameras are now indestructable, and is also useful for attracting guards without them identifying you.
  • Gadgets Simplified: Certain gadgets are combined into one (like the noise camera and the sticky camera).
  • Better Graphics: Like, a lot better, these are some slick polygons *bonk*.
  • Better Sound: The sounds are a little bit better, but what I really mean here, is that sound plays a bigger role in sneaking around. There’s an ambient sound meter which tells you how loud the surrounding area is, so you can adjust your speed accordingly.

But of course, with the good, comes the bad

  • Plot Retardacity: I don’t know how to say this…but the plot? It sucks. It’s filled with a lot of unnecessary holes (things stop making sense after the 4th or 5th level), and it just doesn’t flow. The first two had an identifiable villian, you felt like the levels had a purpose. In this case, however, you just kind of do whatever the objectives are, instead of intuitively knowing what you should be doing. In addition to being overly complex and filled with contradictions, it also doesn’t make sense logically. A lot of key elements to it just would not happen in today’s warfare, or even 20 years ago. They invoke technology that we’re far from gaining, and vastly underestimate the technology we have now. EXAMPLE: You are transmitting data to the NSA, via a plane flying by. For some reason, this plane is flying directly above a war zone, barely missing the skyscrapers. In addition to this, the plane, still going x-hundred miles and hour, is shot down with an infantry’s bazooka. This wouldn’t have happened in Vietnam, let alone 2007. The connection cannot be so weak as to require the plane being inches away from the source. Gah, I won’t go on.
  • Poor Cutscenes: They may have been the same before, but I remember the cutscenes from the first two versions being far smoother. The model animations this time around are very robotic. They aren’t convincing, and add to the level of vaguery in what’s going on. The cutscenes are also usually cut short as a character is saying something, to try and give a “rushed” sense, but it just adds to the confusion.
  • Sporadic Retardacity: Two levels are very, very poorly designed. Level 8 and 9, to be specific. They both start out nice and fun, but towards the middle, something happens to completely change the goal of the mission, and you’re tossed into a situation that is not logical or fun. Example: after the plane crashes, you are faced with North Korean UAVs, invincible, flying, infrared-scanning cameras with spotlights and a turret. They follow you wherever you go, and they can always follow you because the level has only 1 direction to go. Another example: after fighting breaks out between the Japanese ISDF, you need to reach the main target, the instigator of this outbreak. Because these men are all combat-ready, they are wearing helmets, body armor, are super-alert, and have infrared nightvision goggles on. Three of these men are in one room, with two doors. One door in, and one door out. That’s it. It is impossible to not kill these men, or do it by stealthy means. I tried, for over an hour. That’s the kind of situation I mean, where the game’s purpose is stolen by an obstacle that cannot be bypassed stealthily. This were probably the product of crunch-time, and last-minute attempts to get 10 levels in. The last level almost redeemed them, but was slightly dissapointing in the level of fun it was. SC 1 and 2 both had incredibly fun final levels. Why were they fun? I don’t really know. They just were.

Beyond that, the single player alone was probably worth 50 bucks. If I’d gotten the collector’s edition, I’d still have the three original bonus levels from SC, but, such things are not meant to be, I suppose. Once I play through the Co-op I’ll post some thoughts on that, but as is, I have nobody to play it with. I probably won’t write much about Versus for a long time, if at all, because of the extreme complexity. It’s taken me about 4-5 hours of playing just to get fluent with the controls, but the strategy on what to use and when to use it is the real key, and the levels are so complex…you get the idea. Hopefully I won’t forget to write it up, though. Hehe.

[/geek]

My throat feels like a lizard.

EDIT:

I got the server set up (with considerable amounts of help from Benjamin). Go explore the files I have up at the moment! What does this mean to you? I no longer have to use photobucket, which was semi-unreliable, downgraded the picture size, more annoying to link to, yada yada yada. This also means I can resurrect the random templates, unless, of course, you do not want them. If I were to bring them back, it would be be random, it would start on blue, but you could set it to whichever color you prefer. I’d also improve the colors and backgrounds and such for the red and green, and maybe introduce a few other colors. We’ll see.

The Server Location

BOB plus 1 equals 1 (O.o)

That, my friends, is all you will ever need to know. This is a very geeky post. Consider yourself warned.

Benjamin came over today, and we just spent all day doing random stuff. We played some Chaos Theory (boy is he bad at that *ducks*), took apart the old Linksys router, which was pretty cool. It was just standard hardware stuff, but it had random colored blinking LEDs, making it more cool. We also played around with my network (and the lack thereof….man, i am good), but I got it fixed now after taking a second try with the Netgear router. How did I do it? I didn’t use their stupid setup CD. O, foolish self, thinking that automated configuration would surpass that of manual setup.

Beyond that, we did a little PHP stuff, set up Apache and PHP on my computer, poked around with code provided by the wonderful users of PHP.net, none of which did we get working, and that was our day. Jesse was gonna come over too, but homework/grades forced his presence elsewhere. Time to go get owned in online Chaos Theory.

You Know You Love Them (O.o)

 


Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female

You are both sensitive and savvy

Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed

But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

 

 


You Are 65% Left Brained, 35% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.

Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.

If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.

Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.

The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.

Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.

If you’re right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.

Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

 

No. You Can’t Have A Sip. (…)

Or so the mug sitting on my desk says. This mug was used in the acting of our Macbeth scene in English today, for the porter. We did alright, but not fantastic. We all stumbled on a few lines, but we had “mad propz” as I like to say. Karel had a beard made of cotton balls, Karel and I had robes on, ben had a blanket, Jared had keys and the mug I brought, and a bell. It was kinda fun, I guess.

I have an orthodontic appointment tomorrow. If all goes well, I may get the braces off, I might not. We’ll see. Tomorrow is actually shaping up to be a good day. I shouldn’t have to stay after school (Wednesdays are department meetings), so I’ll have a lot less school than normal. Or at least, normal as of late.

Daniel has, for the first time in history, beat me to the chase in getting a new game. How this happened, I cannot tell, but it did, and I am left in pure jealousy as he plays Chaos Theory to his heart’s content. Woe, woe, woe is me.

And now, more homework.

Why Doesn’t Food Rhyme With Good? (…)

That was a serious mistake, to whoever invented the English language.

So, Friday I did not attend school. Not because it was Good Friday (I find it bothersome that so many people do take the day off with that excuse), but to do 5 hours of make up work. I got all of my backlogged math work done, got more practice in on my English performance lines, and didn’t actually get to sleep in Friday. I figured since so many people would be gone, I could take the day off without drawing much attention. Hopefully that is the case. Anyways, this officially means Chemistry is the only subject left with work to do. I’ll be spending all my remaining days off working in Chemistry.

Saturday. The church youth (led by Greg) went to Lindseth at Cornell and did some climbing. It was pretty fun, despite my prognostication beforehand. I got to know Lincoln and Andrew a little better, which was cool. There’s a few kids at church I never really talk to, I dunno why, I just don’t. As for the climbing, I think I did okay considering I suck at it. I got to the top in two different places, but spent most of my time bouldering. My arms are pretty sore right now, but they’re almost back to normal.

Today was Easter (obviously), and the church, as usual, doubled in attendance. It’s kind of weird to see all these people come out of nowhere to church on Easter, and Easter alone. Dad actually taught a really good sermon, though. I normally don’t care for his style and presentation, but I definately learned something today.

Tomorrow? Not only is it Monday, but, Chaos Theory comes out. Speaking of which I need to go harrass my dad about Daniel’s money. If you haven’t read up on Chaos Theory, you need to. It’s gonna rock. 99 from OXM, 98 from Team XBox, 96 from IGN. Definately gonna rock. (btw Daniel, i just asked my dad, he said he lost the credit but will get more money for you tomorrow, i should have it by the time Scouts rolls around)

Finally, I’ve been experiencing a rather strange phenomonon recently. Food, in general, has stopped tasting good. Too much sugar? Not enough sleep? General stomache problems? They probably all contribute, but even my more preferred foods have ceased tasting as delicious as they should. My best guess is just a lack of sleep, because whenever I don’t get enough sleep, I find myself not seeing food as attractive. We shall see.

Banana Nut Cookies Are EXTINCT! (O.o)

That’s right. I ate the last one.

Updated grades:

  • German 3H, Bronfenbrenner: C (a guess)
  • Math 10H, House: B (updated)
  • Principles of Engineering, Peters: A
  • Global 2H, Rumney: A- (updated)
  • Programming 2, Teukolsky: A- (updated)
  • English 10H, Asklar: C (another guess)
  • Chemistry, Smith: F (updated, but i have a LOT missing)
  • PE, Palmer: B

A little bit better, but definately the C’s need to be gone before the end of the semester. I also got my schedule for next year set up. Ideally, it will look like this:

  • Honors English 11
  • Honors US History
  • Honors Math 11
  • AP Physics B
  • AP Computer Science
  • Digital Electronics
  • Computer Integrated Manufacturing
  • PE

Note the lack of a lunch. I’ll probably end up having to drop one of the DDP courses simply because having that many single courses line up is…unlikely. I can hope, though. I can’t wait, though. I won’t have German, and ALL of my classes (excepting US History and PE, and possibly English, depending on the teacher) are on things I’m genuinely into, and finally, it looks…challenging. AP Physics is supposed to be taken after having had Course III – that should be pretty interesting, and fun, as long as I have a good teacher. Back to the good old homework, which I didn’t go to Scouts to do.

EDIT: i accidentally pressed the “save as draft” button, which is why this was gone for two days. sorry!

Evolutionary Napping (…)

This week has sucked. Not in that “oh teh woe is teh me, my girlfriend has left meeee” or “omg world must die omg”, but that “i’m tired, i’m hungry, i’m cold, and i’m still not done with my homework” kind of way. I’m not actually cold, or any of those right now, but that’s the general feeling I’ve had all week. I’ve had no time to socialize during the week. Monday through Friday have been spent hard at work improving those grades I got.

  • German 3H, Bronfenbrenner: D
  • Math 10H, House: C
  • Principles of Engineering, Peters: Passing (probably A or B)
  • Global 2H, Rumney: C
  • Programming 2, Teukolsky: C
  • English 10H, Asklar: F
  • Chemistry, Smith: D
  • PE, Palmer: B

These are officially the worst grades I’ve ever recieved in my lifetime. My first D’s ever, my second F ever (first was last quarter, remember), and the most C’s ever on one card. Unacceptable, to say the least. The grades have all risen by about one letter by now (that’s how much I’ve been doing). You know what? I’m gonna say it again. I hate Mary, German, I hate it all. Every time I step into Ms. Smith’s room I want to shoot myself, just from listening to her for 45 minutes. That counts for an entire month’s worth of being emo, so I’ll stop there.

In addition to fixing grades, which have caused the generic lack of sleep, and an increased hunger, other things have been happening. Most important of all is that of a recent reform to my creationist beliefs. I was what is knows as a YEC (young-earth creationist, they believe God created the world in a 6-day period, instantaneously). Due to recent evidence I came across while doing research for a bible study lesson I was teaching last Tuesday, I’ve changed my opinion rather drastically. I had previously had good faith in the Big Bang, simply due to the empirical evidence already available, but had not actively pursued trying to apply it to the Bible. Upon reading, I came to the conclusion that the Big Bang and Evolution work in a Biblical context – they are not the enemies of common Christian theology. You have to know my history to understand how big of a change this is. You’re reading the blog of a boy who stood up in front of his 7th grade Life Science class to debate evolution, and had several almost heated discussions with his teacher. This is a guy who’s argued with at least a dozen people over the physical evidence for evolution, almost on a regular basis. I really believed evolution had been disproven and was prepped to collapse in on itself. I didn’t just change all that in a moment, you see. It’s taken a good 20-25 hours of researching this week to get me to a point where evolution is believable in a scientific context. I still have my doubts, and I may not accept evolution in the end, but it’s comforting in a lot of ways knowing that I don’t have to fight it anymore. It sapped a lot of energy from me, always arguing and struggling against my friends over it. If nothing else, I’ve gained a more open mind. If you’d like to see my resources on this, just give me a line, I’ll be glad to show you. For now, I supply to you a rather important verse on which this is based.

Romans 1:20
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

This is giving away a little bit of the bible study lesson I’m doing next Tuesday, but basically, God has not put anything in Creation that would be a road block for someone coming to faith. Everything we see is evidence of him, not against him. I’ll get off my soap box now.

Other than that, I’ve just been plain busy. I took a nap after I got home today, and went to Sho’s for an hour. That was a little akward, it’s a little hard to describe, but suffice to say, it was akward. And with that, I take me leave to continue playing Mario RPG.

Trucker Hats and Zelda (O.o)

This week in general is not a good one. Productive, but not good in the least. The crappy grades which I’ve spent so much time fixing, Jonothan leaving, none if it’s cool. I had a glass of champagne with Jonothan and Brian Wednesday night. I’m not a fan of most alcoholic drinks, but it wasn’t too bad, nothing I would drink of my own accord, though. Jonothan left Thursday morning.

Friday was really nice and relaxing, exactly what I had hoped for. Saturday was too, but I had Kerry, Paul, Ben, and Jennie over around 7:30 to watch a movie (we couldn’t decide what movie, but Paul just shoved Zoolander in while nobody was watching, which sort of decided it for us). For whatever reason, Kerry was wearing this really large trucker hat, which she left here. Ben and Paul ended up spending the night, and left in the morning, and I walked down to church. For some reason, my mom’s been in Wisconsin. I can’t fathom what’s worth seeing in Wisconsin, but maybe some things are better left unanswered.

[geek]Beyond that, I’ve just been playing a lot of ZSNES games. I’m a good way through Yoshi’s Island, Mario RPG, Lufia II, Mario 3, Donkey Kong 1 and 2, and I already beat Zelda. I enjoy playing classic games a lot, it’s nice just to be able to sit down and enjoy a game without waiting for other players or dealing with complications and crashes and such. Playing the older games has resurrected my respect for Nintendo, which I lost upon release of the Gamecube. The Revolution may or may not be good, I can’t know, but one can hope. Speaking of which, I was enjoying the spoils of the GDC (Game Developer’s Conference). There was an Empire Earth II demo (sucked) a Chaos Theory Demo (looking good!), reports on a whole bunch of new games – Spartan: Total Warrior (from the makers of the Total War series, and I’m presuming using the Total War engine), Lego Star Wars (looked kinda funny, maybe one of those rental games), some stuff on Xbox 2 features (I was not left enthused), the PC version of Fable (didn’t look fantastic, but it said it had more quests, might be worth a download at least). E3 is on the way, though, which is supposed to have playable prototypes of all 3 consoles. I’m not really into console-hyping, but it’s good to know which system to go for first.[/geek]

At the moment, the house is empty and I’m blasting the Rome soundtrack at as high volume as my ears will allow.

It Won’t Be The Same (O.o)

I bring to you the fabled Colorado post, minus one picture (which happened to be the one I looked forward to seeing full-size the most) which my dad deleted. This is what I get for letting my dad touch that camera. *grumble* All my mom and dad’s pictures turned out like crap – they’re barely worth putting up. It ticks me off a lot – the scenery is completely ruined by a crap disposable camera and poor photography skills. *more complaining*

We left Sunday, landed in Denver about dusk, picked Christopher up from Clair’s (cousin’s widow, for those who forgot). We drove on over to the Johnson’s, which was a two hour drive with 20 lbs of luggage on my lap. It’d been years since the 5 of us had been in the same car, so this was something to be savored, in that bitter kind of way. We got there about 1 AM, greeted by the Weimeraner known as Tenzing (after the mountain climber).

Entrance:

Driveway (that’s our rental in there):

Tenzing (poor picture, apologies):

We slept, and spent Monday adjusting to the elevation of 10, 800 ft.. Christopher ran out and bought a Gamecube on a whim, and rented Mario Kart, which supplied Jonothan and I some amusement. He had a Gamecube, but it was stolen a little while back. Poor Christopher has a hard history with robbery – all his possessions were stolen from a storage facility when he was 18 and had just joined the Army (that was a lot of stuff). Not too long ago his laptop and other major appliances were stolen.

Yes, we woke up to this view every morning:

We stayed in the bottom portion of their house. Their house by the way, is custom, completely wood, and disgustingly nice. Not rich kind of nice, but non-standard kind of nice. Retirement kind of nice. The bottom portion has two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a den (with TV, VCR, DVD).

The downstairs main area:

The upper portion is wide, lots of windows, and shockingly bright in the morning. I took most of the pictures around dusk, so it’s not bright, as the mountain blocks the sun.

The living room (there’s a huge wall of windows to the right (you can see them on the east side picture), but for obvious reasons I can’t take a picture of that):

The kitchen (facing out the south side):

The entry (facing out the north/west side, with my back to the windows):

The outside is very much like a log cabin. Pictures tell more than words, though.

The north side (the outside pictures are going in something of a circle, you should be able to get something of an idea of what the outside looks like if you follow it):

The east side (this ones a jump, sorry):

The south side (you can see the porch that’s in the east side picture on the right, for reference):

I won’t supply many skiing pictures, simply because it’s a lot of work for something that isn’t going to tell much. So, skiing. We skiied Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I didn’t actually ski though. Christopher, Jonothan, and I all snowboarded for our first time on Tuesday, and stuck with it the entire time. It really hurt the first day – you fall down a lot, it sucks. You run out of breath so fast at 11,000+ feet, we were sweating up a storm that first day.

Tuesday was Copper, which is the biggest resort in the vicinity of 1.5 hours. It has about 125 trails, a dozen or so lifts (speed lifts, at that. if you didn’t hear this last year, they’re lifts that go about 3 times as fast as normal lifts. they detach onto an alternate rail at mount and dismount, which goes about half as a fast as normal lifts. the convenience of this is indescribable). We took a lesson that day (and only that day) to make sure we got the basic techniques and stuff. The lessons were so much better there – it’s amazing. Greek Peak’s instructors do this “do this, no you’re not doing it, you have to do this” kind of thing. Our instructor, Jeff, gave us all kinds of tips for how to do all the stuff, it was really nice. We found that when we applied the rules he taught us, everything worked, it was amazing. We just did the bunny hill that first day – and that was hard. It hurt. It hurt bad. When the lesson was over I decided to go attempt a green, and wow was that a mistake. Apparantly Copper stops grooming about mid-season, so on the mildly steep parts of greens, there are moguls. Understand, moguls are completely different on a snowboard. If you don’t know what you’re doing (me), you can’t do crap, whereas on skis you can at least run over the moguls and ruin them. I fell about 30 times on the run, and I wore myself out badly pushing myself across the straits. I was about ready to go back to skiing the next day, but some encouragement from Brian and the brothers kept me at it.

Wednesday we went to Cooper – the smallest resort, but the highest at 13,000 feet. Towards Cooper is about the size of Greek Peak in terms of amount of lifts and runs, and even layout. The runs are still about twice as long, though. I forgot to mention – the runs at Copper are generally half a mile to three-fourths. The green path I took made for a 20-minute run, with a 4-5 minute lift ride. That’s about four to five times as long as Greek Peak’s. And about half to a quarter the lift ride. Amazing, yes? By the end of the day we braved a mild blue. Two days, and a mild blue!

Thursday we went back to Copper to meet up with Clair. We spent half the day floundering on these really bad greens – most greens had “traverse” zones, where snowboarders have to detach their back foot and push for a few hundred yards. This is really tiring, and just frustrating. We managed to get some advice from some seasoned Copper-goers and took a few nice and steep blues, which really made up for the first half of the day. The last run, though, we went to the top to try another blue to discover that it’s really, really steep and had moguls. We actually did ok, but we split when it came to a fork in the path. I went down first, and stopped at the fork. It forked between a blue and a black. The plan was to take the blue, but Jonothan and Christopher missed the blue and went down the black. Jonothan did ok, but Christopher wasn’t feeling too hot and just detached and walked back. Three days, and harder blues!

Copper, at the top (crappy camera):

Friday was Monarch, the middle-range between Copper and Cooper, but all the trails are of far greater difficulty. This is by far the best resort, IMO. It has a lot of unmarked forest trails which are really fun and challenging, they all have huge jumps, lots of powder, huge moguls, all created by skiiers. We did one trail, called “Turbo” 6 times. It’s about the equivelant of Olympian on Greek Peak, the hardest black on the mountain, and yet it’s blue. The first four times were pretty tough, we didn’t know how to handle the moguls. By the 5th and 6th time, we had it down to a science of jumping and braking, it was far more dynamic than it is on skis. FOUR days, very steep blues with a lot of moguls!

Snowboarding has it’s perks, but I think I’ll stick with skiing. Skiing has a lot of conveniences, like poles, seperated feet, and is generally more mobile. Also, you can’t really do back-trail snowboarding around here, as you’d have to push yourself everywhere. Anyway. Monarch had a few ok pictures. There was a professional photographer at the top taking pictures, so one is good.

That was our last day of skiing. Saturday was nothing, I just ran around taking pictures and such. There are a few left of views of the scenery. These are the good ones.

This is of Buena Vista, from the windows:

Night time:

View to the west:

View to the north:

We packed up and cleaned the rooms Saturday too. I ended up vacuuming with a vacuum older than my parents. So old, there was no date on it, anywhere. I took a picture to immortalize this antiquity.

The trip wasn’t just fun, though. It was (and this is said at the risk of sounding corny) a really good family bonding experience. Every time I spend time with my brothers, I realize how much alike we really are. It helps that I’m old enough to really have fun with them now, and not constantly be left behind. Our family sat down for about 3 hours just talking about problems we were facing and prayer requests, it was nice like that. It’s a little weird looking past the outside stuff that bothers me about the family and seeing what’s really worth looking at. It wasn’t gooey, soft, and pretty, but was definately heart warming. Anyways.

And a poorly taken picture of our final feast:

[2012 edit: lost forever]

We left Sunday morning to Denver airport, sent Christopher off to San Antonio, and moved on to Denver. We checked in at the hotel and just…sat, basically. We didn’t do anything until we saw Tim and Joyce Hume (this is the guy I’m named after, remember). It was really good to see them back together (they’d been seperated), and with a child no less. I really enjoy my time with Tim, he’s an awesome one. No pictures, for some reason. Monday was pretty boring, we just kinda sat around, had dinner with Clair, and that was it. We left Tuesday morning, and got back to Ithaca at 12:00 AM Wednesday. They lost Mom’s and Jonothan’s luggage though (after the flight was delayed, too), so we didn’t get home till 1:30 AM. For obvious reasons I didn’t go to school, and that was my trip. Exciting, to be sure.

Death’s Sharpies (^^)

How geek is that – I almost had a semicolon at the end of the tital. This is here to inform you that no, I am not dead, and a post will come soon. Two things will happen before I do this: Jonothan will leave for Iraq (thursday) and I will get the camera from my dad. Apparantly the pictures I took came out spectacularly (I’ve grown fond of taking digital pictures), so that would be rather nice. No later than Friday – I promise.

Very quick details – I got back wednesday morning, did not go to school that day, Paul spent the night Friday, got some time in with Daniel Saturday evening, went to Greg’s for dinner yesterday, lot’s of staying after school working, grades are horrid.

Things will get finished on this blog over the weekend, I promise, but there has been a lot of stuff happening. I’m actually busy, so NYAH!

While I’m Gone…(O.o)

I’m headed to Colorado tomorrow, I’ll be back Tuesday (not next Tuesday) or Wednesday. I didn’t get to all the site improvements I’d hoped to yesterday, and I probably won’t get to them today. I’ll conduct a list of all I did for you, not that you care. 😛

  • Aligned top sidebar border and top post border
  • Made the main column wider.
  • Moved main column higher
  • Divided sidebar into 3 sections.
  • Added Profile section to sidebar.
  • Removed that dumb blogger image at the bottom.
  • Changed title from “Of Tim” to “And The Lack Thereof”.
  • Made IE generally happier.

I also have a list of things I’m planning on doing in the future! Again, not that you care, but…

  • Get the profile area done.
  • Clean up my code a little more, it’s good as is but could be better.
  • Find a new place to put the comments. I’ve found that the current place it out of the way, and easy to miss.
  • Improve the color I have set for the post dates and blog title.
  • Test out some different border styles.
  • Improve for IE, again.
  • Get a better statcounter.

And a little bit further in the future, once I’ve learned PHP and javascript…

  • Set up a server and host the blog on it.
  • Remove the archive.
  • Bring back the multiple style sheet interface (the red, green, and blue templates)
  • Make an option for automatically emailing new posts to you.

I’ve got a lot of hope for this thing, I’ve been really enjoying slowly improving it throughout time. I’m glad to see how much I’ve improved this thing. It looked pretty darn horrid back in the day.

Anyways, I have some packing, and some burning to do. I need some music for the trip, and I don’t have a MP3 CD player (I really need one), so I have to convert everything to .wav and burn it, which just isn’t cool. Oh well. While I’m gone, go check out Aireline, Built to Spill, Muse, and Sunny Day Real Estate. Good stuff. Off I go to pack.

All That and a Bag of Chips! (O.o)

This week would not end. I beat it with sticks, clubs, pencils, and shoelaces, but it would not relent. I’ve had about 25 less hours of sleep than I need this week, and it’s been so very rough. The week in totality has sucked – at least three teachers are highly displeased with me, my grades have been awful (it’s weird, I have like an A+ in global and english, but i doubt i’m even passing in chem and math), and I’ve just been perpetually tired. I can say this for a fact: I have never experienced a week this long.

Tuesday was the Bible Study, which again failed to meet muster. I’ve promised Daniel I’ll go another time before I give up on it, so we shall see how things go in March. Wednesday was…nothing. Thursday was ski club, fun stuff, except for some damage I did to my trachea. I was attempting to grab Colette’s poles using my poles, and I pushed down a little hard and one of my poles stuck in the ground, and before I knew it I had stopped myself going rather fast by having a pole jammed into my throat. That hurt. Of course, in my delerium, I fell over standing up once I got to the bottom. Today was Ben’s birthday (technically tomorrow, but today was more convenient). We went to his house and laughed at Sho’s chick flick, The Notebook. The name is bad enough, but the movie was worse. This was either a case of major plot revision at the last minute, awful editing, or just retarded plot transition. Let me describe the general mood of this story.

Ben: “Something needs to explode.”
Tim: “Why hasn’t anyone died yet?”
Sho: “…”

[queue main character lamenting the absence of his girlfriend]
Narrator: After she moved, he sent a letter to her every day. After one year with no response, he gave up, and became an ensign.
[queue main character running across a battle field with lots of explosions for 10 seconds, and finds his best friend dead. without providing any emotional response and experiencing no emotional change, he returns home, his dad gives him a lot of money, dies, and he begins building a house]

This is in the space of 1 minute, and I am not exaggerating. Even though it was bad, it was most hilarious to mock. I call that a happy birthday.

As for the rest of today, it’s been really, really nice. Not having school is just so delightful, I cannot express the emotion therein. I was watching Jonothan play Halo 2 (he played it for about 18 hours straight yesterday, he couldn’t sleep, so he just played), and he’s improved a lot. If you know my brother, he’s not a real gaming kind of guy, and we’ve never really shared a joy in playing these things, so it’s cool to see him get excited at learning and getting better at a game I really enjoy. We were also playing LotR Trivial Pursuit, while watching the LotR: Fellowship EE, with my dad, too. I haven’t played a board game with my dad in….ages. The last time we did was at least 4 years ago, so that was really nice. My dad went to bed, so Jonothan and I are in the midst of a game of Monopoly (we’re taking a break at the moment).

So, at 4:31 in the morning, Jonothan owned me in Monopoly. Took us three hours. Off to sleep I go.

Justice, the Product of Perspective (O.o)

An arguable statement, but at least partially true in a non-religious context. My recent days have been overly sober, not as spontaneous or as wantonly enjoyable as I normally keep them. Jonothan’s time here has been a reality check for me – recently, I’d begun reducing life to simple equations, which, if worked, Einstein would have found them already. Jonothan told me how the big things right now are really actually small – no matter how mature or how smart you handle matters or approach them. A quick glance at my past and those of my friends has proven his point. I’ve been struggling with this in how I treat these seemingly big matters – should I treat them with any less delicacy or ferocity? My postulate: no. They’re big matters now because there are no matters bigger than those I’m facing – you take things in proportion.

With this in mind, I was blown away when Rachel called Jonothan on his cell, and he picked up. When he was done with a short conversation with her, I asked him why he picked up. His reply: “We’re adults.”. You have no idea how much that scares me – I’m afraid to pick up the phone when my lawn mowing customers are calling to get me to mow their lawn one more time. I guess this is where that proportion thing comes in.

What do you do, though, when something out of proportion enters in the fray? Amanda told me about a friend of hers, who’s being abused, but nothing can be done because he’s about to turn 18, and his parents are habitual liars. It’s times like that I wonder “where’s the justice? no, really, where’d it go?”. When all I can do is pray for him, I’m reminded that God does have a plan here, and that plan may not include me saving the day. A frustrating concept, to be sure.

Saturday night Daniel came over and we watched the rest of Fullmetal, talked, etc.. Sunday was normal, Benjamin came over, we played around in GIMP (I made a few that I found particularly cool – 1, 2, and 3). Today, I stayed home sick (I do have that flu, you kn0w). I woke up to Jonothan handing me a plate of bacon and an egg + cheese + english muffin thing (they’d call them egg McMuffin’s at McDonald’s, but I dunno what they’re actually called).

Beyond that, my musical tastes have been expanded a little bit – I’ve grown keen on two bands recently. Aireline and Muse (I doubt anyone’s heard of the former, but Paul’s heard of Muse, so maybe someone else has heard of it). In any case, I still like the techno, I just like some other stuff too. *cough*

A Darker Side of the Moon (-.-)

Jonothan got here last night, hearing him detail all that’s happened wasn’t exactly uplifting. The thing I didn’t realize is that there’s a reason he’s going to Iraq. He moved to North Carolina to be with Rachel. He wouldn’t be going otherwise. He ended up with nothing, and then some. We laughed at some of the really stupid stuff about playing games online (I’ll explain later, Daniel), though, which was kind of nice. One of the recurring themes that came up while talking to him which kind of dragged my mood down was how all of high school is just a trifle, relationships end up becoming nothing. This wasn’t new information, but being told that the vast majority of those I know, unless they’re really true friends, are just going to fade away once high school is over. Hopefully this really…depressed and nasty feeling will go away, I hate it, I want it gone. It sort of feels like an intruder, it broke in during the night and won’t leave. I guess the seed was planted while talking to a friend of mine (who’s now 24 or 25) a few weeks ago. I think I may spend too much time talking to those who’ve been through high school.

Friday was spent at Amy’s house (that was just a little weird, 5 girls, one guy) for a few hours after waiting for Gwen to finish her Spanish test. I got to meet her teacher, Mrs. Craig, whom I must admit was a very cool teacher. I was talking to her about my German class – or lack thereof. I didn’t mention the name, but she seemed to have noticed the same things as I have, which was rather uplifting.

I’ve ranted about her before, you don’t need to hear me again. Meanwhile, I’ve caught the beginnings of the flu. Jonothan and Brian were up playing Burnout till 4:00 (meaning, in my room) so I didn’t get to sleep nearly as soon as I would have liked.

One last thing, which is Daisy. She just galloped down the basement stairs, which she’s not supposed to do (bad for her bones). As I tried to shoo her back upstairs, she fell back down (this dog’s getting old, she’s 13 now). Upon further inspection of the dog, I noticed one of her paws was worn down and sore, she has two lumps of irritated skin on her legs. I keep telling mom and dad to take her to the vet, but they just say “We’re working on it.”, and that’s that. I realized why Daisy was so excited to see Jonothan (she’s been following him everywhere). Jonothan’s always been the one to treat Daisy the best – he takes her on walks and pets her a lot, generally just a little more attentive. I try and do that, but it’s really time consuming. It’s not that Daisy’s mistreated, but that she doesn’t get the attention she deserves. Normally the amount of attention we give her is fine, she’s happy, we’re happy, it’s all good. I guess as she gets older it’s not enough.

Perfect Squares (^^)

Who knew something could be so square?

That video contains possibly the most square piece of cloth ever to touch this earth. It’s more square than 3-piece suits and 36. I won’t go on so as to keep this post short, I’ve been posting too much lately.

Two things about Jonothan: he’s arriving tomorrow night (he’s driving all day tomorrow), and his car situation is somewhat improved. He had to shell out the money to the towing company to get the car back, but the tenant who had it towed is being emo. Real emo. The landlord is a pretty cool guy, and sending the tenant through the runs for “giving a guy who’s fighting for our country such a hard time”. He’s a real patriot, I say, and I give him my props for the day. The landlord is mad enough at this girl that he pulled out the lawyers to get her to write a simple check. He calmly requests that she pays, and she goes ballistic. After this phone call, Jonothan gets home to find three cop cars outside his place, investigating claims of death threats from him to this tenant (whom he’s never contacted, seen, met, he didn’t even know her name before today). He won’t have to be around to see the mess through, thanks to his landlord.

Skiing was excellent. Add several adjectives adverbs on to that, including but not limited to: excellentely, awesomely, amazingly, superbly, wonderfully, hugely, highly, very, really, exceedingly. School was also very good – I ended up not having to do the German conversation (by grace of God alone, I swear). Today, was a good day.

His Car, His Girlfriend, and His Job (…)

Jonothan’s on a roll. First his car is TOWED (he found out that it was in fact not stolen, but towed at the consent of an intendant, even though he had permission to leave the car there, but he’s now fighting some beaurocrats over it). Then his girlfriend (fiance, but the title fitted better with girlfriend) walks out on him. Now he’s getting an all-expenses payed trip to Iraq.

I’m not worried, although it did help for me to have previous knowledge of this. Eavesdropping on Christopher’s conversations (not really eavesdropping, but I had my headphones on while he was in the room…) has saved me some shock value. When I say previous knowledge, I knew it was gonna happen a year and a half ago, when he was checking out the prospects on National Guard units. My parents, of course, were not informed.

Like I said, I’m not worried. I know his chances are quite good (he has like a .00001% chance of even being injured) due to the marvelous army medical technology and the now somewhat safer Iraq he’ll be heading to. I’d be a lot more comfortable with this if I knew he was going there to make a difference. Christopher’s accounts left me with little faith in our Army’s officers and tacticians. I don’t disagree with the war, for the most part. I’m not stupid enough to try and think we’d get oil out of this, but other facts on the case don’t match up.

Since I’m already into this post, I might as well account for my day. School was not worth detailing, but I stayed after school with a few others, but I got bored after Amy left, so I found myself being rather unenthused to do much of anything. I went to Gwen’s house until I got picked up, which was an hour or two ago. A rather unenthusiastic day.

EDIT:

Looks like Jonothan’s gonna be on Convoy Patrol. He’ll be accompanying convoys going in and aorund Iraq. He’s also gonna try and get him and his stuff up here, meaning I’ll see him before we leave for Colorado – possibly as early as Monday.

Death.

I was prompted to do this from a post on Eileen’s blog, but for different reasons than hers. This was also encouraged by an introductory thing we did as we’re starting Macbeth in English. We listened to famous audio clips from musicians who died young, while showing pictures of them and explaining how they died. I mused to myself how much it would suck to be them. I’ve never wanted fame or fortune (although money for the random things in life would be great), just from examples like all these people who chased after really retarded stuff in a vain search for happiness. I didn’t make this to mock those who have died in useless pursuits of satisfaction, though.

As I was pondering a comment to Eileen’s post, I got thinking a little bit. I’ve never really talked about death on here before, I figured it was long enough and fit for this context. Death has never really scared me. I look forward to it, in some ways, but that desire comes out of my faith, not from some emo self-preservation issue. In the same way, death around me doesn’t really scare me either. It may be a callous look on things, but I get tired of people saying the same things over and over again when it comes to others dying. National or international tragedies leave me highly unsympathetic due to the reactions I see around me. Very few people actually care, most pretend, or care out of obligation. This is not to say they shouldn’t care, but some elements of the facade could be done without. For me, dropping a dollar in the bucket for a charity just doesn’t make me feel like I’ve done my duty to help those in tragedy. I remember the school-run charities during Middle School when 9-11 hit, and giving a few dollars to get the neat-o red-white-n’-blue ribbons they were handing out for donations of more than 10 cents. Perhaps it’s the only thing I CAN or COULD do, but it doesn’t change that “I want to do something a little more” feeling. I doubt that will ever change. When/if I donate, I don’t do it out of a guilty conscience, but out of duty and the knowledge that it would help.

Back to the real point. Death. I don’t know about most of you, but death just doesn’t phase me. I don’t hold a lot of attachment to this life – most of it is spent working so that I can rest. Ironic, no? If anyone I was remotely attached to died, I’d be sad, don’t mistake what I’m saying for a lack of caring. What I would NOT do, is make bad resolutions to not make the same mistake most people do, which is not to live life to their potential. I’m not a fan of cheesy (no matter how dire or set in stone you may seem at the time) resolutions, either. The only thing I fear? Pain. A gun to the head doesn’t scare me, but drowning has the potential to make me quiver. Why? It would be pain that can’t even be soothed or aided, unstoppable, while you get to contemplate what happens to you in three more minutes. Another good example for this? Cancer. Cancer doesn’t scare me. The treatment does. The stories I hear about chemotherapy and radiation therapy really don’t sound pleasant to me. Sure, the cancer itself aint a walk in the park, but I somehow doubt it would cause the same kind of pain.

Enough of my musings, go do something else.

When Three Doors Is/Are Not Enough! (…)

I just got back from “bible study” with Daniel and Benjamin, which ended up pretty boring, but may supposedely get better next time. I might go again, we’ll see. We didn’t really do anything (nobody had anything prepared). :-/ I spent most of the time daydreaming while they argued over random stuff and asked dumb questions.

Today actually didn’t go really great, it didn’t quite hit me till now. I failed (actually failed, -65% failed) two quizzes, one for chem and one for math. My grades came in, and for the first time in my life, I am not on the Honor roll. I had a 3.06. That’s the lowest GPA I’ve ever gotten. Definately not a high point in my academic history. I can’t even remember how to spell correctly, though that’s mostly due to sleep deprevation. Gah. My dad hauled our kitchen screen door into my room so he could fix it, but hasn’t finished the job yet. For now, it’s sitting there, waiting for me open a portal to the netherworld, where moose and cows roam freely.

Monday was far better, as it was spent with Gwen and Amy after school. We walked to Gwen’s piano lesson, while Amy and I sort of did homework. She has this thing about not being able to study while I’m around, I can’t figure it out. It’s a strange occurance, to be sure (insert generic “*grin*” statement). My legs were actually really hurting that day from doing some 150 squats on Saturday night, and they’re still a bit tender. I also had Scouts that night, which was equally lacking in interestingness.

The other important thing on the list that really hasn’t been helping things is Jonothan’s current plight. He got back from his 7-week retraining (boot camp all over again), to find that his car had been stolen, and then Rachel walks out on him. In case you didn’t know, they were engaged, and recently started seriously discussing details. This really makes me sad, not just for Jonothan, but that Rachel would do this. I liked Rachel, she was a nice. Definately not cool of her to just drop that kind of bomb after leading him on like that. Maybe I don’t know the whole story, but either way, Jonothan’s not doing great. It makes me look forward to this winter break trip to Colorado even more.

Set to the Tune of “Commercialization”

The TV is currently spewing out various noises and images related to football and commericals, as I download techno and talk to the few people on IM. I’m not a huge football fan – I can enjoy it in good company, and I know how the game works, but I don’t take time out of my days to watch it. I’m at least into it enough to be able to have a short conversation about it with the pizza delivery guy.

[geek] I spent all of Friday and Saturday building two alternate styles for the Boy Scout website I’m helping with. They wanted some alternate ideas for design, but I was faced with the issue of sorting through code I hadn’t written, and doing it in VI under the unix file system (which I wasn’t very familiar with). It took me about 12 hours to do, since I had to learn how to use chmod (all the files I ssh’d over to the server started with no read/write privilages), and then because of some confusion with the divs and paragraphs, it took me a few hours to figure out the percentages I needed to set (which were never really up to snuff). I also had to figure out a lot of stuff in GIMP (aka Photoshop), as I’ve never really been proficient in that. My second style didn’t work due to some problems in the PHP (that’s all I could find to be the problem in the 20 minutes I had to finish it). Definately fun though, learned a lot of stuff. [/geek]

Nothing else of astounding importance has really happened, though. I’m downloading a whole LOT of techno right now (14 different albums, amounting to about 30 or 40 tracks). During this process though, I’ve noticed something really, really creepy. All the techno forums (where I download the techno) are like…robotic, sort of like a ghost town. So far even the forum formats are the same (they both use phpBB, but the same style, different colors though). I’ve been 4 different places, all the same (including di.fm, which is the general go-to place for techno). All the music is in the same format – one track for each “CD”, with a 2 kb CUE file (i can’t figure out what these do), and usually there’s an option for a torrent or for direct dl. Maybe it’s just the industry standard, I don’t know.

Colette burned me the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. She had me listening to it on the bus home from ski club, it’s pretty good. Some of it’s a little too…singy, but it’s not bad as far as musicals go. Ski club was pretty good, it was nice and warm, so there was room to have some fun. They had signs up telling people to hug the people monitoring the ski lifts. I was running around stealing everybody’s poles (mostly Colette’s, cause she was the easiest to steal from :P).

And, I can’t think of much else interesting to say, so I shall return to looking around for Superbowl commercials.

Perspective, the Product of Intelligence (O.o)

I just read Ben Stein’s final article for a column he did on E!. Not knowing he was not only a Republican, but a Christian, I was rather pleasantly surprised as I read this. I have great respect for Stein in general, so I found this rather interesting. A nice read if you don’t mind the Christian “propoganda” as some put it.

Stein’s Reflections

Today was really….relaxing, a little boring. I didn’t have school due to Peer Mediation (I’ll explain in a moment). After school I journeyed with Amy, Gwen, Kerry, and Paul to the Library, where we attempted homework and lesser forms of slave labor. I was shown Ranma (….I think I’ll stick to anime, manga isn’t my thing…) and we parted from Amy and Gwen and had pizza, then Paul and I shuffled up to my house. The walk up was annoying, as everything was frozen. Speaking of which, our school is still iced, but they keep you from going on the ice. Rather frustrating.

Peer Mediation was generally boring, I don’t completely agree with their ideals, but I severely doubt this will go anywhere. The concept of Mediation is rather simple. A Mediator gets two people who have some beef with eachother, and acts like a moderator. The Mediator makes sure certain rules are applied to the discussion (no interrupting, flaming, basic stuff), and will interject at points with reflections or observations to assist the argument. It’s completely reliant on the two people being smart enough to solve the problem. The Mediator isn’t allowed to have an “agenda” or try and push them towards a solution. Not my style, (I discussed this with Kerry during the boring parts) as I believe humans are naturally evil, and therefore not inclined to come to a proper solution. Anyways, the actual meeting was better than being in school, but not very fun. At first it was good, we were having interesting discussions, had some nice snacks, did a little ping-pong, but it eventually degraded into bad demonstrations (I mean BAD, like, not even good analogies) and concepts that were so boring and so easy to grasp, that I did fall asleep for a few minutes (hey, it was about the time I would have been having Chemistry). Ah well, it’s worth missing two days of school for.

EDIT:

Well grounded, you are able to be realistic and rationalize.

On the inside, you have a hard core. It’s tough to phase you.You are super productive, and you are able to think anything through.

Focused and super charged, your instincts are a good guide for your next step.

Your Element Is Earth

You excel at planning and strategizing.

You could be a champ at chess or Survivor.
What’s Your Element?

DOUBLE EDIT:I like quizzes, they’re like a way to measure my progression and how I grow up. That is, good quizzes. Bad quizzes aren’t. This one is pretty accurate…that’s what I feel like anyways. I used to be really wishy-washy. Every day after school I had to have three hours of “me-time”, no less. I was always complaining, whining, I could go on and on. I feel far more stable now, in control of how I feel and understanding why I feel whatever I feel. Recently I’ve spent a lot of time talking about all sorts of things with a lot of my friends. As I’ve talked, I notice I’m far more open-minded. I used to be highly averted to changing how I view anything (politically especially), but that’s changed a little bit. Having an open mind exposed my ignorance and lack of knowledge in many areas, it forced me to beef up on those areas. It made me a lot stronger in the end.

Most of all, I’m confident. That’s probably the only noticeable outer change to most of you. In reality, I haven’t changed as much as I make it seem. I feel it, though, and it makes life a lot more….interesting.

[/random deep inner thoughts]

TRIPLE EDIT: EDITACULAR:

Just to make some clarification here, all those reflections were NOT based off the quiz. More clarification: I enjoy quizzes for the questions. Those are the reflective part. The results are usually nice because they have pretty pictures. Pictures define a good quiz result. Are we clear? Good. Don’t make me have an EDITACULAR EDITING FRENZY.

 

Three Trees Can Only Be So Interesting (O.o)

Another day-by-day breakdown of the recent events, brought to you by yours truly.

Thursday was cold. When I say cold, I mean -30 cold, as well as harsh cold. I did indeed ski in that -30 wind chill, while missing a movie with those smart enough not to ski. It was one of those lose-lose situations…either way, I’d miss hanging out with a few people, but the added weight of “you already missed one day of skiing, don’t waste more of our money” is what truly tipped the scale. The skiing itself was, at best, marginally bad. All the powder had been robbed from us honest skiers by the bloody snowboarders, and we were left with the rough equivelant of an ice rink, except you had the occasional snowblower freezing your face, which are lacking in most ice rinks (to my knowledge).

Friday was mildly good. I went over to Ben’s for his party thing, which sort of turned out sub-par because nobody showed up. It was kinda fun though, cause I got to see Eddie Izzard (that was a shock, I was expecting some funky and lanky dude, reminiscent of Chris Rock, but I recieved instead, a transvestite with leather bellbottoms and a face akin to a woman I shovel snow for).

Saturday brought about the Klondike, which is a fairly big Scouting thing where Troops compete for the District award (dubbed the Klonduck, as it is a red & white barber pole with a duck nailed atop of it). For the third year in a row, our troop (troop 2) won (absolutely no surprise). We had 77 points at the end of the day (after being shafted at least 5 points total for retarded things), the next highest had 64. That was pretty fun overall, although the pushing a very heavy sled (I’m guessing 70 pounds, I’m really not sure) up a very large hill with considerable amounts of snow. Hopefully the pictures of me on fire (it’s hard to explain, but I was so hot and so sweaty that every inch of my body was steaming, it looks pretty awesome) turned out well, but I doubt they did since he had to do a long exposure to get the steam.

Saturday night we slept outside (no shelter, the logs we were using snapped after we got 50 or so pounds of snow on top of it), it was about 15, at most 20 out, but it was pretty warm. Benjamin, Daniel, Jesse and I all stayed up talking to eachother for a good 5 hours, and boy was THAT weird. The tree analogies and random word-connection games we played definately got odd. The title refers the the three trees I was forced to stare at for 3 hours as we talked, which never changed, and got awfully boring to look at. For those of you about to say “so turn over”, remember that it’s 15 degrees out, and I had to be in a rather specific position to maintain the perfect temperature.

Sunday I got back home about 11:00. I wanted to go to church, but I smelled and looked awful (consider: no shower saturday, plus campfire and extreme amounts of smoke, plus sleeping outside in a sleeping bag, plus that gigantic workout going up the hill, plus random food, makes for a less than stellar smell), so I opted to get a shower and such. [geek] I spent my spare time searching for Gameboy and N64 emulators (which I found, although I have yet to find N64 ROMs). I’ve almost beaten the Gameboy Zelda (I spent a lot of time being really bad at this game as a younger child), and this of course brings up the desire to play the Ocarina of Time (upon remembering the game, it may rival FFVII as the best game ever created, but I’m not completely sure). [/geek] I also talked to Sean from Young Life a little bit, which is always nice.

Today has been very pleasant, and perfectly filled with events. I’ve had enough to keep me busy, but not so much as to get me frustrated. I went to a 30 minute Young Life thing-doodle at Wegmans (easy access to cheap food), met and re-met a few of the guys in that (They’re all seniors, I’m the only underclassman), talked for a bit, nothing out of the ordinary. From there I went to Chili’s with mom and dad, ate, went to Scouts, home, and that’s that. Somewhere in there I also talked to Christopher for 15 minutes, which was spectacular. We’ve challenged eachother to see who can learn how to snowboard faster while we’re in Colorado. We’re both moderately good skiers, he’s been skiing in Canada a number of times, maybe in Colorado once, I’m not sure, he’s been here a few times too.

In unrelated events, I have a few things as well. I finally found and used a crack for the Windows activation thing (just a few hours before Windows would strangle me, too). I talked to Jonothan for 2 or 3 hours the other night (Thursday, possibly Friday I think) which was quite awesome. He told me some of his military stories and stuff he’d heard from comrades of his while he’s been down in Military Police Training Camp (he got called up for training, as did a bunch of random people, in no specific order). I’ll probably post those later, I told half a dozen or so people in my awe at the coolness of them. For now, the possibility of school tomorrow calls. There’s a chance school won’t be in due to some serious flooding in certain parts of the school. One can always hope.

At the End of All Things (-.-)

The title refers to the final chapter of Lord of the Rings. Today’s been a rather active, mentally and emotionally. After the Math A (piece of cake) I went home, and watched the last 3 episodes of Fullmetal. I watched 23 episodes last night (that is, Monday, as this is 1:16 AM on Wednesday morning) in a row. Having finished it, I am wholly reminded of endings, particularly, the end of good things. Books, movies, shows, I hate getting to the end. If the media did the job correctly, I am left with a gaping hole where it once stood, and I grasp for something as a replacement. This is especially painful with this series, as the character of Edward Elric was…incredible. No, I won’t spoil anything for those who valiantly choose to watch it on TV, and by valiant, I refer to the utter frustration you will want to wreak on your television set when each episode ends, and another does not begin. And yet still, I feel the desire to wreak havoc upon my surroundings in the futile hope of recieving another episode.

Besides finishing Fullmetal, I jumped into the job of helping create the Troop 2 Scouts website. Benjamin’s doing the PHP, Daniel’s doing the CSS, I’m doing the content, and the three of us together decide what’s happening graphically. It’s a fun project – I’ve learned a lot about the Unix file system, SSH, and vi.

The true point of this was to express my utter…helplessness to the feeling I have after finishing Fullmetal. I just, argh, when something that good ends, I just wanna scream, and there’s nothing to replace that empty feeling I have. It’s no surpise, really, as I filled my last week’s nights with watching the episodes (heck, it only took me 5 days to watch 51 episodes, so less than that). I should stop ranting at this point, I suppose.

Monday was the first time I’ve been back to Boy Scouts for a good many months, they were rather happy to see me, and my timing seems rather good, considering the rather…inparticipative older scouts (coughBRANDONcoughPETERcough). I’m sort of obligated to go on the next two camp outs, I guess. I wish I hadn’t said yes for the most recent one, as the timing is inconvenient, but backing out would be rather, shall we say, detrimental to the amount of trust placed in my motivation to show up.

I think I may go re-watch a few episodes now, I’m not sure, but we’ll see.

So THIS is What Sewage is Made of! (O.o)

And no, sewage does not contain money or candy, it’s just as bad as the movies say. Our house has a bi-annual thing is does where some mythical object gets stuck in a pipe, and so the sewage backs up into this gigantic metal sink we have in the basement. Half the time we can plunge it out ourselves (boy is that fun!), the other half we are forced to call Roto-Rooter. This is the disadvantage of living in the basement by yourself. My room doesn’t smell, but whenever I walk out the door, it’s like getting trout slapped, several times over. If you don’t know what being trout slapped is, Google it, or have someone take a trout, and proceed to slap you.

I “overslept” for church today, again, but I believe it isn’t me that’s oversleeping. I have no problems waking up for school with no sleep, I should not face troubles with church. My mom also seems to stay home whenever I “oversleep”. To spell it out for you, I think my mom is just covering for herself.

Apparantly my dad’s coming home with KFC, and Jesse and Benjamin. I am determined to show them, and make them love Fullmetal. By the end of today they will have seen good anime. And they will be better for it. On that topic, my next 29 episodes are 54% done. I left it on overnight, so it should be done tomorrow if I do it again tonight.