Category: life

Left, Right, Cut, Back, Down! (O.o)

I have opened begun a post almost every day this week, and just, got distracted. What have I been doing, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you!

Tuesday I went to Crosswalk with Daniel, and afterwards went over to his house for a couple hours. Went to Bible Study, spilled strawberries RIGHT in my lap, embarrassing innuendo followed.

[geek]

The entire purpose of this week, the sole purpose, the only reason this week exists, was E3. I honestly did next to NOTHING this week but watch over 5 hours of press conferences, game demos, and trailers from E3. I stated that I was firm in my faith with the Xbox 360. I am here to tell you that it is not such any longer. The PS3, has by far outclassed the Xbox 360 in hardware, and if some of the rumors are true, games. The sheer power of the PS3 is astounding – they ran a full demo using the Unreal 3 engine flawlessly. The 360 definately can’t do that. However, the 360 carries multiple franchises I am attached to, and several upcoming games I am interested in. The deciding factor here? FFVII. Sony demonstrated a tech demo of astounding quality, of the first scene in FFVII. Rumor has it that the cutscene was a part of the remake. No announcements have been made thus far. Speaking of FFVII, Advent Children is scheduled for September 13th. w00tl4r.

Personally, I need to make myself an empirical comparison of the PS3 vs. the Xbox 360. More for me than you.

PS3:

      ++ Automatically a/b/g wi-fi enabled

 

      ++ Approximately 2x pure processing power w/Cell

 

      ++ Broadcasts up to 1080p

 

      ++ Comes in black, looks nice

 

      + Heavenly Sword

 

      ++ Final Fantasy

 

      + Killzone 2

 

      + Metal Gear Solid 4

 

      ++ Significantly more powerful GPU

 

      + Utilizes Blu-ray

 

    ++ Utilizes Unreal 3 Engine

— Akward controller!
— Fewer good franchises/hopeful games

Xbox 360:

      ++ Automatically online enabled w/Live (which is probably better than other online services)

 

      ++ Better controller

 

      + Blue Dragon

 

      + Comes w/remote?

 

      ++ Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

 

      + Fable 2

 

      ++ Halo 3

 

      + Ninety-Nine Nights

 

    + Perfect Dark Zero

— Half as powerful on the proc side alone
— Less powerful GPU than the RSX
— Semi-ugly appearance

At the moment, PS3 looks to be ahead. We’ve got a few months until November. We’ll see. As a side note: Gothic III comes out this year, as well. I’ve posted a couple random movies I enjoyed on the server. And by the way, that Killzone 2 demo is not reflective of what the game is actually like. In most senses of the word, it’s not real-time.

Linkage

[/geek]

Other than that, I’ve watched another whole blob of movies. I finally got around to watching the two Harry Potter movies (the second and third). The third wasn’t too shabby, though the second kinda sucked. I also rewatched portions of Revolutions, for old time’s sake. I saw Episode III last night, which was refreshingly good. I liked it better than I, II, and IV, it was quite worth seeing.

Today, I cleaned the attic. I didn’t rearrange much (a few signs, some of the chairs), but I vacuumed it up, washed the windows, ping pong table, foosball table, and the snapple machine, and fixed some of the lights, and lastly replaced some of the tacks with nails. And fixed the fan’s positions. And spot-cleaned the carpet. Ahem.

And now I must make sure I wake up tomorrow, for church, as my parents will not be here.

Das War….ein Gutes Spiel! (O.o)

I just spent my entire day at Mike (Langenbacher)’s house. What was I doing, you ask? Not feeding ducks, to be sure. Our German class is doing this group (ours was Mike, Matt, Julia, Ryan, and myself) project for a book we read – paraphrase the movie in the form of a play, and you can do it in a movie. So, we did the movie thing. We shot the entire thing in about 5 hours (5:00 – 10:00), with about 9-10 minutes of actual footage. None of us actually memorized the lines – we’d shoot short sections (like 30 seconds) and just memorize right before. It was spiffy. I died about 5-6 times throughout the movie, which was thoroughly enjoyable. I hope Mike does a good job splicing it together, since I think it will turn out well if he does.
Various events worth noting:

  • I watched the Matrix Reloaded again Wednesday night. I’ve forgotten how cool some of the action scenes are – despite being a poor movie as far as the plot goes, I thoroughly enjoy the fight scenes and car chases.
  • I watched Black Hawk Down again Thursday night. I saw it a couple years ago, when I was in 6th grade. Another good action movie, a nice, realistic portayal of Rangers in action. I was unaware until watching some of the credits that Ridley Scott directed it. Man-points for him.
  • I may be getting my braces off Thursday. It depends on how much they like me. That same day, I will be taking the permit test.
  • I was cleaning out the car that will eventually be mine, (the green Ford Explorer in my driveway), and found much phat l00t throughout it. Jonothan never cleaned it out, so there’s all kinds of stuff about.
  • Benjamin and Nolan are spending the night tomorrow, as well as staying over pretty much all day. Their parents are out of town. Hopefully, Benjamin and I will be able to get this other box running on SuSE and have it serving all this stuff more reliably than it is on here.

Among the important events, Christopher will be coming to live with us (as in, in our house). He’ll be out of the military in a couple weeks, and pretty much has nowhere else to go, but home. His plans for the future are ambiguous, but he’s thinking about taking some courses to finish up his degree (he has at least 2-3 years worth in credit-hours from all kinds of random places). This is cool news.

[geek]

The Xbox 360 was unveiled about three days ago. If it holds up the Xbox tradition, this will be the hardware I’m getting. I don’t like Sony much at all – the PS3 is not appealing to me, even though I haven’t even seen the specifications or capabilities yet. The wiki on it is more extensive than anything the mainstream sites will give you. To sum it up, though, the Xbox 360 does everything and anything you want it to – it can handle media across the Live community and from external sources, like mp3 players, cameras, digital and video. It’s completely wireless enabled, so LAN parties no longer require hubs or cables, and the controllers are wireless. It has customizable plates, detachable 20 GB hd, it just, man, it looks sweet. The games are not worth speculating on – when they’re here, and they’re good, I’ll say something. But the list is nice – Fable 2, Halo 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Blue Dragon, Elder Scrolls IV, and Ghost Recon 3. It’s some crazy stuff. The graphics look incredible for all the games currently along in development. I don’t want to be a raving fanboy, but I hope I can save up enough for this thing. It’s sweet.

And Nintendo? The DS and Gamecube prevent me from trusting them until the deliver. I’m still hurt from the dissapointment of Project Dolphin. I remember the screenshots of the Zelda that was to be on the Dolphin. My heart ached for a long time.

[/geek]

Time to pick a movie to watch and clean up the room.

Honorable War (O.o)

The main event for today: A Soldier’s Story. In light of reading All Quiet on the Western Front, and our recent studying of WWI and WWII, the school invites veterans from just about every war of the previous century to come and talk, as a yearly event. The veterans can give a wide range of responses and stories – generally, the ones from Ithaca are Vietnam veterans, as they only went due to the draft. The rest are pretty much up in the air.

Veteran Number One, Sergeant Major Looplund:
This guy was probably 80-something years old, and an E-9 in the Marines and Active-duty reserves. He’d been in WWII, Korea, and I think Vietnam, I’m not sure on that one. He was drafted in the beginning, but chose to stay with the Marines to this day. As with all Marines, he was deployed to the Pacific in WWII, and in specific, Iwo Jima. In his fully reinforced company of 255 men (there were others, obviously, just not with him), only 35 survived the assault on the island. Nobody asked if he’d ever killed anyone – there were 21,000 Japanese on the island, and only 1000 survived. You do the math.

His company was intended to join the other divisions for a direct assault on Japan – but his company had suffered too many casualties, and was pulled back to Hawaii, re-equip, and the join the other divisions, but before the assault was approved, the atomic bombs were dropped. Something that really struck me about that, is this: “If the atomic bomb had not been dropped, I would not be here today. The Japanese were fanatics; when we landed, every man, woman, and child would be waiting to resist us.”. After WWII, he stayed as an Active Duty reserve, and was activated during both Korea and Vietnam, but I’m not sure if he fought or not.

This guy basically represents, to me, the wisdom you gain with age. He knew what he was talking about. He never swore, not even once. He was detailed, succinct, polite, and basically, just a strong soldier. He had perspective. Someone asked if he wanted to join the war, and he didn’t rant and rave about how war is pointless, how America is stuck on hating the world. I, for one, appreciate that. But he didn’t lie, he gave an honest answer. He sounded proud of his achievements and his past, but acknowledged the reality of what happened. He had also moved on from whatever might have happened – he wasn’t plagued by memories and nightmares. That, right there, is a man I can respect. Part of the reason I respect him highly is I didn’t realize exactly how bitter one can be until the second veteran.

And that, I kid you not, is not because he is (or claimed to be) a Christian.

Veteran Number 2:
This was some girl’s dad (Juliet’s – the one who screamed at me for being a Republican early in the year), I can’t remember his last name. He never gave many details on his rank and position. He was about 50 years old, and fought in the Vietnam War. He was born in Ithaca, and thus obviously only went because he was drafted. He was a semi-pacifist at the time. He was rarely in direct combat while in the army. To be honest, I don’t know what he did. He was really definitely affected by Agent Orange, as he couldn’t keep on a single track for too long, often went on tangents, stopped to cry 3 times (this was his 3rd time speaking today alone). He said that of the 25 places sprayed most with Agent Orange, he stayed at 18 of them.

After spending some time in Vietnam, he was recruited for a series of special bombing runs against North Vietnamese encampments. His job was to go with 4 other soldiers, sneak to other bases, record the coordinates, and take them back to the artillery. I don’t trust the accuracy of his guesses, but he said the missions saved thousands of Americans and killed thousands more Vietnamese, and still regretted doing them. After that he went into a long thing on how Bush was a liar, coke addict, alcoholic tyrant who wants to be a hero. I almost forgot to mention – he swore a LOT.

I had to come back to English later in the day to make up an essay, and he was talking about the same thing to another class. I asked him why he thought that, and man, do I regret asking that. I got about 5 or 10 minutes of curse-filled earfuls on how Bush is the worst thing since poop on a stick. Honestly, I only said three things to him. The first statement, then “I dunno…I just disagree.” and finally “It’s not that I think you’re crazy, I just disagree, that’s all.”. Lesson learned. Needless to say, I don’t have much respect for this guy. Yeah, ‘Nam was bad, so was WWI, so were the Crusades, say what you will, there’s nothing new under the sun.

This is a very long musing on war. Shoot me down if you so please. A lot of my musings are probably not befitting of a kid, but hey, I feel like writing, so I am.

[musing]

This kind of brings me to my whole view on war. The curriculum at our school is really geared towards getting to go see how horrific war is, on realizing it’s a bad thing, all that jazz. I don’t really buy it. That’s a gross oversimplification of my views, but that’s basically the sum of it.

    • All wars are not fought the same way.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a graphic and sometimes nasty portrayal of what happened during WWI – the most pointless, and yet possibly the nastiest war of the previous century. WWI is an exception, like Vietnam, to what war is like. WWI happened in the middle of a technological revolution, and left armies with tools fit only for trench warfare, and by the end, were crushed by sheer numbers and starvation. WWI was before the first Geneva Convention – weapons outlawed long ago in today’s age were weapons of fear and mass destruction. Flamethrowers, gas, shotguns, anything went. Because these were new and better weapons, they were used without warrant. It was war – nobody stopped to ask questions. Vietnam is, in some ways, same thing. Agent Orange, Napalm, it was superior tactics on page, but when implemented were really terrible things, and nobody realized until later. WWII, Korea, Iraq, these do not suffer from the same things.

    • All wars do not have the same purpose.

The best example here is WWI versus WWII. WWI was a war that started almost entirely out of pride in your respective country – it was just an excuse to exert your country’s ability. It was not out of hatred for other countries, but from love of your own. WWII, was far different. WWII was one gigantic resistance to stop three countries from taking over the world. Contrary to popular opinion, it was not to stop the genocide of Jews (which is similar to the myth that the Civil War started because of disagreements on slavery), although that did encourage Allied involvement. Treating war as a whole is a gigantic oversimplification of what it really is.

    • All wars are not won the same way.

Wars are not won if you are fighting for the correct reason. Wars are not lost if you are fighting for the wrong reason. Wars are not won by superior numbers. Wars are entirely dependent on how involved the country is in that war. Sergeant Major Looplund said something very striking: Soldiers hear about the reactions back at home from the newspapers and radio – if they’re only hearing protests and complaints, and no support, what’s gonna happen? This is true, regardless of time. Motivation, morale, that’s what the soldier needs. If a country wants to win a war, they’ll put a complete effort behind it – towards technological advances, gathering of resources, production of materials, behind supporting the soldiers. A divided country is a weak country. That, my friends, is why we spent app. 18 years in Vietnam, and why we are still in Iraq. Both of those have been spearheaded by ineffective military strategies, but, that is beside the current point. Do not think I am comparing Iraq to Vietnam, though. Iraq isn’t even close.

War is often portrayed as the worst of things that can happen between humans. To me, it’s definitely bad, I do not doubt that, but war is just another implementation of sin, human nature. War is not innately more horrific than what happens elsewhere in our lives. We’re just more accustomed to the other things.

[/musing]

In other news, I have another color template I’d like you guys to comment on. Tell me if you like it. It’s not gonna get implemented any time soon, but, it will eventually get around here.

Check it, yo.

No Subscription Fee? (O.o)

I think I am officially done with the appearance changes. Now to get working on that profile…

Yesterday ended up being pretty rough. There were a number of things going on at once, none of which were helping the other. It’s been remedied now, but I lost a lot of sleep in the process.

One random thing: I got a “raise” from one of my mowing customers. Two extra dollars if I sweep the grass off the lawn. Considering this is a lawn which formerly payed 8 dollars for 40 minutes of work, and now pays 10 dollars for 45 minutes of work, this is good.

Scouts last night was kind of mediocre, mostly due to the new rules on our games of ultimate. The game becomes a lot less fun when you’re constantly told to hold back because of younger scouts not being able to keep up. I enjoy playing sports a lot, but it almost seems like the entire purpose is taken away when you can’t play to the best of your ability. I can understand holding back when facing a younger scout, but if I’m guarding some guy who’s bigger than me, how is aggressive guarding going to affect the other scouts? Gah.

Beyond that and the drama, there’s Guild Wars. I got the beta for it a while back, it was pretty mediocre then. It’s done now, and looks pretty darn good, but mostly because it has no subscription fee. The madness of an MMO with no fee is….maddeningly mad. As soon as I get payed by the customers, it’s mine. I haven’t played a good recent RPG in so long. I have high hopes.

Deceleration, and the Lack Thereof (-.-)

I stayed home sick today, and this will be my last sick day for the year. Only 25 days left to go. I worked on the title image, finally got the text AA’d. I realized that GIFs don’t support color-to-transparency, so it’s a PNG again, and IE users get to suffer. Beyond that, I mowed a lawn (I didn’t stay home to do that), went to Scouts, and just got more rest. It was nice.

You know, I was gonna write more. But, something just came up, and has taken away every desire to make a post at this moment.

“Slowerly” (O.o)

I have been having an excessively good weekend. Karel and Nathan (whom I pretty much just met Friday, it’s been a while since I’ve made a new friend) came over and we did random things. Karel is amazingly good at ping-pong. I haven’t played against anyone that’s any good in a very long time.

A few random things. My dad bought me an RF Modulatar (not an adaptor) meaning I can now utilize this DVD player that’s been sitting here. Grades ended Friday, which are not optimal, because in a few classes I have ONE missing assignment, dropping it down like 2 full letters. My mom bought like 50 different kinds of cereals when I asked for something besides Fruity Pebbles. The list of cereals in my house include:

  • 2 Fruity Pebbles
  • 1 Frosted Flakes
  • 1 Frosted Checks
  • 2 Cinnamon Crispex
  • 2 Fruit Loops
  • 1 Cheerios
  • 1 Lucky Charms
  • 3 Cocoa Puffs
  • 3 Rice Krispies
  • 1 Trix
  • 1 Pops
  • 1 Kix
  • 3 Generic Health Brands

I kid you not. I also woke up to find a box of Krispie Kreme donuts in the kitchen. I ate seven. And let me tell you, those were so delectable donuts. The last time I had Krispie Kreme was on my birthday. They are filled with happiness.

My Saturday has been wonderful. I woke up at 1:30, layed in bed for 30 minutes, meandered about for a while, read another 30 pages in my C++ book, took a shower, played some mediocre games of Halo 2. I went and saw Kingdom of Heaven with Daniel and Ben, which was also mediocre. It was supposed to be about the Crusades, but the plot, in general, was nonsensical. It broadcasted a sense of “historical accuracy”, but the main character (Orlando Bloom D: ) starts out as thin blacksmith with long hair that can read. This uneducated and somehow literate blacksmith goes on to command the defense of Jerusalem against Saladin, magically knowing all the ins and outs of swordplay, castle defense, disease (which the vast majority of kings and generals in that day wouldn’t even know), and physics. Plot failures aside, it was still mediocre. The fight scenes were short, uncreative, and generally uninspired. Anyways.

As for the blog, I’m working on yet more changes, which have been approved by various others before implemented. I’ve learned enough javascript to do what I want with the blog – I have to say, Javascript is a disgrace. It feels more like I’m drawing on a page, than writing neatly formed and executed code. I think you’ll like what I’m about to set up.

24 is Not Enough (O.o)

I swear, whoever decided on making days only 24-hours needs to remedy this situation immediately. I’ve spent this entire week staring at this screen and at books, my head hurts, I’m learning way too much. I finally got the motivation to start up with PHP and Javascript, in lieu of my blog changes. In addition to this, I got a different C++ book from my Java teacher, which I’m not sure I like better than the one I have. I’ve probably spent a total of 40 hours doing work on the blog and blog-related locale so far, with more work to do still. I desperately need time, I keep finding myself looking up to find the clock at 11:30, with my homework still not done. It doesn’t help that spring is now here, and mowing customers are calling. Speaking of which, I have to mow a lawn in a few minutes, so this will be fairly short.

Let me know what you think of the changes – I need suggestions. I’m really liking the improvements thus far. It feels a lot more professional and organized to me.

The Halo 2 playlist update and ranking reset was today, but I haven’t been able to touch Halo 2 for three days. Gotta get to that tonight.

THIS is the Rock For You (O.o)

Version 2, of Halo 2, I present to you.

O Halo Two, how I love you,
you give me so many things to do!

With just a single DVD,
you unleash a world of glee!

Never straining the Front Side Bus,
for you were coded in C++!

Such an arsenal to explore,
with which to make war!

So many maps to inhabit,
awesome is what you emit!

Powered by a large Xbox,
you clearly rock my socks!

Halo Two, I kindly request of thee,
thy hand in marriage to me!

*bow*

I might seem a little complaintitive this post…we’ll see.

I went rafting with boy scouts over the weekend, which was marginally fun. The actual rafting wasn’t that great – the water was low, I was pretty cold a lot of the time, and this 250 lb. weight in the form of an adult going on the trip was in our boat. He wouldn’t stop talking, he wouldn’t paddle, it was like, he had ADD or something. The fun part of rafting was the water fights (the water was probably 50-ish, but with wetsuits and a lot of layers on, it wasn’t too bad), but by the time we got our hands on a water gun, everybody was done with the fights. A shame, truly.

The trip as a whole decided to throw every annoying person at me it could. I had to ride down to the camp site (two hours or more to drive down) with the aforementioned hippie vegetarian (i don’t have a problem with vegetarianism unless it’s for stupid reasons…which his were). After sitting in the tent with Jesse and Benjamin for a couple hours, I walk out and find Michael trying to make a fire, by literally clumping together a bunch of twigs, throwing them in between two giant logs, and then throwing two sticks on top of that. I kid you not. I’m like “Dude, you gotta spread it out, there’s no air in there. You also need some kind of ignitor, those twigs aren’t just gonna light!” After sticking a piece of cardboard under it, and 9 or 10 matches failing, I tell him to move his stuff and let me get it started. After 30 minutes or so of collecting bark, Nolan and I got it roaring, and that was that. Further confrontations over how to cook the chicken, boil water, and clean up ensued. We ate fajitas, which I must say, were pretty good, despite the lack of sour cream and taco sauce. Benjamin’s sausages were good too.

The most fun of it all was once we got to bed, when Benjamin, Jesse, and I are just laying there. We always have really interesting conversations. Not as in, intellectually stimulating, but generally hilarious. Quotes like…

“She’s hot.

She’s nice.

…she talks to me.”

result from Jesse’s confessions on his love life. But you don’t need to hear that.

In other news: I missed last night’s episode of Family Guy, which spears my heart like poisoned arrows. I am rectifying this situation as we speak, however. Also, I’ve added a lot more content and such to the server, I’m not done yet, but there’s more to look at if you so desire. That’s about all for today.

Intensity! (…)

I finished all of the content on the other pages for now – the games section will take well-nigh forever to get to the point that I want it, but, it’s acceptable for now. I’m happy with all I’ve gotten done.

[reminiscing]

I went to see one of Gwen’s lacrosse games (she’s on junior varsity i think) today, after walking like 4 miles around the school and getting Pizza from Sammy’s. Paul and I sat around and watched her game, which, (no offense, please don’t hurt me) was massively unexciting. It reminded me of how all Northern sports suck (excluding colleges, it’s generally reversed geographically according to college). 5 of my 9 years in Mississippi were spent playing soccer (yes, I started at the age of 4, before I even started school, or close at least). Soccer is gigantically huge down there – Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina are all deep into it. The way it worked when I played, was soccer was completely seperate from school (the way it should be). Every year, there would be try outs where all the kids would perform a certain set of things (dribble around some cones, pass to another guy, recieve a pass, then shoot on the goal), and the coaches would stand around and pick which ones they wanted. My best friend at the time (Brandon Adcock….ironically, there was another kid in our neighborhood and also on the team named Daniel Cox….yeah…), his dad was a coach, so he usually picked the same people every time. In fact, most of the teams stayed the same, it was rare that you got picked by a coach you didn’t know (unless, of course, you didn’t know any).

All the teams had full uniforms – knit jerseys, each player got the number of their choosing, socks, shorts. Our team was usually blue or purple, and purple is actually not that bad of a color. It was darkish, so you didn’t feel girly wearing it. In addition to that, everyone always got new shin-guards and cleats each year….good memories. Then there were the games, ah, the games. Our town had it’s own complex of soccer fields (this is a town of 25-30,000 people, slightly smaller than Ithaca’s base population), which had one baseball field, and 18 or 20 soccer fields total. Games were almost always on Fridays and Saturdays (during the school year), and usually the same during the summer. During the tournaments we’d usually have 2-3 games each day, and the games were never canceled. 40 degrees out? We still played. Thunderstorms? That was a really fun game, I still remember that one. Yeah, that doesn’t happen up here. The games up here are so far form hardcore, it’s not even funny.

Another thing I noticed was laxidazical management of water and snacks. When we played, players had to bring these 2 gallon jugs, which were usually used up by the end of the game. You never waited till half-time to drink, either. You’d always signal the coach and he’d sub you for 5 minutes. Someone always brought snacks, too, for the end of the game. I could ramble on for hours about my experience, but as a kid, it was way more intense than anything I saw today. Definately makes me wish there were a proper soccer league around here.

[/reminiscing]

As for lacrosse…

I won’t go into it, at risk of being threatened by certain lacrosse players.

And now, I must prepare for this rafting trip over the weekend.

EDIT:

I forgot a little peeve of mine in Chemistry. If any of you know this guy, you know he’s a pain. I walk into Chemistry…

“So, Tim, did you go to that lecture on the shape of space?”
“Nah, I would of if I could, was it good?”
“It was ok, he just talked about how we don’t know the shape of space, and why that is.”
“I dunno…I’d say the universe is a sphere. What else could it be?”
*Matt laughs*
“So you’re saying you’re smarter than all these scientists and the combined research of our entire history?”
“What? First off, history is not a collective attempt to figure out the shape of space. Secondly, I’m basing this of common sense, logic, and a lot of research on my part.”
“Throughout history, science has always been attempting to figure out what our universe and like. These are scientists, they’ve done tons of research!”
“Dude, look at it this way. Before the Big Bang, the universe didn’t exist, right? The capacity for space was not there, so when the Big Bang occured, it occured everywhere, at an equal quantity of force. As it expands…”
“No, you’re wrong. Space was there before the Big Bang. How would you know this?”
“For one thing, it’s basic logic, and for another, it came out of a Scientific American.”
“Well, I read that too, but space was still there.”
“What the crap? Highly respected scientists contribute there! You were just saying…”
*Eli jumps in*
Eli: “Tim, you’re wrong, space is obviously a dodecahedron.”
Tim: “What the crap? No! That’s not physically possible!”
Matt: “How would you know?”
*further conversation is cut off by the teacher, whom we had ignored in the middle of class to argue*

Furthermore, he does it again today.

Matt: “So, Tim, would you like to share more of your expansive knowledge about the universe? Since you’re really smart on these things…”
Tim: “Dude, I have a clue on this. Space is…”
Eli: “It’s a dodecahedron!”
Matt: “It can’t be a sphere!”
*again, conversation is cut off by the teacher*

Stuff like this ticks me off. But you don’t need to hear more.

Acorns and the Sunrise (O.o)

I have rehauled the look, yet again, hopefully you find it more appealing. Firefox has a weird glitch pushing the sidebar down, I’m not sure if I can ever get it figured out. It looks okay on the server-side pages, I dunno what’s going on. You can see all the additions and changes for yourself, I’m not gonna make one of those goofy BULLETED LISTS. Or am I?

  • Put everything inside one static div
  • made a solid border around everything
  • added “root” directory

That’s it. The server-side pages might be done be the end of the day, we’ll see.

I had another weird dream, not as weird as the other one though. So, I’m walking along somewhere near IHS, and I find Gwen and Amy planting flowers to pretty up the school. They’re digging around this tree, planting really small flowers (actually, it might have been grass) in these little trenches they dug. There was a lake 15 ft away, and from then on, it stops making sense. All i remember was digging a rectangular trench around a root (I think I was showing them the proper way to plant flowers) and Amy yelling at me, I dunno. It was weird.

In other news, Ben decided to show his disgust at my beautiful poetry in the form of a flash animation.

It Is NOT Okay to Crackle (O.o)

I present to you…

my poem.

Halo Two, how I love thee,
You are a joy only I can see

Who knew the only one DVD
Could unlock so much glee?

You have so many guns to explore
Pistols, rockets, and snipers galore!

With thine battle rifle
With which none can trifle!

To you, Halo Two,
I can only say “I do”!

*bow*

I slept through two entire classes today. As in, I walked in, sat down, put my head on the desk and did not pull it back up until the class was over. I was tired. I kept waking up in the middle of the night (I was kinda cold, but not conscious enough when I kept waking up to get more covers). In case you didn’t know, I was at Benjamin’s Saturday and Sunday while Mom and Dad were in Boston, visiting the Luddy’s. I didn’t go for a number of reasons.

I had the weirdest dream ever last night, too.

Picture, if you will, a classy hotel, four-star. Very full. It is in the near future, but for some reason, the KGB is alive and thriving, armed in black suits, ties, and sunglasses, with pistols, and enough of them to occupy said hotel. This is where the dream starts off. The KGB enter and occupy the building, and people are evacuating. I’m just a spectator here, not an actual person.

So, the KGB storm the building and people are going nuts. They’re shooting random people down, but for the most part, standing around, looking cool. They only occupy the first floor, though. They just stood in the lobby. Meanwhile, people are going nuts everywhere else in the hotel packing up and evacuating. Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer, mildly reminiscent of somebody from Kill Bill, with a sword. In every room I observe, he’s under the bed, and there’s always two people on the bed. First instance: I think it’s Zach (it could have been paul, but I think it was Zach), and he’s talking in my general direction, I don’t know, but he gets stabbed and I think he falls out the window. Keep in mind, this is a dream, things are fuzzy. Switch to the next room. Spiderman and his friend, wearing a green mask are getting ready to go to bead. Spiderman is wearing his costume, but has yellow shorts on and his right arm is in a cast. His friend is kind of like the hulk. He’s really buff, and has the urge not to wear a shirt to showcase his manly abdominals. And he has a green mask on. So mask-man is laying on the bed and gets stabbed (from under the bed, I don’t know how mr. serial killer did that with a sword), and starts screaming, so Spiderman pulls out a pistol and puts 7 (yes, 7) shots into the bed, somehow misses the serial killer completely, and gets stabbed. There were a couple more rooms of stuff like that happening, with one person getting killed and the other vainly attempting to stop the killer, but that’s about it. Feel enlightened by my horrible dream.

Dreams that I remember are normally very, very vivid, but I often don’t write them down, and thus forget. I have a few dreams I wish I could remember. Oh well.

New maps came out today – they absolutely rock. Definately puts Halo 2 on the map for a long time.

The National Rice Crispie Convention (…)

By request, this post has been outfitted with colorful bold TITLESfor each section!.

Tuesday – Frisbee

An eventful two days, to be sure. Tuesday began with disorganized ultimate in Stewart Park. It was kind of hot out 70+ with humidity, so we spent most of the time sitting around on the swings and demonstrating our physical prowess to eachother. We strolled over to Purity and got some ice cream, and that was the day. Among those present were Gwen, NOT PAUL, Ben, NOT PAUL, Veda, NOT PAUL, Julia, NOT PAUL, Zach, NOT PAUL, Ryan, NOT PAUL, and Amy.

Paul was not there because he was a lazy, lazy bum.

Tuesday – Jared’s LAN

[complaining]

Julia (or rather, her dad) gave me a ride home, and as soon as I sat down at my computer, I get a message from Jared, asking if I could come to his LAN. “Hmmm,” I think to myself. This could be fun, but it’s short notice. I thought about it as I ate dinner (consisting of grilled lemon chicken w/bbq sauce, 1/2 baked potato w/sour cream and butter, and applesauce w/marshmallows). I figure, “Why not?” and after some troubles, make my way over there, by about 9:00. It started out ok – there was a healthily-sized group there, consisting of Ben, Zach, Justin B., Jared, John (the Montana one, don’t know his last name), Charlie (don’t actually know this guy), and Ben Lu. After an hour or so, things got boring. Ben Lu, John, and Jared just kind of played their Counterstrike mods all night, and I mean all night. That’s all they did. Charlie just played San Andreas all night. That’s all he did. We were going to play some Halo 2, but Charlie was not interested in doing anything, and Jared wouldn’t really do anything either. About this point, Zach’s parents arrive with the Xbox we thought we were going to use, but ended up not touching the entire night. It’s a 15/20 minute drive out here, so that’s not a small deal. Coincidentally, Ben gets a killer headache about then, and Jared won’t/can’t do anything for him (who doesn’t have aspirin in their house? no, really?). By this time it’s about midnight-ish, and they turn on this really bad and really loud rap. Nobody in the room likes rap. Nobody. Why was it on? I don’t know. But it was. Combine four computers, a one ps2, one xbox, loud rap, and you get one ridiculously loud and painfully annoying room. After 15 minutes of asking, and then telling them to turn it down, the rap goes away, but the boredom doesn’t. Ben and Zach are fed up and walk upstairs to go sleep on the livingroom floor with, just about nothing. I wander around hoping something will become available to do, but again, the only person even talking to me is Justin, and there’s nothing for us to do, so he sticks to playing Ominusha. After an hour, I give up, and join Ben and Zach in their discomfort. Ben went down once to look for more pillows and blankets (we only had two blankets and four pillows), and discovered four of them (the one not present being Justin) huddled around his computer searching for porn. Obviously mad, Ben takes his computer back upstairs with him, and we eventually get to sleep.

I wake up to Ben L, Jared, Charlie, and John jumping around my head. Why? Because they think it’s absolutely hilarious to do that at 6:00 in the morning. Ben made mention of them possibly being drunk (this is not a remote possibility, and I am not being sarcastic), but I was unable to confirm that. Having had 4 hours of sleep, this was not pleasant. What was even less pleasant? The only food suitable (opposite nasty cold pizza and mountain dew) in the house were bagels. Bagels are fine, but they do not sustain the body. They do not cleanse the pallet of a hard livingroom floor and an upset stomache. After sitting around for an hour and a half laughing at Ominusha as Justin played it, Zach’s mom picked us up and I was home by about 8:00 or 8:30.

[/complaining]

Wednesday – Power Outage

After getting a shower, I went back to sleep for a good 4 or 5 hours, and woke up about 2:00. I hopped onto the computer, and….bzzt. The power goes out. The transformer on the telephone pole down the street exploded (not in a fantastic display of pyrotechnics, but enough to set the telephone pole on fire, and make lots of smoke. The fire department showed up and blocked off the nearby streets, which was kind of amusing to watch cars drive up and wander off in another direction in a bewildered manner. The power did not come back on immediately, so boredom seeped in very fast. Luckily my dad got home an hour or so after the power went out, so we went off to his office so I could check up on his computers (he was having problems with firefox, and I wanted to do maintenence on his old computer that I will soon inherit). By about 5:30, we head out to Chinese Buffet to get some dinner. There was some kid at the table behind us who probably broke the world record for time spoken without ever stopping. He went on and on, about how his friends are crazy about Halo 2, how the Dreamcast was so great (that was hideous to my ears, his facts were so wrong..), his friends, man, I know way more about that child than I ever want to know.

Jonothan’s Exploits

We got home, and the power still wasn’t on. Jonothan called (on our cell phone) and that took up a good hour or two. He has some interesting stories. The prisoners at the base he’s working at are apparantly pretty crafty. They make gigantic slingshots out of the elastic bands in the suits they’re given, and actually have done major damage to the towers with the softball-size rocks they launch. They burn down their tents to get the wooden poles out of the structure and sharpen them to make spears. They stockpile hand-soap from the latrines and use it to light fires on just about anything. Eleven escaped through tunnels they dug under the walls (but were caught 12-hours later). It’s kind of surprising, really. Jonothan’s basically clashing with them on a daily basis, fighting off riots and uprisings. He’s also frustrated by some of the same beurocracy that Christopher faced. Because of what happened at Abu-Grep (grape? not sure..), all the commanding officers are scared of getting blamed or accused of prisoner abuse. This means they won’t let soldiers check any “holy items” the prisoners have – Q’uran, prayer mats, anything slightly religious is a no-go. Except, they keep finding that’s where the prisoners hide all their illegal items. They’ve accidentally knocked down Q’urans to find knives falling out of them, and bumped prayer mats to see more knives. It’s obvious they’re hiding it there, but they can’t do anything about it. Basically, they’re putting the prisoner’s lives before my brother’s. Very, very frustrating.

After our little chat, we waited another hour and the power came back (for a total of 6-7 hours without power). And here we are. I played some Halo 2 and have generally just cooled off from a very long string of events. I was going to write up some impressions on the ALU, as well as plans that my parents have for the weekend, but this is long enough already.

The Stranglehold Knot (O.o)

I slept in for a wonderful many hours today. It feels so good.

Greg did the external evidence of the Bible on Sunday. Good stuff, I say, although I knew a good bit of it (half-ish). Afterwards, Daniel trotted on over and we had a jolley olde time. We ran out and rented Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, and watched both, with some pizza and EXTREME!! ping pong thrown in between. The ping pong consisted of us standing on opposing benches, seperated by the picnic table, and wielding bats. The goal was to keep the ball in the air. Pretty extreme, I know.

Kill Bill was highly worth seeing, although I can certainly see why some don’t like it. The violence wasn’t all that bad, although I’m pretty used to that style of gore. I’m not really sure which one I liked more, though. My guess is Vol. 2, since the action sequences were of higher quality, and the story was a little easier to follow, but I can’t be totally sure. They were both pretty good.

After sitting on the couch for 3 hours and 45 minutes, we jumped on the computer to attempt trickery upon IM. For the most part, it worked. Gwen was probably the must gullible (and that’s saying a lot), I can definately say she never caught on. Pretty sad, I say.

I haven’t done much today besides play Gothic and Warcraft III. I just got back from Boy Scouts. I went with the intention to quit Boy Scouts, but, I’m not sure I have the heart to do it. It’s pretty fun, and if I ever have time, I’d wanna come back. I signed up for the rafting trip at the end of the month, which has been fun in the past.

And finally, the Halo 2 autoliveupdate came out today. I haven’t gotten to see it yet, but I’m gonna try and pull myself away from the computer in a few minutes. w00t!

EDIT:

New screens on the upcoming Halo 2 content!

Pure awesome.

It’s a Lighthouse! (O.o)

In regards to the previous post and the comments therein: take note of a few occurances that are worth noting.

  • I recanted my stance on the Day of Silence, as shown by the edit to the previous post. As usual, I did not remove my original words, so that I don’t forget what the situation was about, and so I can learn from it.
  • The entire debate on the comments was almost completely unrelated to the post. A number of people (I won’t say names, you can go read for yourself) decided my stance was in direct opposition of “gay rights”, per se. This is incorrect. Want to find out what I think? Ask me, don’t assume.
  • In general, online debate, especially over forums, can be pointless. This, I believe, is an exception. Why? We have a few intelligent participants here – more mature than the average teenager. There are obvious exceptions in there, but, they are not the real participants.

Continue debating as you like – I will only remove posts if necessary (and has been twice beore). I know a number of you want it to stop, simply because it will go nowhere – I, for one, find it enjoyable, and definately a learning experience.

As for things not involving this little debate, yesterday was Friday, and today is Spring Break. No, it is not Saturday. It is Spring Break. I went over to Ben’s house with Ben (duhhh), Zach, Paul, Ryan, and Matt. We stopped by Zach’s house to pick up Apples to Apples (i sincerely hope you’ve played that game), and proceeded to play through the entire stack of cards. A grand olde time was had, and Paul spent the night at my house. After owning him as SWITZERLAND, he left about an hour ago.

The only other thing worth noting is this. Reloaded, baby. It’s only funny if you’ve seen the original.

I hold no pity for IE.

[geek]

Also, there’s a Halo 2 autoupdateMonday. The things being changed and fixed include:

  • standby and dummying
  • stronger melee and grenades (i’ve been asking for this since the beginning!)
  • weakened magnum and SMG/Plasma Rifle combo
  • easier leveling (for more balanced games)
  • flag bouncing and wall-grabs
  • sword flying
  • auto-resolution games

Awesome, I say.

[/geek]

It’s Not Supposed To Do That (O.o)

When I got home, mom showed me a “self-rising, self-crispening and browning” microwaveable pizza. I opened it up and it had 3 parts to it: a tray, a lid, and the pizza. You stuck the pizza on the tray, which did something, and put this little ring-lid around the edge of the pizza, seemingly to make the crust work. 5 minutes, and voila, I had a pizza that I didn’t work at all for. Laziness has reached another peak, and it is good.

[rant]

Today was the laughable event of the Day of Silence, a day in which those who “support gays and lesbians” don’t talk. I don’t laugh because it has specifically to do with gays and lesbians, I laugh because it’s just retarded. No, really. Case in point: people are trying to make a ‘statement’, by doing something as passive as not talking. Doesn’t matter what you’re trying to make the statement for, it’s stupid. All this does, and I support this as a fact, is say that you’re trying to make a statement, and even that might be a stretch. Most people don’t notice.

Another aspect of this is that no other “group” has a day in which people state they support said “group”. Don’t try and tell me gays and lesbians are being persecuted – so have Jews, so have Christians, and to a far worse extent. This is life, deal with it, without making akward ‘statements’, that accomplish nothing in the first place.

EDIT: i must admit, upon reviewal of the evidence, the method works. but, this does not end the discussion on homosexuality. post on!

[/rant]
[geek]

I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving my computer on while I’m at school, so I can listen to the music on the server during Programming (and occasionally PoE). I tested it out for the first time today, didn’t work well because the PoE computers don’t have speakers, so I may bring one (singular) in for that purpose. We’ll see.

As for Chaos Theory, I’ve gotten four of the levels beaten on 100% so far, about to start the fifth momentarily. I’m hoping for some kind of special reward here, but, I doubt it. I haven’t heard any mention of it before, so, chances are slim. One can hope.

[/geek]

School was generically okay, nothing special to mention. Today did mark that I officially have 2 days of school left before Spring Break. I haven’t needed a break this much for a while, although I could probably operate a few weeks more on my current level of motivation. The only other thing of note in school is that we took a survey today, mostly on drugs/alcohol, with a short bit on sex. Supposedely, the results go to a national average. I was kind of surprised, that the school would do something as pro-active as this, as in, getting some answers from the 1500-2000 students. The survey itself wasn’t very interesting – the first 50 pages of questions (the amount per page varied, they were grouped by type of answer) were ALL on drugs and alcohol, and there were app. 70 pages. It was kind of interesting as a whole though, considering I know a handful of people who are heavy on the drinking, and know of dozens of people who, uh, seem to be stuck on the weed, as it were. We also have a group of people (hicks) that stand outside on the corner of IHS, smoking cigarettes. How stuff like this happens, and continues to happen, I don’t know.

On to Hokkaido!

Dude, That Was EXTREME!! (O.o)

I am muddy, hungry, and have not started my homework. Church was normal – Greg had a good lesson, as usual. Oh, and Paul? I have some answers for you *grin*. (oh dear…using emotes in blog posts…I’m becoming like Daniel!!) It was on the internal reliability of the Bible (consistency, themes). Pretty cool stuff, especially as he’s doing external next week. I might even take notes.

After Church Benjamin, Jesse, and Nolan came over, and we had pizza while watching Olde English videos. Jesse and Nolan were being bums most of the time, playing on the Xbox, so Benjamin and I started making up some EXTREME!! sports involving EXTREME!! trash cans, EXTREME!! poles, and EXTREME(ly deflated)!! soccer balls. We were playing EXTREME!! ping pong for a while, but that got boring so we moved on to playing it with bats and wiffle-balls on the EXTREME!! picnic table. It didn’t really work, because the picnic table wasn’t wide enough, so we degraded to smashing a deflated soccer ball back and forth. This transformed into a strange form of EXTREME!! minigolf-croquet, and then onto EXTREME!! bowling, which didn’t work, because we couldn’t knock down the trash cans using just an EXTREME!! shovel and a soccer ball.

We eventually got Jesse and Nolan outside (the time it took almost put me to sleep). We were hitting balls back and forth, and eventually found an EXTREME!! bouncy ball in the brush, and I SO pwned Nolan with a headshot from 20 feet with that thing (sorry about that!). They left maybe an hour or two ago.

Last night was Ben’s LAN party, which I attended for 4 hours. Since I was only there for 4 hours, I didn’t get to play a lot of anything, but, among what I did get to play was Halo 2, Chaos Theory (man, it sucks, you can’t do 2v2 with 2 xbox’s), and…that was it. Other people were playing Worms, Gauntlet Legends, and Burnout 3, though. Church conflicted with staying overnight and not sleeping.

As for me, I dismantled that computer that was to be my server (alas, not enough RAM), and took out everything that was of use. Hopefully, the hand-me-down computer I’ll be recieving from my dad will suffice. Hopefully.

And now, a shower.

EDIT EXTREME!!:

Benjamin has a much more EXTREME!! write-up of our activities on his blog.

DOUBLE EDIT EXTREME!!:

Apparantly, extremophile is a word.

TRIPLE EDIT EXTREME!!:

You can’t get more EXTREME!! than THIS.

Oh, He WENT Home… (^^)

I am still sick, but functional to a minimal level. Just thought you should know.

In recent events, my grades have finally “gotten to the dog house” as some would say. I present to you my postulates on the report card.

  1. German 3H: A- (“Tim! You’ve improved so much! You’re being so responsible! I’m impressed!”)
  2. Math 10H: B- (straight from the grade book)
  3. Principles of Engineering: A (guess)
  4. Global 2H: A or A+ (I got a 101 on the last test, did the extra credit…it’s cool)
  5. Programming 2: A or A+ (I’ve gotten A+ on all the projects, with one C- on a test and one A elsewhere)
  6. English 10H: B+ or A- (102 journal grade, 90 on the test, 92 on performance…)
  7. Chemistry: B (this is pending…right now, it’s a B-, after tons and tons and tons of work, up from a 50%, to at least an 82, not sure on many things right now, but at least a B-)
  8. PE: who cares?

In total, I’ve raised my grades by about a proportional 300%+, a literal 175+%, by a magnitude of 2, take your pick, it’s big.

[geek]

Beyond this, I’ve downloaded Eclipse. This doesn’t effect you, but, it’s cool for me. It’s the open-source version of Visual Studio.net Enterprise. Supports Java, C, C++, and all web-based and database languages. I’m really, really lost in the interface, but it’s one of those things that’s powerful enough to take the time to learn, and you’ll be better off in the end. I also picked up this book on C++ Paul gave me eons ago, and will probably start meandering through that (I already started into some of it). I need to figure out how Eclipse works first, though. Otherwise, I can’t compile any of the programs I write. Yeah, shup noob, so I can’t figure out how to debug and run the programs. Nobody cares.

[/geek]

Today consisted of final work on classes (technically the last day of the marking period, meaning teachers start taking grades to apply on the next period, but some stretch the rule). I was running around school too long and ended up missing my bus, so I got to spend extra time on classes. Except, not. None of the teachers were around. I kind meandered around after calling my parents (couldn’t give me a ride, I was really tired and hungry), but I decided I’d make the best of it and sang my way to Center Ithaca, got some pizza and a coke, and read the newspaper for 30 minutes. I don’t know why, but that’s a really nice way to spend an afternoon. I dreaded walking home alone, but strangely enough, it was just plain nice. It’s a relaxing time to just get to think, and enjoy the magnificent day we had.

I got home, and the Epinepherine wore off, and I could not speak coherently, or stay in my chair. It was most hilarious. I ate the last of the chocolate roll (oh, so, very, good), and proceeded back to school to see the newest musical, “My Favorite Year”. The list of attendants includes: Scott, Naina, Gwen, Amy, Mollie, Katie, me, Ryan, Matt, Ben F.. I’ve gotta say…for a high school production, this musical was insanely good. The mains actors were extremely good. I mean, really good. The timing was superb, everything went generally like clockwork. Often the term “good” is thrown around when involved with high school productions, mostly despite many disqualifying traits, such as poor scenery and prop movement, costumes, poor synchronization, or other non-essential traits that boost the believibility of the production. No such thing here.

Amd here we are. For those who care, I stuck my music on the server. That’s a lot less than all of it, but feel free to dig in if you so please. I stuck it on there mainly to listen to while in programming at school. It gets awful boring when you’ve finished all your stuff and have nothing to do but sit. I still have to rip Paul’s Cake CDs (he gave me some for my “surprise” birthday party).

I need sleep, and I’m awesome. But not that awesome. Just a little awesome. And hacked. Cracked, even. With no skillz. But cracked none the less. Pwn. *shnickerh* *cough cough* *HACK!* *wheeze* cough. wink wink. Nod. Smile. Pwn. I am t3h n0ne l1137.zzzzorz. Daniel is a pansy. ‘Cause. Jesse is amused by a simple fan and cheese balls. And kleenex. zzZZZZZZzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

…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!