So, about those pictures from camp. These are actually Benjamin’s, but I figure I’d give them proper captions. Wohoo. One day, my own pictures may get developed.
[2012 edit: lost forever]
“All…your base…are belong to us? What? Isn’t that from some game?”
(i’m willing to bet not many of you will actually catch that one)
[2012 edit: lost forever]
“Heavens above! It’s Jack Thompson!”
[2012 edit: lost forever]
“No.”
[2012 edit: lost forever]
“Heavens above! It’s Jack Thompson!”
After spending 4 or 5 hour’s in Sho’s clothing, I am fully acquainted with women’s apparel (no, i did not wear it all, sickos). I accidentally ripped her jacket trying to get it on, and her shirt and pants just barely fit. Ugh, I’ve done it once, I’ll never do it again.
In case you’re wondering, I was not, in fact, a transvestite (like Ben or Zach), but an emo child. Pictures are soon to come (everybody seemed to find it extremely amusing). Just so you know, I went out with the intention of wearing a robe and a beanie and just looking normal, but no, that would not do. It was not willingly done.
The night as a whole was not super great, but I’ve never actually had a very good Halloween, it seems to be a tradition. That’s okay. I’m feeling more upbeat than previously posted, somewhat thanks to you folk out there. Thank you.
I just hope Sho’s dad didn’t see me. That would be awkward.
EDIT:
No way. I’m not making it easier for you to find those pictures.
[2012 edit: hotlinked for the lols]
As you IE scum can see, things look relatively normal around here. I’ve added a hideous little “notice” box encouraging you to move over to Firefox, which is the suffering you endure for using the crap bucket that is IE. It’s all just some javascript that switches the images to gifs and the css to an IE friendly version. Nothing amazing, it only took about an hour total to do. Be thankful. You are like lasagna without cheese.
So, in an effort to start understanding the constant references to the Godfather in the Sopranos, I sat down and watched half of Part I last night. By the time I had to stop to ensure I got some sleep, I was totally hooked. I’ve been told by many people that it’s possibly the greatest movie of all time, and if nothing else, in the top ten. I’m looking forward to sitting down to it again tonight.
I also watched Batman Begins the other night, which is indeed a good movie. It made me want to see the other Batman movies (read: the first one, not the others). Something I’ve noticed that is unique about Batman is the comlete lack of continuity between each variant, whether it be the cartoon (the dark, shady one, that I wasn’t allowed to watch for the first few years of my youth, I recall it being quite good for a cartoon), the original series (biff! pow!), or the more recent movies. There’s not a lot in common between them. There’s basically a few elements that combine to make the movie: the billionaire Bruce Wayne, the crime-fighting Batman, the crime-ridden Gotham City, and the Bat-accessories. Not even the sidekick Robin is a constant in the equation, which I consider a good thing. It makes for a sort of open book which anybody can pick up, not know anything about Batman, and just get it. That’s healthy story design, I think.
Anyways. I have two programs waiting to be finished, a book to read, and physics.
Speaking of my Physics class, it has reached a low that I was not prepared for. It is boring beyond my wildest dreams. She’s a nice teacher, and I won’t be dropping the class like I normally do when faced with a class that isn’t fun. Even still, when you spend over an hour and a half reviewing three problems, you know someone should be shot, and it’s not the leopard in the corner.
Good night.
Things have normalized, life is normal, things are good. The PSAT left me amused, I expected something difficult. The hardest part was doing the 38 questions in 30 minutes (I am slow, teh woe), which I managed to do. I only omitted 4 question, hooray me. I expect a good score.
For my college major I put down 303 – Computer Science. I was doing a little research on all the fields that I’ve been interested in, to find out that a lot of them were not quite what I’m looking for. Ideally, I’d like something that combines Software Engineering, Number Theory (those two combined equal Computer Science, basically), and an engineering science, like Physics, Astrophysics, or Biomedical. I was slightly disappointed by what wiki had to say about Biomedical engineering, but then again, the article wasn’t of great quality, so I’m doubting it was entirely accurate, but doing something that, say, involved designing the software for some hospital machine would be cool. I’ve always been kinda interested in physically healing people (dude, I play a Medic in BF2, a priest in WoW, you get the idea), but I can see that fading out or being disillusioned out of.
In any case, Computer Science is about as good as it gets right now, and so that’s what I put down. It’s fun planning out your life.
[geek]
A word about BF2, if I may. I was pretty excited to get it free with the video card, but my enthusiasm has been mildly curbed since. It has to be one of the most poorly coded games I’ve ever played. It crashes constantly, the graphics engine is grossly inefficient, the memory management is horrible, it has horrible glitches that are glaringly obvious and yet not fixed, and a lot of the gameplay is flawed. It’s kinda fun, but it’s a lot of pain for only a marginal amount of fun. The thing I hate most is the artillery. I honestly don’t think it has any good use. Your commander can call it in on any area viewed by a person on the team, but to be of use, enemies have to be there, and if there are enemies, there are friendlies. It teamkills almost as much as it kills. There are also other balancing issues that I don’t like (ex. if you’re on foot, all vehicles are going to murder you without fail, unless you’re an unsees anti-tank infantry, and the only vehicles I’ve ever seen do anything besides make for fast transportation are the tanks, helicoptors, and airplanes), and yet despite these I’ve had some fun playing it. The gameplay is dynamic enough to make it worth playing, anyways. If I had more memory and a faster harddrive, that would make it a little more worth playing.
[/geek]
Anyways, this homework isn’t getting done on its own.
A few changes to note – I have put links into the header images. The only one that actually takes you somewhere is the files tab. I’ve set up a semi-primitive photo gallery with which you can browse my collection with great ease. The template is probably about as developed as it will get (it matches the color scheme, displays fine, and reads fine, good enough).
The wedding trip was good. It caused a lot of trouble as far as school goes, which I’m only just now recovering from. All of my teachers have been unhappy with my attendance record thus far. And I’ve failed more than one test. But, I’m getting back on track, so I expect things to go back up.
We left Friday morning, had an uneventful 9 hour drive, got to the town “Chelsea, Michigan” at about 9:00 PM, had some nasty pizza, greeted our host (don’t know their names, they were a little odd), and sprinted off to the theatre to catch the 10:15 showing of Serenity. My friends, if you have not seen this movie, do yourself a favor, and see it. It was extremely good.
If you are unaware as to the nature of Serenity, it’s a movie based off the series Firefly. Firefly was one of Fox’s ‘create and cancel’ swarm, lasting only 10 episodes because every episode occured on a different day at a different time each week. It’s a sci-fi thing, but it’s not an in-your-face type in which each character’s personality is defined by the hyperbalinrakonater in their respective weapons. If you know what I mean. It’s good stuff, go watch it.
Saturday afternoon we ran off and visited Josh, John (I forgot to take pictures of them, sorry), and my Uncle for a few hours before the wedding. I had some good talks with all of them, and as always, that good old Froehlich thing makes it all a lot cooler. The wedding itself (that is, the wedding of my Uncle, and I guess my “Aunt Pat”, as of now) was short and sweet, lasted about 15 minutes, occuring in a tiny Methodist church in town.
The coolest photos come from the ride back. It was at night, and I was bored, so I took photos with a 2-second exposure time. The bumps in the road and a little manual jittering gets some cool effects. Here are a few of my favorites.
The rest can be seen here.
And now for story time. He’s got me some pictures and told a handful of stories and stuff from his experience in Iraq, but I’ll start from when he got home.
Mom and Dad got to see him arrive while I stayed back for school. Upon getting home a few days later, he handed me this, a product of his layover in Ireland. Much happiness ensued, overall, and Mom made lots of really good food.
Anyways, we were sort of in touch while he was in Iraq – we talked on the phone two or three times, and exchanged two or three letters. He didn’t have much access to a phone, limited access to a computer, so letters were the main form of communication. Basically, his day was something like this (get ready for a bulleted list here, guys):
He always ran 12-hour shifts, but they’d change the time of them every 2 weeks, so he could never adjust to them fully. He would work 6 days a week (days off on Sunday), but couldn’t go anywhere on his day off. The only time he left the camp was for an escort every few months, basically meaning he’d sit in a Humvee for the majority of a day. And the camp is not an exciting place to be. Just look.
Not exciting. It’s a very bleak place, completely surrounded by walls. Of course, if you put 3 different groups of people that all hate eachother almost as much as they hate America, then you have a little more excitement. The detainees in the camp are all mostly worthy of being there (estimated at a little over 90% were true threats to the American presence in Iraq, note I say in Iraq), and more than that portion hated the soldiers. But, interestingly enough, there were three factions (names escape me) that hated eachother and would be at eachother’s throats any time they weren’t fighting to break out or kill the soldiers.
Riots would generally break out about every week or so. These consisted of one compound (basically a fenced in area where the detainees stayed) screaming, chanting, and generally making noise, and then proceeding to burn anything and everything they can. “Wait!”, you ask, “How can they burn things?”. Thanks to the morons at Abu Ghraib, “the safety of the soldiers is being sacrificed to the media gods”, as he put it. This means an inspector comes in every week to make sure that the detainees have everything they need – this includes a mosque, a Qur’an, prayer mats, portojohns, beds and tents, clothing, hand sanitizer, cigarettes, and a lighter.
Every one of those items were actively used by the detainees to kill the soldiers or eachother. The American (stress the American here) soldiers are not allowed to enter the mosque, the Qur’ans, or the prayer mats. This means whenever they do shakedowns they are not allowed to search there. A translator would go with them to make sure they did not touch a thing. Dozens of times, they would find knives (they’re fond of the knives) pouring out of this stuff, but they couldn’t do a thing about it.
Here’s an example riot. This is how they begin, with a big gathering. It looks less intense because you don’t see them jumping up and down and screaming in Arabic. The picture in the center is some religious leader (trr’rst), not of importance.
Here’s where the other weapons come in. Most of these guys are issued jumpsuits. These jumpsuits come with nice, large, elastic bands. Combine that and fist-sized rocks taken from the ground and the cinder blocks that make the foundation for their tents and beds, and you have unbelievably destructive weapons. These things go through 4″ bullet-proof glass like paper.
To disperse the crowd to make them easier to manage, they use helicoptors. It’s pretty smart – they bring them in about 30m above the ground, at which the force from the blades will easily knock a guy over, as well as any unstable structures. Like portojohns.
Here’s where the lighters, tents, and hand sanitizer come in. Meet the Purell bomb.
These are makeshift molotov cocktails, made of their headdresses, hand sanitizer, and thrown at anything. Highly explosive, and pretty darn destructive.
The hand sanitizer is mandatory, too. As for the tents, they’re just massively flammable. The canvas is usually coated in kerosene or some other sealant to improve durability, resist insects, and weatherproof it all, but obviously makes the entire thing a disaster waiting to happen. After burning the tent down, they make some more permanent holdings. Meet the ramparts of the desert.
All these do is protect them from the barrage of rubber bullets. That’s right. Through all this, the soldiers get rubber bullets, and some CS gas. Neither of these come close to stopping any determined detainee. What happens if they climb the two barbed wire fences? Oh, no problem, they just request ammo from the ammo dump outside the camp. The Americans aren’t allowed to bring live ammo into the camp unless it’s a hostile situation. Again, I stress the American part, not because it’s not an American camp, but because whenever the British or Australian troops stop by, they have live rounds. In fact, they’re not allowed to enter inside the compounds because of incidents with them killing inmates.
After all is said and done, the compound is pretty much wasted.
But of course, it’s all back up in the same day, just like it was before. Pretty efficient, I say.
And that’s a prison camp for you. There’s not a whole lot else to tell, really, except for a few amusing stories.
Portojohn graffiti is a standard in the armed services, and one such example was a soldier’s infamous mother. What was she infamous for? Nobody knows. But apparantly “V’s Mom” is etched in every portojohn in the entirity of Iraq. There is no exaggeration here.
Some of the world’s worst enter the military out of sheer inability to do anything else. One such soldier found his way into an Airborne unit at the camp. This man’s lack of personal hygene was astounding – his seargants had to escort him to the shower every morning to make sure he showered, and had to routinely check to make sure he had washed his clothes. This guy always failed his PT tests, was generally just a completely unreliable guy. Now, on his uniform, he had a patch on his arm that said “Airborne” below his rank, signifying his status. After having enough of this guy’s crap, a few guys snuck into his bunk, took his unforms, removed the “Airborne” patch and replaced it with an almost identical patch, stating “Shitbag”. This guy never noticed his new found status, and the highly ranked officers in the camp were too baffled by his incompetence to correct him. And thus it stayed on.
Many of the worst detainees in the camp are those who are friendly, speak English well, and fluent in their actions. These are usually the ones who reported directly to known trr’rst leaders. One such trr’rst was known for being a complete jerk, starting fights constantly, always out to make as much trouble for the soldiers as possible. He was constantly in and out of the isolation block, as well as the median between the two, a small fenced area seperated from the rest of the compound. This guy doles out a lot of grief on the soldiers, so he was generally hated more than the others. One soldier found him particularly bad, and felt the need to express this. He expressed this by entering his isolation area, dropping his pants, and spraying the inmate with urine in the manner of a helicopter.
The camp is a pretty big place, and empty compounds are steadily getting filled up by more inmates, so more units come in to handle them. The first night after a compound had been occupied, a controlled fire was seen within the camp, it was large, but not spreading, and no chaos was evident. The next morning, it was revealed that the new unit had gone through every tent and burned all the Qur’ans, prayer mats, weapons, hand sanitizer, lighters, and cigarettes that the inmates had, in one big pile.
Anyways, that’s about all I have for you guys. I hope you enjoyed it.
I’ve known about these for a good year, but Zach and Paul reminded me of them recently. For your viewing pleasure.
These are in fact beer commercials, you are warned, for whatever reasons.
[WoW]
I’m up to level 26, making rather nice progress. I’ve been through the stockades and deadmines, and have yet to go through BFD. In true rip off style (because ripping off is in), here are some amusing screenshots.
Here we see a glitched gnoll, and 4 people all leveling their weapons by leaving their guys there for hours. Amusing. Even more amusing, was that I came back 5 minutes later to find them all naked. True story.
A classic joke.
Sometimes, immaturity is funny.
Zach has funny moments. This is one of them. This was queued from me saying “I can start making silk soon.”.
When LFGing goes wrong.
I have funny moments too. D:
Burned.
<3
[/WoW]
Church wasn’t as exciting as normal, since Greg wasn’t teaching Sunday School. The Mapes did it, and of all the topics to pick, they did evolution, which was minorly awkward. I kind of wanted to jump out and say “uh, no…” a lot, but, I can save it for another day. One thing that I didn’t get to comment on was their belief that God should be included in public school teachings. As much as I’d love for that to happen, I’m fully aware that other religions exist, and if we’re to be a fair country (and not a theocracy), it’s either everybody’s playing field or nobody’s. This plays in with my disagreement with ID beliefs, as well, fully bringing to mind the concept of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (do a google on it). Benjamin and I had a good few chuckles glancing back and forth at eachother, anyways.
So, plans for college. I might have mentioned it before, but hey, whatev. I’m pretty darn sure I’m off to TC3 after the good old high school is over, for two years, and then it’s off to RPI or RIT. What’s nifty is that the tech classes get me credits at TC3 and RIT (that is, if I pass the tests RIT gives out). Irony. The AP classes are less likely to earn me credits than the tech classes. We’re looking at a work ratio of 3:1. But the AP classes are cool, so it’s all good.
Off to homework. Woo.
This so, so so isn’t ready, but I desperately want to post. I’ve been dreaming about it. I kid you not. This blog is wonderful to me. I love it dearly.
We’ll backtrack from here to then.
I’ve spent the past 3 days pretty much just playing World of Warcraft. I caved in and used Paul’s 10-day free trial, after which I will continue playing. At the moment, I’m a level 13 priest, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Very good game. But none of you have waited a month to hear about that.
Work has improved marginally. At this point, I’m basically getting paid to learn/do AutoCAD, which I shouldn’t be complaining about at all. It’s actually been a really good learning experience – I’ve learned how to mail all kinds of packages (I only knew how to mail letters before), stain wood, do stuff at the bank, lots of random things that are kind of useful for every day doings. It has a lot of boring moments though, mostly when I don’t have enough variety in my work. This last project in AutoCAD I’ve been doing has just shot my nerves – every day, something new changes or happens and I have to redo a lot of work. Frustrating, let me tell you. Thankfully, I’m not under any deadline, so nothings going to fail because of me. Actually, the project I’m working on right now is for a building that will be going up where Dominoe’s (that don’t look right O.o) used to be, next to the Gateway Center. It’s a pretty spiffy building. Maybe there’s an NDA on it or something, so I should probably be hush hush….
The only other significant thing in my daily life (e.g. that consumes time) is Jen, whom I still don’t like. She’s mostly house trained, but she’s still a puppy, and thus retains puppy-ness. How quaint.
In important news, Jonothan gets back from Iraq September 15th. He actually arrives back on the 5th (this Saturday), but has to stick around for a many number of days for whatever reason. I’m really looking forward to seeing him. I won’t be able to go down and meet him because it’s 10 days, but, whatev, I’ll see him soon. Before I got WoW, I was playing lots of Zelda (the gamecube version, which I will get to, and OoT), which brought back some great memories from our first Christmas here. We’d get up in the morning over break, grab some hot chocolate and all the blankets we could find, plop down in front of our little monitor and play for many hours. I can’t remember how we worked it out, we probably took turns or something, I dunno.
No word has come in on Christopher’s discharge (still). I’m hoping he’ll be here before Thanksgiving, at this point.
Let’s see….I’ve acquired a job with a cool old Russian dude. He’s a retired professor from Cornell, like 80 years old, so I help him out with gardening and stuff. It lasts basically indefinitely, which is how I’m going to be paying for WoW.
Zach lent me this CD from a band called Bloc Party – it is growing more, and more, and more on me. The lyrics SUCK, basically the same phrase (which was good the first time he said it) over and over (not so good the 8th time). However, the music is excellent, and my constant techno-listening (6 hours a day minimum, thanks to work), I can phase it out and listen to the good stuff.
And now, for the rants that have been brewing for a month.
I.D.
I can’t stand it.
I can tolerate a literal interpretation of Genesis, but the ID mindset has gone too far. For once, Bush has really ticked me off. As most of you know, I was once a big fan of him, but he’s servicing the “religious” right, giving them everything they want while he has time. I can’t stand it. Whether I’m a part of the people he’s blowing kisses towards or not, I don’t want the tax dollars I am now spending (I pay income tax now! Huzzah!) to go towards a movement to stick a “science” like ID in schools. A Slashdotter put it perfectly: Once the ID crowd are willing to say that the Intelligent Designer (God) is falsifiable, then and only then can ID be considered as a possibility. And I know well enough that it’s impossible for that to happen. Faith is the hope in things that cannot be seen, proven, or denied. As with most things that are written in the midst of emotion, I will probably regret a specific phrase or sentence which does not reflect what I mean. But we’ll see. Open fire.
The Gamecube Zelda.
It sucks.
It sucks majorly.
I could live with cell-shading. I could almost live with playing a child, with child-like characters in a child-like work. I could just about live with the sailing. But not. It sucks. I want the next version, which has been delayed until 2006.
Nintendo, if it isn’t good, I sincerely hope you go down in flames.
I wish you all well on this night. I will slowly improve the blog as I desire, but it’s readable, and that’s what matters at this point.
I’m off to the gargantiomous family reunion tomorrow. The timing is unfortunate as the lawns will not be happy once I get back, and I’ll also probably miss a letter or two. On the bright side, we’re coming back with another dog, Season 4 of 24 will be done, and I’ll get to see Christopher. So, we’ll see.
[geek]
Those new maps came out for Halo 2 – I was quite disappointed. Gemini and Backwash are poorly designed, especially with the sword. It often turns into a game of “scramble for a nearby weapon in hopes that a combo-er or sword-er doesn’t see you in time. Backwash is just hard to see in, so you’re always surprised by the sword, and the one shotgun is impossible to find, since everything is leaned against trees, and there are trees everywhere. As such, I do not like those two levels. Relic, Terminal, and Elongation are good, especially Terminal.
[/geek]
Paul got me the absolute coolest song, ever. Amazingly enough, it’s French, a techno of sorts, it has the style of techno, at least. If you’ve seen Ocean’s 12, it’s from the scene with the laser field where Tolour is jumping around. Ocean’s 12, by the way, is possibly one of my favorite movies. Something about it, I can’t put my finger on it, is really, really awesome. I don’t know what it is, but I watched it 3 times yesterday, something about it really intruiges me.
I won’t be back till Tuesday night, so until then, farewell.
[geek]
Happy, Gwen?
New case is wonderful – far quieter and sexier than before. I’ve set my next goal on what to buy – 150 dollars is the required amount this time. CD-RW, DVD/CD-ROM, Arctic Silver, HSF, PSU. Should have that before the end of the month – this is aesthetically the biggest upgrade – the drives will be black, the computer will run slightly faster and cooler, all that jazz, which will be rather nice.
[/geek]
I had the interview with Sho’s dad on Friday, which went rather well – I didn’t actually know it was an interview until Sho scolded my Army shirt near the end of school. It went well either way – it’s exactly what I’d hoped for. That, plus the 7 bucks an hour makes for a very good job.
[geek]
When I got home I promptly ripped apart my computer as Karel watched in laughing horror as I recklessly constructed the beast. My mistake in the building process was in not putting the seperators (my mind blanked on the actual term…) between the mobo and the case. Thankfully my ‘Power Supply’ brand PSU was smart enough to stop before frying me and my hardware. I didn’t know this at the time, and the squealing noise emitting from the PSU scared me witless. After spending the entire night laboring over the mess, I gave up assuming the power surge that day had shorted the PSU, which fried the motherboard and processor.
The next day I was severely distressed – I’d gone a full 18 hours without a computer, and I was beginning to crack. I retreated to my dad’s computer, when available, to sort out which parts to order, which added to 600 dollars. I obviously don’t have 600 dollars on me – I was set on loaning it from either Karel or Christopher. Dad was DEAD set against me borrowing from Karel, and spent all of Sunday arguing with him over the phone and bargaining with Christopher to get him to loan me the money. The other choice was to wait 12 days (actually more than that – about 20) for my Dad to get home to order them for me. Truly, a stressful situation.
[/geek]
In between all this, Paul, Ben, and Zach spent the night Saturday, after randomly appearing as I was going out to mow lawns (at the time Kerry and Julia were there too). Thoroughly mocking my biking gloves, they felt absolutely no mercy for my ego. I didn’t go to church the following morning even though I was ready by 9:15 – Mom didn’t get back from dropping Dad at the airport until almost 10:00, and Paul was still around, so I decided to stay home.
Today, I got myself a grand olde haircut (which I rather like, as per usual). I think I like this one enough to replace my :-O picture. Ye shall see.
I also watched Gladiator two or three times over the weekend. Possibly my favorite movie.
Close runner-ups for the title of this post: “Armed with Honor” “Gravity is a Harsh Mistress” “Divorce Court” “All YOUR MOM are Belong to Us”
I’ve begun the process of upgrading all the components in my computer. Starting with this case. The specs will be along these lines, minimum:
adds to approximately 1095 dollars – about 750 of that is subject to change, because of new technology that may be coming out – it’s why I’m buying the case, then PSU, then ROMs first. After that, comes the mobo/proc, then the RAM, the GPU, and finally the new hardrives. We ordered the case tonight, so it should arrive Friday. I’ll order the PSU as soon as I have the money (basically whenever I mow again). The mobo/proc have to come together, so it will take basically all summer to get that collected (unless I get hired by Mr. Shapiro, or find another available job). I’m excited, anyways.
I stayed home to do lots of things today – find this case and PSU and ROMs, prepare the lesson I taught at Bible Study (which went okay, I thought – definitely could have been better, but nobody responds to anything I say, making it harder to adjust), do English work, Math, and study for my Chemistry and Math finals. I also watched Best in Show last night, which was quite hilarious. I still have Time Bandits, the Star Wars commentaries (I’m curious to see what George has to say..), and Bandits on the current pile of things to watch. The pile’s a lot smaller than it used to be, that’s for sure. I don’t think I mentioned this before – I watched the Tick (a single season comedy that was canceled by FOX a while back), which was also very, very funny. It was only 9 episodes, since it got cut, and it was really low budget, but it was really funny. In the stupid kind of way, that some may not be able to appreciate. And now…a shower.
I’ve had a rather interesting weekend, of sorts. Friday was rather enjoyable – Paul came over, we went downtown, expecting a horde of girls to greet us with unmeasurable joy, and were instead greeted with a capella and greasy pizza. I don’t like spelling a capella, it is most unnatural, suggesting something about the genre itself. Ahem.
We came back (he spent the night), watched the Royal Tenenbaums (good movie, not quite as hilarious as I had expected, but good), and Paul still can’t beat me in soccer. I was Cameroon. CAMEROON. I spent the rest of the day basically doing nothing – I rather badly wanted to get Jesse, Benjamin, and Daniel over, but Jesse had no transportation, Daniel was at his last day of classes, and Benjamin did come over, but we had nothing to do. I sat up in the attic reminiscing, listening to music, for about an hour, doing absolutely nothing. It was actually quite nice, in some respects. I cleaned up the attic some more, moved some signs, and, randomly enough, two couches appeared up there. Dad said Louie (Young Life director-majig) left them here, though it’s not known whether we’re keeping them. Either way, they’re here for a while, and it really rounds off the attic nicely – no weird empty spaces.
The 7 days between now and the end of school seem very, very long. I’m not actually looking forward to the end all that much, I just want to be in a place of regularity, so I can sit down and plan things out. It doesn’t help that I still haven’t gotten an answer from Sho’s dad – that decides a lot of what I’ll be doing over the summer. I really hope I get it, I’m really eager for a new computer, moreso than the repairs on the car. Speaking of which, I’m getting the permit Tuesday.
I’ve begun to appreciate some of Jonothan’s massive 1000+ CD collection in the back room – I’ve dug out his Built to Spill and Sunny Day Real Estate stuff, but it’s hard to find anything in a collection that massive. Admittedly, it doesn’t compare to Christopher’s 100GB library, but his is sorted into folders, which you can scroll down. Flipping through books of CDs is a little slower.
And to end, a fitting quote to my anti-SAB series.
Hebrews 4:2 (NIV)
“For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.”
I wasn’t always a Christian, you know.
Today was quite fun. I spent it at Jesse’s house pretty much from after church till an hour ago. We shot targets with his .22, built an extension for the chicken coup, helped his mom with her stone walkway, it was nice to get out and do some work. They got some chickens recently (within the past few days), and I must say, chickens are ridiculously hilarious. GOBBLEZ!!
Yesterday, I pretty much spent the entire day staring at my programming books and improving this ever-complexifying program I’m making. I’ve almost created my own sorting algorithm, which, with my complete inexperience, will just be a copy of an algorithm that was developed 50 years ago, but, I’ll still have made it on my own. *nod*
I watched Full Metal Jacket the other night. That, my friends, is a really weird movie. I was expecting a bright, comedic war film, but the humor was very dark, and really thrown off by the people constantly dying. I also watched the “new and improved AGAIN” DVD version of Episode IV. I swear…you think they’d have the technology to remove the red and green boxes from around the TIE fighters, and the horrific lightsaber effect (where the actor stands still as the next frame pops in the saber itself). Strangely enough, I’ve never actually watched any of the 3 movies in one sitting. I’ve seen all of them in bits and pieces, but I’ve never seen any of them from front to back. I’m gonna watch V tonight, which is supposedly the best of all of them. Not having any recollection of which scenes go with which movie, I can’t say whether I agree.
My hair is everywhere. I need a haircut.
In reality, I have little to nothing to write today, but I feel the need to update regularly after a week of not writing. So, Sunday was church. Cron preached, which was cool, although I didn’t get to talk to him, which was not cool. After church I went with Benjamin and Jesse to see Episode III again. Definately not as good the second time, as the first hour/hour and a half are snoretastic. Benjamin and I concluded that Lucas did nothing different this time – it was everyone else that did exceptional jobs. All the special effects, the music, and the acting (while still terrible) were overall better.
Today was a standard Monday. It doesn’t get much worse than that. We had a sub today in German, so after finishing our little doodad in the book we were playing cards. An amusing anecdote: the German word to surf the internet is gesurfen, and to chat is geschattet. Ahem. There was a rather uneventful fire in the locker rooms just as school ended, which stopped the buses. I got home, went to the SS office (my SS card will arrive in a week), took a nap, ate some bacon, and here I am. Good day.
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:
— Akward controller!
— Fewer good franchises/hopeful games
Xbox 360:
— 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.
[/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.
Short post today. Benjamin, Jesse and I rigged up the attic with awesome yesterday, and I made some final touches today. It looks pretty good, I say. Pictures!
[2012 edit: hotlinked]
Enjoy.
Random note: I watched Ocean’s Eleven Saturday night. Good movie.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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!
In regards to the previous post and the comments therein: take note of a few occurances that are worth noting.
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:
Awesome, I say.
[/geek]
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!
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.
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.
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!
