Fear not! There shall be a Colin Christmas Blog, mostly because those are really freaking easy, but as for now, it's sleepy time cause work hast totally worn me down. It's pretty much David and I holding the fort, Cathy's in for her bits, but Kristjan and Val and Bill are on vacation (and Bill was sick all last week) and Nick is just MIA and likely vacation as well.

As for the previous post, the double 8ths don't appear on the posting screen but a squares whereas the single 8ths did, and then it reversed going into the actual blog, interesting. I still need a function editor for this, but that's a whole 'nother game to be playing.

Alright, I think I can manage a semi-coherent blog at the moment *crosses fingers*, though I seem to have misplaced most of the mini-notes I make from time to time to try and keep my thoughts in some sort of order (or just keep them at all);


"It's called efficiency, look it up."
"Wouldn't it be faster for you to just tell me?"
"Ah, see? Now you're catching on."

As usual, don't expect most paragraphs to flow together, they are a bundle of thought stretch out over a vast amount of time.

Anyways, apparently Pottery Barn Kids makes mini appliances for kids. Trust me on this statement, I packed some, umm, like a week ago. (There was a really long pause here that I attribute to watching West Wing with Yo Yo Ma which I'm only watching because I've settled into blogging and I don't want to get up to go turn it off) (Long pause continues, blending Bach and dramatic flashbacks is a great way to distract me apparently, that and some great pyschological analysis stuff that I could very easily see David doing). Anyways, they had a mixer, a blender, and a coffee machine, complete with the everlasting phrase ~"enjoy the thrill of pretending to brew morning coffee." ?ô?ô?ô?ô ♫♫♫♫ <--- Damn, the double 8th notes doesn't work here in blogger.

Anyways, speaking of appliances, anyone want to tell me what the hell an osterizer is? If it helps, they apparently have on, off, and pulse settings. Apparently it's a kind of blender, but I'm too lazy to find a better site than that (I already scanned the top hits on Google, perhaps I'd be better off with Jeeves).

I played some Double Dash, and damned if I can't get Powersliding (aka Blue Sparks) to work. I really dont' know what tricks they want this time, but I'm sure when I play more than 5 minutes of driving I'll have it figured out. With just the basics it seems like a rather complicated process of mixing cars and drivers (and the stats are hidden unless you're plaing solo (or 2 in one car) and I wasn't doing that, so that'll again take some solo time then I'll have that logic down pat). It plays rather well, no drastic changes which is good, but it seemed pretty short, I'm certain that there's more to unlock though. I can play either position with enough maliciousness, I'd rather drive cause I can maneuver better than anyone, but being the "gunner" person is fabulous as well (sorry for the fabulous, Queer Eye's on, I'm killing it now) since I've gained plenty of skill abusing surronding racers by playing SSX: Tricky. Ahh, the fun of game synergies.

Alright, Bill's out sick so I'm playing backup manager (which sucks, cause having been out for college, I have no idea where Bill keeps things), I'm either chronically understaff or bored out of my mind at this store and the customers don't make things any easier. Let me ask this, is there anything about Colin that would make you think that I have X-Ray vision? Several dozen times in the past week I have been condescendingly told by customers after asking if "anything was breakable/fragile/in need of bubble wrap" (I vary it cause different phrases get different answers from select morons (ie, "Is anything fragile?" "No, but this needs to be bubble wrapped"). Is there some way that I should be able to predict glass in a bag of presents? Honestly, if you hand me a 5 bags with a combined 37 odd presents, don't be suprised if I ask if anything is breakable, and definately don't get snippy with me. I can't see through wrapping and it's quite aggravating to get people who seem to think I should be able to.

Further, this job has quite proven to me that the statistic that 3/4ths of America is functionally illiterate is very true. UPS has, since last Christmas (when most of these buggers were last here) changed the minimum password requirement from 3 characters to 5. Not only do I get freaks who don't understand what I mean when I say it's now required that it be 5 characters (and then get further confused when I clarify by saying 5 letter ("Oh, I can't use numbers anymore?" Right after I say that we suggest using the Zip Code. I don't know what planet stores the hole these fsckers (sorry for profanity, but it's been building and I'd rather take it out here then on someone at work, cause that'd look bad) came out of, but on Earth, we use Zip codes with numbers, shocking, no?). So, besides these people who take a good 5 minutes to get into their address book, we have those rebels who have used their own User ID's (we strongly suggest Phone Number) and then have forgotten them and expect me to be able to help. Also, we have those who were hit stongly with the object of my prized theory (the Retard Stick) and do things like try and stand on my side of the cash register, or ask for me to add bubbles (they mean peanuts, but somewhere around fertilization there was a bit of other substances besides protein involved I guess).

Well, Melvin is still alive, the Advent is being collected (though the servers are being a pain and the featured games are lousy ones (great Christmas spirit that have). The big question is, how do I break it to Sean that Lord_Malystrix, while he was the proud Christmas Wocky is now, well, umm...she's kinda stripey right now shall we say.

So much for tomorrow eh?

I hard a really great new subtitle for this place but I've now forgotten. Something to the tune of: now with 20% less superfluous redundancy, but I'll worry about that later.

I don't really have too much time to blog, seeing as it is close to 2:30 before my day with a 9:30 Class (9:35 technically, but whatever, and I've stopped counting CS as a class cause Ericson doesn't teach anything in there anyways) and it's the week before finals, at Tech, and they matter and also aren't getting exmpted.

Anyways, this'll be retrograde as far as events go, because that seems like the most logical of orderings, so recents events will be at the top.

Alright, tonight was a day of Mario Kart 64 between Cindy, Jeff, Kevin, a bit of Will, and myself. It was quite a violent game by the end, with several stages being replayed multiple times to settle grudges. In the end, we managed to trample every stage in both 100 cc and Extra as well as every battle stage, though mostly Block Fort and Double Deck. As far as players go, Will had been out of it quite awhile, Cindy was a rookie but played frighteningly well at times, Jeff was a bit of a hobby player, and Kevin and I were the most professional, knowing all the possible maneuvers and tricks.

As the game went on a few patterns became apparent. Namely that Jeff got worse as time went on, for the most part, whenever Cindy won it was by a huge margin, and when it came down to Kevin and I at the wire, whoever started with the lead on the home stretch usually kept it despite firepower. The usual bloodbath events occured that can be expected in any mass run of Mario Kart 64: a come from way behind to victory on Moo Moo Farms for Colin, complete decimation of everyone but Cindy on Extra Toad's Turnpike (nothing like racing in oncoming traffic, eh?), far too many runs of Rainbow road, all of them close and filled with the devastation of Lightning Goddess Cindy's Lightning bolts, Jeff getting nailed on all the stages with nasty jumps: Wario's Stadium, Mushroom Speedway, and Bowser's Castle, and a dominating triumph by myself at the nasty Yoshi stage. Oh, and several bouts of Kevin kicking ass at taking the shortcut on Koopa's Beach. Good times were quite had, though I finished with 30 1st place finishes, 18 second place, 4 3rd, and a unknown, non-zero, moderately large, single-digit number of last places, as well as 10 Victories in Battle out of some odd 18 battles.

Going back before this: FFX-2 is awesome. It's varied, it's interesting, it's learned from the mistakes of past games. One definately needs to have played FFX to understand it fully, though alot of story elements are new. Actually, I recind that, you need to have played FFX and have seen the extended ending from FFX-International which bridges the two, if being annoyingly repetitive and sappy.

Pros of the game: It's diverse with alot of different minigames and missions, it's got multiple endings, has newgame+, has jobs and classes, a great variety of accessories and abilities to learn, new areas to explore, bonds well with the old and the new.

Cons of the game: The Layers of loading are painfully obvious: when battle begins your characters appear sans weapons, which are added only moments before the actual battle begins. AP System is never explained so it remains unclear forever as to what solves what, hard to figure out what to do as some missions aren't ever marked and others that are marked really aren't. Cannot carry across anything but the core abilities of a class and not all of the classes even have this ability: for example, it's not really worth being a white mage, black mage, or warrior, because their extra abilities and auto functions are overrriden by others, similarily, Thief skills are easily better emmulated elsewhere and with the Mug Garment grid and Lady Luck can superceed most abilities, not really a cohesive storyline: things happen and then other things occur as a result, much of the game is from the extras around. New areas aren't incredibly inventive: it seems like a rather poor War III Custom: everything is merely palletshifted and size increased from the old characters.

Though the Cons look bigger, they are not nearly as hidering as the Pros are mouth watering. The pause of loading after every battle is annoying, but the variety of actions to take in battle and the resulting statements outweigh.
Rikku "Ducksoup!"
Paine: "Duck what?"

Beserker Rikku "Bite me! Better yet, I'll bite you!"

All in all, the game feels alot like an older Final Fantasy (Anything pre-X, cause it has actual levels), most likely FF5 for the classing with alot of overlays from Charlie's Angels (and if you think I'm kidding, you are greatly mistaken).

On the other side of SquareEnix's spectrum is FFXI, which I cannot stand. I gave it a fair trial, and it is simply not worth the hype of the 5 freaking discs it was forged onto! The game, which took a good 5 hours to install and was a bitch about it (ie: Please insert Disc 2 followed immediately by "Wrong Disc Inserted" and a load of code that only with careful observation could one decipher that it wanted Disc 1 again whereupon it immediately asks again for Disc 2). Moreover, the game requires the disc to run but inserting it automatically takes you to the uninstall screen, not that I'm complaining, it just wasn't a game for me. I don't mean to bash it, but anything you've read in any online comic is true. I don't mind that it has an odd feel to it, that half the time I examine Japanese characters I get nothing out of their detail and other times I get minor detail. But I do find something wrong in a game that is meant to be diverse and varied yet I see always the same Sword, always the same Armor, Always the same freaking Pumpkin helm! Moreover, I don't know what the idea of having the same monster vary drastically was, but it's stupid. More of the pallet shifts, mostly just name changes though, and close to 50% of the time I have no freaking clue what I'm trying to fight. Partying seems like a great idea, but finding a decent party is hard enough, let alone getting them all to find their way through the interface of doom to actually accept the invitation. I feel like I'm running tech support occasionally, and I've only got a mere 5 hours logged into the game. I think it might get slightly better with a few more levels, but then I realize that I'll eventually be back to level 1, again using crap items (the same crap as everyone else) running around fighting the same uninventive enemies who have much better skills than I, getting crap for doing it. I mean, I don't really mind getting .2 Sword Skill every few swings, or that I have to be fighting rather tough enemies to do it, but the fact that if I were to switch to an axe, I'd be at skill 0 but have the same progression and have to fight the same tough enemies, and rarely do I get the points anyways. Perhaps I'm not an MMORPG person, but I can't help but feel that I'm playing a glorified version of Diablo II with a few differences. Firstly, theres' no channel, all the spammers and morons are in the game with you. Secondly, that it was a version of Diablo II that was made not only by monkeys, but they were all being infused with mercury as they programmed it: It's like a retarted version of Diablo II with all sorts of odd requirements. Thirdly, the Rogue Encampment is roughly the same size as, say, Neptune. You run slow, you have no way to get faster, you die and you go all the way back, and finding an NPC to sell you maps (let alone finding the cash to buy them with) is nearly impossible. No matter where I try and go I end up at my Mog house, apparently every freaking extra pathway leads to the apparently extradimensional home of mine with a rather ugly floating whitish blob with a little red rounded blob that's supposed to be the enchanting Moogle that always lit up my day with dancing back in the days of yore (American FFVI, SNES) which now reminds me of a poorly rendered version of the Mog from the Moogle Game in FFVII after you fed him a few too many nuts. Fourth, instead of a 1 minute patch, it's a few hours.

The game has little conception of what a mission is: I'm supposed to see someone but I have no idea who because I lost track of the name amoung the 1300 other NPCS would I even be likely to end up where I am supposed to did I know their name, but I do know that I'm supposed to take my Blue Acid tester somewhere into a place far deadlier that I and find a place where it changes color, but I don't know where in this place, how I'm to survive, how I'll know when it changes color, or anything else. The opening isn't skippable, and while it's unlikely you'd have too see it too often, I'd much rather listen to Decard Cain than whoever the game spawns for me. It's nifty that different races, classes, and starting locations all get different jntros, but had that effort been placed somewhere else, like quality or patching, I'd have been much happier. All the steps in the right direction that I felt X-2 made, FFXI seems to ignore of blatently oppose.

Okay, back to blogging since I have the chance. I don't feel like utter scum of the earth for being infrequent, though close, but I'm one day better than our dearest Ting. So, worry not dear reader, there will be blogging, and (hopefully), it shall be good. if I remember what I meant to blog about.

We'll start with a rather vital life lesson: When making hot chocolate using the microwave (cause that's the fastest way when you've used up all the hot water making tea, cancerous or not), always heat the water before adding the chocolate, because otherwise the chocolate won't mix with the water, it'll just sit atop it, and then, for lord's sake, just start over right there, it'll save you the hassle of drinking warm water with bits of chocolate floating in it. Definately the least satisfying hot chocolate I've ever had.

Well, memory lapse, there'll be more tomorrow.

Before I get some debted blogging on the way I'll get this out of the way: fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking. Yep, an overflow of cussing derived from Debate-related stress, rewatching all of RedvsBlue, reading Jeff's blog (yes Jeff, I read it, even the long ones. And umm, I don't have the flexibility to fulfull your request I'm afraid) , and listening to my roomate (who's favorite adjective is still this word). If you're curious as to the point of all that? Now there'll be no profanity for the rest of the posts.

Alright, the Chattahooche Debate Tournament Fiasco, from the top.

The idea behind my being at the event at all was that Mrs. Jolle wanted Cindy and I to be judges for the Indivdual Events (aka: Speech) part of the Tournament. I'd never judged IE before but I'd seen them all at one point or another (okay, not Extemporaneous Speaking, but that's light debate to a degree). Well, Cindy was the communications link and told me that Smiley had told her that all the spaces for judges were full, but then David came to my rescue and told me that Smiley had wanted me to judge. Past that, even if I weren't to judge, my mother had been recruited to help prepare food for lunch (about 2 hours of work for a bunch of moms) and I was going to be doing that with her she said, though that wasn't a request. So, anyways, I arrived with my mother at about 8 to 8:10 ish, about 30 minutes after David. So I went in, and because Smiley didn't give me a 'What are you doing here' kind of look, I stayed. Big mistake. First round that day (round 3) found me sitting in front of what I call the Tag room for no reason other than I'm severely brain damaged by simply being at a debate tournament (I say that because the room is really called the Tab room, aka the Tabulations Room, aka the CHS library). So I sat there and told people that the pairings (schedules, schematics, whatever) for the next set of rounds would be coming out in 30 minutes (in tournament terms, whenever we finished making them) but at least we had seperate rooms for everything (Vestavia Hills sucked for two reasons, 1- Speechers like me had about 2 less rounds than Debaters and take about 30-50 minutes versus the 90-120+ hours for a debate round and 2- They had the same rooms used for both so we had to wait on debaters to get started, which involved alot of Colin sitting on the disgusting floor for 30 minutes after a delayed scheduled time waiting for some windbag to stop screaming about Oceans or Weapons or Capitalism or some other moronic Debate Crap. (Sidenote, all debate, in Colin's opinion, wins boil down to the other team finding something really stupid, stupid thing and latching onto it (like the fact that the Affirmative team used a acronym or the pronoun he instead of he/she) and whining about it). So, my day consisted of sitting at that table, yelling at people, sending people to find morons (err, people that we were paying to Judge who were doing a much worse job of it than me (Cause, see, I've worked 3 of these pieces of crap (err, tournaments) and I know to turn my ballot in ASAP before giving a verbal critique, I know to fill in all the Speaker Points and Ranks and Names and sign a Low Point Win if one occured, these morons didn't all the time so I'd send one of my Asian minions (yes, I have those in Debate as well, and they are related to former Asian compatriots of mine 3/4ths of the time) to hunt people down), a light light light lunch (about 4 inches of bread, two sides, with a slice of store-bought sliced turkey; small bottle of water; and a mini bag of chips), and running ballots to Smiley inside the Library from the desk outside. Yes, running. He wanted me to move faster, cause theoretically the extra 15 mph on my part of that massive 50 ft of distance would make the tournament run that much faster. I played perhaps 15 hands of Spades and another 20 of Chinese Poker (2-3 person, usually 2, with an incomplete deck of cards)) in the time I had. I could rant on and on, but it's all the same boring tedium for the rest of the day. David had planned to go to dinner with his Girlfriend and her parents and grandparents, and by planned I mean they had reservations including him, but Smiley vetoed his request, and by vetoed I mean, made enough of an asshole of himself to easily prove he was replacing Stein. The exact words were something to the likes of "Well tell your girlfriend that you'd love some leftover but that you won't be able to attend." We finially got released to leave at something just before 9 o'clock (Smiley might've felt a bit guilty for David cause it was David specifically out of 4 people he released, but that've been far too little, way way too late). So, to summarize the point of contention here:
1) I'd have been a much better judge than most of the crap there, instead I was basically the public relations liason for said crap. So I got to watch unqualified college kids (Yeah, I'm one too) who were more interested in feeling up the other college girls there to judge (trust me, all of being a female in debate is getting felt up by people you've bested several times in rounds of debate who happen to be at the same place as you do and have a topic they know you share at least a partway intrest in to trap you in conversation of some sort). Nothing quite like having to send out 5 waves of 2-3 people each to hunt down a judge who forgot to finish filling her ballot because she was distracted by her laptop and needing all 5 waves because said judge had stepped off school grounds so they could smoke, or take a cell phone call from someone they wish they were copping a feel off of, but either was smart enough to avoid a debate tournament or was busy.
2) Troop Morale was totally crap and that made my job that much harder. Stein wasn't there because he'd taken the most promising Debaters off to Michigan. I'm told that they've been to triple the number of tournaments of any other team yet not only were they not at the single biggest fund-raiser for the Debate team (the tournament) they also only paid the same debate team fee as everyone else at the beginning of the year. That and I was working next to Jen who just wasn't having a great day (working that table will do that to you), what with a pregnant mother helping at the tournament and getting asked the same thing a thousand times by moronic debaters and having way too much responsiblity and being not in the judging pool so she could devote her efforts to the Tab table with me. So no one really wanted to do anything that was asked of them and I was given more excuses and complaints that night than I've ever made in my life (and that says alot from someone as *cough* indecisive and stubborn *cough* as me.
3) My mother got picked to judge and I didn't. She was asked to Judge the Ted Turner/Controversy debates, which is what we call debate for non-debaters. None of the participants nor the judge are allowed to have even a single day of actual debate experience. I however, who was only there to judge (and I was never told I wasn't going to) never got to. My mother passed the duty to Jen's mother and went home, I should've done the same but I really felt guilty about leaving others to suffer, plus it would've voided my right to fully complain.
4) It was a waste of a damned full day that I could've spent with better people doing things that benefitted me in some way. And no folks (folks being all the other college people there that I know who did judge) I serious don't think I'm going to get paid my due for being there to judge. $15 a round times 0 rounds isn't too hard for a greedy man like Smiley (no, I don't really think he is, but he won't pay me out of guilt, he gave me a 3 minute break at the end when there was already nothing happening instead of sending me to help reorganize rooms so I bet he feels that was my due).
Subnote, Cooney, much as I love you, you're evil for flaunting your departure like that.

Okay, so maybe I lied about not cussing, but I did try, what can I say?

Good news first, cause that's about the only way I can mentally handle this, and yeah, no bitching that it's been awhile, I've been busy and have had more important things to be doing, like trying to figure out how the fuck to check for a empty vector. See, It'd been fine if Scheme had told me that the input (empty? vectorofpirates) was invalid, but instead, I spent 2 hours trying to get the rest of the code not to activate on such a condition. Okay, sorry, that was kinda bad news crap, apologies. Back to the good news: REM's CD, The Best of REM in Time 1988-2003 came out this week, or last week, or something. It's a really great CD containing the following:
Man on the Moon, The Great Beyond, Bad Day, What's the Frequency Kennith?, All the Way to Reno, Losing my Religion, E-Bow the Letter, Orange Crush, Imitation of Life, Daysleeper, Animal, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, Stand, Electrolite, All the Right Friends, Everybody Hurts, At my Most Beautiful, Nightswimming. A great collection indeed.

Okay. Time to blog at last. Damn it's been quite some time hasn't it? Okay. Firstly, for my birthday, besides an apparently nefarious gift still in transit, some very nice and pretty goodies from Cindy, and Kingdom Hearts which I bought for myself. I plan to ask my parents for a next Gen system, I just don't know which, cause I could likely long-term "borrow" David's PS2 but that's likely the best system for me cause that's where most of my games are. Note to self, check out reviews on Disgaia cause it looks good (damn I think I spelled that incorrectly, but I don't care at the moment). Food poisoning isn't cool, but it's also not too terrible cause it's a simple action to get it out of your system, even if there were rumors going around about some drunk puking in the bathroom, which amused me even more.

The day before my birthday was quite good, REM concert. Not your standard concert though. Firstly, I don't think there was a single person in the audience who couldn't sing at least a good third of the entire selection and, believe me, every one did. In addition to clapping and cheering (and in David's case, saying "You're Welcome" after Michael Stipes said "Thank you" after every song), everyone stood and sung for, well, pretty much the entire thing. I came out of it with moderately ringing ears and close to no voice whatsoever (it didn't sound too terrible to me, but then again, my hearing was pretty much shot at the time, it made my family laugh though, so I guess I did overdo it a bit, whatever, I enjoyed myself. There was a Freebird moment where a grand total of 3 lighters went up, David quickly countered by lofting his glowing blue cell phone and the other younger gentleman followed suit (same phone nonetheless).

Anyways, the playlist:

Finest Worksong
Begin the Begin
So Fast so Numb
Drive
Animal
Fall on Me
You are the Everything
Bad Day (great song, fun video too, and it's new)
The One I Love
Electrolite
E-Bow the Letter
(Don't go back to) Rockville
Find the River (One of their top songs ever)
Losing my Religion
At my Most Beautifil (another of my tops)
She Just Wants to Be
Walk Unafraid (my Senior Ad's quote came from this song)
Man on the Moon
----------(The Encore)---------
Life and How to Live It
Nightswimming (Their other top song ever, though not as cool w/o strings)
Final Straw
Gardening at Night
Wolves, Lower
Sitting Still
Radio Free Europe (fantatic song)
Permanent Vacation
Imitation of Life (their first #1 song in Japan)
It's the End of the World as We Know it (and I feel Fine). (Yeah, great song, great ending)

I'd have appreciated a little Stand, Catapult, or "Walking on Coals, Sharping Stones, to improve you Business Acumen" (I forgot the name :/ )

As far as Kingdom Hearts goes, I still have a fairly large number of items I need to synthesize, hinging on getting some mushrooms to drop some useful items. Of the 4 optional bosses, The Phantom, The Mecha in the Desert (whose name and origin I've both forgotten), the Ice Titan from Hercules, and mightly Sephiroth himself, have all fallen to my blade (key variety- specifically Oblivion). So, left on the agenda is to beat the Time Trial for Hercules' and Hades' Cups, synth the rest of the items up through Ultima, collect the elemental arts from the white mushrooms to get the Dream Shield even if Save the King will be better, and go forth from the last save point to the end.

Damn. I just figured out how to do select all in Blogger and deleted an entire entry, damn that sucks. Why doesn't this shit have an undo button? I need to start composing in another medium, but then it won't carry across punctuation.

Anyways, once again, on Friday Emory Chang was wearing a "hot as fcuk" shirt, I found it amusing.

Life back at Home is apparently quite haywire. Val's Civic got totalled by a person left turning across two lanes of traffic (Ie, he was in the far right of 3 lines on his side of the highway) so the red 1998 Civic is now quite RIP, though she salavaged most of the add-ons that she'd done to it. Her friend's Subaru flipped going around a curve too fast because the transmission refused to downshift so he filled suit again Subaru and used the cash plus some savings to buy a the next level up Subaru. My manager is apparently getting a divorce, though I don't know who filed for it. Of my 4 grandparents, 2 have been in the hospital in the past week and another just turned 80. My poor Aunt came back from her trip to find that either her daughter or her husband had managed to turn on the oven before they left which just happens to be where she was keeping all their pots and pans having just cleaned up before they left for the trip, so they came back to ugly smoke and right after they cleaned up that mess the water pipe there broke and flooded the kitchen. Almost makes life at Tech sound good, doesn't it?

Ummm. Post later, sleep now.

I have gotten myself another cell phone, a motorola this time, so I'll now be back in the loop of things. It'll be back on the airways at about 10:00 tomorrow, and Jiaz, Jeff, I'll be at breakfast at 9:00 like usual, so you won't ened to call unless things are changed or delayed or relocated or something similar. Note to self, remember to do Chem homework and find the Calc linear algebra book online.

I didn't play any Final Fantasy X this weekend, instead it was alot of SSX: Tricky. Also, I saw Underworld, it was good but I wan't really impressed, I'd rant but I'd spoil something for someone in doing so, even if I was careful, I just know it, so I'll blog later and change the font color to match so people can read it carefully and not have to be exposed.

I also picked up Black and White and it's expansion, Creature Isle. Unfortunately, they seem to have issues with Asgard so I'll have to check EA's support website later to find out what's wrong. Black and White tells me that Asgard is a negative one thousand three-hundred seventy-five MHz processor and doesn't even recoignize it as a Pentium of any sort. Asgard does pass all the other guildelines with flying colors though. Also installed RA2 and Yuri's Revenge as well as all 12 official map packs. With the dissolution of Westwood the entire site has fallen to crap, but that's life for you.

Saw a very interesting GE commercial today. It first showed a Supermodel heading to a laundromat and then a Nanophysicist going to the same location, they run into each other and it's love at first sight. The point of the commercial is that blending beauty and brains gives great results like: [insert some wonderful GE products here]. Anyways, the interesting point is that near the beginning, after they've met, they swap gifts (possibly an anniversary), but regardless, the supermodel's gift we don't see, however what she gets the scientest we do see. He unwraps a shiny Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook, it was quite hard not to be wildly amused.

Last Weekend was fun, if unproductive. I managed 3 hours of Animal Crossing (We now have another town I'm told), 16 hours of Final Fantasy X (mostly blitzball) (Jeff, remind me to steal your PS2 memory card next time I go home so I can copy some of my files to it and bring in some better games), and still no home cooked meals.

I feel so bad. I have a bandaid on my feet just like all the "in the name of fashion" girls I've ever yelled at. My stupid shower sandals are chafing me, not cool.

Okay. The Xanga has been posted. The Tech bashing has begun.

Don't attempt Melchor yet, I've not posted. I'll say here when I have, as well as blogging my uneventful time at home.

I'm giving blood at ~11:00 or 11:30ish on Saturday (that'd be today), give me a call if you want to show up or just go on your own, blood giving is good. Or as Time magazine says: 80% of people surveyed think giving blood is a good idea, 10% of those surveyed give blood regularly.

Okay. I'll be referring all future school related posts to my Xanga, currently it looks like crap, but I've been busy so what can I say.

To get there, just go to Ting's Xanga and change the username to Melchor, now to go do some school related ranting.

Okay. So scheme is harder than I originally thought, I concede that, but it isn't helping that scheme files are saved as .scm's. That, for the unaware, is the same fscking file format that Blizzard uses for Starcraft, non-expansion, maps. Guess which one Asgard default to?

Blah, I'd rant more but I've got a wonderful 8:00 AM class, and I'd still like to shave and shower...

Time for another of those accumulated "stuff to blog about" blogs, ie: random stuff that spurs thoughts. Damn, I need to enable titles, but I haven't and these would all be little subsets anyways, so this'll be a variety pack of variable amusement (v2.0 with colors).

It's so freaking true
Tommy Boy grabbed himself a bunch of relative unknowns to be his teenage band, and they all do a perfectly good job being the stereotypes they are supposed to be. The intelligent drummer, the loony guitar player, the moody, artistic singer/songwriter, and the bass player whom nobody knows or cares about. You think I'm kidding, yet this bass player, who pretty much is in the whole movie, is never given a name, and is referred to in the credits as "The Bass Player."

Nobody ever gives a rat's ass about the bass player.
Yes, I stole it from the Brunching Shuttlecocks' review of That Thing You Do! but it's still a valid point.

No more titles! You may rejoice

It's conversations like this that keep my late nights/early morning interesting
SonOfBloodII (1:13:50 AM): So. I've got Chicago and Bebop music and DDR music. What else does my playlist need
OmniOnAIM (1:14:24 AM): rap
SonOfBloodII (1:14:55 AM): You will die

Yes, it does go on from there, but wouldn't that get kinda tedious? Actually, it doesn't go much father from there cause he got invited to hang out with girls. So, all the more reason to UPS Ting so deadly implements of pain to deal with him and his attitude. *Angry Mumbling* Bragging about girls when I'm stuck in an all guys dorm */Angry Mumbling*. Anyways, I really do need suggestions on what to download.

Sajit's cool, Rap's not. That's roughly all anyone needs to know about my roommate. Okay, a bit more? He's Indian, he's semi-big, he's a lifter, his father's a doctor, and he's slightly hung-over from the frat party last night (well, he spent today sobering and he's fine now I imagine).

Isn't Ga Tech cool? Too bad everything's closed on the damn weekend. No music listening room, arcade doesn't open until 2:00 PM. On the other hand, I've been here a mere 9 days and I've already seen Chicago (on a big screen), My Sassy Girl (technically only the last half, on Kyle's cpu off a CD), What a Girl Wants and Shanghai Knights (on Kyle's cpu off of Jason's downloaded movies), and The Cowboy Bebop Movie (off a DVD in Kyle's cpu).

I had Kyle upload all the DDR songs to my computer, took perhaps a minute, 2 minutes tops I believe it was. I love having this Fiber Optic connection, too bad I can't use shoddy connection as an excuse for not looking up my homework.

Yay. We have a message board for Political Science and the teacher plans on doing random bi-monthly appearances at the local pizza place, I'm going to enjoy this class.

I think my dorm is officially a fire hazard. Off of the 2 socket plug on my desk (with the aid of 2 power strips and one 1-3 adapter) I have plugged in currently: Cell Phone charger, Asgard, Monitor, Speakers, Phone, Stereo/CD Player, Shredder, and two lights. Plus the light in the room, like the one in the ceiling, randomly gets dim for about 30-50 minutes at a time.

What do I need for Tech? Video games for Jeff, Sunglasses, to actually open and construct the rest of the stuff I brought, and other stuff that I'll get to later when my roommate isn't trying to sleep, cause typing is loud.

There will be blogging, there shall be blogging, but my day so far has been exploring the student center, brunch, Bebop, and Stepmania so the blogging will come at a later time today. But there will be blogging.

Okay. So this took awhile, but hey, it's college, my schedule needed some balancing.

With that out of the way, I'll begin with blanket apologies to everyone for my reclusiveness today, but Stinger Rentals was to deliver the fridge today so I had to hang around so I could finially get some cold drinks without having to resort to cups of ice.

Ugh. Is that heartburn? Anyone know any definition for a rough pain in the center of the chest that runs from about 7-11 PM? The water, the food, damn college, too many changes to try and place a source.

So, Tech's showing the Matrix: Reloaded, which I still need to see, and guess what, I have a Dorm meeting during that time, gotta love how that works, eh?

Classes seem alright so far. My Calc II prof seems a bit odd, I feel too advanced for the class cause we're still in review, and there's a good 7 CHS people in there as well. Chem looks like I'll be fine, but then again the first week one really doesn't do anything. At least I've had those classes twice, I'll blog better about them when there's more to blog.

Okay people, the number for my dorm is 4042060697 so I can maybe save some minutes on my cell phone, not that I'm worried or anything, but I like the phone, it's decent quality for what I paid (perhaps $40 I think).

For those who declare me anti-social I'd like to highlight the fact that I have yet to eat alone, ever. Even when I just wander off at some odd hour for a meal I'll stumble into Sofia or Chris Packard or Helen or someone else that I know. I'm not anti social, I just have deep roots already, plus I'm making new friends in my classes as we speak (well, not literally, cause we aren't even literally speaking, unless you're reading this aloud to me or vice-versa, and that'd be kinda weird).

On a more disturbing note, my father has been using AIM regularly now. It's very disturbing getting msg's from David and my father at the same time. And he sends me the run-downs of his weekly D&D games just like his old college friend. Ie: I've been added to the To: list of addresses instead of it going just to Bill. So now I'll know what's going on I guess, kinda odd eh? Welcome to my family. Well, 8 AM CS is tomorrow so I'll be sleeping before I'm late again.

Well, I'm so glad I have these days off to do nothing (I wish). Anyways, today my mother tried awakening me before 8:00 AM (thankfully not with a pillow to the face this time) so I did eventually get up (closer to 8:50 though) and went outside to help add lime to the lawn (my part mostly consisted of opening and dumping the bags). I finished that and then I went inside for a quick 5 minutes of Animal Crossing (See the Aurora mention on SHUMB...OD) and then left for my paternal grandparent's house in Dunwoody where I edged, blew the driveway, and changed two lightbulbs. That was supposed to be the whole of the trip, but my mother's parents called before we managed to get out of the house so we were thus required to go visit them. So I got two more boxes to move stuff in, and two tomatoes (or tomatos for those with odd mentalities in the audience). Then we set off for Micro Center, which is a really nice place, where I picked up some memory for Asgard and 17" flatscreen. They did have a rather nice selection of computer games (though I didn't actually browse any) and a rather crappy selection of video games. However, they did have DJ Sammy's Heaven CD for $15.99 (No, I still haven't bought it). Then I went to CD Warehouse, which has an odd selection of CD's. They, unsuprisingly, did not have Rhapsody, and did not have Tesla, which both suprised and annoyed me because I've been wanting to pickup a one of their CD's. They also didn't have DJ Sammy (or many other Dance CD's that I'd heard of for that matter, though there was one group which suspiciously listed BPMs as well as song lengths for each of their tracks. CD Warehouse also lacked Liquid Tension Experiment and Eternity X (though neither of those suprised me either). I did, however, pick up a used Eiffel 65 - Euro Pop for $6.99 and Sarina Paris' CD for $7.99

Wow, The Police (as in the group with Sting) sucks. I chose a random CD for the drive down to the Allergist's this morning and it happened to be Ghost in the Machine by The Police. I've never been much of a listener to Sting or The Police, and this CD did not change that at all. Essentially it's some white boy's failed attempt at rhyming (not even going to deem this failed poetry) set to music (and by music, I mean someone got drunk and fell asleep listening to Bob Marley). I think I'll stick with REM next trip.

The trip to the Allergist was uneventful and the actual skin test was as well. I brought LotR and read about 100 pages in the time. Anyways, the skin test is a rather annoying process, unenjoyable, but not painful really. You lie, sans shirt, face down on the bed and the nurse takes this...this thing. You know those little three legged table things in the middle of pizzas, well the best description I can give would be that it's the venegeful cousin of one of those. It's a six legged plastic brace thing. Kinda like this: ]-]-] and all the six little feet have a drop of something people are normally allergic to and the foot itself is abrasive so it scratches you a bit. Anyways, you get wiped down with rubbing alcohol, then labeled with Sharpie, then five of these little allergy plastic stamp thingys (the six legged ones, weren't you paying attention here?) get touched to your back and you get notated a bit more with pen, then you have to wait 15 minutes. Then the nurse comes back, and notes the reactions, and washes it all off, with more alcohol of course, and then you get your arm tested, just in case I guess. So the nurse washes one upper arm in...well, you should know by know, and proceeds to perform the equivelent of 18 TB tests. Yes, you get 18 needles worth of random allergenic crap injected just below your skin, unpleasant, but I'm not really bothered by needles, so that's okay. Anyways, end result, I'm borderline allergic to dust mites and also to some weed and some grass (no, they didn't tell me) so there's really nothing I can really do but take OTC medicine and hope it helps. Oh, and spend lots of money buying anti-dust mite bedding, but I doubt I'll bother with that, sounds like more effort than it's worth.

Nothing like starting one's day with a mouthful of sour milk. Only thing to be thankful for; it wasn't today.

Why the hell is this not a new concept to me, I've never read the comic before, yet somehow I think I have. PVP!

Hmmm...I need to send a follow-up mail about my memory. Apparently the status of both orders, the original and the return, is now showing as canceled. But, of course, there isn't even a status cancelled that I was aware of before I saw it. So, basically I'm learning nothing this way and it's getting closer and closer to the zero hour.

Do I need to start worrying when the last credit card statement I count in a given day is for the precise amount of $13.37?

Talk about college prep

Okay. Extra long twin sheets, microwave, toaster oven, Asgard, foam bed pad, 7'x9' floor rug, combo corkboard and whiteboard, desk lamp, pillow, drinks, chips, poptarts, cereal, pens, pencils, calculator, scissors, paper, plate, bowls, silverware, napkins, shower stuff, television, blanket, shelves. Anything else I could possibly need?

Edit: Ooops, forgot the fridge. And btw, this is merely the stuff I have in the basement in a pile.

Double Edit: And the phone, got that as well.

August, the day is fast approaching. I really need to Email my roommate (cause I'm sure as hell not making a call up to Virginia unless I mug Dimitri for his cell phone). Apparently, and no this did not come as a suprise, FYE @ Northpoint carries DJ Sammy in the dance section. Perhaps I should get the cd with Heaven and the Heaven (Candlelight mix). That's what you have to love about trace, everything is some sort of mix at some point in time, it's a nice touch.

Shopping around is tiresome but frightening.
*Jason Mraz's Cd, upon release, 8.95 @ Best Buy. Currently 18.95 @ FYE Northpoint (and that's part of the back to school sale)

*Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance- $15/$20 (Gamecube/PS2 or X-Box) @ Value City. $20 PS2 @ Best Buy. $26.20 preowned at EB.

Just gives you an idea of why I'm preferring to shop online. That being said. There are alot of tasty games out right now that I ought to rent to see if they're worth buying. And, of course, I do just need to flatout buy Arc the Lad for PS2, that is simply great looking. Ikaruga for Gamecube and Endless Saga for PS2 need a closer look before I make the move though.

Sad day, I bought more irregular dice today (ie, non-standard dice, ie D&D dice). David said I needed some cause he was tiring of me taking my dice away from him (imagine that), so I did. Got a really nice twenty-sided though, it's a foresty/hunter colored and takes to light really well.

Saw Whitney working at Best Buy, among the 12,000 other people they had working, and say Dina at Sams Club while I was picking up dinner (hamburgers) and batteries. Didn't say hi to either of them, both were rather busy at the time I saw them.

Okay, the name has reverted despite lack of responses. I just happened to figure that it would be mean to outdate everyone's links to me, assuming there were any. Whatever.

For kicks I decided to read through the 2003 Guide to Greek Life. Now, besides the fact that the girls get comparison tables and charts and lists and rules and deadlines and the frat stuff has none fo that, there are several amusing and/or fightening (depending on how one looks at them) parts to it as well.

From the Phi Delta Theta's description (page 55) : "IF you play a lot of Quake and Dungeons and Dragons this may not be the place for you, otherwise stop by Phi Delta Theta." Good to know, I guess.

Phi Kappa Tau (63) - "We also have our annual Beach Weekend and WTF parties in the summer!" I have no idea what a WTF party is, and no, it doesn't go on to explain.

Psi Upsilon's Entry (73) - "DON'T PANIC! You probably don't know us, but that's OK because we don't know you either. We're Psi Upsilon, Georgia Tech's only co-ed social fraternity. We are a diverse group of men and women and we all manage to get along with each other pretty well, which is why we tend to throw around the slogan "individual standards, not standard individuals." Oh, and we're looking to expand our fighting force of extraordinary magnitude, so we'd love for you to come by our house during rush. Our address is 831 Techwood Drive, which is the second house on the right after you cross Ferst Drive, and our phone number is (404) 892-6398. You can probably recognize us as the ones hurling elecrical appliances to their violent crunchy deaths. We'll be looking for you." No, there aren't any typos in there that are me, it's all them. And doesn't that kinda scare you to read? What the hell is a social fraternity? Aren't they all? That slogan is too close to the 'good odds' one. If they're killing appliances I guess rush food would have to be cold cuts, no?

I've decided that the Bill and Val commentary was just too utterly replusive to post anywhere, censored and warned or not. So, instead, ya'll can have stick figure violence goodness: XiaoXiao! Makes me wish I was running Asgard because of the loading times, but I can cope with the normal computer's power.

Yay! I'm working Friday this week too, so I won't be getting pay shafted totally, what joy.

Since store 4554 has neither spare scrap paper nor internet access I find myself scribbling notes for the blog on blank adhesive labels. So there, Jeff. No register tape notes for me. Course, pen really smears badly on the label's slick surface, but that's the cost of progress I guess.

Okay, random annoyance of the day. I think that $9.37 to send a 4 pound box out to Las Vegas is a pretty good deal. I mean, we're 10% over what the UPS customer counter will offer, so at best you could nix it down to ~$8.50, not that I think the $.87 was what was bothering this lady. I'm not certain what she was expecting. I admit I don't know the rates for the post office by heart, but Priority mail runs 3.85 for one pound, 4 would be about $5.06 or slightly more I think, I'll try pricing it later, but nonetheless, that $4 represents a loss of $100 of insurance and dediacted tracking. Guess that's some people for you.

And in trying to find the Zip Code for Las Vegas, I've found a site that offers a zip code database service for a mere $20/$40/$60 per month depending on basic, premium, or gold service. Add Canada for only $100/$200 for basic or premium, no gold offered. Sounds like a great way to make money though, because I'm certain that lots of companies need a service like this, though it does seem sad when I have Zip Code books, which don't cost me a penny.

Anyways, hypothetical package to 89107. 4 lbs. Well, I made it 3 lbs and 2 ounces to be generous, still comes to $7.06. Well, hope that lady is glad for all her savings, hypothetically speaking of course. There's one package where I hope that whoever ends up shipping it also manages to lose it or destory it. Hate when customers waste my time.

I feel like a stage magician at times. Bill will hand me three 20's and tell me, "makes these into 10's", and I will. Of course, what happens is I go to the bank and get them changed out, but the effect is still the same.

Oh, and for fun I took the extra Uline catalog that came in the UPS Store's mail today, they make some interesting items. Though I don't see the need for a "Shake Well" shipping sticker, that's just me. However, I couldn't find where you could order straws or "gourmet coffee" like we have leftover from the corperate people at the store.

Alright, so yesterday I went to look at Used Cars because there was a used car sale over in the Perimter Mall parking lot. Loads of cars, very few of which met my needs (read: 6'5" Driver who plays a 3/4ths size string bass (yes, my bass is only 3/4ths size)). There was a Suzuki Grand Vitara that fell into my price range and a 2002 Silver Honda CRV which was not, but is the much better choice I feel. I'd rather have gotten something nice and small, but that's not happening. There was a very nice Mazda Miata for a mere 14K, but only Ian or my mother would really come anywhere close to fitting in something like that.

We fulfilled one of my mother's dreams by going to Bahama Breeze. I hadn't heard good things, and that's just about how it went. It started out with a wait where my father, David, and I pored through the menus to see what was in there. In the end I had a Chicken Lemongrass Sandwich which was rather unimpressive. I've had plenty of better chicken. It came with Wassabi-Creme which was actually, as far as David and I can tell, merely very little wassabi and a bit of mayo, comes out tasting like light honey mustard, and "Breeze slaw" which was an eclectic combination of onion, that purple stuff school salads always have (rudebagah perhaps, if you'll forgive the spelling), mango and tomato. Our waitress did first bring us our drinks in plastic cups which she explained as the drinks had just come out of the wash and she didn't want to put cold drinks in warm glasses for fear of explosion, and yes, 2 minutes later there was the sound of glass shattering at another table, and yes, I did laugh. Anyways, the cokes were really really really weak, and that didn't help things out any. So next time I think I'll just go to Hops, I've never had an issue there.

So, speaking of my Blog (yeah, I know that's an invalid transition, but that job is done already), I did rename it, mostly cause the word amplitude is so much fun and because I was thinking of hurling rocks into the lake up where I go canoeing, but I'm calling a referendum on whether to change it again, or revert or keep. So, IM or Email or just generally touch base and give me ideas.

Currently in my head: Ayumi Hamasaki - Endless Sorrow (Agressive Mix)

Yes, gentlemen, Thomases, the memory is on it's way back to Pomona to get changed out and yes I do have the Tracking Number, however, due to the real dangers of Account fraud, I will not be posting it here, however, I can post the track results as it goes, but I'm far too lazy to do it right now.

Pirates of the Caribbean was/is a fantastic movie and I highly reccomend it to everyone. Be forewarned, there are skeletons, and Orlando Bloom's eyes aren't blue. Anyways, the musical score is fantastic, and wordless. Yeah, most movie music is wordless, but Pirates doesn't need songs with words, just exciting music to match the plot and pace. Hell yeah, I'm too tired to do this properly, so go see the movie and thank me later.

Well, I'll be trying this again. Asgard decided to pull a fucking blue screen of death out. My computer is terminal without ever having run a program sucessfully. My day just keeps getting better. On top of all the events and realizations of today I still ache, I'm still off in my sleep cycle, I've lost my appetite, I'm not working much and have nothing to do with my free time. I'm cold and sick yet burning up and I desperately feel the need to vomit. I have a piece of my half eaten dinner stuck in my teeth and flosh, tooth pick, fingers, and toothbrush have all failed to get it out.

Alright, here it goes. Jeff, you figured it out too soon. You had an inkling before the situation had even settled, and so the first denials were truth. Past that, the dissolution of the veil wasn't my idea. I didn't want anything out in the open because I don't think some of us are mature enough to deal with it. Those comments, straightforward, whispered, backhanded, the form doesn't matter that arise when Kyle and Nani or Katie and D'Oraz are together in a moment of emotion are just plain stupid. Fscking stupid. Fucking Fucking Fucking stupid. They serve no purpose. Emotion will happen and you should realize that. Those out there know who I'm talking to, and it isn't Jeff. Reality has lost focus for me recently. Let yourself not sleep and everything gets out of perspective, rest and you can only pray that things realign when everything comes back together. Yes, that's a load of meanless excuses, but I'm venting, ranting, exhausting feelings. There'll be more to this, but don't have the heart to even type any longer.

Btw, Jeff, that knife between your ribs is regrettably mine and while I dislike the thought that holding it again will only re-enable me to cause damage again, I would like my weapon returned. The means of return however is up to you. I am equally receptive to having it handed to me hilt first or returned so the only bit of it that I can see is the hilt, the rest resting within me in a flash of deserved steel.

Yay, FASET (And yes, I do know what that means) is over. No sleep plus too little to drink and sunburns and rugburns that still hurt simply doesn't make anything much fun. They didn't brainwash enough ("What's the good word?") though.

I'm not certain what's worse. The fact that I managed to achieve a combo of 527 on History of DDR on Standard or the fact that that many notes isn't quite half the song.

And, just cause it seems to have fun effects on Katie, the lyrics to Heaven, which I'll have to send D'Oraz a Screenshot of why it's an evil song to try and dance.
CHORUS:
Baby you're all that I want
When you're lyin' here in my arms
I'm findin' it hard to believe
We're in heaven
And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn't too hard to see
We're in heaven

Oh, thinkin' about all our younger years
There was only you and me
We were young and wild and free
Now nothin' can take you away from me
We've been down that road before
But that's over now
You keep me comin' back for more

CHORUS

Oh, once in your life you find someone
Who will turn your world around
Bring you up when you're feelin' down
Yeah, nothin' could change what you mean to me
Oh, there's lots that I could say
But just hold me now
'Cause our love will light the way

CHORUS

I've been waitin' for so long
For somethin' to arrive
For love to come along
Now our dreams are comin' true
Through the good times and the bad
Yeah, I'll be standin' there by you

I've decided that D20 Modern's expansion: Urban Arcana, is too close to the Matrix in some ways. Hell, there's an EMP pulse spell, another which flat out kills machines, and then one that lets you teleport through phone lines or via email (also rules for casting spells through Email, but that's a different story).

I think Stepmania is a corrupting influence. Asgard's Winamp 3 playlist is currently populated only by songs gained through it. It goes something like this:
1) Heaven (DJ Sammy and Yanou)
2) Sweet Dreams (You'd better know the artist)
3) Butterfly: Upswing Mix
4) Candy: Heart
5) Volume 4: Raver's Mix
6) Dam Dariram
7) Beethoven Virus (Pump it Up)
8) Candy: Star
9) Wonderland: UKS Mix
10) Csikos Post (Pump it Up)
11) Dr. Mario's Theme (Smash Brothers Melee)
12) Going to Suzuka: Shoemaker Mix (S&K)
13) Heaven is Place on Earth: Speedo Mix (Wildside)
14) Ika Uka: E=MC2 Mix (Jenny Rom)
15) Bitches (Mindless Self Indulgence) <---hard as hell, Heavy only and if you've never heard the song the nearly random pauses will kill you.
16) 2002 (Tiger Yamato)
17) History of DDR (DJ Slash & the DDR All Stars)
18) Megaman X Theme (Ummm...duh?)

Manual Labor day is fast approaching (or, if you're trust the clock and in any time zone East of Pacific) it already is here, technically. So, what that means is this: My neighborhood is building homes, which means free top soil, and no one in my family is working tomorrow, so it's manual labor time. Warning to all, getting near my house can easily result in conscription, however, conscription does equal soda and likely pizza at the completion of the dirt moving, so approach my house at your own risk. Anyone who can arrange for themselves to have a "medical emergency" I'm long past moral qualms about that kind of lie. Now I just need to contemplate posting that pic of Heaven from Stepmania to scare people.

And onward to other stuff. Firstly, let's take some comments from Katie's side of the field. So, you're Helen eh? And "She's got to be 40, what is this mothers gone wild?" is the statement you're mostly likely to say? Interesting. As for posting my AP scores, I said I'd post them unless I did really well, which near straight 4's isn't. I wanted straight 5's, studied not at all and ought to be satisfied with 4's and a 3, but I know that something seems wrong about that, oh well.

Well, Pirates will have to wait for a later time, I think I'll play Stepmania until Asgard pulls another fatal exception and freezes/locks up and then I'll go to bed.

New from the front (second attempt)

Yeah, Second attempt, I hit the back button on the new mouse and even though I told Blogger to save what I had, it of course didn't.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Asgard now exists, though very little else. To exacerbate the issues I have with Comcast's cable service to my modem randomly not functioning Asgard has his own slew of issues. Yeah, Asgard's a he and not an it, it's easier that way. Anyways, Asgard is because He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (perhaps it is Should) was too many characters long, which is a grand pity. So, besides all Blizzard made games crashing randomly and Asgard randomly restarting, he's doing fine, except I need to get his memory sent back, but I'm in no mood to reorder the stuff and resend it back. Too much effort involved in doing that at this time of day (which was 3 hours ago on the first attempt). I'll discuss more on Asgard as things develop.

Went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean today, definately gets a reccomendation. There'll be a deeper post later, but 1:00 AM and being on a cpu for the vast part of the day isn't conductive to posting.

The promised Random Crap

It's really sad when I have customers hurling packages at me too, but I did anyways. Okay, so I was asking for it. The place was crowded and he had a tiny drop-off package, so I just motioned for him to toss it to me, and he did. I didn't expect him to use such a high arc, but whatever, like I say, our customers are mostly cheapskates and morons.

David's back, I don't know what brought me to say that, cause if you've been paying attention to Life you'd already be aware of that fact, but I think it bears saying as well. Course, now that he's back I seem to have lost my powers of rain.

And AP scores still haven't come it. I'd say the suspense was killing me, but I'd be lying. Sure, they matter, but not enough for me to care. Now, if I didn't get straight fives my mother will have my head on a pike, but that's a worry for a later day.

Yay! We've at last stopped watching Shrek at work. Yes, I love Shrek. But nothing but Shrek for four days straight is simply a bit much. I mean, Val and I could've done all the lines from the start, by the end even Bill could, and that's kinda sad. We moved from Shrek to Bug's Life, which I feel is not nearly as good as Antz, but that's because I like Woody Allen. So, the end conclusion is that Nick should work more often, cause he brought LotR:Fellowship on Saturday. Now, sadly, I spent most of Saturday at Kyle's store instead, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

The gentleman took back his Magnetic Insoles today. Neither Bill nor I really felt the supposed "energy" or "balance" that they were supposed to bring on, but perhaps we are skeptics. I'd had them for a good 2-3 weeks, but getting odd stuff from customers doesn't happen often enough. I mean, free stuff is always cool, and it doesn't happen often enough.

For those who haven't heard the story, which really ought to be mostly everyone, back about a week or two my mother found a raccoon in our basement. So, she and my father shooed the thing out into the garage with brooms and left the garage open slightly to let it escape. Instead it lay down between the two cars and died. This of course, was a great tragedy, especially because my mother vetoed my father and my idea of giving him a Viking Funeral (putting him in a boat with the weapons of his enemies), but sadly the creek by our house leads to the Chattahooche and knowing our luck the dead guy would've made it out to the river unhindered and caused a real stir. So, instead my mother had to dig a huge hole cause the raccoon decided to spread out before rigor mortis settled in.

So, I've been playing State of Emergency because Ian's little friend left it over here. Let me repeat, my 10 year old brother's 10 year old friend rented a Mature rated game and left it at my house. The basic storyline goes as follows: You're a member of a Revolution against the Corporation. Those could be in quotes, but I'm lazy. There are 3 stages: a mall, China Town, and Eastside. So, basically you can either do "Revolution" which is mission based, or "Khaos" which is more or less one big objective with a point score to beat. David's been playing "Revolution" mode, which I find rather stupid, so instead I messed around with "Khaos" and found what I think is perhaps the sickest of all modes: Last Clone Standing. To get into this, you need to know the weapons:
Pistol, Uzi, Handaxe, Nightstick, Sword, Minigun, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Flame Thrower, AK-47, M-16, Grenade, Motlov, Pepper Spray (non-fatal), and Tazer (quite fatal, though very short ranged). So, the way last clone standing works, is that you're in the stage, with fast respawning weapons (4x normal ammo of all but the 1 use weapons) and you're up against 200 enemies who all do nothing but run around...and die. So, it's sickening how my thought I could put into planning what to do (get the Rocket Launcher first? Or go for the minigun?). But yeah, it's fun with sickening slaughter (too bad the little ones turned off gore, cause it would have been amusing).

Apparently Pink jello/pudding and cats don't mix. I have pink cat vomit on the kitchen floor right now. Festive, but disgusting nonetheless.

Karmatic Blogging

Hey, Nice new Title Field options. That said, time to make up for my 4-5 day absence (depending on how you want to count it) from blogging. So, on to the Karma:

Out with the Bad

We'll start off the Bad with last Thursday cause it's as good a place as any to start. Last Thursday I was up at 8:00 because I was told I had a 9:00 hair appointment and then Joe wanted me at work by 10:00 so I could go with him to retrieve a hand-built table from someone's house for the store to ship out. Well, I arrive at the hair salon at, viola, 9:00, and there's no Marlene (she's the lady who I had the appointment with). So, I hang around for 50 minutes, read through 3 magazines, and decide that I really need to be leaving since I know I'm going to be late to work as is. So, I start going and my wonderful window (which I've now gotten fixed) decides to slide down a good 4 inches from the top, which wouldn't be a horrible thing by itself, but then, as ya'll may recall, the sky decided to open up and rain poured down. So, I drove to work, getting soaked, 1 hand holding the window about 2 inches from the top (which was the best I could do since you cannot lift a window without a force on both sides, it just doesn't work, the window will push against a side otherwise and stop moving upwards) and sitting as far to the right on the seat (or off it for a good part of my body) so as to avoid the water streaming in. At least Thursday didn't stay crappy, but it sure started that way.

Number 2, It really irks me to see idiots win. The proverb, the squeaky wheel gets the grease was proved to me this week and last, and it's bad that I let something like this bother me so much, but it does. So, here's how the story goes. Bill goes out of town on a business trip, so it's Cathy, Val, and me in the store and this lady walks in complaining about how her 2 day air didn't get to her friend until 3 days. Cathy asks her if she tracked it and she says yes, so we tell her we'll have our manager give her a call when he gets in town on Monday. That's too slow for her, so we tell her we'll talk to the owner and have him give her a call, she seems satisfied and leaves. Val hops on the computer and inputs the tracking number, and lo-and-behold, the package went out of a Friday and got there on a Tuesday (wow, 2 business days on a 2 day air, who would've thought). So, we speculate that since it was going to a business it must've arrived in 2 days and then internal delivery within the company, something UPS has no part/control of, took the extra day, so Val calls Joe, tells him all this and we leave it in his hands. Friday comes around (yeah, this happened a week before the Thursday above) and I ask Joe how it went. Apparently when he called this lady to explain she interrupted him to state, quite loudly I'm told, that UPS had already approved her claim and that Joe needed to just work on getting her money. Joe tried again to explain why he was calling, she again cut him off and then hung up, so Joe's instructions were that we were not to call her when the refund came in, if she wanted it, she'd have to come ask for it herself, unfortunately, she did. Now, the way we, as a small business, handle refunds on UPS claims is the only way we can in terms of finance. If a customer is getting a refund, they don't get a penny until UPS refunds our account, we not going in the red just so some customer can be repaid for UPS f*cking up. So, this lady comes in on Monday (Bill got back late due to storms and had only been in a few hours) at about 2 and demanded her refund. Bill explained our refund policy (IE, sorry Ma'am, but I can't give you your money back yet) and she went ballistic and bitchy, loudly proclaiming that she didn't care if we didn't have our refund back, she couldn't understand why we couldn't give her her money (yes, a whopping $11.88 I believe it was). So Bill does exactly as I would and say, the Owner is across the street, this is his policy, go speak to him. So she heads off and Bill dashes into the back and calls Joe to give him the warning that she's on her way. She comes back in 5 minutes and says that Joe okayed giving her the money, so we do and she leaves. I hope she never comes back, but that's just me.

Number 3. My computer. I've got most of it right now, the key part is that I have most of it. I don't have the Harddrive, the CD-Drive, the Mouse, and the Keyboard (Which are all on a ground shipment from California, due in on the 15th) or my Memory which is due to, as of yesterday, ship in 2-3 days and is going ground, but they say allow 2-3 weeks for delivery. So, essentially, I'll have all of my computer by Tuesday except my memory, so I say damn, and Kyle says "f-ing assholes". I mean, if they'd asked me I'd have said test or don't, whichever's faster and send it to me by FedEx Ground if you're east of the Rockies or a FedEx Express Saver (Cause 3 day FedEx's go really fast, I only got one sent to me, but it got here in 2 days from way out in CA, gotta love FedEx, at least I do).

This isn't really a Bad persay, but it's not something I like to associate with. Lauren Mikan was in the store on Thursday (I think), she was with her boyfriend (couldn't tell you what #, but I'm fairly certain it was only middle double digits), who was spending his food money for the week sending out something UPS overnight
And, thankfully, I guess that's just about all the major evils this week, though I have an edit button should I have forgotten something.

In with the Good

So, I'm sitting there, looking up a few paragraphs, and then down at the memory chips in my hand, and I figure that's a pretty good place to start with the Good.

Hell, I think about it, and the Good really boils down to the Bad not lasting very long.

Lulu came by the store, and that was good, cause friendly faces among the standard riff-raff are nice, and D'Oraz swings by every now and then to spend lunch break or off work time.

Sorry the Good was so short, but lack of sleep is on my mind right now, and that brings us to:
Random Crap.

Stuff happens, life goes on, and I'll get around to it later.

Wow. I'm again opening the store, since apparently Bill got stuck in Kansas. I don't think I'll ever have a definate schedule, but that's a good thing, cause it's always me getting asked in early, so more hours, equals more cash.

Lunch/Brunch, whatever we've taken to calling a meal at 1:20-ish, was very good. A traditional club on toasted rye followed up by Chocolate Mousse. Excellent.

So now Jiaz and Cal have experienced the umm, experience, that is my driving. If I'd had a better of where I was going I think it would not have been quite so , exciting, and yeah, only one or two slightly overdone turns and one near collision (damn blind spot and the other car moving too fast (cause I know he wasn't there earlier, cause I did look).

Since I don't have anything better to do. I'll post some of the better Life of Riley comics, cause it's a long read, it has a few snags along the way, but that being said, it'll be a good burn of a bit of time.

Math Fun

Death Death Revolution Guidelines

Great Narration Style

I brought my lunch box to work today. That caused a bit of a stir. I'm not certain what I'm going to do at college without it.

That being said, my Daewoo TV is very nice...albiet large and cumbersome.

I visited the allergist this morning. Basically wasted an hour and a half and $15 to schedule a 2 hour appointment. It was pretty dysfunctional.

Yay. I have Bridge Mix again!

I want burning salts. I don't know if there are such a thing, but I want something, chemical sand perhaps, that, when tossed into a normal fire, makes it burn a different color. Wouldn't glowing purple flames be so cool?

I was kinda hoping to leave chemicals out of this. I mean, I realize that the product would have chemicals in it, but that being said. I was more looking for a product than the chemicals I should be stealing (cause I happen to have tons of Borax just lying around, right?)

Okay. I think I might actually have the time and the presence of mind to do another one of these, so here goes my attempt.

Thanks Katie, first and foremost, for coming back. You were here, among us, for such a short time and I'm glad that you're back. I'm saddened that I never made All-State or ASYO (or anything else for that matter) to join you and everyone else for all the fun. Secondly, I say thank you for coming to what concerts you could, it's always nice to have a smiling face out there in the audience (besides my parents), even if the deranged lighting crew makes it impossible to see anything five inches in front of your face. Here's a toast to everything we've every shared: every chance meeting for the oddest of reasons (academic bowl, orchestra, etc.), a dozen conversations without having anything to talk about, and a promise of a rainy day chat. It's been awhile, things have changed, so I obviously cannot say that I know what properly to bequeath you for the start of college, so in lieu of knowledge, you get two. First and foremost, that rainy day chat will be fulfilled, perhaps not on a day with a cloud in the sky, but I'm not one to let my curiosity sit forever. Second, the prodigious duty of keeping track of how many coffees a day needed, because I'm betting that college is going to be that way. I can imagine it now, Colin: *Large Sigh* Today has most definately been a three-mocha day. Jiaz(Having taken a wise course load and having not procrastenated, unlike Colin): Really? Today was most certainly a decaf, extra cream. Okay, maybe not. Yeah, definately not, but I'm guessing that I've lost the presence of mind thing I thought I had. Oh well, such a pity. Well, should I think of something else, it'll get added, cause addendums are something I do often enough anyways. As for who is next? I dunno, but I think Ting would be fun, no?

Current Music: Liquid Tension Experiment: Acid Rain. Just proving that instumental songs are still good.

I watched "Lilo and Stitch" today and I'm going to have to concede that I didn't go into the movie expecting much. It was indeed colorful, if a bit cliche. Too many of the voices I knew, but couldn't put my finger on (I had the same issue with Princess Mononoke). Honestly, this seems to me like another of those Disney needs money movies. Well, that and perhaps the fact that someone on the animation staff was dying to draw a female with a forever bare midriff, but those are just my feelings on the matter. Anyways, the music gets an okay. Nothing fantastic, but after seeing the "Little Mermaid" and playing songs from it, I'm of the belief that if there's a beach there damn well ought to be some calypso music.

I finished reading Avalon, which would have been a miracle for a daily comic starting in 1999, but the author apparently took several multi-month breaks starting at about September 2002, so it wasn't nearly as long as it could/should have been.

Current Song: Moby- That's When I Reach for My Revolver. One of the best things to come out of Life of Riley.

Well, here's today's math lesson. If I have a shipment costing $20.73 and I've already charged $15.73 of it, how much of a discount do I need to apply to the $20.73 to get it to equal the difference. The answer, according to the POS POS (No, that's not a typo, the acronym changes) system that we have over here at the former corperate store, the answer is that it's impossible. If I apply a 100% discount to the $20.73, the charge ends at $5.23. The reason for that is that apparently the $5.00 of insurance and the $.23 fuel surcharge cannot be discounted, even if I wanted to. Just another thing to go on Bill's wishlist for changes to be made to the software.

Hehe. For anyone who knows the story of the frying pan named "Concussion", Val's got a friend with a large rubber mallet named "Persuasion."

Bah. Enough of this work straight into a previously unheard of party stuff. I'm through. This week has already drained me, and I've still got a good 10.5 plus hour day on Friday and am likely working on Saturday as well. That being said, Katie, thanks for the heads up, I'll see what I can do to get there.

Okay. I have work in less than 6 hours with time for a shower and breakfast and lunch preparation factored in, so all my year end stuff is going to have to wait. That being said, I'm going to finish with the end of my anger post that was going to go up last night but I was having my blog converted: "and if anyone wants to argue that issue with me please feel free, I have an unfinished basement full of gardening tools. And if that didn't click with your little conservative minds, put simply, I have well over four dozen unothodox ways to end your life and plenty of space to hide the evidence."

Speaking of which. Katie's next, but after a suprise party gets thrown on me and then suprise D&D atop that, I really don't have the time nor the presence of mind to get it done in any way remotely close to properly.

PLACEHOLDER: Speculation on how Evil Nikhil's taking the new UPS Store rates.

Just for the record folks, that's me warning Katie in her profile, and not the reverse. 'Course if you cannot tell that from the writing style tis a sad day, but well, everyone can't be on top of their game every day, now can they?

Just an addendum. Jeff, I probably ought to add "dragging you to give blood with me" just because I figure it'll give me a goal to accomplish.

Anyways. Avalon is a good complex relationship comic and now I understand all the references Life of Riley made. Course, if you figure out how to tell the male characters apart, please inform me.

Alright. Let's get this little High School Ending show on the road. So. Starting at a totally random point. Despite what I said a few posts ago, there really won't be any definate form to this, and yes it might get a bit touchy here and there, but bear with me or buzz-off, your call.

Jeff, I gotta say thanks for being there, for agreeing with me, and being my ego punching bag. You've basically been background music for me this year and I'm kinda sorry about that. In college, when the crowd clears and we find ourselfs flung into a different world I pray that I'll find the time to actually be a friend in more than just semi-occasional online chats. As for that statement, mind playing moral compass for the first few months if you've got nothing better to do? I tend to be too freaking impressionable (yes, Colin did just say that, and yes, it is very very true. He likes being accepted everywhere cause there's a thrill in not only being able to wander, but knowing a good deal of everyone wherever one wanders) with new people. Anyways. You get three out of me, (Yeah I know there isn't a noun there but I don't make light promises and not much I'll be giving anyone by way of my word will be quite that heavy, I should think). Anyways, here goes. 1) You and I are going to beat Halo together, late afternoon and gaming night only because you've got to play the game with focus and sunlight is a b*tch for ruining that. And we're going to do it with style. We're going to talk, laugh, do everything I've been meaning to do, and the whole time be pumping aliens full of lead and energy with a side of grenades. Wow. That wasn't worded at all like I meant, but the point gets across I think. 2) (I never should have taken a pause in the middle, that'll cost me) My assistance in just about anything the world could throw at you. Yeah, this does really apply to everyone, but it goes here first simply because if anyone got the short end of the stick in any of my friendships, it'd be you, ponder that one for awhile dear reader. 3) Privledges to any good comics I find, cause lord knows I just realized that I have well over 4k pages of comics that I've read. I mean, MT is up over 400, Avalon and Real Life are daily and both reach back to '99, I'll have to do a mass reread in the course of a month and start posting links to the good ones. Or just the random ones like This.

There you go. The first, but not for any particular reason. That being said. I'm not posting another one at the instant, I think the way the whole thing ended up being phrased gives you an idea of why, n'est-ce pas (I've been using that line alot lately).

Well, I spent the first two waking hours of my day staving off the approach of entropy, namely cleaning my room. I have loads and loads of junk in there still, at least a good two more hours still to go. But I did revive a good load of memories, good and bad including "Bob's Delightfully Plump Non-Fat Dairy Creamer," which was the name of my Bass duet at FSU. Name was invented by Leland, my partner, who is to bass players as licorice is to jelly beans. Yeah, it can be considered one, but no one really ever enjoys them. Leland was a bass player in his schools Band (Which tells you something to start with) and actually, at risk of sounding mean, we'll leave it at that.

Jeff, is Lowes still looking for people? Cause my hours at The UPS Store are getting shorter by the day. Just wondering.

Well, I'm presently on reduced sibling days, which really rules. David's off at debate camp in North Texas, and Ian has camp every day until 3 so he's gone before I'm awake and I'm at work before he returns.

Well, we've evolved from listening to just Sinatra at work, to listening to Sinatra and Dean Martin. Bearing that in mind, the song current in my head is "House of the Rising Sun" and you can find a vast array of artists playing it, but my favorite version is Led Zepplin's.

Okay. I've chalked up another 5 comics or so, but haven't read much of any of them, but after I get through a few more, there'll be some more suggestions on good and/or bad places to waste time.

Now that Jiaz has done the year in review I ought to start saying my Thank You's and giving out my promises, ya'll see what I mean when I get the first few up.

Well, my work schedule is no longer designed to kill me. I only work 2-Close on Weekdays now, and still 10-3 on Saturday. Just an update should anyone want to try and get me to do something in the little free time I do get.

In other news, apparently Cartoon Network is soon to air a very scary show called Teen Titans, and that's all I'm going to say, you'll have to figure out the rest by yourself, but do tread with caution, it's a very scary concept.

And with Netscape 7 comes my first technical question. I have a few Mozilla HTML docs that my computer claims I need Netscape 6 to read, what in God's name can I do to alter that?

Well. Netscape 7 certainly is...different. Oh well, Again, not the time to be posting, but with all the rudimentary playstation gaming and various real world events (like work), it's about all I've got.

Waiting for My Rocket is a great CD. A good $8 buy I'd say.

Okay. So perhaps I'm not really awake and shouldn't be worrying about my Blogging Karma when I have work in the morning, but what else do I really have to do?

So. At work I've been reduced to finding amusement swinging a measuring tape around. Which is actually better than cleaning the AC vents (wow, the corperate people didn't ever clean anything, this place is still filthy and Bill and I have been working at it forever). I do think Bill trusts me, perhaps too much for anyone's good. He keeps stopping down at Blimpie to see Kannan. After we broke out all the remained LED bouncy-balls, most of which were dead from age. I convinced him (not much effort there) to take on down to Kannan. It took him 30 minutes. He called about 20 minutes in and asked if we were busy, I said no, Bill goes "well, I'm at Blimpie, I'll keep an eye on things from here." When he did come back he said that they had bounced the ball all over the store, but it wouldn't light up, what a pity. The damn corperate store has all sorts of junk. We have popcorn and topping in a box in the back. No, not microwavable, but actual, put in a popper, popcorn. It's almost scary. And all the customers keep asking where the old people went and if the prices change and then they whine (it's a 10% increase, which on a $6.00 ground shipment is nearly nothing, especially since shipments don't take sales tax).

That's life for you I guess.

Heavy DDR is kinda fun. Double DDR is actually kinda scary. The amount of reach I can get on the pads would likely get someone to shoot me in an arcade (but fortunately it doesn't ask for Left pad left and Right pad Right at the same time very often on light).

Wow. Work today was pretty much utter crud. I mean, it wasn't busy and just dragged on and on. Bill is getting odder by the moment, I'm glad he'll be getting some breaks, cause I seriously think he's starting to lose it. He did throw a customer out, and the day took a major dip, but that's because, as a former UPS owned store, we get all the ratty, cheap-ass customers who will do anything to save a few bucks. We are constantly getting people with insane demands (I want to overnight this 4 pound package with a sig requirement (btw, sig req is a $4 charge by itself) and it better not cost more than $10. Me- Umm...Ma'am? You're looking at $30 minimum. Her- Your prices are so much worse. Me- No, 10% higher than they were. Her- I'm leaving!. Bill- Door's that way) No. That's not how the exilement went today, it wasn't nearly as pretty, but whatever, she deserved it.

I've decided that I ought to find some decent gameboy games and start using those for the spare time I have at work. Since I think it'd be at least less suspicious then using electronic systems on the big tv with Bill.

I started today with an orthodonist appointment. Such great fun, not! I now have braces again. Not the full contingent, just my molars. Which really sucks for eating because my teeth for chewing are presently sore from the new confines, so dinner took me a good 30 minutes to eat (Spaghetti and Chicken with a lemon sauce for those keeping score). Well, I've been here before, I'll manage better after a few days. My nurse (or whatever they are called) was a young asian woman named Christina who would have made a excellent swim teacher for little children. Every time I did what was asked of me (like, opening wide) she said either "Perfect" or "Awesome." And always said it the exact same bright and cheery way, it was kinda maddening. She also would hum little random pieces of songs I've never hear before, which was vaguely disconcerting, but not overly so because I'm prone to break into random bits of jazz every now and then at work. So, the final total, is that I now have braces on 4 teeth and a chain on my wisdom teeth connected to the braces (it feels really weird with my tongue cause I've never had something of that nature before and my wisdom tooth on the right isn't quite out so the chain seems wrong (but I hope it's not). Now, the ugly part was that my appointment took a solid hour and a half and involved having (though not all at one) a dozen cotton wads, two different suction devices, a mirror, a scraper, a microwave heater for sealing the cement, dental cement, dental glue, a muzzle (okay, not really, but something close enough for you to get the idea), a least 20 little metal rings as she was sizing the braces, two pieces of wire, and at least half of a hand (several times).

At work Bill has decided his plan for me. I need to get a flat-top hair cut with bush-whacks in the front and then start drinking "Ripped Energy" from GNC and work out. I'll have to hunt down some pictures of the hair cut first before I even think about it.

I swung by Best Buy on the way back from the Cardiologist and picked up Jason Mraz's CD. I like it alot.

Anyways. Speaking of the Cardiologist, Dr. Dara Rastegar, Iranian, pronouinced my murmor "trivial" and "very minor" so now I don't have to take a few Amoxicillian pills before doing major dental or surgery. Wow. Such and improvement.

I've decided that I ought to learn to tear apart cars so I can buy something non-SUV/minivan-esce and still fit the bass in it. Oh well. Looks like I'll be buying a used CRV sometime soon.

Hey. Mark your calenders, I made a actual decision (on which restaurant to eat at even) on Saturday.

Alright, Bowling. Colin used to be half decent at bowling, but he's long since forgotten what he'd learned that actually made him good (first, follow the dots, not the pins), so I managed a mere 44 the first game (with a Spare and a Strike in there, which makes in even sadder) and then a 25 the second game. Check out that mad scoring power. Okay, perhaps now. I really am not a bowling person though, just like I detest basketball for no real reason. It just falls into the category of "sports Colin doesn't like, not even to watch."

Rainy days at work are pretty slow. Today was not exception. However, CD plan composed mainly of Frank Sinatra with a few songs of the Brian Setzer Orchestra and the Smithereens was good for the mind in periods of complete boredum.

I did clean the high level paneling above the sliding glass walls. Found loose washers and a screw. I don't think I want to know. But that cleaning wasn't nearly as amusing as the Cleaning Crew at about 5:30. Bill with his little yellow feather duster and me with my paper towels and 409, singing Frank Sinatra with the CD, which led into a discussion of the movie Antz, but that's another story.

We also had fun with a large foam mattress, measuring some 48x24x22. So Bill decided to cram it into a 50x16x13. Now, I admit foam gives a bit, but that was alot to give, yet we managed. Sure the box bulges, but that's nothing special, that's why the world gave us strapping tape.

Today was Friday the 13? Did not even notice until some customer asked me the date and we managed to combine the two facts (day of the week and the date) to come to the conclusion that today was indeed Friday the 13th.

Well, at Bill's request I brought in a couple Yes CD's to work for music. Didn't go over so well. Disc 4 song 8, "Velvey Part 2" is a bit atonal. And which song do Cathy and Joe (on seperate play throughs of the song) hear? That one and the one after it, "Money", which is a slightly toned down version of the Beetles "Song 9". Glad to know I've just been mentally docked for my choice in music. And Yes is a good band, just that one song takes a musical ear to appreciate. Bringing Beetles "One" was a much better course of action.

The sound of a car hitting a cat is not a good one. It ran away so I'm praying that it's okay. But it was the perfect end to a day that started like crap and didn't get any better.

I did not know that double ended sharpies existed until today (half fine tip, half regular tip). You learn such wonderful things at work. Also, I learned that jalapeno pepper do not belong in a reuben, but that's a different story.

Alright. Someone of Infoceptor asked everyone to create their "ultimate" burned cd. I didn't do precisely that, because it doesn't have a cohesive theme and this isn't what I'd choose if forced to, but they are all good songs, and I did do it to show musical diversity. So, anyways, was pondering what anyone else's would look like:

Moby- Reach for my Revolover
Jason Mraz - Remedy
Cowboy Bebop - Don't bother none
Pink Martini - Je ne veux pas
Trans Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve Sarajevo
Trans Siberian Orchestra - Fate
Richard Ashcroft - Bittersweet Symphony
Symphony X - Candlelight Fantasia.
Savatage - Morphine Child
Rhapsody - Soul Miner's Daughter
Niko- Night of Fire
Koudelka- Koudelka theme
Final Fantasy VIII - The Landing
Eternity X - A Day in Verse
Dead can Dance - Song of the Dispossessed

I had to listen to Bill's music at work on Saturday, mostly because Nick and I both didn't bring in any CD's, oh well. Seven run throughs of The Smithereens wasn't too bad, William Wilson is a fun song.

I remember what it was I wanted to say, and yes the Cowboy Bebop movie was unsuprisingly responsable for it. I wanted to highlight chokers, using Electra as the most recent example, and how they are simple and elegant. Yep, that was it.

Today was the ultimate in a boring, slow day. I packaged a grand total of one box. Yes, one box. That is it. I also had some more boxes thrown at me to load the trailor, and nearly fell asleep sitting on the conveyor belt. Bill's chrome dice had fallen off his car so he had them in his office. Ten points if you can tell me where he got (it's a movie) the inspiration for having chrome dice.

At work we have Paperpate PhD Multi pens. These things are very nice. One of them is a combo pencil/black pen/stylus and the other two are pencil/black pen/red pen. And with the computers over at UPS Store #4554 being so easy touch screened, the stylus isn't needed. Though playing with touch screen monitors by using two or three pens at once is fun.

In other news, today I realized how similar the words "mecha" and "mecca" sound in pronunciaton. The latter was one of the first words mentioned when I turned on my radio today, but I immediately thought the former. I think I'll blame Jiaz for that one. Oh well, just something I felt I'd mention.

Damn. There is something just resting in the back of my mind to be said. Something that I meant to blog before yesterday even, and I have no clue what it is. Oh well, I must not be that important then.

I need to go purchase Fight Club on DVD, digital cable never shows it.

Song of the Moment- Yoko Kanno - Adieu.

Speaking of which, I need to go pickup the blue soundtrack as well.

Okay, this shall be one of those blogs where I finally get around to mentioning a bundle of things I'd been meaning to mention and kept forgetting, in addition to all the usual crud.

Today was my day for going to the doctors to get everything a-okay'd for Tech. They told me originally that I couldn't get an allergist referral because I hadn't been taking medicine and that they had no Menigitis shots, both of which turned out to be lies. Now, the doctor has become an odd place for me, since I just turned "adult" and therefore go to a different place. But, all that was only made harder because when I turned 18, my father's work (and provider of the family's health insurance at Kaiser) changed databases over and my birthdate went from 1984 to 1989. In short, in one secretarial mishap, I lost 5 years; a change that screwed up my appointment so I've still not seen my true primary care provider. As an adult they didn't even check my height, though I am 173.5 lbs with shoes (I have no idea why I wore shoes but I didn't feel like taking them off and the nurse couldn't have cared less). I also needed a referral for the Cardiologist because, as not many people know, mostly because I don't care, Colin has mitro-valve prolapse, also called a heart murmor (not to be confused with pulminary stenosis, which it was originally diagnosed as). Now to do this they had to run an EKG on me (Electro Cardiogram (You see where the K comes in right? I sure don't)). Dunno what the results were, I doubt they come back that fast. Anyways, EKGs aren't anything new to me, but they sure do hurt alot more post-puberty (yeah, having a bunch of little pieces of tape stuck to my chest wasn't cool). I also got my TB test done. This would be my second ever, since I had one done just barely long enough ago not to qualify as my one for Tech. I wish them luck even finding the mark when I get back on Friday. The nurse raided Pediatrics for me to get a Menigitis shot, which I didn't feel at all (giving blood does wonders for not caring about needles. I could be a heroin addict with no issues, beyond the facts that heroin is damn expensive, illegal, and stupid of course). My trip earned me more of the medicine that I already take when I do things, so my standard fallback meds are now a moot issue, at least until I run out of things.

Next on the list of stories, I have my Cell Phone back. The reason why I didn't have it goes back to my grandparents (father's parents, paternal) whose phone has stopped working (it won't recieve calls any longer) so my mother gave them her cell phone and stole mine. Not the most interesting story, but anyone who wants to explain to me how a phone become one way, please do so.

Next order of business. For those who went to see Bebop. Wouldn't that be a great place for Tech weekends. Just drive over in two cars (mass carpool = fun, right?) and see a few movies and then go wherever else we all need to be? I think it sounds like a unique idea. Small movie theaters are cool, and cooler when everyone knows you by name.

Okay. You know the world is doomed when statements like this can be said and still hold true:
"Your Cardio has a new office at Northside. That is nice because you won't have to drive all the way down to Northside." Btw, if you are curious, it was my mother who said that.

Next on the list (yeah, I made a list, I had free time at work, loads of it) is to point out to everyone that they need to find their copy of the John's Creek Herald for the week of June 4th so you can see the lovely Governor's photo op with Jiaz and D'Oraz in it.

At work today I ate a much larger than standard piece of birthday cake because Diane and Melanie spent a solid 5 minutes convincing me that if I didn't they wouldn't let me leave because then they would be forced to and it would go straight to their hips. Not a direct quote, but really really close to it.

Next, we move on to today's AJC article on Sammy Sosa (who got ejected for having a corked bat). It's in Sports, section C, front page, top right. I'd like to quote "'I use that bat for batting practice,' said Sosa 'that's something that I take the blame for. It's a mistake, I know that. I feel sorry. I just apologize to everybody that are embarrassed.'" Anyone who can point out the two most glaring errors wins, nothing, it's that obvious. If there are more than two, I'm afraid that I just gave up reading it for errors after it. It was too damaging. What is this world coming to?

Bill has taken to calling me Abe Lincoln. Guess I better shave, course then he calls me the second coming, so there's not much I can do. Or, to quote him "the day I see Colin walk in here with a cross on his back, I'm going home. Right then.

Today's lesson. If you think you've done work I say you are wrong. You've not done work until you've stood in a little trailor as your manager hurls boxes at you. And yes, package juggling is more fun than package soccer.

Damn, so much for my master plan. Tech won't allow Neon lights so I guess if I do take the leftover MBE signs from Joe I'll have to find a different use for them.

And a final note, my car is flawed. The left turn signal won't blink.