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.

Xenosaga comment, besides the obvious fact that I've been playing it too much. Someone, yeah I've already forgotten who, it was some 12 major cinematics ago, said Peche. The accent was too small for me to be sure, but I'm assuming that he intended Sin as opposed to Peach (the difference is a single accent mark). On the downside, the game has no load screens, doesn't need them, but everything seems a bit too long of a load. Namco should have given Square the game for polishing because Final Fantasy X does everything this game tries for, only more fluidly.

As for Jeff's comment on Kudos (curtesy of Dictionary.com): A praising remark; an accolade or compliment.

[Greek kudos, magical glory.]

Usage Note: Kudos is one of those words like congeries that look like plurals but are etymologically singular. Acknowledging the Greek history of the term requires Kudos is (not are) due her for her brilliant work on the score. But kudos has often been treated as a plural, especially in the popular press, as in She received many kudos for her work. This plural use has given rise to the singular form kudo. These innovations follow the pattern whereby the English words pea and cherry were shortened from nouns ending in an (s) sound (English pease and French cerise), that were mistakenly thought to be plural. The singular kudo remains far less common than the plural use; both are often viewed as incorrect in more formal contexts. ·It is worth noting that even people who are careful to treat kudos only as a singular often pronounce it as if it were a plural. Etymology would require that the final consonant be pronounced as a voiceless (s), as we do in pathos, another word derived from Greek, rather than as a voiced (z).

Alright, for starters. I'm officially declaring myself sick (as in, in bad health), which is okay because I'm going to the doctor's tomorrow.

Work just got longer again for me. I've gone from working 4-6 @ Ron's store to working 3-7:20 @ Bill's to Noon-3 @ Joe's plus 3-7:20 @ Bills. Well, at least it is $50 a day, even if it swallows most of my day.

On to the references to other blogs part of the blog. First, Kudos to me for giving Jeff the link, props to Infoc for giving it to me, and a hearty good job Jeff for getting further than me. That thing is interesting, but not so much hard as stupid and poorly designed.

On the note of Supercomm, apparently Nextell is putting out a walkie-talkie capable of working across the US. Now I want to know how that works because Satellites would likely be inconsistant and if it had that kind of horizontal range wouldn't you be able to invert the signal and make the most ultimate directional microphone. I mean, just set up the signal right and you'll be able to steal signals from say, the Pentagon from a range of, oh...Mexico perhaps? Other Supercomm note, anyone else find it odd that there were only Concourses B and C?

As for the LED ball, I think that three balls are of course better than two. All the more fun. Plus, it was more for the odd source than the actual gain that the story arose.

And finally, the topic of cultured Katie. A point by point answer to her arguements, cause we've got little else to do at this moment besides sleep so I'm not dead tired tomorrow, but that's not the plan.

Table Manners: Start from the outside and work inwards with utensils. Right hand gets the knife. Don't slurp, no elbows on the table. Wow, basically the same rules as you'd apply to surgery or an autopsy.
Dancing involves culture? Most "cultured" dance is the waltz which you can do in your sleep, D'Oraz and I proved that one lazy afternoon afterschool.
Violence and Cussing: Play a video game with someone cultured and beat them a few times. They'll show the other side of the coin.
Appreciating Art: Doesn't matter. Art is art and you either like it or you don't. Certainly you can evaluate what it is that makes it attractive, but that's a talent and not everyone is required to have it.
Contemporary Classical Music: Is a myth, 'nuff said.
Postmodernism: It ends in -ism and therefore isn't vital to existence.
Classic Literature: At least Katie finishes the books. Plus, Weis and Hickman write really really well.
Philosopy: Damn, I was listening to NPC extoll the virtues of teaching kids proverbs and how to apply them in life and I couldn't but think how Fscking stupid the idea was. They had this girl who'd been through the cirriculum and apparently when people act mean they all start reciting the golden rule.
Europe: Good thing you've never been. WARNING: ECON STATEMENTS COMING The EU is getting pissed at Bush for depriciating the US dollar and therefore making Europe's exports more costly to us. Plus, France is in bad footing. Plus most of what we've drawn from Europe in terms of "culure" can be learned in a book in five minutes or else it's been lost to us cause we found it pointless and pretentious.
History: And anyone wants to talk about history? Hello, the past is boring for the most part and even if you do believe that time is a cycle and we are repeating the past, then knowing the past is irrelevant because you know it by knowing the present.
Foreign Languages: Neither do most other people know them. Plus, Katie knows more French than she lets on. She'll deny that, but that's okay.
Writing: Cannot write essays? Thankyou cards? Handwriting? None of those are needed to hold a good converstation. Culture rarely involves writing, and when it does it'll be invitations which are really simple.
Current Events: Grab a paper, a yahoo look, or a friend. Current events aren't that big of an issue. See History above.
Polite Conversation: Usually helps to center it around the current and present. What is happening there at that moment is a good source of discussion usually.
Travel: I've been to the US and London (for a week when I was less than 2). Being Cultured differs in areas, but to be cultured in the US you don't need any travel.
Theater: You wouldn't want to go unless you dragged people with you, plain and simple. I'd have taken the Symphony had I been in ASYO though...but that's just me.
Clothing: And this only matters if you're in a cultured enviroment.

On a final note. Working at 4554 Corperate with Bill gets really boring because its a long time and no internet. Any suggestions on how I can spend my free time w/o looking off task?

Australian Rules Indoor Quidditch Players rejoice. I have obtained the second most important part of the game. The most important thing being a dark dorm hallway of course. Today (a term I use lightly, but I did mean to post this Monday) I opened my drawer at the UPS Store and found two rather cruddy looking plastic balls, there were no customers so I grabbed one and bounced it and it lit up. I asked Bill if he knew we had these and he wasn't sure what I had, so I gave him the second. Yvette (being our former Corperate employee of the day, she's there until this Saturday, as is Nick, the rest already left) found us playing and proceeded to go into the back (which is rather large from the appearance of the store) and brought out two nice and clean, formerly unopened bouncing LED balls. Bill proceeded to discuss how the LED activation setup was similar to that of a bomb (so I now know how to build a special trigger bomb from old mercury thermostats). Yvette did fail to ever explain to me why the UPS store had LED bouncy balls, but oh well.

Because I know it will amuse someone out there: Clickie. Most of the questions suck though, so, quiz at your own risk I guess.

Alright. After doing Car "Shopping" we stopped by Sams Club to see if the Graduation Photos had been developped, they hadn't (1 hour photo is such a misnomer) but the Bac/Orch Banquet pics had. Anyways, I picked up Xenosaga (thus the german in the previous post). Haven't started on it, and don't plan on doing so until I get through Suikoden again (all 108 this time), though apparently there is a Status Condition (Bonus? Whatever the opposite of ailment is) called Chivarly. Where, if there is a female character in the back row the character with the effect gets revived upon death. Sounds a bit odd, if cute.

So. after getting home I had intended to have a nice quiet afternoon, late lunch, and then go to the concert (though I had no idea where or when it was, typical of me). My mother decided that she was going to take the family to Sandy Springs to see Cowboy Bebop the Movie. I, not being one to pass up such an opportunity, went.

The Movie. It was a quiet little theatre way out there, $22.50 for the four of us. Small movie room, but there was only 9 people counting myself and family, making 5 strangers in the room, slightly smaller than X-2. I'd seen the few trailers that the site had out of the movie and knew basically what to expect. Didn't even know Electra was in the movie until she showed up though, but she was a welcome addition in terms of character and personality. The movie definately gets my reccomendation. It had all the great plots twists (with not too many odd occurances/loopholes), the fantastic music of Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts (though if you actually listen to some of the lyrics, you do begin to wonder) and a good mix of plot/action/humor. David asked me my favorite scene and I responded that it was when Spike asks if he can have a cigarette. I wouldn't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it at that. There are tons of great moments though, except Jet really doesn't do much the whole movie, so if you're a fan of Mr. Black, too bad. Ed actually doesn't pull too many tricks either, but she managed enough to seem like classic Edward. The movie ends the way you expect it to, but you enjoy it enough that that isn't a problem at all.

After that I made it over to the North Springs Marta station to join up with Lulu, Cindy, and Jason (who was running on a whopping 3 hours of sleep). We got to Centennial Olympic Park after Jennifer Love Hewitt had finished and Jason Mraz was beginning as we were walking our way over. Since I came straight from Bebop I was in my, no suprise here, black Fila T-shirt and some Khaki shorts. None of us thought ahead to bring a towel, but the grass was dry so it didn't matter. I'm quite glad that I've lived long enough playing the wind without my jacket as a child because I'd have been rather chilly by the end was that not the case. The concert was great, far more than I expected. Jason Mraz sounded really good even if he did seem to be retuning his guitar every few songs. Arrested Development (wow, I'm really suprised I still remember that name) didn't impress me much, but considering that I'd gone in not expecting much, they were rather good. Shaggy was, Shaggy, and knowing how little I know of Shaggy that says something. I'm not overly familiar with his songs, but I knew more of them than I'd have gone in realizing. He does seem to like to borrow more popular tunes to put his songs to though: The Joker by Steve Miller, Annie are you Okay by Michael Jackson (redone very well by Alien ant Farm), and of crud, I cannot believe I've forgotten, oh well, it'll come to me. He wins points for insulting me, but that's a whole different topic. I spent alot of my attention on the Bass though. Very good players. Not anything that was very difficult (I could have played all but the frilly song ends, and perhaps even those with some effort), but well chose, in tune, in tempo, and nice and loud.

Der Wille zur Macht :)

Well, it's a bit past 1:00 AM and I have work tomorrow. So that dual blog on Cowboy Bebop the Movie and the On the Bricks concert will have to wait until later.

Alright. I spent this morning checking out cars so when I went shopping I could have what I wanted already in mind. The key issue to remember is that I want to spend only $2k on the computer and ~$10k on the car, since my Bass is upwards of $5k. Anyways, I first checked out the Chrysler/Plymouth/Jeep dealership where I learned that the PT Cruiser doesn't have enough headroom and that the Jeep Liberty, while accomodating head and legs, has absolutely crappy gas mileage. The Seabring didn't even come close. I then checked out the Honda dealership and found that neither the Accord nor the Civic had a deep enough trunk to accomodate my Bass (the bridge is too high for the depth that the trunk allows), I didn't attempt the Element because it is so God awfully ugly but I did try out the CRV. The 2003 was very very nice, though the folding/unfolding cup holders between the front seats was terrible, and the older CRV's (aka: those closer to my price range) were good as well, not as fun and still a bit short on the legs, but that's my problem. Then we went across the street to the Toyota dealership and checked things out. The Corolla was absolutely too small and the new Camry wasn't managing either, though the older has a larger trunk so I'll have to test it out sometime. The Toyota Matrix, while kinda short on the legs, was a good car and has a built in Subwoofer (a large built in subwoofer). The Rav4 was slightly smaller, but did manage to accomodate the Bass, even if it did get in the way moreso than in the Matrix. Dragging my bass around did get a ton of comments, the most from the Toyota people, slightly less from the Honda people, and nearly none from the Dodge people. It was annoying to say the least.

So, the total learning comes to this. I really want a new 2003 Toyota Spyder, but there's no way in hell the bass would ever fit or that I'd ever afford that for a college car. But it's so very very nice.

"The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of carpenters and kings. Of why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings."

Anyways, speaking of the coming of time, this is my request to all my computer literate allies, I need to decide what I want my college computer to be, so do please aid me in this. And keep in mine, I don't need any complex video editing equipment, just the basics for gameplay: So a vid card, processor, and little else needs to be very end of the line. Sound isn't a big issue for me, but it's always nice, and I'd love to finally be able to play D2 w/o Winamp being distorted.

NPR was worrying me again. On "Marketplace" they did the numbers segment and immediately began playing the song "We're in the Money" (instrumental only, but still).

Today wasn't good. Was woken at 7:13 because I had managed to sleep through my alarm (apparently someone had set the volume to near subharmonic levels). Got to the orthodontist and recieved 5 spacers in the back of my mouth which are currently driving me insane. This coupled with the fact that my allergies have decided to spring up this morning in the form of a very sore throat does not make for a good day.

Work wasn't bad though. Be thankful for the small things I guess.

My Orthodontist is beginning to worry me.

Him(Dr. Mach)- I wonder if I could put some brackets around those teeth.
Me-*Unable to speak with his hands in my mouth*
Him-Sounds like a plan *Takes hands out*
Me- Wouldn't I have to pre-med for that?
Him- Oh yeah. We'll do it next time.
Him- Actually, keeping 3 groups would be kinda hard *calls over a nurse* instead of doing the 5, 6, 7 binding, lets get some spacers in so we can bind his 5's and 6's.
Nurse-What about his 7's?
Him-They aren't large enough, plus they are 8's, not 7's.

At least I know what all that means, but it was still really odd at the time.

The Adult Swim summer stuff is really great. I'm enjoying it too much I think.

Well, I wrote 6 of the Thank You notes, I don't have an address for the other so it doesn't matter yet. I did sign up for G-Tech, made second session. But no, I didn't teach Jeff anything in Brood today. Yesterday, however, I extolled the virtues of Attack-Move and taught him the important a least 1 miner per mineral patch (he wasn't always using them all), so hopefully we'll be able to graduate to 2 vs 3 games.

I managed to watch Oh Brother Where Art Thou without developing a southern drawl, which yes, is actually an accomplishment for me. Great movie though, and anyone who hasn't seen it certainly needs to.

Anyways. Time to make some goals for the summer I guess. There are of course only a small portion of the grand scale of things, and actually only some of the smaller items, but that's nothing new.

Goal: Learn HTML and various graphic artistry tools to the extent that I can add animations to the Blog. Learn to rip Sprites so I have a basis for said animations (since I can only find really really good Megaman stuff and not anything for Valkyrie Profile. I guess I'll have to harass AlienInfection and Dr.Lucent for stuff (15 points each for anyone who knows who either is. Jeff is not allowed to answer on the AI topic, which might give it away, but oh well). The end result being that I'd love to have a Valkyrie Profile hero and Zero dancing in opposite corners of my Blog. On a related note, since I technically only own my PS and a SNES, I need to spend some hard earned cash purchasing some older RPGs (Valkyrie Profile being among them).

Goal: Get a better car. Currently I'm open to suggestions. The major issue is I have to fit and my bass has to fit as well. So I'm open to any suggestions. I'm sure you'll figure out how to get in contact with me without my aid.

I've finally reached the point of having three seperate folders for my webcomics. 1 is the commonly updated and the creme de la creme; 2 is the good comics, if a bit slow; 3 is all the finished, the extraordinarily slow, or those that I don't even know why I still have on my list. Kinda a frightening thing.

To do List:

*Finish writing thank you notes (only 7 left to go)
*Choose my day for G-Tech Orientation.
*Stop merely playing Brood Wars with Jeff and start actually trying to improve his mistakes. I'm actually starting to micro, kinda scary. I still play with a zerg mentality 24-7 though. If my troops die it's just less supply I need.

Perhaps sleeping from 9:00 PM to 11:00 AM is a bit excessive, but 14 hours is a good compensation for not sleeping the night before (even if there was a 4 hour nap during the next day as well).

Today was devoted to mass D&D which went over just about as well as could normally be expected. Nothing of great note to post. Oh well.

Alright, Jiaz covered all the important stuff, just replace his time playing in the Casino with a game of Spades where Kyle and I triumphed over Tim and Edmund. The question is indeed "Was Project Graduation worth it?" and my answer is a resounding, "Meh". Yeah, I'd most likely do it again, but there weren't any singularily fantastic moments the entire night. The whole thing fluxuated between too many people and too few. I could have done Magic or Mao or Spades anytime of day anywhere else and what little I did see of the Casino falls into the same category of activity. I didn't attempt the obstance course or the bull and don't feel bad for either. Obstacles courses tend to enjoy areas of clearance much lower than Colin is tall, and this one was no exception. It was certainly good seeing all those people who are going off to the far reaches of the United States next year and that alone is probably the main reason why I would do it again. It was enjoyable jousting, earning some beads from Jeff the hard way, and exploiting my dress socks for some very very smooth and slick dancing on the gym floor.

I don't know why Mardi Gras was the theme, nor even why the event had a theme, but most of the decorations were simply annoying and ugly. The DJ did absolutely suck, but I've begun to think that of most any DJ these days, I guess I don't like most of today's "popular" music.

In general though, there simply wasn't enough reminiscing and that was mostly what I expected.

In summation, no I'm not miffed that I didn't win a door prize, no it doesn't matter that we were originally promised that everyone would win one, and yeah, I guess I might do it again. I wouldn't do the same things, but yeah, I'd do it again.

Since I arrived late (a bit past 9:30) to Graduation, I didn't get to rehearse on stage so I had my Bass with me until we got on stage. So, to occupy my attentions I started playing a G major arpeggio followed by a descending run: (G up to B up to D up to G then descending from the high G as F E D C and then starting over. It sounded pretty good).

Anyways, Stony River was vastly unimpressive. I had Unsweet Tea which was Luisanne (not a brand that I'm favoring). I should have realized the mistake when upon my ordering went something like this:
Server: What would you like?
Me: Unsweet Tea
Server: Right, Sweet Tea
Me: UNSweet Tea.

Repeat this process replacing me with David, because it happened like with him immediately beyond me. But I still had the tea and was incredibly unimpressed. I added lemon to help it and instead got cold lemon flavored substance with an awful aftertaste.

I ordered a steak which comes with their seasoning meant to "enhance the flavor and tenderize the meat without being spicy." After the server walked away to allow us time to think David immediately asked aloud how a seasoning could tenderize meat whereas I pondered how you could have no spicy seasoning (it seems to defeat the point of the seasoning). Apparently it was a lie though, and as near as I can tell ever chef there was a reject for an Emmeril teaching school. Which Emmeril kicks it up a notch, these people made the notch the level of the food. The fries tasted like seasoning with an odd texture (because herbs usually don't have the texture of french fries) and the steak was definately reduced in greatness by the over flavoring brought on by the seasoning. Overall I'd much rather go to Hops and save the cash and enjoy my house brewed Root Beer and better food.

Nothing really momentus to say about Graduation except that anyone who drove in the far right lane and then merged deserves to be shot. It took me 40 minutes to get to Mount Pisgah because I was driving lawfully, and upon getting here I proceeded to scratch the truck next to me with my front fender, so I got to walk into the church behind a family I didn't know, the father of which was quite angry at me (his damn truck was too far right).

Anyways. Anyone want to tell me the odds that I'd end up walking out next to Dunn (who apparently had issues crossing the stage, but I'll openly admit that I wasn't watching. Sitting at the extreme right relative to the stage really hindered my view of any but those about to cross.

Ok, time for the random congradulations: Kudos to everyone who sang, especially the soloists (Chloe, Laura, Kate, and Joe) and to everyone who gave speeches, mostly Royal and Edmund though. Points to Charlene for losing her hat and to Alex Liss for not understanding when I tried to convince her to straiten out her honor cords (I thought I did a fairly good wordless demonstration).

Glad to know that all the Orchestra people were told to be Alpha for practice, all sat on the Alpha side of Graduation, and then they put our diplomas in Omegazone, way to go school!

Alright. Apparently crossing my fingers really didn't help. I did manage to play several hands of spades though. Why did we have to read everyone's name? Was there a practical application to that action? Anyways, in case you haven't noticed this is yesterday's overdue blog. I got kinda busy and naver managed to get to a computer. So, after Grad practice I went with D'Oraz to turn his AP Calc practice book into Bolt and on the way back got accosted by both Duncan and Burke for still being at school (wow, I never realized it was such a crime to hang around), so I lied that I was on my way home and went over to the Orchestra room where I played random music with Keith and Fu until it was time for rehearsal. So, I went to the Band room, got my copy of the slide show from the concert (which I have not yet had time to look at), said my final orchestra good byes to all the people I'm really going to miss: Louise, Christine, Christina, Christine, Yichen, Sonica, and played my way through a quarter of a hour of Pomp and Circumstance. ((Damn, time for photos, I'll have to finish this...crap...looks like tomorrow cause I think photos will lead into dinner into Project Graduation...okay, until I return this'll have to be unfinished. So much to say, so little time today)). Yay! Another few moments of spare time! Okay. So after Orch finished for the Seniors (cause we didn't have to play the Rondeau (The Masterpiece Theater Song)) I talked with John fora bit and decided that invading his house sounded like a good way to spend the rest of my day. So I called home and David reminded me that I needed to get an application for him and I remembered that I needed to pickup my paycheck. So, I went over to the UPS Store and found Joe packing 3 printers, 2 computers (sans monitors), a scanner, and a few other miscellaneous electronic components. I proptly joined in (I'd say I rolled up my sleeves, but wearing my Black Fila T-Shirt I didn't have long enouh sleeves to roll at all) and after a good half an hour of work managed to get out of the store (and net an hour worth of pay). I got out to my car to find it claiming 2 missed calls so I checked it out and discovered that my mother wanted me to drop the graduation tickets at home so she could take them to my grandparents so they wouldn't have to rally to my house. So, I detoured from my intended path and took a turn into my neighborhood, immediately getting caught behind the Elementary School Bus. Which sucked because we have lots of little kids and it was the last day of school so the air was filled with pre-adolescent attempts at singing songs no one knew the lyrics to and the bus's ponderous pace was slowed by all the parents and children saying goodbye to the driver. So, after traveling 80 ft in the course of 5 minutes, I handed the tickets to my mother and turned around and headed for John's. I gave him a call to warn him I was on my way and began to regret not going home to change out of a black shirt and jeans. I got to Compton's and we started hurling his Aerobie back and forth (that's the hollow frisbee thing, if you didn't know). Then, after Royal's older sister arrived to see Katie Compton (John's elder sister who is also back from college), John and I went inside and watched some Black Adder (British Comedy is rather predictable these days). After about 4 episodes of that Compton and I beat Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and then I went home, had some dinner, and went out to escape the incoming of David's friends.

*Crosses fingers hoping that graduation practice won't suck*

Actually, that's all I really had to post, did close to nothing today. But then again, how's that a change from the norm?

Not having to go to school is fun. I woke up at about 9:30. Actually got up an hour later. Showered and then crawled Infoc for anything fun to read. Didn't find much, though I've resolved I need to get either "Benthis" or "Miranda" into the RPG Forum (yes, those are names of my invented story characters who don't have a story yet). Anyways, after David came home I ate lunch and went to work at about 2:00 PM. I was at 4554 which is the former corperate store setup across the street from the main store (the one that was setup specifically cause the main store as an MBE was doing so well). It's a rather unique place since it has 6 stations where people can enter their own info, a conveyor belt, 3 shipping stations. It's a pure self-service shipping center and good at it. The packing area seems rather lacking on supplies, but that only matters if you want to send something fragile (speaking of which, I was playing soccer with boxes while loading the UPS trailer, it was fun). At the store are the two UPS employees (well, there are 4 but only 2 today) Frank and Chris. They all have jobs until next Friday and all have been paid as such. Frank is probably 40-50 ish, a short Black man, and funny. He wears an apron which contains perhaps everything you could possibly need to pack something (usually multiples of item, and oftentimes the phone too, though he fails to realize this until the third ring). Chris is younger, likely 25-30ish and slightly taller (though both are shorter than me). Chris is more serious, but today was really really slow and under the "watchful" (umm...right) eye of Bill so more serious wasn't really saying much. My day was spent enjoying their antics, learning how to do things on their systems, and changing prices over to the UPS Store level as opposed to the UPS Store level (yeah, that's the whole truth and not a typo). I was using a Stylus double ended for awhile in the process of changing price settings on the computer, it was kinda scary. That went on until 7:20 ish when we had the store closed down and were finially deciding how we needed to change things. The place is much larger than it looks form the outside, but very inefficient with most of that space. The "gate" for locking the store is a series of $5k glass panels depicting the globe with the words UPS in the center, it was disconcerting to say the least.

Today's French lession shall be idiomatic expressions involving the verb Avoir, but first we'll have to learn to conjugate Avoir in the present, here goes:
j'ai / tu as / il a / nous avons / vous avez / ils ont

Just for the record, Avoir means "to have."

All of these go Subject + Appropriate Avoir form + Situation Word (you'll see)
Faim (Hunger), Soif (Thirst), Tort (Wrong), Raison (Right), Sommeil (Sleepy).

So, I'm hungry is "J'ai faim". They are wrong is "Ils ont tort". You get the idea.

Apparently Katie has joined the ranks of the Christine-ists. How sad.

Current Song: Final Fantasy X - Symphonic Suite.

X-2 Time, since hopefully Netscape will stop it with those stupid illegal operations and random crashes so I can actually get the post finished this time. This might be a little detailed in a roundabout way because I don't want to spoil anything, but I do want to cover some issues, and I have way too much knowledge about X-Men as a comic that it'll all come through.

I saw X-2 at roughly 5 previews past 10:05. Finding Nemo and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen both look like they'll be worth watching. Now whether or not they'll be worth paying to see in theaters is another story, though if Pixar is true to course the short before Finding Nemo should be worth my $6.50. Anyways. The theatre contained Kyle, David, Nick, Steve Trantor, Nick and Steve's friend whose name I don't recall offhand, myself, and a whopping six other people. It was really really empty, I like my movies like that.

Anyways, the quality of the movie was good, fantastic special effects. I didn't like the way Kurt Wagner looked, but that cannot be helped, because beyond his actual appearance (the face wasn't right) he was exactly the personality he should have been, a bit more combatative, but that's not suprising, and German is such a fun language.

Pyro is developped very well, which I believe is the general idea. But he isn't developped enough to justify his actions either. David doesn't think the Brotherhood is going to appear, but I think the stage is pretty much set, but that could just be me.

The pace moves fast enough, though all the damn kids are once again faces in the crowd without using powers save for one of them, who was much younger than he should be, but that's a different matter. Some of the concepts are rather contrived, but you've got to get things done somehow. The foreshadowing is nice, is blatent to someone with any knowledge of the storyline of X-Men. There are some fun little issues thrown in for fans, Beast for example. But the violence is too bloodless given what actually occurs. Tons of fatalities and not much actual blood to show for it. Point blank grenades would make a mess.

Of course the movie still lacks several characters, but that's really a whole different world of a complaint. So, it's time for the lightning round:

1)What character, linked in Storm's past and just above Magneto in the mutant database is missing?

2)What character, who is, to quote Mutant Genesis the "resident psionic japanese-by-the-way-of-britain ninja warrior" also needs to make at least a child appearance?

3)Who is the all too Asian mutant in the last scene? Hint: The earrings are a dead giveaway.

4)Two characters aren't wearing enough green, one is rogue, the other is foreshadowing, who?

That'll do it for now, I need to go pickup David in a bit, then eat some Lunch, and then go to earn some cash

Or David will take the bus home so he doesn't get rained on...oh well.

5)What doesn't Cyclops do, it might be at the end of the credits, for once I didn't stay for them? Hint: The answer is not something, although that is quite true.

Blogger is being very bad so we'll have to discuss X-2 later. *Looks at his copy of X-Men Mutant Genesis* <---Great comic book.