In other news, this new Blogger interface is kinda scary. I don't think I need a giant warning sign with an exclamation mark just sitting there refreshing itself till it finishes for a single post created, seems like a waste of someones bandwidth, but that's all I have to say. That aside, I've been looking through Wizard's Advanced Psionics book for 3.5 Edition that Kyle let me borrow. I must say, I really like the way they changed something. It's certainly not flawless but they've made alot of progress I feel. I enjoy the Psions now being based only on Intelligence, it just seemed wrong for this giant hulking brute to be able to take someone down with the power of his 4 intelligence just because he was an Egoist (Strength focused Psion), but that's been fixed. The Psionic Warrior now kinda plays like a Paladin again, which is alright, I mean, they needed some kind of spell determining stat, now they've got it. The Wilder seems like it'd be an assload of extra work for everyone to keep track of, but useful in a clinch. The new base-classed Psi-Knife really seems alot better in terms of reconciling the dual wield ability and changing sword sizes and the formerly overpowered stat damaging abilities, but still a good class, they didn't beat it into uselessness at all, still a very powerful class, and one of the few pseudo-magical-esce classes that can operate without magic, or the pseudo-magic that is psionics as the case may be. The Prestige classes are changed to match the new paradigm for Psions and seem to do so well. I haven't finished looking through everything but I still dislike that all powers do a fixed damage for Psions rather than the standard Xdice/level for Magic-uses, but oh well, the Augment concert really allowed them to slim the lines. My only two complaints so far are a) they were lazy and reused the Sever the Tie picture (a badass picture for a spell that would've been cool had it been greater than second level) for Energy Ball (which is also kinda a complaint, that they have all these amorphous "Energy" spells, it gets a little haggard trying to figure out when you can cast what to do what). The only other is that, b) the spell Deja Vu is reprinted on sequential pages. It's almost like a bad joke, giving me Deja Vu over a spell with the name and properties of a case of Deja Vu. Ahh, dear irony, though art a bitter draught.

Okay, so after a week of always coming back from Java between the hours of 10:40 and 11:20 in the Webster van, I have come to the follow conclusion: 99X is only getting worse. I mean, they say they do an hour of music, but in 4 days worth of 20 minutes a day travel, aka, 1.333333(repeating) hours of music, I've heard, fully, 99X play 7 songs, which were actually 4 cause I heard 3 songs twice in all that time. What's even worse, is the commericals are now full-on crap. I mean, not relatively crappy, not lacking in one aspect, these most putrid pieces of advertising ever to hit the airwaves are absolutely horrendous. I mean, stupid premises, idiotic means of presenting them, terrible music choice, and abhorrent sound effects. I don't listen to the Braves' games on AM 750 because all the commercials are one play or another trying to get me to buy paint, or jewelry or something. Same reason I don't respect anything Neil Bortz says, political leanings aside, because all his commercials are him trying to get me to buy a bed, and personal endorsements, while annoying to begin with, should never be run during your own show. I mean, sure you'll have the greatest population of listeners interested in you, because they came to hear your show, but that's not something to be exploited, that and your voice is annoying when you don't get the break to escape it. 99x does the same thing, but those were actually kinda good compared to the late night abominations they put out. I guess I'll have to reprogram the quick frequencies so I can get to NPR with having to hold the adjust button for the 9.7 Hz I need to get there. Their latenight is good, and commercial free except for Beg-fest, and even then it's relatively free because they figure no one's listening anyways.

Pehaps Titles work now?

Interesting a new format to Blogger, certainly a change.

Anyways, just a quick poem from Bloom County:

I would never cry if I did find a blue whale in my soup,
Nor would I mind a porcupine inside a chicken coup.
Yes, life is fine when things combine, like pork in beef chow mein.
But, Lord, this time I think I mind, they've put acid in my rain.

Biting Irony. Despite my grades in the class, I get to get up early to program Java for my Uncle. Moreover, despite being family he's paying me more $/hour than the UPS store currently is, though perhaps there's been a mysterious payraise since the whole Christmas ass out of the fryer incident.

Ah well, I'm overdue for sleep.

Well, I hope everyone had a fun and productive 5th of May. On a retrospective note, I hope all my comrades had a good May Day as well.

I managed to scratch the side of the newer of the two Webster family vans pulling into the garage, I swear that my father takes up too much space with the Accord. I am, or have been, very good a pulling really close to the far wall, but I guess after a long day of work I misjudged the angle, Oh well. I'm now "Not allowed to park [that] van in the garage anymore." Whatever, I'll just park it on the driveway when I take it and let her pull it in, one less stressor a day I guess.

Alright, I rescind my previous statement. Well, you know, whatever the version of a forced rescind after being terribly corrected would be.

Anyways, just got back from the Super Walmart. It's a scary place. Loads of employees doing inventory and restocking today apparently. Either way, the things encountered there made me question the future of mankind. Somehow I feel that "Ketchup Blast" Pringles are an omen of worse things to come. When you reach the point where you have a potato chip flavored like a condiment, it's just bad. Also, the middle ground is getting increasingly more difficult. For Pace salsa you can have your pick of medium, mild, or the legendary extra mild. It also appears that Disney has teamed up with Kellogs (or vice versa depending on your take of the issue) so there is now a Disney Princesses Cereal. I just hope it doesn't go any further than that. I'd hate to see every new Disney movie be transformed into a cereal, or worse yet, to see two seperate Disney mergings get fused. I can picture it now: Disney Kellogs Square-Enix present some game wherein the protagionist gets to join forces with the heroes of Final Fantasies IX and XII alongside some of your favorite Disney heroes like Mickey and Simba as well as Kellogs' fine additions to the crew. The fiesty Captain Crunch and the mighty Tony the Tiger. Just think, Huey Luey and Dewy could run the weapon store and then Snap Crackle and Pop could handle the item store.

Well, back to removing the crap from 10th grade from my bedroom. Melchor'll get a few updates now that grades have gone live. *Angry Mumbling*

Just for the record Ting oogles is dangerous diction. Remember that oogling is was Jefe does to women, and being oogles of fun therefore is a bit worrysome, no?

So, I was given the privledge of going with my mother to take my brother and his girlfriend to their Junior Prom at the Atlanta Zoo. Before we left my mother had mentioned hearing of an accident at Peachtree Industrial and 285. Apparently said accident did not end happily for all involved, as we were forced to turn off onto 285 in the opposite direction of the one in which we'd have liked to take because of a police barricade. There was nothing barricided other than the road itself being examined by two policemen with measuring tape. But of course, that couldn't be the only highlight of such a trip, no no, fate would never have that. Instead I got the rare 'treat' of watching someone, in what I hope will be a unique experience, at a GA toll booth in the "50 cents only" lane get out of their car to make change with the vehicle behind them, giving me no choice but to believe that what they say about over half of all americans being functionally illiterate is true.

That said, we can move onto the afformentioned disturbance that bothers me. So, here, I offer the fastest and simplest way I can. Search Google for the phrase Penis Envy, click on the second link from the top, read it. When you get to the "the saga continues", brace yourself for graphics of a phallic nature, the second of which is the true cause of my disturbance. As for why, I'll put that in white so a not to spoil the suprise, unless you do want to highlight it yourself and spoil it yourself, so here goes: What bothers me is, of course, the second of the dildo images, Joan of Arc. I can understand the greater meaning of the entire show and the subsiquent displays, but that one bothers me. Jeanne was a mere 19 at the age of her death, a chaste girl who heard the voice of God. I quote from a biography the following "Much was made of her insistence on wearing male clothing. She was told that for a woman to wear men's clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn't yet told her to change, as well as for protection from sexual abuse by her jailors)" and rest my case as to distrubance there.

There you have it. More on the adventurers of my family later.

But before I go, my last odd statement on life in general, again keeping with the whole Prom thing. Here goes: Anyone who gets laid on Prom night obviously did not dance hard enough.

Again with the Blogs responding to Ting, so here goes. The Closet eh? I was just trying to remember the name of the French film that I got to see only the second half of (missed the first half to AP Lit testing). I even had a profile statement expressing my sheer amazement that the google search: french movie condom factory pretends gay returned nothing unsightly. Stupendous coincide, now if only I could find a good way to get my hands on a copy of it. So, that all said, what'd you think of the movie, deary?

On the note of disturbing things, I need to do some more research into the life of Joan of Arc before I can form this thought and hopefully get rid of it. Accursed Mightygirl and her links. Alas, now I am distraught.
Note to self so I remember why this all disturbs me, "Penis envy."

This won't be the full blown post that I had intended, not that many of you readers really want to hear Colin on a strategy RPG tangent anyways, those games are so crappy, or so I'm told, I'm still a fan, but as I said, that's totally not the intent of this one here.

Anyways, looking and listening around has shown me that just about everyone got a piece of the wonderful e^(theta * i) + i sin theta so I say that everyone should mark their calendars for April 15, birthday of the good man Euler himself (that's pronounced Oiler btw, I case I haven't gotten a good chance to yell at you recently about it and you've forgotten). Notably it is also the anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic and the death of Abraham Lincoln, but I say that we shouldn't allow such things to interefere with the great glory of a Mathematician.

Just think, I'm in college, I've got well more than a great excuse to get drunk, but I'm not. Damn Inhibitions, underagedness, Java homework, oh, and rationality, like anyone could imagine me drunk anyways. It's never going to happen, I've got enough troubles walking as is.

Just taking a moment to gloat about beating Nathan in Cribbage.

Pity that it was such a marginal win that there can't really be any pride in it. Hehe.

More substancial posts will be had later, when it isn't 3 am.

Alright, to start with, anyone know what the average age of Blogger users is? Cause I thought it was younger than 21, but perhaps Blogger people know something I don't. I ask because of this message on the main page:

"Some of us Blogger folks are going to SXSW and to kick things up a notch we're serving up free drinks and t-shirts Monday evening from 6:30-8:00 on March 15th over at Club De Ville in Austin, TX. We provide beer and schwag to our users because we care."

I added the bolding myself so you could see what I was talking about.

Warning: Colin is sick, sore throat, cough, etc. So a mix of allergies and perhaps some minor infection of the sinus, just be forewarned.

I think next time I come home I'll move all my home .mp3s to Asgard so that I can expand my music selection at school past Anime, DDR, and misc extra. Now it'll be even more anime, death metal, metal blade.

So, I present the "Lesson of the Week:"
When collecting items of Earth-shatterning importance, like say the powerstones to an ancient art of magic that could destroy the world, or the keys to a viral plague, that come in sets of 4, do not put them all in one bag, it is bad from and generally an unwise idea. Remember, easy to be transported also means easy to steal.

Just a couple of directed comments to various friends of mine (most of whom likely don't even know that I still update), and yes, dear readers, I swear that I shall eventually add some links to this so you can figure out who it is that I am talking to, perhaps, 'till then I suggest Jiaz's blog as a nexus to figure out who exactly it is that I'm speaking to.

First order of business; Jefe, it's Nathan and I. That said, I'm now aware that I misspelled 'cause' at the start of the previous post, and also that technically the end of the previous paragraph here ends in a preposition, which'd be another of those grammatical no-no's. Then, mmm...resisting the power of burning, Jiaz, you sense the powers of Project Chibi at work?

Third, Ting, aren't you worried that the athletes have had the reciprocation of your thoughts. I mean, if my roommate is anything to judge by, those who build muscles primary have little actual food on hand, especially meat. Just beware. And that said, you might want to check your coding on your later links, they seem to have http:// repeated a few extra times.

The previous thing I just never published caus I had hoped to do something with it, but as all can see, it took the path of the post before it in falling short of accomplishing anything. I figure above all else I think I need to bump that Piers Anthony post slightly further down the page. Anyways, I did start the post before this one, the March 8 one before Jefe posted his little swipe, but that's okay, we're all friends here, right?

That all said, the world is again beginning to worry me. Cindy and I, during break, stopped by at a CVS so I could be proven wrong in a bet I don't recall making (nor had what I said been made into a bet, do I recall making it so specific as it was so that I'd lose), either way. On the way out we were confronted with a conundrum. The store has only one entrance, a pair of side by side single sliding doors, kinda like Wal Mart. Confused yet? I mean that there were two sliding doors side by side, and once inside, there was another pair; typical right? Enter on one side, leave on the other? Apparently that wasn't made too clear here, as Cindy and I looked were we stalled for a moment by the fact that both of the doors that we needed to immediately pass through were marked "Not an Exit", or whatever it is such doors say with the red circle with a diagonal slash. Of course, I do presume this was a mistake (possibly a broken door had been replaced with a spare, but backwards) since there were no other exits. I know for a fact we wouldn't have been the first people to oppose the writing on the wall cause there wasn't a pile of bones anywhere in the store. Okay, so perhaps I'm making a big deal out of an oddity, perhaps I am, but it's things like that that start to worry me. If one is going to mark something as "Not an Exit" there had better damned well be an exit someplace else people will start making one. It is like the door on the Textile building that not only proclaims "Not an Entrance" but is regularly propped open because apparently it locks automatically if it closes. Conflict of interests here perhaps?

Rockapella was a good show. I enjoyed it, and Jiaz's nice seats, which tells me I need to definately get a couple rush tickets to some good shows next semester, because invariably they are rather nice seats, even if the Ferst Center line tends to be massive. It was a different style from going to see the Mikado, so I won't try comparing the two. They sang a good number of songs, despite the long opening act sequence (Emory all-guys acapella group (3 songs), Gatech all-girls acapella group (2), Gatech guys acapella group (2), Gatech guys and girls combined (Evanescence, rather well done too). Rockapella did mostly classics, a few originial pieces and all the member specifics (each person has a song they chose or specialize, or whatever, they did all of those (though the vocal percussion guy doesn't have one). The bald guy wasn't too fabulous, but he seemed to be a decent songwriter. Personally, I knew Carmen Sandiago and Folgers had to be preformed, as well as a couple of the 80's song they came to fame through, but the lack of any of They Might be Giants (Putting on the Ritz, Istanbul), Build me up Buttercup, Ants Marching (I don't think they regularly do this, but I think they do it well anyways). House of the Rising Sun really made it good, but it came at the start when they could have done anything and I'd have been alright with it. Zombie Jamboree gets a thumbs down from me because I don't like the mutant calypso style that it involves, nor the song itself.

Right, okay. Trying not to let the blog fall into destitution and emptiness despite the new subtitle. So, alright, here goes:

Cause the post for yesterday (which I'm technically still living since I've merely not gone to bed, as opposed to having awoken this early the next day) is really bothering me. I've decided that I can conjure up another blog on some manner or another, at least I hope so. So, cross your fingers dear reader, as I attempt to find something, or not. I'll leave this here to remind me to post later, but for now, it's sleepy time so I can finish the afforementioned essay.

Okay. Admittedly I should be working, but goddamn it! I think I might want to do On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, assuming I can find a good synopsis to refresh my memory and some credible book critiques on it. Okay, I knew that Disney was acting to perhaps turn the book into a movie; which worries me, because within the first two chapters the main character kills Death and thus takes his place and then proceeds to collect his first soul from a female who killed in a car accident when the windshield of her car impaled her. That wasn't the bad part, it was the detail in describing how said mass of glass had punctured into her breast.
The next chapter he goes to collect the soul of a man who has tainted himself by experimenting with black magic who asks Death for him to wait a moment longer so he can complete a spell that will allow him to transfer half his sins to his daughter so that he won't have to go to Hell. He promises Death his daughter in exchange (who then promptly arrives naked on the scene, coming from the shower, sees Death, and goes to get prettied up). Unfortunately for the girl, her father doesn't know that she was mind-raped (actual words from the book) by a demon and so his burden of sin will send her over to the side of evil in terms of purity, but that is not an issue until later. Sounds like a great start to a Disney movie eh?

Anyways, all that aside. I stumble upon Piers Anthony's site, hoping to find something of usage, perhaps links or something, and instead find.

Warning, Dangerous to read material ahead. Colin takes no responsability for any of it, at all.

"I trash most spam, but one amused me. It said (I'm cleaning up the language) that the average girl's rectum can stretch up to three inches in diameter, while the average horse's member is five inches in diameter. Apparently the site shows stallions painfully buggering girls. It says I won't believe it. Right on: I don't believe it. If I were a stallion, my sexual interest would be in the vagina of a mare in heat, not the rectum of a hominid. But each according to his taste. Not directly related: there was news of the discovery of 425 million year old fossil they named Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which translates into "Astounding Swimmer with a Large Penis." Maybe he needed to swim well enough to catch a female with a small rectum. "

Near Immediate Edit
Okay, a few quick things to add before I decide to cap this topic and try and find another book:
Firstly, there apparently was a comic book that was started on the book, before going bankrupt.
Check it out, it worries me as well
And Piers Anthony also apparently wrote a book...well, I'll just copy paste it and let it sit:
Other Works:
Pornucopia (1989) is a pornographic fantasy.

Yeah
.........

Look! Colin's still alive! Woo!

Alright, the brief Christmas blog.

In addition to the usual Gift cards and Cash I also recieved a Printer, two pairs of sunglasses (one of which I brought to Tech), a blue jacket (not especially stylish, though it'd be a rare day when Colin pays great attention to style), a bowl (the shallow variety, you know the kind your parents use to keep old matchboxes or coins or keys, that sort of thing, for, actually, basically the same reason, to keep my keys and pens and everything else I usually splay out on the counter), I also got Neverwinter Night's Gold (essentially the original + Shadows of Unrentide (if that's how it's spelled), but not Hordes sadly) and have beaten the SoU campaign with Maudraum Vi~~~ something (Human Paladin w/ the Valiant Set from the Elven Crypt, black skin and dark hair), and am at the end of Chapter 2 of the original campaign with Loriel Oakwarder (Elven NE Rogue going Dual Wield), there'll be more detail about games in a later post (ie: not one taking place past 3:00 AM (I'd add in the morning, but that's just screaming superfluous redundency), also got Suikoden III which I've yet to have the time to play and Disgaea which I've put a bit of time into. Finially, I got a little kitten that is made of rabbit fur (though I'm told they didn't kill the rabbit for the fur, so my father and I are betting that they killed it for the feet and took the fur as well), it's pretty soft, but the fur seems layered oddly. Oh, and the standard stocking stuffers: LED flashlight, lifesavers, tic tacs, that stuff.

Well, that's pretty much the thrills of Christmas (I did have the largest box of anyone (that blue jacket came in a massive box)), so I'll hopefully have a nice blog/critique later detailing Ratchet and Clank and the Sequel, Disgaea, Unreal 2 and XMP, NWN and SoU, to the extents that I've played them. Melchor'll be getting touched to talk about Lab Practicum, First semester Finals and the aftermath and the current semester outlook, D&D (yes, that old thing) ought to be seeing a few more Legends that I thought up in the time of a few classes and hopefully I'll eventually get motivated to turn my Prism Gatech site into something beside a completion grade for a past CS class.

Oh yeah, I need to do a New Year's Blog (not that I made any resolutions) and talk about some other games. D&D Heroes, SSX3, Double Dash, as well as a bundle of movies that I've seen recently (or, not really, or not at all, I've not seen any movies save LotR and Treasure Island recently).

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So much for tomorrow eh?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyways, the playlist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ummm. Post later, sleep now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No more titles! You may rejoice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about college prep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHORUS

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

CHORUS

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

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

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

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

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

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

New from the front (second attempt)

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

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

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

The promised Random Crap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karmatic Blogging

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

Out with the Bad

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

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

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

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

In with the Good

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Math Fun

Death Death Revolution Guidelines

Great Narration Style

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

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

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