This Is A Blog

Move

2008-10-03T03:30:00.002-04:00

You've been good to me, Blogger, but now it's time to move on. Tumblr is just so much better than you. I'm sorry.

All of my Blogger posts have moved to Tumblr. All of my future blog posts will be there. Check it out here:

http://xfisjmg1.tumblr.com/

One Month Later

2008-07-31T00:43:00.002-04:00

A month has passed since my last entry--since then the con has come and gone, and I have unsuccessfully written more about my Wisconsin trip. Before I get started on some of the con stuff, I'll try to more or less summarize by day some of the events of Wisconsin. I would like to revisit this list at some point to add more detail, but for now, you'll have to deal with this.

Tuesday (June 10th) - arrival, ate food (JDs) with casey and tara, picked up movie (the notebook), didn't watch anything (mal was overwhelmed and sick)

Wednesday - made pancakes, went to nature reserve (1000 islands), hiking, disc golf, pizza for lunch, went to visit steph and play games, jimmy johns, watched everything is illuminated followed by drop dead gorgeous

Thursday - mal had to work, hung out with casey from 10 am to 3 pm, tried to go go-karting but it rained, went bowling (filmed it), ate burger king, went to a few gamestores, watched the notebook (tried)

Friday - Radio / LanC 1, Swingset, Tetherball (ouch), Culver's for lunch, Ben called during swing fun time, Applebee's with Mom and Rob, go packers, cheese factory, went to the mall

Saturday - got up at and left at 9 am with mal's dad for the 1 hour trip (stopped to get brats), played disc golf in the mucky dirt, went to eat at chili's, then to the lake and walked along the beach with mal's dad, to the house then the recital, went to eat at ____, drove back (stephen drifts off a bit)

Sunday - buffalo wild wings with steph, bought candy at walmart, movie

Monday - morning, sushi, photo taking, talking to parents, Mallory got sick again, leaving

We actually watched a movie every night (except the first night). Like I said, I'd like to go back and fill in more info about all of this, but I'm not sure when or if that'll be happening.

Con stuff will be coming. At some point. More than likely I'll just link you to the con page: http://fishsticks.fobby.net/photos/chicagocon/

Anyway, Mallory is coming on August 19th and staying until the 28th. I'll probably write more during or after that.

Incredibly nervous to incredibly happy to incredibly sad again

2008-06-30T11:07:00.014-04:00

Lessee, the last post was June 2. A LOT has happened in my life since then, so sit back, grab a coke, and get in a comfortable position--this is gonna be a long one.

When we last left our hero, he was preparing to go to Wisconsin. I left on the 10th of June. The week leading up to that was absolute madness, and I don't think I've ever been as stressed as much as I was that week than in my entire life. I did my best not to worry about too much (and to my knowledge I did a good job of avoiding any and all worry), but good lord did I think about stuff. My mom always told me horror stories of how she'd bring boyfriends home to meet her parents and my grandfather would be extremely hard on them and yell and make them feel really bad, so that didn't help my situation any (for some reason I was really nervous about meeting her father). I even went to the beach to try and tan for a week (this alone proves this is love--I would never go to the beach for anyone. Sand? P'shaw!)

I did alright sleeping until maybe the night of the 8th. Trying to sleep on the 8th and 9th was absolutely ridiculous--I had a lot of trouble sleeping, just lying awake knowing what was so quickly approaching. I prepared the best I could for the 10th, and even got Mal a few things that I wanted her to have, and then woke up on the 10th ready for action.

Now, Mom had to work and Dad had to work. The plan was for dad to come back from work a wee bit early to take me to the airport (leaving your car there for a week costs a buttload of money). My flight left at noon: 12: 05pm. You're supposed to be at the airport an hour and a half early, but considering Myrtle Beach is a rather small airport, I said an hour early would be fine. Anyway, I got up that morning at 9 am and got ready. Dad was supposed to pick me up at 9:30am. I heard the hourly chime go off--it's 10 am and still no dad. Hmmm... that's not good. 10:30 rolls around and still no sign of him. I give him a call and express the severity of the situation. "Dude, you needed to be here at 10!" "Oh I'm sorry, I'm on my way though." On his way, gaaaah. He's finally there by 10:45 but the airport is half an hour away. He arrives and tells me he has to go inside the house to use the bathroom. "There's no time for that!", I scream. He kind of hesitates (I think he really did have to go), then we jump in the car.

We're on our way to the airport. Dad was supposed to pick me up early so we could grab a bite to eat--I was crazy hungry and wanted to munch on something. About halway to the airport it starts to occur to me where I'm going and what's happening, and my stomach starts to get all willy-nilly and such. "Crap." Literally. We stopped at a Burger King and we both ran in to relieve ourselves. After waiting on some guy who took a good 10 minutes. By the time we both were done it was about 11:10 and we were still 10 to 15 minutes away from the airport. We didn't have enough time to eat so we just jumped in the car and flew down there.

I was praying pretty crazily on the way, because, quite honestly, it would suck to have to reschedule a flight because you couldn't make it to the airport on time. We got to the airport around 11:25 or so, and I jumped out of the car and ran inside. The airport was empty--*whew*. I got in line and checked in my bags. Dad came in, I told him I had to run and we parted. I got through security in an extended amount of time--I kept taking off my stuff trying to figure out why the buzzer thing kept going off. I just kept setting it off and they had to take me to the side and frisk me (boy was that fun). Eventually it occurred to me that I just never took off my belt, which is a seatbelt, so the thing was big and metal. Duh. *facepalm*

I get through security and I can finally see the gate. Thank God, I made it. I'm also starving. I took the time to grab a 6" marinara meatball sub from Subway and stuff it down my pie hole just before the plane started boarding. I swallow the last hot (read: hot) bite, and took a deep breath. This was it. This was what I had been waiting for for three months. I get on the plane.

And then I realize that I'll still have another flight so I calmed down a bit. I sit down next to a nice old lady--backstory time: up to this point I had never flown by myself, but I always thought that if I had to do it, I always wanted to sit next to a nice old lady. Something about them seems like it would make the trip smoother or something, not that I expected her to give me homemade cookies from her purse or anything, but hey, who knows. Anyway, throughout the flight I was talking to her and the inevitable conversation of why we were flying came up. When I started to explain the story behind Mallory and myself, she was completely enthralled and wanted to hear more.

I talked to this woman for the entire flight. Turns out she was 70-something (at least I'm pretty sure that's what she told me), the perfect age to be a nice old lady, just like what I wanted. She thought it was so amazing that we met on the internet, and called me young and foolish for pursuing it, but at the same time acknowledged that if I never pursued it I would never know. She said that I looked like a fine young gentleman (not like other 'hoodlums' my age) and that if the girl I was meeting was half as nice as me, we should be fine. I assured her she was absolutely wonderful, and she seemed quite convinced. When the plane landed in Detroit she stopped me getting off the plane and gave me her address. She told me that she had gotten very into our story and wanted to know how it all turned out, and to mail her a letter, even if it just said "Everything went well!" Later when I got back from the trip I wrote a page of stuff and even included a picture of Mallory and me together, so I'm hoping that made her day brighter.

After I parted ways with the woman I was in the airport of destiny(tm). I headed over to some pizza place and got a personal pan pizza and a drink (gah, no sweet tea was already killing me). I sat down and gave Mallory and then Ben a call. I talked to Ben for a while--originally I was going to call him to have him calm me down, but as it turns out, talking to the old lady for 2 hours had made me feel incredible already. I honestly wasn't nervous in the slightest, it was awesome. After I talked with Ben for a bit I headed toward the gate. The next plane ride was much less eventful, sitting by people who didn't really want to talk at all (or acknowledge my existence). Instead, we'll jump to the good part.

I'm about to get off the plane and arrive in Milwaukee, where she's supposed to pick me up. I get off and walk the long path to the baggage claim. I can honestly say that I remember every detail of that hallway and I doubt I'll ever forget. When Mallory and I had talked about meeting, she said she wanted to sneak up on me, so I kept my eye out for her. Then it occurred to me that she may not even be there yet so I gave her a call.

Nope, she wasn't there. She was about 15 minutes away from the airport, actually. I waited on my baggage for about 10 minutes, grabbed it, and sat down. As I sat there, I realized the next thing that would happen is that I would be meeting her. The absolute girl of my dreams, the one who I had already fallen madly in love with and had looked forward to meeting for the last three months. She had wanted to sneak up on me so I sat in a chair facing away from everything, although I could see behind me using the reflection of the glass in front of me (heheh, genius). I sat for a good 10 minutes, probably.

She called again when she was there. I told her I'd see her soon, hung up the phone and swallowed deep. It all sort of sank in all at once (that which didn't probably just ran out of my ears). I sat there staring at the glass, and waiting on that moment. Soon I saw a figure bend down next to me, but behind me. I knew it was her and I stood slowly to my feet. I turned around and there she was--there was a feeling of 'my god she's beautiful' and 'wtf, am I actually here?' all at the same time. I embraced her.

We let go then I grabbed my stuff. She begged to carry something so I let her take my camera bag. We started to head back toward the car. We weren't talking a whole lot, it sort of reminded me of when we had first gotten together--we didn't say much for days. We stood next to each other standing on the moving platform toward the parking lot. I held my hand out in front of her. She grabbed it. We locked fingers and I knew it was real.

We got to the car and put my things inside. We got in the car and for the next two hours made idle chit-chat and Mallory played 'tour guide' with Wisconsin. Turns out that 96% of Wisconsin is cows and farms. We held hands the entire way back home.

Here's where I'm going to abridge this entry. I was there for a week, and in that week I did a few things. First off, I proved to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is real. Our relationship exists, and although we're far away from one another, we're still crazy in love. Like, love. The next thing is that I fell more in love with her than I already was--but I guess that was a given. I have a lot of new (and fun) experiences that I've added to my "Things I've Done In Life" book, and I'm so happy that I shared them all with someone as wonderful as her. I plan on going on about the trip in detail, day by day, after Mallory and myself have a chance to sit down together and go over everything so we get every little detail. Well, maybe not every little detail: I'm sure there's things you don't want to hear about, heheh.

Fast-foward. I'm coming back home. I'm broken. There's a song by Jack's Mannequin entitled 'Bruised', and it fits pretty well (and it hurts to listen to it). I heard it on the flight home and it really killed me. I didn't break down until I got back home, but then it hit me and it hit me really hard. I haven't felt that bad in a long time. It occurred to me, though, that if we're going to be in this sort of relationship, we should probably get used to feeling like this. It hurts, it doesn't feel good, but it's a situation where you just have to reflect on the good times and try to ignore the fact you can't be together all the time. It's something I'm still trying to deal with.

After I got back, I was glad that I'd get to see her in less than a month (yeah, really!), but it was just going so incredibly slow. The next few days we talked quite a bit--every day (as usual) and for prolonged periods of time. She mentioned to me that she had been praying--a quality that I have to admit I'm quite fond of. We talked for a bit about this, and on June 22nd, she finally made a decision that will ultimately change her life, whether or not she realizes it at the moment. It all made sense to me then--why everything worked out like it did. Why we're even together today. Everything was all brought to light, and I realized we were truly meant to be together. It was a good feeling. She's got a ways to go in terms of fully understanding everything, but she's a wonderful person with a good heart, and I'm anxious to see her grow (and I know she will).

Four days later (Thursday), my dad's father passed away. He was 79 years old, and had battled Alzheimer's and Parkinson's for years. He was a very influential preacher in his hometown of Mt. Storm, WV, and he was an incredible man of God. We drove up on Saturday morning to be there for the viewings on Sunday and the funeral today, then spending Tuesday with my mom's family and driving back on Wednesday (as a side note, we're taking a detour on the way back home to swing by and meet Ben Carignan, someone who has been an incredible friend to me for a long time). During the viewing I met tons of people I had never met before--most to all of them were family in some way, shape or form. There was one girl who kept eyeing me from across the room--she'd meet eye contact then look away. I pointed her out to mom and said that she wouldn't stop looking at me. Mom said that maybe she wanted to 'meet' me. I just said that I hoped not, because I'm sure the idiot didn't realize we were kinfolk. Then again, this is West Virginia, and while I'd expect cousins to marry in Alabama, it probably goes on here too. *sigh* What's worse is that my mom told me that someone in her family (slightly distant at least--thank god) just married their cousin. Sorry, there's just something a little weird about being attracted to your cousin in any way. Maybe it's just me.

I'm done for now. I'm still here in WV staying in a trailer in front of my grandma's yard (that's vacation here--hurray rednecks :D). The funeral starts in an hour so I have to get ready. I'll be back at a later post to perhaps talk more about my grandfather and of course about the trip at some point.

Generic Blog Update Time!

2008-06-02T20:24:00.002-04:00

Been quite a while since I last updated this. I got really busy with my finals in school and just didn't seem to have the time to take care of everything I needed to. Luckily it's been a few weeks since then, and I've now been out of school for a few days (since the 29th of May). Plus it's already June! Crazy.

My grades haven't come in yet, except for 3D, which I managed to squeeze a 'B' out of. I'm actually pretty happy about that, considering I had already accepted the fact that I was going to make a 'C' in her class. Apparently she really loved my final project (so much that she gave me a 95 on it). Speaking of which, I never posted my 3rd project here. Here's the Seahorsican, a giant hybrid animal created from foamboard. While I'm at it, here's the final project, Shrimp Nigiri. This quarter, as I've said many times before, just wasn't that hard, and I think I ended up doing alright. Next quarter I'll be taking Drawing II, Speech & Public Speaking, and Advanced Computer Art Applications. I won't be taking another Film class until January, unfortunately.

Now I don't have to worry about school for a while (mid September, actually). I've been looking forward to this summer for a handful of reasons, and now it's finally here. The first (and biggest) thing coming up this summer is my trip to Wisconsin to see Mallory, and it's just 8 days away. Hard to believe the time has crept up on us like this. Every day seems so long, but after a week passes you can hardly believe a week is already gone. This principle seems to apply to almost everything (if not everything), and it's really astounding. It seems like just yesterday I was starting college, and now an entire year has flown by. Truly crazy stuff. I've been really busy in the first few days back and I'll probably stay pretty busy until I leave, but we've still managed to talk for a while every day. Our relationship has really grown over the last 3 months, and I'm anxious to see what 3 more months will bring.

Aside from that all-important trip that I'm extremely happy (and incredibly nervous) about, there's the Starmen.net Convention coming up in mid July (about 3 weeks after I get back from Wisconsin, actually). I'm definitely pumped about this, not only since I'll be able to see Mallory for yet another week, but because I'll be able to finally meet Mr. Benjamin Carignan, someone who has been a very good friend to me over the last year or so (could be longer/shorter, I've discovered I have a horrible recollection of time). Along with him, I'll finally be able to hang out with Martin again, and this time hopefully have more to say (since we'll obviously have more than a few things to talk about this go-round, unlike last time where he more or less awkwardly stood around and didn't say anything, heheh). I'm flying up with Will again, who is an awesome dude as well, and this time the trip won't take as long (actually, it probably will since we have to go from Charlotte to Atlanta before heading to Chicago). Anyway, yeah, the Starmen Con will be a blast, moreso than last year for sure.

Aside from that, the rest of the summer is going to be straight-up work. I've already decided that beside those two important dates, I really have nothing else to do or accomplish, so I'm going to devote my entire summer to working like a madman. I'm kind of interested in buying an iMac at the end of the summer if I could afford it, and I'm willing to work as long and as hard as I possibly can to afford it. Supposedly someone could get me on at a restaurant as a waiter, and while it's something I've never done (and never really had an interest in doing), the money is absolutely amazing. Seriously, you'll make a few hundred dollars a night in tips. That's really crazy, and I definitely wouldn't mind bringing drinks to crazy old golfer dudes if it meant having more dough in my bank account. And by more I really mean making up for all I've spent in the past few months--I've bought two plane tickets, survived in college (buying food, necessities, and ridiculously over-priced art supplies), and a plethora of other stuff, and I need to work a ton this summer to really make up for all the time in school that I couldn't work. Two jobs? Maybe. We'll see what happens. I'll probably go job scouting this week and let them know I can start after the 17th. Then I'll be able to work for a bit until the Starmen Con comes around. Should be a fun, interesting, and crazy busy summer.

Back to the thing that's been on my mind for the past month and slowly takes over more and more of my brain everyday--the trip on June 10th. After spending literally 20 weeks inside of a dorm room and going outside minimally (very minimally), I decided I should maybe head to the beach to get out in the sunshine. So yesterday Seth and myself spent an hour and a half at the beach. In my stupidity I didn't wear sunscreen, but honestly, do you really need sunscreen if you're only going to be outside for that long? I only laid out for an hour, with the other time spent in the water. Anyway, you guessed it--I'm burnt. Not badly though, just maybe a little pink. Honestly it doesn't really bother me that much, I just wish I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did. I'm thinking that in another day or two it will turn into a brownish color and stop stinging, and I'll probably be back out on the beach again. Sunscreen next time? Meh, probably not. I'll just stay out for much less time, heheh.

Oh--I don't think I ever mentioned the outcomes of the PK Tube'n. I was able to come up with an idea and have Dan help out with filming. Our video was called Bring Lucas To America, and shares a lot of similarities with the popular /earthbound series, mostly that it's yet another crazy public stunt by me. We didn't win anything, but we did get an honorable mention, which is A-Ok with me. I also managed to get a lot more subscribers because of it, so I'm really happy with the outcome of the contest. We actually shot the video in HD, so expect to see the high def version on Vimeo sometime in the near future.

And with all of that being said, and with myself feeling good that I finally updated this thing, I think I'll stop. I still have what seems like a million things to do, including a few special things I need to try to accomplish before I leave for WI. I'll keep this updated as best I can--I'll probably write one more post before I leave, and if not, expect one crazy huge one when I get back, probably with a photo album attached (or several--who knows how many pictures we'll take, heheh).

Art Sucks

2008-05-13T18:23:00.006-04:00

Art school's first year is coming to a close. With 16 days remaining, I decided to reflect back on my first year at SCAD and what I've learned from classes, life, and art in general.

Art school is a load of crap. Haha, it's funny reading that, but in actuality it's true. It's not even so much the school as it is the people in the school (which make up the school, so is it the school then?). The problem with art is that there's no absolutes. With any other subject you have yes and no answers. If someone asks you a question there is one answer, the right answer. With art, you only have opinions. The problem with opinions is that they only go so far. If someone makes a piece of art that is undeniable crap, it doesn't necessarily have to be undeniable crap. When you're sitting in a room with 20 other students critiquing each other's work and someone decides to be 'artsy' and turn in a blue square then proceed to talk about it for 15 minutes, that doesn't make him a good artist, that makes him an idiot. But not by the rules of art. So the group of 20 people will sit there for 15 minutes and bob their heads like morons and agree with this idiot because they've all been brainwashed as to what art is. And it's a load of crap.

If I create a piece for a class because I thought it 'looked cool', then that's my reason. I don't care if you think the color choice was to emphasize the historical perseverance of the Mexican culture or if I used a lot of curves because I want to make a statement about the war, you're wrong. Art school is full of people like this, who are generally called 'art students'. And they are. They're hippies, they dress ridiculously, they smoke pot, and some of them come from hippie families (you'll know because the children have names like 'Flower' or 'Sunshine'). I don't have a problem with these or any kind of people. I'm cool with hippies, I'm cool with gays, I'm cool with gay hippies, I'm cool with pot-smoking, crap-spitting retarded art students. The problem is I hardly fit the art student description, which makes me something else. Normally I'd just type 'normal', but I don't think there's such a thing, so I'll just say average.

The people I hang out with are also average. There's nothing wrong with being average, it's a great thing. In this city, it seems to be rare. Walking down the street you'll see people with half of their heads shaved, 10 inch earrings, or perhaps purple and yellow polka-dotted fleece sweatshirts with bright red skirts. Because it's artsy. Once again, I'm cool if people want to dress like they got dressed in the dark, but it's definitely not my thing. I'm sure I'm not as 'normal' as I'd have myself believe, as I walk down the street with my big black headphones blasting EarthBound remixes in my ears, but to the outside world who still has a definition for the word, I'm sure I fit the bill a little bit better.

My biggest problem is with the people being so full of it. Earlier I mentioned the 'blue square' guy. Let me share another story. A few months ago we were turning in our music videos for Intro to Video class (you might remember I did a video for Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure). A majority of the class were new to video or had very little experience, which was fine. During the critique for our videos, though, one student showed a video that was more or less footage of the ghetto with background music (which was fine), but about halfway through the video started getting all shaky. It was obvious as to what he had done, he was shooting while zoomed in and not using a tripod. It looked really bad, and he didn't cut away for some reason, so it was just shaky video for a good 15 seconds. When the video ended, the professor asked him what his intent was for the shaking in the video. Instead of just owning up and stating he couldn't get a hold of a tripod or didn't think to use one, he said it was 'to show the struggle of life on the streets and the gang problems in the world today'. Now, I do sympathize with this particular situation because I don't think he actually filmed it with that in mind (if he did then he's a dumb art student and makes me sad). He obviously said what he did so the professor wouldn't yell at him for it (though the professor did anyway), which is a smart move I suppose (I actually did something similar recently in 3D class--when I turned in my giant pelican-seahorse cardboard model, I made the body incredibly detailed, but didn't do anything to the wings because I finished literally an hour before class. I knew she would ask about them and it would ultimately give me a worse grade, so when she did ask, I told them it was to 'contrast between the simplicity and complexity of the piece'. I got an 'A' on the project. I guess that's an example of how art being opinionated can be on your side.).

For the most part I joke about art now. I know what I like but I couldn't tell you why. Don't analyze my stuff--I'll tell you what my intentions were. If you're laughing at a video I've made, that was its purpose: to make you laugh. The day you think I made you laugh to get you thinking about how much Bush sucks or the government are putting robot chips into newborn baby's brains: that's the day you're wrong and I've lost faith in humanity.

With all that said, I really like SCAD and I'm extremely glad I'm going here. Maybe I'm a hypocrite, hehehe.

Haven't ranted like that in a while, so let's look at some other stuff.

Things that happened recently. Martin got accepted into SCAD! It's been on my mind a bit lately, and it should be pretty awesome. With any luck he'll be able to get into Oglethorpe house with the rest of us, and should be spending a lot of time with us next year. Now all we need is to get Ben's response. Good luck, buddy, I hope it all works out the way it's supposed to.

School is going well. I'm down to 16 days as I stated earlier, and it's not exactly gotten any harder. I managed to squeeze out a 90 on the seahorse project (Fichtinger's not so bad after all... oh wait), which is my first 'A' in her class. Alex managed to get an 88, which he was quite pissed about after he nearly cut his thumb off during an x-acto blade accident. Normally I'd have photos, but seeing as how I stayed up all night to finish it, it's not surprising that I forgot to take pictures of it. I'll do that when I get it back.

Art History and Preproduction continue on as normal, both fairly easy classes with not too much to do. Really all I'm doing now is waiting for this 16 to turn into 15, then 14, 13, all the way to zero. I'm only 27 days away from being with Mallory, and I'm very ready to be done with school and start summer.

Just a little bit longer!

Days pass

2008-05-01T18:27:00.002-04:00

Every 7+ days I write my brain down here. It's that time again!

Under the 40 day mark for the trip to Wisconsin, and only 29 days left on the chain (how long until the end of school). I'm getting really excited, but as usual I'll keep that to a minimum in the blog.

But good Lord am I excited.

Anyway, in terms of schoolwork everything seems to be getting gradually easier... or harder... or something. Preproduction has taken a turn for the better, and it seems we've dropped all assignments to work solely on the final project, which luckily seems to be very easy, if a bit time consuming. 3D seems to be looking up a bit since the professor seemed very interested in my design for the latest project, but who knows what I'll end up getting. With some luck I could pull up the grade in her class to a 'B', which could give me some padding in case I do bad in Art History (albeit some hardcore studying should keep me afloat just fine). Overall school this quarter, as I've stated before, has been much easier than the past two, even if my grades haven't been quite as good. I've still got 4 weeks to fix stuff, so I'll be working on doing that.

One of the biggest video game releases of the year, Grand Theft Auto IV, just came out, so we went and picked it up the other day. I've only had about 45 minutes with the game, but I really like it. I've seen a ton of the game already, though, with Alex and Ian at the helm of the controller on a daily basis. I'll play it a bit more when I get a chance, but I'm sure I won't delve fully into the game until later this summer.

On a final note, I should probably mention the PK Tube'n. It's the 'last leg of the Siege' and is composed of releasing a ridiculous amount of YouTube videos upon the internet, all related to EB on the VC, or bringing M3 to America. It's a really great idea, but what is attracting me (besides the fact that it's a video contest) are the prizes: I need that darn air freshener. I'll be putting my plan into action tomorrow, hopefully, and maybe have something ready to watch on Saturday or something. We'll see what happens :D

Weekly update

2008-04-21T19:45:00.007-04:00

By now it's become a regular thing to update once a week, so I'm going to assume now is the time to update this thing seeing as how it's been one week since the last update.

Not a whole lot going on at the moment. We've completed 4 weeks of school and it feels like I really haven't done all that much. Probably because I haven't. Looking at it now, I've had two 3D projects, an art history test, and one Preproduction assignment. In 4 weeks. That's fairly ridiculous. Albeit when I do have to do work it usually takes a while, it's all been really easy (which is awesome). Now if only I could appease my 3D professor (what the heck is wrong with my wire skate?)

After Mallory purchased a Nintendo DS and Animal Crossing, it was pretty obvious that I needed to start a new file as well. I requested my parents mail me the game and it showed up a few days later. I've never played the game online before, and it really changed my opinion of the game quite a bit. I usually leave my gate open, so if you'd like to visit, feel free to stop by (albeit you'll probably have to let me know when you're coming since I only play a little everyday). I'm Stephen in Savannah, 0344-9532-9865.

I also went ahead and sent Mallory something she needed (or something I wanted her to have), a webcam. I have one built into the Macbook so she could already see me, but now we can see each other! It's almost like being in the same room! ...Well, almost. I talk to her for a good amount of time every day (^-^), and now that I can see her, I just devote an entire screen for the video. Dual monitors rock!

The time remaining until my departure for Wisconsin has fallen under the 50 day mark. Everyday is one day closer, and every night it's even harder to say goodbye. Honestly I had no idea it was even possible to feel like this, to have so much love for one person. There's been quite a few times I could've swore my heart was going to explode, heheh. I've gotten pretty close already, so seeing her in June could push me over the limit. At least if I die in an airport everyone will know what happened to me.

I started writing this post very early in the day and just went back to finish the end now. I finish my day talking to Mallory though, and after typing the above paragraph I simply can't think of anything else to say. There aren't any words left in my head except three simple ones, and quite honestly the readers of this blog shouldn't be bothered with my relationship status, so I'll save everyone reading this the time. There are no more thoughts left in this head of mine for tonight, maybe you'll get more next time :)

Sickness passes, WoW continues

2008-04-14T00:56:00.004-04:00

And so the plague passes us by. From what I can tell, Alex and myself are healed (due to the magic that is Amoxicillin*!). The weekend has come and gone, and I've gotten a few things done. For starters, I finished the basics of my 3D project, aka "Make wire clothing for 'insert reason here'". I'm attempting to create a roller-skate, and so far I've gotten the shoe part done. If you'd like, there's a little video on Vimeo that shows a bit of the work-in-progress, so you can check that out if you'd like.

Beyond that, not much happened, actually. We took a trip to WalMart the other night to grab some random stuff (I also had to pick something up for a certain someone) at 2 or 3 in the morning (which, coincidentally is the absolute best time to go shopping, as to avoid the hustle and bustle of the earlier shopping hours). I still have to pick up a box in order to ship said item, something which completely slipped my mind when I was actually at the WalMart. Silly me.

Alex, Taylor, Dan and myself competed in a Super Smash Bros. Brawl tourney that the student center was hosting Saturday night. We had been practicing up quite a bit so our chances were pretty good. I got as far as round three before I was killed by a ridiculously good Diddy Kong player (banana throw banana throw banana throw dodge banana throw), and Alex made it to round four where he had to fight the same Diddy Kong, which resulted in crash and burn of the competition. We didn't win but we had a good time, and it's awesome when people are cheering for Lucas. For good measure, I wore an EarthBound shirt to the tournament and had people comment on it probably 3 or 4 times. Too bad I didn't have a Mother 3 shirt :\

We have an Art History test approaching fast (and by fast I mean on Tuesday morning). Now, we haven't studied yet, but I'm leaving my entire day open tomorrow just to study for what will easily be the biggest test we've taken at SCAD thus far. We have to memorize 103 different pictures (despite the fact that only 10 of them will appear on the test) as well as learn a barrel full of vocabulary words and random facts about old pieces of art. This is our first Art History test this quarter, which is surprising considering that we're into the 4th week now. What sucks is that we have 5 tests a quarter, and with only 10 weeks of school, we're going to be pumping out tests almost every single week. It's a well-known fact that the first 5 weeks are the easy-going times, while the last 5 are usually living hell. I'm not going to go out on that limb particularly for this quarter, though, since I feel like this is the easiest quarter thus far (albeit my grades probably don't show that--thanks a lot, Fichtinger [was my spoon sculpture really that bad? heheh]). I really haven't had a whole lot of work yet, but we're getting to the breaking point where it should start any time now. Aaaaaany time now. Still waiting. But it's coming, trust me. In the mean time, I'll be waiting for my parents to ship my copy of Animal Crossing: Wild World that's been on the shelf for quite a while.

Of course before I stop I should mention the other half of this post's title. Alex is still playing World of Warcraft. He knows he's getting too deep into it again, and has actually said something already about his playing habits. He knows his limits, so I'm assuming he'll stop soon enough. If not, well, that's his loss I guess, heheheh.

*Yes, I am a doctor. I write my own prescriptions and all of them are for amoxicillin. Am I wrong in thinking that it can cure everything? Mallory thinks so... and she's probably right, heheh.

Alex gets sick, starts playing WoW

2008-04-07T16:35:00.003-04:00

I can't remember now if I mentioned it in my last post, but both Alex and myself have been very sick as of late, with what seem to be cold-like symptoms (coughing, sore throat, and a bit of mucus coming up every once-in-a-while). I think I'm finally getting over it, but Alex seems to be treading along his merry sick path, and while traveling he seems to have started taking crack. WoW crack. For some reason he started playing World of Warcraft again in the last few days, and although he has put parental controls on for himself, I can't help but think this is a bad idea. I'm not a fan of WoW in the least bit, and I know for him it can easily become as addicting as it once was. He assures me he has a grip on it at the moment, and hopefully he does: this quarter is the home stretch for our first year of college. Don't want to screw it up now.

In other news, I recently picked up a box of envelopes as well as some stamps to send letters off to Mallory. We're going to send one every week, to make the next two months go by faster (June is visiting time!). I also assembled the paper chain using the construction paper she included in her last card. 53 school days remaining as of right now, but that number will drastically decrease soon enough. Weeks go by fast here at SCAD (partly due to the 4 day work week), and I suspect summer will arrive before I even realize it.

And summer holds quite a few notable events. First and foremost, the most important event is obviously meeting Mallory in early to mid June, followed by the Starmen.net Convention, which I believe is going to be in early July. Since school doesn't start until mid September, I should have from mid July until then to work (and probably work really, really hard). What I recently realized (and sucks) is that I won't get back to Myrtle Beach until May 29, and by then most jobs (or at least all of the good ones) will be nabbed up, so I'm going to need to do some creative thinking in terms of work this summer. I'll of course be doing video, graphics, and site work on the side, but I need a stronger income this summer, especially with all the traveling I'll be doing early on. I have two companies that want me for an internship, which I would love to do (if it pays), but I didn't check on either of them over spring break, and I'm not sure what to tell them in terms of when I would start (and up until now I wasn't sure of the con dates, so there was really nothing I could do anyway). If I have any head on my shoulders, I'll try and contact the two places in the very near future, and hopefully find out some stuff.

All things on the class-related front look clear; smooth sailing here, at least for a few more days. I have a 3D project that will be due next Wednesday where I have to make clothing out of wire. I just experimented with the wire today and my God is it hard to use. Holy crap. Trying to make a cube that was maybe 3 to 4 inches tall took me 30 to 45 minutes. I can only imagine how time consuming it's going to be trying to make an entire jacket, or a hat, or something similar. And yet that's the assignment. It's also becoming clear that 3D is dangerous, to some small extent. I think all three of us burned ourselves with the hot glue gun in the first project, and now on the first day of project two, Alex cut two of his fingers on the scrap wire. In his defense, the freshly cut wire really is ridiculously sharp. Ian didn't attend class today because he didn't have his tools, even though we went out last night and bought supplies for him. Hmm....

Lessee, what else. Video-game wise I haven't been much into anything. I've been playing Brawl on and off, and I play with Lucas almost religiously now. We haven't had smash balls on for almost 2 weeks now, since it's 'cheating' to use Lucas when they're on, heheh. I've also played a bit of Guitar Hero 2 every once-in-a-while, and each time I do I end up breaking previous records, which is a plus, I guess. It's a fun game, but it'd be nice to play GH3 to hear the new songs or something. I plan on picking it up if I could nab it for under 20 bucks on eBay or something. Ian is still surprisingly pounding away at Dark Cloud 2, though now he's not sure if he got the picture of the flower or not (Mallory informed me that without the picture it's actually impossible to beat the game). If he didn't, looks like he's not going to beat it after all. He wants to play Windwaker but I didn't bring it this quarter. I told him if he beats EarthBound that I'd ask mom to mail me Windwaker. He seems into the idea, so that sounds cool. I wanted him to play it the first quarter, but after 10 minutes or so he was sidetracked and never came back to it. I've had a hankering to play Super Mario RPG lately, actually, so maybe I'll find enough time to run through that.

Mallory and myself went through Donkey Kong Country in about 2 days, beat K. Rool last night. It was her first time through the game; she was quite happy about it and I'm very proud of her :) I also got through it in probably my fastest time, right around 2 hours. I'm going to say that's it due to talking to her while playing, as hearing her voice apparently makes me play better, heheh. I wouldn't mind playing through DKC2 either, since it's been quite a while since I touched that one. We could definitely pass on the third game, though, since that's always marked as the ugly duckling of the series (unless you're counting DK64, which is soooo different). Despite whatever game we play, I do look forward to playing again soon, and even more to when we can play in the same room :D (As a side note, since I'm thinking about it, we played Chess the other night online and she beat me :P In my defense, it was a very close game, but eventually Yahoo wasn't highlighting my available moves because I simply didn't have any more, heheh).

Hmm.... I think I'm done writing now. I'm in the middle of brainstorming more ideas for this wire clothing project, and then later I'll have to do some reading in my books (which finally came today). This is week 3 and it'll be over before I know it, moving on to only 7 weeks remaining, woo-hoo!

So I skipped March

2008-04-01T12:58:00.016-04:00

Haha, amazing. Apparently the last entry was at the end of February. Shortly after that a lot started to change, and as such March was entirely skipped. I'll try to go back and recap on what's been going on.

Looking at my last post, it seems I was playing Oblivion. I ended up putting about 33 hours into the game then stopping. Finals came and I couldn't devote the time to the game (I hadn't started the main quest yet... seriously). Since that time Super Smash Bros. Brawl has surfaced on the grid, and that's predominantly what we play in the dorm. I'm a Lucas user, of course. He seems ridiculously powerful, but I love to use him. In the second quarter we didn't have the Wii since Alex's brother was borrowing it to play the only good games on Wii such as Galaxy and Twilight Princess, but now it's back, solely for Brawl. We started a game of Mario Party 8 the other night, but we only got about 8 turns in before it was a unanimous "this game sucks" and we put Brawl back in.

Second quarter finished up. I managed two A's and a B (darn you Art History finaaaal!). For my final video project I created what is probably the funniest video I've made yet, Crooked A's. It's about a fake SCAD policy that says if a roommate dies, the other roommates get straight A's for the quarter (apparently this rumor originated from a movie made a while back called Dead Man on Campus). Anyway, Alex and myself are trying to kill Ian but our plans keep failing and we end up doing in our friends instead. Check it out on Vimeo right here. There's also a link on that page (I think the bottom right corner) to download the full quality version (which I'd recommend since it's... awesome...er).

A few days ago (we're in the second week of third quarter now, by the way) Nick had to leave to go back home to Virginia. He had some problems getting some loans in time and had to head back. However, he plans on taking a summer quarter and rejoining us for next year. I look forward to having you on-board with us again, Mr. Earl. It's truly a lonelier dorm without hearing you say "I should really get on that homework" every night. Good luck this summer.

Now on to what is really the meat of this post. I have a habit of waiting 7 to 12 days before posting in this blog, but for some reason it never came up, and then I became so pre-occupied with March it just never happened. So what could have possibly been keeping me so busy in the month?

Well, as a precursor to what I'm about to say, let me say that I've never really liked the idea of blogs. Livejournal, xanga, or anything related to that. When I created this blog, it was seriously for the sole purpose of reminding myself in the future what happened in the past, and if people were in any way interested in reading about it, then so be it. For that purpose, I'm going to keep my excitement down to a bare minimum, if possible.

*ahem*

WOOOOOOOOOO YEEEEAAAAAHHHH AAAAAWWWEEEESSOOOOOOMMMEEEEE OH MAN I LOVE LIFE YEEEAAAAHHH BOOOOYEEEE!!!!!

That was honestly bare minimum for how I've felt in the past month. Any more than that and I'd have to record a sound file of myself screaming for you, and we all know how that goes (or maybe we don't, but I need a way to write around me actually having to do that).

The simplistic answer to all of my bizarre behavior is that I'm in love with a girl by the name of Mallory. An unknown force (and 2 of Cupid's arrows) have united us, although distance keeps us apart (she currently resides in Wisconsin). We finally admitted to one another our feelings about a month ago (after an apparent long time of pining previously), and we're both extremely happy. Really happy. Third quarter is here and holding me back, but I'll be on my way up in June to spend a week with her. This is obviously the minimal answer (but as I've stated previously, I'm not going to overdo it), and if you'd really like to hear me babble on like an idiot about how absolutely wonderful she is (or how incredibly in love I am), please feel free to email or call. This experience has changed my life, though, and I'm happier than I've ever been :)

Aaaand that's all you get for now. Just know that I'm extremely satisfied with life and you can expect to hear more as I choose to divulge it (divulge; this is a very general blog about the general things going on in my head and life, mostly for my purposes later; if you want to know more about something I can probably develop on what I've written here in a more private conversation).

Ouch, been a while

2008-02-25T11:12:00.003-05:00

Apparently it's been 12 days since my last post. Hmmm... guess I've been fairly busy since then. I worked pretty hard on getting the Fobbies are Borange mini-site back online... but it's not done yet. It's extremely close, but as of recent I've had a horrible addiction to Oblivion.

Ian wanted to give the game a try, so Taylor brought it over. Ian started playing, Alex started playing, I started playing. In three days I put in 18+ hours. For the record, that's not good. Now I've logged around 22 hours and I haven't really scratched the surface of the game yet. It's a huge immense awesome game, and I can't wait to play more of it. I had to put some work aside in order to get so much play time in, but I've caught up so I'm not really all that worried about it.

Down to three weeks. This weekend I'll be filming my Color Theory final project followed by next week's filming of my Intro To Video final. In both cases I'm not sure what I'm doing yet, but hopefully I'll think of something soon. In the case of the Color Theory I need to think a bit more quickly: the entire storyboard is due tomorrow morning at 8 am. With any luck I'll put down the controller just long enough to come up with a game plan.

Beyond that, not much has happened in the last few days. The '400 babies' shirts I ordered have arrived, so I'll have to go pick those up later. Perhaps I'll remember to post a picture of them here.

Some sort of title goes here

2008-02-13T14:53:00.004-05:00

Well let's see here. First off, I've started to reconstruct the FaB site and with any luck it should be completed in the next week or so. I'm moving along at a pretty quick pace, so I'm excited to finally see it's nearing completion.

The other night we played Risk but apparently the only real goal was to get me out of the game, since after I lost everyone quit playing, heheh. I'm hoping we'll get to play again soon since it's a pretty fun time-waster, although with Alex creating his own rule set, he's only going to be allowed to observe. You can't retreat your men in Risk! They have to be left there to die, just like in real life. Ya know, since no one has ever retreated from anything ever.

I'm getting in 2 hours or so of Call of Duty 4 every week it seems. Not a lot of time, but it keeps me interested in the game. I'd really like to finish Skate at some point but I unfortunately just don't have the time to devote to it. I spend most of my free time working on the computer doing web work (such as the FaB site), or occasionally napping (although I frequently wish I spent more time doing it). Speaking of which, a nap right now wouldn't hurt anything.

I need to finish some arbitrary Color Theory work today and I'll be set for tomorrow. Sometime this weekend I'll have to study for yet another Art History test (and do exceptionally well since I didn't do very good on the last one). Shouldn't have much to do, though, so bring on the workload.

Generic Updateyness!

2008-02-08T01:35:00.000-05:00

Well the host conflict is finally resolved. The domain has been transferred and MeStephen.com is finally back up... kind of. I decided I didn't want to put any real content on the site until I had the new site completely up. So it's new or bust, and since I'm so busy with school it could be a while before that happens. I'm currently in the process of redoing the FaB site, but that could be a few days as well.

Add Extreme Conditioning to Sprint Longer!

2008-02-04T10:51:00.000-05:00

A lot of stuff happened in the last few days. For one, I finished filming the music video for "Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure" by The Weakerthans. I plan on editing it later today and finishing it up tomorrow. I'll be napping very soon though, since it's not very wise to go all day on only 3 hours of sleep.

The other night (Friday) while filming, I received a text message that said my site had been suspended (it was from a friend, not the host). Apparently my host said I had "caused huge download" so they suspended my account. I don't even know what the heck that means. My bandwidth allowance is out the wazoo, so I knew they were retarded and in the wrong. Avoid dot5hosting at all costs.

To make a long story short, they suck so I just switched to Dreamhost today. It'll be a few days before everything is totally transferred, but as far as I know I did everything right so my domain name will be with Dreamhost now. MeStephen.com will be back up soon, but it'll probably just be a place holder index page that links to my YouTube and Google Video accounts.

And now, I'm taking a nap planning to wake up around 1:30 or so. Then the rest of the day will be 'edit day'.

I update on no regular schedule at all!

2008-01-31T00:09:00.000-05:00

Looks like it's been 8 days. Let me also take the time to say if you're reading this: welcome! This isn't one of those "I'm gonna post about how much I hate my life" blogs, it's just me writing what I did each day. If you found it, congrats, but like Fobbies Are Borange, it won't change your life. With that being said:

Man, I've been crazy busy. Unfortunately the worst is yet to come. We were told we have a crazy amount of Color Theory homework this weekend, and Friday (and probably Sunday too) I'll be filming my first project for Intro To Video class, a music video to the song "Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure" by The Weakerthans. I've storyboarded everything and got the costume and other things ready, so I'm excited to get to it tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm cutting this one off early since I'm totally (totally) going to bed now, so I may perhaps write more tomorrow.

Another 6 days? Jiminy Cricket!

2008-01-22T11:05:00.001-05:00

How the heck do you spell 'jiminy'? Anyway.

The extended weekend has come and gone. Unfortunately it never lasts as long as you hope for, and even if it does you never seem to notice the time once it's gone. Sucks, really, since 4 days of no school is a really awesome treat. Now we're reduced to another full week with our incredibly small 3 day weekend.

The weekend is a strange thing. I find myself explaining that 'on the weekend I'll sleep late and regain the sleep lost during the week' but unfortunately that never seems to come to fruition. I'm up until 5 am or so and wake up everyday at 1:30 pm sharp (seriously, how the heck does that happen?). You have to wake up before 2 pm on the weekends because that's when the café closes, and it doesn't reopen until 5 pm (by that time you've probably starved yourself to death). So on the weekends I'm averaging 8 to 8 ½ hours of sleep, which is fine, except the fact that in the week I'm only getting 4 to 5 hours every single night due to my awesome schedule of 8 am classes every freaking day. Now of course I can't complain too much as I've chosen the schedule myself, but seriously: what was I thinking?

We just had a project due in Color Theory class over the weekend. Seeing as how I'm some sort of addict, I created mine with an EarthBound theme. Luckily our professor allows the use of Photoshop for projects, because I'd probably be screwed if we had to actually paint anything. I painted my book for the first project, but I'd like to avoid that in the future. Our professor doesn't grade as harshly as our last quarter studio professor did. This new guy just wants you to meet criteria as opposed to having some mind-blowing composition, so I'm feeling pretty good about his class so far. My other class, Art History, is equally easy (we'll see how easy the tests are as of tomorrow), and Video Production is a blast since it's my major. School hasn't been too much of a problem.

Back into my play world of games: this weekend I purchased yet another xbox 360 controller for reasons still unknown to me. I guess it was the fact we had 4 people in the room at all times (seriously: Nick practically lives with us and occasionally Dan stops by too) that made me want to complete the set. We played some Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 but that was it. Nick also started a Dead Rising file and over the weekend probably invested 15 hours into the game. A little extreme (especially considering he put off homework to play it), but hey, whatever.

I also tightened my belt today (that's bad news for anyone who hasn't been paying attention). It seems like I've lost a little more weight. I'm assuming by the time I return home again I'll probably have lost another 5 pounds or so. I don't have a way to weigh myself here, so I tend not to worry about it. I've got bigger fish to fry (that sounds delicious, by the way), so I'll lean toward my school work and forget about eating.

And forget about eating is something that happens frequently. I actually didn't have my first meal yesterday until 7 pm, and since I woke up at 1:30, that's what I like to consider a 'problem'. With any luck that will be a one-time thing, as I hope to eat regularly if possible.

As for the rest of the day: I'm going to get something to eat in about 30 minutes, then take a nap for a while until 1:30 when I've got to go to class. Come back around 4:45 and begin studying for a Art History test I have in the morning at... you guessed it... 8 am. From what I understand, the tests should be just as easy as the class, so I'm excited about doing well.

Alright, Ramen time.

6 days later: special edition dvd with deleted scenes!

2008-01-16T11:17:00.000-05:00

Apparently it's been an entire 6 days since I last posted something. Apologies. Other than a crazy amount of sleep lack in the last two days or so, nothing really to report. As of right now I'm simply updating this before taking a short snooze (probably until 1 or so). I've had this horrible habit of staying up a bit too late and really paying for it in class the next morning. It definitely doesn't help anything that all of my classes take place at 8 am.

My cold seems to be on a straight path at the moment: not leaving but not necessarily getting any worse. It can only get better (at least I hope so), so I'm expecting to be feeling much better in the next few days.

And... that's really it. Once again, just school work and sleeping with some video game playing here and there. Which reminds me: Brawl was recently delayed until early March. Sucks, but I can wait. Gives us time to get a hold of a Wii again.

Swimmingly

2008-01-10T17:50:00.000-05:00

First week of school: completed. I've managed to concoct myself a sore throat in the process, and even though I've been sick the past week, today was definitely the worst (though it wasn't really all that bad). I've been running on an extremely small amount of sleep (as per usual at SCAD), but the massive weekend will give me a relaxation period, so I'm excited about that.

I spent about 10 hours yesterday playing San Andreas non-stop. Yep. Not sure what it was about it, but I couldn't stop playing it. In fact, when I finish writing in this blog, I'm probably going to play it some more. I've also got a copy of Hitman: Contracts to try out since I've never actually played a Hitman game (but I've seen the movie! ... and it sucked).

My workload has been weightless until today, found out we have to do a few small projects in Color Theory that should only take 3 to 4 hours. I can do that tomorrow. Earlier we talked about playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy tonight, which I'm in full agreement with, since that game is a boatload of fun. I'd be just as happy with new Rock Band entertainment, too, what with the new songs and all. Just hope we don't have any more home-invaders like we did the other night (people walking by, hearing the game and inviting themselves in).

Anyway, I'm done for now. Nothing too interesting going on. Oh yeah--I totally found that key to my mailbox I was looking for. Maybe I didn't mention here on the blog... well anyway, I found it. That's a good thing of the day. Even though I found it last night. Meh.

Generic Update Title

2008-01-09T11:12:00.000-05:00

Lessee here. Yesterday I discovered my Video class is actually a 'studio' class rather than a 'lecture' class, which basically means I have to actually create videos and such. The class was very fun and interesting, and we pretty much talked about movies for an hour. Looking forward to going again tomorrow.

Got an email last night that class was delayed for an hour this morning, so it was only an hour and a half. Now I'm back at the dorm and Alex/Ian are at class. I imagine their class will also be an hour shorter. I'm just copying some games onto the xbox hdd at the moment, then I'll probably go get supplies/books before finally getting around to editing that video (I figure I should probably go ahead and get that out of the way or I'll never get it done).

I'm very pleased with the amount of homework we've had so far (pretty much nothing) as well as what it looks like I'll be doing a few weeks down the line. As far as I'm concerned, this quarter should be way easier than last one.

Short little rant, though: Call of Duty 4 only supports one player online at a time. How lame is that? We used to take 3 guys online at a time with Halo 3, but CoD4 is an amazing game but we have to play one at a time. We've resorted to playing Split Screen for a bit, but it's just not quite the same. I need to go to WalMart later (Alex willing) and I may just pickup an additional 360 controller. Lately both Nick and Dan have been coming over, so the additional controller would help out playing a few select multiplayer games.

Another small side-note: I've noticed that I've been eating a ton of food lately, which is awesome. Mostly because over the 6 week Christmas break I lost 10+ pounds, so the fact that I'm starving all the time is thrilling to me since I should hopefully be able to get that weight back.

I've recently been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas since I never really gave it a chance when it came out. It's quite an improvement of the previous two installments (though I still love Vice City due to the soundtrack). Watching the trailers for the ever-approaching Grand Theft Auto IV makes me giddy like a schoolgirl, though. Unfortunately it's pretty far down the line: suspected to come in May, I believe. Luckily we have Brawl coming in a month to hold us over.

Alright, that's it for now. Not really anything interesting going on, I pretty much rambled about video games.

Tired and hungry, but not busy.

2008-01-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

Running on 5 hours or so of sleep at the moment, and I need to go grab some lunch. I'll probably take a nap then until around 1:30 when I'll need to leave for my Intro to Video Production class. I actually fell asleep about 12 times or so in Color Theory this morning, so I'm hoping to rejuvenate myself for this next class. On the plus side, I'll be done with school by 4:30 today, so I can rest some more and finish up some more work.

Last night was pretty much a Rock Band fest. I'm fairly certain it was played for at least 5 hours yesterday. I haven't really focused on completing anything, though I'd like to get back on Blue Dragon (despite its incredible ease) or Skate. I also promised myself to play more xbox live this quarter, so I'll probably be doing that sometime soon as well. Of course, then again, I need to edit that video we shot in November, heheh. Hopefully stuff will get done soon.

Hectic Weekend Update Transitioning into mass mayhem of first day wonders

2008-01-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

Not sure what the heck that meant. Anyway, this weekend was fairly busy, but now I'm finally situated back at SCAD. Haven't found myself at the dorms too much, but that'll change as of... now. We've played a good bit of Rock Band (which is instantly fun with 4+ people whether you suck or not) and I believe Ian started Call of Duty 4 today as well. I plan on getting to bed soon to get ready for my 8 am class (hurray for 8 am classes every single day :D ... D: ).

Vacation comes to a close with an xbox upgrade

2008-01-03T01:22:00.000-05:00

My winter break has unfortunately come to a close. I'll be leaving on Friday to return to school for the inevitable Monday morning class. Some good has come of this, though. For instance, over the holidays I've managed to learn CSS and apply it to my site's new design. I've beaten a few games and have had a ton of fun playing Rock Band and Risk with friends, not to mention the huge Halo Party. One thing that I had wanted to do the entire time off was install a larger hard drive into my xbox (it's modded to play pretty much anything). The stock drive is a lackluster 8gb, so today I decided to finally go ahead with it.

I did a ton of research last night on it, and went to bed around 3 in the morning. Around 11 I woke up and called Austin. We went down to Best Buy and picked up a 160gb Seagate drive (which was on sale), and stopped by Sears to get some necessary xbox-opening tools.

The directions were a little less than straightforward, but looking through 3 different guides got me going and pretty soon we had the hdd converted to 'xbox format' and locked with the eeprom (basically a file that contains a password exclusive to your particular xbox. Losing it would result in a xbox paperweight). After we had the drive ready, we took apart the xbox to realize the guide didn't mention we needed a third type of screwdriver. So we drove out again to grab it at Lowes.

We finally came back and got started on it. Luckily it was fairly easy to get in there and when we turned it on, it came on! Unfortunately it came on to the MS Dashboard (when modded, it should come up to the mod's dash). Something was wrong, and a few problems later my xbox had the red ring of death. Fortunately since we had access to the hdd, we simply took it back out, reformatted it, and did it all over again (slightly changing the options this time). Put it back in, re-modded it and now it works like a charm. And I've got a 160gb NES/SNES/N64 to boot!

We also tried to schedule a game of Risk tonight but it didn't seem to quite work out, unfortunately. Everyone was busy, working or sick. Austin stuck around until 11:30 or so, then he left as well (see you in March :\).

Another cool tidbit is that since I had my computer open and strung all over the floor, I figured I might as well bother to plug up that extra hard drive that's been sitting on the shelf for a good year or so. It only had about 3 or so gigs on it, but it was 3 gigs of pure nostalgia. Pictures (very few, less than 100 probably) and a video or two, and a ton of old games I had made with RPG Maker 2000. I'm actually copying them over to my main PC to play them :)

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be packing everything up for the big move again. SCAD, I'm coming back. It'll be nice to see you again.

It's 2008. Let's start the year off with a haircut and a blog.

2008-01-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

I resolved to start (and continue writing) a blog for this new year, Mr. 2008. I once started a blog back in July 2005 and managed to keep it going for about 4 months. It was pretty fun to go back recently and read it, so that's my plan: write a bunch of useless crap now and come back in a few years to laugh at myself and call myself names.

To start, I got a hair cut. This picture to the left shows what the hair looked like last night, pre-hair-chopping-fest. This new image below is the result:

Slick, eh? I've also noticed that I apparently own and/or wear a good amount of red shirts. Looking back through PhotoBooth photos has made me aware of this.

Other stuff I should probably scribble down: the return trip to school is fast approaching. Like 3 days left approaching. I'll be driving back to SCAD on Friday, with classes starting on Monday. There seems to be a lot of stuff I need to take this time, especially with the added burden of Rock Band, which, while incredibly fun, is also immensely huge. Plus the television, game systems, clothes, and oh yeah--actual school related stuff.

Anyway, I'm keeping this first blog fairly short for reasons unknown to myself. With some luck, I'll actually write in this thing. Here's to hoping.

First post

2007-08-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

This is just a test of testy stuff. k.