Last week I was looking forward to my siblings going back to school, and everyone else in the house going to work and school, and having the house to myself from about 7 a.m. to say 4 p.m. from Tuesday to Friday. Instead, we had even more winter weather strike, ( The week didn't turn out exactly as I had foreseen... )

Let's see... After going to Sherlock Holmes and getting home, I got on my laptop with the intention of only being on for a couple hours and maybe getting to bed around midnight, which turned into getting to bed after 2 a.m. After being awakened about 9, I packed up my car and left home bound for my university around noon, stopping on the way there to fill up on gas, and I got to the university a little after 4 p.m. It took me about two hours to unload, interspersing my carrying things up four stories to my dorm room with resting in my room and snacking on Chex Mix. I had a bowl of beef stew around 11, I think, and I didn't stop anywhere to get anything to eat, as I keep feeling I should on these four-hour drives from home to college and back again. I have stopped a couple times, but in 2 and a half round trips, I've stopped... twice, I think. Once was on the way home for Thanksgiving break, and the second time was on the way back to college after Thanksgiving.
After I had unpacked most of my stuff into my room, my roommate showed up, and he apparently forgot his key some time over Christmas break. I believe he got a new key today, though I'm not very thrilled with the idea of having to get a new key and the lock replaced because he lost his key - though I do seem to remember somebody mentioning to us at least once that would be the result if someone in a room lost their key, and at least I don't have to pay the 20+ dollars for a new key. Oh well.

Something I seem to have noticed since I've gotten back is that the other room in this suite is the site of... well, uh, much passion? "Romantic interludes"? "Uncomfortable amounts of eroticism"? Though using that particular phrase doesn't seem particularly right... In any case, uh, I've heard much love being made in the next room over. Yes, that seems like a nice way to say it, though perhaps a bit euphemistic, which is better than some more vulgar ways of saying it I could use. I don't understand why that would be going on on a Sunday evening, for crying out loud - I can see a Friday or Saturday night, but a Sunday evening? Granted, I have yet to enter that "world", and so for the moment I'd prefer not to think about it.

Last night I neglected to make my bed before my roommate shut the light off, so I ended up making my bed with a flashlight in the dark (and thus inspiring my Facebook status for most of today - "can make a bed in the dark.", which I thought reeked of this TV Tropes article, and seemed like an appropriate next status would be something about jokes about one's competence work better when other people are making them about oneself. For example, if fifteen other people said this other guy was the smartest person they'd ever met, it would probably say more than if the other guy said "I'm the smartest guy you've ever met", which just sounds arrogant when saying it about oneself.
I'm thinking that may be to some extent me thinking "You can be quiet, and be thought a fool, or open your mouth and remove all doubt", or something about if you talk, people can tell how smart you are immediately compared to if you're quiet. I don't know, I should go to bed soon. 

Anyway, I found that I forgot my alarm clock at home yesterday, but I think I've come up with a solution.

I had some odd dreams last night, which I don't even seem to remember all that much of now...
Today was the first day of classes for second semester. I didn't get to breakfast, but thankfully weight lifting wasn't much - we waited around a short time for the teacher, and then he showed up, read off the roll, gave everyone a piece of paper to fill out about health conditions - are you taking medication, do you have any conditions that would affect being able to lift, stuff like that - and then he told us that we'd meet for 20 minutes, lift weights, and then we'd be done. I decided after class when I was tweeting that 20 minutes twice a week for 2 months seems like something that would be said in an infomercial for selling some miracle concoction for building muscles, losing weight, or something along those lines.
Computer Science seemed to have more people in it than last semester, and it smelled funny - which, given what I read on some forum about computer science majors having bad hygiene, didn't really suprise me. I don't really know who needed the shower or deodorant or whatever, but it seemed that there would have had to have been at least a couple people. Last semester didn't seem that bad, so maybe it was some of the people from the other section of CS 180 that are in there. They make a convenient scapegoat in any case, haha. It'll be different from last semester, and I'll have to start working on things early and turning them in. I'm sure that will come easier once I actually get all of my books for my classes... I think they're supposed to be arriving any time now. I got one earlier today and a couple more packages came today, so I'll try to get them tomorrow.

Then after Computer Science I have a few hours before German, which was different from my last experience with German because the professor spent most of the time talking in German. Thankfully I could understand him most of the time, and several things he would repeat in English. The syllabus was also in English, and (to my amusement) included explicitly the 'rule' that I've heard before that if the professor is ten minutes late, class is canceled. It's true, at least in my Elementary German II class, haha. The professor said he was American and originally from San Diego (in German), but it was odd hearing "Deutsch Deutsch Deutsch a surprise English word Deutsch Deutsch Deutsch". The class was mostly review - going over pronounciation, the alphabet, numbers, the seasons (I was highly amused when he started talking about how on this planet we have four seasons, unlike Venus), and we were going to watch a movie but the professor didn't know how to work the projector or something like that.
After German, I have a few more hours before Health, which I went to about 20 minutes early with a friend, and in that class we just went over the syllabus for about half an hour.

Thus ends my first day of classes, I should have gone to bed like an hour ago... I do seem to have just broken my flashlight, unfortunately - I may have to add "mini-maglite flashlight" to my Wal-Mart list, I have yet to encounter a Maglite that broke. It's not even anything important, just the plastic casing around the lens in front of the bulb is cracked. I do have duct tape, so I might attempt a repair when it's light...

After taking my last final on December 17, I spent the night in my dorm room (my roommate had left the afternoon of the 17th) and, after spending a few hours packing just about everything into my car, I drove home in about 4 hours on December 18 - I left the town where my college is close to 1 pm and I was pulling in to my driveway around 5. After unpacking and depositing most of my stuff on the floor somewhere downstairs, I was told that I needed to move it so most of my stuff ended up in the hallway upstairs by my room. The day after I came home the daughter of my church's pastor was getting married, so I went with my family, saw a few friends, and talked to a few people, though I'm thinking I need to come up with a better response to questions than "Pretty good," which is currently serving as my stock response to just about any question along the lines of "How's college?" or "How's it going?" or "How's life?"
Let's see... After that, I got a haircut last week and I've been enjoying being home and not having classes - I've had plenty of home-cooked food, though I've spent most of this week thus far house-sitting and thus have not had quite as much home-cooked food this week. 

Christmas was pretty good (See?!), I thought - I'd heard on my drive home from college that there was supposed to be a big storm that would hit like right before Christmas, then the 24th had rain and ice falling as I was unpacking my car and taking some things out and generally going back and forth, then it started snowing sometime that afternoon after the sun had melted some of the snow from the last storm (which had been earlier in December). I was awakened the next morning at 7, after going to bed around 2 I think, and the kids were supposed to wait until we were given the go-ahead to come downstairs. When we did, it was revealed that we had gotten Guitar Hero: World Tour. We also got Beatles Rock Band and, later, Guitar Hero: Van Halen. I came home and found that we had gotten a new Xbox 360 to replace our old one, and it has the 'new' Xbox 360 Avatars instead just the old profile system that we used to have on our old Xbox 360. Madagascar 2 and some Madagascar 2 video game came with the Xbox, and John I think got Madden 2010 for that as well. I didn't really get any video games, unfortunately, but I did get, aside from the usual toothbrushes and 'personal care items' (No idea why I felt like using quotes, given that I got shampoo, body wash, and deodorant), a Risk game (Vintage edition, apparently, in a wooden box and overall retro appearance), a printer, and about 100 dollars. That's all I can think of that I got at the moment. I beat Mom that afternoon, which is the first time I've heard of anyone beating her - I've heard stories that Dad could never beat her, but I did. I felt somewhat 1337, haha. Also, I cleaned off most of the deck Christmas morning while my siblings were feeding the puppies down in the shed and by later that afternoon there were a couple inches of snow on the deck. Before Christmas the wind had been blowing and there hadn't been much snow on the deck, but Christmas Day onward there wasn't as much snow.
The day after Christmas was spent scooping the walk (those two-foot drifts on our sidewalk were a bit of an obstacle to use of our sidewalk) and digging out - several neighbors went by with tractors, Dad spent some time on our tractor, and after clearing off all but a few feet of the sidewalk I stayed inside for the rest of the day and worked on my room, I think.
A couple days after Christmas I went to the house of halopikachu  and experienced some of her mom's family Christmas celebration - good food, and I got a few gifts as well... I'd never seen a WarGames shirt before, haha.
As I believe I've already mentioned, I've been house-sitting here since Monday around 5:30 p.m. I didn't sleep at all Tuesday night, and after waking up around 1:11 pm Tuesday I went to bed at 12:30 something am this morning, so I was basically awake for about 35 hours straight. I didn't really notice any problems, though I did have some difficulty staying awake at one point around the 28 or 29 hour (since waking up) mark. I then got about 11 some hours of sleep this morning, since my brother (who came up and spent the night with me) woke me up close to noon. Mom came and got him around 2, I did the chores at 5 (like I have been every day), and I have a game of Risk laid out in the living room that I played this afternoon but haven't touched since around 5 pm today...

Just now I watched the ball drop in New York City via CNN. I was puttering about on this computer when I saw that the clock said "10:59", so I ran in to the living room (where I've had CNN on for a while) and I got there about 20 seconds before the ball started to drop. Currently, I'm enjoying a peppermint candy cane because Mom brought a box from Shenandoah, I'm guessing - I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only child in our house that enjoyed them, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only person in the house that liked them, either.
I haven't had the greatest cell reception here anyway, and after I left my phone on all night apparently my phone cannot pick up any cell phone reception today.

As mentioned, my grades for my first semester of college were finally posted Monday. They were pretty good, I thought, even if worse than I've ever done academically before. I need to do better next semester, and lessons learned from this semester (namely, what NOT to do) will hopefully aid me in the future. I'm fairly confident that my current schedule shouldn't be too much of a challenge, and I'm excited for a quiz bowl tournament that I think some of us freshmen are attending the week after we go back.
However, I have noticed a problem in the last couple days, namely that I hadn't really made any plans with my  younger friends stil in high school to socialize before they start up for their second semester of the 09-10 school year. I'll have to keep this in mind for the future. I have made some plans, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing Avatar.

I'm posting this link because I took a Facebook quiz earlier this evening that I was pretty sure I'd seen before, based on my INTJ results, and after a quick google to find the original, I had another laugh.

I was a bit disappointed when I realized yesterday that here in close to 20 minutes is the end of the 2000s (or the "Noughties", as the British have apparently decided to call them), rather than just the last year of the decade. I think I must have been confused and thought that, like millenia or centuries, decades start in the first year. I was thinking the 2010s started in 2011, for some reason.
Wikipedia quickly informed me of my mistake however, haha.

In the news recently, for future comparison: 
Tiger Woods and associated scandal (that's been since early November, though)
Charlie Sheen and his apparent marital difficulties
the year in review, nothing unusual
the decade in review
the terror attempted bombing on Christmas that I knew nothing about until I read about it this last week, and the fallout on "How could this have slipped through the cracks? Why didn't we know about this threat?"

Well, that's all I can think of for the moment. I'm thinking that in the future I may have to write on this more often, like maybe at least once a week or more. I was looking yesterday, I think it was, at this and I used to write on it about every few days, but for a while I've been writing closer to one entry a month, or less.
Prost Neujahr and Happy New Year, may we all have a wonderful 2010...

Things which shall be addressed in another entry:
Grades from my first semester of college were (finally!) posted Monday-or at least I presume, I discovered this about 2 am Tuesday
Christmas went well, IMHO
It seemed like I had more to put here, but since I can't think of anything on to our main topic for now:


I have, for some time it seems like, wanted to write some kind of story based around a game of RISK(r). However, since starting "Aspiring World Conquerers Anonymous" in college, I have played 3 games of Risk in college and one on Christmas at home, which is more than I had played for I think my entire high school career - or if not more than, then very close to equal, considering I remember playing a couple games of Risk 2210 A.D. on MAP testing days and other free days in high school and I remember a couple games of regular Risk played on other assorted free days in high school. I think that at least one or two games of Risk may also have been played during Christmas vacation over the course of the last 4 years, but at the same time I think those were very limited in number. All right, so maybe I did play more than four games during my four years of high school, but I'm not very certain about that.
Given that the box art, certain editions' game pieces, and other items seem to reflect a Napoleonic setting for the game, I've decided that at least this current Risk story I want to work on should also be in a Napoleonic setting, in which primitive steam engines are the most advanced power technology and muzzleloading flintlocks are the order of the day when it comes to firearms technology.

( However, I had some problems with a Napoleonic setting and the Risk game board... )

Having looked at what the world looked like, now let's take a look at Napoleonic military organization. Risk is, as anyone who has played it knows, very abstract- armies are the only unit that are dealt with, and battles are won and lost based on a dice roll, rather than real-world factors such as logistics, strategy, tactics, equipment, firepower, or anything else that could play a part in a real-life battle that is reduced to a roll of some dice in Risk.
I've decided that each army in this game of Risk that the story is going to be written around, rather than representing some fixed number of soldiers (say, 200,000), is going to represent the army and its command staff. Maybe theoretically, or on paper, each army is composed of some fixed number of men, but casualties, disease, and a variety of other factors would affect the numbers- this way, I think, I could write in something about a battle in which the commander and his staff of some army are captured, some are killed, some are captured, and some disappear, which is all that's represented by that army being lost. Or, alternatively, some army takes too many casualties and scatters after the death of its commander, or a variety of other options.

Another problem that I'm beginning to think about, now that I've done what I feel is exhaustive Internet research on Napoleonic warfare (or at least military organization), is who shall be the characters in this story? I've already decided, due to what I already mentioned about Europe not yet ruling the world in the Napoleonic period (the Napoleonic Wars were from 1793 to 1815, I believe), that each 'army', or color, in this game is going to represent more like an alliance.
( Read more... )
I have also been thinking I should start deciding on what characters I want to have in the story. On a vaguely related note, I've decided that two game turns is going to equal one year. I haven't firmly decided on the number of "players" for this game, but I've kind of been thinking five. Anyway, the number of viewpoint characters seems fairly important, and I think a relatively diverse group would be more interesting than having 5 characters from Europe going all over the place. Perhaps a couple characters from Europe or the Eastern United States, a couple characters from Asia, and a few Arab characters should be considered. Also to take into consideration is age of the characters and their role in the story...

Now for Napoleonic military organization!

( If you really are interested, feel free to click here and read more of my ramblings. )

On another note - seriously, what is up with me? I stayed up until 5 a.m. yesterday and it's... about 6:30 a.m. and counting. I could go to bed now and sleep until, say, 10, 11, or 12, or I could stay up and pull an all-nighter of sorts and go to bed at a relatively normal time later this evening... Blah. Decisions, decisions, sleep deprivation...

So I haven't really 'blogged' since, oh, about two months ago. I can't think of a whole lot that I feel needs to be put here at the moment... Today I edited my first TV Tropes Wiki article (here), correcting a couple factual errors (Turkey fought on the German side in WWI, and they are a member of NATO...) and a few spelling and grammar errors. I'm not sure if this will escalate, or if I'll just lurk and edit minor errors, heh heh.

Another 'milestone' - yesterday I had my first full energy drink - a 24 oz can of Amp I bought from a C-store here to use up some of my extra meal plan money. After I bought about 50 dollars of stuff the last time I was there, if I remember correctly I'm down to about 50 dining dollars (out of 100 for the semester - I've been to the Union for a meal once, I believe, and I probably could have been going there about every Sunday night...) and maybe about 30 meals (which is a bit more than I need, heh.) I had the can of Amp after lunch, thought it tasted about like fruity Mountain Dew (the guarana, perhaps?) and was essentially caffeinated for the rest of the day, heh heh.

I probably should have done laundry tonight, but instead I was on the Internet. Oh well, if my plans proceed as they lay at the moment I'll get to bed around midnight, wake up before noon (I hope, at any rate), maybe I'll eat brunch/breakfast/whatever, and then hopefully I can get some homework done before I play Risk tomorrow night.

Most of my friends I've made here are fellow members of ACO, and a couple of us have started a Risk club which has so far played two games of six players each. The first game, in early November, saw the victor start in Africa and proceed to wipe the rest of the board clean, continuing to trade in cards that he got when eliminating the other players so he was getting ridiculous amounts of armies for each set traded in.
The second game, last Saturday, sort of see-sawed back and forth. I started off with three territories in Europe and one territory each in Africa, Australia, North America, and Asia (South Africa, Indonesia, Alberta, and Irkutsk or somewhere in Central/East Asia). For some reason, thinking "It worked in the last game!", I put most of my armies in Australia, facing off against the guy who sort of co-founded the group (I think he might have come up with the idea) who controlled the rest of Australia and, predictably, proceeded to wipe most of my armies off the map. By the end of the first turn (or maybe by the time it was my turn?), I was stuck with Great Britain, Western Europe, and Northern Europe. I almost eliminated one of the other players, but when I saw the player who had unified Africa under her control move troops into Western Europe (which had been taken from me by the other player I was fighting for control of Europe) I thought "Well, there go my dreams of ruling Europe." Anyway, I made my last stand for that game in Iceland, and then the player who defeated me and controlled Europe, a small part of Asia, and Africa got ganged up on and defeated by two of the other players, the guy who had driven me out of Australia and the guy who had unified South America. The result of that game was that the player who had unified South America went through Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia to get to North America, and the player who controlled it had unified most of it under his rule and then just sat there and fortified his territories.
Tomorrow I believe there might be enough players for a game of classic Risk and a game of Lord of the Rings Risk - I've never been huge on Lord of the Rings, but then I haven't seen all of the movies and I don't think I've actually read the books - I remember reading them in 8th grade, but I think that might have been more because the movies were coming out and I was told I should, or whatever, and I don't really remember much from them...

In other news, I took an approximately two day break from Facebook, in which time apparently everyone decided that December is the month in which one should change their profile picture to be a Pokemon (despite December starting a week and a half ago?) and Facebook decided to roll out some changes to its privacy settings. I'm going to remain paranoid and closed, thank you very much Facebook.
I also noticed that a lot of people seemed to use their status as a medium to broadcast their complaints, which kind of annoyed me, though granted back home most of the schools (and at least one college) had snow days. We didn't get enough snow here - we have maybe a couple inches, and it's supposed to get above freezing this weekend. The last couple days before today, though, were bitterly cold - earlier this week I remember the temperature was like 14 degrees, but the wind chill was below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. I think I might have something similar to reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Better to have snow and be bundled up than roast with 99 degrees and 100% humidity and have to deal with the insects, but then that's just me. I tend to bundle up as appropriate, and I also tend to not require the same degree of social stimulation as most people, I've noticed - during this most recent snow storm, some of my Facebook friends that live in the country were complaining about being stuck and unable to go to town - as for me, living further out in the country and farther from either of the main towns in the county than probably any of them, I've never been one to 'cruise' and 'hang out' (for one), and I don't require going into town that often. Granted, though, I'm pretty happy as long as I have food, water, electricity, and an Internet connection.
I kind of wish we had gotten three feet of snow here, though it probably would be more of a pain to walk through - the sidewalks have mostly cleared by now, I think. We got some ice with our snow earlier this week, and the forecast on Accuweather.com had kept changing.
I remember about this time last week it was predicting like 6 inches, then it went up to 8.8 inches at the highest before it went down to about 4.6 inches, and at least at one point I remember it was predicting 0.3 inches of ice as well.

Anything else I would have to add would be increasingly irrelevant, I think...
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately in the form of worldbuilding for some military science fiction that I've been thinking about, I guess.

Also, Christmas break starts in a week, and I have finals next week...
I was scheduled to have my first final, in Introduction to Political Science, Tuesday afternoon, but I didn't check my e-mail before I went to that class today and when I saw nobody was in the classroom I went back to my room, checked my e-mail, and saw that apparently something came up so my political science professor is going to put the final, in the form of true-false questions, online next week, so that eases off some of the stress, I think, but I still need to study - at least find my notes and read over the review, maybe. I have three of my finals on Thursday of next week - Foundations of Computer Science I, World Civilizations since 1700, and College Algebra - and so that day will be grueling, I imagine - I have a programming project that I need to study for and do this weekend so I don't have to worry about it while also trying to study for finals.
Finally, I might have a final Friday - at least that's when my Skills for Academic Success class was scheduled to have a final, but given that the teacher left at the end of October, I skipped every class period in November, and the two I attempted to go to this week weren't there, I can only assume that there is no final, but I figured I would be considerate/careful and at least look into it, though I'm sure the project I forgot about and botched probably counted as the final. After I've looked into that, and assuming no final, I can start packing up and heading home - though I should be doing that before Friday anyway. Maybe I can start Monday, since I don't have any finals scheduled that day. It'll be nice to be out of classes, I think...

I was glad to learn this week that grades are calculated on a yearly, not semesterly basis, so if I can keep my GPA above a 3.25 for this year I should have all of my scholarships renewed! Given that I currently am not paying my university anything, I would like to continue this state, and so next semester I'll have to be more scholarly rigorous, and not procrastinate as much, get more sleep, etc. etc. etc.

But I need to worry about finals first, I've been concerned about them for what seems like a couple weeks now...

In computer science class today, we got a test back.
Despite getting what might be 5 hours of sleep last night (though almost certainly less), and barely thinking about computer science, programming, or Ada since I took the test ten days ago, I noticed several of the mistakes I made as soon as I looked at the test. Granted, the green pen marks certainly helped me realize how stupid the mistakes I made were, but somehow I feel profoundly enlightened.
This must be what college is like.

I feel like writing a poem about this, but I haven't really thought of anything yet. "Enlightened", "profound", "sublime" seem like the words of the moment, though.

Mid-term break starts next week! I don't know of any tests that I have before the break, though, and considering the break starts Wednesday I would hope that my teachers would have notified their classes... ( Then I decided to ramble. )

So my half-birthday was today - only 6 months until I turn 19. Woo-hoo. Uh, I don't have too much to say, I guess - yesterday it was announced that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and he had only been in office 12 days before the nomination process closed. I'm my typical skeptic self, for the most part - I feel that he's hardly done anything worthy of really getting the award - he hasn't brought peace to the Middle East, he's actually sending more soldiers to Afghanistan, and I have yet to hear of anything really deserving, but at the same time I prefer to think like the statement from someone I read, which said something along the lines of Obama's winning the award shows the promise that he has shown so far and might be more encouragement than "Good job on your achievements." Most of my Facebook friend feed had at least something about Obama winning - I saw a story about it, was surprised, opened the "Latest Headlines" RSS feed to the BBC in Firefox, read a story, tweeted and then updated my Facebook status, and then I saw a lot of people mentioning it somewhere in their status. I like to think that I had something to do with at least some of the reactions, haha.

This week was my college's homecoming. Wednesday I bought a hooded sweatshirt (since I hadn't thought to bring one when I left home in a hurry), and I was glad I did since Thursday and Friday (well, and today for that matter) all turned out to be cold and cloudy and wet, to varying extents. I was going to go to the homecoming parade today originally, then I was talking to a girl on Facebook via comments on my status about planning to go to the homecoming parade, and I guess I became less adamant about waking up early and going to the parade. I ended up staying up until around 3 and then I went to bed, woke up a couple times, and then I woke up close to noon and finally got out of bed. After an excursion out to my car, I found that I didn't bring some things that I had wanted to bring to college, so I suppose I"ll have to make do until I either find or buy more of the disposable razors in question. I only shave every week or so anyway, so it's not like it's a huge deal I suppose...

In other news, I've come up with several intriguing story ideas lately, due to playing "The Battle for Wesnoth", my computer science class, and possibly some other origin I can't think of. ( I thought I'd cut these to save on space.  )





I went to my first college academic bowl tournament last week. I had a lot of fun - ( if you really want to read about it, click here )

Spent essentially the whole weekend in my room, in front of my computer (with the exception of breakfast, "dinner", and laundry Saturday and... uh...). After procrastinating and not getting my math homework done, and reading over the assigned section in my computer science book, I managed to get it done this morning.

And THAT IS the POWER OF GETTING UP EARLY! Well, and late classes. Seriously, not having class until 10:30 is WIN compared to having class at 7:30 or 8 or whenever. I don't even have College Algebra until 2:30!

I hope this procrastination thing doesn't become a habit... It managed to work this time, given that I made lots of spare time by getting up at 7:10 and eating breakfast, and the fact that there wasn't much homework (and what there was, was easy). I do like being back on the block schedule, though I haven't really had any homework yet.

Well, I've been at college a week now. Classes only started Thursday.

( If you want to read a summary of the events before today, click here. )
Today I've mostly stayed in my room - I ventured out to go to breakfast at 8:30ish, there was nobody in the dining hall (which I thought was funny), then I went to the pre-game picnic thing (thankfully a short walk away, but my dorm is awfully close to the football field), then I came back to my room, then I went and did laundry, where I heard a girl playing some Legend of Zelda music on the piano, but now I can't remember which song, darn it.

I think it's funny that it seems to me like of the bulk of the people that I've heard where they come from, most come from Kansas City, St. Louis, or some random town out in the middle of nowhere.

Well, that's it for now, methinks-  tomorrow i might have to do something productive, like homework, rather than Facebook and TV Tropes.

As I may have mentioned, about a month ago I started playing Urban Dead, a "Free Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse" set in the city of Malton, which is ambiguously located - it's under quarantine, but nobody knows for certain just where it is in the English-speaking world. It snowed as a special event once, apparently. Fundamentally, though, there are 2 types of players - Survivors and Zombies. Zombies are, well, zombies, while survivors are humans divided into three character classes, and 8 specific classes.
Here's a handy breakdown of the survivor classes by type.

Military	Scientist	Civilian
Private	Lab Assistant	Cop
Medic	Doctor	Firefighter
Scout		Consumer

In addition, the XP costs to buy new skills differ between the three types - Military skills cost 75 XP to military characters, 150 XP to scientist characters, and 100 xp to civilians. Science skills cost 150 xp for military characters, 75 xp for scientists, and 100 for civilians. Civilian skills cost 100 XP for all classes.

( Here are descriptions of the classes. )
Anyway, wandering around the site of the guy who made Urban Dead, somehow I stumbled across LiveJournal Dungeon Adventure and LiveJournal Space Adventure. I did those for myself and halopikachu . For some reason in the Space Adventure, Aerodotus was a psychic agent while in the Dungeon Adventure Aerodotus was a leprechaun.
But does your dungeon have the Armor of Computers or Scepter of Science? I thought not!
I thought "Sword of SCIENCE!" sounded cool, in any event.

EDIT: I found that I had left the tab with the Dungeon of Aerodotus open. Don't bother thinking too hard about how I killed myself and escaped the dungeon...

Well, I move in the dorms at my college tomorrow, so today I have to finish my thank you notes, finish my room, finish my room, and pack my car. I'm not sure how much of those things are going to get done, exactly, but we'll see. They need to get done before about 2:30, instead at the moment I'm wasting time on the Internets.

Last Saturday, I went to bed about 3 a.m. and then was awakened around 6:15 to help load potatoes, so I went with my brother and dad's parents to the county seat, where somebody brought a truckload of potatoes and a group of people put them in bags. When that was done, we went home, cleaned up, and then my parents and brother got in the car to go to the lake where
halopikachu's family had invited us. it was fun- we boated, tubed (my brother being an adrenaline junkie, he enjoyed going fast on the tube, and so was disappointed when we didn't want to go very fast), and swam in the lake. I thought the speed halopikachu and I went at on the tube was rather nice, while my brother probably would have liked to have been going about twice the speed or more. I also enjoyed the immense amount of what I suppose could be called inside jokes, or jokes about the Internet, Team Fortress 2, and whatever else we referenced and discussed, though I wouldn't have minded not having to answer my brother's questions - "What's homoeroticism?" (We were referring to Respawn of the Dead, of course, a TF2 fanfic where there are, I believe the phrase was, "uncomfortable amounts of homoeroticism", particularly [mostly?] between the Heavy and the Medic). We even played some NES - boy, that brought back memories. Dr. Mario, Duck Hunt, Donkey Kong, and we tried Super Mario Brothers, but it has been forever since I played that and I was a little rusty.
That night, we headed home because we were seeing lots of lightning, then when we got home and I checked the radar on my phone I found that the storms appeared to be to the south and east of home and to the north and west, it didn't look like we would have been affected at all if we had stayed a little longer, as had been feared.
After we got home, I was notified that I had internet back on my desktop, so the next day I tried uploading pictures from my church's youth group mission trip to Colorado to Facebook, but it wasn't working for some reason initially - when it did succeed, out of 160 pictures I think 40 of the pictures are of rock formations from Garden of the Gods (not counting the group photos by rock formations).

School started for my siblings and teacher mother this week, yesterday and today I thought were rather nice, seeing as they left after 7, leaving me alone until whenever they get back (yesterday they were gone for close to 12 hours, today I'm probably going to see them for a little bit this afternoon before getting back whenever I return home tonight, heh heh). For most of this week, and I think it may have happened last week a couple times, Dad woke me up around 7, before he left, but then I would go back to sleep until after 9 or whenever I got up. The last couple days have been an exception to that, though- I've actually been getting up, rather than just falling back asleep.

Also, on another note: when I first opened up Pandora.com on this laptop today, the first song that played was Ride of the Valkyries! It made me feel like today is going to be a good day. Hah, I love that song... Wagner for the win.

That's probably about all I can think of that is not relating to various stuff I found today on the Interwebs, I think I'll turn that into a new entry.

I knew it had been about a year since I joined LJ, but I didn't know exactly until I looked at the archive about 20 minutes ago, before I started writing this entry, before I had it almost complete when the stupid touchpad decided to kick me back a page.

And that is why I would like to have internet access back on my desktop. In summary, anyway.

Advantages of mice versus touchpads aside, another reason I wouldn't mind having internet back on my desktop is so I could use my nice new 21" LCD monitor. I got it and my new phone (HTC Touch Pro) about a week ago (well, a week ago later today). Since I lost internet on my desktop, I've been using my laptop, which has its advantages (mobility - Oh boy, I can get online in the dining room OR in my room!), and its disadvantages (touchpad, small[er] screen, Windows [just kidding, it's nice to have an actual Windows system, rather than a stupid virtual machine]).

Last weekend there was a sort of family reunion, my aunts (Dad being the youngest child and only boy of the family) brought most of their families back (with a couple exceptions, both of which were for health-related reasons), and a few extra (ok, some cousins brought significant others along... Most of the ones that are married brought their spouses back, one brought back her boyfriend and another cousin brought a girl who might be his girlfriend, but I'm not sure if they were married or not), and several cousins brought their kids, but the oldest of these kids (other than my siblings, who are the youngest grandchildren of my grandparents) was 4, I think. I was trying to figure out how we'd be related - first cousins once removed? I wasn't sure. At the family reunion proper Sunday I saw several people I hadn't seen in a while - great-aunts and -uncles, and several people I didn't know and didn't talk to. I faced the problem of being one of the only people my age there - I do have a cousin a couple months younger, and his older sister two years older than me, but other than them and my siblings all of my cousins are several years older... Anyway, that occupied most of the weekend, and I got to have some of the leftovers yesterday when I went for lunch over to my grandparents' house. I wasn't exactly anticipating that, and had already started cooking rice when I got the call.

Earlier tonight it was threatened that I was going to lose internet access for two weeks, but since I move in to the dorms in less than two weeks, I figured that meant "No internet until you move in at college". However, the time frame has passed - it was threatened that I was going to lose internet as soon as Dad finished the dishes, which was, I don't remember the exact time, but I'm certain he had to have been done by 9:00 pm, and obviously that threat didn't come to pass, unless it's going to come to be tomorrow or something. I wonder if my finishing the transcript request forms to send to the colleges I took classes for credit from has something to do with it, but since I finished those forms I've been focusing on developing the planet for my science fiction story I'm working on.

Right now, this currently-unnamed planet has a radius of 94% and density of approximately 108% (it's still in flux, I haven't decided on a figure yet but either 107 or 108%) that of Earth, with a surface gravity of about 1.01 Earth gravity.

Using these figures, this planet is going to be about 11,977 km in diameter, 5.94 g/cm^3 in density, and gravity would be equal to about 9.898 m/sec^2 (compared to 9.8 m/sec^2 on Earth). I wanted it to be smaller than Earth, but with roughly equivalent gravity, I'm not sure if the density is, strictly speaking, feasible (Earth being the densest planet in the solar system, we're sadly lacking in density measurements of similarly sized planets), but I don't think it's beyond the realm of possiblity, either.

In the last couple days, I have sort of started playing RuneScape again - I hadn't played for a couple years, then a couple days ago I started playing again, I leveled up today (up to total level of 467, for anyone keeping track) and I'm thinking of modifying my training plan. Originally, a few years ago when I actually played, I was thinking I would train my skills up to level 30, the minimum for the high score list, but after looking at the Magic high score list and seeing I'd need a level of at least level 50 to get on the high scores there, I'm thinking now I'll have to train things to level 50... I've already got two scores higher than fifty (and destined to go higher, if I follow my current training plan), but even then I don't know that firemaking and woodcutting are exactly essential skills.

Also, in the last few days, I had established a pattern of getting to bed before midnight, but obviously that hasn't been the case last night and tonight.

Once again, as of the 25th of this month, my parents have seen fit to take away my internet access- this time, allegedly I get nothing done when I have internet access. As should be readily apparent, my plan to circumvent this is a success - prevent my internet adapter from connecting to the internet, eh? Well, I respond with getting on via another wireless card, haha! I win!

On a more serious note, this week (Tuesday to Saturday) I'm going with my church youth group to Colorado, so hopefully that will be fun - I imagine it will be, but there are several people not going for various reason, so it's probably not going to be as fun as it possibly could be... Oh well.

Saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the other night with halopikachu - there were several things I didn't quite remember from the book, and it annoyed me how they never mentioned Lavender's name until she was breaking up with him, but on the other hand, I only read the book once, when it came out - 2005 was a long time ago.


Dratted parents again - dad poked his head in, more nonsense about "learn to control computers, right now the computers control you" - gee, if I had a reason, or any interest, in anything other than the internet, maybe I would (insert pointless meaningless task that parents want me to do here). The internet and communicating with the outside world is, forgive me, over NINE THOUSAND - nay, infinitely more interesting than, well, pretty much anything. This would explain the precipitous decline in my book consumption, unfortunately...

But enough of unpleasantries - Half-Blood Prince the other night gave me some ideas for a story, which might allow me to use some of the random names and titles I've accumulated over the last several years (something about a classical-sounding first name and a somewhat nondescript surname intrigues me so... I have no idea why, I suppose there's a shortage of Hieronymuses in my life, haha) and then I could throw away those pieces of paper.

I can hardly wait till the rest of the world, which frankly doesn't care if I decide to spend time online. I will grant that there is such a thing as spending too much time online, to the exclusion of grades, money, etc. (Money is very important, it allows one to pay for food and electricity and internet after all), but honestly I don't think I spend too much time online, for the times when I am allowed to have unrestricted access. But oh the horror, I don't get anything practical done when I do have internet - well, since when did I ever give a hoot for anything practical?

And more parental being annoying - "you can keep the internet on the laptop if you do what we ask" - I. DO. NOT. GIVE. A. HOOT. FOR. E-MAILING. MY WORK STUDY SUPERVISORS AT MARYVILLE AND ASKING ABOUT REFERENCES. I want to stinking enjoy this blasted last summer before college and HAVING MY STINKING INTERNET TAKEN AWAY FOR NO GOOD REASON (Question: Is there ever a good reason? This might bear further thought... Nah.) IS MOST ASSUREDLY NOT the easy path to enjoyment. Of course, my ideal version of summer would probably be winter-like, or at least autumn-like, in temperature... Temperatures above about 80 get quite uncomfortable, especially if high humidity is added into the equation.

I'm ready for the freedom part of college, not so much the being away from friends, or classes, or independent living- if my laundry would do itself, and I got money without having to have a job, then I think I could comfortably live independently. 

Enough of this, though... I suppose parents that care, and do things contrary to my desires, is better than neglectful parents who don't care, though I wouldn't mind having parents that didn't give a hoot about my internet access... But then they would probably be very concerned with my cell phone bill, or social events, or something silly that most parents worry about.

Enough rambling and ranting, nothing productive is getting done other than perhaps some catharsis. Blasted parental units! 

I'm going to keep this relatively short.

California had its good points (The hotel that my advisor and I stayed in was only a few blocks from the Hilton and convention center) and its bad points (SO MANY PEOPLE). Breakfast every morning was waffles at the hotel, lunch and dinner varied with the activities that day.
The flight was really cool (I thought), I had never flown before and I got 50-odd pictures of clouds and the view from 30,000+ feet. 
( If you want to read about California, click here.  )

Monday we got to the airport, then our flight took off almost an hour later than scheduled, but we got back about on time, I think. I got back to Upward Bound( . If you really want to read about the last week on campus, you can click here. )
The UB trip to Minneapolis was fun -we stayed at the Embassy Suites Bloomington, and Valleyfair Amusement Park (which I didn't enjoy, I almost considered going on a roller coaster though, darn girls and peer pressure ;) ) Monday after we got there, Tuesday we went to the Science Museum, University of Minnesota (the guide for the campus tour group I was in was a Philosophy major from Omaha), Dinkytown (an area near the U of M campus), Wednesday we went to Fort Snelling, Buca di Beppo (delicious Italian food!), then the Como Park Zoo and Chanhassen Dinner Theater for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Thursday we went to Mall of America before heading home, I didn't think that Thursday seemed as tearful as the week before, but it was sad.

This last week I helped with a carnival thing for my church youth group, took my brother (and participated in) a trivia camp that my quiz bowl coach was putting on for junior high and high school, then Tuesday I got a new battery for my car, and Wednesday I got a fill-up with Mom's credit card. This weekend I feel like I've squandered, however...

Well, a lot has transpired since my last entry.

I went to orientation Monday of this week - I think  I might be starting to look forward to college - right now, after the first week and the "Truman Week" class (which I'm pretty sure is only the first week), my earliest class is at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesdays, and I think that is Fundamentals of Computer Science, or maybe Computer Science seminar, I can't remember and don't have that information with me at the moment.

I actually went to community service with Upward Bound last week, but this week I decided to relax in my room and maybe get ready for National FBLA - since I probably won't get much chance to relax, and tomorrow is going to be dedicated to flying out and getting to the hotel, and probably a general session for everyone there. I bet it'll be about like State FBLA, except, oh, probably quite a bit larger. I'm going to be gone at National FBLA from tomorrow until Tuesday, I believe- my Technical Concepts test that I'm taking is Saturday morning, I think.

Last night for open floors I wandered around the dorm once, then sat in my room and talked to mom on my phone for a little bit, and then I played Apples to Apples with some friends and friends of those friends. That sentence seemed needlessly complicated, but oh well...

So this whole week, at least until yesterday, we were in a Heat Advisory-  or at least when I was driving Sunday the radio said "most of the listening area is in a heat advisory", then after Dad and I got to my aunt's house where we were going to spend the night before going to my college orientation, the St. Louis stations were saying that there was a Heat Advisory or going to be a heat advisory, with the St. Louis metropolitan area in a Heat Warning due to the urban heat island effect, and after getting back to Upward Bound about 8:30 Monday night Tuesday we were apparently in a heat warning... Today was noticeably less warm and humid feeling (lower heat index I'm sure, at any rate) and on the way back from dinner it was sprinkling like it was going to rain - on the way to dinner, I definitely thought it looked like it was going to rain.

I'm sure there's more that I've forgotten..

Well, this week I have gotten to play some Dreamcast (that's right, I said Dreamcast), and more specifically Twinkle Star Sprites and ChuChu Rocket!. I think it's interesting how the Dreamcast was the first sixth generation console (as in, of roughly the same technology as the Gamecube, Xbox, Playstation 2), but other than some of ChuChu Rocket and the Dreamcast home screen, I have yet to see anything that looks convincingly sixth generation (Of course, the game I've seen the most of would be Twinkle Star Sprites, which was made in 1996... I do think it's funny how it seems to me more like a Super Nintendo game than a Dreamcast or Gamecube-era game, but 1996 was the year that the Nintendo 64 debuted in Japan and North America, so I guess it's not really that surprising. I must say that the music on certain stages of Twinkle Star Sprite is very Earworm-esque, but oddly enough it doesn't really stick in my head to the point where I'm humming it afterwards or anything- it just seems that way. 
When I first heard of Twinkle Star Sprite, I thought it sounded like something that would involve unicorns, rainbows, and maybe sparkling and lots of pretty colors... You try coming up with an alternate definition for a phrase involving those words, I guess I was thinking of Sprite in the sense of the fairy-like creature, and then while I was playing it a couple days ago, I happened to think "oh, it could be referring to the type of graphics. Also, the translation errors and things are interesting and amusing - yesterday I saw one that said "I'm so hangry!" Also, when it says "K.O.!" whenever a KO happens, I (and the friends who play it, and maybe the RA who brought the Dreamcast in) think it definitely sounds like "Fail!" Meme referencing for the win. But I digress...

Oh, and for the record, the RA who brought in the Dreamcast also was the one who invited me and the girls who are also playing Dreamcast to D&D. Unfortunately, I didn't get to join in the D&D adventure they started Sunday night (or whenever it was), seeing as I was on the other side of the state, so Leonidas (my rogue) is... not present. When I was DMing, the RA was joking that my rogue was somewhere with a wench. Meh, I suppose it happens... He does have more-or-less average charisma for a human, after all. Now if he had higher-than-average charisma... heh heh heh.

Last weekend I packed for this week and California, I can't really think of much else that transpired.

How could I have forgotten?! Last Thursday was nice, the underclassmen went to Trenton for a thing with Trenton's Upward Bound, so that left us bridge students and an RA here, all by our lonesome. After class, I actually got the chance to go to lunch and had a sloppy joe, a chili cheese dog, and several pizza bagels, so I felt healthy(</sarcasm>), and at lunch I heard about plans for the evening - watch a movie, go cosmic bowling, and eat at a mexican restaurant. I was perfectly happy with the idea of just hanging out in the dorms all day, but I went along. The movie was pretty funny (The Hangover), then we went to eat at the Mexican restaurant. I wasn't expecting much, since I'm not a big fan of Mexican food (Chinese, on the other hand... I could stuff myself on egg rolls and crab ragoon and be satisfied without throwing rice and meat into the equation, heh), but I got a combo meal from the menu and was pleasantly surprised - it was delicious and filling! Of course, I think there were probably copious amounts of cheese, at least in the taco, that helped bring me to that conclusion... The rice was delicious, it tasted like it had been cooked in Lawry's seasoned salt, and I think the other thing in the meal was two enchiladas, which were good. After the meal, we went back to the dorms for like an hour, then left about the same time as all of the underclassmen were coming back, and got to the bowling alley for cosmic bowling at least 45 minutes before cosmic bowling actually started. Sadly, I didn't do quite as well in the four games bowled as I did Monday of last week, but I did get the highest score in my lane in I believe the third game.
After cosmic bowling, we got back to the dorms about 11:45 pm, and after a few minutes the D&D group gathered for a session... I got to DM, though I think I may have actually made it easier than it should be. This afternoon I calculated the experience point reward, and each player character on that adventure should get 375 xp, according to my math. According to the rules we're using, level 2 comes at 1000 xp. 
Basically, we were goofy, and played D&D until about 4:30 or so Friday morning. Everyone got a kick out of my Southern accent, and the people playing the tanks of the party were using this voices so they sounded dumb and drunk, and then were discussing backstabbing the other people and taking all the money. I got a few hours of sleep, and then drove home. I was surprised that I wasn't that affected for only getting like 3.5 hours of sleep, but I did almost fall asleep after I got home and was just sitting not doing anything, other than that I was surprisingly well. Tonight I'd like to get some more sleep, I was planning on getting more sleep yesterday and then ended up going to bed about 3 hours later than originally planned - I had planned on going to bed at like 11, that turned into midnight, and then finally I went to bed at 1:41, got up at 6:50ish, went to breakfast, and I took a nap from about 8:30 to 9:55, which resulted in me getting to class basically right on time. I had originally intended to get up at 9:30 or 9:15, but after I kept getting texts and being disturbed, I decided on 9:30 rather than 9:15. I was surprised how well it worked - I think I had a sort-of-nightmare about it being 10:55 am, and then I was reassured when I saw it was only 9:55.  

It has now been close to a week (give or take mere hours) since a group of us started this Dungeons and Dragons thing here at Upward Bound. So far, we have progressed to, I think, nearly filling out at least a few people's character sheets (I think mine, at least, is close to done- there are a few others who aren't quite as complete). I think it's an interesting party, assuming I can remember everyone's class and species right - there are several people involved, and a couple different groups. For my purposes, I'm going to call them the core group and the fringe.

( Feel free to read this minutiae if you really want to.  )


I say Tuesday night/Wednesday morning because we (the core group, or at least the female RA, the bridge girls, myself, and the dragonborn's player) stayed up late. No, not all of it was D&D - I think between about 2 and 3 we pretty much quit working on D&D and just talked. One of the pair of bridge girls went to bed somewhere in there - 3:30ish, maybe? - and we separated around 4:30. I went to bed around 5:30 a.m. intending to get an hour's sleep and then go to breakfast. Initially I hadn't planned on going to bed at all, but after reading some of my homework from Intro to Lit and almost falling asleep a couple times I decided that I should get at least a little bit of sleep. I ended up sleeping until about 8:30. It was fun, but not one of my brighter ideas.

I've been having trouble staying awake in class, and today, since I went to bed at 2 this morning, I didn't have a little bit of Mountain Dew before class like I have been, and so I was having trouble staying awake until I banged my head on the desk behind me. Then I didn't have any trouble staying awake, which I've noticed - as soon as I bump my head, or somebody says something about falling asleep, I usually don't have trouble then. I suppose maybe some neurotransmitters or adrenaline or something kicks in out of embarrassment, I don't know but I bet it would make for interesting reading on an MRI. But I digress...

Today we watched some of "O Brother, where art thou?" in class, which I thought was pretty good. The music is good and I thought it was interesting recognizing things in it from the Odyssey.
 
For lunch, since class gets out at 12:40 (so far it's been more like 12:35) I came back to my dorm room and had fritos (I got a bag yesterday pretty much randomly - for some reason my roommate's girlfriend and her roommate didn't want them anymore [something happened, I don't know what, and their room stunk for some reason, I think the exterior of the bag of chips still smelled bad or something], and I was sitting out in the hallway a couple days ago and so I got this bag of Fritos. For lunch, then, I had fritos, a small box of raisins, several handfuls of banana chips, and my last Mountain Dew.

In summary, I seem to be out of Mountain Dew, but obviously staying up until 1 and getting up at 6:30 every morning isn't going to work either.  I kept thinking earlier this week that I would go to bed earlier, and then Tuesday night happened, which stove in those plans. I wouldn't mind getting to bed earlier, really, but at the same time it seems really early, all of a sudden, to be going to bed at 11. Oh wait, that's what I used to do as an underclassman!

Also, I learned how to open up a laptop at my work study so I can clean the fan. It only involves loosening four screws on the bottom, then removing the keyboard, popping off the keyboard cover, and then cleaning the fan and replacing everything. I think I've cleaned the fans of a grand total of maybe 5 laptops so far? 

I'll have to figure out something this weekend, I suppose. Yes, in theory I could sleep until 8:30, but I  really would prefer to go and eat breakfast at the Union - as sad as that seems, my breakfasts at home are usually whatever I can throw together, and not eggs, ham, and potatoes - or eggs, bacon, and hash browns, or eggs, sausage (either links or patties), and tater tots, or any mix of eggs, protein, and potatoes. There's also a regular supply of apple or orange juice, in addition to water and soft drinks from the fountains.

Well, I was wanting to play Morrowind for like two hours, but I've wasted one so far, and we leave at 3:15 - I suppose I'll just have to satisfy myself with an hour, or half an hour, of Morrowind.

So, since graduation, I have gone to National Quiz Bowl, then Upward Bound, then probably done a lot more stuff that I don't remember right now...

I rather enjoyed the two days between graduation and school getting out - I think I probably stayed up too late both nights, or those three nights, or whatever. I thought I finished Latin the first time a couple weeks ago, then since then I've had to change my Mythological Couples project PowerPoint presentation (first I had to write a love letter in Latin, then I had to remove a couple words, and ultimately I just submitted it earlier today or hopefully the final time). I probably should have worked on Thank-you cards from graduation, but instead I wasted time and did other things... I probably should remember more about that time, but I had my computer on for two weeks straight - which is probably the longest time I've had it on for pretty much ever, in view of I've only had this computer since just after Christmas and usually it seems like when I have my computer on for any length of time, a thunderstorm hits or the power goes out; in any case, something happens so the computer goes off and I have to turn it back on, but a couple weeks ago I had it on and running for two weeks straight! 
Achievement aside, we left for national quiz bowl very early Friday the 29th (about 6 a.m.). I was awake and trying to fall asleep until Villisca, and then slept until we had just crossed into Illinois. We ate lunch at a Culver's there, then carried on to Chicago, and I believe I slept some more. After we got there and got registered, we played a practice round against some school from New York and got stomped, I believe the score was 355 to 30 or something. They read the questions very fast.  Later I think our coach was talking to someone and they mentioned that the good teams liked to go and show off at these practice rounds. I happened to catch Jay Leno's final broadcast, I think it'd be nice if they sold DVDs or something of his time on the show but we'll see... Saturday was the actual tournament - we lost our first match to Maggie Walker A of Virginia, who I had heard usually does well (they ended up getting 5th place out of the 192 teams there, I think). Then we beat White Cloud of Michigan for our first win of the day, then we beat MSMP B from Mississippi. Then we lost to Bergen B from New Jersey, then we beat University from California, then a private school from Mississippi, then we lost to Killenberg, New Jersey, then a loss to a private school from Texas, then a loss to a team from San Jose, California (I think they were from an all-boys school), and our final match of the day we beat Danville, Kentucky by 10 points. After that, we went out on the proverbial town, to Navy Pier, and we got to ride the El train. Let's just say I love loathe mass transit. The MetroLink in St. Louis 10 years ago, at least from what I can remember, was smoother and probably faster. The El Train, aside from the inconvenience of having a stretch of track out of service for repairs, thus neccessitating that we transfer to a bus, which would then take us to another train stop, kept hitting bumps and the train car kept moving around. Then, mass transit in general, where the trend seems to be "Fill all the seats, then cram more people in until absolutely no one aboard has any space!" I don't seem like I was raised on a farm 12 miles from anywhere, do I? I'm such a farmer, or something... Anyway, the guy who read for us at the practice match kind of adopted us and was with us the whole time that night, he helped us get around the mass transit and was talking to most of the group at some point - apparently he was 18, but had graduated from his high school in Los Angeles (or at least it was in California) at 16 and he was currently in college at UCLA studying biochemistry.
The next day, since we had a record of 5-5, and better than 4-6, we played in the small school playoffs, but were eliminated by White Cloud. I was annoyed, but in retrospect never really anticipated doing very well at Nationals, so the fact that I got 20th individually and that we got 8th place in the small school division and 116th overall isn't too bad. After getting eliminated, we ate pizza at Giordano's (that was delicious), then we split into a couple different groups. The group I was with browsed some souvenir stores, but we never did get to any museums, as was originally planned - we did get to the Shedd Aquarium for about an hour, but then it closed. We took a water taxi to Navy Pier, and spent a few hours there. When we got back to the hotel (we were on the 8th floor of 10 floors... It was ridiculous, the Hyatt Regency O'Hare), at some point I got my individual trophy and then there was a party in one of our rooms. I had assumed it would be only people from my team, so when I was there and people from other teams started showing up, I went to my room and rested for a while. Then I headed back to the room and hung out there until 4 am, then went to bed. We left that Monday morning about 8:30 after checking out and I had to run back to my room to get my quiz bowl shirt, which I had left hanging in a closet. This time, I slept a couple times in Illinois, then didn't sleep through most of Iowa, and I was certainly awake from Williamsburg, probably, on. It was interesting seeing the clouds, and as we pulled into town we got an escort and sort of a parade, and the diehard fans (parents, mostly) were waiting at the bottom of Main Street in the rain. After a little bit, we went home and I threw together some things for Upward Bound, then I got to drive to Maryville in a thunderstorm. I had thought I was merely getting a ride there, I didn't know I'd have to drive. Anyway, aside from some curb checking and confusion, that managed to work out.

My college class I'm taking (Introduction to Literature) doesn't start until Monday, so this last week I pretty much hung out in the dorms most mornings. I did sleep in Wednesday... I'm surprised how good and different the food seems to be this year (in the past, breakfasts have been reconstituted scrambled eggs, some form of potatoes, and sausage links, sausage patties, or bacon, and biscuits and gravy or pancakes or waffles- Tuesday morning we had a meat egg and cheese biscuit, Thursday morning we had breakfast pizza!). Work study isn't particularly challenging, I can run this program to clean off 96 laptops at a time and when that's done I restart them and run a hardware check. Usually about half of the ones I'm running get done with the disk wiping after 53 minutes and between 35 and 55 seconds, so I start the hardware check on them and then I go to work on sorting through this pile of cables - power cables separated from laptop A/C adaptors, then sorting through Ethernet cables. I work study two hours a day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. I've enjoyed hanging out in the dorms and doing nothing, but my class is from 10:10 to 12:40, so I won't really get lunch as long as I have class, it looks like.

I thought it was funny Thursday I was discussing a map I've been working on for a story with a friend when one of the RAs said "Now I don't want to be presumptuous, but" there were a couple RAs wanting to get a Dungeons and Dragons game together, and asked if I'd be interested. I said I would, and so last night we tried rolling for characters. I was annoyed by a group of people who decided to sit right next to the group of us that were trying to get started and talk, one of whom wouldn't shut up. I was getting pretty annoyed, and in the end with the amount of interest we had we got I think everyone's class and ability scores decided, some people also decided race (I decided on Human Wizard for now, but I want to play around with D&D and make other characters, which I may end up using since most of the people seemed to want to play clerics, wizards, "psions", and "psychic warriors", I think there was one fighter. I may end up using a rogue.... I had this idea of making a human rogue, fighter, cleric, and I don't know what else just to see what I could make. The RA in question who had asked me if I was interested also had a binder with a couple guidebooks in it and a lot of character sheets, and one guidebook I thought was interesting was a "Hero-Builder's Guidebook" or something that had these sets you could roll, and if you got those numbers that's what your character's home environment, family economic situation, family defense readiness, and many other things were. I went through part of it once and got Temperate Marsh, frontier homestead, religious order, and rudimentary family defense readiness, or something like that, I thought it was really interesting. I still think it'll be interesting to see how it goes, and whether the 8 or however many people remain interested, or if it'll just be the core 3 or 4 of us. Since so many of them were non-bridge students, they had to leave at 10:30... Most of the core group that were really interested  were bridge students, and we are supposed to go to bed of our own volition, rather than having specific lights-out times, I think (or guess.. I don't know).

Anyway, I'm up far too late, and probably won't get enough sleep tonight, darn it. Oh well.

We had practice for NAQT the Thursday before we left

So, today is the 65th anniversary of the Allied assault on Festung Europa. With that, I'm going to post the entirety of Eisenhower's message to the troops. I like this message; something about it always seems to send shivers down my spine - particularly the first paragraph.

"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Dwight D Eisenhower.”

Actual meaningful entry to follow.

I Am A: True Neutral Elf Wizard (2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-11

Constitution-12

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-12

Charisma-10


Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.


Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.


Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

I can only conclude I was feeling particularly secular and intellectual at the time this quiz was taken.

As you can tell from the title, I've had a busy time in the time since my last entry. I shall attempt to keep this relatively short (Laconic Entry ACTIVATE!)

First: Prom. Also known  as Operation PROM NOM NOM or Promenomenade. In short, fun was had. In more detail, I took halopikachu to my school's prom on May 2. The theme was "Memories of the Chocolate Factory" and my English, Drama, and Speech teacher was dressed as Willy Wonka to announce at promenade and he was also at prom proper. The car I took (Mom's) was having issues starting when I was going to leave home, but we (meaning Dad) managed to start it, I picked up the flower, then the date, and then we went to the park in town for dinner with a group of my friends. We ate Chinese (well, most of us - one girl had pizza instead), parents took pictures, then we went to a house and changed. After taking pictures once we had dressed, we headed up to promenade, promenaded, then sat around for a while until it seemed like plenty of promenade guests were leaving, so we hopped in the car and I drove to the community building, where prom was - one of the junior parents told me that they weren't letting people into prom until 8 (so we still had half an hour to kill), and so then we cruised. We pulled into a parking lot at the park and talked and took pictures and recorded a short video, then enough time had been killed so we went to prom, played with balloons, danced some (slow danced once, the other times were Cotton-Eyed Joe and I'm probably forgetting some others), ate candy, took pictures. Then it was midnight, so I drove us back to the house where we had changed and changed back into our street clothes, then up to the school for after-prom bash. We got t-shirts, watched the hypnotist, spent like an hour (it seemed like) running through the obstacle course, sat around, talked, and had fun. I got about $150 and a generic Mp3 player at the end (4 am, or thereabouts), so we headed back to the house, got our stuff, and I drove her home and talked. There was something about that conversation I enjoyed, wish I could distinguish what exactly that was. Oh well.

About a week later (May 8) was State Academic Bowl, which we qualified for by winning Districts (April 18) and Sectionals (April 23). We left May 7 for State, the send-off assembly this time was a sort-of quiz bowl match between two teams of teachers. The questions were all essentially over inside jokes from our brain bowl team, like "Which member is more worried before a quiz bowl match than before a basketball game?" or "What is our coach's pet peeve?" or "What is the answer to any math question that you don't know?" I thought it was pretty funny that after I got up on stage and said something about wanting to beat the school who defeated us in the state championships my freshman year, and then explained a little more once it was pointed out or I realized that nobody would know what I was talking about based on what I had initially said, this junior boy that wrestles and is the only person I know currently attending the high school who has beat my ACT score (I scored 32 on the ACT last December, this kid scored 33 on the ACT in April of this year) and probably the smartest kid in next year's senior class (If he's not the smartest, he's certainly in the running) was saying he and a friend of his would go beat up the kids from Thomas Jefferson (the school who beat us in the state championship my freshman year). I thought it was hilarious. We took a school bus down to Columbia, got to the hotel, spent some time there, then we took some pictures and went to Steak and Shake for dinner. I ate with the two sophomores who had gone (well, and my brother after he decided to switch to our table). After dinner, we went back to the hotel, swam in the small hotel pool, and then went to bed. The next day started off with a storm. When we got to the university campus where state brain bowl was being held (MU) it was raining and we got inside. Apparently one team's sponsor had fallen on the slick sidewalk and broken her arm. I was on guard our first two matches, expecting the teams to be pretty good, but in the end I think we beat them pretty handily (Can't be bothered to look up the scores right now). The third match of the day, and final preliminary match of the morning, saw us facing off against Thomas Jefferson Independent (who has made it to the state championship round for like the last ten years and won I think four state championships in a row before this year). That was our closest match of the morning, it ended fifteen points in our favor and so we exited the preliminary rounds with a total of 690 points. We went to the McDonald's on campus for lunch (a short walk, and the weather had cleared off and gotten warm), and when we returned after lunch we played the fourth seed (we were seeded first) and then Leeton. It was Leeton's first time in the state championship (apparently they're from somewhere near Warrensburg) and it was kind of funny their captain (who I think was a junior) had a similar name and looked similar to me. Oddly enough, for being the second-place team they scored 60 points to our 255. Their coach, I seem to remember talking about before the match that they had heard of me, and I heard afterwards something about their being scared of me. I can't imagine why... Seriously, though, we won and got first place in Class 1. Everyone else seemed to be making a big deal about it, and I really didn't get why (making ridiculous poses for pictures and so on) but on the other hand, not everyday do you win a state championship, I suppose. After the picture-taking was over, I got my indivdual award (first place on the All-State team, 15.4 questions per match average, compared to the Leeton captain, who was in second with 11 toss-ups per game... also, the first place all-state players in Class 2, 3 and 4 had averages of 11, 13.6 and 9.8 questions per game respectively, but enough bragging) and after that, we left. We ate at Culver's in St. Joe on the ride home and got periodic updates via Indian Alerts (our school's text messaging system, usually used for announcements like 'track meet today has been canceled' or 'school will be dismissed early due to inclement weather") on the greeting that was planned. The first update was something like "Meet academic team on main street @ 9:30, bring flashlight", most of the other updates were more like "confirmed arrival time 9:30" or something like that. Apparently we weren't supposed to know about our greeting until we got back to town, but considering they used Indian Alerts I'd consider that a FAIL. Anyway, once we got back to Tarkio we rode on a firetruck down Main Street with the sirens going and when we got off the fire truck at the end of Main Street, it seemed like half the town was there. There were lots of congratulations, handshakes, hugs, etc. etc. etc. It was a triumph, almost in the Roman tradition.

The fun part of last weekend (using the term "fun" loosely) was that after returning from State Academic Bowl Friday night, I had Saturday and half of Sunday to pack for senior trip. I managed to get everything packed and my Mp3 player "fixed" so now it will actually sync and get music on it (I need to actually fix it so it will actually work now, the Halo: CE soundtrack doesn't work, along with other problems - I suspect the problem is that dad put the Halo: CE soundtrack on my Sansa TWICE). The trip down to Branson for senior trip wasn't too eventful - a few boys tried purchasing pornographic magazines at the gas station we stopped at near Clinton, but the principal and sponsors got wind of it somehow and so those who had purchased that literature had to return their magazines. That was pretty much the worst rule infraction of the whole trip, I think - no alcohol was brought or found (that I'm aware of) and in short I think we behaved ourselves quite nicely. I also discovered that I enjoy laser tag - at least the place we went to was really cool, Tuesday night a group of us that didn't go to Dixie Stampede went laser tagging at this place, and I thought it was neat the setup of this place had statistics for each vest-gun pair, and  what I suppose would be called a callsign or name - I was Titan, for example, and ended up getting 7 of 16 (there were fourteen kids, our ag teacher, who was one of our class sponsors, and a girl that worked there). Based on the statistics, I would say I gave a little bit better than I got - I was terrible at watching my back, for example, but I'd say I was reasonably good at "sniping" people who showed their LEDs on their vest through a hole I could shoot through. Possibly the most exciting part of the trip was Wednesday night, when they had been talking on the Weather Channel all day about storms that had spawned tornadoes (including one that hit Kirksville, which I thought was interesting in light of the fact that I'm going to go to college there this fall, and made me curious as to the extent of the damage that tornado caused) in the state. After we went to this place we'd gone Monday night for go-karting and mini-golfing, when we got back to the hotel (after stopping at Andy's frozen custard, I got a butterscotch shake) I went to my room and glued myself to the Weather Channel. I decided to get ready for bed so I wouldn't be showering when the storm hit, and I was brushing my teeth after having showered when I first heard thunder around 11 pm. About half an hour later, the county that Branson is in went under a tornado warning, and we had been told at least once earlier in the day that in the event of severe weather, we were to go to the second floor of the hotel (we were on the fifth floor, the lobby was on the third floor, the second floor was apparently mostly underground.) I grabbed my wallet, room key, cell phone, and camera, put on my shoes, and headed downstairs. My class and one of our sponsors (The principal's wife) were in the hallway for about an hour, all told; I felt like it wasn't a good idea to be near the glass door which led to the hot tub and outside pool (which, by the way, didn't have water in it, either one , and some other things happen that I wasn't happy with, but I'm not sure if I was just being neurotic or if I was being intelligent.

We got back from senior trip and Friday was the awards assembly and graduation practice. Our school has a tradition at this awards asembly of after the seniors leave, every class gets to jump forward to the next class's chairs (juniors move to where the seniors were sitting, sophomores move to sit where the juniors were sitting, and so on). Well, our class pulled the prank of taking our chairs with us, which from what I've heard has never been done before. We win. In addition, I feel like I made off like some kind of bandit with all the scholarships, certificates, a couple medals and a trophy that I got at that assembly, but then I've usually done pretty well at this assembly for an underclassmen up to now anyway.

Saturday I went to a couple graduation parties - well, actually, as it happens, the graduation parties for the valedictorian and salutatorian of my class. First we went to the salutatorian's party (she only lives half a mile from me), and then we went in to the valedictorian's party. The valedictorian's party had karaoke, food, and I got cold and wanted to leave before we finally did.

Today was graduation - it was nice to just get it over with. There were technical difficulties gettting the senior slide show to work, and finally they had the chorus sing "I'll Be There For You" before they finally got it working. Multiple people were telling me to either get up and help, or go get my Dad and have him help, but I figured that if our class sponsor/tech coordinator and her husband the principal and whoever else was there wanted or needed my or Dad's help, they would have gotten us. Anyway, I got my diploma, my picture taken multiple times, tassel moved, hugs handshakes etc. Afterwards I went out to my graduation party and ate, finally changed into normal clothing (jeans, t-shirt, tennis shoes, in contrast to shirt, tie, khakis, nice shoes), and we only left there probaby around 8 maybe? I'm sure the import of today will hit later.

 

Well, so much for keeping it short!