Life Through Headphones

Spring Summary

2011-05-13T15:37:00.004-04:00

The past several months has been quite a wild ride. Spring semester has come & gone, and my roommate and I have moved to a new apartment. I also had a few DJ gigs.

Also went to a few concerts.

School was exceptionally tough this semester, primarily because I'm taking Senior-level CS electives and I tried to take Physics to get that sequence started. It ended up becoming a sieve for time and resources and just about all of my classes suffered: A C D D were my final marks in Technical Writing, Discrete Modeling 2, Design Patterns (senior elective), and Physics respectively. I did a poor job of my own time management and didn't stick to my goals -- that is not going to be the case this Summer semester.

The apartment lease ending right before Finals Week certainly didn't help, though. We transferred to a different floor-plan for cheaper rent. The first night was scary because we had an extraordinarily drunk belligerent neighbor roaming around the building. Knock on wood, he hasn't done that since. Here's the old apartment near the end of cleaning during the move out.

A couple weekends ago some friends and I went down to Gulf Shores and had a pretty good time.

This past weekend after finals I went to visit Wayne and some friends - we went hiking and found the highest point in Alabama.

Over the past month I've been looking for an internship position. After interviewing I got a really good offer with a pretty awesome company. I also found that my current part-time work is looking for a full-time employee at a pretty good rate... so I've got some decision-making to do.

Here we go!

Autumn View Apartments Marietta - Do Not Call

2011-04-09T12:20:00.005-04:00

Do not use rent.com or some other routing company to contact Autumn View Apartments in Marietta, Georgia. (Where you dial an 800 number and pass an extension so they route the call.) They scrape your phone number and name from caller ID and continuously call you about specials and move in rates, even after you tell them to stop.

I tried calling them back today to ask (again) for my number to be removed, but no one answered the phone (which I expected - they hardly ever answer their phone anyway.) Not only did they not answer, but instead of forwarding the call to a local answering machine, they sent me to some random call center where I had to leave a message including the name of the property, so that means the call center isn't even specialized for their company. #rage

Autumn View, if you want folks to move in, let them find you. Unsolicitedly calling people and interrupting their daily lives to inform them about a living space they're not interested in is not cool.

Of Current Events

2011-02-01T00:13:00.005-05:00

A republican representative from Georgia wants to do away with drivers licenses. The irony is that he's from Marietta. Cobb County. Those are typically the worst drivers in the state, with the exception of Cherokee county. Anyway, he claims "travel is an inalienable right" so we shouldn't "need papers" to drive. I'll give you a moment to let that settle in.

Yes, while travel could be considered an inalienable right, not all methods of travel are a right. Exhibit A: The No-Fly List. Drivers licenses were developed, I assume, to prevent unsafe and unqualified drivers from legally driving. To get a license one must take a series of tests. And pass them. (Which makes me wonder if that step is just skipped in Cobb County because I swear these people just find them in cracker jack boxes.) "Permission from the state" to drive is supposed to keep people safe, Mr. Representative. Notice how when people get too many points on their license from breaking the law (read: endangering themselves and other drivers) that they get their license taken away. What a novel idea.

Shenanigans from my ridiculous home state aside,

What happened in Whistler, B.C. is absolutely appalling. 100 sled dogs slaughtered when tourism slumped. I don't even know where to begin on this one. Does putting down sled dogs for reasons similar to this happen often? Do adoption agencies where dogsled companies can give their dogs to exist to prevent this from happening? If so, why not take that route? If organizations like that don't exist, why not? I understand it would be quite the fiscal undertaking to make such a thing happen, but when LIVES ARE AT RISK, why should it matter?

The sickening feeling I get is that humane solutions do probably exist, but they might cost money - and to avoid spending more money on these "failed assets" (living, breathing animals) they just killed them.

Dumbest Customer of the Day Award

2010-12-29T16:02:00.004-05:00

I work at a calendar kiosk in the mall. Surprisingly enough, I've had the majority of my "bad customers" after Christmas instead of before. My assumption is that it's because everything is 50% off now.

Regardless, the following exchange happens to me almost once every few hours:

Customer: *shakes a calendar at me* Is this on sale?
Me: *points to the sign that says exactly what I'm about to say* All calendars are 50% off.
Customer: *shakes the calendar again* So is THIS on sale??
Me: That's a calendar, so yes.

Today I had the most irritating guy I've had to date... at first he's irritated with me because I won't give him a special discount for buying four calendars (Woohoo, big spender.) He comes back a bit later with some calendars but shows me a horse calendar, asking me how many months is in the calendar. He's being snippy, at best. Then this happens.

Me: I would assume 12 months, since that's what is usually in a calendar.
Him: Well there's only 10 pictures on the back.
Me: ... *holds calendar, reading for anything indicating a 10-month* No sir, it seems it's 12. The only other length we have is 16 months, and those are marked.
Him: But I only see 10 pictures on the back!
Me: I assure you there are 12 months in here.
Him: Well I'm not buying it unless you open it up and show me.
Me: I'm not opening it unless you buy it.
Him: I'm not buying it if it's a 10 month calendar.
Me: *pause... then shreds the plastic off*
Him: *chuckle*
Me: *shows each page, painfully slow to make it obvious to him* January, February, March, [...] December. 12 months.
Him: Oh, okay... I guess I'll buy it then.

Then he was pissed off because the total wasn't what he thought it'd be. What'd he forget? Tax. Did he get them anyway? Yes. It's a good thing he did too, or I would've loosed a herd of the angriest badgers I could find on him.

Her sir, enjoy your reward.

Fall changes & Howl-O-Ween

2010-11-01T12:00:00.005-04:00

The past semester's flown by. Lots of studying, work, and partying. (All work and no play makes Kevin a dull boy.) After my last post school really picked up. It's still crazy but things have calmed down a bit. Only a bit.

I took down the ugly wallpaper in my bathroom at the apartment and painted. That was a fun project.

That little project took a few nights of work, but it went a lot faster thanks to some friends coming over to help. (Thanks again, guys!) School has been nuts. I've got the hardest class in the CS curriculum with the most difficult professor in the department, and that's a recipe for fun if I've ever had one. Work has been a bit slow with school but I picked up a new freelance web development job and that's been nice.

This past weekend was Halloween on the beach in Alabama with 14 other friends. :) That was a blast. First time on the beach in 2010. The water was cold but still swimmable, surprisingly.

The trip was a blast - I'd love to do it again. The only drawback was the 6.5 hour drive and only staying for one day. Two days there instead of just one would've made the drive a bit more worth it. We were staying at a friend's parents' beach house though, so the cost of the trip was gas and food. :)

The beach house was on stilts so the house swayed a bit when people walked around or danced around. That took some getting used to. We went to some pretty great local restaurants, but it was terrible having only one bathroom for the house and all fifteen of us. On Saturday we hit up a local bar where they had some live bands playing and a costume contest going on. Our group got a special shoutout from the singer of one of the bands, saying he wished he had some dog treats to throw at us or something. There was also a bachelorette party going on so they had our group of costumes dance with her on stage. That was a lot of fun!

I had some friends go to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this past weekend. I haven't heard much, but I hope it was a great rally.

I'll be going to Chicago in a few weeks to see a lot of friends and to DJ what will hopefully be a large party. :) Very excited about that. I'm still doing the weekly podcast over at http://djkainu.com/podcast . I'm a bit late with this week's episode since I was driving most of the day yesterday.

Time to get back to work and school. Hope all is well with everyone.

End of Summer

2010-09-19T13:59:00.004-04:00

Well, Summer is coming to an end. (I don't think anyone told Mother Nature though because our highs are back in the nineties here in the Atlanta area.) Last month I turned 21. The day after I had to take my roommate to the hospital to get his appendix removed.

My first 21+ thing was the Armin van Buuren party at Opera on the first Friday of September. It was Opera's End of Summer White Party, so the dress-code was all-white. It was a spectacular night.

School has been really hard this semester. Hopefully I'll survive.

Last night was Sushifest Fall 2010 and a group of folks chipped in to fly in our friend Matthew Ebel (a fantastic piano-rock artist) to play. :) Lots of sushi was made and consumed, lots of fun and music were shared.

Here's to a good semester and Fall season.

Regarding the Mascot

2010-08-09T17:55:00.007-04:00

First, let me start by highlighting a definition:

demon (noun) - an evil spirit or devil, esp. one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell.
a cruel, evil, or destructive person or thing
a forceful, fierce, or skillful person or thing
- New Oxford American Dictionary

While I cannot speak for the individuals who named the 7th Fighter Squadron at Robins Air Force Base who our school's mascot is based off of, I am fairly certain this is the definition they had in mind when they named themselves the 'Screamin' Demons' back in World War II. Pastor, I don't think I need to remind you that Warner Robins is an Air Force town, or that Warner Robins High School is the oldest high school in the town.

The demon has been the school's mascot for at least sixty years. You have lived in this town for around a year, according to 13WMAZ. If there was a serious issue with the school system or Warner Robins High School specifically regarding what you call "demon praising" and "devil worshipping," I'm sure any one or several of the 100+ churches in this area* would have done something about it. However they haven't. Why? Because there is no "devil worshipping" happening at Warner Robins High School - there are just people. Teachers, staff, and administrators trying to do their job and students trying to learn and discover who they are.

In short, "if it ain't broke don't fix it." (That would be a rhetorical colloquialism, in this case.) Live and let live. If you really aren't happy with the mascot not changing (which it won't), then don't worry about it - just move. Life is too short to worry and do silly things like being arrested over a high-school mascot.

Sincerely,

Me (and probably most everyone else in Warner Robins)

* Churchangel - 104 listed churches in Warner Robins [link] (on the sidebar to the left to find the count)

Marco V

2010-07-29T02:50:00.002-04:00

Well, Opera... I'm not sure what to say.

First George Lukin/Marco V were slated to be in the main room. Then someone from 95.5 The Beat decided to have a party in the main room so we got put in The Venetian Room, which was considerably smaller. It was pretty empty when we got there but it filled up in time. It was getting close for Marco to take the stage when the staff had George cut off the decks and move them outside to the rooftop area.

Turns out the 95.5 party had so many people they needed an overflow room (not sure why they couldn't go outside, but whatever) and they picked ours. We moved from having at least one nice bass unit and three or so other speaker cabinets to two studio monitors for the main sound output.

Marco eventually got there and the party took off on the rooftop despite there not being many people dancing. He probably played for an hour before George took back over. We left soon after that since someone in our party needed to be at work early in the morning.

This is the second event to go sour in the past year. First there was the big Tiesto failure in Norcross, now this. I know Ferry Corsten is scheduled to play in the Venetian room as well in October. Here's hoping it doesn't fizzle out like this one did.

Things

2010-07-28T19:03:00.002-04:00

Things I am looking forward to:

Tonight's concert at Opera. Marco V!
A real bed instead of an air mattress.
A desk.
A chair for the aforementioned desk.
A bed frame and a chest-of-drawers.
A big external hard drive to store my Kainu work on.

Things I'm not looking forward to but need to do anyway:

Pay rent this weekend.
Finish registering for classes.

Things I'd really like to happen:

Get a better paying job or new freelance web work.

Moving

2010-07-26T00:24:00.001-04:00

So.

Summer semester. It's started and almost ended without me talking about it much here.

It's been stressful, to say the least. Finals are tomorrow, I'm looking forward to it being over with.

I moved off campus to a new apartment this past weekend. Currently living in an apartment complex near campus with a friend, paying less rent than I would be at KSU but I'm not sure of the exact amount of savings yet because of the electric bill. Not sure what to expect there.

The move was mostly uneventful. I had a friend help me move yesterday, but we got about half a car-load of stuff in my car thanks to the rain before we realized I was late for my move-in appointment. The leasing lady had already left but a maintenance guy was there and was able to call her and get my keys. The weather didn't look like it was going to let up so I had my friend leave… not ten minutes after, the rain just stopped.

At that point I went to a friend's house then called it a night at my old place.

Today I finished moving by myself, it took about four or five hours to get it done. I also got my internet setup through Comcast. That was the best customer service experience in my life. (Editor note: If your sarcasm alarm hasn't gone off, I hope it's under warranty because it's broken.)

After completing the online order, instead of just paying for it there they passed me off to some chat with someone who either has never used her drivers license number or social security number or simply isn't an American citizen. She ran a background check and wanted my SSN OR my drivers license number with the state it was issued in. I gave her the latter. It took her about five minutes before she realized that "the social security number" was a bit odd. She apologized for her mistake.

Later she tried to force a "professional installation" on me for $49.99 instead of the $25 I had agreed for on the website before I got to the chat. That's FIFTY DOLLARS for some guy to plug in a wire that I can most certainly do myself. I came down on her like the fist of an angry God at that point for trying to slip that in on me. Then she told me that this person couldn't get here until the middle of August.

Uh. No.

She gave me a customer service number to call to get an earlier install, so I called them. And got routed to a call center that only handled Massachusetts customers. Fantastic. It took a while to get routed to a Georgia call center.

(This part I'll keep short since it was actually helpful.) No professional install needed, the guy is sending me a DIY kit that should be here by Wednesday.

Anyway, so far the apartment is panning out decently. (Except for the apartment complex leasing out the pool near my unit for use as a friggin algae farm. The economy really must be that bad.) Hopefully it'll even out and settle down soon. Planning a mini "vacation" to home/Warner Robins after school ends. I need a break.

While I'm Writing A Longer Post,

2010-07-25T23:56:00.003-04:00

Here's the best spam comment I've received all year.

I like to listen music every time, I usually wear my headphone. Actually, I want a house close to the camp and listen loud music, that’s why I think costa rica investment opportunities is a great option for me and for another ones.

The italicized quote was a link to a phishing site. It was a good laugh.

Public Opinion

2010-06-22T11:07:00.003-04:00

Not naming any names, but this reminds me of a certain local news station.

News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who, seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones.

Georgia Cell Phone Law - New Avenue For Police Abuse?

2010-06-20T16:15:00.005-04:00

With a little over a week until the new anti text-messaging law comes into effect in Georgia, a friend of the family offered an interesting argument. (Sending text messages or any other text-based communication while driving will be illegal on July 1, but placing/receiving phone calls is not.)

How are police going to know to pull someone over? What I mean is, how are they differentiating a person sending a text message from finding a phone number to dial or adjusting an iPod playlist? The motions are very similar. One solution would be for the officer to check the phone, but that's a BIG invasion of privacy.

Do you think police will pull over any driver with their head staring down at a glowing hand held device or will it only become an accessory to charges in an accident? How will they investigate if the phone had been in use for now-illegal purposes? Would turning down a device's brightness help? Discuss.

Kentucky Visit

2010-06-09T01:27:00.004-04:00

This past weekend was a visit to Alpine with the family. Melanie was able to come for the first time in eight years, this time with her two relatively new little ones in tow.

The trip up went well. Eric had spent the past week in Kennesaw with me to visit with his girlfriend up here. We met Melanie and the rest in Chattanooga then followed each other up the scenic highway 27 straight up to Mamaw & Papaw's house.

The little ones occupied themselves in coloring books and the like while the rest of us hung out and caught up.

The next day a lot of family came up, including my Dad and Stepmom. It was really nice seeing all that family again. Even though I have most of them on Facebook, nothing beats a good reunion in Alpine.

I went into town with some cousins and my brother and sister to find wifi to submit some homework (unsuccessful) and to get some groceries (successful.) The night wound down after that. I almost slept outside on the hammock but several bugs kept trying to make friends with me so I abandoned them and went inside.

The next day we visited a relative who lived one street down, but it took forty or so minutes of driving down that street to get to his cabin next to the river. He had internet so I was able to submit my assignments and what not. The weather was sub-optimal for going out on the boat, so a couple of us just went down through the woods to the river to sit around for a bit.

After that we went back to the house and had a lot of family come over again. Barbecue was had. :) After the evening wound down, Eric went out to the field near the house with a tripod to take pictures of the stars. It didn't take long after he was out the door for me, my sister, and my Dad to suggest sneaking out and tossing firecrackers in his general direction.

Dad felt the need to plan, but it wasn't really all that necessary. It was a decent success. :)

Monday I had to go home. I believe the rest of the family went back to the lake since it was a much better day for boating/swimming. I tried to take highway 27 back but there was a flipped semi about halfway through the fifty mile stretch of winding roads, so I turned around, found I-75, and took it down. I got back with just enough time to print out my assignments and get to class.

It was a pretty good trip. :)

Summer Happenings

2010-05-29T02:01:00.006-04:00

Well, this past Spring semester certainly did end up a certifiable cluster-cuss (tip of the hat to the Fantastic Mr.Fox.)

Graduated MGC A Year After Finishing

The good news - after finishing Middle Georgia College almost a year ago, I now legally have my Associates Degree in Computer Science from there. Turns out I missed some paperwork.

College Career Drama

Somehow I managed to lose the HOPE scholarship between Spring and Summer semester. I'm also not getting the full amount of the Pell grant because I'm not a full time student. The result? Pell isn't covering all of my tuition and most of my housing this semester. It's covering most of tuition. Rent for the next few months has to come out of my empty pockets.

What does this mean for me?

Ultimately it exposes my irrationality, but I'm choosing to take out student loans to help cover tuition/rent to stay in Kennesaw with my friends up there than return home to Warner Robins where rent is free and college is a short drive away. I worked my ass off for two years to get out of this town, this minor setback isn't going to drag me back.

If I were to use my Associates Degree to get a full time job right now, I'd end up being in limbo for longer than the two years it'd take for me to get my degree as a full time student. If push really comes to shove I'll just get another part time job or try to get more freelance web work.

Ultimately I just want to get done with school as fast as I can. Transferring seems like it might set me back further. I'll just deal with the student loans so I can stay in the Atlanta area where my career will most likely end up being.

DJing

Launched my podcast a few weeks ago and it's been a pretty big success so far. :) Lots and lots of people downloading. I'm pretty excited. Still looking to land a gig in a club in the city, though.

Misc

Started going to the gym again. Minimum three times a week, running on the treadmill or the elliptical. The construction has moved to my wing of the dorm so I'm up at 8am whether I feel like it or not hearing a bunch of hammering and drilling. I really want to see Killers when it comes out this week. I've been playing laser tag with friends in Atlanta every other week. It's pretty fun - I'm getting better and it's great exercise.

There's been a general lack of photos so here lately are some random ones.

Dorm construction

The computer lab I was working in for about two weeks refreshing.

Sister, niece, and nephew were in town. We visited lots of family.

Train singing at the Crawfish Boil in Alabama a few weeks ago.

Facebook

2010-05-16T18:02:00.003-04:00

Alright. You've probably heard Facebook's privacy bullshit in the news recently, or heard friends saying they're closing their account. Yes, their privacy policy is both longer than the US Constitution and out of line but you don't have to quit to keep most of your information locked down.

First, consider starting over with a clean slate. Say you created your Facebook account back in grade school and you're preparing to graduate college. That's a wealth of information about you, dirt and all. You can create a new Facebook account, friend your old account, then read your friends from the new account by browsing the list on the old. For more instructions on how to do that, read this.

Two words for you: Lock down. Say you go to get hired by some nice company in some city somewhere but they look you up on Facebook and turn you down from some photos you were tagged in at that massive party the weekend before. Sure it's wrong - I don't think it's illegal yet, and businesses do it all the time. The cure? Set the majority of your privacy settings to FRIENDS ONLY. Do that from the Privacy settings page.

I'm not sure what the default privacy settings are anymore but they pretty much open you up to the world. For example, see this website - http://youropenbook.org/. I went through each of the sections and marked the settings as Friends Only or Custom then Only Me.

The point of conflict right now is in the Friends, Tags and Connections area, where they first set your location and all your interests to Everyone on default. You can hide them to Friends Only, but each and every one of the "interest pages" are public and your name is on that page. Sure, cooking and swimming are harmless interests but if you want to keep your guilty pleasure of underwater basket weaving private, your only option now is to remove it from your interests on Facebook.

Another useful privacy tool is the option to hide the photos and videos you were tagged in by default. This option would've spared the individual in the anecdote above. I set mine to Only Me (via the Custom option.)

This past Friday it was said that Facebook held an emergency mandatory meeting, presumably about their privacy blunder. I don't think it's time to jump ship just yet, especially since most everyone I know uses Facebook as a default mode of communication.

The real information to get out of this post is that you have control over most of the data you put on Facebook, but they've deemed your interests and current location as public knowledge, so to prevent it from ending up on Google and in the hands of an ex, a stalker, or your future employers' hands, remove it from Facebook.

Banana Ice Cream!

2010-05-11T19:12:00.003-04:00

So, a few weeks ago I was introduced to one-ingredient banana ice cream. It was by word of mouth at first.. I had to look up instructions after I froze the bananas, unsliced... skin and all.

Anyway, I tried it again correctly last night and the results were pretty spectacular.

I deviated from the recipe only in that I added blended frozen strawberries. I found that the bananas didn't blend well at all, it took a lot of time to get them to look anything close to the picture on the site. Most of the "blending" was done manually with a spoon. I added a little tiny bit of nonfat milk to it to help it blend a bit easier.

After the bananas were in the bowl I tossed 5-6 frozen strawberries into the blender and they turned to strawberry ice dust. I had to scrape that out into the bowl with a spoon. After mixing, it was amazing.

The real key to the whole dessert is you have to use ripened bananas. The friend who introduced me to this didn't wait and tried it on fresh bananas, and it tasted pretty bitter.

I owe you few readers a post about school, but that'll have to wait. My living room is full right now and I must return to Mario Kart. :)

Open Letter to Conservatives

2010-03-23T18:23:00.004-04:00

I can't say I'm a very political person. I'm pretty "moderate", if that's the name of the no-man's-land between the two political parties in this country. I'd say this should be required reading, but I know most people who need to read it will stop reading halfway through and not read anything in the lists.

I do feel it's worth sharing, though. Here's an excerpt:

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some expamples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:

- American Dad, author of the blog linked below.

Above is the letter, linked below is the full article including the long (relevant) list of examples.

An Open Letter to Conservatives

DANCE MUSIC!

2010-03-18T13:31:00.005-04:00

April and May I'm coming to find are going to be amazing months music-wise.

The weekend of April 1st - A State of Trance 450 part one happens in several different countries. I'm pretty sure there will be a live audio stream and hopefully there will be a video stream like last year for ASOT 400.

The weekend of April 9th - A State of Trance 2010 releases and there are SEVERAL tracks that I'm excited about on that album. Also this weekend is the second part of ASOT 450, so that'll be exciting. :)

Saturday April 10 - George Acosta will be playing at Opera in Atlanta. I've talked with him online a bit and I love a great deal of his music, so that's going to be an exciting night.

Wednesday April 14 - Benny Benassi will be at Opera. I've not heard much of his stuff but it seems that it's mainly electro-pop and I could get into that. Sounds like it should be a good night!

Saturday April 17 - Max Graham will be at Opera. I've never seen or heard anything about his live shows but he was featured in a track on A State of Trance 2009 last year and it was a nice tune. I might go to this. :)

Wednesday April 21 - Sander van Doorn will be at Opera! I am so freakin' excited about this. I love his darker/dancier style, so this is probably going to be a night to remember.

Saturday May 15 - Morgan Page will be at Opera. This man constructed the beautiful House track The Longest Road. I think his set will bring down the house, and I'm pretty sure I'll make this show.

I'm not sure I'm going to know what to do with myself. I'm so very excited! haha

Starting Spring Break

2010-03-08T11:02:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone - spring break 2010 starts this week and I finally have a few moments to breathe and write an entry in this thing.

Wrapping up my last post, I dropped Physics. Now I have to work my tail off this semester and in the Summer to keep HOPE. It hit me this morning that it was a little strange that I had a HOPE review just before this past Fall semester and now I'm about to have one again, so I'm going to call Financial Aid and see if I actually even have a review coming.

Anyway, not a lot has happened. Work has been going smoothly. I don't remember if I wrote about it, but I got a job up here - I'm doing work-study with IT support for our Computer Science & Information Systems department. It's pretty exciting. School has still been challenging. Two weekends ago I visited Wayne in Alabama again. We found a new hobby - walking trails.

It was a pretty good trip.

I should probably go outside today to enjoy the weather since the forecast is supposed to be rainy for the rest of the week.

The Importance of the HOPE Scholarship: A Case Study

2010-02-24T01:03:00.002-05:00

Midterms are usually a crunch-time for college students but it's a killer for me this semester. I hit the 90 semester hour mark after this past Fall, which means I'm due for a HOPE evaluation at the end of this school year. Right now I'm sitting at a 2.84 and I need at least a 3 to keep the scholarship.

What will losing it mean for me? Right now HOPE pays for classes and Pell covers most of rent. Provided I continue to receive the Pell Grant, I'll still be able to stay in school but I will likely have to move off-campus in search of cheaper rent, probably with friends in an apartment around here. Rent will hit $560/mo instead of the $535/mo it currently is for me. If I have to stay on campus I'll likely have to pull out a student loan to stay on campus.

Will I even be able to get a 3 in time? I don't know - I'm not sure of what I'd have to do grade-wise besides get all A's, and that might not even help. Physics, Computer/Network Architecture, and Discrete Modeling II got off to a very rough start this semester and I'm trying to do what I can to get back on the ball. Staying focused on that goal has been hard, I'll admit.

I just ran some numbers, and for me to have a 3.0 by the end of this semester I'd have to make a 4.04, which isn't possible. I would have to take at least two hours in the Summer to get it to a 3 at that point. All of this is of course providing that I ace EVERYTHING.

I'm writing this because I'm at a dead-end with a take-home Physics test I recieved. Unless a miracle happens in the morning, I won't finish this test and the grade won't be stellar. We have only three tests, but the final exam is weighted the most (and it won't be cumulative), so there's a small chance. I'm extremely tempted to just drop this class since I won't be able to take the second half of it until Fall. If I were to drop this course now and retake it in the Fall, I'd know to focus a lot more in the beginning and I'd only have to wait a few weeks to take the second half instead of three months.

I'm pretty sure I'd be able to keep my housing if I drop the class - it'll drop be into part-time status, though.. so I'm not too sure. I'd have to ask Housing. I know a friend at Georgia State is in the same situation as I am and they won't be kicking him out.

Part of me wants to finish this test, pass or fail, and work my ass off to get back on the ball. The other half is telling me its realistically not possible to get the marks I need to keep HOPE.

I don't know what to do.

Hello, February

2010-02-04T21:12:00.005-05:00

Hello, second month of the new decade.

I don't think I'd be wrong if I said I'd spent half of this month under cloudcover, and most of that time under rainfall. The weather up here is absolutely gloomy and it really takes a toll on my mood.

Even though the weather can really be crappy up here ~~sometimes~~ most times, some days the weather is absolutely beautiful.

Then again, my having some mystery illness since New Years certainly hasn't helped that. I finally went to the campus clinic a few days ago about it and they gave me some antibiotics and an inhaler to open up my airways. I'll finish the antibiotics over the weekend, so I'm hoping to be over this cough by the start of next week.

I haven't been sleeping very well as of late, and a lot of it is due to renovations that have started on my dorm. They're fixing units that leak excessively during rains. They won't actually be working near my window until August, but they set up camp in front of my unit, so I get to hear them every morning for the next seven months.

I probably would have been over the mystery cough by now but last Wednesday I went back to Opera with some friends to see some awesome DJ's and the cough got a lot worse. Lesson learned, no clubbing while sick. It sure was worth it, though.

Related, only slightly (dancing = exercise), I've started going to the gym here on campus. I really like it there. I went twice last week and I would've gone several days this week but my cough has only just begun to ease up - I didn't want to relapse to bad coughing for the sake of losing a few calories.

In music news I've got my first official gig lined up - I'll be playing at least one set at the dances at Furry Weekend Atlanta. I'm still producing monthly promotional mixes, this month's mix can be found here.

I also met (online) one of the DJ's from Opera, George Lukin. He's a pretty cool guy and he helped me ID one of my favorite tracks from the night.

Keeping with the music theme, I've been working with some local friends on a podcast. They've got me running recording, so this is what I was staring at for several hours last night. I enjoyed it, though. :)

That's it for this update. I have no idea what February has in store for me, or what I have in store for it, but I bet it's going to involve a lot of schoolwork and hopefully a lot less personal illness.

That's College

2010-01-25T11:55:00.001-05:00

Several days ago I was introduced to a gym at a friend's apartment complex. It's "free of charge" (part of the rent) and you can use it whenever you like 24/7 (literally.) I knew I had paid some fee for something similar at KSU, so I took a look at my invoice for Spring semester.

Something doesn't add up:

Athletic Fee - $144.00
Student Activity Fee - $72.00
Health Fee - $51.00
Recreation Center Fee - $42.00

I'm not in athletics, I'm not sure what "Student Activity" is (be it the student center or other random activities that happen around campus, maybe both), I'm not in any health class, and I'm not sure what this recreation center is. Health could be for the health clinic - I'm not sure if you have to pay them while you're there or if that pays for it. I thought it could be part of the food since that's a part of health, but the meal plan is a separate option.

Here's something else,

Transportation Fee - $50.00
Parking Permit - $50.00

Two transportation related fees, same cost -- we have parking permits, we have no public transit on campus outside of CCT that makes its round through here several times a day (from campus to Wal*Mart or something.)

It's frustrating, but it's a fact of college life I suppose.

Of Bookbags & Internet Companies

2010-01-13T21:14:00.005-05:00

TL;DR - Don't buy bookbags from Wal*Mart. They'll look like this after the first week:

It started to fall apart right after I got it then held up pretty well until the last few weeks - then it disintegrated.

Not really, but it tore open enough that anyone could reach inside and take anything out, or if I hit a step just right books would fall out. Because that's really not what I'm looking for in a bookbag, I found a Swiss Gear bookbag at Target for $25, marked down from $59.

Why am I blogging about bookbags? I don't really know, but I'd bet it has a lot to do with the copious amount of free time I have this evening. But my new bookbag came with some spiffy shiny things and more zippers/compartments than I have uses for.

In other news, if you've been living under a rock but peeked out to read this little blog, Google told China to shove it and Facebook's watching everything you do. The first was a bit of a surprise, the second not so much.

Google's not going to censor its search results in China anymore, even if it means ending their business in the country. Why they're doing it is pretty interesting, but I'll let you read it in the link above.

The Rumpus had an interview with an anonymous Facebook employee and essentially at one point in time they had a universal password that could access any account from inside their company's network. Now they just have a little button that lets them "become" you and see everything you've done. I don't have anything to hide - if I did I wouldn't be on Facebook - but that's still a bit creepy.

Holidays, Spring Semester, Snow!

2010-01-07T21:11:00.003-05:00

My last post was when last semester ended, so I've got a bit of catching up to do. A lot of my holiday break was spent with my friend Wayne between my house and his house in Alabama. He's a pretty cool kid.

I caught a stomach bug right after I got back to Warner Robins - luckily it was after my grandparents and other family from Kentucky left. After I recovered from that I went about my break.

Christmas went well - I spent it between Mom's, Dad's, and Granny's as usual. :)

It's a good thing I got an external hard drive for Christmas because my Macbook took a dive and died over New Years. I had literally finished my Time Machine backup a day or two before it died. I spent New Years with Wayne, his family, and a bunch of our friends in Alabama. I was sitting with him at his work and my iPhone USB cable somehow wrapped around one of his jacket buttons as he sat down - when he sat back up when customers came into the store, it tugged my laptop off of the table and onto the tile floor. The HD had some collisions and died.

New Years was spent exploding fireworks, most of the time not according to the instructions. After New Years was two days with friends in Birmingham. I managed to catch a cold, so I'm dealing with the tail end of that mess right now.

Spring semester started today and Mother Nature graced us with snow! Several of my friends laughed, but I'm from central/south Georgia - I don't get to see a lot of snow! The image below links to my snow gallery on Facebook.

That's my friend David being ~~crazy~~ awesome. (I couldn't do the strike on Facebook but I can do it here! Take THAT social media!)

It was pretty interesting because most of the day it was above freezing. It snowed until it got below freezing, then it started sleeting. I think Mother Nature's a bit confused or something. Anyway, the roads are icing up right now. I was originally going to the Apple store to get them to look at my machine tomorrow but with the temperature not getting above freezing tomorrow, I don't want to drive on the icy highway so I'll call them and reschedule.

Fall Semester's OVER

2009-12-12T21:12:00.004-05:00

A Percussion Ensemble
B Database Systems
B Operating Systems
B Global Economics
C Discrete Modeling I

I thought I'd done better in my two computer science courses... Looks like I'll have to work harder next semester. I'm not sure what happened in DM I, other than the final... I'll ask the professor in the beginning of next semester since I'll have the same one again.

I need to study more (and do such on a regular basis.) That'll solve most, if not all, of my academic problems.

GPA is sitting at 2.84. I've gotta bring that up above a 3 before my next HOPE evaluation, whenever that is.

Finals

2009-12-07T17:17:00.004-05:00

Today starts Finals Week and marks the end of my first semester at Kennesaw State University. :) I've got one final this evening, two tomorrow afternoon, and one on Thursday night.

Things were rocky for the first few weeks but I made more friends than a cell phone SIM card from a few years could handle, and I'm more than OK with that. :) It's interesting to think that I left Middle Georgia College after two years with less than five (or so) people I could truly call friends and now I have more than I can count up here.

Living in Metro Atlanta has been a learning experience: I've learned never to trust a vehicle with Cobb tags and that you have to wipe knowledge of driving in the rain/snow if you want to fit in on the interstate. (It's a good thing I've never been much for conforming to fit in.)

It's also kind of nice to have a cafeteria where the chefs experiment... except for when they experiment with a dessert and the result turns out to be cement.

Anyway, I better get offline and start studying.

Dear Murphy

2009-12-01T00:38:00.004-05:00

Your law SUCKS. Repeal it.

Tonight was both our percussion concert and my Database Systems project presentation. At the same time. I literally (thought I had to, more on that) had to run from the percussion concert to the CS building to make it on time for my presentation.

The concert went pretty well until we played Invention. I feel so bad for my roommate because what happened to him has happened to me before. Miss a phrase or something and completely lose your train of thought for the rest of the tune. The tune was a flop but we managed to all finish together and didn't have to stop, so that was good.

I rushed from the music hall to the CS building and found Group 4 presenting. I'm in 8. They were moving a lot slower than I thought they were. That means I could've helped put equipment away (which is something I usually do) and say goodbye to everyone since I might not be performing next semester, but I thought I had to leave.

So our presentation time comes up. I go to the podium computer, get on the website that's hosting my project and the powerpoint file, and download the powerpoint. I also got the website on the screen. We ran through the powerpoint (tripped a few times through it because we hadn't rehearsed) and once we finished it, I went to the website to show the class the application.

To give you an idea of how much work was put into this, we've been working on the project since the semester started. The app I had put plenty of time into but procrastinated so I stayed up working on that app until 5 this morning. Couldn't get to sleep until 5:30 because I was nervous about the presentation and concert.

Well I try to open one of the links on the site and it doesn't load. The connection is timing out. I try a few geek tricks (SSH tunneling and the like) to get to the site (just in case KSU IT was blocking it for some reason) but it wasn't working.

So the presentation fell apart. I kind of walked through bits of the source, answered some questions, and then gave up after it refused to load. None of the computers in the room (even the students) weren't getting in.

I sat down and tried what I could to get into it. FTP, SFTP/SSH, etc weren't working. I tried the site Down For Everyone Or Just Me and it BROKE the site. It didn't say "Yep it's down for everyone" or "No it's just you, the site is online." -- I got a nasty error:

That error message came up on any computer we tried checking it with, so it wasn't just some weird error with my computer. I even tried searching up bogus domains and I got that they were "down." Tried working sites and found they were up.

Mine brought a nasty slew of error messages.

Of course now that I'm back in the dorm and the class has forgotten about tonight, the site works now.

You can see the project here.
The source code can be found here.

Meteor Showers, Rainstorms, and Birthday Parties

2009-11-17T13:27:00.003-05:00

It's been a season for showers of astronomical, meteorological, and cake-and-balloonological varieties.

Last night I went with some friends from the Kennesaw area up to a mountaintop in Jasper, GA to see the Leonids. We were able to see several meteors before the clouds rolled in from the West. I originally had plans with some friends in the South Atlanta area and it would have been a bit more beneficial because the Northern areas got covered in clouds first. We still had a great time, regardless!

The aforementioned clouds brought more rain to the area. Exactly one week ago that tropical storm (or hurricane? I don't remember if it ever made it to that strength) rolled over Kennesaw and soaked us to the bone. I really need to invest in an umbrella so I don't get to my classroom building looking like a wet dog.

I'm about to have to go through the same shenanigans here in a few hours and I'm not terribly excited about it.

This has been a month for birthdays, too. This past week we had celebrations for my friends Izzy, Kari, and Kanu. Later this week will be Arc's birthday. Izzy's party started at Stevie B's (hooray cheap pizza buffets!) and ended up back at his place. Kari's party was at a karaoke (Kari-oke :D) pub in Macon. That was a blast because about eleven of us ended up on the stage singing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." It was fantastic.

The Thanksgiving holiday break is coming up next week. After that we'll have one week of class as normal... then finals week.

The semester's gone by fast.

Leonids

2009-11-03T12:37:00.002-05:00

I stumbled upon a Facebook event for the Leonid Meteor Shower that'll be happening two weeks from now.

That page said it'd be from about 11p Tues the 17th to 4am on the 18th with a peak at 21:43 GT. That GT translated to 6pm EST. Those two don't add up. I've seen on some skywatching sites that they're estimating a peak for North America around 3am Tuesday morning, not Wednesday morning.

Has anyone heard anything? I really would like some clarification, I'm trying to plan an event.

Busy Between DJing and School

2009-11-01T23:16:00.004-05:00

Hey November! You really pulled one on me, DST. Not only was I an hour behind last night since I stayed in Alabama after DJing at a Halloween party but I was two hours behind after you pulled your shenanigans. "You woke up at 10:45" you say... I say 12:45... which explains why I felt so great when I woke up.

The party last night was a blast. Some of my friends converted an old saddle club clubhouse to a nice club-environment to have the party in.

Earlier this week I played my first live gig ever at my friend Courtney's poker night. That was pretty fun. The Halloween party was a bit more significant because they had a large sound system - it was closer to what I'll be working with in the future. And there was an active crowd as opposed to people sitting and playing cards at a table.

School's been crazy but that's just because the semester's starting to wind down. I met up with my academic advisor earlier this week about classes for the Spring and my projected graduation, which we found to be Spring or Summer of 2011. If I don't get my scheduling done right for the Spring, then it pushes everything back until Fall of 2011. It's pretty complicated. :(

We have about one more full month of class left before Finals. Huzzah.

Vexed

2009-10-19T01:18:00.003-04:00

These past few weekends have been thirteen kinds of crazy.

I should have been home last weekend and this coming weekend, not this weekend. Last weekend could have been DJ photography and a good relaxation period from school work and my brother's band schedule. The photography didn't happen this weekend because my friend's camera is "on the fritz." For one of my three days at home, I was in North Georgia for Eric's last away competition. It would have been beneficial for me to have stayed in Kennesaw because I could have driven a short distance to that and not have missed out on some stuff with friends up there.

This coming weekend will be my brother's last high school band competition here in town so at least I won't have a day trip back to North Georgia.

In other news, my Stepsister got into another car accident. She dodged a deer heading to Elko and flipped/rolled into the ditch. Had she not had her seatbelt on, she probably wouldn't be with us any more.

I'm ready for this semester to be over.

October's Here

2009-10-11T22:27:00.003-04:00

I've been so busy with school that I've barely had time for the internet. Unfortunately there have been times where I've chosen to sit on the computer and do nothing on the internet instead of studying, and that's shown in my grades. I'm working on getting better on that, at least.

My little brother's band competition was last weekend and they didn't do so hot. I think this is the first time since before I was at that school that they didn't make finals at a competition. I left KSU too late and wasn't able to make their prelims show, so I was pretty bummed about that. Dad and Kim made it over after the competition and we had lunch at a good Mexican restaurant. That was nice.

The weather can't seem to make up its mind. There'll be one pretty chilly/windy day and then the next thing you know, highs are back in the high eighties, it's muggier than humidor outside, and then we get a few days of London-esque overcast and rain. We're about to start that last bit tomorrow.

This past weekend was my friend Mike Rickard's CD release party for his new CD entitled SWEAT. It was a very good show and I'm so glad I was able to make it over there.

It was also my cousin's oldest-daughter's 4th birthday. I was drafted to take photos. There was also the Tiesto event that I was looking forward to, but the event crashed and burned. Long story short, my friend waited almost five hours in line, myself only about one, and police in riot gear made everyone who was waiting to go inside go home. The details can be found on my Last.FM page. I'm going to see about getting a refund tomorrow.

I had one midterm last week and I've got at least two more tests coming up this week, one of which is tomorrow.

Fall's Here

2009-09-30T12:07:00.003-04:00

This week highs have been floating between the sixties and seventies and the lows between the forties and the fifties. :) Hooray jacket weather!

School is going okay for the most part. I had a Discrete Math exam yesterday that kicked my ass. The worst part was, I had the scratch paper in my pocket when I was out at dinner with friends last night, I brought it out, and some kid who hadn't taken a Discrete class solved a problem in his head. In < 30 seconds. I was stuck for > 30 minutes on it, which is probably why I didn't finish my test.

Moving on from that, yesterday my body decided to wake me up before sunrise and wouldn't let me go to sleep, so I got to watch the sun rise. I ended up going to Waffle House with a friend and then to a concert on campus held by the Atlanta Percussion Trio. Turns out my Percussion professor is one of the three, so that was pretty cool.

I know this is moderately random, but I have a question about your kitchen habits. Please see the poll linked here.

This weekend is my little brother's first last High School band competition. I can't wait to see their show. I hope they do well.

Rain, rain, go away.

2009-09-21T22:49:00.003-04:00

So that rain I mentioned in my last post.

It was in full force today. A thunderstorm started up shortly before I started my blog post last night and I think it finally ended around two this afternoon. All morning it was just thunder, lightning, and a constant heavy downpour. My cousin wrote that we had about 15 inches of rain today. I believe it.

I heard that the Health Sciences building, the Computer Science building, the new cafeteria, and some of the student center flooded today. I know for a fact that the first floor of our dorm (yes, the one that caught fire last week) flooded. The parking lot was a lake, and the traffic circle shown above was like that for about two to three hours today.

KSU was slow to close campus down. Around the middle of the day we got flash flood warnings and "don't come to campus unless it's absolutely necessary" alerts, and finally in the mid-afternoon we got a CAMPUS CLOSED message, followed by a message informing us that campus will be closed tomorrow as well.

I managed to throw together a dinner plan with some friends to get myself out of the dorm for a bit. I had to go to the parking deck to get my car, and probably 80% of the lights are no longer working in there. The power is still on, but a lot of the lights are blown. Maybe the deck got struck by lightning, or maybe it was from the power surges we had this afternoon.

I'm sure 15" of water isn't good for any electrical system.

Anyway, people were talking/worried about it raining for the rest of the week until next Monday, but the weather channel is telling me otherwise. As of about an hour ago, TWC's hourly forecast predicted rain early tomorrow morning, some scattered showers and storms tomorrow afternoon, and then clearing up tomorrow evening for a partly cloudy Wednesday.

Who knows? I don't. TWC doesn't seem to (as the forecast has changed a few times today.)

I'm just ready for the rain to be over, and I'm sure the rest of Atlanta is too.

Anime Weekend Atlanta 2009

2009-09-21T00:56:00.003-04:00

So, AWA 2009 was a lot of fun. The con-feel is definitely different now that I don't live two hours away. It was very rainy. VERY rainy. As my friend Meridith said, buckets of rain - sheets of buckets of rain - trucks of sheets of buckets of rain. Literally, the storms are forming just southwest of Marietta/Kennesaw and they're blowing over us. It's been a thunderstorm here for the past hour or so, maybe more.

Anyway....

That picture will take you to my Facebook gallery from the con. That's my friend Cyan in the suit and my friend Lane hoisted over his shoulder. Man, that was hilarious.

These are posters for my friend DJ's manga Aerial-Rave. I bought his manga for a bit more than he was asking today and he gave me some posters. :3 Now my dorm room isn't so empty.

The only "loot" I have besides his manga and the posters is some Sonic key-chains that I'll add to my Sonic bag. I wanted to find some wall-scrolls but I couldn't find any that I liked. This con was more about spending time with friends and having a blast than buying things, which is how it should be.

I did manage to stay for the dance/rave last night but... it was neither. The first DJ played rap/hip-hop and so the handful of break-dancers were happy, but the rest of the crowd was silent and unmoving. Another DJ came up and started to play some electronica/old-school trance music/eurodance and the crowd went nuts. After a half hour or so of that he went to break-beat and the crowd died, then the rap DJ came back and I left. We waited in the line for 1h30m (photo is below) and it really wasn't worth it.

All in all it was a great weekend.

As far as school is concerned, I've been a bad procrastinator. Things are still getting done, just right before they're due. I'm working on fixing that. Tomorrow will hopefully be a good study/work day.

If Dance Music is Your Thing

2009-09-18T02:45:00.004-04:00

http://www.djkainu.com/mixes/TigerpawPokerMix2.mp3

My latest mix is published and online. Here is the tracklist:

Dirty Vegas - Tonight (Above & Beyond Remix)
Treadstone - Inspirado (Vocal mix)
Ben Preston - Elizabeth
Way Out West feat. Jonathan Mendelsohn vs. Dakota - Only the Fox (DJ Kainu mashup)
Myon & Shane 54 feat. Aruna - Helpless (Ian Flux & Thomas Biofeld remix)
Fredrik Miller - Spring Blossoms
Neptune Project - Aztec
Phuture Sound feat. Angie - Come to Me
Cressida - Onyric (Stoneface & Terminal remix)
Activa vs. Chris & Matt Kidd - U.R. (Stoneface & Terminal remix)
Stoneface & Terminal - Blueprint (Club mix)

--

As far as school is going, my procrastination has been leveling up. :/ My pattern as of late has been to study/do homework the day that the stuff is due. It would usually be the night before, but since all of my classes are at night the pattern's shifted.

This past weekend my Stepmom got me a 2" mattress pad and it's been working wonders.. I think. I haven't had much sleep this week. My only valid excuse was the fire we had in our dorm earlier this week.

I managed to get a picture of the "scene" today. I can't even say that I was scared. It was right about 8am when it went off and I had fallen asleep around 2:30 that morning. Getting out of the building was a blur, the alarms were loud, no one was really sure if we were supposed to leave or if it was some strange drill, etc. After we got down to the first floor we got to the smoke, so we knew it was real.

At least it didn't get out of hand. It could have ended badly.

Anime Weekend Atlanta is this weekend. That should be fun. The weekend after that I'll be staying in Kennesaw for at least Friday night to help out with a fund-raising house party for AIDS Walk Atlanta.

Ferry Corsten & Technology Issues

2009-09-05T03:35:00.002-04:00

This past Wednesday I saw Ferry Corsten at Opera in Atlanta with a friend from Middle Georgia College. We had a blast. This show was way better than the last show he had here.

(That image links to a public gallery from that night.)

I finally got my own wireless router for my dorm so I'm not either chained to my wall or using shady wifi's in the area. Phew. I also ordered Snow Leopard and upgraded this week. Also this week, I got signed up for the MSDNAA thing because I'm a computer science major and I get free software now. :) I downloaded Windows 7 (64-bit edition) and tried to install it on my Macbook. Boot camp really wants me to reformat the entire drive before I do anything with it so that's frustrating to say the least. I don't have enough external hard drive space to pull it off yet. At least not right now. I may tomorrow, we'll see.

Anyway, I took a demo of Parallels 4 (since Snow Leopard broke the version 3 that I already had) and installed it to there. That was a mistake and a waste of a product key. I'll be downloading the 32-bit edition tomorrow sometime.

Oh yeah, I'm also one year older now. Last weekend I turned twenty. :)

I'll leave you all with Armin van Buuren's new single with Dutch singer Van Velson entitled "Broken Tonight."

Kennesaw

2009-08-26T01:06:00.002-04:00

It's week two of the Fall semester at Kennesaw. If you've been following my Facebook or Twitter, you're fully aware of the issues I had adjusting to living on my own up here. The good news, I am more-or-less over the issues in question, so things are all good. :)

In lieu of doing homework (for the moment), I've loaded my recent photos to Facebook and I'll share a few here (along with a link to the album.)

More photos can be found here.

I'm finally starting to build my own schedule around my class schedule and that's helping things along quite a bit. I'm also super-psyched because tomorrow I'm going to see some friends in the Atlanta-area that I haven't seen for quite some time. :)

As far as music is going, I've been getting a lot of inspiration so hopefully I'll have a mix released by the end of September.

Moved to Kennesaw

2009-08-17T01:21:00.003-04:00

This one's going to be a bit long.

Started out that shortly after my last post, I discovered that KSU Housing "didn't receive" my rent money order. UPS said it was delivered. They told me to bring all the documentation related to it, like the MO receipt and the UPS info, but to be prepared to pay the rent anyway. The good news is, I got up here today and it turns out UPS put my room number on the package (I must have told them it, I don't know) so it was sitting in my mailbox. I'm just glad it wasn't fraud or anything. Phew.

I went to Mom's last night to spend some time with her and Eric before I left. After church this morning, I skipped lunch (was too nervous to eat) then started moving stuff out to my car. And then it started to rain.

So I had a sandwich and sat with Mom outside for a while. It was nice. :) After the rain paused, I got the rest of my stuff from her house in the car and went to Dad's for the rest of my stuff.

After reworking how everything was setup in my car under the hot Georgia sun (let's not even mention the 210% humidity), I left.

The trip up to Kennesaw wasn't that bad. Traffic was down to 10mph just South of Macon, so that was fun. It didn't last long, though. Then I went through two storms.

I got to KSU, checked in, got the money order issue taken care of, called Mom and Dad, then went to my room. My RA/roommate Ian was walking the halls, so I got to meet him. He's a cheerful guy. I got to my room and found that my key didn't work, but my room was unlocked so I dropped my bag and stuff off and went to get a new key.

When I first got to the building, the halls were pretty empty, so I figured moving in would be relatively easy... but by the time I got my key replaced, the entire first floor was filled with people with carts waiting on the elevator. So I started moving stuff in manually, walking up the stairs.

After enough of that, Steven and I went to eat at the brand spankin' new cafeteria and it was REALLY good. <3 I'm going to have to expand my meal plan, I'm just sayin'.

Once we were finished with dinner, we went to the floor meeting that Ian and another RA were hosting. It's really sad how hard they had to work to get the people to listen. It was like herding cats.

After the floor meeting, Steven decided that we should go to WalMart for "essential" groceries. Well, we got more than that. We're bad shoppers, but we're working on that. ^^; My bill wasn't as high as his, so I'm still doing OK I suppose. Our biggest issue was that Steven went to the frozen foods first and then we did everything else.

Is thawed then refrozen "frozen" pizza safe to eat?

Anyway, after unpacking everything I got my room settled. Among the things I got from WalMart was rings for my shower rod, since the curtains came with none. The rings were meant to slide onto the rod. Solid steel rings. The rod is screwed (firmly, I might add) into the wall. So that was a no-go. I ended up going back to get some new ones. Then it turned out that they were the EXACT (if not slightly smaller) width of the ringlets on the vinyl layer, so.... Those sucked to fix and put up. But as soon as they were up, I had a shower.

And it felt amazing.

So once I got my awesome Wii pajama pants and a good night-shirt on, I get online to post this and the Facebook photos... but I see that I have a message from some random girl. Turns out I dropped my KSU ID in the WalMart parking lot. So I grabbed Steven (since he's been here longer than I have and he's lived in that complex before) and we went to find her. We succeeded, and I got my ID back. Hooray awesome people! I can't believe how lucky I am that it happened as it did. It was in the PARKING LOT no less!

I wondered how it happened then realized that I took it out of my wallet when Steven and I went to get dinner and instead of putting it back in the wallet, it went into my jean pockets. Lesson learned.

So now I'm back in my room. Getting ready for bed. I'm really sleepy. :|

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

2009-08-14T21:33:00.003-04:00

So, I started packing for Sunday's move to Kennesaw State University today. Earlier this week Kim and I got a bunch of stuff from WalMart for this. Yesterday was spent with washing bedding, towels, and my own laundry (as well as helping my Dad's company digitize some drawings. Finally, a paycheck!)

Today I played around with car-packing configurations and filled up the two-totes I had from my MGC moving experience. I'm pretty sure I can get the two totes into the back of my car as well as my laundry basket, then having the other stuff kind of free-floating in the empty spots.

I really wish I would have factored moving into my car-purchase planning. Maybe I would have sided with a truck or an SUV. At least it's not the old Taurus. I wouldn't be able to fit all of this into it.

I didn't realize that I would need so much stuff. Mainly the "stuff" in question is all of the cleaning and cooking supplies I'm bringing for the group. I think I've more or less got us squared away.

I've still got to get stuff from my Mom's too. :/ Mainly my monitor, some figures for my desk, and some hangers. I haven't been at the house recently because I had family from Florida visiting so tomorrow will be a day for Mom.

Quote of the Day

2009-08-12T22:23:00.002-04:00

(10:21:43 PM) Mom: what is discrete modeling??
(10:21:55 PM) Me: I'm not entirely sure myself.
(10:22:10 PM) Mom: you better not be taking off your clothes!!
(10:22:15 PM) Mom: haha
(10:22:20 PM) Me: LOL.
(10:22:24 PM) Me: No it's some kind of math class.
(10:22:29 PM) Mom: oh
(10:22:49 PM) Mom: it sounds questionable.....

If I weren't only running on three hours asleep, I would have remembered to have given her this in the middle of the chat.

Fun Twitter Apps

2009-08-06T18:11:00.004-04:00

So, if you are on the Twitter service, you should check out the following applications. The first two are Twitter clients, the rest are fun uses for Twitter on the web.

TweetDeck - An Adobe AIR Twitter client. It's laid out nicely but it really only gets fun if you have a large screen resolution so you can have enough room for a search column. I usually search #asot OR asot on Thursday's during Armin van Buuren's A State of Trance radio show to keep in the loop with the Trance community on Twitter.

TwitterFon - An Twitter client for the iPhone/iTouch. I spent the money and went Pro after the free version started to get ads. It's a pretty nifty program as you can update your location, upload straight to Twitpic instead of sending an email, and manage multiple accounts with it. My only complaints recently is that the "flip" render (when you turn the device on its side) is really choppy and sometimes annoyingly slow.

CurseBird - A Twitter statistics app that monitors curse words on the network. You can even enter in a username to get stats on their cursing. It's good for giggles, that's about it.

TweetStats - Another Twitter statistics app but this one is essentially that, a dashboard-like view of your Twitter career, such as most used words, who you retweet the most, when you Tweet the most through the week (and during the day), and all sorts of other fun stuff. You can also use the Word Cloud that gets produced to make a Wordle. That's the last image in this little set.

TwitterHolic - This is the first major Twitter/web app I knew of, I think. It's pretty much a WHO'S MOST POPULAR list but you can see who is "most popular" by location, such as Warner Robins, GA.

In my Psychology class, we were told that data is unorganized facts. Information is taking those facts and getting something useful out of them. With the exception of fact, Twitter could be seen as the data and those web apps could be facets of information that they give.

One of my friends said a while back that "Twitter is the answer to a question that hasn't been found yet." I think that given all the other Twitter services out there, such as TwitPoop, ExecTweets, and FileSocial, it's not as if we aren't searching far and wide.

ORLY, Orly?

2009-08-04T12:56:00.005-04:00

As a side-note, I think this case was a goner from the beginning because of both Orly's name and the Internet meme it reflects.

I've kept my mouth shut about this whole Birther issue because I didn't know a lot about it, but... Today I was linked to an article/video that says it all.

This is a quote from the blog post from the person who Orly replaced in the MSNBC interview:

But shortly after I agreed to go on, the booker called and said they had to cancel. The reason why, it turns out, is that they'd booked de facto Birther movement leader Orly Taitz instead. [...] Sure, they may have lost out on facts and reasoned discussion, but even I'm more than willing to admit that on my best day I can never be as, um, entertaining as Taitz was.

The video was pretty ridiculous, and funny. I went to Google to find what Comedy Central's Jon Stewart has said about her (I remember his segment on it being pretty funny) and I found two websites for this whole Birther thing. It seems the Birthers' ""web design"" is just as bad as their "tactics" and logic in this whole matter. (Speaking of their tactics, it seems the "Kenyan birth certificate" was forged from an Australian birth certificate. Way to be mature, America.)

Here are screen captures of the sites in question if you don't want to follow the links:

Here's that hilarious career-killing moment on MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

In other news, if you happen to support same-sex marriage, there is a survey being taken regarding DOMA that will be submitted to the White House.

Not a lot happening, yet...

2009-07-31T00:53:00.004-04:00

One day I will learn to appreciate this break for what it is -- a break.

I finished in my Lit class with a B. :) I need to make sure that MGC has sent the transcript off. I asked them to a few months ago, but as to if they have or not.... I'll find out.

I also mailed off my first bit of rent, since for some reason the first payment can't be online via credit card. I do hope it gets there in good order because the girl I dealt with at More Than Mail was a bit... spacey. And their Windows 95-esque applications they had running scared be a bit.

Speaking of technology, if you have an iPhone, read this article. I believe it's the first true-to-form VIRUS for an Apple product. IE it replicates, spreads, and has the potential to do damage. I'll be turning off my phone while I'm asleep so if this rogue message arrives, it'll be while I'm awake so I can turn the bloody bastard off.

A QUESTION FOR YOU (few) READERS, how do you do todo lists?

I've tried old fashioned notebook paper, but usually the lists get out of date and there ends up being more papers with todo items than I know what to do with. I've tried maintaining a text file, adding and removing items as they come but it's only on one computer so that makes mobile insights and AH-HA's a bit difficult to log. GMail's Tasks lab app is good but it doesn't work on the iPhone and sometimes I forget to check it. Well, a lot of times.

I'm planning on keeping big todos on my bathroom mirror with glass markers. That'll be fun. :) COLORS!

I have a feeling instead of having to do ONE Physics class that I may have to take THREE... and if that's the case, I might as well just expect a 2.5 or 3 year stay at Kennesaw. :/ I'm almost positive that means I'll have student loans by the time I graduate (knock on wood, none to date yet) so... we'll see.

In other news, I got some nice money selling some old stuff on eBay and have purchased an audio card for my Macbook. Now all I need is a mixer. My DJ friend Draconum pointed me in the right direction, so it should happen soon. For my roommates' sanity, I'll probably just hack normal computer speakers to be my output instead of bookshelf-size studio monitors.

In job-news, I found some job opportunities for on campus work and submitted my resume to one of them. I haven't received an email or a phone call yet. I wonder if I should just go on ahead and submit my resume to the other jobs that piqued my interest. Thoughts?

Registered for Classes

2009-07-21T22:02:00.003-04:00

Monday:
Percussion 4-4:50p
Database systems 8-10:45p

Tuesday:
Discrete math 3:30-4:45p
Operating systems 6:30-7:45p
Economics 8-9:15p

Thursday:
Discrete math 3:30-4:45p
Operating systems 6:30-7:45p
Economics 8-9:15p

Friday:
Percussion 4-4:50p

Orientation went well. I'm pretty happy with my course schedule, as long as I don't end up with any morning classes. I still have to work a Calculus and/or a Physics class into that mix. It just depends, I have a bit more paperwork to go through.

I have my last Final exam at MGC tomorrow. That's relatively exciting. I just have quite a bit of studying to do.

Furries Dancing

2009-07-13T17:00:00.002-04:00

This is a clip from my friend Draconum's set a few weeks ago. Oliver Smith's mix of Meet Me In Montauk. I love this tune.

In other fairly random news, remember the huge dragon I used to have in my room at my Dad's house? It got replaced with a smaller/cuter (I can't believe I used that word) decoration.

I figure a few things. If I'm too poor, not home enough, and don't have the time right now to own a real dog, I can own a fake one. Don't have to worry about house training or keeping up with food and water. Just gotta watch for sharp objects. Also, while it may be a bit odd, if the world didn't have oddities, it'd be a pretty boring place. :)

A Public Service Announcement

2009-07-09T22:57:00.002-04:00

That is all. Well... no, I lied.

Big things could be coming. :)

Things Could Have Been Worse

2009-07-08T00:22:00.005-04:00

But then again, they weren't as bad as I initially thought.

A few hours after my last blog post, I dodged a dead dog on a main road in town and ended up blowing a tire on some kind of road divider. My car didn't have a jack, so I called a friend to come help me. The spare was completely deflated and I was too far from a gas station to get air, so I had to call my Mom to get her to bring a tool from my old car out to us.

I was worried about me finding a relatively cheap tire, but I managed to find one for $54. After getting it replaced (it was beyond repair,) I noticed what I thought was a scratch on my car. It looked like someone had keyed my car. Turns out it was bubble gum or something that hit my car on the highway.

The moral of this story? Don't throw crap (ESPECIALLY GUM) out of your car window on the highway... or I will find you, pillage your village, and steal your women.

In other random news, Steve's back in Germany. He should be back stateside in September.

Last night I had three beverages (totaling seven shots of espresso) over a five hour period at Starbucks, working on the culmination of two months of procrastination. It was an annotated bibliography over some element of American Literature that existed before the Civil War. I chose some pretty radical interpretations of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. The project was due at 11:59pm and I finished/turned it in at 11:48p.

So, I move to Kennesaw in a little over a month. The semester at MGC ends in the next few weeks, and I'll be a college graduate.

Exciting. :) Also, if you haven't noticed, my layout here has changed. I got it from http://btemplates.com/ . :) Below you is a great song by Nic Chagall.

The Pirate Bay

2009-07-01T11:32:00.003-04:00

So, the Pirate Bay, a Bittorrent tracker setup by the Pirate Party of Sweden recently got tangled up in some lawsuits from America, and they lost. People feared the site and service would go down but it didn't. Now it seems the service is going to be bought out by Global Gaming Factory X AB, as stated by their blog entry on the matter.

After getting home from work today, I found this article on the BBC. In essence, they will pay users to share the files, but where will the money come from? The quote is below.

"More than half of all internet traffic is file sharing and P2P [peer-to-peer] traffic and buying Pirate Bay gives us one of the biggest sources of traffic.

"We can then use this massive network of file-sharers to help [internet service providers] reduce overload.

"Let's say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site - which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP - we can take that song and put it out on P2P.

"The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn't have a million people all grabbing a file and - for the users who share that song - a payment for putting that file on the P2P network."

It does not state anywhere in the article that the end-user downloading the item will have to pay for their content. Later the article mentions that they would be making money from the ISP since they could take up to 90% of the load off of their network, so perhaps that could fund this endeavor.

My second question about all of this is: what about content that is not illegal? I know some linux distributions, for example, are spread via bittorrent. If they were to be hosted at TPB (or whatever this conglomerate will be), if the end-user has to pay for a download, will they have to pay for the normally-free software? Or what about music that some artists put out in the public to be free? Instead of hosting on their sites, they load it to P2P land. Will it cost at TPB?

I'd like to hear your thoughts, lurkers.

Rank1 & Jacksonville City Beach

2009-06-18T00:41:00.007-04:00

The Rank1 show was AMAZING. Unfortunately the iPhone 3.0 update came out today so I didn't have video-taking capabilities at the show. It topped the last Armin event that I went to. I was dancing the ENTIRE TIME and I was very sore/tired the day after.

ATB is tomorrow night. Depending on the ticket price, I may not go. I haven't gotten my ticket yet. I really do want to go, though.

--

I am finally home from vacation. It didn't feel like a vacation though because I had a great deal of Summer coursework to do and things weren't as enjoyable as they could have been. That's another story for another blog, though.

The quickie from the vacation: We got to a late start for the trip down. We did get to stop in Valdosta to see my sister, her husband, and my nephew & niece who were visiting. :)

The first night was rainy and the bar beside our hotel was PACKED so we didn't get to sleep until late. The second day was spent between the beach and the pool. The third day was spent between the pool and a water park. Dinner that night was at Sticky Fingers. I recommend that restaurant chain to EVERYONE who likes ribs. :)

The third day was spent between the pool and Avenue's Mall.

Every morning I was in the hotel room for several hours because of homework. I didn't go to the ocean much on this vacation because the water was ICE cold and cloudy. I couldn't see the sharks and sting rays when they swam by. Yes, both happened.

Today's journey home was just that - a journey. It took seemingly forever because instead of taking I-75 and I-95 (or whatever), Mom's Garmin decided to take us through some back-roads. For the whole trip. It was the most irritating thing ever, considering we came close to running out of gas and the lack of traffic meant that if we had broken down, we probably would've had to have waited a while to be found.

--

Here is the YouTube video from a fun Improv Everywhere event that happened (I assume) recently. I'd really love to participate in one of these. Or get some friends together and get us to do something like this on our own. :)

My friend Draconum also posted an article that is HIGHLY relevant to my interests. This is basically what I planned on doing with my life in the next ten to twenty years. :) Developers by day, DJs by night.

--

Also, with the stuff going on in Iran right now... I have been following some Iranian twitter users. Things are crazy over there right now. :/ I just hope these guys will be okay.

Just kidding, sorry.

2009-06-08T00:22:00.003-04:00

My MacBook is okay. :)

I remembered that the ominous beeping noise was familiar from when I replaced the memory on my old MacBook.

I took apart the bottom of the case like I was supposed to, removed the memory chips for a moment, then replaced them. I also gently nudged the hard drive to attempt to reconnect the SATA link if it had come undone.

After reassembling the case, replacing the battery, returning the laptop to its upright and open position, and turning it on, it worked. In fact, it went through it's unhibernate-screen and brought me back to where it was.

Just to be safe I ran the disk utility. Everything looks good... so far. I also rebooted and nothing bad happened.

It is definitely time to invest in a large external hard drive to use Apple's Time Machine (backup) software. I don't need another scare like this again.

Note to self: Cancel Apple concierge appointment in the morning.

Panama City Beach + Dead MacBook

2009-06-07T19:50:00.003-04:00

I'd be posting photos from the vacation like crazy, but alas they are on my iPhone which syncs to my MacBook. Said laptop was in my bookbag that took a swan-dive off of the kitchen counter after I got home. (It was sleeping & wouldn't respond, so I shut it off. Tried to boot and it just gave short error tones.)

The few pictures that will be posted were from my Twitpic account. Also, Twitpic is being kind of weird right now so if the images don't show up right now, check back later.

I now have an appointment with the Apple Store in Atlanta on Tuesday morning.

Back to the vacation, it was a lot of fun. Passing through Perry my tire pressure warning light came on. We stopped and checked them out. The front left was at 20 psi when it should have been at 32. We rectified the situation, I reset my light, we went back on the highway, and not five minutes later it came on again. We stopped some time after, and there was no change. My light is still giving me troubles and there is no visible sign of a problem. We even took my car to the Tire Center at the WalMart in Panama City Beach and they couldn't find anything wrong.

I'll be going to the Toyota dealership where I got it from tomorrow morning to have them look at it.

Other than the random car issues, the trip was good.

During the first few mornings I went to a Starbucks to get away from the ocean so I could focus on homework. After that I'd be between the condo room and the ocean. I only went to the pool once, I think. Maybe twice.

Didn't do much shopping on my own or with the family as a whole... I mainly went when I had to take my brother and his girlfriend out.

The sunset was pretty nice, NGL.

The beach was nice, too. We didn't have a seaweed or jellyfish problem this trip. :) The first full day was pretty rainy in the morning but the afternoon was nice. The next day was about the same, just with more sun. The last full day we had was picture-perfect all day.

We had a bit of silliness on the trip as well. I picked this little guy up (believe me -- LITTLE. I knew I should have gotten the bigger one) and my brother and his girlfriend got a huge turtle & a lobster respectively. Those were a lot of fun in the ocean. I used my whale as a chair in the sand but it started to go flat. I thought it was just because I'm heavy but it turns out a cigarette ash (or something) got it. It's all patched up now, though. I don't know why I bothered. Leaving it outside at Dad's just means either the dogs will chew it up or my stepsister's rowdy friends will pop it.

This was taken last night while we were all waiting to go to dinner. If this isn't relaxed, I don't know what is.

June: LGBT Month

2009-06-02T22:29:00.006-04:00

First of all, thank you Mr.Obama.

One of my friends made the following comment on the proclamation:

Well, we certainly can't claim to be a Christian nation when the President pulls this crap on his own initiative...can we?

First of all, we aren't a Christian nation. I thought the Founding Fathers established a nation where there was NO single official religion?

Second, I'm sure this isn't "his own" initiative. He has a ton of people behind him on this issue.

I don't think half of the strongly opposed actually read the proclamation, but that's just me and my pessimism speaking.

I don't understand why people are so opposed to this. It is an immature plague of learned and preconceived notions/judgements that blind people from seeing the truth.

--

In slightly related news, which makes it kind of interesting that this proclamation got released today, I was at work getting some tools together and I saw two guys pull up in a car. The passenger got out, kissed the driver good bye, they told each other to have a good day, the passenger went inside the lobby to the building and the driver drove off. Then this happens.

There's more.

I really do not understand people.

The guy that was earlier mentioned once basically told me that he felt LGBT was wrong, that they shouldn't be allowed to marry, and that he'd still be friends with LGBT people.

How in the world can you call yourself a friend when you deny the said friend the right to marry his or her loved one? You are their "friend" when you believe a keystone to their foundation makes them wrong. It's like a faux friendship. If you even want to call it that. It really makes my insides burn.

Hypocrisy... I love it.

Client #1: Complete

2009-05-29T21:34:00.003-04:00

My friend and I have completed our first client's website. :)

If you or anyone you know is in need of some kind of website, drop me a line here and we'll talk things over OR you can go to our unfinished website and wait for us to finish and launch it: http://www.designplox.net/ .

In other news, my stepsister is a high school graduate!

Really California?

2009-05-26T20:05:00.005-04:00

You are dead to me.

In much less depressing news, next Tuesday check out Matthew Ebel performing live at 6pm at http://ustre.am/Xn. He is very A+. If you are in the central-Georgia area and visited the Drip Drop Cafe on a concert night when it was still in business, he is very similar to those artists.

Here's a shameless plug to some of my other friends/artists: Mike Rickard, Marce, Steph Hayes & The Good Problems, Chris Schutz & The Tourists, and Ronnda Cadle.

Persistent links to these wonderful folks will be added to my sidebar momentarily.

Plagirism At Its Best

2009-05-23T10:52:00.004-04:00

I had previously assumed that those who cheat would try to hide it so they wouldn't be discovered. After all, if you are caught cheating in any college class, the punishment is pretty much you being tossed out of school - that would essentially ruin any college-required future you would have. That being said, if you were going to cheat, you need have a good enough reason to risk your future. For example, the assignment you are working on has to be hard enough that your future is jeopardized already. Furthermore, once you do it, you need to try to not get caught.

This morning I sign into WebCT (service that hosts our online courses at MGC) and start checking out the public discussion board for my Computer Literacy course. As part of the course requirements, for each chapter we have to start one discussion and reply to two other students' discussions. I had already posted my discussion last night and was hoping some students had caught up so that I could write my two replies.

So I went on to read a certain student's post and recognized my writing style. I opened my post and easily saw where she had copied and pasted. I also love the newline at the top of her post where she captured the one of the newlines in her selecting for the CTRL+C.

You can click the following images to enlarge them.

This person didn't even take the time to move some of my words around. Taking out my commentary and subsequently moving the period does not make it your own work.

Star Trek: Too Badass for Humans to Experience in Real Life

2009-05-23T00:02:00.004-04:00

The one thing I hate about the movie, though I really love it so much, is the realization of where we are in terms of technology.

In other words, I'm sad that I won't be alive to experience stuff like this when it is around.

Probably some of my favorite scenes from the movie are when Kirk is driving that car or riding his bike in Iowa and there's a HUGE launch tower thing in the distance, just chilling there. I remember back when I was in elementary school when I'd be late getting to school because my Mom, my brother, and I would sit and watch the live shuttle launch from Florida. It was a big deal back then. It still (more or less) is.

Of course 'Trek is fiction and Hollywood, but one day we will be somewhere near that stage. I don't think it will happen while we're still fighting amongst ourselves here, though. It seems people come to unity easier when they have a common enemy, instead of a common (positive) goal.

(Icon made by my friend Kari.)

Cameras ready, prepare to flash.

2009-05-19T23:17:00.004-04:00

Summer semester started today. I was up until 2am last night, and since the classes opened at 12am today I had time to explore and get the preliminary "read the rules" stuff out of the way. It's funny, it's almost 24 hours later and my class with Dr.Colon doesn't even have the entry quiz up yet. I think he forgot that the semester started today.

June is really starting to fill up for me. In the first week I'll be going to Panama City Beach with my Dad and that family. A few days later I'll be turning around and going to Jacksonville Beach with my Mom and other family. Rank 1 will be playing at Opera on the 11th and I might be in Jacksonville during that time, so I'm not sure if I can make it or not yet.

As far as the subject line goes, it's lyrics from the JOC rework of Green Velvet's "Flash." I've been listening to the ASOT400 weekend again and that's the opening track of Simon Patterson's set from the second night. If you're into dance music and missed out on the weekend (or you saw it and want to relive it) then check out this torrent. It's a 6.15gb beast, so watch out.

In other random news, I guess Warner Robins is a "real" city now because we have our own Doom-monger. There's been talk of some guy standing at the corner of Houston Lake and Watson with a ventriloquist dummy and some sign strapped to him but no one's been able to read the sign until now:

It says something from revelations,
ronald reagan being the antichrist, and
come to jesus before the end of the time.

-JD's tweet regarding the matter.

In more random news, I saw a SUV on Watson today that had a "Twilight Mom" sticker on the back window. I don't know what to think of that.

To break the monotony of these posts, here's a picture of the twilight sky from this evening.

Oh, summer.

2009-05-17T23:45:00.005-04:00

So, the new Dane Cook show is on. (ISolated INcident.) It's good, I like it. Pretty dirty, but still good. Lots of new material. :D

The past week hasn't been too exciting. I was supposed to go to work-study but my boss canceled on me for last Monday and said sometime this week would be good. I'll be going to Cochran on Tuesday to get books for the Summer semester, which starts the same day. Hopefully I can meet with my advisor to fill out a graduation check-list sheet.

I'm pretty tired of weighing 230 pounds, so I'm trying to be healthier. I'm going to try my best to walk at least once a day, even if it's so muggy outside that you can move your arms fast and swim through the air. I'm also trying to drink more water throughout the day instead of sweet tea. I told myself last night I'd make smarter food decisions but that totally did NOT work out today.

Oh, I got an iPhone.

In other news, the desktop PC had a bout of Spyware & CHROME of all things got infected. I was disappointed.

Note some of the intricacies about this screenshot. First of all, Chrome's UI foils the attempt to make IE [insert version number] look like a faux Windows Explorer window. Also, I love Chrome's download verification thing. Looks like this thing was trying to install some extra stuff, as well as throw more pop-ups on the screen.

So yeah. Definitely bored. 16 days until I go to the beach.

Power outages

2009-05-10T21:15:00.003-04:00

Technology has come a long way, and the majority of it relies on electricity. Most people take electricity for granted and never really think about it unless either they pay the bill themselves, or there is a power outage.

I do wonder how many people are actually prepared and knowledgeable for what to do in a power outage. (I do believe that would depend on where they lived - how often the power is out where they live, if they have electricity at all.) Taking that idea a step further, I wonder just how prepared we as a society are for some kind of war or event that would throw us back to the stone-age.

Tonight my Mom, my brother, and I were planning dinner but a strong storm knocked the power out. We couldn't cook because we have an electric stove. We couldn't boil water for tea without starting a fire in the fireplace. We couldn't call out for take-out/delivery without using our cell phones. I know that rotary phones can be still used when the power is out, but even that wouldn't work for people who move to the highly-pushed digital telephone service. I ended up calling a restaurant from my cellphone to make sure they had power (after googling [SMS 466453] their number) to make sure it wouldn't be a waste of gas to drive out there. (They were indeed open and we had our dinner there.)

Zooming back out, I'm pretty sure if electricity were taken out on a nationwide scale that cellular telephone service would fall through, unless each cell tower location had its own set of emergency generators. I'd like to think they do. So cell phones would be a viable communication option for at least a week, seeing as batteries would die. I know there are wind-up-flashlights that generate electricity and I'm sure the concept could be applied to a battery charger of any kind, if it hasn't already yet.

Enough ranting, though. If anyone has any ideas or comments, I would love to hear them.

Grades are posted (way faster than before)

2009-05-08T23:48:00.008-04:00

So... Yeah. Calculus II is a miracle, I'm not gonna lie. I expected worse. I kind of expected that in Biology, but I thought I'd do a lot better seeing as how I made an A last semester in Principles of Bio I. I had a different professor this time around and I didn't do all I could to adjust to the different teaching methods.

I knew all of the others would be what they were. :) I'm proud of them.

My GPA for the semester is a 2.94 and my overall GPA is a 3.20. Last semester's GPA was a 2.86 with my overall GPA at that time being a 3.29.

I will do better next semester. I just hope I do okay at Kennesaw.

Principles of Biology II	C
Object-Oriented Programming in C++	A
Object-Oriented Programing in Java	A
Ultimate Frisbee	A
Calculus II	D
Music Appreciation	A

The End of an Era

2009-05-06T23:01:00.003-04:00

This week marks the (more or less) end of my full-time stay at Middle Georgia College.

I had my last final on Tuesday morning. Today, our anime club (Animation Exclamation: Koryo) had a spaghetti dinner at our Club Advisor's house, who happens to be my Biology professor from this past Fall semester.

Pretty much the only people who showed up were the regular club attendees. We had a blast though. The spaghetti was the best I had ever had in my life (thanks again, Zack!) I also came to the realization that chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream mixed with espresso chip ice cream is possibly one of the best things ever... at least in my little universe.

Tonight was a blast and I hope we all meet up again in the future to do something, but I'm not sure how feasible that is in reality. I know since my professor and her husband are big geeks like I am, we might run into each other at a convention down the road, but who knows. It's really kind of weird to think that most everyone is going our own separate way from here on out.

It's also really interesting to think, out of all of the people I met at Middle Georgia College, my AnEx friends are probably the closest I've had here, even including percussion.

Now it's time to hope for the best when grades get released. My Calculus II grade determines whether or not I'll leave Middle Georgia College as simply just a transfer student or as a transfer student with an Associates Degree in Computer Science.

How to cool down your humble abode,

2009-05-05T18:37:00.002-04:00

Turn all flat-panels' brightness down to at least 50%.

I'm not sure if it's limited to certain technologies, but all of our flat-panel displays emitted a lot of heat (you could really tell if you held your hand above the display.) Turning down the brightness yielded a noticeable difference in temperature on all the computer monitors and the hdtv we have.

Give this a try and save your a/c and electric bill! ^^

I'm not dead (knock on wood)

2009-04-29T13:09:00.003-04:00

I've definitely been busy with exams, projects, and general studying to get ready for finals. x_x

Last week I went to the Markus Schulz show in Atlanta with some friends. The show was.. okay. The crowd really sucked, and I think Markus' crazy tour schedule is getting to his nerves. Or something.

I went swimming for the first time this year last weekend. :D It was fun. I'm glad that this weekend will be warm so that I can do it again.

I got my apartment in Kennesaw lined up. I've got some pretty awesome roommates. :D

I can't really think of anything else to write. So much has been going on.

My Twitter account has been unlocked so now anyone can follow it.

http://www.twitter.com/drgnkiyo

Long time, no blog

2009-04-12T23:24:00.003-04:00

No, I'm not dead. I've just been very busy.

So the Armin van Buuren show on the first of this month was pretty amazing. There was a LOT more people than normal so the dance floor was insanely hot. He took the decks a half hour early (and consequently ended a half hour early.) I managed to catch a clip of the show while I was taking a break from dancing my butt off.

I can't wait until he comes back. The vibe is ALWAYS different with him, and I still don't know why. I bet it has a lot to do with him holding onto his #1 Worldwide DJ for the second year in a row, though. :)

School has been hectic. From today we have TWELVE school days until Finals Week. Roughly. More or less. Don't quote me on that. Either way, it's three more weeks and I'm really excited about this semester coming to an end.

I GOT ACCEPTED TO KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY.

:)

Shaun (mentioned in the last blog) and I had everything planned out as far as being apartment mates goes, but he didn't get accepted to the music program and since he's finished all of his core, there's no reason for him to go. :( I've been scouring the internet for possible roommates with no luck, so I think I'm gonna end up with a stranger. :( All I can hope for is that I make some awesome new friends or Shaun reapplies and gets in for Spring.

For you readers who are into trance/dance music, check out this track -

It's really good. "On a Good Day" by Oceanlab, remixed by Daniel Kandi.

I think I'm going to leave the Blogosphere with that for the night.

This week is going to be insane.

Microblogging Friday

2009-03-28T11:04:00.004-04:00

(I can't guarantee the accuracy of these times (not like it really matters) because I wrote it all when I got home, not as the day progressed.) Also I'll add pictures as soon as Shaun wakes up and uploads them to Facebook.

4:30am - Woke up with my mouth feeling like a dry desert. Destroyed a glass of water then went back to bed.

10:40am - Woke up to start my day. Went to Mom's to shower, do homework, etc.

11:00am - Get to Mom's, find letter from Internal Audit Dept. Panicked over possible tax errors. It was just my new debit card from the bank. Phew.

1:30pm - Eating lunch and struggling to finish OOP C++ homework in time so I can go to my meeting with my new advisor at Kennesaw.

3:00pm - Get done with in-town errands and get on the interstate.

4:30pm - Standing still on the interstate. Advisor leaves office at 5pm. I call her to tell her I probably won't make it. We reschedule for next week.

5:15pm - Met with Shaun at Lenox Mall after getting turned around on Peachtree St. We eat pizza for dinner then wander the mall.

8:00pm - Get a call from Mat. I gave him the wrong directions to Lenox. Had to walk him through how to get to the mall (correctly, this time.)

9:20pm - We leave Lenox in search of gasoline for the Scion. Got turned around twice. Made it just in time, though.

9:40pm - Arrived at Churchill Grounds. Depart with GPS in hand in search of an ATM machine.

9:45pm - Accosted by two beggers already. This is getting really old and Shaun has no street smarts that he's demonstrating. No ATM yet.

9:50pm - Find an ATM but it rejects my PIN. We give up and Shaun covers my entry fee. We sit down, start listening, and order dinner.

12:00am - Main performance ends. We go to the parking lot and end up talking. Mat and Shaun light up their 8" cigars and lots of penis jokes arise.

1:15am - Still in the parking lot and I decide to go home.

2:30am - I'm tired of being on the road by this point and I'm singing Panic! at the Disco to keep myself awake.

3:00am - Get home to find Dad and Kim still awake. There are flowers on the kitchen table, so Dad must have apologized earlier today.

3:09am - Finishing this microblog, turning off the lights/laptop, and going to bed. *flop*

Innerpartysystem

2009-03-22T12:45:00.003-04:00

My friend Andrew gave me Innerpartysystem's EP (and a lot of other music) before we got out on spring break. I've slowly been adding the music to my library so I don't get overwhelmed. I went on a road trip yesterday and decided to add this group to my iPod.

They were practically all I listened to.

I've been listening to them for less than twenty-four hours, I've listened them fifty-two times. That puts them at #1 for the past seven days with Armin van Buuren at #2 with twenty-two tracks played.

They are also already at #8 for my three-month statistics. :)

Friends and sushi

2009-03-18T14:54:00.005-04:00

(For those of you who keep up with this thing, my professor got the grading issue sorted out.)

Monday was spent with my friends Mat and Shaun. We went to Moe's shortly after they opened, raided Wal*Mart, then went to the mall to kill time until we went to see Medea Goes to Jail. That's a very funny movie and I highly recommend going to see it.

That's Mat thoroughly enjoying a poster in Spencer's.

After the movie, we all went our separate ways. I went to Starbucks for a friend's birthday gathering. I also tried Quiznos for the first time. It takes great, it's just too expensive for that food.

Yesterday I was in Atlanta with my friend Anthony. We shopped around in the Lenox mall for several hours before going to a friend's to make/eat a lot of sushi. :) Also, while I was at the mall I found a nice Quicksilver shirt and Anthony introduced me to Starbucks' iced soy green tea latte (say that five times fast.)

Anyway (back to sushi) if I remember correctly, it's the second time in my life that I've really just chowed down on sushi. It was a lot of fun.

The ride home kind of sucked because my "You should have filled up two hours ago, jackass" light came on in the ghetto. One I made it back to the interstate, I was still in Northbound mode so I ended up back in Atlanta.

When I crossed over a hilltop and saw a few skyscrapers, I honestly thought to myself "Wait, when did this area get buildings like that? Am I going the right way?" It was about that time that I realized that the exit numbers were incrementing (In Georgia they get larger the further North you go from the South border), and I angrily shouted an expletive as I looked at 1:31am staring back at me on the clock.

Here are some random videos that we watched after pillaging sushi.

I can't wait for this weekend.

Unacceptable

2009-03-15T14:53:00.003-04:00

If you are planning on taking online classes, don't choose Middle Georgia College for your school. Especially if you are a computer science major. Find somewhere else.

On several occassions, the WebCT answer bank has been wrong. In my first semester at MGC, one of the questions was along the lines of "What cable transports data across the network?" The answer (Written in black and white in the textbook too) was CAT-5. The test bank said PS/2 (keyboard/mouse input transport.) The worst part is, my professor insisted that "the computer is always right." (Anyone with common sense in our field would know that the computer was wrong in this case!)

In my C++ class, on some of the tests, it'd be looking for something like "#include " for an answer. Here is how it actually displayed. It's happened numerous times. I've reported it to the professor and he said that he fixed the problem. The WebCT team isn't escaping the <> and so the browsers are interpreting it as a bad HTML tag.

Instead of just fixing all of those questions, they leave it to the student to figure out how to get around it. When those issues come up I have to view the source and hunt down which one the answer is. Here's an even better illustration of this issue.

The latest gaffe with this system happened last night and today. Last night I logged in and it told me that I had a new grade for a test I hadn't even taken yet. It told me I made a zero. I still had both of my two test attempts left.

I took the test today and aced it with a 100, and it still told me I had a zero. I took it again and the zero remained. Check it out here.

Emails to my professor have gone unanswered thus far. There is a support number for WebCT in his syllabus -- I called it and got a student who couldn't help me and had no idea what was going on. Those were his own words.

"Middle Georgia College: Now THIS is ~~college~~ failure!"

Spring Break

2009-03-14T12:14:00.003-04:00

Spring break started yesterday and I couldn't be happier, save for the weather (that took a downturn the day I got off.)

My grandmother went into surgery for her cancer on Thursday and they got the tissue out. They also checked her lymph nodes and found them to be clean. :) As my cousin Sara put it, ".. I feel with my whole heart that my family will look back on 2009 as the year my Granny beat cancer." :)

The Army took Steve back to Germany yesterday. :/ Earlier this week he told us that they were getting his flight together, then I was told he was told he was leaving Sunday so he was planning on coming to see us here in Warner Robins yesterday, but they got him up early and threw him and his stuff on a plane.

While eating out at Mellow Mushroom last night with Andrew, he said the same thing happened to someone he knew -- the guy had some time off and he was going to go home to his family but they shipped him to Iraq with little warning yesterday. I wonder what's going on.

It also looks like I got my wish of an easy way to save money -- my debit/credit card got captured. One of Visa's third party companies had some kind of issue and as a result, a lot of cards got "compromised," and mine was one of them... so I had them close it and now I'll be waiting for about a month for my replacement (since there are so many people that this happened to.)

I do believe that chai tea is a divine gift. :3 Especially for $3.99 at your local Kroger. (Not that I endorse Kroger by any means [I actually hate it.], I just know they have it there.) I've gotta play around with the chai to milk ratio (and experiment with syrups) but so help me, I'll have a cheap fix by the time I start school in the Fall. :3

Interesting thought,

2009-03-10T21:44:00.003-04:00

Time and sunrise/sunset is really only a major topic with the majority of the people I know around the daylight savings time switches.

Some people are blown away that the sun rises before six in the morning on the beaches and then somewhere around four in the morning in the deserts of Iraq.

If you think about it, right now with DST active, the first month's 6-7am period is pretty dark. By the end of it and into the peak summer months, it's light out. Take into consideration that we are ahead by an hour (Spring forward, fall back.) So... in the peak summer months, the sun's already up by 6am. :)

It just amuses me slightly that people are amazed at something that's "rare" and "strange" while it's quite normal and technically happens to them pretty often.

An adventure in microblogging

2009-03-10T12:24:00.001-04:00

9 March 2009

8:07am - Fell asleep around 11. Woke up at 12:30. Couldn't sleep until 2. Woke up an hour late. Fell back asleep. Missed first class.

10:51am - Made a 93 on my Bio exam. Lecture was good. Brent wasn't in class today - maybe he got snowed in at home?

11:06am - Elevator in Walker is making loud crashing noises. And people ask me why I never use that elevator!

12:03pm - Tour bus of out-of-town softball players at Subway. Kind of crazy. Would have been funnier had they all been on their week.

2:35pm - Java lecture was boring. Classmate complained about how the work was hard and pointless. He's a nice guy but I think he needs a new major.

2:48pm - Shaun isn't here today - is sick. :( I hope he's okay. Listening to last week's A State of Trance & studying for a music app test.

5:33pm - Wendy's with Mat was fun. Shaun has a stomach bug. KSU hasn't processed his paperwork either and he's not sure about housing either.

8:00pm - Music app test went okay, I should've studied more. Waiting to possibly go out to eat tonight.

10:52pm - Dinner at La Cabana was rather awesome. :) Lots and lots of fun. Time to go to bed.

Thoughts on Human Nature

2009-03-07T11:11:00.003-05:00

It's been a couple of days since my last post. I've been busy with exams and midterm in general.

Here's a correction to my last post. I pasted the wrong image url (a broken one) to the post. It is fixed now.

I found out earlier this week that my grandmother on my mother's side has cancer. I was told they're going to take that tissue out and start her on radiation, but that's all I've heard.

I saw Watchmen last night and I really enjoyed it. I was a little surprised at the plot because I thought it was only about someone killing masked superheros. I really liked it, though. It had a very cynical view of human nature and highlighted some of the stuff I've been thinking over the past several years. I'm not exactly sure if experiencing all of that last night is responsible for my next two points in this update, but here we go anyway. :)

This was touched on by my friend Dominic. The post can be found here and a link to his blog is in my links section. He basically pointed out that with the advent of social networking, there really are no secrets anymore with most people. Just about everything in someone's personal life can be found on their Facebook or Myspace profile page.

I was taught in Psychology that relationships are built on a balanced exchange of information. Most of the time this is done by two people during the dating/courting period in their relationship. What Dominic points out is that barely anyone takes time to get to know another person anymore. People either just hook up or after the first "date" they jump into a serious relationship.

I recommend reading what he has to say. He gets the point across a lot better than I do.

My next post comes from something that happened a few days ago. Usually when I get into my Calculus class, there are people talking about things. As I came in that morning, their subject was working. Rather, that doing any kind of work with no reward was really stupid and that nobody really works for free.

I interjected that the concept of volunteering is people working for free. I basically got laughed at and was told that "free" is just an illusion, and that most volunteer workers are high school students trying to get into college.

Whoever it was had a point. A lot of bigger colleges ask about volunteer work.

I guess it's just down to the grimy side of human nature again. Most people in this world nowadays only do something for someone else when "something is in it for them." On the bright side, at least the work, whatever it may be, is getting done.

iMac invasion!

2009-03-02T14:57:00.004-05:00

I'm very happy. :) My Macbook fits in nicely.

The thing that really kind of sucks is that they all are running Windows XP. It's under Boot Camp, yes, but the Mac OS side isn't usable yet. They don't have accounts setup for public/student use yet.

One thing that was kind of weird as well was that my professor and I rebooted two of the machines to try to get into the Mac half but we couldn't login, so we rebooted to Windows and we weren't able to log in. MGC does authentication over the network so I figured maybe the network cable was out of port or something, but the cable worked when it was plugged into my computer. It was weird.

Also, I didn't think I'd like the mighty mouse or the new apple keyboards as much as I do. They are rather awesome. ^^

Web 2.0 and smalltown news sources should not mix. Ever.

2009-03-01T22:10:00.003-05:00

Several months ago 13WMAZ, a local news station, "advanced" to Web 2.0. In this post, I define Web 2.0 as the use of dynamic official content and a push for user-created content.

The first W2.0 attempt flopped and instead of porting all of the data to the new system that they use now, they just dropped it all and told everyone to reapply for membership.

For a while, it was VERY irritating because you couldn't do anything on the site without telling it where you were, what your gender is, and how old you are.

To my main gripe, their new system allows users to comment and discuss news material. I've been refreshing the school closings page for about an hour now and I can see the comments being exchanged on the bottom of the page. I've divided them into three categories:

Students who want to be out of school and are excited about what's going on.

Parents who are inquiring about unlisted schools to see if they should be putting their child/children to bed.

Self-righteous individuals who think telling the other commenters that they are stupid for thinking the roads would be frozen will actually stop them from commenting.

People who tell commenters to be quiet stop using the comment area as a chat.

People who defend any of the commenters being verbally abused by either of the previous two items.

If you think it through logically, all the comment area is going to do for most any news article on that site is cause a commotion. Someone is going to voice their opinion and someone is going to lash out at them with "all the reasons they are wrong."

The commenting aspect should be left to the users' personal blogs that the site offers, or to blogs like the one you are reading right now.

A system could be developed that links the news article to something mentioned in the blog, and then the commotion could erupt somewhere OUTSIDE of the actual news page. OR, since that would be too decentralized and the people who want to get their point across out won't be able to reach as wide an audience, divide the site into two sections: News-based and user-content-based.

In one area (the area I would stay in), would be only news. Then if the user wanted, they could follow a link to a discussion board centered around that article. Users on the news page wouldn't have to see all of the "discussion" if they didn't want to.

Either way, probably the best reason there should be a division is to prevent misinformation.

Inexperienced users on the internet might read a comment on the page and believe that it is a factual statement produced by the news media. On the small scale, if some user hears a rumor that Perry High School is out but it's really not and a parent/guardian reads that and believes it to be truth (like the commenter did), then their student will be in trouble for missing class.

On a large scale, if some user commented some kind of false accusation against some country or group of people on an international news entry, more rumors and false truths would be let into the community.

Snowing in Central Georgia

2009-03-01T13:42:00.005-05:00

Well, not at the moment, but it sure was earlier and they're forecasting more this afternoon. :)

I woke up this morning to some loud rattling on my (metal) air conditioner and when I opened the window I saw sleet coming down pretty heavily. It did that for about an hour and then it started to snow.

I went to get gas, cereal, and a white mocha from Starbucks and ended up in a Winter Wonderland -- the snow on Watson Blvd was abusive but amazing. I'm really sad that it's only drizzling right now but I guess I really shouldn't expect much from this storm system.

I'm really not sure about school tomorrow morning because this thing is supposed to keep producing until around midnight or so and then it'll be way below freezing, so there will be a ton of ice on the road.

I really don't want to go out in it but I have a test first thing in Calculus.

Car accidents...

2009-02-26T22:28:00.005-05:00

My stepsister was in a wreck today.

I'm really glad Dad didn't send me pictures when he told me, because after all the stuff that happened this morning I probably would have broken down.

She pulled out onto a main road from our residential area and didn't see one car. From what I understand, that person tried to swerve and because of that, they nailed her engine. Then the cars spun and bounced into each other in the rear, leaving my stepsister's car facing ongoing traffic on the other side of the divided road.

She's okay, for the most part. Nothing is broken. Just bruises, bumps, scrapes, and pulled muscles. It's really a miracle because she didn't have her seat belt on. The picture of the door is of where her body it.

I really feel bad for commenting to her last weekend that I got the shit end of the stick with my fender bender. (We had a bet going on who would get the first speeding ticket, she got the first and then I got into the first accident.)

Reader, whoever you are, please be careful on the road.

A question for you,

2009-02-25T11:11:00.003-05:00

How many five-year-old's could you take in a fight? :)

http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/

The specifics:

- You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
- You are not allowed to touch a wall.
- When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is "out."
- I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your magic number. The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy Americans.
- The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of "counter-tactics" training.
- There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
* The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down.

-Taken from the blog post that inspired this.

I can take on 24.

Also, out of curiosity, how many ninety-year-old's could you take in a fight? I've got 23.

My Environmentalist is Showing

2009-02-22T20:18:00.007-05:00

Dear Reader,

Watch this video.

Sincerely, Me.

--

I got into an accident before the An-Ex sushi dinner. Someone in front of me put on their brakes rather quick, I put on mine to not run into them, and then the guy behind me (An An-Ex member who was carpooling the other half of our group) slid into me because his brakes locked. There was no substantial damage done (that I can tell so far), though it really sounded like it at first... Just a scratch and some paint transfer. We worked out what to do so my car will be fixed soon. :)

The dinner itself was a success. Zen's is amazing and I highly recommend going there if you are in the Central Georgia area.

Friday was a day of rest and laundry.

Saturday was my cousin Sara's daughter's first birthday party. :) It was a lot of fun.

Today was more or less another day of rest. I've got a long week ahead of me.

Maybe I will follow you forever

2009-02-19T13:23:00.007-05:00

Today was the first lab exam for Biology of the semester. I think I did alright on it. We had some pretty crazy weather last night -- we had a tornado warning in the early evening. A funnel cloud passed over the air force base that's a few miles away from my house. I'm just glad it didn't decide to touch down.

Tonight is AnEx:Koryo's Zen's Steakhouse visit. I hope it goes well. I really kind of hope that I don't have to carpool people because I'll have to drive home, drive back to school to drop people off, then drive BACK home.

It's going to be different not having to drive to Atlanta for a party tonight. I'm definitely looking forward to the rest I'm gonna get, though.

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T17:09:00.005-05:00

Well, not for a lot of us single people.

And now for something completely different,

I really want to try this:

I've got a ton of homework to do and no will to do it. I hate days like this. >_<

RIP Macbook & Above and Beyond

2009-02-13T18:00:00.008-05:00

So, my Macbook kicked the bucket yesterday afternoon. :(

I was sitting in work-study writing out a search function for the software I've been writing for the department, my Macbook was beside me with iTunes at the ready. I was talking to my boss and then I heard this horrible noise, so I looked over and my Mac's screen was off and the CD drive was going crazy. It wouldn't respond to anything, so I killed the power to it and rebooted it. I logged in and it waited less than a minute and started the same thing all over again.

Today I tried using the Mac OS installation DVD. If the computer stayed on while running from the DVD, the issue would be in the OS software and it would just need reinstalling, and if it died (which it did), it's a hardware issue.

So I managed to get my hard drive out of it and I'm working on getting all of my stuff off of it.

The horrible luck my family has had with technology over the past week has almost been amusing. My brother's laptop died (something is wrong with the motherboard, I think) a few days ago and then mine died today.

I think I'm going to have to just buy a normal Macbook instead of a Macbook Pro. I simply can't afford a Pro machine right now and I really need a laptop for school.

Anyway, Above and Beyond was last night. :) The show was alright. I actually had a better time at Ferry Corsten's show, but that had nothing to do with the DJs (They're incomparable -- both remarkably awesome) -- it was the crowd. It seemed like there were more people there for the party than for the music. It was okay, but I'm kind of tired of walking out of the club with my nerves frayed and my shirt covered with someone's drink that they threw in a fit of excitement at the music or anger at another individual.

So here's what some of the highlights were like!

There were some pretty good ravers doing their thing during the warm-up act, which was very good as well. The warmup was JP Del Rio and he worked the audience really well.

Epoch Failure

2009-02-09T17:43:00.004-05:00

So, Gizmodo posted an article that stated that Unix time's 1234567890 will happen on Friday the 13th this month. Here on the Eastern seaboard, it'll happen at 6:31:30 PM.

They supplied the following perl code to let readers find when in their timezone that it would happen:

perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";'

That's cool and all, so I decided to see when exactly that the epoch failure will occur.

( In a nutshell, the epoch [reference time to synch time across computers] was started on 00:00:00 January 1, 1970. It's been counting in seconds ever since. It's stored as an integer. On 32-bit computers, the highest integer that can be stored in memory is 2147483647. The second that number is incremented to 2147483648, it will "wrap around" and be stored as -2147483648, and as it is "incremented", it will decrease. (-2147483647, then -2147483646, etc.) This will send "time" back to 1901. )

So, I put in the following code perl -e 'print scalar localtime(-2147483648),"\n";' and I got the following output:

Fri Dec 13 15:45:52 1901

So... This coming Friday the 13th will be 1234567890 and once the epoch wraps around and computers around the world shit bricks, it will be Friday the 13th in that "wrap around" time.

I like being a geek sometimes. :)

Ferry Corsten at Opera

2009-02-06T14:47:00.005-05:00

Last night was so much fun. The crowd got kind of crazy about halfway through the show... body surfing, throwing drinks around, people being stupid, etc... but at some point they either calmed down or left and the last hour of the show was amazing.

I knew the majority of the tracks he played so that made the night even better.

Here are two of my videos from last night. Others are on my YouTube page.

Small update on things

2009-02-02T18:29:00.006-05:00

School has been okay to say the least. There's been a bit of needless drama going on that, in my humble opinion, has no place in college or "the real world" (wherever that is.) But that's okay.

A small update on Sarah and Steve, the baby's funeral was last Tuesday. Sarah was in really bad shape. I don't really know how to describe Steve. I haven't seen them since that day. Steve was supposed to go back to the Army base on Friday but I heard he went back on Sunday. His Dad told us that he was going to apply for a humanitarian reassignment back to the states to be with her. I don't know about being in town, but I know he's going to try get put back in the states.

I have no idea what's going on with his surgery. If I remember correctly, that meeting with the doctors was supposed to be last week but because of all that happened, he was granted emergency leave to be here.

I really need to apply for Kennesaw State and Armstrong Atlantic. I'll probably do that when I get home from Music Appreciation (where I'm at right now.)

I bought my Ferry Corsten tickets last night so I'm good for Thursday. :) I'm very excited about it.

That's him. It's going to be a blast. (As far as that video goes, I can't believe he played THROUGH sunrise. My brain would have exploded!) Luckily one of the guys going with my group to this event lives about twenty minutes away from Atlanta, so we can stay for the whole event then crash at his place and then drive back home the following afternoon. (I'd say morning but I know how late I sleep after these things.)

Also, for your enjoyment, some random music-humor that was shown to me several years ago. We're covering music notation in the class right now and this came to mind.

You can click each of the pages for a larger view. They are hilarious.

What would you do if you were this guy?

2009-01-28T21:44:00.003-05:00

I can't embed the video, but just click the picture below to see it. :)

Then of course, being this woman couldn't be much better, I'm sure.

It really sucks that YouTube disabled the ability for you to watch it right here in this screen but maybe that's how they're keeping it safe from copyright deletion.

Life lesson #273

2009-01-22T13:32:00.006-05:00

Never drink a full ~~16oz~~ (update on 28 Jan 2009) It was actually a 20.8oz cup. I checked it today.] cup of coffee in less than ten minutes.

Calculus ended early today (someone needs to check on Satan in Hell and make sure it's not frozen over) and I was a zombie despite seven hours of sleep, so I went to raid the coffee in the Cafe mentioned earlier this week. I went back to the science/math building and realized that we were going to be in lab that day. We can't have drinks in lab. I came to the chugging conclusion when I realized that a) I needed the kick because I was so tired and b) I didn't want to waste the time and the $1.92 it took to have the beverage. My professor was nice enough to not make me throw it away, so I went out into the hall and "beasted" the beverage. (Thanks for the term, Ryan.)

The lab went great. A fast-forward kind of great, but still great nonetheless.

Aside from coffee news, Steve came over Tuesday night and brought me to the Macon Hospital where Sarah's at. She's attached to a ventilator right now because she had water on her lungs. Other than that, she's doing good. Steve has seven or eight days left on his emergency leave period.

In work study for the past few workdays I've been writing software to handle the chemical management for the college. I'll be finished with it next week, I think.

Time for me to go back to work.

Coffee zombie requires coffee!

2009-01-20T11:19:00.004-05:00

Dear GOD, I almost lost my religion on the Sanford Cafe employees this morning.

I was up until 1am doing Calculus homework last night. We reviewed most of the chapter in lecture today and then covered the last two sections. In Biology we covered all of plant life in one hour and fifteen minutes and I don't remember much because I was struggling to stay awake the whole time. I stumble out of the lecture hall and walk through the -2*C + 20mph wind to the cafe, brush past the mass of disgruntled students who are inevitably going to be late to class because so many people want smoothies (the understaffed cafe can't ring up customers and please the smoothie-addicts at the same time.)

Once to the sacred coffee machine, I get a cup and start to fill it with the Bold stuff. I get one pump of fluid and then bubbles after that, which get on my white hoodie so now I'll have coffee stains until I get home or find a Tide pen.

It takes the coffee machine a full five minutes to make, meanwhile there is a growing crowd of foaming at the mouth coffee addicts. I finally fought the good fight and got my drink filled, and now I am awake. Huzzah. <3

I'm not looking too forward to playing frisbee in this weather. I'm also going to see if I can get out of Percussion tonight so I can do the sixty-six (39 in one section, 27 in another) Calculus problems tonight. That number isn't accurate either because assuredly there are multiple parts to at least half of these. :(

Magdalena Rose

2009-01-19T00:13:00.004-05:00

Today my best friend and his wife lost their unborn baby girl, Magdalena Rose McCoy. She was only a month or two shy of being born into this world.

I was sitting on the couch watching one of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour movies giving my mind a break from the Calculus homework that I have been working on since I woke up when my Stepmom came into the room and told me.

I am still at a loss. This was my first niece (not by blood but she might as well have been), and I never got to meet her. I'm sure she would have been amazing -- she got off to a great start by kicking her Dad in the eye through her Mom's belly!

Magdalena, I am going to miss you. Steve and Sarah, I love you.

Flamedramon!

2009-01-16T21:16:00.005-05:00

I'm going to need a bigger desk for all of these types of things. This is at Dad's house, all of my other figures are at Mom's on MY desk. I was lucky enough to find this guy back in December while I was up late helping a friend with his computer. Shipping took forever and for a few weeks I thought I had been cheated. It really did seem likely, especially since Zero Two hasn't aired since I was in middle school.

That night, me and my friend were at my house and I was getting his computer prepped for a reformat. We were talking about all sorts of geekery and I showed him how to search for models and other things relevant to his interest on eBay. For fun, I searched for this Digimon figure (I had been looking for it for two or three years off and on), and I lucked out with a Hong Kong seller.

He's probably 6" or 7" tall. I'm pleasantly surprised because they didn't say how tall it was on the eBay listing and with how the photo looked, it looked pretty small. I thought I was getting screwed, but I'm glad I wasn't. ^^

No One Watches the Sky Anymore

2009-01-14T20:48:00.005-05:00

That's actually a bit of a lie, but I know I haven't for a pretty long time. This was the sky a few nights ago as seen from my campus. The entire sky was covered in it. I'd upload the other photos but my phone has a bad habit of making things green, so that will have to wait.

One of the guys in the computer science department is looking for a roommate for his apartment that is less than two minutes away from campus (walking.) I just saw it today and I think I'm going to take him up on his offer. I don't think boredom will be much of a problem because Monday nights are Music Appreciation, Tuesday nights are Percussion, and Wednesday nights are An-Ex meetings. Sunday I'll just leave Warner Robins late and Thursday night I'll go home. One of my commuting friends is also interested in sharing the living space, so that will help the bills drop. Hooray cheaper rent!

I've got a mountain of Calculus homework that's due next week some time. I'm going to go to bed early tonight so I won't be a zombie for class tomorrow, and I'll just knock out the homework over the weekend sometime.

What's so very frustrating is that I have so MUCH Calculus homework that I don't really have time to do much of anything else, like exploring Logic Express or writing out code for a few projects that I'm behind on.

I'm really looking forward to this four day weekend. Thank God tomorrow is Thursday.

Steve's Temporary Return & Selling Stuff

2009-01-11T09:37:00.009-05:00

Steve came back for the weekend, and I was very happy to see him again so soon. The doctors basically want to see if his toe will heal itself over the next three weeks to see if they actually need to do the surgery. He told me the extent of what happened and that since it's been two months since the accident that it's already grown back wrong. He can't bend it at all and it still hurts him. I have a feeling they will have to re-break it. >_< However he has already told the people on base that he wants to do rehab here in Georgia, and since they want to wait three weeks to see if water is wet, I imagine it will be a bit of time before they actually do the surgery. The longer he is here and not in Iraq, the better.

Kari and I finally got our company's domain and hosting package set up. We have to meet up at some point this week to get the design/content together for it. We're also hoping to finish with our first client this week as well.

I'm selling some video games. I sold my DS earlier this year so I definitely have no use for any of these games. Anonymous commenting should be allowed here so if you are interested, leave a comment with some kind of contact information (and if I know you, who you are.)

DS Games:

Starfox Command
Digimon World DS
Lunar Dragon Song
Final Fantasy III
Super Mario 64 DS
Pac-Pix
Mario Kart DS

GBA Games:

Pokemon FireRed Version
Fire Emblem - The Sacred Stones

Don't forget, A State of Trance will be on this Thursday at 2pm EST on the radio station mentioned here.

Above & Beyond / WGI Startup

2009-01-09T20:13:00.004-05:00

I highly recommend watching this video. Lots of people ask me why I love this music and why I want to work with it for the rest of my life. It brings together the best people in the world, I believe. People from all cultures regardless of background, ethnicity, language, anything, are brought together by this music.

There is no other experience in the world like being at a trance event. I really do wish it were big here in the United States like it seems to be most everywhere else in the world, but I think it's growing.

--

School has gotten off to a good start, though I am exhausted right now. I didn't get too much sleep Wednesday night and I had to be up before dawn for class on Thursday. I fell asleep relatively early last night but I had to be up at 5:30am for work.

Indoor drumline/WGI started back at Middle GA College yesterday. Our premier show will be on 14 February and championships are going to be held on 28 March... so in other words, the competition season is going to be ridiculously condensed.

I had to break from my forty-four problem count Calculus assignment to write this. I had not actually intended on blogging tonight but I was looking up a podcast and found Above & Beyond's podcast in the process, and it was very deserving of a post. Time to go back to torture, though. The earlier I finish this, the earlier I can get to bed.

A State of Trance!

2009-01-08T11:43:00.001-05:00

This will probably be more aimed at my friends/the younger family, but every Thursday I try to catch Armin van Buuren's radio show A State of Trance. You can tune in today (and every Thursday) at 2pm EST at the link below.

http://www.di.fm/mp3/trance.pls

Also, if you have iTunes, an iPod, or some other method of listening to podcasts, I highly recommend Armin van Buuren's "A State of Trance" podcast (found here .) I am also starting to tune in to Gareth Emery's podcast, which can be found here. I'm liking it so far, so if you enjoy this kind of music, I really recommend both for your listening pleasure. :]

In some performance news,

Ferry Corsten will be in Atlanta on 5 Feb, Above & Beyond will be in Atlanta on 12 Feb, and Armin van Buuren will be in Atlanta on 1 Apr. I'm so very glad that the first two shows are on Thursday nights but Armin's means that Thursday morning at school is NOT going to be fun... but it will be very worth it. :)

School so far has been really enjoyable. My Java class only has four people in it, myself and the professor included.

T-minus 14h21m for Spring semester 2009

2009-01-06T18:39:00.002-05:00

Monday/Wednesday
8:00am - Calculus II
9:30am - Principles of Biology II (Lecture)
[Free time or work study]
12:30pm - Computer Science II (Lecture)
2:00pm - Computer Science II (Lab) (Monday only)
[Work study]

Tuesday/Thursday
8:00am - Calculus II
9:30am - Principles of Biology II (Lab)
[Free time or work study]
3:30pm - Ultimate Frisbee
[Work study]
5:30pm - Percussion Ensemble

I've had my schedule since before the end of last semester but I reread over it yesterday and had a wave of relief. The break that I have in the 11am block is probably going to save my sanity.

Over the past few days I've kind of been glued to the computer writing code for plox. ^^; I need to pay more attention to the clock when I'm programming.

Today I met up with a friend from high school who will be moving to Germany in the next few weeks. He told me that I need to visit him when Loveparade goes on. I really want to take him up on that offer, but I just need to see when it falls this year and if I can get away to do so.

Steve & A New University

2009-01-04T11:42:00.003-05:00

Here's the skinny for those of you who don't know me: Steve is my best friend of five or six years, he has been in the army for two of them, and has been in Iraq for almost a year as a tank mechanic.

Last month he was working on a tank and the guy operating the jack wasn't paying attention, so something broke and a spring fell on his foot at full force, breaking some stuff. So he's been tossed around that hemisphere between medical personnel and they ended up shipping him back to Georgia for his final consultation and surgery. They gave him a few days' leave, so here he is with his wife in my kitchen. :) The hard hat was something my Dad and I had kept for him after he left working with my Dad's company to join the army. That hat was from our first job-site together. He should be heading back to Savannah today, sometime.

As for a new college, if all goes well over this semester (and with course availability come summertime), I'll be graduating from Middle Georgia College after summer semester. I've been trying to find a university that doesn't have a math-intensive computer science program (because I'm not too great at math the first time -- when they need me to be good at it) and that has a music program that is open to non-majors.

I believe Armstrong Atlantic in Savannah, Georgia will be my best bet. Not only do they have a music program open to non-majors, they have a percussion ensemble that is open as well. :) Again, for those that don't know me, I've been a growing percussionist since I first entered middle school.

Anyway, Christmas went by without fanfare. New Years was about the same. I missed the ball drop for the first time in my waking/conscious/remembering life... but then again, once you've seen one you've more or less seen them all.

I'll be honest - I don't want to go back to school on Wednesday. My full week 8am Calculus II class is the only thing I am not looking forward to. Everything else is bearable. I'll make it though. Somehow.

Whattt?

2008-12-19T20:55:00.001-05:00

I figure this will be the easiest way to keep everyone in the family (and whoever else who wants to stalk me) in the loop with what's going on in my life.

A short update for those who either a) haven't heard from me in a while or b) don't know me: I'm a nineteen year old college sophomore at Middle Georgia College. I'm a computer science major. I'm a percussionist (currently performing with the MGC Indoor Drumline.) I'm a bit of a computer geek, but as my work-study professor so eloquently put it, "I'm a more 'well-rounded' computer geek." I really enjoy repairing computers and designing/coding websites.

I'm not too sure how often this will be updated, but I know there will be several posts here in the next week or so because of the holidays.